The Inquisition / A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church

by E. Vacandard

CHAPTER IX THE INQUISITION IN OPERATION

We do not intend to relate every detail of the Inquisition's action.
A brief outline, a sort of bird's-eye view, will suffice.

Its field, although very extensive, did not comprise the whole of Christendom, nor even all the Latin countries. The Scandinavian kingdoms escaped it almost entirely; England experienced it only once in the case of the Templars; Castile and Portugal knew nothing of it before the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was almost unknown in France—at least as an established institution—except in the South, in what was called the county of Toulouse, and later on in Languedoc.

The Inquisition was in full operation in Aragon. The Cathari, it seems, were wont to travel frequently from Languedoc to Lombardy, so that upper Italy had from an early period its contingent of Inquisitors. Frederic II had it established in the two Sicilies and in many cities of Italy and Germany. Honorius IV (1285-1287) introduced it into Sardinia.[1] Its activity in Flanders and Bohemia in the fifteenth century was very considerable. These were the chief centers of its operations.

[1] Potthast, no. 22307; Registres d'Honorius IV, published by Maurice Prou, 1888, no. 163.

Some of the Inquisitors had an exalted idea of their office. We recall the ideal portrait of the perfect Inquisitor drawn by Bernard Gui and Eymeric. But, by an inevitable law of history, the reality never comes up to the ideal.

We know the names of many Inquisitors, monks and bishops.[1] There are some whose memory is beyond reproach; in fact the Church honors them as saints, because they died for the faith.[2]

[1] Mgr. Douais, Documents, vol. 1, pp. cxxix-ccix.

[2] V.g., Peter of Verona, assassinated by heretics in 1252.

But others fulfilled the duties of their office in a spirit of hatred and impatience, contrary both to natural justice and to Christian charity. Who can help denouncing, for instance, the outrageous conduct of Conrad of Marburg. Contemporary writers tell us that when heretics appeared before his tribunal, he granted them no delay, but at once required them to answer yes or no to the accusations against them. If they confessed their guilt, they were granted their lives, and thrown into prison; if they refused to confess, they were at once condemned and sent to the stake. Such summary justice strongly resembles injustice.

But Robert the Dominican, known as Robert the Bougre, for he was a converted Patarin, surpassed even Conrad in cruelty. Among the exploits of this Inquisitor, special mention must be made of the executions at Montwimer in Champagne. The Bishop, Moranis, had allowed a large community of heretics to grow up about him. Robert determined to punish the town severely. In one week he managed to try all his prisoners. On May 29, 1239, about one hundred and eighty of them, with their bishop, were sent to the stake. Such summary proceedings caused complaints to be sent to Rome against this cruel Inquisitor. He was accused of confounding in his blind fanaticism the innocent with the guilty, and of working upon simple souls so as to increase the number of his victims. An investigation proved that these complaints were well founded. In fact, it revealed such outrages that Robert the Bougre was at first suspended from his office, and finally condemned to perpetual imprisonment.[1]

[1] Aubri des Trois Fontaines, ad ann. 1239, Mon. Germ., SS., vol. xxiii, 944, 945.

Other acts of the Inquisition were no less odious. In 1280 the Consuls of Carcassonne complained to the Pope, the King of France, and the episcopal vicars of the diocese of the cruelty and injustice of Jean Galand in the use of torture. He had inscribed on the walls of the Inquisition these words: dominculas ad torquendum et cruciandum homines diversis generibus tormentorum. Some prisoners had been tortured on the rack, and most of them were so cruelly treated that they lost the use of their arms and legs, ad became altogether helpless. Some even died in great agony of their torments. The complaint continues in this tone, and mentions five or six times the great cruelty of the tortures inflicted.

Philip the Fair, who was noble-hearted occasionally, addressed a letter May 13, 1291, to the seneschal of Carcassonne in which he denounced the Inquisitors for their cruel torturing of innocent men, whereby the living and the dead were fraudulently convicted; and among other abuses he mentions particularly "tortures newly invented." Another letter of his (1301) addressed to Foulques de Saint-Georges, contained a similar denunciation.

In a bull intended for Cardinals Taillefer de la Chappelle and Bérenger de Frédol, March 13, 1306, Clement V mentions the complaints of the citizens of Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes, regarding the cruelty practiced in the prisons of the Inquisition. Several of these unfortunates "were so weakened by the rigors of their imprisonment, the lack of food, and the severity of their tortures (sevitia tormentorum), that they died."

The facts in Savonarola's case are very hard to determine. The official account of his interrogatory declares that he was subjected to three and a half tratti di fune. This was a form of torture known as the strappado. The Signoria, in answer to the reproaches of Alexander VI at their tardiness, declared that they had to deal with a man of great endurance; that they had assiduously tortured him for many days with slender results.[1] Burchard, the papal prothonotary, states that he was put to the torture seven times. It made very little difference whether these tortures were inflicted per modum continuationis or per modum iterationis, as the casuist of the Inquisition put it. At any rate, it was a crying abuse.[2]

[1] Villari, La storia di Girolamo Savonarola, Firenze, 1887, vol. ii, p. 197.

[2] H. Lucas, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, a Biographical Study. London, Sands, 1905.

We may learn something of the brutality of the Inquisitors from the remorse felt by one of them. He had inflicted the torture of the burning coals upon a sorceress. The unfortunate woman died soon afterwards in prison as a result of her torments. The Inquisitor, knowing he had caused her death, wrote John XXII for dispensation from the irregularity he had thereby incurred.

But the greatest excesses of the Inquisition were due to the political schemes of sovereigns. Such instances were by no means rare. Hardly had the Inquisition been established, when Frederic II tried to use it for political purposes. He was anxious to put the prosecution for heresy in the hands of his royal officers, rather than in the hands of the bishops and the monks. When, therefore, in 1233, he boasted in a letter to Gregory IX that he had put to death a great number of heretics in his kingdom, the Pope answered that he was not at all deceived by this pretended zeal. He knew full well that the Emperor wished simply to get rid of his personal enemies, and that he had put to death many who were not heretics at all.

The personal interests of Philip the Fair were chiefly responsible for the trial and condemnation of the Templars. Clement V himself and the ecclesiastical judges were both unfortunately guilty of truckling in the whole affair. But their unjust condemnation was due chiefly to the king's desire to confiscate their great possessions.[1]

[1] The tribunals of the Inquisition were perhaps never more cruel than in the case of the Templars. At Paris, according to the testimony of Ponsard de Gisiac, thirty-six Templars perished under torture. At Sens, Jacques de Saciac said that twenty-five had died of torment and suffering. (Lea, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 262.) The Grand Master, Jacques Molay, owed his life to the vigor of his constitution. Confessions extorted by such means were altogether valueless. Despite all his efforts, Philip the Fair never succeeded in obtaining a formal condemnation of the Order.

Joan of Arc was also a victim demanded by the political interests of the day. If the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, had not been such a bitter English partisan, it is very probable that the tribunal over which he presided would not have brought in the verdict of guilty, which sent her to the stake;[1] she would never have been considered a heretic at all, much less a relapsed one.

[1] The greatest crime of the trial was the substitution, in the documents, of a different form of abjuration from the one Joan read near the church of Saint-Ouen.

It would be easy to cite many instances of the same kind, especially in Spain. If there was any place in the world where the State interfered unjustly in the trials of the Inquisition, it was in the kingdom of Ferdinand and Isabella, the kingdom of Philip II.[1]

[1] The complaints of various Popes prove this. Cf. Héféle, Le Carinal Ximénes, Paris, 1857, pp. 265-274. Langlois, L'Inquisition d'après les travaux recents, Paris, 1902, pp. 89-141; Bernaldez, Historia de los Reyes: Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla, Fernandez y Isabel, Madrid, 1878; Rodrigo, Historia verdadera de la Inquisicion, 3 vol., Madrid, 1876-1877.

From all that has been said, we must not infer that the tribunals of the Inquisition were always guilty of cruelty and injustice; we ought simply to conclude that too frequently they were. Even one case of brutality and injustice deserves perpetual odium.

. . . . . . . .

The severest penalties the Inquisition could inflict (apart from the minor penalties of pilgrimages, weariltg the crosses, etc.), were imprisonment, abandonment to the secular arm, and confiscation of property.

"Imprisonment, according to the theory of the Inquisition, was not a punishment, but a means by which the penitent could obtain, on the bread of tribulation and the 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."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 484.

Heretics who confessed their errors during the time of grace were imprisoned only for a short time; those who confessed under torture or under threat of death were imprisoned for life; this was the usual punishment for the relapsed during most of the thirteenth century. It was the only penalty that Bernard of Caux (1244-1248) inflicted upon them.

"There were two kinds of imprisonment," writes Lea, "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 the laity of both sexes, permitted to prisoners."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 486, 487.

As far back as 1282, Jean Galand had forbidden the jailer of the prison of Carcassonne to eat or take recreation with the prisoners, or to allow them to take recreation, or to keep servants.

Husband and wife, however, were allowed access to each other if either or both were imprisoned; and late in the fourteenth century Eymeric declared that zealous Catholics might be admitted to visit prisoners, but not women and simple folk who might be perverted, for converted prisoners, he added, were very liable to relapse, and to infect others, and usually died at the stake.[1]

[1] Eymeric, Directorium, p. 507.

"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 the 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, were unprovided 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 Lespinasse, in 1216, 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."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i. p. 487.

In these wretched prisons the diet was most meager. But "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."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 491.

The number of prisoners, even with a life sentence, was rather considerable. The collections of sentences that we possess give us precise information on this point.

We have, for instance, the register of Bernard of Caux, the Inquisitor of Toulouse for the years 1244-1246. Out of fifty-two of his sentences, twenty-seven heretics were sentenced to life imprisonment. We must not forget also that several of them contain condemnations of many individuals; the second, for instance, condemned thirty-three persons, twelve of whom were to be imprisoned for life; the fourth condemned eighteen persons to life imprisonment. On the other hand, the register does not record one case of abandonment to the secular arm, even for relapse into heresy.[1]

[1] Douais, Documents, vol. 1, pp. cclx-cclxi; vol. ii. pp. i-89.

Bernard must be considered a severe Inquisitor. The register of the notary of Carcassonne, published by Mgr. Douais, contains for the years 1249-1255 two hundred and seventy-eight articles. But imprisonment very rarely figured among the penances inflicted. The usual penalty was enforced service in the Holy Land, passagium, transitus ultramarinus.[1]

[1] Douais, Documents, vol. 1, pp. cclxvii-cclxxxiv; vol. ii. pp. 115, 243.

Bernard Gui, Inquisitor at Toulouse for seventeen years (1308-1325), was called upon to condemn nine hundred and thirty heretics, of whom two were guilty of false witness, eighty-nine were dead, and forty were fugitives. In the eighteen Sermones or Autos-da-fé in which he rendered the sentences we possess today, he condemned three hundred and seven to prison, i.e., about one-third of all the heretics brought before his tribunal.[1]

[1] Douais, Documents, vol. 1, pp. ccv, cf. Appendix B. Note that the register records 930 condemnations. Cf. Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 550.

The tribunal of the Inquisition of Pamiers in the Sermones of 1318-1324, held ninety-eight heresy trials. The records declare that two were acquitted; and say nothing of the penalty inflicted upon twenty-one others who were tried. The most common penalty was life imprisonment. In the Sermo of March 8, thirteen heretics were sentenced to prison, eight of whom were set at liberty on July 4, 1322; these latter were condemned to wear single or double crosses. Six out of ten, tried on August 2, 1321, were sentenced for life to the German prison. On June 19, 1323, six out of ten tried were condemned to prison (murus strictus); on August 12, 1324, ten out of eleven tried were condemned for life to the strict prison: ad strictum muri Carcassonne inquisitionis carcerem in vinculis ferreis ac in pane et aqua. We gather from these statistics that the Inquisition of Pamiers inflicted the penalty of life imprisonment as often as, if not more than, the Inquisition of Toulouse.

We have seen above that the penalty of imprisonment was sometimes mitigated and even commuted. Life imprisonment was sometimes commuted into temporary imprisonment, and both into pilgrimages or wearing the cross. Twenty, imprisoned by the Inquisition of Pamiers, were set at liberty on condition that they wore the cross. This clemency was not peculiar to the Inquisition of Pamiers. In 1328, by a single sentence, twenty-three prisoners of Carcassonne were set at liberty, and other slight penances substituted.

In Bernard Gui's register of sentences we read of one hundred and nineteen cases of release from prison with the obligation to wear the cross, and, of this number, fifty-one were subsequently released from even the minor penalty. Prisoners were sometimes set at liberty on account of sickness, e.g., women with child, or to provide for their families.

"In 1246 we find Bernard dc Caux, 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."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, 486.

Assuredly this penalty of imprisonment was terrible, but while we may denounce some Inquisitors for having made its suffering more intense out of malice or indifference, we must also admit that others sometimes mitigated its severity.

. . . . . . . .

The condemnation of obstinate heretics, and later on, of the relapsed, permitted no exercise of clemency. How many heretics were abandoned to the secular arm, and thus sent to the stake, is impossible to determine. However, we have some interesting statistics of the more important tribunals on this point. The portion of the register of Bernard de Caux which relates to impenitent heretics has been lost, but we have the sentences of the Inquisition of Pamiers (1318-1324), and of Toulouse (1308-1323). In nine Sermones or Autos-da-fé[1] of the tribunal of Pamiers, condemning sixty-four persons, only five heretics were abandoned to the secular arm.

[1] The Sermo generalis after which the sentences were solemnly pronounced by the Inquisitors was called in Spain auto-da-fé.

Bernard Gui presided over eighteen autos-da-fé, and condemned nine hundred and thirty heretics; and yet he abandoned only forty-two to the secular arm.[1] These Inquisitors were far more lenient than Robert the Bougre. Taking all in all, the Inquisition in its operation denoted a real progress in the treatment of criminals; for it not only put an end to the summary vengeance of the mob, but it diminished considerably the number of those sentenced to death.[2]

[1] Cf. the sentences of Bernard Gui in Douais, Documents, vol. i, p. ccv, and Appendix B.

[2] Even while the Inquisition was in full operation, the heretics who managed to escape the ecclesiastical tribunals had no reason to congratulate themselves. For we read that Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse in 1248, caused eighty heretics to be burned at Berlaiges, near Agen, after they had confessed in his presence, without giving them the opportunity of recanting.

We notice at Pamiers that only one out of thirteen, while at Toulouse but one in twenty-two, was sentenced to death. Although terrible enough, these figures are far different from the exaggerated statistics imagined by the fertile brains of ignorant controversialists.[1]

[1] Of course we do not here refer to honest historians like Langlois who estimates that one heretic out of every ten was abandoned to the secular arm (op. cit., p. 106). Dom Brial erroneously states in his preface to vol. xix of the Recueil des Historiens des Gautes (p. xxiii) that Bernard Gui burned 637 heretics. This figure represented the number of heretics then known to be condemned, but only 40 of these were abandoned to the secular arm. The exact number is 42 out of 930. Cf. Douais, Documents, vol. i, p. ccv, and Appendix B.

It is true that many writers are haunted by the cruelty of the Spanish or German tribunals which sent to the stake a great number of victims, i.e., conversos and witches.

From the very beginning, the Spanish Inquisition acted with the utmost severity. "Twelve hundred conversos, penitents, obdurate and relapsed heretics were present at the auto-da-fé in Toledo, March, 1487; and, according to the most conservative estimate, Torquemada sent to the stake about two thousand heretics"[1] in twelve years.

[1] Langlois, L'Inquisition d'après des tableaux récents, 1902, pp. 105, 106. This number, without being certain, is asserted by contemporaries, Pulga and Marinco Siculo. Cf. Héféle, Le Cardinal Ximénes, Paris, 1856, pp. 290, 291. Another contemporary, Bernaldes, speaks of over 700 burned from 1481-1488; cf. Gams, Kirchengeschichte von Spanien, vol. iii, 2, p. 69.

"During this same period," says a contemporary historian, "fifteen thousand heretics did penance, and were reconciled to the Church."[1] That makes a total of seventeen thousand trials. We can thus understand how Torquemada, although grossly calumniated, came to be identified with this period, during which so many thousands of conversos appeared before the Spanish tribunals.

[1] Pulgar, in Héféle, op. cit., p. 291.

The zeal of the Inquisitors seemed to abate after a time.[1] Perhaps they thought it better to keep the Jews and the Mussulmans in the Church by kindness. But kindness failed just as force had failed. After one hundred years, the number of obdurate conversos was as great as ever. Several ardent advocates of force advised the authorities to send them all to the stake. But the State determined to drive the Moriscos from Spain, as it had banished the Jews in 1492. Accordingly in September, 1609, a law was passed decreeing the banishment, under penalty of death, of all Moriscos, men, women, and children. Five hundred thousand persons, about one sixteenth of the postulation were thus banished from Spain, and forced to seek refuge on the coasts of Barbary. "Behold," writes Brother Bléda, "the most glorious event in Spain since the times of the Apostles; religious unity is now secured; an era of prosperity is certainly about to dawn."[2] This era of prosperity so proudly announced by the Dominican zealot never came. This extreme measure, which pleased him so greatly, in reality weakened Spain, by depriving her of hundreds of thousands of her subjects.

[1] "The Inquisition of Valencia condemned one hundred and twelve conversos in 1538 (of whom fourteen were sent to the stake); at the auto-da-fé of Seville, September 24, 1559, three were burned, and eight were reconciled and sentenced to life imprisonment; on June 6, 1585, the Inquisitors of Saragossa in their account to Philip II speak of having reconciled sixty-three, and of having sent five to the stake." Langlois, op. cit., p. 106.

[2] Cf. Bléda, Defensio fidei in causa neophytorum sive Moriscorum regni Valentini totiusque Hispaniæ,, Valencia, 1610.

The witchcraft fever which spread over Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries stimulated to an extraordinary degree the zeal of the Inquisitors. The bull of Innocent VIII, Summis Desiderantes, December 5, 1484, made matters worse. The Pope admitted that men and women could have immoral relations with demon, and that sorcerers by their magical incantations could injure the harvests, the vineyards, the orchards and the fields.[1]

[1] Bullarium, vol. v, p. 296 and seq., and Pegna's Bullarium in Eymeric, Directorium Inquisit., p. 83.

He also complained of the folly of those ecclesiastics and laymen who opposed the Inquisition in its prosecution of heretical sorcerers, and concluded by conferring additional powers upon the Dominican Inquisitors, Institoris and Sprenger, the author of the famous Malleus Maleficarum.

Innocent VIII assuredly had no intention of committing the Church to a belief in the phenomena he mentioned in his bull, but his personal opinion did leave an influence upon the canonists and Inquisitors of his day; this is clear from the trials for witchcraft held during this period.[1] It is impossible to estimate the number of sorcerers condemned. Louis of Paramo triumphantly declared that in a century and a half the Holy Office sent to the stake over thirty thousand.[2] Of course we must take such round numbers with a grain of salt, as they always are greatly exaggerated. But the fact remains that the condemnations for sorcery were so numerous as to stagger belief. The Papacy itself recognized the injustice of its agents. For in 1637 instructions were issued stigmatizing the conduct of the Inquisitors on account of their arbitrary and unjust prosecution of sorcerers; they were accused of extorting from them by cruel tortures confessions that were valueless, and of abandoning them to the secular arm without sufficient cause.[1]

[1] Pignatelli, Consultationes novissimæ canonicæ, Venetiis, 2 in fol., vol. i, p. 505, Consultatio 123.

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Confiscation, though not so severe a penalty as the stake, bore very heavily upon the victims of the Inquisition. The Roman laws classed the crime of heresy with treason, and visited it with a principal penalty, death, and a secondary penalty, confiscation. They decreed that all heretics, without exception, forfeited their property the very day they wavered in the faith. Actual confiscation of goods did not take place in the case of those penitents who had deserved no severer punishment than temporary imrisonment. Bernard Gui answered those who objected to this ruling, by showing that, as a matter of fact, there was no real pecuniary loss involved. For, he argued: "Secondary penances are inflicted only upon those heretics who denounce their accomplices. But, by this denunciation, they ensure this discovery and arrest of the guilty ones, who, without their aid, would have escaped punishment; the goods of these heretics are at once confiscated, which is certainly a positive gain."[1] Actual confiscation took place in the case of all obdurate and relapsed heretics abandoned to the secular arm, with all penitents condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and with all suspects who had managed to escape the Inquisition, either by flight or by death. The heretic who died peacefully in bed before the Inquisition could lay hands upon him was considered contumacious, and treated as such; his remains were exhumed, and his property confiscated. This last fact accounts for the incredible frequency of prosecutions against the dead. Of the six hundred and thirty-six cases tried by Bernard Gui, eighty-eight were posthumous. As a general rule, the confiscation of the heretic's property, which so frequently resulted from the trials of the Inquisition, had a great deal to do with the interest they aroused. We do not say that the Holy Office systematically increased the number of its condemnations merely to increase its pecuniary profits. But abuses of this kind were inevitable. We know they existed, because the Popes denounced them strongly, although they were too rare to deserve more than a passing mention. But would the ecclesiastical and lay princes who, in varying proportions, shared with the Holy Office in these confiscations, and who in some countries appropriated them all, have accorded to the Inquisition that continual good-will and help which was the condition of its prosperity, without what Lea calls "the stimulant of pillage?" We may very well doubt it…. That is why, in point of fact, their zeal for the faith languished whenever pecuniary gain was not forthcoming. "In our days," writes the Inquisitor Eymeric rather gloomily, "there are no more rich heretics, so that princes, not seeing much money in prospect, will not put themselves to any expense; it is a pity that so salutary an institution as ours should be so uncertain of its future."[2]

[1] Practica,m 3 pars, p. 185.

[2] Langlois, op. cit., pp. 75-78.

Most historians have said little or nothing about the money side of the Inquisition. Lea was the first to give it the attention it deserved. He writes "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."[1] There was indeed very little security in business, for the contracts of a hidden heretic were essentially null and void, and could be rescinded as soon as his guilt was discovered, either during his lifetime or after his death. In view of such a penal code, we can understand why Lea should write: "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."[2]

[1] Lea, op. cit., p. 522.

[2] Lea, op. cit., p. 480.

. . . . . . . .

This summary of the acts of the Inquisition is at best but a brief and very imperfect outline. But a more complete study would not afford us any deeper insight into its operation.

Human passions are responsible for the many abuses of the Inquisition. The civil power in heresy trials was far from being partial to the accused. On the contrary, it would seem that the more pressure the State brought to bear upon the ecclesiastical tribunals, the more arbitrary their procedure became.

We do not deny that the zeal of the Inquisitors was at times excessive, especially in the use of torture. But some of their cruelty may be explained by their sincere desire for the salvation of the heretic. They regarded the confession of the suspects as the beginning of their conversion. They therefore believed any means used for that purpose justified. They thought that an Inquisitor had done something praiseworthy, when, even at the cost of cruel torments, he freed a heretic from his heresy. He was sorry indeed to be obliged to use force; but that was not altogether his fault, but the fault of the laws which he had to enforce.

Most men regard the auto-da-fé as the worst horror of the Inquisition. It is hardly ever pictured without burning flames and ferocious looking executioners. But an auto-da-fé did not necessarily call for either stake or executioner. It was simply a solemn "Sermon," which the heretics about to be condemned had to attend.[1] The death penalty was not always inflicted at these solemnities, which were intended to impress the imagination of the people. Seven out of eighteen autos-da-fé presided over by the famous Inquisitor, Bernard Gui, decreed no severer penalty than imprisonment.

[1] On these "Sermons," cf. Tanon, op. cit., pp. 425-431.

We have seen, moreover, that in many places, even in Spain, at a certain period, the number of heretics condemned to death was rather small. Even Lea, whom no one can accuse of any great partiality for the Church is forced to state: "The stake consumed comparatively few victims."[1]

[1] Op. cit., vol. i, p. 480.

In fact, imprisonment and confiscation were as a rule the severest penalties inflicted.