Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/475

 RECURRENCE OF TOLERATION. 459 they were tried and executed by Benedict XII. To shield them- selves they implicated the Bishop of Beziers as their instigator.* Yet organized persecution seems to have died away with the withdrawal of sorcery from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition by John XXII. in 1330, while the stimulus which his proclamations had given to the trade of the magician continued to extend it and render it profitable. The tendency of popular thought is shown by the attribution, in some places, of the Black Death to the in- cantations as well as to the poisons of the Jews. Such an expedient as that of the Council of Chartres in 1366, which ordered sorcerers to be excommunicated in mass every Sunday in all parish churches, would only serve to impress the popular mind with the reality and importance of their powers. During this period the study and practice of magic arts were pursued with avidity, and in many cases almost without concealment. Miguel de Urrea, who was Bishop of Tarazona from 1309 to 1316, was honored with the title of el Nigromantico, and his portrait in the archiepiscopal palace of Tarragona bears an inscription describing him as a most skilful necromancer, who even deluded the devil with his own arts. Gerard Groot himself, claimed by the Brethren of the Common Life as their revered founder, was in his youth an earnest student of the occult sciences, but during an illness he solemnly abandoned them before a priest and burned his books. Many years later he turned his knowledge to account by exposing a certain John Heyden, who had long practised on the credulity of the people of Amsterdam and its vicinity. On his coming to De venter, Groot examined him and found him ignorant of necromancy and its allied arts, and concluded that he operated through a compact with Satan. Not willing to incur the irregularity of shedding blood, Groot contented himself with driving him away, and then, on learning that he had settled at Harderwick, wrote to the brethren there giving them an account of him; but the whole affair shows that such persons could count on practical toleration unless some zealot chose to set the laws in motion. The extent to which this toleration was carried, and the limitless credulity to which the popular mind had been trained are shown in the ac- No. 30.
 * Wright, op. cit. pp. xxiii.-xxix.— Vaissette, IV. Pr. 173.— Raynald. ann. 1337,