Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/402

 386 GERMANY. xnission as inquisitor of Friar John Schande and, and wntmg ear- nestly to the German prelates to lend him aU assistance. The pes- tiferous madness of the Beghards, he said, was blazmg forth afresh and efiorts were requisite for its suppression. As in their dioceses the Inquisition had no prisons of its own, they were required to give it the free use of the episcopal jails. We are told m general terms that Friar John was energetic and successful but no records remain to prove his activity or its results, and it is fair to cone ude that the bishops, as usual, gave him the cold shoulder There is no proof even that he was concerned in the condemnation of the Be-hard heresiarch Berthold von Eohrback, who in 1356 expiated hiseresy in the flames. Berthold had previously been caught m Wiirzburg, and had recanted through dread of the stake. He ought to have been imprisoned for hfe, but the German spiritual courts, as usual, were unversed in the penalties for heresy, and he was a lowed togo free, when he secretly made his way to Speier. There he was successfu in propagating his doctrines until he was agam arrested. As a relapsed herefic, under the rules of the Inquisition there was no mercy for him, but the rules were imperfectly understood m Germany, and again he was treated more leniently than the canons allowed, and was offered reconciUation. This time his courage dM not fail him. " My faith," he said, " is the gif of God, and I neither ought nor wish to reject his grace." That Innocent s at- tempt to introduce the Inquisition proved a fatoe may be gath^ ered from the action of WiUiam of Gennep, in his vernal synod of Cologne in 1357. While deploring the increase of the permcious sect of Beghards, which threatens to infect his whole city and dio- cese, he mikes no allusion whatever to the papal Inquisition and the canons. The measures of his predecessors are referred to, in accordance with which all parish priests are directed to proceed
 * ainst the heretics, under threat of prosecution for re~- -d

excommunication is pronounced against those who aid the Beg- hards with alms.* t?„„™. • Undeterred by ill-success the effort was renewed. From a MS. sentence of June 6, 1366, printed by Moshemi, we learn tha the Dominican, Henry de Agro, was^that^me commissioned as . Raynald, ann. 1353, No. 26, 37.-Trithem. Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1356.- Naucleri Chron. ann. 1356.— Hartzheim IV. 483.