Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/521

Rh princes or governments that at this time repudiated the temporal authority of the Papal See, did not think of challenging the claims of the Popes to recognition as the supreme head of the Church, and the rightful arbiters in all spiritual matters. At the very time that they were striving to emancipate themselves from papal control in temporal matters, they were lending the Church all their strength to punish heresy and schism. Thus the Albigenses in Southern France, the Lollards in England, and the Hussites in Bohemia, were extirpated or punished by the civil authorities, acting either in accordance with the then universal idea of how heresy should be dealt with, or in obedience to the commands of the Roman See.