Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/421

Rh elytes. The Inquisition had been eagerly on his track, but he was shrewd and crafty, and had eluded its pursuit. Forced, probably about 1397, to fly to Vienna with two of his disciples, John and James, they were discovered and seized. The celebrated Henry of Hesse (Langenstein) undertook their conversion, and flattered himself that he had succeeded, but they all relapsed and were burned. As Peter, the Celestinian abbot, was at this time Inquis- itor of Passau, he probably had the satisfaction of ridding the Church of this dangerous heresiarch, whose belief in his own di- vine inspiration was such that he considered his will to be equal to that of God.

Not long after a similar martyrdom occurred at Constance, where a Beghard, named Burgin, had founded a sect of extreme austerity. Captured with his disciples by the bishop, he would not abandon his doctrines, and was duly relaxed. Gerson's nu- merous allusions to the Turelupins and Beghards show that at this period the sect was attracting much attention and was regarded as seductively dangerous. With all his tendency to mysticism, Gerson could recognize the peril incurred by those whom he de- scribes as deceived through too great a desire to reach the sweet- ness of God, and who mistake the delirium of their own hearts for divine promptings: thus disregarding the law of Christ, they follow their own inclinations without submitting to rule, and are precipitated into guilt by their own presumption. He was espe- cially averse to the spiritual intimacy between the sexes, where devotion screened the precipice on the brink of which they stood. Mary of Valenciennes, he says, was especially to be avoided on this account, for she applied what is set forth about the divine fruition to the passions seething in her own soul, and she argues that he who reaches the perfection of divine love is released from the observance of all precepts. Thus the Brethren of the Free Spirit were practically the same in the fifteenth century as in the times of Ortlieb and Amauri.

Giles Cantor, who founded in Brussels the sect which styled itself Men of Intelligence, was probably a disciple of Mary of Va-