THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION. 607 lated all manner of distorted and false accounts of it. Julius II., so far from obeying the visions of Letser, confirmed in 1511 the religious order of the Immaculate Conception founded at Toledo in 1484 by the zeal of Beatriz de Silva.* Wigand Wirt did not wholly escape, though he does not seem to have been directly implicated in the fraud. The Observantine Franciscans prosecuted him before the Holy See for his savage tract against his adversaries. The case was heard by two succes- sive commissions of cardinals, until, October 25, 1512, Wirt aban- doned the defence and was sentenced to make the most humiliat- ing of retractions. In public he revoked, abolished, repudiated, and extirpated his book as scandalous, insulting, defamatory, use- less, and prejudicial ; he confessed that in it he had injured the- ological doctrine and wounded the fraternal charity of many, including the venerable Franciscans, and the honor and fame of Conrad Henselin, Thomas Wolff, Sebastian Brandt, and Jacob of Schlettstadt (Wimpheling) ; and he declared his belief that those who upheld the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception did not err. Moreover, under penalty of perpetual imprisonment, he promised, within four months after November 1, to repeat his recantation publicly in Heidelberg, after giving three days' notice to the Franciscan convent there ; he begged pardon of all whom he had injured, and he obligated himself to undergo perpetual im- prisonment if he should in any way, directly or indirectly, repeat the offence. The Dominican general who took part in the sen- tence, commanded all priors and prelates of the Order to con- fine him for life, wherever he might be found, in case of non-f ulfil-
- I have followed a contemporary account of this curious affair — " De Qua-
tuor Haeresiarchis in civitate Bernensi nuper combustis, a.d. 1500," 4to, sine nota (Strassburg, 1509), attributed to Thomas Murner. It accords sufficiently with the briefer reports of Trithemius (Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1509) and Sebastian Brandt (Pauli Langii Chron. Citicens. ann. 1509), and that of the Chron. Glass- berger ann. 1501, 1506, 1507, 1509.— Garibay, Compendio Historial de Espafia, Lib. xx. cap. 13. The Bernese community was piously devoted to the Virgin. In 1489 a cer- tain Nicholas Rotelfinger was inconsiderate enough to declare that she helped the wicked as well as the good. For this he was obliged to stand a whole day in an iron collar and to make oath that he would personally seek the pope and bring home a written absolution.— Valerius Anshelin, Berner-Chronik, Bern, 1884, I. 355.
