Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/653

 DEMORALIZATION OF THE CHURCH. 637 These deplorable statements are confirmed by the supplication of the Council of Pisa in 1409 to Alexander V., and by the reform ers who gathered around the Council of Constance in hopes of see- ing it fulfil its functions of purifying the Church in its head and members — John Gerson, Cardinal d'Ailly, Cardinal Zabarella, Bernhardus Baptizatus, Theodoric Vrie. I have already quoted Nicholas de Clemangis, and need only say that the others were equally outspoken and equally full of detail, while the reformatory projects drawn up for consideration by the council are eloquent as to the evils which they were designed to remove. At first Sigismund and the Germans, with the French and English nations, were united in demanding that reformation should precede the election of a pope in place of the deposed John XXIII., but the close alliance formed between Sigismund and Henry V. alienated the French ; by a skilful use of this they were won over, and the prospects of reform grew so desperate that Sigismund seriously contemplated seizing all the cardinals, as the main obstacle to the wished-for action, and removing them from Constance. On learn- ing this, far from yielding, they put on their red hats and wore them in the streets as a token of their readiness to undergo mar- tyrdom, and a paper was drawn up stigmatizing the English and Germans as Wickliffites and Hussites. The Germans responded in a vigorous protest, officially describing the condition of the Church in terms as decided as those employed by Nicholas de Clemangis. For this state of things they hold the Holy See solely responsible, for they date back these abuses to a time, a century and a half before, when the increasing pretensions of the curia enabled it to infect all Christendom with its vices, and they allude with special hor- ror to the use of the papal penitentiary, worse than ordinary simony, whereby crimes were taxed in proportion to their heinous- ness and villainous traffic was made in sin. The Church, they con- cluded, had forfeited the reverence of the laity, which regarded it with contempt, as rather Antichristian than Christian. The stead- fast attitude of the Germans, however, was weakened by the death of their strongest ally, Bobert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury, and two of Sigismund's most trusted prelates were bribed to betray the cause. The Archbishop of Biga, who was tired of his constant quarrels with the Teutonic knights, was promised the rich bishopric of Liege, and the Bishop of Coire was promised the archbishopric