Europe's inner demons

The activities described by Francis of Maiolati include one very curious feature. The Fraticelli were said not simply to kill babies but to do so in a particularly bizarre manner — by passing them from hand to hand until they died. Now this strange fantasy had a long history behind it. As early as the eighth century the head of the Armenian church, John of Ojun, had described how the Paulician heretics killed the fruit of their orgies in just that way.⁽³⁹⁾ And in the twelfth century the French chronicler Guibert de Nogent had said of the heretics of Soissons almost exactly what Francis of Maiolati said of the Fraticelli: “They light a great fire and all sit around it. They pass the child from hand to hand and finally throw it on the fire, and leave it there until it is entirely consumed. Later, when the child is burned to ashes, they make those ashes into a sort of bread; each eats a piece by way of communion.”

⁽⁴⁰⁾ So, behind the grim and solemn procedures of interrogation and torture, we discover a literary tradition. More precisely, we discover an age-old fantasy enshrined in theological tracts and monastic chronicles.

It is possible to trace the route by which this fantasy reached the tribunal of bishops in Rome. In the mid-fourteenth century the Franciscan Order produced a reform movement from within its own ranks, the Observants. Like the Franciscan Order itself, the Observant reform started in central Italy and quickly spread through the whole of Italy and into other lands. The basis of the reform was the “poor and scanty use” of worldly goods; and many of the Observants were as ascetic in their way of life as the Fraticelli themselves.

An early promoter of the Observant movement was St Bernardin of Siena, who was active during the first half of the fourteenth century. For some thirty years he travelled throughout Italy, preaching in a style which was both eloquent and pithy and which evoked immense popular response. And a sermon which he delivered in the Piazza del Campo at Siena in 1427 — that is, some forty years before the trial in the Castel Sant’ Angelo — includes an account of the barilotto: an account which incidentally explains the origins of the term itself. Bernardin gives the usual account of the promiscuous nocturnal orgy, of the tossing to death of the baby boy, of the making of the powders; but he also has something new to say. The sect which performs these rites calls itself “the people of the barilotto”: and the

barilotto is really the little barrel, or flask, in which the mixture of powdered ashes and wine is kept, and from which the members of the sect ceremonially drink.⁽⁴¹⁾

In all this there is not a word about the Fraticelli. Indeed, no particular sect is named at all; and the one indication given — that some of the people are to be found in Piedmont, where they make a practice of killing inquisitive inquisitors — would point to the Waldensians rather than to the Fraticelli. But Bernardin had a devoted friend and collaborator, who often accompanied him as he travelled from town to town —  and who, in due course, was to procure his canonization. This was St John of Capestrano; and it was he who turned Bernardin’s quite unspecific story into an accusation against the Fraticelli.

In personality John of Capestrano in some ways recalls Conrad of Marburg; though he lived some two centuries later and played a far greater part in the life of his time.⁽⁴²⁾ Up to the age of twenty-nine he lived a wholly secular life; being married, a successful magistrate, and deeply involved in the political and military struggles between the small Italian states. The turning-point came when he was captured and imprisoned, broke a leg in trying to escape, and then, while lying chained and in agony in a dungeon, saw repeated visions of St Francis. Liberated by his captors, he renounced all his possessions and became an Observant Franciscan. In the end he was to do more than anybody to make the Observants into the dominant branch of the Order, and an important factor in European life. Canonized in 1690, he is known as “the apostle of Europe”.

In his lifetime Capestrano was a legendary and formidable figure. Journeying incessantly, preaching almost daily, he enjoyed a prestige equalled only by Bernardin. Successive popes favoured and employed him, sometimes as legate, sometimes as inquisitor. Extraordinarily ascetic in his way of life, he was also extraordinarily relentless in his pursuit of dissidents. He constantly urged princes, towns and even popes to sharper action against the Jews; while as inquisitor he became the scourge of the Italian Fraticelli.