Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/564

 5^g THE HUSSITES. their wishes. Furnished with imperial letters to the Catholic no- bles and to their leader, Ulric Mainhard of Rosenberg, he turned in Julj to the safer region of Moravia, where presumably the in- fluence of Podiebrad and Rokyzana was not so strong. Here his career indicates how little foundation there was for the persistent Catholic complaints of the proscriptive intolerance of the Cahxtins. Though on Bohemian territory, Catholic and Hussite seem to have been dwelling together in mutual harmony ; the Bishop of Olmiitz was a CathoUc, and no hindrance seems to have been experienced by Capistrano in his labors for the conversion of the so-called her- etics. Beginning at Briinn, August 1, 1451, there is a register con- taining names and dates of more than eleven thousand conversions made by him up to May, 1452. Yet at the same time he was re- stricted to persuasion, and was not allowed to use inquisitorial methods. As his converts Avere voluntary, he smoothed the path of the repentant heretic, reconciling him to the Church with only the infliction of a salutary penance, and allowing him to retain all his possessions and dignities. Where the heretic was hardened, he was powerless, except through such miraculous power as he could wield. The situation was an anomalous one— unexampled, in fact, in the Middle Ages— of heretic and CathoUc dwelling to- gether in peace, the heretic in the ascendant, yet not only toler- ating the Catholic, but allowing a man like Capistrano to wander through the land denouncing heretics and making conversions un- molested. To Capistrano the position was irritating in the ex-^ treme, insomuch as he was limited to the arts of persuasion, and! was unable to enforce his arguments with the dungeon and thej stake. This peculiar state of things is well illustrated by an ad- venture related of him at Breslau. Though Silesia had a Catholic^ bishop, it belonged to Bohemia, and mutual tolerance was estab-' lished. In the summer of 1453 Capistrano came there and labored to convert the Hussites, but these sons of Belial, to ridicule his miraculous powers, placed a young man in a bier, carried him to where the inquisitor was preaching, and asked the latter to resus- • citate the dead. Capistrano sternly repUed, " Let him have his portion with the dead in eternity!" and went his way. Then the heretics said to the crowd, " We have holier men among us ;" and one of them went to the coflin, calling to its inmate, " Peter, arise !" and then whispering, " It is time to get up ;" but there