[Footnote 122: The Manichæism of the Albigenses is maintained by Mosheim, Gieseler, Schmidt, etc. A good summary of the evidence in favor of this view is given in an article in the London Quarterly Review for April, 1855. The defence of the Albigenses from this serious charge is ably conducted by George Stanley Faber in his "Inquiry into the History and Theology of the Ancient Vallenses and Albigenses" (London, 1838). One of the more recent apologists is F. de Portal, in his "Les descendants des Albigeois et des Huguenots" (Paris, 1860).] [Footnote 123: At Arras, for instance, in 1460, a number of men and women were burned alive as _Vaudois_, after having been entrapped into an admission of their guilt by a treacherous advocate. Too late they exposed the deceit practised upon them, and protested their innocence. The alleged crimes were: flying to their place of assembly by witchcraft, adoring the devil, trampling upon the cross, blasphemy, riotous feasting, and vile offences against morality--staple charges recurring again and again, _ad nauseam_, whenever persecuted men and women have been compelled to meet secretly for God's worship. See L. Rossier, Histoire des protestants de Picardie (Paris, 1861), 1-4; and more at length, Chronicon Cornelii Zantfliet, which styles the sufferers heretics a hundred times worse than Waldenses. Martene et Durand, Vet. Scriptorum ampliss. collectio (Paris, 1729), vii. 501.] [Footnote 124: If, as Adolphe Müntz concludes, after a critical examination of style, etc. (Nicolas de Clémangis; sa vie et ses écrits, Paris, 1846), the famous treatise De ruina Ecclesiæ, or _De corrupto Ecclesiæ statu_, emanated not from Clemangis at Avignon, but from some member of the University of Paris hostile to the Popes of Avignon, yet the undisputed writings of Clemangis contain denunciations of the corruptions of the church quite as decided as any found in the spurious treatise. In his tract _De Præsulibus Simoniacis_, for example, he declares that the degradation of the clergy, fostered by the cupidity of the episcopate, had indeed made God's house a den of robbers. It was "rapinæ officina in qua venalia exponuntur sacramenta ... in qua peccata etiam venduntur," etc. Müntz, 53. Certainly it would be hard to portray the life of the priests in darker colors than they appear in the letters of C. to Gerson, the authenticity of which is not challenged. See the extracts in Von Polenz, Calvinismus in Frankreich, i. 115. According to Nicholas de Clemangis, the _chaste_ priest was a rare exception, and an object of ridicule to his companions.] [Footnote 125: The complicated motives inducing the Council of Constance to acquiesce in the cruel sentence of Huss were skilfully traced as far back as by the learned Mosheim, Institutes of Eccles. Hist. (ed. Murdoch), ii. 429, note.]