Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/145

Rh HUGUES AUBRIOT.-THOMAS OF APULIA. 129 fessed and recanted the heresies of which he had been convicted, and received the sentence of perpetual imprisonment, which of course carried with it the confiscation of his wealth, while the re- joicing scholars of the University lampooned him in halting verses. He was thence conveyed to a dungeon in the episcopal prison, where he lay until 1382, when the insurrection of the Maillotins occurred. The first thought of the people was of their old prévôt. They broke open the prison, drew him forth and placed him at their head. He accepted the post, but the same night he quietly withdrew and escaped to his native Burgundy, where his advent- urous life ended in peaceful obscurity. The story is instructive as showing how efficient an instrument was the Inquisition for the gratification of malice. In fact, its functions as a factor in politi- cal strife were of sufficient importance to require more detailed consideration hereafter.*

After this we hear little more of the Inquisition of Paris, al- though it continued to exist. When, in 1388, the eloquence of Thomas of Apulia drew wondering crowds to listen with venera- tion to his teaching that the law of the Gospel was simply love, with the deduction that the sacraments, the invocation of saints, and all the inventions of the current theology were useless; when he wrote a book inveighing against the sins of prelate and pope, and asserting, with the Everlasting Gospel, that the reign of the Holy Ghost had supplanted that of the Father and the Son, and when he boldly announced himself as the envoy of the Holy Ghost sent to reform the world, the Inquisition was not called upon to silence even this revolutionary heretic. It was the Prévôt of Paris who ordered nim to desist from preaching, and, when he refused, it was the bish- op and University who tried him, ordered his book to be burned on the Place de Grève, and would have him burned had not the medi- eal alienists of the day testified to his insanity and procured for him commutation of his punishment to perpetual imprisonment.+

Various causes had long been contributing to deprive the In-

I. Liv. I. c. 13, liv. II. c. 1. + Religieux de S. Denis, op. cit. Liv. Iv. ch. 13.-D'Argentré, Collect. Judic. e novis error. I. II. 151. II.-9
 * Grandes Chroniques, ann. 1380-1.-Religieux de S. Denis, Hist. de Charles