Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/198

 182 THE SPANISH PENINSULA. val between the death of Bishop Rodrigo, in March, 1232, and the election of his successor, Arnaldo, in August, 1234, the heretics had ample opportunity to work their wicked will. A Catharan named Arnaldo had been burned, about 1218, in a place in the sub- urbs used for depositing filth. There was a spring there which the heretics colored red, and proclaimed that it had miraculously been turned to blood. Many of them, simulating bhndness, lameness, and demoniacal possession, were carried there and pre- tended to be cured, after which they dug up the heretic's bones and declared them to be those of a holy martyr. The people were fired with enthusiasm, erected a chapel, and worshipped the relics with the utmost ardor. In vain the clergy and the friars endeavored to stem the tide ; the people denounced them as here- tics, and despised the excommunication with which the neighbor- ing bishops visited the adoration of the new saint ; Avhile the real heretics made many converts by secretly relating how the affair had been managed, and pointing it out as a sample of the manu- facture of saints and miracles. God visited the sacrilege with a drouth of ten months, which was not broken until Lucas, at the risk of his life, destroyed the heretic chapel ; and Avhen the rains came there was a reailsion of feeling which enabled him to expel the heretics. All this would seem to indicate that the heretics were numerous and organized; it certainly shows that there vras no machinery for their suppression; but after the elevation of Lucas to the see of Tuy, in 1239, we hear no more of heretics or of persecutions. The whole affair, apparently, was a sporadic manifestation, probably of some band of fugitives from Langue- doc, who disappeared and left no following.^ If what Lucas tells us be true, that ecclesiastics frequently joined in and enjoyed the ridicule with which heretics derided the sacraments and the clergy, the Spanish Church was not likely to give much aid to the introduction of the Inquisition. How little its methods were understood appears in the fact that when,, in 1236, San Fernando III. found some heretics at Palencia, he proceeded to brand them in the face, which brought them to reason and led them to seek absolution. No one seemed to know Espaiia Sagrada, XXII. 120-22, 126-30.
 * Lucse Tudeas. de altera Vita, Lib. in. c. 7, 9. Cf. c. 18, 20. — Florez,