CHAPTER VI.

GERMANY.

In 1209 Henry of Veringen, Bishop of Strassburg, accompanied Otho IV. on his coronation expedition to Rome. We have seen (p. 192) how some of the ecclesiastics in the emperor's train were scandalized by the almost open toleration of heretics in the papal city; possibly recriminations may have passed between the German and the Italian prelates, and the former may have been recommended to look more sharply after the orthodoxy of their own dioceses. Be this as it may, Bishop Henry is said to have carried home with him some theologians eager to punish aberrations from the faith, and a little investigation showed to his horror that his land was full of misbelievers. A searching inquest was organized, and he soon had five hundred prisoners representing all classes of society. He was a humane man, as the times went, and he sincerely sought their conversion, to which end he set on foot disputations, but his clergy were no match for the sectaries in knowledge of Scripture, and the faith gained little by the attempt. Recourse to stronger measures was evidently requisite, and he announced that all who were obstinate should be burned. This brought most of them to their senses; heretic books and writings were eagerly surrendered, and the converts abjured. About a hundred of them, however, under the persuasion of their leader, a priest of Strassburg named John, were obdurate, including twelve priests, twenty-three women, and a number of nobles. So ignorant were the episcopal officials of the method of proceeding against heretics that they were utterly at a loss how to convict these recusants; some form of trial seems to have been thought necessary, and resort was had to the old expedient of the red-hot iron ordeal. The heretics protested against it as a manifest tempting of God, but their objections were unavailing; those who denied their heresy were subjected to it, and naturally but few escaped. One of them, named Reinhold, appealed to Innocent III. against this form of trial, and the pope promptly responded by forbidding its further use in such matters, although we are told by contemporaries that its efficacy was abundantly proved by miracles. One of the heretics who repented at the last moment was divinely cured of his burn and was discharged. Returning home rejoicing, his wife upbraided him with his weakness, and under her reproof he relapsed. Immediately the burn reappeared, and a similar one was developed on the hand of the wife, inflicting such agony that neither could restrain their screams. Fearing to betray themselves, they rushed to the woods, where they yelled like wild beasts; this led to their speedy discovery, and before the ashes of their confederates were yet cold they both shared the same fate. More fortunate was one of a number of heretics convicted in this manner at Cambrai about the same time. On his way to the stake he listened to the exhortations of a priest and commenced to repent and confess. As he did so his hand began to heal, and when he received absolution there was no trace left of the burn. Then the priest called attention to him, pronouncing him innocent, and on the evidence of his uninjured hand he was discharged. At Strassburg there were eighty obstinate ones, whose heresy was proved by the ordeal. They were all burned the same day in a ditch beyond the walls, and in the sixteenth century the hollow was still known to the citizens as the Ketzergrube. The property of the condemned was duly confiscated and was divided between the magistrates and those who had labored so successfully in vindicating the faith.[354]

It is not to be supposed that Strassburg was a solitary centre of heresy, and that this was the only case of contemporary persecution. Fragmentary allusions to the detection and punishment of misbelief in other places during the next few years show that the population of the Rhinelands was deeply infected, and that when the ignorance and sloth of the clergy permitted detection, heretics were ruthlessly exterminated. The event at Strassburg, however, happens to have been reported with a fulness of detail which invests it with peculiar importance as revealing the methods of the episcopal inquisition of the period, and the nature of existing religious dissidence.[355]

The Cathari appear to have virtually disappeared from Germany, where their foothold, at best, had been precarious. German soil seems to have been unpropitious to this essentially Southern growth. On the other hand, Waldenses were numerous, together with sectaries known as Ortlibenses or Ordibarii.

We have already seen how rapidly Waldensianism extended from Burgundy to Franche Comté and Lorraine, and how, in 1199, Innocent III., after vainly endeavoring to persuade the Waldenses of Metz to surrender their vernacular Scriptures, had sent thither the Abbot of Citeaux and two other abbots to repress their zeal. The abbots duly performed their mission, preached to the misguided zealots, and burned all such copies of the forbidden books as they could lay their hands on, though it is fair to presume, from the silence of the chronicler, that no human victims expiated at the stake their unlawful studies. The consequence of this misplaced lenity was the emboldenment of the heretics. Some years later when Bishop Bertrand was preaching in the cathedral he saw two whom he recognized, and pointed them out, saying, "I see among you missionaries of the Devil; there they are, who in my presence at Montpellier were condemned for heresy and cast out." The unabashed Waldenses, with a companion, replied to him with insults, and, leaving the church, gathered a crowd, to whom they preached their doctrines. The bishop was powerless to silence them, for, when he attempted to use force, he found them protected by some of the most influential citizens of the town, and they were able to disseminate their pestiferous opinions in safety. Here, as in many other places, quarrels between the people and the bishop paralyzed the arm of the Church, and the Waldenses for many years continued to infect the city.[356]

It cannot, therefore, surprise us that nearly all the heretics burned at Strassburg in 1212 belonged to this sect. From their writings and confessions a list of three hundred errors was compiled, afterwards condensed into seventeen, and these were read before them to the people while they were on their way to the place of execution. Priest John, their leader, admitted the correctness of all save one alleging promiscuous sexual intercourse, which he indignantly denied. Those which he admitted show how rapidly their doctrines were developing to their logical conclusions, and how impassable was the gulf which already separated them from the Church. All the holy orders were rejected, and this already led to the abolition of sacerdotal celibacy; disbelief in purgatory was definitely adopted, with its consequences as to prayers and masses for the dead, and there had already been invented, before St. Francis and his followers, the dogma that Christ and his disciples held no property.[357]

The Ortlibenses or Ordibarii, who were also represented among the victims of Strassburg, demand a somewhat more detailed consideration than their immediate importance would seem to justify, because, although comparatively few in numbers, they present the earliest indication of a peculiar tendency in German free thought which we shall find reproduce itself in many forms, and constitute, with almost unconquerable stubbornness, the principal enemy with which the Inquisition had to deal.

Early in the century Maître David de Dinant, a schoolman of Paris, whose subtlety of argumentation rendered him a favorite with Innocent III., had indulged in dangerous speculations derived from the Aristotelian philosophy, as transmitted through the Arab commentators, adulterated with neo-Platonic elements, which transmuted the theism of the Greek into a kind of mystic pantheism. These speculations were carried still further by his fellow-schoolman, Amauri de Bène, a favorite of the heir-apparent, Prince Louis. His views were condemned by the university in 1204; he appealed to the Holy See, but was compelled to abjure in 1207, when he is said to have died of mortification. He had disciples, however, who propagated his doctrines in secret. They were mostly men of education and intelligence, theologians of the university and priests, except a certain goldsmith named Guillaume, who was esteemed as the prophet of the little sect. It was impossible that bold speculations of this nature should remain stationary, and the theoretical premises of David and Amauri were carried to unexpected conclusions in the effort to reduce them into a system for proselytism among the people. Amauri had taught that God was the essence of all creatures, and, as light could not be seen of itself, but only in the air, so God was invisible except in his creatures. The inevitable deduction from this was that after death all beings would return to God, and in him be unified in eternal rest. This swept away the doctrines of future retribution, purgatory, and hell, and, as the Amaurians did not fail to point out, the innumerable observances through which the Church controlled the consciences and the wealth of men through its power over the keys and the treasury of salvation. As this was destructive to the ecclesiastical system, so was the doctrine equally subversive of morality, which taught that such was the virtue of love and charity that whatever was done in their behalf could be no sin, and, further, that any one filled with the Holy Ghost was impeccable, no matter what crime he might commit, because that Spirit, which is God, cannot sin, nor can man, who is nothing of himself, so long as the Spirit of God is in him.[358]

There was in these utterances an irresistible attraction to minds prone to mystic exaltation. Even the orthodox Cæsarius of Heisterbach argues that much is permitted to the saints which is forbidden to sinners; where is the Spirit of God, there is liberty--have charity, and do what thou pleasest.[359] When the fatal word had once been spoken, it could not be hushed to silence, and, in spite of the most persistent and unsparing efforts of repression, these dangerous heights of superhuman spirituality continued to be the goal of men dissatisfied with the limitations of frail humanity, down to the time of Molinos and the Illuminati, and the influence of the doctrine is to be traced in the reveries of Madame Guyon and the Quietists.

Yet the Amaurian heresy was speedily crushed in its place of origin. In his proselyting zeal, Guillaume the goldsmith, in 1210, approached a certain Maître Raoul de Nemours, who feigned readiness of conviction, and reported the matter to Pierre, Bishop of Paris, and Maître Robert de Curzon, the papal supervisor of preaching in France. By their advice he pretended conversion and accompanied the Amaurians on a missionary tour which lasted for three months and extended as far as Langres. We learn something of the habits of the sectaries when we are told that to keep up the deception he would pretend to be wrapped in ecstasy, with face upturned to heaven, and on recovering himself would relate the visions which had been vouchsafed to him, though he successfully evaded the requests that he should preach the new doctrines in public. When fully informed as to all details, he communicated with the authorities, and arrests were made. A council of bishops was convened in Paris which found no difficulty in condemning all concerned; those who were in orders were degraded, and they were all handed over to the secular authorities. There were as yet no laws defining the punishment of heresy, so their fate was postponed until the return of the king, who was then absent. The result was that four of the leaders were imprisoned for life and ten were burned, who met their fate with unshrinking calmness. The simple folk of both sexes who had been seduced into following them were mercifully spared. A few executions took place elsewhere, such as that of one of the heresiarchs, Maître Godin, who was tried and burned at Amiens; the remains of Amauri were exhumed and exposed to the dogs, after which his bones were scattered in the fields; the writings of the enthusiasts were forbidden to be read; the study of natural science in the university was suspended for three years, and the works of Aristotle, which had given rise to the heresy, were publicly burned.[360]

The doctrine of impeccability was likely to give loosened rein to human passion in those whose spiritual exaltation did not lift them above the weakness of the flesh, and there may be truth in the accusations current against the Amaurians, that the disciples of both sexes abandoned themselves to scandalous license, under the pretext of yielding to the demands of Christian love. Yet the popular designation of Papelards bestowed on the sectaries show that they at least preserved an exterior of sanctity and devotion, and that they prudently abstained from putting into practice their theories of the uselessness of the sacraments and of all external cult.

The heresy was thus crushed in its birthplace, where we hear no more of it except that there were teachers of it in Dauphiné, where they were confounded with the Waldenses, and that in 1225 Honorius III. ordered the destruction of the Periphyseos of Erigena, which was thought to have given rise to Amauri's speculations. The seed, however, was widely scattered, to bear fruit in foreign soil. The University of Paris drew together eager searchers after knowledge from every country in Europe, and it could not be difficult for the Amaurians to find among those from abroad converts who would prove useful missionaries. In 1215, Robert de Curzon includes the works of a certain Maurice the Spaniard in his condemnation of those of David and Amauri. Another disciple is said to have been Ortlieb of Strassburg, the teacher of the sectaries known by his name whose fate we have seen at Strassburg. That the heresy was known not to be extinguished is shown by the fact that in 1215 the great Council of Lateran still deemed it necessary to utter a formal condemnation of the doctrines of Amauri, which it stigmatized as crazy rather than heretical.[361]

We know little of the faith originally professed by the Brethren of the Free Spirit, as the followers of Ortlieb called themselves. The principal account we have of their doctrines in the thirteenth century concerns itself much more with the results in denying the efficacy of sacerdotal observances than with the principles which led to those results; but there are indications of pantheism in the assertion of the eternity of the uncreated universe, in the promise of eternal life to all, while denying the resurrection of the flesh, and in the mystic representation of the Trinity by three members of the sect. No immorality is attributed to them; nay, the severest continence was prescribed by them, even in marriage; the only generation of children permitted was spiritual, through conversion, while homicide, lying, and oaths were strictly forbidden. It is quite probable that in Alsace the prevalence of Waldensianism and the sympathies born of common proscription may have considerably modified the opinions of the disciples of Ortlieb. They were by no means exterminated in the persecutions of 1212, and we hear of further pursuit against them in 1216, extending as far as Thurgau, in Switzerland. About the middle of the century they are described as prevailing in Suabia, especially in the neighborhood of Nördlingen and Oettingen, and Albertus Magnus thought them of sufficient importance to draw up an elaborate list of their errors.[362]

It was not long before another consequence, especially shocking to the faithful, was drawn from the fruitful premises of pantheism. If God was the essence of all creatures, Satan himself could not be excepted; if all were to be eventually reunited in God, Satan and his angels could not be condemned to eternal perdition. So infinite were the conclusions which flowed from the bold assumptions of the Amaurians, that those who accepted their views inevitably diverged in the applications, as they attributed greater or less importance to one series of propositions or another. There were some who took special interest in this theory as to Satan, and as their utterances were peculiarly exasperating to the orthodox, they were designated as a separate sect under the name of Luciferans. Of these we hear much but see little. Their doctrines were exaggerated into devil-worship, and they were included in the list of heretics to be periodically anathematized with a zeal which attributed to them vastly greater importance than their scanty numbers deserved. Probably this was because they were peculiarly well adapted to serve as a stimulus for a healthy popular abhorrence of heresy. The most extravagant and repulsive stories were circulated as to their hideous rites, which gradually took shape under the current superstitions as to witchcraft, which they aided to formulate and render concrete. At the period under consideration they formed the basis of the wildest and most ferocious epidemic of persecution that the world had yet seen.

The first indication we have of this tendency occurs in the case of Henry Minneke, Provost of the Cistercian nunnery of Neuwerke in Goslar, which is further of interest as showing how utterly, at the close of the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Germany was destitute of any inquisitorial machinery, and how ignorant were her prelates as yet of inquisitorial procedure. In 1222 Minneke was accused before his bishop, the fanatic Conrad von Reisenberg of Hildesheim, of certain heretical opinions. An assembly of prelates was held at Goslar, which took testimony of his nuns, and found him guilty. He was simply ordered to teach his doctrines no longer. When he disobeyed he was summoned before Bishop Conrad, who examined him for three days and sentenced him to return to his Premonstratensian monastery, and ordered the nuns to elect another provost. To this, again, he paid no attention, probably considering that his immunities as a monk exempted him from episcopal jurisdiction, and the bishop seems to have had no resource but to implore the intervention of Honorius III. When the pope ordered the sentence executed, the nuns interjected an appeal back to him and to the emperor. Both appeals were rejected; Minneke was declared a diseased member of the Church, fit only to be cut off, and the nuns were told that they should rejoice in being liberated from his influence. Still he remained firm, and the bishop was obliged to consult the Cardinal-legate, Cinthio of Porto, before he ventured to throw the indomitable heretic into prison. From his jail, Minneke himself appealed to the pope, asserting that he had been condemned unheard, praying for an examination, and offering to submit to incarceration for life if he should refuse to recant any erroneous opinions of which he might be convicted. Honorius thereupon, in May, 1224, ordered Bishop Conrad to bring his prisoner before the legate and an assembly of prelates for a final hearing and judgment. About October I, at Bardewick, Cinthio met an assembly of the bishops of North Germany, where it was decided that Minneke was convicted of having encouraged the nuns to regard him as greater than any other born of woman; he had on many points relaxed the severe Cistercian discipline; in his sermons he had declared that the Holy Ghost was the Father of the Son, and had so exalted the state of virginity as to represent marriage as a sin; in a vision he had seen Satan praying to be forgiven, and he had asserted that in heaven there was a woman greater than the Virgin, whose name was Wisdom. Still another synod, held at Hildesheim, October 22, was requisite to conclude the matter. Minneke was brought before it, was convicted of his errors, and degraded from the priesthood, but even yet Bishop Conrad was so little sure of his authority that the sentence was published under the seal of the legate. The culprit was handed over to the secular authorities, and was duly burned in 1225. The prominence accorded to this assertion, that Satan desired forgiveness, is shown by his being stigmatized as a Manichæan and a Luciferan.[363]

This case has a further interest for us, inasmuch as one of the participators in the final judgment was a man who filled all Germany with his fame, and who was the most perfect embodiment of the pure fanaticism of his time--Conrad of Marburg. Though a secular priest and holding himself aloof from both Mendicant Orders,[364] Conrad steeped himself in the severest poverty and gained his bread by beggary. Though he could have aspired to any dignity in the Church, which reverenced him as its greatest apostle, and though for years all the benefices of Thuringia were placed by the Landgrave Louis at his absolute disposal, he never accepted a single preferment. Devoted solely to the work of the Lord, his fiery soul and unrelaxing energies were directed with absolute singleness of purpose to advancing the kingdom of heaven upon earth, according to the light which was in him.[365]

Stern in temper and narrow in mind, his bigotry was ardent to the pitch of insanity. What were his conceptions of the duty of man to his Creator and how his conscience led him to abuse unlimited authority can best be judged by his course as spiritual director of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia. The daughter of Andreas of Hungary, born in 1207, married in 1221, at the age of thirteen, to Louis of Thuringia, one of the most powerful of German princes, a mother at fourteen, a widow at twenty, and dying of self-inflicted austerities in her twenty-fourth year, Elizabeth was the rarest type of womanly gentleness and self-abnegation, of all Christian virtues and spiritual aspirations. When but eighteen years of age she placed herself under Conrad's direction, and he proceeded to discipline this heavenly spirit with a ferocity worthy of a demon. Such implicit obedience did he exact that on one occasion when he had sent for her to hear him preach, and she was unable to do so on account of an unexpected visit from her sister-in-law, the Margravine of Misnia, he angrily declared that he would leave her. She went to him the next day and entreated for pardon; on his continuing obdurate, she and her maidens, whom he blamed for the matter, cast themselves at his feet, when he caused them all to be stripped to their shifts and soundly scourged. It is no wonder that he inspired her with such terror that she was wont to say "If I so much dread a mortal man, how is God to be rightly dreaded?" After the death of Louis, whom she tenderly loved, and when his brother Henry despoiled her and drove her out, penniless, with her children, she submitted with patient resignation and earned her living by beggary; and when he was forced to compound for her dower-rights with money, she made haste to distribute it in charity. Under the influence of the diseased pietism inculcated by Conrad, she abandoned her children to God and devoted herself to succoring casual outcasts and lepers; and the depth of her humility was shown when scandal made busy with her fame in consequence of her relations with Conrad. On being warned of this and counselled to greater prudence, she brought forth the bloody scourge which she used, and said, "This is the love the holy man bears to me. I thank God, who has deigned to accept this final oblation from me. I have sacrificed everything--station, wealth, beauty--and have made myself a beggar, intending only to preserve the adornment of womanly modesty; if God chooses to take this also, I hold it to be a special grace." It was this spirit, so self-abased and humble, that Conrad's brutal fanaticism sought systematically to break, contradicting her of set purpose in all things, and demanding of her every possible sacrifice. Merely to add to her afflictions he drove away, one by one, the faithful serving-women who idolized her, finally expelling Guda, who had been her loved companion since infancy in Hungary; as they themselves said, "He did this with a good intention, because he feared our influence in recalling her past splendors, and he wished to deprive her of all human comfort that she might rely wholly on God." When she disobeyed his orders he used to beat her and strike her, which she endured with pleasure, in memory of the blows inflicted on Christ. Once he sent for her to come to him at Oldenburg to determine whether he would put her into an extremely rigid convent there. The nuns asked him to let her visit them, and he gave her permission, expecting that she would decline in view of the excommunication hanging over all intruders on the sacred precincts. Supposing, however, that she had leave, she went, while her woman Irmengard stood outside, received the key, and opened the door. For this Conrad made them both lie down, and ordered his faithful comrade, Friar Gerhard, to beat them with a heavy rod, so that they bore the marks of the flogging for weeks. Well might, in the next century, the mysterious Friend of God in the Oberland, when speaking of St. Elizabeth, remark that she had abandoned herself, in place of to God, to a man far inferior to herself in natural aptitudes as well as in the gifts of divine grace.[366]

The significance of all this lies not only in the coarse violence of Conrad's methods, which regarded torture, mental and physical, as the most efficient aid to salvation, but also in the arrogance of the nature which could, without a shadow of hesitation, assume the position of an avenging God punishing humanity for its weakness and sin. When a man of such a temper was inflamed with the most fiery fanaticism, was armed with irresponsible power, and believed himself to be engaged in a direct conflict with Satan, his mad enthusiasm could lead only to a catastrophe. For the evil which he wrought it would be unjust to hold him responsible. The crime lay with those who could coolly select such an instrument, work up his crazy zeal to the highest pitch, and then let him loose to wreak his blind wrath upon defenceless populations.

Conrad had long been a man of mark, and his qualities were well known to those who made use of him. His burning eloquence was adapted to move the passions of the people, and as early as 1214 he had been honored with a commission to preach in Germany the crusade which was one of the objects for which the great Council of Lateran was assembled. From this time on his activity was unabated, and there is probably truth in the assertion that he took part in the occasional persecutions of heresy which are reported, though no details have reached us. His mission as preacher brought him into direct relations with Rome, and his success in inducing thousands to take the cross gave him high repute with the curia, doubtless enhanced by the disinterestedness which asked for no reward. He gradually came to be employed as a representative in matters of importance, and his unwearied energy rendered him increasingly useful. In 1220 he was intrusted with the duty of compelling, by the censures of the Church, the Emperor Frederic to fulfil his long-delayed vow of leading an expedition to the Holy Land, and he was further made chief of the business of preaching in its behalf, by being empowered to commission assistants throughout Germany. In these letters he is addressed as "_Scholasticus_" or head of the church schools in Mainz, showing that he then held that dignity. In 1227 still greater evidence was given of the confidence reposed in him. In March of that year Gregory XI. had mounted the papal throne with full resolve to crush the rising powers of heresy, and, if possible, to deprive it of its excuse for existence in the corruptions of the church establishment. We have seen how, on June 20, 1227, he tried the experiment in Florence of creating a kind of inquisition, with a Dominican to exercise its functions. In Germany there seems to have been no one but Conrad on whom to rely. June 12, eight days before the commission issued to Giovanni di Salerno, Gregory wrote to Conrad commending highly the diligence with which he was tracking and pursuing heretics--a diligence of which, unfortunately, all details are lost to us. In order that his labors might be more efficacious, Conrad was directed and empowered to nominate whomsoever he might see fit as his assistants, and with them to inquire energetically after all who were infected with heresy, so that the extirpation of the tares from the fields of the Lord might proceed with due authority. Though the Inquisition was scarce as yet even a prospective conception, this was in effect an informal commission as inquisitor-general for Germany, and it is probably no injustice to Gregory to suggest that one of the motives prompting it was the desire to substitute papal authority for the episcopal jurisdiction under which the local and spasmodic persecutions had hitherto been carried on.[367]

Eight days later, on June 20, another commission was sent to Conrad, which increased enormously his power and influence. The German Church was as corrupt and depraved as its neighbors, and all efforts to purify it had thus far proved failures. In 1225 the Cardinal-legate Cinthio had assembled a great national council at Mainz, which had solemnly adopted an elaborate series of searching canons of reformation, that proved as bootless as all similar efforts before or since. Something more was wanted, and the sternly implacable virtue of Conrad seemed to point him out as the fitting instrument for burning out the incurable cancer which was consuming the vitals of the German Church. Gregory, whose residence beyond the Alps as legate had rendered him familiar with its condition, describes its priesthood as abandoned to lasciviousness, gluttony, and all manner of filthy living, like cattle putrescing in their own dung; as committing habitually wickedness which laymen would abhor, corrupting the people by their evil example, and causing the name of the Lord to be blasphemed. To remedy these deplorable evils, he now commissioned Conrad as reformer, with full powers to enforce the regulations of the cardinal-legate, and the monasteries were especially designated as objects for his regenerating hand.[368]

Armed with almost illimitable powers, Conrad was now the foremost German ecclesiastic of the time, and we may well understand the admiration of Theodoric of Thuringia, who declares that he shone like a star throughout all Germany. Yet at this time his ill-balanced impulsiveness was concentrating his energies on the torturing of St. Elizabeth. There is no trace of his exercising his inquisitorial functions, and the only record of his activity as a reformer is his reorganizing the nunnery of Nordhausen by the simple expedient of expelling the nuns, who all led ungodly lives. Yet his services as a persecutor never were more needed. The excommunication of the Emperor Frederic, on September 29 of the same year, for temporarily abandoning his crusade, had set Church and State fairly by the ears, and had inspired the heretics with fresh hopes. Everywhere their missionary activity redoubled, and the land was said to be full of them. In each diocese they had a bishop to whom they gave the name of the regular incumbent, and they pretended to have a pope whom they called Gregory, so that, under examination, they could swear that they held the faith of the bishop and of Pope Gregory. In 1229 the Waldenses were again discovered in Strassburg, and for several years persecution continued there, resulting in burning many obstinate heretics and penancing those who yielded.[369]

Local measures such as these were manifestly insufficient, and thus far all efforts at a comprehensive system of persecution had failed. In 1231 Gregory was busily occupied in organizing some more efficient method, and Germany was not forgotten. The Roman statutes of Annibaldo and the papal edicts of that year, to which frequent allusion has been made above, were sent to the Teutonic prelates, June 20, with letters blaming them for their lukewarmness and lenity, and ordering them to put vigorously into force the new edicts. Yet already there had been sufficient persecution to occasion the necessity of settling the novel questions arising from the confiscations, and the Diet of Worms, on June 2 of the same year, had decided that the allodial lands and the movables should go to the heirs, the fiefs to the lord, and in case of serfs the personalty to the master, thus excluding the Church and the persecutors from any share. Under Gregory's earnest impulsion the sluggishness of the bishops was somewhat stimulated. The Archbishop of Trèves made a perquisition through his city, and found three schools of heretics in full activity. He called a synod for the trial of those who were captured, and had the satisfaction of burning three men, and a woman named Leuchardis, who had borne the reputation of exceeding holiness, but who was found, upon examination, to belong to the dreaded sect of Luciferans, deploring the fall of Satan as unjustly banished from heaven.[370]

Still the results did not correspond to Gregory's desires. In October of the same year (1231) he sought to spur Conrad on to a discharge of his duty by praising in the most exalted terms his activity and success in exterminating heretics, and by exhorting him, with the same wealth of exaggeration, to redoubled energy. The need of earnest work was more pressing than ever. The Archbishops of Trèves and Mainz had reported that an apostle of heresy had been sowing tares through all the land, so that not only the cities, but the towns and hamlets, were infected. Many heresiarchs, moreover, each in his own appointed district, were laboring to overthrow the Church. Conrad was therefore given full discretionary powers; he was not even required to hear the cases, but only to pronounce judgment, which was to be final and without appeal--justice to those suspect of heresy being, apparently, of no moment. He was authorized to command the aid of the secular arm, to excommunicate protectors of heresy, and to lay interdict on whole districts. The recent decrees of the Holy See were referred to as his guide, and heretics who would abjure were to have the benefit of absolution, care being taken that they should have no further opportunity of mischief--a delicate expression for condemning them to lifelong incarceration. When Conrad received these extensive powers he was so dangerously ill that his life was despaired of, and before he had fairly recovered St. Elizabeth died, November 29, 1231. Harsh as was his nature, her loss affected him severely, and for a considerable time his energies were concentrated on fruitless efforts for her canonization. In intervals of leisure, however, he exercised his powers on such heretics as were unlucky enough to be within easy reach. In Marburg itself many suspects were seized, including knights, priests, and persons of condition, of whom some recanted and the rest were burned. On one excursion to Erfurt, moreover, in 1232, he took the opportunity to burn four more victims.[371]

Results so far below what might reasonably have been expected could not but be disappointing in the extreme to Gregory. One expedient remained--to try whether among the Dominicans there might not be found men able and willing to devote themselves fearlessly and exclusively to the holy work. Between the end of 1231 and that of 1232, therefore, commissions were sent to various Dominican establishments empowering their officials to undertake the work. The treaty of Ceperano, in 1230, had restored peace between the empire and the papacy, and Frederic's aid was successfully invoked to give the imperial sanction to the new experiment. From Ravenna, in March, 1232, he issued a constitution addressed to all the prelates and potentates of the empire, ordering their efficient co-operation in the extirpation of heresy, and taking under the special imperial protection all the Mendicants deputed by the pope for that purpose. The secular authorities were commanded to arrest all who should be designated to them by the inquisitors, to hold them safely until condemnation, and to put to a dreadful death those convicted of heresy or fautorship, or to imprison for life such as should recant and abjure. Relapse was punishable with the death-penalty, and descendants to the second generation were declared incapable of holding fiefs or public office.[372]

Here were laws provided and ministers for their enforcement, and the business of vindicating the faith might at last be expected to prosper. If Conrad was remiss, others would be found enthusiastically ready for the work. So it proved. Suddenly there appeared on the scene a Dominican named Conrad Tors, said to be a convert from heresy, who, without special commission, commenced to clear the land of error. He carried with him a layman named John, one-eyed and one-handed, of thoroughly disreputable character, who boasted that he could recognize a heretic at sight. Apparently with little more evidence than this, Conrad Tors raided from town to town, condemning his victims wholesale, and those whom he delivered to the magistrates they were compelled by popular excitement to burn. Soon, however, a revulsion of feeling took place, and then the Dominican shrewdly enlisted the support of the nobles by directing his attacks against the more wealthy, and holding out the prospect of extensive confiscations to be divided. When remonstrated with he is said to have replied, "I would burn a hundred innocent if there was one guilty among them." Stimulated by this shining example, many Dominicans and Franciscans joined him, and became his eager assistants in the work.[373]

Whether, as reported, Conrad Tors, to strengthen himself, sought out Conrad of Marburg and persuaded him to take part in the good work, or whether the latter, scenting the battle from afar, was aroused from his torpor and rushed eagerly to the fray, cannot positively be determined. This much is certain, that at length he came forward, and not only lent the weight of his great name to the proceedings, but urged them to a crueller and wider development with all his vehemence of character and implacable severity.

The heresy of which the miserable victims of this onslaught were accused was not Waldensian, but Luciferan. Its hideous rites were described in full detail by Master Conrad to Pope Gregory, and are worth repeating as illustrating the superstitions concerning witchcraft which, for centuries, worked such cruel wrong in every corner of Europe. Indeed, it seemed inevitable that such embroideries should be added by inquisitorial craft or popular credulity to the tenets of heretics, for, on the first emergence of Catharism at Orleans in 1022, very similar stories were told of the infernal rites of the heretics, which are repeated by Walter Mapes in the latter half of the twelfth century.[374] That Conrad obtained these wild fictions in endless duplication from those who stood before his judgment-seat there need be no reasonable doubt. The reports of witch-trials in later times are too numerous and authentic for us to question the readiness of self-accusation of those who saw no other means of escape, or their eagerness to propitiate their judge by responding to every incriminating suggestion, and telling him what they found him desirous of hearing. Crude as were Conrad's methods, the inquisitorial process proved its universal effectiveness by their producing confessions as surely as the more elaborate refinements invented by his successors, although he had not the advantage of the use of torture.

According to these revelations, when a novice is received into the sect and first attends the assembly, there appears to him a toad, which he kisses either on the posteriors or on the mouth; in the latter case it deposits something in his mouth. Occasionally it has the aspect of a goose or of a duck, and sometimes it is as large as an oven. Then there comes to him a man of wonderful paleness, with the blackest of eyes, and so thin that he is naught but skin and bone. Him the novice likewise kisses, finding him ice-cold, and with that kiss all remembrance of the Catholic faith vanishes from his heart. Then all sit down to a feast, after which, from a statue which is always present, there descends a black cat, as large as a dog, with the tail bent back. She comes down backwards and her posteriors are kissed, first by the novice, then by the master of the assembly, and finally by all who are worthy and perfect, while those who are imperfect and feel themselves unworthy receive peace from the master. Then each resumes his place, songs are sung, and the master says to his next neighbor, "What does this teach?" The answer is, "The highest peace," and another adds, "And that we must obey." All lights are then extinguished and indiscriminate intercourse takes place, after which the candles are relighted, each one takes his seat, and from a dark corner appears a man shining like the sun in his upper half, while from the hips down he is black like the cat. He illuminates the whole place, and the master, taking a fragment of the novice's garment, hands it to him, saying, "Master, I give this to thee which has been given to me." To this the shining man replies, "Thou hast served me well, thou wilt serve me more and better. I leave to thy care what thou hast given me," and then he disappears. Each year at Easter they receive the host, carry it home in their mouths, and spit it out into a cesspool to show their contempt for the Redeemer. They hold that God unjustly and treacherously cast Satan into hell; the latter is the Creator, who in the end will overcome God, when they expect eternal bliss with him. That which is pleasing to God is to be avoided, and that which he hates is to be cherished.

This transparent tissue of inventions was apparently doubted by no one, and it excited almost to insanity the credulous old man who filled the papal chair. He replies that he is drunk with wormwood, and in fact his letters read like the ravings of a madman. "If against such men the earth should rise up, and the stars of heaven reveal their iniquity, so that not only men, but the elements, should unite in their destruction, wiping them from the face of the earth without sparing sex or age, and rendering them an eternal opprobrium for the nations, it would not be a sufficient and worthy punishment of their crimes." If they cannot be converted, the strongest remedies must be used. Fire and steel must be applied to wounds incurable by milder applications. Conrad was instructed forthwith to preach a crusade against them, and the bishop of the province, the emperor, and his son, King Henry, were ordered to exert all their powers for the extirpation of the wretches.[375]

The means which Master Conrad took to obtain these avowals from his victims were simple in the extreme. The processes of the Inquisition had not yet been formulated, and the unlimited powers with which he was clothed enabled his impatient temper to reach the desired goal by the shortest possible course. As officially reported, after the bursting of the bubble, to Gregory by his own penitentiary, the Dominican Bernard, and the Archbishop of Mainz, the accused was allowed simply the option of confessing what was demanded of him, and receiving penance, or of being burned for denial--which, in fact, was the essence of the inquisitorial process, reduced to its simplest terms. Conrad had no prisons at his disposal for the incarceration of penitents, and the infliction of wearing crosses seems to have been unknown to him, so he devised the penance of shaving the head as a mark of humiliation for his converts, who were moreover, of course, obliged to give the names of all whom they had seen in the hideous nocturnal assemblies.

At the outset he had fallen into the hands of a designing woman, a vagrant about twenty years old who had quarrelled with her relations, and who, coming by chance to Bingen, and observing what was going on, saw her opportunity of revenge. She pretended to be of the sect, that her husband had been burned, that she wished to perish likewise, but added that if the Master would believe her she would reveal the names of the guilty. Conrad eagerly swallowed the bait, and sent her with his assistants to Clavelt, whence she came, where she caused the burning of her kindred. Then there was a certain Amfrid, who finally confessed that he had led Conrad to condemn a number of innocent men. Creatures of this kind were sure not to be lacking, and it was even said that cunning heretics caused themselves to be accused, and accepted penance, for the purpose of incriminating Catholics, and thus rendering the whole proceeding odious. As no one had the slightest opportunity of defence, some steadfast men preferred to be burned and thus earn salvation, rather than to confess to lies and falsely accuse others. The weaker ones who saved their lives, when pressed to name their accomplices, would often say, "I know not whom to accuse: tell me the names of those you suspect;" or, when interrogated about individuals, would evasively reply, "They were as I was; they were in the assemblies as I was," which was apparently sufficient. "Thus," proceeds the official report to the pope, "brother accused brother, the wife the husband, and the master the servant. Others gave money to the shaven penitents in order to learn from them methods of evasion and escape, and there arose a confusion unknown for ages. I, the archbishop, first by myself and afterwards with the two archbishops of Trèves and Cologne, warned Master Conrad to proceed in so great a matter with more moderation and discretion, but he refused."[376]

From this last fact we gather that the prelates of the land, while not interfering effectively to protect their people, had, at least, taken no part in the insane persecution which was raging. Conrad had found plenty of assistants among the Dominicans and Franciscans, but the secular hierarchy had held aloof. In vain had Gregory, in October, 1232, written to them and to the princes, telling them that the heretics who formerly lay in hiding were now coming forward openly, like war-horses harnessed for battle, publicly preaching their errors and seeking the perdition of the simple and ignorant. Faith was rare in Germany, he said, and, therefore, he ordered them to make vigorous inquisition throughout their lands, seizing all heretics and suspects, and proceeding against them in accordance with the papal decrees of 1231. The appeal fell upon deaf ears. The bishops seem to have been thoroughly disturbed by the encroachments which the papacy was making on their independence through the new agencies which it was bringing into play. The Mendicant Orders were already a sufficiently dangerous factor, and now came these new inquisitors, armed with papal commissions, superseding their time-honored jurisdiction in every spot within their dioceses. It is no wonder that they felt alarmed, and that they held aloof. The German prelates were great secular princes, combining civil and spiritual authority. The three electoral archbishops--Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne--stood on a level as temporal lords with the most powerful princes of the empire, and the wide extent of many of the dioceses rendered the bishops scarcely less formidable. They were always suffering from the greed of the Roman curia, and were perpetually involved in struggles to resist its encroachments. Frederic II., indeed, by his constitutions of 1232, had increased their secular authority by rendering them absolute masters of the episcopal cities, whose municipal rights and liberties he abolished, but at the same time he had given, as we have seen, the imperial sanction to the papal Inquisition, and had rendered it everywhere supreme. It is no wonder that they felt aggrieved and alarmed, that they withheld their co-operation as far as they safely could, and that well-grounded jealousy would lead them to seize the first safe opportunity of crushing the intruding upstarts.[377]

Fortunately for the German people, Conrad's blind recklessness was not long in affording them the desired chance. Beginning with the lowly and helpless, his operations had rapidly advanced to the higher classes. In his eyes the meanest peasant and the loftiest noble were on an equality, and he was as prompt to assail the one as the other, but his witnesses at first had not dared to accuse the high-born and powerful. It is quite possible, indeed, that, as the persecution became more dreadful, some of them may have felt that the surest mode of bringing on a crisis was to involve the magnates of the land. Rumors were spread impugning the faith of the Counts of Aneberg, Lotz, and Sayn. Conrad eagerly directed his interrogatories to obtaining evidence against them, and summoned them to appear before him. Count Sayn was an especially notable prey, as he was one of the most powerful nobles of the diocese, whose extensive possessions were guarded by castles renowned for strength, and whose reputation was that of a stern and cruel man. The crime of which he was accused was that of riding on a crab, and open defiance was expected from him. Sigfried, the Archbishop of Mainz, to make a show of obedience to the papal commands, had called a provincial council to assemble March 13, 1233. When it met, it deplored the prevalence of heresy, from which scarce a village in the land was free; it prayed the prelates to labor zealously for the suppression of the evil, commanded them to enforce in their respective dioceses the recent decrees of the pope and of the emperor, which were to be read and explained in the local synods, so that the heretics might be frightened to conversion; it deprecated the practice of seizing the property of suspects before their guilt was determined; it ordered the bishops to provide prisons for coiners and incorrigible clerks, without alluding to the imprisonment of heretics, although Gregory, but a few weeks before, had specially ordered them to employ perpetual incarceration in all cases of relapse; it endeavored to maintain episcopal jurisdiction by enacting that inquisitors must obtain letters from the bishop before exercising their powers in any diocese; finally, it anticipated the resistance of Count Sayn and the other inculpated nobles, by directing that if any magnate, relying upon the strength of his castles and the support of his subjects, should refuse to appear after three citations, his bishop should preach a crusade against him with indulgences, and he should be manfully assailed.[378]

Thus, while ostensibly obeying the commands of the pope and emperor, the action of the bishops was practically directed to limiting the powers of the inquisitors. As for the threat of a crusade, its significance is seen in the steps actually taken in the case of Count Sayn. That shrewd noble saw that he could rely upon episcopal protection if he could promise the bishops efficient support, and he had sufficient interest with King Henry to induce him to join with Sigfried of Mainz in calling a council for July 25, to consider his case. The king and his princes attended the assembly as well as the prelates, so that it was rather an imperial diet than an ecclesiastical council. The count asserted his innocence and offered to prove it by conjurators. Conrad, who was present, found his position suddenly changed. The assembly was, in reality, a national protest against the supremacy of the papal Inquisition, and the inquisitor, in place of being a judge armed with absolute jurisdiction, was merely a prosecutor. He presented his witnesses, but in that august presence the hearts of some of them failed, and they withdrew; others felt emboldened to declare that they had been forced to accuse the count in order to save their own lives, and those who persisted were easily shown to be personal enemies of the accused. The whole assemblage seemed inspired with a common desire to put an end to Conrad's arbitrary proceedings, and the prosecution broke down totally. King Henry alone, perhaps already meditating his rebellion against his father, and anxious not to offend either the nobles or the papacy, desired to postpone the matter for further consideration. The count pressed earnestly for immediate judgment, but the Archbishop of Trèves interposed--"My lord, the king wishes the case postponed;" then turning to the people, "I announce to you that Count Sayn departs from here unconvicted, and as a good Catholic," Master Conrad sullenly muttered, "If he had been convicted it would have been different," and withdrew. The count finally agreed to allow the matter to be referred to Rome, and ecclesiastics of distinction were appointed to lay the proceedings before the Holy See for final decision.[379]

Maddened by his defeat, Conrad at once proceeded to preach in the streets of Mainz a crusade against some nobles who had been summoned and who had not appeared. To this both the archbishop and the king objected, and he was forced to desist. With his usual impulsiveness he then abruptly determined to quit an ungrateful world, and to live henceforth in retirement at Marburg. The king and archbishop offered him an armed escort, but he would accept nothing save letters of surety, and with these he departed to meet his fate. Those against whom his crusade had been preached lay in wait for him near Marburg and despatched him, July 31, regardless of his entreaties for mercy. His faithful follower, Friar Gerhard, refused the opportunity offered him to escape, threw himself on the body of his beloved master, and perished with him. The scene of the murder is supposed to be Kappeln on the Lahnsberg, where a chapel was erected to commemorate it. The body was carried to Marburg and buried by the side of St. Elizabeth, and when the latter was translated to the magnificent Elizabethskirche, his bones were likewise carried thither.[380]

The immediate reputation which Conrad left behind him is shown by the vision, related by a contemporary, which indicated that he was hopelessly damned. Modern ecclesiastics, however, take a more favorable view of his career, and even the amiable Alban Butler describes him as a virtuous and enlightened priest, who rendered great service by his preaching, and whose fervor, disinterestedness, and love of poverty and austerity rendered him a model for his contemporaries. Yet, unaccountably, the Church has not yet proceeded to his vindication as a martyred saint, and has neglected to place him alongside of those kindred spirits, St. Peter Martyr and St. Pedro Arbues.[381]

With Conrad's withdrawal from the Council of Mainz the proceedings of which he had been the mainspring came to an end at once. "Thus," says a contemporary ecclesiastic, "ceased this storm, the most dangerous persecution of the faithful since the days of Constantius the Heretic and Julian the Apostate. People once more began to breathe. Count Sayn was a wall for the mansion of the Lord, lest this madness should rage further, enveloping guilty and innocent alike, bishops and princes, religious and Catholics, like peasants and heretics." The murderers evidently felt that they had nothing to dread from public opinion, for they voluntarily came forward and offered to submit themselves to the judgment of the Church as regards the heresy whereof Conrad had accused them, and to the secular tribunals as regards the homicide, agreeing to present themselves for examination at a diet of the empire which was ordered for February, 1234, at Frankfort.[382]

Gregory, who in June had been ordering a crusade preached against the heretics, and had been stimulating prince and prelate to a yet more ferocious persecution, was moved to regret when the envoy of the assembly of Mainz, Conrad, the "Scholasticus" of Speier, presented letters from the king and bishops describing the arbitrary methods of his inquisitor. He ordered letters drawn up prescribing a more regular form of trial for heretics; but before the envoy had permission to depart, there arrived the originator of the trouble, Conrad Tors, with the pitiful tale of the Master's martyrdom. At this news the emotional pope could not contain his wrath. The letters just written were recalled and torn up, and the unlucky envoy was threatened with the deprivation of all his benefices. Under the remonstrances of the Sacred College, however, Gregory's ire subsided sufficiently to allow him to renew the letters and to enable the envoy to depart unscathed. The pope solaced himself, however, with pouring out his grief at full length in letters to the German prelates. The death of Conrad was a thunderclap which had shaken the walls of the Christian sanctuary. No words were strong enough to describe the transcendant merits and services of the martyr, and no punishment could be invented too severe for the murderers. The bishops were roundly rated for their indifference in the matter, and were ordered to take immediate and effective measures. The Dominican provincial, Conrad, was commanded, in conjunction with the bishops, to carry on the Inquisition vigorously, and to preach a crusade against the heretics.[383]

In spite of this furious grief and wrath the German prelates maintained a most provoking calmness. The fanatic Conrad, Bishop of Hildesheim, it is true, preached a crusade as ordered by the pope, and under his impulsion the Landgrave, Conrad of Thuringia, zealously purged his land of heretics, and completely destroyed all their assemblies, levelling to the ground Willnsdorf, which was reckoned their chief abiding-place; while his brother, Henry Raspe, and Hartmann, Count of Kiburg (Zurich), took the cross under the same auspices, and received, in consequence, papal protection for their dominions. Even this measure of activity, however, was regarded unfavorably in Germany, and there was no response to the cry for vengeance. The Diet of Frankfort duly assembled February 2, 1234, and the first business recorded was an accusation brought by King Henry himself against the Bishop of Hildesheim for having preached the crusade; it was treated as an offence, and though he was pardoned by unanimous request, the recalcitrance against the papal tendencies was none the less significant. Then the memory of the martyred Conrad was arraigned, and this, as a matter of faith, was discussed by the ecclesiastics separately. There were twenty-five archbishops and bishops present, who were almost unanimous in condemning him, while the Bishop of Hildesheim and a Dominican named Otto strenuously defended him. One of the prelates exclaimed that Master Conrad ought to be dug up and burned as a heretic; but no conclusion seems to have been reached, for the proceedings were interrupted by the introduction of a procession of those whom he had shaved in penance the preceding year, who marched in with a cross at their head, and complained of his cruelty with dolorous cries, when a tumult arose from which his defenders were glad to escape with their lives. On the following Monday the solemn purgation of Count Sayn took place in the field of judgment beyond the walls. Eight bishops, twelve Cistercian and three Benedictine abbots, twelve Franciscan and three Dominican friars, who, with many other clerks and numerous nobles, took part in his oath of denial, show how emphatically the German hierarchy desired to disclaim all sympathy with Conrad's acts. Count Solms, whom Conrad had forced to confession, went through the same ceremony, declaring with tears in his eyes that the fear of death alone had compelled him to admit himself guilty. The diet then proceeded to legislate for the future, and its slender enunciation on the subject of heresy can have carried little comfort to the wrathful Gregory. It simply commanded that all who exercised judicial functions should use every effort to purge the land of heresy, but at the same time it cautioned them to prefer justice to unjust persecution.[384]

Two months later, April 2, 1234, a council was held at Mainz for final action. Count Sayn and others who had been accused were subjected to a form of examination, were declared innocent, and were restored to reputation and to their possessions. Conrad's unlucky witnesses who had been forced to commit perjury were ordered to undergo a penance of seven years; those who had accused the innocent were maliciously sent to the pope for the imposition of penance, and he was, in the same spirit, asked what should be done about those whom Conrad had unjustly burned. As for the murderers, they were simply excommunicated.[385]

All this was a direct challenge to the Holy See, but Gregory prudently delayed action. He was involved in troubles with the Romans which rendered inadvisable any trial of strength with the united Teutonic Church. He sent his penitentiary, Bernard, who made an investigation on the spot, and, in conjunction with Archbishop Sigfried, furnished him with a report to which we are indebted for most of our knowledge of the affair. On receiving this, Gregory expressed his regret that he had intrusted to Master Conrad the enormous powers which had led to a result so lamentable. Still his decision was delayed. Towards the end of the year 1234 he appealed earnestly to the German bishops for aid in his quarrel with the Romans, which continued until he made peace with them in April, 1235. His hands were now free, but it was not until July that he trusted himself to express his indignation. Then he scolded most vehemently the Council of Mainz for daring, in the absence of any defenders of the faith, to absolve those whom Conrad had prosecuted, and for sending to him for absolution the murderers, without having first exacted of them full satisfaction for their detestable crime. His sentence upon them is that they shall join the crusade to Palestine when it sets sail the following March, giving good security to insure their obedience, and meanwhile they shall visit all the greater churches in the region of the crime, bare-footed and naked, except drawers, with a halter around the neck, and a rod in the hand, and, when the affluence of people is the greatest, cause themselves to be scourged by all the priests, while they chant the penitential psalms, and publicly confess their guilt. After this they may be absolved.[386]

It is satisfactory to know that the immediate author of the troubles met with the fate which he deserved. Conrad Tors, on his return from Rome, endeavored to resume his interrupted labors, but the temper of the people had changed, and the victims were no longer unresisting. At Strassburg he summoned the Junker Heinz von Müllenheim, who unceremoniously settled the accusation by slaying him. His assistant, the one-eyed John, met an even more ignominious fate, for he was recognized at Freiburg and hanged.[387]

Thus ended this terrible drama, which left an impression of horror on the souls of the German people not easily effaced. The number of Conrad's victims can only be guessed at. Some chroniclers vaguely speak of them as innumerable, and one asserts that a thousand unfortunates were burned. Although this is probably an exaggeration, for the period of Conrad's insane activity cannot have exceeded a twelvemonth, yet the number must have been considerable to produce so profound an impression on a generation which was by no means susceptible.[388]

One good result there undoubtedly was. The universal detestation excited by Conrad's crazy fanaticism rendered it comparatively easy for the bishops to maintain the jurisdiction which they had assumed, and to keep the Inquisition confined within narrow limits. For a time this was doubtless facilitated by the open quarrels between Frederic II. and the papacy, but even after his death, during the Great Interregnum and the reigns of emperors who were more or less dependent upon the Holy See, more than a century was to pass away before the popes, who were so zealously organizing and strengthening it elsewhere, made a serious effort to establish the Inquisition in Germany. We hear of no endeavors on their part, we meet with no appointments or commissions of German inquisitors. It seems to have been tacitly understood that the institution was unfitted for German soil until a period when it had fairly entered into decadence in the lands where its growth was the rankest.

The excitement of Conrad of Marburg's exploits was naturally succeeded by a reaction. In 1233 the murder of Bishop Berthold of Coire, attributed to heretics, shows how far persecution spread, accompanied by a dangerous tendency to resistance. Throughout 1234 both Dominicans and Franciscans are reported as busy, with the result of numerous burnings; but the lesson taught by the attitude of the German prelates was not lost, and in 1235 the magistrates of Strassburg enjoined on them to seek conversions by preaching, and not to burn people without at least giving them a hearing. The languor and reaction continued. We have seen from the complaints of the Count of Salins, in 1248, and the fruitless efforts of Innocent IV. to establish the Inquisition in Besançon, that the western borders of Germany were full of Waldenses who had little to dread. At the same period there was a demonstration in the neighborhood of Halle which may be reasonably regarded as Waldensian. The papacy had succeeded in raising a rival to Frederic in the person of William of Holland, and a crusade was on foot in his favor against Conrad, Frederic's son. The imperialists would naturally regard with favor the Waldensian doctrines denying the power of the keys and the obedience due to interdicts, and they might not object further to the tenet that sinful priests cannot administer the sacraments. Such were the dogmas attributed to the heretics of Halle, who came boldly forward in 1248, were eagerly listened to by the nobles, and were favored by King Conrad, but they speedily disappeared from sight in the changeful circumstances of that tumultuous time.[389]

We have much more distinct indications of the existence both of heresy and of the Inquisition in the writings of David of Augsburg, and of the author now generally known as the Passauer Anonymus. The date of the latter is not absolutely certain, but it cannot vary much from 1260. His field of action was the extensive diocese of Passau, stretching from the Iser to the Leitha, and from Bohemia to Styria, embracing eastern Bavaria and northern Austria. His instructions seem to take for granted the existence of an organized Inquisition with its fully developed code of procedure, but his description of the prevalence of Waldensianism would indicate that it was almost inoperative. He tells us that he had often been concerned in the inquisition and examination of the "schools," or communities, of Waldenses, of which there were forty-one in the diocese, ten of them being in the single town of Clamme, where the heretics slew the parish priest without any one being punished for it. There were also forty-one Waldensian churches, organized under a bishop residing in Empenbach, and there was a school for lepers at Newenhoffen. All this shows a prosperous growth of heresy little disturbed by persecution. It is observable that the places enumerated as the seats of these churches are mostly insignificant villages, the larger towns appear to be avoided, and the heretics belong to the humbler classes--mostly peasants and mechanics. Their wonderful familiarity with Scripture and their self-devoted earnestness in making converts have already been alluded to. From the writer's long description of the tenets of the Ordibarii and Ortlibenses it is evident that they formed a fair proportion of the heretics with whom the inquisitor had to deal, and their belief that the Day of Judgment would come when the pope and the emperor should be converted to their sect, indicates the hopefulness of a faith that is growing and spreading. Soon afterwards we hear of Waldenses captured in the diocese of Ratisbon, and their continued activity, in spite of persecution, through all the south German regions.[390]

There was little on the part of the Inquisition or the bishops to prevent the growth and spread of heresy. During the Interregnum, in 1261, a council of Mainz seems suddenly to have awakened to a sense of neglected duty in the premises; it vigorously anathematized all heretics after the fashion customary in the papal bulls, and it strictly commanded the bishops of the province to labor zealously for the extermination of heresy in their respective dioceses, enforcing, with regard to the persons and property of heretics, the papal constitutions and the statutes of a former provincial council. There is here no sign of the existence of a papal Inquisition, and the episcopal activity which was threatened appears to have lain dormant, though the action of the council would seem to show that heretics were numerous enough to attract attention. It is true that, in the chancery of Rodolph of Hapsburg, whose reign extended from 1273 to 1292, there was a formula for acknowledging and confirming the papal commissions presented by inquisitors, showing that this must, at least occasionally, have been done. The emperor calls God to witness that his chief object in accepting the crown was to be able to defend the faith; he alludes to the exercise of inquisitorial jurisdiction over the descendants of heretics as well as over heretics themselves, but he carefully inserts a saving clause to the effect that the accused must be legitimately proved guilty and be properly condemned. If, however, inquisitors presented themselves to obtain this recognition of their powers, they have left no visible traces of the results of their activity.[391]

In the codes which embody the customs current in mediæval Germany there is no recognition whatever of the existence of such a body as the Inquisition. The Sachsenspiegel, which contains the municipal law of the northern provinces, provides, it is true, the punishment of burning for those convicted of unbelief, poisoning, or sorcery, but says nothing as to the manner of trial; and the rule enunciated that no houses shall be destroyed except when rape is committed in them, or a violated woman is carried into them, shows that the demolition of the residences and refuges of heretics was unknown within its jurisdiction. The code throughout is singularly disregardful of ecclesiastical pretensions, and richly earned the papal anathema bestowed upon it when its practical working happened to attract the attention of the Roman curia.[392]

The Schwabenspiegel, or code in force in southern Germany, is much more complaisant to the Church, but it knows of no jurisdiction over heretics save that of the bishops. It admits that an emperor rendering himself suspect in the faith can be put under ban by the pope. It provides death by fire for the heretic. It directs that when heretics are known to exist, the ecclesiastical courts shall inquire about them and proceed against them. If convicted, the secular judge shall seize them and doom them according to law. If he neglects or refuses he is to be excommunicated by the bishop, and his suzerain shall inflict on him the penalty of heresy. If a secular prince does not punish heresy he is to be excommunicated by the episcopal court; if he remains under the censure for a year the bishop is to report him to the pope, who shall deprive him of his rank and honors, and the emperor is bound to execute his sentence by stripping him of all his possessions, feudal and allodial. All this shows ample readiness to accept the received ecclesiastical law of the period as to heresy, but utter ignorance of the inquisitorial process is revealed in the provision which inflicts the _talio_ on whoever accuses another of certain crimes, including heresy, without being able to convict him. When the accuser had to accept the chances of the stake, prosecutions were not apt to be common.[393]

* * * * *

Towards the close of the thirteenth century and the opening of the fourteenth, attention was aroused to the dangerous tendencies of certain forms of belief lurking among some semi-religious bodies which had long enjoyed the favor of the pious and the protection of the Church, known by the names of Beguines, Beghards, Lollards, Cellites, etc. Infinite learned trifling has been wasted in imagining derivations for these appellations. The Beguines and Beghards themselves assert their descent from St. Begga, mother of Pepin of Landen, who built a Benedictine nunnery at Andennes. Another root has been sought in Lambert-le-Bègue, or the Stammerer, a priest of St. Christopher at Liège, about 1180, who became prominent by denouncing the simony of the canons of the cathedral. Prebends were openly placed for sale in the hands of a butcher named Udelin, who acted as broker, and when Lambert aroused the people to a sense of this wickedness, the bishop arrested him as a disturber, and the clergy assailed him and tore him with their nails. His connection with the Beguines arose from his affording them shelter in his house at St. Christopher, which has remained until modern times the largest and richest Beguinage of the province. The soundest opinion, however, would seem to be that both Beghard and Beguine are derived from the old German word _beggan_, signifying either to beg or to pray, while Lollard is traced to _lullen_, to mutter prayers.[394]

The motives were numerous which impelled multitudes to desire a religious life without assuming the awful and irrevocable vows that cut them off absolutely from the world. This was especially the case among women who chanced to be deprived of their natural guardians and who sought in those wild ages the protection which the Church alone could confer. Thus associations were formed, originally of women, who simply promised chastity and obedience while they lived in common, who assisted either by labor or beggary in providing for the common support, who were assiduous in their religious observances, and who performed such duties of hospitality and of caring for the sick as their opportunities would allow. The Netherlands were the native seat of this fruitful idea, and as early as 1065 there is a charter extant given by a convent of Beguines at Vilvorde, near Brussels. The drain of the crusades on the male population increased enormously the number of women deprived of support and protection, and gave a corresponding stimulus to the growth of the Beguinages. In time men came to form similar associations, and soon Germany, France, and Italy became filled with them. To this contributed in no small degree the insane laudation of poverty by the Franciscans and the merit conceded to a life of beggary by the immense popularity of the Mendicant Orders. To earn a livelihood by beggary was in itself an approach to sanctity, as we have seen in the case of Conrad of Marburg and St. Elizabeth. About 1230 a certain Willem Cornelis, of Antwerp, gave up a prebend and devoted himself to teaching the pre-eminent virtue of poverty. He carried the received doctrine on the subject, however, to lengths too extravagant, for he held that poverty consumed all sin, as fire ate up rust, and that a harlot, if poor, was better than a just and continent rich man; and though he was honorably buried in the church of the Virgin Mary, yet when, four years later, these opinions came to be known, Bishop Nicholas of Cambrai caused his bones to be exhumed and burned.[395]

Extremes such as this show us the prevailing tendencies of the age, and it is necessary to appreciate these tendencies in order to understand how Europe came to tolerate the hordes of holy beggars, either wandering or living in communities, who covered the face of the land, and drained the people of their substance. Of the two classes the wanderers were the most dangerous, but in both there was the germ of future trouble, although the settled Beguines approached very nearly the Tertiaries of the Mendicants. Indeed, they frequently placed themselves under the direction of Dominicans or Franciscans, and eventually those who survived the vicissitudes of persecution mostly merged into the Tertiaries of either one Order or the other.

The rapid growth of these communities in the thirteenth century is easily explicable. Not only did they respond to the spiritual demands of the age, but they enjoyed the most exalted patronage. In Flanders the counts seem never wearied of assisting them. Gregory IX. and his successors took their institution under the special protection of the Holy See. St. Louis provided them with houses in Paris and other cities, and left them abundant legacies in his will, in which he was imitated by his sons. Under such encouragement their numbers increased enormously. In Paris there were multitudes. About 1240 they were estimated at two thousand in Cologne and its vicinity, and there were as many in the single Beguinageof Nivelle, in Brabant. Philippe de Montmirail, a pious knight who devoted himself to good works, is said to have been instrumental in providing for five thousand Beguines throughout Europe. The great Beguinage of Ghent, founded in 1234, by the Countesses of Flanders, Jeanne and Marguerite, is described in the seventeenth century as resembling a small town, surrounded with wall and fosse, containing open squares, conventual houses, dwellings, infirmary, church, and cemetery, inhabited by eight hundred or a thousand women, the younger living in the convents, the older in separate houses. They were tied by no permanent vows and were free to depart and marry at any time, but so long as they were inmates they were bound to obey the Grand Mistress. The guardianship of the establishment was hereditary in the House of Flanders, and it was under the supervision of the Dominican prior of Ghent. How large was the space that Beguinism occupied in public estimation in the thirteenth century is shown by Philippe Mousket, who calls Conrad of Marburg a Beguine, "_uns bégins mestre serrmonnière_."[396]

Those who thus lived in communities could be subjected to wholesome supervision and established rules, but it was otherwise with those who maintained an independent existence, either in one spot or wandering from place to place, sometimes supporting themselves by labor, but more frequently by beggary. Their customary persistent cry through the streets--"_Brod durch Gott_"--became a shibboleth unpleasantly familiar to the inhabitants of the German cities, which the Church repeatedly and ineffectually endeavored to suppress. A circumstance occurring about 1240 illustrates their reputation for superior sanctity and the advantages derivable from it. A certain Sibylla of Marsal near Metz, we are told, seeing how many women under the name of Beguines flourished in the appearance of religion, and under the guidance of the Dominicans, thought fit to imitate them. Assiduous attendance at matins and mass gained her the repute of peculiar holiness. Then she pretended to fast and live on celestial food, she had ecstasies and visions, and deceived the whole region, not excepting the Bishop of Metz himself. The Beguines who had hailed her as a saintly sister were excessively mortified when an accident revealed the imposture; the people were so enraged that some wanted to burn her and others to bury her alive, but the bishop shut her up in a convent, _in pace_, where, naturally enough, she soon died.[397]

The Church was not long in recognizing the danger inherent in these practices when withdrawn from close supervision. On the one hand there was simulated piety, like that of Sibylla of Marsal, on the other the far more serious opportunity of indulgence in unlawful speculation. In 1250 and the following years the Beguines of Cologne repeatedly sought the protection of papal legates against the oppression of both clergy and laity. Already, in 1259, a council of Mainz strongly reproved the pestiferous sect of Beghards and Beguttæ (Beguines), who wandered through the streets crying "_Broth durch Gott_," preaching in caverns and other secret places, and given to various practices disapproved by the Church. All priests were ordered to warn them to abandon these customs, and to expel from their parishes those who were obstinate. In 1267 the Council of Trèves forbade their preaching in the streets on account of the heresies which they disseminated. In 1287 a council of Liège deprived all who did not live in the Beguinages of the right to wear the peculiar habit and enjoy the privileges of Beguines. In Suabia, about the same period, some members of communities of Beghards and Beguines sought to persuade the rest that they could better serve God "in freedom of spirit," when the bishops proceeded to abolish all such associations, and some of them asked to adopt the rule of St. Augustin.[398]

All this points to the adoption, by the followers of Ortlieb, who called themselves Brethren of the Free Spirit, of the habit and appellation of the Beghards and Beguines, and the gradual invasion among the latter of the doctrines derived from Amaury. Comparatively few of the Lollards, Beghards, or Beguines were contaminated with these heresies, but they all had to share the responsibility, and the communities of both sexes, who led the most regular lives and were inspired with the purest orthodoxy, were exposed to unnumbered tribulations for lack of a distinctive appellation. When heretics regarded as peculiarly obnoxious were anathematized as Beghards and Beguines, it was impossible for those who bore the name, without sharing the errors, to escape the common responsibility. It became even worse when John XXII. plunged into a quarrel with the Spiritual Franciscans, drove them into open rebellion, and persecuted the new heresy which he had thus created with all the unsparing wrath of his vindictive nature. In France the Tertiary Franciscans were popularly known as Beguines, and this became the appellation customarily bestowed on these Spiritual heretics, and adopted by the Avignonese popes to designate them. Not only has this led to much confusion on the part of heresiologists, but its effect, for a time, on the fortunes of the virtuous and orthodox Beguines of both sexes was most disastrous. The heretic Beghards, it is true, adopted for themselves the title of Brethren of the Free Spirit; the rebellious Franciscans insisted that they were the only legitimate representatives of the Order, and, at most, assumed the term of Spirituals, in order to distinguish themselves from their carnal-minded conventual brethren; but the authorities were long in admitting these distinctions, and, in the eyes of the Church at large, the condemnation of Beghards and Beguines covered all alike.

We have here to do only with the Brethren of the Free Spirit, whose doctrines, as we have seen, were derived from the speculations of the Amaurians carried to Germany by Ortlieb of Strassburg. Descriptions of their errors have reached us from so many sources, covering so long a period, with so general a consensus in fundamentals, that there can be little doubt as to the main principles of their faith. In a sect extending over so wide a reach of territory, and stubbornly maintaining itself through so many generations, there must necessarily have existed subdivisions, as one heresiarch or another pushed his speculations in some direction further than his fellows, and founded a special school whose aberrations there was no central authority to control. Many of the peculiarly repulsive extravagances attributed to them, however, may safely be ascribed to keen-witted schoolmen engaged in trying individual heretics, and forcing them to admit consequences logically but unexpectedly deduced from their admitted premises. There was no little intellectual activity in the sect, and their tracts and books of devotion, written in the vernacular, were widely distributed, and largely relied upon as means of missionary effort. These, of course, have wholly disappeared, and we are left to gather their doctrines from the condemnations passed upon them.

The foundation of their creed was pantheism. God is everything that is. There is as much of the divinity in a louse as in a man or in any other creature. All emanates from him and returns to him. As the soul thus reverts to God after death, there is neither purgatory nor hell, and all external cult is useless. Thus at one blow was destroyed the efficacy of all sacerdotal observances and of the sacraments. Of the latter, indeed, no terms were severe enough to express their contempt, and they were sometimes in the habit of saying that the Eucharist tasted to them like dung. Man being thus God by nature, has in him all that is divine, and each one may say that he himself created the universe. One of the accusations brought against Master Eckart was that he had declared that his little finger created the world. Nay, more, man can so unite himself with God that he can do whatever God does; he thus needs no God; he is impeccable, and whatever he does is without sin. In this state of perfection he grieves at nothing, he rejoices at nothing, he is free from all virtue and all virtuous actions. No one is bound to labor for his bread; as all things are in common, each one may take what his necessities or desires may prompt.[399]

The practical deductions from these doctrines were not only destructive to the Church, but dangerous to the moral and social order. The lofty mysticism of the teachers might preserve them from the evil results which flowed from the presumption of impeccability. In their austere stoicism they condemned all sexual indulgence save that of which the sole object was the procurement of offspring. They taught that a woman in marrying should deeply deplore the loss of her virginity, and that no one was perfect in whom promiscuous nakedness could awaken either shame or passion. That tests of this kind were not infrequent, the history of ill-regulated enthusiasm, from the time of the early Christians, will not permit us to doubt, and the Beghards succeeded so well in subduing the senses that a hostile controversialist can only suggest Satanic influence, well known to demonologists for its refrigerating power, as an explanation of their wonderful self-control under such temptation. Yet this rare exaltation of austerity was not possible to all natures. It was easy for him who had not risen superior to the allurements of the senses to imagine himself perfected, impeccable, and entitled to gratify his passions. St. Paul, in arguing against the bondage of the Old Law, had furnished texts which, when cited apart from their contexts, could be and were alleged in justification: "For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. VIII. 2)--"The law is not made for a righteous man" (1 Tim. I. 9)--"But if ye be led of the Spirit ye are not under the law" (Galat. V. 18)--and the Brethren of the Free Spirit claimed freedom from all the trammels of the law. Such a doctrine was attractive to those who desired excuse and opportunity for license, and the evidence is too abundant and confirmatory for us to doubt that, at least in some cases, the sectaries abandoned themselves to the grossest sensuality. It is noteworthy that, in order to describe the divine internal light which they enjoyed, they invented for themselves the term Illuminism, which for more than three centuries continued to be of most serious import.[400]

As a branch of the sect may be reckoned the Luciferans, who have been repeatedly alluded to above. Pantheism, of course, included Satan as an emanation from God, who in due time would be restored to union with the Godhead, and it was not difficult to assume that his fallen state was an injustice. In 1312 Luciferans were discovered at Krems, in the diocese of Passau, whose bishop, Bernhard, together with Conrad, Archbishop of Salzburg, and Frederic, Duke of Austria, undertook their extirpation with the aid of the Dominican Inquisition, which seems to have maintained some foothold in those regions. The persecution lasted until 1315, but the sect was not exterminated, and reappeared repeatedly in after-years. It is reported to have been thoroughly organized, with twelve "apostles" who travelled annually throughout Germany, making converts and confirming the believers in the faith. All the ceremonies of external worship were rejected, but they did not enjoy the impeccability of Illuminism, for two of their ministers were held to enter paradise every year, where they received from Enoch and Elias the power of absolving their followers, and this power they communicated to others in each community. Those who were detected proved obdurate; they were deaf to all persuasion, and met their death in the flames with the utmost cheerfulness. One of the apostles, who was burned at Vienna, stated, under torture, that there were eight thousand of them scattered throughout Bohemia, Austria, and Thuringia, besides numbers elsewhere. Bohemia was especially infected with these errors, and Trithemius, in the opening years of the sixteenth century, states that there were still thousands of them in that kingdom. This is doubtless an exaggeration, if not a complete mistake, but they were again discovered in Austria in 1338 and 1395, and many of them were burned.[401]

The tendency to mysticism which found its complete expression in the Brethren of the Free Spirit influenced greatly the development of German religious thought in channels which, although assumedly orthodox, trenched narrowly upon heresy. If, as Altmeyer argues, a period of tribulation leads to the predominance of sentiment over intellect, to the yearning for direct intercourse between the soul and the Divine Essence, which is the supreme aim of the mystic, the Germany of the fourteenth century had troubles enough to justify the development of mysticism. Yet it is rather a question of the mental characteristics of a race than of external circumstances. Bonaventura was the father of the mystics, yet he founded no sect at home; France, in the hundred years' war with England, had ample experience of trial, and yet mysticism never flourished on her soil. In Germany, however, the mystic tendency of religious sentiment during the fourteenth century is the most marked spiritual phenomenon of the period. Few names in the first quarter of the century were more respected than that of Master Eckart, who stood high in the ranks of the great Dominican Order. I have already (Vol. I., p. 360) related how he fell under suspicion of participating in the errors of the Beghards, how his brethren vainly strove to save him, and how the Archbishop of Cologne won a decided victory over the feeble and unorganized Dominican Inquisition by vindicating the subjection of a Dominican to his episcopal Inquisition. If the twenty-eight articles finally condemned by John XXII. as heretical be correctly extracted from Eckart's teachings, there can be no doubt that he was deeply infected with the pantheistic speculations of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, that he admitted the common divinity of man and God, and shared in the dangerous deductions which proved that sin and virtue were the same in the eyes of God. To a hierarchy founded on sacerdotalism, moreover, nothing could be more revolutionary than the rejection of external cult, which was the necessary conclusion from the doctrine that there is no virtue in external acts, but that only the internal operations of the soul are of moment; that no man should regret the commission of sin, or ask anything of God.[402]

The importance of Eckart's views lies not so much in his own immediate influence as in that of his disciples. He was the founder of the school of German mystics, through whom the speculations of Amauri of Bene, in various dilutions, made a deep impression on the religious development of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. All the leaders in the remarkable association known as the "Friends of God" drew, directly or indirectly, their inspiration from Master Eckart, and all, to a greater or less extent, reveal their affinity to the Brethren of the Free Spirit, although they succeeded in keeping technically within the limits of orthodoxy.

John of Rysbroek, humane and gentle as he was, regarded the Brethren of the Free Spirit with such horror that he deemed them worthy of the stake. Yet, though he avoided their pantheism, he taught, like them, the supreme end of existence in the absorption of the individual into the infinite substance of God; moreover, the Perfect, inflamed by divine love, are dead to themselves and to the world, and are thus incapable of sin. It is no wonder that Gerson regarded as dangerous these doctrines, so nearly akin to those of the Beghards, and though Rysbroek might hesitate to draw from them the conclusions inevitable to hardier thinkers, they were sufficient to render unsuccessful the attempt made, in 1624, to canonize him, in spite of the incontestable miracles wrought at his tomb. His most distinguished disciple was Gerard Groot, who partially outgrew the metaphysical subtleties of his teacher and turned his energies to the more practical directions out of which sprang the Brethren of the Common Life. Groot was equally severe upon the corruption of the clergy and the errors of the heretics. When the introduction of the Inquisition into Germany drove the Brethren of the Free Spirit to find new places of refuge, some of them came to Holland, where the prevalence of pantheistic mysticism gave opportunity of spreading their doctrines. Groot's own views sufficiently resembled theirs to render their bolder speculations doubly offensive to him, and he sought to repress them with especial zeal. The convent of Augustinian Hermits at Dordrecht had the reputation of being tainted with the heresy, and Groot was eager to detect and punish it. Bartholomew, one of the Augustinians, was particularly suspected, and Groot proposed to follow him secretly with a notary and take down his words. In this, or some other way, evidence was obtained; there was no Inquisition in Holland, and Groot procured his citation before Florent, Bishop of Utrecht, about the year 1380. The case was beard before the episcopal vicar; Bartholomew denied the expressions attributed to him and was let off with an injunction to publicly repeat the denial in Kampen and Zwolle, where he was said to have uttered his heresies. This unexpected lenity excited the indignation of Groot, who had sufficient influence to induce Bishop Florent to take up the case again and try it personally. Bartholomew endeavored to escape his persecutor by appearing a day in advance of the one set for his trial, but word was sent to Groot, who threw himself into a wagon, and by travelling all night reached Utrecht in time. On this occasion he was successful; Bartholomew was condemned as a heretic, abjured, and was sentenced to wear crosses in the form of scissors. The Augustinians did not lack friends, and they retaliated on those who had busied themselves in the matter. The magistrates of Kampen prosecuted some women who had served as witnesses and fined them, and they also banished for ten years Werner Keynkamp, a friend of Groot, who subsequently was thrice prior of houses of Brethren of the Common Life. Groot himself did not escape, for soon afterwards Bishop Florent, for the purpose of silencing him, issued an order withdrawing all commissions to preach. Groot then endeavored to procure from Urban VI. papal commissions as preacher and inquisitor, and sent to Rome ten florins to pay for the bulls. Fortunately for his fame, he died, in 1384, before the return of his messenger, and Holland was spared the effects of his inconsiderate zeal, inflamed by strife and armed with the irresponsible power of the Inquisition. In his gentler capacity he left his mantle to Florent Radewyns, under whom were developed the communities of the Common Life. These spread rapidly throughout the Netherlands and Germany, and though occasionally the subject of inquisitorial persecution, they were covered by the decision of Martin V., when Matthew Grabon, at the Council of Constance, endeavored to procure the condemnation of the Beguines, of which more anon. After this they flourished without opposition, supporting themselves by disseminating culture, as educators and copiers of manuscripts. After the Reformation the communities rapidly died out, although the house of Emmerich, near Düsseldorf, remained to be closed by Napoleon, in 1811, and the four brethren then ejected from it continued to observe the rules, till the last one, Gerard Mulder, died at Zevenaar, March 15, 1854. One branch of the brethren, however, adopted the Rule of the canons-regular of St. Augustin. Their convent of Windesheim became the model which was universally followed, and the order had the honor of training two such men as Thomas-à-Kempis and Erasmus. The Imitation of Christ is the final exquisite flower of the moderated mysticism of John of Rysbroek. Brought down to practical life, this mysticism contributed largely to the spiritual movement which culminated in the Reformation, for it taught the superfluity of external works and the dependence of the individual on himself alone for salvation. In this the Brethren of the Common Life were active. To them dogma became less important than the interior discipline which should fit men to be really children of God. Preaching among the people and teaching in the schools, such brethren as Henry Harphius, John Brugman, Denis Van Leeuwen, Jon Van Goch, and John Wessel of Groningen, were unwittingly undermining the power of the hierarchy, although they virtually escaped all imputation of heresy and danger of persecution.[403]

Less lasting, though more noticeable at the time, was the association of Friends of God, which formed itself in the upper Rhinelands. The most prominent disciple of Master Eckart was John Tauler, who retained enough of his master's doctrines to render him amenable to the charge of heresy had there been in those days a German Inquisition in working order. That he escaped prosecution is the most conclusive evidence that the machinery of persecution was thoroughly out of gear. In the heights of his illuminated quietism all the personality of the devotee was lost in the abyss of Divinity. No human tongue could describe the resignation to God in which the whole being is merged so that it lost all sense of power of its own. No priestly ministrant or mediator was required. The individual could bring his soul into relations with the Godhead so intimate that it was virtually lost in the Divine Essence, and he could become so thoroughly under the influence of the Holy Ghost that he was, so to speak, inspired, and his acts were the acts of the Third Person of the Trinity. All this was possible for the layman without sacerdotal observance. Man was answerable for himself to himself alone, and could make himself at one with God without the intervention of the priest.[404]

Great as was Tauler's renown as the foremost preacher of his day, he bowed as a little child before the mysterious layman known as the Friend of God in the Oberland. In the full strength of mature manhood, when at least fifty years of age and when all Strassburg was hanging on his words, a stranger sought his presence and probed to the bottom his secret weaknesses. He was a Pharisee, proud of his learning and his skill in scholastic theology; before he could be fit for the guidance of souls he must cast off all reliance on his own strength and become as an infant relying on God alone. Overcome by the mystic power of his visitor, the doctor of theology subdued his pride, and in obedience to the command of the stranger, who never revealed his name, Tauler for two years abstained from preaching and from hearing confessions. From this struggle with himself he emerged a new man, and formed one of the remarkable band of Friends of God whom the nameless stranger was engaged in selecting and uniting.[405]

This association was not numerous, for only rare souls could rise to the altitude in which they would surely wish only what God wishes and dislike what God dislikes; but its adepts were scattered from the Netherlands to Genoa, and from the Rhinelands to Hungary. Terrible were the struggles and spiritual conflicts, the alternations of hope and despair, of ravishing ecstasies and hideous temptations, with which God tried the neophyte who sought to ascend into the serene atmosphere of mystic illuminism--struggles and conflicts which form a strangely resembling prototype of those which for long years tested the steadfastness of John Bunyan. When at length the initiation was safely endured, God drew them to him, he illuminated their souls so that they became one with him; they were gods by grace, even as he is God by nature. Then they were in a condition of absolute sinlessness, and could enjoy the assurance that it would continue during life, so that at death they would ascend at once to heaven with no preliminary purgatory.[406]

In many of their tenets and practices there is a strange reverberation of Hinduism, all the stranger that there can be no possible connection between them, unless perchance there may be some elements derived from mystic Arabic Aristotelianism, which so strongly influenced scholastic thought.[407] As the old Brahmanic _tapas_, or austere meditation, enabled man to acquire a share of the divine nature, so the interior exercises of the Friends of God assimilated man to the Divinity, and the miraculous powers which they acquired find their prototypes in the Rishis and Rahats. The self-inflicted barbarities of the Yoga system were emulated in the efforts necessary to subdue the rebellious flesh; Rulman Merswin, for instance, used to scourge himself with wires and then rub salt into the wounds. The religious ecstasies of the Friends of God were the counterpart of the Samadhi or beatific insensibility of the Hindu; and the supreme good which they set before themselves was the same as that of the Sankhya school--the renunciation of the will and the freedom from all passions and desires, even that of salvation. Yet these resemblances were modified by the Christian sense of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, and by the more practical character of the Western mind, which did not send its votaries into the jungle and forest, but ordered them, if laymen, to continue their worldly life; if rich, they were not to despoil themselves, but to employ their riches in good works, and to discharge their duties to man as well as to God. Rulman Merswin was a banker, and continued in active business while founding the community of the Grün Wöhrd and writing the treatises which were the support and the comfort of the faithful. Yet the chief of them all and his immediate disciples founded a hermitage in the wilderness, where they devoted themselves to propitiating the wrath of God. The unutterable wickedness of man called for divine vengeance. Earthquakes, pestilence, famine, had been disregarded warnings, and only the intercession of the Friends of God had obtained repeated reprieves. The Great Schism, in 1378, was a new and still greater calamity, and in 1379 an angel messenger informed them that the final punishment was postponed for a year, after which they must not ask for further delay. Still, in 1380, thirteen of them were mysteriously called to assemble in a "divine diet," to which an angel brought a letter informing them that, at the prayer of the Virgin, God had granted a respite of three years provided they would constitute themselves "prisoners of God," living the life of recluses in absolute silence, broken only two days in the week from noon to eve, and then only to ask for necessaries or to give spiritual counsel. To this they assented, and not long afterwards they disappear from view.[408]

The Friends of God are noteworthy not only as a significant development of the spiritual tendencies of the age, but they have a peculiar interest for us from their relations with the Church on the one hand and with the Brethren of the Free Spirit on the other. They were an outgrowth of the latter, though they avoided the deplorable moral extravagances of the parent sect. The "Ninth Rock," which was the supreme height of ascetic illuminism of the Beghards, reappears in the same sense in the most notable of Rulman Merswin's works, attributed until recently to Henry Suso. It is no wonder that Nider confounded the Friends of God with the Beghards, though Merswin's "Baner Buechelin" was written for the purpose of denouncing the errors of the latter. In much, as we have seen, they differed from the current doctrines of the Church, carrying their aberrations further than those which in the seventeenth century were so severely repressed in Molinos and the Illuminati. To these they added special errors of their own. Many Jews and Moslems, they said, were saved, for God abandons none who seek him, and though they cannot enjoy Christian baptism, God himself baptizes them spiritually in the sufferings of the death-agony. In the same spirit they refused to denounce the heretic to human justice for fear of anticipating divine justice; they could tolerate him in the world as long as God saw fit to do so. Yet they had one saving principle which preserved them from the temporal and spiritual consequences of their errors, giving us a valuable insight into the relations between the Church and heresy. While denouncing in the strongest language the corruptions and worldliness of the establishment, they professed the most implicit obedience to Rome, and much could be overlooked or pardoned so long as the supremacy of the Holy See was not called in question. When, in June, 1377, the Friend of God in the Oberland was inspired to visit, with a comrade, Gregory XI., and warn him of the dangers which threatened Christendom, they spoke to him with the utmost freedom, and though he at first was angered, he finally recognized in them the envoys of the Holy Ghost and honored them greatly, urging them to resume their abandoned design of founding a great institution of their order. Gregory was relentless in the extermination of Waldenses, Beghards, and the remnants of the Cathari, but he saw nothing to object to in the mysticism and illuminism of his visitors. He did not even take offence when they threatened him with death within the twelvemonth if he did not reform the Church. In effect he died March 28, 1378; but, if we may believe Gerson, his dying regrets were not that he had neglected these warnings, but that by too credulously listening to the visions of male and female prophets he had paved the way for the Great Schism, which he foresaw would break out when he was removed from the scene.[409]

After this hasty review of the more orthodox developments of mysticism we may return to the history of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who maintained the pantheistic doctrine in all its crudity, and did not shrink from its legitimate deductions. Towards the close of the thirteenth century the transcendent merits of beggary, so long acknowledged, began to be questioned. In 1274 the Council of Lyons endeavored to suppress the unauthorized mendicant associations. In 1286 Honorius IV. condemned the Segarellists, and some ten years later the persecution, by Boniface VIII., of the Celestines and stricter Franciscans showed that poverty was no longer to be regarded as the supreme virtue. About the same time he issued a bull ordering the active persecution of some heretics, whose teaching that perfection required men and women to go naked and not to labor with the hands would seem to identify them with the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The same feeling manifested itself contemporaneously in Germany. The first instance of actual persecution recorded is a curt notice that, in 1290, the Franciscan lector at Colmar caused to be arrested two Beghards and two Beguines, and several others at Basle whom he considered to be heretics. Two years later the Provincial Council of Mainz, held at Aschaffenburg, emphatically repeated the condemnation of the Beghards and Beguines, expressed by the previous council of 1259, and this was again repeated by another council of Mainz in 1310, while other canons regulating the recognized communities of Beguines show that the distinction was clearly drawn between those who led a settled life under supervision and the wandering beggars who preached in caverns and disseminated doctrines little understood, but regarded with suspicion.[410]

It was Henry von Virnenburg, Archbishop of Cologne, however, who commenced the war against them which was to last so long. Elected in 1306, he immediately assembled a provincial council, of which the first two canons are devoted to them with an amplitude proving how important they were becoming. They wore a long tabard and tunics with cowls distinguishing them from the people at large; they had the hardihood to engage in public disputation with the Franciscans and Dominicans, and the obstinacy to refuse to be overcome in argument, and, what was worse, their persistent beggary was so successful that it sensibly diminished the alms which were the support of the authorized Mendicants. All this shows the absence of any papal inquisition and an enjoyment of practical toleration unknown outside of the boundaries of Germany, but it may be assumed that the Beghards did not publicly reveal their more dangerous and repulsive doctrines, for the enumeration of their errors by the council presents them in a very moderate form. Still, the archbishop pronounced them excommunicated heretics, to be suppressed by the secular arm unless they recanted within fifteen days. A month was given them to abandon their garments and mode of life, after which they were to earn their bread by honest labor. This was well-intentioned legislation, but it seems to have remained wholly inoperative. The Beghards continued to assail the Mendicants with such ardor and success that the Franciscans, who were crippled by the death of their lector in 1305, applied for succor to their general, Gonsalvo. The necessity must have been pressing, for in 1308 he sent to their assistance the greatest schoolman of the Order, Duns Scotus. He was received with the enthusiasm which his eminence merited, but, unfortunately, he died in November of the same year, and the Beghards were able to continue their proselytism without efficient opposition.[411]

About this time their missionary labors seem to have become particularly active and to have attracted wide attention. We have seen how, in 1310, the Beguine, Marguerite Porete of Hainault, was burned in Paris, and bore her martyrdom with unshrinking firmness. In the same year occurred the Council of Mainz already referred to, and also a council of Trèves, in which their unauthorized exposition of Scripture was denounced, and all parish priests were required to summon them to abandon their evil ways within a fortnight, under pain of excommunication. In 1309 we hear of certain wandering hypocrites called Lollards, who, throughout Hainault and Brabant, had considerable success in obtaining converts among noble ladies.[412]

This missionary fervor seems to have attracted attention to the sect, leading to special condemnation under the authority of the General Council of Vienne, which was assembled in November, 1311. The heresy had evidently been studied with some care, for the first tolerably complete account which we have of its doctrines is embodied in the canon proscribing it. Bishops and inquisitors were ordered to perform their office diligently in tracking all who entertained it, and seeing that they were duly punished unless they would freely abjure. Unfortunately, Clement's zeal was not satisfied with this. The pious women who lived in communities under the name of Beguines were not easily distinguishable from the heretical wanderers. In another canon, therefore, the Beguinages are described as infected with those who dispute about the Trinity and the Divine Essence and disseminate opinions contrary to the faith. These establishments are therefore abolished. At the same time there was evidently a feeling that this was inflicting a wrong, and the canon ends with the contradictory declaration that faithful women, either vowing chastity or not, may live together in houses and devote themselves to penitence and the service of God. There was a lamentable lack of clearness about this which left it for the local prelates to interpret their duty according to their wishes.[413]

The Clementines, or book of canon law containing these provisions, was not issued during Clement's life, and it was not until November, 1317, that his successor, John XXII., gave them legal force by their authoritative publication. Apparently the bishops waited for this, for during the interim we hear nothing of persecution, until August, 1317, just before the issue of the Clementines, when John of Zurich, Bishop of Strassburg, suddenly took the matter up. He did not act under the canons of Vienne, but under those of 1310 adopted by the Council of Mainz, of which province he was a suffragan; but an allusion to the penalties decreed by the Holy See shows that the action at Vienne was known. The Beghards apparently had sought no concealment, for he threatened with excommunication all who should not within three days lay aside the distinguishing garments of the sect, and their fearless publicity is further shown by the bishop's confiscating the houses in which their assemblies were held, and forbidding any one to read or listen to or possess their hymns and writings, which were to be delivered up for burning within fifteen days. The fact that among them were many clerks in holy orders, monks, married folks, and others, shows that their opinions were widely held among those who were not mere wandering beggars--the latter probably being merely the missionaries who made converts and administered to the spiritual needs of the faithful. John of Zurich was not content with merely threatening. He made a visitation of his diocese, in which he found many of the sectaries. He organized an Inquisition of learned theologians, by whom they were tried; those who recanted were sentenced to wear crosses--the first authentic record in Germany of the use of this penance, so long since established elsewhere--and those who were obstinate he handed over to the secular arm to be burned. These active proceedings may be regarded as the first regular exercise of the episcopal Inquisition on German soil. Multitudes of Beghards fled from the diocese, and in June, 1318, the bishop had the satisfaction of reporting his success to his fellow-suffragans and urging them to follow his example. Yet this persecution, if sharp, was transitory, for in 1319 we find him again issuing letters to his clergy, saying that the Clementines had been enforced elsewhere, but not in the diocese of Strassburg. All incumbents are ordered, under pain of suspension, to require the Beguines to lay aside their vestments within fifteen days and to conform to the usages of the Church. If any refuse, the inquisitors will be instructed to inquire into their faith.[414]

Meanwhile the publication of the Clementines had produced results not corresponding exactly to the intentions of Clement. The canon directed against the heretics received little attention, and five years elapse before we hear of any serious persecutions under it. The heretics were poor; there were no spoils to tempt episcopal officials to the thankless labor of tracking them and trying them, and few of the bishops had the zeal of John of Zurich to divert them from their temporal cares and pleasures. The Beguinages, however, were an easy prey; there was property to be confiscated in reward of intelligent activity. Besides, many of the establishments were under the supervision of the Mendicant Orders, and were virtually or absolutely Tertiary houses, the destruction of which gratified the inextinguishable jealousy between the secular clergy and the Orders; the struggle between John XXII. and the Franciscans, moreover, was commencing, and the Tertiaries of the latter, who were popularly known as Beguines in France, were fair game. The bishops for the most part, therefore, neglected the saving clause of the canon respecting the Beguinages, and construed literally and pitilessly the orders for their abolition. So eager were they to gratify their vindictiveness against the Mendicants that, when these interfered to save their Tertiaries, they were excommunicated as fautors and defenders of heresy. Thus arose a persecution which, though bloodless, was most deplorable. All through France and Germany and Italy the poor creatures were turned adrift upon the world, without means of support. Those who could, found husbands; many were driven to a life of prostitution, others, doubtless, perished of want and exposure. Even the quasi-conventual dress to which they were accustomed was proscribed, and they were forced to wear gay colors under pain of excommunication. In the history of the Church there have been many more cruel persecutions, but few which in suddenness and extent have caused greater misery, and none, we are safe to say, so wanton, causeless, and lacking even the shadow of justification. The impression made on the popular mind is seen in the current report that on his death-bed Clement bitterly repented of three things--that he had poisoned the Emperor Henry VII. and that he had destroyed the Orders of the Templars and of the Beguines.[415]

The Church had declared, in the great Council of Lateran, that no congregations should be allowed to exist save under some approved rule. The Beguines had gradually, almost unconsciously, grown up in practical contravention of this canon. The solution of their present difficulties lay in attaching themselves to some recognized Order, and John XXII., in 1319, recognizing the mischief wrought by the heedless legislation of Vienne, promised exemption from further persecution of those who would become Mendicant Tertiaries. Large numbers of them sought this refuge, though their adhesion was more nominal than real. They preserved their self-government, their habits of labor, and their ownership of individual property. In a bull of December 31, 1320, and others of later date, John drew the distinction between those who lived piously and obediently in their houses, and those who wandered around disputing on matters of faith. The former, he is told, amount to two hundred thousand in Germany alone, and he bitterly reproached the bishops who were disturbing them on account of the comparatively small number whose misconduct had drawn forth the misinterpreted condemnation of Clement. They are in future to be left in peace. This, at least, put an end, in 1321, to the persecution of those of Strassburg.[416]

The innocent Beguines thus obtained a breathing-space, and the gaps in their ranks were soon filled up. The obnoxious members, however, felt the effects of the Clementine canon as severely as the habitual sloth and indifference of the German prelates in such matters would permit. Archbishop Henry, of Cologne, was one of the few who manifested an active interest in the matter, and his exertions were rewarded with considerable success. The Lollards and Beghards no longer ventured to show themselves publicly, and in the absence of organized machinery it was not easy to detect them, but in 1322 the archbishop had the good fortune to capture the most formidable heresiarch of the region. Walter, known as the Lollard, was a Hollander, and was the most active and successful of the Beghard missionaries. He was not an educated man, and was ignorant of Latin, but he had a keen intelligence and ready eloquence, indefatigable enthusiasm and persuasiveness. His proselyting labors were facilitated by his numerous writings in the vernacular, which were eagerly circulated from hand to hand. He had been busy in Mainz, where he had numerous disciples, and came from there to Cologne, where he chanced to fall into the archbishop's hands. He made no secret of his belief, refused to abjure, and welcomed death in the service of his faith. The severest tortures were vainly employed to force him to reveal the names of his fellow-believers; his constancy was unalterable, and he perished in the flames with serene cheerfulness.[417]

The episcopal Inquisition was not as efficient as the zeal of the archbishop might wish, but, such as it was, it pursued its labors with indifferent success. In 1323 we hear of a priest detected in heresy, who was duly degraded and burned. In 1325 greater results followed the accidental discovery of an assembly of Beghards. The story told is the legend common to other places, of a husband, whose suspicions were aroused, tracking his wife to the nocturnal conventicle and witnessing the sensual orgies which were popularly believed to be customary in such places. The episcopal Inquisition was rewarded with a large number of culprits, whose trial was speedy and sure. Those who would not abjure, about fifty in number, were put to death--some at the stake, and some drowned in the Rhine, a novel punishment for heresy, which shows how uncertain as yet were the dealings with heretics in Germany. It is quite probable that some of these poor creatures may have sought to shield their errors under the reputation of the great Dominican preacher, Master Eckart, and thus brought upon him the prosecution which worried him to death. It is possible, also, that pursuit of this higher game may have diverted the archbishop from the chase of the humbler quarry, for we hear of no further victims in the next few years, though we are told that the heresy was by no means suppressed.[418]

Archbishop Henry died in 1331 without further success, so far as the records show, and his successor Waleran, Count of Juliers, took up the cause in more systematic fashion. He endeavored to organize a permanent episcopal Inquisition by appointing a commissioner whose duty it was to inquire after heretics, and who had power to reconcile and absolve those who should recant--in fact, an inquisitor under another name. The success of this attempt did not correspond to its deserts. In March, 1335, Waleran was obliged to announce that the evil had greatly increased in both the city and diocese, and he called upon all his prelates and clergy to assist his Inquisition by rigidly enforcing the statutes of Archbishop Henry. This was as ineffective as the previous measures. The heretics were so bold that they openly wore the garments of the sect and followed its practices; nay, more, the inquisitor was either so negligent or so corrupt that he gave absolutions without requiring conformity. In October of the same year, therefore, the archbishop issued another pastoral epistle, in which he pronounced all such absolutions void, and deplored the constant spread of the heresy.[419]

The zeal of the Archbishops of Cologne was not without imitators. Throughout Westphalia, Bishops Ludwig of Munster, Gottfrid of Osnabruck, Gottfrid of Minden, and Bernhard of Paderborn had been active in eradicating the heresy within their dioceses. In 1335 Bishop Berthold of Strassburg made a spasmodic effort to enforce the Clementines, and in the same year there were some victims burned in Metz. The Magdeburg Archbishop Otto was of more tolerant temper. In 1336 a number of "Brethren of the Lofty Spirit" were detected in his city, who did not hesitate, under examination, to admit their belief, which to pious ears sounded like the most horrible blasphemy; yet he liberated them after a few days' confinement on their simply recanting their errors verbally. In this same year, however, we have the first instance of a papal inquisitor at work in north Germany. Friar Jordan, an Augustinian eremite, held a commission as inquisitor in both sections of Saxony. He was not well versed in the inquisitorial process, for when at Angermünde in the Uckermark he came upon a nest of Luciferans, he humanely offered them the opportunity of canonical purgation. Fourteen of them failed to procure the requisite number of conjurators, and were duly burned. From Angermünde Friar Jordan seems to have hastened to Erfurt, where he was present at the trial of a Beghard named Constantine, though the proceedings were carried on by the vicar of the Archbishop of Mainz. There was no desire to punish the heretic, who bore a good reputation and was useful as a writer of manuscripts. He asserted himself to be the Son of God, and that he would arise three days after death, so there was ample ground for the endeavor humanely made by his judges to prove him insane. A long respite was given him for this purpose, but he persistently declared his sanity, refused all attempts at conversion, and perished in the flames.[420]

When the effort was made to find heretics there seems to have been plenty of them to reward the search. In this same year, 1336, we hear of the discovery in Austria of a numerous sect who, from the description, were probably Luciferans. The rites of their nocturnal subterranean assemblies bear a considerable resemblance to those revealed by the penitents of Conrad of Marburg, showing how the tradition was handed down to the outbreak of witchcraft. We are told that they had contaminated innumerable souls, but they were exterminated by the free use of the stake and other cruel torments. The next year, in Brandenburg, many simple folk were seduced into demonolatry by three evil spirits who personated the Trinity; and though these were driven off by a Franciscan with the host, the dupes persisted in their error, and preferred burning to recantation. Even divested of its supernatural embroidery, the heresy, probably Luciferan, must have been one which excited enthusiasm in its followers, for at the place of execution they declared that the flames lighted to consume them were golden chariots to carry them to heaven. Another instance of Luciferanism occurred at Salzburg, in 1340, when a priest named Rudolph, in the cathedral, cast to the ground the cup containing the blood of Christ, a sacrilege which he had previously committed at Halle. Under examination, he denied transubstantiation, and asserted the final salvation of Satan and his angels. He was obstinate to the last, and consequently was burned.[421]

The Brethren of the Free Spirit had by no means been suppressed. In 1339 three aged heresiarchs of the sect were captured at Constance and tried by the bishop. Disgusting practices of sensuality were proved against them, and they described their abhorrence of the rites of the Church in the most revolting terms. Their constancy held good until they were brought to the place of execution, when it failed them; they recanted, and were sentenced to imprisonment for life in a dungeon on bread and water. In 1342, at Würzburg, two more were forced to recantation. Persecution, however, was spasmodic, and in many places toleration practically existed. Thus, in Suabia, in 1347, we are told that the heresy of the Beghards spread without let or hindrance. It was impossible to eradicate it, even had there been efforts made to suppress it, which there were not, and it would eventually have overturned the Church had there not finally arisen theologians able and willing to combat it.[422]

About this period flourished Conrad of Montpellier, a canon of Ratisbon, one of the most learned men of the day, who wrote a tract against the sect. In spite of the condemnation uttered by the Council of Vienne, he says it continues to increase and multiply, as there are no prelates found to oppose it. The heretics are mostly ignorant peasants and mechanics, who wander around wearing the distinctive garments of the sect, which are also frequently used as a disguise by Waldenses. They seek hospitality of the Beguines, whom they corrupt by persuading them that man, through piety, can become the equal of Christ. At Ratisbon, Conrad met one of these, who was not suffered to enjoy security, for the bishop arrested him, and, on his obstinately maintaining his errors, cast him in a dungeon, where he perished. Another, named John of Mechlin, preached his heresy publicly through upper Germany, where his eloquence gained him crowds of followers, including nobles and ecclesiastics, though Conrad declares that, on arguing with him, he proved to be utterly ignorant. There would appear to have been equal toleration in the Netherlands, for about this period, at Brussels, a woman named Blomaert, who wrote several treatises on the Spirit of Liberty and on Love, was reverenced as something more than human, and when she went to take the Eucharist she was said by her disciples to be attended by two seraphim. She vanquished the most learned theologians, until John of Rysbroek succeeded in confuting her.[423]

* * * * *

Since the disputed election of Louis of Bavaria, in 1314, the relations between the empire and the papacy had been strained. The victory of Mühldorf, in 1322, which assured to Louis the sovereignty, had been followed, in 1323, by an open rupture with John XXII., after which the strife had been internecine. Each declared his enemy a heretic who had forfeited all rights, and the interdicts which John showered over Germany had been met by Louis with cruel persecution of all ecclesiastics obeying them, wherever he could enforce his power.[424] Such a state of affairs had not been favorable for the persecution of heresy; it may, partially at least, explain the immunity enjoyed in so many places by heretics, and the impossibility of introducing the Inquisition in any form of general organization. Though the papacy assumed that the imperial throne was vacant, and asserted that, during such vacancy, the government of the empire devolved upon the pope, these pretensions could not practically be made good. With the death of Louis, in 1347, and the recognition of his rival, Charles IV.--the "priest's emperor"--Rome might fairly hope that all obstacles would be removed; that the opposition of the episcopate to the Inquisition would be broken down, and that the field would be open for a persistent and systematic persecution, which would soon relieve Germany of the reproach of toleration. When Clement VI., in 1348, could paternally reprove the young emperor for lack of dignity in the fashion of his garments, which were too short and too tight for his imperial station, the youth could surely be relied upon to obey whatever instructions might be sent him with regard to the suppression of heresy. The same year saw the appointment of John Schandeland, doctor of the Dominican house at Strassburg, as papal inquisitor for all Germany.[425]

Scarcely, however, had the pope and emperor felt their positions assured, and preparations had been thus made to take advantage of the situation, when a catastrophe supervened which defied all human calculation. The weary fourteenth century was nearing the end of its first half when Europe was scourged with a calamity which might well seem to fulfil all that apocalyptic prophets had threatened of the vengeance of God on the sins of man. In 1347 the plague known as the Black Death invaded Europe from the East, making leisurely progress during 1348 and 1349 through France, Spain, Hungary, Germany, and England. No corner of Europe was spared, and on the high seas it is said that vessels with rich cargoes were found floating, of which the crews had perished to the last man. Doubtless there are exaggerations in the contemporary reports which assert that two thirds or three quarters or five sixths of the inhabitants of Europe fell victims to the pest; but Boccaccio, as an eye-witness, tells us that the mortality within the walls of Florence from March to July, 1348, amounted to one hundred thousand souls; that in the fields the harvests lay ungathered; that in the city palaces were tenantless and unguarded; that parents forsook children and children parents. In Avignon the mortality was estimated at one hundred thousand; Clement VI. shut himself up in his apartments in the sacred palace, where he built large fires to ward off the pestilence, and would allow none to approach him. In Paris fifty thousand were said to have perished; in St. Denis sixteen thousand; in Strassburg sixteen thousand. That these figures, though vague, are not improbable, is shown by the case of Béziers, where, in 1348, Mascaro, who was chosen _escudier_ to fill a vacancy, records in his diary that all the consuls were carried off, all their _escudiers_ or assistants, and all the _clavars_ or tax-collectors, and that out of every thousand inhabitants only a hundred escaped. As though Nature did not cause sufficient misery, man contributed his share by an uprising against the Jews. They were accused of causing the plague by poisoning the waters and the pastures, and the blind wrath of the population did not stop to consider that they drank from the same wells as the Christians, and suffered with them in the pestilence. From the Atlantic to Hungary they were tortured and slain with sword and fire. At Erfurt three thousand are said to have perished, and in Bavaria the number was computed at twelve thousand.[426]

It was not only by the massacre of the Jews that the people sought to placate the wrath of God. The gregarious enthusiasm of which we have seen so many instances was by no means extinct. In 1320 France had seen another assemblage of the Pastoureaux, when the dumb population arose, armed only with banners, for the conquest of the Holy Land, and an innumerable multitude wandered over the land, peaceably at first, but subsequently showing their devotion by attacking the Jews, and finally manifesting their antagonism to the hierarchy by plundering the ecclesiastics and the churches, until they were dispersed with the sword and put out of the way with the halter. In 1334 the great Dominican preacher, Venturino da Bergamo, roused the population of Lombardy to so keen a sense of the necessity of propitiating God that he organized a pilgrimage to Rome for the sake of obtaining pardons, variously estimated as consisting of from ten thousand to three millions of penitents. Clothed in white, with black cloaks bearing on one side a white dove and olive-branch, and on the other a white cross, they marched peaceably in bands to the holy city, though when Venturino went to John XXII., in Avignon, to get the pardons for his followers, he was accused of heresy, and had to undergo a trial by the Inquisition.[427]

Such being the popular tendencies of the age, it is no wonder that the profound emotions caused by the fearful scourge of the Black Death found relief in a gregarious outburst of penitence. Germany had suffered less than the rest of Europe, only one fourth of the population being estimated as perishing, but the religious sensibilities of the people had been stirred by the interdicts against Louis of Bavaria, and the pestilence had been preceded by earthquakes, which were portents of horror. It well might seem that God, wearied with man's wickedness, was about to put an end to the human race, and that only some extraordinary effort of propitiation could avert his wrath. In this state of mental tension it needed but a touch to send an impulse through the whole population. Suddenly, in the spring of 1349, the land was covered with bands of Flagellants, like those whom we have seen nearly a century before, expiating their sins by public scourging. Some said that the example was set in Hungary; others attributed it to different places, but it responded so thoroughly to the vague longings of the people, and it spread so rapidly, that it seemed to be the result of a universal consentaneous impulse. All the proceedings, at least at first, were conducted decently and in order. The Flagellants marched in bands of moderate size, each under a leader and two lieutenants. Beggary was strictly prohibited, and no one was admitted to fellowship who would not promise obedience to the captain, and who had not money to defray his own expenses, estimated at four pfennige per diem, though the hospitality universally offered in the towns through which they passed was freely accepted to the extent of lodging and meals; but two nights were never to be spent in the same place. Monks and priests, nobles and peasants, women and children were marshalled together in common contrition to placate an offended God. They chanted rude hymns--

"Nü tretent herzu die bussen wellen. Fliehen wir die heissen hellen. Lucifer ist ein bose geselle," etc.--

and scourged themselves at stated times, the men stripping to the waist and using a scourge knotted with four iron points, so lustily laid on that an eye-witness says that he had seen two jerks requisite to disengage the point from the flesh. They taught that this exercise, continued for thirty-three days and a half, washed from the soul all taint of sin, and rendered the penitent pure as at birth.

From Poland to the Rhine the processions of Flagellants met with little opposition, except in a few towns, such as Erfurt, where the magistrates prohibited their entrance, and in the province of Magdeburg, where Archbishop Otho suppressed them. They spread through Holland and Flanders, but when they invaded France, Philippe de Valois interfered, and they penetrated no farther than Troyes. The guardians of public order, indeed, could not look without dread upon such a popular demonstration, which by organization might become dangerous. When the Flagellants of Strassburg proposed to form a permanent confraternity, Charles IV., who was in that city, peremptorily forbade it. Already dangerous characters were attracted to the wandering bands; in many places their zeal had led to the merciless persecution of the Jews, and there were not lacking symptoms of a significant antagonism to the Church, manifesting itself in attacks upon ecclesiastics and clerical property. The Church, in fact, looked askance upon a religious manifestation not of her prescription, and her susceptibilities were not soothed by the daily reading, amid the flagellation, of a letter brought by an angel to the Church of St. Peter, in Jerusalem, relating that God, incensed at the non-observance of Sundays and Fridays, had scourged Christendom, and would have destroyed the world but for the intercession of the angels and the Virgin. This was accompanied by a message that general flagellation for thirty-three and a half days would cause him to lay aside his wrath. There was danger, indeed, of open antagonism and insubordination. The Mendicants, who endeavored to discourage this independent popular penitence, incurred the bitterest hostility, which had no scruple in finding expression. At Tournay the orator of the Flagellants denounced them as scorpions and antichrists, and on the borders of Misnia two Dominicans, who endeavored to reason with a band of Flagellants, were set upon with stones; one had sufficient agility to escape, but the other was lapidated to death.[428]

When in Basle about a hundred of the principal citizens organized themselves into a confraternity, and made a flagellating pilgrimage to Avignon, they excited great admiration among the citizens, and most of the cardinals were disposed to think highly of the new penitential discipline. Clement VI. penetrated deeper below the surface, and recognized the danger to the Church of allowing irregular and independent manifestations of zeal, and of permitting unauthorized associations and congregations to form themselves. Moreover, what was to become of the most serviceable and profitable function of the Holy See in administering the treasures of salvation, if men could cleanse themselves of sin by self-prescribed and self-inflicted penance? The movement bore within it the germ of revolution, as threatening and as dangerous as that of the Poor Men of Lyons, or of any of the sects which had thus far been successfully combated, and self-preservation required its prompt suppression at any cost. From the standpoint of worldly wisdom this reasoning was unanswerable, but members of the Sacred College were obstinate. They prevailed upon Clement not to execute his first intention of casting the Flagellants into prison, and the discussion on the policy to be pursued must have been protracted, for it was not until October 20, 1349, that the papal bull of condemnation was issued. This took the ground that it was a disregard of the power of the keys and a contempt of Church discipline for these new and unauthorized associations to wear distinctive garments, to form assemblies governed by self-dictated statutes, and performing acts contrary to received observances. Allusion was made to the cruelties exercised on the Jews, and the invasion of ecclesiastical property and jurisdiction. All prelates were ordered to suppress them forthwith; those who refused obedience were to be imprisoned until further orders, and the aid of the secular arm was to be called upon if necessary.[429]

Clement was correct in his anticipation of the effects of the new discipline on the minds of the faithful. When the subject came up for discussion at the Council of Constance, in 1417, and San Vicente Ferrer was inclined to regard it with favor, his lofty reputation and his services in procuring the abandonment of Peter of Luna (Benedict XIII.) by Spain rendered it impossible not to treat him with respect, but Gerson took him delicately to task and wrote a tract to show the evils resulting from the practice. Experience, he said, had shown that the members of the sect of Flagellants were led to look with contempt on sacramental confession and the sacrament of penitence, for they exalted their peculiar form of penance, not only over that prescribed by the Church, but even over martyrdom, because they shed their own blood, while the blood of martyrs was shed by others. This led directly to insubordination and to destroying the reverence due to the Church, and was the fruitful parent of heresy. From some of his allusions, indeed, we may gather that it frequently caused collisions between the people and the priesthood, in which the latter were apt to be roughly handled.[430]

This shows how inefficient had been Clement's prohibition, and how obstinately the practice had maintained itself until it had risen to the rank of a new heresy. When his bull was received by the German prelates they fully comprehended the dangers which it sought to avert, and addressed themselves vigorously to its enforcement. The Flagellants were denounced from the pulpit as an impious sect, condemned by the Holy See. Those who would humbly return to the Church would be received to mercy, while the obdurate would be made to experience the full rigor of the canons. This thinned the ranks considerably, but there were enough of persistent ones to furnish a new harvest of martyrs. Many were executed, or exposed to various forms of torment, and not a few rotted to death in the dungeons in which they were thrown. Even ecclesiastics could not be prevented from adhering to the obnoxious sect. William of Gennep, Archbishop of Cologne, in a provincial council excommunicated all clerks who joined the Flagellants; yet this was so completely disregarded that in his vernal synod of 1353 he was obliged to order all deans and rectors of churches to assemble their chapters, read his letters, and make provision for the public excommunication by name of all the disobedient, to be followed within a fortnight by their suspension. We shall see hereafter with what persistent obstinacy the outbreak of flagellation recurred from time to time, and how it was regarded as heresy, pure and simple, by the Church. Meanwhile, it is not to be doubted that the Brethren of the Free Spirit took full advantage of the excitement prevailing in men's minds, and of the upturning which resulted, both spiritually and socially. When the bands of Flagellants first made their appearance they were joined in many places, we are told, by the heretics known as Lollards, Beghards, and Cellites. Involved in common persecution, they grew to have common interests, and they became too intimately associated together not to lend each other mutual support.[431]

Thus far the faith had not gained the advantage which had naturally been expected to follow the undisputed domination of the pious Charles IV. At the end of 1352 Innocent VI. ascended the papal throne and promptly repeated the attempt to introduce the papal Inquisition in Germany by renewing, in July, 1353, the commission as inquisitor of Friar John Schandeland, and writing earnestly to the German prelates to lend him all assistance. The pestiferous madness of the Beghards, he said, was blazing forth afresh, and efforts were requisite for its suppression. As in their dioceses the Inquisition had no prisons of its own, they were required to give it the free use of the episcopal jails. We are told in general terms that Friar John was energetic and successful, but no records remain to prove his activity or its results, and it is fair to conclude that the bishops, as usual, gave him the cold shoulder. There is no proof even that he was concerned in the condemnation of the Beghard heresiarch Berthold von Rohrback, who in 1356 expiated his heresy in the flames. Berthold had previously been caught in Würzburg, and had recanted through dread of the stake. He ought to have been imprisoned for life, but the German spiritual courts, as usual, were unversed in the penalties for heresy, and he was allowed to go free, when he secretly made his way to Speier. There he was successful in propagating his doctrines until he was again arrested. As a relapsed heretic, under the rules of the Inquisition, there was no mercy for him, but the rules were imperfectly understood in Germany, and again he was treated more leniently than the canons allowed, and was offered reconciliation. This time his courage did not fail him. "My faith," he said, "is the gift of God, and I neither ought nor wish to reject his grace." That Innocent's attempt to introduce the Inquisition proved a failure may be gathered from the action of William of Gennep, in his vernal synod of Cologne in 1357. While deploring the increase of the pernicious sect of Beghards, which threatens to infect his whole city and diocese, he makes no allusion whatever to the papal Inquisition and the canons. The measures of his predecessors are referred to, in accordance with which all parish priests are directed to proceed against the heretics, under threat of prosecution for remissness, and excommunication is pronounced against those who aid the Beghards with alms.[432]

Undeterred by ill-success the effort was renewed. From a MS. sentence of June 6, 1366, printed by Mosheim, we learn that the Dominican, Henry de Agro, was at that time commissioned as inquisitor of the province of Mainz and the diocese of Bamberg and Basle, the latter of which belonged to the province of Besançon. He was conducting an active inquisition in the diocese of Strassburg, whose bishop, John of Luxembourg, had gratified episcopal jealousy by not allowing him to perform his office independently, but had adjoined to him his vicar, Tristram, who acted in the matter not simply as representing the bishop in the sentence, but as co-inquisitor. According to the rules of the Inquisition, the judgment was rendered in an assembly of experts. The victim in this case was a woman, Metza von Westhoven, a Beguine, who had been tried and who had abjured in the persecution under Bishop John of Zurich, nearly half a century before. As a relapsed heretic there was no pardon for her, and she was duly relaxed.[433]

Thus far whatever hopes might have been based upon the zeal of Charles IV. had not been realized. He seems to have taken no part in the efforts of the papacy, and without the imperial exequatur the commissions issued to inquisitors had but moderate chance of enjoying the respect and obedience of the prelates. In 1367 Urban V. returned to the work by commissioning two inquisitors for Germany, the Dominicans Louis of Willenberg and Walter Kerlinger, with powers to appoint vicars. The Beghards were the only heretics alluded to as the object of their labors; prelates and magistrates were ordered to lend their efficient assistance and to place all prisons at their disposal until the German Inquisition should have such places of its own. This was the most comprehensive measure as yet taken for the organization of the Holy Office in Germany, and it proved the entering wedge, though at first Charles IV. does not seem to have responded. The choice of inquisitors was shrewd. Of Friar Louis we hear little, but Friar Walter (variously named Kerling, Kerlinger, Krelinger, and Keslinger) was a man of influence, a chaplain and favorite of the emperor, who had the temper of a persecutor and the opportunity and ambition to magnify his office. In 1369 he became Dominican Provincial of Saxony, and continued to perform the duplicate functions until his death, in 1373. He lost no time in getting to work, for in 1368 we hear of a Beghard burned in Erfurt, and to his unwearied exertions is generally attributed the temporary suppression of the sect.[434]

Still there was at first no appearance of any hearty support from either the spiritual or temporal potentates of Germany, and without this the business of persecution could only languish. When, however, the emperor made his Italian expedition, in 1368, the opportunity was utilized to arouse him to a sense of his neglected duties. It was rare indeed for an emperor to have the cordial support of the papacy, and we may reasonably assume that Charles was made to see that through their union the Inquisition might be rendered serviceable to both in breaking down the independence of the great prince-bishops. Thus it happened that when that institution was falling into desuetude in the lands of its birth, it was for the first time regularly organized in Germany and given a substantive existence. From Lucca, on June 9 and 10, 1369, the emperor issued two edicts which excel all previous legislation in the unexampled support accorded to inquisitors--the extravagance of their provisions probably furnishing a measure of the opposition to be overcome. All prelates, princes, and magistrates are ordered to expel and treat as outlaws the sect of Beghards and Beguines, commonly known as _Wilge Armen_ or _Conventschwestern_, who beg with the vainly prohibited formula "_Brod durch Gott!_" At the command of Walter Kerlinger and his vicars or other inquisitors, all who give alms to the proscribed class shall be arrested and so punished as to serve as a terror to others. With special significance the prelates are addressed and commanded to use their powers for the extermination of heresy; in the strongest language, and under threats of condign punishment to be visited on them in person and on their temporalities, they are ordered to obey with zeal the commands of Friar Kerlinger, his vicars, and all other inquisitors as to the arrest and safekeeping of heretics; they are to render all possible aid to the inquisitors, to receive and treat them kindly and courteously, and furnish them with guards in their movements. Moreover, all inquisitors are taken under the special imperial favor and protection. All the powers, privileges, liberties, and immunities granted to them by preceding emperors or by the rulers of any other land are conferred upon them, and confirmed, notwithstanding any laws or customs to the contrary. To enforce these privileges, two dukes (Saxony and Brunswick), two counts (Schwartzenberg and Nassau), and two knights (Hanstein and Witzeleyeven) are appointed conservators and guardians, with instructions to act whenever complaint is made to them by the inquisitors. They shall see that one third of the confiscations of heretic Beghards and Beguines are handed over to the Inquisition, and shall proceed directly and fearlessly, without appeal, against any one impeding or molesting it in any manner, making examples of them, both in person and property. Any contravention of the edict shall entail a mulct of one hundred marks, one half payable to the fisc and one half to the party injured. Besides this, any one impeding or molesting any of the inquisitors or their agents, directly or indirectly, openly or secretly, is declared punishable with confiscation of all property for the benefit of the imperial treasury, and deprivation of all honors, dignities, privileges, and immunities.[435]

These portentous edicts provided for the _personnel_ of the Inquisition and the exercise of its powers, but to render it a permanent institution there were still lacking houses in which it could hold its tribunals, and prisons in which to keep its captives. The imperial resources were not adequate to this, and nothing was to be expected from the piety of princes and prelates. Somebody must be despoiled for its benefit--somebody too defenceless to resist, yet possessed of property sufficient to be tempting. These conditions were exactly filled by the orthodox Beghards and Beguines, who, since their temporary persecution after the publication of the Clementines, had continued to prosper and to enjoy the donations of the pious. They were accordingly marked as the victims, and, a week after the issue of the edicts just described, another was published in which these poor creatures are described as cultivating a sacrilegious poverty, which they assert to be the most perfect form of life, and their communities, if left undisturbed, will become seminaries of error. Moreover, the Inquisition has no house, domicile, or strong tower for the detention of the accused and for the perpetual incarceration of those who abjure, whereby many heretics remain unpunished and the seed of evil is scattered. Therefore the houses of the Beghards are given to the Inquisition to be converted into prisons; those of the Beguines are ordered to be sold and the proceeds divided into thirds, one part being assigned to repairing roads and the walls of the towns, another to be given to inquisitors, to be expended on pious uses, among which is included the maintenance of prisoners. But three days' notice is given to the victims prior to expulsion from their homes.[436]

If the Inquisition could have been permanently established in Germany this unscrupulous measure would have accomplished the object. What between the imperial favor and Kerlinger's energy it at last had a fair start. The last edict alludes to two additional inquisitors whom Kerlinger was authorized to appoint and to his successful labors, by which the heretic Brethren of the Free Spirit had been completely destroyed in the provinces of Magdeburg and Bremen, and in Thuringia, Hesse, Saxony, and elsewhere. Probably this is exaggerated, but we learn from other sources that Kerlinger was zealously active and that his labors were rewarded with success. In Magdeburg and Erfurt he burned a number of heretics and forced the rest to outward conformity or to flight. We hear of him at Nordhausen in 1369, where he captured forty Beghards; of these seven were obdurate and were burned, and the rest abjured and accepted penance. This is probably a fair example of his work, and we may believe Gregory XI. when, in 1372, he says that the Inquisition had destroyed heresy and heretics in the central provinces and driven them to the outlying districts of Brabant, Holland, Stettin, Breslau, and Silesia, where they are gathered in such multitudes that they hope to be able to maintain themselves; wherefore he earnestly calls upon the prelates and nobles to bring the good work to an end by efficiently supporting the Holy Office in its final labors. Apparently Kerlinger had not been anxious to divide his authority by exercising his power to appoint two additional colleagues, and Gregory now intervened to relieve him of this duty and place the German Inquisition on a permanent footing by assimilating its organization to that of the institution elsewhere. He increased the number of Inquisitors to five and placed their appointment and removal in the hands of the Dominican master and provincial, or either of them. Kerlinger and Louis, however, were to remain as two of the five, and no power, whether imperial or episcopal, should have authority to interfere with the free exercise of their functions.[437]

A further extension of the power of the Inquisition granted by Charles IV. was of no great importance at the time, but has the highest interest to us as the first indication of what was to come. A leading feature of the Beghard propaganda was the circulation among the laity of written tracts and devotional works. Composed in the vernacular, they reached a class which was not wholly illiterate and yet was unable to profit by the orthodox works of which Latin was the customary vehicle. For the suppression of this effective method of missionary work the Inquisition was intrusted with a censorship of literature, to which further reference will be made hereafter. Less interesting to us, but probably more important at the time, was the permission granted to the inquisitors to appoint notaries. It will be remembered how jealously these appointments were guarded, and this concession was evidently looked upon as a special favor. The inquisitors apparently had been trammelled by the lack of notaries, and they were now authorized to appoint one in each diocese, and to replace him when removed by death or disability.[438]

As regards the seizure of the Beguinages, it was ruthlessly carried out by Kerlinger. Those of Mühlhausen had been very flourishing, and on February 16, 1370, four of them were delivered by him to the magistrates to be converted to public uses--probably the city's share of the plunder. It would seem, however, that obstacles were thrown in his way. The jealousy of the bishops was not likely to look with favor upon this permanent establishment of the Inquisition in their dioceses, with prisons and landed property that would render it independent. Mosheim judiciously suggests that as these houses were benevolent gifts for pious uses the bishops could assert them to be under their jurisdiction and not subject to an imperial edict; nobles and citizens, moreover, had been trained to regard their inoffensive inmates with favor, and were not eager to share in the spoils. Whatever may have been their motives, Kerlinger could not have found the way open to the general confiscation that he desired. In 1371 he was obliged to petition Gregory XI., reciting the existence of heretics called Beghards and Beguines, and the imperial edict confiscating their conventicles, the confirmation of which he desired. There was nothing to lead Gregory to suppose that there was in this anything but the well-understood confiscation of heretical property, and he willingly gave the desired confirmation.[439]

Thus, after a desultory struggle lasting for nearly a century and a half, the Inquisition finally established itself in Germany as an organized body. For a while, at least, the office of inquisitor was kept regularly filled as vacancies occurred. When Kerlinger died, in 1373, his successor in the Provincialate of Saxony, Hermann Hetstede, is qualified as being an inquisitor, and the same title is given to Henry Albert, who followed Hetstede in 1376. The Holy Office seems to have been almost exclusively in Dominican hands, and we rarely hear of its functions as performed by Franciscans. The good work proceeded apace. In 1372 Kerlinger had a heretic of higher rank than usual to deal with in the person of Albert, Bishop of Halberstadt, who publicly taught fatalistic doctrines--possibly some form of predestination such as Wickliff was commencing to formulate. This resulted in a great decrease in pious works, for it struck at the root of the invocation of saints, masses for the dead, and liberality to the clergy, and the consequences threatened to be so serious that Gregory XI. ordered Kerlinger, together with Hervord, Provost of Erfurt, and an Augustinian named Rodolph, to force the bishop to an abjuration, and in case of disobedience to transmit him to the papal court for judgment. In the same year Gregory recounts with much satisfaction the success of the inquisitors in driving the Beghards out of central and northern Germany; he stimulated the emperor to support their labors with fresh zeal, and sent encyclicals to the princes, prelates, and magistrates, commanding them to use every effort to render the work complete, by exterminating the heretics in the regions where they had taken refuge. Early in the next year he commissioned the Dominican, John of Boland, an imperial chaplain, as inquisitor in the dioceses of Trèves, Cologne, and Liège, the Beghards and Beguines being the objects specially indicated; and Charles hastened to invest him with all the powers specified in his letters of 1369, ordering the Dukes of Luxembourg, Limburg, Brabant, and Juliers, the Princes of Mons and Cleves, and the Counts of La Marck, Kirchberg, and Spanheim to serve as conservators and guardians of the edict.[440]

Although the Brethren of the Free Spirit were the chief objects of all this inquisitorial activity, the Flagellants were not neglected. In 1361 a demonstration of these enthusiasts in far-off Naples awakened the solicitude of Innocent VI. In 1369 we hear of an outbreak of women coming from Hungary, which was summarily suppressed in Saxony. In 1372 Flagellants reappeared in various parts of Germany, asserting the peculiar efficacy of their penance as replacing the sacraments of the Church, so that Gregory XI. felt it necessary to direct the inquisitors to exterminate them. In 1373 and 1374 this irrepressible tendency took a new shape, known as the Dancing Mania, which broke out at the consecration of a church in Aix-la-Chapelle. Bands of both sexes, mostly consisting of poor and simple folk, poured into Flanders from the Rhinelands, dancing and singing as though possessed by the Furies. Under intense spiritual excitement the performer would leap and dance until he fell to earth with convulsions, when his comrades would revive him by jumping upon him, or a cloth which he wore, tied around the belly, would be tightly twisted with a stick. This was generally looked upon as a kind of demoniacal possession until a multitude of these dancers assembled at Herestal and consulted together as to the best plan for slaying all the priests, canons, and clergy of Liège, when the madness was recognized as no longer harmless. Still it spread over a large portion of Germany and lasted for several years. Though not in itself a heresy, it led in some places to heretical opinions on the sacraments, for it was popularly explained by attributing it to defective baptism, caused by the universal practice among priests of keeping concubines.[441]

Scarce had the Inquisition been fairly organized and had settled to its work, when its arbitrary proceedings awakened active opposition. As the heretic Beghards and Beguines were the principal objects of its activity, and the orthodox ones of its cupidity, the sufferings of the latter speedily awoke compassion which found expression in terms so decided that Gregory XI. could not refuse to listen. Accordingly, in April, 1374, he wrote to the Archbishops of Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne, reciting these complaints and ordering a report about the life and conversation of the persons concerned, who should be protected and cherished if innocent, and be punished if guilty. At least from Cologne and Worms, probably from the other prelates, came answers that the persecuted communities were composed of faithful Catholics. In Cologne the magistrates intervened and complained energetically to the pope that a Dominican inquisitor was vexing the poor folk, and they asked that his proceedings be stopped. The victims, they said, were people of little culture, who were interrogated with questions so difficult that the most skilful theologians could scarce answer them, while their edifying lives had led the clergy to protect them against the threats of the Inquisition. Proceedings were thus checked, but still the peculiar garments which the devotees had always worn furnished an excuse for continued persecution, and another appeal was made to Gregory, to which he responded in December, 1377, by ordering the prelates not to permit their molestation on this account so long as they were good Catholics and obedient to the ecclesiastical authorities. The German bishops were thus fully armed with papal authority to restrict the operations of the inquisitors, and those who, like Bishop Lambert of Strassburg, were themselves disposed to persecution, did not dare to proceed further. The regular communities of Beghards and Beguines were assured of toleration, and if the heretical Brethren of the Free Spirit managed to share in this immunity, it probably did not give the prelates much concern.[442]

All this was discouraging to the zeal of inquisitors whose institution had hardly yet taken root in the land, but worse was still to follow. In 1378 died both Gregory XI. and Charles IV. The election of Urban VI. gave rise to the Great Schism, and Wenceslas, the son and successor of Charles, was notoriously indifferent to the interest of religion as represented by the Church. Thus deprived of its two indispensable supporters, the Inquisition could not make head against episcopal jealousy. In 1381 there could have been no inquisitors in the extensive dioceses of Ratisbon, Bamberg, and Misnia, for we find the Archbishop of Prague as papal legate ordering the bishops to appoint them, and threatening to do so himself in case of disobedience. Still the Inquisition did not entirely pretermit its labors. In 1392 we hear of a papal inquisitor named Martin who travelled through Suabia to Würzburg, finding in the latter place a number of peasants and simple folk belonging to the sect of Flagellants and Beghards. They had not in them the stuff of martyrs, and accepted the penance imposed upon them of joining in a crusade then preaching against the Turks--the first time for nearly a century that we meet with this penalty. Then Martin went to Erfurt--always a heretical centre--where he came upon numerous heretics of the same kind. Some of these were obstinate and were duly burned, others accepted penance, and the rest sought safety in flight. The following year there was burned at Cologne, by the papal inquisitor, Albert, a leading Beghard known as Martin of Mainz, a former Benedictine monk and a disciple of the celebrated Nicholas of Basle; and in his trial there are allusions to others of the sect executed not long before at Heidelberg.[443]

About this period, after a long interval, we again become cognizant of the existence of Waldenses. The Beghards had succeeded in concentrating upon themselves the attention of the papal and episcopal inquisitions, and the followers of Peter Waldo had remained unnoticed, doubtless owing their safety to outward conformity, though by absenting themselves from their parishes about the Easter tide they sometimes managed to escape taking communion for five or six years in succession. Thus laboring quietly and peacefully, preaching by night in cellars, mills, stables, and other retired places, they gained numerous converts among the peasants and artisans, who saw in the sanctity of their lives, as sadly admitted by the so-called Peter of Pilichdorf, the strongest contrast with the scandalous license of the clergy.[444] Thus they multiplied in secret until all Germany was full of them, including the closely-related sect of Winkelers. About 1390 they were discovered in Mainz, where for a hundred years they had lurked undisturbed. The Archbishop, Conrad II., kept the matter in his own hands. In 1392 he issued a commission, as episcopal inquisitors, to Frederic, Bishop of Toul, Nicholas of Saulheim, the Dean of St. Stephen, and John Wasmod, of Homburg, a priest of the cathedral, to whom the papal inquisitor could adjoin himself if he so chose. These inquisitors were armed with full authority to arrest, try, torture, sentence, and abandon to the secular arm all heretics, and were instructed to proceed in accordance with the practice of the Inquisition. They zealously discharged their duty. A number of Waldenses were already in the episcopal prison, and they made diligent perquisition after the rest. By free use of torture they obtained the necessary avowals and evidence. Those who were obstinate were handed over to the secular arm, and an _auto de fé_ celebrated at Bingen in 1392, where six-and-thirty wretches were burned, proved that the papal Inquisition itself could not have been more effective. A little tract on the examination of Waldenses, evidently written on this occasion, shows that the inquisitorial process was fairly well understood, and that the episcopal officials had not much to learn from their rivals.[445]

When attention was once attracted to this secret heresy, it was not long before Waldenses were discovered everywhere. In a short list of them, dated 1391, Poland, Hungary, Bavaria, Suabia, and Saxony are represented. The author of the tract which passes under the name of Peter of Pilichdorf, who took an energetic part both with the pen and in action in suppressing this suddenly discovered heresy, informs us, in 1395, that the Netherlands, Westphalia, Prussia, and Poland were not infected with it, while Thuringia, Misnia, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, and Hungary numbered their heretics by thousands. Curiously enough, in this list he omits Pomerania, where, along the Baltic regions, the Waldenses were thickly scattered from Stettin to Königsberg. The heresy had been deeply rooted there for at least a century, and the local priesthood seem to have borne no ill-will to the harmless sectaries, who conformed outwardly to the orthodox observances. Even when in confession intimations of the heresy escaped, as sometimes happened, they were wisely and mercifully overlooked. Yet there is evidence of previous persecution in the confession of Sophia Myndekin, of Fleit, who said that she had been fifty years in the sect, that her husband had been burned at Angermünde, and that she had only escaped on account of pregnancy, while all their little property was confiscated. They were poor folk, mostly peasants and laborers, and though there are occasional allusions in the trials to men of gentle blood, the tenets of the sect excluded all who owed feudal military service, war and bloodshed being strictly forbidden. They were visited yearly by their ministers, some of whom were mechanics, and others learned men skilled in Holy Writ, probably from Bohemia, who preached, heard confessions, and granted absolution, the utmost secrecy being observed in these ministrations. Moreover, collections were made and remitted to the headquarters of the sect, showing that they formed part of the great Waldensian organization.[446]

They had long been unmolested when one of their ministers, known as Brother Klaus, who had visited them in 1391 and had heard many confessions, apparently became frightened at the movement against them. He apostatized, and seems to have betrayed the names of his penitents. The Church made haste to secure the fruits of his repentance. Brother Peter, Provincial of the Celestinian Order, was appointed papal inquisitor, and early in 1393 he came to Stettin armed with full powers from the Archbishop of Prague and the Bishops of Lebus and Camin to represent them. He issued citations, both general ones from the pulpits of the infected region, and special summonses to individuals. This naturally caused great excitement, and some of the suspects fled; in Klein-Wurbiser, indeed, there was a faint demonstration made against the inquisitorial apparitors, but there was no resistance, and the great majority submitted to the inevitable. Friar Peter, as customary, was lenient with those who spontaneously confessed and abjured; all took the oaths, including that of persecuting heresy and heretics, with only an occasional manifestation of hesitancy. Torture seems to have been unnecessary; there was no exhibition of obstinacy, and no burnings. They were condemned to wear crosses and perform other penance, and when, as was usually the case, their parents had died in the sect, they were required to indicate the place of burial, presumably for exhumation. From January, 1393, until February, 1394, Friar Peter was engaged in this work. One of his registers, comprising four hundred and forty-three cases, was in the hands of Flacius Illyricus, fragments of which have recently been discovered and described by Herr Wattenbach.[447]

From Pomerania, Friar Peter hastened to the south, where he found Waldenses as numerous, and less inclined to submission. He has left a brief memorial of his labors, written in 1395, in which he expresses his fears that the heresy would become dominant, as the Waldenses were resorting to force, and were employing arson and homicide to intimidate the orthodox. His only evidence of this, however, is that on September 8, those of Steyer, to punish the parish priest for receiving the inquisitors in his house, burned his barn, and affixed to the town gates, by night, a warning in the shape of a half-burned brand and a bloody knife. This offence was cruelly avenged, for in 1397, at Steyer, more than a hundred Waldenses of either sex were burned. In this relentless persecution the case of a child of ten condemned to wear crosses shows how unsparing were the tribunals, while others in which the culprits were burned for relapse, having already abjured before the inquisitor, Henry of Olmütz, indicate that this was not the first effort made to exterminate the heresy. How extended it was, and how vigorous its repression, may be gathered from the pseudo Peter of Pilichdorf, who tells us that from Thuringia to Moravia a thousand converts were made in two years, and that the inquisitors who were busy in Austria and Hungary expected soon to have a thousand more.[448]

About the year 1400, in Strassburg, there was active persecution against a sect known as Winkelers, who were discovered to have four assemblies in the city, and others in Mainz and Hagenau. In their confessions they alluded to their comrades in many other places, such as Nordlingen, Ratisbon, Augsburg, Tischengen, Soleure, Berne, Weissenberg, Speier, Holzhausen, Schwäbisch-Wörth, Friedberg, and Vienna. Although, strictly speaking, not Waldenses, they had so many traits in common that the distinction is rather one of organization than of faith. In 1374 one of their number returned to the Church, and the fear of his betraying the little community led to his deliberate murder, the assassins being paid, and undergoing penance to obtain absolution. Some years later the inquisitor, John Arnoldi, was threatened with similar vengeance and left the city. In the final persecution some thirty families were put on trial, while many succeeded in remaining concealed. There was but one noble among them, Blumstein, who abjured, and who, some twenty years later, is found filling important civic posts. Though reference is made in one of the trials to members of the sect who had been burned at Ratisbon, those of Strassburg were more fortunate. The inquisitor, Böckeln, is said to have received bribes for assigning private penance to some of the guilty; and though the Dominicans demanded the burning of the heretics, the magistrates interceded with the episcopal official, and banishment was the severest penalty inflicted. Torture, however, had been freely used in obtaining confessions. After this, nothing more is heard in Strassburg of either Winkelers or Waldenses until the burning of Frederic Reiser in 1458.[449]

There evidently was ample work for the Inquisition in Germany, but it seems to have been more anxious to repair its defeat in the contest with the Beghards than to operate against the Waldenses. In the general excitement on the subject of heresy it was not difficult to render the Beghards objects of renewed suspicion and persecution. To some extent the bishops and most of the inquisitors joined in this, but the suspects had friends among the prelates, who wrote, towards the close of 1393, to Boniface IX., eulogizing their piety, obedience, and good works, and asking protection for them. To this Boniface responded, January 7, 1394, in a brief addressed to the German prelates, ordering them to investigate whether these persons are contaminated with the errors condemned by Clement V. and John XXII., and whether they follow any reproved religious Order; if not, they are to be efficiently protected. An exemplified copy of this brief, given by the Archbishop of Magdeburg, October 20, 1396, shows that it continued to be used and was relied upon in the troubles which followed, soon after, through a sudden change of policy by Boniface. The Inquisition did not remain passive under this interference with its operations. It represented to Boniface that for a hundred years heresies had lurked under the outward fair-seeming of the Beghards and Beguines, in consequence of which, almost every year, obstinate heretics had been burned in the different cities of the empire, and that their suppression was impeded by certain papal constitutions which were urged in their protection. Boniface was easily moved to reversing his recent action, and by a bull of January 31, 1395, he restored to vigor the decrees of Urban V., Gregory XI., and Charles IV., under which he ordered the Inquisition to prosecute earnestly the Beghards, Lollards, and _Zwestriones_. This gave full power to molest the orthodox associations as well as the heretic Brethren of the Free Spirit, and a severe storm of persecution burst over them. Even some of the bishops joined in this, as appears from a synod held in Magdeburg about this time, which ordered the priests to excommunicate and expel them. Yet this again aroused their friends, and Boniface was induced to reissue his bull with an addition which, like the contradictory provisions of the Clementines, shows the perplexity caused by the admixture of orthodoxy and heresy among the Beguines. After repeating his commands for their suppression, he adds that there are pious organizations known as Beghards, Lollards, and _Zwestriones_, which shall be permitted to wear their vestments, to beg, and to continue their mode of life, excommunication being threatened against any inquisitor who shall molest them, unless they have been convicted by the ordinaries of the diocese.[450]

This left the matter very much to the discretion of the local authorities, but the spirit of persecution was fairly revived, and the Inquisition made haste to fortify its position. Under pretext that the bulls of Gregory XI. were becoming worn by age and use, it procured their renewal from Boniface IX., in 1395, though the pope is careful to express that he grants no new privileges. In 1399 it succeeded in having the number of inquisitors increased to six for the Dominican province of Saxony alone, on the plea that its wide extent and populous cities rendered the existing force insufficient. This was not without reason, for the province embraced the great archiepiscopal districts of Mainz, Cologne, Magdeburg, and Bremen, to which were added Rügen and Camin. Camin belonged to the province of Gnesen, and Rügen formed part of the diocese of Roskild, which was suffragan to the metropolitan of Lünden in Sweden, thus furnishing the only instance of inquisitorial jurisdiction in any region that can be called Scandinavian, save a barren attempt made, in 1421, under the stimulus of the Hussite troubles. A few weeks later Boniface issued another bull, ordering the prelates and secular rulers of Germany to give all aid and protection to Friar Eylard Schöneveld and other inquisitors, and especially to lend the use of their prisons, as the Inquisition in those parts is said to have none of its own, which shows that Kerlinger's scheme of obtaining them from the property of the Beghards had not proved a success. Eylard set vigorously to work in the lands adjoining the Baltic, which from their remoteness had probably escaped his predecessors. At Lubec, in 1402, he procured the arrest of a Dolcinist named Wilhelm by the municipal officials, showing that he had no familiars of his own; the accused was examined several times in the presence of numerous clerks, monks, and laymen, showing that the secrecy of the inquisitorial process was unknown or unobserved, and he was finally burned. He had a comrade named Bernhard, who fled to Wismar, whither Schöneveld followed him and had him burned in 1403. The same year he seized a priest at Stralsund, who rejected all solicitations to abjure, and was burned as a persistent heretic; and at Rostock he condemned for heresy a woman who drove away with the bitterest reproaches her son, a Cistercian monk, when he urged her to recant, and who likewise perished in the flames.[451]

About this period heresy appears to have had also to contend with a reaction on the part of the secular authorities. When, in 1400, the Flagellants made a demonstration in the Low Countries, the magistrates of Maestricht expelled them, and when the people took their side the energetic interference of the Bishop of Liège put an end to the insubordination; besides, the Sire de Perweis threw a band of Flagellants into his dungeons and Tongres closed its gates upon them, so that the epidemic was checked. With the year 1400 the comparative peace which the Beguines had enjoyed for some fifteen years came to an end. Their most dreaded enemy was the Dominican, John of Mühlberg, whose purity of life and energy in battling with the moral and spiritual errors of his time won him a wide reputation throughout Germany, so that when he died in exile, driven from Basle by the clergy whom his attacks had embittered, he was long regarded by the people as a saint and a martyr. About 1400 he stirred up in Basle a struggle with the Beguines, which for ten years kept the city in an uproar. Primarily an episode in the hostility between the Dominicans and Franciscans, it extended to the clergy and magistrates, and finally to the citizens at large. In 1405 the Beguines were expelled, but the Franciscans obtained from the papacy bulls ordering their restoration, and the retraction of all that had been said against them. At last, in 1411, Bishop Humbert and the town council, excited by a fiery sermon of John Pastoris, abolished the associations, which were forced to abandon their living in common and their vestments, or to leave the place. The city of Berne followed this example, and the magistrates of Strassburg took the same course, when some of the Beguines adopted the former alternative and some the latter. Many of these took refuge secretly at Mainz. They were discovered, and the archbishop, John II., holding them to be heretics, ordered them to be prosecuted. The matter was intrusted to Master Henry von Stein, who set vigorously about it. The refugees from Strassburg, mostly women, were thrown into prison; we also hear of a nun who was likewise incarcerated, and of a youth from Rotenburg, who was mounted on a hogshead in the public square, and in the presence of the populace was obliged to accept the penance of crosses, in an _auto de fé_ much less impressive than those which Bernard Gui was wont to celebrate.[452]

It was not long before this that the Brethren of the Free Spirit were deprived of their greatest leader, Nicholas of Basle. As a wandering missionary he had for many years been engaged in propagating the doctrines of the sect, and had gained many proselytes. The Inquisition had been eagerly on his track, but he was shrewd and crafty, and had eluded its pursuit. Forced, probably about 1397, to fly to Vienna with two of his disciples, John and James, they were discovered and seized. The celebrated Henry of Hesse (Langenstein) undertook their conversion, and flattered himself that he had succeeded, but they all relapsed and were burned. As Peter, the Celestinian abbot, was at this time Inquisitor of Passau, he probably had the satisfaction of ridding the Church of this dangerous heresiarch, whose belief in his own divine inspiration was such that he considered his will to be equal to that of God.

Not long after a similar martyrdom occurred at Constance, where a Beghard, named Burgin, had founded a sect of extreme austerity. Captured with his disciples by the bishop, he would not abandon his doctrines, and was duly relaxed. Gerson's numerous allusions to the Turelupins and Beghards show that at this period the sect was attracting much attention and was regarded as seductively dangerous. With all his tendency to mysticism, Gerson could recognize the peril incurred by those whom he describes as deceived through too great a desire to reach the sweetness of God, and who mistake the delirium of their own hearts for divine promptings: thus disregarding the law of Christ, they follow their own inclinations without submitting to rule, and are precipitated into guilt by their own presumption. He was especially averse to the spiritual intimacy between the sexes, where devotion screened the precipice on the brink of which they stood. Mary of Valenciennes, he says, was especially to be avoided on this account, for she applied what is set forth about the divine fruition to the passions seething in her own soul, and she argues that he who reaches the perfection of divine love is released from the observance of all precepts. Thus the Brethren of the Free Spirit were practically the same in the fifteenth century as in the times of Ortlieb and Amauri.[453]

Giles Cantor, who founded in Brussels the sect which styled itself Men of Intelligence, was probably a disciple of Mary of Valenciennes, and the name was adopted merely to cover its affiliation with the proscribed Brethren of the Free Spirit. Its doctrines were substantially the same in their mystic pantheism and illuminism; and their practical application is seen in the story that on one occasion Giles was moved by the spirit to go naked for some miles when carrying provision to a poor person. So open a manifestation would have insured his prosecution had there been any machinery for persecution in efficient condition in Brabant; but he was allowed to propagate his doctrines in peace until he died. He was succeeded in the leadership of the sect by a Carmelite known as William of Hilderniss, and at length it attracted, in 1411, the attention of Cardinal Peter d'Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai. Fortunately for William, the bishop chose to direct the proceedings himself, and they show complete disregard of inquisitorial methods. He appointed special commissioners, who made an inquisition; both the names and the testimony of the witnesses were submitted to William, who made what defence he could. In rendering judgment d'Ailly called in the Dominican Prior of St. Quentin, who was inquisitor of the district of Cambrai, and the sentence was as irregular as the proceedings. William had no desire for martyrdom, and abjured the heresy; he was required to purge himself with six compurgators, after which he was to undergo the penance of three years' confinement in a castle of the bishop's, while if he failed in his purgation he was to be imprisoned in a convent of his order during the archbishop's pleasure--a most curious and illogical medley. He succeeded in finding the requisite number of compurgators, but though he disappeared from the scene his sect was by no means extinguished, and we hear of the persecution of a heresiarch as late as 1428.[454]

That Clement VI. did not err when he foresaw the dangerous errors lurking under the devotion of the Flagellants was demonstrated in 1414. The sect still existed, and its crude theories as to the efficacy of flagellation had gradually been developed into an antisacerdotal heresy of the most uncompromising character. A certain Conrad Schmidt was the constructive heresiarch who gave to its belief an organized completeness, and his death made no diminution of the zeal of his disciples, nor did the failure of his prophecy of the end of the world in 1309. The curious connection between the Flagellants and the Beghards is indicated by the fact that these Flagellant Brethren, or Brethren of the Cross, as they styled themselves, regarded Conrad as the incarnation of Enoch, and a certain Beghard, who had been burned at Erfurt about 1364, as Elias--an angel having brought their souls from heaven and infused them into Schmidt and this Beghard while yet in the womb. Schmidt was to preside at the approaching Day of Judgment, which was constantly believed to be at hand, Antichrist being the pope and the priests, whose reign was drawing to an end.

When, in 1343, the letter commanding flagellation, to which I have already alluded, was brought by an angel and laid on the altar of St. Peter, God withdrew all spiritual power from the Church and bestowed it on the Brethren of the Cross. Since then all sacraments had lost their virtue, and to partake of them was mortal sin. Baptism had been replaced by that of the blood drawn by the scourge; the sacrament of matrimony only defiled marriage; the Eucharist was but a device by which the priests sold a morsel of bread for a penny--if they believed it to be the body of Christ they were worse than Judas, who got thirty pieces of silver for it; flagellation replaced them all. Oaths were a mortal sin, but to avoid betraying the sect the faithful could take them and receive the sacraments, and then expiate it by flagellation. The growth of such a belief and the mingled contempt and hatred manifested for the clergy prove that to the people the Church was as much a stranger and an oppressor as it had been in the twelfth century. It had learned nothing, and was as far from Christ as ever.

Conrad Schmidt had promulgated his errors in Thuringia, where his sectaries were discovered, in 1414, at Sangerhausen. Thither sped the inquisitor Schöneveld--called Henry by the chroniclers, but probably the same as the Eylard, whom we have seen at work some years before on the shores of the Baltic. The princes of Thuringia and Misnia were ordered to assist him, and they were eager to share in the suppression of a heresy which threatened to revolutionize the social order. The proceedings must have been more energetic than regular. Torture must have been freely used to gather into the net so many victims; nor can a patient hearing have been given to the accused. Their shrift was short, and before Schöneveld had left the scene of action he had caused the burning of ninety-one at Sangerhausen, forty-four in the neighboring town of Winkel, and many more in other villages. Yet such was the persistence of the heresy that even this wholesale slaughter did not suffice for its suppression. Two years later, in 1416, its remains were discovered, and again Schöneveld was sent for. He examined the accused. To those who abjured he assigned penances, and handed over the obstinate to the secular arm. His assizes must have been hurried, for he did not stay to witness the execution of those whom he had condemned, and after his departure the princes gathered all together, both penitents and impenitents, some three hundred in number, and burned the whole of them in one day. This terrible example produced the profound impression that was desired, and hereafter the sect of Flagellants may be regarded as unimportant. Some discussion, as we have seen, took place the next year at the Council of Constance, when San Vicente Ferrer expressed his approbation of this form of discipline, and Gerson mildly urged its dangers; but when, in 1434, a certain Bishop Andreas specified, among the objects of the Council of Basle, the suppression of the heresies of the Hussites, Waldenses, Fraticelli, Wickliffites, the Manichæans of Bosnia, the Beghards, and the schismatic Greeks, there is no allusion in the enumeration to Flagellants. Yet the causes which had given rise to the heresy continued in full force and it was still cherished in secret. In 1453 and 1454 Brethren of the Cross were again discovered in Thuringia, and the Inquisition was speedily at work to reclaim them. Besides the errors propagated by Conrad Schmidt, it was not difficult to extort from the accused the customary confessions of foul sexual excesses committed in dark subterranean conventicles, and even of Luciferan doctrines, teaching that in time Satan would regain his place in heaven and expel Christ; though when we hear that they alleged the evil lives of the clergy as the cause of their misbelief we may reasonably doubt the accuracy of these reports. Aschersleben, Sondershausen, and Sangerhausen were the centres of the sect, and at the latter place, in 1454, twenty-two men and women were burned as obstinate heretics. In 1481 a few were punished in Anhalt, and the sect gradually disappeared.[455]

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The case of the Beghards and Beguines came before the Council of Constance in several shapes. To guard themselves from the incessant molestations to which they were exposed they had, to a large extent, affiliated themselves, nominally at least, as Tertiaries, to the Mendicant Orders, chiefly to the Franciscan, whose scapular they adopted. In a project of reform, carefully prepared for action by the council, this is strongly denounced; they are said to live in forests and in cities, free from subjection, indulging in indecent habits, not without suspicion of heresy, and though able of body and fit to earn their livelihood by labor, they subsist on alms, to the prejudice of the poor and miserable. It was therefore proposed to forbid the wearing of the scapular by all who were not bound by vows to the Orders and subjected to the Rules. It was also pronounced necessary to make frequent visitations of their communities on account of the peculiarities of their life, and magistrates and nobles were to be ordered not to interfere with such wholesome supervision under pain of interdict. It was possibly to meet this attack that numerous testimonial letters from the clergy and magistrates of Germany certifying to the orthodoxy, piety, and usefulness of the associations were sent to Martin V., who submitted them to Angelo, Cardinal of SS. Peter and Marcellus, and received from him a favorable report. Towards the close of the council, in 1418, a more formidable assault was made upon them by Matthew Grabon, a Dominican of Wismar, who laid before Martin V. twenty-four articles to prove that all such associations outside of the approved religious orders ought to be abolished. To accomplish this, after the approved style of scholastic logic, he was obliged to assert such absurd general principles as that it was equivalent to suicide, and therefore a mortal sin, for any secular person to give away his property in charity, and that the pope had no power to grant a dispensation in such cases. Grabon's propositions and conclusions were referred to Antonio, Cardinal of Verona, who submitted them to Cardinal Peter d'Ailly and Chancellor Gerson. The former reported that the paper was heretical and should be burned, while the jurists should be called upon to decide what ought to be done to its writer. The latter, that the doctrine was pestiferous and blasphemous, and that its author, if obstinate, should be arrested. Grabon was glad to escape by publicly abjuring some of his articles as heretical, others as erroneous, and others as scandalous and offensive to pious ears. The triumph of the Beguines was decisive, and they might at last hope for a respite from persecution. The associations increased and flourished accordingly, and under their shelter the Brethren of the Free Spirit continued to propagate their heresy.[456]

From this time forward the attention of the Church was mainly directed to Hussitism, the most formidable enemy that it had encountered since the Catharism of the twelfth century. This will be considered in a following chapter, and meanwhile I need only say that its secret but threatening progress throughout Germany called for active means of repression and led to more thorough organization of the Inquisition. The bull of Martin V., issued February 22, 1418, against Wickliffites and Hussites, is addressed not only to prelates but to inquisitors commissioned in the dioceses and cities of Salzburg, Prague, Gnesen, Olmütz, Litomysl, Bamberg, Misnia, Passau, Breslau, Ratisbon, Cracow, Posen, and Neutra. While of course this is not to be taken literally, as though there were an organized tribunal of the Holy Office in each of these places, still it indicates that in the districts infected or exposed to infection the Church was arming itself with its most effective weapons. The growing danger, moreover, was leading the bishops to abandon somewhat their traditional jealousy. In this same year, 1418, the council of the great province of Salzburg not only urged the bishops to extirpate heresy and to enforce the canons against the secular powers neglecting their duty in this respect, but commanded all princes and potentates to seize and imprison all who were designated as suspect of heresy by the prelates and the inquisitors. Thus at last the episcopate recognized the Inquisition and came to its support.[457]

Yet the attention of the persecutors was not so exclusively directed to the Hussites as to allow the Brethren of the Free Spirit to escape, and in their zeal they continued to molest the orthodox Beguines in spite of the action of Martin V. at Constance. In 1431 Eugenius IV. found himself obliged to intervene for their protection. In a bull, addressed to the German prelates, he recites the favorable action of his predecessors and the troubles to which, in spite of this, they were exposed by the inquisitors. Those who wander around without fixed habitations he orders to be compelled to dwell in the houses of the confraternity, and those who reside quietly and piously are to be efficiently protected. This bull affords perhaps the only instance in which the episcopal power is rendered superior to the Inquisition, for the bishops are authorized to enforce its provisions by the censures of the Church, without appeal, even if those who interfere with the Beguines enjoy special immunities, thus subjecting the inquisitors to excommunication by the prelates. This stretch of papal power exasperated Doctor Felix Hemmerlin, Cantor of Zurich, who detested the Beguines. He wrote several bitter tracts against them, and explained the favor shown them by Eugenius by irreverently stating that the pope had himself been once a Beghard at Padua. In one of his numerous assaults upon them, written probably about 1436, he alludes to several recent cases within a limited region, which would indicate that in spite of the papal protection of the Beguines, the Brethren of the Free Spirit were actively persecuted, and that, if the statistics of the whole empire could be procured, the number of victims would be found not small. Thus in Zurich a certain Burchard and his disciples were tried and penanced with crosses; but they were subsequently found to be relapsed and were all burned. At Uri, Charles and his followers were similarly burned. At Constance Henry de Tierra was forced to abjure. At Ulm, John and a numerous company were subjected to public penance. In Würtemberg there was a great heresiarch punished, whose conviction was only secured after infinite pains. Then from Bohemia there come Beghards every year who seduce a countless number to heresy in Berne and Soleure. This leads one to think that Hemmerlin, in his passion, may confound Hussites with Beghards, and this is confirmed by his assertion that there is in Upper Germany no heresy save that introduced by the foxes of this pernicious sect. Nider, in fact, writing immediately after the Council of Basle had effected a settlement with the Hussites, when, for a time at least, in Germany they were no longer considered enemies of the Church, declares that heretics were few and powerless, skulking in concealment and not to be dreaded, although he had, in describing the errors of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, stated that they were still by no means uncommon in Suabia. It was evidently a member of this sect whom he describes as seeing at Ratisbon when proceeding with the Archdeacon of Barcelona on a mission from the Council of Basle to the Hussites. She was a young woman of spotless character, who made no effort to propagate her faith, but she could not be induced to recant. The archdeacon advised that she be tortured to break her spirit, which was done without success and without forcing her to name her confederates; but when Nider visited her in her cell during the evening, he found her exhausted with suffering, and he readily brought her to acknowledge her error, after which she made a public recantation. This shows us that there could have been no Inquisition in Ratisbon, and that the local authorities had even lost the memory of inquisitorial proceedings.[458]

In 1446 the Council of Würzburg found it necessary to repeat the canon of that of Mainz in 1310, ordering the expulsion of all wandering Beghards using the old cry of "_Brod durch Gott_" and preaching in caverns and secret places, showing the maintenance of the traditional customs and also the absence of more active persecution. In 1453 Nicholas V. formally adjoined them to the Mendicant Orders as Tertiaries. Some of them obeyed and formed a distinct class, known as Zepperenses, from their principal house at Zepper. They diminished greatly in number, however, and in 1650 Innocent X. united them with the Tertiaries of Italy, under the General Master residing in Lombardy. The female portion of the associations, which became distinctively known as Beguines, were more fortunate. They were able to preserve their identity and their communities, which remain flourishing to the present day, especially in the Netherlands, where in 1857 the great Beguinage of Ghent contained six hundred Beguines and two hundred locataires or boarders.[459]

Still there remained a considerable number both of heretic Brethren of the Free Spirit and of orthodox Beghards of both sexes who recalcitrated of being thus brought under rule and deprived of their accustomed independence. Thus it is related of Bernhard, who was elected Abbot of Hirsau in 1460, that among other reforms he ejected all the Beguines from their house at Altburg, on account of their impurity of life, and replaced them with Dominican Tertiaries. This aroused the hostility of the Beghards who dwelt in hermitages in the forest of Hirsau, and they conspired against the abbot, but only to their own detriment. In 1463 the Synod of Constance complains of the unlawful wearing of the Franciscan scapular by Lollards and Beguines; all who do so are required to prove their right or to lay it aside, and able-bodied Lollards are ordered to live by honest labor and not by beggary. This latter practice was ineradicable, however, and twenty years later another synod was compelled to repeat the command. In 1491 a synod of Bamberg refers to the provisions of the Clementines against the Beguines as though their enforcement was still called for; and Friar John of Moravia, who died at Brünn in 1492, is warmly praised as a fierce and indefatigable persecutor of Hussites and Beghards. These insubordinate religionists continued to exist under almost constant persecution, until the Reformation, when they served as one of the elements which contributed to the spread of Lutheranism.[460]

* * * * *

It was impossible that Hussitism should triumph in Bohemia without awakening an echo throughout Germany, or that the Hussites should abstain from missionary and proselyting efforts, but the spread of the heresy through the Teutonic populations was sternly and successfully repressed. In 1423 the Council of Siena, under the presidency of papal legates, showed itself fully alive to the danger. It sharply reproved both inquisitors and episcopal ordinaries for the supineness which alone could explain the threatening spread of heresy. They were urged to constant and unsparing vigilance under pain of four months' suspension from entering a church and such other punishment as might seem opportune. They were further ordered to curse the heretics with bell, book, and candle every Sunday in all the principal churches. Holy Land indulgences were offered to all who would assist them in capturing heretics, as well as to rulers who, unable to capture them, should at least expel them from their territories. The earnest tone of the council reflects the alarm that was everywhere felt, and it unquestionably led to renewed exertions, though only a few instances of successful activity chance to be recorded. Thus, in 1420, a priest, known as Henry Grünfeld, who had embraced Hussite doctrines, was burned at Ratisbon, where likewise, in 1423, another priest named Henry Rathgeber met the same fate. In 1424 a priest named John Drändorf suffered at Worms, and in 1426 Peter Turman was burned at Speier. Even after the Council of Basle had recognized the Hussites as orthodox, and under the Compactata they enjoyed toleration in states where they held temporal authority, they were still persecuted as heretics elsewhere. About 1450 John Müller ventured to preach Hussite doctrines throughout Franconia, where he met with much acceptance and gained a numerous following, but he was forced to fly, and one hundred and thirty of his disciples were seized and carried to Würzburg. There they were persuaded to recant by the Abbot John of Grumbach and Master Anthony, a preacher of the cathedral. More tragic was the fate of Frederic Reiser, a Suabian, educated in Waldensianism. Under the guise of a merchant he had served as a preacher among the Waldensian churches which maintained a secret existence throughout Germany. At Heilsbronn he was captured in a Hussite raid, when, carried to Mount Tabor, he recognized the practical identity of the faiths and received ordination at the hands of the Taborite Bishop Nicholas. He labored to bring about a union of the churches, and wandered as a missionary through Germany, Bohemia, and Switzerland. Finally he settled at Strassburg, which was always a heretic centre, and gathered a community of disciples around him. He called himself "Frederic, by the grace of God bishop of the faithful in the Roman Church who spurn the Donation of Constantine." He was detected in 1458 and arrested with his followers. Under torture he confessed all that was required of him, only to withdraw it when removed from the torture-chamber. The burgomaster, Hans Drachenfels, and the civic magistracy earnestly opposed his execution, but they were obliged to yield, and he was burned, together with his faithful servant, Anna Weiler, an old woman of Nürnberg.[461]

Reiser had been specially successful with the descendants of the Pomeranian Waldenses who, as we have seen, abjured before the inquisitor Peter in 1393. They appear to have by no means abandoned their heresy, and were easily brought to the modifications which assimilated them to the Hussites--.the adoption of bishops, priests, and deacons, the communion in both elements, and the honoring of Wickliff, Huss, and Jerome of Prague. In this same year, 1458, a tailor of Selchow, named Matthew Hagen, was arrested with three disciples and carried to Berlin for trial by order of the Elector Frederic II. He had been ordained as a priest in Bohemia by Reiser, and had returned to propagate the doctrines of the sect and administer its sacraments. His followers weakened and abjured, but he remained steadfast, and was abandoned to the secular arm. To root out the sect, Dr. John Canneman, who had tried Hagen, was sent to Angermünde as episcopal inquisitor; he found many sectaries but no obstinacy, for they willingly submitted and abjured.[462]

There was, in fact, enough in common between the doctrines of the more radical Hussites and those of the Waldenses to bring the sects eventually together. The Waldenses had by no means been extirpated, and when, in 1467, the remnant of the Taborites known as the Bohemian Brethren opened communication with them, the envoys sent had no difficulty in finding them on the confines between Austria and Moravia, where they had existed for more than two centuries. They had a bishop named Stephen, who speedily called in another bishop to perform the rite of ordination for the Brethren, showing that the heretic communities were numerous and well organized. The negotiations unfortunately attracted attention, and the Church made short work of those on whom it could lay its hands. Bishop Stephen was burned at Vienna and the flock was scattered, many of them finding refuge in Moravia. Others fled as far as Brandenburg, where already there were flourishing Waldensian communities. These were soon afterwards discovered, and steel, fire, and water were unsparingly used for their destruction, without blotting them out. A portion of those who escaped emigrated to Bohemia, where they were gladly received by the Bohemian Brethren and incorporated into their societies. The close association thus formed between the Brethren and the Waldenses resulted in a virtual coalescence which gave rise to a new word in the nomenclature of heresy. When, in 1479, Sixtus IV. confirmed Friar Thomas Gognati as Inquisitor of Vienna, he urged him to put forth every exertion to suppress the Hussites and Nicolinistæ. These latter, who took their name from Nicholas of Silesia, were evidently Bohemian Brethren who adhered to the extreme doctrine common to both sects, that nothing could justify putting a human being to death. Thus the struggle continued, and though the danger was averted which had once seemed threatening, of the widespread adoption of Hussite theories, there remained concealed enough Hussite and Waldensian hostility to Rome to serve as a nucleus of discontent and to give sufficient support to revolt when a man was found, like Luther, bold enough to clothe in words the convictions which thousands were secretly nursing.[463]

Signs, indeed, were not wanting in the fifteenth century or the inevitable rupture of the sixteenth. Prominent among those who boldly defied the power of Rome was Gregory of Heimburg, whom Ullman well designates as the citizen-Luther of the fifteenth century. He first comes into view at the Council of Basle, in the service of Æneas Sylvius, who was then one of the foremost advocates of the reforming party, and he remained steadfast to the principles which his patron bartered for the papacy. A forerunner of the Humanists, he labored to diffuse classical culture, and with his admiration for the ancients he had, like Marsiglio of Padua, imbibed the imperial theory of the relations between Church and State. With tongue and pen inspired by dauntless courage he was indefatigable to the last in maintaining the rights of the empire and the supremacy of general councils. The power of the keys, he taught, had been granted to the apostles collectively; these were represented by general councils, and the monopoly in the hands of the pope was a usurpation. His free expression of opinion infallibly brought him into collision with his early patron, and the antagonism was sharpened when Pius II. convoked the assembly of princes at Mantua to provide for a new crusade. Gregory, who was there as counsellor of the princes, boldly declared that this was only a scheme to augment the papal power and drain all Germany of money. When Nicholas of Cusa, a time-server like Pius, was appointed Bishop of Brixen and claimed property and rights regarded by Sigismund of Austria as belonging to himself, Sigismund, under Gregory's advice, arrested the bishop. Thereupon Pius, in June, 1460, laid Sigismund's territories under interdict, and induced the Swiss to attack him. Gregory drew up an appeal to a general council, which Sigismund issued, although Pius had forbidden such appeals, and he further had the hardihood to prove by Scripture, the fathers, and history, that the Church was subject to the State. It was no wonder that Gregory shared his master's excommunication. In October, 1460, he was declared a heretic, and all the faithful were ordered to seize his property and punish him. To this he responded in vigorous appeals and replications, couched in the most insolent and contemptuous language towards both Pius and Nicholas. In October, 1461, Pius sent Friar Martin of Rotenburg to preach the faith and preserve the faithful from the errors of Sigismund and his heresiarch Gregory, and, professing to believe that Martin was in personal danger, he offered an indulgence of two years and eighty days to all who would render him assistance in his need. He also ordered the magistrates of Nürnburg to seize Gregory's property and expel him or deliver him up for punishment. We next find Gregory aiding Diether, Archbishop of Cologne, in his quarrel with Pius over the unprecedented and extortionate demand of the Holy See for annates; but Diether resigned, Sigismund made his peace, and Gregory was abandoned to his excommunication, even the city of Nürnburg withdrawing its protection. He then took refuge in Bohemia with George Podiebrad, whom he served efficiently as a controversialist, earning a special denunciation as a heretic of the worst type from Paul II., in 1469; but Podiebrad died in 1471. Gregory then went to Saxony, where Duke Albert protected him and effected his reconciliation with Sixtus IV. He was absolved at Easter, 1472, only to die in the following August, after spending a quarter of a century in ceaseless combat with the papacy.[464]

If Gregory of Heimburg embodies the revolt of the ruling classes against Rome, Hans of Niklaushausen shows us the restless spirit of opposition to sacerdotalism which was spreading among the lower strata of society. Hans Böheim was a wandering drummer or fifer from Bohemia, who chanced to settle at Niklaushausen, near Würzburg. He doubtless brought with him the revolutionary ideas of the Hussites, and he seems to have entered into an alliance with the parish priest and a Mendicant Friar or Beghard. He began to have revelations from the Virgin which suited so exactly the popular wishes that crowds speedily began to assemble to listen to him. She instructed him to announce to her people that Christ could no longer endure the pride, the avarice, and the lust of the priesthood, and that the world would be destroyed in consequence of their wickedness, unless they promptly showed signs of amendment. Tithes and tribute should be purely voluntary, tolls and customs dues were to be abolished, and game was no longer to be preserved. As the fame of these revelations spread, crowds flocked to hear the inspired teacher, from the Rhinelands, Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony, and Misnia, so that at times he addressed an audience of twenty thousand to thirty thousand souls. So great was the reverence felt for him that those who could touch him deemed themselves sanctified, and fragments of his garments were treasured as relics, so that his clothes were rent in pieces whenever he appeared, and a new suit was requisite daily. That no one doubted the truth of the Virgin's denunciations of the clergy shows the nature of the popular estimation of the Church, for the vast crowds who came eagerly to listen were by no means composed of the dangerous elements of society. They were peaceful and orderly; men and women slept in the neighboring fields and woods and caves without fear of robbery or violence; they had money to spend, moreover, for the offerings of gold and silver, jewels, garments, and wax were large--large enough, indeed, to tempt the greed of the potentates, for after the downfall of Hans the spoils were divided between the Count of Wertheim, suzerain of Niklaushausen, the Bishop of Würzburg, and his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Mainz. The latter used a portion of his plunder in building a citadel near Mainz, the destruction of which soon afterwards by fire was generally regarded as indicating the displeasure of the Virgin.

Bishop Rudolph of Würzburg repeatedly forbade the pilgrimage to Niklaushausen, but in vain, and at length he was led to take more decided steps. The great festivity of the region was the feast of St. Kilian, the martyr of Würzburg, falling on July 8. On the Sunday previous, July 6, 1476, Hans significantly told his audience to return the following Saturday armed, but to leave their women and children at home. Matters were evidently approaching a crisis, and the bishop did not wait for the result, but sent a party of guards, who seized Hans and conveyed him to a neighboring stronghold. The next day about six thousand of his deluded followers, including many women and children, set out for the castle, without arms, believing that its walls would fall at their demand. They refused to disperse when summoned, but were readily scattered by a sally of men-at-arms, supported by a discharge from the cannon of the castle, in which many were slain. Hans was easily forced by torture to confess the falsity of his revelations and the deceits by which he and his confederates had stimulated the excitement by false miracles; but his confession did not avail him, and he was condemned to be burned. At the place of execution his followers expected divine interference, and to prevent enchantment the executioner shaved him from head to foot. He walked resolutely to the stake, singing a hymn, but his fortitude gave way and he shrieked in agony as the flames reached him. To prevent his ashes from being treasured as relics, they were carefully collected and cast into the river. The priest and Beghard who had served as his confederates sought safety in flight, but were caught and confessed, after which they were discharged; but two peasants--one who had suggested the advance upon the castle and one who had wounded the horse of one of the guards who captured Hans--were beheaded.[460]

If Gregory of Heimburg and Hans of Niklaushausen represent the antagonism to Rome which pervaded the laity from the highest to the lowest, John von Ruchrath of Wesel indicates that even in the Church the same spirit was not wanting. One of the most eminent theologians and preachers of whom Germany could boast, celebrated in the schools as the "Light of the World" and the "Master of Contradictions," he was a hardy and somewhat violent disputant, who in his sermons had no scruple in presenting his opinions in the most offensive shape. Like Luther, of whom he was the true precursor, he commenced by an assault upon indulgences, moved thereto by the Jubilee of 1450, when pious Europe precipitated itself upon Rome to take heaven by assault. Step by step he advanced to strip the Church of its powers, and was led to reject the authority of tradition and the fathers, recurring to Scripture as the sole basis of authority. He even banished from the creed the word "_Filioque_," and his predestinarian views deprived the Church of all the treasures of salvation. How little he recked of the feelings of those whose faith he assailed is seen in his remark that if fasting was instituted by St. Peter, it was probably to obtain a better market for his fish.

It shows how rusty had become the machinery of persecution and the latitude allowed to free speech that John of Wesel was permitted so long, without interference, to ripen into a heresiarch and to disseminate from the pulpit and professorial chair these opinions, as dangerous as any emitted by Waldenses, Wickliffites, or Hussites. In fact, but for the bitter quarrel between the Realists and Nominalists, which filled the scholastic world with strife, it is probable that he would have been unmolested to the end and enabled to close his days in peace. He was a leader of the Nominalists, and the Dominican Thomists of Mainz were resolved to silence him. The Archbishop of Mainz was Diether of Isenburg, who had been forced to abandon his see in 1463, but had resumed it in 1475 on the death of his competitor, Adolph of Nassau; he did not wish another conflict with Rome, to which he was exposed in consequence of his public denunciations of the papal auctions of the archiepiscopal pallium; he was threatened with this unless he would surrender John of Wesel as a victim, and he yielded to the pressure in 1479.

In the great province of Mainz there was no inquisitor; trial by the regular episcopal officials would be of uncertain result; and as there was a Dominican inquisitor at Cologne, in the person of Friar Gerhard von Elten, he was sent for. He came, accompanied by Friar Jacob Sprenger, not yet an inquisitor, but whom we shall see hereafter in that capacity busy in burning witches. With him came the theologians from the universities of Heidelberg and Cologne, who were to sit as experts and assessors, and so carefully were they selected that one of the Heidelberg doctors, to whom we are indebted for an account of the proceedings, tells us that among them all there was but one Nominalist. He evidently regards the whole matter as an incident in the scholastic strife, and says that the accused would have been acquitted had he been allowed counsel and had he not been so harshly treated.

The proceedings are a curious travesty of the inquisitorial process, which show that, however much its forms had been forgotten, the principle was rigidly maintained of treating the accused as guilty in advance. There was no secrecy attempted; everything was conducted in an assembly consisting of laymen as well as ecclesiastics, prominent among whom we recognize the Count of Wertheim, fresh from the plunder of Hans of Niklaushausen. After a preliminary meeting, when the assembly convened for business, February 8, 1479, the inquisitor von Elten presided, with Archbishop Diether under him, and opened the proceedings by suggesting that two or three friends of the accused should warn him to repent of his errors and beg for mercy, in which case he should have mercy, but otherwise not. A deputation was thereupon despatched, but their mission was not speedily performed; the inquisitor chafed at the delay, and began blustering and threatening. A high official was sent to hurry the matter, but at that moment John of Wesel entered, pallid, bent with age, leaning on his staff, and supported by two Franciscans. He was made to sit on the floor; von Elten repeated to him the message, and when he attempted to defend himself he was cut short, badgered and threatened, until he was brought to sue for pardon. After this he was put through a long and exhausting examination, and was finally remanded until the next day. A commission consisting principally of the Cologne and Heidelberg doctors was appointed to determine what should be done with him. The next day he was again brought out and examined afresh, when he endeavored to defend his views. "If all men renounce Christ," he said, "I will still worship him and be a Christian," to which von Elten retorted, "So say all heretics, even when at the stake." Finally it was resolved that three doctors should be deputed, piously to exhort him to abandon his errors. As in the case of Huss, it was not his death that was wanted, but his humiliation.

On the 10th the deputies labored with him. "If Christ were here," he told them, "and were treated like me, you would condemn him as a heretic--but he would get the better of you with his subtlety." At length he was persuaded to acknowledge that his views were erroneous, on the deputies agreeing to take the responsibility on their own consciences. He had long been sick when the trial was commenced, all assistance was withheld from him; age, weakness, and the dark and filthy dungeon from which he had vainly begged to be relieved broke down his powers of resistance, and he submitted. He publicly recanted and abjured, his books were burned before his face, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Augustinian monastery of Mainz. He did not long survive his mortification and misery, for he died in 1481. The trial excited great interest among all the scholars of Germany, who were shocked at this treatment of a man so eminent and distinguished. Yet his writings survived him and proved greatly encouraging to the early Reformers. Melanchthon enumerates him among those who by their works kept up the continuity of the Church of Christ.[466]

It is evident from this case that the Inquisition, though not extinct in Germany, was not in working order, and that even where it existed nominally a special effort was requisite to make it function. Still we hear occasionally of the appointment of inquisitors, and from the career of Sprenger we know that their labors could be fruitfully directed to the extirpation of witchcraft. Sorcery, indeed, had become the most threatening heresy of the time, and other spiritual aberrations were attracting little attention. In the elaborate statutes issued by the Synod of Bamberg, in 1491, the section devoted to heresy dwells at much length on the details of witchcraft and magic, and mentions only one other doctrinal error--the vitiation of sacraments in polluted hands--and it directs that all who neglect to denounce heretics are to be themselves treated as accomplices, but it makes no allusion to the Inquisition. Still there is an occasional manifestation showing that inquisitors existed and sometimes exercised their powers. I shall hereafter have occasion to refer to the case of Herman of Ryswick, who was condemned and abjured in 1499, escaped from prison, and was burned as a relapsed by the inquisitor at The Hague, in 1512, and only allude to it here as an evidence of continued inquisitorial activity.[467]

The persecution of John Reuchlin, like that of John of Wesel, sprang from scholastic antagonisms, but its development shows how completely, during the interval, the inquisitorial power had wasted away. Reuchlin was a pupil of John Wessel of Groningen; as the leader of the Humanists, and the foremost representative in Germany of the new learning, he was involved in bitter controversy with the Dominicans, who, as traditional Thomists, were ready to do battle to the death for scholasticism. The ferocious jocularity with which Sebastian Brandt dilates, in his most finished Latinity, upon the torture and burning of four Dominicans at Berne, in 1509, for frauds committed in the controversy over the Immaculate Conception, indicates the temper which animated the hostile parties, even as its lighter aspect is seen in the unsparing satire of Erasmus and of the _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_. When, therefore, Reuchlin stood forward to protect Jews and Jewish literature against the assaults of the renegade Pfefferkorn, the opportunity to destroy him was eagerly seized. In 1513 a Dominican inquisitor, the Prior Jacob von Hochstraten, came from Cologne to Mainz on an errand precisely similar to that of his predecessor von Elten. Unlike John of Wesel, however, Reuchlin felt that he could safely appeal to Rome, where Leo X. was himself a man of culture and a Humanist. Leo was well disposed, and commissioned the Bishop of Speier to decide the question, which was in itself a direct blow at the inquisitorial power. Still more contemptuously damaging was the bishop's judgment. Reuchlin was declared free of all suspicion of heresy, the prosecution was pronounced frivolous, and the costs were put upon Hochstraten, with a threat of excommunication for disobedience. This was confirmed at Rome, in 1415, where silence was imposed on Reuchlin's accusers under a penalty of three thousand marks. The Humanists celebrated their victory with savage rejoicing. Eleutherius Bizenus printed a tract summoning, in rugged hexameters, all Germany to assist in the triumph of Reuchlin, in which Hochstraten--that thief, who as accuser and judge persecutes the innocent--marches in chains, with his hands tied behind his back, while Pfefferkorn, with ears and nose cut off, is dragged by a hook through his heels, face downwards, until his features lose the semblance of humanity. The Dominicans are characterized as worse than Turks, and more worthy to be resisted, and the author wonders what unjust pope and cowardly emperor had enabled them to impose their yoke on the land. These were brave words, but premature. The quarrel had attracted the attention of all Europe, the Dominican Order itself and all it represented were on trial, and it could not afford to submit to defeat. Hochstraten hastened to Rome; the Dominicans of the great University of Cologne did not hesitate to say that if the pope maintained the sentence they would appeal to the future council, they would refuse to abide by his decision, they would pronounce him to be no pope and organize a schism, and much more, which shows upon what a slender tenure the papacy held the allegiance of its Janissaries. Leo cowered before the storm which he had provoked, and in 1416 he issued a mandate superseding the sentence, but the spirit of insubordination was growing strong in Germany, and Franz von Sickingen, the free-lance, compelled its observance. As the Lutheran revolt grew more threatening, however, the support of the Dominicans became more and more indispensable, and in 1420 Leo settled the matter by setting aside the decision of the Bishop of Speier, imposing silence on Reuchlin, and laying all the costs on him. Hochstraten, moreover, was restored to his office.[468]

The reparation came too late to render the Inquisition of any service, now that its efficiency was more sorely needed than ever before. Had it existed in Germany in good working order, Luther's career would have been short. When, October 31, 1517, he nailed his propositions concerning indulgences on the church-door of Wittenberg, and publicly defended them, an inquisitor such as Bernard Gui would have speedily silenced him, either destroying his influence by forcing him to a public recantation, or handing him over to be burned if he proved obstinate. Hundreds of hardy thinkers had been thus served, and the few who had been found stout enough to withstand the methods of the Holy Office had perished. Fortunately, as we have seen, the Inquisition never had struck root in German soil, and now it was thoroughly discredited and useless. Hochstraten's hands were tied; Doctor John Eck, inquisitor for Bavaria and Franconia, was himself a Humanist, who could argue and threaten, but could not act.

In France the University had taken the place of the almost forgotten Inquisition, repressing all aberrations of faith, while a centralized monarchy had rendered--at least until the Concordat of Francis I.--the national Church in a great degree independent of the papacy. In Germany there was no national Church; there was subjection to Rome which was growing unendurable for financial reasons, but there was nothing to take the place of the Inquisition, and a latitude of speech had become customary which was tolerated so long as the revenues of St. Peter were not interfered with. This perhaps explains why the significance of Luther's revolt was better appreciated at Rome than on the spot. After he had been formally declared a heretic by the Auditor-general of the Apostolic Chamber at the instance of the promoter fiscal, the legate, Cardinal Caietano, wrote that he could terminate the matter himself, and that it was rather a trifling affair to be brought before the pope. He did not fulfil his instructions to arrest Luther and tell him that if he would appear before the Holy See, to excuse himself, he would be treated with undeserved clemency. After the scandal had been growing for a twelvemonth, Leo again wrote to Caietano to summon Doctor Martin before him, and, after diligent examination, to condemn or absolve him as might prove requisite. It was now too late. Insubordination had spread, and rebellion was organizing itself. Before these last instructions reached Caietano, Luther came in answer to a previous summons, but, though he professed himself in all things an obedient son of the Church, he practically manifested an ominous independence, and was conveyed away unharmed. The legate trusted to his powers as a disputant rather than to force; and had he attempted the latter, he had no machinery at hand to frustrate the instructions given by the Augsburg magistrates for Luther's protection. In the paralysis of persecution the inevitable revolution went forward.[469]