Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/185

 THE HERESY IN SPAIN. 169 Hugo, Bishop of Valencia, and the Inquisitor Nicolas Roselli to prosecute the case forthAvith. Justi must have recanted, for he was merely imprisoned for life, while the bones of the two Terti- aries were dug up and burned. Even more obdurate was Fray Arnaldo Mutaner, who for nineteen years infected Puycerda and Urgel with the same heresy. He was contumacious and refused to appear when summoned to abjure. After consultation with Gregory XL, Berenger Darili, Bishop of Urgel, condemned him, and so did Eymerich. Pursuit apparently grew hot, and he fled to the East. The last we hear of him is in 1373, when Gregory ordered his vicar, the Franciscan Arnaud, to seize him and send him in chains to the papal court, but whether the effort was successful we have no means of knowing. A bull of Martin Y. in 1426 shows the continued existence of Fraticelli in Ara- gon and Catalonia, and the necessity of active measures for their extirpation.* It was probably a heresy of the same nature which, in 1442, was discovered in Durango, Biscay. The heresiarch was the Fran- ciscan Alonso de Mella, brother of Juan, Cardinal-bishop of Za- mora, and the sectaries were known as Cerceras. The story that Alonso taught indiscriminate sexual intercourse is doubtless one of the customary exaggerations. King Juan II., in the absence of the Inquisition, sent the Franciscan, Francisco de Soria, and Juan Alonso Cherino, Abbot of Alcala la Real, to investigate the matter, with two alguazils and a sufficient force. The heretics were seized and carried, some to Valladolid and some to Santo Domingo de la Calcada, where torture was used to extract con- fession, and the obstinate ones were burned in considerable num- bers. Fray Alonso de Mella, however, managed to escape and fled to Granada, it is said, with some of his girls ; but he did not avert his fate, for he was acanavereado by the Moors — that is, put to a lingering death with pointed sticks. The affair must have made a profound impression on the popular mind, for even until modern times the people of Durango were reproached by their neighbors with the " autos de Fray Alonso" and in 1828 an over- zealous alcalde, to obliterate all record of the matter, burned the No. 18.— Wadding, ann. 1371, No. 26-30.
 * Ripoll II. 245.— Eymeric. pp. 266-7.— Raynald. aim. 1373, No. 19; ami. 1426,