The existence of such venturesome pantheistic speculations as these broad-cast in Germany reacted very unfavourably on all unrecognized, and particularly on migratory, religious associations, which became involved in the persecutions set on foot in consequence of the undoubted heresies of the pantheists. Such associations tended to increase in the thirteenth century. They were not necessarily connected with the Spiritual Franciscans or Fraticelli; but they certainly owed their origin to the popularity of the mendicant idea as practised by the friars, in particular the Minorites. They are found in France, Germany, Italy and the Low Countries; and to such voluntary fellowships there could be no legitimate objection in themselves; they might be the most laudable instruments for the exploitation of religious zeal. Only they called for thorough supervision. Beguinages, therefore--large permanent houses--were established in such towns as Cologne, Ghent, and Paris, such establishments being under careful management, the special protection of the popes and secular princes, and enjoying often the highest reputation for sanctity. But with wanderers it was different. They could not be supervised, and to distinguish between the orthodox and the schismatic mendicant was difficult. Undisciplined vagrancy was in itself an invitation to temptation. The Inquisition in Germany represented to Boniface IX in 1396 that for a hundred years all manner of heresies had lurked under the outward fair-seeming of the Beghards and that their suppression was impeded by certain papal constitutions urged in their protection.[62] It is true that at times, owing to the extent to which the innocent were wont to suffer with the guilty, the papacy had ere that come to the rescue of the former, as for example Benedict XIV in 1336 and Gregory XI in 1374. It had in particular been necessary to protect women, large numbers of whom joined themselves not only to the permanent mendicant communities, but to the wandering mendicants. In times that were hard and wild and disordered, when there was no system of poor-relief save through the Church, the lot of widows and of women and girls who had no male protectors was exceedingly hard, and for such the mendicant associations had a clear attraction as a means of asylum and refuge. The war upon the Beghards in many cases led to many respectable women being led into a life of misery and want and sometimes prostitution, until Benedict XIV intervened on their behalf.[63] At the Council of Constance certain rules were drawn up for the regulation of beguinages, but beguines did not thereby escape persecution. In 1431 we find Eugenius IV intervening for their protection. Ever in danger of persecution, wanderers over the face of the land, these mendicant communities, whether remaining within the Church's fold or not, were a source of religious unrest, of dissatisfaction with the hierarchy, of aspiration for new doctrines which would attune with the intense individualism of a mystic illuminism. By such men and women Lutheranism might well be welcomed and its progress materially assisted.[64]