CHAPTER V - INQUISITORIAL PENALTIES
Acquittals being virtually unknown,[415] nearly every case brought before the Holy Office involved the sentence of one penalty or another. The word ‘penalty’ is not technically exact. Strictly speaking, the Inquisition was concerned not with crimes and punishments, but with spiritual errors and penances.[416] Thus, when the tribunal consigned some one to prison, its formula ran that the man in question shall betake himself to prison and there penance himself on a diet of bread and water. No confessor will regard the mere expression of contrition as sufficient in itself; nor will the genuine penitent be satisfied. Penance is the outward and visible sign of sincere repentance, and an earnest of future amendment of life. All the penalties inflicted by the Inquisition had this expiatory character.[417] Some of them were of quite a trivial description. The penitent ‘suspect’ might simply be enjoined to hear Mass on so many Sundays and festivals, or—if his commercial practice suggested unsoundness of doctrine on the subject of interest—to undertake not to exact usury in the future or to promise to restore ill-gotten gains.[418] But, as a rule, the penance was a much more serious matter. One of the most frequent was that of pilgrimages.[419] These were of various kinds. In the earlier days of the Inquisition the penitent[420] was often sent to Palestine on crusade against the infidel. But after the failure of St. Louis’ expedition and the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the crusade ceased to find a place among inquisitorial penances. Ordinary pilgrimages were classified as greater or less. The former took the penitent out of his own country and involved long travelling; the latter were to shrines in his own country. Thus for a Frenchman Rome, the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury, Cologne, St. James of Compostella, Constantinople would come under the first category; Paris, Boulogne, Bordeaux, Vienne under the latter. The undertaking of the longer journeys might be a most severe imposition. The penitent had to abandon his work and set out upon travels which might well occupy many months and even years. He probably had to endure much real suffering, fatigue, and privation. In the case of the crusade, and probably in other pilgrimages as well, there was an element of personal danger. In the pilgrim’s absence what happened to his family and dependents? In many instances one supposes that on his return after a long absence he must have found his occupation gone. Those condemned to make pilgrimages received from the inquisitor letters which explained their itinerary and might give instructions as to certain additional penances they had to undergo, while they at the same time served as safe-conducts, of which there might be much need in localities where popular feeling was strong against heretics. Pilgrims were required to bring back with them written attestations, signed by the chaplains at shrines they were ordered to visit, in proof that they had actually carried out the prescribed programme.[421]
The penance of pilgrimage was often united with two others—scourging and the wearing of crosses, or other marks on the clothing, indicative of the penitent heretic. Flagellation by itself was regarded as one of the lightest of penances. The Councils of Tarragona (1242) and of Narbonne (1243) fixed it as the penance to be undergone by those who voluntarily made confession during the term of grace—that is, by the least culpable of all possible kinds of heretic. The custom was for the flogging to be inflicted in public and in ceremonious fashion. The penitent was obliged to present himself on the appointed days stripped to the waist, and to bring the rod with him. As a general rule the day appointed was Sunday, and the priest performed the operation of scourging upon the penitent between the reading of the Epistle and of the Gospel during Mass. Whether the operation was painful or not is disputed. One commentator supposes that it was no light matter and that the penitent was soundly whipped; another argues that, as the whipping was done at the altar by inexperienced hands and the sufferer was in a position to cry out and resist during divine service, the humiliation was the most severe part of the penance.[422] One may perhaps conclude that the severity of the flagellation depended very much upon the intention of the inquisitors and the strength of arm of the ministering priest. Sometimes the sufferer might have to submit to the scourging in processions through the streets or in every house in which he had been seen in company with heretics; or, in the case of the pilgrim, at the various shrines visited. Such repeated floggings may or may not have been very painful, but even in days when they would not produce such a sense of shame as now, they must have been very humiliating.
In this respect the wearing of crosses was even worse. The origin of this penance was that during his missionary labours St. Dominic had ordered penitents to wear two small crosses, sewn on the breast of their clothing in token of contrition. The Inquisition adopted the practice and it was very frequently inflicted, being prescribed, like flagellation, for those who voluntarily made confession of heresy. Next to imprisonment this penance figures most often in the sentences of Bernard Gui; it was rather less extensively used latterly. The small marks which St. Dominic had required became under the Inquisition very large ones—as a rule two-and-a-half palms in height, two in breadth. They were saffron in colour and had to be worn one on the breast, the other on the back. Other symbols besides crosses were sometimes used. Thus false witnesses had to wear the symbol of red tongues, prisoners liberated on bail hammers, sorcerers the representation of demons. The wearing of distinguishing marks was designed to be, and was felt to be, a less tolerable penalty than flogging. The shameful garb had to be worn continuously indoors and out, exposing the wearer at all times to the jeers, if not the fanatical hostility, of the crowd. The penance was enjoined sometimes for an indefinite period, and so long as he had to wear it, it would be difficult for the penitent to obtain employment. It is plain that evasion was frequently attempted. The Council of Béziers (1233) prescribed confiscation of goods for those who either refused to wear the crosses or tried to conceal them.[423] The Council of Valence (1248) went further and decreed that evasion should be regarded as a sign of impenitent heresy. But evidently the hardships attendant upon this penance were so great that the Church felt it must do something to mitigate their severity, and the Council of Béziers (1246) commanded that penitents wearing crosses should not be subjected to ridicule or excluded from the transaction of business.[424]
There were penalties of a pecuniary nature—the exaction of fines, the confiscation of property. In earlier days, when it was yet thought of as contrary to the principles of their origin that the Friars should receive money on any pretext, it was felt to be repugnant that inquisitors, being friars, should exact fines. On the other hand, from of old it had been regarded as a normal and praiseworthy form of showing genuine contrition to give alms; and it would have been surprising had this sort of penance been found absent from Inquisitorial practice. From the time of the Council of Béziers (1246) onwards, it seems to have been recognized that the exaction of a fine was a perfectly legitimate form of penance, the proceeds to be used for the maintenance of inquisitorial prisons and similar necessary expenses. Eymeric laid it down that this penance should be used ‘decently and in such a way as not to give offence to the laity.’[425] A broader interpretation came to be made of the ‘pious’ purposes for which the proceeds of fines might properly be utilized; they might even include public work of general utility, such as the building of bridges.[426] In moderation, the payment of a fine was a form of penance much more easily borne than those already mentioned; and if the money was used for such objects as the erection of a church or chapel or hospital, the maintenance of the poor or other such philanthropic work, it seems an eminently justifiable sort of penalty.
It had, however, one serious drawback—namely, that the profits might be used for ends much less worthy, for the personal enrichment of the judges, and might be a temptation to extortion. Innocent IV, who in 1245 had directed that fines must be utilized solely for the building and upkeep of prisons, is found in 1249 strongly inveighing against inquisitors for the enormity of their exactions, and in 1251 prohibiting the imposition of fines where any other form of penance would serve. Despite this injunction, the penance was still employed; but the papal pronouncement is evidence, not only of the obvious temptation to extortion, but also of the fact of inquisitors’ yielding to it.
A fine was the customary penalty for such a minor offence as the thoughtless utterance of blasphemous words; it was also frequently exacted in commutation of other forms of penance, as for example that of pilgrimage, when the penitent was too old or infirm to perform it, or again in the case of a young girl not fit to undergo the ardours of a journey across Europe.[427] So also when the death of a heretic left his prescribed penance uncompleted, the rule was that his heirs had to make compensation in the form of money, which might be heavy in amount.[428] The provocation to extortion in both these instances is obvious. The accounts of the Inquisition were unchecked, except by the papal camera, and there was no public opinion able, or as a rule any authority desirous, to prevent abuse.[429]
A more serious matter than the exaction of fines was the confiscation of property. This, strictly speaking, was not a penalty, and technically also the Inquisition was not responsible. The goods of the heretic were simply sequestrated by the State automatically. So it had been in the case of the Manichæans under the Roman empire. It should, however, be noted that if the children of a heretic were not themselves heretics, they were able to succeed to his estate. It was otherwise in the case of crimes, and in particular of treason, which involved the complete, unconditional confiscation of the delinquent’s estate. As the mediæval Church very plausibly reasoned that heresy was a crime analogous to majestas, only more heinous as being treason against the King of Kings, the inference was obvious that heresy involved confiscation. In his Decree of 1184, following the example of Alexander III in 1163, who had enjoined on secular princes the duty of imprisoning heretics and taking their property,
Lucius III again declared confiscation of property to be appropriate to heresy, but sought to obtain the benefit for the Church. The practice as to the sharing of the spoils of confiscation varied in different countries. Invariably, as soon as anyone had been declared a heretic by the Inquisition, the State at once sequestrated his property.[430] In the south of France indeed the confiscation took place even before—as soon as the suspect had been arrested or cited. If the prisoner recanted or, in the latter case, if the suspect were found guiltless, the property was then restored. Innocent III’s fulmination regarding confiscation had been vague in its terminology. What constituted the degree of criminality punishable by confiscation? Did the term ‘heretics’ mean only the obdurate, those who had to be handed over to the State, or did it include ‘fautors’? The interpretation seems to have varied. But the most common interpretation was that all those whose offence was sufficiently heinous as to be ‘penanced’ by imprisonment, the contumacious who failed to answer to citation and all those in whose houses heretics were found, were liable to the confiscation of their property. This seizing of estate before the termination of judicial proceedings was obviously a heavy hardship, not only upon the accused, but more especially upon his family. In France the rules regarding confiscation were carried out most remorselessly. Even before the accused had been found guilty his wife and children might find themselves turned adrift, dependent upon a charity which it was dangerous to extend to those even indirectly connected with heresy.[431] In France, also, the whole of the confiscated property, once the royal power was strong enough to insist upon this, went to the State. Confiscation meant the entire loss of property, movable and immovable, but there were certain exceptions. A wife could claim to retain her dowry, but only on condition that she had not been cognizant of her husband’s heresy when she married him.
Elsewhere it was otherwise. In Ad extirpanda, Innocent IV laid down the rule that the proceeds were to be divided into three equal portions, a third to go to the local authorities, a third to the officials of the Inquisition, a third to bishop and inquisitor.[432] Latterly, in Italy, a different tripartite division was made, the third which had originally gone to bishop and inquisitor having to be paid to the pope. The question of distribution was complicated by feudal considerations, the feudal lord being able to put forward a claim to any forfeited possessions of his vassal. But, however much the allocation of these revenues might vary, it was always understood that they were to be utilized for the prosecution of the war against heresy, and in particular the defraying of the expenses of the Inquisition.
The secular princes no doubt played their part. They had every inducement to do so. It is always good policy, if not to stimulate, at all events to preserve, the goose that lays the golden eggs.[433] But, neither with regard to the action of the secular princes nor of the Inquisition, is it desirable to over-estimate the significance of the pecuniary penances and penalties suffered by the heretic. It is no doubt true that their importance used to be under-estimated, when the tendency was to rivet attention on the stake and torture-chamber in dealing with the Inquisition. It is also true that the opportunity of reaping mercenary profit from the prosecution of heresy was an encouragement to cupidity. It is only in human nature that it should be so. It may be true to say that ‘persecution, as a steady and continuous policy, rested, after all, upon confiscation.’[434] But that is not necessarily to say more than that the Inquisition had to meet its expenses in some way or other; and it was not unnatural to put to those expenses the proceeds of pecuniary penalties imposed directly by, or indirectly resulting from, the sentences of the tribunal. Confiscation was a very customary expedient in the Middle Ages, and once granted the Church’s reasonable analogy, on its own premises, between heresy and treason, it was an inevitable accompaniment of inquisitorial practice. That extortion and avarice were likely to be excited by the scheme is true; but to suggest avarice as a prime motive in the prosecution of heresy is quite to overshoot the mark.[435] The Church did not embark upon the destruction of Catharism because it coveted the wealth of Cathari, but because it felt it must preserve itself against a movement, which it regarded as anti-religious, anti-social and immoral.[436] In the second place, it must be remembered that the majority of mediæval heretical sects consisted of poor men. Only rarely was a rich man a heretic, and Fraticelli, Beguines, Dolcinists and most of the later sects, ardently persecuted by the Inquisition as they were, were certainly not worth pursuing from the point of view of the material profit to be derived thereby. Eymeric, lamenting the dearth of heretics of substance in Spain in his day to help the tribunal to pay its way, deals cursorily with the subject of confiscation as one scarcely affecting the inquisitor at all.[437]
The most severe of the inquisitorial penances was that of imprisonment: but it is a penance. The idea is that, left in solitude, where he is out of reach of heretical contamination and has time to reflect on his offence, where in the simple life sustained on bread and water there are no worldly distractions, the penitent may be enabled by the aid of ghostly counsel to make a sincere return to the bosom of the Church. Bernard de Caux used this penance frequently; it would appear that he enjoined it upon all who did not voluntarily surrender within the time of grace.[438] This was the ruling laid down by the Council of Narbonne (1244), which ruthlessly declared that no arguments of mercy against the infliction were to be considered, such as the dependence of his family upon the heretic, nor illness, nor old age. The Council of Béziers, two years later, reiterated this principle, but recommended lenience where the penance might involve death to dependents. Imprisonment was also frequently the penalty for failure to carry out penances previously imposed. In the sentences of Bernard de Caux a large percentage are for perpetual imprisonment. In Languedoc, to meet the necessities of the battle with Catharism, the Council of Narbonne ruled that imprisonment should always be for life. The tribunal did not at the time possess the resources to render the execution of this order practicable. At a later period it appears to have been carried out.
There were different degrees in the severity of the imprisonment. The most lenient form, known as murus largus, allowed of the prisoner’s leaving his cell, taking exercise in the corridors and holding conversation with other prisoners, similarly privileged, possibly also with friends from outside the prison. Much less desirable was the lot of the penitent consigned to murus strictus. Placed in a cell of the smallest size and worst description, dark and unsavoury, in some cases chained by both hands and feet, he was not permitted ever to leave his cell. This severer form of imprisonment was reserved for those whose offence had been especially conspicuous and therefore especially scandalous and dangerous to the faith and for those whose confessions had not been wholly satisfactory, complete and open.[439]
Mediæval prisons were all of them apt to be horrible places, and it does not appear that those used by the Inquisition were more noisome than others. That they were terrible enough we know: as for example from the report, as to the conditions in the Cour de l’Inquisition in Carcassonne, made by the papal commissioners in 1305.[440] From other evidence it appears that harsh severity was laid down as a rule for the treatment by gaolers of their charges.[441] And, as a general rule, there was little supervision of the prisons, and their inmates had small chance of redress against ill-treatment. Only the strong ventilation of an alert public opinion can find its way into the dark recesses of prison life: there was no public opinion in the Middle Ages interested in the wrongs of the heretic. It does not appear that there was separate accommodation provided for those awaiting trial apart from the condemned. It is only right to add, however, that the Inquisition sanctioned the giving of presents of food and drink, clothing and cash from outside friends to the prisoners, so that they were not wholly dependent upon the diet of bread and water, which was all that the prisons provided.
The Inquisition was apt to find itself in difficulties with regard to the funds necessary for the maintenance of its prisoners. The prisons the tribunal itself built were of the cheapest, and consequently of the most insanitary, description. In France there were few specifically inquisitorial prisons, those belonging to the secular and episcopal authorities being utilized. Prior to the absorption of Languedoc into the French monarchy at the Peace of Paris, the cost of building and maintaining prisons in that country had been borne partly by the bishops, partly by the holders of confiscated property.[442] Probably after 1230 the lot of heretic prisoners in Languedoc sensibly improved. In Italy the Inquisition seems to have been able to meet such expenses out of the proceeds of confiscation.
A penalty frequently met with in the early days of the Inquisition is that of banishment. Originally used in the Roman empire by the civil authority against Arians, Nestorians, Manichæans, it was ordered by the Council of Rheims in 1157 against heretics, incorporated in the Assize of Clarendon, in the edict of Verona, and in those of Alfonso II and Pedro II of Aragon. On the surface it appeared an excellent method of ridding a country of the contamination of heresy. But to banish from one country was merely to introduce the virus of the scourge into another. The effect was simply to spread the epidemic. In the second place, banishment was a confession of failure, as it gave no promise of amendment upon the part of the individual: which was ever the inquisitor’s object. Hence he preferred imprisonment of the heretic to his banishment, holding him fast to getting rid of him.
Heresy, being regarded as essentially anti-social, involved exclusion from civil rights. The heretic could hold no office in Church and State, could hold no title or honour of any kind. If a father, his natural authority over his children was rendered invalid; if a husband, he no longer had legal authority over his wife; if a king, he forfeited the obedience of his subjects; if a baron, the vassalage of his tenants. He could not succeed to property or, having it, leave it by will. His debtors need pay him nothing. The incapacity to hold office in the State affected not only the offender himself, but descendants of the second generation in the paternal, the first generation in the maternal, line.[443]
The idea of the taint of heresy is apparent in another penalty which the inquisitor was competent to inflict the destruction of houses which had harboured heretical inmates or been the scene of heretical meetings.[444] This penalty is less a punishment than a symbolical act, expressive of the Church’s horror of heresy; an attempt to blot out the very memory of the offence. This practice, sanctioned in Roman law, was enjoined by the Assize of Clarendon, by the Emperor Henry VI in the edict of Prato of 1195, by Frederick II in 1232. It was consecrated by the Church in the days of Innocent III. Innocent IV actually demanded the demolition, not only of the house in which the heretic had been found, but also of neighbouring houses, if they belonged to the same property; a stringent rule modified by Alexander IV. The houses must never be rebuilt, and more, the places where they had stood must remain unused for other building. There was just one saving clause: the stones of the demolished houses might be used for pious purposes.[445] Had these regulations been literally carried out, it is obvious that whole towns might have been devastated and remained waste. But it is evident that the rules were not fulfilled to the letter. They were made to apply in Languedoc to houses in which definite heretical acts had taken place, such as the Catharan heretication. Even so, the secular arm was not disposed to approve of a penalty which not only did material damage, but diminished the yield of confiscations. Both France and Germany protested; and eventually the inquisitors agreed to issue licences to build on the sites of the demolished houses.[446]
So far we have dealt, on the whole, with penalties incurred by those who, in the end, became reconciled to the Church—those who confessed, performed their penance in token of contrition and promised amendment. But there were also those who did not become reconciled. They fall under three headings—the contumacious, the impenitent, the relapsed.
As regards the first, the Inquisition adopted the rule of Roman law. If the accused, being cited three times or given one peremptory summons to appear, failed to do so, he was reckoned as contumacious. The penalty was excommunication and forfeiture of goods. This sentence would be annulled in the event of the accused’s surrendering himself to the tribunal within the space of a year from the date of the citation.[447] Otherwise, he was liable, on falling into the hands of the Inquisition, as an excommunicate, to be handed over to the secular arm.
With the stubborn impenitent, resisting up to the last all efforts of the Church to bring him back to her bosom, there was obviously nothing to be done. But the inquisitor, to whom relaxation to the secular arm was an admission of defeat, left no means untried, of persuasion, admonition, force, to avoid such failure. His reluctance to hand over the heretic as a hopeless recalcitrant, was in most cases perfectly genuine. Even after the sentence of relaxation had been pronounced, indeed after the culprit had actually been handed over, the slightest sign of willingness to repent might suffice to save the victim.[448] Eymeric mentions one case in which a heretic, consigned to the flames at Barcelona, being scorched on one side, cried out in his agony that he would recant, and was at once removed from the fire.[449]
The relapsed were those who, having once erred and been received back into communion, sinned in the same way again. These were incorrigible. Their former repentance had manifestly been a mere sham, and the outrage cried to heaven. Repetition of the sin of heresy could not be suffered.[450] Accordingly the relapsed were the only class of offenders coming before the Holy Office who could not save themselves by penitence. Relapse came to involve relaxation automatically. But it had not been so at first, perpetual imprisonment being the penalty originally enjoined, for example by the Councils of Tarragona and Béziers. By 1258, however, relaxation had come to be recognized as the sole possible reward for relapse.[451]
Relaxation to the secular arm meant death, and death by burning. The inquisitor himself, who did not and could not pronounce a death sentence, knew, on the other hand, that a sentence of relaxation was tantamount to one of death.
It is true that he made use of a formula,[452] expressing a desire that lenience might be shown to the victim; and that some apologists have based upon this the contention that the ecclesiastical tribunal was in no way responsible for the death penalty; urging, on the one hand, that the desire that the relaxed heretic might not suffer either death or mutilation was perfectly genuine, on the other that the lay authority was entirely independent in the matter, pronouncing and executing its own sentence, based on a decision of its own, not the Inquisition’s relaxation; and that, should it decide to spare the life of the heretic, the Church would make no complaint, but quite the contrary.[453]
The theory cannot be accepted. The attitude of Gregory IX and Innocent IV towards Frederick II’s Constitutions, and the bulls, Cum adversus haereticam and Ad extirpanda, are really decisive in the matter.[454] But there is additional clear proof that the formula of leniency was an empty formula, intended merely to preserve technical conformity with the Canon.[455] In the first place, what appropriate punishment for the contumacious, the impenitent, the relapsed could there be short of death? Even the contrite heretic, received back into the fold, may have to undergo so severe a penance as perpetual imprisonment. If the Church metes out to the contrite punishment as severe as the impenitent has to face, she is putting a premium upon impenitence. The simple fact that perpetual imprisonment is numbered among the penances inflicted by the Inquisition is proof positive that the Inquisition desired and anticipated from the secular arm the death penalty for those relaxed to it. For careless as to the ultimate fate of the impenitent the Church cannot possibly be. She cannot be willing that he should go free to rejoice in the triumph of his obduracy among confederates and to spread contagion among the faithful. Shall he be banished by the secular authority? To what end? Banishment only means the spread of infection. Shall he, then, be imprisoned by the secular authority? Again, to what end? The Inquisition can imprison as well as the State. It is a strange obtuseness that does not see that the whole attitude of the Inquisition to the heretic points logically, and indeed inevitably, to death as the fate of the obdurate. The tribunal had been created, and it existed, to the end that heresy might be exterminated. To have failed to secure that those who to the last resisted all its most strenuous efforts to obtain confession and reconciliation must expect a worse fate than those who proved compliant would have stultified its very existence.
As a matter of fact, the Church saw to it, that the penalty meted out by the secular arm to the relaxed was death. Hardly ever did the secular ruler show any reluctance to inflict it. But if he forbore, he would probably be excommunicated.[456] Ever after the Fourth Council of the Lateran the Church made it incumbent upon the lay power to carry out the imperial edicts against heresy. The formula of mercy, then, may be called either a ‘legal fiction’ or bluntly, a ‘hypocrisy’: it was never intended to be taken literally.[457] The scrupulous regard of the Church for regularity in accordance with the Canon showed susceptibility to decorum; as a repudiation of moral responsibility it would have been contemptible.
But the mediæval Church did not repudiate such responsibility, as some of its modern apologists have sought to do. Had it disapproved of the penalty of death for the obdurate heretic, it both could and would have said so. Nay, more. It possessed the authority and practical power to have prevented it. To doubt that is to attribute to the mediæval Church infinitely less influence than it actually possessed. A papacy, claiming and at times exercising authority in matters temporal as well as spiritual, could have brought pressure to bear upon the secular power in a matter peculiarly the Church’s concern. The fact that it never made any attempt to do so is proof that it never desired to.
As a matter of fact, the Church in the Middle Ages felt no such squeamishness, as is natural in these modern days of religious toleration, regarding the drastic punishment of errors in intellectu. Once granted the point of view that heresy is a more heinous offence than coining—to use St. Thomas’ analogy—or than treason, to use a commoner and more forcible comparison, and the penalty of death for heresy appears not shocking and horrible, but something eminently just and proper. We may take St. Thomas as representative of the best thought of the Church on the subject in the Middle Ages. Later inquisitors were quite unequivocal in their language. ‘Pertinax non tantum est relaxandus, sed etiam vivus a saeculari potestate conburendus.’[458] Simancas, likewise, has no qualms. The best human law demands the burning of the heretic; in this according with the divine law. Christ is quoted in proof. ‘Igne igitur extirpanda est haeretica pubis: ne nobis Deus irascitur, si haereticos dimittimus impunitos.’[459] A favourite line of argument was that adopted by Ludovico à Paramo, in comparing the Church to the ark of Noah. As God utterly destroyed the unbelievers outside the Ark by a deluge, so now does he destroy the heretic.[460] It is modern humanitarianism, not Inquisitorial authorities, that seeks to disclaim moral responsibility for the stake.
The outward and visible sign of the Church’s approval was its participation in the ceremony of execution. This took place frequently as part of a great and elaborate function known as the sermo generalis or ‘act of faith’—the auto-da-fé of the Spanish Inquisition. There could be a sermo generalis without an execution. A burning was not the essential feature of the ceremony. The auto had humble beginnings. In the early days of the Inquisition in Toulouse there might be one every week or so. In rapid, business-like fashion the sentences against heretics were pronounced in the presence of the civil and ecclesiastical officers. But in course of time the proceedings came to be much more elaborate, the object being to impress the popular mind. The sermo generalis usually took place on a Sunday and inside a church, a platform being erected upon which the culprits were placed. The ceremony, which started in the early morning, began with a sermon appropriate to the occasion, preached by an inquisitor. After this an indulgence was announced for all who had come to take part in the solemnity; the civil magistrates took an oath of fidelity, and excommunication was fulminated against all who had in any way thwarted the Inquisition in the pursuance of its labours. Next the confessions of the penitents were read, followed by the recital of the form of abjuration, which they repeated word by word. It does not appear that they wore any such distinctive garb as was customary in the Spanish Inquisition of later days. The inquisitor then absolved the penitents from the excommunication which their heresy had incurred, the formal sentences were read out, first in Latin, then in the vulgar tongue; after which the culprits were brought forward in order corresponding with the degree of their guilt, beginning with the least guilty and ending with the impenitent and relapsed. For the disposal of the latter adjournment was made to another place, where they were handed over to the lay authorities. The victims destined to pay the last penalty were not at once executed. It was not seemly that the execution should take place on a Sunday, and they were given another night to make their peace with God. The following day they were brought to the stake, accompanied by ghostly comforters, who would earnestly exhort them to penitence, seeing that, except in the case of the relapsed, reconciliation was possible up to the last moment. They were forbidden to exhort the victims to quiet submission for fear that this might suggest that they were doing something to expedite the punishment in store for the heretics.[461]
This would have been an irregularity. Yet so implicitly did the Church believe in death for the obstinate heretic, that she pursued his body even after death.
For death did not terminate heresy; and it was evidently felt to be obnoxious that anyone who had been a heretic, even though his heresy had never been detected during life, should pass beyond the reach of ecclesiastical justice. Notwithstanding the pronouncement of Ivo of Chartres that the powers of the Church extended only to the present world, by the middle of the thirteenth century it seems to have been generally recognized that the corpses of all persons, whose heresy was discovered only after their demise, were to be dug up and disposed of in accordance with the degree of their guilt.[462] In 1209 a synod at Paris caused the body of Amaury de Bène to be flung to the dogs, and in 1237 the bodies of certain heretic nobles were carried through the streets of Toulouse and solemnly burnt.[463] The practice seems to have been partly due to a popular feeling that it was a dreadful and scandalous thing that a heretic should be buried in consecrated ground, partly to a desire on the part of the inquisitors to demonstrate their implacable zeal and unlimited power.[464]
All inquisitorial sentences, with the single exception of death—which, strictly speaking, was not an inquisitorial sentence at all—could be, and frequently were, commuted. Thus for imprisonment is substituted the wearing of crosses in view of the penitent’s having given information about a plot against the inquisitor’s life. The procuring of the capture of other heretics is similarly rewarded.[465] Commutation to a lighter penance is allowed to a woman, because she has a number of small children; to a man, because he has a wife and family dependent upon him.[466] Such unconditional remitments were rare; temporary alleviations were more frequent.[467] Penitents might be allowed to leave prison, for periods varying from a few weeks to two years, on account of child-birth or illness.[468] A husband and wife, both in prison for heresy, might be allowed access to one another.[469]
A right of appeal existed, from the bishop to the metropolitan, from the inquisitor to the Pope. The papacy was at first averse to receiving appeals in cases of heresy, Lucius III in 1185 declaring that he would have none of them.[470] When, however, the Inquisition was established, the right was acknowledged. But it was at best of doubtful and partial utility. It was a condition that the appeal must be lodged before the sentence was pronounced. In other words there could be no appeal against a decision of the tribunal. It was valid only as against an alleged injustice in procedure.[471] A complaint on the latter ground could easily be rectified by the inquisitors themselves by the simple device of starting the process anew and carefully avoiding the irregularity of which complaint was made. If the inquisitors regarded the appeal as frivolous, they could dismiss it. It is clear that they regarded all appeals as a nuisance, an unwarrantable embarrassment.[472] The most successful appeals lodged against the tribunal were those brought by powerful nobles and influential towns.[473] For the ordinary person, devoid of influence, the right of appeal offered small hope of deliverance.
We have valuable evidence as to the comparative frequency of the various penances prescribed by the Inquisition. The practice of different inquisitors varied, as was inevitable, when so much was left to the arbitrary decision of the individual judge. But a general computation is possible. Imprisonment, confiscation of property, the wearing of crosses are the sentences that occur most frequently. No inquisitor in the Middle Ages was more vigorous and efficient than Bernard Gui. In a collection of sentences extending over a period of seventeen years, 1308-23, there are 307 of imprisonment, 143 of wearing crosses, 69 of exhumation, 9 of pilgrimages without the wearing of crosses, 40 of condemnation of fugitives as contumacious, 45 of relaxation to the secular arm; i.e. only 45 sentences of relaxation out of 613.[474] Another veritable ‘hammer of heretics,’ Bernard de Caux, has left voluminous records of his cases between the years 1246 and 1248. There are a large number of sentences of life imprisonment; not a single mention of relaxation.[475] This is very remarkable, as it seems highly unlikely that Bernard de Caux never came across an impenitent in the course of his duties, and the suggestion is at least plausible that the records are incomplete, being only entries of sentences of imprisonment.[476] But the clear indication of the evidence is that the number of cases of relaxation must have been comparatively small in the aggregate and very small in comparison with other sentences.
This may appear strange to those whose sole idea of the Inquisition is that of a court mainly concerned with the burning of heretics. Such a conception rests upon a misunderstanding of the object and function of the tribunal. It did not aim at making great holocausts of victims; it desired only to make a few examples. Except in Languedoc, where the heretics were in a majority and powerful, a few examples always sufficed. It sought not vengeance, which was a synonym for failure, but reconciliation, which meant success. More characteristic of the Inquisition than its sentences of relaxation, with their attendant horrible consequence, in reality more effective and perhaps more terrible, was its whole method of procedure, its use of torture, moral as well as physical, the agony of the rack and the nervous strain of prolonged and tortuous examination, its utilization of the humiliation of the cross-wearing, of the dull and hopeless misery of harsh and lengthy imprisonment, by which the spirit of the victim was broken and the purity of the faith preserved.