Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/84

 53 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. Germany being for the time cut off by his quarrel with Louis of Bavaria. Charles at first refused, but finally agreed to divide the spoils, and granted the power in consideration of a papal grant to him of a tithe for two years — as a contemporary remarks, " et ainsi saincte yglise, quant Vun le font, V autre VescorcheP John pro- ceeded to extort a large sum ; from some he got a full tithe, from others a half, from others again as much as he could extract, while all who held benefices under papal authority had to pay a full years revenue. His excuse for this insatiable acquisitiveness was that he designed the monev for a crusade, but as he lived to be a nonagenary without executing that design, the contemporary Villani is perhaps justified in the cautious remark — " Possiby he had such intention." Though for the most part parsimonious, he spent immense sums in advancing the fortunes of his nephew — or son — the Cardinal-legate Poyet, who was endeavoring to found a principality in the north of Italy. He lavished money in making Avignon a permanent residence for the papacy, though it was re- served for Benedict XII. to purchase and enlarge the enormous palace-fortress of the popes. Yet after his death, when an inven- tory of his effects came to be made, there was found in his treasury eighteen millions of gold florins, and jewels and vestments esti- mated at seven millions more. Even in mercantile Florence, the sum was so incomprehensible that Villani, whose brother was one of the appraisers, feels obliged to explain that each million is a thousand thousands. When we reflect upon the comparative pov- erty of the period and the scarcity of the precious metals, we can estimate how great an amount of suffering was represented by such an accumulation, wrung as it was, in its ultimate source, from the wretched peasantry, who gleaned at the best an insuf- ficient subsistence from imperfect agriculture. We can, perhaps, moreover, imagine how, in its passage to the papal treasury, it represented so much of simony, so much of justice sold or denied to the wretched litigants in the curia, so much of purgatory re- mitted, and of pardons for sins to the innumerable applicants for a share of the Church's treasurv of salvation^ Chron. (Eccard. Corp. Hist. Med. ^Evi I. 1806-8).— Friednch, Statut. Synod. Wratislav., Hannoverae, 1827, pp. 37, 38, 41.— Grandes Chroniques, V. 300.— Guillel. Nangiac. Contiu. ann. 1326. — The collection of papal briefs relating to
 * Villani, Chronica. Lib. xi. c. 20. — Chron. Glassberger ann. 1334.— Vitodurani