Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/371

 BKETHREN OP THE FREE SPIRIT. 355 Comparatively few of the Lollards, Beghards, or Beguines were contaminated with these heresies, but they all had to share the re- sponsibility, and the communities of both sexes, who led the most regular lives and were inspired with the purest orthodoxy, were exposed to unnumbered tribulations for lack of a distinctive ap- peUation. When heretics regarded as peculiarly obnoxious were anathematized as Beghards and Beguines, it was impossible for those who bore the name, without sharing the errors, to escape ^e common responsibility. It became even worse when John XXII. plunged into a quarrel with the Spiritual Franciscans, drove them into open rebellion, and persecuted the new heresy which he had thus created with all the unsparing wrath of his vindictive nature. In France the Tertiary Franciscans were pop- ularly known as Beguines, and this became the appellation cus- tomarily bestowed on these Spiritual heretics, and adopted by the Avignonese popes to designate them. Not only has this led to much confusion on the part of heresiologists, but its effect for a time, on the fortunes of the virtuous and orthodox Beguines of both sexes was most disastrous. The heretic Beghards, it is true adopted for themselves the title of Brethren of the Free Spirit- the rebellious Franciscans insisted that they were the only legiti- mate representatives of the Order, and, at most, assumed the term ot Spirituals, m order to distinguish themselves from their carnal- mmded conventual brethren ; but the authorities were loner in admitting these distinctions, and, in the eyes of the Church at large, the condemnation of Beghards and Beguines covered aU alike. We have here to do only with the Brethren of the Free Spirit whose doctrines, as we have seen, were derived from the specula- tions of the Amaurians carried to Germany by Ortlieb of Strass burg. Descriptions of their errors have reached us from so many som-ces, covering so long a period, with so general a consensus in fundamentals, that there can be little doubt as to the main princi pies of their faith. In a sect extending over so wide a reach of territory, and stubbornly maintaining itself thi^ough so many generations, there must necessarily have existed subdivisions as one heresiarch or another pushed his speculations in some direc^ tion further than his fellows, and founded a special school whose aberrations there was no central authority to control. Many of