Germany.
It was discovered in 1209 that the diocese of Strassburg was gravely infected with heresy, and a large number of unfortunate persons perished at the stake. On one day in that city the episcopal authorities caused to be burnt eighty persons who had failed to pass successfully through the ordeal of the red-hot iron. Catharism was little known in Germany, and the heretics were mainly Waldenses. A body allied to them, known as the Ortlibenses, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, founded by one Ortlieb, of Strassburg, held that God was the essence of all creatures, and invisible except through them. From this it followed, or was believed to follow, that man, being an embodiment of the spirit of God, was incapable of sin. This doctrine swept away, not merely the entire apparatus of theology, but the whole system of observances which constituted the religion of the Church and the source of its wealth. And as it was broad enough to include the Prince of Darkness himself in the possibility of redemption, its advocates became known as Luciferans, a designation which gave rise to many scandalous reports. The tenets of the Ortlibenses were doubtless capable of being abused, though there is little evidence to show that they were so to any serious extent. Spurred on by Gregory, the cruel fanatic, Conrad of Marburg—whom he had appointed first Inquisitor of Germany—carried on the work of persecution to the utmost of his power, but his success failed to satisfy the merciless Pontiff. Transparently-invented confessions, detailing hideous and absurd orgies of devil-worship, which Conrad extracted from the Luciferans and forwarded to the Pope, drove him almost insane with wrath, and persecution was carried on with such frantic intensity that even the Bishops protested against its excesses. Conrad was greatly mortified by the acquittal of a powerful noble, Count Sayn, who had been accused of the deadly crime of riding on a crab! During this reign of terror the Ortlibenses were suppressed, with the burning of ten of their leaders, who met their fate with calmness; and a few years afterwards, on July 31, 1233, Conrad was murdered. In this case, also, a singular leniency on the part of the Church towards serious crime was observed, the guilty parties being punished merely with excommunication. Strangely enough, the Church has not manufactured a saint out of Conrad of Marburg, whether because of his brutal treatment of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, or because of the unpopularity caused by his excessive zeal, history does not record. It is to the credit of the German Bishops that they declined to give any public approval of his actions. Another persecuting Conrad, who had much to do with the troubles, was slain, and his assistant hanged. The number of these men’s victims is not known, but that it must have been large is shown by the profound impression produced in Germany by the persecution. It should be mentioned that the secular code and episcopal laws of Germany made ample provision for the suppression of heresy without reference to the Inquisition.
The doctrines of the Ortlibenses embodied a mixture of ascetic and pantheistic tendencies which, though at first pure, were afterwards so developed as to be made a cloak for immoral practices. The original ideal seems to have been fairly well maintained, and it is doubtful whether there was any foundation for the charges made by some Italian ecclesiastics, that the ideas of sinlessness and of bodily nakedness as a state of grace were deliberately employed for the corruption of women. Another notorious sect, calling themselves the Friends of God, held the daring conception that it was possible for Jews and Moslems to obtain salvation, and refused to denounce heretics as long as God tolerated them.
The episcopal Inquisition was not organized in Germany until 1317, and was directed mainly against the Beghards (known also as the Lollards), who originated in the Netherlands and taught that poverty was the greatest virtue. Upon these inoffensive people the Archbishop of Cologne had opened war a few years earlier. The female heretics, known as Beguines, were severely persecuted, though not to death; and it is said that on his death-bed Pope Clement V bitterly regretted authorizing the proceedings against them. Walter the Lollard, the most dangerous heretic of the Rhine provinces, was terribly tortured in 1322, and, on the special instructions of the Pope, he and many of his followers perished in the flames, meeting their fate with undaunted cheerfulness. In 1353 renewed attempts were made to establish the Inquisition in Germany, but without success. The well-known mania of the Flagellants was persecuted as heresy, and many people were burnt, while many others were left to rot in underground dungeons. Another sect, called the “Friends of God,� furnished more victims, and during the great plague the murder of Jews was thought to be pleasing to God. In 1369 the Emperor Charles IV took the Inquisition under State protection, and it was organized for work, five Inquisitors being appointed, though it still lacked houses and prisons. The unfortunate Beghards and Beguines were turned out of their houses, which were appropriated by the Inquisitors, of course without paying compensation, and not without opposition from the Bishops, who saw their own prerogatives threatened. The Beghards had been allowed to make their opinions public by means of tracts written in the vernacular; the censorship vested in the Holy Office rectified the oversight. Both the Bishops and the civil authorities objected to indiscriminate persecution, and even succeeded in obtaining from Gregory XI authority to restrict the Inquisitors’ activity in regard to the Beghards and Beguines. Being almost unmolested for a time, the Waldensian heretics again came into prominence, and from 1393 to 1397 suffered severely from persecution. At Steyer, in the latter year, more than a hundred Waldenses of both sexes were burnt. Of the followers of Conrad Schmidt, of Thuringia, many were discovered in 1414, and ninety-one were burnt in one town, forty-four in another, and many more in the villages of that province. A still more horrible case occurred two years later, when 300 of the Flagellants, penitent as well as impenitent, suffered at the stake in one day.
The superiority of the episcopate over the Inquisition was asserted by a Bull of Eugenius IV in 1431, which had the novel effect of rendering the Inquisitors liable to excommunication if they interfered with the Bishops. Persecution went on, however, until, in the time of the Reformation, most of the heretical bodies lost their identity in the spread of Lutheranism. One of the precursors of that great movement was Gregory of Heimburg, who for twenty-five years boldly wrote and preached against the Papacy and the abuse by the Church of its power. A similar campaign was carried on by Hans of Niklaushausen, who proclaimed that the wickedness of the clergy was bringing about the destruction of the world. He was seized by the episcopal tribunal of Wurzburg, and silenced in the customary manner. In spite of intermittent activity and a large number of burnings in Germany, the Inquisition never obtained a firm foothold in that country; while in Bavaria it was not formally established till 1599, and did not retain power for long. Had it been as strong and efficient as it proved in Spain, the career of Martin Luther would have been a brief one, and the Reformation would have been postponed indefinitely.