Church, fit only to be cut off, and the nuns were told that they should rejoice in being liberated from his influence. Still he remained firm, and the bishop was obliged to consult the Cardinal-legate, Cinthio of Porto, before he ventured to throw the indomi- table heretic into prison. From his jail, Minneke himself appealed to the pope, asserting that he had been condemned unheard, praying for an examination, and offering to submit to incarceration for life if he should refuse to recant any erroneous opinions of which he might be convicted. Honorius thereupon, in May, 1224, ordered Bishop Conrad to bring his prisoner before the legate and an assembly of prelates for a final hearing and judgment. About October 1, at Bardewick, Cinthio met an assembly of the bishops of North Germany, where it was decided that Minneke was convicted of having encouraged the nuns to regard him as greater than any other born of woman; he had on many points relaxed the severe Cistercian discipline; in his sermons he had declared that the Holy Ghost was the Father of the Son, and had so exalted the state of virginity as to represent marriage as a sin; in a vision he had seen Satan praying to be forgiven, and he had asserted that in heaven there was a woman greater than the Virgin, whose name was Wisdom. Still another synod, held at Hildesheim, October 22, was requisite to conclude the matter. Minneke was brought before it, was convicted of his errors, and degraded from the priesthood, but even yet Bishop Conrad was so little sure of his authority that the sentence was published under the seal of the legate. The culprit was handed over to the secular authorities, and was duly burned in 1225. The prominence accorded to this assertion, that Satan desired forgiveness, is shown by his being stigmatized as a Manichæan and a Luciferan.[1]
This case has a further interest for us, inasmuch as one of the participators in the final judgment was a man who filled all Ger- many with his fame, and who was the most perfect embodiment of the pure fanaticism of his time—Conrad of Marburg. Though a secular priest and holding himself aloof from both Mendicant Orders,[2] Conrad steeped himself in the severest poverty and gained
