Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/188

 ^^2 THE SPANISH PENINSULA. ecclesiastics of the fifteenth century. His matchless eloquence his rigid austerity, his superhuman ^igor, and his ^^q^^nchaWe zeal for the extermination of heresy well earned the beatification conferred on him after death; and since 1417 he had been known as a hammer of heretics. He held a conimission ^^^^'^'^^^^^ nuisitor which clothed him with power throughout Chr^tendom, and the heretics in every corner of Italy, in Bohemia, Hungary Bosnia, and Dalmatia, had learned with cause to tremble at hi name. It required no httle nerve to assail such a man and yet ^-hen, April 18, 1462, at Brescia, he pubhcly preached the forbid- den doctrine, the Dominican Inquisitor, Giacomo da Brescia, lost no time in calling him to account. First a courteous note ex- pressed disbelief in the report of the sermon and asked a disclaimer ; but on the Observantine adhering to the doctrine, a formal sum- mons followed, citing. him to appear for trial on the next day^ The t^YO Orders had thus fairly locked horns. The Bishop o Brescia interfered and obtained a withdrawal of the summons, but fh™estionhad to befought out before the pope. Thebit erness of feeling may be judged by the complaint of the inquisitor that his opponent had so excited the people of Brescia against him and the Dominicans that but for prompt measures many of them would have been slain; while, from Milan to Verona, every Domimcan pulpit resounded with denunciations of Giacomo deUa Marca as a The politic Pius II. feared to quarrel with either Order, and had a tortuous path to tread. To the Dominicans he furnished an authenticated copy of the decision of Clement YI. To Giacomo della Marca he wrote that this had been done because he could not refuse it, and not to give it authority. It had not been issued by Clement, but only in his name, and the question was still an open one. Giacomo might rest in peace in the conviction ha the pope had full confidence in his'zeal and orthodoxy, and that his calumniators should be silenced. On May 31 he issued com- mands that all discussions of the question should cease, and that ■ both sides should send their most learned brethren to an assembly which he would hold in September for exhaustive debate and final decision. This he hoped would put an end ^o the matter while skilful postponement of the conference would allow it to die out ; but he miscalculated the enmity of the rival Orders. The