The Schwabenspiegel, or code in force in southern Germany, is much more complaisant to the Church, but it knows of no jurisdiction over heretics save that of the bishops. It admits that an emperor rendering himself suspect in the faith can be put under ban by the pope. It provides death by fire for the heretic. It directs that when heretics are known to exist, the ecclesiastical courts shall inquire about them and proceed against them. If convicted, the secular judge shall seize them and doom them according to law. If he neglects or refuses he is to be excommunicated by the bishop, and his suzerain shall inflict on him the penalty of heresy. If a secular prince does not punish heresy he is to be excommunicated by the episcopal court; if he remains under the censure for a year the bishop is to report him to the pope, who shall deprive him of his rank and honors, and the emperor isbound to execute his sentence by stripping him of all his possessions, feudal and allodial. All this shows ample readiness to accept the received ecclesiastical law of the period as to heresy, but utter ignorance of the inquisitorial process is revealed in the provision which inflicts thetalioon whoever accuses another of certain crimes, including heresy, without being able to convict him. When the accuser had to accept the chances of the stake, prosecutions were not apt to be common.[393]
Towards the close of the thirteenth century and the opening of the fourteenth, attention was aroused to the dangerous tendencies of certain forms of belief lurking among some semi-religious bodies which had long enjoyed the favor of the pious and the protection of the Church, known by the names of Beguines, Beghards, Lollards, Cellites, etc. Infinite learned trifling has been wasted in imagining derivations for these appellations. The Beguines and Beghards themselves assert their descent from St. Begga, mother of Pepin of Landen, who built a Benedictine nunnery at Andennes. Another root has been sought in Lambert-le-Bègue, or the Stammerer, a priest of St. Christopher at Liège, about 1180, who became prominent by denouncing the simony of the canons of the cathedral. Prebends were openly placed for sale in the hands of a butcher named Udelin, who acted as broker, and when Lambert aroused the people to a sense of this wickedness, the bishop arrested him as a disturber, and the clergy assailed him and tore him with their nails. His connection with the Beguines arose from his affording them shelter in his house at St. Christopher, which has remained until modern times the largest and richest Beguinage of the province. The soundest opinion, however, would seem to be that both Beghard and Beguine are derived from the old German wordbeggan, signifying either to beg or to pray, while Lollard is traced tolullen, to mutter prayers.[394]
The motives were numerous which impelled multitudes to desire a religious life without assuming the awful and irrevocable vows that cut them off absolutely from the world. This was especially the case among women who chanced to be deprived of their natural guardians and who sought in those wild ages the protection which the Church alone could confer. Thus associations were formed, originally of women, who simply promised chastity and obedience while they lived in common, who assisted either by labor or beggary in providing for the common support, who were assiduous in their religious observances, and who performed such duties of hospitality and of caring for the sick as their opportunities would allow. The Netherlands were the native seat of this fruitful idea, and as early as 1065 there is a charter extant given by a convent of Beguines at Vilvorde, near Brussels. The drain of the crusades on the male population increased enormously the number of women deprived of support and protection, and gave a corresponding stimulus to the growth of the Beguinages. In time men came to form similar associations, and soon Germany, France, and Italy became filled with them. To this contributed in no small degree the insane laudation of poverty by the Franciscans and the merit conceded to a life of beggary by the immense popularity of the Mendicant Orders. Toearn a livelihood by beggary was in itself an approach to sanctity, as we have seen in the case of Conrad of Marburg and St. Elizabeth. About 1230 a certain Willem Cornelis, of Antwerp, gave up a prebend and devoted himself to teaching the pre-eminent virtue of poverty. He carried the received doctrine on the subject, however, to lengths too extravagant, for he held that poverty consumed all sin, as fire ate up rust, and that a harlot, if poor, was better than a just and continent rich man; and though he was honorably buried in the church of the Virgin Mary, yet when, four years later, these opinions came to be known, Bishop Nicholas of Cambrai caused his bones to be exhumed and burned.[395]
Extremes such as this show us the prevailing tendencies of the age, and it is necessary to appreciate these tendencies in order to understand how Europe came to tolerate the hordes of holy beggars, either wandering or living in communities, who covered the face of the land, and drained the people of their substance. Of the two classes the wanderers were the most dangerous, but in both there was the germ of future trouble, although the settled Beguines approached very nearly the Tertiaries of the Mendicants. Indeed, they frequently placed themselves under the direction of Dominicans or Franciscans, and eventually those who survived the vicissitudes of persecution mostly merged into the Tertiaries of either one Order or the other.
The rapid growth of these communities in the thirteenth century is easily explicable. Not only did they respond to the spiritual demands of the age, but they enjoyed the most exalted patronage. In Flanders the counts seem never wearied of assisting them. Gregory IX. and his successors took their institution under the special protection of the Holy See. St. Louis provided them with houses in Paris and other cities, and left them abundant legacies in his will, in which he was imitated by his sons. Under such encouragement their numbers increased enormously. In Paris there were multitudes. About 1240 they were estimated at two thousand in Cologne and its vicinity, and there were as many in the single Beguinageof Nivelle, in Brabant. Philippe de Montmirail,a pious knight who devoted himself to good works, is said to have been instrumental in providing for five thousand Beguines throughout Europe. The great Beguinage of Ghent, founded in 1234, by the Countesses of Flanders, Jeanne and Marguerite, is described in the seventeenth century as resembling a small town, surrounded with wall and fosse, containing open squares, conventual houses, dwellings, infirmary, church, and cemetery, inhabited by eight hundred or a thousand women, the younger living in the convents, the older in separate houses. They were tied by no permanent vows and were free to depart and marry at any time, but so long as they were inmates they were bound to obey the Grand Mistress. The guardianship of the establishment was hereditary in the House of Flanders, and it was under the supervision of the Dominican prior of Ghent. How large was the space that Beguinism occupied in public estimation in the thirteenth century is shown by Philippe Mousket, who calls Conrad of Marburg a Beguine, “uns bégins mestre serrmonnière.“”[396]
Those who thus lived in communities could be subjected to wholesome supervision and established rules, but it was otherwise with those who maintained an independent existence, either in one spot or wandering from place to place, sometimes supporting themselves by labor, but more frequently by beggary. Their customary persistent cry through the streets—”“Brod durch Gott“”—became a shibboleth unpleasantly familiar to the inhabitants of the German cities, which the Church repeatedly and ineffectually endeavored to suppress. A circumstance occurring about 1240 illustrates their reputation for superior sanctity and the advantages derivable from it. A certain Sibylla of Marsal near Metz, we are told, seeing how many women under the name of Beguines flourished in the appearance of religion, and under the guidance of the Dominicans, thought fit to imitate them. Assiduous attendance at matins and mass gained her the repute of peculiar holiness. Then she pretended to fast and live on celestial food, she had ecstasies and visions, and deceived the whole region, not excepting the Bishop of Metz himself. The Beguines who had hailed her as a saintly sister were excessively mortified when an accident revealed the imposture; the people were so enraged that some wanted to burn her and others to bury her alive, but the bishop shut her up in a convent,in pace, where, naturally enough, she soon died.[397]
The Church was not long in recognizing the danger inherent in these practices when withdrawn from close supervision. On the one hand there was simulated piety, like that of Sibylla of Marsal, on the other the far more serious opportunity of indulgence in unlawful speculation. In 1250 and the following years the Beguines of Cologne repeatedly sought the protection of papal legates against the oppression of both clergy and laity. Already, in 1259, a council of Mainz strongly reproved the pestiferous sect of Beghards and Beguttæ (Beguines), who wandered through the streets crying ”Broth durch Gott,” preaching in caverns and other secret places, and given to various practices disapproved by the Church. All priests were ordered to warn them to abandon these customs, and to expel from their parishes those who were obstinate. In 1267 the Council of Trèves forbade their preaching in the streets on account of the heresies which they disseminated. In 1287 a council of Liège deprived all who did not live in the Beguinages of the right to wear the peculiar habit and enjoy the privileges of Beguines. In Suabia, about the same period, some members of communities of Beghards and Beguines sought to persuade the rest that they could better serve God “in freedom of spirit,” when the bishops proceeded to abolish all such associations, and some of them asked to adopt the rule of St. Augustin.[398]
All this points to the adoption, by the followers of Ortlieb, who called themselves Brethren of the Free Spirit, of the habit and appellation of the Beghards and Beguines, and the gradual invasion among the latter of the doctrines derived from Amaury.Comparatively few of the Lollards, Beghards, or Beguines were contaminated with these heresies, but they all had to share the responsibility, and the communities of both sexes, who led the most regular lives and were inspired with the purest orthodoxy, were exposed to unnumbered tribulations for lack of a distinctive appellation. When heretics regarded as peculiarly obnoxious were anathematized as Beghards and Beguines, it was impossible for those who bore the name, without sharing the errors, to escape the common responsibility. It became even worse when John XXII. plunged into a quarrel with the Spiritual Franciscans, drove them into open rebellion, and persecuted the new heresy which he had thus created with all the unsparing wrath of his vindictive nature. In France the Tertiary Franciscans were popularly known as Beguines, and this became the appellation customarily bestowed on these Spiritual heretics, and adopted by the Avignonese popes to designate them. Not only has this led to much confusion on the part of heresiologists, but its effect, for a time, on the fortunes of the virtuous and orthodox Beguines of both sexes was most disastrous. The heretic Beghards, it is true, adopted for themselves the title of Brethren of the Free Spirit; the rebellious Franciscans insisted that they were the only legitimate representatives of the Order, and, at most, assumed the term of Spirituals, in order to distinguish themselves from their carnal-minded conventual brethren; but the authorities were long in admitting these distinctions, and, in the eyes of the Church at large, the condemnation of Beghards and Beguines covered all alike.
We have here to do only with the Brethren of the Free Spirit, whose doctrines, as we have seen, were derived from the speculations of the Amaurians carried to Germany by Ortlieb of Strassburg. Descriptions of their errors have reached us from so many sources, covering so long a period, with so general a consensus in fundamentals, that there can be little doubt as to the main principles of their faith. In a sect extending over so wide a reach of territory, and stubbornly maintaining itself through so many generations, there must necessarily have existed subdivisions, as one heresiarch or another pushed his speculations in some direction further than his fellows, and founded a special school whose aberrations there was no central authority to control. Many ofthe peculiarly repulsive extravagances attributed to them, however, may safely be ascribed to keen-witted schoolmen engaged in trying individual heretics, and forcing them to admit consequences logically but unexpectedly deduced from their admitted premises. There was no little intellectual activity in the sect, and their tracts and books of devotion, written in the vernacular, were widely distributed, and largely relied upon as means of missionary effort. These, of course, have wholly disappeared, and we are left to gather their doctrines from the condemnations passed upon them.
The foundation of their creed was pantheism. God is everything that is. There is as much of the divinity in a louse as in a man or in any other creature. All emanates from him and returns to him. As the soul thus reverts to God after death, there is neither purgatory nor hell, and all external cult is useless. Thus at one blow was destroyed the efficacy of all sacerdotal observances and of the sacraments. Of the latter, indeed, no terms were severe enough to express their contempt, and they were sometimes in the habit of saying that the Eucharist tasted to them like dung. Man being thus God by nature, has in him all that is divine, and each one may say that he himself created the universe. One of the accusations brought against Master Eckart was that he had declared that his little finger created the world. Nay, more, man can so unite himself with God that he can do whatever God does; he thus needs no God; he is impeccable, and whatever he does is without sin. In this state of perfection he grieves at nothing, he rejoices at nothing, he is free from all virtue and all virtuous actions. No one is bound to labor for his bread; as all things are in common, each one may take what his necessities or desires may prompt.[399]
The practical deductions from these doctrines were not only destructive to the Church, but dangerous to the moral and social order. The lofty mysticism of the teachers might preserve themfrom the evil results which flowed from the presumption of impeccability. In their austere stoicism they condemned all sexual indulgence save that of which the sole object was the procurement of offspring. They taught that a woman in marrying should deeply deplore the loss of her virginity, and that no one was perfect in whom promiscuous nakedness could awaken either shame or passion. That tests of this kind were not infrequent, the history of ill-regulated enthusiasm, from the time of the early Christians, will not permit us to doubt, and the Beghards succeeded so well in subduing the senses that a hostile controversialist can only suggest Satanic influence, well known to demonologists for its refrigerating power, as an explanation of their wonderful self-control under such temptation. Yet this rare exaltation of austerity was not possible to all natures. It was easy for him who had not risen superior to the allurements of the senses to imagine himself perfected, impeccable, and entitled to gratify his passions. St. Paul, in arguing against the bondage of the Old Law, had furnished texts which, when cited apart from their contexts, could be and were alleged in justification: “For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom.VIII. 2)—“The law is not made for a righteous man” (1 Tim.I. 9)—“But if ye be led of the Spirit ye are not under the law” (Galat.V. 18)—and the Brethren of the Free Spirit claimed freedom from all the trammels of the law. Such a doctrine was attractive to those who desired excuse and opportunity for license, and the evidence is too abundant and confirmatory for us to doubt that, at least in some cases, the sectaries abandoned themselves to the grossest sensuality. It is noteworthy that, in order to describe the divine internal light which they enjoyed, they invented for themselves the term Illuminism, which for more than three centuries continued to be of most serious import.[400]
As a branch of the sect may be reckoned the Luciferans, who have been repeatedly alluded to above. Pantheism, of course, includedSatan as an emanation from God, who in due time would be restored to union with the Godhead, and it was not difficult to assume that his fallen state was an injustice. In 1312 Luciferans were discovered at Krems, in the diocese of Passau, whose bishop, Bernhard, together with Conrad, Archbishop of Salzburg, and Frederic, Duke of Austria, undertook their extirpation with the aid of the Dominican Inquisition, which seems to have maintained some foothold in those regions. The persecution lasted until 1315, but the sect was not exterminated, and reappeared repeatedly in after-years. It is reported to have been thoroughly organized, with twelve “apostles” who travelled annually throughout Germany, making converts and confirming the believers in the faith. All the ceremonies of external worship were rejected, but they did not enjoy the impeccability of Illuminism, for two of their ministers were held to enter paradise every year, where they received from Enoch and Elias the power of absolving their followers, and this power they communicated to others in each community. Those who were detected proved obdurate; they were deaf to all persuasion, and met their death in the flames with the utmost cheerfulness. One of the apostles, who was burned at Vienna, stated, under torture, that there were eight thousand of them scattered throughout Bohemia, Austria, and Thuringia, besides numbers elsewhere. Bohemia was especially infected with these errors, and Trithemius, in the opening years of the sixteenth century, states that there were still thousands of them in that kingdom. This is doubtless an exaggeration, if not a complete mistake, but they were again discovered in Austria in 1338 and 1395, and many of them were burned.[401]
The tendency to mysticism which found its complete expression in the Brethren of the Free Spirit influenced greatly the development of German religious thought in channels which, although assumedly orthodox, trenched narrowly upon heresy. If, as Altmeyer argues, a period of tribulation leads to the predominance of sentiment over intellect, to the yearning for direct intercourse between the soul and the Divine Essence, which is the supreme aim of the mystic, the Germany of the fourteenth century had troublesenough to justify the development of mysticism. Yet it is rather a question of the mental characteristics of a race than of external circumstances. Bonaventura was the father of the mystics, yet he founded no sect at home; France, in the hundred years’’ war with England, had ample experience of trial, and yet mysticism never flourished on her soil. In Germany, however, the mystic tendency of religious sentiment during the fourteenth century is the most marked spiritual phenomenon of the period. Few names in the first quarter of the century were more respected than that of Master Eckart, who stood high in the ranks of the great Dominican Order. I have already (Vol. I., p. 360) related how he fell under suspicion of participating in the errors of the Beghards, how his brethren vainly strove to save him, and how the Archbishop of Cologne won a decided victory over the feeble and unorganized Dominican Inquisition by vindicating the subjection of a Dominican to his episcopal Inquisition. If the twenty-eight articles finally condemned by John XXII. as heretical be correctly extracted from Eckart’s teachings, there can be no doubt that he was deeply infected with the pantheistic speculations of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, that he admitted the common divinity of man and God, and shared in the dangerous deductions which proved that sin and virtue were the same in the eyes of God. To a hierarchy founded on sacerdotalism, moreover, nothing could be more revolutionary than the rejection of external cult, which was the necessary conclusion from the doctrine that there is no virtue in external acts, but that only the internal operations of the soul are of moment; that no man should regret the commission of sin, or ask anything of God.[402]
The importance of Eckart’s views lies not so much in his own immediate influence as in that of his disciples. He was the founder of the school of German mystics, through whom the speculationsof Amauri of Bene, in various dilutions, made a deep impression on the religious development of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. All the leaders in the remarkable association known as the “Friends of God” drew, directly or indirectly, their inspiration from Master Eckart, and all, to a greater or less extent, reveal their affinity to the Brethren of the Free Spirit, although they succeeded in keeping technically within the limits of orthodoxy.
John of Rysbroek, humane and gentle as he was, regarded the Brethren of the Free Spirit with such horror that he deemed them worthy of the stake. Yet, though he avoided their pantheism, he taught, like them, the supreme end of existence in the absorption of the individual into the infinite substance of God; moreover, the Perfect, inflamed by divine love, are dead to themselves and to the world, and are thus incapable of sin. It is no wonder that Gerson regarded as dangerous these doctrines, so nearly akin to those of the Beghards, and though Rysbroek might hesitate to draw from them the conclusions inevitable to hardier thinkers, they were sufficient to render unsuccessful the attempt made, in 1624, to canonize him, in spite of the incontestable miracles wrought at his tomb. His most distinguished disciple was Gerard Groot, who partially outgrew the metaphysical subtleties of his teacher and turned his energies to the more practical directions out of which sprang the Brethren of the Common Life. Groot was equally severe upon the corruption of the clergy and the errors of the heretics. When the introduction of the Inquisition into Germany drove the Brethren of the Free Spirit to find new places of refuge, some of them came to Holland, where the prevalence of pantheistic mysticism gave opportunity of spreading their doctrines. Groot’s own views sufficiently resembled theirs to render their bolder speculations doubly offensive to him, and he sought to repress them with especial zeal. The convent of Augustinian Hermits at Dordrecht had the reputation of being tainted with the heresy, and Groot was eager to detect and punish it. Bartholomew, one of the Augustinians, was particularly suspected, and Groot proposed to follow him secretly with a notary and take down his words. In this, or some other way, evidence was obtained; there was no Inquisition in Holland, and Groot procured his citation before Florent, Bishop of Utrecht, about the year 1380. The case was beard before the episcopal vicar; Bartholomew deniedthe expressions attributed to him and was let off with an injunction to publicly repeat the denial in Kampen and Zwolle, where he was said to have uttered his heresies. This unexpected lenity excited the indignation of Groot, who had sufficient influence to induce Bishop Florent to take up the case again and try it personally. Bartholomew endeavored to escape his persecutor by appearing a day in advance of the one set for his trial, but word was sent to Groot, who threw himself into a wagon, and by travelling all night reached Utrecht in time. On this occasion he was successful; Bartholomew was condemned as a heretic, abjured, and was sentenced to wear crosses in the form of scissors. The Augustinians did not lack friends, and they retaliated on those who had busied themselves in the matter. The magistrates of Kampen prosecuted some women who had served as witnesses and fined them, and they also banished for ten years Werner Keynkamp, a friend of Groot, who subsequently was thrice prior of houses of Brethren of the Common Life. Groot himself did not escape, for soon afterwards Bishop Florent, for the purpose of silencing him, issued an order withdrawing all commissions to preach. Groot then endeavored to procure from Urban VI. papal commissions as preacher and inquisitor, and sent to Rome ten florins to pay for the bulls. Fortunately for his fame, he died, in 1384, before the return of his messenger, and Holland was spared the effects of his inconsiderate zeal, inflamed by strife and armed with the irresponsible power of the Inquisition. In his gentler capacity he left his mantle to Florent Radewyns, under whom were developed the communities of the Common Life. These spread rapidly throughout the Netherlands and Germany, and though occasionally the subject of inquisitorial persecution, they were covered by the decision of Martin V., when Matthew Grabon, at the Council of Constance, endeavored to procure the condemnation of the Beguines, of which more anon. After this they flourished without opposition, supporting themselves by disseminating culture, as educators and copiers of manuscripts. After the Reformation the communities rapidly died out, although the house of Emmerich, near Düsseldorf, remained to be closed by Napoleon, in 1811, and the four brethren then ejected from it continued to observe the rules, till the last one, Gerard Mulder, died at Zevenaar, March 15, 1854. One branch of the brethren, however,adopted the Rule of the canons-regular of St. Augustin. Their convent of Windesheim became the model which was universally followed, and the order had the honor of training two such men as Thomas-à-Kempis and Erasmus. The Imitation of Christ is the final exquisite flower of the moderated mysticism of John of Rysbroek. Brought down to practical life, this mysticism contributed largely to the spiritual movement which culminated in the Reformation, for it taught the superfluity of external works and the dependence of the individual on himself alone for salvation. In this the Brethren of the Common Life were active. To them dogma became less important than the interior discipline which should fit men to be really children of God. Preaching among the people and teaching in the schools, such brethren as Henry Harphius, John Brugman, Denis Van Leeuwen, Jon Van Goch, and John Wessel of Groningen, were unwittingly undermining the power of the hierarchy, although they virtually escaped all imputation of heresy and danger of persecution.[403]
Less lasting, though more noticeable at the time, was the association of Friends of God, which formed itself in the upper Rhinelands. The most prominent disciple of Master Eckart was John Tauler, who retained enough of his master’s doctrines to render him amenable to the charge of heresy had there been in those days a German Inquisition in working order. That he escaped prosecution is the most conclusive evidence that the machinery of persecution was thoroughly out of gear. In the heights of his illuminated quietism all the personality of the devotee was lost in the abyss of Divinity. No human tongue could describe the resignation to God in which the whole being is merged so that it lost all sense of power of its own. No priestly ministrant or mediator was required. The individual could bring his soul into relations with the Godhead so intimate that it was virtually lost in the Divine Essence, and he could become so thoroughly under the influence of the Holy Ghost that he was, so to speak, inspired, andhis acts were the acts of the Third Person of the Trinity. All this was possible for the layman without sacerdotal observance. Man was answerable for himself to himself alone, and could make himself at one with God without the intervention of the priest.[404]
Great as was Tauler’s renown as the foremost preacher of his day, he bowed as a little child before the mysterious layman known as the Friend of God in the Oberland. In the full strength of mature manhood, when at least fifty years of age and when all Strassburg was hanging on his words, a stranger sought his presence and probed to the bottom his secret weaknesses. He was a Pharisee, proud of his learning and his skill in scholastic theology; before he could be fit for the guidance of souls he must cast off all reliance on his own strength and become as an infant relying on God alone. Overcome by the mystic power of his visitor, the doctor of theology subdued his pride, and in obedience to the command of the stranger, who never revealed his name, Tauler for two years abstained from preaching and from hearing confessions. From this struggle with himself he emerged a new man, and formed one of the remarkable band of Friends of God whom the nameless stranger was engaged in selecting and uniting.[405]
This association was not numerous, for only rare souls could rise to the altitude in which they would surely wish only what God wishes and dislike what God dislikes; but its adepts were scattered from the Netherlands to Genoa, and from the Rhinelands to Hungary. Terrible were the struggles and spiritual conflicts,the alternations of hope and despair, of ravishing ecstasies and hideous temptations, with which God tried the neophyte who sought to ascend into the serene atmosphere of mystic illuminism—struggles and conflicts which form a strangely resembling prototype of those which for long years tested the steadfastness of John Bunyan. When at length the initiation was safely endured, God drew them to him, he illuminated their souls so that they became one with him; they were gods by grace, even as he is God by nature. Then they were in a condition of absolute sinlessness, and could enjoy the assurance that it would continue during life, so that at death they would ascend at once to heaven with no preliminary purgatory.[406]
In many of their tenets and practices there is a strange reverberation of Hinduism, all the stranger that there can be no possible connection between them, unless perchance there may be some elements derived from mystic Arabic Aristotelianism, which so strongly influenced scholastic thought.[407]As the old Brahmanictapas, or austere meditation, enabled man to acquire a share of the divine nature, so the interior exercises of the Friends of God assimilated man to the Divinity, and the miraculous powers which they acquired find their prototypes in the Rishis and Rahats. The self-inflicted barbarities of the Yoga system were emulated in the efforts necessary to subdue the rebellious flesh; Rulman Merswin, for instance, used to scourge himself with wires and then rub salt into the wounds. The religious ecstasies of the Friends of God were the counterpart of the Samadhi or beatific insensibility of the Hindu; and the supreme good which they set before themselves was the same as that of the Sankhya school—the renunciation of the will and the freedom from all passions and desires, even that of salvation. Yet these resemblances were modified by the Christian sense of the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, and by the more practical character of the Western mind, which did not send its votaries into the jungle and forest, but ordered them, if laymen, to continue their worldly life; if rich, they were not to despoil themselves, but to employ their riches in good works, and to discharge their duties to man as well as to God. Rulman Merswinwas a banker, and continued in active business while founding the community of the Grün Wöhrd and writing the treatises which were the support and the comfort of the faithful. Yet the chief of them all and his immediate disciples founded a hermitage in the wilderness, where they devoted themselves to propitiating the wrath of God. The unutterable wickedness of man called for divine vengeance. Earthquakes, pestilence, famine, had been disregarded warnings, and only the intercession of the Friends of God had obtained repeated reprieves. The Great Schism, in 1378, was a new and still greater calamity, and in 1379 an angel messenger informed them that the final punishment was postponed for a year, after which they must not ask for further delay. Still, in 1380, thirteen of them were mysteriously called to assemble in a “divine diet,” to which an angel brought a letter informing them that, at the prayer of the Virgin, God had granted a respite of three years provided they would constitute themselves “prisoners of God,” living the life of recluses in absolute silence, broken only two days in the week from noon to eve, and then only to ask for necessaries or to give spiritual counsel. To this they assented, and not long afterwards they disappear from view.[408]
The Friends of God are noteworthy not only as a significant development of the spiritual tendencies of the age, but they have a peculiar interest for us from their relations with the Church on the one hand and with the Brethren of the Free Spirit on the other. They were an outgrowth of the latter, though they avoided the deplorable moral extravagances of the parent sect. The “Ninth Rock,” which was the supreme height of ascetic illuminism of the Beghards, reappears in the same sense in the most notable of Rulman Merswin’s works, attributed until recently to Henry Suso. It is no wonder that Nider confounded the Friends of God with the Beghards, though Merswin’s “Baner Buechelin” was written for the purpose of denouncing the errors of the latter. In much, as we have seen, they differed from the current doctrines of the Church, carrying their aberrations further than those which in the seventeenth century were so severely repressed in Molinos and the Illuminati. To these they added special errors of their own. Many Jews and Moslems, they said, were saved, for God abandonsnone who seek him, and though they cannot enjoy Christian baptism, God himself baptizes them spiritually in the sufferings of the death-agony. In the same spirit they refused to denounce the heretic to human justice for fear of anticipating divine justice; they could tolerate him in the world as long as God saw fit to do so. Yet they had one saving principle which preserved them from the temporal and spiritual consequences of their errors, giving us a valuable insight into the relations between the Church and heresy. While denouncing in the strongest language the corruptions and worldliness of the establishment, they professed the most implicit obedience to Rome, and much could be overlooked or pardoned so long as the supremacy of the Holy See was not called in question. When, in June, 1377, the Friend of God in the Oberland was inspired to visit, with a comrade, Gregory XI., and warn him of the dangers which threatened Christendom, they spoke to him with the utmost freedom, and though he at first was angered, he finally recognized in them the envoys of the Holy Ghost and honored them greatly, urging them to resume their abandoned design of founding a great institution of their order. Gregory was relentless in the extermination of Waldenses, Beghards, and the remnants of the Cathari, but he saw nothing to object to in the mysticism and illuminism of his visitors. He did not even take offence when they threatened him with death within the twelvemonth if he did not reform the Church. In effect he died March 28, 1378; but, if we may believe Gerson, his dying regrets were not that he had neglected these warnings, but that by too credulously listening to the visions of male and female prophets he had paved the way for the Great Schism, which he foresaw would break out when he was removed from the scene.[409]
After this hasty review of the more orthodox developments of mysticism we may return to the history of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who maintained the pantheistic doctrine in all its crudity, and did not shrink from its legitimate deductions. Towardsthe close of the thirteenth century the transcendent merits of beggary, so long acknowledged, began to be questioned. In 1274 the Council of Lyons endeavored to suppress the unauthorized mendicant associations. In 1286 Honorius IV. condemned the Segarellists, and some ten years later the persecution, by Boniface VIII., of the Celestines and stricter Franciscans showed that poverty was no longer to be regarded as the supreme virtue. About the same time he issued a bull ordering the active persecution of some heretics, whose teaching that perfection required men and women to go naked and not to labor with the hands would seem to identify them with the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The same feeling manifested itself contemporaneously in Germany. The first instance of actual persecution recorded is a curt notice that, in 1290, the Franciscan lector at Colmar caused to be arrested two Beghards and two Beguines, and several others at Basle whom he considered to be heretics. Two years later the Provincial Council of Mainz, held at Aschaffenburg, emphatically repeated the condemnation of the Beghards and Beguines, expressed by the previous council of 1259, and this was again repeated by another council of Mainz in 1310, while other canons regulating the recognized communities of Beguines show that the distinction was clearly drawn between those who led a settled life under supervision and the wandering beggars who preached in caverns and disseminated doctrines little understood, but regarded with suspicion.[410]
It was Henry von Virnenburg, Archbishop of Cologne, however, who commenced the war against them which was to last so long. Elected in 1306, he immediately assembled a provincial council, of which the first two canons are devoted to them with an amplitude proving how important they were becoming. They wore a long tabard and tunics with cowls distinguishing them from the people at large; they had the hardihood to engage in public disputation with the Franciscans and Dominicans, and the obstinacy to refuse to be overcome in argument, and, what was worse, their persistent beggary was so successful that it sensibly diminished the alms which were the support of the authorizedMendicants. All this shows the absence of any papal inquisition and an enjoyment of practical toleration unknown outside of the boundaries of Germany, but it may be assumed that the Beghards did not publicly reveal their more dangerous and repulsive doctrines, for the enumeration of their errors by the council presents them in a very moderate form. Still, the archbishop pronounced them excommunicated heretics, to be suppressed by the secular arm unless they recanted within fifteen days. A month was given them to abandon their garments and mode of life, after which they were to earn their bread by honest labor. This was well-intentioned legislation, but it seems to have remained wholly inoperative. The Beghards continued to assail the Mendicants with such ardor and success that the Franciscans, who were crippled by the death of their lector in 1305, applied for succor to their general, Gonsalvo. The necessity must have been pressing, for in 1308 he sent to their assistance the greatest schoolman of the Order, Duns Scotus. He was received with the enthusiasm which his eminence merited, but, unfortunately, he died in November of the same year, and the Beghards were able to continue their proselytism without efficient opposition.[411]
About this time their missionary labors seem to have become particularly active and to have attracted wide attention. We have seen how, in 1310, the Beguine, Marguerite Porete of Hainault, was burned in Paris, and bore her martyrdom with unshrinking firmness. In the same year occurred the Council of Mainz already referred to, and also a council of Trèves, in which their unauthorized exposition of Scripture was denounced, and all parish priests were required to summon them to abandon their evil ways within a fortnight, under pain of excommunication. In 1309 we hear of certain wandering hypocrites called Lollards, who, throughout Hainault and Brabant, had considerable success in obtaining converts among noble ladies.[412]
This missionary fervor seems to have attracted attention to the sect, leading to special condemnation under the authority of theGeneral Council of Vienne, which was assembled in November, 1311. The heresy had evidently been studied with some care, for the first tolerably complete account which we have of its doctrines is embodied in the canon proscribing it. Bishops and inquisitors were ordered to perform their office diligently in tracking all who entertained it, and seeing that they were duly punished unless they would freely abjure. Unfortunately, Clement’s zeal was not satisfied with this. The pious women who lived in communities under the name of Beguines were not easily distinguishable from the heretical wanderers. In another canon, therefore, the Beguinages are described as infected with those who dispute about the Trinity and the Divine Essence and disseminate opinions contrary to the faith. These establishments are therefore abolished. At the same time there was evidently a feeling that this was inflicting a wrong, and the canon ends with the contradictory declaration that faithful women, either vowing chastity or not, may live together in houses and devote themselves to penitence and the service of God. There was a lamentable lack of clearness about this which left it for the local prelates to interpret their duty according to their wishes.[413]
The Clementines, or book of canon law containing these provisions, was not issued during Clement’s life, and it was not until November, 1317, that his successor, John XXII., gave them legal force by their authoritative publication. Apparently the bishops waited for this, for during the interim we hear nothing of persecution, until August, 1317, just before the issue of the Clementines, when John of Zurich, Bishop of Strassburg, suddenly took the matter up. He did not act under the canons of Vienne, but under those of 1310 adopted by the Council of Mainz, of which province he was a suffragan; but an allusion to the penalties decreed by the Holy See shows that the action at Vienne was known. The Beghards apparently had sought no concealment, for he threatened with excommunication all who should not within three days lay aside the distinguishing garments of the sect, and their fearless publicity is further shown by the bishop’s confiscating the houses in which their assemblies were held, and forbidding any one to read or listen to or possess their hymns and writings, whichwere to be delivered up for burning within fifteen days. The fact that among them were many clerks in holy orders, monks, married folks, and others, shows that their opinions were widely held among those who were not mere wandering beggars—the latter probably being merely the missionaries who made converts and administered to the spiritual needs of the faithful. John of Zurich was not content with merely threatening. He made a visitation of his diocese, in which he found many of the sectaries. He organized an Inquisition of learned theologians, by whom they were tried; those who recanted were sentenced to wear crosses—the first authentic record in Germany of the use of this penance, so long since established elsewhere—and those who were obstinate he handed over to the secular arm to be burned. These active proceedings may be regarded as the first regular exercise of the episcopal Inquisition on German soil. Multitudes of Beghards fled from the diocese, and in June, 1318, the bishop had the satisfaction of reporting his success to his fellow-suffragans and urging them to follow his example. Yet this persecution, if sharp, was transitory, for in 1319 we find him again issuing letters to his clergy, saying that the Clementines had been enforced elsewhere, but not in the diocese of Strassburg. All incumbents are ordered, under pain of suspension, to require the Beguines to lay aside their vestments within fifteen days and to conform to the usages of the Church. If any refuse, the inquisitors will be instructed to inquire into their faith.[414]
Meanwhile the publication of the Clementines had produced results not corresponding exactly to the intentions of Clement. The canon directed against the heretics received little attention, and five years elapse before we hear of any serious persecutions under it. The heretics were poor; there were no spoils to tempt episcopal officials to the thankless labor of tracking them and trying them, and few of the bishops had the zeal of John of Zurich to divert them from their temporal cares and pleasures. The Beguinages, however, were an easy prey; there was property to be confiscated in reward of intelligent activity. Besides, many of the establishments were under the supervision of the Mendicant Orders, and were virtually or absolutely Tertiary houses, the destruction of which gratified the inextinguishable jealousy between the secular clergy and the Orders; the struggle between John XXII. and the Franciscans, moreover, was commencing, and the Tertiaries of the latter, who were popularly known as Beguines in France, were fair game. The bishops for the most part, therefore, neglected the saving clause of the canon respecting the Beguinages, and construed literally and pitilessly the orders for their abolition. So eager were they to gratify their vindictiveness against the Mendicants that, when these interfered to save their Tertiaries, they were excommunicated as fautors and defenders of heresy. Thus arose a persecution which, though bloodless, was most deplorable. All through France and Germany and Italy the poor creatures were turned adrift upon the world, without means of support. Those who could, found husbands; many were driven to a life of prostitution, others, doubtless, perished of want and exposure. Even the quasi-conventual dress to which they were accustomed was proscribed, and they were forced to wear gay colors under pain of excommunication. In the history of the Church there have been many more cruel persecutions, but few which in suddenness and extent have caused greater misery, and none, we are safe to say, so wanton, causeless, and lacking even the shadow of justification. The impression made on the popularmind is seen in the current report that on his death-bed Clement bitterly repented of three things—that he had poisoned the Emperor Henry VII. and that he had destroyed the Orders of the Templars and of the Beguines.[415]
The Church had declared, in the great Council of Lateran, that no congregations should be allowed to exist save under some approved rule. The Beguines had gradually, almost unconsciously, grown up in practical contravention of this canon. The solution of their present difficulties lay in attaching themselves to some recognized Order, and John XXII., in 1319, recognizing the mischief wrought by the heedless legislation of Vienne, promised exemption from further persecution of those who would become Mendicant Tertiaries. Large numbers of them sought this refuge, though their adhesion was more nominal than real. They preserved their self-government, their habits of labor, and their ownership of individual property. In a bull of December 31, 1320, and others of later date, John drew the distinction between those who lived piously and obediently in their houses, and those who wandered around disputing on matters of faith. The former, he is told, amount to two hundred thousand in Germany alone, and he bitterly reproached the bishops who were disturbing them on account of the comparatively small number whose misconduct had drawn forth the misinterpreted condemnation of Clement. They are in future to be left in peace. This, at least, put an end, in 1321, to the persecution of those of Strassburg.[416]
The innocent Beguines thus obtained a breathing-space, and the gaps in their ranks were soon filled up. The obnoxious members, however, felt the effects of the Clementine canon as severely as the habitual sloth and indifference of the German prelates in such matters would permit. Archbishop Henry, of Cologne, wasone of the few who manifested an active interest in the matter, and his exertions were rewarded with considerable success. The Lollards and Beghards no longer ventured to show themselves publicly, and in the absence of organized machinery it was not easy to detect them, but in 1322 the archbishop had the good fortune to capture the most formidable heresiarch of the region. Walter, known as the Lollard, was a Hollander, and was the most active and successful of the Beghard missionaries. He was not an educated man, and was ignorant of Latin, but he had a keen intelligence and ready eloquence, indefatigable enthusiasm and persuasiveness. His proselyting labors were facilitated by his numerous writings in the vernacular, which were eagerly circulated from hand to hand. He had been busy in Mainz, where he had numerous disciples, and came from there to Cologne, where he chanced to fall into the archbishop’s hands. He made no secret of his belief, refused to abjure, and welcomed death in the service of his faith. The severest tortures were vainly employed to force him to reveal the names of his fellow-believers; his constancy was unalterable, and he perished in the flames with serene cheerfulness.[417]
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 thusbrought 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 topious 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 supernaturalembroidery, 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 ofthe 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 notbeen 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 prophetshad 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 chosenescudierto fill a vacancy, records in his diary that all the consuls were carried off, all theirescudiersor assistants, and all theclavarsor 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 cloaksbearing 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 strictlyprohibited, 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—