Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/80

 64 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. the Italian Spirituals were not obliged to enter, as they were re- leased from subjection to the Conventuals, and could afford to re- main in obedience to Kome. Angelo da Clarino writes to his dis- ciples that torment and death were preferable to separation from the Church and its head ; the pope was the bishop of bishops, who regulated all ecclesiastical dignities ; the power of the keys is from Christ, and submission is due in spite of persecution. Yet, together with these appeals are others which show how impracticable was the position created by the belief in St. Francis as a new evan- gelist whose Eule was a revelation. If kings or prelates com- mand what is contrary to the faith, then obedience is due to God, and death is to be welcomed. Francis placed in the Rule ^othinsr but what Christ bade him write, and obedience is due to it rather than to prelates. After the persecution under John XXII. he even quotes a prophecy attributed to Francis, to the effect that men would arise who would render the Order odious, and corrupt the whole Church ; there would be a pope not canoni- cally elected who would not believe rightly as to Christ and the Eule ; there would be a split in the Order, and the wrath of God would visit those who cleaved to error. With clear reference to John, he says that if a pope condemns evangelical truth as an error he is to be left to the judgment of Christ and the doctors ; if he excommunicates as heresy the poverty of the Gospel, he is excommunicate of God and is a heretic before Christ. Yet, though his faith and obedience were thus sorely tried, Angelo and his fol- lowers never attempted a schism. He died in 1337, worn out with sixty years of tribulation and persecution — a man of the firmest and gentlest spirit, of the most saintly aspirations, who had fallen on evil days and had exhausted himself in the hopeless effort to reconcile the irreconcilable. Though John XXII. had permitted him to assume the habit and Rule of the Celestins, he was obliged to live in hiding, with his abode known only to a few faithful friends and followers, of some of whom we hear as on trial before the Inquisition as Fraticelli, in 1334. It was in the desert hermit- age of Santa Maria di Aspro in the Basilicata ; but three days before his death a rumor spread that a saint was dying there, and such multitudes assembled that it was necessary to place guards at the entrance of his retreat, and admit the people two by two to gaze on his dying agonies. He shone in miracles, and was finallv