Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/176

 160 THE FRATICELLI. the Mark of Ancona, was instructed to proceed severely against him and other fautors of these heretics. By his active operations Fra Giovanni incurred the ill-will of the nobles of his district, who had sufficient influence with the general, Gerard Odo, to procure his replacement by his associate Giacomo and subsequently by Si- mone da Ancona, but the Cardinal Legate Bertrand intervened, and Benedict restored him with high encomiums on his efficiency. Although persecution was thus active, it is probable that few of the sectaries had the spirit of martyrdom, and that they recanted under pressure, but there was no hesitation in inflicting the full punishment of heresy on those who were persistent. June 3, 1337, at Venice, Fra Francesco da Pistoia was burned for pertinaciously asserting the poverty of Christ in contempt of the definitions of John XXII., nor was he the only victim.* The test of heresy, as I have said, was the assertion that Christ and the apostles held no property. This appears from the abjura- tion of Fra Francesco d ? Ascoli in 1344, who recants that belief and declares that in accordance with the bulls of John XXII. he holds it to be heretical. That such continued to be the customary formula appears from Eymerich, who instructs his inquisitor to make the penitent declare under oath, " I swear that I believe in my heart and profess that our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles while in this mortal life held in common the things which Scrip- ture declares them to have had, and that they had the right of giving, selling, and alienating theni." f The heresy was thus so purely an artificial one, created by the Holy See, that perhaps it is not difficult to understand the sym- pathy excited by these poor and self-denying ascetics, who bore all the external marks of what the Church had for ages taught to be exceeding holiness. Camerino continued to be a place of refuge. In 1343 Clement VI. ordered the Bishops of Ancona and Osimo to cite before him within three months Gentile, Lord of Camerino, for various offences, among which was protecting the Fraticelli, impeding the inquisitors in the prosecution of tbeir duties, and de- 1339. No. 1.— Raynald. aim. 1335, No. 63 ; ann. 1336, No. 63, 64, 66-7 ; ann. 1337, No. 30; ann. 1375, No. 64. — Comba, La Riforma in Italia, I. 328.— Vit. Prima Benedict! XII. ann. 1337 (Muratori S. R. I. III. n. 531). f D'Argentre I. i. 345. — Eymeric. p. 486.
 * Wadding, ann. 1335, No. 10-11: ami. 1336, No. 1; ann. 1337, No. 1; aim.