THE PROTEST OF S AC HSENH AUSEN. 137 sions of the papacy ; he demanded the assembling of a general council before which he would make good his claims ; it was his duty, as the head of the empire, to maintain the purity of the faith against a pope who was a fautor of heretics. It shows how little he yet understood about the questions at issue that to sus- tain this last charge he accused John of unduly protecting the Franciscans against universal complaints that they habitually vio- lated the secrecy of the confessional, this being apparently his version of the papal condemnation of John of Poilly's thesis that confession to a Mendicant friar was insufficient.* If Louis at first thought to gain strength by thus utilizing the jealousy and dislike felt by the secular clergy towards the Men- dicants, he soon realized that a surer source of support was to be found in espousing the side of the Franciscans in the quarrel forced upon them by John. The two months' delay granted by John ex- pired March 7 without Louis making an appearance, and on March 25 the pope promulgated against him a sentence of excommunica- tion, with a threat that he should be deprived of all rights if he did not submit within three months. To this Louis speedily re- joined in a document known as the Protest of Sachsenhausen, which shows that since December he had put himself in communication with the disaffected Franciscans, had entered into alliance with them, and had recognized how great was the advantage of posing as the defender of the faith and assailing the pope with the charge of heresy. After paying due attention to John's assaults on the rights of the empire, the Protest takes up the question of his recent bulls respecting poverty and argues them in much detail. John had declared before Franciscans of high standing that for forty years he had regarded the Rule of Francis as fantastic and impossible. As the Eule was revealed by Christ, this alone proves him to be a heretic. Moreover, as the Church is infallible in its definitions of faith, and as it has repeatedly, through Honorius III., Innocent IV., Alexander IV., Innocent V., Nicholas III., and Nicholas IV., pronounced in favor of the poverty of Christ and the apostles, John's condemnation of this tenet abundantly shows him
- Carl Miiller, op. cit. § 5.— Preger, Politik des Pabstes Johann XXII. (Miin-
chen, 1885, pp. 7, 54). — Martene Thesaur. II. 644-51. — Raynald. ann. 1323, No. 34-5.
