Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition

by Arthur Stanley Turberville

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.