Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/285

 DECLINE OP THE INQUISITION. 269 mission to comfort and keep steadfast in the faith, and from whom they made collections which they reported to the General Assem- bly or Council. Between Pignerol and Calabria they counted twenty-five days' journey along the western coast, returning by the eastern to Venice. Everywhere they met friends acquainted with their secret passwords, and in spite of ecclesiastical vigilance there existed throughout Italy a subterranean network of heresy disguised under outward conformity. In 1497 the envoys from the Bohemian Brethren, Lucas and Thomas, found in Eome itself one of their faith, whom they bitterly reproached for coneealinff his belief. In Calabria, in 1530, it was estimated that they num bered ten thousand souls, in Venetia, six thousand. The fate of these poor creatures, after generations of peaceful existence which might weU seem destined to be perpetual, belongs to a period be- yond our present limits, but the fact that they could thus prosper and increase shows how rusty had grown the machinery of the Inquisition, and how incapable had become its officials.* It only remains for us to note cursorily such indications as have reached us of the activity and condition of the Inquisition in the several provinces of Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In Savoy, as we have seen, the bitter contest with the Waldenses kept it in fair working condition, while it was gradually falling into desuetude elsewhere, although in Lombardy it still for a while, maintained its terrors. We have a somewhat va^ue de- scription of Its sleepless vigilance in 1318, in pursuing certain here- tics who are described as Lollards -whether Begghards or Wal- denses does not appear, but probably the latter, as we are told that when concealment became impossible the men escaped to Bohemia leaving some women with children at the breast, whereupon the women were burned, and the children given to good Catholics to be brought up in the faith. In 13M we hear of a great popular excitenaent, caused by the belief that a number of Ltim! oi the Inquisition had suffered unjustly. Matters went so far that the Imperial Vicar, Lucchin o Visconti, asked C lement VI. to order an oo ' f ■'W''^^ Boni, opTX,;^81._Lomta^d^Louis Paschale np 29- 33.-Perrm, Hist, des Vaudois, B. ir. ch. 7, lO.-Comba, La Reforma I oef' Ve gez.^uscana,Eivista Conte.poranea, ISe^.-Ca.e.rii Hist. F:;t Orth^dl: