Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/204

 jgg THE SPANISH PENINSULA. vers. Pedro was summoned to appear, and on his faiUng to do so his doctrine was condemned as heretical, and he was sentenced— not to the stake for contumacy, but to recant pubhcly in the pulpit He submitted and chd so, and we are told m the official report of the proceedings that all the faithful burst into tears at this signal manifestation of the conquering hand of God. Pedro died peacefully in the bosom of the Church during the next year, 1480, and Sixtus IV., in confirming the action of the council, ordered the archbishop to prosecute as heretics any of his foUow- ers who would not imitate his obedience.* Evidently some more efficient and less cumbrous method was requisite if *the population of reunited Spain was to enjoy the blessing of uniformity in faith. It did not take long for the piety of Isabella and the pohcy of Ferdinand to discover appro- priate means. In Portugal, Affonso II., at the commencement of his reign, in 1211, had manifested his zeal by inducing his Cortes to adopt severe laws for the repression of heresy ; but when Sueiro Cxomes, the first Dominican Provincial of Spain, endeavored to introduce in his kingdom inquisitors of the order, Affonso refused to admit them, and successfully insisted that heretics should be tried as heretofore by the ordinary episcopal courts. This rebuff sufficed for nearly a century and a half, and there must have been con- siderable freedom of thought, for, about 1325, Alvaro Pelayo gives a long list of the errors publicly defended in the scliools of Lisbon by Thomas Scotus, a renegade friar. Their nature may be appre- ciated from his Averrhoistic assertion that there had been three deceivers-Moses who deceived the Jews, Christ the Christians, and Mahomet the Saracens. He seems to have enjoyed immunity until he declared that St. Antony of Padua kept concubines when the Franciscan prior had him incarcerated, and his trial followed At last, by a bull, dated January IT, 1376, Gregory XL authorized ■ Agapito Colonna, Bishop of Lisbon, to appoint, for this time only, a Franciscan inquis itor, as heresies were know n to be spreading, ' Alphons. de Castro"adv. H^reses Lib. iii. s. v, C^fessio.-mesc<.s, Historia Pontifical, Lib. vi. c. 18.-Aguirre Concil. Hispan. V. SSl-S.-D'Argentre, I. n. 398-303.