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A HISTORY OF THE INQUISITION
Vol. II.
A HISTORY OF
THE INQUISITION
OF
THE MIDDLE AGES.
BY
HENRY CHARLES LEA,
AUTHOR OF
“AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF SACERDOTAL CELIBACY,” “SUPERSTITION AND FORCE,” “STUDIES IN CHURCH HISTORY.”
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1901
Copyright, 1887, by Harper & Brothers.
——
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS.
BOOK II.—THE INQUISITION IN THE SEVERAL LANDS OF CHRISTENDOM.
CHAPTER I.—Languedoc. PageObstacles to Establishing the Inquisition
1Progress and Zeal of the Dominicans
6First Appointment of Inquisitors.—Tentative Proceedings
8Popular Resistance
12Position of Count Raymond
14Troubles at Toulouse.—Expulsion of the Inquisition
16Its Return and Increasing Vigor
21Suspended from 1238 to 1241
24Condition of the Country.—Rising of Trencavel
25Connection between Religion and State-craft
26Pierre Cella’s Activity in 1241-1242
30Heretic Stronghold of Montségur
34Massacre of Avignonet.—Its Unfortunate Influence
35Count Raymond’s Last Effort.—Triumph of the Inquisition
38Raymond Reconciled to the Church
40Fall of Montségur.—Heresy Defenceless
42Increased Activity of the Inquisition
44Raymond’s Persecuting Energy.—His Death
46Desperation of the Heretics.—Intercourse with Lombardy
49Supremacy of Inquisition.—It Attacks the Count of Foix
52Death of Alphonse and Jeanne in 1273
56Rise of the Royal Power.—Appeals to the King
57Popular Discontent.—Troubles at Carcassonne
58Philippe le Bel Intervenes.—His Fluctuating Policy
62Renewed Troubles at Carcassonne.—Submission in 1299
67Prosecutions at Albi, 1299-1300
71Inquisitorial Frauds.—Case of Castel Fabri
72Frère Bernard Délicieux
75Renewed Troubles.—Philippe Sends Jean de Pequigny
77Philippe Tries to Reform the Inquisition
79Troubles at Albi.—Conflict between Church and State
82Philippe Visits Languedoc.—His Plan of Reform
86Despair at Carcassonne.—Treasonable Projects
88Appeal to Clement V.—Investigation
92Abuses Recognized.—Reforms of Council of Vienne
94Election of John XXII.
98The Inquisition Triumphs.—Fate of Bernard Délicieux
99Recrudescence of Heresy.—Pierre Autier
104Bernard Gui Extirpates Catharism
107Case of Limoux Noir
108Results of the Triumph of the Inquisition
109Political Effects of Confiscation
110 CHAPTER II.—France.Inquisition Introduced in 1233 by Frère Robert le Bugre
113Opposed by the Prelates.—Encouraged by St. Louis
115Robert’s Insane Massacres and Punishment
116Inquisition Organized.—Its Activity in 1248
117Slender Records of its Proceedings
120Paris
Auto de féin 1310.—Marguerite la Porete
123Gradual Decadence.—Case of Hugues Aubriot
125The Parlement Assumes Superior Jurisdiction
130The University of Paris Supplants the Inquisition
135Moribund Activity during the Fifteenth Century
138Attempt to Resuscitate it in 1451
140It Falls into utter Discredit
144The French Waldenses.—Their Number and Organization
145Intermittent Persecution.—Their Doctrines
147François Borel and Gregory XI.
152Renewed Persecutions in 1432 and 1441
157Protected by Louis XI.—Humiliation of the Inquisition
158Alternations of Toleration and Persecution
159 CHAPTER III.—The Spanish Peninsula. Aragon.—Unimportance of Heresy there
162Episcopal and Lay Inquisition Tried in 1233
163Papal Inquisition Introduced.—Navarre Included
165Delay in Organization
167Greater Vigor in the Fourteenth Century
169Dispute over the Blood of Christ
171Nicolas Eymerich
174Separation of Majorca and Valencia
177Decline of Inquisition
178Resuscitation under Ferdinand the Catholic
179 Castile.—Inquisition not Introduced there
180Cathari in Leon
181Independent Legislation of Alonso the Wise
183Persecution for Heresy Unknown
184Case of Pedro of Osma in 1479
187 Portugal.—No Effective Inquisition there
188 Chapter IV.—ITALY.Political Conditions Favoring Heresy
191Prevalence of Unconcealed Catharism
192Development of the Waldenses
194Popular Indifference to the Church
196Gregory XI. Undertakes to Suppress Heresy
199Gradual Development of Inquisition
201Rolando da Cremona
202Giovanni Schio da Vicenza
203St. Peter Martyr
207He Provokes Civil War in Florence
210Death of Frederic II. in 1250.—Chief Obstacle Removed
213Assassination of St. Peter Martyr.—Use Made of it
214Rainerio Saccone
218Triumph of the Papacy.—Organization of the Inquisition
220Heresy Protected by Ezzelin and Uberto
223Ezzelin Prosecuted as a Heretic.—His Death
224Uberto Pallavicino
228The Angevine Conquest of Naples Revolutionizes Italy
231Triumph of Persecution
233Sporadic Popular Opposition
237Secret Strength of Heresy.—Case of Armanno Pongilupo
239Power of the Inquisition.—Papal Interference
242Naples.—Toleration Under Normans and Hohenstaufens
244The Inquisition Under the Angevines
245Sicily
248Venice.—Its Independence
249Inquisition Introduced in 1288, under State Supervision
251Decadence of Inquisition in Fourteenth Century
253Disappearance of the Cathari.—Persistence of the Waldenses
254Remnants of Catharism in Corsica and Piedmont
255Persecution of the Waldenses of Piedmont
259Decline of the Lombard Inquisition
269Venice.—Subjection of Inquisition to the State
273Tuscany.—Increasing Insubordination.—Case of Piero di Aquila
275Continued Troubles in Florence
280Tommasino da Foligno
281Decline of Inquisition in Central Italy
282The Two Sicilies.—Inquisition Subordinate to the State
284 CHAPTER V.—The Slavic Cathari.Efforts of Innocent III. and Honorius III. East of the Adriatic
290The Mendicant Orders Undertake the Task
293Bloody Crusades from Hungary
294Revival of Catharism
298Endeavors of Boniface VIII. and John XXII.
299Fruitlessness of the Work
301Reign of Stephen Tvrtko
303Catharism the State Religion
305Advance of the Turks
306Confusion Aggravated by Persecution
307The Cathari Aid the Turkish Conquest
313Disappearance of Catharism
314 CHAPTER VI.—Germany.Persecution of Strassburg Waldenses in 1212
316Spread of Waldensianism in Germany
318Mystic Pantheism.—The Amaurians and Ortlibenses
319Brethren of the Free Spirit or Beghards.—Luciferans
323Conrad of Marburg.—His Character and Career
325Gregory XI. Vainly Stimulates him to Persecution
329Gregory Commissions the Dominicans as Inquisitors
333The Luciferan Heresy
334Conrad’s Methods and Massacres
336Antagonism of the Prelates
338Assembly of Mainz.—Conrad’s Defeat and Murder
340Persecution Ceases.—The German Church Antagonistic to Rome
342The Reaction Keeps the Inquisition out of Germany
346Waldenses and Inquisition in Passau
347Growth of Heresy.—Virtual Toleration
348The Beguines, Beghards, and Lollards
350The Brethren of the Free Spirit
354Tendency to Mysticism.—Master Eckart
358John of Rysbroek, Gerard Groot, and the Brethren of the Common Life
360John Tauler and the Friends of God
362Persecution of the Brethren of the Free Spirit
367Antagonism between Louis of Bavaria and the Papacy
377Subservience of Charles IV.—The Black Death
378Gregarious Enthusiasm.—The Flagellants
380Clement VI. Condemns Them.—They Become Heretics
383Attempts to Introduce the Inquisition.—Successful in 1369
385Persecution of Flagellants and Beghards.—The Dancing Mania
390Beghards and Beguines Protected by the Prelates
394Speedy Decline of the Inquisition
395The Waldenses.—Their Extension and Persecution
396Renewed Persecution of the Beghards
401William of Hilderniss, and the Men of Intelligence
405The Flagellants.—The Brethren of the Cross
406Triumph of the Beghards at Constance
409Renewed Persecution
411Hussitism in Germany.—Coalescence with Waldenses
414Gregory of Heimburg
417Hans of Niklaushausen
418John von Ruchrath of Wesel
420Decay of the Inquisition.—John Reuchlin
423Its Impotence in the Case of Luther
425 CHAPTER VII.—Bohemia.Independence of Bohemian Church.—Waldensianism
427Inquisition Introduced in 1257.—Revived by John XXII.
428Growth of Waldensianism.—John of Pirna
430Conditions Favoring the Growth of Heresy.—Episcopal Inquisition
433The Precursors of Huss
436Wickliff and Wickliffitism
438John Huss Becomes the Leader of Reform
444Progress of the Revolution.—Rupture with Rome
445Convocation of the Council of Constance
453Motives Impelling Huss’s Presence
455His Reception and Treatment
457His Arrest.—Question of the Safe-conduct
460Communion in both Elements
471The Trial of Huss.—Illustration of the Inquisitorial Process
473Exceptional Audiences Allowed to Huss
484Extraordinary Efforts to Procure Recantation
486The Inevitable Condemnation and Burning
490Indignation in Bohemia
494Jerome of Prague.—His Trial and Execution
495 CHAPTER VIII.—The Hussites.Inquisitorial Methods Attempted in Bohemia
506Increasing Antagonism.—Fruitless Threats of Force
508Parties Form Themselves.—Calixtins and Taborites
511Sigismund Succeeds to the Throne.—Failure of Negotiations
514Crusade Preached in 1420.—Its Repulse
516Religious Extravagance.—Pikardi, Chiliasts
517The Four Articles of the Calixtins
519Creed of the Taborites
522Failure of Repeated Crusades.—The Hussites Retaliate
525Efforts to Reform the Church.—Council of Siena
527Council of Basle.—Negotiation with the Hussites a Necessity
530The Four Articles the Basis.—Accepted as the “Compactata”
533The Taborites Crushed at Lipan
535Difficulties Caused by Rokyzana’s Ambition
536Insincere Peace.—Sigismund’s Reactionary Reign and Death
538The Calixtins Secure Control under George Podiebrad
541Rome Disavows the Compactata.—Giacomo della Marca in Hungary
542The Use of the Cup the Only Distinction.—Capistrano Sent as Inquisitor
545His Projected Hussite Crusade Impeded by the Capture of Constantinople
551Efforts to Resist the Turks.—Death of Capistrano at Belgrade
552Steady Estrangement of Bohemia.—Negotiations and Attacks
555The Compactata Maintained in Spite of Rome
559The Bohemian Brethren Arise from the Remains of the Taborites
561Their Union with the Waldenses
564Their Growth and Constancy under Persecution
566 APPENDIX OF DOCUMENTS 569The following typographical errors were corrected by the etext transcriber:
1. Behind them now, moreover, was Gregory XI., the implacable and indefatigable persecutor of heresy=>Behind them now, moreover, was Gregory IX., the implacable and indefatigable persecutor of heresy
2. chair of St. Peter to be filled, and in 1216 Louis Hutin sent his=> chair of St. Peter to be filled, and in 1316 Louis Hutin sent his
If the faithful had imagined that the Treaty of 1229 had ended the contest with heresy they were quickly undeceived. The blood-money for the capture of heretics, promised by Count Raymond, was indeed paid when earned, for the Inquisition undertook to see that this was done, but the earning of it was dangerous. Nobles and burghers alike protected and defended the proscribed class, and those who hunted them were slain without mercy when occasion offered. The heretics continued as numerous as ever, and we have already seen the fruitless efforts put forth by the Cardinal Legate Romano and the Council of Toulouse. Even the university which Raymond bound himself to establish in Toulouse for the propagation of the faith, though it subsequently performed its work, was at first a failure. Learned theologians were brought from Paris to fill its chairs, but their scholastic subtleties were laughed at by the mocking Southrons as absurd novelties, and the heretics were bold enough to contend with them in debate. After a few years Raymond neglected to continue the stipends, and for a time the university was suspended.[5]
Urgent as was evidently the need of some organized body devoted exclusively to persecution, the appointment of the first inquisitors, in 1233, seems not to have been regarded as possessing any special significance. It was merely an experiment, from which no great results were anticipated. Frère Guillem Pelisson, who shared in the labors and perils of the nascent Inquisition, and who enthusiastically chronicled them, evidently does not consider it as an innovation worthy of particular attention. It was so natural an evolution from the interaction of the forces and materials of the period, and its future importance was so little suspected, that he passes over its founding as an incident of less moment than the succession to the Priory of Toulouse. “Frère Pons de Saint Gilles,” he says, “was made Prior of Toulouse, who bore himself manfully and effectively for the faith against the heretics, together with Frère Pierre Cella of Toulouse and Frère Guillem Arnaud of Montpellier, whom the lord pope made inquisitors against the heretics in the dioceses of Toulouse and Cahors. Also, the Legate Archbishop of Vienne made Frère Arnaud Catala, who was then of the Convent of Toulouse, inquisitor against the heretics.” Thus colorless is the only contemporary account of the establishment of the Holy Office.[9]
“If you will not believe this, look at that raging fire which is consuming your comrades. Now I wish you to reply to me in one word or two, for you will burn in the fire or join us.” Or again, “If you do not confess at once, the flames are already lighted; your name is proclaimed throughout the city with the blast of trumpets, and the people are gathering to see you burn.” In this terrible poem, Isarn only turned into verse what he felt in his own heart, and what he saw passing under his eyes almost daily.[15]
In Narbonne disturbances arose even more serious, although special inquisitors had not yet been sent there. In March, 1234, the Dominican prior, François Ferrer, undertook a volunteer inquisition and threw in prison a citizen named Raymond d’Argens. Fifteen years previous the artisans of the suburb had organized a confederation for mutual support called the Amistance, and this body arose as one man and forcibly rescued the prisoner. The archbishop, Pierre Amiel, and the viscount, Aimery of Narbonne, undertook to rearrest him, but found his house guarded by the Amistance, which rushed upon their followers with shouts of “Kill! kill!” and drove them away after a brief skirmish, in which the prior was badly handled. The archbishop had recourse to excommunication and interdict, but to little purpose, for the Amistance seized his domains and drove him from the city. Both sides sought allies. Gregory IX. appealed to King Jayme of Aragon, while a complaint from the consuls of Narbonne to those of Nimes looks as though they were endeavoring to effect a confederation of the cities against the Inquisition, of whose arbitrary and illegal methods of procedure they give abundant details. A kind of truce was patched up in October, but the troubles recommenced when the prior, in obedience to an order from his provincial, undertook a fresh inquisition, and made a number of arrests. In December a suspension was obtained by the citizens appealing to the pope, the king, and the legate, but in 1235 the people rose against the Dominicans, drove them from the city, sacked their convent, and destroyed all the records of the proceedings against heresy. Archbishop Pierre had cunningly separated the city from the suburb, about equal in population, by confining the inquisition to the latter, and this bore fruit in his securing the armed support of the former. The suburb placed itself under the protection of Count Raymond, who, nothing loath to aggravate the trouble, came there and gave to the people as leaders Olivier de Termes and Guiraud de Niort, two notorious defenders of heretics. A bloody civil war broke out between the two sections, which lasted until April, 1237, when a truce for a year was agreed upon. In the following August the Count of Toulouse and the Seneschal of Carcassonne were called in as arbitrators, and in March, 1238, a peace was concluded. That the Church triumphed is shown by the conditions which imposed upon some of the participators in the troubles a year’s service in Palestine or against the Moors of Spain.[17]
As early as 1230 he was taxed by the legate with inobservance of the conditions of the peace, and was forced to promise amendment of his ways. In 1232 we see Gregory IX. imperiously ordering him to be energetic in the duty of persecution, and, possibly in obedience to this, during the same year, we find him personally accompanying Bishop Raymond of Toulouse in a nocturnal expedition among the mountains, which was rewarded with the capture of nineteen perfected heretics, male and female, including one of their most important leaders, Pagan, Seigneur de Bécède, whose castle we saw captured in 1227. All these expiated their errors at the stake. Yet not long afterwards the Bishop of Tournay, as papal legate, assembled the prelates of Languedoc and formally cited Raymond before King Louis to answer for his slackness in carrying out the provisions of the treaty. The result of this was the drawing up of severe enactments against heretics, which he was obliged to promulgate in February, 1234. In spite of this, and of a letter from Gregory to the bishops ordering them no longer to excommunicate him so freely as before, he was visited within a twelvemonth with two fresh excommunications, for purely temporal causes. Then came fresh urgency from the pope for the extirpation of heresy, with which Raymond doubtless made a show of compliance, as his heart was bent on obtaining from Rome a restoration of the Marquisate of Provence. In this he was strongly backed by King Louis, whose brother Alfonse was to be Raymond’s heir, and towards the close of the year he sought an interview with Gregory and succeeded in effecting it. His reconciliation with the papacy appeared to be complete. His military reputation stood high, and Gregory made use of his visit to confide to him the leadership of the papal troops in a campaign against the rebellious citizens of Rome, who had expelled the head of the Church from their city. Though he did not succeed in restoring the pope, they parted on the best of terms, and he returned to Toulouse as a favored son of the Church, ready on all points to obey her behests.[19]
The epistle to Raymond was accompanied with one to the legate, instructing him to compel the count to make amends and perform the crusade. To Frederic II. he wrote forbidding him to call on Raymond for feudal services, as the count was under excommunication and virtually a heretic, to which the emperor replied, reasonably enough, that, so long as Raymond enjoyed possession of fiefs held under the empire, excommunication should not confer on him the advantage of release from their burdens. King Louis was also appealed to and was urged to hasten the marriage between his brother Alfonse and Raymond’s daughter Jeanne. With the spectre of all Europe in arms looming up before him Raymond could do nothing but yield. When, therefore, the legate summoned him to meet the inquisitors at Carcassonne he meekly went there and conferred with them and the bishops. The conference ended with his promise to return the bishop and friars and clergy to Toulouse, and this promise he kept. The friars were duly reinstated September 4, after ten months of exile. That Guillem Arnaud returned with them is a matter of course.[23]
The progress of the Inquisition, however, was not destined to be uninterrupted. Count Raymond, apparently reckless of the numerous excommunications under which he lay, so far from sailing for Palestine in March, had seized Marseilles, which was in rebellion against its suzerain, the Count of Provence. This aroused anew the indignation of Gregory, not only because of its interference with the war against the Saracens in Spain and the Holy Land, but because of the immunity which heretics would enjoy during the quarrel of the Christian princes. He peremptorily ordered Raymond to desist from his enterprise on Marseilles, and to perform his Crusader’s vow. An appeal was made to King Louis and Queen Blanche, whose intervention procured for Raymond not only a postponement of the crusade for another year, but an order to the legate empowering him to grant the count’s request to take the Inquisition entirely out of the hands of the Dominicans, if, on investigation, he should find justification for Raymond’s assertion that they were actuated by hatred towards himself. Fresh troubles had arisen at Toulouse. July 24, 1237, the inquisitors had again excommunicated the viguier and consuls, because they had not arrested and burned Alaman de Roaix and some other heretics, condemned in absentia, and Raymond was resolved, if possible, to relieve himself and his subjects from the cruel oppression to which they were exposed.[28]
The temporary suspension was unexpectedly prolonged, for, owing to hostilities with Frederic II., the cardinal-legate’s departure was postponed for a year. When at least he came, in 1239, he brought special orders to the inquisitors to obey his commands. What investigation he made and what were his conclusions we have no means of knowing, but this at least is certain, that until late in 1241 the Inquisition was effectually muzzled. No traces remain of its activity during these years, and Catholic and Catharan alike could draw a freer breath, relieved of apprehension from its ever-present supervision and the seemingly superhuman energy of the friars.[30]
We can readily conjecture the reasons which impelled its reinstatement. Doubtless the bishops were as negligent as of old, and looked after their temporalities to the exclusion of their duties in preserving the purity of the faith. Doubtless, too, the heretics, encouraged by virtual toleration, grew bolder, and cherished hopes of a return to the good old times, when, secure under their native princes, they could safely defy distant Paris and yet more distant Rome. The condition of the country was, in fact, by no means reassuring, especially in the regions which had become domains of the crown. The land was full of knights and barons who were more or less openly heretics, and who knew not when the blow might fall on them; of seigneurs who had been proscribed for heresy; of enforced converts who secretly longed to avow their hidden faith, and to regain their confiscated lands; of penitents burning to throw off the crosses imposed on them, and to avenge the humiliations which they had endured. Refugees, faidits, and heretic teachers were wandering through the mountains, dwelling in caverns and in the recesses of the forests. Scarce a family but had some kinsman to avenge, who had fallen in the field or had perished at the stake. The lack of prisons and the parsimony of the prelates had prevented a general resort to imprisonment, and the burnings had not been numerous enough to notably reduce the numbers of those who were of necessity bitterly opposed to the existing order. Suddenly, in 1240, an insurrection appeared, headed by Trencavel, son of that Viscount of Béziers whom we have seen entrapped by Simon de Montfort and dying opportunely in his hands, not without suspicion of poison. He brought with him from Catalonia troops of proscribed knights and gentlemen, and was greeted enthusiastically by the vassals and subjects of his house. Count Raymond, his cousin, held aloof; but his ambiguous conduct showed plainly that he was prepared to act on either side as success or defeat might render advisable. At first the rising seemed to prosper. Trencavel laid siege to his ancestral town of Carcassonne, and the spirit of his followers was shown when, on the surrender of the suburb, they slaughtered in cold blood thirty ecclesiastics who had received solemn assurance of free egress to Narbonne.[31]
The case of the Seigneurs de Niort, powerful nobles of Fenouillèdes, who had taken part in Trencavel’s insurrection, is interesting from the light which it throws upon the connection between the religion and the politics of the time, the difficulties which the Inquisition experienced in dealing with stubborn heresy and patriotism, and the damage inflicted on the heretic cause by the abortive revolt. The three brothers—Guillem Guiraud, Bernard Otho, and Guiraud Bernard—with their mother, Esclarmonde, had long been a quarry which both the inquisitors and the royal seneschal of Carcassonne had been eager to capture. Guillem had earned the reputation of a valiant knight in the wars of the crusades, and the brothers had managed to hold their castles and their power through all the vicissitudes of the time. In the general inquisition made by Cardinal Romano in 1229 they were described as among the chief leaders of the heretics, and the Council of Toulouse, at the same time, denounced two of them as enemies of the faith, and declared them excommunicate if they did not submit within fifteen days. In 1233 we hear of their having, not long before, laid waste with fire and sword the territories of Pierre Amiel, Archbishop of Narbonne, and they had assailed and wounded him while on his way to the Holy See, an exploit which led Gregory IX. to order the archbishop, in conjunction with the Bishop of Toulouse, to proceed against them energetically, while at the same time he invoked the secular arm by a pressing command to Count Raymond. It was probably under this authority that Bishop Raymond du Fauga and the Provost of Toulouse held an inquest on them, in which was taken the testimony of Pierre Amiel and of one hundred and seven other witnesses. The evidence was conflicting. The archbishop swore at great length as to the misdeeds of his enemies. They were all heretics. At one time they kept in their Castle of Dourne no less than thirty perfected heretics, and they had procured the assassination of André Chaulet, Seneschal of Carcassonne, because he had endeavored to obtain evidence against them. Other witnesses were equally emphatic. Bernard Otho on one occasion had silenced a priest in his own church, and had replaced him in the pulpit with a heretic, who had preached to the congregation. On the other hand, there were not wanting witnesses who boldly defended them. The preceptor of the Hospital at Puységur swore to the orthodoxy of Bernard Otho, and declared that what he had done for the faith and for peace had caused the death of a thousand heretics. A priest swore to having seen him assist in capturing heretics, and an archdeacon declared that he would not have remained in the land but for the army which Bernard raised after the death of the late king, adding that he believed the prosecution arose rather from hate than from charity. Nothing came of this attempt, and in 1234 we meet with Bernard Otho as a witness to a transaction between the royal Seneschal of Carcassonne and the Monastery of Alet; but when the Inquisition was established it was promptly brought to bear on the nobles who persisted in maintaining their feudal independence in spite of the fact that their immediate suzerain was now the king. In 1235 Guillem Arnaud, the inquisitor, while in Carcassonne, with the Archdeacon of Carcassonne as assistant, cited the three brothers and their mother to answer before him. Bernard Otho and Guillem obeyed the summons, but would confess nothing. Then the seneschal seized them; under compulsion Guillem made confession ample to warrant the inquisitor in sentencing him to perpetual prison (March 2, 1236), while Bernard, remaining obdurate, was condemned as a contumacious heretic (February 13, 1236), and the seneschal made preparations to burn him. Guiraud and his mother, Esclarmonde, were further condemned, March 2, for contumacious absence. Guiraud, however, who had wisely kept at large, began to fortify his castles and make warlike demonstrations so formidable that the Frenchmen scattered through the land took alarm. The Maréchal de la Foi, Levis of Mirepoix, stood firm, but the rest so worked upon the seneschal that the brothers were released, and the inquisitors had only the barren satisfaction of condemning the whole family on paper—a disappointment alleviated, it is true, by gathering for the stake a rich harvest of less formidable heretics, both clerks and laymen. Equally vain was an effort made two years later by the inquisitors to compel Count Raymond to carry out their sentence by confiscating the lands of the contumacious nobles, but the failure of Trencavel’s revolt forced them to sue for peace. Bernard Otho was again brought before the Inquisition, and Guillem de Niort made submission for himself and brothers, surrendering their castles to the king on condition that he would procure their reconciliation with the Church, and that of their mother, nephews, and allies, and, failing to accomplish this by the next Pentecost, that he would restore their castles and grant them a month of truce to put themselves in defence. King Louis ratified the treaty in January, 1241, but refused, when the time came, to restore the castles, only agreeing to pay over the revenues on consideration that the brothers should reside outside of Fenouillèdes. Guillem died in 1256, when Louis kept both castles and revenues, under pretext that the treaty had been a personal one with Guillem. The new order of things by this time had become so firmly established that no further resistance was to be dreaded. The extinction of this powerful family is a typical example of the manner in which the independence of the local seigneurie was gradually broken down by means of the Inquisition, and the authority of crown and Church was extended over the land.[34]
When such was the measure meted out to spontaneous penitents within the time of grace, with harsher measures in reserve for those subsequently detected, we can easily imagine the feelings inspired by the Inquisition in the whole population, without distinction of creed, and the terror common to all when the rumor spread that the inquisitors were coming. Scarce any one but was conscious of some act—perhaps of neighborly charity—that rendered him a criminal to the awful fanaticism of Pierre Cella or Guillem Arnaud. The heretics themselves would look to be imprisoned for life, with confiscation, or to be burned, or sent to Constantinople to support the tottering Latin Empire; while the Catholics were likely to fare little better on the distant pilgrimages to which they were sentenced, even though they were spared the sterner punishments or the humiliation of the saffron cross. Such a visit would bring, even to the faithful, the desolation of a pestilence. The inquisitors would pass calmly on, leaving a neighborhood well-nigh depopulated—fathers and mothers despatched to distant shrines for months or years, leaving dependent families to starve, or harvests ungathered to be the prey of the first-comer, all the relations of a life, hard enough at the best, disturbed and broken up. Even such a record as that of Pierre Cella’s sentences rendered within the time of grace shows but a portion of the work. A year or two later we find the Council of Narbonne beseeching the inquisitors to delay rendering sentences of incarceration, because the numbers of those flocking in for reconciliation after the expiration of the term of grace were so great that it would be impossible to raise funds for their maintenance, or to find stones enough, even in that mountainous land, to build prisons to contain them.[37] That a whole vicinage, when it had timely notice, should bind itself in a league to defeat the purpose of the inquisitors, as at Castelnaudary, must have been a frequent experience; that, sooner or later, despair should bring about a catastrophe like that of Avignonet was inevitable.
Montségur for years had been the Mount Tabor of the Cathari—the place of refuge in which, as its name implies, they could feel secure when safety could be hoped for nowhere else. It had been destroyed, but early in the century Raymond de Péreille had rebuilt it, and for forty years he held it as an asylum for heretics, whom he defended to the utmost of his ability. In 1232 the Catharan bishops Tento of Agen and Guillabert de Castres of Toulouse, with a number of ministers, foreseeing, in the daily increasing pressure of persecution, the necessity of some stronghold which should serve as an asylum, arranged with Raymond that he should receive and shelter all fugitives of the sect and guard the common treasure to be deposited there. His castle, situated in the territories of the marshals of Mirepoix, had never opened its gates to the Frenchmen. Its almost inaccessible peak had been sedulously strengthened with all that military experience could suggest or earnest devotion could execute. Ever since the persecutions of the Inquisition commenced we hear of those who fled to Montségur when they found the inquisitor’s hand descending upon them. Dispossessed knights, faidits of all kinds, brought their swords to its defence; Catharan bishops and ministers sought it when hard pressed, or made it a resting-place in their arduous and dangerous mission-work. Raymond de Péreille himself sought its shelter when, compromised by the revelations of Raymond Gros, he fled from Toulouse, in 1237, with his wife Corba; the devotion of his race to heresy being further proved by the fate of his daughter Esclarmonde, who perished for her faith at the stake, and by the Catharan episcopate of his brother Arnaud Roger. Such a stronghold in the hands of desperate men, fired with the fiercest fanaticism, was a menace to the stability of the new order in the State; to the Church it was an accursed spot whence heresy might at any moment burst forth to overspread the land again. Its destruction had long been the desire of all good Catholics, and Raymond’s pledge to King Louis, March 14, 1241, to capture it had been one of the conditions on which his suspicious relations with Trencavel had been condoned. In fact, he made some show of besieging it during the same year, but success would have been most damaging to the plans which he was nursing, and his efforts can scarce have been more than a cover for military preparations destined to a far different object. The French army, after the suppression of the rising, also laid siege to Montségur, but were unable to effect its reduction.[38]
The massacre of Avignonet came at a time peculiarly unfortunate for Count Raymond, who was nursing comprehensive and far-reaching plans, then ripe for execution, for the rehabilitation of his house and the independence of his land. He could not escape the responsibility for the catastrophe which public opinion everywhere attached to him. Although he had recently, on March 14, solemnly sworn to persecute heresy with his whole strength when, apparently sick unto death, he had sought absolution at the hands of the episcopal official of Agen, yet he was known to be hostile to the Dominicans as inquisitors, and had bitterly opposed the restoration of their functions. On May 1, just four weeks before the event, he had made a solemn declaration in the presence of numerous prelates and nobles to the effect that he had appealed to Rome against the commission of Dominican inquisitors by the provincial in his territories, and that he intended to prosecute that appeal. He protested that he earnestly desired the eradication of heresy, and urged the bishops to exercise energetically their ordinary power to that end, promising his full support to them and the execution of the law both as to confiscation and the death-penalty. He would even accept the friars as inquisitors provided they acted independently of their Orders, and not under the authority of their provincials. One of his baillis even threatened, in the church of Moissac, seizure of person and property for all who should submit to the penalties imposed by the inquisitors, as they were not authorized by the count to administer justice. Such being his position, it was inevitable that he should be regarded as an accomplice in the murders, and that the cause which he represented should suffer greatly in the revulsion of public feeling which it occasioned.[42]
The triumph of both had been secured. This ended the last serious effort of the South to recover its independence. Henceforth, under the treaty of Paris, it was to pass irrevocably into the hands of the stranger, and the Inquisition was to have unrestricted opportunity to enforce conformity in religion. It was in vain that Raymond again, at the Council of Béziers, April 20, 1243, summoned the bishops of his dominions—those of Toulouse, Agen, Cahors, Albi, and Rodez—urging them personally or through proper deputies, whether Cistercians, Dominicans, or Franciscans, to make diligent inquisition after heresy, and pledged the assistance of the secular arm for its extirpation. It was equally in vain that, immediately on the accession of Innocent IV., in June, a deputation of Dominicans, frightened by the warning of Avignonet, earnestly alleged many reasons why the dangerous burden should be lifted from their shoulders. The pope peremptorily refused, and ordered them to continue their holy labors, even at the risk of martyrdom.[44]
Still more menacing to the heretic cause was the reconciliation at last effected between Raymond and the papacy. In September, 1243, the count visited Italy, where he had an interview with Frederic II. in Apulia, and with Innocent in Rome. For ten years he had been under excommunication, and had carried on an unavailing struggle. He could no longer cherish illusions, and was doubtless ready to give whatever assurances might be required of him. On the other hand, the new pope was free from the predispositions which the long strife had engendered in Gregory IX. There seems to have been little difficulty in reaching an understanding, to which the good offices of Louis IX. powerfully contributed. December 2, Raymond was released from his various excommunications; January 1, 1244, the absolution was announced to King Louis and the prelates of the kingdom, who were ordered to publish it in all the churches, and January 7 the Legate Zoen was instructed to treat him with fatherly affection and not permit him to be molested. In all this absolution had only been given ad cautelam, or provisionally, for a special excommunication had been decreed against him as a fautor of heretics, after the massacre of Avignonet, by the inquisitors Ferrer and Guillem Raymond. Against this he had made a special appeal to the Holy See in April, 1243, and a special bull of May 16, 1244, was required for its abrogation. No conditions seem to have been imposed respecting the long-deferred crusade, and thenceforth Raymond lived in perfect harmony with the Holy See. Indeed, he was the recipient of many favors. A bull of March 18, 1244, granted him the privilege that for five years he should not be forced by apostolic letters to answer in judgment outside of his own dominions; another of April 27, 1245, took him, his family, and lands under the special protection of St. Peter and the papacy; and yet another of May 12, 1245, provided that no delegate of the Apostolic See should have power to utter excommunication or any other sentence against him without a special mandate. Besides this, one of April 21, 1245, imposed some limitations on the power of inquisitors, limitations which they seem never to have observed. Raymond was fairly won over. He had evidently resolved to accommodate himself to the necessities of the time, and the heretic had nothing further to hope or the inquisitor to fear from him. The preparation for increased and systematic vigor of operations is seen in the elaborate provisions, so often referred to above, of the Council of Narbonne, held at this period.[46]
Although the lives of the rest of the captives were guaranteed, they were utilized to the utmost. For months the inquisitors Ferrer and P. Durant devoted themselves to the examinations to secure evidence against heretics far and near, dead and alive. From the aged Raymond de Péreille to a child ten years of age, they were forced, under repeated interrogatories, to recall every case of adoration and heretication that they could remember, and page after page was covered with interminable lists of names of those present at sermons and consolamenta through a period extending back to thirty or forty years before, and embracing the whole land as far as Catalonia. Even those who had brought victual to Montségur and sold it were carefully looked after and set down. It can readily be conceived what an accession was made to the terrible records of the Inquisition, and how valuable was the insight obtained into the ramifications of heresy throughout the land during more than a generation—what digging up of bones would follow with confiscation of estates, and with what unerring certainty the inquisitors would be able to seize their victims and confound their denials. We can only guess at the means by which this information was extracted from the prisoners. Torture had not yet been introduced; life had been promised, and perpetual imprisonment was inevitable for such pronounced heretics; and when we see Raymond de Péreille himself, who had endured unflinchingly the vicissitudes of the crusades, and had bravely held out to the last, ransacking his memory to betray all whom he had ever seen adore a minister, we can imagine the horrors of the two months’’ preliminary captivity which had so broken his spirit as to bring him to this depth of degradation. Even a perfected heretic, Arnaud de Bretos, captured while flying to Lombardy, was induced to reveal the names of all who had given him shelter and attended his ministrations during his missionary wanderings.[48]
The fearless and indefatigable men who now performed the functions of inquisitor in Languedoc can rarely have taken advantage of this concession to weakness. Bernard de Caux, who so well earned the title of the hammer of heretics, was at this time the leading spirit of the Inquisition of Toulouse, after a term of service in Montpellier and Agen, and he had for colleague a kindred spirit in Jean de Saint-Pierre. Together they made a thorough inquest over the whole province, passing the population through a sieve with a completeness which must have left few guilty consciences unexamined. There is extant a fragmentary record of this inquest, covering the years 1245 and 1246, during which no less than six hundred places were investigated, embracing about one half of Languedoc. The magnitude of the work thus undertaken, and the incredible energy with which it was pushed, is seen in the enormous number of interrogatories recorded in petty towns. Thus at Avignonet there are two hundred and thirty; at Fanjoux, one hundred; at Mas-Saintes-Puelles, four hundred and twenty. M. Molinier, to whom we are indebted for an account of this interesting document, has not made an accurate count of the whole number of cases, but estimates that the total cannot fall far short of eight thousand to ten thousand. When we consider what all this involved in the duty of examination and comparison we may well feel wonder at the superhuman energy of these founders of the Inquisition; but we may also assume, as with the sentences of Pierre Cella, that the fate of the victims who were sifted out of this mass of testimony must have been passed upon with no proper or conscientious scrutiny. At least, however, they must have escaped the long and torturing delays customary in the later and more leisurely stages of the Inquisition. With such a record before us it is not easy to understand the complaint of the bishops of Languedoc, in 1245, that the Inquisition was too merciful, that heresy was increasing, and that the inquisitors ought to be urged to greater exertions. It was possibly in consequence of the lack of harmony thus revealed between the episcopate and the Inquisition that Innocent, in April of the same year, ordered the Inquisitors of Languedoc to proceed as usual in cases of manifest heresy, and in those involving slight punishment, while he directed them to suspend proceedings in matters requiring imprisonment, crosses, long pilgrimages, and confiscation until definite rules should be laid down in the Council of Lyons, which he was about to open. These questions, however, were settled in that of Béziers, which met in 1246, and issued a new code of procedure.[51]
The fate of Languedoc was now irrevocably sealed. Hitherto there had been hopes that perhaps Raymond’s inconstancy might lead him to retrace the steps of the last few years. Moreover, his subjects had shared in the desire, manifested in his repeated marriage projects, that he should have an heir to inherit the lands not pledged in succession to his daughter. He was but in his fifty-first year, and the expectation was not unreasonable that his line might be perpetuated and the southern nationality be preserved. All this was now seen to be a delusion, and the most sanguine Catharan could look forward to nothing but a life of concealment ending in prison or fire. Yet the heretic Church stubbornly held its own, though with greatly diminished numbers. Many of its members fled to Lombardy, where, even after the death of Frederic II., the civic troubles and the policy of local despots, such as Ezzelin da Romano, afforded some shelter from the Inquisition. Yet many remained and pursued their wandering missions among the faithful, perpetually tracked by inquisitorial spies, but rarely betrayed. These humble and forgotten men, hopelessly braving hardship, toil, and peril in what they deemed the cause of God, were true martyrs, and their steadfast heroism shows how little relation the truth of a religion bears to the self-devotion of its followers. Rainerio Saccone, the converted Catharan, who had the best means of ascertaining the facts, computes, about this time, that there were in Lombardy one hundred and fifty “perfected” refugees from France, while the churches of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Albi, including that of Agen, then nearly destroyed, numbered two hundred more. These figures would indicate that a very considerable congregation of believers still existed in spite of the systematic and ruthless proscription of the past twenty years. Their earnestness was kept alive, not only by the occasional and dearly-prized visits of the travelling ministers, but by the frequent intercourse which was maintained with Lombardy. Until the disappearance of the sect on this side of the Alps, there is, in the confessions of penitents, perpetual allusion to these pilgrimages back and forth, which kept up the relations between the refugees and those left at home. Thus, in 1254, Guillem Fournier, in an interrogatory before the Inquisition of Toulouse, relates that he started for Italy with five companions, including two women. His first resting-place was at Coni, where he met many heretics; then at Pavia, where he was hereticated by Raymond Mercier, former deacon of Toulouse. At Cremona he lived for a year with Vivien, the much-loved Bishop of Toulouse, with whom he found a number of noble refugees. At Pisa he stayed for eight months; at Piacenza he again met Vivien, and he finally returned to Languedoc with messages from the refugees to their friends at home. In 1300, at Albi, Étienne Mascot confesses that he had been sent to Lombardy by Master Raymond Calverie to bring back Raymond André, or some other perfected heretic. At Genoa he met Bertrand Fabri, who had been sent on the same errand by Guillem Golfier. They proceeded together and met other old acquaintances, now refugees, who conducted them to a spot where, in a wood, were several houses of refuge for heretics. The lord of the place gave them a Lombard, Guglielmo Pagani, who returned with them. In 1309 Guillem Falquet confessed at Toulouse to having been four times to Como, and even to Sicily, organizing the Church. He was caught while visiting a sick believer, and condemned to imprisonment in chains, but managed to escape in 1313. At the same time was sentenced Raymond de Verdun, who had likewise been four times to Lombardy.[55]
The last shadow of open resistance was dissipated in the year 1255. After the fall of Montségur the proscribed and disinherited knights, the faidits, and the heretics had sought to establish among the mountains some stronghold where they could feel safe for a moment. Driven from one retreat after another, they finally took possession of the castle of Quéribus, in the Pyrenees of Fenouillèdes. In the early spring of 1255 this last refuge was besieged by Pierre d’Auteuil, the royal Seneschal of Carcassonne. The defence was stubborn. May 5 the seneschal appealed to the bishops sitting in council at Béziers to give him assistance, as they had done so energetically at Montségur. The reply of the prelates was commendably cautious. They were not bound, they said, to render military service to the king, and when they had joined his armies it had been by command of a legate or of their primate, the Archbishop of Narbonne. Nevertheless, as common report described Quéribus as a receptacle of heretics, thieves, and robbers, and its reduction was a good work for the faith and for peace, they would each one, without derogating from his rights, furnish such assistance as seemed to him fitting. It may be assumed from this that the seneschal had to do the work unaided; in fact, he complained to the king that the prelates rather impeded than assisted him, but by August the place was in his hands, and nothing remained for the outlaws but the forest and the caverns. In that savage region the dense undergrowth afforded many a hiding-place, and an attempt was made to cut away the briers and thorns which served as shelter for ruined noble and hunted Catharan. The work was undertaken by a certain Bernard, who thence acquired the name of Espinasser or thorn-cutter. Popular hatred has preserved his remembrance, and expresses its sentiment in a myth which gibbets him in the moon.[57]
When such were the persecutions to which the greatest were exposed it is easy to understand the tyranny exercised over the whole land by the irresponsible power of the inquisitors. No one was so loftily placed as to be beyond their reach, no one so humble as to escape their spies. When once they had cause of enmity with a man there was no further peace for him. The only appeal from them was to the pope, and not only was Rome distant, but the avenue to it lay, as we have seen, in their own hands. Human wickedness and folly have erected, in the world’s history, more violent despotisms, but never one more cruel, more benumbing, or more all-pervading.
In 1271 Alphonse and Jeanne, who had accompanied St. Louis in his unlucky crusade to Tunis, died without issue, during the homeward journey. The line of Raymond was thus extinct, and the land passed irrevocably to the crown. Philippe le Hardi took possession even of the territories which Jeanne had endeavored, as was her right, to alienate by will, and though he surrendered the Agenois to Henry III., he succeeded in retaining Querci. No opposition was made to the change of masters. When, October 8, 1271, Guillaume de Cobardon, royal Seneschal of Carcassonne, issued his orders regulating the new régime, one of the first things thought of was the confiscations. All castles and villages which had been forfeited for heresy were taken into the king’s hand, without prejudice to the right of those to whom they might belong, thus throwing the burden of proof upon all claimants, and cutting out assigns under alienations. In 1272 Philippe paid a visit to his new territories; it was designed to be peaceful, but some violences committed by Roger Bernard IV. of Foix caused him to come at the head of an army, with which he easily overcame the resistance of the count, occupied his lands, and threw him into a dungeon. Released in 1273, the count in 1276 rendered such assistance in the invasion of Navarre that Philippe took him into favor and restored his castles, on his renouncing all allegiance to Aragon. Thus the last show of independence in the South was broken down, and the monarchy was securely planted on its ruins.[62]
It was impossible that this metamorphosis in the national institutions could be effected without greatly modifying the relations between Church and State. Thus even the saintliness of Louis IX. did not prevent him from defending himself and his subjects from ecclesiastical domination in a spirit very different from that which any French monarch had ventured to exhibit since the days of Charlemagne. The change became still more manifest under his grandson, Philippe le Bel. Though but seventeen years of age when he succeeded to the throne in 1286, his rare ability and vigorous temper soon led him to assert the royal power in incisive fashion. He recognized, within the boundaries of his kingdom, no superior, secular or spiritual. Had he entertained any scruples of conscience, his legal counsellors could easily remove them. To such men as Pierre Flotte and Guillaume de Nogaret the true position of the Church was that of subjection to the State, as it had been under the successors of Constantine, and in their eyes Boniface VIII. was to their master scarce more than Pope Vigilius had been to Justinian. Few among the revenges of time are more satisfying than the catastrophe of Anagni, in 1303, when Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna laid hands on the vicegerent of God, and Boniface passionately replied to Nogaret’s reproaches, “I can patiently endure to be condemned and deposed by a Patarin”—for Nogaret was born at St. Felix de Caraman, and his ancestors were said to have been burned as Cathari. If this be true he must have been more than human if he did not feel special gratification when, at command of his master, he appeared before Clement V. with a formal accusation of heresy against Boniface, and demanded that the dead pope’s bones be dug up and burned. The citizens of Toulouse recognized him as an avenger of their wrongs when they placed his bust in the gallery of their illustrious men in the Hôtel-de-ville.[63]
The secretly guilty were quite sufficiently influential, and the innocent sufficiently apprehensive, to keep up the agitation which had been commenced, and at last it began to bear fruit. A new inquisitor of Carcassonne, Nicholas d’Abbeville, was quite as cruel and arbitrary as his predecessors, and when the people prepared an appeal to the king he promptly threw into jail the notary who drew up the paper. In their desperation they disregarded this warning; a deputation was sent to the court, and this time they were listened to. May 13, 1291, Philippe addressed a letter to his Seneschal of Carcassonne reciting the injuries inflicted by the Inquisition on the innocent through the newly-invented system of torture, by means of which the living and the dead were fraudulently convicted and the whole land scandalized and rendered desolate. The royal officials were therefore ordered no longer to obey the commands of the inquisitors in making arrests, unless the accused be a confessed heretic or persons worthy of faith vouch for his being publicly defamed for heresy. A month later he reiterated these orders even more precisely, and announced his intention of sending deputies to Languedoc armed with full authority to make permanent provision in the matter. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of these manifestoes as marking a new era in the relations between the temporal and spiritual authorities. For far less than this all the chivalry and scum of Europe had been promised salvation if they would drive Raymond of Toulouse from his inheritance.[67]
Meanwhile, the exigencies of Italian politics caused Boniface suddenly to retrace his steps. His quarrel with the Cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna rendered it advisable to propitiate Philippe. In May, 1297, he assented to a tithe conceded to the king by his bishops, and in the bull Noveritis (July, 1297) he exempted France from the operation of the Clericis laicos, while in Licet per speciales (July, 1298) he withdrew his arrogant pretension imperatively to prolong the armistice between France and England. A truce was thus patched up with Philippe, who hastened to manifest his good-will to the Holy See by abandoning his subjects again to the inquisitors. In the Liber Sextus of the Decretals, published by Boniface March 3, 1298, the pope included, with customary imperiousness, a canon commanding the absolute obedience of all secular officials to the orders of inquisitors under penalty of excommunication, which if endured for a year carried with it condemnation for heresy. This was his answer to the French monarch’s insubordinate legislation, and Philippe at the moment was not inclined to contest the matter. In September he meekly enclosed the canon to his officials with instructions to obey it in every point, arresting and imprisoning all whom inquisitors or bishops might designate, and punishing all whom they might condemn. A letter of Frère Arnaud Jean, Inquisitor of Pamiers, dated March 2, of the same year, assuring the Jews that they need dread no novel measures of severity, would seem to indicate that the royal protection had been previously withdrawn from them. The good understanding between king and pope lasted until 1300, when the quarrel broke out afresh with greater acrimony than ever. In December of that year the provisions of Clericis laicos were renewed by the bull Nuper ex rationalibus, followed by the short one, of which the authenticity is disputed, Scire te volumus, asserting Philippe’s subjection in temporal affairs and calling forth his celebrated rejoinder, Sciat tua maxima fatuitas. The strife continued with increasing violence till the seizure of Boniface at Anagni, September 8, 1303, and his death in the following month.[73]
For some years the Inquisition of Carcassonne was suspended. As soon as secular support was withdrawn public opinion was too strong, and it succumbed. This lasted until the truce between king and pope again placed the royal power at the disposal of the inquisitors. In their despair the citizens then sent envoys to Boniface VIII., with Aimeric Castel at their head, supported by a number of Franciscans. Boniface listened to their complaints and proposed to depute the Bishop of Vicenza as commissioner to examine and report, but the papal referendary, afterwards Cardinal of S. Sabina, required a bribe of ten thousand florins as a preliminary. It was promised him, but Aimeric, having secured the good offices of Pierre Flotte and the Duke of Burgundy, thought he could obtain his purpose for less, and refused to pay it. When Boniface heard of the refusal he angrily exclaimed, “We know in whom they trust, but by God all the kings in Christendom shall not save the people of Carcassonne from being burned, and specially the father of that Aimeric Castel!” The negotiation fell through, and Nicholas d’Abbeville had his triumph. A large portion of the citizens were wearied with the disturbances, and were impatient under the excommunication which rested on the community. The prosperity of the town was declining, and there were not wanting those who predicted its ruin. The hopelessness of further resistance was apparent, and matters being thus ripe for a settlement, a solemn assembly was held, April 27, 1299, when the civic magistrates met the inquisitor in the presence of the Bishops of Albi and Béziers, Bertrand de Clermont, Inquisitor of Toulouse, the royal officials, sundry abbots and other notables. Nicholas dictated his own terms for the absolution asked at his hands, nor were they seemingly harsh. Those who were manifest heretics, or specially defamed, or convicted by legal proof must take their chance. The rest were to be penanced as the bishops and the Abbot of Fontfroide might advise, excluding confiscation and personal or humiliating penalties. All this was reasonable enough from an ecclesiastical point of view, but so deep-seated was the distrust, or so strong the heretical influence, that the people asked twenty-four hours for consideration, and on reassembling the next day refused the terms. Six months passed, their helplessness and isolation each day becoming more apparent, until, October 8, they reassembled, and the consuls asked for absolution in the name of the community. Nicholas was not severe. The penance imposed on the town was the building of a chapel in honor of St. Louis, which was accomplished in the year 1300 at the cost of ninety livres Tournois. The consuls, in the name of the community, secretly abjured heresy. Twelve of the most guilty citizens were reserved for special penances, viz., four of the old consuls, four councillors, two advocates, and two notaries. Of these the fate was doubtless deplorable. Chance has preserved to us the sentence passed on one of the authors of the troubles, Guillem Garric, by which we find that he rotted in the horrible dungeon of Carcassonne for twenty-two years before he was brought forward for judgment in 1321, when in consideration of his long confinement he was given the choice between the crusade and exile, and the crushed old man fell on his knees and gave thanks to Jesus Christ and to the inquisitors for the mercy vouchsafed him. Some years later intense excitement was created when Frère Bernard Délicieux obtained sight of the agreement, and discovered that the consuls had been represented in it as confessing that the whole community had given aid to manifest heretics, that they had abjured in the name of all, and thus that all citizens were incapacitated for office and were exposed to the penalties of relapse in case of further trouble. This excited the people to such a point that the inquisitor, Geoffroi d’Ablis, was obliged to issue a solemn declaration, August 10, 1303, disclaiming any intention of thus taking advantage of the settlement; and notwithstanding this, when King Philippe came to Carcassonne in 1305 the agreement was pronounced fraudulent, the seneschal Gui Caprier was dismissed for having affixed his seal to it, and confessed that he had been bribed to do so by Nicholas d’Abbeville with a thousand livres Tournois.[76]
The whole country was ripe for revolt. The revival of Philippe’s quarrel with Boniface soon gave assurance that help might be expected from the throne; but if this should fail there would be scant hesitation on the part of desperate men in looking for some other sovereign who would lend an ear to their complaints. The arrest and trial for treason of the Bishop of Pamiers, in 1301, shows us what was then the undercurrent of popular feeling in Languedoc, where the Frenchman was still a hated stranger, the king a foreign despot, and the people discontented and ready to shift their allegiance to either England or Aragon whenever they could see their advantage in it. The fragile tenure with which the land was still held by the Kings of Paris must be kept in view if we would understand Philippe’s shifting policy.[78]
The next step was to take an appeal to the Holy See and ask for “Apostoli,” but this was no easy matter. So general was the terror inspired by Nicholas that the doctor of decretals, Jean de Penne, to whom they applied to draw the paper, refused unless his name should be kept inviolably secret, and nineteen years afterwards Bernard when on trial refused to reveal it until compelled to do so. To obtain a notary to authenticate the appeal was still harder. All those in Carcassonne absolutely refused, and it was found necessary to bring one from a distance, so that it was not until July 16 that the document was ready for service. How seriously, indeed, all parties regarded what should have been a very simple business is shown by the winding-up of the appeal, which places, until the case is decided, not only the body of Castel Fabri, but the appellants and the whole Franciscan convent, under the protection of the Holy See. When they went to serve the instrument on Nicholas the doors, as before, were found closed and entrance could not be effected. It was therefore read in the street and left tacked on the door, to be taken down and treasured and brought forward in evidence against Bernard in 1319. We have no further records of the case, but that the appeal was ineffectual is visible in the fact that in 1322-3 the accounts of Arnaud Assalit show that the royal treasury was still receiving an income from the confiscated estates of Castel Fabri; while in 1329 the still unsatisfied vengeance of the Inquisition ordered the bones of his wife Rixende to be exhumed.[81]
The coup-de-main executed on the so-called heretics of Albi, in December, 1299, and the early months of 1300, had excited consternation too general for the matter to be passed over. King Philippe’s quarrel with Boniface was breaking out afresh, and he might not be averse to making his subjects feel that they had a protector in the throne. With the advice of his council an investigation was ordered, and confided to the Bishops of Béziers and Maguelonne, but the inquisitors arrogantly and persistently refused to allow the secrets of their office to be invaded. This was not calculated to remove popular disquiet, and in 1301 Philippe sent to Languedoc two officials armed with supreme powers, under the name of Reformers. As the royal authority extended and established itself, special deputies for the investigation and correction of abuses were frequently despatched to the provinces. In the present case those who came to Languedoc perhaps had for their chief business the arrest of the Bishop of Pamiers, accused of treasonable practices, but the colorable pretext for their mission was the correction of inquisitorial abuses. One of them, Jean de Pequigny, Vidame of Amiens, was a man of high character for probity and sagacity; the other was Richard Nepveu, Archdeacon of Lisieux, of whom we hear little in the following years, except that he quietly slipped into the vacant episcopate of Béziers. He must have done his duty to some extent, however, for Bernard Gui tells us that he died in 1309 of leprosy, as a judgment of God for his hostility to the Inquisition.[84]
The Reformers, meanwhile, had sent for Bernard Délicieux, who was then quietly performing his duties as lector in the convent of Narbonne. He must already have made himself conspicuous in the affair of Castel Fabri, and was evidently regarded as a desirable ally in the impending struggle. According to his own story he advised Pequigny to let the Inquisition alone, as experience had shown that effort was useless; but on being called again to Toulouse on some business connected with the Priory of la Daurade, and having to visit Paris in connection with the will of Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, it was arranged, at Pequigny’s suggestion, that he should accompany a deputation which the citizens of Albi were sending to the king to invoke his active intervention. The court was at Senlis, whither they repaired, and there came also Pequigny to justify himself, and Frère Foulques with several Dominicans, eager to establish the innocence of the Inquisition.[86]
All this, of course, gave little satisfaction; nor were the people placated by the removal of Nicholas d’Abbeville, for he was succeeded in the Inquisition of Carcassonne by Geoffroi d’Ablis, who was as energetic and unsparing as his predecessor, and who brought royal letters, dated January 1, 1303, ordering all officials to render him the customary obedience. Popular excitement grew more and more threatening, and as Albi had no local inquisitors of its own, being within the jurisdiction of the tribunal of Carcassonne, the discontent vented itself on the Dominicans, who were regarded as the representatives of the hated tribunal. On the first Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1302, when the friars went as usual to preach in the churches they were violently ejected and assailed with cries of “Death to the traitors!” and deemed themselves at length fortunate in being able to regain their convent. This state of things continued for several years, during which they scarce dared to show themselves in the streets, and were never secure from insult. All alms and burial-fees were withdrawn, and the people refused even to attend mass in their church. The names of Dominic and Peter Martyr were erased from the crucifix at the principal gate of the town, and were replaced with those of Pequigny and Nepveu, and of two citizens who were leaders in the disturbances—Arnaud Garsia and Pierre Probi of Castres.[90]
Benedict XI. had given other proofs of partisanship. It is true that in answer to the complaints of the oppressed people he appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the matter, but there is no trace of their labors, which were probably cut short by his death, July 7, 1304. No commissioners of his selection would have been likely to report adversely to the Inquisition, for he manifested his prejudgment by ordering the Minister of Aquitaine, under pain of forfeiture of office and future disability, to arrest Frère Bernard without warning and send him under sufficient guard to the papal court, as a fautor of heretics and presumably a heretic. The leading citizens of Albi, including G. de Pesenches the viguier and Gaillard Étienne the royal judge, who had sought to aid Pequigny, were also involved in the papal condemnation. The Minister of Aquitaine intrusted to Frère Jean Rigaud the execution of the arrest, which he duly performed, June, 1304, in the convent of Carcassonne, adding an excommunication when Bernard, encouraged by the active sympathy of the people, delayed in obeying the papal summons. He never went, and it is a curious illustration of Franciscan tendencies to see that the minister absolved him from the excommunication, and that the provincial chapter of his Order at Albi decided that he had done all that was requisite, though perhaps Benedict’s death in July had relieved them from fears as to the immediate consequences of their contumacy.[95]
At Albi the change had the wished-for effect. No more heretics were found and no further prosecutions were required. Yet the refusal of the king to entertain any project of reform other than his previous one of curbing the Inquisition with an illusory episcopal supervision was a grievous disappointment. Men naturally argued that if the Dominicans had done right they ought not to be insulted by the proposed episcopal co-operation; and if they had done wrong they ought to be replaced. If any change was called for, the projected one was insufficient. So many hopes had been built upon the royal presence in the land, that the result caused universal dismay, which was not relieved by Philippe’s subsequent action. When he visited Carcassonne he was urged to see the unfortunate captives whose persecution had been the prominent cause of the troubles, but he refused, and sent his brother Louis to look at them. Worse than all, the citizens had designed to propitiate him and demonstrate their loyalty by offering him some elaborate silver vessels. These were yet in the hands of the gold-smiths of Montpellier when the royal party came to Carcassonne, so they were sent after him to Béziers, where the presentation was made, a portion to him and the rest to the queen. She accepted the offering, but he not only rejected it, but, when he learned what the queen had done, forced her to return the present. This threw the consuls of Carcassonne into despair. Offerings of this kind from municipalities to the sovereign were so customary and their gracious acceptance so much a matter of course, that refusal in this instance seemed to argue some most unfavorable intentions on the part of the king, which was not unlikely, seeing that Elias Patrice, the leading citizen of Carcassonne, had plainly told him when there that if he did not render them speedy justice against the Inquisition they would be forced to seek another lord, and when Philippe ordered him from his presence the citizens obeyed Patrice’s command to remove the decorations from the streets. Imagining that he had been won over by the Dominicans and that his protection would be withdrawn, the prospect of being abandoned to the mercy of the Inquisition seemed so terrible that they wildly declared that if they could not find another lord to protect them they would burn the town and with the inhabitants seek some place of refuge. In consultation with Frère Bernard it was hastily determined to offer their allegiance to Ferrand, son of the King of Majorca.
The Sacred College, monopolized by electioneering intrigues, paid no heed to the imploring prayer of the Albigensian clergy, but when the year’s turmoil was ended by the triumph of the French party in the election of Clement V. the hopes raised by the death of his predecessor might reasonably seem destined to fruition. Bertrand de Goth, Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, was a Gascon by birth, and, though an English subject, was doubtless more familiar than the Italians with the miseries and needs of Languedoc. His transfer of the papacy to French soil was also of good augury. Hardly had the news of his election reached Albi, when Frère Bernard was busy in organizing a mission to represent to him in the name of the city the necessity of relief, and when he visited Toulouse the wives of the prisoners, still languishing in confinement, were taken thither to make their woes emphatically known. Hardly had he been consecrated at Lyons when these complaints poured in and were substantiated by two Dominicans, Bertrand Blanc and François Aimeric, who were as emphatic as the representatives of Albi in their denunciations of inquisitorial methods and abuses. Geoffroi d’Ablis hurried thither from Carcassonne to defend himself in such haste that he left no one to take his place, and was obliged to send from Lyons, September 29, 1305, a commission to Jean de Faugoux and Gerald de Blumac to act in his stead. In this paper his fiery fanaticism breathes forth in his denunciations of the horrid beasts, the cruel beasts, who are ravaging the vineyard of the Lord, and who are to be tracked to their dens and extirpated with unsparing rigor.[101]
If there were any further formal proceedings in this matter, which thus assumed the shape of a litigation between the people and the Inquisition, they have not reached us. Yet the cardinals, before continuing their journey, took some steps which showed that they were convinced of the truth of the accusations. They visited the prison of Carcassonne, and caused the prisoners, forty in number, of whom three were women, to be brought before them. Some of these were sick, others worn with age, and all tearfully complaining of the horrors of their lot, the insufficiency of food and bedding, and the cruelty of their keepers. The cardinals were moved to dismiss all the jailers and attendants except the chief, and to put the prison under the control of the Bishop of Carcassonne. It is significant that the oath imposed on the new officials bound them never to speak to a prisoner except in the presence of an associate, and not to steal any of the food destined for those under their charge. One of the cardinals visited the prison of the Bishop of Albi, where he found the jailers well spoken of, but was shocked with the condition of the prisoners. Many of them were in chains and all in narrow, dark cells, where some of them had been confined for five years or more without being yet condemned. He ordered all chains removed, that light should be introduced in the cells, and that new and less inhuman ones should be built within a month. As regards general amelioration in inquisitorial proceedings, the only regulation which they issued was a confirmation of Philippe’s expedient, requiring the co-operation of the diocesan with the inquisitor, and this was withdrawn by Clement, August 12, 1308, in an apologetic bull declaring that the cardinals had exceeded his intentions.[103]
One case may indeed be cited to show a special relaxation of the procedure against heretics. Philippe’s hatred of Boniface VIII. was undying, and could not be quenched even by the miserable end of his enemy. Yet the one thing which he failed to wring from his tool in the papal chair was the condemnation of the memory of Boniface as a heretic. After repeated efforts he compelled Clement to take testimony on the subject, and a cloud of witnesses were produced who swore with minute detail to the unbelief of the late pope in the immortality of the soul, and in all the doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement, and to his worship of demons, to his cynical and unnatural lasciviousness, and to the common fame which existed in the community as to his evil beliefs and habits. The witnesses were reputable churchmen for the most part, and their evidence was precise. A tithe of such testimony would have sufficed to burn the bones and disinherit the heirs of a score of ordinary culprits, but for once the recognized rules of procedure were set aside. Philippe was forced to desist from the pursuit, though Clement in his final bull of April 27, 1311, declared that the king and his witnesses had been actuated solely by zeal for the Church, and the affair fell through. The pretensions put forth by Boniface in his offensive decretals were formally withdrawn, and Guillaume de Nogaret obtained his long-withheld absolution.[107]
Clement died at Carpentras April 20, 1314, carrying with him the shame and guilt of the ruin of the Templars, and was followed in about seven months (November 29) by his tempter and accomplice, Philippe le Bel. The cardinals on whom devolved the choice of a successor to St. Peter were torn with dissensions. The Italians demanded that the election should be held in the Eternal City. The French, or Gascons, as they were called, insisted on the observance of the rule that the selection should be made on the spot where the last pontiff had expired, knowing that in Italy they would be exposed to the same insults and annoyances as were inflicted in France on their Italian brethren. Shut up in the episcopal palace of Carpentras, the conclave awaited in vain the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, even though those outside tried the gentle expedient of cutting off the food of the members and pillaging their houses. The situation grew so insupportable that, as a last desperate resort, on July 23, 1314, the Gascon faction, under the lead of Clement’s nephews, set fire to the palace and threatened the Italians with death, so that the latter were glad to escape with their lives by breaking a passage through the rear wall. Two years passed away without the election of a visible head of the Church, and the faithful might well fear that they had seen the last of the popes. The French court, however, had found itself so well abetted by a French pope that its policy required the chair of St. Peter to be filled, and in 1316 Louis Hutin sent his brother, Philippe le Long, then Count of Poitiers, to Lyons with orders to get the cardinals together. To accomplish this Philippe was obliged to swear that he would neither do them violence nor imprison them, and they, having thus secured their independence, were no more disposed to accord than before. For six months the business thus lagged without prospect of result, when Philippe received the news of the sudden death of his brother, and that the widowed queen claimed to be pregnant. The prospect of a vacant throne, or at least of a regency, awaiting him in Paris rendered further dallying in Lyons insupportable, nor could he well depart without bringing his errand to a successful issue. Hastily counselling with his lawyers, it was discovered that his oath was unlawful and therefore not to be observed. Consequently he invited the reverend fathers to a colloquy in the Dominican convent, and when they were thus safely hived he sternly told them that they should not depart till they had chosen a pope. His guards blocked every entrance, and he hastened off to Paris, leaving them to deliberate in captivity. Thus entrapped they made a merit of necessity, though forty days were still required before they proclaimed Jacques d’Ozo, Cardinal of Porto, as the Vicar of Christ—the Italians having been won over by his oath that he would never mount a horse or mule except to go to Rome. This oath he kept during his whole pontificate of eighteen years, for he slipped down the Rhone to Avignon by boat, ascended on foot to the palace, and never left it except to visit the cathedral which adjoined it. Such a process of selection was not likely to result in the evolution of a saint, and John XXII. was its natural exponent. His distinguished learning and vigorous abilities had elevated him from the humblest origin, while his boundless ambition and imperious temper provoked endless quarrels from which his daring spirit never shrank.[108]
Whether the citizens of Albi whose arrest in 1299 gave rise to so many troubles were really heretics or not cannot now be determined. Their confessions were precise and detailed, but, as their defenders alleged, the Inquisition had ample means of extorting what it pleased from its victims, and the long delay in convicting them would seem to argue that the tribunal had good reason for not wishing its sentences to see the light while there was chance of their being subjected to scrutiny under Clement V. The inquisitors urged in justification a single case, that of Lambert de Foyssenx, who complained to Clement’s cardinals that he had been unjustly accused, but who subsequently asserted his heresy defiantly, refused to recant, and was burned in 1309. This is the only instance of the kind, for the wretched survivors who were led to abjure and recant in 1319 were broken by prison and torture, and their evidence is worthless.[113]
This stirring exhortation was probably superfluous, for the prey was captured before it could have been published throughout the land. The arrest of nearly all his family and friends, in 1308-9, had driven Pierre Autier from his accustomed haunts. About St. John’s Day (June 24), 1309, he found refuge with Perrin Maurel of Belpech, near Castelnaudari, where he lay for five weeks or more. Thither came his daughter Guillelma, who remained with him a short time, and the two departed together. The next day he was captured. Perrin Maurel was likewise seized, and with customary fidelity stoutly denied everything until Pierre Autier, in prison, advised him in December to confess.[118]
This may be said to close the bloody drama of Catharism in Languedoc. Armed with the revelations thus obtained, Bernard Gui and Geoffroi d’Ablis required but a few years more to convert or burn the remnant of Pierre Autier’s disciples who could be caught, and to drive into exile those who eluded their spies. No new and self-devoted missionaries arose to take his place, and after 1315 the Patarin almost disappears from the records of the Inquisition in France. Some few scattering cases subsequently occur, but their offences are of old date and almost invariably revert to the missionary work of Pierre Autier and his associates. One of the latest of these is recorded in an undated sentence, probably of 1327 or 1328, in which Jean Duprat, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, condemns Guillelma Tornière. She had abjured and had been long confined in prison, where she was detected in making converts and praising Guillem Autier and Guillem Balibaste as good and saintly men. Under interrogation she refused to take an oath, and was accordingly burned. In 1328, Henri de Chamay of Carcassonne condemned to prison Guillem Amiel for Catharism, and in 1329 he sentenced two Cathari, Bartolomé Pays and Raymond Garric of Albi, whose offences had been committed respectively thirty-five and forty years before. In the same year he ordered four houses and a farm to be demolished because their owners had been hereticated in them, but these acts had doubtless been performed long previous. Confiscations still continued for ancestral offences, but Catharism as an existing belief may be said at this period to be virtually extinct in Languedoc, where it had a hundred and fifty years before had a reasonable prospect of becoming the dominant religion.[121]
In the same year, 1329, occurred a case which is not without interest as showing how an earnest but unstable brain pondering over the crime and misery of the world, wove some of the cruder elements of Catharism and Averrhoism into a fantastic theory. Limoux Noir, of Saint-Paul in the diocese of Alet, had already been tried by his bishop in 1326, but had been able to evade the unskilled officials of the episcopal tribunal. The Inquisition had surer methods and speedily brought him to confession. He had formed a philosophy of the Universe which superseded all religion. God had created the archangels, these the angels, and the latter the sun and moon. These heavenly bodies, as being unstable and corruptible, were females. Out of their urine the world was formed, and was necessarily corrupt, with all that sprang from it. Moses, Mahomet, and Christ were all sent by the sun and were teachers of equal authority. In the under world Christ and Mahomet are now disputing and seeking to gain followers. Baptism was of no more use than the circumcision of Israel or the blessing of Islam, for those who renounced evil in baptism grew up to be robbers and strumpets. The Eucharist was naught, for God would not let himself be handled by adulterers such as the priests. Matrimony was to be shunned, for from it sprang robbers and strumpets. Thus he explained away and rejected all the doctrines and practices of the Church. To see whether the Saviour’s fast of forty days was possible, he had fasted in a cabin ten days and nights, at the end of which this system of philosophy had been revealed to him by God. Again, in 1327, he had placed himself in endura, with the resolve to carry it to the end, but had been persuaded by his brother to take the Eucharist, to save his bones from being burned after his death. He was sixty years old, and his crazy doctrines had brought him a few disciples, but the sect was crushed at the outset. He declared to the inquisitor that he would rather be flayed alive than believe in transubstantiation, and he proved his resolute character by resisting all attempts to induce him to recant, so that there was no alternative but to abandon him to the secular arm, which was duly done and his belief perished with him.[122]
Thus the Inquisition triumphed, as force will generally do when it is sufficiently strong, skilfully applied, and systematically continued without interruption to the end. In the twelfth century the south of France had been the most civilized land of Europe. There commerce, industry, art, science, had been far in advance of the age. The cities had won virtual self-government, were proud of their wealth and strength, jealous of their liberties, and self-sacrificing in their patriotism. The nobles, for the most part, were cultivated men, poets themselves or patrons of poetry, who had learned that their prosperity depended on the prosperity of their subjects, and that municipal liberties were a safeguard, rather than a menace, to the wise ruler. The crusaders came, and their unfinished work was taken up and executed to the bitter end by the Inquisition. It left a ruined and impoverished country, with shattered industry and failing commerce. The native nobles were broken by confiscation and replaced by strangers, who occupied the soil, introducing the harsh customs of Northern feudalism, or the despotic principles of the Roman law, in the extensive domains acquired by the crown. A people of rare natural gifts had been tortured, decimated, humiliated, despoiled, for a century and more. The precocious civilization which had promised to lead Europe in the path of culture was gone, and to Italy was transferred the honor of the Renaissance. In return for this was unity of faith and a Church which had been hardened and vitiated and secularized in the strife. Such was the work and such the outcome of the Inquisition in the field which afforded it the widest scope for its activity, and the fullest opportunity for developing its powers.
In this respect the Inquisition was building better than it knew. In thus aiding to establish the royal power over the newly-acquired provinces, it was contributing to erect an authority which was destined in the end to reduce it to comparative insignificance. With the disappearance of Catharism, Languedoc became as much a part of the monarchy as l’Isle de France, and the career of its Inquisition merges into that of the rest of the kingdom. It need not, therefore, be pursued separately further.
We have no means of knowing what measures Robert adopted, but there can be no doubt that under this stimulus, and clothed with this authority, he was active and unsparing. His crazy fanaticism probably exaggerated greatly the extent of the evil and confounded the innocent with the guilty. It was not long before the Archbishop of Sens, in whose province La Charité lay, expostulated with Gregory upon this interference with his jurisdiction, and in this he was joined by other prelates, alarmed at the authority given to the Dominican Provincial of Paris to appoint inquisitors for all portions of the kingdom. They assured the pope that there was no heresy in their provinces and no necessity for these extraordinary measures. Gregory thereupon revoked all commissions early in February, 1234, and urged the prelates to be vigilant, recommending them to make use of Dominicans in all cases where action appeared desirable, as the friars were specially skilled in the refutation of heresy. Had Robert been an ordinary man this might have postponed for some time the extension of the Inquisition in France, but he was too ardent to be repressed. In June, 1234, we find St. Louis paying for the maintenance of heretics in prison at St. Pierre-le-Moutier, near Nevers, which would seem as though Frère Robert had succeeded in getting to work again on his old field of operations. Meanwhile he had not been idle elsewhere. King Louis furnished him with an armed guard to protect him from the enmities which he aroused, and, secure in the royal favor, he traversed the country carrying terror everywhere. At Péronne he burned five victims; at Elincourt, four, besides a pregnant woman who was spared for a time at the intercession of the queen. His methods were speedy, for before Lent was out we find him at Cambrai, where, with the assistance of the Archbishop of Reims and three bishops, he burned about twenty and condemned others to crosses and prison. Thence he hastened to Douai, where, in May, he had the satisfaction of burning ten more, and condemning numerous others to crosses and prison in the presence of the Count of Flanders, the Archbishop of Reims, sundry bishops and an immense multitude who crowded to the spectacle. Thence he hurried to Lille, where more executions followed. All this was sufficient to convince Gregory that he had been misinformed as to the absence of heresy. Undisturbed by the severe experience which he had just undergone with a similar apostle of persecution, Conrad of Marburg, we find him, in August, 1235, excitedly announcing to the Dominican provincial that God had revealed to him that the whole of France was boiling with the venom of heretical reptiles, and that the business of the Inquisition must be resumed with loosened rein. Frère Robert was to be commissioned again, with fitting colleagues to scour the whole kingdom, aided by the prelates, so that innocence should not suffer nor guilt escape. The Archbishop of Sens was strictly ordered to lend efficient help to Robert, whom God had gifted with especial grace in these matters, and Robert himself was honored with a special papal commission empowering him to act throughout the whole of France. The pope, moreover, spurred him on with exhortations to spare no labor in the work, and not to shrink from martyrdom if necessary for the salvation of souls.[127]
We have no means of knowing what measures Robert adopted, but there can be no doubt that under this stimulus, and clothed with this authority, he was active and unsparing. His crazy fanaticism probably exaggerated greatly the extent of the evil and confounded the innocent with the guilty. It was not long before the Archbishop of Sens, in whose province La Charité lay, expostulated with Gregory upon this interference with his jurisdiction, and in this he was joined by other prelates, alarmed at the authority given to the Dominican Provincial of Paris to appoint inquisitors for all portions of the kingdom. They assured the pope that there was no heresy in their provinces and no necessity for these extraordinary measures. Gregory thereupon revoked all commissions early in February, 1234, and urged the prelates to be vigilant, recommending them to make use of Dominicans in all cases where action appeared desirable, as the friars were specially skilled in the refutation of heresy. Had Robert been an ordinary man this might have postponed for some time the extension of the Inquisition in France, but he was too ardent to be repressed. In June, 1234, we find St. Louis paying for the maintenance of heretics in prison at St. Pierre-le-Moutier, near Nevers, which would seem as though Frère Robert had succeeded in getting to work again on his old field of operations. Meanwhile he had not been idle elsewhere. King Louis furnished him with an armed guard to protect him from the enmities which he aroused, and, secure in the royal favor, he traversed the country carrying terror everywhere. At Péronne he burned five victims; at Elincourt, four, besides a pregnant woman who was spared for a time at the intercession of the queen. His methods were speedy, for before Lent was out we find him at Cambrai, where, with the assistance of the Archbishop of Reims and three bishops, he burned about twenty and condemned others to crosses and prison. Thence he hastened to Douai, where, in May, he had the satisfaction of burning ten more, and condemning numerous others to crosses and prison in the presence of the Count of Flanders, the Archbishop of Reims, sundry bishops and an immense multitude who crowded to the spectacle. Thence he hurried to Lille, where more executions followed. All this was sufficient to convince Gregory that he had been misinformed as to the absence of heresy. Undisturbed by the severe experience which he had just undergone with a similar apostle of persecution, Conrad of Marburg, we find him, in August, 1235, excitedly announcing to the Dominican provincial that God had revealed to him that the whole of France was boiling with the venom of heretical reptiles, and that the business of the Inquisition must be resumed with loosened rein. Frère Robert was to be commissioned again, with fitting colleagues to scour the whole kingdom, aided by the prelates, so that innocence should not suffer nor guilt escape. The Archbishop of Sens was strictly ordered to lend efficient help to Robert, whom God had gifted with especial grace in these matters, and Robert himself was honored with a special papal commission empowering him to act throughout the whole of France. The pope, moreover, spurred him on with exhortations to spare no labor in the work, and not to shrink from martyrdom if necessary for the salvation of souls.[127]
This was pouring oil upon the flames. Robert’s untempered fanaticism had required no stimulus, and now it raged beyond all bounds. The kingdom, by Gregory’s thoughtless zeal, was delivered up to one who was little better than a madman. Supported by the piety of St. Louis, the prelates were obliged to aid him and carry out his behests, and for several years he traversed the provinces of Flanders, Champagne, Burgundy, and France with none to curb or oppose him. The crazy ardor of such a man was not likely to be discriminating or to require much proof of guilt. Those whom he designated as heretics had the alternative of abjuration with perpetual imprisonment or of the stake—varied occasionally with burial alive. In one term of two or three months he is said to have thus despatched about fifty unfortunates of either sex, and the whole number of his victims during his unchecked career of several years must have been large. The terror spread by his arbitrary and pitiless proceedings rendered him formidable to high and low alike, until at length the evident confounding of the innocent with the guilty raised a clamor to which even Gregory IX. was forced to listen. An investigation was held in 1238 which exposed his misdeeds, though not before he had time, in 1239, to burn a number of heretics at Montmorillon in Vienne, and twenty-seven, or, according to other accounts, one hundred and eighty-three, at Mont-Wimer—the original seat of Catharism in the eleventh century—where, at this holocaust pleasing to God, there were present the King of Navarre with a crowd of prelates and nobles and a multitude wildly estimated at seven hundred thousand souls. Robert’s commission was withdrawn, and he expiated his insane cruelties in perpetual prison. The case ought to have proved, like that of Conrad of Marburg, a wholesome warning. Unfortunately the spirit which he had aroused survived him, and for three or four years after his fall active persecution raged from the Rhine to the Loire, under the belief that the land was full of heretics.[128]
The Inquisition at Besançon appears to have been at first independent of that of Paris. After the failure to establish it in 1233 it seems to have remained in abeyance until 1247, when Innocent IV. ordered the Prior of Besançon to send friars throughout Burgundy and Lorraine for the extirpation of heresy. The next year John Count of Burgundy urged greater activity, but his zeal does not seem to have been supplemented with liberality, and in 1255 the Dominicans asked to be relieved of the thankless task, which proved unsuccessful for lack of funds, and Alexander IV. acceded to their request. There are some evidences of an Inquisition being in operation there about 1283, and in 1290 Nicholas IV. ordered the Provincial of Paris to select three inquisitors to serve in the dioceses of Besançon, Geneva, Lausanne, Sion, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, thus placing Lorraine and the French Cantons of Switzerland, as well as Franche Comté, under the Inquisition of France, an arrangement which seems to have lasted for more than a century.[132]
In 1308 we hear of a certain Étienne de Verberie of Soissons, accused before the inquisitor of blasphemous expressions concerning the body of Christ. He alleged drunkenness in excuse, and was mercifully treated. Shortly afterwards occurred the first formal auto de fé of which we have cognizance at Paris, on May 31, 1310. A renegade Jew was burned, but the principal victim was Marguerite de Hainault, or la Porete. She is described as a “béguine clergesse,” the first apostle in France of the German sect of Brethren of the Free Spirit, whom we shall consider more fully hereafter. Her chief error was the doctrine that the soul, absorbed in Divine love, could yield without sin or remorse to all the demands of the flesh, and she regarded with insufficient veneration the sacrifice of the altar. She had written a book to propagate these doctrines which had, before the year 1305, been condemned as heretical and burned by Gui II., Bishop of Cambrai. He had mercifully spared her, while forbidding her under pain of the stake from circulating it in future or disseminating its doctrines. In spite of this she had again been brought before Gui’s successor, Philippe de Marigny, and the Inquisitor of Lorraine, for spreading it among the simple folk called Begghards, and she had again escaped. Unwearied in her missionary work, she had even ventured to present the forbidden volume to Jean, Bishop of Chalons, without suffering the penalty due to her obstinacy. In 1308 she extended her propaganda to Paris and fell into the hands of Frère Guillaume de Paris, the inquisitor, before whom she persistently refused to take the preliminary oath requisite to her examination. He was probably too preoccupied with the affair of the Templars to give her prompt justice, and for eighteen months she lay in the inquisitorial dungeons under the consequent excommunication. This would alone have sufficed for her conviction as an impenitent heretic, but her previous career rendered her a relapsed heretic. Instead of calling an assembly of experts, as was customary in Languedoc, the inquisitor laid a written statement of the case before the canonists of the University, who unanimously decided, May 30, that if the facts as stated were true, she was a relapsed heretic, to be relaxed to the secular arm. Accordingly, on May 31, she was handed over, with the customary adjuration for mercy, to the prévôt of Paris, who duly burned her the next day, when her noble manifestation of devotion moved the people to tears of compassion. Another actor in the tragedy was a disciple of Marguerite, a clerk of the diocese of Beauvais named Guion de Cressonessart. He had endeavored to save Marguerite from the clutches of the Inquisition, and on being seized had, like her, refused to take the oath during eighteen months’’ imprisonment. His brain seems to have turned during his detention, for at length he astonished the inquisitor by proclaiming himself the Angel of Philadelphia and an envoy of God, who alone could save mankind. The inquisitor in vain pointed out that this was a function reserved solely for the pope, and as Guion would not withdraw his claims he was convicted as a heretic. For some reason, however, not specified in the sentence, he was only condemned to degradation from orders and to perpetual imprisonment.[136]
Yet for some years longer there was a show of activity at Carcassonne, where Henri de Chamay was a worthy representative of the older inquisitors. January 16, 1329, in conjunction with Pierre Bruni he celebrated an auto de fé at Pamiers, where thirty-five persons were permitted to lay aside crosses, and twelve were released from prison with crosses, six were pardoned, seven were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, together with four false witnesses, eight had arbitrary penances assigned them, four dead persons were sentenced, and a friar and a priest were degraded. As the see of Pamiers, to which this auto was confined, was a small one, the number of sentences uttered indicates active work. December 12, of the same year, Henri de Chamay held another at Narbonne, where the fate of some forty delinquents was decided. Then, January 7, 1329, he held another at Pamiers; May 19, one at Béziers; September 8, one at Carcassonne, where six unfortunates were burned and twenty-one condemned to perpetual prison. Shortly afterwards he burned three at Albi, and towards the end of the year he held another auto at a place not named, where eight persons were sentenced to prison, three to prison in chains, and two were burned. Some collisions seem to have occurred about this time with the royal officials, for, in 1334, the inquisitors complained to Philippe de Valois that their functions were impeded, and Philippe issued orders to the seneschals of Nimes, Toulouse, and Carcassonne that the Inquisition must be maintained in the full enjoyment of its ancient privileges.[138]
Various causes had long been contributing to deprive the Inquisition in France of the importance which it had once enjoyed. It no longer as of old poured into the royal fisc a stream of confiscations and co-operated efficiently in consolidating the monarchy. It had done its work too well, and not only had it become superfluous as an instrument for the throne, but the throne which it had aided to establish had become supreme and had reduced it to subjection. Even in the plenitude of inquisitorial power the tendency to regard the royal court as possessing a jurisdiction higher than that of the Holy Office is shown in the case of Amiel de Lautrec, Abbot of S. Sernin. In 1322 the Viguier of Toulouse accused him to the Inquisition for having preached the doctrine that the soul is mortal in essence and only immortal through grace. The Inquisition examined the matter and decided that this was not heresy. The royal procureur-général, dissatisfied with this, appealed from the decision, not to the pope but to the Parlement or royal court. No question more purely spiritual can well be conceived, and yet the Parlement gravely entertained the appeal and asserted its jurisdiction by confirming the decree of the Inquisition.[144]
The Great Schism, followed by the councils of Constance and Basle, did much to shake the papal power on which that of the Inquisition was founded. The position of Charles VII. towards Rome was consistently insubordinate, and the Pragmatic Sanction which he published in 1438 secured the independence of the Gallican Church, and strengthened the jurisdiction of the Parlement. When Louis XI. abrogated it, in 1461, the remonstrances of his Parlement form a singularly free-spoken indictment of papal vices, and that body continued to treat the instrument as practically in force, while Louis himself, by successive measures of 1463, 1470, 1472, 1474, 1475, and 1479, gradually re-established its principles. Had not the Concordat of Francis I., in 1516, swept it away, when he conspired with Leo X. to divide the spoils of the Church, it would eventually have rendered France independent of Rome. Francis knew so well the opposition which it would excite that he hesitated for a year to submit the measure to his Parlement for registration, and the Parlement deferred the registration for another year, till at last the negotiator of the concordat, Cardinal Duprat, brought to bear sufficient pressure to accomplish the object. During the discussion the University had the boldness to protest publicly against it, and to lodge with the Parlement an appeal to the next general council.[151]
It is not to be supposed, however, that the Inquisition, though fallen from its former dignity, had ceased to exist or to perform its functions after a fashion. It was to the interest of the popes to maintain it, and the position of inquisitor, though humble in comparison with that which his predecessors enjoyed, was yet a source of influence, and possibly of profit, which led to its being eagerly sought. In 1414 we find two contestants for the post at Toulouse, and in 1424 an unseemly quarrel between two rivals at Carcassonne. The diocese of Geneva was also the subject of contention embittered by the traditional rivalry between the two Mendicant Orders. It will be remembered that in 1290 this, with other French cantons, was included by Nicholas IV. in the inquisitorial province of Besançon, which was Dominican. Geneva belonged, however, ecclesiastically to the metropolis of Vienne, which was under the Franciscan Inquisition of Provence, and Gregory XI. so treated it in 1375. When Pons Feugeyron was commissioned, in 1409, Geneva was not mentioned in the enumeration of the dioceses under him; but when his commission was renewed by Martin V., in 1418, it was included, and he began to exercise his powers there. There at once arose the threat of a most scandalous quarrel between the combative Orders; the Dominicans appealed to Martin, and in 1419 he restored Geneva to them. Yet in 1434, when Eugenius IV. again confirmed Pons Feugeyron’s commission, the name of Geneva once more slipped in. The Dominicans must again have successfully reclaimed it, for in 1472, when there was a sudden resumption of inquisitorial activity under Sixtus IV., in confirming Frère Jean Vaylette as Inquisitor of Provence, with the same powers as Pons Feugeyron, Geneva was omitted in the list of his jurisdictions, while the Dominicans, Victor Rufi and Claude Rufi, were appointed respectively at Geneva and Lausanne; and in 1491 another Dominican, François Granet, was commissioned at Geneva.[156]
Still the Inquisition was not wholly without evidence of activity in its purposed sphere of duty. We shall see hereafter that Pierre d’Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, when, in 1411, he prosecuted the Men of Intelligence, duly called in the inquisitor of the province, who was Dominican Prior of St. Quentin in Vermandois, to join in the sentence. In 1430 we hear of a number of heretics who had been burned at Lille by the deputy-inquisitor and the Bishop of Tournay; and in 1431 Philippe le Bon ordered his officials to execute all sentences pronounced by Brother Heinrich Kaleyser, who had been appointed Inquisitor of Cambrai and Lille by the Dominican Provincial of Germany—a manifest invasion of the rights of his colleague of Paris, doubtless due to the political complications of the times. This order of Philippe le Bon, however, shows that the example of supervision set by the Parlement was not lost on the feudatories, for the officials are only instructed to make arrests when there has been a proper preliminary inquest, with observance of all the forms of law. I shall have occasion hereafter to speak of the part played by the Inquisition in the tragedy of Joan of Arc, and need here only allude to the appointment, in 1431, by Eugenius IV., of Frère Jean Graveran to be Inquisitor of Rouen, where he was already exercising the functions of the office, and where he was succeeded in 1433 by Frère Sébastien l’Abbé, who had been papal penitentiary and chaplain—another evidence of the partition of France during the disastrous English war. People were growing more careless about excommunication than ever. About 1415, a number of ecclesiastics of Limoges were prosecuted by the inquisitor, Jean du Puy, as suspect of heresy for this cause; they appealed to the Council of Constance, and in 1418 the matter was referred back to the archbishop. Still the indifference to excommunication grew, and in 1435 Eugenius IV. instructed the Inquisitor of Carcassonne to prosecute all who remained under the censure of the Church for several years without seeking absolution.[158]
Several cases occurring about this period are interesting as illustrations of the spread of the spirit of inquiry and independence, and of the subordinate position to which the Inquisition had sunk. In 1459, at Lille, there was burned a heretic known as Alphonse of Portugal, who led an austere life as an anchorite and frequented the churches assiduously, but who declared that since Gregory the Great there had been no true pope, and consequently no valid administration of the sacraments. In the account which has reached us of his trial and execution there is no allusion to the intervention of the Holy Office. Still more significant is the case, in 1484, of Jean Laillier, a priest in Paris, a theological licentiate, and an applicant for the doctorate in theology. In his sermons he had been singularly free-spoken. He denied the validity of the rule of celibacy; he quoted Wickliff as a great doctor; he rejected the supremacy of Rome and the binding force of tradition and decretal; John XXII., he said, had had no power to condemn Jean de Poilly; so far from St. Francis occupying the vacant throne of Lucifer in heaven, he was rather with Lucifer in hell; since the time of Silvester the Holy See had been the church of avarice and of imperial power, where canonization could be obtained for money. So weak had become the traditional hold of the Church on the consciences of men that this revolutionary preaching seems to have aroused no opposition, even on the part of the Inquisition; but Laillier, not content with simple toleration, applied to the University for the doctorate, and was refused admission to the preliminary disputations unless he should purge himself, undergo penance, and obtain the assent of the Holy See. Laillier thereupon boldly applied to the Parlement, now by tacit assent clothed with supreme jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters, asking it to compel the University to admit him. The Parlement entertained no doubts as to its own competence, but decided the case in a manner not looked for by the hardy priest. It ordered Louis, Bishop of Paris, in conjunction with the inquisitor and four doctors selected by the University, to prosecute Laillier to due punishment. The bishop and inquisitor agreed to proceed separately and communicate their processes to each other; but Laillier must have had powerful backers, for Bishop Louis, without conferring with his colleague or the experts, allowed Laillier to make a partial recantation and a public abjuration couched in the most free and easy terms, absolved him, June 23, 1486, pronounced him free from suspicion of heresy, restored him to his functions, and declared him capable of promotion to all grades and honors. Frère Jean Cossart, the inquisitor, who had been diligently collecting evidence of many scandalous doctrines of Laillier’s and vainly communicating them to the bishop, was forced to swallow this affront in silence, but the University felt its honor engaged and was not inclined to submit. November 6, 1486, it issued a formal protest against the action of the bishop, appealed to the pope, and demanded “Apostoli.” Innocent VIII. promptly came to the rescue. He annulled the decision of the bishop and ordered the inquisitor, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Sens and the Bishop of Meaux, to throw Laillier into prison, while they should investigate the unrecanted heresies and send the papers to Rome for decision. Very suggestive of the strong influences supporting Laillier is the pope’s expression of fear lest the pressure brought to bear on the University should have forced it to admit him to the doctorate; if so, such action is pronounced void, and all engaged in the attempt are ordered to desist under pain of incurring suspicion of heresy. It is not a little singular that the Bishop of Meaux, who was thus selected to sit in judgment on Laillier, was at this very time under censure by the University for reviving the Donatist heresy of the insufficiency of the sacraments in polluted hands—the Eucharist of a fornicating priest was of no more account, he said, than the barking of a dog. Many an unfortunate Waldensian had been burned for less than this, but the inquisitor had not dared to hold him to account. Nor do we hear of his intervention in the case of Jean Langlois, priest of St. Crispin, who, when celebrating mass, June 3, 1491, horrified his flock by casting on the floor and trampling the consecrated wine and host. On his arrest he gave as his reason that the body and blood of Christ were not in the elements, and as he stubbornly refused to recant, he expiated his error at the stake. Similar was the fate of Aymon Picard, who, at the feast of St. Louis in the Sainte-Chapelle, August 25, 1503, snatched the host from the celebrant and cast it in pieces on the floor, and obstinately declined to abjure. All this was significant of the time coming when the Inquisition would be more necessary than ever.[161]
The present degradation which it shared with the rest of the Church in the constantly growing supremacy of the State is manifested by a commission issued in 1485, by Frère Antoine de Clède, appointing a vicar to act for him in Rodez and Vabres. In this document he styles himself Inquisitor of France, Aquitaine, Gascony, and Languedoc, deputed by the Holy See and the Parlement. The two bodies are thus equal sources of authority, and the appointment by the pope would have been insufficient without the confirmation by the royal court. How contemptible, indeed, the Inquisition had become, even in the eyes of ecclesiastics, is brought instructively before us in a petty quarrel between the Inquisitor Raymond Gozin and his Dominican brethren. When he succeeded Frère Gaillard de la Roche, somewhere about 1516, he found that the house of the Inquisition at Toulouse had been stripped of its furniture and utensils by the friars of the Dominican convent. He made a reclamation, and some of the articles were restored; but the friars subsequently demanded them back, and on his refusal procured from the General Master instructions to the vicar, under which the latter proceeded to extremities with him, wholly disregarding his appeal to the pope, though he finally, in 1520, succeeded in obtaining the intervention of Leo X. Imagination could scarcely furnish a more convincing proof of decadence than this exhibition of the successor of Bernard de Caux and Bernard Gui vainly endeavoring to defend his kitchen gear from the rapacious hands of his brethren.[162]
They had a regular organization—schools for the young where their doctrines were doubtless implanted in the children of orthodox parents; cemeteries where their dead were buried; missionaries who traversed the land diligently to spread the faith, and who customarily refused all alms, save hospitality. A certain Pierre des Vaux is frequently referred to as one of the most active and most beloved of these, regarded, according to one of his disciples, as an angel of light. Public preaching in the streets was constant, and numerous allusions are made to disputations held between the Waldensian ministers and the Catharan perfects. Still, the utmost good feeling existed between the two persecuted sects. Men were found who confessed to believing in the Waldenses and to performing acts of adoration to the Cathari—in the common enmity to Rome any faith which was not orthodox was regarded as good. The reputation of the Waldenses as skilful leeches was a powerful aid in their missionary labors. They were constantly consulted in cases of disease or injury, and almost without exception they refused payment for their ministrations, save food. One woman confessed to giving forty sols to a Catharan for medical services, while to Waldenses she gave only wine and bread. We learn also that they heard confessions and imposed penance; that they celebrated a sacramental supper in which bread and fish were blessed and partaken of, and that bread which they consecrated with the sign of the cross was regarded as holy by their disciples. Notwithstanding the strength and organization of the sect, the Waldenses were evidently looked upon by Pierre Cella with a less unfavorable eye than the Cathari, and the penances imposed on them were habitually lighter.[164]
A few Waldenses appear in the prosecutions of Henri de Chamay of Carcassonne in 1328 and 1329, and, from the occasional notices which have reached us in the succeeding years, we may conclude that persecution, more or less fitful, never wholly ceased; while, in spite of this, the heresy kept constantly growing. After the disappearance of Catharism, indeed, it was the only refuge for ordinary humanity when dissatisfied with Rome. The Begghards were mystics whose speculations were attractive only to a certain order of minds. The Spirituals and Fraticelli were Franciscan ascetics. The Waldenses sought only to restore Christianity to its simplicity; their doctrines could be understood by the poor and illiterate, groaning under the burdens of sacerdotalism, and they found constantly wider acceptance among the people, in spite of all the efforts put forth by the waning power of the Inquisition. Benedict XII., in 1335, summoned Humbert II., Dauphin of Viennois, and Adhémar of Poitou to assist the inquisitors. Humbert obeyed, and from 1336 to 1346 there were expeditions sent against them which drove them from their homes and captured some of them. Of these a portion abjured and the rest were burned; their possessions were confiscated and the bones of the dead exhumed. The secular and ecclesiastical officials of Embrun joined in these efforts, but they had no permanent result. In Languedoc Frère Jean Dumoulin, Inquisitor of Toulouse, in 1344 attacked them vigorously, but only succeeded in scattering them throughout Béarn, Foix, and Aragon. In 1348 Clement VI. again urged Humbert, who responded with strict orders to his officers to aid the ecclesiastical authorities with what force might be necessary, and this time we hear of twelve Waldenses brought to Embrun, and burned on the square in front of the cathedral. When Dauphiné became a possession of the crown the royal officials were equally ready to assist. Letters of October 20, 1351, from the governor, order the authorities of Briançon to give the inquisitor armed support in his operations against the heretics of the Briançonnais, but this seems to have been ineffective; and the next year Clement VI. appealed to the Dauphin Charles, and to Louis and Joanna of Naples, to aid Frère Pierre Dumont, the Inquisitor of Provence, and summoned prelates and magistrates to co-operate in the good work. The only recorded result of this was the penancing of seven Waldenses by Dumont in 1353. More successful were the Christian labors of Guillaume de Bordes, Archbishop of Embrun from 1352 to 1363, surnamed the Apostle of the Waldenses, who tried the unusual expedient of kindness and persuasion. He personally visited the mountain valleys, and had the satisfaction of winning over a number of the heretics. With his death his methods were abandoned, and Urban V., from 1363 to 1365, was earnest in calling upon the civil power and in stimulating the zeal of the Provençal inquisitors, Frères Hugues Cardilion and Jean Richard. The celebrated inquisitor François Borel now appears upon the scene. Armed expeditions were sent into the mountains which had considerable success. Many of the heretics were obstinate and were burned, while others saved their lives by abjuration. Their pitiful little properties were confiscated; one had a cow, another two cows and clothes of white cloth. In the purse of another, more wealthy, were found two florins—a booty which scarce proved profitable, for the wood to burn him and a comrade cost sixty-two sols and six deniers. One woman named Juven who was burned possessed a vineyard. The vintage was gathered and the must stored in her cabin, when the wrathful neighbors fired it at night and destroyed the product.[169]
The Waldenses by this time were substantially the only heretics with whom the Church had to deal outside of Germany. The French version of the Schwabenspiegel, or South German municipal code, made for the Romande speaking provinces of the empire, is assignable to the closing years of the century, and it attests the predominance of Waldensianism in its chapter on heresy, by translating the Käezer (Catharus) of the original by vaudois. Even “Leschandus” (Childeric III.) is said to have been dethroned by Pope Zachary because he was a protector of vaudois. That at this period the Inquisition had become inoperative in those regions where it had once been so busy is proved by the episcopal tribunals being alone referred to as having cognizance of such cases—the heretic is to be accused to his bishop, who is to have him examined by experts.[176]
After the Church had reorganized itself at the Council of Constance it had leisure to look after the interests of the faith, although its energies were mostly monopolized by the Hussite troubles. In 1417 we hear of Catharine Sauve, an anchorite, burned at Montpellier for Waldensian doctrines by the deputy-inquisitor, Frère Raymond Cabasse, assisted by the Bishop of Maguelonne. The absence of persecution had by no means been caused by a diminution in the number of heretics. In 1432 the Council of Bourges complained that the Waldenses of Dauphiné had taxed themselves to send money to the Hussites, whom they recognized as brethren; and there were plenty of them to be found by any one who took the trouble to look after them. On August 23, of this same year, we have a letter from Frère Pierre Fabri, Inquisitor of Embrun, to the Council of Basle, excusing himself for not immediately obeying a summons to attend it on the ground of his indescribable poverty, and of his preoccupations in persecuting the Waldenses. In spite of the great executions which he had already made, he describes them as flourishing as numerously as ever in the valleys of Freyssinières, Argentière, and Pute, which had been almost depopulated by the ferocious raids of François Borel. He now has in his dungeons of Embrun and Briançon six relapsed heretics, who have revealed to him the names of more than five hundred others whom he is about to seize, and whose trials will be a work of time, but as soon as he can absent himself without prejudice to the faith his first duty will be to attend the council. Evidently the harvest was abundant and the reapers were few.[178]
It is not until 1475 that we find the inquisitors again at work in their old hunting-ground among the valleys around the headwaters of the Durance. The Waldenses had quietly multiplied again. They held their conventicles undisturbed, they dared openly to preach their abhorred faith, and their missionary zeal was rewarded with abundant conversions. Worse than all, when the bishops and inquisitors sought to repress them in the accustomed manner, they appealed to the royal court, which was so untrue to its duty that it granted them letters of protection and they waxed more insolent than ever. In vain Sixtus IV. sent special commissions armed with full powers to put an end to this disgraceful state of things. Men at this time in France recked little of papal authority, and the commissioners found themselves scorned. Sixtus, therefore, July 1, 1475, addressed an earnest remonstrance to Louis XI. The king was surely ignorant of the acts of his representatives; he would hasten to disavow them and lend the whole power of the State, as of old, to the support of the Inquisition.[180]
With a new king, in the person of Louis XII., there came a new phase in the affairs of the Waldenses. A conference was held in Paris before the royal chancellor, where envoys from Freyssinières met Rostain, the new Archbishop of Embrun, and deputies of the Parlement of Grenoble. It was resolved to send to the spot papal and royal commissioners, with power to determine the status of the so-called heretics. They went to Freyssinières and examined witnesses, who satisfied them that the population were good Catholics, in spite of the urgent assertions of the archbishop that they were notorious heretics. All the excommunications were removed, which put an end to the prosecutions. On October 12, 1502, Louis XII. confirmed the decision, and Alexander VI., to whose son, Cæsar Borgia, Louis had given the Duchy of Valentinois, embracing the territory in question, was not disposed to run counter to the royal wishes. The Waldenses were, however, unable to loosen the grip of the Archbishop of Embrun on the property which he had confiscated, in spite of positive orders for its restoration from the king, but at least they were allowed, under the guise of Catholicism, to worship God after their own fashion, until the crowding pressure of the Reformation forced them to a merger with the Calvinists. In the Briançonnais, in spite of occasional burnings, heresy continued to spread until, in 1514, Antoine d’Estaing, Bishop of Angoulême, was sent thither, when the measures he adopted, vigorously enforced by the secular authorities, put an end to it in a few years.[183]
It is somewhat remarkable that we hear nothing specifically of the Cathari in Aragon proper. Matthew Paris, indeed, tells a wild tale of how, in 1234, they were so numerous in the parts of Spain that they decreed the abrogation of Christianity, and raised a large army with which they burned churches and spared neither age nor sex, until Gregory IX. ordered a crusade against them throughout western Europe, when in a stricken field they were all cut off to a man; but this may safely be set down to the imagination of some pilgrim returning from Compostella and desiring to repay a night’s hospitality at St. Alban’s. In the enumeration of Rainerio Saccone, about 1250, there is no mention of any Catharan organization west of the Pyrenees. That many Cathari existed in Aragon there can be no doubt, but they are never described as such, and the only heretics of whom we hear by name are los encabats—the Insabbatati or Waldenses. It will be remembered that it was against these that the savage edicts of Alonso II. and Pedro II. were directed, towards the close of the twelfth century.[184]
To what extent this crude expedient was put in practice we have no means of knowing, but probably some attempts were made which only proved its inefficiency. Esparrago died soon afterwards and was succeeded in the archiepiscopal seat of Tarragona by Guillen Mongriu, whose vigorous and martial temperament was illustrated by his conquest of the island of Iviza. Mongriu speedily found that the domestic Inquisition would not work, and applied for the solution of some doubts to Gregory, who sent him, April 30, 1235, a code of instructions drawn up by Raymond of Pennaforte. About this time we find the first record of active work in persecution, which illustrates the absence of all formal inquisitorial procedure. Robert, Count of Rosellon, was one of the great feudatories of the crown of Aragon. He seems to have been involved, as most nobles were, in some disputes as to fiefs and tithes with the Bishop of Elne, whose diocese was in his territories. The bishop accused him of being the chief of the heretics of the region and of using his castles as a refuge for them. All this was very likely true—at least the bishop had no difficulty in finding witnesses to prove it, when Robert obediently abjured, but subsequently relapsed. Don Jayme accordingly had him arrested and imprisoned, but Robert managed to escape and shut himself in one of his inaccessible mountain strongholds. His position, however, was desperate, and his lands liable to confiscation; he therefore expressed to Gregory IX. his desire to return to the bosom of the Church, and offered to serve with his followers against the Saracen as long as the pope might designate. Gregory therefore wrote, February 8, 1237, to Raymond of Pennaforte, that if the count would for three years with his subjects assist in the conquest of Valencia, and give sufficient security that in case of relapse his territories should be forfeited to the crown, he could be absolved. On hearing this the good bishop hastened to the papal court and declared that if Robert was absolved he and his witnesses would be exposed to the imminent peril of death, and that heresy would triumph in his diocese; but, on receiving assurances that his fiefs and tithes would be taken care of, he quieted down and offered no further opposition.[186]
In Aragon the institution gradually took shape. Berenger de Palau, Bishop of Barcelona, was busily engaged in organizing it throughout his diocese at the time of his death in 1241, and the vicar, who replaced him while the see was vacant, completed it. In 1242 Pedro Arbalate, who had succeeded Guillen Mongriu as archbishop, with the assistance of Raymond of Pennaforte, held the Council of Tarragona to settle the details of procedure. Under the guidance of so eminent a canonist, the code drawn up by the council showed a thorough knowledge of the principles guiding the Church in its dealings with heretics, and long continued to be referred to as an authority not only in Spain, but in France. At the same time its careful definitions, which render it especially interesting to us, indicate that it was prepared for the instruction of a Church which as yet practically knew nothing of the principles of persecution firmly established elsewhere. It was probably under the impulse derived from these movements that active persecution was resumed at Castelbo, which does not seem to have been purified by the raid of 1237. This time the heretics were not as patient as before, and resorted to poison, with which they succeeded in taking off Fray Ponce de Blanes, or de Espira, the inquisitor, who had made himself peculiarly obnoxious by his vigorous pursuit of heresy for several years. This aroused all the martial instincts of the retired archbishop, Guillen Mongriu, who assembled some troops, besieged and took the castle, burned many of the heretics, and imprisoned the rest for life. An organized effort was made to extend the Inquisition throughout the kingdom, and the parish priests were individually summoned to lend it all the aid in their power. Urgel seems to have been the headquarters of the sectaries, for subsequently we hear of their sharp persecution there by the Dominican inquisitor, Bernardo Travesser, and of his martyrdom by them. As usual, both he and Ponce de Blanes shone forth in miracles, and have remained an object of worship in the Church of Urgel, though in 1262 the latter was translated to Montpellier, where he lies magnificently entombed.[189]
Still, the progress of organization seems to have been exceedingly slow. In 1244 a case decided by Innocent IV. shows a complete absence of any effective system. The Bishop of Elne and a Dominican friar, acting as inquisitors, had condemned Ramon de Malleolis and Helena his wife as heretics. By some means they succeeded in appealing to Gregory IX., who referred the matter to the Archdeacon of Besalu and the Sacristan of Girona. These acquitted the culprits and restored them to their possessions; but the case was carried back to Rome, and Innocent finally confirmed the first sentence of conviction. Again, in 1248, a letter from Innocent IV. to the Bishop of Lerida, instructing him as to the treatment in his diocese of heretics who voluntarily return to the Church, presupposes the absence of inquisitors and absolute ignorance as to the fundamental principles in force. The power conferred the same year on the Dominican Provincial of Spain to appoint inquisitors seems to have remained unused. The efforts of Archbishop Mongriu and Raymond of Pennaforte had spent themselves apparently without permanent results. King Jayme grew dissatisfied, and, in 1254, urgently demanded a fresh effort of Innocent IV. This time the pope concluded, at Jayme’s suggestion, to place the matter entirely in Dominican hands; but so little had been done in the way of general organization that he confided the choice of inquisitors to the priors of Barcelona, Lerida, Perpignan, and Elne, each one to act within his own diocese, unless, indeed, there are inquisitors already in function under papal commissions—a clause which shows the confusion existing at the time. Innocent further felt it necessary to report this action to the Archbishops of Tarragona and Narbonne, and to call upon them to assist the new appointees. This device does not seem to have worked satisfactorily. At that time the whole peninsula constituted but one Dominican province, and, in 1262, Urban IV. again adopted definitely the plan, in general use elsewhere, of empowering the provincial to appoint the inquisitors—now limited to two. A few days before he had sent to those of Aragon a bull defining their powers and procedure, and a copy of this was enclosed to the provincial for his guidance. This long remained the basis of organization; but after the division of the province into two, by the General Chapter of Cologne in 1301, the Aragonese chafed under their subordination to the Provincial of Spain, whose territories consisted only of Castile, Leon, and Portugal. The struggle was protracted, but the Inquisition of Aragon at last achieved independence in 1351, when Fray Nicholas Roselli, the Provincial of Aragon, obtained from Clement VI. the power of appointing and removing the inquisitors of the kingdom.[190]
To Roselli, however, belongs the credit of raising a question which inflamed to a white heat the traditional antagonism of the two great Mendicant Orders. It is worth brief attention as an illustration of the nicety to which doctrinal theology had attained under the combined influence of scholastic subtlety in raising questions, and inquisitorial enforcement of implicit obedience in the minutest articles of faith. In 1351 the Franciscan Guardian of Barcelona, in a public sermon, stated that the blood shed by Christ in the Passion lost its divinity, was sundered from the Logos, and remained on earth. The question was a novel one and a trifle difficult of demonstration, but its raising gave Roselli a chance to inflict a blow on the hated Franciscans, and he referred it to Rome. The answer met his most ardent anticipations. The Cardinal of Sabina, by order of Clement VI., wrote that the pope had heard the proposition with horror; he had convened an assembly of theologians in which he himself argued against it, when it was condemned, and the inquisitors everywhere were ordered to proceed against all audacious enough to uphold it. Roselli’s triumph was complete, and the unfortunate guardian was obliged to retract his speculations in the pulpit where he had promulgated them. The Franciscans were restless under this rebuff, which they construed as directed against their Order. In spite of the papal decision the question remained an open one in the schools, where it was eagerly debated on both sides. The Franciscans argued, with provoking reasonableness, that the blood of Christ might well be believed to remain on earth, seeing that the foreskin severed in the Circumcision was preserved in the Lateran Church and reverenced as a relic under the very eyes of pope and cardinal, and that portions of the blood and water which flowed in the Crucifixion were exhibited to the faithful at Mantua, Bruges, and elsewhere. After the lapse of a century, the Franciscan, Jean Bretonelle, professor of theology in the University of Paris, in 1448 brought the matter before the faculty, stating that it was causing discussion at Rochelle and other places. A commission of theologians was appointed, which, after due debate, rendered a solemn decision that it was not repugnant to the faith to believe that the blood shed at the Passion remained on earth. Thus encouraged, the Franciscans grew bolder.
The conference had become an inevitable evil, and Pius found himself obliged to allow it to meet in December, 1463. Each side selected three champions, and for three days, in the presence of the pope and sacred college, they argued the point with such ardent vehemence that, in spite of the bitter winter weather, they were bathed in sweat. Then others took part and the question was debated pro and con. The Franciscans put in evidence the blood of Christ exhibited for the veneration of the faithful in many shrines, and to the foreskin which was in the Lateran and also in the royal chapel of France. They also appealed to the cuttings of Christ’s hair and beard, the parings of his nails, and all his excretions—did these remain on earth or were they divine and carried to heaven? To these arguments the Dominican reply is a curious exhibition of special pleading and sophistry; but as no one could allege a single text of Scripture bearing upon the question, neither side could claim the victory. The good Bishop of Brescia, who had at first played the part of peacemaker, consistently presented a written argument in which he proved that the pope ought not to settle the question because such a determination would, firstly, be doubtful; secondly, superfluous; and, thirdly, perilous. This wise utterance was probably inspired, for Pius reserved his decision, and, August 1, 1464, only eight days before his death, issued a bull in which he recited how the faithful had been scandalized by the quarrel between the two Orders, and, therefore, he forbade further discussion on the subject until the Holy See should finally decide it. The Dominicans were emphatically prohibited from denouncing the Franciscans as heretics on account of it, and any infraction of his commands was punishable by ipso facto excommunication supplemented with harsh imprisonment. He tells us himself that after the public discussion the cardinals debated the matter for several days. The majority inclined to the Dominicans and he agreed with them, but the preaching of the Franciscans was necessary for the crusade against the Turks which he proposed to lead in person, and it was impolitic to offend them, so he postponed the decision. Mutterings of discussion, without open quarrel, have since then occasionally occurred between the Orders, but the popes have never seen fit to issue a definite decision on the subject, and the momentous question started by Roselli remains still unsettled—a pitfall for unwary feet.[194]
From Eymerich’s lament over the difficulty of providing for the expenses of an institution so necessary to the Church, it is evident that the kings of Aragon had not felt it their duty to support the Holy Office, while the bishops, he tells us, were as firm as their brethren in other lands in evading the responsibility which by right was incumbent on them. The confiscations, he adds, amounted to little or nothing, for heretics were poor folk—Waldenses, Fraticelli, and the like. In fact, so far as we can gather, the sum of Eymerich’s activity during his long career is so small that it shows how little was left of heresy by this time. Occasional Fraticelli and Waldenses and renegade Jews or Saracens were all that rewarded the inquisitor, with every now and then some harmless lunatic whose extravagance unfortunately took a religious turn, or some over-subtle speculator on the intricacies of dogmatic theology. Thus, early in his career, about 1360, Eymerich had the satisfaction of burning as a relapsed heretic a certain Nicholas of Calabria, who persisted in asserting that his teacher, Martin Gonsalvo of Cuenca, was the Son of God, who would live forever, would convert the world, and at the Day of Judgment would pray for all the dead and liberate them from hell. In 1371 he had the further gratification of silencing, by a decision of Gregory XI., a Franciscan, Pedro Bonageta. The exact relation between the physical matter of the consecrated host and the body of Christ under certain circumstances had long been a source of disputation in the Church, and Fray Pedro taught that if it fell into the mud or other unclean place, or if it were gnawed by a mouse, the body of Christ flew to heaven and the wafer became simple bread; and so also when it was ground under the teeth of the recipient, before he swallowed it. Gregory did not venture to pronounce this heretical, but he forbade its public enunciation. About the same time Eymerich had a good deal of trouble with Fray Ramon de Tarraga, a Jew turned Dominican, whose numerous philosophical writings savored of heresy. After he had been kept in prison for a couple of years, Gregory ordered him to have a speedy trial, and threatened Eymerich with punishment for contumacy if his commands were disobeyed. Ramon must have had powerful friends in the Order whom Eymerich feared to provoke, for six months later Gregory wrote again, saying that if Ramon could not be punished according to the law in Aragon, he must be sent to the papal court under good guard with all the papers of the process duly sealed. In fact, the Inquisition was not established for the trial of Dominicans. At the same time another Jew, Astruchio de Piera, held by Eymerich on an accusation of sorcery and the invocation of demons, was claimed as justiciable by the civil power, and was sequestrated until Gregory ordered his delivery to the inquisitor, who forced him to abjure and imprisoned him for life. Somewhat earlier was a certain Bartolo Janevisio, of Majorca, who indulged in some apocalyptic writing about Antichrist, and was forced, in 1361, by Eymerich to recant, while his book was publicly burned. More practical, from a political point of view, was Eymerich’s doctrine that all who lent assistance to the Saracens were punishable by the Inquisition as fautors of heresy, but this seems to have remained a theoretical assertion which brought no business to the Holy Office. We shall see hereafter how he fared in seeking the condemnation of Raymond Lulli’s writings, and need only say here that the result was his suspension from office, to be succeeded by his capital enemy Bernardo Ermengaudi, in 1386, and that after the succession to the throne, in 1387, of Juan I., who was bitterly hostile to him, he was twice proscribed and exiled, and was denounced by the king as an obstinate fool, an enemy of the faith inspired by Satan, anointed with the poison of infidelity, together with other unflattering qualifications. He did not succeed better when in his rash zeal he assailed the holy San Vicente Ferrer for saying in a sermon that Judas Iscariot had a true and salutary repentance; that, being unable to reach Christ and obtain forgiveness owing to the crowd, he hanged himself and was pardoned in heaven. When the case was drawing to a conclusion, Pedro de Luna, then Cardinal of Aragon, took Vicente under his protection and made him his confessor, and, after his election in 1394 as Avignonese pope, under the name of Benedict XIII., he forced Eymerich to surrender the papers, which he unceremoniously burned. The next inquisitor, Bernardo Puig, is said to have been earnest and successful, punishing many heretics and confuting many heresies. In Valencia, about 1390, there was a case in which Pedro de Ceplanes, priest of Cella, read in his church a formal declaration that there were three natures in Christ—divine, spiritual, and human. A merchant of the town loudly contradicted it, and a tumult arose. The inquisitor of Valencia promptly arrested the too ingenious theologian, who only escaped the stake by public recantation and condemnation to perpetual imprisonment; but he broke jail and fled to the Balearic Isles, interjecting an appeal to the Holy See.[195]
A case occurring in 1423 would seem to indicate that the Inquisition had lost much of the terror which had rendered it formidable. Fray Pedro Salazo, Inquisitor of Rosellon and Cerdaña, threw in prison on charges of heresy a hermit named Pedro Freserii, who enjoyed great reputation for sanctity among the people. The accused declared that the witnesses were personal enemies, and that he was ready to purge himself before a proper judge, and his friends lodged an appeal with Martin V. The pope referred the matter, with power to decide without appeal, to Bernardo, Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Arles, in the diocese of Elne. Bernardo deputed the case to a canon of the church of Elne, who acquitted the accused without awaiting the result of another appeal to the pope interjected by the inquisitor; and Martin finally sent the matter to the Ordinary of Narbonne, with power to summon all parties before him and decide the case definitely. The whole transaction shows a singular want of respect for the functions of the Inquisition.[197]
Yet, as against the poor and friendless, the Inquisition retained its power. Wickliffitism—as it had become the fashion to designate Waldensianism—had continued to spread, and about 1440 numbers of its sectaries were discovered, of whom some were reconciled, and more were burned as obstinate heretics by Miguel Ferriz, Inquisitor of Aragon, and Martin Trilles of Valencia. Possibly among these was an unfortunate woman, Leonor, wife of Doctor Jayme de Liminanna, of whom, about this time, we hear that she refused to perform the penance assigned to her by the Inquisition of Cartagena, and that she was consequently abandoned to the secular arm. The post of inquisitor continued to be sought for. To multiply it, Catalonia was separated from Aragon by Nicholas V. shortly after his accession in 1447. In 1459 another division took place, the diocese of Barcelona being erected into an independent tribunal by Martiale Auribelli, Dominican General Master, for the benefit of Fray Juan Conde, counsellor and confessor of the infant Carlos, Prince of Viane. The new incumbent, however, had not a peaceful time. It was probably the Inquisitor of Catalonia, objecting to the fractioning of his district, who obtained from Pius II., in 1461, a brief annulling the division, on the ground that one inquisitor had always sufficed. Fray Juan resisted and incurred excommunication, but the influence of his royal patron was sufficient to obtain from Pius, October 13, 1461, another bull restoring him to his position and absolving him from the excommunication. In 1479 a squabble occurring at Valencia shows that the office possessed attractions worth contending for. The Provincial of Aragon had removed Fray Jayme Borell and appointed Juan Marquez in his stead. Borell carried the tale of his woes to Sixtus IV., who commanded the General Master to replace him and retain him in peaceful possession.[199]
Ferdinand the Catholic succeeded to the throne of Aragon in 1479, as he had already done, in 1474, to that of Castile by right of his wife Isabella. Even before the organizing of the new Inquisition in Aragon, in 1483, it is probable that the influence of Ferdinand had done much to restore the power of the institution. In 1482, on the eve of the change, we find the Inquisition of Aragon acting with renewed vigor and boldness, under the Dominican, Juan de Epila. A number of cases are recorded of this period, including the prosecution of the father and mother of Felipe de Clemente, Prothonotary of the kingdom. As a preparatory step to placing the dominions of the crown of Aragon under Torquemada as Inquisitor-general, it was requisite to get rid of Cristobal Gualvez, who had been Inquisitor of Valencia since 1452, and who had disgraced his office by his crimes. Sixtus IV. had a special enmity to him, and, in ordering his deposition, stigmatized him as an impudent and impious man, whose unexampled excesses were worthy of severe chastisement; and when Sixtus, in 1483, extended Torquemada’s authority over the whole of Spain, with power to nominate deputies, he excepted “that son of iniquity, Cristobal Gualvez,” who had been interdicted from the office in consequence of his demerits, and whom he even deprived of the function of preaching.[200]
It is true that the Dominican legend relates how Dominic returned from Rome to Spain as Inquisitor-general, on the errand of establishing there the Inquisition for the purpose of punishing the renegade converted Jews and Moors; how he was warmly seconded by San Fernando III.; how he organized the Inquisition throughout the land, celebrating himself the first auto de fé at Burgos, where three hundred apostates were burned, and the second auto in the presence of the saintly king, who himself carried on his shoulders fagots for the burning of his subjects, and the pertinacious wretches defiantly rejoiced in the flames which were consuming them; how, after this, he established the Inquisition in Aragon, whence he journeyed to Paris and organized it throughout France; how, in 1220, he sent Conrad of Marburg as inquisitor to Germany, and in 1221 finished his labors by founding it in all the parts of Italy. All this can rank in historical value with the veracious statement of an old chronicler—a compatriot of the Pied Piper of Hamelin—that St. Boniface was an inquisitor, and that, with the support of Pepin le Bref, he burned many heretics. Detailed lists, moreover, are given of the successive inquisitors-general of the Peninsula—Frailes Suero Gomes, B. Gil, Pedro de Huesca, Arnaldo Segarra, Garcia de Valcos, etc., but these are simply the Dominican provincials of Spain, who were empowered by the popes to appoint inquisitors, and whose exercise of that power did not extend beyond Aragon. Even Paramo, although he tries to prove that there were inquisitors nominally in Castile, is forced to admit that practically there was no Inquisition there.[201]
If what Lucas tells us be true, that ecclesiastics frequently joined in and enjoyed the ridicule with which heretics derided the sacraments and the clergy, the Spanish Church was not likely to give much aid to the introduction of the Inquisition. How little its methods were understood appears in the fact that when, in 1236, San Fernando III. found some heretics at Palencia, he proceeded to brand them in the face, which brought them to reason and led them to seek absolution. No one seemed to know what to do with them, so Gregory IX. was applied to, and he authorized the Bishop of Palencia to reconcile them. There is probably no truth in the statement of some historians that the king, on several occasions, was obliged to levy from his subjects a tribute of wood with which to burn the unrepentant, and the story only serves to show how utterly vague have been the current conceptions of the period.[203]
We reach firmer ground with the codes known as El Fuero Real and Las Siete Partidas, the first issued by Alonso the Wise, in 1255, and the second about ten years later. By this time the Inquisition was at its height. It was thoroughly organized, and wherever it existed the business of suppressing heresy was exclusively in its hands. Yet not only does Alonso take no count of it, but in his regulation by secular law of the relations between the heretic and the Church he shows how completely, up to this period, Spain had remained outside of the great movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Heresy, it is true, is one of the matters pertaining to the ecclesiastical tribunals, and any one can accuse a heretic before his bishop or vicar. If the accused is found not to believe as the Church teaches, effort is to be made to convert him, and if he returns to the faith he is to be pardoned. If he proves obstinate, he is to be handed over to the secular judge. Then, however, his fate is decided without reference to the laws which the Church had endeavored to introduce throughout Christendom. If the culprit had received the consolamentum, or is a believer observing the rites, or one of those who deny the future life, he is to be burned; but if a believer not observing the rites, he is to be banished or imprisoned until he returns to the faith. Any one learning heresy, but not yet a believer, is fined ten pounds of gold to the fisc, or, if unable to pay, to receive fifty lashes in public. In the case of those who die in heresy or are executed, their estates pass to Catholic descendants, or, in default of these, to the next of kin; if without such kindred, the property of laymen goes to the fisc, of ecclesiastics, to the Church, if claimed within a year, after which it inures to the fisc. Children disinherited for heresy recover their portions, but not the mesne profits, on recantation. No one, after condemnation for heresy, can hold office, inherit property, make a will, execute a sale, or give testimony. The house where a wandering heretic missionary is sheltered is forfeited to the Church, if inhabited by the owner; if rented, the offending tenant is fined ten pounds of gold or publicly scourged. A rico home or noble sheltering heretics in his lands or castles, and persisting after a year’s excommunication, forfeits the land or castle to the king; and if a non-noble his body and property are at the king’s pleasure. The Christian who turns Jew or Moslem is legally a heretic, and is to be burned, as well as one who brings up a child in the forbidden faith. Prosecutions of the dead, however, are humanely limited to five years after decease.[204]
This, perhaps, technically justifies Alonso Tostado, Bishop of Avila, who soon afterwards alludes to inquisitors in Spain investigating those defamed for heresy, and it explains the remarks of Sixtus IV. when, in January, 1482, he confirmed the two inquisitors appointed at Seville by Ferdinand and Isabella at the commencement of their reforms, and forbade their naming more, for the reason that the appointees of the Dominican provincial were sufficient. In spite of all this, the Spanish Inquisition was simply potential, not existent. When, in 1453, Alonso de Almarzo, Abbot of the great Benedictine foundation of Antealtares of Compostella, with his accomplices, was tried for selling throughout Spain and Portugal indulgences warranted to release the souls of the damned from hell, for counterfeiting the papal Agnus Dei, for forging and altering papal letters, and for persuading Jewish converts to apostatize, had there been an Inquisition it would promptly have taken cognizance of the culprits; but in place of this the case was referred to Nicolas V., who instructed the Bishop of Tarazona to proceed against them. A few years later Alonso de Espina, about 1460, sorrowfully admits the absence of all persecution of heresy. Bishops and inquisitors and preachers ought all to resist the heretics, but there is no one to do it. “No one investigates the errors of heretics. The ravening wolves, O Lord, have gained admittance to thy flock, for the shepherds are few. There are many hirelings, and because they are hirelings they care only for shearing, not for feeding the sheep!” and he draws a deplorable picture of the Spanish Church, distracted with heretics, Jews, and Saracens. Soon after this, in 1464, the Cortes assembled at Medina turned its attention to the subject and complained of the great number of “malos cristianos e sospechosos en la fe,” but the national aversion to the papal Inquisition still manifested itself, and its introduction was not suggested. The archbishops and bishops were requested to set on foot a rigid investigation after heretics, and King Henry IV. was asked to lend them aid, so that every suspected place might be thoroughly searched, and offenders brought to light, imprisoned, and punished. It was represented to the king that this would be to his advantage, as the confiscations would inure to the royal treasury, and he graciously expressed his assent; but the effort was resultless.[207]
At the same time even Spain was not wholly unmoved by the spirit of unrest and inquiry which marked the second half of the fifteenth century, sapping the foundations of tradition and rejecting the claims of sacerdotalism. About 1460 we learn from Alonso de Espina that many were beginning to deny the efficacy of oral confession, and this point could not have been reached without calling in question many other doctrines and observances which the Church taught to be necessary to salvation. At length these innovators grew so bold that Pedro de Osma, a professor in the great University of Salamanca, ventured to promulgate their obnoxious opinions in print. Oral confession, he asserted, was of human, not of divine precept, and was unnecessary for the forgiveness of sins; no papal indulgence could insure the living from the fires of purgatory; the papacy could err, and had no power to dispense with the statutes of the Church. Had there been any machinery of persecution at hand, short work would have been made with so bold a heretic, but the authorities were so much at a loss what to do with him that they applied to Sixtus IV., who sent a commission to Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, the dignitary next in rank to the king, to try him. In 1479 a council was assembled for the purpose at Alcalà, consisting of fifty-two of the best theologians in Spain, besides a number of canon lawyers. Pedro was summoned to appear, and on his failing to do so his doctrine was condemned as heretical, and he was sentenced—not to the stake for contumacy, but to recant publicly in the pulpit. He submitted and did so, and we are told in the official report of the proceedings that all the faithful burst into tears at this signal manifestation of the conquering hand of God. Pedro died peacefully in the bosom of the Church during the next year, 1480, and Sixtus IV., in confirming the action of the council, ordered the archbishop to prosecute as heretics any of his followers who would not imitate his obedience.[208]
The New Inquisition of Spain was a model which the smaller kingdom would naturally be expected to adopt, and in fact, to ardent Catholics, there might well seem to be a necessity for such an institution in view of the problems arising from the large influx of New Christians flying from Spanish persecution. Dom Manoel, indeed, at one time entertained so seriously the idea of establishing the Spanish Inquisition in his dominions that, in 1515, he ordered his ambassador at Rome, D. Miguel da Silva, to obtain from Leo X. the same privileges as those which had been conceded to Castile, but from some cause the project was abandoned. His son, Dom João III., who succeeded him in 1521, was a weak-minded fanatic, and it is only singular that the introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model was delayed for still ten years. The struggle which took place over the measure belongs, however, to a period beyond our present limits.[211]
For centuries the normal condition of Italy was not far removed from anarchy. Spasmodic attempts of the empire to make good its traditional claim to overlordship were met by the steady policy of the papacy to extend its temporal power over the Peninsula. During the century occupied by the reigns of the Hohenstaufens (1152-1254), when the empire seemed nearest to accomplishing its ends, the popes sought to erect a rampart by stimulating the attempts of the cities to establish their independence and form self-governing republics, and it thus created for itself a party in all of them. North of the Patrimony of St. Peter the soil of Italy thus became fractioned into petty states under institutions more or less democratic. For the most part they were torn with savage internal feuds between factions which, as Guelf or Ghibelline, hoisted the banner of pope or kaiser as an excuse for tearing each other to pieces. As a rule, they were involved in constant war with each other. Occasionally, indeed, some overmastering necessity might bring about a temporary union, as when the Lombard League, in 1177, broke the Barbarossa’s power on the field of Legnano, but, in general, the chronicles of that dismal period are a confused mass of murderous strife inside and outside the gates of every town.
Lombardy, in fact, was the centre whence Catharism was propagated throughout Europe. We have seen above how for more than half a century it served as a refuge to the persecuted saints of Languedoc, and as a source whence to draw missionaries and teachers. About 1240 a certain Yvo of Narbonne was falsely accused of heresy and fled to Italy, where he was received as a martyr, and had full opportunity of penetrating into the secrets of the sectaries. In a letter to Géraud, Archbishop of Bordeaux, he describes their thorough organization throughout Italy, with ramifications extending into all the neighboring lands. From all the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany their youth were sent to Paris to perfect themselves in logic and theology, so as to be able successfully to defend their errors. Catharan merchants frequented fairs and obtained entrance into houses where they lost no opportunity of scattering the seed of false doctrine. Full of zeal and courage, the Catharan believed his faith to be the religion of the future, and his ardor courted martyrdom in the effort to spread it everywhere. Milan was the headquarters whither every year delegates were sent from the churches throughout Christendom, bringing contributions for the support of the central organization, and receiving instructions as to the symbol, changed every twelvemonth, whereby the wandering Patarin could recognize the houses of his brethren and safely claim hospitality. It was in vain that, in 1212, Innocent III. warned the heretical city of the fate of Languedoc, and threatened to send a similar crusade for its extirpation. Fortunately for the Lombards he had no one to summon to their destruction, for Germany, however desirous of conquering Italy, was too distracted for such an enterprise, and the popes dreaded imperial domination quite as much as heresy. There was bitter irony in the reply of Frederic II., when, in 1236, he was subduing the rebellious Lombards, and he answered the clamor of Gregory IX., who called upon him to transfer his arms to Syria, by pointing out that the Milanese were much worse than Saracens, and their subjugation much more important.[214]
It was, however, in the valleys of the Cottian Alps, to which they spread from Dauphiné, that they settled themselves most firmly. In those inhospitable regions, till then almost uninhabited, their marvellous and self-denying industry occupied every spot where incessant labor could support life. There they rapidly increased and filled the valleys of Luserna, Angrogna, San Martino, and Perosa. In 1210 Giacomo di Carisio, Bishop of Turin, alarmed at the constant growth of this heresy in his diocese, applied to Otho IV. for aid in its suppression, but the emperor in reply merely ordered him to use severity in their punishment and expulsion. Authority for this he already had in abundance under the canons, but he lacked the physical force to render it effective, and the imperial rescript went for naught. This shows that the local suzerains took no measures to enforce persecution, and the heretics continued to increase. The immediate sovereign of the district most deeply infected was the Abbey of Ripaille, which found itself unable to control them, and made over its temporal rights to Tommaso I., Count of Savoy. He issued an edict, to which I have already referred, imposing a fine of ten sols for giving refuge to heretics, which proved altogether ineffective. Thus, in the absence of efficient repression, were established those Alpine communities whose tenacity of belief supplied through centuries an unfailing succession of humble martyrs, and who ennobled human nature by their marvellous example of constancy and endurance.[216]
Something more than imperial edicts was plainly necessary, and Honorius, in casting around for methods to check the spread of heresy, appointed, in 1224, the Bishops of Brescia and Modena as commissioners with special powers to exterminate the heretics of Lombardy—as inquisitors, in fact, this being one of the steps which gradually led to the establishment of the Inquisition, the usefulness of the Dominicans in this respect not having yet been divined. The Bishop of Modena, however, undertook a mission to convert the pagans of Prussia, and the Bishop of Rimini was substituted in his place. The prelates commenced with Brescia itself, whose prelate doubtless knew where to strike. They ordered the tearing down of certain houses where heretical preachers had been accustomed to hold forth. At once an armed insurrection broke out. The perennial factions of the city took sides. Several churches were burned, and the heretics parodied from them the anathema by casting lighted torches from the windows, and solemnly excommunicating all members of the Church of Rome. It was not until after a severe and prolonged conflict that the Catholics obtained the upper hand, and then the terms prescribed by Honorius were so mild as to indicate that it was not deemed politic to drive the defeated party to despair. All excommunicates were required to apply personally for absolution to the Holy See. The fortified houses of the lords of Gambara, of Ugona, of the Oriani, of the sons of Botatio, who had been the leader in the troubles, were ordered to be razed to the ground, never to be rebuilt, while other strongholds, which had been defended against the Catholics, were to be cut down one-third or one-half. Benificed clerks who were children of heretics or of fautors were to be suspended for three years or more as their individual participation in the troubles might indicate. A levy of three hundred and thirty lire was ordered on the clergy of Lombardy and the Trivigiana to recompense the Catholics for the losses endured in contending with the heretics. So unaccustomed as yet were the Lombards to persecution that even these conditions were deemed too harsh. The city of Milan interceded, and finally even the authorities of Brescia itself urged that moderation would be conducive to peace; and, May 1, 1226, Honorius authorized the bishops to use their discretion in diminishing the penalties. When, however, the Dominican Guala was elected Bishop of Brescia in 1230, he speedily succeeded in introducing in the local statutes the law of Frederic, of March, 1224, which decreed for heretics the stake or loss of the tongue, and he forced the podestà to swear to its execution.[220]
It was now that Gregory, seeing the futility of all efforts thus far save those which the Dominicans were making in Florence, hit upon the final and successful experiment of confiding to the Order the suppression of heresy as part of their regular duties. A fresh impulse was felt all along the line. The Church suddenly found that it could count upon an unexpected reserve of enthusiasm, boundless and exhaustless, despising danger and reckless of consequences, which in the end could hardly fail to triumph. A new class of men now appears upon the scene—San Piero Martire, Giovanni da Vicenza, Rolando da Cremona, Rainerio Saccone—worthy to rank with their brethren in Languedoc, who devoted themselves to what they held to be their duty with a singleness of purpose which must command respect, however repulsive their labors may seem to us. On one hand these men had an easier task than their Western colleagues, for they had not to contend with the jealousy, or submit to the control, of the bishops. The independence of the Italian episcopate had been broken down in the eleventh century. Besides, the bishops naturally belonged to the Guelfic faction, and welcomed any allies who promised to aid them in crushing the antagonistic party in their turbulent cities. On the other hand, the political dissensions which raged everywhere with savage ferocity increased enormously the difficulties and dangers of the task.
The earliest name I have met with bearing the title of Inquisitor of Lombardy is that of a Frà Alberico in 1232. The Cardinal Legate Goffredo, whom we have seen busy in Milan, undertook to quiet civil strife in Bergamo, with the consent of all factions, by appointing as podestà Pier Torriani of Milan; and at the same time he seized the opportunity to make a raid on heretics, a number of whom he cast into prison. No sooner was his back turned than the citizens refused to receive his podestà, elected in his place a certain R. di Madello, and, what was worse, set at liberty the captive heretics. Thereupon the legate placed the city under interdict, which brought the people to their senses, and they agreed to stand to the mandate of the Church. Gregory accordingly, November 3, 1232, instructed Alberico, as Inquisitor of Lombardy, to reconcile the city on condition that the people refund to Pier Torriani all his expenses and give sufficient security to exterminate heresy. Here we see how intimate were the relations between politics and heresy, and what difficulties the alliance threw in the way of persecution.[223]
Frà Rolando da Cremona we have already met as professor in the inchoate University of Toulouse, and we have seen how rigid and unbending was his zeal. Hardly had he quitted Langueduc when we find him, in 1233, already actively at work in the congenial duty of suppressing heresy at Piacenza. The twenty-five years which had elapsed since the Piacenzans had shown themselves so indifferent to their spiritual privileges had not greatly increased their respect for orthodoxy. Rolando assembled them, preached to them, and then ordered the podestà to expel the heretics. The result did not correspond to his expectations. With the connivance of the podestà, the heretics and their friends arose and made a general onslaught on the clergy, including the bishop and the friars, in which a monk of San Sabino was slain and Rolando and some of his comrades were wounded. The Dominicans carried Rolando half-dead from the city, which was placed under interdict by the bishop. Then a revulsion of feeling occurred; Rolando was asked to return, and full satisfaction was promised. He prudently kept away, but ordered the imprisonment of the podestà and twenty-four others till the pleasure of the pope should be known. Gregory took advantage of the opportunity by sending thither the Archdeacon of Novara, with instructions to place the city under control of the orthodox party, taking ample security that the heretics should be suppressed; but this arrangement did not please the citizens, who rose again and liberated the prisoners. Sharp as was this experience, it did not dull the edge of Rolando’s zeal, for the next year we find him at work in the Milanese, where he received rough treatment at the hands of Lantelmo, a noble who sheltered heretics in his castle near Lodi. For this Lantelmo was condemned to be led through the streets, stripped and with a halter around his neck, to Rolando’s presence, and there to accept such penance as the friar, at command of the pope, might enjoin on him. A month later we hear of his seizing two Florentine merchants, Feriabente and Capso, with all their goods. They evidently were persons of importance, for Gregory ordered their release in view of having received bail for them in the enormous sum of two thousand silver marks.[224]
For some years Giovanni Schio led a comparatively quiet existence in Bologna, but in 1247, by which time the Inquisition was fairly taking shape, Innocent IV. appointed him perpetual inquisitor throughout Lombardy, arming him with full powers and releasing him from all subjection or accountability to the Dominican general or provincial. In the existing condition of the north of Italy the commission was virtually inoperative, and its only interest lies in its terms, which show that up to this time there was no organized Inquisition there. We hear nothing further of his activity, even after the death of Frederic, in 1250, until, in 1256, the long-delayed crusade was undertaken against Ezzelin da Romano. By his fiery eloquence he raised in Bologna a considerable force of crusaders, at whose head he marched against the tyrant of the Trevisan, but, disgusted with the quarrels of the leaders, he returned to Bologna before the final catastrophe, and he is supposed to have perished, in 1265, in the crusade against Manfred, when there was a contingent of ten thousand Bolognese in the army of Charles of Anjou.[229]
The whole of central Italy, in fact, was almost as deeply infected with heresy as Lombardy, and little had as yet been done to purify it. That as late as 1235 no comprehensive attempt had been made to establish the Inquisition is shown by a papal brief addressed in that year to the Dominicans of Viterbo, empowering them, in all the dioceses of Tuscany, Viterbo, Orta, Balneoreggio, Castro, Soano, Amerino, and Narni, to absolve heretics not publicly defamed for heresy, who should spontaneously accuse themselves, provided the bishops assented and sufficient bail were given; and the bishops were ordered to co-operate. Heretics not thus voluntarily confessing were to be dealt with according to the papal statutes. At Viterbo dwelt Giovanni da Benevento, who was called the pope of the heretics, but it was not until Gregory went thither in 1237 and undertook the task of purifying the place himself that any efficient action was taken; he condemned Giovanni and many other heretics, and ordered the palaces of some of the noblest families of the city to be torn down, as having afforded refuge to heretics. At the same time the Bishop of Padua was urged to persevere in the good work, and at Parma the Knights of Jesus Christ were instituted with the same object by Jordan, the Dominican general. All this indicates the commencement of systematic operations, and the pressure grew stronger year by year. Under the energetic management of Ruggieri Calcagni the Florentine Inquisition rapidly took shape and executions became frequent, while in the confessions of the accused allusions are made to heretics burned elsewhere, showing that persecution was becoming active wherever political conditions rendered it possible. Thus in a confession of 1244 there is a reference to two, Maffeo and Martello, burned not long before at Pisa.[234]
Thus was destroyed in Florence the power of the heretics and of the Ghibellines. Ruggieri, for his steadfast courage, was rewarded, before the close of 1245, with the bishopric of Castro, and was succeeded as inquisitor by San Piero himself, whose indefatigable zeal allowed the heretics no rest. Many of them, recognizing the futility of further resistance, abandoned their errors; others fled, and when Piero left Florence he could boast that heresy was conquered and the Inquisition established on an impregnable basis; though Rainerio’s estimate of the Florentine Cathari, some years later, shows that it still had an ample harvest to reward its labors.[235]
While Ruggieri, in the summer of 1245, was precipitating the conflict in Florence, Innocent IV., in the Council of Lyons, was passing sentence of dethronement on Frederic II. and trying to find some aspirant hardy enough to accept the imperial crown. Frederic laughed the sentence to scorn and easily disposed of his would-be competitors, but he was obliged to struggle hard to maintain his Italian possessions, and his death, December 13, 1250, relieved the papacy from the most formidable antagonist which its ambitious designs had ever encountered. Skilled equally in the arts of war and peace, untiring in activity, dismayed by no reverses, intellectually far in advance of his age, and encumbered with few scruples, Frederic’s brilliant abilities and indomitable courage had been the one obstacle in the papal path towards domination over Italy and the foundation on that basis of a universal theocratic monarchy. His son, Conrad IV., a youth of twenty-one, was scarce to be dreaded in comparison, though Innocent cautiously waited for a while in Lyons before venturing into Italy. After reaching Genoa, June 8, 1251, he addressed to Piero da Verona and Viviano da Bergamo a brief which shows that the intervening six months had not sufficed to dull the sense of rejoicing at the death of his great opponent, and that no more time was to be lost in taking full advantage of the opportunity. A dithyrambic burst of exultation is followed by the declaration that thanks to God for this inestimable mercy are to be rendered not so much in words as in deeds, and of these the most acceptable is the purification of the faith. Frederic’s favor towards heretics had long impeded the operations of the Inquisition throughout Italy, and now that he is removed it is to be put into action everywhere with all possible vigor. Inquisitors are to be sent into all parts of Lombardy; Piero and Viviano are ordered to proceed forthwith to Cremona, armed with all necessary powers; rulers who do not zealously assist them will be coerced with the spiritual sword, and, if this proves insufficient, Christendom will be aroused to destroy them in a crusade. This bull was followed by a rapid succession of others addressed to the Dominican provincials and to potentates, ordering strenuous co-operation, and the inscription in all local statutes of the constitutions of the dead emperor and of the popes—bulls issued in such haste that, June 13, 1252, the pope was obliged to explain that the blunders and omissions arising from the hurried work of the scribes are not to invalidate them. The whole was crowned, May 15, 1252, by the issue of the bull Ad extirpanda, of which I have given an abstract in a former chapter. This sought to render the civil power completely subservient to the Inquisition, and prescribed the extirpation of heresy as the chief duty of the State.[236]
The enthusiasm excited by the career of San Piero was turned to practical account by the organization in most of the Italian cities of Crocesegnati, composed of the principal cavaliers, who swore to defend and assist the inquisitors at peril of their lives, and to devote person and property to the extermination of heretics, for which service they received plenary remission of all their sins. These associations were wont to assemble on the feast of San Piero in the Dominican churches, which were the seats of the Inquisition, and hold aloft their drawn swords during the reading of the Gospel, in testimony of their readiness to crush heresy with force. They continued to exist until the last century, and Frà Pier-Tommaso Campana, who was inquisitor at Crema, relates with pride how, in 1738, he presided over such a ceremony in Milan. The Crocesegnati, moreover, furnished material support to the inquisitors, supplying them when necessary with both men and money for the performance of their functions. In fact, they were subject to excommunication if they refused to give money when called upon by the inquisitor. It can readily be conceived how greatly the effectiveness of the Inquisition was increased by such an organization.[240]
One of Rainerio’s first enterprises, in 1253, was summoning Egidio, Count of Cortenuova, before his tribunal, as a fautor and defender of heresy. The castle of Cortenuova, near Bergamo, had been razed as a nest of heretics, and its reconstruction prohibited, but the count had seized the castle of Mongano, which was claimed by the Bishop of Cremona, and had converted it into a den of heretics, who enjoyed immunity under his protection. He disdained to obey the citation and was duly excommunicated. He paid no attention to this, and on March 23, 1254, Innocent IV. ordered the authorities of Milan, under pain of ecclesiastical censures, to take the castle by force and deliver its inmates to the inquisitors for trial. The count, however, was in close alliance with Pallavicino, “that enemy of God and the Church,” and the Milanese appear to have had no appetite for the enterprise at the time. Mongano continued to be a place of refuge for the persecuted until 1269, when the Milanese were at last stimulated to undertake the siege, and on capturing it handed it over to the Dominicans.[243]
As the Inquisition warmed to its work, the four inquisitors provided for Lombardy by Innocent IV. proved insufficient, and, March 20, 1256, Alexander IV. ordered the provincial to increase the number to eight. He appears to have been somewhat dilatory in obedience, for in 1260 he was sharply reminded of the command and enjoined no longer to postpone its fulfilment. Possibly the delay may have arisen from the fact that in January, 1257, Rainerio had risen to the position of supreme inquisitor over the whole of Lombardy and the Marches of Genoa and Treviso, with power to appoint deputies. He thus was doubtless practically emancipated from the control of the provincial, and was able to supply any deficiency in the working force with those who were absolutely dependent upon himself. In March, 1256, the prelates had been required in the most urgent terms to render all aid and support to the inquisitors; and in January, 1257, this was emphasized by informing them that those who manifested neglect should not escape punishment, while those who showed themselves zealous would find the Holy See benignant to them in their “opportunities.” The significance of this is not to be mistaken, and it would be difficult to set limits to the power thus concentrated in the hands of the ex-Catharan.[247]
So long as these Ghibelline chiefs retained power it was evident that the foothold of heresy was secure, and that the hopes based on the death of Frederic II. were not destined to fruition. Every motive had long conspired to render the Church eager for the destruction of Ezzelin, who was its most dreaded antagonist, and every expedient had been tried to reduce him to subjection. As far back as 1221 Gregory IX., then legate in Lombardy, had extorted from him assurances of his hatred of heresy. In 1231 his sons, Ezzelin and Alberico, were at the papal court expressing horror at his crimes and promising to deliver him up for trial as a heretic if he would not reform, in order to escape the disinheritance which they would otherwise incur under Frederic’s laws. They pledged themselves, moreover, to deliver to him letters from Gregory, dated September 1, in which he was bitterly reproached for his protection of heretics, and told that if he would humbly acknowledge his errors and expel all heretics from his lands he might come within two months to the Holy See, prepared to obey implicitly all commands laid upon him; otherwise heaven and earth would be invoked against him, his lands should be abandoned to seizure, and he, who was already a scandal and a horror to men, should become an eternal opprobrium.[249]
The Neapolitan conquest and the death of Innocent IV. postponed the organization of the crusade, but at length, in June, 1256, it set out from Venice under the leadership of the Legate Filippo, Archbishop-elect of Ravenna. The capture by assault of Padua, Ezzelin’s most important city, was an encouraging commencement of the campaign, but the seven-days’’ sack, to which the unfortunate town was abandoned, showed that the soldiers of the cross were determined to make the most of the indulgences which they had earned. Under its incompetent captain the crusade dragged on without further result, in spite of reiterated bulls offering salvation, until, in 1258, the legate was utterly routed near Brescia and captured, together with his astrologer, the Dominican Everard. Brescia fell into Ezzelin’s hands, who, more powerful than ever, entertained designs upon Milan, where he had relations with the Ghibelline faction. When all danger seemed to him past, however, there was a sudden revulsion of fortune. The Ghibelline chiefs of Lombardy, Uberto Pallavicino and Buoso di Dovara, lords of Cremona, had been in alliance with him; they had aided in the capture of Brescia, with the understanding that they were to share in its possession, but he had monopolized the conquest, and they were resolved on revenge. June 11, 1259, they signed a treaty against Ezzelin with the Milanese and with Azzo d’Este, the head of the Lombard Guelfs. Ezzelin took the field with a heavy force, hoping to gain possession of Milan through the intelligences which he had within the walls, but on the march he was attacked by Uberto, Buoso, and Azzo, who by skilful strategy dispersed his troops and captured him, grievously wounded. His savage pride would not brook this degradation: he tore the bandages from his wound, refused all aid, and died in a few days.[253]
Uberto cared as little as Ezzelin for the impotent papal thunder, and quietly went on strengthening his position and adding city after city to his dominions, in spite of Alexander’s instructions to Rainerio and his inquisitors to act vigorously and to preach a crusade. Between his success in the north, and the daily extending influence of Manfred’s wise and vigorous rule in the south, it looked for a while as though the ambitious designs of the papacy were permanently crushed, and that the Italian Inquisition might come to an untimely end. Inquisitors were no longer able to move around in safety, even in the Roman province, and prelates and cities were ordered to provide them with a sufficient guard in all their journeys. An indication of the popular feeling is afforded by the action taken in 1264 by the people of Bergamo, greatly to the indignation of the Roman curia, to defend themselves against the arbitrary methods of inquisitorial procedure. They enacted that any one cited or excommunicated for heresy or fautorship might take an oath before the prosecutor or bishop that he held the faith of the Church of Rome in all its details, and then another oath before the podestà binding himself to pay one hundred sols every time that he deviated from it; after this he could not be cited outside of the city, and was eligible to any municipal office within it, while the magistrates were to defend him at the public expense against any such citation or excommunication. Yet outside of Uberto’s territories and influence the business of the Inquisition in Lombardy went steadily on. In 1265 and 1266 Clement IV. is found issuing instructions as to the duties and appointment of inquisitors as vigorously as though there were no impediments to their functions. It seemed only a question of time, however, when the districts yet open should be closed to them.[257]
Although one by one Pallavicino’s cities revolted from him in the general terror, his submission was only to gain time, and in 1267 he risked another cast of the die by joining in the invitation to Italy of the young Conradin, but the defeat and capture of that prince at Tagliacozza, in August, 1268, followed by his barbarous execution in October, extinguished the house of Suabia and the hopes of the Ghibellines. Charles of Anjou was master of Italy; he was created imperial vicar in Tuscany; even in the north we find him this year appointing Adalberto de’’ Gamberti as podestà in Piacenza. Before the close of 1268 Pallavicino died, broken with age and in utter misery, while besieged in his castle of Gusaliggio by the Piacenzans and Parmesans. For a presumed heretic he made a good end, surrounded by Dominicans and Franciscans, confessing his sins and receiving the viaticum, so that, as a pious chronicler observes, we may humbly believe that his soul was saved. Despite the calumnies of the papalists, he left the reputation of a man of sterling worth, of lofty aims, and of great capacity. As for Rainerio Saccone, the last glimpse we have of him is in July, 1262, when Urban IV. orders him to come with all possible speed for consultation on a matter of moment, defraying, from the proceeds of the confiscations, all expenses for horses and other necessaries on the journey. His expulsion from Milan had evidently not diminished his importance.[260]
Thus heresy, deprived of all protection, was gradually stamped out, and the Inquisition established its power in every corner of the land. How that power was abused to oppress the faithful with ingeniously devised schemes of extortion we have already seen. In fact, in the territories which had once been Ghibelline, it was impossible for any man, no matter how rigid his orthodoxy, to be safe from prosecution if he chanced to provoke the ill-will of the officials, or possessed wealth to excite their cupidity. So successful had the Church been in confounding political opposition with heresy that the mere fact of having adhered of necessity to Ezzelin during the period of his unquestioned domination long continued sufficient to justify prosecution for heresy, entailing the desirable result of confiscation. When Ezzelin’s generation passed away, the memory of the dead was assailed and the descendants were disinherited. In all this there was no pretence of errors of faith, but the men to whom the Church intrusted the awful powers of the Inquisition seemed implacably determined to erase from the land every trace of those who had once dared to resist its authority. At last, in 1304, the authorities of Vicenza appealed to Benedict XI. no longer to allow the few survivors of Ezzelin’s party and their descendants to be thus cruelly wronged, and the pope graciously granted their petition. By this time the empire was but a shadow; Ghibellinism represented no living force that the papacy could reasonably dread, and its persecution had long been merely the gratification of greed or malice.[264]
Even in the Patrimony of St. Peter resistance was not wholly at an end. In 1254, when the papacy was triumphant, Innocent IV. urged the inquisitors of Orvieto and Anagni to take advantage of the propitious time and act with the utmost vigor. In 1258 Alexander IV. sounded the alarm that heresy was increasing even in Rome itself, and he pressingly urged increased activity on the inquisitors and greater zeal in their support by the bishops. Their efforts were not wholly successful. Twenty years later a knight named Pandolfo still made his stronghold of Castro Siriani, near Anagni, a receptacle of heretics. Frà Sinibaldo di Lago, the inquisitor of the Roman province, made various ineffectual attempts to prosecute him, and in 1278 Nicholas III. sent his notary, Master Benedict, with offers of pardon in return for obedience, but the heretics were obdurate, and Nicholas was forced to order Orso Orsini, Marshal of the Church in Tuscany, to levy troops and give Frà Sinibaldo armed assistance sufficient to enable him to coerce them to penitence. A similar enterprise against the Viterbian noble, Capello di Chia, in 1260, has already been described (Vol. I. p. 342). In this case the zeal of the Viterbians, who levied an army to assist the inquisitor, must have had some political motive, for their city was of evil repute in the matter of heresy. In 1265, encouraged by the assistance of Manfred, the people had risen against the Inquisition and had only been subdued after a bloody fight in which two friars were slain. In 1279 Nicholas expresses his regret that although, while he had been inquisitor-general, he had labored strenuously to purge Viterbo of heresy, his labors had been unsuccessful. Heretics were still concealed there, and the whole city was infected. Frà Sinibaldo was therefore ordered to go thither to make a thorough inquisition of the place.[267]
How difficult, indeed, was the task of the inquisitor in detecting heresy under the mask of orthodoxy is curiously illustrated by the case of Armanno Pongilupo himself. In Ferrara heretics were numerous. Armanno’s parents were both Cathari; he was a “consolatus” and his wife a “consolata.” In 1254 he was detected and imprisoned; he confessed and abjured, and was released. From his Catharan bishop he received absolution for his oath of abjuration, and was received back into the sect. From this time until his death, in 1269, he was unceasingly engaged in propagating Catharan doctrines and in ministering to the wants of his less fortunate brethren in the clutches of the Inquisition, which was exceedingly active and successful. Meanwhile be preserved an exterior of the strictest Catholicism; he was regular in attendance at the altar and confessional, and wholly devoted to piety and good works. He died in the odor of sanctity, was buried in the cathedral, and immediately he began to work miracles. He was soon reverenced as a saint. A magnificent tomb arose over his remains, an altar was erected, and, as the miraculous manifestations of his sanctity multiplied, his chapel became filled with images and ex-votos, to the no little profit of the church fortunate enough to possess him. Adored as a saint in the popular cult, there came a general demand for his canonization, in which the pride of the city was warmly enlisted, but which was steadfastly opposed by the Inquisition. In the confessions of heretics before it the name of Armanno constantly recurred as that of one of the most active and trusted members of the sect, and ample evidence accumulated as to his unrepentant heresy. Then arose a curious conflict, waged on both sides with unremitting vigor for thirty-two years. Hardly had the remains been committed to honorable sepulture in the cathedral when Frà Aldobrandini, the inquisitor who had tried him in 1254, ordered the archpriest and chapter to exhume and burn the corpse, and on their refusal excommunicated them and placed the cathedral under interdict. From this they appealed to Gregory X. and set to work to gather the evidence for canonization. For this purpose at different times five several inquests were held and superabundant testimony was forthcoming as to the success with which his suffrage was invoked, how the sick were healed, the blind made to see, and the halt to walk, while numerous priests bore emphatic witness to his pre-eminent piety during life. Gregory and Aldobrandini passed away leaving the matter unsettled. Frà Florio, the next inquisitor, sent to Rome expressly to urge Honorius IV. to come to a decision, but Honorius died without concluding the matter. On the accession of Boniface VIII., in 1294, Frà Guido da Vicenza, then inquisitor, again visited Rome to procure a termination of the affair. Still the contending forces were too evenly balanced for either to win. At length the Lord of Ferrara, Azzo X., interposed, for the contest between the inquisitor and the secular clergy seriously threatened the peace of the city. In 1300 Boniface appointed a commission to make a thorough investigation, with power to decide finally, and in 1301 sentence was rendered to the effect that Armanno had died a relapsed heretic; that no one should believe him to be anything but a heretic; that his bones should be exhumed and burned, the sarcophagus containing them and the altar erected before it be destroyed; that all statues, images, ex-votos, and other offerings set up in his honor in the cathedral and other Ferrarese churches should be removed within ten days; and that all his property, real and personal, was confiscated to the Inquisition, any sales or conveyances made of them during the thirty-two years which had elapsed since his death being void. Frà Guido’s triumph was complete, and on the death of the Bishop of Ferrara, in 1303, he was rewarded with the episcopate. Extraordinary as this case may seem, it was not unique. At Brescia a heresiarch named Guido Lacha was long adored as a saint by the people until the imposture was detected by the Inquisition, which caused his bones to be dug up and burned.[269]
Together with this exhibition of papal indulgence may be classed the occasional interference of the Holy See to moderate the rigor of the canons, or to repress the undue zeal of an inquisitor, when the sufferer had influence or money enough to attract the papal attention. It is pleasant to record three instances of this kind on the part of the despotic Boniface VIII., when, in 1297, he declared that Rainerio Gatti, a noble of Viterbo, and his sons had been prosecuted by the inquisitors on perjured testimony, wherefore the process was to be annulled and the accused and their heirs relieved from all stain of heresy; when, in 1298, he ordered the Inquisition to restore to the innocent children of a heretic the property confiscated by Frà Andrea the inquisitor, and when he ordered Frà Adamo da Como, the inquisitor of the Roman province, to desist from molesting Giovanni Ferraloco, a citizen of Orvieto, whom his predecessors, Angelo da Rieti and Leonardo da Tivoli, had declared absolved from heresy. This Frà Adamo apparently rendered his office a terror to the innocent. May 8, 1293, we find him compelling Pierre d’Aragon, a gentleman of Carcassonne who chanced to be in Rome, to give him security in the heavy sum of one hundred marks to present himself within three months to the Inquisition of Carcassonne and obey its mandates. Pierre accordingly appeared before Bertrand de Clermont on June 19, and was closely examined, and then again on August 16, but nothing was discovered against him. Whether or not he recovered his one hundred marks from Frà Adamo does not appear, but the incident affords an illustration at once of the perfected organization of the Holy Office, and of the dangers which surrounded travellers in the countries where it flourished.[272]
Naples, like the other portions of southern Europe, had been exposed to the infection of heresy. At an early period missionaries from Bulgaria had penetrated the passes of the southern Apennines, and, in that motley population of Greek and Saracen and Norman, proselytes had not been lacking. The Norman kings, usually at enmity with the Holy See, had not cared to inquire too closely into the orthodoxy of their subjects, and had they done so the independence of the feudal baronage would have rendered minute perquisition by no means easy. The allusions of the Abbot Joachim of Flora to the Cathari indicate that their existence and doctrines were familiar facts in Calabria, though as Rainerio makes no allusion to any Catharan church in Italy south of Florence it is presumable that the sectaries were widely scattered and unorganized. In 1235, when the Dominican convent in Naples was broken into by a mob and several of the friars were grievously wounded, Gregory IX. attributed the violence to friends of heretics.[274]
The ineffectiveness of the Neapolitan Inquisition is seen in the comparative security which attended an organized immigration of Waldenses from the valleys of the Cottian Alps. It was probably about 1315 that Zanino del Poggio, a Milanese noble, led forth the first band from Savoy, under specified guarantees of lands and privileges, after the intending emigrants had received the report of deputies sent in advance to survey the promised refuge. Fresh bands came to join them and a group of villages sprang up—Guardia Piemontese, or Borgo degli Oltremontani, Argentina, La Rocca, Vaccarizzo, and San Vincenzo in Calabria, while in Apulia there were Monteleone, Montanto, Faito, La Cella, and Matta. These were regularly visited by the “barbes,” or missionary pastors, who spent their lives wandering around among the scattered churches, administering the consolations of religion and watching over the purity of the faith. The fierce persecutions conducted by François Borel led to further emigration on an enlarged scale, which naturally sought the Neapolitan territories as a haven of rest, until Apulia came to be regarded as the headquarters of the sect. That considerable bodies of heretics could thus establish themselves and flourish argues great negligence on the part of the Inquisition. In fact, its recognized inefficiency was shown as early as 1326, when John XXII. was in pursuit of some Fraticelli who had fled to Calabria; instead of calling upon the inquisitors he applied to King Robert and to the Duke of Calabria to capture them and hand them over to the episcopal tribunals.[279]
When, as the result of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the Island of Sicily passed into the hands of Pedro III. of Aragon, it was placed in the bitterest antagonism towards the Holy See, and no active persecution is to be looked for. In fact, in 1285, Martin IV., in ordering a crusade preached against Pedro, gives as one of the four reasons alleged in justification that heresy was multiplying in the island, and that inquisitors were prevented from visiting it. It was not till 1302 that Boniface VIII. was brought to accept the accomplished fact, and to acknowledge Frederic of Aragon as King of Trinacria. The Inquisition soon followed. In 1304 we find Benedict XI. ordering Frederic to receive and give all due assistance to Frà Tommaso di Aversa the inquisitor, and all other inquisitors who may be sent thither. The pope, however, did not erect it into a separate tribunal, but instructed the Holy Office of the mainland that its jurisdiction extended over both sides of the Faro. Yet the introduction of the Inquisition in the island was nominal rather than real except, as we shall see, with regard to the Templars, and Sicily long remained a safe refuge for the persecuted Fraticelli. Doubtless Arnaldo de Vilanova contributed to this by the picture which he presented to Frederic of the inquisitors of the day. They were a diabolical pest, trafficking in their offices, converting themselves into demons, never edifying the faithful, but rather making them infidels, as they abandoned themselves to hatred, greed, and lust, with no one to condemn them or to repress their fury. When, in 1328, the Archbishop of Palermo arrested a Fraticello, appeal was at once made to Frederic, and John XXII. wrote to the archbishop urgently commanding that the sect be extirpated, showing apparently that there was no Inquisition then at work.[280]
This could by no means be satisfactory to the papacy, and when the death of Frederic II. led to an immediate effort to extend the Inquisition through the territories hitherto closed to it, Venice was not forgotten. By a bull of June 11, 1251, Innocent IV. ordered the Frati Vicenzo of Milan, and Giovanni of Vercelli, to proceed to Venice and persecute heretics there with the same powers as those exercised by inquisitors elsewhere in Lombardy. Whether the good friars made the attempt to exercise these powers is questionable; if they did so, their ill-success is unquestionable. There is a document of 1256 which contains an oath to pursue heretics and to denounce them, not to the ecclesiastical tribunals, but to the doge or to the magistrates—an oath presumably administered to the secular inquisitors established in 1249. The same document contains a clause which indicates that the death-penalty threatened in 1249 had already been abrogated. It classes Cathari and usurers together: it alludes to the punishment decreed for those convicted of relapse into either sin, and shows that this was not capital, by providing that if the convict is a foreigner he shall be banished from Venice, but if a citizen he shall not be banished. Yet the death-penalty seems to have been restored soon afterwards, for, in 1275, the oath of Giacomo Contarini is the same as that of 1249, with the unimportant addition that the judgment of an episcopal vicar during the vacancy of a see can be substituted for that of a bishop.[283]
The Inquisition was unaccustomed to submit to control, and soon chafed under these limitations. Already, in 1292, Nicholas IV. complained to Piero Gradenigo that the terms of the agreement were not carried out. The inquisitors, Bonagiunta of Mantua and Giuliano of Padua, reported that the papal and imperial laws against heresy were not enforced, and that under the arrangement for expenditures they were unable to employ a force of familiars sufficient to detect and seize the heretics. Heresy consequently, they said, continued to flourish in Venetian territory, for all of which Nicholas bitterly scolded the doge, and demanded such changes as should remove these scandals, but without effect. The Signoria, apparently, had not seen fit to abolish the office of secular inquisitors provided by the legislation of 1249. These were three in number, and were known as the “tre Savi dell’’ eresia,“ or ”assistenti.” It was hardly possible that a duplicate organization such as this could work without clashing. The situation became intolerable, and in 1301 Frà Antonio, the Inquisitor of Treviso, resolved to put an end to it. He notified the three Savi, Tommaso Viaro, Marino Zorzi, and Lorenzo Segico, to recognize no superior save himself. Their submission not being forthcoming, he proceeded to Venice, and addressed to the Doge Gradenigo a monition ordering him, under pain of excommunication, to swear to obey all the papal constitutions on heresy. Gradenigo refused, alleging that this would be a violation of his oath of office; the inquisitor withdrew his monition, and matters remained as before. Whatever hopes had been entertained that the entering wedge would enable the Inquisition to establish itself without restriction were foiled by the steadfastness of the republic. The three Savi continued their functions and, perhaps, even enlarged them; it had become customary for them to be selected from among the senators, and they acted in conjunction with the inquisitor in all cases coming within his jurisdiction. As Venice extended her conquests on the mainland, in all cities under her domination the rettori or governors performed this function, and their participation was required in all prosecutions for heresy, not only by the inquisitor, but by the bishops.[286]
In Italy, as in France, the history of the Inquisition during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is one of decadence. It is true that in Italy it had not to contend with the consolidation of power in the hands of a monarch, but the Captivity of Avignon and the debasement of the papacy under the influence of the French court, co-operating with the rise of the cities in wealth and culture, conduced to the same result; while the Great Schism, followed by the Councils of Constance and Basle, tended to emancipate the minds of men and foster independence. During the fourteenth century much of the inquisitorial activity was devoted to the new heresy of the Fraticelli, which will be referred to hereafter when we come to consider that remarkable religious movement. That movement, indeed, was the chief exception to the decay in spiritual enthusiasm which diminished at once the veneration which the Inquisition inspired and the opposition of heterodoxy which constituted its raison d’’ être. As heretics grew fewer and poorer its usefulness decreased, its means of impressing the popular imagination disappeared, and its rewards grew less and less.
The simple and earnest faith of the Waldenses, on the other hand, inculcated helpfulness and hopefulness, patience under tribulation, and an abiding trust in the watchful care of the Heavenly Father. The arduous toil of the artisan or husbandman was blessed in the consciousness of the performance of a duty. The virtues which form the basis of all Christian society—industry, charity, self-abnegation, sobriety, chastity, thrift—were stimulated and cultivated, and man was taught that his fate, here and hereafter, depended on himself, and not on the ministration or mediation of his fellow-creatures, alive or dead. It was a faith which fitted man for the environment in which he had been placed by his Creator, and it was capable of adaptation to the infinite vicissitudes of human progress. Accordingly, it had proportionate vitality. Rooted out in one place, it grew in another. It responded too nearly to the needs and aspirations of multitudes ever to be wholly blotted out. There was always a propitious soil for its scattered seeds, and its resistance of inertia in the end proved too much for even the persistent energy of its destroyers.
Notwithstanding these evidences of vitality, Catharism was rapidly dying out. The latest definite reference to it, west of the Adriatic, occurs in 1403, when San Vicente Ferrer, the great Spanish revivalist, undertook a peaceful mission in the remote valleys which no Catholic priest had dared to visit for thirty years, when he found and converted a number of Cathari dwelling among the Waldenses. He regarded as a form of Manichæism the worship of the rising sun which he found habitual among the peasants of the diocese of Lausanne, and some such survival of nature-worship was probably not infrequent, for a penitent of Frà Antonio Secco, in 1387, speaks of adoring the sun and moon on bended knees. Yet there would seem to be a remnant of Catharism lingering among the Waldenses of the Savoy valleys as late as 1451, when Filippo Regis was tried by the Inquisition.[291]
These incessant ravages naturally led to emigration on an extended scale, which, as we have seen, mostly turned itself to Calabria and Apulia, where the brethren had dwelt in comparative peace for nearly two centuries. A large portion of the population of Freyssinières, for instance, expatriated themselves and settled in the valley of Volturara. The Inquisition was virtually extinct in the kingdom of Naples during the fifteenth century, and the heretics had earned toleration by a decent reserve. They attended mass occasionally, allowed their children to be baptized by the priests, and, what was more important, they paid their tithes with exemplary regularity—tithes which grew satisfactorily under the incessant industry of the God-fearing husbandmen. The mountain valleys which had been almost a desert became smiling with corn-fields and pastures, orchards and vine-yards. The nobles on whose lands they had settled under formal agreements gave willing protection to those who contributed so greatly to their revenues. When the independence of the feudatories was lost under the growing royal power of the House of Aragon, the heretics sought and obtained, in 1497, from King Frederic, the confirmation by the crown of the agreements with the nobles, and thus felt assured of continued toleration. They were visited every two years by the travelling pastors, or barbes, who came in pairs, an elder, known as the reggitore, and a younger, the coadiutore, journeying with some pretence of occupation, finding in every city the secret band of believers whom it was their mission to comfort and keep steadfast in the faith, and from whom they made collections which they reported to the General Assembly or Council. Between Pignerol and Calabria they counted twenty-five days’’ journey along the western coast, returning by the eastern to Venice. Everywhere they met friends acquainted with their secret passwords, and in spite of ecclesiastical vigilance there existed throughout Italy a subterranean network of heresy disguised under outward conformity. In 1497 the envoys from the Bohemian Brethren, Lucas and Thomas, found in Rome itself one of their faith, whom they bitterly reproached for concealing his belief. In Calabria, in 1530, it was estimated that they numbered ten thousand souls, in Venetia, six thousand. The fate of these poor creatures, after generations of peaceful existence which might well seem destined to be perpetual, belongs to a period beyond our present limits, but the fact that they could thus prosper and increase shows how rusty had grown the machinery of the Inquisition, and how incapable had become its officials.[301]
Yet, shorn as the Inquisition had become of real effectiveness for its avowed functions, the office continued to be sought, doubtless because it conferred a certain measure of importance, and possibly because it afforded opportunity of illicit gains. Inquisitors were regularly appointed, and the custom grew up in Lombardy that in each city where a tribunal existed vacancies were filled on the nomination of the prior of the local Dominican convent with the assent of discreet brethren, whereupon the General Master of the Order issued the commission. In 1500 this was modified by giving the Vicar-general of Lombardy power to reject or ratify the nomination. The subordinate position to which the inquisitorial office had fallen is illustrated in the last decade of the fifteenth century by Frà Antonio da Brescia, who was inquisitor of his native place, and who was claimed as an ornament of the Dominican Order, but his eulogist has nothing to say as to his persecuting heretics, while praising his pulpit labors in many of the Italian cities.[305]
Allusion has been made in a former chapter to the limitation imposed in 1450 by the Council of Ten on the number of armed familiars whom the inquisitor might retain, reducing them to four, and in 1451 increasing them to twelve, with instructions to the police to see that they were really engaged in the duties of the Holy Office. In so large and populous a district this sufficiently shows how purely nominal were the functions of the Inquisition, and how close was the supervision exercised by the State. Yet inquisitors continued to be appointed, but when they attempted to exercise any independent jurisdiction we have seen, in the case of the sorcerers of 1521, that even the most energetic interference of Leo X. could not induce the Signoria to waive its right of final decision.[308]
Meanwhile another scene of the comedy was developing itself. In its contest with Frà Piero the republic had not stood solely on the defensive. Piero, papal nuncio at Lucca, who had in charge the prosecutions against the inquisitors for embezzling the sums due to the camera, had appointed as his deputy in Florence, Niccolò, Abbot of Santa Maria, who proceeded against Frà Piero on that charge, to which the Signoria added the accusation, sustained by abundant testimony, of extorting from citizens large sums of money by fraudulent prosecutions for heresy. By March 10, 1346, the Signoria was asking the appointment of Frà Michele di Lapo as his successor. Frà Piero was a fugitive, and refused to return and stand his trial when legally cited and tendered a safe-conduct. After due delay, in 1347, the Abate Niccolò, being armed with papal authority, declared him in default and contumacious, and then proceeded to excommunicate him. The excommunication was published in all the churches of Florence, and Frà Piero was thus cut off from the faithful and abandoned to Satan. He could afford to regard all this with calm philosophy. His success in collecting the cardinal’s money entitled him to reward, and the booty of seven thousand florins which he had personally carried off from Florence as the results of his two years’’ inquisitorial career, could doubtless be used to advantage. While Niccolò was vainly citing him, he was promoted, February 12, 1347, to the episcopate of Sant-Angeli de’’ Lombardi, and his excommunication was answered, June 29, 1348, by his translation to the presumably preferable see of Trivento. All that the Florentines could do was to petition repeatedly that in future inquisitors should be selected from among their own citizens, who would be less likely than strangers to be guilty of extortions and scandals. Their request was respected at least in 1354, when a Florentine, Frà Bernardo de’’ Guastoni, was appointed Inquisitor of Tuscany.[314]
This was not likely to be effective, and the Signoria made a more promising effort at self-protection by passing various laws imitated from those adopted not long before at Perugia. To limit the abuse of selling licenses to bear arms, the inquisitor, as we have seen, was restricted to employing six armed familiars. Moreover, it was decreed that no citizen could be arrested without the participation of the podestà, who was required to seize all persons designated to him by the bishop—the inquisitor not being alluded to—which would seem to leave small opportunity for independent action by the latter, especially as he was deprived of his private jail and was ordered to send all prisoners to the public prison. He was further prohibited from inflicting pecuniary punishments, and all whom he condemned as heretics were to be burned. This was revolutionary in a high degree, and did not tend to harmonize the relations between the republic and the papacy. The desperate quarrel between them which arose in 1375 was caused by political questions, but it was embittered by troubles arising from the Inquisition, especially as a demand made by Innocent VI., in 1355, for a revision of their statutes remained unheeded. In 1372 efforts were made to obtain the removal of Frà Tolomeo da Siena, the Inquisitor of Tuscany, who was exceedingly unpopular, but Gregory XI. expressed the fullest confidence in him and ordered him to be protected by the Vicar-general, Filippo, Bishop of Sabina. Yet the pope probably yielded, for I find in 1373 that Frà Piero di Ser Lippo, who had already served as Tuscan inquisitor in 1371, was again appointed to replace a certain Frà Andrea di Ricco. With some intervals Frà Piero served until at least 1384, and he proved no more disposed than his predecessors to yield to the resistance which the methods of the Inquisition inevitably provoked in the free Italian cities. Pistoia had followed the example of Florence in endeavoring to protect its citizens by municipal statutes, and in 1375 it was duly placed under interdict and its citizens were excommunicated. At the same time Frà Piero complained of Florence as impeding the free action of the Inquisition, and Gregory at once ordered the Signoria to abrogate the obnoxious statutes. No attention was paid to these commands by Florence, and when the rupture came the Florentine mob expressed its feelings by destroying the inquisitorial prison and driving the inquisitor from the city. It was also alleged that in the disturbances a monk named Niccolò was tortured and buried alive. These misdeeds, although denied by the Signoria, were alleged as a justification of the terrible bull of March 31, 1376, fulminated against Florence by Gregory. In this he not only excommunicated and interdicted the city, but specially outlawed the citizens, exposing their property wherever found to seizure, and their persons to slavery. This shocking abuse was the direct outgrowth of the long series of legislation against heresy, and was sanctioned by the public law of the period; everywhere throughout Christendom the goods of Florentines were seized and the merchants were glad to beg their way home, stripped of all they possessed. Not all were so fortunate, as some pious monarchs, like Edward III., in addition reduced them to servitude. No commercial community could long endure a contest waged after this fashion, and, as before, Florence was compelled to submit. In the peace signed July 28, 1378, the republic agreed to annul all laws restricting the Inquisition and interfering with the liberties of the Church, and it authorized a papal commissioner to expunge them from the statute-book. The Great Schism, however, weakened for a time the aggressive energy of the papacy, and much of the obnoxious legislation reappears in the revised code of 1415.[315]
The career of Tommasino da Foligno, who died in 1377, has interest for us, not only as illustrating the activity of the Inquisition of the period, but also from the curious parallelism which it affords with that of Savonarola. He was one of the prophets, like St. Birgitta of Sweden, St. Catharine of Siena, and the Friends of God in the Rhinelands, who were called forth by the untold miseries then afflicting mankind. A tertiary of St. Francis, he had practised for three years the greatest austerities as an anchorite, when God summoned him forth to preach repentance to the warring factions whose savage quarrels filled every city in the land with wretchedness. Like the other contemporary prophets, he spared neither clerk nor layman; and his bitter animadversions at Perugia on the evil life of Gerald, Abbot of Marmoutiers, papal vicar for the States of the Church, may perhaps account for his subsequent rough handling by the Inquisition. Gifted with miraculous power, as well as with the spirit of prophecy, he wandered from town to town, proclaiming the wrath of God, and foretelling misfortunes which, in the existing state of society, were almost sure to come to pass. To convince the incredulous at Siena, on a midsummer day he predicted a frost for the morrow. When it duly came he was accused of sorcery, seized by the Inquisition, and tortured nearly to death, but he was discharged when a miracle established his innocence and healed the wounds of the torture-chamber. After an intermediate pilgrimage to far-off Compostella, his preaching at Florence excited so much antagonism that again he was arrested by the Inquisition, cast into a dungeon, and kept three days without food or drink, to be finally discharged as insane. After his death at Foligno, unsuccessful attempts were made to procure his canonization, and he long remained an object of local veneration and worship.[316]
In Rome, when there really was a heresiarch to condemn, there was no Inquisition at hand to perform the duty. In the proceedings against Luther there is no trace of its intervention. The bull Exsurge Domine, June 15, 1520, contains no allusion to his doctrines having been examined by it; when they were publicly condemned, June 12, 1521, the ceremony was performed by the Bishop of Ascoli, Auditor of the Rota, and Silvestro Prierias, Master of the Sacred Palace, while the sentence which consigned his effigy and his books to the flames was pronounced by Frà Cipriano, professor in the College of Sacred Theology. It was perhaps the most momentous auto de fé that has ever been celebrated, but the Inquisition can boast of no participation in it.[318]
Ferdinand the Catholic, in founding the New Spanish Inquisition, obtained for his grand inquisitor the power of nominating deputies in all the dependencies of Castile and Aragon. About 1487 Fray Antonio de la Peña was sent to Sicily in that capacity, who speedily organized the Holy Office on its new basis throughout the island; and in 1492 an edict of banishment was issued against the Jews, who, as of old, were the chief objects of persecution. On the mainland there was more trouble. When, in 1503, Ferdinand acquired the kingdom of Naples, the Great Captain, Gonsalvo of Cordova, finding the people excited with the fear that the Spanish Inquisition might be introduced, made a solemn compact that no inquisitors should be sent thither. The old rules were kept in force; no one was allowed to be arrested without a special royal warrant, and no inquisitor could exercise any functions without the confirmation of his commission by the royal representative. Notwithstanding this, in 1504, Diego Deza, the Spanish inquisitor-general, sent to Naples an inquisitor and a receiver of confiscated property, with royal letters ordering them to have free exercise of their authority, but Gonsalvo, who knew by how slender a tenure the new dynasty held the allegiance of the people, seems not to have admitted them. Under the excuse that the Jews and New Christians expelled from Spain found refuge in Naples, the attempt was again made in 1510, and Andres Palacio was sent there as inquisitor, but the populace rose in arms and made demonstrations so threatening that even Ferdinand’s fanaticism was forced to give way. The movements of the French in the north of Italy were disquieting, the loyalty of the Neapolitans was not to be relied upon, and the inquisitor was withdrawn with a promise that no further effort would be made to force upon the people the dreaded tribunal. Even Julius II. recognized the necessity of this and assented to the understanding. The Calabrian and Apulian Waldenses thus had a respite until the progress of the Reformation in Italy aroused the Church to renewed efforts and to a complete reorganization of its machinery of persecution.[323]
At length the papal attention was again directed to this deplorable state of affairs. In 1221 Honorius III. sent his chaplain, Master Aconcio, as legate to Hungary, with orders to arouse the king and the prelates to a sense of their obligation to exterminate the heretics who were thus openly defiant. On his way the legate paused at Ragusa to superintend the election of an orthodox archbishop, after which he ordered all Dalmatia and Croatia to join in a crusade, but no one followed him, and he went alone to Bosnia, where he died the same year. Better results were promised by the ambition of Ugolin, Archbishop of Kalocsa, who desired to extend his province; he proposed to Andreas II. of Hungary that he would lead a crusade at his own cost, and king and pope promised him all the territories which he should clear of heretics, but Ugolin overrated his powers, and adopted the expedient of subsidizing with two hundred silver marks the ruler of Syrmia, Prince John, son of Margaret, widow of the Emperor Isaac Angelus. John took the money without performing his promise, though reminded of it by Honorius in 1227. Relieved from apprehension, the Bosnians deposed their Ban Stephen and replaced him with a Catharan, Ninoslav, one of the most notable personages in Bosnian history, who maintained himself from 1232 to 1250.[327]
The scale at length seemed to turn with the advent on the scene of the Mendicant Orders, full of the irrepressible enthusiasm, the disregard of toil and hardship, and the thirst for martyrdom of which we have already seen so many examples. Behind them now, moreover, was Gregory IX., the implacable and indefatigable persecutor of heresy, who urged them forward unceasingly. The Dominicans were first upon the ground. As early as 1221 the Order formed establishments in Hungary, developing its proselyting energy from that centre, and thus taking the heretics in flank. The Dominican legend relates that the Inquisition was founded in Hungary by Friar Jackzo (St. Hyacinth), an early member of the Order, who died in 1257, and that it could soon boast of two martyred inquisitors, Friar Nicholas, who was flayed alive, and Friar John, who was lapidated by the heretics. In 1233 we hear of the massacre of ninety Dominican missionaries among the Cumans, and it was perhaps somewhat earlier than this that thirty-two were drowned by the Bosnian heretics, whom they were seeking to convert; but Dominican ardor was only inflamed by such incidents. Preparations were made for systematic work. In 1232 Gregory ordered his legate in Hungary, Giacopo, Bishop of Palestrina, to convert the Bosnians. King Andreas gave the Banate to his son Coloman, Duke of Croatia and Dalmatia, and ordered him to assist. Results soon followed. The Catholic Bishop of Bosnia was himself infected with heresy, and excused himself on the ground that he had ignorantly supposed the Cathari to be orthodox. The Archbishop of Ragusa was cognizant of this, and had paid no attention to it, so Giacopo transferred Bosnia to Kalocsa—a transfer, however, which was for the present inoperative. More important was the conversion of Ninoslav, who abandoned the religion of his fathers in order to avert the attacks of Coloman, which were rapidly dismembering his territories. He was effusively welcomed by Gregory; he gave money to the Dominicans for the building of a cathedral; many of his magnates followed his example, and his kinsman, Uban Prijesda, handed his son to the Dominicans as a hostage for the sincerity of his conversion. Gregory was overjoyed at this apparent success. In 1233 he ordered the boy restored to his father; he took Bosnia under the special protection of the Holy See, and ordered Coloman to defend Ninoslav from the attacks of disaffected heretics; he deposed the heretic bishop, and instructed his legate to divide the territory into two or three sees, appointing proper incumbents. The latter measure was not carried out, however, and a German Dominican, John of Wildeshausen, was consecrated Bishop of all Bosnia.[328]
It was about this time that Rainerio Saccone gives us his computation of the Perfects in many of the Catharan churches. In Constantinople there were two churches, a Latin and a Greek, the former comprising fifty Perfects. The latter, together with those of Bulgaria, Roumania, Slavonia, and Dalmatia, he estimates at about five hundred. This would indicate a very large number of believers, and shows how unfruitful had been the labors and the wars which had continued for more than a generation. In fact, although Bela’s long reign lasted until 1270, he failed utterly in his efforts to extirpate heresy. On the contrary, the Cathari grew ever stronger and the Church sank lower and lower. Even the Bosnian bishops dared no longer to remain in their see, but resided in Djakovar. So little reverence was there felt in those regions for the Holy See that so near as Trieste, when, in 1264, two Dominicans commissioned to preach the crusade against the Turks endeavored to perform their duty, the dean and canons hustled them violently out of the church, and would not even allow them to address the crowd in the public square, while the archdeacon publicly declared that any one who listened to them was excommunicate.[333]
Things grew worse with the accession, in 1272, of Bela’s grandson, Ladislas IV., known as the Cuman, from his mother Elizabeth, a member of that pagan tribe. Ladislas lived with the Cumans and shared their religion until his contempt for the Holy See manifested itself in the most offensive manner. The papal legate, Filippo, Bishop of Fermo, had called a council to meet at Buda, when Ladislas ordered the magistrates of the city not to permit the entrance of any prelates, or the supplying of any food to the legate, who was thus forced to depart ignominiously. This called down upon him the anger of Rodolph of Hapsburg and of Charles of Anjou, and he was fain, in 1280, to make reparation, not only by a humble apology and a grant of one hundred marks per annum for the founding of a hospital, but by adopting and publishing as the law of the land all the papal statutes against heresy, and swearing to enforce them vigorously, while his mother Elizabeth did the same as Duchess of Bosnia. Something was gained by this, and still more, when, in 1282, Ladislas appointed as ruler of Bosnia his brother-in-law, Stephen Dragutin, the exiled King of Servia. The latter, although a Greek, persecuted the Cathari; and when, about 1290, he was converted to Catholicism, his zeal increased, He sent to Rome Marino, Bishop of Antivari, to report the predominance of heresy and to ask for aid. Nicholas IV. promptly responded by commissioning a legate to Andreas III., the new King of Hungary, to preach a crusade, and the Emperor Rodolph was ordered to assist, but the effort was bootless. Equally vain was his command to the Franciscan Minister of Slavonia to select two friars acquainted with the language, and send them to Bosnia to extirpate heresy. The request at the same time made to Stephen to support them with the secular arm shows that the missionaries were in fact inquisitors. Unluckily, Nicholas in his zeal also employed Dominicans in the business. Inspired by the traditional hatred between the Orders, the inquisitors, or missionaries, employed all their energies in quarrelling with each other, and became objects of ridicule instead of terror to the heretics.[334]
Mladen was overthrown by Stephen Kostromanić, and when he fled to Hungary, Charles Robert cast him in prison, leaving undisturbed possession to Stephen, who styled himself Ban by the grace of God. Stephen, in 1322, seems to have abandoned Catholicism, joining either the Greeks or the Cathari, but in spite of this affairs commenced to look more favorable. Hungary began to emerge from the disorders and disasters which had so long crippled it, and King Charles Robert was inclined to listen to exhortations as to his duty towards the Bosnian heretics. In 1323, therefore, John XXII. made another attempt, sending Frà Fabiano thither and ordering Charles Robert and Stephen to give him effective support. The latter was obdurate, though the former seems to have manifested some zeal, if one may believe the praises bestowed on him in 1327 by John. Fabiano was indefatigable, but his duty proved no easy one. At the very outset he met with unexpected resistance in a city so near at hand as Trieste. When he endeavored there to enforce the decrees against heresy, and to arouse the people to a sense of their duty, the bells were rung, a mob was assembled, he was dragged from the pulpit and beaten, the leaders in the disturbance being two canons of the Cathedral, Michele da Padua, and Raimondo da Cremona, who were promptly ordered by the pope to be prosecuted as suspects of heresy. Hardly had he settled this question when he was involved in a controversy with the rival Dominicans, whom he found to be poaching on his preserves. A zealous Dominican, Matteo of Agram, by suppressing the fact that Slavonia was Franciscan territory, had obtained from John letters authorizing the Dominican provincial to appoint inquisitors, commissioned to preach a crusade with Holy Land indulgences, and these inquisitors had been urgently recommended by the pope to the King of Hungary and other potentates. It was impossible that the Orders could co-operate in harmony, and Fabiano made haste to represent to John the trap into which he had been led. The pope was now at the height of his controversy with the greater part of the Franciscans over the question of poverty, and it was impolitic to give just grounds of complaint to those who remained faithful; he therefore promptly recalled the letters given to the Dominicans, and scolded them roundly for deceiving him. Even yet it seemed impossible for Fabiano to penetrate beyond the borders of his district, or to work without impediment, for in 1329 he was occupied with prosecuting for heresy the Abbot of SS. Cosmas and Damiani of Zara and one of his monks, when John, the Archbishop of Zara, intervened forcibly and stopped the proceedings. The difficulties thrown in Fabiano’s way must have been great, for he felt compelled to visit Avignon for their removal, but his usual ill-luck accompanied him. The contest between the papacy on the one side, and the Visconti and Louis of Bavaria on the other, rendered parts of Lombardy unsafe for papalists, and a son of Belial named Franceschino da Pavia had no scruple in laying hands on the inquisitor and despoiling him of his horses, books, and papers. During all this time the Inquisition must have been at a standstill, but at last Fabiano overcame all obstacles. In 1330 he returned to the scene of action; Charles Robert and Stephen lent him their assistance, and the work of suppressing the Cathari commenced under favorable auspices, and by the methods which we have seen so successful elsewhere. The condition of the Bosnian Church may be guessed from the fear felt by John XXII. that the bishops would be heretics, leading him, in 1331, to reserve their appointment to the Holy See. Yet on the death of Bishop Peter, in 1334, the chapter elected a successor, and Charles Robert endeavored to force a layman on the Church, causing a disgraceful quarrel which was not settled until Benedict XII., in 1336, pronounced in favor of the candidate of the chapter.[336]
Stephen’s position, in fact, was becoming precarious. To the east was Stephen Dusan the Great, who styled himself Emperor of Servia, Greece, and Bulgaria, and who had shown himself unfriendly since the union of Herzegovina with Bosnia. To the north was Charles Robert, who was preparing to take part in the war. It is true that the Venetians, desirous to keep Hungary away from their Adriatic possessions, were ready to form an alliance with Stephen, but the odds against him were too great. He probably intimated a readiness to submit, for when, in 1339, Benedict sent the Franciscan General Gherardo as legate to Hungary, Charles Robert convoyed him to the Bosnian frontier, where Stephen received him with all honor, and said that he was not averse to extirpating the Cathari, but feared that in case of persecution they would call in Stephen Dusan. If liberally supported by the pope and King of Hungary he would run the risk. In 1340 Benedict promised him the help of all Catholics, and he allowed himself to be converted, an example followed by many of the magnates. It was quite time, for Catholicism had virtually disappeared from Bosnia, where the churches were mostly abandoned and torn down. Gherardo hastened to follow up his advantage by sending missionaries and inquisitors into Bosnia. That there was no place there, however, for the methods of the Inquisition, and that persuasion, not force, was required, is seen by the legends which recount how one of these inquisitors, Fray Juan de Aragon, made numerous converts, after a long and bitter disputation in an heretical assembly, by standing unhurt on a blazing pyre; and how one of his disciples, John, repeated the experience, remaining in the flames while one might chant the Miserere. These miracles, we are told, were very effective, and the stories show that nothing else could have been so. Stephen remained true to his promises, and the Catholic Church commenced to revive. A bull of Clement VI., in 1344, recites that, deceived by the falsehoods of the Franciscan General Gherardo, he had ordered the Bosnian tithes paid over to the friars on the pretext of rebuilding the churches, but on the representation of Laurence, Bishop of Bosnia, that they belonged to him and that he had no other source of support, he is in future to receive them. At the instance of Clement, in 1345, Stephen consented to allow the return of Valentine, Bishop of Makarska, who for twenty years had been an exile from his see, and the next year a third bishopric, that of Duvno, was erected. The Catharan magnates were restless, however, and when Dusan the Great, in 1350, invaded Bosnia many of them joined him, but their prospects became worse when peace followed in 1351, and when, in 1353, shortly before his death, Stephen married his only child to Louis of Hungary, a zealous Catholic who had succeeded his father, Charles Robert, in 1342.[339]
Stephen Kostromanić was succeeded by his young nephew, Stephen Tvrtko, under the regency of his mother, Helena. Under such circumstances, dissatisfied and insubordinate Catharan magnates had ample opportunity to produce confusion. Of this full advantage was taken by Louis of Hungary as soon as the death of Dusan the Great, in 1355, relieved him from that formidable antagonist. The Dominicans hastened, in 1356, to obtain from Innocent VI. a confirmation of the letters of John XXII., of 1327, authorizing them to preach a crusade against the heretics with Holy Land indulgences. Louis seized Herzegovina as a dower for his wife Elisabeth, reduced Stephen Tvrtko to the position of a vassal, and forced him to swear to extirpate the Cathari. Not content with this he proceeded to stir up rebellion among the magnates, producing great confusion, during which the Cathari regained their position. Then, in 1360, Innocent VI. conferred on Peter, Bishop of Bosnia, full powers as papal inquisitor, and also ordered a new crusade, which served as a pretext to Louis for a fresh invasion. Nothing was accomplished by this; but in 1365 the Cathari, irritated at Tvrtko’s efforts to suppress them, drove him and his mother from Bosnia. Louis furnished him with troops, and asked Urban V. to send two thousand Franciscans to convert the heretics. After a desperate struggle Tvrtko regained the throne. His brother, Stephen Vuk, who had aided the rebels, fled to Ragusa and embraced Catholicism, after which, in 1368, he appealed for aid to Urban V., representing that his heretic brother had disinherited him on account of his persecuting heretics. Urban accordingly urged Louis to protect the orthodox Vuk, and to force Tvrtko to abandon his errors, but nothing came of it. Whether Tvrtko was Catharan or Catholic does not clearly appear. Probably he was indifferent to all but his personal interests, and was ready to follow whatever policy promised to serve his ambition, and his success shows that he must have had the support of his subjects, who were nearly all Cathari. Although, in 1368, Urban V. congratulated Louis of Hungary on the success of his arms, aided by the friars, in bringing into the fold many thousand heretics and schismatics, Louis himself, in 1372, reported that Christianity was established in but few places; in some the two faiths were commingled, but for the most part all the inhabitants were Cathari. It was in vain that Gregory XI. endeavored to found Franciscan houses as missionary centres; the Bosnians would not be weaned from their creed. Had Tvrtko followed a policy of persecution he could not have accomplished the conquests which, for a brief period, shed lustre on the Bosnian name. He extended his sway over a large part of Servia and over Croatia and Dalmatia, and when, in 1376, he assumed the title of king, there was no one to dispute it. After his death, in 1391, the magnates asserted virtual independence under a succession of royal puppets—Stephen Dabisa, his young son, under the regency of his widow, Helena, and then Stephen Ostoja. The most powerful man in Bosnia was the Vojvode Hrvoje Vukcić, who ruled the north, and next to him was his kinsman Sandalj Hranić who dominated the south. Both of these men were Cathari, and so was the king, Stephen, Ostoja, and all his family. Catholicism almost disappeared, and Catharism was the religion of the State. It was organized under a Djed (grandfather), or chief, with twelve Ucitelji, or teachers, of whom the first was the Gost, or visitor, the deputy and successor of the Djed, and the second was known as the Starac, or elder.[340]
These were state officials, and we see them occasionally acting in an official capacity. Thus, when, in 1404, the Vojvode Paul Klesić, who had been exiled, was recalled, it was the Djed Radomjer who sent Catharan envoys to Ragusa to bring him home, and who wrote to the Doge of Ragusa on the subject. Klesić was a Catharan, and his residence in Ragusa, as well as that of many similar Catharan exiles, shows that persecution had grown obsolete even on the coast of the Adriatic. In spite of his Catharism, Hrvoje Vukcić was made by Ladislas of Naples, Duke of Spalatro and lord of some of the Dalmatian islands, thus making Catharism dominant along the shore. In the troubles which ended in the deposition of Stephen Ostoja and the election of Stephen Tvrtko II. a “Congregation of the Bosnian Lords” was held in 1404, in which, among those present, are enumerated the Djed and several of his Ucitelji, but no mention is made of any Catholic bishop. Toleration seemed to have established itself. The Great Schism gave the Holy See abundant preoccupation, and missionary efforts are no longer heard of, until the Emperor Sigismund, as King of Hungary, bethought himself of re-establishing his claim over Bosnia. Two armies sent in 1405 were unsuccessful, but in 1407 Gregory XII. aided him with a bull summoning Christendom to a crusade against the Turks, the apostate Allans, and the Manichæans. Under these auspices, in 1408, he led a force of sixty thousand Hungarians and Poles into Bosnia, defeated and captured Tvrtko II., and recovered Croatia and Dalmatia, but the Bosnians were obstinate, and replaced Ostoja on the throne. Another expedition, in 1410-1411, drove Ostoja to the south, and Sigismund, for a while, retained possession of Bosnia, but when, in 1415, he released Tvrtko II. and sent him to Bosnia as king, a civil war immediately ensued. Tvrtko at first was successful, supported with a large Hungarian army, but Ostoja called the Turks to his assistance, and in a decisive battle the Hungarians were defeated. The Turks penetrated to Cillei in the Steyermark, devastating and plundering everywhere, and on their return carried with them thousands of Christian captives.[341]
This shows the new factor which had injected itself into the already tangled problem. In 1389 the fatal day of the Amselfeld had thrown open the whole Balkan peninsula to the Turks, who since then had been steadily winning their way. In 1392 we hear of their first incursion in southern Bosnia, after which they had constantly taken a greater part in the affairs of the Banate. The condition of the country was that of savage and perpetual civil war. There was no royal power capable of enforcing order, and the magnates were engaged in tearing each other to pieces. Devoid of all sentiment of nationality, no one had any scruple in calling in the aid of the infidel, in paying allegiance to him, or in subsidizing him to prevent his joining the opposite party. It was the same with Catholic, Catharan, and Greek. No sense of the ever-approaching danger served to make them abandon their internecine quarrels, and if a temporary petty advantage was to be gained there was no hesitation in aiding the Turk to a farther advance. The only wonder is that the progress of the Moslem conquest was so slow; there can be little doubt that it could have been arrested by united effort, and it may be questioned whether the rule of Islam was not, after all, an improvement on the state of virtual anarchy which it replaced. To the peasantry it offered itself rather as a deliverance. When, in 1461, Stephen Tomasević ascended the throne, in his appeal for aid to Pius II. he describes the Turks as treating the peasants kindly, promising them freedom, and thus winning them over, and he adds that the magnates cannot defend their castles when thus abandoned by the peasants.[342]
On the fall of Constantinople, in May, 1453, Stephen Thomas promptly sent envoys to Mahomet II. to tender his allegiance. In the ever-deepening menace of the Turks persecution could hardly be resumed with activity, but the popes occasionally gave him a portion of the moneys raised for the crusade, and the Cathari were humiliated and proscribed as far as could be ventured upon, and constituted a discontented and dangerous element of the population. In 1459 we find the king protesting to Pius II. that he persecuted the Cathari roundly, and asking for more bishops; and one of his latest acts was to send the Bishop of Nona to the pope with three Catharan magnates—George Kucinić, Stojsav Tvrtković, and Radovan Viencinić—that they might be converted. It seems incredible that any one should covet a throne so precarious, and yet, in 1461, while Stephen Thomas was battling with the Croatian magnates, he was murdered by his son, Stephen Thomasević, and his brother Radivoj. The crown which Stephen Thomasević thus won by a parricide was a crown of thorns. To the north Matthias Corvinus of Hungary was estranged and unforgiving; to the west was Croatia, with which he was at war; in the south Stephen Vukcić was his enemy; while on the east lay Servia, now a Turkish pashalic, from which Mahomet II. only awaited the fitting moment to reduce Bosnia to a like condition. Thus surrounded by foes, the internal condition of the land was not reassuring, for it was full of secret or open Cathari, who longed for help or revenge, no matter whence it might come.[350]
Defiance such as this left nothing to hope for from the Turk, but preoccupations in Wallachia kept Mahomet busy during 1462, and he postponed his revenge till the following year. It shows the blindness of Rome to the situation and the unflagging persistency of the determination to secure uniformity of faith, that during this respite Pius II. sent learned friars to Bosnia with instructions that the best mode of overcoming heresy was to promote study. The instructions were excellent, but sadly misplaced. Through the winter and spring of 1463 Mahomet was preparing the final blow by massing one hundred and fifty thousand men at Adrianople. To throw Stephen Thomasevic off of his guard, his request for a fifteen years’’ truce was granted, and his envoys, returning with this welcome news, were followed, after an interval of four days, by the Turkish host. The land was found defenceless, and no resistance was offered till the invaders reached the royal castle of Bobovac, a stronghold capable of prolonged defence. Its commandant, however, was Count Radak, a Catharan who had been forced to conversion, and on the third day he surrendered on a promise of reward. When he claimed this, Mahomet, reproaching him with his treason, had him promptly beheaded, and tradition still points out on the road to Sutiska the rock Radakovica, where the traitor met his end. The capitulation of Bobovac cast terror throughout the land. Resistance was no longer thought of, and the only alternatives were flight or submission. The king hurried towards the Croatian frontier, with Mahomet Pasha at his heels, and was compelled at Kljuć to surrender on promise of life and freedom, but, in spite of this, he was put to death, after being utilized to order all commandants of cities and castles to surrender them. Within eight days more than seventy towns fell into the hands of the Turks, and by the middle of June all Bosnia was in their possession. Then Mahomet turned southward to overrun the territories of Stephen Vukcić, but the mountains of Herzegovina were bravely defended by the Cathari, and by the end of June the Turkish host took its way homeward, carrying with it one hundred thousand prisoners and thirty thousand youths to be converted into Janissaries.[352]
Thus abandoned by Christendom, except to hasten the end through perpetually inflaming religious strife, Bosnia was conquered without a struggle, while Herzegovina held out for twenty years longer. How easily the catastrophe might have been averted is seen in the fact that before the year 1463 was out Matthias Corvinus had reconquered a large portion of the territory so easily won, which was held until the Hungarian power was broken on the disastrous field of Mohacs in 1526. In the Turkish lands the Cathari for the most part embraced Mahometanism, and the sect which had so stubbornly endured the vicissitudes of more than a thousand years disappeared in obscurity. The Christians had the resource of flight, which they embraced, commencing an emigration which continued until the middle of the eighteenth century. This was rather to escape oppression than persecution, for the Turks permitted them the exercise of their religion. When the blessed Angelo of Verbosa, the disciple of Giacomo della Marca, persuaded his fellow-believers to leave the country, Mahomet sent for him and menacingly asked him his reasons. “To worship God elsewhere,” he boldly replied, and so eloquently pleaded his cause that the Turk ordered the Christians to be unmolested, and gave Angelo permission to preach. Thenceforth the Franciscans were the refuge and support of the Christians up to modern times, though they had many cruelties to endure at the hands of the barbarous conquerors.[353]
IN 1209 Henry of Veringen, Bishop of Strassburg, accompanied Otho IV. on his coronation expedition to Rome. We have seen (p. 192) how some of the ecclesiastics in the emperor’s train were scandalized by the almost open toleration of heretics in the papal city; possibly recriminations may have passed between the German and the Italian prelates, and the former may have been recommended to look more sharply after the orthodoxy of their own dioceses. Be this as it may, Bishop Henry is said to have carried home with him some theologians eager to punish aberrations from the faith, and a little investigation showed to his horror that his land was full of misbelievers. A searching inquest was organized, and he soon had five hundred prisoners representing all classes of society. He was a humane man, as the times went, and he sincerely sought their conversion, to which end he set on foot disputations, but his clergy were no match for the sectaries in knowledge of Scripture, and the faith gained little by the attempt. Recourse to stronger measures was evidently requisite, and he announced that all who were obstinate should be burned. This brought most of them to their senses; heretic books and writings were eagerly surrendered, and the converts abjured. About a hundred of them, however, under the persuasion of their leader, a priest of Strassburg named John, were obdurate, including twelve priests, twenty-three women, and a number of nobles. So ignorant were the episcopal officials of the method of proceeding against heretics that they were utterly at a loss how to convict these recusants; some form of trial seems to have been thought necessary, and resort was had to the old expedient of the red-hot iron ordeal. The heretics protested against it as a manifest tempting of God, but their objections were unavailing; those who denied their heresy were subjected to it, and naturally but few escaped. One of them, named Reinhold, appealed to Innocent III. against this form of trial, and the pope promptly responded by forbidding its further use in such matters, although we are told by contemporaries that its efficacy was abundantly proved by miracles. One of the heretics who repented at the last moment was divinely cured of his burn and was discharged. Returning home rejoicing, his wife upbraided him with his weakness, and under her reproof he relapsed. Immediately the burn reappeared, and a similar one was developed on the hand of the wife, inflicting such agony that neither could restrain their screams. Fearing to betray themselves, they rushed to the woods, where they yelled like wild beasts; this led to their speedy discovery, and before the ashes of their confederates were yet cold they both shared the same fate. More fortunate was one of a number of heretics convicted in this manner at Cambrai about the same time. On his way to the stake he listened to the exhortations of a priest and commenced to repent and confess. As he did so his hand began to heal, and when he received absolution there was no trace left of the burn. Then the priest called attention to him, pronouncing him innocent, and on the evidence of his uninjured hand he was discharged. At Strassburg there were eighty obstinate ones, whose heresy was proved by the ordeal. They were all burned the same day in a ditch beyond the walls, and in the sixteenth century the hollow was still known to the citizens as the Ketzergrube. The property of the condemned was duly confiscated and was divided between the magistrates and those who had labored so successfully in vindicating the faith.[354]
We have already seen how rapidly Waldensianism extended from Burgundy to Franche Comté and Lorraine, and how, in 1199, Innocent III., after vainly endeavoring to persuade the Waldenses of Metz to surrender their vernacular Scriptures, had sent thither the Abbot of Citeaux and two other abbots to repress their zeal. The abbots duly performed their mission, preached to the misguided zealots, and burned all such copies of the forbidden books as they could lay their hands on, though it is fair to presume, from the silence of the chronicler, that no human victims expiated at the stake their unlawful studies. The consequence of this misplaced lenity was the emboldenment of the heretics. Some years later when Bishop Bertrand was preaching in the cathedral he saw two whom he recognized, and pointed them out, saying, “I see among you missionaries of the Devil; there they are, who in my presence at Montpellier were condemned for heresy and cast out.” The unabashed Waldenses, with a companion, replied to him with insults, and, leaving the church, gathered a crowd, to whom they preached their doctrines. The bishop was powerless to silence them, for, when he attempted to use force, he found them protected by some of the most influential citizens of the town, and they were able to disseminate their pestiferous opinions in safety. Here, as in many other places, quarrels between the people and the bishop paralyzed the arm of the Church, and the Waldenses for many years continued to infect the city.[356]
The heresy was thus crushed in its birthplace, where we hear no more of it except that there were teachers of it in Dauphiné, where they were confounded with the Waldenses, and that in 1225 Honorius III. ordered the destruction of the Periphyseos of Erigena, which was thought to have given rise to Amauri’s speculations. The seed, however, was widely scattered, to bear fruit in foreign soil. The University of Paris drew together eager searchers after knowledge from every country in Europe, and it could not be difficult for the Amaurians to find among those from abroad converts who would prove useful missionaries. In 1215, Robert de Curzon includes the works of a certain Maurice the Spaniard in his condemnation of those of David and Amauri. Another disciple is said to have been Ortlieb of Strassburg, the teacher of the sectaries known by his name whose fate we have seen at Strassburg. That the heresy was known not to be extinguished is shown by the fact that in 1215 the great Council of Lateran still deemed it necessary to utter a formal condemnation of the doctrines of Amauri, which it stigmatized as crazy rather than heretical.[361]
The first indication we have of this tendency occurs in the case of Henry Minneke, Provost of the Cistercian nunnery of Neuwerke in Goslar, which is further of interest as showing how utterly, at the close of the first quarter of the thirteenth century, Germany was destitute of any inquisitorial machinery, and how ignorant were her prelates as yet of inquisitorial procedure. In 1222 Minneke was accused before his bishop, the fanatic Conrad von Reisenberg of Hildesheim, of certain heretical opinions. An assembly of prelates was held at Goslar, which took testimony of his nuns, and found him guilty. He was simply ordered to teach his doctrines no longer. When he disobeyed he was summoned before Bishop Conrad, who examined him for three days and sentenced him to return to his Premonstratensian monastery, and ordered the nuns to elect another provost. To this, again, he paid no attention, probably considering that his immunities as a monk exempted him from episcopal jurisdiction, and the bishop seems to have had no resource but to implore the intervention of Honorius III. When the pope ordered the sentence executed, the nuns interjected an appeal back to him and to the emperor. Both appeals were rejected; Minneke was declared a diseased member of the Church, fit only to be cut off, and the nuns were told that they should rejoice in being liberated from his influence. Still he remained firm, and the bishop was obliged to consult the Cardinal-legate, Cinthio of Porto, before he ventured to throw the indomitable heretic into prison. From his jail, Minneke himself appealed to the pope, asserting that he had been condemned unheard, praying for an examination, and offering to submit to incarceration for life if he should refuse to recant any erroneous opinions of which he might be convicted. Honorius thereupon, in May, 1224, ordered Bishop Conrad to bring his prisoner before the legate and an assembly of prelates for a final hearing and judgment. About October I, at Bardewick, Cinthio met an assembly of the bishops of North Germany, where it was decided that Minneke was convicted of having encouraged the nuns to regard him as greater than any other born of woman; he had on many points relaxed the severe Cistercian discipline; in his sermons he had declared that the Holy Ghost was the Father of the Son, and had so exalted the state of virginity as to represent marriage as a sin; in a vision he had seen Satan praying to be forgiven, and he had asserted that in heaven there was a woman greater than the Virgin, whose name was Wisdom. Still another synod, held at Hildesheim, October 22, was requisite to conclude the matter. Minneke was brought before it, was convicted of his errors, and degraded from the priesthood, but even yet Bishop Conrad was so little sure of his authority that the sentence was published under the seal of the legate. The culprit was handed over to the secular authorities, and was duly burned in 1225. The prominence accorded to this assertion, that Satan desired forgiveness, is shown by his being stigmatized as a Manichæan and a Luciferan.[363]
Conrad had long been a man of mark, and his qualities were well known to those who made use of him. His burning eloquence was adapted to move the passions of the people, and as early as 1214 he had been honored with a commission to preach in Germany the crusade which was one of the objects for which the great Council of Lateran was assembled. From this time on his activity was unabated, and there is probably truth in the assertion that he took part in the occasional persecutions of heresy which are reported, though no details have reached us. His mission as preacher brought him into direct relations with Rome, and his success in inducing thousands to take the cross gave him high repute with the curia, doubtless enhanced by the disinterestedness which asked for no reward. He gradually came to be employed as a representative in matters of importance, and his unwearied energy rendered him increasingly useful. In 1220 he was intrusted with the duty of compelling, by the censures of the Church, the Emperor Frederic to fulfil his long-delayed vow of leading an expedition to the Holy Land, and he was further made chief of the business of preaching in its behalf, by being empowered to commission assistants throughout Germany. In these letters he is addressed as “Scholasticus” or head of the church schools in Mainz, showing that he then held that dignity. In 1227 still greater evidence was given of the confidence reposed in him. In March of that year Gregory XI. had mounted the papal throne with full resolve to crush the rising powers of heresy, and, if possible, to deprive it of its excuse for existence in the corruptions of the church establishment. We have seen how, on June 20, 1227, he tried the experiment in Florence of creating a kind of inquisition, with a Dominican to exercise its functions. In Germany there seems to have been no one but Conrad on whom to rely. June 12, eight days before the commission issued to Giovanni di Salerno, Gregory wrote to Conrad commending highly the diligence with which he was tracking and pursuing heretics—a diligence of which, unfortunately, all details are lost to us. In order that his labors might be more efficacious, Conrad was directed and empowered to nominate whomsoever he might see fit as his assistants, and with them to inquire energetically after all who were infected with heresy, so that the extirpation of the tares from the fields of the Lord might proceed with due authority. Though the Inquisition was scarce as yet even a prospective conception, this was in effect an informal commission as inquisitor-general for Germany, and it is probably no injustice to Gregory to suggest that one of the motives prompting it was the desire to substitute papal authority for the episcopal jurisdiction under which the local and spasmodic persecutions had hitherto been carried on.[367]
Results so far below what might reasonably have been expected could not but be disappointing in the extreme to Gregory. One expedient remained—to try whether among the Dominicans there might not be found men able and willing to devote themselves fearlessly and exclusively to the holy work. Between the end of 1231 and that of 1232, therefore, commissions were sent to various Dominican establishments empowering their officials to undertake the work. The treaty of Ceperano, in 1230, had restored peace between the empire and the papacy, and Frederic’s aid was successfully invoked to give the imperial sanction to the new experiment. From Ravenna, in March, 1232, he issued a constitution addressed to all the prelates and potentates of the empire, ordering their efficient co-operation in the extirpation of heresy, and taking under the special imperial protection all the Mendicants deputed by the pope for that purpose. The secular authorities were commanded to arrest all who should be designated to them by the inquisitors, to hold them safely until condemnation, and to put to a dreadful death those convicted of heresy or fautorship, or to imprison for life such as should recant and abjure. Relapse was punishable with the death-penalty, and descendants to the second generation were declared incapable of holding fiefs or public office.[372]
Here were laws provided and ministers for their enforcement, and the business of vindicating the faith might at last be expected to prosper. If Conrad was remiss, others would be found enthusiastically ready for the work. So it proved. Suddenly there appeared on the scene a Dominican named Conrad Tors, said to be a convert from heresy, who, without special commission, commenced to clear the land of error. He carried with him a layman named John, one-eyed and one-handed, of thoroughly disreputable character, who boasted that he could recognize a heretic at sight. Apparently with little more evidence than this, Conrad Tors raided from town to town, condemning his victims wholesale, and those whom he delivered to the magistrates they were compelled by popular excitement to burn. Soon, however, a revulsion of feeling took place, and then the Dominican shrewdly enlisted the support of the nobles by directing his attacks against the more wealthy, and holding out the prospect of extensive confiscations to be divided. When remonstrated with he is said to have replied, “I would burn a hundred innocent if there was one guilty among them.” Stimulated by this shining example, many Dominicans and Franciscans joined him, and became his eager assistants in the work.[373]
This transparent tissue of inventions was apparently doubted by no one, and it excited almost to insanity the credulous old man who filled the papal chair. He replies that he is drunk with wormwood, and in fact his letters read like the ravings of a madman. “If against such men the earth should rise up, and the stars of heaven reveal their iniquity, so that not only men, but the elements, should unite in their destruction, wiping them from the face of the earth without sparing sex or age, and rendering them an eternal opprobrium for the nations, it would not be a sufficient and worthy punishment of their crimes.” If they cannot be converted, the strongest remedies must be used. Fire and steel must be applied to wounds incurable by milder applications. Conrad was instructed forthwith to preach a crusade against them, and the bishop of the province, the emperor, and his son, King Henry, were ordered to exert all their powers for the extirpation of the wretches.[375]
At the outset he had fallen into the hands of a designing woman, a vagrant about twenty years old who had quarrelled with her relations, and who, coming by chance to Bingen, and observing what was going on, saw her opportunity of revenge. She pretended to be of the sect, that her husband had been burned, that she wished to perish likewise, but added that if the Master would believe her she would reveal the names of the guilty. Conrad eagerly swallowed the bait, and sent her with his assistants to Clavelt, whence she came, where she caused the burning of her kindred. Then there was a certain Amfrid, who finally confessed that he had led Conrad to condemn a number of innocent men. Creatures of this kind were sure not to be lacking, and it was even said that cunning heretics caused themselves to be accused, and accepted penance, for the purpose of incriminating Catholics, and thus rendering the whole proceeding odious. As no one had the slightest opportunity of defence, some steadfast men preferred to be burned and thus earn salvation, rather than to confess to lies and falsely accuse others. The weaker ones who saved their lives, when pressed to name their accomplices, would often say, “I know not whom to accuse: tell me the names of those you suspect;” or, when interrogated about individuals, would evasively reply, “They were as I was; they were in the assemblies as I was,” which was apparently sufficient. “Thus,” proceeds the official report to the pope, “brother accused brother, the wife the husband, and the master the servant. Others gave money to the shaven penitents in order to learn from them methods of evasion and escape, and there arose a confusion unknown for ages. I, the archbishop, first by myself and afterwards with the two archbishops of Trèves and Cologne, warned Master Conrad to proceed in so great a matter with more moderation and discretion, but he refused.”[376]
Fortunately for the German people, Conrad’s blind recklessness was not long in affording them the desired chance. Beginning with the lowly and helpless, his operations had rapidly advanced to the higher classes. In his eyes the meanest peasant and the loftiest noble were on an equality, and he was as prompt to assail the one as the other, but his witnesses at first had not dared to accuse the high-born and powerful. It is quite possible, indeed, that, as the persecution became more dreadful, some of them may have felt that the surest mode of bringing on a crisis was to involve the magnates of the land. Rumors were spread impugning the faith of the Counts of Aneberg, Lotz, and Sayn. Conrad eagerly directed his interrogatories to obtaining evidence against them, and summoned them to appear before him. Count Sayn was an especially notable prey, as he was one of the most powerful nobles of the diocese, whose extensive possessions were guarded by castles renowned for strength, and whose reputation was that of a stern and cruel man. The crime of which he was accused was that of riding on a crab, and open defiance was expected from him. Sigfried, the Archbishop of Mainz, to make a show of obedience to the papal commands, had called a provincial council to assemble March 13, 1233. When it met, it deplored the prevalence of heresy, from which scarce a village in the land was free; it prayed the prelates to labor zealously for the suppression of the evil, commanded them to enforce in their respective dioceses the recent decrees of the pope and of the emperor, which were to be read and explained in the local synods, so that the heretics might be frightened to conversion; it deprecated the practice of seizing the property of suspects before their guilt was determined; it ordered the bishops to provide prisons for coiners and incorrigible clerks, without alluding to the imprisonment of heretics, although Gregory, but a few weeks before, had specially ordered them to employ perpetual incarceration in all cases of relapse; it endeavored to maintain episcopal jurisdiction by enacting that inquisitors must obtain letters from the bishop before exercising their powers in any diocese; finally, it anticipated the resistance of Count Sayn and the other inculpated nobles, by directing that if any magnate, relying upon the strength of his castles and the support of his subjects, should refuse to appear after three citations, his bishop should preach a crusade against him with indulgences, and he should be manfully assailed.[378]
The immediate reputation which Conrad left behind him is shown by the vision, related by a contemporary, which indicated that he was hopelessly damned. Modern ecclesiastics, however, take a more favorable view of his career, and even the amiable Alban Butler describes him as a virtuous and enlightened priest, who rendered great service by his preaching, and whose fervor, disinterestedness, and love of poverty and austerity rendered him a model for his contemporaries. Yet, unaccountably, the Church has not yet proceeded to his vindication as a martyred saint, and has neglected to place him alongside of those kindred spirits, St. Peter Martyr and St. Pedro Arbues.[381]
It is satisfactory to know that the immediate author of the troubles met with the fate which he deserved. Conrad Tors, on his return from Rome, endeavored to resume his interrupted labors, but the temper of the people had changed, and the victims were no longer unresisting. At Strassburg he summoned the Junker Heinz von Müllenheim, who unceremoniously settled the accusation by slaying him. His assistant, the one-eyed John, met an even more ignominious fate, for he was recognized at Freiburg and hanged.[387]
The excitement of Conrad of Marburg’s exploits was naturally succeeded by a reaction. In 1233 the murder of Bishop Berthold of Coire, attributed to heretics, shows how far persecution spread, accompanied by a dangerous tendency to resistance. Throughout 1234 both Dominicans and Franciscans are reported as busy, with the result of numerous burnings; but the lesson taught by the attitude of the German prelates was not lost, and in 1235 the magistrates of Strassburg enjoined on them to seek conversions by preaching, and not to burn people without at least giving them a hearing. The languor and reaction continued. We have seen from the complaints of the Count of Salins, in 1248, and the fruitless efforts of Innocent IV. to establish the Inquisition in Besançon, that the western borders of Germany were full of Waldenses who had little to dread. At the same period there was a demonstration in the neighborhood of Halle which may be reasonably regarded as Waldensian. The papacy had succeeded in raising a rival to Frederic in the person of William of Holland, and a crusade was on foot in his favor against Conrad, Frederic’s son. The imperialists would naturally regard with favor the Waldensian doctrines denying the power of the keys and the obedience due to interdicts, and they might not object further to the tenet that sinful priests cannot administer the sacraments. Such were the dogmas attributed to the heretics of Halle, who came boldly forward in 1248, were eagerly listened to by the nobles, and were favored by King Conrad, but they speedily disappeared from sight in the changeful circumstances of that tumultuous time.[389]
We have much more distinct indications of the existence both of heresy and of the Inquisition in the writings of David of Augsburg, and of the author now generally known as the Passauer Anonymus. The date of the latter is not absolutely certain, but it cannot vary much from 1260. His field of action was the extensive diocese of Passau, stretching from the Iser to the Leitha, and from Bohemia to Styria, embracing eastern Bavaria and northern Austria. His instructions seem to take for granted the existence of an organized Inquisition with its fully developed code of procedure, but his description of the prevalence of Waldensianism would indicate that it was almost inoperative. He tells us that he had often been concerned in the inquisition and examination of the “schools,” or communities, of Waldenses, of which there were forty-one in the diocese, ten of them being in the single town of Clamme, where the heretics slew the parish priest without any one being punished for it. There were also forty-one Waldensian churches, organized under a bishop residing in Empenbach, and there was a school for lepers at Newenhoffen. All this shows a prosperous growth of heresy little disturbed by persecution. It is observable that the places enumerated as the seats of these churches are mostly insignificant villages, the larger towns appear to be avoided, and the heretics belong to the humbler classes—mostly peasants and mechanics. Their wonderful familiarity with Scripture and their self-devoted earnestness in making converts have already been alluded to. From the writer’s long description of the tenets of the Ordibarii and Ortlibenses it is evident that they formed a fair proportion of the heretics with whom the inquisitor had to deal, and their belief that the Day of Judgment would come when the pope and the emperor should be converted to their sect, indicates the hopefulness of a faith that is growing and spreading. Soon afterwards we hear of Waldenses captured in the diocese of Ratisbon, and their continued activity, in spite of persecution, through all the south German regions.[390]
The Schwabenspiegel, or code in force in southern Germany, is much more complaisant to the Church, but it knows of no jurisdiction over heretics save that of the bishops. It admits that an emperor rendering himself suspect in the faith can be put under ban by the pope. It provides death by fire for the heretic. It directs that when heretics are known to exist, the ecclesiastical courts shall inquire about them and proceed against them. If convicted, the secular judge shall seize them and doom them according to law. If he neglects or refuses he is to be excommunicated by the bishop, and his suzerain shall inflict on him the penalty of heresy. If a secular prince does not punish heresy he is to be excommunicated by the episcopal court; if he remains under the censure for a year the bishop is to report him to the pope, who shall deprive him of his rank and honors, and the emperor is bound to execute his sentence by stripping him of all his possessions, feudal and allodial. All this shows ample readiness to accept the received ecclesiastical law of the period as to heresy, but utter ignorance of the inquisitorial process is revealed in the provision which inflicts the talio on whoever accuses another of certain crimes, including heresy, without being able to convict him. When the accuser had to accept the chances of the stake, prosecutions were not apt to be common.[393]
Those who thus lived in communities could be subjected to wholesome supervision and established rules, but it was otherwise with those who maintained an independent existence, either in one spot or wandering from place to place, sometimes supporting themselves by labor, but more frequently by beggary. Their customary persistent cry through the streets—”“Brod durch Gott“”—became a shibboleth unpleasantly familiar to the inhabitants of the German cities, which the Church repeatedly and ineffectually endeavored to suppress. A circumstance occurring about 1240 illustrates their reputation for superior sanctity and the advantages derivable from it. A certain Sibylla of Marsal near Metz, we are told, seeing how many women under the name of Beguines flourished in the appearance of religion, and under the guidance of the Dominicans, thought fit to imitate them. Assiduous attendance at matins and mass gained her the repute of peculiar holiness. Then she pretended to fast and live on celestial food, she had ecstasies and visions, and deceived the whole region, not excepting the Bishop of Metz himself. The Beguines who had hailed her as a saintly sister were excessively mortified when an accident revealed the imposture; the people were so enraged that some wanted to burn her and others to bury her alive, but the bishop shut her up in a convent, in pace, where, naturally enough, she soon died.[397]
As a branch of the sect may be reckoned the Luciferans, who have been repeatedly alluded to above. Pantheism, of course, included Satan as an emanation from God, who in due time would be restored to union with the Godhead, and it was not difficult to assume that his fallen state was an injustice. In 1312 Luciferans were discovered at Krems, in the diocese of Passau, whose bishop, Bernhard, together with Conrad, Archbishop of Salzburg, and Frederic, Duke of Austria, undertook their extirpation with the aid of the Dominican Inquisition, which seems to have maintained some foothold in those regions. The persecution lasted until 1315, but the sect was not exterminated, and reappeared repeatedly in after-years. It is reported to have been thoroughly organized, with twelve “apostles” who travelled annually throughout Germany, making converts and confirming the believers in the faith. All the ceremonies of external worship were rejected, but they did not enjoy the impeccability of Illuminism, for two of their ministers were held to enter paradise every year, where they received from Enoch and Elias the power of absolving their followers, and this power they communicated to others in each community. Those who were detected proved obdurate; they were deaf to all persuasion, and met their death in the flames with the utmost cheerfulness. One of the apostles, who was burned at Vienna, stated, under torture, that there were eight thousand of them scattered throughout Bohemia, Austria, and Thuringia, besides numbers elsewhere. Bohemia was especially infected with these errors, and Trithemius, in the opening years of the sixteenth century, states that there were still thousands of them in that kingdom. This is doubtless an exaggeration, if not a complete mistake, but they were again discovered in Austria in 1338 and 1395, and many of them were burned.[401]
The importance of Eckart’s views lies not so much in his own immediate influence as in that of his disciples. He was the founder of the school of German mystics, through whom the speculations of Amauri of Bene, in various dilutions, made a deep impression on the religious development of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. All the leaders in the remarkable association known as the “Friends of God” drew, directly or indirectly, their inspiration from Master Eckart, and all, to a greater or less extent, reveal their affinity to the Brethren of the Free Spirit, although they succeeded in keeping technically within the limits of orthodoxy.
John of Rysbroek, humane and gentle as he was, regarded the Brethren of the Free Spirit with such horror that he deemed them worthy of the stake. Yet, though he avoided their pantheism, he taught, like them, the supreme end of existence in the absorption of the individual into the infinite substance of God; moreover, the Perfect, inflamed by divine love, are dead to themselves and to the world, and are thus incapable of sin. It is no wonder that Gerson regarded as dangerous these doctrines, so nearly akin to those of the Beghards, and though Rysbroek might hesitate to draw from them the conclusions inevitable to hardier thinkers, they were sufficient to render unsuccessful the attempt made, in 1624, to canonize him, in spite of the incontestable miracles wrought at his tomb. His most distinguished disciple was Gerard Groot, who partially outgrew the metaphysical subtleties of his teacher and turned his energies to the more practical directions out of which sprang the Brethren of the Common Life. Groot was equally severe upon the corruption of the clergy and the errors of the heretics. When the introduction of the Inquisition into Germany drove the Brethren of the Free Spirit to find new places of refuge, some of them came to Holland, where the prevalence of pantheistic mysticism gave opportunity of spreading their doctrines. Groot’s own views sufficiently resembled theirs to render their bolder speculations doubly offensive to him, and he sought to repress them with especial zeal. The convent of Augustinian Hermits at Dordrecht had the reputation of being tainted with the heresy, and Groot was eager to detect and punish it. Bartholomew, one of the Augustinians, was particularly suspected, and Groot proposed to follow him secretly with a notary and take down his words. In this, or some other way, evidence was obtained; there was no Inquisition in Holland, and Groot procured his citation before Florent, Bishop of Utrecht, about the year 1380. The case was beard before the episcopal vicar; Bartholomew denied the expressions attributed to him and was let off with an injunction to publicly repeat the denial in Kampen and Zwolle, where he was said to have uttered his heresies. This unexpected lenity excited the indignation of Groot, who had sufficient influence to induce Bishop Florent to take up the case again and try it personally. Bartholomew endeavored to escape his persecutor by appearing a day in advance of the one set for his trial, but word was sent to Groot, who threw himself into a wagon, and by travelling all night reached Utrecht in time. On this occasion he was successful; Bartholomew was condemned as a heretic, abjured, and was sentenced to wear crosses in the form of scissors. The Augustinians did not lack friends, and they retaliated on those who had busied themselves in the matter. The magistrates of Kampen prosecuted some women who had served as witnesses and fined them, and they also banished for ten years Werner Keynkamp, a friend of Groot, who subsequently was thrice prior of houses of Brethren of the Common Life. Groot himself did not escape, for soon afterwards Bishop Florent, for the purpose of silencing him, issued an order withdrawing all commissions to preach. Groot then endeavored to procure from Urban VI. papal commissions as preacher and inquisitor, and sent to Rome ten florins to pay for the bulls. Fortunately for his fame, he died, in 1384, before the return of his messenger, and Holland was spared the effects of his inconsiderate zeal, inflamed by strife and armed with the irresponsible power of the Inquisition. In his gentler capacity he left his mantle to Florent Radewyns, under whom were developed the communities of the Common Life. These spread rapidly throughout the Netherlands and Germany, and though occasionally the subject of inquisitorial persecution, they were covered by the decision of Martin V., when Matthew Grabon, at the Council of Constance, endeavored to procure the condemnation of the Beguines, of which more anon. After this they flourished without opposition, supporting themselves by disseminating culture, as educators and copiers of manuscripts. After the Reformation the communities rapidly died out, although the house of Emmerich, near Düsseldorf, remained to be closed by Napoleon, in 1811, and the four brethren then ejected from it continued to observe the rules, till the last one, Gerard Mulder, died at Zevenaar, March 15, 1854. One branch of the brethren, however, adopted the Rule of the canons-regular of St. Augustin. Their convent of Windesheim became the model which was universally followed, and the order had the honor of training two such men as Thomas-à-Kempis and Erasmus. The Imitation of Christ is the final exquisite flower of the moderated mysticism of John of Rysbroek. Brought down to practical life, this mysticism contributed largely to the spiritual movement which culminated in the Reformation, for it taught the superfluity of external works and the dependence of the individual on himself alone for salvation. In this the Brethren of the Common Life were active. To them dogma became less important than the interior discipline which should fit men to be really children of God. Preaching among the people and teaching in the schools, such brethren as Henry Harphius, John Brugman, Denis Van Leeuwen, Jon Van Goch, and John Wessel of Groningen, were unwittingly undermining the power of the hierarchy, although they virtually escaped all imputation of heresy and danger of persecution.[403]
After this hasty review of the more orthodox developments of mysticism we may return to the history of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, who maintained the pantheistic doctrine in all its crudity, and did not shrink from its legitimate deductions. Towards the close of the thirteenth century the transcendent merits of beggary, so long acknowledged, began to be questioned. In 1274 the Council of Lyons endeavored to suppress the unauthorized mendicant associations. In 1286 Honorius IV. condemned the Segarellists, and some ten years later the persecution, by Boniface VIII., of the Celestines and stricter Franciscans showed that poverty was no longer to be regarded as the supreme virtue. About the same time he issued a bull ordering the active persecution of some heretics, whose teaching that perfection required men and women to go naked and not to labor with the hands would seem to identify them with the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The same feeling manifested itself contemporaneously in Germany. The first instance of actual persecution recorded is a curt notice that, in 1290, the Franciscan lector at Colmar caused to be arrested two Beghards and two Beguines, and several others at Basle whom he considered to be heretics. Two years later the Provincial Council of Mainz, held at Aschaffenburg, emphatically repeated the condemnation of the Beghards and Beguines, expressed by the previous council of 1259, and this was again repeated by another council of Mainz in 1310, while other canons regulating the recognized communities of Beguines show that the distinction was clearly drawn between those who led a settled life under supervision and the wandering beggars who preached in caverns and disseminated doctrines little understood, but regarded with suspicion.[410]
About this period flourished Conrad of Montpellier, a canon of Ratisbon, one of the most learned men of the day, who wrote a tract against the sect. In spite of the condemnation uttered by the Council of Vienne, he says it continues to increase and multiply, as there are no prelates found to oppose it. The heretics are mostly ignorant peasants and mechanics, who wander around wearing the distinctive garments of the sect, which are also frequently used as a disguise by Waldenses. They seek hospitality of the Beguines, whom they corrupt by persuading them that man, through piety, can become the equal of Christ. At Ratisbon, Conrad met one of these, who was not suffered to enjoy security, for the bishop arrested him, and, on his obstinately maintaining his errors, cast him in a dungeon, where he perished. Another, named John of Mechlin, preached his heresy publicly through upper Germany, where his eloquence gained him crowds of followers, including nobles and ecclesiastics, though Conrad declares that, on arguing with him, he proved to be utterly ignorant. There would appear to have been equal toleration in the Netherlands, for about this period, at Brussels, a woman named Blomaert, who wrote several treatises on the Spirit of Liberty and on Love, was reverenced as something more than human, and when she went to take the Eucharist she was said by her disciples to be attended by two seraphim. She vanquished the most learned theologians, until John of Rysbroek succeeded in confuting her.[423]
Since the disputed election of Louis of Bavaria, in 1314, the relations between the empire and the papacy had been strained. The victory of Mühldorf, in 1322, which assured to Louis the sovereignty, had been followed, in 1323, by an open rupture with John XXII., after which the strife had been internecine. Each declared his enemy a heretic who had forfeited all rights, and the interdicts which John showered over Germany had been met by Louis with cruel persecution of all ecclesiastics obeying them, wherever he could enforce his power.[424] Such a state of affairs had not been favorable for the persecution of heresy; it may, partially at least, explain the immunity enjoyed in so many places by heretics, and the impossibility of introducing the Inquisition in any form of general organization. Though the papacy assumed that the imperial throne was vacant, and asserted that, during such vacancy, the government of the empire devolved upon the pope, these pretensions could not practically be made good. With the death of Louis, in 1347, and the recognition of his rival, Charles IV.—the “priest’s emperor”—Rome might fairly hope that all obstacles would be removed; that the opposition of the episcopate to the Inquisition would be broken down, and that the field would be open for a persistent and systematic persecution, which would soon relieve Germany of the reproach of toleration. When Clement VI., in 1348, could paternally reprove the young emperor for lack of dignity in the fashion of his garments, which were too short and too tight for his imperial station, the youth could surely be relied upon to obey whatever instructions might be sent him with regard to the suppression of heresy. The same year saw the appointment of John Schandeland, doctor of the Dominican house at Strassburg, as papal inquisitor for all Germany.[425]
Scarcely, however, had the pope and emperor felt their positions assured, and preparations had been thus made to take advantage of the situation, when a catastrophe supervened which defied all human calculation. The weary fourteenth century was nearing the end of its first half when Europe was scourged with a calamity which might well seem to fulfil all that apocalyptic prophets had threatened of the vengeance of God on the sins of man. In 1347 the plague known as the Black Death invaded Europe from the East, making leisurely progress during 1348 and 1349 through France, Spain, Hungary, Germany, and England. No corner of Europe was spared, and on the high seas it is said that vessels with rich cargoes were found floating, of which the crews had perished to the last man. Doubtless there are exaggerations in the contemporary reports which assert that two thirds or three quarters or five sixths of the inhabitants of Europe fell victims to the pest; but Boccaccio, as an eye-witness, tells us that the mortality within the walls of Florence from March to July, 1348, amounted to one hundred thousand souls; that in the fields the harvests lay ungathered; that in the city palaces were tenantless and unguarded; that parents forsook children and children parents. In Avignon the mortality was estimated at one hundred thousand; Clement VI. shut himself up in his apartments in the sacred palace, where he built large fires to ward off the pestilence, and would allow none to approach him. In Paris fifty thousand were said to have perished; in St. Denis sixteen thousand; in Strassburg sixteen thousand. That these figures, though vague, are not improbable, is shown by the case of Béziers, where, in 1348, Mascaro, who was chosen escudier to fill a vacancy, records in his diary that all the consuls were carried off, all their escudiers or assistants, and all the clavars or tax-collectors, and that out of every thousand inhabitants only a hundred escaped. As though Nature did not cause sufficient misery, man contributed his share by an uprising against the Jews. They were accused of causing the plague by poisoning the waters and the pastures, and the blind wrath of the population did not stop to consider that they drank from the same wells as the Christians, and suffered with them in the pestilence. From the Atlantic to Hungary they were tortured and slain with sword and fire. At Erfurt three thousand are said to have perished, and in Bavaria the number was computed at twelve thousand.[426]
From Poland to the Rhine the processions of Flagellants met with little opposition, except in a few towns, such as Erfurt, where the magistrates prohibited their entrance, and in the province of Magdeburg, where Archbishop Otho suppressed them. They spread through Holland and Flanders, but when they invaded France, Philippe de Valois interfered, and they penetrated no farther than Troyes. The guardians of public order, indeed, could not look without dread upon such a popular demonstration, which by organization might become dangerous. When the Flagellants of Strassburg proposed to form a permanent confraternity, Charles IV., who was in that city, peremptorily forbade it. Already dangerous characters were attracted to the wandering bands; in many places their zeal had led to the merciless persecution of the Jews, and there were not lacking symptoms of a significant antagonism to the Church, manifesting itself in attacks upon ecclesiastics and clerical property. The Church, in fact, looked askance upon a religious manifestation not of her prescription, and her susceptibilities were not soothed by the daily reading, amid the flagellation, of a letter brought by an angel to the Church of St. Peter, in Jerusalem, relating that God, incensed at the non-observance of Sundays and Fridays, had scourged Christendom, and would have destroyed the world but for the intercession of the angels and the Virgin. This was accompanied by a message that general flagellation for thirty-three and a half days would cause him to lay aside his wrath. There was danger, indeed, of open antagonism and insubordination. The Mendicants, who endeavored to discourage this independent popular penitence, incurred the bitterest hostility, which had no scruple in finding expression. At Tournay the orator of the Flagellants denounced them as scorpions and antichrists, and on the borders of Misnia two Dominicans, who endeavored to reason with a band of Flagellants, were set upon with stones; one had sufficient agility to escape, but the other was lapidated to death.[428]
This shows how inefficient had been Clement’s prohibition, and how obstinately the practice had maintained itself until it had risen to the rank of a new heresy. When his bull was received by the German prelates they fully comprehended the dangers which it sought to avert, and addressed themselves vigorously to its enforcement. The Flagellants were denounced from the pulpit as an impious sect, condemned by the Holy See. Those who would humbly return to the Church would be received to mercy, while the obdurate would be made to experience the full rigor of the canons. This thinned the ranks considerably, but there were enough of persistent ones to furnish a new harvest of martyrs. Many were executed, or exposed to various forms of torment, and not a few rotted to death in the dungeons in which they were thrown. Even ecclesiastics could not be prevented from adhering to the obnoxious sect. William of Gennep, Archbishop of Cologne, in a provincial council excommunicated all clerks who joined the Flagellants; yet this was so completely disregarded that in his vernal synod of 1353 he was obliged to order all deans and rectors of churches to assemble their chapters, read his letters, and make provision for the public excommunication by name of all the disobedient, to be followed within a fortnight by their suspension. We shall see hereafter with what persistent obstinacy the outbreak of flagellation recurred from time to time, and how it was regarded as heresy, pure and simple, by the Church. Meanwhile, it is not to be doubted that the Brethren of the Free Spirit took full advantage of the excitement prevailing in men’s minds, and of the upturning which resulted, both spiritually and socially. When the bands of Flagellants first made their appearance they were joined in many places, we are told, by the heretics known as Lollards, Beghards, and Cellites. Involved in common persecution, they grew to have common interests, and they became too intimately associated together not to lend each other mutual support.[431]
These portentous edicts provided for the personnel of the Inquisition and the exercise of its powers, but to render it a permanent institution there were still lacking houses in which it could hold its tribunals, and prisons in which to keep its captives. The imperial resources were not adequate to this, and nothing was to be expected from the piety of princes and prelates. Somebody must be despoiled for its benefit—somebody too defenceless to resist, yet possessed of property sufficient to be tempting. These conditions were exactly filled by the orthodox Beghards and Beguines, who, since their temporary persecution after the publication of the Clementines, had continued to prosper and to enjoy the donations of the pious. They were accordingly marked as the victims, and, a week after the issue of the edicts just described, another was published in which these poor creatures are described as cultivating a sacrilegious poverty, which they assert to be the most perfect form of life, and their communities, if left undisturbed, will become seminaries of error. Moreover, the Inquisition has no house, domicile, or strong tower for the detention of the accused and for the perpetual incarceration of those who abjure, whereby many heretics remain unpunished and the seed of evil is scattered. Therefore the houses of the Beghards are given to the Inquisition to be converted into prisons; those of the Beguines are ordered to be sold and the proceeds divided into thirds, one part being assigned to repairing roads and the walls of the towns, another to be given to inquisitors, to be expended on pious uses, among which is included the maintenance of prisoners. But three days’’ notice is given to the victims prior to expulsion from their homes.[436]
Although the Brethren of the Free Spirit were the chief objects of all this inquisitorial activity, the Flagellants were not neglected. In 1361 a demonstration of these enthusiasts in far-off Naples awakened the solicitude of Innocent VI. In 1369 we hear of an outbreak of women coming from Hungary, which was summarily suppressed in Saxony. In 1372 Flagellants reappeared in various parts of Germany, asserting the peculiar efficacy of their penance as replacing the sacraments of the Church, so that Gregory XI. felt it necessary to direct the inquisitors to exterminate them. In 1373 and 1374 this irrepressible tendency took a new shape, known as the Dancing Mania, which broke out at the consecration of a church in Aix-la-Chapelle. Bands of both sexes, mostly consisting of poor and simple folk, poured into Flanders from the Rhinelands, dancing and singing as though possessed by the Furies. Under intense spiritual excitement the performer would leap and dance until he fell to earth with convulsions, when his comrades would revive him by jumping upon him, or a cloth which he wore, tied around the belly, would be tightly twisted with a stick. This was generally looked upon as a kind of demoniacal possession until a multitude of these dancers assembled at Herestal and consulted together as to the best plan for slaying all the priests, canons, and clergy of Liège, when the madness was recognized as no longer harmless. Still it spread over a large portion of Germany and lasted for several years. Though not in itself a heresy, it led in some places to heretical opinions on the sacraments, for it was popularly explained by attributing it to defective baptism, caused by the universal practice among priests of keeping concubines.[441]
Scarce had the Inquisition been fairly organized and had settled to its work, when its arbitrary proceedings awakened active opposition. As the heretic Beghards and Beguines were the principal objects of its activity, and the orthodox ones of its cupidity, the sufferings of the latter speedily awoke compassion which found expression in terms so decided that Gregory XI. could not refuse to listen. Accordingly, in April, 1374, he wrote to the Archbishops of Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne, reciting these complaints and ordering a report about the life and conversation of the persons concerned, who should be protected and cherished if innocent, and be punished if guilty. At least from Cologne and Worms, probably from the other prelates, came answers that the persecuted communities were composed of faithful Catholics. In Cologne the magistrates intervened and complained energetically to the pope that a Dominican inquisitor was vexing the poor folk, and they asked that his proceedings be stopped. The victims, they said, were people of little culture, who were interrogated with questions so difficult that the most skilful theologians could scarce answer them, while their edifying lives had led the clergy to protect them against the threats of the Inquisition. Proceedings were thus checked, but still the peculiar garments which the devotees had always worn furnished an excuse for continued persecution, and another appeal was made to Gregory, to which he responded in December, 1377, by ordering the prelates not to permit their molestation on this account so long as they were good Catholics and obedient to the ecclesiastical authorities. The German bishops were thus fully armed with papal authority to restrict the operations of the inquisitors, and those who, like Bishop Lambert of Strassburg, were themselves disposed to persecution, did not dare to proceed further. The regular communities of Beghards and Beguines were assured of toleration, and if the heretical Brethren of the Free Spirit managed to share in this immunity, it probably did not give the prelates much concern.[442]
About this period, after a long interval, we again become cognizant of the existence of Waldenses. The Beghards had succeeded in concentrating upon themselves the attention of the papal and episcopal inquisitions, and the followers of Peter Waldo had remained unnoticed, doubtless owing their safety to outward conformity, though by absenting themselves from their parishes about the Easter tide they sometimes managed to escape taking communion for five or six years in succession. Thus laboring quietly and peacefully, preaching by night in cellars, mills, stables, and other retired places, they gained numerous converts among the peasants and artisans, who saw in the sanctity of their lives, as sadly admitted by the so-called Peter of Pilichdorf, the strongest contrast with the scandalous license of the clergy.[444] Thus they multiplied in secret until all Germany was full of them, including the closely-related sect of Winkelers. About 1390 they were discovered in Mainz, where for a hundred years they had lurked undisturbed. The Archbishop, Conrad II., kept the matter in his own hands. In 1392 he issued a commission, as episcopal inquisitors, to Frederic, Bishop of Toul, Nicholas of Saulheim, the Dean of St. Stephen, and John Wasmod, of Homburg, a priest of the cathedral, to whom the papal inquisitor could adjoin himself if he so chose. These inquisitors were armed with full authority to arrest, try, torture, sentence, and abandon to the secular arm all heretics, and were instructed to proceed in accordance with the practice of the Inquisition. They zealously discharged their duty. A number of Waldenses were already in the episcopal prison, and they made diligent perquisition after the rest. By free use of torture they obtained the necessary avowals and evidence. Those who were obstinate were handed over to the secular arm, and an auto de fé celebrated at Bingen in 1392, where six-and-thirty wretches were burned, proved that the papal Inquisition itself could not have been more effective. A little tract on the examination of Waldenses, evidently written on this occasion, shows that the inquisitorial process was fairly well understood, and that the episcopal officials had not much to learn from their rivals.[445] and Saxony are represented. The author of the tract which passes under the name of Peter of Pilichdorf, who took an energetic part both with the pen and in action in suppressing this suddenly discovered heresy, informs us, in 1395, that the Netherlands, Westphalia, Prussia, and Poland were not infected with it, while Thuringia, Misnia, Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, and Hungary numbered their heretics by thousands. Curiously enough, in this list he omits Pomerania, where, along the Baltic regions, the Waldenses were thickly scattered from Stettin to Königsberg. The heresy had been deeply rooted there for at least a century, and the local priesthood seem to have borne no ill-will to the harmless sectaries, who conformed outwardly to the orthodox observances. Even when in confession intimations of the heresy escaped, as sometimes happened, they were wisely and mercifully overlooked. Yet there is evidence of previous persecution in the confession of Sophia Myndekin, of Fleit, who said that she had been fifty years in the sect, that her husband had been burned at Angermünde, and that she had only escaped on account of pregnancy, while all their little property was confiscated. They were poor folk, mostly peasants and laborers, and though there are occasional allusions in the trials to men of gentle blood, the tenets of the sect excluded all who owed feudal military service, war and bloodshed being strictly forbidden. They were visited yearly by their ministers, some of whom were mechanics, and others learned men skilled in Holy Writ, probably from Bohemia, who preached, heard confessions, and granted absolution, the utmost secrecy being observed in these ministrations. Moreover, collections were made and remitted to the headquarters of the sect, showing that they formed part of the great Waldensian organization.[446]
About the year 1400, in Strassburg, there was active persecution against a sect known as Winkelers, who were discovered to have four assemblies in the city, and others in Mainz and Hagenau. In their confessions they alluded to their comrades in many other places, such as Nordlingen, Ratisbon, Augsburg, Tischengen, Soleure, Berne, Weissenberg, Speier, Holzhausen, Schwäbisch-Wörth, Friedberg, and Vienna. Although, strictly speaking, not Waldenses, they had so many traits in common that the distinction is rather one of organization than of faith. In 1374 one of their number returned to the Church, and the fear of his betraying the little community led to his deliberate murder, the assassins being paid, and undergoing penance to obtain absolution. Some years later the inquisitor, John Arnoldi, was threatened with similar vengeance and left the city. In the final persecution some thirty families were put on trial, while many succeeded in remaining concealed. There was but one noble among them, Blumstein, who abjured, and who, some twenty years later, is found filling important civic posts. Though reference is made in one of the trials to members of the sect who had been burned at Ratisbon, those of Strassburg were more fortunate. The inquisitor, Böckeln, is said to have received bribes for assigning private penance to some of the guilty; and though the Dominicans demanded the burning of the heretics, the magistrates interceded with the episcopal official, and banishment was the severest penalty inflicted. Torture, however, had been freely used in obtaining confessions. After this, nothing more is heard in Strassburg of either Winkelers or Waldenses until the burning of Frederic Reiser in 1458.[449]
It was not long before this that the Brethren of the Free Spirit were deprived of their greatest leader, Nicholas of Basle. As a wandering missionary he had for many years been engaged in propagating the doctrines of the sect, and had gained many proselytes. The Inquisition had been eagerly on his track, but he was shrewd and crafty, and had eluded its pursuit. Forced, probably about 1397, to fly to Vienna with two of his disciples, John and James, they were discovered and seized. The celebrated Henry of Hesse (Langenstein) undertook their conversion, and flattered himself that he had succeeded, but they all relapsed and were burned. As Peter, the Celestinian abbot, was at this time Inquisitor of Passau, he probably had the satisfaction of ridding the Church of this dangerous heresiarch, whose belief in his own divine inspiration was such that he considered his will to be equal to that of God.
Giles Cantor, who founded in Brussels the sect which styled itself Men of Intelligence, was probably a disciple of Mary of Valenciennes, and the name was adopted merely to cover its affiliation with the proscribed Brethren of the Free Spirit. Its doctrines were substantially the same in their mystic pantheism and illuminism; and their practical application is seen in the story that on one occasion Giles was moved by the spirit to go naked for some miles when carrying provision to a poor person. So open a manifestation would have insured his prosecution had there been any machinery for persecution in efficient condition in Brabant; but he was allowed to propagate his doctrines in peace until he died. He was succeeded in the leadership of the sect by a Carmelite known as William of Hilderniss, and at length it attracted, in 1411, the attention of Cardinal Peter d’Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai. Fortunately for William, the bishop chose to direct the proceedings himself, and they show complete disregard of inquisitorial methods. He appointed special commissioners, who made an inquisition; both the names and the testimony of the witnesses were submitted to William, who made what defence he could. In rendering judgment d’Ailly called in the Dominican Prior of St. Quentin, who was inquisitor of the district of Cambrai, and the sentence was as irregular as the proceedings. William had no desire for martyrdom, and abjured the heresy; he was required to purge himself with six compurgators, after which he was to undergo the penance of three years’’ confinement in a castle of the bishop’s, while if he failed in his purgation he was to be imprisoned in a convent of his order during the archbishop’s pleasure—a most curious and illogical medley. He succeeded in finding the requisite number of compurgators, but though he disappeared from the scene his sect was by no means extinguished, and we hear of the persecution of a heresiarch as late as 1428.[454]
Conrad Schmidt had promulgated his errors in Thuringia, where his sectaries were discovered, in 1414, at Sangerhausen. Thither sped the inquisitor Schöneveld—called Henry by the chroniclers, but probably the same as the Eylard, whom we have seen at work some years before on the shores of the Baltic. The princes of Thuringia and Misnia were ordered to assist him, and they were eager to share in the suppression of a heresy which threatened to revolutionize the social order. The proceedings must have been more energetic than regular. Torture must have been freely used to gather into the net so many victims; nor can a patient hearing have been given to the accused. Their shrift was short, and before Schöneveld had left the scene of action he had caused the burning of ninety-one at Sangerhausen, forty-four in the neighboring town of Winkel, and many more in other villages. Yet such was the persistence of the heresy that even this wholesale slaughter did not suffice for its suppression. Two years later, in 1416, its remains were discovered, and again Schöneveld was sent for. He examined the accused. To those who abjured he assigned penances, and handed over the obstinate to the secular arm. His assizes must have been hurried, for he did not stay to witness the execution of those whom he had condemned, and after his departure the princes gathered all together, both penitents and impenitents, some three hundred in number, and burned the whole of them in one day. This terrible example produced the profound impression that was desired, and hereafter the sect of Flagellants may be regarded as unimportant. Some discussion, as we have seen, took place the next year at the Council of Constance, when San Vicente Ferrer expressed his approbation of this form of discipline, and Gerson mildly urged its dangers; but when, in 1434, a certain Bishop Andreas specified, among the objects of the Council of Basle, the suppression of the heresies of the Hussites, Waldenses, Fraticelli, Wickliffites, the Manichæans of Bosnia, the Beghards, and the schismatic Greeks, there is no allusion in the enumeration to Flagellants. Yet the causes which had given rise to the heresy continued in full force and it was still cherished in secret. In 1453 and 1454 Brethren of the Cross were again discovered in Thuringia, and the Inquisition was speedily at work to reclaim them. Besides the errors propagated by Conrad Schmidt, it was not difficult to extort from the accused the customary confessions of foul sexual excesses committed in dark subterranean conventicles, and even of Luciferan doctrines, teaching that in time Satan would regain his place in heaven and expel Christ; though when we hear that they alleged the evil lives of the clergy as the cause of their misbelief we may reasonably doubt the accuracy of these reports. Aschersleben, Sondershausen, and Sangerhausen were the centres of the sect, and at the latter place, in 1454, twenty-two men and women were burned as obstinate heretics. In 1481 a few were punished in Anhalt, and the sect gradually disappeared.[455]
From this time forward the attention of the Church was mainly directed to Hussitism, the most formidable enemy that it had encountered since the Catharism of the twelfth century. This will be considered in a following chapter, and meanwhile I need only say that its secret but threatening progress throughout Germany called for active means of repression and led to more thorough organization of the Inquisition. The bull of Martin V., issued February 22, 1418, against Wickliffites and Hussites, is addressed not only to prelates but to inquisitors commissioned in the dioceses and cities of Salzburg, Prague, Gnesen, Olmütz, Litomysl, Bamberg, Misnia, Passau, Breslau, Ratisbon, Cracow, Posen, and Neutra. While of course this is not to be taken literally, as though there were an organized tribunal of the Holy Office in each of these places, still it indicates that in the districts infected or exposed to infection the Church was arming itself with its most effective weapons. The growing danger, moreover, was leading the bishops to abandon somewhat their traditional jealousy. In this same year, 1418, the council of the great province of Salzburg not only urged the bishops to extirpate heresy and to enforce the canons against the secular powers neglecting their duty in this respect, but commanded all princes and potentates to seize and imprison all who were designated as suspect of heresy by the prelates and the inquisitors. Thus at last the episcopate recognized the Inquisition and came to its support.[457]
Still there remained a considerable number both of heretic Brethren of the Free Spirit and of orthodox Beghards of both sexes who recalcitrated of being thus brought under rule and deprived of their accustomed independence. Thus it is related of Bernhard, who was elected Abbot of Hirsau in 1460, that among other reforms he ejected all the Beguines from their house at Altburg, on account of their impurity of life, and replaced them with Dominican Tertiaries. This aroused the hostility of the Beghards who dwelt in hermitages in the forest of Hirsau, and they conspired against the abbot, but only to their own detriment. In 1463 the Synod of Constance complains of the unlawful wearing of the Franciscan scapular by Lollards and Beguines; all who do so are required to prove their right or to lay it aside, and able-bodied Lollards are ordered to live by honest labor and not by beggary. This latter practice was ineradicable, however, and twenty years later another synod was compelled to repeat the command. In 1491 a synod of Bamberg refers to the provisions of the Clementines against the Beguines as though their enforcement was still called for; and Friar John of Moravia, who died at Brünn in 1492, is warmly praised as a fierce and indefatigable persecutor of Hussites and Beghards. These insubordinate religionists continued to exist under almost constant persecution, until the Reformation, when they served as one of the elements which contributed to the spread of Lutheranism.[460]
There was, in fact, enough in common between the doctrines of the more radical Hussites and those of the Waldenses to bring the sects eventually together. The Waldenses had by no means been extirpated, and when, in 1467, the remnant of the Taborites known as the Bohemian Brethren opened communication with them, the envoys sent had no difficulty in finding them on the confines between Austria and Moravia, where they had existed for more than two centuries. They had a bishop named Stephen, who speedily called in another bishop to perform the rite of ordination for the Brethren, showing that the heretic communities were numerous and well organized. The negotiations unfortunately attracted attention, and the Church made short work of those on whom it could lay its hands. Bishop Stephen was burned at Vienna and the flock was scattered, many of them finding refuge in Moravia. Others fled as far as Brandenburg, where already there were flourishing Waldensian communities. These were soon afterwards discovered, and steel, fire, and water were unsparingly used for their destruction, without blotting them out. A portion of those who escaped emigrated to Bohemia, where they were gladly received by the Bohemian Brethren and incorporated into their societies. The close association thus formed between the Brethren and the Waldenses resulted in a virtual coalescence which gave rise to a new word in the nomenclature of heresy. When, in 1479, Sixtus IV. confirmed Friar Thomas Gognati as Inquisitor of Vienna, he urged him to put forth every exertion to suppress the Hussites and Nicolinistæ. These latter, who took their name from Nicholas of Silesia, were evidently Bohemian Brethren who adhered to the extreme doctrine common to both sects, that nothing could justify putting a human being to death. Thus the struggle continued, and though the danger was averted which had once seemed threatening, of the widespread adoption of Hussite theories, there remained concealed enough Hussite and Waldensian hostility to Rome to serve as a nucleus of discontent and to give sufficient support to revolt when a man was found, like Luther, bold enough to clothe in words the convictions which thousands were secretly nursing.[463]
Signs, indeed, were not wanting in the fifteenth century or the inevitable rupture of the sixteenth. Prominent among those who boldly defied the power of Rome was Gregory of Heimburg, whom Ullman well designates as the citizen-Luther of the fifteenth century. He first comes into view at the Council of Basle, in the service of Æneas Sylvius, who was then one of the foremost advocates of the reforming party, and he remained steadfast to the principles which his patron bartered for the papacy. A forerunner of the Humanists, he labored to diffuse classical culture, and with his admiration for the ancients he had, like Marsiglio of Padua, imbibed the imperial theory of the relations between Church and State. With tongue and pen inspired by dauntless courage he was indefatigable to the last in maintaining the rights of the empire and the supremacy of general councils. The power of the keys, he taught, had been granted to the apostles collectively; these were represented by general councils, and the monopoly in the hands of the pope was a usurpation. His free expression of opinion infallibly brought him into collision with his early patron, and the antagonism was sharpened when Pius II. convoked the assembly of princes at Mantua to provide for a new crusade. Gregory, who was there as counsellor of the princes, boldly declared that this was only a scheme to augment the papal power and drain all Germany of money. When Nicholas of Cusa, a time-server like Pius, was appointed Bishop of Brixen and claimed property and rights regarded by Sigismund of Austria as belonging to himself, Sigismund, under Gregory's advice, arrested the bishop. Thereupon Pius, in June, 1460, laid Sigismund's territories under interdict, and induced the Swiss to attack him. Gregory drew up an appeal to a general council, which Sigismund issued, although Pius had forbidden such appeals, and he further had the hardihood to prove by Scripture, the fathers, and history, that the Church was subject to the State. It was no wonder that Gregory shared his master's excommunication. In October, 1460, he was declared a heretic, and all the faithful were ordered to seize his property and punish him. To this he responded in vigorous appeals and replications, couched in the most insolent and contemptuous language towards both Pius and Nicholas. In October, 1461, Pius sent Friar Martin of Rotenburg to preach the faith and preserve the faithful from the errors of Sigismund and his heresiarch Gregory, and, professing to believe that Martin was in personal danger, he offered an indulgence of two years and eighty days to all who would render him assistance in his need. He also ordered the magistrates of Nürnburg to seize Gregory’s property and expel him or deliver him up for punishment. We next find Gregory aiding Diether, Archbishop of Cologne, in his quarrel with Pius over the unprecedented and extortionate demand of the Holy See for annates; but Diether resigned, Sigismund made his peace, and Gregory was abandoned to his excommunication, even the city of Nürnburg withdrawing its protection. He then took refuge in Bohemia with George Podiebrad, whom he served efficiently as a controversialist, earning a special denunciation as a heretic of the worst type from Paul II., in 1469; but Podiebrad died in 1471. Gregory then went to Saxony, where Duke Albert protected him and effected his reconciliation with Sixtus IV. He was absolved at Easter, 1472, only to die in the following August, after spending a quarter of a century in ceaseless combat with the papacy.[464]
Bishop Rudolph of Würzburg repeatedly forbade the pilgrimage to Niklaushausen, but in vain, and at length he was led to take more decided steps. The great festivity of the region was the feast of St. Kilian, the martyr of Würzburg, falling on July 8. On the Sunday previous, July 6, 1476, Hans significantly told his audience to return the following Saturday armed, but to leave their women and children at home. Matters were evidently approaching a crisis, and the bishop did not wait for the result, but sent a party of guards, who seized Hans and conveyed him to a neighboring stronghold. The next day about six thousand of his deluded followers, including many women and children, set out for the castle, without arms, believing that its walls would fall at their demand. They refused to disperse when summoned, but were readily scattered by a sally of men-at-arms, supported by a discharge from the cannon of the castle, in which many were slain. Hans was easily forced by torture to confess the falsity of his revelations and the deceits by which he and his confederates had stimulated the excitement by false miracles; but his confession did not avail him, and he was condemned to be burned. At the place of execution his followers expected divine interference, and to prevent enchantment the executioner shaved him from head to foot. He walked resolutely to the stake, singing a hymn, but his fortitude gave way and he shrieked in agony as the flames reached him. To prevent his ashes from being treasured as relics, they were carefully collected and cast into the river. The priest and Beghard who had served as his confederates sought safety in flight, but were caught and confessed, after which they were discharged; but two peasants—one who had suggested the advance upon the castle and one who had wounded the horse of one of the guards who captured Hans—were beheaded.[465]
On the 10th the deputies labored with him. “If Christ were here,” he told them, “and were treated like me, you would condemn him as a heretic—but he would get the better of you with his subtlety.” At length he was persuaded to acknowledge that his views were erroneous, on the deputies agreeing to take the responsibility on their own consciences. He had long been sick when the trial was commenced, all assistance was withheld from him; age, weakness, and the dark and filthy dungeon from which he had vainly begged to be relieved broke down his powers of resistance, and he submitted. He publicly recanted and abjured, his books were burned before his face, and he was sentenced to imprisonment for life in the Augustinian monastery of Mainz. He did not long survive his mortification and misery, for he died in 1481. The trial excited great interest among all the scholars of Germany, who were shocked at this treatment of a man so eminent and distinguished. Yet his writings survived him and proved greatly encouraging to the early Reformers. Melanchthon enumerates him among those who by their works kept up the continuity of the Church of Christ.[466]
The persecution of John Reuchlin, like that of John of Wesel, sprang from scholastic antagonisms, but its development shows how completely, during the interval, the inquisitorial power had wasted away. Reuchlin was a pupil of John Wessel of Groningen; as the leader of the Humanists, and the foremost representative in Germany of the new learning, he was involved in bitter controversy with the Dominicans, who, as traditional Thomists, were ready to do battle to the death for scholasticism. The ferocious jocularity with which Sebastian Brandt dilates, in his most finished Latinity, upon the torture and burning of four Dominicans at Berne, in 1509, for frauds committed in the controversy over the Immaculate Conception, indicates the temper which animated the hostile parties, even as its lighter aspect is seen in the unsparing satire of Erasmus and of the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum. When, therefore, Reuchlin stood forward to protect Jews and Jewish literature against the assaults of the renegade Pfefferkorn, the opportunity to destroy him was eagerly seized. In 1513 a Dominican inquisitor, the Prior Jacob von Hochstraten, came from Cologne to Mainz on an errand precisely similar to that of his predecessor von Elten. Unlike John of Wesel, however, Reuchlin felt that he could safely appeal to Rome, where Leo X. was himself a man of culture and a Humanist. Leo was well disposed, and commissioned the Bishop of Speier to decide the question, which was in itself a direct blow at the inquisitorial power. Still more contemptuously damaging was the bishop’s judgment. Reuchlin was declared free of all suspicion of heresy, the prosecution was pronounced frivolous, and the costs were put upon Hochstraten, with a threat of excommunication for disobedience. This was confirmed at Rome, in 1415, where silence was imposed on Reuchlin’s accusers under a penalty of three thousand marks. The Humanists celebrated their victory with savage rejoicing. Eleutherius Bizenus printed a tract summoning, in rugged hexameters, all Germany to assist in the triumph of Reuchlin, in which Hochstraten—that thief, who as accuser and judge persecutes the innocent—marches in chains, with his hands tied behind his back, while Pfefferkorn, with ears and nose cut off, is dragged by a hook through his heels, face downwards, until his features lose the semblance of humanity. The Dominicans are characterized as worse than Turks, and more worthy to be resisted, and the author wonders what unjust pope and cowardly emperor had enabled them to impose their yoke on the land. These were brave words, but premature. The quarrel had attracted the attention of all Europe, the Dominican Order itself and all it represented were on trial, and it could not afford to submit to defeat. Hochstraten hastened to Rome; the Dominicans of the great University of Cologne did not hesitate to say that if the pope maintained the sentence they would appeal to the future council, they would refuse to abide by his decision, they would pronounce him to be no pope and organize a schism, and much more, which shows upon what a slender tenure the papacy held the allegiance of its Janissaries. Leo cowered before the storm which he had provoked, and in 1416 he issued a mandate superseding the sentence, but the spirit of insubordination was growing strong in Germany, and Franz von Sickingen, the free-lance, compelled its observance. As the Lutheran revolt grew more threatening, however, the support of the Dominicans became more and more indispensable, and in 1420 Leo settled the matter by setting aside the decision of the Bishop of Speier, imposing silence on Reuchlin, and laying all the costs on him. Hochstraten, moreover, was restored to his office.[468]
In France the University had taken the place of the almost forgotten Inquisition, repressing all aberrations of faith, while a centralized monarchy had rendered—at least until the Concordat of Francis I.—the national Church in a great degree independent of the papacy. In Germany there was no national Church; there was subjection to Rome which was growing unendurable for financial reasons, but there was nothing to take the place of the Inquisition, and a latitude of speech had become customary which was tolerated so long as the revenues of St. Peter were not interfered with. This perhaps explains why the significance of Luther’s revolt was better appreciated at Rome than on the spot. After he had been formally declared a heretic by the Auditor-general of the Apostolic Chamber at the instance of the promoter fiscal, the legate, Cardinal Caietano, wrote that he could terminate the matter himself, and that it was rather a trifling affair to be brought before the pope. He did not fulfil his instructions to arrest Luther and tell him that if he would appear before the Holy See, to excuse himself, he would be treated with undeserved clemency. After the scandal had been growing for a twelvemonth, Leo again wrote to Caietano to summon Doctor Martin before him, and, after diligent examination, to condemn or absolve him as might prove requisite. It was now too late. Insubordination had spread, and rebellion was organizing itself. Before these last instructions reached Caietano, Luther came in answer to a previous summons, but, though he professed himself in all things an obedient son of the Church, he practically manifested an ominous independence, and was conveyed away unharmed. The legate trusted to his powers as a disputant rather than to force; and had he attempted the latter, he had no machinery at hand to frustrate the instructions given by the Augsburg magistrates for Luther’s protection. In the paralysis of persecution the inevitable revolution went forward.[469]
We have seen how the Inquisitor of Passau, about the middle of the thirteenth century, describes the flourishing condition of the Waldensian churches in Austria, along the borders of Bohemia and Moravia, and the intense zeal of propagandism which animated their members. Close to the west, moreover, they were to be found in the diocese of Ratisbon. That the heresy should cross the boundary line was inevitable, and it ran little risk of detection and persecution by a worldly and slothful priesthood, until it gained strength enough to declare itself openly. The alarm was first sounded by Innocent IV. in 1245, who summoned the prelates of Hungary to intervene, as those of Bohemia apparently were not to be depended upon, and there was evidently no inquisitorial machinery which could be employed. Innocent describes the heresy as established so firmly and widely that it embraced not only the simple folk, but also princes and magnates, and it was so elaborately organized that it had a chief who was reverenced as pope. These are all declared excommunicate, their lands confiscated for the benefit of the first occupant, and any who shall relapse after recantation are to be abandoned to the secular arm without a hearing, in accordance with the canons.[471]
Papal attention being thus called to the existence of heresy in the east of Europe, and to the inefficiency of the local machinery for its extermination, steps were immediately taken for the introduction of the Inquisition. In 1318 John XXII. commissioned the Dominican Peregrine of Oppolza and the Franciscan Nicholas of Cracow as inquisitors in the dioceses of Cracow and Breslau, while Bohemia and Poland were intrusted to the Dominican Colda and the Franciscan Hartmann. As usual, the secular and ecclesiastical powers were commanded to afford them assistance whenever called upon. Poland, doubtless, was as much in need as Bohemia of inquisitorial supervision, for John Muscata, the Bishop of Cracow, was as negligent as his brother of Prague, and drew upon himself in 1319 severe reprehension from John XXII. for the sloth and neglect which had rendered heresy bold and aggressive in his diocese. This does not seem to have accomplished much, for in 1327 John found himself obliged to order the Dominican Provincial of Poland to appoint inquisitors to stem the flood of heresy which was infecting the people from regions farther west. Germany and Bohemia apparently were sending missionaries, whose labors met with much acceptance among the people. King Ladislas was especially asked to lend his aid to the inquisitors; he promptly responded by ordering the governors of his cities to support them with the civil power, and their vigorous action was rewarded with abundant success.[474]
During the latter half of the century, Bohemia, under these auspices, was one of the most flourishing kingdoms of Europe. Its mines of the precious metals gave it wealth; the freedom enjoyed by its peasantry raised them mentally and morally above the level of the serfs of other lands; culture and enlightenment were diffused from its university. It was renowned throughout the Continent for the splendor of its churches, which in size and number were nowhere exceeded. At the monastery of Königsaal, where the Bohemian kings lay buried, around the walls of the garden the whole of the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelations, was engraved, with letters enlarging in size with their distance from the ground, so that all could be easily read. In the bitter struggles of after generations the reign of King Charles was fondly looked back upon as the golden age of Bohemia. Wealth and culture, however, were accompanied with corruption. Nowhere were the clergy more worldly and depraved. Concubinage was well-nigh universal, and simony pervaded the Church in all its ranks, the sacraments were sold and penitence compounded for. All the abuses for which clerical immunity furnished opportunity nourished, and the land was overrun by vagrants whose tonsure gave them charter to rob and brawl, and dice and drink. The influences from above which moulded the Bohemian Church may be estimated from a single instance. In 1344 Clement VI. wrote to Arnest, then simple Bishop of Prague, calling attention to the numerous cases in his diocese wherein preferment had been procured for minors either by force or simony. The horror which the good pope expresses at this abuse is significantly illustrated by his having not long before issued dispensations to five members of one family in France, aged respectively seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven years, to hold canonries and other benefices. Apparently the Bohemians had not taken the proper means to obtain the sanction of the curia for such infraction of the canons, so Clement ordered Arnest to dispossess the incumbents in all such cases, and to impose due penance on them. But he was also instructed, in conjunction with the papal collector, to force them to compound with the papal camera for all the revenues which they had thus illegally received, and after they had undergone this squeezing process he was authorized to reinstate them.[478]
In all this activity for the suppression of heresy it is worthy of note that the episcopal Inquisition alone is referred to. In fact there was no papal Inquisition in Bohemia. The bull of Gregory XI., in 1372, ordering the appointment of five inquisitors for Germany, confines their jurisdiction to the provinces of Cologne, Mainz, Utrecht, Magdeburg, Salzburg, and Bremen, and pointedly omits that of Prague, although the zeal of Charles IV. might have been expected to secure the blessings of the institution for his hereditary realm.[481] This is the more curious, moreover, since the intellectual movement started by the University of Prague was producing a number of men distinguished not only for learning and piety, but for their bold attacks on the corruptions of the Church, and their questioning of some of its most profitable dogmas. The appearance of these precursors of Huss is one of the most remarkable indications of the tendencies of the age in Bohemia, and shows how the Waldensian spirit of revolt had unconsciously spread among the population.
The spirit of indignation and disquiet did not confine itself to denunciations of clerical abuses. Men were growing bolder, and began to question some of the cherished dogmas which gave rise to those abuses. In the synod of 1384 one of the subjects discussed was whether the saints were cognizant of the prayers addressed to them, and whether the worshipper was benefited by their suffrages—the mere raising of such a question showing how dangerously bold had become the spirit of inquiry. The man who most fitly represented this tendency was Mathias of Janow, whom the Archbishop John of Jenzenstein utilized in his efforts to reform the incurable disorders of the clergy. Mathias was led to trace the troubles to their causes, and to teach heresies from the consequences of which even the protection of the archbishop could not wholly defend him. In the synod of 1389 he was forced to make public recantation of his errors in holding that the images of Christ and the saints gave rise to idolatry, and that they ought to be banished from the churches and burned; that relics were of no service, and the intercession of saints was useless; while his teaching that every one should be urged to take communion daily foreshadowed the eucharistic troubles which play so large a part in the Hussite excitement. Yet he was allowed to escape with six months’’ suspension from preaching and hearing confessions outside of his own parochial church, a mistaken lenity which he repaid by continuing to teach the same errors more audaciously than ever, and even urging that the laity be admitted to communion in both elements. Mathias was not alone in his heterodoxy, for in the same synod of 1389 a priest named Andreas was obliged to revoke the same heresy respecting images, and another named Jacob was suspended from preaching for ten years for a still more offensive expression of similar beliefs, with the addition that suffrages for the dead were useless, that the Virgin could not help her devotees, and that the archbishop had erred in granting an indulgence to those who adored her image, and that the utterances of the holy doctors of the Church are not to be received.[483]
The marriage of Anne of Luxembourg, sister of Wenceslas of Bohemia, to Richard II., in 1382, led to considerable intercourse between the kingdoms until her death, in 1394. Many Bohemians visited England during the excitement caused by Wickliff’s controversies, and his writings were carried to Prague, where they found great acceptance. Huss tells us that about 1390 they commenced to be read in the University of Prague, and that they continued thenceforth to be studied. No orthodox Bohemian had hitherto ventured as far as the daring Englishman, but there were many who had entered on the same path, to say nothing of the secret Waldensian heretics, and the general feeling excited throughout Germany by the reckless simony and sale of indulgences which marked the later years of Boniface IX. Thus the movement which had been in progress since the middle of the century received a fresh impulsion from the circumstances under which the works of Wickliff were perused and scattered abroad in innumerable copies. All of his treatises were eagerly sought for. A MS. in the Hofbliothek of Vienna gives a catalogue of ninety of them which were known in Bohemia, and it is to those regions that we must look for the remains of his voluminous labors, the greater part of which were successfully suppressed at home. In time he came to be reverenced as the fifth Evangelist, and a fragment of stone from his tomb was venerated at Prague as a relic. Still more suggestive of his commanding influence is the fidelity with which Huss followed his reasoning, and oftentimes the arrangement, and even the words, of his treatises.[488]
John of Husinec, commonly known as Huss, who became the leading exponent and protomartyr of Wickliffitism in Bohemia, is supposed to have been born in 1369, of parents whose poverty forced him to earn his own livelihood. In 1393 he obtained the degree of bachelor of arts; in 1394 that of bachelor of theology; in 1396 that of master of arts; but the doctorate he never attained, though in 1398 he was already lecturing in the university; in 1401 he was dean of the philosophical faculty, and rector in 1402. Curiously enough, he embraced the Realist philosophy, and won great applause in his combats with the Nominalists. So little promise did his early years give of his career as a reformer that, in 1392, he spent his last four groschen for an indulgence, when he had only dry crusts for food. In 1400 he was ordained as priest, and two years later he was appointed preacher to the Bethlehem chapel, where his earnest eloquence soon rendered him the spiritual leader of the people. The study of Wickliff’s writings, begun shortly after this, quickened his appreciation of the evils of a corrupted Church, and when Archbishop Zbinco of Hasenburg, shortly after his consecration in 1403, appointed him as preacher to the annual synods, Huss improved the opportunity to address to the assembled clergy a series of terrible invectives against their worldliness and filthiness of living, which excited general popular hatred and contempt for them. After one of peculiar vigor, in October, 1407, the clamor among the ecclesiastics grew so strong that they presented a formal complaint against him to Archbishop Zbinco, and he was deprived of the position. By this time he was recognized as the leader in the effort to purify the Church, and to reduce it to its ancient simplicity, with such men as Stephen Palecz, Stanislas of Znaim, John of Jessinetz, Jerome of Prague, and many others eminent for learning and piety as his collaborators. To some of these he was inferior in intellectual gifts, but his fearless temper, his unbending rectitude, his blameless life, and his kindly nature won for him the affectionate veneration of the people and rendered him its idol.[489]
While thus in Bohemia the upholders of the old order of things were silenced and reformation in the morals of the clergy was enforced with no gentle hand, the news spread around Christendom that the long-desired general council was to be convoked at last for the settlement of the Great Schism, the reformation of the Church from its head downwards, and the suppression of heresy. Many strivings had there been to effect this, but the policy of the Italian popes, as at Pisa, had thus far successfully eluded the dreaded decision. The pressure grew, however, until it became overwhelming. With the rival vicars of Christ each showering perdition upon the adherents of the others, the spiritual condition of the faithful was most anxious and a solution of the tremendous question was the most pressing necessity for all who believed what the Latin Church had assiduously taught for a thousand years. The politics of Europe, moreover, were hopelessly complicated by the strife, and no peace was to be expected while so dangerous an element of discord continued to exist. This was especially the case in Germany, where independent princes and prelates each selected for himself the pope of his preference, leading to bitter and intricate quarrels. Second only in importance to this was the reform of the abuses and corruption, the venality and license of the clergy, which made themselves felt everywhere, from the courts of the pontiffs to the meanest hamlet. Heresy likewise was to be met and suppressed, for though England could deal single-handed with the Lollardry within her shores, the aspect of matters in Bohemia was threatening, and Sigismund, the emperor-elect, as the heir of his childless brother Wenceslas, was deeply concerned in the pacification of the kingdom. In vain John XXIII. endeavored to have the council held in Italy, where he could control it. The nations insisted on some place where the free parliament of Christendom could convene unshackled and debate unchecked. Sigismund selected the episcopal city of Constance; John, hard pressed by Ladislas of Naples and driven from Rome, was forced to yield, and, December 9, 1413, issued his bull convoking the assemblage for the first of the following November. Not only were all prelates and religious corporations ordered to be represented, but all princes and rulers were commanded to be there in person or by deputy. Imperial letters from Sigismund, which accompanied the bull, gave assurance that the powers of State and Church would be combined to reach the result desired by all.[500]
It was inevitable that Huss should tempt his fate at Constance. To both Sigismund and Wenceslas it was of the utmost importance that some authoritative decision should put an end to the strife within the Bohemian Church. The reformers had always professed their desire to submit their demands to a free general council, and Huss himself had appealed to such a council from the papal sentence of excommunication. To hesitate now would be to abandon his life’s work, to admit that he dared not face the assembled piety and learning of the Church, and to confess himself a heretic. The host of adversaries in the Bohemian clergy whom his bitter invectives had inflamed and whose preferment had been forfeited through the agitation which he had led would surely be there to blacken him and to misrepresent his cause, and all would be lost if he were not present to defend it in person. They had long jeered him for not daring to present himself to the Holy See in obedience to its summons, and had pronounced blasphemous his appeal to Christ from its excommunication. To hesitate to submit his cause to the council would give his adversaries an inestimable advantage. Besides, incredible as it may seem in view of the violence of his assaults upon the doctrine which rendered the high places in the hierarchy profitable, and his persistent denial of the validity of his excommunication, he believed himself to be in full communion with the Church, that he would find the council in sympathy with his views, and that certain sermons which he had prepared would, when delivered before the assembled prelates, be efficient in bringing about the reforms which he advocated. In his singleness of mind he could not comprehend that men who had thundered as vehemently as himself against current abuses and corruptions, but who had not dared to assail the principles from which those evils sprang, would shrink back aghast from his bolder doctrinal aberrations, and would regard him as a heretic subject to the inquisitorial rule prescribing the naked alternative of recantation or the stake.[502]
When, therefore, the imperial and royal wishes for his presence at Constance were signified to him, with a promise of safe-conduct and full security, he willingly assented, and so anxious was he to be present at the opening of the council that he did not even wait for the promised safe-conduct, which reached him only after his arrival there. That some discussion took place among his friends as to the danger to be incurred there can be no doubt. Jerome of Prague, when on his trial, asserted that he had persuaded Huss to go, and Huss in one of his letters from prison alludes to the warnings which he had received. He himself was evidently not wholly without misgivings. A sealed letter left with his disciple, Master Martin, not to be opened till news should be received of his death, alludes to the persecution which he had suffered for restraining the inordinate lives of the clergy, and his expectation that it would soon reach its consummation. He makes disposition of his slender effects—his gray gown, his white gown, and sixty grossi, which comprise the whole of his worldly gear—and expresses his remorse for the time wasted before his ordination, when he used to play chess to the loss of his own temper and that of others. The unaffected simplicity and pure-heartedness of the man shine like a divine light through the brief words of his last request. A letter in the vernacular to his disciples also announces his fear that his enemies may seek in the council to take his life by false testimony. He asks the prayers of his friends that he may have eloquence to uphold the truth and constancy to endure to the last. Still, he did not wholly neglect precautions. Not only did he procure from the inquisitor Nicholas, Bishop of Nazareth, the certificate of his orthodoxy already alluded to, but he posted, August 26, throughout Prague a notice in Latin and Bohemian that he would appear before the archbishop, then holding a convocation of the Bohemian clergy, and challenged all who impugned his faith to come forward and accuse him either there or at Constance, asserting his readiness to submit to the punishment of heresy in case he was convicted, but that accusers who failed should be subjected to the talio. When John of Jessinetz, his representative, presented himself the next day at the door of the convocation, he was refused admission on the pretext that the body was deliberating on national affairs, and he was told to come back another time. In the assembly of nobles, however, Huss obtained an audience of the archbishop, who was also papal legate, and who declared that he knew of nothing to render Huss guilty except that he ought to purge himself of the excommunication. Of this a certified notarial instrument was sent to Sigismund by Huss with the statement that under the imperial safe-conduct he was ready to go to Constance to defend publicly the faith for which he was prepared, if necessary, to die.[503]
The sturdy Bohemian was evidently a troublesome subject to deal with. In the eyes of the faithful it was quite scandal enough to see at liberty a priest who had openly defied a papal excommunication, and had defended the recognized errors of Wickliff; there was, moreover, every probability that he would carry out his audacious design of preaching to the clergy a sermon in which the vices of the papal court and the shortcomings of the whole ecclesiastical body would be pitilessly and eloquently exposed, and it would be proved from Scripture that the whole system had no warrant in the law of Christ. The path which the pope and his cardinals had to tread in managing the council was likely to be tortuous and thorny enough without this additional element of disturbance and turbulence. It was far safer to disarm him at once, to anticipate his attacks by treating him legally as one accused of heresy and awaiting trial. Stephen Palecz and Michael de Causis, and a crowd of other Bohemian doctors and priests whom Huss had roughly handled, had already furnished ample material for his indictment, and in the inquisitorial process the first step was to make sure that the accused should not escape. Even had the case been one in which bail could be taken, Huss had the whole kingdom of Bohemia at his back; bail to any amount would be furnished and forfeited, and, once safe at home, he would have laughed to scorn a condemnation for contumacy. Such might reasonably be the arguments of the cardinals when the resolve was taken to arrest him, but the execution of the design was either inexcusably insidious, or the manifestation of irresolution which reached its conclusion only by degrees. On November 28 the cardinals, in consistory with the pope, sent to Huss’s lodgings the Bishops of Augsburg and Trent, with Henry of Ulm, the burgomaster of Constance, to summon him at once before them to defend his faith. The envoys greeted him kindly, and though both he and John of Chlum protested that the summons was a violation of the safe-conduct, he immediately consented to go, although he said he had come to Constance to appear openly in the council, and not secretly before the cardinals. He added that he could not be imprisoned because he had a safe-conduct. John of Chlum and some friends accompanied him to the palace occupied by the pope. When the cardinals told him he was accused of disseminating many heresies, he replied that he would rather die than be convicted of a single one; he had come with alacrity to Constance, and if he was found in error he would willingly abjure. To this the cardinals said, “You have answered well.” No further examination was had, but John XXIII., whose policy was to embroil the council with Sigismund, took occasion to ask John of Chlum whether Huss had an imperial safe-conduct, to which Chlum replied, “Holy father, you know that he has.” Again the pope asked the question and received the same answer, but none of the cardinals requested to see the document. When the morning session was over, guards were placed over Huss and John of Chlum. The weary afternoon wore away in suspense, while the cardinals held another session in which Stephen Palecz and Michael de Causis were busy. The tedium of detention was only broken by a simple-looking Franciscan, who accosted Huss and asked for instruction on the subject of transubstantiation, and, on being satisfactorily answered, inquired about the union of humanity and divinity in Christ. Huss recognized that he was no simple inquirer, for he had asked the most difficult question in theology; he declined further colloquy, and on the retiring of the friar was informed by the guards that he was Master Didaco, renowned as the subtlest theologian of Lombardy. About nightfall John of Chlum was allowed to depart, while Huss was detained, and soon after Stephen and Michael came exultingly and told him that he was now in their power, and should not escape till he had paid the last penny. He was taken under guard to the house of the precentor of the cathedral, in charge of the Bishop of Lausanne, regent of the apostolic chamber, and after eight days was transferred to the Dominican convent on the Rhine. Here he was confined in a cell adjoining the latrines, where a fever soon caused his life to be despaired of. His sudden death would have been a most untoward event, and the pope sent his own physicians to restore him. It was in vain that his friends in Prague procured from Archbishop Conrad a declaration affirming that he had never found Huss to vary from the faith in a single word. His fate had already been virtually decided.[507]
The case against Huss was rendered stronger, almost at the outset, by the action of his friends at home. It must have been shortly after his arrival in Constance that Jacobel of Mies, who had succeeded Michael de Causis in the Church of St. Adalbert, commenced to administer communion in both elements to the laity, and thus gave rise to the most distinguishing and obstinate feature of Bohemian heresy. Zeal for the Eucharist had long been a marked peculiarity of religious devotion in Bohemia. The synod of 1390 promised an indulgence of forty days to all who bent the knee on the elevation of the host; and the frequent partaking of the sacrament was repeatedly and strenuously urged by those who have been classed as the precursors of Huss. Mathias of Janow had even ventured to recommend that the cup should be restored to the laity, but the question had never reappeared during the stormy years in which Huss and his friends had been battling for the Wickliffite doctrines. According to Æneas Sylvius, a certain Peter of Dresden, infected with Waldensian errors, had left Prague with the other Germans in 1409, but was driven from home on account of his heresy and took refuge again in Prague, where he supported himself as a teacher of children. He it was who suggested to Jacobel the return to the ancient practice of the Church; the heretics, delighted to find a question in which they were clearly in the right, eagerly embraced it. The custom spread to the churches of St. Michael, St. Martin, the Bethlehem Chapel, and elsewhere, in spite of the opposition of King Wenceslas and Archbishop Conrad, who vainly threatened secular punishments and ecclesiastical interdicts. Huss was speedily communicated with. He approved of the custom, as indeed he could not well help doing, and his tract in its favor, when conveyed to the disciples, gave a fresh impetus to the movement. It was in vain that on June 15, 1415, the council condemned the use of the cup by the laity, pronounced heretics all priests so administering the sacrament, ordered them to be handed over to the secular arm, and commanded all prelates and inquisitors to prosecute as heretics those who denied the propriety of communion in one element. For more than a century the Utraquists, or Calixtins, as they called themselves, were the ruling party in Bohemia. The consciousness of being in the wrong and of having to justify itself by all manner of trivial excuses rendered the council additionally eager to crush the insubordination of which Huss was the representative. [514]
We have seen that Huss was arrested November 28, 1414. Michael de Causis, Stephen Palecz, and others of his enemies had presented formal articles of accusation against him. These, drawn up in the name of Michael, accused him of maintaining the remanence of the substance in the Eucharist after consecration, of asserting the vitiation of the sacraments in the hands of sinful priests and denying the power of the keys under the same conditions, of holding that the Church should have no temporal possessions, of disregarding excommunication, of granting the cup to the laity, of defending the forty-five condemned articles of Wickliff, of exciting the people against the clergy, so that if he were allowed to return to Prague there would be a persecution such as had not been seen since the days of Constantine, and of other errors and offences. This was more than sufficient to justify his trial, and the process was commenced without delay by the appointment, December 1, of commissioners to examine him. These commissioners were, in fact, inquisitors, and the council at large served as the assembly of experts in which, as it will be remembered, final assent was given to the judgment. One of the commissioners at least, Bernardo, Bishop of Città di Castello, was already familiar with the matter, for only the year before, as papal nuncio in Poland, he had assisted in driving away Jerome of Prague. In addition to the articles of Michael de Causis there was a kind of indictment against Huss presented to the commissioners by the procurators and promoters of the council, reciting the troubles at Prague, his excommunication, and his teaching of Wickliffite heresies.[515]
It thus was idle to suppose that the council, because it had deposed John XXIII., would set free so contumacious a heretic, whose very virtues only rendered him the more dangerous. The inquisitorial process must go on to the end. Even during the bitterest and most doubtful portion of the contest, before the pope had been brought back to Constance, the successive steps of the trial received due attention. On April 17 four new commissioners were appointed to replace the previous ones, whose commissions from the pope were held to have expired, and the new commission was expressly granted power to proceed to final sentence. The only doubt arising was whether the condemnation of Wickliff, with which the case of Huss was inextricably related, should be uttered in the name of the pope or in that of the council, and its publication, May 4, in the latter form, showed that the assembly had no hesitation as to its duty in stamping out the heresy of the master and of the disciple. The active measures also, which during this period were taken against Jerome of Prague, were an indication not to be mistaken of the purposes of the council. Yet how little the friends of Huss understood the real position of affairs, and how false hopes had been excited by the rupture with the pope, is seen in their efforts at this juncture to press the trial to a conclusion. Under the procrastinating policy of the Inquisition it is quite possible that Huss would have been left to his solitary musings for a time indefinitely longer, in hopes that his resolution would at last give way, but for the efforts of his friends, who hoped to secure his release. On May 13 they presented a memorial complaining of his treatment, imprisoned in irons and perishing of hunger and thirst, without trial or conviction, in violation of the safe-conduct and of the pledged faith of the empire. They also remonstrated against the stories which were circulated to prejudice the case, that in Bohemia the blood of Christ was carried around in bottles, and that cobblers heard confession and celebrated mass. On May 16 the council replied to the effect that as far back as 1411 Huss had had a hearing before the Holy See and had been excommunicated, and had since then not only proved himself a heretic, but a heresiarch, by remaining under excommunication and preaching forbidden doctrines, even in Constance itself. As for the safe-conduct, we have seen how it was pretended to have been procured after the arrest. This elusive answer might have shown how the case was already prejudged by those who were to decide it; yet again, on May 18, the Bohemians presented a rejoinder urging promptitude. It was fully expected in Constance that a session would be held on the 22d, at which Huss would be condemned; but about this time attention was engrossed by the trial of John XXIII., who was at length deposed, May 29, and notified of his deposition on the 31st. Sigismund was now preparing for the voyage to Spain, which was expected to take place in June, and if anything was to be done with Huss before his departure further delay was inadmissible. Probably the Bohemians imagined that in some indefinable way he would yet save their leader. On May 31, therefore, they presented another memorial, reiterating their complaints about the safe-conduct and asking for a speedy public hearing. Sigismund entered during the discussion and strenuously urged the public audience, which was finally promised. Huss’s friends further urged that he should be brought from his prison and be allowed a few days to recover from his harsh incarceration, and a show was made of complying with the request. On the same day John of Chlum had the satisfaction of forwarding to Gottlieben an order for the transmission of Huss to Constance. The next day, June 1, a special deputation from the council followed and presented to him the thirty articles which had been proved against him. They reported that he submitted himself to the council; but he maintained that he only agreed to do so on such points as he could be proved to have taught erroneously. At last he was brought to Constance in chains and confined in the Franciscan convent.[523]
On June 5 a congregation of the council was held in the Franciscan convent. At first the intention was to carry out the ordinary inquisitorial procedure by considering, in the absence of Huss, the articles proved against him, but Peter Mladenowic hastened to John of Chlum and Wenceslas of Duba, who forthwith appealed to Sigismund. The latter at once sent the Palsgrave Louis and Frederic Burggrave of Nuremberg to the council, with orders that nothing should be done until Huss was present and his books were before them for verification. At length, therefore, he had the long-desired opportunity of meeting his adversaries, and defending himself in public debate. The books from which his errors had been extracted were laid before him—his treatise “De Ecclesia” and his tracts against Stephen Palecz and Stanislaus of Znaim—and he acknowledged them to be his. The articles were taken up in succession. He was required to answer to each a simple yea or nay, and when he desired to explain anything a scene of indescribable confusion arose. When he asked to be taught wherein he had erred he was told that he must first recant his heresies, which was strictly in accordance with the law. The day wore away in the discussion, and it had to be renewed on the 7th, and again on the 8th—Sigismund being present on these latter occasions. Huss defended himself gallantly, with wonderful quickness of thought and dialectical skill, but nothing could be more unlike the free debate which he had deluded himself into anticipating when he left Prague. Although the Cardinal of Ostia, who presided, endeavored to show fairness, the assembly at times became a howling mob with shouts of “Burn him! Burn him!” Interruptions were incessant, he was baited on all sides with questions, and frequently his replies were drowned in clamor. As a judicial act it was a mockery, but it served the purpose desired by Sigismund, and the Church had shown itself not afraid of public discussion with the heresiarch. At the end of the third day of this tumultuous wrangling Huss was exhausted almost to fainting. The night before toothache had deprived him of sleep, an attack of fever supervened, and six months of harsh imprisonment had left him little physical endurance. The proceedings terminated with the cardinals urging him to recant and promising him merciful treatment if he would throw himself upon the mercy of the council. He asked for another hearing, saying that he would submit if his arguments and authorities were insufficient. To this Cardinal Peter d’Ailly replied that the unanimous decision of the doctors was that he must confess his error in publishing the articles ascribed to him, he must swear never in future to believe or teach them, and must recant them publicly. Huss begged the council for the love of God not to force him to wrong his conscience, for abjuration meant the renunciation of an error previously entertained, and many of those brought against him he had never held. Sigismund asked him why he could not renounce errors which he said had been ascribed to him through perjury, and Huss had to explain to him the technical meaning of abjuration. One member of the council even objected to the accused being admitted to recantation, because he was not to be trusted, but this would have been wholly illegal. Even in the case of relapse the heretic always had a right to confess and recant, and the council was not to be betrayed into so manifest a denial of justice. It was impossible, in such a crowd of eager persecutors, to maintain the legal forms in all strictness, and there followed a number of volunteer accusations by individuals, on which an irregular discussion could not be repressed. Finally, as Huss was withdrawn, John of Chlum succeeded in giving him a friendly grasp of the hand and a word of sympathy. To the forlorn and despised heretic that touch and voice were a solace which nerved him for the yet harder trials of the succeeding weeks.[525]
In hope of his weakening, the end was postponed until the approaching departure of Sigismund rendered further delay impossible. Yet effort was not abandoned till the last. On July 1 a deputation of prelates endeavored to persuade him that he could reasonably recant, but he handed them a written confession calling God to witness that he had never taught many of the articles; as for the rest, if there were error in them he detested it, but he could not abjure any of them. Puzzled by his unexpected tenacity of purpose, and earnestly desirous of avoiding the catastrophe, a final and unprecedented concession was agreed upon. On July 5 Zabarella and Peter d’Ailly sent for him and offered to let him deny the heresies proved by witnesses if he would abjure those extracted from his books. This was, in fact, an abandonment of all inquisitorial precedent, but Huss had persistently declared that most of the latter were fraudulently drawn, so as to attribute to him errors which he had never held, and he was immovable. As a last resource, later in the same day, Sigismund sent his friends John of Chlum and Wenceslas of Duba, with four bishops, to ask him whether he would persevere or recant, but his answer was as firm as ever. To the friendly adjuration of John of Chlum he replied with tears that he would willingly revoke anything in which he could be proved to have erred. The bishops pronounced him obstinate in error and left him.[530]
The long-continued teaching of the Church, that persistent heresy was the one crime for which there could be no pardon or excuse, seemed to deprive even the wisest and purest of all power of reasoning where it was concerned. There was no hesitation in admitting that the pestilent heresy of the Hussites was caused by the simoniacal corruptions of the Roman curia, whereby many Christian souls were led to eternal perdition, and that it could not be eradicated until a thorough reformation was effected. Yet in place of drawing from this the necessary deduction, the feeling of the council is reflected by its historian in the blasphemous representation of Christ as recording with satisfaction the hideous details of the execution, and as saying that the wicked soul of the heretic commenced in temporal flame the torment which it would suffer through eternity in hell. The trial, in fact, had been conducted in accordance with the universally received practice in such cases, the only exceptions being in favor of the accused. If the result was inevitable, it was the fault of the system and not of the judges, and their consciences might well feel satisfied.[533]
Great was the disgust of the orthodox when they learned that this pious view of the matter was not entertained in Prague, and it required the most positive assurances of eye-witnesses to make them believe the incredible fact that, from king to peasant in Bohemia, there was practical unanimity in the belief that he who had been condemned and executed as a heretic was a martyr; that the popular songs sung in the streets represented him as one who had shed his blood for Christ, and that he was inserted in the calendar of saints, with his feast on July 6, the day of his execution. The good fathers, however, were not long in finding, from indubitable evidence, that they had made a grave mistake as to the Bohemian temper, and that they had only succeeded in inflaming the disease which they had sought to eradicate. As soon as the defiance excited in Bohemia could be learned in Constance, the council made haste to write, July 26, to the authorities there, protesting that Huss and Jerome of Prague had been treated with all tenderness, that the persistent heresy of the former had forced his delivery to the secular court for judgment, and that all similar heretics would be treated in the same manner. The Bohemians were exhorted to justify, by similar persecution, the good opinion of their orthodoxy which the council had formed from the report of the Bishop of Litomysl, whose popular name of Iron John sufficiently indicates his inflexibility. This good opinion was not sustained when a protest was received from the barons of Bohemia and Moravia, hastily drawn up as soon as the news of the execution had reached them—a protest which the council promptly ordered to be burned. Its letter of July 26 led to the convocation of a national assembly, in which an address was framed and received the signatures of nearly five hundred barons, knights, and gentlemen. In this they asserted their belief in Huss’s purity and orthodoxy; that he had unjustly been put to death without confession or lawful conviction; that Jerome they supposed had shared the same fate; that the defamation of the kingdom for heresy was the work of liars, and that any one who asserted it, saving Sigismund, lied in his throat, was the vilest of traitors and the worst of heretics, and as such they would prosecute him before the future pope. A more dangerous symptom of rebellion was a pledge signed by the magnates, agreeing that all priests should be allowed to preach freely the truths of Scripture, that no bishop should be permitted to interfere with them unless they taught errors, and that no excommunications or interdicts from abroad should be received or observed.[534]
It only remained to secure the submission of John of Chlum, the courageous defender of Huss. He had remained in Constance and was in the power of the council. What means were adopted for his abasement do not appear, but, on July 1, he swore to maintain the faith, admitted that Huss and Jerome had suffered justly, and desired letters of his declaration to be made, that he might send them to Bohemia.[546]
The council had proposed to follow up the execution of Huss by an immediate application of inquisitorial methods to the whole Bohemian kingdom, but, at the instance of John, Bishop of Litomysl, it had commenced by the expedient of giving notice in its letter of July 26, 1415. This, as we have seen, only added to the exasperation of Bohemia, and on August 31 it issued to Bishop John letters commissioning him with inquisitorial powers to suppress all heresy in Bohemia; if he could not perform his office in safety elsewhere he was authorized to summon all suspect to his episcopal seat at Litomysl. Wenceslas dutifully issued to him a safe-conduct, but the irate Bohemians were already ravaging his territories, and he consulted prudence in not venturing his person there. The canons evidently could not be enforced amid a people so exasperated; so, on September 23, after listening to the recantation of Jerome, the council tried a further expedient, by a decree appointing John, Patriarch of Constantinople, and John, Bishop of Senlis, as commissioners (or, rather, inquisitors) to try all Hussite heretics. They were empowered to summon all heretics or suspects to appear before them in the Roman curia by public edict, to be posted in the places frequented by such heretics, or in the neighboring territories if it were dangerous to attempt it at the residences of the accused, and such edicts might be either general in character or special. This was strictly according to rule, and if the object had been to secure the legal condemnation in absentia of the mass of the Bohemian nation, it was well adapted for the purpose; but as the nation was seething in revolt, and was venerating Huss and Jerome with as much ardor as was shown in Rome to St. Peter and St. Paul, its only effect was to strengthen the hands of the extremists. This was seen when, on December 30, 1415, an address was delivered to the council, signed by four hundred and fifty Bohemian nobles, reiterating their complaints of the execution of Huss, and withdrawing themselves from all obedience. This hardy challenge was accepted February 20, 1416, by citing all the signers and other supporters of Huss and Wickliff to appear before the council within fifty days and answer to the charge of heresy, in default of which they were to be proceeded against as contumacious. As it was not safe to serve this citation on them personally, or, indeed, anywhere in Bohemia, it was ordered to be affixed on the church doors at Constance, Ratisbon, Vienna, and Passau. This was followed up with all the legal forms; the citations were affixed to the church doors, and record made in Constance May 5, in Passau May 3, in Vienna May 10, and in Ratisbon June 14, 21, and 24. On June 3 the offenders were declared to be in contumacy, and on September 4 the further prosecution of the matter was intrusted to John of Constantinople.[547]
This was speedily followed, February 22, 1418, by a bull of Martin V., addressed to the prelates and inquisitors, not only of Bohemia and Moravia, but of the surrounding territories, Passau, Salzburg, Ratisbon, Bamberg, Misnia, Silesia, and Poland. The pope expressed his grief and surprise that the heretics had not been brought to repentance by the miserable deaths of Huss and Jerome, but had been excited by the devil to yet greater sins. The prelates and inquisitors were ordered to track them out and deliver them to the secular arm; and such as proved themselves remiss in the work were to be removed, and replaced with more energetic successors. Secular potentates were commanded to seize and hold in chains all heretics, and to punish them duly when convicted, and a long series of instructions was given as to trials, penalties, and confiscations, in strict accordance with the inquisitorial practice which had so long been current. If this was intended to give countenance to Sigismund’s promised expedition it proved useless, for the royal promise ended as Sigismund’s were wont to do, and the next we hear of him is a letter of December, 1418, to Wenceslas, threatening that unlucky monarch with a crusade if he shall not suppress heresy.[551]
Feeble as had been the royal authority, it yet had served as a restraint upon the hostile sects eager to tear each other to pieces. With the death of the king the untamable passions burst forth. Two days afterwards the churches and convents were mobbed, the images and organs were broken, and those in which the cup had been refused to the laity were the objects of special vengeance. Priests and monks were taken prisoners, and within a few days the Dominican and Carthusian convents were burned. Queen Sophia endeavored, in vain, to maintain order with such of the barons as remained loyal; civil war broke forth, until, on November 13, the queen concluded with the cities of Prague a truce to last until April 23, 1420, the queen promising to maintain the law of God and communion in both elements, while the citizens pledged themselves to refrain from image-breaking and the destruction of convents. Mutual exasperation, however, was too great to be restrained. Ziska came to Prague and destroyed churches and monasteries in the city and neighborhood; Queen Sophia laid siege to Pilsen; a neighborhood war broke out in which shocking cruelties were perpetrated on both sides; German miners of Caurzim and Kuttenberg threw into abandoned mines all the Calixtins on whom they could lay their hands, and some Bavarians who were coming to the assistance of Rackzo of Ryzmberg tied to a tree and burned the priest Naakvasa, a zealous Calixtin. Ziska was not behindhand in this, and in burning convents not infrequently allowed the monks to share the fate of their buildings. In the desultory war which raged everywhere both sides cut off the hands and feet of prisoners.[554]
Nothing, probably, could have averted an eventual explosion; but, for the moment, it seemed that Sigismund was about to enter on peaceable possession of his kingdom, and any subsequent rebellion would have been attempted under great disadvantages. Suddenly, however, an act of inconsiderate and gratuitous fanaticism set all Bohemia aflame. Some trouble in Silesia had called Sigismund to Breslau, where he was joined by a papal legate armed by Martin V. with power to proclaim a crusade with Holy Land indulgences. John Krasa, a merchant of Prague, who chanced to be there, talked over boldly about the innocence of Huss; he was arrested, persisted in his faith, and was condemned by the legate and prelates who were with Sigismund to be dragged by the heels at a horse’s tail to the place of execution and burned. While lying in prison he was joined by Nicholas of Bethlehem, a student of Prague, who had been sent by the city to Sigismund to offer to receive him if he would not interfere with the use of the cup to the laity. In place of listening to him he was tried as a heretic and thrown into prison to await the result. Krasa encouraged him to endure to the last, and both were brought forth on March 15, 1420, to undergo the punishment. As the feet of Nicholas were about to be attached to the horse, his courage gave way and he recanted. Krasa was undaunted; the legate followed him, as he was dragged to the place of execution, exhorting him to repent, but in vain; he was attached half-dead to the stake and duly burned. Two days later, March 17, the legate proclaimed the crusade. The die was cast; the Church so willed it, and a new Albigensian war was inevitable.[556]
There was wavering no longer in Bohemia. The events at Breslau united all, with the exception of a few barons and such Germans as were left, in resistance against Sigismund. The preachers thundered against him as the Red Dragon of the Apocalypse. By April 3 the citizens of Utraquist Prague had bound themselves by a solemn oath with the Taborites to defend themselves against him to the last, and were busy in preparations to sustain a siege. Sigismund’s forces were wholly inadequate for the conquest of a virtually united kingdom. After an advance to Kuttenberg he was forced to withdraw and await the assembling of the crusade, which took long to organize, and did not burst in its fury over Bohemia until the following year, 1421. It was on a scale to crush all resistance. In its mass of one hundred and fifty thousand men all Europe was represented, from Russia to Spain and from Sicily to England. The reunited Church aroused all Christendom to stamp out the revolt, and the treasures of salvation were poured lavishly forth to exterminate those who dared to maintain the innocence of Huss and Jerome, and to take the Eucharist as all Christians had done until within two hundred years. The war was waged with desperation. Five times during 1421 the crusaders invaded Bohemia, and five times they were beaten back disastrously. The gain to the faith was scarce perceptible, for Sigismund stripped the churches of all their precious ornaments, declaring that he was not impelled by lack of reverence, but by a prudent desire to prevent their falling into the hands of the Hussites. Both sides perpetrated cruelties happily unknown save in the ferocity of religious wars. During the siege of Prague all Bohemians captured were burned as heretics whether they used the cup or not; and on July 19 the besieged demanded of the magistrates sixteen German prisoners, whom they took outside of the walls and burned in hogsheads in full sight of the invading army. We can estimate the mercilessness of the strife when it was reckoned among the good deeds of George, Bishop of Passau, who accompanied Albert of Austria, that by his intercession he saved the lives of many Bohemian captives.[557]
In the sudden removal of ecclesiastical repression of free thought it was inevitable that unbalanced minds should riot in extravagant speculation. Among the zealots who subsequently developed into the sect of the Taborites there was at first a strong tendency to apocalyptic prophecy suited to the times. First, there was to be a period of unsparing vengeance, during which safety could be found only in five specified cities of refuge, after which would follow the second advent of Christ, and the reign of peace and love among the elect, and earth would become a paradise. At first, the destruction of the wicked was to be the work of God, but as passions became fiercer it was held to be the duty of the righteous to cut them off without sparing. These Chiliasts or Millenarians had for their leader Martin Huska, surnamed Loquis, on account of his eloquence, and numbered among them Coranda and other prominent Taborite priests. Waldensian influence is visible in some features of their faith, and they rendered themselves peculiarly obnoxious by the denial of transubstantiation. For this they were exposed to pitiless persecution wherever their adversaries could exercise it. One of their leading members, a cobbler of Prague, named Wenceslas, was burned in a hogshead, July 23, 1421, for refusing to rise at the elevation of the host, and soon afterwards three priests shared the same fate because they refused to light candles before the sacrament. Martin Loquis himself was arrested in February of the same year, but was released at the intercession of the Taborites, and set out with a companion to seek Procopius in Moravia. At Chrudim, however, the travellers were arrested, and were burned at Hradisch after two months of torture vainly inflicted to wean them from their errors and force them to reveal the names of their associates. As a distinct sect the Chiliasts speedily disappear from view, but their members remained a portion of the Taborites, the development of whose opinions they profoundly influenced. In the delegation sent to Basle, in 1433, Peter of Zatce, who represented the Orphans, had been a Chiliast.[559]
The Calixtins thus sought to keep themselves strictly within the pale of orthodoxy, and deemed themselves greatly injured and insulted by the appellation of heretic. After the reconciliation of 1436 one of their most constant causes of complaint was that they were still stigmatized as heretics, and that the Council of Basle would not issue letters proclaiming to Christendom that they were regarded as faithful sons of the Church. In 1464, after successive popes had repeatedly refused to ratify the pacification of Basle and had excommunicated as hardened heretics George Podiebrad and all who acknowledged him as king, when George sent an embassy to Louis XI. of France, Kostka of Postubitz, the envoy, and his attendants were more than once surprised and annoyed to find that the people of the towns through which they passed were disposed to regard them as heretics. The position of the Bohemian Calixtins was an anomalous one which has no parallel in the history of mediæval Christendom.[563]
What were their views with respect to the Lord’s Supper cannot be stated with precision. Laurence of Brezowa, a Calixtin bitterly hostile to them, says that they consecrated the elements in a loud voice and in the vulgar tongue, that the people might be assured that they were receiving the real body and the real blood, which infers belief in transubstantiation. In 1431 Procopius the Great and other leaders of the Taborites issued a proclamation defining their position, in which they asserted their disbelief in purgatory, in the intercessory power of the Virgin and saints, in masses for the dead, in absolution through indulgences, etc., but said nothing against transubstantiation. When, in 1436, the legates of the Council of Basle complained of the non-observance of the Compactata, one of their grievances was that Bohemia still sheltered Wickliffites who believed in the remanence of the substance of the bread, but they said nothing about the existence of any worse form of belief. On the other hand, the Taborite Bishop, Nicholas of Pilgram, strongly asserted that Christ was only present spiritually, that no veneration was due to the consecrated elements, and that there was less idolatry in those who of old adored moles and bats and snakes than in Christians who worshipped the host, for those things at least had life. During the negotiations, in January, 1433, the legates of the council presented a series of twenty-eight articles, attributed to the Bohemians, and asked for definite answers, yea or nay. One of these was a denial of transubstantiation, and the Bohemians could never be induced to make the desired reply. Peter Chelcicky reproached the Taborites with concealing their belief on the subject, but it is probable that there was no absolute accord among them. The Chiliast leaven doubtless spread the denial of transubstantiation; others probably adopted the Wickliffite doctrine of remanence; others again may have preserved the orthodox faith, and all resented the appellation of Pikards, with which the Bohemians designated those who disbelieved in the absolute conversion of the elements. Certain it is that the question did not come up with any prominence in the negotiations with the Council of Basle; and in the description which Æneas Sylvius gives, in 1451, of the Taborites of Mount Tabor he simply says that some of them are so foolish that they hold the doctrine of Berenger, that the body of Christ is only figuratively in the sacrament.[566]
Meanwhile the Church was perplexed with another yet more vexatious question. Christendom never ceased to clamor for the reform of which it had been cheated at Constance. Skilful procrastination had wearied the reforming fathers, and they had consented, in 1418, to the dissolution of the council, hoping that the promises made in the election of Martin V. would be fulfilled. They took the precaution, however, to provide for an endless series of councils, which might be expected to resume and complete their unfinished work, and the plan which they laid out shows how deep-seated was the distrust entertained of the papacy. Another general council was ordered to be held in five years, then one in seven years thereafter, and finally a perpetual succession at intervals of ten years, with careful provisions to nullify the expected evasions of the popes.[569]
The time fixed for the assembling of the Council of Basle, March, 1431, was rapidly drawing nigh without any action on the part of Martin looking to its convocation. He who owed his election to a general council was notorious for abhorring the very name of council. At length, on November 8, 1430, there appeared on the doors of the papal palace, and in the most conspicuous places in Rome, an anonymous notice, purporting to be issued by two Christian kings, reciting the necessity of holding a council in obedience to the decrees of Constance, and appending some conclusions of a threatening character, to the effect that if the pope and cardinals impede it, or even evade promoting it, they are to be held as fautors of heresy; that if the pope does not open the council himself or by his deputies, those who may be present will be compelled by divine law to withdraw obedience from him, and Christendom will be bound to obey them, and that they will be forced to proceed summarily to his deposition and that of the cardinals as fautors of heresy. It was evident that Christendom was determined to have the council, with the pope or without him, and Martin, after holding out till the last moment, was compelled to yield. He had appointed, January 11, 1431, Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini as legate to preach another crusade with plenary indulgences against the Hussites, and to him he issued, February 1, a commission to open and preside at the council. One of those most earnest in bringing this about was the Cardinal of Siena. Had he been able to forecast the future he would have tempered his zeal. Within three weeks Martin was dead, and on March 3 the Cardinal of Siena was elected his successor, taking the name of Eugenius IV.[573]
Making due allowance for inevitable rhetorical exaggeration this picture is a true one. Hussite ideas were rapidly spreading through Germany, and finding a congenial soil in the aversion born of incurable clerical corruption. About this time Felix Hemmerlin complains of the countless souls seduced to heresy by the emissaries who, every year, come from Bohemia to Berne and Soleure. Numerous executions of heretics are recorded at this period in Flanders, where persecution had been for centuries almost unknown, and we may be sure that Hussite missionaries were busily carrying on an equally successful propaganda elsewhere. If the hopes which were built on the council were destroyed, the Church might well expect a general revolt. Sustained by the united support of Cismontane Christendom, the council resolutely went its way. Sigismund urged it to stand firm, and in November, 1432, he issued an imperial declaration that he would sustain it against all assailants. Eugenius held out until February, 1433, when he assented to its continuance, but in July he again dissolved it, and in September repeated the command. Then the council commenced active proceedings to arraign and try him, and in December he revoked these bulls. In the subsequent quarrel the council decreed his suspension in January, 1439, and his deposition in June, while the election of Amedeo of Savoy as Felix V. was confirmed in November of the same year.[576]
By unbending firmness the Bohemians carried their point, and secured the recognition of the four articles, which became celebrated in history as the Compactata—the Magna Charta of the Bohemian Church until swept away by the counter-Reformation. This was agreed to in Prague, November 26, 1433, and confirmed by mutual clasp of hands between the legates of the council and the deputies of the three Bohemian sects, but matters were by no means settled. The four articles were brief and simple declarations which admitted of unlimited diversity of construction. The dialecticians of the council had no difficulty in explaining them away, until they practically amounted to nothing; the Hussites, on the other side, with equal facility, expanded them to cover all that they could possibly wish to claim. Hardly was the handclasping over when it was found that the Bohemians asserted that the permission of communion in both elements meant that they were to continue to administer it to infants, and to force it proscriptively on every one—positions to which the council could by no means assent. This will serve as an illustration of the innumerable questions which kept the negotiators busy during yet thirty dreary months. So far, indeed, was the matter as yet from being settled, that, in April, 1434, the council levied a half-tithe on Christendom for a crusade against the Hussites, which enabled it to stimulate with liberal payments the zeal of the Bohemian Catholic nobles.[578]
It is not likely that any results would have been reached but for events which at first seemed to threaten the continuance of the negotiations. The Taborites could only have consented to treat on the basis, so inadequate to them, of the four articles, in the confidence that the practical application would cover a vastly wider sphere. After the preliminary agreement of November 26, the construction assumed by the legates of the council made them draw back. The affair was reaching a conclusion, and it was necessary to have a definite understanding of that to which they were binding themselves. After the departure of the legates from Prague, in January, 1434, hot discussions arose between them and the Calixtins as to the continuance of the negotiations. There were political as well as religious differences between them. The Taborites were mostly peasants and poor folk; they wanted no nobles or gentlemen in their ranks, and seem to have had republican tendencies, as they desired to add to the four articles two others, providing for the independence of Bohemia and for the retention of all confiscated property. Both parties became exasperated, and flew to arms for a contest decisive as to their respective mastery. The Taborites had for some time been besieging Pilsen, a city which held out for Sigismund. Learning that their friends in the Neustadt of Prague had been slaughtered without distinction of age or sex, to the number, it is said, of twenty-two thousand, they raised the siege, May 9, to take vengeance on the city, but after a demonstration before it, they withdrew towards Moravia. Meanwhile the Calixtins had formed an alliance with the Catholic barons, who had been liberally subsidized by the council, and followed them with a formidable force. The shock came at Lipan, on Sunday, May 30. All day and night the battle raged, and until the third hour of Monday morning. When it was over, Procopius, Lupus, and thirteen thousand of the bravest Taborites lay dead upon the field, and the murderous nature of the strife is seen in the fact that but seven hundred prisoners were taken, though we may question the claim of the victors that the battle cost them but two hundred men, and we may hope that there is exaggeration in the boast that they burned several thousand of those whom they subsequently captured. The power of the Taborites was utterly broken. It is true that they continued to hold Mount Tabor until finally crushed by George Podiebrad, in 1452; and that in the December following the battle their unconquerable spirit was again contemplating an appeal to arms, but after Lipan they were only a troublesome element of insubordination, and not a factor in the political situation. The congratulatory letters sent by some of the victors to Sigismund, and the effusive joy with which he communicated the news to the council, show that the victory was one for the Catholics.[579]
Even after the virtual elimination of the Taborites there were ample subjects of dispute, and at one time the prospect seemed so unpromising that preliminary arrangements were set on foot, in August, 1434, for organizing a new crusade on the proceeds of the half-tithe levied shortly before. One source of endless trouble sprang from the personal ambition of Rokyzana. Learned, able, a hardy disputant, and a skilled man of affairs, he had determined to be Archbishop of Prague, and this object he pursued with unalterable constancy. He bore a leading part in the negotiations, and made himself as conspicuous as possible, shifting his ground with dexterity, interposing objections and smoothing them as the interest of the moment might dictate. At first he endeavored to have a clause inserted that the people and the clergy should be empowered to elect an archbishop, who should be acknowledged and confirmed by the emperor and the pope. This being rejected, he procured of Sigismund a secret agreement that the election should be held, and that the emperor would do all in his power to secure the confirmation by the pope, without cost for pallium, confirmation, or notarial fees. Although this, when discovered, was protested against by the legates of the council and refused by the council itself, he proceeded, in 1435, to obtain an election by the national assembly of Bohemia, to the great disgust of the orthodox, who reasonably dreaded this example of a return of the primitive methods of selecting prelates. Again Sigismund secretly accepted this, while the legates declared it to be invalid, and that, as an infraction of the Compactata, it must be annulled. On this question the whole negotiation was nearly wrecked, and it was only settled by Sigismund and his son-in-law and heir, Albert of Austria, promising to issue letters recognizing Rokyzana as archbishop, and to compel obedience to him as such. After this it required but a fortnight more of quarrelling to bring the matter to a termination, and signatures to the Compactata were duly exchanged July 5, 1436, amid general rejoicings. Sigismund, restored to the throne of his fathers, made a show of complying with his promise, by writing to the council a letter asking Rokyzana’s confirmation, at the same time explaining to the legates that he considered the council ought to refuse, but that he did not wish to break with his new subjects too suddenly. Of course the confirmation never came, and although Rokyzana called God to witness that he did not wish the archbishopric, the policy of his long life was devoted to obtaining it. With all convenient speed Sigismund forgot the pledge to enforce obedience to him. His position became so dangerous that he secretly fled from Prague, June 16, 1437, and remained in exile until after the deaths of Sigismund and Albert, when he returned in 1440, and speedily became the most powerful man in Bohemia. This position he retained until his death, in 1471, administering the archbishopric, constantly seeking confirmation at the hands of successive popes, and subordinating the policy of the kingdom, internal and external, so far as he dared, to that object—not the least anomalous feature of the anomalous Calixtin Church.[580]
After the death of Albert what central authority there was in Bohemia was lodged in the hands of two governors, Ptacek representing the Calixtins, and Mainhard of Rosenberg, the victor of Lipan, the Catholics. In October, 1443, we hear of the Emperor Frederic III. as about starting for Bohemia where he expected to receive the regency, but his hopes were frustrated. Ptacek died in 1445, when the choice for his succession fell upon George Podiebrad, a powerful baron, who, though only twenty-four, had acquired a high reputation for military ability and sagacity. He was largely under the influence of Rokyzana, to whom doubtless his election was due. After a long interval, Rome again appeared upon the scene. Nicholas V., who ascended the papal throne in 1447, sent, in 1448, John, Cardinal of Sant’’ Angelo, to Prague as legate. The Bohemians earnestly urged him to ratify the Compactata and confirm Rokyzana as archbishop. He promised an answer, but finding the situation embarrassing, he secretly left Prague with Mainhard of Rosenberg. Popular indignation enabled George by a coup d’’état, in which there was considerable bloodshed, to render himself master of Prague and to cast Mainhard into prison, where he died soon after. George thus became the undisputed master of Bohemia. When Ladislas, in 1452, was recognized as king, George secured the regency, and when the young monarch died towards the close of 1457, at the early age of eighteen, George’s coronation as king soon followed. Under him, until just before his death in 1471, Rokyzana’s influence was almost unbounded.[584]
The situation of Bohemia, as a member of the Latin Church, was unprecedented. After the first break between Eugenius IV. and the Council of Basle the name of the pope disappears in the negotiations for the restoration of unity. These were carried on by both sides as though the conciliar authority was supreme, and the papal assent or confirmation was a matter of no moment, although a papal legate was present in January, 1436, at the conference at Stuhlweissenberg, where the matter was virtually settled. As the council drew to its weary end, powerless and discredited, the triumphant Eugenius was not disposed to recognize the validity of its acts or to ratify them gratuitously. The Bohemians alleged that he had confirmed the Compactata, but no positive evidence was forthcoming. To purchase the submission of Germany, in 1447, he had ratified a portion of the acts of the council, but the Compactata could not be included in his carefully. guarded decrees. On the accession of Nicholas V., in 1447, the Bohemians sent to him a deputation offering him their allegiance, but we have seen how wary was the legate whom he despatched in return to Prague. It is true that to obtain the abdication of Felix V., Nicholas issued a bull, June 28, 1449, approving all the acts of the council which might strictly be held to confirm the Compactata, but the character of the bull shows that it had in view rather the material interests involved in benefices and preferment. Whatever doubt the Bohemians may have had as to the papal intentions towards them was speedily dissipated.[585]
He appears to have meddled no longer with the private lives of the orthodox clergy, but to have devoted his energies to the easier work of exterminating heretics. Early in 1437 we hear of him south of the Danube, where the Bishop of Sreim praised his effective work; by putting to death all who could not be converted, he had saved the diocese from a rising of the Hussites, in which all the clergy would have been slain. Eugenius rewarded him by describing him as “a vigorous and most ruthless extirpator of heresy,” and granting him the power of appointing subordinate inquisitors, thus rendering him an inquisitor-general in all the wide region confided to him. It was probably a result of the quarrel over the priestly concubines that led, in 1438, Simon of Bacska, Archdeacon of Fünfkirchen, to excommunicate him; but that official was speedily forced to withdraw the anathema by the Emperor Albert and the Archbishop of Gran. For a while his labors were interrupted by a call to attend the Council of Ferrara, held in 1438 by Eugenius IV., to offset the hostile assemblage at Basle, but he speedily returned to Hungary. It was doubtless owing to his efforts that in Poland the barons and cities entered into a solemn league and covenant to suppress heresy, April 25, 1438—just before Poland intervened in Bohemia to protect the Hussites from the Emperor Albert. In 1439 Giacomo’s zeal received a check on the more immediate fields of his labors. In Sreim he delivered to the secular arm, as convicted heretics, a priest and three associates; their friends assembled in force, broke open the prison and carried off the culprits, and, what is difficult to understand, unless the heresy was merely concubinage, the Archbishop of Kalocsa, when appealed to, protected the criminals. Giacomo had recourse to the Emperor Albert, who wrote sharply to the archbishop in June; and this proving ineffectual, again in August. What was the result of the affair is not known, but Albert, as we have seen, died in October, to the great detriment of religion; and in 1440 Giacomo left Hungary on account of ill-health. He seems not to have been immediately replaced, and, in the absence of organized persecution, the tares speedily began to multiply again among the wheat. In January, 1444, Eugenius IV., deploring the spread of Hussitism throughout the Danubian regions, appointed the Observantine Vicar Fabiano of Bacs as inquisitor for the whole Slavonian vicariate, which included Hungary, with power to appoint inquisitors under him. These were authorized to act in complete independence of the local prelates; Holy Land indulgences were promised to all who would aid them, and excommunication, removable only by pope or inquisitor, against all withholding assistance. In July, 1446, Eugenius again alludes to the flourishing condition of Hussitism in Hungary and Moldavia, in spite of the labors of the friars, and he recurs to the question which baffled Giacomo della Marca. Many parish priests, he says, in these regions not only keep concubines publicly, but teach that there is no sin in intercourse between unmarried persons; the question has been asked him whether this is heresy, justiciable by the Inquisition; this he answers in the affirmative, and authorizes Fabiano and his deputies to treat it as such. Apparently it was not the practice itself, but the justification of it, which was so heinous.[588]
Capistrano’s busy mischief-making was bearing its fruits. The breach between Rome and Bohemia was constantly widening, and if the zeal of the German princes could be brought to correspond to the ardor of the missionary of strife, the horrors of the old Hussite wars might be hopefully looked for again. During the remainder of the year 1452 we find him travelling through Germany, probably with this charitable object, though at Leipsic he paused long enough for his eloquence to win for his rigid Order sixty professors and students.[594] His efforts to raise a crusade against Bohemia, however, were frustrated by the capture of Constantinople in May, 1453. The immense impression which this produced throughout Christendom, the universal alarm at the progress of the Turk, and the necessity of defending Europe against his approach, speedily threw into the shade all minor questions. A new crusade was imperatively wanted, but it could not be wasted upon Bohemia and the Utraquists.
A brief and clear-cut letter of Æneas Sylvius to Capistrano, dated July 26, 1454, tells him to give up the dream of getting to Prague and go to Frankfort, where he will be useful. An assembly of princes had been held in Ratisbon, where a crusade had been agreed upon, and Philip of Burgundy had consented to lead it. Final arrangements were to be made in Frankfort in October, and there Æneas Sylvius wanted the aid of Capistrano’s tireless ardor. Their correspondence at this juncture shows the terror which existed lest Europe should be overrun; the confusion and uncertainty which prevailed, and the selfish differences which threatened to neutralize effort. At Frankfort their worst fears were realized. The zeal of the princes had cooled, and they declared the purpose of the pope and emperor was to steal their money and not to fight. They demanded that the business should be conducted by a general council which should at the same time repress the Holy See—in fact, both parties were selfishly endeavoring to turn the agony of Europe to account; the pope to raise money, and the princes to recover their independence. All that Æneas and Capistrano could obtain was a promise that at the Pentecost of 1455 they would meet the emperor and determine what could be done. In February and March, 1455, they began to assemble at Neuburg, near Vienna, where Podiebrad again used every effort to procure Rokyzana’s confirmation. As for the crusade, the energies of Christendom seemed paralyzed by the petty jealousies and ambitions of its rulers. At last, under the unflagging eloquence of Æneas and Capistrano, things appeared to be taking shape, when the news was received of the death of Nicholas V. on March 22. Everything fell to pieces, and the princes departed, postponing action until the next year. It was a forcible example of the utility of the papacy, which supplied a common head to the discordant forces of the time.[596]
Suddenly the news came that the dreaded Mahomet II. was advancing, and had laid siege to Belgrade. Ladislas, who was King of Hungary as well as of Bohemia, was at Buda-Pesth, and with his uncle, the Count of Cillei, on pretext of a hunting-excursion, basely fled to Austria. John Hunyady, Count of Transylvania, who had been regent of the kingdom, organized the Hungarian forces, with some German crusaders who had come to his assistance, while Capistrano marched with him as papal commander of the crusade. Glorious in the annals of Hungary is the victory of Belgrade. “With a flotilla of boats on the Danube, Hunyady, on July 14, 1456, cut his way into the town through the beleaguering forces. Furious were the attack and the defence until the 22d, when a fierce assault by the Turks was repulsed, and the besieged followed the retreating enemy, burned one of their camps, spiking some of their cannon and carrying the rest back into the town, where they did good service during the rest of that memorable day. Mahomet gathered together his forces for a last desperate attempt, which was a failure, and during the night he fled, leaving twenty-four thousand men upon the field, and three hundred cannon. His army was utterly dispersed, and this disaster, aided by the heroic resistance of Scanderbeg in Albania, arrested the Turkish invasion and gave Europe a breathing-spell. It cost, however, the lives of the two heroes to whom it was due. The stench of the dead bodies sickened the army of the victors, and John Hunyady fell a victim, August 11, to the epidemic, which prevented the following up of the advantage. Capistrano had thrown himself into the work with all his self-forgetful enthusiasm. His eloquence had wrought the Christians up to the highest pitch of religious exaltation; the crusaders would obey no one but him, and his labors were incessant. He passed days without time for food, and nights without rest; for seventeen days, it is said, before the victory, he slept but seven hours in all. He was in his seventy-first year, with a frame weakened by habitual austerities, and when the strain was past exhausted nature paid the penalty. A slow fever set in, August 6, under which he wasted away, and died, October 23. He was perhaps the most perfect type which the age produced of the ideal son of the Church; a purely artificial creation, in which the weakness of humanity disappeared with some of its virtues, and the whole nature, with its rare powers, was concentrated in unselfish devotion to a mistaken purpose. Such men are the tools of the worldly and unscrupulous who know how to use them, and for forty years Capistrano had been thus employed to bring misery on his fellow-beings, unconscious of the evil which he wrought. Yet, as Æneas Sylvius shrewdly points out, there was one weak spot left in his nature. In the letters in which he and Hunyady described the victory of Belgrade neither chief gave credit to the other. As Æneas says, “Capistrano had despised the pomps of the world, he had fled from its delights, he had trampled down avarice, he had overcome lust, but he could not contemn glory.”[598]
All this was not a mere brutum fulmen. It was not difficult to excite rebellion among turbulent subjects and attacks from ambitious neighbors. With all his vigor and capacity George found the maintenance of his position by no means easy. When, in 1468, the German princes had agreed upon a five years’’ truce in order to concentrate their energies against the Moslem, Paul II. threw the empire into confusion by sending the Bishop of Ferrara to preach a crusade with plenary indulgences against Bohemia, adding the special favor that all who joined in the preaching should have the privilege of choosing a confessor, and receiving from him plenary absolution and indulgence. The kingdom was bestowed upon Matthias Corvinus of Hungary, who took the cross, and with an army of crusaders occupied Moravia. A long war ensued, during which George died, in 1471, released from excommunication on his death-bed, and Ladislas II., son of Casimir of Poland, was elected as his successor. In 1475 the rivals came to terms; both were recognized as kings of Bohemia, while Matthias was to have for life Moravia, Silesia, and the greater part of Lusatia, and the survivor was to enjoy the whole kingdom. On the death of Matthias, in 1490, Ladislas recovered the three provinces, and shortly afterwards added Hungary to his dominions.[602]
It is not to be imagined that the teachings of Wickliff and Huss were wholly forgotten in Utraquist degeneracy. Their real inheritors were the Taborites, and although these, in their disorderly enthusiasm, vainly contended against the spirit of the age and disappeared from sight under the strong hand of Podiebrad, the seed which they had nurtured was not wholly lost. The profound religious convictions which animated these poor and simple folk are visible through the satire with which Æneas Sylvius requited their hospitality in 1451, on the eve of their suppression. Travelling with some nobles, on a mission from Frederic III., he was benighted near Mount Tabor, and thought it safer to trust himself with the enemies of his faith than to pass the hours of darkness in the open villages. In return for the simple kindliness of his reception the polished scholar and courtier describes them with the liveliest ridicule, and with brutal sneers at their poverty. They were mostly peasants, and as they came forth to greet him in the cold and rain, many were almost naked, having nothing but a shirt or a sheepskin to protect them; one had no saddle, another no reins, another no spurs; this one had lost an eye, that one an arm. Ziska was their patron saint, whose portrait was painted on the city gates. Though they ridiculed the consecration of churches, they were very earnest in listening to the word of God, and if any one was too busy or too lazy to go to the wooden house where they assembled for preaching he was compelled by stripes. Though they paid no tithes, they filled their priests’’ houses with corn, beer, wood, vegetables, meat, and all the necessaries of life. Firm as they were in defence of their religious independence, they were not intolerant, and wide diversity of opinion was allowed among them.[604]
In retaining all the sacraments they retained belief in the necessity of apostolical succession for that of ordination; but as the sacraments were vitiated in unworthy hands, they became oppressed with misgivings as to the efficacy of the sacerdotal character of their priests, derived as it was through the Church of Rome. Some of them proposed sending to the legendary Christians of India, but they met with two men who had been in the East, and the accounts they received of the Oriental churches satisfied them that the succession there had been lost. Then they bethought them of the Greeks, but they met some Greeks in Prague, and many Bohemians had been in the Levant and Danubian provinces, from whom they learned that fees were required for ordination, thus rendering it void through simony; moreover, they heard of three Bohemians who had been ordained without inquiry as to their morals, which satisfied them that no true ordination was to be obtained there. Finally they turned to the Waldenses, of whom there was a community on the Austrian border. These claimed to descend from the primitive Church; that their ancestors had separated from Rome when the papacy was secularized under Silvester by the donation of Constantine, and that they had preserved the apostolic succession untainted. It remained for the brethren to see whether it was the will of God that they should organize themselves by means of these Waldenses. At Lhotka, in 1467, an assembly of about sixty chosen deputies was held. After fasting and earnest prayer, recourse was had to the lot, to decide whether they should separate themselves from the Roman priesthood. The result was affirmative. Then they selected nine men, from among whom three or two or one should be drawn, or none, if God so willed it. Twelve cards were taken, on three of which was written “is,” and on nine “is not.” These were mingled together, and a youth was directed to distribute nine of them among the men selected. All three with “is” proved to have been distributed, and the assembly devoutly thanked God for showing them the path to follow. Michael of Zamberg was sent to the Waldensian Bishop Stephen, who investigated his faith and life, and thanked God, with tears, that it had been vouchsafed him before he died to see such pious men. After episcopal consecration Michael returned; careful inquiry was made as to the antecedents of one of the three elect, named Matthias, and he was duly consecrated as bishop by Michael, who thereupon laid down both his Waldensian episcopate and Catholic priesthood, and was again ordained anew by Matthias.[607]
Gregory had moulded the Church of the Brethren on the strictest basis. Members on entering were not, it is true, obliged to contribute their property to the common fund, but this was frequently done. The closest watch was kept on the conduct of each, and any dereliction was visited with expulsion, not to be revoked without evidence of change of heart. No one was allowed to take an oath, even in court, to hold an office, to keep an inn, to follow any trade except in the necessaries of life. Any noble desiring to join was required to lay aside his rank and resign whatever offices he might hold. In 1479 two barons and several knights applied for admission, when the rules were strictly enforced, and some submitted while others withdrew. This rigor at last caused violent dissensions, and in 1490 the Synod of Brandeis relaxed the rules. The puritan party recalcitrated and were strong enough to cause a revocation of this action in a subsequent synod. Much ill-feeling was generated, until, in 1495, at the Synod of Reichenau, there was mutual forgiveness and a moderation of the rules. Yet two of the puritan leaders, Jacob of Wodnan and Amos of Stekna, refused to accept the compromise, and founded the sect known as Amosites, or the Little Party, which maintained a separate existence for forty-six years.[609]
THE INQUISITION.
BOOK II.
THE INQUISITION IN THE SEVERAL LANDS OF CHRISTENDOM.
CHAPTER I.
LANGUEDOC.
THE men who laid the foundations of the Inquisition in Languedoc had before them an apparently hopeless task. The whole organization and procedure of the institution were to be developed as experience might dictate and without precedents for guidance. Their uncertain and undefined powers were to be exercised under peculiar difficulties. Heresy was everywhere and all-pervading. An unknown but certainly large portion of the population was addicted to Catharism or Waldensianism, while even the orthodox could not, for the most part, be relied upon for sympathy or aid. Practical toleration had existed for so many generations, and so many families had heretic members, that the population at large was yet to be educated in the holy horror of doctrinal aberrations. National feeling, moreover, and the memory of common wrongs suffered during twenty years of bitter contest with invading soldiers of the Cross, during which Catholic and Catharan had stood side by side in defence of the fatherland, had created the strongest bonds of sympathy between the different sects. In the cities the magistrates were, if not heretics, inclined to toleration and jealous of their municipal rights and liberties. Throughout the country many powerful nobles were avowedly or secretly heretics, and Raymond of Toulouse himself was regarded as little better than a heretic. The Inquisition was the symbol of a hated foreign domination which could look for no cordial support from any of these classes. It was welcomed, indeed, by such Frenchmen as had succeeded in planting themselves in the land, but they were scattered, and were themselves the objects of detestation to their neighbors. The popular feeling is voiced by the Troubadours, who delight in expressing contempt for the French and hostility to the friars and their methods. As Guillem de Montanagout says: “Now have the clerks become inquisitors and condemn men at their pleasure. I have naught against the inquests if they would but condemn errors with soft words, lead the wanderers back to the faith without wrath, and allow the penitent to find mercy.” The bolder Pierre Cardinal describes the Dominicans as disputing after dinner over the quality of their wines: “They have created a court of judgment, and whoever attacks them they declare to be a Waldensian; they seek to penetrate into the secrets of all men, so as to render themselves dreaded.”[1]
The lands which Raymond had succeeded in retaining were, moreover, drained by the enormous sums exacted of him in the pacification. To enable him to meet these demands he was authorized to levy taxes on the subjects of the Church, in spite of their immunities, and this and the other expedients requisite for the discharge of his engagements could not fail to excite widespread discontent with the settlement and hostility to all that represented it. That it was hard to extort these payments from a population exhausted by twenty years of war is manifest when, in 1231, two years after the treaty, the Abbey of Citeaux had not as yet received any part of the two thousand marks which were its share of the plunder, and it was forced to agree to a settlement under which Raymond promised to pay in annual instalments of two hundred marks, giving as security his revenues from the manor of Marmande.[2]
The Inquisition, it is true, was at first warmly greeted by the Church, but the Church had grown so discredited during the events of the past half-century that its influence was less than in any other spot in Christendom. Even in Aragon the Council of Tarragona, in 1238, felt itself compelled to decree excommunication against those who composed or applauded lampoons against the clergy. The abuse of the interdict had grown to such proportions that Innocent IV., in 1243, and again in 1245, was obliged to forbid its employment throughout southern France, in all places suspected of heresy, because it afforded to heretics so manifold an occasion of asserting that it was used for private interests, and not for the salvation of souls. During the troubles which followed after the crusade of Louis VIII. the bishops had taken advantage of the confusion to seize many lands to which they had no claim, and this involved them in endless quarrels with the royal fisc in the territories which fell to the king, while in those which remained to Raymond, the pious St. Louis was forced to interfere to obtain for him a restoration of what they obstinately refused to surrender. The Church itself was so deeply tainted with heresy that the faithful were scandalized at seeing the practical immunity enjoyed by heretical clerks, owing to the difficulty of assembling a sufficient number of bishops to officiate at their degradation, and Gregory IX. felt it necessary, in 1233, to decree that in such cases a single bishop, with some of his abbots, should have power to deprive them of holy orders and deliver them to the secular arm to be burned—a provision which he subsequently embodied in the canon law. Innocent IV., moreover, in 1245, felt called upon to order his legate in Languedoc to see that no one suspected of heresy was elected or consecrated as bishop. On the other hand, priests who were zealous in aiding the Inquisition sometimes found that the enmities thus excited rendered it impossible for them to reside in their parishes, as occurred in the case of Guillem Pierre, a priest of Narbonne, in 1246, who on this account was allowed to employ a vicar and to hold a plurality of benefices. About the same time Innocent IV. felt obliged to express his surprise that the prelates disobeyed his repeated commands to assist the Inquisition; he has trustworthy information that they neglect to do so, and he threatens them roundly with his displeasure unless they manifest greater zeal. Bernard Gui, indeed, speaks of the bishops who favored Count Raymond as among the craftiest and most dangerous enemies of the inquisitors. The natural antagonism between the Mendicants and the secular clergy was, moreover, increased by the pretension of the inquisitors to supervise the priesthood and see that they performed their neglected duty in all that pertained to the extension of the faith. That under such circumstances the Dominicans employed in the pious work should suffer constant molestation scarce needs the explanation given by the pope that it was through the influence of the Arch Enemy.[3]
Another serious impediment to the operations of the Inquisition lay in the absence of places of detention for those accused and of prisons for those condemned. We have already seen how the bishops shirked their duty in providing jails for the multitudes of prisoners until St. Louis was obliged to step in and construct them, and during this prolonged interval the sentences of the inquisitors show, in the number of contumacious absentees after a preliminary hearing, how impossible it often was to retain hold of heretics who had been arrested.[4]
To undertake, in such an environment, the apparently hopeless task of suppressing heresy required men of exceptional character, and they were not wanting. Repulsive as their acts must seem to us, we cannot refuse to them the tribute due to their fearless fanaticism. No labor was too arduous for their unflagging zeal, no danger too great for their unshrinking courage. Regarding themselves as elected to perform God’s work, they set about it with a sublime self-confidence which lifted them above the weakness of humanity. As the mouthpiece of God, the mendicant friar, who lived on charity, spoke to prince and people with all the awful authority of the Church, and exacted obedience or punished contumacy unhesitatingly and absolutely. Such men as Pierre Cella, Guillem Arnaud, Arnaud Catala, Ferrer the Catalan, Pons de Saint-Gilles, Pons de l’Esparre, and Bernard de Caux, bearded prince and prelate, were as ready to endure as merciless to inflict, were veritable Maccabees in the internecine strife with heresy, and yet were kind and pitiful to the miserable and overflowing with tears in their prayers and discourses. They were the culminating development of the influences which produced the Church Militant of the Middle Ages, and in their hands the Inquisition was the most effective instrument whereby it maintained its supremacy. A secondary result was the complete subjugation of the South to the King of Paris, and its unification with the rest of France.
If the faithful had imagined that the Treaty of 1229 had ended the contest with heresy they were quickly undeceived. The blood-money for the capture of heretics, promised by Count Raymond, was indeed paid when earned, for the Inquisition undertook to see that this was done, but the earning of it was dangerous. Nobles and burghers alike protected and defended the proscribed class, and those who hunted them were slain without mercy when occasion offered. The heretics continued as numerous as ever, and we have already seen the fruitless efforts put forth by the Cardinal Legate Romano and the Council of Toulouse. Even the university which Raymond bound himself to establish in Toulouse for the propagation of the faith, though it subsequently performed its work, was at first a failure. Learned theologians were brought from Paris to fill its chairs, but their scholastic subtleties were laughed at by the mocking Southrons as absurd novelties, and the heretics were bold enough to contend with them in debate. After a few years Raymond neglected to continue the stipends, and for a time the university was suspended.[5]
The most encouraging feature of the situation, one, indeed, full of promise, was the steady progress of the Dominican Order. It had outgrown the modest Church of St. Romano, bestowed upon it by Bishop Foulques; and in 1230 the piety of a prominent burgher of Toulouse, Pons de Capdenier, provided for it more commodious quarters in an extensive garden, situated partly in the city and partly in the suburbs. The inmates of the convent, some forty in number, were always ready to furnish champions of the Cross, whose ardent zeal shrank from neither toil nor peril; and when, in 1232, the fanatic Bishop Foulques died and was succeeded by the yet more fiery fanatic, the Dominican Provincial Raymond du Fauga, the Order was fully prepared to enter upon the exterminating war with heresy which was to last for a hundred years.[6]
The eager zeal of the friars did not wait to be armed with the organized authorization of inquisitorial powers. Their leading duty was to combat heresy, and their assaults on it were unintermitting. In 1231 a friar, in a sermon, declared that Toulouse was full of heretics, who held their assemblies there and disseminated their errors without hindrance. Already the magistrates seem to have looked askance on these pious efforts, for this assertion was made the occasion of a decided attempt at repression. The consuls of the city met and summoned before them, in the capitole, or town-hall, the prior, Pierre d’Alais. There they roundly scolded and threatened him, declaring that it was false to assert the existence of heresy in the town, and forbidding such utterances for the future. Trivial as was the occurrence, it has interest as the commencement of the ill-will between the authorities of Toulouse and the Inquisition, and as illustrating the sense of municipal pride and independence still cherished in the cities of the South. It required but a few years’’ struggle to trammel the civic liberties which had held their own against feudalism, but which could not stand against the subtler despotism of the Church.[7]
Even thus early Dominican ardor refused to be thus restrained. Master Roland of Cremona, noted as the first Dominican licentiate of the University of Paris, who had been brought to Toulouse to teach theology in the infant University, was scandalized when he heard of the insolent language of the consuls, and exclaimed that it was only a fresh incentive to preach against heresy more bitterly than ever. He set the example in this, and was eagerly followed by many of the brethren. He soon, too, had an opportunity of proving the falsity of the consuls’’ disclaimer. It transpired that Jean Pierre Donat, a canon of the ancient Church of Saint Sernin, who had recently died and been buried in the cloister, had been secretly hereticated on his death-bed. Without authority, and apparently without legal investigation, Master Roland assembled some friars and clerks, exhumed the body from the cloister, dragged it through the streets, and publicly burned it. Soon afterwards he heard of the death of a prominent Waldensian minister named Galvan. After stirring up popular passion in a sermon, he marched at the head of a motley mob to the house where the heretic had died and levelled it to the ground; then proceeding to the Cemetery of Villeneuve, where the body was interred, he dug it up and dragged it through the city, accompanied by an immense procession, to the public place of execution beyond the walls, where it was solemnly burned.[8]
All this was volunteer persecution. The episcopal court was as yet the only tribunal having power to act in such matters, and it, as we have seen, could only authorize the secular arm to do its duty in the final execution. Yet the episcopal court seems to have been in no way invoked in these proceedings, and no protest is recorded as having been uttered against such irregular enforcements of the law by the mob. There was, in fact, no organization for the steady repression of heresy. Bishop Raymond appears to have satisfied himself with an occasional raid against heretics outside of the city, and to have allowed those within it virtual immunity under the protection of the consuls, though he had, in virtue of his office, all the powers requisite for the purpose, and the machinery for their effective use could have readily been developed. No permanent results were to be expected from fitful bursts of zeal, and the suppression of heresy might well seem to be as far off as ever.
Urgent as was evidently the need of some organized body devoted exclusively to persecution, the appointment of the first inquisitors, in 1233, seems not to have been regarded as possessing any special significance. It was merely an experiment, from which no great results were anticipated. Frère Guillem Pelisson, who shared in the labors and perils of the nascent Inquisition, and who enthusiastically chronicled them, evidently does not consider it as an innovation worthy of particular attention. It was so natural an evolution from the interaction of the forces and materials of the period, and its future importance was so little suspected, that he passes over its founding as an incident of less moment than the succession to the Priory of Toulouse. “Frère Pons de Saint Gilles,” he says, “was made Prior of Toulouse, who bore himself manfully and effectively for the faith against the heretics, together with Frère Pierre Cella of Toulouse and Frère Guillem Arnaud of Montpellier, whom the lord pope made inquisitors against the heretics in the dioceses of Toulouse and Cahors. Also, the Legate Archbishop of Vienne made Frère Arnaud Catala, who was then of the Convent of Toulouse, inquisitor against the heretics.” Thus colorless is the only contemporary account of the establishment of the Holy Office.[9]
How little the functions of these new officials were at first understood is manifested by an occurrence, which is also highly suggestive of the tension of public feeling. In a quarrel between two citizens, one of them, Bernard Peitevin, called the other, Bernard de Solier, a heretic. This was a dangerous reputation to have, and the offended man summoned his antagonist before the consuls. The heretical party, we are told, had obtained the upper hand in Toulouse, and the magistrates were all either sympathizers with or believers in heresy. Bernard Peitevin was condemned to exile for a term of years, to pay a fine both to the complainant and to the city, and to swear publicly in the town-hall that he had lied, and that de Solier was a good Catholic. The sentence was a trifle vindictive, and Peitevin sought counsel of the Dominicans, who recommended him to appeal to the bishop. Episcopal jurisdiction in such a matter was perhaps doubtful, but Raymond du Fauga entertained the appeal. A few years later, if any cognizance had been taken of the case it would have been by the Inquisition, but now the inquisitors, Pierre Cella and Guillem Arnaud, appeared as advocates of the appellant in the bishop’s court, and so clearly proved de Solier’s heresy that the miserable wretch fled to Lombardy.[10]
Similar indefiniteness of procedure is visible in the next attempt. The inquisitors, Pierre and Guillem, began to make an inquest through the city, and cited numerous suspects, all of whom found defenders among the chief citizens. The hearings took place before them, but seem as yet to have been in public. One of the accused, named Jean Teisseire, asserted himself to be a good Catholic because he had no scruples in maintaining marital relations with his wife, in eating flesh, and in lying and swearing, and he warned the crowd that they were liable to the same charge, and that it would be wiser for them to make common cause than to abandon him. When he was condemned, and the viguier, the official representative of the count, was about to conduct him to the stake, so threatening a clamor arose that the prisoner was hurried to the bishop’s prison, still proclaiming his orthodoxy. Intense excitement pervaded the city, and menaces were freely uttered to destroy the Dominican convent and to stone all the friars, who were accused of persecuting the innocent. While in prison Teisseire pretended to fall mortally sick, and asked for the sacraments; but when the bailli of Lavaur brought to Toulouse some perfected heretics and delivered them to the bishop, Teisseire allowed himself to be hereticated by them in prison, and grew so ardent in the faith under their exhortations that when they were taken out for examination he accompanied them, declaring that he would share their fate. The bishop assembled the magistrates and many citizens, in whose presence he examined the prisoners. They were all condemned, including Teisseire, who obstinately refused to recant, and no further opposition was offered when they were all duly burned.[11]
Here we see the inquisitorial jurisdiction completely subordinate to that of the bishop, but when the inquisitors soon afterwards left Toulouse to hold inquests elsewhere they acted with full independence. At Cahors we hear nothing of the Bishop of Querci taking part in the proceedings under which they condemned a number of the dead, exhuming and burning their bodies, and inspiring such fear that a prominent believer, Raymond de Broleas, fled to Rome. At Moissac they condemned Jean du Gard, who fled to Montségur, and they cited a certain Folquet, who, in terror, entered the convent of Belleperche as a Cistercian monk, and, finding that this was of no avail, finally fled to Lombardy. Meanwhile Frère Arnaud Catala and our chronicler, Guillem Pelisson, descended upon Albi, where they penanced a dozen citizens by ordering them to Palestine, and in conjunction with another inquisitor, Guillem de Lombers, burned two heretics, Pierre de Puechperdut and Pierre Bomassipio.[12]
The absence of the inquisitors from Toulouse made no difference in the good work, for their duties were assumed by their prior, Pons de Saint-Gilles. Under what authority he acted is not stated, but we find him, in conjunction with another friar, trying and condemning a certain Arnaud Sancier, who was burned, in spite of his protests to the last that he was a good Catholic, causing great agitation in the city, but no tumultuous uprising.[13]
The terror which Pelisson boasts that these proceedings spread through the land was probably owing not only to the evidence they afforded of an organized system of persecution, but also to their introduction of a much more effective method of prosecution than had heretofore been known. The “heretic,” so called, was the perfected teacher who disdained to deny his faith, and his burning was accepted by all as a matter of course, as also was that of the “credens,” or believer, who was defiantly contumacious and persisted in admitting and adhering to his creed. Hitherto, however, the believer who professed orthodoxy seems generally to have escaped, in the imperfection of the judicial means of proving his guilt. The friars, trained in the subtleties of disputation and learned in both civil and canon law, were specially fitted for the detection of this particularly dangerous secret misbelief, and their persistence in worrying their victims to the death was well calculated to spread alarm, not only among the guilty, but among the innocent.
How reasonable were the fears inspired by the speedy informality of the justice accorded to the heretic is well illustrated by a case occurring in 1234. When the canonization of St. Dominic was announced in Toulouse it was celebrated in a solemn mass performed by Bishop Raymond in the Dominican convent. St. Dominic, however, desired to mark the occasion with some more edifying manifestation of his peculiar functions, and caused word to be brought to the bishop, as the latter was leaving the church for the refectory to partake of a meal, that a woman had just been hereticated in a house hard by, in the Rue de l’Olmet sec. The bishop, with the prior and some others, hurried thither. It was the house of Peitavin Borsier, the general messenger of the heretics of Toulouse, whose mother-in-law lay dying of fever. So sudden was the entrance of the intruders that the woman’s friends could only tell her “the bishop is coming,” and she, who expected a visit from the heretic bishop, was easily led on by Raymond to make a full declaration of her heresy and to pledge herself to be steadfast in it. Then, revealing himself, he ordered her to recant, and, on her refusal, he summoned the viguier, condemned her as a heretic, and had the satisfaction of seeing the dying creature carried off on her bed and burned at the place of execution. Borsier and his colleague, Bernard Aldric of Drémil, were captured, and betrayed many of their friends; and then Raymond and the friars returned to their neglected dinner, giving thanks to God and to St. Dominic for so signal a manifestation in favor of the faith.[14]
The ferocious exultation with which these extra-judicial horrors were perpetrated is well reflected in a poem of the period by Isarn, the Dominican Prior of Villemier. He represents himself as disputing with Sicard de Figueras, a Catharan bishop, and each of his theological arguments is clinched with a threat—
“E’’ s’aquest no vols creyre vec te ’l foc aizinat Que art tos companhos, Aras vuelh que m’’respondas en un mot o en dos, Si cauziras et foc o remanras ab nos.”
“If you will not believe this, look at that raging fire which is consuming your comrades. Now I wish you to reply to me in one word or two, for you will burn in the fire or join us.” Or again, “If you do not confess at once, the flames are already lighted; your name is proclaimed throughout the city with the blast of trumpets, and the people are gathering to see you burn.” In this terrible poem, Isarn only turned into verse what he felt in his own heart, and what he saw passing under his eyes almost daily.[15]
As the holy work assumed shape and its prospects of results grew more encouraging, the zeal of the hunters of men increased, while the fear and hatred of the hunted became more threatening. On both sides passion was fanned into flame. Already, in 1233, two Dominicans, sent to Cordes to seek out heretics, had been slain by the terrified citizens. At Albi the people, excited by the burning of the two heretics already referred to, rose, June 14, 1234, when Arnaud Catala ordered the episcopal bailli to dig up the bones of a heretic woman named Beissera whom he had condemned. The bailli sent back word that he dared not do it. Arnaud left the episcopal synod in which he was sitting, coolly went to the cemetery, himself gave the first strokes of the mattock, and then, ordering the officials to proceed with the work, returned to the synod. The officials quickly rushed after him, saying that they had been ejected from the burial-ground by the mob. Arnaud returned and found it occupied by a crowd of howling sons of Belial, who quickly closed in on him, striking him in the face and pummelling him on all sides, with shouts of “Kill him! he has no right to live!” Some endeavored to drag him into the shops hard by to slay him; others wished to throw him into the river Tarn, but he was rescued and taken back to the synod, followed by a mass of men fiercely shouting for his death. The whole city, indeed, seemed to be of one mind, and many of the principal burghers were leaders of the tumult. It is satisfactory to learn that, although Arnaud mercifully withdrew the excommunication which he launched at the rebellious city, his successor, Frère Ferrer, wrought the judgment of God upon the guilty, imprisoning many of them and burning others.[16]
In Narbonne disturbances arose even more serious, although special inquisitors had not yet been sent there. In March, 1234, the Dominican prior, François Ferrer, undertook a volunteer inquisition and threw in prison a citizen named Raymond d’Argens. Fifteen years previous the artisans of the suburb had organized a confederation for mutual support called the Amistance, and this body arose as one man and forcibly rescued the prisoner. The archbishop, Pierre Amiel, and the viscount, Aimery of Narbonne, undertook to rearrest him, but found his house guarded by the Amistance, which rushed upon their followers with shouts of “Kill! kill!” and drove them away after a brief skirmish, in which the prior was badly handled. The archbishop had recourse to excommunication and interdict, but to little purpose, for the Amistance seized his domains and drove him from the city. Both sides sought allies. Gregory IX. appealed to King Jayme of Aragon, while a complaint from the consuls of Narbonne to those of Nimes looks as though they were endeavoring to effect a confederation of the cities against the Inquisition, of whose arbitrary and illegal methods of procedure they give abundant details. A kind of truce was patched up in October, but the troubles recommenced when the prior, in obedience to an order from his provincial, undertook a fresh inquisition, and made a number of arrests. In December a suspension was obtained by the citizens appealing to the pope, the king, and the legate, but in 1235 the people rose against the Dominicans, drove them from the city, sacked their convent, and destroyed all the records of the proceedings against heresy. Archbishop Pierre had cunningly separated the city from the suburb, about equal in population, by confining the inquisition to the latter, and this bore fruit in his securing the armed support of the former. The suburb placed itself under the protection of Count Raymond, who, nothing loath to aggravate the trouble, came there and gave to the people as leaders Olivier de Termes and Guiraud de Niort, two notorious defenders of heretics. A bloody civil war broke out between the two sections, which lasted until April, 1237, when a truce for a year was agreed upon. In the following August the Count of Toulouse and the Seneschal of Carcassonne were called in as arbitrators, and in March, 1238, a peace was concluded. That the Church triumphed is shown by the conditions which imposed upon some of the participators in the troubles a year’s service in Palestine or against the Moors of Spain.[17]
In Toulouse, the centre both of heresy and persecution, in spite of mutterings and menaces, open opposition to the Inquisition was postponed longer than elsewhere. Although Count Raymond is constantly represented by the Church party as the chief opponent of the Holy Office, it was probably his influence that succeeded in staving off so long the inevitable rupture. Hard experience from childhood could scarce have rendered him a fervent Catholic, yet that experience had shown him that the favor and protection of the Church were indispensable if he would retain the remnant of territory and power that had been left to him. He could not as yet be at heart a persecutor of heresy, yet he could not afford to antagonize the Church. It was important for him to retain the love and good-will of his subjects and to prevent the desolation of his cities and lordships, but it was yet more important for him to escape the stigma of favoring heresy, and to avoid calling down upon his head a renewal of the storm in which he had been so nearly wrecked. Few princes have had a more difficult part to play, with dangers besetting him on every side, and if he earned the reputation of a trimmer without religious convictions, that reputation and his retention of his position till his death are perhaps the best proof of the fundamental wisdom which guided his necessarily tortuous course. Pierre Cardinal, the Troubadour, describes him as defending himself from the assaults of the worst of men, as fearing neither the Frenchman nor the ecclesiastic, and as humble only with the good.[18]
He was always at odds with his prelates. Intricate questions with regard to the temporalities were a constant source of quarrel, and he lived under a perpetual reduplication of excommunications, for he had been so long under the ban of the Church that no bishop hesitated for a moment in anathematizing him. Then, one of the conditions of the treaty of 1229 had been that within two years he should proceed to Palestine and wage war there with the infidel for five years. The two years had passed away without his performing the vow; the state of the country at no time seemed to render so prolonged an absence safe, and for years a leading object of his policy was to obtain a postponement of his crusade or immunity for the non-observance of his vow. Moreover, from the date of the peace of Paris until the end of his life he earnestly and vainly endeavored to obtain from Rome permission for the sepulture of his father’s body. These complications crippled him in multitudinous ways and exposed him to immense disadvantage in his fencing with the hierarchy.
As early as 1230 he was taxed by the legate with inobservance of the conditions of the peace, and was forced to promise amendment of his ways. In 1232 we see Gregory IX. imperiously ordering him to be energetic in the duty of persecution, and, possibly in obedience to this, during the same year, we find him personally accompanying Bishop Raymond of Toulouse in a nocturnal expedition among the mountains, which was rewarded with the capture of nineteen perfected heretics, male and female, including one of their most important leaders, Pagan, Seigneur de Bécède, whose castle we saw captured in 1227. All these expiated their errors at the stake. Yet not long afterwards the Bishop of Tournay, as papal legate, assembled the prelates of Languedoc and formally cited Raymond before King Louis to answer for his slackness in carrying out the provisions of the treaty. The result of this was the drawing up of severe enactments against heretics, which he was obliged to promulgate in February, 1234. In spite of this, and of a letter from Gregory to the bishops ordering them no longer to excommunicate him so freely as before, he was visited within a twelvemonth with two fresh excommunications, for purely temporal causes. Then came fresh urgency from the pope for the extirpation of heresy, with which Raymond doubtless made a show of compliance, as his heart was bent on obtaining from Rome a restoration of the Marquisate of Provence. In this he was strongly backed by King Louis, whose brother Alfonse was to be Raymond’s heir, and towards the close of the year he sought an interview with Gregory and succeeded in effecting it. His reconciliation with the papacy appeared to be complete. His military reputation stood high, and Gregory made use of his visit to confide to him the leadership of the papal troops in a campaign against the rebellious citizens of Rome, who had expelled the head of the Church from their city. Though he did not succeed in restoring the pope, they parted on the best of terms, and he returned to Toulouse as a favored son of the Church, ready on all points to obey her behests.[19]
There he found matters rapidly approaching a crisis which tested to the utmost his skill in temporizing. Passions on both sides were rising to an uncontrollable point. At Easter, 1235, the promise of grace for voluntary confession brought forward such crowds of penitent heretics that the Dominicans were insufficient to take their testimony, and were obliged to call in the aid of the Franciscans and of all the parish priests of the city. Encouraged by this, the prior, Pons de Saint-Gilles, commenced to seize those who had not come forward spontaneously. Among these was a certain Arnaud Dominique, who, to save his life, promised to betray eleven heretics residing in a house at Cassers. This he fulfilled, though four of them escaped through the aid of the neighboring peasants, and he was set at liberty. The long-suffering of the heretics, however, was at last exhausted, and shortly afterwards he was murdered in his bed at Aigrefeuille by the friends of those whom he had thus sacrificed. Still more significant of the dangerous tension of popular feeling was a mob which, under the guidance of two leading citizens, forcibly rescued Pierre-Guillem Delort from the hands of the viguier and of the Abbot of Saint-Sernin, who had arrested him and were conveying him to prison. The situation was becoming unbearable, and soon the ceremony of dragging through the streets and burning the bodies of some dead heretics aroused an agitation so general and so menacing that Count Raymond was sent for in hopes that his interposition might avert the most deplorable consequences. Thus far, although perhaps somewhat lacking in alacrity of persecution, no serious charges could be laid against him. His officials, his baillis and viguiers, had responded to all appeals of the inquisitors and had lent the aid of the secular arm in seizing heretics, in burning them, and in confiscating their property. Yet when he came to Toulouse and begged the inquisitors to suspend for a time the vigor of their operations he was not listened to. Then he turned to the papal legate, Jean, Archbishop of Vienne, complaining specially of Pierre Cella, whom he considered to be inspired with personal enmity to himself, and whom he regarded as the chief author of the troubles. His request that Cella’s operations should be confined to Querci was granted. That inquisitor was sent to Cahors, where, with the assistance of Pons Delmont and Guillem Pelisson he vigorously traversed the land and forced multitudes to confess their guilt.[20]
This expedient was of no avail. Persecution continued as aggressive as ever, and popular indignation steadily rose. The inevitable crisis soon came which should determine whether the Inquisition should sink into insignificance, as had been the case with so many previous efforts, or whether it should triumph over all opposition and become the dominating power in the land.
Guillem Arnaud was in no way abashed by the banishment of his colleague. Returning from a brief absence at Carcassonne, of which more anon, he summoned for trial as believers twelve of the leading citizens of Toulouse, one of them a consul. They refused to appear, and threatened him with violence unless he should desist. On his persisting, word was sent him, with the assent of Count Raymond, that he must either leave the city or abandon his functions as inquisitor. He took council with his Dominican brethren, when it was unanimously agreed that he should proceed manfully in his duty. The consuls then ejected him by force from the city; he was accompanied to the bridge over the Garonne by all the friars, and as he departed the consuls recorded a protest to the effect that if he would desist from the inquisition he could remain; otherwise, in the name of the count and in their own, they ordered him to leave the city. He went to Carcassonne, whence he ordered the Prior of Saint-Étienne and the parish priests to repeat the citations to the parties already summoned. This order was bravely obeyed in spite of threats, when the consuls sent for the prior and priests, and after keeping them in the town-hall part of a night, expelled them from the town, and publicly proclaimed that any one daring to repeat the citations should be put to death, and that any one obeying the summons of an inquisitor should answer for it in body and goods. Another proclamation followed, in which the name of Count Raymond was used, prohibiting that any one should give or sell anything to the bishop, the Dominicans, or the canons of Saint-Étienne. This forced the bishop to leave the city, as we are told that no one dared even to bake a loaf of bread for him, and the populace, moreover, invaded his house, beat his clerks, and stole his horses. The Dominicans fared better, for they had friends hardy enough to supply them with necessaries, and when the consuls posted guards around their house, still bread and cheese and other food was thrown over their walls in spite of the arrest of some of those engaged in it. Their principal suffering was from lack of water, which had to be brought from the Garonne, and as this source of supply was cut off, they were unable to boil their vegetables. For three weeks they thus exultingly endured their martyrdom in a holy cause. Matters became more serious when the indomitable Guillem Arnaud sent from Carcassonne a letter to the prior saying, that as no one dared to cite the contumacious citizens, he was forced to order two of the friars to summon them to appear before him personally in Carcassonne to answer for their faith, and that two others must accompany them as witnesses. Tolling the convent bell, the prior assembled the brethren, and said to them with a joyful countenance: “Brethren, rejoice, for I must send four of you through martyrdom to the throne of the Most High. Such are the commands of our brother, Guillem the inquisitor, and whoever obeys them will be slain on the spot, as threatened by the consuls. Let those who are ready to die for Christ ask pardon.” With a common impulse the whole body cast themselves on the ground, which was the Dominican form of asking pardon, and the prior selected four, Raymond de Foix, Jean de Saint-Michel, Gui de Navarre, and Guillem Pelisson. These intrepidly performed their duty, even penetrating when necessary into the bed-chambers of the accused. Only in one house were they ill-treated, and even there, when the sons of the person cited drew knives upon them, the bystanders interfered.
There was evidently nothing to be done with men who thus courted martyrdom. To gratify them would be suicidal, and the consuls decided to expel them. On being informed of this the prior distributed among trusty friends the books and sacred vessels and vestments of the convent. The next day (Nov. 5 or 6, 1235) the friars, after mass, sat down to their simple meal, during which the consuls came with a great crowd and threatened to break in the door. The friars marched in procession to their church, where they took their seats, and when the consuls entered and commanded them to depart they refused. Then each was seized and violently led forth, two of them who threw themselves on the ground near the door being picked up by the hands and feet and carried out. Thus they were accompanied through the town, but not otherwise maltreated, and they turned the affair into a procession, marching two by two and singing Te Deum and Salve Regina. At first they went to a farm belonging to the church of Saint-Étienne, but the consuls posted guards to see that nothing was furnished to them, and the next day the prior distributed them among the convents of the province. That the whole affair enlisted for them the sympathies of the faithful was shown by two persons of consideration joining them and entering the Order while it was going on.[21]
It is significant of the position which Guillem Arnaud’s steadfastness had already won for his office that to him was conceded the vindication of this series of outrages on the immunity of the Church. Bishop Raymond had joined him in Carcassonne without anathematizing the authors of his exile, but now the anathema promptly went forth, November 10, 1235, uttered by the inquisitor with the names of the Bishops of Toulouse and Carcassonne appended as assenting witnesses. It was confined to the consuls, but Count Raymond was not allowed to escape the responsibility. The excommunication was sent to the Franciscans of Toulouse for publication, and when they obeyed they too were expelled, in no gentle fashion, and the rebellious city was virtually left without ecclesiastics. Further excommunications followed, now including the count, and Prior Pons de Saint-Gilles hastened to Italy to pour the story of his woes into the sympathizing ears of the pope and the sacred college. Gregory assailed the count as the chief offender. A minatory brief of April 28, 1236, addressed to him, is couched in the severest language. He is held responsible for the audacious acts of the consuls; he is significantly reminded of the unperformed vow of the crusade; not only has he failed to extirpate heresy according to his pledges, but he is a manifest fautor and protector of heretics; his favorites and officers are suspect of heresy; he protects those who have been condemned; his lands are a place of refuge for those flying from persecution elsewhere, so that heresy is daily spreading and conversions from Catholicism are frequent, while zealous churchmen seeking to restrain them are slain and abused with impunity. All this he is peremptorily ordered to correct and to sail with his knights to the Holy Land in the “general passage” of the following March. It scarcely needed the reminder, which the pope did not spare him, of the labors which the Church and its Crusaders had undergone to purge his lands of heresy. He had too keen a recollection of the abyss from which he had escaped to risk another plunge. He had gone as far as he dared in the effort to protect his subjects, and it were manifest folly to draw upon his head and theirs another inroad of the marauders whom the pope with a word could let loose upon him to earn salvation with the sword.[22]
The epistle to Raymond was accompanied with one to the legate, instructing him to compel the count to make amends and perform the crusade. To Frederic II. he wrote forbidding him to call on Raymond for feudal services, as the count was under excommunication and virtually a heretic, to which the emperor replied, reasonably enough, that, so long as Raymond enjoyed possession of fiefs held under the empire, excommunication should not confer on him the advantage of release from their burdens. King Louis was also appealed to and was urged to hasten the marriage between his brother Alfonse and Raymond’s daughter Jeanne. With the spectre of all Europe in arms looming up before him Raymond could do nothing but yield. When, therefore, the legate summoned him to meet the inquisitors at Carcassonne he meekly went there and conferred with them and the bishops. The conference ended with his promise to return the bishop and friars and clergy to Toulouse, and this promise he kept. The friars were duly reinstated September 4, after ten months of exile. That Guillem Arnaud returned with them is a matter of course.[23]
Pierre Cella was still restricted to his diocese of Querci, and as Guillem required a colleague, a concession was made to popular feeling by the legate in appointing a Franciscan, it being imagined that the comparative mildness of that Order might serve to modify the hatred felt towards the Dominicans. The post was conferred on the provincial minister, Jean de Notoyra, but his other duties were too engrossing, and he substituted Frère Étienne de Saint-Thibery, who had the reputation of being a modest and courteous man. If hopes were entertained that thus the severity of the Inquisition would be tempered, they were disappointed. The two men worked cordially together, with a single purpose and perfect unanimity.[24]
Guillem Arnaud’s activity was untiring. During his exile in Carcassonne he occupied himself with the trial of the Seigneur de Niort, whom he sentenced in February or March, 1236.[25] In the early months of 1237 we hear of him in Querci, co-operating with Pierre Cella in harrying the heretics of Montauban. During his absence there occurred a crowning mercy in Toulouse, which threw the heretics into a spasm of terror and contributed greatly to their destruction. Raymond Gros, who had been a perfected heretic for more than twenty years, one of the most loved and trusted leaders of the sect, was suddenly converted. Tradition relates that a quarter of a century before he had been seized and consigned to the stake, when the prophetic spirit of St. Dominic, foreseeing that he would return to the Church and perform shining service in the cause of God, rescued him from the flames. On April 2, without heralding, he presented himself at the Dominican convent, humbly begged to be received into the Church, and promised to do whatever should be required of him. With the eagerness of an impassioned convert he proceeded to reveal all that lifelong intercourse with the Cathari had brought to his knowledge. So full were his recollections that several days were required to write down all the names and facts that crowded to his lips. The lists were long and embraced prominent nobles and citizens, confirming suspicion in many cases, and revealing heresy in other quarters where it was wholly unlooked for.
Guillem Arnaud hurried back from Montauban to take full advantage of this act of Providence. The heretics were stunned. None of them dared to deny the truth of the accusations made by Raymond Gros. Many fled, some of whose names reappear in the massacre of Avignonet and the final catastrophe of Montségur. Many recanted and furnished further revelations. Long lists were made out of those who had been hereticated on their death-beds, and multitudes of corpses were exhumed and burned, with the resultant harvest of confiscations. It is difficult to exaggerate the severity of the blow thus received by heresy. Toulouse was its headquarters. Here were the nobles and knights, the consuls and rich burghers who had thus far defied scrutiny and had protected their less fortunate comrades. Now scattered and persecuted, forced to recant, or burned, the power of the secret organization was broken irrevocably. We can well appreciate the pious exultation of the chronicler as he winds up his account of the consternation and destruction thus visited upon the heretical community—“Their names are not written in the Book of Life, but their bodies here were burned and their souls are tortured in hell!” A single sentence of February 19, 1238, in which more than twenty penitents were consigned en masse to perpetual imprisonment, shows the extent of the harvest and the haste of the harvesters.[26]
The Inquisition thus had overcome the popular horror which its proceedings had excited; it had braved the shock and triumphed over the opposition of the secular authorities, and had planted itself firmly in the soil. After the harvest had been gathered in Toulouse it was evident to the indefatigable activity of the inquisitors that they could best perform their functions by riding circuit and holding assizes in all the towns subject to their jurisdiction, and this was represented as a concession to avert the complaints of those who deemed it a hardship to be summoned to distant places. Their incessant labors began to tell. Heretics were leaving the lands of Raymond at last and seeking a refuge elsewhere. Possibly some of them found it in the domains which had fallen to the crown, for in this year we find Gregory scolding the royal officials for their slackness of zeal in executing sentences against powerful heretics. Elsewhere, however, there was no rest for them. In Provence this year Pons de l’Esparre made himself conspicuous for the energy and effectiveness with which he confounded the enemies of the faith; while Montpellier, alarmed at the influx of heretics and their success in propagating their errors, appealed to Gregory to favor them with some assistance that should effectively resist the rising tide, and Gregory at once ordered his legate Jean de Vienne to go thither and take the necessary measures.[27]
The progress of the Inquisition, however, was not destined to be uninterrupted. Count Raymond, apparently reckless of the numerous excommunications under which he lay, so far from sailing for Palestine in March, had seized Marseilles, which was in rebellion against its suzerain, the Count of Provence. This aroused anew the indignation of Gregory, not only because of its interference with the war against the Saracens in Spain and the Holy Land, but because of the immunity which heretics would enjoy during the quarrel of the Christian princes. He peremptorily ordered Raymond to desist from his enterprise on Marseilles, and to perform his Crusader’s vow. An appeal was made to King Louis and Queen Blanche, whose intervention procured for Raymond not only a postponement of the crusade for another year, but an order to the legate empowering him to grant the count’s request to take the Inquisition entirely out of the hands of the Dominicans, if, on investigation, he should find justification for Raymond’s assertion that they were actuated by hatred towards himself. Fresh troubles had arisen at Toulouse. July 24, 1237, the inquisitors had again excommunicated the viguier and consuls, because they had not arrested and burned Alaman de Roaix and some other heretics, condemned in absentia, and Raymond was resolved, if possible, to relieve himself and his subjects from the cruel oppression to which they were exposed.[28]
In this his efforts were crowned with most unlooked-for success. May 13, 1238, he obtained a suspension for three months of all inquisitorial proceedings, during which time his envoys sent to Gregory were to be heard. They seem to have used most persuasive arguments, for Gregory wrote to the Bishop of Toulouse to continue the suspension until the new legate, the Cardinal-bishop of Palestrina, should examine into the complaints against the Dominicans and consider the advisability of granting Raymond’s request that the business of persecution should be confined, as formerly, to the bishops. Raymond’s crusade was also reduced to three years, to be performed voluntarily, provided he would give to King Louis sufficient security that he would sail the following year: by performing this, and making amends for the wrongs inflicted on the Church, he was to earn absolution from his numerous excommunications.[29]
The temporary suspension was unexpectedly prolonged, for, owing to hostilities with Frederic II., the cardinal-legate’s departure was postponed for a year. When at least he came, in 1239, he brought special orders to the inquisitors to obey his commands. What investigation he made and what were his conclusions we have no means of knowing, but this at least is certain, that until late in 1241 the Inquisition was effectually muzzled. No traces remain of its activity during these years, and Catholic and Catharan alike could draw a freer breath, relieved of apprehension from its ever-present supervision and the seemingly superhuman energy of the friars.[30]
We can readily conjecture the reasons which impelled its reinstatement. Doubtless the bishops were as negligent as of old, and looked after their temporalities to the exclusion of their duties in preserving the purity of the faith. Doubtless, too, the heretics, encouraged by virtual toleration, grew bolder, and cherished hopes of a return to the good old times, when, secure under their native princes, they could safely defy distant Paris and yet more distant Rome. The condition of the country was, in fact, by no means reassuring, especially in the regions which had become domains of the crown. The land was full of knights and barons who were more or less openly heretics, and who knew not when the blow might fall on them; of seigneurs who had been proscribed for heresy; of enforced converts who secretly longed to avow their hidden faith, and to regain their confiscated lands; of penitents burning to throw off the crosses imposed on them, and to avenge the humiliations which they had endured. Refugees, faidits, and heretic teachers were wandering through the mountains, dwelling in caverns and in the recesses of the forests. Scarce a family but had some kinsman to avenge, who had fallen in the field or had perished at the stake. The lack of prisons and the parsimony of the prelates had prevented a general resort to imprisonment, and the burnings had not been numerous enough to notably reduce the numbers of those who were of necessity bitterly opposed to the existing order. Suddenly, in 1240, an insurrection appeared, headed by Trencavel, son of that Viscount of Béziers whom we have seen entrapped by Simon de Montfort and dying opportunely in his hands, not without suspicion of poison. He brought with him from Catalonia troops of proscribed knights and gentlemen, and was greeted enthusiastically by the vassals and subjects of his house. Count Raymond, his cousin, held aloof; but his ambiguous conduct showed plainly that he was prepared to act on either side as success or defeat might render advisable. At first the rising seemed to prosper. Trencavel laid siege to his ancestral town of Carcassonne, and the spirit of his followers was shown when, on the surrender of the suburb, they slaughtered in cold blood thirty ecclesiastics who had received solemn assurance of free egress to Narbonne.[31]
It required but a small force of royal troops under Jean de Beaumont to crush the insurrection as quickly as it had arisen, and to inflict a vengeance which virtually annihilated the petite noblesse of the region; but, nevertheless, the lesson which it taught was not to be neglected. The civil order, as now established in the south of France, evidently rested in the religious order, and the maintenance of this required hands more vigorous and watchful than those of the self-seeking prelates. A great assembly of the Cathari held in 1241, on the bank of the Larneta, under the presidency of Aymeri de Collet, heretic Bishop of Albi, showed how bold they had become, and how confidently they looked to the future. Church and State both could see now, if not before, that the Inquisition was a necessary factor in securing to both the advantages gained in the crusades.[32]
Gregory IX., the founder of the Inquisition, died August 22, 1241. It is probable that, before his death, he had put an end to the suspension of the Inquisition and slipped the hounds from the leash, for his immediate successor, Celestin IV., enjoyed a pontificate of but nineteen days—from September 20 to October 8—and then followed an interregnum until the election of Innocent IV., June 28, 1243, so that for nearly two years the papal throne was practically vacant. Raymond’s policy, for the moment, had leaned towards gratifying the papacy, for he desired from Gregory not only the removal of his four excommunications and forbearance in the matter of the crusade, but also a dispensation to enable him to carry out a contract of marriage into which he entered with Sanche, daughter and heiress of the Count of Provence, not foreseeing that Queen Blanche would juggle him in this, and, by securing the brilliant match for her son Charles, found the House of Anjou-Provence, and win for the royal family another large portion of the South. Full of these projects, which promised so well for the rehabilitation of his power, he signed, April 18, 1241, with Jayme I. of Aragon, a treaty of alliance for the defence of the Holy See and the Catholic faith, and against the heretics. Under such influences he was not likely to oppose the renewal of active persecution. Besides, he had been compromised in Trencavel’s insurrection; he had been summoned to answer for his conduct before King Louis, when, on March 14, he had been forced to take an oath to banish from his lands the faidits and enemies of the king, and to capture without delay the castle of Montségur, the last refuge of heresy.[33]
The case of the Seigneurs de Niort, powerful nobles of Fenouillèdes, who had taken part in Trencavel’s insurrection, is interesting from the light which it throws upon the connection between the religion and the politics of the time, the difficulties which the Inquisition experienced in dealing with stubborn heresy and patriotism, and the damage inflicted on the heretic cause by the abortive revolt. The three brothers—Guillem Guiraud, Bernard Otho, and Guiraud Bernard—with their mother, Esclarmonde, had long been a quarry which both the inquisitors and the royal seneschal of Carcassonne had been eager to capture. Guillem had earned the reputation of a valiant knight in the wars of the crusades, and the brothers had managed to hold their castles and their power through all the vicissitudes of the time. In the general inquisition made by Cardinal Romano in 1229 they were described as among the chief leaders of the heretics, and the Council of Toulouse, at the same time, denounced two of them as enemies of the faith, and declared them excommunicate if they did not submit within fifteen days. In 1233 we hear of their having, not long before, laid waste with fire and sword the territories of Pierre Amiel, Archbishop of Narbonne, and they had assailed and wounded him while on his way to the Holy See, an exploit which led Gregory IX. to order the archbishop, in conjunction with the Bishop of Toulouse, to proceed against them energetically, while at the same time he invoked the secular arm by a pressing command to Count Raymond. It was probably under this authority that Bishop Raymond du Fauga and the Provost of Toulouse held an inquest on them, in which was taken the testimony of Pierre Amiel and of one hundred and seven other witnesses. The evidence was conflicting. The archbishop swore at great length as to the misdeeds of his enemies. They were all heretics. At one time they kept in their Castle of Dourne no less than thirty perfected heretics, and they had procured the assassination of André Chaulet, Seneschal of Carcassonne, because he had endeavored to obtain evidence against them. Other witnesses were equally emphatic. Bernard Otho on one occasion had silenced a priest in his own church, and had replaced him in the pulpit with a heretic, who had preached to the congregation. On the other hand, there were not wanting witnesses who boldly defended them. The preceptor of the Hospital at Puységur swore to the orthodoxy of Bernard Otho, and declared that what he had done for the faith and for peace had caused the death of a thousand heretics. A priest swore to having seen him assist in capturing heretics, and an archdeacon declared that he would not have remained in the land but for the army which Bernard raised after the death of the late king, adding that he believed the prosecution arose rather from hate than from charity. Nothing came of this attempt, and in 1234 we meet with Bernard Otho as a witness to a transaction between the royal Seneschal of Carcassonne and the Monastery of Alet; but when the Inquisition was established it was promptly brought to bear on the nobles who persisted in maintaining their feudal independence in spite of the fact that their immediate suzerain was now the king. In 1235 Guillem Arnaud, the inquisitor, while in Carcassonne, with the Archdeacon of Carcassonne as assistant, cited the three brothers and their mother to answer before him. Bernard Otho and Guillem obeyed the summons, but would confess nothing. Then the seneschal seized them; under compulsion Guillem made confession ample to warrant the inquisitor in sentencing him to perpetual prison (March 2, 1236), while Bernard, remaining obdurate, was condemned as a contumacious heretic (February 13, 1236), and the seneschal made preparations to burn him. Guiraud and his mother, Esclarmonde, were further condemned, March 2, for contumacious absence. Guiraud, however, who had wisely kept at large, began to fortify his castles and make warlike demonstrations so formidable that the Frenchmen scattered through the land took alarm. The Maréchal de la Foi, Levis of Mirepoix, stood firm, but the rest so worked upon the seneschal that the brothers were released, and the inquisitors had only the barren satisfaction of condemning the whole family on paper—a disappointment alleviated, it is true, by gathering for the stake a rich harvest of less formidable heretics, both clerks and laymen. Equally vain was an effort made two years later by the inquisitors to compel Count Raymond to carry out their sentence by confiscating the lands of the contumacious nobles, but the failure of Trencavel’s revolt forced them to sue for peace. Bernard Otho was again brought before the Inquisition, and Guillem de Niort made submission for himself and brothers, surrendering their castles to the king on condition that he would procure their reconciliation with the Church, and that of their mother, nephews, and allies, and, failing to accomplish this by the next Pentecost, that he would restore their castles and grant them a month of truce to put themselves in defence. King Louis ratified the treaty in January, 1241, but refused, when the time came, to restore the castles, only agreeing to pay over the revenues on consideration that the brothers should reside outside of Fenouillèdes. Guillem died in 1256, when Louis kept both castles and revenues, under pretext that the treaty had been a personal one with Guillem. The new order of things by this time had become so firmly established that no further resistance was to be dreaded. The extinction of this powerful family is a typical example of the manner in which the independence of the local seigneurie was gradually broken down by means of the Inquisition, and the authority of crown and Church was extended over the land.[34]
Under the reaction consequent upon Trencavel’s failure, and emboldened by the ruin of the local protectors of the people, the inquisitors returned to their work with sharpened zeal and redoubled energy. Chance has preserved for us a record of sentences pronounced by Pierre Cella, during a circuit of a few months in Querci, from Advent, 1241, to Ascension, 1242, which affords us a singularly instructive insight into one phase of inquisitorial operations. We have seen that, when an inquisitor visited a town, he proclaimed a “time of grace,” during which those who voluntarily came forward and confessed were spared the harsher punishments of prison, confiscation, or the stake, and that the Inquisition found this expedient exceedingly fruitful, not only in the number of penitents which it brought in, but in the testimony which was gathered concerning the more contumacious. The record in question consists of cases of this kind, and its crowded calendar justifies the esteem in which the method was held.[35]
Summarized, the record shows—
In Gourdon
219
sentences pronounced in Advent, 1241.
In Montcucq
84
" " " Lent, 1242.
In Sauveterre
5.
In Belcayre
7.
In Montauban
254
sentences pronounced in week before Ascension (May 21-28, 1242).
In Moissac
99
" " " week of Ascension (May 28-June 5, 1242).
In Montpezat
22
" " " Lent, 1242.
In Montaut
23
" " " " "
In Castelnau
11
" " " " "
Total
724
Of these penitents four hundred and twenty-seven were ordered to make the distant pilgrimage to Compostella, in the northwestern corner of Spain—some four hundred or five hundred miles of mountainous roads. One hundred and eight were sent to Canterbury, this pilgrimage, in all but three or four cases, being superimposed on that to Compostella. Only two penitents were required to visit Rome, but seventy-nine were ordered to serve in the crusades for terms varying from one to eight years.
The first thing that impresses one in considering this record is the extraordinary speed with which the work was done. The whole was despatched in six months, and there is no evidence that the labor was continuous—in fact, it could not have been so, for the inquisitor had to move from place to place, to grant the necessary delays, and must have been frequently interrupted to gather in the results of testimony which implicated recusants. With what reckless lack of consideration the penances were imposed is shown by the two hundred and nineteen penitents of Gourdon, whose confessions were taken down and whose sentences were pronounced within the four weeks of Advent; and even this is outstripped by the two hundred and fifty-two of Montauban, despatched in the week before Ascension, at the rate of forty-two for each working-day. In several cases two culprits are included in the same sentence.
Even more significant than this, however, are the enormous numbers—two hundred and nineteen for a small town like Gourdon and eighty-four for Montcucq. The number of these who were really heretics, both Catharan and Waldensian, is large, and shows how thoroughly the population was interpenetrated with heresy. Even more, however, were good Catholics whose cases prove how amicably the various sects associated together, and how impossible it was for the most orthodox to avoid the association with heretics which rendered him liable to punishment. This friendly intercourse is peculiarly notable in the case of a priest who confessed to having gone to some heretics in a vineyard, where he read in their books and ate pears with them. He was rudely reminded of his indiscretion by being suspended from his functions, sent to Compostella and thence to Rome, with letters from the inquisitors which doubtless were not for his benefit, for apparently they felt unable to decide what ought to be done for an offence so enormous. Even the smallest derelictions of this sort were rigorously penanced. A citizen of Sauveterre had seen three heretics entering the house of a sick man, and heard that they had hereticated him, but knew nothing of his own knowledge, yet he was subjected to the disgrace of a penitential pilgrimage to Puy. Another, of Belcayre, had carried a message between two heretics, and was sent to Puy, St. Gilles, and Compostella. A physician of Montauban had bound up the arm of a heretic and was subjected to the same three pilgrimages, and the same penance was inflicted on a woman who had simply eaten at a table with heretics. The same was prescribed in several cases of boatmen who had ignorantly transported heretics, without recognizing them until the voyage was under way or finished. A woman who had eaten and drunk with another woman who she heard was a heretic was sentenced to the pilgrimages of Puy and St. Gilles, and the same penance was ordered for a man who had once seen heretics, and for a woman who had consulted a Waldensian about her sick son. The Waldenses had great reputation as skilful leeches, and two men who had called them in for their wives and children were penanced with the pilgrimages of Puy, St. Gilles, and Compostella. A man who had seen heretics two or three times, and had already purchased reconciliation by a gift to a monastery, was sent on a long series of pilgrimages, embracing both Compostella and Canterbury, besides wearing the yellow cross for a year. Another was sent to Compostella because he had once been thrown into company with heretics in a boat, although he had left them on hearing their heresies; and yet another because, when a boy, he had spent part of a day and night with heretics. One who had seen heretics when he was twelve years old was sent to Puy; while a woman who had seen them in her father’s house was obliged to go to Puy and St. Gilles. A man who had seen two heretics leaving a place which he had rented was sent to Compostella, and another who had allowed his Waldensian mother to visit him and had given her an ell of cloth was forced to expiate it with pilgrimages to Puy, St. Gilles, and Compostella.[36] The list might be prolonged almost indefinitely, but these cases will suffice to show the character of the offence and the nature of the grace proffered for voluntary confession. There is no pretence that any of these particular culprits themselves were not wholly orthodox, but the people were to be taught that the toleration which had existed for generations was at an end; that the neighborly intercourse which had established itself between Catholic and Catharan and Waldensian was in itself a sin; that the heretic was to be tracked and captured like a wild beast, or at least to be shunned like a leper.
[1] Diez, Leben und Werke der Troubadours, pp. 450, 576.--Millot, Hist. Littéraire des Troubadours, III. 244-50.
[2] Teulet, Layettes, II. 185, 226-8. In 1239 we find Raymond asking for six months’ delay in the payment of one of the instalments (Ib. p. 406).
[3] Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1238 c. 11 (Mart. Ampl. Coll. VII. 134).--Ripoll I. 120, 145, 165.--Potthast No. 9452, 11092, 11094, 11515.--Vaissette, III. Pr. 365.--Teulet, Layettes, II. 262.--Arch. des Frères Prêcheurs de Toulouse (Doat, XXXI. 19)--C. 1 Sexto v. 2.--Raynald. ann. 1243, No. 30.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXI. 69).--Bern. Guidon, de Trib. Grad. Prædicat. (Bouquet, XXI, 739).--Practica super Inquisit. (MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 14930, fol. 224). When Cardinal Wolsey sought to reform the English Church he found the same difficulty in obtaining bishops to degrade clerical criminals, and he obtained from Clement VII. the same remedy (Rymer, XIV. 239).
[4] Coll. Doat, XXI. 149, 153, 156, 158.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 9992.
[5] Practica super Inquisit. (MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 14930, fol. 224).--Guill. Pelisso Chron. (Ed. Molinier. Anicii, 1880, pp. 6, 15).--Epistt. Sæcul. XIII. T. I. No. 688 (Monument. Hist. German.).--Bern. Guidon. Vit. Gregor. PP. IX. (Muratori S. R. I. III. 573). One of the complaints made by Gregory IX. against Raymond, in 1236, was that he had neglected to pay the salaries of the professors, and that the school of Toulouse was dissolved (Teulet, Layettes, II. 315). In 1239, however, a receipt in full for them was exhibited to the papal legate (Ib. p. 397), and in 1242, when Raymond was under peril of death in the Agenois, his chief physician was Loup of Spain, the professor of medicine in the University (Ib. p. 466).
[6] Pelisso Chron. pp. 7-8.
[7] Ibid. pp. 9-10.
[8] Pelisso Chron. pp. 10-11.--Preger, Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte der deutschen Mystik, p. 17.
[9] Pelisso Chron. p. 13. Cf. Bern. Guidon. Vit. Gregor. PP. IX. (Muratori S. R. I. III. 573).
[10] Pelisso pp. 10-17.
[11] Ibid. pp. 17-20.
[12] Pelisso Chron. pp. 20-1.
[13] Ibid. p. 22.
[14] Pelisso Chron. pp. 23-5.
[15] Millot, Troubadours, II. 65-77.--Mary-Lafon, Histoire du Midi de la France, III. 396-99.
[16] Vaissette, III. 403.--Martene Thesaur. I. 985.--Pelisso Chron. pp. 13-14, 52-9. Chabanaud (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. 330) thinks it probable that this Arnaud Catala is the troubadour of the same name, developing, like Folquet of Marseilles and others, from a poet to a persecutor.
[17] Vaissette, III. 402-3, 406; Pr. 370-1, 379-81.--Coll. Doat, XXXI. 33.--Teulet, Layettes, II. 321, 334.
[18]
“Car del pejors homes que son Se defen et de tot le mont; Que Franses ni clergia Ni las autras gens ne l’affront; Mas als bos s’humilia Et l’mal confond.” (Peyrat, Les Albigeois et l’Inquisition, II. 394).
(Peyrat, Les Albigeois et l’Inquisition, II. 394).
[19] Bern. Guidon. Vit. Gregor. PP. IX. (Muratori, S. R I. III. 573)--Archives Nat. de France J. 430, No. 17, 18.--Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 42.--Peyrat, Hist. des Albigeois, I. 287.--Harduin. Concil. VII. 203-8.--D’Achery Spicileg. III. 606.--Potthast No. 9771.--Epistt. Sæculi XIII. T. I. No. 577 (Mon. Germ. Hist.).--Matt. Paris ann. 1334, p. 280.--Vaissette, III. 399-400, 406.--Hist. Diplom. Frid. II. T. IV. pp. 485, 799-802.
[20] Pelisso Chron. pp. 25-8.
[21] Pelisso Chron. pp. 30-40.--Bern. Guidon. Hist. Fundat. Convent. Præidicat. (Martene Thesaur. VI. 460-1).--Epistt. Sæculi XIII. T. I. No. 688 (Mon. Germ. Hist.).--Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 43.
[22] Martene Thesaur. I. 992.--Epistt. Sæculi XIII. T. I. No. 688 (Mon. Germ. Hist.)--Teulet, Layettes, II. 314. The subordination of the bishop to the inquisitors is further shown in the excommunication of the viguier and consuls of Toulouse, July 24, 1237, in which Bishop Raymond and other prelates are mentioned as assessors to the inquisitors (Doat, XXI. 148).
[23] Potthast No. 10152.--Epistt. Sæcul. XIII T. I. No. 700 (Mon. Germ. Hist.).--Hist. Diplom. Frid. II. T. IV. P. II. p. 912.--Vaissette, III. 408.--Pelisso Chron. pp. 40-1.
[24] Pelisso Chron. p. 41-2.
[25] Coll. Doat, XXI. 163.
[26] Pelisso Chron. pp. 43-51.--Coll. Doat, XXI. 149.--It is probable that among these victims perished Vigoros de Bocona, a Catharan bishop. Alberic de Trois Fontaines places his burning in Toulouse in 1233 (Chron. ann. 1233), but there is evidence of his being still alive and active in 1235 or 1236 (Doat, XXII. 222). He was ordained a “filius major” in Montségur about 1229, by the Catharan bishop, Guillabert de Castres (Doat, XXII. 226), and his name as that of a revered teacher continues for many years to occur in the confessions of penitents.
[27] Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 43.--Arch, de l’Évêché de Béziers (Doat, XXXI. 35).--Bern. Guidon. Libell. de Magist. Ord. Prædic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 422).--Raynald. ann. 1237, No. 32.
[28] Epistt. Sæculi XIII. T. I. No. 706 (Mon. Germ. Hist).--Potthast No. 10357, 10361.--Raynald. ann. 1237, No. 33, 37.--Teulet, Layettes, II. 339, No. 2514.--Vaissette, III. 410.--Coll. Doat, XXI. 146. A deposition of Raymond Jean of Albi, April 30, 1238 (Doat, XXIII. 273), probably marks the term of the activity of the Inquisition before its suspension.
[29] Teulet, Layettes, II. 377, 386.--Epistt. Sæculi XIII. T. I. No. 731 (Mon. Germ. Hist.).--Raynald. ann. 1239, No. 71-3.--Arch. du Vatican T. XIX. (Berger, Actes d’Innocent IV. p. xix.).
[30] Arch. Nat. de France J. 430. No. 19, 20.--Guill. Pod. Laurent, c. 43.--Vaissette, III. 411.
[31] Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 43.--Guill. Nangiac. Gest. S. Ludov. ann. 1239.--Vaissette, III. 420.--Bern. Guidon. Vit. Gregor. PP. IX. (Muratori S. R. I. III. 574).--Teulet, Layettes, II. 457. It was not until 1247 that Trencavel released the consuls of Béziers from their allegiance to him.--Mascaro, Libre de Memorias, ann. 1247.
[32] A. Molinier (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VII. 448-61).--Douais, Les Albigeois, Paris, 1879; Pieces justif. No. 4.
[33] D’Achery Spicileg. III. 621.--Vaissette, III. 424; Pr. 400.
[34] Guillem de Tudela V. 8980, 9183.--Trésor des Chartes du Roi à Carcassonne (Doat, XXII. 34-49).--Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VIII. 975.--Teulet, Layettes, II. 252, No. 2241.--Vaissette, III. 383, 422-3; Pr. 385, 397-99.--Ripoll VII. 9.--Potthast No. 9024.--Pelisso Chron. pp. 28-9.--Coll. Doat, XXI. 163-164, 166; XXIV. 81.
[35] The document is in the Collection Doat, XXI. 185 sqq.--Although it does not specify that the cases are of voluntary penitents within the time of grace, there is no risk in assuming this. The penances are all of the kind provided for such penitents; and in one case (fol. 220) it is mentioned that the party had not come in within the time, which would infer that the rest had done so. Besides, the extraordinary speed with which the business was transacted is wholly incompatible with prosecutions of accused persons striving to maintain their innocence.
[36] Coll. Doat, XXI. 210, 215, 216, 227, 229, 230, 238, 265, 283, 285, 293, 299, 300, 301, 305, 307, 308, 310.
When such was the measure meted out to spontaneous penitents within the time of grace, with harsher measures in reserve for those subsequently detected, we can easily imagine the feelings inspired by the Inquisition in the whole population, without distinction of creed, and the terror common to all when the rumor spread that the inquisitors were coming. Scarce any one but was conscious of some act—perhaps of neighborly charity—that rendered him a criminal to the awful fanaticism of Pierre Cella or Guillem Arnaud. The heretics themselves would look to be imprisoned for life, with confiscation, or to be burned, or sent to Constantinople to support the tottering Latin Empire; while the Catholics were likely to fare little better on the distant pilgrimages to which they were sentenced, even though they were spared the sterner punishments or the humiliation of the saffron cross. Such a visit would bring, even to the faithful, the desolation of a pestilence. The inquisitors would pass calmly on, leaving a neighborhood well-nigh depopulated—fathers and mothers despatched to distant shrines for months or years, leaving dependent families to starve, or harvests ungathered to be the prey of the first-comer, all the relations of a life, hard enough at the best, disturbed and broken up. Even such a record as that of Pierre Cella’s sentences rendered within the time of grace shows but a portion of the work. A year or two later we find the Council of Narbonne beseeching the inquisitors to delay rendering sentences of incarceration, because the numbers of those flocking in for reconciliation after the expiration of the term of grace were so great that it would be impossible to raise funds for their maintenance, or to find stones enough, even in that mountainous land, to build prisons to contain them.[37] That a whole vicinage, when it had timely notice, should bind itself in a league to defeat the purpose of the inquisitors, as at Castelnaudary, must have been a frequent experience; that, sooner or later, despair should bring about a catastrophe like that of Avignonet was inevitable.
Montségur for years had been the Mount Tabor of the Cathari—the place of refuge in which, as its name implies, they could feel secure when safety could be hoped for nowhere else. It had been destroyed, but early in the century Raymond de Péreille had rebuilt it, and for forty years he held it as an asylum for heretics, whom he defended to the utmost of his ability. In 1232 the Catharan bishops Tento of Agen and Guillabert de Castres of Toulouse, with a number of ministers, foreseeing, in the daily increasing pressure of persecution, the necessity of some stronghold which should serve as an asylum, arranged with Raymond that he should receive and shelter all fugitives of the sect and guard the common treasure to be deposited there. His castle, situated in the territories of the marshals of Mirepoix, had never opened its gates to the Frenchmen. Its almost inaccessible peak had been sedulously strengthened with all that military experience could suggest or earnest devotion could execute. Ever since the persecutions of the Inquisition commenced we hear of those who fled to Montségur when they found the inquisitor’s hand descending upon them. Dispossessed knights, faidits of all kinds, brought their swords to its defence; Catharan bishops and ministers sought it when hard pressed, or made it a resting-place in their arduous and dangerous mission-work. Raymond de Péreille himself sought its shelter when, compromised by the revelations of Raymond Gros, he fled from Toulouse, in 1237, with his wife Corba; the devotion of his race to heresy being further proved by the fate of his daughter Esclarmonde, who perished for her faith at the stake, and by the Catharan episcopate of his brother Arnaud Roger. Such a stronghold in the hands of desperate men, fired with the fiercest fanaticism, was a menace to the stability of the new order in the State; to the Church it was an accursed spot whence heresy might at any moment burst forth to overspread the land again. Its destruction had long been the desire of all good Catholics, and Raymond’s pledge to King Louis, March 14, 1241, to capture it had been one of the conditions on which his suspicious relations with Trencavel had been condoned. In fact, he made some show of besieging it during the same year, but success would have been most damaging to the plans which he was nursing, and his efforts can scarce have been more than a cover for military preparations destined to a far different object. The French army, after the suppression of the rising, also laid siege to Montségur, but were unable to effect its reduction.[38]
On Ascension night, 1242, while Pierre Cella was tranquilly winding up his work at Montauban, the world was startled with the news that a holocaust of the terrible inquisitors had been made at Avignonet, a little town about twelve leagues from Toulouse. The stern Guillem Arnaud and the courteous Étienne de Saint-Thibery were making, like their colleague Pierre Cella, a circuit through the district subjected to their mercy. Some of their sentences which have been preserved show that in November, 1241, they were laboring at Lavaur and at Saint-Paul de Caujoux, and in the spring of 1242 they came to Avignonet.[39] Raymond d’Alfaro was its bailli for the count, who was his uncle through his mother, Guillemetta, a natural daughter of Raymond VI. When he heard that the inquisitors and their assistants were coming he lost no time in preparing for their destruction. A swift messenger was despatched to the heretics of Montségur, and in answer to his summons Pierre Roger of Mirepoix, with a number of knights and their retainers, started at once. They halted in the forest of Gaiac, near Avignonet, where food was brought them, and they were joined by about thirty armed men of the vicinage, who waited with them till after nightfall. Had this plot failed, d’Alfaro had arranged another for an ambuscade on the road to Castelnaudary, and the fact that so extensive a conspiracy could be organized on the spot, without finding a traitor to betray it, shows how general was the hate that had been earned by the cruel work of the Inquisition. Not less significant is the fact that on their return to Montségur the murderers were hospitably entertained at the Château de Saint-Félix by a priest who was cognizant of their bloody deed.
The victims came unsuspectingly to the trap. There were eleven in all. The two inquisitors, with two Dominican friars, and one Franciscan, the Benedictine Prior of Avignonet, Raymond de Costiran, Archdeacon of Lezat, a former troubadour, of whose verses only a single obscene song remains, a clerk of the archdeacon, a notary, and two apparitors—in all a court fully furnished for the despatch of business. They were hospitably received and housed in the castle of the count, where on the morrow they were to open their dread tribunal for the trembling inhabitants. When darkness came a selected band of twelve, armed with axes, left the forest and stole cautiously to a postern of the castle, where they were met by Golairan, a comrade of d’Alfaro, who assured himself that all was right, and returned to see what the inquisitors were doing. Coming back, he reported that they were drinking; but a second visit, after an interval, brought the welcome news that they were going to bed. As though apprehensive of danger, they had remained together in the great hall, and had barricaded the door. The gate was opened, the men of Montségur were admitted and were joined by d’Alfaro, armed with a mace, and twenty-five men of Avignonet, and the fact that an esquire in the service of the inquisitors was with him indicates that there was treachery at work. The hall-door was quickly broken down, the wild band of assassins rushed in, and, after despatching their victims, there was a fierce chorus of gratified vengeance, each man boasting of his share in the bloody deed—d’Alfaro especially, who shouted “Va be, esta be,” and claimed that his mace had done its full duty in the murderous work. Its crushing of Guillem Arnaud’s skull had deprived Pierre Roger de Mirepoix, the second in command at Montségur, of the drinking-cup which he had demanded as his reward for the assistance furnished. The plunder of the victims was eagerly shared between the assassins—their horses, books, garments—even to their scapulars. When the news reached Rome, the College of Cardinals made haste to express their belief that the victims had become blessed martyrs of Jesus Christ, and one of the first acts of Innocent IV., after his installation in June, 1243, was to repeat this declaration; but they never were canonized, in spite of frequent requests to the Holy See, and of the numerous miracles which attested their sanctity in the popular cult, until, in 1866, Pius IX. gave them tardy recognition.[40]
Like the murder of the legate Pierre de Castelnau, in 1208, the massacre of Avignonet was a fatal error. Its violation of the traditional sanctity of the ecclesiastic sent a thrill of horror even among those who had small sympathy with the cruelty of the Inquisition, while the deliberateness of its planning and its unsparing ferocity gave color to the belief that heresy was only to be extirpated by force. Sympathy, indeed, for a time might well change sides, for the massacre was practically unavenged. Frère Ferrer, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, made due inquest into the affair, and after the capture of Montségur, in 1244, some of the participants confessed all the details, but the real culprits escaped. Count Raymond, it is true, when he had leisure from pressing business, hanged a few of the underlings, but we find Raymond d’Alfaro, in 1247, promoted to be Viguier of Toulouse, and representing his master in the proceedings with regard to the burial of the old count, and, finally, he was one of the nine witnesses to Raymond’s last will. Another ringleader, Guillem du Mas-Saintes-Puelles, is recorded as taking the oath of allegiance to Count Alfonse, in 1249, after the death of Raymond. Guillem’s participation in the murders has special interest, as showing the antagonism created by the violence of the Inquisition, for in 1233, as Bailli of Lavaur, he had dutifully seized a number of heretics and carried them to Toulouse, where they were promptly burned.[41]
The massacre of Avignonet came at a time peculiarly unfortunate for Count Raymond, who was nursing comprehensive and far-reaching plans, then ripe for execution, for the rehabilitation of his house and the independence of his land. He could not escape the responsibility for the catastrophe which public opinion everywhere attached to him. Although he had recently, on March 14, solemnly sworn to persecute heresy with his whole strength when, apparently sick unto death, he had sought absolution at the hands of the episcopal official of Agen, yet he was known to be hostile to the Dominicans as inquisitors, and had bitterly opposed the restoration of their functions. On May 1, just four weeks before the event, he had made a solemn declaration in the presence of numerous prelates and nobles to the effect that he had appealed to Rome against the commission of Dominican inquisitors by the provincial in his territories, and that he intended to prosecute that appeal. He protested that he earnestly desired the eradication of heresy, and urged the bishops to exercise energetically their ordinary power to that end, promising his full support to them and the execution of the law both as to confiscation and the death-penalty. He would even accept the friars as inquisitors provided they acted independently of their Orders, and not under the authority of their provincials. One of his baillis even threatened, in the church of Moissac, seizure of person and property for all who should submit to the penalties imposed by the inquisitors, as they were not authorized by the count to administer justice. Such being his position, it was inevitable that he should be regarded as an accomplice in the murders, and that the cause which he represented should suffer greatly in the revulsion of public feeling which it occasioned.[42]
Raymond had been busy in effecting a widespread alliance which should wring from the House of Capet its conquests of the last quarter of a century. He had been joined by the Kings of England, Castile, and Aragon, and the Count de la Marche, and everything bid fair for his reconquest of his old domains. The massacre of Avignonet was a most untoward precursor of the revolt which burst forth immediately afterwards. It shook the fidelity of some of his vassals, who withdrew their support; and, to counteract its impression, he felt obliged to convert his sham siege of Montségur into an active one, thus employing troops which he could ill spare. Yet the rising, for a while, promised success, and Raymond even reassumed his old title of Duke of Narbonne. King Louis, however, was equal to the occasion, and allowed the allies no time to concentrate their forces. His victories over the English and Gascons at Taillebourg and Saintes, July 19 and 23, deprived Raymond of all hope of assistance from that quarter. Pestilence forced the withdrawal of the main army of Louis, but a force under the veteran Imbert de Beaujeu operated actively against Raymond, who, without help from his allies and deserted by many of his vassals, was obliged to lay down his arms, December 22. When suing for peace he pledged himself to extirpate heresy and to punish the assassins of Avignonet with an effusiveness which shows the importance attached to these conditions. The sagacity and moderation of King Louis granted him easy terms, but one of the stipulations of settlement was that every male inhabitant over the age of fifteen should take an oath to assist the Church against heresy, and the king against Raymond, in case of another revolt. Thus the purity of the faith and the supremacy of the foreign domination were once again recognized as inseparably allied.[43]
The triumph of both had been secured. This ended the last serious effort of the South to recover its independence. Henceforth, under the treaty of Paris, it was to pass irrevocably into the hands of the stranger, and the Inquisition was to have unrestricted opportunity to enforce conformity in religion. It was in vain that Raymond again, at the Council of Béziers, April 20, 1243, summoned the bishops of his dominions—those of Toulouse, Agen, Cahors, Albi, and Rodez—urging them personally or through proper deputies, whether Cistercians, Dominicans, or Franciscans, to make diligent inquisition after heresy, and pledged the assistance of the secular arm for its extirpation. It was equally in vain that, immediately on the accession of Innocent IV., in June, a deputation of Dominicans, frightened by the warning of Avignonet, earnestly alleged many reasons why the dangerous burden should be lifted from their shoulders. The pope peremptorily refused, and ordered them to continue their holy labors, even at the risk of martyrdom.[44]
Despite this single exhibition of hesitation and weakness, the Order was not lacking in men whose eager fanaticism rendered them fully prepared to accept the perilous post. The peril, indeed, was apparent rather than real—it had passed away in the revulsion which followed the useless bloodshed of Avignonet and the failure of Raymond’s rebellion. There was a rising tide in favor of orthodoxy. A confraternity organized in October, 1243, by Durand, Bishop of Albi, is probably only the expression of what was going on in many places. Organized under the protection of St. Cecilia, the members of the association pledged themselves not only to mutual protection, but to aid the bishop to execute justice on heretics, Vaudois and their fautors, and to defend inquisitors as they would their own bodies. Any member suspected of heresy was to be incontinently ejected, and a reward of a silver mark was offered for every heretic captured and delivered to the association. The new pope had, moreover, spoken in no uncertain tone. His refusal to relieve the Dominicans was accompanied with a peremptory command to all the prelates of the region to extend favor, assistance, and protection to the inquisitors in their toils and tribulations. Any slackness in this was freely threatened with the papal vengeance, while favor was significantly promised as the reward of zeal. The Dominicans were urged to fresh exertion to overcome the threatened recrudescence of heresy. A new legate, Zoen, Bishop-elect of Avignon, was also despatched to Languedoc, with instructions to act vigorously. His predecessor had been complained of by the inquisitors for having, in spite of their remonstrances, released many of their prisoners and remitted penances indiscriminately. All such acts of misplaced mercy were pronounced void, and Zoen was ordered to reimpose all such penalties without appeal.[45]
Still more menacing to the heretic cause was the reconciliation at last effected between Raymond and the papacy. In September, 1243, the count visited Italy, where he had an interview with Frederic II. in Apulia, and with Innocent in Rome. For ten years he had been under excommunication, and had carried on an unavailing struggle. He could no longer cherish illusions, and was doubtless ready to give whatever assurances might be required of him. On the other hand, the new pope was free from the predispositions which the long strife had engendered in Gregory IX. There seems to have been little difficulty in reaching an understanding, to which the good offices of Louis IX. powerfully contributed. December 2, Raymond was released from his various excommunications; January 1, 1244, the absolution was announced to King Louis and the prelates of the kingdom, who were ordered to publish it in all the churches, and January 7 the Legate Zoen was instructed to treat him with fatherly affection and not permit him to be molested. In all this absolution had only been given ad cautelam, or provisionally, for a special excommunication had been decreed against him as a fautor of heretics, after the massacre of Avignonet, by the inquisitors Ferrer and Guillem Raymond. Against this he had made a special appeal to the Holy See in April, 1243, and a special bull of May 16, 1244, was required for its abrogation. No conditions seem to have been imposed respecting the long-deferred crusade, and thenceforth Raymond lived in perfect harmony with the Holy See. Indeed, he was the recipient of many favors. A bull of March 18, 1244, granted him the privilege that for five years he should not be forced by apostolic letters to answer in judgment outside of his own dominions; another of April 27, 1245, took him, his family, and lands under the special protection of St. Peter and the papacy; and yet another of May 12, 1245, provided that no delegate of the Apostolic See should have power to utter excommunication or any other sentence against him without a special mandate. Besides this, one of April 21, 1245, imposed some limitations on the power of inquisitors, limitations which they seem never to have observed. Raymond was fairly won over. He had evidently resolved to accommodate himself to the necessities of the time, and the heretic had nothing further to hope or the inquisitor to fear from him. The preparation for increased and systematic vigor of operations is seen in the elaborate provisions, so often referred to above, of the Council of Narbonne, held at this period.[46]
Yet so long as heresy retained the stronghold of Montségur as a refuge and rallying-point its secret and powerful organization could not be broken. The capture of that den of outlaws was a necessity of the first order, and as soon as the confusion of the rebellion of 1242 had subsided it was undertaken as a crusade, not by Raymond, but by the Archbishop of Narbonne, the Bishop of Albi, the Seneschal of Carcassonne, and some nobles, either led by zeal or by the hope of salvation. The heretics, on their side, were not idle. Some baillis of Count Raymond sent them Bertrand de la Bacalairia, a skilful maker of military engines, to aid them in the defence, who made no scruple in affirming that he came with the assent of the count, and from every side money, provisions, arms, and munitions of war were poured into the stronghold. In the spring of 1243 the siege began, prosecuted with indefatigable ardor by the besiegers, and resisted with desperate resolution by the besieged. As in the old combats at Toulouse, the women assisted their warriors, and the venerable Catharan bishop, Bertrand Martin, animated their devoted courage with promises of eternal bliss. It is significant of the public temper that sympathizers in the besiegers’’ camp permitted tolerably free communication between the besieged and their friends, and gave them warning of the plans of attack. Even the treasure which had been stored up in Montségur was conveyed away safely through the investing lines, about Christmas, 1243, to Pons Arnaud de Châteauverdun in the Savartès. Secret relations were maintained with Count Raymond, and the besieged were buoyed up with promises that if they would hold out until Easter, 1244, he would march to their relief with forces supplied by the Emperor Frederic II. It was all in vain. The siege dragged on its weary length for nearly a year, till, on the night of March 1, 1244, guided by some shepherds who betrayed their fellow-countrymen, by almost inaccessible paths among the cliffs, the crusaders surprised and carried one of the outworks. The castle was no longer tenable. A brief parley ensued, and the garrison agreed to surrender at dawn, delivering up to the archbishop all the perfected heretics among them, on condition that the lives of the rest should be spared. Although a few were let down from the walls with ropes and thus escaped, the capitulation was carried out, and the archbishop’s shrift was short. At the foot of the mountain-peak an enclosure of stakes was formed, piled high with wood, and set on fire. The Perfect were asked to renounce their faith, and on their refusal were cast into the flames. Thus perished two hundred and five men and women. The conquerors might well write exultingly to the pope, “We have crushed the head of the dragon!”[47]
Although the lives of the rest of the captives were guaranteed, they were utilized to the utmost. For months the inquisitors Ferrer and P. Durant devoted themselves to the examinations to secure evidence against heretics far and near, dead and alive. From the aged Raymond de Péreille to a child ten years of age, they were forced, under repeated interrogatories, to recall every case of adoration and heretication that they could remember, and page after page was covered with interminable lists of names of those present at sermons and consolamenta through a period extending back to thirty or forty years before, and embracing the whole land as far as Catalonia. Even those who had brought victual to Montségur and sold it were carefully looked after and set down. It can readily be conceived what an accession was made to the terrible records of the Inquisition, and how valuable was the insight obtained into the ramifications of heresy throughout the land during more than a generation—what digging up of bones would follow with confiscation of estates, and with what unerring certainty the inquisitors would be able to seize their victims and confound their denials. We can only guess at the means by which this information was extracted from the prisoners. Torture had not yet been introduced; life had been promised, and perpetual imprisonment was inevitable for such pronounced heretics; and when we see Raymond de Péreille himself, who had endured unflinchingly the vicissitudes of the crusades, and had bravely held out to the last, ransacking his memory to betray all whom he had ever seen adore a minister, we can imagine the horrors of the two months’’ preliminary captivity which had so broken his spirit as to bring him to this depth of degradation. Even a perfected heretic, Arnaud de Bretos, captured while flying to Lombardy, was induced to reveal the names of all who had given him shelter and attended his ministrations during his missionary wanderings.[48]
Henceforth the Cathari could hope only in God. All chance of resistance was over. One by one their supports had broken, and there was only left the passive resistance of martyrdom. The Inquisition could track and seize its victims at leisure, and king and count could follow with decrees of confiscation which were gradually to transfer the lands of the South to orthodox and loyal subjects. The strongest testimony that can be given to the living earnestness of the Catharan faith is to be found in the prolongation of this struggle yet through three hopeless generations. It is no wonder, however, if the immediate effect of these crowding events was to fill the heretics with despair. In the poem of Isarn de Villemur, written about this period, the heretic, Sicard de Figueras is represented as saying that their best and most trusted friends are turning against them and betraying them. How many believers at this juncture abandoned their religion, even at the cost of lifelong imprisonment, we have no means of accurately estimating, but the number must have been enormous, to judge from the request, already alluded to, of the Council of Narbonne about this time to the inquisitors to postpone their sentences in view of the impossibility of building prisons sufficient to contain the crowds who hurried in to accuse themselves and seek reconciliation, after the expiration of the time of grace, which Innocent IV., in December, 1243, had ordered to be designated afresh.[49]
Yet, in a population so thoroughly leavened with heresy, these thousands of voluntary penitents still left an ample field of activity for the zeal of the inquisitors. Each one who confessed was bound to give the names of all whom he had seen engaged in heretical acts, and of all who had been hereticated on the death-bed. Innumerable clews were thus obtained to bring to trial those who failed to accuse themselves, and to exhume and burn the bones of those who were beyond the ability to recant. For the next few years the life of the inquisitors was a busy one. The stunned populations no longer offered resistance, and grew used to the despair of the penitents sentenced to perpetual prison, the dragging of decomposed corpses through the streets, and the horror of the Tophets where the victims passed through temporal to eternal flame. Still there is a slight indication that the service was not wholly without danger from the goadings of vengeance or the courage of despair, when the Council of Béziers, in 1246, ordering travelling inquests, makes exception in the cases when it may not be safe for the inquisitors to personally visit the places where the inquisition should be held; and Innocent IV., in 1247, authorizes the inquisitors to cite the accused to come to them, in view of the perils arising from the ambushes of heretics.[50]
The fearless and indefatigable men who now performed the functions of inquisitor in Languedoc can rarely have taken advantage of this concession to weakness. Bernard de Caux, who so well earned the title of the hammer of heretics, was at this time the leading spirit of the Inquisition of Toulouse, after a term of service in Montpellier and Agen, and he had for colleague a kindred spirit in Jean de Saint-Pierre. Together they made a thorough inquest over the whole province, passing the population through a sieve with a completeness which must have left few guilty consciences unexamined. There is extant a fragmentary record of this inquest, covering the years 1245 and 1246, during which no less than six hundred places were investigated, embracing about one half of Languedoc. The magnitude of the work thus undertaken, and the incredible energy with which it was pushed, is seen in the enormous number of interrogatories recorded in petty towns. Thus at Avignonet there are two hundred and thirty; at Fanjoux, one hundred; at Mas-Saintes-Puelles, four hundred and twenty. M. Molinier, to whom we are indebted for an account of this interesting document, has not made an accurate count of the whole number of cases, but estimates that the total cannot fall far short of eight thousand to ten thousand. When we consider what all this involved in the duty of examination and comparison we may well feel wonder at the superhuman energy of these founders of the Inquisition; but we may also assume, as with the sentences of Pierre Cella, that the fate of the victims who were sifted out of this mass of testimony must have been passed upon with no proper or conscientious scrutiny. At least, however, they must have escaped the long and torturing delays customary in the later and more leisurely stages of the Inquisition. With such a record before us it is not easy to understand the complaint of the bishops of Languedoc, in 1245, that the Inquisition was too merciful, that heresy was increasing, and that the inquisitors ought to be urged to greater exertions. It was possibly in consequence of the lack of harmony thus revealed between the episcopate and the Inquisition that Innocent, in April of the same year, ordered the Inquisitors of Languedoc to proceed as usual in cases of manifest heresy, and in those involving slight punishment, while he directed them to suspend proceedings in matters requiring imprisonment, crosses, long pilgrimages, and confiscation until definite rules should be laid down in the Council of Lyons, which he was about to open. These questions, however, were settled in that of Béziers, which met in 1246, and issued a new code of procedure.[51]
In all this Count Raymond, now thoroughly fitted in the Catholic groove, was an earnest participant. As his stormy life drew to its close, harmony with the Church was too great an element of comfort and prosperity for him to hesitate in purchasing it with the blood of a few of his subjects, whom, indeed, he could scarce have saved had he so willed. He gave conspicuous evidence of his hatred of heresy. In 1247 he ordered his officials to compel the attendance of the inhabitants at the sermons of the friars in all towns and villages through which they passed, and in 1249, at Berlaiges, near Agen, he coldly ordered the burning of eighty believers who had confessed their errors in his presence—a piece of cruelty far transcending that habitual with the inquisitors. About the same time King Jayme of Aragon effected a change in the Inquisition in the territories of Narbonne. Possibly this may have had some connection with the murder by the citizens of two officials of the Inquisition and the destruction of its records, giving endless trouble in the effort to reconstruct the lists of sentences and the invaluable accumulation of evidence against suspects. Be this as it may, Innocent IV., at the request of the king, forbade the archbishop and inquisitors from further proceedings against heresy, and then empowered the Dominican Provincial of Spain and Raymond of Pennaforte to appoint new ones for the French possessions of Aragon.[52]
When St. Louis undertook his disastrous crusade to Damietta he was unwilling to leave behind him so dangerous a vassal as Raymond. The vow of service to Palestine had long since been remitted by Innocent IV., but the count was open to persuasion, and the bribes offered show at once the importance attached to his presence with the host and to his absence from home. The king promised him twenty thousand to thirty thousand livres for his expenses and the restitution of the duchy of Narbonne on his return. The pope agreed to pay him two thousand marks on his arrival beyond seas, and that he should have during his absence all the proceeds of the redemption of vows and all legacies bequeathed to the crusade. The prohibition of imposing penitential crusades on converted heretics was also suspended for his benefit, while the other long pilgrimages customarily employed as penances were not to be enjoined while he was in service. Stimulated by these dazzling rewards, he assumed the cross in earnest, and his ardor for the purity of the faith grew stronger. Even the tireless activity of Bernard de Caux was insufficient to satisfy him. While that incomparable persecutor was devoting all his energies to working up the results of his tremendous inquests, Raymond, early in 1248, complained to Innocent that the Inquisition was neglecting its duty; that heretics, both living and dead, remained uncondemned; that others from abroad were coming into his own and neighboring territories and spreading their pestilence, so that the land which had been well-nigh purified was again filled with heresy.[53]
Death spared Raymond the misfortunes of the ill-starred Egyptian crusade. When his preparations were almost complete he was seized with mortal illness and died, September 27, 1249, with his latest breath ordering his heirs to restore the sums which he had received for the expedition, and to send fifty knights to serve in Palestine for a year. That his death was generally regretted by his subjects we can readily believe. Not only was it the extinction of the great house which had bravely held its own from Carlovingian times, but the people felt that the last barrier between them and the hated Frenchmen was removed. The heiress Jeanne had been educated at the royal court, and was French in all but birth. Moreover, she seems to have been a nonentity whose influence is imperceptible, and the sceptre of the South passed into the hands of Alphonse of Poitiers, an avaricious and politic prince, whose zeal for orthodoxy was greatly stimulated by the profitable confiscations resulting from persecution. Raymond had required repeated urging to induce him to employ this dreaded penalty with the needful severity. No such watchfulness was necessary in the case of Alphonse. When the rich heritage fell in, he and his wife were with his brother, King Louis, in Egypt, but the vigilant regent, Queen Blanche, promptly took possession in their name, and on their return, in 1251, they personally received the homage of their subjects. By a legal subtlety Alphonse evaded the payment of the pious legacies of Raymond’s will, and compounded for it by leaving, on his departure for the North, a large sum to provide for the expenses of the Inquisition, and to furnish wood for the execution of its sentences. Not long afterwards we find him urging his bishops to render more efficient support to the labors of the inquisitors; in his chancery there was a regular formula of a commission for inquisitors, to be sent to Rome for the papal signature; and throughout his twenty years of reign he pursued the same policy without deviation. The urgency with which, in December, 1268, he wrote to Pons de Poyet and Étienne de Gátine, stimulating them to redoubled activity in clearing his dominions of heretics, was wholly superfluous, but it is characteristic of the line of action which he carried out consistently to the end.[54]
The fate of Languedoc was now irrevocably sealed. Hitherto there had been hopes that perhaps Raymond’s inconstancy might lead him to retrace the steps of the last few years. Moreover, his subjects had shared in the desire, manifested in his repeated marriage projects, that he should have an heir to inherit the lands not pledged in succession to his daughter. He was but in his fifty-first year, and the expectation was not unreasonable that his line might be perpetuated and the southern nationality be preserved. All this was now seen to be a delusion, and the most sanguine Catharan could look forward to nothing but a life of concealment ending in prison or fire. Yet the heretic Church stubbornly held its own, though with greatly diminished numbers. Many of its members fled to Lombardy, where, even after the death of Frederic II., the civic troubles and the policy of local despots, such as Ezzelin da Romano, afforded some shelter from the Inquisition. Yet many remained and pursued their wandering missions among the faithful, perpetually tracked by inquisitorial spies, but rarely betrayed. These humble and forgotten men, hopelessly braving hardship, toil, and peril in what they deemed the cause of God, were true martyrs, and their steadfast heroism shows how little relation the truth of a religion bears to the self-devotion of its followers. Rainerio Saccone, the converted Catharan, who had the best means of ascertaining the facts, computes, about this time, that there were in Lombardy one hundred and fifty “perfected” refugees from France, while the churches of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Albi, including that of Agen, then nearly destroyed, numbered two hundred more. These figures would indicate that a very considerable congregation of believers still existed in spite of the systematic and ruthless proscription of the past twenty years. Their earnestness was kept alive, not only by the occasional and dearly-prized visits of the travelling ministers, but by the frequent intercourse which was maintained with Lombardy. Until the disappearance of the sect on this side of the Alps, there is, in the confessions of penitents, perpetual allusion to these pilgrimages back and forth, which kept up the relations between the refugees and those left at home. Thus, in 1254, Guillem Fournier, in an interrogatory before the Inquisition of Toulouse, relates that he started for Italy with five companions, including two women. His first resting-place was at Coni, where he met many heretics; then at Pavia, where he was hereticated by Raymond Mercier, former deacon of Toulouse. At Cremona he lived for a year with Vivien, the much-loved Bishop of Toulouse, with whom he found a number of noble refugees. At Pisa he stayed for eight months; at Piacenza he again met Vivien, and he finally returned to Languedoc with messages from the refugees to their friends at home. In 1300, at Albi, Étienne Mascot confesses that he had been sent to Lombardy by Master Raymond Calverie to bring back Raymond André, or some other perfected heretic. At Genoa he met Bertrand Fabri, who had been sent on the same errand by Guillem Golfier. They proceeded together and met other old acquaintances, now refugees, who conducted them to a spot where, in a wood, were several houses of refuge for heretics. The lord of the place gave them a Lombard, Guglielmo Pagani, who returned with them. In 1309 Guillem Falquet confessed at Toulouse to having been four times to Como, and even to Sicily, organizing the Church. He was caught while visiting a sick believer, and condemned to imprisonment in chains, but managed to escape in 1313. At the same time was sentenced Raymond de Verdun, who had likewise been four times to Lombardy.[55]
The proscribed heretics, thus nursing their faith in secret, gave the inquisitors ample occupation. As their ranks were thinned by persecution and flight, and as their skill in concealment increased with experience, there could no longer be the immense harvests of penitents reaped by Pierre Gella and Bernard de Caux, but there were enough to reward the energies of the friars and to tax the adroitness of their spies. The organization of the Inquisition, moreover, was gradually perfected. In 1254 the Council of Albi carefully revised the regulations concerning it. Fixed tribunals were established, and the limitations of the inquisitorial districts were strictly defined. For Provence and the territories east of the Rhone, Marseilles was the headquarters, eventually confided to the Franciscans. The rest of the infected regions were left to the Dominicans, with tribunals at Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Narbonne; and, from such fragmentary documents as have reached us, at this time the Inquisition at Carcassonne rivalled that of Toulouse in energy and effectiveness. For a while safety was sought by heretics in northern France, but the increasing vigor of the Inquisition established there drove the unfortunate refugees back, and in 1255 a bull of Alexander IV. authorized the Provincial of Paris and his inquisitors to pursue the fugitives in the territories of the Count of Toulouse. At the same time the special functions of the inquisitors were jealously guarded against all encroachments. We have seen how, in its early days, it was subjected to the control of papal legates, but now that it was firmly established and thoroughly organized it was held independent; and when the legate Zoen, Bishop of Avignon, in 1257, endeavored, in virtue of his legatine authority, which fourteen years before had been so absolute, to perform inquisitorial work, he was rudely reminded by Alexander IV. that he could do so if he pleased in his own diocese, but that outside of it he must not interfere with the Inquisition. To this period is also to be ascribed the complete subjection of all secular officials to the behests of the inquisitors. The piety of St. Louis and the greed of Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou rivalled each other in placing all the powers of the State at the disposal of the Holy Office, and in providing for its expenses. It was virtually supreme in the land, and, as we have seen, it was a law unto itself.[56]
The last shadow of open resistance was dissipated in the year 1255. After the fall of Montségur the proscribed and disinherited knights, the faidits, and the heretics had sought to establish among the mountains some stronghold where they could feel safe for a moment. Driven from one retreat after another, they finally took possession of the castle of Quéribus, in the Pyrenees of Fenouillèdes. In the early spring of 1255 this last refuge was besieged by Pierre d’Auteuil, the royal Seneschal of Carcassonne. The defence was stubborn. May 5 the seneschal appealed to the bishops sitting in council at Béziers to give him assistance, as they had done so energetically at Montségur. The reply of the prelates was commendably cautious. They were not bound, they said, to render military service to the king, and when they had joined his armies it had been by command of a legate or of their primate, the Archbishop of Narbonne. Nevertheless, as common report described Quéribus as a receptacle of heretics, thieves, and robbers, and its reduction was a good work for the faith and for peace, they would each one, without derogating from his rights, furnish such assistance as seemed to him fitting. It may be assumed from this that the seneschal had to do the work unaided; in fact, he complained to the king that the prelates rather impeded than assisted him, but by August the place was in his hands, and nothing remained for the outlaws but the forest and the caverns. In that savage region the dense undergrowth afforded many a hiding-place, and an attempt was made to cut away the briers and thorns which served as shelter for ruined noble and hunted Catharan. The work was undertaken by a certain Bernard, who thence acquired the name of Espinasser or thorn-cutter. Popular hatred has preserved his remembrance, and expresses its sentiment in a myth which gibbets him in the moon.[57]
With the land at its feet, the Inquisition, in the plenitude of its power, had no hesitation in attacking the loftiest nobles, for all men were on a level in the eyes of the Most High, and the Holy Office was the avenger of God. The most powerful vassal of the houses of Toulouse and Aragon was the Count of Foix, whose extensive territories on both sides of the Pyrenees rendered him almost independent in his mountain fastnesses. Count Roger Bernard II., known as the Great, had been one of the bravest and most obstinate defenders of the land, and, after the pacification of 1229, Raymond had been obliged to threaten him with war to force him to submit. His memory was proudly treasured in the land as “Rogier Bernat lo pros et sens dengun reproche.” His family was deeply tinctured with heresy. His wife and one of his sisters were Waldenses, another sister was a Catharan, and the monk of Vaux-Cernay describes him as an enemy of God and a cruel persecutor of the Church. Yet, when he yielded in 1229, although he does not seem to have energetically fulfilled his oath to persecute heresy in his domains, for in 1233 we hear of his holding a personal conference at Aix with the heretic bishop Bertrand Martin, he was in other respects a loyal subject and faithful son of the Church. In 1237 he counselled his son, then Vizconde de Castelbo in Aragon, to allow the Inquisition in his lands, which resulted in the condemnation of many heretics, although Ponce, Bishop of Urgel, his personal enemy, had refused to relieve him of excommunication as a fautor of heresy until 1240, when he submitted to the conditions imposed, abjured heresy, and was reconciled. At his death, in 1241, he left liberal bequests to the Church, and especially to his ancestral Cistercian Abbey of Bolbonne, in which he died in monkish habit, after duly receiving the sacraments. His son, Roger IV., gave the coup de grâce to the rising of 1242, by placing himself under the immediate sovereignty of the crown, and defeating Raymond after the victories of St. Louis had driven back the English and Gascons. He had some troubles with the Inquisition, but a bull of Innocent IV., in 1248, eulogizes his devotion to the Holy See, and rewards him with the power to release from the saffron crosses six penitents of his choice; and in 1261 he issued an edict commanding the enforcement of the rule that no office within his domains should be held by any one condemned to wear crosses, any one suspected of heresy, or the son of any one similarly defamed.[58]
All this would seem to give ample guarantee of the orthodoxy and loyalty of the House of Foix, but the Inquisition could not condone its ancient patriotism and tolerance. Besides, if Roger Bernard the Great could be convicted of heresy, the confiscation of the broad inheritance would effect a great political object and afford ample spoils for all concerned. Twenty-two years after his death, therefore, in 1263, proceedings were commenced against his memory. A faithful servitor of the old count still survived, Raymond Bernard de Flascan, bailli of Mazères, who had attended his lord day and night during his last sickness. If he could be brought to swear that he had seen heretication performed on the death-bed, the desirable object would be attained. Frère Pons, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, came to Mazères, found the old man an unsatisfactory witness, and threw him into a dungeon. Suffering under a severe strangury, he was starved and tormented with all the cruel ingenuity of the Inquisition, and interrogated at intervals, without his resolution giving way. This was continued for thirty-two days, when Pons resolved to carry him back to Carcassonne, where possibly the appliances for bringing refractory witnesses to terms were more efficacious. Before the journey, which he expected to be his last, the faithful bailli was given a day’s respite at the Abbey of Bolbonne, which he utilized by executing a notarial instrument, November 26, 1263, attested by two abbots and a number of monks, in which he recited the trials already endured, solemnly declared that he had never seen the old count do anything contrary to the faith of Rome, but that he had died as a good Catholic, and that if, under the severe torture to which he expected to be subjected, human weakness should lead him to assert anything else, he would be a liar and a traitor, and no credence should be given to his words. It would be difficult to conceive of a more damning revelation of inquisitorial methods; yet fifty years later, when those methods had been perfected, all concerned in the preparation of the instrument, whether as notary or witnesses, would have been prosecuted as impeders of the Inquisition, to be severely punished as fautors of heresy.[59]
What became of the poor wretch does not appear. Doubtless he perished in the terrible Mura of Carcassonne under the combination of disease, torture, and starvation. His judicial murder, however, was gratuitous, for the old count’s memory remained uncondemned. Yet Roger Bernard III., despite the papal favor and the proofs he had given of adhesion to the new order of things, was a perpetual target for inquisitorial malice. When lying in mortal illness at Mazères, in December, 1264, he received from Étienne de Gâtine, then Inquisitor of Narbonne, an imperious order, with threats of prosecution in case of failure, to capture and deliver up his bailli of Foix, Pierre André, who was suspect of heresy and had fled on being cited to appear. The count dared only in reply to express surprise that no notice had been given him that his bailli was wanted, adding that he had issued orders for his arrest, and would have personally joined in the pursuit had not sickness rendered him incapable. At the same time he requested “Apostoli,” and appealed to the pope, to whom he retailed his grievances. The inquisitors, he said, had never ceased persecuting him; at the head of armed forces they were in the habit of devastating his lands under pretext of searching for heretics, and they would bring in their train and under their protection his special enemies, until his territories were nearly ruined and his jurisdiction set at naught. He, therefore, placed himself and his dominions under the protection of the Holy See. He probably escaped further personal troubles, for he died two months later, in February, 1265, like his father, in the Cistercian habit, and in the Abbey of Bolbonne; but in 1292 his memory was assailed before Bertrand de Clermont, Inquisitor of Carcassonne. The effort was fruitless, for in 1297 Bertrand gave to his son, Roger Bernard IV., a declaration that the accusation had been disproved, and that neither he nor his father should suffer in person or property in consequence of it.[60]
When such were the persecutions to which the greatest were exposed it is easy to understand the tyranny exercised over the whole land by the irresponsible power of the inquisitors. No one was so loftily placed as to be beyond their reach, no one so humble as to escape their spies. When once they had cause of enmity with a man there was no further peace for him. The only appeal from them was to the pope, and not only was Rome distant, but the avenue to it lay, as we have seen, in their own hands. Human wickedness and folly have erected, in the world’s history, more violent despotisms, but never one more cruel, more benumbing, or more all-pervading.
For the next twenty years there is little worthy of special note in the operations of the Inquisition of Languedoc. It pursued its work continuously with occasional outbursts of energy. Étienne de Gâtine, and Pons de Poyet, who presided over its tribunals for many years, were no sluggards, and the period from 1373 to 1375 rewarded their industry with an abundant harvest. Though heretics naturally grew scarcer with the unintermitting pursuit of so many years, there was still the exhaustless catalogue of the dead, whose exhumation furnished an impressive spectacle for the mob, while their confiscations were welcome to the pious princes, and contributed largely to the change of ownership of land which was a political consummation so desirable. Yet heresy with incredible stubbornness maintained itself, though its concealment grew ever more difficult, and Italy grew less safe as a refuge and less prolific as a source of inspiration.[61]
In 1271 Alphonse and Jeanne, who had accompanied St. Louis in his unlucky crusade to Tunis, died without issue, during the homeward journey. The line of Raymond was thus extinct, and the land passed irrevocably to the crown. Philippe le Hardi took possession even of the territories which Jeanne had endeavored, as was her right, to alienate by will, and though he surrendered the Agenois to Henry III., he succeeded in retaining Querci. No opposition was made to the change of masters. When, October 8, 1271, Guillaume de Cobardon, royal Seneschal of Carcassonne, issued his orders regulating the new régime, one of the first things thought of was the confiscations. All castles and villages which had been forfeited for heresy were taken into the king’s hand, without prejudice to the right of those to whom they might belong, thus throwing the burden of proof upon all claimants, and cutting out assigns under alienations. In 1272 Philippe paid a visit to his new territories; it was designed to be peaceful, but some violences committed by Roger Bernard IV. of Foix caused him to come at the head of an army, with which he easily overcame the resistance of the count, occupied his lands, and threw him into a dungeon. Released in 1273, the count in 1276 rendered such assistance in the invasion of Navarre that Philippe took him into favor and restored his castles, on his renouncing all allegiance to Aragon. Thus the last show of independence in the South was broken down, and the monarchy was securely planted on its ruins.[62]
This consolidation of the south of France under the kings of Paris was not without compensating advantages. The monarch was rapidly acquiring a centralized power, which was very different from the overlordship of a feudal suzerain. The study of the Roman law was beginning to bear fruit in the State as well as in the Church, and the imperial theories of absolutism as inherent in kingship were gradually altering all the old relations. The king’s court was expanding into the Parlement, and was training a school of subtle and resolute civil lawyers who lost no opportunity of extending the royal jurisdiction, and of legislating for the whole land in the guise of rendering judgments. In the appeals which came ever more thickly crowding into the Parlement from every quarter, the mailed baron found himself hopelessly entangled in the legal intricacies which were robbing him of his seignorial rights almost without his knowledge; and the Ordonnances, or general laws, which emanated from the throne, were constantly encroaching on old privileges, weakening local jurisdictions, and giving to the whole country a body of jurisprudence in which the crown combined both the legislative and the executive functions. If it thus was enabled to oppress, it was likewise stronger to defend, while the immense extension of the royal domains since the beginning of the century gave it the physical ability to enforce its growing prerogatives.
It was impossible that this metamorphosis in the national institutions could be effected without greatly modifying the relations between Church and State. Thus even the saintliness of Louis IX. did not prevent him from defending himself and his subjects from ecclesiastical domination in a spirit very different from that which any French monarch had ventured to exhibit since the days of Charlemagne. The change became still more manifest under his grandson, Philippe le Bel. Though but seventeen years of age when he succeeded to the throne in 1286, his rare ability and vigorous temper soon led him to assert the royal power in incisive fashion. He recognized, within the boundaries of his kingdom, no superior, secular or spiritual. Had he entertained any scruples of conscience, his legal counsellors could easily remove them. To such men as Pierre Flotte and Guillaume de Nogaret the true position of the Church was that of subjection to the State, as it had been under the successors of Constantine, and in their eyes Boniface VIII. was to their master scarce more than Pope Vigilius had been to Justinian. Few among the revenges of time are more satisfying than the catastrophe of Anagni, in 1303, when Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna laid hands on the vicegerent of God, and Boniface passionately replied to Nogaret’s reproaches, “I can patiently endure to be condemned and deposed by a Patarin”—for Nogaret was born at St. Felix de Caraman, and his ancestors were said to have been burned as Cathari. If this be true he must have been more than human if he did not feel special gratification when, at command of his master, he appeared before Clement V. with a formal accusation of heresy against Boniface, and demanded that the dead pope’s bones be dug up and burned. The citizens of Toulouse recognized him as an avenger of their wrongs when they placed his bust in the gallery of their illustrious men in the Hôtel-de-ville.[63]
It was to the royal power, thus rising to supremacy, that the people instinctively turned for relief from the inquisitorial tyranny which was becoming insupportable. The authority lodged in the hands of the inquisitor was so arbitrary and irresponsible that even with the purest intentions it could not but be unpopular, while to the unworthy it afforded unlimited opportunity for oppression and the gratification of the basest passions. Dangerous as was any manifestation of discontent, the people of Albi and Carcassonne, reduced to despair by the cruelty of the inquisitors, Jean Galande and Jean Vigoureux, mustered courage, and in 1280 presented their complaints to Philippe le Hardi. It was difficult to sustain their charges with specific proofs, and after a brief investigation their reiterated requests for relief were dismissed as frivolous. In the agitation against the Inquisition thus commenced, it must be borne in mind that heretics had little to do. By this time they were completely cowed and were quite satisfied if they could enjoy their faith in secret. The opposition arose from good Catholics, the magistrates of cities and substantial burghers, who saw the prosperity of the land withering under the deadly grasp of the Holy Office, and who felt that no man was safe whose wealth might arouse cupidity or whose independence might provoke revenge. The introduction of the use of torture impressed the popular imagination with special horror, and it was widely believed that confessions were habitually extorted by insufferable torment from rich men whose faith was unblemished. The cruel provisions which brought confiscation on the descendants of heretics, moreover, were peculiarly hard to endure, for ruin impended over every one against whom the inquisitor might see fit to produce from his records evidence of ancestral heresy. It was against these records that the next attempt was directed. Foiled in their appeal to the throne, the consuls of Carcassonne and some of its prominent ecclesiastics, in 1283 or 1284, formed a conspiracy to destroy the books of the Inquisition containing the confessions and depositions. How far this was organized it would be difficult now to say. The statements of the witnesses conflict so hopelessly on material points, even as to dates, that there is little dependence to be placed on them. They were evidently extracted under torture, and if they are credible the consuls of the city and the archdeacon, Sanche Morlana, the episcopal Ordinary, Guillem Brunet, other episcopal officials and many of the secular clergy were not only implicated in the plot, but were heretics in full affiliation with the Cathari. Whether true or false they show that there was the sharpest antagonism between the Inquisition and the local Church. The whole has an air of unreality which renders one doubtful about accepting any portion, but there must have been some foundation for the story. According to the evidence Bernard Garric, who had been a perfected heretic and a filius major, but had been converted and was now a familiar of the Inquisition, was selected as the instrument. He was approached, and after some bargaining he agreed to deliver the books for two hundred livres Tournois, for the payment of which the consuls went security. How the attempt failed and how it was discovered does not appear, but probably Bernard at the first overtures confided the plot to his superiors and led on the conspirators to their ruin.[64]
The whole community was now at the mercy of the Inquisition, and it was not disposed to be lenient in its triumph. While the trials were yet going on, the citizens made a fresh appeal to Pierre Chalus, the royal chancellor, who was passing through Toulouse on a mission from the court of Paris to that of Aragon. This was easily disposed of, for on September 13, 1285, the inquisitors triumphantly brought before him Bernard Garric to repeat the confession made a week previous. He had thoroughly learned his lesson, and the only conclusion which the royal representative could reach was that Carcassonne was a hopeless nest of heretics, deserving the severest measures of repression. As a last resort recourse was had to Honorius IV., but the only result was a brief from him to the inquisitors expressing his grief that the people of Carcassonne should be impeding the Inquisition with all their strength, and ordering the punishment of the recalcitrants irrespective of their station, order, or condition, an expression which shows that the opposition had not arisen from heretics.[65]
In reply to these complaints the inquisitors could urge with some truth that heresy, though hidden, was still busy. Although heretic seigneurs and nobles had been by this time well-nigh destroyed and their lands had passed to others, there was still infection among the bourgeoisie of the cities and the peasantry. It is one of the noteworthy features of Catharism, moreover, that at no time during its existence were lacking earnest and devoted ministers, who took their lives in their hands and wandered around in secret among the faithful, administering spiritual comfort and instruction, making converts where they could, exhorting the young and hereticating the old. In toil and hardship and peril they pursued their work, gliding by night from one place of concealment to another, and their self-devotion was rivalled by that of their disciples. Few more touching narratives can be conceived than those which could be constructed from the artless confessions extorted from the peasant-folk who fell into the hands of the inquisitors—the humble alms which they gave, pieces of bread, fish, scraps of cloth, or small coins, the hiding-places which they constructed in their cabins, the guidance given by night through places of danger, and, more than all, the steadfast fidelity which refused to betray their pastors when the inquisitor suddenly appeared and offered the alternative of free pardon or the dungeon and confiscation. The self-devotion of the minister was well matched with the quiet heroism of the believer. To this fidelity and the complete network of secret organization which extended over the land may be attributed the marvellously long exemption which many of these ministers enjoyed in their proselyting missions. Two of the most prominent of them at this period, Raymond Delboc and Raymond Godayl, or Didier, had already, in 1276, been condemned by the Inquisition of Carcassonne as perfected heretics and fugitives, but they kept at their work until the explosion of 1300, incessantly active, with the inquisitors always in pursuit but unable to overtake them. Guillem Pagès is another whose name constantly recurs in the confessions of heretications during an almost equally long period. The inquisitors might well urge that their utmost efforts were needed, but their methods were such that even the best intentions would not have saved the innocent from suffering with the guilty.[66]
The secretly guilty were quite sufficiently influential, and the innocent sufficiently apprehensive, to keep up the agitation which had been commenced, and at last it began to bear fruit. A new inquisitor of Carcassonne, Nicholas d’Abbeville, was quite as cruel and arbitrary as his predecessors, and when the people prepared an appeal to the king he promptly threw into jail the notary who drew up the paper. In their desperation they disregarded this warning; a deputation was sent to the court, and this time they were listened to. May 13, 1291, Philippe addressed a letter to his Seneschal of Carcassonne reciting the injuries inflicted by the Inquisition on the innocent through the newly-invented system of torture, by means of which the living and the dead were fraudulently convicted and the whole land scandalized and rendered desolate. The royal officials were therefore ordered no longer to obey the commands of the inquisitors in making arrests, unless the accused be a confessed heretic or persons worthy of faith vouch for his being publicly defamed for heresy. A month later he reiterated these orders even more precisely, and announced his intention of sending deputies to Languedoc armed with full authority to make permanent provision in the matter. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of these manifestoes as marking a new era in the relations between the temporal and spiritual authorities. For far less than this all the chivalry and scum of Europe had been promised salvation if they would drive Raymond of Toulouse from his inheritance.[67]
It was probably to break in some degree the force of this unheard-of interference with inquisitorial supremacy that in September, 1292, Guillem de Saint-Seine, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, ordered all the parish priests in his district for three weeks on Sundays and feast-days to denounce as excommunicate all who should impede the business of the Inquisition and all notaries who should wickedly draw up revocations of confessions for heretics. This could not effect much, nor was anything accomplished by a Parlement held April 14, 1293, at Montpellier, by the royal chamberlain, Alphonse de Ronceyrac, of all the royal officials and inquisitors of Toulouse and Carcassonne to reform the abuses of all jurisdictions.[68]
Shortly after this, in September, 1293, Philippe went a step further and threw his ægis over the unfortunate Jew. Although Jews as a class were not liable to persecution by the Inquisition, still, if after being once converted they reverted to Judaism, or if they proselyted among Christians to obtain converts, or if they were themselves converts from Christianity, they were heretics in the eyes of the Church, they fell under inquisitorial jurisdiction, and were liable to be abandoned to the secular arm. All these classes were a source of endless trouble to the Church, especially the “neophytes” or converted Jews, for feigned conversions were frequent, either for worldly advantage or to escape the incessant persecution visited upon the unlucky children of Israel.[69] The bull Turbato corde, ordering the inquisitors to be active and vigilant in prosecuting all who were guilty of these offences, issued in 1268 by Clement IV., was reissued by successive popes with a pertinacity showing the importance attached to it, and when we see Frère Bertrand de la Roche, in 1274, officially described as inquisitor in Provence against heretics and wicked Christians who embrace Judaism, and Frère Guillaume d’Auxerre, in 1285, qualified as “Inquisitor of Heretics and Apostate Jews in France,” it is evident that these cases formed a large portion of inquisitorial business. As the Jews were peculiarly defenceless, this jurisdiction gave wide opportunity for abuse and extortion which was doubtless turned fully to account. Philippe owed them protection, for in 1291 he had deprived them of their own judges and ordered them to plead in the royal courts, and now he proceeded to protect them in the most emphatic manner. To Simon Brisetête, Seneschal of Carcassonne, he sent a copy of the bull Turbato corde, with instructions that while this was to be implicitly obeyed, no Jew was to be arrested for any cause not specified therein, and, if there was any doubt, the matter was to be referred to the royal council. He further enclosed an Ordonnance directing that no Jew in France was to be arrested on the requisition of any person or friar of any Order, no matter what his office might be, without notifying the seneschal or bailli, who was to decide whether the case was sufficiently clear to be acted upon without reference to the royal council. Simon Brisetête thereupon ordered all officials to defend the Jews, not to allow any exactions to be imposed on them whereby their ability to pay their taxes might be impaired, and not to arrest them at the mandate of any one without informing him of the cause. It would not have been easy to limit more skilfully the inquisitorial power to oppress a despised class.[70]
Philippe had thus intervened in the most decided manner, and the oppressed populations of Languedoc might reasonably hope for permanent relief, but his subsequent policy belied their hopes. It vacillated in a manner which is only partially explicable by the shifting political exigencies of the times so far as we can penetrate them. In this same year, 1293, the Seneschal of Carcassonne is found instructing Aimeric, the Viscount of Narbonne, to execute royal letters ordering aid to be rendered to the inquisitors there. This may have been a mere local matter, and Philippe, for a while at least, adhered to his position. Towards the end of 1295 there was issued an Ordonnance of the royal court, applicable to the whole kingdom, forbidding the arrest of any one on the demand of a friar of any Order, no matter what his position might be, unless the seneschal or bailli of the jurisdiction was satisfied that the arrest should be made, and the person asking it showed a commission from the pope. This was sent to all the royal officials with strict injunctions to obey it, although, if the accused were likely to fly, he might be detained, but not surrendered until the decision of the court could be had. Moreover, if any persons were then in durance contrary to the provisions of the Ordonnance, they were to be set at liberty. Even this did not effect its object sufficiently, and a few months later, in 1296, Philippe complained to his Seneschal of Carcassonne of the numbers who were arrested by the royal officers, and confined in the royal prisons on insufficient grounds, causing scandal and the heavy infliction of infamy on the innocent. To prevent this arrests were forbidden except in cases of such violent presumption of heresy that they could not be postponed, and the officials were instructed, when called upon by the inquisitors, to make such excuses as they could. These orders were obeyed, for when, about this time, Foulques de Saint-Georges, Vice-inquisitor of Carcassonne, ordered the arrest of sundry suspects by Adam de Marolles, the deputy seneschal, the latter referred the matter to his principal, Henri de Elisia, who, after consultation with Robert d’Artois, lieutenant of the king in Languedoc and Gascony, refused the demand.[71]
[37] Concil. Narbonn. ann. 1244 c. 19.
[38] Pelisso Chron. pp. 49-50.--Coll. Doat, XXII. 216-17, 224, 228.--Schmidt, Cathares I. 315, 324.
[39] Coll. Doat, XXI. 153, 155, 158.
[40] Vaissette, III. 431; Pr. 438-42.--Doat, XXIV. 160.--Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 45.--Peyrat, Les Albigeois et l’Inquisition, II. 304.--Diez, Leben und Werke der Troubadours, p. 491.--Ripoll I. 117.--Analecta Franciscana, Quaracchi, 1887, II. 65. The Catholic tradition at Avignonet was that some of the inquisitors’ followers escaped to the church, where they were massacred with a number of Catholic inhabitants who had sought refuge there. In consequence of this pollution the church remained unused for forty years, and the anniversary of its reconciliation, on the first Tuesday in June, was still, in the last century, celebrated with illuminations and rejoicing as a local feast (Bremond ap. Ripoll l.c.)
[41] Vaissette, III. 456.--Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 45.--Molinier ap. Pelisso Chron. p. 19.--Molinier, L’Ensevelissement de Raimond VI. p. 21.--Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VIII. 1258.
[42] Teulet, Layettes, II. 466.--Maj. Chron. Lemovicens. ann. 1242 (Bouquet, XXI. 765).--Vaissette, III. Pr. 410.--Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 45.--Schmidt. Cathares, I. 320.--Bern. Guidon. Vit. Cœlestin. PP. IV. (Muratori S.R.I. III. 589).
[43] Vaissette, III. 434-7, 439.--Teulet, Layettes, II. 470, 481-2, 484, 487, 488, 489, 493, 495, etc.
[44] Vaissette, III. Pr. 425.--Ripoll I. 118. Innocent’s bull is dated July 10, 1243, within a fortnight after his election. The deputation had evidently been sent to Celestin IV., and the bull had been prepared in advance, awaiting the election of a successor.
[45] Archives de l’Évêché d’Albi (Doat, XXXI. 47).--Archives de l’Inq. de Carcassonne (Doat, XXXI. 63, 65, 97).--Berger, Registres d’Innocent IV. No. 31, 102.
[46] Vaissette, III. 443; Pr. 411, 433-4.--Potthast No. 10943, 11187, 11218, 11390, 11638.--Teulet, Layettes, II. 523, 524, 528, 534.--D’Achery, III. 621.--Berger, Registres d’Innocent IV. No. 21, 267, 360, 364, 594, 697, 1283.--Douais. Les sources de l’histoire de l’Inquisition (loc. cit. p. 415).
[47] Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 46.--Coll. Doat, XXII. 204, 210; XXIV. 76, 80, 168-72, 181.--Schmidt, Cathares, I. 325.--Peyrat, Les Albigeois et l’Inquisition, II. 363 sqq.
[48] Collection Doat, XXII. 202, 214, 237; XXIV. 68, 160, 182, 198.
[49] Millot, Troubadours, II. 77.--Berger, Registres d’Innocent IV. No. 37.
[50] Concil. Biterrens. ann. 1246, Consil. ad Inquis. c. 1.--Ripoll, I. 179.
[51] Doat, XXII. 217.--Molinier, L’Inquisition dans le midi de la France, pp. 186-90.--See also Peyrat, Les Albigeois et l’Inq. III. 467-73.--Vaissette, III. Pr. 446-8.--Teulet, Layettes, II. 566. M. l’Abbé Douais (loc. cit. p. 419) tells us that the examinations in the inquest of Bernard de Caux number five thousand eight hundred and four.
[52] Vaissette, III. 457, 459; Pr. 467.--Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 48.--Baluz. et Mansi I. 210.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carcassonne (Doat, XXXI. 105, 149).--Ripoll, I. 184.
[53] Vaissette, III. 455-6; Pr. 468, 469.--Arcli. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXI. 77, 79, 80).--Martene Thesaur. I. 1040.
[54] Martene Thesaur. I. 1044.--Vaissette, III. 465.--Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VIII. 1255, 1292, 1333, 1583.--Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 48--Mary-Lafon, Hist. du midi de la France, III. 33, 49--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carcass. (Doat, XXXI. 250).
[55] Rainer. Summa (Mart. Thesnur. V. 1768).--Molinier, L’Inquis. dans le midi de la France, pp. 254-55.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 11847.--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 13, 14.--See also the curious account of Ivo of Narbonne in Matt. Paris, ann. 1243, p. 412-13 (Ed. 1644). The Abbé Douais, in his analysis of the fragments of the “Registre de l’Inquisition de Toulouse” of 1254 and 1256, tells us that it contains the names of six hundred and thirteen accused belonging to the departments of Aude, Ariège, Gers, Aveyron, and Tarne-et-Garonne, the greater part of whom were Perfects. That this is evidently an error is shown by the statistics of Rainerio Saccone, quoted in the text. At this time, in fact, the whole Catharan Church, from Constantinople to Aragon, contained only four thousand Perfects. Still the number of accused shows the continued existence of heresy as a formidable social factor and the successful activity of the Inquisition in tracking it. In this register eight witnesses contribute one hundred and seven names to the list of accused (Sources de l’hist. de l’Inquisition, loc. cit. pp. 432-33).
[56] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, Nouv. Acquis. 139.--Molinier, op. cit. p. 404.--Ripoll I. 273-4.--Arch. Nat. de France, J. 431, No. 34.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXI. 239, 250, 252).--Vaissette, III. Pr. 528, 536.--Arch. di Napoli, Regestro 6, Lettere D, fol. 180.
[57] Concil. Biterrens. ann. 1255.--Vaissette, III. 482-3; IV. 17.--A. Molinier (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VI. 843).--Peyrat, op. cit. III. 54.
[58] Miguel del Verms, Chronique Bearnaise.--P. Sarnaii Hist. Albigens. c. 6.--Guill. Pod. Laur., c. 8.--Schmidt, Cathares, I. 299.--Vaissette, III. 426, 503; Pr. 383-5, 392-3.--Teulet, Layettes, II. 490.--Bern. Guidon. Vit. Cœlestin. PP. IV. (Muratori, S. R. I. III. 589).--Berger, Registres d’Innocent IV. No. 3530.
[59] Vaissette, III. Pr. 551-3.
[60] Vaissette, III. Pr. 575-77; IV. Pr. 109.
[61] Coll Doat, XXV. XXVI.--Martene Thesaur. V. 1809.
[62] Vaissette, IV. 3-5, 9-11, 16, 24-5.--Baudouin, Lettres inédites de Philippe le Bel, Paris, 1886, p. 125.
[63] Raynald ann. 1303, No. 41.--Vaissette, IV. Note xi.--Guill. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1303, 1309, 1310.--Nich. Trivetti Chron. ann. 1306.--La Faille, Annales de Toulouse I. 284. The irresistible encroachment of the royal jurisdiction, in spite of perpetual opposition, is most effectively illustrated in the series of royal letters recently printed by M. Ad. Baudouin (Lettres inédites de Philippe le Bel, Paris, 1886).
[64] Bern. Guidon. Gravam. (Doat, XXX. 93, 97).--Molinier op. cit. p. 35.--Doat, XXVI. 197, 245, 265, 266.--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. p. 282. Sanche Morlana, the archdeacon of Carcassonne, who is represented as bearing a leading part in the conspiracy, belonged to one of the noblest families of the city. His brother Arnaud, who at one time was Seneschal of Foix, was likewise implicated, and died a few years later in the bosom of the Church. In 1328 Jean Duprat, then inquisitor, obtained evidence that Arnaud had been hereticated during a sickness, and again subsequently on his death-bed (Doat. XXVIII. 128). This would seem to lend color to the charge of heresy against the conspirators, but the evidence was considered too flimsy to warrant condemnation.
[65] Doat, XXVI. 254.--Bern. Guidon. Gravam. (Doat, XXX. 93).--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXII. 132).
[66] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin. No. 11847.--Doat, XXVI. 197.--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 54, 109, 111, 130, 137, 138, 139, 143, 144, 146, 147.
[67] There has been great confusion as to the date of Philippe’s action. The Ordonnance as printed by Laurière and Isambert is of 1287. As given by Vaissette (IV. Pr. 97-8) it is of 1291. A copy in Doat, XXXI. 266 (from the Regist. Curiæ Franciæ de Carcass.), is dated 1297. Schmidt (Cathares I. 342) accepts 1287; A. Molinier (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, IX. 157)confirms the date of 1291. The latter accords best with the series of events. 1287 would seem manifestly impossible, as Philippe was crowned January 6, 1286, at the age of seventeen, and would scarcely, in fifteen months, venture on such a step so defiant of all that was held sacred; nor would Nicholas IV. in 1290 have praised his zeal in furthering the Inquisition (Ripoll II. 29), while 1297 seems incompatible with his subsequent action on the subject. In 1292 Philippe prohibited the capitouls of Toulouse from employing torture on clerks subject to the jurisdiction of the bishop, a prohibition which had to be repeated in 1307.--Baudouin, Lettres inédites de Philippe le Bel, pp. 16, 73.
[68] Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXII. 251).--Chron. Bardin ann. 1293 (Vaissette IV. Pr. 9).
[69] In 1278 the inquisitors of France applied to Nicholas III. for instructions, stating that some time previous, during a popular persecution of the Jews, many of them through fear, though not absolutely coerced, had received baptism and allowed their children to be baptized. With the passing of the storm they had returned to their Jewish blindness, whereupon the inquisitors had cast them in prison. They were duly excommunicated, but neither this nor the “squalor carceris” had been of avail, and they had thus remained for more than a year. The nonplussed inquisitors thereupon submitted to the Holy See the question as to further proceedings, and Nicholas ordered them to treat such Jews as heretics--that is to say, to burn them for continued obstinacy.--Archives de l’Inq. de Carcassonne (Doat, XXXVII. 191).
[70] Mag. Bull. Roman. I. 151, 155, 159.--Archivio di Napoli, Registro 20, Lett. B, fol. 91.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 14930, fol. 227-8.--Wadding, ann. 1290, No. 5, 6.--C. 13, Sexto V. 2--Coll. Doat, XXXII. 127; XXXVII. 193, 206, 209, 242, 255, 258.--Wadding, ann. 1359, No. 1-3.--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. p. 230. In 1288 Philippe had already ordered the Seneschal of Carcassonne to protect the Jews from the citations and other vexations inflicted on them by the ecclesiastical courts (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, IX. Pr. 232). Yet in 1306 he had all the Jews of the kingdom seized and exiled, and forbidden to return under pain of death (Guill. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1306).
[71] Regist. Curiæ Franciæ de Carc. (Doat, XXXII. 254, 267, 268, 269).--Vaisette, IV. Pr. 99.
No previous sovereign had ventured thus to trammel the Inquisition. These regulations, in fact, rendered it virtually powerless, for it had no organization of its own; even its prisons were the king’s and might be withdrawn at any time, and it depended wholly upon the secular arm for physical force. In some places, as at Albi, it might rely upon episcopal assistance, but elsewhere it could do nothing of itself. Philippe had, moreover, been careful not to excite the ill-will of his bishops, for his Ordonnances and instructions alluded simply to the friars, thus excluding the Inquisition from royal aid without specifically naming it. His quarrel with Boniface VIII. was now beginning. Between January, 1296, and February, 1297, appeared the celebrated bulls Clericis laicos, Ineffabilis amoris, Excitat nos, and Exiit a te, whose arrogant encroachments on the secular power aroused him to resistance, and this doubtless gave a sharper zest to his desire to diminish in his dominions the authority of so purely papal an institution as the Inquisition. So shrewd a prince could readily see its effectiveness as an instrument of papal aggression, for the Church could make what definition it pleased of heresy; and Boniface did not hesitate to give him fair warning, when, in October, 1297, he ordered the Inquisitor of Carcassonne to proceed against certain officials of Béziers who had rendered themselves in the papal eyes suspect of heresy because they remained under excommunication, incurred for imposing taxes on the clergy, boasting that food had not lost its savor to them nor sleep its sweetness, and who, moreover, dared with polluted lips to revile the Holy See itself. Under such an extension of jurisdiction Philippe himself might not be safe, and it is no wonder that tentative efforts made in 1296 and 1297 to find some method of reconciling the recent royal Ordonnances with the time-honored absolutism of the Inquisition proved failures.[72]
Meanwhile, the exigencies of Italian politics caused Boniface suddenly to retrace his steps. His quarrel with the Cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna rendered it advisable to propitiate Philippe. In May, 1297, he assented to a tithe conceded to the king by his bishops, and in the bull Noveritis (July, 1297) he exempted France from the operation of the Clericis laicos, while in Licet per speciales (July, 1298) he withdrew his arrogant pretension imperatively to prolong the armistice between France and England. A truce was thus patched up with Philippe, who hastened to manifest his good-will to the Holy See by abandoning his subjects again to the inquisitors. In the Liber Sextus of the Decretals, published by Boniface March 3, 1298, the pope included, with customary imperiousness, a canon commanding the absolute obedience of all secular officials to the orders of inquisitors under penalty of excommunication, which if endured for a year carried with it condemnation for heresy. This was his answer to the French monarch’s insubordinate legislation, and Philippe at the moment was not inclined to contest the matter. In September he meekly enclosed the canon to his officials with instructions to obey it in every point, arresting and imprisoning all whom inquisitors or bishops might designate, and punishing all whom they might condemn. A letter of Frère Arnaud Jean, Inquisitor of Pamiers, dated March 2, of the same year, assuring the Jews that they need dread no novel measures of severity, would seem to indicate that the royal protection had been previously withdrawn from them. The good understanding between king and pope lasted until 1300, when the quarrel broke out afresh with greater acrimony than ever. In December of that year the provisions of Clericis laicos were renewed by the bull Nuper ex rationalibus, followed by the short one, of which the authenticity is disputed, Scire te volumus, asserting Philippe’s subjection in temporal affairs and calling forth his celebrated rejoinder, Sciat tua maxima fatuitas. The strife continued with increasing violence till the seizure of Boniface at Anagni, September 8, 1303, and his death in the following month.[73]
Under this varying policy the fate of the people of Languedoc was hard. Nicholas d’Abbeville, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, was a man of inflexible severity, arrogantly bent on pushing his prerogatives to the utmost. He had an assistant worthy of him in Foulques de Saint-Georges, the Prior of the Convent of Albi, which was under his jurisdiction. He had virtually another assistant in the bishop, Bernard de Castanet, who delighted to act as inquisitor, impelled alike by fanaticism and by greed, for, as we have seen, the bishops of Albi, by a special transaction with St. Louis, enjoyed a half of the confiscations. Prior to his elevation in 1276 Bernard had been auditor of the papal camera, which shows him to have been an accomplished legist, and he was also a patron of art and literature, but he was ever in trouble with his people. Already, in 1277, he had succeeded in so exasperating them that his palace was swept by a howling mob, and he barely escaped with his life. In 1282 he commenced the erection of the cathedral of St. Cecilia, a gigantic building, half church, half fortress, which swallowed enormous sums, and stimulated his hatred of heresy by supplying a pious use for the estates of heretics.[74]
To such men the protection granted to his subjects by Philippe was most distasteful, and not without reason. Heretics naturally took advantage of the restrictions imposed on the Inquisition and redoubled their activity. It might seem, indeed, to them that the day of supremacy of the Church was past, and that the rising independence of the secular power might usher in an era of comparative toleration, in which their persecuted religion would at length find its oft-deferred opportunity of converting mankind—a dream in which they indulged to the last. More demonstrative, if not more earnest, was the feeling which the royal policy aroused in Carcassonne. The Ordonnances had not only crippled the Inquisition, but had shown the disfavor with which it was regarded by the king, and in 1295 some of the leading citizens, who had been compromised in the trials of 1285, found no difficulty in arousing the people to open resistance. For a while they controlled the city, and inflicted no little injury on the Dominicans, and on all who ventured to support them. Nicholas d’Abbeville was driven from the pulpit when preaching, pelted with stones and pursued with drawn swords, and the judges of the royal court on one occasion were glad to escape with their lives, while the friars were beaten and insulted when they appeared in public and were practically segregated as excommunicates. Bernard Gui, an eye-witness, naturally attributes this to the influence of heresy, but it is impossible for us now to conjecture how much may have been due to religious antagonism, and how much to the natural reaction among the orthodox against the intolerable oppression of the inquisitorial methods.[75]
For some years the Inquisition of Carcassonne was suspended. As soon as secular support was withdrawn public opinion was too strong, and it succumbed. This lasted until the truce between king and pope again placed the royal power at the disposal of the inquisitors. In their despair the citizens then sent envoys to Boniface VIII., with Aimeric Castel at their head, supported by a number of Franciscans. Boniface listened to their complaints and proposed to depute the Bishop of Vicenza as commissioner to examine and report, but the papal referendary, afterwards Cardinal of S. Sabina, required a bribe of ten thousand florins as a preliminary. It was promised him, but Aimeric, having secured the good offices of Pierre Flotte and the Duke of Burgundy, thought he could obtain his purpose for less, and refused to pay it. When Boniface heard of the refusal he angrily exclaimed, “We know in whom they trust, but by God all the kings in Christendom shall not save the people of Carcassonne from being burned, and specially the father of that Aimeric Castel!” The negotiation fell through, and Nicholas d’Abbeville had his triumph. A large portion of the citizens were wearied with the disturbances, and were impatient under the excommunication which rested on the community. The prosperity of the town was declining, and there were not wanting those who predicted its ruin. The hopelessness of further resistance was apparent, and matters being thus ripe for a settlement, a solemn assembly was held, April 27, 1299, when the civic magistrates met the inquisitor in the presence of the Bishops of Albi and Béziers, Bertrand de Clermont, Inquisitor of Toulouse, the royal officials, sundry abbots and other notables. Nicholas dictated his own terms for the absolution asked at his hands, nor were they seemingly harsh. Those who were manifest heretics, or specially defamed, or convicted by legal proof must take their chance. The rest were to be penanced as the bishops and the Abbot of Fontfroide might advise, excluding confiscation and personal or humiliating penalties. All this was reasonable enough from an ecclesiastical point of view, but so deep-seated was the distrust, or so strong the heretical influence, that the people asked twenty-four hours for consideration, and on reassembling the next day refused the terms. Six months passed, their helplessness and isolation each day becoming more apparent, until, October 8, they reassembled, and the consuls asked for absolution in the name of the community. Nicholas was not severe. The penance imposed on the town was the building of a chapel in honor of St. Louis, which was accomplished in the year 1300 at the cost of ninety livres Tournois. The consuls, in the name of the community, secretly abjured heresy. Twelve of the most guilty citizens were reserved for special penances, viz., four of the old consuls, four councillors, two advocates, and two notaries. Of these the fate was doubtless deplorable. Chance has preserved to us the sentence passed on one of the authors of the troubles, Guillem Garric, by which we find that he rotted in the horrible dungeon of Carcassonne for twenty-two years before he was brought forward for judgment in 1321, when in consideration of his long confinement he was given the choice between the crusade and exile, and the crushed old man fell on his knees and gave thanks to Jesus Christ and to the inquisitors for the mercy vouchsafed him. Some years later intense excitement was created when Frère Bernard Délicieux obtained sight of the agreement, and discovered that the consuls had been represented in it as confessing that the whole community had given aid to manifest heretics, that they had abjured in the name of all, and thus that all citizens were incapacitated for office and were exposed to the penalties of relapse in case of further trouble. This excited the people to such a point that the inquisitor, Geoffroi d’Ablis, was obliged to issue a solemn declaration, August 10, 1303, disclaiming any intention of thus taking advantage of the settlement; and notwithstanding this, when King Philippe came to Carcassonne in 1305 the agreement was pronounced fraudulent, the seneschal Gui Caprier was dismissed for having affixed his seal to it, and confessed that he had been bribed to do so by Nicholas d’Abbeville with a thousand livres Tournois.[76]
Encouraged by the crippling and suspension of the Inquisition, the Catharan propaganda had been at work with renewed vigor. In 1299 the Council of Béziers sounded the alarm by announcing that perfected heretics had made their appearance in the land, and ordering close search made after them. At Albi, Bishop Bernard was, as usual, at variance with his flock, who were pleading against him in the royal court to preserve their jurisdiction. The occasion was opportune. He called to his assistance the inquisitors Nicholas d’Abbeville and Bertrand de Clermont, and towards the close of the year 1299 the town was startled by the arrest of twenty-five of the wealthiest and most respected citizens, whose regular attendance at mass and observance of all religious duties had rendered them above suspicion. The trials were pushed with unusual celerity, and, from the manner in which those who at first denied were speedily brought to confession and to revealing the names of their associates, there was doubtless good ground for the popular belief that torture was ruthlessly and unsparingly used; in fact, allusions to it in the final sentence of Guillem Calverie, one of the victims, leave no doubt on the subject. Abjuration saved them from the stake, but the sentence of perpetual imprisonment in chains was a doubtful mercy for those who were sentenced, while a number were kept interminably in jail awaiting judgment.[77]
The whole country was ripe for revolt. The revival of Philippe’s quarrel with Boniface soon gave assurance that help might be expected from the throne; but if this should fail there would be scant hesitation on the part of desperate men in looking for some other sovereign who would lend an ear to their complaints. The arrest and trial for treason of the Bishop of Pamiers, in 1301, shows us what was then the undercurrent of popular feeling in Languedoc, where the Frenchman was still a hated stranger, the king a foreign despot, and the people discontented and ready to shift their allegiance to either England or Aragon whenever they could see their advantage in it. The fragile tenure with which the land was still held by the Kings of Paris must be kept in view if we would understand Philippe’s shifting policy.[78]
The prosecutions of Albi caused general terror, for the victims were universally thought to be good Catholics, selected for spoliation on account of their wealth. The conviction was widespread that such inquisitors as Jean de Faugoux, Guillem de Mulceone, Jean de Saint-Seine, Jean Galande, Nicholas d’Abbeville, and Foulques de Saint-Georges had long had no scruple in obtaining, by threats and torture, such testimony as they might desire against any one whom they might wish to ruin, and that their records were falsified, and filled with fictitious entries for that purpose. Some years before, Frère Jean Martin, a Dominican, had invoked the interposition of Pierre de Montbrun, Archbishop of Narbonne (died 1286), to put a stop to this iniquity. Some investigation was made, and the truth of the charges was established. The dead were found to be the special prey of these vultures, who had prepared their frauds in advance. Even the fierce orthodoxy of the Maréchaux de la Foi could not save Gui de Levis of Mirepoix from this posthumous attack; and, when Gautier de Montbrun, Bishop of Carcassonne, died, they produced from their records proof that he had adored heretics and had been hereticated on his death-bed. In this latter case, fortunately, the archbishop happened to know that one of the witnesses, Jourdain Ferrolh, had been absent at the time when, by his alleged testimony, he had seen the act of adoration. Frère Jean Martin urged the archbishop to destroy all the records and cause the Dominicans to be deprived of their functions, and the prelate made some attempt at Rome to effect this, contenting himself meanwhile with issuing some regulations and sequestrating some of the books. It was probably during this flurry that the Inquisitors of Carcassonne and Toulouse, Nicholas d’Abbeville and Pierre de Mulceone, hearing that they were likely to be convicted of fraud, retired with their records to the safe retreat of Prouille and busied themselves in making a transcript, with the compromising entries omitted, which they ingeniously bound in the covers stripped from the old volumes.[79]
About this time occurred a case which confirms the popular belief in inquisitorial iniquity, and which had results of vastly greater importance than its promoters anticipated. When the disappointed Boniface VIII. swore that he would cause the burning of Aimeric Castel’s father, he uttered no idle threat. Nicholas d’Abbeville, a fitting instrument, was at hand, and to him he privately gave the necessary verbal instructions. Castel Fabri, the father, had been a citizen of Carcassonne distinguished for piety and benevolence no less than for wealth. A friend of the Franciscan Order, after duly receiving the sacraments, he had died, in 1278, in the hands of its friars, six of whom kept watch in the sick-room until his death, and he had been buried in the Franciscan cemetery. We have seen in the case of the Count of Foix how easily all these precautions could be brushed aside, and Nicholas found no difficulty in discovering or making the evidence he required.[80] Suddenly, in 1300, the people of Carcassonne were startled by a notice, read in all the parish churches, summoning those wishing to defend the memory of Castel Fabri to appear before the Inquisition on a day named, as the deceased was proved to have been hereticated on his death-bed. The moment was well chosen, as Aimeric Castel, the son, was absent. The Franciscans, for whom the accused had doubtless provided liberally in his will, felt themselves called upon to assume his defence. Hastily consulting, they determined to send their lector, Bernard de Liegossi, or Délicieux, to the General Chapter then assembling at Marseilles, for instructions, as, in the chronic antagonism between the Mendicants, the matter seemed to be regarded as an assault on the Order. The wife of Aimeric Castel provided for the expenses of the journey, and Bernard returned with instructions from the provincial to defend the memory of the deceased, while Eléazar de Clermont, the syndic of the convent, was deputed by the Guardian of Narbonne to co-operate with him. Meanwhile Nicholas had proceeded to condemnation, and when, July 4, 1300, Bernard and Eléazar presented themselves to offer the testimony of the friars who had watched the dying man, Nicholas received them standing, refused to listen to them, and on their urging their evidence left the room in the most contemptuous manner. In the afternoon they returned to ask for a certificate of their offer and its refusal, but found the door of the Inquisition closed, and could not effect an entrance.
The next step was to take an appeal to the Holy See and ask for “Apostoli,” but this was no easy matter. So general was the terror inspired by Nicholas that the doctor of decretals, Jean de Penne, to whom they applied to draw the paper, refused unless his name should be kept inviolably secret, and nineteen years afterwards Bernard when on trial refused to reveal it until compelled to do so. To obtain a notary to authenticate the appeal was still harder. All those in Carcassonne absolutely refused, and it was found necessary to bring one from a distance, so that it was not until July 16 that the document was ready for service. How seriously, indeed, all parties regarded what should have been a very simple business is shown by the winding-up of the appeal, which places, until the case is decided, not only the body of Castel Fabri, but the appellants and the whole Franciscan convent, under the protection of the Holy See. When they went to serve the instrument on Nicholas the doors, as before, were found closed and entrance could not be effected. It was therefore read in the street and left tacked on the door, to be taken down and treasured and brought forward in evidence against Bernard in 1319. We have no further records of the case, but that the appeal was ineffectual is visible in the fact that in 1322-3 the accounts of Arnaud Assalit show that the royal treasury was still receiving an income from the confiscated estates of Castel Fabri; while in 1329 the still unsatisfied vengeance of the Inquisition ordered the bones of his wife Rixende to be exhumed.[81]
The case of Castel Fabri might have passed unnoticed, like thousands of others, had it not chanced to bring into collision with the Inquisition the lector of the convent of Carcassonne. Bernard Délicieux was no ordinary man, in fact a contemporary assures us that in the whole Franciscan Order there were few who were his equals. Entering the Order about 1284, his position of lector or teacher shows the esteem felt for his learning, for the Mendicants were ever careful in selecting those to whom they confided such functions; and, moreover, we find him in relations with the leading minds of the age, such as Raymond Lully and Arnaldo de Vilanova. His eloquence made him much in request as preacher; his persuasiveness enabled him to control those with whom he came in contact, while his enthusiastic ardor prompted him to make any sacrifices necessary to a cause which had once enlisted his sympathies. He was no latitudinarian or time-server, for when the split came in his own Order he embraced, to his ruin, the side of the Spiritual Franciscans, with the same disregard of self as he had manifested in his dealings with the Inquisition. He was no admirer of toleration, for he devoutly wished the extermination of heresy, but experience and observation had convinced him that in Dominican hands the Inquisition was merely an instrument of oppression and extortion, and he imagined that by transferring it to the Franciscans its usefulness would be preserved while its evils would be removed. Boniface VIII., as we have seen, about this time replaced the Franciscan inquisitors of Padua and Vicenza with Dominicans for the purpose of repressing similar evils, and in the jealousy and antagonism between the two orders the converse operation might seem worth attempting in Languedoc. In the hope of alleviating the sufferings of the people, Bernard devoted himself to the cause for years, incurring obloquy, persecution, and ingratitude. Those whom he sought to serve allowed him to sell his books in their service, and to cripple himself with debt, while the enmities which he excited hounded him relentlessly to the death. Yet in the struggle he had the sympathies of his own Order which everywhere throughout Languedoc manifested itself the enemy of the Dominican Inquisition. Already, in 1291, Franciscans in Carcassonne had endeavored to intervene in cases of heresy, and had been sharply reproved by Philippe le Bel at the instance of the Inquisitor Guillaume de Saint-Seine. In 1298 they had supported the appeal of the men of Carcassonne to Boniface VIII., and throughout the whole of Bernard’s agitation the Franciscan convents are seen to be rallying-points of the opposition. It is there that Bernard preaches his fiery sermons; it is there that meetings are held to plan resistance. During the troubles in Carcassonne Foulques de Saint-Georges went with twenty-five men to the Franciscan convent to cite the opponents of the Inquisition. The friars would not admit them, but tolled the bell and an angry crowd assembled, while those inside the convent assailed them with stones and quarrels, and they were glad to escape with their lives.[82]
Vainly the inquisitors complained to the Franciscan prelates of Bernard as an impeder of the Holy Office. The form of a trial would be gone through, and the offender would be furnished with letters attesting his innocence. The Dominicans asserted that Franciscan zeal was solely caused by jealousy; the Franciscans retorted that their friends were the special objects of inquisitorial persecution. King Philippe’s confessor was a Dominican, Queen Joanna’s a Franciscan, and the two courtly friars took part, for and against the Inquisition, with a zeal which rendered them important factors in the struggle. The undying hostility between the two Orders always led them to opposite sides in every question of dogma or practice, and this was one which afforded the amplest scope to bitterness.[83]
The coup-de-main executed on the so-called heretics of Albi, in December, 1299, and the early months of 1300, had excited consternation too general for the matter to be passed over. King Philippe’s quarrel with Boniface was breaking out afresh, and he might not be averse to making his subjects feel that they had a protector in the throne. With the advice of his council an investigation was ordered, and confided to the Bishops of Béziers and Maguelonne, but the inquisitors arrogantly and persistently refused to allow the secrets of their office to be invaded. This was not calculated to remove popular disquiet, and in 1301 Philippe sent to Languedoc two officials armed with supreme powers, under the name of Reformers. As the royal authority extended and established itself, special deputies for the investigation and correction of abuses were frequently despatched to the provinces. In the present case those who came to Languedoc perhaps had for their chief business the arrest of the Bishop of Pamiers, accused of treasonable practices, but the colorable pretext for their mission was the correction of inquisitorial abuses. One of them, Jean de Pequigny, Vidame of Amiens, was a man of high character for probity and sagacity; the other was Richard Nepveu, Archdeacon of Lisieux, of whom we hear little in the following years, except that he quietly slipped into the vacant episcopate of Béziers. He must have done his duty to some extent, however, for Bernard Gui tells us that he died in 1309 of leprosy, as a judgment of God for his hostility to the Inquisition.[84]
The Reformers established themselves at Toulouse, where Foulques de Saint-Georges had been inquisitor since Michaelmas, 1300, and speedily gathered much damaging testimony against him, for he was accused not only of unduly torturing persons for purposes of extortion, but of gratifying his lusts by arresting women whose virtue he failed otherwise to overcome. Thither flocked representatives of Albi, with the wives and children of the prisoners, beseeching and imploring the representatives of the king for justice, and promising revelations if they would issue letters of safety to those who would give information—for the terror inspired by the Inquisition was such that no one dared to testify concerning it unless he was assured of protection against its vengeance. The Bishop of Albi came also to justify himself, and on his return to his episcopal seat he was welcomed with a manifestation of the feeling entertained for him by his flock, whom the coming of the Reformers encouraged in the expression or their sentiments. When his approach was announced a crowd of men and women rushed forth from the gates to meet him with shouts of “Death, death, death to the traitor!” It may perhaps be doubted whether, as reported, he bore the threats and insults with patience akin to that of Christ, ordering his followers to keep their weapons down; certain it is that he was roughly handled, and had difficulty in safely reaching his palace. A conspiracy was formed to burn the palace, in order, during the confusion, to liberate the prisoners, but the hearts of the conspirators failed them and the project was abandoned. Even more menacing was the action of a number of the chief citizens, who bound themselves by a notarial instrument to prosecute him and Nicholas d’Abbeville in the king’s court. As a consequence, the bishop’s temporalities were sequestrated, and eventually the enormous fine of twenty thousand livres stripped him of a portion of his ill-gotten gains for the benefit of the king, who was bitterly reproached by Bernard Délicieux for thus preferring money to justice. Bernard de Castanet retained his uneasy seat until 1308, when, seeing under Clement V. no prospect of better times, he procured a transfer to the quieter see of Puy. One of the earliest signs of the revulsion under John XXII. was his advancement, in December, 1316, to the Cardinalate of Porto, which he held for only eight months, his death occurring in August, 1317.[85]
The Reformers, meanwhile, had sent for Bernard Délicieux, who was then quietly performing his duties as lector in the convent of Narbonne. He must already have made himself conspicuous in the affair of Castel Fabri, and was evidently regarded as a desirable ally in the impending struggle. According to his own story he advised Pequigny to let the Inquisition alone, as experience had shown that effort was useless; but on being called again to Toulouse on some business connected with the Priory of la Daurade, and having to visit Paris in connection with the will of Louis, Bishop of Toulouse, it was arranged, at Pequigny’s suggestion, that he should accompany a deputation which the citizens of Albi were sending to the king to invoke his active intervention. The court was at Senlis, whither they repaired, and there came also Pequigny to justify himself, and Frère Foulques with several Dominicans, eager to establish the innocence of the Inquisition.[86]
The battle was fought out before the king. Bernard urged the suspension of the inquisitors during an investigation, or that the Dominicans should be permanently declared ineligible while awaiting final action by the Holy See. Supported by Frère Guillaume, the king’s Dominican confessor, Foulques preferred charges against Pequigny, but could furnish no proofs. Pequigny retorted with accusations against Foulques, and a commission, consisting of the Archbishop of Narbonne and the Constable of France, was appointed to hear both sides. After due deliberation, it reported in favor of Pequigny, and the king took the unheard-of step of removing the inquisitor. He at first requested this of the Dominican Provincial of Paris, who possessed the power to do so, but that official called together a chapter, which contented itself with appointing an adjunct, and ordering Foulques to retain office till the middle of the following Lent, in order to complete the trials which he had already commenced. This gave Philippe great offence, which he expressed in the most outspoken terms in letters to his chaplain and to the Bishop of Toulouse, whom he bitterly reproached for advising acceptance of the terms. He did not content himself with words, for simultaneously, December 8, 1301, he wrote to the bishop, the Inquisitor of Toulouse, and the seneschals of Toulouse and Albi, stating that the imploring cries of his subjects, including prelates and ecclesiastics, counts, barons, and other distinguished men, convinced him that Foulques was guilty of the charges preferred against him, including crimes abhorrent to the human mind. He afflicted the people with numerous exactions and oppressions; he was accustomed to commence proceedings with torture inconceivable and incredible, and thus compel confession from those whom he suspected, and when this failed he suborned witnesses to testify falsely. His detestable excesses had created such general terror that a rising of the people was to be apprehended unless some speedy remedy was had. Some further unavailing opposition was made to Foulques’s removal, but not much was gained by the appointment of his successor, Guillaume de Morières, who had previously succeeded him in the Priory of Albi. Foulques was gratified with the important Priory of Avignon, and when he subsequently died in poverty at Lyons he was regarded by his Order almost in the light of a martyr.[87]
Philippe had not contented himself with getting rid of Foulques, but had endeavored to introduce reforms which are interesting not only as a manifestation of the royal supremacy which he assumed, but also as the model of all subsequent endeavors to curb the abuses of the Inquisition. It was natural that this should take the shape of reviving the episcopal power which had become so completely suppressed. Firstly, the prison which the crown had built on its own land in Toulouse for the use of the Inquisition was to be placed under the charge of some one selected by both bishop and inquisitor, and in case of their disagreement by the royal seneschal. The inquisitor was deprived of the power of arbitrary arrest. He was obliged to consult the bishop, and when they could not agree the question was to be decided by a majority vote in an assemblage consisting of certain officials of the cathedral and of the Franciscan and Dominican convents. Arrests were only to be made by the seneschal, after these preliminaries had been observed, except in case of foreign heretics who might escape. The question of bail was to be settled in the same way as that of arrest. In no case was either bishop or inquisitor entitled to obedience when acting individually, for, as the king declared, “We cannot endure that the life and death of our subjects shall be abandoned to the discretion of a single individual, who, even if not actuated by cupidity, may be insufficiently informed.” Inadequate as these reforms eventually proved, they had an excellent temporary effect. For a time the Inquisition was paralyzed, and arrests which had been taking place every week were suddenly brought to an end, for during 1302 these provisions were embodied in a general Ordonnance, and the legislation of 1293 protecting the Jews was repeated. At the same time Philippe was careful to manifest due solicitude for the suppression of heresy, for he published anew the severe edict of St. Louis; and on the appointment of Guillaume de Morières to the Inquisition of Toulouse he wrote to the seneschal instructing him to place the royal prisons at the inquisitor’s disposal, to pay him the customary stipend, and to aid him in every way until further orders.[88]
While the new regulations may have promised relief elsewhere, they gave little comfort at Albi, the inquisitorial proceedings of whose bishop had given rise to the whole disturbance. Its citizens were still languishing in the prison of the Inquisition of Carcassonne, and a numerous deputation of both sexes was sent to the king, accompanied by two Franciscans, Jean Hector and Bertrand de Villedelle. Again Bernard Délicieux was present, having this time been opportunely chosen to represent the Order on a summons from Philippe for consultation on the subject of his quarrel with Pope Boniface. They all followed the king to Pierrefonds and then to Compiègne. He gave them fair words, promised a speedy visit to Languedoc, when he would settle matters, and consoled them with a donation of one thousand livres, which he could well afford to do, for the confiscated estates of the prisoners were in his hands, and were never released.[89]
All this, of course, gave little satisfaction; nor were the people placated by the removal of Nicholas d’Abbeville, for he was succeeded in the Inquisition of Carcassonne by Geoffroi d’Ablis, who was as energetic and unsparing as his predecessor, and who brought royal letters, dated January 1, 1303, ordering all officials to render him the customary obedience. Popular excitement grew more and more threatening, and as Albi had no local inquisitors of its own, being within the jurisdiction of the tribunal of Carcassonne, the discontent vented itself on the Dominicans, who were regarded as the representatives of the hated tribunal. On the first Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1302, when the friars went as usual to preach in the churches they were violently ejected and assailed with cries of “Death to the traitors!” and deemed themselves at length fortunate in being able to regain their convent. This state of things continued for several years, during which they scarce dared to show themselves in the streets, and were never secure from insult. All alms and burial-fees were withdrawn, and the people refused even to attend mass in their church. The names of Dominic and Peter Martyr were erased from the crucifix at the principal gate of the town, and were replaced with those of Pequigny and Nepveu, and of two citizens who were leaders in the disturbances—Arnaud Garsia and Pierre Probi of Castres.[90]
The prisoners of Albi were still as far as ever from liberation, and Bernard Délicieux urged Pequigny to come to Carcassonne and consider their case on the spot. In the summer of 1303 he did so, and was met by a large number of the people of Albi, men and women, praying him to liberate them. While he was investigating the subject he came upon the instrument of pacification between Nicholas d’Abbeville and the consuls of Carcassonne in 1299. This was communicated to the people by Frère Bernard in a fiery sermon, and a knowledge of its conditions aroused them almost to frenzy. Riots ensued in which the houses of some of the old consuls and of those who were regarded as friends of the Inquisition were destroyed; the Dominican church was assailed, its windows broken, the statues in its porch overthrown, and the friars maltreated. To violate the prisons of the Inquisition was so serious a matter that Pequigny seems to have wished the backing of an enraged populace before he would venture on the step: and when he resolved upon it he anticipated resistance so confidently that with his privity Bernard assembled fourscore men, with skilled mechanics, in the Franciscan convent, ready to break open the jails in case of necessity. Their services were not needed. Geoffroi d’Ablis yielded, and in August, 1303, Pequigny removed the prisoners of Albi. He did not discharge them, however, but merely transferred them to the royal prisons, and refused to carry them to the king as Bernard advised. Possibly their treatment for a while may have been gentler, but they derived no permanent advantage from the movement. The grasp of the Inquisition was unrelaxing. It obtained possession of them again, and we shall see that it held them to the last.[91]
Meanwhile advantage was taken of the access obtained to them to procure from them statements of the tortures which they had endured, and lists were made of the names of those whom they had been forced to accuse as heretics. These were circulated throughout the land and excited general alarm, the Franciscans being especially active in giving them publicity. On the other hand, the inquisitor Geoffroi d’Ablis was equal to the emergency. He cited Pequigny to appear and stand trial for impeding the Inquisition, and on his refusal excommunicated him, September 29; and as soon as word could be carried to Paris he was published as excommunicate by the Dominicans there. This audacious act brought all parties to a sense of the nature of the conflict which had sprung up between Church and State. The consuls and people of Albi addressed to the queen an earnest petition beseeching her to prevail upon the king not to abandon them by withdrawing the Reformers, who had already done so much good and on whom depended their last hope. A fruitless effort also was made to prevent the publication of the excommunication. At Castres, October 13, Jean Ricoles, stipendiary priest of the Church of St. Mary, published it from the pulpit, as he was bound to do, and was promptly arrested by the deputy of the royal viguier of Albi and carried to the Franciscan convent, where he was threatened and maltreated, and the friars used every effort to persuade him to withdraw it. This in itself was a grave violation of clerical immunity, and it was soon recognized that such proceedings were worse than useless. Pequigny’s authority was paralyzed until the excommunication should be removed, and this could only be done by the man who had uttered it, or by the pope himself.[92]
The prospect of relief was darkened by the election, October 21, of Benedict XI., himself a Dominican and necessarily pre-disposed in favor of the Inquisition. Special exertions evidently were required unless all that had been gained was to be lost, and, at the best, litigation in the Roman court was a costly business. Pequigny had appealed to the pope, and, October 29, he wrote from Paris to the cities of Languedoc asking for their aid in the persecution which he had brought upon himself in their cause. Bernard Délicieux promptly busied himself to obtain the required assistance. By his exertions the three cities of Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes entered into an alliance and pledged themselves to furnish the sum of three thousand livres, one half by Carcassonne and the rest by the other two, and to continue in the same proportions as long as the affair should last. After Pequigny’s death they renewed their obligation to his oldest son Renaud; but as the matter was much protracted, they grew tired, and Bernard, who had raised some of the money on his own responsibility, was left with heavy obligations, of which he vainly sought restitution at the hands of the ungrateful cities.[93]
The quarrel was thus for a time transferred to Rome. Pequigny went to Italy with envoys from the king and from Carcassonne and Albi to plead his cause, and was opposed by Guillaume de Morières, the Inquisitor of Toulouse, sent thither to manage the case against him. Benedict was not slow in showing on which side his sympathies lay. At Perugia, while the pope was conducting the solemnities of Pentecost, May 17, 1304, Pequigny ventured to enter the church. Benedict saw him, and, pointing to him, said to his marshal, P. de Brayda, “Turn out that Patarin!” an order which the marshal zealously obeyed. The significance of the incident was not small, and after the death of both Benedict and Pequigny, Geoffroi d’Ablis caused a notarial instrument recounting it to be drawn up and duly authenticated as one of the documents of the process. The climate of Italy was very unhealthy for Transmontanes. Morières died at Perugia, and Pequigny followed him at Abruzzo, September 29, 1304, the anniversary of his excommunication. Having remained for a year under the ban for impeding the Inquisition, he was legally a heretic, and his burial in consecrated ground is only to be explained by the death of Benedict a short time before. Geoffroi d’Ablis demanded that his bones be exhumed and burned, while Pequigny’s sons carried on the appeal for the rehabilitation of his memory. The matter dragged on till Clement V. referred it to a commission of three cardinals. These gave a patient hearing to both sides, who argued the matter exhaustively, and submitted all the necessary documents and papers. At last, July 23, 1308, they rendered their decision to the effect that the sentence of excommunication had been unjust and iniquitous, and that its revocation should be published in all places where it had been announced. Geoffroi fruitlessly endeavored to appeal from this, which was the most complete justification possible of all that had been said and done against the Inquisition, emphasized by Clement’s cutting refusal to listen to his statements—“It is false: the land never wished to rebel, but was in evil case in consequence of the doings of the Inquisition,” while a cardinal told him that for fifty years the people had been goaded to resistance by the excesses of his predecessors, and that when a corrective was applied they only added evil to evil.[94]
Benedict XI. had given other proofs of partisanship. It is true that in answer to the complaints of the oppressed people he appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the matter, but there is no trace of their labors, which were probably cut short by his death, July 7, 1304. No commissioners of his selection would have been likely to report adversely to the Inquisition, for he manifested his prejudgment by ordering the Minister of Aquitaine, under pain of forfeiture of office and future disability, to arrest Frère Bernard without warning and send him under sufficient guard to the papal court, as a fautor of heretics and presumably a heretic. The leading citizens of Albi, including G. de Pesenches the viguier and Gaillard Étienne the royal judge, who had sought to aid Pequigny, were also involved in the papal condemnation. The Minister of Aquitaine intrusted to Frère Jean Rigaud the execution of the arrest, which he duly performed, June, 1304, in the convent of Carcassonne, adding an excommunication when Bernard, encouraged by the active sympathy of the people, delayed in obeying the papal summons. He never went, and it is a curious illustration of Franciscan tendencies to see that the minister absolved him from the excommunication, and that the provincial chapter of his Order at Albi decided that he had done all that was requisite, though perhaps Benedict’s death in July had relieved them from fears as to the immediate consequences of their contumacy.[95]
Meanwhile Philippe le Bel had at last fulfilled his promise to visit in person his southern provinces and rectify on the spot the wrongs of which his subjects had so long complained. He was expecting a favorable termination to his negotiation with Benedict for the removal of the excommunications launched by Boniface VIII. against himself and his subjects and chief agents, a result which he obtained May 13, 1304, with exception of the censure inflicted on Guillaume de Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna. When, therefore, he reached Toulouse on Christmas Day, 1303, he was not disposed to excite unnecessarily Benedict’s prejudices. From Albi and Carcassonne multitudes flocked to him with cries for redress and protection, and Pequigny spoke eloquently in their behalf. The inquisitors were represented by Guillem Pierre, the Dominican provincial, while Bernard Délicieux was foremost in the debate. It was on this occasion that he made his celebrated assertion that St. Peter and St. Paul would be convicted of heresy if tried with inquisitorial methods, and when the scandalized Bishop of Auxerre tartly reproved him, he stoutly maintained the truth of what he had said. Friar Nicholas, the king’s Dominican confessor, was suspected of exercising undue influence in favor of the Inquisition, and Bernard endeavored to discredit him by accusing him of betraying to the Flemings all the secrets of the royal council. Geoffroi d’Ablis, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, moreover, was ingratiating himself with Philippe at the moment by skilful negotiations to bring about a reconciliation with Rome.[96]
Philippe patiently heard both sides, and recorded his conclusions in an edict of January 13, 1304, which was in the nature of a compromise. It recited that the king had come to Languedoc for the purpose of pacifying the country excited by the action of the Inquisition, and had had prolonged consultation on the subject with all who were entitled to express an opinion. The result thus reached was that the prisoners of the Inquisition should be visited by royal deputies in company with inquisitors; the prisons were to be safe, but not punitive. In the case of prisoners not yet sentenced the trials were to be carried to conclusion under the conjoined supervision of the bishops and inquisitors, and this co-operation was to be observed in the future, except at Albi, where the bishop, being suspected, was to be replaced by Arnaud Novelli, the Cistercian Abbot of Fontfroide. The royal officials were strictly ordered to aid in every way the inquisitors and episcopal ordinaries when called upon, and to protect from injury and violence the Dominicans, their churches and houses.[97]
At Albi the change had the wished-for effect. No more heretics were found and no further prosecutions were required. Yet the refusal of the king to entertain any project of reform other than his previous one of curbing the Inquisition with an illusory episcopal supervision was a grievous disappointment. Men naturally argued that if the Dominicans had done right they ought not to be insulted by the proposed episcopal co-operation; and if they had done wrong they ought to be replaced. If any change was called for, the projected one was insufficient. So many hopes had been built upon the royal presence in the land, that the result caused universal dismay, which was not relieved by Philippe’s subsequent action. When he visited Carcassonne he was urged to see the unfortunate captives whose persecution had been the prominent cause of the troubles, but he refused, and sent his brother Louis to look at them. Worse than all, the citizens had designed to propitiate him and demonstrate their loyalty by offering him some elaborate silver vessels. These were yet in the hands of the gold-smiths of Montpellier when the royal party came to Carcassonne, so they were sent after him to Béziers, where the presentation was made, a portion to him and the rest to the queen. She accepted the offering, but he not only rejected it, but, when he learned what the queen had done, forced her to return the present. This threw the consuls of Carcassonne into despair. Offerings of this kind from municipalities to the sovereign were so customary and their gracious acceptance so much a matter of course, that refusal in this instance seemed to argue some most unfavorable intentions on the part of the king, which was not unlikely, seeing that Elias Patrice, the leading citizen of Carcassonne, had plainly told him when there that if he did not render them speedy justice against the Inquisition they would be forced to seek another lord, and when Philippe ordered him from his presence the citizens obeyed Patrice’s command to remove the decorations from the streets. Imagining that he had been won over by the Dominicans and that his protection would be withdrawn, the prospect of being abandoned to the mercy of the Inquisition seemed so terrible that they wildly declared that if they could not find another lord to protect them they would burn the town and with the inhabitants seek some place of refuge. In consultation with Frère Bernard it was hastily determined to offer their allegiance to Ferrand, son of the King of Majorca.
The younger branch of the House of Aragon, which drew its title from the Balearic Isles, held the remnants of the old French possessions of the Catalans, including Montpellier and Perpignan. It had old claims to much of the land, and its rule might well be hailed by the people as much more welcome than the foreign domination to which they had been unwillingly subjected. Had the whole region agreed to transfer its allegiance, its reduction might have cost Philippe a doubtful struggle, embarrassed as he was with the chronic disaffection of the Flemings. When, however, the project was broached to the men of Albi, they refused peremptorily to embark in it, and there can be no stronger proof of the desperation of the Carcassais than their resolution to persist in it single-handed. Ferrand and his father were at Montpellier entertaining the French court, which they accompanied to Nîmes. He eagerly listened to the overtures, and asked Frère Bernard to come to him at Perpignan. Bernard went thither with a letter of credence from the consuls, which he prudently destroyed on the road. The King of Majorca, when he heard of the offer, chastened his son’s ambition by boxing his ears and pulling him around by the hair, and he ingratiated himself with his powerful neighbor by communicating the plot to Philippe.[98]
Although there could have been no real danger from so crazy a project, the relation of the southern provinces to the crown were too strained for the king not to exact a vengeance which should prove a warning. A court was assembled at Carcassonne which sat through the summer of 1305 and made free use of torture in its investigations. Albi, which had taken no part in the plot, escaped an investigation by a bribe of one thousand livres to the seneschal, Jean d’Alnet, but the damage inflicted on the Franciscan convent shows that the Dominicans were keen to make reprisals for what they had suffered. The town of Limoux had been concerned in the affair; it was fined and disfranchised, and forty of its citizens were hanged. As for Carcassonne, all of its eight consuls, with Elias Patrice at their head, and seven other citizens were hanged in their official robes, the city was deprived of self-government and subjected to the enormous fine of sixty thousand livres, a sentence from which it vainly appealed to the Parlement. As Bernard Gui observes with savage exultation, those who had croaked like ravens against the Dominicans were exposed to the ravens. Aimeric Castel, who had sought in this way to obtain redress for the wrong done to his father’s memory and estate, escaped by flight, but was captured and long lay a prisoner, finally making his peace with a heavy ransom, and a harvest of fines was gathered into the royal exchequer from all who could be accused of privity. As for Frère Bernard, he received early intelligence from Frère Durand, the queen’s confessor, of the discovery of the plot, when he boldly headed a delegation of citizens of Albi who went to Paris to protest their innocence. There Durand informed them that Albi was not implicated, when they returned, leaving Bernard. At the request of the king, Clement V. had him arrested and carried to Lyons, whence he was taken by the papal court to Bordeaux; and when it went to Poitiers he was confined in the convent of St. Junian of Limoges. In May, 1307, at the instance of Clement, Philippe issued letters of amnesty to all concerned, and remitted to Carcassonne the portion of its fine not yet paid, and in Lent, 1308, Bernard was allowed to come to Poitiers. On the king’s arrival there he boldly complained to him of his arrest and of the punishment which had involved the innocent with the guilty. As he still had no license to leave the papal court, he accompanied it to Avignon, and was at length discharged with the royal assent—the heavy bribes paid to three cardinals by his friends of Albi having perhaps something to do with his immunity. He returned to Toulouse, and we hear of no further activity on his part. His narrow escape probably sobered his restless enthusiasm, and as the reform of the Inquisition seemed to have been taken resolutely in hand by Clement V. he might well persuade himself that there was no further call for self-sacrifice.[99]
The death of Benedict XI., in July, 1304, had given fresh hopes to the sufferers from the Inquisition. There was an interregnum of nearly a year before the election of his successor, Clement V., June 5, 1305. During this period a petition to the College of Cardinals was presented by seventeen of the religious bodies of the Albigeois, including the canons of the cathedral of Albi, those of the church of St. Salvi, the convent of Gaillac, etc., imploring in the most pressing terms the Sacred College to intervene and avert the fearful dangers threatening the community. The land, they declare, is Catholic, the people are faithful, cherishing the religion of Rome in their hearts, and professing it with their lips. Yet so fierce are the dissensions between them and the inquisitors, that they are aroused to wrath and are eager to put to the sword those whom they have learned to regard as enemies. Doubtless the inquisitors had taken advantage of the revulsion consequent upon the fruitless treason of Carcassonne and of the altered attitude of the king. Philippe thenceforth interfered no further, save to urge his representatives to renewed vigilance in enforcing the laws against heretics and the disabilities inflicted upon their descendants. It was not only the treason of Carcassonne which indisposed him to interfere; from 1307 onward he needed the indispensable aid of the Inquisition to carry out his designs against the Templars, and he could afford neither to antagonize it nor to limit its powers.[100]
The Sacred College, monopolized by electioneering intrigues, paid no heed to the imploring prayer of the Albigensian clergy, but when the year’s turmoil was ended by the triumph of the French party in the election of Clement V. the hopes raised by the death of his predecessor might reasonably seem destined to fruition. Bertrand de Goth, Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, was a Gascon by birth, and, though an English subject, was doubtless more familiar than the Italians with the miseries and needs of Languedoc. His transfer of the papacy to French soil was also of good augury. Hardly had the news of his election reached Albi, when Frère Bernard was busy in organizing a mission to represent to him in the name of the city the necessity of relief, and when he visited Toulouse the wives of the prisoners, still languishing in confinement, were taken thither to make their woes emphatically known. Hardly had he been consecrated at Lyons when these complaints poured in and were substantiated by two Dominicans, Bertrand Blanc and François Aimeric, who were as emphatic as the representatives of Albi in their denunciations of inquisitorial methods and abuses. Geoffroi d’Ablis hurried thither from Carcassonne to defend himself in such haste that he left no one to take his place, and was obliged to send from Lyons, September 29, 1305, a commission to Jean de Faugoux and Gerald de Blumac to act in his stead. In this paper his fiery fanaticism breathes forth in his denunciations of the horrid beasts, the cruel beasts, who are ravaging the vineyard of the Lord, and who are to be tracked to their dens and extirpated with unsparing rigor.[101]
His efforts to justify the Inquisition were unavailing, more especially, perhaps, because the people of Albi bribed Cardinal Raymond de Goth, the pope’s nephew, with two thousand livres Tournois, the Cardinal of Santa Croce with as much, and the Cardinal Pier Colonna with five hundred. March 13, 1306, Clement commissioned two cardinals, Pierre of San Vitale (afterwards of Palestrina) and Berenger of SS. Nereo and Achille (afterwards of Frascati), who were about to pass through Languedoc on a mission, to investigate and make such temporary changes as they should find necessary. The people of Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes had offered to prove that good Catholics were forced to confess heresy through the stress of torture and the horrors of the prisons, and further that the records of the Inquisition were altered and falsified. Until the investigation was completed, the inquisitors were not to consign to strict prison or to inflict torture on any one except in conjunction with the diocesan, and in the place of the Bishop of Albi the Abbot of Fontfroide was subrogated.
On April 16, 1306, the cardinals held a public session at Carcassonne in presence of all the notables of the place. The consuls of Carcassonne and the delegates of Albi preferred their complaints and were supported by the two Dominicans, Blanc and Aimeric, who had appeared before the pope. On the other hand, Geoffroi d’Ablis and the deputy of the Bishop of Albi defended themselves and complained of the popular riots and the ill-treatment to which they had been exposed. After hearing both sides the cardinals adjourned further proceedings until January 25, at Bordeaux, where Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes were each to send four procurators to conduct the matter. As this office was a most dangerous one, the cardinals gave security to them against the Inquisition during the performance of their duty. This was no idle precaution, and Aimeric Castel, one of the representatives of Carcassonne, found himself in such danger that in September, 1308, he was obliged to procure from Clement a special bull forbidding the inquisitors to assail him until the termination of the affair. Even greater danger impended over any witnesses called upon to prove the falsification of records, as they were bound to silence under oaths which exposed them to the stake as relapsed heretics in case they revealed their evidence, and the cardinals were asked to absolve them from these oaths.[102]
If there were any further formal proceedings in this matter, which thus assumed the shape of a litigation between the people and the Inquisition, they have not reached us. Yet the cardinals, before continuing their journey, took some steps which showed that they were convinced of the truth of the accusations. They visited the prison of Carcassonne, and caused the prisoners, forty in number, of whom three were women, to be brought before them. Some of these were sick, others worn with age, and all tearfully complaining of the horrors of their lot, the insufficiency of food and bedding, and the cruelty of their keepers. The cardinals were moved to dismiss all the jailers and attendants except the chief, and to put the prison under the control of the Bishop of Carcassonne. It is significant that the oath imposed on the new officials bound them never to speak to a prisoner except in the presence of an associate, and not to steal any of the food destined for those under their charge. One of the cardinals visited the prison of the Bishop of Albi, where he found the jailers well spoken of, but was shocked with the condition of the prisoners. Many of them were in chains and all in narrow, dark cells, where some of them had been confined for five years or more without being yet condemned. He ordered all chains removed, that light should be introduced in the cells, and that new and less inhuman ones should be built within a month. As regards general amelioration in inquisitorial proceedings, the only regulation which they issued was a confirmation of Philippe’s expedient, requiring the co-operation of the diocesan with the inquisitor, and this was withdrawn by Clement, August 12, 1308, in an apologetic bull declaring that the cardinals had exceeded his intentions.[103]
The existence of the evils complained of was thus admitted, but the Church shrank from applying a remedy, and, after the struggle of years, relief was as illusory as ever. Even with regard to the crying and inexcusable abuse of the detention of prisoners in these fearful dungeons for long years without conviction or sentence, Clement found himself powerless to effect reform in the most flagrant cases. The inquisitors had in their archives a bull of Innocent IV. authorizing them to defer indefinitely passing sentence when they deemed that delay was in the interest of the faith, and of this they took full advantage. Of the captives seized by the Bishop of Albi in 1299, many were still unsentenced when the Cardinal of San Vitale examined his prisons. This visit passed away without result. Five years afterwards, in 1310, Clement wrote to the Bishop of Albi and Geoffroi d’Ablis that the citizens of Albi, whom he names, had repeatedly appealed to him, after more than eight years of imprisonment, to have their trials completed either to condemnation or absolution. He therefore orders the trials proceeded with at once and the results submitted for confirmation to the Cardinals of Palestrina and Frascati, his former commissioners. Bertrand de Bordes, Bishop of Albi, and Geoffroi d’Ablis contemptuously disregarded this command, because some of the prisoners named in it had died before its date, whence they argued that the papal letter had been surreptitiously obtained. When this contumacy reached the ears of Clement, some year or two later, he wrote to Geraud, then Bishop of Albi, and Geoffroi, peremptorily reiterating his commands and ordering them to try both living and dead. In spite of this, Geoffroi maintained his sullen contumacy. We have no means of knowing the fate of most of these unfortunates, who probably rotted to death in their dungeons without their trials being concluded; but of some of them we have traces, as related in a former chapter. After Clement and his cardinals had passed away, and no further interference was to be dreaded, in 1319 two surviving ones, Guillem Salavert and Isarn Colli, were brought out for further examination, when the former confirmed his confession and the latter retracted it as extorted under torture. Six months later, Guillem Calverie of Cordes, who had been imprisoned in 1301, was abandoned to the secular arm for retracting his confession (probably before Clement’s cardinals), and Guillem Salavert was allowed to escape with wearing crosses, in consideration of his nineteen years’’ imprisonment without conviction. Even as late as 1328 attested copies made by order of the royal judge of Carcassonne, of inventories of personal property of Raymond Calverie and Jean Baudier, two of the prisoners of 1299-1300, show that their cases were still the subject of litigation. Even more remarkable as a manifestation of contumacy is the case of Guillem Garric, held in prison for complicity in the attempt to destroy the records at Carcassonne in 1284. Royal letters of 1312 recite that his merits and piety had caused Clement V. to grant him full pardon, wherefore the king restores to him and his descendants his confiscated castle of Monteirat. Yet the Inquisition did not relax its grip, but waited until 1321, when he was brought forth from prison, and in consideration of his contrition Bernard Gui mercifully sentenced the old man to perpetual banishment from France within thirty days.[104]
Another endeavor was made by Clement to repress the abuses of the Inquisition by transferring from its jurisdiction to that of the bishops the Jews of the provinces of Toulouse and Narbonne on account of the undue molestation to which they were continually subjected. This transfer even included cases then pending, but after Clement’s death a bull was produced in which he annulled the previous one and restored the jurisdiction of the Inquisition.[105]
The outcome of all this struggle and investigation is to be found in the measures of reform adopted in 1312 by the Council of Vienne at Clement’s instance. The five books of canon law known as the “Clementines,” which were enacted by the council, were retained for revision by Clement, who was on the point of publishing them when he died, April 20, 1314. They were held in suspense during the long interregnum which followed, and were not authoritatively given to the world until October 25, 1317, by John XXII. The canons relating to the Inquisition have been alluded to above, and it will be remembered that they only restricted the power of the inquisitor by requiring episcopal concurrence in the use of torture, or of harsh confinement equivalent to torture, and in the custody of prisons. There was a brutum fulmen of excommunication denounced against those who should abuse their power for purposes of hate, affection, or extortion, and the importance of the whole lies far less in the remedies it proposes than in its emphatic testimony of the existence of cruelty and corruption in every detail of inquisitorial practice. Bernard Gui vainly raised his voice in an earnest and elaborate protest against the publication of the new rules, and after their promulgation he did not hesitate openly to tell his brethren that they required to be modified or rather wholly suspended by the Holy See, but his expostulations were totally uncalled for. The closest examination of inquisitorial methods before and after the publication of the Clementines fails to reveal any influence exercised by them for good or for evil. No trace of any practical effort for their enforcement is to be found, and inquisitors went on, as was their wont, in the arbitrary fashion for which their office gave them such unlimited opportunity.[106]
One case may indeed be cited to show a special relaxation of the procedure against heretics. Philippe’s hatred of Boniface VIII. was undying, and could not be quenched even by the miserable end of his enemy. Yet the one thing which he failed to wring from his tool in the papal chair was the condemnation of the memory of Boniface as a heretic. After repeated efforts he compelled Clement to take testimony on the subject, and a cloud of witnesses were produced who swore with minute detail to the unbelief of the late pope in the immortality of the soul, and in all the doctrines of the incarnation and the atonement, and to his worship of demons, to his cynical and unnatural lasciviousness, and to the common fame which existed in the community as to his evil beliefs and habits. The witnesses were reputable churchmen for the most part, and their evidence was precise. A tithe of such testimony would have sufficed to burn the bones and disinherit the heirs of a score of ordinary culprits, but for once the recognized rules of procedure were set aside. Philippe was forced to desist from the pursuit, though Clement in his final bull of April 27, 1311, declared that the king and his witnesses had been actuated solely by zeal for the Church, and the affair fell through. The pretensions put forth by Boniface in his offensive decretals were formally withdrawn, and Guillaume de Nogaret obtained his long-withheld absolution.[107]
Clement died at Carpentras April 20, 1314, carrying with him the shame and guilt of the ruin of the Templars, and was followed in about seven months (November 29) by his tempter and accomplice, Philippe le Bel. The cardinals on whom devolved the choice of a successor to St. Peter were torn with dissensions. The Italians demanded that the election should be held in the Eternal City. The French, or Gascons, as they were called, insisted on the observance of the rule that the selection should be made on the spot where the last pontiff had expired, knowing that in Italy they would be exposed to the same insults and annoyances as were inflicted in France on their Italian brethren. Shut up in the episcopal palace of Carpentras, the conclave awaited in vain the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, even though those outside tried the gentle expedient of cutting off the food of the members and pillaging their houses. The situation grew so insupportable that, as a last desperate resort, on July 23, 1314, the Gascon faction, under the lead of Clement’s nephews, set fire to the palace and threatened the Italians with death, so that the latter were glad to escape with their lives by breaking a passage through the rear wall. Two years passed away without the election of a visible head of the Church, and the faithful might well fear that they had seen the last of the popes. The French court, however, had found itself so well abetted by a French pope that its policy required the chair of St. Peter to be filled, and in 1316 Louis Hutin sent his brother, Philippe le Long, then Count of Poitiers, to Lyons with orders to get the cardinals together. To accomplish this Philippe was obliged to swear that he would neither do them violence nor imprison them, and they, having thus secured their independence, were no more disposed to accord than before. For six months the business thus lagged without prospect of result, when Philippe received the news of the sudden death of his brother, and that the widowed queen claimed to be pregnant. The prospect of a vacant throne, or at least of a regency, awaiting him in Paris rendered further dallying in Lyons insupportable, nor could he well depart without bringing his errand to a successful issue. Hastily counselling with his lawyers, it was discovered that his oath was unlawful and therefore not to be observed. Consequently he invited the reverend fathers to a colloquy in the Dominican convent, and when they were thus safely hived he sternly told them that they should not depart till they had chosen a pope. His guards blocked every entrance, and he hastened off to Paris, leaving them to deliberate in captivity. Thus entrapped they made a merit of necessity, though forty days were still required before they proclaimed Jacques d’Ozo, Cardinal of Porto, as the Vicar of Christ—the Italians having been won over by his oath that he would never mount a horse or mule except to go to Rome. This oath he kept during his whole pontificate of eighteen years, for he slipped down the Rhone to Avignon by boat, ascended on foot to the palace, and never left it except to visit the cathedral which adjoined it. Such a process of selection was not likely to result in the evolution of a saint, and John XXII. was its natural exponent. His distinguished learning and vigorous abilities had elevated him from the humblest origin, while his boundless ambition and imperious temper provoked endless quarrels from which his daring spirit never shrank.[108]
[72] Du Puy, Histoire du Differend, etc. Pr. 14, 15, 23, 24.--D’Argentré, Collect. Judic. de novis Error. I. I. 125.--Vaissette, IV. Pr. 99.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXII. 264).--Faucon, Registres de Boniface VIII. No. 2140.
[73] Du Puy, op. cit. Pr. 39, 41, 42, 44.--Faucon, Registres de Boniface VIII. No. 1822-3, No. 1829, No. 1830-1, No. 1930.--C. 18 Sexto v. 2.--Isambert, Anc. Loix Franç. II. 718.--Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. Pr. 347.--Archives de l’Évêché d’Albi (Doat, XXXII. 275).
[74] C. Molinier, L’Inq. dans le midi de la France, p. 92.--A. Molinier(Vaissette, Éd. Privat, IX. 307). The character and power of the bishops of Albi are illustrated in a successor of Bernard de Castanet, Bishop Géraud, who in 1312, to settle a quarrel with the Seigneur de Puygozon, raised an army of five thousand men with which he attacked the royal Château Vieux d’Albi, and committed much devastation.--Vaissette, IV. 160.
[75] Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conv. Prædic. (Martene Coll. Ampl. VI. 477-8).--Ejusd. Gravam. (Doat, XXX. 94).
[76] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 18, 119-23, 129, 135-6, 292.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXII. 283).--Vaissette, IV. 91; Pr. 100-2.--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 282-5.--Coll. Doat, XXXIV. 21.
[77] Concil. Biterrens. ann. 1299, c. 3 (Vaissette, IV. 96).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 264, 270.--Archives de l’Evêché d’Albi (Doat, XXXV. 69).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 11847.--Lib. Sententt. Inquis. Tolos. p. 266.
[78] Du Puy, Hist. du Differend, Pr. 633 sqq. 653-4.--Martene Thesaur. I. 1320-36.
[79] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 125-8, 139.
[80] In a series of confessions extracted from Master Arnaud Matha, a clerk of Carcassonne, in 1285, there are two, of October 4 and 10, in which he describes all the details of the heretication of Castel Fabri on his death-bed, in 1278 (Doat, XXVI. 258-60). While these cannot be positively said to be interpolations, they have the appearance of being so, and it may safely be assumed as impossible that such a matter would have been allowed to lie dormant for fifteen years with so rich a prize within reach. The case is doubtless one of the forged records which, as we have seen, were popularly believed to be customary in the Inquisition.
[81] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 14-16, 29-30, 35, 120, 148.--Coll. Doat, XXVII. 178; XXXIV. 123, 189. As late as 1338 the confiscated house of Castel Fabri at Carcassonne was the subject of a reclamation by Pierre de Manse who claimed that Philippe le Bel had given it to his queen, through whom it had come to him. The royal officials asserted that the gift had only been for life, and had seized it again, but Philippe de Valois abandoned it to the claimant.--Vaissette, Éd. Privat. X. Pr. 831-3.
[82] Historia Tribulationum (Archiv für Litteratur. u. Kirchengeschichte, 1886, p. 148).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 231.--Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. 268.
[83] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 9, 19, 22, 24, 26, 32, 40, 63, 70, 73, 81, 82, 84, 119, 128, 149, 155, 163.--Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conv. Albiens. (D. Bouquet, XXI. 748).--Coll. Doat, XXXIV. 26.
[84] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 163.--Guillel. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1303.--Grandes Chroniques, T. V. pp. 156-7.--Girard de Fracheto Chron. contin. ann. 1203 (D. Bouq. XXI. 23).--Vaissette, IV. 112.--Bern. Guidon. Hist. Fund. Conv. (Martene Ampl. Coll. V. 514). When, long years afterwards, in 1319, Bernard Délicieux was carried from Avignon to Toulouse for the trial which led to his death, one of the convoy, a notary named Arnaud de Nogaret, chanced to allude to a report that Pequigny had been bribed with one thousand livres to oppose the Inquisition. Then the old man’s temper flashed forth in defence of his departed friend--“Thou liest in the throat: the Vidame was an honest man!”--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 263.
[85] Bern. Guidon. Hist. Fund. Conv. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 510-11).--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXVII. 7).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270. fol. 6, 7, 11, 42, 45, 48, 71, 161, 270.--Arch. de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat. XXXIV. 169).--Vaissette, IV. 143.
[86] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 16, 149.
[87] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 121, 125, 132, 150, 159, 165.--Vaissette, IV. Pr. 118-20.--Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conv. Prædic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 510).--Arch. de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat, XXXIV. 169).
[88] Vaissette, IV. Pr. 118-21.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No, 4270, fol. 69.--Isambert, Anc. Loix Franç. II. 747, 789.
[89] Arch, de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat, XXXIV. 169).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 16, 70, 134, 151.--Coll. Doat, XXXIII. 207-72; XXXIV. 189.
[90] Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. Pr. 409.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 165.--Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conr. Prædic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 511).
[91] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 8, 17, 19, 20, 32, 44, 49, 58, 156, 162, 229.--Pequigny is also said to have arrested some of the friars connected with the Inquisition (La Faille, Annales de Toulouse I. 34), but I think this impossible.
[92] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 27, 272.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXII. 114).--Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conv. Prædic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 511).--Vaissette, IV. Pr. 128.--Coll. Doat, XXXIV. 26. The Dominican party declared that the statements purporting to come from the prisoners were fraudulent, and Bernard Gui relates with savage satisfaction that a monk named Raymond Baudier, who was concerned in getting them up, hanged himself like Judas (l. c. p. 514).
[93] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 63, 153-55, 272-3.--Hauréau, Bern. Délicieux pp. 187, 190.
[94] Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXI. 10; XXXII. 114).--Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conv. Prædic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 510-11).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 88, 109, 122.
[95] Arch. de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat, XXXIV. 45).--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXIV. 14).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 23, 25, 31, 86, 132, 137, 140-1, 152, 153.
[96] Grandjean, Registres de Benoit XI. No. 1253-60, 1276.--MSS, Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 21, 73, 74, 158, 162, 278.--Molinier, L’Inq. dans le midi de la France pp. 126-7.--Geoffroi d’Ablis had sufficient influence with the king to persuade him to found the Dominican convent of Poissy.
[97] Vaissette, IV. Pr. 130-1.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 139.
[98] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 26, 74-8, 88-9, 98, 103-8, 198, 200-3, 226, 233, 265, 279.--Mascaro, Memorias de Bezes, ann. 1336, 1389. For the tenure of Montpellier by the Kings of Majorca, see Vaissette, IV. 38, 42, 77-8, 151, 235-6. It was not until 1349 that Philippe de Valois bought out the rights of Jayme II., and in 1352 his son Jean was obliged to extinguish the claims still asserted by Pedro IV. of Aragon (Ib. 247, 268, Pr. 219). Bernard’s attention was probably drawn to the House of Majorca by its strong adhesion to the Franciscan Order. Ferrand’s older brother died in 1304, in the Franciscan habit, under the name of Fray Jayme. Another brother, Felipe, became a “Spiritual Franciscan,” as we shall see hereafter.
[99] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 78-80, 90-1, 196, 247, 252-3, 257-9.--Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conv. Prædic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 479-80).--Vaissette, IV. 129-30.--Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. Pr. 461.--Bernard Gui’s allusion refers to the insults offered to the Dominicans during the troubles of Carcassonne, when those who ventured into the streets were followed with cries of “Coac, Coac!” “ad modum corvi”--MS. No. 4270, fol. 281.
[100] Arch. de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat, XXXIV. 42).--Arch, de l’Évêché d’Albi (Doat, XXXII. 81).
[101] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 10-11, 84, 128, 160-7.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXII. 83). Geoffroi’s stay at Lyons was prolonged. November 29, we find him issuing commissions to those appointed by his deputies (Doat, XXXII. 85). Jean de Faugoux had been connected with the Inquisition for at least twenty years (Doat, XXXII. 125).
[102] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 254.--Arch, de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat, XXXIV. 45).--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXIII. 48).
[103] Arch. de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat, XXXIV. 45).--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXIV. 89, 112).--Bern. Guidon Gravam. (Doat, XXX. 95-6.)--Ripoll II. 112. I designed printing in the Appendix the Gravamina of Bernard Gui and the report of the Cardinals. M. Charles Molinier, however, I understand, is engaged on an edition of these documents, to be accompanied with a complete apparatus, which will render any other publication superfluous.
[104] Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXI. 74; XXXIV. 89).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 11847.--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 228, 266-7, 282-5.--Coll. Doat, XXXII. 309, 316.--Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. Pr. 526.
[105] Archives de l’Inq. de Carcassonne (Doat, XXXVII. 255). The Inquisition seems to have by some means acquired jurisdiction over the Jews of Languedoc. In 1279 there is a charter granted by Bernard, Abbot of S. Antonin of Pamiers, to the Jews of Pamiers, approving of certain statutes agreed upon among themselves concerning their internal affairs, thus showing them subjected to the abbatial jurisdiction. Yet in 1297 we have a letter from the inquisitor, Frère Arnaud Jean, ordering the Jews of Pamiers to live according to the customs of the Jews of Narbonne, and promising not to introduce “aliquas graves et insolitas novitates.” During the interval they had thus passed into the hands of the Inquisition.--Coll. Doat, XXXVII. 156, 160.
[106] Martin Fuldens. Chron. ann. 1312.--C. 1, 2, 3, Clement, V. iii.--Bern. Guidon. Gravam. (Doat, XXX.).--Bern. Guidon. Practica, P. IV. c. 1. It is due to Clement to say that doubtless he devised a much more thorough reform, and the meagreness of the outcome is probably attributable to the final revision under John XXII. Angelo da Clarino, writing from Avignon in 1313, about the new canons, which were then supposed to be ready for issue, says: “Inquisitores etiam heretice pravitatis restringuntur et supponuntur episcopis”--which would argue something much more decisive than the regulations as they finally appeared.--Franz Ehrle, Archiv. für Litteratur-u. Kirchengeschichte, 1885, p. 545.
[107] Du Puy, Histoire du Differend, Preuves, pp. 522-602.
[108] Joann. Canon. S. Victor. Chron. ann. 1314-16.--Rymer, Fœdera, III. 494-5.--Grandes Chroniques, ann. 1314-16--Bern. Guidon. Vit. Joann. PP. XXII.--Ptolmaei Lucens. Append. John XXII. has always passed as the son of a cobbler of Cahors. Recent researches, however, render it probable that he belonged to a well-to-do burgher family.--A. Molinier (Vaissette, Éd. Privat. X. 363.)
With his election the troubles of the Inquisition of Languedoc were over. Though he published the Clementines, he soon let it be seen that the inquisitors had nothing to fear from him, and they made haste to pay off the accumulated scores of vengeance. The first victim was Bernard Délicieux. During the pontificate of Clement and the interregnum he had lived in peace, and might well imagine that his enthusiasm for the people of Languedoc had been forgotten. His earnest nature had led him to join the section of his order known as the Spirituals, and he had been prominent in the movements by which, during the vacancy of the Holy See, they had gained possession of the convents of Béziers and Narbonne. One of the first cares of John XXII. was to heal this schism in the Order, and he promptly summoned before him the friars of Béziers and Narbonne. Bernard had not hesitated in signing an appeal to the pope, and he now boldly came before him at the head of his brethren. When he undertook to argue their cause he was accused of having impeded the Inquisition and was promptly arrested. Besides the charge of impeding the Inquisition, others of encompassing by magic arts the death of Benedict XI., and of treason in the affair of Carcassonne, were brought against him. A papal commission was formed to investigate these matters, and for more than two years he was held in close prison while the examination went slowly on. At length it was ready for trial, and September 3, 1319, a court was convened at Castelnaudari consisting of the Archbishop of Toulouse and the Bishops of Pamiers and St. Papoul, when the archbishop excused himself and left the matter in the hands of his associates, who transferred the court to Carcassonne, September 12. The importance attached to the trial is shown by the fact that at it the Inquisition was represented by the inquisitor Jean de Beaune, and the king by his Seneschal of Carcassonne and Toulouse and his “Reformers,” Raoul, Bishop of Laon, and Jean, Count of Forez.[109]
The official report of the trial has been preserved in all its immense prolixity, and there are few documents of that age more instructive as to what was then regarded as justice. Some of Bernard’s old accomplices, such as Arnaud Garsia, Guillem Fransa, Pierre Probi, and others, who had already been seized by the Inquisition, were brought forward to be tried with him and were used as witnesses to save their own lives by swearing his away. The old man, worn with two years of imprisonment and constant examination, was subjected for two months to the sharpest cross-questioning on occurrences dating from twelve to eighteen years previous, the subjects of the multiform charges being ingeniously intermingled in the most confusing manner. Under pretext of seeking the salvation of his soul he was solemnly and repeatedly admonished that he was legally a heretic for remaining for more than a year under the ipso facto excommunication incurred by impeding the Inquisition, and that nothing could save him from the stake but absolute submission and full confession. Twice he was tortured, the first time, October 3, on the charge of treason, and the second, November 20, on that of necromancy; and though the torture was ordered to be “moderate,” the notaries who assisted at it are careful to report that the shrieks of the victim attested its sufficiency. In neither case was anything extracted from him, but the efficacy of the combined pressure thus brought to bear on a man weakened by age and suffering is shown by the manner in which he was brought day by day to contradict and criminate himself, until at last he threw himself on the mercy of the court, and humbly begged for absolution.[110]
In the sentence, rendered December 8, he was acquitted of attempting the life of Benedict XI., while on the other charges his guilt was aggravated by no less than seventy perjuries committed under examination. After abjuration, he was duly absolved and condemned to degradation from holy orders and imprisonment for life, in chains and on bread and water, in the inquisitorial prison of Carcassonne. Considering the amnesty proclaimed in 1307 by Philippe le Bel, and the discharge of Frère Bernard in 1308, it seems strange that now the representatives of Philippe le Long at once protested against the sentence as too mild, and appealed to the pope. The judges themselves did not think so, for in delivering the prisoner to Jean de Beaune they humanely ordered that in view of his age and debility, and especially the weakness of his hands (doubtless crippled in the torture-chamber), the penance of chains and bread and water should be omitted. Jean de Beaune may be pardoned if he felt a fierce exultation when the ancient enemy of his office was thus placed in his hands to expiate the offence which had so harassed his predecessors; and that exultation was perhaps increased when, February 26, 1320, the relentless pope, possibly to gratify the king, countermanded the pitying order of the bishops, and required the sentence to be executed in all its terrible rigor. Under these hardships the frail body which had been animated by so dauntless a spirit soon gave way, and in a few months merciful death released the only man who had dared to carry on a systematic warfare with the Inquisition.[111]
The progress of reaction had been rapid. In 1315 Louis Hutin had issued an edict in which were embodied most of the provisions of the laws of Frederic II. This piece of legislation, perfectly superfluous in view of the eighty years’’ career of the Inquisition in his dominions, is only of interest as showing the influence already obtained by the Dominicans during the papal interregnum. With the election of John XXII., notwithstanding his publication of the Clementines, all fear of interference disappeared, and the populations were surrendered again to the unchecked authority of the inquisitors. There was a significant notice to this effect in the withdrawal by the new pope, March 30, 1318, of the security given by Clement’s cardinals to Aimeric Castel and the other citizens of Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes, who were deputed to carry on the case of those cities against the inquisitors, and the latter were directed to prosecute them diligently. The Inquisition recognized that its hour of triumph had come, and took in hand the survivors of those who had been conspicuous in the disturbances of fifteen years before. The unconvicted prisoners of 1299 and 1300, whom it had held in defiance of the reiterated orders of Clement—at least those who had not rotted to death in its dungeons—were brought forth and disposed of. A still more emphatic assertion of its renewed mastery was the subjection and “reconciliation” of the rebellious towns. Of what took place at Carcassonne we have no record, but it probably was the same as the ceremonies performed at Albi. There, March 11, 1319, the consuls and councillors and a great crowd of citizens were assembled in the cathedral cemetery, before Bishop Bernard and the inquisitor Jean de Beaune. There, with uplifted hands, they all professed repentance in the most humiliating terms, and swore to accept whatever penance might be imposed upon them, and thereafter to obey implicitly the bishop and inquisitor. Then those present, together with the dead who had shown signs of penitence, were relieved from excommunication, the rest of the population being required to apply for absolution within a month. The announcement of the penances followed. The town was to make good all expenses and losses accruing to the episcopate and Inquisition by reason of the troubles; it was to build and complete within two years a chapel to the cathedral, and a portal to the Dominican church; to give fifty livres to the Carmelites to be expended on their church, and, finally, to construct marble tombs for Nicholas d’Abbeville, and Foulques de Saint-Georges at Lyons and Carcassonne, where those inquisitors had died in poverty and exile by reason of the rebellion of the inhabitants. Ten pilgrimages, moreover, were designated for the survivors of those who in 1301 had bound themselves to prosecute Bishop Bertrand and Nicholas d’Abbeville in the royal court, as well as for those who had served as consuls and councillors from 1302 to 1304. Jean de Beaune seems to have considered it a special grace when, in December, 1320, he postponed the performance of their pilgrimages during the year from Easter, 1321, to 1322. The town of Cordes, June 29, 1321, was “reconciled” with a similar humiliating ceremony and pledges of future obedience. Thus the Inquisition celebrated its triumph in the long struggle. It had won the victory, and its opponents could only save themselves by unconditional surrender.[112]
Whether the citizens of Albi whose arrest in 1299 gave rise to so many troubles were really heretics or not cannot now be determined. Their confessions were precise and detailed, but, as their defenders alleged, the Inquisition had ample means of extorting what it pleased from its victims, and the long delay in convicting them would seem to argue that the tribunal had good reason for not wishing its sentences to see the light while there was chance of their being subjected to scrutiny under Clement V. The inquisitors urged in justification a single case, that of Lambert de Foyssenx, who complained to Clement’s cardinals that he had been unjustly accused, but who subsequently asserted his heresy defiantly, refused to recant, and was burned in 1309. This is the only instance of the kind, for the wretched survivors who were led to abjure and recant in 1319 were broken by prison and torture, and their evidence is worthless.[113]
Yet Bernard Gui was undoubtedly correct when he asserted that the troubles and limitations imposed on the Inquisition under Philippe le Bel led to the recrudescence of a heresy which had been nearly extinguished. In the debate before the king at Toulouse, in 1304, Guillem Pierre, the Dominican provincial, asserted that there were then in Languedoc no heretics except some forty or fifty in Albi, Carcassonne, and Cordes, and for a few leagues around them. This was doubtless an exaggeration, but with improved prospects of immunity perfected missionaries were invited from Lombardy and Sicily, and the number of believers rapidly increased. Bernard Gui boasts that from 1301 to 1315 there were more than a thousand detected by the Inquisition, who confessed and were publicly punished.[114]
The registers of Geoffroi d’Ablis at Carcassonne in 1308-9 show great activity rewarded by abundant results, and one of the witnesses in the trial of Bernard Délicieux tells us that, when the Inquisition was able to resume its labors there, many heretics and believers were promptly discovered.[115] About the same period commence the sentences of the Inquisition of Toulouse published by Limborch. In 1306 Bernard Gui had been appointed inquisitor at Toulouse. His numerous works attest his wide range of learning and incessant mental activity, while his practical skill in affairs was animated with a profound conviction of the wickedness of heresy and of the duty of his Order to enforce, at every cost, submission to Rome. Two missions as papal legate, one to Italy and the other to France, and two bishoprics, those of Tuy and Lodève, attest the value set on his services by John XXII. With his appointment at Toulouse he promptly commenced the long campaign which resulted in the virtual extirpation of Catharism in Languedoc. Yet, though stern and unsparing when the occasion seemed to demand it, his record bears no trace of useless cruelty or abusive extortion.[116]
Catharism by this time had been forced back to the humbler class among whom it had found its first disciples. The nobles and gentlemen who had so long upheld it had perished or been impoverished by the remorseless confiscations of three quarters of a century. The rich burghers of the cities—merchants and professional men—had learned the temptations held out by their wealth and the impossibility of avoiding detection. The fascinations of martyrdom have their limits, and the martyrs among them had been gradually but surely weeded out. Yet the old beliefs were still rooted among the simple folk of country hamlets and especially in the wild valleys among the foothills of the eastern Pyrenees. The active intercourse with Lombardy, and even with Sicily, was still kept up, and there were not wanting earnest ministers who braved every danger to administer to believers the consolations of their religion and to spread the faith in the fastnesses which were its last refuge. Chief among these was Pierre Autier, formerly a notary of Ax (Pamiers). His early life had not been pure, for we hear of his druda, or mistress, and his natural children, but with advancing years he embraced all the asceticism of the sect, to which he devoted his life. Driven to Lombardy in 1295, he returned in 1298 to remain on his native soil to the end, and to endure a war to the knife from the Inquisition. His property was confiscated and his family dispersed and ruined. The region to which he belonged lay at the foot of the Pyrenees, rugged, with few roads and many caves and hiding-places, whence escape across the frontier to Aragon was comparatively facile; it was full of his kindred who were devoted to him, and here for eleven years he maintained himself, lurking in disguise and wandering from place to place with the emissaries of the Holy Office ever on his track. He had been ordained to the ministry at Como, and speedily acquired authority in the sect of which he became one of the most zealous, indefatigable, and intrepid missionaries. Already, in 1300, he was so conspicuous that every effort was made for his apprehension. A certain Guillem Jean offered the Dominicans of Pamiers to betray him, but the treachery became known among the faithful, two of whom, Pierre d’Aère and Philippe de Larnat enticed Guillem to the bridge at Alliat by night, seized him, gagged him, carried him off to the mountains, and, after extorting a confession, cast him over a precipice. Worthy lieutenants of Pierre Autier were his brother Guillem and his son Jacques, Amiel de Perles, Pierre Sanche, and Sanche Mercadier, whose names occur everywhere throughout the confessions as active missionaries. Jacques Autier on one occasion had the boldness to preach at midnight to a gathering of heretic women in the Church of Sainte-Croix in Toulouse, the spot being selected as one in which they could best hold their meeting undisturbed.[117]
The work of Geoffroi d’Ablis in Carcassonne seems to be principally directed to determining the protectors and refuges of Pierre Autier. At Toulouse Bernard Gui was energetically employed in the same direction. The heretic was driven from place to place, but the wonderful fidelity of his disciples seemed to render all efforts vain, and finally Bernard was driven to the expedient of issuing, August 10, 1309, a special proclamation as an incitement for his capture.
“Friar Bernard Gui, Dominican, Inquisitor of Toulouse, to all worshippers of Christ, the reward and crown of eternal life. Gird yourselves, Sons of God; arise with me, Soldiers of Christ, against the enemies of his Cross, those corrupters of the truth and purity of Catholic faith, Pierre Autier, the heresiarch, and his coheretics and accomplices, Pierre Sanche and Sanche Mercadier. Hiding in concealment and walking in darkness, I order them by the virtue of God, to be tracked and seized wherever they may be found, promising eternal reward from God, and also a fitting temporal payment to those who will capture and produce them. Watch, therefore, O pastors, lest the wolves snatch away the sheep of your flock! Act manfully, faithful zealots, lest the adversaries of the faith fly and escape!”
This stirring exhortation was probably superfluous, for the prey was captured before it could have been published throughout the land. The arrest of nearly all his family and friends, in 1308-9, had driven Pierre Autier from his accustomed haunts. About St. John’s Day (June 24), 1309, he found refuge with Perrin Maurel of Belpech, near Castelnaudari, where he lay for five weeks or more. Thither came his daughter Guillelma, who remained with him a short time, and the two departed together. The next day he was captured. Perrin Maurel was likewise seized, and with customary fidelity stoutly denied everything until Pierre Autier, in prison, advised him in December to confess.[118]
This triumph was followed in October by the capture of Amiel de Perles, who forthwith placed himself in endura, refusing to eat or drink, and, as he was fast sinking, to prevent the stake from being robbed of its prey, a special auto de fé was hurriedly arranged for his burning, October 23. While yet his strength lasted, however, Bernard Gui enjoyed the ghastly amusement of making the two heresiarchs in his presence perform the act of heretical “adoration.”[119]
Pierre Autier was not burned until the great auto de fé of April, 1310, when Geoffroi d’Ablis came from Carcassonne to share in the triumph. The heresiarch had not sought to conceal his faith, but had boldly declared his obnoxious tenets and had pronounced the Church of Rome the synagogue of Satan. That he was subjected to the extremity of torture, however, there can be no reasonable doubt—not to extract a confession, for this was superfluous, but to force him to betray his disciples and those who had given him refuge. His intimate acquaintance with all the heretics of the land was a source of information too important for Bernard Gui to shrink from any means of acquiring it; and the copious details thus obtained are alluded to in too many subsequent sentences for us to hesitate as to the methods by which the heresiarch was brought to place his friends and associates at the mercy of his tormentors.[120]
This may be said to close the bloody drama of Catharism in Languedoc. Armed with the revelations thus obtained, Bernard Gui and Geoffroi d’Ablis required but a few years more to convert or burn the remnant of Pierre Autier’s disciples who could be caught, and to drive into exile those who eluded their spies. No new and self-devoted missionaries arose to take his place, and after 1315 the Patarin almost disappears from the records of the Inquisition in France. Some few scattering cases subsequently occur, but their offences are of old date and almost invariably revert to the missionary work of Pierre Autier and his associates. One of the latest of these is recorded in an undated sentence, probably of 1327 or 1328, in which Jean Duprat, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, condemns Guillelma Tornière. She had abjured and had been long confined in prison, where she was detected in making converts and praising Guillem Autier and Guillem Balibaste as good and saintly men. Under interrogation she refused to take an oath, and was accordingly burned. In 1328, Henri de Chamay of Carcassonne condemned to prison Guillem Amiel for Catharism, and in 1329 he sentenced two Cathari, Bartolomé Pays and Raymond Garric of Albi, whose offences had been committed respectively thirty-five and forty years before. In the same year he ordered four houses and a farm to be demolished because their owners had been hereticated in them, but these acts had doubtless been performed long previous. Confiscations still continued for ancestral offences, but Catharism as an existing belief may be said at this period to be virtually extinct in Languedoc, where it had a hundred and fifty years before had a reasonable prospect of becoming the dominant religion.[121]
In the same year, 1329, occurred a case which is not without interest as showing how an earnest but unstable brain pondering over the crime and misery of the world, wove some of the cruder elements of Catharism and Averrhoism into a fantastic theory. Limoux Noir, of Saint-Paul in the diocese of Alet, had already been tried by his bishop in 1326, but had been able to evade the unskilled officials of the episcopal tribunal. The Inquisition had surer methods and speedily brought him to confession. He had formed a philosophy of the Universe which superseded all religion. God had created the archangels, these the angels, and the latter the sun and moon. These heavenly bodies, as being unstable and corruptible, were females. Out of their urine the world was formed, and was necessarily corrupt, with all that sprang from it. Moses, Mahomet, and Christ were all sent by the sun and were teachers of equal authority. In the under world Christ and Mahomet are now disputing and seeking to gain followers. Baptism was of no more use than the circumcision of Israel or the blessing of Islam, for those who renounced evil in baptism grew up to be robbers and strumpets. The Eucharist was naught, for God would not let himself be handled by adulterers such as the priests. Matrimony was to be shunned, for from it sprang robbers and strumpets. Thus he explained away and rejected all the doctrines and practices of the Church. To see whether the Saviour’s fast of forty days was possible, he had fasted in a cabin ten days and nights, at the end of which this system of philosophy had been revealed to him by God. Again, in 1327, he had placed himself in endura, with the resolve to carry it to the end, but had been persuaded by his brother to take the Eucharist, to save his bones from being burned after his death. He was sixty years old, and his crazy doctrines had brought him a few disciples, but the sect was crushed at the outset. He declared to the inquisitor that he would rather be flayed alive than believe in transubstantiation, and he proved his resolute character by resisting all attempts to induce him to recant, so that there was no alternative but to abandon him to the secular arm, which was duly done and his belief perished with him.[122]
Thus the Inquisition triumphed, as force will generally do when it is sufficiently strong, skilfully applied, and systematically continued without interruption to the end. In the twelfth century the south of France had been the most civilized land of Europe. There commerce, industry, art, science, had been far in advance of the age. The cities had won virtual self-government, were proud of their wealth and strength, jealous of their liberties, and self-sacrificing in their patriotism. The nobles, for the most part, were cultivated men, poets themselves or patrons of poetry, who had learned that their prosperity depended on the prosperity of their subjects, and that municipal liberties were a safeguard, rather than a menace, to the wise ruler. The crusaders came, and their unfinished work was taken up and executed to the bitter end by the Inquisition. It left a ruined and impoverished country, with shattered industry and failing commerce. The native nobles were broken by confiscation and replaced by strangers, who occupied the soil, introducing the harsh customs of Northern feudalism, or the despotic principles of the Roman law, in the extensive domains acquired by the crown. A people of rare natural gifts had been tortured, decimated, humiliated, despoiled, for a century and more. The precocious civilization which had promised to lead Europe in the path of culture was gone, and to Italy was transferred the honor of the Renaissance. In return for this was unity of faith and a Church which had been hardened and vitiated and secularized in the strife. Such was the work and such the outcome of the Inquisition in the field which afforded it the widest scope for its activity, and the fullest opportunity for developing its powers.
Yet in the very triumph of the Inquisition was the assurance of its decline. Supported by the State, it had earned and repaid the royal favor by the endless stream of confiscations which it poured into the royal coffers. Perhaps nothing contributed more to the consolidation of the royal supremacy than the change of ownership which threw into new hands so large a portion of the lands of the South. In the territories of the great vassals the right to the confiscations for heresy became recognized as an important portion of the droits seigneurioux. In the domains of the crown they were granted to favorites or sold at moderate prices to those who thus became interested in the new order of things. The royal officials grasped everything on which they could lay their hands, whether on the excuse of treason or of heresy, with little regard to any rights; and although the integrity of Louis IX. caused an inquest to be held in 1262 which restored a vast amount of property illegally held, this was but a small fraction of the whole. To assist his Parlement in settling the innumerable cases which arose, he ordered, in 1260, the charters and letters of greatest importance to be sent to Paris. Those of each of the six senechaussées filled a coffer, and the six coffers were deposited in the treasury of the Sainte-Chapelle. In this process of absorption the case of the extensive Viscounty of Fenouillèdes may be taken as an illustration of the zeal with which the Inquisition co-operated in securing the political results desired by the crown. Fenouillèdes had been seized during the crusades and given to Nuñez Sancho of Roussillon, from whom it passed, through the King of Aragon, into the hands of St. Louis. In 1264 Beatrix, widow of Hugues, son of the former Viscount Pierre, applied to the Parlement for her rights and dower and those of her children. Immediately the inquisitor, Pons de Poyet, commenced a prosecution against the memory of Pierre, who had died more than twenty years previously in the bosom of the Church, and had been buried with the Templars of Mas Deu, after assuming the religious habit and receiving the last sacraments. He was condemned for having held relations with heretics, his bones were dug up and burned, and the Parlement rejected the claim of the daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Pierre, the eldest of these, in 1300, made a claim for the ancestral estates, and Boniface VIII. espoused his quarrel with the object of giving trouble to Philippe le Bel; but, though the affair was pursued for some years, the inquisitorial sentence held good. It was not only the actual heretics and their descendants who were dispossessed. The land had been so deeply tinctured with heresy that there were few indeed whose ancestors could not be shown, by the records of the Inquisition, to have incurred the fatal taint of associating with them.[123]
The rich bourgeoisie of the cities were ruined in the same way. Some inventories have been preserved of the goods and chattels sequestrated when the arrests were made at Albi in 1299 and 1300, which show how thoroughly everything was swept into the maelstrom. That of Raymond Calverie, a notary, gives us every detail of the plenishing of a well-to-do burgher’s house—every pillow, sheet, and coverlet is enumerated, every article of kitchen gear, the salted provisions and grain, even his wife’s little trinkets. His farm or bastide was subjected to the same minuteness of seizure. Then we have a similar insight into the stock and goods of Jean Baudier, a rich merchant. Every fragment of stuff is duly measured—cloths of Ghent, Ypres, Amiens, Cambray, St. Omer, Rouen, Montcornet, etc., with their valuation—pieces of miniver, and other articles of trade. His town house and farm were inventoried with the same conscientious care. It is easy to see how prosperous cities were reduced to poverty, how industry languished, and how the independence of the municipalities was broken into subjection in the awful uncertainty which hung over the head of every man.[124]
In this respect the Inquisition was building better than it knew. In thus aiding to establish the royal power over the newly-acquired provinces, it was contributing to erect an authority which was destined in the end to reduce it to comparative insignificance. With the disappearance of Catharism, Languedoc became as much a part of the monarchy as l’Isle de France, and the career of its Inquisition merges into that of the rest of the kingdom. It need not, therefore, be pursued separately further.
CHAPTER II.
FRANCE.
ALTHOUGH Catharism never obtained in the North sufficient foothold to render it threatening to the Church, yet the crusades and the efforts which followed the pacification of 1229 must have driven many heretics to seek refuge in places where they might escape suspicion. In organizing persecution in the South, therefore, it was necessary to provide some supervision more watchful than episcopal negligence was likely to supply, over the regions whither heretics might fly when pursued at home, or the efforts made in Languedoc would only be scattering the infection. Vigilant guardians of the faith were consequently requisite in lands where heretics were few and hidden, as well as in those where they were numerous and enjoyed protection from noble and city. Under the pious king, St. Louis, who declared that the only argument a layman could use with a heretic was to thrust a sword into him up to the hilt, they were sure of ample support from the secular power.[125]
Accordingly when, in 1233, the experiment was tried of appointing Pierre Cella and Guillem Arnaud as inquisitors in Toulouse, a similar tentative effort was made in the northern part of the kingdom. Here also it was the Dominican Order which was called upon to furnish the necessary zealots. I have already alluded to the failure of the attempt to induce the Friars of Franche-Comté to undertake the work. In western Burgundy, however, the Church was more fortunate in finding a proper instrument. Like Rainerio Saccone, Frère Robert, known as le Bugre, had been a Patarin. The peculiar fitness thence derived for detecting the hidden heretic was rendered still more effective by the special gift which he is said to have claimed, of being able to recognize them by their speech and carriage. In addition, he was fitted for the work by the ardent fanaticism of the convert, by his learning, his fiery eloquence, and his mercilessness. When, early in 1233, instructions to persecute heresy were sent to the Prior of Besançon, Robert was nominated to represent him and act as his substitute; and, eager to manifest his zeal, he lost no time in making a descent upon La Charité. It will be remembered that this place was notorious as a centre of heresy in the twelfth century, and that repeated efforts had been made to purify it. These had proved fruitless against the stubbornness of the misbelievers, and Frère Robert found Stephen, the Cluniac prior, vainly endeavoring to win or force them over. The new inquisitor seems to have been armed with no special powers, but his energy speedily made a profound impression, and heretics came forward and confessed their errors in crowds, husbands and wives, parents and children, accusing themselves and each other without reserve. He reported to Gregory IX. that the reality was far worse than had been rumored; that the whole town was a stinking nest of heretical wickedness, where the Catholic faith was almost wholly set aside and the people in their secret conventicles had thrown off its yoke. Under a specious appearance of piety they deceived the wisest, and their earnest missionary efforts, extending over the whole of France, were seducing souls from Flanders to Britanny. Uncertain as to his authority, he applied to Gregory for instructions and was told to act energetically in conjunction with the bishops, and, under the statutes recently issued by the Holy See, to extirpate heresy thoroughly from the whole region, invoking the aid of the secular arm, and coercing it if necessary with the censures of the Church.[126]
We have no means of knowing what measures Robert adopted, but there can be no doubt that under this stimulus, and clothed with this authority, he was active and unsparing. His crazy fanaticism probably exaggerated greatly the extent of the evil and confounded the innocent with the guilty. It was not long before the Archbishop of Sens, in whose province La Charité lay, expostulated with Gregory upon this interference with his jurisdiction, and in this he was joined by other prelates, alarmed at the authority given to the Dominican Provincial of Paris to appoint inquisitors for all portions of the kingdom. They assured the pope that there was no heresy in their provinces and no necessity for these extraordinary measures. Gregory thereupon revoked all commissions early in February, 1234, and urged the prelates to be vigilant, recommending them to make use of Dominicans in all cases where action appeared desirable, as the friars were specially skilled in the refutation of heresy. Had Robert been an ordinary man this might have postponed for some time the extension of the Inquisition in France, but he was too ardent to be repressed. In June, 1234, we find St. Louis paying for the maintenance of heretics in prison at St. Pierre-le-Moutier, near Nevers, which would seem as though Frère Robert had succeeded in getting to work again on his old field of operations. Meanwhile he had not been idle elsewhere. King Louis furnished him with an armed guard to protect him from the enmities which he aroused, and, secure in the royal favor, he traversed the country carrying terror everywhere. At Péronne he burned five victims; at Elincourt, four, besides a pregnant woman who was spared for a time at the intercession of the queen. His methods were speedy, for before Lent was out we find him at Cambrai, where, with the assistance of the Archbishop of Reims and three bishops, he burned about twenty and condemned others to crosses and prison. Thence he hastened to Douai, where, in May, he had the satisfaction of burning ten more, and condemning numerous others to crosses and prison in the presence of the Count of Flanders, the Archbishop of Reims, sundry bishops and an immense multitude who crowded to the spectacle. Thence he hurried to Lille, where more executions followed. All this was sufficient to convince Gregory that he had been misinformed as to the absence of heresy. Undisturbed by the severe experience which he had just undergone with a similar apostle of persecution, Conrad of Marburg, we find him, in August, 1235, excitedly announcing to the Dominican provincial that God had revealed to him that the whole of France was boiling with the venom of heretical reptiles, and that the business of the Inquisition must be resumed with loosened rein. Frère Robert was to be commissioned again, with fitting colleagues to scour the whole kingdom, aided by the prelates, so that innocence should not suffer nor guilt escape. The Archbishop of Sens was strictly ordered to lend efficient help to Robert, whom God had gifted with especial grace in these matters, and Robert himself was honored with a special papal commission empowering him to act throughout the whole of France. The pope, moreover, spurred him on with exhortations to spare no labor in the work, and not to shrink from martyrdom if necessary for the salvation of souls.[127]
This was pouring oil upon the flames. Robert’s untempered fanaticism had required no stimulus, and now it raged beyond all bounds. The kingdom, by Gregory’s thoughtless zeal, was delivered up to one who was little better than a madman. Supported by the piety of St. Louis, the prelates were obliged to aid him and carry out his behests, and for several years he traversed the provinces of Flanders, Champagne, Burgundy, and France with none to curb or oppose him. The crazy ardor of such a man was not likely to be discriminating or to require much proof of guilt. Those whom he designated as heretics had the alternative of abjuration with perpetual imprisonment or of the stake—varied occasionally with burial alive. In one term of two or three months he is said to have thus despatched about fifty unfortunates of either sex, and the whole number of his victims during his unchecked career of several years must have been large. The terror spread by his arbitrary and pitiless proceedings rendered him formidable to high and low alike, until at length the evident confounding of the innocent with the guilty raised a clamor to which even Gregory IX. was forced to listen. An investigation was held in 1238 which exposed his misdeeds, though not before he had time, in 1239, to burn a number of heretics at Montmorillon in Vienne, and twenty-seven, or, according to other accounts, one hundred and eighty-three, at Mont-Wimer—the original seat of Catharism in the eleventh century—where, at this holocaust pleasing to God, there were present the King of Navarre with a crowd of prelates and nobles and a multitude wildly estimated at seven hundred thousand souls. Robert’s commission was withdrawn, and he expiated his insane cruelties in perpetual prison. The case ought to have proved, like that of Conrad of Marburg, a wholesome warning. Unfortunately the spirit which he had aroused survived him, and for three or four years after his fall active persecution raged from the Rhine to the Loire, under the belief that the land was full of heretics.[128]
The unlucky termination of Robert’s career did not affect his colleagues, and thenceforth the Inquisition was permanently established throughout France in Dominican hands. The prelates at first were stimulated to some show of rivalry in the performance of their neglected duties. Thus the provincial council of Tours, in 1239, endeavored to revive the forgotten system of synodal witnesses. Every bishop was instructed to appoint in each parish three clerks—or, if such could not be had, three laymen worthy of trust—who were to be sworn to reveal to the officials all ecclesiastical offences, especially those concerning the faith. Such devices, however, were too cumbrous and obsolete to be of any avail against a crime so sedulously and so easily concealed as heresy, even if the prelates had been zealous and earnest persecutors. The Dominicans remained undisputed masters of the field, always on the alert, travelling from place to place, scrutinizing and questioning, searching the truth and dragging it from unwilling hearts. Yet scarce a trace of their strenuous labors has been left to us. Heretics throughout the North were comparatively few and scattered; the chroniclers of the period take no note of their discovery and punishment, nor even of the establishment of the Inquisition itself. That a few friars should be deputed to the duty of hunting heretics was too unimpressive a fact to be worthy of record. We know, however, that the pious King Louis welcomed them in his old hereditary dominions, as he did in the newly-acquired territories of Languedoc, and stimulated their zeal by defraying their expenses. In the accounts of the royal baillis for 1248 we find entries of sums disbursed for them in Paris, Orleans, Issoudun, Senlis, Amiens, Tours, Yèvre-le-Chatel, Beaumont, St. Quentin, Laon, and Macon, showing that his liberality furnished them with means to do their work, not only in the domains of the crown, but in those of the great vassals; and these items further illustrate their activity in every corner of the land. That their sharp pursuit rendered heresy unsafe is seen in the permission already alluded to, in 1255, to pursue their quarry across the border into the territories of Alphonse of Toulouse, thus disregarding the limitations of inquisitorial districts.[129]
This shows us that already the Inquisition was becoming organized in a systematic manner. In Provence, where Pons de l’Esparre, the Dominican prior, had at first carried on a kind of volunteer chase after heretics, we see an inquisitor officially acting in 1245. This district, comprising the whole southeastern portion of modern France, with Savoy, was confided to the Franciscans. In 1266, when they were engaged in Marseilles in mortal strife with the Dominicans, the business of persecution would seem to have been neglected, for we find Clement IV. ordering the Benedictines of St. Victor to make provision for extirpating the numerous heretics of the valley of Rousset, where they had a dependency. The Inquisition of Provence was extended in 1288 over Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, whose governor was ordered to defray from the confiscations the moderate expenses of the inquisitors, Bertrand de Cigotier and Guillem de Saint-Marcel. In 1292 Dauphiné was likewise included, thus completing the organization in the territories east of the Rhone. The attention of the inquisitors was specially called to the superstition which led many Christians to frequent the Jewish synagogues with lighted candles, offering oblations and watching through the vigils of the Sabbath, when afflicted with sickness or other tribulations, anxious for friends at sea or for approaching childbirth. All such observances, even in Jews, were idolatry and heresy, and those who practised them were to be duly prosecuted.[130]
With this exception the whole of France was confided to the Dominicans. In 1253 a bull of Innocent IV. renders the Provincial of Paris supreme over the rest of the kingdom, including the territories of Alphonse of Toulouse. Numerous bulls follow during the next few years which speak of the growth of heresy requiring increased efforts for its suppression and of the solicitude of King Louis that the Inquisition should be effective. Elaborate instructions are sent for its management, and various changes are made and unmade in a manner to show that a watchful eye was kept on the institution in France, and that there was a constant effort to render it as efficient as possible. By a papal brief of 1255 we see that at that time the Inquisition of Languedoc was independent of the Paris provincial; in 1257 it is again under his authority; in 1261 it is once more removed, and in 1264 it is restored to him—a provision which became final, rendering him in some sort a grand-inquisitor for the whole of France. In 1255 the Franciscan provincial was adjoined to the Dominican, thus dividing the functions between the two Orders; but this arrangement, as might be expected, does not seem to have worked well, and in 1256 we find the power again concentrated in the hands of the Dominicans. The number of inquisitors to be appointed was always strictly limited by the popes, and it varied with the apparent exigencies of the times and also with the extent of territory. In 1256 only two are specified; in 1258 this is pronounced insufficient for so extensive a region, and the provincial is empowered to appoint four more. In 1261, when Languedoc was withdrawn, the number is reduced to two; in 1266 it is increased to four, exclusive of Languedoc and Provence, to whom in 1267 associates were adjoined, and in 1273 the number was made six, including Languedoc, but excluding Provence. This seems to have been the final organization, but it does not appear that the Northern kingdom was divided into districts, strictly delimitated as those of the South.[131]
The Inquisition at Besançon appears to have been at first independent of that of Paris. After the failure to establish it in 1233 it seems to have remained in abeyance until 1247, when Innocent IV. ordered the Prior of Besançon to send friars throughout Burgundy and Lorraine for the extirpation of heresy. The next year John Count of Burgundy urged greater activity, but his zeal does not seem to have been supplemented with liberality, and in 1255 the Dominicans asked to be relieved of the thankless task, which proved unsuccessful for lack of funds, and Alexander IV. acceded to their request. There are some evidences of an Inquisition being in operation there about 1283, and in 1290 Nicholas IV. ordered the Provincial of Paris to select three inquisitors to serve in the dioceses of Besançon, Geneva, Lausanne, Sion, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, thus placing Lorraine and the French Cantons of Switzerland, as well as Franche Comté, under the Inquisition of France, an arrangement which seems to have lasted for more than a century.[132]
Little remains to us of the organization thus perfected over the wide territory stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Rhine. The laborers were vigorous, and labored according to the light which was in them, but the men and their acts are buried beneath the dust of the forgotten past. That they did their duty is visible in the fact that heresy makes so little figure in France, and that the slow but remorseless extermination of Catharism in Languedoc was not accompanied by its perpetuation in the North. We hear constantly of refugees from Toulouse and Carcassonne flying for safety to Lombardy and even to Sicily, but never to Touraine or Champagne, nor do we ever meet with cases in which the earnest missionaries of Catharism sought converts beyond the Cevennes. This may fairly be ascribed to the vigilance of the inquisitors, who were ever on the watch. Chance has preserved for us as models in a book of formulas some documents issued by Frère Simon Duval, in 1277 and 1278, which afford us a momentary glimpse at his proceedings and enable us to estimate the activity requisite for the functions of his office. He styles himself inquisitor “in regno Franciæ,” which indicates that his commission extended throughout the kingdom north of Languedoc, and he speaks of himself as acting in virtue of the apostolical authority and royal power, showing that Philippe le Hardi had dutifully commissioned him to summon the whole forces of the State to his assistance when requisite. November 23, 1277, he gives public notice that two canons of Liège, Suger de Verbanque and Berner de Niville, had fled on being suspected of heresy, and he cites them to appear for trial at St. Quentin in Vermandois on the 23d of the ensuing January. This trial was apparently postponed, for on January 21, 1278, we find him summoning the people and clergy of Caen to attend his sermon on the 23d. Here he at least found an apostate Jewess who fled, and we have his proclamation calling upon every one to aid Copin, sergeant of the Bailli of Caen, who had been despatched in her pursuit. Frère Duval was apparently making an extended inquest, for July 5 he summons the people and clergy of Orleans to attend his sermon on the 7th. A fortnight later he is back in Normandy and has discovered a nest of heretics near Evreux, for on July 21 we have his citation of thirteen persons from a little village hard by to appear before him. These fragmentary and accidental remains show that his life was a busy one and that his labors were not unfruitful. A letter of the young Philippe le Bel, in February, 1285, to his officials in Champagne and Brie, ordering them to lend all aid to the inquisitor Frère Guillaume d’Auxerre, indicates that those provinces were about to undergo a searching examination.[133]
The inquisitors of France complained that their work was impeded by the universal right of asylum which gave protection to criminals who succeeded in entering a church. No officer of the law dared to follow and make an arrest within the sacred walls, for a violation of this privilege entailed excommunication, removable only after exemplary punishment. Heretics were not slow in availing themselves of the immunity thus mercifully afforded by the Church which they had wronged, and in the jealousy which existed between the secular clergy and the inquisitors there was apparently no effort made to restrict the abuse. Martin IV. was accordingly appealed to, and in 1281 he issued a bull addressed to all the prelates of France, declaring that such perversion of the right of asylum was no longer to be permitted; that in such cases the inquisitors were to have full opportunity to vindicate the faith, and that so far from being impeded in the performance of their duty, they were to be aided in every way. The special mention in this bull of apostate Jews along with other heretics indicates that this unfortunate class formed a notable portion of the objects of inquisitorial zeal. Several of them, in fact, were burned or otherwise penanced in Paris between 1307 and 1310.[134]
There was one class of offenders who would have afforded the Inquisition an ample field for its activity, had it been disposed to take cognizance of them. By the canons, any one who had endured excommunication for a year without submission and seeking absolution was pronounced suspect of heresy, and we have seen Boniface VIII., in 1297, directing the inquisitors of Carcassonne to prosecute the authorities of Béziers for this cause. The land was full of such excommunicates, for the shocking abuse of the anathema by priest and prelate for personal interests had indurated the people, and in a countless number of cases absolution was only to be procured by the sacrifice of rights which even faithful sons of the Church were not prepared to make. This growing disregard of the censure was aggravating to the last degree, but the inquisitors do not seem to have been disposed to come forward in aid of the secular clergy, nor did the latter call upon them for assistance. In 1301 the Council of Reims directed that proceedings should be commenced, when it next should meet, against all who had been under excommunication for two years, as being suspect of heresy; and in 1303 it called upon all such to come forward and purge themselves of the suspicion, but the court in which this was to be done was that of the bishops and not of the Inquisition. Mutual jealousy was seemingly too strong to admit of such co-operation.[135]
In 1308 we hear of a certain Étienne de Verberie of Soissons, accused before the inquisitor of blasphemous expressions concerning the body of Christ. He alleged drunkenness in excuse, and was mercifully treated. Shortly afterwards occurred the first formal auto de fé of which we have cognizance at Paris, on May 31, 1310. A renegade Jew was burned, but the principal victim was Marguerite de Hainault, or la Porete. She is described as a “béguine clergesse,” the first apostle in France of the German sect of Brethren of the Free Spirit, whom we shall consider more fully hereafter. Her chief error was the doctrine that the soul, absorbed in Divine love, could yield without sin or remorse to all the demands of the flesh, and she regarded with insufficient veneration the sacrifice of the altar. She had written a book to propagate these doctrines which had, before the year 1305, been condemned as heretical and burned by Gui II., Bishop of Cambrai. He had mercifully spared her, while forbidding her under pain of the stake from circulating it in future or disseminating its doctrines. In spite of this she had again been brought before Gui’s successor, Philippe de Marigny, and the Inquisitor of Lorraine, for spreading it among the simple folk called Begghards, and she had again escaped. Unwearied in her missionary work, she had even ventured to present the forbidden volume to Jean, Bishop of Chalons, without suffering the penalty due to her obstinacy. In 1308 she extended her propaganda to Paris and fell into the hands of Frère Guillaume de Paris, the inquisitor, before whom she persistently refused to take the preliminary oath requisite to her examination. He was probably too preoccupied with the affair of the Templars to give her prompt justice, and for eighteen months she lay in the inquisitorial dungeons under the consequent excommunication. This would alone have sufficed for her conviction as an impenitent heretic, but her previous career rendered her a relapsed heretic. Instead of calling an assembly of experts, as was customary in Languedoc, the inquisitor laid a written statement of the case before the canonists of the University, who unanimously decided, May 30, that if the facts as stated were true, she was a relapsed heretic, to be relaxed to the secular arm. Accordingly, on May 31, she was handed over, with the customary adjuration for mercy, to the prévôt of Paris, who duly burned her the next day, when her noble manifestation of devotion moved the people to tears of compassion. Another actor in the tragedy was a disciple of Marguerite, a clerk of the diocese of Beauvais named Guion de Cressonessart. He had endeavored to save Marguerite from the clutches of the Inquisition, and on being seized had, like her, refused to take the oath during eighteen months’’ imprisonment. His brain seems to have turned during his detention, for at length he astonished the inquisitor by proclaiming himself the Angel of Philadelphia and an envoy of God, who alone could save mankind. The inquisitor in vain pointed out that this was a function reserved solely for the pope, and as Guion would not withdraw his claims he was convicted as a heretic. For some reason, however, not specified in the sentence, he was only condemned to degradation from orders and to perpetual imprisonment.[136]
The next case of which we hear is that of the Sieur de Partenay, in 1323, to which allusion has already been made. Its importance to us lies in its revealing the enormous and almost irresponsible authority wielded by the Inquisition at this period. The most powerful noble of Poitou, when designated as a heretic by Frère Maurice, the Inquisitor of Paris, is at once thrown into the prison of the Temple by the king, and all his estates are sequestrated to await the result. Fortunately for Partenay he had a large circle of influential friends and kindred, among them the Bishop of Noyon, who labored strenuously in his behalf. He was able to appeal to the pope, alleging personal hatred on the part of Frère Maurice; he was sent under guard to Avignon, where his friends succeeded in inducing John XXII. to assign certain bishops as assessors to try the case with the inquisitor, and after infinite delays he was at length set free—probably not without the use of means which greatly diminished his wealth. When such a man could be so handled at the mere word of an angry friar, meaner victims stood little chance.[137] This case in the North and the close of Bernard Gui’s career in Toulouse, about the same time, mark the apogee of the Inquisition in France. Thenceforth we have to follow its decline.
Yet for some years longer there was a show of activity at Carcassonne, where Henri de Chamay was a worthy representative of the older inquisitors. January 16, 1329, in conjunction with Pierre Bruni he celebrated an auto de fé at Pamiers, where thirty-five persons were permitted to lay aside crosses, and twelve were released from prison with crosses, six were pardoned, seven were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, together with four false witnesses, eight had arbitrary penances assigned them, four dead persons were sentenced, and a friar and a priest were degraded. As the see of Pamiers, to which this auto was confined, was a small one, the number of sentences uttered indicates active work. December 12, of the same year, Henri de Chamay held another at Narbonne, where the fate of some forty delinquents was decided. Then, January 7, 1329, he held another at Pamiers; May 19, one at Béziers; September 8, one at Carcassonne, where six unfortunates were burned and twenty-one condemned to perpetual prison. Shortly afterwards he burned three at Albi, and towards the end of the year he held another auto at a place not named, where eight persons were sentenced to prison, three to prison in chains, and two were burned. Some collisions seem to have occurred about this time with the royal officials, for, in 1334, the inquisitors complained to Philippe de Valois that their functions were impeded, and Philippe issued orders to the seneschals of Nimes, Toulouse, and Carcassonne that the Inquisition must be maintained in the full enjoyment of its ancient privileges.[138]
Activity continued for some little time longer, but the records have perished which would supply the details. We happen to have the accounts of the Sénéchaussée of Toulouse, for 1337, which show that Pierre Bruni, the inquisitor, was by no means idle. The receiver of confiscations enumerates the estates of thirty heretics from which collections are in hand; there was an auto de fé celebrated and paid for; the number of prisoners in the inquisitorial jail is stated at eighty-two, but as their maintenance during eleven months amounted to the sum of three hundred and sixty-five livres fourteen sols, the average number at three deniers per diem must have been ninety. The terrible vicissitudes of the English war doubtless soon afterwards slackened the energy of the inquisitors, but we know that there were autos de fé celebrated at Carcassonne in 1346, 1357, and 1383, and one at Toulouse in 1374. The office of inquisitor continued to be filled, but its functions diminished greatly in importance, as we may guess from the fact that it is related of Pierre de Mercalme, who was Provincial of Toulouse from 1350 to 1363, that during more than two years of this period he also served as inquisitor.[139]
In the North we hear little of the Inquisition during this period. The English wars, in fact, must have seriously interfered with its activity, but we have an evidence that it was not neglecting its duty in a complaint made by the Provincial of Paris to Clement VI., in 1351, that the practice of excepting the territories of Charles of Anjou from the commissions issued to inquisitors deprived the provinces of Touraine and Maine of the blessings of the institution and allowed heresy to flourish there, whereupon the pope promptly extended the authority of Frère Guillaume Chevalier and of all future inquisitors to those regions.[140]
With the return of peace under Charles le Sage the Inquisition had freer scope. The Begghards, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, undeterred by the martyrdom of Marguerite la Porete, had continued to exist in secret. In September, 1365, Urban V. notified the prelates and inquisitors throughout France that they were actively at work propagating their doctrines, and he sent detailed information as to their tenets and the places where they were to be found to the Bishop of Paris, with orders to communicate it to his fellow-prelates and the Inquisition. If any immediate response to this was made, the result has not reached us, but in 1372 we find Frère Jacques de More, “inquisiteur des Bougres,” busy in eradicating them. They called themselves the Company of Poverty, and were popularly known by the name of Turelupins; as in Germany, they were distinguished by their peculiar vestments, and they propagated their doctrines largely by their devotional writings in the vernacular. Charles V. rewarded the labors of the inquisitor with a donation of fifty francs, and received the thanks of Gregory XI. for his zeal. The outcome of the affair was the burning of the books and garments of the heretics in the swine-market beyond the Porte Saint-Honoré, together with the female leader of the sect, Jeanne Daubenton. Her male colleague escaped by death in prison, but his body was preserved in quicklime for fifteen days, in order that he might accompany his partner in guilt in the flames. That such a spectacle was sufficiently infrequent to render it a matter of importance is shown by its being recorded in the doggerel of a contemporary chronicler—
[109] Joann. Can. S. Victor. Chron. ann. 1311, 1316-19.--Historia Tribulationum (Archiv. für Litteratur-u. Kirchengeschichte, 1886, pp. 145-8).--Wadding. ann. 1318, No. 26-7.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 1, 39.
[110] MSS. Bib. Nat, fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 5, 81, 103-4, 146-7, 169. Arnaud Garsia and Pierre Probi were kept in prison until 1325, when they were released on payment of two thousand gold florins, and such penance as Jean Duprat, the inquisitor, might impose on them. Their sequestrated property was ordered to be restored.--Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. Pr. 645.
[111] Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolosan. pp. 268-73.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 186-92.--Jo. a S. Victore Memor. Historiale ann. 1319 (Bouquet, XXI. 664).
[112] Isambert, Anc. Loix Franç. III. 123.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXXII. 138).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 11847.--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 228, 244-8, 266-7, 277-81.--Arch, de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat, XXXIV. 169, 185).
[113] Bern. Guidon. Gravam. (Doat, XXX. 97).
[114] Ibid. (Doat, XXX. 96, 98).--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 138-9, 213.
[115] Molinier, L’Inq. dans le midi de la France, p. 111--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 285.
[116] Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conv. Præedic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 469).--Touron, Hommes illustres de l’Ordre de S. Dominique, II. 94.
[117] Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 2, 3, 12, 13, 32, 68, 76, 81, 159.--Molinier, L’Inq. dans le midi de la France, pp. 145-56.
[118] Molinier, op. cit. p. 157--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos, p. 102.
[119] Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. p. 37.
[120] Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 59, 60, 64, 73, 74, 75, 92-3, 132.
[121] Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 341-2.--Coll. Doat, XXVII. 198-200, 248; XXVIII. 128, 158. The entire disappearance of a sect once so numerous and powerful as the Cathari has appeared so unlikely that there has been a widespread belief that their descendants were to be found in the Cagots--the accursed race of the Pyrenees who in French Navarre were only admitted to common legal rights in 1709, and in the Spanish province in 1818, some of them still existing in the latter. The Cagots themselves even assumed this to be their origin in an appeal to Leo X., in 1517, to be restored to human society, and claimed that their ancestral errors had been long atoned for. Yet among all the conjectures as to the origin of this mysterious class, the descent from Catharans would seem to be the least admissible, and M. de Lagrèze’s opinion that they are descendants of lepers is sustained by arguments which appear to be convincing.--Lagrèze, La Navarre Française I. 53-60. Cf. Vaissette, Liv. XXXIV. c. 79.
[122] Coll. Doat, XXVII. 216-25, 234.
[123] Vaissette, III, 362, 496; IV. 104-5, 211.--Archives de l’Évêché de Béziers (Doat, XXXI. 35).--Beugnot, Les Olim I. 1029-30.--Les Olim I. 580.--Coll. Doat, XXXIII. 1. The extent of the change of the proprietorship is well illustrated by a list of the lands and rents confiscated for heresy to the profit of Philippe de Montfort from his vassals. It embraces fiefs and other properties in Lautrec, Montredon, Senegats, Rabastain, and Lavaur. The knights and gentlemen and peasants thus stripped are all named, with their offences--one died a heretic, another was hereticated on his death-bed, a third was condemned for heresy, and a fourth was burned at Lavaur, while in other cases the mother, or the father, or both were heretics (Doat, XXXII. 258-63). Many examples of donations and sales are preserved in the Doat collection. I may instance T. XXXI. fol. 171, 237, 255; T. XXXII. fol. 46, 53, 55, 57, 64, 67, 69, 244, etc. In the possessions of the English crown in Aquitaine the same process was going on, though in a minor degree (Rymer, Fœdera, III. 408).
[124] Coll. Doat, XXXII. 309, 316.
[125] Joinville, P. I. (Ed. 1785. p. 23).
[126] Alberic. Triun. Font. Chron. ann. 1236.--Gregor. PP. IX. Bull. Gaudemus. 19 Ap. 1233 (Ripoll I. 45-6).--Raynald. ann. 1233, No. 59.
[127] Greg. PP. IX. Bull. Olim, 4 Feb. 1234; Ejusd. Bull. Dudum, 21 Aug. 1235; Ejusd. Bull. Quo inter cœteras, 22 Aug. 1235; Ejusd. Bull. Dudum, 23 Aug. 1235 (Ripoll I. 80-1).--Potthast No. 9386.--Chron. breve Lobiens. ann. 1235 (Martene Thes. III. 1427).--D. Bouquet, XXII. 570.--Chron. Rimée de Philippe Mousket, v. 28871-29025.--Alberic. Trium Font. ann. 1235.
[128] Chron. S. Medardi Suessionens. (D’Achery, II. 491).--Conc. Trevirens. ann. 1238, c. 31 (Martene Ampl. Coll. VII. 130).--Wadding. Annal. ann. 1236, No. 3.--Meyeri Annal. Flandrens. Lib. VIII. ann. 1236.--Raynald. ann. 1238, No. 52.--Matt. Paris ann. 1236, 1238, pp. 293, 326 (Ed. 1644).--Chron. Gaufridi de Collone ann. 1239 (Bouquet, XXII. 3).--Alberic. Trium Font. Chron. ann. 1239.--Chron. Riméc de Phil. de Mousket, v. 30525-34. Frère Bremond endeavors to clear Robert’s fame from the accusations brought against him by Matthew Paris, and states that he died in the convent of St. Jacques in Paris in 1235.
[129] Concil. Turonens. ann. 1239, c. 1.--D. Bouquet, XXI. 262, 264, 268, 273, 274, 276, 280, 281.--Ripoll I. 273-4.
[130] Coll. Doat, XXXI. 68.--Martene Coll. Ampl. I. 1284.--Wadding. Annal. ann. 1288, No. 14, 15; ann. 1290, No. 3, 5, 6; ann. 1292, No. 3.
[131] Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat. XXXI. 90; XXXII. 41).--Wadding. Annal. ann. 1255, No. 14.--Raynald. ann. 1255, No. 33.--Arch. Nat. de France, J. 431, No. 30, 31, 34, 35, 36.--Ripoll I. 273-4, 291, 362, 472, 512; II. 29.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin. No. 14930. fol. 226.--Martene Thesaur. V. 1814, 1817.
[132] Ripoll I. 179, 183; II. 29.--Potthast No. 15995.--Lib. Sentt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 252-4.
[133] Martene Thesaur. V. 1809, 1811-13.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carcass. (Doat, XXXII. 127).
[134] Ripoll II. 1.--Guill. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1307, 1310.
[135] Martene Ampl. Collect. VII. 1325-7. Cf. Concil. Trident. Sess. xxv. Decret. Reform, c. 3.
[136] Arch. Nat. de France, J. 428, No. 15, 19 bis.--Guillel. Nangiac. Contin, ann. 1308, 1310.--Grandes Chroniques, V. 188.
[137] Guillel. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1323.--Grandes Chroniques, V. 273-4.--Chron. Johann. S. Victor. Contin. ann. 1323 (Bouquet, XXI. 681).
[138] Coll. Doat, XXVII. 119, 132, 140, 146, 156, 178, 192, 198, 232.--Vaissette, IV. Pr. 23.
[139] Vaiseette, Éd. Privat, X. Pr. 782-3, 792, 802, 813-14.--Arch, de l’Évêché d’Albi (Doat. XXXV. 120).--Vaissette, IV. 184.--Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 433.
[140] Ripoll II. 236.
“L’an MDCCCLXXII. je vous dis tout pour voir Furent les Turelupins condannez pour ardoir, Pour ce qu’ils desvoient le people à decepvoir Par feaultes heresies, l’Eveque en soult levoir.”
The sect was a stubborn one, however, especially in Germany, as we shall see hereafter, and in the early part of the next century Chancellor Gerson still considers it of sufficient importance to combat its errors repeatedly. Its mystic libertinism was dangerously seducing, and he was especially alarmed by the incredible subtlety with which it was presented in a book written by a woman known as Mary of Valenciennes. In May, 1421, twenty-five of these sectaries were condemned at Douai by the Bishop of Arras. Twenty of them recanted and were penanced with crosses and banishment or imprisonment, but five were stubborn and sealed their faith with martyrdom in the flames.[141]
In 1381 Frère Jacques de More had a more illustrious victim in Hugues Aubriot. A Burgundian by birth, Aubriot’s energy and ability had won for him the confidence of the wise King Charles, who had made him Prévôt of Paris. This office he filled with unprecedented vigor. To him the city owed the first system of sewerage that had been attempted, as well as the Bastille, which he built as a bulwark against the English, and he imposed some limitation on the flourishing industry of the filles de vie. His good government gained him the respect and affection of the people, but he made a mortal enemy of the University by disregarding the immunities on the preservation of which, in the previous century, it had staked its existence. In savage mockery of its wrath, when building the Petit-Châtelet, he named two foul dungeons after two of the principal quarters of the University, le Clos Bruneau and la Rue du Foing, saying that they were intended for the students. Under the strong rule of Charles V. the University had to digest its wrongs as best it could, but after his death, in 1380, it eagerly watched its opportunity. This was not long in coming, nor, in the rivalry between the Dukes of Berri and Burgundy, was it difficult to enlist the former against Aubriot as a Burgundian. The rule of the princes, at once feeble and despotic, invited disorder, and when the people, November 25, 1380, rose against the Jews, pillaged their houses, and forcibly baptized their children, Aubriot incurred the implacable enmity of the Church by forcing a restoration of the infants to their parents. The combination against him thus became too strong for the court to resist. It yielded, and on January 21, 1381, he was cited to appear before the bishop and inquisitor. He disdained to obey the summons, and his excommunication for contumacy was published in all the churches of Paris. This compelled obedience, and when he came before the inquisitor, on February 1, he was at once thrown into the episcopal prison while his trial proceeded. The charges were most frivolous, except the affair of the Jewish children and his having released from the Châtelet a prisoner accused of heresy, placed there by the inquisitor. It was alleged that on one occasion one of his sergeants had excused himself for delay by saying that he had waited at church to see God (the elevation of the Host), when Aubriot angrily rejoined, “Sirrah, know ye not that I have more power to harm you than God to help;” and again that when some one had told him that they would see God in a mass celebrated by Silvestre de la Cervelle, Bishop of Coutances, he replied that God would not permit himself to be handled by such a man as the bishop. His enemies were so exasperated that on the strength of this flimsy gossip he was actually condemned to be burned without the privilege allowed to all heretics of saving himself by abjuration; but the princes intervened and succeeded in obtaining this for him. He had no reason to complain of undue delay. On May 17 a solemn auto de fé was held. On a scaffold erected in front of Nôtre Dame, Aubriot humbly confessed and recanted the heresies of which he had been convicted, and received the sentence of perpetual imprisonment, which of course carried with it the confiscation of his wealth, while the rejoicing scholars of the University lampooned him in halting verses. He was thence conveyed to a dungeon in the episcopal prison, where he lay until 1382, when the insurrection of the Maillotins occurred. The first thought of the people was of their old prévôt. They broke open the prison, drew him forth and placed him at their head. He accepted the post, but the same night he quietly withdrew and escaped to his native Burgundy, where his adventurous life ended in peaceful obscurity. The story is instructive as showing how efficient an instrument was the Inquisition for the gratification of malice. In fact, its functions as a factor in political strife were of sufficient importance to require more detailed consideration hereafter.[142]
After this we hear little more of the Inquisition of Paris, although it continued to exist. When, in 1388, the eloquence of Thomas of Apulia drew wondering crowds to listen with veneration to his teaching that the law of the Gospel was simply love, with the deduction that the sacraments, the invocation of saints, and all the inventions of the current theology were useless; when he wrote a book inveighing against the sins of prelate and pope, and asserting, with the Everlasting Gospel, that the reign of the Holy Ghost had supplanted that of the Father and the Son, and when he boldly announced himself as the envoy of the Holy Ghost sent to reform the world, the Inquisition was not called upon to silence even this revolutionary heretic. It was the Prévôt of Paris who ordered him to desist from preaching, and, when he refused, it was the bishop and University who tried him, ordered his book to be burned on the Place de Grève, and would have him burned had not the medical alienists of the day testified to his insanity and procured for him a commutation of his punishment to perpetual imprisonment.[143]
Various causes had long been contributing to deprive the Inquisition in France of the importance which it had once enjoyed. It no longer as of old poured into the royal fisc a stream of confiscations and co-operated efficiently in consolidating the monarchy. It had done its work too well, and not only had it become superfluous as an instrument for the throne, but the throne which it had aided to establish had become supreme and had reduced it to subjection. Even in the plenitude of inquisitorial power the tendency to regard the royal court as possessing a jurisdiction higher than that of the Holy Office is shown in the case of Amiel de Lautrec, Abbot of S. Sernin. In 1322 the Viguier of Toulouse accused him to the Inquisition for having preached the doctrine that the soul is mortal in essence and only immortal through grace. The Inquisition examined the matter and decided that this was not heresy. The royal procureur-général, dissatisfied with this, appealed from the decision, not to the pope but to the Parlement or royal court. No question more purely spiritual can well be conceived, and yet the Parlement gravely entertained the appeal and asserted its jurisdiction by confirming the decree of the Inquisition.[144]
This was ominous of the future, although the indefatigable Henri de Chamay, apparently alarmed at the efforts successfully made by Philippe de Valois to control and limit spiritual jurisdictions, procured from that monarch, in November, 1329, a Mandement confirming the privileges of the Inquisition, placing all temporal nobles and officials afresh at its disposal, and annulling all letters emanating from the royal court, whether past or future, which should in any way impede inquisitors from performing their functions in accordance with their commissions from the Holy See. The evolution of the monarchy was proceeding too rapidly to be checked. Henri de Chamay himself, in 1328, had officially qualified himself as inquisitor, deputed, not by the pope, as had always been the formula proudly employed, but by the king, and a judicial decision to this effect followed soon after. It was Philippe’s settled policy to enforce and extend the jurisdiction of the crown, and in pursuance of this he sent Guillaume de Villars to Toulouse to reform the encroachments of the ecclesiastical tribunals over the royal courts. In 1330 de Villars, in the performance of his duty, caused the registers of the ecclesiastical courts to be submitted to him, after which he demanded those of the Inquisition. When we remember how jealously these were guarded, how arrogantly Nicholas d’Abbeville had refused a sight of them to the bishops sent by Philippe le Bel, and how long Jean de Pequigny hesitated before he interfered with Geoffroi d’Ablis, we can measure the extent of the silent revolution which had occurred during the interval in the relations between Church and State, by the fact that de Villars, on being refused, coolly proceeded to break open the door of the chamber in which the registers were kept. The inquisitor appealed, and again it was not to the pope, but to the Parlement, and that body, in condemning de Villars to pay the costs and damages, did so on the ground that the Inquisition was a royal and not an ecclesiastical court. This was a Pyrrhic victory; the State had absorbed the Inquisition. It was the same when, in 1334, Philippe listened to the complaints of the inquisitors that his seneschals disturbed them in their jurisdiction, and gave orders that they should enjoy all their ancient privileges, for these are treated as derived wholly from the royal power. Henceforth the Inquisition could exist only on sufferance, subject to the supervision of the Parlement, while the Captivity of Avignon, followed by the Great Schism, constantly gave to the temporal powers increased authority in spiritual matters.[145]
How completely the Inquisition was becoming an affair of state is indicated by two incidents. In 1340, when the lieutenant of the king in Languedoc, Louis of Poitou, Count of Die and Valentinois, was making his entry into the good city of Toulouse, he found the gate closed. Dismounting and kneeling bareheaded on a cushion, he took an oath on the Gospels, in the hands of the inquisitor, to preserve the privileges of the Inquisition, and then another oath to the consuls to maintain the liberties of the city. Thus both institutions were on the same footing and required the same illusory guarantee, the very suggestion of which would have been laughed to scorn by Bernard Gui. Again, in 1368, when the royal revenues were depleted by the English wars and the ravages of the Free Companies, and were insufficient to pay the wages of the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, Pierre Scatisse, the royal treasurer, ordered a levy by the consuls of twenty-six livres tournois to complete the payment. Confiscations had long since ceased to meet the expenditures, but the inquisitor was a royal official and must be paid by the city if not by the state.[146]
How thorough was the subjection of all ecclesiastical institutions, and how fallen the Inquisition from its high estate, is manifested by an occurrence in 1364, at a moment when the royal authority was at the lowest ebb. King John had died a prisoner in London, April 8, and the young Charles V. was not crowned until May 19, while his kingdom was reduced almost to anarchy by foreign aggression and internal dissensions. Yet, April 16, Marshal Arnaud d’Audeneham, Lieutenant du Roi in Languedoc, convoked at Nîmes an assembly of the Three Estates presided over by the Archbishop of Narbonne. One of the questions discussed was a quarrel between the Archbishop of Toulouse and the inquisitor whom he had prohibited from exercising his functions, saying that the Inquisition had been established at the request of the province of Languedoc, and that now it had become an injury. All the prelates, except Aymeri, Bishop of Viviers, sided with the archbishop, while the representatives of Toulouse asked to be admitted as parties to the suit on the side of the inquisitor. No one seems to have doubted that the marshal, as royal deputy, had full jurisdiction over the matter, and his decision was against the archbishop.[147]
Even in Carcassonne, where the Dominicans had lorded it so imperiously, all fear of them had disappeared so utterly that in 1354 a sturdy blacksmith named Hugues erected a shop close to the church of the Friars, and carried on his noisy avocation so vigorously as to interrupt their services and interfere with their studies. Remonstrances and threats were of no avail, and they were obliged to appeal, not to the bishop or the inquisitor, but to the king, who graciously sent a peremptory order to his seneschal to remove the smithy or to prevent Hugues from working in it.[148]
Towards the end of the century some cases occurring in Reims illustrate how completely the Inquisition was falling into abeyance throughout the kingdom, and how the jurisdiction of the royal court of the Parlement was accepted as supreme in spiritual matters. In 1385 there arose a dispute between the magistrates of the city and the archbishop as to jurisdiction over blasphemy, which was claimed by both. This was settled by an agreement recognizing it as belonging to the archbishop, but twenty years later the quarrel broke out afresh over the case of Drouet Largèle, who was guilty of blasphemy savoring of heresy as to the Passion and the Virgin. The matter was appealed to the Parlement, which decided in favor of the archbishop, and no allusion throughout the whole affair occurs as to any claim that the Inquisition might have to interpose, showing that at this time it was practically disregarded. Yet we chance to know that Reims was the seat of an Inquisition, for in 1419 Pierre Florée was inquisitor there, and preached, October 13, the funeral sermon at the obsequies of Jean sans Peur of Burgundy, giving great offence by urging Philippe le Bon not to avenge the murder of his father. We see also the scruples of the Inquisition on the subject of blasphemy in 1423 at Toulouse, where it had become the custom to submit to the inquisitor the names of all successful candidates in municipal elections in order to ascertain whether they were in any way suspect of heresy. Among the capitouls elected in 1423 was a certain François Albert, who was objected to by the acting inquisitor, Frère Bartolomé Guiscard, on account of habitual use of the expletives Tête-Dieu and Ventre-Dieu, whereupon the citizens substituted Pierre de Sarlat. Albert appealed to the Parlement, which approved of the action of the inquisitor.[149]
Still more emphatic as to the supreme authority of the Parlement was the case of Marie du Canech of Cambrai, to which I have already had occasion to refer. For maintaining that when under oath she was not bound to tell the truth to the prejudice of her honor, she was prosecuted for heresy by the Bishop of Cambrai and Frère Nicholas de Péronne, styling himself deputy of the inquisitor-general or Provincial of Paris. Being severely mulcted, she appealed to the Archbishop of Reims, as the metropolitan, and he issued inhibitory letters. Then the bishop and inquisitor appealed from the archbishop to the Parlement. The matter was elaborately argued on both sides, the archbishop alleging that there was at that time no inquisitor in France, and drawing a number of subtle distinctions. The Parlement had no hesitation in accepting jurisdiction over this purely spiritual question. It paid no attention to the cautious arguments of the archbishop, but decided broadly that the bishop and inquisitor had no grounds for disobeying the citation of the archbishop evoking the case to his own court, and it condemned them in costs. Thus the ancient supremacy of the episcopal jurisdiction was reasserted over that of the Inquisition.[150]
The Great Schism, followed by the councils of Constance and Basle, did much to shake the papal power on which that of the Inquisition was founded. The position of Charles VII. towards Rome was consistently insubordinate, and the Pragmatic Sanction which he published in 1438 secured the independence of the Gallican Church, and strengthened the jurisdiction of the Parlement. When Louis XI. abrogated it, in 1461, the remonstrances of his Parlement form a singularly free-spoken indictment of papal vices, and that body continued to treat the instrument as practically in force, while Louis himself, by successive measures of 1463, 1470, 1472, 1474, 1475, and 1479, gradually re-established its principles. Had not the Concordat of Francis I., in 1516, swept it away, when he conspired with Leo X. to divide the spoils of the Church, it would eventually have rendered France independent of Rome. Francis knew so well the opposition which it would excite that he hesitated for a year to submit the measure to his Parlement for registration, and the Parlement deferred the registration for another year, till at last the negotiator of the concordat, Cardinal Duprat, brought to bear sufficient pressure to accomplish the object. During the discussion the University had the boldness to protest publicly against it, and to lodge with the Parlement an appeal to the next general council.[151]
During this period of antagonism to Rome the University of Paris had contributed no little to the abasement of the Inquisition by supplanting it as an investigator of doctrine and judge of heresy. Its ancient renown, fully maintained by an uninterrupted succession of ardent and learned teachers, gave it great authority. It was a national institution of which clergy and laity alike might well be proud, and at one time it appeared as though it might rival the Parlement in growing into one of the recognized powers of the State. In the fearful anarchy which accompanied the insanity of Charles VI. it boldly assumed a right to speak on public affairs, and its interference was welcomed. In 1411 the king, who chanced at the time to be in the hands of the Burgundians, appealed to it to excommunicate the Armagnacs, and the University zealously did so. In 1412 it presented a remonstrance to the king on the subject of the financial disorders of the time and demanded a reform. Supported by the Parisians, at its dictate the financiers and thieves of the government, with the exception of the chancellor, were dismissed in 1413, greatly to the discontent of the courtiers, who ridiculed the theologians as bookworms; and in the same year it co-operated with the Parlement in securing momentary peace between the angry factions of the land. The thanks which the heir-apparent, the Duke of Guienne, accompanied by the Dukes of Berri, Burgundy, Bavaria, and Bar, solemnly rendered to the assembled Faculty, virtually recognized it as a part of the State. But when, in 1415, it sent a deputation to remonstrate against the oppression of the people through excessive taxation, the Duke of Guienne, who was angry at the part taken by it, without consulting the court, in degrading John XXIII. at the Council of Constance, curtly told the spokesmen that they were interfering in matters beyond their competence; and when the official orator attempted to reply, the duke had him arrested on the spot and kept in prison for several days.[152]
Though its temporary ambition to rival the Parlement in state affairs was fortunately not gratified, in theology such a body as this was supreme. It would naturally be called upon, either as a whole or by delegates, to furnish the experts whose counsel was to guide bishop and inquisitor in the decision of cases; and as the old heresies died out and new ones were evolved, every deviation from orthodoxy came to be submitted to it as a matter of course, when its decision was received as final. These were for the most part scholastic subtleties to which I shall recur hereafter, as well as to the great controversies over the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, and over Nominalism and Realism, in which it took a distinguished part. Sometimes, however, the questions were more practical. When some insolent wretch, in 1432, impudently told Frère Pierre de Voie, the deputy-inquisitor of Evreux, that his citations were simply abuses, the offended functionary, in place of promptly clapping the recalcitrant into prison, plaintively referred the case to the University, and had the satisfaction of receiving a solemn decision that the words were audacious, presumptuous, scandalous, and tending to rebellion (it did not say heretical), and that the utterer was liable to punishment. Bernard Gui or Nicholas d’Abbeville would have asked for no such warrant.[153]
To what an extent the University in time replaced the Inquisition in its neglected and forgotten functions is shown in 1498, in the case of the Observantine Franciscan, Jean Vitrier. In the restlessness and insubordination which heralded the Reformation, this obscure friar anticipated Luther even more than did John of Wesel, although in the strictness of his asceticism he taught that a wife might better break her marriage-vow than her fasts. In his preaching at Tournay he counselled the people to drag the concubines and their priests from their houses with shame and derision; he affirmed that it was a mortal sin to listen to the masses of concubinary priests. Pardons and indulgences were the offspring of hell: the faithful ought not to purchase them, for they were not intended for the maintenance of brothels. Even the intercession of the saints was not to be sought. These were old heresies for which any inquisitor would promptly offer the utterer the alternative of abjuration or the stake; but the prelates and magistrates of Tournay referred the matter to the University, which laboriously extracted from Vitrier’s sermons sixteen propositions for condemnation.[154]
Even more significant of the growing authority of the University and the waning power of the Papacy was a decision rendered in 1502. Alexander VI. had levied a tithe on the clergy of France, with the customary excuse of prosecuting the war against the Turks. The clergy, whose consent had not been asked, refused to pay. The pope rejoined by excommunicating them, and they applied to the University to know whether such a papal excommunication was valid, whether it was to be feared, and whether they should consequently abstain from the performance of divine service. On all these points the University replied in the negative, unanimously and without hesitation. Had circumstances permitted the same independence in Germany, a little more progress in this direction would have rendered Luther superfluous.[155]
It is not to be supposed, however, that the Inquisition, though fallen from its former dignity, had ceased to exist or to perform its functions after a fashion. It was to the interest of the popes to maintain it, and the position of inquisitor, though humble in comparison with that which his predecessors enjoyed, was yet a source of influence, and possibly of profit, which led to its being eagerly sought. In 1414 we find two contestants for the post at Toulouse, and in 1424 an unseemly quarrel between two rivals at Carcassonne. The diocese of Geneva was also the subject of contention embittered by the traditional rivalry between the two Mendicant Orders. It will be remembered that in 1290 this, with other French cantons, was included by Nicholas IV. in the inquisitorial province of Besançon, which was Dominican. Geneva belonged, however, ecclesiastically to the metropolis of Vienne, which was under the Franciscan Inquisition of Provence, and Gregory XI. so treated it in 1375. When Pons Feugeyron was commissioned, in 1409, Geneva was not mentioned in the enumeration of the dioceses under him; but when his commission was renewed by Martin V., in 1418, it was included, and he began to exercise his powers there. There at once arose the threat of a most scandalous quarrel between the combative Orders; the Dominicans appealed to Martin, and in 1419 he restored Geneva to them. Yet in 1434, when Eugenius IV. again confirmed Pons Feugeyron’s commission, the name of Geneva once more slipped in. The Dominicans must again have successfully reclaimed it, for in 1472, when there was a sudden resumption of inquisitorial activity under Sixtus IV., in confirming Frère Jean Vaylette as Inquisitor of Provence, with the same powers as Pons Feugeyron, Geneva was omitted in the list of his jurisdictions, while the Dominicans, Victor Rufi and Claude Rufi, were appointed respectively at Geneva and Lausanne; and in 1491 another Dominican, François Granet, was commissioned at Geneva.[156]
Yet the position thus eagerly sought had no legitimate means of support. In the terrible disorders of the times the royal stipends had been withdrawn. Alexander V., in 1409, instructed his legate, the Cardinal of S. Susanna, that some method must be devised of meeting the expenses of the inquisitor, his associate, his notary, and his servant. He suggests either levying three hundred gold florins on the Jews of Avignon; or that each bishop shall defray the cost as the inquisitor moves from one diocese to another; or that each bishop shall contribute ten florins annually out of the legacies for pious uses. Which device was adopted does not appear, but they all seem to have proved fruitless, for in 1418 Martin V. wrote to the Archbishop of Narbonne that he must find some means of supplying the necessary expenses of the Inquisition. Under such circumstances the attraction of the office may, perhaps, be discerned from a petition, in this same year 1418, from the citizens of Avignon in favor of the Jews. The protection afforded by the Avignonese popes to this proscribed class had rendered the city a Jewish centre, and they were found of much utility; but they were constantly molested by the inquisitors, who instituted frivolous prosecutions against them, doubtless not without profit. Martin listened kindly to the appeal, and it proves the degradation of the Inquisition that he gave the Jews a right to appoint an assessor who should sit with the inquisitor in all cases in which they were concerned.[157]
Still the Inquisition was not wholly without evidence of activity in its purposed sphere of duty. We shall see hereafter that Pierre d’Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, when, in 1411, he prosecuted the Men of Intelligence, duly called in the inquisitor of the province, who was Dominican Prior of St. Quentin in Vermandois, to join in the sentence. In 1430 we hear of a number of heretics who had been burned at Lille by the deputy-inquisitor and the Bishop of Tournay; and in 1431 Philippe le Bon ordered his officials to execute all sentences pronounced by Brother Heinrich Kaleyser, who had been appointed Inquisitor of Cambrai and Lille by the Dominican Provincial of Germany—a manifest invasion of the rights of his colleague of Paris, doubtless due to the political complications of the times. This order of Philippe le Bon, however, shows that the example of supervision set by the Parlement was not lost on the feudatories, for the officials are only instructed to make arrests when there has been a proper preliminary inquest, with observance of all the forms of law. I shall have occasion hereafter to speak of the part played by the Inquisition in the tragedy of Joan of Arc, and need here only allude to the appointment, in 1431, by Eugenius IV., of Frère Jean Graveran to be Inquisitor of Rouen, where he was already exercising the functions of the office, and where he was succeeded in 1433 by Frère Sébastien l’Abbé, who had been papal penitentiary and chaplain—another evidence of the partition of France during the disastrous English war. People were growing more careless about excommunication than ever. About 1415, a number of ecclesiastics of Limoges were prosecuted by the inquisitor, Jean du Puy, as suspect of heresy for this cause; they appealed to the Council of Constance, and in 1418 the matter was referred back to the archbishop. Still the indifference to excommunication grew, and in 1435 Eugenius IV. instructed the Inquisitor of Carcassonne to prosecute all who remained under the censure of the Church for several years without seeking absolution.[158]
With the pacification of France and the final expulsion of the English, Nicholas V. seems to have thought the occasion opportune for reviving and establishing the Inquisition on a firmer and broader basis. A bull of August 1, 1451, to Hugues le Noir, Inquisitor of France, defines his jurisdiction as extending not only over the Kingdom of France, but also over the Duchy of Aquitaine and all Gascony and Languedoc. Thus, with the exception of the eastern provinces, the whole was consolidated into one district, with its principal seat probably in Toulouse. The jurisdiction of the inquisitor was likewise extended over all offences that had hitherto been considered doubtful—blasphemy, sacrilege, divination, even when not savoring of heresy, and unnatural crimes. He was further released from the necessity of episcopal co-operation, and was empowered to carry on all proceedings and render judgment without calling the bishops into consultation. Two centuries earlier these enormous powers would have rendered Hugues almost omnipotent, but now it was too late. The Inquisition had sunk beyond resuscitation. In 1458 the Franciscan Minister of Burgundy represented to Pius II. the deplorable condition of the institution in the extensive territories confided to his Order, comprising the great archiepiscopates of Lyons, Vienne, Arles, Aix, Embrun, and Tarantaise, and covering both sides of the Rhone and a considerable portion of Savoy. In the thirteenth century Clement IV. had placed this region under the control of the Burgundian Minister, but with the lapse of time his supervision had become nominal. Ambitious friars had obtained directly from the popes commissions to act as inquisitors in special districts, and therefore acknowledged no authority but their own. Others had assumed the office without appointment from any one. There was no power to correct their excesses; scandals were numerous, the people were oppressed, and the Order exposed to opprobrium. Pius hastened to put an end to these abuses by renewing the obsolete authority of the minister, with full power of removal, even of those who enjoyed papal commissions.[159]
The Inquisition was thus reorganized, but its time had passed. To so low an ebb had it fallen that in this same year, 1458, Frère Bérard Tremoux, Inquisitor of Lyons, who had aroused general hostility by the rigor with which he exercised his office, was thrown in prison through the efforts of the citizens, and it required the active interposition of Pius II. and his legate, Cardinal Alano, to effect his release. The venality and corruption of the papal curia, moreover, was so ineradicable that no reform was possible in anything subject to its control. But three years after Pius had placed the whole district under the Minister of Burgundy we find him renewing the old abuses by a special appointment of Brother Bartholomäus of Eger as Inquisitor of Grenoble. That such commissions were sold, or conferred as a matter of favor, there can be no reasonable doubt, and the appointees were turned loose upon their districts to wring what miserable gains they could from the fears of the people. Only this can explain a form of appointment which became common as “inquisitor in the Kingdom of France,” “without prejudice to other inquisitors authorized by us or by others”—a sort of letter-of-marque to cruise at large and make what the appointees could from the faithful. Similarly significant is the appointment of Frère Pierre Cordrat, confessor of Jean, Duke of Bourbon, in 1478, to be Inquisitor of Bourges, thus wholly disregarding the consolidation of the kingdom by Nicholas V. It is hardly necessary to extend the list further. Inquisitors were appointed by the popes in constant succession, either for the kingdom of France or for special districts, as though the institution were at the height of its power and activity. That something was to be gained by all this there can be no question, but there is little risk in assuming that the gainer was not religion.[160]
Several cases occurring about this period are interesting as illustrations of the spread of the spirit of inquiry and independence, and of the subordinate position to which the Inquisition had sunk. In 1459, at Lille, there was burned a heretic known as Alphonse of Portugal, who led an austere life as an anchorite and frequented the churches assiduously, but who declared that since Gregory the Great there had been no true pope, and consequently no valid administration of the sacraments. In the account which has reached us of his trial and execution there is no allusion to the intervention of the Holy Office. Still more significant is the case, in 1484, of Jean Laillier, a priest in Paris, a theological licentiate, and an applicant for the doctorate in theology. In his sermons he had been singularly free-spoken. He denied the validity of the rule of celibacy; he quoted Wickliff as a great doctor; he rejected the supremacy of Rome and the binding force of tradition and decretal; John XXII., he said, had had no power to condemn Jean de Poilly; so far from St. Francis occupying the vacant throne of Lucifer in heaven, he was rather with Lucifer in hell; since the time of Silvester the Holy See had been the church of avarice and of imperial power, where canonization could be obtained for money. So weak had become the traditional hold of the Church on the consciences of men that this revolutionary preaching seems to have aroused no opposition, even on the part of the Inquisition; but Laillier, not content with simple toleration, applied to the University for the doctorate, and was refused admission to the preliminary disputations unless he should purge himself, undergo penance, and obtain the assent of the Holy See. Laillier thereupon boldly applied to the Parlement, now by tacit assent clothed with supreme jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters, asking it to compel the University to admit him. The Parlement entertained no doubts as to its own competence, but decided the case in a manner not looked for by the hardy priest. It ordered Louis, Bishop of Paris, in conjunction with the inquisitor and four doctors selected by the University, to prosecute Laillier to due punishment. The bishop and inquisitor agreed to proceed separately and communicate their processes to each other; but Laillier must have had powerful backers, for Bishop Louis, without conferring with his colleague or the experts, allowed Laillier to make a partial recantation and a public abjuration couched in the most free and easy terms, absolved him, June 23, 1486, pronounced him free from suspicion of heresy, restored him to his functions, and declared him capable of promotion to all grades and honors. Frère Jean Cossart, the inquisitor, who had been diligently collecting evidence of many scandalous doctrines of Laillier’s and vainly communicating them to the bishop, was forced to swallow this affront in silence, but the University felt its honor engaged and was not inclined to submit. November 6, 1486, it issued a formal protest against the action of the bishop, appealed to the pope, and demanded “Apostoli.” Innocent VIII. promptly came to the rescue. He annulled the decision of the bishop and ordered the inquisitor, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Sens and the Bishop of Meaux, to throw Laillier into prison, while they should investigate the unrecanted heresies and send the papers to Rome for decision. Very suggestive of the strong influences supporting Laillier is the pope’s expression of fear lest the pressure brought to bear on the University should have forced it to admit him to the doctorate; if so, such action is pronounced void, and all engaged in the attempt are ordered to desist under pain of incurring suspicion of heresy. It is not a little singular that the Bishop of Meaux, who was thus selected to sit in judgment on Laillier, was at this very time under censure by the University for reviving the Donatist heresy of the insufficiency of the sacraments in polluted hands—the Eucharist of a fornicating priest was of no more account, he said, than the barking of a dog. Many an unfortunate Waldensian had been burned for less than this, but the inquisitor had not dared to hold him to account. Nor do we hear of his intervention in the case of Jean Langlois, priest of St. Crispin, who, when celebrating mass, June 3, 1491, horrified his flock by casting on the floor and trampling the consecrated wine and host. On his arrest he gave as his reason that the body and blood of Christ were not in the elements, and as he stubbornly refused to recant, he expiated his error at the stake. Similar was the fate of Aymon Picard, who, at the feast of St. Louis in the Sainte-Chapelle, August 25, 1503, snatched the host from the celebrant and cast it in pieces on the floor, and obstinately declined to abjure. All this was significant of the time coming when the Inquisition would be more necessary than ever.[161]
The present degradation which it shared with the rest of the Church in the constantly growing supremacy of the State is manifested by a commission issued in 1485, by Frère Antoine de Clède, appointing a vicar to act for him in Rodez and Vabres. In this document he styles himself Inquisitor of France, Aquitaine, Gascony, and Languedoc, deputed by the Holy See and the Parlement. The two bodies are thus equal sources of authority, and the appointment by the pope would have been insufficient without the confirmation by the royal court. How contemptible, indeed, the Inquisition had become, even in the eyes of ecclesiastics, is brought instructively before us in a petty quarrel between the Inquisitor Raymond Gozin and his Dominican brethren. When he succeeded Frère Gaillard de la Roche, somewhere about 1516, he found that the house of the Inquisition at Toulouse had been stripped of its furniture and utensils by the friars of the Dominican convent. He made a reclamation, and some of the articles were restored; but the friars subsequently demanded them back, and on his refusal procured from the General Master instructions to the vicar, under which the latter proceeded to extremities with him, wholly disregarding his appeal to the pope, though he finally, in 1520, succeeded in obtaining the intervention of Leo X. Imagination could scarcely furnish a more convincing proof of decadence than this exhibition of the successor of Bernard de Caux and Bernard Gui vainly endeavoring to defend his kitchen gear from the rapacious hands of his brethren.[162]
It is quite probable that this dispute was envenomed by the inevitable jealousy between the main body of the Order and its puritan section known as the Reformed Congregation. Of this latter Raymond Gozin was vicar-general, and his anxiety to regain his furnishings was probably due to the fact that he was altering the house of the Inquisition so as to accommodate within it a Reformed convent. The vast buildings which it had required in the plenitude of its power had become a world too wide for its shrunken needs. The original home of the Dominican Order, before the removal in 1230 through the liberality of Pons de Capdenier, it contained a church with three altars, a refectory, cells (or prison), chambers, guest-rooms, cloisters, and two gardens. In approving of the proposed alterations, Leo X. stipulated that some kind of retiring-room with convenient offices must still be reserved for the use of the Inquisition. This epitomizes the history of the institution. Yet it had by no means wholly lost its power of evil, for in 1521 Johann Bomm, Dominican Prior of Poligny, and inquisitor at Besançon had the satisfaction of despatching two lycanthropists, or wer-wolves.[163]
The career of the Waldenses forms so interesting and well-defined an episode in the history of persecution that I have hitherto omitted all reference to that sect, in order to present a brief, continuous outline of its relations with the Inquisition, which found in it, after the disappearance of the Cathari, the only really important field of labor in France.
Although by no means as numerous or as powerful in Languedoc as the Cathari, the Waldenses formed an important heretical element. They were, however, mostly confined to the humbler classes, and we hear of few nobles belonging to the sect. In the sentences of Pierre Cella, rendered in Querci in 1241 and 1242, we have abundant testimony as to their numbers and activity. Thus, references occur to them—
At Gourdon in
55
cases out of 219
At Montcucq in
44
" " " 84
At Sauveterre in
1
case " " 5
At Belcayre in
3
cases out of 7
At Montauban in
175
" " " 252
At Moissac in
1
case " " 94
At Montpezat in
no
" " " 22
At Montaut in
no
" " " 23
At Castelnau in
1
" " " 11
and although many of these are mere allusions to having seen them or had dealings with them, the comparative frequency of the reference indicates the places where their heresy was most flourishing. Thus, Montauban was evidently its headquarters in the district, and at Gourdon and Montcucq there were vigorous colonies.
They had a regular organization—schools for the young where their doctrines were doubtless implanted in the children of orthodox parents; cemeteries where their dead were buried; missionaries who traversed the land diligently to spread the faith, and who customarily refused all alms, save hospitality. A certain Pierre des Vaux is frequently referred to as one of the most active and most beloved of these, regarded, according to one of his disciples, as an angel of light. Public preaching in the streets was constant, and numerous allusions are made to disputations held between the Waldensian ministers and the Catharan perfects. Still, the utmost good feeling existed between the two persecuted sects. Men were found who confessed to believing in the Waldenses and to performing acts of adoration to the Cathari—in the common enmity to Rome any faith which was not orthodox was regarded as good. The reputation of the Waldenses as skilful leeches was a powerful aid in their missionary labors. They were constantly consulted in cases of disease or injury, and almost without exception they refused payment for their ministrations, save food. One woman confessed to giving forty sols to a Catharan for medical services, while to Waldenses she gave only wine and bread. We learn also that they heard confessions and imposed penance; that they celebrated a sacramental supper in which bread and fish were blessed and partaken of, and that bread which they consecrated with the sign of the cross was regarded as holy by their disciples. Notwithstanding the strength and organization of the sect, the Waldenses were evidently looked upon by Pierre Cella with a less unfavorable eye than the Cathari, and the penances imposed on them were habitually lighter.[164]
From Lyons the Waldensian belief had spread to the North and East, as well as to the South and West. It is a curious fact that while the Cathari never succeeded in establishing themselves to any extent beyond the Romance territories, the Waldenses were already, in 1192, so numerous in Lorraine that Eudes, Bishop of Toul, in ordering them to be captured and brought to him in chains for judgment, not only promises remission of sins as a reward, but feels obliged to add that if, for rendering this service, the faithful are driven away from their homes, he will find them in food and clothing. In Franche Comté, John, Count of Burgundy, bears emphatic testimony to their numbers in 1248, when he solicited of Innocent IV. the introduction of the Inquisition in his dominions, and its discontinuance in 1257 doubtless left them to multiply in peace. In 1251 we find the Archbishop of Narbonne condemning some female Waldenses to perpetual imprisonment. It was, however, in the mountains of Auvergne and the Alpine and sub-Alpine regions stretching between Geneva and the Mediterranean that they found the surest refuge. While Pierre Cella was penancing those of Querci, the Archbishop of Embrun was busy with their brethren of Freyssinières, Argentière, and Val-Pute, which so long continued to be their strongholds. In 1251, when Alphonse and Jeanne, on their accession, guaranteed at Beaucaire the liberties of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, the Bishop-legate Zoen earnestly urged them to destroy the Waldenses there. There were ample laws on the municipal statute-books of Avignon and Arles for the extermination of “heretics and Waldenses,” but the local magistracy was slack in their enforcement and was obliged to swear to extirpate the sectaries. The Waldenses were mostly simple mountain folk, with possessions that offered no temptation for confiscation, and persecuting energy was more profitable and more usefully directed against the richer Cathari. We hear, indeed, that from 1271 to 1274 the zeal of Guillaume de Cobardon, Seneschal of Carcassonne, urged the inquisitors to active work against the Waldenses, resulting in numerous convictions, but among the far more populous communities near the Rhone the Inquisition was not introduced into the Comtat Venaissin until 1288, nor into Dauphiné until 1292, and in both cases we are told that it was caused by the alarming spread of heresy. In 1288 the same increase is alluded to in the provinces of Arles, Aix, and Embrun, when Nicholas IV. sent to the nobles and magistrates there the laws of Frederic II., with orders for their enforcement, and to the inquisitors a code of instructions for procedure.[165]
About the same period there is a curious case of a priest named Jean Philibert, who was sent from Burgundy into Gascony to track a fugitive Waldensian. He followed his quarry as far as Ausch, where he found a numerous community of the sectaries, holding regular assemblies and preaching and performing their rites, although they attended the parish churches to avert suspicion. Their evangelical piety so won upon him that, after going home, he returned to Ausch and formally joined them. He wandered back to Burgundy, where he fell under suspicion, and in 1298 he was brought before Gui de Reims, the Inquisitor of Besançon, when he refused to take an oath and was consigned to prison. Here he abjured, and on being liberated returned to the Waldenses of Gascony, was again arrested, and brought before Bernard Gui in 1311, who finally burned him in 1319 as a relapsed. In 1302 we hear of two Waldensian ministers haunting the region near Castres, in the Albigeois, wandering around by night and zealously propagating their doctrines. Still, in spite of these evidences of activity, little effort at repression is visible at this period. The Inquisition was crippled for a while by its contest with Philippe le Bel and Clement V., and when it resumed unrestricted operations, Pierre Autier and his Catharan disciples absorbed its energies. Although the sentences of Bernard Gui at Toulouse commence in 1308, it is not until the auto de fé of 1316 that any Waldenses appear among its victims, when one was condemned to perpetual imprisonment and one was burned as an unrepentant heretic. The auto of 1319 appears to have been a jail-delivery, for poor wretches appear in it whose confessions date back to 1309, 1311, 1312, and 1315. On this occasion eighteen Waldenses were condemned to pilgrimages with or without crosses, twenty-six to perpetual prison, and three were burned. In the auto of 1321 a man and his wife who obstinately refused to abjure were burned. In that of 1322 eight were sentenced to pilgrimages, of whom five had crosses, two to prison, six dead bodies were exhumed and burned, and there is an allusion to the brother of one of the prisoners who had been burned at Avignon. This comprises the whole work of Bernard Gui from 1308 to 1323, and does not indicate any very active persecution. It is perhaps noteworthy that all of those punished in 1319 were from Ausch, while the popular name of “Burgundians,” by which the Waldenses were known, indicates that the headquarters of the sect were still in Franche Comté. In fact, an allusion to a certain Jean de Lorraine as a successful missionary indicates that region as busy in proselyting efforts, and there are not wanting facts to prove that the Inquisition of Besançon was active during this period. In the auto of 1322 many of the sufferers were refugees from Burgundy, and we learn that they had a provincial named Girard, showing that the Waldensian Church of that region had a regular organization and hierarchy.[166]
In his “Practica” Bernard Gui gives a clear and detailed statement of the Waldensian belief as it existed at this time, the chief points of which may be worth enumerating as affording us a definite view of the development of the faith in its original seat after a century and a half of persecution. There was no longer any self-deceit as to connection with the Roman Church. Persecution had done its work, and the Waldenses were permanently severed. Theirs was the true Church, and that of the pope was but a house of lies, whose excommunication was not to be regarded, and whose decrees were not to be obeyed. They had a complete organization, consisting of bishops, priests, and deacons, and they held in some large city one or two general chapters every year, in which orders were conferred and measures for mission work were perfected. The Waldensian orders, however, did not confer exclusive supernatural power. Although they still believed in transubstantiation, the making of the body and blood of Christ depended on the purity of the ministrant; a sinner was impotent to effect it, while it could be done by any righteous man or woman. It was the same with absolution: they held the power of the keys direct from Christ, and heard confessions and imposed penance. Their antisacerdotalism was strongly expressed in the simplification of their faith. There was no purgatory, and consequently masses for the dead or the invocation of the suffrages of the saints were of no avail; the saints, in fact, neither heard nor helped man, and the miracles performed in their name in the churches were fictitious. The fasts and feasts prescribed in the calendar were not to be observed, and the indulgences so lavishly sold were useless. As of old, oaths and homicide were forbidden. Yet enough of the traditional ascetic tendencies were preserved to lead to the existence of a monastic fraternity whose members divested themselves of all individual property, and promised chastity, with obedience to a superior. Bernard Gui refers, with a brevity which shows how little importance he attached to them, to stories about sexual abominations performed in nocturnal assemblies, and he indicates the growth of popular superstition by a brief allusion to a dog which appears in these gatherings and sprinkles the sectaries with his tail.[167]
The non-resistance doctrines of the Waldenses rendered them, as a rule, a comparatively easy prey, but human nature sometimes asserted itself, and a sharp persecution carried on at this period by Frère Jacques Bernard, Inquisitor of Provence, provoked a bloody reprisal. In 1321 he sent two deputies—Frères Catalan Fabri and Pierre Paschal—to the diocese of Valence to make inquisition there. Former raids had left the people in an angry mood. Multitudes had been subjected to the humiliation of crosses, and these and their friends vowed revenge on the appearance of the new persecutors. A plot was rapidly formed to assassinate the inquisitors at a village where they were to pass the night. For some reason, however, they changed their plans, and passed on to the Priory of Montoison. The conspirators followed them, broke down the doors, and slew them. Strangely enough, the Prior of Montoison was accused of complicity in the murder, and was arrested when the murderers were seized. The bodies of the martyrs were solemnly buried in the Franciscan convent at Valence, where they soon began to manifest their sanctity in miracles, and they would have been canonized by John XXII. had not the quarrel which soon afterwards sprang up between him and the Franciscans rendered it impolitic for him to increase the number of Franciscan saints.[168]
A few Waldenses appear in the prosecutions of Henri de Chamay of Carcassonne in 1328 and 1329, and, from the occasional notices which have reached us in the succeeding years, we may conclude that persecution, more or less fitful, never wholly ceased; while, in spite of this, the heresy kept constantly growing. After the disappearance of Catharism, indeed, it was the only refuge for ordinary humanity when dissatisfied with Rome. The Begghards were mystics whose speculations were attractive only to a certain order of minds. The Spirituals and Fraticelli were Franciscan ascetics. The Waldenses sought only to restore Christianity to its simplicity; their doctrines could be understood by the poor and illiterate, groaning under the burdens of sacerdotalism, and they found constantly wider acceptance among the people, in spite of all the efforts put forth by the waning power of the Inquisition. Benedict XII., in 1335, summoned Humbert II., Dauphin of Viennois, and Adhémar of Poitou to assist the inquisitors. Humbert obeyed, and from 1336 to 1346 there were expeditions sent against them which drove them from their homes and captured some of them. Of these a portion abjured and the rest were burned; their possessions were confiscated and the bones of the dead exhumed. The secular and ecclesiastical officials of Embrun joined in these efforts, but they had no permanent result. In Languedoc Frère Jean Dumoulin, Inquisitor of Toulouse, in 1344 attacked them vigorously, but only succeeded in scattering them throughout Béarn, Foix, and Aragon. In 1348 Clement VI. again urged Humbert, who responded with strict orders to his officers to aid the ecclesiastical authorities with what force might be necessary, and this time we hear of twelve Waldenses brought to Embrun, and burned on the square in front of the cathedral. When Dauphiné became a possession of the crown the royal officials were equally ready to assist. Letters of October 20, 1351, from the governor, order the authorities of Briançon to give the inquisitor armed support in his operations against the heretics of the Briançonnais, but this seems to have been ineffective; and the next year Clement VI. appealed to the Dauphin Charles, and to Louis and Joanna of Naples, to aid Frère Pierre Dumont, the Inquisitor of Provence, and summoned prelates and magistrates to co-operate in the good work. The only recorded result of this was the penancing of seven Waldenses by Dumont in 1353. More successful were the Christian labors of Guillaume de Bordes, Archbishop of Embrun from 1352 to 1363, surnamed the Apostle of the Waldenses, who tried the unusual expedient of kindness and persuasion. He personally visited the mountain valleys, and had the satisfaction of winning over a number of the heretics. With his death his methods were abandoned, and Urban V., from 1363 to 1365, was earnest in calling upon the civil power and in stimulating the zeal of the Provençal inquisitors, Frères Hugues Cardilion and Jean Richard. The celebrated inquisitor François Borel now appears upon the scene. Armed expeditions were sent into the mountains which had considerable success. Many of the heretics were obstinate and were burned, while others saved their lives by abjuration. Their pitiful little properties were confiscated; one had a cow, another two cows and clothes of white cloth. In the purse of another, more wealthy, were found two florins—a booty which scarce proved profitable, for the wood to burn him and a comrade cost sixty-two sols and six deniers. One woman named Juven who was burned possessed a vineyard. The vintage was gathered and the must stored in her cabin, when the wrathful neighbors fired it at night and destroyed the product.[169]
All this was of no avail. When Gregory XI. ascended the pontifical throne, in 1370, his attention was early directed to the deplorable condition of the Church in Provence, Dauphiné, and the Lyonnais. The whole region was full of Waldenses, and many nobles were now beginning to embrace the heresy. The prelates were powerless or negligent, and the Inquisition ineffective. He set to work vigorously, appointing inquisitors and stimulating their zeal, but the whole system by this time was so discredited that his labors were ineffectual. The royal officials, so far from aiding the inquisitors, had no scruple in impeding them. Unsafe places were assigned to them in which to conduct their operations; they were forced to permit secular judges to act as assessors with them; their proceedings were submitted for revision to the secular courts, and even their prisoners were set at liberty without consulting them. The secular officials refused to take oaths to purge the land of heresy, and openly protected heretics, especially nobles, when prosecutions were commenced against them.[170]
Gregory duly complained of this to Charles le Sage in 1373, but to little purpose at first. The evil continued unabated, and in 1375 he returned to the charge still more vigorously. No stone was left unturned. Not only was the king requested to send a special deputy to the infected district, but the pope wrote directly to the royal lieutenant, Charles de Banville, reproaching him for his protection of heretics, and threatening him if he did not mend his ways. Certain nobles who had become conspicuous as favorers of heresy were significantly reminded of the fate of Raymond of Toulouse; the prelates were scolded and stimulated; Amedeo of Savoy was summoned to assist, and the Tarantaise was added to the district of Provence that nothing might interfere with the projected campaign. As the spread of heresy was attributable to the lack of preachers, and to the neglect of prelates and clergy in instructing their flocks, the inquisitor was empowered to call in the services of Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians, to spread over the land and teach the people the truths of religion. These multiplied efforts at length began to tell. Charles issued orders to enforce the laws against heresy, and when Gregory sent a special Apostolic Internuncio, Antonio, Bishop of Massa, to direct operations, persecution began in earnest. Frère François Borel, the Inquisitor of Provence, had long been struggling against the indifference of the prelates and the hostility of the secular power. Now that he was sure of efficient seconding be was like a hound slipped from the leash. His forays against the miserable populations of Freyssinières, l’Argentière, and Val-Pute (or Val-Louise) have conferred on him a sinister reputation, unredeemed by the efficient aid which he contributed to regaining the liberties of his native town of Gap.[171]
The immediate success which rewarded these efforts was so overwhelming as to bring new cause for solicitude. The Bishop of Massa’s mission commenced early in May, 1375, and already, by June 17, Gregory is concerned about the housing and support of the crowds of wretches who had been captured. In spite of numerous burnings of those who proved obstinate, the prisons of the land were insufficient for the detention of the captives, and Gregory at once ordered new and strong ones to be built in Embrun, Avignon, and Vienne. To solve the financial complications which immediately arose, the bishops, whose negligence was accountable for the growth of heresy, were summoned within three months to furnish four thousand gold florins to build the prisons, and eight hundred florins per annum for five years for the support of the prisoners. This they were allowed to take from the legacies for pious uses, and the restitutions of wrongly-acquired funds, with a threat, if they should demur, that they should be deprived of these sources of income and be excommunicated besides. The bishops, however, were no more amenable to such arguments than those of Languedoc had been in 1245, and, after the three months had passed, Gregory answers, October 5, the anxious inquiry of the Bishop of Massa as to how he shall feed his prisoners, by telling him that it is the business of every bishop to support those of his diocese, and that any one who refuses to do so is to be coerced with excommunication and the secular arm. This was a mere brutum fulmen, and in 1376 he endeavored to secure a share in the confiscations, but King Charles refused to divide them, though in 1378 he at last agreed to give the inquisitors a yearly stipend for their own support, similar to that paid to their brethren at Toulouse.[172]
All other devices being exhausted, Gregory at last had recourse to the unfailing resource of the curia—an indulgence. There is something so appallingly grotesque in tearing honest, industrious folk from their homes by the thousand, in thrusting them into dungeons to rot and starve, and then evading the cost of feeding them by presenting them to the faithful as objects of charity, that the proclamation which Gregory issued August 15, 1370, is perhaps the most shameless monument of a shameless age—
[141] Raynald. ann. 1365, No. 17; ann. 1373, No. 19, 21.--Gaguini Hist. Francor. Lib. IX. c. 2. (Ed. 1576, p. 158).--Meyeri Annal. Flandr. Lib. XIII. ann. 1372.--Du Cange s. v. Turlupini.--Gersoni de Consolat. Theolog. Lib. IV. Prosa 3; Ejusd. de Mystica Theol. Specul. P. I. Consid. 8; Ejusd. de Distinctione verarum Visionum Signum, 5.--Altmeyer, Précurseurs de la Réforme aux Pays-Bas, I. 85. Probably there may be some connection between the Turelupins and certain wandering bands known as “de Pexariacho” and suspected of heresy. A member of these, named Bidon de Puy-Guillem, of the diocese of Bordeaux, was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and was liberated by Gregory XI. in 1371 (Coll. Doat, XXXV. 134).
[142] Grandes Chroniques, ann. 1380-1.--Religieux de S. Denis, Hist. de Charles VI. Liv. I. c. 13, liv. II. c. 1.
[143] Religieux de S. Denis, op. cit. Liv. IV. ch. 13.--D’Argentré, Collect. Judic. de novis error. I. II. 151.
[144] Chron. Bardin, ann. 1322 (Vaissette, IV. Pr. 21-22).
[145] Isambert, Anc. Lois Franç. IV. 364-5.--Coll. Doat, XXVII. 118.--Vaissette, IV. Pr. 23.
[146] Chron. Bardin, ann. 1340, 1368 (Vaissette, IV. Pr. 27, 31).
[147] Chron. Bardin, ann. 1364 (Vaissette, IV. Pr. 30. Cf. A. Molinier, Éd. Privat. X. 763).
[148] Martene Thesaur. I. 1399.
[149] Arch. Administratives de Reims, III. 637-45.--Meyeri Annal. Flandr. Lib. XVI. ann. 1419.--Lafaille, Annales de Toulouse I. 183.--Chron. Bardin, ann. 1423 (Vaissette. IV. Pr. 38).
[150] Arch. Administratives de Reims, III. 639-43.
[151] Isambert, Anc. Lois Franç. IX. 3; X. 393, 396-416, 477.--Bochelli Decret. Eccles. Gallican. Lib. IV. Tit. 4, 5.--Bull. de la Soc. de l’Hist. du Protestantisme en France, 1860, p. 121.--D’Argentré Coll. Judic. de novis Error. I. II. 357.--Fascic. Rer. Expetend. et Fugiend. I. 63 (Ed. 1690). The feelings with which the abrogation of the Pragmatic Sanction in 1461 was received are well expressed in the “Pragmaticæ Sanctionis Passio,” Baluz. et Mansi, IV. 29. Pius II. is singularly candid in his account of the simoniacal transaction through which he purchased the abrogation by giving the cardinal’s hat to Jean, Bishop of Arras. The suggestion at first provoked the liveliest remonstrances from the members of the Sacred College, who, through their spokesman, the Cardinal of Avignon, warned Pius that there would be no peace in the Consistory, for the bishop would set them all by the ears, and that his unquiet spirit showed that he must be the offspring of an Incubus. Pius admitted all this, but argued that it was an unfortunate necessity; both Louis XI. and Philippe le Bon had asked for his promotion; unless the request was granted the Pragmatic Sanction would not be abolished, for the fury of the disappointed man would convert him into its supporter, and, as he was learned, he would readily find ample Scriptural warrant to adduce in its favor, which would be decisive, as he was the only man in France who urged the abrogation, and he could readily lead the king to change his mind. These arguments were convincing, and Pius enjoyed the supreme triumph of destroying the last relic of the reforms of Constance and Basle. He paid dearly for it, however, in the annoyances inflicted on him by the new cardinal, whom he describes as a liar and a perjurer, avaricious and ambitious, a glutton and a drunkard, and excessively given to women. He was so irascible that at meals he would frequently throw the silver plates and vessels at the servants, and occasionally would push the whole table over, to the dismay of his guests.--Æn. Sylvii Opp. inedd. (Atti della Accad. dei Lincei, 1883, pp. 531, 546-8).
[152] Juvenal des Ursins, ann. 1411, 1413.--Religieux de S. Denis, Hist. de Charles VI. Liv. XXXII. ch. 14; XXXIII. ch. 1, 15, 16; XXXV. ch. 18.
[153] D’Argentré, op. cit. I. II. 370.
[154] Ibid. I. II. 340.
[155] Ibid. I. II. 346.
[156] Wadding, ann. 1375, No. 17; 1418, No. 1, 2; 1419, No. 2; 1434, No. 2, 3; 1472, No. 24.--Ripoll II. 522, 566-9, 637, 644; III. 487; IV. 6.
[157] Wadding. ann. 1409, No. 13; 1418, No. 1, 2, 4.
[158] Baluz. et Mansi I. 288-93,--Arch. Gén. de Belgique, Papiers d’État, v. 405.--MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds Moreau, 444, fol. 10.--Ripoll II. 533; III. 6, 8, 21, 193.
[159] Ripoll III. 301.--Wadding, ann. 1458, No. 12.
[160] Wadding, ann. 1458, No. 13; 1461, No. 3.--Ripoll III. 317, 423, 487; IV. 103, 217, 303, 304, 356, 373. A MS. of Bernard Gui’s Practica, now in the Municipal Library of Toulouse, bears a marginal note that it was lent by the Inquisition of Toulouse, in 1483, to the Dominicans of Bordeaux to be transcribed, thus showing that there was an Inquisition in operation in the latter city of which the members required instruction in their duties (Molinier, l’Inq. dans le midi de la France, p. 201).
[161] Memoires de Jacques du Clercq, Liv. III. ch. 43.--D’Argentré, op. cit. I. II. 308-18, 319-20, 323, 347.
[162] Bremond, ap. Ripoll IV. 373.--Ripoll IV. 390.
[163] Ripoll IV. 376.--Wieri de Præstig. Dæmon. Lib. VI. c. 11.
[164] Coll. Doat, XXI. 197, 203, 208, 223, 225, 232, 233, 234, 236, 238, 241, 244, 250, 252, 254, 261-2, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 275, 276, 281, 282, 289, 296. It is perhaps worthy of note that Raymond de Péreille, the Castellan of Montségur, and his companions, when on trial, while freely giving evidence about innumerable Cathari, declared that they knew nothing whatever about Waldenses, which would seem to indicate that there was little communication between the sects (Doat, XXII. 217; XXIII. 344; XXIV. 8).
[165] Statut. Synod. Odonis Tullensis ann. 1192, c. ix., x. (Martene Thesaur. IV. 1180).--Ripoll I. 183.--Douais, Les sources de l’histoire de l’Inq. (Revue des Questions Historiques, Oct. 1881, p. 434).--Peyrat, Les Alb. et l’Inquis. III. 74.--Chabrand, Vaudois et Protestants des Alpes, Grenoble, 1886, p. 34.--Havet, L’heresie et le bras seculier (Bib. de l’École des Chartes, 1880, p. 585).--Vaissette, IV. 17.--A. Molinier (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VI. 819).--Wadding, ann. 1288, No. 14-15; 1292, No. 3.--Raynald. ann. 1288, No. 27-8.
[166] Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 200-1, 207-8, 216-43, 252-4, 262-5, 289-90, 340-7, 352, 355, 364-66.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carcass. (Doat, XXVII. 7 sqq.).
[167] Bernard. Guidon. Practica P. v. (Doat. XXX.).
[168] Wadding. ann. 1321, No. 21-4.
[169] Arch. de l’Inq. de Carcass. (Doat, XXVII. 119 sqq.).--Raynald. ann. 1335, No. 63; 1344, No. 9; 1352, No. 20.--Chabrand. op. cit. pp. 36-7.--Wadding ann. 1352, No. 14, 15; 1363, No. 14, 15; 1364, No. 14, 15; 1365, No. 3.--Lombard, Pierre Valdo et les Vaudois du Briançonnais, Genève, 1880, pp. 17. 20, 23-7.
[170] Raynald. ann. 1372, No. 34; ann. 1373, No. 19.
[171] Wadding. ann. 1375, No. 11-19.--D’Argentré, op. cit. I. I. 394.--Ripoll II. 289.--Raynald. ann. 1375, No. 26.--Gautier, Hist, de la Ville de Gap, p. 39.
[172] Lombard, op. cit. pp. 27-8.--Wadding, ann. 1375, No. 21-3.--Isambert, Anc. Loix Franç. IV. 491.
“To all the faithful in Christ: As the help of prisoners is counted among pious works, it befits the piety of the faithful to mercifully assist the incarcerated of all kinds who suffer from poverty. As we learn that our beloved son, the Inquisitor François Borelli, has imprisoned for safe-keeping or punishment many heretics and those defamed for heresy, who in consequence of their poverty cannot be sustained in prison unless the pious liberality of the faithful shall assist them as a work of charity; and as we wish that these prisoners shall not starve, but shall have time for repentance in the said prisons; now, in order that the faithful in Christ may through devotion lend a helping hand, we admonish, ask, and exhort you all, enjoining it on you in remission of your sins, that from the goods which God has given you, you bestow pious alms and grateful charity for the food of these prisoners, so that they may be sustained by your help, and you, through this and other good works inspired by God, may attain eternal blessedness!”[173]
Imagination refuses to picture the horrors of the economically constructed jails where these unfortunates were crowded to wear out their dreary lives, while their jailers vainly begged for the miserable pittance that should prolong their agonies. Yet so far was Gregory from being satisfied with victims in number far beyond his ability to keep, that, December 28, 1375, he bitterly scolded the officials of Dauphiné for the negligent manner in which they obeyed the king’s commands to aid the inquisitors—a complaint which he reiterated May 18, 1376. From some expressions in these letters it is permissible to assume that this whole inhuman business had shocked even the dull sensibilities of that age of violence. Yet in spite of all that had been accomplished the heretics remained obstinate, and in 1377 Gregory indignantly chronicles their increase, while reproaching the inquisitors with their slackness in performing the duties for which they had been appointed.[174]
What effect on the future of the Waldenses a continuance of Gregory’s remorseless energy would have wrought can only be matter of conjecture. He died March 27, 1378, and the Great Schism which speedily followed gave the heretics some relief, during which they continued to increase, although in 1380 Clement VII. renewed the commission of Borel, whose activity was unabated until 1393, and his victims were numbered by the hundred. A good many conversions rewarded his labors, and the converts were allowed to retain their property on payment of a certain sum of money, as shown by a list made out in 1385. In 1393 he is said to have burned a hundred and fifty at Grenoble in a single day. San Vicente Ferrer was a missionary of a different stamp, and his self-devoted labors for several years in the Waldensian valleys won over numerous converts. His memory is still cherished there, and the village of Puy-Saint-Vincent, with a chapel dedicated to him, shows that his kindly ministrations were not altogether lost.[175]
The Waldenses by this time were substantially the only heretics with whom the Church had to deal outside of Germany. The French version of the Schwabenspiegel, or South German municipal code, made for the Romande speaking provinces of the empire, is assignable to the closing years of the century, and it attests the predominance of Waldensianism in its chapter on heresy, by translating the Käezer (Catharus) of the original by vaudois. Even “Leschandus” (Childeric III.) is said to have been dethroned by Pope Zachary because he was a protector of vaudois. That at this period the Inquisition had become inoperative in those regions where it had once been so busy is proved by the episcopal tribunals being alone referred to as having cognizance of such cases—the heretic is to be accused to his bishop, who is to have him examined by experts.[176]
How completely the Waldenses dropped out of sight in the struggles of the Great Schism is seen in a bull of Alexander V., in 1409, to Frère Pons Feugeyron, whose enormous district extended from Marseilles to Lyons and from Beaucaire to the Val d’Aosta. This comprehended the whole district which François Borel and Vicente Ferrer found swarming with heretics. The inquisitor is urged to use his utmost endeavors against the schismatic followers of Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII., against the increasing numbers of sorcerers, against apostate Jews and the Talmud, but not a word is said about Waldenses. They seem to have been completely forgotten.[177]
After the Church had reorganized itself at the Council of Constance it had leisure to look after the interests of the faith, although its energies were mostly monopolized by the Hussite troubles. In 1417 we hear of Catharine Sauve, an anchorite, burned at Montpellier for Waldensian doctrines by the deputy-inquisitor, Frère Raymond Cabasse, assisted by the Bishop of Maguelonne. The absence of persecution had by no means been caused by a diminution in the number of heretics. In 1432 the Council of Bourges complained that the Waldenses of Dauphiné had taxed themselves to send money to the Hussites, whom they recognized as brethren; and there were plenty of them to be found by any one who took the trouble to look after them. On August 23, of this same year, we have a letter from Frère Pierre Fabri, Inquisitor of Embrun, to the Council of Basle, excusing himself for not immediately obeying a summons to attend it on the ground of his indescribable poverty, and of his preoccupations in persecuting the Waldenses. In spite of the great executions which he had already made, he describes them as flourishing as numerously as ever in the valleys of Freyssinières, Argentière, and Pute, which had been almost depopulated by the ferocious raids of François Borel. He now has in his dungeons of Embrun and Briançon six relapsed heretics, who have revealed to him the names of more than five hundred others whom he is about to seize, and whose trials will be a work of time, but as soon as he can absent himself without prejudice to the faith his first duty will be to attend the council. Evidently the harvest was abundant and the reapers were few.[178]
In 1441 the Inquisitor of Provence, Jean Voyle, made some effort at persecution, but apparently with little result, and the Waldensian churches seem to have enjoyed a long respite, for the terrible episode of the so-called Vaudois of Arras, in 1460, as we shall see hereafter, was merely a delirium of witchcraft. In France, so completely had the Waldenses monopolized the field of misbelief in the public mind that sorcery became popularly known as vauderie and witches as vaudoises. Accordingly, when, in 1465, at Lille, five “Poor Men of Lyons” were tried, and four of them recanted and one was burned, it was necessary to find some other name for them, and they were designated as Turelupins.[179]
It is not until 1475 that we find the inquisitors again at work in their old hunting-ground among the valleys around the headwaters of the Durance. The Waldenses had quietly multiplied again. They held their conventicles undisturbed, they dared openly to preach their abhorred faith, and their missionary zeal was rewarded with abundant conversions. Worse than all, when the bishops and inquisitors sought to repress them in the accustomed manner, they appealed to the royal court, which was so untrue to its duty that it granted them letters of protection and they waxed more insolent than ever. In vain Sixtus IV. sent special commissions armed with full powers to put an end to this disgraceful state of things. Men at this time in France recked little of papal authority, and the commissioners found themselves scorned. Sixtus, therefore, July 1, 1475, addressed an earnest remonstrance to Louis XI. The king was surely ignorant of the acts of his representatives; he would hasten to disavow them and lend the whole power of the State, as of old, to the support of the Inquisition.[180]
The correspondence which ensued would doubtless be interesting reading if it were accessible. Its purport, however, can readily be discerned in the Ordonnance of May 18, 1478, which marks in the most emphatic manner the supremacy which the State had obtained over the Church. The king assumed that his subjects of Dauphiné were all good Catholics. In a studied tone of contemptuous insolence he alludes to the old Mendicants (vieux mendiens) styling themselves inquisitors, who vex the faithful with accusations of heresy and harass them with prosecutions in the royal and ecclesiastical courts for purposes of extortion or to secure the confiscation of their property. He therefore forbids his officers to aid in making such confiscations, decrees that the heirs shall be reinstated in all cases that have occurred, and in order to put a stop to the frauds and abuses of the inquisitors he strictly enjoins that for the future they shall not be permitted to prosecute the inhabitants in any manner.[181]
Such was the outcome of the efforts which, for two hundred and fifty years, the Church had unremittingly made to obtain despotic control over the human mind. For far less than such defiance it had destroyed Raymond of Toulouse and the civilization of Languedoc. It had built up the monarchy with the spoils of heresy, and now the monarchy cuffed it and bade it bury its Inquisition out of the sight of decent men. This put an end for a time to the labors of the Inquisition against the Waldenses of Dauphiné, but the troubles of the latter were by no means over. The death of Louis, in 1483, deprived them of their protector, and the Italian policy of Charles VIII. rendered him less indifferent to the wishes of the Holy See. At the request of the Archbishop of Embrun, Innocent VIII. ordered the persecutions renewed. The Franciscan Inquisitor, Jean Veyleti, whose excesses had caused the appeal to the throne in 1475, was soon again at work, and had the satisfaction of burning both consuls of Freyssinières. Though the Waldenses had represented themselves to Louis XI. as faithful Catholics, the ancient errors were readily brought to light by the efficient means of torture. Though they believed in transubstantiation, they denied that it could be effected by sinful priests. Their barbes, or pastors, were ordained, and administered absolution after confession, but the pope, the bishops, and the priests had lost that power. They denied the existence of purgatory, the utility of prayers for the dead, the intercession of saints, the power of the Virgin, and the obligation of keeping any feast-days save Sunday. Wearied with their stubbornness, the archbishop, in June and July, 1486, summoned them either to leave the country or to come forward and submit, and as they did neither he excommunicated them. This was equally ineffective, and he appealed again to Innocent VIII., who resolved to end the heresy with a decisive blow. Accordingly, in 1488, a crusade on a large scale was organized in both Dauphiné and Savoy. The papal commissioner, Alberto de’’ Capitanei, obtained the assistance of the Parlement of Grenoble, and a force was raised under the command of Hugues de La Palu, Comte de Vanax, to attack them on every side. The attack was delayed by legal formalities, during which they were urged to submission, but refused, saying that their faith was pure and that they would die rather than abandon it. At length, in March, 1489, the crusaders advanced. The valley of Pragelato was the first assailed, and, after a few days, was reduced to the alternative of death or abjuration, when fifteen obstinate heretics were burned. In Val Cluson and Freyssinières the resistance was more stubborn and there was considerable carnage, which so frightened the inhabitants of Argentière that they submitted peaceably. In Val Louise the people took refuge in the cavern of Aigue Fraide, which they imagined inaccessible, but La Palu succeeded in reaching it, and built fires in the mouth, suffocating the unhappy refugees. This, and the confiscations which followed, divided between Charles VIII. and the Archbishop of Embrun, gave a fatal blow to Waldensianism in the valleys. To prevent its resuscitation the legate left behind him François Ploireri as Inquisitor of Provence, who continued to harass the people with citations and pronounced condemnations for contumacy, burning an occasional barbe and confiscating the property of relapsed and hardened heretics.[182]
With a new king, in the person of Louis XII., there came a new phase in the affairs of the Waldenses. A conference was held in Paris before the royal chancellor, where envoys from Freyssinières met Rostain, the new Archbishop of Embrun, and deputies of the Parlement of Grenoble. It was resolved to send to the spot papal and royal commissioners, with power to determine the status of the so-called heretics. They went to Freyssinières and examined witnesses, who satisfied them that the population were good Catholics, in spite of the urgent assertions of the archbishop that they were notorious heretics. All the excommunications were removed, which put an end to the prosecutions. On October 12, 1502, Louis XII. confirmed the decision, and Alexander VI., to whose son, Cæsar Borgia, Louis had given the Duchy of Valentinois, embracing the territory in question, was not disposed to run counter to the royal wishes. The Waldenses were, however, unable to loosen the grip of the Archbishop of Embrun on the property which he had confiscated, in spite of positive orders for its restoration from the king, but at least they were allowed, under the guise of Catholicism, to worship God after their own fashion, until the crowding pressure of the Reformation forced them to a merger with the Calvinists. In the Briançonnais, in spite of occasional burnings, heresy continued to spread until, in 1514, Antoine d’Estaing, Bishop of Angoulême, was sent thither, when the measures he adopted, vigorously enforced by the secular authorities, put an end to it in a few years.[183]
CHAPTER III.
THE SPANISH PENINSULA.
THE kingdom of Aragon, stretching across both sides of the Pyrenees, with a population kindred in blood and speech to that of Mediterranean France, was particularly liable to inroads of heresy from the latter. The Counts of Barcelona had been Carlovingian vassals, and even owned a shadowy allegiance to the first Capetians. We have seen how ready were Pedro II. and his successors to aid in resisting Frankish encroachments, even at the cost of encouraging heresy, and it was inevitable that schismatic missions should be established in populous centres such as Barcelona, and that heretics, when hard-pressed, should seek refuge in the mountains of Cerdaña and Urgel. In spite of this, however, heresy never obtained to the west of the Pyrenees the foothold which it enjoyed to the east. Its manifestations there were only spasmodic, and were suppressed with effort comparatively slender.
It is somewhat remarkable that we hear nothing specifically of the Cathari in Aragon proper. Matthew Paris, indeed, tells a wild tale of how, in 1234, they were so numerous in the parts of Spain that they decreed the abrogation of Christianity, and raised a large army with which they burned churches and spared neither age nor sex, until Gregory IX. ordered a crusade against them throughout western Europe, when in a stricken field they were all cut off to a man; but this may safely be set down to the imagination of some pilgrim returning from Compostella and desiring to repay a night’s hospitality at St. Alban’s. In the enumeration of Rainerio Saccone, about 1250, there is no mention of any Catharan organization west of the Pyrenees. That many Cathari existed in Aragon there can be no doubt, but they are never described as such, and the only heretics of whom we hear by name are los encabats—the Insabbatati or Waldenses. It will be remembered that it was against these that the savage edicts of Alonso II. and Pedro II. were directed, towards the close of the twelfth century.[184]
After this, for a while, persecution seems to have slept. The sympathies and ambition of King Pedro were enlisted with Raymond of Toulouse, and after his fall at Muret, during the minority of Jayme I., the Aragonese probably awaited the results of the Albigensian war with feelings enlisted in favor of their race rather than of orthodoxy. As it drew to a close, however, Don Jayme, in 1226, issued an edict prohibiting all heretics from entering his kingdom, doubtless moved thereunto by the numbers who sought escape from the crusade of Louis VIII., and he followed this, in 1228, with another, depriving heretics, with their receivers, fautors, and defenders, of the public peace. The next step, we are told by the chroniclers of the Inquisition, was taken in consequence of the urgency of Raymond of Pennaforte, the Dominican confessor of the young king, who prevailed on him to obtain from Gregory IX. inquisitors to purge his land. This is based on the bull Declinante, addressed, May 26, 1232, to Esparrago, Archbishop of Tarragona, and his suffragans, instructing them to make inquest in their dioceses after heretics, either personally or by Dominicans or other fitting persons, and to punish such as might be found, according to the statutes recently issued by him and by Annibaldo, Senator of Rome. This doubtless gave an impulse to what followed, but as yet there was no thought of a papal or Dominican Inquisition, or of adopting foreign legislation. In the following year, 1233, Don Jayme issued from Tarragona, with the advice of his assembled prelates, a statute on the subject, showing that the matter was regarded as pertaining to the State rather than to the Church. Seigneurs who protected heretics in their lands forfeited them to the lord, or, if allodial, to the king. Houses of heretics, if allodial, were to be torn down; if held in fief, forfeited to the lord. All defamed or suspected of heresy were declared ineligible to office. That the innocent might not suffer with the guilty, no one was to be punished as a heretic or believer except by his bishop or such ecclesiastic as had authority to determine his guilt. Bishops were ordered, when it might seem expedient to them in places suspected of heresy, to appoint a priest or clerk, while the king or his bailli would appoint two or three laymen, whose duty it should be to investigate heretics, and, taking precautions against their escape, to report them to the bishop or to the royal officials, or to the lord of the place. In this incongruous mixture of clerical and lay elements there may, it is true, be discovered the germ of an Inquisition, but one of a character very different from that which was at this time taking shape at Toulouse. The subordinate position of these so-called inquisitors is seen in the provision that any negligence in the performance of their functions was punishable, in the case of a clerk, by the loss of his benefice, in that of a layman, by a pecuniary mulct.[185]
To what extent this crude expedient was put in practice we have no means of knowing, but probably some attempts were made which only proved its inefficiency. Esparrago died soon afterwards and was succeeded in the archiepiscopal seat of Tarragona by Guillen Mongriu, whose vigorous and martial temperament was illustrated by his conquest of the island of Iviza. Mongriu speedily found that the domestic Inquisition would not work, and applied for the solution of some doubts to Gregory, who sent him, April 30, 1235, a code of instructions drawn up by Raymond of Pennaforte. About this time we find the first record of active work in persecution, which illustrates the absence of all formal inquisitorial procedure. Robert, Count of Rosellon, was one of the great feudatories of the crown of Aragon. He seems to have been involved, as most nobles were, in some disputes as to fiefs and tithes with the Bishop of Elne, whose diocese was in his territories. The bishop accused him of being the chief of the heretics of the region and of using his castles as a refuge for them. All this was very likely true—at least the bishop had no difficulty in finding witnesses to prove it, when Robert obediently abjured, but subsequently relapsed. Don Jayme accordingly had him arrested and imprisoned, but Robert managed to escape and shut himself in one of his inaccessible mountain strongholds. His position, however, was desperate, and his lands liable to confiscation; he therefore expressed to Gregory IX. his desire to return to the bosom of the Church, and offered to serve with his followers against the Saracen as long as the pope might designate. Gregory therefore wrote, February 8, 1237, to Raymond of Pennaforte, that if the count would for three years with his subjects assist in the conquest of Valencia, and give sufficient security that in case of relapse his territories should be forfeited to the crown, he could be absolved. On hearing this the good bishop hastened to the papal court and declared that if Robert was absolved he and his witnesses would be exposed to the imminent peril of death, and that heresy would triumph in his diocese; but, on receiving assurances that his fiefs and tithes would be taken care of, he quieted down and offered no further opposition.[186]
Under the impulsion of Gregory and of Raymond of Pennaforte, Dominican inquisitors had at last been resorted to, and in this year, 1237, we first become cognizant of them. In right of his wife Ermessende, Roger Bernard the Great of Foix was Vizconde of Castelbo, a fief held of the Bishop of Urgel, with whom he had had a bitter war. He gave Castelbo to his son Roger, who, by the advice of his father, in 1237, allowed the Inquisition free scope there, placing the castle in the hands of Ramon Fulco, Vizconde of Cardona, in the name of the Archbishop of Tarragona and the bishops assembled at the Council of Lerida. That council thereupon appointed a number of inquisitors, including Dominicans and Franciscans, who made a descent on Castelbo. It had long been noted as a nest of Catharans. In 1225, under the protection of Arnaldo, then lord of the place, perfected heretics publicly preached their doctrines there. In 1234 we hear of a heretic of Mirepoix going thither to receive the consolamentum on his death-bed. The inquisitors, therefore, had no difficulty in finding victims. They ordered two houses to be destroyed, exhumed and burned the bones of eighteen persons, condemned as heretics, and carried off as prisoners some forty-five men and women, condemned fifteen who fled, and were undecided about sundry others. Still, the Bishop of Urgel was not satisfied, and he gratified his rancor by condemning and excommunicating Roger Bernard as a defender of heretics, and it was not until 1240 that the latter, through the intervention of the Archbishop of Tarragona, and by submitting, abjuring heresy, and swearing to perform any penance assigned to him, procured from the bishop absolution and a certificate that he recognized him “per bon et per leyal e per Catholich.”[187]
In 1238 the Inquisition of Aragon may be said to be founded. In April of that year Gregory IX. wrote to the Franciscan Minister and Dominican Prior of Aragon deploring the spread of heresy through the whole kingdom, so that heretics no longer seek secrecy, but openly combat the Church, to the destruction of its liberties; and though this may be an exaggeration, we know from a confession before the Inquisition of Toulouse that there were enough scattered through the land to afford shelter to the wandering Catharan missionaries. Gregory, therefore, placed in the hands of the Mendicants the sword of the Word of God, which was not to be restrained from blood. They were instructed to make diligent inquisition against heresy and its abettors, proceeding in accordance with the statutes which he had issued, and calling in when necessary the aid of the secular arm. At the same time he made a similar provision for Navarre, which was likewise said to be swarming with heretics, by commissioning as inquisitors the Franciscan Guardian of Pamplona and the Dominican Pedro de Leodegaria. As an independent institution the Inquisition of Navarre seems never to have advanced beyond an embryonic condition. In 1246 we find Innocent IV. writing to the Franciscan Minister there to publish that Grimaldo de la Mota, a citizen of Pamplona, is not to be aspersed as a heretic because while in Lombardy he had eaten and drunk with suspected persons, but this is the only evidence of vitality that I have met with, and Navarre was subsequently incorporated into the Inquisition of Aragon.[188]
In Aragon the institution gradually took shape. Berenger de Palau, Bishop of Barcelona, was busily engaged in organizing it throughout his diocese at the time of his death in 1241, and the vicar, who replaced him while the see was vacant, completed it. In 1242 Pedro Arbalate, who had succeeded Guillen Mongriu as archbishop, with the assistance of Raymond of Pennaforte, held the Council of Tarragona to settle the details of procedure. Under the guidance of so eminent a canonist, the code drawn up by the council showed a thorough knowledge of the principles guiding the Church in its dealings with heretics, and long continued to be referred to as an authority not only in Spain, but in France. At the same time its careful definitions, which render it especially interesting to us, indicate that it was prepared for the instruction of a Church which as yet practically knew nothing of the principles of persecution firmly established elsewhere. It was probably under the impulse derived from these movements that active persecution was resumed at Castelbo, which does not seem to have been purified by the raid of 1237. This time the heretics were not as patient as before, and resorted to poison, with which they succeeded in taking off Fray Ponce de Blanes, or de Espira, the inquisitor, who had made himself peculiarly obnoxious by his vigorous pursuit of heresy for several years. This aroused all the martial instincts of the retired archbishop, Guillen Mongriu, who assembled some troops, besieged and took the castle, burned many of the heretics, and imprisoned the rest for life. An organized effort was made to extend the Inquisition throughout the kingdom, and the parish priests were individually summoned to lend it all the aid in their power. Urgel seems to have been the headquarters of the sectaries, for subsequently we hear of their sharp persecution there by the Dominican inquisitor, Bernardo Travesser, and of his martyrdom by them. As usual, both he and Ponce de Blanes shone forth in miracles, and have remained an object of worship in the Church of Urgel, though in 1262 the latter was translated to Montpellier, where he lies magnificently entombed.[189]
Still, the progress of organization seems to have been exceedingly slow. In 1244 a case decided by Innocent IV. shows a complete absence of any effective system. The Bishop of Elne and a Dominican friar, acting as inquisitors, had condemned Ramon de Malleolis and Helena his wife as heretics. By some means they succeeded in appealing to Gregory IX., who referred the matter to the Archdeacon of Besalu and the Sacristan of Girona. These acquitted the culprits and restored them to their possessions; but the case was carried back to Rome, and Innocent finally confirmed the first sentence of conviction. Again, in 1248, a letter from Innocent IV. to the Bishop of Lerida, instructing him as to the treatment in his diocese of heretics who voluntarily return to the Church, presupposes the absence of inquisitors and absolute ignorance as to the fundamental principles in force. The power conferred the same year on the Dominican Provincial of Spain to appoint inquisitors seems to have remained unused. The efforts of Archbishop Mongriu and Raymond of Pennaforte had spent themselves apparently without permanent results. King Jayme grew dissatisfied, and, in 1254, urgently demanded a fresh effort of Innocent IV. This time the pope concluded, at Jayme’s suggestion, to place the matter entirely in Dominican hands; but so little had been done in the way of general organization that he confided the choice of inquisitors to the priors of Barcelona, Lerida, Perpignan, and Elne, each one to act within his own diocese, unless, indeed, there are inquisitors already in function under papal commissions—a clause which shows the confusion existing at the time. Innocent further felt it necessary to report this action to the Archbishops of Tarragona and Narbonne, and to call upon them to assist the new appointees. This device does not seem to have worked satisfactorily. At that time the whole peninsula constituted but one Dominican province, and, in 1262, Urban IV. again adopted definitely the plan, in general use elsewhere, of empowering the provincial to appoint the inquisitors—now limited to two. A few days before he had sent to those of Aragon a bull defining their powers and procedure, and a copy of this was enclosed to the provincial for his guidance. This long remained the basis of organization; but after the division of the province into two, by the General Chapter of Cologne in 1301, the Aragonese chafed under their subordination to the Provincial of Spain, whose territories consisted only of Castile, Leon, and Portugal. The struggle was protracted, but the Inquisition of Aragon at last achieved independence in 1351, when Fray Nicholas Roselli, the Provincial of Aragon, obtained from Clement VI. the power of appointing and removing the inquisitors of the kingdom.[190]
Meanwhile the inquisitors had not been inactive. Fray Pedro de Cadreyta rendered himself especially conspicuous, and as usual Urgel is the prominent scene of activity. In conjunction with his colleague, Fray Pedro de Tonenes, and Arnaldo, Bishop of Barcelona, he rendered final judgment, January 11, 1257, against the memory of Ramon, Count of Urgel, as a relapsed heretic who had abjured before the Bishop of Urgel, and whose bones were to be exhumed; but, with unusual lenity, the widow, Timborosa, and the son, Guillen, were admitted to reconciliation and not deprived of their estates. Twelve years later, in 1269, we find Cadreyta, together with another colleague, Fray Guillen de Colonico, and Abril, Bishop of Urgel, condemning the memory of Arnaldo, Vizconde of Castelbo, and of his daughter Ermessende, whom we know as the heretic wife of Roger Bernard the Great of Foix. They had both been dead more than thirty years, and her grandson, Roger Bernard III. of Foix, who had inherited the Vizcondado of Castelbo, was duly cited to defend his ancestors; but if he made the attempt, it was vain, and their bones were ordered to be exhumed. It is not likely that these sturdy champions of the faith confined their attention to the dead, though the only execution we happen to hear of at this period is that of Berenguer de Amoros, burned in 1263. That the living, indeed, were objects of fierce persecution is rendered more than probable by the martyrdom of Cadreyta, who was stoned to death by the exasperated populace of Urgel, and who thus furnished another saint for local cult.[191]
During the remainder of the century we hear little more of the Inquisition of Aragon, but the action of the Council of Tarragona, in 1291, would seem to show that it was neither active nor much respected. Otherwise the council would scarce have felt called upon to order the punishment of heretics who deny a future existence, and, further, that all detractors of the Catholic faith ought to be punished as they deserve, to teach them reverence and fear. Still more significant is the injunction on parish priests to receive kindly and aid efficiently the beloved Dominican inquisitors, who are laboring for the extirpation of heresy.[192]
With the opening of the fourteenth century there would appear to be an increase of vigor. In 1302 Fray Bernardo celebrated several autos de fé, in which a number of heretics were abandoned to the secular arm. In 1304 Fray Domingo Peregrino had an auto in which we are told that those who were not burned were banished, with the assent of King Jayme II.—one of the rare instances of this punishment in the annals of the Inquisition. In 1314 Fray Bernardo Puigcercos was so fortunate as to discover a number of heretics, of whom he burned some and exiled others. To Juan de Longerio, in 1317, belongs the doubtful honor of condemning the works of Arnaldo de Vilanova. The names of Arnaldo Burguete, Guillen de Costa, and Leonardo de Puycerda have also reached us, as successful inquisitors, but their recorded labors were principally directed against the Spiritual Franciscans, and will be more particularly noted hereafter. The Aragonese seem not to have relished the methods of the Inquisition, for in 1325 the Cortes, with the assent of King Jayme II., prohibited for the future the use of the inquisitorial process and of torture, as violations of the Fueros. Whether or not this was intended to apply to the ecclesiastical as well as to the secular courts it is impossible now to tell, but, if it were, it had no permanent result, as we learn from the detailed instructions of Eymerich fifty years later. About the middle of the century, the merits of the Inquisitor Nicholas Roselli earned him the cardinalate. It is true that when the energetic action of the Inquisitor Jean Dumoulin, in 1344, drove the Waldenses from Toulouse to seek refuge beyond the Pyrenees, Clement VI. wrote earnestly to the kings and prelates of Aragon and Navarre to aid the Inquisition in destroying the fugitives, but there is no trace of any corresponding result.[193]
To Roselli, however, belongs the credit of raising a question which inflamed to a white heat the traditional antagonism of the two great Mendicant Orders. It is worth brief attention as an illustration of the nicety to which doctrinal theology had attained under the combined influence of scholastic subtlety in raising questions, and inquisitorial enforcement of implicit obedience in the minutest articles of faith. In 1351 the Franciscan Guardian of Barcelona, in a public sermon, stated that the blood shed by Christ in the Passion lost its divinity, was sundered from the Logos, and remained on earth. The question was a novel one and a trifle difficult of demonstration, but its raising gave Roselli a chance to inflict a blow on the hated Franciscans, and he referred it to Rome. The answer met his most ardent anticipations. The Cardinal of Sabina, by order of Clement VI., wrote that the pope had heard the proposition with horror; he had convened an assembly of theologians in which he himself argued against it, when it was condemned, and the inquisitors everywhere were ordered to proceed against all audacious enough to uphold it. Roselli’s triumph was complete, and the unfortunate guardian was obliged to retract his speculations in the pulpit where he had promulgated them. The Franciscans were restless under this rebuff, which they construed as directed against their Order. In spite of the papal decision the question remained an open one in the schools, where it was eagerly debated on both sides. The Franciscans argued, with provoking reasonableness, that the blood of Christ might well be believed to remain on earth, seeing that the foreskin severed in the Circumcision was preserved in the Lateran Church and reverenced as a relic under the very eyes of pope and cardinal, and that portions of the blood and water which flowed in the Crucifixion were exhibited to the faithful at Mantua, Bruges, and elsewhere. After the lapse of a century, the Franciscan, Jean Bretonelle, professor of theology in the University of Paris, in 1448 brought the matter before the faculty, stating that it was causing discussion at Rochelle and other places. A commission of theologians was appointed, which, after due debate, rendered a solemn decision that it was not repugnant to the faith to believe that the blood shed at the Passion remained on earth. Thus encouraged, the Franciscans grew bolder.
The Observantine Franciscan, Giacomo da Monteprandone, better known as della Marca, was one of the most prominent ecclesiastics of the fifteenth century. His matchless eloquence, his rigid austerity, his superhuman vigor, and his unquenchable zeal for the extermination of heresy well earned the beatification conferred on him after death; and since 1417 he had been known as a hammer of heretics. He held a commission as universal inquisitor which clothed him with power throughout Christendom, and the heretics in every corner of Italy, in Bohemia, Hungary, Bosnia, and Dalmatia, had learned with cause to tremble at his name. It required no little nerve to assail such a man, and yet when, April 18, 1462, at Brescia, he publicly preached the forbidden doctrine, the Dominican Inquisitor, Giacomo da Brescia, lost no time in calling him to account. First a courteous note expressed disbelief in the report of the sermon and asked a disclaimer; but on the Observantine adhering to the doctrine, a formal summons followed, citing him to appear for trial on the next day. The two Orders had thus fairly locked horns. The Bishop of Brescia interfered and obtained a withdrawal of the summons, but the question had to be fought out before the pope. The bitterness of feeling may be judged by the complaint of the inquisitor that his opponent had so excited the people of Brescia against him and the Dominicans that but for prompt measures many of them would have been slain; while, from Milan to Verona, every Dominican pulpit resounded with denunciations of Giacomo della Marca as a heretic.
The politic Pius II. feared to quarrel with either Order, and had a tortuous path to tread. To the Dominicans he furnished an authenticated copy of the decision of Clement VI. To Giacomo della Marca he wrote that this had been done because he could not refuse it, and not to give it authority. It had not been issued by Clement, but only in his name, and the question was still an open one. Giacomo might rest in peace in the conviction that the pope had full confidence in his zeal and orthodoxy, and that his calumniators should be silenced. On May 31 he issued commands that all discussions of the question should cease, and that both sides should send their most learned brethren to an assembly which he would hold in September for exhaustive debate and final decision. This he hoped would put an end to the matter, while skilful postponement of the conference would allow it to die out; but he miscalculated the enmity of the rival Orders. The quarrel raged more fiercely than ever. The Franciscans declared that the inquisitor who started it would be deprived of his office and mastership in theology. Pius thereupon soothed him by assuring him that he had only done his duty, and that he had nothing to fear.
The conference had become an inevitable evil, and Pius found himself obliged to allow it to meet in December, 1463. Each side selected three champions, and for three days, in the presence of the pope and sacred college, they argued the point with such ardent vehemence that, in spite of the bitter winter weather, they were bathed in sweat. Then others took part and the question was debated pro and con. The Franciscans put in evidence the blood of Christ exhibited for the veneration of the faithful in many shrines, and to the foreskin which was in the Lateran and also in the royal chapel of France. They also appealed to the cuttings of Christ’s hair and beard, the parings of his nails, and all his excretions—did these remain on earth or were they divine and carried to heaven? To these arguments the Dominican reply is a curious exhibition of special pleading and sophistry; but as no one could allege a single text of Scripture bearing upon the question, neither side could claim the victory. The good Bishop of Brescia, who had at first played the part of peacemaker, consistently presented a written argument in which he proved that the pope ought not to settle the question because such a determination would, firstly, be doubtful; secondly, superfluous; and, thirdly, perilous. This wise utterance was probably inspired, for Pius reserved his decision, and, August 1, 1464, only eight days before his death, issued a bull in which he recited how the faithful had been scandalized by the quarrel between the two Orders, and, therefore, he forbade further discussion on the subject until the Holy See should finally decide it. The Dominicans were emphatically prohibited from denouncing the Franciscans as heretics on account of it, and any infraction of his commands was punishable by ipso facto excommunication supplemented with harsh imprisonment. He tells us himself that after the public discussion the cardinals debated the matter for several days. The majority inclined to the Dominicans and he agreed with them, but the preaching of the Franciscans was necessary for the crusade against the Turks which he proposed to lead in person, and it was impolitic to offend them, so he postponed the decision. Mutterings of discussion, without open quarrel, have since then occasionally occurred between the Orders, but the popes have never seen fit to issue a definite decision on the subject, and the momentous question started by Roselli remains still unsettled—a pitfall for unwary feet.[194]
In 1356 Roselli was created Cardinal of S. Sisto, and was succeeded after a short interval by Nicolas Eymerich, the most noteworthy man of whom the Aragonese Inquisition can boast, although after more than thirty years of service he ended his days in disgrace and exile. Trained in varied learning, and incessant in industry, of his numerous works but one has had the honors of print—his “Directorium Inquisitorum,” in which, for the first time, he systematized the procedure of his beloved institution, giving the principles and details which should guide the inquisitor in all his acts. The book remained an authority to the last, and formed the basis of almost all subsequent compilations. Eymerich’s conception of the model inquisitor was lofty. He must be fully acquainted with all the intricacies of doctrine, and with all the aberrations of heresy—not only those which are current among the common people, but the recondite speculations of the schools, Averrhoism and Aristotelian errors, and the beliefs of Saracen and Tartar. At a time when the Inquisition was declining and falling into contempt, he boldly insisted on its most extreme prerogatives as an imprescriptible privilege. If he assumed that the heretic had but one right—that of choosing between submission and the stake—he was in this but the conscientious exponent of his age, and his writings are instinct with the conviction that the work of the inquisitor is the salvation of souls.
From Eymerich’s lament over the difficulty of providing for the expenses of an institution so necessary to the Church, it is evident that the kings of Aragon had not felt it their duty to support the Holy Office, while the bishops, he tells us, were as firm as their brethren in other lands in evading the responsibility which by right was incumbent on them. The confiscations, he adds, amounted to little or nothing, for heretics were poor folk—Waldenses, Fraticelli, and the like. In fact, so far as we can gather, the sum of Eymerich’s activity during his long career is so small that it shows how little was left of heresy by this time. Occasional Fraticelli and Waldenses and renegade Jews or Saracens were all that rewarded the inquisitor, with every now and then some harmless lunatic whose extravagance unfortunately took a religious turn, or some over-subtle speculator on the intricacies of dogmatic theology. Thus, early in his career, about 1360, Eymerich had the satisfaction of burning as a relapsed heretic a certain Nicholas of Calabria, who persisted in asserting that his teacher, Martin Gonsalvo of Cuenca, was the Son of God, who would live forever, would convert the world, and at the Day of Judgment would pray for all the dead and liberate them from hell. In 1371 he had the further gratification of silencing, by a decision of Gregory XI., a Franciscan, Pedro Bonageta. The exact relation between the physical matter of the consecrated host and the body of Christ under certain circumstances had long been a source of disputation in the Church, and Fray Pedro taught that if it fell into the mud or other unclean place, or if it were gnawed by a mouse, the body of Christ flew to heaven and the wafer became simple bread; and so also when it was ground under the teeth of the recipient, before he swallowed it. Gregory did not venture to pronounce this heretical, but he forbade its public enunciation. About the same time Eymerich had a good deal of trouble with Fray Ramon de Tarraga, a Jew turned Dominican, whose numerous philosophical writings savored of heresy. After he had been kept in prison for a couple of years, Gregory ordered him to have a speedy trial, and threatened Eymerich with punishment for contumacy if his commands were disobeyed. Ramon must have had powerful friends in the Order whom Eymerich feared to provoke, for six months later Gregory wrote again, saying that if Ramon could not be punished according to the law in Aragon, he must be sent to the papal court under good guard with all the papers of the process duly sealed. In fact, the Inquisition was not established for the trial of Dominicans. At the same time another Jew, Astruchio de Piera, held by Eymerich on an accusation of sorcery and the invocation of demons, was claimed as justiciable by the civil power, and was sequestrated until Gregory ordered his delivery to the inquisitor, who forced him to abjure and imprisoned him for life. Somewhat earlier was a certain Bartolo Janevisio, of Majorca, who indulged in some apocalyptic writing about Antichrist, and was forced, in 1361, by Eymerich to recant, while his book was publicly burned. More practical, from a political point of view, was Eymerich’s doctrine that all who lent assistance to the Saracens were punishable by the Inquisition as fautors of heresy, but this seems to have remained a theoretical assertion which brought no business to the Holy Office. We shall see hereafter how he fared in seeking the condemnation of Raymond Lulli’s writings, and need only say here that the result was his suspension from office, to be succeeded by his capital enemy Bernardo Ermengaudi, in 1386, and that after the succession to the throne, in 1387, of Juan I., who was bitterly hostile to him, he was twice proscribed and exiled, and was denounced by the king as an obstinate fool, an enemy of the faith inspired by Satan, anointed with the poison of infidelity, together with other unflattering qualifications. He did not succeed better when in his rash zeal he assailed the holy San Vicente Ferrer for saying in a sermon that Judas Iscariot had a true and salutary repentance; that, being unable to reach Christ and obtain forgiveness owing to the crowd, he hanged himself and was pardoned in heaven. When the case was drawing to a conclusion, Pedro de Luna, then Cardinal of Aragon, took Vicente under his protection and made him his confessor, and, after his election in 1394 as Avignonese pope, under the name of Benedict XIII., he forced Eymerich to surrender the papers, which he unceremoniously burned. The next inquisitor, Bernardo Puig, is said to have been earnest and successful, punishing many heretics and confuting many heresies. In Valencia, about 1390, there was a case in which Pedro de Ceplanes, priest of Cella, read in his church a formal declaration that there were three natures in Christ—divine, spiritual, and human. A merchant of the town loudly contradicted it, and a tumult arose. The inquisitor of Valencia promptly arrested the too ingenious theologian, who only escaped the stake by public recantation and condemnation to perpetual imprisonment; but he broke jail and fled to the Balearic Isles, interjecting an appeal to the Holy See.[195]
The creation, in 1262, of the kingdom of Majorca, comprising the Balearic Isles, Rosellon, and Cerdaña, by Jayme I. of Aragon, for the benefit of his younger son Jayme, seemed to render a separate inquisition requisite for the new realm. At what time it was established is uncertain, the earliest inquisitor of Majorca on record being Fr. Ramon Durfort, whose name occurs as a witness on a charter of 1332, and he continued to occupy the position until 1343, when he was elected Provincial of Toulouse. From that time, at least, there is a succession of inquisitors, and the forcible reunion in 1348, by Pedro IV., of the outlying provinces to the crown of Aragon did not effect a consolidation of the tribunals. As the Inquisition declined in dignity and importance, indeed, it seems to have sought a remedy in multiplying and localizing its offices. In 1413 Benedict XIII. (who was still recognized as pope in Aragon) made a further division by separating the counties of Rosellon and Cerdaña from the Balearic Isles, Fray Bernardo Pages retaining the former, and Guillen Sagarra obtaining the latter. Both of these were energetic men who celebrated a number of autos de fé, in which numerous heretics were reconciled or burned. Sagarra was succeeded by Bernardo Moyl, and the latter by Antonio Murta, who was confirmed in 1420, when Martin V. approved of the changes made. At the same time Martin, at the request of the king and of the consuls of Valencia, erected that province also into a separate Inquisition. The Provincial of Aragon appointed Fray Andrea Ros to fill the position; he was confirmed in 1433 by Eugenius IV., but was removed without cause assigned the next year by the same pope, although we are told that he inflexibly persecuted the “Bohemians” or “Wickliffites” with fire and sword. His successors, Domingo Corts and Antonio de Cremona, earned equal laurels in suppressing Waldenses.[196]
A case occurring in 1423 would seem to indicate that the Inquisition had lost much of the terror which had rendered it formidable. Fray Pedro Salazo, Inquisitor of Rosellon and Cerdaña, threw in prison on charges of heresy a hermit named Pedro Freserii, who enjoyed great reputation for sanctity among the people. The accused declared that the witnesses were personal enemies, and that he was ready to purge himself before a proper judge, and his friends lodged an appeal with Martin V. The pope referred the matter, with power to decide without appeal, to Bernardo, Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Arles, in the diocese of Elne. Bernardo deputed the case to a canon of the church of Elne, who acquitted the accused without awaiting the result of another appeal to the pope interjected by the inquisitor; and Martin finally sent the matter to the Ordinary of Narbonne, with power to summon all parties before him and decide the case definitely. The whole transaction shows a singular want of respect for the functions of the Inquisition.[197]
Even more significant is a complaint made in 1456 to Calixtus III. by Fray Mateo de Rapica, a later inquisitor of Rosellon and Cerdaña. Certain neophytes, or converted Jews, persisted in Judaic practices, such as eating meat in Lent and forcing their Christian servants to do likewise. When Fray Mateo and Juan, Bishop of Elne, prosecuted them, they were so far from submitting that they published a defamatory libel upon the inquisitor, and, with the aid of certain laymen, afflicted him with injuries and expenses. Finding himself powerless, he appealed to the pope, who ordered the Archbishop and Official of Narbonne to intervene and decide the matter. The same spirit, in even a more aggravated form, was exhibited in a case already referred to, when, in 1458, Fray Miguel, the Inquisitor of Aragon, was maltreated and thrown in prison for nine months by some nobles and high officials of the kingdom, whom he had offended in obeying the instructions sent to him by Nicholas V.[198]
Yet, as against the poor and friendless, the Inquisition retained its power. Wickliffitism—as it had become the fashion to designate Waldensianism—had continued to spread, and about 1440 numbers of its sectaries were discovered, of whom some were reconciled, and more were burned as obstinate heretics by Miguel Ferriz, Inquisitor of Aragon, and Martin Trilles of Valencia. Possibly among these was an unfortunate woman, Leonor, wife of Doctor Jayme de Liminanna, of whom, about this time, we hear that she refused to perform the penance assigned to her by the Inquisition of Cartagena, and that she was consequently abandoned to the secular arm. The post of inquisitor continued to be sought for. To multiply it, Catalonia was separated from Aragon by Nicholas V. shortly after his accession in 1447. In 1459 another division took place, the diocese of Barcelona being erected into an independent tribunal by Martiale Auribelli, Dominican General Master, for the benefit of Fray Juan Conde, counsellor and confessor of the infant Carlos, Prince of Viane. The new incumbent, however, had not a peaceful time. It was probably the Inquisitor of Catalonia, objecting to the fractioning of his district, who obtained from Pius II., in 1461, a brief annulling the division, on the ground that one inquisitor had always sufficed. Fray Juan resisted and incurred excommunication, but the influence of his royal patron was sufficient to obtain from Pius, October 13, 1461, another bull restoring him to his position and absolving him from the excommunication. In 1479 a squabble occurring at Valencia shows that the office possessed attractions worth contending for. The Provincial of Aragon had removed Fray Jayme Borell and appointed Juan Marquez in his stead. Borell carried the tale of his woes to Sixtus IV., who commanded the General Master to replace him and retain him in peaceful possession.[199]
Ferdinand the Catholic succeeded to the throne of Aragon in 1479, as he had already done, in 1474, to that of Castile by right of his wife Isabella. Even before the organizing of the new Inquisition in Aragon, in 1483, it is probable that the influence of Ferdinand had done much to restore the power of the institution. In 1482, on the eve of the change, we find the Inquisition of Aragon acting with renewed vigor and boldness, under the Dominican, Juan de Epila. A number of cases are recorded of this period, including the prosecution of the father and mother of Felipe de Clemente, Prothonotary of the kingdom. As a preparatory step to placing the dominions of the crown of Aragon under Torquemada as Inquisitor-general, it was requisite to get rid of Cristobal Gualvez, who had been Inquisitor of Valencia since 1452, and who had disgraced his office by his crimes. Sixtus IV. had a special enmity to him, and, in ordering his deposition, stigmatized him as an impudent and impious man, whose unexampled excesses were worthy of severe chastisement; and when Sixtus, in 1483, extended Torquemada’s authority over the whole of Spain, with power to nominate deputies, he excepted “that son of iniquity, Cristobal Gualvez,” who had been interdicted from the office in consequence of his demerits, and whom he even deprived of the function of preaching.[200]
The great kingdom of Castile and Leon, embracing the major portion of the Spanish peninsula, never enjoyed the blessing of the mediæval Inquisition. It was more independent of Rome than any other monarchy of the period. Lordly prelates, turbulent nobles, and cities jealous of their liberties allowed scant opportunity for the centralization of power in the crown. The people were rude and uncultured, and not much given to vain theological speculation. Their superfluous energy, moreover, found ample occupation in the task of winning back the land from the Saracen. The large population of Jews and of conquered Moors gave them peculiar problems to deal with which would have been complicated rather than solved by the methods of the Inquisition, until the union of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella, followed by the conquest of Granada, enabled those monarchs to undertake seriously the business, attractive both to statecraft and to fanaticism, of compelling uniformity of faith.
It is true that the Dominican legend relates how Dominic returned from Rome to Spain as Inquisitor-general, on the errand of establishing there the Inquisition for the purpose of punishing the renegade converted Jews and Moors; how he was warmly seconded by San Fernando III.; how he organized the Inquisition throughout the land, celebrating himself the first auto de fé at Burgos, where three hundred apostates were burned, and the second auto in the presence of the saintly king, who himself carried on his shoulders fagots for the burning of his subjects, and the pertinacious wretches defiantly rejoiced in the flames which were consuming them; how, after this, he established the Inquisition in Aragon, whence he journeyed to Paris and organized it throughout France; how, in 1220, he sent Conrad of Marburg as inquisitor to Germany, and in 1221 finished his labors by founding it in all the parts of Italy. All this can rank in historical value with the veracious statement of an old chronicler—a compatriot of the Pied Piper of Hamelin—that St. Boniface was an inquisitor, and that, with the support of Pepin le Bref, he burned many heretics. Detailed lists, moreover, are given of the successive inquisitors-general of the Peninsula—Frailes Suero Gomes, B. Gil, Pedro de Huesca, Arnaldo Segarra, Garcia de Valcos, etc., but these are simply the Dominican provincials of Spain, who were empowered by the popes to appoint inquisitors, and whose exercise of that power did not extend beyond Aragon. Even Paramo, although he tries to prove that there were inquisitors nominally in Castile, is forced to admit that practically there was no Inquisition there.[201]
Yet, even in the distant city of Leon, Catharism had obtained a foothold. Bishop Rodrigo, who died in 1232, expelled a number of Cathari, on his attention being called to them by their circulating a story to excite hatred of the priesthood, relating how a poor woman placed a candle on the altar in honor of the Virgin, and on her leaving it a priest took it for his own use. The following night the Virgin appeared to her votary and cast burning wax into her eyes, saying, “Take the wages of your service. As soon as you went away a priest carried off the candle; as you would have been rewarded had the candle been consumed on my altar, so you must bear the punishment, since your carelessness gave me the light only for a moment.” This diabolical story, says Lucas of Tuy, an eye-witness, so affected the minds of the simple that the devotion of offering candles ceased, and it required two genuine miracles to restore the faith of the people. During the interval between the death of Bishop Rodrigo, in March, 1232, and the election of his successor, Arnaldo, in August, 1234, the heretics had ample opportunity to work their wicked will. A Catharan named Arnaldo had been burned, about 1218, in a place in the suburbs used for depositing filth. There was a spring there which the heretics colored red, and proclaimed that it had miraculously been turned to blood. Many of them, simulating blindness, lameness, and demoniacal possession, were carried there and pretended to be cured, after which they dug up the heretic’s bones and declared them to be those of a holy martyr. The people were fired with enthusiasm, erected a chapel, and worshipped the relics with the utmost ardor. In vain the clergy and the friars endeavored to stem the tide; the people denounced them as heretics, and despised the excommunication with which the neighboring bishops visited the adoration of the new saint; while the real heretics made many converts by secretly relating how the affair had been managed, and pointing it out as a sample of the manufacture of saints and miracles. God visited the sacrilege with a drouth of ten months, which was not broken until Lucas, at the risk of his life, destroyed the heretic chapel; and when the rains came there was a revulsion of feeling which enabled him to expel the heretics. All this would seem to indicate that the heretics were numerous and organized; it certainly shows that there was no machinery for their suppression; but after the elevation of Lucas to the see of Tuy, in 1239, we hear no more of heretics or of persecutions. The whole affair, apparently, was a sporadic manifestation, probably of some band of fugitives from Languedoc, who disappeared and left no following.[202]
If what Lucas tells us be true, that ecclesiastics frequently joined in and enjoyed the ridicule with which heretics derided the sacraments and the clergy, the Spanish Church was not likely to give much aid to the introduction of the Inquisition. How little its methods were understood appears in the fact that when, in 1236, San Fernando III. found some heretics at Palencia, he proceeded to brand them in the face, which brought them to reason and led them to seek absolution. No one seemed to know what to do with them, so Gregory IX. was applied to, and he authorized the Bishop of Palencia to reconcile them. There is probably no truth in the statement of some historians that the king, on several occasions, was obliged to levy from his subjects a tribute of wood with which to burn the unrepentant, and the story only serves to show how utterly vague have been the current conceptions of the period.[203]
We reach firmer ground with the codes known as El Fuero Real and Las Siete Partidas, the first issued by Alonso the Wise, in 1255, and the second about ten years later. By this time the Inquisition was at its height. It was thoroughly organized, and wherever it existed the business of suppressing heresy was exclusively in its hands. Yet not only does Alonso take no count of it, but in his regulation by secular law of the relations between the heretic and the Church he shows how completely, up to this period, Spain had remained outside of the great movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Heresy, it is true, is one of the matters pertaining to the ecclesiastical tribunals, and any one can accuse a heretic before his bishop or vicar. If the accused is found not to believe as the Church teaches, effort is to be made to convert him, and if he returns to the faith he is to be pardoned. If he proves obstinate, he is to be handed over to the secular judge. Then, however, his fate is decided without reference to the laws which the Church had endeavored to introduce throughout Christendom. If the culprit had received the consolamentum, or is a believer observing the rites, or one of those who deny the future life, he is to be burned; but if a believer not observing the rites, he is to be banished or imprisoned until he returns to the faith. Any one learning heresy, but not yet a believer, is fined ten pounds of gold to the fisc, or, if unable to pay, to receive fifty lashes in public. In the case of those who die in heresy or are executed, their estates pass to Catholic descendants, or, in default of these, to the next of kin; if without such kindred, the property of laymen goes to the fisc, of ecclesiastics, to the Church, if claimed within a year, after which it inures to the fisc. Children disinherited for heresy recover their portions, but not the mesne profits, on recantation. No one, after condemnation for heresy, can hold office, inherit property, make a will, execute a sale, or give testimony. The house where a wandering heretic missionary is sheltered is forfeited to the Church, if inhabited by the owner; if rented, the offending tenant is fined ten pounds of gold or publicly scourged. A rico home or noble sheltering heretics in his lands or castles, and persisting after a year’s excommunication, forfeits the land or castle to the king; and if a non-noble his body and property are at the king’s pleasure. The Christian who turns Jew or Moslem is legally a heretic, and is to be burned, as well as one who brings up a child in the forbidden faith. Prosecutions of the dead, however, are humanely limited to five years after decease.[204]
All this shows that Alonso and his counsellors recognized the duty of the State to preserve the purity of the faith, but that they considered it wholly an affair of the State, in which the Church had no voice beyond ascertaining the guilt of the accused. All the voluminous and minute legislation of Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Alexander IV. was wholly disregarded—the canon law had no currency in Castile, which regulated such matters to suit its own needs. That in this respect the popular needs were met is shown by the Ordenamiento de Alcalà, issued in 1348, which is silent on the subject of heresy. Apparently no change was deemed necessary in the provisions of the Partidas, which were then for the first time confirmed by the popular assembly. Under such legislation it follows as a matter of course that the Dominican provincial had no inquisitors to appoint, except in Aragon, under the bull of Urban IV. in 1262.
Castile continued unvexed by the Inquisition, and persecution for heresy was almost unknown. In 1316 Bernard Gui, of Toulouse, discovered in his district some of the dreaded sectaries known as Dolcinists or Pseudo-Apostoli, who fled to Spain to escape his energetic pursuit. May 1, 1316, he wrote to all the prelates and friars of Spain describing their characteristics and urging their apprehension and punishment. Had there been an Inquisition there he would have addressed himself to it. From remote Compostella he received an answer, written by Archbishop Rodrigo, March 6, 1317, announcing that five persons answering to the description had been captured there and were held in chains, and asking for instructions as to the mode of trying them and the punishment to be inflicted in case they are found guilty, “for all this is heretofore unaccustomed in our parts.” Evidently there was no Inquisition in Castile and Leon to which to apply, and even the provisions of the Partidas were unknown, though of all places in the kingdom Compostella must have been the one most familiar with the outer world and with heretics, from the stream of penitents continually sent thither as pilgrims.[205]
In 1401 Boniface IX. made a demonstration by appointing the provincial, Vicente de Lisboa, inquisitor over all Spain, directing that his expenses should be paid by the bishops, and that no superior of his Order could remove him. The only heresy specifically alluded to in the bull is the idolatrous worship of plants, trees, stones, and altars—apparently superstitious relics of paganism which indicate the condition of religion and culture in the Peninsula. Boniface’s action could hardly have been taken with any expectation of result, as Spain rendered obedience to Benedict XIII., the Antipope of Avignon, and it was probably only a move in the political game of the Great Schism. Whatever the motive, however, the effort was fruitless, for Fray Vicente was already dead in the odor of sanctity at the date of the bull. On learning this, Boniface returned to the charge, February 1, 1402, by empowering forever thereafter the Dominican Provincial of Spain to appoint and remove inquisitors, or to act as such himself, with all the privileges and powers accorded to the office by the canons. Inoperative as this remained, it at least had the advantage of supplying to the Spanish historians an unbroken line of inquisitors-general to be catalogued. About the same time King Henry III. increased the penalties of heresy by decreeing confiscation to the royal treasury of one-half of the possessions of heretics condemned by the ecclesiastical judges.[206]
This, perhaps, technically justifies Alonso Tostado, Bishop of Avila, who soon afterwards alludes to inquisitors in Spain investigating those defamed for heresy, and it explains the remarks of Sixtus IV. when, in January, 1482, he confirmed the two inquisitors appointed at Seville by Ferdinand and Isabella at the commencement of their reforms, and forbade their naming more, for the reason that the appointees of the Dominican provincial were sufficient. In spite of all this, the Spanish Inquisition was simply potential, not existent. When, in 1453, Alonso de Almarzo, Abbot of the great Benedictine foundation of Antealtares of Compostella, with his accomplices, was tried for selling throughout Spain and Portugal indulgences warranted to release the souls of the damned from hell, for counterfeiting the papal Agnus Dei, for forging and altering papal letters, and for persuading Jewish converts to apostatize, had there been an Inquisition it would promptly have taken cognizance of the culprits; but in place of this the case was referred to Nicolas V., who instructed the Bishop of Tarazona to proceed against them. A few years later Alonso de Espina, about 1460, sorrowfully admits the absence of all persecution of heresy. Bishops and inquisitors and preachers ought all to resist the heretics, but there is no one to do it. “No one investigates the errors of heretics. The ravening wolves, O Lord, have gained admittance to thy flock, for the shepherds are few. There are many hirelings, and because they are hirelings they care only for shearing, not for feeding the sheep!” and he draws a deplorable picture of the Spanish Church, distracted with heretics, Jews, and Saracens. Soon after this, in 1464, the Cortes assembled at Medina turned its attention to the subject and complained of the great number of “malos cristianos e sospechosos en la fe,” but the national aversion to the papal Inquisition still manifested itself, and its introduction was not suggested. The archbishops and bishops were requested to set on foot a rigid investigation after heretics, and King Henry IV. was asked to lend them aid, so that every suspected place might be thoroughly searched, and offenders brought to light, imprisoned, and punished. It was represented to the king that this would be to his advantage, as the confiscations would inure to the royal treasury, and he graciously expressed his assent; but the effort was resultless.[207]
[173] Wadding. ann. 1376, No. 3.
[174] Wadding. ann. 1375, No. 24; ann. 1376, No. 2.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carcass. (Doat, XXXV. 163).
[175] Perrin’s Waldenses, translated by Lennard, London, 1624, Bk. 2 pp. 18, 19.--Leger, Hist. des Églises Vaudoises II. 26.--Chabrand, op. cit. pp. 39, 40.
[176] Miroir de Souabe, ch. 89 (Ed. Matile, Neuchatel, 1843).
[177] Wadding. ann. 1409, No. 12.
[178] Mary-Lafon, Hist. du midi de la France, III. 384.--C. Bituricens. ann. 1432 (Harduin. VIII. 1459).--Martene Ampl. Coll. VII. 161-3.
[179] Leger, Hist. des Églises vaudoises, II. 24.--Duverger, La Vauderie dans les États de Philippe le Bon, Arras, 1885, p. 112. Even in the eariy part of the sixteenth century, Robert Gaguin, in speaking of riding on a broomstick and worshipping Satan, adds “quod impietatis genus Valdensium esse dicitur” (Rer. Gallican. Annal. Lib. X. p. 242. Francof. ad M. 1587).
[180] Martene Ampl. Collect. II. 1506-7.
[181] Isambert, Anc. Loix Franç. X. 793-4.
[182] Chabrand, op. cit. pp. 43, 48-52, 70.--Herzog, Die romanischen Waldenser pp. 277-82.--D’Argentré I. I. 105.--Leger, Hist. des Églises Vaudoises II. 23-5.--Filippo de Boni, I Calabro-Valdesi p. 71.--Comba, Histoire des Vaudois d’Italie, Paris, 1887, I. 160-66, 169. The Waldensian legend relates that in the cavern of Aigue-Fraide the number of victims was three thousand, of whom four hundred were children, but I think that M. Chabrand has sufficiently demonstrated its exaggerated improbability (Op. cit. pp. 53-9).
[183] Herzog, op. cit. pp. 283-5.--Perrin, Hist. Waldens. B. II. ch. 3.--Chabrand, op. cit. pp. 73-4.
[184] Matt. Paris ann. 1234 (p. 270, Ed. 1644).--Reinerii Summa (Martene Thesaur. V. 1767-8).
[185] Archives Nat. de France, J. 426, No. 4.--D’Achery Spicileg III. 598.--Paramo de Orig. Offic. S. Inquis. p. 177.--Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. III. c. 94.--Ripoll I. 38. (Cf. Llorente, Ch. III. Art. i. No. 3).--Marca Hispanica, pp. 1425-6.
[186] Llorente, Ch. III. Art. i. No. 5--Ripoll I. 91-2.
[187] Vaissette, III. Pr. 383-5, 392-3.--Doat, XXII. 218; XXIV. 184.
[188] Wadding, ann. 1238, No. 6.--Doat, XXIV. 182.--Pet. Rodulphii Hist. Seraph. Lib. II. fol. 285b.--Berger, Registres d’Innoc. IV. No. 2257.--Monteiro, Hist. da Inquisição, P. I. Liv. ii. ch. 36.
[189] Llorente, Ch. III Art. 1. No. 7, 8, 19.--Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1242.--Paramo, pp. 110, 177-8.
[190] Berger, Registres d’Innocent IV. No. 799, 3904.--Baluz. et Mansi I. 208.--Ripoll I. 245, 427, 429; II. 235.--Eymeric. Direct. Inquis. pp. 129-36.--Paramo, p. 132.
[191] Llorente, Ch. III. Art. i. No. 14, 17.--Monteiro, Hist. da Inquisição, P. I. Liv. ii. ch. 10.--Pelayo, Heterodoxos Españoles, I. 492.--Zurita, Añales de Aragon, Lib. II. c. 76.--Paramo, p. 178.
[192] Concil. Tarraconens. ann. 1291, c. 8 (Martene Ampl. Coll. VII. 294).
[193] Llorente, Ch. III. Art. ii. No. 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14.--Eymeric. Direct. Inquis. p. 265.--Ripoll II. 245.--Zurita, Añales, Lib. VI. c. 61.--Raynald. ann. 1344, No. 9.
[194] Eymeric. Direct. Inq. p. 262.--Ripoll. III. 421; VII. 90.--Wadding. ann. 1351, No. 16, 18, 21; ann. 1462, No. 1-18; 1463, No. 1-5; 1464, No. 1-6.--D’Argentré, I. I. 372; II. 250, 254.--Gradonici Pontif. Brixianorum Series, Brixiæ, 1755, pp. 348-51.--Æn. Sylvii Comment. Lib. XI.; Ejusd. Lib. de Contentione Divini Sanguinis.
[195] Eymeric. Direct. Inquis. pp. 44, 266, 314-6, 351, 357-8, 652-3.--Mag. Bull. Rom. I. 263.--Ripoll II. 268, 269, 270.--Martene Thesaur. II. 1181-2, 1182 bis, 1189.--Raynald. ann. 1398, No. 23.--Wadding, ann. 1371, No. 14-24.--Paramo, p. 111.--Pelayo, Heterodoxos Españoles, I. 499-500, 528.
[196] Dameto, Mut, y Alemany, Historia General de Mallorca (Ed. 1840, I. 101-3, II. 652).--Libell. de Magist. Ord. Prædic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 432).--Paramo, pp. 179, 186-7.--Ripoll II. 579, 594; III. 20, 28.--Monteiro, P. I. Liv. ii. c. 30.--Llorente, Ch. III. Art. iii. No. 4, 8.
[197] Ripoll II. 613.
[198] Ripoll III. 347.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carcass. (Doat, XXXV. 192).
[199] Llorente, Ch. III. Art. iii. No. 11.--Albertini Repertor. Inquis. s. v. Deficiens.--Ripoll III. 397, 415, 572.
[200] Llorente, Ch. VII. Art. ii. No. 2.--Herculano, Da Origem, etc., da Inquisição em Portugal, I. 44.--Ripoll III. 422.--Paramo, p. 187.
[201] Monteiro, P. I. Liv. i. c. 38, 44, 46, 48-51; Liv. ii. c. 5-12.--Chron. Eccles. Hamelens. (Scriptt. Rer. Brunsv. II. 508).--Herculano, I. 39.--Baluz. et Mansi, I. 208.--Paramo de Orig. Offic. S. Inquis. p. 131.
[202] Lucæ Tudens. de altera Vita, Lib. III. c. 7, 9. Cf. c. 18, 20.--Florez, España Sagrada, XXII. 120-22, 126-30.
[203] Lucæ Tudens. Lib. III. c. 12.--Raynald. ann. 1236, No. 60.--Rodrigo. Hist. Verdadera de la Inquisicion, II. 10.
[204] Las Siete Partidas, P. I. Tit. vi. I. 58; P.VII. Tit. xxiv. I. 7; Tit. XXV. II. 2-7.--El Fuero real, Lib. IV. Tit. i. II. 1, 2.
[205] Coll. Doat, XXX. 132 sqq.--Archbishop Rodrigo’s letter is dated 1315. This I presume to be an error of a copyist, probably misled by the use of the Spanish era in which 1355 is equivalent to 1317.
[206] Ripoll II. 421, 433.--Monteiro, P. I. Liv. ii. c. 35, 36.--Ordenanzas Reales, Lib. VIII. Tit. iv. I. 4.
[207] Monteiro, P. I. Liv. ii. c. 30.--Rodrigo, II. 11, 14-15.--Paramo, p. 136.--Raynald. ann. 1453, No. 19.--Alphons. de Spina Fortalic. Fidei Prolog, fol. 56b (Ed. 1494).
For the most part the orthodoxy of Spain had been vexed only with a few Fraticelli and Waldenses, not numerous enough to call for active repression. The main trouble lay in the multitudes of Jews and Moors who, under the law, were entitled to toleration, but whom popular fanaticism had forced to conversion in great numbers, and whose purity of faith was justly liable to suspicion. Hereafter I hope to have the opportunity of showing that from both the religious and the political standpoint of the age the measures taken by Ferdinand and Isabella were by no means without justification, however mistaken they were both in morals and in policy, and however unfortunate in their ultimate results. At present it suffices to point out this condition of affairs to explain the dissatisfaction which was widely prevalent and the demand for an efficient remedy.
At the same time even Spain was not wholly unmoved by the spirit of unrest and inquiry which marked the second half of the fifteenth century, sapping the foundations of tradition and rejecting the claims of sacerdotalism. About 1460 we learn from Alonso de Espina that many were beginning to deny the efficacy of oral confession, and this point could not have been reached without calling in question many other doctrines and observances which the Church taught to be necessary to salvation. At length these innovators grew so bold that Pedro de Osma, a professor in the great University of Salamanca, ventured to promulgate their obnoxious opinions in print. Oral confession, he asserted, was of human, not of divine precept, and was unnecessary for the forgiveness of sins; no papal indulgence could insure the living from the fires of purgatory; the papacy could err, and had no power to dispense with the statutes of the Church. Had there been any machinery of persecution at hand, short work would have been made with so bold a heretic, but the authorities were so much at a loss what to do with him that they applied to Sixtus IV., who sent a commission to Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, the dignitary next in rank to the king, to try him. In 1479 a council was assembled for the purpose at Alcalà, consisting of fifty-two of the best theologians in Spain, besides a number of canon lawyers. Pedro was summoned to appear, and on his failing to do so his doctrine was condemned as heretical, and he was sentenced—not to the stake for contumacy, but to recant publicly in the pulpit. He submitted and did so, and we are told in the official report of the proceedings that all the faithful burst into tears at this signal manifestation of the conquering hand of God. Pedro died peacefully in the bosom of the Church during the next year, 1480, and Sixtus IV., in confirming the action of the council, ordered the archbishop to prosecute as heretics any of his followers who would not imitate his obedience.[208]
Evidently some more efficient and less cumbrous method was requisite if the population of reunited Spain was to enjoy the blessing of uniformity in faith. It did not take long for the piety of Isabella and the policy of Ferdinand to discover appropriate means.
In Portugal, Affonso II., at the commencement of his reign, in 1211, had manifested his zeal by inducing his Cortes to adopt severe laws for the repression of heresy; but when Sueiro Gomes, the first Dominican Provincial of Spain, endeavored to introduce in his kingdom inquisitors of the order, Affonso refused to admit them, and successfully insisted that heretics should be tried as heretofore by the ordinary episcopal courts. This rebuff sufficed for nearly a century and a half, and there must have been considerable freedom of thought, for, about 1325, Alvaro Pelayo gives a long list of the errors publicly defended in the schools of Lisbon by Thomas Scotus, a renegade friar. Their nature may be appreciated from his Averrhoistic assertion that there had been three deceivers—Moses who deceived the Jews, Christ the Christians, and Mahomet the Saracens. He seems to have enjoyed immunity until he declared that St. Antony of Padua kept concubines, when the Franciscan prior had him incarcerated, and his trial followed. At last, by a bull, dated January 17, 1376, Gregory XI. authorized Agapito Colonna, Bishop of Lisbon, to appoint, for this time only, a Franciscan inquisitor, as heresies were known to be spreading, and there were no inquisitors in the kingdom. The nominee was to receive an annual salary of two hundred gold florins assessed upon all the dioceses in the proportion of their contributions to the apostolic chamber. Under this authority Agapito appointed the first Portuguese inquisitor, Martino Vasquez. From what we have seen elsewhere we may reasonably doubt his success in collecting his stipend; but, small as his receipts may have been, they were the equivalent of his service, for no trace of any labors performed by him remains.[209]
The Great Schism commenced in 1378, and as Portugal acknowledged Urban VI. while Spain adhered to the antipope Clement VII., the Dominican province of Spain divided itself, the Portuguese choosing a vicar-general, and finally a provincial, Gonçalo, in 1418, when Martin V. legalized the separation. This perhaps explains why Martino Vasquez was succeeded by another Franciscan. In 1394 Rodrigo de Cintra, calling himself Inquisitor of Portugal and Algarve, applied to Boniface IX. for confirmation, which was graciously accorded to him. Apparently the revenues of the office were nil, for the privilege was granted to him of residing with one associate at will in any Franciscan convent, which was bound to minister to his necessities, the same as to any other master of theology. Rodrigo was preacher to King João I., who requested this favor of Boniface, and his career, like that of his predecessor, is a blank. He was followed by a Dominican, Vicente de Lisboa, who had been Provincial of Spain at the time of the disruption, when he returned to Portugal and became confessor of Dom João. The king, in 1399, requested of Boniface his appointment as inquisitor, which was duly granted; and, as we have seen, in 1401, the pope endeavored to extend his jurisdiction over Castile and Leon. No trace of his inquisitorial activity exists. After his death, in 1401, there appears to have been an interval. The office apparently was regarded as a perquisite of the royal chapel for those who would condescend to accept it. The next appointment of which we hear is that of another confessor of Dom João, in 1413, this time a Franciscan, Affonso de Alprão, of whose doings no record has been preserved. When, in 1418, the kingdom was reorganized as an independent Dominican province, the earnest annalists of the Inquisition assume that under the bull of Boniface IX., in 1402, each successive provincial was likewise an inquisitor-general, and the lists of these worthies are laboriously paraded as such, until the founding of the New Inquisition in 1531. No acts of theirs in such capacity, however, are recorded. The Holy Office continued dormant, without even a titular official, until, in the early years of the sixteenth century, Dom Manoel, stimulated by the example of his Castilian neighbors, and feeling solicitude as to the status of the New Christians, or converts from Judaism and Islam, bethought him of its revival. Although he had the Dominican provincial at hand, no purpose of utilizing him in this manner seems to have been entertained. The king applied to the pope and obtained the appointment of a Franciscan, Henrique de Coimbra, but there is no trace of his activity.[210]
The New Inquisition of Spain was a model which the smaller kingdom would naturally be expected to adopt, and in fact, to ardent Catholics, there might well seem to be a necessity for such an institution in view of the problems arising from the large influx of New Christians flying from Spanish persecution. Dom Manoel, indeed, at one time entertained so seriously the idea of establishing the Spanish Inquisition in his dominions that, in 1515, he ordered his ambassador at Rome, D. Miguel da Silva, to obtain from Leo X. the same privileges as those which had been conceded to Castile, but from some cause the project was abandoned. His son, Dom João III., who succeeded him in 1521, was a weak-minded fanatic, and it is only singular that the introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model was delayed for still ten years. The struggle which took place over the measure belongs, however, to a period beyond our present limits.[211]
CHAPTER IV.
ITALY.
IN France we have seen the stubbornness of heresy in alliance with feudalism resisting the encroachments of monarchy. In Italy we meet with different and more complicated conditions, which gave additional stimulus to antagonism against the established Church, and rendered its suppression a work of much greater detail. Here heresy and politics are so inextricably intermingled that at times differentiation becomes virtually impossible, and the fate of heretics depends more on political vicissitudes than even on the zeal of men like St. Peter Martyr, or Rainerio Saccone.
For centuries the normal condition of Italy was not far removed from anarchy. Spasmodic attempts of the empire to make good its traditional claim to overlordship were met by the steady policy of the papacy to extend its temporal power over the Peninsula. During the century occupied by the reigns of the Hohenstaufens (1152-1254), when the empire seemed nearest to accomplishing its ends, the popes sought to erect a rampart by stimulating the attempts of the cities to establish their independence and form self-governing republics, and it thus created for itself a party in all of them. North of the Patrimony of St. Peter the soil of Italy thus became fractioned into petty states under institutions more or less democratic. For the most part they were torn with savage internal feuds between factions which, as Guelf or Ghibelline, hoisted the banner of pope or kaiser as an excuse for tearing each other to pieces. As a rule, they were involved in constant war with each other. Occasionally, indeed, some overmastering necessity might bring about a temporary union, as when the Lombard League, in 1177, broke the Barbarossa’s power on the field of Legnano, but, in general, the chronicles of that dismal period are a confused mass of murderous strife inside and outside the gates of every town.
Heresy could scarce ask conditions more favorable for its spread. The Church, worldly to the core, was immersed in temporal cares and pleasures, and during the strife between Alexander III. and the four antipopes successively set up by Frederic I.—Victor, Pascal, Calixtus, and Innocent—the enforcement of orthodoxy was out of the question. After the triumph of the papacy, stringent decrees, as we have seen, were issued by Lucius III., and edicts were promulgated by Henry VI. in 1194, and by Otho IV. in 1210, but they were practically inefficient. When every town was divided against itself heresy could bargain for toleration by holding the balance of power, and was frequently able, by throwing its weight on one side or the other, to obtain a share in the government. The larger struggles of city against city and of pope against emperor afforded a still wider field for the exercise of this diplomatic ability, of which full advantage was taken. When the formulas of persecution became defined under Honorius III., Gregory IX., and Frederic II., and fautorship was made equivalent to heresy, the factions and the nobles who tolerated or protected heretics became involved in the common anathema, and whole communities were stigmatized as given over to false idols. Yet although Ghibelline and heretic were frequently held by the popes to be almost convertible terms, there was in reality no test capable of universal application. Traditional hostility to the empire rendered Milan an intensely Guelf community, and yet it was everywhere recognized as the greatest centre of heresy.
Though heresy was by no means so universal as the papal anathemas would indicate, yet heretics were quite numerous enough to possess political importance, and to have some justification for their hopes of eventually becoming dominant. Little concealment was deemed necessary. When Otho IV. was in Rome for his coronation in 1209, under the vigilant rule of Innocent III., the ecclesiastics who accompanied him were scandalized at finding schools where Manichæan doctrines were openly taught, apparently without interference. The earlier Dominican persecutors are represented as constantly holding public disputations with heretics in the most populous cities of Italy, and the miracles related of them were mostly occasioned by the taunts and challenges of heretics. Otho, at Ferrara, in 1210, was obliged to order the magistrates to put to the ban the Cathari who refused, at the instance of the bishop, to return to the Church, and also those who publicly supported them.[212]
Although Stephen of Bourbon relates that a converted heretic informed him that in Milan there were no less than seventeen heterodox sects which bitterly disputed with each other, yet they can, as in France, be reduced to two main classes—Cathari, or Patarins, and Waldenses. The Cathari, it will be remembered, made their appearance in the first half of the eleventh century, at Monforte, in Lombardy, and they had continued to multiply since then. About the middle of the thirteenth century Rainerio Saccone gives us an enumeration of their churches. In Lombardy and the Marches there were about five hundred perfected Cathari of the Albanensian sect, more than fifteen hundred Concorrezenses, and about two hundred Bajolenses. The Church of Vicenza reckoned about a hundred; there were as many in Florence and Spoleto, and in addition about one hundred and fifty refugees from France in Lombardy. As he estimates the total number, from Constantinople to the Pyrenees, at four thousand, with a countless congregation of believers, it will be seen that nearly two thirds of the whole number were concentrated in northern Italy, chiefly in Lombardy, and that they constituted a notable portion of the population.[213]
Lombardy, in fact, was the centre whence Catharism was propagated throughout Europe. We have seen above how for more than half a century it served as a refuge to the persecuted saints of Languedoc, and as a source whence to draw missionaries and teachers. About 1240 a certain Yvo of Narbonne was falsely accused of heresy and fled to Italy, where he was received as a martyr, and had full opportunity of penetrating into the secrets of the sectaries. In a letter to Géraud, Archbishop of Bordeaux, he describes their thorough organization throughout Italy, with ramifications extending into all the neighboring lands. From all the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany their youth were sent to Paris to perfect themselves in logic and theology, so as to be able successfully to defend their errors. Catharan merchants frequented fairs and obtained entrance into houses where they lost no opportunity of scattering the seed of false doctrine. Full of zeal and courage, the Catharan believed his faith to be the religion of the future, and his ardor courted martyrdom in the effort to spread it everywhere. Milan was the headquarters whither every year delegates were sent from the churches throughout Christendom, bringing contributions for the support of the central organization, and receiving instructions as to the symbol, changed every twelvemonth, whereby the wandering Patarin could recognize the houses of his brethren and safely claim hospitality. It was in vain that, in 1212, Innocent III. warned the heretical city of the fate of Languedoc, and threatened to send a similar crusade for its extirpation. Fortunately for the Lombards he had no one to summon to their destruction, for Germany, however desirous of conquering Italy, was too distracted for such an enterprise, and the popes dreaded imperial domination quite as much as heresy. There was bitter irony in the reply of Frederic II., when, in 1236, he was subduing the rebellious Lombards, and he answered the clamor of Gregory IX., who called upon him to transfer his arms to Syria, by pointing out that the Milanese were much worse than Saracens, and their subjugation much more important.[214]
We have no means of obtaining an approximate estimate of the Waldenses, but in some districts they must have been almost as numerous as the Cathari. The remains of the Arnaldistæ and Umiliati had eagerly welcomed the missionaries of the Poor Men of Lyons, and had not only adopted their tenets, but had pushed them to a further development in antagonism to Rome. As early as 1206 we see Innocent III. alluding to Umiliati and Poor Men of Lyons as synonymous expressions, and endeavoring with little success to effect their expulsion from Faenza, where they were spreading and infecting the people. In Milan they had built a school where they publicly taught their doctrines; this was at length torn down by a zealous archbishop, and when, in 1209, Durán de Huesca sought to bring them back to the fold, a hundred or more of them consented to be reconciled if the building were restored to them. Evidently they had little to dread from active persecution, and subsequent letters of Innocent show them to be still flourishing there. The Waldenses who were burned at Strassburg in 1212 admitted that their chief resided in Milan, and that they were in the habit of collecting money and remitting it to him.[215]
It was, however, in the valleys of the Cottian Alps, to which they spread from Dauphiné, that they settled themselves most firmly. In those inhospitable regions, till then almost uninhabited, their marvellous and self-denying industry occupied every spot where incessant labor could support life. There they rapidly increased and filled the valleys of Luserna, Angrogna, San Martino, and Perosa. In 1210 Giacomo di Carisio, Bishop of Turin, alarmed at the constant growth of this heresy in his diocese, applied to Otho IV. for aid in its suppression, but the emperor in reply merely ordered him to use severity in their punishment and expulsion. Authority for this he already had in abundance under the canons, but he lacked the physical force to render it effective, and the imperial rescript went for naught. This shows that the local suzerains took no measures to enforce persecution, and the heretics continued to increase. The immediate sovereign of the district most deeply infected was the Abbey of Ripaille, which found itself unable to control them, and made over its temporal rights to Tommaso I., Count of Savoy. He issued an edict, to which I have already referred, imposing a fine of ten sols for giving refuge to heretics, which proved altogether ineffective. Thus, in the absence of efficient repression, were established those Alpine communities whose tenacity of belief supplied through centuries an unfailing succession of humble martyrs, and who ennobled human nature by their marvellous example of constancy and endurance.[216]
Although the Lombard Waldenses admitted their descent from the Poor Men of Lyons, their more rapid development gave rise to differences, and in 1218 a conference was held at Bergamo between delegates of both parties. This did not succeed in removing the points of dissidence, and about 1230 the Lombards sent to the brethren in Germany a statement of the discussion and of their views. It is not our province to enter into these minute details of faith and Church government, but the affair is worth alluding to as illustrating the flourishing condition of the Church, the practical toleration which it enjoyed, and the active communication which existed between its organizations throughout Europe.[217]
The aggressiveness of the heretics, the favor shown them by the people, and the impossibility of any systematic suppression by the Church under existing political conditions are well exhibited in the troubles which commenced at Piacenza in 1204. There the heretics were strong enough to provoke a quarrel between the authorities and Bishop Grimerio, which resulted in either the withdrawal or the expulsion of the prelate and all the clergy. The exiles transferred themselves to Cremona, but in 1205 that city likewise quarrelled with its pastors, and the wanderers were again driven forth, to find a refuge in Castell’’ Arquato. For three years and a half Piacenza remained without an orthodox priest, and deprived of all the observances and consolations of religion. So weak was the hold of the Church upon the people that this deprivation was acquiesced in with the utmost indifference. In October, 1206, Innocent III. sent three Apostolic Visitors to effect a reconciliation, with a threat of dividing the diocese and apportioning it among the neighboring sees, but the citizens cared nothing for this, and refused the terms demanded, which required them to compensate their bishop for the damage inflicted on him. After some six months wasted in fruitless negotiations the Visitors departed, and it was not till July, 1207, that another commission, offering more favorable conditions, succeeded in effecting a reconciliation which enabled the clergy to return from exile. About the same period Innocent found himself obliged to use persuasion and argument in the endeavor to urge the people of Treviso to expel their heretics. So far from threatening them, he begged them to have faith that their bishop would reform the excesses of the clergy whose evil example had disturbed them. It is easy thus to understand the exulting confidence with which the heretics anticipated the eventual triumph of their creeds, and the despair which led Abbot Joachim of Flora, in expounding the Apocalypse, to see in them the locusts with the power of scorpions who issue from the bottomless pit at the sounding of the fifth trumpet (Rev. IX. 3, 4). These heretics are the Antichrist; they are to grow in power and their king is already chosen, that king of the locusts “whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon” (Rev. IX. 11). Resistance to them will be in vain; they are to unite with the Saracens, with whom, in 1195, he says they are already entering into negotiations.[218]
When Honorius III., in 1220, obtained from Frederic II. the ferocious coronation-edict against heresy, he may well have imagined that the way was open for its immediate suppression. If so, he was not long in discovering his mistake. Whatever professions Frederic might make, or whatever rigor he might exercise in his Sicilian dominions, it was no part of his policy to estrange the Ghibelline leaders, or to strengthen the Guelfic factions in the turbulent little republics which he sought to reduce to subjection. His whole reign was an internecine conflict, open or concealed, with Rome, and he was too much of a free-thinker to have any scruples as to the sources whence he could draw strength for himself or annoyance for his enemy. In central and upper Italy, therefore, his laws were for the most part virtually a dead letter. Already, in 1221, Ezzelin da Romano, the most powerful Ghibelline in the March of Treviso, was complained of for the protection which he afforded to heretics, and his continuing to do so to the end shows that he found it to be good policy. When, in 1227, Ingheramo da Macerata, the late podestà of Rimini, was persecuted by the citizens because he had delivered for burning as heretics some of their daughters and sisters, and because he had wished to inscribe on their statute-books the constitutions of Frederic, it was not to the emperor that he applied for protection, but to Honorius III.[219]
Something more than imperial edicts was plainly necessary, and Honorius, in casting around for methods to check the spread of heresy, appointed, in 1224, the Bishops of Brescia and Modena as commissioners with special powers to exterminate the heretics of Lombardy—as inquisitors, in fact, this being one of the steps which gradually led to the establishment of the Inquisition, the usefulness of the Dominicans in this respect not having yet been divined. The Bishop of Modena, however, undertook a mission to convert the pagans of Prussia, and the Bishop of Rimini was substituted in his place. The prelates commenced with Brescia itself, whose prelate doubtless knew where to strike. They ordered the tearing down of certain houses where heretical preachers had been accustomed to hold forth. At once an armed insurrection broke out. The perennial factions of the city took sides. Several churches were burned, and the heretics parodied from them the anathema by casting lighted torches from the windows, and solemnly excommunicating all members of the Church of Rome. It was not until after a severe and prolonged conflict that the Catholics obtained the upper hand, and then the terms prescribed by Honorius were so mild as to indicate that it was not deemed politic to drive the defeated party to despair. All excommunicates were required to apply personally for absolution to the Holy See. The fortified houses of the lords of Gambara, of Ugona, of the Oriani, of the sons of Botatio, who had been the leader in the troubles, were ordered to be razed to the ground, never to be rebuilt, while other strongholds, which had been defended against the Catholics, were to be cut down one-third or one-half. Benificed clerks who were children of heretics or of fautors were to be suspended for three years or more as their individual participation in the troubles might indicate. A levy of three hundred and thirty lire was ordered on the clergy of Lombardy and the Trivigiana to recompense the Catholics for the losses endured in contending with the heretics. So unaccustomed as yet were the Lombards to persecution that even these conditions were deemed too harsh. The city of Milan interceded, and finally even the authorities of Brescia itself urged that moderation would be conducive to peace; and, May 1, 1226, Honorius authorized the bishops to use their discretion in diminishing the penalties. When, however, the Dominican Guala was elected Bishop of Brescia in 1230, he speedily succeeded in introducing in the local statutes the law of Frederic, of March, 1224, which decreed for heretics the stake or loss of the tongue, and he forced the podestà to swear to its execution.[220]
Gregory IX. was a man of sterner temper than Honorius, and, despite his octogenary age, his advent to the pontificate, in 1227, was the signal for unrelenting war on heresy. Within three weeks of his accession peace was signed, under the auspices of the papacy, between Frederic II. and the Lombard League, with provisions for the suppression of heresy. Gregory immediately, in the most imperious fashion, summoned the Lombards to perform their duty. Hitherto, he told them, all their pretended efforts had been fraudulent. No enforcement of the imperial constitutions had been attempted. If the heretics had at any time been driven away, it was with a secret understanding that they would be allowed to return and dwell in peace. If fines had been inflicted, the money had been covertly refunded. If statutes had been enacted, there was always a reservation by which they were rendered ineffective. Thus heresy had grown and strengthened while the liberties of the Church had been subverted. Heretics had been permitted to preach their doctrines publicly, while ecclesiastics had been outlawed and imprisoned. All this must cease, the provisions of the treaty of peace must be enforced, and, if they continued in their evil courses, the Holy See would find means to coerce them in their perversity.[221]
These were brave words, though the political condition of Lombardy rendered them ineffective. Nearer home, however, Gregory had fairer opportunity of enforcing his will, and we have already seen how promptly he recognized the utility of the Order of Dominic and laid the foundations of the Inquisition by his tentative action in Florence. While this was taking shape his zeal was stimulated by the discovery, in 1231, that in Rome itself heresy had become so bold that it ventured to assert itself openly, and that many priests and other ecclesiastics had been converted. Probably the first auto de fé on record was that held by the Senator Annibaldo at the portal of Santa Maria Maggiore, when these unfortunates were burned or condemned to perpetual prison, and Gregory took advantage of the occasion to issue the decretal which became the basis of inquisitorial procedure, and to procure the enactment of severe secular laws in the name of the senator. The details I have already given (Vol. I. p. 325), and they need not be repeated here; but Gregory did not content himself with what he thus accomplished in Rome. His aid just then was desirable to Frederic II. in his Lombard complications, and to Gregory’s urgency may doubtless be attributed the severe legislation of the Sicilian Constitutions, issued about this time, and the Ravenna decrees of 1232. Shortly afterwards, indeed, we find Frederic writing to him that they are like father and son; that they should sharpen the spiritual and temporal swords respectively committed to them against heretics and rebels, without wasting effort on sophistry, for if time be spent in disputation nature will succumb to disease. It is not probable that Gregory counted much on the zeal of the emperor, but he sent the edict of Annibaldo to Milan, with instructions that it be adopted and enforced there. Already, in 1228, his legate, Goffredo, Cardinal of San Marco, had obtained of the Milanese the enactment of a law by which the houses of heretics were to be destroyed, and the secular authorities were required to put to death within ten days all who were condemned by the Church; but thus far no executions seem to have taken place under it.[222]
It was now that Gregory, seeing the futility of all efforts thus far save those which the Dominicans were making in Florence, hit upon the final and successful experiment of confiding to the Order the suppression of heresy as part of their regular duties. A fresh impulse was felt all along the line. The Church suddenly found that it could count upon an unexpected reserve of enthusiasm, boundless and exhaustless, despising danger and reckless of consequences, which in the end could hardly fail to triumph. A new class of men now appears upon the scene—San Piero Martire, Giovanni da Vicenza, Rolando da Cremona, Rainerio Saccone—worthy to rank with their brethren in Languedoc, who devoted themselves to what they held to be their duty with a singleness of purpose which must command respect, however repulsive their labors may seem to us. On one hand these men had an easier task than their Western colleagues, for they had not to contend with the jealousy, or submit to the control, of the bishops. The independence of the Italian episcopate had been broken down in the eleventh century. Besides, the bishops naturally belonged to the Guelfic faction, and welcomed any allies who promised to aid them in crushing the antagonistic party in their turbulent cities. On the other hand, the political dissensions which raged everywhere with savage ferocity increased enormously the difficulties and dangers of the task.
In Italy, as in France, the organization of the Inquisition was gradual. It advanced step by step, the earlier proceedings, as we have seen both in Florence and Toulouse, being characterized by little regularity. As the tribunal by degrees assumed shape, a definite code of procedure was established which was virtually the same everywhere, except with regard to the power of confiscation, the application of the profits of persecution, and the acquittal of the innocent. To these attention has already been called, and they need not detain us further. The problems which the founders of the Inquisition had to meet in Italy, and the methods in which these were met, can best be illustrated by a rapid glance at what remains to us of the careers of some of the earnest men who undertook the apparently hopeless task.
The earliest name I have met with bearing the title of Inquisitor of Lombardy is that of a Frà Alberico in 1232. The Cardinal Legate Goffredo, whom we have seen busy in Milan, undertook to quiet civil strife in Bergamo, with the consent of all factions, by appointing as podestà Pier Torriani of Milan; and at the same time he seized the opportunity to make a raid on heretics, a number of whom he cast into prison. No sooner was his back turned than the citizens refused to receive his podestà, elected in his place a certain R. di Madello, and, what was worse, set at liberty the captive heretics. Thereupon the legate placed the city under interdict, which brought the people to their senses, and they agreed to stand to the mandate of the Church. Gregory accordingly, November 3, 1232, instructed Alberico, as Inquisitor of Lombardy, to reconcile the city on condition that the people refund to Pier Torriani all his expenses and give sufficient security to exterminate heresy. Here we see how intimate were the relations between politics and heresy, and what difficulties the alliance threw in the way of persecution.[223]
Frà Rolando da Cremona we have already met as professor in the inchoate University of Toulouse, and we have seen how rigid and unbending was his zeal. Hardly had he quitted Langueduc when we find him, in 1233, already actively at work in the congenial duty of suppressing heresy at Piacenza. The twenty-five years which had elapsed since the Piacenzans had shown themselves so indifferent to their spiritual privileges had not greatly increased their respect for orthodoxy. Rolando assembled them, preached to them, and then ordered the podestà to expel the heretics. The result did not correspond to his expectations. With the connivance of the podestà, the heretics and their friends arose and made a general onslaught on the clergy, including the bishop and the friars, in which a monk of San Sabino was slain and Rolando and some of his comrades were wounded. The Dominicans carried Rolando half-dead from the city, which was placed under interdict by the bishop. Then a revulsion of feeling occurred; Rolando was asked to return, and full satisfaction was promised. He prudently kept away, but ordered the imprisonment of the podestà and twenty-four others till the pleasure of the pope should be known. Gregory took advantage of the opportunity by sending thither the Archdeacon of Novara, with instructions to place the city under control of the orthodox party, taking ample security that the heretics should be suppressed; but this arrangement did not please the citizens, who rose again and liberated the prisoners. Sharp as was this experience, it did not dull the edge of Rolando’s zeal, for the next year we find him at work in the Milanese, where he received rough treatment at the hands of Lantelmo, a noble who sheltered heretics in his castle near Lodi. For this Lantelmo was condemned to be led through the streets, stripped and with a halter around his neck, to Rolando’s presence, and there to accept such penance as the friar, at command of the pope, might enjoin on him. A month later we hear of his seizing two Florentine merchants, Feriabente and Capso, with all their goods. They evidently were persons of importance, for Gregory ordered their release in view of having received bail for them in the enormous sum of two thousand silver marks.[224]
During this transition period, while the Inquisition was slowly taking shape, one of the most notable of the Dominicans engaged in the work of persecution was Giovanni Schio da Vicenza. I have alluded in a previous chapter to his marvellous career as a pacificator, and it may perhaps not be unjust to assume that his motive in employing his unequalled eloquence in harmonizing discordant factions was not only the Christian desire for peace, but also to remove the obstruction to persecution caused by perpetual strife, for in almost all these movements we may trace the connection between heresy and politics. After his wonderful success at Bologna, Gregory urged him to undertake a similar mission to Florence, where constant civic war was accompanied by recrudescence of heresy. In spite of the efforts of the embryonic Inquisition there, heresy was undisguised, and the ministers of Christ were openly opposed and ridiculed. Gregory assumed that Giovanni acted under the direct inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and did not venture to send him orders, but only requests. He was, like all his colleagues, popularly regarded as a thaumaturgist, and stories were told of his crossing rivers dry-shod, and causing vultures to descend from on high at his simple command. The Bolognese were so loath to part with him that they used gentle violence to retain him, and only let him go after Gregory had ordered their city laid under interdict, and had threatened to deprive of its episcopal dignity any place which should detain him against his will. After completely succeeding in his mission to Florence he was despatched on a similar one to Lombardy. The League, which had been so efficient an instrument in curbing the imperial power, was breaking up. Fears were entertained that Frederic would soon return from Germany with an army, and a portion of the Lombard cities and nobles were disposed to invite him. Some countervailing influence was required, and nothing more effective than Giovanni’s eloquence could be resorted to. At Padua, Treviso, Conigliano, Ceneda, Oderzo, Belluno, and Feltre he preached on the text “Blessed are the feet of the bearers of peace” with such effect that even the terrible Ezzelin da Romano is said to have twice burst into tears. The whole land was pacified, save the ancestral quarrel between Ezzelin and the counts of Campo San Piero, which unpardonable wrongs had rendered implacable. After a visit to Mantua, the apostle of peace went to Verona, then besieged by an army of Mantuans, Bolognese, Brescians, and Faenzans, where he persuaded the assailants to withdraw, and the Veronese, in gratitude, proclaimed him podestà by acclamation. He promptly made use of the position to burn in the market-place some sixty heretics of both sexes, belonging to the noblest families of the city. Then he summoned to a great assembly in a plain hard by all the confederate cities and nobles. Obedient to his call there came the Patriarch of Aquileia, the Bishops of Mantua, Brescia, Bologna, Modena, Reggio, Treviso, Vicenza, Padua, and Ceneda, Ezzelin da Romano, the Marquis of Este, who was Lord of Mantua, the Count of San Bonifacio, who ruled Ferrara, and delegates from all the cities, with their carrochi. The multitude was diversely estimated at from forty thousand to five hundred thousand souls, who were wrought by his eloquence to the utmost enthusiasm of mutual forgiveness. After denouncing as rebels and enemies of the Church all who adhered to Frederic or invited him to Italy, Giovanni induced his auditors to swear to accept such settlement of their quarrels as he should dictate, and when he announced the terms they unanimously signed the treaty.[225]
So great became his reputation that Gregory IX. was seriously disturbed at a report that Giovanni contemplated making himself pope. A consistory was assembled to consider the advisability of excommunicating him, and that step would have been taken had not the Bishop of Modena sworn upon a missal that he had once seen an angel descend from heaven while Giovanni was speaking, and place a golden cross upon his brow. A confidential mission was sent to Bologna to investigate his career there, which returned with authentic accounts of numberless miracles performed by him, among them no less than ten resuscitations of the dead. So holy a man could not well be thrust from the pale of the Church, and the project was abandoned.[226]
Meanwhile he had visited his native place, Vicenza, on invitation of the bishop, and had so impressed the people that they gave him their statutes to revise at his pleasure, and proclaimed him duke, marquis, and count of the city—titles which belonged to the bishop, who also offered to make over the episcopate to him. As at Verona, he used his power to burn a number of heretics. During his absence at Verona, Uguccione Pileo, an enemy of the Schia family, induced the people to revolt, when Giovanni hastened back and suppressed the rebellion, putting to death, with torture, a number of citizens, who are charitably supposed to have been heretics. Uguccione brought up reinforcements; a fierce battle was fought in the streets, and Giovanni was worsted and taken prisoner. A letter of condolence, addressed to him in prison, by Gregory, under date of September 22, 1233, serves to fix the date of this, and to show how powerless was the papacy to protect its agents in the fierce dissensions of the period. Giovanni was obliged to ransom himself and return to Verona, and thence to Bologna. The peace which he had effected was of short duration. The chronic wars broke out afresh, and Giovanni, at the instance of Gregory, came again to pacify them. In this he succeeded, but no sooner was his back turned than hostilities were renewed. Gregory made a third attempt, through the Bishops of Reggio and Treviso, who induced the warring factions to lay down their arms for a while; but the main object, of presenting a united front and keeping Frederic out of Italy, was lost, Ezzelin and a number of the cities urged his coming, and the decisive victory of Cortenuova, in November, 1237, dissolved the Lombard League which had so long held the empire in check, and made him master of Lombardy.[227]
During all this time Gregory had been untiring in his efforts to subdue heresy in Lombardy, undeterred by the disheartening lack of result. All his legates to that province were duly instructed to regard this as one of their chief duties. In May, 1236, he had even attempted to establish there a rudimentary Inquisition, but, in the existing condition of the land, even he could hardly have expected to accomplish anything. Frederic came with professions that the extirpation of heresy was one of the motives impelling him to the enterprise; and when Gregory reproached him with suppressing the preaching of the friars and thus favoring heresy, he astutely retorted, with a reference to Giovanni, by alluding to those who, under pretext of making war on heresy, were busy in establishing themselves as potentates, and were taking castles as security from those suspect in faith. Gregory, in reply, could only disclaim all responsibility for the acts of the adventurous friar. Yet Gregory himself, when it suited his Lombard policy, did not hesitate to relax his severity against the heretics, and it became a popular cry in Germany that he had been bribed with their gold.[228]
For some years Giovanni Schio led a comparatively quiet existence in Bologna, but in 1247, by which time the Inquisition was fairly taking shape, Innocent IV. appointed him perpetual inquisitor throughout Lombardy, arming him with full powers and releasing him from all subjection or accountability to the Dominican general or provincial. In the existing condition of the north of Italy the commission was virtually inoperative, and its only interest lies in its terms, which show that up to this time there was no organized Inquisition there. We hear nothing further of his activity, even after the death of Frederic, in 1250, until, in 1256, the long-delayed crusade was undertaken against Ezzelin da Romano. By his fiery eloquence he raised in Bologna a considerable force of crusaders, at whose head he marched against the tyrant of the Trevisan, but, disgusted with the quarrels of the leaders, he returned to Bologna before the final catastrophe, and he is supposed to have perished, in 1265, in the crusade against Manfred, when there was a contingent of ten thousand Bolognese in the army of Charles of Anjou.[229]
Yet the most noteworthy in all respects of the dauntless zealots who fought the seemingly desperate battle against heresy was Piero da Verona, better known as St. Peter Martyr. Born at Verona in 1203 or 1206, of a heretic family, his legend relates that he was divinely led to recognize their errors. When a schoolboy of only seven years of age his uncle chanced to ask him what he learned, and he repeated the orthodox creed. His uncle thereupon told him he must not say that God created the heaven and the earth, for he was not the creator of the visible universe; but the child, filled with the Holy Ghost, overcame his elder in argument, who thereupon urged the parents to remove him from school, but the father, who hoped to see him become a leader of the sect, allowed him to complete his education. His orthodox zeal grew with his growth, and in 1221 he entered the Dominican Order. His confessor testified that he never committed a mortal sin, and the bull of his canonization bears emphatic evidence to his humility, his meek obedience, his sweet benignity, his exhaustless compassion, his unfailing patience, his wonderful charity, his passionate supplications to God for martyrdom, and the innumerable miracles which illustrated his life.[230]
Before the Dominicans were armed with the power of persecution Piero earnestly devoted himself to the original function of the Order, that of controverting heresy, and preaching against heretics. In this the success of the young apostle was marvellously aided by his thaumaturgic development. At Ravenna, Mantua, Venice, Milan, and other places, numerous wonders are related of his performance. Thus, at Cesena, the success of his efforts at conversion irritated the heretics, who, on one occasion, interrupted his preaching in the public square by volleys of filth and stones discharged from a house near by. He several times mildly entreated them to desist, but in vain, when, inspired by divine wrath, he launched a terrible imprecation against them. Instantly the house crumbled in ruin, burying the sacrilegious wretches, nor could it be rebuilt until long afterwards.[231]
When the Dominicans were charged with the duty of persecution his earnest zeal naturally caused him to be selected as one of the earliest laborers. In 1233 he was sent to Milan, where, thus far, all the efforts of papal missives and legates had proved ineffectual to rouse the authorities and the citizens to undertake the holy work. The laws which, in 1228, Cardinal Goffredo had inscribed on the statute-book had remained a dead letter. All this was changed when Piero da Verona made his influence felt. Not only did he cause Gregory’s legislation of 1231 to be adopted in the municipal law, but he stimulated the podestà, Oldrado da Tresseno, and the archbishop, Enrico da Settala, to work in earnest. A number of heretics were burned, who were probably the first victims of fanaticism which Milan had seen since the time of the Cathari of Monforte. So strong was the impression made by these executions that they earned for the podestà Oldrado the honor of an equestrian portrait in bas-relief, with the inscription, “Qui solium struxit, Catharos ut debuit uxit,” which is still to be seen adorning the wall of the Sala del Consiglio, now the Archivio pubblico. It fared worse with the archbishop, who was rendered so unpopular that he was banished, for which the magistracy was duly excommunicated; but he, too, had posthumous reward, for his tomb bore the legend “instituto inquisitore jugulavit hœreses.” Piero likewise founded in Milan a company, or association, for the suppression of heresy, which was taken under immediate papal protection—the model of that which ten years later did such bloody work in Florence. We may safely assume that his fiery activity continued unabated, though we hear nothing of him until 1242, when we again find him in Milan so vigorously at work that he is said to have caused a sedition which nearly ruined the city.[232]
Two years later we meet him fighting heresy in Florence. That city, it will be remembered, was the subject of the earliest inquisitorial experiments, Frà Giovanni di Salerno, Prior of Santa Maria Novella, having been commissioned to prosecute heretics in 1228, and being succeeded after his death, in 1230, by Frà Aldobrandini Cavalcante, and about 1241 by Frà Ruggieri Calcagni. The first two of these accomplished little, being, in fact, rather preachers than inquisitors. The heretics were protected by the Ghibelline faction and the partisans of Frederic II., and heresy, far from decreasing, spread rapidly in spite of occasional burnings. When the Catharan Bishop Paternon fled, his position was successively held by three others, Torsello, Brunnetto, and Giacopo da Montefiascone. Many of the most powerful families were heretics or open defenders of heresy—the Baroni, Pulci, Cipriani, Cavalcanti, Saraceni, and Malpresa. The Baroni built a stronghold at San Gaggio, beyond the walls, which served as a refuge for the Perfected, and there were plenty of houses in the town where they could hold their conventicles in safety. The Cipriani had two palaces, one at Mugnone and the other in Florence, where troops of Cathari assembled under the leadership of a heresiarch named Marchisiano, and there were great schools at Poggibonsi, Pian di Cascia, and Ponte a Sieve.[233]
The whole of central Italy, in fact, was almost as deeply infected with heresy as Lombardy, and little had as yet been done to purify it. That as late as 1235 no comprehensive attempt had been made to establish the Inquisition is shown by a papal brief addressed in that year to the Dominicans of Viterbo, empowering them, in all the dioceses of Tuscany, Viterbo, Orta, Balneoreggio, Castro, Soano, Amerino, and Narni, to absolve heretics not publicly defamed for heresy, who should spontaneously accuse themselves, provided the bishops assented and sufficient bail were given; and the bishops were ordered to co-operate. Heretics not thus voluntarily confessing were to be dealt with according to the papal statutes. At Viterbo dwelt Giovanni da Benevento, who was called the pope of the heretics, but it was not until Gregory went thither in 1237 and undertook the task of purifying the place himself that any efficient action was taken; he condemned Giovanni and many other heretics, and ordered the palaces of some of the noblest families of the city to be torn down, as having afforded refuge to heretics. At the same time the Bishop of Padua was urged to persevere in the good work, and at Parma the Knights of Jesus Christ were instituted with the same object by Jordan, the Dominican general. All this indicates the commencement of systematic operations, and the pressure grew stronger year by year. Under the energetic management of Ruggieri Calcagni the Florentine Inquisition rapidly took shape and executions became frequent, while in the confessions of the accused allusions are made to heretics burned elsewhere, showing that persecution was becoming active wherever political conditions rendered it possible. Thus in a confession of 1244 there is a reference to two, Maffeo and Martello, burned not long before at Pisa.[234]
In Florence Frà Ruggieri’s vigor was reducing the heretics to desperation. Each trial revealed fresh names, and as the circle spread the prosecutions became more numerous and terrible. The Signoria was coerced by papal letters to enforce the citations of the inquisitor, and as the prisoners multiplied and their depositions were taken, fully a third of the citizens, including many nobles, were found to be involved. Excited by the magnitude of the developments, Ruggieri determined to strike at the chiefs, and, invoking the aid of the Priors of the Arts, he seized a number of them and condemned to the stake those who proved contumacious. The time had evidently come when they must choose between open resistance and destruction. The Baroni assembled their followers, broke open the jails, and carried off the prisoners, who were distributed through various strongholds in the Florentine territory, where they continued to preach and spread their doctrines.
Matters were rapidly approaching a crisis. On the one hand it was impossible for so large a body as the heretics to permit themselves to be slaughtered in detail with impunity, to say nothing of the spoliation and gratification of private feuds which could not fail to involve the innocent with the guilty in a persecution of such extent so recklessly pursued. On the other hand, the persecutors were maddened with excitement and with the prospects of at last triumphing over the adversaries who had so long defied them. Innocent IV. wrote pressingly to the Signoria commanding energetic support for the inquisitor, and he summoned from Lombardy Piero da Verona to lend his aid in the approaching struggle. Towards the end of 1244 Piero hastened to the conflict, and his eloquence drew such crowds that the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella had to be enlarged to accommodate the multitude. He utilized the enthusiasm by enrolling the orthodox nobles in a guard to protect the Dominicans, and formed a military order under the name of the Società de’’ Capitani di Santa Maria, uniformed in a white doublet with a red cross, and these led the organization known as the Compagnia della Fede, sworn to defend the Inquisition at all hazards, under privileges granted by the Holy See. Thus encouraged and supported, Ruggieri pushed forward the trials, and numbers of victims were burned. This was a challenge which the heretics could only decline under pain of annihilation. They likewise organized under the lead of the Baroni, and it was not difficult to persuade the podestà, Ser Pace di Pesannola of Bergamo, recently appointed by Frederic II., that the interest of his master required him to protect them. Thus the perennial quarrel between the Church and the empire filled the streets of Florence with bloodshed under the banners of orthodoxy and heterodoxy.
Ruggieri provoked the conflict without flinching. He cited the Baroni before him, and when they contemptuously refused to appear he procured a special mandate from Innocent IV. This they obeyed with the utmost docility, about August 1, 1245, swearing to stand to the mandates of the Church, and depositing one thousand lire as security; but when they understood that he was about to render sentence against them, they appealed to the podestà. Ser Pace thereupon sent his officers, August 12, to Ruggieri, ordering him to annul the proceedings as contrary to the mandate of the emperor, to return the money taken as bail, and, in case of contumacy, to appear the next day before the podestà under penalty of a thousand marks. Ruggieri’s only notice of this was a summons the next day to Ser Pace to appear before the Inquisition as suspect of heresy and fautorship, under pain of forfeiture of office. The fervid rhetoric of Frà Piero poured oil upon the flames, and the city found itself divided into two factions, not unequally matched and eager to fly at each other. Taking advantage of the assembling of the faithful in the churches on a feast-day, the podestà sounded the tocsin, and many unarmed Catholics are said to have been slaughtered before the altars. Then on St. Bartholomew’s day (August 24) Ruggieri and Bishop Ardingho, in the Piazza di S. Maria Novella, publicly read a sentence condemning the Baroni, confiscating their possessions, and ordering their castles and palaces to be destroyed, which naturally led to a bloody collision between the factions. Piero then placed himself at the head of the Compagnia della Fede, carrying a standard like the other captains, among whom the de’’ Rossi were the most conspicuous. Under his leadership two murderous battles were fought, one at the Croce al Trebbio and the other in the Piazza di S. Felicità, in both of which the heretics were utterly routed. Monuments still mark the scene of these victories; and, until recent times, the banner which San Piero gave to the de’’ Rossi was still carried by the Compagnia di San Piero Martire on the celebration of his birthday, April 29, while the one which he bore himself is preserved among the relics of Santa Maria Novella and is publicly displayed on his feast-day.
Thus was destroyed in Florence the power of the heretics and of the Ghibellines. Ruggieri, for his steadfast courage, was rewarded, before the close of 1245, with the bishopric of Castro, and was succeeded as inquisitor by San Piero himself, whose indefatigable zeal allowed the heretics no rest. Many of them, recognizing the futility of further resistance, abandoned their errors; others fled, and when Piero left Florence he could boast that heresy was conquered and the Inquisition established on an impregnable basis; though Rainerio’s estimate of the Florentine Cathari, some years later, shows that it still had an ample harvest to reward its labors.[235]
While Ruggieri, in the summer of 1245, was precipitating the conflict in Florence, Innocent IV., in the Council of Lyons, was passing sentence of dethronement on Frederic II. and trying to find some aspirant hardy enough to accept the imperial crown. Frederic laughed the sentence to scorn and easily disposed of his would-be competitors, but he was obliged to struggle hard to maintain his Italian possessions, and his death, December 13, 1250, relieved the papacy from the most formidable antagonist which its ambitious designs had ever encountered. Skilled equally in the arts of war and peace, untiring in activity, dismayed by no reverses, intellectually far in advance of his age, and encumbered with few scruples, Frederic’s brilliant abilities and indomitable courage had been the one obstacle in the papal path towards domination over Italy and the foundation on that basis of a universal theocratic monarchy. His son, Conrad IV., a youth of twenty-one, was scarce to be dreaded in comparison, though Innocent cautiously waited for a while in Lyons before venturing into Italy. After reaching Genoa, June 8, 1251, he addressed to Piero da Verona and Viviano da Bergamo a brief which shows that the intervening six months had not sufficed to dull the sense of rejoicing at the death of his great opponent, and that no more time was to be lost in taking full advantage of the opportunity. A dithyrambic burst of exultation is followed by the declaration that thanks to God for this inestimable mercy are to be rendered not so much in words as in deeds, and of these the most acceptable is the purification of the faith. Frederic’s favor towards heretics had long impeded the operations of the Inquisition throughout Italy, and now that he is removed it is to be put into action everywhere with all possible vigor. Inquisitors are to be sent into all parts of Lombardy; Piero and Viviano are ordered to proceed forthwith to Cremona, armed with all necessary powers; rulers who do not zealously assist them will be coerced with the spiritual sword, and, if this proves insufficient, Christendom will be aroused to destroy them in a crusade. This bull was followed by a rapid succession of others addressed to the Dominican provincials and to potentates, ordering strenuous co-operation, and the inscription in all local statutes of the constitutions of the dead emperor and of the popes—bulls issued in such haste that, June 13, 1252, the pope was obliged to explain that the blunders and omissions arising from the hurried work of the scribes are not to invalidate them. The whole was crowned, May 15, 1252, by the issue of the bull Ad extirpanda, of which I have given an abstract in a former chapter. This sought to render the civil power completely subservient to the Inquisition, and prescribed the extirpation of heresy as the chief duty of the State.[236]
Innocent’s mandate probably found Piero at the convent of San Giovanni in Canali at Piacenza, of which he was prior in 1250, and where his austerities so impressed his brethren that they begged his friend, Matteo da Correggio, pretor of the city, to induce him to moderate them, lest the flesh which he so persistently macerated should give way under the ardent spirit within. If, in fact, we are to believe the statement that he habitually never broke his fast before sunset, and that he passed most of the night in prayer, restricting his sleep to the least that was compatible with life, his career becomes easily intelligible. Deficiency of nourishment, replaced by unceasing and unnatural nervous exaltation, must have rendered him virtually an irresponsible being.[237]
We have no details of what he accomplished as inquisitor at Cremona, or at Milan to which he was afterwards transferred. It is presumable, however, that his relentless activity fully responded to the expectations of those who had selected him as the fittest instrument to take advantage, in the headquarters of heresy, of the unexpected opportunity to visit the now defenceless heretics with the wrath of God. Within nine months after he had been summoned to action he had already become such an object of terror that in despair a plot was laid for his assassination. The matter was intrusted to Stefano Confaloniero, a noble of Aliate, and the hire of the assassins, twenty-five lire, was furnished by Guidotto Sachella. The week before Easter (March 23-30), 1252, Stefano proposed the murder to Manfredo Clitoro of Giussano, who agreed to do it, and associated with him Carino da Balsamo. At the same time Giacopo della Chiusa undertook to go to Pavia to slay Rainerio Saccone, and made the journey, but failed to accomplish his mission. The other conspirators were more successful. Frà Piero at that time was Prior of Como, and went thither to pass his Easter. He was obliged to return to Milan on Low Sunday, April 7, as on that day expired the term of fifteen days which he had assigned to a contumacious heretic. During Easter week Stefano, with Manfredo and Carino, went to Como and awaited Piero’s departure. It shows the fearlessness and the austerity of the man that he set out on foot, April 7, though weakened with a quartain fever, and accompanied only by a single friar, Domenico. Manfredo and Carino followed them as far as Barlassina, and set upon them in a lonely spot. Carino acted as executioner, laying open Piero’s head with a single blow, mortally wounding Domenico, and then, finding that Piero still breathed, plunging a dagger in his breast. Some passing travellers carried the body of the martyr to the convent of San Sempliciano, while Domenico was conveyed to Meda, where he died five days afterwards. As for the conspirators, I have already alluded to the strange delay which postponed for forty-three years the final sentence of Stefano Confaloniero, and to the repentance and beatification of Carino, who became St. Acerinus. Daniele da Giussano, another of the confederates, also repented and entered the Dominican Order. Giacopo della Chiusa seems to have escaped, and Manfredo and a certain Tommaso were captured and confessed. Manfredo admitted that he had been concerned in the murder of two other inquisitors, Frà Pier di Bracciano and Frà Catalano, both Franciscans, at Ombraida in Lombardy. He was simply ordered to present himself to the pope for judgment, but in place of obeying he very naturally fled, and there is no record of his subsequent fate. No one seems to have been put to death, and common report asserted that the assassins found a safe refuge among the Waldenses of the Alpine valleys, which is not improbable.[238]
In fact, the Church made much shrewder use of the martyrdom than the exaction of vulgar vengeance. Its whole machinery was set to work at once to impress the populations with the sanctity of the martyr. Miracles multiplied around him. When the General Chapter of the Order assembled at Bologna in May, Innocent wrote to them in terms of the most extravagant hyperbole respecting him, and urged them to fresh exertions in the cause of Christ. By August 31, he ordered the commencement of proceedings of canonization, and before a year had elapsed, March 25, 1253, the bull of canonization was issued—I believe the most speedy creation of a saint on record. It would be difficult to exaggerate the cult which developed itself around the martyr. Before the century was out, Giacopo di Voragine compared his martyrdom with that of Christ, establishing many similitudes between them, and he assures us that the disappearance of heresy in the Milanese was owing to the merits of the saint—indeed, already, in the bull of canonization it is asserted that many heretics had been converted by his death and miracles. It is true that when, in 1291, Frà Tommaso d’Aversa, a Dominican of Naples, in a sermon on the feast of San Piero dared to compare his wounds with the stigmata of St. Francis—saying that the former were the signs of the living God and not of the dead, while the latter were those of the dead God and not of the living—it is true that the expression was thought to savor of blasphemy. The existing pope, Nicholas IV., chanced to be a Franciscan, so Tommaso was summoned before him, forced to confess, and was sent back to his provincial with orders to subject him to a punishment that would prevent a repetition of the sacrilege. Yet successive popes encouraged the cult of San Piero until Sixtus V., in 1586, designated him as the second head of the Inquisition after St. Dominic, and as its first martyr, and in 1588 granted plenary indulgence to all who should visit for devotion the Dominican churches on the days of St. Dominic, Peter Martyr, and Catharine of Siena. In the seventeenth century an enthusiastic Spaniard declared that he was crowned with three crowns, “como Emperador de Martyres.” In 1373, Gregory XI. granted permission to erect a small oratory on the spot of the murder, which grew to be a magnificent church with a splendid convent, through the offerings of the innumerable pilgrims who flocked thither. The authenticity of the martyr’s sanctity was proved when, in 1340, eighty-seven years after death, the body was translated to a tomb of marvellous workmanship, and was found in a perfect state of preservation; and when the sepulchre was opened in 1736 it was still found uncorrupted, with wounds corresponding exactly to those described in the annals.[239]
The enthusiasm excited by the career of San Piero was turned to practical account by the organization in most of the Italian cities of Crocesegnati, composed of the principal cavaliers, who swore to defend and assist the inquisitors at peril of their lives, and to devote person and property to the extermination of heretics, for which service they received plenary remission of all their sins. These associations were wont to assemble on the feast of San Piero in the Dominican churches, which were the seats of the Inquisition, and hold aloft their drawn swords during the reading of the Gospel, in testimony of their readiness to crush heresy with force. They continued to exist until the last century, and Frà Pier-Tommaso Campana, who was inquisitor at Crema, relates with pride how, in 1738, he presided over such a ceremony in Milan. The Crocesegnati, moreover, furnished material support to the inquisitors, supplying them when necessary with both men and money for the performance of their functions. In fact, they were subject to excommunication if they refused to give money when called upon by the inquisitor. It can readily be conceived how greatly the effectiveness of the Inquisition was increased by such an organization.[240]
If the heretics had hoped to strike their persecutors with terror they were short-sighted. The fanaticism of the Order of Dominic furnished an unfailing supply of men eager for the crown of martyrdom and unsparing in their efforts to earn it. Hardly were the splendid obsequies of San Piero completed when his place was occupied by Guido da Sesto and Rainerio Saccone da Vicenza. The latter had been high in the Catharan Church, when, divinely illuminated as to his errors, he was converted and expiated his past life by entering the strict Dominican Order. It was possibly in his favor that in 1246 Innocent IV. authorized the Dominican prior at Milan to admit repentant heretics into the Order without requiring the year’s novitiate that was imposed on Catholics. Thoroughly acquainted with all the secrets of heresy, he could render invaluable aid in persecuting his old associates, whom he pursued with all the ruthless bigotry of an apostate. He was speedily made an inquisitor, and earned an enviable reputation among the faithful by his vigor and success in exterminating heresy. The fact that, as we have seen, he was singled out with San Piero by the conspirators to be slain shows how thoroughly he had earned the hate of the persecuted. We know nothing of the details of the attempt upon his life save that Giacopo della Chiusa returned from Pavia with his errand unaccomplished. Rainerio was at once transferred to Milan as the man best fitted to replace the martyr, and he justified the selection by the unbending firmness with which he vindicated the authority of his office. It was still a novelty in Lombardy, and a man of his keen intelligence, strength of purpose, and self-devotion was required to organize it and establish it among a recalcitrant population.[241]
Heretics, in fact, were more numerous than ever in Lombardy, for the active work carried on in Languedoc by Bernard de Caux and his colleagues had caused a wholesale emigration. Until the death of Frederic, Lombardy was regarded as a secure haven; colonies established themselves there, and even after the Lombard Inquisition was thoroughly organized the persecuted wretches continued for half a century to seek refuge there, nor do we often hear of their being detected.[242] All of Rainerio’s resolution and energy were required for the work before him. In the March of Treviso, Ezzelin da Romano, whose influence extended far to the west, continued openly to protect heresy, and even in Lombardy the hopes excited by Frederic’s death threatened to prove fallacious. In 1253, when Conrad IV. passed through Treviso to recover possession of his Sicilian kingdom, he appointed as his Lombard vicar-general Uberto Pallavicino, who soon became as obnoxious to the Church as Ezzelin himself; and, though Conrad died in 1254, and Innocent IV. seized Naples as a forfeited fief of the Church, Pallavicino’s power continued to increase, and he soon established relations with Manfred, Frederic’s illegitimate son, who wrested Naples from the papacy and became the chief of the Ghibelline faction. Even more threatening was the revulsion of feeling in Milan itself, when its ardent Guelfism was changed to indifference by Innocent’s indiscreet assertion of certain ecclesiastical immunities which touched the pride of the citizens. The heads of the hydra might well seem indestructible.
[208] Alphons. de Castro adv. Hæreses Lib. III. s.v. Confessio.--Illescas, Historia Pontifical, Lib. VI. c. 18.--Aguirre Concil. Hispan. V. 351-8.--D’Argentré, I. II. 298-302.
[209] Herculano, I. 40.--Monteiro. P. I. Liv. ii. c. 34.--Pelayo, Heterodoxos Españoles, I. 782-3.
[210] Llorente, Ch. III. Art. ii. No. 24.--Monteiro, P. I. Liv. ii. c. 35, 37, 38, 39.--Wadding, ann. 1394, No. 4; 1413, No. 4.--Ripoll II. 389.
[211] Herculano, Da Origem, etc., da Inquisição, I. 163-5.
[212] Cæsar. Heisterbacens. Dial. Mirac. Dist. V. c. 25.--Muratori Antiq. Ital. Diss. LX. (T. XII. p. 447).
[213] D’Argentré, Coll. Judic. de novis Error. I. i. 86.--Reinerii Summa (Martene Thesaur. V. 1767).
[214] Matt. Paris. ann. 1236, p. 293; ann. 1243, pp. 412-13 (Ed. 1644)--Trithem. Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1230.--Innoc. PP. III. Regest. XV. 189.--Hist. Diplom. Frid. II. T. IV. p. 881.
[215] Montet, Hist. litt. des Vaudois du Piémont, pp. 40-1.--Innoc. PP. III. Regest. IX. 18, 19, 204; XII. 17; XIII. 63.--Kaltner, Konrad v. Marburg, pp. 42, 44.--Annal. Marbacens. ann. 1231 (Urstisii Germ. Hist. Scriptt. II. 90).
[216] Böhmer, Regest, Imp. V. 110.--Comba, La Riforma in Italia, I. 254-57.--Ejusd. Histoire des Vaudois d’Italie, I. 124 sqq., 140.--Charvaz, Origine dei Valdesi, App. No. XXII. Giuseppe Manuel di S. Giovanni (Un’ Episodia della Storia del Piemonte, Torino, 1874, pp. 15-21) argues that the letter of Otho IV. is only the draft of one which the bishop desired to procure, but the question is merely of archæological interest, for in either case it was equally ineffective.
[217] Rescript. Heres. Lombard. (Preger, Beiträge, München, 1875, pp. 56-63).--Reinerii Summa (Martene Thesaur. V. 1775).
[218] Campi, Dell’ Historia Ecclesiastica di Piacenza, P. II.. pp. 92 sqq.--Innoc. PP. III. Regest. IX. 131, 166-9; X. 54, 64, 222.--Tocco, L’Heresia nel Medio Evo, pp. 364, 366 (Firenze, 1884).--Cf. Pseudo-Joachim de septem temporibus Ecclesiæ P. V.
[219] Epistt. Sæcul. XIII. T. I. No. 451 (Mon. Hist. Germ.).--Potthast No. 7672.
[220] Epistt. Sæc. XIII. T. I. No. 264-66, 275, 295 (Mon. Hist. Germ.).--Havet, Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 1880, p. 602.
[221] Epistt. Sæc. XIII. T. I. No. 355.
[222] Raynald. Annal. ann. 1231, No. 13-18.--Constit. Sicular. Lilt. I. Tit. i.--Rich. S. Germ. Chron. (Muratori, S. R. I. VII. 1026).--Vit. Gregor. PP. IX. (Ib. III. 578).--Hist. Diplom. Frid. II. T. IV. pp. 299-300, 409-11.--Verri, Storia di Milano, I. 242.--Bern. Corio, Hist. Milanese, ann. 1228.
[223] Ripoll. 41.
[224] Epistt. Sæc. XIII. T. I. No. 559.--Raynald. ann. 1233, No. 40.--Ripoll I. 69, 71. Probably about this period may have occurred the incident related of Moneta, the disciple of St. Dominic, whose efforts against the heretics of Lombardy are said to have aroused their animosity to the point that a noble named Peraldo hired an assassin to despatch him. Word was brought to Moneta, who seized a crucifix and assembled a band of the faithful, with whom he captured Peraldo and the bravo, delivered them to the secular authorities, and they were both burned alive.--Ricchini Vit. Monetæ, p. viii.
[225] Ripoll I. 48, 56-9.--Matt. Paris, ann. 1238, p. 320.--Chron. Veronens. ann. 1233 (Muratori, S.R.I. VIII. 67).--Gerardi Maurisii Hist. (Ib. pp. 37-9).--Barbarano de’ Mironi, Hist. Eccles. di Vicenza, II. 79-84.
[226] Barbarano de’ Mironi, op. cit. II. 90-1.
[227] Ripoll I. 60-1--Barbarano de’ Mironi op. cit. II. 86, 91-2.
[228] Greg. PP. IX. Bull. Ille humani generis, 20 Maii, 1230 (Ripoll I. 95. gives this in 1237, probably a reissue).--Epistt. Sæcul. XIII. T. I. No. 693, 700, 702, 704.--Hist. Diplom. Frid. II. T. IV. P. II. pp. 907-8.--Schmidt, Cathares, I. 161.
[229] Ripoll I. 174-5.--Barbarano de’ Mironi, op. cit. II. 94-6.
[230] Jac. de Voragine Legenda Aurea s. V.--Mag. Bull. Rom. I. 94.
[231] Campana, Storia di San Piero-Martire, Milano, 1741, pp. 28-39.
[232] Bern. Corio, Hist. Milanese, ann. 1233, 1242.--Verri, Storia di Milano, I. 241-3.--Ripoll I. 65.--Annal. Mediolanens. c. xiv. (Muratori, S.R.I. XVI. 651).--Sarpi, Discorso (Ed. Helmstad. 1763, IV. 21).
[233] Lami, Antichità Toscane, pp. 497, 500.
[234] Ripoll I. 79-80.--Raynald. ann. 1235, No. 15.--Vit. Gregor. PP. IX. (Muratori, S.R.I. III. 581).--Lami op. cit. pp. 554, 557.
[235] Lami, op. cit. pp. 560-85.--Lami’s account of these troubles, based upon original sources, is so complete that I have followed it without reference to other authorities. Most of the documents are still in the Archives of Florence (Archiv. Diplom., Prov. S. Maria Novella, ann. 1245). The Compagnia della Fede, known subsequently as del Bigallo, was changed in the middle of the fifteenth century, by Sant’ Antonino, Prior of San Marco, into a charitable association for the care of orphans (Villari, Storia di Girol. Savonarola, Firenze, 1887, I. 37).
[236] Ripoll I. 192-3, 199, 205, 208-14, 231.--Berger, Registres d’Innoc. IV. No. 5065, 5345.--Mag. Bull. Rom. I. 91.
[237] Campana, Vita di San Piero-Martire, pp. 100-1.
[238] Bern. Corio, Hist. Milanese, ann. 1252.--Gualvaneo Flamma c. 286 (Muratori, S. R. I. XI. 684).--Ripoll I. 224, 244, 389.--Campana, Vita di San Piero Martire, pp. 118-20, 125, 128-9, 132-33.--Annal. Mediolanens. c. 24 (Muratori, XVI. 656).--Tamburini, Storia dell’ Inquisizione, I. 492-502.--Wadding Annal. ann. 1284, No. 3.--Rodulphii Hist. Seraph. Relig. Lib. I. fol. 126.--Raynald. Annal. ann. 1403, No. 24. There is a Daniele da Giussano who appears as inquisitor in Lombardy in 1279 (Ripoll I. 567), and who may very probably be the same as the accomplice in the murder.
[239] Ripoll I. 212.--Campana, op. cit. 126, 149, 151, 257, 259, 262-3.--Jac. de Vorag. Legenda Aurea s. v.--Mag. Bull. Roman. I. 94.--Wadding Annal. ann. 1291, No. 24.--Juan de Mata, Santoral de los dos Santos, Barcelona, 1637, fol. 28.--Gualvaneo Flamma, Opusc. (Muratori, S. R. I. XII. 1035). Frà Tommaso’s disgrace was not perpetual. We shall meet him hereafter as inquisitor, alternately protecting and persecuting the Spiritual Franciscans. If the accounts of the latter be true, his death in 1306 was a visitation of God for the frightful cruelties inflicted upon them (Hist. Tribulationum, ap. Archiv für Litteratur-und Kirchengeschichte, 1886, p. 326). The question of the Stigmata was always a burning one between the two Orders. The Dominicans at first refused to accept the miracle until forced to submit by energetic papal measures (Chron. Glassberger ann. 1237--Analecta Franciscana II. 58, Quaracchi, 1887), and when at length they claimed the same honor for St. Catharine of Siena the Franciscans were equally incredulous. In 1473, at Trapani, the two Orders preached against each other on this subject with so much violence as to raise great disorders between their respective partisans among the laity, until the Viceroy of Sicily was obliged to interfere (La Mantia, L’Inquisizione in Sicilia, Torino, 1886, p. 17); and, as already mentioned, Sixtus IV., in 1475, prohibited the ascription of the Stigmata to St. Catharine.
[240] Ripoll VIII. 113.--Chron. Parmens. ann. 1286 (Muratori, S.R.I. IX. 810).--Campana, op. cit. p. 63.--Bernardi Comens. Lucerna Inquis. s. VV. Bona hœreticor. No. 6, Crucesignati. Indulgentia.
[241] Ripoll I. 144, 168.--Campi, Dell’ Hist. Eccles. di Piacenza, P. II. pp. 208-9.
[242] Molinier, Thesis de Fratre Guillelmo Pelisso, Anicii, 1880, pp. lix.-lx.
One of Rainerio’s first enterprises, in 1253, was summoning Egidio, Count of Cortenuova, before his tribunal, as a fautor and defender of heresy. The castle of Cortenuova, near Bergamo, had been razed as a nest of heretics, and its reconstruction prohibited, but the count had seized the castle of Mongano, which was claimed by the Bishop of Cremona, and had converted it into a den of heretics, who enjoyed immunity under his protection. He disdained to obey the citation and was duly excommunicated. He paid no attention to this, and on March 23, 1254, Innocent IV. ordered the authorities of Milan, under pain of ecclesiastical censures, to take the castle by force and deliver its inmates to the inquisitors for trial. The count, however, was in close alliance with Pallavicino, “that enemy of God and the Church,” and the Milanese appear to have had no appetite for the enterprise at the time. Mongano continued to be a place of refuge for the persecuted until 1269, when the Milanese were at last stimulated to undertake the siege, and on capturing it handed it over to the Dominicans.[243]
Better success awaited Rainerio’s efforts with Roberto Patta da Giussano, a Milanese noble who for twenty years had been one of the most conspicuous defenders of heresy in Lombardy. At his castle of Gatta he publicly maintained heretic bishops, allowing them to build houses, and establish schools whence they spread their pernicious doctrines through the land. They had also there a cemetery where, among others, were buried their bishops, Nazario and Desiderio. The place was notorious, and it is related of San Piero-Martire, as an instance of his prophetic gifts, that once when passing it he had foretold its destruction and the exhumation of the heretic bones. Roberto had been cited by the archbishop and had abjured heresy, but no effective measures had been ventured upon to coerce him from his evil ways, and the heretics of Gatta had continued to enjoy his protection. It was otherwise when, in 1254, Rainerio and Guido summoned him again. On his failing to appear they summarily condemned him as a heretic, declared his property confiscated and his descendants subject to the usual disabilities. Roberto saw that the new officials were not to be trifled with. The prospects of the Ghibellines at the moment were apparently hopeless. He hastened to make his peace, binding himself to submit to any terms which the pope might dictate; and Innocent doubtless deemed himself merciful when, August 19, 1254, he ordered the castle of Gatta and all the heretic houses to be destroyed by fire, the bones in the cemetery to be dug up and burned, and the count to perform such salutary penance as Rainerio might prescribe.[244]
The papal power was now at its height. Conrad IV. had died May 20, 1254, not without suspicion of poison; Innocent IV. had seized his Sicilian kingdoms, and for a brief space, until Manfred’s romantic adventures and victory of Foggia, he might well imagine himself on the eve of becoming the undisputed temporal as well as spiritual head of Italy. Every effort was made to perfect the Inquisition and to render it efficient both as a political instrument and as a means of bringing about the long-desired uniformity of belief. On March 8 Innocent had taken an important step in its organization by ordering the Franciscan Minister of Rome to appoint friars of his Order as inquisitors in all the provinces south of Lombardy. On May 20 he reissued his bull Ad extirpanda; on the 22d he sent the constitutions of Frederic II. to all the Italian rulers, with orders to incorporate them in the local statutes, and informed them that the Mendicants were instructed to coerce them in case of disobedience. On the 29th he proceeded to reorganize the Lombard Inquisition by instructing the provincial to appoint four inquisitors whose power should extend from Bologna and Ferrara to Genoa. Under this impulsion and the restless energy of Rainerio no time was lost in extending the institution in every direction save where Ghibelline potentates such as Ezzelin and Uberto prevented its introduction. We chance to have an illustration of the process in the records of the little republic of Asti, on the confines of Savoy. It is recited that in 1254 two inquisitors, Frà Giovanni da Torino and Frà Paulo da Milano, with their associates, appeared before the council of the republic and announced to them that the pope enjoined them to admit the Inquisition within their territories. Thereupon the Astigiani made answer that they were ready to obey the pontiff, but they had no laws providing for persecution and it would be necessary to frame one. Accordingly an ordenamento was drawn up prescribing obedience to the constitutions of Innocent IV. and Frederic II., and it was forthwith added to the local statutes. Similar action was doubtless taking place in every quarter where the people had thus far remained in ignorance of the new doctrine that the suppression of heresy was the first duty of the government.[245]
The death of Innocent IV., December 7, 1254, whether it was the result of Dominican litanies or of mortification at Manfred’s success, made no difference in the energy with which the progress of the Inquisition was pushed. The accession of Alexander IV. was signalized by a succession of bulls repeating and enforcing the regulations of his predecessor, and urging prelates and inquisitors to increased activity. To overcome the resistance of such cities as were slack in the duty of capturing and delivering all who were designated for arrest by the inquisitors, the latter were empowered to punish such delinquency with the heavy fine of two hundred silver marks. Under this impulsion Rainerio assembled the people of Milan, August 1, 1255, in the Piazza del Duomo, read to them his commission, and gave them notice that, although he had hitherto acted with great mildness, the time had passed for trifling. Many citizens, he said, openly derided the Inquisition in the public streets; others caused scandal by opposing and molesting it. He therefore gave three formal warnings, attested by a notarial instrument duly witnessed, that all who should continue to indulge in detraction or should in any way impede the Inquisition were excommunicate as fautors of heresy, and would be prosecuted to such penalties as their audacity deserved.[246]
As the Inquisition warmed to its work, the four inquisitors provided for Lombardy by Innocent IV. proved insufficient, and, March 20, 1256, Alexander IV. ordered the provincial to increase the number to eight. He appears to have been somewhat dilatory in obedience, for in 1260 he was sharply reminded of the command and enjoined no longer to postpone its fulfilment. Possibly the delay may have arisen from the fact that in January, 1257, Rainerio had risen to the position of supreme inquisitor over the whole of Lombardy and the Marches of Genoa and Treviso, with power to appoint deputies. He thus was doubtless practically emancipated from the control of the provincial, and was able to supply any deficiency in the working force with those who were absolutely dependent upon himself. In March, 1256, the prelates had been required in the most urgent terms to render all aid and support to the inquisitors; and in January, 1257, this was emphasized by informing them that those who manifested neglect should not escape punishment, while those who showed themselves zealous would find the Holy See benignant to them in their “opportunities.” The significance of this is not to be mistaken, and it would be difficult to set limits to the power thus concentrated in the hands of the ex-Catharan.[247]
Territorially, however, his authority was circumscribed by the possessions of Uberto and Ezzelin, within which no inquisitor dared venture. In this very year, 1257, Piacenza, which had fallen under control of Uberto, was placed in such complete hostility to the Church that it was deprived of its episcopate, and its bishop, Alberto, was transferred to Ferrara. In Vicenza, which was ruled by Ezzelin, matters were even worse. There the heretics had a recognized chief named Piero Gallo, of the Borgo di San Piero, whose name was adopted by them as a rallying cry, to which the Catholics responded with “viva Volpe!“—a member of the family of Volpe being the leader of their faction; and so thoroughly did this become encrusted in the habits of the people that we are told in the seventeenth century that the cry of the citizens of the Borgo (then corruptly called Porsampiero) was still ”viva Gallo!“ while that of the dwellers in the Piazza and Porta Nuova was ”viva Volpe!” Ezzelin would permit no persecution, and when the blessed Bortolamio di Breganze, one of the immediate disciples of St. Dominic, was made Bishop of Vicenza, in 1256, he was reduced to seeking conversions by persuasion. After preaching for a while with little effect he had a public discussion with Piero Gallo, and so impressed him by argument that the heretic was converted. We may reasonably doubt the assertion that Ezzelin’s displeasure at this feat was the cause of Bortolamio’s banishment from his see, but, whatever was the motive, he was consoled by Alexander IV., who sent him as nuncio to England. During his absence, in 1258, his archdeacon, Bernardo Nicelli, was bolder, and made a capture of importance in the person of the Catharan Bishop, Viviano Bogolo. He endeavored to convert his prisoner, but his powers of persuasion were insufficient, and Ezzelin interfered and set the heretic at liberty.[248]
So long as these Ghibelline chiefs retained power it was evident that the foothold of heresy was secure, and that the hopes based on the death of Frederic II. were not destined to fruition. Every motive had long conspired to render the Church eager for the destruction of Ezzelin, who was its most dreaded antagonist, and every expedient had been tried to reduce him to subjection. As far back as 1221 Gregory IX., then legate in Lombardy, had extorted from him assurances of his hatred of heresy. In 1231 his sons, Ezzelin and Alberico, were at the papal court expressing horror at his crimes and promising to deliver him up for trial as a heretic if he would not reform, in order to escape the disinheritance which they would otherwise incur under Frederic’s laws. They pledged themselves, moreover, to deliver to him letters from Gregory, dated September 1, in which he was bitterly reproached for his protection of heretics, and told that if he would humbly acknowledge his errors and expel all heretics from his lands he might come within two months to the Holy See, prepared to obey implicitly all commands laid upon him; otherwise heaven and earth would be invoked against him, his lands should be abandoned to seizure, and he, who was already a scandal and a horror to men, should become an eternal opprobrium.[249]
Whether the sons dutifully presented to their father this portentous epistle does not appear, nor is it of any importance save as showing how Ezzelin was already regarded as the mainstay of heresy, and how habitually zeal for the faith was made to cover the ambitious political designs of the Church. Ezzelin’s courage never wavered, and his adventurous career was pursued with scarce a check. When Frederic II. overcame the resistance of Lombardy, he gave, in 1238, his natural daughter Selvaggia to Ezzelin in marriage and created him imperial vicar. The unanimous testimony of the ecclesiastical chroniclers represents him as a monster whose crimes almost transcend the capacity for evil of human nature, but the unrelieved blackness of the picture defeats the object of the painter. Possibly he may have been among the worst of the Italian despots of the time, when faithlessness and contempt for human suffering were the rule, but the long unbroken success which attended him shows that he must have had qualities which attached men to him, and the report that he was twice moved to tears by the eloquence of Frà Giovanni Schio indicates a degree of sensibility impossible in one utterly depraved. In fact, the anecdote related by Benvenuto da Imola, that he carried on his back his sister’s lover Sordello to and from the place of assignation, and then gave the frightened troubadour a friendly warning, presupposes a character wholly at variance with that currently attributed to him. Some of the stories circulated to excite odium against him are so absurdly exaggerated as to cast doubt upon all the accusations of the papalist writers.[250]
Gregory’s letters of September 1, 1231, were simply a ruse. So far was he from awaiting the two months’’ delay for Ezzelin to present himself, that three days later, on September 4, he executed his threat by ordering the Bishops of Reggio, Modena, Brescia, and Mantua to offer Ezzelin’s lands to the spoiler, and to preach the cross against him, with the same indulgences as for the Holy Land. This proved a failure, and when Frà Giovanni Schio was sent on his mission of peace, in 1233, Ezzelin’s absolution was included in the general pacification, though he had not abandoned the protection of heresy, which had been the ostensible reason for assailing him. While Frederic was at peace with the Church, Ezzelin appears to have been let alone; and when the quarrel broke out afresh, after the emperor’s subjugation of Lombardy, Ezzelin was again attacked. Frederic’s excommunication of April 7, 1239, was followed, November 20, by that of Ezzelin. This time there is no mention of fautorship of heresy, but only of his encroachments on the church of Treviso and of his remaining under excommunication for more than three years. A month is given to him to submit, after which he is to be proceeded against as a heretic, for the Church had already discovered the convenience of treating disobedience as heresy. Nothing came of this, and in 1244 Innocent IV. resolved to see whether the Inquisition could not be used to better effect. Frà Rolando da Cremona, whose dauntless energy we have witnessed, was commissioned to make inquest on him as on one suspected and publicly defamed for heresy by reason of his association with heretics; and as the accused was “terrible and powerful,” the inquisitor was empowered to publish the legal citations in any place where he could do so in safety. The result of this trial in absentia was conclusive. It was found that he was the son of a heretic, that his kinsmen were heretics, that under his protection heresy had spread throughout the March of Treviso, and it was decided that he did not believe in the faith of Christ, and must be held suspect of heresy. In March, 1248, Innocent pronounced his condemnation as a manifest heretic to receive the reward of damnation incurred by damned heretics, but promised him that he would learn the abundant clemency of the Church if he would present himself in person by the next Ascension day (May 28). The wary old chief did not allow his curiosity as to the extent of papal clemency to overcome his caution, and abstained from placing his person in Innocent’s power. He sent envoys, however, who offered to purge him of the suspicion of heresy by swearing to his orthodoxy; but Innocent held that he must appear in person, and offered him a safe-conduct in coming and going. There was no security promised in staying, however, and Ezzelin was cautious. The term allowed him passed away, and he was duly excommunicated. After two years more he was notified that unless he appeared by August 1, 1250, he would be subjected to the statutes against heresy. The obdurate sinner was equally unmoved by this, and in June, 1251, the Bishop of Treviso and the Dominican Prior of Mantua were ordered to summon him personally again to appear by a given time, offering him ample security for his safety: if he disobeyed, his subjects of Treviso were commanded to coerce him, and if this failed a crusade was to be preached against him.[251]
To a pope desirous of extending his temporal sway it was exceedingly convenient to condemn his political opponents for heresy, and exceedingly economical to pay for their subjugation by lavishing the treasures of salvation. Thus, in April, 1253, Innocent IV., as an episode in his quarrel with Brancaleone, Senator of Rome, ordered the Dominicans of the Roman province to preach a crusade, with Holy-Land indulgences, against the so-called heretics of Tuscany. Preparations were similarly made, on a larger scale, to crush those of Lombardy, where heresy was described as being more rampant and aggressive than ever. For two years a succession of bulls was issued directing all prelates, and especially the inquisitors, to preach the cross against them, with a most liberal assortment of indulgences. In one of these absolution was actually offered to those who held property wrongfully acquired, provided they contributed its value in aid of the crusade, thus deliberately rendering the Church an accomplice in robbery. In another, all persons or communities neglecting to aid the crusade were ordered to be prosecuted by the inquisitors as fautors of heresy. As a formal preliminary, Ezzelin was again cited, April 9, 1254, to present himself for judgment by the next Ascension day (May 21), failing which he was sentenced as a manifest heretic, to be dealt with as such. In all these proceedings the curious travesty of an inquisitorial trial shows us the influence which the Inquisition was already exercising on the minds of churchmen, and the employment of inquisitors proves how useful the institution was becoming as a factor in advancing the power of the Holy See.[252]
The Neapolitan conquest and the death of Innocent IV. postponed the organization of the crusade, but at length, in June, 1256, it set out from Venice under the leadership of the Legate Filippo, Archbishop-elect of Ravenna. The capture by assault of Padua, Ezzelin’s most important city, was an encouraging commencement of the campaign, but the seven-days’’ sack, to which the unfortunate town was abandoned, showed that the soldiers of the cross were determined to make the most of the indulgences which they had earned. Under its incompetent captain the crusade dragged on without further result, in spite of reiterated bulls offering salvation, until, in 1258, the legate was utterly routed near Brescia and captured, together with his astrologer, the Dominican Everard. Brescia fell into Ezzelin’s hands, who, more powerful than ever, entertained designs upon Milan, where he had relations with the Ghibelline faction. When all danger seemed to him past, however, there was a sudden revulsion of fortune. The Ghibelline chiefs of Lombardy, Uberto Pallavicino and Buoso di Dovara, lords of Cremona, had been in alliance with him; they had aided in the capture of Brescia, with the understanding that they were to share in its possession, but he had monopolized the conquest, and they were resolved on revenge. June 11, 1259, they signed a treaty against Ezzelin with the Milanese and with Azzo d’Este, the head of the Lombard Guelfs. Ezzelin took the field with a heavy force, hoping to gain possession of Milan through the intelligences which he had within the walls, but on the march he was attacked by Uberto, Buoso, and Azzo, who by skilful strategy dispersed his troops and captured him, grievously wounded. His savage pride would not brook this degradation: he tore the bandages from his wound, refused all aid, and died in a few days.[253]
No greater service could have been rendered to the Church than that performed by Uberto, who had been in field and council the soul of the alliance that destroyed the dreaded Ezzelin and threw open, after thirty years of fruitless effort, the March of Treviso to the Inquisition. Some show of favor in return for such services would not have been amiss; would perhaps, indeed, have been wise, as it might have won over the powerful Ghibelline chief. In the treaty of June 11, however, the allies had alluded to Manfred as King of Sicily, and had pledged themselves to labor for his reconciliation with the pope. No service, especially after it had become irrevocable, could overbalance this recognition of the hated son of Frederic. Uberto, Buoso, and the Cremonese had been absolved from excommunication when they entered the alliance, but Alexander IV. wrote, December 13, 1259, to his legate in Lombardy that the absolution was worthless because it had not been administered by a Dominican or a Franciscan, who alone were empowered to grant it; if, however, the allies would repudiate Manfred and give sufficient security to obey the mandates of the Church and to restore all Church property, they might still be absolved.[254]
Apparently Alexander’s head had been turned by the triumph over Ezzelin, but he knew little of the man whom he thus treated with such supercilious ingratitude. By intrigues with the Torriani and other powerful nobles of Milan, Uberto created for himself a party in that city, and in 1260 he procured his election as podestà for five years. Rainerio Saccone vainly endeavored to prevent a consummation so deplorable. He assembled the citizens, denounced Uberto as vehemently suspected of heresy and as a manifest defender of heretics, and threatened that if it was persisted in he would ring all the church bells, and summon the people and clergy and Crocesegnati to oppose it by force. Unfortunately the citizens did not take in good part this somewhat insolent interference of a stranger with their internal affairs; or, as Alexander IV. describes it, “this wholesome counsel given in the spirit of humility and kindness.” In wrath they assembled and rushed to the Dominican convent, where they gave Rainerio the alternative of leaving the city or faring worse. He chose the wiser alternative and departed.[255]
It was in vain that Alexander, in the bull detailing these griefs, ordered Rainerio and the other inquisitors to prosecute the guilty parties. It was in vain also that he approved, October 14, 1260, the statutes of an association of Defenders of the Faith recently formed in Milan in honor of Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter Martyr, whose members pledged themselves to give assistance, armed or otherwise, to the Inquisition in its labors for the extermination of heresy. Uberto was now the most powerful man in Lombardy, and wherever his influence extended he prohibited inquisitors from performing their functions. Heretics were safe under his rule, and they flocked to his territories from other parts of Lombardy and from Languedoc and Provence. One of his confidential servitors was a certain Berenger, who had been condemned for heresy. Alexander lost no time in repeating with him the comedy of an inquisitorial trial, which we have seen performed with Ezzelin. December 9, 1260, he addressed instructions to the inquisitors of Lombardy to cite him, from some safe place, to the papal presence within two months, offering him a safe-conduct for coming (but not for going), when if he can prove his innocence he will be admitted to swear obedience to the papal mandates. If he does not appear, he is to be proceeded against inquisitorially.[256]
Uberto cared as little as Ezzelin for the impotent papal thunder, and quietly went on strengthening his position and adding city after city to his dominions, in spite of Alexander’s instructions to Rainerio and his inquisitors to act vigorously and to preach a crusade. Between his success in the north, and the daily extending influence of Manfred’s wise and vigorous rule in the south, it looked for a while as though the ambitious designs of the papacy were permanently crushed, and that the Italian Inquisition might come to an untimely end. Inquisitors were no longer able to move around in safety, even in the Roman province, and prelates and cities were ordered to provide them with a sufficient guard in all their journeys. An indication of the popular feeling is afforded by the action taken in 1264 by the people of Bergamo, greatly to the indignation of the Roman curia, to defend themselves against the arbitrary methods of inquisitorial procedure. They enacted that any one cited or excommunicated for heresy or fautorship might take an oath before the prosecutor or bishop that he held the faith of the Church of Rome in all its details, and then another oath before the podestà binding himself to pay one hundred sols every time that he deviated from it; after this he could not be cited outside of the city, and was eligible to any municipal office within it, while the magistrates were to defend him at the public expense against any such citation or excommunication. Yet outside of Uberto’s territories and influence the business of the Inquisition in Lombardy went steadily on. In 1265 and 1266 Clement IV. is found issuing instructions as to the duties and appointment of inquisitors as vigorously as though there were no impediments to their functions. It seemed only a question of time, however, when the districts yet open should be closed to them.[257]
There have been few revolutions more pregnant with results than that which occurred when the popes, renouncing the hope of acquiring for themselves the kingdom of Sicily, and vainly tempting Edmond, son of Henry III. of England, succeeded in arousing the ambition of Charles of Anjou, and caused a crusade to be preached everywhere in his behalf. The papacy fully recognized the supreme importance of the issue, and staked everything upon it. The treasures of salvation were poured forth with unstinted hand, and plenary indulgences were given to all who would contribute a fourth of their income or a tenth of their property. The temporal treasury of the Church was drawn upon with equal liberality. Three years’’ tithe of all ecclesiastical revenues in France and Flanders were granted to Charles, and when all this proved insufficient, Clement IV. sacrificed the property of the Roman churches without hesitation. An effort to raise one hundred thousand livres by pledging it brought in only thirty thousand, and then he pawned for fifty thousand more the plate and jewels of the Holy See. He could truly answer Charles’s increasing demands for money to support his naked and starving crusaders by declaring that he had done all he could, and that he was completely exhausted—he had no mountains and rivers of gold, and could not turn earth and stones into coin. So utter was his penury that the cardinals were reduced to living at the expense of the monasteries; and when the Abbot of Casa Dei complained of the number quartered on him, he was told that he would be relieved of the Cardinal of Ostia, but that he must support the rest. More permanent relief, however, was found at the expense of the foreigner by assigning to them revenues on churches abroad on the liberal scale of three hundred marks a year apiece.[258]
Vainly Pallavicino sought to prevent the passage of the crusaders through Lombardy. The fate of Italy—one may almost say of the papacy—was decided, February 26, 1266, on the plain of Benevento, where Guelf and Ghibelline from all portions of the Peninsula faced each other. Had Charles been defeated it would have fared ill with the Holy See. Europe had looked with aversion on the prostitution of its spiritual power to advance its temporal interests, and success alone could serve as a justification, in an age when men looked on the battle ordeal as recording the judgment of God. In the previous August, Clement had despairingly answered Charles’s demands for money by declaring that he had none and could get none—that England was hostile, that Germany was almost openly in revolt, that France groaned and complained, that Spain scarce sufficed for her internal necessities, and that Italy did not furnish her own share of expenses. After the battle, however, he could exultingly write, in May, to Cardinal Ottoboni of San Adriano, his legate in England, that “Charles of Anjou holds in peace the whole kingdom of that pestilent man, obtaining his putrid body, his wife, his children, and his treasure,” adding that already the Mark of Ancona had returned to obedience, that Florence, Siena, Pistoja, and Pisa had submitted, that envoys had come from Uberto and Piacenza, and that others were expected from Cremona and Genoa; and on June 1 he announced the submission of Uberto and of Piacenza and Cremona.[259]
Although one by one Pallavicino’s cities revolted from him in the general terror, his submission was only to gain time, and in 1267 he risked another cast of the die by joining in the invitation to Italy of the young Conradin, but the defeat and capture of that prince at Tagliacozza, in August, 1268, followed by his barbarous execution in October, extinguished the house of Suabia and the hopes of the Ghibellines. Charles of Anjou was master of Italy; he was created imperial vicar in Tuscany; even in the north we find him this year appointing Adalberto de’’ Gamberti as podestà in Piacenza. Before the close of 1268 Pallavicino died, broken with age and in utter misery, while besieged in his castle of Gusaliggio by the Piacenzans and Parmesans. For a presumed heretic he made a good end, surrounded by Dominicans and Franciscans, confessing his sins and receiving the viaticum, so that, as a pious chronicler observes, we may humbly believe that his soul was saved. Despite the calumnies of the papalists, he left the reputation of a man of sterling worth, of lofty aims, and of great capacity. As for Rainerio Saccone, the last glimpse we have of him is in July, 1262, when Urban IV. orders him to come with all possible speed for consultation on a matter of moment, defraying, from the proceeds of the confiscations, all expenses for horses and other necessaries on the journey. His expulsion from Milan had evidently not diminished his importance.[260]
Under these circumstances, the long interregnum of nearly three years, which occurred after the death of Clement IV., in 1268, made little difference. Henceforth there was to be no refuge for heresy. The Inquisition could be organized everywhere, and could perform its functions unhampered. By this time, too, its powers, its duties, and its mode of procedure had become thoroughly defined and universally recognized, and neither prelate nor potentate dared to call them in question. As already stated, in 1254, Innocent IV. had divided the Peninsula between the two Orders, giving Genoa and Lombardy to the Dominicans, and central and southern Italy to the Franciscans. To the provinces of Rome and Tuscany were allotted two inquisitors each, while for that of St. Francis, or Spoleto, one was deemed sufficient, but in 1261 each inquisitor was furnished with two assistants, and the provincials were instructed to appoint as many more as might be asked for, so that the holy work might be prosecuted with full vigor. Lombardy, as we have seen, had eight inquisitors, and when the Dominicans divided that province, in 1304, the number was increased to ten, seven being assigned to Upper and three to Lower Lombardy. For a while the March of Treviso and Romagnola were intrusted to the Franciscans, but, as stated above (Vol. I. p. 477), their extortions were so unendurable that, in 1302, Boniface VIII. transferred these districts to the Dominicans, without thereby relieving the people.[261]
No time had been lost in enforcing unity of belief in the territories redeemed from Ghibelline control. As early as February, 1259, the Franciscan Minister of Bologna was ordered to appoint two friars as inquisitors in Romagnola. At Vicenza, no sooner was quiet restored after the death of Ezzelin than Frà Giovanni Schio was sent thither to remove the excommunication incurred by the people in consequence of their subjection to Ezzelin. The ceremony was symbolic of the scourging inflicted on penitents. The podestà and council assembled at the usual place of meeting, whence they marched in pairs to the cathedral. At the south portal stood Giovanni with seven priests, and as the magistrates entered they touched each one lightly with rods, after which the rites of absolution were solemnly performed. The exiled bishop, Bortolamio, on his return from England had tarried with St. Louis, whose confessor he had been in Palestine, where he had served as papal legate during the saintly king’s crusade. As soon as he heard of the death of Ezzelin he hastened homeward, bearing with him the priceless treasures of a thorn of the crown and a piece of the cross which St. Louis had bestowed upon him in parting. At once he commenced to build the great Dominican church and convent of the Santa Corona. The site chosen was on the most elevated spot in the city, known as the Colle, and among the buildings destroyed to give place for it was the church of Santa Croce, which had been occupied by the heretics as their place of assembly and worship. We are told that the presence of the relics worked the miracle of relieving the city of its three leading sins—avarice, heresy, and discord. As for heresy, the miracle lay in the unlooked-for conversion of the chief heretic of the district, Gieremia, known as the Archbishop of the Mark, who, with his son Alticlero, made public recantation. The heretic bishop, Viviano Bogolo, fled to Pavia, where he was recognized and burned. His two deacons, Olderico da Marola and Tolomeo, with eight others, probably Perfects, were obstinate, and were promptly burned. These examples were sufficient. The “credentes” furnished no further martyrs, and heresy, at least in its outward manifestation, was extinguished.[262]
In some places, unblessed with such wonder-working relics, however, the Inquisition had much greater trouble in establishing orthodoxy. In Piacenza it is said to have found the burning of twenty-eight wagon loads of heretics necessary. At Sermione for sixteen years the inhabitants defiantly refused to allow persecution. Though Catholic themselves, they continued to afford protection to heretics, who naturally flocked thither as one refuge after another was rendered unsafe by the zeal of the inquisitors. It was in vain that Frà Timedeo, the inquisitor, obtained evidence by sending there a female spy, named Costanza da Bergamo, who pretended to be a heretic, received the consolamentum, and was then unreservedly admitted to their secrets. At last the scandal of such ungodly toleration became unendurable, and the Bishop of Verona prevailed upon Mastino and Alberto della Scala of Verona, and Pinamonte de’’ Bonacolsi of Mantua, to reduce Sermione to obedience. It was obliged to submit in 1276, delivering up no less than one hundred and seventy-four perfected heretics, and humbly asking to be restored to Catholic unity, with a pledge to stand to the mandates of the Church. Frà Filippo Bonaccorso, the Inquisitor of Treviso, applied to John XXI. for instructions as to the treatment of the penitent community. The pope was a humane and cultured man who cared more for poetry than theology, and he was disposed to be lenient with repentant sinners. He instructed Frà Filippo to remove the interdict if the town would appoint a syndic to abjure heresy in its name, and to swear in future to seize all heretics and deliver them to the Inquisition, any infraction of the oath to work a renewal, ipso facto, of the interdict. Every inhabitant was then to appear personally before the inquisitor, and make full confession of everything relating to heresy, to abjure, and to accept such penance as might be assigned—all infamous penalties, disabilities, imprisonment, and confiscation being mercifully excluded. Full records were to be kept of each case, and any withholding of the truth or subsequent relapse was to expose the delinquent to the full rigor of the law. Obstinate heretics were to be dealt with according to the canons, and of these there were found seventy, whom Frà Filippo duly condemned, and had the satisfaction of seeing burned. To insure the future purity of the faith, in 1278 a Franciscan convent was built at Sermione with the proceeds of a fine of four thousand lire levied upon Verona as one of the conditions of removing the interdict incurred by its upholding the cause of the unfortunate Conradin; and in 1289 Ezzelin’s castle of Illasio was given to some of the nobles who had been conspicuous in the reduction of Sermione, as a reward for their service, and to stimulate them in the future to continue their support of the Inquisition.[263]
Thus heresy, deprived of all protection, was gradually stamped out, and the Inquisition established its power in every corner of the land. How that power was abused to oppress the faithful with ingeniously devised schemes of extortion we have already seen. In fact, in the territories which had once been Ghibelline, it was impossible for any man, no matter how rigid his orthodoxy, to be safe from prosecution if he chanced to provoke the ill-will of the officials, or possessed wealth to excite their cupidity. So successful had the Church been in confounding political opposition with heresy that the mere fact of having adhered of necessity to Ezzelin during the period of his unquestioned domination long continued sufficient to justify prosecution for heresy, entailing the desirable result of confiscation. When Ezzelin’s generation passed away, the memory of the dead was assailed and the descendants were disinherited. In all this there was no pretence of errors of faith, but the men to whom the Church intrusted the awful powers of the Inquisition seemed implacably determined to erase from the land every trace of those who had once dared to resist its authority. At last, in 1304, the authorities of Vicenza appealed to Benedict XI. no longer to allow the few survivors of Ezzelin’s party and their descendants to be thus cruelly wronged, and the pope graciously granted their petition. By this time the empire was but a shadow; Ghibellinism represented no living force that the papacy could reasonably dread, and its persecution had long been merely the gratification of greed or malice.[264]
The triumph of the Inquisition had not been effected wholly without resistance. In 1277 Frà Corrado Pagano undertook a raid against the heretics of the Valtelline. It was, doubtless, organized on an extended scale, for he took with him two associates and two notaries. This would indicate that heretics were numerous; the event showed that they did not lack protectors, for Corrado da Venosta, one of the most powerful nobles of the region, cut short the enterprise by slaughtering the whole party, on St. Stephen’s day, December 26. Pagano had been a most zealous persecutor of heresy, and when his body was brought to Como it lay there for eight days before interment, with wounds freshly bleeding, showing that he was a martyr of God, and justifying the title bestowed on him by his Dominican brethren of St. Pagano of Como. His relics are still preserved there and are the objects of a local cult. Nicholas III. made every effort to avenge the murder, even invoking the assistance of Rodolf of Hapsburg, and his joy was extreme when, in November, 1279, the podestà and people of Bergamo succeeded in capturing Corrado and his accomplices. He at once ordered their delivery, under safe escort, to the inquisitors, Anselmo da Alessandria, Daniele da Giussano, and Guidone da Coconate, who were instructed to inflict a punishment sufficient to intimidate others from imitating their wickedness, and all the potentates of Lombardy were commanded to co-operate in their safe conveyance.[265]
The same year that justice was thus vindicated, a popular ebullition in Parma shows how slender was the hold which the Inquisition possessed on the people. Frà Florio had been diligent in the exercise of his functions, and we are told that he had burned innumerable heretics, when, in 1279, he chanced at Parma to have before him a woman guilty of relapse. It was a matter of course to condemn her to relaxation, and she was duly burned. In place of being piously impressed by the spectacle the Parmesans were inspired by Satan to indignation which expressed itself by sacking the Dominican convent, destroying the records of the Inquisition, and maltreating the friars so that one of them died within a few days. The Dominicans thereupon abandoned the ungrateful city, marching out in solemn procession. The magistrates showed singular indifference as to punishing this misdeed, and when summoned by the Cardinal Legate of Ostia, the representatives who presented themselves lacked the necessary authority, so that, after vainly waiting for satisfaction, he laid an interdict upon the city. This was not removed till 1282, and even then the guilty were not punished. In 1285 we find Honorius IV. taking up the matter afresh and summoning the Parmesans to send delegates to him within a month to receive sentence; what that sentence was does not appear, but in 1287 the humbled citizens petitioned the Dominicans to return, received them with great honor, and voted them one thousand lire, in annual instalments of two hundred lire, wherewith to build a church. So stubborn was the opposition elsewhere to the Inquisition and its ways, that in 1287 the Provincial Council of Milan still deemed it necessary to decree that any member of a municipal government in any city within the province who should urge measures favoring heretics should be deemed suspect of heresy, and should forfeit any fiefs or benefices held of the Church.[266]
Even in the Patrimony of St. Peter resistance was not wholly at an end. In 1254, when the papacy was triumphant, Innocent IV. urged the inquisitors of Orvieto and Anagni to take advantage of the propitious time and act with the utmost vigor. In 1258 Alexander IV. sounded the alarm that heresy was increasing even in Rome itself, and he pressingly urged increased activity on the inquisitors and greater zeal in their support by the bishops. Their efforts were not wholly successful. Twenty years later a knight named Pandolfo still made his stronghold of Castro Siriani, near Anagni, a receptacle of heretics. Frà Sinibaldo di Lago, the inquisitor of the Roman province, made various ineffectual attempts to prosecute him, and in 1278 Nicholas III. sent his notary, Master Benedict, with offers of pardon in return for obedience, but the heretics were obdurate, and Nicholas was forced to order Orso Orsini, Marshal of the Church in Tuscany, to levy troops and give Frà Sinibaldo armed assistance sufficient to enable him to coerce them to penitence. A similar enterprise against the Viterbian noble, Capello di Chia, in 1260, has already been described (Vol. I. p. 342). In this case the zeal of the Viterbians, who levied an army to assist the inquisitor, must have had some political motive, for their city was of evil repute in the matter of heresy. In 1265, encouraged by the assistance of Manfred, the people had risen against the Inquisition and had only been subdued after a bloody fight in which two friars were slain. In 1279 Nicholas expresses his regret that although, while he had been inquisitor-general, he had labored strenuously to purge Viterbo of heresy, his labors had been unsuccessful. Heretics were still concealed there, and the whole city was infected. Frà Sinibaldo was therefore ordered to go thither to make a thorough inquisition of the place.[267]
Earnest and unsparing as were the labors of the inquisitors, it seemed impossible to eradicate heresy. Its open manifestations were readily suppressed when the Ghibelline chiefs who protected it were destroyed, but in secret it still flourished and maintained its organization. In the inquest held on the memory of Armanno Pongilupo of Ferrara there is a good deal of testimony which shows not only the activity and success of the Inquisition of that city, but the continued existence of heresy throughout the whole region. There are allusions to numerous heretics in Vicenza, Bergamo, Rimini, and Verona. In the latter city a lady-in-waiting of the Marchesa d’Este, named Spera, was burned in 1270, and about the same time there were two Catharan bishops there, Alberto and Bonaventura Belesmagra. In 1273 Lorenzo was Bishop of Sermione, and Giovanni da Casaletto was Bishop of Mantua. There was a secret organization extending through all the Italian cities, with visitors and filii majores performing their rounds, and messengers were constantly passing to and fro, elaborate arrangements being made for secreting them. Those who were in prison were kept supplied with necessaries by their brethren at large, who never knew at what moment they might be incarcerated. From the sentences of Bernard Gui we know that until the fourteenth century was fairly advanced the Cathari of Languedoc still looked to Italy as to a haven of refuge; that pilgrims thither had no trouble in finding their fellow-believers in Lombardy, in Tuscany, and in the kingdom of Sicily; that when the French churches were broken up those who sought to be admitted to the circle of the Perfect, or to renew their consolamentum, resorted to Lombardy, where they could always find ministers authorized to perform the rites. When Amiel de Perles had forfeited his ordination a conference was held in which it was determined that he should be sent with an associate to “the Ancient of the Heretics,” Bernard Audoyn de Montaigu, in Lombardy for reconciliation; and on another occasion we hear of Bernard himself visiting Toulouse on business connected with the propagation of the faith.[268]
How difficult, indeed, was the task of the inquisitor in detecting heresy under the mask of orthodoxy is curiously illustrated by the case of Armanno Pongilupo himself. In Ferrara heretics were numerous. Armanno’s parents were both Cathari; he was a “consolatus” and his wife a “consolata.” In 1254 he was detected and imprisoned; he confessed and abjured, and was released. From his Catharan bishop he received absolution for his oath of abjuration, and was received back into the sect. From this time until his death, in 1269, he was unceasingly engaged in propagating Catharan doctrines and in ministering to the wants of his less fortunate brethren in the clutches of the Inquisition, which was exceedingly active and successful. Meanwhile be preserved an exterior of the strictest Catholicism; he was regular in attendance at the altar and confessional, and wholly devoted to piety and good works. He died in the odor of sanctity, was buried in the cathedral, and immediately he began to work miracles. He was soon reverenced as a saint. A magnificent tomb arose over his remains, an altar was erected, and, as the miraculous manifestations of his sanctity multiplied, his chapel became filled with images and ex-votos, to the no little profit of the church fortunate enough to possess him. Adored as a saint in the popular cult, there came a general demand for his canonization, in which the pride of the city was warmly enlisted, but which was steadfastly opposed by the Inquisition. In the confessions of heretics before it the name of Armanno constantly recurred as that of one of the most active and trusted members of the sect, and ample evidence accumulated as to his unrepentant heresy. Then arose a curious conflict, waged on both sides with unremitting vigor for thirty-two years. Hardly had the remains been committed to honorable sepulture in the cathedral when Frà Aldobrandini, the inquisitor who had tried him in 1254, ordered the archpriest and chapter to exhume and burn the corpse, and on their refusal excommunicated them and placed the cathedral under interdict. From this they appealed to Gregory X. and set to work to gather the evidence for canonization. For this purpose at different times five several inquests were held and superabundant testimony was forthcoming as to the success with which his suffrage was invoked, how the sick were healed, the blind made to see, and the halt to walk, while numerous priests bore emphatic witness to his pre-eminent piety during life. Gregory and Aldobrandini passed away leaving the matter unsettled. Frà Florio, the next inquisitor, sent to Rome expressly to urge Honorius IV. to come to a decision, but Honorius died without concluding the matter. On the accession of Boniface VIII., in 1294, Frà Guido da Vicenza, then inquisitor, again visited Rome to procure a termination of the affair. Still the contending forces were too evenly balanced for either to win. At length the Lord of Ferrara, Azzo X., interposed, for the contest between the inquisitor and the secular clergy seriously threatened the peace of the city. In 1300 Boniface appointed a commission to make a thorough investigation, with power to decide finally, and in 1301 sentence was rendered to the effect that Armanno had died a relapsed heretic; that no one should believe him to be anything but a heretic; that his bones should be exhumed and burned, the sarcophagus containing them and the altar erected before it be destroyed; that all statues, images, ex-votos, and other offerings set up in his honor in the cathedral and other Ferrarese churches should be removed within ten days; and that all his property, real and personal, was confiscated to the Inquisition, any sales or conveyances made of them during the thirty-two years which had elapsed since his death being void. Frà Guido’s triumph was complete, and on the death of the Bishop of Ferrara, in 1303, he was rewarded with the episcopate. Extraordinary as this case may seem, it was not unique. At Brescia a heresiarch named Guido Lacha was long adored as a saint by the people until the imposture was detected by the Inquisition, which caused his bones to be dug up and burned.[269]
This was the period of the greatest power and activity of the Inquisition, and the extent of its perfected organization is shown in a document of 1302, wherein Frà Guido da Tusis, Inquisitor of Romagnola, publishes in the communal council of Rimini the names of thirty-nine officials whom he has selected as his assistants. The expenses of such a body could not have been light, and to defray them there must have been a constant stream of fines and confiscations pouring into the inquisitorial treasury, showing an abundant harvest of heresy and active work in its suppression.[270] It was probably between 1320 and 1330 that was produced the treatise of Zanghino Ugolini, so often quoted above. Frà Donato da Sant’’ Agata had been appointed Inquisitor of Romagnola, and the learned jurisconsult of Rimini drew up for his instruction a summary of the rules governing inquisitorial procedure, which is one of the clearest and best manuals of practice that we possess.
A singular episode of lenity occurred not long before, which is not to be passed over, although inexplicable in itself and unproductive of consequences. Its importance, indeed, lies in the evidence which it affords that the extreme severity of the laws against heresy was recognized as really unnecessary, since its relaxation in favor of a single community as a matter of favor would otherwise have been a crime against the faith. In February, 1286, Honorius IV., in consideration of the fidelity manifested by the people of Tuscany to the Roman Church, and especially to him before his elevation, relieved them individually and universally from the penalties for heresy, including all disabilities decreed by his predecessors and by Frederic II., whether incurred by their own errors or by those of their ancestors. Catholic children of heretic parents were thus ipso facto restored to all privileges and were no longer liable to disinheritance. In the case of existing heretics it was necessary for them to appear before the inquisitors within a time to be named by the latter—excepting absentees in foreign lands, to whom a term of five months was allowed—to abjure heresy and receive penance, which was to be a secret one, involving neither humiliation, disability, or loss of property. Cases of relapse, however, were to be treated with all the rigor of the law. As this bull abrogated in Tuscany the constitutions of Frederic II., it required confirmation by Rodolph of Hapsburg, which was duly procured. For a while this extraordinary privilege seems to have been observed, for, in 1289, Nicholas IV., when anathematizing heretics and stimulating the zeal of inquisitors throughout Genoa, Lombardy, Romagnola, Naples, and Sicily, pointedly omits Tuscany from his enumeration. In time, however, it was either repealed or disregarded. No case could come more completely within its purview than that already referred to of Gherardo of Florence, dying prior to 1250 and prosecuted in 1313. His numerous children and grandchildren were good Catholics, and yet they were all disinherited and subjected to the canonical disabilities.[271]
Together with this exhibition of papal indulgence may be classed the occasional interference of the Holy See to moderate the rigor of the canons, or to repress the undue zeal of an inquisitor, when the sufferer had influence or money enough to attract the papal attention. It is pleasant to record three instances of this kind on the part of the despotic Boniface VIII., when, in 1297, he declared that Rainerio Gatti, a noble of Viterbo, and his sons had been prosecuted by the inquisitors on perjured testimony, wherefore the process was to be annulled and the accused and their heirs relieved from all stain of heresy; when, in 1298, he ordered the Inquisition to restore to the innocent children of a heretic the property confiscated by Frà Andrea the inquisitor, and when he ordered Frà Adamo da Como, the inquisitor of the Roman province, to desist from molesting Giovanni Ferraloco, a citizen of Orvieto, whom his predecessors, Angelo da Rieti and Leonardo da Tivoli, had declared absolved from heresy. This Frà Adamo apparently rendered his office a terror to the innocent. May 8, 1293, we find him compelling Pierre d’Aragon, a gentleman of Carcassonne who chanced to be in Rome, to give him security in the heavy sum of one hundred marks to present himself within three months to the Inquisition of Carcassonne and obey its mandates. Pierre accordingly appeared before Bertrand de Clermont on June 19, and was closely examined, and then again on August 16, but nothing was discovered against him. Whether or not he recovered his one hundred marks from Frà Adamo does not appear, but the incident affords an illustration at once of the perfected organization of the Holy Office, and of the dangers which surrounded travellers in the countries where it flourished.[272]
The Inquisition was thus thoroughly established and at work in northern and central Italy, and heresy was gradually disappearing before its remorseless and incessant energy. To escape it many had fled to Sardinia, but in 1258 that island was added to the inquisitorial province of Tuscany, and inquisitors were sent thither to track the fugitives in their retreats.[273] There were two regions, however, Venice and the Two Sicilies, which thus far we have not considered, as they were in some sort independent of the movement which we have traced in the rest of the Peninsula.
Naples, like the other portions of southern Europe, had been exposed to the infection of heresy. At an early period missionaries from Bulgaria had penetrated the passes of the southern Apennines, and, in that motley population of Greek and Saracen and Norman, proselytes had not been lacking. The Norman kings, usually at enmity with the Holy See, had not cared to inquire too closely into the orthodoxy of their subjects, and had they done so the independence of the feudal baronage would have rendered minute perquisition by no means easy. The allusions of the Abbot Joachim of Flora to the Cathari indicate that their existence and doctrines were familiar facts in Calabria, though as Rainerio makes no allusion to any Catharan church in Italy south of Florence it is presumable that the sectaries were widely scattered and unorganized. In 1235, when the Dominican convent in Naples was broken into by a mob and several of the friars were grievously wounded, Gregory IX. attributed the violence to friends of heretics.[274]
Frederic II., however much at times his policy might lead him to proclaim ferocious edicts of persecution, and even spasmodically to enforce them, had no convictions of his own to render him persistent in persecution, and his lifelong contest with the papacy gave him, secretly at least, a fellow-feeling with all who resisted the supremacy of the Holy See, whether in temporal or spiritual concerns. Occasional attacks such as that under the auspices of the Archbishop of Reggio, in 1231, or the form of secular inquisition which he instituted in 1233, had little permanent effect. Cathari driven from Languedoc, who perhaps found even Lombardy insecure, were tolerably sure of refuge in the wild and secluded valleys of Calabria and the Abruzzi, lying aside from the great routes of travel. The domination in Naples of Innocent IV. was too brief for the organization of any systematized persecution, and when Manfred reconquered the kingdom, although he seems to have felt his position too precarious to risk open toleration, and, under pressure from Jayme of Aragon, he ordered Bishop Vivian of Toulouse and his disciples, who had settled in Apulia, to leave his dominions, yet he went no further in active measures of repression.[275]
Charles of Anjou came as a crusader and as the champion of the Church. Scarce was his undisputed domination assured by the execution of Conradin, October 20, 1268, than we see him zealously employed in establishing the Inquisition throughout the kingdom. Numerous royal letters of 1269 show it actively at work, and manifest the solicitude of the king that the stipends and the expenses of the inquisitors should be provided for, and that every assistance should be rendered by the public officials. Each inquisitor was furnished with a letter which placed all the forces of the State at his unreserved command. The Neapolitan Inquisition was fully manned. There was one inquisitor for Bari and the Capitanata, one for Otranto, and one for the Terra di Lavoro and the Abruzzi; and in 1271 one was added for Calabria and one for Sicily. Most of them were Dominicans, but we meet with at least one Franciscan, Frà Benvenuto. Yet no buildings or prisons seem to have been provided for them. The royal jails were placed at their disposal, and the keepers were instructed to torture prisoners on requisition from the inquisitors. Even as late as 1305 this arrangement appears to be in force.[276]
Charles’s zeal did not confine itself to thus organizing and promoting the Inquisition. He supplemented its labors by instituting raids on heretics conducted under his own auspices. Thus, although there was an inquisitor for the Abruzzi, we find him, December 13, 1269, sending thither the Cavaliere Berardo da Rajano with instructions to investigate and seize heretics and their fautors. The utmost diligence was enjoined on him, and the local officials were ordered to assist him in every way, but there is no allusion to his mission being in co-operation with the inquisitor. Another significant manifestation of Charles’s devotion is seen in his founding, in 1274, and richly endowing for the Dominicans the splendid church of San Piero Martire in Naples, and stimulating his nobles to follow his example in showering wealth upon it. Yet fifty years afterwards, in 1324, the building was still incomplete for lack of funds, when King Robert aided the construction with fifty ounces of gold, which he ordered the inquisitors to pay out of the royal third of the confiscations coming into their hands. This is interesting as showing how, in Naples, the profitable side of persecution was wholly under the control of the Holy Office.[277]
Few details have been preserved to us of the activity of the Inquisition in Naples. We know that heretics continued to exist there, but the wild and mountainous character of much of the country doubtless afforded them abundant opportunities of safe asylum. Already, in August, 1269, a letter of Charles ordering the seizure of sixty-eight heretics designated by Frà Benvenuto shows that the work was being energetically prosecuted, and in another letter of March 14, 1270, there is an allusion to three others whom Frà Matteo di Caetellamare had recently caused to be burned in Benevento. The inquisitors of Languedoc, moreover, made haste, as early as 1269, to send agents to Naples to hunt the refugees whom their severity had driven there, and Charles ordered every assistance to be rendered to them, which, perhaps, explains the success of Frà Benvenuto. Yet the perpetual necessity for royal interposition leads to the inference that the Inquisition was not nearly so effective in Naples as it proved in Languedoc and Lombardy. The royal authority seems to be required at every turn, partly because the king allowed little independent initiative to the inquisitors, and partly, perhaps, because the local officials did not lend as hearty a co-operation as they might have done. Thus the Neapolitan Inquisition, even under the Angevines, seems never to have attained the compact and effective organization of which we have seen the results elsewhere, though Charles II. was an eager persecutor who stimulated the zeal of his inquisitors, and his son Robert earned the name of the Pious. In 1305 we shall see Frà Tommaso di Aversa active in persecuting the Spiritual Franciscans, and in 1311, King Robert, at the instance of Frà Matteo da Ponza, ordered that all newly converted Jews should live scattered among Christians, so as not to be tempted back to Judaism.[278]
The ineffectiveness of the Neapolitan Inquisition is seen in the comparative security which attended an organized immigration of Waldenses from the valleys of the Cottian Alps. It was probably about 1315 that Zanino del Poggio, a Milanese noble, led forth the first band from Savoy, under specified guarantees of lands and privileges, after the intending emigrants had received the report of deputies sent in advance to survey the promised refuge. Fresh bands came to join them and a group of villages sprang up—Guardia Piemontese, or Borgo degli Oltremontani, Argentina, La Rocca, Vaccarizzo, and San Vincenzo in Calabria, while in Apulia there were Monteleone, Montanto, Faito, La Cella, and Matta. These were regularly visited by the “barbes,” or missionary pastors, who spent their lives wandering around among the scattered churches, administering the consolations of religion and watching over the purity of the faith. The fierce persecutions conducted by François Borel led to further emigration on an enlarged scale, which naturally sought the Neapolitan territories as a haven of rest, until Apulia came to be regarded as the headquarters of the sect. That considerable bodies of heretics could thus establish themselves and flourish argues great negligence on the part of the Inquisition. In fact, its recognized inefficiency was shown as early as 1326, when John XXII. was in pursuit of some Fraticelli who had fled to Calabria; instead of calling upon the inquisitors he applied to King Robert and to the Duke of Calabria to capture them and hand them over to the episcopal tribunals.[279]
When, as the result of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, the Island of Sicily passed into the hands of Pedro III. of Aragon, it was placed in the bitterest antagonism towards the Holy See, and no active persecution is to be looked for. In fact, in 1285, Martin IV., in ordering a crusade preached against Pedro, gives as one of the four reasons alleged in justification that heresy was multiplying in the island, and that inquisitors were prevented from visiting it. It was not till 1302 that Boniface VIII. was brought to accept the accomplished fact, and to acknowledge Frederic of Aragon as King of Trinacria. The Inquisition soon followed. In 1304 we find Benedict XI. ordering Frederic to receive and give all due assistance to Frà Tommaso di Aversa the inquisitor, and all other inquisitors who may be sent thither. The pope, however, did not erect it into a separate tribunal, but instructed the Holy Office of the mainland that its jurisdiction extended over both sides of the Faro. Yet the introduction of the Inquisition in the island was nominal rather than real except, as we shall see, with regard to the Templars, and Sicily long remained a safe refuge for the persecuted Fraticelli. Doubtless Arnaldo de Vilanova contributed to this by the picture which he presented to Frederic of the inquisitors of the day. They were a diabolical pest, trafficking in their offices, converting themselves into demons, never edifying the faithful, but rather making them infidels, as they abandoned themselves to hatred, greed, and lust, with no one to condemn them or to repress their fury. When, in 1328, the Archbishop of Palermo arrested a Fraticello, appeal was at once made to Frederic, and John XXII. wrote to the archbishop urgently commanding that the sect be extirpated, showing apparently that there was no Inquisition then at work.[280]
The Republic of Venice was always a law unto itself. Though forming part of the March of Treviso, its predominant interests in the thirteenth century lay to the east of the Adriatic, and it did not become a formidable power on the mainland until the acquisition of Treviso in 1339. That of Padua, in 1405, followed by Verona, Vicenza, Feltre, Belluno, and Brescia, greatly increased its strength, and in 1448 it wrenched Bergamo from the dukes of Milan. Thus its policy with regard to the Inquisition eventually controlled the whole of the March of Treviso, and a considerable portion of Lombardy.
That policy held at bay in all things the pretensions of the Holy See, and looked with extreme suspicion on whatever might give the popes an excuse for interference with either the domestic policy or the foreign enterprises of the Signoria. Fairly orthodox, though not bigoted, Venice held aloof from the strife between Guelf and Ghibelline, and was not involved in the anathemas lavished upon Ezzelin da Romano. Venice, in fact, was the basis of operations in the crusade against him, and it was a Venetian who led the expedition up the Brenta which captured Padua. Yet the republic made no haste to join in the movement for the extermination of heresy so energetically pushed by Gregory IX. and his successors. The Constitutions of Frederic II. were never inscribed in its statute-books. In 1229 the official oath of the Doge Giacopo Tiepoli, which, as is customary, contains the criminal code of the day, embodies no allusion to heresy or its suppression, and the same is true of the criminal statute of 1232 published by the same doge.[281]
It was about this time that the Inquisition was developed with all the aggressive energy of which Gregory IX. was capable, but it found no foothold in Venice. Yet the duty to punish heresy was at length recognized, though the civil authorities would abate no jot of their right to control the administration of justice in spiritual as well as in temporal matters. The official oath taken in 1249 by the Doge Marino Morosini contains a promise that certain upright and discreet and Catholic men shall be appointed, with the advice of the Council, to inquire after heretics. All heretics, moreover, who shall be delivered to the secular arm by the Archbishop of Grado or other bishops of the Venetian territories shall be duly burned, under the advice of the Council, or of a majority of its members. Thus a kind of secular Inquisition was established to search after heretics. The ancient jurisdiction of the episcopal courts was alone recognized, but the judgment of the bishops was subject to revision by the Council before the death-penalty could be inflicted.[282]
This could by no means be satisfactory to the papacy, and when the death of Frederic II. led to an immediate effort to extend the Inquisition through the territories hitherto closed to it, Venice was not forgotten. By a bull of June 11, 1251, Innocent IV. ordered the Frati Vicenzo of Milan, and Giovanni of Vercelli, to proceed to Venice and persecute heretics there with the same powers as those exercised by inquisitors elsewhere in Lombardy. Whether the good friars made the attempt to exercise these powers is questionable; if they did so, their ill-success is unquestionable. There is a document of 1256 which contains an oath to pursue heretics and to denounce them, not to the ecclesiastical tribunals, but to the doge or to the magistrates—an oath presumably administered to the secular inquisitors established in 1249. The same document contains a clause which indicates that the death-penalty threatened in 1249 had already been abrogated. It classes Cathari and usurers together: it alludes to the punishment decreed for those convicted of relapse into either sin, and shows that this was not capital, by providing that if the convict is a foreigner he shall be banished from Venice, but if a citizen he shall not be banished. Yet the death-penalty seems to have been restored soon afterwards, for, in 1275, the oath of Giacomo Contarini is the same as that of 1249, with the unimportant addition that the judgment of an episcopal vicar during the vacancy of a see can be substituted for that of a bishop.[283]
[243] Ripoll I. 238, 242-3; VII. 31.--Bern. Corio, Hist. Milanese, ann. 1269.
[244] Ripoll I. 254.--Campana, op. cit. p. 114.
[245] Bern. Guidon. Vit. Innocent. PP. IV. (Muratori, S.R.I. III. 592).--Wadding, ann. 1254, No. 8.--Ripoll I. 246.--Sclopis, Antica Legislazione del Piemonte, p. 440.
[246] Ripoll I. 285.--Raynald. ann. 1255, No. 31--Campi, Dell’ Hist. Eccles. di Piacenza. P. II. pp. 212-13, 402.
[247] Ripoll I. 300, 326, 327, 399.--Potthast No. 16292.
[248] Campi, Deli’ Hist. Eccles. di Piacenza, P. II. pp. 214-15.--Barbarano de Mironi, Hist. Eccles. di Vicenza, II. 99, 104.
[249] Epistt. Sæcul. XIII. T. I. No. 451.--Raynald. ann. 1231, No. 20-22.
[250] Chabaneau (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. 314).--Monach. Patavin. Chron. (Muratori, S. R. I. VIII. 707-9).--Frederic II. is similarly described by the papal scribes as a monster delighting in objectless cruelty. See Vit. Gregor. PP. IX. (Muratori, S. R. I. III. 583-4).
[251] Epistt. Sæcul. XIII. T. I. No. 453, 741, 757-9.--Ripoll I. 59, 135, 193.--Potthast No. 12899.--Berger, Registres d’Innocent IV. No. 4095.--Raynald. Annal. ann. 1248. No. 25-6.--Harduin. Concil. VII. 362.
[252] Ripoll I. 230, 247, 249-51, 286, 391.--Mag. Bull. Rom. 1.102-4.--Pegnæ Append. Eymeric. p. 77.--Harduin. Concil. VII. 362.
[253] Raynald. ann. 1357, No. 38-9; 1258, No. 1-4; 1259, No. 1-3.--Rolandini Chron. Lib. IX.-XII. (Muratori, S. R. I. VIII. 299-352).--Monach. Patavin. Chron. (Ib. VIII. 691-705).--Nic. Smeregi Chron. (Ib. VIII. 101).--Wadding, ann. 1258, No. 6.--Mag. Bull. Rom, I. 118. The ferocity of the age is seen in the treatment bestowed on Ezzelin’s brother Alberico, when captured with his family. He was gagged and tied to a tree, his wife and daughters were burned alive before his eyes, his sons were slain and their limbs thrown in his face, and then he was deliberately hacked in pieces.--Laurentii de Monacis Ezerinus III. (Muratori, S. R. I. VIII. 150). Alberico was a man of culture, a troubadour, and a patron of the gai science (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, X. 313).
[254] Raynald. ann. 1259, No. 6-9.
[255] Ripoll I. 398.--Bern. Corio, Hist. Milanese, ann. 1259.
[256] Arch. de l’Inquis de Carcassonne (Doat. XXXI.).--Ripoll I. 400.
[257] Potthast No. 17984-5.--Arch. de I’Inquis. de Carc. (Doat, XXXI. 216).--Ripoll I. 402, 460, 462, 466, 469, 478.--Raynald. ann. 1260, No. 12.--Mag. Bull. Rom. I. 119. The bull threatening the people of Bergamo with interdict for their legislation is by Urban IV. and dated in 1264, as found in the archives of the Inquisition of Carcassonne (Doat, XXX. 288), while Ripoll (I. 499) gives it as by Clement IV. in 1265, showing that the Bergamese were obstinate. Bergamo had been under interdict for adhering to Frederic and Conrad, and had only been reconciled after the death of the latter in 1255 (Ripoll I. 268).
[258] Epistt. Urbani PP. IV. (Martene Thesaur. II. 9-50, 74-9, 116-18, 220-37.)--Epistt. Clement. PP. IV. (Ibid. pp. 176, 186, 196-200, 213, 218, 241-5, 250, 260, 274).
[259] Epistt. Clem. PP. IV. (Martene Thesaur. II. 174, 319, 327).--Raynald. ann. 1266, No. 23.
[260] Ripoll I. 427, 514.--Campi, Dell’ Hist. Eccles. di Piacenza, P. II. pp. 218-31.--Philippi Bergomat. Supplem. Chron. ann. 1261.
[261] Wadding, ann. 1254, No. 7, 8, 11, 16; 1261, No. 2.--Grandjean, Registres de Benoît XI. No. 1167.--Ripoll II. 87.
[262] Wadding, ann. 1259, No. 3.--Barbarano de’ Mironi, Hist. Eccles. di Vicenza, II. 95, 105, 108, 113, 121.
[263] Annal. Mediolanens. cap. 31 (Muratori, S. R. I. XVI. 662).--Muratori Antiq. Ital. XII. 513.--Wadding, ann. 1277, No. 10, 11; 1278, No. 33; 1289, No. 18.
[264] Grandjean, Registres de Benoit XI. No. 508.
[265] Paramo, p. 264.--Verri, Storia di Milano, I. 244.--Ripoll I. 567.--Raynald. ann. 1278, No. 78.--In Doat, XXXII. 160, is the letter to the authorities of Bergamo, which Bremond (Ripoll ubi sup.) says is not to be found.
[266] Memor. Protestat. Regiens. ann. 1279, 1282 (Muratori, S.R.I. VIII. 1146, 1150).--Bern. Corio, Hist. Milanese, ann. 1279.--Paramo Lib. II. Tit. ii. cap. 30, No. 13.--Pegnæ Append. ad Eymeric. p. 55--Salimbene Chron. pp. 274, 276, 342.--Chron. Parmens. ann. 1279, 1282, 1286, 1287 (Muratori, IX. 792, 799, 809-11).--Sarpi, Discorso (Opere, IV. 21).--Concil. Mediolanens. ann. 1287, c. xi.
[267] Ripoll I. 241-2.--Wadding. ann. 1258, No. 3, 5; ann. 1278, No. 33; ann. 1279, No. 29; Regest. Nich. PP. III. No. 11.--Mag. Bull. Rom. I. 118.--Martene Thesaur. II. 191.--Raynald. ann. 1278, No. 78.
[268] Muratori Antiq. Ital. XII. 513-14, 521-3, 537-8.--Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolosan. pp. 2, 3, 12, 13, 32, 68, 75, 76, 81, etc.
[269] Muratori Antiq. Ital. XII. 508-55.--Bern. Guidon. Vit. Bonif. VIII. (S.R.I. III. 671-2).--Barbarano de’ Mironi, Hist. Eccles. di Vicenza II. 153.--Salimbene Chron. ann. 1279, p. 276.--Paramo, p. 299. The wide attention attracted by the case of Armanno is shown by the allusion to it in the German chronicles.--Trithem Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1299.--Chron. Cornel. Zanfliet (Martene Ampl. Coll. V. 142-3).
[270] Introductio ad Zanchini Tract. de Hæres, ed. Campegii, Romæ, 1568. (I owe a copy of this document to the kindness of Prof. Felice Tocco, of Florence.)
[271] Cod. Epist. Rodulphi I. Lipsiæ, 1807, pp. 266-9.--Wadding. ann. 1289, No. 20.--Lami, Antichità Toscane, pp. 497, 536-7.
[272] Faucon, Registres de Boniface VIII. No. 1673, p. 632.--Wadding. ann. 1298, No. 3.--Arch. de l’Inq. de Carc. (Doat, XXVI. 147).
[273] Wadding. ann. 1285, No. 9, 10.
[274] Tocco, L’Eresia nel Medio Evo, p. 403.--Renerii Summa (Martene Thesaur. V. 1767).--Ripoll I. 74.
[275] Raynald. ann. 1231, No. 19.--Rich. de S. German. Chron. ann. 1233.--Giannone, Ist. Civ. di Napoli, Lib. XVII. c. 6, Lib. XIX. c. 5.--Vaissette, IV. 17.
[276] Archivio di Napoli, MSS. Chioccarello T. VIII.--Ib. Regist. 3 Lett. A, fol. 64; Reg. 4 Lett. B, fol. 47; Reg. 5 Lett. C, fol. 224; Reg. 6 Lett. D, fol. 35, 39, 174; Reg. 10 Lett. B. fol. 6, 7, 96; Reg. 11 Lett. C, fol. 40; Reg. 13 Lett. A, fol. 212; Reg. 113 Lett. A, fol. 385; Reg. 154 Lett. C, fol. 81; Reg. 167 Lett. A, fol. 324.
[277] Archivio di Napoli, Reg. 6 Lett. D, fol. 135; Reg. 253 Lett. A, fol. 68.--Giannone, Ist. Civ. di Napoli Lib. XIX. c. 5.
[278] Archivio di Napoli, Regist. 3 Lett. A, fol. 64; Regist. 4 Lett. B, fol. 47; Reg. 9 Lett. C, fol. 39.--MSS. Chioccarello, T. VIII.
[279] Lombard, Jean Louis Paschal et les Martyrs de Calabre, Geneve, 1881, pp. 22-32.--Filippo de Boni, L’Inquisizione e i Calabro-Valdesi, Milano, 1864, pp. 73-77.--Perrin, Hist. des Vaudois, Liv. II. ch. 7.--Comba, Hist. des Vaudois d’Italie, I. 128, 181-6, 190.--Rorengo, Memorie Historiche, Torino, 1649, pp. 77 sqq.--Martini Append. ad Mosheim de Beghardis, p. 638. Vegezzi-Ruscalla (Rivista Contemporanea, 1862) has shown the identity of the dialects of the Calabrian Guardia and of the Val d’Angrogna, proving the reality of the emigration.
[280] Salimbene, p. 330.--Grandjean, Registries de Benoît XI. No. 834-5.--Pelayo Heterodoxos Españoles, I. 730.--La Mantia, Origine e Vicende dell’ Inquisizione in Sicilia, Torino, 1886, p. 12.
[281] Sarpi, Discorso (Opere, Ed. Helmstadt, IV. 20).
[282] Archivio Generale di Venezia, Codice ex Brera, No. 277, Carte 5.
[283] Ripoll VII. 25.--Arch. di Venez. Miscellanea, Codice No. 133, p. 121; Cod. ex Brera, No. 277, Carte 5.
