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

by Henry Charles Lea

The more serious trouble concerning poverty was not long in developing itself. Next to St. Francis himself in the Order stood Elias. Before Francis went on his mission to convert the Soldan he had sent Elias as provincial beyond the sea, and on his return from the adventure he brought Elias home with him. At the first general chapter, held in 1221, Francis being too much enfeebled to preside, Elias acted as spokesman and Francis sat at his feet, pulling his gown when he wanted anything said. In 1223 we hear of Cæsarius, the German provincial, going to Italy “to the blessed Francis or the Friar Elias.” When, through infirmity or inability to maintain discipline, Francis retired from the generalate, Elias was vicar-general of the Order, to whom Francis submitted himself as humbly as the meanest brother, and on the death of the saint, in October, 1226, it was Elias who notified the brethren throughout Europe of the event, and informed them of the Stigmata, which the humility of Francis had always concealed. Although in February, 1227, Giovanni Parenti of Florence was elected general, Elias seems practically to have retained control. Parties were rapidly forming themselves in the Order, and the lines between them were ever more sharply drawn. Elias was worldly and ambitious; he had the reputation of being one of the ablest men of affairs in Italy; he could foresee the power attaching to the command of the Order, and he had not much scruple as to the means of attaining it. He undertook the erection of a magnificent church at Assisi to receive the bones of the humble Francis, and he was unsparing in his demands for money to aid in its construction. The very handling of money was an abomination in the eyes of all true brethren, yet all the provinces were called upon to contribute, and a marble coffer was placed in front of the building to receive the gifts of the pious. This was unendurable, and Friar Leo went to Perugia to consult with the blessed Gilio, who had been the third associate to join St. Francis, who said it was contrary to the precepts of the founder. “Shall I break it, then?” inquired Leo. “Yes,” replied Gilio, “if you are dead, but if you are alive, let it alone, for you will not be able to endure the persecution of Elias.” Notwithstanding this warning, Leo went to Assisi, and with the assistance of some comrades broke the coffer; Elias filled all Assisi with his wrath, and Leo took refuge in a hermitage.[5]

When the edifice was sufficiently advanced, a general chapter was held in 1230 to solemnize the translation of the saintly corpse. Elias sought to utilize the occasion for his own election to the generalate by summoning to it only those brethren on whose support he could reckon, but Giovanni got wind of this and made the summons general. Elias then caused the translation to be effected before the brethren had assembled; his faction endeavored to forestall the action of the chapter by carrying him from his cell, breaking open the doors, and placing him in the general’s seat. Giovanni appeared, and after tumultuous proceedings his friends obtained the upper hand; the disturbers were scattered among the provinces, and Elias retreated to a hermitage, where he allowed his hair and beard to grow, and through this show of sanctity obtained reconciliation to the Order. Finally, in the chapter of 1232, his ambition was rewarded. Giovanni was deposed and he was elected general.[6]

These turbulent intrigues were not the only evidence of the rapid degeneracy of the Order. Before Francis’s Testament was five years old his commands against evasions of the Rule by cunning interpretations had been disregarded. The chapter of 1231 had applied to Gregory IX. to know whether the Testament was binding upon them in this respect, and he replied in the negative, for Francis could not bind his successors. They also asked about the prohibition to hold money and property, and Gregory ingeniously suggested that this could be effected through third parties, who could hold money and pay debts for them, arguing that such persons should not be regarded as their agents, but as the agents of those who gave the money or of those to whom it was to be paid. These elusory glosses of the Rule were not accepted without an energetic opposition which threatened a schism, and it is easy to imagine the bitterness with which the sincere members of the Order watched its rapid degeneracy; nor was this bitterness diminished by the use which Elias made of his position. His carnality and cruelty, we are told, convulsed the whole Order. His rule was arbitrary, and for seven years, in defiance of the regulations, he held no general chapter. He levied exactions on all the provinces to complete the great structure at Assisi. Those who resisted him were relegated to distant places. Even while yet only vicar he had caused St. Anthony of Padua, who had come to Assisi to worship at the tomb of Francis, to be scourged to the blood, when Anthony only expostulated with, “May the blessed God forgive you, brethren!” Worse was the fate of Cæsarius of Speier, who had been appointed Provincial of Germany in 1221 by St. Francis himself, and had built up the Order to the north of the Alps. He was the leader of the puritan malcontents, who were known as Cæsarians, and he felt the full wrath of Elias. Thrown into prison, he lay there in chains for two years. At length the fetters were removed, and, early in 1239, his jailer having left the door of his cell open, he ventured forth to stretch his cramped limbs in the wintry sun. The jailer returned and thought that he was attempting to escape. Fearing the pitiless anger of Elias, he rushed after the prisoner and dealt him a mortal blow with a cudgel. Cæsarius was the first, but by no means the last, martyr who shed his blood for the strict observance of a Rule breathing nothing but love and charity.[7]

The cup at last was full to overflowing. In 1237 Elias had sent visitors to the different provinces whose conduct caused general exasperation. The brethren of Saxony appealed to him from their visitor, and, finding this fruitless, they carried their complaint to Gregory. The pope at length was roused to intervene. A general chapter was convened in 1239, when, after a stormy scene in presence of Gregory and nine cardinals, the pope finally announced to Elias that his resignation would be received. Possibly in this there may have been political as well as ascetic motives. Elias was a skilful negotiator, and was looked upon with a friendly eye by Frederic II., who forthwith declared that the dismissal was done in his despite, for Elias was at the time engaged in an effort to heal the irremediable breach between the papacy and the empire. Certain it is that Elias at once took refuge with Frederic and became his intimate companion. Gregory made an effort to capture him by inviting him to a conference. Failing in this, a charge was brought against him of visiting poor women at Cortona without permission, and on refusing to obey a summons he was excommunicated.[8]

Thus already in the Franciscan Order there were established two well-defined parties, which came to be known as the Spirituals and the Conventuals, the one adhering to the strict letter of the Rule, the other willing to find excuses for its relaxation in obedience to the wants of human nature and the demands of worldliness. After the fall of Elias the former had the supremacy during the brief generalates of Alberto of Pisa, and Haymo of Feversham. In 1244 the Conventuals triumphed in the election of Crescenzio Grizzi da Jesi, under whom occurred what the Spirituals reckoned as the “Third Tribulation,” for, in accordance with their apocalyptic speculations, they were to undergo seven tribulations before the reign of the Holy Ghost should usher in the Millennium. Crescenzio followed in the footsteps of Elias. Under Haymo, in 1242, there had been an attempt to reconcile with the Rule Gregory’s declaration of 1231. Four leading doctors of the Order, with Alexander Hales at their head, had issued the Declaratio Quatuor Magistrorum, but even their logical subtlety had failed. The Order was constantly growing, it was constantly acquiring property, and its needs were constantly increasing. A bull of Gregory IX. in 1239, authorizing the Franciscans of Paris to acquire additional land with which to enlarge their monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Près, is an example of what was going on all over Europe. In 1244, at the chapter which elected Crescenzio, the Englishman, John Kethene, succeeded, against the opposition of nearly the whole body of the assembly, in obtaining the rejection of Gregory’s definition, but the triumph of the Puritans was short-lived. Crescenzio sympathized with the laxer party, and applied to Innocent IV. for relief. In 1245 the pope responded with a declaration in which he not only repeated the device of Gregory IX. by authorizing deposits of money with parties who were to be regarded as the agents of donors and creditors, but ingeniously assumed that houses and lands, the ownership of which was forbidden to the Order, should be regarded as belonging to the Holy See, which granted their use to the friars. Even papal authority could not render these transparent subterfuges satisfying to the consciences of the Spirituals, and the growing worldliness of the Order provoked continuous agitation. Crescenzio before taking the vows had been a jurist and physician, and there was further complaint that he encouraged the brethren in acquiring the vain and sterile science of Aristotle rather than in studying divine wisdom. Under Simone da Assisi, Giacopo Manfredo, Matteo da Monte Rubiano, and Lucido, seventy-two earnest brethren, finding Crescenzio deaf to their remonstrances, prepared to appeal to Innocent. He anticipated them, and obtained from the pope in advance a decision under which he scattered the recalcitrants in couples throughout the provinces for punishment. Fortunately his reign was short. Tempted by the bishopric of Jesi, he resigned, and in 1248 was succeeded by Giovanni Borelli, better known as John of Parma, who at the time was professor of theology in the University of Paris.[9]

The election of John of Parma marked a reaction in favor of strict observance. The new general was inspired with a holy zeal to realize the ideal of St. Francis. The exiled Spirituals were recalled and allowed to select their own domiciles. During the first three years John visited on foot the whole Order, sometimes with two, and sometimes with only one companion, in the most humble guise, so that he was unrecognized, and could remain in a convent for several days, observing its character, when he would reveal himself and reform its abuses. In the ardor of his zeal he spared the feelings of no one. A lector of the Mark of Ancona, returning home from Rome, described the excessive severity of a sermon preached by him, saying that the brethren of the Mark would never have allowed any one to say such things to them; and when asked why the masters who were present had not interfered, he replied, “How could they? It was a river of fire which flowed from his lips.” He suspended the declaration of Innocent IV. until the pontiff, better informed, could be consulted. It was, however, impossible for him to control the tendencies to relaxation of the Rule, which were ever growing stronger, and his efforts to that end only served to strengthen disaffection which finally grew to determined opposition. After consultation between some influential members of the Order it was resolved to bring before Alexander IV. formal accusations against him and the friends who surrounded him. The attitude of the Spirituals, in fact, fairly invited attack.[10]

To understand the position of the Spirituals at this time, and subsequently, it is necessary to cast a glance at one of the most remarkable spiritual developments of the thirteenth century. Its opening years had witnessed the death of Joachim of Flora, a man who may be regarded as the founder of modern mysticism. Sprung from a rich and noble family, and trained for the life of a courtier under Roger the Norman Duke of Apulia, a sudden desire to see the holy places took him, while yet a youth, to the East, with a retinue of servitors. A pestilence was raging when he reached Constantinople, which so impressed him with the miseries and vanities of life that he dismissed his suite and continued his voyage as an humble pilgrim with a single companion. His legend relates that he fell in the desert overcome with thirst, and had a vision of a man standing by a river of oil, and saying to him, “Drink of this stream,” which he did to satiety, and when he awoke, although previously illiterate, he had a knowledge of all Scripture. The following Lent he passed in an old well on Mount Tabor; in the night of the Resurrection a great splendor appeared to him, he was filled with divine light to understand the concordance of the Old and New Laws, and every difficulty and every obscurity vanished. These tales, repeated until the seventeenth century, show the profound and lasting impression which he left upon the minds of men.[11]

Thenceforth his life was dedicated to the service of God. Returning home, he avoided his father’s house, and commenced preaching to the people; but this was not permissible to a layman, so he entered the priesthood and the severe Cistercian Order. Chosen Abbot of Corazzo, he fled, but was brought back and forced to assume the duties of the office, till he visited Rome, in 1181, and obtained from Lucius III. permission to lay it down. Even the severe Cistercian discipline did not satisfy his thirst for austerity, and he retired to a hermitage at Pietralata, where his reputation for sanctity drew disciples around him, and in spite of his yearning for solitude he found himself at the head of a new Order, of which the Rule, anticipating the Mendicants in its urgency of poverty, was approved by Celestin III. in 1196. Already it had spread from the mother-house of San Giovanni in Fiore, and numbered several other monasteries.[12]

Joachim considered himself inspired, and though in 1200 he submitted his works unreservedly to the Holy See, he had no hesitation in speaking of them as divinely revealed. During his lifetime he enjoyed the reputation of a prophet. When Richard of England and Philip Augustus were at Messina, they sent for him to inquire as to the outcome of their crusade, and he is said to have foretold to them that the hour had not yet come for the deliverance of Jerusalem. Others of his fulfilled prophecies are also related, and the mystical character of the apocalyptic speculations which he left behind him served to increase, after his death, his reputation as a seer. His name became one customarily employed for centuries when any dreamer or sharper desired to attract attention, and quite a literature of forgeries grew up which were ascribed to him. Somewhat more than a century after his death we find the Dominican Pipino enumerating a long catalogue of his works with the utmost respect for his predictions. In 1319 Bernard Délicieux places unlimited confidence in a prophetical book of Joachim’s in which there were representations of all future popes with inscriptions and symbols under them. Bernard points out the different pontiffs of his own period, predicts the fate of John XXII., and declares that for two hundred years there had been no mortal to whom so much was revealed as to Joachim. Cola di Rienzo found in the pseudo-prophecies of Joachim the encouragement that inspired his second attempt to govern Rome. The Franciscan tract De ultima, Ætate Ecclesiæ, written in 1356, and long ascribed to Wickliff, expresses the utmost reverence for Joachim, and frequently cites his prophecies. The Liber Conformitatum, in 1385, quotes repeatedly the prediction ascribed to Joachim as to the foundation of the two Mendicant Orders, symbolized in those of the Dove and of the Crow, and the tribulations to which the former was to be exposed. Not long afterwards the hermit Telesforo da Cosenza drew from the same source prophecies as to the course and termination of the Great Schism, and the line of future popes until the coming of Antichrist—prophecies which attracted sufficient attention to call for a refutation from Henry of Hesse, one of the leading theologians of the day. Cardinal Peter d’Ailly speaks with respect of Joachim’s prophecies concerning Antichrist, and couples him with the prophetess St. Hildegarda, while the rationalistic Cornelius Agrippa endeavors to explain his predictions by the occult powers of numbers. Human credulity preserved his reputation as a prophet to modern times, and until at least as late as the seventeenth century prophecies under his name were published, containing series of popes with symbolical figures, inscriptions, and explanations, apparently similar to the Vaticinia Pontificum which so completely possessed the confidence of Bernard Délicieux. Even in the seventeenth century the Carmelites printed the Oraculum Angelicum of Cyril, with its pseudo-Joachitic commentary, as a proof of the antiquity of their Order.[13]

Joachim’s immense and durable reputation as a prophet was due not so much to his genuine works as to the spurious ones circulated under his name. These were numerous—Prophecies of Cyril, and of the Erythræan Sybil, Commentaries on Jeremiah, the Vaticinia Pontificum, the De Oneribus Ecclesiæ and De Septem Temporibus Ecclesiæ. In some of these, reference to Frederic II. would seem to indicate a period of composition about the year 1250, when the strife between the papacy and empire was at the hottest, and the current prophecies of Merlin were freely drawn upon in framing their exegesis. There can be little doubt that their authors were Franciscans of the Puritan party, and their fearless denunciations of existing evils show how impatient had grown the spirit of dissatisfaction. The apocalyptic prophecies were freely interpreted as referring to the carnal worldliness which pervaded all orders in the Church; all are reprobate, none are elect; Rome is the Whore of Babylon, and the papal curia the most venal and extortionate of all courts; the Roman Church is the barren fig-tree, accursed by Christ, which shall be abandoned to the nations to be stripped. It would be difficult to exaggerate the bitterness of antagonism displayed in these writings, even to the point of recognizing the empire as the instrument of God which is to overthrow the pride of the Church. These outspoken utterances of rebellion excited no little interest, especially within the Order itself. Adam de Marisco, the leading Franciscan of England, sends to his friend Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, some extracts from these works which have been brought to him from Italy. He speaks of Joachim as one justly credited with divine insight into prophetic mysteries; he asks to have the fragments returned to him after copying, and meanwhile commends to the bishop’s consideration the impending judgments of Providence which are invited by the abounding wickedness of the time.[14]