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remember that a large part of his audience would be ignorant peasants who
had never heard a really good preacher. As Tanchelm addressed them in the open fields, dressed as a monk, the audiences reacted like modern teenagers to a pop idol. He denounced the Church for its
corruption, and told them that if the sacraments were administered by sinful priests, they would fail to work. So many were convinced that the churches were soon empty. And when Tanchelm told his
followers not to pay taxes to the church (called tithes), they were delighted to follow his advice.
    Was Tanchelm a charlatan, or did he really believe he was a messiah? He certainly felt that he had a right to live like a king. He dressed magnificently, and was always surrounded by a large
retinue, including twelve men who were supposed to be the twelve disciples. One day he announced that he would become betrothed to the Virgin Mary, and held a ceremony in which he and a sacred
statue were joined together in front of a vast crowd who offered their jewellery as an engagement present.
    With so many followers, the Church could do nothing about him; he held Utrecht, Antwerp and large areas of the countryside. Finally, about AD 1115, he was killed –
like the messiah of Gevaudon – by treachery, being stabbed by a priest who had been allowed to approach him. But his influence remained as powerful as ever, and it took another “miracle
worker”, Norbert of Xanten (who was regarded with favour by the Church) to finally “de-convert” his followers in Antwerp and restore power to the Church.
    Rebellion, Mysticism and Sex
    How did these “messiahs” become so powerful? To begin with, all of them had the gift of preaching. But it was more than that. The Christian Church, which began as a
poor and persecuted organization whose leaders were thrown to the lions, suddenly became the official religion of Rome in AD 313, under the Emperor Constantine. As soon as
they gained power, the Christians began to behave far worse than their enemies, destroying pagan temples, burning heretics, and squabbling amongst themselves. In effect, the Church became the
supreme dictator. And the poor, ordered to go to church every Sunday, groaning under heavy taxes and forced to pay to have their sins forgiven, became increasingly disenchanted with their spiritual
masters. But there was nothing they could do; the Church exerted the same iron grip as the Nazis in Germany or the Communists in Stalin’s Russia.
    This is why rebel messiahs found an eager audience. Like Jesus, they attacked the establishment and declared that the “law” was less important than the spirit. Besides there had
always been a strong tradition of mysticism in the Church. Mystics were men who had experienced moments of overwhelming joy and illumination in which they felt they had seen God. The mystics taught
that every man has a divine spark, and that therefore, in a sense, every man is God – or contains a fragment of God. They also believed that all Nature is an expression of God – in fact
some (called Pantheists) believed that Nature is God. One of the greatest of the early mystics, Dionysius the Areopagite (around AD 500) taught that God is a kind of
emptiness or darkness, and can only be reached by recognizing that God is not knowledge or power or eternity, or anything else that the mind can grasp. God is beyond all words and ideas.
    The Wife Who Lost her Ring
    One popular story of the Middle Ages was about a rich merchant whose wife began to spend a great deal of time in church. When her husband heard rumours that the church
consisted of believers in the Free Spirit, he decided to follow her one day. Wearing a disguise, he walked behind her into an underground cavern where – to his surprise – the service
began with a dance, in which everyone chose his or her partner. After that, the congregation ate food and drank wine. The husband began to understand why his wife preferred this to the