Chapter VI: Germany (2)

Maddened by his defeat, Conrad at once proceeded to preach in the streets of Mainz a crusade against some nobles who had been summoned and who had not appeared. To this both the archbishop and the king objected, and he was forced to desist. With his usual impulsiveness he then abruptly determined to quit an ungrateful world, and to live henceforth in retirement at Marburg. The king and archbishop offered him an armed escort, but he would accept nothing save letters of surety, and with these he departed to meet his fate. Those against whom his crusade had been preached lay in wait for him near Marburg and despatched him, July 31, regardless of his entreaties for mercy. His faithful follower, Friar Gerhard, refused the opportunity offered him to escape, threw himself on the body of his beloved master, and perished with him. The scene of the murder is supposed to be Kappeln on the Lahnsberg, where a chapel was erected to commemorate it. The body was carried to Marburg and buried by the side of St. Elizabeth, and when the latter was translated to the magnificent Elizabethskirche, his bones were likewise carried thither.[380]

The immediate reputation which Conrad left behind him is shown by the vision, related by a contemporary, which indicated that he was hopelessly damned. Modern ecclesiastics, however, take a more favorable view of his career, and even the amiable Alban Butler describes him as a virtuous and enlightened priest, who rendered great service by his preaching, and whose fervor, disinterestedness, and love of poverty and austerity rendered him a model for his contemporaries. Yet, unaccountably, the Church has not yet proceeded to his vindication as a martyred saint, and has neglected to place him alongside of those kindred spirits, St. Peter Martyr and St. Pedro Arbues.[381]

With Conrad's withdrawal from the Council of Mainz the proceedings of which he had been the mainspring came to an end at once. "Thus," says a contemporary ecclesiastic, "ceased this storm, the most dangerous persecution of the faithful since the days of Constantius the Heretic and Julian the Apostate. People once more began to breathe. Count Sayn was a wall for the mansion of the Lord, lest this madness should rage further, enveloping guilty and innocent alike, bishops and princes, religious and Catholics, like peasants and heretics." The murderers evidently felt that they had nothing to dread from public opinion, for they voluntarily came forward and offered to submit themselves to the judgment of the Church as regards the heresy whereof Conrad had accused them, and to the secular tribunals as regards the homicide, agreeing to present themselves for examination at a diet of the empire which was ordered for February, 1234, at Frankfort.[382]

Gregory, who in June had been ordering a crusade preached against the heretics, and had been stimulating prince and prelate to a yet more ferocious persecution, was moved to regret when the envoy of the assembly of Mainz, Conrad, the "Scholasticus" of Speier, presented letters from the king and bishops describing the arbitrary methods of his inquisitor. He ordered letters drawn up prescribing a more regular form of trial for heretics; but before the envoy had permission to depart, there arrived the originator of the trouble, Conrad Tors, with the pitiful tale of the Master's martyrdom. At this news the emotional pope could not contain his wrath. The letters just written were recalled and torn up, and the unlucky envoy was threatened with the deprivation of all his benefices. Under the remonstrances of the Sacred College, however, Gregory's ire subsided sufficiently to allow him to renew the letters and to enable the envoy to depart unscathed. The pope solaced himself, however, with pouring out his grief at full length in letters to the German prelates. The death of Conrad was a thunderclap which had shaken the walls of the Christian sanctuary. No words were strong enough to describe the transcendant merits and services of the martyr, and no punishment could be invented too severe for the murderers. The bishops were roundly rated for their indifference in the matter, and were ordered to take immediate and effective measures. The Dominican provincial, Conrad, was commanded, in conjunction with the bishops, to carry on the Inquisition vigorously, and to preach a crusade against the heretics.[383]

In spite of this furious grief and wrath the German prelates maintained a most provoking calmness. The fanatic Conrad, Bishop of Hildesheim, it is true, preached a crusade as ordered by the pope, and under his impulsion the Landgrave, Conrad of Thuringia, zealously purged his land of heretics, and completely destroyed all their assemblies, levelling to the ground Willnsdorf, which was reckoned their chief abiding-place; while his brother, Henry Raspe, and Hartmann, Count of Kiburg (Zurich), took the cross under the same auspices, and received, in consequence, papal protection for their dominions. Even this measure of activity, however, was regarded unfavorably in Germany, and there was no response to the cry for vengeance. The Diet of Frankfort duly assembled February 2, 1234, and the first business recorded was an accusation brought by King Henry himself against the Bishop of Hildesheim for having preached the crusade; it was treated as an offence, and though he was pardoned by unanimous request, the recalcitrance against the papal tendencies was none the less significant. Then the memory of the martyred Conrad was arraigned, and this, as a matter of faith, was discussed by the ecclesiastics separately. There were twenty-five archbishops and bishops present, who were almost unanimous in condemning him, while the Bishop of Hildesheim and a Dominican named Otto strenuously defended him. One of the prelates exclaimed that Master Conrad ought to be dug up and burned as a heretic; but no conclusion seems to have been reached, for the proceedings were interrupted by the introduction of a procession of those whom he had shaved in penance the preceding year, who marched in with a cross at their head, and complained of his cruelty with dolorous cries, when a tumult arose from which his defenders were glad to escape with their lives. On the following Monday the solemn purgation of Count Sayn took place in the field of judgment beyond the walls. Eight bishops, twelve Cistercian and three Benedictine abbots, twelve Franciscan and three Dominican friars, who, with many other clerks and numerous nobles, took part in his oath of denial, show how emphatically the German hierarchy desired to disclaim all sympathy with Conrad's acts. Count Solms, whom Conrad had forced to confession, went through the same ceremony, declaring with tears in his eyes that the fear of death alone had compelled him to admit himself guilty. The diet then proceeded to legislate for the future, and its slender enunciation on the subject of heresy can have carried little comfort to the wrathful Gregory. It simply commanded that all who exercised judicial functions should use every effort to purge the land of heresy, but at the same time it cautioned them to prefer justice to unjust persecution.[384]

Two months later, April 2, 1234, a council was held at Mainz for final action. Count Sayn and others who had been accused were subjected to a form of examination, were declared innocent, and were restored to reputation and to their possessions. Conrad's unlucky witnesses who had been forced to commit perjury were ordered to undergo a penance of seven years; those who had accused the innocent were maliciously sent to the pope for the imposition of penance, and he was, in the same spirit, asked what should be done about those whom Conrad had unjustly burned. As for the murderers, they were simply excommunicated.[385]

All this was a direct challenge to the Holy See, but Gregory prudently delayed action. He was involved in troubles with the Romans which rendered inadvisable any trial of strength with the united Teutonic Church. He sent his penitentiary, Bernard, who made an investigation on the spot, and, in conjunction with Archbishop Sigfried, furnished him with a report to which we are indebted for most of our knowledge of the affair. On receiving this, Gregory expressed his regret that he had intrusted to Master Conrad the enormous powers which had led to a result so lamentable. Still his decision was delayed. Towards the end of the year 1234 he appealed earnestly to the German bishops for aid in his quarrel with the Romans, which continued until he made peace with them in April, 1235. His hands were now free, but it was not until July that he trusted himself to express his indignation. Then he scolded most vehemently the Council of Mainz for daring, in the absence of any defenders of the faith, to absolve those whom Conrad had prosecuted, and for sending to him for absolution the murderers, without having first exacted of them full satisfaction for their detestable crime. His sentence upon them is that they shall join the crusade to Palestine when it sets sail the following March, giving good security to insure their obedience, and meanwhile they shall visit all the greater churches in the region of the crime, bare-footed and naked, except drawers, with a halter around the neck, and a rod in the hand, and, when the affluence of people is the greatest, cause themselves to be scourged by all the priests, while they chant the penitential psalms, and publicly confess their guilt. After this they may be absolved.[386]

It is satisfactory to know that the immediate author of the troubles met with the fate which he deserved. Conrad Tors, on his return from Rome, endeavored to resume his interrupted labors, but the temper of the people had changed, and the victims were no longer unresisting. At Strassburg he summoned the Junker Heinz von Müllenheim, who unceremoniously settled the accusation by slaying him. His assistant, the one-eyed John, met an even more ignominious fate, for he was recognized at Freiburg and hanged.[387]

Thus ended this terrible drama, which left an impression of horror on the souls of the German people not easily effaced. The number of Conrad's victims can only be guessed at. Some chroniclers vaguely speak of them as innumerable, and one asserts that a thousand unfortunates were burned. Although this is probably an exaggeration, for the period of Conrad's insane activity cannot have exceeded a twelvemonth, yet the number must have been considerable to produce so profound an impression on a generation which was by no means susceptible.[388]

One good result there undoubtedly was. The universal detestation excited by Conrad's crazy fanaticism rendered it comparatively easy for the bishops to maintain the jurisdiction which they had assumed, and to keep the Inquisition confined within narrow limits. For a time this was doubtless facilitated by the open quarrels between Frederic II. and the papacy, but even after his death, during the Great Interregnum and the reigns of emperors who were more or less dependent upon the Holy See, more than a century was to pass away before the popes, who were so zealously organizing and strengthening it elsewhere, made a serious effort to establish the Inquisition in Germany. We hear of no endeavors on their part, we meet with no appointments or commissions of German inquisitors. It seems to have been tacitly understood that the institution was unfitted for German soil until a period when it had fairly entered into decadence in the lands where its growth was the rankest.

The excitement of Conrad of Marburg's exploits was naturally succeeded by a reaction. In 1233 the murder of Bishop Berthold of Coire, attributed to heretics, shows how far persecution spread, accompanied by a dangerous tendency to resistance. Throughout 1234 both Dominicans and Franciscans are reported as busy, with the result of numerous burnings; but the lesson taught by the attitude of the German prelates was not lost, and in 1235 the magistrates of Strassburg enjoined on them to seek conversions by preaching, and not to burn people without at least giving them a hearing. The languor and reaction continued. We have seen from the complaints of the Count of Salins, in 1248, and the fruitless efforts of Innocent IV. to establish the Inquisition in Besançon, that the western borders of Germany were full of Waldenses who had little to dread. At the same period there was a demonstration in the neighborhood of Halle which may be reasonably regarded as Waldensian. The papacy had succeeded in raising a rival to Frederic in the person of William of Holland, and a crusade was on foot in his favor against Conrad, Frederic's son. The imperialists would naturally regard with favor the Waldensian doctrines denying the power of the keys and the obedience due to interdicts, and they might not object further to the tenet that sinful priests cannot administer the sacraments. Such were the dogmas attributed to the heretics of Halle, who came boldly forward in 1248, were eagerly listened to by the nobles, and were favored by King Conrad, but they speedily disappeared from sight in the changeful circumstances of that tumultuous time.[389]

We have much more distinct indications of the existence both of heresy and of the Inquisition in the writings of David of Augsburg, and of the author now generally known as the Passauer Anonymus. The date of the latter is not absolutely certain, but it cannot vary much from 1260. His field of action was the extensive diocese of Passau, stretching from the Iser to the Leitha, and from Bohemia to Styria, embracing eastern Bavaria and northern Austria. His instructions seem to take for granted the existence of an organized Inquisition with its fully developed code of procedure, but his description of the prevalence of Waldensianism would indicate that it was almost inoperative. He tells us that he had often been concerned in the inquisition and examination of the "schools," or communities, of Waldenses, of which there were forty-one in the diocese, ten of them being in the single town of Clamme, where the heretics slew the parish priest without any one being punished for it. There were also forty-one Waldensian churches, organized under a bishop residing in Empenbach, and there was a school for lepers at Newenhoffen. All this shows a prosperous growth of heresy little disturbed by persecution. It is observable that the places enumerated as the seats of these churches are mostly insignificant villages, the larger towns appear to be avoided, and the heretics belong to the humbler classes--mostly peasants and mechanics. Their wonderful familiarity with Scripture and their self-devoted earnestness in making converts have already been alluded to. From the writer's long description of the tenets of the Ordibarii and Ortlibenses it is evident that they formed a fair proportion of the heretics with whom the inquisitor had to deal, and their belief that the Day of Judgment would come when the pope and the emperor should be converted to their sect, indicates the hopefulness of a faith that is growing and spreading. Soon afterwards we hear of Waldenses captured in the diocese of Ratisbon, and their continued activity, in spite of persecution, through all the south German regions.[390]

There was little on the part of the Inquisition or the bishops to prevent the growth and spread of heresy. During the Interregnum, in 1261, a council of Mainz seems suddenly to have awakened to a sense of neglected duty in the premises; it vigorously anathematized all heretics after the fashion customary in the papal bulls, and it strictly commanded the bishops of the province to labor zealously for the extermination of heresy in their respective dioceses, enforcing, with regard to the persons and property of heretics, the papal constitutions and the statutes of a former provincial council. There is here no sign of the existence of a papal Inquisition, and the episcopal activity which was threatened appears to have lain dormant, though the action of the council would seem to show that heretics were numerous enough to attract attention. It is true that, in the chancery of Rodolph of Hapsburg, whose reign extended from 1273 to 1292, there was a formula for acknowledging and confirming the papal commissions presented by inquisitors, showing that this must, at least occasionally, have been done. The emperor calls God to witness that his chief object in accepting the crown was to be able to defend the faith; he alludes to the exercise of inquisitorial jurisdiction over the descendants of heretics as well as over heretics themselves, but he carefully inserts a saving clause to the effect that the accused must be legitimately proved guilty and be properly condemned. If, however, inquisitors presented themselves to obtain this recognition of their powers, they have left no visible traces of the results of their activity.[391]

In the codes which embody the customs current in mediæval Germany there is no recognition whatever of the existence of such a body as the Inquisition. The Sachsenspiegel, which contains the municipal law of the northern provinces, provides, it is true, the punishment of burning for those convicted of unbelief, poisoning, or sorcery, but says nothing as to the manner of trial; and the rule enunciated that no houses shall be destroyed except when rape is committed in them, or a violated woman is carried into them, shows that the demolition of the residences and refuges of heretics was unknown within its jurisdiction. The code throughout is singularly disregardful of ecclesiastical pretensions, and richly earned the papal anathema bestowed upon it when its practical working happened to attract the attention of the Roman curia.[392]

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 is bound 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 the _talio_ on 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 word _beggan_, signifying either to beg or to pray, while Lollard is traced to _lullen_, 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. To earn 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 of the 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 them from 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, included Satan 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 troubles enough 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 speculations of 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 denied the 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, and his 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 Brahmanic _tapas_, 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 Merswin was 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 abandons none 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]