A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume III Part 6

The violent measures of John XXII., followed up by his successors, for a while effectually repressed the spiritual asceticism of the Franciscans.

Yet it was impossible that impulses which were so marked a characteristic of the age should be wholly obliterated in an Order in which they had become traditional. We see this in the kindness manifested by the Franciscans to the Fraticelli when it could be done without too much risk, and we cannot doubt that there were many who aspired to imitate the founder without daring to overleap the bounds of obedience. Such men could not but look with alarm and disgust at the growing worldliness of the Order under the new dispensation of John.

When the Provincial of Tuscany could lay aside five hundred florins out of the alms given to his brethren, and then lend this sum to the Hospital of S. Maria of Siena at ten per cent. per annum, although so flagrant a violation of his vows and of the canons against usury brought upon him the penalty of degradation, it required a divine visitation to impress his sin upon the minds of his fellows, and he died in 1373 in great agony and without the sacraments. Various other manfestations about the same time indicate the magnitude of the evil and the impossibility of suppressing it by human means. Under Boniface IX., Franciscans, we are told, were in the habit of seeking dispensations to enable them to hold benefices and even pluralities; and the pope decreed that any Mendicant desiring to be transferred to a non-Mendicant Order should, as a preliminary, pay a hundred gold florins to the papal camera. Under such a system there could be scarce a pretence of maintaining the holy poverty which had been the ideal of Francis and his followers.[184]

Yet the ardent thirst of poverty and the belief that in it lay the only a.s.sured path to salvation were too widely diffused to be repressed.

Giovanni Colombini, a rich and ambitious citizen of Siena had his thoughts accidentally directed to heaven. His career strikingly resembles that of Peter Waldo, save that the Church, grown wiser, utilized his zeal instead of antagonizing him. The Order of Jesuats which he founded was approved by Urban V. in 1367. It was an order of lay brethren under the Augustinian Rule, vowed to poverty and devoted to the care of the sick, not unlike that of the Cellites or Alexians of the Rhinelands.[185]

It was inevitable that there should be dissatisfaction among the more ascetic Franciscans, and that the more zealous of these should seek some remedy short of heresy. In 1350 Gentile of Spoleto obtained from Clement VI. authorization for some houses of stricter observance. Immediately the experience of Angelo and Liberato was repeated. The wrath of the Conventuals was excited. The innovators were accused of adopting the short and narrow gowns which had been the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of the dreaded Olivists. In the General Chapter of 1353, the General Farignano was urged to exterminate them by the measures which had proved so effective in Languedoc. To this he did not a.s.sent, but he set spies to work to obtain evidence against them, and soon was able to accuse them of receiving Fraticelli. They admitted the fact, but argued that this had been in the hope of converting the heretics, and when they proved obstinate they had been expelled--but they had not been reported to the Inquisition as duty required. Armed with this, Farignano represented to Innocent VI. the grave dangers of the innovation, and obtained a revocation of the papal authorization. The brethren were dispersed, Gentile and two companions were thrown into prison at Orvieto; his coadjutor, Fra Martino, a most exemplary man, who shone in miracles after death, died the next year, and the rest were reduced to obedience.

After prolonged captivity Gentile was released, and died in 1362, worn out with fruitless labors to restore the discipline of the Order.[186]

More fortunate was his disciple, Paoluccio da Trinci, of Foligno, a simple and unlearned friar, who had obtained from his kinsman, Ugolino, Lord of Foligno, a dungeon in which to gratify his thirst for asceticism. Though he had permission for this from his superiors, he suffered much from the hostility of the laxer brethren, but his austerities gained him great popular reverence and many disciples. In 1368 the General Farignano chanced to attend a provincial chapter at Foligno, and was persuaded to ask of Ugolino a spot called Brulliano, in the mountains between Foligno and Camerino, as a hermitage for Paoluccio and his followers. After his request was granted he dreaded a schism in the Order and wished to recall it, but Ugolino held him to his purpose.

The place was wild, rocky, marshy, unwholesome, infested with serpents, and almost uninhabited. Thither Paoluccio led his brethren, and they were forced to adopt the sabots or wooden shoes, which became the distinguis.h.i.+ng foot-gear of their Order. Their reputation spread apace; converts flocked to them; their buildings required enlargement; a.s.sociate houses were founded in many places, and thus arose the Observantines, or Franciscans of strict observance--an event in the history of the Church only second in importance to the original foundation of the Mendicant Orders.[187]

When Paoluccio died, in 1390, he was already reckoned as a provincial within the Order. After an interval he was succeeded by his coadjutor, Giovanni Stronconi. In 1405 began the marvellous career of St.

Bernardino of Siena, who counts as the formal founder of the Observantines. They had merely been called the Brethren of the Hermitages until the Council of Constance established them as an organization virtually independent of the Conventuals, when they took the name by which they have since been known. Everywhere their inst.i.tution spread. New houses arose, or those of the Conventuals were reformed and given over to them. Thus in 1426 they were introduced into the province of Stra.s.sburg through the intervention of Matilda of Savoy, wife of the Palsgrave Louis the Bearded. Familiar in her youth with their virtues, she took occasion at Heidelberg to point out to her husband the Franciscans in their convent garden below them, amusing themselves with military exercises. It resulted in the reform of all the houses in his dominions and the introduction of the Observantine discipline, not without serious trouble. In 1453 Nicholas of Cusa, as legate, forced all the houses in the diocese of Bamberg to adopt the Observantine discipline, under threat of forfeiting their privileges. In 1431 the holy house on Mt. Alverno, the Franciscan Mecca, was made over to them, and in 1434 the guardians.h.i.+p of the Holy Places in Jerusalem.

In 1460 we hear of their penetrating to distant Ireland. It is not to be supposed that the Conventuals submitted quietly to the encroachments and triumphs of the hated ascetics whom for a century and a half they had successfully baffled and persecuted. Quarrels, sharper and bitterer even than those with the Dominicans, were of constant occurrence, and were beyond the power of the popes to allay. A promising effort at reunion attempted by Capistrano in 1430, under the auspices of Martin V., was defeated by the incurable laxity of the Conventuals, and there was nothing left for both sides but to continue the war. In 1435 the strife rose to such a pitch in France that Charles VII. was obliged to appeal to the Council of Basle, which responded with a decree in favor of the Observantines. The struggle was hopeless. The corruption of the Conventuals was so universally recognized that even Pius II. does not hesitate to say that, though they generally excel as theologians, virtue is the last thing about which most of them concern themselves. In contrast with this the holiness of the new organization won for it the veneration of the people, while the unflagging zeal with which it served the Holy See secured for it the favor of the popes precisely as the Mendicant Orders had done in the thirteenth century. At first merely a branch of the Franciscans, then placed under a virtually independent vicar-general, at length Leo X., after vainly striving to heal the differences, gave the Observantines a general minister and reduced the Conventuals to a subordinate position under a general master.[188]

A religious revival such as this brought into service a cla.s.s of men who were worthy representatives of the Peter Martyrs and Guillem Arnauds of the early Inquisition. Under their ruthless energy the Fraticelli were doomed to extinction. The troubles of the Great Schism had allowed the heretics to flourish almost unnoticed and unmolested, but after the Church had healed its dissensions at Constance and had entered upon a new and vigorous life, it set to work in earnest to eradicate them.

Hardly had Martin V. returned to Italy from Constance when he issued from Mantua, November 14, 1418, a bull in which he deplores the increase of the abominable sect in many parts, and especially in the Roman province. Fortified with the protection of the temporal lords, they abuse and threaten the bishops and inquisitors who attempt to repress them. The bishops and inquisitors are therefore instructed to proceed against them vigorously, without regard to limits of jurisdiction, and to prosecute their protectors, even if the latter are of episcopal or regal dignity, which sufficiently indicates that the Fraticelli had found favor with those of highest rank in both Church and State. This accomplished little, for in a subsequent bull of 1421 Martin alludes to the continued increase of the heresy, and tries the expedient of appointing the Cardinals of Albano and Porto as special commissioners for its suppression. The cardinals proved as inefficient as their predecessors. In 1423 the General Council of Siena was greatly scandalized at finding that at p.e.n.i.scola there was a heretic pope with his college of cardinals, apparently flouris.h.i.+ng without an attempt at concealment, and the Gallican nation made several ineffectual efforts to induce the council to take active measures against the secular authorities under whose favor these scandals were allowed to exist. How utterly the machinery of persecution had broken down is ill.u.s.trated by the case of three Fraticelli who had at this period been detected in Florence--Bartolommeo di Matteo, Giovanni di Marino of Lucca, and Bartolommeo di Pietro of Pisa. Evidently distrusting the Florentine Inquisition, which was Franciscan, Martin V. specially intrusted the matter to his legates then presiding over the Council of Siena. On the sudden dissolution of the council the legates returned to Rome, except the Dominican General, Leonardo of Florence, who went to Florence. To him, therefore, Martin wrote, April 24, 1424, empowering him to terminate the case himself, and expressly forbidding the Inquisitor of Florence from taking any part in it. In September of the same year Martin instructed Piero, Abbot of Rosacio, his rector of the Mark of Ancona, to extirpate the Fraticelli existing there, and the difficulty of the undertaking was recognized in the unwonted clemency which authorized Piero to reconcile even those who had been guilty of repeated relapses.[189]

Some new motive force was evidently required. There were laws in abundance for the extermination of heresy, and an elaborate organization for their enforcement, but a paralysis seemed to have fallen upon it, and all the efforts of the Holy See to make it do its duty was in vain.

The problem was solved when, in 1426, Martin boldly overslaughed the Inquisition and appointed two Observantines as inquisitors, without limitation of districts and with power to appoint deputies, thus rendering them supreme over the whole of Italy. These were the men whom we have so often met before where heresy was to be combated--San Giovanni da Capistrano, and the blessed Giacomo da Monteprandone, generally known as della Marca--both full of zeal and energy, who richly earned their respective canonization and beatification by lifelong devotion and by services which can scarce be overestimated. It is true that Giacomo was commissioned only as a missionary, to preach to the heretics and reconcile them, but the difference was practically undiscoverable, and when, a quarter of a century later, he fondly looked back over the exploits of his youth, he related with pride how the heretics fled from before his face, abandoned their strongholds, and left their flocks to his mercy. Their headquarters seem to have been in the Mark of Ancona, and chiefly in the dioceses of Fabriano and Jesi.

There the new inquisitors boldly attacked them. There was no resistance.

Such of the teachers as could do so sought safety in flight, and the fate of the rest may be guessed from the instructions of Martin in 1428 to Astorgio, Bishop of Ancona, his lieutenant in the Mark, with respect to the village of Magnalata. As it had been a receptacle of heretics, it is to be levelled with the earth, never to be rebuilt. Stubborn heretics are to be dealt with according to the law--that is, of course, to be burned, as Giacomo della Marca tells us was the case with many of them.

Those who repent may be reconciled, but their leaders are to be imprisoned for life, and are to be tortured, if necessary, to force them to reveal the names of their fellows elsewhere. The simple folk who have been misled are to be scattered around in the vicinage where they can cultivate their lands, and are to be recompensed by dividing among them the property confiscated from the rest. The children of heretic parents are to be taken away and sent to a distance, where they can be brought up in the faith. Heretic books are to be diligently searched for throughout the province; and all magistrates and communities are to be warned that any favor or protection shown to heretics will be visited with forfeiture of munic.i.p.al rights.[190]

Such measures ought to have been effective, as well as the device of Capistrano, who, after driving the Fraticelli out of Ma.s.sacio and Palestrina, founded Observantine houses there to serve as citadels of the faith, but the heretics were stubborn and enduring. When Eugenius IV. succeeded to the papacy he renewed Capistrano's commission in 1432 as a general inquisitor against the Fraticelli. We have no details of his activity during this period, but he was doubtless busily employed, though he was deprived of the a.s.sistance of Giacomo, who until 1440 was, as we have seen, at work among the Cathari of Bosnia and the Hussites of Hungary. The Fraticelli of Ancona were still troublesome, for, on his return from Asia in 1441, Giacomo was sent thither as special inquisitor for their suppression. When, in 1447, Nicholas V. ascended the papal throne, he made haste to renew Capistrano's commission, and in 1449 a combined attack was made on the heretics of the Mark, possibly stimulated by the capture, in his own court, of a bishop of the Fraticelli named Matteo, disguised in a Franciscan habit. Nicholas himself went to Fabriano, while Capistrano and Giacomo scoured the country. Magnalata had been rebuilt in spite of the prohibition, and it, with Migliorotta, Poggio, and Merulo, was brought back to the faith, by what means we can well guess. Giacomo boasts that the heretics gave five hundred ducats to a bravo to slay Capistrano, and on one occasion two hundred and on another one hundred and fifty to procure his own death, but the a.s.sa.s.sins in each case were touched with compunction and came in and made confession--doubtless a profitable revelation for sharpers to make, for no one acquainted with Italian society at that period can imagine that such sums would not have effected their object. The inquisitors, however, were specially protected by Heaven. Capistrano's legend relates that on one occasion the heretics waited for him in ambush. His companions pa.s.sed in safety, and when he followed alone, absorbed in meditation and prayer, a sudden whirlwind, with torrents of rain, kept his a.s.sailants in their lair, and he escaped. Giacomo was similarly divinely guarded. At Matelica a heretic concealed himself in a chapel of the Virgin, to a.s.sail the inquisitor as he pa.s.sed, but the Virgin appeared to him with threats so terrible that he fell to the ground and lay there till the neighbors carried him to a hospital, and it was three months before he was able to seek Giacomo at Fermo and abjure.[191]

The unlucky captives were brought before Nicholas at Fabriano and burned. Giacomo tells us that the stench lasted for three days and extended as far as the convent in which he was staying. He exerted himself to save the souls of those whose bodies were forfeit by reason of relapse, and succeeded in all cases but one. This hardened heretic was the treasurer of the sect, named Chiuso. He refused to recant, and would not call upon G.o.d or the Virgin or the saints for aid, but simply said "Fire will not burn me." His endurance was tested to the utmost.

For three days he was burned piecemeal at intervals, but his resolution never gave way, and at last he expired impenitent, in spite of the kindly efforts to torture him to heaven.[192]

After this we hear little of the Fraticelli, although the sect still continued to exist for a while in secret. In 1467 Paul II. converted a number of them who were brought from Poli to Rome. Eight men and six women, with paper mitres on their heads, were exposed to the jeers of the populace on a high scaffold at the Aracli, while the papal vicar and five bishops preached for their conversion. Their penance consisted in imprisonment in the Campidoglio, and in wearing a long robe bearing a white cross on breast and back. It was probably on this occasion that Rodrigo Sanchez, a favorite of Paul's, and subsequently Bishop of Palencia, wrote a treatise on the poverty of Christ, in which he proved that ecclesiastics led apostolic lives in the midst of their possessions. In 1471 Fra Tommaso di Scarlino was sent to Piombino and the maritime parts of Tuscany to drive out some Fraticelli who had been discovered there. This is the last allusion to them that I have met with, and thereafter they may be considered as virtually extinct. That they soon pa.s.sed completely out of notice may be inferred from the fact that in 1487, when the Spanish Inquisition persecuted some Observantines, Innocent VIII. issued a general order that any Franciscans imprisoned by Dominican inquisitors should be handed over for trial to their own superiors, and that no such prosecutions should be thereafter undertaken.[193]

The Observantine movement may be credited with the destruction of the Fraticelli, not so much by furnis.h.i.+ng the men and the zeal required for their violent suppression as by supplying an organization in which ascetic longings could be safely gratified, and by attracting to themselves the popular veneration which had so long served as a safeguard to the heretics. When we read of Capistrano's reputation among his countrymen--how in Vicenza, in 1451, the authorities had to shut the city gates to keep out the influx of surging crowds, and when he walked the streets he had to be accompanied by a guard of Frati to keep off the people seeking to touch him with sticks or to secure a fragment of his garment as a relic; how in Florence, in 1456, an armed guard was requisite to prevent his suffocation--we can realize the tremendous influence exercised by him and his fellows in diverting the current of public opinion to the Church which they represented. Like the Mendicants of the thirteenth century, they restored to it much of the reverence which it had forfeited, in spite of the relaxation and self-indulgence to which, if Poggio is to be believed, many of them speedily degenerated.[194]

Not less effective was the refuge which the Observantines afforded to those whose morbid tendencies led them to seek superhuman austerity. The Church having at last recognized the necessity of furnis.h.i.+ng an outlet for these tendencies, as the old Fraticelli died or were burned there were none to take their place, and the sect disappears from view without leaving a trace behind it. Ascetic zeal must indeed have been intense when it could not be satiated by such a life as that of Lorenzo da Fermo, who died in 1481 at the age of one hundred and ten, after pa.s.sing ninety years with the Observantines. For forty of these years he lived on Mont Alverno, wearing neither cowl nor sandals--bareheaded and barefooted in the severest weather, and with the thinnest garments. If there were natures which craved more than this, the Church had learned either to utilize or to control them. Thus was organized the Order of the Strict Observance, better known as the Recollects. The Conde de Sotomayor, of the n.o.blest blood of Spain, had entered the Franciscan Order, and, becoming dissatisfied with its laxity, obtained from Innocent VIII., in 1487, authority to found a reformed branch, which he established in the wilds of the Sierra Morena. In spite of the angry opposition of both Conventuals and Observantines, it proved successful and spread permanently through France and Italy. An irregular and unfortunate effort in the same direction was made not long after by Matteo da Tivoli, a Franciscan whose thirst for supreme asceticism had led him to adopt the life of a hermit, with about eighty followers, in the Roman province. They threw off all obedience to the Order, under the influence of Satan, who appeared to Matteo in the guise of Christ. He was seized and imprisoned, and commenced to doubt the reality of his mission, when another vision confirmed him. He succeeded in escaping with a comrade, and lived in caves among the mountains with numerous disciples, illuminated by G.o.d and gifted with miraculous power. He organized his followers into an independent Order, with general, provincials, and guardians, but the Church succeeded in breaking it up in 1495, Matteo finally returning to the Conventuals, while most of his disciples entered the Observantines.[195]

In reviewing this history of the morbid aberrations of lofty impulses, it is impossible not to recognize how much the Church lost in vitality, and how much causeless suffering was inflicted by the theological arrogance and obstinate perversity of John XXII. With tact and discretion the zeal of the Fraticelli could have been utilized, as was subsequently that of the Observantines. The ceaseless quarrels of the Conventuals with the latter explain the persecutions endured by the Spirituals and the Fraticelli. Paoluccio was fortunate in finding men high in station who were wise enough to protect his infant organization until it had demonstrated its usefulness and was able to defend itself, but there never was a time, even when it was the most useful weapon in the hands of the Holy See, when the Conventuals would not, had they been able, have treated it as inhumanly as they had treated the followers of Angelo and Olivi and Michele da Cesena.

CHAPTER IV.

POLITICAL HERESY UTILIZED BY THE CHURCH.

The identification of the cause of the Church with that of G.o.d was no new thing. Long before the formulation of laws against heresy and the organization of the Inquisition for its suppression, the advantage had been recognized of denouncing as heretics all who refused obedience to the demands of prelate and pope. In the quarrel between the empire and papacy over the question of the invest.i.tures, the Council of Lateran, in 1102, required all the bishops in attendance to subscribe a declaration anathematizing the new heresy of disregarding the papal anathema, and though the Church as yet was by no means determined on the death-penalty for ordinary heresy, it had no hesitation as to the punishment due to the imperialists who maintained the traditional rights of the empire against its new pretensions. In that same year the monk Sigebert, who was by no means a follower of the antipope Alberto, was scandalized at the savage cruelty of Paschal II. in exhorting his adherents to the slaughter of all the subjects of Henry IV. Robert the Hierosolymitan of Flanders, on his return from the first crusade, had taken up arms against Henry IV. and had signalized his devotion by depopulating the Cambresis, whereupon Paschal wrote to him with enthusiastic praises of this good work, urging him to continue it as quite as pious as his labors to recover the Holy Sepulchre, and promising remission of sins to him and to all his ruthless soldiery. Paschal himself became a heretic when, in 1111, yielding to the violence of Henry V., he conceded the imperial right of invest.i.ture of bishops and abbots, although when Bruno, Bishop of Segni and Abbot of Monte Casino, boldly proved his heresy to his face, he deprived the audacious reasoner of the abbacy and sent him back to his see. In his settlement with Henry, he had broken a consecrated host, each taking half, and had solemnly said, "Even as this body of Christ is divided, so let him be divided from the kingdom of Christ who shall attempt to violate our compact;" but the stigma of heresy was unendurable, and in 1112 he presided over the Council of Lateran, which p.r.o.nounced void his oath and his bulls. When Henry complained that he had violated his oath, he coolly replied that he had promised not to excommunicate Henry, but not that he should not be excommunicated by others. If Paschal was not forced literally to abjure his heresy he did so constructively, and the principle was established that even a pope could not abandon a claim of which the denial had been p.r.o.nounced heretical. When, not long afterwards, the German prelates were required at their consecration to abjure all heresy, and especially the Henrician, the allusion was not to the errors of Henry of Lausanne, but to those of the emperor who had sought to limit the encroachments of the Holy See on the temporal power.[196]

As heresy, rightly so called, waxed and grew more and more threatening, and the struggle for its suppression increased in bitterness and took an organized shape under a formidable body of legislation, and as the application of the theory of indulgences gave to the Church an armed militia ready for mobilization without cost whenever it chose to proclaim danger to the faith, the temptation to invoke the fanaticism of Christendom for the defence or extension of its temporal interests inevitably increased in strength. In so far as such a resort can be justified, the Albigensian crusades were justified by a real antagonism of faith which foreboded a division of Christianity, and their success irresistibly led to the application of the same means to cases in which there was not the semblance of a similar excuse. Of these one of the earliest, as well as one of the most typical, was that of the Stedingers.

The Stedingers were a mixed race who had colonized on the lower Weser the lands which their industry won from the overflow of river and sea, their territory extending southward to the neighborhood of Bremen. A rough and semi-barbarous folk, no doubt--hardy herdsmen and fishermen, with perhaps an occasional tendency to piracy in the ages which celebrated the exploits of the Vikings of Jomsburg. They were freemen under the spiritual care of the Archbishops of Bremen, who in return enjoyed their t.i.thes. This t.i.the question had been immemorially a troublesome one, ever since a tincture of Christianity had overspread those regions. In the eleventh century Adam of Bremen tells us that throughout the archiepiscopate the bishops sold their benedictions and the people were not only abandoned to l.u.s.t and gluttony, but refused to pay their t.i.thes. The Stedingers were governed by judges of their own choice, administering their own laws, until, about 1187, trouble arose from the attempts of the Counts of Oldenburg to extend their authority over the redeemed marshes and islands, by building a castle or two which should keep the population in check. There were few churches, and, as the parishes were large, the matrons were accustomed to carry their daughters to ma.s.s in wagons. The garrisons were in the habit of sallying forth and seizing these women to solace their solitude, till the people arose, captured the castles, slew the garrisons, and dug a ditch across a neck of their territory, leaving only one gate for entrance. John Count of Oldenburg recovered his castles, but after his death the Stedingers rea.s.serted their independence. Among their rights they included the non-payment of t.i.thes, and they treated with contumely the priests sent to compel their obedience. They strengthened their defences, and their freedom from feudal and ecclesiastical tyranny attracted to them refugees from all the neighboring lands. Hartwig, Archbishop of Bremen, when on his way to the Holy Land in 1197, is said to have asked Celestin III. to preach a crusade against them as heretics, but this is evidently an error, for the Albigensian wars had not as yet suggested the employment of such methods. Matters became more embroiled when some monks who ventured to inculcate upon the peasants the duty of t.i.the-paying were martyred. Still worse was it when a priest, irritated at the smallness of an oblation offered at Easter by a woman of condition, in derision slipped into her mouth the coin in place of the Eucharist. Unable to swallow it, and fearing to commit sacrilege, the woman kept it in her mouth till her return home, when she ejected it in some clean linen and discovered the trick. Enraged at this insult her husband slew the priest, and thus increased the general ferment. After his return Hartwig endeavored, in 1207, to reduce the recalcitrant population, but without success, except to get some money.[197]

Yet the Stedingers were welcomed as fully orthodox when their aid was wanted in the struggle which raged from 1208 till 1217, between the rival archbishops of Bremen, first between Waldemar and Burchard, and then between Waldemar and Gerhardt. Ranged at first on the side of Waldemar, after the triumph of Frederic II. over Otho their defection to Gerhardt was decisive, and in 1217 the latter obtained his archiepiscopal seat, where he held his allies in high favor until his death in 1219. He was succeeded by Gerhardt II., of the House of Lippe, a warlike prelate who endeavored to overthrow the liberties of Bremen itself, and to levy tolls on all the commerce of the Weser. The Stedinger t.i.thes were not likely to escape his attention. Other distractions, including a war with the King of Denmark and strife with the recalcitrant citizens of Bremen, prevented any immediate effort to subjugate the Stedingers, but at length his hands were free. His brother, Hermann Count of Lippe, came to his a.s.sistance with other n.o.bles, for the independence of the Weser peasant-folk was of evil import to the neighboring feudal lords. To take advantage of the ice in those watery regions the expedition set forth in December, 1229, under the leaders.h.i.+p of the count and the archbishop. The Stedingers resisted valiantly. On Christmas Day a battle was fought in which Count Hermann was slain and the crusaders put to flight. To celebrate the triumph the victors in derision appointed mock officials, styling one emperor, another pope, and others archbishops and bishops, and these issued letters under these t.i.tles--a sorry jest, which when duly magnified represented them as rebels against all temporal and spiritual authority.[198]

It was evident that some more potent means must be found to overcome the indomitable peasantry, and the device adopted was suggested by the success, in 1230, of the crusade preached by Wilbrand, Bishop of Utrecht, against the free Frisians in revenge for their slaying his predecessor Otho, a brother of Archbishop Gerhardt, and imprisoning his other brother, Dietrich, Provost of Deventer, after their victory of Coevorden. It was scarce possible not to follow this example. At a synod held in Bremen in 1230, the Stedingers were put to the ban as the vilest of heretics, who treated the Eucharist with contempt too horrible for description, who sought responses from wise-women, made waxen images, and wrought many other works of darkness.[199]

Doubtless there were remnants of pagan superst.i.tion in Steding, such as we shall hereafter see existing throughout many parts of Christendom, which served as a foundation for these accusations, but that in fact there were no religious principles involved, and that the questions at issue were purely political, is indicated by the praise which Frederic II., in an epistle dated June 14, 1230, bestows on the Stedingers for the aid which they had rendered to a house of the Teutonic Knights, and his exhortation that they should continue to protect it. We learn, moreover, that everywhere the peasantry openly favored them and joined them when opportunity permitted. It was simply an episode in the extension of feudalism and sacerdotalism. The scattered remains of the old Teutonic tribal independence were to be crushed, and the combined powers of Church and State were summoned to the task. How readily such accusations could be imposed on the credulity of the people we have seen from the operations of Conrad of Marburg, and the stories to which he gave currency of far-pervading secret rites of demon-wors.h.i.+p. Yet the preliminaries of a crusade consumed time, and during 1231 and 1232 Archbishop Gerhardt had all he could do to withstand the a.s.saults of the victorious peasants, who twice captured and destroyed the castle of Schlutter, which he had rebuilt to protect his territories from their incursions; he sought support in Rome, and in October, 1232, after ordering an investigation of the heresy by the Bishops of Lubeck, Ratzeburg, and Minden, Gregory IX. came to his aid with bulls addressed to the Bishops of Minden, Lubeck, and Verden, ordering them to preach the cross against the rebels. In these there is nothing said about t.i.thes, but the Stedingers are described as heretics of the worst description, who deny G.o.d, wors.h.i.+p demons, consult seeresses, abuse the sacrament, make wax figurines to destroy their enemies, and commit the foulest excesses on the clergy, sometimes nailing priests to the wall with arms and legs spread out, in derision of the Crucified. Gregory's long pontificate was devoted to two paramount objects--the destruction of Frederic II. and the suppression of heresy. The very name of heretic seemed to awake in him a wrath which deprived him of all reasoning powers, and he threw himself into the contest with the unhappy peasants of the Weser marshes as unreservedly as he did into that which Conrad of Marburg was contemporaneously waging with the powers of darkness in the Rhinelands. In January, 1233, he wrote to the Bishops of Paderborn, Hildesheim, Verden, Munster, and Osnabruck, ordering them to a.s.sist their brethren of Ratzeburg, Minden, and Lubeck, whom he had commissioned to preach a crusade, with full pardons, against the heretics called Stedingers, who were destroying the faithful people of those regions. An army had meanwhile been collected which accomplished nothing during the winter against the steadfast resolution of the peasants, and dispersed on the expiration of its short term of service.

In a papal epistle of June 17, 1233, to the Bishops of Minden, Lubeck, and Ratzeburg, this lack of success is represented as resulting from a mistaken belief on the part of the crusaders that they were not getting the same indulgences as those granted for the Holy Land, leading them to withdraw after gaining decisive advantages. The bishops are therefore ordered to preach a new crusade in which there shall be no error as to the pardons to be earned, unless meanwhile the Stedingers shall submit to the archbishop and abandon their heresies. Already, however, another band of crusaders had been organized, which, towards the end of June, 1233, penetrated eastern Steding, on the right bank of the Weser. This district had hitherto kept aloof from the strife, and was defenceless.

The crusaders devastated the land with fire and sword, slaying without distinction of age or s.e.x, and manifesting their religious zeal by burning all the men who were captured. The crusade came to an inglorious end, however; for, encouraged by its easy success, Count Burchard of Oldenburg, its leader, was emboldened to attack the fortified lands on the west bank, when he and some two hundred crusaders were slain and the rest were glad to escape with their lives.[200]

Matter's were evidently growing serious. The success of the Stedingers in battling for the maintenance of their independence was awakening an uneasy feeling among the populations, and the feudal n.o.bles were no less interested than the prelates in subduing what might prove to be the nucleus of a dangerous and far-reaching revolt. The third crusade was therefore preached with additional energy over a wider circle than before, and preparations were made for an expedition in 1234 on a scale to crush all resistance. Dominicans spread like a cloud over Holland, Flanders, Brabant, Westphalia, and the Rhinelands, summoning the faithful to defend religion. In Friesland they had little success, for the population sympathized with their kindred and were rather disposed to maltreat the preachers, but elsewhere their labors were abundantly rewarded. Bulls of February 11 take under papal protection the territories of Henry Raspe of Thuringia, and Otho of Brunswick, who had a.s.sumed the cross--the latter, however, only with a view to self-protection, for he was an enemy of Archbishop Gerhardt. The heaviest contingent came from the west, under Hendrik, Duke of Brabant, consisting, it is said, of forty thousand men led by the _preux chevalier_, Florent, Count of Holland, together with Thierry, Count of Cleves, Arnoul of Oudenarde, Ra.s.so of Gavres, Thierry of Dixmunde, Gilbert of Zotteghem, and other n.o.bles, eager to earn salvation and preserve their feudal rights. Three hundred s.h.i.+ps from Holland gave a.s.surance that the maritime part of the expedition should not be lacking. Apparently warned by the disastrous outcome of his zeal in the affair of Conrad of Marburg, Gregory at the last moment seems to have felt some misgiving, and in March, 1234, sent to Bishop Guglielmo, his legate in North Germany, orders to endeavor by peaceful means to bring about the reconciliation of the peasants, but the effort came too late.

In April the hosts were already a.s.sembling, and the legate did, and probably could do, nothing to avert the final blow. Overwhelming as was the force of the crusaders, the handful of peasants met it with their wonted resolution. At Altenesch, on May 27, they made their stand and resisted with stubborn valor the onslaught of Hendrik of Brabant and Florent of Holland; but, in the vast disparity of numbers, Thierry of Cleves was able to make a flank attack with fresh troops which broke their ranks, when they were slaughtered unsparingly. Six thousand were left dead upon the field, besides those drowned in the Weser in the vain attempt at flight, and we are asked to believe that the divine favor was manifested in that only seven of the crusaders perished. The land now lay defenceless before the soldiers of the Lord, who improved their victory by laying it waste with fire and sword, sparing neither age nor s.e.x. Six centuries later, on May 27, 1834, a monument was solemnly dedicated on the field of Altenesch to the heroes who fell in desperate defence of their land and liberty.[201]

Bald as was the pretence for this frightful tragedy, the Church a.s.sumed all the responsibility and kept up the transparent fiction to the last.

When the slaughter and devastation were over, came the solemn farce of reconciling the heretics. As the land had been so long under their control, their dead were buried indistinguishably with the remains of the orthodox, so, November 28, 1234, Gregory graciously announced that the necessity of exhumation would be waived in view of the impossibility of separating the one from the other, but that all cemeteries must be consecrated anew to overcome the pollution of the heretic bodies within them. Considerable time must have been consumed in the settlement of all details, for it is not until August, 1236, that Gregory writes to the archbishop that, as the Stedingers have abandoned their rebellion and humbly supplicated for reconciliation, he is authorized to reconcile them on receiving proper security that they will be obedient for the future and make proper amends for the past. In this closing act of the b.l.o.o.d.y drama it is noteworthy that there is no allusion to any of the specific heresies which had been alleged as a reason for the extermination of the heretics. Perhaps the breaking of Conrad of Marburg's bubble had shown the falsity of the charges, but whether this were so or not those charges had been wholly supererogatory except as a means of exciting popular animosity. Disobedience to the Church was sufficient; resistance to its claims was heresy, punishable here and hereafter with all the penalties of the temporal and spiritual swords.[202]

It is not to be supposed that Gregory neglected to employ in his own interest the moral and material forces which he had thus put at the disposal of Gerhardt of Bremen. When, in 1238, he became involved in a quarrel with the Viterbians and their leader Aldobrandini, he commuted the vow of the Podesta of Spoleto to serve in Palestine into service against Viterbo, and he freely offered Holy Land indulgences to all who would enlist under his banner. In 1241 he formally declared the cause of the Church to be more important than that of Palestine, when, being in want of funds to carry on his contest with Frederic II., he ordered that crusaders be induced to commute their vows for money, while still receiving full indulgences, or else be persuaded to turn their arms against Frederic in the crusade which he had caused to be preached against him. Innocent IV. pursued the same policy when he had set up a rival emperor in the person of William of Holland, and a crusade was preached in 1248 for a special expedition to Aix-la-Chapelle, of which the capture was necessary in order to his coronation, and vows for Palestine were redeemed that the money should be handed over to him.

After Frederic's death his son Conrad IV. was the object of similar measures, and all who bore arms in his favor against William of Holland were the subject of papal anathemas. To maintain the Italian interests of the papacy, men slaughtered each other in holy wars all over Europe.

The disastrous expedition to Aragon which cost Philippe le Hardi his life in 1284 was a crusade preached by order of Martin IV. to aid Charles of Anjou, and to punish Pedro III. for his conquest of Sicily after the Sicilian Vespers.[203]

With the systematization of the laws against heresy and the organization of the Inquisition, proceedings of this nature a.s.sume a more regular shape, especially in Italy. It was in their character as Italian princes that the popes found the supreme utility of the Holy Office. Frederic II. had been forced to pay for his coronation not only by the edict of persecution, but by the confirmation of the grant of the Countess Matilda. Papal ambition thus stimulated aspired to the domination of the whole of Italy, and for this the way seemed open with the death of Frederic in 1250, followed by that of Conrad in 1254. When the hated Suabians pa.s.sed away, the unification of Italy under the triple crown seemed at hand, and Innocent IV., before his death in December, 1254, had the supreme satisfaction of lording it in Naples, the most powerful pope that the Holy See had known. Yet the n.o.bles and cities were as unwilling to subject themselves to the Innocents and Alexanders as to the Frederics, and the turbulent factions of Guelf and Ghibelline maintained the civil strife in every corner of central and upper Italy.

To the papal policy it was an invaluable a.s.sistance to have the power of placing in every town of importance an inquisitor whose devotion to Rome was unquestioned, whose person was inviolable, and who was authorized to compel the submissive a.s.sistance of the secular arm under terror of a prosecution for heresy in the case of slack obedience. Such an agent could cope with podesta and bishop, and even an unruly populace rarely ventured a resort to temporary violence. The statutes of the republics, as we have seen, were modified and moulded to adapt them to the fullest development of the new power, under the excuse of facilitating the extermination of heresy, and the Holy Office became the ultimate expression of the serviceable devotion of the Mendicant Orders to the Holy See. From this point of view we are able to appreciate the full significance of the terrible bulls _Ad extirpanda_, described in a previous chapter.

It was possibly with a view thus to utilize the force of both Orders that the Inquisitions of northern and central Italy were divided between them, and their respective provinces permanently a.s.signed to each. Nor perhaps would we err in recognizing an object in the a.s.signment to the Dominicans, who were regarded as sterner and more vigorous than their rivals, of the province of Lombardy, which not only was the hot-bed of heresy, but which retained some recollections of the ancient independence of the Ambrosian Church, and was more susceptible to imperial influences from Germany.

With the development of the laws against heresy, and the organization of special tribunals for the application of those laws, it was soon perceived that an accusation of heresy was a peculiarly easy and efficient method of attacking a political enemy. No charge was easier to bring, none so difficult to disprove--in fact, from what we have seen of the procedure of the Inquisition, there was none in which acquittal was so absolutely impossible where the tribunal was desirous of condemnation. When employed politically the accused had the naked alternative of submission or of armed resistance. No crime, moreover, according to the accepted legal doctrines of the age, carried with it a penalty so severe for a potentate who was above all other laws. Besides, the procedure of the Inquisition required that when a suspected heretic was summoned to trial, his first step was humbly to swear to stand to the mandates of the Church, and perform whatever penance it should see fit to impose in case he failed to clear himself of the suspicion. Thus an immense advantage was gained over a political enemy by merely citing him to appear, when he was obliged either to submit himself in advance to any terms that might be dictated to him, or, by refusing to appear, expose himself to condemnation for contumacy with its tremendous temporal consequences.

It mattered little what were the grounds on which a charge of heresy was based. In the intricate intrigues and factional strife which seethed and boiled in every Italian city, there could be no lack of excuse for setting the machinery of the Inquisition in motion whenever there was an object to be attained. With the organization of the Hildebrandine theocracy the heretical character of simple disobedience, which had been implied rather than expressed, came to be distinctly formulated. Thomas Aquinas did not shrink from proving that resistance to the authority of the Roman Church was heretical. By embodying in the canon law the bull _Unam Sanctam_ the Church accepted the definition of Boniface VIII. that whoever resists the power lodged by G.o.d in the Church resists G.o.d, unless, like a Manichaean, he believes in two principles, which shows him to be a heretic. If the supreme spiritual power errs, it is to be judged of G.o.d alone; there is no earthly appeal. "We say, declare, define, and p.r.o.nounce that it is necessary to salvation that every human creature be subjected to the Roman pontiff." Inquisitors, therefore, were fully justified in laying it down as an accepted principle of law that disobedience to any command of the Holy See was heresy; so was any attempt to deprive the Roman Church of any privilege which it saw fit to claim. As a corollary to this was the declaration that inquisitors had power to levy war against heretics and to give it the character of a crusade by granting all the indulgences offered for the succor of the Holy Land. Armed with such powers, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Inquisition as a political instrument.[204]

Incidental allusion has been made above to the application of these methods in the cases of Ezzelin da Romano and Uberto Pallavicino, and we have seen their efficacy even in the tumultuous lawlessness of the period as one of the factors in the ruin of those powerful chiefs. When the crusade against Ezzelin was preached in the north of Europe he was represented to the people simply as a powerful heretic who was persecuting the faith. Even more conspicuous was the application of this principle in the great struggle on which all the rest depended, which in fact decided the destiny of the whole peninsula. The destruction of Manfred was an actual necessity to the success of the papal policy, and for years the Church sought throughout Europe a champion who could be allured by the promise of an earthly crown and a.s.sured salvation. In 1255 Alexander IV. authorized his legate, Rustand, Bishop of Bologna, to release Henry III. of England from his crusader's vow if he would turn his arms against Manfred, and the bribe of the Sicilian throne was offered to Henry's son, Edmund of Lancaster. When Rustand preached the crusade against Manfred and offered the same indulgences as for the Holy Land the ignorant islanders wondered greatly at learning that the same pardons could be earned for shedding Christian blood as for that of the infidel. They did not understand that Manfred was necessarily a heretic, and that, as Alexander soon afterwards declared to Rainerio Saccone, it was more important to defend the faith at home than in foreign lands. In 1264, when Alphonse of Poitiers was projecting a crusade, Urban IV.

urged him to change his purpose and a.s.sail Manfred. Finally, when Charles of Anjou was induced to strive for the glittering prize, all the enginery of the Church was exerted to raise for him an army of crusaders with a lavish distribution of the treasures of salvation. The shrewd lawyer, Clement IV., seconded and justified the appeal to arms by a formal trial for heresy. Just as the crusade was bursting upon him, Clement was summoning him to present himself for trial as a suspected heretic. The term a.s.signed to him was February 2, 1266; Manfred had more pressing cares at the moment, and contented himself with sending procurators to offer purgation for him. As he did not appear personally, Clement, on February 21, called upon the consistory to declare him condemned as a contumacious heretic, arguing that his excuse that the enemy were upon him was invalid, since he had only to give up his kingdom to avert attack. As but five days after this, on February 26, Manfred fell upon the disastrous field of Benevento, the legal proceedings had no influence on the result, yet none the less do they serve to show the spirit in which Rome administered against its political opponents the laws which it had enacted against heresy.[205]

This was the virtual destruction of the imperial power in Italy. With the Angevines on the throne of Naples and the empire nullified by the Great Interregnum and its consequences, the popes had ample opportunity to employ the penalties for heresy to gratify hatred or to extend their power. How they used the weapon for the one purpose is seen when Boniface VIII. quarrelled with the Colonnas and condemned them as heretics, driving the whole family out of Italy, tearing down their houses and destroying their property; though after Sciarra Colonna vindicated his orthodoxy by capturing and causing the death of Boniface at Anagni, Benedict XI. made haste to reverse the sentence, except as to confiscation.[206] How the principle worked when applied to temporal aggrandizement may be estimated from the attempt of Clement V. to gain possession of Ferrara. When the Marchese Azzo d' Este died, in 1308, he left no legitimate heirs, and the Bishop of Ferrara was Fra Guido Maltraverso, the former inquisitor who had succeeded in burning the bones of Armanno Pongilupo. He forthwith commenced intriguing to secure the city for the Holy See, which had some shadowy claims arising under the donations of Charlemagne. Clement V. eagerly grasped at the opportunity. He p.r.o.nounced the rights of the Church unquestionable, and condoled with the Ferrarese on their having been so long deprived of the sweetness of clerical rule and subjected to those who devoured them.

There were two pretenders, Azzo's brother Francesco and his natural son Frisco. The Ferrarese desired neither; they even manifested a disregard for the blessings promised them by Clement and proclaimed a republic.

Frisco sought the aid of the Venetians, while Francesco secured the support of the Church. Frisco obtained possession, but fled when Francesco advanced with the papal legate, Arnaldo di Pelagrua, who a.s.sumed the domination of the city--as a contemporary chronicler observes, Francesco had no reason to be disappointed, for ecclesiastics always act like rapacious wolves. Then, with the aid of the Venetians, Frisco regained possession, and peace was made in December, 1308. This was but the commencement of the struggle for the unhappy citizens. In 1309 Clement proclaimed a crusade against the Venetians. March 7 he issued a bull casting an interdict over Venice with confiscation of all its possessions, excommunicating the doge, the senate, and all the gentlemen of the republic, and offering Venetians to slavery throughout the world. As their s.h.i.+ps sailed to every port, many Venetian merchants were reduced to servitude throughout Christendom. The legate a.s.siduously preached the crusade, and all the bishops of the region a.s.sembled at Bologna with such forces as they could raise. Mult.i.tudes took the cross to gain the indulgence, Bologna alone furnis.h.i.+ng eight thousand troops, and the legate advanced with an overwhelming army. After severe fighting the Venetians were defeated with such slaughter that the legate, to avert a pestilence, offered an indulgence to every man who would bury a dead body, and the fugitives drowned in the Po were so numerous that the water was corrupted and rendered unfit to drink. All the prisoners taken he blinded and sent to Venice, and on entering the city he hanged all the adherents of Frisco. Appointing a governor in the name of the Church, he returned to Avignon and was splendidly rewarded for his services in the cause of Christ, while Clement unctuously congratulated the Ferrarese on their return to the sweet bosom of the Church, and declared that no one could, without sighs and tears, reflect upon their miseries and afflictions under their native rulers. In spite of this the ungrateful people, chafing under the foreign domination, arose in 1310 and ma.s.sacred the papalists. Then the legate returned with a Bolognese force, regained possession and hanged the rebels, with the exception of one, who bought off his life. Fresh tumults occurred, with b.l.o.o.d.y reprisals and frightful atrocities on both sides until, in 1314.

Clement, wearied with his prize, made it over to Sancha, wife of Robert of Naples. The Gascon garrison excited the hatred of the people, who in 1317 invited Azzo, son of Francesco, to come to their relief. After a stubborn resistance the Gascons surrendered on promise of life, but the fury of the people would not be restrained, and they were slain to the last man. From this brief episode in the history of an Italian city we can conceive what was the influence of papal ambition stimulated by the facility with which its opponents could be condemned as heretics and armies be raised at will to defend the faith.[207]

John XXII. was not a pope to allow the spiritual sword to rust in the sheath, and we have seen incidentally the use which he made of the charge of heresy in his mortal combat with Louis of Bavaria. Still more characteristic were his proceedings against the Visconti of Milan. On his accession in August, 1316, his first thought was to unite Italy under his overlords.h.i.+p, and to keep the empire beyond the Alps, for which the contested election of Louis of Bavaria and Frederic of Austria seemed to offer full opportunity. Early in December he despatched Bernard Gui, the Inquisitor of Toulouse, and Bertrand, Franciscan Minister of Aquitaine, as nuncios to effect that purpose. Neither Guelfs nor Ghibellines were inclined to accept his views--the Ferrarese troubles, not as yet concluded, were full of pregnant warnings.

Especially recalcitrant were the three Ghibelline chiefs of Lombardy, Matteo Visconti, known as the Great, who ruled over the greater part of the region and still retained the t.i.tle of Imperial Vicar bestowed on him by Henry VII., Cane della Scala, Lord of Verona, and Pa.s.serino of Mantua. They received his envoys with all due honor, but found excuses for evading his commands. In March, 1317, John issued a bull in which he declared that all the imperial appointments had lapsed on the death of Henry, that until his successor had received the papal approval all the power of the empire vested in the Holy See, and that whoever presumed to exercise those powers without permission was guilty of treason to the Church. Papal imperiousness on one side and Ghibelline stubbornness on the other rendered a rupture inevitable. It is not our province to trace the intricate maze of diplomatic intrigue and military activity which followed, with the balance of success preponderating decidedly in favor of the Ghibellines. April 6, 1318, came a bull decreeing excommunication on Matteo, Cane, Pa.s.serino, and all who refused obedience. This was speedily followed by formal monitions and citations to trial on charges of heresy, Matteo and his sons being the chief objects of persecution.

It was not difficult to find materials for these, furnished by refugees from Milan at the papal court--Bonifacio di Farra, Lorenzo Gallini, and others. The Visconti were accused of erring in the faith, especially as to the resurrection, of invoking the devil, with whom they had compacts, of protecting Guglielma; they were fautors of heretics and impeders of the Inquisition; they had robbed churches, violated nuns, and tortured and slain priests. The Visconti remained contumaciously absent and were duly condemned as heretics. Matteo summoned a conference of the Ghibelline chiefs at Soncino, which treated the action of the pope as an effort to resuscitate the failing cause of the Guelfs. A Ghibelline league was formed with Can Grande della Scala as captain of its forces.

To meet this John called in the aid of France, appointed Philippe de Valois Imperial Vicar, and procured a French invasion which proved bootless. Then he sent his son or nephew, Cardinal Bertrand de Poyet as legate, with the t.i.tle of "pacifier," at the head of a crusading army raised by a lavish distribution of indulgences. As Petrarch says, he a.s.sailed Milan as though it were an infidel city, like Memphis or Damascus, and Poyet, whose ferocity was a proof of his paternity, came not as an apostle, but as a robber. A devastating war ensued, with little advantage to the papalists, but the spiritual sword proved more effective than the temporal. May 26, 1321, the sentence of condemnation was solemnly promulgated in the Church of San Stefano at Ba.s.segnano, and was repeated by the inquisitors March 14, 1322, at Valenza.[208]

Strange as it may seem, these proceedings appear to have had a decisive influence on public opinion. It is true that when, in the seventeenth century, Paolo Sarpi alluded to these transactions and a.s.sumed that Matteo's only crime was his adherence to Louis of Bavaria, Cardinal Albizio admitted the fact, and argued that those who adhered to a schismatic and heretic emperor, and disregarded the censures of the Church, rendered themselves suspect of heresy and became formal heretics. Yet this was not the impression at the time, and John had recognized that something more was required than such a charge of mere technical heresy. The Continuation of Nangis, which reflects with fidelity the current of popular thought, recounts the sins of Matteo and his sons, described in the papal sentence, as a new heresy arisen in Lombardy, and the papalist military operations as a righteous crusade for its suppression. Although this was naturally a French view of the matter, it was not confined to France. In Lombardy Matteo's friends were discouraged and his enemies took fresh heart. A peace party speedily formed itself in Milan, and the question was openly asked whether the whole region should be sacrificed for the sake of one man. In spite of Matteo's success in buying off Frederic of Austria, whom John had bribed with gold and promises to intervene with an army, the situation grew untenable even for his seasoned nerves. It is, perhaps, worthy of mention that Francesco Garbagnate, the old Guglielmite, a.s.sociation with whom was one of the proofs of heresy alleged against Matteo, was one of the efficient agents in procuring his downfall, for Matteo had estranged him by refusing him the captaincy of the Milanese militia.

Matteo sent to the legate to beg for terms, and was told that nothing short of abdication would be listened to; he consulted the citizens and was given to understand that Milan would not expose itself to ruin for his sake. He yielded to the storm--perhaps his seventy-two years had somewhat weakened his powers of resistance--he sent for his son Galeazzo, with whom he had quarrelled, and resigned to him his power, with an expression of regret that his quarrel with the Church had made the citizens his enemies. From that time forth he devoted himself to visiting the churches. In the Chiesa Maggiore he a.s.sembled the clergy, recited the Symbol in a loud voice, crying that it had been his faith during life, and that any a.s.sertion to the contrary was false, and of this he caused a public instrument to be drawn up. Departing thence like to one crazed, he hastened to Monza to visit the Church of S. Giovanni Battista, where he was taken sick and was brought back to the Monastery of Cresconzago, and died within three days, on June 27, to be thrust into unconsecrated ground. The Church might well boast that its ban had broken the spirit of the greatest Italian of the age.[209]