From Pomerania, Friar Peter hastened to the south, where he found Waldenses as numerous, and less inclined to submission. He has left a brief memorial of his labors, written in 1395, in which he expresses his fears that the heresy would become dominant, as the Waldenses were resorting to force, and were employing arson and homicide to intimidate the orthodox. His only evidence of this, however, is that on September 8, those of Steyer, to punish the parish priest for receiving the inquisitors in his house, burned his barn, and affixed to the town gates, by night, a warning in the shape of a half-burned brand and a bloody knife. This offence was cruelly avenged, for in 1397, at Steyer, more than a hundred Waldenses of either sex were burned. In this relentless persecution the case of a child of ten condemned to wear crosses shows how unsparing were the tribunals, while others in which the culprits were burned for relapse, having already abjured before the inquisitor, Henry of Olmütz, indicate that this was not the first effort made to exterminate the heresy. How extended it was, and how vigorous its repression, may be gathered from the pseudo Peter of Pilichdorf, who tells us that from Thuringia to Moravia a thousand converts were made in two years, and that the inquisitors who were busy in Austria and Hungary expected soon to have a thousand more.[448]
About the year 1400, in Strassburg, there was active persecution against a sect known as Winkelers, who were discovered to have four assemblies in the city, and others in Mainz and Hagenau. In their confessions they alluded to their comrades in many other places, such as Nordlingen, Ratisbon, Augsburg, Tischengen, Soleure, Berne, Weissenberg, Speier, Holzhausen, Schwäbisch-Wörth, Friedberg, and Vienna. Although, strictly speaking, not Waldenses, they had so many traits in common that the distinction is rather one of organization than of faith. In 1374 one of their number returned to the Church, and the fear of his betraying the little community led to his deliberate murder, the assassins being paid, and undergoing penance to obtain absolution. Some years later the inquisitor, John Arnoldi, was threatened with similar vengeance and left the city. In the final persecution some thirty families were put on trial, while many succeeded in remaining concealed. There was but one noble among them, Blumstein, who abjured, and who, some twenty years later, is found filling important civic posts. Though reference is made in one of the trials to members of the sect who had been burned at Ratisbon, those of Strassburg were more fortunate. The inquisitor, Böckeln, is said to have received bribes for assigning private penance to some of the guilty; and though the Dominicans demanded the burning of the heretics, the magistrates interceded with the episcopal official, and banishment was the severest penalty inflicted. Torture, however, had been freely used in obtaining confessions. After this, nothing more is heard in Strassburg of either Winkelers or Waldenses until the burning of Frederic Reiser in 1458.[449]
There evidently was ample work for the Inquisition in Germany, but it seems to have been more anxious to repair its defeat in the contest with the Beghards than to operate against the Waldenses. In the general excitement on the subject of heresy it was not difficult to render the Beghards objects of renewed suspicion and persecution. To some extent the bishops and most of the inquisitors joined in this, but the suspects had friends among the prelates, who wrote, towards the close of 1393, to Boniface IX., eulogizing their piety, obedience, and good works, and asking protection for them. To this Boniface responded, January 7, 1394, in a brief addressed to the German prelates, ordering them to investigate whether these persons are contaminated with the errors condemned by Clement V. and John XXII., and whether they follow any reproved religious Order; if not, they are to be efficiently protected. An exemplified copy of this brief, given by the Archbishop of Magdeburg, October 20, 1396, shows that it continued to be used and was relied upon in the troubles which followed, soon after, through a sudden change of policy by Boniface. The Inquisition did not remain passive under this interference with its operations. It represented to Boniface that for a hundred years heresies had lurked under the outward fair-seeming of the Beghards and Beguines, in consequence of which, almost every year, obstinate heretics had been burned in the different cities of the empire, and that their suppression was impeded by certain papal constitutions which were urged in their protection. Boniface was easily moved to reversing his recent action, and by a bull of January 31, 1395, he restored to vigor the decrees of Urban V., Gregory XI., and Charles IV., under which he ordered the Inquisition to prosecute earnestly the Beghards, Lollards, and Zwestriones. This gave full power to molest the orthodox associations as well as the heretic Brethren of the Free Spirit, and a severe storm of persecution burst over them. Even some of the bishops joined in this, as appears from a synod held in Magdeburg about this time, which ordered the priests to excommunicate and expel them. Yet this again aroused their friends, and Boniface was induced to reissue his bull with an addition which, like the contradictory provisions of the Clementines, shows the perplexity caused by the admixture of orthodoxy and heresy among the Beguines. After repeating his commands for their suppression, he adds that there are pious organizations known as Beghards, Lollards, and Zwestriones, which shall be permitted to wear their vestments, to beg, and to continue their mode of life, excommunication being threatened against any inquisitor who shall molest them, unless they have been convicted by the ordinaries of the diocese.[450]
This left the matter very much to the discretion of the local authorities, but the spirit of persecution was fairly revived, and the Inquisition made haste to fortify its position. Under pretext that the bulls of Gregory XI. were becoming worn by age and use, it procured their renewal from Boniface IX., in 1395, though the pope is careful to express that he grants no new privileges. In 1399 it succeeded in having the number of inquisitors increased to six for the Dominican province of Saxony alone, on the plea that its wide extent and populous cities rendered the existing force insufficient. This was not without reason, for the province embraced the great archiepiscopal districts of Mainz, Cologne, Magdeburg, and Bremen, to which were added Rügen and Camin. Camin belonged to the province of Gnesen, and Rügen formed part of the diocese of Roskild, which was suffragan to the metropolitan of Lünden in Sweden, thus furnishing the only instance of inquisitorial jurisdiction in any region that can be called Scandinavian, save a barren attempt made, in 1421, under the stimulus of the Hussite troubles. A few weeks later Boniface issued another bull, ordering the prelates and secular rulers of Germany to give all aid and protection to Friar Eylard Schöneveld and other inquisitors, and especially to lend the use of their prisons, as the Inquisition in those parts is said to have none of its own, which shows that Kerlinger’s scheme of obtaining them from the property of the Beghards had not proved a success. Eylard set vigorously to work in the lands adjoining the Baltic, which from their remoteness had probably escaped his predecessors. At Lubec, in 1402, he procured the arrest of a Dolcinist named Wilhelm by the municipal officials, showing that he had no familiars of his own; the accused was examined several times in the presence of numerous clerks, monks, and laymen, showing that the secrecy of the inquisitorial process was unknown or unobserved, and he was finally burned. He had a comrade named Bernhard, who fled to Wismar, whither Schöneveld followed him and had him burned in 1403. The same year he seized a priest at Stralsund, who rejected all solicitations to abjure, and was burned as a persistent heretic; and at Rostock he condemned for heresy a woman who drove away with the bitterest reproaches her son, a Cistercian monk, when he urged her to recant, and who likewise perished in the flames.[451]
About this period heresy appears to have had also to contend with a reaction on the part of the secular authorities. When, in 1400, the Flagellants made a demonstration in the Low Countries, the magistrates of Maestricht expelled them, and when the people took their side the energetic interference of the Bishop of Liège put an end to the insubordination; besides, the Sire de Perweis threw a band of Flagellants into his dungeons and Tongres closed its gates upon them, so that the epidemic was checked. With the year 1400 the comparative peace which the Beguines had enjoyed for some fifteen years came to an end. Their most dreaded enemy was the Dominican, John of Mühlberg, whose purity of life and energy in battling with the moral and spiritual errors of his time won him a wide reputation throughout Germany, so that when he died in exile, driven from Basle by the clergy whom his attacks had embittered, he was long regarded by the people as a saint and a martyr. About 1400 he stirred up in Basle a struggle with the Beguines, which for ten years kept the city in an uproar. Primarily an episode in the hostility between the Dominicans and Franciscans, it extended to the clergy and magistrates, and finally to the citizens at large. In 1405 the Beguines were expelled, but the Franciscans obtained from the papacy bulls ordering their restoration, and the retraction of all that had been said against them. At last, in 1411, Bishop Humbert and the town council, excited by a fiery sermon of John Pastoris, abolished the associations, which were forced to abandon their living in common and their vestments, or to leave the place. The city of Berne followed this example, and the magistrates of Strassburg took the same course, when some of the Beguines adopted the former alternative and some the latter. Many of these took refuge secretly at Mainz. They were discovered, and the archbishop, John II., holding them to be heretics, ordered them to be prosecuted. The matter was intrusted to Master Henry von Stein, who set vigorously about it. The refugees from Strassburg, mostly women, were thrown into prison; we also hear of a nun who was likewise incarcerated, and of a youth from Rotenburg, who was mounted on a hogshead in the public square, and in the presence of the populace was obliged to accept the penance of crosses, in an auto de fé much less impressive than those which Bernard Gui was wont to celebrate.[452]
It was not long before this that the Brethren of the Free Spirit were deprived of their greatest leader, Nicholas of Basle. As a wandering missionary he had for many years been engaged in propagating the doctrines of the sect, and had gained many proselytes. The Inquisition had been eagerly on his track, but he was shrewd and crafty, and had eluded its pursuit. Forced, probably about 1397, to fly to Vienna with two of his disciples, John and James, they were discovered and seized. The celebrated Henry of Hesse (Langenstein) undertook their conversion, and flattered himself that he had succeeded, but they all relapsed and were burned. As Peter, the Celestinian abbot, was at this time Inquisitor of Passau, he probably had the satisfaction of ridding the Church of this dangerous heresiarch, whose belief in his own divine inspiration was such that he considered his will to be equal to that of God.
Not long after a similar martyrdom occurred at Constance, where a Beghard, named Burgin, had founded a sect of extreme austerity. Captured with his disciples by the bishop, he would not abandon his doctrines, and was duly relaxed. Gerson’s numerous allusions to the Turelupins and Beghards show that at this period the sect was attracting much attention and was regarded as seductively dangerous. With all his tendency to mysticism, Gerson could recognize the peril incurred by those whom he describes as deceived through too great a desire to reach the sweetness of God, and who mistake the delirium of their own hearts for divine promptings: thus disregarding the law of Christ, they follow their own inclinations without submitting to rule, and are precipitated into guilt by their own presumption. He was especially averse to the spiritual intimacy between the sexes, where devotion screened the precipice on the brink of which they stood. Mary of Valenciennes, he says, was especially to be avoided on this account, for she applied what is set forth about the divine fruition to the passions seething in her own soul, and she argues that he who reaches the perfection of divine love is released from the observance of all precepts. Thus the Brethren of the Free Spirit were practically the same in the fifteenth century as in the times of Ortlieb and Amauri.[453]
Giles Cantor, who founded in Brussels the sect which styled itself Men of Intelligence, was probably a disciple of Mary of Valenciennes, and the name was adopted merely to cover its affiliation with the proscribed Brethren of the Free Spirit. Its doctrines were substantially the same in their mystic pantheism and illuminism; and their practical application is seen in the story that on one occasion Giles was moved by the spirit to go naked for some miles when carrying provision to a poor person. So open a manifestation would have insured his prosecution had there been any machinery for persecution in efficient condition in Brabant; but he was allowed to propagate his doctrines in peace until he died. He was succeeded in the leadership of the sect by a Carmelite known as William of Hilderniss, and at length it attracted, in 1411, the attention of Cardinal Peter d’Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai. Fortunately for William, the bishop chose to direct the proceedings himself, and they show complete disregard of inquisitorial methods. He appointed special commissioners, who made an inquisition; both the names and the testimony of the witnesses were submitted to William, who made what defence he could. In rendering judgment d’Ailly called in the Dominican Prior of St. Quentin, who was inquisitor of the district of Cambrai, and the sentence was as irregular as the proceedings. William had no desire for martyrdom, and abjured the heresy; he was required to purge himself with six compurgators, after which he was to undergo the penance of three years’’ confinement in a castle of the bishop’s, while if he failed in his purgation he was to be imprisoned in a convent of his order during the archbishop’s pleasure—a most curious and illogical medley. He succeeded in finding the requisite number of compurgators, but though he disappeared from the scene his sect was by no means extinguished, and we hear of the persecution of a heresiarch as late as 1428.[454]
That Clement VI. did not err when he foresaw the dangerous errors lurking under the devotion of the Flagellants was demonstrated in 1414. The sect still existed, and its crude theories as to the efficacy of flagellation had gradually been developed into an antisacerdotal heresy of the most uncompromising character. A certain Conrad Schmidt was the constructive heresiarch who gave to its belief an organized completeness, and his death made no diminution of the zeal of his disciples, nor did the failure of his prophecy of the end of the world in 1309. The curious connection between the Flagellants and the Beghards is indicated by the fact that these Flagellant Brethren, or Brethren of the Cross, as they styled themselves, regarded Conrad as the incarnation of Enoch, and a certain Beghard, who had been burned at Erfurt about 1364, as Elias—an angel having brought their souls from heaven and infused them into Schmidt and this Beghard while yet in the womb. Schmidt was to preside at the approaching Day of Judgment, which was constantly believed to be at hand, Antichrist being the pope and the priests, whose reign was drawing to an end.
When, in 1343, the letter commanding flagellation, to which I have already alluded, was brought by an angel and laid on the altar of St. Peter, God withdrew all spiritual power from the Church and bestowed it on the Brethren of the Cross. Since then all sacraments had lost their virtue, and to partake of them was mortal sin. Baptism had been replaced by that of the blood drawn by the scourge; the sacrament of matrimony only defiled marriage; the Eucharist was but a device by which the priests sold a morsel of bread for a penny—if they believed it to be the body of Christ they were worse than Judas, who got thirty pieces of silver for it; flagellation replaced them all. Oaths were a mortal sin, but to avoid betraying the sect the faithful could take them and receive the sacraments, and then expiate it by flagellation. The growth of such a belief and the mingled contempt and hatred manifested for the clergy prove that to the people the Church was as much a stranger and an oppressor as it had been in the twelfth century. It had learned nothing, and was as far from Christ as ever.