CHAPTER III - ‘THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL’
In 1196 Pope Celestine III gave his sanction to a new order, of which the mother-house was in Fiore. From this place its founder derived his name, and he is generally known as Joachim of Flora. Born of a noble family and intended for a courtier, he had joined the Cistercians in the desire for a life of austere discipline, but finding its severities insufficient to satisfy his zeal had retired into a hermitage, where however would-be disciples sought him out, so that he had to put himself at their head. Joachim, who has been described as ‘the founder of modern mysticism,’[44] regarded himself as inspired, and in his own life-time obtained the reputation of a prophet. As a prophet he is recognized in Dante.[45] There is no question that Joachim was much under Greek influences. Calabria itself, the scene of most of his labours, was half-Greek; he paid more than one visit to Greece, came in contact with the Greek Church and also almost certainly with the Cathari, for Greece was a hotbed of their doctrines. There is some common ground between Catharism and the peculiar teachings with which the name of Abbot Joachim is associated. Except for a few unimportant pamphlets against the Jews and other adversaries of the Christian faith there are only three works of which he was the undoubted author—a concordance, a psalter and a commentary on the book of the Revelation. The authenticity of two epistles ascribed to him is probable, but many other works put down to his authorship after his death are certainly spurious.[46]
The contemporary reputation of Joachim would appear to have been derived as much from his spoken utterances as from his writings: but Adam Marsh prized the smallest fragments of his works, sending them whenever he could obtain them from Italy to Bishop Grosseteste. On the other hand, however interesting and indeed startling they may have been, they were not during their author’s lifetime regarded as in any way injurious. His reputation as a seer was wholly orthodox and unexceptionable. In 1200 he submitted his books to the Holy See for its approval, and the verdict was that they were undoubtedly of divine inspiration. Thirteen years later, indeed, certain speculations concerning the Trinity in one of his minor tracts were condemned by the Council of the Lateran. But the author was not personally condemned, and his order was definitely approved; while in 1220 Honorius III issued a bull declaring Joachim to have been a good Catholic.[47]
It is doubtful if the name of Joachim of Flora would ever have been of any more than very transitory importance had it not been for the appearance in 1254 of a work entitled ‘The Eternal Gospel,’ of which he was stated to be the author. No book of that title figures among the authentic works of Joachim, nor did he give that name to any collection of them. It seems that the book which appeared in Paris in 1254 consisted of Joachim’s three principal works—which had none of them been hitherto deemed heretical—with explanatory notes and a lengthy and all-important introduction (Introductorius in Evangelium Aeternum). It must have been rather in the notes and introduction than in the text that the heresy lay, in the interpretations put upon Joachim’s apocalyptic effusions rather than in the effusions themselves. The true author, therefore, of the heresies associated with ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ would appear to be the commentator, not the originator. The authorship of the introduction and the glosses was early ascribed to one of two persons—to a certain Gherardo da Borgo San Donnino by the contemporary chronicler Salimbene, to John of Parma by the inquisitor Eymeric in his ‘Directorium Inquisitorum,’ written more than a century later. In any case the author was a Franciscan.[48] And between the conceptions contained in ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ and the Franciscan Order, it will be seen, there was a very close and a very significant connection.
We may take it that the compiler of the work which startled the world in 1254—whether it was Gherardo or John of Parma—is to be regarded less as an expounder of the teaching of Joachim of Flora than as an original thinker, either honestly finding a preceptor and a kindred soul in the prophet and simply elaborating his thesis, or else utilizing the apocalyptic utterances of a man who had died in the full odour of sanctity in order to build up a thesis essentially his own on esoteric writings easily susceptible of a new construction. It is sufficient that ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ has direct reference to that section of the Franciscans which was at the time led by John of Parma, and that in the new religion which the work predicts the Friars are to play the leading part as inaugurators. The work is indeed astoundingly revolutionary. In much the same way that Mazzini in his ‘From the Council to God’ proclaimed the emergence of a new religion of Humanity superseding Christianity did ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ proclaim a new religion, that of the Holy Ghost. But whereas condemnation of the Catholic Church was commonplace in the nineteenth century and humanitarian ideas familiar; in the thirteenth century it is rather astonishing to find an admission that Christianity has failed and that a new dispensation is necessary for the salvation of mankind. The text of ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ is the words in the book of the Revelation, ‘And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come.’[49] Joachim had foretold in his ‘Concordia’ that the world would go through three cycles, those of the Father or the circumcision or the law; of the Son, crucifixion, grace; of the Holy Ghost, peace and love. The first had been the era of Judaism, of the Old Testament. It had led on to that of the New Testament and the Christian Church. The second period was very shortly to reach its accomplishment, and the third and last era, that of ‘The Everlasting Gospel,’ to be inaugurated by a new religious order. By mystic computations the date of the commencement of the final era was found to be 1260.
Fundamental to such a mystic conception of human history is the assumption that Christianity is not the whole and the sole truth, that it is not complete in itself, but only a partial revelation of God to man, destined to be superseded by a fuller, ampler revelation in the same way in which it had superseded Judaism. Such an assumption could only rest upon a pessimistic view of contemporary life and society, a feeling that it urgently needed a new saviour. Joachim strongly denounced the evils of his day, especially those evinced by the Church, which was given up to carnal appetites and neglected its duties, to the advantage of proselytizing heresies, for which it was thus itself indirectly responsible. The author or authors of ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ illustrated this very conception by elaborating a thesis really more destructive of the Catholic faith than Catharism itself. The ending of the second era was to be accompanied by great tribulations, but these grievous troubles would usher in the millennium, days of perfect justice, peace and happiness, in which God would be worshipped everywhere and in which the Eucharist and indeed all other sacraments would be needless, mankind being liberated from such burdens, so complete would be the knowledge of God in the heart of the individual man. The conversion of the world to this new dispensation, in which each man would live the devoted life of a monk, was to be brought about by the new mendicant order, in which would be manifested all the highest powers of man. What order could this be but the Franciscan?
The personality and career of St. Francis of Assisi are of profound significance in the history of mediæval Christianity. Their sanctity and spiritual power gave other men, such as Peter Damiani, Bruno, Stephen Harding, Norbert, Bernard, Dominic, a great reputation and authority even in their own lifetime. But Francis stood apart from and above all of them, even Bernard. His intense sincerity, his absolute, unconditional renunciation of all worldly things, the charm and beauty of his character made the man, upon whose body the στίγματα of Christ were said to have been seen, appear to his own day as one different from all other men—indeed so miraculously near to the spirit of his Master as to be hailed by some even as a second Christ. Simple, unlearned, not interested in intellectual matters, making religion an inward matter of spiritual experience, intense conviction of sin and of repentance together with unreserved devotion of life and soul to God in personal service, St. Francis was no organizer, and when the nucleus of an order gathered round him viewed the future with the utmost disquietude, fearing in the very fact of organization a falling away from those ideas of strictest poverty and personal holiness which marked out the Minorites from all other religious associations. Yet if the influence of St. Francis was to survive his death, organization, whatever its drawbacks, was an imperative necessity. This work was carried out by a man of rare energy and constructive powers, Elias of Cortona, with the active support of Gregory IX. Elias did for the Franciscans what St. Paul did for primitive Christianity. But between the spirit of Elias and that of Francis there was a difference equivalent to that between the zeal of a prophet and the skill of a statesman. The Franciscan Order as it came to be, if it gained something by its organization, lost also, as the founder had foreseen. With organization there came indeed recruitment from the ranks of scholarship, and the followers of the unlearned saint of Assisi included in Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura and Roger Bacon men who could take stand with Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas himself among the followers of the learned Dominic de Guzman. But there came also with organization temporal influence and worldly wealth, entirely out of harmony with the mind and ideals of Francis, and proving indeed a snare and a temptation to those very clerical abuses against which the whole life of Francis had been a protest.
Accordingly, there came about a very serious and indeed irreconcilable cleavage among the Grey Friars. There were on the one side the followers of Elias who came to be known as the Conventuals, arguing that a strict compliance with the principles of Francis was impracticable, indeed fanatical, that compromise involving the abandonment of the mendicant ideal and the acceptance of property was not only justifiable but unavoidable for the continued existence of their society. On the other side were the Spirituals, arguing that the policy of compromise meant nothing less than the repudiation of the distinctive characteristics of the order which had led to its creation and justified its continuation, and urging to the full the strictest conformity with all their uncompromising sincerity. The dispute between the two parties had been some years in progress when ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ was published, the John of Parma to whom the authorship of the work was by some attributed being at that time General of the order and a most perfervid Spiritual. St. Francis himself had indeed been orthodox enough, for the most part accepting the articles of faith in a spirit of unquestioning obedience, though the bent of his mind and his marriage to the Lady Poverty caused him to attach more importance to some dogmas than to others, and in particular to shorten and to simplify all forms and ritual. But in the beautiful fancifulness of Francis there was a strong element of mysticism, and this element was a marked characteristic of those who sought to retain his ideal of asceticism in the order. To such the mystical outpourings of the Abbot Joachim made a powerful appeal. For they perceived in his predictions a clear reference to themselves, found in Francis the forerunner and in themselves, his true followers, the destined preachers of the new era of the Holy Ghost in which the carnal-mindedness of a decadent Church and the corruption and indeed the worldliness of the whole human race were to be known no more. To some extremists Francis figured not as a great saint and servant of Christ seeking to reclaim the world to His truth, but as an equal with Christ—not as the restorer of an existent religion, but as the creator of a new religion. So completely heterodox a construction was it possible to place upon the mission of St. Francis, in the light of Joachite prophecy.[50]
It can easily be understood that the taint of Joachitism among the Spirituals gave a splendid opportunity to their adversaries, which the latter were not slow to take. The Pope, Alexander IV, was appealed to; John of Parma was forced to resign, and his successor, Bonaventura, who belonged to neither party, was made, however unwillingly, to take action against John himself and his most outstanding adherents. Already evidence was accumulating of heretical dangers which might accrue from the wedding together of Franciscan ideas of poverty with Joachitic mysticism, and Spirituals began to be looked upon askance. Already Languedoc, abundant source of all manner of onslaughts upon the faith, was beginning to welcome the ideas of Joachim, and it was possible for the Conventuals to argue that their opponents were no better than a heretical sect, another form of Cathari. Later on there came successors to the author of ‘The Everlasting Gospel,’ in the Franciscan Pierre Jean Olivi in France, in Italy Arnaldo da Villanova, who pronounced the vices of the clergy to be eloquent signs of the presence of Antichrist.
To begin with the Spirituals were in the ascendant. Bonaventura, in controversy with William of Saint Amour, a virulent enemy of the whole Franciscan order, maintained that poverty was an essential feature of Christianity and that neither Christ Himself nor His disciples owned property of any kind. Pope Nicholas III by the bull Exiit qui seminat gave the sanction of the Holy See to the view that St. Francis had been inspired in his creation of the Rule by the Holy Ghost; that Christ had completely renounced the ownership of property and that such renunciation was most laudable and Christian. At the same time he drew a distinction—no new one, because it had already been put into practice by Innocent IV and Alexander IV—between ownership and use, and laid down as a rule always to be followed that the ownership of Franciscan property was vested in the Holy See, the Franciscans themselves simply having the usufruct. This bull did not, as might have been anticipated, settle the dispute between the two Franciscan factions. Laxity increased among the Conventuals, and Joachite tendencies still subsisted among their opponents. The pontificate of Boniface VIII, which began in 1294, brought upon the scene a man most eminently practical, essentially worldly. To the Pope, who had designs on the temporal power and eventually announced categorically, ‘I am Caesar, I am Emperor,’ the ascetic ideal of the Spirituals was a ridiculous fanaticism, which was also a positive nuisance. The mendicant orders had been especially the servants of the papacy; the Spirituals were apt to refer to it as Antichrist. Moreover, the existence of wandering friars, actually beggars, under no proper discipline and supervision—as some of the Spirituals had become—outraged his sense of order and decency. Boniface decided that these lawless bands must be hunted down, and utilized the Inquisition for this purpose. Under Clement V the lot of the Spirituals considerably improved, and inveighing against the abuses of their false brethren they very nearly succeeded in securing a permanent separation into an order of their own. Instead of this Clement, while declaring in favour of the ascetic party and favouring them generally during his pontificate, endeavoured to induce the rival factions to drop their quarrels and live together in amity. His efforts at settlement were defeated by the action of Spirituals in Italy, who at the very time when a Council at Vienne, sitting in 1311-12, was declaring in favour of the Spirituals and prohibiting their enemies from referring to them as heretics, proclaimed themselves a separate community and brought down the Pope’s wrath upon them as rebels and schismatics and indeed founders of a pestilential sect.
The controversy came to a head under Clement’s successor, the resolute and aggressive John XXII, to whom the pauper ideal was particularly obnoxious. He was extremely avaricious and full of worldly ambitions which involved him in frequent wars in Italy. This pontiff—possessing in his nature not one single feature in common with St. Francis—determined on restoring order within the Franciscan fold and bringing the Spirituals to obedience.[51] The first attack on the ascetic party was made in Languedoc. One of the minor distinctive features of the Spirituals was their wearing smaller gowns and hoods than the Conventuals. The Spirituals in the province of Aquitaine, in Béziers, Narbonne and Carcassonne, were forbidden to wear this distinctive garb. Twenty-five, to whom the wearing of their habit was symbolical of the whole principle for which they stood, refused to submit and were delivered to the Inquisition at Marseilles. Already the Pope had declared that all the wandering Spirituals in Languedoc who styled themselves Fratres de paupere vita or Fraticelli were heretics, and had stated very significantly in the bull Quorundam that however praiseworthy poverty might be, more praiseworthy was obedience. Four of the twenty-five remained obdurate to the last, were handed over to the secular arm, and burnt. This proved to be but the beginning of a persecution carried out most rigorously by means of the Holy Office, particularly in the south of France, but also in Spain and Italy.
The rebel Franciscans were persecuted because they were heretical, and it is important to note in what their heresy consisted. It was not because of Joachite tendencies—these might or might not exist, they were not a criterion—it was because of disobedience pure and simple. To disobey the constitution Quorundam, to dispute its ruling as to the wearing of a habit and the question of ownership of property—that was heresy. It is true that the motive which induced the recalcitrant to refuse obedience to the bull was a repudiation of papal authority to lay down such a regulation regarding the Franciscan Rule, and that such repudiation was connected with Joachite views as to the degeneracy of the Church and the unique reforming rôle of the Franciscan order. None the less the fact remained that in running directly counter to the ruling of the bull Exiit qui seminat and the decisions of the Council of Vienne John XXII had actually created a new heresy, had asserted that what had seemed most Christian and laudable to Nicholas III and Clement V was an error in the faith. The persecution had the result of actually encouraging Joachitism. ‘As well to be hanged for a sheep as a lamb’ is a proverb of very general validity. If it was heresy to disobey a papal bull—granted that that had to be disobeyed—why not go to the full length of rejecting the papacy and declaring it superseded by the era of St. Francis and the Holy Ghost? The papal pronouncement made the fanatical Spirituals more and more convinced that the Roman Church was indeed ‘the whore of Babylon,’ the Pope veritable Antichrist. And certainly we may regard the extremists latterly, under the goad of persecution, as having developed into a sect, definitely believing itself to be the true Church—that of St. Francis and the Holy Ghost. But such fanatical Spirituals were exceedingly small in numbers, their influence very restricted, and their extinction was brought about without very much difficulty.
But it was not only the extremists that were made victims. On November 12, 1323, John XXII, to whom the Spirituals’ conception of the place of poverty in the Christian Church was definitely anathema, so irreconcilable was it with his papal policy, issued the bull, Cum inter nonnullos, in which it was authoritatively denied that Christ and His Apostles possessed no property. To assert that they held none was error and heresy.[52] This question of dogma became involved with secular politics, when Lewis of Bavaria, being claimant to the imperial crown and at enmity with Pope John, found it convenient to adopt the cause of the Franciscans and to denounce the Pope himself as a heretic for not believing in the absolute poverty of Christ, as he did in a formal indictment of John known as the Protest of Sachsenhausen. A controversy between Empire and Papacy was thus started which is of great interest because it evoked the ‘Defensor Pacis’ of Marsiglio of Padua and the numerous polemical works of William of Ockham on the imperial side. This controversy is of much greater interest and significance than the story of the persecutions of the Fratres de paupere vita, or Fraticelli, which continued as the result of John XXII’s action, more especially in Italy, into the later decades of the fourteenth century. The significance of the persecutions lies in the virtual creation of a heresy by a papal bull. That it should be possible for any individual wearer of the papal tiara to declare heretical what his predecessors had held to be praiseworthy and to stigmatize as heretics his opponents in secular politics revealed a great danger. To hold fast to an immutable faith is easy, but what if the immutable faith does as a matter of fact change! The bull Cum inter nonnullos made it possible that a man might be condemned as a heretic because he held a certain view as to Christ’s poverty, although perfectly able and willing to subscribe to every article in the Christian creed as defined in the great councils of the early Church. Catharism may have been a real peril to the Church; but to maintain that men who had no other wish but to preserve the strict Rule of St. Francis in the order constituted such a peril is impossible. And men might well be bewildered by the fact that whereas the revolutionary teachings of Joachitism were not at first proscribed, the wearing of a particular type of hood became heretical not many years later.
The importance of ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ lies principally in its influence on the Franciscan order, but it had several other developments which are of distinct interest as remarkable illustrations of the strange fanaticisms and superstitious credulities possible in the thirteenth century. The Joachite idea of a new era and new religion led to the astonishing discovery of incarnations of the divine. One was found in a certain woman, a native of Milan, called Guglielma, who seemed to have been in no way remarkable save for her piety.[53] Yet the little band of followers who gathered round her came to venerate her as a saint and a miracle worker. The biographies of mediæval worthies are full of tales of the miraculous, and there was nothing strange in this. But the extraordinary absurdity followed of finding her to be the Holy Ghost in female form. The woman herself never countenanced such fantastic ideas and expressly repudiated any supernatural powers. But after her death a small circle of fanatic devotees established her worship in Milan with a certain Maifreda at their head, performing high sacerdotal functions and destined in the eyes of her associates to succeed to the papal throne when the corrupt Roman Church should have passed away.
The Guglielmites were a very insignificant sect, easily extinguished. Potentially more dangerous were the followers of one Gherardo Segarelli, a very ignorant and very demented enthusiast of Parma, who, being rejected on his seeking admission into the Franciscan order, determined to outdo St. Francis in the exact reproduction of the life of Christ.[54] His method of accomplishing this purpose was to have himself circumcised, wrapped in swaddling clothes and suckled by a woman—after which preliminaries he stalked into the streets of his native town, a wild, uncouth figure, calling all men to repentance. In time the madman succeeded in attracting devotees from among herdsmen as ignorant and almost as foolish as himself. The movement began to be formidable when it spread beyond Parma, even beyond Italy, being found in 1287 in Germany; and it appeared that Segarelli aimed at proselytizing the world. The papacy was roused, the Inquisition put into action, Segarelli himself in 1300 burnt in Parma, his disciples, known as Apostolic Brethren, energetically persecuted.
They were not, however, entirely eradicated. Some remained—men of more intellect than the lunatic heresiarch and his half-witted herdsmen—and among them a certain Fra Dolcino, who saw in the appearance of Segarelli in the all-fateful year 1260 a fulfilment of the prophecies in ‘The Everlasting Gospel.’[55] He chose to regard himself as a heaven-appointed messenger of the new dispensation. As fanatical as Segarelli himself, he was more dangerous because apparently gifted with the capacity of leadership and of inspiring even enthusiastic loyalty. Beginning in Milan, Bergamo, Brescia, Vercelli, he had by 1304 created a distinct religious community among the Italian Alps. It appears that in order to maintain their supplies of provisions they were wont to resort to robbery, and must have become a public nuisance. But they were also dangerous heretics; it is a remarkable tribute to the mark made by Dolcino’s personality that Dante makes Mohammed send a warning message to Dolcino, as to a kindred false prophet, lest he fall into the same ill-case as himself.[56] In June, 1305, Clement V resolved upon drastic measures to wipe out this ‘son of Belial who had been polluting Lombardy.’[57] A crusade was organized against the Dolcinists in their mountain fastnesses, and after a desperate defence against no fewer than four different expeditions, in which there was much bloodshed and ferocity and in which the heretics were so reduced as to have recourse to cannibalism, they were forced to surrender.[58] The punishment of Dolcino—for the nature of which, it should be remembered, the state and in no way the Inquisition was responsible—was terrible in the extreme. He was gradually torn to pieces by red-hot pincers—an appalling torment which he bore with an almost incredible fortitude.
Indirectly connected with the ascetic and mendicant enthusiasm of the Spiritual Franciscans were certain heretical movements in Germany—those of the Beghards or Beguines. The names are used somewhat indiscriminately to denote Fraticelli, who were simply wandering Spirituals asserting the supreme virtues of poverty, and other sectaries, much more extravagant, whose only likeness to the Spirituals lay in their mendicancy. The indiscriminacy of nomenclature undoubtedly denotes a very comprehensible failure at times to distinguish between vagrants outwardly alike and all of them at least under the suspicion of heretical tendencies.[59] Among the extravagants to whom this title was given were followers of two teachers of a crude mysticism and pantheism—one Amaury de Bène,[60] whose doctrine had a very marked antinomian tinge, for he maintained that no one filled with the Holy Ghost and the spirit of love could commit sin; the other, Ortlieb of Strassburg, whose pantheism caused him to include Satan in the divine essence, so that his followers, generally known as Brethren of the Free Spirit, were also sometimes known as Luciferans and credited with devil-worship and the perpetration of the most disgusting obscenities at the initiation of novices into the faith. The Brethren of the Free Spirit were never numerous, but in spite of constant persecution they appear to have existed right up to the days of Lutheranism. Their doctrines were not without significance, because together with an exalted claim to impeccability which prescribed the severest tests of sexual purity they combined a mystic belief, which under the term Illuminism, a name they themselves adopted, had a considerable influence on the theological thought of Germany. The most remarkable of these was the distinguished Dominican, Master Eckhart, who appears to have maintained that man shared the divinity of God and that in the eyes of God virtue and sin were alike.[61]
The existence of such venturesome pantheistic speculations as these broad-cast in Germany reacted very unfavourably on all unrecognized, and particularly on migratory, religious associations, which became involved in the persecutions set on foot in consequence of the undoubted heresies of the pantheists. Such associations tended to increase in the thirteenth century. They were not necessarily connected with the Spiritual Franciscans or Fraticelli; but they certainly owed their origin to the popularity of the mendicant idea as practised by the friars, in particular the Minorites. They are found in France, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries; and to such voluntary fellowships there could be no legitimate objection in themselves; they might be the most laudable instruments for the exploitation of religious zeal. Only they called for thorough supervision. Beguinages, therefore—large permanent houses—were established in such towns as Cologne, Ghent, and Paris, such establishments being under careful management, the special protection of the popes and secular princes, and enjoying often the highest reputation for sanctity. But with wanderers it was different. They could not be supervised, and to distinguish between the orthodox and the schismatic mendicant was difficult. Undisciplined vagrancy was in itself an invitation to temptation. The Inquisition in Germany represented to Boniface IX in 1396 that for a hundred years all manner of heresies had lurked under the outward fair-seeming of the Beghards and that their suppression was impeded by certain papal constitutions urged in their protection.[62] It is true that at times, owing to the extent to which the innocent were wont to suffer with the guilty, the papacy had ere that come to the rescue of the former, as for example Benedict XIV in 1336 and Gregory XI in 1374. It had in particular been necessary to protect women, large numbers of whom joined themselves not only to the permanent mendicant communities, but to the wandering mendicants. In times that were hard and wild and disordered, when there was no system of poor-relief save through the Church, the lot of widows and of women and girls who had no male protectors was exceedingly hard, and for such the mendicant associations had a clear attraction as a means of asylum and refuge. The war upon the Beghards in many cases led to many respectable women being led into a life of misery and want and sometimes prostitution, until Benedict XIV intervened on their behalf.[63] At the Council of Constance certain rules were drawn up for the regulation of beguinages, but beguines did not thereby escape persecution. In 1431 we find Eugenius IV intervening for their protection. Ever in danger of persecution, wanderers over the face of the land, these mendicant communities, whether remaining within the Church’s fold or not, were a source of religious unrest, of dissatisfaction with the hierarchy, of aspiration for new doctrines which would attune with the intense individualism of a mystic illuminism. By such men and women Lutheranism might well be welcomed and its progress materially assisted.[64]
One of the strangest of the fanatical outbursts of the Middle Ages, especially in Germany, is indirectly connected with the Brethren of the Free Spirit, some of whom joined themselves with the Flagellants. The latter first made their appearance in Europe in 1259 in Italy, whence the movement spread to Bohemia and Germany. A more important outbreak occurred in the middle of the next century, when the appalling ravages of the Black Death had no doubt brought home to many thousands of the survivors the awful fragility and insecurity of human life and the need for repentance and godliness. It was the consciousness of the impotence of man probably that gave popularity to the abasement and self-torture of the scourge. There was a positive luxury of misery in the suggestion of so drastic a means of grace for a polluted people, smitten by the heavy hand of an angry God. Through Hungary, Germany, Flanders, Holland marched these penitents, proclaiming complete regeneration for all who should persevere in flagellation for thirty-three days and a half, chanting weird prayers in which this creed was enshrined.[65] Theirs was a new gospel—the all-sufficient efficacy of the voluntary effusion of blood.[66]
It is no wonder that the authorities became alarmed. Legitimate exception was taken to the enthusiasts’ indecency—men went virtually naked, women insufficiently clad, all were under a temptation to sexual excesses.[67] Worse was the doctrinal error involved—the attack upon sacraments and priesthood contained in the preaching of the strange means of grace by these new priests of Baal.[68] In 1349 Clement VI, condemning the movement on the ground of the contempt of the Church implied in the formation of such an unlicensed fellowship, ordered the suppression of the Flagellants, who thereafter came under the purview of the Inquisition. The heretical doctrine inherent in the Flagellant mania was enunciated in its most extravagant form by a native of Thuringia, named Conrad Schmidt, who in 1414 was maintaining that all spiritual authority had passed from the Catholic Church to the Flagellants, that not only were the sacraments useless, but they had been proscribed by God and it was mortal sin to partake of them, so that, for example, the ceremony of marriage polluted the union.
The fundamentally anti-sacerdotal character of the Flagellant movement was shared by another contemporary mania in Flanders and the Rhinelands—a dancing mania, under whose impulse fanatics would leap and convulse themselves in the most violent contortions in fierce ecstasies of religious frenzy.[69]
It is a most curious and remarkable story that is made by these interconnected heresies, more especially of the thirteenth century, and by others like them. In the midst of the Ages of Faith individual emotional outpourings or intellectual speculations would lead to strange results of fanaticism or dogma. There were indeed some that were mainly sensual in origin, but others betokened an earnest desire for a new heaven and a new earth and demanded a moral progression in human affairs not visible in existing human society. Such an aspiration is implicit in all the strange theories connected with ‘The Everlasting Gospel’ and in all the ideas of the Spiritual Franciscans, their offshoots and their companion sects. How much of such aspiration, such opinions could the mediæval Church absorb within herself? It was ever doubtful. It would have been impossible to predict beforehand upon which side would eventually be found many of the remarkable men referred to in this chapter—Francis, John of Parma, Bonaventura, Marsiglio of Padua, William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, Amaury, Master Eckhart. The pope who condemned the Spiritual Franciscans might easily have regarded Francis himself as a heretic. Fortunately for herself the Church, while repudiating doctrines which were obviously unchristian, those that were the mere frenzies of the ignorant and the demented, succeeded in absorbing a large measure of the enthusiasm and the thought of the age, incorporated the mendicant orders, produced the scholastic philosophy. Nevertheless there were abroad in the mediæval world moral and intellectual ferments, yearnings for regeneration and guesses at truth which found within her fold no satisfaction.
Note.—In O. Holder-Egger’s (complete) edition of Salimbene (Monumenta Germaniae Historica, vol. xxxii, Hanover and Leipzig, 1905-13) the most important references to Joachitism are on pp. 231-41, 292-4, 455-8.