bound to execute his sentence by stripping him of all his posses- sions, feudal and allodial. All this shows ample readiness to accept the received ecclesiastical law of the period as to heresy, but utter ignorance of the inquisitorial process is revealed in the provision which inflicts the talio on whoever accuses another of certain crimes, including heresy, without being able to convict him. When the accuser had to accept the chances of the stake, prosecutions were not apt to be common.[1]
Towards the close of the thirteenth century and the opening of the fourteenth, attention was aroused to the dangerous tenden- cies of certain forms of belief lurking among some semi-religious bodies which had long enjoyed the favor of the pious and the protection of the Church, known by the names of Beguines, Beg- Infinite learned trifling has been hards, Lollards, Cellites, etc. wasted in imagining derivations for these appellations. The Be- guines and Beghards themselves assert their descent from St. Begga, mother of Pepin of Landen, who built a Benedictine nun- nery at Andennes. Another root has been sought in Lambert-le- Bègue, or the Stammerer, a priest of St. Christopher at Liège, about 1180, who became prominent by denouncing the simony of the canons of the cathedral. Prebends were openly placed for sale in the hands of a butcher named Udelin, who acted as broker, and when Lambert aroused the people to a sense of this wickedness, the bishop arrested him as a disturber, and the clergy assailed him and tore him with their nails. His connection with the Be- guines arose from his affording them shelter in his house at St. Christopher, which has remained until modern times the largest and richest Beguinage of the province. The soundest opinion, how- ever, would seem to be that both Beghard and Beguine are de- rived from the old German word beggan, signifying either to beg or to pray, while Lollard is traced to lullen, to mutter prayers.[2]
- ↑ Schwabenspiegel, Ed. Senck. c. 29, 116 § 12, 351; Ed. Schilt. c. 111, 166,308.
- ↑ Hist. Monast. S. Laurent. Leodiens. Lib. v. c. 54. Mag. Chron. Belgic. p. 193.—Mosheim de Beghardis, Lipsiae, 1790, pp. 98–100, 114.In popular use the words Lollard and Beghard were virtually convertible, and yet there is a difference between them. The associations of Lollards were founded during a pestilence at Antwerp about the year 1300. They were laymen
