A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume II

by Henry Charles Lea

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]