CHAPTER III.

THE FRATICELLI.

We have seen how John XXII. created and exterminated the heresy of the

Spiritual Franciscans, and how Michele da Cesena enforced obedience

within the Order as to the question of granaries and cellars and the

wearing of short and narrow gowns. The settlement of the question,

however, on so illogical a basis as this was impossible, especially in

view of the restless theological dogmatism of the pope and his

inflexible determination to crush all dissidence of opinion. Having once

undertaken to silence the discussions over the rule of poverty which had

caused so much trouble for nearly a century, his logical intellect led

him to carry to their legitimate conclusions the principles involved in

his bulls _Quorumdam, Sancta Romana_, and _Gloriosam Ecclesiam_, while

his thorough worldliness rendered him incapable of anticipating the

storm which he would provoke. A character such as his was unable to

comprehend the honest inconsistency of men like Michele and Bonagrazia,

who could burn their brethren for refusing to have granaries and

cellars, and who, at the same time, were ready to endure the stake in

vindication of the absolute poverty of Christ and the apostles, which

had so long been a fundamental belief of the Order, and had been

proclaimed as irrefragable truth in the bull _Exiit qui seminat_.

In fact, under a pope of the temperament of John, the orthodox

Franciscans had a narrow and dangerous path to tread. The Spirituals

were burned as heretics because they insisted on following their own

conception of the Rule of Francis, and the distinction between this and

the official recognition of the obligation of poverty was shadowy in the

extreme. The Dominicans were not slow to recognize the dubious position

of their rivals, nor averse to take advantage of it. If they could bring

the received doctrines of the Franciscan Order within the definition of

the new heresy they would win a triumph that might prove permanent. The

situation was so artificial and so untenable that a catastrophe was

inevitable, and it might be precipitated by the veriest trifle.

In 1321, when the persecution of the Spirituals was at its height, the

Dominican inquisitor, Jean de Beaune, whom we have seen as the colleague

of Bernard Gui and the jailer of Bernard Délicieux, was engaged at

Narbonne in the trial of one of the proscribed sect. To pass judgment he

summoned an assembly of experts, among whom was the Franciscan Berenger

Talon, teacher in the convent of Narbonne. One of the errors which he

represented the culprit as entertaining was that Christ and the

apostles, following the way of perfection, had held no possessions,

individually or in common. As this was the universal Franciscan

doctrine, we can only regard it as a challenge when he summoned Frère

Berenger to give his opinion respecting it. Berenger thereupon replied

that it was not heretical, having been defined as orthodox in the

decretal _Exiit_, when the inquisitor hotly demanded that he should

recant on the spot. The position was critical, and Berenger, to save

himself from prosecution, interjected an appeal to the pope. He hastened

to Avignon, but found that Jean de Beaune had been before him. He was

arrested; the Dominicans everywhere took up the question, and the pope

allowed it to be clearly seen that his sympathies were with them. Yet

the subject was a dangerous one for disputants, as the bull _Exiit_ had

anathematized all who should attempt to gloss or discuss its decisions;

and, as a preliminary to reopening the question, John was obliged, March

26, 1322, to issue a special bull, _Quia nonnunquam_, wherein he

suspended, during his pleasure, the censures pronounced in _Exiit qui

seminat_. Having thus intimated that the Church had erred in its former

definition, he proceeded to lay before his prelates and doctors the

significant question whether the pertinacious assertion that Christ and

the apostles possessed nothing individually or in common was a

heresy.[140]

The extravagances of the Spirituals had borne their fruit, and there was

a reaction against the absurd laudation of poverty which had grown to be

a fetich. This bore hard on those who had been conscientiously trained

in the belief that the abnegation of property was the surest path to

salvation; but the follies of the ascetics had become uncomfortable, if

not dangerous, and it was necessary for the Church to go behind its

teachings since the days of Antony and Hilarion and Simeon Stylites, to

recur to the common-sense of the gospel, and to admit that, like the

Sabbath, religion was made for man and not man for religion. In a work

written some ten years after this time, Alvar Pelayo, papal penitentiary

and himself a Franciscan, treats the subject at considerable length, and

doubtless represents the views which found favor with John. The

anchorite should be wholly dead to the world and should never leave his

hermitage; memorable is the abbot who refused to open his door to his

mother for fear his eye should rest upon her, and not less so the monk

who, when his brother asked him to come a little way and help him with a

foundered ox, replied, "Why dost thou not ask thy brother who is yet in

the world?" "But he has been dead these fifteen years!" "And I have been

dead to the world these twenty years!" Short of this complete

renunciation, all men should earn their living by honest labor. In spite

of the illustrious example of the sleepless monks of Dios, the apostolic

command "Pray without ceasing" (Thessal. v. 17) is not to be taken

literally. The apostles had money and bought food (John IV. 8), and

Judas carried the purse of the Lord (John XII. 6). Better than a life of

beggary is one blessed by honest labor, as a swineherd, a shepherd, a

cowherd, a mason, a blacksmith, or a charcoal-burner, for a man is thus

fulfilling the purpose of his creation. It is a sin for the able-bodied

to live on charity, and thus usurp the alms due to the sick, the infirm,

and the aged. All this is a lucid interval of common-sense, but what

would Aquinas or Bonaventura have said to it, for it sounds like the

echo of their great antagonist, William of Saint-Amour?[141]

It was inevitable that the replies to the question submitted by John

should be adverse to the poverty of Christ and the apostles. The bishops

were universally assumed to be the representatives of the latter, and

could not be expected to relish the assertion that their prototypes had

been commanded by Christ to own no property. The Spirituals had made a

point of this. Olivi had proved not only that Franciscans promoted to

the episcopate were even more bound than their brethren to observe the

Rule in all its strictures, but that bishops in general were under

obligation to live in deeper poverty than the members of the most

perfect Order. Now that there was a chance of justifying their

worldliness and luxury, it was not likely to be lost. Yet John himself

for a while held his own opinion suspended. In a debate before the

consistory, Ubertino da Casale, the former leader of the orthodox

Spirituals, was summoned to present the Franciscan view of the poverty

of Christ, in answer to the Dominicans, and we are told that John was

greatly pleased with his argument. Unluckily, at the General Chapter

held at Perugia, May 30, 1322, the Franciscans appealed to Christendom

at large by a definition addressed to all the faithful, in which they

proved that the absolute poverty of Christ was the accepted doctrine of

the Church, as set forth in the bulls _Exiit_ and _Exivi de Paradiso_,

and that John himself had approved of these in his bull _Quorumdum_.

Another and more comprehensive utterance to the same effect received the

signatures of all the Franciscan masters and bachelors of theology in

France and England. With a disputant such as John this was an act of

more zeal than discretion. His passions were fairly aroused, and he

proceeded to treat the Franciscans as antagonists. In December of the

same year he dealt them a heavy blow in the bull _Ad conditorem_,

wherein with remorseless logic he pointed out the fallacy of the device

of Innocent IV. for eluding the provisions of the Rule by vesting the

ownership of property in the Holy See and its use in the Friars. It had

not made them less eager in acquisitiveness, while it had led them to a

senseless pride in their own asserted superiority of poverty. He showed

that use and consumption as conceded to them were tantamount to

ownership, and that pretended ownership subject to such usufruct was

illusory, while it was absurd to speak of Rome as owning an egg or a

piece of cheese given to a friar to be consumed on the spot. Moreover,

it was humiliating to the Roman Church to appear as plaintiff or

defendant in the countless litigations in which the Order was involved,

and the procurators who thus appeared in its name were said to abuse

their position to the injury of many who were defrauded of their rights.

For these reasons he annulled the provisions of Nicholas III., and

declared that henceforth no ownership in the possessions of the Order

should inhere in the Roman Church and no procurator act in its

name.[142]

The blow was shrewdly dealt, for though the question of the poverty of

Christ was not alluded to, the Order was deprived of its subterfuge, and

was forced to admit practically that ownership of property was a

necessary condition of its existence. Its members, however, had too long

nursed the delusion to recognize its fallacy now, and in January, 1323,

Bonagrazia, as procurator specially commissioned for the purpose,

presented to the pope in full consistory a written protest against his

action. If Bonagrazia had not arguments to adduce he had at least ample

precedents to cite in the long line of popes since Gregory IX.,

including John himself. He wound up by audaciously appealing to the

pope, to Holy Mother Church, and to the apostles, and though he

concluded by submitting himself to the decisions of the Church, he could

not escape the wrath which he had provoked. It was not many years since

Clement V. had confined him for resisting too bitterly the extravagance

of the Spirituals: he still consistently occupied the same position, and

now John cast him into a foul and dismal dungeon because he had not

moved with the world, while the only answer to his protest was taking

down from the church doors the bull _Ad conditorem_ and replacing it

with a revised edition, more decided and argumentative than its

predecessor.[143]

All this did not conduce to a favorable decision of the question as to

the poverty of Christ. John was now fairly enlisted against the

Franciscans, and their enemies lost no opportunity of inflaming his

passions. He would listen to no defence of the decision of the Chapter

of Perugia. In consistory a Franciscan cardinal and some bishops timidly

ventured to suggest that possibly there might be some truth in it, when

he angrily silenced them--"You are talking heresy"--and forced them to

recant on the spot. When he heard that the greatest Franciscan schoolman

of the day, William of Ockham, had preached that it was heretical to

affirm that Christ and the apostles owned property, he promptly wrote to

the Bishops of Bologna and Ferrara to investigate the truth of the

report, and if it was correct to cite Ockham to appear before him at

Avignon within a month. Ockham obeyed, and we shall hereafter see what

came of it.[144]

The papal decision on the momentous question was at last put forth,

November 12, 1323, in the bull _Cum inter nonnullos_. In this there was

no wavering or hesitation. The assertion that Christ and the apostles

possessed no property was flatly declared to be a perversion of

Scripture; it was denounced for the future as erroneous and heretical,

and its obstinate assertion by the Franciscan chapter was formally

condemned. To the believers in the supereminent holiness of poverty, it

was stunning to find themselves cast out as heretics for holding a

doctrine which for generations had passed as an incontrovertible truth,

and had repeatedly received the sanction of the Holy See in its most

solemn form of ratification. Yet there was no help for it, and unless

they were prepared to shift their belief with the pope, they could only

expect to be delivered in this world to the Inquisition and in the next

to Satan.[145]

Suddenly there appeared a new factor in the quarrel, which speedily gave

it importance as a political question of the first magnitude. The

sempiternal antagonism between the papacy and the empire had been

recently assuming a more virulent aspect than usual under the imperious

management of John XXII. Henry VII. had died in 1313, and in October,

1314, there had been a disputed election. Louis of Bavaria and Frederic

of Austria both claimed the kaisership. Since Leo III., in the year 800,

had renewed the line of Roman emperors by crowning Charlemagne, the

ministration of the pope in an imperial coronation had been held

essential, and had gradually enabled the Holy See to put forward

undefined claims of a right to confirm the vote of the German electors.

For the enforcement of such claims a disputed election gave abundant

opportunity, nor were there lacking other elements to complicate the

position. The Angevine papalist King of Naples, Robert the Good, had

dreams of founding a great Italian Guelf monarchy, to which John XXII.

lent a not unfavorable ear; especially as his quarrel with the

Ghibelline Visconti of Lombardy was becoming unappeasable. The

traditional enmity between France and Germany, moreover, rendered the

former eager in everything that could cripple the empire, and French

influence was necessarily dominant in Avignon. It would be foreign to

our purpose to penetrate into the labyrinth of diplomatic intrigue which

speedily formed itself around these momentous questions. An alliance

between Robert and Frederic, with the assent of the pope, seemed to give

the latter assurance of recognition, when the battle of Mühldorf,

September 28, 1322, decided the question. Frederic was a prisoner in the

hands of his rival, and there could be no further doubt as to which of

them should reign in Germany. It did not follow, however, that John

would consent to place the imperial crown on the head of Louis.[146]

So far was he from contemplating any such action that he still insisted

on deciding between the claims of the competitors. Louis contemptuously

left his pretensions unanswered and proceeded to settle matters by

concluding a treaty with his prisoner and setting him free. Moreover, he

intervened effectually in the affairs of Lombardy, rescued the Visconti

from the Guelf league which was about to overwhelm them, and ruined the

plans of the cardinal legate, Bertrand de Poyet, John's nephew or son,

who was carving out a principality for himself. It would have required

less than this to awaken the implacable hostility of such a man as John,

whose only hope for the success of his Italian policy now lay in

dethroning Louis and replacing him with the French king, Charles le Bel.

He rushed precipitately to the conflict and proclaimed no quarter.

October 8, 1323, in the presence of a vast multitude, a bull was read

and affixed to the portal of the cathedral of Avignon, which declared

not only that no one could act as King of the Romans until his person

had been approved by the pope, but repeated a claim, already made in

1317, that until such approval the empire was vacant, and its government

during the interregnum belonged to the Holy See. All of Louis's acts

were pronounced null and void; he was summoned within three months to

lay down his power and submit his person to the pope for approval, under

pain of the punishments which he had incurred by his rebellious pretence

of being emperor; all oaths of allegiance taken to him were declared

annulled; all prelates were threatened with suspension, and all cities

and states with excommunication and interdict if they should continue to

obey him. Louis at first received this portentous missive with singular

humility. November 12 he sent to Avignon envoys, who did not arrive

until January 2, 1324, to ask whether the reports which he had heard of

the papal action were true, and if so to request a delay of six months

in which to prove his innocence. To this John, on January 7, gave answer

extending the term only two months from that day. Meanwhile Louis had

taken heart, possibly encouraged by the outbreak of the quarrel between

John and the Franciscans, for the date of the credentials of the envoys,

November 12, was the same as that of the bull _Cum inter nonnullos_. On

December 18, he issued the Nuremberg Protest, a spirited vindication of

the rights of the German nation and empire against the new pretensions

of the papacy; he demanded the assembling of a general council before

which he would make good his claims; it was his duty, as the head of the

empire, to maintain the purity of the faith against a pope who was a

fautor of heretics. It shows how little he yet understood about the

questions at issue that to sustain this last charge he accused John of

unduly protecting the Franciscans against universal complaints that they

habitually violated the secrecy of the confessional, this being

apparently his version of the papal condemnation of John of Poilly's

thesis that confession to a Mendicant friar was insufficient.[147]

If Louis at first thought to gain strength by thus utilizing the

jealousy and dislike felt by the secular clergy towards the Mendicants,

he soon realized that a surer source of support was to be found in

espousing the side of the Franciscans in the quarrel forced upon them by

John. The two months' delay granted by John expired March 7 without

Louis making an appearance, and on March 25 the pope promulgated against

him a sentence of excommunication, with a threat that he should be

deprived of all rights if he did not submit within three months. To this

Louis speedily rejoined in a document known as the Protest of

Sachsenhausen, which shows that since December he had put himself in

communication with the disaffected Franciscans, had entered into

alliance with them, and had recognized how great was the advantage of

posing as the defender of the faith and assailing the pope with the

charge of heresy. After paying due attention to John's assaults on the

rights of the empire, the Protest takes up the question of his recent

bulls respecting poverty and argues them in much detail. John had

declared before Franciscans of high standing that for forty years he had

regarded the Rule of Francis as fantastic and impossible. As the Rule

was revealed by Christ, this alone proves him to be a heretic. Moreover,

as the Church is infallible in its definitions of faith, and as it has

repeatedly, through Honorius III., Innocent IV., Alexander IV., Innocent

V., Nicholas III., and Nicholas IV., pronounced in favor of the poverty

of Christ and the apostles, John's condemnation of this tenet abundantly

shows him to be a heretic. His two constitutions, _Ad conditorem_ and

_Cum inter nonnullos_, therefore, have cut him off from the Church as a

manifest heretic teaching a condemned heresy, and have disabled him from

the papacy; all of which Louis swore to prove before a general council

to be assembled in some place of safety.[148]

John proceeded with his prosecution of Louis by a further declaration,

issued July 11, in which, without deigning to notice the Protest of

Sachsenhausen, he pronounced Louis to have forfeited by his contumacy

all claim to the empire; further obstinacy would deprive him of his

ancestral dukedom of Bavaria and other possessions, and he was summoned

to appear October 1, to receive final sentence. Yet John could not leave

unanswered the assault upon his doctrinal position, and on November 10

he issued the bull _Quia quorumdam_, in which he argued that he had

exercised no undue power in contradicting the decisions of his

predecessors: he declared it a condemned heresy to assert that Christ

and the apostles had only simple usufruct, without legal possession, in

the things which Scripture declared them to have possessed, for if this

were true it would follow that Christ was unjust, which is blasphemy.

All who utter, write, or teach such doctrines fall into condemned

heresy, and are to be avoided as heretics.[149]

Thus the poverty of Christ was fairly launched upon the world as a

European question. It is a significant illustration of the intellectual

condition of the fourteenth century that in the subsequent stages of

the quarrel between the papacy and the empire, involving the most

momentous principles of public law, those principles, in the manifestoes

of either side, assume quite a subordinate position. The shrewd and able

men who conducted the controversy evidently felt that public opinion was

much more readily influenced by accusations of heresy, even upon a point

so trivial and unsubstantial, than by appeals to reason upon the

conflicting jurisdictions of Church and State.[150] Yet, as the quarrel

widened and deepened, and as the stronger intellects antagonistic to

papal pretensions gathered around Louis, they were able, in unwonted

liberty of thought and speech, to investigate the theory of government

and the claims of the papacy with unheard-of boldness. Unquestionably

they aided Louis in his struggle, but the spirit of the age was against

them. Spiritual authority was still too awful for successful rebellion,

and when Louis passed away affairs returned to the old routine, and the

labors of the men who had waged his battle in the hope of elevating

humanity disappeared, leaving but a doubtful trace upon the modes of

thought of the time.

The most audacious of these champions was Marsiglio of Padua.

Interpenetrated with the principles of the imperial jurisprudence, in

which the State was supreme and the Church wholly subordinated, he had

seen in France how the influence of the Roman law was emancipating the

civil power from servitude, and perhaps in the University of Paris had

heard the echoes of the theories of Henry of Ghent, the celebrated

Doctor Solemnis, who had taught the sovereignty of the people over their

princes. He framed a conception of a political organization which should

reproduce that of Rome under the Christian emperors, with a recognition

of the people as the ultimate source of all civil authority. Aided by

Jean de Jandum he developed these ideas with great hardihood and skill

in his "_Defensor Pacis_", and in 1326, when the strife between John and

Louis was at its hottest, the two authors left Paris to lay the result

of their labors before the emperor. In a brief tract, moreover, "_De

translatione imperii_," Marsiglio subsequently sketched the manner in

which the Holy Roman Empire had arisen, showing the ancient subjection

of the Holy See to the imperial power, and the baselessness of the papal

claims to confirm the election of the emperors. John XXII. had no

hesitation in condemning the daring authors as heretics, and the

protection which Louis afforded them added another count to the

indictment against him for heresy. Unable to wreak vengeance upon them,

all who could be supposed to be their accomplices were sternly dealt

with. A certain Francesco of Venice, who had been a student with

Marsiglio at Paris, was seized and carried to Avignon on a charge of

having aided in the preparation of the wicked book, and of having

supplied the heresiarch with money. Tried before the Apostolic Chamber,

he stoutly maintained that he was ignorant of the contents of the

"_Defensor Pacis_," that he had deposited money with Marsiglio, as was

customary with scholars, and that Marsiglio had left Paris owing him

thirteen sols parisis. Jean de Jandun died in 1328, and Marsiglio not

later than 1343, thus mercifully spared the disappointment of the

failure of their theories. In so far as purely intellectual conceptions

had weight in the conflict they were powerful allies for Louis. In the

"_Defensor Pacis_" the power of the keys is argued away in the clearest

dialectics. God alone has power to judge, to absolve, to condemn. The

pope is no more than any other priest, and a priestly sentence may be

the result of hatred, favor, or injustice, of no weight with God.

Excommunication, to be effective, must not proceed from the judgment of

a single priest, but must be the sentence of the whole community, with

full knowledge of all the facts. It is no wonder that when, in 1376, a

French translation of the work appeared in Paris it created a profound

sensation. A prolonged inquest was held, lasting from September to

December, in which all the learned men in the city were made to swear

before a notary as to their ignorance of the translator.[151]

More vehement and more fluent as a controversialist was the great

schoolman, William of Ockham. When the final breach came between the

papacy and the rigid Franciscans he was already under inquisitorial

trial for his utterances. Escaping from Avignon with his general,

Michele, he found refuge, like the rest, with Louis, whose cause he

strengthened by skilfully linking the question of Christ's poverty with

that of German independence. Those who refused to accept a papal

definition on a point of faith could only justify themselves by proving

that popes were fallible and their power not unlimited. Thus the strife

over the narrow Franciscan dogmatism on poverty broadened until it

embraced the great questions which had disturbed the peace of Europe

since the time of Hildebrand, nearly three centuries before. In 1324

Ockham boasted that he had set his face like flint against the errors of

the pseudo-pope, and that so long as he possessed hand, paper, pens, and

ink, no abuse or lies or persecution or persuasion would induce him to

desist from attacking them. He kept his promise literally, and for

twenty years he poured forth a series of controversial works in defence

of the cause to which he had devoted his life. Without embracing the

radical doctrines of Marsiglio on the popular foundation of political

institutions, he practically reached the same outcome. While admitting

the primacy of the pope, he argued that a pope can fall into heresy, and

so, indeed, can a general council, and even all Christendom. The

influence of the Holy Ghost did not deprive man of free-will and prevent

him from succumbing to error, no matter what might be his station. There

was nothing sure but Scripture; the poorest and meanest peasant might

adhere to Catholic truth revealed to him by God, while popes and

councils erred. Above the pope is the general council representing the

whole Church. A pope refusing to entertain an appeal to a general

council, declining to assemble it, or arrogating its authority to

himself is a manifest heretic, whom it is the duty of the bishops to

depose, or, if the bishops refuse, then that of the emperor, who is

supreme over the earth. But it was not only by the enunciation of

general principles that he carried on the war; merciless were his

assaults on the errors and inconsistencies of John XXII., who was proved

guilty of seventy specific heresies. Thus to the bitter end his

dauntless spirit kept up the strife; one by one his colleagues died and

submitted, and he was left alone, but he continued to shower ridicule on

the curia and its creatures in his matchless dialectics. Even the death

of Louis and the hopeless defeat of his cause did not stop his fearless

pen. Church historians claim that in 1349 he at last made his peace and

was reconciled, but this is more than doubtful, for Giacomo della Marca

classes him with Michele and Bonagrazia as the three unrepentant

heretics who died under excommunication. It is not easy to determine

with accuracy what influence was exercised by the powerful intellects

which England, France, and Italy thus contributed to the defence of

German independence. Possibly they may have stimulated Wickliff to

question the foundation of papal power and the supremacy of the Church

over the State, leading to Hussite insubordination. Possibly, too, they

may have contributed to the movement which in various development

emboldened the Councils of Constance and Basle to claim superiority over

the Holy See, the Gallican Church to assert its liberties, and England

to frame the hostile legislation of the Statutes of Provisors and

Præmunire. If this be so, the hopeless entanglements of German politics

caused them to effect less in their own chosen battle-field than in

lands far removed from the immediate scene of conflict.[152]

* * * * *

This rapid glance at the larger aspects of the strife has been necessary

to enable us to follow intelligently the vicissitudes of the discussion

over the poverty of Christ, which occupied in the struggle a position

ludicrously disproportionate to its importance. For some time after the

issue of the bulls _Cum inter nonnullos_ and _Quia quorumdam_ there was

a sort of armed neutrality between John and the heads of the Franciscan

Order. Each seemed to be afraid of taking a step which should

precipitate a conflict, doubtless secretly felt by both sides to be

inevitable. Still there was a little skirmishing for position. In 1325

Michele had summoned the general chapter to assemble at Paris, but he

feared that an effort would be made to annul the declarations of

Perugia, and that John would exercise a pressure by means of King

Charles le Bel, whose influence was great through the number of

benefices at his disposal. Suddenly, therefore, he transferred the call

to Lyons, where considerable trouble was experienced through the efforts

of Gerard Odo, a creature of the pope, and subsequently the successor of

Michele, to obtain relaxations of the Rule as regarded poverty. Still

the brethren stood firm, and these attempts were defeated, while a

constitution threatening with imprisonment all who should speak

indiscreetly and disrespectfully of John XXII. and his decretals

indicates the passions which were seething under the surface. Not long

after this we hear of a prosecution suddenly commenced against our old

acquaintance Ubertino da Casale, in spite of his Benedictine habit and

his quiet residence in Italy. He seems to have been suspected of having

furnished the arguments on the subject of the poverty of Christ in the

Protest of Sachsenhausen, and, September 16, 1325, an order was sent for

his arrest, but he got wind of it and escaped to Germany--the first of

the illustrious band of refugees who gathered around Louis of Bavaria,

though he appears to have made his peace in 1330. John seems to have at

last grown restive at the tacit insubordination of the Franciscans, who

did not openly deny his definitions as to the poverty of Christ, but

whom he knew to be secretly cherishing in their hearts the condemned

doctrine. In 1326 Michele issued decrees subjecting to a strict

censorship all writings by the brethren and enforcing one of the rules

which prohibited the discussion of doubtful opinions, thus muzzling the

Order in the hope of averting dissension; but it was not in John's

nature to rest satisfied with silence which covered opposition, and in

August, 1327, he advanced to the attack. In the bull _Quia nonnunquam_,

addressed to archbishops and inquisitors, he declared that many still

believed in the poverty of Christ in spite of his having pronounced such

belief a heresy, and that those who entertained it should be treated as

heretics. He therefore now orders the prelates and inquisitors to

prosecute them vigorously, and though the Franciscans are not specially

named, the clause which deprives the accused of all papal privileges

and subjects them to the ordinary jurisdictions sufficiently shows that

they were the object of the assault. It is quite possible that this was

provoked by some movement among the remains of the moderate Spirituals

of Italy--men who came to be known as Fraticelli--who had never indulged

in the dangerous enthusiasms of the Olivists, but who were ready to

suffer martyrdom in defence of the sacred principles of poverty. Such

men could not but have been at once excited by the papal denial of

Christ's poverty, and encouraged by finding the Order at large driven

into antagonism with the Holy See. Sicily had long been a refuge for the

more zealous when forced to flee from Italy. At this time we hear of

their crossing back to Calabria, and of John writing to Niccolò da

Reggio, the Minister of Calabria, savage instructions to destroy them

utterly. Lists are to be made out and sent to him of all who show them

favor, and King Robert is appealed to for aid in the good work. Robert,

in spite of his close alliance with the pope, and the necessity of the

papal favor for his ambitious plans, was sincerely on the side of the

Franciscans. He seems never to have forgotten the teachings of Arnaldo

de Vilanova, and as his father, Charles the Lame, had interfered to

protect the Spirituals of Provence, so now both he and his queen did

what they could with the angry pope to moderate his wrath, and at the

same time he urged the Order to stand firm in defence of the Rule. In

the protection which he afforded he did not discriminate closely between

the organized resistance of the Order under its general, and the

irregular mutiny of the Fraticelli. His dominions, as well as Sicily,

served as a refuge for the latter. With the troubles provoked by John

their numbers naturally grew. Earnest spirits, dissatisfied with

Michele's apparent acquiescence in John's new heresy, would naturally

join them. They ranged themselves under Henry da Ceva, who had fled to

Sicily from persecution under Boniface VIII.; they elected him their

general minister and formed a complete independent organization, which,

when John triumphed over the Order, gathered in its recalcitrant

fragments and constituted a sect whose strange persistence under the

fiercest persecution we shall have to follow for a century and a

half.[153]

On the persecution of these insubordinate brethren Michele da Cesena

could afford to look with complacency, and he evidently desired to

regard the bull of August, 1327, as directed against them. He maintained

his attitude of submission. In June the pope had summoned him from Rome

to Avignon, and he had excused himself on the ground of sickness. His

messengers with his apologies were graciously received, and it was not

until December 2 that he presented himself before John. The pope

subsequently declared that he had been summoned to answer for secretly

encouraging rebels and heretics, and doubtless the object was to be

assured of his person, but he was courteously welcomed, and the

ostensible reason given for sending for him was certain troubles in the

provinces of Assisi and Aragon, in which Michele obediently changed the

ministers. Until April, 1328, he remained in the papal court, apparently

on the best of terms with John.[154]

Meanwhile the quarrel between the empire and the papacy had been

developing apace. In the spring of 1326 Louis suddenly and without due

preparation undertook an expedition to Italy, at the invitation of the

Ghibellines, for his imperial coronation. When he reached Milan in April

to receive the iron crown John sternly forbade his further progress, and

on this being disregarded, proceeded to excommunicate him afresh. Thus

commenced another prolonged series of citations and sentences for

heresy, including the preaching of a crusade with Holy Land indulgences

against the impenitent sinner. Unmoved by this, Louis slowly made his

way to Rome, which he entered January 7, 1327, and where he was crowned

on the 17th, in contemptuous defiance of papal prerogative, by four

syndics elected by the people, after which, according to usage, he

exchanged the title of King of the Romans for that of Emperor. As the

defender of the faith he proceeded to try the pope on the charge of

heresy, based upon his denial of the poverty of Christ. April 14 he

promulgated a law authorizing the prosecution and sentence _in absentia_

of those notoriously defamed for treason or heresy, thus imitating the

papal injustice of which he himself complained bitterly; and, on the

17th, sentence of deposition was solemnly read to the assembled people

before the basilica of St. Peter. It recited that it was rendered at the

request of the clergy and people of Rome; it recapitulated the crimes of

the pope, whom it stigmatized as Antichrist; it pronounced him a heretic

on account of his denying the poverty of Christ, deposed him from the

papacy, and threatened confiscation on all who should render him support

and assistance.[155]

As a pope was necessary to the Church, and as the college of cardinals

were under excommunication as fautors of heresy, recourse was had to the

primitive method of selection: some form of election by the people and

clergy of Rome was gone through on May 12, and a new Bishop of Rome was

presented to the Christian world in the person of Pier di Corbario, an

aged Franciscan of high repute for austerity and eloquence. He was

Minister of the province of the Abruzzi and papal penitentiary. He had

been married, his wife was still living, and he was said to have entered

the Order without her consent, which rendered him "irregular" and led to

an absurd complication, for the woman, who had never before complained

of his leaving her, now came forward and put in her claims to be bought

off. He assumed the name of Nicholas V., a college of cardinals was

readily created for him, he appointed nuncios and legates and proceeded

to degrade the Guelfic bishops and replace them with Ghibellines. In the

confusion attendant upon these revolutionary proceedings it can be

readily imagined that the Fraticelli emerged from their hiding-places

and indulged in glowing anticipations of the future which they fondly

deemed their own.[156]

Although the Franciscan prefect of the Roman province assembled a

chapter at Anagni which pronounced against Pier di Corbario, and ordered

him to lay aside his usurped dignity, it was impossible that the Order

should escape responsibility for the rebellion, nor is it likely that

Michele da Cesena was not privy to the whole proceeding. He had remained

quietly at Avignon, and John had manifested no abatement of cordiality

until April 9, when, on being summoned to an audience, the pope attacked

him on the subject of the Chapter of Perugia, which six years before had

asserted the poverty of Christ and the apostles. Michele stoutly

defended the utterances of the chapter, saying that if they were

heretical then Nicholas IV. and the other popes who had affirmed the

doctrine were heretics. Then the papal wrath exploded. Michele was a

headstrong fool, a fautor of heretics, a serpent nourished in the bosom

of the Church; and when the stream of invective had exhausted itself he

was placed under constructive arrest, and ordered not to leave Avignon

without permission, under pain of excommunication, of forfeiture of

office, and of future disability. A few days later, on April 14, in the

secrecy of the Franciscan convent, he relieved his feelings by executing

a solemn notarial protest, in the presence of William of Ockham,

Bonagrazia, and other trusty adherents, in which he recited the

circumstances, argued that the pope either was a heretic or no pope, for

either his present utterances were erroneous or else Nicholas IV. had

been a heretic; in the latter case Boniface VIII. and Clement V., who

had approved the Bull _Exiit qui seminat_, were likewise heretics, their

nominations of cardinals were void, and the conclave which elected John

was illegal. He protested against whatever might be done in derogation

of the rights of the Order, that he was in durance and in just fear, and

that what he might be forced to do would be null and void. The whole

document is a melancholy illustration of the subterfuges rendered

necessary by an age of violence.[157]

Michele was detained in Avignon while the general chapter of the Order

was held at Bologna, to which John sent Bertrand, Bishop of Ostia, with

instructions to have another general chosen. The Order, however, was

stubborn. It sent a somewhat defiant message to the pope and re-elected

Michele, requesting him moreover to indicate Paris as the next place of

assemblage, to be held, according to rule, in three years, to which he

assented. In view of the drama which was developing in Rome he might

reasonably fear for liberty or life. Preparations were made for his

escape. A galley, furnished, according to John, by the Emperor Louis,

but according to other and more trustworthy accounts, by Genoese

refugees, was sent to Aigues-mortes. Thither he fled, May 26,

accompanied by Ockham and Bonagrazia. The Bishop of Porto sent by John

in hot haste after him, had an interview with him on the deck of his

galley, but failed to induce him to return. He reached Pisa on June 9,

and there ensued a war of manifestoes of unconscionable length, in which

Michele was pronounced excommunicate and deposed, and John was proved to

be a heretic who had rightfully forfeited the papacy. Michele could only

carry on a wordy conflict, while John could act. Bertrand de la Tour,

Cardinal of San Vitale, was appointed Vicar-general of the Order,

another general chapter was ordered to assemble in Paris, June, 1329,

and preparations were made for it by removing all provincials favorable

to Michele, and appointing in their places men who could be relied on.

Out of thirty-four who had met in Bologna only fourteen were seen in

Paris; Michele was deposed and Gerard Odo was elected in his place; but

even under this pressure no declaration condemning the poverty of Christ

could be obtained from the chapter. The mass of the Order, reduced to

silence, remained faithful to the principles represented by its deposed

general, until forced to acquiescence by the arbitrary measures so

freely employed by the pope and the examples made of those who dared to

express opposition. Still John was not disposed to relax the Franciscan

discipline, and when, in 1332, Gerard Odo, in the hope of gaining a

cardinal's hat, persuaded fourteen provincial ministers to join him in

submitting a gloss which would have virtually annulled the obligation of

poverty, his only reward was the ridicule of the pope and sacred

college.[158]

The settlement of the question depended much more upon political than

upon religious considerations. Louis had abandoned Rome and established

himself in Pisa with his pope, his cardinals, and his Franciscans, but

the Italians were becoming tired of their kaiser. It mattered little

that in January, 1329, he indulged in the childish triumph of solemnly

burning John XXII. in effigy; he was obliged soon after to leave the

city, and towards the end of the year he returned to Germany, carrying

with him the men who were to defend his cause with all the learning of

the schools, and abandoning to their fate those of his partisans who

were unable to follow him.[159] The proceedings which ensued at Todi

will serve to show how promptly the Inquisition tracked his retreating

footsteps, and how useful it was as a political agency in reducing

rebellious communities to submission.

The Todini were Ghibelline. In 1327, when John XXII. had ordered

Francisco Damiani, Inquisitor of Spoleto, to proceed vigorously against

Mucio Canistrario of Todi as a rebel against the Church, and Mucio had

accordingly been imprisoned, the people had risen in insurrection and

liberated the captive, while the inquisitor had been forced to fly for

his life. In August, 1328, they had welcomed Louis as emperor and Pier

di Corbario as pope, and had ordered their notaries to use the regnal

years of the latter in their instruments; they had, moreover, attacked

and taken the Guelf city of Orvieto and, like all the cities which

adhered to Louis, they had expelled the Dominicans. In August, 1329,

abandoned by Louis, proceedings were commenced against them by the

Franciscan, Frà Bartolino da Perugia, the inquisitor, who announced his

intention of making a thorough inquest of the whole district of Assisi

against all Patarins and heretics, against those who assert things not

to be sins which the Church teaches to be sins, or are minor sins which

the Church holds to be greater, against those who understand the

Scriptures in a sense different from what the Holy Spirit demands,

against those who talk against the state and observance of the Roman

Church and its teachings, and against those who have detracted from the

dignity and person of the pope and his constitutions. Under this

searching examinations were made as to the acts of the citizens during

the visit of Louis, any sign of respect paid to him being regarded as a

crime, and two sets of prosecutions were commenced--one against the

Ghibellines of the city and the other against the "rebellious"

Franciscans. These latter were summoned to reply to five articles--1, If

they believed in, favored, or adhered to the Bavarian and the intrusive

antipope; 2, If they had marched with a cross to meet these heretics on

their entrance into Todi; 3, If they had obeyed or done reverence to the

Bavarian as emperor or to P. di Corbario as pope; 4, If they had taught

or preached that the constitutions of John were heretical or himself a

heretic; 5, If, after Michele da Cesena was condemned and deposed for

heresy, they had adhered to him and his errors. These interrogations

show how conveniently the religious and political questions were mingled

together, and how thorough was the investigation rendered possible by

the machinery of the Inquisition. The proceedings dragged on, and, July

1, 1330, John condemned the whole community as heretics and fautors of

heresy. July 7 he sent this sentence to the legate, Cardinal Orsini,

with instructions to cite the citizens peremptorily and to try them,

according to the inquisitorial formula, "_summarie et de plano et sine

strepitu et figura_" Under this the Todini finally made submission, the

cardinal sent Frà Bartolino and his colleague thither, and the city was

reconciled, subject to the papal approval. They had been obliged to make

a gift of ten thousand florins to Louis, and now a fine of equal amount

was levied upon them, besides one hundred lire imposed on each of one

hundred and thirty-four citizens. Apparently the terms exacted were not

satisfactory to John, for a papal brief of July 20, 1331, declared the

submission of the citizens deceitful, and ordered the interdict renewed.

The last document which we have in the case is one of June 1, 1332, in

which the legate sends to the Bishop of Todi a list of one hundred and

ninety-seven persons, including Franciscans, parish priests, heads of

religious houses, nobles, and citizens, who are ordered to appear before

him at Orvieto on June 15, to stand trial on the inquisitions which have

been found against them. That the proceedings were pushed to the bitter

end there can be no doubt, for when in this year the General Gerard Odo

proposed to revoke the commission of Frà Bartolino, John intervened and

extended it for the purpose of enabling him to continue the prosecutions

to a definite sentence. This is doubtless a fair specimen of the minute

persecution which was going on wherever the Ghibellines were not strong

enough to defend themselves by force of arms.[160]

As for the unhappy antipope, his fate was even more deplorable. Confided

at Pisa by Louis to the care of Count Fazio da Doneratico, the leading

noble of the city, he was concealed for a while in a castle in Maremma.

June 18, 1329, the Pisans rose and drove out the imperialist garrison,

and in the following January they were reconciled to the Church. A part

of the bargain was the surrender of Pier di Corbario, to whom John

promised to show himself a kind father and benevolent friend, besides

enriching Fazio for the betrayal of his trust. After making public

abjuration of his heresies in Pisa, Pier was sent, guarded by two state

galleys, to Nice, where he was delivered to the papal agents. In every

town on the road to Avignon he was required publicly to repeat his

abjuration and humiliation. August 25, 1330, with a halter around his

neck, he was brought before the pope in public consistory. Exhausted and

broken with shame and suffering, he flung himself at his rival's feet

and begged for mercy, abjuring and anathematizing his heresies, and

especially that of the poverty of Christ. Then, in a private consistory,

he was made again to confess a long catalogue of crimes, and to accept

such penance as might be awarded him. No humiliation was spared him, and

nothing was omitted to make his abject recantation complete. Having thus

rendered him an object of contempt and deprived him of all further power

of harm, John mercifully spared him bodily torment. He was confined in

an apartment in the papal palace, fed from the papal table, and allowed

the use of books, but no one was admitted to see him without a special

papal order. His wretched life soon came to an end, and when he died, in

1333, he was buried in the Franciscan habit. Considering the ferocity of

the age, his treatment is one of the least discreditable acts in the

career of John XXII. It was hardly to be expected, after the savage

vindictiveness of the Ernulphine curse which he had published, April 20,

1329, on his already fallen rival--"May he in this life feel the wrath

of Peter and Paul, whose church he has sought to confound! May his

dwelling-place be deserted, and may there be none to live under his

roof! May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow! May they be

driven forth from their hearth-stones to beggary! May the usurer devour

their substance, and strangers seize the work of their hands! May the

whole earth fight against him, may the elements be his enemies, may the

merits of all the saints at rest confound him and wreak vengeance on him

through life!"[161]

During the progress of this contest public opinion was by no means

unanimous in favor of John, and the Inquisition was an efficient

instrumentality in repressing all expression of adverse sentiments. In

1328, at Carcassonne, a certain Germain Frevier was tried before it for

blaspheming against John, and stigmatizing his election as simoniacal

because he had promised never to set foot in stirrup till he should set

out for Rome. Germain, moreover, had declared that the Franciscan pope

was the true pope, and that if he had money he would go there and join

him and the Bavarian. Germain was not disposed to martyrdom; at first he

denied, then, after being left to his reflections in prison for five

months, he pleaded that he had been drunk and knew not what he was

saying; a further delay showed him that he was helpless, he confessed

his offences and begged for mercy.[162]

Another case, in 1329, shows us what were the secret feelings of a large

portion of the Franciscan Order, and the means required to keep it in

subordination. Before the Inquisition of Carcassonne, Frère Barthelémi

Bruguière confessed that in saying mass and coming to the prayer for the

pope he had hesitated which of the two popes to pray for, and had

finally desired his prayer to be for whichever was rightfully the head

of the Church. Many of his brethren, he said, were in the habit of

wishing that God would give John XXII. so much to do that he would

forget the Franciscans, for it seemed to them that his whole business

was to afflict them. It was generally believed among them that their

general, Michele, had been unjustly deposed and excommunicated. In a

large assembly of friars he had said, "I wish that antipope was a

Dominican, or of some other Order," when another rejoined, "I rejoice

still more that the antipope is of our Order, for if he was of another

we should have no friend, and now at least we have the Italian," whereat

all present applauded. For a while Frère Barthelémi held out, but

imprisonment with threats of chains and fasting broke down his

resolution, and he threw himself upon the mercy of the inquisitor, Henri

de Chamay. That mercy consisted in a sentence of harsh prison for life,

with chains on hands and feet and bread and water for food. Possibly the

Dominican inquisitor may have felt pleasure in exhibiting a Franciscan

prisoner, for he allowed Barthelémi to retain his habit; and it shows

the minute care of John's vindictiveness that a year later he wrote

expressly to Henri de Chamay reciting that, as the delinquent had been

expelled from the Order, the habit must be stripped from him and be

delivered to the Franciscan authorities.[163]

In Germany the Franciscans for the most part remained faithful to

Michele and Louis, and were of the utmost assistance to the latter in

the struggle. The test was the observance of the interdict which for so

many years suspended divine service throughout the empire, and was a

sore trial to the faithful. To a great extent this was disregarded by

the Franciscans. It was to little purpose that, in January, 1331, John

issued a special bull directed against them, deprived of all privileges

and immunities those who recognized Louis as emperor and celebrated

services in interdicted places, and ordered all prelates and inquisitors

to prosecute them. On the other hand, Louis was not behindhand in

enforcing obedience by persecution wherever he had the power. An

imperial brief of June, 1330, addressed to the magistrates of Aix,

directs them to assist and protect those teachers of the truth, the

Franciscans Siegelbert of Landsberg and John of Royda, and to imprison

all their brethren whom they may designate as rebels to the empire and

to the Order until the general, Michele, shall decide what is to be done

with them. This shows that even in Germany the Order was not unanimous,

but doubtless the honest Franciscan, John of Winterthur, reflects the

feelings of the great body when he says that the reader will be struck

with horror and stupor on learning the deeds with which the pope

convulsed the Church. Inflamed by some madness, he sought to argue

against the poverty of Christ, and when the Franciscans resisted him he

persecuted them without measure. The Dominicans encouraged him, and he

largely rewarded them. The traditional enmity between the Orders found

ample gratification. The Dominicans, to excite contempt for the

Franciscans, exhibited paintings of Christ with a purse, putting in his

hand to take out money; nay, to the horror of the faithful, on the walls

of their monasteries, in the most frequented places, they pictured

Christ hanging on the cross with one hand nailed fast, and with the

other putting money in a pouch suspended from his girdle. Yet rancor and

religious zeal did not wholly extinguish patriotism among the

Dominicans; they were, moreover, aggrieved by the sentence of heresy

passed upon Master Eckart, which may perhaps explain the fact that

Tauler supported Louis, as also did Margaret Ebner, one of the Friends

of God, and the most eminent Dominican sister of the day. It is true

that many Dominican convents were closed for years, and their inmates

scattered and exiled for persistently refusing to celebrate, but others

complied unwillingly with the papal mandates. At Landshut they had

ceased public service, but when the emperor came there they secretly

arranged with the Duke of Teck to assail their house with torches and

threaten to burn it down, so that they might have the excuse of

constraint for resuming public worship, and the comedy was successfully

carried out. In fact, the General Chapter of 1328 complained that in

Germany the brethren in many places were notably negligent in publishing

the papal bulls about Louis.[164]

All this, however, was but an episode in the political struggle, which

was to be decided by the rivalries between the houses of Wittelsbach,

Hapsburg, and Luxemburg, and the intrigues of France. Louis gradually

succeeded in arousing and centring upon himself the national spirit,

aided therein by the arrogant disdain with which John XXII. and his

successors received his repeated offers of qualified submission. When,

in 1330, Louis had temporarily secured the support of John of Luxemburg,

King of Bohemia, and the Duke of Austria, and they offered themselves as

sureties that he would fulfil what might be required of him, provided

the independence of the empire was recognized, John retorted that Louis

was a heretic and thus incapacitated; he was a thief and a robber, a

wicked man who consorted with Michele, Ockham, Bonagrazia, and

Marsiglio; not only had he no title to the empire, but the state of

Christendom would be inconceivably deplorable if he were recognized.

After the death of John in December, 1334, another attempt was made, but

it suited the policy of France and of Bohemia to prolong the strife, and

Benedict XII. was as firm as his predecessor. Louis was at all times

ready to sacrifice his Franciscan allies, but the papacy demanded the

right practically to dictate who should be emperor, and by a skilful use

of appeals to the national pride Louis gradually won the support of an

increasing number of states and cities. In 1338 the convention of Rhense

and the Reichstag of Frankfort formally proclaimed as a part of the law

of the empire that the choice of the electors was final, and that the

papacy had no confirmatory power. The interdict was ordered not to be

observed, and in all the states adhering to Louis ecclesiastics were

given the option of resuming public worship within eight days or of

undergoing a ten years' exile. It was some relief to them in this

dilemma that the Roman curia sold absolutions in such cases for a

florin.[165]

In the strife between Louis and the papacy the little colony of

Franciscan refugees at Munich was of the utmost service to the imperial

cause, but their time was drawing to an end. Michele da Cesena died

November 29, 1342, his latest work being a long manifesto proving that

John had died an unrepentant heretic, and that his successors in

defending his errors were likewise heretics; if but one man in

Christendom holds the true faith, that man in himself is the Church.

The dithyrambic palinode which passes as his death-bed recantation is

clearly a forgery, and there can be no doubt that Michele persisted to

the end. When dying he handed the seal of the Order over to William of

Ockham, who used it as Vicar-general; he had already, in April, 1342,

appointed two citizens of Munich, John Schito and Grimold Treslo, as

syndics and procurators of the Order, the latter of whom subsequently

assumed the generalate. Bonagrazia died in June, 1347, declaring with

the last breath of his indomitable soul that the cause of Louis was

righteous. The date of William of Ockham's death is uncertain, but it

occurred between 1347 and 1350.[166]

Thus dropped off, one by one, the men who had so gallantly defended the

doctrine of the poverty of Christ. As regards the political conceptions

which were the special province of Marsiglio and Ockham, their work was

done, and they could exercise no further influence over the

uncontrollable march of events. With the death of Benedict XII., in

1342, Louis made renewed efforts for pacification, but John of Bohemia

was intriguing to secure the succession for his house, and they were

fruitless, except to strengthen Louis by demonstrating the impossibility

of securing terms tolerable to the empire. Still the intrigue went on,

and in July, 1346, the three ecclesiastical electors, Mainz, Trèves, and

Cologne, with Rodolph of Saxony, and John of Bohemia, assembled at

Rhense under the impulsion of Clement VI. and elected the son of John,

Charles Margrave of Moravia, as a rival king of the Romans. The

movement, however, had no basis of popular support, and when Louis

hastened to the Rhinelands all the cities and nearly all the princes and

nobles adhered to him. Had the election been postponed for a few weeks

it would never have taken place, for the next month occurred the battle

of Crécy, where the gallant knight, John of Bohemia, died a chivalrous

death, Charles, the newly-elected king, saved his life by flight, and

French influence was temporarily eclipsed. Thus unauspiciously

commenced, the reign of Charles IV. had little promise of duration,

when, in October, 1347, Louis, while indulging in his favorite pastime

of hunting, was struck with apoplexy and fell dead from his horse. The

hand of God might well be traced in the removal of all the enemies of

the Holy See, and Charles had no further organized opposition to

dread.[167]

Desirous of obtaining the fullest advantage from this unlooked-for

good-fortune, Clement VI. commissioned the Archbishop of Prague and the

Bishop of Bamberg to reconcile all communities and individuals who had

incurred excommunication by supporting the Bavarian, with a formula of

absolution by which they were obliged to swear that they held it heresy

for an emperor to depose a pope, and that they would never obey an

emperor until he had been approved by the pope. This excited intense

disgust, and in many places it could not be enforced. The teachings of

Marsiglio and Ockham had at least borne fruit in so far that the papal

pretensions to virtually controlling the empire were disdainfully

rejected. The German spirit thus aroused is well exemplified by what

occurred at Basle, a city which had observed the interdict and was eager

for its removal. When Charles and the Bishop of Bamberg appeared before

the gates they were received by the magistrates and a great crowd of

citizens. Conrad of Barenfels, the burgomaster, addressed the bishop:

"My Lord of Bamberg, you must know that we do not believe, nor will we

confess, that our late lord, the Emperor Louis, ever was a heretic.

Whomsoever the electors or a majority of them shall choose as King of

the Romans we will hold as such, whether he applies to the pope or not,

nor will we do anything else that is contrary to the rights of the

empire. But if you have power from the pope and are willing to remit all

our sins, so be it." Then, turning to the people, he called out, "Do you

give to me and to Conrad Münch power to ask for the absolution of your

sins?" The crowd shouted assent; the two Conrads took an oath in

accordance with this; divine services were resumed, and the king and

bishop entered the town.[168]

Yet the question as to the poverty of Christ, which had been put forward

by John and Louis as the ostensible cause of quarrel, and which had been

so warmly embraced by a portion at least of the German Franciscans, sank

completely out of sight north of the Alps with the death of Louis and

the extinction of the Munich colony of refugees. Germany had her own

hordes of mendicants, regular and irregular, in the Beguines and

Beghards, who seem to have troubled themselves but little about points

so purely speculative; and though we occasionally hear of Fraticelli in

those regions, it is rather as a convenient name employed by monkish

chroniclers than as really representing a distinctive sect.

It was otherwise in the South, and especially in Italy, the native home

of Franciscanism and of the peculiar influences which moulded the

special ascetic development of the Order. There the impulses which had

led the earlier Spirituals to endure the extremity of persecution in

vindication of the holiness of absolute poverty were still as strong as

ever. Under Boniface and Clement and during the earlier years of John

its professors had lain in hiding or had sought the friendly refuge of

Sicily. In the confusion of the Franciscan schism they had emerged and

multiplied. With the downfall of the antipope and the triumph of John

they were once more proscribed. In the quarrel over the poverty of

Christ, that tenet had naturally become the distinguishing mark of the

sectaries, and its condemnation by John necessarily entailed the

consequence of denying the papal authority and asserting the heresy of

the Holy See. Yet there can be no doubt that among the austerer members

of the orthodox Order who accepted the definitions of the papacy there

was much sympathy felt for the rebellious dissidents. Resistance to the

imperious will of John XXII. having failed, there were abundant stories

of visions and miracles circulated from convent to convent, as to the

wrath of God and of St. Francis visited upon those who infringed upon

the holy vow of poverty. The _Liber Conformitatum_ is manifestly the

expression of the aspirations of those who wished to enforce the Rule in

all its strictness as the direct revelation of the Holy Spirit. Such men

felt that the position of their proscribed brethren was logically

correct, and they were unable to reconcile the decrees of Nicholas III.

with those of John XXII. One of these, described as a man much beloved

of God, applied to St. Birgitta to resolve his doubts, whereupon she

had two visions in which the Virgin sent him her commands to say to all

who believed that the pope was no pope, and that priests do not truly

consecrate the host in the mass, that they were heretics filled with

diabolical iniquity. All this points to a strong secret sympathy with

the Fraticelli which extended not only among the people, but among the

friars and occasionally even among the prelates, explaining the ability

of the sectaries to maintain their existence from generation to

generation in spite of almost unremitting persecution by the

Inquisition.[169]

In 1335, one of the earliest cares of Benedict XII. after his accession

was the repression of these _Fratres de paupere Vita_, as they styled

themselves. They still in many places publicly displayed their contumacy

by wearing the short and narrow gowns of the Spirituals. They still held

Michele to be their general, insulted the memory of John XXII., and were

earnestly and successfully engaged in proselytism. Moreover, they were

openly protected by men of rank and power. All the inquisitors, from

Treviso and Lombardy to Sicily, were commanded to free the Church from

these impious hypocrites by vigorous action, and directions were sent to

the prelates to lend efficient assistance. There were some, at least, of

the latter who did not respond, for in 1336 Francesco, Bishop of

Camerino, and Giacopo, Bishop of Firmo, were summoned to answer for

favoring the sectaries and permitting them to live in their dioceses.

The whole Order, in fact, was still infected with these dangerous

doctrines, and could not be brought to view the dissidents with proper

abhorrence. Benedict complained that in the kingdom of Naples many

Franciscan convents gave shelter to these perverse brethren, and in a

bull regulating the Order issued this same year he alludes to those

among them who wear peculiar vestments and, under a pretended exterior

of sanctity, maintain heresies condemned by the Church of Rome; all

such, together with those who protect them, are to be imprisoned until

they submit. It was not always easy to enforce obedience to these

mandates. The Bishop of Camerino was stubborn, and the next year, 1337,

Frà Giovanni di Borgo, the inquisitor of the Mark of Ancona, was

instructed to proceed severely against him and other fautors of these

heretics. By his active operations Frà Giovanni incurred the ill-will of

the nobles of his district, who had sufficient influence with the

general, Gerard Odo, to procure his replacement by his associate Giacomo

and subsequently by Simone da Ancona, but the Cardinal Legate Bertrand

intervened, and Benedict restored him with high encomiums on his

efficiency. Although persecution was thus active, it is probable that

few of the sectaries had the spirit of martyrdom, and that they recanted

under pressure, but there was no hesitation in inflicting the full

punishment of heresy on those who were persistent. June 3, 1337, at

Venice, Frà Francesco da Pistoia was burned for pertinaciously asserting

the poverty of Christ in contempt of the definitions of John XXII., nor

was he the only victim.[170]

The test of heresy, as I have said, was the assertion that Christ and

the apostles held no property. This appears from the abjuration of Frà

Francesco d' Ascoli in 1344, who recants that belief and declares that

in accordance with the bulls of John XXII. he holds it to be heretical.

That such continued to be the customary formula appears from Eymerich,

who instructs his inquisitor to make the penitent declare under oath, "I

swear that I believe in my heart and profess that our Lord Jesus Christ

and his apostles while in this mortal life held in common the things

which Scripture declares them to have had, and that they had the right

of giving, selling, and alienating them."[171]

The heresy was thus so purely an artificial one, created by the Holy

See, that perhaps it is not difficult to understand the sympathy excited

by these poor and self-denying ascetics, who bore all the external marks

of what the Church had for ages taught to be exceeding holiness.

Camerino continued to be a place of refuge. In 1343 Clement VI. ordered

the Bishops of Ancona and Osimo to cite before him within three months

Gentile, Lord of Camerino, for various offences, among which was

protecting the Fraticelli, impeding the inquisitors in the prosecution

of their duties, and despising for several years the excommunication

which they had pronounced against him. Even the inquisitors themselves,

especially in Franciscan districts, were not always earnest in the work,

possibly because there was little prospect of profitable confiscations

to be procured from those who regarded the possession of property as a

sin, and in 1346 Clement found himself obliged to reprove them sharply

for their tepidity. In such districts the Fraticelli showed themselves

with little concealment. When, in 1348, Cola di Rienzo fled from Rome

after his first tribuneship, he betook himself to the Fraticelli of

Monte Maiella; he was charmed with their holiness and poverty, entered

the Order as a Tertiary, and deplored that men so exemplary should be

persecuted by the pope and the Inquisition. Tuscany was full of them. It

was in vain that about this period Florence adopted severe laws for

their repression, placing them under the ban, empowering any one to

capture them, and deliver them to the Inquisition, and imposing a fine

of five hundred lire on any official declining, when summoned by the

inquisitors, to assist in their arrest. The very necessity of enacting

such laws shows how difficult it was to stimulate the people to join the

persecution. Even this appears to have been ineffectual. There is extant

a letter from Giovanni delle Celle of Vallombrosa to Tommaso di Neri, a

Fraticello of Florence, in which the former attacks the fatuity of the

latter in making an idol of poverty; the letter was answered and led to

a controversy which seems to have been conducted openly.[172]

Yet, trivial as was apparently the point at issue, it was impossible

that men could remain contentedly under the ban of the Church without

being forced to adopt principles destructive of the whole ecclesiastical

organization. They could only justify themselves by holding that they

were the true Church, that the papacy was heretical and had forfeited

its claim of obedience, and could no longer guide the faithful to

salvation. It is an interesting proof of the state of public opinion in

Italy, that in spite of the thoroughly organized machinery of

persecution, men who held these doctrines were able to disseminate them

almost publicly and to make numerous proselytes. About the middle of

the century they circulated throughout Italy a document written in the

vernacular, "so that it can be understood by every one," giving their

reasons for separating themselves from pope and prelate. It is

singularly temperate in tone and logical in structure. The argument is

drawn strictly from Scripture and from the utterances of the Church

itself, and from even the standpoint of a canonist it is unanswerable.

There are no apocalyptic hysterics, no looking forward to Antichrist or

to new ages of the world, no mysticism. There is not even any reference

to St. Francis, nor any claim that his Rule is inspired and inviolable.

Yet none the less the whole body of the Church is declared to be

heretic, and all the faithful are summoned to cut loose from it.

The reasons alleged for this are three--First, heresy; second, simony;

third, fornication. As to the first, John XXII. is proved to be a

heretic by the bulls pronouncing heretical the doctrine that Christ and

the apostles possessed nothing. This is easily done by reason of the

definitions of the previous popes confirmed by the Council of Vienne.

The corollary of course follows that all his successors and their

cardinals are heretics. As regards simony, the canons of the Decretum

and the utterances of the doctors are quoted to show that it is heresy.

As regards fornication, it was easy to cite the canons embodying the

Hildebrandine doctrine that the sacraments of fornicating priests are

not to be received. It is true that there are many priests who are not

fornicators, but there are none who are not simonists--who have not

given or received money for the sacraments. Even if he could be found

who is innocent on all these heads, it would be necessary for him to

separate himself from the rest, for, as Raymond of Pennaforte shows in

his Summa, those are guilty of mortal sin and idolatry who receive the

sacraments of heretics. The Fraticelli, therefore, have been obliged to

withdraw from a heretical church, and they issue this manifesto to

justify their course. If in any way it is erroneous, they ask to have

the error pointed out; and if it is correct, the faithful are bound to

join them, because, after the facts are known, association with prelates

and clergy thus heretical and excommunicate will involve in heresy all

who are guilty of it.[173]

All the Fraticelli, however, were not uniformly agreed upon all points.

In the above document a leading argument is drawn from the assumed

vitiation of the sacraments in polluted hands--a dangerous tenet,

constantly recurring to plague the successors of Hildebrand--which we do

not find in other utterances of the sectaries. In fact, we find them, in

1362, divided into two branches, one of which recognized as its leader

Tommaso, ex-Bishop of Aquino, and held that as John XXII. and his

successors were heretics, the sacrament of ordination derived from them

was void, and reordination was required of all ecclesiastics entering

the sect. The other, which took its name from Felipe of Majorca, was

regularly organized under a general minister, and, while equally

regarding the popes as heretics, recognized the ordinations of the

establishment. All branches of the sect, however, drew ample store of

reasons from the venality and corruption of the Church, which was

doubtless their most convincing argument with the people. There is

extant a letter in the vulgar tongue from a frate to two female

devotees, arguing, like the more formal manifesto, that they are bound

to withdraw from the communion of the heretical church. This is the

beast with seven horns, which are: 1, supreme pride; 2, supreme cruelty;

3, supreme folly or wrath; 4, supreme deceit and inimitable falsehood;

5, supreme carnality or lust; 6, supreme cupidity or avarice; 7, supreme

hatred of truth, or malice. The ministers of this heretic church have no

shame in publicly keeping concubines, and in selling Christ for money in

the sacraments. This letter further indicates the legitimate descent of

the Fraticelli from the Spirituals by a quotation from Joachim to show

that St. Francis is Noah, and the faithful few of his children are those

who are saved with him in the Ark.[174]

A still closer connection may be inferred from a bull of Urban V.,

issued about 1365, instructing inquisitors to be active in exterminating

heretics, and describing for their information the different heresies.

The Fraticelli are represented as indulging in gluttony and

lasciviousness under the cover of strict external sanctity, pretending

to be Franciscan Tertiaries, and begging publicly or living in their own

houses. It is possible, however, that his description of their holding

assemblies in which they read Olivi's "Postil on the Apocalypse" and his

other works, but chiefly the account of his death, is rather borrowed

from Bernard Gui's account of the Spirituals of Languedoc, than a

correct statement of the customs of the Fraticelli of his time.[175]

Of the final shape which the heresy assumed we have an authoritative

account from its ruthless exterminator, the Inquisitor Giacomo della

Marca. In his "Dialogue with a Fraticello," written about 1450, there is

no word about the follies of the Spirituals, or any extraneous dogmas.

The question turns wholly on the poverty of Christ and the heresy of

John's definitions of the doctrine. The Fraticelli stigmatize the

orthodox as Joannistæ, and in turn are called Michaelistæ, showing that

by this time the extravagances of the Spirituals had been forgotten, and

that the heretics were the direct descendants of the schismatic

Franciscans who followed Michele da Cesena. The disorders and immorality

of the clergy still afforded them their most effective arguments in

their active missionary work. Giacomo complains that they abused the

minds of the simple by representing the priests as simonists and

concubinarians, and that the people, imbued with this poison, lost faith

in the clergy, refused to confess to them, to attend their masses, to

receive their sacraments, and to pay their tithes, thus becoming

heretics and pagans and children of the devil, while fancying themselves

children of God.[176]

The Fraticelli thus formed one or more separate organizations, each of

which asserted itself to be the only true Church. In the scanty

information which we possess, it is impossible to trace in detail the

history of the fragmentary parts into which they split, and we can only

say in general terms that the sect did not consist simply of anchorites

and friars, but had its regular clergy and laity, its bishops and their

supreme head or pope, known as the Bishop of Philadelphia, that being

the name assigned to the community. In 1357 this position was filled by

Tommaso, the ex-Bishop of Aquino; chance led to the discovery of such a

pope in Perugia in 1374; in 1429 we happen to know that a certain

Rainaldo filled the position, and shortly after a frate named Gabriel.

There is even talk of a chief of the laity who styled himself Emperor of

the Christians.[177]

It was in vain that successive popes ordered the Inquisition to take the

most active measures for the suppression of the sect, and that

occasional holocausts rewarded their exertions, as when, under Urban V.

nine were burned at Viterbo, and in 1389 Frà Michele Berti de Calci

suffered the same fate at Florence. This last case reveals in its

details the popular sympathy which favored the labors of the Fraticelli.

Frà Michele had been sent to Florence as a missionary by a congregation

of the sect which met in a cavern in the Mark of Ancona. He preached in

Florence and made many converts, and was about leaving the city, April

19, when he was betrayed by five female zealots, who sent for him

pretending to seek conversion. His trial was short. A colleague saved

his life by recantation, but Michele was firm. When brought up in

judgment to be degraded from the priesthood he refused to kneel before

the bishop, saying that heretics are not to be knelt to. In walking to

the place of execution many of the crowd exchanged words of cheer with

him, leading to considerable disturbance, and when tied to a stake in a

sort of cabin which was to be set on fire, a number put their heads

inside to beg him to recant. The place was several times filled with

smoke to frighten him, but he was unyielding, and after his incremation

there were many people, we are told, who regarded him as a saint.[178]

Proceedings such as this were not likely to diminish the favor with

which the Fraticelli were popularly regarded. The two Sicilies continued

to be thoroughly interpenetrated with the heresy. When, in 1362, Luigi

di Durazzo made his abortive attempt at rebellion, he regarded the

popularity of the Fraticelli as an element of sufficient importance for

him to publicly proclaim sympathy with them, to collect them around him,

and have Tommaso of Aquino celebrate mass for him. Francesco Marchisio,

Archdeacon of Salerno, was a Fraticello, in spite of which he was

elevated to the see of Trivento in 1362, and occupied it till his death

about twenty years later. In 1372 Gregory XI. was shocked to learn that

in Sicily the bones of Fraticelli were venerated as the relics of

saints, that chapels and churches were built in their honor, and that on

their anniversaries the populace flocked thither with candles to worship

them; but it is not likely that his instructions to the inquisitors to

put an end to these unseemly manifestations of mistaken piety were

successful. At Perugia, in 1368, the magistrates were induced to throw

many of the Fraticelli into prison, but to so little purpose that the

people persisted in regarding them as the true children of St. Francis

and in giving them shelter, while the Franciscans were despised on

account of the laxity of their observance, the luxury of their houses,

the costliness of their vestments, and the profusion of their table.

They were ridiculed and insulted in the streets until they scarce dared

to venture in public; if one chanced to let the collar of his shirt show

above his gown, some one would pull up the linen and ask the jeering

crowd if this was the austerity of St. Francis. As a last resort, in

1374, they sent for Paoluccio of Foligno and a public disputation was

arranged with the Fraticelli. Paoluccio turned the tide of popular favor

by proving that obedience to the pope was of greater moment than

obedience to the Rule, and the Fraticelli were driven from the town.

Even then the Inquisition seems not to have dared to prosecute

them.[179]

The proselyting efforts of the Fraticelli were by no means confined to

Italy. Believing themselves the only true Church, it was their duty to

carry salvation throughout the world, and there were earnest spirits

among them who were ready to dare as much as the orthodox among the

infidels and barbarians. Already, in 1344, Clement VI. found himself

obliged to address the archbishops, bishops, and all the faithful

throughout Armenia, Persia, and the East, warning them against these

emissaries of Satan, who were seeking to scatter among them the seeds of

error and schism. He had no inquisitors to call upon in those regions,

but he ordered the prelates to inquire after them and to punish them,

authorizing them, with a singular lack of perception, to invoke, if

necessary, the aid of the secular arm. The Fraticelli made at least one

convert of importance, for in 1346 Clement felt himself obliged to cite

for appearance within four months no less a personage than the

Archbishop of Seleucia, who, infected with pseudo-minorite errors, had

written in Armenian and was circulating throughout Asia a postil on St.

John in which he asserted the forbidden doctrine of the poverty of

Christ. In 1354 Innocent VI. heard of Fraticellian missionaries laboring

among the Chazars of the Crimea, and he forthwith ordered the Bishop of

Caffa to repress them with inquisitorial methods. In 1375 Gregory XI.

learned that they were active in Egypt, Syria, and Asia, and he promptly

ordered the Franciscan provincial of those regions to enforce on them

the severity of the laws. One, named Lorenzo Carbonello, had ventured to

Tunis, to infect with his heresy the Christians of that kingdom,

whereupon Gregory commanded Giacomo Patani and Guillen de Ripoll, the

captains of the Christian troops in the service of the Bey of Tunis, to

seize him and send him in chains to the Archbishop of Naples or of Pisa.

Doubtless, if the command was obeyed, it led the unthinking Moslem to

thank Allah that they were not Christians.[180]

In Languedoc and Provence the rigorous severity with which the

Spirituals had been exterminated seems to have exercised a wholesome

influence in repressing the Fraticelli, but nevertheless a few cases on

record shows the existence of the sect. In 1336 we hear of a number

confined in the papal dungeons of Avignon--among them a papal

chaplain--and that Guillaume Lombard, the judge of ecclesiastical

causes, was ordered to exert against them the full severity of the

laws. In 1354 two Tuscan Fraticelli, Giovanni da Castiglione and

Francesco d' Arquata, were arrested at Montpellier for holding that John

XXII. had forfeited his authority by altering the definitions of the

bull _Exiit_, and that his successors were not the true Church. Innocent

VI. caused them to be brought before him, but all efforts to make them

recant were vain; they went tranquilly to the stake, singing _Gloria in

excelsis_, and were reverenced as martyrs by a large number of their

brethren. Two others, named Jean de Narbonne and Maurice had not long

before met the same fate at Avignon. In northern France we hear little

of the heresy. The only recorded case seems to be that of Denis

Soulechat, a professor of the University of Paris, who taught in 1363

that the law of divine love does away with property, and that Christ and

the apostles held none. Summoned by the Inquisitor Guillaume Rochin, he

abjured before the Faculty and then appealed to the pope. At Avignon,

when he endeavored to purge himself before an assembly of theologians,

he only added new errors to his old ones, and was sent back to the

Cardinal of Beauvais and the Sorbonne with orders to make him recant,

and to punish him properly with the advice of the inquisitor. In 1368 he

was forced to a public abjuration.[181]

In Spain a few cases show that the heresy extended across the Pyrenees.

In Valencia, Fray Jayme Justi and the Tertiaries Guillermo Gelabert and

Marti Petri, when arrested by R. de Masqueta, commissioner of the

Inquisitor Leonardo de Puycerda, appealed to Clement VI., who ordered

the Bishop of Valencia to release them on their giving bail not to leave

the city until their case should be decided at Avignon. They must have

had wealthy disciples, for security was furnished in the heavy sum of

thirty thousand sols, and they were discharged from prison. The papal

court was in no hurry with the case--probably it was forgotten--when, in

1353, Clement learned that the two Tertiaries were dead, and that Justi

was in the habit of leaving the city and spreading his pestiferous

doctrines among the people. He therefore ordered Hugo, Bishop of

Valencia, and the Inquisitor Nicolas Roselli to prosecute the case

forthwith. Justi must have recanted, for he was merely imprisoned for

life, while the bones of the two Tertiaries were dug up and burned. Even

more obdurate was Fray Arnaldo Mutaner, who for nineteen years infected

Puycerda and Urgel with the same heresy. He was contumacious and refused

to appear when summoned to abjure. After consultation with Gregory XI.,

Berenger Darili, Bishop of Urgel, condemned him, and so did Eymerich.

Pursuit apparently grew hot, and he fled to the East. The last we hear

of him is in 1373, when Gregory ordered his vicar, the Franciscan

Arnaud, to seize him and send him in chains to the papal court, but

whether the effort was successful we have no means of knowing. A bull of

Martin V. in 1426 shows the continued existence of Fraticelli in Aragon

and Catalonia, and the necessity of active measures for their

extirpation.[182]

It was probably a heresy of the same nature which, in 1442, was

discovered in Durango, Biscay. The heresiarch was the Franciscan Alonso

de Mella, brother of Juan, Cardinal-bishop of Zamora, and the sectaries

were known as Cerceras. The story that Alonso taught indiscriminate

sexual intercourse is doubtless one of the customary exaggerations. King

Juan II., in the absence of the Inquisition, sent the Franciscan,

Francisco de Soria, and Juan Alonso Cherino, Abbot of Alcalá la Real, to

investigate the matter, with two alguazils and a sufficient force. The

heretics were seized and carried, some to Valladolid and some to Santo

Domingo de la Calçada, where torture was used to extract confession, and

the obstinate ones were burned in considerable numbers. Fray Alonso de

Mella, however, managed to escape and fled to Granada, it is said, with

some of his girls; but he did not avert his fate, for he was

_acañavereado_ by the Moors--that is, put to a lingering death with

pointed sticks. The affair must have made a profound impression on the

popular mind, for even until modern times the people of Durango were

reproached by their neighbors with the "_autos de Fray Alonso_" and in

1828 an overzealous alcalde, to obliterate all record of the matter,

burned the original documents of the process, which till then had

reposed quietly among the records of the parish church.[183]

* * * * *

The violent measures of John XXII., followed up by his successors, for a

while effectually repressed the spiritual asceticism of the Franciscans.

Yet it was impossible that impulses which were so marked a

characteristic of the age should be wholly obliterated in an Order in

which they had become traditional. We see this in the kindness

manifested by the Franciscans to the Fraticelli when it could be done

without too much risk, and we cannot doubt that there were many who

aspired to imitate the founder without daring to overleap the bounds of

obedience. Such men could not but look with alarm and disgust at the

growing worldliness of the Order under the new dispensation of John.

When the Provincial of Tuscany could lay aside five hundred florins out

of the alms given to his brethren, and then lend this sum to the

Hospital of S. Maria of Siena at ten per cent. per annum, although so

flagrant a violation of his vows and of the canons against usury brought

upon him the penalty of degradation, it required a divine visitation to

impress his sin upon the minds of his fellows, and he died in 1373 in

great agony and without the sacraments. Various other manfestations

about the same time indicate the magnitude of the evil and the

impossibility of suppressing it by human means. Under Boniface IX.,

Franciscans, we are told, were in the habit of seeking dispensations to

enable them to hold benefices and even pluralities; and the pope decreed

that any Mendicant desiring to be transferred to a non-Mendicant Order

should, as a preliminary, pay a hundred gold florins to the papal

camera. Under such a system there could be scarce a pretence of

maintaining the holy poverty which had been the ideal of Francis and his

followers.[184]

Yet the ardent thirst of poverty and the belief that in it lay the only

assured path to salvation were too widely diffused to be repressed.

Giovanni Colombini, a rich and ambitious citizen of Siena had his

thoughts accidentally directed to heaven. His career strikingly

resembles that of Peter Waldo, save that the Church, grown wiser,

utilized his zeal instead of antagonizing him. The Order of Jesuats

which he founded was approved by Urban V. in 1367. It was an order of

lay brethren under the Augustinian Rule, vowed to poverty and devoted to

the care of the sick, not unlike that of the Cellites or Alexians of the

Rhinelands.[185]

It was inevitable that there should be dissatisfaction among the more

ascetic Franciscans, and that the more zealous of these should seek some

remedy short of heresy. In 1350 Gentile of Spoleto obtained from Clement

VI. authorization for some houses of stricter observance. Immediately

the experience of Angelo and Liberato was repeated. The wrath of the

Conventuals was excited. The innovators were accused of adopting the

short and narrow gowns which had been the distinguishing mark of the

dreaded Olivists. In the General Chapter of 1353, the General Farignano

was urged to exterminate them by the measures which had proved so

effective in Languedoc. To this he did not assent, but he set spies to

work to obtain evidence against them, and soon was able to accuse them

of receiving Fraticelli. They admitted the fact, but argued that this

had been in the hope of converting the heretics, and when they proved

obstinate they had been expelled--but they had not been reported to the

Inquisition as duty required. Armed with this, Farignano represented to

Innocent VI. the grave dangers of the innovation, and obtained a

revocation of the papal authorization. The brethren were dispersed,

Gentile and two companions were thrown into prison at Orvieto; his

coadjutor, Frà Martino, a most exemplary man, who shone in miracles

after death, died the next year, and the rest were reduced to obedience.

After prolonged captivity Gentile was released, and died in 1362, worn

out with fruitless labors to restore the discipline of the Order.[186]

More fortunate was his disciple, Paoluccio da Trinci, of Foligno, a

simple and unlearned friar, who had obtained from his kinsman, Ugolino,

Lord of Foligno, a dungeon in which to gratify his thirst for

asceticism. Though he had permission for this from his superiors, he

suffered much from the hostility of the laxer brethren, but his

austerities gained him great popular reverence and many disciples. In

1368 the General Farignano chanced to attend a provincial chapter at

Foligno, and was persuaded to ask of Ugolino a spot called Brulliano, in

the mountains between Foligno and Camerino, as a hermitage for Paoluccio

and his followers. After his request was granted he dreaded a schism in

the Order and wished to recall it, but Ugolino held him to his purpose.

The place was wild, rocky, marshy, unwholesome, infested with serpents,

and almost uninhabited. Thither Paoluccio led his brethren, and they

were forced to adopt the sabots or wooden shoes, which became the

distinguishing foot-gear of their Order. Their reputation spread apace;

converts flocked to them; their buildings required enlargement;

associate houses were founded in many places, and thus arose the

Observantines, or Franciscans of strict observance--an event in the

history of the Church only second in importance to the original

foundation of the Mendicant Orders.[187]

When Paoluccio died, in 1390, he was already reckoned as a provincial

within the Order. After an interval he was succeeded by his coadjutor,

Giovanni Stronconi. In 1405 began the marvellous career of St.

Bernardino of Siena, who counts as the formal founder of the

Observantines. They had merely been called the Brethren of the

Hermitages until the Council of Constance established them as an

organization virtually independent of the Conventuals, when they took

the name by which they have since been known. Everywhere their

institution spread. New houses arose, or those of the Conventuals were

reformed and given over to them. Thus in 1426 they were introduced into

the province of Strassburg through the intervention of Matilda of Savoy,

wife of the Palsgrave Louis the Bearded. Familiar in her youth with

their virtues, she took occasion at Heidelberg to point out to her

husband the Franciscans in their convent garden below them, amusing

themselves with military exercises. It resulted in the reform of all the

houses in his dominions and the introduction of the Observantine

discipline, not without serious trouble. In 1453 Nicholas of Cusa, as

legate, forced all the houses in the diocese of Bamberg to adopt the

Observantine discipline, under threat of forfeiting their privileges. In

1431 the holy house on Mt. Alverno, the Franciscan Mecca, was made over

to them, and in 1434 the guardianship of the Holy Places in Jerusalem.

In 1460 we hear of their penetrating to distant Ireland. It is not to be

supposed that the Conventuals submitted quietly to the encroachments and

triumphs of the hated ascetics whom for a century and a half they had

successfully baffled and persecuted. Quarrels, sharper and bitterer even

than those with the Dominicans, were of constant occurrence, and were

beyond the power of the popes to allay. A promising effort at reunion

attempted by Capistrano in 1430, under the auspices of Martin V., was

defeated by the incurable laxity of the Conventuals, and there was

nothing left for both sides but to continue the war. In 1435 the strife

rose to such a pitch in France that Charles VII. was obliged to appeal

to the Council of Basle, which responded with a decree in favor of the

Observantines. The struggle was hopeless. The corruption of the

Conventuals was so universally recognized that even Pius II. does not

hesitate to say that, though they generally excel as theologians, virtue

is the last thing about which most of them concern themselves. In

contrast with this the holiness of the new organization won for it the

veneration of the people, while the unflagging zeal with which it served

the Holy See secured for it the favor of the popes precisely as the

Mendicant Orders had done in the thirteenth century. At first merely a

branch of the Franciscans, then placed under a virtually independent

vicar-general, at length Leo X., after vainly striving to heal the

differences, gave the Observantines a general minister and reduced the

Conventuals to a subordinate position under a general master.[188]

A religious revival such as this brought into service a class of men who

were worthy representatives of the Peter Martyrs and Guillem Arnauds of

the early Inquisition. Under their ruthless energy the Fraticelli were

doomed to extinction. The troubles of the Great Schism had allowed the

heretics to flourish almost unnoticed and unmolested, but after the

Church had healed its dissensions at Constance and had entered upon a

new and vigorous life, it set to work in earnest to eradicate them.

Hardly had Martin V. returned to Italy from Constance when he issued

from Mantua, November 14, 1418, a bull in which he deplores the increase

of the abominable sect in many parts, and especially in the Roman

province. Fortified with the protection of the temporal lords, they

abuse and threaten the bishops and inquisitors who attempt to repress

them. The bishops and inquisitors are therefore instructed to proceed

against them vigorously, without regard to limits of jurisdiction, and

to prosecute their protectors, even if the latter are of episcopal or

regal dignity, which sufficiently indicates that the Fraticelli had

found favor with those of highest rank in both Church and State. This

accomplished little, for in a subsequent bull of 1421 Martin alludes to

the continued increase of the heresy, and tries the expedient of

appointing the Cardinals of Albano and Porto as special commissioners

for its suppression. The cardinals proved as inefficient as their

predecessors. In 1423 the General Council of Siena was greatly

scandalized at finding that at Peniscola there was a heretic pope with

his college of cardinals, apparently flourishing without an attempt at

concealment, and the Gallican nation made several ineffectual efforts to

induce the council to take active measures against the secular

authorities under whose favor these scandals were allowed to exist. How

utterly the machinery of persecution had broken down is illustrated by

the case of three Fraticelli who had at this period been detected in

Florence--Bartolommeo di Matteo, Giovanni di Marino of Lucca, and

Bartolommeo di Pietro of Pisa. Evidently distrusting the Florentine

Inquisition, which was Franciscan, Martin V. specially intrusted the

matter to his legates then presiding over the Council of Siena. On the

sudden dissolution of the council the legates returned to Rome, except

the Dominican General, Leonardo of Florence, who went to Florence. To

him, therefore, Martin wrote, April 24, 1424, empowering him to

terminate the case himself, and expressly forbidding the Inquisitor of

Florence from taking any part in it. In September of the same year

Martin instructed Piero, Abbot of Rosacio, his rector of the Mark of

Ancona, to extirpate the Fraticelli existing there, and the difficulty

of the undertaking was recognized in the unwonted clemency which

authorized Piero to reconcile even those who had been guilty of repeated

relapses.[189]

Some new motive force was evidently required. There were laws in

abundance for the extermination of heresy, and an elaborate organization

for their enforcement, but a paralysis seemed to have fallen upon it,

and all the efforts of the Holy See to make it do its duty was in vain.

The problem was solved when, in 1426, Martin boldly overslaughed the

Inquisition and appointed two Observantines as inquisitors, without

limitation of districts and with power to appoint deputies, thus

rendering them supreme over the whole of Italy. These were the men whom

we have so often met before where heresy was to be combated--San

Giovanni da Capistrano, and the blessed Giacomo da Monteprandone,

generally known as della Marca--both full of zeal and energy, who richly

earned their respective canonization and beatification by lifelong

devotion and by services which can scarce be overestimated. It is true

that Giacomo was commissioned only as a missionary, to preach to the

heretics and reconcile them, but the difference was practically

undiscoverable, and when, a quarter of a century later, he fondly looked

back over the exploits of his youth, he related with pride how the

heretics fled from before his face, abandoned their strongholds, and

left their flocks to his mercy. Their headquarters seem to have been in

the Mark of Ancona, and chiefly in the dioceses of Fabriano and Jesi.

There the new inquisitors boldly attacked them. There was no resistance.

Such of the teachers as could do so sought safety in flight, and the

fate of the rest may be guessed from the instructions of Martin in 1428

to Astorgio, Bishop of Ancona, his lieutenant in the Mark, with respect

to the village of Magnalata. As it had been a receptacle of heretics, it

is to be levelled with the earth, never to be rebuilt. Stubborn heretics

are to be dealt with according to the law--that is, of course, to be

burned, as Giacomo della Marca tells us was the case with many of them.

Those who repent may be reconciled, but their leaders are to be

imprisoned for life, and are to be tortured, if necessary, to force them

to reveal the names of their fellows elsewhere. The simple folk who have

been misled are to be scattered around in the vicinage where they can

cultivate their lands, and are to be recompensed by dividing among them

the property confiscated from the rest. The children of heretic parents

are to be taken away and sent to a distance, where they can be brought

up in the faith. Heretic books are to be diligently searched for

throughout the province; and all magistrates and communities are to be

warned that any favor or protection shown to heretics will be visited

with forfeiture of municipal rights.[190]

Such measures ought to have been effective, as well as the device of

Capistrano, who, after driving the Fraticelli out of Massacio and

Palestrina, founded Observantine houses there to serve as citadels of

the faith, but the heretics were stubborn and enduring. When Eugenius

IV. succeeded to the papacy he renewed Capistrano's commission in 1432

as a general inquisitor against the Fraticelli. We have no details of

his activity during this period, but he was doubtless busily employed,

though he was deprived of the assistance of Giacomo, who until 1440 was,

as we have seen, at work among the Cathari of Bosnia and the Hussites of

Hungary. The Fraticelli of Ancona were still troublesome, for, on his

return from Asia in 1441, Giacomo was sent thither as special inquisitor

for their suppression. When, in 1447, Nicholas V. ascended the papal

throne, he made haste to renew Capistrano's commission, and in 1449 a

combined attack was made on the heretics of the Mark, possibly

stimulated by the capture, in his own court, of a bishop of the

Fraticelli named Matteo, disguised in a Franciscan habit. Nicholas

himself went to Fabriano, while Capistrano and Giacomo scoured the

country. Magnalata had been rebuilt in spite of the prohibition, and it,

with Migliorotta, Poggio, and Merulo, was brought back to the faith, by

what means we can well guess. Giacomo boasts that the heretics gave five

hundred ducats to a bravo to slay Capistrano, and on one occasion two

hundred and on another one hundred and fifty to procure his own death,

but the assassins in each case were touched with compunction and came in

and made confession--doubtless a profitable revelation for sharpers to

make, for no one acquainted with Italian society at that period can

imagine that such sums would not have effected their object. The

inquisitors, however, were specially protected by Heaven. Capistrano's

legend relates that on one occasion the heretics waited for him in

ambush. His companions passed in safety, and when he followed alone,

absorbed in meditation and prayer, a sudden whirlwind, with torrents of

rain, kept his assailants in their lair, and he escaped. Giacomo was

similarly divinely guarded. At Matelica a heretic concealed himself in a

chapel of the Virgin, to assail the inquisitor as he passed, but the

Virgin appeared to him with threats so terrible that he fell to the

ground and lay there till the neighbors carried him to a hospital, and

it was three months before he was able to seek Giacomo at Fermo and

abjure.[191]

The unlucky captives were brought before Nicholas at Fabriano and

burned. Giacomo tells us that the stench lasted for three days and

extended as far as the convent in which he was staying. He exerted

himself to save the souls of those whose bodies were forfeit by reason

of relapse, and succeeded in all cases but one. This hardened heretic

was the treasurer of the sect, named Chiuso. He refused to recant, and

would not call upon God or the Virgin or the saints for aid, but simply

said "Fire will not burn me." His endurance was tested to the utmost.

For three days he was burned piecemeal at intervals, but his resolution

never gave way, and at last he expired impenitent, in spite of the

kindly efforts to torture him to heaven.[192]

After this we hear little of the Fraticelli, although the sect still

continued to exist for a while in secret. In 1467 Paul II. converted a

number of them who were brought from Poli to Rome. Eight men and six

women, with paper mitres on their heads, were exposed to the jeers of

the populace on a high scaffold at the Aracoeli, while the papal vicar

and five bishops preached for their conversion. Their penance consisted

in imprisonment in the Campidoglio, and in wearing a long robe bearing a

white cross on breast and back. It was probably on this occasion that

Rodrigo Sanchez, a favorite of Paul's, and subsequently Bishop of

Palencia, wrote a treatise on the poverty of Christ, in which he proved

that ecclesiastics led apostolic lives in the midst of their

possessions. In 1471 Frà Tommaso di Scarlino was sent to Piombino and

the maritime parts of Tuscany to drive out some Fraticelli who had been

discovered there. This is the last allusion to them that I have met

with, and thereafter they may be considered as virtually extinct. That

they soon passed completely out of notice may be inferred from the fact

that in 1487, when the Spanish Inquisition persecuted some

Observantines, Innocent VIII. issued a general order that any

Franciscans imprisoned by Dominican inquisitors should be handed over

for trial to their own superiors, and that no such prosecutions should

be thereafter undertaken.[193]

The Observantine movement may be credited with the destruction of the

Fraticelli, not so much by furnishing the men and the zeal required for

their violent suppression as by supplying an organization in which

ascetic longings could be safely gratified, and by attracting to

themselves the popular veneration which had so long served as a

safeguard to the heretics. When we read of Capistrano's reputation among

his countrymen--how in Vicenza, in 1451, the authorities had to shut the

city gates to keep out the influx of surging crowds, and when he walked

the streets he had to be accompanied by a guard of Frati to keep off the

people seeking to touch him with sticks or to secure a fragment of his

garment as a relic; how in Florence, in 1456, an armed guard was

requisite to prevent his suffocation--we can realize the tremendous

influence exercised by him and his fellows in diverting the current of

public opinion to the Church which they represented. Like the Mendicants

of the thirteenth century, they restored to it much of the reverence

which it had forfeited, in spite of the relaxation and self-indulgence

to which, if Poggio is to be believed, many of them speedily

degenerated.[194]

Not less effective was the refuge which the Observantines afforded to

those whose morbid tendencies led them to seek superhuman austerity. The

Church having at last recognized the necessity of furnishing an outlet

for these tendencies, as the old Fraticelli died or were burned there

were none to take their place, and the sect disappears from view without

leaving a trace behind it. Ascetic zeal must indeed have been intense

when it could not be satiated by such a life as that of Lorenzo da

Fermo, who died in 1481 at the age of one hundred and ten, after passing

ninety years with the Observantines. For forty of these years he lived

on Mont Alverno, wearing neither cowl nor sandals--bareheaded and

barefooted in the severest weather, and with the thinnest garments. If

there were natures which craved more than this, the Church had learned

either to utilize or to control them. Thus was organized the Order of

the Strict Observance, better known as the Recollects. The Conde de

Sotomayor, of the noblest blood of Spain, had entered the Franciscan

Order, and, becoming dissatisfied with its laxity, obtained from

Innocent VIII., in 1487, authority to found a reformed branch, which he

established in the wilds of the Sierra Morena. In spite of the angry

opposition of both Conventuals and Observantines, it proved successful

and spread permanently through France and Italy. An irregular and

unfortunate effort in the same direction was made not long after by

Matteo da Tivoli, a Franciscan whose thirst for supreme asceticism had

led him to adopt the life of a hermit, with about eighty followers, in

the Roman province. They threw off all obedience to the Order, under the

influence of Satan, who appeared to Matteo in the guise of Christ. He

was seized and imprisoned, and commenced to doubt the reality of his

mission, when another vision confirmed him. He succeeded in escaping

with a comrade, and lived in caves among the mountains with numerous

disciples, illuminated by God and gifted with miraculous power. He

organized his followers into an independent Order, with general,

provincials, and guardians, but the Church succeeded in breaking it up

in 1495, Matteo finally returning to the Conventuals, while most of his

disciples entered the Observantines.[195]

* * * * *

In reviewing this history of the morbid aberrations of lofty impulses,

it is impossible not to recognize how much the Church lost in vitality,

and how much causeless suffering was inflicted by the theological

arrogance and obstinate perversity of John XXII. With tact and

discretion the zeal of the Fraticelli could have been utilized, as was

subsequently that of the Observantines. The ceaseless quarrels of the

Conventuals with the latter explain the persecutions endured by the

Spirituals and the Fraticelli. Paoluccio was fortunate in finding men

high in station who were wise enough to protect his infant organization

until it had demonstrated its usefulness and was able to defend itself,

but there never was a time, even when it was the most useful weapon in

the hands of the Holy See, when the Conventuals would not, had they been

able, have treated it as inhumanly as they had treated the followers of

Angelo and Olivi and Michele da Cesena.