Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/184

jgg THE SPANISH PENINSULA. Dominican friar, acting as inquisitors, had condemned Ramon de MalleoUs and Helena liis wife as heretics. By some means they succeeded in appeahng to Gregory IX., who referred the matter to the Archdeacon of Besalu and the Sacristan of Girona. These acquitted the culprits and restored them to their possessions ; but the case was carried back to Eome, and Innocent finally confirmed the first sentence of conviction. Again, in 1248, a letter from Innocent IV. to the Bishop of Lerida, instructing him as to the treatment in his diocese of heretics who voluntarily return to the Church, presupposes the absence of inquisitors and absolute igno- rance as to the fundamental principles in force. The power con- ferred the same year on the Dominican Provincial of Spam to appoint inquisitors seems to have remained unused. The efforts of Archbishop Mongriu and Raymond of Pennaforte had spent themselves apparently without permanent results. Kmg Jayme grew dissatisfied, and, in 1254, urgently demanded a fresh effort of Innocent IV. This time the pope concluded, at Jayme's sugges- tion to place the matter entirely in Dominican hands ; but so httle had been done in the way of general organization that he confided the choice of inquisitors to the priors of Barcelona, Lerida, Per- pignan, and Elne, each one to a«t within his own diocese, unless, indeed, there are inquisitors already in function under papal com- missions-a clause Avhich shows the confusion existing at the time. Innocent further felt it necessary to report this action to the Arch- bishops of Tarragona and Narbonne, and to call upon them to assist the new appointees. This device does not seem to have worked satisfactorily. At that time the whole peninsula consti- tuted but one Dominican province, and, in 1262, Urban IV. agam adopted definitely the plan, in general use elsewhere, of e™PO^ver- ing the provincial to appoint the inquisitors-now hmited to t^^ o A few days before he had sent to those of Aragon a bull dehmng their powers and procedure, and a copy of this was enclosal to the provincial for his guidance. This long remained the basis of organization; but after the division of the province into two, by ■ the General Chapter of Cologne in 1301, the Aragonese chaM under their subordination to the Provincial of Spam, whose teiri- tories consisted only of Castile, Leon, and Portugal The struggle was protracted, but the Inquisition of Aragon at last achieved in- lependence in IsSl, when Fray Nicholas RoseUi, the Provincial of