Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/451

Rh forsaken the Church. In the earliest synod whose proceedings have reached us the first place is given to this subject; the arch-deacons were directed to make diligent perquisition in their respective districts, both personally and through the deans and parish priests, without exciting suspicion, and ass who were found guilty or suspect of heresy were to be forthwith denounced to the archbishop or the inquistor. Similar instructions were is- sued in 1355; and after Arnest's death, in 1364, his successor, John Ocko was equally vigilant, as appears from the acts of his synods in 1366 and 1371. The neighborhood of Pisek was especially con- taminated, and from the acts of the Consistory of 1381 it appears that a preiest named Johl, of Pisek, could not be ordained because both his father and grandfather had been heretics. What was this heresy that thus descended from generation to generation not stated, but it was doubtless Waldensian. In this same year Archbishop John, as papal legate for his own province and for the dioceses of Ratisbon, Bamberg, and Misnia, held a council at Prague, in which he mournfully described the spread of the Wal- densses and Srabites—the latter probably Behards. He sharply reproved the bishops who, through sloth or parsimony, had not appointed inquisitors, and threatened that if they did not do so forthwith, he would do it himself. When ten years later, the Church took the alarm and acted vigorusly, the Waldenses of Brandenburg, who were prosecuted, declared that their teachers came from Bohemia.*

In all this activity for the suppression of heresy it is worth of note that the episcopal Inquisition alone is referred to. In fact there was no papal Inquistion in Bohemia. The bull of Gregory XI., in 1372, ordering the appointment of five inquisitors or Germany, confines their jurisdiction to the provinces of Co- logne, Mainz Utrecht, Magdeburg, Salzburg, and Bremen and pointedly omits that of Prague, although the zeal of Charles IV. might have been expected to secure the blessings of the institu- tion for his hereditary realm.† This is the more curious more-

pp. 32–33, 37.—W Preger, Beiträge, p. 51.—Flac Illyr. Catal. Test. Veritas Lib. xv. p. 1506 (Ed. 1608).
 * Höfle, Prager Conciien, pp. 2,5,12, 14, 26–7.—Loserth, Hus und Wiclif

† Mosheim de Beghardis p. 381.