Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/167

 FATE OF PIER DI CORBARIO. 151 General Gerard Odo proposed to revoke the commission of Fra Bartolino, John intervened and extended it for the purpose of enabling him to continue the prosecutions to a definite sentence. This is doubtless a fair specimen of the minute persecution Avhich was going on wherever the Ghibellines were not strong enough to defend themselves by force of arms.* As for the unhappy antipope, his fate was even more deplora- ble. Confided at Pisa bv Louis to the care of Count Fazio da %j Doneratico, the leading noble of the city, he was concealed for a while in a castle in Maremma. June 18, 1329, the Pisans rose and drove out the imperialist garrison, and in the following Janu- ary they were reconciled to the Church. A part of the bargain was the surrender of Pier di Corbario, to whom John promised to show himself a kind father and benevolent friend, besides enrich- ing Fazio for the betrayal of his trust. After making public ab- juration of his heresies in Pisa, Pier was sent, guarded by two state galleys, to Nice, where he was delivered to the papal agents. In every town on the road to Avignon he was required publicly to repeat his abjuration and humiliation. August 25, 1330, with a halter around his neck, he was brought before the pope in public consistory. Exhausted and broken with shame and suffering, he flung himself at his rival's feet and begged for mercy, abjuring and anathematizing his heresies, and especially that of the poverty of Christ. Then, in a private consistory, he was made again to con- fess a long catalogue of crimes, and to accept such penance as might be awarded him. No humiliation was spared him, and nothing was omitted to make his abject recantation complete. Having thus rendered him an object of contempt and deprived him of all further power of harm, John mercifully spared him bodily torment. He was confined in an apartment in the papal palace, fed from the papal table, and allowed the use of books, but no one was admitted to see him without a special papal order. His wretched life soon came to an end, and when he died, in 1333, he was buried in the Franciscan habit. Considering the ferocity of the age, his treatment is one of the least discreditable acts in the career of John XXII. It was hardly to be expected, after the Archivio Storico Italiano, 1 Ott. 1865, pp. 10-21.— Ripoll II. 180.— Wadding, ann. 1326, No. 9; 1327, No. 3-4; 1331, No. 4; 1332, No. 5.
 * Franz Ehrle (Archiv fur L. u K. 1885, pp. 159-64; 1886, pp. 653-69).—