Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/342

 gog GERMANY. his bread by beggary. Though he could have aspired to any dig- nity in the Church, which reverenced him as its greatest apostle and though for years all the benefices of Thuringia were placed by the Landgrave Louis at his absolute disposal, he never accepted a single preferment. Devoted solely to the work of the Lord, his fiery soul and unrelaxing energies were directed with absolute sin- gleness of purpose to advancing the kingdom of heaven upon earth, according to the light which was in him.* Stern in temper and narrow in mind, his bigotry was ardent to the pitch of insanity. What were his conceptions of the duty ot man to his Creator and how his conscience led him to abuse un- limited authority can best be judged by his course as spiritual director of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia. The daughter o Andreas of Hungary, born in 1207, married in 1221, at the age of thirteen, to Louis of Thuringia, one of the most powerful of German princes^^ a mother at fourteen, a widow at twenty, and dymg of self-mflicted sistently claimed by the Dominicans as an ornament of their Order. Their legend lates that he was miraculonsly drawn into it in 1220 l.y t. Doj- — ; who earnestly desired him as a colleague, and who prompt y sent h.m to Ger Tany with a commission as inqnisitor (Monteiro, Historia «3«; /-a Inqu.sr.ao P " Liv i. c. 48.-Jac. de Voragine Legend. Aur. fol. 90a, Ed "SO-P-^''. ™ 248-9) and RipoU assumes it as a matter of course, though he foiled to fur- bL us wHh the promised dissertation to prove it (Bull. Dom n. I. 20, 52) See I o Kaltner, pp. 76-82. The claim is based upon his inquisitona act.v.tj, h. voTuntary poverty, and the title of pr<^icator, which he bore m v.rtue of a papal LmSn-arguments flimsy enough, but better than that of his lates cham- In Hausrath, who cites an expression in a letter of Gregory IX. character^z.n.. Con^das d e watch-dog of the Lord-" Dcninicu. canu " (Hoffman, Gesch.cht. d Inq I 92). Of course a negative, such as the present, can only be proved by nega ves, but these are sufficient. In numerous letters to h.m from Hononus III Ind Gregory IX. he is never addressed as ■' FraUr^ the term rnvanably used by the Menlicants. The superscription always is " M<.<,istro Conra^ * Ma^n.c^ /itori VerU Be, or the equivalent-Conrad being P--ab ^ ^ mast m, /T^ • 4.4. a^^ YTTT T T No 51 117, 118, 126, 361, 362, 4S4, 5drf, oo/;. ■ SS nCchtnicrof'he tL°e he'is n;ver ;po.en of as •• Fr.^^^^^.^■ wTv as " MagUUr Conradu^r Besides, Theodoric of Thur,ng,a, hrnrself a Do- m n can afd almost a contemporary, in his life of St. Elizabeth ^^scnl^s Conrad X most exalted terms, without claiming him for his Order, whK=h e could hast No. 7930.-Epistt. S(Bc. XUL T. L No. 361.