Chapter IV: Italy (3)

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]

As the pressure of the Inquisition extended throughout Lombardy and the Marches, the persecuted heretics naturally sought a refuge in Venetian territory, where supervision was so much more negligent. It was in vain that about 1286 Frà Filippo of Mantua, the Inquisitor of Treviso, was sent by Honorius IV. with a summons to the republic to inscribe in its laws the constitutions against heresy of Frederic and of the popes. Although the example of the other cities of the Marca Trivigiana was urged, and Venice was repeatedly required to do the same, obedience was persistently refused. At length, in 1288, Nicholas IV. lost patience with this persistent contumacy. He peremptorily ordered the Signoria to adopt the imperial and papal laws, and commanded that the doge should swear not only not to impede the Inquisitor of Treviso in his duties, but to assist him. In default of obedience he threatened to proceed against the city both spiritually and temporally.[284]

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

The Inquisition was unaccustomed to submit to control, and soon chafed under these limitations. Already, in 1292, Nicholas IV. complained to Piero Gradenigo that the terms of the agreement were not carried out. The inquisitors, Bonagiunta of Mantua and Giuliano of Padua, reported that the papal and imperial laws against heresy were not enforced, and that under the arrangement for expenditures they were unable to employ a force of familiars sufficient to detect and seize the heretics. Heresy consequently, they said, continued to flourish in Venetian territory, for all of which Nicholas bitterly scolded the doge, and demanded such changes as should remove these scandals, but without effect. The Signoria, apparently, had not seen fit to abolish the office of secular inquisitors provided by the legislation of 1249. These were three in number, and were known as the "_tre Savi dell' eresia_," or "_assistenti_." It was hardly possible that a duplicate organization such as this could work without clashing. The situation became intolerable, and in 1301 Frà Antonio, the Inquisitor of Treviso, resolved to put an end to it. He notified the three Savi, Tommaso Viaro, Marino Zorzi, and Lorenzo Segico, to recognize no superior save himself. Their submission not being forthcoming, he proceeded to Venice, and addressed to the Doge Gradenigo a monition ordering him, under pain of excommunication, to swear to obey all the papal constitutions on heresy. Gradenigo refused, alleging that this would be a violation of his oath of office; the inquisitor withdrew his monition, and matters remained as before. Whatever hopes had been entertained that the entering wedge would enable the Inquisition to establish itself without restriction were foiled by the steadfastness of the republic. The three Savi continued their functions and, perhaps, even enlarged them; it had become customary for them to be selected from among the senators, and they acted in conjunction with the inquisitor in all cases coming within his jurisdiction. As Venice extended her conquests on the mainland, in all cities under her domination the _rettori_ or governors performed this function, and their participation was required in all prosecutions for heresy, not only by the inquisitor, but by the bishops.[286]

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In Italy, as in France, the history of the Inquisition during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is one of decadence. It is true that in Italy it had not to contend with the consolidation of power in the hands of a monarch, but the Captivity of Avignon and the debasement of the papacy under the influence of the French court, co-operating with the rise of the cities in wealth and culture, conduced to the same result; while the Great Schism, followed by the Councils of Constance and Basle, tended to emancipate the minds of men and foster independence. During the fourteenth century much of the inquisitorial activity was devoted to the new heresy of the Fraticelli, which will be referred to hereafter when we come to consider that remarkable religious movement. That movement, indeed, was the chief exception to the decay in spiritual enthusiasm which diminished at once the veneration which the Inquisition inspired and the opposition of heterodoxy which constituted its _raison d' être_. As heretics grew fewer and poorer its usefulness decreased, its means of impressing the popular imagination disappeared, and its rewards grew less and less.

As regards the Cathari, the Inquisition had done its work too well. Unceasing and unsparing repression gradually annihilated the sect which, during the first half of the thirteenth century, seemed almost able to dispute with Rome the possession of Italy on equal terms. Yet when we see that the Waldenses, exposed to the same merciless rigor, were not extinguished, we recognize that some other factor besides mere persecution was at work to obliterate a belief which once enjoyed so potent an influence on the human mind that thousands for its sake went joyfully to a dreadful death. The secret must be looked for in the hopeless pessimism of the faith itself. There was in it nothing to encourage and strengthen man in the battle of life. Manes had robbed the elder Mazdeism of its vitality when he assigned to the Evil Principle complete dominion over Nature and the visible universe, and when he adopted the Sankhya philosophy, which teaches that existence is an evil, while death is an emancipation for those who have earned spiritual immortality, and a mere renewal of the same hated existence for all who have not risen to the height of the austerest maceration. As civilization slowly advanced, as the midnight of the Dark Ages began to yield to the approaching dawn of modern ideas, as the hopelessness of humanity grew less abject, the Manichæan theory grew less attractive. The world was gradually awakening to new aims and new possibilities; it was outgrowing the dreary philosophy of pessimism, and was unconsciously preparing for the yet unknown future in which man was to regard Nature not as an enemy, but as a teacher. Catharism had no possibility of development, and in that lay its doom.

The simple and earnest faith of the Waldenses, on the other hand, inculcated helpfulness and hopefulness, patience under tribulation, and an abiding trust in the watchful care of the Heavenly Father. The arduous toil of the artisan or husbandman was blessed in the consciousness of the performance of a duty. The virtues which form the basis of all Christian society--industry, charity, self-abnegation, sobriety, chastity, thrift--were stimulated and cultivated, and man was taught that his fate, here and hereafter, depended on himself, and not on the ministration or mediation of his fellow-creatures, alive or dead. It was a faith which fitted man for the environment in which he had been placed by his Creator, and it was capable of adaptation to the infinite vicissitudes of human progress. Accordingly, it had proportionate vitality. Rooted out in one place, it grew in another. It responded too nearly to the needs and aspirations of multitudes ever to be wholly blotted out. There was always a propitious soil for its scattered seeds, and its resistance of inertia in the end proved too much for even the persistent energy of its destroyers.

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

On the mainland, in spite of the vigilance of the Inquisition, Cathari continued to exist in Piedmont. In 1388 Frà Antonio Secco of Savigliano had the good-fortune to lay hands on one of the active members of the sect, Giacomo Bech of Chieri, near Turin. The report of his examination before the inquisitor and the Bishop of Turin, which has been printed by Sig. Girolamo Amati, gives full details of the condition of the sect. After his tongue had been loosened by repeated applications of torture, his confession shows that it was numerous in the vicinage, and that it comprised members of many noble families--the Patrizi, Bertoni, Petiti, Narro, and ancestors of Balbi and Cavour. Although in Italy, as in France, the name of Waldenses had become applicable to all heretics, and they were commonly designated by this name, they retained the moderated dualism of the Lombard Cathari. Satan fell from heaven, created the visible universe, and will finally return to glory. The law of Moses was dictated by him, and Moses was the greatest of sinners. Human souls are fallen demons, who transmigrate into other human bodies, or into those of animals, until released by death-bed _consolamentum_. The purity of the faith was maintained by occasional intercourse with its headquarters in Bosnia. Giacomo Bech was converted by a Slavonian missionary, in conjunction with Jocerino de' Balbi and Piero Patrizi, and the latter gave him ten florins and sent him to Bosnia to perfect himself in the doctrines, though he was compelled by ill-fortune at sea to return without accomplishing his pilgrimage. Forty years before one of the Balbi had gone thither for the same purpose; in 1360 a Narro and a Benso, Piero Patrizi himself in 1377, and Berardo Rascherio in 1380. Evidently the little community of Chieri maintained active relations with the heads of the Church. In 1370 Bech had fallen into the hands of the inquisitor, Frà Tommaso da Casacho, had been forced to confess, and had been released after abjuration in reward for his betraying his fellow-disciples.[288]

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

He proved a mine of information well worth the repeated interrogatories which extended from May 29 to July 10, for he had been a member of the sect for twenty-five years and a wandering missionary for fifteen, and was familiar with all the congregations, which appear to have been numerous, some in the neighborhood of Turin, but mostly in the lower Alpine valleys between Pignerol and Susa. Though he repeatedly alludes to the sectaries as Vaudois, they had no affinity with the Waldenses, and it is observable that he makes no reference to their existence in any of the distinctive Waldensian valleys, such as Angrogna, Perosa, or San Martino. They were mostly poor folk--peasants, servants, muleteers, innkeepers, mechanics, and artisans, and the chiefs of their "synagogues" were generally of this class, although occasionally a clerk, a canon, a notary, or other educated person is enumerated among the members. What were their precise distinctive tenets it is not easy to define with accuracy. Galosna's rough handling had evidently rendered him eager to satisfy the credulity of his examiners, and the imaginative character of some of his revelations casts a doubt on the truthfulness of them all. The applicant for initiation had to drink a beverage, foul of aspect, made with the excrement of a toad kept for the purpose; taken in excess it was apt to prove fatal, and its power was such that whoso once partook of it could never thereafter abandon the sect. Martino del Prete, the chief heresiarch, had a black cat as large as a lamb, which he declared to be the best friend he had on earth. We may safely set down the accounts of the sexual abominations which succeeded religious services in the conventicles, when the lights were extinguished, as worthy of equal credence. Contradictions in the repeated statements of the doctrines taught show that Galosna's imagination served him better than his memory in his prolonged examinations. He was told that in joining the sect he would secure salvation in glory with God the Father, and yet he declares that the sect rejected immortality, and held that the soul died with the body--and again, that there was no purgatory, but only heaven and hell hereafter. They believed, moreover, in God the Father who created the heavens, but they worshipped the Great Dragon, the creator of the world, who fought God and the angels, and was more powerful than he on earth. Christ was not the Son of God, but of Joseph, and was worthy of no special reverence. Altogether the account is hopelessly confused, but we can discern the dualism of a bastard Catharism, and allusions are made to the _consolamentum_ and the sacrament of bread. Like Jacopo Bech, Galosna had already abjured in the hands of Frà Tommaso da Casacho. Both were therefore relapsed; there was no mercy for them, and on September 5, 1388, they were abandoned to the secular arm in Turin and necessarily burned. Unfortunately the record ends here, and we have no details as to the rich harvest which Frà Antonio must have reaped from the ample information obtained from his victims as to the scattered members of the sects.[290]

Notwithstanding these evidences of vitality, Catharism was rapidly dying out. The latest definite reference to it, west of the Adriatic, occurs in 1403, when San Vicente Ferrer, the great Spanish revivalist, undertook a peaceful mission in the remote valleys which no Catholic priest had dared to visit for thirty years, when he found and converted a number of Cathari dwelling among the Waldenses. He regarded as a form of Manichæism the worship of the rising sun which he found habitual among the peasants of the diocese of Lausanne, and some such survival of nature-worship was probably not infrequent, for a penitent of Frà Antonio Secco, in 1387, speaks of adoring the sun and moon on bended knees. Yet there would seem to be a remnant of Catharism lingering among the Waldenses of the Savoy valleys as late as 1451, when Filippo Regis was tried by the Inquisition.[291]

* * * * *

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

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

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

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