well as the legislative imponent, of the terrific system which ripened
gradually and experimentally in his pontificate. It does not appear
whether he has read, or knows through Havet the investigations which
conducted Ficker to a different hypothesis. The transition of 1231 from
the saving of life to the taking of life by fire was nearly the sharpest
that men can conceive, and in pursuance of it the subsequent legal forms
are mere detail. The spirit and practice of centuries were renounced for
the opposite extreme; and between the mercy of 1230 and the severity of
1231 there was no intervening stage of graduated rigour. Therefore it is
probable that the new idea of duty, foreign to Italian and specifically
to Roman ways, was conveyed by a new man, that a new influence just then
got possession of the Pope. Professor Ficker signals Guala as the real
contriver of the _regime_ of terror, and the man who acquired the
influence imported the idea and directed the policy. Guala was a
Dominican prior whom the Pope trusted in emergencies. In the year 1230
he negotiated the treaty of San Germano between Frederic II. and the
Church, and was made Bishop of Brescia. In that year Brescia, first
among Italian cities, inserted in its statutes the emperor's Lombard law
of 1224, which sent the heretic to the stake. The inference is that the
Dominican prelate caused its insertion, and that nobody is so likely to
have expounded its available purport to the pontiff as the man who had
so lately caused it to be adopted in his own see, and who stood high
just then in merit and in favour. That Guala was bishop-elect on 28th
August, half a year before the first burnings at Rome, we know; that he
caused the adoption of Frederic's law at Brescia or at Rome is not in
evidence. Of that abrupt and unexplained enactment little is told us,
but this we are told, that it was inspired by Honorius: "Leges quoque
imperiales per quondam Fredericum olim Romanorum imperatorem, tunc in
devotione Romane sedis persistentem, procurante eadem sede, fuerunt
edite et Padue promulgate" (Bern. Guidonis, _Practica Inquisitionis_,
173). At any rate, Gregory, who had seen most things since the elevation
of Innocent, knew how Montfort dealt with Albigensian prisoners at
Minerve and Lavaur, what penalties were in store at Toulouse, and on
what principles Master Conrad administered in Germany the powers
received from Rome. The Papacy which inspired the coronation laws of
1220, in which there is no mention of capital punishment, could not have
been unobservant of the way in which its own provisions were
transformed; and Gregory, whom Honorius had already called "magnum et
speciale ecclesie Romane membrum," who had required the university of
Bologna to adopt and to expound the new legislation, and who knew the
Archbishop of Magdeburg, had little to learn from Guala about the
formidable weapon supplied to that prelate for the government of
Lombardy. There is room for further conjecture.
In those days it was discovered that Arragon was infested with heresy;
and the king's confessor proposed that the Holy See be applied to for
means of active suppression. With that object, in 1230 he was sent to
Rome. The envoy's name was Raymond, and his home was on the coast of
Catalonia in the town of Pennaforte. He was a Bolognese jurist, a
Dominican, and the author of the most celebrated treatise on morals made
public in the generation preceding the scholastic theology. The five
years of his abode in Rome changed the face of the Church. He won the
confidence of Gregory, became penitentiary, and was employed to codify
the acts of the popes militant since the publication of Gratian. Very
soon after Saint Raymond appeared at the papal court, the use of the
stake became law, the inquisitorial machinery had been devised, and the
management given to the priors of the order. When he departed he left
behind him instructions for the treatment of heresy, which the pope
adopted and sent out where they were wanted. He refused a mitre, rose to
be general, it is said in opposition to Albertus Magnus, and retired
early, to become, in his own country, the oracle of councils on the
watch for heterodoxy. Until he came, in spite of much violence and many
laws, the popes had imagined no permanent security against religious
error, and were not formally committed to death by burning. Gregory
himself, excelling all the priesthood in vigour and experience, had for
four years laboured, vaguely and in vain, with the transmitted
implements. Of a sudden, in three successive measures, he finds his way,
and builds up the institution which is to last for centuries. That this
mighty change in the conditions of religious thought and life and in the
functions of the order was suggested by Dominicans is probable. And it
is reasonable to suppose that it was the work of the foremost Dominican
then living, who at that very moment had risen to power and predominance
at Rome.
No sane observer will allow himself to overdraw the influence of
national character on events. Yet there was that in the energetic race
that dwell with the Pyrenees above them and the Ebro below that suited a
leading part in the business of organised persecution. They are among
the nations that have been inventors in politics, and both the
constitution of Arragon and that of the society of Jesus prove their
constructive science. While people in other lands were feeling their
way, doubtful and debonair, Arragon went straight to the end. Before the
first persecuting pope was elected, before the Child of Apulia, who was
to be the first persecuting emperor, was born, Alfonso proscribed the
heretics. King and clergy were in such accord that three years later the
council of Girona decreed that they might be beaten while they remained,
and should be burnt if they came back. It was under this government,
amid these surroundings, that Saint Dominic grew up, whom Sixtus V.,
speaking on authority which we do not possess, entitled the First
Inquisitor. Saint Raymond, who had more to do with it than Saint
Dominic, was his countryman. Eymerici, whose _Directorium_ was the best
authority until the _Practica_ of Guidonis appeared, presided during
forty years over the Arragonese tribunal; and his commentator Pegna, the
Coke upon Littleton of inquisitorial jurisprudence, came from the same
stern region.
The _Histoire Generale de Languedoc_ in its new shape has supplied Mr.
Lea with so good a basis that his obligations to the present editors
bring him into something like dependence on French scholarship. He
designates monarchs by the names they bear in France--Louis le
Germanique, Charles le Sage, Philippe le Bon, and even Philippe; and
this habit, with Foulques and Berenger of Tours, with Aretino for
Arezzo, Oldenburg for Altenburg, Torgau for Zuerich, imparts an exotic
flavour which would be harmless but for a surviving preference for
French books. Compared with Bouquet and Vaissete, he is unfamiliar with
Boehmer and Pertz. For Matthew Paris he gets little or no help from Coxe,
or Madden, or Luard, or Liebermann, or Huillard. In France few things of
importance have escaped him. His account of Marguerite Porrette differs
from that given by Haureau in the _Histoire Litteraire_, and the
difference is left unexplained. No man can write about Joan of Arc
without suspicion who discards the publications of Quicherat, and even
of Wallon, Beaucourt, and Luce. Etienne de Bourbon was an inquisitor of
long experience, who knew the original comrade and assistant of Waldus.
Fragments of him scattered up and down in the works of learned men have
caught the author's eye; but it is uncertain how much he knows of the
fifty pages from Stephanus printed in Echard's book on Saint Thomas, or
of the volume in which Lecoy de la Marche has collected all, and more
than all, that deserves to live of his writings. The "Historia
Pontificalis," attributed to John of Salisbury, in the twentieth volume
of the _Monumenta_, should affect the account of Arnold of Brescia. The
analogy with the Waldenses, amongst whom his party seems to have merged,
might be more strongly marked. "Hominum sectam fecit que adhuc dicitur
heresis Lumbardorum.... Episcopis non parcebat ob avariciam et turpem
questum, et plerumque propter maculam vite, et quia ecclesiam Dei in
sanguinibus edificare nituntur." He was excommunicated and declared a
heretic. He was reconciled and forgiven. Therefore, when he resumed his
agitation his portion was with the obstinate and relapsed. "Ei populus
Romanus vicissim auxilium et consilium contra omnes homines et nominatim
contra domnum papam repromisit, eum namque excommunicaverat ecclesia
Romana.... Post mortem domni Innocentii reversus est in Italiam, et
promissa satisfactione et obediencia Romane ecclesie, a domno Eugenio
receptus est apud Viterbum." And it is more likely that the fear of
relics caused them to reduce his body to ashes than merely to throw the
ashes into the Tiber.
The energy with which Mr. Lea beats up information is extraordinary even
when imperfectly economised. He justly makes ample use of the _Vitae
Paparum Avenionensium_, which he takes apparently from the papal volume
of Muratori. These biographies were edited by Baluze, with notes and
documents of such value that Avignon without him is like Athenaeus
without Casaubon, or the Theodosian Code without Godefroy. But if he
neglects him in print, he constantly quotes a certain Paris manuscript
in which I think I recognise the very one which Baluze employed.
Together with Guidonis and Eymerici, the leading authority of the
fourteenth century is Zanchini, who became an inquisitor at Rimini in
1300, and died in 1340. His book was published with a commentary by
Campeggio, one of the Tridentine fathers; and Campeggio was further
annotated by Simancas, who exposes the disparity between Italian and
Spanish usage. It was reprinted, with other treatises of the same kind,
in the eleventh volume of the _Tractatus_. Some of these treatises, and
the notes of Campeggio and Simancas, are passed over by Mr. Lea without
notice. But he appreciates Zanchini so well that he has had him copied
from a manuscript in France. Very much against his habit, he prints one
entire sentence, from which it appears that his copy does not agree to
the letter with the published text. It is not clear in every case
whether he is using print or manuscript. One of the most interesting
directions for inquisitors, and one of the earliest, was written by
Cardinal Fulcodius, better known as Clement IV. Mr. Lea cites him a
dozen times, always accurately, always telling us scrupulously which of
the fifteen chapters to consult. The treatise of Fulcodius occupies a
few pages in Carena, _De Officio S.S. Inquisitionis_, in which, besides
other valuable matter, there are notes by Carena himself, and a tract by
Pegna, the perpetual commentator of the Inquisition. This is one of the
first eight or ten books which occur to any one whose duty it is to lay
in an inquisitor's library. Not only we are never told where to find
Fulcodius, but when Carena is mentioned it is so done as to defy
verification. Inartistic references are not, in this instance, a token
of inadequate study. But a book designed only for readers who know at a
glance where to lay their finger on _S. Francis. Collat. Monasticae,
Collat. 20_, or _Post constt. IV. XIX. Cod. I. v._ will be slow in
recovering outlay.
Not his acquaintance with rare books only, which might be the curiosity
of an epicurean, but with the right and appropriate book, amazes the
reader. Like most things attributed to Abbot Joachim, the Vaticinia
Pontificum is a volume not in common use, and decent people may be found
who never saw a copy. Mr. Lea says: "I have met with editions of Venice
issued in 1589, 1600, 1605, and 1646, of Ferrara in 1591, of Frankfort
in 1608, of Padua in 1625, and of Naples in 1660, and there are
doubtless numerous others." This is the general level throughout; the
rare failures disappear in the imposing supererogation of knowledge. It
could not be exceeded by the pupils of the Goettingen seminary or the
Ecole des Chartes. They have sometimes a vicious practice of overtopping
sufficient proof with irrelevant testimony: but they transcribe all
deciding words in full, and for the rest, quicken and abridge our toil
by sending us, not to chapter and verse, but to volume and page, of the
physical and concrete book. We would gladly give Bluebeard and his
wife--he had but one after all--in exchange for the best quotations from
sources hard of access which Mr. Lea must have hoarded in the course of
labours such as no man ever achieved before him, or will ever attempt
hereafter. It would increase the usefulness of his volumes, and double
their authority. There are indeed fifty pages of documentary matter not
entirely new or very closely connected with the text. Portions of this,
besides, are derived from manuscripts explored in France and Italy, but
not it seems in Rome, and in this way much curious and valuable material
underlies the pages; but it is buried without opportunity of display or
scrutiny. Line upon line of references to the Neapolitan archives only
bewilder and exasperate. Mr. Lea, who dealt more generously with the
readers of _Sacerdotal Celibacy_, has refused himself in these
overcrowded volumes that protection against overstatement. The want of
verifiable indication of authorities is annoying, especially at first;
and it may be possible to find one or two references to Saint
Bonaventure or to Wattenbach which are incorrect. But he is exceedingly
careful in rendering the sense of his informants, and neither strains
the tether nor outsteps his guide. The original words in very many cases
would add definiteness and a touch of surprise to his narrative.
If there is anywhere the least infidelity in the statement of an
author's meaning, it is in the denial that Marsilius, the imperial
theorist, and the creator with Ockam of the Ghibelline philosophy that
has ruled the world, was a friend of religious liberty. Marsilius
assuredly was not a Whig. Quite as much as any Guelph, he desired to
concentrate power, not to limit or divide it. Of the sacred immunities
of conscience he had no clearer vision than Dante. But he opposed
persecution in the shape in which he knew it, and the patriarchs of
European emancipation have not done more. He never says that there is no
case in which a religion may be proscribed; but he speaks of none in
which a religion may be imposed. He discusses, not intolerance, but the
divine authority to persecute, and pleads for a secular law. It does not
appear how he would deal with a Thug. "Nemo quantumcumque peccans contra
disciplinas speculativas aut operativas quascumque punitur vel arcetur
in hoc saeculo praecise in quantum huiusmodi, sed in quantum peccat
contra praeceptum humanae legis.... Si humana lege prohibitum fuerit
haereticum aut aliter infidelem in regione manere, qui talis in ipsa
repertus fuerit, tanquam legis humanae transgressor, poena vel supplicio
huic transgressioni eadem lege statutis, in hoc saeculo debet arceri."
The difference is slight between the two readings. One asserts that
Marsilius was tolerant in effect; the other denies that he was tolerant
in principle.
Mr. Lea does not love to recognise the existence of much traditional
toleration. Few lights are allowed to deepen his shadows. If a stream of
tolerant thought descended from the early ages to the time when the
companion of Vespucci brought his improbable tale from Utopia, then the
views of Bacon, of Dante, of Gerson cannot be accounted for by the
ascendency of a unanimous persuasion. It is because all men were born to
the same inheritance of enforced conformity that we glide so easily
towards the studied increase of pain. If some men were able to perceive
what lay in the other scale, if they made a free choice, after
deliberation, between well-defined and well-argued opinions, then what
happened is not assignable to invincible causes, and history must turn
from general and easy explanation to track the sinuosities of a tangled
thread. In Mr. Lea's acceptation of ecclesiastical history intolerance
was handed down as a rule of life from the days of St. Cyprian, and the
few who shrank half-hearted from the gallows and the flames were
exceptions, were men navigating craft of their own away from the track
of St. Peter. Even in his own age he is not careful to show that the
Waldenses opposed persecution, not in self-defence, but in the necessary
sequence of thought. And when he describes Eutychius as an obscure man,
who made a point at the fifth general council, for which he was rewarded
with the patriarchate of Constantinople--Eutychius, who was already
patriarch when the council assembled; and when he twice tears Formosus
from his grave to parade him in his vestments about Rome,--we may
suspect that the perfect grasp of documentary history from the twelfth
century does not reach backwards in a like degree.
If Mr. Lea stands aloft, in his own domain, as an accumulator, his
credit as a judge of testimony is nearly as high. The deciding test of
his critical sagacity is the masterly treatment of the case against the
Templars. They were condemned without mercy, by Church and State, by
priest and jurist, and down to the present day cautious examiners of
evidence, like Prutz and Lavocat, give a faltering verdict. In the face
of many credulous forerunners and of much concurrent testimony Mr. Lea
pronounces positively that the monster trial was a conspiracy to murder,
and every adverse proof a lie. His immediate predecessor, Schottmueller,
the first writer who ever knew the facts, has made this conclusion easy.
But the American does not move in the retinue of the Prussian scholar.
He searches and judges for himself; and in his estimate of the chief
actor in the tragedy, Clement V., he judges differently. He rejects, as
forgeries, a whole batch of unpublished confessions, and he points out
that a bull disliked by inquisitors is not reproduced entire in the
_Bullarium Dominicanum_. But he fails to give the collation, and is
generally jealous about admitting readers to his confidence, taking them
into consultation and producing the scales. In the case of Delicieux,
which nearly closes the drama of Languedoc, he consults his own sources,
independently of Haureau, and in the end adopts the marginal statement
in Limborch, that the pope aggravated the punishment. In other places,
he puts his trust in the _Historia Tribulationum_, and he shows no
reason for dismissing the different account there given of the death of
Delicieux: "Ipsum fratrem Bernardum sibi dari a summo pontifice
petierunt. Et videns summus pontifex quod secundum accusationes quas de
eo fecerant fratres minores justitiam postularent, tradidit eis eum.
Qui, quum suscepissent eum in sua potestate, sicut canes, cum vehementer
furiunt, lacerant quam capiunt bestiam, ita ipsi diversis afflictionibus
et cruciatibus laniaverunt eum. Et videntes quod neque inquisitionibus
nec tormentis poterant pompam de eo facere in populo, quam quaerebant,
in arctissimo carcere eum reduxerunt, ibidem eum taliter tractantes,
quod infra paucos menses, quasi per ignem et aquam transiens, de carcere
corporis et minorum et praedicatorum liberatus gloriose triumphans de
mundi principe, migravit ad coelos."
We obtain only a general assurance that the fate of Cecco d' Ascoli is
related on the strength of unpublished documents at Florence. It is not
stated what they are. There is no mention of the epitaph pronounced by
the pope who had made him his physician: "Cucullati Minores recentiorum
Peripateticorum principem perdiderunt." We do not learn that Cecco
reproached Dante with the same fatalistic leaning for which he himself
was to die: "Non e fortuna cui ragion non vinca." Or how they disputed:
"An ars natura fortior ac potentior existeret," and argument was
supplanted by experiment: "Aligherius, qui opinionem oppositam mordicus
tuebatur, felem domesticam Stabili objiciebat, quam ea arte instituerat,
ut ungulis candelabrum teneret, dum is noctu legeret, vel coenaret.
Cicchius igitur, ut in sententiam suam Aligherium pertraheret, scutula
assumpta, ubi duo musculi asservabantur inclusi, illos in conspectum
felis dimisit; quae naturae ingenio inemendabili obsequens, muribus vix
inspectis, illico in terram candelabrum abjecit, et ultro citroque
cursare ac vestigiis praedam persequi instituit." Either Appiani's
defence of Cecco d' Ascoli has escaped Mr. Lea, who nowhere mentions
Bernino's _Historia di tutte l' Heresie_ where it is printed; or he may
distrust Bernino for calling Dante a schismatic; or it may be that he
rejects all this as legend, beneath the certainty of history. But he
does not disdain the legendary narrative of the execution: "Tradition
relates that he had learned by his art that he should die between Africa
and Campo Fiore, and so sure was he of this that on the way to the stake
he mocked and ridiculed his guards; but when the pile was about to be
lighted he asked whether there was any place named Africa in the
vicinage, and was told that that was the name of a neighbouring brook
flowing from Fiesole to the Arno. Then he recognised that Florence was
the Field of Flowers, and that he had been miserably deceived." The
Florentine document before me, whether the same or another I know not,
says nothing about untimely mockery or miserable deception: "Aveva
inteso dal demonio dover lui morire di morte accidentale infra l'Affrica
e campo di fiore; per lo che cercando di conservare la reputazione sua,
ordino di non andar mai nelle parti d'Affrica; e credendo tal fallacia e
di potere sbeffare la gente, pubblicamente in Italia esecutava l'arte
della negromanzia, et essendo per questo preso in Firenze e per la sua
confessione essendo gia giudicato al fuoco e legato al palo, ne vedendo
alcun segno della sua liberazione, avendo prima fatto i soliti
scongiuri, domando alle persone che erano all'intorno, se quivi vicino
era alcun luogo che si chiamasse Affrica, et essendogli risposto di si,
cioe un fiumicello che correva ivi presso, il quale discende da Fiesole
ed e chiamato Affrica, considerando che il demonio per lo campo de'
fiori aveva inteso Fiorenza, e per l'Affrica quel fiumicello, ostinato
nella sua perfidia, disse al manigoldo che quanto prima attaccasse il
fuoco."
Mr. Lea thinks that the untenable conditions offered to the count of
Toulouse by the council of Arles in 1211 are spurious. M. Paul Meyer has
assigned reasons on the other side in his notes to the translation of
the _Chanson de la Croisade_, pp. 75-77; and the editors of Vaissete
(vi. 347) are of the same opinion as M. Paul Meyer. It happens that Mr.
Lea reads the _Chanson_ in the _editio princeps_ of Fauriel; and in this
particular place he cites the _Histoire du Languedoc_ in the old and
superseded edition. From a letter lately brought to light in the
_Archiv fuer Geschichte des Mittelalters_, he infers that the decree of
Clement V. affecting the privilege of inquisitors was tampered with
before publication. A Franciscan writes from Avignon when the new canons
were ready: "Inquisitores etiam heretice pravitatis restinguuntur et
supponuntur episcopis"--which he thinks would argue something much more
decisive than the regulations as they finally appeared. Ehrle, who
publishes the letter, remarks that the writer exaggerated the import of
the intended change; but he says it not of this sentence, but of the
next preceding. Mr. Lea has acknowledged elsewhere the gravity of this
Clementine reform. As it stands, it was considered injurious by
inquisitors, and elicited repeated protests from Bernardus Guidonis: "Ex
predicta autem ordinatione seu restrictione nonnulla inconvenientia
consecuntur, que liberum et expeditum cursum officii inquisitoris tam in
manibus dyocesanorum quam etiam inquisitorum diminuunt seu retardant....
Que apostolice sedis circumspecta provisione ac provida circumspectione
indigent, ut remedientur, aut moderentur in melius, seu pocius totaliter
suspendantur propter nonnulla inconvenientia que consecuntur ex ipsis
circa liberum et expeditum cursum officii inquisitoris."
The feudal custom which supplied Beaumarchais with the argument of his
play recruits a stout believer in the historian of the Inquisition, who
assures us that the authorities may be found on a certain page of his
_Sacerdotal Celibacy_. There, however, they may be sought in vain. Some
dubious instances are mentioned, and the dissatisfied inquirer is passed
on to the Fors de Bearn, and to Lagreze, and is informed that M. Louis
Veuillot raised an unprofitable dust upon the subject. I remember that
M. Veuillot, in his boastful scorn for book learning, made no secret
that he took up the cause because the Church was attacked, but got his
facts from somebody else. Graver men than Veuillot have shared his
conclusion. Sir Henry Maine, having looked into the matter in his quick,
decisive way, declared that an instance of the _droit du seigneur_ was
as rare as the Wandering Jew. In resting his case on the Pyrenees, Mr.
Lea shows his usual judgment. But his very confident note is a too easy
and contemptuous way of settling a controversy which is still wearily
extant from Spain to Silesia, in which some new fact comes to light
every year, and drops into obscurity, riddled with the shafts of
critics.