Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/194

 178 THE FRATICELLI. The unlucky captives were brought before Nicholas at Fabri- ano and burned. Giacomo tells us that the stench lasted for three days and extended as far as the convent in which he was staying. He exerted himself to save the souls of those whose bodies were forfeit by reason of relapse, and succeeded in all cases but one. This hardened heretic was the treasurer of the sect, named Chiuso. He refused to recant, and would not call upon God or the Virgin or the saints for aid, but simply said " Fire will not burn me." His endurance was tested to the utmost. For three days he was burned piecemeal at intervals, but his resolution never gave way, and at last he expired impenitent, in spite of the kindly efforts to torture him to heaven.* After this Ave hear little of the Fraticelli, although the sect still continued to exist for a while in secret. In 1467 Paul II. con- verted a number of them who were brought from Poli to Rome. Eight men and six women, with paper mitres on their heads, were exposed to the jeers of the populace on a high scaffold at the Ara- cceli, while the papal vicar and five bishops preached for their conversion. Their penance consisted in imprisonment in the Cam- pidoglio, and in wearing a long robe bearing a white cross on breast and back. It was probably on this occasion that Rodrigo Sanchez, a favorite of Paul's, and subsequently Bishop of Palencia, wrote a treatise on the poverty of Christ, in which he proved that ecclesiastics led apostolic lives in the midst of their possessions. In 1471 Fra Tommaso di Scarlino was sent to Piombino and the maritime parts of Tuscany to drive out some Fraticelli who had been discovered there. This is the last allusion to them that I have met with, and thereafter they may be considered as virtually ex- tinct. That they soon passed completely out of notice may be inferred from the fact that in 1487, when the Spanish Inquisition persecuted some Observantines, Innocent VIII. issued a general order that any Franciscans imprisoned by Dominican inquisitors should be handed over for trial to their own superiors, and that no such prosecutions should be thereafter undertaken.f No. 24-5. — Raynald. ann. 1432, No. 24. — Jac. de Marchia Dial. (Baluz. et Mansi II. 610). t Steph. Infessurae Diar. Urb. Rom. ann. 1467 (Eccard. Corp. Hist. II. 1803).—
 * Jac. de Marchia 1. c.