Zawis and Kunigunde/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
MARTYRDOM.
During Solomon’s sojourn in Hungary he was enabled to employ, for the benefit of his brethren in that region and in Poland, much favorable influence through the mediation of both Lord Zawis and the Emperor. The latter felt little regard for Jews; but the internal quiet of Hungary suited his momentary policy. He knew that Jews and sectaries occupied the one the finance, and the other the chief commerce of the neighboring kingdoms; and he did not desire that a sympathetic insurrection should disturb his own estates. Austria, and especially Vienna, included a large population long alienated in religion from Rome, and decidedly favorable to the Premsyl dynasty. He did not possess a florin in his treasury; and even his present small force clamored for pay. Rome exacted every groschen for herself, and compelled obedience by enforcing poverty Rudolph had irretrievably bound himself to the church; and the repression of so-called heretics at once conciliated ecclesiastics, and removed a possible source of antagonism to himself. For these reasons, Rudolph encouraged Ladislaus in renewing in Hungary, during the spring of 1280, the almost obsolete laws against heresy. The church thus proposed to annihilate, as in Spain, the most industrious, frugal, and intelligent elements of her population, that had restored prosperity after the terrible Tartar ravages of 1241. “If Ladislaus,” he often remarked, “chooses to root out, like the Alfonsos, the best portion of his own people, I shall have less fears of any occasion for another Kressenbrünn. The less power he possesses at home the more secure is the Adriatic from his ambition.” in this policy Venice steadily encouraged the emperor; and the Senate countenanced the diversion of the stream of trade from Hungary and Bohemia to the Tyrol. This trade speedily languished indeed; but the shrewd liberation of Venetian trade from the guild that had held it, enabled the queen of the Adriatic to augment her commerce with Barcelona, Sicily, Italy, England, and even the Baltic, almost to the total deprivation of Rudolph of any share. At this date the foundation of French, English, and Dutch commerce was imperishably laid. A momentary supposed advantage to his dynasty from the support of the ecclesiastics totally blinded Ladislaus to every such consideration. In conformity to his policy, Brother Primus easily obtained authority to enforce the revived laws against heresy; and Gran became his objective point. Accordingly at Ofen he kept close watch on Solomon’s movements; and when the latter had discharged his commission for Lord Zawis he started for Gran in order to advise Pietro, Lord Boppo, and his friends of the renewal of legalized severities. To afford them such aid as might lie in his power, he solicited a commission from Ladislaus, which in brief and vague terms was reluctantly presented. This open letter, however, according to a well known device, fatally practiced on several occasions, did not receive enrollment, and thus fell short of full legal effect. Brother Primus and several companions joined Solomon on his departure. The latter, perceiving the attention, saluted his companion in Hebrew. Receiving no answer, he tried Spanish. Brother Primus looked confused. Then Solomon tried Arabic with equal want of success. Lastly Solomon, with a look of scorn, pointed to the most ignorant of the crowd, indicating to Brother Primus that he might possibly be able to converse with him. The Jew then strode forward until the company encountered a small military guard. Here the party halted. The officer saluted respectfully and Solomon recognized the commander of the escort that had conveyed Otakar’s body to Vienna. Further explanation was not required; and the chief hope and plan for the arrest of Solomon was disappointed. The party advanced, and by degrees one and another of the travelers approached in a friendly manner, and Brother Primus saw his chosen guard on most friendly acquaintance with his intended victim. On approaching Gran, the party observed signs of commotion. Along the road from Moravia advanced an irregular multitude. The crowd increased as it proceeded. In front marched a numerous band of men stripped to the waist, each carrying a scourge with which from time to time he smote his fellows nearest, and was himself also scourged. With dolorous cries, lamentations, contortions, and wailings the flagellants approached Gran. By aside path Brother Primus withdrew unnoticed. The strange company settled on the edge of the town at the same caravanserai whither Solomon and his friends had been conducted on their first arrival. During all that night excited multitudes poured towards Gran from every quarter. At stated intervals the flagellants screamed and smote each other. Orators with streaming hair stood on platforms of any kind and wildly denounced the wrath of God against his enemies. Some worked themselves into convulsions, and were pointed to as possessed with demons.
“The wrath of God; the wrath of God,” men screamed, “is about to fall.”
The contagion spread. The wild multitude became frenzied. At this favorable moment Brother Secundus ascended a platform, and holding up a large crucifix, denounced the sin of heresy as the object of the deserved vengeance of the Almighty. “The heretics, the heretics!” shouted the multitude. “Death to the heretics!”
During this scene another party, flagellants and peasants, started through the town, and thus the excitement spread. Solomon retired and observed. The townsmen assembled and stood on their defense. The great body of the flagellants at length marched through the town, and joined the former body in the further suburb. Shouts and screamslong resounded. Advancing cautiously, Solomon observed two rough heaps of wood, fagots and broken furniture. In the midst of each a stake, and fastened to the stakes two persons he could not distinguish. A frantic multitude gesticulated. The fires blazed up. In front of the crowd stood Brother Primus and Brother Secundus. Advancing nearer, Solomon perceived,—oh, horror! the forms of Pietro and Eudocia. With a roar the flames ascended. “Oh, water,” cried Eudocia, “water, water!”
Quickly advancing, a poor limping creature rushed between the very flames, held the cup to Eudocia’s lips, and at that moment fell suffocated in the fire that speedily consumed both. Pietro sang at first aloud, and then more feebly:
“Glory to the Lord on high,
His mercy is assured;
In life and death his love is nigh,
The cross hath Christ endured.
“Father forgive us; let our sin
Measure thy mercy—free.
Receive us with—thy—saints—within;—
Thy death—our— — —tory!”
The last words, choked in utterance, told that Pietro Felice in religion, Lord of Besalu, of the line of Berengario, last duke of Provence, of the stock of the Counts of Barcelona, had passed from earth by the sudden fury of a frenzied multitude, under the direct guidance and preparation of Brothers Primus and Secundus, who saw their unexpected opportunity to enforce the sanguinary law now renewed. The dreadful suddenness of the event prevented any measures from being taken. In great anger the now aroused townsmen assailed the flagellant fanatics; and under, the guidance and leadership of an old man with streaming white hair, drove the disordered rabble with fierce blows and wounds and desperate menaces far from the town. Brother Primus and Secundus retired a short distance, and quietly requested from the magistrates additional guards to quell the commotion that had arisen, and now resisted the royal commands. They also demanded special protection for themselves, particularly from the violence of Boppo, Solomon, and others whom they designated, and also instant refreshments, provision, and secure lodging. A public meeting immediately held selected a deputation to proceed to Ofen to lay the dreadful occurrence before King Ladislaus.
Robberies and disorder among the hungry multitude created angry disturbance; and when the still tumultuous throng departed much of the bazaar and many houses had been pillaged. Fires also broke out that required much labor, and created further losses and distress. In twelve short hours the thriving town of Gran, that had just reached the verge of steady and permanent prosperity, but had accumulated little, became as if visited again by the Tartars. With admirable foresight, the magistrates divided the people into sections, each with a prescribed duty. Some provided lodging for the homeless. Others removed the rubbish and prepared for rebuilding; and a chosen body tenderly gathered up the ashes where Pietro. Eudocia, and Ulda had yielded their lives. Here the first place fell, by universal respect, to Lord Boppo, the father of the martyred lady. In one casket the ashes were reverently deposited; and then again under the open sun the little congregation sang their burial hymn, and spoke to each other of the honors attached to their fidelity.
“Forgive me, brethren,” said the afflicted veteran, “if I feel unable to express my deep emotion at the example of serenity and faith exhibited by my sainted daughter.
“An equal nobility must be attributed to her faithful husband. Assuredly such constancy is imperishable; and the divine love that imparts it will yet sanctify the world.”
Then taking Solomon’s hand, the old man, shading his own tearful eyes, presented him in silence to the congregation. A hush of surprise spread through the company. “Brethren in the same Lord,” said Solomon, with that confidence in himself and that aspect of practiced address, tempered by the solemnity of the occasion, that propriety dictated, “our common humanity revolts against such cruel violence. Not the spirit of love inculcates these evil deeds. Yet in presence of the dignified fortitude, the majestic constancy we have witnessed, our human character is invested with a new nobility. Elevated indeed above the commoninstincts and cravings of human life must those hearts be that can with like serene preparedness depart from all that men commonly deem most excellent. A bond of divine energy unites such hearts with that origin of power and love which thus sacredly conjoins heaven and earth. Not in ascetic annihilation of the graces God had given, not in absorbed abstraction that abandons all human sympathies, not in immured exile from the love and sympathy that exalts humanity by partaking of its daily sorrows, and imparting its sanctified discipline in the love and care of conjugal life, the patience of parental endurance, and the calm forbearance among provocations in our chequered life, did our revered friends exhibit their love for their human kindred, their devotion to divine progress in grace, and nearness to the essence of the pure source of all good. Such gifts as they possessed they devoted to the service of their fellows.
“Dutiful and loving children, affectionate and in all honor as husband and wife; and earnest in daily avocations of useful industry in sympathy with men and women, their fidelity is a demonstration of the presence of a divine spirit; and their death leaves an inheritance of love for suffering humanity that never can depart from the earth. Of the generous and devoted sister who sacrificed herself in the very flames to perform a work of love, my knowledge is that even the affliction of leprosy could not extinguish from her soul that abnegation of self in discharge of the duty she felt prompted to perform that marks the highest advance in divine things. An outcast among men, a wanderer and an object of loathing, she performed an act of sublime charity that ought to put to eternal shame the real instigators of these barbarities. The world shall learn to distinguish between the pompous ambition, noisy assertion of piety and charity, and consuming pretensions of the one party, and the humble, unostentatious, and heroic devotedness of the other.
“The fiery trial that consumed her has exalted unassuming truth and charity forever.”
Six vigorous men, of whom Solomon was one, then raised the common simple bier, and bore it, while all uncovered sang a dirge, slowly to its resting place.
Ladislaus returned a reply in the words that history has attributed to him.
“In our duchy,” he said, “and the diocese of Bosnia, and some of the adjacent countries, divers sects of heretical pravity are known now for a long time to have detestably multiplied and damnably increased, to the dishonor of the Creator, and the disgrace of the Christian faith.” Ladislaus added, as if apologetically, “Our diplomatic records remind us that in 1226 the pope Honorius III. praised Coloman, Duke of Slavonia, for his willingness to exterminate the heretics of Bosnia; and censured John, lord of the further Sirmium for not entering on the crusade against them. In 1233 the bishop of Bosnia was deposed for heresy; and Nikol the Slavonian, Duke of Bosnia, whose predecessors had been addicted to heresy, abjured it. In 1234 Gregory IX. dispatched a legate to preach a crusade against heretics. At that time throughout all Bosnia and the neighboring provinces so greatly had the multitude of the false believers increased, that the whole land moaned and groaned like a trackless desert. In 1236 Prince Zbislas and many other chiefs of the diocese of Bosnia were distinguished for heretical pravity. In 1238 a new crusade was preached against the Bosnian heretics in Hungary. In 1243 Innocent IV. commissioned a legate to Croatia and Dalmatia to extirpate the stain of heretical pravity wherewith the entire region was infected. In 1247 Innocent IV. declared that as well the church as the entire diocesan district of Bosnia had totally lapsed into the iniquity of heresy; although the Archbishop of Cologne, not without great effusion of blood, much slaughter of men, and great expenditure of the church property of Cologne, which had obtained the temporai dominion of that region, had violently subdued a portion of that country; while nevertheless the church could not be sustained in the purity of the faith because castles and fortresses had not been sufficiently strengthened to resist assault and siege. We are compelled to preserve the friendship of the empire and the church under the conditions recently established.” The unsettled condition of Prussia restrained the sanguinary purposes of Ladislaus for the present.