What Did Peter de Bruys Really Teach?

In the section entitled "Ministy of the Holy Spirit 1000 - 1900 A.D., Nate makes the following statement:

Prominent among such Teachers was Pierre De Brueys, an able and Diligent Preacher who for 20 years, braving all dangers, traveled throughout Dauphiny, Province, Languedoc, and Gascony, drawing multitudes from the Superstition in which they had been brought up, back to the teachings of Scripture, until he was burned at St. Gilles (1126). He showed them from Scripture that NONE should be baptized until they had Attained to the Full use of their Reason, that it is Useless to BUILD Churches, as God accepts sincere worship, wherever offered; that crucifixes should not be venerated (regard with reverence), but rather looked upon with horror, as representing the instrument on which our Lord Suffered. The Bread and Wine are not changed into the body and blood of Christ, but are symbols commemorative of His death: and that the PRAYERS and good works of the LIVING cannot benefit the dead.

[Clay] What Nate apparently doesn't know is that de Bruys was a heretic, even by 2x2 standards. Here is what Colish writes about him:

"There were other heretics who were not academics and who also objected to certain popular devotions. A good case in point is Peter of Bruys (fl. 1117/29-35/6), a renegade cleric and unlicensed preacher in southern France. He reverted to a heresy held by more than one group in the early Church, the notion that Christ's humanity was not real, but illusory. For Peter, Christ had never been born in the flesh and had never truly suffered and died. Hence, he thought it improper to venerate the crucifix. He expressed this view by lighting a bonfire of crucifixes in front of the abbey church of St. Gilles one Good Friday, which led to his lynching by the enraged citizens. His disciple, Henry of Lausanne (fl. 1116-48), continued Peter's preaching, which also included the rejection of the sacraments and the need for a clergy to administer them." (Colish, Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, Yale University Press: New Haven, 1977, p. 247)

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© Copyright Clay Randall, 2001