Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 12.djvu/426

 PREACHERS

368b

PREACHERS

est defenders of the pontifical rights at the time of the Council of Basle (Lederer, " Johann von Torquemada, sein Leben und seine Schriften", Freiburg, 1S79; Hefele, "Conciliengesch.", VIII).

Many important officials were furnished to the Church: Masters of the Sacred Palace (Catalamus, "De magistro sacri palatii apostolici", Rome, 1751); pontifical penitentiaries (Fontana, "Sacr. Theatr. Dominic", 470; 631; "Bull. O. P.", VIII, 765, Pceni- tentiarii; GoUer, "Die piipstliche Ponitentiarii von ihrem Ursprung bis zu ihrer Umgestaltung unter Pius VII", Rome, 1907-11); and especially pontifical inquisitors. The defence of the Faith and the re- pression of heresy is essentially an apostolic and pontifical work. The Preachers also furnished many delegate judges holding their powers either from the bishops or from the pope, but the order as such had no mission properly so called, and the legislation for the repression of heresy was in particular absolutely foreign to it. The extreme dangers run by the Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century, owing to the progress of the Albigensians and Cathari, impelled the papacy to labour for their repression. It first urged the bishops to act, and the establish- ment of sj-nodal witnesses was destined to make their mission more effective, but the insufficiency of this arrangement induced Gregory IX to advise the bishops to make use of the Preachers and finally, doubtless owing to the lack of zeal displayed by many bishops, to create inquisitorial judges by pontifical delegation. The Preachers were not chosen dc jure, but de facto and successively in the various provinces of the order. The pope usually charged the Domini- can provincials with the nomination of inquisitorial officers whose jurisdiction ordinarily coincided with the territory of the Dominican province. In their office the inquisitors were removed from the authority of their order and dependent only on the Holy See. The first pontifical inquisitors were invariably chosen from the Order of Preachers, the reason being the scarcity of educated and zealous clerics. The Preachers, being vowed to study and preaching, were alone prepared for a ministry, which required both learning and courage. The order received this, like many other pontifical commissions, only with regret. The master general, Humbert of Romans, declared that the friars should flee all odious offices and especially the Inquisition (Opera, ed. Berthier, II, 36).

The same solicitude to remove the order from the odium of the inquisitorial office impelled the provin- cial chapter of Cahors (1241) to forbid that anything should accrue to the friars from the administration of the Inquisition, that the order might not be slandered. The provincial chapter of Bordeaux (1257) even forbade the religious to eat with the in- quisitors in places where the order had a convent (Douais, "Les Freres Precheurs en Gascogne", Paris- Auch, 1885, p. 64). In coimtries where heresy was powerful, for instance in the south of France and the north of Italy, the order had much to endure, pillage, temporary expulsion, and assassination of the in- quisitors. After the putting to death of the in- quisitors at A\-ignonet (28 May, 1242) and the assas- sination of St. Peter of Verona (29 April, 1242) ("Vitae fratrum", ed. Reichart, 231; Perein, "Monu- menta Conventus Tolosani", Toulouse, 1693, II, 198; Acta SS., 29 April) the order, whose adminis- tration had much to suffer from this war against heresy, immediately requested to be relieved of the inquisitorial office. Innocent IV refused (10 April, 1243; Potthast, 11,083), and the following year the bishops of the south of France petitioned the pope that he would retain the Preachers in the Inquisition ("Hist. gen. du Languedoc", III, ed. in folio, proof CCLIX, Vol. CCCCXLVI). Nevertheless the Holy See understood the desire of the Preachers; several provinces of Christendom ceased to be administered

by them and were confided to the Friars Minor, viz., the Pontifical States, Apulia, Tuscany, the March of Tre\'isa and Slavonia, and finally Provence (Pott- hast, 11,993, 15,330, 15,409, 15,410, 18,895, 20,169; Tanon, " Hist, des tribunaux de I'inquisition en France" Paris, 1893; Idem, "Documents pour servir a I'hist. de I'inquisition dans le Languedoc", Paris, 1900; Vacandard, "L 'Inquisition", Paris, 1907; Lea, "Hist, of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages", New _ York-London, 1888, French tr., Paris, 1900; Fredericq, "Corpus documentorum Inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis Neerlandicce", Ghent, 1900; Ama- bile, "II santo officio della Inquizione in Napoli", Citta di Castello, 1892; Canzons, "Hist, de I'in- quisition en France", Paris, 1909; Jordan, "La re- sponsabilit^ de I'Eglise dans la repression de \'h6- r&ie au moyen-age" in "Annales de Philosophie ehr^t.", CLIV, 1907, p. 225). The suppression of heresy which had been especially active in certain more affected parts of Christendom, diminished notably in the second half of the thirteenth century. The particular conditions prevailing in Spain brought about the re-establishment of the Inquisition with new duties for the inquisitor general. These were exercised from 1483 to 1498 by Thomas of Torque- mada, who reorganized the whole scheme of sup- pression, and by Diego de Deza from 1498 to 1507. These were the first and last Dominican inquisitors general in Spain (Lea, "Hist, of the Inquisition of Spain", New York, 1906; Cotarelo y Valledor, "Fray Diego de Deza", Madrid, 1905).

(i) The Friars Preachers and the Secular Clergy. — The Preachers, who had been constituted from the beginning as an order of clerics vowed to ecclesias- tical duties with a view to supplementing the in- sufficiency of the secular clergy, were universally accepted by the episcopate, which was unalsle to pro\'ide for the pastoral care of the faithful and the instruction of clerics. It was usually the bishops who summoned the Preachers to their dioceses. The conflicts which broke out here and there during the thirteenth century were not generally due to the bishops but to the parochial clergy who considered themsel\-es injured in their temporal rights because of the devotion and generosity of the faithful towards the order. As a general thing compromises were reached between the convents and the parishes in which they were situated and peaceful results fol- lowed. The two great contests between the order and the secular clergy broke out in France during the thirteenth century. The first took place at the University of Paris, led by William of Saint-Amour (1252-59), and was complicated by a scholastic question. The episcopate had no share in this, and the church supported with all its strength the rights and privileges of the order, which emerged victorious (Mandonnet, "Siger de Brabant", I, 70, 90; Perrod, "Etude sur la vie et les oeuvres de Guillaume de Saint-Amour" in "Memoires de la 80ci(5te d'dmulation de Jura", Lons-le-Saunier, 1902, p. 61; Seppelt, "Der Kampf der Bettelorden an der Universitat Paris in der Mitte des 13. Jahrhunderts " in "KirchengeschichtUche Abhandlungen", Breslau,

III, 1905; VII, 1909). The strife broke out anew in the north of France after the privilege of Martin

IV, "Ad fructus uberes" (13 Dec, 1281), and lasted until the Council of Paris in 1290. It was to a large ex-tent conducted by Guillaume de Flavacourt, Bishop of Amiens, but in this instance also the two great mendicant orders triumphed over their adve^ saries, thanks to the energetic assistance of two cardinal legates (Denifle-Chatelain, "Chart. Univ. Paris", I, passim: Finke, "Das Pariser National Konzil 1290" in "Romische Quartalschrift", 1895, p. 171; Paulus, "Welt und Ordensclerus beim Ausgange des XIII. Jahrhunderts in Kampfe um die Pfarr-Rechte", Essen-Ruhr, 1900).