Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/163

 ties. The world shall learn to distinguish between the pompous ambition, noisy assertion of piety and charity, and consuming pretensions of the one party, and the humble, unostentatious, and heroic devotedness of the other.

“The fiery trial that consumed her has exalted unassuming truth and charity forever.”

Six vigorous men, of whom Solomon was one, then raised the common simple bier, and bore it, while all uncovered sang a dirge, slowly to its resting place.

Ladislaus returned a reply in the words that history has attributed to him.

“In our duchy,” he said, “and the diocese of Bosnia, and some of the adjacent countries, divers sects of heretical pravity are known now for a long time to have detestably multiplied and damnably increased, to the dishonor of the Creator, and the disgrace of the Christian faith.” Ladislaus added, as if apologetically, “Our diplomatic records remind us that in 1226 the pope Honorius III. praised Coloman, Duke of Slavonia, for his willingness to exterminate the heretics of Bosnia; and censured John, lord of the further Sirmium for not entering on the crusade against them. In 1233 the bishop of Bosnia was deposed for heresy; and Nikol the Slavonian, Duke of Bosnia, whose predecessors had been addicted to heresy, abjured it. In 1234 Gregory IX. dispatched a legate to preach a crusade against heretics. At that time throughout all Bosnia and the neighboring provinces so greatly had the multitude of the false