Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/358

„4^2 GERMANY. has neglected to place him alongside of those kindred spirits, St. Peter Martyr and St. Pedro Arbues." With Conrad's withdrawal from the Council of Mamz the pro- ceedings of which he had been the mainspring came to an end at once " Thus," says a contemporary ecclesiastic, " ceased this storm, the most dangerous persecution of the faithful since the days of Constantius the Heretic and Julian the Apostate Peo- ple once more began to breathe. Count Sayn was a wall for the mansion of the Lord, lest this madness should rage further, en- veloping guilty and innocent alike, bishops and princes, religious and Catholics,' like peasants and heretics." The murderers evi- dently felt that they had nothing to dread from public opinion, for they voluntarily came forward and offered to submit them- selves to the judgment of the Church as regards the heresy whereof Conrad had accused them, and to the secular tribunals as regards the homicide, agreeing to present themselves for examination at a diet of the empire which was ordered for February, 1234, at 1 rank- TO 1^1 T Gregory who in June had been ordering a crusade preached against the heretics, and had been stimulating prince and prelate to a yet more ferocious persecution, was moved to regret when the envoy of the assembly of Mainz, Conrad, the " Scholasticus of Speier, presented letters from the king and bishops describing the arbitrary methods of his inquisitor. He ordered letters drawn up prescribing a more regular form of trial for heretics; but be- fore the envoy had permission to depart, there arrived the origi- nator of the trouble, Conrad Tors, with the pitiful tale of the Mas- ter's martyrdom. At this news the emotional pope could not con- tain his wrath. The letters just written were recalled and torn up, and the unlucky envoy was threatened with the depriva^on of all his benefices. Under the remon^rances of the Sacred Col- lege, however, Gregory's ire subsided sufficiently to allow him to renew the letters and to enable the envoy to depart unscathed The pope solaced himself, however, with pouring out his grief at full length in letters to the German prelates. The death of Con- rad was a thunderclap which had shaken the walls of the Chris- • Alberic. Trium Font.ann. 1233.-Alban Butler, Vies des Saints, 19 Nov»-.. + Gest. Treviror. c. 174.— Hartzheim III. 549. ,