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 408 GERMANY. beea freely used to gather into the net so many victims ; nor can a patient hearing have been given to the accused. Their shrift was short, and before Schoneveld had left the scene of action he had caused the burning of ninety-one at Sangerhausen, forty-four in the neighboring town of Winkel, and many more in other vil- lages. Yet such was the persistence of the heresy that even this wholesale slaughter did not suffice for its suppression. Two years later, in 1416, its remains were discovered, and again Schoneveld was sent for. He examined the accused. To those who abjured he assigned penances, and handed over the obstinate to the secu- lar arm. His assizes must have been hurried, for he did not stay to witness the execution of those whom he had condemned, and after his departure the princes gathered all together, both peni- tents and impenitents, some three hundred in number, and burned the whole of them in one day. This terrible example produced the profound impression that was desired, and hereafter the sect of Flagellants may b^ regarded as unimportant. Some discussion, as we have seen, took place the next year at the Council of Con- stance, when San Vicente Ferrer expressed his approbation of this form of disciphne, and Gerson mildly urged its dangers ; but when, in 1434, a certain Bishop Andreas specified, among the objects of the Council of Basle, the suppression of the heresies of the Huss- ites, Waldenses, FraticeUi, Wickliffites, the Manichaeans of Bosnia, the'Beghards, and the schismatic Greeks, there is no aUusion in the enumeration to Flagellants. Yet the causes which had given rise to the heresy continued in full force and it was still cherished in secret. In 1453 and 1454 Brethren of the Cross were again discovered in Thuringia, and the Inquisition was speedily at work to reclaim them. Besides the errors propagated by Conrad Schmidt, it was not difficult to extort from the accused the cus- tomary confessions of foul sexual excesses committed in dark sub- terranean conventicles, and even of Luciferan doctrines, teaching that in time Satan would regain his place in heaven and expel Christ ; though when we hear that they alleged the evil lives of the clergy as the cause of their misbelief we may reasonably doubt the accuracy of these reports. Aschersleben, Sondershausen, and Sangerhausen were the centres of the sect, and at the latter place, in 1454, twenty-two men and women were burned as obstinate