They taught that all men were brothers and equal in the sight of God,
and upbraided the priests for their pride and luxury.
These doctrines and the extravagances of the Flagellants alarmed the
pope, Clement VI., who launched against the enthusiasts a bull of
excommunication, and ordered their persecution as heretics. This course,
at first, roused their enthusiasm to frenzy. Some of them even pretended
to be the Messiah, one of these being burnt as a heretic at Erfurt.
Gradually, however, as the plague died away, and the occasion for this
fanatical outburst vanished, the enthusiasm of the Flagellants went with
it, and they sunk from sight. In 1414 a troop of them reappeared in
Thuringia and Lower Saxony, and even surpassed their predecessors in
wildness of extravagance. With the dying out of this manifestation this
strange mania of the middle ages vanished, probably checked by the
growing intelligence of mankind.
_THE SWISS AT MORGARTEN_
On a sunny autumn morning, in the far-off year 1315, a gallant band of
horsemen wound slowly up the Swiss mountains, their forest of spears and
lances glittering in the ruddy beams of the new-risen sun, and extending
down the hill-side as far as the eye could reach.
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