BONIFACE VIII. 37 Conventual faction to visit Celestin in his prison and taunt and insult him for the favor which he had shown to the Spirituals. A prosecution for heresy which Boniface ordered, in March, 1295, against Fra Pagano di Pietra-Santa was doubtless instigated by the same spirit.* More than this. To Boniface's worldly, practical mind the hordes of wandering mendicants, subjected to no authority, were an intolerable nuisance, whether it arose from ill-regulated asceticism or idle vagabondage. The decree of the Council of Lyons had failed to suppress the evil, and, in 1496 and 1497, Boniface issued instructions to all bishops to compel such wanderers or hermits, popularly known as Bizochi, either to lay aside their fictitious re- ligious habits and give up their mode of life, or to betake themselves to some authorized Order. The inquisitors were instructed to de- nounce to the bishops all suspected persons, and if the prelates were remiss, to report them to the Holy See. One remarkable clause gives special authority to the inquisitors to prosecute sucL of these Bizochi as may be members of their own Orders, thus showing that there was no heresy involved, as otherwise the in- quisitors would have required no additional powers. f The following year Boniface proceeded to more active meas- ures. He ordered the Franciscan, Matteo da Chieti, Inquisitor of Assisi, to visit personally the mountains of the Abruzzi and Mark of Ancona and to drive from their lurking places the apostates from various religious Orders and the Bizochi who infested those regions. His previous steps had probably been ineffective, and possibly also he may have been moved to more decisive action by the rebellious attitude of the Spirituals and proscribed mendicants. Not only did they question the papal authority, but they were be- ginning to argue that the papacy itself was vacant. So far from being content with the bull Exiit qui seminat, they held that its author, Nicholas III., had been deprived by God of the papal func- tions, and consequently that he had had no legitimate successors. Thereafter there had been no true ordinations of priest and prel- ate, and the real Church consisted in themselves alone. To rem-
- Hist. Tribulat. (loc. cit. 1886, pp. 309-10).— Faucon et Thomas, Registres de
Boniface VIII. No. 37, 1232, 1233, 1292, 1825.— Wadding, ann. 1295, No. 14. t Franz Ehrle, Archiv fur L. u. K. 1886, pp. 157-8.
