Chapter IV · ITALY. (continued 2)

Thus heresy, deprived of all protection, was gradually stamped out, and the Inquisition established its power in every corner of the land. How that power was abused to oppress the faithful with ingeniously devised schemes of extortion we have already seen. In fact, in the territories which had once been Ghibelline, it was impossible for any man, no matter how rigid his orthodoxy, to be safe from prosecution if he chanced to provoke the ill-will of the officials, or possessed wealth to excite their cupidity. So successful had the Church been in confounding political opposition with heresy that the mere fact of having adhered of necessity to Ezzelin during the period of his unquestioned domination long continued sufficient to justify prosecution for heresy, entailing the desirable result of confiscation. When Ezzelin’s generation passed away, the memory of the dead was assailed and the descendants were disinherited. In all this there was no pretence of errors of faith, but the men to whom the Church intrusted the awful powers of the Inquisition seemed implacably determined to erase from the land every trace of those who had once dared to resist its authority. At last, in 1304, the authorities of Vicenza appealed to Benedict XI. no longer to allow the few survivors of Ezzelin’s party and their descendants to be thus cruelly wronged, and the pope graciously granted their petition. By this time the empire was but a shadow; Ghibellinism represented no living force that the papacy could reasonably dread, and its persecution had long been merely the gratification of greed or malice.[264]

The triumph of the Inquisition had not been effected wholly without resistance. In 1277 Frà Corrado Pagano undertook a raid against the heretics of the Valtelline. It was, doubtless, organized on an extended scale, for he took with him two associates and two notaries. This would indicate that heretics were numerous; the event showed that they did not lack protectors, for Corrado da Venosta, one of the most powerful nobles of the region, cut short the enterprise by slaughtering the whole party, on St. Stephen’s day, December 26. Pagano had been a most zealous persecutor of heresy, and when his body was brought to Como it lay there for eight days before interment, with wounds freshly bleeding, showing that he was a martyr of God, and justifying the title bestowed on him by his Dominican brethren of St. Pagano of Como. His relics are still preserved there and are the objects of a local cult. Nicholas III. made every effort to avenge the murder, even invoking the assistance of Rodolf of Hapsburg, and his joy was extreme when, in November, 1279, the podestà and people of Bergamo succeeded in capturing Corrado and his accomplices. He at once ordered their delivery, under safe escort, to the inquisitors, Anselmo da Alessandria, Daniele da Giussano, and Guidone da Coconate, who were instructed to inflict a punishment sufficient to intimidate others from imitating their wickedness, and all the potentates of Lombardy were commanded to co-operate in their safe conveyance.[265]

The same year that justice was thus vindicated, a popular ebullition in Parma shows how slender was the hold which the Inquisition possessed on the people. Frà Florio had been diligent in the exercise of his functions, and we are told that he had burned innumerable heretics, when, in 1279, he chanced at Parma to have before him a woman guilty of relapse. It was a matter of course to condemn her to relaxation, and she was duly burned. In place of being piously impressed by the spectacle the Parmesans were inspired by Satan to indignation which expressed itself by sacking the Dominican convent, destroying the records of the Inquisition, and maltreating the friars so that one of them died within a few days. The Dominicans thereupon abandoned the ungrateful city, marching out in solemn procession. The magistrates showed singular indifference as to punishing this misdeed, and when summoned by the Cardinal Legate of Ostia, the representatives who presented themselves lacked the necessary authority, so that, after vainly waiting for satisfaction, he laid an interdict upon the city. This was not removed till 1282, and even then the guilty were not punished. In 1285 we find Honorius IV. taking up the matter afresh and summoning the Parmesans to send delegates to him within a month to receive sentence; what that sentence was does not appear, but in 1287 the humbled citizens petitioned the Dominicans to return, received them with great honor, and voted them one thousand lire, in annual instalments of two hundred lire, wherewith to build a church. So stubborn was the opposition elsewhere to the Inquisition and its ways, that in 1287 the Provincial Council of Milan still deemed it necessary to decree that any member of a municipal government in any city within the province who should urge measures favoring heretics should be deemed suspect of heresy, and should forfeit any fiefs or benefices held of the Church.[266]

Even in the Patrimony of St. Peter resistance was not wholly at an end. In 1254, when the papacy was triumphant, Innocent IV. urged the inquisitors of Orvieto and Anagni to take advantage of the propitious time and act with the utmost vigor. In 1258 Alexander IV. sounded the alarm that heresy was increasing even in Rome itself, and he pressingly urged increased activity on the inquisitors and greater zeal in their support by the bishops. Their efforts were not wholly successful. Twenty years later a knight named Pandolfo still made his stronghold of Castro Siriani, near Anagni, a receptacle of heretics. Frà Sinibaldo di Lago, the inquisitor of the Roman province, made various ineffectual attempts to prosecute him, and in 1278 Nicholas III. sent his notary, Master Benedict, with offers of pardon in return for obedience, but the heretics were obdurate, and Nicholas was forced to order Orso Orsini, Marshal of the Church in Tuscany, to levy troops and give Frà Sinibaldo armed assistance sufficient to enable him to coerce them to penitence. A similar enterprise against the Viterbian noble, Capello di Chia, in 1260, has already been described (Vol. I. p. 342). In this case the zeal of the Viterbians, who levied an army to assist the inquisitor, must have had some political motive, for their city was of evil repute in the matter of heresy. In 1265, encouraged by the assistance of Manfred, the people had risen against the Inquisition and had only been subdued after a bloody fight in which two friars were slain. In 1279 Nicholas expresses his regret that although, while he had been inquisitor-general, he had labored strenuously to purge Viterbo of heresy, his labors had been unsuccessful. Heretics were still concealed there, and the whole city was infected. Frà Sinibaldo was therefore ordered to go thither to make a thorough inquisition of the place.[267]

Earnest and unsparing as were the labors of the inquisitors, it seemed impossible to eradicate heresy. Its open manifestations were readily suppressed when the Ghibelline chiefs who protected it were destroyed, but in secret it still flourished and maintained its organization. In the inquest held on the memory of Armanno Pongilupo of Ferrara there is a good deal of testimony which shows not only the activity and success of the Inquisition of that city, but the continued existence of heresy throughout the whole region. There are allusions to numerous heretics in Vicenza, Bergamo, Rimini, and Verona. In the latter city a lady-in-waiting of the Marchesa d’Este, named Spera, was burned in 1270, and about the same time there were two Catharan bishops there, Alberto and Bonaventura Belesmagra. In 1273 Lorenzo was Bishop of Sermione, and Giovanni da Casaletto was Bishop of Mantua. There was a secret organization extending through all the Italian cities, with visitors and filii majores performing their rounds, and messengers were constantly passing to and fro, elaborate arrangements being made for secreting them. Those who were in prison were kept supplied with necessaries by their brethren at large, who never knew at what moment they might be incarcerated. From the sentences of Bernard Gui we know that until the fourteenth century was fairly advanced the Cathari of Languedoc still looked to Italy as to a haven of refuge; that pilgrims thither had no trouble in finding their fellow-believers in Lombardy, in Tuscany, and in the kingdom of Sicily; that when the French churches were broken up those who sought to be admitted to the circle of the Perfect, or to renew their consolamentum, resorted to Lombardy, where they could always find ministers authorized to perform the rites. When Amiel de Perles had forfeited his ordination a conference was held in which it was determined that he should be sent with an associate to “the Ancient of the Heretics,” Bernard Audoyn de Montaigu, in Lombardy for reconciliation; and on another occasion we hear of Bernard himself visiting Toulouse on business connected with the propagation of the faith.[268]

How difficult, indeed, was the task of the inquisitor in detecting heresy under the mask of orthodoxy is curiously illustrated by the case of Armanno Pongilupo himself. In Ferrara heretics were numerous. Armanno’s parents were both Cathari; he was a “consolatus” and his wife a “consolata.” In 1254 he was detected and imprisoned; he confessed and abjured, and was released. From his Catharan bishop he received absolution for his oath of abjuration, and was received back into the sect. From this time until his death, in 1269, he was unceasingly engaged in propagating Catharan doctrines and in ministering to the wants of his less fortunate brethren in the clutches of the Inquisition, which was exceedingly active and successful. Meanwhile be preserved an exterior of the strictest Catholicism; he was regular in attendance at the altar and confessional, and wholly devoted to piety and good works. He died in the odor of sanctity, was buried in the cathedral, and immediately he began to work miracles. He was soon reverenced as a saint. A magnificent tomb arose over his remains, an altar was erected, and, as the miraculous manifestations of his sanctity multiplied, his chapel became filled with images and ex-votos, to the no little profit of the church fortunate enough to possess him. Adored as a saint in the popular cult, there came a general demand for his canonization, in which the pride of the city was warmly enlisted, but which was steadfastly opposed by the Inquisition. In the confessions of heretics before it the name of Armanno constantly recurred as that of one of the most active and trusted members of the sect, and ample evidence accumulated as to his unrepentant heresy. Then arose a curious conflict, waged on both sides with unremitting vigor for thirty-two years. Hardly had the remains been committed to honorable sepulture in the cathedral when Frà Aldobrandini, the inquisitor who had tried him in 1254, ordered the archpriest and chapter to exhume and burn the corpse, and on their refusal excommunicated them and placed the cathedral under interdict. From this they appealed to Gregory X. and set to work to gather the evidence for canonization. For this purpose at different times five several inquests were held and superabundant testimony was forthcoming as to the success with which his suffrage was invoked, how the sick were healed, the blind made to see, and the halt to walk, while numerous priests bore emphatic witness to his pre-eminent piety during life. Gregory and Aldobrandini passed away leaving the matter unsettled. Frà Florio, the next inquisitor, sent to Rome expressly to urge Honorius IV. to come to a decision, but Honorius died without concluding the matter. On the accession of Boniface VIII., in 1294, Frà Guido da Vicenza, then inquisitor, again visited Rome to procure a termination of the affair. Still the contending forces were too evenly balanced for either to win. At length the Lord of Ferrara, Azzo X., interposed, for the contest between the inquisitor and the secular clergy seriously threatened the peace of the city. In 1300 Boniface appointed a commission to make a thorough investigation, with power to decide finally, and in 1301 sentence was rendered to the effect that Armanno had died a relapsed heretic; that no one should believe him to be anything but a heretic; that his bones should be exhumed and burned, the sarcophagus containing them and the altar erected before it be destroyed; that all statues, images, ex-votos, and other offerings set up in his honor in the cathedral and other Ferrarese churches should be removed within ten days; and that all his property, real and personal, was confiscated to the Inquisition, any sales or conveyances made of them during the thirty-two years which had elapsed since his death being void. Frà Guido’s triumph was complete, and on the death of the Bishop of Ferrara, in 1303, he was rewarded with the episcopate. Extraordinary as this case may seem, it was not unique. At Brescia a heresiarch named Guido Lacha was long adored as a saint by the people until the imposture was detected by the Inquisition, which caused his bones to be dug up and burned.[269]

This was the period of the greatest power and activity of the Inquisition, and the extent of its perfected organization is shown in a document of 1302, wherein Frà Guido da Tusis, Inquisitor of Romagnola, publishes in the communal council of Rimini the names of thirty-nine officials whom he has selected as his assistants. The expenses of such a body could not have been light, and to defray them there must have been a constant stream of fines and confiscations pouring into the inquisitorial treasury, showing an abundant harvest of heresy and active work in its suppression.[270] It was probably between 1320 and 1330 that was produced the treatise of Zanghino Ugolini, so often quoted above. Frà Donato da Sant’’ Agata had been appointed Inquisitor of Romagnola, and the learned jurisconsult of Rimini drew up for his instruction a summary of the rules governing inquisitorial procedure, which is one of the clearest and best manuals of practice that we possess.

A singular episode of lenity occurred not long before, which is not to be passed over, although inexplicable in itself and unproductive of consequences. Its importance, indeed, lies in the evidence which it affords that the extreme severity of the laws against heresy was recognized as really unnecessary, since its relaxation in favor of a single community as a matter of favor would otherwise have been a crime against the faith. In February, 1286, Honorius IV., in consideration of the fidelity manifested by the people of Tuscany to the Roman Church, and especially to him before his elevation, relieved them individually and universally from the penalties for heresy, including all disabilities decreed by his predecessors and by Frederic II., whether incurred by their own errors or by those of their ancestors. Catholic children of heretic parents were thus ipso facto restored to all privileges and were no longer liable to disinheritance. In the case of existing heretics it was necessary for them to appear before the inquisitors within a time to be named by the latter—excepting absentees in foreign lands, to whom a term of five months was allowed—to abjure heresy and receive penance, which was to be a secret one, involving neither humiliation, disability, or loss of property. Cases of relapse, however, were to be treated with all the rigor of the law. As this bull abrogated in Tuscany the constitutions of Frederic II., it required confirmation by Rodolph of Hapsburg, which was duly procured. For a while this extraordinary privilege seems to have been observed, for, in 1289, Nicholas IV., when anathematizing heretics and stimulating the zeal of inquisitors throughout Genoa, Lombardy, Romagnola, Naples, and Sicily, pointedly omits Tuscany from his enumeration. In time, however, it was either repealed or disregarded. No case could come more completely within its purview than that already referred to of Gherardo of Florence, dying prior to 1250 and prosecuted in 1313. His numerous children and grandchildren were good Catholics, and yet they were all disinherited and subjected to the canonical disabilities.[271]

Together with this exhibition of papal indulgence may be classed the occasional interference of the Holy See to moderate the rigor of the canons, or to repress the undue zeal of an inquisitor, when the sufferer had influence or money enough to attract the papal attention. It is pleasant to record three instances of this kind on the part of the despotic Boniface VIII., when, in 1297, he declared that Rainerio Gatti, a noble of Viterbo, and his sons had been prosecuted by the inquisitors on perjured testimony, wherefore the process was to be annulled and the accused and their heirs relieved from all stain of heresy; when, in 1298, he ordered the Inquisition to restore to the innocent children of a heretic the property confiscated by Frà Andrea the inquisitor, and when he ordered Frà Adamo da Como, the inquisitor of the Roman province, to desist from molesting Giovanni Ferraloco, a citizen of Orvieto, whom his predecessors, Angelo da Rieti and Leonardo da Tivoli, had declared absolved from heresy. This Frà Adamo apparently rendered his office a terror to the innocent. May 8, 1293, we find him compelling Pierre d’Aragon, a gentleman of Carcassonne who chanced to be in Rome, to give him security in the heavy sum of one hundred marks to present himself within three months to the Inquisition of Carcassonne and obey its mandates. Pierre accordingly appeared before Bertrand de Clermont on June 19, and was closely examined, and then again on August 16, but nothing was discovered against him. Whether or not he recovered his one hundred marks from Frà Adamo does not appear, but the incident affords an illustration at once of the perfected organization of the Holy Office, and of the dangers which surrounded travellers in the countries where it flourished.[272]

The Inquisition was thus thoroughly established and at work in northern and central Italy, and heresy was gradually disappearing before its remorseless and incessant energy. To escape it many had fled to Sardinia, but in 1258 that island was added to the inquisitorial province of Tuscany, and inquisitors were sent thither to track the fugitives in their retreats.[273] There were two regions, however, Venice and the Two Sicilies, which thus far we have not considered, as they were in some sort independent of the movement which we have traced in the rest of the Peninsula.

Naples, like the other portions of southern Europe, had been exposed to the infection of heresy. At an early period missionaries from Bulgaria had penetrated the passes of the southern Apennines, and, in that motley population of Greek and Saracen and Norman, proselytes had not been lacking. The Norman kings, usually at enmity with the Holy See, had not cared to inquire too closely into the orthodoxy of their subjects, and had they done so the independence of the feudal baronage would have rendered minute perquisition by no means easy. The allusions of the Abbot Joachim of Flora to the Cathari indicate that their existence and doctrines were familiar facts in Calabria, though as Rainerio makes no allusion to any Catharan church in Italy south of Florence it is presumable that the sectaries were widely scattered and unorganized. In 1235, when the Dominican convent in Naples was broken into by a mob and several of the friars were grievously wounded, Gregory IX. attributed the violence to friends of heretics.[274]

Frederic II., however much at times his policy might lead him to proclaim ferocious edicts of persecution, and even spasmodically to enforce them, had no convictions of his own to render him persistent in persecution, and his lifelong contest with the papacy gave him, secretly at least, a fellow-feeling with all who resisted the supremacy of the Holy See, whether in temporal or spiritual concerns. Occasional attacks such as that under the auspices of the Archbishop of Reggio, in 1231, or the form of secular inquisition which he instituted in 1233, had little permanent effect. Cathari driven from Languedoc, who perhaps found even Lombardy insecure, were tolerably sure of refuge in the wild and secluded valleys of Calabria and the Abruzzi, lying aside from the great routes of travel. The domination in Naples of Innocent IV. was too brief for the organization of any systematized persecution, and when Manfred reconquered the kingdom, although he seems to have felt his position too precarious to risk open toleration, and, under pressure from Jayme of Aragon, he ordered Bishop Vivian of Toulouse and his disciples, who had settled in Apulia, to leave his dominions, yet he went no further in active measures of repression.[275]

Charles of Anjou came as a crusader and as the champion of the Church. Scarce was his undisputed domination assured by the execution of Conradin, October 20, 1268, than we see him zealously employed in establishing the Inquisition throughout the kingdom. Numerous royal letters of 1269 show it actively at work, and manifest the solicitude of the king that the stipends and the expenses of the inquisitors should be provided for, and that every assistance should be rendered by the public officials. Each inquisitor was furnished with a letter which placed all the forces of the State at his unreserved command. The Neapolitan Inquisition was fully manned. There was one inquisitor for Bari and the Capitanata, one for Otranto, and one for the Terra di Lavoro and the Abruzzi; and in 1271 one was added for Calabria and one for Sicily. Most of them were Dominicans, but we meet with at least one Franciscan, Frà Benvenuto. Yet no buildings or prisons seem to have been provided for them. The royal jails were placed at their disposal, and the keepers were instructed to torture prisoners on requisition from the inquisitors. Even as late as 1305 this arrangement appears to be in force.[276]

Charles’s zeal did not confine itself to thus organizing and promoting the Inquisition. He supplemented its labors by instituting raids on heretics conducted under his own auspices. Thus, although there was an inquisitor for the Abruzzi, we find him, December 13, 1269, sending thither the Cavaliere Berardo da Rajano with instructions to investigate and seize heretics and their fautors. The utmost diligence was enjoined on him, and the local officials were ordered to assist him in every way, but there is no allusion to his mission being in co-operation with the inquisitor. Another significant manifestation of Charles’s devotion is seen in his founding, in 1274, and richly endowing for the Dominicans the splendid church of San Piero Martire in Naples, and stimulating his nobles to follow his example in showering wealth upon it. Yet fifty years afterwards, in 1324, the building was still incomplete for lack of funds, when King Robert aided the construction with fifty ounces of gold, which he ordered the inquisitors to pay out of the royal third of the confiscations coming into their hands. This is interesting as showing how, in Naples, the profitable side of persecution was wholly under the control of the Holy Office.[277]

Few details have been preserved to us of the activity of the Inquisition in Naples. We know that heretics continued to exist there, but the wild and mountainous character of much of the country doubtless afforded them abundant opportunities of safe asylum. Already, in August, 1269, a letter of Charles ordering the seizure of sixty-eight heretics designated by Frà Benvenuto shows that the work was being energetically prosecuted, and in another letter of March 14, 1270, there is an allusion to three others whom Frà Matteo di Caetellamare had recently caused to be burned in Benevento. The inquisitors of Languedoc, moreover, made haste, as early as 1269, to send agents to Naples to hunt the refugees whom their severity had driven there, and Charles ordered every assistance to be rendered to them, which, perhaps, explains the success of Frà Benvenuto. Yet the perpetual necessity for royal interposition leads to the inference that the Inquisition was not nearly so effective in Naples as it proved in Languedoc and Lombardy. The royal authority seems to be required at every turn, partly because the king allowed little independent initiative to the inquisitors, and partly, perhaps, because the local officials did not lend as hearty a co-operation as they might have done. Thus the Neapolitan Inquisition, even under the Angevines, seems never to have attained the compact and effective organization of which we have seen the results elsewhere, though Charles II. was an eager persecutor who stimulated the zeal of his inquisitors, and his son Robert earned the name of the Pious. In 1305 we shall see Frà Tommaso di Aversa active in persecuting the Spiritual Franciscans, and in 1311, King Robert, at the instance of Frà Matteo da Ponza, ordered that all newly converted Jews should live scattered among Christians, so as not to be tempted back to Judaism.[278]

The ineffectiveness of the Neapolitan Inquisition is seen in the comparative security which attended an organized immigration of Waldenses from the valleys of the Cottian Alps. It was probably about 1315 that Zanino del Poggio, a Milanese noble, led forth the first band from Savoy, under specified guarantees of lands and privileges, after the intending emigrants had received the report of deputies sent in advance to survey the promised refuge. Fresh bands came to join them and a group of villages sprang up—Guardia Piemontese, or Borgo degli Oltremontani, Argentina, La Rocca, Vaccarizzo, and San Vincenzo in Calabria, while in Apulia there were Monteleone, Montanto, Faito, La Cella, and Matta. These were regularly visited by the “barbes,” or missionary pastors, who spent their lives wandering around among the scattered churches, administering the consolations of religion and watching over the purity of the faith. The fierce persecutions conducted by François Borel led to further emigration on an enlarged scale, which naturally sought the Neapolitan territories as a haven of rest, until Apulia came to be regarded as the headquarters of the sect. That considerable bodies of heretics could thus establish themselves and flourish argues great negligence on the part of the Inquisition. In fact, its recognized inefficiency was shown as early as 1326, when John XXII. was in pursuit of some Fraticelli who had fled to Calabria; instead of calling upon the inquisitors he applied to King Robert and to the Duke of Calabria to capture them and hand them over to the episcopal tribunals.[279]

When, as the result of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the Island of Sicily passed into the hands of Pedro III. of Aragon, it was placed in the bitterest antagonism towards the Holy See, and no active persecution is to be looked for. In fact, in 1285, Martin IV., in ordering a crusade preached against Pedro, gives as one of the four reasons alleged in justification that heresy was multiplying in the island, and that inquisitors were prevented from visiting it. It was not till 1302 that Boniface VIII. was brought to accept the accomplished fact, and to acknowledge Frederic of Aragon as King of Trinacria. The Inquisition soon followed. In 1304 we find Benedict XI. ordering Frederic to receive and give all due assistance to Frà Tommaso di Aversa the inquisitor, and all other inquisitors who may be sent thither. The pope, however, did not erect it into a separate tribunal, but instructed the Holy Office of the mainland that its jurisdiction extended over both sides of the Faro. Yet the introduction of the Inquisition in the island was nominal rather than real except, as we shall see, with regard to the Templars, and Sicily long remained a safe refuge for the persecuted Fraticelli. Doubtless Arnaldo de Vilanova contributed to this by the picture which he presented to Frederic of the inquisitors of the day. They were a diabolical pest, trafficking in their offices, converting themselves into demons, never edifying the faithful, but rather making them infidels, as they abandoned themselves to hatred, greed, and lust, with no one to condemn them or to repress their fury. When, in 1328, the Archbishop of Palermo arrested a Fraticello, appeal was at once made to Frederic, and John XXII. wrote to the archbishop urgently commanding that the sect be extirpated, showing apparently that there was no Inquisition then at work.[280]

The Republic of Venice was always a law unto itself. Though forming part of the March of Treviso, its predominant interests in the thirteenth century lay to the east of the Adriatic, and it did not become a formidable power on the mainland until the acquisition of Treviso in 1339. That of Padua, in 1405, followed by Verona, Vicenza, Feltre, Belluno, and Brescia, greatly increased its strength, and in 1448 it wrenched Bergamo from the dukes of Milan. Thus its policy with regard to the Inquisition eventually controlled the whole of the March of Treviso, and a considerable portion of Lombardy.

That policy held at bay in all things the pretensions of the Holy See, and looked with extreme suspicion on whatever might give the popes an excuse for interference with either the domestic policy or the foreign enterprises of the Signoria. Fairly orthodox, though not bigoted, Venice held aloof from the strife between Guelf and Ghibelline, and was not involved in the anathemas lavished upon Ezzelin da Romano. Venice, in fact, was the basis of operations in the crusade against him, and it was a Venetian who led the expedition up the Brenta which captured Padua. Yet the republic made no haste to join in the movement for the extermination of heresy so energetically pushed by Gregory IX. and his successors. The Constitutions of Frederic II. were never inscribed in its statute-books. In 1229 the official oath of the Doge Giacopo Tiepoli, which, as is customary, contains the criminal code of the day, embodies no allusion to heresy or its suppression, and the same is true of the criminal statute of 1232 published by the same doge.[281]

It was about this time that the Inquisition was developed with all the aggressive energy of which Gregory IX. was capable, but it found no foothold in Venice. Yet the duty to punish heresy was at length recognized, though the civil authorities would abate no jot of their right to control the administration of justice in spiritual as well as in temporal matters. The official oath taken in 1249 by the Doge Marino Morosini contains a promise that certain upright and discreet and Catholic men shall be appointed, with the advice of the Council, to inquire after heretics. All heretics, moreover, who shall be delivered to the secular arm by the Archbishop of Grado or other bishops of the Venetian territories shall be duly burned, under the advice of the Council, or of a majority of its members. Thus a kind of secular Inquisition was established to search after heretics. The ancient jurisdiction of the episcopal courts was alone recognized, but the judgment of the bishops was subject to revision by the Council before the death-penalty could be inflicted.[282]

This could by no means be satisfactory to the papacy, and when the death of Frederic II. led to an immediate effort to extend the Inquisition through the territories hitherto closed to it, Venice was not forgotten. By a bull of June 11, 1251, Innocent IV. ordered the Frati Vicenzo of Milan, and Giovanni of Vercelli, to proceed to Venice and persecute heretics there with the same powers as those exercised by inquisitors elsewhere in Lombardy. Whether the good friars made the attempt to exercise these powers is questionable; if they did so, their ill-success is unquestionable. There is a document of 1256 which contains an oath to pursue heretics and to denounce them, not to the ecclesiastical tribunals, but to the doge or to the magistrates—an oath presumably administered to the secular inquisitors established in 1249. The same document contains a clause which indicates that the death-penalty threatened in 1249 had already been abrogated. It classes Cathari and usurers together: it alludes to the punishment decreed for those convicted of relapse into either sin, and shows that this was not capital, by providing that if the convict is a foreigner he shall be banished from Venice, but if a citizen he shall not be banished. Yet the death-penalty seems to have been restored soon afterwards, for, in 1275, the oath of Giacomo Contarini is the same as that of 1249, with the unimportant addition that the judgment of an episcopal vicar during the vacancy of a see can be substituted for that of a bishop.[283]

As the pressure of the Inquisition extended throughout Lombardy and the Marches, the persecuted heretics naturally sought a refuge in Venetian territory, where supervision was so much more negligent. It was in vain that about 1286 Frà Filippo of Mantua, the Inquisitor of Treviso, was sent by Honorius IV. with a summons to the republic to inscribe in its laws the constitutions against heresy of Frederic and of the popes. Although the example of the other cities of the Marca Trivigiana was urged, and Venice was repeatedly required to do the same, obedience was persistently refused. At length, in 1288, Nicholas IV. lost patience with this persistent contumacy. He peremptorily ordered the Signoria to adopt the imperial and papal laws, and commanded that the doge should swear not only not to impede the Inquisitor of Treviso in his duties, but to assist him. In default of obedience he threatened to proceed against the city both spiritually and temporally.[284]

The position of the republic was already indefensible under the public law of the period. It was so administering its own laws as to afford an asylum to a class universally proscribed, and it was refusing to allow the Church to apply the only remedy deemed appropriate to this crying evil. It therefore yielded to the inevitable, but in a manner to preserve its own autonomy and independence. It absolutely refused to incorporate in its own statutes the papal and imperial laws, but, August 4, 1289, it empowered the doge, Giovanni Dandolo, to give assistance to the inquisitor, when called upon, without referring each case to the Senate. A further wise provision decreed that all fines and confiscations should inure to the State, which in turn undertook to defray the expenses of the Holy Office. These were not light, as, in addition to the cost of making arrests and maintaining prisoners, the inquisitor received the liberal salary of twelve ducats a month. For this purpose the proceeds of the corn-tax were set aside, and the money was deposited with the Provveditore delle Viare, who disbursed it on the requisition of the inquisitor. This compromise was accepted by Nicholas IV., August 28, 1288, and was duly embodied in the official oath of the next doge, Piero Gradenigo. Thus, while the inquisitor had full opportunity of suppressing heresy, the temptation to abuse his office for purposes of extortion was reduced to a minimum, and the State, by retaining in its hands all the financial portion of the business, was able at any time to exercise control.[285]

The Inquisition was unaccustomed to submit to control, and soon chafed under these limitations. Already, in 1292, Nicholas IV. complained to Piero Gradenigo that the terms of the agreement were not carried out. The inquisitors, Bonagiunta of Mantua and Giuliano of Padua, reported that the papal and imperial laws against heresy were not enforced, and that under the arrangement for expenditures they were unable to employ a force of familiars sufficient to detect and seize the heretics. Heresy consequently, they said, continued to flourish in Venetian territory, for all of which Nicholas bitterly scolded the doge, and demanded such changes as should remove these scandals, but without effect. The Signoria, apparently, had not seen fit to abolish the office of secular inquisitors provided by the legislation of 1249. These were three in number, and were known as the “tre Savi dell’’ eresia,“ or ”assistenti.” It was hardly possible that a duplicate organization such as this could work without clashing. The situation became intolerable, and in 1301 Frà Antonio, the Inquisitor of Treviso, resolved to put an end to it. He notified the three Savi, Tommaso Viaro, Marino Zorzi, and Lorenzo Segico, to recognize no superior save himself. Their submission not being forthcoming, he proceeded to Venice, and addressed to the Doge Gradenigo a monition ordering him, under pain of excommunication, to swear to obey all the papal constitutions on heresy. Gradenigo refused, alleging that this would be a violation of his oath of office; the inquisitor withdrew his monition, and matters remained as before. Whatever hopes had been entertained that the entering wedge would enable the Inquisition to establish itself without restriction were foiled by the steadfastness of the republic. The three Savi continued their functions and, perhaps, even enlarged them; it had become customary for them to be selected from among the senators, and they acted in conjunction with the inquisitor in all cases coming within his jurisdiction. As Venice extended her conquests on the mainland, in all cities under her domination the rettori or governors performed this function, and their participation was required in all prosecutions for heresy, not only by the inquisitor, but by the bishops.[286]

In Italy, as in France, the history of the Inquisition during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is one of decadence. It is true that in Italy it had not to contend with the consolidation of power in the hands of a monarch, but the Captivity of Avignon and the debasement of the papacy under the influence of the French court, co-operating with the rise of the cities in wealth and culture, conduced to the same result; while the Great Schism, followed by the Councils of Constance and Basle, tended to emancipate the minds of men and foster independence. During the fourteenth century much of the inquisitorial activity was devoted to the new heresy of the Fraticelli, which will be referred to hereafter when we come to consider that remarkable religious movement. That movement, indeed, was the chief exception to the decay in spiritual enthusiasm which diminished at once the veneration which the Inquisition inspired and the opposition of heterodoxy which constituted its raison d’’ être. As heretics grew fewer and poorer its usefulness decreased, its means of impressing the popular imagination disappeared, and its rewards grew less and less.

As regards the Cathari, the Inquisition had done its work too well. Unceasing and unsparing repression gradually annihilated the sect which, during the first half of the thirteenth century, seemed almost able to dispute with Rome the possession of Italy on equal terms. Yet when we see that the Waldenses, exposed to the same merciless rigor, were not extinguished, we recognize that some other factor besides mere persecution was at work to obliterate a belief which once enjoyed so potent an influence on the human mind that thousands for its sake went joyfully to a dreadful death. The secret must be looked for in the hopeless pessimism of the faith itself. There was in it nothing to encourage and strengthen man in the battle of life. Manes had robbed the elder Mazdeism of its vitality when he assigned to the Evil Principle complete dominion over Nature and the visible universe, and when he adopted the Sankhya philosophy, which teaches that existence is an evil, while death is an emancipation for those who have earned spiritual immortality, and a mere renewal of the same hated existence for all who have not risen to the height of the austerest maceration. As civilization slowly advanced, as the midnight of the Dark Ages began to yield to the approaching dawn of modern ideas, as the hopelessness of humanity grew less abject, the Manichæan theory grew less attractive. The world was gradually awakening to new aims and new possibilities; it was outgrowing the dreary philosophy of pessimism, and was unconsciously preparing for the yet unknown future in which man was to regard Nature not as an enemy, but as a teacher. Catharism had no possibility of development, and in that lay its doom.

The simple and earnest faith of the Waldenses, on the other hand, inculcated helpfulness and hopefulness, patience under tribulation, and an abiding trust in the watchful care of the Heavenly Father. The arduous toil of the artisan or husbandman was blessed in the consciousness of the performance of a duty. The virtues which form the basis of all Christian society—industry, charity, self-abnegation, sobriety, chastity, thrift—were stimulated and cultivated, and man was taught that his fate, here and hereafter, depended on himself, and not on the ministration or mediation of his fellow-creatures, alive or dead. It was a faith which fitted man for the environment in which he had been placed by his Creator, and it was capable of adaptation to the infinite vicissitudes of human progress. Accordingly, it had proportionate vitality. Rooted out in one place, it grew in another. It responded too nearly to the needs and aspirations of multitudes ever to be wholly blotted out. There was always a propitious soil for its scattered seeds, and its resistance of inertia in the end proved too much for even the persistent energy of its destroyers.

Yet in Italy the Cathari lasted long after they had disappeared from France. Driven from the plains of Lombardy and central Italy, they took refuge in places less accessible. In 1340 we hear of them in Corsica, when Gerald, the Franciscan general, sent his friars thither, who succeeded in exterminating them for a time. In 1369 we again find Franciscans, under Frà Mondino da Bologna, zealously at work there, and earnestly supported by Gregory XI. In 1372 and 1373 Gregory wrote to the Bishops of Marrana and Ajaccio, and to Frà Gabriele da Montalcino, urging renewed activity, and, with singular lenity, authorizing them to remit the death-penalty in cases of single relapse. These hunted refugees were mostly in the forests and mountains, and to subdue them a chain of spiritual forts was established, in the shape of Franciscan houses. As late as 1397 a certain Frà Francesco was sent to Corsica in the double capacity of papal nuncio and inquisitor.[287]

On the mainland, in spite of the vigilance of the Inquisition, Cathari continued to exist in Piedmont. In 1388 Frà Antonio Secco of Savigliano had the good-fortune to lay hands on one of the active members of the sect, Giacomo Bech of Chieri, near Turin. The report of his examination before the inquisitor and the Bishop of Turin, which has been printed by Sig. Girolamo Amati, gives full details of the condition of the sect. After his tongue had been loosened by repeated applications of torture, his confession shows that it was numerous in the vicinage, and that it comprised members of many noble families—the Patrizi, Bertoni, Petiti, Narro, and ancestors of Balbi and Cavour. Although in Italy, as in France, the name of Waldenses had become applicable to all heretics, and they were commonly designated by this name, they retained the moderated dualism of the Lombard Cathari. Satan fell from heaven, created the visible universe, and will finally return to glory. The law of Moses was dictated by him, and Moses was the greatest of sinners. Human souls are fallen demons, who transmigrate into other human bodies, or into those of animals, until released by death-bed consolamentum. The purity of the faith was maintained by occasional intercourse with its headquarters in Bosnia. Giacomo Bech was converted by a Slavonian missionary, in conjunction with Jocerino de’ Balbi and Piero Patrizi, and the latter gave him ten florins and sent him to Bosnia to perfect himself in the doctrines, though he was compelled by ill-fortune at sea to return without accomplishing his pilgrimage. Forty years before one of the Balbi had gone thither for the same purpose; in 1360 a Narro and a Benso, Piero Patrizi himself in 1377, and Berardo Rascherio in 1380. Evidently the little community of Chieri maintained active relations with the heads of the Church. In 1370 Bech had fallen into the hands of the inquisitor, Frà Tommaso da Casacho, had been forced to confess, and had been released after abjuration in reward for his betraying his fellow-disciples.[288]

Frà Antonio’s labors had been already rewarded by the discovery of another sect of Cathari in the valleys to the west and northwest of Turin. Their heresiarch was Martino del Prete, and the community of Chieri had vainly endeavored to win them over to unity. In Pignerol, Frà Antonio had, in November, 1387, arrested a suspected heretic named Antonio Galosna, who passed for a Franciscan Tertiary. The Inquisition in those parts was greatly dependent upon the secular authorities, and the Count of Savoy, Amadeo VII., was not disposed to second it with zeal. When Galosna at first denied, Antonio succeeded in having him tortured till he promised to tell everything if released from torture, and accordingly the next day he made confession; but Giovanni di Brayda, the chamberlain of Amadeo, and Antonio da Valencia, the Judge of Pignerol, promised him that if he would retract they would effect his deliverance. The Castellan of Pignerol, in whose charge he was, also offered to liberate him on receiving five florins for himself and seventy more for necessary expenses; but, although Galosna pledged all his property to raise the sum, this device seems to have failed. On December 29 he was brought before the count himself, after being warned by di Brayda that if he confirmed his confession he should be hanged. He accordingly retracted it, but was not liberated, and a month later, in the presence of the count and the inquisitor, he repeated that his confession had been extorted by violence. Apparently he was made the subject of a prolonged debate between State and Church, in which the latter triumphed, for on May 29 we find him in the possession of the Bishop of Turin and of the inquisitor, undergoing examination in the castle of Dross, near Turin.[289]

He proved a mine of information well worth the repeated interrogatories which extended from May 29 to July 10, for he had been a member of the sect for twenty-five years and a wandering missionary for fifteen, and was familiar with all the congregations, which appear to have been numerous, some in the neighborhood of Turin, but mostly in the lower Alpine valleys between Pignerol and Susa. Though he repeatedly alludes to the sectaries as Vaudois, they had no affinity with the Waldenses, and it is observable that he makes no reference to their existence in any of the distinctive Waldensian valleys, such as Angrogna, Perosa, or San Martino. They were mostly poor folk—peasants, servants, muleteers, innkeepers, mechanics, and artisans, and the chiefs of their “synagogues” were generally of this class, although occasionally a clerk, a canon, a notary, or other educated person is enumerated among the members. What were their precise distinctive tenets it is not easy to define with accuracy. Galosna’s rough handling had evidently rendered him eager to satisfy the credulity of his examiners, and the imaginative character of some of his revelations casts a doubt on the truthfulness of them all. The applicant for initiation had to drink a beverage, foul of aspect, made with the excrement of a toad kept for the purpose; taken in excess it was apt to prove fatal, and its power was such that whoso once partook of it could never thereafter abandon the sect. Martino del Prete, the chief heresiarch, had a black cat as large as a lamb, which he declared to be the best friend he had on earth. We may safely set down the accounts of the sexual abominations which succeeded religious services in the conventicles, when the lights were extinguished, as worthy of equal credence. Contradictions in the repeated statements of the doctrines taught show that Galosna’s imagination served him better than his memory in his prolonged examinations. He was told that in joining the sect he would secure salvation in glory with God the Father, and yet he declares that the sect rejected immortality, and held that the soul died with the body—and again, that there was no purgatory, but only heaven and hell hereafter. They believed, moreover, in God the Father who created the heavens, but they worshipped the Great Dragon, the creator of the world, who fought God and the angels, and was more powerful than he on earth. Christ was not the Son of God, but of Joseph, and was worthy of no special reverence. Altogether the account is hopelessly confused, but we can discern the dualism of a bastard Catharism, and allusions are made to the consolamentum and the sacrament of bread. Like Jacopo Bech, Galosna had already abjured in the hands of Frà Tommaso da Casacho. Both were therefore relapsed; there was no mercy for them, and on September 5, 1388, they were abandoned to the secular arm in Turin and necessarily burned. Unfortunately the record ends here, and we have no details as to the rich harvest which Frà Antonio must have reaped from the ample information obtained from his victims as to the scattered members of the sects.[290]

Notwithstanding these evidences of vitality, Catharism was rapidly dying out. The latest definite reference to it, west of the Adriatic, occurs in 1403, when San Vicente Ferrer, the great Spanish revivalist, undertook a peaceful mission in the remote valleys which no Catholic priest had dared to visit for thirty years, when he found and converted a number of Cathari dwelling among the Waldenses. He regarded as a form of Manichæism the worship of the rising sun which he found habitual among the peasants of the diocese of Lausanne, and some such survival of nature-worship was probably not infrequent, for a penitent of Frà Antonio Secco, in 1387, speaks of adoring the sun and moon on bended knees. Yet there would seem to be a remnant of Catharism lingering among the Waldenses of the Savoy valleys as late as 1451, when Filippo Regis was tried by the Inquisition.[291]

Italian Waldensianism continued to flourish in the mountain fastnesses of Piedmont, where the endless struggle with parsimonious nature fostered the hardier virtues. Thence, as we have seen, were emigrants and even colonies sent out, as persecution scattered the faithful or as population outgrew the narrow means of subsistence. The kindlier climate and less aggressive Inquisition of Naples finally rendered the southern colonies the headquarters of the sect, with which constant intercommunication was kept up. In 1387 we are told that the chief pontiff resided in Apulia and that the Waldensian community at Barge in Piedmont was presided over by two Apulians. A century later the mother communities in the Cottian Alps still looked to southern Italy as to the centre of their Church.[292]

In 1292 we hear of persecutions in the Val Perosa, and again in 1312 there were burnings of obstinate heretics in the valleys, but these efforts effected little, for in 1332 a brief of John XXII. describes the Waldensian church of the diocese of Turin as being in a most flourishing condition. The heretics were so numerous that they disdained concealment, holding assemblies in public in which as many as five hundred would be gathered together. When Frà Giovanni Alberto, the Inquisitor of Turin, had recently made an effort to repress them, they boldly rose in arms. On the public square of Angrogna they slew the parish priest Guillelmo, whom they suspected of furnishing information, and Alberto himself they besieged in a castle where he had taken refuge, so that he was glad to escape with his life, leaving the land abandoned to heresy. For twenty years and more one of their principal chiefs had been a man named Pier Martino, known also as Giuliano or Martino Pastrae, who chanced in his wandering missions to fall into the hands of Jean de Bades, the Inquisitor of Provence. The pope thereupon orders the latter to deliver his prisoner to Frà Alberto, who will be able to extract from him information of the utmost value in tracking and seizing his fellow-religionists—information, as the pope suggests, which will justify the use of torture. Doubtless this lucky capture enabled Frà Alberto to lay hands on a number of outlying heretics, though he probably did not again venture his person in the populous communities which had shown so sturdy a readiness in self-protection.[293]

Persecution continued, and in 1354 we chance to hear of an order issued by Giacomo, Prince of Piedmont, to the Counts of Luserna, to imprison a number of Waldenses recently discovered in Luserna and the neighboring valleys. The order was issued at the instance of Pietro di Ruffia, Inquisitor of Piedmont, who paid for his zeal with his life, being shortly afterwards slain at Susa. In 1363 and 1364 Urban V. made another attempt to reduce the heretics to obedience. The infected district was exposed to attack on both sides, for the jurisdiction of the Inquisitor of Provence extended over the Tarantaise. Frère Jean Richard of Marseilles was directed to assail them from the west, while the inquisitor and the Bishop of Turin were busy on the east. Amadeo of Savoy was requested to co-operate with the Seneschal of Provence, and this combined assault resulted in a number of captures and trials. It was doubtless the mingled despair and thirst for revenge excited by this that led to many Waldenses joining in the rising of the Jacquerie in Savoy in 1365—a rising which was suppressed with the customary merciless cruelty by the King of Navarre and Wenzel of Brabant. In spite of these efforts at repression a letter written by them in 1368, to their German brethren, would seem to show that they were still regarded as the leaders of the sect.[294]

Gregory XI. was especially zealous in the warfare with heresy, and we have already seen how earnest were his efforts in 1375 to suppress the Waldenses of Provence and Dauphiné. Those of Piedmont had rendered themselves peculiarly obnoxious. Frà Antonio Pavo had recently gone to “Bricarax,” a place deeply infected with heresy, to preach against them—his sermon, of course, including a summons before his tribunal—when in place of humbly submitting, a dozen of them, incited by the Evil One, had set upon him as he left the church and had slain him. Another inquisitor, probably Pietro di Ruffia, had met the same fate in the Dominican cloister at Susa, on the day of the Purification of the Virgin (February 2). Such misdeeds demanded exemplary chastisement, and Gregory’s exhortations to Charles V. of France were accompanied with the strongest urgency on Amadeo VI. of Savoy to clear his land of brambles. We have seen how successful were the labors of the Nuncio, Antonio Bishop of Massa, and the Inquisitor of Provence, François Borel. They did not confine their energies to the French valleys. The Waldenses of the Val di Susa were exposed to the most pitiless persecution; on a Christmas night Borel with an armed force attacked Pragelato, putting to the sword all whom he could reach. The wretches who escaped perished of hunger and cold, including, it is said, fifty women with children at the breast.[295]

It may be hoped that this holocaust satisfied the manes of the murdered inquisitors, for they seem to have received no other satisfaction. A succession of inquisitors—Piero di Castelmonte, Ruffino di Terdona, Tommaso da Casacho, and Michele Grassi, undaunted by the fate of their predecessors, wasted their energies on the Piedmontese Waldenses without reducing them to subjection. The pitiless forays of Borel drove the poor wretches from their native valleys, and they poured over into Piedmont. Amadeo VII., who succeeded his father in 1383, seems to have given the Inquisition but slender support, and it had little encouragement in its efforts to subdue the stubborn mountaineers. The fragmentary records of Frà Antonio Secco, who undertook the work in the spring of 1387, show how fruitless was the endeavor to co-operate with the ruthless proselytism of Borel. It is true that he caught Isabel Ferreria, the wife of Giovanni Gabriele, one of the murderers of Antonio Pavo, and had the satisfaction of torturing her, but he could get no evidence against her, and could only learn that her husband had died in 1386. Some other suspects he tortured and penanced with crosses: apparently he had no prisons at his disposal in which to incarcerate them. Accusations and denunciations poured in to him by the hundred, showing that the land was alive with heretics, but he was powerless to inflict on them punishment that would make an impression. One of his first cases had been a certain Lorenzo Bandoria, who had abjured before Antonio Pavo, and who under torture confessed to continued heresy. Here was a clear case of relapse, and accordingly, on March 31, he was abandoned to the secular arm and all his property declared confiscated to the Inquisition. This proved a mere brutum fulmen, for on May 6 Frà Antonio was obliged to issue a mandate to Ugonetto Bruno, Lord of Ozasco, ordering him, under pain of a hundred marks, to capture Lorenzo and present him before the tribunal the next day, while the treasurer of Ozasco was required, under threat of excommunication, to appear at the same time with an inventory of all the convict’s property. As Lorenzo had been handed over to the Castellan of Pignerol for execution, it is evident that the officials refused to carry out the sentences of the inquisitor, nor does this new effort appear to have had any better result. Many of his citations were disregarded, and when, on May 19, he ordered the lords of Ozasco to arrest three heretics under penalty of a hundred marks, no attention seems to have been paid to the command. This insubordination increased, and as the season advanced we observe that when an accused refuses to confess, the dread entry “the lord inquisitor is not content” is not followed by the customary torture, but that the culprit is mercifully dismissed under bail. One case gave Frà Antonio infinite disgust. On June 27 he cited Giacomo Do and Sanzio Margarit of Sangano; they did not appear, but on August 6 he found them in Turin and seized them. For fifteen days he kept them in chains, when they broke jail, but by the help of God he caught them again and carried them to the castle of Avegliana, where they remained ten days. He had been unable to get them tortured, and they would not confess without it; the magistrates of Avegliana appealed to Count Amadeo, who ordered them released, and Frà Antonio records the unwillingness with which he obeyed the command. He endeavored to turn his stay in Avegliana to account by publishing the customary monition for all persons to come forward and confess their own heresy or denounce those who were suspect. For nine days he waited, but not a soul appeared to accuse himself or his neighbors, and he departed, grieved at heart over the obduracy of the people, for it was common fame that there were many heretics there and in the neighborhood, especially at Coazze and Valgione. The final blow came when in December he issued a summons to all the officials of Val Perosa, one of the recognized Waldensian valleys, reciting that their land was full of heretics and that they must appear before him in Pignerol to purge themselves and their communities of this infamy. They did not obey, but through the intervention of the Piedmontese Chancellor, Giovanni di Brayda, and other courtiers, they agreed to pay Count Amadeo five hundred florins a year, for which he was to prevent the inquisitor from visiting Val Perosa, and they were to be exempted from obeying his citations. This was too much to endure, and Frà Antonio shook the dust of Pignerol from his feet for the more promising chase of the Cathari near Turin, first denouncing the officials of Val Perosa as having incurred excommunication and the penalties of contumacy, the only result of which was to draw upon his head the wrath of Count Amadeo. It does not appear that he had any better success in endeavoring to obtain for his Inquisition the confiscations of the people of Pragelato condemned by the Provençal inquisitor, François Borel. By a special privilege of Clement VII. the latter’s jurisdiction had been extended over some of the Piedmontese valleys, and though Frà Antonio might abandon the persons of the heretics to his Franciscan rival, he was resolved, if he could, to retain their property. These mishaps of Frà Antonio have an interest, not only as a rare instance of difficulties thrown into the path of the Inquisition, but as explaining why the fierce persecutions of Borel had so little effect in diminishing Waldensianism.[296] Pragelato, however, suffered more severely in 1400 when, about Christmas, it was attacked by an armed force from Susa. The inhabitants who escaped death or capture took refuge on the mountain-tops of the Val San Martino, where many perished from exposure in the inclement season; and the survivors, on returning after the departure of the troops, found their dwellings dismantled. This cold-blooded cruelty shocked even Boniface IX., who ordered the inquisitor in charge of the foray to moderate his zeal in future.[297]

Vicente Ferrer’s visit of 1403 was of a more peaceful nature, but it is not likely that the conversions of which he boasted were more permanent than those which his eloquence effected with the Moors and Jews of his native land, where they eagerly clamored for baptism under the persuasion of massacre.[298]

During the Great Schism persecution slackened, but already, in 1416, fresh decrees were issued against the Waldenses. Our knowledge of details is but fragmentary at best, and it is impossible to construct a complete history of the conflict between them and the Inquisition, but we may fairly infer that the latter was at least spasmodically active. A petition addressed to the Duke of Savoy by the lords of Luserna recites that the inhabitants of the valley were in full rebellion, owing to repeated persecution; the document is without date, but must be posterior to 1417, when Sigismund erected the county into a duchy. Again, we know that, between 1440 and 1450, Frà Bertrando Piero, vicar of the inquisitor, in one raid burned at Coni twenty-two relapsed heretics, and confiscated their property. This happens to be alluded to in a memorial addressed in 1457 to Calixtus III., by the people of the neighboring village of Bernez, who proceed to relate that after this exploit Frà Bertrando visited their town in company with his principal, Frà Ludovico da Soncino, and commenced an inquisition there, but abandoned it, to the scandal of the people, without concluding the trials. Then Felix V. (Amadeo of Savoy) sent the Abbot of San-Piero of Savigliano to complete the unfinished business, who acquitted a number of the accused. Then recently there had come a new inquisitor who took up the cases again and molested those who had been discharged, whereupon they petitioned the pope that he be restrained from further proceedings until two experts in theology be appointed as assessors by the Bishop of Mondovi and the Abbot of Savigliano. The presentation of such a request shows how much the Inquisition had lost of its power of inspiring awe, and this is emphasized by the action of Calixtus in ordering the Bishop of Turin and the inquisitor to associate with themselves two experts and proceed with the cases. It indicates, moreover, that little rest was allowed to the Waldenses. While this affair was dragging its slow length along, Nicholas V., in 1453, addressed to the Bishops of Turin and Nice and to the Inquisitor Giacomo di Buronzo, a bull reciting that Giacomo had found in the Valley of Luserna a majority of the inhabitants infected with heresy, many of them having relapsed repeatedly. Unable to convert them, he had placed an interdict on the valley; the people had repented and begged for readmission to the Church, wherefore Nicholas orders the removal of the interdict, and that penitents, whether relapsed or not, be pardoned and restored to all their civil rights—a degree of lenity which indicates that sterner measures at the time were clearly inexpedient.[299]

In 1475 a more serious war of extermination was commenced against them under the Duchess Yolande, Regent of Savoy, in conjunction with the simultaneous action of the Inquisition in Dauphiné. By an edict of January 23, 1476, all the officials in the infected districts were placed at the disposition of the Inquisition, and the podestà of Luserna was cited to appear on February 10, to answer for his conduct, in refusing, at the instance of the Inquisitor Andrea di Aquapendente, to make proclamation that none of the converts of Giacomo di Buronzo should be permitted to effect sales greater in amount than one florin, and that all sales which had been made by them were void, for they had relapsed, were endeavoring to emigrate, and to dispose of their property, which was legally confiscated. Louis XI., who stopped the persecution, as we have seen, so unceremoniously in his own dominions, felt interest enough in the matter to extend protection over the unfortunates in his sister’s territories, and his word had power sufficient to dampen the zeal of the duchess, who was wholly dependent on him after the misfortunes of Charles the Bold. Sixtus IV. was much scandalized by this. He had sent a special papal commissioner to speed the holy work, and he wrote pressingly to Louis, assuming that the royal letters of protection must have been surreptitiously obtained. He instructed the Bishop of Turin to go, if possible, in person to Louis and to make every effort to exterminate the heretics, who dared openly to propagate their doctrines and make converts, to the ruin of immortal souls. The death of Louis, in 1483, deprived the Waldenses of their protector, and persecution recommenced. An order of Duke Carlo I., in 1484, to inquire into the violences committed by the people of Angrogna, Villaro, and Bobbio because their lords endeavored to suppress their heresies, shows how soon and how bitterly the struggle broke out afresh. The heretics scattered through the towns of Piedmont were mercilessly dealt with by the inquisitors, but those who inhabited the mountain valleys were safe, except from assault by overwhelming forces. In April, 1487, Innocent VIII. recites how the inquisitor-general, Frà Blasio di Monreale, had gone to the infected district, and had vainly sought by earnest exhortations to induce the heretics to abandon their errors; how they had contemptuously defied his censures, had continued openly to preach and make converts, had attacked his house, slain his familiar, and pillaged his goods. More strenuous efforts were evidently requisite, and Innocent appointed Alberto de’’ Capitanei, Archdeacon of Cremona, as papal nuncio and commissioner to Piedmont and Dauphiné, with instructions to coerce the people to receive Frà Blasio, and permit the free exercise of his office, and to crush the heretics like venomous serpents. To this end Alberto was empowered to preach a crusade with plenary indulgences, and to deprive of their office and dignities all, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, who refused to obey his commands. From February to May, 1488, he duly issued his citations to the heretics, and as they were contumacious, he condemned them accordingly and abandoned them in mass to the secular arm. Meanwhile a force estimated at eighteen thousand crusaders had been raised in France and Piedmont, which advanced in four columns so as to block every avenue of escape. The slaughter in Val Louise has already been alluded to. The Val d’Angrogna was more fortunate, and in the attack upon it the crusading army was virtually annihilated. This victory earned for the Waldenses a respite, and in 1490 Carlo I. invited them to a conference at Pignerol, where he granted them peace and confirmed their privileges. In 1498 they were visited by Lucas of Prague and Thomas Germanus, envoys of the Unitas Fratrum of Bohemia. Through these they addressed a letter to the Bohemian King Ladislas and his nobles, boasting that they did not frequent the Catholic churches, fiercely denouncing the vices of the priesthood, and arguing that the benediction of such men was rather a malediction. Evidently the spirit of the persecuted saints was unbroken, and it was soon after put to the test in the valley of the Po, where whole villages were found to consist of Waldenses. Marguerite de Foix, Marchioness of Saluces, put troops at the command of the Inquisitor Angelo Ricciardino, who had found his ordinary machinery baffled. The villages of Pravillelm, Beitoneto, and Oncino were raided; most of the inhabitants succeeded in escaping to Luserna, but some were captured, and five were sentenced to be burned, March 24, 1510. A heavy snow-storm delayed the execution, and during the ensuing night the prisoners broke jail and joined their comrades. The inquisitor, however, was not to be balked of his exhibition, and replaced the fugitives with three prisoners to whom he had promised pardon in consideration of the fulness of their confessions, and who were duly burned. The deserted villages were confiscated and made over to good Catholics, but the refugees at intervals descended on them, slaying and spoiling without mercy, till no one dared to dwell there. Finally the bigoted marchioness yielded, and for a round sum of money, in 1512, permitted the exiles to return and dwell in peace. The triumph of toleration thus won by the sword was but local and temporary. In Savoy, the statutes published in 1513 contain all the time-honored provisions for the suppression of heresy, with instructions to all public officials to aid in every way the Inquisition, whose expenses are to be defrayed out of the confiscations. Continued persecution was thus provided for, nor was it averted when, in 1530, the Waldenses opened negotiations with the Protestants of Switzerland, resulting in their final incorporation with the Calvinists.[300]

These incessant ravages naturally led to emigration on an extended scale, which, as we have seen, mostly turned itself to Calabria and Apulia, where the brethren had dwelt in comparative peace for nearly two centuries. A large portion of the population of Freyssinières, for instance, expatriated themselves and settled in the valley of Volturara. The Inquisition was virtually extinct in the kingdom of Naples during the fifteenth century, and the heretics had earned toleration by a decent reserve. They attended mass occasionally, allowed their children to be baptized by the priests, and, what was more important, they paid their tithes with exemplary regularity—tithes which grew satisfactorily under the incessant industry of the God-fearing husbandmen. The mountain valleys which had been almost a desert became smiling with corn-fields and pastures, orchards and vine-yards. The nobles on whose lands they had settled under formal agreements gave willing protection to those who contributed so greatly to their revenues. When the independence of the feudatories was lost under the growing royal power of the House of Aragon, the heretics sought and obtained, in 1497, from King Frederic, the confirmation by the crown of the agreements with the nobles, and thus felt assured of continued toleration. They were visited every two years by the travelling pastors, or barbes, who came in pairs, an elder, known as the reggitore, and a younger, the coadiutore, journeying with some pretence of occupation, finding in every city the secret band of believers whom it was their mission to comfort and keep steadfast in the faith, and from whom they made collections which they reported to the General Assembly or Council. Between Pignerol and Calabria they counted twenty-five days’’ journey along the western coast, returning by the eastern to Venice. Everywhere they met friends acquainted with their secret passwords, and in spite of ecclesiastical vigilance there existed throughout Italy a subterranean network of heresy disguised under outward conformity. In 1497 the envoys from the Bohemian Brethren, Lucas and Thomas, found in Rome itself one of their faith, whom they bitterly reproached for concealing his belief. In Calabria, in 1530, it was estimated that they numbered ten thousand souls, in Venetia, six thousand. The fate of these poor creatures, after generations of peaceful existence which might well seem destined to be perpetual, belongs to a period beyond our present limits, but the fact that they could thus prosper and increase shows how rusty had grown the machinery of the Inquisition, and how incapable had become its officials.[301]

It only remains for us to note cursorily such indications as have reached us of the activity and condition of the Inquisition in the several provinces of Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In Savoy, as we have seen, the bitter contest with the Waldenses kept it in fair working condition, while it was gradually falling into desuetude elsewhere, although in Lombardy it still, for a while, maintained its terrors. We have a somewhat vague description of its sleepless vigilance in 1318, in pursuing certain heretics who are described as Lollards—whether Begghards or Waldenses does not appear, but probably the latter, as we are told that when concealment became impossible the men escaped to Bohemia, leaving some women with children at the breast, whereupon the women were burned, and the children given to good Catholics to be brought up in the faith. In 1344 we hear of a great popular excitement, caused by the belief that a number of victims of the Inquisition had suffered unjustly. Matters went so far that the Imperial Vicar, Lucchino Visconti, asked Clement VI. to order an investigation, which was duly held, though we do not know the result. It was possibly the feeling thus aroused which led, in 1346, to the murder in the Milanese of a Franciscan inquisitor conspicuous for his persecuting zeal. The perpetual troubles during the century between the Holy See and the Visconti cannot but have greatly interfered with the efficiency of persecution. In the collected statutes of the Dukes of Milan from 1343 to 1495 there is no allusion of any kind to the Inquisition, or to the punishment of heretics. There is, however, on record a decree of 1388 placing the civil officials at the service of the Inquisition, but it enforces the conditions of the Clementines, which require episcopal consent to the use of torture and harsh prison, and to the final sentence. It moreover threatens inquisitors with punishment for using their office to extort money or gratify malice; and it further significantly commands them not to abuse the privilege of armed familiars, or to unnecessarily multiply their officials. How the political passions of the time hindered the functions of the Holy Office is seen in the case of Frà Ubertino di Carleone, a bustling Franciscan, subsequently Bishop of Lipari, who, about 1360, was accused of heresy by the Inquisitor of Piacenza. He at once proclaimed that his Ghibellinism was the motive of the prosecution, and aroused the factions of the city to a tumult, under cover of which he escaped.[302]

Inquisitors, indeed, continued to be regularly appointed, and to perform such of their functions as they could, but the decline in their usefulness is shown by one of the earliest acts of Martin V., in 1417, before leaving Constance, in commissioning the Observantine Franciscan, Giovanni da Capistrano, as a special inquisitor against the heretics of Mantua. From this time, in fact, when any effective effort against heresy was called for, the regular machinery of the Inquisition was no longer relied upon. It seems to have been regarded as effete for all the purposes for which it had been instituted, and special appointments were necessary of men devoted to the work, such as Capistrano and his friend Giacomo della Marca. Just as the inquisitorial jurisdiction had superseded the episcopal, so now both were overslaughed as insufficient. Thus, in 1457, when a new heresy sprang up in Brescia and Bergamo concerning Christ, the Virgin, and the Church Militant, infecting both clergy and laity, and including suspicion of sorcery, Calixtus III. ordered his nuncio in those parts, Master Bernardo del Bosco, to seize the heretics and try them, with even more than the privileges of an inquisitor, for he was empowered to proceed to final judgment and execution without appeal, leaving it to his discretion whether he should call for advice upon the inquisitors and episcopal ordinaries. Two years later, in the case of Zanino da Solcia, to which I shall recur hereafter, the sentence was rendered by the Lombard inquisitor, Frà Jacopo da Brescia, but the examination took place in the presence of Master Bernardo del Bosco, who moreover received the abjuration of Zanino, and the sentence was sent to Pius II. and was modified by him. The diminution of popular respect for the Inquisition was still further manifested in 1459, by the doubts publicly expressed of the validity of the bulls of Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. authorizing inquisitors to preach crusades against heretics and to prosecute for heresy all persons and communities impeding them, so that Calixtus III. was obliged to reissue the authorization.[303]

A curious case occurring about this time illustrates the growing indifference felt in Lombardy for the Inquisition. In Milan, about 1440, a learned mathematician, named Amadeo de’’ Landi, was accused of heresy before the inquisitors. During the progress of his trial he was, to the great damage of his reputation, denounced as a heretic by sundry friars in their sermons, and among others by Bernardino of Siena, the saintly head of the Observantines. The Inquisition pronounced him a good Catholic and discharged him, but those who had slandered him offered no reparation. The acquittal by the Inquisition apparently did not outweigh the denunciations of Bernardino, and Amadeo appealed to Eugenius IV., who referred the matter to Giuseppe di Brippo, with power to enforce his decision with censures. Giuseppe summoned the detractors to appear on a certain day, and on their failing to present themselves condemned Bernardino to make public retraction under pain of excommunication. Bernardino paid no heed to this, and on his death in 1444, when immediate efforts were made for his canonization, Amadeo raised great scandal by proclaiming that he had died in mortal sin as an excommunicate. This gratified the jealousy of the conventual branch of the Franciscans and many of the secular clergy, who spread the scandal far and wide. By this time, however, the Observantines were too influential for such an assault upon their revered vicar-general to be successful; and in 1447 they obtained from Nicholas V. a bull in which he annulled all the proceedings of Giuseppe, ordered every record of them to be destroyed, imposed silence on the unlucky Amadeo, declared Bernadino to have acted righteously throughout, and forbade all clerks, friars, and others from indulging in further detraction concerning him. I may add that the opposition of the Conventuals was powerful enough to postpone until 1450 the canonization of San Bernardino, and a humorous incident in the struggle may be worth mention. When the blessed Tommaso of Florence died at Rieti in 1447, and immediately began to coruscate in miracles, Capistrano hurried thither and forbade him to display further his thaumaturgic powers until Bernardino should be canonized—and Tommaso meekly obeyed.[304]

Yet, shorn as the Inquisition had become of real effectiveness for its avowed functions, the office continued to be sought, doubtless because it conferred a certain measure of importance, and possibly because it afforded opportunity of illicit gains. Inquisitors were regularly appointed, and the custom grew up in Lombardy that in each city where a tribunal existed vacancies were filled on the nomination of the prior of the local Dominican convent with the assent of discreet brethren, whereupon the General Master of the Order issued the commission. In 1500 this was modified by giving the Vicar-general of Lombardy power to reject or ratify the nomination. The subordinate position to which the inquisitorial office had fallen is illustrated in the last decade of the fifteenth century by Frà Antonio da Brescia, who was inquisitor of his native place, and who was claimed as an ornament of the Dominican Order, but his eulogist has nothing to say as to his persecuting heretics, while praising his pulpit labors in many of the Italian cities.[305]

In Venice, as we have seen, the Inquisition never succeeded in shaking off the trammels of state supervision and interference. In what spirit the State regarded its relations with the Holy Office was exhibited in 1356, when Frà Michele da Pisa, the Inquisitor of Treviso, imprisoned some Jewish converts who had apostatized. This was strictly within his functions, but the secular officials interposed, forbade his proceeding to try his prisoners, seized his familiars, and tortured them on the charge of pilfering the property of the accused. These high-handed measures provoked the liveliest indignation on the part of Innocent VI., but the republic stood firm, and nothing seems to have been gained. In the correspondence which ensued, moreover, there are allusions to former troubles which show that this was by no means the first time that Frà Michele’s labors had been impeded by the secular power. Sometimes, indeed, the Signoria completely ignored the Inquisition. In 1365 a case in which a prisoner had blasphemed the Virgin was brought before the Great Council, which ordered him to be tried by the vicar of the Bishop of Castello, and on conviction to be banished, thus prescribing the punishment, and recognizing only the episcopal jurisdiction.[306]

In 1373 Venice was honored with the appointment of a special inquisitor, Frà Ludovico da San-Martino, while Frà Niccolò Mucio of Venice was made Inquisitor of Treviso. This led to some debate about their partition of the great Patriarchate of Aquileia, which extended from the province of Spalatro to that of Milan. The Patriarchate of Grado (which was not transferred to Venice till 1451) was adjudged to Ludovico, together with the see of Jesol. This latter place, though close to Venice, was then, we are told, in ruins, with a roofless cathedral serving as a place of refuge for heretics, who there felt safe from persecution. This partition did not improve the position of the inquisitor, whose importance was reduced to a minimum. He seems, in fact, to be regarded only as a functionary of the state police. In 1412 the Great Council orders him, April 17, to put an end to the performance of divine service by a Greek priest named Michael, whose celebrations attract great crowds, and also to banish him, taking care to so manage the affair that the interposition of the council may not be suspected; and a month later, May 26, the order of banishment is revoked, but the prohibition of celebration is maintained. In all his proper functions the inquisitor was overslaughed and disregarded. In 1422 the Council of Ten appointed a commission to examine some Franciscans charged with sacrificing to demons and other abominable practices, and a month later they sent to Martin V., requesting powers to terminate the matter, in view of the immunities enjoyed by the Mendicants. When, in the following year, 1423, the Senate withdrew the pecuniary provision with which the State had always defrayed the expenses of the Inquisition, they marked their sense of its inutility and their indifference to its power. This may possibly have led to the reunion of the districts of Venice and Treviso, for, in 1433 and 1434, we find single inquisitors appointed to both. In the latter year the lack of power of the incumbent, Frà Luca Cioni, is shown by the fact that when he desired to proceed against Ruggieri da Bertona, accused of heresy, he was forced to get Eugenius IV. to order the Bishop of Castello (Venice) to assist him. A further recognition of the inefficiency of the Inquisition is seen in the sending of Frà Giovanni da Capistrano to Venice in 1437, when the Jesuats were accused of heresy, and he acquitted them, and again, about 1450, when heretical notions spread there concerning the origin and nature of the soul, which he suppressed.[307]

Allusion has been made in a former chapter to the limitation imposed in 1450 by the Council of Ten on the number of armed familiars whom the inquisitor might retain, reducing them to four, and in 1451 increasing them to twelve, with instructions to the police to see that they were really engaged in the duties of the Holy Office. In so large and populous a district this sufficiently shows how purely nominal were the functions of the Inquisition, and how close was the supervision exercised by the State. Yet inquisitors continued to be appointed, but when they attempted to exercise any independent jurisdiction we have seen, in the case of the sorcerers of 1521, that even the most energetic interference of Leo X. could not induce the Signoria to waive its right of final decision.[308]

In Mantua, which formed part of the Patriarchate of Aquileia, we hear, in 1494, of an inquisitor who, for lack of heresies to suppress, assailed the monts de piété, or public pawning establishments, and all who favored them. These institutions were founded about this period as a charitable work for the purpose of rescuing the poor from the exactions of the usurers and the Jews. Frà Bernardino da Feltre, a celebrated Observantine Franciscan, made this a special object of his mission-work in the Italian cities, and on his coming to Mantua he completely silenced his adversaries. The decline of visible heresy at this period, in fact, is illustrated in the very diffuse account which Luke Wadding gives, year after year, of Bernardino’s triumphant progress throughout Italy to call the people to repentance, when cities eagerly disputed with each other the blessing of his presence. In all this there is no allusion to any attacks by him on heresy; had there been any to assail, his burning zeal would not have suffered it to enjoy impunity.[309]

In Tuscany the growing insubordination felt towards the Inquisition was manifested at Siena, in 1340, by the enactment of laws checking some of its abuses. Frà Simone Filippo, the inquisitor, complained to Benedict XII., who at once pronounced them null and void, and ordered them erased from the statute-book. The relations between the Holy Office and the people at this period, however, are more significantly displayed in a series of events occurring at Florence, of which the details chance to have been preserved. In Tuscany the triumph of orthodoxy had been complete. A sermon of Frà Giordano da Rivalto, in 1304, asserts that heresy was virtually exterminated: scarce any heretics remained, and they were in strict hiding. This is confirmed by Villani, who tells us that, by the middle of the century, there were no heretics in Florence. This is doubtless too absolute an assertion, but the existence of a few scattered Waldenses and Fraticelli offered scant excuse for such an establishment as the inquisitor was accustomed to maintain. In 1337 the papal nuncio, Bertrand, Archbishop of Embrun, took the incumbent of the office severely to task for the abuse of appointing an excessive number of assistants, and ordered him in future to restrict himself to four counsellors and assessors, two notaries, two jailers, and twelve ministers or familiars. This was by no means a small or inexpensive body of officials; the Inquisition’s share of confiscations from the few poverty-stricken heretics who could occasionally be picked up evidently was insufficient to maintain such a corps, and means, either fair or foul, must be found to render the income of the office adequate to the wants of those who depended upon it for their fortunes. How this was done, on the one hand by cheating the papal camera, and on the other by extorting money on false charges of heresy and by selling to bravoes licenses to carry arms, has already been pointed out. The former device was one which, when detected, was difficult to condone, and its discovery caused, in the commencement of 1344, a sudden vacancy in the Florentine Inquisition. The republic was in the habit of suggesting names to the Franciscan General for appointment, and sometimes its requests were respected. In the present case it asked, February 26, that the Tuscan inquisitor, Frà Giovanni da Casale, be permitted to exercise his functions within the city, but the suggestion was unheeded, and in March the post was given to Frà Piero di Aquila.[310]

Frà Piero was a distinguished member of the Franciscan Order. But two months earlier he had been appointed chaplain to Queen Joanna of Naples, and his Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard were highly esteemed, receiving, in 1480, the honor of an edition printed at Speier. A man so gifted was warmly welcomed, and the republic thanked the Franciscan General for the selection. I have already detailed how he fell into the same courses as his predecessor in cheating the papal camera, how he was prosecuted for this, and for what the republic officially denounced as “estorsioni nefande” committed on the people, and how, within two years after his appointment, he was a fugitive, not daring to stand trial. There is another phase of his activity, however, which is worth recounting in some detail, as it illustrates perfectly how useful an instrument was the Inquisition in carrying out the wishes of the Roman curia in matters wholly disconnected with the purity of the faith.[311]

The Cardinal of Santa Sabina, while visiting various courts in the capacity of papal legate, had had occasion to collect large sums. In charity to him we may assume, what doubtless was the truth, that the money belonged to the pope, although it stood in the cardinal’s name on the books of his bankers, the great Florentine company of the Acciajuoli. In receiving it the members of the company had bound themselves jointly and severally for its repayment, agreeing to subject themselves to the judgment of the Court of Auditors of the Apostolic Chamber. In 1343 there was due the cardinal some twelve thousand florins, which the Acciajuoli were unable to pay. A commercial and financial crisis had paralyzed the commerce and industries of the city. Its bankers had advanced vast sums to Edward III. of England and to Robert the Good of Naples, and clamored in vain for repayment. The Lombard war had exhausted the public treasury and the whole community was bankrupt. Not only the Acciajuoli, but the Bardi, the Peruzzi, and other great banking-houses closed their doors, and ruin stared the Florentines in the face. There was at least one creditor, however, who was resolved to have his money.[312]

On October 9, 1343, Clement VI. wrote to the republic, stating the claim of the cardinal and ordering the Signoria to compel the Acciajuoli to pay it. Under the circumstances this was clearly impossible, but judgment against the debtors had been rendered by the auditors of the papal camera. This was enough to bring the affair within the sphere of spiritual jurisdiction, and authority was sent to the inquisitor to execute the sentence, calling in the aid of the secular arm, and, if necessary, laying an interdict on the city. The matter dragged on until, November 23, 1345, Frà Piero appeared before the Gonfaloniero and the Priors of the Arts, and summoned them to imprison the debtors until payment, under pain of excommunication and interdict; whereupon the magistrates responded that, out of reverence for the pope and respect for the inquisitor and to oblige the cardinal, they would lend the aid of the secular arm. Still the money was not forthcoming, and although such assets of the Acciajuoli as could be seized were delivered to Frà Piero, and security was given for the balance, he held the whole community responsible for the debt of a few of the citizens. The discussion became angry, and when the inquisitor, in violation of a law of the republic, committed the indiscretion of arresting Salvestro Baroncelli, a member of the bankrupt company, as he was leaving the palace of the Priors of the Arts, his three familiars who had committed the offence were, in compliance with a savage statute, punished with banishment and the loss of the right hand.

All this did not extract the money from the bankrupts, and Frà Piero laid the city under interdict, but both the clergy and people refused to observe it. The churches remained open and the rites of religion continued to be celebrated, leading to a fresh series of prosecutions against the bishop and priests. Inside the walls the Florentines might disregard the censures of the Church, but a commercial community could not afford to be cut off from intercourse with the world. Her citizens and their goods were scattered in every trade-centre in Christendom, and were virtually outlawed by the interdict. This was the reason alleged by the priors when, June 14, 1346, they humbled their pride and sent commissioners to Clement authorized to bind the republic to pay the debt of the Acciajuoli to the cardinal, not exceeding seven thousand florins, in eight months. Their submission was graciously received, and, February 28, 1347, the pope ordered the interdict removed, cautiously providing, however, for its ipso facto renewal in case the obligation for six thousand six hundred florins was not met at maturity.[313]

Meanwhile another scene of the comedy was developing itself. In its contest with Frà Piero the republic had not stood solely on the defensive. Piero, papal nuncio at Lucca, who had in charge the prosecutions against the inquisitors for embezzling the sums due to the camera, had appointed as his deputy in Florence, Niccolò, Abbot of Santa Maria, who proceeded against Frà Piero on that charge, to which the Signoria added the accusation, sustained by abundant testimony, of extorting from citizens large sums of money by fraudulent prosecutions for heresy. By March 10, 1346, the Signoria was asking the appointment of Frà Michele di Lapo as his successor. Frà Piero was a fugitive, and refused to return and stand his trial when legally cited and tendered a safe-conduct. After due delay, in 1347, the Abate Niccolò, being armed with papal authority, declared him in default and contumacious, and then proceeded to excommunicate him. The excommunication was published in all the churches of Florence, and Frà Piero was thus cut off from the faithful and abandoned to Satan. He could afford to regard all this with calm philosophy. His success in collecting the cardinal’s money entitled him to reward, and the booty of seven thousand florins which he had personally carried off from Florence as the results of his two years’’ inquisitorial career, could doubtless be used to advantage. While Niccolò was vainly citing him, he was promoted, February 12, 1347, to the episcopate of Sant-Angeli de’’ Lombardi, and his excommunication was answered, June 29, 1348, by his translation to the presumably preferable see of Trivento. All that the Florentines could do was to petition repeatedly that in future inquisitors should be selected from among their own citizens, who would be less likely than strangers to be guilty of extortions and scandals. Their request was respected at least in 1354, when a Florentine, Frà Bernardo de’’ Guastoni, was appointed Inquisitor of Tuscany.[314]

This was not likely to be effective, and the Signoria made a more promising effort at self-protection by passing various laws imitated from those adopted not long before at Perugia. To limit the abuse of selling licenses to bear arms, the inquisitor, as we have seen, was restricted to employing six armed familiars. Moreover, it was decreed that no citizen could be arrested without the participation of the podestà, who was required to seize all persons designated to him by the bishop—the inquisitor not being alluded to—which would seem to leave small opportunity for independent action by the latter, especially as he was deprived of his private jail and was ordered to send all prisoners to the public prison. He was further prohibited from inflicting pecuniary punishments, and all whom he condemned as heretics were to be burned. This was revolutionary in a high degree, and did not tend to harmonize the relations between the republic and the papacy. The desperate quarrel between them which arose in 1375 was caused by political questions, but it was embittered by troubles arising from the Inquisition, especially as a demand made by Innocent VI., in 1355, for a revision of their statutes remained unheeded. In 1372 efforts were made to obtain the removal of Frà Tolomeo da Siena, the Inquisitor of Tuscany, who was exceedingly unpopular, but Gregory XI. expressed the fullest confidence in him and ordered him to be protected by the Vicar-general, Filippo, Bishop of Sabina. Yet the pope probably yielded, for I find in 1373 that Frà Piero di Ser Lippo, who had already served as Tuscan inquisitor in 1371, was again appointed to replace a certain Frà Andrea di Ricco. With some intervals Frà Piero served until at least 1384, and he proved no more disposed than his predecessors to yield to the resistance which the methods of the Inquisition inevitably provoked in the free Italian cities. Pistoia had followed the example of Florence in endeavoring to protect its citizens by municipal statutes, and in 1375 it was duly placed under interdict and its citizens were excommunicated. At the same time Frà Piero complained of Florence as impeding the free action of the Inquisition, and Gregory at once ordered the Signoria to abrogate the obnoxious statutes. No attention was paid to these commands by Florence, and when the rupture came the Florentine mob expressed its feelings by destroying the inquisitorial prison and driving the inquisitor from the city. It was also alleged that in the disturbances a monk named Niccolò was tortured and buried alive. These misdeeds, although denied by the Signoria, were alleged as a justification of the terrible bull of March 31, 1376, fulminated against Florence by Gregory. In this he not only excommunicated and interdicted the city, but specially outlawed the citizens, exposing their property wherever found to seizure, and their persons to slavery. This shocking abuse was the direct outgrowth of the long series of legislation against heresy, and was sanctioned by the public law of the period; everywhere throughout Christendom the goods of Florentines were seized and the merchants were glad to beg their way home, stripped of all they possessed. Not all were so fortunate, as some pious monarchs, like Edward III., in addition reduced them to servitude. No commercial community could long endure a contest waged after this fashion, and, as before, Florence was compelled to submit. In the peace signed July 28, 1378, the republic agreed to annul all laws restricting the Inquisition and interfering with the liberties of the Church, and it authorized a papal commissioner to expunge them from the statute-book. The Great Schism, however, weakened for a time the aggressive energy of the papacy, and much of the obnoxious legislation reappears in the revised code of 1415.[315]