Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/440

424 jocularity with which Sebastian Brandt dilates, in his most finished Latinity, upon the torture and burning of four Dominicans at Berne, in 1509, for frauds committed in the controversy over the Immaculate Conception, indicates the temper which animated the hostile parties, even as its lighter aspect is seen in the unsparing satire of Erasmus and of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum. When, therefore, Reuchlin stood forward to protect Jews and Jewish literature against the assaults of the renegade Pfefferkorn, the opportunity to destroy him was eagerly seized. In 1513 a Dominican inquisitor, the Prior Jacob von Hochstraten, came from Cologne to Mainz on an errand precisely similar to that of Unlike John of Wesel, however, his predecessor von Elten. Reuchlin felt that he could safely appeal to Rome, where Leo X. was himself a man of culture and a Humanist. Leo was well disposed, and commissioned the Bishop of Speier to decide the question, which was in itself a direct blow at the inquisitorial power. Still more contemptuously damaging was the bishop's judgment. Reuchlin was declared free of all suspicion of heresy, the prosecution was pronounced frivolous, and the costs were put upon Hochstraten, with a threat of excommunication for disobedience. This was confirmed at Rome, in 1415, where silence was imposed on Reuchlin's accusers under a penalty of three thousand marks. The Humanists celebrated their victory with savage rejoicing. Eleutherius Bizenus printed a tract summoning, in rugged hexameters, all Germany to assist in the triumph of Reuchlin, in which Hochstraten—that thief, who as accuser and judge persecutes the innocent—marches in chains, with his hands tied behind his back, while Pfefferkorn, with ears and nose cut off, is dragged by a hook through his heels, face downwards, until his features lose the semblance of humanity. The Dominicans are characterized as worse than Turks, and more worthy to be resisted, and the author wonders what unjust pope and cowardly emperor had enabled them to impose their yoke on the land. These were brave words, but premature. The quarrel had attracted the attention of all Europe, the Dominican Order itself and all it represented were on trial, and it could not afford to submit to defeat. Hochstraten hastened to Rome; the Dominicans of the great University of Cologne did not hesitate to say that if the pope maintained the sentence they would appeal to the future council, they would refuse to abide by