II. FRANCE
Although Catharism never obtained in the North sufficient foothold to render it threatening to the Church, yet the crusades and the efforts which followed the pacification of 1229 must have driven many heretics to seek refuge in places where they might escape suspicion. In organizing persecution in the South, therefore, it was necessary to provide some supervision more watchful than episcopal negligence was likely to supply, over the regions whither heretics might fly when pursued at home, or the efforts made in Languedoc would only be scattering the infection. Vigilant guardians of the faith were consequently requisite in lands where heretics were few and hidden, as well as in those where they were numerous and enjoyed protection from noble and city. Under the pious king, St. Louis, who declared that the only argument a layman could use with a heretic was to thrust a sword into him up to the hilt, they were sure of ample support from the secular power.[125]
Accordingly when, in 1233, the experiment was tried of appointing Pierre Cella and Guillem Arnaud as inquisitors in Toulouse, a similar tentative effort was made in the northern part of the kingdom. Here also it was the Dominican Order which was called upon to furnish the necessary zealots. I have already alluded to the failure of the attempt to induce the Friars of Franche-Comté to undertake the work. In western Burgundy, however, the Church was more fortunate in finding a proper instrument. Like Rainerio Saccone, Frère Robert, known as le Bugre, had been a Patarin. The peculiar fitness thence derived for detecting the hidden heretic was rendered still more effective by the special gift which he is said to have claimed, of being able to recognize them by their speech and carriage. In addition, he was fitted for the work by the ardent fanaticism of the convert, by his learning, his fiery eloquence, and his mercilessness. When, early in 1233, instructions to persecute heresy were sent to the Prior of Besançon, Robert was nominated to represent him and act as his substitute; and, eager to manifest his zeal, he lost no time in making a descent upon La Charité. It will be remembered that this place was notorious as a centre of heresy in the twelfth century, and that repeated efforts had been made to purify it. These had proved fruitless against the stubbornness of the misbelievers, and Frère Robert found Stephen, the Cluniac prior, vainly endeavoring to win or force them over. The new inquisitor seems to have been armed with no special powers, but his energy speedily made a profound impression, and heretics came forward and confessed their errors in crowds, husbands and wives, parents and children, accusing themselves and each other without reserve. He reported to Gregory IX. that the reality was far worse than had been rumored; that the whole town was a stinking nest of heretical wickedness, where the Catholic faith was almost wholly set aside and the people in their secret conventicles had thrown off its yoke. Under a specious appearance of piety they deceived the wisest, and their earnest missionary efforts, extending over the whole of France, were seducing souls from Flanders to Britanny. Uncertain as to his authority, he applied to Gregory for instructions and was told to act energetically in conjunction with the bishops, and, under the statutes recently issued by the Holy See, to extirpate heresy thoroughly from the whole region, invoking the aid of the secular arm, and coercing it if necessary with the censures of the Church.[126]
We have no means of knowing what measures Robert adopted, but there can be no doubt that under this stimulus, and clothed with this authority, he was active and unsparing. His crazy fanaticism probably exaggerated greatly the extent of the evil and confounded the innocent with the guilty. It was not long before the Archbishop of Sens, in whose province La Charité lay, expostulated with Gregory upon this interference with his jurisdiction, and in this he was joined by other prelates, alarmed at the authority given to the Dominican Provincial of Paris to appoint inquisitors for all portions of the kingdom. They assured the pope that there was no heresy in their provinces and no necessity for these extraordinary measures. Gregory thereupon revoked all commissions early in February, 1234, and urged the prelates to be vigilant, recommending them to make use of Dominicans in all cases where action appeared desirable, as the friars were specially skilled in the refutation of heresy. Had Robert been an ordinary man this might have postponed for some time the extension of the Inquisition in France, but he was too ardent to be repressed. In June, 1234, we find St. Louis paying for the maintenance of heretics in prison at St. Pierre-le-Moutier, near Nevers, which would seem as though Frère Robert had succeeded in getting to work again on his old field of operations. Meanwhile he had not been idle elsewhere. King Louis furnished him with an armed guard to protect him from the enmities which he aroused, and, secure in the royal favor, he traversed the country carrying terror everywhere. At Péronne he burned five victims; at Elincourt, four, besides a pregnant woman who was spared for a time at the intercession of the queen. His methods were speedy, for before Lent was out we find him at Cambrai, where, with the assistance of the Archbishop of Reims and three bishops, he burned about twenty and condemned others to crosses and prison. Thence he hastened to Douai, where, in May, he had the satisfaction of burning ten more, and condemning numerous others to crosses and prison in the presence of the Count of Flanders, the Archbishop of Reims, sundry bishops and an immense multitude who crowded to the spectacle. Thence he hurried to Lille, where more executions followed. All this was sufficient to convince Gregory that he had been misinformed as to the absence of heresy. Undisturbed by the severe experience which he had just undergone with a similar apostle of persecution, Conrad of Marburg, we find him, in August, 1235, excitedly announcing to the Dominican provincial that God had revealed to him that the whole of France was boiling with the venom of heretical reptiles, and that the business of the Inquisition must be resumed with loosened rein. Frère Robert was to be commissioned again, with fitting colleagues to scour the whole kingdom, aided by the prelates, so that innocence should not suffer nor guilt escape. The Archbishop of Sens was strictly ordered to lend efficient help to Robert, whom God had gifted with especial grace in these matters, and Robert himself was honored with a special papal commission empowering him to act throughout the whole of France. The pope, moreover, spurred him on with exhortations to spare no labor in the work, and not to shrink from martyrdom if necessary for the salvation of souls.[127]
This was pouring oil upon the flames. Robert’s untempered fanaticism had required no stimulus, and now it raged beyond all bounds. The kingdom, by Gregory’s thoughtless zeal, was delivered up to one who was little better than a madman. Supported by the piety of St. Louis, the prelates were obliged to aid him and carry out his behests, and for several years he traversed the provinces of Flanders, Champagne, Burgundy, and France with none to curb or oppose him. The crazy ardor of such a man was not likely to be discriminating or to require much proof of guilt. Those whom he designated as heretics had the alternative of abjuration with perpetual imprisonment or of the stake--varied occasionally with burial alive. In one term of two or three months he is said to have thus despatched about fifty unfortunates of either sex, and the whole number of his victims during his unchecked career of several years must have been large. The terror spread by his arbitrary and pitiless proceedings rendered him formidable to high and low alike, until at length the evident confounding of the innocent with the guilty raised a clamor to which even Gregory IX. was forced to listen. An investigation was held in 1238 which exposed his misdeeds, though not before he had time, in 1239, to burn a number of heretics at Montmorillon in Vienne, and twenty-seven, or, according to other accounts, one hundred and eighty-three, at Mont-Wimer--the original seat of Catharism in the eleventh century--where, at this holocaust pleasing to God, there were present the King of Navarre with a crowd of prelates and nobles and a multitude wildly estimated at seven hundred thousand souls. Robert’s commission was withdrawn, and he expiated his insane cruelties in perpetual prison. The case ought to have proved, like that of Conrad of Marburg, a wholesome warning. Unfortunately the spirit which he had aroused survived him, and for three or four years after his fall active persecution raged from the Rhine to the Loire, under the belief that the land was full of heretics.[128]
The unlucky termination of Robert’s career did not affect his colleagues, and thenceforth the Inquisition was permanently established throughout France in Dominican hands. The prelates at first were stimulated to some show of rivalry in the performance of their neglected duties. Thus the provincial council of Tours, in 1239, endeavored to revive the forgotten system of synodal witnesses. Every bishop was instructed to appoint in each parish three clerks--or, if such could not be had, three laymen worthy of trust--who were to be sworn to reveal to the officials all ecclesiastical offences, especially those concerning the faith. Such devices, however, were too cumbrous and obsolete to be of any avail against a crime so sedulously and so easily concealed as heresy, even if the prelates had been zealous and earnest persecutors. The Dominicans remained undisputed masters of the field, always on the alert, travelling from place to place, scrutinizing and questioning, searching the truth and dragging it from unwilling hearts. Yet scarce a trace of their strenuous labors has been left to us. Heretics throughout the North were comparatively few and scattered; the chroniclers of the period take no note of their discovery and punishment, nor even of the establishment of the Inquisition itself. That a few friars should be deputed to the duty of hunting heretics was too unimpressive a fact to be worthy of record. We know, however, that the pious King Louis welcomed them in his old hereditary dominions, as he did in the newly-acquired territories of Languedoc, and stimulated their zeal by defraying their expenses. In the accounts of the royal baillis for 1248 we find entries of sums disbursed for them in Paris, Orleans, Issoudun, Senlis, Amiens, Tours, Yèvre-le-Chatel, Beaumont, St. Quentin, Laon, and Macon, showing that his liberality furnished them with means to do their work, not only in the domains of the crown, but in those of the great vassals; and these items further illustrate their activity in every corner of the land. That their sharp pursuit rendered heresy unsafe is seen in the permission already alluded to, in 1255, to pursue their quarry across the border into the territories of Alphonse of Toulouse, thus disregarding the limitations of inquisitorial districts.[129]
This shows us that already the Inquisition was becoming organized in a systematic manner. In Provence, where Pons de l’Esparre, the Dominican prior, had at first carried on a kind of volunteer chase after heretics, we see an inquisitor officially acting in 1245. This district, comprising the whole southeastern portion of modern France, with Savoy, was confided to the Franciscans. In 1266, when they were engaged in Marseilles in mortal strife with the Dominicans, the business of persecution would seem to have been neglected, for we find Clement IV. ordering the Benedictines of St. Victor to make provision for extirpating the numerous heretics of the valley of Rousset, where they had a dependency. The Inquisition of Provence was extended in 1288 over Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, whose governor was ordered to defray from the confiscations the moderate expenses of the inquisitors, Bertrand de Cigotier and Guillem de Saint-Marcel. In 1292 Dauphiné was likewise included, thus completing the organization in the territories east of the Rhone. The attention of the inquisitors was specially called to the superstition which led many Christians to frequent the Jewish synagogues with lighted candles, offering oblations and watching through the vigils of the Sabbath, when afflicted with sickness or other tribulations, anxious for friends at sea or for approaching childbirth. All such observances, even in Jews, were idolatry and heresy, and those who practised them were to be duly prosecuted.[130]
With this exception the whole of France was confided to the Dominicans. In 1253 a bull of Innocent IV. renders the Provincial of Paris supreme over the rest of the kingdom, including the territories of Alphonse of Toulouse. Numerous bulls follow during the next few years which speak of the growth of heresy requiring increased efforts for its suppression and of the solicitude of King Louis that the Inquisition should be effective. Elaborate instructions are sent for its management, and various changes are made and unmade in a manner to show that a watchful eye was kept on the institution in France, and that there was a constant effort to render it as efficient as possible. By a papal brief of 1255 we see that at that time the Inquisition of Languedoc was independent of the Paris provincial; in 1257 it is again under his authority; in 1261 it is once more removed, and in 1264 it is restored to him--a provision which became final, rendering him in some sort a grand-inquisitor for the whole of France. In 1255 the Franciscan provincial was adjoined to the Dominican, thus dividing the functions between the two Orders; but this arrangement, as might be expected, does not seem to have worked well, and in 1256 we find the power again concentrated in the hands of the Dominicans. The number of inquisitors to be appointed was always strictly limited by the popes, and it varied with the apparent exigencies of the times and also with the extent of territory. In 1256 only two are specified; in 1258 this is pronounced insufficient for so extensive a region, and the provincial is empowered to appoint four more. In 1261, when Languedoc was withdrawn, the number is reduced to two; in 1266 it is increased to four, exclusive of Languedoc and Provence, to whom in 1267 associates were adjoined, and in 1273 the number was made six, including Languedoc, but excluding Provence. This seems to have been the final organization, but it does not appear that the Northern kingdom was divided into districts, strictly delimitated as those of the South.[131]
The Inquisition at Besançon appears to have been at first independent of that of Paris. After the failure to establish it in 1233 it seems to have remained in abeyance until 1247, when Innocent IV. ordered the Prior of Besançon to send friars throughout Burgundy and Lorraine for the extirpation of heresy. The next year John Count of Burgundy urged greater activity, but his zeal does not seem to have been supplemented with liberality, and in 1255 the Dominicans asked to be relieved of the thankless task, which proved unsuccessful for lack of funds, and Alexander IV. acceded to their request. There are some evidences of an Inquisition being in operation there about 1283, and in 1290 Nicholas IV. ordered the Provincial of Paris to select three inquisitors to serve in the dioceses of Besançon, Geneva, Lausanne, Sion, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, thus placing Lorraine and the French Cantons of Switzerland, as well as Franche Comté, under the Inquisition of France, an arrangement which seems to have lasted for more than a century.[132]
Little remains to us of the organization thus perfected over the wide territory stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Rhine. The laborers were vigorous, and labored according to the light which was in them, but the men and their acts are buried beneath the dust of the forgotten past. That they did their duty is visible in the fact that heresy makes so little figure in France, and that the slow but remorseless extermination of Catharism in Languedoc was not accompanied by its perpetuation in the North. We hear constantly of refugees from Toulouse and Carcassonne flying for safety to Lombardy and even to Sicily, but never to Touraine or Champagne, nor do we ever meet with cases in which the earnest missionaries of Catharism sought converts beyond the Cevennes. This may fairly be ascribed to the vigilance of the inquisitors, who were ever on the watch. Chance has preserved for us as models in a book of formulas some documents issued by Frère Simon Duval, in 1277 and 1278, which afford us a momentary glimpse at his proceedings and enable us to estimate the activity requisite for the functions of his office. He styles himself inquisitor “in regno Franciæ,” which indicates that his commission extended throughout the kingdom north of Languedoc, and he speaks of himself as acting in virtue of the apostolical authority and royal power, showing that Philippe le Hardi had dutifully commissioned him to summon the whole forces of the State to his assistance when requisite. November 23, 1277, he gives public notice that two canons of Liège, Suger de Verbanque and Berner de Niville, had fled on being suspected of heresy, and he cites them to appear for trial at St. Quentin in Vermandois on the 23d of the ensuing January. This trial was apparently postponed, for on January 21, 1278, we find him summoning the people and clergy of Caen to attend his sermon on the 23d. Here he at least found an apostate Jewess who fled, and we have his proclamation calling upon every one to aid Copin, sergeant of the Bailli of Caen, who had been despatched in her pursuit. Frère Duval was apparently making an extended inquest, for July 5 he summons the people and clergy of Orleans to attend his sermon on the 7th. A fortnight later he is back in Normandy and has discovered a nest of heretics near Evreux, for on July 21 we have his citation of thirteen persons from a little village hard by to appear before him. These fragmentary and accidental remains show that his life was a busy one and that his labors were not unfruitful. A letter of the young Philippe le Bel, in February, 1285, to his officials in Champagne and Brie, ordering them to lend all aid to the inquisitor Frère Guillaume d’Auxerre, indicates that those provinces were about to undergo a searching examination.[133]
The inquisitors of France complained that their work was impeded by the universal right of asylum which gave protection to criminals who succeeded in entering a church. No officer of the law dared to follow and make an arrest within the sacred walls, for a violation of this privilege entailed excommunication, removable only after exemplary punishment. Heretics were not slow in availing themselves of the immunity thus mercifully afforded by the Church which they had wronged, and in the jealousy which existed between the secular clergy and the inquisitors there was apparently no effort made to restrict the abuse. Martin IV. was accordingly appealed to, and in 1281 he issued a bull addressed to all the prelates of France, declaring that such perversion of the right of asylum was no longer to be permitted; that in such cases the inquisitors were to have full opportunity to vindicate the faith, and that so far from being impeded in the performance of their duty, they were to be aided in every way. The special mention in this bull of apostate Jews along with other heretics indicates that this unfortunate class formed a notable portion of the objects of inquisitorial zeal. Several of them, in fact, were burned or otherwise penanced in Paris between 1307 and 1310.[134]
There was one class of offenders who would have afforded the Inquisition an ample field for its activity, had it been disposed to take cognizance of them. By the canons, any one who had endured excommunication for a year without submission and seeking absolution was pronounced suspect of heresy, and we have seen Boniface VIII., in 1297, directing the inquisitors of Carcassonne to prosecute the authorities of Béziers for this cause. The land was full of such excommunicates, for the shocking abuse of the anathema by priest and prelate for personal interests had indurated the people, and in a countless number of cases absolution was only to be procured by the sacrifice of rights which even faithful sons of the Church were not prepared to make. This growing disregard of the censure was aggravating to the last degree, but the inquisitors do not seem to have been disposed to come forward in aid of the secular clergy, nor did the latter call upon them for assistance. In 1301 the Council of Reims directed that proceedings should be commenced, when it next should meet, against all who had been under excommunication for two years, as being suspect of heresy; and in 1303 it called upon all such to come forward and purge themselves of the suspicion, but the court in which this was to be done was that of the bishops and not of the Inquisition. Mutual jealousy was seemingly too strong to admit of such co-operation.[135]
* * * * *
In 1308 we hear of a certain Étienne de Verberie of Soissons, accused before the inquisitor of blasphemous expressions concerning the body of Christ. He alleged drunkenness in excuse, and was mercifully treated. Shortly afterwards occurred the first formal auto de fé of which we have cognizance at Paris, on May 31, 1310. A renegade Jew was burned, but the principal victim was Marguerite de Hainault, or la Porete. She is described as a “béguine clergesse,” the first apostle in France of the German sect of Brethren of the Free Spirit, whom we shall consider more fully hereafter. Her chief error was the doctrine that the soul, absorbed in Divine love, could yield without sin or remorse to all the demands of the flesh, and she regarded with insufficient veneration the sacrifice of the altar. She had written a book to propagate these doctrines which had, before the year 1305, been condemned as heretical and burned by Gui II., Bishop of Cambrai. He had mercifully spared her, while forbidding her under pain of the stake from circulating it in future or disseminating its doctrines. In spite of this she had again been brought before Gui’s successor, Philippe de Marigny, and the Inquisitor of Lorraine, for spreading it among the simple folk called Begghards, and she had again escaped. Unwearied in her missionary work, she had even ventured to present the forbidden volume to Jean, Bishop of Chalons, without suffering the penalty due to her obstinacy. In 1308 she extended her propaganda to Paris and fell into the hands of Frère Guillaume de Paris, the inquisitor, before whom she persistently refused to take the preliminary oath requisite to her examination. He was probably too preoccupied with the affair of the Templars to give her prompt justice, and for eighteen months she lay in the inquisitorial dungeons under the consequent excommunication. This would alone have sufficed for her conviction as an impenitent heretic, but her previous career rendered her a relapsed heretic. Instead of calling an assembly of experts, as was customary in Languedoc, the inquisitor laid a written statement of the case before the canonists of the University, who unanimously decided, May 30, that if the facts as stated were true, she was a relapsed heretic, to be relaxed to the secular arm. Accordingly, on May 31, she was handed over, with the customary adjuration for mercy, to the prévôt of Paris, who duly burned her the next day, when her noble manifestation of devotion moved the people to tears of compassion. Another actor in the tragedy was a disciple of Marguerite, a clerk of the diocese of Beauvais named Guion de Cressonessart. He had endeavored to save Marguerite from the clutches of the Inquisition, and on being seized had, like her, refused to take the oath during eighteen months’ imprisonment. His brain seems to have turned during his detention, for at length he astonished the inquisitor by proclaiming himself the Angel of Philadelphia and an envoy of God, who alone could save mankind. The inquisitor in vain pointed out that this was a function reserved solely for the pope, and as Guion would not withdraw his claims he was convicted as a heretic. For some reason, however, not specified in the sentence, he was only condemned to degradation from orders and to perpetual imprisonment.[136]
The next case of which we hear is that of the Sieur de Partenay, in 1323, to which allusion has already been made. Its importance to us lies in its revealing the enormous and almost irresponsible authority wielded by the Inquisition at this period. The most powerful noble of Poitou, when designated as a heretic by Frère Maurice, the Inquisitor of Paris, is at once thrown into the prison of the Temple by the king, and all his estates are sequestrated to await the result. Fortunately for Partenay he had a large circle of influential friends and kindred, among them the Bishop of Noyon, who labored strenuously in his behalf. He was able to appeal to the pope, alleging personal hatred on the part of Frère Maurice; he was sent under guard to Avignon, where his friends succeeded in inducing John XXII. to assign certain bishops as assessors to try the case with the inquisitor, and after infinite delays he was at length set free--probably not without the use of means which greatly diminished his wealth. When such a man could be so handled at the mere word of an angry friar, meaner victims stood little chance.[137] This case in the North and the close of Bernard Gui’s career in Toulouse, about the same time, mark the apogee of the Inquisition in France. Thenceforth we have to follow its decline.
Yet for some years longer there was a show of activity at Carcassonne, where Henri de Chamay was a worthy representative of the older inquisitors. January 16, 1329, in conjunction with Pierre Bruni he celebrated an auto de fé at Pamiers, where thirty-five persons were permitted to lay aside crosses, and twelve were released from prison with crosses, six were pardoned, seven were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, together with four false witnesses, eight had arbitrary penances assigned them, four dead persons were sentenced, and a friar and a priest were degraded. As the see of Pamiers, to which this auto was confined, was a small one, the number of sentences uttered indicates active work. December 12, of the same year, Henri de Chamay held another at Narbonne, where the fate of some forty delinquents was decided. Then, January 7, 1329, he held another at Pamiers; May 19, one at Béziers; September 8, one at Carcassonne, where six unfortunates were burned and twenty-one condemned to perpetual prison. Shortly afterwards he burned three at Albi, and towards the end of the year he held another auto at a place not named, where eight persons were sentenced to prison, three to prison in chains, and two were burned. Some collisions seem to have occurred about this time with the royal officials, for, in 1334, the inquisitors complained to Philippe de Valois that their functions were impeded, and Philippe issued orders to the seneschals of Nimes, Toulouse, and Carcassonne that the Inquisition must be maintained in the full enjoyment of its ancient privileges.[138]
Activity continued for some little time longer, but the records have perished which would supply the details. We happen to have the accounts of the Sénéchaussée of Toulouse, for 1337, which show that Pierre Bruni, the inquisitor, was by no means idle. The receiver of confiscations enumerates the estates of thirty heretics from which collections are in hand; there was an auto de fé celebrated and paid for; the number of prisoners in the inquisitorial jail is stated at eighty-two, but as their maintenance during eleven months amounted to the sum of three hundred and sixty-five livres fourteen sols, the average number at three deniers per diem must have been ninety. The terrible vicissitudes of the English war doubtless soon afterwards slackened the energy of the inquisitors, but we know that there were autos de fé celebrated at Carcassonne in 1346, 1357, and 1383, and one at Toulouse in 1374. The office of inquisitor continued to be filled, but its functions diminished greatly in importance, as we may guess from the fact that it is related of Pierre de Mercalme, who was Provincial of Toulouse from 1350 to 1363, that during more than two years of this period he also served as inquisitor.[139]
In the North we hear little of the Inquisition during this period. The English wars, in fact, must have seriously interfered with its activity, but we have an evidence that it was not neglecting its duty in a complaint made by the Provincial of Paris to Clement VI., in 1351, that the practice of excepting the territories of Charles of Anjou from the commissions issued to inquisitors deprived the provinces of Touraine and Maine of the blessings of the institution and allowed heresy to flourish there, whereupon the pope promptly extended the authority of Frère Guillaume Chevalier and of all future inquisitors to those regions.[140]
With the return of peace under Charles le Sage the Inquisition had freer scope. The Begghards, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, undeterred by the martyrdom of Marguerite la Porete, had continued to exist in secret. In September, 1365, Urban V. notified the prelates and inquisitors throughout France that they were actively at work propagating their doctrines, and he sent detailed information as to their tenets and the places where they were to be found to the Bishop of Paris, with orders to communicate it to his fellow-prelates and the Inquisition. If any immediate response to this was made, the result has not reached us, but in 1372 we find Frère Jacques de More, “inquisiteur des Bougres,” busy in eradicating them. They called themselves the Company of Poverty, and were popularly known by the name of Turelupins; as in Germany, they were distinguished by their peculiar vestments, and they propagated their doctrines largely by their devotional writings in the vernacular. Charles V. rewarded the labors of the inquisitor with a donation of fifty francs, and received the thanks of Gregory XI. for his zeal. The outcome of the affair was the burning of the books and garments of the heretics in the swine-market beyond the Porte Saint-Honoré, together with the female leader of the sect, Jeanne Daubenton. Her male colleague escaped by death in prison, but his body was preserved in quicklime for fifteen days, in order that he might accompany his partner in guilt in the flames. That such a spectacle was sufficiently infrequent to render it a matter of importance is shown by its being recorded in the doggerel of a contemporary chronicler--
“L’an MDCCCLXXII. je vous dis tout pour voir Furent les Turelupins condannez pour ardoir, Pour ce qu’ils desvoient le people à decepvoir Par feaultes heresies, l’Eveque en soult levoir.”
The sect was a stubborn one, however, especially in Germany, as we shall see hereafter, and in the early part of the next century Chancellor Gerson still considers it of sufficient importance to combat its errors repeatedly. Its mystic libertinism was dangerously seducing, and he was especially alarmed by the incredible subtlety with which it was presented in a book written by a woman known as Mary of Valenciennes. In May, 1421, twenty-five of these sectaries were condemned at Douai by the Bishop of Arras. Twenty of them recanted and were penanced with crosses and banishment or imprisonment, but five were stubborn and sealed their faith with martyrdom in the flames.[141]
In 1381 Frère Jacques de More had a more illustrious victim in Hugues Aubriot. A Burgundian by birth, Aubriot’s energy and ability had won for him the confidence of the wise King Charles, who had made him Prévôt of Paris. This office he filled with unprecedented vigor. To him the city owed the first system of sewerage that had been attempted, as well as the Bastille, which he built as a bulwark against the English, and he imposed some limitation on the flourishing industry of the filles de vie. His good government gained him the respect and affection of the people, but he made a mortal enemy of the University by disregarding the immunities on the preservation of which, in the previous century, it had staked its existence. In savage mockery of its wrath, when building the Petit-Châtelet, he named two foul dungeons after two of the principal quarters of the University, le Clos Bruneau and la Rue du Foing, saying that they were intended for the students. Under the strong rule of Charles V. the University had to digest its wrongs as best it could, but after his death, in 1380, it eagerly watched its opportunity. This was not long in coming, nor, in the rivalry between the Dukes of Berri and Burgundy, was it difficult to enlist the former against Aubriot as a Burgundian. The rule of the princes, at once feeble and despotic, invited disorder, and when the people, November 25, 1380, rose against the Jews, pillaged their houses, and forcibly baptized their children, Aubriot incurred the implacable enmity of the Church by forcing a restoration of the infants to their parents. The combination against him thus became too strong for the court to resist. It yielded, and on January 21, 1381, he was cited to appear before the bishop and inquisitor. He disdained to obey the summons, and his excommunication for contumacy was published in all the churches of Paris. This compelled obedience, and when he came before the inquisitor, on February 1, he was at once thrown into the episcopal prison while his trial proceeded. The charges were most frivolous, except the affair of the Jewish children and his having released from the Châtelet a prisoner accused of heresy, placed there by the inquisitor. It was alleged that on one occasion one of his sergeants had excused himself for delay by saying that he had waited at church to see God (the elevation of the Host), when Aubriot angrily rejoined, “Sirrah, know ye not that I have more power to harm you than God to help;” and again that when some one had told him that they would see God in a mass celebrated by Silvestre de la Cervelle, Bishop of Coutances, he replied that God would not permit himself to be handled by such a man as the bishop. His enemies were so exasperated that on the strength of this flimsy gossip he was actually condemned to be burned without the privilege allowed to all heretics of saving himself by abjuration; but the princes intervened and succeeded in obtaining this for him. He had no reason to complain of undue delay. On May 17 a solemn auto de fé was held. On a scaffold erected in front of Nôtre Dame, Aubriot humbly confessed and recanted the heresies of which he had been convicted, and received the sentence of perpetual imprisonment, which of course carried with it the confiscation of his wealth, while the rejoicing scholars of the University lampooned him in halting verses. He was thence conveyed to a dungeon in the episcopal prison, where he lay until 1382, when the insurrection of the Maillotins occurred. The first thought of the people was of their old prévôt. They broke open the prison, drew him forth and placed him at their head. He accepted the post, but the same night he quietly withdrew and escaped to his native Burgundy, where his adventurous life ended in peaceful obscurity. The story is instructive as showing how efficient an instrument was the Inquisition for the gratification of malice. In fact, its functions as a factor in political strife were of sufficient importance to require more detailed consideration hereafter.[142]
After this we hear little more of the Inquisition of Paris, although it continued to exist. When, in 1388, the eloquence of Thomas of Apulia drew wondering crowds to listen with veneration to his teaching that the law of the Gospel was simply love, with the deduction that the sacraments, the invocation of saints, and all the inventions of the current theology were useless; when he wrote a book inveighing against the sins of prelate and pope, and asserting, with the Everlasting Gospel, that the reign of the Holy Ghost had supplanted that of the Father and the Son, and when he boldly announced himself as the envoy of the Holy Ghost sent to reform the world, the Inquisition was not called upon to silence even this revolutionary heretic. It was the Prévôt of Paris who ordered him to desist from preaching, and, when he refused, it was the bishop and University who tried him, ordered his book to be burned on the Place de Grève, and would have him burned had not the medical alienists of the day testified to his insanity and procured for him a commutation of his punishment to perpetual imprisonment.[143]
* * * * *
Various causes had long been contributing to deprive the Inquisition in France of the importance which it had once enjoyed. It no longer as of old poured into the royal fisc a stream of confiscations and co-operated efficiently in consolidating the monarchy. It had done its work too well, and not only had it become superfluous as an instrument for the throne, but the throne which it had aided to establish had become supreme and had reduced it to subjection. Even in the plenitude of inquisitorial power the tendency to regard the royal court as possessing a jurisdiction higher than that of the Holy Office is shown in the case of Amiel de Lautrec, Abbot of S. Sernin. In 1322 the Viguier of Toulouse accused him to the Inquisition for having preached the doctrine that the soul is mortal in essence and only immortal through grace. The Inquisition examined the matter and decided that this was not heresy. The royal procureur-général, dissatisfied with this, appealed from the decision, not to the pope but to the Parlement or royal court. No question more purely spiritual can well be conceived, and yet the Parlement gravely entertained the appeal and asserted its jurisdiction by confirming the decree of the Inquisition.[144]
This was ominous of the future, although the indefatigable Henri de Chamay, apparently alarmed at the efforts successfully made by Philippe de Valois to control and limit spiritual jurisdictions, procured from that monarch, in November, 1329, a Mandement confirming the privileges of the Inquisition, placing all temporal nobles and officials afresh at its disposal, and annulling all letters emanating from the royal court, whether past or future, which should in any way impede inquisitors from performing their functions in accordance with their commissions from the Holy See. The evolution of the monarchy was proceeding too rapidly to be checked. Henri de Chamay himself, in 1328, had officially qualified himself as inquisitor, deputed, not by the pope, as had always been the formula proudly employed, but by the king, and a judicial decision to this effect followed soon after. It was Philippe’s settled policy to enforce and extend the jurisdiction of the crown, and in pursuance of this he sent Guillaume de Villars to Toulouse to reform the encroachments of the ecclesiastical tribunals over the royal courts. In 1330 de Villars, in the performance of his duty, caused the registers of the ecclesiastical courts to be submitted to him, after which he demanded those of the Inquisition. When we remember how jealously these were guarded, how arrogantly Nicholas d’Abbeville had refused a sight of them to the bishops sent by Philippe le Bel, and how long Jean de Pequigny hesitated before he interfered with Geoffroi d’Ablis, we can measure the extent of the silent revolution which had occurred during the interval in the relations between Church and State, by the fact that de Villars, on being refused, coolly proceeded to break open the door of the chamber in which the registers were kept. The inquisitor appealed, and again it was not to the pope, but to the Parlement, and that body, in condemning de Villars to pay the costs and damages, did so on the ground that the Inquisition was a royal and not an ecclesiastical court. This was a Pyrrhic victory; the State had absorbed the Inquisition. It was the same when, in 1334, Philippe listened to the complaints of the inquisitors that his seneschals disturbed them in their jurisdiction, and gave orders that they should enjoy all their ancient privileges, for these are treated as derived wholly from the royal power. Henceforth the Inquisition could exist only on sufferance, subject to the supervision of the Parlement, while the Captivity of Avignon, followed by the Great Schism, constantly gave to the temporal powers increased authority in spiritual matters.[145]
How completely the Inquisition was becoming an affair of state is indicated by two incidents. In 1340, when the lieutenant of the king in Languedoc, Louis of Poitou, Count of Die and Valentinois, was making his entry into the good city of Toulouse, he found the gate closed. Dismounting and kneeling bareheaded on a cushion, he took an oath on the Gospels, in the hands of the inquisitor, to preserve the privileges of the Inquisition, and then another oath to the consuls to maintain the liberties of the city. Thus both institutions were on the same footing and required the same illusory guarantee, the very suggestion of which would have been laughed to scorn by Bernard Gui. Again, in 1368, when the royal revenues were depleted by the English wars and the ravages of the Free Companies, and were insufficient to pay the wages of the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, Pierre Scatisse, the royal treasurer, ordered a levy by the consuls of twenty-six livres tournois to complete the payment. Confiscations had long since ceased to meet the expenditures, but the inquisitor was a royal official and must be paid by the city if not by the state.[146]
How thorough was the subjection of all ecclesiastical institutions, and how fallen the Inquisition from its high estate, is manifested by an occurrence in 1364, at a moment when the royal authority was at the lowest ebb. King John had died a prisoner in London, April 8, and the young Charles V. was not crowned until May 19, while his kingdom was reduced almost to anarchy by foreign aggression and internal dissensions. Yet, April 16, Marshal Arnaud d’Audeneham, Lieutenant du Roi in Languedoc, convoked at Nîmes an assembly of the Three Estates presided over by the Archbishop of Narbonne. One of the questions discussed was a quarrel between the Archbishop of Toulouse and the inquisitor whom he had prohibited from exercising his functions, saying that the Inquisition had been established at the request of the province of Languedoc, and that now it had become an injury. All the prelates, except Aymeri, Bishop of Viviers, sided with the archbishop, while the representatives of Toulouse asked to be admitted as parties to the suit on the side of the inquisitor. No one seems to have doubted that the marshal, as royal deputy, had full jurisdiction over the matter, and his decision was against the archbishop.[147]
Even in Carcassonne, where the Dominicans had lorded it so imperiously, all fear of them had disappeared so utterly that in 1354 a sturdy blacksmith named Hugues erected a shop close to the church of the Friars, and carried on his noisy avocation so vigorously as to interrupt their services and interfere with their studies. Remonstrances and threats were of no avail, and they were obliged to appeal, not to the bishop or the inquisitor, but to the king, who graciously sent a peremptory order to his seneschal to remove the smithy or to prevent Hugues from working in it.[148]
Towards the end of the century some cases occurring in Reims illustrate how completely the Inquisition was falling into abeyance throughout the kingdom, and how the jurisdiction of the royal court of the Parlement was accepted as supreme in spiritual matters. In 1385 there arose a dispute between the magistrates of the city and the archbishop as to jurisdiction over blasphemy, which was claimed by both. This was settled by an agreement recognizing it as belonging to the archbishop, but twenty years later the quarrel broke out afresh over the case of Drouet Largèle, who was guilty of blasphemy savoring of heresy as to the Passion and the Virgin. The matter was appealed to the Parlement, which decided in favor of the archbishop, and no allusion throughout the whole affair occurs as to any claim that the Inquisition might have to interpose, showing that at this time it was practically disregarded. Yet we chance to know that Reims was the seat of an Inquisition, for in 1419 Pierre Florée was inquisitor there, and preached, October 13, the funeral sermon at the obsequies of Jean sans Peur of Burgundy, giving great offence by urging Philippe le Bon not to avenge the murder of his father. We see also the scruples of the Inquisition on the subject of blasphemy in 1423 at Toulouse, where it had become the custom to submit to the inquisitor the names of all successful candidates in municipal elections in order to ascertain whether they were in any way suspect of heresy. Among the capitouls elected in 1423 was a certain François Albert, who was objected to by the acting inquisitor, Frère Bartolomé Guiscard, on account of habitual use of the expletives Tête-Dieu and Ventre-Dieu, whereupon the citizens substituted Pierre de Sarlat. Albert appealed to the Parlement, which approved of the action of the inquisitor.[149]
Still more emphatic as to the supreme authority of the Parlement was the case of Marie du Canech of Cambrai, to which I have already had occasion to refer. For maintaining that when under oath she was not bound to tell the truth to the prejudice of her honor, she was prosecuted for heresy by the Bishop of Cambrai and Frère Nicholas de Péronne, styling himself deputy of the inquisitor-general or Provincial of Paris. Being severely mulcted, she appealed to the Archbishop of Reims, as the metropolitan, and he issued inhibitory letters. Then the bishop and inquisitor appealed from the archbishop to the Parlement. The matter was elaborately argued on both sides, the archbishop alleging that there was at that time no inquisitor in France, and drawing a number of subtle distinctions. The Parlement had no hesitation in accepting jurisdiction over this purely spiritual question. It paid no attention to the cautious arguments of the archbishop, but decided broadly that the bishop and inquisitor had no grounds for disobeying the citation of the archbishop evoking the case to his own court, and it condemned them in costs. Thus the ancient supremacy of the episcopal jurisdiction was reasserted over that of the Inquisition.[150]
The Great Schism, followed by the councils of Constance and Basle, did much to shake the papal power on which that of the Inquisition was founded. The position of Charles VII. towards Rome was consistently insubordinate, and the Pragmatic Sanction which he published in 1438 secured the independence of the Gallican Church, and strengthened the jurisdiction of the Parlement. When Louis XI. abrogated it, in 1461, the remonstrances of his Parlement form a singularly free-spoken indictment of papal vices, and that body continued to treat the instrument as practically in force, while Louis himself, by successive measures of 1463, 1470, 1472, 1474, 1475, and 1479, gradually re-established its principles. Had not the Concordat of Francis I., in 1516, swept it away, when he conspired with Leo X. to divide the spoils of the Church, it would eventually have rendered France independent of Rome. Francis knew so well the opposition which it would excite that he hesitated for a year to submit the measure to his Parlement for registration, and the Parlement deferred the registration for another year, till at last the negotiator of the concordat, Cardinal Duprat, brought to bear sufficient pressure to accomplish the object. During the discussion the University had the boldness to protest publicly against it, and to lodge with the Parlement an appeal to the next general council.[151]
During this period of antagonism to Rome the University of Paris had contributed no little to the abasement of the Inquisition by supplanting it as an investigator of doctrine and judge of heresy. Its ancient renown, fully maintained by an uninterrupted succession of ardent and learned teachers, gave it great authority. It was a national institution of which clergy and laity alike might well be proud, and at one time it appeared as though it might rival the Parlement in growing into one of the recognized powers of the State. In the fearful anarchy which accompanied the insanity of Charles VI. it boldly assumed a right to speak on public affairs, and its interference was welcomed. In 1411 the king, who chanced at the time to be in the hands of the Burgundians, appealed to it to excommunicate the Armagnacs, and the University zealously did so. In 1412 it presented a remonstrance to the king on the subject of the financial disorders of the time and demanded a reform. Supported by the Parisians, at its dictate the financiers and thieves of the government, with the exception of the chancellor, were dismissed in 1413, greatly to the discontent of the courtiers, who ridiculed the theologians as bookworms; and in the same year it co-operated with the Parlement in securing momentary peace between the angry factions of the land. The thanks which the heir-apparent, the Duke of Guienne, accompanied by the Dukes of Berri, Burgundy, Bavaria, and Bar, solemnly rendered to the assembled Faculty, virtually recognized it as a part of the State. But when, in 1415, it sent a deputation to remonstrate against the oppression of the people through excessive taxation, the Duke of Guienne, who was angry at the part taken by it, without consulting the court, in degrading John XXIII. at the Council of Constance, curtly told the spokesmen that they were interfering in matters beyond their competence; and when the official orator attempted to reply, the duke had him arrested on the spot and kept in prison for several days.[152]
Though its temporary ambition to rival the Parlement in state affairs was fortunately not gratified, in theology such a body as this was supreme. It would naturally be called upon, either as a whole or by delegates, to furnish the experts whose counsel was to guide bishop and inquisitor in the decision of cases; and as the old heresies died out and new ones were evolved, every deviation from orthodoxy came to be submitted to it as a matter of course, when its decision was received as final. These were for the most part scholastic subtleties to which I shall recur hereafter, as well as to the great controversies over the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, and over Nominalism and Realism, in which it took a distinguished part. Sometimes, however, the questions were more practical. When some insolent wretch, in 1432, impudently told Frère Pierre de Voie, the deputy-inquisitor of Evreux, that his citations were simply abuses, the offended functionary, in place of promptly clapping the recalcitrant into prison, plaintively referred the case to the University, and had the satisfaction of receiving a solemn decision that the words were audacious, presumptuous, scandalous, and tending to rebellion (it did not say heretical), and that the utterer was liable to punishment. Bernard Gui or Nicholas d’Abbeville would have asked for no such warrant.[153]
To what an extent the University in time replaced the Inquisition in its neglected and forgotten functions is shown in 1498, in the case of the Observantine Franciscan, Jean Vitrier. In the restlessness and insubordination which heralded the Reformation, this obscure friar anticipated Luther even more than did John of Wesel, although in the strictness of his asceticism he taught that a wife might better break her marriage-vow than her fasts. In his preaching at Tournay he counselled the people to drag the concubines and their priests from their houses with shame and derision; he affirmed that it was a mortal sin to listen to the masses of concubinary priests. Pardons and indulgences were the offspring of hell: the faithful ought not to purchase them, for they were not intended for the maintenance of brothels. Even the intercession of the saints was not to be sought. These were old heresies for which any inquisitor would promptly offer the utterer the alternative of abjuration or the stake; but the prelates and magistrates of Tournay referred the matter to the University, which laboriously extracted from Vitrier’s sermons sixteen propositions for condemnation.[154]
Even more significant of the growing authority of the University and the waning power of the Papacy was a decision rendered in 1502. Alexander VI. had levied a tithe on the clergy of France, with the customary excuse of prosecuting the war against the Turks. The clergy, whose consent had not been asked, refused to pay. The pope rejoined by excommunicating them, and they applied to the University to know whether such a papal excommunication was valid, whether it was to be feared, and whether they should consequently abstain from the performance of divine service. On all these points the University replied in the negative, unanimously and without hesitation. Had circumstances permitted the same independence in Germany, a little more progress in this direction would have rendered Luther superfluous.[155]
It is not to be supposed, however, that the Inquisition, though fallen from its former dignity, had ceased to exist or to perform its functions after a fashion. It was to the interest of the popes to maintain it, and the position of inquisitor, though humble in comparison with that which his predecessors enjoyed, was yet a source of influence, and possibly of profit, which led to its being eagerly sought. In 1414 we find two contestants for the post at Toulouse, and in 1424 an unseemly quarrel between two rivals at Carcassonne. The diocese of Geneva was also the subject of contention embittered by the traditional rivalry between the two Mendicant Orders. It will be remembered that in 1290 this, with other French cantons, was included by Nicholas IV. in the inquisitorial province of Besançon, which was Dominican. Geneva belonged, however, ecclesiastically to the metropolis of Vienne, which was under the Franciscan Inquisition of Provence, and Gregory XI. so treated it in 1375. When Pons Feugeyron was commissioned, in 1409, Geneva was not mentioned in the enumeration of the dioceses under him; but when his commission was renewed by Martin V., in 1418, it was included, and he began to exercise his powers there. There at once arose the threat of a most scandalous quarrel between the combative Orders; the Dominicans appealed to Martin, and in 1419 he restored Geneva to them. Yet in 1434, when Eugenius IV. again confirmed Pons Feugeyron’s commission, the name of Geneva once more slipped in. The Dominicans must again have successfully reclaimed it, for in 1472, when there was a sudden resumption of inquisitorial activity under Sixtus IV., in confirming Frère Jean Vaylette as Inquisitor of Provence, with the same powers as Pons Feugeyron, Geneva was omitted in the list of his jurisdictions, while the Dominicans, Victor Rufi and Claude Rufi, were appointed respectively at Geneva and Lausanne; and in 1491 another Dominican, François Granet, was commissioned at Geneva.[156]
Yet the position thus eagerly sought had no legitimate means of support. In the terrible disorders of the times the royal stipends had been withdrawn. Alexander V., in 1409, instructed his legate, the Cardinal of S. Susanna, that some method must be devised of meeting the expenses of the inquisitor, his associate, his notary, and his servant. He suggests either levying three hundred gold florins on the Jews of Avignon; or that each bishop shall defray the cost as the inquisitor moves from one diocese to another; or that each bishop shall contribute ten florins annually out of the legacies for pious uses. Which device was adopted does not appear, but they all seem to have proved fruitless, for in 1418 Martin V. wrote to the Archbishop of Narbonne that he must find some means of supplying the necessary expenses of the Inquisition. Under such circumstances the attraction of the office may, perhaps, be discerned from a petition, in this same year 1418, from the citizens of Avignon in favor of the Jews. The protection afforded by the Avignonese popes to this proscribed class had rendered the city a Jewish centre, and they were found of much utility; but they were constantly molested by the inquisitors, who instituted frivolous prosecutions against them, doubtless not without profit. Martin listened kindly to the appeal, and it proves the degradation of the Inquisition that he gave the Jews a right to appoint an assessor who should sit with the inquisitor in all cases in which they were concerned.[157]
Still the Inquisition was not wholly without evidence of activity in its purposed sphere of duty. We shall see hereafter that Pierre d’Ailly, Bishop of Cambrai, when, in 1411, he prosecuted the Men of Intelligence, duly called in the inquisitor of the province, who was Dominican Prior of St. Quentin in Vermandois, to join in the sentence. In 1430 we hear of a number of heretics who had been burned at Lille by the deputy-inquisitor and the Bishop of Tournay; and in 1431 Philippe le Bon ordered his officials to execute all sentences pronounced by Brother Heinrich Kaleyser, who had been appointed Inquisitor of Cambrai and Lille by the Dominican Provincial of Germany--a manifest invasion of the rights of his colleague of Paris, doubtless due to the political complications of the times. This order of Philippe le Bon, however, shows that the example of supervision set by the Parlement was not lost on the feudatories, for the officials are only instructed to make arrests when there has been a proper preliminary inquest, with observance of all the forms of law. I shall have occasion hereafter to speak of the part played by the Inquisition in the tragedy of Joan of Arc, and need here only allude to the appointment, in 1431, by Eugenius IV., of Frère Jean Graveran to be Inquisitor of Rouen, where he was already exercising the functions of the office, and where he was succeeded in 1433 by Frère Sébastien l’Abbé, who had been papal penitentiary and chaplain--another evidence of the partition of France during the disastrous English war. People were growing more careless about excommunication than ever. About 1415, a number of ecclesiastics of Limoges were prosecuted by the inquisitor, Jean du Puy, as suspect of heresy for this cause; they appealed to the Council of Constance, and in 1418 the matter was referred back to the archbishop. Still the indifference to excommunication grew, and in 1435 Eugenius IV. instructed the Inquisitor of Carcassonne to prosecute all who remained under the censure of the Church for several years without seeking absolution.[158]
With the pacification of France and the final expulsion of the English, Nicholas V. seems to have thought the occasion opportune for reviving and establishing the Inquisition on a firmer and broader basis. A bull of August 1, 1451, to Hugues le Noir, Inquisitor of France, defines his jurisdiction as extending not only over the Kingdom of France, but also over the Duchy of Aquitaine and all Gascony and Languedoc. Thus, with the exception of the eastern provinces, the whole was consolidated into one district, with its principal seat probably in Toulouse. The jurisdiction of the inquisitor was likewise extended over all offences that had hitherto been considered doubtful--blasphemy, sacrilege, divination, even when not savoring of heresy, and unnatural crimes. He was further released from the necessity of episcopal co-operation, and was empowered to carry on all proceedings and render judgment without calling the bishops into consultation. Two centuries earlier these enormous powers would have rendered Hugues almost omnipotent, but now it was too late. The Inquisition had sunk beyond resuscitation. In 1458 the Franciscan Minister of Burgundy represented to Pius II. the deplorable condition of the institution in the extensive territories confided to his Order, comprising the great archiepiscopates of Lyons, Vienne, Arles, Aix, Embrun, and Tarantaise, and covering both sides of the Rhone and a considerable portion of Savoy. In the thirteenth century Clement IV. had placed this region under the control of the Burgundian Minister, but with the lapse of time his supervision had become nominal. Ambitious friars had obtained directly from the popes commissions to act as inquisitors in special districts, and therefore acknowledged no authority but their own. Others had assumed the office without appointment from any one. There was no power to correct their excesses; scandals were numerous, the people were oppressed, and the Order exposed to opprobrium. Pius hastened to put an end to these abuses by renewing the obsolete authority of the minister, with full power of removal, even of those who enjoyed papal commissions.[159]
The Inquisition was thus reorganized, but its time had passed. To so low an ebb had it fallen that in this same year, 1458, Frère Bérard Tremoux, Inquisitor of Lyons, who had aroused general hostility by the rigor with which he exercised his office, was thrown in prison through the efforts of the citizens, and it required the active interposition of Pius II. and his legate, Cardinal Alano, to effect his release. The venality and corruption of the papal curia, moreover, was so ineradicable that no reform was possible in anything subject to its control. But three years after Pius had placed the whole district under the Minister of Burgundy we find him renewing the old abuses by a special appointment of Brother Bartholomäus of Eger as Inquisitor of Grenoble. That such commissions were sold, or conferred as a matter of favor, there can be no reasonable doubt, and the appointees were turned loose upon their districts to wring what miserable gains they could from the fears of the people. Only this can explain a form of appointment which became common as “inquisitor in the Kingdom of France,” “without prejudice to other inquisitors authorized by us or by others”--a sort of letter-of-marque to cruise at large and make what the appointees could from the faithful. Similarly significant is the appointment of Frère Pierre Cordrat, confessor of Jean, Duke of Bourbon, in 1478, to be Inquisitor of Bourges, thus wholly disregarding the consolidation of the kingdom by Nicholas V. It is hardly necessary to extend the list further. Inquisitors were appointed by the popes in constant succession, either for the kingdom of France or for special districts, as though the institution were at the height of its power and activity. That something was to be gained by all this there can be no question, but there is little risk in assuming that the gainer was not religion.[160]
Several cases occurring about this period are interesting as illustrations of the spread of the spirit of inquiry and independence, and of the subordinate position to which the Inquisition had sunk. In 1459, at Lille, there was burned a heretic known as Alphonse of Portugal, who led an austere life as an anchorite and frequented the churches assiduously, but who declared that since Gregory the Great there had been no true pope, and consequently no valid administration of the sacraments. In the account which has reached us of his trial and execution there is no allusion to the intervention of the Holy Office. Still more significant is the case, in 1484, of Jean Laillier, a priest in Paris, a theological licentiate, and an applicant for the doctorate in theology. In his sermons he had been singularly free-spoken. He denied the validity of the rule of celibacy; he quoted Wickliff as a great doctor; he rejected the supremacy of Rome and the binding force of tradition and decretal; John XXII., he said, had had no power to condemn Jean de Poilly; so far from St. Francis occupying the vacant throne of Lucifer in heaven, he was rather with Lucifer in hell; since the time of Silvester the Holy See had been the church of avarice and of imperial power, where canonization could be obtained for money. So weak had become the traditional hold of the Church on the consciences of men that this revolutionary preaching seems to have aroused no opposition, even on the part of the Inquisition; but Laillier, not content with simple toleration, applied to the University for the doctorate, and was refused admission to the preliminary disputations unless he should purge himself, undergo penance, and obtain the assent of the Holy See. Laillier thereupon boldly applied to the Parlement, now by tacit assent clothed with supreme jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters, asking it to compel the University to admit him. The Parlement entertained no doubts as to its own competence, but decided the case in a manner not looked for by the hardy priest. It ordered Louis, Bishop of Paris, in conjunction with the inquisitor and four doctors selected by the University, to prosecute Laillier to due punishment. The bishop and inquisitor agreed to proceed separately and communicate their processes to each other; but Laillier must have had powerful backers, for Bishop Louis, without conferring with his colleague or the experts, allowed Laillier to make a partial recantation and a public abjuration couched in the most free and easy terms, absolved him, June 23, 1486, pronounced him free from suspicion of heresy, restored him to his functions, and declared him capable of promotion to all grades and honors. Frère Jean Cossart, the inquisitor, who had been diligently collecting evidence of many scandalous doctrines of Laillier’s and vainly communicating them to the bishop, was forced to swallow this affront in silence, but the University felt its honor engaged and was not inclined to submit. November 6, 1486, it issued a formal protest against the action of the bishop, appealed to the pope, and demanded “Apostoli.” Innocent VIII. promptly came to the rescue. He annulled the decision of the bishop and ordered the inquisitor, in conjunction with the Archbishop of Sens and the Bishop of Meaux, to throw Laillier into prison, while they should investigate the unrecanted heresies and send the papers to Rome for decision. Very suggestive of the strong influences supporting Laillier is the pope’s expression of fear lest the pressure brought to bear on the University should have forced it to admit him to the doctorate; if so, such action is pronounced void, and all engaged in the attempt are ordered to desist under pain of incurring suspicion of heresy. It is not a little singular that the Bishop of Meaux, who was thus selected to sit in judgment on Laillier, was at this very time under censure by the University for reviving the Donatist heresy of the insufficiency of the sacraments in polluted hands--the Eucharist of a fornicating priest was of no more account, he said, than the barking of a dog. Many an unfortunate Waldensian had been burned for less than this, but the inquisitor had not dared to hold him to account. Nor do we hear of his intervention in the case of Jean Langlois, priest of St. Crispin, who, when celebrating mass, June 3, 1491, horrified his flock by casting on the floor and trampling the consecrated wine and host. On his arrest he gave as his reason that the body and blood of Christ were not in the elements, and as he stubbornly refused to recant, he expiated his error at the stake. Similar was the fate of Aymon Picard, who, at the feast of St. Louis in the Sainte-Chapelle, August 25, 1503, snatched the host from the celebrant and cast it in pieces on the floor, and obstinately declined to abjure. All this was significant of the time coming when the Inquisition would be more necessary than ever.[161]
The present degradation which it shared with the rest of the Church in the constantly growing supremacy of the State is manifested by a commission issued in 1485, by Frère Antoine de Clède, appointing a vicar to act for him in Rodez and Vabres. In this document he styles himself Inquisitor of France, Aquitaine, Gascony, and Languedoc, deputed by the Holy See and the Parlement. The two bodies are thus equal sources of authority, and the appointment by the pope would have been insufficient without the confirmation by the royal court. How contemptible, indeed, the Inquisition had become, even in the eyes of ecclesiastics, is brought instructively before us in a petty quarrel between the Inquisitor Raymond Gozin and his Dominican brethren. When he succeeded Frère Gaillard de la Roche, somewhere about 1516, he found that the house of the Inquisition at Toulouse had been stripped of its furniture and utensils by the friars of the Dominican convent. He made a reclamation, and some of the articles were restored; but the friars subsequently demanded them back, and on his refusal procured from the General Master instructions to the vicar, under which the latter proceeded to extremities with him, wholly disregarding his appeal to the pope, though he finally, in 1520, succeeded in obtaining the intervention of Leo X. Imagination could scarcely furnish a more convincing proof of decadence than this exhibition of the successor of Bernard de Caux and Bernard Gui vainly endeavoring to defend his kitchen gear from the rapacious hands of his brethren.[162]
It is quite probable that this dispute was envenomed by the inevitable jealousy between the main body of the Order and its puritan section known as the Reformed Congregation. Of this latter Raymond Gozin was vicar-general, and his anxiety to regain his furnishings was probably due to the fact that he was altering the house of the Inquisition so as to accommodate within it a Reformed convent. The vast buildings which it had required in the plenitude of its power had become a world too wide for its shrunken needs. The original home of the Dominican Order, before the removal in 1230 through the liberality of Pons de Capdenier, it contained a church with three altars, a refectory, cells (or prison), chambers, guest-rooms, cloisters, and two gardens. In approving of the proposed alterations, Leo X. stipulated that some kind of retiring-room with convenient offices must still be reserved for the use of the Inquisition. This epitomizes the history of the institution. Yet it had by no means wholly lost its power of evil, for in 1521 Johann Bomm, Dominican Prior of Poligny, and inquisitor at Besançon had the satisfaction of despatching two lycanthropists, or wer-wolves.[163]
* * * * *
The career of the Waldenses forms so interesting and well-defined an episode in the history of persecution that I have hitherto omitted all reference to that sect, in order to present a brief, continuous outline of its relations with the Inquisition, which found in it, after the disappearance of the Cathari, the only really important field of labor in France.
Although by no means as numerous or as powerful in Languedoc as the Cathari, the Waldenses formed an important heretical element. They were, however, mostly confined to the humbler classes, and we hear of few nobles belonging to the sect. In the sentences of Pierre Cella, rendered in Querci in 1241 and 1242, we have abundant testimony as to their numbers and activity. Thus, references occur to them--
At Gourdon in 55 cases out of 219 At Montcucq in 44 " " " 84 At Sauveterre in 1 case " " 5 At Belcayre in 3 cases out of 7 At Montauban in 175 " " " 252 At Moissac in 1 case " " 94 At Montpezat in no " " " 22 At Montaut in no " " " 23 At Castelnau in 1 " " " 11
and although many of these are mere allusions to having seen them or had dealings with them, the comparative frequency of the reference indicates the places where their heresy was most flourishing. Thus, Montauban was evidently its headquarters in the district, and at Gourdon and Montcucq there were vigorous colonies.
They had a regular organization--schools for the young where their doctrines were doubtless implanted in the children of orthodox parents; cemeteries where their dead were buried; missionaries who traversed the land diligently to spread the faith, and who customarily refused all alms, save hospitality. A certain Pierre des Vaux is frequently referred to as one of the most active and most beloved of these, regarded, according to one of his disciples, as an angel of light. Public preaching in the streets was constant, and numerous allusions are made to disputations held between the Waldensian ministers and the Catharan perfects. Still, the utmost good feeling existed between the two persecuted sects. Men were found who confessed to believing in the Waldenses and to performing acts of adoration to the Cathari--in the common enmity to Rome any faith which was not orthodox was regarded as good. The reputation of the Waldenses as skilful leeches was a powerful aid in their missionary labors. They were constantly consulted in cases of disease or injury, and almost without exception they refused payment for their ministrations, save food. One woman confessed to giving forty sols to a Catharan for medical services, while to Waldenses she gave only wine and bread. We learn also that they heard confessions and imposed penance; that they celebrated a sacramental supper in which bread and fish were blessed and partaken of, and that bread which they consecrated with the sign of the cross was regarded as holy by their disciples. Notwithstanding the strength and organization of the sect, the Waldenses were evidently looked upon by Pierre Cella with a less unfavorable eye than the Cathari, and the penances imposed on them were habitually lighter.[164]
From Lyons the Waldensian belief had spread to the North and East, as well as to the South and West. It is a curious fact that while the Cathari never succeeded in establishing themselves to any extent beyond the Romance territories, the Waldenses were already, in 1192, so numerous in Lorraine that Eudes, Bishop of Toul, in ordering them to be captured and brought to him in chains for judgment, not only promises remission of sins as a reward, but feels obliged to add that if, for rendering this service, the faithful are driven away from their homes, he will find them in food and clothing. In Franche Comté, John, Count of Burgundy, bears emphatic testimony to their numbers in 1248, when he solicited of Innocent IV. the introduction of the Inquisition in his dominions, and its discontinuance in 1257 doubtless left them to multiply in peace. In 1251 we find the Archbishop of Narbonne condemning some female Waldenses to perpetual imprisonment. It was, however, in the mountains of Auvergne and the Alpine and sub-Alpine regions stretching between Geneva and the Mediterranean that they found the surest refuge. While Pierre Cella was penancing those of Querci, the Archbishop of Embrun was busy with their brethren of Freyssinières, Argentière, and Val-Pute, which so long continued to be their strongholds. In 1251, when Alphonse and Jeanne, on their accession, guaranteed at Beaucaire the liberties of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, the Bishop-legate Zoen earnestly urged them to destroy the Waldenses there. There were ample laws on the municipal statute-books of Avignon and Arles for the extermination of “heretics and Waldenses,” but the local magistracy was slack in their enforcement and was obliged to swear to extirpate the sectaries. The Waldenses were mostly simple mountain folk, with possessions that offered no temptation for confiscation, and persecuting energy was more profitable and more usefully directed against the richer Cathari. We hear, indeed, that from 1271 to 1274 the zeal of Guillaume de Cobardon, Seneschal of Carcassonne, urged the inquisitors to active work against the Waldenses, resulting in numerous convictions, but among the far more populous communities near the Rhone the Inquisition was not introduced into the Comtat Venaissin until 1288, nor into Dauphiné until 1292, and in both cases we are told that it was caused by the alarming spread of heresy. In 1288 the same increase is alluded to in the provinces of Arles, Aix, and Embrun, when Nicholas IV. sent to the nobles and magistrates there the laws of Frederic II., with orders for their enforcement, and to the inquisitors a code of instructions for procedure.[165]
About the same period there is a curious case of a priest named Jean Philibert, who was sent from Burgundy into Gascony to track a fugitive Waldensian. He followed his quarry as far as Ausch, where he found a numerous community of the sectaries, holding regular assemblies and preaching and performing their rites, although they attended the parish churches to avert suspicion. Their evangelical piety so won upon him that, after going home, he returned to Ausch and formally joined them. He wandered back to Burgundy, where he fell under suspicion, and in 1298 he was brought before Gui de Reims, the Inquisitor of Besançon, when he refused to take an oath and was consigned to prison. Here he abjured, and on being liberated returned to the Waldenses of Gascony, was again arrested, and brought before Bernard Gui in 1311, who finally burned him in 1319 as a relapsed. In 1302 we hear of two Waldensian ministers haunting the region near Castres, in the Albigeois, wandering around by night and zealously propagating their doctrines. Still, in spite of these evidences of activity, little effort at repression is visible at this period. The Inquisition was crippled for a while by its contest with Philippe le Bel and Clement V., and when it resumed unrestricted operations, Pierre Autier and his Catharan disciples absorbed its energies. Although the sentences of Bernard Gui at Toulouse commence in 1308, it is not until the auto de fé of 1316 that any Waldenses appear among its victims, when one was condemned to perpetual imprisonment and one was burned as an unrepentant heretic. The auto of 1319 appears to have been a jail-delivery, for poor wretches appear in it whose confessions date back to 1309, 1311, 1312, and 1315. On this occasion eighteen Waldenses were condemned to pilgrimages with or without crosses, twenty-six to perpetual prison, and three were burned. In the auto of 1321 a man and his wife who obstinately refused to abjure were burned. In that of 1322 eight were sentenced to pilgrimages, of whom five had crosses, two to prison, six dead bodies were exhumed and burned, and there is an allusion to the brother of one of the prisoners who had been burned at Avignon. This comprises the whole work of Bernard Gui from 1308 to 1323, and does not indicate any very active persecution. It is perhaps noteworthy that all of those punished in 1319 were from Ausch, while the popular name of “Burgundians,” by which the Waldenses were known, indicates that the headquarters of the sect were still in Franche Comté. In fact, an allusion to a certain Jean de Lorraine as a successful missionary indicates that region as busy in proselyting efforts, and there are not wanting facts to prove that the Inquisition of Besançon was active during this period. In the auto of 1322 many of the sufferers were refugees from Burgundy, and we learn that they had a provincial named Girard, showing that the Waldensian Church of that region had a regular organization and hierarchy.[166]
In his “Practica” Bernard Gui gives a clear and detailed statement of the Waldensian belief as it existed at this time, the chief points of which may be worth enumerating as affording us a definite view of the development of the faith in its original seat after a century and a half of persecution. There was no longer any self-deceit as to connection with the Roman Church. Persecution had done its work, and the Waldenses were permanently severed. Theirs was the true Church, and that of the pope was but a house of lies, whose excommunication was not to be regarded, and whose decrees were not to be obeyed. They had a complete organization, consisting of bishops, priests, and deacons, and they held in some large city one or two general chapters every year, in which orders were conferred and measures for mission work were perfected. The Waldensian orders, however, did not confer exclusive supernatural power. Although they still believed in transubstantiation, the making of the body and blood of Christ depended on the purity of the ministrant; a sinner was impotent to effect it, while it could be done by any righteous man or woman. It was the same with absolution: they held the power of the keys direct from Christ, and heard confessions and imposed penance. Their antisacerdotalism was strongly expressed in the simplification of their faith. There was no purgatory, and consequently masses for the dead or the invocation of the suffrages of the saints were of no avail; the saints, in fact, neither heard nor helped man, and the miracles performed in their name in the churches were fictitious. The fasts and feasts prescribed in the calendar were not to be observed, and the indulgences so lavishly sold were useless. As of old, oaths and homicide were forbidden. Yet enough of the traditional ascetic tendencies were preserved to lead to the existence of a monastic fraternity whose members divested themselves of all individual property, and promised chastity, with obedience to a superior. Bernard Gui refers, with a brevity which shows how little importance he attached to them, to stories about sexual abominations performed in nocturnal assemblies, and he indicates the growth of popular superstition by a brief allusion to a dog which appears in these gatherings and sprinkles the sectaries with his tail.[167]
The non-resistance doctrines of the Waldenses rendered them, as a rule, a comparatively easy prey, but human nature sometimes asserted itself, and a sharp persecution carried on at this period by Frère Jacques Bernard, Inquisitor of Provence, provoked a bloody reprisal. In 1321 he sent two deputies--Frères Catalan Fabri and Pierre Paschal--to the diocese of Valence to make inquisition there. Former raids had left the people in an angry mood. Multitudes had been subjected to the humiliation of crosses, and these and their friends vowed revenge on the appearance of the new persecutors. A plot was rapidly formed to assassinate the inquisitors at a village where they were to pass the night. For some reason, however, they changed their plans, and passed on to the Priory of Montoison. The conspirators followed them, broke down the doors, and slew them. Strangely enough, the Prior of Montoison was accused of complicity in the murder, and was arrested when the murderers were seized. The bodies of the martyrs were solemnly buried in the Franciscan convent at Valence, where they soon began to manifest their sanctity in miracles, and they would have been canonized by John XXII. had not the quarrel which soon afterwards sprang up between him and the Franciscans rendered it impolitic for him to increase the number of Franciscan saints.[168]
A few Waldenses appear in the prosecutions of Henri de Chamay of Carcassonne in 1328 and 1329, and, from the occasional notices which have reached us in the succeeding years, we may conclude that persecution, more or less fitful, never wholly ceased; while, in spite of this, the heresy kept constantly growing. After the disappearance of Catharism, indeed, it was the only refuge for ordinary humanity when dissatisfied with Rome. The Begghards were mystics whose speculations were attractive only to a certain order of minds. The Spirituals and Fraticelli were Franciscan ascetics. The Waldenses sought only to restore Christianity to its simplicity; their doctrines could be understood by the poor and illiterate, groaning under the burdens of sacerdotalism, and they found constantly wider acceptance among the people, in spite of all the efforts put forth by the waning power of the Inquisition. Benedict XII., in 1335, summoned Humbert II., Dauphin of Viennois, and Adhémar of Poitou to assist the inquisitors. Humbert obeyed, and from 1336 to 1346 there were expeditions sent against them which drove them from their homes and captured some of them. Of these a portion abjured and the rest were burned; their possessions were confiscated and the bones of the dead exhumed. The secular and ecclesiastical officials of Embrun joined in these efforts, but they had no permanent result. In Languedoc Frère Jean Dumoulin, Inquisitor of Toulouse, in 1344 attacked them vigorously, but only succeeded in scattering them throughout Béarn, Foix, and Aragon. In 1348 Clement VI. again urged Humbert, who responded with strict orders to his officers to aid the ecclesiastical authorities with what force might be necessary, and this time we hear of twelve Waldenses brought to Embrun, and burned on the square in front of the cathedral. When Dauphiné became a possession of the crown the royal officials were equally ready to assist. Letters of October 20, 1351, from the governor, order the authorities of Briançon to give the inquisitor armed support in his operations against the heretics of the Briançonnais, but this seems to have been ineffective; and the next year Clement VI. appealed to the Dauphin Charles, and to Louis and Joanna of Naples, to aid Frère Pierre Dumont, the Inquisitor of Provence, and summoned prelates and magistrates to co-operate in the good work. The only recorded result of this was the penancing of seven Waldenses by Dumont in 1353. More successful were the Christian labors of Guillaume de Bordes, Archbishop of Embrun from 1352 to 1363, surnamed the Apostle of the Waldenses, who tried the unusual expedient of kindness and persuasion. He personally visited the mountain valleys, and had the satisfaction of winning over a number of the heretics. With his death his methods were abandoned, and Urban V., from 1363 to 1365, was earnest in calling upon the civil power and in stimulating the zeal of the Provençal inquisitors, Frères Hugues Cardilion and Jean Richard. The celebrated inquisitor François Borel now appears upon the scene. Armed expeditions were sent into the mountains which had considerable success. Many of the heretics were obstinate and were burned, while others saved their lives by abjuration. Their pitiful little properties were confiscated; one had a cow, another two cows and clothes of white cloth. In the purse of another, more wealthy, were found two florins--a booty which scarce proved profitable, for the wood to burn him and a comrade cost sixty-two sols and six deniers. One woman named Juven who was burned possessed a vineyard. The vintage was gathered and the must stored in her cabin, when the wrathful neighbors fired it at night and destroyed the product.[169]
All this was of no avail. When Gregory XI. ascended the pontifical throne, in 1370, his attention was early directed to the deplorable condition of the Church in Provence, Dauphiné, and the Lyonnais. The whole region was full of Waldenses, and many nobles were now beginning to embrace the heresy. The prelates were powerless or negligent, and the Inquisition ineffective. He set to work vigorously, appointing inquisitors and stimulating their zeal, but the whole system by this time was so discredited that his labors were ineffectual. The royal officials, so far from aiding the inquisitors, had no scruple in impeding them. Unsafe places were assigned to them in which to conduct their operations; they were forced to permit secular judges to act as assessors with them; their proceedings were submitted for revision to the secular courts, and even their prisoners were set at liberty without consulting them. The secular officials refused to take oaths to purge the land of heresy, and openly protected heretics, especially nobles, when prosecutions were commenced against them.[170]
Gregory duly complained of this to Charles le Sage in 1373, but to little purpose at first. The evil continued unabated, and in 1375 he returned to the charge still more vigorously. No stone was left unturned. Not only was the king requested to send a special deputy to the infected district, but the pope wrote directly to the royal lieutenant, Charles de Banville, reproaching him for his protection of heretics, and threatening him if he did not mend his ways. Certain nobles who had become conspicuous as favorers of heresy were significantly reminded of the fate of Raymond of Toulouse; the prelates were scolded and stimulated; Amedeo of Savoy was summoned to assist, and the Tarantaise was added to the district of Provence that nothing might interfere with the projected campaign. As the spread of heresy was attributable to the lack of preachers, and to the neglect of prelates and clergy in instructing their flocks, the inquisitor was empowered to call in the services of Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians, to spread over the land and teach the people the truths of religion. These multiplied efforts at length began to tell. Charles issued orders to enforce the laws against heresy, and when Gregory sent a special Apostolic Internuncio, Antonio, Bishop of Massa, to direct operations, persecution began in earnest. Frère François Borel, the Inquisitor of Provence, had long been struggling against the indifference of the prelates and the hostility of the secular power. Now that he was sure of efficient seconding be was like a hound slipped from the leash. His forays against the miserable populations of Freyssinières, l’Argentière, and Val-Pute (or Val-Louise) have conferred on him a sinister reputation, unredeemed by the efficient aid which he contributed to regaining the liberties of his native town of Gap.[171]
The immediate success which rewarded these efforts was so overwhelming as to bring new cause for solicitude. The Bishop of Massa’s mission commenced early in May, 1375, and already, by June 17, Gregory is concerned about the housing and support of the crowds of wretches who had been captured. In spite of numerous burnings of those who proved obstinate, the prisons of the land were insufficient for the detention of the captives, and Gregory at once ordered new and strong ones to be built in Embrun, Avignon, and Vienne. To solve the financial complications which immediately arose, the bishops, whose negligence was accountable for the growth of heresy, were summoned within three months to furnish four thousand gold florins to build the prisons, and eight hundred florins per annum for five years for the support of the prisoners. This they were allowed to take from the legacies for pious uses, and the restitutions of wrongly-acquired funds, with a threat, if they should demur, that they should be deprived of these sources of income and be excommunicated besides. The bishops, however, were no more amenable to such arguments than those of Languedoc had been in 1245, and, after the three months had passed, Gregory answers, October 5, the anxious inquiry of the Bishop of Massa as to how he shall feed his prisoners, by telling him that it is the business of every bishop to support those of his diocese, and that any one who refuses to do so is to be coerced with excommunication and the secular arm. This was a mere brutum fulmen, and in 1376 he endeavored to secure a share in the confiscations, but King Charles refused to divide them, though in 1378 he at last agreed to give the inquisitors a yearly stipend for their own support, similar to that paid to their brethren at Toulouse.[172]
All other devices being exhausted, Gregory at last had recourse to the unfailing resource of the curia--an indulgence. There is something so appallingly grotesque in tearing honest, industrious folk from their homes by the thousand, in thrusting them into dungeons to rot and starve, and then evading the cost of feeding them by presenting them to the faithful as objects of charity, that the proclamation which Gregory issued August 15, 1370, is perhaps the most shameless monument of a shameless age--
“To all the faithful in Christ: As the help of prisoners is counted among pious works, it befits the piety of the faithful to mercifully assist the incarcerated of all kinds who suffer from poverty. As we learn that our beloved son, the Inquisitor François Borelli, has imprisoned for safe-keeping or punishment many heretics and those defamed for heresy, who in consequence of their poverty cannot be sustained in prison unless the pious liberality of the faithful shall assist them as a work of charity; and as we wish that these prisoners shall not starve, but shall have time for repentance in the said prisons; now, in order that the faithful in Christ may through devotion lend a helping hand, we admonish, ask, and exhort you all, enjoining it on you in remission of your sins, that from the goods which God has given you, you bestow pious alms and grateful charity for the food of these prisoners, so that they may be sustained by your help, and you, through this and other good works inspired by God, may attain eternal blessedness!”[173]
Imagination refuses to picture the horrors of the economically constructed jails where these unfortunates were crowded to wear out their dreary lives, while their jailers vainly begged for the miserable pittance that should prolong their agonies. Yet so far was Gregory from being satisfied with victims in number far beyond his ability to keep, that, December 28, 1375, he bitterly scolded the officials of Dauphiné for the negligent manner in which they obeyed the king’s commands to aid the inquisitors--a complaint which he reiterated May 18, 1376. From some expressions in these letters it is permissible to assume that this whole inhuman business had shocked even the dull sensibilities of that age of violence. Yet in spite of all that had been accomplished the heretics remained obstinate, and in 1377 Gregory indignantly chronicles their increase, while reproaching the inquisitors with their slackness in performing the duties for which they had been appointed.[174]
What effect on the future of the Waldenses a continuance of Gregory’s remorseless energy would have wrought can only be matter of conjecture. He died March 27, 1378, and the Great Schism which speedily followed gave the heretics some relief, during which they continued to increase, although in 1380 Clement VII. renewed the commission of Borel, whose activity was unabated until 1393, and his victims were numbered by the hundred. A good many conversions rewarded his labors, and the converts were allowed to retain their property on payment of a certain sum of money, as shown by a list made out in 1385. In 1393 he is said to have burned a hundred and fifty at Grenoble in a single day. San Vicente Ferrer was a missionary of a different stamp, and his self-devoted labors for several years in the Waldensian valleys won over numerous converts. His memory is still cherished there, and the village of Puy-Saint-Vincent, with a chapel dedicated to him, shows that his kindly ministrations were not altogether lost.[175]
The Waldenses by this time were substantially the only heretics with whom the Church had to deal outside of Germany. The French version of the Schwabenspiegel, or South German municipal code, made for the Romande speaking provinces of the empire, is assignable to the closing years of the century, and it attests the predominance of Waldensianism in its chapter on heresy, by translating the Käezer (Catharus) of the original by vaudois. Even “Leschandus” (Childeric III.) is said to have been dethroned by Pope Zachary because he was a protector of vaudois. That at this period the Inquisition had become inoperative in those regions where it had once been so busy is proved by the episcopal tribunals being alone referred to as having cognizance of such cases--the heretic is to be accused to his bishop, who is to have him examined by experts.[176]
How completely the Waldenses dropped out of sight in the struggles of the Great Schism is seen in a bull of Alexander V., in 1409, to Frère Pons Feugeyron, whose enormous district extended from Marseilles to Lyons and from Beaucaire to the Val d’Aosta. This comprehended the whole district which François Borel and Vicente Ferrer found swarming with heretics. The inquisitor is urged to use his utmost endeavors against the schismatic followers of Benedict XIII. and Gregory XII., against the increasing numbers of sorcerers, against apostate Jews and the Talmud, but not a word is said about Waldenses. They seem to have been completely forgotten.[177]
After the Church had reorganized itself at the Council of Constance it had leisure to look after the interests of the faith, although its energies were mostly monopolized by the Hussite troubles. In 1417 we hear of Catharine Sauve, an anchorite, burned at Montpellier for Waldensian doctrines by the deputy-inquisitor, Frère Raymond Cabasse, assisted by the Bishop of Maguelonne. The absence of persecution had by no means been caused by a diminution in the number of heretics. In 1432 the Council of Bourges complained that the Waldenses of Dauphiné had taxed themselves to send money to the Hussites, whom they recognized as brethren; and there were plenty of them to be found by any one who took the trouble to look after them. On August 23, of this same year, we have a letter from Frère Pierre Fabri, Inquisitor of Embrun, to the Council of Basle, excusing himself for not immediately obeying a summons to attend it on the ground of his indescribable poverty, and of his preoccupations in persecuting the Waldenses. In spite of the great executions which he had already made, he describes them as flourishing as numerously as ever in the valleys of Freyssinières, Argentière, and Pute, which had been almost depopulated by the ferocious raids of François Borel. He now has in his dungeons of Embrun and Briançon six relapsed heretics, who have revealed to him the names of more than five hundred others whom he is about to seize, and whose trials will be a work of time, but as soon as he can absent himself without prejudice to the faith his first duty will be to attend the council. Evidently the harvest was abundant and the reapers were few.[178]
In 1441 the Inquisitor of Provence, Jean Voyle, made some effort at persecution, but apparently with little result, and the Waldensian churches seem to have enjoyed a long respite, for the terrible episode of the so-called Vaudois of Arras, in 1460, as we shall see hereafter, was merely a delirium of witchcraft. In France, so completely had the Waldenses monopolized the field of misbelief in the public mind that sorcery became popularly known as vauderie and witches as vaudoises. Accordingly, when, in 1465, at Lille, five “Poor Men of Lyons” were tried, and four of them recanted and one was burned, it was necessary to find some other name for them, and they were designated as Turelupins.[179]
It is not until 1475 that we find the inquisitors again at work in their old hunting-ground among the valleys around the headwaters of the Durance. The Waldenses had quietly multiplied again. They held their conventicles undisturbed, they dared openly to preach their abhorred faith, and their missionary zeal was rewarded with abundant conversions. Worse than all, when the bishops and inquisitors sought to repress them in the accustomed manner, they appealed to the royal court, which was so untrue to its duty that it granted them letters of protection and they waxed more insolent than ever. In vain Sixtus IV. sent special commissions armed with full powers to put an end to this disgraceful state of things. Men at this time in France recked little of papal authority, and the commissioners found themselves scorned. Sixtus, therefore, July 1, 1475, addressed an earnest remonstrance to Louis XI. The king was surely ignorant of the acts of his representatives; he would hasten to disavow them and lend the whole power of the State, as of old, to the support of the Inquisition.[180]
The correspondence which ensued would doubtless be interesting reading if it were accessible. Its purport, however, can readily be discerned in the Ordonnance of May 18, 1478, which marks in the most emphatic manner the supremacy which the State had obtained over the Church. The king assumed that his subjects of Dauphiné were all good Catholics. In a studied tone of contemptuous insolence he alludes to the old Mendicants (vieux mendiens) styling themselves inquisitors, who vex the faithful with accusations of heresy and harass them with prosecutions in the royal and ecclesiastical courts for purposes of extortion or to secure the confiscation of their property. He therefore forbids his officers to aid in making such confiscations, decrees that the heirs shall be reinstated in all cases that have occurred, and in order to put a stop to the frauds and abuses of the inquisitors he strictly enjoins that for the future they shall not be permitted to prosecute the inhabitants in any manner.[181]
Such was the outcome of the efforts which, for two hundred and fifty years, the Church had unremittingly made to obtain despotic control over the human mind. For far less than such defiance it had destroyed Raymond of Toulouse and the civilization of Languedoc. It had built up the monarchy with the spoils of heresy, and now the monarchy cuffed it and bade it bury its Inquisition out of the sight of decent men. This put an end for a time to the labors of the Inquisition against the Waldenses of Dauphiné, but the troubles of the latter were by no means over. The death of Louis, in 1483, deprived them of their protector, and the Italian policy of Charles VIII. rendered him less indifferent to the wishes of the Holy See. At the request of the Archbishop of Embrun, Innocent VIII. ordered the persecutions renewed. The Franciscan Inquisitor, Jean Veyleti, whose excesses had caused the appeal to the throne in 1475, was soon again at work, and had the satisfaction of burning both consuls of Freyssinières. Though the Waldenses had represented themselves to Louis XI. as faithful Catholics, the ancient errors were readily brought to light by the efficient means of torture. Though they believed in transubstantiation, they denied that it could be effected by sinful priests. Their barbes, or pastors, were ordained, and administered absolution after confession, but the pope, the bishops, and the priests had lost that power. They denied the existence of purgatory, the utility of prayers for the dead, the intercession of saints, the power of the Virgin, and the obligation of keeping any feast-days save Sunday. Wearied with their stubbornness, the archbishop, in June and July, 1486, summoned them either to leave the country or to come forward and submit, and as they did neither he excommunicated them. This was equally ineffective, and he appealed again to Innocent VIII., who resolved to end the heresy with a decisive blow. Accordingly, in 1488, a crusade on a large scale was organized in both Dauphiné and Savoy. The papal commissioner, Alberto de’ Capitanei, obtained the assistance of the Parlement of Grenoble, and a force was raised under the command of Hugues de La Palu, Comte de Vanax, to attack them on every side. The attack was delayed by legal formalities, during which they were urged to submission, but refused, saying that their faith was pure and that they would die rather than abandon it. At length, in March, 1489, the crusaders advanced. The valley of Pragelato was the first assailed, and, after a few days, was reduced to the alternative of death or abjuration, when fifteen obstinate heretics were burned. In Val Cluson and Freyssinières the resistance was more stubborn and there was considerable carnage, which so frightened the inhabitants of Argentière that they submitted peaceably. In Val Louise the people took refuge in the cavern of Aigue Fraide, which they imagined inaccessible, but La Palu succeeded in reaching it, and built fires in the mouth, suffocating the unhappy refugees. This, and the confiscations which followed, divided between Charles VIII. and the Archbishop of Embrun, gave a fatal blow to Waldensianism in the valleys. To prevent its resuscitation the legate left behind him François Ploireri as Inquisitor of Provence, who continued to harass the people with citations and pronounced condemnations for contumacy, burning an occasional barbe and confiscating the property of relapsed and hardened heretics.[182]
With a new king, in the person of Louis XII., there came a new phase in the affairs of the Waldenses. A conference was held in Paris before the royal chancellor, where envoys from Freyssinières met Rostain, the new Archbishop of Embrun, and deputies of the Parlement of Grenoble. It was resolved to send to the spot papal and royal commissioners, with power to determine the status of the so-called heretics. They went to Freyssinières and examined witnesses, who satisfied them that the population were good Catholics, in spite of the urgent assertions of the archbishop that they were notorious heretics. All the excommunications were removed, which put an end to the prosecutions. On October 12, 1502, Louis XII. confirmed the decision, and Alexander VI., to whose son, Cæsar Borgia, Louis had given the Duchy of Valentinois, embracing the territory in question, was not disposed to run counter to the royal wishes. The Waldenses were, however, unable to loosen the grip of the Archbishop of Embrun on the property which he had confiscated, in spite of positive orders for its restoration from the king, but at least they were allowed, under the guise of Catholicism, to worship God after their own fashion, until the crowding pressure of the Reformation forced them to a merger with the Calvinists. In the Briançonnais, in spite of occasional burnings, heresy continued to spread until, in 1514, Antoine d’Estaing, Bishop of Angoulême, was sent thither, when the measures he adopted, vigorously enforced by the secular authorities, put an end to it in a few years.[183]
III. THE SPANISH PENINSULA
The kingdom of Aragon, stretching across both sides of the Pyrenees, with a population kindred in blood and speech to that of Mediterranean France, was particularly liable to inroads of heresy from the latter. The Counts of Barcelona had been Carlovingian vassals, and even owned a shadowy allegiance to the first Capetians. We have seen how ready were Pedro II. and his successors to aid in resisting Frankish encroachments, even at the cost of encouraging heresy, and it was inevitable that schismatic missions should be established in populous centres such as Barcelona, and that heretics, when hard-pressed, should seek refuge in the mountains of Cerdaña and Urgel. In spite of this, however, heresy never obtained to the west of the Pyrenees the foothold which it enjoyed to the east. Its manifestations there were only spasmodic, and were suppressed with effort comparatively slender.
It is somewhat remarkable that we hear nothing specifically of the Cathari in Aragon proper. Matthew Paris, indeed, tells a wild tale of how, in 1234, they were so numerous in the parts of Spain that they decreed the abrogation of Christianity, and raised a large army with which they burned churches and spared neither age nor sex, until Gregory IX. ordered a crusade against them throughout western Europe, when in a stricken field they were all cut off to a man; but this may safely be set down to the imagination of some pilgrim returning from Compostella and desiring to repay a night’s hospitality at St. Alban’s. In the enumeration of Rainerio Saccone, about 1250, there is no mention of any Catharan organization west of the Pyrenees. That many Cathari existed in Aragon there can be no doubt, but they are never described as such, and the only heretics of whom we hear by name are los encabats--the Insabbatati or Waldenses. It will be remembered that it was against these that the savage edicts of Alonso II. and Pedro II. were directed, towards the close of the twelfth century.[184]
After this, for a while, persecution seems to have slept. The sympathies and ambition of King Pedro were enlisted with Raymond of Toulouse, and after his fall at Muret, during the minority of Jayme I., the Aragonese probably awaited the results of the Albigensian war with feelings enlisted in favor of their race rather than of orthodoxy. As it drew to a close, however, Don Jayme, in 1226, issued an edict prohibiting all heretics from entering his kingdom, doubtless moved thereunto by the numbers who sought escape from the crusade of Louis VIII., and he followed this, in 1228, with another, depriving heretics, with their receivers, fautors, and defenders, of the public peace. The next step, we are told by the chroniclers of the Inquisition, was taken in consequence of the urgency of Raymond of Pennaforte, the Dominican confessor of the young king, who prevailed on him to obtain from Gregory IX. inquisitors to purge his land. This is based on the bull Declinante, addressed, May 26, 1232, to Esparrago, Archbishop of Tarragona, and his suffragans, instructing them to make inquest in their dioceses after heretics, either personally or by Dominicans or other fitting persons, and to punish such as might be found, according to the statutes recently issued by him and by Annibaldo, Senator of Rome. This doubtless gave an impulse to what followed, but as yet there was no thought of a papal or Dominican Inquisition, or of adopting foreign legislation. In the following year, 1233, Don Jayme issued from Tarragona, with the advice of his assembled prelates, a statute on the subject, showing that the matter was regarded as pertaining to the State rather than to the Church. Seigneurs who protected heretics in their lands forfeited them to the lord, or, if allodial, to the king. Houses of heretics, if allodial, were to be torn down; if held in fief, forfeited to the lord. All defamed or suspected of heresy were declared ineligible to office. That the innocent might not suffer with the guilty, no one was to be punished as a heretic or believer except by his bishop or such ecclesiastic as had authority to determine his guilt. Bishops were ordered, when it might seem expedient to them in places suspected of heresy, to appoint a priest or clerk, while the king or his bailli would appoint two or three laymen, whose duty it should be to investigate heretics, and, taking precautions against their escape, to report them to the bishop or to the royal officials, or to the lord of the place. In this incongruous mixture of clerical and lay elements there may, it is true, be discovered the germ of an Inquisition, but one of a character very different from that which was at this time taking shape at Toulouse. The subordinate position of these so-called inquisitors is seen in the provision that any negligence in the performance of their functions was punishable, in the case of a clerk, by the loss of his benefice, in that of a layman, by a pecuniary mulct.[185]
To what extent this crude expedient was put in practice we have no means of knowing, but probably some attempts were made which only proved its inefficiency. Esparrago died soon afterwards and was succeeded in the archiepiscopal seat of Tarragona by Guillen Mongriu, whose vigorous and martial temperament was illustrated by his conquest of the island of Iviza. Mongriu speedily found that the domestic Inquisition would not work, and applied for the solution of some doubts to Gregory, who sent him, April 30, 1235, a code of instructions drawn up by Raymond of Pennaforte. About this time we find the first record of active work in persecution, which illustrates the absence of all formal inquisitorial procedure. Robert, Count of Rosellon, was one of the great feudatories of the crown of Aragon. He seems to have been involved, as most nobles were, in some disputes as to fiefs and tithes with the Bishop of Elne, whose diocese was in his territories. The bishop accused him of being the chief of the heretics of the region and of using his castles as a refuge for them. All this was very likely true--at least the bishop had no difficulty in finding witnesses to prove it, when Robert obediently abjured, but subsequently relapsed. Don Jayme accordingly had him arrested and imprisoned, but Robert managed to escape and shut himself in one of his inaccessible mountain strongholds. His position, however, was desperate, and his lands liable to confiscation; he therefore expressed to Gregory IX. his desire to return to the bosom of the Church, and offered to serve with his followers against the Saracen as long as the pope might designate. Gregory therefore wrote, February 8, 1237, to Raymond of Pennaforte, that if the count would for three years with his subjects assist in the conquest of Valencia, and give sufficient security that in case of relapse his territories should be forfeited to the crown, he could be absolved. On hearing this the good bishop hastened to the papal court and declared that if Robert was absolved he and his witnesses would be exposed to the imminent peril of death, and that heresy would triumph in his diocese; but, on receiving assurances that his fiefs and tithes would be taken care of, he quieted down and offered no further opposition.[186]
Under the impulsion of Gregory and of Raymond of Pennaforte, Dominican inquisitors had at last been resorted to, and in this year, 1237, we first become cognizant of them. In right of his wife Ermessende, Roger Bernard the Great of Foix was Vizconde of Castelbo, a fief held of the Bishop of Urgel, with whom he had had a bitter war. He gave Castelbo to his son Roger, who, by the advice of his father, in 1237, allowed the Inquisition free scope there, placing the castle in the hands of Ramon Fulco, Vizconde of Cardona, in the name of the Archbishop of Tarragona and the bishops assembled at the Council of Lerida. That council thereupon appointed a number of inquisitors, including Dominicans and Franciscans, who made a descent on Castelbo. It had long been noted as a nest of Catharans. In 1225, under the protection of Arnaldo, then lord of the place, perfected heretics publicly preached their doctrines there. In 1234 we hear of a heretic of Mirepoix going thither to receive the consolamentum on his death-bed. The inquisitors, therefore, had no difficulty in finding victims. They ordered two houses to be destroyed, exhumed and burned the bones of eighteen persons, condemned as heretics, and carried off as prisoners some forty-five men and women, condemned fifteen who fled, and were undecided about sundry others. Still, the Bishop of Urgel was not satisfied, and he gratified his rancor by condemning and excommunicating Roger Bernard as a defender of heretics, and it was not until 1240 that the latter, through the intervention of the Archbishop of Tarragona, and by submitting, abjuring heresy, and swearing to perform any penance assigned to him, procured from the bishop absolution and a certificate that he recognized him “per bon et per leyal e per Catholich.”[187]
In 1238 the Inquisition of Aragon may be said to be founded. In April of that year Gregory IX. wrote to the Franciscan Minister and Dominican Prior of Aragon deploring the spread of heresy through the whole kingdom, so that heretics no longer seek secrecy, but openly combat the Church, to the destruction of its liberties; and though this may be an exaggeration, we know from a confession before the Inquisition of Toulouse that there were enough scattered through the land to afford shelter to the wandering Catharan missionaries. Gregory, therefore, placed in the hands of the Mendicants the sword of the Word of God, which was not to be restrained from blood. They were instructed to make diligent inquisition against heresy and its abettors, proceeding in accordance with the statutes which he had issued, and calling in when necessary the aid of the secular arm. At the same time he made a similar provision for Navarre, which was likewise said to be swarming with heretics, by commissioning as inquisitors the Franciscan Guardian of Pamplona and the Dominican Pedro de Leodegaria. As an independent institution the Inquisition of Navarre seems never to have advanced beyond an embryonic condition. In 1246 we find Innocent IV. writing to the Franciscan Minister there to publish that Grimaldo de la Mota, a citizen of Pamplona, is not to be aspersed as a heretic because while in Lombardy he had eaten and drunk with suspected persons, but this is the only evidence of vitality that I have met with, and Navarre was subsequently incorporated into the Inquisition of Aragon.[188]
In Aragon the institution gradually took shape. Berenger de Palau, Bishop of Barcelona, was busily engaged in organizing it throughout his diocese at the time of his death in 1241, and the vicar, who replaced him while the see was vacant, completed it. In 1242 Pedro Arbalate, who had succeeded Guillen Mongriu as archbishop, with the assistance of Raymond of Pennaforte, held the Council of Tarragona to settle the details of procedure. Under the guidance of so eminent a canonist, the code drawn up by the council showed a thorough knowledge of the principles guiding the Church in its dealings with heretics, and long continued to be referred to as an authority not only in Spain, but in France. At the same time its careful definitions, which render it especially interesting to us, indicate that it was prepared for the instruction of a Church which as yet practically knew nothing of the principles of persecution firmly established elsewhere. It was probably under the impulse derived from these movements that active persecution was resumed at Castelbo, which does not seem to have been purified by the raid of 1237. This time the heretics were not as patient as before, and resorted to poison, with which they succeeded in taking off Fray Ponce de Blanes, or de Espira, the inquisitor, who had made himself peculiarly obnoxious by his vigorous pursuit of heresy for several years. This aroused all the martial instincts of the retired archbishop, Guillen Mongriu, who assembled some troops, besieged and took the castle, burned many of the heretics, and imprisoned the rest for life. An organized effort was made to extend the Inquisition throughout the kingdom, and the parish priests were individually summoned to lend it all the aid in their power. Urgel seems to have been the headquarters of the sectaries, for subsequently we hear of their sharp persecution there by the Dominican inquisitor, Bernardo Travesser, and of his martyrdom by them. As usual, both he and Ponce de Blanes shone forth in miracles, and have remained an object of worship in the Church of Urgel, though in 1262 the latter was translated to Montpellier, where he lies magnificently entombed.[189]
Still, the progress of organization seems to have been exceedingly slow. In 1244 a case decided by Innocent IV. shows a complete absence of any effective system. The Bishop of Elne and a Dominican friar, acting as inquisitors, had condemned Ramon de Malleolis and Helena his wife as heretics. By some means they succeeded in appealing to Gregory IX., who referred the matter to the Archdeacon of Besalu and the Sacristan of Girona. These acquitted the culprits and restored them to their possessions; but the case was carried back to Rome, and Innocent finally confirmed the first sentence of conviction. Again, in 1248, a letter from Innocent IV. to the Bishop of Lerida, instructing him as to the treatment in his diocese of heretics who voluntarily return to the Church, presupposes the absence of inquisitors and absolute ignorance as to the fundamental principles in force. The power conferred the same year on the Dominican Provincial of Spain to appoint inquisitors seems to have remained unused. The efforts of Archbishop Mongriu and Raymond of Pennaforte had spent themselves apparently without permanent results. King Jayme grew dissatisfied, and, in 1254, urgently demanded a fresh effort of Innocent IV. This time the pope concluded, at Jayme’s suggestion, to place the matter entirely in Dominican hands; but so little had been done in the way of general organization that he confided the choice of inquisitors to the priors of Barcelona, Lerida, Perpignan, and Elne, each one to act within his own diocese, unless, indeed, there are inquisitors already in function under papal commissions--a clause which shows the confusion existing at the time. Innocent further felt it necessary to report this action to the Archbishops of Tarragona and Narbonne, and to call upon them to assist the new appointees. This device does not seem to have worked satisfactorily. At that time the whole peninsula constituted but one Dominican province, and, in 1262, Urban IV. again adopted definitely the plan, in general use elsewhere, of empowering the provincial to appoint the inquisitors--now limited to two. A few days before he had sent to those of Aragon a bull defining their powers and procedure, and a copy of this was enclosed to the provincial for his guidance. This long remained the basis of organization; but after the division of the province into two, by the General Chapter of Cologne in 1301, the Aragonese chafed under their subordination to the Provincial of Spain, whose territories consisted only of Castile, Leon, and Portugal. The struggle was protracted, but the Inquisition of Aragon at last achieved independence in 1351, when Fray Nicholas Roselli, the Provincial of Aragon, obtained from Clement VI. the power of appointing and removing the inquisitors of the kingdom.[190]
Meanwhile the inquisitors had not been inactive. Fray Pedro de Cadreyta rendered himself especially conspicuous, and as usual Urgel is the prominent scene of activity. In conjunction with his colleague, Fray Pedro de Tonenes, and Arnaldo, Bishop of Barcelona, he rendered final judgment, January 11, 1257, against the memory of Ramon, Count of Urgel, as a relapsed heretic who had abjured before the Bishop of Urgel, and whose bones were to be exhumed; but, with unusual lenity, the widow, Timborosa, and the son, Guillen, were admitted to reconciliation and not deprived of their estates. Twelve years later, in 1269, we find Cadreyta, together with another colleague, Fray Guillen de Colonico, and Abril, Bishop of Urgel, condemning the memory of Arnaldo, Vizconde of Castelbo, and of his daughter Ermessende, whom we know as the heretic wife of Roger Bernard the Great of Foix. They had both been dead more than thirty years, and her grandson, Roger Bernard III. of Foix, who had inherited the Vizcondado of Castelbo, was duly cited to defend his ancestors; but if he made the attempt, it was vain, and their bones were ordered to be exhumed. It is not likely that these sturdy champions of the faith confined their attention to the dead, though the only execution we happen to hear of at this period is that of Berenguer de Amoros, burned in 1263. That the living, indeed, were objects of fierce persecution is rendered more than probable by the martyrdom of Cadreyta, who was stoned to death by the exasperated populace of Urgel, and who thus furnished another saint for local cult.[191]
During the remainder of the century we hear little more of the Inquisition of Aragon, but the action of the Council of Tarragona, in 1291, would seem to show that it was neither active nor much respected. Otherwise the council would scarce have felt called upon to order the punishment of heretics who deny a future existence, and, further, that all detractors of the Catholic faith ought to be punished as they deserve, to teach them reverence and fear. Still more significant is the injunction on parish priests to receive kindly and aid efficiently the beloved Dominican inquisitors, who are laboring for the extirpation of heresy.[192]
With the opening of the fourteenth century there would appear to be an increase of vigor. In 1302 Fray Bernardo celebrated several autos de fé, in which a number of heretics were abandoned to the secular arm. In 1304 Fray Domingo Peregrino had an auto in which we are told that those who were not burned were banished, with the assent of King Jayme II.--one of the rare instances of this punishment in the annals of the Inquisition. In 1314 Fray Bernardo Puigcercos was so fortunate as to discover a number of heretics, of whom he burned some and exiled others. To Juan de Longerio, in 1317, belongs the doubtful honor of condemning the works of Arnaldo de Vilanova. The names of Arnaldo Burguete, Guillen de Costa, and Leonardo de Puycerda have also reached us, as successful inquisitors, but their recorded labors were principally directed against the Spiritual Franciscans, and will be more particularly noted hereafter. The Aragonese seem not to have relished the methods of the Inquisition, for in 1325 the Cortes, with the assent of King Jayme II., prohibited for the future the use of the inquisitorial process and of torture, as violations of the Fueros. Whether or not this was intended to apply to the ecclesiastical as well as to the secular courts it is impossible now to tell, but, if it were, it had no permanent result, as we learn from the detailed instructions of Eymerich fifty years later. About the middle of the century, the merits of the Inquisitor Nicholas Roselli earned him the cardinalate. It is true that when the energetic action of the Inquisitor Jean Dumoulin, in 1344, drove the Waldenses from Toulouse to seek refuge beyond the Pyrenees, Clement VI. wrote earnestly to the kings and prelates of Aragon and Navarre to aid the Inquisition in destroying the fugitives, but there is no trace of any corresponding result.[193]
To Roselli, however, belongs the credit of raising a question which inflamed to a white heat the traditional antagonism of the two great Mendicant Orders. It is worth brief attention as an illustration of the nicety to which doctrinal theology had attained under the combined influence of scholastic subtlety in raising questions, and inquisitorial enforcement of implicit obedience in the minutest articles of faith. In 1351 the Franciscan Guardian of Barcelona, in a public sermon, stated that the blood shed by Christ in the Passion lost its divinity, was sundered from the Logos, and remained on earth. The question was a novel one and a trifle difficult of demonstration, but its raising gave Roselli a chance to inflict a blow on the hated Franciscans, and he referred it to Rome. The answer met his most ardent anticipations. The Cardinal of Sabina, by order of Clement VI., wrote that the pope had heard the proposition with horror; he had convened an assembly of theologians in which he himself argued against it, when it was condemned, and the inquisitors everywhere were ordered to proceed against all audacious enough to uphold it. Roselli’s triumph was complete, and the unfortunate guardian was obliged to retract his speculations in the pulpit where he had promulgated them. The Franciscans were restless under this rebuff, which they construed as directed against their Order. In spite of the papal decision the question remained an open one in the schools, where it was eagerly debated on both sides. The Franciscans argued, with provoking reasonableness, that the blood of Christ might well be believed to remain on earth, seeing that the foreskin severed in the Circumcision was preserved in the Lateran Church and reverenced as a relic under the very eyes of pope and cardinal, and that portions of the blood and water which flowed in the Crucifixion were exhibited to the faithful at Mantua, Bruges, and elsewhere. After the lapse of a century, the Franciscan, Jean Bretonelle, professor of theology in the University of Paris, in 1448 brought the matter before the faculty, stating that it was causing discussion at Rochelle and other places. A commission of theologians was appointed, which, after due debate, rendered a solemn decision that it was not repugnant to the faith to believe that the blood shed at the Passion remained on earth. Thus encouraged, the Franciscans grew bolder.
The Observantine Franciscan, Giacomo da Monteprandone, better known as della Marca, was one of the most prominent ecclesiastics of the fifteenth century. His matchless eloquence, his rigid austerity, his superhuman vigor, and his unquenchable zeal for the extermination of heresy well earned the beatification conferred on him after death; and since 1417 he had been known as a hammer of heretics. He held a commission as universal inquisitor which clothed him with power throughout Christendom, and the heretics in every corner of Italy, in Bohemia, Hungary, Bosnia, and Dalmatia, had learned with cause to tremble at his name. It required no little nerve to assail such a man, and yet when, April 18, 1462, at Brescia, he publicly preached the forbidden doctrine, the Dominican Inquisitor, Giacomo da Brescia, lost no time in calling him to account. First a courteous note expressed disbelief in the report of the sermon and asked a disclaimer; but on the Observantine adhering to the doctrine, a formal summons followed, citing him to appear for trial on the next day. The two Orders had thus fairly locked horns. The Bishop of Brescia interfered and obtained a withdrawal of the summons, but the question had to be fought out before the pope. The bitterness of feeling may be judged by the complaint of the inquisitor that his opponent had so excited the people of Brescia against him and the Dominicans that but for prompt measures many of them would have been slain; while, from Milan to Verona, every Dominican pulpit resounded with denunciations of Giacomo della Marca as a heretic.
The politic Pius II. feared to quarrel with either Order, and had a tortuous path to tread. To the Dominicans he furnished an authenticated copy of the decision of Clement VI. To Giacomo della Marca he wrote that this had been done because he could not refuse it, and not to give it authority. It had not been issued by Clement, but only in his name, and the question was still an open one. Giacomo might rest in peace in the conviction that the pope had full confidence in his zeal and orthodoxy, and that his calumniators should be silenced. On May 31 he issued commands that all discussions of the question should cease, and that both sides should send their most learned brethren to an assembly which he would hold in September for exhaustive debate and final decision. This he hoped would put an end to the matter, while skilful postponement of the conference would allow it to die out; but he miscalculated the enmity of the rival Orders. The quarrel raged more fiercely than ever. The Franciscans declared that the inquisitor who started it would be deprived of his office and mastership in theology. Pius thereupon soothed him by assuring him that he had only done his duty, and that he had nothing to fear.
The conference had become an inevitable evil, and Pius found himself obliged to allow it to meet in December, 1463. Each side selected three champions, and for three days, in the presence of the pope and sacred college, they argued the point with such ardent vehemence that, in spite of the bitter winter weather, they were bathed in sweat. Then others took part and the question was debated pro and con. The Franciscans put in evidence the blood of Christ exhibited for the veneration of the faithful in many shrines, and to the foreskin which was in the Lateran and also in the royal chapel of France. They also appealed to the cuttings of Christ’s hair and beard, the parings of his nails, and all his excretions--did these remain on earth or were they divine and carried to heaven? To these arguments the Dominican reply is a curious exhibition of special pleading and sophistry; but as no one could allege a single text of Scripture bearing upon the question, neither side could claim the victory. The good Bishop of Brescia, who had at first played the part of peacemaker, consistently presented a written argument in which he proved that the pope ought not to settle the question because such a determination would, firstly, be doubtful; secondly, superfluous; and, thirdly, perilous. This wise utterance was probably inspired, for Pius reserved his decision, and, August 1, 1464, only eight days before his death, issued a bull in which he recited how the faithful had been scandalized by the quarrel between the two Orders, and, therefore, he forbade further discussion on the subject until the Holy See should finally decide it. The Dominicans were emphatically prohibited from denouncing the Franciscans as heretics on account of it, and any infraction of his commands was punishable by ipso facto excommunication supplemented with harsh imprisonment. He tells us himself that after the public discussion the cardinals debated the matter for several days. The majority inclined to the Dominicans and he agreed with them, but the preaching of the Franciscans was necessary for the crusade against the Turks which he proposed to lead in person, and it was impolitic to offend them, so he postponed the decision. Mutterings of discussion, without open quarrel, have since then occasionally occurred between the Orders, but the popes have never seen fit to issue a definite decision on the subject, and the momentous question started by Roselli remains still unsettled--a pitfall for unwary feet.[194]
In 1356 Roselli was created Cardinal of S. Sisto, and was succeeded after a short interval by Nicolas Eymerich, the most noteworthy man of whom the Aragonese Inquisition can boast, although after more than thirty years of service he ended his days in disgrace and exile. Trained in varied learning, and incessant in industry, of his numerous works but one has had the honors of print--his “Directorium Inquisitorum,” in which, for the first time, he systematized the procedure of his beloved institution, giving the principles and details which should guide the inquisitor in all his acts. The book remained an authority to the last, and formed the basis of almost all subsequent compilations. Eymerich’s conception of the model inquisitor was lofty. He must be fully acquainted with all the intricacies of doctrine, and with all the aberrations of heresy--not only those which are current among the common people, but the recondite speculations of the schools, Averrhoism and Aristotelian errors, and the beliefs of Saracen and Tartar. At a time when the Inquisition was declining and falling into contempt, he boldly insisted on its most extreme prerogatives as an imprescriptible privilege. If he assumed that the heretic had but one right--that of choosing between submission and the stake--he was in this but the conscientious exponent of his age, and his writings are instinct with the conviction that the work of the inquisitor is the salvation of souls.
From Eymerich’s lament over the difficulty of providing for the expenses of an institution so necessary to the Church, it is evident that the kings of Aragon had not felt it their duty to support the Holy Office, while the bishops, he tells us, were as firm as their brethren in other lands in evading the responsibility which by right was incumbent on them. The confiscations, he adds, amounted to little or nothing, for heretics were poor folk--Waldenses, Fraticelli, and the like. In fact, so far as we can gather, the sum of Eymerich’s activity during his long career is so small that it shows how little was left of heresy by this time. Occasional Fraticelli and Waldenses and renegade Jews or Saracens were all that rewarded the inquisitor, with every now and then some harmless lunatic whose extravagance unfortunately took a religious turn, or some over-subtle speculator on the intricacies of dogmatic theology. Thus, early in his career, about 1360, Eymerich had the satisfaction of burning as a relapsed heretic a certain Nicholas of Calabria, who persisted in asserting that his teacher, Martin Gonsalvo of Cuenca, was the Son of God, who would live forever, would convert the world, and at the Day of Judgment would pray for all the dead and liberate them from hell. In 1371 he had the further gratification of silencing, by a decision of Gregory XI., a Franciscan, Pedro Bonageta. The exact relation between the physical matter of the consecrated host and the body of Christ under certain circumstances had long been a source of disputation in the Church, and Fray Pedro taught that if it fell into the mud or other unclean place, or if it were gnawed by a mouse, the body of Christ flew to heaven and the wafer became simple bread; and so also when it was ground under the teeth of the recipient, before he swallowed it. Gregory did not venture to pronounce this heretical, but he forbade its public enunciation. About the same time Eymerich had a good deal of trouble with Fray Ramon de Tarraga, a Jew turned Dominican, whose numerous philosophical writings savored of heresy. After he had been kept in prison for a couple of years, Gregory ordered him to have a speedy trial, and threatened Eymerich with punishment for contumacy if his commands were disobeyed. Ramon must have had powerful friends in the Order whom Eymerich feared to provoke, for six months later Gregory wrote again, saying that if Ramon could not be punished according to the law in Aragon, he must be sent to the papal court under good guard with all the papers of the process duly sealed. In fact, the Inquisition was not established for the trial of Dominicans. At the same time another Jew, Astruchio de Piera, held by Eymerich on an accusation of sorcery and the invocation of demons, was claimed as justiciable by the civil power, and was sequestrated until Gregory ordered his delivery to the inquisitor, who forced him to abjure and imprisoned him for life. Somewhat earlier was a certain Bartolo Janevisio, of Majorca, who indulged in some apocalyptic writing about Antichrist, and was forced, in 1361, by Eymerich to recant, while his book was publicly burned. More practical, from a political point of view, was Eymerich’s doctrine that all who lent assistance to the Saracens were punishable by the Inquisition as fautors of heresy, but this seems to have remained a theoretical assertion which brought no business to the Holy Office. We shall see hereafter how he fared in seeking the condemnation of Raymond Lulli’s writings, and need only say here that the result was his suspension from office, to be succeeded by his capital enemy Bernardo Ermengaudi, in 1386, and that after the succession to the throne, in 1387, of Juan I., who was bitterly hostile to him, he was twice proscribed and exiled, and was denounced by the king as an obstinate fool, an enemy of the faith inspired by Satan, anointed with the poison of infidelity, together with other unflattering qualifications. He did not succeed better when in his rash zeal he assailed the holy San Vicente Ferrer for saying in a sermon that Judas Iscariot had a true and salutary repentance; that, being unable to reach Christ and obtain forgiveness owing to the crowd, he hanged himself and was pardoned in heaven. When the case was drawing to a conclusion, Pedro de Luna, then Cardinal of Aragon, took Vicente under his protection and made him his confessor, and, after his election in 1394 as Avignonese pope, under the name of Benedict XIII., he forced Eymerich to surrender the papers, which he unceremoniously burned. The next inquisitor, Bernardo Puig, is said to have been earnest and successful, punishing many heretics and confuting many heresies. In Valencia, about 1390, there was a case in which Pedro de Ceplanes, priest of Cella, read in his church a formal declaration that there were three natures in Christ--divine, spiritual, and human. A merchant of the town loudly contradicted it, and a tumult arose. The inquisitor of Valencia promptly arrested the too ingenious theologian, who only escaped the stake by public recantation and condemnation to perpetual imprisonment; but he broke jail and fled to the Balearic Isles, interjecting an appeal to the Holy See.[195]
The creation, in 1262, of the kingdom of Majorca, comprising the Balearic Isles, Rosellon, and Cerdaña, by Jayme I. of Aragon, for the benefit of his younger son Jayme, seemed to render a separate inquisition requisite for the new realm. At what time it was established is uncertain, the earliest inquisitor of Majorca on record being Fr. Ramon Durfort, whose name occurs as a witness on a charter of 1332, and he continued to occupy the position until 1343, when he was elected Provincial of Toulouse. From that time, at least, there is a succession of inquisitors, and the forcible reunion in 1348, by Pedro IV., of the outlying provinces to the crown of Aragon did not effect a consolidation of the tribunals. As the Inquisition declined in dignity and importance, indeed, it seems to have sought a remedy in multiplying and localizing its offices. In 1413 Benedict XIII. (who was still recognized as pope in Aragon) made a further division by separating the counties of Rosellon and Cerdaña from the Balearic Isles, Fray Bernardo Pages retaining the former, and Guillen Sagarra obtaining the latter. Both of these were energetic men who celebrated a number of autos de fé, in which numerous heretics were reconciled or burned. Sagarra was succeeded by Bernardo Moyl, and the latter by Antonio Murta, who was confirmed in 1420, when Martin V. approved of the changes made. At the same time Martin, at the request of the king and of the consuls of Valencia, erected that province also into a separate Inquisition. The Provincial of Aragon appointed Fray Andrea Ros to fill the position; he was confirmed in 1433 by Eugenius IV., but was removed without cause assigned the next year by the same pope, although we are told that he inflexibly persecuted the “Bohemians” or “Wickliffites” with fire and sword. His successors, Domingo Corts and Antonio de Cremona, earned equal laurels in suppressing Waldenses.[196]
A case occurring in 1423 would seem to indicate that the Inquisition had lost much of the terror which had rendered it formidable. Fray Pedro Salazo, Inquisitor of Rosellon and Cerdaña, threw in prison on charges of heresy a hermit named Pedro Freserii, who enjoyed great reputation for sanctity among the people. The accused declared that the witnesses were personal enemies, and that he was ready to purge himself before a proper judge, and his friends lodged an appeal with Martin V. The pope referred the matter, with power to decide without appeal, to Bernardo, Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Arles, in the diocese of Elne. Bernardo deputed the case to a canon of the church of Elne, who acquitted the accused without awaiting the result of another appeal to the pope interjected by the inquisitor; and Martin finally sent the matter to the Ordinary of Narbonne, with power to summon all parties before him and decide the case definitely. The whole transaction shows a singular want of respect for the functions of the Inquisition.[197]
Even more significant is a complaint made in 1456 to Calixtus III. by Fray Mateo de Rapica, a later inquisitor of Rosellon and Cerdaña. Certain neophytes, or converted Jews, persisted in Judaic practices, such as eating meat in Lent and forcing their Christian servants to do likewise. When Fray Mateo and Juan, Bishop of Elne, prosecuted them, they were so far from submitting that they published a defamatory libel upon the inquisitor, and, with the aid of certain laymen, afflicted him with injuries and expenses. Finding himself powerless, he appealed to the pope, who ordered the Archbishop and Official of Narbonne to intervene and decide the matter. The same spirit, in even a more aggravated form, was exhibited in a case already referred to, when, in 1458, Fray Miguel, the Inquisitor of Aragon, was maltreated and thrown in prison for nine months by some nobles and high officials of the kingdom, whom he had offended in obeying the instructions sent to him by Nicholas V.[198]
Yet, as against the poor and friendless, the Inquisition retained its power. Wickliffitism--as it had become the fashion to designate Waldensianism--had continued to spread, and about 1440 numbers of its sectaries were discovered, of whom some were reconciled, and more were burned as obstinate heretics by Miguel Ferriz, Inquisitor of Aragon, and Martin Trilles of Valencia. Possibly among these was an unfortunate woman, Leonor, wife of Doctor Jayme de Liminanna, of whom, about this time, we hear that she refused to perform the penance assigned to her by the Inquisition of Cartagena, and that she was consequently abandoned to the secular arm. The post of inquisitor continued to be sought for. To multiply it, Catalonia was separated from Aragon by Nicholas V. shortly after his accession in 1447. In 1459 another division took place, the diocese of Barcelona being erected into an independent tribunal by Martiale Auribelli, Dominican General Master, for the benefit of Fray Juan Conde, counsellor and confessor of the infant Carlos, Prince of Viane. The new incumbent, however, had not a peaceful time. It was probably the Inquisitor of Catalonia, objecting to the fractioning of his district, who obtained from Pius II., in 1461, a brief annulling the division, on the ground that one inquisitor had always sufficed. Fray Juan resisted and incurred excommunication, but the influence of his royal patron was sufficient to obtain from Pius, October 13, 1461, another bull restoring him to his position and absolving him from the excommunication. In 1479 a squabble occurring at Valencia shows that the office possessed attractions worth contending for. The Provincial of Aragon had removed Fray Jayme Borell and appointed Juan Marquez in his stead. Borell carried the tale of his woes to Sixtus IV., who commanded the General Master to replace him and retain him in peaceful possession.[199]
Ferdinand the Catholic succeeded to the throne of Aragon in 1479, as he had already done, in 1474, to that of Castile by right of his wife Isabella. Even before the organizing of the new Inquisition in Aragon, in 1483, it is probable that the influence of Ferdinand had done much to restore the power of the institution. In 1482, on the eve of the change, we find the Inquisition of Aragon acting with renewed vigor and boldness, under the Dominican, Juan de Epila. A number of cases are recorded of this period, including the prosecution of the father and mother of Felipe de Clemente, Prothonotary of the kingdom. As a preparatory step to placing the dominions of the crown of Aragon under Torquemada as Inquisitor-general, it was requisite to get rid of Cristobal Gualvez, who had been Inquisitor of Valencia since 1452, and who had disgraced his office by his crimes. Sixtus IV. had a special enmity to him, and, in ordering his deposition, stigmatized him as an impudent and impious man, whose unexampled excesses were worthy of severe chastisement; and when Sixtus, in 1483, extended Torquemada’s authority over the whole of Spain, with power to nominate deputies, he excepted “that son of iniquity, Cristobal Gualvez,” who had been interdicted from the office in consequence of his demerits, and whom he even deprived of the function of preaching.[200]
* * * * *
The great kingdom of Castile and Leon, embracing the major portion of the Spanish peninsula, never enjoyed the blessing of the mediæval Inquisition. It was more independent of Rome than any other monarchy of the period. Lordly prelates, turbulent nobles, and cities jealous of their liberties allowed scant opportunity for the centralization of power in the crown. The people were rude and uncultured, and not much given to vain theological speculation. Their superfluous energy, moreover, found ample occupation in the task of winning back the land from the Saracen. The large population of Jews and of conquered Moors gave them peculiar problems to deal with which would have been complicated rather than solved by the methods of the Inquisition, until the union of Aragon and Castile under Ferdinand and Isabella, followed by the conquest of Granada, enabled those monarchs to undertake seriously the business, attractive both to statecraft and to fanaticism, of compelling uniformity of faith.
It is true that the Dominican legend relates how Dominic returned from Rome to Spain as Inquisitor-general, on the errand of establishing there the Inquisition for the purpose of punishing the renegade converted Jews and Moors; how he was warmly seconded by San Fernando III.; how he organized the Inquisition throughout the land, celebrating himself the first auto de fé at Burgos, where three hundred apostates were burned, and the second auto in the presence of the saintly king, who himself carried on his shoulders fagots for the burning of his subjects, and the pertinacious wretches defiantly rejoiced in the flames which were consuming them; how, after this, he established the Inquisition in Aragon, whence he journeyed to Paris and organized it throughout France; how, in 1220, he sent Conrad of Marburg as inquisitor to Germany, and in 1221 finished his labors by founding it in all the parts of Italy. All this can rank in historical value with the veracious statement of an old chronicler--a compatriot of the Pied Piper of Hamelin--that St. Boniface was an inquisitor, and that, with the support of Pepin le Bref, he burned many heretics. Detailed lists, moreover, are given of the successive inquisitors-general of the Peninsula--Frailes Suero Gomes, B. Gil, Pedro de Huesca, Arnaldo Segarra, Garcia de Valcos, etc., but these are simply the Dominican provincials of Spain, who were empowered by the popes to appoint inquisitors, and whose exercise of that power did not extend beyond Aragon. Even Paramo, although he tries to prove that there were inquisitors nominally in Castile, is forced to admit that practically there was no Inquisition there.[201]
Yet, even in the distant city of Leon, Catharism had obtained a foothold. Bishop Rodrigo, who died in 1232, expelled a number of Cathari, on his attention being called to them by their circulating a story to excite hatred of the priesthood, relating how a poor woman placed a candle on the altar in honor of the Virgin, and on her leaving it a priest took it for his own use. The following night the Virgin appeared to her votary and cast burning wax into her eyes, saying, “Take the wages of your service. As soon as you went away a priest carried off the candle; as you would have been rewarded had the candle been consumed on my altar, so you must bear the punishment, since your carelessness gave me the light only for a moment.” This diabolical story, says Lucas of Tuy, an eye-witness, so affected the minds of the simple that the devotion of offering candles ceased, and it required two genuine miracles to restore the faith of the people. During the interval between the death of Bishop Rodrigo, in March, 1232, and the election of his successor, Arnaldo, in August, 1234, the heretics had ample opportunity to work their wicked will. A Catharan named Arnaldo had been burned, about 1218, in a place in the suburbs used for depositing filth. There was a spring there which the heretics colored red, and proclaimed that it had miraculously been turned to blood. Many of them, simulating blindness, lameness, and demoniacal possession, were carried there and pretended to be cured, after which they dug up the heretic’s bones and declared them to be those of a holy martyr. The people were fired with enthusiasm, erected a chapel, and worshipped the relics with the utmost ardor. In vain the clergy and the friars endeavored to stem the tide; the people denounced them as heretics, and despised the excommunication with which the neighboring bishops visited the adoration of the new saint; while the real heretics made many converts by secretly relating how the affair had been managed, and pointing it out as a sample of the manufacture of saints and miracles. God visited the sacrilege with a drouth of ten months, which was not broken until Lucas, at the risk of his life, destroyed the heretic chapel; and when the rains came there was a revulsion of feeling which enabled him to expel the heretics. All this would seem to indicate that the heretics were numerous and organized; it certainly shows that there was no machinery for their suppression; but after the elevation of Lucas to the see of Tuy, in 1239, we hear no more of heretics or of persecutions. The whole affair, apparently, was a sporadic manifestation, probably of some band of fugitives from Languedoc, who disappeared and left no following.[202]
If what Lucas tells us be true, that ecclesiastics frequently joined in and enjoyed the ridicule with which heretics derided the sacraments and the clergy, the Spanish Church was not likely to give much aid to the introduction of the Inquisition. How little its methods were understood appears in the fact that when, in 1236, San Fernando III. found some heretics at Palencia, he proceeded to brand them in the face, which brought them to reason and led them to seek absolution. No one seemed to know what to do with them, so Gregory IX. was applied to, and he authorized the Bishop of Palencia to reconcile them. There is probably no truth in the statement of some historians that the king, on several occasions, was obliged to levy from his subjects a tribute of wood with which to burn the unrepentant, and the story only serves to show how utterly vague have been the current conceptions of the period.[203]
We reach firmer ground with the codes known as El Fuero Real and Las Siete Partidas, the first issued by Alonso the Wise, in 1255, and the second about ten years later. By this time the Inquisition was at its height. It was thoroughly organized, and wherever it existed the business of suppressing heresy was exclusively in its hands. Yet not only does Alonso take no count of it, but in his regulation by secular law of the relations between the heretic and the Church he shows how completely, up to this period, Spain had remained outside of the great movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Heresy, it is true, is one of the matters pertaining to the ecclesiastical tribunals, and any one can accuse a heretic before his bishop or vicar. If the accused is found not to believe as the Church teaches, effort is to be made to convert him, and if he returns to the faith he is to be pardoned. If he proves obstinate, he is to be handed over to the secular judge. Then, however, his fate is decided without reference to the laws which the Church had endeavored to introduce throughout Christendom. If the culprit had received the consolamentum, or is a believer observing the rites, or one of those who deny the future life, he is to be burned; but if a believer not observing the rites, he is to be banished or imprisoned until he returns to the faith. Any one learning heresy, but not yet a believer, is fined ten pounds of gold to the fisc, or, if unable to pay, to receive fifty lashes in public. In the case of those who die in heresy or are executed, their estates pass to Catholic descendants, or, in default of these, to the next of kin; if without such kindred, the property of laymen goes to the fisc, of ecclesiastics, to the Church, if claimed within a year, after which it inures to the fisc. Children disinherited for heresy recover their portions, but not the mesne profits, on recantation. No one, after condemnation for heresy, can hold office, inherit property, make a will, execute a sale, or give testimony. The house where a wandering heretic missionary is sheltered is forfeited to the Church, if inhabited by the owner; if rented, the offending tenant is fined ten pounds of gold or publicly scourged. A rico home or noble sheltering heretics in his lands or castles, and persisting after a year’s excommunication, forfeits the land or castle to the king; and if a non-noble his body and property are at the king’s pleasure. The Christian who turns Jew or Moslem is legally a heretic, and is to be burned, as well as one who brings up a child in the forbidden faith. Prosecutions of the dead, however, are humanely limited to five years after decease.[204]
All this shows that Alonso and his counsellors recognized the duty of the State to preserve the purity of the faith, but that they considered it wholly an affair of the State, in which the Church had no voice beyond ascertaining the guilt of the accused. All the voluminous and minute legislation of Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Alexander IV. was wholly disregarded--the canon law had no currency in Castile, which regulated such matters to suit its own needs. That in this respect the popular needs were met is shown by the Ordenamiento de Alcalà, issued in 1348, which is silent on the subject of heresy. Apparently no change was deemed necessary in the provisions of the Partidas, which were then for the first time confirmed by the popular assembly. Under such legislation it follows as a matter of course that the Dominican provincial had no inquisitors to appoint, except in Aragon, under the bull of Urban IV. in 1262.
Castile continued unvexed by the Inquisition, and persecution for heresy was almost unknown. In 1316 Bernard Gui, of Toulouse, discovered in his district some of the dreaded sectaries known as Dolcinists or Pseudo-Apostoli, who fled to Spain to escape his energetic pursuit. May 1, 1316, he wrote to all the prelates and friars of Spain describing their characteristics and urging their apprehension and punishment. Had there been an Inquisition there he would have addressed himself to it. From remote Compostella he received an answer, written by Archbishop Rodrigo, March 6, 1317, announcing that five persons answering to the description had been captured there and were held in chains, and asking for instructions as to the mode of trying them and the punishment to be inflicted in case they are found guilty, “for all this is heretofore unaccustomed in our parts.” Evidently there was no Inquisition in Castile and Leon to which to apply, and even the provisions of the Partidas were unknown, though of all places in the kingdom Compostella must have been the one most familiar with the outer world and with heretics, from the stream of penitents continually sent thither as pilgrims.[205]
In 1401 Boniface IX. made a demonstration by appointing the provincial, Vicente de Lisboa, inquisitor over all Spain, directing that his expenses should be paid by the bishops, and that no superior of his Order could remove him. The only heresy specifically alluded to in the bull is the idolatrous worship of plants, trees, stones, and altars--apparently superstitious relics of paganism which indicate the condition of religion and culture in the Peninsula. Boniface’s action could hardly have been taken with any expectation of result, as Spain rendered obedience to Benedict XIII., the Antipope of Avignon, and it was probably only a move in the political game of the Great Schism. Whatever the motive, however, the effort was fruitless, for Fray Vicente was already dead in the odor of sanctity at the date of the bull. On learning this, Boniface returned to the charge, February 1, 1402, by empowering forever thereafter the Dominican Provincial of Spain to appoint and remove inquisitors, or to act as such himself, with all the privileges and powers accorded to the office by the canons. Inoperative as this remained, it at least had the advantage of supplying to the Spanish historians an unbroken line of inquisitors-general to be catalogued. About the same time King Henry III. increased the penalties of heresy by decreeing confiscation to the royal treasury of one-half of the possessions of heretics condemned by the ecclesiastical judges.[206]
This, perhaps, technically justifies Alonso Tostado, Bishop of Avila, who soon afterwards alludes to inquisitors in Spain investigating those defamed for heresy, and it explains the remarks of Sixtus IV. when, in January, 1482, he confirmed the two inquisitors appointed at Seville by Ferdinand and Isabella at the commencement of their reforms, and forbade their naming more, for the reason that the appointees of the Dominican provincial were sufficient. In spite of all this, the Spanish Inquisition was simply potential, not existent. When, in 1453, Alonso de Almarzo, Abbot of the great Benedictine foundation of Antealtares of Compostella, with his accomplices, was tried for selling throughout Spain and Portugal indulgences warranted to release the souls of the damned from hell, for counterfeiting the papal Agnus Dei, for forging and altering papal letters, and for persuading Jewish converts to apostatize, had there been an Inquisition it would promptly have taken cognizance of the culprits; but in place of this the case was referred to Nicolas V., who instructed the Bishop of Tarazona to proceed against them. A few years later Alonso de Espina, about 1460, sorrowfully admits the absence of all persecution of heresy. Bishops and inquisitors and preachers ought all to resist the heretics, but there is no one to do it. “No one investigates the errors of heretics. The ravening wolves, O Lord, have gained admittance to thy flock, for the shepherds are few. There are many hirelings, and because they are hirelings they care only for shearing, not for feeding the sheep!” and he draws a deplorable picture of the Spanish Church, distracted with heretics, Jews, and Saracens. Soon after this, in 1464, the Cortes assembled at Medina turned its attention to the subject and complained of the great number of “malos cristianos e sospechosos en la fe,” but the national aversion to the papal Inquisition still manifested itself, and its introduction was not suggested. The archbishops and bishops were requested to set on foot a rigid investigation after heretics, and King Henry IV. was asked to lend them aid, so that every suspected place might be thoroughly searched, and offenders brought to light, imprisoned, and punished. It was represented to the king that this would be to his advantage, as the confiscations would inure to the royal treasury, and he graciously expressed his assent; but the effort was resultless.[207]
For the most part the orthodoxy of Spain had been vexed only with a few Fraticelli and Waldenses, not numerous enough to call for active repression. The main trouble lay in the multitudes of Jews and Moors who, under the law, were entitled to toleration, but whom popular fanaticism had forced to conversion in great numbers, and whose purity of faith was justly liable to suspicion. Hereafter I hope to have the opportunity of showing that from both the religious and the political standpoint of the age the measures taken by Ferdinand and Isabella were by no means without justification, however mistaken they were both in morals and in policy, and however unfortunate in their ultimate results. At present it suffices to point out this condition of affairs to explain the dissatisfaction which was widely prevalent and the demand for an efficient remedy.
At the same time even Spain was not wholly unmoved by the spirit of unrest and inquiry which marked the second half of the fifteenth century, sapping the foundations of tradition and rejecting the claims of sacerdotalism. About 1460 we learn from Alonso de Espina that many were beginning to deny the efficacy of oral confession, and this point could not have been reached without calling in question many other doctrines and observances which the Church taught to be necessary to salvation. At length these innovators grew so bold that Pedro de Osma, a professor in the great University of Salamanca, ventured to promulgate their obnoxious opinions in print. Oral confession, he asserted, was of human, not of divine precept, and was unnecessary for the forgiveness of sins; no papal indulgence could insure the living from the fires of purgatory; the papacy could err, and had no power to dispense with the statutes of the Church. Had there been any machinery of persecution at hand, short work would have been made with so bold a heretic, but the authorities were so much at a loss what to do with him that they applied to Sixtus IV., who sent a commission to Alonso Carrillo, Archbishop of Toledo, the dignitary next in rank to the king, to try him. In 1479 a council was assembled for the purpose at Alcalà, consisting of fifty-two of the best theologians in Spain, besides a number of canon lawyers. Pedro was summoned to appear, and on his failing to do so his doctrine was condemned as heretical, and he was sentenced--not to the stake for contumacy, but to recant publicly in the pulpit. He submitted and did so, and we are told in the official report of the proceedings that all the faithful burst into tears at this signal manifestation of the conquering hand of God. Pedro died peacefully in the bosom of the Church during the next year, 1480, and Sixtus IV., in confirming the action of the council, ordered the archbishop to prosecute as heretics any of his followers who would not imitate his obedience.[208]
Evidently some more efficient and less cumbrous method was requisite if the population of reunited Spain was to enjoy the blessing of uniformity in faith. It did not take long for the piety of Isabella and the policy of Ferdinand to discover appropriate means.
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In Portugal, Affonso II., at the commencement of his reign, in 1211, had manifested his zeal by inducing his Cortes to adopt severe laws for the repression of heresy; but when Sueiro Gomes, the first Dominican Provincial of Spain, endeavored to introduce in his kingdom inquisitors of the order, Affonso refused to admit them, and successfully insisted that heretics should be tried as heretofore by the ordinary episcopal courts. This rebuff sufficed for nearly a century and a half, and there must have been considerable freedom of thought, for, about 1325, Alvaro Pelayo gives a long list of the errors publicly defended in the schools of Lisbon by Thomas Scotus, a renegade friar. Their nature may be appreciated from his Averrhoistic assertion that there had been three deceivers--Moses who deceived the Jews, Christ the Christians, and Mahomet the Saracens. He seems to have enjoyed immunity until he declared that St. Antony of Padua kept concubines, when the Franciscan prior had him incarcerated, and his trial followed. At last, by a bull, dated January 17, 1376, Gregory XI. authorized Agapito Colonna, Bishop of Lisbon, to appoint, for this time only, a Franciscan inquisitor, as heresies were known to be spreading, and there were no inquisitors in the kingdom. The nominee was to receive an annual salary of two hundred gold florins assessed upon all the dioceses in the proportion of their contributions to the apostolic chamber. Under this authority Agapito appointed the first Portuguese inquisitor, Martino Vasquez. From what we have seen elsewhere we may reasonably doubt his success in collecting his stipend; but, small as his receipts may have been, they were the equivalent of his service, for no trace of any labors performed by him remains.[209]
The Great Schism commenced in 1378, and as Portugal acknowledged Urban VI. while Spain adhered to the antipope Clement VII., the Dominican province of Spain divided itself, the Portuguese choosing a vicar-general, and finally a provincial, Gonçalo, in 1418, when Martin V. legalized the separation. This perhaps explains why Martino Vasquez was succeeded by another Franciscan. In 1394 Rodrigo de Cintra, calling himself Inquisitor of Portugal and Algarve, applied to Boniface IX. for confirmation, which was graciously accorded to him. Apparently the revenues of the office were nil, for the privilege was granted to him of residing with one associate at will in any Franciscan convent, which was bound to minister to his necessities, the same as to any other master of theology. Rodrigo was preacher to King João I., who requested this favor of Boniface, and his career, like that of his predecessor, is a blank. He was followed by a Dominican, Vicente de Lisboa, who had been Provincial of Spain at the time of the disruption, when he returned to Portugal and became confessor of Dom João. The king, in 1399, requested of Boniface his appointment as inquisitor, which was duly granted; and, as we have seen, in 1401, the pope endeavored to extend his jurisdiction over Castile and Leon. No trace of his inquisitorial activity exists. After his death, in 1401, there appears to have been an interval. The office apparently was regarded as a perquisite of the royal chapel for those who would condescend to accept it. The next appointment of which we hear is that of another confessor of Dom João, in 1413, this time a Franciscan, Affonso de Alprão, of whose doings no record has been preserved. When, in 1418, the kingdom was reorganized as an independent Dominican province, the earnest annalists of the Inquisition assume that under the bull of Boniface IX., in 1402, each successive provincial was likewise an inquisitor-general, and the lists of these worthies are laboriously paraded as such, until the founding of the New Inquisition in 1531. No acts of theirs in such capacity, however, are recorded. The Holy Office continued dormant, without even a titular official, until, in the early years of the sixteenth century, Dom Manoel, stimulated by the example of his Castilian neighbors, and feeling solicitude as to the status of the New Christians, or converts from Judaism and Islam, bethought him of its revival. Although he had the Dominican provincial at hand, no purpose of utilizing him in this manner seems to have been entertained. The king applied to the pope and obtained the appointment of a Franciscan, Henrique de Coimbra, but there is no trace of his activity.[210]
The New Inquisition of Spain was a model which the smaller kingdom would naturally be expected to adopt, and in fact, to ardent Catholics, there might well seem to be a necessity for such an institution in view of the problems arising from the large influx of New Christians flying from Spanish persecution. Dom Manoel, indeed, at one time entertained so seriously the idea of establishing the Spanish Inquisition in his dominions that, in 1515, he ordered his ambassador at Rome, D. Miguel da Silva, to obtain from Leo X. the same privileges as those which had been conceded to Castile, but from some cause the project was abandoned. His son, Dom João III., who succeeded him in 1521, was a weak-minded fanatic, and it is only singular that the introduction of the Inquisition on the Spanish model was delayed for still ten years. The struggle which took place over the measure belongs, however, to a period beyond our present limits.[211]