Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/64

 48 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. dispense from vows, his right to claim implicit obedience in mat- ters concerning faith and morals, and other similar mutterings of rebellion.* The work of Olivi which called forth the greatest discussion, and as to which the evidences are peculiarly irreconcilable, was his Postil on the Apocalypse. It was from this that the chief arguments were drawn for his condemnation. In an inquisitorial sentence of 1318 we learn that his writings were then again under examination by order of John XXII. ; that they were held to be the source of all the errors which the sectaries were then expiating at the stake, and that principal among them was his work on the Apocalypse, so that, until the papal decision, no one was to hold him as a saint or a Catholic. When the condemnatory report of eight masters of theology came, in 131 ( J, the Spirituals held that the outrage thus committed on the faith deprived of all virtue the sacrament of the altar. Xo formal judgment was rendered, how- ever, until February 8, 1326, when John XXII. finally condemned the Postil on the Apocalypse after a careful scrutiny in the Con- sistory, and the general chapter of the Order forbade any one to read or possess it. One of the reports of the experts upon it has reached us. It is impossible to suppose that they deliberately manufactured the extracts on which their conclusions are based, and these extracts are quite sufficient to show that the work was an echo of the most dangerous doctrines of the Everlasting Gos- pel. The fifth age is drawing to an end, and, under the figure of the mystical Antichrist, there are prophecies about the pseudo-pope, pseudo-Christs, and pseudo-prophets in terms which clearly allude to the existing hierarchy. The pseudo-pope will be known by his heresies concerning the perfection of evangelical poverty (as we shall see was the case with John XXII. ), and the pseudo-Joachim's prophecies concerning Frederic II. are quoted to show how prel- ates and clergy who defend the Rule will be ejected. The carnal church is the Great AYhore of Babylon ; it makes drunken and Wadding (arm. 1297, No. 33-5) identifies Pons Botugati with St. Pons Car- bonelh, the illustrious teacher of St. Louis of Toulouse. Franz Ehrle (Archiv fur L. u. K. 1886, p. 300) says he can find no evidence of this, and the author of the Hist. Tribulat., in his detailed account of the affair, would hardly have omitted a fact so serviceable to his cause.
 * Hist. Tribulat. (loc. cit. pp. 300-1).— Tocco, pp. 489-91, 503-4.