The impudence of Tanchelyn and the superstition of his followers seem alike incredible.  All Antwerp was his harem.  He levied, likewise, vast sums upon his converts, and whenever he appeared in public, his apparel and pomp were befitting an emperor.  Three thousand armed satellites escorted his steps and put to death all who resisted his commands.  So groveling became the superstition of his followers that they drank of the water in which, he had washed, and treasured it as a divine elixir.  Advancing still further in his experiments upon human credulity, he announced his approaching marriage with the Virgin Mary, bade all his disciples to the wedding, and exhibited himself before an immense crowd in company with an image of his holy bride.  He then ordered the people to provide for the expenses of the nuptials and the dowry of his wife, placing a coffer upon each side of the image, to receive the contributions of either sex.  Which is the most wonderful manifestation in the history of this personage—­the audacity of the impostor, or the bestiality of his victims?  His career was so successful in the Netherlands that he had the effrontery to proceed to Rome, promulgating what he called his doctrines as he went.  He seems to have been assassinated by a priest in an obscure brawl, about the year 1115.

By the middle of the 12th century, other and purer heresiarchs had arisen.  Many Netherlanders became converts to the doctrines of Waldo.  From that period until the appearance of Luther, a succession of sects—­Waldenses, Albigenses, Perfectists, Lollards, Poplicans, Arnaldists, Bohemian Brothers—­waged perpetual but unequal warfare with the power and depravity of the Church, fertilizing with their blood the future field of the Reformation.  Nowhere was the persecution of heretics more relentless than in the Netherlands.  Suspected persons were subjected to various torturing but ridiculous ordeals.  After such trial, death by fire was the usual but, perhaps, not the most severe form of execution.  In Flanders, monastic ingenuity had invented another most painful punishment for Waldenses and similar malefactors.  A criminal whose guilt had been established by the hot iron, hot ploughshare, boiling kettle, or other logical proof, was stripped and bound to the stake:—­he was then flayed, from the neck to the navel, while swarms of bees were let loose to fasten upon his bleeding flesh and torture him to a death of exquisite agony.

Nevertheless heresy increased in the face of oppression The Scriptures, translated by Waldo into French, were rendered into Netherland rhyme, and the converts to the Vaudois doctrine increased in numbers and boldness.  At the same time the power and luxury of the clergy was waxing daily.  The bishops of Utrecht, no longer the defenders of the people against arbitrary power, conducted themselves like little popes.  Yielding in dignity neither to king nor kaiser, they exacted homage from the most powerful princes of the