Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/138

 122 GUGLIELMA AND DOLCINO. The description which Bernard Gui gives of the Apostles, in order to guide his brother inquisitors in their detection, shows how fully they carried into practice the precepts of their simple creed. They wore a special habit, closely approaching a conventual garb — probably the white mantle and cord adopted by Segarelli. They presented all the exterior signs of saintliness. As they wandered along the roads and through the streets they sang hymns, or uttered prayers and exhortations to repentance. What- ever was spontaneously set before them they ate with thankful- ness, and when appetite was satisfied they left what might remain and carried nothing with them. In their humble fashion they seem to have imitated the apostles as best they could, and to have carried poverty to a pitch which Angelo da Clarino himself might have envied. Bernard Gui, in addition, deplores their intractable obstinacy, and adduces a case in which he had kept one of them in prison for two years, subjecting him to frequent examination, before he was brought to confession and repentance — by what gentle persuasives we may readily guess." All this may seem to us the most harmless of heresies, and yet the impression produced by the exploits of Dolcino caused it to be regarded as one of the most formidable ; and the earnestness of the sectaries in making converts was rendered dangerous by their drawing their chief arguments from the evil lives of the clergy. When the Brethren of the Free Spirit were condemned in the Clementines, Bernard Gui wrote earnestly to John XXII., urging that a clause should be inserted including the Apostles, whom he described as growing like weeds and spreading from Italy to Languedoc and Spain. This is probably one of the exag- gerations customary in such matters, but about this time a Dol- cinist named Jacopo da Querio was discovered and burned in Avi- gnon. In 1316 Bernard Gui found others within his own district, when his energetic proceedings soon drove the poor wretches across the Pyrenees, and he addressed urgent letters to all the prelates of Spain, describing them and calling for their prompt extermina- tion, which resulted, as mentioned in a former chapter, in the ap- prehension of five of the heretics at far-off Compostella, doubtless the remnants of the disciples of the Apostle Richard. Possibly
 * Bernard. Guidon. Pmctica P. v.