Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/260

244 "^^^• etio the property confiscated by Fra Andrea the inquisitor, and when he ordered Fra Adamo da Como, the inquisitor ot the Ro- man province, to desist from molesting Giovanni Ferraloco a cit- izen of Orvieto, whom his predecessors, Angelo da Rieti and Leo- nardo da TivoU, had declared absolved from heresy. This Ira Adamo apparently rendered his office a terror to the innocent. May 8, 1293, we find him compelling Pierre d' Aragon, a gentleman of Carcassonne who chanced to be in Rome, to give him secunty in the heavy sum of one hundred marks to present himself withm three months to the Inquisition of Carcassonne and obey its man- dates. Pierre accordingly appeared before Bertram! de Clermont on June 19, and was closely examined, and then again on August 16 but nothing was discovered against him. Whether or not he recovered his one hundred marks from Fra Adamo does not ap- pear but the incident affords an illustration at once of the per- fected organization of the Holy Office, and of the dangers which surrounded travellers in the countries where it flourished.' The Inquisition was thus thoroughly established and at work in northern and central Italy, and heresy was gradually disap- pearing before its remorseless and incessant energy To escape it many had fled to Sardinia, but in 1258 that island was added to the inquisitorial province of Tuscany, and inquisitors were sent thither to track the fugitives in their retreats.f There were two regions, however, Venice and the Two Sicilies, which thus far we have not considered, as they were in some sort independent of the movement which we have traced in the rest of the Peninsula Naples like the other portions of southern Europe, had been exposed to the infection of heresy. At an early period mission- aries from Bulgaria had penetrated the passes of the southern Ap- ennines, and, in that motley population of Greek and Saracen and Normal pr;selytes had not been lacking. The Norman kings usually at enmity with the Holy See, had not cared to inquire too closely into the orthodoxy of their subjects, and had they done so the independence of the feudal baronage would have rendered . Faucon, Registres de Boniface VIII. No. 1673, p. 632.-Wadding. ann. 1298, No. 3.— Arch, de I'lnq. de Care. (Boat, XXVI. 147). + "Wadding, ann. 1385, No. 9, 10.