Prague, soon became too small for the audience, and he was often obliged to preach in the open air outside the church. The state of Prague became as that of a modern town during a revival meeting, and we here meet for the first time with one of those outbreaks of religious enthusiasm that are henceforth so frequent in the annals of Prague. Like so many other church reformers, Conrad soon came into conflict with the mendicant friars.[1] He had in his sermons vigorously attacked these friars, whose dishonesty, avarice, and immorality caused great scandal in Bohemia. They were, no doubt, particularly incensed against Conrad because he had—as they complained—admonished his congregation to give alms rather to the poor than to strong and well-fed monks.[2] The monks and nuns of the mendicant orders had been in the habit of demanding a sum of money from young boys and girls who wished to enter their orders. Informed of this practice, which he considered simonical according to canon law, Conrad complained to the Archbishop Ernest of Padrubice, who, however, declined to interfere, declaring that these orders, both male and female, were subject only to their own regulations. This fact witnesses to the difficulty that confronted even the best of bishops, if he attempted to remedy the evil customs of the church of that time. The mendicant friars were not long in seeking for vengeance. When, at the end of the year 1358, a French
- ↑ The animosity of the mendicant friars against all church reformers was great at this period. In a letter addressed to Conrad by Adalbert Ranco, one of the most learned Bohemians of the time and sometime rector of the University of Paris, known as a friend of Conrad, Milic, and Janov, he writes from Avignon: “Dicatis Milicio quod Parisiis publice dicitur et quasi super certa per mendicantes praedicatur quod ego sum simplex Armachanus (a reference to Richard Fitz Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh). Casopis Musea Královstri Ceskeho (Journal of the Bohemian Musem), 1880, p. 561.
- ↑ The mendicant friars declared: “Item dixit (Conrad): Vos non vultis dare pauperibus et datis monachis qui sunt fortes et qui plus habent quam habere debent. Nolite talibus fortibus dare quia modicum meritum ex hoc habebitis quia videlicet in quolibet collegio esset nee unus qui mereretur illud stipendium quod omnes devorant in guttura sua. (Höfler, Geschichte der hussitischen Bewegung Böhmen, vol. ii. pp. 17–50, contains previously unpublished documents concerning the conflicts of Conrad, Milic, Janov, and Ranco with the ecclesiastical authorities and with the mendicant friars.)
