114 GUGLIELMA AND DOLCINO. against the Church. The State also soon became their enemy, for as the year 1305 opened, their slender stock of provisions was exhausted and they replenished their stores by raids upon the lower valleys.* The Church could not afford to brook this open defiance, to say nothing of the complaints of rapine and sacrilege which filled the land, yet it shows the dread which Dolcino already inspired that recourse was had to the pope, under whose auspices a formal crusade was preached, in order to raise a force deemed sufficient to exterminate the heretics. One of the early acts of Clement Y. after his election, June 5, 1305, was to issue bulls for this purpose, and the next step was to hold an assembly, August 24, where a league was formed and an agreement signed pledging the assem- bled nobles to shed the last drop of their blood to destroy the Gaz- zari, who had been driven out of Sesia and Biandrate, but had not ceased to trouble the land. Armed with the papal commissions, Rainerio, Bishop of Yercelli, and the inquisitors raised a consider- able force and advanced to the mountain refuge of the Apostles. Dolcino, seeing the futility of resistance, decamped by night and es- tablished his little community on an almost inaccessible mountain, and the crusaders, apparently thinking them dispersed, withdrew. Dolcino was now fairly at bay ; the only hope of safety lay in re- sistance, and since the Church was resolved on war, he and his fol- lowers would at least sell their lives as dearly as they could. His new retreat was on the Parete Calvo — the Bare Wall — whose name sufficiently describes its character, a mountain overlooking the village of Campertogno. On this stronghold the Apostles fortified themselves and constructed such habitations as they could, and from it they ravaged the neighboring valleys for subsistence. The Podesta of Yarallo assembled the men of the Yalsesia to dis- lodge them, but Dolcino laid an ambush for him, attacked him with stones and such other weapons as the Apostles chanced to have, and took him prisoner with most of his men, obtaining ransoms which enabled the sectaries to support life for a while longer. Their depredations continued till all the land within striking dis- tance was reduced to a desert, the churches despoiled, and the in- habitants driven off.f
- Hist. Dulcin. (Muratori IX. 428-9).— Bescape, loc. cit.
f Hist. Dulcin. (Muratori IX. 430-1).— Bescape. loc. cit.
