Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/288

 272 ITALY present themselves condemned Bernardino to make x^ublic retrac- tion under pain of excommunication. Bernardino paid no heed to this, and on his death in 1444, when immediate efforts were made for his canonization, Amadeo raised great scandal by pro- claiming that he had died in mortal sin as an excommunicate. This gratified the jealousy of the conventual branch of the Fran- ciscans and many of the secular clergy, who spread the scandal far and wide. By this time, however, the Observantines were too in- fluential for such an assault upon their revered vicar-general to be successful ; and in 1447 they obtained from Nicholas Y. a bull in which he annulled all the proceedings of Giuseppe, ordered every record of them to be destroyed, imposed silence on the unlucky Amadeo, declared Bernadino to have acted righteously through- out, and forbade all clerks, friars, and others from indulging in further detraction concerning him. I may add that the opposition of the Conventuals was powerful enough to postpone until 1450 the canonization of San Bernardino, and a humorous incident in the struggle may be worth mention. When the blessed Tommaso of Flor'ence died at Eieti in 1447, and immediately began to corus- cate in miracles, Capistrano hurried thither and forbade him to dis- play further his thaumaturgic powers until Bernardino should be canonized— and Tommaso meekly obeyed."^ Yet, shorn as the Inquisition had become of real effectiveness for its avowed functions, the office continued to be sought, doubt- less because it conferred a certain measure of importance, and pos- sibly because it afforded opportunity of illicit gains. Inquisitors were regularly appointed, and the custom grew up in Lombardy that in each city where a tribunal existed vacancies were filled on the nomination of the prior of the local Dominican convent with the assent of discreet brethren, whereupon the General Master of the Order issued the commission. In 1500 this was modified by giving the Yicar-general of Lombardy power to reject or ratify the nomination. The subordinate position to which the inquisi- torial office had fallen is illustrated in the last decade of the fif- teenth century by Fra Antonio da Brescia, who was inquisitor of his native place, and who was claimed as an ornament of the Do- minican Order, but his eulogist has nothing to say as to his perse-
 * Wadding, ann. 1447, No. 8, 47 ; ann. 1450, No. 2.-Raynald. ami. 1446, No. 8.