Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/118

 102 GUGLIELMA AND DOLCINO. mediately after Andrea's execution an examination of his wife Riccadona, as to the furniture in her house and the wine in her cellar, shows that the Inquisition was prompt in looking after the confiscations of those condemned to death ; and the fragment of an interrogatory, February 12, 1302, of Marchisio Secco, a monk of Chiaravalle, indicates that it was involved in a struggle with the abbey to compel the refunding of the bequest of Guglielma, as the heresy for which she had been condemned, of course, ren- dered void all dispositions of her property. How this resulted we have no means of knowing, but we may feel assured that the ab- bey was forced to submit ; indeed, the complicity of the monks with the heretics was so clearly indicated that we may wonder none of their names appear in the lists of those condemned.* Thus ended this little episode of heresy, of no importance in its origin or results, but curious from the glimpse which it affords into the spiritual aberrations of the time, and the procedure of the Lombard Inquisition, and noteworthy as a rare instance of inquisitorial clemency.f t Spiritual eccentricities, such as those of the Guglielmites, are not to be regarded as peculiar to any age or any condition of civilization. The story of Joanna Southcote is well known, and the Southcottian Church maintained its existence in London until the middle of the present century. In July, 1886, the American journals reported the discovery, in Cincinnati, of a sect even more closely approximating to the Guglielmites, and about as numerous, calling them- selves Perfectionists, and believing in two married sisters — a Mrs. Martin as an incarnation of God, and a Mrs. Brooke as that of Christ. Like their predeces- sors in Milan the sect is by no means confined to the illiterate, but comprises people of intelligence and culture who have abandoned all worldly occupation in the expectation of the approaching Millennium — the final era of the Ever- lasting Gospel. The exposure for a time broke up the sect, of which some mem- bers departed, while others, with the two sisters, joined a Methodist church. Their faith was not shaken, however, and in June. 1887, the church expelled them after an investigation. One of the charges against them was that they held the Church of the present day to be Babylon and the abomination of the earth. England has also recently had a similar experience in a peasant woman of not particularly moral life who for some fifteen years, until her death, Sep- tember 18, 1886, was regarded by her followers as a new incarnation of Christ. Her own definition of herself was, " I am the second appearing and incarnation of Jesus, the Christ of God, the Bride, the Lamb's Wife, the God-Mother and Saviour, Life from Heaven," etc., etc. She signed herself " Jesus, First and
 * Ogniben, pp. 42-4, 63, 67-8, 81-2, 91-2, 95-6, 97, 100, 110, 113, 115-16.