Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/216

 200 POLITICAL HERESY.— THE CHURCH. Inquisition. Transferring themselves to the securer walls of Ya- lenza, they heard witnesses and collected testimony, and on March 14 they condemned Matteo as a defiant and unrepentant heretic. He had imposed taxes on the churches and collected them by vio- lence ; he had forcibly installed his creatures as superiors in mon- asteries and his concubines in nunneries ; he had imprisoned eccle- siastics and tortured them — some had died in prison and others still lingered there ; he had expelled prelates and seized their lands ; he had prevented the transmission of money to the papal camera, even sums collected for the Holy Land ; he had inter- cepted and opened letters between the pope and the legates ; he had attacked and slain crusaders assembled in Milan for the Holy Land ; he had disregarded excommunication, thus showing that he erred in the faith as to the sacraments and the power of the keys ; he had prevented the interdict laid upon Milan from being observed ; he had obstructed prelates from holding synods and visiting their dioceses, thus favoring heresies and scandals ; his enormous crimes show that he is an offshoot of heresy, his ances- tors having been suspect and some of them burned, and he has for officials and confidants heretics, such as Francesco Garbagnate, on whom crosses had been imposed ; he has expelled the Inquisition from Florence and impeded it for several years ; he interposed in favor of Maifreda who was burned ; he is an invoker of demons, seeking from them advice and responses ; he denies the resurrec- tion of the flesh ; he has endured papal excommunication for more than three years, and when cited for examination into his faith he refused to appear. He is, therefore, condemned as a contuma- cious heretic, all his territories are declared confiscated, he himself deprived of all honors, station, and dignities, and liable to the pen- alties decreed for heresy, his person to be captured, and his chil- dren and grandchildren subjected to the customary disabilities.* This curious farrago of accusations is worth reciting, as it shows what was regarded as heresy in an opponent of the temporal power of the papacy — that the simplest acts of self-defence against an enemy who was carrying on active war against him were gravely treated as heretical, and constituted valid reasons for inflicting all the tremendous penalties prescribed by the laws for lapses Ughelli, Italia Sacra, IV. 286-93 (Ed. 1652).