Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/460

 4AA SORCERY AND OCCULT ARTS. of 1324 was furnished by the Inquisitor of Bologna, and there was no question as to his relapse. From the beginning the end was inevitable, but there was a mockery of opportunity for defence allowed him, and it was not until December 15 that sentence was pronounced. In accordance with rule, the Bishop of Florence sent a delegate to act with the inquisitor, and an assembly of high dignitaries and experts was assembled to participate, including the Cardinal-legate of Tuscany, the Bishop of Aretino, and Cecco's enemy, the chancellor of Duke Charles. He was abandoned to the secular arm and delivered to Charles's vicar, Jacopo da Brescia. All his books and astrological writings were further ordered to be surrendered within twenty-four hours to the bishop or inquisitor. Cecco was forthwith conducted to the place of execution beyond the walls. Tradition relates that he had learned by his art that he should die between Africa and " Campo Fiore," and so sure was he of this that on the way to the stake he mocked and ridiculed his guards ; but when the pile was about to be lighted he asked whether there was any place named Africa in the vicinage, and was told that that was the name of a neighboring brook flowing from Fiesole to the Arno. Then he recognized that Florence was the Field of Flowers and that he had been miserably deceived.* Astrology continued to hold its doubtful position with a grow- ing tendency to its condemnation. There were few who could take the common-sense view of Petrarch, that astrologers might be useful if they confined themselves to predicting eclipses and storms, and heat and cold, but that when they talked about the fate of men, known only to God, they simply proved themselves to be liars. Eymerich tells us that if a man was suspected of necro- mancy and was found to be an astrologer it went far to prove him a necromancer, for the two were almost always conjoined. Gerard Groot denounced astrology as a science hostile to God and aiming to supersede his laws. In Spain, in the middle of the fourteenth No. 46.— Cantii, Eretici d' Italia, I. 149-52. I owe many of the above details to a sketch of Cecco's life in a Florentine MS. which I judge from the handwriting to be of the seventeenth century, and of which the anonymous author appears to be well informed ; also, to a MS. copy of the elaborate sentence, much more full than the fragments given by Lami and Cantu.
 * Villain x. 40, 41. — Larni, Antichita Toscaue, pp. 593-4. — Raynald. arm. 1327,