Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/140

 12-4 GUGLIELMA AND DOLCINO. ened them with exemplary punishment for continued contumacy, and promised that, if they were afraid of damage to the repu- tation of their women, the latter should be mildly treated and spared humiliating penance on giving information as to their as- sociates.* After a long interval we hear of the Apostles again in Langue- doc, where, in 1368, the Council of Lavaur calls attention to them as wandering through the land in spite of the condemnation of the Holy See, and disseminating errors under an appearance of exter- nal piety, wherefore they are ordered to be arrested and punished by the episcopal courts. In 1374 the Council of Xarbonne deemed it necessary to repeat this injunction ; and we have seen that in 1402 and 1403 the zeal of the Inquisitor Eylard was rewarded in Lubec and Wismar by the capture and burning of two Apostles. This is the last authentic record of a sect which a hundred years before had for a brief space inspired so wide a terror. f Closely allied with the Dolcinists, and forming a link between them and the German Brethren of the Free Spirit, were some Italian heretics known as followers of the Spirit of Liberty, of. whom a few scattered notices have reached us. They seem to have avoided the pantheism of the Germans, and did not teach the return of the soul to its Creator, but they adopted the danger- ous tenet of the perfectibility of man, who in this life can become as holy as Christ. This can be accomplished by sins as well as by virtues, for both are the same in the eye of God, who directs all things and allows no human free-will. The soul is purified by sin, and the greater the pleasure in carnal indulgences the more nearly they represent God. There is no eternal punishment, but virens. aim. 1310 c. 50 (Martene Thesanr. IV 250). — Alvar. Pelag. de Planctu Ec- cles. Lib. n. art. lii. (fol. 166, 172, Ed. 1517).— Wadding, aim. 1335, No. 8-9.— Ray nald.ann. 1335, No. 62. t Concil. Vaurens. aim. 1368 c. 24 ; Concil. Narbonn. aim. 1374 c. 5 (Harduin. VII. 1818, 1880).— Herman. Corneri Chron. ann. 1260, 1402 (Eccard. Corp. Hist. Med. ^Evi 11.906,1185). I have already referred (Vol. II. p. 429) to the persecution at Prague, in 1315, of some heretics whom Dubravius qualifies as Dolcinists, but who probably were Waldenses and Luciferans.
 * Concil. Coloniens. aim. 1306 c. 1, 2 (Hartzheirn IY. 100, 102).— Concil. Tre-