to preach and bear confessions without the license of the bishop and the invitation of the pastor. In 1393 Conrad II., Archbishop of Mainz, varied his persecution of the Waldenses by an edict in which he described the Mendicants as wolves in sheep's clothing, and prohibited them from hearing confessions. On the other hand, Maitre Jean de Gorelle, a Franciscan, in 1408, publicly argued that curates were not competent to preach and hear confessions, which was the business of the friars — a proposition which the University of Paris promptly compelled him to retract.[1]
The quarrel seemed endless. In 1409 the Mendicants complained that the clergy stigmatized them as robbers and wolves, and insisted that all sins confessed to them must be confessed again to the parish curates, thus reviving the error of Jean de Poilly condemned by John XXII. Alexander Y., himself a Franciscan, responded to their request by issuing the bull Regnans in excelsis, which threatened with the pains of heresy all who should uphold such doctrines, or that the consent of the priest was requisite before the parishioner could confess to the friars. During the great schism the papacy was no longer an object of terror. The University of Paris boldly took up the quarrel, and under the leadership of John Gerson refused to receive this bull, compelling the Dominicans and CarmeUtes publicly to renounce it, and expelling
- ↑ Clement PP. IV. Bull. Promdentia, ann. 1268.— Ripoll I. 341, 344.— Ptol. Lucens. Hist. Eccles. Lib. xxiii. c. 21, 24-5. — Henr. Steronis Annal. ann. 1287, 1299. — Annal. Dominican. Colmariens. ann. 1277. — Waddingi Annal. ann. 1291, No. 97 ; ann. 1303, No. 32. — Concil. Valentin, ann. 1255. — Concil. Ravennat. ann. 1259.— Martene Ampliss. Collect. II. 1291. — Concil. Remens. ann. 1287.— Salimbene Chronica, pp. 371, 378-9. — Guillel. Nangiac. ann. 1298; Ejusd. Continuat. ann. 1351. — Revelat. S. Brigittge Lib. vi. c. 63 ; cf. Lib. i. c. 41.— c. 2 Extravagant. Commun. in. vi. — c. 1. Ejusd. v. 7. — Ripoll II. 92-3. — P. de Herenthals Vit. Joann. XXII. ann. 1233. — Martene Thesaur. 1. 1368.— c. 2 Extravagant. Commun. v. iii. — Alph. de Spina Fortalicium Fidei, fol. 61a (Ed. 1494). — liecker, Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 30 (Babington's Transl.). — Fascic. Rer. Expetend. et Fugiend.II. 466 (Ed. 1690).— Theiner Monument. Hibern. et Scotor. No. 634, p. 313.— Cosentino, Archivio Storico Siciliano, 1886, p. 336. — Concil. Salisburgens. ann. 1386, c. 8. — Gudeni Cod. Diplom. III. 603.— D'Argentrg, Collect. Judic. de No vis Error, L ii. 178.
During the Black Death, of one hundred and forty Dominicans at Montpellier, but seven survived ; in Marseilles, of a hundred and sixty, not one. The mortality in the Franciscan Order was reckoned at one hundred and twenty-four thousand four hundred and thirty-four members, which is a manifest exaggeration. — Hoffman, Geschichte der Inquisition, II. 374-5.
