Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/409

 FLAGELLANTS.-THE DANCING MANIA. 393 hards out of central and northern Germany; he stimulated the emperor to support their labors with fresh zeal, and sent encycli- cals to the princes, prelates, and magistrates, commanding them to use every effort to render the work complete, by exterminating the heretics in the regions where they had taken refuge. Early in the next year he commissioned the Dominican, John of Boland, an imperial chaplain, as inquisitor in the dioceses of Trèves, Co- logne, and Liège, the Beghards and Beguines being the objects specially indicated; and Charles hastened to invest him with all the powers specified in his letters of 1369, ordering the Dukes of Luxembourg, Limburg, Brabant, and Juliers, the Princes of Mons and Cleves, and the Counts of La Marck, Kirchberg, and Span- heim to serve as conservators and guardians of the edict.* Although the Brethren of the Free Spirit were the chief ob- jects of all this inquisitorial activity, the Flagellants were not neglected. In 1361 a demonstration of these enthusiasts in far-off Naples awakened the solicitude of Innocent VI. In 1369 we hear of an outbreak of women coming from Hungary, which was sum- marily suppressed in Saxony. In 1372 Flagellants reappeared in various parts of Germany, asserting the peculiar efficacy of their penance as replacing the sacraments of the Church, so that Greg- ory XI. felt it necessary to direct the inquisitors to exterminate them. In 1373 and 1374 this irrepressible tendency took a new shape, known as the Dancing Mania, which broke out at the con- secration of a church in Aix-la-Chapelle. Bands of both sexes, mostly consisting of poor and simple folk, poured into Flanders from the Rhinelands, dancing and singing as though possessed by the Furies. Under intense spiritual excitement the performer would leap and dance until he fell to earth with convulsions, when his comrades would revive him by jumping upon him, or a cloth which he wore, tied around the belly, would be tightly twisted with a stick. This was generally looked upon as a kind of demo- niacal possession until a multitude of these dancers assembled at Herestal and consulted together as to the best plan for slaying all the priests, canons, and clergy of Liège, when the madness was


 * r1 Cat. Prædic. Prov. Saxon. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 344).—Raynald. aun. 1372, No. 33, 34.—Mosheim de Beghardis pp. 388-92.—Martini Append. ad Mosheim pp. 647-8.