Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 1.djvu/305

 Consiglio; and when ecclesiastical matters were under discussion in the Maggior Consiglio or the Senate all members who were related to any one holding an appointment from the Curia were obliged to retire. The minutes were marked expulsis papalistis.

The excessive accumulation of Church property had been regulated by a law passed as early as 1286, which provided that all legacies to monastic establishments must be registered, and the property taxed like any other.

The question of the jurisdiction of the secular Courts over ecclesiastics was a fruitful source of differences with the Curia. Originally it would seem that clerics were subject to the secular Courts in civil as well as in criminal cases. Jacopo Tiepolo granted jurisdiction to the Bishops but reserved punishment to the secular Courts. This arrangement gave rise to constant disputes, and in 1324 a commission was appointed to draw up regulations on the question. Finally a convention was reached between the Patriarch of Grado and the secular authorities, whereby it was agreed that in the case of injury done by a cleric to a laic the secular Courts should denounce the offender to the ecclesiastical Courts, which should try and sentence him in accordance with existing laws; and vice versa in the case of injury inflicted by a laic on a cleric. By the bull of Paul II in 1468 those clerics who had been tonsured after the committal of a crime with a view to securing benefit of clergy were handed over by the Church to the secular Courts; so too were the clerics caught in flagrante and unfrocked. Sixtus IV, in view of the growing frequency of crime-especially of counterfeit coining and of conspiracy-on the part of clerics, instructed the Patriarch to hand over all such offenders to the secular Courts, but to assist at the trial in the person of his Vicar.

The independent attitude of the Republic in matters ecclesiastical is illustrated once again in the position occupied by the Inquisition at Venice. When the Pope, with a view to crushing the Albigensian and Patarinian heresies, endeavoured to establish everywhere in Italy the Dominican Inquisition, the Republic resisted its introduction into Venice. But in 1249, in the reign of the Doge Morosini, the Holy Office was admitted, though only in a modified form. The State charged itself to discover heretics, who when caught were examined by the Patriarch, the Bishop of Castello, or any other Venetian Ordinary. The examining Court was confined to a return of fact. It was called on to state whether the examinee was or was not guilty of heresy. Punishment was reserved to the secular authority. This arrangement did not satisfy the Court of Rome, and in 1289 a modification took place. An Inquisitor was appointed by the Pope, but he required the Doge's exequatur before he could act, and a board was created of three Venetian nobles, to sit as assessors to the Holy Office. Their duty was to guard the rights of Venetian citizens against ecclesiastical encroachment; without