Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/135

 DOLCINO'S PUNISHMENT. H9 the secular arm. For the superfluous cruelty which followed the Church was not responsible ; it was the expression of the terror of the secular authorities, leading them to repress by an awful example the ever-present danger of a peasant revolt. On June 1, 1307, the prisoners were brought forth. Margherita's beauty moved all hearts to compassion, and this, coupled with the reports of her wealth, led many nobles to offer her marriage and pardon if she would abjure, but, constant to her faith and to Dolcino, she preferred the stake. She was slowly burned to death before his eyes, and then commenced his more prolonged torture. Mounted on a cart, provided with braziers to keep the instruments of tor- ment heated, he was slowly driven along the roads through that long summer day and torn gradually to pieces with red-hot pincers. The marvellous constancy of the man was shown by his enduring it without rewarding his torturers with a single change of feature. Only when his nose was wrenched off was observed a slight shiver in the shoulders, and when a yet crueller pang was inflicted, a single sigh escaped him. While he was thus dying in linger- ing torture Longino Cattaneo, at Biella, was similarly utilized to afford a salutary warning to the people. Thus the enthusiasts expiated their dreams of the regeneration of mankind.* Complete as was Dolcino's failure, his character and his fate left an ineffaceable impression on the population. The Parete Calvo, his first mountain refuge, was considered to be haunted by evil spirits, whom he had left to guard a treasure buried in* a cave, and who excited such tempests when any one invaded their domain that the people of Triverio were forced to maintain guards to warn off persistent treasure -seekers. Still stronger was the 88— Regest. Clement. PP. V. T. II. pp. 79-82, 88 (Ed. Benedictina, Romae,1886). — Mosheims Ketzergeschichte I, 395.— Ughelli, Italia Sacra, Ed. 1652, IV. 1104- 8.— Hist. Dulcin. (Muratori IX. 436, 440).— Benv. da Imola (Muratori Antiq. III. 460).— Bernard. Guidon. Vit. Clement. PP. V. (Muratori III. I. 674).— Bescape, loc. cit. The punishment inflicted on Dolcino and Longino was not exceptional. By a Milanese statute of 1393 all secret attempts upon the life of any member of a family with whom the criminal lived were subject to a penalty precisely the same in all details, except that it ended by attaching the offender to a wheel and leaving him to perish in prolonged agony. — Antiqua Ducum Mediolani Decreta, p. 187 (Mediolani, 1654).
 * Mariotti (A. Galenga), Fra Dolcino and his Times, London, 1853, pp. 287-