Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/191

ARAGON. 175 which by right was incumbent on them. The confiscations, he adds, amounted to httle or nothing, for heretics were poor folk— Waldenses, Fraticelli, and the hke. In fact, so far as we can gather, the sum of Eymerich's activity during his long career is so small that it shows how little was left of heresy by this time. Occasional Fraticelli and Waldenses and renegade Jews or Sara- cens were all that rewarded the inquisitor, with every now and then some harmless lunatic whose extravagance unfortunately took a rehgious turn, or some over-subtle speculator on the intri- cacies of dogmatic theology. Thus, early in his career, about 1360, Eymerich had the satisfaction of burning as a relapsed heretic a certain Nicholas of Calabria, who persisted in asserting that his teacher, Martin Gonsalvo of Cuenca, was the Son of God, who would five forever, would convert the world, and at the Day of Judgment would pray for all the dead and Hberate them from hell. In 1371 he had the further gratification of silencing, by a decision of Gregory XI., a Franciscan, Pedro Bonageta. The ex- act relation between the physical matter of the consecrated host and the body of Christ under certain circumstances had long been a source of disputation in the Church, and Fray Pedro taught that if it fell into the mud or other unclean place, or if it were gnawed by a mouse, the body of Christ flew to heaven and the wafer be- came simple bread ; and so also when it was ground under the teeth of the recipient, before he swallowed it. Gregory did not venture to pronounce this heretical, but he forbade its public enun- ciation. About the same time Eymerich had a good deal of trouble with Fray Eamon de Tarraga, a Jew turned Dominican, whose numerous philosophical writings savored of heresy. After he had been kept in prison for a couple of years, Gregory ordered him to have a speedy trial, and threatened Eymerich with punishment for contumacy if his commands were disobeyed. Ramon must have had powerful friends in the Order whom Eymerich feared to provoke, for six months later Gregory wrote again, saving that if Ramon could not be punished according to the law in Aragon, he must be sent to the papal court under good guard with aU the papers of the process duly sealed. In fact, the Inquisition was not established for the trial of Dominicans. At the same time another Jew, Astruchio de Piera, held by Eymerich on an accusation of sorcery and the invocation of demons, was claimed as justiciable