With the death of the chief defenders of comparative sanity in religion--Marsilio of Padua, William of Ockham, and others--the Spiritual Franciscans again underwent severe persecution, and controversy centred round the rights and privileges of the Church and the moral condition of the clergy. The well-known sect of the Fratricelli maintained that the real heretic was the Church, which by its evil conduct had created the heresies that it punished, and by its doctrines perverted the minds of simple believers. Popular sympathy in their favour was powerless to prevent punishment. The Popes commanded the Inquisitors to persecute, and about the middle of the century several persons were burnt in Italy and France, a number apparently in the presence of Pope Nicholas V. One of the leaders was burnt by instalments, and lingered for three days before death freed him from his torturers. Under this vigorous repression the Fratricelli became extinct towards the end of the fifteenth century. CHAPTER V MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES _Political Heresy._ The charge of heresy, being easy to make and hard to disprove, furnished a useful and efficacious means of attacking political enemies, especially as there was no other offence for which the penalty was so severe. Crusades against heretics were common. Prior to the great Albigensian war there were several crusades against the Stedingers of north-western Germany, a harmless sect of Waldensian tendencies, who were finally suppressed in the twelfth century. During the three following centuries the Papacy started or sanctioned crusades against Viterbo, Aix la Chapelle, Aragon, Ezzelin da Romano, Manfred of Sicily, Ferrara, Venice, the Visconti of Milan, the Hussites, the Maffredi, and others. During this period Italy was a scene of almost chronic disorder, turbulence, and war of the most ruthless character. At the capture at Cesena in 1376 the Papal Legate ordered that all the inhabitants should be put to the sword, “without distinction of age or sex, after they had admitted him and his bandits into the city under his solemn oath that no injury would be inflicted on them. The number of the slain was estimated at 5,000.”[36] In the early part of the fourteenth century many noble Italian families had sentences of heresy pronounced against them by the Inquisition. The earnest efforts of Savonarola to purify the Church and the freedom of his preaching induced the Papacy to proceed against him, though, as usual, political considerations also were influential. He was tried under a Papal commission and in accordance with the formulas of the Inquisition, though it does not appear that the proceedings were officially held by that body. At any rate, he was burnt in 1498, and after his death it was discovered that his writings contained no definitely heretical opinions. _The Templars._