A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume IILea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume II
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- History
The present degradation which it shared with the rest of the Church in
the constantly growing supremacy of the State is manifested by a
commission issued in 1485, by Frère Antoine de Clède, appointing a vicar
to act for him in Rodez and Vabres. In this document he styles himself
Inquisitor of France, Aquitaine, Gascony, and Languedoc, deputed by the
Holy See and the Parlement. The two bodies are thus equal sources of
authority, and the appointment by the pope would have been insufficient
without the confirmation by the royal court. How contemptible, indeed,
the Inquisition had become, even in the eyes of ecclesiastics, is
brought instructively before us in a petty quarrel between the
Inquisitor Raymond Gozin and his Dominican brethren. When he succeeded
Frère Gaillard de la Roche, somewhere about 1516, he found that the
house of the Inquisition at Toulouse had been stripped of its furniture
and utensils by the friars of the Dominican convent. He made a
reclamation, and some of the articles were restored; but the friars
subsequently demanded them back, and on his refusal procured from the
General Master instructions to the vicar, under which the latter
proceeded to extremities with him, wholly disregarding his appeal to the
pope, though he finally, in 1520, succeeded in obtaining the
intervention of Leo X. Imagination could scarcely furnish a more
convincing proof of decadence than this exhibition of the successor of
Bernard de Caux and Bernard Gui vainly endeavoring to defend his kitchen
gear from the rapacious hands of his brethren.[162]
It is quite probable that this dispute was envenomed by the inevitable
jealousy between the main body of the Order and its puritan section
known as the Reformed Congregation. Of this latter Raymond Gozin was
vicar-general, and his anxiety to regain his furnishings was probably
due to the fact that he was altering the house of the Inquisition so as
to accommodate within it a Reformed convent. The vast buildings which it
had required in the plenitude of its power had become a world too wide
for its shrunken needs. The original home of the Dominican Order, before
the removal in 1230 through the liberality of Pons de Capdenier, it
contained a church with three altars, a refectory, cells (or prison),
chambers, guest-rooms, cloisters, and two gardens. In approving of the
proposed alterations, Leo X. stipulated that some kind of retiring-room
with convenient offices must still be reserved for the use of the
Inquisition. This epitomizes the history of the institution. Yet it had
by no means wholly lost its power of evil, for in 1521 Johann Bomm,
Dominican Prior of Poligny, and inquisitor at Besançon had the
satisfaction of despatching two lycanthropists, or wer-wolves.[163]
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