Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/213

IMPEDIMENTS TO PERSECUTION. 197 ciliation which enabled the clergy to return from exile. About the same period Innocent found himself obliged to use persuasion and argument in the endeavor to urge the people of Treviso to expel their heretics. So far from threatening them, he beg<.ed them to have faith that their bishop would reform the excises ot the clergy whose evil example had disturbed them. It is easy thus to understand the exulting confidence with which the heretics anticipated the eventual triumph of their creeds, and the despair which led Abbot Joachim of Flora, in expounding the Apocahise to see m them the locusts with the power of scorpions who i/sue from the bottomless pit at the sounding of the fifth trumpet (Eev IX. 3, 4). These heretics are the Antichrist ; they are to grow in power and their king is already chosen, that king of the locusts ' whose name m the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon " (Eev. xx. 11). Resistance to them will be m vam ; they are to unite with the Saracens, with whom, wl ' ^^^' ""^ *"' '"'^"^'^y «'^^•'""g i^to negotiations * When Honorius III, in 1220, obtained from Frederic II the agined that the way was open for its immediate suppression If so, he was not long in discovering his, mistake. Whatever 'pro- fessions Frederic might make, or whatever rigor he might exer cise m his Sicilian dominions, it was no part ll his polify to es trange the Ghibelline leaders, or to strengthen the Guelflc fa tions in the turbulent little republics which hf sought to reduced 'l jection. His whole reign was an internecine conflict, open or con cealed, with Eome, and he was too much of a free-thinker to have any scruples as to the sources whence he could draw strength f" hZf ""^ ""7^"'^^ *«^ his enemy. In central and upper Italy Already m 1221 Ezzelm da Eomano, the most powerful Ghibel- line in the March of Treviso, was complained of for the protection which he afforded to heretics, and his continuing to do'so to he end shows that he found it to be good policy.^' When, in 122^ III Rersfx^'if wt """If"!' " ^"=^"^^' P- "• PP- ««'-I--. PP. ^ ^ (^irenze, 1884)._Cf. Pseudo-Joachim de septem temporibus Ecclesiaj