Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/90

 74 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. error, and that if he were pope he would abrogate it. The influ- ence of the Everlasting Gospel is seen in the fact that of those who recanted at Marseilles and were imprisoned, a number fled to the Infidel, leaving behind them a paper in which they defiantly professed their faith, and prophesied that they would return tri- umphantly after the death of John XXII.* Thus John, ere yet his pontificate was a year old, had succeed- ed in creating a new heresy — that which held it unlawful for Franciscans to wear flowing gowns or to have granaries and cellars. In the multiform development of human perversity there has been perhaps none more deplorably ludicrous than this, that man should burn his fellows on such a question, or that men should be found dauntless enough to brave the flames for such a principle, and to feel that they were martyrs in a high and holy cause. John proba- bly, from the constitution of his mind and his training, could not understand that men could be so enamoured of holy poverty as to sacrifice themselves to it, and he could only regard them as obsti- nate rebels, to be coerced into submission or to pay the penalty. He had taken his stand in support of Michele da Cesena's author- ity, and resistance, whether active or passive, only hardened him. The bull Quorumdam had created no little stir. A defence of it, written by an inquisitor of Carcassonne and Toulouse, probably Jean de Beaune, shows that its novel positions had excited grave doubts in the minds of learned men, who were not convinced of its orthodoxy, though not prepared to risk open dissent. There is also an allusion to a priest who persisted in maintaining the errors which it condemned and who was handed over to the secular arm, II. 248-51, 271-2. — Joann. S.Victor. Chron. ann. 1319 (Muratori S. R. I. III. n. 478-9).— MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 4270, fol. 188, 262. Bernard, however, in his examination, denied these allegations as well as Olivi's tenet that Christ was alive when lanced upon the Cross, although he said some MSS. of St. Mark so represented him (fol. 167-8). Of the remainder of those who were tried at Marseille? the fate is uncertain. From the text it appears that at least some of them were imprisoned. Others were probably let off with lighter penances, for in 1325 Blaise Boerii, a shoe- maker of Narbonne, when on trial before the Inquisition of Carcassonne, con- fessed that he had visited, in houses at Marseilles, three of them at one time and four at another, and had received them in his own house and had conducted them on their way. — Doat, XXVII. 7 sqq.
 * Raym. de Fronciacho (Archiv f. L. u. K. 1887, p. 31).— Baluz. et Mansi