Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/201

 THE STEDINGERS. Ig5 It was evident that some more potent means must be found to overcome the indomitable peasantry, and the device adopted was suggested by the success, in 1230, of the crusade preached by Wil- brand, Bishop of Utrecht, against the free Frisians in revenge for their slaying his predecessor Otho, a brother of Archbishop Ger- hardt, and imprisoning his other brother, Dietrich, Provost of Deventer, after their victory of Coevorden. It was scarce pos- sible not to follow this example. At a synod held in Bremen in 1230, the Stedingers were put to the ban as the vilest of heretics, who treated the Eucharist with contempt too horrible for descrip- tion, who sought responses from wise-women, made waxen images, and wrought many other works of darkness.* Doubtless there were remnants of pagan superstition in Steding, such as we shall hereafter see existing throughout many parts of Christendom, which served as. a foundation for these accusations, but that in fact there were no religious principles involved, and that the questions at issue were purely political, is indicated by the praise which Frederic II., in an epistle dated June 14, 1230, bestows on the Stedingers for the aid which they had rendered to a house of the Teutonic Knights, and his exhortation that they should con- tinue to protect it. We learn, moreover, that everywhere the peas- antry openly favored them and joined them when opportunity per- mitted. It was simply an episode in the extension of feudalism and sacerdotalism. The scattered remains of the old Teutonic tribal in- dependence were to be crushed, and the combined powers of Church and State were summoned to the task. How readily such accusa- tions could be imposed on the credulity of the people we have seen from the operations of Conrad of Marburg, and the stories to which he gave currency of far-pervading secret rites of demon-worship. Yet the preliminaries of a crusade consumed time, and during 1231 and 1232 Archbishop Gerhardt had all he could do to withstand the assaults of the victorious peasants, who twice captured and de- stroyed the castle of Schlatter, which he had rebuilt to protect his territories from their incursions ; he sought support in Rome, and in October, 1232, after ordering an investigation of the heresy by the Bishops of Lubeck, Ratzeburg, and Minden, Gregory IX. came to macher, p. 81.
 * Emonis Chron. ann. 1227, 1230 (Matthaei Analecta III. 128, 132).— Schu-