he could not have effected more. Earnestly the Bishops of Csanad and Transylvania appealed to him to visit their dioceses, which abounded in heretics; and as the latter prelate speaks of the Hussites having penetrated to his bishopric from Moldavia, it shows how widely the heresy had been diffused through southeastern Europe.[1]
Suddenly, in 1437, Frà Giacomo's career was interrupted. He had crushed the Fraticelli of Italy, the wild Cathari of Bosnia, and the fiercer Hussites of Hungary, but when he attacked the orthodox concubinary priests of Fünfkirchen, and strove to force them to abandon the illicit partners who were universally kept, they proved too strong for even his iron will and seasoned nerves, backed though he was by the power of pope and kaiser and the awful authority of the Inquisition. They raised such a storm at this attempted invasion of their accustomed privileges that he was obliged to abandon his work and fly for his life. He appealed to Eugenius, and Eugenius to Sigismund. The latter wrote to Henry, the Bishop of Fünfkirchen, peremptorily ordering him to recall Giacomo and give him every aid, and also to Giacomo, assuring him of support. Thus assailed, Bishop Henry gave instructions that Giacomo should be supplied with all necessaries, but the attempt to enforce chastity on the priesthood seems to have been abandoned. The customary penalty in Hungary for such offences was five marks, and the synods of Gran in 1450 and 1480 complain that the archdeacons not only keep these fines for themselves, but encourage the criminals in order to derive profit from them; in fact, they issued in Hungary, as in many other places, licenses to sin, which may, perhaps, explain the indignation caused by Giacomo's interference and its lack of success.[2]
He appears to have meddled no longer with the private lives of the orthodox clergy, but to have devoted his energies to the easier work of exterminating heretics. Early in 1437 we hear of him south of the Danube, where the Bishop of Sreim praised his effective work; by putting to death all who could not be converted, he had saved the diocese from a rising of the Hussites, in which
- ↑ Loserth, Mittheilungen des Vereins für Gesch. der Deutschen in Böhmen, 1885, pp. 102-4, 107.—Wadding. ann. 1436, No. 1-11.—Ægid. Carlerii. Lib. de Legation. (Mon. Conc. Gen. Sæc. XV. T. I. p. 691).
- ↑ Wadding. ann. 1437, No. 6-12.—Synodd. Strigonens. ann. 1450, 1480 (Batthyani Legg. Eccles. Hung. III. 481, 557).
