Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/261

 NAPLES AND SICILY. 245 minute perquisition by no means easy. The allusions of the Ab- bot Joachim of Flora to the Cathari indicate that their existence and doctrines were familiar facts in Calabria, though as Eainerio makes no allusion to any Catharan church in Italy south of Flor- ence it is presumable that the sectaries were widely scattered and unorganized. In 1235, when the Dominican convent in :N'aples was broken into by a mob and several of the friars were griev- ously wounded, Gregory IX. attributed the violence to friends of heretics.* Frederic II., however much at times his pohcy might lead him to proclaim ferocious edicts of persecution, and even spas- modically to enforce them, had no convictions of his own to ren- der him persistent in persecution, and his lifelong contest with the papacy gave him, secretly at least, a feUow-f eehng with aU who resisted the supremacy of the Holy See, whether in temporal or spiritual concerns. Occasional attacks such as that under the au- spices of the Archbishop of Reggio, in 1231, or the form of secular inquisition which he instituted in 1233, had Httle permanent effect. Cathari driven from Languedoc, who perhaps found even Lom- bardy insecure, were tolerably sure of refuge in the wild and se- cluded valleys of Calabria and the Abruzzi, lying aside from the great routes of travel. The domination in IN'aples of Innocent lY. was too brief for the organization of any systematized persecution* and when Manfred reconquered the kingdom, although he seems to have felt his position too precarious to risk open toleration, and, under pressure from Jayme of Aragon, he ordered Bishop Vivian of Toulouse and his disciples, who had settled in Apulia, to leave his dominions, yet he went no further in active measures of repres- sion.f Charles of Anjou came as a crusader and as the champion of the Church. Scarce was his undisputed domination assured by the execution of Conradin, October 29, 1268, than we see him zealously employed in establishing the Inquisition throughout the kingdom. IS-umerous royal letters of 1269 show it actively at work, and manifest the solicitude of the king that the stipends^and V. 1767).— Ripoll L 74. fRaynald. ann. 1231, No. 19. -Rich, de S. German. Chron. ann 1233 _ Giannone, 1st. Civ. di Napoli, Lib. xvii. c. 6, Lib. xix. c. 5.-Vaissette, IV. 17.
 * Tocco, L'Eresia nel Medio Evo, p. 403.-Reiiierii Summa (Martene Thesaur