Peter of Bruys

]

The fifth error was that “they deride sacrifices, prayers, alms, and other good works by the faithful living for the faithful dead, and say that these things cannot aid any of the dead even in the least...The good deeds of the living cannot profit the dead, because translated from this life their merits cannot be increased or diminished, for beyond this life there is no longer place for merits, only for retribution. Nor can a dead man hope from anybody that which while alive in the world he did not obtain. Therefore those things are vain that are done by the living for the dead, because since they are mortal they passed by death over the way for all flesh to the state of the future world, and took with them all their merit, to which nothing can be added.”

Death and legacy

As Peter the Venerable recorded, crosses were singled out for special iconoclasm. Peter of Bruys felt that crosses should not deserve veneration. Crosses became for the Petrobrusians objects of desecration and were destroyed in bonfires. In or around the year 1131, Peter was publicly burning crosses in St Gilles near Nîmes. The local populace, angered by Peter's destruction of the crosses, cast him into the flames of his own bonfire.

in 1139.

Henry of Lausanne's followers became known as Henricians. Both the Henrician and the Petrobrusian sects began to die out in 1145, the year St Bernard of Clairvaux began preaching for a return to Roman orthodoxy in southern France. Soon afterwards Henry of Lausanne was arrested, brought before the bishop of Toulouse, and probably imprisoned for life. In a letter to the people of Toulouse, undoubtedly written at the end of 1146, Bernard calls upon them to extirpate the last remnants of the heresy. As late as 1151, however, some Henricians still remained active in Languedoc. In that year, the Benedictine monk and English chronicler Matthew Paris related that a young girl who claimed to be miraculously inspired by the Virgin Mary was reputed to have converted a great number of the disciples of Henry of Lausanne.cite book
last=Paris | first=Matthew | title =The compilation of the 'Chronica majora' of Matthew Paris | work = | publisher =H. Milford | date =1944
url = | accessdate = ] The sects both disappear from the historical record after this reference.cite book | last=Colish | first=Marcia | title =Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition | work = | publisher =Yale University Press | date =1977 | url = | accessdate = ]

There is no evidence that Peter Waldo or any other later religious figures were directly influenced by Peter of Bruys.Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, pp. 874-876] His radical views on the Old Testament and the New Testament epistles disqualify him from even being a spiritual forerunner of later Protestant figures such as Martin Luther or John Smyth. In spite of this, Peter of Bruys is considered a prophet of the Reformation by some evangelical Protestants.cite book | last =Daily | first =John R. | title =Primitive Monitor | publisher = | date =1897 | location = Greenfield, IN, USA | pages =422–425 | isbn = ]

References

Persondata
NAME = Peter of Bruys
ALTERNATIVE NAMES = Pierre De Bruys or Peter de Bruis
SHORT DESCRIPTION = 12th century heresiarch
DATE OF BIRTH =
PLACE OF BIRTH = Bruis, France
DATE OF DEATH = 1131
PLACE OF DEATH = Saint–Gilles, Gard, France