Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/403

Rh inquisitor of the province of Mainz and the diocese of Bamberg and Basle, the latter of which belonged to the province of Besan- çon. He was conducting an active inquisition in the diocese of Strassburg, whose bishop, John of Luxembourg, had gratified episcopal jealousy by not allowing him to perform his office inde- pendently, but had adjoined to him his vicar, Tristram, who acted in the matter not simply as representing the bishop in the sen- tence, but as co-inquisitor. According to the rules of the Inquisi- tion, the judgment was rendered in an assembly of experts. The victim in this case was a woman, Metza von Westhoven, a Beguine, who had been tried and who had abjured in the persecution under Bishop John of Zurich, nearly half a century before. As a re- lapsed heretic there was no pardon for her, and she was duly re- laxed.

Thus far whatever hopes might have been based upon the zeal of Charles IV. had not been realized. He seems to have taken no part in the efforts of the papacy, and without the imperial exe- quatur the commissions issued to inquisitors had but moderate chance of enjoying the respect and obedience of the prelates. In 1367 Urban V. returned to the work by commissioning two in- quisitors for Germany, the Dominicans Louis of Willenberg and Walter Kerlinger, with powers to appoint vicars. The Beghards were the only heretics alluded to as the object of their labors; prelates and magistrates were ordered to lend their efficient as- sistance and to place all prisons at their disposal until the German Inquisition should have such places of its own. This was the most comprehensive measure as yet taken for the organization of the Holy Office in Germany, and it proved the entering wedge, though at first Charles IV. does not seem to have responded. The choice of inquisitors was shrewd. Of Friar Louis we hear little, but Friar Walter (variously named Kerling, Kerlinger, Krelinger, and Keslinger) was a man of influence, a chaplain and favorite of the emperor, who had the temper of a persecutor and the opportu- nity and ambition to magnify his office. In 1369 he became Do- minican Provincial of Saxony, and continued to perform the dupli- cate functions until his death, in 1373. He lost no time in getting to work, for in 1368 we hear of a Beghard burned in Erfurt, and