Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/263

 NAPLES AND SICILY. 247 Few details have been preserved to us of the activity of the Inquisition in Naples. We know that heretics continued to exist there, but the wild and mountainous character of much of the country doubtless afforded them abundant opportunities of safe asylum. Ah-eady, in August, 1269, a letter of Charles ordering the seizure of sixty-eight heretics designated by Fra Benvenuto shov.-s that the work was being energetically prosecuted, and in another letter of March 14, 1270, there is an aUusion to three others whom Fra Matteo di Castellamare had recently caused to be burned in Benevento. The inquisitors of Languedoc, moreover, made haste as early as 1269, to send agents to Naples to hunt the refugees whom their severity had driven there, and Charles ordered every assistance to be rendered to them, which, perhaps, explains the success of Fri Benvenuto. Yet the perpetual necessity for royal interposition leads to the inference that the Inquisition was not nearly so effective in Naples as it proved in Languedoc and Lom- bardy. The royal authority seems to be required at every turn partly because the king allowed little independent initiative to the inquisitors, and partly, perhaps, because the local officials did not lend as hearty a co-operation as they might have done. Thus the Neapohtan Inquisition, even under the Angevines, seems never to have attained the compact and effective organization of which we have seen the results elsewhere, though Charles II. was an ea-er pei^ecutor who stimulated the zeal of his inquisitors, and his s°on Robert earned the name of the Pious. In 1305 we shaU see Fra lommasodiAversa active in persecuting the Spiritual Franciscans, and in 1311, King Robert, at the instance of Fra Matteo da Ponza ordered that all newly converted Jews should live scattered amono^ Christians, so as not to be tempted back to Judaism * " The ineffectiveness of the Neapolitan Inquisition is seen in the comparative security which attended an organized immigration of Waldenses from the valleys of the Cottian Alps. It was^^robably about 1315 that Zanino del Poggio, a Milanese noble, led forth th; first band from Savoy, under specified guarantees of lands a.ul privileges, after the intending emigrants had received the report of deputies sent in advance to survey the promised refuge. Fresh • Archivio di Napoli, Regist. 3 Lett. A, fol. 64; Hegist 4 Lett B fol 4-. Reg. 9 Lett. C, fol. 39._MSS. Cliioccarello, T. VIII. ' '