Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/67

 RESULTS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. 51 of the episcopal officials to the prosecution of those whose princi- pal belief consisted in the renunciation of all worldly goods, and it is not likely that they showed themselves more diligent in their duties than we have seen them when greater interests were at stake. The action of the council may therefore be safely assumed as wasted, except as justifying persecution within the Order. The lay Beguines doubtless enjoyed practical immunity, while the Spiritual Friars continued to endure the miseries at the hands of their superiors for which monastic life afforded such abundant opportunities. Thus, at Villefranche, when Raymond Auriole and Jean Prime refused to admit that their vows permitted a liberal use of the things of the world, they were imprisoned in chains and starved till Raymond died, deprived of the sacraments as a heretic, and Jean barely escaped with his life.* Thus passed away the unfortunate thirteenth century — that age of lofty aspirations unfulfilled, of brilliant dreams unsubstan- tial as visions, of hopes ever looking to fruition and ever disap- pointed. The human intellect had awakened, but as yet the hu- man conscience slumbered, save in a few rare souls who mostly paid in disgrace or death the penalty of their precocious sensitive- ness. That wonderful century passed away and left as its legacy to its successor vast progress, indeed, in intellectual activity, but on the spiritual side of the inheritance a dreary void. All efforts to elevate the ideals of man had miserably failed. Society was harder and coarser, more carnal and more worldly than ever, and it is not too much to say that the Inquisition had done its full share to bring this about by punishing aspirations, and by teach- ing that the only safety lay in mechanical conformity, regardless of abuses and unmindful of corruption. The results of that hun- dred years of effort and suffering are well symbolized in the two popes with whom it began and ended — Innocent III. and that pinchbeck Innocent, Boniface VIII., who, in the popular phrase of the time, came in like a fox, ruled like a lion, and died like a dog. In intellect and learning Boniface was superior to his model, in imperious pride his equal, in earnestness, in self-devo- Declaratio (Archiv f. Litt.- u. K. 1887, pp. 183-4).
 * Concil. Biterrens. ann. 1299 c. 4 (Martene Thesaur. IV. 220).— Ubertini