are pious organizations known as Beghards, Lollards, and Zwestri- ones, which shall be permitted to wear their vestments, to beg, and to continue their mode of life, excommunication being threatened against any inquisitor who shall molest them, unless they have been convicted by the ordinaries of the diocese.[1]
This left the matter very much to the discretion of the local authorities, but the spirit of persecution was fairly revived, and the Inquisition made haste to fortify its position. Under pretext that the bulls of Gregory XI. were becoming worn by age and use, it procured their renewal from Boniface IX., in 1395, though the pope is careful to express that he grants no new privileges. In 1399 it succeeded in having the number of inquisitors increased to six for the Dominican province of Saxony alone, on the plea that its wide extent and populous cities rendered the existing force insufficient. This was not without reason, for the province em- braced the great archiepiscopal districts of Mainz, Cologne, Magde- burg, and Bremen, to which were added Rügen and Camin. Camin belonged to the province of Gnesen, and Rügen formed part of the diocese of Roskild, which was suffragan to the metropolitan of Lünden in Sweden, thus furnishing the only instance of inquisi- torial jurisdiction in any region that can be called Scandinavian, save a barren attempt made, in 1421, under the stimulus of the Hussite troubles. A few weeks later Boniface issued another bull, ordering the prelates and secular rulers of Germany to give all aid and protection to Friar Eylard Schöneveld and other inquisitors, and especially to lend the use of their prisons, as the Inquisition in those parts is said to have none of its own, which shows that Kerlinger's scheme of obtaining them from the property of the Beghards had not proved a success. Eylard set vigorously to work in the lands adjoining the Baltic, which from their remoteness had probably escaped his predecessors. At Lubec, in 1402, he pro- cured the arrest of a Dolcinist named Wilhelm by the municipal officials, showing that he had no familiars of his own; the accused was examined several times in the presence of numerous clerks, monks, and laymen, showing that the secrecy of the inquisitorial process was unknown or unobserved, and he was finally burned.
- ↑ Martini Append. ad Mosheim pp. 652-66, 674-5.—Mosheim pp. 409-10, 430-1.—Hartzheim V. 676.—Haupt, Zeitschrift für K. G. 1885, pp. 565–7.
