religious age and more reasonable motives, where the one party indignantly repudiated the worldly possessions, which the other imperiously obtruded where a body of beggars preferred the endurance of a deadly persecution to the sacrifice of the duty of poverty.

In this manner the dispute proceeded, until the rupture between John and Lewis of Bavaria became open and decided. Then the Emperor, as if to turn against the Church the old ecclesiastical policy, hastened to profit by the divisions of his adversary, and to foment the spiritual rebellion. The provinces of the empire were thrown open to all the denominations of schism and heresy; and the multiform enemies of papacy found refuge in the dominions of Lewis, and honour at his court. Marsilius of Padua, Cæsenas, Bonagratia, and William Occam, were the most illustrious among those exiles. They directed their eloquence, their learning, and their satire, both personally against John, and generally against the system of the Church; and their writings, which were eagerly read even by that generation, were transmitted with still greater profit to a less prejudiced posterity.

On the other hand, the Pope was ardently supported by his Dominican emissaries. Their thirst for heretical blood was heated by a particular jealousy of the Franciscan Order. Wherever an avenue was open they penetrated. They pursued the fugitives even into the remote plains of Poland and Hungary, and introduced into those ignorant regions the machinery of the Inquisition. But France and Italy† were the scene of their most successful exertions; and these were not confined to the pontificate of John. Even the virtuous Benedict began his reign by an anathema against the Fratricelli; and it is remarkable, that, in the Constitution which he published on this occasion‡, the articles of their heresy are swelled to fifty-five. Their denial of the power of the Pope to permit them to have property is among the most curious, and not the least grave, of their offences;-some very gross absurdities were also imputed to them, which may have been calumniously, as indeed they may have been truly, alleged. But there is one observation here necessary, which will tend to account for the great multiplicity and vagueness of the charges advanced. A furious war was at that time raging in Italy between the imperial and papal factions; and it was a part of the crooked policy of the churchmen of Rome to confound political enmity with spiritual perversity, and to brand the adversaries of the visible church with the crime of heretical depravity. Among the adversaries of the church they usually classed its reformers-those who were indeed its only real friends; and thus it happened, that the term heresy came now to comprehend every opinion unfavourable to the ecclesiastical government of the day, and the gates of the Inquisition received without distinction a various and indiscriminate multitude.

Still, as long as the reign of Lewis continued, a secure asylum was

*The history of John XXII. abounds with edicts against the various denominations of heresy. We are also bound to mention that he published (in 1326) one Constitution to repress the too great zeal of certain inquisitors in Sicily; but when we examine the nature of that zeal, we find that it had ventured to attack 'nostros et apostolica sedis officiales vel nuntios, &c.' John, as well as several other popes, extended more protection to the Jews than they enjoyed elsewhere.

+ Vit. John XXII. ap. Baluz. Mosheim calculates, from various records published and unpublished, that the names of about two thousand persons, of both sexes, may be enumerated, who suffered martyrdom in France and Italy for their inflexible attachment to the poverty of St. Francis. Cent. xiv. p. 2. ch. ii.

Bzov. ad ann. 1335, s. ii.

offered to all descriptions of Dissenters; and these, being already connected by one common principle and one common wrong, may have adopted from each other the absurd opinions, which some of them certainly held. But the spirit which united them was deep animosity against the Pope, whom they accused in their turn of impiety and usurpation. In the year 1345*, Lewis was succeeded by Charles IV.; and as that Prince was chiefly obliged for his elevation to pontifical influence, so his policy followed the interests of the Court of Avignon. If the principles of the Bavarian had continued to govern his dominions for another generation, it is not improbable that the empire would have wholly freed itself from papal supremacy, and raised the banners of Reformation in the fourteenth century with no inconsiderable advantage to religion. But such anticipation of the more perfect triumph of a more enlightened age was cut short by the perfidy t of the Imperial counsels. The numerous insurgents against the despotism of Rome, whom Lewis had encouraged and protected and created, were betrayed by his successor into the hands of the avenger. The peaceful provinces of the empire, hitherto sacred from the inroads of persecution, were now thrown open to the Dominicans. Their irruption was supported by secular edicts and arms; and the extirpation of the Voluntary beggars'-the enemies of the Church and the Roman empire,'-was pressed with equal ardour by the pope and the emperor. The houses of the offenders were given to the tribunal of the Inquisition, to be converted into prisons for heretics; and their effects were publicly sold, for the equal profit of the inquisitors who ordered, of the magistrates who enforced, and of the poor who witnessed, their execution. The survivors fled towards the banks of the Rhine, to Switzerland, Brabant and Pomerania; but they were followed by a tempest of mandates and bulls, and hunted by the keen Dominicans even into their most distant retreats; till at length it is admitted, that the greater part of Germany was restored, after this sanguinary purification, to the peaceful embrace of the Church.

But neither edicts, nor bulls, nor inquisitors, could suppress the spirit of the schism, though they might extinguish its name; and those who preserved their obedience to the more rigid rule, were still found to be so numerous, and the love of that discipline was still in some provinces so prevalent, that the popes at length thought proper to sanction the Institution. Accordingly, the Franciscan Order was by authority divided into two bodies, which subsist to this day-the more indulgent were called the Conventual Brethren-the more austere, the Brethren of Observance. The disputes which afterwards disturbed this arrangement were partial and insignificant; and the historian may express his astonishment mixed with

*About the same time died William Occham, pestilentissimus Hæresiarcha.'-Bzovius (ann. 1347, s. xxxvi.), though he designates this Englishman to have been 'omnium incentor malorum, auctor scelerum, cultor tenebrarum, &c. &c.,' still does not attribute his death to divine interposition;-which is the more surprising, because he had not hesitated to pronounce somewhat earlier (ann. 1321, s. xxi.) that Dante died through the peculiar vengeance of Heaven, which visited his calumnies against the popes.

This is no ground perhaps for imputing to Charles personally, that his intolerance was aggravated by treachery. The individual stands convicted of persecution only. But the circumstance of this change adds one to the many instances, in which the steady, consistent perseverance of the Vatican has carried its point, through the fluctuations of the Imperial policy.

+ See Mosheim, Cent. xiv. p. ii. ch. ii. Their crime is mentioned in the edict (published at Lucca in 1369) which condemns them. They are a pernicious sect, who pretend to a sacrilegious and heretical poverty, and who are under a vow that they neither ought to have, nor will have, any property, whether special or common, in the goods they use-which they extend even to their wretched habits.'

sorrow, that so simple a method of reconciliation could only be reached through the paths of intolerance and oppression.

The term Beghard was in this age commonly applied to the Tertiaries of St. Francis; and, though in its origin proBeghards and Lollards. bably innocent of such principles, it was now involved in the guilt and fate of the anti-papal heresies. The Brethren of the free spirit,' the harmless mystics of the last century*, had been some time known by that appellation; and sometimes they are designated as Lollards, in the records of the following age. The reason of their confusion is, that both names were indiscriminately used by the Church to stigmatize those who dissented from it, without any new inquiry as to the grounds and points of their dissent. Mosheim, who has investigated this subject with great diligence, considers the Lollards † to have been a society of pious laymen, formed in the first instance at Antwerp, for the purpose of visiting the sick and burying the dead during a season of pestilence; for the clergy are affirmed to have deserted their official duties, as soon as they became attended with peril. The humane motives and religious practice of the new society caused it to spread throughout Flanders and many parts of Germany, and it was encouraged by the respect of the magistrates and the love of the inhabitants. Its success excited the jealousy, as indeed it reflected on the reputation, of all the clergy; but the Mendicants had perhaps a deeper motive for animosity against it, when they found that their own profits suffered through its gratuitous charity. Accordingly, they raised the customary clamours of impiety and heresy: under the mask of extraordinary holiness, the Lollards concealed forsooth the blackest errors and the most enormous vices! they were denounced at the pontifical throne, and their name has passed into the language of the Church to designate a misbelieving and sanctified hypocrite.

They may have held some foolish opinions-among those generally attributed to them the following are the most peculiar: that the mind ought to be called away from the external and sensible parts of religion, and fixed on inward and spiritual worship; that the soul which is wholly absorbed in the love of God is free from the restraint of every law, and may gratify its natural appetites without sin; that perfect virtue and perfect beatitude may be obtained in this world; and that persons so circumstanced are removed above every worldly consideration; so that the moral virtues, as well as the religious ceremonies, might be neglected without offence. Moreover they pretended that there were two Churches, the carnal Church, which was that of Rome; the spiritual, which was confined to their own society. . . Such were the crimes imputed to

*See Mosheim, Cent. xII. p. ii. ch. v.

Mosheim, Cent. xiv. p. ii. ch. ii. The word Lolhard means a singer-as Beghard means one who prays. The former were also called the Cellite brethren and sisters-the Alexian brethren'-from the cells in which they lived, and the saint who was their patron. See Semler, Secul. XIV. cap. i.

Other charges are instanced by Bzovius (ann. 1307, s. ix.) They held that the Mass, Baptism and Extreme Unction were useless ceremonies; that Lucifer was an injured being, and that the angels, as well as all the enemies of their own sect, would be finally condemned; that Mary did not continue a virgin after the nativity; that the body of the Lord in the Eucharist was not real; that marriage was only sanctified whoredom; that God neither punished nor regarded human sins. Besides this, they lay toge ther promiscuously under the pretence of charity; they ate flesh when they would; they observed no festivals and derided the merits and intercession of the saints; and finally they were so obstinate under persecution, that whatever might be their sex or age, they

them by the Churchmen; and this last may really have been the secret of their offence. Yet, though we should believe them to have held almost every tenet with which they are charged, (for the contempt of moral duties was clearly not a tenet, but a consequence calumniously drawn by their enemies,) may we not discern, that the principle from which they departed was excellent and holy? It led them into some extravagances; but were those so gross, or nearly so detestable, as the deliberate absurdities which were committed by the Church itself during the same period ?-the insertion into the Liturgy of the words in which the angel Gabriel saluted the Virgin Mary' the institution of festivals in honour of the lance, the nails, the crown of Christ *-the appointment of a holy day for the solemn celebration of the wounds of Christ, miraculously impressed upon the body of St. Francis! . . . . If we should believe all the calumnies that churchmen have ever fabricated in vilification of the Mystics, we shall find among them nothing so irrational, nothing nearly so impious, as those authorized ecclesiastical mummeries.

The Lollards suffered some oppression in Austria and other countries; but a war of extermination does not appear to have been formally proclaimed against them. No doubt, they were confounded by the inquisitors, sometimes erroneously and sometimes wilfully, with the more avowed enemies of the papal government; and thus they shared that vengeance, which was chiefly intended for the Spirituals and Beghards. But whether through their greater obscurity or more manifest harmlessness, they escaped in comparative safety, without any direct attack,and to this tolerance it may perhaps be attributed, that the sect of the Lollards † (properly so called) never rose into great power and never became dangerous to the Catholic Church.

Dulcinus.

During the reign of Clement V., a preacher named Dulcinus, attended by a woman called Margaret, his wife or his mistress, presented himself in Lombardy, and erected in the neighbouring mountains the standard of heresy. He was charged with contempt of the Catholic hierarchy, and with censuring the abuses of their immoderate wealth; also with asserting a succession of three theocracies that those under the Father and the Son were already passed; that the third, under the Holy Spirit, was then in operation. Lastly, to consummate his odium, his followers, who were not very numerous, were assailed with the primitive and accustomed calumny of promiscuous unanimously preferred death to conversion. . . . In this strange and calumnious catalogue we may observe the malignity, with which some tenets, merely rejecting the inno vations of Rome, are mixed up with the most horrible crimes and blasphemies. Yet this was one of the most vulgar among the artifices of the Churchmen of those days.

*Others might be added. For instance, John XXII. re-established with fresh indulgences the festival of the body of Christ'—granting to all Christians a general pardon of forty days for every reverence made, on the name of Jesus Christ being pronounced by the priest. Giovanni Villani, lib. ii, cap. lxxix.

The name Lollard, as is well known, was afterwards generally applied to various adversaries of the popish establishment; but the real origin both of the name and sect was probably such as has been here described.

His followers called themselves The Spiritual Congregation and the Order of the Apostles.' 'We alone (they said) are in the perfection in which the apostles were, and in the liberty which proceeds immediately from Jesus Christ. Wherefore we acknowledge obedience neither to the pope nor any other human being: nor has he any power to excommunicate us... The pope can give no absolution from sins unless he be as holy as St. Peter, living in entire poverty and humility.. so that all the popes and prelates, since St. Sylvester, having deviated from that original holiness, are prevaricators and seducers, with the single exception of Pope Celestine, Pietro di Morone, &c.' See Fleury, liv. xci, sec. xxiii.

prostitution. A crusade was preached by the Church against these miserable enthusiasts, and its enemies were led to the assault by a zealous bishop. Surrounded and pressed among the Alpine passes, many had already perished from cold and want, before the sword was drawn to complete their destruction. It did so most effectually; and Roman Catholic writers record without emotion, that the heretic was torn in pieces limb from limb, after his Spiritual Sister' had suffered before his eyes by the same torture. As the massacre is recorded without emotion, so its consequence is told without understanding or reflection-that the disciples of the martyr were multiplied by the deed, and increased beyond number*. The history and heresies † of Wiclif also belong to this period; but we shall at present leave them unnoticed, as more immediately appertaining to English history, and already familiar to most readers. And if we pass from the name of that great patriarch of the Reformation to the mention of a transient sect of mere fanatics, we shall most faithfully exhibit the character of an age, in which the long reign of ignorance and error was first disturbed by the irregular struggles of reviving reason. The beginnings of those great revolutions, which renovate the whole frame of society, are invariably marked by some transient excesses, occasioned by the first fermentation of new and active principles, in a body not yet qualified to give them full efficacy. And so it befell in the present instance-an age, in which the true principles of Christianity were beginning once more to glimmer through the ecclesiastical system which had so long obscured them, was troubled by some of the wildest absurdities of superstition.

The sect of the Flagellants first betrayed its existence The Flagellants. about the middle of the thirteenth century; but it was discouraged by the authorities both spiritual and secular, and seemingly repressed: nevertheless, about the year 1340, it broke out again with additional violence. Its first re-appearance was in Italy, in the neighbourhood of Cremona ‡: suddenly a multitude, amounting to ten thousand persons, issued from the surrounding cities and villages, and paraded the country, flogging themselves and (in the first instance) begging. The contagion spread with a rapidity which will afflict, but cannot surprise, the observer of religious absurdities; and in the course of ten years scarcely a country in Europe was exempt from its visitation. As the Flagellants increased in numbers, they adopted some sort of system and method in their fanaticism; which, though it may have varied under different circumstances, possessed the same general character. Naked from the loins upwards, and marked on their front and back with red crosses, they spread themselves in numerous bands over the face of Europe. Twice every day, in the most public places, they performed their discipline, until blood flowed from the wounds; and they completed their duties by one nocturnal and private flagellation. No one among them begged. No one was admitted into the society who was entirely destitute; no one, unless he had made a full confession of his sins, unless he had received the consent of his wife, unless

Supra numerum. See Vita (4ta) Clementis V. apud Baluzium. Bzovius, ad ann. 1310. sec. xiii.

Wiclif's Sixty-one Heresies are carefully enumerated by Bzovius, (ann. 1352, s. xv.) and that author expresses very sincere regret at his escape from the bishops, whom the pope had stirred against him. Indeed, notwithstanding his great protectors, the Reformer seems not to have been secure till the grand schism frittered away the power of papacy. Bzov. ann. 1340, s. xxiv.