Andrea and Maifreda were thoroughly frightened; they begged the disciples, if called before the inquisitors, to preserve silence with regard to them, as otherwise they could not escape death. It is a peculiar illustration of the recognized hostility between the two Mendicant Orders that the first impulse was to seek assistance from the Franciscans. No sooner were the citations issued than Andrea, with the Doctor Beltramo da Ferno, one of the earnest believers, went to the Franciscan convent, where they learned from Frà Daniele da Ferno that Frà Guidone de Cocchenato and the rest of the inquisitors had no power to act, as their commissions had been annulled by the pope, and that Frà Pagano di Pietra Santa had a bull to that effect. Some intrigue would seem to be behind this, which it would be interesting to disentangle, for we meet here with old acquaintances. Frà Guidone is doubtless the same inquisitor whom we have seen in 1279 participating in the punishment of Corrado da Venosta, and Frà Pagano has come before us as the subject of a prosecution for heresy in 1295. Possibly it was this which now stimulated his zeal against the inquisitors, for when the Guglielmites called upon him the next day he produced the bull and urged them to appear, and thus afford him evidence that the inquisitors were discharging their functions—evidence for which he said that he would willingly give twenty-five lire. It is a striking proof of the impenetrable secrecy in which the operations of the Inquisition were veiled that he had been anxiously and vainly seeking to obtain testimony as to who were really discharging the duties of the tribunal; when, latterly, a heretic had been burned at Balsemo he had sent thither to find out who had rendered the sentence, but was unable to do so. Then the Guglielmites applied to the Abbot of Chiaravalle and to one of his monks, Marchisio di Veddano, himself suspected of Guglielmitism. These asked to have a copy of the bull, and one was duly made by a notary and given to them, which they took to the Archbishop of Milan at Cassano, and asked him to place the investigation of the matter in their hands. He promised to intervene, but if he did so he was probably met with the information, which had been speedily elicited from the culprits, that they held Boniface VIII. not to be pope, and consequently that the archbishop whom he had created was not archbishop. Either in this or in some other way the prelate’s zeal was refrigerated, and he offered no opposition to the proceedings.[105]
The Inquisition was well manned, for, besides Frà Guidone, whose age and experience seem to have rendered him the leading actor in the tragedy, and Lanfranco, who took little part in it, we meet with a third inquisitor, Rainerio di Pirovano, and in their absence they are replaced with deputies, Niccolò di Como, Niccolò di Varenna, and Leonardo da Bergamo. They pushed the matter with relentless energy. That torture was freely used there can be no doubt. No conclusion to the contrary can be drawn from the absence of allusion to it in the depositions of the accused, for this is customary. Not only do the historians of the affair speak without reserve of its employment, but the character of the successive examinations of the leading culprits indicates it unerringly—the confident asseverations at first of ignorance and innocence, followed, after a greater or less interval, with unreserved confession. This is especially notable in the cases of those who had abjured in 1284, such as Andrea, Maifreda, and Giacobba, who, as relapsed, knew that by admitting their persistent heresy they were condemning themselves to the flames without hope of mercy, and who therefore had nothing to gain by confession, except exemption from repetition of torment.[106]
The documents are too imperfect for us to reconstruct the process and ascertain the fate of all of those implicated. In Languedoc, after all the evidence had been taken, there would have been an assembly held in which their sentences would have been determined, and at a solemn Sermo these would have been promulgated, and the stake would have received its victims. Much less formal were the proceedings at Milan. The only sentence of which we have a record was rendered August 23 in an assembly where the archbishop sat with the inquisitors and Matteo Visconti appears among the assessors; and in this the only judgment was on Suor Giacobba dei Bassani, who, as a relapsed, was necessarily handed over to the secular arm for burning. It would seem that even before this Ser Mirano di Garbagnate, a priest deeply implicated, had been burned. Andrea was executed probably between September 1 and 9, and Maifreda about the same time—but we know nothing about the date of the other executions, or of the exhumation and cremation of Guglielma’s bones—while the examinations of other disciples continued until the middle of October. Another remarkable peculiarity is that for the minor penalties the inquisitors called in no experts and did not even consult the archbishop, but acted wholly at their own discretion, a single frate absolving or penancing each individual as he saw fit. The Lombard Inquisition apparently had little deference for the episcopate, even of the Ambrosian Church.[107]
Yet the action of the Inquisition was remarkable for its mildness, especially when we consider the revolutionary character of the heresy. The number of those absolutely burned cannot be definitely stated, but it probably did not exceed four or five. These were the survivors of those who had abjured in 1284, for whom, as relapsed and obstinate heretics, there could be no mercy. The rest were allowed to escape with penalties remarkably light. Thus Sibilia Malcolzati had been one of the most zealous of the sect; in her early examinations she had resolutely perjured herself, and it had cost no little trouble to make her confess, yet when, on October 6, she appeared before Frà Rainerio and begged to be relieved from the excommunication which she had incurred, he was moved by her prayers and assented, on the ordinary conditions that she would stand to the orders of the Church and Inquisition, and perform the obligations laid upon her. Still more remarkable is the leniency with which two sisters, Catella and Pietra Oldegardi, were treated, for Frà Guidone absolved them on their abjuring their heresy, contenting himself with simply referring them to their confessors for the penance which they were to perform. The severest punishment recorded for any except the relapsed was the wearing of crosses, and these, imposed in September and October, were commuted in December for a fine of twenty-five lire, payable in February—showing that confiscation was not a part of the penalty. Even Taria, the expectant cardinal of the New Dispensation, was thus penanced and relieved. Immediately after Andrea’s execution an examination of his wife Riccadona, as to the furniture in her house and the wine in her cellar, shows that the Inquisition was prompt in looking after the confiscations of those condemned to death; and the fragment of an interrogatory, February 12, 1302, of Marchisio Secco, a monk of Chiaravalle, indicates that it was involved in a struggle with the abbey to compel the refunding of the bequest of Guglielma, as the heresy for which she had been condemned, of course, rendered void all dispositions of her property. How this resulted we have no means of knowing, but we may feel assured that the abbey was forced to submit; indeed, the complicity of the monks with the heretics was so clearly indicated that we may wonder none of their names appear in the lists of those condemned.[108]
Thus ended this little episode of heresy, of no importance in its origin or results, but curious from the glimpse which it affords into the spiritual aberrations of the time, and the procedure of the Lombard Inquisition, and noteworthy as a rare instance of inquisitorial clemency.[109]
About the time when Guglielma settled in Milan, Parma witnessed the commencement of another abnormal development of the great Franciscan movement. The stimulus which monachism had received from the success of the Mendicant Orders, the exaltation of poverty into the greatest of virtues, the recognition of beggary as the holiest mode of life, render it difficult to apportion between yearnings for spiritual perfection and the attractions of idleness and vagabondage in a temperate climate the responsibility for the numerous associations which arose in imitation of the Mendicants. The prohibition of unauthorized religious orders by the Lateran Council was found impossible of enforcement. Men would herd together with more or less of organization in caves and hermitages, in the streets of cities, and in abandoned dwellings and churches by the roadsides. The Carmelites and Augustinian hermits won recognition after a long struggle, and became established Orders, forming, with the Franciscans and Dominicans, the four Mendicant religions. Others, less reputable, or more independent in spirit, were condemned, and when they refused to disband they were treated as rebels and heretics. In the tension of the spiritual atmosphere, any man who would devise and put in practice a method of life assimilating him most nearly to the brutes would not fail to find admirers and followers; and, if he possessed capacity for command and organization, he could readily mould them into a confraternity and become an object of veneration, with an abundant supply of offerings from the pious.
The year 1260 was that in which, according to Abbot Joachim, the era of the Holy Ghost was to open. The spiritual excitement which pervaded the population was seen in the outbreak of the Flagellants, which filled northern Italy with processions of penitents scourging themselves, and in the mutual forgiveness of injuries, which brought an interval of peace to a distracted land. In such a condition of public feeling, gregarious enthusiasm is easily directed to whatever responds to the impulse of the moment, and the self-mortification of a youth of Parma, called Gherardo Segarelli, found abundant imitators. Of low extraction, uncultured and stupid, he had vainly applied for admission into the Franciscan Order. Denied this, he passed his days vacantly musing in the Franciscan church. The beatitude of ecstatic abstraction, carried to the point of the annihilation of consciousness, has not been confined to the Tapas and Samadhi of the Brahman and Buddhist. The monks of Mt. Athos, known as Umbilicani from their pious contemplation of their navels, knew it well, and Jacopone da Todi shows that its dangerous raptures were familiar to the zealots of the time.[110] Segarelli, however, was not so lost to external impressions but that he remarked in the scriptural pictures which adorned the walls the representations of the apostles in the habits which art has assigned to them. The conception grew upon him that the apostolic life and vestment would form the ideal religious existence, superior even to that of the Franciscans which had been denied to him. As a preliminary, he sold his little property; then, mounting the tribune in the Piazza, he scattered the proceeds among the idlers sunning themselves there, who forthwith gambled it away with ample floods of blasphemy. Imitating literally the career of Christ, he had himself circumcised; then, enveloped in swaddling clothes, he was rocked in a cradle and suckled by a woman. His apprenticeship thus completed, he embarked on the career of an apostle, letting hair and beard grow, enveloped in a white mantle, with the Franciscan cord around his waist, and sandals on his feet. Thus accoutred he wandered through the streets of Parma crying at intervals “Penitenzagite” which was his ignorant rendering of “Penitentiam agite!”—the customary call to repentance.[111]
For a while he had no imitators. In search of disciples he wandered to the neighboring village of Collechio, where, standing at the roadside, he shouted “Enter my vineyard!” The passers-by who knew his crazy ways paid no attention to him, but strangers took his call to be an invitation to help themselves from the ripening grapes of an adjacent vineyard, which they accordingly stripped. At length he was joined by a certain Robert, a servant of the Franciscans, who, as Salimbene informs us, was a liar and a thief, too lazy to work, who flourished for a while in the sect as Frà Glutto, and who finally apostatized and married a female hermit. Gherardo and Glutto wandered through the streets of Parma in their white mantles and sandals, calling the people to repentance. They gathered associates, and the number rapidly grew to three hundred. They obtained a house in which to eat and sleep, and lacked for nothing, for alms came pouring in upon them more liberally than on the regular Mendicants. These latter wondered greatly, for the self-styled Apostles gave nothing in return—they could not preach, or hear confessions, or celebrate mass, and did not even pray for their benefactors. They were mostly ignorant peasants, swineherds and cowherds, attracted by an idle life which was rewarded with ample victuals and popular veneration. When gathered together in their assemblies they would gaze vacantly on Segarelli and repeat at intervals in honor of him, “Father! Father! Father!”[112]
When the Council of Lyons, in 1274, endeavored to control the pest of these unauthorized mendicant associations, it did not disperse them, but contented itself with prohibiting the reception of future members, in the expectation that they would thus gradually become extinguished. This was easily eluded by the Apostles, who, when a neophyte desired to join them, would lay before him a, habit and say, “We do not dare to receive you, as this is prohibited to us, but it is not prohibited to you; do as you think fit.” Thus, in spite of papal commands, the Order increased and multiplied, as we are told, beyond computation. In 1284 we hear of seventy-two postulants in a body passing through Modena and Reggio to Parma to be adopted by Segarelli, and a few days afterwards twelve young girls came on the same errand, wrapped in their mantles and styling themselves Apostolesses. Imitating Dominic and Francis, Segarelli sent his followers throughout Europe and beyond seas to evangelize the world. They penetrated far, for already in 1287 we find the Council of Würzburg stigmatizing the wandering Apostles as tramps, and forbidding any one to give them food on account of their religious aspect and unusual dress. Pedro de Lugo (Galicia), who abjured before the Inquisition of Toulouse in 1322, testified that he had been inducted in the sect twenty years previous by Richard, an Apostle from Alessandria in Lombardy, who was busily spreading the heresy beyond Compostella.[113]
Notwithstanding the veneration felt by the brethren for Segarelli he steadily refused to assume the headship of the Order, saying that each must bear his own burden. Had he been an active organizer, with the material at his disposition, he might have given the Church much trouble, but he was inert and indisposed to abandon his contemplative self-indulgence. He seems to have hesitated somewhat as to the form which the association should assume, and consulted Alberto of Parma, one of the seven notaries of the curia, whether they should select a superior. Alberto referred him to the Cistercian Abbot of Fontanaviva, who advised that they should not found houses, but should continue to wander over the land wrapped in their mantles, and they would not fail of shelter by the charitable. Segarelli was nothing loath to follow his counsel, but a more energetic spirit was found in Guidone Putagi, brother of the Podestà of Bologna, who entered the Order with his sister Tripia. Finding that Segarelli would not govern, he seized command and for many years conducted affairs, but he gave offence by abandoning the poverty which was the essence of the association. He lived splendidly, we are told, with many horses, lavishing money like a cardinal or papal legate, till the brethren grew tired and elected Matteo of Ancona as his successor. This led to a split. Guidone retained possession of the person of Segarelli, and carried him to Faenza. Matteo’s followers came there and endeavored to seize Segarelli by force; the two parties came to blows and the Anconitans were defeated. Guidone, however, was so much alarmed for his safety that he left the Apostles and joined the Templars.[114]