Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition

by Arthur Stanley Turberville

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]