Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/208

 192 ITALY. Heresy could scarce ask conditions more favorable for its spread. The Church, worldly to the core, was immersed in temporal cares and pleasures, and during the strife between Alexander III. and the four antipopes successively set up by Frederic I.— Victor, Pas- cal, Calixtus, and Innocent— the enforcement of orthodoxy was out of the question. After the triumph of the papacy, stringent decrees, as we have seen, were issued by Lucius III., and edicts were promulgated by Henry YI. in 1194, and by Otho lY. in 1210, but they were practically inefficient. When every town was divided against itself heresy could bargain for toleration by hold- ing the balance of power, and was frequently able, by throwing its weight on one side or the other, to obtain a share in the government. The larger struggles of city against city and of pope against emperor afforded a still wider field for the exercise of this diplomatic ability, of which full advantage was taken. When the formulas of persecution became defined under Honorius III., Gregory IX., and Frederic II., and fautorship was made equivalent to heresy, the factions and the nobles who tolerated or protected heretics became involved in the common anathema, and whole communities were stigmatized as given over to false idols. Yet although Ghibelline and heretic were frequently held by the popes to be almost convertible terms, there was in reality no test capable of nniversal application. Traditional hostility to the empire rendered Milan an intensely Guelf community, and yet it was everywhere recognized as the greatest centre of heresy. Though heresy was by no means so universal as the papal anathemas would indicate, yet heretics were quite numerous enough to possess political importance, and to have some justifi- cation for their hopes of eventually iDCComing dominant. Little concealment was deemed necessary. When Otho lY. was in Eome for his coronation in 1209, under the vigilant rule of Innocent HI., the ecclesiastics who accompanied him were scandahzed at finding schools where Manichaean doctrines were openly taught, appar- ently without interference. The earlier Dominican persecutors are represented as constantly holding pubUc disputations with heretics in the most populous cities of Italy, and the miracles re- lated of them were mostly occasioned by the taunts and challenges of heretics. Otho, at Ferrara, in 1210, was obliged to order the .magistrates to put to the ban the C^thari who refused, at the