Chapter VI · GERMANY. (continued 3)

From this time forward the attention of the Church was mainly directed to Hussitism, the most formidable enemy that it had encountered since the Catharism of the twelfth century. This will be considered in a following chapter, and meanwhile I need only say that its secret but threatening progress throughout Germany called for active means of repression and led to more thorough organization of the Inquisition. The bull of Martin V., issued February 22, 1418, against Wickliffites and Hussites, is addressed not only to prelates but to inquisitors commissioned in the dioceses and cities of Salzburg, Prague, Gnesen, Olmütz, Litomysl, Bamberg, Misnia, Passau, Breslau, Ratisbon, Cracow, Posen, and Neutra. While of course this is not to be taken literally, as though there were an organized tribunal of the Holy Office in each of these places, still it indicates that in the districts infected or exposed to infection the Church was arming itself with its most effective weapons. The growing danger, moreover, was leading the bishops to abandon somewhat their traditional jealousy. In this same year, 1418, the council of the great province of Salzburg not only urged the bishops to extirpate heresy and to enforce the canons against the secular powers neglecting their duty in this respect, but commanded all princes and potentates to seize and imprison all who were designated as suspect of heresy by the prelates and the inquisitors. Thus at last the episcopate recognized the Inquisition and came to its support.[457]

Yet the attention of the persecutors was not so exclusively directed to the Hussites as to allow the Brethren of the Free Spirit to escape, and in their zeal they continued to molest the orthodox Beguines in spite of the action of Martin V. at Constance. In 1431 Eugenius IV. found himself obliged to intervene for their protection. In a bull, addressed to the German prelates, he recites the favorable action of his predecessors and the troubles to which, in spite of this, they were exposed by the inquisitors. Those who wander around without fixed habitations he orders to be compelled to dwell in the houses of the confraternity, and those who reside quietly and piously are to be efficiently protected. This bull affords perhaps the only instance in which the episcopal power is rendered superior to the Inquisition, for the bishops are authorized to enforce its provisions by the censures of the Church, without appeal, even if those who interfere with the Beguines enjoy special immunities, thus subjecting the inquisitors to excommunication by the prelates. This stretch of papal power exasperated Doctor Felix Hemmerlin, Cantor of Zurich, who detested the Beguines. He wrote several bitter tracts against them, and explained the favor shown them by Eugenius by irreverently stating that the pope had himself been once a Beghard at Padua. In one of his numerous assaults upon them, written probably about 1436, he alludes to several recent cases within a limited region, which would indicate that in spite of the papal protection of the Beguines, the Brethren of the Free Spirit were actively persecuted, and that, if the statistics of the whole empire could be procured, the number of victims would be found not small. Thus in Zurich a certain Burchard and his disciples were tried and penanced with crosses; but they were subsequently found to be relapsed and were all burned. At Uri, Charles and his followers were similarly burned. At Constance Henry de Tierra was forced to abjure. At Ulm, John and a numerous company were subjected to public penance. In Würtemberg there was a great heresiarch punished, whose conviction was only secured after infinite pains. Then from Bohemia there come Beghards every year who seduce a countless number to heresy in Berne and Soleure. This leads one to think that Hemmerlin, in his passion, may confound Hussites with Beghards, and this is confirmed by his assertion that there is in Upper Germany no heresy save that introduced by the foxes of this pernicious sect. Nider, in fact, writing immediately after the Council of Basle had effected a settlement with the Hussites, when, for a time at least, in Germany they were no longer considered enemies of the Church, declares that heretics were few and powerless, skulking in concealment and not to be dreaded, although he had, in describing the errors of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, stated that they were still by no means uncommon in Suabia. It was evidently a member of this sect whom he describes as seeing at Ratisbon when proceeding with the Archdeacon of Barcelona on a mission from the Council of Basle to the Hussites. She was a young woman of spotless character, who made no effort to propagate her faith, but she could not be induced to recant. The archdeacon advised that she be tortured to break her spirit, which was done without success and without forcing her to name her confederates; but when Nider visited her in her cell during the evening, he found her exhausted with suffering, and he readily brought her to acknowledge her error, after which she made a public recantation. This shows us that there could have been no Inquisition in Ratisbon, and that the local authorities had even lost the memory of inquisitorial proceedings.[458]

In 1446 the Council of Würzburg found it necessary to repeat the canon of that of Mainz in 1310, ordering the expulsion of all wandering Beghards using the old cry of “Brod durch Gott” and preaching in caverns and secret places, showing the maintenance of the traditional customs and also the absence of more active persecution. In 1453 Nicholas V. formally adjoined them to the Mendicant Orders as Tertiaries. Some of them obeyed and formed a distinct class, known as Zepperenses, from their principal house at Zepper. They diminished greatly in number, however, and in 1650 Innocent X. united them with the Tertiaries of Italy, under the General Master residing in Lombardy. The female portion of the associations, which became distinctively known as Beguines, were more fortunate. They were able to preserve their identity and their communities, which remain flourishing to the present day, especially in the Netherlands, where in 1857 the great Beguinage of Ghent contained six hundred Beguines and two hundred locataires or boarders.[459]

Still there remained a considerable number both of heretic Brethren of the Free Spirit and of orthodox Beghards of both sexes who recalcitrated of being thus brought under rule and deprived of their accustomed independence. Thus it is related of Bernhard, who was elected Abbot of Hirsau in 1460, that among other reforms he ejected all the Beguines from their house at Altburg, on account of their impurity of life, and replaced them with Dominican Tertiaries. This aroused the hostility of the Beghards who dwelt in hermitages in the forest of Hirsau, and they conspired against the abbot, but only to their own detriment. In 1463 the Synod of Constance complains of the unlawful wearing of the Franciscan scapular by Lollards and Beguines; all who do so are required to prove their right or to lay it aside, and able-bodied Lollards are ordered to live by honest labor and not by beggary. This latter practice was ineradicable, however, and twenty years later another synod was compelled to repeat the command. In 1491 a synod of Bamberg refers to the provisions of the Clementines against the Beguines as though their enforcement was still called for; and Friar John of Moravia, who died at Brünn in 1492, is warmly praised as a fierce and indefatigable persecutor of Hussites and Beghards. These insubordinate religionists continued to exist under almost constant persecution, until the Reformation, when they served as one of the elements which contributed to the spread of Lutheranism.[460]

It was impossible that Hussitism should triumph in Bohemia without awakening an echo throughout Germany, or that the Hussites should abstain from missionary and proselyting efforts, but the spread of the heresy through the Teutonic populations was sternly and successfully repressed. In 1423 the Council of Siena, under the presidency of papal legates, showed itself fully alive to the danger. It sharply reproved both inquisitors and episcopal ordinaries for the supineness which alone could explain the threatening spread of heresy. They were urged to constant and unsparing vigilance under pain of four months' suspension from entering a church and such other punishment as might seem opportune. They were further ordered to curse the heretics with bell, book, and candle every Sunday in all the principal churches. Holy Land indulgences were offered to all who would assist them in capturing heretics, as well as to rulers who, unable to capture them, should at least expel them from their territories. The earnest tone of the council reflects the alarm that was everywhere felt, and it unquestionably led to renewed exertions, though only a few instances of successful activity chance to be recorded. Thus, in 1420, a priest, known as Henry Grünfeld, who had embraced Hussite doctrines, was burned at Ratisbon, where likewise, in 1423, another priest named Henry Rathgeber met the same fate. In 1424 a priest named John Drändorf suffered at Worms, and in 1426 Peter Turman was burned at Speier. Even after the Council of Basle had recognized the Hussites as orthodox, and under the Compactata they enjoyed toleration in states where they held temporal authority, they were still persecuted as heretics elsewhere. About 1450 John Müller ventured to preach Hussite doctrines throughout Franconia, where he met with much acceptance and gained a numerous following, but he was forced to fly, and one hundred and thirty of his disciples were seized and carried to Würzburg. There they were persuaded to recant by the Abbot John of Grumbach and Master Anthony, a preacher of the cathedral. More tragic was the fate of Frederic Reiser, a Suabian, educated in Waldensianism. Under the guise of a merchant he had served as a preacher among the Waldensian churches which maintained a secret existence throughout Germany. At Heilsbronn he was captured in a Hussite raid, when, carried to Mount Tabor, he recognized the practical identity of the faiths and received ordination at the hands of the Taborite Bishop Nicholas. He labored to bring about a union of the churches, and wandered as a missionary through Germany, Bohemia, and Switzerland. Finally he settled at Strassburg, which was always a heretic centre, and gathered a community of disciples around him. He called himself "Frederic, by the grace of God bishop of the faithful in the Roman Church who spurn the Donation of Constantine." He was detected in 1458 and arrested with his followers. Under torture he confessed all that was required of him, only to withdraw it when removed from the torture-chamber. The burgomaster, Hans Drachenfels, and the civic magistracy earnestly opposed his execution, but they were obliged to yield, and he was burned, together with his faithful servant, Anna Weiler, an old woman of Nürnberg.[461]

Reiser had been specially successful with the descendants of the Pomeranian Waldenses who, as we have seen, abjured before the inquisitor Peter in 1393. They appear to have by no means abandoned their heresy, and were easily brought to the modifications which assimilated them to the Hussites--.the adoption of bishops, priests, and deacons, the communion in both elements, and the honoring of Wickliff, Huss, and Jerome of Prague. In this same year, 1458, a tailor of Selchow, named Matthew Hagen, was arrested with three disciples and carried to Berlin for trial by order of the Elector Frederic II. He had been ordained as a priest in Bohemia by Reiser, and had returned to propagate the doctrines of the sect and administer its sacraments. His followers weakened and abjured, but he remained steadfast, and was abandoned to the secular arm. To root out the sect, Dr. John Canneman, who had tried Hagen, was sent to Angermünde as episcopal inquisitor; he found many sectaries but no obstinacy, for they willingly submitted and abjured.[462]

There was, in fact, enough in common between the doctrines of the more radical Hussites and those of the Waldenses to bring the sects eventually together. The Waldenses had by no means been extirpated, and when, in 1467, the remnant of the Taborites known as the Bohemian Brethren opened communication with them, the envoys sent had no difficulty in finding them on the confines between Austria and Moravia, where they had existed for more than two centuries. They had a bishop named Stephen, who speedily called in another bishop to perform the rite of ordination for the Brethren, showing that the heretic communities were numerous and well organized. The negotiations unfortunately attracted attention, and the Church made short work of those on whom it could lay its hands. Bishop Stephen was burned at Vienna and the flock was scattered, many of them finding refuge in Moravia. Others fled as far as Brandenburg, where already there were flourishing Waldensian communities. These were soon afterwards discovered, and steel, fire, and water were unsparingly used for their destruction, without blotting them out. A portion of those who escaped emigrated to Bohemia, where they were gladly received by the Bohemian Brethren and incorporated into their societies. The close association thus formed between the Brethren and the Waldenses resulted in a virtual coalescence which gave rise to a new word in the nomenclature of heresy. When, in 1479, Sixtus IV. confirmed Friar Thomas Gognati as Inquisitor of Vienna, he urged him to put forth every exertion to suppress the Hussites and Nicolinistæ. These latter, who took their name from Nicholas of Silesia, were evidently Bohemian Brethren who adhered to the extreme doctrine common to both sects, that nothing could justify putting a human being to death. Thus the struggle continued, and though the danger was averted which had once seemed threatening, of the widespread adoption of Hussite theories, there remained concealed enough Hussite and Waldensian hostility to Rome to serve as a nucleus of discontent and to give sufficient support to revolt when a man was found, like Luther, bold enough to clothe in words the convictions which thousands were secretly nursing.[463]

Signs, indeed, were not wanting in the fifteenth century or the inevitable rupture of the sixteenth. Prominent among those who boldly defied the power of Rome was Gregory of Heimburg, whom Ullman well designates as the citizen-Luther of the fifteenth century. He first comes into view at the Council of Basle, in the service of Æneas Sylvius, who was then one of the foremost advocates of the reforming party, and he remained steadfast to the principles which his patron bartered for the papacy. A forerunner of the Humanists, he labored to diffuse classical culture, and with his admiration for the ancients he had, like Marsiglio of Padua, imbibed the imperial theory of the relations between Church and State. With tongue and pen inspired by dauntless courage he was indefatigable to the last in maintaining the rights of the empire and the supremacy of general councils. The power of the keys, he taught, had been granted to the apostles collectively; these were represented by general councils, and the monopoly in the hands of the pope was a usurpation. His free expression of opinion infallibly brought him into collision with his early patron, and the antagonism was sharpened when Pius II. convoked the assembly of princes at Mantua to provide for a new crusade. Gregory, who was there as counsellor of the princes, boldly declared that this was only a scheme to augment the papal power and drain all Germany of money. When Nicholas of Cusa, a time-server like Pius, was appointed Bishop of Brixen and claimed property and rights regarded by Sigismund of Austria as belonging to himself, Sigismund, under Gregory's advice, arrested the bishop. Thereupon Pius, in June, 1460, laid Sigismund's territories under interdict, and induced the Swiss to attack him. Gregory drew up an appeal to a general council, which Sigismund issued, although Pius had forbidden such appeals, and he further had the hardihood to prove by Scripture, the fathers, and history, that the Church was subject to the State. It was no wonder that Gregory shared his master's excommunication. In October, 1460, he was declared a heretic, and all the faithful were ordered to seize his property and punish him. To this he responded in vigorous appeals and replications, couched in the most insolent and contemptuous language towards both Pius and Nicholas. In October, 1461, Pius sent Friar Martin of Rotenburg to preach the faith and preserve the faithful from the errors of Sigismund and his heresiarch Gregory, and, professing to believe that Martin was in personal danger, he offered an indulgence of two years and eighty days to all who would render him assistance in his need. He also ordered the magistrates of Nürnburg to seize Gregory’s property and expel him or deliver him up for punishment. We next find Gregory aiding Diether, Archbishop of Cologne, in his quarrel with Pius over the unprecedented and extortionate demand of the Holy See for annates; but Diether resigned, Sigismund made his peace, and Gregory was abandoned to his excommunication, even the city of Nürnburg withdrawing its protection. He then took refuge in Bohemia with George Podiebrad, whom he served efficiently as a controversialist, earning a special denunciation as a heretic of the worst type from Paul II., in 1469; but Podiebrad died in 1471. Gregory then went to Saxony, where Duke Albert protected him and effected his reconciliation with Sixtus IV. He was absolved at Easter, 1472, only to die in the following August, after spending a quarter of a century in ceaseless combat with the papacy.[464]

If Gregory of Heimburg embodies the revolt of the ruling classes against Rome, Hans of Niklaushausen shows us the restless spirit of opposition to sacerdotalism which was spreading among the lower strata of society. Hans Böheim was a wandering drummer or fifer from Bohemia, who chanced to settle at Niklaushausen, near Würzburg. He doubtless brought with him the revolutionary ideas of the Hussites, and he seems to have entered into an alliance with the parish priest and a Mendicant Friar or Beghard. He began to have revelations from the Virgin which suited so exactly the popular wishes that crowds speedily began to assemble to listen to him. She instructed him to announce to her people that Christ could no longer endure the pride, the avarice, and the lust of the priesthood, and that the world would be destroyed in consequence of their wickedness, unless they promptly showed signs of amendment. Tithes and tribute should be purely voluntary, tolls and customs dues were to be abolished, and game was no longer to be preserved. As the fame of these revelations spread, crowds flocked to hear the inspired teacher, from the Rhinelands, Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony, and Misnia, so that at times he addressed an audience of twenty thousand to thirty thousand souls. So great was the reverence felt for him that those who could touch him deemed themselves sanctified, and fragments of his garments were treasured as relics, so that his clothes were rent in pieces whenever he appeared, and a new suit was requisite daily. That no one doubted the truth of the Virgin’s denunciations of the clergy shows the nature of the popular estimation of the Church, for the vast crowds who came eagerly to listen were by no means composed of the dangerous elements of society. They were peaceful and orderly; men and women slept in the neighboring fields and woods and caves without fear of robbery or violence; they had money to spend, moreover, for the offerings of gold and silver, jewels, garments, and wax were large—large enough, indeed, to tempt the greed of the potentates, for after the downfall of Hans the spoils were divided between the Count of Wertheim, suzerain of Niklaushausen, the Bishop of Würzburg, and his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Mainz. The latter used a portion of his plunder in building a citadel near Mainz, the destruction of which soon afterwards by fire was generally regarded as indicating the displeasure of the Virgin.

Bishop Rudolph of Würzburg repeatedly forbade the pilgrimage to Niklaushausen, but in vain, and at length he was led to take more decided steps. The great festivity of the region was the feast of St. Kilian, the martyr of Würzburg, falling on July 8. On the Sunday previous, July 6, 1476, Hans significantly told his audience to return the following Saturday armed, but to leave their women and children at home. Matters were evidently approaching a crisis, and the bishop did not wait for the result, but sent a party of guards, who seized Hans and conveyed him to a neighboring stronghold. The next day about six thousand of his deluded followers, including many women and children, set out for the castle, without arms, believing that its walls would fall at their demand. They refused to disperse when summoned, but were readily scattered by a sally of men-at-arms, supported by a discharge from the cannon of the castle, in which many were slain. Hans was easily forced by torture to confess the falsity of his revelations and the deceits by which he and his confederates had stimulated the excitement by false miracles; but his confession did not avail him, and he was condemned to be burned. At the place of execution his followers expected divine interference, and to prevent enchantment the executioner shaved him from head to foot. He walked resolutely to the stake, singing a hymn, but his fortitude gave way and he shrieked in agony as the flames reached him. To prevent his ashes from being treasured as relics, they were carefully collected and cast into the river. The priest and Beghard who had served as his confederates sought safety in flight, but were caught and confessed, after which they were discharged; but two peasants—one who had suggested the advance upon the castle and one who had wounded the horse of one of the guards who captured Hans—were beheaded.[465]

If Gregory of Heimburg and Hans of Niklaushausen represent the antagonism to Rome which pervaded the laity from the highest to the lowest, John von Ruchrath of Wesel indicates that even in the Church the same spirit was not wanting. One of the most eminent theologians and preachers of whom Germany could boast, celebrated in the schools as the “Light of the World” and the “Master of Contradictions,” he was a hardy and somewhat violent disputant, who in his sermons had no scruple in presenting his opinions in the most offensive shape. Like Luther, of whom he was the true precursor, he commenced by an assault upon indulgences, moved thereto by the Jubilee of 1450, when pious Europe precipitated itself upon Rome to take heaven by assault. Step by step he advanced to strip the Church of its powers, and was led to reject the authority of tradition and the fathers, recurring to Scripture as the sole basis of authority. He even banished from the creed the word “Filioque,” and his predestinarian views deprived the Church of all the treasures of salvation. How little he recked of the feelings of those whose faith he assailed is seen in his remark that if fasting was instituted by St. Peter, it was probably to obtain a better market for his fish.

It shows how rusty had become the machinery of persecution and the latitude allowed to free speech that John of Wesel was permitted so long, without interference, to ripen into a heresiarch and to disseminate from the pulpit and professorial chair these opinions, as dangerous as any emitted by Waldenses, Wickliffites, or Hussites. In fact, but for the bitter quarrel between the Realists and Nominalists, which filled the scholastic world with strife, it is probable that he would have been unmolested to the end and enabled to close his days in peace. He was a leader of the Nominalists, and the Dominican Thomists of Mainz were resolved to silence him. The Archbishop of Mainz was Diether of Isenburg, who had been forced to abandon his see in 1463, but had resumed it in 1475 on the death of his competitor, Adolph of Nassau; he did not wish another conflict with Rome, to which he was exposed in consequence of his public denunciations of the papal auctions of the archiepiscopal pallium; he was threatened with this unless he would surrender John of Wesel as a victim, and he yielded to the pressure in 1479.

In the great province of Mainz there was no inquisitor; trial by the regular episcopal officials would be of uncertain result; and as there was a Dominican inquisitor at Cologne, in the person of Friar Gerhard von Elten, he was sent for. He came, accompanied by Friar Jacob Sprenger, not yet an inquisitor, but whom we shall see hereafter in that capacity busy in burning witches. With him came the theologians from the universities of Heidelberg and Cologne, who were to sit as experts and assessors, and so carefully were they selected that one of the Heidelberg doctors, to whom we are indebted for an account of the proceedings, tells us that among them all there was but one Nominalist. He evidently regards the whole matter as an incident in the scholastic strife, and says that the accused would have been acquitted had he been allowed counsel and had he not been so harshly treated.

The proceedings are a curious travesty of the inquisitorial process, which show that, however much its forms had been forgotten, the principle was rigidly maintained of treating the accused as guilty in advance. There was no secrecy attempted; everything was conducted in an assembly consisting of laymen as well as ecclesiastics, prominent among whom we recognize the Count of Wertheim, fresh from the plunder of Hans of Niklaushausen. After a preliminary meeting, when the assembly convened for business, February 8, 1479, the inquisitor von Elten presided, with Archbishop Diether under him, and opened the proceedings by suggesting that two or three friends of the accused should warn him to repent of his errors and beg for mercy, in which case he should have mercy, but otherwise not. A deputation was thereupon despatched, but their mission was not speedily performed; the inquisitor chafed at the delay, and began blustering and threatening. A high official was sent to hurry the matter, but at that moment John of Wesel entered, pallid, bent with age, leaning on his staff, and supported by two Franciscans. He was made to sit on the floor; von Elten repeated to him the message, and when he attempted to defend himself he was cut short, badgered and threatened, until he was brought to sue for pardon. After this he was put through a long and exhausting examination, and was finally remanded until the next day. A commission consisting principally of the Cologne and Heidelberg doctors was appointed to determine what should be done with him. The next day he was again brought out and examined afresh, when he endeavored to defend his views. “If all men renounce Christ,” he said, “I will still worship him and be a Christian,” to which von Elten retorted, “So say all heretics, even when at the stake.” Finally it was resolved that three doctors should be deputed, piously to exhort him to abandon his errors. As in the case of Huss, it was not his death that was wanted, but his humiliation.

On the 10th the deputies labored with him. “If Christ were here,” he told them, “and were treated like me, you would condemn him as a heretic—but he would get the better of you with his subtlety.” At length he was persuaded to acknowledge that his views were erroneous, on the deputies agreeing to take the responsibility on their own consciences. He had long been sick when the trial was commenced, all assistance was withheld from him; age, weakness, and the dark and filthy dungeon from which he had vainly begged to be relieved broke down his powers of resistance, and he submitted. He publicly recanted and abjured, his books were burned before his face, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Augustinian monastery of Mainz. He did not long survive his mortification and misery, for he died in 1481. The trial excited great interest among all the scholars of Germany, who were shocked at this treatment of a man so eminent and distinguished. Yet his writings survived him and proved greatly encouraging to the early Reformers. Melanchthon enumerates him among those who by their works kept up the continuity of the Church of Christ.[466]

It is evident from this case that the Inquisition, though not extinct in Germany, was not in working order, and that even where it existed nominally a special effort was requisite to make it function. Still we hear occasionally of the appointment of inquisitors, and from the career of Sprenger we know that their labors could be fruitfully directed to the extirpation of witchcraft. Sorcery, indeed, had become the most threatening heresy of the time, and other spiritual aberrations were attracting little attention. In the elaborate statutes issued by the Synod of Bamberg, in 1491, the section devoted to heresy dwells at much length on the details of witchcraft and magic, and mentions only one other doctrinal error—the vitiation of sacraments in polluted hands—and it directs that all who neglect to denounce heretics are to be themselves treated as accomplices, but it makes no allusion to the Inquisition. Still there is an occasional manifestation showing that inquisitors existed and sometimes exercised their powers. I shall hereafter have occasion to refer to the case of Herman of Ryswick, who was condemned and abjured in 1499, escaped from prison, and was burned as a relapsed by the inquisitor at The Hague, in 1512, and only allude to it here as an evidence of continued inquisitorial activity.[467]

The persecution of John Reuchlin, like that of John of Wesel, sprang from scholastic antagonisms, but its development shows how completely, during the interval, the inquisitorial power had wasted away. Reuchlin was a pupil of John Wessel of Groningen; as the leader of the Humanists, and the foremost representative in Germany of the new learning, he was involved in bitter controversy with the Dominicans, who, as traditional Thomists, were ready to do battle to the death for scholasticism. The ferocious jocularity with which Sebastian Brandt dilates, in his most finished Latinity, upon the torture and burning of four Dominicans at Berne, in 1509, for frauds committed in the controversy over the Immaculate Conception, indicates the temper which animated the hostile parties, even as its lighter aspect is seen in the unsparing satire of Erasmus and of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum. When, therefore, Reuchlin stood forward to protect Jews and Jewish literature against the assaults of the renegade Pfefferkorn, the opportunity to destroy him was eagerly seized. In 1513 a Dominican inquisitor, the Prior Jacob von Hochstraten, came from Cologne to Mainz on an errand precisely similar to that of his predecessor von Elten. Unlike John of Wesel, however, Reuchlin felt that he could safely appeal to Rome, where Leo X. was himself a man of culture and a Humanist. Leo was well disposed, and commissioned the Bishop of Speier to decide the question, which was in itself a direct blow at the inquisitorial power. Still more contemptuously damaging was the bishop’s judgment. Reuchlin was declared free of all suspicion of heresy, the prosecution was pronounced frivolous, and the costs were put upon Hochstraten, with a threat of excommunication for disobedience. This was confirmed at Rome, in 1415, where silence was imposed on Reuchlin’s accusers under a penalty of three thousand marks. The Humanists celebrated their victory with savage rejoicing. Eleutherius Bizenus printed a tract summoning, in rugged hexameters, all Germany to assist in the triumph of Reuchlin, in which Hochstraten—that thief, who as accuser and judge persecutes the innocent—marches in chains, with his hands tied behind his back, while Pfefferkorn, with ears and nose cut off, is dragged by a hook through his heels, face downwards, until his features lose the semblance of humanity. The Dominicans are characterized as worse than Turks, and more worthy to be resisted, and the author wonders what unjust pope and cowardly emperor had enabled them to impose their yoke on the land. These were brave words, but premature. The quarrel had attracted the attention of all Europe, the Dominican Order itself and all it represented were on trial, and it could not afford to submit to defeat. Hochstraten hastened to Rome; the Dominicans of the great University of Cologne did not hesitate to say that if the pope maintained the sentence they would appeal to the future council, they would refuse to abide by his decision, they would pronounce him to be no pope and organize a schism, and much more, which shows upon what a slender tenure the papacy held the allegiance of its Janissaries. Leo cowered before the storm which he had provoked, and in 1416 he issued a mandate superseding the sentence, but the spirit of insubordination was growing strong in Germany, and Franz von Sickingen, the free-lance, compelled its observance. As the Lutheran revolt grew more threatening, however, the support of the Dominicans became more and more indispensable, and in 1420 Leo settled the matter by setting aside the decision of the Bishop of Speier, imposing silence on Reuchlin, and laying all the costs on him. Hochstraten, moreover, was restored to his office.[468]

The reparation came too late to render the Inquisition of any service, now that its efficiency was more sorely needed than ever before. Had it existed in Germany in good working order, Luther’s career would have been short. When, October 31, 1517, he nailed his propositions concerning indulgences on the church-door of Wittenberg, and publicly defended them, an inquisitor such as Bernard Gui would have speedily silenced him, either destroying his influence by forcing him to a public recantation, or handing him over to be burned if he proved obstinate. Hundreds of hardy thinkers had been thus served, and the few who had been found stout enough to withstand the methods of the Holy Office had perished. Fortunately, as we have seen, the Inquisition never had struck root in German soil, and now it was thoroughly discredited and useless. Hochstraten’s hands were tied; Doctor John Eck, inquisitor for Bavaria and Franconia, was himself a Humanist, who could argue and threaten, but could not act.

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