learned and wise men as witnesses in behalf of his opinions, so many teachers of the church, that they would have sufficed, if he had passed the whole of this time in all quietness in the study of wisdom. His voice was pleasant, clear, full-sounding, accompanied with a certain dignity; his gestures adapted to excite indignation or pity, which, however, he neither asked for, nor sought to obtain. He stood up fearlessly, undaunted, not merely contemning death, but even demanding it, so that one might look upon him as a second Cato. Oh, what a man, a man worthy of everlasting remembrance!"* Meantime, he was visited in his prison by several of the most considerable men of the council, who hoped that he might be prevailed on to recant. Among these was cardinal Francis Zabarella. But Jerome continued stedfast to the end.

The 30th of May was now appointed as the day for passing and executing the sentence on Jerome. After the bishop on whom this office was devolved by the council had made his discourse introducing the motion to pass sentence on Jerome, the latter began with a loud voice to address those who were present. He refuted what the bishop had said; protested his innocence; complained of the perversion of his language, and inveighed against the corruption of a clergy abandoned to luxury and self-enjoyment, rioting in pleasures at the expense of the poor. The sentence of the council having been pronounced on him, he was delivered over to the secular arm. He then commended himself to God, and singing psalms and hymns allowed himself to be led to the place of execution. On arriving at the spot where Huss had suffered martyrdom, and where he himself was to follow him, he fell on his knees and offered up a long and fervent prayer, so that the executioner growing impatient, he had to be lifted up from the earth. Whilst they were fastening him with a chain to the stake, and arranging the faggots around him, he sang a spiritual song in praise of the day that brought him martyrdom. The fire being lighted behind his back, lest he might see it and be terrified, he called to the executioner to light it before his eyes, "For," said he, "if I had been afraid of this fire, I

* V. d. Hardt, III. p. 69.

'My

should not have come here!" And then addressing the assembled crowd in the German language he said: " beloved children, as I have sung, so and no otherwise do I believe. But the cause for which I now die is this, that I would not agree with the council in affirming* that Master Huss was justly condemned by them. For I had truly known him as a genuine preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." When the fire was kindled, he repeated in a loud voice, "Into thy hands, O God, I commit my spirit." And afterwards, when already suffering the deadly torture of the flames, he said, in the Bohemian language : "Lord God, have pity on me, forgive me my sins, for thou knowest I have sincerely loved thy truth." His voice could no longer be heard, but his lips appeared amidst the flames as if moving in prayer. The eye-witness, Poggio, then describes the impression which the martyrdom of Jerome made on him, though he found it impossible to comprehend what gave him the power so to die. "With cheerful looks he went readily and willingly to his death; he feared neither death, nor the fire and its torture. No stoic ever suffered death with so firm a soul, as that with which he seemed to demand it. Jerome endured the torments of the fire with more tranquillity than Socrates displayed in drinking his cup of hemlock."†

III. THE FRIENDS OF GOD IN GERMANY.

WHILE the contests between the popes, since the time of John the Twenty-second and the emperor Louis the Fourth, were important on account of their influence on the advancement of the church by promoting greater freedom of inquiry

* Poggio, in V. d. Hardt, III. p. 71.

† V. d. Hardt, III. p. 70. We may also compare here the words with which another man of this period, who likewise was incapable of understanding the spirit which animated these men, Eneas Silvio Piccolomini, expresses his admiration, when, speaking of Huss and Jerome, he says: Pertulerunt ambo constanti animo necem, et quasi ad epulas invitati ad incendium properarunt, nullam emittentes vocem, quæ miseri animi facere posset indicium. Nemo philosophorum tam forti animo mortem pertulisse traditur, quam isti incendium. Histor. Bohemica, p. 31.

into ecclesiastical law and reactions against the absolute power of the popes, there were other important influences also resulting from the same causes on the movements of the religious spirit. In particular, there was partly called forth and partly promoted by these contests a religious fermentation among the German people, of which the after consequences lasted for a long time. These influences, however, we must contemplate in their connection with other disturbances in the world, and other significant appearances. Great physical and mental suffering grew out of these contests; many minds were profoundly disquieted by the interdict, the suspension of divine worship, the absence of church blessings, where the need of them was most deeply felt. Add to this the desolating effects produced by one of those pestilences often witnessed, among the signs of a time preparing by the dissolution of the old for a new creation, by virtue of an inscrutable connection between physical and spiritual development on this earth; between history and nature, under the guiding hand of that wise providence which makes all power subservient to one highest end. And such pestilences serve the double purpose of arousing slumbering minds to thought, and making them conscious of their true condition. At the time of which we are speaking, all the causes above mentioned conspired together to bring the church to a consciousness of her deep corruption, to point her away from the physical to the spiritual distress, to awaken in her a remembrance of God's judgments, to direct her eye to the hidden future, leading men, with the prophets and the Apocalypse for their guides, to study the signs of the last times. And so, in fact, it came about that many thought they saw very near at hand the coming of Antichrist and the second advent of Christ, or a new spiritual revelation of Christ to execute judgment on a corrupt church, and prepare the way for restoring it to greater glory. Out of all this proceeded, on the one hand, divers movements of a fanatical spirit, and on the other contemplations of a more sober and profound Christian seriousWe are speaking of movements which continued long to propagate themselves, reaching into the fifteenth century. The prophecies of a Hildegard; the writings, genuine and spurious, of an abbot Joachim, supplied nutriment to such

ness.

tendencies. The physical and spiritual sufferings of that distressful period awakened a more profound sense of religious need. In the common church theology such a need could find no satisfaction; from the common clergy, the individuals in whom this sense of need had been awakened, could expect no assistance. One peculiar characteristic for which the German race has ever been distinguished, is their profound sense of the religious element, seated in the inmost depths of the soul; their readiness to be impelled by the discordant strifes of the external world, and unfruitful human ordinances, to seek and find God in the deep recesses of their own hearts, and to experience a hidden life in God springing forth in opposition to barren conceptions of the abstract intellect that leave the heart cold and dead, a mechanism that converts religion into a mere round of outward ceremonies. John Nieder, a Dominican of the fifteenth century, relates in a book of his containing many remarkable passages regarding the internal religious life, in this and the next following times,* that in Germany it was a custom with men and women, not only of the lower orders but in noble families, to set apart one hour at least of every day to meditation on the benefits they owed to the sufferings of Christ, that they might be the better prepared for the patient endurance of trials and the exercise of all the virtues. Thus arose among clergymen, monks, and laymen, of both sexes, the tendency to a mysticism that gave depth to the religious element. This tendency, which at first had developed itself in conflict with the beginnings of the scholastic theology, afterwards fell in with it, and was now beginning to shape itself in a more independent way and to gain greater influence, especially upon the popular life, in Germany. As early as the close of the thirteenth century, the way for this had already been prepared; but by the causes above mentioned it was still further promoted. Thus in the midst of this general distress

* Formicarius ed. v. d. Hardt. Hlemst. 1696.

Est consuetudo laudabilis multorum, ne dicam plebeorum utriusque sexus in Alemmannia, verum etiam magnatum et nobilium, ad minus semel die naturali, hora aliqui, summum humano generi impensum beneficium, Christi passionem, meditari ac repetere, ut exinde, Deo grati, mala mundi ferant patientius et virtutes operentur facilius. P. 133.

and these discords of the times, we see that affiliated societies, growing out of one spirit, were formed in south and west Germany and spread as far as the Netherlands, or from the Netherlands back to Germany, having their principal seats in Strasburg, Basle, Cologne, and Nuremberg, whose members were called, both by themselves and others, Friends of God. Not that it was intended thereby to designate an exclusive party or sect, but simply to denote a certain stage of spiritual life, the stage of disinterested love to God; a love free from all desire of reward as the predominating affection, and opposed to a state of the affections still under bondage, where the man seeks in God something other than God himself. The scripture which seemed to authorise this distinction and opposition between servants and friends of God, were our Saviour's words in John xv. 15, which are thus explained by one of these Friends of God, the Dominican John Tauler: "Therefore did our Lord say to his disciples, 'Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends.' The henceforth' was from the time they forsook all and followed him; then they were his friends and no longer servants.' The same opposition is expressed again by this writer, where he distinguishes between those that carried within them the false ground, those under bondage to the world, and the true friends of God, who, without any separate will of their own, referred all things to God.† Men were to be found among them, who had carefully studied the scholastic theology, who occasionally display a certain refinement and subtlety of conceptual distinction, and make some use of an exact classification of the mental faculties. Such men were Tauler and Ruysbroch. But still the theology growing out of a living intercourse with God, and grounded in the internal experiences of the spiritual life, was opposed to the former and considered far superior to it. They pointed away from the strifes and contests of the scholastic theologians, which served to bewilder the mind, to those fountains of knowledge within.

* See Schmidt, in his work, "Johannes Tauler von Strasburg," which contains so many richly-instructive remarks, explanatory of the appearances we are considering. Hamburg, 1841. P. 165.

See the words in the Basle edition of his Sermons, of the year 1522, fol. 27, b; and in the Francfort edition of the year 1826. Vol. I. p. 263.