The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

PIUS V. AND THE INQUISITION. 297
ments belonging to the Holy Office, or should abet such
offences ; and lastly those who should forcibly break into the
prisons of the Inquisition, set free its prisoners, or rescue
the imprisoned from their gaolers, or give them sanctuary.
Anyone who was guilt}^ of such acts of violence at once in-
curred excommunication, was held guilty of high treason,
forfeited his benefices and property, and was to be handed
over to the secular arm. A special brief, on the other hand,
again confirmed in its privileges a confraternity which, since
the middle ages, had undertaken the defence of the In-
quisition.^ Another edict was specially directed to the safe-
guarding from molestation of those religious who had recourse
to the tribunal of the faith or were cited by it as witnesses.^
Pius V. appealed to his own long experience as Inquisitor
in justification of his stern measures against the follov/ers
of the new religion. If we may judge from his decrees it
certainly cannot be held that his experience had given him
any respect for the Protestant movement in Italy. Judging
from what he says in these decrees the Italian Protestants
were in his opinion a sect which was groping in the dark ;
they had sufficient courage to spread their doctrines secretly
and unseen, but once they were discovered and brought to
judgment, in the great majority of cases their boldness miser-
ably crumbled away, at the very moment when it was called
upon to prove that the movement really inspired constancy
of opinion and the courage that makes martyrs ;
on the con-
trary, they denied their Protestantism and recanted. For
this reason, as he often said, in his opinion sternness was the
^ Brief in favour of the " cruce signati " of October 13, 1570,
Bull, Rom., VII., 860. In his early activities as Inqnisitor
Ghislieri had been helped by a member of the Compagnia della
C: ore against the heretics in the Swiss part of the diocese of Como
(Catena, 6). For the Crocesegnati cf. Fumi, L'Inquisizione,
19-26. The Duke of Florence quickly dissolved a confraternity
of Crocesegnati which was set up in Siena in 1569. Canti^,
Eretici, II., 452.
580.
^ Decree of August 7, 1567, in Pastor, Dela-ete. 30 ; Diana,