Note 364 — Chapter VI · GERMANY.

Conrad of Marburg was too shining a light not to be earnestly and persistently claimed by the Dominicans as an ornament of their Order. Their legend relates that he was miraculously drawn into it in 1220 by St. Dominic himself, who earnestly desired him as a colleague, and who promptly sent him to Germany with a commission as inquisitor (Monteiro, Historia da Sacra Inquisição, P. I. Liv. i. c. 48.--Jac. de Voragine Legend. Aur. fol. 90a, Ed. 1480.--Paramo, pp. 248-9), and Ripoll assumes it as a matter of course, though he failed to furnish us with the promised dissertation to prove it (Bull. Domin. I. 20, 52). See also Kaltner, pp. 76-82. The claim is based upon his inquisitorial activity, his voluntary poverty, and the title of prædicator, which he bore in virtue of a papal commission--arguments flimsy enough, but better than that of his latest champion, Hausrath, who cites an expression in a letter of Gregory IX. characterizing Conrad as the watch-dog of the Lord--“Dominicus canis” (Hoffman, Geschichte d. Inq,. II. 392). Of course a negative, such as the present, can only be proved by negatives, but these are sufficient. In numerous letters to him from Honorius III. and Gregory IX. he is never addressed as “Frater,” the term invariably used by the Mendicants. The superscription always is “Magistro Conrado de Marburo prædicatori Verbi Dei, or the equivalent--Conrad being presumably a master in theology (Epistt. Sæc. XIII. T. I. No. 51, 117, 118, 126, 361, 362, 484, 533, 537). Similarly in the chronicles of the time he is never spoken of as ”Frater,“ but always as ”Magister Conradus.” Besides, Theodoric of Thuringia, himself a Dominican, and almost a contemporary, in his life of St. Elizabeth describes Conrad in the moat exalted terms, without claiming him for his Order, which he could not have avoided doing had there been ground for it (Canisii Thesaur. IV. 116).