probably Perfects, were obstinate, and were promptly burned. These examples were sufficient. The "credentes" furnished no further martyrs, and heresy, at least in its outward manifestation, was extinguished.[1]
In some places, unblessed with such wonder-working relics, however, the Inquisition had much greater trouble in establishing orthodoxy. In Piacenza it is said to have found the burning of twenty-eight wagon loads of heretics necessary. At Sermione for sixteen years the inhabitants defiantly refused to allow perse- cution. Though Catholic themselves, they continued to afford protection to heretics, who naturally flocked thither as one refuge after another was rendered unsafe by the zeal of the inquisitors. It was in vain that Frà Timedeo, the inquisitor, obtained evidence by sending there a female spy, named Costanza da Bergamo, who pretended to be a heretic, received the consolamentum, and was then unreservedly admitted to their secrets. At last the scandal of such ungodly toleration became unendurable, and the Bishop of Verona prevailed upon Mastino and Alberto della Scala of Ve- rona, and Pinamonte de' Bonacolsi of Mantua, to reduce Sermione to obedience. It was obliged to submit in 1276, delivering up no less than one hundred and seventy-four perfected heretics, and humbly asking to be restored to Catholic unity, with a pledge to stand to the mandates of the Church. Frà Filippo Bonaccorso, the Inquisitor of Treviso, applied to John XXI. for instructions as to the treatment of the penitent community. The pope was a humane and cultured man who cared more for poetry than theol- ogy, and he was disposed to be lenient with repentant sinners. He instructed Frà Filippo to remove the interdict if the town would appoint a syndic to abjure heresy in its name, and to swear in future to seize all heretics and deliver them to the Inquisition, any infraction of the oath to work a renewal, ipso facto, of the interdict. Every inhabitant was then to appear personally before the inquisitor, and make full confession of everything relating to heresy, to abjure, and to accept such penance as might be assigned -all infamous penalties, disabilities, imprisonment, and confisca- tion being mercifully excluded. Full records were to be kept of
- ↑ Wadding, ann. 1259, No. 3.- Barbarano de' Mironi, Hist. Eccles. di Vicenza, II. 95, 105, 108, 113, 121.
