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
voted them one thousand lire, in annual instalments of two hundred lire,
wherewith to build a church. So stubborn was the opposition elsewhere to
the Inquisition and its ways, that in 1287 the Provincial Council of
Milan still deemed it necessary to decree that any member of a municipal
government in any city within the province who should urge measures
favoring heretics should be deemed suspect of heresy, and should forfeit
any fiefs or benefices held of the Church.[266]
Even in the Patrimony of St. Peter resistance was not wholly at an end.
In 1254, when the papacy was triumphant, Innocent IV. urged the
inquisitors of Orvieto and Anagni to take advantage of the propitious
time and act with the utmost vigor. In 1258 Alexander IV. sounded the
alarm that heresy was increasing even in Rome itself, and he pressingly
urged increased activity on the inquisitors and greater zeal in their
support by the bishops. Their efforts were not wholly successful. Twenty
years later a knight named Pandolfo still made his stronghold of Castro
Siriani, near Anagni, a receptacle of heretics. Frà Sinibaldo di Lago,
the inquisitor of the Roman province, made various ineffectual attempts
to prosecute him, and in 1278 Nicholas III. sent his notary, Master
Benedict, with offers of pardon in return for obedience, but the
heretics were obdurate, and Nicholas was forced to order Orso Orsini,
Marshal of the Church in Tuscany, to levy troops and give Frà Sinibaldo
armed assistance sufficient to enable him to coerce them to penitence. A
similar enterprise against the Viterbian noble, Capello di Chia, in
1260, has already been described (Vol. I. p. 342). In this case the zeal
of the Viterbians, who levied an army to assist the inquisitor, must
have had some political motive, for their city was of evil repute in the
matter of heresy. In 1265, encouraged by the assistance of Manfred, the
people had risen against the Inquisition and had only been subdued after
a bloody fight in which two friars were slain. In 1279 Nicholas
expresses his regret that although, while he had been inquisitor-general,
he had labored strenuously to purge Viterbo of heresy, his labors had
been unsuccessful. Heretics were still concealed there, and the whole
city was infected. Frà Sinibaldo was therefore ordered to go thither to
make a thorough inquisition of the place.[267]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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