Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/618

 C02 INTELLECT AND FAITH. As a means of evading a decision without exasperating either Order this policy was successful, but as a measure of peace it was an utter failure. Renewed disturbances forced Alexander VI. to confirm the bull of Sixtus IV., with a clause calling upon the sec- ular arm to keep the peace, if necessary ; but in France the Univer- sity of Paris wholly disregarded the prescriptions of both popes and treated as heretics all who denied the Immaculate Conception. In 1495, on the Feast of the Conception, December 8, a Franciscan named Jean Grillot so far forgot his fealty to his Order as to deny the dogma in preaching in Saint-Germain TAuxerrois. He was immediately laid hold of and so energetically handled that by the 25th of the same month he made public recantation in the same church. This put the University on its mettle, and on March 3, 1496, it adopted a statute, signed by a hundred and twelve doctors in theology, affirming the doctrine and ordering that in future no one should be admitted into its body without taking an oath to maintain it, when if he proved recreant he should be expelled, de- graded from all honors, and treated as a heathen and a publican. This example was followed by the Universities of Cologne, Tubin- gen, Mainz, and other places, arraying nearly all the learned bodies against the Dominicans, and training the vast majority of future theologians in the doctrine. Most of the cardinals and prelates everywhere gave in their adhesion ; kings and princes joined them ; the Carmelites took the same side, and the Dominicans were left almost alone to fight the unequal battle. When in 1501, at Hei- delberg, the Dominicans offered a disputation on the subject which the Franciscans eagerly accepted, the aspect of public opinion grew so threatening that they were obliged to get the palsgrave and magistrates to forbid it.* So sensitive did the supporters of the Immaculate Conception become that a Dominican preaching on December 8 had needs be wary in the allusions to the Virgin which were unavoidable on that day of his humiliation. At Dieppe, on the feast of 1196, Jean de Ver, a Dominican, made use of expressions which were thought to oppose the dogma indirectly ; he was at once brought to account and forced to confess publicly, and swear that in future ding, ann. 1500, No. 29. — Chron. Glassberger ann. 1501.
 * D'Argentre I. il 331-5, 342-3.— Trith em. Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1498.— Wad-