38 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. edy this, Frere Matthieu de Bodici came from Provence, bringing with him the books of Pierre Jean Olivi, and in the Church of St. Peter in Home he was elected pope by five Spirituals and thirteen women. Boniface promptly put the Inquisition on their track, but they fled to Sicily, which, as we shall see, subsequently be- came the headquarters of the sect.* Friar Jordan, to whom we are indebted for these details, as- sumes that Liberato and his associates were concerned in this movement. The dates and order of events are hopelessly con- fused, but it would rather seem that the section of the Spirituals represented by Liberato kept themselves aloof from all such revo- lutionary projects. Their sufferings were real and prolonged, but had they been guilty of participating in the election of an anti- pope they would have had but the choice between perpetual im- prisonment and the stake. They were accused of holding that Boniface was not a lawful pope, that the authority of the Church was vested in themselves alone, and that the Greek Church was preferable to the Latin — in other words of Joachitism — but Angelo declares emphatically that all this was untrue, and his constancy of endurance during fift} T years of persecution and suffering en- titles his assertion to respect. He relates that after their authori- zation by Celestin Y. they lived as hermits in accordance with the papal concession, sojourning as paupers and strangers wherever they could find a place of retreat, and strictly abstaining from preaching and hearing confessions, except when ordered to do so by bishops to whom they owed obedience. Even before the resig- nation of Celestin, the Franciscan authorities, irritated at the es- cape of their victims, disregarded the papal authority and endeav- ored with an armed force to capture them. Celestin himself seems to have given them warning of this, and the zealots, recog- nizing that there was no peace for them in Italy, resolved to ex- patriate themselves and seek some remote spot where they could gratify their ascetic longings and worship God without human
- Raynald. aim. 1297, No. oo.— Jordani Chron. cap. 236, Partic. 3 (Muratori,
Antiq XL 766). So far was Pierre Jean Olivi from participating in these rebellious movements that be wrote a tract to prove the legality of Celestin's abdication and Boniface's succession (Franz Ehrle, Archiv f. L. u. K. 1887, p. 525).
