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

by Henry Charles Lea

In France the University had taken the place of the almost forgotten Inquisition, repressing all aberrations of faith, while a centralized monarchy had rendered—at least until the Concordat of Francis I.—the national Church in a great degree independent of the papacy. In Germany there was no national Church; there was subjection to Rome which was growing unendurable for financial reasons, but there was nothing to take the place of the Inquisition, and a latitude of speech had become customary which was tolerated so long as the revenues of St. Peter were not interfered with. This perhaps explains why the significance of Luther’s revolt was better appreciated at Rome than on the spot. After he had been formally declared a heretic by the Auditor-general of the Apostolic Chamber at the instance of the promoter fiscal, the legate, Cardinal Caietano, wrote that he could terminate the matter himself, and that it was rather a trifling affair to be brought before the pope. He did not fulfil his instructions to arrest Luther and tell him that if he would appear before the Holy See, to excuse himself, he would be treated with undeserved clemency. After the scandal had been growing for a twelvemonth, Leo again wrote to Caietano to summon Doctor Martin before him, and, after diligent examination, to condemn or absolve him as might prove requisite. It was now too late. Insubordination had spread, and rebellion was organizing itself. Before these last instructions reached Caietano, Luther came in answer to a previous summons, but, though he professed himself in all things an obedient son of the Church, he practically manifested an ominous independence, and was conveyed away unharmed. The legate trusted to his powers as a disputant rather than to force; and had he attempted the latter, he had no machinery at hand to frustrate the instructions given by the Augsburg magistrates for Luther’s protection. In the paralysis of persecution the inevitable revolution went forward.[469]

CHAPTER VII.
BOHEMIA.

THERE is no historical foundation for the legend that Peter Waldo’s missionary labors carried him into Bohemia, where he died, but there can be no question that the Waldensian heresy found a foothold among the Czechs at a comparatively early date. Bohemia formed part of the great archiepiscopal province of Mainz, whose metropolitan could exercise but an ineffective supervision over a district so distant. The supremacy of Rome pressed lightly on its turbulent ecclesiastics. In the last decade of the twelfth century a papal legate, Cardinal Pietro, sent thither to levy a tithe for the recovery of the Holy Land, was scandalized to find that the law of celibacy was unknown to the secular priesthood; he did not venture to force it on those already in orders, and his efforts to make postulants take the vow of continence provoked a tumult which required severe measures of suppression. In a Church thus partially independent the abuses which stimulated revolt elsewhere might perhaps be absent, but the field for missionary labor lay open and unguarded.[470]

We have seen how the Inquisitor of Passau, about the middle of the thirteenth century, describes the flourishing condition of the Waldensian churches in Austria, along the borders of Bohemia and Moravia, and the intense zeal of propagandism which animated their members. Close to the west, moreover, they were to be found in the diocese of Ratisbon. That the heresy should cross the boundary line was inevitable, and it ran little risk of detection and persecution by a worldly and slothful priesthood, until it gained strength enough to declare itself openly. The alarm was first sounded by Innocent IV. in 1245, who summoned the prelates of Hungary to intervene, as those of Bohemia apparently were not to be depended upon, and there was evidently no inquisitorial machinery which could be employed. Innocent describes the heresy as established so firmly and widely that it embraced not only the simple folk, but also princes and magnates, and it was so elaborately organized that it had a chief who was reverenced as pope. These are all declared excommunicate, their lands confiscated for the benefit of the first occupant, and any who shall relapse after recantation are to be abandoned to the secular arm without a hearing, in accordance with the canons.[471]

We have no means of knowing whether any action was taken in consequence of this decree, but if efforts were made they did not succeed in eradicating the heresy. In 1257 King Premysl Otokar II. applied to Alexander IV. for aid in its suppression, as it continued to spread, and to this request was due the first introduction of the Inquisition in Bohemia. Two Franciscans, Lambert the German and Bartholomew lector in Brünn, received the papal commission as inquisitors throughout Bohemia and Moravia. It is fair to assume that they did their duty, but no traces of their activity have reached us, nor is there any evidence that their places were filled when they died or retired. The Inquisition may be considered as non-existent, and when, after a long interval, we again hear of persecution, it is in a shape that shows that the Bishop of Prague, like his metropolitan of Mainz, was not disposed to invite papal encroachments on his jurisdiction. In 1301 a synod of Prague deplored the spread of heresy and ordered every one cognizant of it to give information to the episcopal inquisitors, from which we may infer that heretics were active, that they had been little disturbed, and that the elaborate legislation elsewhere in force for the detection and punishment of heresy was virtually unknown in Bohemia.[472]

In 1318 John of Drasic, the Bishop of Prague, was summoned to Avignon by John XXII. to answer accusations brought against him by Frederic of Schönberg, Canon of Wyschehrad, as a fautor of heresy. The complaint set forth that heretics were so numerous that they had an archbishop and seven bishops, each of whom had three hundred disciples. The description of their faith would seem to indicate that there were both Waldenses and Luciferans—the latter forming part of the sect which we have seen described about this time as flourishing in Austria, where they are said to have been introduced by missionaries from Bohemia—and that their doctrines have been commingled. They are described as considering oaths unlawful; confession and absolution could be administered indifferently by layman or priest; rebaptism was allowed; the divine unity and the resurrection of the dead were denied; Jesus had only a phantasmic body; and Lucifer was expected finally to reign. Of course there were also the customary accusations of sexual excesses committed in nocturnal assemblies held in caverns, which only proves that there was sufficient dread of persecution to prevent the congregations from meeting openly. The good bishop, it appears, only permitted these wretches to be arraigned by his inquisitors after repeated pressure from John of Luxembourg, the king. Fourteen of them were convicted and handed over to the secular arm, but the bishop interfered, to the great disgust of the king, and forcibly released them, except a physician named Richard, who was imprisoned; the bishop, moreover, discharged the inquisitors, who evidently were his own officials and not papal appointees. These were serious offences on the part of a prelate, and he expiated his lenity by a confinement of several years in Avignon. Possibly his hostility to the Franciscans may have rendered him an object of attack.[473]

Papal attention being thus called to the existence of heresy in the east of Europe, and to the inefficiency of the local machinery for its extermination, steps were immediately taken for the introduction of the Inquisition. In 1318 John XXII. commissioned the Dominican Peregrine of Oppolza and the Franciscan Nicholas of Cracow as inquisitors in the dioceses of Cracow and Breslau, while Bohemia and Poland were intrusted to the Dominican Colda and the Franciscan Hartmann. As usual, the secular and ecclesiastical powers were commanded to afford them assistance whenever called upon. Poland, doubtless, was as much in need as Bohemia of inquisitorial supervision, for John Muscata, the Bishop of Cracow, was as negligent as his brother of Prague, and drew upon himself in 1319 severe reprehension from John XXII. for the sloth and neglect which had rendered heresy bold and aggressive in his diocese. This does not seem to have accomplished much, for in 1327 John found himself obliged to order the Dominican Provincial of Poland to appoint inquisitors to stem the flood of heresy which was infecting the people from regions farther west. Germany and Bohemia apparently were sending missionaries, whose labors met with much acceptance among the people. King Ladislas was especially asked to lend his aid to the inquisitors; he promptly responded by ordering the governors of his cities to support them with the civil power, and their vigorous action was rewarded with abundant success.[474]

Among these heretics there may have been Brethren of the Free Spirit, but they were probably for the most part Waldenses, who at this time had a thoroughly organized Church in Bohemia, whence emissaries were sent to Moravia, Saxony, Silesia, and Poland. They regarded Lombardy as their headquarters, to which they sent their youth for instruction, together with moneys collected for the support of the parent Church. All this could not be concealed from the vigilance of the inquisitors appointed by John XXII. No doubt active measures of repression were carried out with little intermission, though chance has only preserved an indication of inquisitorial proceedings about the year 1330. Saaz and Laun are mentioned as the cities in which heresy was most prevalent. With the open rupture between the papacy and Louis of Bavaria its repression became more difficult, although Bohemia under John of Luxembourg remained faithful to the Holy See. Heretics increased in Prague and its neighborhood; after a brief period of activity the Inquisition seems to have disappeared; John of Drasic, whose tolerance we have seen, was still Bishop of Prague, and fresh efforts were necessary. In 1335 Benedict XII. accordingly appointed the Franciscan Peter Naczeracz as inquisitor in the diocese of Olmütz and the Dominican Gall of Neuburg for that of Prague. As usual, all prelates were commanded to lend their aid, and King John was specially reminded that he held the temporal sword for the purpose of subduing the enemies of the faith. His son, the future Emperor Charles IV., at that time in charge of the kingdom, was similarly appealed to.[475]

In the subject province of Silesia, about the same period, a bold heresiarch known as John of Pirna made a deep impression. He was probably a Fraticello, as he taught that the pope was Antichrist and Rome the Whore of Babylon and a synagogue of Satan. In Breslau the magistrates and people espoused his doctrines, which were openly preached in the streets. Breslau was ecclesiastically subject to Poland, and in 1341 John of Schweidnitz was commissioned from Cracow as inquisitor to suppress the growing heresy. The people, however, arose, drove out their bishop and slew the inquisitor, for which they were subsequently subjected to humiliating penance, and John of Pirna’s bones were exhumed and burned. The unsatisfied vengeance of Heaven added to their punishment by a conflagration which destroyed nearly the whole city, during which a pious woman saw an angel with a drawn sword casting fiery coals among the houses.[476]

Bohemia and its subject provinces were thus thoroughly infected with heresy, mostly Waldensian, when several changes took place which increased the prominence of the kingdom and stimulated vastly its intellectual activity. In 1344 Prague was separated from its far-off metropolis of Mainz and was erected into an archbishopric, for which the piety of Charles, then Margrave of Bohemia, provided a zealous and enlightened prelate in the person of Arnest of Pardubitz. Two years later, in 1346, Charles was elected King of the Romans by the Electors of Trèves and Cologne in opposition to Louis of Bavaria, as the supporter of the papacy; and a month later he succeeded to the throne of Bohemia through the knightly death of the blind King John at Crécy. Still more influential and far-reaching in its results was the founding in 1347 of the University of Prague, to which the combined favor of pope and emperor gave immediate lustre. Archbishop Arnest assumed its chancellorship, learned schoolmen filled its chairs; students flocked to it from every quarter, and it soon rivalled in numbers and reputation its elder sisters of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna.[477]