Nor, in the general whirl of thought and feeling, was it easy to foresee on which side any new development of this feeling should be classed; whether it should be condemned as a source of heresy and a disturbance of order, or applauded as a revival of stronger faith and stricter discipline. The Dominicans and Franciscans, called into existence to combat heresy and to strengthen the Papal power, were looked upon by the secular clergy as intruders on their lawful privileges and disturbers of the peace; while the Franciscan renunciation of property gradually led them on to the advocacy of doctrines, which were at least as inconvenient to Popes and Cardinals as to the secular nobles. It is characteristic of the way in which anxiety for their temporal possessions was colouring all the feelings of the defenders of the Church, that, throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the name with which its champions were most eager to brand their opponents, as indicating the darkest shade of heresy, was the name of “Picard.” This word was a corruption of “Beghard,” the title of a Flemish sect, which had been distinguished for its devotion and zeal for prayer, but which had alarmed the rulers of the world by its advocacy of community of goods. The confusion produced in men’s minds by the failure of the Church’s armies to recover Palestine, was still further increased by the retirement of the Popes to Avignon, and at a later time by that schism in the Papacy which followed the restoration of the Papal rule in Rome; and, along with the desire for the re-establishment of the unity of the Church, there grew the wish for a revival of peace and purity in the general life of Europe. Of all the rulers of the fourteenth century Charles IV. seemed the most likely to guide these conflicting movements into channels, which should be at once favourable to the champions of the Papacy, and welcome to the promoters of peace and purity. As King of Bohemia he had inherited, through his mother’s family, traditions of special devotion to the Church; and most of the circumstances of his career were of a kind to encourage the hopes of the Pope and the clergy. He had been elected to the Imperial throne, in opposition to the most bitterly anti-papal of Emperors, Louis of Bavaria; he had steadily opposed all the proposals which had been made to him, to induce him to assert his Imperial authority over the Italian cities; and he had prefaced the Majestas Carolina with an assertion of his adherence to the Catholic faith, and a denunciation of heresy. No doubt that clause in the Golden Bull which repudiated the necessity of a Papal sanction to the election of an Emperor, had drawn a protest from the Pope; but this error had surely been more than compensated for, by the zeal which Charles had shown for the restoration of the Pope to Rome, and for the maintenance of the Papal authority in Italy.