Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/411

Rh of Strassburg, were themselves disposed to persecution, did not dare to proceed further. The regular communities of Beghards and Beguines were assured of toleration, and if the heretical Brethren of the Free Spirit managed to share in this immunity, it probably did not give the prelates much concern.

All this was discouraging to the zeal of inquisitors whose in- stitution had hardly yet taken root in the land, but worse was still to follow. In 1378 died both Gregory XI. and Charles IV. The election of Urban VI. gave rise to the Great Schism, and Wenceslas, the son and successor of Charles, was notoriously in- different to the interest of religion as represented by the Church. Thus deprived of its two indispensable supporters, the Inquisition could not make head against episcopal jealousy. In 1381 there could have been no inquisitors in the extensive dioceses of Ratisbon, Bamberg, and Misnia, for we find the Archbishop of Pragueas papal legate ordering the bishops to appoint them, and threatening to do so himself in case of disobedience. Still the Inquisition did not entirely pretermit its labors. In 1392 we hear of a papal inquisitor named Martin who travelled through Suabia to Würzburg, finding in the latter place a number of peasants and simple folk belonging to the sect of Flagellants and Beghards. They had not in them the stuff of martyrs, and accepted the penance imposed upon them of joining in a crusade then preaching against the Turks-the first time for nearly a century that we meet with this penalty. Then Martin went to Erfurt-always a heretical centre-where he came upon numerous heretics of the same kind. Some of these were obstinate and were duly burned, others accepted penance, and the rest sought safety in flight. The following year there was burned at Cologne, by the papal inquisi- tor, Albert, a leading Beghard known as Martin of Mainz, a for- mer Benedictine monk and a disciple of the celebrated Nicholas of Basle; and in his trial there are allusions to others of the sect executed not long before at Heidelberg.

About this period, after a long interval, we again become cog-