A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume II Part 9

Charles's zeal did not confine itself to thus organizing and promoting the Inquisition. He supplemented its labors by inst.i.tuting 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 a.s.sist 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 n.o.bles 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 Fra 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 Fra 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 a.s.sistance to be rendered to them, which, perhaps, explains the success of Fra 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 Fra Tommaso di Aversa active in persecuting the Spiritual Franciscans, and in 1311, King Robert, at the instance of Fra 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 n.o.ble, 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 Francois 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sistance to Fra 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 l.u.s.t, 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 Const.i.tutions 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. .h.i.therto 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 doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ment contains a clause which indicates that the death-penalty threatened in 1249 had already been abrogated. It cla.s.ses 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 subst.i.tuted for that of a bishop.[283]

As the pressure of the Inquisition extended throughout Lombardy and the Marches, the persecuted heretics naturally sought a refuge in Venetian territory, where supervision was so much more negligent. It was in vain that about 1286 Fra Filippo of Mantua, the Inquisitor of Treviso, was sent by Honorius IV. with a summons to the republic to inscribe in its laws the const.i.tutions against heresy of Frederic and of the popes.

Although the example of the other cities of the Marca Trivigiana was urged, and Venice was repeatedly required to do the same, obedience was persistently refused. At length, in 1288, Nicholas IV. lost patience with this persistent contumacy. He peremptorily ordered the Signoria to adopt the imperial and papal laws, and commanded that the doge should swear not only not to impede the Inquisitor of Treviso in his duties, but to a.s.sist him. In default of obedience he threatened to proceed against the city both spiritually and temporally.[284]

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

The Inquisition was unaccustomed to submit to control, and soon chafed under these limitations. Already, in 1292, Nicholas IV. complained to Piero Gradenigo that the terms of the agreement were not carried out.

The inquisitors, Bonagiunta of Mantua and Giuliano of Padua, reported that the papal and imperial laws against heresy were not enforced, and that under the arrangement for expenditures they were unable to employ a force of familiars sufficient to detect and seize the heretics. Heresy consequently, they said, continued to flourish in Venetian territory, for all of which Nicholas bitterly scolded the doge, and demanded such changes as should remove these scandals, but without effect. The Signoria, apparently, had not seen fit to abolish the office of secular inquisitors provided by the legislation of 1249. These were three in number, and were known as the "_tre Savi dell' eresia_," or "_a.s.sistenti_." It was hardly possible that a duplicate organization such as this could work without clashing. The situation became intolerable, and in 1301 Fra 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 const.i.tutions 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 partic.i.p.ation 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 debas.e.m.e.nt 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 emanc.i.p.ate 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 const.i.tuted its _raison d' etre_. As heretics grew fewer and poorer its usefulness decreased, its means of impressing the popular imagination disappeared, and its rewards grew less and less.

As regards the Cathari, the Inquisition had done its work too well.

Unceasing and unsparing repression gradually annihilated the sect which, during the first half of the thirteenth century, seemed almost able to dispute with Rome the possession of Italy on equal terms. Yet when we see that the Waldenses, exposed to the same merciless rigor, were not extinguished, we recognize that some other factor besides mere persecution was at work to obliterate a belief which once enjoyed so potent an influence on the human mind that thousands for its sake went joyfully to a dreadful death. The secret must be looked for in the hopeless pessimism of the faith itself. There was in it nothing to encourage and strengthen man in the battle of life. Manes had robbed the elder Mazdeism of its vitality when he a.s.signed to the Evil Principle complete dominion over Nature and the visible universe, and when he adopted the Sankhya philosophy, which teaches that existence is an evil, while death is an emanc.i.p.ation for those who have earned spiritual immortality, and a mere renewal of the same hated existence for all who have not risen to the height of the austerest maceration. As civilization slowly advanced, as the midnight of the Dark Ages began to yield to the approaching dawn of modern ideas, as the hopelessness of humanity grew less abject, the Manichaean theory grew less attractive.

The world was gradually awakening to new aims and new possibilities; it was outgrowing the dreary philosophy of pessimism, and was unconsciously preparing for the yet unknown future in which man was to regard Nature not as an enemy, but as a teacher. Catharism had no possibility of development, and in that lay its doom.

The simple and earnest faith of the Waldenses, on the other hand, inculcated helpfulness and hopefulness, patience under tribulation, and an abiding trust in the watchful care of the Heavenly Father. The arduous toil of the artisan or husbandman was blessed in the consciousness of the performance of a duty. The virtues which form the basis of all Christian society--industry, charity, self-abnegation, sobriety, chast.i.ty, 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 mult.i.tudes ever to be wholly blotted out. There was always a propitious soil for its scattered seeds, and its resistance of inertia in the end proved too much for even the persistent energy of its destroyers.

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

On the mainland, in spite of the vigilance of the Inquisition, Cathari continued to exist in Piedmont. In 1388 Fra Antonio Secco of Savigliano had the good-fortune to lay hands on one of the active members of the sect, Giacomo Bech of Chieri, near Turin. The report of his examination before the inquisitor and the Bishop of Turin, which has been printed by Sig. Girolamo Amati, gives full details of the condition of the sect.

After his tongue had been loosened by repeated applications of torture, his confession shows that it was numerous in the vicinage, and that it comprised members of many n.o.ble families--the Patrizi, Bertoni, Pet.i.ti, Narro, and ancestors of Balbi and Cavour. Although in Italy, as in France, the name of Waldenses had become applicable to all heretics, and they were commonly designated by this name, they retained the moderated dualism of the Lombard Cathari. Satan fell from heaven, created the visible universe, and will finally return to glory. The law of Moses was dictated by him, and Moses was the greatest of sinners. Human souls are fallen demons, who transmigrate into other human bodies, or into those of animals, until released by death-bed _consolamentum_. The purity of the faith was maintained by occasional intercourse with its headquarters in Bosnia. Giacomo Bech was converted by a Slavonian missionary, in conjunction with Jocerino de' Balbi and Piero Patrizi, and the latter gave him ten florins and sent him to Bosnia to perfect himself in the doctrines, though he was compelled by ill-fortune at sea to return without accomplishing his pilgrimage. Forty years before one of the Balbi had gone thither for the same purpose; in 1360 a Narro and a Benso, Piero Patrizi himself in 1377, and Berardo Rascherio in 1380.

Evidently the little community of Chieri maintained active relations with the heads of the Church. In 1370 Bech had fallen into the hands of the inquisitor, Fra Tommaso da Casacho, had been forced to confess, and had been released after abjuration in reward for his betraying his fellow-disciples.[288]

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

He proved a mine of information well worth the repeated interrogatories which extended from May 29 to July 10, for he had been a member of the sect for twenty-five years and a wandering missionary for fifteen, and was familiar with all the congregations, which appear to have been numerous, some in the neighborhood of Turin, but mostly in the lower Alpine valleys between Pignerol and Susa. Though he repeatedly alludes to the sectaries as Vaudois, they had no affinity with the Waldenses, and it is observable that he makes no reference to their existence in any of the distinctive Waldensian valleys, such as Angrogna, Perosa, or San Martino. They were mostly poor folk--peasants, servants, muleteers, innkeepers, mechanics, and artisans, and the chiefs of their "synagogues" were generally of this cla.s.s, although occasionally a clerk, a canon, a notary, or other educated person is enumerated among the members. What were their precise distinctive tenets it is not easy to define with accuracy. Galosna's rough handling had evidently rendered him eager to satisfy the credulity of his examiners, and the imaginative character of some of his revelations casts a doubt on the truthfulness of them all. The applicant for initiation had to drink a beverage, foul of aspect, made with the excrement of a toad kept for the purpose; taken in excess it was apt to prove fatal, and its power was such that whoso once partook of it could never thereafter abandon the sect.

Martino del Prete, the chief heresiarch, had a black cat as large as a lamb, which he declared to be the best friend he had on earth. We may safely set down the accounts of the s.e.xual abominations which succeeded religious services in the conventicles, when the lights were extinguished, as worthy of equal credence. Contradictions in the repeated statements of the doctrines taught show that Galosna's imagination served him better than his memory in his prolonged examinations. He was told that in joining the sect he would secure salvation in glory with G.o.d the Father, and yet he declares that the sect rejected immortality, and held that the soul died with the body--and again, that there was no purgatory, but only heaven and h.e.l.l hereafter. They believed, moreover, in G.o.d the Father who created the heavens, but they worshipped the Great Dragon, the creator of the world, who fought G.o.d and the angels, and was more powerful than he on earth.

Christ was not the Son of G.o.d, but of Joseph, and was worthy of no special reverence. Altogether the account is hopelessly confused, but we can discern the dualism of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d Catharism, and allusions are made to the _consolamentum_ and the sacrament of bread. Like Jacopo Bech, Galosna had already abjured in the hands of Fra Tommaso da Casacho. Both were therefore relapsed; there was no mercy for them, and on September 5, 1388, they were abandoned to the secular arm in Turin and necessarily burned. Unfortunately the record ends here, and we have no details as to the rich harvest which Fra Antonio must have reaped from the ample information obtained from his victims as to the scattered members of the sects.[290]

Notwithstanding these evidences of vitality, Catharism was rapidly dying out. The latest definite reference to it, west of the Adriatic, occurs in 1403, when San Vicente Ferrer, the great Spanish revivalist, undertook a peaceful mission in the remote valleys which no Catholic priest had dared to visit for thirty years, when he found and converted a number of Cathari dwelling among the Waldenses. He regarded as a form of Manichaeism 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 Fra Antonio Secco, in 1387, speaks of adoring the sun and moon on bended knees. Yet there would seem to be a remnant of Catharism lingering among the Waldenses of the Savoy valleys as late as 1451, when Filippo Regis was tried by the Inquisition.[291]

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

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

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

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

It may be hoped that this holocaust satisfied the manes of the murdered inquisitors, for they seem to have received no other satisfaction. A succession of inquisitors--Piero di Castelmonte, Ruffino di Terdona, Tommaso da Casacho, and Michele Gra.s.si, undaunted by the fate of their predecessors, wasted their energies on the Piedmontese Waldenses without reducing them to subjection. The pitiless forays of Borel drove the poor wretches from their native valleys, and they poured over into Piedmont.

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

Pragelato, however, suffered more severely in 1400 when, about Christmas, it was attacked by an armed force from Susa. The inhabitants who escaped death or capture took refuge on the mountain-tops of the Val San Martino, where many perished from exposure in the inclement season; and the survivors, on returning after the departure of the troops, found their dwellings dismantled. This cold-blooded cruelty shocked even Boniface IX., who ordered the inquisitor in charge of the foray to moderate his zeal in future.[297]

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

During the Great Schism persecution slackened, but already, in 1416, fresh decrees were issued against the Waldenses. Our knowledge of details is but fragmentary at best, and it is impossible to construct a complete history of the conflict between them and the Inquisition, but we may fairly infer that the latter was at least spasmodically active. A pet.i.tion addressed to the Duke of Savoy by the lords of Luserna recites that the inhabitants of the valley were in full rebellion, owing to repeated persecution; the doc.u.ment is without date, but must be posterior to 1417, when Sigismund erected the county into a duchy.

Again, we know that, between 1440 and 1450, Fra Bertrando Piero, vicar of the inquisitor, in one raid burned at Coni twenty-two relapsed heretics, and confiscated their property. This happens to be alluded to in a memorial addressed in 1457 to Calixtus III., by the people of the neighboring village of Bernez, who proceed to relate that after this exploit Fra Bertrando visited their town in company with his princ.i.p.al, Fra Ludovico da Soncino, and commenced an inquisition there, but abandoned it, to the scandal of the people, without concluding the trials. Then Felix V. (Amadeo of Savoy) sent the Abbot of San-Piero of Savigliano to complete the unfinished business, who acquitted a number of the accused. Then recently there had come a new inquisitor who took up the cases again and molested those who had been discharged, whereupon they pet.i.tioned the pope that he be restrained from further proceedings until two experts in theology be appointed as a.s.sessors by the Bishop of Mondovi and the Abbot of Savigliano. The presentation of such a request shows how much the Inquisition had lost of its power of inspiring awe, and this is emphasized by the action of Calixtus in ordering the Bishop of Turin and the inquisitor to a.s.sociate with themselves two experts and proceed with the cases. It indicates, moreover, that little rest was allowed to the Waldenses. While this affair was dragging its slow length along, Nicholas V., in 1453, addressed to the Bishops of Turin and Nice and to the Inquisitor Giacomo di Buronzo, a bull reciting that Giacomo had found in the Valley of Luserna a majority of the inhabitants infected with heresy, many of them having relapsed repeatedly. Unable to convert them, he had placed an interdict on the valley; the people had repented and begged for readmission to the Church, wherefore Nicholas orders the removal of the interdict, and that penitents, whether relapsed or not, be pardoned and restored to all their civil rights--a degree of lenity which indicates that sterner measures at the time were clearly inexpedient.[299]

In 1475 a more serious war of extermination was commenced against them under the d.u.c.h.ess Yolande, Regent of Savoy, in conjunction with the simultaneous action of the Inquisition in Dauphine. By an edict of January 23, 1476, all the officials in the infected districts were placed at the disposition of the Inquisition, and the podesta of Luserna was cited to appear on February 10, to answer for his conduct, in refusing, at the instance of the Inquisitor Andrea di Aquapendente, to make proclamation that none of the converts of Giacomo di Buronzo should be permitted to effect sales greater in amount than one florin, and that all sales which had been made by them were void, for they had relapsed, were endeavoring to emigrate, and to dispose of their property, which was legally confiscated. Louis XI., who stopped the persecution, as we have seen, so unceremoniously in his own dominions, felt interest enough in the matter to extend protection over the unfortunates in his sister's territories, and his word had power sufficient to dampen the zeal of the d.u.c.h.ess, who was wholly dependent on him after the misfortunes of Charles the Bold. Sixtus IV. was much scandalized by this. He had sent a special papal commissioner to speed the holy work, and he wrote pressingly to Louis, a.s.suming that the royal letters of protection must have been surrept.i.tiously obtained. He instructed the Bishop of Turin to go, if possible, in person to Louis and to make every effort to exterminate the heretics, who dared openly to propagate their doctrines and make converts, to the ruin of immortal souls. The death of Louis, in 1483, deprived the Waldenses of their protector, and persecution recommenced. An order of Duke Carlo I., in 1484, to inquire into the violences committed by the people of Angrogna, Villaro, and Bobbio because their lords endeavored to suppress their heresies, shows how soon and how bitterly the struggle broke out afresh. The heretics scattered through the towns of Piedmont were mercilessly dealt with by the inquisitors, but those who inhabited the mountain valleys were safe, except from a.s.sault by overwhelming forces. In April, 1487, Innocent VIII. recites how the inquisitor-general, Fra Blasio di Monreale, had gone to the infected district, and had vainly sought by earnest exhortations to induce the heretics to abandon their errors; how they had contemptuously defied his censures, had continued openly to preach and make converts, had attacked his house, slain his familiar, and pillaged his goods. More strenuous efforts were evidently requisite, and Innocent appointed Alberto de' Capitanei, Archdeacon of Cremona, as papal nuncio and commissioner to Piedmont and Dauphine, with instructions to coerce the people to receive Fra Blasio, and permit the free exercise of his office, and to crush the heretics like venomous serpents. To this end Alberto was empowered to preach a crusade with plenary indulgences, and to deprive of their office and dignities all, whether ecclesiastics or laymen, who refused to obey his commands. From February to May, 1488, he duly issued his citations to the heretics, and as they were contumacious, he condemned them accordingly and abandoned them in ma.s.s to the secular arm. Meanwhile a force estimated at eighteen thousand crusaders had been raised in France and Piedmont, which advanced in four columns so as to block every avenue of escape. The slaughter in Val Louise has already been alluded to. The Val d'Angrogna was more fortunate, and in the attack upon it the crusading army was virtually annihilated. This victory earned for the Waldenses a respite, and in 1490 Carlo I. invited them to a conference at Pignerol, where he granted them peace and confirmed their privileges. In 1498 they were visited by Lucas of Prague and Thomas Germa.n.u.s, envoys of the _Unitas Fratrum_ of Bohemia. Through these they addressed a letter to the Bohemian King Ladislas and his n.o.bles, boasting that they did not frequent the Catholic churches, fiercely denouncing the vices of the priesthood, and arguing that the benediction of such men was rather a malediction. Evidently the spirit of the persecuted saints was unbroken, and it was soon after put to the test in the valley of the Po, where whole villages were found to consist of Waldenses. Marguerite de Foix, Marchioness of Saluces, put troops at the command of the Inquisitor Angelo Ricciardino, who had found his ordinary machinery baffled. The villages of Pravillelm, Beitoneto, and Oncino were raided; most of the inhabitants succeeded in escaping to Luserna, but some were captured, and five were sentenced to be burned, March 24, 1510. A heavy snow-storm delayed the execution, and during the ensuing night the prisoners broke jail and joined their comrades. The inquisitor, however, was not to be balked of his exhibition, and replaced the fugitives with three prisoners to whom he had promised pardon in consideration of the fulness of their confessions, and who were duly burned. The deserted villages were confiscated and made over to good Catholics, but the refugees at intervals descended on them, slaying and spoiling without mercy, till no one dared to dwell there. Finally the bigoted marchioness yielded, and for a round sum of money, in 1512, permitted the exiles to return and dwell in peace. The triumph of toleration thus won by the sword was but local and temporary. In Savoy, the statutes published in 1513 contain all the time-honored provisions for the suppression of heresy, with instructions to all public officials to aid in every way the Inquisition, whose expenses are to be defrayed out of the confiscations.

Continued persecution was thus provided for, nor was it averted when, in 1530, the Waldenses opened negotiations with the Protestants of Switzerland, resulting in their final incorporation with the Calvinists.[300]

These incessant ravages naturally led to emigration on an extended scale, which, as we have seen, mostly turned itself to Calabria and Apulia, where the brethren had dwelt in comparative peace for nearly two centuries. A large portion of the population of Freyssinieres, 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 ma.s.s occasionally, allowed their children to be baptized by the priests, and, what was more important, they paid their t.i.thes with exemplary regularity--t.i.thes which grew satisfactorily under the incessant industry of the G.o.d-fearing husbandmen. The mountain valleys which had been almost a desert became smiling with corn-fields and pastures, orchards and vine-yards. The n.o.bles 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 n.o.bles, and thus felt a.s.sured 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 a.s.sembly 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 pa.s.swords, and in spite of ecclesiastical vigilance there existed throughout Italy a subterranean network of heresy disguised under outward conformity. In 1497 the envoys from the Bohemian Brethren, Lucas and Thomas, found in Rome itself one of their faith, whom they bitterly reproached for concealing his belief. In Calabria, in 1530, it was estimated that they numbered ten thousand souls, in Venetia, six thousand. The fate of these poor creatures, after generations of peaceful existence which might well seem destined to be perpetual, belongs to a period beyond our present limits, but the fact that they could thus prosper and increase shows how rusty had grown the machinery of the Inquisition, and how incapable had become its officials.[301]

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

Inquisitors, indeed, continued to be regularly appointed, and to perform such of their functions as they could, but the decline in their usefulness is shown by one of the earliest acts of Martin V., in 1417, before leaving Constance, in commissioning the Observantine Franciscan, Giovanni da Capistrano, as a special inquisitor against the heretics of Mantua. From this time, in fact, when any effective effort against heresy was called for, the regular machinery of the Inquisition was no longer relied upon. It seems to have been regarded as effete for all the purposes for which it had been inst.i.tuted, and special appointments were necessary of men devoted to the work, such as Capistrano and his friend Giacomo della Marca. Just as the inquisitorial jurisdiction had superseded the episcopal, so now both were overslaughed as insufficient.

Thus, in 1457, when a new heresy sprang up in Brescia and Bergamo concerning Christ, the Virgin, and the Church Militant, infecting both clergy and laity, and including suspicion of sorcery, Calixtus III.

ordered his nuncio in those parts, Master Bernardo del Bosco, to seize the heretics and try them, with even more than the privileges of an inquisitor, for he was empowered to proceed to final judgment and execution without appeal, leaving it to his discretion whether he should call for advice upon the inquisitors and episcopal ordinaries. Two years later, in the case of Zanino da Solcia, to which I shall recur hereafter, the sentence was rendered by the Lombard inquisitor, Fra Jacopo da Brescia, but the examination took place in the presence of Master Bernardo del Bosco, who moreover received the abjuration of Zanino, and the sentence was sent to Pius II. and was modified by him.

The diminution of popular respect for the Inquisition was still further manifested in 1459, by the doubts publicly expressed of the validity of the bulls of Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. authorizing inquisitors to preach crusades against heretics and to prosecute for heresy all persons and communities impeding them, so that Calixtus III. was obliged to reissue the authorization.[303]

A curious case occurring about this time ill.u.s.trates the growing indifference felt in Lombardy for the Inquisition. In Milan, about 1440, a learned mathematician, named Amadeo de' Landi, was accused of heresy before the inquisitors. During the progress of his trial he was, to the great damage of his reputation, denounced as a heretic by sundry friars in their sermons, and among others by Bernardino of Siena, the saintly head of the Observantines. The Inquisition p.r.o.nounced him a good Catholic and discharged him, but those who had slandered him offered no reparation. The acquittal by the Inquisition apparently did not outweigh the denunciations of Bernardino, and Amadeo appealed to Eugenius IV., who referred the matter to Giuseppe di Brippo, with power to enforce his decision with censures. Giuseppe summoned the detractors to appear on a certain day, and on their failing to present themselves condemned Bernardino to make public retraction under pain of excommunication.

Bernardino paid no heed to this, and on his death in 1444, when immediate efforts were made for his canonization, Amadeo raised great scandal by proclaiming that he had died in mortal sin as an excommunicate. This gratified the jealousy of the conventual branch of the Franciscans and many of the secular clergy, who spread the scandal far and wide. By this time, however, the Observantines were too influential for such an a.s.sault upon their revered vicar-general to be successful; and in 1447 they obtained from Nicholas V. a bull in which he annulled all the proceedings of Giuseppe, ordered every record of them to be destroyed, imposed silence on the unlucky Amadeo, declared Bernadino to have acted righteously throughout, and forbade all clerks, friars, and others from indulging in further detraction concerning him.

I may add that the opposition of the Conventuals was powerful enough to postpone until 1450 the canonization of San Bernardino, and a humorous incident in the struggle may be worth mention. When the blessed Tommaso of Florence died at Rieti in 1447, and immediately began to coruscate in miracles, Capistrano hurried thither and forbade him to display further his thaumaturgic powers until Bernardino should be canonized--and Tommaso meekly obeyed.[304]

Yet, shorn as the Inquisition had become of real effectiveness for its avowed functions, the office continued to be sought, doubtless because it conferred a certain measure of importance, and possibly because it afforded opportunity of illicit gains. Inquisitors were regularly appointed, and the custom grew up in Lombardy that in each city where a tribunal existed vacancies were filled on the nomination of the prior of the local Dominican convent with the a.s.sent 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 ill.u.s.trated in the last decade of the fifteenth century by Fra 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]