Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/100

 81 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. one's neighbor, and not an injury, to give him a chance of con- version.- Evidently these poor folk would have been harmless enough if let alone, and their persecution could only be justified by the duty of the Church to preserve erring souls from perdition. A sect based upon the absolute abnegation of property as its chief principle, and the apocalyptic reveries of the Everlasting Gospel, could never become dangerous, though it might be disagreeable, from its mute — or perhaps vivacious — protest against the luxury and Avorldliness of the Church. Even if let alone it would prob- ably soon have died out. Springing as it did in a region and at a period in which the Inquisition was thoroughly organized, it had no chance of survival, and it speedily succumbed under the fero- cious energy of the proceedings brought to bear against it. Yet we cannot fix with any precision the date of its extinction. The records are imperfect, and those which we possess fail to draw a distinction between the Spirituals and the orthodox Franciscans, who, as we shall see, Avere driven to rebellion by John XXII. on the question of the poverty of Christ. This latter dogma became one of so much larger importance that the dreams of the Spirituals were speedily lost to view, and in the later cases it is reasonable to assume that the victims were Fraticelli. Still, there are several prosecutions on record at Carcassonne in 1329, which were doubt- less of Spirituals. One of them was of Jean Eoger, a priest who had stood in high consideration at Beziers ; he had been an asso- ciate of Pierre Trencavel in his wanderings, and the slight penance imposed on him would seem to indicate that the ardor of persecu- tion was abating, though we learn that the bones of the martyrs of Marseilles were still handed around as relics. John XXII. was not disposed to connive at any relaxation of rigor, and in Febru- ary, 1331, he reissued his bull Sancta Rornana, with a preface ad- dressed to bishops and inquisitors in which he assumes that the sect is flourishing as vigorously as ever, and orders the most active meas- ures taken for its suppression. Doubtless there Avere subsequent prosecutions, but the sect as a distinctive one faded out of sight.f During the period of its actiA r e existence it had spread across
 * Bern. Guidon. Practica P. v. f Doat, XXVII. 156, 170, 178, 215 ; XXXII. 147.