nterdicted their public penance,
which he had not authorised; and, on pain of excommunication, prohibited
throughout Christendom the continuance of these pilgrimages. Philip VI.,
supported by the condemnatory judgment of the Sorbonne, forbade their
reception in France. Manfred, King of Sicily, at the same time
threatened them with punishment by death; and in the East they were
withstood by several bishops, among whom was Janussius, of Gnesen, and
Preczlaw, of Breslau, who condemned to death one of their Masters,
formerly a deacon; and, in conformity with the barbarity of the times,
had him publicly burnt. In Westphalia, where so shortly before they had
venerated the Brothers of the Cross, they now persecuted them with
relentless severity; and in the Mark, as well as in all the other
countries of Germany, they pursued them as if they had been the authors
of every misfortune.

The processions of the Brotherhood of the Cross undoubtedly promoted the
spreading of the plague; and it is evident that the gloomy fanaticism
which gave rise to them would infuse a new poison into the already
desponding minds of the people.

Still, however, all this was within the bounds of barbarous enthusiasm;
but horrible were the persecutions of the Jews, which were committed in
most countries, with even greater exasperation than in the twelfth
century, during the first Crusades. In every destructive pestilence the
common people at first attribute the mortality to poison. No instruction
avails; the supposed testimony of their eyesight is to them a proof, and
they authoritatively demand the victims of their rage. On whom, then,
was it so likely to fall as on the Jews, the usurers and the strangers
who lived at enmity with the Christians? They were everywhere suspected
of having poisoned the wells or infected the air. They alone were
considered as having brought this fearful mortality upon the Christians.
They were, in consequence, pursued with merciless cruelty; and either
indiscriminately given up to the fury of the populace, or sentenced by
sanguinary tribunals, which, with all the forms of the law, ordered them
to be burnt alive. In times like these, much is indeed said of guilt and
innocence; but hatred and revenge bear down all discrimination, and the
smallest probability magnifies suspicion into certainty. These bloody
scenes, which disgraced Europe in the fourteenth century, are a
counterpart to a similar mania of the age, whic