A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume ILea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume I
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- History
appointed to determine upon a compromise, which was accepted by both
parties and approved by Sixtus IV. about 1480. The priests were not to
teach that the Orders were fruitful of heresies, the friars were not to
teach that parishioners need not hear mass on Sundays and feast days in
their parish churches, or confess to their curates at Easter, though
they were not to be deprived of hearing confessions and granting
absolutions. Neither priests nor friars were to endeavor to get the
laity to choose sepulture with either; and neither party was to assail
or detract from the other in their sermons. The insertion of this
compromise in the canon law shows the importance attached to it, and
that it was regarded as a lasting settlement, applicable throughout
Latin Christendom. Its effect is seen in the inclusion, among the
heresies of Jean Lallier condemned in Paris in 1484, of those which
revived the doctrine of Jean de Poilly and declared that John XXII. had
no power to pronounce it heretical. Yet, at the Lateran Council, in
1515, a determined effort was made by the bishops to obtain the
revocation of the special privileges of the Mendicants. By refusing to
vote for any measures they obtained a promise of this, but skilful delay
enabled Leo X. to elude performance till the following year, when a
compromise was effected, which merely shows by what it forbade to the
Mendicants how contemptuous had been their defiance of episcopal
authority. They lost little by this, for in 1519 Erasmus complains in a
letter to Albert, Cardinal-Archbishop of Mainz, "The world is
overburdened with the tyranny of the Mendicants, who, though they are
the satellites of the Roman See, are yet so numerous and powerful that
they are formidable to the pope himself and even to kings. To them, when
the pope aids them, he is more than God, when he displeases them he is
worthless as a dream."[260]
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