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]