Amauri

, or more commonly Amalric or Almeric (de Chartres), professor of logic and theology at Paris, in the thirteenth century, was a nadve of Bene in the diocese of Chartres, and rendered himself famous for the singularity of his opinions, and the multitudes who became his followers, and suffered for their adherence. Adopting the metaphysics of Aristotle, he formed to himself a new system of religion, which has been thus explained. Aristotle supposes that all beings are composed of matter, which has in itself neither form nor shape: this he calls the first matter. This Amauri called God, because it is a necessary and infinite being. He acknowledged in God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to whom he attributed the empire of the world, and whom he regarded as the object of religious worship. But as this matter was endowed with a property of continual motion, it necessarily followed that this world must some time have an end, and that all the beings therein must return to that first matter, which was the supreme of all beings the first existing, and the only one eternal. Religion, according to Amauri’s opinion, had three epochas, which bore a similitude to the reign of the three persons in the Trinity. The reign of God had existed as long as the law of Moses. The reign of the Son would not always last; the ceremonies and sacrifices, which according to Amauri constituted the essence of it, would not be eternal. A time would come when the sacraments should cease, and then the religion of the Holy Ghost would begin, in which men would have no need of sacraments, and would render a spiritual worship to the Supreme Being. This epocha was the reign of the Holy Ghost, which according to Amauri was foretold by the scripture, and which would succeed to the Christian religion, as the Christian religion had succeeded to that of Moses. The Christian religion therefore was the reign of Jesus Christ | in the world, and every man under that law ought to look on himself as one of the members of Jesus Christ. Amauri had many proselytes, but his opinions were condemned by pope Innocent III. His disciples added that the sacraments were useless, and that no action dictated by charity could be bad. They were condemned by the council of Paris in 1209, and many of them burned. Amauri appealed to the pope, who also condemned his doctrines; but for fear of a rigorous punishment he retracted his opinions, retired to St. Martin des Champs, and died there of chagrin and disappointment. His bones were afterwards dug up and burnt by order of the council of Paris. As there is much confusion in the accounts given of Amauri’s system, it may be necessary to add, that Spanheim, Fleury, and others, are of opinion that most of the heresies imputed to him, are without foundation, and represent him as having only taught that every Christian ought to believe himself a member of Jesus Christ, otherwise they cannot be saved, and that Dinant and his other disciples fell into those errors which he was accused of having taught. It seems not improbable that his inveighing against the worship of saints and images would in that age form the principal article against him; and it is certain that many of his disciples were men of distinguished piety, remarkable for the gravity and austerity of their lives, and for suffering death, in all its dreadful forms, with the utmost resolution. ¹