Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/232

 216 ITALY. In fact, the' Church made much shrewder use of the martyr- dom than the exaction of vulgar vengeance. Its whole machinery was set to work at once to impress the populations with the sanc- tity of the martyr. Miracles multiplied around him. When the General Chapter of the Order assembled at Bologna in May, In- nocent wrote to them in terms of the most extravagant hyperbole respecting him, and urged them to fresh exertions in the cause of Christ. By August 31, he ordered the commencement of proceed- ings of canonization, and before a year had elapsed, March 25, 1253, the bull of canonization was issued — I believe the most speedy creation of a saint on record. It would be difficult to ex- aggerate the cult which developed itself around the martyr. Be- fore the century was out, Giacopo di Yoragine compared his mar- tyrdom with that of Christ, estabhshing many similitudes between them, and he assures us that the disappearance of heresy in the Milanese Avas owing to the merits of the saint — indeed, already, in the bull of canonization it is asserted that many heretics had been converted by his death and miracles. It is true that Avhen, in 1291, Fra Tommaso d'Aversa, a Dominican of Naples, in a sermon on the feast of San Biero dared to compare his wounds with the stigmata of St. Francis— saying that the former were the signs of the living God and not of the dead, while the latter were those of the dead God and not of the living— it is true that the expression was thought to savor of blasphemy. The existing pope, Nicholas lY., chanced to be a Franciscan, so Tommaso was summoned before him, forced to confess, and was sent back to his provincial with orders to subject him to a punishment that would prevent a repe- tition of the sacrilege. Yet successive popes encouraged the cult of San Fiero until Sixtus Y., in 1586, designated him as the second head of the Inquisition after St. Dominic, and as its first martyr, and in 1588 granted plenary indulgence to all who should visit for devotion the Dominican churches on the days of St. Dominic, Beter Martyr, and Catharine of Siena. In the seventeenth cen- tury an enthusiastic Spaniard declared that he was crowned with three crowns, " como Emperador de Martyresr In 1373, Gregory XL granted permission to erect a small oratory on the spot of 1279 (Ripoll I. 567), and who may very probably be the same as the accomplice in the murder.