Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/656

 640 CONCLUSION. arbiter of every man's destiny, for salvation depended not so much on individual desert as on the ministrations of those who controlled the sacraments. How benumbing was this influence on the moral faculties is visible in the confession of Anna Miolerin, one of the Tyrolese witches burned in 1506, where the spread of witchcraft is attributed to the sensual and drunken priests who are unable to confess their penitents properly, or to baptize children, so that the latter, unprotected by the sacrament, are easily betrayed to Satan. The priests, she says, ought to baptize children reverently and re- peat all the words of the ceremony.* As for monasticism, Abbot Trithemius gives us a vigorous sketch of its demoralization. The great Benedictine Order, the mother and exemplar of the rest, had been founded on a wise and comprehensive system, including productive labor in the fields and religious observances in the houses : but he tells us that the monks when abroad were idle and vain, and when inside the walls were abandoned to carnal delights, with nothing of decorous to show but the habit, and even this was mostly neglected. Xo one thought of enforcing the forgotten discipline. The monasteries had be- come stables for clerks, or fortresses for fighting-men, or markets for traders, or brothels for strumpets, in which the greatest of crimes was to live without sin. The abbots thought of nothing but of satisfying their appetites and vanities, their lusts, their am- bition, and their avarice, while the brethren were monks only in name, and were vessels of wrath and sin. A confirmatory glimpse at the interior life of these establishments is afforded by Angelus Rumpherus, elected Abbot of Formbach in 1501, in his account of his immediate predecessor, Leonhard, who had ruled the abbey since 1174. He was especially fond of using torture, of which he had infinite ingenious varieties at his service. Unable to endure his tyranny, a monk named Engelschalk, a man of good natural parts and disposition, fled, but was taken sick and brought back. He Ryd de Reen de Vita Clericor. (lb. II. 142). — Mem. de Jacques du Clercq, Liv. in. ch. 43. — Steph. Infessurae Diar. Urb. Roman, ann. 1474 (Eccard. Corp. Hist. II. 1939). — Wimpfeling de vita et moribus Episcoporum, Argentorati, 1512. — De Munditia et Castitate Sacerdotum {sine nota, sed Parisiis c. 1500). — Rapp, Die Hexenprocesse uud ihre Gegner aus Tirol, p. 148.
 * Fascic. Rer. Expetend. et Fugiend. I. 68, 417; II. 105 (Ed. 1690).— Herui.