Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/354

 338 GERMANY. From this last fact we gather that the prelates of the land, while not interfering effectively to protect their people, had, at least, taken no part in the insane persecution which was raging. Conrad had found plenty of assistants among the Dominicans and Franciscans, but the secular hierarchy had held aloof. In vain had Gregory, in October, 1232, written to them and to the prmces, telling them that the heretics who formerly lay in hiding were now coming forward openly, like war-horses harnessed for bat- tle, publicly preaching their errors and seeking the perdition of the simple and ignorant. Faith was rare in Germany, he said, and, therefore, he ordered them to make vigorous inquisition throughout their lands, seizing all heretics and suspects, and pro- ceeding against them in accordance with the papal decrees of 1231. The appeal feU upon deaf ears. The bishops seem to have been thoroughly disturbed by the encroachments which the pa- pacy was making on their independence through the new agen- cies which it was bringing into play. The Mendicant Orders were already a sufficiently dangerous factor, and now came these new inquisitors, armed with papal commissions, superseding their time-honored jurisdiction in every spot within their dioceses. It is no wonder that they felt alarmed, and that they held aloof. The German prelates were great secular princes, combining civil and spiritual authority. The three electoral archbishops-Mam z, Treves, and Cologne— stood on a level as temporal lords with the most powerful princes of the empire, and the wide extent of many of the dioceses rendered the bishops scarcely less formidable. They were always suffering from the greed of the Eoman curia, and were perpetually involved in struggles to resist its encroach- ments. Frederic II., indeed, by his constitutions of 1232, had increased their secular authority by rendering them absolute mas- ters of the episcopal cities, whose municipal rights and hberties he abolished, but at the same time he had given, as we have seen, the imperial sanction to the papal Inquisition, and had rendered it" every Avhere supreme. It is no wonder that they felt aggrieved and alarmed, that they withheld their co-operation as far as they This serves to illustrate the relations between the Roman curia and the great German bishoprics, the insatiable greed of the former, and the fruitless effort. at emancipation of the latter.