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

by Henry Charles Lea

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]