THE BRETHREN OF THE FREE SPIRIT. 3^7 ards the close of the thirteenth century the transcendent merits of beggary, so long acknowledged, began to be questioned. In 1274 the Council of Lyons endeavored to suppress the unauthor- ized mendicant associations. In 1286 Honorius lY. condemned the Segarellists, and some ten years later the persecution, by Boni- face YIII., of the Celestines and stricter Franciscans showed that poverty was no longer to be regarded as the supreme virtue. About the same time he issued a bull ordering the active persecu- tion of some heretics, whose teaching that perfection required men and women to go naked and not to labor with the hands would seem to identify them with the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The same feeling manifested itself contemporaneously in Germany. The first instance of actual persecution recorded is a curt notice that, in 1290, the Franciscan lector at Colmar caused to be arrested two Beghards and two Beguines, and several others at Basle whom he considered to be heretics. Two years later the Provin- cial Council of Mainz, held at Aschaffenburg, emphatically repeat- ed the condemnation of the Beghards and Beguines, expressed by the previous council of 1259, and this was again repeated by an- other council of Mainz in 1310, while other canons regulating the recognized communities of Beguines show that the distinction was clearly drawn between those who led a settled life under super- vision and the wandering beggars who preached in caverns and disseminated doctrines little understood, but regarded with suspi- It was Henry von Yirnenburg, Archbishop of Cologne, how- ever, who commenced the war against them which was to last so long. Elected in 1306, he immediately assembled a provincial council, of which the first two canons are devoted to them with an amphtude proving how important they were becoming. They wore a long tabard and tunics with cowls distinguishing them from the people at large; they had the hardihood to engage in public disputation with the Franciscans and Dominicans, and the obstinacy to refuse to be overcome in argument, and, what was worse, their persistent beggary was so successful that it sensibly diminished the ahns which were the support of the authorized
- Raynald. ann. 1296, No. 34.-Annal. Domin. Colmar. ann. 1290 (Urstisu
■Germ. Histor. II. 25).— Hartzheim IV. 54, 201.
