Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/248

 232 POLITICAL HERESY.-THE CHURCH. from them to incriminate Savonarola. The officials in power had but a short time for action, as their term of office ended with the month, although by arbitrary and illegal devices they secured suc- cessors of their own party. Their last official act, on the 30th, was the exile of ten of the accused citizens, and the imposition on twenty-three of various fines, amounting in all to twelve thousand florins.* The new government which came in power May 1 at once dis- charged the imprisoned citizens, but kept Savonarola and his com- panions. These, as Dominicans, were not justiciable by the civil power, but the Signoria immediately applied to Alexander for authority to condemn and execute them. He refused, and ordered them to be delivered to him for judgment, as he had already done when the news reached him of Savonarola's capture. To this the republic demurred, doubtless for the reason privately alleged to the ambassador, that Savonarola was privy to too many state secrets to be intrusted to the Roman curia ; but it suggested that the pope might send commissioners to Florence to conduct the proceedings in his name. To this he assented. In a brief of May 11 the Bishop of Yaison, the suffragan of the Archbishop of Flor- ence, is instructed to degrade the culprits from holy orders, at the requisition of the commissioners who had been empowered to con- duct the examination and trial to final sentence. In the selection of these commissioners the Inquisition does not appear. Even had it not fallen too low in popular estimation to be intrusted with an affair of so much moment, in Tuscany it was Franciscan, and to have given special authority to the existing inquisitor, Fra Francesco da Montalcino, would have been injudicious in view of the part taken by the Franciscans in the downfall of Savonarola. Alexander showed his customary shrewdness in selecting for the miserable work the Dominican general, Giovacchino Torriani, who bore the reputation of a kind-hearted and humane man. He was but a stalking-horse, however, for the real actor was his asso- ciate, Francesco Eomolino, a clerk of Lerida, whose zeal in the infamous business was rewarded with the cardinalate and arch- bishopric of Palermo. After all, their duties were only ministerial Lib. ii. p. 79.
 * Landucci, p. 174. — Processo Autentico, p. 563. — Villari, H. 210, 217. — Nardi,