Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition

by Arthur Stanley Turberville

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.