y
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 Muentz concludes, after a critical
examination of style, etc. (Nicolas de Clemangis; sa vie et ses ecrits,
Paris, 1846), the famous treatise De ruina Ecclesiae, or _De corrupto
Ecclesiae 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 Praesulibus 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
"rapinae officina in qua venalia exponuntur sacramenta ... in qua peccata
etiam venduntur," etc. Muentz, 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.]

[Footnote 126: This rare poem has been reprinted, with the unimportant
passages omitted, in the Bulletin de la Soc. de l'hist. du prot. franc.,
v. (1857) 268, etc.]

[Footnote 127:

"Cessez, cessez me donner ornemens,
Calices, croix, et beaux accoutremens;
Faictes que j'aye ministres vertueux....
Les images d'argent tant sumptueux,
La grant beaute des moustiers si notables
Ne sont pas tant devant Dieu acceptables
Que la doctrine et vie bonne et saincte
Des bona