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

THE INQUISITION AT FARNZA. 313
an explanation of his negligence.^ At Faenza, so states a
report of the following year, thirty-seven heretics had recently
been imprisoned, and the whole district had been infected by
a teacher who had now fled to Geneva, and that probably
the only remedy was the free use of the stake.- In September,
1568, Tiepolo reported that at Amandola, a small town in the
Marches, brigands and escaped monks had set fire to the
churches and destroj-ed the sacred images, and that the Pope
intended to take severe measures with Amandola and the
neighbouring S. Ginesc, since he had heard that there were
many heretics there. No place in the Papal States, however,
had a worse name in this respect than Faenza ; the Pope even
thought of destroying the city and transferring its inhabitants
elsewhere ; many persons from that city had recently been
handed over to the Roman Inquisition.^
The Pope, who had already had experience of that place as
Inquisitor, set up there a commissariate-general of the In-
quisition, whose jurisdiction extended over the dioceses of
Faenza, Ravenna, Imola, Cervia, Cesena, Bertinoro and
Sarsina.* The choice of the first commissary-general, however,
was not a happy one ; this was Angelo Gazini da Lugo. The
Inquisitor was too severe ;
a chronicler wrote that even the
stones trembled before his terrible rigour. A contemporary
^ *" In Faenza sono stati presi molte persona havute per
heretiche con un frate de Servi predicatore che si conducono qui,
at il vescovo e chiamato per la negligenza usata." B. Pia to
Luzzana, April 12, 1567, Gonzaga Archives, Mantua.
^ *" . . . et si scuopre qualla terra tutta infetta per opara di un
maestro di scuola che se n'e poi fuggito a Genevra che si dubita
che non bisogni andarvi col fuoco." Cipriano Saracinello to
Cardinal Farnese, February 28, 1568, State Archives, Naples
C. Fames, 763.
=* Tiepolo, September 25, 1568, in Mutinelli, I., 79. Cf.
Canix), Eretici, II., 408 ; *Avviso di Roma of September 17, 1568,
among the correspondence of Cusano, State Archives, Vienna.
* What follows is taken from the kind information of Prof.
Giuseppe Donati of Florence, who is preparing a work on the
Riforma e Contrariforma a Faenza nel sec. XVI.