Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/72

 56 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. eagerlv read by himself, his queen and his children, by archbishops and bishops, by the clergy and the laity. He demanded that the sentence be revoked as uncanonical, else he would punish Fray Guillermo severely and visit with his displeasure all the Domini- cans of his dominions. It was probably this royal favor which saved Arnaldo when he came near being burned at Santa Christina, and escaped with no worse infliction than being stigmatized as a necromancer and enchanter, a heretic and a pope of the heretics.* When the persecution of the Spirituals of Provence was at its height. Arnaldo procured from Charles the Lame of Naples, who was also Count of Provence, a letter to the general, Gerald, which for a time put a stop to it. In 1309 we find him at Avignon, on a mission from Jayme II., well received by Clement V., who prized highly his skill as a physician. He used effectively this po- sition by secretly persuading the pope to send for the leaders of the Spirituals, in order to learn from them orally and in writing of what they complained and what reformation they desired in their Order. With regard to his own affairs he was not so fortunate. At a public hearing before the pope and cardinals, in October, 1309, he predicted the end of the world within the century, and the advent of Antichrist within its first forty years ; he dwelt at much length on the depravity of clergy and laity, and complained bitterly of the persecution of those who desired to live in evan- gelical poverty. All this was to be expected of him, but he added the incredible indiscretion of reading a detailed account of the dreams of Jayme II. and Frederic of Trinacria, their doubts and his explanations and exhortations — matters, all of them, as sacredly confidential as the confession of a penitent. Cardinal Xapoleone Orsini, the protector of the Spirituals, wrote to Jayme congratu- lating him on his piety as revealed by that wise and illuminated man, inflamed with the love of God, Master Arnaldo, but this ef- fort to conjure the tempest was unavailing. The Cardinal of Porto and Ramon Ortiz, Dominican Provincial of Aragon, promptly reported to Jayme that he and his brother had been represented as wavering in the faith and as believers in dreams, and advised him no longer to employ as his envoy such a heretic as Arnaldo. Jayme' s pride was deeply wounded. It was in vain that Clement Pelayo, I. 481, 772.