HISTORY OF THE INQUISITIONS
After the
Roman Church had consolidated its power in the early Middle Ages, heretics came
to be regarded as enemies of society. The crime of heresy was defined as a
deliberate denial of an article of truth of the Catholic faith, and a public and
obstinate persistence in that alleged error. At this time, there was a sense of
Christian unity among townspeople and rulers alike, and most of them agreed
with the Church that heretics seemed to threated society itself.
A third
variety of the Inquisition was the Roman Inquisition. Alarmed by the spread of
Protestantism and especially by its penetration into Italy, Pope Paul III in
1542 established in Rome the Congregation of the Inquisition. This institution
was al so known as the Roman Inquisition and the Holy Office. Six cardinals
including Carafa constituted the original inquisition whose powers extended to
the whole Church. The "Holy Office" was really a new institution
related to the Medieval Inquisition only by vague precedents. More free from episcopal
control than its predecessor, it also conceived of its function differently.
Some saw its establishment as an attempt to counter-balance the severe Spanish
Inquisition at a time when much of Italy was under Spanish rule. Whereas the
medieval Inquisition had focused on popular misconceptions which resulted in
the disturbance of public order, the Holy Office was concerned with orthodoxy
of a more academic nature, especially as it appeared in the writings of
theologians. In its first twelve years, the activities of the Roman Inquisition
were relatively modest and were restricted almost exclusively to Italy.
Cardinal Carafa became Pope Paul IV in 1555 and immediately urged a vigorous
pursuit of "suspects." His snare did not exclude bishops or even
cardinals of the Church. Pope Paul IV carged the congregation to draw up a list
of books which he felt offended faith or morals. This resulted in the first
Index of Forbidden Books (1559). Although succeeding popes tempered the zeal of
the Roman Inquisition,
many viewed
the institution as the cutomary instrument of papal government used in the
regulation of Church order. This was the institution that would later put
Galileo on trial.
However, the
repression of heresy remained unorganized, and with the large scale heresies in
the 11th and 12th centuries, Pope Gregory IX instituted the papal inquisition
in 1231 for the apprehension and trial of heretics. The name Inquisition is der
ived from the Latin verb inquiro (inquire into). The Inquisitiors did not wait
for complaints, but sought out persons accused of heresy. Although the
Inquisition was created to combat the heretical Cathari and Waldenses, the
Inquisition later extended i ts activity to include witches, diviners,
blasphemers, and other sacrilegious persons.
Another reason
for Pope Gregory IX's creation of the Inquisition was to bring order and
legality to the process of dealing with heresy, since there had been tendencies
in the mobs of townspeople to burn alleged heretics without much of a trial.
Pope Gregory's original intent for the Inquisition was a court of exception to
inquire into and glean the beliefs of those differing from Catholic teaching,
and to instruct them in the orthodox doctrine. It was hoped that heretics would
see the falsity of the ir opinion and would return to the Roman Catholic
Church. If they persisted in their heresy, however, Pope Gregory, finding it
necessary to protect the Catholic community from infection would have suspects
handed over to civil authorities since these her etics had violated not only
Church law but civil law as well. The secular authorities would apply their own
brands of punishment for civil disobedience which, at the time, included
burning at the stake.
The
inquisitiors, or judges of this medieval Inquisition were recruited almost
exclusively from the Franscian and Dominican orders. In the early period of the
institution, the Inquisitiors rode the circut in search of heretics, but this
practice was short lived. The Inquisitors soon acquired the right to summon the
suspects from their homes to the Inquisition center. The medieval Inquisition
functioned only in a limited way in northern Europe. It was employed most in
the south of France and in nor thern Italy.
Throughout the
Inquisition's history, it was rivaled by local ecclesiastical and secular
jurisdictions. No matter how determined, no pope succeeded in establishing
complete control of the institution. Medieval kings, princes, bishops, and
civil auth orities wavered between acceptance and resistance of the Inquisition.
The institution reached its apex in the second half of the 13th century. During
this period, the tribunals were almost entirely free from any authority,
including that of the pope. T herefore, it was almost impossible to eradicate
abuse.
A second
variety of the Inquisition was the infamous Spanish Inquisition, authorized by
Pope Sixtus IV in 1478. Pope Sixtus tried to establish harmony between the
inquisitors and the ordinaries, but was unable to maintain control of the
desires of Ki ng Ferdinand V and Queen Isablella. Sixtus agreed to recognize
the independence of the Spanish Inquisition. This institution survived to the
beginning of the 19th century, and was permanently suppressed by a decree on
July 15, 1834.
Dave Hunt, A Cup of Trembling (Eugene, Oregon:
Harvest House Publishers, 1995): 160:
Church
historian R. Tudor Jones writes that "the majority of the martyrs were
ordinary people, including many women"...John Foxe was an eyewitness and
earnest historian of the fierce persecution in England in his day. His Book of
Martyrs gives detailed accounts of many public trials and executions of those
whom the Roman Catholic Church judged to be "heretics" worthy of
death. His descriptions of Christians being burned at the stake tell of their
inspiring bravery in the face of such a horrible death and of the determination
of Roman Catholicism to exterminate everywhere true Christians who opposed
her. Similar records have come down of the massacres of Jews at the hands
of the Roman Church.
John Daniel, The Grand Design Exposed (CHJ
Publishing, 1999): 27, 78:
Through
relentless torture, starvation, genocide, massacres, burning at the stake,
against every conceivable fury of [Papal] Rome, they [i.e., the ‘seeds of
protest’] could not be extinguished. History estimates that over one hundred
million people lost their lives during that time of [Papal] Roman tyranny. Is
it any wonder that God graphically describes this onslaught of [Papal] Rome as
her being ‘drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the
martyrs of Jesus’, and calls her the ‘Beast’?
…For the
unbiased researcher, history reeks of the butchery of Romanism, where whole
cities and populations were unmercifully wiped out, just because they
worshipped God in a manner that was different from Roman Catholicism.
Charles A.
Bolton (Ex-Roman Catholic priest):
What has
turned my soul against Roman abuse of power is the way in which it has tortured
and burned such saints of God as Joan of Arc, hundreds of the Albigensian
martyrs in France in the 12th century, the Knights Templar, John Huss [Czech
Jan Hus], the Dominican Savonarola, the Dominican Giordano Bruno, [and] the
Anglican bishops Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer. The Inquisition has promoted at
least two wholesale massacres: [hundreds of] thousands of Protestant
Waldensians in northern Italy, and thousands of Protestant Huguenots by the
massacre of St. Bartholomew in France. More than 30,000 of the most cultured
Protestants of France were put to the sword on the night of St. Bartholomew,
August 24, 1572. At the news [of this brutal, bloody massacre], the Pope
had cannons fired, proclaimed a jubilee, ordered a Te Deum of thanksgiving to
be sung, and struck a special medal to commemorate the glorious ‘victory’.
Dave Hunt, A Woman Rides the Beast (Eugene, Oregon:
Harvest House Publishers, 1994): 80, 261:
To wring out
confessions from these poor creatures, the Roman Catholic Church devised
ingenious tortures so excruciating and barbarous that one is sickened by their
recital.
The Medieval
Inquisition had flourished for centuries when Pope Paul III, in 1542, gave it
permanent status as the first of Rome’s Sacred Congregations, the ‘Holy,
Catholic and Apostolic Inquisition’. Known more recently as the ‘Holy Office’,
its name was changed in 1967 to the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith’…Therefore it is not surprising that the ‘Office of the Inquisition’
still occupies the Palace of the Inquisition adjacent to the Vatican, though
under its new name, the ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’. Its
current Grand Inquisitor, who reports directly to the pope, is the former
Archbishop of Munich, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, whom Time [Magazine] has
called ‘the world’s most powerful cardinal [and] the Catholic Church’s chief
enforcer of dogma…’
Will Durant
(Historian 1885-1981), The Story of
Civilization (MJF Books, 1993):
Christians
[i.e., Roman Catholics] of the twelfth century accused the Jews of kidnapping
Christian children either to sacrifice them to Jahveh, or to use their blood as
medicine or in the making of unleavened bread for the Passover feast. Jews were
charged with poisoning the wells…and of stealing consecrated wafers to pierce
them and draw from them the blood of Christ…[and] of draining the wealth of
Christendom into Jewish hands.”
Peter de Rosa,
Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the
Papacy (New York, NY: Crown Publishers, 1988): 175:
Of eighty
popes in a line from the thirteenth century on, not one of them disapproved of
the theology and apparatus of Inquisition. On
the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of
this deadly machine.
F. Tupper
Saussy, Rulers of Evil (HarperCollins,
2001): xviii, 304:
The Roman
Inquisition…had been administered since 1542 by the Jesuits.
Pontifex
Maximus [i.e., the pope of Rome] has laundered the Inquisition’s name twice. In
1908, Pope Pius X renamed it ‘the Holy Office’, which [Pope] Paul VI
transformed into [the] ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’ in 1965.
The unHoly Inquisitions
The unHoly Inquisitions
"Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God which conflicts with Church dogma
must be burned without pity."
- Pope Innocent III -THE CATHOLIC
CHURCH HAS KILLED MILLIONS - THIS IS NOT CHRISTIANITY.
The Inquisition was an ecclesiastical court and process of the Roman Catholic
Church setup for the purpose towards the discovery and punishment of heresy
which wielded immense power and brutality in medieval and early modern times.
The Inquisitions function was principally assembled to repress all heretics of
rights, depriving them of their estate and assets which became subject to the
ownership of the Catholic treasury, with each relentlessly sought to destroy
anyone who spoke, or even thought differently to the Catholic Church. This
system for close to over six centuries became the legal framework throughout
most of Europe that orchestrated one of the most confound religious orders in
the course of mankind.
Inquisition Procedure
At root the word Inquisition signifies as little of evil as the primitive "inquire," or the adjective inquisitive, but as words, like persons, lose their characters by bad associations, so "Inquisition" has become infamous and hideous as the name of an executive department of the Roman Catholic Church.
Inquisition Procedure
At root the word Inquisition signifies as little of evil as the primitive "inquire," or the adjective inquisitive, but as words, like persons, lose their characters by bad associations, so "Inquisition" has become infamous and hideous as the name of an executive department of the Roman Catholic Church.
All crimes and all vices are contained in this one word
Inquisition. Murder, robbery, arson, outrage, torture, treachery, deceit,
hypocrisy, cupidity, holiness. No other word in all languages is so hateful as
this one that owes its abhorrent preeminence to its association with the Roman
Church.
In the Dark Side of Christian History, Helen Ellerbe describes how the same men who had been both prosecutor and judge decided upon the sentence of heresy. Once an Inquisitor arrived to a heresy-ridden district, a 40 day period of grace was usually allowed to all who wished to confess by recanting their faith.
In the Dark Side of Christian History, Helen Ellerbe describes how the same men who had been both prosecutor and judge decided upon the sentence of heresy. Once an Inquisitor arrived to a heresy-ridden district, a 40 day period of grace was usually allowed to all who wished to confess by recanting their faith.
After this period of grace had finished, the inhabitants were then
summoned to appear before the Inquisitor. Citizens accused of heresy would be
woken in the dead of night, ordered, if not gagged, and then escorted to the
holy edifice, or Inquisition prison for closer examination.
In 1244, the Council of Harbonne ordered that in the
sentencing of heretics, no husband should be spared because of his wife, nor
wife because of her husband, and no parent spared from a helpless child. Once
in custody victims waited before their judge anxiously, while he pondered
through the document of their accusation. During the first examination, enough
of their property was likewise confiscated to cover the expenses of the
preliminary investigation.
The accused would then be implicated and asked incriminating and
luring questions in a dexterous manner of trickery calculated to entangle most.
Many manual's used and promulgated were by the grand inquisitor Bernardus Guidonis, the Author of Practica Inquisitionis (Practice of the
Inquisition) and the Directorium
Inquisitorum (Guideline for Inquisitors) completed by Nicolaus Eymerich, grand inquisitor of Aragon. These were the
authoritative text-books for the use of inquisitors until the issue of
Torquemada's instructions in 1483, which was an enlarged and revised Directorium.
A Chapter of the Manual is headed "of the torture" and
contains these small reflections:
"The torture is not an infallible method to obtain the truth;
there are some men so pusillanimous that at the first twinge of pain they will
confess crimes they never committed; others there are so valiant and robust
that they bear the most cruel torments. Those who have once been placed upon
the rack suffer it with great courage, because their limbs accommodate
themselves to it with facility or resist with force; others with charms and
spells render themselves insensible, and will die before they will confess
anything."
The author gives further directions:
“When sentence of torture has been given, and while the
executioner is preparing to apply it, the inquisitor and the grave persons who
assist him should make fresh attempts to persuade the accused to confess the
truth; the executioners and their assistants, while stripping him, should
affect uneasiness, haste, and sadness, endeavoring thus to instill fear into
his mind; and when he is stripped naked the inquisitors should take him aside,
exhorting him to confess, and promising him his life upon condition of his
doing so, provided that he is not a relapsed (one dilated a second time),
because in such a case they cannot promise him that."
Later afterwards in the sixteenth century, Cardinal Giovanni Caraffa, a zealot for the purity of Catholicism
who later became the pope himself, also held a stern and gloomy view of moral
rectitude for heretics. In 1542, he was appointed by pope Paul III to
administer the Inquisition.
The manuscript life of Caraffa gives the following rules
drawn up by Caraffa himself:
"Firstly when the faith is in question, there must be no
delay; but at the slightest suspicion, rigorous measures must be resorted to
with all speed. Secondly, no consideration is to be shown to any prince or
prelate, however high his station. Thirdly, extreme severity is rather to be
exercised against those who attempt to shield themselves under the protection
of any potentate, and fourthly, no man must lower himself by showing toleration
toward heretics of any kind."
The inquisition put
their victims to the test (here using the rack)
Most defendants
confessed in the long run in order to escape the great anguish and bitter
torture.
Once found guilty
(regardless) they were handed over to the civil authorities to be
"relaxed" (that is of course, burnt alive)
Refusing to confess at the first hearing, saw heretics being
remanded to the prisons for several months. The dungeons were situated
underground, so that the outcries of the subject might not reach other parts of
the building. In some medieval cells, the inauspicious were bound in stocks or
chains, unable to move about and forced to sleep standing up or on the ground.
In some cases there was no light or ventilation, inmates were generally starved
and kept in solitary confinement in the dark and allowed no contact with the
outside world, including that of their own family.
In 1252, Pope Innocent IV
officially authorized the creation of the horrifying Inquisition torture
chambers. It also included anew perpetual imprisonment or death at the stake
without the bishops consent. Acquittal of the accused was now virtually
impossible. Thus, with a license granted by the pope himself, Inquisitors were
free to explore the depths of horror and cruelty. Dressed as black-robed fiends
with black cowls over their heads, Inquisitors could extract confessions from
just about anyone. The Inquisition invented every conceivable devise to inflict
pain by slowly dismembering and dislocating the body.
Many of the devices were inscribed with the motto "Glory be only to God." Bernardus Guidonis, the Inquisitor in
Toulouse instructed the layman as to never argue with the unbeliever, but as to
"thrust his sword into the man's belly as far as it will go." George Ryley Scott describes how the
inquisitors, gorged with their inhumanity, and developed a degree of
callousness rarely rivaled in the annals of civilization, with the
ecclesiastical authorities condemning every faith outside of Christianity as demonic.
Even the very fact of having a charge brought against you, and of being summoned to the Inquisition was sufficient to strike abject terror into the bravest man or woman. For very few who entered the doors of that halls of torment emerged whole in mind and body. If they escaped with their life, they were, with rare exceptions, maimed, physically or mentally forever. Those who did happen to endure the dungeons generally went mad in captivity, screaming out in despair to escape their purgatories. Others willingly committed suicide during their confinement.
Even the very fact of having a charge brought against you, and of being summoned to the Inquisition was sufficient to strike abject terror into the bravest man or woman. For very few who entered the doors of that halls of torment emerged whole in mind and body. If they escaped with their life, they were, with rare exceptions, maimed, physically or mentally forever. Those who did happen to endure the dungeons generally went mad in captivity, screaming out in despair to escape their purgatories. Others willingly committed suicide during their confinement.
The defendant were known to incriminate themselves at any chance
they had to escape the horrors. As Henry
Charles Lea describes, one of the conditions of escaping the penalties was
that they stated all they knew of other heretics and apostates, under the
general terror, there was little hesitation in denouncing not only friends and
acquaintances, but the nearest and dearest kindred--parents, children, brothers
and sisters--this ultimately and indefinitely prolonged the Inquisitions
through their associates.
In the ages of faith, when the priest, was little less than a God himself, a curse from his lips was
often more feared than physical torments. To even establish an accusation against
a bishop itself required 72 witnesses; against a deacon was 27; against an
inferior dignitary was 7, and for non-members of the clergy, 2 was sufficient
to convict. Whole communities went mad with grief and fear of the thought
towards being denounced to the Inquisition. It spread all over Europe. Men,
women, and children, all legally murdered on evidence by a church, which
today would only be accepted unless the court and jury specifically composed of
the inmates of a lunatic asylum.
During the course, defendants had no rights to counsel or advice,
and was even denied the right to know the names of their accusers. No favorable
evidence or character witnesses were permitted. In any case, one who even spoke
for an accused heretic would be arrested as an accomplice. Never would a
prisoner of the Inquisition have seen the accusation against himself, or any
other. All efforts relating to time, place, and person were carefully
concealed.
Henry Charles Lea describes however that evidence was accepted from witnesses who
could not legally testify in any other kind of trial; such as condemned
criminals, other heretics, or children even as young as the age of two. The
Inquisitor Jean Bodin (1529-96)
author of De La Demonomanie des Sorciers
(Of the Demonomania of Witches)
especially valued child witnesses for extracting confessions, as they were
easily persuaded to confess. Children though, were no exception for being
prosecuted and tortured themselves. The treatment of witches' children was
particularly brutal.
Suspicion alone of witchcraft would warrant torture. Once a girl
was nine and a half, and a boy was ten and a half, they were both liable to
inquiry. Younger children below this age were still nevertheless tortured to
elicit testimonies that could be used against their own parents. A famous
French magistrate was known to have regretted his leniency when, instead of
having young children accused of witchcraft burned, he had only sentenced them
to be flogged while they watched their parents burn.
The children of those parents murdered usually were force to beg
in vain upon the streets, for no one dared feed or shelter them thus incurring
a suspicion of heresy upon themselves. The suspicion was sufficient enough to
drive away even the closest kindred and friends of the unfortunate. Sympathy
for them would be interpreted as sympathy with their heresy.
Put to the torture
using the Pulley
-the accused
confessed to anything and everything that their tormentors wanted them to
admit.
The pulley or strappado
was the first torture of the Inquisition usually applied. Executioners would
hoist the victim up to the ceiling using a rope with their hands tied securely
behind their back. They were then suspended about six feet from the floor. In
this position, heavy iron weights, usually amounting to about 45 kg, were
attached to their feet. The executioners would then pull on the rope, then
suddenly allowing it to slack causing the victim to fall.
The rapid descent would then come to an abrupt stop, bewildering
every joint and nerve in the system. In most cases it entailed dislocation.
This process was repeated again and again heavier and more intense until the
culprit confessed or became unconscious. Christian
Monks would stand by to record any confessions, with even records today
displaying the transformation of the monks steady handwriting to vigorous
shaking after they recanted inside the dungeons.
If a relapsed heretic refused to recant and endure the torture,
the contumacious sufferer was then carried to the scaffold and his body bound
to a wooden cross. There the executioner, with a bar of iron, would break each
leg and arm in two places and left to die. If the heretic was slow to expire,
the executioner would then partake to strangulation, and their body was bound
to a stake and burnt outside.
Papal Inquisition (1233)
At the close of the 12th century, heresy was spreading rapidly in Southern France. Papal legates were sent by Pope Innocent III into the disaffected district to increase the severity of repressive measures against the Waldenses. In 1200, Peter of Castelnau was made associate inquisitor for Southern France. The powers of the papal legates were increased so as to bring non-compliant bishops within the net. Diego, bishops of Osma, and Dominec came onto the scene. In 1206, Peter and Raoul went as spies among the Albigenses.
Papal Inquisition (1233)
At the close of the 12th century, heresy was spreading rapidly in Southern France. Papal legates were sent by Pope Innocent III into the disaffected district to increase the severity of repressive measures against the Waldenses. In 1200, Peter of Castelnau was made associate inquisitor for Southern France. The powers of the papal legates were increased so as to bring non-compliant bishops within the net. Diego, bishops of Osma, and Dominec came onto the scene. In 1206, Peter and Raoul went as spies among the Albigenses.
Count Raymond of Toulouse abased himself in 1207, before Peter promised to extirpate the
heretics he had defended. Dominec advised a crusade against the Albigenses. The
pope's inquisitors tried, condemned, and punished offenders inflicting the
death penalty itself with the concurrence of the civil powers.
The Inquisition was also destined to become a permanent institution. The vigor and success of the Papal Legatine Inquisition assured this. The Fourth Lateran Council took the initial steps with Pope Innocent III presiding. The synodal courts were given something of the character of inquisitorial tribunals. Synods were to be held in each province annually, and violations of the Lateran canons rigorously punished.
The Inquisition was also destined to become a permanent institution. The vigor and success of the Papal Legatine Inquisition assured this. The Fourth Lateran Council took the initial steps with Pope Innocent III presiding. The synodal courts were given something of the character of inquisitorial tribunals. Synods were to be held in each province annually, and violations of the Lateran canons rigorously punished.
The condemned were to be left in the hands of the secular power,
and their goods were to be confiscated. The secular powers were to be
admonished and induced, and, should it prove necessary, were to be compelled to
the utmost of their power to exterminate all who were pointed out as heretics
by the church. Any prince declining not to purge his land of heresy was to be
excommunicated. If he persisted, complaint was to be made to the pope, who was
then to absolve his vassals from allegiance and allow the country to be seized
by Catholics who should exterminate the heretics. Those who joined in the
crusade for the extermination of heretics were to have the some indulgence as
the crusaders who went to the Holy Land.
In the face of this inexpugnable record, how futile it is for modern church apologists to pretend that Rome did not shed blood, and was not responsible for the atrocities of the Inquisition. The Council of Toulouse in 1229 adopted a number of canons tending to give permanent character to the Inquisition as an institution.
In the face of this inexpugnable record, how futile it is for modern church apologists to pretend that Rome did not shed blood, and was not responsible for the atrocities of the Inquisition. The Council of Toulouse in 1229 adopted a number of canons tending to give permanent character to the Inquisition as an institution.
It made or indicated the machinery for questioning, convicting,
and punishing. Heretics were to be excluded from medical practice; the houses
in which they were found to be razed to the ground; they were to be delivered
to the archbishop, or local authorities; forfeiture or public rights could be
removed only by a papal dispensation; any one who allowed a heretic to remain
in his country, or who shielded him in the slightest degree, would lose his
land, personal property, and official position; the local magistracy joined in
the search for heretics; men from the ages of 14, and women from 12, were to
make oath and renew it every two years, that they would inform on heretics.
This made every person above those ages a bloodhound to track to
torture and kill. Local councils added to these regulations, always in the
direction of severity and injustice. The organic development of the Papal
Inquisition proceeded rapidly. It was found that bishops, for the various
reasons, would not always enforce the cruel canons of the councils.
So blood-drunk Pope Gregory
IX in August, 1231, put the Inquisition under the control of the
Dominicans, and order especially created for the defense of the church
against heresy. Dominican inquisitors were appointed for Aragon, Germany,
Austria, Lombardy, and Southern France.
The chronicle of the inquisitor Guilhem Pelhisso shows the most tragic episodes of the reign of terror which wasted Languedoc in France for a century. Guillaume Arnaud, Peter Cella, Bernard of Caux, Jean de St Pierre, Nicholas of Abbeville, Foulques de St Georges, were all the chief inquisitors who played the part of absolute dictatorship, burning at the stake, attacking both the living and the dead.
The chronicle of the inquisitor Guilhem Pelhisso shows the most tragic episodes of the reign of terror which wasted Languedoc in France for a century. Guillaume Arnaud, Peter Cella, Bernard of Caux, Jean de St Pierre, Nicholas of Abbeville, Foulques de St Georges, were all the chief inquisitors who played the part of absolute dictatorship, burning at the stake, attacking both the living and the dead.
One of the leading head Inquisitors of Germany was Conrad of Marburg. Stern in temper and
narrow in mind, his bigotry was said to be ardent to the pitch of near
insanity. Conrad was urged by Pope Gregory IX as to "not to punish
the wicked, but as to hurt the innocence with fear." History shows us how
far these Inquisitors answered to this ideal. Conrad murdered and terrified
countless people in pursuit of his duties, regarding mental and physical
torture as a rapid route to salvation. He was given full discretionary powers,
and was not required to hear the cases, but to pronounce judgment, which was to
be final and without appeal-justice to those suspect of heresy.
He was authorized to command the aid of the secular arm, to
excommunicate protectors of heresy, and to lay interdict on whole districts.
During his reign, he claimed to have uncovered nests of "Devil
worshippers" and adopted the motto "I would gladly burn a hundred
innocent if there was one guilty among them.” Stimulated by this shining
example, many Dominicans and Franciscans merged with him, and became his eager
assistants. He also sentenced the feline cat to be forever viewed as a tool of
manifestation for witches and sorcerers.
During the persecution of heresy in the Rhineland's by Conrad,
one obstinate culprit actually refused to burn in spite of all the efforts of
his zealous executioners. A thoughtful priest brought to the roaring pile a
consecrated host. This at once dissolved the spell by a mightier magic, and the
luckless heretic was speedily reduced to ashes.
Other inquisitors included Peter of Verona in Italy, Robert the Bulgar in northeast France, and Bernardus Guidonis in Toulouse. Guidonis, was considered the most experienced inquisitor of his day, condemning roughly 900 heretics, with recorded sentences pronounced after death against 89 persons during a period of 15 years. Not only was their property confiscated and their heirs disinherited, but they were subject to still further penalties. In the north of France, the Inquisition was marked by a series of melancholy events. Robert le Bougre, spent six years going through the Nivernais, Burgundy, Flanders and Champagne, burning at the stake in every place unfortunates whom he condemned without judgment.
Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834)
In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was established with the papal approval of Pope Sixtus IV. The reform and extension of the ancient tribunal which had existed from the thirteenth century was mainly to discover and eliminate Jews and Muslims secretly taking up their beliefs in private.
Other inquisitors included Peter of Verona in Italy, Robert the Bulgar in northeast France, and Bernardus Guidonis in Toulouse. Guidonis, was considered the most experienced inquisitor of his day, condemning roughly 900 heretics, with recorded sentences pronounced after death against 89 persons during a period of 15 years. Not only was their property confiscated and their heirs disinherited, but they were subject to still further penalties. In the north of France, the Inquisition was marked by a series of melancholy events. Robert le Bougre, spent six years going through the Nivernais, Burgundy, Flanders and Champagne, burning at the stake in every place unfortunates whom he condemned without judgment.
Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834)
In 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was established with the papal approval of Pope Sixtus IV. The reform and extension of the ancient tribunal which had existed from the thirteenth century was mainly to discover and eliminate Jews and Muslims secretly taking up their beliefs in private.
The conduct of this holy office greatly weakened the power and
diminished the population of Spain. It was considered the most deadliest and
notorious of all Inquisitions, as firstly being, it was the most highly
organized and secondly, it was far more exposed and open with the death penalty
than that of the papal Inquisition. This holy office became veiled by secrecy,
unhesitatingly kept back, falsified, concealed, and forged the reports of
thousands of trials.
The first two Inquisitors in the districts of Seville were appointed in 1480 by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to round up the most wealthiest heretics; the reason for this, was that the property of those accused, were shared equally between the Catholic throne and the Dominicans.
The Catholic Spanish
government also directly paid the expenses, and received the net income of
the Inquisition itself from the accused. According to civil law, people
convicted of religious treason were sentenced to death and their goods
confiscated while the Catholic Church feasted on their estate. Additional
Inquisitors were named, including Tomas
Torquemada, who the following year was appointed Inquisitor General for
all of Spain.
Tomas, who's duty was to organize the rules of inquisitorial
procedures in Seville, Castille and Aragon. He believed punishment of heretics,
was the only way to achieve political and religious unity in Spain. Those
refusing to accept Catholicism where lead to the stake and burnt alive in a
procession and Catholic ceremony known as "auto-de-fe'" (act of
faith).
The conclusion of an
"auto de fe".
Huge public burnings
took place of those convicted of Heresy.
Roman catholic Inquisition (1542-1700)
In the early 1500's and 1600's, the Catholic Church went through a reformation. It consisted of two related movements:
In the early 1500's and 1600's, the Catholic Church went through a reformation. It consisted of two related movements:
(1) a
defensive reaction against the Reformation, a movement begun by Martin
Luther in 1517 that gave birth to Protestantism
(2) a
Catholic reform which saw Protestants declare war on Catholics
The satanic papal church called the Council of Trent partly as a defense against Protestantism. In
1542, Pope Paul III (1534-49)
established the Holy Office as the final court of appeal in trials of heresy.
The Church also published a list of books that were forbidden to read.
Heretical books were outlawed, and searched out by domiciliary visits. Every
book that came was scrutinized minutely with the express object of finding some
passage which might be interpreted as being against the principles or interests
of the Catholic faith.
The secular coadjutor were also not allowed to learn to read or
write without permission. No man was able to aspire to any rank above that of
which he already holded. The church insisted on this regulation as a means to
obtaining a perfect knowledge of its subordinates.
The censorship of books took three forms:
(1) complete
condemnation and suppression
(2) the
expunging of certain objectionable passages or parts
(3) the
correction of sentences or the deletion of specific words as mentioned
A list of the various books condemned upon any of these three
heads was printed every year, after which anyone found to be in the possession
of a volume coming under section (1) or an unexpurgated or uncorrected copy of
a volume coming under section (2) or (3) was deemed guilty and liable to serve
punishment. The author and the publisher of any such book often spent the
remainder of their lives in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Its overall goal
was to eradicate Protestant influences in Europe.
A number of wars resulting from religious conflicts broke out as well as the Catholic governments tried to stop the spread of Protestantism in the country. Such attempts led to the civil war in France from 1562 to 1598 and a rebellion in the Netherlands between 1565 and 1648. Religion was a major issue in the fighting between Spain and England from 1585 to 1604.
It was also a cause of the Thirty Years' War 1618 to 1648, which
centered in Germany, that eventually involved all of the great nations of
Europe halving its population. The estimate of the death toll during the
Inquisitions ranged worldwide from 600,000 to as high in the millions covering
a span of almost six centuries.
Victor Hugo
estimated the number of the victims of the Inquisition at five million,
it is said, and certainly the number was much greater than that if we take into
account, as we should, the wives and husbands, the parents and children, the
brothers and sisters, and other relatives of those tortured and slaughtered by
the priestly institution. To these millions should properly be added the others
killed in the wars precipitated in the attempt to fasten the Inquisition upon the people of various countries, as the
Netherlands and Germany.
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The unHoly demonic Inquisitions
"Fear is the basis of the whole - fear of the mysterious,
fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the
parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand."
parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand."
- Bertrand Russell
catholic Medieval Torture Devices
Reaching its peak in the 12th century, torture was used in capital cases as well as against suspected heretics. From the mid-14th century to the end of the 18th century, torture was a common and sanctioned part of the legal proceedings of most European countries which was approved by the inquisition in cases of heresy.
Reaching its peak in the 12th century, torture was used in capital cases as well as against suspected heretics. From the mid-14th century to the end of the 18th century, torture was a common and sanctioned part of the legal proceedings of most European countries which was approved by the inquisition in cases of heresy.
The most common means of torture included burning, beating and
suffocating, however the techniques below are some of the more extravagant and
depraved methods used and allowed by the Roman Catholic Church.
Torture room in the
Inquisition cathedral in Nuremberg
The Rack
The Rack was an instrument of torture often used in the Middle Ages, and a popular means of extricating confession. The victim was tied across a board by their ankles and wrists, rollers at either end of the board were turned by pulling the body in opposite directions until dislocation of every joint occurred. According to Puigblanch, quoted in Mason's History of the Inquisition,
The Rack was an instrument of torture often used in the Middle Ages, and a popular means of extricating confession. The victim was tied across a board by their ankles and wrists, rollers at either end of the board were turned by pulling the body in opposite directions until dislocation of every joint occurred. According to Puigblanch, quoted in Mason's History of the Inquisition,
"in this attitude he experienced eight strong contortions in
his limbs, namely, two of the fleshy parts of the arms above the elbows, and
two below; one on each thigh, and also on the legs."
Bound, the heretic, could then be subjected to other forms of
torture for the exaltation of their faith.
The Rack was
extensively used during the Spanish Inquisition.
Other forms included the detainee being fastened in a groove upon
a table on his or her back. Suspended above was a gigantic pendulum, the ball
of which had a sharp edge on the lower section, and the pendulum lengthen with
every stroke. The victim sees this engine of destruction swinging to and fro
only a short distance from ones eyes.
Momentarily the keen edge comes nearer, and at length cuts the
skin, and gradually cuts deeper and deeper, until their life has fully expired.
The Stocks
With their feet in the stocks, two pieces of timber clamped together, over and under, both across each leg above the ankles. The soles of their feet then having been greased with lard, a blazing brazier was applied to them, and they were first blistered and then fried. At intervals a board was interposed between the fire and their feet and removed once they disobeyed the command to confess themselves of guilt for which they had been charged.
Being more painful, but less fatal than racking, this was the
torture most in vogue when the subject chanced to be of the female sex. It was
also favored in cases where children were to be persuaded to testify against their
parents. Slighter tortures consisted of binding a piece of iron to a limb and
putting a twister mark to force it inwards, as was pressing the fingers with
rods between them, or removing a nail from fingers or toes, which were all
highly practiced upon persons of not sufficient strength to support the pulley,
rack, or fire.
Water Torture
The victim's nostrils were pinched shut, and eight quarts of fluid were poured down the victim's throat through a funnel. Other techniques included forcing a cloth down the throat, while pouring water, which made a swallowing reflex pushing it further down into the stomach producing all the agonies of suffocation by drowning until the victim lost consciousness. Instead of water, the torture was sometimes conducted with boiling water or vinegar.
Water Torture
The victim's nostrils were pinched shut, and eight quarts of fluid were poured down the victim's throat through a funnel. Other techniques included forcing a cloth down the throat, while pouring water, which made a swallowing reflex pushing it further down into the stomach producing all the agonies of suffocation by drowning until the victim lost consciousness. Instead of water, the torture was sometimes conducted with boiling water or vinegar.
Death occurs from distention or rupturing of the stomach. One of
the many cases recorded by the Inquisition, was in 1598 concerning a captured
man, who was accused of being a werewolf and "possessed by a demon"
while in prison. The official report states only that he had such a thirst that
he drank a large tubful of water so that his belly was "distended and
hard", and then later died.
The Heretics Fork
This instrument consisted of two little forks one set against the other, with the four prongs plunged into the flesh, under the chin and above the chest, with hands secured firmly behind their backs. A small collar supported the instrument in such a manner that the victims were usually forced to hold their head erect, thus preventing any movement.
The forks did not penetrate any vital points, and thus suffering
was prolonged and death was always nearly avoided. The pointed prongs on each
end to crane the persons head made speech or movement near impossible. The
Heretics Fork was very common during the height of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Pear
The pear was a torture device used on females. This device was inserted into the vagina, or mouth of the victim and then expanded by force of the screw to the maximum aperture setting of the victims cavity. The antrum would then irremediably become lacerated, nearly always fatally, ripping the tissue, flesh and membranes.
The Pear
The pear was a torture device used on females. This device was inserted into the vagina, or mouth of the victim and then expanded by force of the screw to the maximum aperture setting of the victims cavity. The antrum would then irremediably become lacerated, nearly always fatally, ripping the tissue, flesh and membranes.
This item became extensively applied throughout the Spanish
Inquisition to force confessions from those accused of Witchcraft. The
pointed prongs at the end of the segments serve better to rip into the throat,
the intestines or the cervix. Many paid dearly when the Pear was their fate.
The Branks
The Branks, also sometimes called Dame's Bridle, or Scold's Bridle comprised of a metal facial mask and spiked mouth depressor that was implemented on housewives up until the early 19th century. Many clergymen sustained in this husband's right to handle his wife, and to use "salutary restraints in every case of misbehavior" without the intervention of what some court records of 1824 referred to as "vexatious prosecutions."
Generally a husband would need only to accuse his wife of
disagreeing with his decisions, at which the Branks could be applied. The
subject would then be paraded through the streets, or chained to the market
cross where she was exposed to public ridicule.
The Wheel
The wheel was one of the most popular and insidious methods of torture and execution practiced. The giant spiked wheel was able to break bodies as it rolled forward, causing the most agonizing and drawn-out death. Other forms include the "braided" wheel, where the victim would be tied to the execution dock or platform. Their limbs were spread and tied to stakes or iron rings on the ground. Slices of wood were placed under the main joints, wrists, ankles, knees, hips, and elbows. The executioner would then smash every joint with the iron-tyred edge of the wheel--however the executioner would avoid fatal blows to give the victim a painful death.
The Wheel
The wheel was one of the most popular and insidious methods of torture and execution practiced. The giant spiked wheel was able to break bodies as it rolled forward, causing the most agonizing and drawn-out death. Other forms include the "braided" wheel, where the victim would be tied to the execution dock or platform. Their limbs were spread and tied to stakes or iron rings on the ground. Slices of wood were placed under the main joints, wrists, ankles, knees, hips, and elbows. The executioner would then smash every joint with the iron-tyred edge of the wheel--however the executioner would avoid fatal blows to give the victim a painful death.
According to a German chronicler, the victim was transformed into
a huge screaming puppet writhing in their own blood. It looked like a sea
monster with four tentacles, and raw slimy shapeless flesh, mixed with
splinters of bone. After the smashing had taken place the victim would
literally be "braided" into the wheel and hung horizontally at the
top of the pole.
The Breast Ripper
The name of this device speaks for itself. Women condemned of heresy, blasphemy, adultery, and witchcraft often felt the wrath of this device as it violently tore a breast from their torso.
The Breast Ripper
The name of this device speaks for itself. Women condemned of heresy, blasphemy, adultery, and witchcraft often felt the wrath of this device as it violently tore a breast from their torso.
This device was highly put into service during the massacre of the
Danes.
Hanging cages
These cages were usually hung around the outsides of town halls and ducal palaces, they were also near the town's hall of justice and surprisingly cathedrals. The victim, naked and exposed, would slowly wither from hunger and thirst. The weather would second the victims death by heat stroke and sunburn in the summer and cold in the winter.
The victims and corpses were usually previously mutilated before
being put in the cages to make a more edifying example of the punishment. The
cadavers were left in the cages until the bones literally fell apart.
The Garotte
Originally, the garotte was simply hanging by another name. However, during Medieval times, executioners began to refine the use of rope until it became as feared and as vile as any serious punishments. Executioners first used the garotte to end the suffering of heretics broken on the wheel, but by the turn of the 18th century the seed of an idea involving slow strangulation was planted in the minds of lawmakers.
At first, garottes were
nothing more than an upright post with a hole bored through. The victim would
stand or sit on a seat in front of the post and chanting crowd, and a rope was
looped around his or her neck. The ends of the cords were fed through the hole
in the post. The executioner would then pull on both ends of the cord, or twist
them tourniquet-styled, slowly strangling the victim. Later modifications
included a spike fixed into the wood frame at the back of the victim's neck,
parting the vertebrae as the rope tighten.
The Head Crusher
With the victim's chin placed on the lower bar, a screw then forces the cap down on the victims cranium. The recipients teeth are crushed and forced into the sockets to smash the surrounding bone. The eyes are compressed from their sockets and brain from the fractured skull.
This device, although not a form of capital punishment, is still
used for interrogational purposes. It was to inflict extreme agony and shock
and leave the victim in its grasp for hours. Other methods included the head
screw (below) which was placed around the forehead and tighten. The accused
became so frantic by the extreme panic of having their head crushed that they
confessed to anything.
Burnt at the Stake
If the Inquisitor wanted to be sure no relics were left behind by an accused and convicted heretic, he would select death by burning at the stake as the preferred method of execution. With few exceptions, death came from being burned alive. Frequently, burning a victim at the stake was cause for a crowd. Not content to merely learn about the spectacle after it was over, the masses wanted to be entertained.
Burnt at the Stake
If the Inquisitor wanted to be sure no relics were left behind by an accused and convicted heretic, he would select death by burning at the stake as the preferred method of execution. With few exceptions, death came from being burned alive. Frequently, burning a victim at the stake was cause for a crowd. Not content to merely learn about the spectacle after it was over, the masses wanted to be entertained.
Reflecting on those facts, and understanding such events occurred
"under the law," one can clearly understand how Thomas Hobbes (this is a contemporary biography) came to the
conclusions he did about man in a state of nature.
If man is capable of such violence and inhumanity in a state of
civilization, of what is he capable when there are no laws and there is no
society?
(Carole D. Bos)
The Iron Maiden
The Iron Maiden or Virgin of Nuremberg was a tomb-sized container with folding doors. The object was to inflict punishment, then death. Upon the inside of the door were vicious spikes. As the prisoner was shut inside he or she would be pierced along the length of their body. The talons were not designed to kill outright.
The Iron Maiden or Virgin of Nuremberg was a tomb-sized container with folding doors. The object was to inflict punishment, then death. Upon the inside of the door were vicious spikes. As the prisoner was shut inside he or she would be pierced along the length of their body. The talons were not designed to kill outright.
The pinioned prisoner was left to slowly perish in the utmost
pain. Some models included two spikes that were driven into the eyes causing
blindness. One of these diabolical machines was exhibited in 1892.
The Strappado
One of the most common torture techniques. All one needed to set up a strappado was a sturdy rafter and a rope. The victim's wrists were bound behind their back, and the rope would be tossed over the beam.
The Strappado
One of the most common torture techniques. All one needed to set up a strappado was a sturdy rafter and a rope. The victim's wrists were bound behind their back, and the rope would be tossed over the beam.
The victim was repeatedly dropped from a height, so that their
arms and shoulders would dislocate. This was a punishment of the Secret
Tribunal until 1820.
The Boots
Also known as the bootikens. The legs of the patient were usually placed between two planks of wood, which they binded with cords and wedges. The torturer used a large, heavy hammer to pound the wedges, driving them closer together.
The Boots
Also known as the bootikens. The legs of the patient were usually placed between two planks of wood, which they binded with cords and wedges. The torturer used a large, heavy hammer to pound the wedges, driving them closer together.
Forceful blows were used to squeeze the legs to jelly, lacerating
flesh, protruding the shins, and crushing the bones; sometimes so that marrow
gushed out. Once unloosed the bones fall to pieces, rendering the legs useless.
This torture was most overwhelming, as one can imagine.
Judas Cradle
The victim was stripped, hoisted and hung over this pointed pyramid with iron belts. Their legs were stretched out frontwards, or their ankles pulled down by weights. The tormentor would then drop the accused onto the pyramid penetrating both orifices. With their muscles contracted, they were usually unable to relax and fall asleep.
Judas Cradle
The victim was stripped, hoisted and hung over this pointed pyramid with iron belts. Their legs were stretched out frontwards, or their ankles pulled down by weights. The tormentor would then drop the accused onto the pyramid penetrating both orifices. With their muscles contracted, they were usually unable to relax and fall asleep.
As mentioned by Anne
Barstowe, the torturers took high advantage of positions of authority to
indulge in the most pornographic sessions of sexual control over heretics.
The Guillotine
The Guillotine became the official instrument of execution in France in 1792, during the French Revolution. The device was named for Joseph Ignace Guillotine (1738-1814), a member of the Revolutionary assembly. He regarded the device as a quick and merciful type of execution. A guillotine had two posts joined by a crossbeam at the top. A heavy steel knife with a slanting edge fit in grooves in the posts. A cord held the knife in place.
When the executioner cut the cord, the knife dropped and cut off
the victim's head. It was not until 1981, that France abolished capital
punishment, and that the use of the guillotine ended. The Guillotine family
were later forced to change their surname's as a direct result of this
invention.
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The Holy Inquisitions
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The Holy Inquisitions
"If women become tired or even die, that does not matter. Let
them die in childbirth, that is why they are there."
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Leader of the German Reformation--a religious
movement that led to the ultimate birth of Protestantism
The Holy Witchhunts
The term witch comes from the Old English word wicca, which is derived from the Germanic root wic, meaning to bend or to turn. Such accounts of witchcraft are found extensively in antiquity from Medea who employed sorcery to help Jason win the Golden Fleece, to the Witch of Endor in the Old Testament by whom King Saul consulted.
The term witch comes from the Old English word wicca, which is derived from the Germanic root wic, meaning to bend or to turn. Such accounts of witchcraft are found extensively in antiquity from Medea who employed sorcery to help Jason win the Golden Fleece, to the Witch of Endor in the Old Testament by whom King Saul consulted.
Most justification of the persecution of witches in Europe all
later based themselves on such biblical percepts as commanded through that,
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. (with Exodus.22:18 )",
or that "the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they
sacrifice to devils, and not to God;
and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. (1 Cor. 10:20)"
These imputations from the 8th century and up then saw witchcraft
becoming highly associated with apostasy with extensive and very violent
campaigns taking place to mark its spread.
Woman's chamber
inside Inquisition Cathedral at Nuremberg.
In The Dark Side of
Christian History, Helen Ellerbe
provided a baseline on the 300 year period of witch hunting from the fifteenth
to the eighteenth century, in what R.H.
Robbins calls "the shocking nightmare, the foulest crime and deepest
shame of western civilization," that ensured the European abandonment of
the belief in magic. The Church created the elaborate concept of devil
worship and then, used the persecution of it to wipe out dissent, subordinate
the individual to authoritarian control, and openly denigrate women.
The witchhunts became an
eruption of orthodox Christianity's
vilification of women, or "the weaker vessel," in St. Peter's words.
The second century St. Clement of Alexandria wrote:
"Every woman should be filled with shame by the thought that
she is a woman."
The sixth century Christian
philosopher, Boethius, wrote in The
Consolation of Philosophy,
"Woman is a temple built upon a sewer."
Bishops at the sixth century Council
of Macon voted as to whether women had souls. In the tenth century Odo
of Cluny declared,
"To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure..."
The thirteenth century St. Thomas Aquinas suggested that God had made a mistake in creating
woman:
"nothing [deficient] or defective should have been produced
in the first establishment of things; so woman ought not to have been produced
then."
Lutherans at Wittenberg debated whether women were really human
beings at all. Orthodox Christians
held women responsible for all sin. As the Bible's
Apocrypha states,
"Of woman came the beginning of sin/ And thanks to her, we
all must die."
It is women who are often understood to be impediments to
spirituality in a context where God
reigns strictly from heaven and demands a renunciation of physical pleasure. As
I Corinthians 7:1 states,
"It is a good thing for a man to have nothing to do with a
woman."
The Inquisitors
explained that women are more likely to become witches than men because the
female sex is more concerned with things of the flesh than men; being formed
from a man's rib, they are only "imperfect animals" and
"crooked" whereas man belongs to a privileged sex from whose midst Christ emerged.
King James I
estimated that the ratio of women to men who succumbed to witchcraft was twenty
to one. Of those formally persecuted for witchcraft, between 80 to 90 percent
were women.
Burning Iron Chair:
consisted of
sharpened iron nails that could be heated red hot from below.
The victim would be
bound and then slowly roasted
in the open air as
the coals heated the iron.
The persecution of witchcraft also enabled the Church to prolong the profitability of the Inquisition. The
Inquisition had left regions so economically destitute that the inquisitor Eymeric complained,
"In our days there are no more rich heretics... it is a pity
that so salutary an institution as ours should be so uncertain of its
future."
The Inquisition exposed a whole new group of people from whom to collect money.
It took every advantage of this opportunity.
The author Barbara Walker
notes:
"Victims were charged for the very ropes that bound them and
the wood that burned them. Each procedure of torture carried its fee. After the
execution of a wealthy witch, officials usually treated themselves to a banquet
at the expense of the victim's estate."
Burning at the stake
was the chief fate of accused witches.
(Image: Library of
Congress)
Others where hanged,
or crushed.
One way of
determinating the guilt of witches,
was the ducking or
ducking stool,
in which her hands
and feet were tied up together
and then her body was
thrown off a bridge into the water.
If she floated, she
was declared a witch.
If she sank, and
drowned, she was declared innocent.
The process of formally persecuting witches followed the grinding
inquisitional procedure. Once accused of witchcraft, it was virtually
impossible to escape conviction. After cross-examination, the victim's body was
examined for the witch's mark. The historian Walter Nigg described the process:
...she was stripped naked and the executioner shaved off all her
body hair in order to seek in the hidden places of the body the sign which the
devil imprinted on his cohorts.
Warts, freckles, and birthmarks were considered certain tokens of
amorous relations with Satan. Should a woman show no sign of a witch's mark,
guilt could still be established by methods such as sticking needles in the
accused's eyes. The confession was then extracted by the hideous methods of
torture already developed during earlier phases of the Inquisition.
"Loathe they are to
confess without torture," wrote King James I in his Daemonologie.
A physician serving in witch prisons spoke of women driven half
mad:
"by frequent torture... kept in prolonged squalor and
darkness of their dungeons... and constantly dragged out to undergo atrocious
torment until they would gladly exchange at any moment this most bitter
existence for death, are willing to confess whatever crimes are suggested to
them rather than to be thrust back into their hideous dungeon amid ever
recurring torture."
Unless the witch died during torture, she was taken to the stake.
Since many of the burnings took place in public squares, inquisitors prevented
the victims from talking to the crowds by using wooden gags or cutting their
tongues out.
"What is the
difference whether it is in a wife or a mother,
it is still Eve the
temptress that we must beware of in any woman...
I fail to see what
use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function
of bearing children."
of bearing children."
- Saint Augustine
(the prominent pioneer of Western theology)
The sexual mutilation of accused witches was not uncommon. With
the orthodox understanding that divinity had little or nothing to do with the
physical world, sexual desire was perceived to be unGodly. When the men persecuting the accused witches found
themselves sexually aroused, they assumed that such desire emanated, not from
themselves, but from the woman. They attacked breasts and genitals with
pincers, pliers and red-hot irons.
Some rules pardoned sexual abuse by allowing men deemed
"zealous Catholics" to visit female prisoners in solitary confinement
while not allowing female visitors. The people of Toulouse were so convinced
that the inquisitor Foulques de
Saint-George arraigned women for no other reason than to sexually abuse
them that they took the dangerous and unusual step of gathering evidence
against him.
Old, wise healing women were particular targets for witch-hunters as well.
Old, wise healing women were particular targets for witch-hunters as well.
"At this day," wrote Reginald Scot in 1584,
"it is indifferent to say in the English tongue, 'she is a witch' or 'she
is a wise woman.'"
Common people of pre-reformational Europe relied upon wise women
and men for the treatment of illness rather than upon churchmen, monks or
physicians. Robert Burton wrote in
1621:
Sorcerers are too common; cunning men, wizards and white witches,
as they call them, in every village, which, if they be sought unto, will help
almost all infirmities of body and mind.
By combining their knowledge of medicinal herbs with an entreaty
for divine assistance, these healers provided both more affordable and most
often more effective medicine than was available elsewhere. Churchmen of the
Reformation objected to the magical nature of this sort of healing, to the
preference people had for it over the healing that the Church or
Church-licensed physicians offered, and to the power that it gave women. As a
by-product of the witch hunts, the field of early medicine also transferred to
exclusively male hands and the Western herbal tradition was largely destroyed.
Protestant and Catholic rivaled each other in the madness of the
hour. Witches were burned no longer
in ones and twos, but in scores and hundreds. A bishop of Geneva is said to
have burned five hundred within three months, a bishop of Bamburg six hundred,
a bishop of Wurzburg nine hundred. Eight hundred were condemned, apparently in
one body, by the Senate of Savoy. Nicholaus
Remigius, the criminal judge in Lorraine, boasted that in 15 years he had
sent to death 900 people for the crime of witchcraft. In one year alone he
forced 16 witches to commit suicide.
The Archbishop of Treves burned a hundred and eighteen women and
two men, from whom confessions had been extorted that their incantations had
prolonged the winter. Paramo boasts that in a century and a half from
the commencement of the sect, in 1404, the
Holy Office had burned at least 30,000 witches. Cumanus, in Italy,
burned 41 women in one province alone. Strasbourg, burned 5000 in a period of
20 years.
It was reported in 1518 when the Senate was officially informed
that the inquisitor had burned 70 witches of the Valcamonica, that he had as
many in his prisons, and that those suspected or accused amounted to about
5000, or one fourth of the inhabitants of the valleys. In Germany 500 were
burned in 1515 and 1516. In 1524, 1000 females accused of being witches died at
Como, and for several years subsequently, the number of victims exceeded 100
annually.
In France, about 1520, the fires for the execution of witches
blazed in almost every town; in one township in Piedmont there was not a family
that had not lost a member; at Verneuil in 1561, women were burned on the
charged of having converted themselves into cats. The delusion spread like an
epidemic through the villages. Many women were murdered by mobs. At Leith, in
Scotland, 9 women were burned together in 1664; the bishops’ palaces of South
Germany basically became shambles--the lordly prelates of Salzburg, Wurzburg,
and Bamberg taking lead in the butchery.
The executioner of Neisse in Silesia even invented an oven in
which he roasted to death 42 women and young girls in one year. Within 9 years
he had roasted over a 1000 people, including children 2 to 4 years old. In
Wurzburg many children were burned, some no older than 9 years.
A History of the Inquisition In The Middle Ages.
By Henry Charles Lea - 1888
By Henry Charles Lea - 1888
Chapter IX. The Inquisitorial Process
The procedure
of the episcopal courts, as described in a former chapter, was based on the
principles of the Roman law, and whatever may have been its abuses in practice,
it was equitable in theory, and its processes were limited by strictly defined
rules. In the Inquisition all this was changed, and if we would rightly
appreciate its methods we must understand the relations which the inquisitor
conceived to exist between himself and the offenders brought before his
tribunal.
As a judge, he
was vindicating the faith and avenging God for the wrongs inflicted on him by
misbelief. He was more than a judge, however, he was a father-confessor
striving for the salvation of the wretched souls perversely bent on perdition.
In both capacities he acted with an authority far higher than that of an
earthly judge. If his sacred mission was accomplished, it mattered little what
methods were used. If the offender asked mercy for his unpardonable crime it
must be through the most unreserved submission to the spiritual father who was
seeking to save him from the endless torment of hell. The first thing demanded
of him when he appeared before the tribunal was an oath to stand to the
mandates of the Church, to answer truly all questions asked of him, to betray
all heretics known to him, and to perform whatever penance might be imposed on
him; and refusal to take this oath was to proclaim himself at once a defiant
and obstinate heretic.
In the
Cismontane Inquisition the preliminary oath seems only to pledge the accused to
tell the truth as to himself and others (Eymeric. p. 421). In Italy, however,
it was the more elaborate affair described in the text. In the trials of the
Guglielmites at Milan, in 1300, the accused were, in addition, made to impose.
The duty of
the inquisitor, moreover, was distinguished from that of the ordinary judge by
the fact that the task assigned to him was the impossible one of ascertaining
the secret thoughts and opinions of the prisoner. External acts were to him
only of value as indications of belief, to be accepted or rejected as he might
deem them conclusive or illusory. The crime he sought to suppress by punishment
was purely a mental one--acts, however criminal, were beyond his jurisdiction.
The murderers of St. Peter Martyr were prosecuted, not as assassins, but as
fautors of heresy and impeders of the Inquisition.
The usurer
only came within his purview when he asserted or showed by his acts that he
considered usury no sin; the sorcerer when his incantations proved that he
preferred to rely on the powers of demons rather than those of God, or that he
entertained wrongful notions upon the sacraments. Zanghino tells us that he
witnessed the condemnation of a concubinary priest by the Inquisition, who was
punished not for his licentiousness, but because while thus polluted he
celebrated daily mass and urged in excuse that he considered himself purified
by putting on the sacred vestments.
Then, too,
even doubt was heresy; the believer must have fixed and unwavering faith, and
it was the inquisitor's business to ascertain this condition of his mind.
External acts and verbal professions were as naught. The accused might be
regular in his attendance at mass; he might be liberal in his oblations,
punctual in confession and communion, and yet be a heretic at heart. When
brought before the tribunal he might profess the most unbounded submission to
the decisions of the Holy See, the strictest adherence to orthodox doctrine,
the freest readiness to subscribe to whatever was demanded of him, and yet be
secretly a Catharan or a Vaudois, fit only for the stake.
Other Forms Of Action Discouraged
Few, indeed,
were there who courageously admitted their heresy when brought before the
tribunal, and to the conscientious judge, eager to destroy the foxes which ravaged
the vineyard of the Lord, the task of exploring the secret heart of man was no
easy one. We cannot wonder that he speedily emancipated himself from the
trammels of recognized judicial procedure which, in preventing him from
committing injustice, would have rendered his labors futile. Still less can we
be surprised that fanatic zeal, arbitrary cruelty, and insatiable cupidity
rivalled each other in building up a system unspeakably atrocious. Omniscience
alone was capable of solving with justice the problems which were the daily
routine of the inquisitor; human frailty, resolved to accomplish a
predetermined end, inevitably reached the practical conclusion that the
sacrifice of a hundred innocent men were better than the escape of one guilty.
Thus of the
three forms of criminal actions, accusation, denunciation, and inquisition, the
latter necessarily became, in place of an exception, the invariable rule, and
at the same time it was stripped of the safeguards by which its dangerous
tendencies had been in some degree neutralized. If a formal accuser presented
himself, the inquisitor was instructed to discourage him by pointing out the
danger of the talio to which he was
exposed by inscribing himself; and by general consent this form of action was
rejected in consequence of its being "litigious"--that is, because it
afforded the accused some opportunities of defence. That there was danger to
the accuser, and that the Inquisition practically discouraged the process, was
shown in 1304, when an inquisitor, Frà Landulfo, imposed a fine of one
hundred and fifty ounces of gold on the town of Theate because it had
officially accused a man of heresy and had failed in the proof. The action by
denunciation was less objectionable, because in it the inquisitor acted ex officio; but it was unusual, and the
inquisitorial process at an early period became substantially the only one
followed.
To appreciate
the contrast between the processes of the Inquisition and of the secular courts,
it will suffice to allude to the practice of the latter in Milan in the first
half of the fourteenth century.
Not only, as
we shall see, were its safeguards withdrawn, but virtually the presumption of
guilt was assumed in advance. About 1278 an experienced inquisitor lays down
the rule as one generally received, that in places much suspected of heresy
every inhabitant must be cited to appear, must be forced to abjure heresy and
to tell the truth, and be subjected to a detailed interrogatory about himself and
others, in which any lack of frankness will subject him hereafter to the
dreadful penalties of relapse. That this was not a mere theoretical proposition
appears from the great inquests held by Bernard de Caux and Jean de
Saint-Pierre in 1245 and 1246, when there are recorded two hundred and thirty
interrogatories of inhabitants of the little town of Avignonet, one hundred of
those of Fanjeaux, and four hundred and twenty of Mas-Saintes-Puelles.
From this
responsibility there was no escape for any one who had reached the age at which
the Church held him able to answer for his own acts. What this age was,
however, was a subject of dispute. The Councils of Toulouse, Béziers, and Albi
assumed it to be fourteen for males and twelve for females, when they prescribed
the oath of abjuration to be taken by the whole population, and this rule was
adopted by some authorities.
Minors And Absentees
Others
contented themselves with the definition that the child must be old enough to
understand the purport of an oath, while there were not wanting high
authorities who reduced the age of responsibility to seven years, and those who
more charitably fixed it at nine and a half for girls and ten and a half for
boys.
It is true
that in Latin countries, where minority did not cease until the age of
twenty-five, no one beneath that age had a standing in court, but this was
readily evaded by appointing for him a "curator," under whose shadow
he could be tortured and condemned; and when we are told that no one below the
age of fourteen should be tortured, we are left to conjecture the minimum age
of responsibility for heresy.
Nor could the
offender escape by absenting himself. Absence was contumacy and only increased
his guilt, by adding a fresh and unpardonable offence, besides being
technically tantamount to confession. In fact, before the Inquisition was
thought of, the inquisitorial process was rendered absolute in ecclesiastical
jurisprudence precisely to meet such cases, as when Innocent III. degraded the
Bishop of Coire on evidence taken ex
parte by his commissioners, after the bishop had repeatedly refused to
appear before them; and the importance of this decision is shown by the fact
that Raymond of Pennaforte embodied it in the canon law to prove that in cases
of contumacy the testimony taken in an inquisitio
was valid ground for condemnation without a litis
contestatio or contest between the prosecution and the defence.
Accordingly,
when a party failed to appear, after due citation published in his parish
church and proper delay, there was no hesitation in proceeding against him to
conviction in absentia--the absence
of the culprit being piously supplied by "the presence of God and the
Gospels" when the sentence was rendered. Contumacious absence, in fact,
was in itself enough.
Frederic II.
in his earliest edict, in 1220, following the Lateran Council of 1215, had
declared that the suspect who did not clear himself within twelve months was to
be condemned as a heretic, and this was applied to the absent, who were ordered
to be sentenced after a year's excommunication, whether anything was proved
against them or not. Enduring excommunication for a year without seeking its
removal was evidence of heresy as to the sacraments and the power of the keys,
if as to nothing else; and some authorities were so rigid with regard to this
that the Council of Béziers denounced the punishment of heresy for all who
remained excommunicate for forty days.
Even the delay
of a twelvemonth, however, was evaded, for inquisitors were instructed when
citing the absent to summon them, not only to appear, but to purge themselves
within a given time, and then as soon as it had elapsed the accused was held to
be convicted. Yet the extreme penalty of relaxation was rarely enforced in such
cases, and the Inquisition contented itself generally with imprisoning for life
those against whom no offence was proved save contumacy, unless, indeed, when
caught they refused to submit and abjure.
As little was
there any escape by death. It mattered not that the sinner had been called to
the judgment-seat of God, the faith must be vindicated by his condemnation and
the faithful be edified by his punishment. If he had incurred only imprisonment
or the lighter penalties, his bones were simply dug up and cast out. If his
heresy had deserved the stake, they were solemnly burned. A simulacrum of
defence was allowed to heirs and descendants, on whom were visited the heavy
penalties of confiscation and personal disabilities. How unflagging was the
zeal with which these mortuary prosecutions were sometimes carried on is
visible in the case of Armanno Pongilupo of Ferrara, over whose remains war was
waged between the Bishop and the Inquisitor of Ferrara for thirty-two years
after his death, in 1269, ending with the triumph of the Inquisition in 1301.
No prescription of time barred the Church in these matters, as the heirs and
descendants of Gherardo of Florence found when, in 1313, Frà Grimaldo the
inquisitor commenced a successful prosecution against their ancestor who had
died prior to 1250.
Disregard Of Forms
At best the
inquisitorial process was a dangerous one in its conjunction of prosecutor with
judge, and when it was first introduced in ecclesiastical jurisprudence careful
limitations to prevent abuse were felt to be absolutely essential. The danger
was doubled when the prosecuting judge was an earnest zealot bent on upholding
the faith and predetermined on seeing in every prisoner before him a heretic to
be convicted at any cost; nor was the danger lessened when he was merely
rapacious and eager for fines and confiscations. Yet the theory of the Church
was that the inquisitor was an impartial spiritual father whose functions in
the salvation of souls should be fettered by no rules.
All the safeguards
which human experience had shown to be necessary in judicial proceedings of the
most trivial character were deliberately cast aside in these cases, where life
and reputation and property through three generations were involved. Every
doubtful point was decided "in favor of the faith." The inquisitor,
with endless iteration, was empowered and instructed to proceed summarily, to
disregard forms, to permit no impediments arising from judicial rules or the
wrangling of advocates, to shorten the proceedings as much as possible by
depriving the accused of the ordinary facilities of defence, and by rejecting
all appeals and dilatory exceptions. The validity of the result was not to be
vitiated by the omission at any stage of the trial of the forms which had been
devised to prevent injustice and subject the judge to responsibility.
Had the
proceedings been public, there might have been some check upon this hideous
system, but the Inquisition shrouded itself in the awful mystery of secrecy
until after sentence had been awarded and it was ready to impress the multitude
with the fearful solemnities of the auto
de fé. Unless proclamation were to be made for an absentee, the citation
of a suspected heretic was made in secret.
All knowledge
of what took place after he presented himself was confined to the few discreet
men selected by his judge, who were sworn to inviolable silence, and even the
experts assembled to consult over his fate were subjected to similar oaths. The
secrets of that dismal tribunal were guarded with the same caution, and we are
told by Bernard Gui that extracts from the records were to be furnished rarely
and only with the most careful discretion. Paramo, in the quaint pedantry with
which he ingeniously proves that God was the first inquisitor and the
condemnation of Adam and Eve the first model of the inquisitorial process,
triumphantly points out that he judged them in secret, thus setting the example
which the Inquisition is bound to follow, and avoiding the subtleties which the
criminals would have raised in their defence, especially at the suggestion of
the crafty serpent. That he called no witnesses is explained by the confession
of the accused, and ample legal authority is cited to show that these
confessions were sufficient to justify the conviction and punishment.
If this
blasphemous absurdity raises a smile, it has also its melancholy side, for it
reveals to us the view which the inquisitors themselves took of their
functions, assimilating themselves to God and wielding an irresponsible power
which nothing short of divine wisdom could prevent from being turned by human
passions into an engine of the most deadly injustice. Released from all the
restraint of publicity and unrestricted by the formalities of law, the
procedure of the Inquisition, as Zanghino tells us, was purely arbitrary. How
the inquisitors construed their powers and what use they made of their
discretion we shall have abundant opportunity of seeing hereafter.
Usual Course of Trial
The ordinary
course of a trial by the Inquisition was this. A man would be reported to the
inquisitor as of ill-repute for heresy, or his name would occur in the
confessions of other prisoners.
A secret
inquisition would be made and all accessible evidence against him would be
collected. He would then be secretly cited to appear at a given time, and bail
taken to secure his obedience, or if he were suspected of flight, he would be
suddenly arrested and confined until the tribunal was ready to give him a
hearing. Legally there required to be three citations, but this was eluded by
making the summons "one for three;" when the prosecution was based on
common report the witnesses were called apparently at random, making a sort of
drag-net, and when the mass of surmises and gossip, exaggerated and distorted
by the natural fear of the witnesses, eager to save themselves from suspicion
of favoring heretics, grew sufficient for action, the blow would fall. The
accused was thus prejudged. He was assumed to be guilty, or he would not have
been put on trial, and virtually his only mode of escape was by confessing the
charges made against him, abjuring heresy, and accepting whatever punishment
might be imposed on him in the shape of penance. Persistent denial of guilt and
assertion of orthodoxy, when there was evidence against him, rendered him an
impenitent, obstinate heretic, to be abandoned to the secular arm and consigned
to the stake.
The process
thus was an exceedingly simple one, and is aptly summarized by an inquisitor of
the fifteenth century in an argument against admitting the accused to bail. If
one is caught in heresy, by his own confession, and is impenitent, he is to be
delivered to the secular arm to be put to death; if penitent, he is to be
thrust in prison for life, and therefore is not to be let loose on bail; if he
denies, and is legitimately convicted by witnesses, he is, as an impenitent, to
be delivered to the secular court to be executed.
The contrast
between this and the secular jurisprudence of the thirteenth century is
illustrated in the charter granted by Alphonse of Poitiers to the town of Auzon
(Auvergne), about 1260.
Yet many
reasons led the inquisitor earnestly to desire to secure confession. In
numerous cases--indeed, no doubt in a majority--the evidence, while possibly
justifying suspicion, was of too loose and undefined a character to justify
condemnation, for every idle rumor was taken up, and any flimsy pretext which
led to prosecution assumed importance when the inquisitor found himself bound
to show that he had not acted unadvisedly, or when he had in prospect fines and
confiscations for the benefit of the faith. Even when the evidence was
sufficient, there were motives equally strong to induce the inquisitor to labor
with his prisoner in the hope of leading him to withdraw his denial and throw
himself upon the mercy of the tribunal. Except in the somewhat rare cases of
defiant heretics, confession was always accompanied with professions of
conversion and repentance. Not only thus was a soul snatched from Satan, but
the new convert was bound to prove his sincerity by denouncing all whom he knew
or might suspect to be heretic, thus opening fresh avenues for the extirpation
of heresy.
Bernard Gui,
copying an earlier inquisitor, tells us eloquently that when the external
evidence was insufficient for conviction, the mind of the inquisitor was torn
with anxious cares. On the one side, his conscience pained him if he punished
one who was neither confessed nor convicted; but he suffered still more,
knowing by constant experience the falsity and cunning and malice of these men,
if he allowed them to escape through their vulpine astuteness, to the damage of
the faith. In such case they were strengthened and multiplied, and rendered
keener than ever, while the laity were scandalized at seeing the inefficiency
of the Inquisition, baffled in its undertakings, and its most learned men
played with and defied by rude and illiterate persons, for they believed the
inquisitors to have all the proofs and arguments of the faith so ready at hand
that no heretic could elude them or prevent their converting him. From this it
is easy to see how the self-conceit of the inquisitor led him inevitably to
conviction.
Delation Indispensable
In another
passage he points out how greatly profitable to the faith was the conversion of
such persons, because not only were they obliged to betray their fellows and
the hiding-places and conventicles of darkness, but those whom they had
influenced were more ready to acknowledge their errors and seek in turn to be
converted. As early as 1246 the Council of Béziers had pointed out the utility
of such conversions, and had instructed the inquisitors to spare no pains in
procuring them, and all subsequent authorities evidently regarded this as the
first of their duties. They all agree, moreover, in holding delation of
accomplices as the indispensable evidence of true conversion. Without this the
repentant heretic in vain might ask for reconciliation and mercy; his refusal
to betray his friends and kindred was proof that he was unrepentant, and he was
forthwith handed over to the secular arm, exactly as in the Roman law a
converted Manichæan who consorted with Manichæans without denouncing them to
the authorities was punishable with death.
How useful
this was is seen in the case of Saurine Rigaud, whose confession is recorded at
Toulouse in 1254, where it is followed by a list of one hundred and sixty-nine
persons incriminated by her, their names being carefully tabulated with their
places of residence for immediate action. How strictly, moreover, the duty of
the reconciled heretic was construed is seen in the fate of Guillem Sicrède at
Toulouse in 1312. He had abjured and been reconciled in 1262. Fifty years
afterwards, in 1311, he had been present at the death-bed of his brother, where
heretication had been performed, and he had failed to betray it, though he had
vainly objected to it.
When asked for
his reasons, he simply said that he had not wished to injure his nephews, and
for this, in 1312, he was imprisoned for life. Delation was so indispensable to
the Inquisition that it was to be secured by rewards as well as by punishments.
Bernard Gui tells us that those who voluntarily come forward and prove their
zeal by confession and by betraying all their associates are not only to be pardoned,
but their livelihood must be secured at the hands of princes and prelates;
while betraying a single "perfected" heretic insured immunity and
perhaps additional reward.
The
inquisitor's anxiety to secure confession was well grounded, not only through
the advantages thus secured, but to satisfy his own conscience. In ordinary
crimes, a judge was usually certain that an offence had been committed before
he undertook to prosecute a prisoner accused of murder or theft. In many cases,
however, the inquisitor could have no assurance that there had been any crime.
A man might be
reasonably suspected, he might have been seen conversing with those
subsequently proved to be heretics, he might have given them alms or other
assistance, he might even have attended a meeting of heretics, and yet be
thoroughly orthodox at heart; or he might be a bitter heretic and yet have
given no outward sign. His own assertion of orthodoxy, his willingness to
subscribe to the faith of Rome, went for nothing, for experience had proved
that most heretics were willing to subscribe to anything, and that they had
been trained by persecution to conceal their beliefs under the mask of rigid
orthodoxy.
Confession of
heresy thus became a matter of vital importance, and no effort was deemed too
great, no means too repulsive, to secure it. This became the centre of the
inquisitorial process, and it is deserving of detailed consideration, not only
because it formed the basis of procedure in the Holy Office, but also because
of the vast and deplorable influence which it exercised for five centuries on
the whole judicial system of Continental Europe.
The first and
readiest means was, of course, the examination of the accused. For this the
inquisitor prepared himself by collecting and studying all the adverse evidence
that could be procured, while the prisoner was kept in sedulous ignorance of
the charges against him. Skill in interrogation was the one pre-eminent
requisite of the inquisitor, and manuals prepared by experienced brethren for
the benefit of the younger officials are full of details with regard to it and
of carefully prepared forms of interrogations suited for every heretical sect.
Constant training developed a class of acute and subtle minds, practised to
read the thoughts of the accused, skilled to lay pitfalls for the incautious,
versed in every art to confuse, prompt to detect ambiguities, and quick to take
advanage of hesitation or contradiction.
Even in the
infancy of the institution the consuls of Narbonne complained to those of Nimes
that the inquisitors, in their efforts to entrap the unwary, did not hesitate
to make use of dialectics as sophistical as those with which students
encountered each other in scholastic diversion. Nothing more ludicrous can well
be imagined than the complaints of these veteran examiners, restricted by no
rules, of the shrewd duplicity of their victims, who struggled, occasionally
with success, to avoid criminating themselves, and they sought to explain it by
asserting that wicked and shameless priests instructed them how to equivocate
on points of faith.
The Interragatory
An experienced
inquisitor drew up for the guidance of his successors a specimen examination of
a heretic, to show them the quibbles and tergiversations for which they must be
prepared when dealing with those who shrank from boldly denying their faith.
Its fidelity is attested by Bernard Gui reproducing it fifty years later in his
"Practica," and it is too characteristic an illustration of the
encounter between the trained intellect of the inquisitor and the untutored
shrewdness of the peasant struggling to save his life and his conscience, to be
omitted.
"When a
heretic is first brought up for examination, he assumes a confident air, as
though secure in his innocence. I ask him why he has been brought before me. He
replies, smiling and courteous, 'Sir, I would be glad to learn the cause from
you.'
"I. 'You
are accused as a heretic, and that you believe and teach otherwise than Holy
Church believes.'
"A.
(Raising his eyes to heaven, with an air of the greatest faith) 'Lord, thou
knowest that I am innocent of this, and that I never held any faith other than
that of true Christianity.'
"I. 'You
call your faith Christian, for you consider ours as false and heretical. But I
ask whether you have ever believed as true another faith than that which the
Roman Church holds to be true.
"A. 'I
believe the true faith which the Roman Church believes, and which you openly
preach to us.'
"I.
'Perhaps you have some of your sect at Rome whom you call the Roman Church. I,
when I preach, say many things, some of which are common to us both, as that
God liveth, and you believe some of what I preach. Nevertheless you may be a
heretic in not believing other matters which are to be believed.'
"A. 'I
believe all things that a Christian should believe.'
"I. 'I
know your tricks. What the members of your sect believe you hold to be that
which a Christian should believe. But we waste time in this fencing. Say
simply, Do you believe in one God the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost?'
"A. 'I
believe.'
"I. 'Do
you believe in Christ born of the Virgin, suffered, risen, and ascended to
heaven?'
"A.
(Briskly) 'I believe.'
"I. 'Do you
believe the bread and wine in the mass performed by the priests to be changed
into the body and blood of Christ by divine virtue?'
"A.
'Ought I not to believe this?'
"I. 'I
don't ask if you ought to believe, but if you do believe.'
"A. 'I
believe whatever you and other good doctors order me to believe.'
"I.
'Those good doctors are the masters of your sect; if I accord with them you
believe with me; if not, not.'
"A. 'I
willingly believe with you if you teach what is good to me.'
"I. 'You
consider it good to you if I teach what your other masters teach. Say, then, do
you believe the body of our Lord Jesus Christ to be in the altar?'
"A.
(Promptly) 'I believe.'
"I. 'You
know that a body is there, and that all bodies are of our Lord. I ask whether
the body there is of the Lord who was born of the Virgin, hung on the cross,
arose from the dead, ascended, etc.?'
"A. 'And
you, sir, do you not believe it?'
"I. 'I
believe it wholly.'
"A. 'I
believe likewise.' <429.png' proofer1='tenorcnj' proofer2='the Senior Gravedigger'/>
"I. 'You
believe that I believe it, which is not what I ask, but whether you believe
it.'
"A. 'If
you wish to interpret all that I say otherwise than simply and plainly, then I
don't know what to say. I am a simple and ignorant man. Pray don't catch me in
my words.'
"I. 'If
you are simple, answer simply, without evasions.'
"A.
'Willingly.'
"I. 'Will
you then swear that you have never learned anything contrary to the faith which
we hold to be true?'
"A.
(Growing pale) 'If I ought to swear, I will willingly swear.'
"I. 'I
don't ask whether you ought, but whether you will swear.'
"A. 'If
you order me to swear, I will swear.'
"I. 'I
don't force you to swear, because as you believe oaths to be unlawful, you will
transfer the sin to me who forced you; but if you will swear, I will hear it.'
"A. 'Why
should I swear if you do not order me to?'
"I. 'So
that you may remove the suspicion of being a heretic.'
"A. 'Sir,
I do not know how unless you teach me.'
"I. 'If I
had to swear, I would raise my hand and spread my fingers and say, "So
help me God, I have never learned heresy or believed what is contrary to the
true faith."'
"Then
trembling as if he cannot repeat the form, he will stumble along as though
speaking for himself or for another, so that there is not an absolute form of
oath and yet he may be thought to have sworn. If the words are there, they are
so turned around that he does not swear and yet appears to have sworn. Or he
converts the oath into a form of prayer, as as 'God help me that I am not a heretic
or the like;' and when asked whether he had sworn, he will say: 'Did you not
hear me swear?' And when further hard pressed he will appeal, saying 'Sir, if I
have done amiss in aught, I will willingly bear the penance, only help me to
avoid the infamy of which I am accused through malice and without fault of
mine.' But a vigorous inquisitor must not allow himself to be worked upon in
this way, but proceed firmly till he makes these people confess their error, or
at least publicly abjure heresy, so that if they are subsequently found to have
sworn falsely, he can, without further hearing, abandon them to the secular
arm. If one consents to swear that he is not a heretic, I say to him, 'If you
wish to swear so as to escape the stake, one oath will not suffice for me, nor
ten, nor a hundred, nor a thousand, because you dispense each other for a
certain number of oaths taken under necessity, but I will require a countless
number. Moreover, if I have, as I presume, adverse witnesses against you, your
oaths will not save you from being burned. You will only stain your conscience
without escaping death. But if you will simply confess your error, you may find
mercy.' Under this anxiety, I have seen some confess."
The same
inquisitor illustrates the ease with which the cunning of these simple folk
fenced and played with the best-trained men of the Holy Office by a case in
which he saw a serving-wench elude the questions of picked examiners for
several days together, and she would have escaped had there not by chance been
found in her chest the fragment of a bone of a heretic recently burned, which
she had preserved as a relic, according to one of her companions who had
collected the bones with her. But the inquisitor does not tell us how many
thousand good Catholics, confused by the awful game which they were playing,
mystified with the intricacies of scholastic theology, ignorant how to answer
the dangerous questions put to them so searchingly, and terrified with the
threats of burning for persistent denial, despairingly confessed the crime of
which they were so confidently assumed to be guilty, and ratified their
conversion by inventing tales about their neighbors, while expiating the wrong
by suffering confiscation and lifelong imprisonment.
Yet the
inquisitor was frequently baffled in this intellectual digladiation by the
innocence or astuteness of the accused. His resources, however, were by no
means exhausted, and here we approach one of the darkest and most repulsive
aspects of our theme. Human inconsistency, in its manifold development, has
never exhibited itself in more deplorable fashion than in the instructions on
this subject transmitted to their younger brethren by the veterans of the Holy
Office--instructions intended for none but official eyes, and therefore framed
with the utmost unreserve. Trained through long experience in an accurate
knowledge of all that can move the human breast; skilled not only to detect the
subtle evasions of the intellect, but to seek and find the tenderest point
through which to assail the conscience and the heart; relentless in inflicting
agony on body and brain, whether through the mouldering wretchedness of the
hopeless dungeon protracted through uncounted years, the sharper pain of the
torture-chamber, or by coldly playing on the affections; using without scruple
the most violent alternatives of hope and fear; employing with cynical openness
every resource of guile and fraud on wretches purposely starved to render them
incapable of self-defence, the counsels which these men utter might well seem
the promptings of fiends exulting in the unlimited power to wreak their evil
passions on helpless mortals. Yet through all this there shines the evident
conviction that they are doing the work of God. No labor is too great if they can
win a soul from perdition; no toil too repulsive if they can bring a
fellow-creature to an acknowledgment of his wrong-doing and a genuine
repentance that will wipe out his sins; no patience too prolonged if it will
avoid the unjust conviction of the innocent.
All the
cunning fence between judge and culprit, all the fraud, all the torture of body
and mind so ruthlessly employed to extort unwilling confessions, were not
necessarily used for the mere purpose of securing a victim, for the inquisitor
was taught to be as earnest with the recalcitrants against whom he had
sufficient testimony as with the cases in which evidence was deficient. With
the former he was seeking to save a soul from immolating itself in the pride of
obstinacy; with the latter he was laboring to preserve the sheep by not
liberating an infected one to spread pestilence among the flock. It mattered
little to the victim what were the motives actuating his persecutor, for
conscientious cruelty is apt to be more cold-blooded and calculating, more
relentless and effective, than passionate wrath, but the impartial student must
needs recognize that while many inquisitors were doubtless dullards who
followed unthinkingly a prescribed routine as a vocation, and others were
covetous or sanguinary tyrants actuated only by self-interest or ambition, yet
among them were not a few who believed themselves to be discharging a high and
holy duty, whether they abandoned the impenitent to the flames, or by methods
of unspeakable baseness rescued from Satan a soul which he had reckoned as his
own. They were instructed that it was better to let the guilty escape than to
condemn the innocent, and, therefore, that they must have either clear proofs
or confession. In the absence of absolute evidence, therefore, the very
conscientiousness of the judge, under such a system, led him to resort to any
means to satisfy himself by wringing an acknowledgment from his victim.
The resources
for procuring unwilling confession, at command of the inquisitor, may be
roughly divided into two classes--deceit and torture, the latter comprehending
both mental and physical pain, however administered. Both classes were resorted
to freely and without scruple, and there was ample variety to suit the
idiosyncrasies of all judges and prisoners.
Perhaps the
mildest form of the devices to entrap an unwary prisoner was the recommendation
that the examiner should always assume the fact of which he was in quest and
ask about the details, as, for instance, "How often have you confessed as
a heretic?" "In what chamber of yours did they lie?" Going a
step further, the inquisitor is advised during the examination to turn over the
pages of evidence as though referring to it, and then boldly inform the
prisoner that he is not telling the truth, for it is thus and thus; or to pick
up a paper and pretend to read from it whatever is necessary to deceive him; or
he can be told circumstantially that some of the masters of the sect have
incriminated him in their revelations. To render these devices more effective,
the jailer was instructed to worm himself into the confidence of the prisoners,
with feigned interest and compassion, and urge them to confess at once, because
the inquisitor is a merciful man who will take pity on them. Then the
inquisitor was to pretend that he had conclusive evidence, and that if the
accused would confess and point out those who had led him astray, he should be
allowed to go home forthwith, with any other blandishments likely to prove
effective.
A more
elaborate trap was that of treating the prisoner with kindness in place of
rigor; sending trusty agents to his cell to gain his confidence, and then urge
him to confess, with promises of mercy and that they would intercede for him.
When everything was ripe, the inquisitor himself would appear and confirm these
promises, with the mental reservation that all which is done for the conversion
of heretics is merciful, that penances are mercies and spiritual remedies, so
that when the unlucky wretch was prevailed upon to ask for mercy in return for
his revelations, he was to be led on with the general expression that more
would be done for him than he asked.
That spies
should play a prominent part in such a system was inevitable. The trusty agents
who were admitted to the prisoner's cell were instructed to lead him graduallv
on from one confession to another until they should gain sufficient evidence to
incriminate him, without his realizing it. Converted heretics, we are told,
were very useful in this business. One would be sent to visit him and say that
he had only pretended conversion through fear, and after repeated visits
overstay his time and be locked up. Confidential talk would follow in the
darkness, while witnesses with a notary were crouching within earshot to take
down all that might fall from the lips of the unconscious victim.
Fellow-prisoners were utilized whenever possible, and were duly rewarded for
treachery. In the sentence of a Carmelite monk, January 17, 1329, guilty of the
most infamous sorceries, it is recorded in extenuation of his black catalogue
of guilt, that while in prison with sundry heretics he had aided greatly in
making them confess and had revealed many important matters which they had
confided to him, from which the Inquisition had derived great advantage and hoped
to gain more.
These
artifices were diversified with appeals to force. The heretic, whether
acknowledged or suspected, had no rights. His body was at the mercy of the
Church, and if through tribulation of the flesh he could be led to see the
error of his ways, there was no hesitation in employing whatever means were
readiest to save his soul and advance the faith. Among the miracles for which
St. Francis was canonized it is related that a certain Pietro of Assisi was
captured in Rome on an accusation of heresy, and confided for conversion to the
Bishop of Todi, who loaded him with chains and fed him on measured quantities
of bread and water in a dark dungeon. Thus brought through suffering to
repentance, on the vigil of St. Francis he invoked the saint for help with
passionate tears. Moved by his zeal, St. Francis appeared to him and ordered
him forth.
His chains
fell off and the doors flew open, but the poor wretch was so crazed by the
sudden answer to his prayer that he clung to the doorpost with cries which
brought the jailers running to him. The pious bishop hastened to the prison,
and reverently acknowledging the power of God, sent the shivered fetters to the
pope in token of the miracle. Even more illustrative and better authenticated
is a case related with much gratulation by Nider as occurring when he was
teaching in the University of Vienna. A heretic priest, thrown into prison by
his bishop, proved obstinate, and the most eminent theologians who labored for
his conversion found him their match in disputation. Believing that vexation
brings understanding, they at length ordered him to be bound tightly to a
pillar. The cords eating into the swelling flesh caused such exquisite torture
that when they visited him the next day he begged piteously to be taken out and
burned. Coldly refusing, they left him for another twenty-four hours, by which
time physical pain and exhaustion had broken his spirit. He humbly recanted,
retired to a Paulite monastery, and lived an exemplary life.
It will
readily be believed that there was scant hesitation in employing any methods
likely to crush the obduracy of the prisoner who refused the confession and
recantation demanded of him. If he were likely to be reached through the
affections, his wife and children were admitted to his cell in hopes that their
tears and pleadings might work on his feelings and overcome his convictions.
Alternate
threats and blandishments were tried; he would be removed from his foul and
dismal dungeon to commodious quarters, with liberal diet and a show of
kindness, to see if his resolution would be weakened by alternations of hope
and despair. Master of the art of playing upon the human heart, the trained
inquisitor left no method untried which promised victory in the struggle
between him and the helpless wretch abandoned to his experiments. Among these,
one of the most efficient was the slow torture of delay. The prisoner who
refused to confess, or whose confession was deemed imperfect, was remanded to
his cell, and left to ponder in solitude and darkness. Except in rare cases
time was no object with the Inquisition, and it could afford to wait.
Perhaps in a
few weeks his resolution might break down, and he might ask to be heard. If
not, six months might elapse before he was again called up for hearing. If
still obstinate he would be again sent back. Months would lengthen into years,
perhaps years into decades, and find him still unconvicted and still a
prisoner, hopeless and despairing. Should friendly death not intervene, the
terrible patience of the Inquisition was nearly certain to triumph in the end,
and the authorities all agree upon the effectiveness of delay. This explains
what otherwise would be hard to understand--the immense protraction of so many
of the inquisitorial trials whose records have reached us. Three, five, or ten
years are common enough as intervals between the first audience of a prisoner
and his final conviction, nor are instances wanting of even greater delays.
Bernalde, wife of Guillem de Montaigu, was imprisoned at Toulouse in 1297, and
made a confession the same year, yet she was not formally sentenced to
imprisonment until the auto of 1310.
I have already alluded to the case of Guillem Garric, brought to confess at
Carcassonne in 1321 after a detention of nearly thirty years. In the auto de fé of 1319, at Toulouse,
Guillem Salavert was sentenced, who had made an unsatisfactory confession in
1299 and another in 1316; to the latter he had unwaveringly adhered, and at
last Bernard Gui, overcome by his obstinacy, let him off with the penance of
wearing crosses, in consideration of his twenty years' imprisonment without
conviction. At the same auto were
sentenced six wretches who had recently died in prison, two of whom had made
their first confession in 1305, one in 1306, two in 1311, and one in 1315. Nor
was this hideous torture of suspense peculiar to any special tribunal. Guillem
Salavert was one of those implicated in the troubles of Albi in 1299, when many
of the accused were speedily tried and sentenced by the bishop, Bernard de
Castenet, and Nicholas d'Abbeville, inquisitor of Carcassonne, but some were
reserved for the harder fate of detention without trial. The intervention of
the pope was sought, and in 1310 Clement V. wrote to the bishop and the
inquisitor, giving the names of ten of them, including some of the most
respectable citizens of Albi, who had lain for eight years or more in jail
awaiting judgment, many of them in chains and all in narrow, dark cells. His
order for their immediate trial was disobeyed, and in a subsequent letter he
speaks of several of them having died before his previous epistle, and
reiterated his command for the prompt disposal of the survivors. The
Inquisition was a law unto itself, however, and again his mandate was
disregarded. In 1319, besides Guillem Salavert, two others, Guillem Calverie
and Isarn Colli, were brought from their dungeon and retracted their
confessions which had been extorted from them by torture. Calverie figured with
Salavert in the auto of Toulouse in
the same year. When Colli was sentenced we do not know, but in the accounts of
Arnaud Assalit, royal steward of confiscations, for 1322-3, there appears the
property of "Isarnus Colli condemnatus," showing his ultimate fate.
In the auto of 1319, moreover, occur
the names of two citizens of Cordes, Durand Boissa and Bernard Ouvrier (then
deceased), whose confessions date respectively from 1301 and 1300, doubtless
belonging to the same unfortunate group, who had eaten their hearts in despair
and misery for a score of years.
When it was
desired to hasten this slow torture, the object was easily accomplished by
rendering the imprisonment unendurably harsh. As we shall see hereafter, the
dungeons of the Inquisition at best were abodes of fearful misery, but when
there was reason for increasing their terrors there was no difficulty in
increasing the hardships. The "durus
career et arcta vita"--chains and starvation in a stifling hole--was a
favorite device for extracting confession from unwilling lips. We shall meet
hereafter an atrocious instance of this inflicted on a witness, as early as
1263, when the ruin of the great house of Foix was sought.
Extortion Of Confessions
Introduction Of Torture
It was pointed
out that judicious restriction of diet not only reduced the body but weakened
the will, and rendered the prisoner less able to resist alternate threats of
death and promises of mercy. Starvation, in fact, was reckoned as one of the
regular and most efficient methods to subdue unwilling witnesses and defendants.
In 1306 Clement V. declared, after an official investigation, that at
Carcassonne prisoners were habitually constrained to confession by the
harshness of the prison, the lack of beds, and the deficiency of food, as well
as by torture.
With all these
resources at their command, it might seem superfluous for inquisitors to have
recourse to the vulgar and ruder implements of the torture-chamber. The rack
and strappado, in fact, were in such violent antagonism, not only with the
principles of Christianity, but with the practices of the Church, that their
use by the Inquisition, as a means of furthering the faith, is one of the
saddest anomalies of that dismal period. I have elsewhere shown how
consistently the Church opposed the use of torture, so that, in the barbarism
of the twelfth century, Gratian lays it down as an accepted rule of the canon
law that no confession is to be extorted by torment.
Torture,
moreover, except among the Wisigoths, had been unknown among the barbarians who
founded the commonwealths of Europe, and their system of jurisprudence had
grown up free from its contamination. It was not until the study of the revived
Roman law, and the prohibition of ordeals by the Lateran Council of 1215, which
was gradually enforced during the first half of the thirteenth century, that
jurists began to feel the need of torture and accustom themselves to the idea
of its introduction. The earliest instances with which I have met occur in the
Veronese Code of 1228 and the Sicilian Constitutions of Frederic II. in 1231,
and in both of these the references to it show how sparingly and hesitatingly
it was employed. Even Frederic, in his ruthless edicts, from 1220 to 1239,
makes no allusion to it, but, in accordance with the Verona decree of Lucius
III., prescribes the recognized form of canonical purgation for the trial of
all suspected heretics. Yet it rapidly won its way in Italy, and when Innocent
IV., in 1252, published his bull Ad
extirpanda, he adopted it, and authorized its use for the discovery of heresy.
A decent
respect for the old-time prejudices of the Church, however, forbade him to
allow its administration by the inquisitors themselves or their servitors. It
was the secular authorities who were ordered to force all captured heretics to
confess and accuse their accomplices, by torture which should not imperil life
or injure limb, "just as thieves and robbers are forced to confess their
crimes and accuse their accomplices." The unrepealed canons of the Church,
in fact, prohibited all ecclesiastics from being concerned in such acts, and
even from being present where torture was administered, so that the inquisitor
whose zeal should lead him to take part in it was thereby rendered
"irregular" and unfit for sacred functions until he could be
"dispensed" or purified. This did not suit the policy of the
institution.
Possibly
outside of Italy, where torture was as yet virtually unknown, it found
difficulty in securing the co-operation of the public officials; everywhere it
complained that this cumbrous mode of administration interfered with the
profound secrecy which was an essential characteristic of its operations. But
four years after the bull of Innocent IV., Alexander IV., in 1256, removed the
difficulty with characteristic indirection by authorizing inquisitors and their
associates to absolve each other, and mutually grant dispensations for
irregularities--a permission which was repeatedly reiterated, and which was
held to remove all impediment to the use of torture under the direct
supervision of the inquisitor and his ministers. In Naples, where the
Inquisition was but slenderly organized, we find the public officials used by
it as torturers until the end of the century, but elsewhere it speedily
arrogated the administration of torment to its own officials.
Even in
Naples, however, Frà Tomaso d'Aversa is seen, in 1305, personalty
inflicting the most brutal tortures on the Spiritual Franciscans; and when he
found it impossible in this manner to make them convict themselves, he employed
the ingenious expedient of starving for a few days one of the younger brethren,
and then giving him strong wine to drink; when the poor wretch was fuddled
there was no difficulty in getting him to admit that he and his twoscore
comrades were all heretics.
Torture saved
the trouble and expense of prolonged imprisonment; it was a speedy and
effective method of obtaining what revelations might be desired, and it grew
rapidly in favor with the Inquisition, while its extension throughout secular
jurisprudence was remarkably slow. In 1260 the charter granted by Alphonse of
Poitiers to the town of Auzon specially exempts the accused from torture, no
matter what the crime involved. This shows that its use was gradually
spreading, and already, in 1291, Philippe le Bel felt himself called upon to
restrain its abuses; in letters to the seneschal of Carcassonne he alludes to
the newly-introduced methods of torture in the Inquisition, whereby the
innocent were convicted and scandal and desolation pervaded the land.
He could not
interfere with the internal management of the Holy Office, but he sought a
corrective in forbidding indiscriminate arrests at the sole bidding of the
inquisitors. As might be expected, this was only a palliative; callous
indifference to human suffering grows by habit, and the misuse of this terrible
method of coercion continued to increase. When the despairing cry of the
population induced Clement V. to order an investigation into the iniquities of
the Inquisition of Carcassonne, the commission issued to the cardinals sent
thither in 1306 recites that confessions were extorted by torture so severe
that the unfortunates subjected to it had only the alternative of death; and in
the proceedings before the commissioners the use of torture is so frequently
alluded to as to leave no doubt of its habitual employment. It is a noteworthy
fact, however, that in the fragmentary documents of inquisitorial proceedings
which have reached us the references to torture are singularly few. Apparently
it was felt that to record its use would in some sort invalidate the force of
the testimony.
Thus, in the
cases of Isarn Colli and Guillem Calverie, mentioned above, it happens to be
stated that they retracted their confessions made under torture, but in the
confessions themselves there is nothing to indicate that it had been used. In
the six hundred and thirty-six sentences borne upon the register of Toulouse
from 1309 to 1323 the only allusion to torture is in the recital of the case of
Calverie, but there are numerous instances in which the information wrung from
the convicts who had no hope of escape could scarce have been procured in any
other manner. Bernard Gui, who conducted the Inquisition of Toulouse during
this period, has too emphatically expressed his sense of the utility of torture
on both principals and witnesses for us to doubt his readiness in its
employment.
The result of
Clement's investigation in 1306 led to an effort at reform which was agreed to
in the Council of Vienne in 1311, but with customary indecision Clement delayed
the publication of the considerable body of legislation adopted by the council
until his death, and it was not issued till October, 1317, by his successor
John XXII. Among the abuses which he sought to limit was that of torture, and
to this end he ordered that it should not be administered without the
concurrent action of bishop and inquisitor if this could be had within the
space of eight days. Bernard Gui emphatically remonstrated against this as
seriously crippling the efficiency of the Inquisition, and he proposed to
substitute for it the meaningless phrase that torture should only be used with
mature and careful deliberation, but his suggestion was unheeded, and the
Clementine regulation remained the law of the Church.
The
inquisitors, however, were too little accustomed to restraint in any form to
submit long to this infringement on their privileges. It is true that
disobedience rendered the proceedings void, and the unhappy wretch who was
unlawfully tortured without episcopal consultation could appeal to the pope,
but this did not undo the work; Rome was distant, and the victims of the
Inquisition for the most part were too friendless and too helpless to protect
themselves in such illusory fashion.
In Bernard
Gui's "Practica," written probably about 1328 or 1330, he only speaks
of consultation with experts, making no allusions to bishops; Eymerich adheres
to the Clementines, but his instructions as to what is to be done in case of
their disregard shows how frequent was such action; while Zanghino boldly
affirms that the canon is to be construed as permitting torture by either
bishop or inquisitor. In some proceedings against the Waldenses of Piedmont in
1387, if the accused did not confess freely on a first examination an entry was
made that the inquisitor was not content, and twenty-four hours were given the
prisoner to amend his statements; he would be tortured and brought back next
morning in a more complying frame of mind, when a careful record would be made
that his confession was without torture and aloof from the torture-chamber.
Cunning
casuists, moreover, discovered that Clement had only spoken of torture in
general and had not specifically alluded to witnesses, whence they concluded
that one of the most shocking abuses of the system, the torture of witnesses,
was left to the sole discretion of the inquisitor, and this became the accepted
rule. It only required an additional step to show that after the accused had
been convicted by evidence or had confessed as to himself, he became a witness
as to the guilt of his friends and thus could be arbitrarily tortured to betray
them. Even when the Clementines were observed, the limit of eight days enabled
the inquisitor to proceed independently after waiting for that length of time.
While witnesses
who were supposed to be concealing the truth could be tortured as a matter of
course, there was some discussion among jurists as to the amount of adverse
evidence that would justify placing the accused on the rack. Unless there was
some colorable reason to believe that the crime of heresy had been committed,
evidently there was no excuse for the employment of such means of
investigation. Eymerich tells us that when there are two incriminating
witnesses, a man of good reputation can be tortured to ascertain the truth,
while if he is of evil repute he can be condemned without it or can be tortured
on the evidence of a single witness. could be tortured as a matter of
courseZanghino, on the other hand, asserts that the evidence of a single
witness of good character is sufficient for the authorization of torture,
without distinction of persons, while Bernardo di Como says that common report
is enough. In time elaborate instructions were drawn up for the guidance of
inquisitors in this matter, but their uselessness was confessed in the
admission that, after all, the decision was to be left to the discretion of the
judge. How little sufficed to justify the exercise of this discretion is seen
when jurists held it to be sufficient if the accused, on examination, was
frightened and stammered and varied in his answers, without any external
evidence against him.
Application Of Torture
In the
administration of torture the rules adopted by the Inquisition became those of
the secular courts of Christendom at large, and therefore are worth brief
attention. Eymerich, whose instructions on the subject are the fullest we have,
admits the grave difficulties which surrounded the question, and the notorious
uncertainty of the result. Torture should be moderate, and effusion of blood be
scrupulously avoided, but then, what was moderation? Some prisoners were so
weak that at the first turn of the pulleys they would concede anything asked
them; others so obstinate that they would endure all things rather than confess
the truth. Those who had previously undergone the experience might be either
the stronger or the weaker for it, for with some the arms were hardened, while
with others they were permanently weakened. In short, the discretion of the
judge was the only rule.
Both bishop
and inquisitor ought rightfully to be present. The prisoner was shown the
implements of torment and urged to confess. On his refusal he was stripped and
bound by the executioners and again entreated to speak, with promises of mercy
in all cases in which mercy could be shown. This frequently produced the
desired result, and we may be assured that the efficacy of torture lay not so
much in what was extracted by its use as in the innumerable cases in which its
dread, near or remote, paralyzed the resolution with agonizing expectations. If
this proved ineffectual, the torture was applied with gradually increased
severity.
In the case of
continued obstinacy additional implements of torment were exhibited and the
sufferer was told that he would be subjected to them all in turn. If still
undaunted, he was unbound, and the next or third day was appointed for renewal
of the infliction. According to rule, torture could be applied but once, but
this, like all other rules for the protection of the accused, was easily eluded.
It was only necessary to order, not a repetition, but a "continuance"
of the torture, and no matter how long the interval, the holy casuists were
able to continue it indefinitely; or a further excuse would be found in
alleging that additional evidence had been discovered, which required a second
torturing to purge it away. During the interval fresh solicitations were made
to elicit confession, and these being unavailing, the accused was again
subjected to torment either of the same kind as before or to others likely to
prove more efficacious. If he remained silent after torture, deemed sufficient
by his judges, some authorities say that he should be discharged and that a
declaration was to be given him that nothing had been proved against him; others,
however, order that he should be remanded to prison and be kept there.
The trial of
Bernard Délicieux, in 1319, reveals another device to elude the prohibition of
repeated torture, for the examiners could at any moment order the torture to
satisfy their curiosity about a single point, and thus could go on indefinitely
with others.
Any confession
made under torture required to be confirmed after removal from the
torture-chamber. Usually the procedure appears to be that the torture was
continued until the accused signified his readiness to confess, when he was
unbound and carried into another room where his confession was made. If,
however, the confession was extracted during the torture, it was read over
subsequently to the prisoner and he was asked if it were true: there was,
indeed, a rule that there should be an interval of twenty-four hours between
the torture and the confession, or its confirmation, but this was commonly
disregarded.
Silence
indicated assent, and the length of silence to be allowed for was, as usual,
left to the discretion of the judge, with warning to consider the condition of
the prisoner, whether young or old, male or female, simple or learned. In any
case the record was carefully made that the confession was free and
spontaneous, without the pressure of force or fear. If the confession was
retracted, the accused could be taken back for a continuance of the
torture--not, as we are carefully told, for a repetition--provided always that
he had not been "sufficiently" tortured before.
Retraction Of Confessions
The question
as to the retraction of confession was one which exercised to no small degree
the inquisitorial jurists, and practice was not wholly uniform. It placed the
inquisitor in a disagreeable position, and, in view of the methods adopted to
secure confession, it was so likely to occur that naturally stringent measures
were adopted to prevent it. Some authorities draw a distinction between
confessions made "spontaneously" and those extorted by torture or its
threat, but in practice the difference was disregarded. The most merciful view
taken of revocation is that of Eymerich, who says that if the torture had been
sufficient, the accused who persistently revokes is entitled to a discharge.
In this
Eymerich is alone. Some authorities recommend that the accused be forced to
withdraw his revocation by repetition of torture. Others content themselves
with regarding it as impeding the Inquisition, and as such including it in the
excommunication regularly published by parish priests and at the opening of
every auto de fé, and this
excommunication included notaries who might wickedly aid in drawing up such
revocations. The general presumption of law, however, was that the confession
was true and the retraction a perjury, and the view taken of such cases was
that the retraction proved the accused to be an impenitent heretic, who had
relapsed after confession and asking for penance. As such there was nothing to
be done with him but to hand him over to the secular arm for punishment without
a hearing.
It is true,
that in the case of Guillem Calverie, thus condemned in 1319 by Bernard Gui for
withdrawing his confession, the culprit was mercifully allowed fifteen days in
which to revoke his revocation, but this was a mere exercise of the discretion
customarily lodged with the inquisitor. How strictly the rule was construed
which regarded revocation as relapse is seen in the remark of Zanghino, that if
a man had confessed and abjured and been set free under penance, and if he
subsequently remarked in public that he had confessed under fear of expense or
to avoid heavier punishment, he was to be regarded as an impenitent heretic,
liable to be burned as a relapsed. We shall see hereafter the full significance
of this point in its application to the Templars. There was an additional
question of some nicety which arose when the retracted confession incriminated
others besides the accused; in this case the most merciful view taken was that,
if it was not to be held good against them, the one who confessed was liable to
punishment for false-witness. As no confession was sufficient which did not
reveal the names of partners in guilt, those inquisitors who did not regard
revocation as relapse could at least imprison the accused for life as a false
witness.
The
inquisitorial process as thus perfected was sure of its victim. No one whom a
judge wished to condemn could escape. The form in which it became naturalized
in secular jurisprudence was less arbitrary and effective, yet Sir John
Fortescue, the chancellor of Henry VI., who in his exile had ample opportunity
to observe its working, declares that it placed every man's life or limb at the
mercy of any enemy who could suborn two unknown witnesses to swear against him.
A History of the Inquisition In The Middle Ages.
By Henry Charles Lea - 1888
By Henry Charles Lea - 1888
Chapter X. Evidence
We have seen
in the foregoing chapter the inevitable tendency of the inquisitorial process
to assume the character of a duel between the judge and the accused with the
former as the assailant. This deplorable result was the necessary outcome of
the system and of the task imposed upon the inquisitor. He was required to
penetrate the inscrutable heart of man, and professional pride perhaps
contributed as much as zeal for the faith in stimulating him to prove that he
was not to be baffled by the unfortunates brought before him in judgment.
In such a
struggle as this the testimony of witnesses, for the most part, counted for
little except as a basis for arrest and prosecution, and for threatening the
accused with the unknown mass of evidence against him, and for this the
slightest breath of scandal, even from a single person notoriously
foul-mouthed, sufficed, without calling witnesses.
The real
battlefield was the prisoner's conscience, and his confession the prize of
victory. Yet the subject of evidence as treated by the Inquisition is not
wholly to be passed over, for it affords fresh illustration of the manner in
which the practice of construing everything "in favor of the faith"
led to the development of the worst body of jurisprudence invented by man, and
to the habitual perpetration of the foulest injustice. The matter-of-course way
in which rules destructive of every principle of fairness are laid down by men
presumably correct in the ordinary affairs of life affords a wholesome lesson
as to the power of fanaticism to warp the intellect of the most acute.
This did not
arise from any peculiar laxity of practice in the ordinary ecclesiastical
courts. Their procedure, based upon the civil law, accepted and enforced its
rules as to the admission of evidence, and the onus of proof lay upon the
assertor of a fact.
Vagueness Of Testimony
Innocent III.,
in his instructions as to the Cathari of La Charitã, reminded the local
authorities that even violent presumptions were not proof, and were
insufficient for condemnation in a matter so heinous--a rule which was embodied
in the canon law, where it became for the inquisitors merely an excuse for
obtaining certitude by extorting confession.
How completely
they felt themselves emancipated from all wholesome restraint is shown by the
remarks of Bernard Gui--"The accused are not to be condemned unless they
confess or are convicted by witnesses, though not according to the ordinary
laws, as in other crimes, but according to the private laws or privileges
conceded to the inquisitors by the Holy See, for there is much that is peculiar
to the Inquisition.
From almost
the inception of the Holy Office there was an effort to lay down rules as to
what constituted evidence of heresy; but the Council of Narbonne, in 1244,
winds up an enumeration of the various indications by saying that it is
sufficient if the accused can be shown to have manifested by any word or sign
that he had faith or belief in heretics or considered them to be "good
men" (bos homes). The kind of
testimony received was as flimsy and impalpable as the facts, or supposed
facts, sought to be proved. In the voluminous examinations and depositions
which have reached us from the archives of the Inquisition we find the
witnesses allowed and encouraged to say everything that may occur to them.
Great weight was attached to popular report or belief, and to ascertain this
the opinion of the witness was freely received, whether based on knowledge or
prejudice, hearsay evidence, vague rumors, general impressions, or idle gossip.
Everything, in
fact, that could affect the accused injuriously was eagerly sought and
scrupulously written down. In the determined effort to ruin the seigneurs de
Niort, in 1240, of the one hundred and eight witnesses examined scarce one was
able to speak of his own knowledge as to any act of the accused. In 1254 Arnaud
Baud of Montrãal was qualified as "suspect" of heresy because he
continued to visit his mother and aided her in her need after she had been
hereticated, though there was absolutely nothing else against him; only
delivering her up to be burned would have cleared him. It became, in fact, a
settled principle of law that either husband or wife knowing the other to be a
heretic and not giving information within a twelvemonth was held to be a
consenting party without further evidence, and was punishable as a heretic.
Naturally the
conscientious inquisitor recognized the vicious circle in which he moved and
sought to satisfy himself that he could designate infallible signs which would
justify the conclusion of heresy. There is ample store of such enumerated. Thus
for the Cathari it sufficed to show that the accused had venerated one of the
perfected, had asked a blessing, had eaten of the blessed bread or had kept it,
had been voluntarily present at an heretication, had entered into the covenansa to be hereticated on the
death-bed, etc.
For the
Waldenses such indications were considered to be the confessing of sins to and accepting
penance from those known not to be regularly ordained by an orthodox bishop,
praying with them according to their rites by bending the knees with them on a
bench or other inclined object, being present with them when they pretended to
make the Host, receiving "peace" from them, or blessed bread. All
this was easily catalogued, but beyond it lay a region of doubt concerning
which authorities differed. The Council of Albi, in 1254, declared that
entering a house, in which a heretic was known to be, converted simple
suspicion into vehement; and Bernard Gui mentions that some inquisitors held
that visiting heretics, giving them alms, guiding them in their journeys, and
the like was sufficient for condemnation, but he agrees with Gui Foucoix in not
so considering it, as all this might be done through carnal affection or for
hire.
The heart of
man, he adds, is deep and inscrutable, but he seeks to satisfy himself for
attempting the impossible by arguing that all which cannot be explained
favorably must be admitted as adverse proof. It is a noteworthy fact that in
long series of interrogations there will frequently be not a single question as
to the belief of the party making confession. The whole energy of the
inquisitor was directed to obtaining statements of external acts. The upshot of
it all necessarily was that almost everything was left to the discretion of the
inquisitor, whose temper had more to do with the result than the proof of guilt
or its absence.
How
insignificant were the tokens on which a man's fate might depend may be
understood by a single instance. In 1234 Accursio Aldobrandini, a Florentine
merchant in Paris, made the acquaintance of some strangers with whom he
conversed several times, giving their servant on one occasion ten sols, and bowing
to them when they met, out of politeness. This latter act was equivalent to the
"veneration" which was the crucial test of heresy, and when he
chanced to learn that his new acquaintances were heretics he felt himself lost.
Hastening to
Rome, he laid the matter before Gregory IX., who exacted bail of him and sent a
commission to the Bishop of Florence to investigate the antecedents of
Accursio. The report was examined by the cardinals of Ostia and Preneste and
found to be emphatic in commending his orthodoxy, so he escaped with a penance
prescribed by Raymond of Pennaforte, the papal penitentiary, and Gregory wrote
to the inquisitors of Paris not to molest him. Under such a system the most
devout Catholic could never feel safe for a moment.
Suspicion Of Heresy
Yet in spite
of all these efforts to define the indefinable, it was in the very nature of
things that absolute certitude could not, in a vast range of cases, be reached
except through confession. In order, therefore, to avert the misfortune of
acquitting those who could not be brought to confess, it became necessary to
invent a new crime--that known as "suspicion of heresy."
This opened a
wide field for the endless subtleties and refinements in which the jurists of
the schools delighted, rendering their so-called science of law a worthy rival
of scholastic theology. Suspicion thus was primarily divided into three grades,
designated as light, vehement, and violent, and the glossators revel in
defining the amount and quality of evidence which renders the accused guilty of
either of these, with the usual result that practically the matter was left to
the discretion of the tribunal.
That a man
against whom nothing substantial was proved should be punished merely because
he was suspected of guilt may seem to modern eyes a scant measure of justice;
but to the inquisitor it appeared a wrong to God and man that any one should
escape against whose orthodoxy there rested a shadow of a doubt. Like much else
taught by the Inquisition, this found its way into general criminal law, which
it perverted for centuries.
Two witnesses
were usually assumed to be necessary for the condemnation of a man of good
repute, though some authorities demanded more. Yet when a case threatened to
fail for lack of testimony, the discretion of the inquisitor was the ultimate
arbitrator; and it was agreed that if two witnesses to the same fact could not
be had, single witnesses to two separate facts of the same general character
would suffice. When there was only one witness in all, the accused was still
put on his purgation. With the same determination to remove all obstacles in
the way of conviction, if a witness revoked his testimony it was held that if
his evidence had been favorable to the accused, the revocation annulled it; if
adverse, the revocation was null.
The same
disposition to construe everything in favor of the faith governed the
admissibility of witnesses of evil character. The Roman law rejected the
evidence of accomplices, and the Church had adopted the rule. In the False
Decretals it had ordered that no one should be admitted as an accuser who was a
heretic or suspected of heresy, was excommunicate, a homicide, a thief, a
sorcerer, a diviner, a ravisher, an adulterer, a bearer of false witness, or a
consulter of diviners and soothsayers. Yet when it came to prosecuting heresy
all these prohibitions were thrown to the winds. As early as the time of
Gratian, infamous and heretical witnesses were receivable against heretics. The
edicts of Frederic II. rendered heretics incapable of giving testimony, but
this disability was removed when they testified against heretics.
Character And Age Of Witnesses
In the lay
courts, if a witness swore to the innocence of the accused and subsequently
changed his testimony, the first statement was held good and the second was
rejected, but in cases of heresy the incriminating evidence was always
received.
That there was
some hesitation on this point we see in the Legatine Inquisition held in
Toulouse in 1229, where it is recorded that Guillem Solier, a converted
heretic, was restored in fame in order to enable him to bear witness against
his former associates, and even as late as 1260 Alexander IV. was obliged to
reassure the French inquisitors that they could safely use the evidence of
heretics; but the principle became a settled one, adopted in the canon law, and
constantly enforced in practice. Without it, in fact, the Inquisition would
have been deprived of its most fruitful means of tracking heretics. It was the
same with excommunicates, perjurers, infamous persons, usurers, harlots, and
all those who, in the ordinary criminal jurisprudence of the age, were regarded
as incapable of bearing witness, yet whose evidence was receivable against
heretics. All legal exceptions were declared inoperative except that of mortal
enmity.
In the
ordinary criminal law of Italy no evidence was received from a witness under
twenty, but in cases of heresy such testimony was taken, and, though not legal,
it sufficed to justify torture. In France the distinction seems to have been
less rigidly defined, and the matter probably was left, like so much else, to
the discretion of the inquisitors. As the Council of Albi specifies seven years
as the period at which all children were ordered to be made to attend church
and learn the Creed, Paternoster, and Salutation to the Virgin, it may be
safely assumed that below that age they would hardly be admitted to give
testimony. In the records of the Inquisition the age of the witness is rarely
stated, but I have met with one case, in 1244, after the capture of the
pestilent nest of heretics at Montsãgur, where the Inquisition gathered so
goodly harvest, when the age of a witness, Arnaud Olivier, happens to be
mentioned as ten years.
He admitted
having been a Catharan "believer" since he had reached the age of
discretion, and thus was responsible for himself and others. His evidence is
gravely recorded against his father, his sister, and nearly seventy others; and
in it he is made to give the names of sixty-six persons who were present about
a year before at the sermon of a Catharan bishop. The wonderful exercise of so
young a memory does not seem to have excited any doubts as to the validity of
his testimony, which must have been held conclusive against the unfortunates
enumerated, as he stated that they all "venerated" their prelate.
Wives and
children and servants were not admitted to give evidence in favor of the
accused, but their testimony if adverse to him was welcomed, and was considered
peculiarly strong. It was the same with the heretic, who, as we have seen, was
freely admitted as an adverse witness, but who was rejected if appearing for
the defence. In short, the only exception which could be taken to an accusing
witness was malignity. If he was a mortal enemy of the prisoner it was presumed
that his testimony was rather the prompting of hate than zeal for the faith,
and it was required to be thrown out. In the case of the dead, the evidence of
a priest that he had shriven the defunct and administered the viaticum went for nothing; but if he
testified that the departed had confessed to being a heretic, had recanted, and
had received absolution, then his bones were not exhumed and burned, but the
heirs had to endure such penance of fine or confiscation as would have been
inflicted on him if alive.
Of course no
witness could refuse to give evidence. No privilege or vow or oath released him
from the duty. If he was unwilling and paltered or prevaricated and
equivocated, there was the gentle persuasion of the torture-chamber, which, as
we have seen, was even more freely used on witnesses than on principals. It was
the ready instrument by which any doubts as to the testimony could be cleared
up; and it is fair to attribute to the sanction of this terrible abuse by the
Inquisition the currency which it so long enjoyed in European criminal law.
Even the secrecy of the confessional was not respected in the frenzied effort
to obtain all possible information against heretics.
Names Of Witnesses Withheld
All priests
were enjoined to make strict inquiries of their penitents as to their knowledge
of heretics and fautors of heresy. The seal of sacramental confession could not
be openly and habitually violated, but the result was reached by indirection.
When the confessor succeeded in learning anything he was told to write it down
and then endeavor to induce his penitent to reveal it to the proper
authorities. Failing in this, he was, without mentioning names, to consult
God-fearing experts as to what he ought to do--with what effect can readily be
conjectured, since the very fact of consulting as to his duty shows that the
obligation of secrecy was not to be deemed absolute.
After this
glimpse at the inquisitorial system of evidence, we hardly need the assurance
of the legists that less was required for conviction in heresy than in any
other crime, and inquisitors were instructed that slender testimony was
sufficient to prove it--"probatur
quis hÃ…“reticus ex levi causa." Yet evil as was all this, the crowning
infamy of the Inquisition in its treatment of testimony was withholding from
the accused all knowledge of the names of the witnesses against him. In the
ordinary courts, even in the inquisitorial process, their names were
communicated to him along with the evidence which they had given, and it will
be remembered that when the Legate Romano held his inquest at Toulouse, in
1229, the accused followed him to Montpellier with demands to see the names of
those who had testified against them, when the cardinal recognized their right
to this, but eluded it by showing merely a long list of all the witnesses who
had appeared during the whole inquest, giving as an excuse the danger to which
they were exposed from the malevolence of those who had suffered by their
evidence.
That there was
some risk incurred by those who destroyed their neighbors is true; the
inquisitors and chroniclers mention that assassinations from this cause
sometimes occurred--six being reported in Toulouse between 1301 and 1310. It
would have been strange had this not been the case, nor was the chance of such
wild justice altogether an unwholesome check upon the security of malevolence.
Yet that so flimsy an excuse should have been systematically put forward shows
merely that the Church recognized and was ashamed of its plain denial of
justice, since no such precaution was deemed necessary in other criminal
affairs. Already in 1244 and 1246 the councils of Narbonne and Bãziers order
the inquisitors not to indicate in any manner the names of the witnesses, alleging
as a reason the "prudent wish" of the Holy See, although in the
instructions of the Cardinal of Albano the saving clause of risk is expressed.
When Innocent
IV. and his successors regulated the inquisitorial procedure, the same
limitation to cases in which divulging the names would expose the witnesses to
danger was sometimes omitted and sometimes repeated, and when Boniface VIII.
embodied in the canon law the rule of withholding the names he expressly
cautioned bishops and inquisitors to act with pure intentions, not to withhold
the names when there was no peril in communicating them, and if the peril
ceased they were to be revealed. Yet it is impossible to regard all this as
more than a decent veil of hypocrisy to cover recognized injustice, for it was
a flagrant fact that inquisitors everywhere treated these exhortations as the
councils of Narbonne and Bãziers had treated the limitations prescribed by the
Cardinal of Albano. Although in the inquisitorial manuals the limitation of
risk is usually mentioned, the instructions with regard to the conduct of the
trials always assume as a matter of course that the prisoner is kept in
ignorance of the names of the witnesses against him. As early as the time of
Gui Foucoix that jurist treats it as the universal practice; a nearly
contemporary MS. manual lays it down as an invariable rule; and in the later
periods we are coolly informed by both Eymerich and Bernardo di Como that cases
were rare in which risk did not exist; that it was great when the accused was rich
and powerful, but greater still when he was poor and had friends who had
nothing to lose.
Eymerich
evidently considers it much more decent to refuse the names than to adopt the
expedients of some over-conscientious inquisitors who furnished, like Cardinal
Romano, the names written on a different piece of paper and so arranged that
their identification with their evidence was impossible, or who mixed up other
names with those of the witnesses so as to confuse hopelessly the defence.
Occasionally a less disreputable but almost equally confusing plan was adopted,
in swearing a portion of the witnesses in the presence of the accused, while
examining them in his absence. Thus in the trial of Bernard Dãlicieux, in 1319,
out of forty-eight witnesses whose depositions are recorded, sixteen were sworn
in his presence; in that of Huss, in 1414, it is mentioned that fifteen
witnesses at one time were taken to his cell that he might see them sworn.
From this
withholding of names it was but a step to withholding the evidence altogether,
and that step was sometimes taken. In truth the whole process was so completely
at the arbitrary discretion of the inquisitor, and the accused was so wholly
without rights, that whatever seemed good in the eyes of the former was allowable
in the interest of the faith. Thus we are told that if a witness retracted his
evidence, the fact should not be made known to the defendant lest it should
encourage him in his defence, but the judge is recommended to bear it in mind
when rendering judgment.
The tender
care for the safety of witnesses even went so far that it was left to the
conscience of the inquisitor whether or not to give the accused a copy of the
evidence itself if there appeared to be danger to be apprehended from doing so.
Relieved from all supervision, and practically not subject to appeals, it may
be said that there were no rules which the inquisitor might not suspend or
abrogate at pleasure when the exigencies of the faith seemed to require it.
Among the many
evils springing from this concealment, which released witnesses and accusers
from all responsibility, not the least was the stimulus which it afforded to
delation and the temptation created to gratify malice by reckless perjury. Even
without any special desire to do mischief, an unfortunate, whose resolution had
been broken down by suffering and torture, when brought at last to confess,
might readily be led to make his story as satisfactory as possible to his tormentors
by mentioning all names that might occur to him as being present at
conventicles and heretications.
False Witness
There can be
no question that the business of the Inquisition was greatly increased by the
protection which it thus afforded to informers and enemies, and that it was
made the instrument of an immense amount of false-witness. The inquisitors felt
this danger and frequently took such precautions as they could without trouble,
by warning a witness of the penalties incurred by perjury, making him obligate
himself in advance to endure them, and rigidly questioning him as to whether he
had been suborned.
Occasionally,
also, we find a conscientious judge like Bernard Gui carefully sifting
evidence, comparing the testimony of different witnesses, and tracing out
incompatibilities which proved that one at least was false. He accomplished
this twice, once in 1312 and again in 1316, the earlier case presenting some
peculiar features. A man named Pons Arnaud came forward spontaneously and
accused his son Pierre of having endeavored to have him hereticated when
laboring under apparently mortal sickness. The son denied it. Bernard, on
investigation, found that Pons had not been sick at the date specified, and
that there had been no heretics at the place named. Armed with this information
he speedily forced the accuser to confess that he had fabricated the story to
injure his son.
Creditable as
is this case to the inquisitor, it is hideously suggestive of the pitfalls
which lay around the feet of every man; and no less so is an instance in which
Henri de Chamay, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, in 1329, resolutely traced out a
conspiracy to ruin an innocent man, and had the satisfaction of forcing five
false-witnesses to confess their guilt. Rare instances such as these, however,
offered but a feeble palliation for the inherent vices of the system, and in
spite of the severe punishment meted out to those who were discovered, the
crime was of very frequent occurrence.
The security
with which it could be committed renders it safe to assume that detection
occurred in a very small proportion of the cases; so when among the scanty
documents that have reached us we see six false-witnesses (of whom two were
priests and one a clerk), sentenced at an auto
de fã held at Pamiers in 1323; four at Narbonne in December, 1328; one, a
few weeks after, at Pamiers; four more at Pamiers in January, 1329, and seven
(one of whom was a notary) at Carcassonne in September, 1329, we may conclude
that if the full records of the Inquisition were accessible, the list would be
a frightful one, and would suggest an incalculable amount of injustice which
remained undiscovered. We do not need the admission of Eymerich that witnesses
are found frequently to conspire together to ruin an innocent man, and we may
well doubt his assurance that persistent scrutiny by the inquisitor will detect
the wrong. There is, perhaps, only a consistent exhibition of inquisitorial
logic in the dictum of Zanghino, that a witness who withdraws testimony adverse
to a prisoner is to be punished for false-witness, while his testimony is to
stand, and to receive full weight in rendering judgment.
A
false-witness, when detected, was treated with as little mercy as a heretic. As
a symbol of his crime two pieces of red cloth in the shape of tongues were
affixed to his breast and two to his back, to be worn through life. He was
exhibited at the church-doors on a scaffolding during divine service on
Sundays, and was usually imprisoned for life.
The symbol was
changed to that of a letter in the case of Guillem Maurs, condemned in 1322 for
conspiring with others to forge letters of the Inquisition whereby some parties
were to be cited for heresy with the view of extorting hush-money from them. As
the degree of criminality varied, so there were differences in the severity of
punishment. Those condemned in Pamiers in 1323 were let off without
incarceration. The four at Narbonne, in 1328, were regarded as peculiarly
culpable, having been suborned by enemies of the accused, and they were accordingly
condemned to the severest form of imprisonment, on bread and water, with chains
on hands and feet. The assembly of experts held at Pamiers for the auto of January, 1329, decided that, in
addition to imprisonment, either lenient or harsh, according to the gravity of
the offence, the offenders should make good any damage accruing to the accused.
This was an
approach to the talio, and the
principle was fully carried out in 1518 by Leo X. in a rescript to the Spanish
Inquisition, authorizing the abandonment to the secular arm of false witnesses
who had succeeded in inflicting any notable injury on their victims. The
expressions used by the pope justify the conclusion that the crime was still
frequent. Zanghino tells us that in his time there was no defined legal
penalty, and that the false witness was to be punished at the discretion of the
inquisitor--another instance of the tendency which pervades the whole
inquisitorial jurisprudence, to fetter the tribunals with as few rules as
possible, to clothe them with arbitrary power, and trust to God, in whose name
and for whose glory they professed to act, to inspire them with the wisdom
necessary for the discharge of their irresponsible trust.
A History of the Inquisition In The Middle Ages.
By Henry Charles Lea - 1888
By Henry Charles Lea - 1888
Chapter XI. The Defence
From the
preceding sketch of the inquisitorial process it may readily be inferred that
scant opportunities for defence were allowed by the Holy Office. It was in the
very nature of the process that all the preliminary proceedings were taken in
secrecy and without the knowledge of the accused. The case against him was made
up before his arrest, and he was examined, urged to confess, and perhaps
imprisoned for years and tortured, before he was allowed to know what were the
charges against him. It was only after a confession had been extorted from him,
or the inquisitor despaired of extorting one, that he was furnished with the
evidence against him, and even then the names of the witnesses were habitually
suppressed.
All this is in
cruel contrast with the righteous care to avoid injustice prescribed for the
ordinary episcopal courts. In them the Council of Lateran orders that the
accused shall be present at the inquisition against him, unless he
contumaciously absents himself; the charges are to be explained to him, that he
may have the opportunity of defending himself; the witnesses' names, with their
respective evidence, are to be made public, and all legitimate exceptions and
answers be admitted, for suppression of names would invite slander, and
rejection of exceptions would admit false testimony.
The suspected
heretic, however, was prejudged. The effort of the inquisitor was not to avoid
injustice, but to force him to admit his guilt and seek reconciliation with the
Church. To accomplish this effectually the facilities for defence were
systematically reduced to a minimum.
It is true
that, in 1246, the Council of Bãziers lays down the rule that the accused shall
have proper opportunities for defence, including necessary delays and the
admission of exceptions and legitimate replies; but if this were intended as a
check on the arbitrary operations which already characterized the Inquisition,
it was wholly disregarded. In the first place, the secrecy of the tribunal
enabled the judge to do as he might think best. In the second place, the only
possible remaining check to arbitrary action was removed by denying to the
accused the advantage of counsel.
Then, as now,
the intricacy of legal forms rendered the trained advocate a necessity to every
man on trial; the layman, ignorant of his rights, and of the method of
enforcing them, was utterly helpless. So thoroughly was this understood that in
the ecclesiastical courts it was frequently a custom to furnish advocates
gratuitously to poor men unable to employ them, and in the charter granted by
Simon de Montfort, in 1212, to his newly-acquired territories, it was provided
that justice should always be gratuitous, and that counsel should be provided
by the court for pleaders too poor to retain them.
When this
right thus was recognized in the most trifling cases, to refuse it to those who
were battling for their lives before a tribunal in which the judge was also
prosecutor, was more than the Church at first dared openly to do, but it practically
reached the result by indirection. Innocent III., in a decretal embodied in the
canon law, had ordered advocates and scriveners to lend no aid or counsel to
heretics and their defenders, or to undertake their causes in litigation. This,
which was presumably intended as one of the disabilities inflicted on defiant
and acknowledged heretics, was readily applied to the suspect who were not yet
convicted, and who were struggling to prove their innocence, for their guilt
was always assumed in advance.
The councils
of Valence and Albi, in 1248 and 1254, while ordering inquisitors not to
embarrass themselves with the vain jangling of lawyers in the conduct of the
prosecution, significantly make reference to this provision of the canon law as
applicable to counsel who might be so hardy as to aid the defence. That this
became a settled and recognized principle is shown by Bernard Gui's assertion
that advocates who excuse and defend heretics are to be held guilty of
fautorship of heresy--a crime which became heresy itself if satisfaction at the
discretion of the inquisitor was not rendered within a twelvemonth.
Refusal Of Council
When to this
we add the perpetually reiterated commands to the inquisitors to proceed
without regard to legal forms or the wrangling of advocates, and the notice to
notaries that he who drew up the revocation of a confession was excommunicated
as an impeder of the Inquisition, it will readily be seen that there was no
need of formally refusing counsel to the accused, and that there was no
practical benefit permitted from the admission of the barren generality that
one who believed a heretic to be innocent and endeavored to prove him so was
not on that account liable to punishment. Eymerich is careful to specify that
the accused has the right to employ counsel, and that a denial of this
justifies an appeal, but then he likewise states that the inquisitor can
prosecute any advocate or notary who undertakes the cause of heretics; and a
century earlier a manuscript manual for inquisitors directs them to prosecute
as defenders of heresy any advocates who take such cases, with the addition
that if they are clerks they are to be perpetually deprived of their benefices.
It is no
wonder, therefore, that finally inquisitors adopted the rule that advocates
were not to be allowed in inquisitorial trials. This injustice had its
compensation, however, for the employment of counsel, in fact, was likely to
prove as dangerous to the defendant as to his advocate, for the Inquisition was
entitled to all accessible information, and could summon the latter as a
witness, force him to surrender any papers in his hands, and reveal what had
passed between him and his client. Such considerations, however, are rather
theoretical than practical, for it may well be doubted whether, in the ordinary
course of the Inquisition, counsel for the defence ever appeared before it.
The terror
that it inspired is well illustrated by the circumstance that when, in 1300,
Friar Bernard Dãlicieux was commissioned by his Franciscan provincial to defend
the memory of Castel Fabri, and Nicholas d'Abbeville, the Inquisitor of
Carcassonne, rudely refused him even an audience, he could find no notary in
the city who dared to assist him in drawing up a legal protest; every one
feared arrest and prosecution if he took the least part in an opposition to the
dreaded inquisitor, and Bernard had to wait ten or twelve days until he could
bring a notary from a distance to perform the simplest formality. The local
officials might well hesitate to incur the wrath of Nicholas, for a few years
before he had cast in jail a notary who had ventured to draw up an appeal of
the inhabitants of Carcassonne to the king.
Refusal To Plead
All this is
interesting as an illustration of the spirit which pervaded every act of the
Inquisition, but in reality no advocate could be of material service to the
accused, save in the most exceptional cases. The men who organized the Holy
Office knew too well what they wanted to leave open any possibilities of which
even the shrewdest advocate could take advantage, and it was admitted on all
hands as a recognized fact that there was no method of defence save disabling
the witnesses for the prosecution. It has been seen that enmity was the only
source of disability in a witness, and this had to be mortal--there must have
been bloodshed between the parties, or other cause sufficient to induce one to
seek the life of the other.
If, therefore,
the case rested on witnesses of this kind, their testimony had to be rejected
and the prosecution fell. As this was the only possible mode of escape, the
cruelty of withholding from the prisoner the names of the adverse witnesses
becomes doubly conspicuous. He was forced to grope around in the dark and blindly
name such persons as he imagined might have a hand in his misfortunes. If he
failed to hit upon any who appeared in the case, the evidence against him was
conclusive, as far as it went. If he chanced to name some of the witnesses, he
was interrogated as to the causes of enmity; the inquisitor examined into the
facts of the alleged quarrel, and decided as he saw fit as to the retention or
the rejection of their testimony. Conscientious jurists like Gui Foucoix and
inquisitors like Eymerich warned their brethren that as the accused had so
slender a chance of guessing the sources of evidence, the judge ought to
investigate for himself and discard any that seemed to be the product of
malice; but there were others who sought rather to deprive the poor wretch of every
straw that might postpone his sinking. One device was to ask him, as though
casually, at the end of his examination, whether he had any enemies who would
so disregard the fear of God as to accuse him falsely, and if, thus taken
unawares, he replied in the negative, he debarred himself from any subsequent
defence; or the most damaging witness would be selected and the prisoner be
asked if he knew him, when a denial would estop him from claiming enmity.
It is easy to
imagine other tricks by which shrewd and experienced inquisitors could save
themselves the trouble of admitting the accused to even the nugatory form of
defence to which alone he was entitled. As to allowing him to call witnesses in
his favor, except to prove enmity of the accusers, it was never thought of in
ordinary cases. By a legal fiction, the inquisitor was supposed to look at both
sides of the case, and to take care of the defence as well as of the
prosecution. If the accused failed to guess the names of enemies among the
witnesses and to disable their testimony, he was condemned.
In England,
under the barbarous custom of the peine
forte et dure, a prisoner who refused to plead either guilty or not guilty
was pressed to death, because the trial could not go on without either
confession or defence. Cruel as was this expedient, it was the outcome of a
manly sense of justice, which based its procedure on the rule that the worst
felon should have a fair opportunity to prove his innocence. Far worse was the
system of the Inquisition, which was equally resolved that its culprits should
have no such easy method of escape as a refusal to plead. It had no scruples as
to proceeding in such cases, and the obstinacy of the accused only simplified
matters. The refusal was an act of contumacy, equivalent to disobeying a
summons to appear, or it was held to be tantamount to a confession, and the
obdurate prisoner was forthwith handed over to the secular arm as an impenitent
heretic, fit only for the stake. The use of torture, however, rendered such cases
rare.
In the
register of the Inquisition of Carcassonne from 1249 to 1258 M. Molinier has
found two cases in which the accused was allowed to introduce evidence in his
favor. In one of these G. Vilanière called two witnesses to prove an alibi; in
the other Guilleim Nègre brought forward a letter of reconciliation and
penitence. In neither case was the defendant successful.
The enviable
simplicity which the inquisitorial process thus assumed in the absence of
counsel and of all practical opportunities for defence can perhaps best be
illustrated by one or two cases. Thus in the Inquisition of Carcassonne, June
19, 1252, P. Morret is called up and asked if he wishes to defend himself
against the matters found in the instructio
or indictment against him. He has nothing to allege except that he has enemies,
of whom he names five. Apparently he did not happen to guess any of the
witnesses, for the case proceeded by reading the evidence to him, after which
he is again asked thrice if he has anything further to say. To this he replies
in the negative, and the case ends by assigning January 29 for the rendering of
sentence.
Two years
later, in 1254, at Carcassonne, a certain Bernard Pons was more lucky, for he
happened to guess aright in naming his wife as an inimical witness, and we have
the proceedings of the inquest held to determine whether the enmity was mortal.
Three witnesses are examined, all of whom swear that she is a woman of loose
character; one deposes that she had been taken in adultery by her husband;
another that he had beaten her for it, and the third that he had recently heard
her say that she wished her husband dead that she might marry a certain Pug
Oler, and that she would willingly become a leper if that would bring it about.
This would certainly
seem sufficient, but Pons appears nevertheless not to have escaped. So
thoroughly hopeless, indeed, was the prospect of any effort at defence, that it
frequently was not even attempted, and the accused, like Arnaud Fabri at
Carcassonne, August 20, 1252, when asked if he wished a copy of the evidence
against him, would despairingly decline it. It was a customary formula in a
sentence to state that the convict had been offered opportunity for defence and
had not availed himself of it, showing how frequently this was the case.
Prosecution Of The Dead
In the case of
prosecution of the dead, the children or the heirs were scrupulously cited to
appear and defend his memory, as they were necessarily parties to the case
through the disabilities and confiscation following upon condemnation.
Proclamation was also made publicly in the churches inviting any one else who
chose to appear or who had any interest in the matter by reason of holding
property of the deceased; and then a third public notice was given that if no
one came forward on the day named, definitive sentence would be rendered. Thus
in a case occurring in 1327, Jean Duprat, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, orders the
priests of all the churches in the dioceses of Carcassonne, Narbonne, and Alet
to publish the notice during divine service on every Sunday and feast-day till
the day of hearing, and to send him a notarial attestation of their action. The
sentences in these cases are careful to recite these notices so sedulously
served on all concerned; but notwithstanding this display of a desire to do
exact justice, the proceedings were quite as hollow a mockery as those against
the living.
That it was so
recognized is seen at the auto of
1309 at Toulouse, where there were four dead persons sentenced, and it is
stated that in one case no one appeared, and in the other three the heirs
obeyed the citation but renounced all defence. In the case of Castel Fabri,
before alluded to, at Carcassonne, in 1300, where the estate was very large,
the heirs appeared, but were denied all opportunity of defence by Nicholas
d'Abbeville, the inquisitor; and in that of Pierre de Tornamire, though the
heirs, as we have seen, succeeded in reversing the judgment through the gross
informality of the proceedings, it was not until after a struggle which lasted
for thirty-two years, during which time the estate must have been sequestrated.
Sometimes, when death-bed heretications had occurred, the children put in the
plea of non compos, which was
admitted to be good, but as none of the family were allowed to testify, and
only disinterested witnesses of approved orthodoxy were received, instances of
success must have been rare indeed.
Practically
every avenue of escape was closed to those who fell into the hands of the
inquisitor. Technically the accused had a right, as in other cases, to recuse
his judge, but this was a dangerous experiment, and we hardly need the
assurance of Bernardo di Como that it was virtually unknown. Ignorance was no
defence, and its mere assertion, according to Bernard Gui, only rendered a man
worthy of condemnation along with his master, the father of lies.
Persistent
denial of the offence charged, even when accompanied with profession of faith
and readiness to submit to the mandates of the Church, was obstinacy and impenitence
which precluded all hope of mercy. Even suicide in prison was equivalent to
confession of guilt without repentance. It is true that insanity or drunkenness
might be urged in extenuation of the utterance of heretical words, and this
might mitigate the sentence, if there were due contrition and seeking for
reconciliation, but admission of the conclusion at which the inquisitor had
arrived from his ex parte inquest was
the predetermined result, and the only alternative to this was abandonment to
the secular arm.
That
plain-spoken friar, Bernard Dãlicieux, uttered the literal truth when he
declared, in the presence of Philippe le Bel and all his court, that if St.
Peter and St. Paul were accused of "adoring" heretics and were
prosecuted after the fashion of the Inquisition, there would be no defence open
for them. Questioned as to their faith, they would answer like masters in
theology and doctors of the Church, but when told that they had adored
heretics, and they asked what heretics, some names, common in those parts,
would be mentioned, but no particulars would be given. When they would ask for
statements as to time and place, no facts would be furnished, and when they
would demand the names of the witnesses these would be withheld. How, then, asked
Bernard, could the holy apostles defend themselves, especially when any one who
wished to aid them would himself be attacked as a fautor of heresy. It was so.
The victim was enveloped in a net from which there was no escape, and his
frantic struggles only twisted it more tightly around him.
Theoretically,
indeed, an appeal lay to the pope from the Holy Office, and to the metropolitan
from the bishop, for denial of justice or irregularity of procedure, but it had
to be made before sentence was rendered, as condemnation was final.
Appeals To The Holy See
Possibly this
may have held out some prospect of benefit in the case of bishops exercising
their inquisitorial jurisdiction. In that of inquisitors, when "apostoli," or letters remanding the
case to the Holy See, were demanded, it rested with them to grant affirmative
("reverential") ones, or negative ones. The former admitted the
transfer of the case; the latter kept it in the inquisitor's hands unless it
was formally taken from him by the pope. This, it is safe to say, could rarely
happen, and, as the proceeding was an intricate one, it could only be resorted
to by experts. A man like Master Eckart, supported by the whole Dominican
Order, could undertake it, even though in the end he fared no better at the hands
of John XXII. than he would have done at those of the Archbishop of Cologne.
So when, in
1323, the Sire de Partenay, one of the most powerful nobles of Poitou, was
cited for heresy by Friar Maurice, the Inquisitor of Paris, and was thrown into
the Temple by Charles le Bel, he appealed from Maurice as a judge prejudiced by
personal hatred. Charles sent him under guard to John XXII. at Avignon, who at
first refused to entertain the appeal, but at length, by the influential
intercession of Partenay's friends, was induced to appoint several bishops as
assessors to the inquisitor, and after long-protracted proceedings the interest
of Partenay was sufficient to obtain his liberation. Cases like these, however,
are wholly exceptional and have no bearing upon the thousands of humble folk
and "petite noblesse" who
filled the prisons of the Inquisition and figured in its autos de fã.
The manuals
for inquisitors, indeed, make no scruple in instructing them as to the devices
and deceits by which they can elude all attempts to appeal when through
disregard of rules they have exposed themselves to it.
There was
another class of cases, however, in which the interference of the pope
occasionally gave relief, for the Holy See was autocratic and could set aside
all rules. The curia was always greedy for money, and, outside of Italy, had no
share in the confiscations. It can, therefore, readily be imagined that men of
wealth whose whole property was at stake might well consent to divide it with
the papal court, whose all-powerful intervention would thereby be secured.
As early as
1245 the bishops of Languedoc are found complaining to Innocent IV. of the
number of heretics who thus obtain exemption. Not only those undergoing trial,
but those fearing to be cited, those excommunicated for contumacy, or
legitimately sentenced, escape the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and enjoy
immunity on the strength of letters granted by the papal penitentiaries. I have
met with a number of special cases of this interference of the Holy See with
the Holy Office, one at least of which indicates the means of persuasion
employed. In letters of December 28, 1248, the papal penitentiary Algisius
orders the release, without confiscation, of six prisoners of the Inquisition
who had confessed to heresy, one of the reasons assigned being the liberal
contributions which they had made to the cause of the Holy Land.
Acquittal Prohibited
It is no
wonder that the inquisitors sometimes grew mutinous under this aggravating
interference, of which they could so readily guess the motive, and, on one
occasion at least, they gave the curia a lesson. Some inhabitants of Limoux, in
1249, condemned to wear crosses and perform heavy penances, obtained from
Innocent IV. an order for their mitigation, whereupon the inquisitors, in their
irritation, went a step further and absolved the penitents without reserve.
Accepting this
rebuke, Innocent commanded the original sentence to be reimposed, and the
unlucky culprits gained nothing by their effort. Less questionable was the interference,
in 1255, of Alexander IV. in the case of Aimeric de Bressols of
Castel-Sarrazin, who had been condemned for heretical acts committed thirty
years before. He represented that he had performed most of the penance enjoined
on him and that he was unable, through old age and poverty, to accomplish the
rest, whereupon the pope mercifully authorized the Inquisitors to commute it
into other pious works. A somewhat remarkable case occurred in 1371, when
Gregory XI. authorized the Inquisitor of Carcassonne to release Bidon de
Puy-Guillem, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and repentant, the reason
given for papal intervention being that there existed no other power to commute
the sentence.
This kind of
papal intervention, however, was in contravention of the law and not in its
fulfilment, and need not be weighed in considering the results of the
inquisitorial process. That result, as might be expected, was condemnation in
some form or other so uniformly that it may be regarded as inevitable. In the
register of Carcassonne from 1249 to 1258, comprising about two hundred cases,
there does not occur a single instance of a prisoner discharged as innocent. It
is true that the interrogatory of Alizaãs Debax, March 27, 1249, is followed by
the note "she was not heard a second time because she was considered
innocent," but this apparent exception is nullified by a second memorandum
"crucesignata est"--she was
condemned to the public infamy of wearing crosses, probably to confirm the
popular impression that the Inquisition never missed its mark.
A man against
whom there was no evidence to justify conviction and who yet would not confess
himself guilty, was kept in prison indefinitely at the discretion of the
inquisitor; at length, if the proof against him was only incidental and not
direct, and the suspicion was light, he might be mercifully discharged under
bail, with orders to stand at the door of the Inquisition from breakfast-time
until dinner, and from dinner until supper, until some further testimony should
turn up against him, and the inquisitor be able to prove the guilt so
confidently assumed. On this side of the Alps it was a recognized rule that no
one should be acquitted. The utmost stretch of justice, when the accusation
failed entirely, was a sentence of not proven. The charges were simply declared
not to be substantiated, and the inquisitors were carefully warned never to
pronounce a man innocent, so that there might be no bar to subsequent
proceedings in case of further evidence. Possibly in Italy, in the fourteenth
century, this rule may have been neglected, for Zanghino gives a formula of
acquittal, based, significantly enough, on the evidence being proved to be
malicious.
Suspicion Of Heresy
Clement V.
recognized the injustice wrought under this system when he embodied in the
canon law a declaration that inquisitors abused to the injury of the faithful
the wise provisions made for the defence of the faith; when he forbade them
from falsely convicting any one, or acting either for or against the accused
through love, hate, or the hopes of gain, under penalty of ipso facto excommunication, removable only by the Holy See. Bernard
Gui hotly denied these assertions, which he declared to be precisely those with
which the heretics defamed the Holy Office to its great damage.
To impute
heresy to the innocent, he said, is worthy of damnation, but none the less so
is it to slander the Inquisition. In spite, he adds, of the refutation of the
accusations brought against it, this canon assumes their truth and the heretics
exult over its disgrace. If the heretics exulted, their rejoicings were
premature. The Inquisition went its way in the accustomed paths, and Clement's
well-meant effort at reform proved wholly unavailing.
The erection
of suspicion into a crime gave ample opportunity for the habitual avoidance of
acquittal. This took its origin in the customs of the barbarian and mediæval
codes, which required the accused, against whom a probable case was made out,
to demonstrate his innocence either by the ordeal, or by the form of purgation
known in England as the Wager of Law, in which he produced a prescribed number
of his friends to share with him the oath of denial.
In the
coronation-edict of Frederic II. those who were suspected of heresy were
required to purge themselves in this manner, as the Church might demand, under
pain of being outlawed, and, if they remained so for a year, of being condemned
as heretics. This gave a peculiar and sinister significance to suspicion of
heresy which was carefully elaborated and turned to account. Suspicion might
arise from many causes, the chief of which was popular rumor and belief.
Omission to take the oath abjuring heresy imposed on all the inhabitants of
Languedoc, within the term prescribed, was sufficient, or neglect to reveal
heretics, or the possession of heretical books. The intricate questions to
which this extension of criminality gave rise are fairly illustrated in the
discussion of an inquisitor whether those who listened to the instructions of
the Waldenses,
"Do not
lie, nor swear, nor commit fornication, but give to every man his due; go to
church, pay your tithes, and the perquisites of the priests," and, knowing
this to be good advice, conclude the utterers to be good men--whether such are
to be considered suspect of heresy; and he tells us that after diligent
consideration he must decide in the affirmative, and order them to purgation.
The difficulty of reducing to practice these intangible speculations was
realized by Chancellor Gerson, who admits that due allowance should be made for
variations of habits and manners in different places and times, but the
ordinary inquisitor was troubled with few such scruples. It was easier to treat
the suspect as criminals; to classify suspicion into its three grades of light,
vehement, and violent; to prescribe punishment for it, and to inflict the
disabilities of heresy on the suspect and their descendants.
Even the
definition of the three grades of suspicion was abandoned as impossible, and it
was left to the arbitrary discretion of the inquisitor to classify each
individual case which came before him. Nothing more condemnatory of the whole
system can well be imagined than the explanation of Eymerich that suspects are
not heretics; that they are not to be condemned for heresy, and that therefore
their punishment should be lighter, except in the case of violent suspicion.
Against this there was no defence possible, and no evidence to be admitted. The
culprit might not be a heretic or entertain any error of belief, but if he
would not abjure and give satisfaction (and abjuration included confession), he
was to be handed over to the secular arm; if he confessed and sought
reconciliation, he was to be imprisoned for life.
For light and
vehement suspicion the accused was ordered to furnish conjurators in his oath
of denial. These were to be men of his own rank in life, who knew him
personally and who swore to their belief in his orthodoxy and in the truth of
his exculpatory oath. Their number varied, at the discretion of the inquisitor,
with the degree of suspicion to be purged away, from three to twenty or thirty,
and even more.
In the case of
strangers, however, who had no acquaintances, the inquisitor was advised to be
moderate. It was no mere idle ceremony, and, as usual, all the chances were
thrown against the defendant. If he was unable to procure the required number
of compurgators, or neglected to do so within a year, the law of Frederic II.
was enforced, and he was usually condemned as a heretic to burning alive;
although some inquisitors argued that this was only presumptive, not absolute,
proof, and that he could escape the stake by confessing and abjuring--of course
being subject to the penance of perpetual prison.
If he
succeeded and performed his purgation duly, he was by no means acquitted. If
the suspicion against him was vehement he could still be punished; even if it
was light the fact that he had been suspected was an ineradicable blot. With
the curious logical inconsequence characteristic of inquisitorial procedure, in
addition to the purgation, he was obliged to abjure the heresy of which he had
cleared himself; this abjuration remained of record against him, and in case of
a second accusation his escape from the previous one was not reckoned as having
proved his innocence, but as an evidence of guilt. If the purgation had been
for light suspicion, his punishment now was increased; and if it had been for
vehement suspicion, he was now regarded as a relapsed, to whom no mercy could
be shown, but who was handed over to the secular arm without a hearing.
Practically, however, this injustice is important chiefly as a manifestation of
the spirit of the Inquisition; its methods were too thorough to render frequent
a recourse to purgation, and Zanghino, when he treats of it, feels obliged to
explain it as a custom little known. One case, however, at least, is on record
at Angermã¼nde, where the inquisitor Friar Jordan, in 1336, tried by this
method a number of persons accused of the mysterious Luciferan heresy, when
fourteen men and women who were unable to procure the requisite number of
compurgators were duly burned.
Abjuration
An
indispensable formality in all cases in which the culprit was admitted to
reconciliation with the Church was abjuration of heresy. Of this there were
various forms adapted to the different occasions of its use--whether for
suspicion, light, vehement, or violent, or after confession and repentance. It
was performed in public, at the autos de
fã, except in rare cases, such as those of ecclesiastics likely to cause
scandal, and it frequently embodied a pecuniary penalty for infraction of its
promises, and security for their performance. The principal point to be
observed in all was to see that the penitent abjured heresy in general as well
as the special heresy with which he had been charged.
If this were
duly attended to, he could always be handed over to the secular arm without a
hearing in case of relapse, except when the abjuration had been for light
suspicion. If it were neglected, and he had, for instance, abjured Catharism
only, he might subsequently indulge in some other form of heresy, such as
Waldensianism or usury, and have the benefit of another chance. The case was
one not likely to occur, but the point is interesting as showing how the
Inquisition could manifest the most scrupulous attention to form, while
discarding in its practice all that entitles the administration of justice to
respect.
The importance
attached to the abjuration is illustrated by a case in the Inquisition of
Toulouse in 1310. Sibylla, wife of Bernard Borell, had been forced to
confession and abjuration in 1305. Continuing her heretical practices, she was
arrested in 1309 and again obliged to confess. As a relapsed heretic she was
doomed irrevocably to the stake, but, luckily for her, the abjuration could not
be found among the papers of the Holy Office, and though the rest of the record
seems to have been accessible, she could only be prosecuted as though for a
first offence, and she escaped with imprisonment for life.
In the case of
suspects of heresy who cleared themselves by compurgation, abjuration, of
course, did not include confession.
In accusations
of heresy, supported by evidence, however, no one could be admitted to
abjuration who did not confess that of which he was accused. Denial, as we have
seen, was obduracy, punished by the stake, and confession was a condition
precedent to admission to abjuration. In ordinary cases, where torture was
freely used, confession was almost a matter of course. There were extraordinary
cases, however, like that of Huss at Constance, where torture was spared and
where the accused denied the doctrines attributed to him. In such cases the
necessity of confession prior to abjuration must be borne in mind if we are to
understand the inevitable consequences.
Chapter XII. The Sentence
The penal
functions of the Inquisition were based upon a fiction which must be
comprehended in order rightly to appreciate much of its action. Theoretically
it had no power to inflict punishment. Its mission was to save men's souls; to
recall them to the way of salvation, and to assign salutary penance to those
who sought it, like a father-confessor with his penitents. Its sentences,
therefore, were not, like those of an earthly judge, the retaliation of society
on the wrong-doer, or deterrent examples to prevent the spread of crime; they
were simply imposed for the benefit of the erring soul, to wash away its sin.
The inquisitors themselves habitually speak of their ministrations in this sense.
When they
condemned a poor wretch to lifelong imprisonment, the formula in use, after the
procedure of the Holy Office had become systematized, was a simple injunction
on him to betake himself to the jail and confine himself there, performing
penance on bread and water, with a warning that he was not to leave it under
pain of excommunication, and of being regarded as a perjured and impenitent
heretic. If he broke jail and escaped, the requisition for his recapture under
a foreign jurisdiction describes him, with a singular lack of humor, as one
insanely led to reject the salutary medicine offered for his cure, and to spurn
the wine and oil which were soothing his wounds.
Technically,
therefore, the list of penalties available to the inquisitor was limited. He
never condemned to death, but merely withdrew the protection of the Church from
the hardened and impenitent sinner who afforded no hope of conversion, or from
him who showed by relapse that there was no trust to be placed in his pretended
repentance.
Except in
Italy, he never confiscated the heretic's property; he merely declared the
existence of a crime which, under the secular law, rendered the culprit
incapable of possession. At most he could impose a fine, as a penance, to be
expended in good works. His tribunal was a spiritual one, and dealt only with
the sins and remedies of the spirit, under the inspiration of the Gospels,
which always lay open before it. Such, at least, was the theory of the Church,
and this must be borne in mind if we would understand what may occasionally
seem to be inconsistencies and incongruities--especially in view of the
arbitrary discretion which left to the individual inquisitor such opportunity
to display his personal characteristics in dealing with the penitents before
him. He was a judge in the forum of conscience, bound by no statutes and
limited by no rules, with his penitents at his mercy, and no power save that of
the Holy See itself could alter one jot of his decrees.
This sometimes
led to a lenity which would be otherwise inexplicable, as in the case of the
murderers of St. Peter Martyr. Pietro Balsamo, known as Carino, one of the
hired assassins, was caught red-handed, and his escape by bribery from prison
created a popular excitement leading to a revolution in Milan. Yet, when
recaptured, he repented, was forgiven, and allowed to enter the Dominican
Order, in which he peacefully died, with the repute of a "beato;" and though the Church never
formally recognized his right to the public worship paid to him in some places,
still, in one of the stalls of the martyr's own great church of Sant'
Eustorgio, he appears, with the title of the blessed Acerinus, in a chiaroscuro
of 1505, among the Dominican saints.
Theory Of The Inquisition
Not one,
indeed, of those concerned in the assassination appears to have been put to
death, and the leading instigator of the crime, Stefano Confaloniere of Aliate,
a notorious heretic and fautor of heretics, after repeated abjurations,
releases, and relapses, was not fairly imprisoned until 1295, forty-three years
after the murder. It was the same when, soon afterwards, the Franciscan
inquisitor, Pier da Bracciano, was assassinated, and Manfredo di Sesto, who had
hired the assassins, was brought before Rainerio Saccone, the Inquisitor of
Milan. He confessed the crime and other offences in aid of heresy, but was only
ordered to present himself to the pope and receive penance. Contumaciously
neglecting to do this, Innocent IV. merely ordered the magistrates of Italy to
arrest and detain him if he should be found.
Yet the theory
which held the Church to be a loving mother unwillingly inflicting wholesome
chastisement on her unruly children only lent a sharper rigor to most of the
operations of the Inquisition. Those who were obdurate to its kindly efforts
were ungrateful and disobedient when ingratitude and disobedience were offences
of the most heinous nature.
They were
parricides whom it was mercy to reduce to subjection, and whose sin only the
severest suffering could expiate. We have seen how little the inquisitor recked
of human misery in his efforts to detect and convert the heretic, and it is not
to be supposed that he would be more tender in his ministrations to the
diseased souls asking for absolution and penance--and it was only the penitent
who had confessed and abjured his sin who came before the judgment-seat for
punishment. All others were left to the secular arm.
The flimsiness
of this theory, however, is manifest from the fact that it was not only
heretics--those who consciously erred in matters of faith--who were subjected
to the jurisdiction and chastisement of the Inquisition. Fautors, receivers,
and defenders--those who showed hospitality, gave alms, or sheltered or
assisted heretics in any way, or neglected to denounce them to the authorities,
or to capture them when occasion offered, also rulers who omitted to execute
the laws against heresy, however orthodox themselves, incurred suspicion of
heresy, simple, vehement, or violent.
If violent, it
was tantamount to heresy; if simple or vehement, we have seen how readily it
might, by failure of purgation, or by repetition, grow into technical heresy
and relapse, incurring the gravest penalties, including relaxation to the
secular arm. Not less conclusive to the real import of the inquisitorial
organization is the argument of Zanghino, that if a heretic repents, confesses
to his priest, accepts and performs penance and receives absolution, however he
may be relieved from hell and pardoned in the sight of God, he is not released
from temporal punishment, and is still subject to prosecution by the
Inquisition. It would not abandon its prey, while yet it could not impugn the
efficacy of the sacrament of penitence, and such difficulties were eluded by
forbidding priests to take cognizance of heresy, which was reserved for bishops
and inquisitors.
Forms Of Penance
The penances
customarily imposed by the Inquisition were comparatively few in number. They
consisted, firstly, of pious observances--recitation of prayers, frequenting of
churches, the discipline, fasting, pilgrimages, and fines nominally for pious
uses, such as a confessor might impose on his ordinary penitents. These were
for offences of trifling import.
Next in grade
are the "confusibiles"--the
humiliating and degrading penances, of which the most important was the wearing
of yellow crosses sewed upon the garments; and, finally, the severest
punishment among those strictly within the competence of the Holy Office, the
"murus," or prison.
Confiscation, as I have said, was an incident, and the stake, like it, was the
affair of the secular power; and though both were really controlled by the
inquisitor, they will be more conveniently considered separately. The Councils
of Narbonne and Bãziers, in addition, prescribe a purely temporal
punishment--banishment, either temporary or perpetual--but this would appear to
have been so rarely employed that it may be disregarded, although in the
earlier period it occasionally occurs in sentences, or is found among the
penances to which repentant heretics pledged themselves to submit.
The sin of
heresy was too grave to be expiated simply by contrition and amendment. While
the Church professed to welcome back to her bosom all her erring and repentant
children, the way of the transgressor was made hard, and his offence could only
be washed away by penances severe enough to prove the robustness of his
convictions.
Before the
Inquisition was founded, about 1208, St. Dominic, while acting under the
authority of the Legate Arnaud, converted a Catharan named Pons Roger, and
prescribed for him a penance which has chanced to be preserved. It will give us
an insight into what were considered reasonable terms of readmission to the
Church, at a time when it was straining every nerve to win the heretics back, and
before it had fairly resorted to the use of force. On three Sundays the
penitent is to be stripped to the waist and scourged by the priest from the
entrance of the town of Trãville to the church-door. He is to abstain forever
from meat and eggs and cheese, except on Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, when
he is to eat of them in sign of his abnegation of his Manichã¦an errors. For
twoscore days, twice a year, he is to forego the use of fish, and for three
days in each week that of fish, wine, and oil, fasting, if his health and
labors will permit. He is to wear monastic vestments, with a small cross sewed
on each breast. If possible, he is to hear mass daily, and on feast-days to
attend church at vespers. Seven times a day he is to recite the canonical hours,
and, in addition, the Paternoster ten times each day and twenty times each
night.
He is to
observe the strictest chastity. Every month he is to show this paper to the
priest, who is to watch its observance closely, and this mode of life is to be
maintained until the legate shall see fit to alter it, while for infraction of
the penance he is to be held as a perjurer and a heretic, and be segregated
from the society of the faithful.
This shows how
the various forms of penance were mingled together at the discretion of the
ghostly father. The same is seen in an exceedingly lenient sentence imposed in
1258 by the inquisitors of Carcassonne on Raymond Maria, who had confessed to
various acts of heresy committed twenty or thirty years before, and who, for
other reasons, had strong claims for merciful treatment.
It further
illustrates the practice of compounding pious observances for money. Raymond is
ordered to fast from the Friday after Michaelmas until Easter, and to eat no
meat on Saturdays, but he can redeem the fast by giving a denier to a poor man.
Every day he is to recite seven times the Paternoster and Ave Maria. Within
three years he is to visit the shrines of St. Mary of Roche-amour, St. Rufus of
Aliscamp, St. Gilles of Vauverte, St. William of the Desert, and Santiago de
Compostella, bringing home testimonial letters from the rector of each church;
and in lieu of other penances he is to give six livres Tournois to the Bishop
of Albi to aid in building a chapel. He is to hear mass at least every Sunday
and feast-day, and to abstain from all work on those days. Another penance
belonging to the same general category is that inflicted on a Carthusian monk
of la Loubatiã¨re who was guilty of Spiritual Franciscanism.
He was ordered
not to leave the abbey for three years, and during that time not to speak
except in extreme necessity. For a year he was to confess daily in the presence
of his brethren that John XXII. was the true pope and entitled to obedience;
and, in addition, he was to undergo certain fasts and perform certain
recitations of the liturgy and psalter. Penances of this character could be
varied ad infinitum at the caprice of
the inquisitor.
The Discipline - Pilgrimages
In all this
there is no mention of flagellation, but that was so general a feature of
penance that it is frequently taken for granted in prescribing pilgrimages and
attendance at church. We have seen Raymond of Toulouse submitting to it, and
however abhorrent it may be to our modern ideas, it did not carry with it that
sense of humiliation which to us appears inseparable from it. In the lightest
penalties provided for voluntary converts, coming forward within the time of
grace, the Councils of Narbonne and Bãziers, in 1244 and 1246, and that of
Tarragona, in 1242, order the discipline.
It was no
light matter. Stripped as much as decency and the inclemency of the weather
would permit, the penitent presented himself every Sunday, between the Epistle
and the Gospel, with a rod in his hand, to the priest engaged in celebrating
mass, who soundly scourged him in the presence of the congregation, as a
fitting interlude in the mysteries of divine service. On the first Sunday in
every month, after mass, he was to visit, similarly equipped, every house in
which he had seen heretics, and receive the same infliction; and on the
occasion of every solemn procession he was to accompany it in the same guise,
to be beaten at every station and at the end.
Even when the
town happened to be placed under interdict, or himself to be excommunicated,
there was to be no cessation of the penance, and apparently it lasted as long
as the wretched life of the penitent, or at least until it pleased the
inquisitor to remember him and liberate him. That this was no idle threat is
shown by these precise details occurring in a formula given by Bernard Gui,
about 1330, for the release from prison of penitents who by patience and
humility in their captivity have earned a mitigation of their punishment, and
virtually the same formula was employed immediately after the organization of
the Inquisition.
The
pilgrimages, which were regarded as among the lightest of penances, were also
mercies only by comparison. Performed on foot, the number commonly enjoined
might well consume several years of a man's life, during which his family might
perish. A frequent injunction by Pierre Cella, one of the most moderate of
inquisitors, comprehended Compostella and Canterbury, with perhaps several
intermediate shrines, and in one case a man over ninety years of age was ordered
to perform the weary tramp to Compostella simply for having consorted with
heretics.
These
pilgrimages were not without peril and hardship, although the hospitality
exercised by the numerous convents on the road enabled the poorest pilgrim to
sustain life. Still, pilgrimages were so habitual a feature of mediã¦val
habits, and entered so frequently into ordinary penance, that their use by the
Inquisition was inevitable. When the yearning for salvation was so strong that
two hundred thousand pilgrims arriving in Rome in a single day is said to have
been no uncommon occurrence during the Jubilee of 1300, the penitent who
escaped with the performance of such pious observances might well regard
himself as mercifully treated.
The
penitential pilgrimages of the Inquisition were divided into two classes--the
greater and the less. In Languedoc the greater pilgrimages were customarily
four--to Rome, Compostella, St. Thomas of Canterbury, and the Three Kings of
Cologne. The smaller were nineteen in number, extending from shrines of local
celebrity to Paris and Boulogne-sur-mer. The cases in which they were employed
may be estimated by the sentence passed by Bernard Gui, in 1322, on three
culprits whose only offence was that, some fifteen or twenty years before, they
had seen Waldensian teachers in their fathers' houses without knowing what they
were.
Commencing
within three months, the penitents were required to perform seventeen of the
minor pilgrimages, reaching from Bordeaux to Vienne, bringing back, as usual,
from each shrine testimonial letters of the visit. In this case it is specified
that they were not obliged to wear the crosses, and I think it probable that
this exempted them from scourging at each of the shrines, to which penitents
with crosses would naturally be subjected. In one case, occurring in 1308, a
culprit was excused from pilgrimages on account of his age and weakness, and
was only required to make two visitations a year in the city of Toulouse.
Considerate humanity such as this is not sufficiently common in the annals of
the Inquisition for an example of it to be passed in silence.
At the
inception of the Inquisition the pilgrimage universally ordered for men was
that to Palestine, as a crusader. Indeed, the legate, Cardinal Romano,
commanded this for all who were suspect of heresy. It seems to have been felt
that the best use to which a heretic could be put, if he was to escape the
fagot, was to make him aid in the defence of the Holy Land--a service of
infinite hardship and peril. In the wholesale persecutions in Languedoc the
numbers of these unwilling crusaders were so great that alarm was excited lest
they should pervert the faith in the land of its origin, and about 1242 or 1243
a papal prohibition was issued, forbidding it for the future.
The Council of
Bãziers, in 1246, commits to the discretion of the inquisitors whether
penitents shall serve beyond seas, or send a man-at-arms to represent them, or
fight the battles of the faith nearer home, against heretics or Saracens. The
term of service was also left to the inquisitors, but was usually for two or
three years, though sometimes for seven or eight, and those who went to
Palestine, if they were so fortunate as to return, were obliged to bring back
testimonial letters from the Patriarch of Jerusalem or Acre.
Crusades As Penitence
When Count
Raymond was preparing to fulfil his long-delayed vow of a crusade, in his
eagerness for recruits he procured in 1247, from Innocent IV., a bull
empowering the Archbishop of Ausch and Bishop of Agen, within Raymond's
dominions, to commute into a pilgrimage beyond seas the penance of temporary
crosses and prison, and even when these were perpetual, if the consent could be
had of the inquisitor who had uttered the sentence; and the following year this
was extended to those in the territories of the Counts of Montfort.
Under this
impulsion, the penance of crusading became common again. There is extant a
notice given by the inquisitors of Carcassonne, October 5, 1251, in the church
of St. Michael, to those wearing crosses and those relieved from them, that
they must without fail sail for the Holy Land, as they had pledged themselves
to do, in the next fleet; and in the Register of Carcassonne the injunction of
the crusade is of frequent occurrence. With the disastrous result of the
ventures of St. Louis and the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem this form of
penance gradually diminished, but it continued to be occasionally prescribed.
As late as 1321 we find Guillem Garric condemned to go beyond seas with the
next convoy and remain until recalled by the inquisitor; if legitimately
impeded (which was likely, as he was an old man who had rotted in a dungeon for
thirty years) he could replace himself with a competent fighting-man, and if he
neglected to do so, he was condemned to perpetual prison. This sentence,
moreover, affords one of the rare instances of banishment, for Guillem, besides
furnishing a substitute, is ordered to expatriate himself to such place as
shall be designated, during the pleasure of the inquisitor.
These penances
did not interfere with the social position and self-respect of the penitent.
Far heavier was the apparently simple penalty of wearing the crosses, which was
known as a pÃ¥“na confusibilis, or
humiliating punishment. We have seen that already, in 1208, St. Dominic orders
his converted heretic to wear two small crosses on the breast in sign of his
sin and repentance. It seems a contradiction that the emblem of the Redemption,
so proudly worn by the crusader and the military orders, should be to the convert
an infliction almost unbearable, but when it became the sign of his sin and
disgrace there were few inflictions which might not more readily be borne.
The two little
crosses of St. Dominic grew to conspicuous pieces of saffron-colored cloth, of
which the arms were two and a half fingers in breadth, two and a half palms in
height, and two palms in width, one sewed on the breast and the other on the
back, though occasionally one on the breast sufficed.
If the convert
during his trial had committed perjury, a second transverse arm was added at
the top; and if he had been a "perfected" heretic, a third cross was
placed upon the cap. Another form was that of a hammer, worn by prisoners
temporarily liberated on bail; and we have seen the red tongues fastened on
false-witnesses, and the symbol of a letter inflicted on a forger, while other
emblematical forms were prescribed, as the fancy of the inquisitor might
dictate.
They were
never to be laid aside, indoors or out, and when worn out the penitent was
obliged to renew them. During the latter half of the thirteenth century those
who went beyond seas might abandon their crosses during their crusade, but were
obliged to reassume them on returning. In the earlier days of the Inquisition a
term ranging from one year to seven or eight was usually prescribed, but in the
later period it was always for life, unless the inquisitor saw fit, as a reward
of good behavior, to remit it. Thus in the auto
de fã of 1309 Bernard Gui permitted Raymonde, wife of Étienne Got, to
remove the crosses which she had been condemned to wear, some forty years
before, by Pons de Poyet and Étienne de Gâtine.
In Italy the
crosses appear to be of red cloth (Archiv. di Firenze, Prov. S. Maria Novella,
31 Ott. 1327).
At an early
period there is a single allusion to another "pÃ…“na confusibilis" in the shape of a wooden collar or yoke
worn by the penitent. This occurs at La Charité, in 1233, and I have not met
with it elsewhere.
The Council of
Narbonne, in 1229, prescribed the wearing of these crosses by all converts who
voluntarily abandoned heresy and returned to the faith of their own free will,
as an evidence of their detestation of their former errors. Apparently the
penance was found hard to bear, and efforts were made to escape it, for the
statutes of Raymond, in 1234, and the Council of Bãziers of the same year,
threaten confiscation for all who refuse to wear them, or endeavor to conceal
them. Subsequent councils renewed and extended the obligation on all who were
reconciled to the Church; and that of Valence, in 1248, decreed that all who
disobeyed should be forced without mercy to resume them, and that abandoning
them after due monition should be visited, like jail-breaking, with the full
penalties of impenitent heresy.
In a case
recorded in 1251, a penitent preparing for a crusade seems to have thought
himself authorized to abandon the crosses before starting, and was sentenced to
come to Carcassonne on the first Sunday of every month until his departure, barefooted
and in shirt and drawers, and visit every church in the city, with a rod, to
undergo scourging.
Though this
penance was regarded as merciful in comparison with imprisonment, it was not
easily endurable, and we can readily understand the sharp penalties required to
enforce obedience. In the sentences of Pierre Cella it is only prescribed in
aggravated cases, and then merely for from one to five years, though
subsequently it grew to be universal, and without a limit of time. The
unfortunate penitent was exposed to the ridicule and derision of all whom he
met, and was heavily handicapped in every effort to earn a livelihood. Even in
the earlier time, when a majority of the population of Languedoc were heretics,
and the cross-wearers were so numerous that their presence in Palestine was
dreaded, the Council of Bãziers, in 1246, feels obliged to warn the people that
penitents should be welcomed and their cheerful endurance of penance should be
a subject of gratulation for all the faithful, and therefore it strictly
forbids ridicule of those who wear crosses, or refusal to transact business
with them.
Though
penitents were under the special protection of the Church, it had too zealously
preached detestation of heresy to be able to control the feelings of the
population towards those whom it thus saw fit to stigmatize. A slight
indication of this is seen in the case of Raymonde Manifacier, who, in 1252,
was cited before the Inquisition of Carcassone for abandoning the crosses, when
she urged in extenuation that the one on her cloak had been torn and she was
too poor to replace it, while as regards that on her cape, her mistress, whom
she served as nurse, had forbidden her to wear it and had given her a cape
without one. A stronger case is that already cited of Arnaud Isarn, who found,
after year's experience, that he could not earn a living while thus bearing the
marks of his degradation.
The
Inquisition recognized the intolerable hardships to which its penitents were
exposed, and sometimes in mercy mitigated them. Thus, in 1250, at Carcassonne,
Pierre Pelha receives permission to lay aside the crosses temporarily during a
voyage which he is obliged to make to France. Bernard Gui assures us that young
women were frequently excused from wearing them, because with them they would
be unable to find husbands; and among the formulas of his "Practica" one which exempts the
penitent from crosses enumerates the various reasons usually assigned, such as
the age or infirmity of the wearer (presumably rendering him a safe object of
insult) or on account of his children, whom he may not otherwise be able to
support, or for the sake of his daughters, whom he cannot marry. Still more
suggestive are formulas of proclamations threatening to prosecute as impeders
of the Inquisition and to impose crosses on those who ridicule such penitents
or drive them away or prevent them from following their callings; and the
insufficiency of this is shown by still other formulas of orders addressed to
the secular officials, who are required to see that no such outrages are
perpetrated. Sometimes monitions of this kind formed part of the regular
proceedings of the autos de fé. The
wearing of the symbol of Christianity was evidently a punishment of no slight
character. The well-known sanbenito of
the modern Spanish Inquisition was derived from the scapular with
saffron-colored crosses which was worn by those condemned to imprisonment, when
on certain feast-days they were exposed at the church doors, that their misery
and humiliation might serve as a warning to the people.
It will be
remembered that at the outset there was some discussion as to whether it should
be competent for the inquisitors to inflict the pecuniary penance of fines. The
voluntary poverty and renunciation of money of the Mendicants, to whom the Holy
Office was confided, had not yet become so obsolete that the incongruity could
be overlooked of their using their almost limitless discretion in levying fines
and handling the money thence accruing.
That they
commenced it early is shown by a sentence of 1237, already quoted, in which
Pons Grimoardi, a voluntary convert, is required to pay to the order of the
inquisitor ten livres Morlaas, while in 1245, in Florence, one rendered by the
indefatigable inquisitor, Ruggieri Calcagni, shows that already fines were
habitual there. It was not without cause, therefore, that the Council of
Narbonne, in 1244, in its instructions to inquisitors, ordered them to abstain
from pecuniary penances both for the sake of the honor of their Order and
because they would have ample other work to do.
The Order
itself felt this to be the case, and as inquisitors were not yet, at least in
theory, emancipated from the control of their superiors, already, in 1242, the
Provincial Chapter of Montpellier had endeavored to enforce the rules of the
Order by strictly prohibiting them from inflicting pecuniary penances for the
future, or from collecting those which had already been imposed. How little
respect was shown to these injunctions is visible from a bull of Innocent IV.,
in 1245, in which, to preserve the reputation of the inquisitors, he orders all
fines paid over to two persons selected by the bishop and inquisitor, to be
expended in building prisons and in supporting prisoners, in compliance with
which the Council of Bãziers, in 1246, abandoned the position taken by the
Council of Narbonne, and agreed that the fines should be employed on the
prisons, and in defraying the necessary expenses of the Inquisition, possibly
because the good bishops found that they themselves were expected to meet these
demands as appertaining to the episcopal jurisdiction.
In an
inquisitorial manual of the period this is specified as the destination of the
fines, but the power was speedily abused, and in 1249 Innocent IV. sternly
rebuked the inquisitors in general for the heavy exactions which they wrung
from their converts, to the disgrace of the Holy See and the scandal of the
faithful at large. This apparently had no effect, and in 1251 he prohibited
them wholly from levying fines if any other form of penance could be employed.
Yet the inquisitors finally triumphed and won the right to inflict pecuniary
penances at discretion. These were understood to be for pious uses, in which
term were included the expenses of the Inquisition; and as they were payable to
the inquisitors themselves, they doubtless were so expended--it is to be hoped
in accordance with the caution of Eymerich, "decently and without scandal
to the laity."
In the
sentences of Frà Antonio Secco on the peasants of the Waldensian valleys
in 1387, the penance of crosses is usually accompanied with a fine of five or
ten florins of pure gold, payable to the Inquisition, nominally to defray the
expenses of the trial. An attempt of the State to secure a share was defeated
by a council of experts assembled at Piacenza in 1276 by the Lombard
inquisitors, Frà Niccolò da Cremona and Frà Daniele da Giussano. A
more decent use of the power to inflict money payments was one which Pierre Cella,
the first inquisitor of Toulouse, frequently employed, by adding to the
pilgrimages or other penances imposed the obligation of maintaining a priest or
a poor man for a term of years or for life.
In the later
period of the Inquisition it was argued that fines were inadmissible, because
if the accused were a heretic all his property disappeared in confiscation,
while if he were not he should not be punished, but the inquisitors responded
that, although this was true, there were fautors and defenders of heresy, and
those whose heresy consisted merely in a thoughtless word, all of whom could
legitimately be fined; and the profitable abuse went on.
Scarcely
separable from the practice of fines was that of commuting penances for money.
When we remember how extensive and lucrative was the custom of commuting the
vows of crusaders, it was inevitable that a similar abuse should flourish in
the Church's dealings with the penitents whom the Inquisition had placed within
its power. A ready excuse was found in the proviso that the sums thence arising
should be spent in pious uses--and no use could be more pious than that of
ministering to the wants of those who were zealously laboring for the purity of
the faith.
In this the
Holy See set the example. We have seen how, in 1248, Algisius, the papal
penitentiary, ordered the release, by authority of Innocent IV., of six
prisoners who had confessed heresy, alleging as a reason the satisfactory
contributions which they had made to the Holy Land. The same year Innocent
formally authorized Algisius to commute the penalties of certain heretics,
without regard to the inquisitors, and he further empowered the Archbishop of
Ausch to transmute into subsidies the penances imposed on reconciled heretics.
Raymond was
preparing for his crusade, and the excuse was a good one. The heretics were
eager to escape by sacrificing their substance, and the project promised to be
profitable. In 1249, accordingly, Algisius was sent to Languedoc armed with
power to commute all inquisitorial penances into fines to be devoted to the
needs of the Church and of the Holy Land, and to issue all necessary
dispensations notwithstanding the privileges of the Inquisition. It is not to
be supposed that the example was lost upon the inquisitors. Naturally enough,
the cases which have reached us usually specify some pious work to which the
funds were to be devoted, as when, in 1255, the inquisitors of Toulouse allowed
twelve of the principal citizens of Lavaur to commute their penances into money
to be contributed to building the church which was afterwards the Cathedral of
Lavaur; and in 1258 they assisted the church of Najac in the same way by
allowing a number of the inhabitants to redeem their penalties for its benefit.
The public utility of bridges caused them to be included in the somewhat
elastic term of pious uses. Thus, in 1310, at Toulouse, Mathieu Aychard is
released from wearing crosses and performing certain pilgrimages on condition
of contributing forty livres Tournois to a new bridge then under construction at
Tonneins; and in a formula for such transactions given by Bernard Gui,
absolution and dispensation from pilgrimages and other penances are said to be
granted in consideration of the payment of fifty livres for the building of a
certain bridge, or of a certain church, or "to be spent in pious uses at
our discretion." This last clause shows that commutations were by no means
always thus liberally disposed of, and in fact they often inured to the benefit
of those imposing them. We have a specimen of this in letters of the Inquisitor
of Narbonne in 1264, granting absolution to Guillem du Puy in consideration of
his giving one hundred and fifty livres Tournois to the Inquisition.
The magnitude
of these sums shows the eagerness of the penitents to escape, and the enormous
power of extortion wielded by the inquisitor. If he was a man of integrity he
could doubtless resist the temptation, but to the covetous and self-indulgent
the opportunity of oppressing the helpless was almost unlimited. The system was
kept up to the end. Under Nicholas V. Fray Miguel, the Inquisitor of Aragon,
gave mortal offence to some high dignitaries in following certain papal
instructions, whereupon they maltreated him and kept him in prison for nine
months. It was a flagrant case of impeding the Inquisition, and in 1458 Pius
II. ordered the Archbishop of Tarragona to dig up the bones of one of the
offenders who had died, and to send the rest to the Holy See for judgment--but
he added that the archbishop might, at his discretion, substitute a mulct for
the war against the Turks, to be transmitted to the papal camera. It goes
without saying that the death-penalty could never legally be commuted.
Penitents who
died before fulfilling their penance afforded a specially favorable opportunity
for such transactions as these. Death, as we have seen, afforded no immunity
from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and in no wise abated its energy of
prosecution. There might be a distinction drawn in practice between those who
were taken off while humbly performing the penance assigned to them, but before
its completion, and those who had wilfully neglected its commencement; but
legally the non-fulfilment of penance entailed condemnation for heresy whether
in the dead or living.
In 1329, for
instance, the Inquisition of Carcassonne ordered the exhumation and cremation
of the bones of seven persons declared to have died in heresy for not having
fulfilled the penance enjoined on them, which of course carried with it the
confiscation of their property and the subjection of their descendants to the
usual disabilities. The Councils of Narbonne and Albi directed the inquisitors
to exact satisfaction at discretion from the heirs of those who had died before
judgment, if they would have been condemned to wear crosses, as well as those
who had confessed and been sentenced, and who had not lived, whether to
commence or to complete their penance. Gui Foucoix expresses his belief that in
these cases the penitent is admitted to purgatory, and he decides that nothing
should be demanded from his heirs; but even his authority did not overcome the
more palatable doctrine of the councils, and a contemporary manual directs the
inquisitor to exact a "congruous satisfaction." There is something
peculiarly repulsive in the rapacity which thus followed beyond the grave those
who had humbly confessed and repented and were received into the bosom of the
Church, but the Inquisition was unrelenting and exacted the last penny.
For instance,
the Inquisitor of Carcassonne had prescribed five years' pilgrimage to the Holy
Land for Jean Vidal, who died before performing it. March 21, 1252, his heirs,
under citation, swore that his whole estate was worth twenty livres, and gave
security to obey the decision of the inquisitor, which was announced the
following August, and proved to be a demand for twenty livres--the entire value
of his property. In another case, Raymonde Barbaira had died before
accomplishing some pilgrimages with crosses to which she had been sentenced. An
inventory of her property showed it to consist of some bedding, clothing, a
chest, a few cattle, and four sous in money, which had been divided up among
her kindred, and from this pitiful inheritance the inquisitor, on March 7, 1256
demanded forty sous, for the payment of which by Easter the heirs had to give
security. Such petty and vulgar details as these give us a clearer insight into
the spirit and working of the Inquisition, and of the grinding oppression which
it exercised on the subject populations. Even in the case of fautors who were
not heretics, the heirs were obliged to perform any pecuniary penance which had
been inflicted upon them.
A more
legitimate source of income, but yet one which opened the door to grave abuses,
was the custom of taking bail, which of course was liable to forfeiture,
serving, in such cases, as an irregular form of commutation. This custom dated
from the inception of the Inquisition, and was practised at every stage of the
proceedings, from the first citation to the final sentence, and even afterwards,
when prisoners were sometimes liberated temporarily on giving security for
their return. The convert who was absolved on abjuring was also required to
give security that he would not relapse.
The Crosses
Thus, in 1234,
we see Lantelmo, a Milanese noble, ordered to give bail in two thousand lire,
and two Florentine merchants bailed by their friends in two thousand silver
marks. So, in 1244, the Baroni, of Florence, gave bail in one thousand lire to
obey the mandates of the Church; and in 1252 a certain Guillem Roger pledged
one hundred livres that he would go beyond seas by the next fleet and serve
there for two years. The security was always to be pecuniary, and the
inquisitor was warned not to take it of heretics, for their offence implied
confiscation, but this was not strictly observed, as in special cases friends
were found who furnished the necessary pledges. Forfeited bail was payable to
the inquisitor, sometimes directly, and sometimes through the hands of the
bishops, and was to be used for the expenses of the Inquisition. The usual form
of bond pledged all the property of the principal and that of two sureties,
jointly and severally; and as a general rule bail may be said to have been
universal, except in cases where the offence was regarded as too serious to
admit of it, or when the offender could not procure it.
It was
impossible that these methods of converting the sentences of the Inquisition
into current coin could flourish without introducing widespread corruption.
Admission to bail might be the result of favoritism or degenerate into covert
bribery. The discretion of the inquisitor was so wide that bribery itself could
be safely indulged in. A crime necessarily so secret as this form of extortion
cannot be expected to leave traces behind it, except in those cases in which it
proved a failure, but sufficient instances of the latter are on record to show
that the tribunals were surrounded by men who made a trade of their influence,
real or presumed, with the judges. When these were incorruptible the business
was suppressed with more or less success, but when they were acquisitive, they
had ample field for unhallowed gain, to be wrung without stint or check from
the subject populations both by bribery and extortion. Considering that every
one above the age of seven was liable to the indelible suspicion of heresy by
the mere fact of citation, it will be seen what an opportunity lay before the
inquisitor and his spies and familiars to practise upon the fears of all, to
sell exemptions from arrest, as well as to bargain for liberation. That these
fruitful sources of gain were not abundantly worked would be incredible even in
the absence of proof, but proof sufficient exists.
In 1302
Boniface VIII. wrote to the Dominican Provincial of Lombardy that the papal
ears had been lacerated with complaints of the Franciscan inquisitors of Padua
and Vicenza, whose malicious cupidity had wronged many men and women by
exacting from them immense sums and inflicting on them all manner of injuries.
When the pope naïvely adduces in cumulation of their villainy that these
wrong-doers had not employed the illicit gains for the benefit of the Holy
Office, or of the Roman Church, or even of their own Order, he affords ground
for the suspicion that a judicious distribution of the spoils secured silent
condonation of such offences in many cases. He had sent Gui, Bishop of Saintes,
to investigate these complaints, who reported them well founded, and he orders
the provincial to replace the delinquents with Dominicans.
The change
brought little relief, for the very next year Mascate de' Mosceri, a jurist of
Padua, appealed to Benedict from the new Dominican inquisitor, FrÃ
Benigno, who was vexing him with prosecutions in order to extort money from
him; and in 1304 Benedict was obliged to address to the inquisitors of Padua
and Vicenza a grave warning as to the official complaints which still arose
about their fraudulent prosecution of good Catholics by means of false
witnesses.
It is easy to
understand the complaint made by the stricter Franciscans that the inquisitors
of their Order rode around in state in place of walking barefoot as was
prescribed by the rule. At this very time, moreover, the Dominicans of
Languedoc were the subject of precisely similar arraignment on the part of the
communities subjected to them. Redress in this case was long in coming, but at
last the investigation set on foot by Clement V. convinced him of the truth of
the facts alleged, and at the Council of Vienne, in 1311, he caused the
adoption of canons, embodied in the Corpus Juris, which placed on record
conspicuously his conviction that the inquisitorial office was frequently
abused by the extortion of money from the innocent and the escape of the guilty
through bribery. The remedy which he devised, of ipso facto excommunication in such cases, was complained of by
Bernard Gui on the ground that it would invalidate the rightful acts, as well
as the evil ones, of the wrong-doer; which only serves to show the vicious
circle in which the whole business moved. Yet neither the hopes of Clement nor
the fears of Bernard were justified by the result. The inquisitors continued to
enrich themselves and the people to suffer untold miseries. In 1338 a papal
investigation was made of a transaction by which the city of Albi purchased, by
the payment of a sum of money to the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, the liberation
of some citizens accused of heresy. In 1337 Benedict XII. ordered his nuncio in
Italy, Bertrand, Archbishop of Embrun, to investigate the complaints which came
from all parts of Italy that the inquisitors extorted money, received presents,
allowed the guilty to escape, and punished the innocent, through hatred or
avarice, and empowered him to make removals in consequence; and the exercise of
this power shows that the complaints were well founded. The effects of the
measure, however, were evanescent.
Fines. Commutations For Money
In 1346 the
whole republic of Florence rose against their inquisitor, Piero di Aquila, for
various abuses, among which figured extortion. He fled and refused to return
during the investigation which followed, in spite of the offer of a
safe-conduct.
A single
witness swore to sixty-six cases of extortion, and in a partial list of them
which has been preserved the sums exacted vary from twenty-five to seventeen
hundred gold florins, showing how unlimited were the profits which tempted the
unscrupulous. Villani tells us that in two years he had thus amassed more than
seven thousand florins, an enormous sum in those days; that there were no
heretics in Florence at the time, and that the offences which thus proved so
lucrative to him consisted of usury and thoughtless blasphemy. As for usury,
Alvaro Pelayo tells us that at that time the bishops of Tuscany set the example
by habitually so employing the church funds, but the inquisitors did not meddle
with the prelates. As for blasphemy, the subtle refinements which converted
simple blasphemous expressions into heresy, as set forth by Eymerich, show how
readily a skilful inquisitor could speculate on idle oaths. Boccaccio doubtless
had Frà Piero in memory when he described the recent inquisitor of
Florence who, like all his brethren, had an eye as keen to discover a rich man
as a heretic, and who extracted a heavy douceur
from a citizen for boasting in his cups that he had wine so good that Christ
would drink it. The keenness which thus made profitable business for the Holy
Office, when heresy was declining, is illustrated by the case of Marie du
Canech, a money-changer of Cambrai, in 1403. In a case before the Ordinary she
incautiously expressed the opinion that when under oath she was not bound to
give evidence against her own honor and interest. For this the deputy
inquisitor, Frère Nicholas de Péronne, prosecuted her and condemned her to various
penances, including nine years' abstention from business and eighty gold crowns
for expenses.
These abuses
continued to the last. Cornelius Agrippa tells us that it was customary for
inquisitors to convert corporal punishments into pecuniary ones and even to
exact annual payments as the price of forbearance. When he was in the Milanese,
about 1515, there was a disturbance caused by their secretly extorting large
sums from women of noble birth, whose husbands at length discovered it, and the
inquisitors were glad to escape with their lives.
I have dwelt
at some length upon this feature of the Inquisition because it is one which has
rarely received attention, although it inflicted misery and wrong to an almost
unlimited extent. The stake consumed comparatively few victims. While the
horrors of the crowded dungeon can scarce be exaggerated, yet more effective
for evil and more widely exasperating was the sleepless watchfulness which was
ever on the alert to plunder the rich and to wrench from the poor the hard-earned
gains on which a family depended for support.
It was only in
rare cases that the victims dared to raise a cry, and rarer still were those in
which that cry was heard; but sufficient instances have reached us to prove
what a scourge was the institution, in this aspect alone, on all the
populations cursed by its presence. At a very early period the wealthy already
recognized that well-timed liberality was advisable towards those who held such
power in the hollow of their hands. In 1244 the Dominican Chapter of Cahors
lifted a warning voice and ordered inquisitors not to allow their brethren to
receive presents which would expose the whole Order to disrepute; but this
scrupulousness wore off, and even a man of high character like Eymerich could
argue that inquisitors may properly be the recipients of gifts, though he
dubiously adds that they ought to be refused from those under trial, except in
special circumstances. As the accounts of the Inquisition were rendered only to
the papal camera, it will be seen how little the officials had to dread
investigation and exposure. As little had they to fear the divine wrath, for
their very functions, while thus engaged, insured them plenary indulgence for
all sins confessed and repented. Thus secure, here and hereafter, they were
virtually relieved from all restraint.
There was one
purely temporal penalty which came within the competence of the
Inquisition--the designation of the houses which were to be destroyed in
consequence of the contamination of heresy. The origin of this curious practice
is not readily traced. Under the Roman law, buildings in which heretics held
their conventicles with the owner's consent were not torn down, but were
forfeited to the Church. Yet as soon as heresy began to be formidable we find
their destruction commanded by secular rulers with singular unanimity. The
earliest provision I have met with occurs in the assizes of Clarendon in 1166,
which order the razing of all houses in which heretics were received. The
example was followed by the Emperor Henry VI. in the edict of Prato, in 1194,
by Otho IV. in 1210, and by Frederic II. in the edict of Ravenna, in 1232, as
an addition to his coronation-edict of 1220, from which it had been omitted. It
had already been adopted in the code of Verona in 1228 in all cases in which
the owner, after eight days' notice, neglected to expel heretic occupants; it
is found in the statutes of Florence a few years later, and is included in the
papal bulls defining the procedure of the Inquisition. In France the Council of
Toulouse, in 1229, decreed that any house in which a heretic was found was to
be destroyed, and this was given the force of secular law by Count Raymond in
1234.
It naturally
forms a feature of the legislation of the succeeding councils which regulated
the inquisitorial proceedings, and was adopted by St. Louis. Castile, in fact,
seems to be the only land in which the regulation was not observed, owing
doubtless to the direct derivation of its legislation from the Roman law, for,
in the Partidas, houses in which heretics were sheltered are ordered to be
given to the Church. Elsewhere such dwellings were razed to the ground, and the
site, as accursed, was to remain forever a receptacle for filth and unfit for
human habitation; yet the materials could be employed for pious uses unless
they were ordered to be burned by the inquisitor who rendered the sentence.
This sentence was addressed to the parish priest, with directions to publish it
for three successive Sundays during divine service.
In France the
royal officials in charge of the confiscations came at length to object to this
destruction of property, which was sometimes considerable, as the castle of the
seigneur was as liable to it as the cabin of the peasant. In 1329 it forms one
of the points for which the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, Henri de Chamay, asked
and obtained the confirmation of Philippe de Valois, and the same year he had
the satisfaction, in an auto held in
September, to order the destruction of four houses, and a farm, whose owners
had been hereticated in them on their death-beds. Some fifty years later,
however, a quarrel on the subject between the king's representatives and the
inquisitors of Dauphiné resulted differently. Charles le Sage, after
consulting with the pope, issued letters of October 19, 1378, ordering that the
penalty should no longer be enforced.
The
independent spirit of northern Germany manifested itself in the same manner,
and in the Sachsenspiegel there is a peremptory command that no houses shall be
destroyed except for rape committed within them. In Italy the custom continued,
as there the confiscations did not inure to the sovereign, but it was held that
if the owner had no guilty knowledge of the use made of his house he was
entitled to keep it. Lawyers disputed, however, as to the perpetuity of the
prohibition to build on the spot, some holding that possession by a Catholic
for forty years conferred a right to erect a new house, which others denied,
arguing that a perpetual and imprescriptible servitude had been created. The
inquisitors, in process of time, arrogated to themselves the power to issue
licenses to build anew on these sites, and this right they exercised,
doubtless, to their own profit, though they might not have found it easy to
cite authority for it.
Another
temporal penalty may be alluded to as illustrating the unlimited discretion
enjoyed by the inquisitors in imposing penance. When, in 1321, the town of
Cordes made humble submission for its long-continued insubordination to its
bishop and inquisitor, the penance assigned to the community by Bernard Gui and
Jean de Beaune was the construction of a chapel of such size as might be
ordered, in honor of St. Peter Martyr, St. Cecilia, St. Louis, and St. Dominic,
with the statues of those saints in wood or stone above the altar; and, to
complete the humiliation of the community, the portal was to be adorned with
statues of the bishop and of the two inquisitors, the whole to be finished
within two years, under a penalty of five hundred livres Tournois, which was to
be doubled for a delay of another two years.
Doubtless the
people of Cordes built the chapel without delay, but they hesitated at this
glorifying of their oppressors, for, twenty-seven years afterwards, in 1348, we
find the municipal authorities summoned before the Inquisition of Toulouse and
compelled to give pledges that the portal shall forthwith be completed and the
inquisitorial effigies be erected.
The severest
penance the inquisitor could impose was incarceration. It was, according to the
theory of the inquisitors, not a punishment, but a means by which the penitent
could obtain, on the bread of tribulation and water of affliction, pardon from
God for his sins, while at the same time he was closely supervised to see that
he persevered in the right path and was segregated from the rest of the flock,
thus removing all danger of infection. Of course it was only used for converts.
The defiant heretic who persisted in disobedience, or who pertinaciously
refused to confess his heresy and asserted his innocence, could not be admitted
to penance, and was handed over to the secular arm.
In the bull Excommunicamus of Gregory IX., in 1229,
all who after arrest were converted to the faith through fear of death were
ordered to be incarcerated for life, thus to perform appropriate penance. The
Council of Toulouse almost simultaneously made the same regulation, and
manifested its sense of the real value of the involuntary conversions by adding
the caution that they be prevented from corrupting others. The Ravenna decree
of Frederic II., in 1332, adopted the same rule and made it settled legal
practice. The Council of Arles, in 1234, called attention to the perpetual
backsliding of those converted by force, and ordered the bishops to enforce
strictly the penance of perpetual prison in all such cases. As yet the relapsed
were not considered as hopeless, and were not abandoned to the secular court,
or "relaxed," but were similarly imprisoned for life.
The
Inquisition at its inception thus found the rule established, and enforced it
with the relentless vigor which it manifested in all its functions. It was
represented as a special mercy shown to those who had forfeited all claims on
human compassion. There were to be no exemptions. The Council of Narbonne, in
1244, specifically declared that, except when special indulgence could be
procured from the Holy See, no husband was to be spared on account of his wife,
or wife on account of her husband, or parent in consideration of helpless
children; neither sickness nor old age should claim mitigation. Every one who
did not come forward within the time of grace and confess and denounce his
acquaintances was liable to this penance, which in all cases was to be
lifelong; but the prevalence of heresy in Languedoc was so great, and the
terror inspired by the activity of the inquisitors grew so strong, that those
who had allowed the allotted period to elapse flocked in, begging for
reconciliation, in such multitudes that the good bishops declare not only that
funds for the support of such crowds of prisoners were lacking, but even that
it would be impossible to find stones and mortar sufficient to build prisons
for them.
The
inquisitors are therefore instructed to delay incarceration in these cases,
unless impenitence, relapse, or flight, is to be apprehended, until the
pleasure of the pope can be learned. Apparently Innocent IV. was not disposed
to leniency, for in 1246 the Council of Bãziers sternly orders the imprisonment
of all who have overstayed the time of grace, while counselling commutation
when it would entail evident peril of death on parents or children.
Imprisonment thus became the usual punishment, except of obstinate heretics,
who were burned. In a single sentence of February 19, 1237, at Toulouse, some
twenty or thirty penitents are thus condemned, and are ordered to confine
themselves in a house until prisons can be built. In a fragment which has been
preserved of the register of sentences in the Inquisition of Toulouse from 1246
to 1248, comprising one hundred and ninety-two cases, with the exception of
forty-three contumacious absentees, the sentence is invariably imprisonment. Of
these, one hundred and twenty-seven are perpetual, six are for ten years, and
sixteen for an indefinite period, as may seem expedient to the Church. It
apparently was not till a later period that the order of the Council of
Narbonne was obeyed, and the sentence always was for life. In the later periods
this proportion will not hold good, for all inquisitors were not like the
fierce Bernard de Caux, who then ruled the Holy Office in Toulouse; but
perpetual imprisonment remained to the last the principal penance inflicted on
penitents, although the decrees of Frederic and the canons of the councils of
Toulouse and Narbonne were not held to apply to those who abjured heartily
after arrest.
In the later
sentences which have reached us it is often not easy to guess why one prisoner
is incarcerated and another let off with crosses, when the offences enumerated
as to each would seem to be indistinguishable. The test between the two
probably was one which does not appear on the record. All alike were converts,
but he whose conversion appeared to be hearty and spontaneous was considered to
be entitled to the easier penance, while the harsher one was inflicted when the
conversion seemed to be enforced and the result of fear.
Yet how
relentlessly a man like Bernard Gui, who represents the better class of
inquisitors, could enforce the strict measure of the law is seen in the case of
Pierre Raymond Dominique, who had been cited to appear in 1309, had fled and
incurred excommunication, had consequently, in 1315, been condemned as a
contumacious heretic, and in 1321 had voluntarily come forward and surrendered
himself on a promise that his life should be spared. His acts of heresy had not
been flagrant, and he pleaded as an excuse for his contumacy his wife and seven
children, who would have starved had they been deprived of his labor, but in
spite of this he was incarcerated for life. Even the stern Bernard de Caux was
not always so merciless. In 1246, we find him, in sentencing Bernard Sabbatier,
a relapsed heretic, to perpetual imprisonment, adding that as the culprit's
father is a good Catholic and old and sick, the son may remain with him and
support him as long as he lives, meanwhile wearing the crosses.
There were two
kinds of imprisonment, the milder, or "murus
largus," and the harsher, known as "murus strictus" or "durus"
or "arctus." All were on
bread and water, and the confinement, according to rule, was solitary, each
penitent in a separate cell, with no access allowed to him, to prevent his
being corrupted or corrupting others; but this could not be strictly enforced,
and about 1306 Geoffroi d'Ablis stigmatizes as an abuse the visits of clergy,
and laity of both sexes, permitted to prisoners. Husband and wife, however,
were allowed access to each other if either or both were imprisoned; and late
in the fourteenth century Eymerich agrees that zealous Catholics may be
admitted to visit prisoners, but not women and simple folk who might be
perverted, for converted prisoners, he adds, are very liable to relapse, and to
infect others, and usually end with the stake.
In the milder
form, or "murus largus,"
the prisoners apparently were, if well behaved, allowed to take exercise in the
corridors, where sometimes they had opportunities of converse with each other
and with the outside world. This privilege was ordered to be given to the aged
and infirm by the cardinals who investigated the prison of Carcassonne and took
measures to alleviate its rigors. In the harsher confinement, or "murus strictus," the prisoner was
thrust into the smallest, darkest, and most noisome of cells, with chains on
his feet--in some cases chained to the wall. This penance was inflicted on
those whose offences had been conspicuous, or who had perjured themselves by
making incomplete confessions, the matter being wholly at the discretion of the
inquisitor. I have met with one case, in 1328, of aggravated false-witness,
condemned to "murus strictissimus,"
with chains on both hands and feet. When the culprits were members of a
religious order, to avoid scandal the proceedings were usually held in private,
and the imprisonment would be ordered to take place in a convent of their own
Order. As these buildings, however, usually were provided with cells for the
punishment of offenders, this was probably of no great advantage to the victim.
In the case of Jeanne, widow of B. de la Tour, a nun of Lespenasse, in 1246,
who had committed acts of both Catharan and Waldensian heresy, and had
prevaricated in her confession, the sentence was confinement in a separate cell
in her own convent, where no one was to enter or see her, her food being pushed
in through an opening left for the purpose--in fact, the living tomb known as
the "in pace."
I have already
alluded to the varying treatment designedly practised in the detentive
imprisonment of those who were under trial. When there was no special object to
be attained by cruelty, this probably was as mild as could reasonably be
expected. From occasional indications in the trials, it would seem that
considerable intercourse was allowed with the outside world, as well as between
the prisoners themselves, though watchful care was enjoined to prevent
communication of any kind which might tend to harden the prisoner against a
full confession of his sins.
The prisons
themselves were not designed to lighten the penance of confinement. At best the
jails of the Middle Ages were frightful abodes of misery. The
seigneurs-justiciers and cities obliged to maintain them looked upon the
support of prisoners as a heavy charge of which they would gladly relieve
themselves. If a debtor was thrust into a dungeon, although the law limited his
confinement to forty days and ordered him to be comfortably fed, these
prescriptions were customarily eluded, for the worse he was treated the greater
effort he would make to release himself. As for criminals, bread and water were
their sole diet, and if they perished through neglect and starvation it was a
saving of expense. The prisoner who had money and friends could naturally
obtain better treatment by liberal payment; but this alleviation was not often
to be looked for in the case of heretics whose property had been confiscated,
and with whom sympathy was dangerous.
The enormous
number of captives resulting from the vigorous operations of the Inquisition in
Languedoc had rendered the question as to the duty of building and maintaining
prisons one of no little magnitude. It unquestionably rested with the bishops,
whose laches in persecuting heresy were only made good by the inquisitors, and
the bishops, at the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, had admitted this, only
excepting that when the heretic had property those to whom the confiscations
inured should provide for him. The burden, however, proved unexpectedly large,
and we find them, in the Council of Narbonne, in 1244, trying to shift their
responsibility by suggesting that the penitents who, but for the recent papal
command, would be sent on crusades, should be utilized in building prisons and
furnishing them with necessaries, "lest the prelates be overburdened with
the poor converts, and be unable to provide for them on account of their
multitude." Two years later, at Bãziers, they declared that provision for
both construction and maintenance ought to be made by those who profited by the
confiscations, to which might be added the fines imposed by the inquisitors,
which was not unreasonable; but in 1249 Innocent IV. still asserted that it was
their business, and scolded them for not attending to it, and ordered that they
be compelled to do it. At length, in 1254, the Council of Albi definitely
decided that the holders of confiscated property should make provision for the
imprisonment and maintenance of its former owners, and that, when heretics had
nothing to confiscate, the cities or lords on whose lands they were captured
should be responsible for them, and should be compelled by excommunication to
attend to it. Still, the responsibility of the bishops was so self-evident that
some zealous inquisitors talked of prosecuting them as fautors of heresy for
neglecting to provide prisons, but Gui Foucoix discreetly advises against this,
and recommends that such cases should be referred to the Holy See.
The fate of
the unfortunate captives was evidently most precarious while their oppressors
and despoilers were thus squabbling as to the cost of keeping them in jail and
providing them with bread and water. There was evident fitness that those who
profited by the enormous confiscations resulting from persecution should at
least provide prisons and maintenance for the unhappy victims of fanaticism and
greed; and St. Louis, to whom the chief profits came as suzerain of the
territories ceded at the Treaty of Paris, recognized in part his
responsibility. In 1233 he undertook to provide prisons in Toulouse,
Carcassonne, and Bãziers. In 1246 he ordered his seneschal to provide for the
inquisitors competent prisons in Carcassonne and Bãziers, and to furnish daily
bread and water for the prisoners. In 1258 we find him ordering his seneschal
of Carcassonne to bring to speedy completion those which had been commenced; he
assumes that the prelates and barons on whose lands heretics are captured
should provide for their maintenance; but, in order to avoid trouble, he is
willing that expenditures for this purpose shall be made from the royal funds,
to be subsequently collected from the seigneurs.
With the death
of Alfonse and Jeanne of Toulouse, in 1272, all the territories lapsed to the
crown, and, with insignificant exceptions, all the confiscations fell to the
king. Henceforth the maintenance of prisons and prisoners, and the wages of
jailers and attendants, were defrayed by the crown, except perhaps at Albi,
where the bishop shared in the spoils, and seems to have been held to a portion
of the expenses. Among the requests of Henri de Cbamay, granted in 1329 by Philippe
de Valois, is that the inquisitorial prison at Carcassonne shall be repaired by
the king, and that all who have shared in the confiscations shall be made to
contribute pro rata. Thereupon the
seneschal assessed the Count of Foix to the extent of three hundred and two
livres eleven sols nine deniers, which the latter refused to pay, and appealed
to the king, with what result is not known. From a decision of the Parlement of
Paris in 1304 it appears that the royal allowance for maintenance was three deniers
per diem for each convicted prisoner, which would seem liberal enough, though
Jacques de Polignac, who had charge of the prison at Carcassonne, and who was
punished for his frauds, made out his accounts at the rate of eight deniers.
This extravagance was not a precedent, and in 1337 we find the accounts still
made out at the old rate of three deniers. For the accused detained and
awaiting trial the Inquisition itself presumably had to provide. In Italy,
where the confiscations, as we shall see, were divided into thirds, the
Inquisition was self-supporting. In Naples the royal prisons were employed, and
a royal order was required for incarceration.
While the
penance prescribed was a diet of bread and water, the Inquisition, with
unwonted kindness, did not object to its prisoners receiving from their friends
contributions of food, wine, money, and garments, and among its documents are
such frequent allusions to this that it may be regarded as an established
custom. Collections were made among those secretly inclined to heresy to
alleviate the condition of their incarcerated brethren, and it argues much in
favor of the disinterested zeal of the persecuted that they were willing to
incur the risk attendant on this benevolence, for any interest shown towards
these poor wretches exposed them to accusation to fautorship.
The prisons
were naturally built with a view to economy of construction and space rather
than to the health and comfort of the captives. In fact the papal orders were
that they should be constructed of small, dark cells for solitary confinement,
only taking care that the "enormis
rigor" of the incarceration should not extinguish life. M. Molinier's
description of the Tour de l'Inquisition at Carcassonne, which was used as the
inquisitorial prison, shows how literally these instructions were obeyed. It
was a horrible place, consisting of small cells, deprived of all light and
ventilation, where through long years the miserable inmates endured a living
death far worse than the short agony of the stake.
Unfulfilled Penance
In these
abodes of despair they were completely at the mercy of the jailers and their
servants. Complaints were not listened to; if a prisoner alleged violence or
ill-treatment his oath was contemptuously refused, while that of the prison
officials was received. A glimpse into the discipline of these establishments
is afforded by the instructions given, in 1282, by Frère Jean Galande,
Inquisitor of Carcassonne, to the jailer Raoul and his wife Bertrande, whose
management had been rather lax. Under pain of irrevocable dismissal he is
prohibited in future from keeping scriveners or horses in the prison; from
borrowing money or accepting gifts from the prisoners; from retaining the money
or effects of those who die; from releasing prisoners or allowing them to go
beyond the first door, or to eat with him; from employing the servants on any
other work or sending them anywhere, or gambling with them, or permitting them
to gamble with each other.
Evidently a
prisoner who had money could obtain illicit favors from the honest Raoul; but
these injunctions make no allusion to one of the most crying abuses which
disgraced the establishments--the retention by the jailers of the moneys and
provisions placed in their hands by the friends of the imprisoned. Frauds of
all kinds naturally grew up among all who were concerned in dealing with these
helpless creatures. In 1304 Hugolin de Polignac, the custodian of the royal
prison at Carcassonne, was tried on charges of embezzling a part of the king's allowance,
of carrying the names of prisoners on the rolls for years after their death,
and of retaining the moneys contributed for them by their friends; but the
evidence was insufficient to convict him.
The cardinals
whom Clement V. commissioned soon after to investigate the abuses of the
Inquisition of Languedoc intimate broadly the nature of the frauds habitually
practised, when they required the new jailers whom they appointed to swear to
deliver to each captive without diminution the provisions supplied by the king,
as well as those furnished by friends--an intimation confirmed by the decretals
of Clement V. Their report shows that they were horror-struck with what they
saw. At Carcassonne they took the control of the prison wholly from the
inquisitor, Geoffroi d'Ablis, and placed it in the hands of the bishop,
ordering the upper cells to be repaired at once, in order that the aged and
sick should be transferred to them; at Albi they struck the chains off the
prisoners, commanded the cells to be lighted and new and better ones built
within a month; at Toulouse things were equally bad. Everywhere there was
complaint of lack of food and of beds, as well as of frequent torture. Their
measures for reformation consisted in dividing the responsibility between bishop
and inquisitor, whose concurrence was requisite to a sentence of imprisonment,
and each of whom should appoint a jailer, while each jailer should have a key
to each cell, and swear never to speak to a prisoner except in presence of his
colleague. This insufficient remedy was adopted by Clement, and can hardly be
imagined to have worked much improvement. Bernard Gui bitterly complained of
the infamy cast on the Inquisition by the papal assertion of fraud and
ill-treatment in the management of its prisons, and he pronounced the new
regulations impracticable. Slender as was the restraint which they imposed on
the inquisitors, we may feel sure that it was not long submitted to.
In a few years
Bernard Gui, in his Practica, assumes that the power of imprisoning lies wholly
with the inquisitor; he contemptuously cites the Clementine canon by its title
only, and proceeds to quote a bull of Clement IV. as if still in force, giving
the authority to the inquisitor, and making no mention of the bishop. In fact,
before the century was out, Eymerich considered the Clementine canons on this
subject not worth inserting in his work, because, as he tells us, they were
nowhere observed in consequence of their cost and inconvenience. About 1500,
however, Bernardo di Como admits that the Clementine rule may be observed in
punitive confinement after sentence, but holds that the inquisitor has sole
control of the detentive prisons used before and during trial.
With such
jailers it is probably rather to their corruption than to any lack of strength
in the buildings that we may attribute the occasional escape of the inmates,
which appears to have been by no means an infrequent occurrence. Even those who
were confined in chains sometimes effected their liberation. More sufficient, however,
as a means of release from the horrors of these foul dungeons was the excessive
mortality caused by their filthy and unventilated squalor. Occasionally, as we
have seen, the unfortunate were unlucky enough to live through protracted
confinement, and there is one case in which a woman was graciously discharged,
with crosses, in view of her having been for thirty-three years in the prison
of Toulouse. As a rule, however, we may conclude that the expectation of life
was very short. No records remain, if any were kept, to show the average term
of those condemned to lifelong penance; but in the autos de fé there occur sentences pronounced upon prisoners who
had died before their cases were ended, which show how large was the
death-rate. These cases were despatched in batches. In the auto of 1310, at Toulouse, there are ten, who had died after
confessing their heresy and before receiving sentence; in that of 1319 there
are eight. The prison of Carcassonne seems to have been almost as deadly. In
the auto of 1325 we find a lot of
four similar cases, and in that of 1328 there are five. It is only under these
peculiar circumstances that we have any chance of guessing at the deaths which
occurred in prison, and from these scattered indications we can assume that the
insanitary condition of the jails worked its inevitable result without human
interference.
Imprisonment
was naturally the most frequent penance inflicted by the inquisitors. In
Bernard Gui's Register of Sentences, comprising his operations between 1308 and
1322, there are six hundred and thirty-six condemnations recorded, which may be
thus classified:
br br Delivered to
the secular court and burned
40 br br Bones exhumed and burned
67 br br Imprisoned
300 br br Bones exhumed of those who would have been imprisoned 21 br
br Condemned to wear
crosses
138 br br Condemned to perform pilgrimages
16 br br Banished to
Holy Land
1 br br Fugitives
36 br br Condemnation of the Talmud
1 br br Houses to be destroyed 16
636
and this may
presumably be taken as a fair measure of the comparative frequency of the
several punishments in use.
One
peculiarity of the inquisitorial sentence remains to be noted. It always ended
with a reservation of power to modify, to mitigate, to increase, and to
reimpose at discretion. As early as 1244 the Council of Narbonne instructed the
inquisitors always to reserve this power, and it became established as an
invariable custom. Even without its formal expression, Innocent IV., in 1245,
conferred on the inquisitors, acting with the advice and consent of the bishop
of the penitent, authority to modify the penance imposed. The bishop, in fact,
usually concurred in these alterations of sentences, but Zanchini informs us
that though his assent should be asked, it was not essential, except in the
case of clerks. The inquisitor, however, had no power to grant absolute
pardons, which was reserved exclusively to the pope. The sin of heresy was so
indelible that no authority short of the vicegerent of God could wash it out
completely.
This power to
mitigate sentences was frequently exercised. It served as a stimulus to the
penitents to give evidence by their deportment of the sincerity of their
conversion, and, perhaps, also, it was occasionally of benefit as a means of
depleting overcrowded jails.
Thus in
Bernard Gui's Register of Sentences there occur one hundred and nineteen cases
of release from prison, with the obligation to wear the crosses, and of these
fifty-one were subsequently relieved from the crosses. Besides these latter,
there are also eighty-seven cases in which those originally condemned to
crosses were permitted to lay them aside. This mercy was not peculiar to the
Inquisition of Toulouse. In 1328, in a single sentence, twenty-three persons
were released from the prison of Carcassone, their penance being commuted to
crosses, pilgrimages, and other observances. What the measure of mercy was in
such cases may be guessed from another sentence of commutation at Carcassonne
in 1329, liberating ten penitents, among them the Baroness of Montréal.
They were
required to wear the yellow crosses for life and to perform twenty-one
pilgrimages, embracing shrines as distant as Rome, Compostella, Canterbury, and
Cologne. They were to hear mass every Sunday and feast-day during life, and
present themselves with rods to the officiating priest and receive the
discipline in the face of the congregation; and also to accompany all
processions and be similarly disciplined at the final station. Existence under
such conditions might well be regarded as a doubtful blessing.
These
mitigatory sentences, moreover, like the original ones, strictly reserved the
power of alteration and reimposition, with or without cause. When the
Inquisition once laid hands upon a man it never released its hold, and its
utmost mercy was merely a ticket-of-leave. Just as no verdict of acquittal ever
was issued, so the Council of Bãziers, in 1246, and Innocent IV., in 1247, told
the inquisitors that when they liberated a prisoner he was to be warned that
the slightest cause of suspicion would lead him to be punished without mercy,
and that they must retain the right to incarcerate him again without the
formality of a fresh trial or sentence if the interest of the faith required.
These
conditions were observed in the formularies and enjoined in the manuals of
practice. The penitent was made to understand fully that whatever liberty he
enjoyed was subject to the arbitrary discretion of his judge, who could recall
him to dungeon or fetters at any moment, and in his oath of abjuration he
pledged his person and all his property to appear at once whenever he might be
summoned.
If Bernard Gui
in his Formulary gives a draft of pardon for person and property and
disabilities of heirs, he adds a caution that it is never, or most rarely, to
be used. When some great object was to be attained, such as the capture of a
prominent heretic teacher, the inquisitors might stretch their authority and
hold out promises of this kind to his disciples to induce them to betray
him--promises which, it is pleasant to say, were almost universally spurned. If
special penances had been imposed, on their fulfilment the inquisitor, if he
saw fit, might declare the penitent to be a man of good character, but this did
not alter the reservation in the original sentence. The mercy of the
Inquisition did not extend to a pardon, but only to a reprieve, dum bene se gesserit, and the man who
had once undergone a sentence never knew at what moment he might not be
summoned to hear of its reimposition or even of a harsher one.
Once a
delinquent, his fate forever after was in the hands of the silent and mysterious
judge who need not hear him nor give any reason for his destruction. He lived
forever on the verge of ruin, never knowing when the blow might fall, and
utterly powerless to avert it. He was always a subject to be watched by the
universal police of the Inquisition--the parish priest, the monks, the clergy,
nay, the whole population--who were strictly enjoined to report any neglect of
penance or suspicious conduct, when he was at once liable to the awful
penalties of relapse. Nothing was easier for a secret enemy than to destroy
him, safe that his name would never be mentioned. We may pity the victims of
the stake and the dungeon, but their fate was scarce harder than that of the
multitudes who were the objects of the Inquisition's apparent mercy, but whose
existence from that hour was one of endless, hopeless anxiety.
The same
implacability manifested itself after death. Allusion has frequently been made
to the exhumation of the bones of those who by opportunely dying had seemed to
exchange the vengeance of man for that of God, and it is only necessary to
mention here that the fate of the dead was harder than that of the living. If
he had died after confession and repentance, it is true, his punishment was
only that which he would have received if alive, the digging up replacing
imprisonment, and his heirs being forced to perform or compound for any lighter
penance; but if he had not confessed and there was evidence of heresy he was
classed with the impenitent heretics, his remains were delivered to the secular
arm, and his property hopelessly confiscated. This will account for the large
number of these executions as shown in the records quoted above.
If the secular
authorities hesitated to perform the task of exhumation, they were coerced with
excommunication.
The same
spirit pursued the descendants. In the Roman law the crime of treason was
pursued with merciless vindictiveness, and its provisions are constantly quoted
by the canon lawyers as precedents for the punishment of heresy, with the
addition that treason to God is far more heinous than that to an earthly
sovereign.
It was,
perhaps, natural that the churchman, in his eagerness to defend the kingdom of
God, should follow and surpass the example of the emperors, and this will
explain, if it may not justify, much that is abhorrent in the inquisitorial
procedure.
In the Code of
Justinian, treason is made especially odious by inflicting on the sons
disability to hold office and to succeed to collateral estates. By the Council
of Toulouse, in 1229, even spontaneously converted heretics were declared
ineligible to public office. It was natural, therefore, that Frederic II.
should apply the Roman practice to heresy, and should extend its provision to
grandchildren. This, like the rest of his legislation, was eagerly adopted and
enforced by the Church. Alexander IV., however, in a bull of 1257, repeatedly
reissued by his successors, explained that this did not apply in cases where
the culprit had made amends and performed penance, and this was still further
lightened by Boniface VIII., who removed the incapacity from grandchildren by
the female line of those who had died in heresy. In this form it remained
permanently in the canon law.
The Inquisition
depended so much upon secular officials for assistance that there was some
justification in its seeking to prevent those who might be suspected of
sympathizing with heresy from holding office in which they could thwart its
plans and aid the offender. Yet as there was no prescription of time as to
proceedings against the dead, so was there none in invoking disabilities
against their descendants, and the records of the Inquisition were an
inexhaustible treasury of torment for those who were in any way connected with
heresy. No one, in fact, could feel sure that evidence might not at any moment
be discovered or manufactured against some long-deceased parent or grandparent,
which would ruin his career, and that some industrious searcher into the
archives might not find some blot on his genealogical tree. In 1288 Philippe le
Bel writes to the Seneschal of Carcassonne that Raymond Vitalis of Avignon is
exercising the office of notary in Carcassonne, though his maternal
grandfather, Roger Isarn, is said to have been burned for heresy.
If this is the
fact, the seneschal is ordered to deprive him of the position. In 1292 Guiraud
d'Auterive, a sergeant-at-arms of the king, was proceeded against on the same
grounds, and we find Guillem de S. Seine, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne,
furnishing to the royal procureur evidence that, in 1256, Guiraud's father and
mother had confessed to acts of heresy, and that, in 1276, his uncle, Raymond
Carbonnel, had been burned as a perfected heretic. In these cases we see the
royal power invoked for the dismissal of the official, but in the perfected
theory of the Inquisition the inquisitor had the power to deprive of office any
one whose father or grandfather had been a heretic or defender of heretics. In
order to avoid questions like these, when a penitent had fulfilled his penance,
prudent children would take out letters declaratory of the fact, so as to have
evidence of capacity to hold office. In special cases the inquisitor had power
to relieve descendants of these disabilities, and this was occasionally done;
but, like the remission of penance, this relief was only a suspension, liable
at any moment to forfeiture on the slightest manifestation of heretical
tendencies.
Underlying all
these sentences was another on which they, and, indeed, the whole power of the
Inquisition, were based in last resort--the sentence of excommunication.
Theoretically the censures of the Inquisition might be the same as those of any
other ecclesiastics authorized to cut men off from salvation, but the latter
had so habitually abused their functions that the anathema, in the mouth of
priests who were neither feared nor respected, lost, at times at least, its
awe-inspiring authority. The censures of the Inquisition were in the hands of a
smaller body of men, selected for their implacable vigor, and no one ever
disregarded them with impunity.
The secular
authorities, moreover, were bound to put to the ban and confiscate the property
of any one whom the inquisitor might excommunicate for heresy or fautorship. In
fact, as the inquisitors were fond of boasting, their curse was stronger in
four ways than that of the secular clergy. They could coerce the temporal
government to outlaw the excommunicate; they could force it to confiscate his
property; they could condemn any one remaining under excommunication for a
year; and they could inflict the major excommunication upon any one
communicating with their excommunicates.
Thus they
enforced obedience to their citations and submission to their penances. Thus
they made the secular power execute their sentences; thus they swept aside the
statutes that interfered with their proceedings; thus they proved that the
kingdom of God which they represented was superior to the kingdoms of earth. Of
all excommunications that of the inquisitor worked the speediest vengeance and
inspired the sharpest terror, and the boldest shrank from provoking it.
Chapter XIII.
Confiscation
Although, for the most part, as we
shall see, confiscation was technically not the work of the Inquisition, the
distinction was rather nominal than real. Even in times and places in which the
inquisitor did not pronounce the sentence of confiscation, it was the
accompaniment of the sentence which he did pronounce. It was, therefore, one of
the most serious of the penalties at his disposal, and the largeness of the
results effected by it give it an importance worthy a somewhat minute
examination.
For the source of this, as of so much
else, we must look to the Roman law. It is true that, cruel as were the
imperial edicts against heresy, they did not go to the length of thus
indirectly punishing the innocent. Even when the detested Manichãans were
mercilessly condemned to death, their property was confiscated only when their
heirs were likewise heretics. If the children were orthodox they succeeded to
the estate of the heretic parent, who could not execute a will and disinherit
them. It was otherwise with crime. Any conviction involving deportation or the
mines carried with it confiscation, though the wife could reclaim her dower and
any gifts made to her before the commission of the offence, and so could
children emancipated from the patria
potestas. All else inured to the fisc. In majestas or treason, the offender was liable to condemnation after
death, involving the confiscation of his estate, which was held to have lapsed
to the fisc at the time when he first conceived the crime. These provisions
furnished the armory whence pope and king drew the weapons which rendered the
pursuit of heresy attractive and profitable.
King Roger, who occupied the throne of
the Two Sicilies during the first half of the twelfth century, seems to have
been the first to apply the Roman practice by decreeing confiscation for all
who apostatized from the Catholic faith--whether to the Greek Church, to Islam,
or to Judaism does not appear. Yet the Church cannot escape the responsibility
of naturalizing this penalty in European law as a punishment for spiritual
transgressions. The great Council of Tours, held by Alexander III., in 1163,
commanded all secular princes to imprison heretics and confiscate their
property. Lucius III., in his Verona decretal of 1184, sought to obtain for the
Church the benefit of the confiscation which he again declared to be incurred
by heresy. One of the earliest acts of Innocent III., in his double capacity of
temporal prince and head of Christianity, was to address a decretal to his
subjects of Viterbo, in which he says,
"In the lands subject to our
temporal jurisdiction we order the property of heretics to be confiscated; in
other lands we command this to be done by the temporal princes and powers, who,
if they show themselves negligent therein, shall be compelled to do it by
ecclesiastical censures. Nor shall the property of heretics who withdraw from
heresy revert to them, unless some one pleases to take pity on them. For as,
according to the legal sanctions, in addition to capital punishment, the
property of those guilty of majestas
is confiscated, and life simply is allowed to their children through mercy
alone, so much the more should those who wander from the faith and offend the
Son of God be cut off from Christ and be despoiled of their temporal goods,
since it is a far greater crime to assail spiritual than temporal
majesty."
This decretal, which was adopted into
the canon law, is important as embodying the whole theory of the subject. In
imitation of the Roman law of majestas,
the property of the heretic was forfeited from the moment he became a heretic
or committed an act of heresy. If he recanted, it might be restored to him
purely in mercy. When the ecclesiastical tribunals declared him to be, or to
have been, a heretic, confiscation operated itself; the act of seizing the
property was a matter for the secular power to whom it inured, and the mercy
which might spare it could only be shown by that power. All this it is
requisite to keep in mind if we would correctly appreciate some points which
have frequently been misunderstood.
Innocent's decretal further illustrates
the fact that at the commencement of the struggle with heresy the chief
difficulty encountered by the Church in relation to confiscation was to
persuade or coerce the temporal rulers to do what it held to be their duty in
taking possession of heretical property. This was one of the principal offences
which Raymond VI. of Toulouse expiated so bitterly, as explained to him by
Innocent in 1210. His son proclaimed it as the law in his statutes of 1234, and
included in its provisions, in accordance with the Ordonnance of Louis VIII.,
in 1226, and that of Louis IX., in 1229, all who favored heretics in any way or
refused to aid in their capture; but his policy did not always comport with its
enforcement, and he sometimes had to be sternly rebuked for non-feasance.
After all danger of armed resistance
had disappeared, however, sovereigns, as a rule, eagerly welcomed the
opportunity of recruiting their slender revenues, and the confiscation of the
property of heretics and of fautors of heresy was generally recognized in
European law, although the Church was occasionally obliged to repeat its
injunctions and threats, and though there were some regions in which they were
slackly obeyed.
Confiscation was an ordinary resource
of mediæval law. In England, from the time of Alfred, property, as well as
life, was forfeited for treason (Alfred's Dooms 4--Thorpe I. 63), a penalty
which, remained until 1870 (Low and Pulling's Dictionary of English History, p.
469). In France murder, false-witness, treachery, homicide, and rape were all punished
with death and confiscation (Beaumanoir, Coutumes du Beauvoisis xxx. 2-5). By
the German feudal law the fief might be forfeited for a vast number of
offences, but the distinction was drawn that, if the offence was against the
lord, the fief reverted to him; if simply a Roman law was generallyr ecognized,
that the title to property devolved to the fisc as soon as the crime had been
committed.
The relation of the Inquisition to
confiscation varied essentially with time and place. In France the principle
derived from the Roman law was generally recognized, that the title to property
devolved to the fisc as soon as the crime had been committed. There was
therefore nothing for the inquisitor to do with regard to it. He simply
ascertained and announced the guilt of the accused and left the State to take
action.
Thus Gui Foucoix treats the subject as
one wholly outside of the functions of the inquisitor, who at most can only
advise the secular ruler or intercede for mercy; while he holds that those only
are legally exempt from forfeiture who come forward spontaneously and confess
before any evidence has been taken against them.
In accordance with this, there is, as a
rule, no allusion to confiscation in the sentences of the French Inquisition,
though in one or two instances chance has preserved for us, in the accounts of
the procureurs des encours, or royal
stewards of the confiscations, evidence that estates were sold and covered into
the fisc in cases in which the forfeiture is not specified in the sentence. In
condemnations of absentees and of the dead, confiscation is occasionally
declared, as though in these the State might need some guidance, but even here
the practice is not uniform. In a sentence issued by Guillem Arnaud and
Étienne de S. Thibery, November 24, 1241, on two absentees, their estates are
adjudged to whom it may concern. In the Register of Bernard de Caux
(1246-1248), in thirty-two cases of contumacious absentees confiscation is
included in the sentence, and in nine similar ones it is omitted, as well as in
one hundred and fifty-nine condemnations to prison in which it was undoubtedly
operative.
In the Inquisition of Carcassonne, a
sentence of December 12, 1328, on five deceased persons, who would have been
imprisoned had they lived, ends with "et
consequenter bona ipsorum dicimus confiscanda," while a previous
sentence, February 24, 1325, identical in character, on four defunct culprits,
has no such corollary appended. In fact, strictly speaking, it was recognized
that the inquisitor had no power to remit confiscations without permission from
the fisc, and the custom of extending mercy to those who came forward
voluntarily and confessed was founded upon a special concession to that effect
granted by Raymond of Toulouse to the Inquisition in 1235.
Variations In Practice
As soon as a suspected heretic was
cited or arrested the secular officials sequestrated his property and notified
his debtors by proclamation. No doubt, when condemnation took place, the
inquisitor communicated the result to the proper officials, but as a rule no
record of the fact seems to have been kept in the archives of the Holy Office,
although an early manual of practice specifies it as part of his duty to see
that the confiscation was enforced. At a later period, in 1328, in a record of
an assembly of experts held at Pamiers, the presence is specified of Arnaud
Assalit, royal procureur des encours of Carcassonne, so that probably by this
time it had become customary for that official to attend these deliberations
and thus obtain early notice of the sentences to be passed.
In Italy it was long before any settled
practice was established. In 1252 a bull of Innocent IV. directs the rulers of
Lombardy, Tarvisina, and Romagna to confiscate without fail the property of all
who were excommunicated as heretics, or as receivers, defenders, or fautors of
heretics, thus recognizing confiscation as a matter belonging to the secular
power. Yet soon the papal authority succeeded in obtaining a share of the
spoils, even beyond the limits of the States of the Church, as is seen in the
bulls Ad extirpanda of Innocent IV.
and Alexander IV., and the matter thus became one in which the Inquisition had
a direct interest. The indifference which so well became the French tribunals
was therefore not readily maintained, and the share of the inquisitor in the
results led him to participate in the process of securing them.
Yet there were variations in practice.
Zanghino tells us that formerly confiscations were decreed in the States of the
Church by the ecclesiastical judges and elsewhere by the secular power, but
that in his time (circa 1320) they were everywhere (in Italy) included in the
jurisdiction of the episcopal and inquisitorial courts, and the secular
authorities had nothing to do with them; but he adds that confiscation is
prescribed by law for heresy, and that the inquisitor has no discretion to
remit it, except in the case of voluntary converts with the assent of the
bishop.
Yet though the forfeiture occurs ipso facto by the commission of the crime,
it requires a declaratory sentence of confiscation. This consequently was
expressed in the most formal manner in the condemnation of the accused by the
Italian Inquisition, and the secular authorities were told not to interfere
unless called upon.
At a very early period in some places
the Italian inquisitors seem to have undertaken not only to decree but to
control the confiscations. About 1245 we find the Florentine inquisitor,
Ruggieri Calcagni, sentencing a Catharan named Diotaiuti, for relapse, with a
fine of one hundred lire. Ruggieri acknowledges the receipt of this, to be
applied to the pope, or to the furtherance of the faith, and formally concedes
the rest of the heretic's estate to his wife Jacoba, thus exercising ownership
over the whole. Yet this was not maintained, for in 1283 there is a sentence of
the Podestà of Florence, reciting that the inquisitor Frà Salomone da Lucca had
notified him that the widow Ruvinosa, lately deceased, had died a heretic, and
that her property was to be confiscated; whereupon he orders it to be seized
and sold, and the proceeds divided according to the papal constitutions.
At length, however, the inquisitors
assumed and exercised full control over the handling of the confiscations. In
the conveyance of a confiscated house by the municipal authorities of Florence,
in 1327, to the Dominicans, the deed is careful to assert that it is made with
the assent of the inquisitor. Even in Naples we see King Robert, in 1324,
ordering the inquisitors to pay out of the royal share of the confiscations
fifty ounces of gold to the Prior of the Church of San Domenico of Naples, to
aid in its completion.
Degrees Of Guilt
In Germany the Diet of Worms, in 1231,
indicates the confusion existing in the feudal mind between heresy and treason
by allowing the allodial lands and personal property of the condemned to
descend to the heirs, while fiefs were confiscated to the suzerain. If he was a
serf, his goods inured to his master; but from all personal property was
deducted the cost of burning its owner and the droits de justice of the seigneur-justicier. Two years later, in
1233, the Council of Mainz protested against the injustice, which quickly
showed itself in Germany as elsewhere, of assuming guilt as soon as a man was
accused, and treating his property as though he were convicted. It directed
that the estates of those on trial should remain untouched until sentence was
rendered, and any one who meanwhile should plunder or partition them should be
excommunicated until he made restitution and rendered satisfaction. Finally,
however, when the Emperor Charles IV. endeavored to introduce the Inquisition
into Germany, in 1369, he adopted the Italian custom and ordered one third of
the confiscations to be made over to the inquisitors.
The exact degree of criminality which
entailed confiscation is not capable of very rigid definition. Even in states
where the inquisitor nominally had no control over it, the arbitrary discretion
lodged with him as to the fate of the accused placed the matter practically in
his hands, and his notification to the secular authorities would be a virtual
sentence. It is probable that custom varied with time and with the temper of
the inquisitor. We have seen that Innocent III. commanded it for all heretics,
but what constituted technical heresy was not so easily determined. The
statutes of Raymond decreed it not only for heretics, but for those who showed
them favor. The Council of Béziers, in 1233, demanded it for all reconciled
converts not condemned to wear crosses, and those of Béziers, in 1246, and
Albi, in 1254, prescribed it for all whom the inquisitors should penance with
imprisonment.
Still, in a sentence of February 19,
1237, in which the inquisitors of Toulouse condemn some twenty or thirty
penitents to perpetual imprisonment, confiscation is only threatened as an
additional punishment in case they do not perform the penance. Imprisonment,
however, finally was admitted by legists as the invariable test; although St.
Louis, when in 1259 he mitigated his Ordonnance of 1229, ordered confiscation
not only for those who were condemned to prison, but for those who
contumaciously refused obedience to citations and those in whose houses
heretics were found, his officials being instructed to ascertain from the inquisitors
in all cases, while pending, whether the accused deserved imprisonment, and if
so, to retain the sequestrated property.
When he further provided, as a special
grace, that the heirs should be restored to possession in cases where the
heretic had offered himself for conversion before citation, had entered a
religious order, and had worthily died there, he shows how universal
confiscation had previously been and how ruthlessly the principle had been
enforced that a single act of heresy forfeited all ownership. In fact, even at
the close of the fifteenth century, the rule was laid down that confiscation
was a matter of course, while restoration of property to a reconciled penitent
required an express declaration.
According to the most lenient
construction of the law, therefore, the imprisonment of a reconciled convert
carried with it the confiscation of his property, and as imprisonment was the
ordinary penance, confiscation was general. There may possibly have been
exceptions. The six prisoners released in 1248 by Innocent IV. had been in jail
for some time--some of them for four years and more after confessing
heresy--and yet the liberal contributions to the Holy Land which purchased
their pardon show that they or their friends must have had control of property--unless,
indeed, the money was raised on a pledge of the estates to be restored. So when
Alaman de Roaix was condemned to imprisonment by Bernard de Caux, in 1248, the
sentence provided for an annuity to be paid to a person designated, and for
compensation to be made for the rapine which he had committed, which would look
as though property were left to him; but as he had for ten years been a
contumacious and proscribed fugitive, these fines must have been taken out of
his estate in the hands of the State.
Apparent exceptions such as these can
be accounted for, and the proceedings of the Inquisition as a whole indicate
that imprisonment and confiscation were inseparable. Sometimes, even, it is
stated in sentences passed upon the dead that they are pronounced worthy of
imprisonment in order to deprive the heirs of succession to the estates. At a
later date, indeed, Eymerich, who dismisses the whole matter briefly as one
with which the inquisitor has no concern, speaks as though confiscation only
took place when a heretic did not repent and recant before sentence, but his
commentator, Pegna, easily proves this to be an error. Zanghino assumes as a
matter of course that property is forfeited by the act of heresy; and he points
out that pecuniary penances cannot be imposed because the whole estate is gone,
although there may be mercy shown at discretion with the assent of the bishop,
and simple suspicion is not subject to confiscation.
In the early zeal of persecution
everything was swept away in wholesale seizure, but, in 1237, Gregory IX.
assumed that the dowers of Catholic wives ought to be exempt in certain cases,
and in 1247 Innocent IV. erected it into a rule that such dowers should be
restored to the wives and should not be included in future forfeitures,
although heresy would not justify divorce, and, in 1258, St. Louis accepted
this rule. It was subject to serious limitations, however, since under the
canon law the wife could not claim it if she had been cognizant of the
husband's heresy when she married, and, according to some authorities, if she
had lived with him after ascertaining it, or even if she had failed to inform
against him within forty days after discovering it. As the children were
incapable of inheritance, she only held the dower for life, after which it fell
into the fisc.
Although in principle confiscation was
an affair of the State, the division of the spoils did not follow any
invariable rule. Before the organization of the Inquisition, when the Waldenses
of Strassburg were burned, it is mentioned that their forfeited property was
equally divided between the Church and the secular authorities. Lucius III., as
we have just seen, endeavored to turn the forfeitures to the benefit of the
Church. In the papal territory there could be little question as to this, and
Innocent IV., in his bull Ad extirpanda
of 1252, showed disinterestedness in devoting the whole proceeds to the
stimulation of persecution. One third was given to the local authorities, one
third to the officials of the Inquisition, and one third to the bishop and
inquisitor, to be expended in the assault on heresy--provisions which were
retained in the subsequent recensions of the bull by Alexander IV. and Clement
IV., while forfeited bail went exclusively to the inquisitor. Yet this was
speedily held to refer only to the independent states of Italy, for, in 1260,
we find Alexander IV. ordering the inquisitors of Rome and Spoleto to sell the
confiscated estates of heretics and pay over the proceeds to the pope himself;
and a transaction of 1261 shows Urban IV. collecting three hundred and twenty
lire from some confiscations at Spoleto.
Apparent Exceptions
At length, both in the Roman province
and elsewhere throughout Italy, the custom settled down to a tripartite
division between the local community, the Inquisition, and the papal camera,
the reason for the latter, as given by Benedict XI., being that the bishops
appropriated to themselves the share intrusted to them for the persecution of
heresy. In Florence a transaction of 1283 shows this to be the received
regulation; and documents of various dates during the next half-century
indicate that it was the custom of the republic to appoint attorneys or
trustees to take seisin of confiscated property in the name of the city, which
in 1319 liberally granted its share for the next ten years to the construction
of the church of Santa Reparata. That the amounts were not small may be guessed
from a petition of the inquisitors to the republic in 1299, setting forth that
the Holy Office must have funds wherewith to pay its stipendiary officials, and
therefore praying leave to invest in real estate the sums accruing to the
Inquisition from this source--showing accumulations prudently garnered for the
future. The request was granted to the extent of one thousand lire, with the
proviso that none of the city's share be taken.
Embezzlement By
Inquisitors
This latter precaution would seem to
argue no great confidence in the integrity of the inquisitors, nor was the
insinuation uncalled for. By this time the money-changers had fairly occupied
the Temple, and, as we have seen in the last chapter, it seemed almost
impossible to preserve official honesty when persecution had become almost as
much a financial speculation as a matter of faith. That plain-spoken
Franciscan, Alvaro Pelayo, Bishop of Silva, writing about the year 1335,
bitterly reproaches those of his brethren who act as inquisitors with their
abuse of the funds accruing to the Holy Office. The papal division into thirds he
declares was generally disregarded; the inquisitors monopolized the whole and
spent it on themselves or enriched their kindred at their pleasure. Chance has
preserved in the Florentine archives some documents confirmatory of this
accusation.
It seems that in 1343 Clement VI.
obtained evidence that the inquisitors of both Florence and Lucca were
habitually defrauding the papal camera of its third of the fines and
confiscations, and accordingly he sent to Pietro di Vitale, Primicerio of
Lucca, authority to collect the sums in arrears and to prosecute the
embezzlers.
How it fared with them we have no means
of knowing, but the camera seems not to have gained much. In filling the
vacancies thus occasioned Pietro di Aquila, a Franciscan of high standing, was
appointed in Florence, who fell at once into the same evil ways, and within two
years was obliged to fly from a prosecution by the primicerio, in addition to
the charges of extortion brought against him by the republic.
In Naples, under the Angevines, when the
Inquisition was first introduced, Charles of Anjou monopolized the
confiscations with the same rapacity that was customary in France. As early as
March, 1270, we find him writing to his representatives in the Principato Ultra
that three heretics had recently been burned at Benevento, whose estates he
orders looked after and accounted for in detail. In 1290, however, Charles II.
ordered the fines and confiscations to be divided into thirds, of which one
should inure to the royal fisc, one be used for the promotion of the faith, and
one be given to the Inquisition. Feudal lands, however, were to revert to the
crown or to the immediate lord as the case might require.
In Venice the compromise reached in
1289 between the signiory and Nicholas IV., whereby the republic permitted the
introduction of the Inquisition, provided that all receipts of the Holy Office
should be for the benefit of the State, and this arrangement seems to have been
maintained. In Piedmont the confiscations were divided between the State and
the Inquisition until, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, Amedeo IX.
took the whole, allowing to the Holy Office only the expenses of the
proceedings.
In the other Italian states the papal
curia grew dissatisfied with its share, when there was no longer a necessity of
purchasing the co-operation of the civil power with a third of the spoils. It
is a disputed point with the jurists when and how the change was effected, but
in the first quarter of the fourteenth century the Church succeeded in grasping
the whole of the confiscations, which were divided equally between the
Inquisition and the papal camera. The rapacity with which this source of income
was exploited is illustrated in a case occurring at Pisa in 1304.
The inquisitor Angelo da Reggio had
condemned the memory of a deceased citizen, Loterio Bonamici, and confiscated
his property, part of which he then gave away and part he sold at prices which
the papal curia esteemed too low. Benedict XI. thereupon ordered the Bishop of
Ostia not to punish the inquisitor, but to use freely the censures of the
Church in hunting up the assets in the hands of the holders and to take it from
them.
Finally, in 1438, Eugenius IV.
generously handed back to the bishops the share of the papal camera in order to
stimulate their slackness in persecution, and, where the bishop was also the
temporal lord of his see, the confiscations were to be equally divided between
him and the Inquisition. Bernardo di Como, however, writing about the year
1500, asserts that the whole confiscations inure to the inquisitor to be
expended at his discretion; but he subsequently admits that the subject is
confused and uncertain, owing to contradictory papal decisions and conflicting
jurisdictions in different territories.
Quarrels Over The
Spoils
In Spain the rule was laid down that if
the heretic were a clerk, or a lay vassal of the Church, the confiscation went
to the Church; if otherwise, to the temporal seigneur.
This greed for the plunder of the
wretched victims of persecution is peculiarly repulsive as exhibited by the
Church, and may to some extent palliate the similar action by the State in
countries where the latter was strong enough to seize and retain it. The
threats of coercion, which at first were necessary to induce the temporal
princes to confiscate the property of their heretical subjects, soon became
superfluous, and history has few displays of man's eagerness to profit by his
fellow's misfortunes more deplorable than that of the vultures which followed
in the wake of the Inquisition to batten on the ruin which it wrought.
In Languedoc at first the Inquisition
endeavored to control the confiscations for the purpose of building prisons and
maintaining prisoners, but these pretensions received no attention. Under the
feudal system, the confiscations were for the benefit of the seigneur
haut-justicier. The rapid extension of the royal jurisdiction, in the second
half of the thirteenth century in France, ended by practically placing them in
the hands of the king, but during the earlier and more profitable period there
were quarrels over the spoils. After the treaty of Paris, in 1229, St. Louis,
in granting fiefs in the newly-acquired territories, seems to have endeavored
to provide for these questions by reserving the confiscations for heresy.
The prudence of this is shown by the
suit brought by the Marãchaux de Mirepoix--one of the few families founded by
the adventurers who accompanied de Montfort--who claimed the movables of all
heretics captured in their lands, even if the goods were in the lands of the
king--a demand which was rejected by the Parlement of Paris, in 1269. The
bishops put in a claim to the confiscations of all real and personal property
of heretics living under their jurisdiction, and at the Council of Lille
(Comtat Venaissin) in 1251, they threatened with excommunication any one who
should dispute it.
The groundlessness of this claim is
seen in an agreement made under the auspices of the Legate Romano in December,
1229, between the Bishop of Bãziers and the king, in which the royal right to
the confiscations is recognized as incontestable, and the bishop only
stipulates that in case of fiefs they shall, if granted, be held subject to his
seignorial rights, or if the king retains them some compensation shall be made
for the loss of the suzerainty.
This indicates a source of reasonable
complaint, for, in the annexation of fiefs to the crown, the bishops found
themselves losing in place of profiting by persecution.
Various efforts were made to adjust
these conflicting claims over the spoil. By a transaction of 1234 we see that
the king had subjected himself to the stipulation of parting with all
confiscated property within a year and a day. The Council of Béziers, in 1246,
adopted a canon on the subject, but it could not be enforced, and at length,
about 1255, St. Louis agreed upon a compromise, whereby all confiscated lands
subject to the bishops were equally divided, with a right on the part of the
prelates to buy out, within two months, the royal share at a price fixed by
arbitration; if this right was not exercised the king was bound, within a year
and a day, to pass the lands out of his hands into those of a person of the
same condition as the former owner, to be held under the same terms of service
or villeinage; but all movables were declared to belong unreservedly to the
crown. Under this arrangement the temporalities of the sees grew rapidly. We
have seen the apostolic poverty which afflicted the bishops of Toulouse prior
to the crusades: during the succeeding century the whole land was impoverished
and the cities suffered especially, yet when, in 1317, John XXII. carved six
new bishoprics out of the see of Toulouse, his reason was found in the
excessive revenues of the bishop, amounting to forty thousand livres Tournois
per annum, although it had already been shorn of nearly half of its territory
by Boniface VIII. to form the see of Pamiers.
The Bishops Of Albi
The bishops of Albi were especially
active and fortunate in this saturnalia of plunder. During the confusion of the
wars and the settlement they assumed rights, including haute justice and the confiscations, which led to contests with the
representatives of the crown, lasting for thirty years. They were specially
active in the pursuit of heretics, which they thus found profitable as well as
praiseworthy. In 1247 Bishop Bertrand procured from Innocent IV. a special
deputation of inquisitorial power, probably to strengthen his claims, and the
next year he drove a thriving business in selling commutations for confiscation
to condemned and repentant heretics--an expedient more lucrative than regular,
for when Alphonse of Poitiers, in 1253, endeavored to speculate in the
confiscations in the same way, he was compelled to desist by the Archbishop of
Narbonne and the Bishop of Toulouse, who declared that it would lead to the
scandal of the faithful and the destruction of religion.
Finally, to settle the claims of the
bishop on the confiscations, St. Louis, in December, 1264, made with Bernard de
Combret, the incumbent of the see, a convention, promptly confirmed by Urban
IV., by which the prelate was entitled to one half of all confiscations of
realty and personalty within the diocese, with the further advantage that the
king's share of the real estate passed into possession of the bishop if it was
not sold within a twelvemonth, and became his absolute property if not sold
within three years.
Accordingly in the accounts of the
royal procureurs des encours of
Carcassonne we constantly find the confiscations in Albi shared with the
bishop. Although between St. John's day 1322 and 1323 this share in money
amounted only to one hundred and sixty livres, there were times when it was
much greater. About the year 1300 Bishop Bernard de Castanet generously gave to
the Dominican Church of Albi his portion of the estates of two citizens,
Guillem Aymeric and Jean de Castanet, condemned after death, which amounted to
more than one thousand livres. It can readily be imagined that this arrangement
with the crown gave rise to constant quarrels.
In vain Philippe le Bel, in 1307,
ordered the observance of the agreement with restitution for any infractions.
In 1316 we find the bishop claiming properties which had not been sold within
the three years, and Arnaud Assalit, the procureur,
arguing that he had been prevented from effecting sales by just and legitimate
causes, when the seneschal, Aymeric de Croso, decided that the impediments had
been legitimate, and that the rights of the king were not forfeited.
These were not the only questions
arising from this wholesale spoliation which afforded an ample harvest to the
legal profession. A suit brought by the bishops of Rodez for some lands held by
the crown as heretic confiscations dragged on for thirty years until it reached
the Parlement of Paris, which coolly annulled all the proceedings on the ground
that those who had acted for the crown had lacked the requisite authority.
Almost equally protracted and confused was a suit between Eleanor de Montfort,
Countess of Vendôme, and the king over the lands of Jean Baudier and Raymond
Calverie. The confiscations occurred in 1300; in 1327 the suit was still
pursuing its weary way, to be finally compromised in 1335.
All prelates were not as rapacious as
those of Albi, one of whom we find still, in 1328, complaining of the evasions
resorted to by the victims to save a fragment of their property for their
families; but the princes and their representatives were relentless in grasping
all that they could lay their hands on. I have mentioned that as soon as a
suspect was cited before the Inquisition his property was sequestrated to await
the result, and proclamation was made to all his debtors and those who held his
effects to bring everything to the king. Charles of Anjou carried this practice
to Naples, where a royal order, in 1269, to arrest sixty-nine heretics contains
instructions to seize simultaneously their goods, which are to be held for the
king. So assured were the officials that condemnation would follow trial that they
frequently did not await the result, but carried out the confiscation in
advance. This abuse was coeval with the founding of the Inquisition.
In 1237 Gregory IX. complained of it
and forbade it, but to little purpose, for in 1246 the Council of Béziers
again prohibited it, unless, indeed, the offender had knowingly adhered to
those who were known to be heretics, in which case, apparently, it was
sanctioned. When, in 1259, St. Louis mitigated the rigors of confiscation, he
indirectly forbade this wrong by instructing his officials that, when the
accused was not condemned to imprisonment, they should give him or his heirs a
hearing to reclaim the property; but, if there was any suspicion of heresy, it
was not to be restored without taking security that it should be surrendered if
anything was proved within five years, during which period it was not to be
alienated.
Yet still the outrage of confiscation
before conviction continued with sufficient frequency to induce Boniface VIII.
to embody its prohibition in the canon law. Even this did not put a stop to it.
The Inquisition had so habituated men's minds to the belief that no one escaped
who had once fallen into its hands, that the officials considered themselves
safe in acting upon the presumption. By an unusual coincidence we have the data
from various sources in a single case of this kind which is doubtless the type
of many others. In the prosecutions at Albi in 1300, a certain Jean Baudier was
first examined January 20, when he acknowledged nothing.
At a second hearing, February 5, he
confessed to acts of heresy, and he was condemned March 7. Yet his confiscated
property was sold January 29, not only before his sentence, but before his
confession. Guillem Garric, charged with complicity in the plot to destroy the
inquisitorial records of Carcassonne in 1284, was not sentenced until 1319, but
in 1301 we find the Count of Foix and the royal officials quarrelling over his
confiscated castle of Monteirat.
Rapacity Of The
Princes
The ferocious rapacity with which this
process of confiscation was carried on may be conceived from a report made by
Jean d'Arsis, Seneschal of Rouergue, to Alphonse of Poitiers, about 1253, as an
evidence of the zeal with which he was guarding the interests of his suzerain.
The Bishop of Rodez was conducting a vigorous episcopal inquisition, and at
Najac had handed over a certain Hugues Paraire as a heretic, whom the seneschal
burned "incontinently" and collected over one thousand livres
Tournois from his estate.
Hearing, subsequently, that the bishop
had cited before him at Rodez six other citizens of Najac, d'Arsis hastened
thither to see that no fraud was practised on the count. The bishop told him
that these men were all heretics, and that he would make the count gain one
hundred thousand sols from their confiscations, but both he and his assessors
begged the seneschal to forego a portion to the culprits or their children,
which that loyal servitor bluntly refused. Then the bishop, following evil
counsel, and in fraud of the rights of the count, endeavored to elude the
forfeiture by condemning the heretics to some lighter penance. The seneschal,
however, knew his master's rights and seized the property, after which he
allowed some pittance to the penitents and their children, reporting that in
addition to this he was in possession of about one thousand livres; and he
winds up by advising the count, if he wishes not to be defrauded, to appoint
some one to watch and supervise the further inquisitions of the bishop. On the
other hand the bishops complained that the officials of Alphonse permitted
heretics, for a pecuniary consideration, to retain a part or the whole of their
confiscated property, or else condemned to the flames those who did not deserve
it in order to seize their estates. These frightful abuses grew so unbearable
that, in 1254, the officials of Alphonse, including Gui Foucoix, endeavored to
reform them by issuing general regulations on the subject, but the matter was
one which in its inherent nature scarce admitted of reform. Y
et Alphonse, with all his greed, was
not unwilling to share the plunder with those who secured it for him, and
several of his not wholly disinterested liberalities of this kind are on
record. In 1268 we have a letter of his assigning to the Inquisition a revenue
of one hundred livres per annum on the confiscated estate of a heretic; and in
1270 another, confirming the foundation of a chapel from a similar source.
Nothing could exceed the minute
thoroughness with which every fragment of a confiscated estate was followed up
and seized. The account of the collections of confiscated property from 1302 to
1313 by the procureurs des encours of
Carcassone is extant in MS., and shows how carefully the debts due to the
condemned were looked after, even to a few pence for a measure of corn. In the
case of one wealthy prisoner, Guillem de Fenasse, the estate was not wound up
for eight or ten years, and the whole number of debts collected foots up to
eight hundred and fifty-nine, in amounts ranging from five deniers upward.
As the collectors never credit
themselves with amounts paid in discharge of debts due by these estates, it is
evident that the rule that a heretic could give no valid obligations was
strictly construed and that creditors were shamelessly cheated. In this seizure
of debts the nobles asserted a right to claim any sums due by debtors who were
their vassals, but Philippe de Valois, in 1329, decided that when the debts
were payable at the domicile of the heretic they inured to the royal fisc,
irrespective of the allegiance of the debtor. Another illustration of the
remorseless greed which seized everything is found in a suit decided by the
Parlement of Paris in 1302. On the death of the Chevalier Guillem Prunèle and
his wife Isabelle, the guardianship of their orphans would legally vest in the
next of kin, the Chevalier Bernard de Montesquieu, but he had been burned some
years before for heresy, and his estate, of course, confiscated.
The Seneschal of Carcassonne insisted
that the guardianship which thus subsequently fell in formed part of the assets
of the estate, and he accordingly assumed it, but a nephew, an Esquire Bernard
de Montesquieu, contested the matter and finally obtained a decision in his
favor.
Equal care was exercised in recovering
alienated property. As, in obedience to the Roman law of majestas, forfeiture occurred ipso
facto as soon as the crime of heresy was committed, the heretic could
convey no legal title, and any assignments which he might have made were void,
no matter through how many hands the property might have passed. The holder was
forced to surrender it, nor could he demand restitution of what he had paid,
unless the money or other consideration were found among the goods of the
heretic. The eagerness with which, in such cases, the rigor of the law was
enforced may be estimated from one occurring in 1272.
Charles of Anjou had written from
Naples to his viguier and sous-viguier at Marseilles telling them that a
certain Maria Roberta, before condemnation to prison for heresy, had sold a
house which was subject to confiscation; this he ordered them to seize, to sell
by auction, and to report the proceeds; but they neglected to do so. The
viguiers were changed, and now the unforgetful Charles writes to the new
officials, repeating his orders and holding them personally responsible for
obedience. At the same time he writes to his seneschal with instructions to
look after the matter, as it lies very near to his heart.
The cruelty of the process of
confiscation was enhanced by the pitiless methods employed. As soon as a man
was arrested for suspicion of heresy his property was sequestrated and seized
by the officials, to be returned to him in the rare cases in which his guilt
might be declared not proven. This rule was enforced in the most rigorous
manner, every article of his household gear and provisions being inventoried,
as well as his real estate.
Thus, whether innocent or guilty, his
family were turned out-of-doors to starve or to depend upon the precarious
charity of others--a charity chilled by the fact that any manifestation of
sympathy was dangerous. It would be difficult to estimate the amount of human
misery arising from this source alone.
In this chaos of plunder we may readily
imagine that those who were engaged in such work were not over-nice as to
securing a share of the spoliations. In 1304 Jacques de Polignac, who had been
for twenty years keeper of the inquisitorial jail at Carcassonne, and several
of the officials employed on the confiscations, were found to have converted
and detained a large amount of valuable property, including a castle, several
farms and other lands, vineyards, orchards, and movables, all of which they
were compelled to disgorge and to suffer punishment at the king's pleasure.
It is pleasant to turn from this cruel
greed to a case which excited much interest in Flanders at a time when in that
region the Inquisition had become so nearly dormant that the usages of
confiscation were almost forgotten. The Bishop of Tournay and the Vicar of the
Inquisition condemned at Lille a number of heretics, who were duly burned. They
confiscated the property, claiming the movables for the Church and the
inquisitor, and the realty for the fisc. The magistrates of Lille boldly
interposed, declaring that among the liberties of their town was the privilege
that no burgher could forfeit both body and goods; and, acting for the children
of one of the victims, they took out apostoli
and appealed to the pope.
The counsellors of the suzerain,
Philippe le Bon of Burgundy, with a clearer perception of the law, claimed that
the whole confiscations inured to him, while the ecclesiastics declared the
rule to be invariable that the personalty went to the Church and only the real estate
to the fisc. The triangular quarrel threatened long and costly litigation, and
finally all parties agreed to leave the decision to the duke himself. With rare
wisdom, in 1430, he settled the matter, with general consent, by deciding that
the sentence of confiscation should be treated as not rendered, and the
property be left to the heirs, at the same time expressly declaring that the
rights of Church, Inquisition, city, and state, were reserved without
prejudice, in any case that might arise in future, which was, he said, not
likely to occur.
He did not manifest the same
disinterestedness in 1460, however, in the terrible persecution of the
sorcerers of Arras, when the movables were confiscated to the episcopal
treasury, and he seized the landed property in spite of the privileges alleged
by the city.
In addition to the misery inflicted by
these wholesale confiscations on the thousands of innocent and helpless women
and children thus stripped of everything, it would be almost impossible to
exaggerate the evil which they entailed upon all classes in the business of
daily life. All safeguards were withdrawn from every transaction. No creditor
or purchaser could be sure of the orthodoxy of him with whom he was dealing;
and, even more than the principle that ownership was forfeited as soon as
heresy had been committed by the living, the practice of proceeding against the
memory of the dead after an interval virtually unlimited, rendered it
impossible for any man to feel secure in the possession of property, whether it
had descended in his family for generations, or had been acquired within an
ordinary lifetime.
The prescription of time against the
Church had to be at least forty years--against the Roman Church, a hundred, and
this prescription ran, not from the commission of the crime, but from its
detection. Though some legists held that proceedings against the deceased had
to be commenced within five years after death, others asserted that there was
no limit, and the practice of the Inquisition shows that the latter opinion was
followed. The prescription of forty years' possession by good Catholics was
further limited by the conditions that they must at no time have had a
knowledge that the former owner was a heretic, and, moreover, he must have died
with an unsullied reputation for orthodoxy--both points which might cast a
grave doubt on titles.
Disinterestedness Of
Philippe Le Bon
Prosecution of the dead, as we have
seen, was a mockery in which virtually defence was impossible and confiscation
inevitable. How unexpectedly the blow might fall is seen in the case of
Gherardo of Florence. He was rich and powerful, a member of one of the noblest
and oldest houses, and was consul of the city in 1218. Secretly a heretic, he
was hereticated on his death-bed between 1246 and 1250, but the matter lay
dormant until 1313, when Frà Grimaldo, the Inquisitor of Florence, brought a
successful prosecution against his memory.
In the condemnation were included his
children Ugolino, Cante, Nerlo, and Bertuccio, and his grandchildren, Goccia,
Coppo, Frà Giovanni, Gherardo, prior of S. Quirico, Goccino, Baldino, and
Marco--not that they were heretics, but that they were disinherited and
subjected to the disabilities of descendants of heretics. When such proceedings
were hailed as pre-eminent exhibitions of holy zeal, no man could feel secure
in his possessions, whether derived from descent or purchase.
An instance of a different character,
but equally illustrative, is furnished by the case of Géraud de Puy-Germer.
His father had been condemned for heresy in the times of Raymond VII. of
Toulouse, who generously restored the confiscated estates. Yet, twenty years
after the death of the count, in 1268, the zealous agents of Alphonse seized
them as still liable to forfeiture. Gãraud thereupon appealed to Alphonse, who
ordered an investigation, but with what result does not appear.
Not only were all alienations made by
heretics set aside and the property wrested from the purchasers, but all debts
contracted by them, and all hypothecations and liens given to secure loans,
were void. Thus doubt was cast upon every obligation that a man could enter
into. Even when St. Louis softened the rigor of confiscation in Languedoc, the
utmost concession he would make was that creditors should be paid for debts
contracted by culprits before they became heretics, while all claims arising
subsequently to an act of heresy were rejected. As no man could be certain of
the orthodoxy of another, it will be evident how much distrust must have been
thrown upon every bargain and every sale in the commonest transactions of life.
The blighting influence of this upon
the development of commerce and industry can readily be perceived, coming as it
did at a time when the commercial and industrial movement of Europe was
beginning to usher in the dawn of modern culture. It was not merely the
spiritual striving of the thirteenth century that was repressed by the
Inquisition; the progress of material improvement was seriously retarded. It
was this, among other incidents of persecution, which arrested the promising
civilization of the south of France and transferred to England and the
Netherlands, where the Inquisition was comparatively unknown, the predominance
in commerce and industry which brought freedom and wealth and power and
progress in its train.
The quick-witted Italian commonwealths,
then rising into mercantile importance, were keen to recognize the disabilities
thus inflicted upon them. In Florence a remedy was sought by requiring the
seller of real estate always to give security against possible future sentences
of confiscation by the Inquisition--the security in general being that of a
third party, although there must have been no little difficulty in obtaining
it, and though it might likewise be invalidated at any moment by the same
cause.
Even in contracts for personalty,
security was also often demanded and given. This was, at least, only replacing
one evil by another of scarcely less magnitude, and the trouble grew so
intolerable that a remedy was sought for one of its worst features. The
republic solemnly represented to Martin IV. the scandals which had occurred and
the yet greater ones threatened, in consequence of the confiscation of the real
estate of heretics in the hands of bona
fide purchasers, and by a special bull of Nov. 22, 1283, the pontiff
graciously ordered the Florentine inquisitors in future not to seize such
property.
The princes who enjoyed the results of
confiscations recognized that they carried with them the correlative duty of
defraying the expenses of the Inquisition; indeed, self-interest alone would
have prompted them to maintain in a state of the highest efficiency an
instrumentality so profitable. Theoretically, it could not be denied that the
bishops were liable for these expenses, and at first the inquisitors of
Languedoc sought to obtain funds from them, suggesting that at least pecuniary
penances inflicted for pious uses should be devoted to paying their notaries
and clerks. This was fruitless, for, as Gui Foucoix (Clement IV.) remarks,
their hands were tenacious and their purses constipated, and as it was useless
to look to them for resources, he advises that the pecuniary penances be used
for the purpose, providing it be done decently and without scandalizing the
people. Throughout central and northern Italy, as we have seen, the fines and
confiscations rendered the Inquisition fully self-supporting, and the
inquisitors were eager to make business out of which they could reap a
pecuniary harvest. In Venice the State defrayed all expenses and took all
profits. In Naples the same policy was at first pursued by the Angevine
monarchs, who took the confiscations and, in addition to maintaining prisoners,
paid to each inquisitor one augustale (one quarter ounce of gold) per diem for
the expenses of himself and his associate, his notary, and three familiars,
with their horses.
These stipends were assigned upon the
Naples customs on iron, pitch, and salt; the orders for their payment ran
usually for six months at a time and had to be renewed; there was considerable
delay in the settlements, and the inquisitors had substantial cause of
complaint, although the officials were threatened with fines for lack of
promptness. In 1272, however, I find a letter issued to the inquisitor, FrÃ
Matteo di Castellamare, providing him with a year's salary, payable six months
in advance. When, as mentioned above, Charles II., in 1290, divided the
proceeds according to the papal prescription, he liberally continued to
contribute to the expenses, though on a somewhat reduced scale. In letters of
May 16, 1294, he orders the payment to Frà Bartolomeo di Aquila of four tareni
per diem (the tareno was one thirtieth of an ounce of gold), and July 7 of the
same year he provides that five ounces per month be paid to him for the
expenses of his official family.
In France there was at first some
question as to the responsibility for the charges attendant upon persecution.
The duty of the bishops to suppress heresy was so plain that they could not
refuse to meet the expenses, at least in part.
Expenses Of The
Inquisition
Before the establishment of the
Inquisition this consisted almost wholly in the maintenance of imprisoned
converts, and at the Council of Toulouse they agreed to defray this in the case
of those who had no money, while those who had property to be confiscated they
claimed should be supported by the princes who obtained it.
This proposition, like the subsequent
one of the Council of Albi, in 1254, was altogether too cumbrous to work. The
statutes of Raymond, in 1234, while dwelling elaborately on the subject of
confiscation, made no provision for meeting the cost of the new Inquisition,
and the matter remained unsettled. In 1237 we find Gregory IX. complaining that
the royal officials contributed nothing for the support of the prisoners whose
property they had confiscated. When, in 1246, the Council of Béziers was
assembled, the Cardinal Legate of Albano reminded the bishops that it was their
business to provide for it, according to the instructions of the Council of
Montpellier, whose proceedings have not reached us. The good bishops were not
disposed to do this.
As we have seen, they claimed that
prisons should be built at the expense of the recipients of the confiscations,
and suggested that the fines should be used for their maintenance and for that
of the inquisitors. The piety of St. Louis, however, would not see the good
work halt for lack of the necessary means; with a more worldly prince we might
assume that he recognized the money spent on inquisitors as profitably
invested. In 1248 we find him defraying their expenses in all the domains of
the crown, and we have shown above how he assumed the cost of prisons and
prisoners; in addition to which, in 1246, he ordered his Seneschal of Carcassonne
to pay out of the confiscations ten sols per diem to the inquisitors for their
expenses.
It may fairly be presumed that Count
Raymond contributed with a grudging hand to the support of an institution which
he had opposed so long as he dared; but when he was succeeded, in 1249, by
Jeanne and Alphonse of Poitiers, the latter politic and avaricious prince saw
his account in stimulating the zeal of those to whom he owed his harvest of
confiscations. Not only did he defray the cost of the fixed tribunals, but his
seneschals had orders to pay the expenses of the inquisitors and their
familiars in their movements throughout his territories. He paid close
attention to detail. In 1268 we find Guillem de Montreuil, Inquisitor of
Toulouse, reporting to him the engagement of a notary at six deniers per diem
and of a servitor at four, and Alphonse graciously ordering the payment of
their wages. Charles of Anjou, who was equally greedy, found time amid his
Italian distractions to see that his Seneschal of Provence and Forcalquier kept
the Inquisition supplied on the same basis as did the king in the royal
dominions.
Large as were the returns to the fisc
from the industry of the Inquisition, the inquisitors were sometimes disposed
to presume upon their usefulness, and to spend money with a freedom which
seemed unnecessary to those who paid the bills. Even in the fresh zeal of 1242
and 1244, before the princes had made provision for the Holy Office, and while
the bishops were yet zealously maintaining their claims to the fines, the
luxury and extravagance of the inquisitors called down upon them the reproof of
their own Order as expressed in the Dominican provincial chapters of
Montpellier and Avignon.
It would be, of course, unjust to cast
such reproach upon all inquisitors, but no doubt many deserved it, and we have
seen that there were numerous ways in which they could supply their wants,
legitimate or otherwise. It might, indeed, be a curious question to determine
the source whence Bernard de Caux, who presided over the tribunal of Toulouse
until his death, in 1252, and who, as a Dominican, could have owned no
property, obtained the means which enabled him to be a great benefactor to the
convent of Agen, founded in 1249. Even Alphonse of Poitiers sometimes grew tired
of ministering to the wishes of those who served him so well. In a confidential
letter of 1268 he complains of the vast expenditures of Pons de Poyet and
Étienne de Gâtine, the inquisitors of Toulouse, and instructs his agent to
try to persuade them to remove to Lavaur, where less extravagance might be
hoped for. He offered to put at their disposal the castle of Lavaur, or any
other that might be fit to serve as a prison; and at the same time he craftily
wrote to them direct, explaining that, in order to enable them to extend their
operations, he would place an enormous castle in their hands.
Some very curious details as to the
expenses of the Inquisition, thus defrayed from the confiscations, from St.
John's day, 1322, to 1323, are afforded by the accounts of Arnaud Assalit, procureur des encours of Carcassonne and
Béziers, which have fortunately been preserved. From the sums thus coming into
his hands the procureur met the
outlays of the Inquisition to the minutest item--the cost of maintaining
prisoners, the hunting up of witnesses, the tracking of fugitives, and the
charges for an auto de fé, including
the banquets for the assembly of experts and the saffron-colored cloth for the
crosses of the penitents. We learn from this that the wages of the inquisitor
himself were one hundred and fifty livres per annum, and also that they were
very irregularly paid.
Frère Otbert had been appointed in
Lent, 1316, and thus far had received nothing of his stipend, but now, in
consequence of a special letter from King Charles le Bel, the whole
accumulation for six years, amounting to nine hundred livres, is paid in a
lump. Although by this time persecution was slackening for lack of material,
the confiscations were still quite profitable. Assalit charges himself with two
thousand two hundred and nineteen livres seven sols ten deniers collected
during the year, while his outlays, including heavy legal expenses and the
extraordinary payment to Frère Otbert, amounted to one thousand one hundred
and sixty-eight livres eleven sols four deniers, leaving about one thousand and
fifty livres of profit to the crown.
Persecution Dependent
On Confiscation
Persecution, as a steady and continuous
policy, rested, after all, upon confiscation. It was this which supplied the
fuel to keep up the fires of zeal, and when it was lacking the business of
defending the faith languished lamentably. When Catharism disappeared under the
brilliant aggressiveness of Bernard Gui, the culminating point of the
Inquisition was passed, and thenceforth it steadily declined, although still
there were occasional confiscated estates over which king, prelate, and noble
quarrelled for some years to come. The Spirituals, Dulcinists, and Fraticelli
were Mendicants, who held property to be an abomination; the Waldenses were
poor folk--mountain shepherds and lowland peasants--and the only prizes were an
occasional sorcerer or usurer. Still, as late as 1337 the office of bailli of
the confiscations for heresy in Toulouse was sufficiently lucrative to be worth
purchasing under the prevailing custom of selling all such positions, and the
collections for the preceding fiscal year amounted to six hundred and forty
livres six sols.
The intimate connection between the
activity of persecuting zeal and the material results to be derived from it is
well illustrated in the failure of the first attempt to extend the Inquisition
into Franche Comtã. John, Count of Burgundy, in 1248, represented to Innocent
IV. the alarming spread of Waldensianism throughout the province of Besanon and
begged for its repression.
Apparently the zeal of Count John did
not lead him to pay for the purgation of his dominions, and the plunder to be
gained was inconsiderable, for, in 1255, Alexander IV. granted the petition of
the friars to be relieved from the duty, in which they averred that they had
exhausted themselves fruitlessly for lack of money.
The same lesson is taught by the want
of success which attended all attempts to establish the Inquisition in
Portugal. When, in 1376, Gregory XI. ordered the Bishop of Lisbon to appoint a
Franciscan inquisitor for the kingdom, recognizing apparently that there would
be small receipts from confiscations, he provided that the incumbent should be
paid a salary of two hundred gold florins per annum, assessed upon the various
sees in the proportion of their forced contributions to the papal camera. The
resistance of inertia, which rendered this command resultless, doubtless arose
from the objection of the prelates to being thus taxed; and the same may be
said of the effort of Boniface IX., when he appointed Fray Vicente de Lisboa as
Inquisitor of Spain and ordered his expenses defrayed by the bishops.
Disputes Over The
Expenses
Perhaps the most unscrupulous attempt
to provide for the maintenance of the Inquisition was that made by the Emperor
Charles IV. when, in 1369, he endeavored to establish it in Germany on a
permanent basis. Heretics were neither numerous nor rich, and little could be
gained from their confiscations to sustain the zeal of Kerlinger and his brethren;
and we shall see hereafter how the houses of the orthodox and inoffensive
Beghards and Beguines were summarily confiscated in order to provide domiciles
and prisons for the inquisitors, while the cities were invited to share in the
spoils in order to enlist popular support for the odious measure; we shall see
also how it failed in consequence of the steady repugnance of prelates and
people for the Holy Office.
Eymerich, writing in Aragon, about
1375, says that the source whence the expenses of the Inquisition should be met
is a question which has been long debated and never settled. The most popular
view among churchmen was that the burden should fall on the temporal princes,
since they obtained the confiscations and should accept the charge with the
benefit; but in these times, he sorrowfully adds, there are few obstinate
heretics, fewer still relapsed, and scarce any rich ones, so that, as there is
little to be gained, the princes are not willing to defray the expenses. Some
other means ought to be found, but of all the devices which have been proposed
each has its insuperable objection; and he concludes by regretting that an
institution so wholesome and so necessary to Christendom should be so badly
provided.
It was probably while Eymerich was
saddened with these unpalatable truths that the question was raising itself in
the most practical shape elsewhere. As late as 1337 in the accounts of the
SÃnéchaussÃe of Toulouse there are expenditures for an auto de fà and for repairs to the buildings and prison of the
Inquisition, the salaries of the inquisitor and his officials, and the
maintenance of prisoners, but the confusion and bankruptcy entailed by the
English war doubtless soon afterwards caused this duty to be neglected. In 1375
Gregory XI. persuaded King Frederic of Sicily to allow the confiscations to
inure to the benefit of the Inquisition, so that funds might not be lacking for
the prosecution of the good work. At the same time he made a vigorous effort to
exterminate the Waldenses who were multiplying in Dauphinã.
There were prisons to be built and
crowds of prisoners to be supported, and he directed that the expenses should
be defrayed by the prelates whose negligence had given opportunity for the
growth of heresy. Although he ordered this to be enforced by excommunication,
it would seem that the constipated purses of the bishops could not be relaxed,
for soon after we find the inquisitor laying claim to a share in the
confiscations, on the reasonable ground of his having no other source whence to
defray the necessary expenses of his tribunal. The royal officials insisted on
keeping the whole, and a lively contest arose, which was referred to King
Charles le Sage.
The monarch dutifully conferred with
the Holy See, and, in 1378, issued an Ordonnance
retaining the whole of the confiscations and assigning to the inquisitor a
yearly stipend--the same as that paid to the tribunals of Toulouse and
Carcassonne--of one hundred and ninety livres Tournois, out of which all the
expenses of the Inquisition were to be met; with a proviso that if the
allowance was not regularly paid then the inquisitor should be at liberty to
detain a portion of the forfeitures. No doubt this agreement was observed for a
time, but it lapsed in the terrible disorders which ensued on the insanity of
Charles VI.
In 1409 Alexander V. left to his legate
to decide whether the Inquisitor of Dauphinã should receive three hundred gold
florins a year, to be levied on the Jews of Avignon, or ten florins a year from
each of the bishops of his extensive district, or whether the bishops should be
compelled to support him and his officials in his journeys through the country.
These precarious resources disappeared in the confusion of the civil wars and
invasion which so nearly wrecked the monarchy. In 1432, when Frère Pierre
Fabri, Inquisitor of Embrun, was summoned to attend the Council of Basle, he
excused himself on account of his preoccupation with the stubborn Waldenses,
and also on the ground of his indescribable poverty, "for never have I had
a penny from the Church of God, nor have I a stipend from any other
source."
Of course it would be unjust to say
that greed and thirst for plunder were the impelling motives of the
Inquisition, though, when complaints were made that the fisc was defrauded of
its dues by the immunity promised to those who would come in and confess during
the time of grace, and when Bernard Gui met this objection by pointing out that
these penitents were obliged to betray their associates, and thus, in the long
run, the fisc was the gainer, we see how largely the minds of those who urged
on persecution were occupied by its profits.
We therefore are perfectly safe in
asserting that but for the gains to be made out of fines and confiscations its
work would have been much less thorough, and that it would have sunk into
comparative insignificance as soon as the first frantic zeal of bigotry had
exhausted itself.
This zeal might have lasted for a
generation, to be followed by a period of comparative inaction, until a fresh
onslaught would have been excited by the recrudescence of heresy. Under a
succession of such spasmodic attacks Catharism might perhaps have never been
completely rooted out. By confiscation the heretics were forced to furnish the
means for their own destruction. Avarice joined hands with fanaticism, and
between them they supplied motive power for a hundred years of fierce,
unremitting, unrelenting persecution, which in the end accomplished its main
purpose.
Chapter XIV. The Stake
Like confiscation, the death-penalty
was a matter with which the Inquisition had theoretically no concern. It
exhausted every effort to bring the heretic back to the bosom of the Church. If
he proved obdurate, or if his conversion was evidently feigned, it could do no
more. As a non-Catholic, he was no longer amenable to the spiritual
jurisdiction of a Church which he did not recognize, and all that it could do
was to declare him a heretic and withdraw its protection. In the earlier
periods the sentence thus is simply a condemnation as a heretic, accompanied by
excommunication, or it merely states that the offender is no longer considered
as subject to the jurisdiction of the Church. Sometimes there is the addition
that he is abandoned to secular judgment--"relaxed," according to the
terrible euphemism which assumed that he was simply discharged from custody.
When the formulas had become more perfected there is frequently the explanatory
remark that the Church has nothing left to do to him for his demerits; and the
relinquishment to the secular arm is accompanied with the significant addition
"debita animadversione puniendum"--that
he is to be duly punished by it. The adjuration that this punishment, in
accordance with the canonical sanctions, shall not imperil life or limb, or
shall not cause death or effusion of blood, does not appear in the earlier
sentences, and was not universal even at a later period.
That this appeal for mercy was the
merest form is admitted by Pegna, who explains that it was used only that the
inquisitors might seem not to consent to the effusion of blood, and thus avoid
incurring "irregularity."
Respobsibility Of The
Church
The Church took good care that the
nature of the request should not be misapprehended. It taught that in such
cases all mercy was misplaced unless the heretic became a convert, and proved
his sincerity by denouncing all his fellows. The remorseless logic of St.
Thomas Aquinas rendered it self-evident that the secular power could not escape
the duty of putting the heretic to death, and that it was only the exceeding
kindness of the Church that led it to give the criminal two warnings before
handing him over to meet his fate. The inquisitors themselves had no scruples
on the subject, and condescended to no subterfuges respecting it, but always
held that their condemnation of a heretic was a sentence of death. They showed
this in averting the pollution of a Church by not uttering these sentences
within the sacred precincts, this portion of the ceremony of an auto de fé being performed in the
public square.
One of their teachers in the thirteenth
century, copied by Bernard Gui in the fourteenth, argues:
"The object of the Inquisition is
the destruction of heresy. Heresy cannot be destroyed unless heretics are
destroyed: heretics cannot be destroyed unless their defenders and fautors are
destroyed, and this is effected in two ways, viz., when they are converted to
the true Catholic faith, or when, on being abandoned to the secular arm, they
are corporally burned."
In the next century, Fray Alonso de
Spina points out that they are not to be delivered up to extermination without
warning once and again, unless, indeed, their growth threatens trouble to the
Church, when they are to be extirpated without delay or examination. Under these
teachings the secular powers naturally recognized that in burning heretics they
were only obeying the commands of the Inquisition. In a commission issued by
Philippe le Bon of Burgundy, November 9, 1431, ordering his officials to render
obedience to Friar Kaleyser, recently appointed Inquisitor of Lille and
Cambrai, among the duties enumerated is that of inflicting due punishment on
heretics "as he shall decree, and as is customary." In the accounts
of the royal procureurs des encours,
the cost of these executions in Languedoc was charged against the proceeds of
the confiscations as part of the expenses of the Inquisition, thus showing that
they were not regarded as ordinary incidents of criminal justice, to be
defrayed out of the ordinary revenues, but as peculiarly connected with and
dependent upon the operations of the Inquisition, of which the royal officials
only acted as ministers. The Inquisitor Sprenger had no hesitation in alluding
to the victims whom he caused to be burned--"quas incinerari fecimus."
In fact, how modern is the pretension
that the Church was not responsible for the atrocity is apparent when, as late
as the seventeenth century, the learned Cardinal Albizio, in controverting FrÃ
Paolo as to the control of the Inquisition by the State in Venice, had no
scruple in asserting that "the inquisitors in conducting the trials,
regularly came to the sentence, and if it was one of death it was immediately
and necessarily put into execution by the doge and the senate."
We have already seen that the Church
was responsible for the enactment of the ferocious laws punishing heresy with
death, and that she intervened authoritatively to annul any secular statutes
which should interfere with the prompt and effective application of the
penalties. In the same way, as we have also seen, she provided against any
negligence or laxity on the part of the magistrates in executing the sentences
pronounced by the inquisitors. According to the universal belief of the period,
this was her plainest and highest duty, and she did not shrink from it.
Boniface VIII. only recorded the current practice when he embodied in the canon
law the provision whereby the secular authorities were commanded to punish duly
and promptly all who were handed over to them by the inquisitors, under pain of
excommunication, which became heresy if endured for a twelvemonth, and the
inquisitors were rigidly instructed to proceed against all magistrates who
proved recalcitrant, while they were at the same time cautioned only to speak
of executing the laws without specifically mentioning the penalty, in order to
avoid falling into "irregularity," though the only punishment
recognized by the Church as sufficient for heresy was burning alive. Even if
the ruler was excommunicated and incapable of legally performing any other
function, he was not relieved from the obligation of this supreme duty, with
which nothing was allowed to interfere. Indeed, authorities were found to argue
that if an inquisitor were obliged to execute the sentence himself he would not
thereby incur irregularity.
Secular Co-operation
We are not to imagine, however, from
these reduplicated commands that the secular power, as a rule, showed itself in
the slightest degree disinclined to perform the duty. The teachings of the
Church had made too profound an impression for any doubt in the premises to
exist. As has been seen above, the laws of all the states of Europe prescribed
concremation as the appropriate penalty for heresy, and even the free
commonwealths of Italy recognized the Inquisition as the judge whose sentences
were to be blindly executed. Raymond of Toulouse himself, in the fit of piety
which preceded his death in 1249, caused eighty believers in heresy to be
burned at Berlaiges, near Agen, after they had confessed in his presence,
apparently without giving them the opportunity of recanting.
From the contemporary sentences of
Bernard de Caux, it is probable that, had these unfortunates been tried before
that ardent champion of the faith, not one of them would have been condemned to
the stake as impenitent. Quite as significant was the suit brought by the
Marãchal de Mirepoix against the Seneschal of Carcassonne, because the latter
had invaded his right to burn for himself all his subjects condemned as
heretics by the Inquisition.
In 1269 the Parlement of Paris decided
the case in his favor, after which, on March 18, 1270, the seneschal acceded to
his demand that the bones of seven men and three women of his territories,
recently burned at Carcassonne, should be solemnly surrendered to him in
recognition of his right; or, if they could not be found and identified, then,
as substitutes, ten canvas bags filled with straw--a ghastly symbolic ceremony
which was actually performed two days later, and a formal notarial act executed
in attestation of it.
Yet, though the De Levis of Mirepoix
rejoiced in the title of Marãchaux de la Foi, it is not to be assumed that this
eagerness arose wholly from bloodthirsty fanaticism, for there was nothing to
which the seigneur-justicier clung more jealously than to every detail of his
jurisdiction. A similar dispute arose in 1309, when the Count of Foix claimed
the right to burn the Catharan heresiarch, Jacques Autier, and a woman named
Guillelma Cristola, condemned by Bernard Gui, because they were his subjects,
but the royal officials maintained their master's privileges in the premises,
and the suit thence arising was still pending in 1326. So at Narbonne, where
there was a long-standing dispute between the archbishop and the viscount as to
the jurisdiction, and where, in 1319, the former in conjunction with the
inquisitor Jean de Beaune relaxed three heretics, he claimed for his court the
right to burn them. The commune, as representing the viscount, resisted this,
and the hideous quarrel was only settled by the representative of the king
stepping in and performing the act. In so doing, however, he carefully
specified that it was not to work prejudice to either party, while to the end
the archbishop protested against the intrusion upon his rights.
If, however, from any cause, the
secular authorities were reluctant to execute the death-sentence, the Church
had little ceremony in putting forth its powers to coerce obedience. When, for
instance, the first resistance in Toulouse had been broken down and the Holy
Office had been reinstated there, the inquisitors, in 1237, condemned six men
and women as heretics; but the viguier and consuls refused to receive the
convicts, to confiscate their property, and "to do with them what was
customary to be done with heretics"--that is, to burn them alive.
Thereupon the inquisitors, after counselling with the bishop, the Abbot du Mas,
the Provost of St. Étienne, and the Prior of La Daurade, proceeded to excommunicate
solemnly the recalcitrant officials in the Cathedral of St. Étienne. In 1288
Nicholas IV. lamented the neglect and covert opposition with which in many
places the secular authorities evaded the execution of the inquisitorial
sentences, and directed that they should be punished with excommunication and
deprivation of office and their communities be subjected to interdict. In 1458,
at Strassburg, the Burgermeister, Hans Drachenfels, and his colleagues refused
at first to burn the Hussite missionary Frederic Reiser and his servant Anna
Weiler, but their resistance was overcome and they were finally forced to
execute the sentence. Thirty years later, in 1486, the magistrates of Brescia
objected to burning certain witches of both sexes condemned by the Inquisition,
unless they should be permitted to examine the proceedings. This was held to be
flat rebellion.
Civil lawyers, it is true, had
endeavored to prove that the secular authorities had a right to see the papers,
but the inquisitors had succeeded in having this claim rejected. Innocent VIII.
promptly declared the Venetian demands to be a scandal to the faith, and he
ordered the excommunication of the magistrates if within six days they did not
execute the convicts, any municipal statutes to the contrary being pronounced
null and void--a decision which was held to give the secular courts six days in
which to carry out the sentence of condemnation. A more stubborn contest arose
in 1521, when the Inquisition endeavored to purge the dioceses of both Brescia and
Bergamo of the witches who still infested them. The inquisitor and episcopal
ordinaries proceeded against them vigorously, but the Signiory of Venice
interposed and appealed to Leo X., who appointed his nuncio at Venice to revise
the trials.
The latter delegated his power to the
Bishop of Justinopolis, who proceeded with the inquisitor and ordinaries to the
Valcamonica of Brescia, where the so-called heretics were numerous, and
condemned some of them to be relaxed to the secular arm. Still dissatisfied,
the Venetian Senate ordered the Governor of Brescia not to execute the
sentences or to permit them to be executed, or to pay the expenses of the
proceedings, but to send the papers to Venice for revision, and to compel the
Bishop of Justinopolis to appear before them, which he was obliged to do. This
inflamed the papal indignation to the highest pitch. Leo X. warmly assured the
inquisitor and the episcopal officials that they had full jurisdiction over the
culprits, that their sentences were to be executed without revision or
examination, and that they must enforce these rights with the free use of
ecclesiastical censures. The spirit of the age, however, was insubordinate, and
Venice had always been peculiarly so in all matters connected with the Holy Office.
We shall see hereafter how the Council of Ten undauntedly held its position and
asserted the superiority of its jurisdiction in a manner previously unexampled.
Coercion Of The State
In view of this unvarying policy of the
Church during the three centuries under consideration, and for a century and a
half later, there is a typical instance of the manner in which history is
written to order, in the quiet assertion of the latest Catholic historian of
the Inquisition that "the Church took no part in the corporal punishment
of heretics. Those who perished miserably were only chastised for their crimes,
sentenced by judges invested with the royal jurisdiction.
The record of the excesses committed by
the heretics of Bulgaria, by the Gnostics and Manich˜ans, is historical, and
capital punishment was only inflicted on criminals confessing to robbery,
assassination, and violence. The Albigenses were treated with equal
benignity;... the Catholic Church deplored all acts of vengeance, however great
was the provocation given by the ferocity of those factious masses." So
completely, in truth, was the Church convinced of its duty to see that all
heretics were burned that, at the Council of Constance, the eighteenth article
of heresy charged against John Huss was that, in his treatise de Ecclesia, he had taught that no
heretic ought to be abandoned to secular judgment to be punished with death.
In his defence even Huss admitted that
a heretic who could not be mildly led from error ought to suffer bodily
punishment; and when a passage was read from his book in which those who
deliver an unconvicted heretic to the secular arm are compared to the Scribes
and Pharisees who delivered Christ to Pilate, the assembly broke out into a
storm of objurgation, during which even the sturdy reformer, Cardinal Pierre
d'Ailly, was heard to exclaim,
"Verily those who drew up the
articles were most moderate, for his writings are much more atrocious."
Impenitent Heretics
The continuous teachings of the Church
led its best men to regard no act as more self-evidently just than the burning
of the heretic, and no heresy less defensible than a demand for toleration.
Even Chancellor Gerson himself could see nothing else to be done with those who
pertinaciously adhered to error, even in matters not at present explicitly
articles necessary to the faith.[B] The fact is, the Church not only defined
the guilt and forced its punishment, but created the crime itself. As we shall
see, under Nicholas IV. and Celestine V., the strict Franciscans were
pre-eminently orthodox; but when John XXII. stigmatized as heretical the belief
that Christ lived in absolute poverty, he transformed them into unpardonable
criminals whom the temporal officials were bound to send to the stake, under
pain of being themselves treated as heretics.
There was thus a universal consensus of
opinion that there was nothing to do with a heretic but to burn him. The
heretic as known to the laws, both secular and ecclesiastical, was he who not
only admitted his heretical belief, but defended it and refused to recant. He
was obstinate and impenitent; the Church could do nothing with him, and as soon
as the secular lawgivers had provided for his guilt the awful punishment of the
stake, there was no hesitation in handing him over to the temporal jurisdiction
to endure it. All authorities unite in this, and the annals of the Inquisition
can vainly be searched for an exception. Yet this was regarded by the
inquisitor as a last resort. To say nothing of the saving of a soul, a convert
who would betray his friends was more useful than a roasted corpse, and, as we
have seen, no effort was spared to obtain recantation. Experience had shown
that such zealots were often eager for martyrdom and desired to be speedily
burned, and it was no part of the inquisitor's pleasure to gratify them. He was
advised that this ardor frequently gave way under time and suffering, and
therefore he was told to keep the obstinate and defiant heretic chained in a
dungeon for six months or a year in utter solitude, save when a dozen
theologians and legists should be let in upon him to labor for his conversion,
or his wife and children be admitted to work upon his heart.
It was not until all this had been
tried and failed that he was to be relaxed. Even then the execution was
postponed for a day to give further opportunity for recantation, which, we are
told, rarely happened, for those who went thus far usually persevered to the
end; but if his resolution gave way and he professed repentance, his conversion
was presumed to be the work of fear rather than of grace, and he was to be
strictly imprisoned for life. Even at the stake his offer to abjure ought not
to be refused, though there was no absolute rule as to this, and there could be
little hope of the genuineness of such conversion.
Eymerich relates a case occurring at
Barcelona when three heretics were burned, and one of them, a priest, after
being scorched on one side, cried out that he would recant. He was removed and
abjured, but fourteen years later was found to have persisted in heresy and to
have infected many others, when he was despatched without more ado.
Relapse
The obstinate heretic who preferred
martyrdom to apostasy was by no means the sole victim doomed to the stake. The
secular lawgiver had provided this punishment for heresy, but had left to the
Church its definition, and the definition was enlarged to serve as a gentle
persuasive that should supplement all deficiencies in the inquisitorial
process. Where testimony deemed sufficient existed, persistent denial only aggravated
guilt, and the profession of orthodoxy was of no avail. If two witnesses swore
to having seen a man "adore" a perfected heretic it was enough, and
no declaration of readiness to subscribe to all the tenets of Rome availed him,
without confession, abjuration, recantation, and acceptance of penance. Such a
one was a heretic, to be pitilessly burned. It was the same with the
contumacious who did not obey the summons to stand trial. Persistent refusal of
the oath was likewise technical heresy, condemning the recalcitrant to the
stake.
Even when there was no proof, simple
suspicion became heresy if the suspect failed to purge himself with conjurators
and remained so for a year. In violent suspicion, refusal to abjure worked the
same result in a twelvemonth. A retracted confession was similarly regarded. In
short, the stake supplied all defects. It was the ultima ratio, and although not many cases have reached us in which
executions actually occurred on these grounds, there is no doubt that such
provisions were of the utmost utility in practice, and that the terror which
they inspired extorted many a confession, true or false, from unwilling lips.
There was another class of cases,
however, which gave the inquisitors much trouble, and in which they were long
in settling upon a definite and uniform course of procedure. The innumerable
forced conversions wrought by the dungeon and stake filled the prisons and the
land with those whose outward conformity left them at heart no less heretics
than before. I have elsewhere spoken of the all-pervading police of the Holy
Office and of the watchfulness exercised over the converts whose liberation at
best was but a ticket-of-leave. That cases of relapse into heresy should be
constant was therefore a matter of course. Even in the jails it was impossible
to segregate all the prisoners, and complaints are frequent of these wolves in
sheep's clothing who infected their more innocent fellow-captives. A man whose
solemn conversion had once been proved fraudulent could never again be trusted.
He was an incorrigible heretic whom the Church could no longer hope to win
over. On him mercy was wasted, and the stake was the only resource. Yet it is
creditable to the Inquisition that it was so long in reducing to practice this
self-evident proposition.
As early as 1184 the Verona decree of
Lucius III. provides that those who, after abjuration, relapse into the abjured
heresy shall be delivered to the secular courts, without even the opportunity
of being heard. The Ravenna edict of Frederic II., in 1232, prescribed death
for all who, by relapse, showed that their conversion had been a pretext to
escape the penalty of heresy. In 1244 the Council of Narbonne alludes to the
great multitude of such cases, and, following Lucius III., orders them to be
relaxed without a hearing. Yet these stern mandates were not enforced. In 1233
we find Gregory IX. contenting himself with prescribing perpetual imprisonment
for such cases, which he speaks of as being already numerous. In a single
sentence of February 10, 1237, the inquisitors of Toulouse condemn seventeen
relapsed heretics to perpetual imprisonment. Raymond de Pennaforte, at the
Council of Tarragona, in 1242, alludes to the diversity of opinion on the
subject, and pronounces in favor of imprisonment; and, in 1246, the Council of
Bãziers, in giving similar instructions, speaks of them as being in accordance
with the apostolic mandates. Even this degree of severity was not always
inflicted. In 1242 Pierre Cella only prescribes pilgrimages and crosses for
such offenders, and, in a case occurring in Florence in 1245, Ruggieri Calcagni
lets off the culprit with a not extravagant fine.
Relapse In Suspicion
What to do with these multitudes of
false converts was evidently a question which perplexed the Church no little,
and, as usual, a solution, at least for the time, was found in leaving the
matter to the discretion of the inquisitors. In answer to the inquiries of the
Lombard Holy Office, the Cardinal of Albano, about 1245, tells the officials to
make use of such penalties as they shall deem appropriate. In 1248 Bernard de
Caux asked the same question of the Archbishop of Narbonne, and was told that,
according to the "apostolic mandates," those who returned to the
Church a second time, humbly and obediently, might be let off with perpetual
imprisonment, while those who were disobedient should be abandoned to the
secular arm. Under these instructions the practice varied, though it is
pleasant to be able to say that, in the vast majority of cases, the inquisitors
leaned to the side of mercy. Even the ardent zeal of Bernard de Caux allowed
him to use his discretion gently. In his register of sentences, from 1246 to
1248, there are sixty cases of relapse, none of which are punished more
severely than by imprisonment, and in some of them the confinement is not
perpetual.
The same lenity is observable in
various sentences rendered during the next ten years, both by him and by other
inquisitors. Yet, with one exception, the codes of instruction which date about
this period assume that relapse is always to be visited with relaxation, and
that the offender is to have no hearing in his defence. In the exceptional
instance the compiler illustrates the uncertainty which existed by sometimes
treating relapse as punishable with imprisonment and sometimes as entailing the
stake. Relapse into usury, however, was let off with the lighter alternative.
The fact is that in Languedoc, under the Treaty of Paris, as stated above, an
oath of abjuration was administered every two years to all males over fourteen
and all females over twelve, and any subsequent act of heresy was technically a
relapse. This, perhaps, explains the indecision of the inquisitors of Toulouse.
It was impossible to burn all such cases.
Whatever be the cause, there evidently
was considerable doubt in the minds of inquisitors as to the penalty of
relapse, and it must be recorded to their credit that in this they were more
merciful than the current public opinion of the age. Jean de Saint-Pierre, the
colleague and successor of Bernard de Caux, followed his example in always
condemning the relapsed to imprisonment, and when, after Bernard's death, in
1252, Renaud de Chartres was adjoined to him, the same rule continued to be
observed. Renaud found, however, to his horror, that the secular judges
disregarded the sentence and mercilessly burned the unhappy victims, and that
this had been going on under his predecessors. The civil authorities defended
their course by arguing that in no other way could the land be purged of heresy,
which was acquiring new force under the mistaken lenity of the inquisitors.
Frère Renaud felt that he could not overlook this cruelty in silence as his
predecessors had done.
He therefore reported the facts to
Alphonse of Poitiers, and informed him that he proposed to refer the matter to
the pope, pending whose answer he would keep his prisoners secure from the
brutal violence of the secular officials.
What was the papal response we can only
conjecture, but it doubtless leaned rather to the rigorous zeal of Alphonse's
officials than to the milder methods of Frère Renaud, for it was about this
time that Rome definitely decided for the unconditional relaxation of all who
were guilty of relapsing into heresy which had once been abjured. The precise date
of this I have not been able to determine. In 1254 Innocent IV. contents
himself, in a very aggravated case of double relapse occurring in Milan, with
ordering destruction of houses and public penance, but in 1258 relaxation for
relapse is alluded to by Alexander IV. as a matter previously irrevocably
settled--possibly by the very appeal of Frère Renaud. It seems to have taken
the inquisitors somewhat by surprise, and for several years they continued to
trouble the Holy See with the pertinent question of how such a rule was to be
reconciled with the universally received maxim that the Church never closes her
bosom to her wayward children seeking to return. To this the characteristic
explanation was given that the Church was not closed to them, for if they
showed signs of penitence they might receive the Eucharist, even at the stake,
but without escaping death. In this shape the decision was embodied in the
canon law, and made a part of orthodox doctrine in the Summa of St. Thomas
Aquinas. The promise of the Eucharist frequently formed part of the sentence in
these cases, and the victim was always accompanied to execution by holy men
striving to save his soul until the last--though it is shrewdly advised that
the inquisitor himself had better not exhibit his zeal in this way, as his
appearance will be more likely to excite hardening than softening of the heart.
Although inquisitors continued to
assume discretion in these cases and did not by any means invariably send the
relapsed to the stake, still relapse became the main cause of capital
punishment. Defiant heretics courting martyrdom were comparatively rare, but
there were many poor souls who could not abandon conscientiously the errors
which they had cherished, and who vainly hoped, after escaping once, to be able
to hide their guilt more effectually.[A] All this gave a fresh importance to
the question of what legally constituted relapse, and led to endless
definitions and subtleties. It became necessary to determine with some
precision, when the offender was refused a hearing, the exact amount of
criminality in both the first and second offences, which would justify
condemnation for impenitent heresy. Where guilt was ofttimes so shadowy and
impalpable, this was evidently no easy matter.
There were cases in which a first trial
had only developed suspicion without proof, and it seemed hard to condemn a man
to death for an assumed second offence when he had not been proved guilty of
the first. Hesitating to do so, the inquisitors applied to Alexander IV. to resolve
their doubts, and he answered in the most positive manner. When the suspicion
had been "violent" he said, it was "by a sort of legal
fiction" to be held as legal proof of guilt, and the accused was to be
condemned. When it was "light" he was to be punished more heavily
than for a first offence, but not with the full penalty of relapse. Moreover,
the evidence required to prove the second offence was of the slightest; any
communication with or kindness shown to heretics sufficed. This decision was
repeated by Alexander and his successors with a frequency which shows how
doubtful and puzzling were the points which came up for discussion, but the
rule of condemnation was finally carried into the canon law and became the
unalterable policy of the Church. The authorities, except Zanghino, agree that
in such cases there was no room for mercy.
Besides these enigmas there were others
respecting forms of guilt which might reasonably be regarded as less deserving
of the last resort. Thus relapse into fautorship gave rise to considerable
divergence of views. The Council of Narbonne, in 1244, was of opinion that
those guilty of this offence should be sent to the pope for absolution and the
imposition of penance--a cumbrous procedure, not likely to find favor. During the
middle period of the Inquisition, the authorities, including Bernard Gui, while
not prescribing relaxation to the secular arm, suggest that penance be imposed
sufficiently severe to inspire wholesome fear in others; while, towards the end
of the fourteenth century, Eymerich holds that a relapsed fautor is to be
abandoned to secular justice without a hearing. Even those defamed for heresy,
if after due purgation they again incur defamation, are strictly liable to the
same fate, though this was so hard a measure that Eymerich proposes that such
cases should be referred to the pope.
There was another class of offenders
who gave the inquisitors endless trouble, and for whom it was difficult to
frame rigid and invariable rules--those who escaped from prison or omitted to
fulfil the penances assigned to them. According to theory, all penitents were
converts to the true faith who eagerly accepted penance as their sole hope of
salvation.
To reject it subsequently was therefore
an evidence that the conversion had been feigned or that the inconstant soul
had reverted to its former errors, as otherwise the loving and wholesome
discipline of the benignant Mother Church would not be spurned. From the
beginning, therefore, these culprits were classed with the relapsed. In 1248
the Council of Valence ordered them to have the benefit of a warning, after
which further persistence in disobedience rendered them liable to the full
penalty of obstinate heresy; and this was sometimes provided for in the
sentence itself, by a clause which warned them that any disregard of the
observances enjoined would expose them to the fate of perjured and impenitent
heretics. Yet as late as 1260 Alexander IV. seems at a loss what rule to
prescribe in such cases, and merely talks vaguely of excommunication and
reimposition of the penalties, with the assistance, if necessary, of the
secular authorities. Yet about the same period Gui Foucoix pronounced in favor
of the death-penalty for these offenders, arguing that the offence proved
impenitent heresy; but Bernard Gui held this to be too severe, and advised
leaving them to the discretion of the inquisitor--a discretion which he himself
had no hesitation in exercising.
Unfulfilled Penance
The two most frequent varieties of the
offence were laying aside the yellow crosses and prison-breaking. The former
was never, so far as I have seen, punished with death, though visited with
penalties sufficiently sharp to serve as a deterrent. The latter, according to
the later inquisitors, was capital--the escaped prisoner was a relapsed
heretic, to be burned without a hearing. Some jurists argued that a failure
fully to betray all heretics of whom the convert had knowledge--a pledge to do
so forming a necessary part of the oath of abjuration--constituted relapse, but
Bernard Gui regards this as unduly harsh. Absolute refusal to perform the
penance enjoined was, of course, evidence of obstinate heresy, leading
inevitably to the stake. Such cases were naturally rare, for penance was only
prescribed for those who had confessed, had professed conversion, and had asked
for reconciliation; but there is one on record of a woman, in the latter half
of the fifteenth century, before the Inquisition of Cartagena, who was duly
abandoned to the secular arm.
Notwithstanding these extensions of the
death-penalty, I am convinced that the number of victims who actually perished
at the stake is considerably less than has ordinarily been imagined. The
deliberate burning alive of a human being, simply for difference of belief, is
an atrocity so dramatic and appeals so strongly to the imagination that it has
come to be regarded as the leading feature in the activity of the Inquisition.
Yet, frequent as recourse to the stake undoubtedly was, it formed but a
comparatively small part of the instrumentalities of repression.
Frequency Of Burning
The records of those evil days have
mostly disappeared, and there is now no possibility of reconstructing their
statistics, but if this could be done I have no doubt that the actual executions
by fire would excite surprise by falling far short of the popular estimate.
Imagination has grown inflamed at the manifold iniquities of the Holy Office,
and has been ready to accept without examination exaggerations which have
become habitual. No one can suspect the learned Dom Brial of prejudice or of
ordinary lack of accuracy, and yet in his Preface to Vol. XXI. of the
"Recueil des Historiens des Gaules" (p. xxiii.), he quotes as
trustworthy an assertion that Bernard Gui, during his service as Inquisitor of
Toulouse from 1308 to 1323, put to death no less than six hundred and
thirty-seven heretics. Now that, as we have seen, was the total number of
sentences uttered by the tribunal during those years, and of these sentences
only forty were capital--in addition to sixty-seven dead heretics condemned to
be exhumed and burned, for the most part because they were not alive to recant.
Again, no inquisitor left behind him a more enviable record for zeal and
activity in the relentless persecution of heresy than Bernard de Caux, who
labored in the earlier period when the land was yet full of heresy, and
heretics had not yet been cowed into submissiveness. Bernard Gui characterizes
him as "a persecutor and hammer of heretics, a holy man and full of God, ...
wonderful in his life, wonderful in doctrine, wonderful in extirpating
heresy;" he wrought miracles while alive, and in 1281, twenty-eight years
after his death, his body was found uncorrupted and perfect, except part of the
nose. Such a man is not to be accused of undue tenderness towards heretics, and
yet, in his register of sentences from 1246 to 1248, there is not a single case
of abandonment to the secular arm, unless we may reckon as such the
condemnations of contumacious absentees, who were necessarily declared to be
heretics.
These, indeed, were liable to be burned
by the secular justice, but, in fact, they could always save themselves by
submission, and this very register affords a very striking instance in point.
There was no more obnoxious heretic in Toulouse than Alaman de Roaix. He
belonged to one of the noblest families in the city, and one which furnished
many members to the heretic church, of which he himself was suspected of being
a bishop. In 1229 the Legate Romano had condemned him and had imposed on him
the penance of a crusade to the Holy Land, which he had sworn to perform and
never fulfilled. In 1237 the earliest inquisitors, Guillem Arnaud and Étienne
de Saint-Thibery, again took up his case, finding him unremittingly active in
protecting heretics and disseminating heresy, spoiling, ransoming, wounding,
and slaying priests and clerks, and this time they condemned him in absentia. He became a faydit, or proscribed man, living sword
in hand and plundering the orthodox to support himself and his friends. No more
aggravated case of obstinate heresy and persistent contumacy can well be
imagined, and yet when he acknowledged his errors, January 16, 1248, professed
conversion, and asked for penance, a score of years after his first conversion,
he was only condemned to imprisonment.
In fact, as we have already seen, the
earnest endeavors of the inquisitors were directed much more to obtaining
conversions with confiscations and betrayal of friends than to provoking
martyrdoms. An occasional burning only was required to maintain a wholesome
terror in the minds of the population. With his forty cases of concremation in
fifteen years, Bernard Gui managed to crush the last convulsive struggle of
Catharism, to keep the Waldenses in check, and repress the zealous ardor of the
Spiritual Franciscans. The really effective weapons of the Holy Office, the
real curses with which it afflicted the people, can be looked for in its
dungeons and its confiscations, in the humiliating penances of the saffron crosses,
and in the invisible police with which it benumbed the heart and soul of every
man who had once fallen into its hands.
The Execution
A few words will suffice as to the
repulsive subject of the execution itself. When the populace was called
together to view the last agonies of the martyrs of heresy, its pious zeal was
not mocked by any ill-advised devices of mercy. The culprit was not, as in the
later Spanish Inquisition, strangled before the lighting of the fagots; nor had
the invention of gunpowder suggested the somewhat less humane expedient of
hanging a bag of that explosive around his neck to shorten his torture when the
flames should reach it. He was tied living to a post set high enough over a
pile of combustibles to enable the faithful to watch every act of the tragedy
to its awful end. Holy men accompanied him to the last, to snatch his soul if
possible from Satan; and, if he were not a relapsed, he could, as we have seen,
save also his body at the last moment. Yet even in these final ministrations we
see a fresh illustration of the curious inconsistency with which the Church
imagined that it could shirk the responsibility of putting a human creature to
death, for the friars who accompanied the victim were strictly warned not to
exhort him to meet death promptly or to ascend firmly the ladder leading to the
stake, or to submit cheerfully to the manipulations of the executioner, for if
they did so they would be hastening his end and thus fall into
"irregularity"--a tender scruple, it must be confessed, and one
singularly out of place in those who had accomplished the judicial murder. For
these occasions a holiday was usually selected, in order that the crowd might
be larger and the lesson more effective; while, to prevent scandal, the
sufferer was silenced, lest he might provoke the people to pity and sympathy.
As for minor details, we happen to have
them preserved in an account by an eye-witness of the execution of John Huss at
Constance, in 1415. He was made to stand upon a couple of fagots and tightly
bound to a thick post with ropes, around the ankles, below the knee, above the
knee, at the groin, the waist, and under the arms. A chain was also secured
around the neck. Then it was observed that he faced the east, which was not
fitting for a heretic, and he was shifted to the west; fagots mixed with straw
were piled around him to the chin.
Then the Count Palatine Louis, who
superintended the execution, approached with the Marshal of Constance, and
asked him for the last time to recant. On his refusal they withdrew and clapped
their hands, which was the signal for the executioners to light the pile. After
it had burned away there followed the revolting process requisite to utterly
destroy the half-burned body--separating it in pieces, breaking up the bones
and throwing the fragments and the viscera on a fresh fire of logs. When, as in
the cases of Arnaldo of Brescia, some of the Spiritual Franciscans, Huss,
Savonarola, and others, it was feared that relics of the martyr would be
preserved, especial care was taken, after the fire was extinguished, to gather
up the ashes and cast them in a running stream.
There is something grotesquely horrible
in the contrast between this crowning exhibition of human perversity and the
cool business calculation of the cost of thus sending a human soul through
flame to its Creator. In the accounts of Arnaud Assalit we have a statement of
the expenses of burning four heretics at Carcassonne, April 24, 1323. It runs
thus:
For large wood - 55 sols 6 deniers.
For vine-branches - 21 sols 3 deniers.
For straw - 2 sols 6 deniers.
For four stakes - 10 sols 9 deniers.
For ropes to tie the convicts - 4 sols 7 deniers.
For the executioner, each 20 sols 80 sols.
In all - 8 livres 14 sols 7 deniers.
or, a little more than two livres apiece.
For vine-branches - 21 sols 3 deniers.
For straw - 2 sols 6 deniers.
For four stakes - 10 sols 9 deniers.
For ropes to tie the convicts - 4 sols 7 deniers.
For the executioner, each 20 sols 80 sols.
In all - 8 livres 14 sols 7 deniers.
or, a little more than two livres apiece.
When the heretic had eluded his
tormentors by death and his body or skeleton was dug up and burned, the
ceremony was necessarily less impressive, but nevertheless the most was made of
it. As early as 1237 Guillem Pelisson, a contemporary, describes how at
Toulouse a number of nobles and others were exhumed, when "their bones and
stinking corpses" were dragged through the streets, preceded by a
trumpeter proclaiming "Qui aytal
fara, aytal perira"--who does so shall perish so--and at length were
duly burned "in honor of God and of the blessed Mary His mother, and the
blessed Dominic His servant." This formula was preserved to the end, and
it was not economical from a pecuniary point of view. In Assalit's accounts we
find that it cost five livres nineteen sols and six deniers, in 1323, for labor
to dig up the bones of three dead heretics, a sack and cord in which to stow
them, and two horses to drag them to the Grève, where they were burned the
next day.
The agency of fire was also invoked by
the Inquisition to rid the land of pestilent and heretical writings, a matter
not without interest as signalizing the commencement of its activity in what
subsequently became the censorship of the press. The burning of books
displeasing to the authorities was a custom respectable by its antiquity.
Constantine, as we have seen, demanded the surrender of all Arian works under
penalty of death. In 435 Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. ordered all
Nestorian books to be burned, and another law threatens punishment on all who will
not deliver up Manichãan writings for the same fate. Justinian condemned the secunda editio, in which the glossators
agree in recognizing the Talmud.
During the ages of barbarism which
followed there was little to call forth this method of repressing the human
mind, but with the revival of speculation the ancient measures were speedily
again called into use. When, in 1210, the University of Paris was agitated with
the heresy of Amaury, the writings of his colleague, David de Dinant, together
with the Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle, to which it was attributed, were
ordered to be burned. Allusion has already been made to the burning of Romance
versions of the Scriptures by Jayme I. of Aragon and to the commands of the
Council of Narbonne, in 1229, against the possession of any portion of Holy
Writ by laymen, as well as to the burning of William of St. Amour's book,
"De periculis." Jewish
books, however, and particularly the Talmud, on account of its blasphemous
allusions to the Saviour and the Virgin, were the objects of special
detestation, in the suppression of which the Church was unwearying.
In the middle of the twelfth century
Peter the Venerable contented himself with studying the Talmud and holding up
to contempt some of the wild imaginings which abound in that curious compound
of the sublime and the ridiculous. His argumentative methods were not suited to
the impatience of the thirteenth century, which had committed itself to sterner
dealings with misbelievers, and the persecution of Jewish literature followed
swiftly on that of Albigenses and Waldenses. It was started by a converted Jew
named Nicholas de Rupella, who, about 1236, called the attention of Gregory IX.
to the blasphemies with which the Hebrew books were filled, and especially the
Talmud.
Burning Of Books
In June, 1239, Gregory issued letters
to the Kings of England, France, Navarre, Aragon, Castile, and Portugal, and to
the prelates in those kingdoms, ordering that on a Sabbath in the following
Lent, when the Jews would be in their synagogues, all their books should be
seized and delivered to the Mendicant Friars. A report of the examination which
ensued in Paris has been preserved, and shows that there was no difficulty in
finding in the Jewish writings abundant matter offensive to pious ears, though
the Rabbis who ventured to appear in their defence endeavored to explain away
the blasphemous allusions to the Christian Messiah, the Virgin, and the saints.
The proceedings dragged on for years, and sentence was not finally rendered until
May 13, 1248, after which Paris was edified with the spectacle of the burning
of fourteen wagon-loads at one time and of six at another. Like the luz or os coccygis, which the Rabbis held to be indestructible, the Talmud
could not be wiped out of existence, and, in 1255, St. Louis, in his
instructions to his seneschals in the Narbonnais, again orders all copies to be
burned, together with all other books containing blasphemies; while in 1267
Clement IV. (Gui Foucoix) instructed the Archbishop of Tarragona to coerce by
excommunication the King of Aragon and his nobles to force the Jews to deliver
up their Talmuds and other books to the inquisitors for examination, when, if
they contain no blasphemies, they may be returned, but if otherwise they are to
be sealed up and securely kept. Alonso the Wise of Castile was wiser, if, as
reported, he caused the Talmud to be translated, in order that its errors might
be exposed to the public. The passive resistance of the faithful was not to be
overcome, and in 1299 Philippe le Bel felt obliged to denounce the persistent
multiplication of the Talmud, and to order his judges to aid the Inquisition in
its extermination. Ten years later, in 1309, we hear of three large wagon-loads
of Jewish books publicly burned in Paris. How fruitless were all these efforts
is seen in a formal sentence recited by Bernard Gui in the auto de fé of 1319. Under the impulsion of the Inquisition the
royal officials had again made diligent perquisition and had collected all the
copies of the Talmud on which they could lay their hands.
Experts in the Hebrew tongue had then
been employed to examine them carefully, and after mature counsel between the
inquisitors and the jurists called in to assist, the books were condemned to be
carried in two carts through the streets of Toulouse, while the royal officers
proclaimed in loud voice that their fate was due to their blasphemies against
the Lord Jesus Christ and his mother the most holy Virgin and the Christian
name, after which they were to be solemnly burned. This is the only case of
execution occurring during Bernard Gui's term of service as inquisitor, and,
from two carts being required to accommodate the obnoxious books, it was
probable the result of search continued for a considerable time.
That he deemed the matter to require
constant vigilance is shown by his including in his collection of forms one
which orders all priests for three Sundays to publish an injunction commanding
the delivery to the Inquisition, for examination, of all Jewish books, including
"Talamuz," under pain of excommunication. The warfare against this
specially obnoxious work continued. In the very next year, 1320, John XXII.
issued orders that all copies of it should be seized and burned. In 1409
Alexander V. paused in his denunciation of rival popes to order its
destruction.
The contest is well known which arose
over it at the revival of letters, with Pfefferkorn and Reuchlin as the rival
champions, and not all the efforts of the humanists availed to save it from
proscription. Even as late as 1554 Julius III. repeated the command to the
Inquisition to burn it without mercy, and all Jews were ordered, under pain of
death, to surrender all books blaspheming Christ--a provision which was
embodied in the canon law and remains there to this day. The censorship of the
Inquisition was not confined to Jewish errors, but its activity in this
direction will be more conveniently considered hereafter.
In the Paris condemnation of 1248 the
Talmud only is specified, though in the examination mention is made of the
Gloss of Solomon of Troyes, and of a work which from its description would seem
to be the Toldos Jeschu, or history of Jesus, which so excited the ire of the
Carthusian, Ramon Marti, in his Pugio
Fidei, and of all subsequent Christians (cf. Wagenseilii Tela Ignea
Satanæ, Altdorfi, 1681). No one can read its curious account of the career of
Christ from a Jewish standpoint without wondering that a single copy of it was
allowed to reach modern times.
Influence On The
Church
This is not the place for us to
consider the influence of the Inquisition in all its breadth, but while yet we
have its procedure in view it may not be amiss to glance cursorily at some of
the effects immediately resulting from its mode of dealing with those whom it tried
and condemned or absolved.
On the Church the processes invented
and recommended to respect by the Inquisition had a most unfortunate effect.
The ordinary episcopal courts employed them in dealing with heretics, and found
their arbitrary violence too efficient not to extend it over other matters
coming within their jurisdiction. Thus the spiritual tribunals rapidly came to
employ inquisitorial methods. Already, in 1317, Bernard Gui speaks of the use
of torture being habitual in them; and in complaining of the Clementine
restrictions, he asks why the bishops should be limited in applying torture to
heretics, while they could employ it without limit in everything else.
Thus habituated to the harshest
measures, the Church grew harder and crueller and more unchristian. The worst
popes of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries could scarce have dared to shock
the world with such an exhibition as that with which John XXII. glutted his
hatred of Hugues Gerold, Bishop of Cahors. John was the son of an humble mechanic
of Cahors, and possibly some ancient grudge may have existed between him and
Hugues. Certain it is that no sooner did he mount the pontifical throne than he
lost no time in assailing his enemy. May 4, 1317, the unfortunate prelate was
solemnly degraded at Avignon and condemned to perpetual imprisonment. This was
not enough. On a charge of conspiring against the life of the pope he was
delivered to the secular arm, and in July of the same year he was partially
flayed alive and then dragged to the stake and burned.
This hardening process went on until
the quarrels of the loftiest prelates were conducted with a savage ferocity
which would have shamed a band of buccaneers. When, in 1385, six cardinals were
accused of conspiring against Urban VI. the angry pontiff had them seized as
they left the consistory and thrust into an abandoned cistern in the castle of
Nocera, where he was staying, so restricted in dimensions that the Cardinal di
Sangro, who was tall and portly, could not stretch himself at full length. The
methods taught by the inquisitors were brought into play. Subjected to hunger,
cold, and vermin, the accused were plied by the creatures of the pope with
promises of mercy if they would confess. This failing, torture was used on the
Bishop of Aquila and a confession was procured implicating the others.
They still refused to admit their
guilt, and they were tortured on successive days. All that could be obtained
from the Cardinal di Sangro was the despairing self-accusation that he suffered
justly in view of the evil which he had wrought on archbishops, bishops, and
other prelates at Urban's command. When it came to the turn of the Cardinal of
Venice, Urban intrusted the work to an ancient pirate, whom he had created
Prior of the Order of St. John in Sicily, with instructions to apply the
torture till he could hear the victim howl; the infliction lasted from early
morning till the dinner-hour, while the pope paced the garden under the window
of the torture-chamber, reading his breviary aloud that the sound of his voice
might keep the executioner reminded of the instructions. The strappado and rack
were applied by turns, but though the victim was old and sickly, nothing could
be wrenched from him save the ejaculation, "Christ suffered for us!"
The accused were kept in their foul
dungeon until Urban, besieged in Nocera by Charles of Durazzo, managed to
escape and dragged them with him. In the flight the Bishop of Aquila, weakened
by torture and mounted on a miserable hack, could not keep up with the party,
when Urban ordered him despatched and left his corpse unburied by the wayside.
The six cardinals, less fortunate, were carried by sea to Genoa, and kept in so
vile a dungeon that the authorities were moved to pity and vainly begged mercy
for them. Cardinal Adam Aston, an Englishman, was released on the vigorous
intercession of Richard II., but the other five were never seen again. Some
said that Urban had them beheaded; others that when he sailed for Sicily he
carried them to sea and cast them overboard; others, again, that a trench was
dug in his stable in which they were buried alive with a quantity of quicklime,
to hasten the disappearance of their bodies. Urban's competitor, known as
Clement VII., was no less sanguinary.
When, as Cardinal Robert of Geneva, he
exercised legatine functions for Gregory XI., he led a band of Free Companions
to vindicate the papal territorial claims. The terrible cold-blooded massacre
of Cesena was his most conspicuous exploit, but equally characteristic of the
man was his threat to the citizens of Bologna that he would wash his hands and
feet in their blood. Such was the retroactive influence of the inquisitorial
methods on the Church which had invented them to plague the heretic. If Bernabo
and Galeazzo Visconti caused ecclesiastics to be tortured and burned to death
over slow fires, they were merely improving on the lessons which the Church
itself had taught.
On secular jurisprudence the example of
the Inquisition worked even more deplorably. It came at a time when the old
order of things was giving way to the new--when the ancient customs of the
barbarians, the ordeal, the wager of law, the wer-gild, were growing obsolete
in the increasing intelligence of the age, when a new system was springing into
life under the revived study of the Roman law, and when the administration of
justice by the local feudal lord was becoming swallowed up in the widening
jurisdiction of the crown. The whole judicial system of the European monarchies
was undergoing reconstruction, and the happiness of future generations depended
on the character of the new institutions.
That in this reorganization the worst
features of the imperial jurisprudence--the use of torture and the
inquisitorial process--should be eagerly, nay, almost exclusively, adopted,
should be divested of the safeguards which in Rome had restricted their abuse,
should be exaggerated in all their evil tendencies, and should, for five
centuries, become the prominent characteristic of the criminal jurisprudence of
Europe, may safely be ascribed to the fact that they received the sanction of
the Church. Thus recommended, they penetrated everywhere along with the
Inquisition; while most of the nations to whom the Holy Office was unknown
maintained their ancestral customs, developing into various forms of criminal
practice, harsh enough, indeed, to modern eyes, but wholly divested of the more
hideous atrocities which characterized the habitual investigation into crime in
other regions.
Of all the curses which the Inquisition
brought in its train this, perhaps, was the greatest--that, until the closing
years of the eighteenth century, throughout the greater part of Europe, the
inquisitorial process, as developed for the destruction of heresy, became the
customary method of dealing with all who were under accusation; that the
accused was treated as one having no rights, whose guilt was assumed in
advance, and from whom confession was to be extorted by guile or force.
Even witnesses were treated in the same
fashion; and the prisoner who acknowledged guilt under torture was tortured
again to obtain information about any other evil-doers of whom he perchance
might have knowledge. So, also, the crime of "suspicion" was imported
from the Inquisition into ordinary practice, and the accused who could not be
convicted of the crime laid to his door could be punished for being suspected
of it, not with the penalty legally provided for the offence, but with some
other, at the fancy and discretion of the judge. It would be impossible to compute
the amount of misery and wrong, inflicted on the defenceless up to the present
century, which may be directly traced to the arbitrary and unrestricted methods
introduced by the Inquisition and adopted by the jurists who fashioned the
criminal jurisprudence of the Continent. It was a system which might well seem
the invention of demons, and was fitly characterized by Sir John Fortescue as
the Road to Hell.
Posted by ALAN LAMONT at 07:51
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