Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/220

 204 POLITICAL HERESY.— THE CHURCH. thari of Bosnia, three years' tithe of the Hungarian churches if he would put down those sons of damnation, the Maflredi, who have been sentenced as heretics, and other adversaries of the Church, including the Ordelaffi of Friuli. Fra Fortanerio, Patriarch of Grado, was also commissioned to preach a crusade against them, and succeeded in raising an army under Malatesta of Rimini. The appearance of forty thousand Hungarians in the Tarvisina fright- ened all Italy ; the Maffredi succumbed, and in the same year In- nocent ordered their absolution and reconciliation.* It would be easy to multiply instances, but these will probably suffice to show the use made by the Church of heresy as a politi- cal agent, and of the Inquisition as a convenient instrumentality for its application. When the Great Schism arose it was natural that the same methods should be employed by the rival popes against each other. As early as 1382 we find Charles III. of Xa- ples confiscating the property of the Bishop of Trivento, just dead, as that of a heretic because he had adhered to Clement VII. In the commission issued in 1409 by Alexander Y. to Pons Feugeyron, as Inquisitor of Provence, the adherents of Gregory XII. and of Benedict XIII. are enumerated among the heretics whom he is to exterminate. It happened that Frere Etienne de Combes, Inquisi- Wadding, aim. 1356, No. 7, 20.— Raynald. ann. 1356, No. 33. This abuse of spiritual power for purposes of territorial aggrandizement did not escape the trenchant satire of Erasmus. He describes " the terrible thunder- bolt which by a nod will send the souls of mortals to the deepest hell, and which the vicars of Christ discharge with special wrath on those who, instigated by the devil, seek to nibble at the Patrimony of Peter. It is thus they call the cities and territories and revenues for which they fight with fire and sword, spilling much Christian blood, and they believe themselves to be defending like apostles the spouse of Christ, the Church, by driving away those whom they stigmatize as her enemies, as if she could have any worse enemies than impious pontiffs." — Encom. Moriae. Ed. Lipsiens. 1829, II. 379. That the character of these papal wars had not been softened since the hor- rors described above at Ferrara, is seen in the massacre of Cesena, in 1376, when the papal legate, Robert, Cardinal of Geneva, ordered all the inhabitants put to the sword, without distinction of age or sex, after they had admitted him and his bandits into the city under his solemn oath that no injury should be inflicted on them. The number of the slain was estimated at five thousand. — Poggii Hist. Florentin. Lib. h. ann. 1376.
 * Werunsky Excerptt. ex Registt. Clem. VI. et Innoc. VI. pp. 37, 74, 87, 101. —