The episcopal Inquisition was not as efficient as the zeal of the archbishop might wish, but, such as it was, it pursued its labors with indifferent success. In 1323 we hear of a priest detected in heresy, who was duly degraded and burned. In 1325 greater results followed the accidental discovery of an assembly of Beghards. The story told is the legend common to other places, of a husband, whose suspicions were aroused, tracking his wife to the nocturnal conventicle and witnessing the sensual orgies which were popularly believed to be customary in such places. The episcopal Inquisition was rewarded with a large number of culprits, whose trial was speedy and sure. Those who would not abjure, about fifty in number, were put to death—some at the stake, and some drowned in the Rhine, a novel punishment for heresy, which shows how uncertain as yet were the dealings with heretics in Germany. It is quite probable that some of these poor creatures may have sought to shield their errors under the reputation of the great Dominican preacher, Master Eckart, and thus brought upon him the prosecution which worried him to death. It is possible, also, that pursuit of this higher game may have diverted the archbishop from the chase of the humbler quarry, for we hear of no further victims in the next few years, though we are told that the heresy was by no means suppressed.[418]
Archbishop Henry died in 1331 without further success, so far as the records show, and his successor Waleran, Count of Juliers, took up the cause in more systematic fashion. He endeavored to organize a permanent episcopal Inquisition by appointing a commissioner whose duty it was to inquire after heretics, and who had power to reconcile and absolve those who should recant—in fact, an inquisitor under another name. The success of this attempt did not correspond to its deserts. In March, 1335, Waleran was obliged to announce that the evil had greatly increased in both the city and diocese, and he called upon all his prelates and clergy to assist his Inquisition by rigidly enforcing the statutes of Archbishop Henry. This was as ineffective as the previous measures. The heretics were so bold that they openly wore the garments of the sect and followed its practices; nay, more, the inquisitor was either so negligent or so corrupt that he gave absolutions without requiring conformity. In October of the same year, therefore, the archbishop issued another pastoral epistle, in which he pronounced all such absolutions void, and deplored the constant spread of the heresy.[419]
The zeal of the Archbishops of Cologne was not without imitators. Throughout Westphalia, Bishops Ludwig of Munster, Gottfrid of Osnabruck, Gottfrid of Minden, and Bernhard of Paderborn had been active in eradicating the heresy within their dioceses. In 1335 Bishop Berthold of Strassburg made a spasmodic effort to enforce the Clementines, and in the same year there were some victims burned in Metz. The Magdeburg Archbishop Otto was of more tolerant temper. In 1336 a number of “Brethren of the Lofty Spirit” were detected in his city, who did not hesitate, under examination, to admit their belief, which to pious ears sounded like the most horrible blasphemy; yet he liberated them after a few days’’ confinement on their simply recanting their errors verbally. In this same year, however, we have the first instance of a papal inquisitor at work in north Germany. Friar Jordan, an Augustinian eremite, held a commission as inquisitor in both sections of Saxony. He was not well versed in the inquisitorial process, for when at Angermünde in the Uckermark he came upon a nest of Luciferans, he humanely offered them the opportunity of canonical purgation. Fourteen of them failed to procure the requisite number of conjurators, and were duly burned. From Angermünde Friar Jordan seems to have hastened to Erfurt, where he was present at the trial of a Beghard named Constantine, though the proceedings were carried on by the vicar of the Archbishop of Mainz. There was no desire to punish the heretic, who bore a good reputation and was useful as a writer of manuscripts. He asserted himself to be the Son of God, and that he would arise three days after death, so there was ample ground for the endeavor humanely made by his judges to prove him insane. A long respite was given him for this purpose, but he persistently declared his sanity, refused all attempts at conversion, and perished in the flames.[420]
When the effort was made to find heretics there seems to have been plenty of them to reward the search. In this same year, 1336, we hear of the discovery in Austria of a numerous sect who, from the description, were probably Luciferans. The rites of their nocturnal subterranean assemblies bear a considerable resemblance to those revealed by the penitents of Conrad of Marburg, showing how the tradition was handed down to the outbreak of witchcraft. We are told that they had contaminated innumerable souls, but they were exterminated by the free use of the stake and other cruel torments. The next year, in Brandenburg, many simple folk were seduced into demonolatry by three evil spirits who personated the Trinity; and though these were driven off by a Franciscan with the host, the dupes persisted in their error, and preferred burning to recantation. Even divested of its supernatural embroidery, the heresy, probably Luciferan, must have been one which excited enthusiasm in its followers, for at the place of execution they declared that the flames lighted to consume them were golden chariots to carry them to heaven. Another instance of Luciferanism occurred at Salzburg, in 1340, when a priest named Rudolph, in the cathedral, cast to the ground the cup containing the blood of Christ, a sacrilege which he had previously committed at Halle. Under examination, he denied transubstantiation, and asserted the final salvation of Satan and his angels. He was obstinate to the last, and consequently was burned.[421]
The Brethren of the Free Spirit had by no means been suppressed. In 1339 three aged heresiarchs of the sect were captured at Constance and tried by the bishop. Disgusting practices of sensuality were proved against them, and they described their abhorrence of the rites of the Church in the most revolting terms. Their constancy held good until they were brought to the place of execution, when it failed them; they recanted, and were sentenced to imprisonment for life in a dungeon on bread and water. In 1342, at Würzburg, two more were forced to recantation. Persecution, however, was spasmodic, and in many places toleration practically existed. Thus, in Suabia, in 1347, we are told that the heresy of the Beghards spread without let or hindrance. It was impossible to eradicate it, even had there been efforts made to suppress it, which there were not, and it would eventually have overturned the Church had there not finally arisen theologians able and willing to combat it.[422]
About this period flourished Conrad of Montpellier, a canon of Ratisbon, one of the most learned men of the day, who wrote a tract against the sect. In spite of the condemnation uttered by the Council of Vienne, he says it continues to increase and multiply, as there are no prelates found to oppose it. The heretics are mostly ignorant peasants and mechanics, who wander around wearing the distinctive garments of the sect, which are also frequently used as a disguise by Waldenses. They seek hospitality of the Beguines, whom they corrupt by persuading them that man, through piety, can become the equal of Christ. At Ratisbon, Conrad met one of these, who was not suffered to enjoy security, for the bishop arrested him, and, on his obstinately maintaining his errors, cast him in a dungeon, where he perished. Another, named John of Mechlin, preached his heresy publicly through upper Germany, where his eloquence gained him crowds of followers, including nobles and ecclesiastics, though Conrad declares that, on arguing with him, he proved to be utterly ignorant. There would appear to have been equal toleration in the Netherlands, for about this period, at Brussels, a woman named Blomaert, who wrote several treatises on the Spirit of Liberty and on Love, was reverenced as something more than human, and when she went to take the Eucharist she was said by her disciples to be attended by two seraphim. She vanquished the most learned theologians, until John of Rysbroek succeeded in confuting her.[423]
Since the disputed election of Louis of Bavaria, in 1314, the relations between the empire and the papacy had been strained. The victory of Mühldorf, in 1322, which assured to Louis the sovereignty, had been followed, in 1323, by an open rupture with John XXII., after which the strife had been internecine. Each declared his enemy a heretic who had forfeited all rights, and the interdicts which John showered over Germany had been met by Louis with cruel persecution of all ecclesiastics obeying them, wherever he could enforce his power.[424] Such a state of affairs had not been favorable for the persecution of heresy; it may, partially at least, explain the immunity enjoyed in so many places by heretics, and the impossibility of introducing the Inquisition in any form of general organization. Though the papacy assumed that the imperial throne was vacant, and asserted that, during such vacancy, the government of the empire devolved upon the pope, these pretensions could not practically be made good. With the death of Louis, in 1347, and the recognition of his rival, Charles IV.—the “priest’s emperor”—Rome might fairly hope that all obstacles would be removed; that the opposition of the episcopate to the Inquisition would be broken down, and that the field would be open for a persistent and systematic persecution, which would soon relieve Germany of the reproach of toleration. When Clement VI., in 1348, could paternally reprove the young emperor for lack of dignity in the fashion of his garments, which were too short and too tight for his imperial station, the youth could surely be relied upon to obey whatever instructions might be sent him with regard to the suppression of heresy. The same year saw the appointment of John Schandeland, doctor of the Dominican house at Strassburg, as papal inquisitor for all Germany.[425]
Scarcely, however, had the pope and emperor felt their positions assured, and preparations had been thus made to take advantage of the situation, when a catastrophe supervened which defied all human calculation. The weary fourteenth century was nearing the end of its first half when Europe was scourged with a calamity which might well seem to fulfil all that apocalyptic prophets had threatened of the vengeance of God on the sins of man. In 1347 the plague known as the Black Death invaded Europe from the East, making leisurely progress during 1348 and 1349 through France, Spain, Hungary, Germany, and England. No corner of Europe was spared, and on the high seas it is said that vessels with rich cargoes were found floating, of which the crews had perished to the last man. Doubtless there are exaggerations in the contemporary reports which assert that two thirds or three quarters or five sixths of the inhabitants of Europe fell victims to the pest; but Boccaccio, as an eye-witness, tells us that the mortality within the walls of Florence from March to July, 1348, amounted to one hundred thousand souls; that in the fields the harvests lay ungathered; that in the city palaces were tenantless and unguarded; that parents forsook children and children parents. In Avignon the mortality was estimated at one hundred thousand; Clement VI. shut himself up in his apartments in the sacred palace, where he built large fires to ward off the pestilence, and would allow none to approach him. In Paris fifty thousand were said to have perished; in St. Denis sixteen thousand; in Strassburg sixteen thousand. That these figures, though vague, are not improbable, is shown by the case of Béziers, where, in 1348, Mascaro, who was chosen escudier to fill a vacancy, records in his diary that all the consuls were carried off, all their escudiers or assistants, and all the clavars or tax-collectors, and that out of every thousand inhabitants only a hundred escaped. As though Nature did not cause sufficient misery, man contributed his share by an uprising against the Jews. They were accused of causing the plague by poisoning the waters and the pastures, and the blind wrath of the population did not stop to consider that they drank from the same wells as the Christians, and suffered with them in the pestilence. From the Atlantic to Hungary they were tortured and slain with sword and fire. At Erfurt three thousand are said to have perished, and in Bavaria the number was computed at twelve thousand.[426]
It was not only by the massacre of the Jews that the people sought to placate the wrath of God. The gregarious enthusiasm of which we have seen so many instances was by no means extinct. In 1320 France had seen another assemblage of the Pastoureaux, when the dumb population arose, armed only with banners, for the conquest of the Holy Land, and an innumerable multitude wandered over the land, peaceably at first, but subsequently showing their devotion by attacking the Jews, and finally manifesting their antagonism to the hierarchy by plundering the ecclesiastics and the churches, until they were dispersed with the sword and put out of the way with the halter. In 1334 the great Dominican preacher, Venturino da Bergamo, roused the population of Lombardy to so keen a sense of the necessity of propitiating God that he organized a pilgrimage to Rome for the sake of obtaining pardons, variously estimated as consisting of from ten thousand to three millions of penitents. Clothed in white, with black cloaks bearing on one side a white dove and olive-branch, and on the other a white cross, they marched peaceably in bands to the holy city, though when Venturino went to John XXII., in Avignon, to get the pardons for his followers, he was accused of heresy, and had to undergo a trial by the Inquisition.[427]
Such being the popular tendencies of the age, it is no wonder that the profound emotions caused by the fearful scourge of the Black Death found relief in a gregarious outburst of penitence. Germany had suffered less than the rest of Europe, only one fourth of the population being estimated as perishing, but the religious sensibilities of the people had been stirred by the interdicts against Louis of Bavaria, and the pestilence had been preceded by earthquakes, which were portents of horror. It well might seem that God, wearied with man’s wickedness, was about to put an end to the human race, and that only some extraordinary effort of propitiation could avert his wrath. In this state of mental tension it needed but a touch to send an impulse through the whole population. Suddenly, in the spring of 1349, the land was covered with bands of Flagellants, like those whom we have seen nearly a century before, expiating their sins by public scourging. Some said that the example was set in Hungary; others attributed it to different places, but it responded so thoroughly to the vague longings of the people, and it spread so rapidly, that it seemed to be the result of a universal consentaneous impulse. All the proceedings, at least at first, were conducted decently and in order. The Flagellants marched in bands of moderate size, each under a leader and two lieutenants. Beggary was strictly prohibited, and no one was admitted to fellowship who would not promise obedience to the captain, and who had not money to defray his own expenses, estimated at four pfennige per diem, though the hospitality universally offered in the towns through which they passed was freely accepted to the extent of lodging and meals; but two nights were never to be spent in the same place. Monks and priests, nobles and peasants, women and children were marshalled together in common contrition to placate an offended God. They chanted rude hymns—