A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III

by Henry Charles Lea

As for the unhappy antipope, his fate was even more deplorable. Confided at Pisa by Louis to the care of Count Fazio da Doneratico, the leading noble of the city, he was concealed for a while in a castle in Maremma. June 18, 1329, the Pisans rose and drove out the imperialist garrison, and in the following January they were reconciled to the Church. A part of the bargain was the surrender of Pier di Corbario, to whom John promised to show himself a kind father and benevolent friend, besides enriching Fazio for the betrayal of his trust. After making public abjuration of his heresies in Pisa, Pier was sent, guarded by two state galleys, to Nice, where he was delivered to the papal agents. In every town on the road to Avignon he was required publicly to repeat his abjuration and humiliation. August 25, 1330, with a halter around his neck, he was brought before the pope in public consistory. Exhausted and broken with shame and suffering, he flung himself at his rival’s feet and begged for mercy, abjuring and anathematizing his heresies, and especially that of the poverty of Christ. Then, in a private consistory, he was made again to confess a long catalogue of crimes, and to accept such penance as might be awarded him. No humiliation was spared him, and nothing was omitted to make his abject recantation complete. Having thus rendered him an object of contempt and deprived him of all further power of harm, John mercifully spared him bodily torment. He was confined in an apartment in the papal palace, fed from the papal table, and allowed the use of books, but no one was admitted to see him without a special papal order. His wretched life soon came to an end, and when he died, in 1333, he was buried in the Franciscan habit. Considering the ferocity of the age, his treatment is one of the least discreditable acts in the career of John XXII. It was hardly to be expected, after the savage vindictiveness of the Ernulphine curse which he had published, April 20, 1329, on his already fallen rival—“May he in this life feel the wrath of Peter and Paul, whose church he has sought to confound! May his dwelling-place be deserted, and may there be none to live under his roof! May his children be orphans, and his wife a widow! May they be driven forth from their hearth-stones to beggary! May the usurer devour their substance, and strangers seize the work of their hands! May the whole earth fight against him, may the elements be his enemies, may the merits of all the saints at rest confound him and wreak vengeance on him through life!”[161]

During the progress of this contest public opinion was by no means unanimous in favor of John, and the Inquisition was an efficient instrumentality in repressing all expression of adverse sentiments. In 1328, at Carcassonne, a certain Germain Frevier was tried before it for blaspheming against John, and stigmatizing his election as simoniacal because he had promised never to set foot in stirrup till he should set out for Rome. Germain, moreover, had declared that the Franciscan pope was the true pope, and that if he had money he would go there and join him and the Bavarian. Germain was not disposed to martyrdom; at first he denied, then, after being left to his reflections in prison for five months, he pleaded that he had been drunk and knew not what he was saying; a further delay showed him that he was helpless, he confessed his offences and begged for mercy.[162]

Another case, in 1329, shows us what were the secret feelings of a large portion of the Franciscan Order, and the means required to keep it in subordination. Before the Inquisition of Carcassonne, Frère Barthelémi Bruguière confessed that in saying mass and coming to the prayer for the pope he had hesitated which of the two popes to pray for, and had finally desired his prayer to be for whichever was rightfully the head of the Church. Many of his brethren, he said, were in the habit of wishing that God would give John XXII. so much to do that he would forget the Franciscans, for it seemed to them that his whole business was to afflict them. It was generally believed among them that their general, Michele, had been unjustly deposed and excommunicated. In a large assembly of friars he had said, “I wish that antipope was a Dominican, or of some other Order,” when another rejoined, “I rejoice still more that the antipope is of our Order, for if he was of another we should have no friend, and now at least we have the Italian,” whereat all present applauded. For a while Frère Barthelémi held out, but imprisonment with threats of chains and fasting broke down his resolution, and he threw himself upon the mercy of the inquisitor, Henri de Chamay. That mercy consisted in a sentence of harsh prison for life, with chains on hands and feet and bread and water for food. Possibly the Dominican inquisitor may have felt pleasure in exhibiting a Franciscan prisoner, for he allowed Barthelémi to retain his habit; and it shows the minute care of John’s vindictiveness that a year later he wrote expressly to Henri de Chamay reciting that, as the delinquent had been expelled from the Order, the habit must be stripped from him and be delivered to the Franciscan authorities.[163]

In Germany the Franciscans for the most part remained faithful to Michele and Louis, and were of the utmost assistance to the latter in the struggle. The test was the observance of the interdict which for so many years suspended divine service throughout the empire, and was a sore trial to the faithful. To a great extent this was disregarded by the Franciscans. It was to little purpose that, in January, 1331, John issued a special bull directed against them, deprived of all privileges and immunities those who recognized Louis as emperor and celebrated services in interdicted places, and ordered all prelates and inquisitors to prosecute them. On the other hand, Louis was not behindhand in enforcing obedience by persecution wherever he had the power. An imperial brief of June, 1330, addressed to the magistrates of Aix, directs them to assist and protect those teachers of the truth, the Franciscans Siegelbert of Landsberg and John of Royda, and to imprison all their brethren whom they may designate as rebels to the empire and to the Order until the general, Michele, shall decide what is to be done with them. This shows that even in Germany the Order was not unanimous, but doubtless the honest Franciscan, John of Winterthur, reflects the feelings of the great body when he says that the reader will be struck with horror and stupor on learning the deeds with which the pope convulsed the Church. Inflamed by some madness, he sought to argue against the poverty of Christ, and when the Franciscans resisted him he persecuted them without measure. The Dominicans encouraged him, and he largely rewarded them. The traditional enmity between the Orders found ample gratification. The Dominicans, to excite contempt for the Franciscans, exhibited paintings of Christ with a purse, putting in his hand to take out money; nay, to the horror of the faithful, on the walls of their monasteries, in the most frequented places, they pictured Christ hanging on the cross with one hand nailed fast, and with the other putting money in a pouch suspended from his girdle. Yet rancor and religious zeal did not wholly extinguish patriotism among the Dominicans; they were, moreover, aggrieved by the sentence of heresy passed upon Master Eckart, which may perhaps explain the fact that Tauler supported Louis, as also did Margaret Ebner, one of the Friends of God, and the most eminent Dominican sister of the day. It is true that many Dominican convents were closed for years, and their inmates scattered and exiled for persistently refusing to celebrate, but others complied unwillingly with the papal mandates. At Landshut they had ceased public service, but when the emperor came there they secretly arranged with the Duke of Teck to assail their house with torches and threaten to burn it down, so that they might have the excuse of constraint for resuming public worship, and the comedy was successfully carried out. In fact, the General Chapter of 1328 complained that in Germany the brethren in many places were notably negligent in publishing the papal bulls about Louis.[164]

All this, however, was but an episode in the political struggle, which was to be decided by the rivalries between the houses of Wittelsbach, Hapsburg, and Luxemburg, and the intrigues of France. Louis gradually succeeded in arousing and centring upon himself the national spirit, aided therein by the arrogant disdain with which John XXII. and his successors received his repeated offers of qualified submission. When, in 1330, Louis had temporarily secured the support of John of Luxemburg, King of Bohemia, and the Duke of Austria, and they offered themselves as sureties that he would fulfil what might be required of him, provided the independence of the empire was recognized, John retorted that Louis was a heretic and thus incapacitated; he was a thief and a robber, a wicked man who consorted with Michele, Ockham, Bonagrazia, and Marsiglio; not only had he no title to the empire, but the state of Christendom would be inconceivably deplorable if he were recognized. After the death of John in December, 1334, another attempt was made, but it suited the policy of France and of Bohemia to prolong the strife, and Benedict XII. was as firm as his predecessor. Louis was at all times ready to sacrifice his Franciscan allies, but the papacy demanded the right practically to dictate who should be emperor, and by a skilful use of appeals to the national pride Louis gradually won the support of an increasing number of states and cities. In 1338 the convention of Rhense and the Reichstag of Frankfort formally proclaimed as a part of the law of the empire that the choice of the electors was final, and that the papacy had no confirmatory power. The interdict was ordered not to be observed, and in all the states adhering to Louis ecclesiastics were given the option of resuming public worship within eight days or of undergoing a ten years’ exile. It was some relief to them in this dilemma that the Roman curia sold absolutions in such cases for a florin.[165]

In the strife between Louis and the papacy the little colony of Franciscan refugees at Munich was of the utmost service to the imperial cause, but their time was drawing to an end. Michele da Cesena died November 29, 1342, his latest work being a long manifesto proving that John had died an unrepentant heretic, and that his successors in defending his errors were likewise heretics; if but one man in Christendom holds the true faith, that man in himself is the Church. The dithyrambic palinode which passes as his death-bed recantation is clearly a forgery, and there can be no doubt that Michele persisted to the end. When dying he handed the seal of the Order over to William of Ockham, who used it as Vicar-general; he had already, in April, 1342, appointed two citizens of Munich, John Schito and Grimold Treslo, as syndics and procurators of the Order, the latter of whom subsequently assumed the generalate. Bonagrazia died in June, 1347, declaring with the last breath of his indomitable soul that the cause of Louis was righteous. The date of William of Ockham’s death is uncertain, but it occurred between 1347 and 1350.[166]

Thus dropped off, one by one, the men who had so gallantly defended the doctrine of the poverty of Christ. As regards the political conceptions which were the special province of Marsiglio and Ockham, their work was done, and they could exercise no further influence over the uncontrollable march of events. With the death of Benedict XII., in 1342, Louis made renewed efforts for pacification, but John of Bohemia was intriguing to secure the succession for his house, and they were fruitless, except to strengthen Louis by demonstrating the impossibility of securing terms tolerable to the empire. Still the intrigue went on, and in July, 1346, the three ecclesiastical electors, Mainz, Trèves, and Cologne, with Rodolph of Saxony, and John of Bohemia, assembled at Rhense under the impulsion of Clement VI. and elected the son of John, Charles Margrave of Moravia, as a rival king of the Romans. The movement, however, had no basis of popular support, and when Louis hastened to the Rhinelands all the cities and nearly all the princes and nobles adhered to him. Had the election been postponed for a few weeks it would never have taken place, for the next month occurred the battle of Crécy, where the gallant knight, John of Bohemia, died a chivalrous death, Charles, the newly-elected king, saved his life by flight, and French influence was temporarily eclipsed. Thus unauspiciously commenced, the reign of Charles IV. had little promise of duration, when, in October, 1347, Louis, while indulging in his favorite pastime of hunting, was struck with apoplexy and fell dead from his horse. The hand of God might well be traced in the removal of all the enemies of the Holy See, and Charles had no further organized opposition to dread.[167]

Desirous of obtaining the fullest advantage from this unlooked-for good-fortune, Clement VI. commissioned the Archbishop of Prague and the Bishop of Bamberg to reconcile all communities and individuals who had incurred excommunication by supporting the Bavarian, with a formula of absolution by which they were obliged to swear that they held it heresy for an emperor to depose a pope, and that they would never obey an emperor until he had been approved by the pope. This excited intense disgust, and in many places it could not be enforced. The teachings of Marsiglio and Ockham had at least borne fruit in so far that the papal pretensions to virtually controlling the empire were disdainfully rejected. The German spirit thus aroused is well exemplified by what occurred at Basle, a city which had observed the interdict and was eager for its removal. When Charles and the Bishop of Bamberg appeared before the gates they were received by the magistrates and a great crowd of citizens. Conrad of Barenfels, the burgomaster, addressed the bishop: “My Lord of Bamberg, you must know that we do not believe, nor will we confess, that our late lord, the Emperor Louis, ever was a heretic. Whomsoever the electors or a majority of them shall choose as King of the Romans we will hold as such, whether he applies to the pope or not, nor will we do anything else that is contrary to the rights of the empire. But if you have power from the pope and are willing to remit all our sins, so be it.” Then, turning to the people, he called out, “Do you give to me and to Conrad Münch power to ask for the absolution of your sins?” The crowd shouted assent; the two Conrads took an oath in accordance with this; divine services were resumed, and the king and bishop entered the town.[168]

Yet the question as to the poverty of Christ, which had been put forward by John and Louis as the ostensible cause of quarrel, and which had been so warmly embraced by a portion at least of the German Franciscans, sank completely out of sight north of the Alps with the death of Louis and the extinction of the Munich colony of refugees. Germany had her own hordes of mendicants, regular and irregular, in the Beguines and Beghards, who seem to have troubled themselves but little about points so purely speculative; and though we occasionally hear of Fraticelli in those regions, it is rather as a convenient name employed by monkish chroniclers than as really representing a distinctive sect.

It was otherwise in the South, and especially in Italy, the native home of Franciscanism and of the peculiar influences which moulded the special ascetic development of the Order. There the impulses which had led the earlier Spirituals to endure the extremity of persecution in vindication of the holiness of absolute poverty were still as strong as ever. Under Boniface and Clement and during the earlier years of John its professors had lain in hiding or had sought the friendly refuge of Sicily. In the confusion of the Franciscan schism they had emerged and multiplied. With the downfall of the antipope and the triumph of John they were once more proscribed. In the quarrel over the poverty of Christ, that tenet had naturally become the distinguishing mark of the sectaries, and its condemnation by John necessarily entailed the consequence of denying the papal authority and asserting the heresy of the Holy See. Yet there can be no doubt that among the austerer members of the orthodox Order who accepted the definitions of the papacy there was much sympathy felt for the rebellious dissidents. Resistance to the imperious will of John XXII. having failed, there were abundant stories of visions and miracles circulated from convent to convent, as to the wrath of God and of St. Francis visited upon those who infringed upon the holy vow of poverty. The Liber Conformitatum is manifestly the expression of the aspirations of those who wished to enforce the Rule in all its strictness as the direct revelation of the Holy Spirit. Such men felt that the position of their proscribed brethren was logically correct, and they were unable to reconcile the decrees of Nicholas III. with those of John XXII. One of these, described as a man much beloved of God, applied to St. Birgitta to resolve his doubts, whereupon she had two visions in which the Virgin sent him her commands to say to all who believed that the pope was no pope, and that priests do not truly consecrate the host in the mass, that they were heretics filled with diabolical iniquity. All this points to a strong secret sympathy with the Fraticelli which extended not only among the people, but among the friars and occasionally even among the prelates, explaining the ability of the sectaries to maintain their existence from generation to generation in spite of almost unremitting persecution by the Inquisition.[169]