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Rh the Beguines, whom they corrupt by persuading them that man, through piety, can become the equal of Christ. At Ratisbon, Conrad met one of these, who was not suffered to enjoy security, for the bishop arrested him, and, on his obstinately maintaining his errors, cast him in a dungeon, where he perished. Another, named John of Mechlin, preached his heresy publicly through upper Germany, where his eloquence gained him crowds of fol- lowers, including nobles and ecclesiastics, though Conrad declares that, on arguing with him, he proved to be utterly ignorant. There would appear to have been equal toleration in the Nether- lands, for about this period, at Brussels, a woman named Blomaert, who wrote several treatises on the Spirit of Liberty and on Love, was reverenced as something more than human, and when she went to take the Eucharist she was said by her disciples to be attended by two seraphim. She vanquished the most learned theologians, until John of Rysbroek succeeded in confuting her.

Since the disputed election of Louis of Bavaria, in 1314, the relations between the empire and the papacy had been strained. The victory of Mühldorf, in 1322, which assured to Louis the sov- ereignty, had been followed, in 1323, by an open rupture with John XXII., after which the strife had been internecine. Each declared his enemy a heretic who had forfeited all rights, and the interdicts which John showered over Germany had been met by Louis with cruel persecution of all ecclesiastics obeying them, wherever he could enforce his power. Such a state of affairs had not