But Josse Grypstuiver held his peace.
Now the bailiff made a sign to the company that they should keep silence, adding that the placards contained a clause which expressly forbade the petitioning of mercy for heretics. But he said that if Claes would abjure his heresy he should be executed by hanging instead of by burning. And the people murmured:
“What matters burning or hanging, they both mean death!”
And the women wept and the men murmured under their breath.
Claes said:
“I will abjure nothing. Do to my body whatsoever is pleasing to your mercy.”
Then spoke the Dean of Renaix, Titelman by name:
“It is intolerable that these vermin of heretics should raise up their heads in this way before their judges. After all, the burning of the body is but a passing pain, and torture is necessary for the saving of souls, and for the recantation of error, lest the people be given the dangerous spectacle of heretics dying in a state of final impenitence.”
At these words the women wept still more, and the men said: “In those cases where the crime is confessed punishment may be rightly inflicted, but torture is illegal!”
The tribunal decided that since indeed it was a fact that the ordinances did not order torture to be applied in such cases, there was no occasion to insist that Claes should suffer it. He was asked once more if he would not recant.