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]
The career of Tommasino da Foligno, who died in 1377, has interest for
us, not only as illustrating the activity of the Inquisition of the
period, but also from the curious parallelism which it affords with that
of Savonarola. He was one of the prophets, like St. Birgitta of Sweden,
St. Catharine of Siena, and the Friends of God in the Rhinelands, who
were called forth by the untold miseries then afflicting mankind. A
tertiary of St. Francis, he had practised for three years the greatest
austerities as an anchorite, when God summoned him forth to preach
repentance to the warring factions whose savage quarrels filled every
city in the land with wretchedness. Like the other contemporary
prophets, he spared neither clerk nor layman; and his bitter
animadversions at Perugia on the evil life of Gerald, Abbot of
Marmoutiers, papal vicar for the States of the Church, may perhaps
account for his subsequent rough handling by the Inquisition. Gifted
with miraculous power, as well as with the spirit of prophecy, he
wandered from town to town, proclaiming the wrath of God, and
foretelling misfortunes which, in the existing state of society, were
almost sure to come to pass. To convince the incredulous at Siena, on a
midsummer day he predicted a frost for the morrow. When it duly came he
was accused of sorcery, seized by the Inquisition, and tortured nearly
to death, but he was discharged when a miracle established his innocence
and healed the wounds of the torture-chamber. After an intermediate
pilgrimage to far-off Compostella, his preaching at Florence excited so
much antagonism that again he was arrested by the Inquisition, cast into
a dungeon, and kept three days without food or drink, to be finally
discharged as insane. After his death at Foligno, unsuccessful attempts
were made to procure his canonization, and he long remained an object of
local veneration and worship.[316]
During the fifteenth century the Inquisition in central Italy subsided
into the same unimportance that we have witnessed elsewhere. The effect
of the Great Schism in reducing the respect felt for the papacy was
especially felt in Italy, and the papal officials lost nearly all power
of enforcing obedience, although the Inquisition at Pisa, when it was
strengthened by the presence of the council held there in 1409, took its
revenge on a man named Andreani, whom it burned for the crime of
habitually and publicly ridiculing it. When the schism was healed at
Constance, one of the earliest efforts of Martin V. was directed against
the Fraticelli, whose increase in the Roman province he especially
deprecated. In his bull on the subject, November 14, 1418, he complained
that when inquisitors endeavored to exercise their office against the
heretics the latter would claim the jurisdiction of some temporal lord
and then threaten and insult their persecutors, so that the latter were
afraid to perform their functions. Martin's only remedy was practically
to supersede the inquisitors by special appointments, and this naturally
sank the institution to a deeper degradation. Thus in 1424, when there
were three Fraticelli to be tried in Florence, Martin placed the matter
in the hands of Frà Leonardo, a Dominican professor of theology. Still
the office of inquisitor continued to be sought and appointments to be
made with more or less regularity, from motives which can easily be
conjectured; but of activity against heresy there is scarce a trace. How
unimportant its functions had become in Bologna may be gathered from the
fact that in 1461 the inquisitor, Gabriele of Barcelona, was sent to
Rome by his superiors to teach theology in the convent of Minerva, when
Pius II. authorized him to appoint a vicar to discharge his duties
during his absence. Ten years afterwards the Bolognese inquisitor, Frà
Simone da Novara, was fortunate enough to lay hands on a man named
Guizardo da Sassuolo, who was suspected of heresy. So completely were
such proceedings forgotten that he felt obliged to apply for
instructions to Paul II., who congratulated him on the capture, ordered
him to proceed according to the canons, and desired the episcopal vicar
to co-operate. Heretics evidently had grown scarce, and the
inquisitorial functions had fallen into desuetude.[317]
In Rome, when there really was a heresiarch to condemn, there was no
Inquisition at hand to perform the duty. In the proceedings against
Luther there is no trace of its intervention. The bull _Exsurge Domine_,
June 15, 1520, contains no allusion to his doctrines having been
examined by it; when they were publicly condemned, June 12, 1521, the
ceremony was performed by the Bishop of Ascoli, Auditor of the Rota, and
Silvestro Prierias, Master of the Sacred Palace, while the sentence
which consigned his effigy and his books to the flames was pronounced by
Frà Cipriano, professor in the College of Sacred Theology. It was
perhaps the most momentous _auto de fé_ that has ever been celebrated,
but the Inquisition can boast of no participation in it.[318]
* * * * *
In the Two Sicilies the Inquisition dragged on a moribund existence.
Letters of King Robert in 1334 and 1335 and of Joanna I. in 1342 and
1343 show that inquisitors continued to be appointed and to receive the
royal exequatur, but they were limited to making fifty arrests each, and
record of these was required to be entered in the royal courts; they had
no jails, and the royal officials received their prisoners and tortured
them when called upon. The Jews appear to be the main object of
inquisitorial activity, and this can only have been halting, for in 1344
Clement VI. orders his legate at Naples, Aymerico, Cardinal of S.
Martino, to punish condignly all apostate Jews, as though there were no
Inquisition at work there. Yet in 1362 there were three inquisitors in
Naples, Francesco da Messina, Angelo Cicerello da Monopoli, and Ludovico
da Napoli, who took part in the trial of the rebellious Luigi di
Durazzo. Still, when efforts were to be made against the Fraticelli,
Urban V., in 1368, deemed it necessary to send a special inquisitor, Frà
Simone del Pozzo, to Naples. Although his jurisdiction extended over the
island of Sicily, Gregory XI., in 1372, when informed that the relics of
the Fraticelli were venerated there as those of saints, ordered the
prelates to put a stop to it, as though he had no inquisitor to call
upon. Yet Frà Simone was there in that year, and had a theological
disputation with Frà Niccolò di Girgenti, a learned Franciscan who had
been provincial of his Order. The question turned upon some scholastic
subtleties respecting the three persons of the Trinity, and as each
disputant claimed the victory, Simone proceeded to settle the matter by
secretly prosecuting his antagonist for heresy. Niccolò got wind of this
and at once appealed to Rome, before the Archbishop of Palermo,
demanding his _apostoli_--an appeal which Simone pronounced frivolous.
The revelations made by Niccolò as to his antagonists present a most
dismal picture of the internal condition of the Church at the time,
although Frà Simone's learning and ascetic life won him the popular
reputation of a saint, and he obtained the bishopric of Catania,
becoming an important political personage. In 1373 Frederic III. issued
letters to all the royal officials ordering them to lend all aid to him
and to his familiars, and the Inquisition seems to have been firmly
established, with prisons of its own. In 1375 we find Gregory applying
to the king for the confiscations, and procuring from the revenues of
Palermo an appropriation of twelve ounces of gold, to be applied to the
extermination of heresy. In this recrudescence of persecution the Jews
appear to have been the principal victims. They appealed to Frederic,
who in the same year, 1375, issued letters severely blaming the
inquisitors and ordering that in future their prisoners should be
confined only in the royal jails; that civil judges should assist in
their decisions, and that an appeal should lie to the High Court. This
was imposing serious limitations on inquisitorial jurisdiction, but no
reclamation against it appears to have been made. In Naples, letters of
Charles III., issued in 1382 to Frà Domenico di Astragola and Frà
Leonardo di Napoli, show that inquisitors continued to be appointed. In
1389 Boniface IX. seems to unite Naples with Sicily by appointing Frà
Antonio Traverso di Aversa as inquisitor on both sides of the Faro; but
in 1391 another brief of the same pope alludes to the Inquisition of
Sicily having become vacant by the death of Frà Francesco da Messina,
and as there is customarily but one inquisitor there he fills the
vacancy by the appointment of Frà Simone da Amatore. Frà Simone had a
somewhat stormy career. Already, in 1392, he was replaced by Frà
Giuliano di Mileto, afterwards Bishop of Cefalù, but seems to have
regained his position, for in 1393 he was obliged by King Martin to
refund moneys extorted from some Jews whom he had prosecuted for holding
illicit relations with Christian women, and was told not to interfere
with matters beyond his jurisdiction. Engaging in treasonable
intrigues, he was driven from the island, and in 1397 we find him acting
as papal legate and provincial in Germany. In 1400 he obtained his
pardon from King Martin, and was allowed to reside in Syracuse, but was
strictly forbidden from exercising the office of inquisitor. Meanwhile,
in 1395, we hear of Guglielmo di Girgenti as inquisitor, and in 1397, of
Matteo di Catania, a sentence by whom in that year, fining a Jew and his
wife in forty ounces, was confirmed by the king, showing that the
Inquisition continued to be subordinated to the civil power. Frà Matteo
was inquisitor on both sides of the Faro, for a royal letter of 1399
describes him as such, and orders obedience rendered to his vicar, while
another of 1403 shows that he still retained the position. A royal
decree of 1402 specially provides for Jews an appeal to the king from
all inquisitorial sentences, thus continuing what had long been the
practice. In 1415 royal letters confirming the appointment of Frà
Antonio de Pontecorona, others of 1427 in favor of Frà Benedetto da
Perino, and of 1446, in favor of Frà Andrea de la Pascena, show that the
organization was maintained, but all sentences were required to be
transmitted to the viceroy, who submitted them to a royal judge before
they were valid. Thus, in 1451, King Alfonso confirmed a fine of ten
thousand florins, levied upon the Jews as a punishment for their usuries
and other offences.[319]
On the mainland we have seen proof of the decay of the Inquisition in
the undisturbed growth of the Waldensian communities, and the complete
breaking-down of its machinery is fairly illustrated in 1427, when
Joanna II. undertook to enforce certain measures against the Jews of her
kingdom. Had there been an effective and organized Inquisition she would
have required no better instrument for her purpose; and it could only
have been the absence of this that led her to call in the indefatigable
persecutor, Frà Giovanni da Capistrano, to whom she issued a commission
to coerce the Jews to abandon usury and to wear the sign Tau, as
provided by law. He was empowered to decree such punishments as he
might deem fit, which were to be mercilessly inflicted by all judges and
other officials, and he was moreover to constrain, under pain of
confiscation, the Jews to surrender to him for cancellation all letters
and privileges granted to them by former monarchs. Yet there was still a
simulacrum of the Inquisition maintained, for in the following year,
1428, we find Martin V. confirming the appointment of Frà Niccolò di
Camisio as Inquisitor of Benevento, Bari, and the Capitanata.[320]
Whatever vitality the Inquisition retained was still more reduced when,
in 1442, the House of Aragon obtained the throne of Naples. Giannone
tells us that the Aragonese princes rarely admitted inquisitors, and,
when they did so, required minute reports as to their every official
act, never permitting any conviction without the participation of the
secular magistrates, followed by royal confirmation, as we have seen to
have been the case in Sicily. When, in 1449, Nicholas V. appointed Frà
Matteo da Reggio as inquisitor to exterminate the apostate Jews who were
said to be numerous throughout the kingdom, the terms employed would
seem to indicate that for some time the Inquisition had been practically
extinct, although but two years before he had given a commission to Frà
Giovanni da Napoli, and although subsequent inquisitors were
occasionally appointed.[321]
In Sicily, however, in 1451, the Inquisition obtained fresh vitality by
means of an ingenious device. Frà Enrico Lugardi, Inquisitor of Palermo,
produced a most impudent forgery in the shape of a long and elaborate
privilege purporting to have been issued by the Emperor Frederic II. in
1224, ordering all his Sicilian subjects to give aid and comfort to the
"inquisitors of heretical pravity," and stating that, as it was
unfitting that all confiscations should inure to the royal fisc without
rewarding the inquisitors for their toils and perils, the confiscations
henceforth should be divided equally between the fisc, the Inquisition,
and the Holy See; moreover, all Jews and infidels were required once a
year to supply inquisitors and their attendants, when in prosecution of
their duty, with all necessaries for man and beast. Though the
fraudulent character of this document was conspicuous on its face, to
say nothing of a blunder in the regnal year of its date, the age was not
a critical one; Frà Enrico seems to have had no trouble in inducing King
Alonso to confirm it, and it was subsequently confirmed again in 1477 by
Ferdinand and Isabella. The privileges which it conferred were
substantial, and gave fresh importance to the Inquisition, although its
judgments were still subjected to revision by the civil power. When, in
1474, famine led Sixtus IV. to request of the Viceroy Ximenes the
shipment of a large supply of corn from Sicily to Rome, he wrote to the
inquisitor, Frà Salvo di Cassetta, ordering him to strain every nerve to
secure the granting of the favor. The inquisitor at that time was
evidently a personage of influence, for Frà Salvo in fact was also
confessor of the viceroy. The central tribunal of the Inquisition sat in
Palermo, and there were three commissioners or deputies in charge of the
three "valleys" of the island.[322]
Ferdinand the Catholic, in founding the New Spanish Inquisition,
obtained for his grand inquisitor the power of nominating deputies in
all the dependencies of Castile and Aragon. About 1487 Fray Antonio de
la Peña was sent to Sicily in that capacity, who speedily organized the
Holy Office on its new basis throughout the island; and in 1492 an edict
of banishment was issued against the Jews, who, as of old, were the
chief objects of persecution. On the mainland there was more trouble.
When, in 1503, Ferdinand acquired the kingdom of Naples, the Great
Captain, Gonsalvo of Cordova, finding the people excited with the fear
that the Spanish Inquisition might be introduced, made a solemn compact
that no inquisitors should be sent thither. The old rules were kept in
force; no one was allowed to be arrested without a special royal
warrant, and no inquisitor could exercise any functions without the
confirmation of his commission by the royal representative.
Notwithstanding this, in 1504, Diego Deza, the Spanish inquisitor-general,
sent to Naples an inquisitor and a receiver of confiscated property,
with royal letters ordering them to have free exercise of their
authority, but Gonsalvo, who knew by how slender a tenure the new
dynasty held the allegiance of the people, seems not to have admitted
them. Under the excuse that the Jews and New Christians expelled from
Spain found refuge in Naples, the attempt was again made in 1510, and
Andres Palacio was sent there as inquisitor, but the populace rose in
arms and made demonstrations so threatening that even Ferdinand's
fanaticism was forced to give way. The movements of the French in the
north of Italy were disquieting, the loyalty of the Neapolitans was not
to be relied upon, and the inquisitor was withdrawn with a promise that
no further effort would be made to force upon the people the dreaded
tribunal. Even Julius II. recognized the necessity of this and assented
to the understanding. The Calabrian and Apulian Waldenses thus had a
respite until the progress of the Reformation in Italy aroused the
Church to renewed efforts and to a complete reorganization of its
machinery of persecution.[323]