The burning of the four martyrs of Marseilles was the signal for active inquisitorial work. Throughout all the infected region the Holy Office bent its energies to the suppression of the new heresy; and as previously there had been no necessity for concealing opinions, the suspects were readily laid hold of. There was thus an ample harvest, and the rigor of the inquisition set on foot is shown by the order issued in February, 1322, by John XXII., that all Tertiaries in the suspected districts should be summoned to appear and be closely examined. This caused general terror. In the archives of Florence there are preserved numerous letters to the papal curia, written in February, 1322, by the magistrates and prelates of the Tuscan cities, interceding for the Tertiaries, and begging that they shall not be confounded with the new sect of Beguines. This is doubtless a sample of what was occurring everywhere, and the all-pervading fear was justified by the daily increasing roll of martyrs. The test was simple. It was whether the accused believed that the pope had power to dispense with vows, especially those of poverty and chastity. As we have seen, it was a commonplace of the schools, which Aquinas proved beyond cavil, that he had no such power, and even as recently as 1311 the Conventuals, in arguing before Clement V., had admitted that no Franciscan could hold property or take a wife under command from the pope; but things had changed in the interval, and now those who adhered to the established doctrine had the alternative of recantation or the stake. Of course but a small portion of the culprits had the steadfastness to endure to the end against the persuasive methods which the Inquisition knew so well how to employ, and the number of the victims who perished shows that the sect must have been large. Our information is scanty and fragmentary, but we know that at Narbonne, where the bishops at first endeavored to protect the unfortunates, until frightened by the threats of the inquisitors, there were three burned in 1319, seventeen in Lent, 1321, and several in 1322. At Montpellier, persecution was already active in 1319. At Lunel there were seventeen burned; at Béziers, two at one time and seven at another; at Pézénas, several, with Jean Formayron at their head; in Gironde, a number in 1319; at Toulouse, four in 1322, and others at Cabestaing and Lodève. At Carcassonne there were burnings in 1319, 1320, and 1321, and Henri de Chamay was active there between 1325 and 1330. A portion of his trials are still extant, with very few cases of burning, but Mosheim had a list of one hundred and thirteen persons executed at Carcassonne as Spirituals from 1318 to about 1350. All these cases were under Dominican inquisitors, and the Franciscans were even more zealous, if we may believe Wadding's boast that in 1323 there were one hundred and fourteen burned by Franciscan inquisitors alone. The Inquisition at Marseilles, in fact, which was in Franciscan hands, had the reputation of being excessively severe with the recalcitrant brethren of the Order. In a case occurring in 1329 Frère Guillem de Salvelle, the Guardian of Béziers, states that their treatment there was very harsh and the imprisonment of the most rigorous description. Doubtless Angelo da Clarino has justification for the assertion that the Conventuals improved their triumph over their antagonists like mad dogs and wolves, torturing, slaying, and ransoming without mercy. Trivial as may seem to us the cause of quarrel, we cannot but respect the simple earnestness which led so many zealots to seal their convictions with their blood. Many of them, we are told, courted martyrdom and eagerly sought the flames. Bernard Léon of Montréal was burned for persistently declaring that, as he had vowed poverty and chastity, he would not obey the pope if ordered to take a wife or accept a prebend.[79]