Page:Zawis and Kunigunde (1895).djvu/138

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134
A WIDOW PLEADS

from their states, even at the cost of population, ruin, beggary, and desolation.”

“I would rather, a thousand times, rule over a wilderness than over prosperity gained by heretics,” interposed Albert. “And such shall be the principle I shall establish in my states.”

“Every true son of the church will imitate your example,” observed Brother Primus, “but our peril is still greater than the reverend bishop is aware of.”

“I am well informed,” firmly responded Bruno. “Until about a century ago in every one of these provinces from Constantinople, and especially Philippopolis to Milan, and from Viterbo to the Rhine—mouth, every district listened with joy not only to abuse and defamation of the clergy, but to the socalled evangelism of the heretics. From Smyrna to Ierne they extended. Until Nikol the Slavonian abjured heresy under compulsion, and from dread of foreign intervention, the entire Bosnian dynasty was heretical. Hungary, Poland, Bohemia more than tolerated the Greek heretics who had always affiliated with Constantinople, whence they had sprung. Their chief churches of Bulgaria, Druguria, Philadelphia in Roumania, of Passau, and Donnezach, of Slavonia, of Constantinople both Greek and Latin, of Metz, Strasbourg, of Milan, where a large college had long subsisted, of Coucorrezo, of Bajolo, of Florence, of Valle Spoletana, of Tolosa, Carcassonne, of Aquileia, Cremona, Carinthia, Austria, and especially at Vienna and Neustedt, at Bagnolo, Brescia, Treves, Cologne, and many other cities, exercised wide juris-