Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/277

 THE WALDENSES OF PIEDMONT. 261 Gregory XI. was especially zealous in the warfare with heresy, and we have already seen how earnest were his efforts in 1375 to suppress the Waldenses of Provence and Daiiphine. Those of Piedmont had rendered themselves peculiarly obnoxious. Fra Antonio Pavo had recently gone to " Bricarax," a place deeply in- fected with heresy, to preach against them— his sermon, of course including a summons before his tribunal— when in place of hum- bly submitting, a dozen of them, incited by the Evil One, had set upon him as he left the church and had slain him. Another in- quisitor, probably Pietro di Kuffia, had met the same fate in the Dominican cloister at Susa, on the da.y of the Purification of the Yirgin (February 2). Such misdeeds demanded exemplary chas- tisement, and Gregory's exhortations to Charles Y. of France were accompanied with the strongest urgency on Amadeo YI. of Savoy to clear his land of brambles. We have seen how successful were the labors of the Nuncio, Antonio Bishop of Massa, and the In- quisitor of Provence, Francois Borel. They did not confine their energies to the French valleys. The Waldenses of the Yal di Susa were exposed to the most pitiless persecution ; on a Christmas night Borel with an armed force attacked Pragelato, putting to the sword all whom he could reach. The wretches who escaped perished of hunger and cold, including, it is said, fifty women with children at the breast.* It may be hoped that this holocaust satisfied the manes of the murdered inquisitors, for they seem to have received no other sat- isfaction. A succession of inquisitors — Piero di Castelmonte, Eufiino di Terdona, Tommaso da Casacho, and Michele Grassi, un- daunted by the fate of their predecessors, wasted their energies on the Piedmontese Waldenses without reducing them to subjection. The pitiless forays of Borel drove the poor wretches from their native valleys, and they poured over into Piedmont. Amadeo YIL, who succeeded his father in 1383, seems to have given the Inquisition but slender support, and it had little encouragement in its efforts to subdue the stubborn mountaineers. The fragmentary records of Fra Antonio Secco, who undertook the work in the spring of 1387, show how fruitless was the endeavor to co-operate p. 70. »
 * Raynald. ann. 1375, No. 26.-Filippo de Boni, LTnquiz. e i Calabro-Valdesi