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

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o 26 HISTORY OF THE POPES.<br />

suppressed.^ It was not only Protestant errors, properly<br />

so called, which had to be dealt with in Italy at that time.<br />

In 1568 sixteen heretics, who among o<strong>the</strong>r things had revived<br />

mono<strong>the</strong>lism,^ were arrested at Ferrara, and condemned to<br />

<strong>the</strong> gaUe3'^s and quarries, while at Naples a sect made its<br />

appearance in 1567 which had adopted <strong>the</strong> rites <strong>of</strong> Judaism.^<br />

Moreover, a great number <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Italian Protestants belonged<br />

to that purely rationalistic sect known as <strong>the</strong> Anabaptists,*<br />

not because its condemnation <strong>of</strong> infant baptism was its principal<br />

doctrine, but because in <strong>the</strong> eyes <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> world at that time,<br />

that was <strong>the</strong>ir most monstrous belief. From time immemorial<br />

men had been admitted into <strong>the</strong> Church by baptism almost<br />

exclusively as infants ; if <strong>the</strong> sacrament had been adminis-<br />

tered to such invalidly, it followed that for many centuries<br />

<strong>the</strong>re had been no Christians and no Church, and that <strong>the</strong><br />

foundation <strong>of</strong> Christ had long since disappeared. This ex-<br />

plains <strong>the</strong> great horror that was felt for <strong>the</strong> Anabaptists.<br />

Rome kept a watchful eye upon all <strong>the</strong>se many forms <strong>of</strong><br />

heresy. At <strong>the</strong> beginning <strong>of</strong> his reign Pius V. formed <strong>the</strong><br />

project <strong>of</strong> sending to aU <strong>the</strong> Inquisitors <strong>of</strong> Italy orders to<br />

furnish reports to Rome <strong>of</strong> all who were suspected <strong>of</strong> heresy.^<br />

^ Report <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Franciscan Conventual, Eojero <strong>of</strong> Nice, who by<br />

<strong>the</strong> orders <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Bishop <strong>of</strong> Ventimiglia gave missions in Tenda in<br />

1566 (GiOFFREDO, Storia delle Alpi marittime, V., Turin, 1839,<br />

ad an. 1566. Cf. P. Degiovanni, Gli eretici di Tenda-Briga-<br />

Sospello nei secoli xv. e xvi. Florence, 1881, 9 seq., extract <strong>from</strong><br />

Rivista crist.). In a *brief <strong>of</strong> August 7, 1566, Pius V. praises<br />

<strong>the</strong> zeal <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Count for <strong>the</strong> repression <strong>of</strong> hei-esy, Brevia, Arm. 44,<br />

t. 12, p. 99, Papal Secret Archives.<br />

^Cantlt, Eretici, II., 98.<br />

''Ibid. 332. Laderchi 1567, n. 61. Little is known <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong><br />

heretics in Sicily {cf. V. La Mantia, Origini e vicende dellTnquisizione<br />

in Sicilia in Riv. sior. Ital., 1886, 481 seq.) ; in 1568 and<br />

1569 an autodafe took place at Palermo [Arch. sior. Sicil.,<br />

XXXVIII. , 1914, 306, 309. For <strong>the</strong> heretics at Verona cf.<br />

Riv. stor. Ital., 1912, 241.<br />

^ Cf. Benrath in Studien und Kvitiksn, 1S85, i seqq.<br />

^ Babbi, <strong>the</strong> Tuscan envoy to Rome, July 2, 1566, in Cant^,<br />

II., 431.

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