Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition

by Arthur Stanley Turberville

It was the same with a number of other moral offences. Adultery did not in itself come under the cognizance of the tribunal; but if the adulterer maintained that his transgression was not a sin, it did. There is, for instance, the case of a licentious priest living in concubinage being punished by the Inquisition, because he asserted that he was purified of his ill-living by the simple act of putting on his vestments. In a word, an error in morals is triable only if it is also an error in belief. Otherwise, it is dealt with by the ordinary ecclesiastical courts. As it is arguable that a large number of crimes are indicative of doctrinal error, the Holy Office could put forward a rather sweeping claim to judicature over all manner of wrong-doing; but in practice there was probably not much trouble as a rule, the tribunal being kept sufficiently well occupied with offences in intellectu. Only when the implication of heresy was the significant feature of a crime was the Inquisition likely to be interested.

The list of offences coming within the sphere of inquisitorial judicature is completed with the mention of sorcery and witchcraft, practices essentially implying heresy.

II

The ingenious Ludovico à Paramo, ever anxious to discover warranty for all that the Inquisition was and did in the Bible, and particularly in the infancy of the human race, discovered the beginnings of the inquisitorial process in the Book of Genesis. Thus God was the first inquisitor; the call, ‘Adam, where art thou?’ was a citation to a heretic; the coats of skins made for Adam and Eve were special garb for heretics, the original of the special garb, the sanbenitos, with which the Holy Office clad its culprits; and the deprivation of Adam and Eve of paradise was equivalent to the confiscation of the heretic’s goods.[374]

We shall find a more practically helpful explanation of the procedure of the Inquisition if we content ourselves by remembering the origins of the tribunal in the Middle Ages. The fundamental fact, which shaped the whole character of its judicature, giving it its essential distinctiveness apart from other judicatures, was the function of the inquisitor. Originally he had been, not a judge, but a missionary; he never became a judge simply and solely, he never entirely ceased to be a missionary. His primary object was not so much to pronounce a judgment as to guard the faith; his ambition not to condemn a heretic, but to reconcile him to the Church. Every impenitent heretic was in a sense a witness to inquisitorial failure, every penitent was a triumph. The inquisitor, even when sitting in his tribunal, was not solely a judicial functionary; he was still a confessor, a spiritual guide. This fact is the keynote to the procedure of the Inquisition, because it meant that the procedure was not simply and wholly judicial. The Inquisition aimed at being something more than a court. Its ultimate object was not secured by the simple judicial process of deciding the guilt or innocence of the accused; it sought the spiritual end of bringing the accused to a right state of mind and soul.[375]

Consequently, the inquisitor is always actuated by the desire to secure confession. That does not by any means necessarily involve conviction. What is wanted is that everyone arraigned before the tribunal should publicly in the proceedings acknowledge his acceptance of the Catholic faith. If he is not guilty, not a heretic at all, the inquisitor has reason for personal rejoicing—there is one scandal less to the Church and the faith. Or if the accused is guilty, but acknowledges his guilt and is of his own accord, without compulsion, willing to recant, again so much the better. It was preferable that the lost sheep should voluntarily return, or allow itself quietly to be led back, into the fold than that it should have to be forcibly driven in. What the Church least desired was that the sheep should be lost altogether. Only if all means to secure reconciliation had failed, was it possible to acquiesce in such defeat. But the Church, in giving the most earnest solicitude to the errant individual, had to think also, and yet more earnestly, of the whole community, and of the sanctity and majesty of the truth which the obdurate heretic had spurned.

Consequently, a salutary example must be made, the penalty being duly solemn and impressive. But the mild methods first.

The second distinctive feature of the Inquisition was the methods of originating proceedings before it. Whereas, under Roman law, either the accusation by an individual or the denunciation by an official was necessary before proceedings could be initiated, an inquisitio could be instituted as the result of a diffamatio, the general report of the inhabitants of any community, a parish, a seigneurie, a town. It was indeed laid down that the diffamatio must be apud bonos et graves, people of standing and gravity of character. This stipulation was no doubt something of a safeguard: nevertheless it remains true that, as no individual had to take upon himself the onus of showing that he had good cause for preferring a charge, the simple fact of unpopularity with his neighbours might be quite sufficient for the institution of proceedings against a man who was for any reason, just or unjust, taboo among them. This method of justice belonged to Canon law; there was no trace of it in Roman law; but it has to be remembered that it was not instituted specifically against heretics, but rather against clerical wrong-doers in high places, who passed unchecked because the necessary number of accusers willing to take upon themselves the responsibility, and also possibly danger, of prosecution could not readily be found.[376]

Simple rumour by itself was not of great practical value. It had to be organized. Hence the ruling of Innocent Ill’s decretal, Licet Heli (1199), relating to clerical abuses, that superiors are to keep diligent watch over their subordinates, so as to bring their misdoings before judicial authority; hence, as regards heresy, the system of ‘synodal witnesses,’ whose specific duty it was to vocalize local public opinion or knowledge. The general vague diffamatio of the neighbourhood is by them so crystallized as to become of practical value in a court of law. But while this system of using the depositions of the synodal witnesses and the village clergy, accomplished much, further organization was needed. The additional device necessary was provided by the institution of the special papal delegates, who were inquisitors in two different senses—judicial officers, examining charges brought before them as members of a tribunal; but also procurators making the preliminary investigations prior to trial. They had two distinct functions, two distinct inquisitions to make. These are technically inquisitio generalis and inquisitio specialis.