In spite of occasional but determined opposition, the Inquisition was by this time supreme all over the Peninsula; the temporal power of the Church grew with its triumph, and heretics were burnt in considerable numbers. It was hardly possible, says an Italian writer, for a man to be a Christian and die in his bed.[29] At one small town seventy persons, and at Piacenza, it is said, twenty-eight wagon loads of human beings, were thus put to death. It is curious that of one man who secretly propagated heretical opinions, while professing to be a devout Catholic, many miracles were recorded after his death. When the evidence of his heterodoxy was found to be conclusive, they ceased, and the quarrel which arose about his sanctity lasted for thirty-two years, until the Pope decreed that the charge of heresy was proved, that his bones should be burnt, all his property confiscated, and all sales or transfers of it declared void. In the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, Charles of Anjou, whose ambition to dominate Italy had been fostered by the Papacy, established the Inquisition about 1268 or 1269. It looked sharply after the financial results, but, although its operations were at first carried on with vigour, it did not assume the compact and effective form which it possessed in the South of France. Heretics were occasionally burnt, but numbers remained unmolested--a fact which implies some inefficiency on the part of the Inquisitors. At Venice the success of the persecutors was still more meagre, for the Republic jealously kept them in subordination. Its lack of persecuting zeal aroused the ire of the Pope, but his peremptory orders were complied with only in such a way as to leave the supremacy of the State unimpaired. Reserving the right to control confiscations, it undertook only to defray the Inquisitors’ expenses. The Inquisition was becoming no longer a paying concern, and its decay in Italy, as in France, went on steadily during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Catharism had been virtually stamped out, but the Waldenses remained obstinate, strong in their simple faith and hopefulness, their incessant industry, and hardy virtues. In spite of the burning of some of their number in 1312, they flourished in their remote villages until a pitiless persecution by Gregory XI, in 1375, thinned their ranks and avenged the murder of two Inquisitors. About the middle of the fifteenth century a zealous priest in one raid burned twenty-two relapsed heretics, whose property was confiscated. A respite then ensued, but persecution was shortly recommenced, in the form of a crusade. On one occasion five heretics were sentenced to be burnt, but managed to escape. Determined not to be baulked of his prey, the Inquisitor burnt in their stead three other persons whose confessions had secured their pardon. The Waldenses fought bravely, and once nearly annihilated the crusading army, but in the end they were overpowered.