The pro-imperial Ghibelline party received a major setback with the death of Emperor Frederick II on 13 December 1250. His son Conrad IV continued the struggle, but the papacy emerged victorious with the capture and execution of Frederick’s grandson Conradin in 1268, who was the last of the Hohenstaufen rulers. With the loss of their main ally, the Ghibellines went into decline, and the Cathars they were protecting found themselves vulnerable to the attentions of the Inquisition. After the murder of the Inquisitor and former Cathar Peter of Verona by Cathar-hired assassins in 1252, pope Innocent IV wasted no time using it to the Church’s advantage: Peter was canonised as St Peter Martyr, and Innocent authorised the use of torture during inquisitorial procedure.
The intensification of the Inquisition’s efforts drove many Cathars underground, or into living double lives. Perhaps the most extraordinary case of this is that of Armanno Pungilupo of Ferrara. He was thought of as a pious Catholic who was famed for his good works and, after his death on 10 January 1268, was buried in the cathedral. His saintly reputation persisted, and miracles were reported around his tomb. After much rooting around by the Inquisition, it emerged that Armanno had been not just a Cathar Believer, but had been a Perfect for the last 20 years of his life. He even survived a brush with the Inquisition in 1254, who tortured him, made him swear loyalty to the Catholic Church and threatened to impose a heavy fine on him if he was caught engaging in heretical practices in the future. Armanno agreed, and promptly carried on as before. Even one of the so-called miracles at his tomb, that of a mute who suddenly regained the power of speech, was found to have been faked by a Cathar intent on lampooning the Church’s cult of miracles. Eventually, the Inquisition prevailed, and Armanno’s remains were dug up and burnt in 1301, and his ashes thrown into the River Po.
By far the most serious loss the Italian Cathars sustained was the fall in 1276 of the castle at Sirmione, which stood on a peninsula extending into Lake Garda. Sirmione was the Italian Montsegur, and had been home to various exiled Cathars, including the last known bishop of the Northern French Cathar church, and also the last Cathar bishop of Toulouse, Bernard Oliba. In February 1278, all 200 Sirmionese Perfect were burnt in the amphitheatre at Verona.
Brute force and mass murder, however, were not the sole reasons for Catharism’s decline in Italy. As Malcolm Lambert notes, ‘alternative paths to salvation had opened up’,100 and people were able to express their dissatisfaction with the Church in other ways, not just by becoming Cathars. Groups such as the lay confraternities certainly played a large part in this, as did the enormous success of the Franciscans. Unlike the Languedoc, where Catharism was extinguished in a Church-sponsored holocaust that ended with the Inquisition of James Fournier and the burning of William Belibaste, Catharism in Italy faded away slowly. The last active Cathar bishop was arrested in 1321, and the last known Cathar in Florence was hauled up before the Inquisition in 1342. By this date, the only remaining Cathars existed in secretive mountain communities in the Alps, where, for several more decades, they managed to elude the long arm of the Inquisition.
World History
