Note 992 — XXIV. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

Comp. Doeringii Chron. passim. Döringk was minister or head of the powerful Franciscan order in Saxony, and therefore may be considered an unexceptionable witness.

In the Polish diet of 1459, one of its leading members brought forward a series of propositions which showed the feelings entertained by the people towards papal exactions—“The Bishop of Rome has invented a most unjust motive for imposing taxes—the war against the infidels.... The Pope feigns that he employs his treasures in the erection of churches; but in fact he employs them to enrich his relations,” etc.—Krasinski, Reformation in Poland I. 96.

The councils of Constance and Bâle had produced, for a time, a spirit of great independence. John of Frankfort does not hesitate to declare that the papal authority is not binding when in opposition to the law of God—“Unde patet quod nec papalis vel et imperialis constitutio legi Dei obvians possit dici recta; nec aliquis ipsorum potest licite mandare quod sua constitutio servetur a subditis” (Johann. de Francford. contra Feymeros). According to the decisions of the Decretalists, this was rank heresy, and yet John of Frankfort was one of the leading minds of the period, and of unquestioned orthodoxy. He was a popular preacher, a doctor of theology, chaplain and secretary of the Count Palatine of the Rhine, and a bold disputant against the Hussites. He records with his own hand that, as inquisitor, he convicted and burned, July 4th, 1429, at Lüders, an unfortunate heretic who denied the propriety of invoking the Virgin and the saints. Under the skilful management, however, of Nicholas V. and Pius II. this spirit of independence died away, to again revive, in the next century, in a more determined form.