Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/459

CECCO D'ASCOLI. 443 the angle of the earth, he was necessarily born in a stable ; as Scorpio was in the second degree, he was poor ; while Mercury in his own house in the ninth section of the heavens rendered his wisdom profound. In the same way he proved that Antichrist would come two thousand years after Christ, as a great soldier nobly attended, and not surrounded by cowards as was Christ. This was almost a challenge to the Inquisition, and Fra Lamberto del Cordiglio, the Bolognese inquisitor, was not slow to take it up. Cecco was forced to abjure, December 16, 1324, and was mercifully treated. He was condemned to surrender all his books of astrol- ogy and forbidden to teach the science in Bologna, publicly or privately ; he was deprived of his Master's degree and subjected to certain salutary penance of fasting and prayer, together with a fine of seventy-five lire, which latter may possibly explain the lightness of the rest of the sentence. The most serious feature of the affair for him was that now he was a penitent heretic who could expect no further mercy ; it behooved him to walk warily, for in case of fresh offence he would be a relapsed, doomed inevi- tably to the stake. Cecco's temperament, however, was not one to brook such constraint. He came to Florence, then under the rule of Charles of Calabria, and resumed the practice of his art. He circulated copies of his forbidden work, which he claimed had been corrected by the Bolognese inquisitor, but which contained the same erroneous doctrines; he advanced them anew in his philosophical poem, LAcerba, and he employed them in the re- sponses given to his numerous clients. In May, 1327, when all Italy was excited at the coming of Louis of Bavaria, he predicted that Louis would enter Kome and be crowned, he announced the time and manner of his death, and gave advice, which was followed, not to attack him when he passed by Florence. Perhaps all this might have escaped animadversion but for the personal enmity and jealousy of Charles of Calabria's chancellor, the Bishop of Aversa, and of Dino del Garbo, a renowned doctor of philosophy, esteemed the best physician in Italy. Be this as it may, in July, 1327, Fra Accursio, the Inquisitor of Florence, arrested him. There was ample evidence that he had continued to teach and act on the fatalistic theories which were subversive of free-will, but the Inquisition as usual required a confession, and torture was freely used to obtain it. A copy of the sentence and abjuration