Such was the development of the Mendicant Orders and their complicated relations with the Church. Yet their activity was too great to be confined to the defence of the Holy See and to the religious revival by which they, for a time, reacquired for Rome the veneration of the people. One of the collateral objects to which they devoted a portion of their energies was missionary work, and in this they set a worthy example to their successors, the Jesuits of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Among the incessant labors of St. Francis his efforts to convert the infidel were conspicuous. He proposed to visit Morocco, in the hope of converting King Miramolin, and had reached Spain on his voyage thither, when compelled by sickness to return. In the thirteenth year of his conversion he travelled to Syria for the purpose of bringing over the Soldan of Babylon to the Christian faith, although war was then raging with the Saracens. Captured between the hostile lines, he was carried with his companion in chains to the soldan, when he offered to undergo the ordeal of fire to prove the truth of his faith; he was offered magnificent presents, but spurned them, and was allowed to depart. His followers were true to his example. No distance and no danger deterred them from the task of winning souls to Christianity, and in these arduous labors there was a noble emulation between them and the Dominicans, for Dominic had likewise proposed an extended scheme of missions in which to close his life’s work. As early as 1225 we find missionaries of both orders laboring in Morocco. In 1233 Franciscans were despatched to convert Miramolin, the Sultan of Damascus, the caliph, and Asia in general. In 1237 the Eastern Jacobites were brought back to Catholic unity by the zeal of Dominicans, and they were at work among Nestorians, Georgians, Greeks, and other Eastern schismatics. Indulgences, the same as for a crusade, were offered to all who engaged in these enterprises, which were perilous enough, for soon after we hear of ninety Dominicans suffering martyrdom among the Cumans in eastern Hungary, when the hordes of Genghis Khan swept over the land. After the retirement of the Tartars they returned and converted the Cumans by wholesale, besides laboring among the Cathari of Bosnia and Dalmatia, where several of them were slain and two of their convents were burned by the heretics. The extent of the Franciscan missions may be judged by a bull of Alexander IV., in 1258, addressed to all the brethren in the lands of the Saracens, Pagans, Greeks, Bulgarians, Cumans, Ethiopians, Syrians, Iberians, Alans, Cathari, Goths, Zichori, Russians, Jacobites, Nubians, Nestorians, Georgians, Armenians, Indians, Muscovites, Tartars, Hungarians, and the missionaries to the Christian captives among the Turks; and however hazy may be the geography of this enumeration, the extent of the ground sought to be covered shows the activity and self-sacrificing energy of the good brethren. Among the Tartars their success was for a while encouraging. The great khan himself was baptized, and the converts were so numerous that a bishop became necessary for their organization; but the khan apostatized and the missionaries paid with their lives the forfeit of their zeal, nor were they by any means the only martyrs who suffered in the cause. The efficacy of their Armenian mission may be seen in the renunciation of King Haito of Armenia, who entered the Order and assumed the name of Friar John, though the vicissitudes of his subsequent career were not encouraging to future imitators. He was not, however, the only royal Franciscan, for St. Louis of Toulouse, son of Charles the Lame of Naples and Provence, resisted his father’s offer of a crown to become a Franciscan. Less authentic, perhaps, are the Dominican accounts of eight missionaries of their Order who, in 1316, penetrated to the empire of Prester John in Abyssinia, where they founded so durable a Church that in half a century they had the Inquisition organized there, with Friar Philip, son of one of Prester John’s subject kings, as inquisitor-general. His zeal led him to attack with both spiritual and fleshly weapons another king who indulged in bigamy, and by whom he was treacherously seized and put to death, November 4, 1366, his martyrdom and sanctity being attested by numerous miracles. Be this as it may, the Franciscans record with pardonable pride that members of their Order accompanied Columbus on his second voyage to America, eager to commence the conversion of the New World.[263]
The special field of activity of the Mendicants, however, which more particularly concerns us, was that of the conversion and persecution of heretics—of the Inquisition, which they made their own. It was inevitable that this should fall into their hands as soon as the inadequacy of the ancient episcopal courts required the organization of a new system. The discovery and conviction of the heretic was no easy task. It required special training, and that training was exactly what the Orders sought to give their neophytes to fit them for the work of preaching and conversion. With no ties of locality, soldiers of the Cross ready to march to any point at the word of command, they could be despatched at a moment’s notice whenever their services were required. Moreover, their peculiar devotion to the Holy See rendered them specially useful in organizing the papal Inquisition which was to supersede by degrees the episcopal jurisdiction, and prove so efficient an instrument in reducing the local churches to subjection.
That Dominic was the founder of the Inquisition and the first inquisitor-general has become a part of Roman tradition. It is affirmed by all the historians of the Order, and by all the panegyrists of the Inquisition; it has the sanction of infallibility in the bull Invictarum of Sixtus V., and it is confirmed by quoting a bull of Innocent III. appointing him inquisitor-general. Yet it is safe to say that no tradition of the Church rests on a slenderer basis. That Dominic devoted the best years of his life to combating heresy there is no doubt, and as little that, when a heretic was deaf to argument or persuasion, he would cheerfully stand by the pyre and see him burned, like any other zealous missionary of the time; but in this he was no more prominent than hundreds of others, and of organized work in this direction he was utterly guiltless. Indeed, from the year 1215, when he laid the foundation of his Order, he was engrossed in it to the exclusion of all other objects, and was obliged to forego his cherished design of ending his days as a missionary to Persia. We shall see that it was not until more than ten years after his death, in 1221, that such an institution as the papal Inquisition can be said to have existed. The prominent part assigned in it to his successors easily explains the legend which has grown around his name, a legend which may safely be classed with the enthusiastic declaration of an historian of the Order that more than a hundred thousand heretics had been converted by his teaching, his merits, and his miracles.[264]
A similar legendary halo exaggerates the exclusive glory, claimed by the Order, of organizing and perfecting the Inquisition. The bulls of Gregory IX. alleged in support of the assertion are simply special orders to individual Dominican provincials to depute brethren fitted for the purpose to the duty of preaching against heresy and examining heretics, and prosecuting their defenders. Sometimes Dominicans are sent to special districts to proceed against heretics, with an apology to the bishops and an explanation that the friars are skilful in convincing heretics, and that the other episcopal duties are too engrossing to enable the prelates to give proper attention to this. The fact simply is that there was no formal confiding of the Inquisition to the Dominicans any more than there was any formal founding of the Inquisition itself. As the institution gradually assumed shape and organization in the effort to find some effectual means to ferret out concealed heretics, the Dominicans were the readiest instrument at hand, especially as they professed the function of preaching and converting as their primary business. As conversion became less the object, and persecution the main business of the Inquisition, the Franciscans were equally useful, and the honors of the organization were divided between them. Indeed, there was no hesitation in confiding inquisitorial functions to clerics of any denomination when occasion required. As early as 1258 we find two canons of Lodève acting under papal commissions as inquisitors of Albi, and we shall meet hereafter, at the close of the fourteenth century, Peter the Celestinian discharging the duties of papal inquisitor with abundant energy from the Baltic to Styria.[265]
Yet the earliest inquisitors, properly so called, were unquestionably Dominicans. When, after the settlement between Raymond of Toulouse and St. Louis, the extirpation of heresy in the Albigensian territories was seriously undertaken, and the episcopal organization proved unequal to the task, it was Dominicans who were sent thither to work under the direction of the bishops. In northern France the business gradually fell almost exclusively into the hands of Dominicans. In Aragon, as early as 1232, they are recommended to the Archbishop of Tarragona as fitting instruments, and in 1249 the institution was confided to them. Eventually southern France was divided between them and the Franciscans, the western portion being given to the Dominicans, while the Comtat Venaissin, Provence, Forcalquier, and the states of the empire in the provinces of Arles, Aix, and Embrun were under charge of the Franciscans. As for Italy, after some confusion arising from the conflicting pretensions of the two Orders, it was, in 1254, formally divided between them by Innocent IV., the Dominicans being assigned to Lombardy, Romagnola, Tarvesina, and Genoa, while the central portion of the peninsula fell to the Franciscans; Naples, as yet, being free from the institution. This division, however, was not always strictly observed, for at times we find Franciscan inquisitors in Milan, Romagnola, and Tarvesina. In Germany and Austria the Inquisition, as we shall see, never took deep root, but, in so far as it was organized there, it was in Dominican hands, while Bohemia and Dalmatia were under the care of Franciscans.[266]
Sometimes the two orders were conjoined. In 1237 the Franciscan Étienne de Saint Thibéry was associated with the Dominican Guillem Arnaud in Toulouse, in hopes that the reputation of his Order for greater mildness might diminish the popular aversion for the new institution. In April, 1238, Gregory IX. appointed the provincials of the two Orders in Aragon as inquisitors for that kingdom, and in the same year the same policy was pursued in Navarre. In 1255 the Franciscan Guardian of Paris was associated with the Dominican prior as the heads of the Inquisition in France; in 1267 we find both Orders furnishing inquisitors for Burgundy and Lorraine; and in 1311 we hear of two Dominicans and one Franciscan as inquisitors in the province of Ravenna. It was found the wisest course, however, to define sharply the boundaries of their respective jurisdictions, for the active and incessant jealousy between the two bodies rendered any concurrence or competition between them an explosive mine liable to be started by a spark. Their mutual hatreds began early, and the unscrupulous means by which they were gratified were a perpetual scandal and danger to the Church. In 1266, for instance, a lively quarrel arose between the Dominicans of Marseilles and the Franciscan inquisitor of that city. The dissension spread until the two Orders were embroiled throughout Provence, Forcalquier, Avignon, Arles, Beaucaire, Montpellier, and Carcassonne, and everywhere they were preaching against and insulting each other in public. Several briefs of Clement IV. show that the pope was obliged to intervene, and his command that in future inquisitors shall forbear to use their powers to prosecute each other, no matter how guilty the offending party may apparently be, indicates that the sharpest weapons of the Holy Office had been used in the strife. When, as late as 1479, Sixtus IV. forbade inquisitors of either Order to sit in judgment on brethren of the other, it would indicate that the intervening two centuries had not diminished the tendency. The jealousy with which their respective limits were defended is illustrated by troubles which occurred in 1290 about the Tarvesina. This was Dominican territory, but for many years the office of inquisitor at Treviso was filled by the Franciscan Filippo Bonaccorso. When, in 1289, he accepted the episcopate of Trent, the Dominicans expected the office to be restored to them, and were indignant at seeing it given to another Franciscan, Frà Bonajuncta. The Dominican inquisitor of Lombardy Frà Pagano, and his vicar, Frà Viviano, went so far in their resistance that serious disturbances were excited in Verona, and it became necessary for Nicholas IV. to intervene in 1291, when he punished the recalcitrants by perpetual deprivation of their functions. To the heretics it must have offered excusable delight to see their persecutors persecuting each other. So ineradicable was the hostility between the two Orders that Clement IV. established the rule that there should be a distance of at least three thousand feet between their respective possessions—a regulation which only led to new and more intricate disputes. They even quarrelled as to the right of precedence in processions and funerals, which was claimed by the Dominicans, and settled in their favor by Martin V. in 1423. We shall see hereafter how important in the development of the mediæval Church was this implacable rivalry.[267]
In the busy world of the thirteenth century there was thus no agency more active than that of the Mendicant Orders, for good and for evil. On the whole perhaps the good preponderated, for they undoubtedly aided in postponing a revolution for which the world was not yet ready. Though the self-abnegation of their earlier days was a quality too rare and perishable to be long preserved, and though they soon sank to the level of the social order around them, yet had their work not been altogether lost. They had brought afresh to men’s minds some of the forgotten truths of the gospel, and had taught them to view their duties to their fellows from a higher plane. How well they recognized and appreciated their own services is shown by the story, common to the legend of both Orders, which tells that while Dominic and Francis were waiting the approval of Innocent III. a holy man had a vision in which he saw Christ brandishing three darts with which to destroy the world, and the Virgin inquiring his purpose. Then said Christ, “The world is full of pride, avarice, and lust; I have borne with it too long, and with these darts will I consume it.” The Virgin fell on her knees and interceded for man, but in vain, until she revealed to him that she had two faithful servants who would reduce it to his dominion. Then Christ desired to see the champions; she showed him Dominic and Francis, and he was content. The pious author of the story could hardly have foreseen that in 1627 Urban VIII. would be obliged to deprive the Mendicant Friars of Cordova of their dearly prized immunity, and to subject them to episcopal jurisdiction, in the hope of restraining them from seducing their spiritual daughters in the confessional.[268]
CHAPTER VII.
THE INQUISITION FOUNDED.
THE gradual organization of the Inquisition was simply a process of evolution arising from the mutual reaction of the social forces which we have described. The Albigensian Crusades had put an end to open resistance, yet the heretics were none the less numerous, and, if less defiant, were only the more difficult to discover. The triumph of force had increased the responsibility of the Church, while the imperfection of its means of discharging that responsibility was self-confessed in the enormous spread of heresy during the twelfth century. We have seen the confused and uncertain manner in which the local prelates had sought to meet the new demands upon them. When the existence of hidden crime is suspected there are three stages in the process of its suppression—the discovery of the criminal, the proof of his guilt, and finally his punishment. Of all others the crime of heresy was the most difficult to discover and to prove, and when its progress became threatening the ecclesiastics on whom fell the responsibility of its eradication were equally at a loss in each of the three steps to be taken for its extermination.
Immersed, for the most part, in the multiplied troubles connected with the overgrown temporalities of their sees, the bishops would await popular rumor to designate some man or group of men as heretical. On seizing the suspected persons, there was rarely any external evidence to prove their guilt, for except where numbers rendered repression impossible, the sectaries were assiduous in outward conformity to orthodox observance, and the slender theological training of episcopal officials was generally unequal to the task of extracting confessions from thoughtful and keen-witted men, or of convicting them out of their own mouths. The judicial use of torture was as yet happily unknown, and the current substitute of a barbarous age, the Ordeal, was resorted to with a frequency which shows how ludicrously helpless were the ecclesiastics called upon to perform functions so novel. Even St. Bernard approved of this expedient, and in 1157 the Council of Reims prescribed it as the rule in all cases of suspected heresy. More enlightened churchmen viewed its results with well-grounded disbelief, and Peter Cantor mentions several cases to prove its injustice. A poor woman accused of Catharism was abandoned to die of hunger, till in confession to a religious dean she protested her innocence and was advised by him to offer the hot-iron ordeal in proof, which she did with the result of being burned first by the iron and then at the stake. A good Catholic, against whom the only suspicious evidence was his poverty and his pallor, was ordered by an assembly of bishops to undergo the same ordeal, which he refused to do unless the prelates would prove to him that this would not be a mortal sin in tempting God. This tenderness of conscience was sufficient, so without further parley they unanimously handed him over to the secular authorities, and he was promptly burned. With the study of the Roman law, however, this mode of procedure gradually fell into disfavor with the Church, and the enlightenment of Innocent III. peremptorily forbade its use in 1212, when it was extensively employed by Henry of Vehringen, Bishop of Strassburg, to convict a number of heretics; while in 1215 the Council of Lateran, following the example of Alexander III. and Lucius III., formally prohibited all ecclesiastics from taking part in the administration of ordeals of any kind. How great was the perplexity of ignorant prelates, debarred from this ready method of seeking the judgment of God, may be guessed by the expedient which had, in 1170, been adopted by the good Bishop of Besançon, when the religious repose of his diocese was troubled by some miracle-working heretics. He is described as a learned man, and yet to solve his doubts as to whether the strangers were saints or heretics, he summoned the assistance of an ecclesiastic deeply skilled in necromancy and ordered him to ascertain the truth by consulting Satan. The cunning clerk deceived the devil into a confidential mood and learned that the strangers were his servants; they were deprived of the satanic amulets which were their protection, and the populace, which had previously sustained them, cast them pitilessly into the flames.[269]