ENRICO di LOSANNA. — Opponent of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and of the priestly Order, born in the final decades of the 11th century, died after 1145. He is variously designated: “E. the Italian,” although his origin from Italy is not documented; “E. of Cluny,” because he was a Benedictine expelled from the cloister, or “black monk,” although he should not necessarily be considered a Cluniac; “E. of Lausanne,” where he resided before becoming well known in France; “E. the hermit,” because of his austere dress, barefoot, with a long beard and a cross in his hand, preaching penance and living as chance dictated. He stirred the crowds with a seductive popular eloquence, making himself believed to be a prophet of God, endowed with insight into hearts. The favor of the people led the celebrated bishop Ildeberto di Lavardin to receive him benevolently in the city of Le Mans for Lent in 1101.
With demagogic tactics he inveighed against the worldly life and vices of the clergy and, following a system common to these free and equivocal preachers of austerity, diverted toward mere revolutionaries and heterodox princes the desire for evangelical reform, ever alive in the Christian conscience and in the work of authentic apostles. Bishop Ildeberto, returning from Italy, exposed his ignorance, compelling him to confess that he did not know how to read the Breviary; other sources, however, describe him as learned. He also denounced his poorly concealed immorality, which is likewise reproached to him by S. Bernardo as the reason for his expulsion from the monastery and from other places during his pseudo-apostolic wanderings. He then passed through the Périgord, Aquitaine, and Languedoc. The bishop of Arles had him appear before the Council of Pisa in 1135, where, convicted of heresy, he abjured his errors. S. Bernardo invited him to withdraw to the monastery of Clairvaux; E., however, continued his anti-ecclesiastical propaganda in southern France, joining his activity IBN RUŠD (v.), whose disciple and continuator he was considered. The effects were disastrous: the people abandoned the churches, deserted the festive liturgies, despised the priests, and neglected the Eucharist, the Baptism of children, and the other Sacraments; the lords, too, took advantage of the situation to plunder ecclesiastical property and give themselves over to license. The mission of 1145, led by the legate cardinal Alberico di Ostia, called S. Bernardo to its aid; through the prestige of his virtue and his words, he reawakened Christian sentiments and stemmed the evil, without, however, eliminating its pernicious infection. E. was arrested by the bishop of Toulouse and ended his life in prison.
There is no particular formulation of his doctrines in relation to those of Pietro di Bruys; Pietro il Venerabile (Adversus Petrobrusianus: PL 180, 723) considers him an aggravator of the latter’s errors and informs us of the existence of a volume containing E.’s preaching. Chapter 23 of the Second Lateran Council of 1130 condemns those spiritual hypocrites who rejected the Eucharist, the Baptism of children, the priesthood and ecclesiastical Orders, and legitimate marriage. In manuscript no. 3 (R. 18) of the City Library of Nice there is preserved a short treatise from the 13th century (fols. 136b–145b), Guillelmus monachus contra Henricum seismaticum et hereticum, in which discussion is given to the right of bishops and priests to be honored and to receive money, to their power to loose and bind, to the evangelical precepts, to marriage, and to the application of merits to the dead. Through a free interpretation of Scripture, E. must have accentuated opposition to the dogmatic and moral teaching of the hierarchy and to the priestly, sacramental, and liturgical ordering of Christian life, consequently arriving at a contestation of the related dogmatic truths, without constructing an orderly doctrinal system. On the historical level, the Henricians prepared minds to receive the dualistic doctrines of the neo-Manichaeans or Cathars (v.), Albigensians (v.), who invaded the aforementioned regions in the middle of the 12th century.
