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
This could by no means be satisfactory to the papacy, and when the death
of Frederic II. led to an immediate effort to extend the Inquisition
through the territories hitherto closed to it, Venice was not forgotten.
By a bull of June 11, 1251, Innocent IV. ordered the Frati Vicenzo of
Milan, and Giovanni of Vercelli, to proceed to Venice and persecute
heretics there with the same powers as those exercised by inquisitors
elsewhere in Lombardy. Whether the good friars made the attempt to
exercise these powers is questionable; if they did so, their ill-success
is unquestionable. There is a document of 1256 which contains an oath to
pursue heretics and to denounce them, not to the ecclesiastical
tribunals, but to the doge or to the magistrates--an oath presumably
administered to the secular inquisitors established in 1249. The same
document contains a clause which indicates that the death-penalty
threatened in 1249 had already been abrogated. It classes Cathari and
usurers together: it alludes to the punishment decreed for those
convicted of relapse into either sin, and shows that this was not
capital, by providing that if the convict is a foreigner he shall be
banished from Venice, but if a citizen he shall not be banished. Yet the
death-penalty seems to have been restored soon afterwards, for, in 1275,
the oath of Giacomo Contarini is the same as that of 1249, with the
unimportant addition that the judgment of an episcopal vicar during the
vacancy of a see can be substituted for that of a bishop.[283]
As the pressure of the Inquisition extended throughout Lombardy and the
Marches, the persecuted heretics naturally sought a refuge in Venetian
territory, where supervision was so much more negligent. It was in vain
that about 1286 Frà Filippo of Mantua, the Inquisitor of Treviso, was
sent by Honorius IV. with a summons to the republic to inscribe in its
laws the constitutions against heresy of Frederic and of the popes.
Although the example of the other cities of the Marca Trivigiana was
urged, and Venice was repeatedly required to do the same, obedience was
persistently refused. At length, in 1288, Nicholas IV. lost patience
with this persistent contumacy. He peremptorily ordered the Signoria to
adopt the imperial and papal laws, and commanded that the doge should
swear not only not to impede the Inquisitor of Treviso in his duties,
but to assist him. In default of obedience he threatened to proceed
against the city both spiritually and temporally.[284]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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