Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/628

 612 INTELLECT AND FAITH. errors was the assertion that Mary was conceived by the opera- tion of the Holy Ghost, without the intervention of St. Joachim.* Yet who can say that in the centuries to come this dogma may not also win its place, and the Virgin thus be elevated to an equality with her Son One function of the Inquisition remains to be considered — the censorship of the press — although its full activity in this direction belongs to a period beyond our present limits. We have seen how Bernard Gui burned Talmuds by the wagon-load, and the special training of the inquisitors would seem to point them out as the most available conservators of the faith from the dangerous abuse of the pen. Yet it was long before any definite system was adopted. The universities were almost the only centres of intel- lectual activity, and they usually exercised a watchful care over the aberrations of their members. When some work of impor- tance was to be condemned the authority of the Holy See was frequently invoked, as in the case of Erigena's Periphyseos* the Everlasting Gospel, William of St. Amour's assault upon the Men- dicants, and Marsilio of Padua's Defensor Pads. On the other hand, as we have seen, in 1316 the episcopal vicar of Tarragona had no hesitation in assembling some monks and friars and con- demning a number of Arnaldo de Vilanova's writings, and about the same time the inquisitors of Bologna took similar action with respect to Cecco d'Ascoli's commentary on the Sjihcera of Sacro- bosco. Yet no thought seems to have occurred of using the In- quisition for this purpose as a general agency with power of imme- diate decision, before Charles IY. endeavored to establish the Holy Office in Germany. The heresy of the Brethren of the Free Spirit was largely propagated by means of popular books of devotion ; to check this and the forbidden use by the laity of translations of Scripture in the vernacular, the emperor, in 1369, empowered the inquisitors and their successors to seize and burn all such books, and to employ the customary inquisitorial censures to overcome resistance. All the subjects of the empire, secular and clerical, from the highest to the lowest, were ordered to lend their aid, under pain of the imperial displeasure. In 1376 Gregory XI. fol-
 * Reusch, op. cit. II. 989.