In Rome, when there really was a heresiarch to condemn, there was no Inquisition at hand to perform the duty. In the proceedings against Luther there is no trace of its intervention. The bull _Exsurge Domine_, June 15, 1520, contains no allusion to his doctrines having been examined by it; when they were publicly condemned, June 12, 1521, the ceremony was performed by the Bishop of Ascoli, Auditor of the Rota, and Silvestro Prierias, Master of the Sacred Palace, while the sentence which consigned his effigy and his books to the flames was pronounced by Frà Cipriano, professor in the College of Sacred Theology. It was perhaps the most momentous _auto de fé_ that has ever been celebrated, but the Inquisition can boast of no participation in it.[318] * * * * * In the Two Sicilies the Inquisition dragged on a moribund existence. Letters of King Robert in 1334 and 1335 and of Joanna I. in 1342 and 1343 show that inquisitors continued to be appointed and to receive the royal exequatur, but they were limited to making fifty arrests each, and record of these was required to be entered in the royal courts; they had no jails, and the royal officials received their prisoners and tortured them when called upon. The Jews appear to be the main object of inquisitorial activity, and this can only have been halting, for in 1344 Clement VI. orders his legate at Naples, Aymerico, Cardinal of S. Martino, to punish condignly all apostate Jews, as though there were no Inquisition at work there. Yet in 1362 there were three inquisitors in Naples, Francesco da Messina, Angelo Cicerello da Monopoli, and Ludovico da Napoli, who took part in the trial of the rebellious Luigi di Durazzo. Still, when efforts were to be made against the Fraticelli, Urban V., in 1368, deemed it necessary to send a special inquisitor, Frà Simone del Pozzo, to Naples. Although his jurisdiction extended over the island of Sicily, Gregory XI., in 1372, when informed that the relics of the Fraticelli were venerated there as those of saints, ordered the prelates to put a stop to it, as though he had no inquisitor to call upon. Yet Frà Simone was there in that year, and had a theological disputation with Frà Niccolò di Girgenti, a learned Franciscan who had been provincial of his Order. The question turned upon some scholastic subtleties respecting the three persons of the Trinity, and as each disputant claimed the victory, Simone proceeded to settle the matter by secretly prosecuting his antagonist for heresy. Niccolò got wind of this and at once appealed to Rome, before the Archbishop of Palermo, demanding his _apostoli_--an appeal which Simone pronounced frivolous. The revelations made by Niccolò as to his antagonists present a most dismal picture of the internal condition of the Church at the time, although Frà Simone’s learning and ascetic life won him the popular reputation of a saint, and he obtained the bishopric of Catania,