But if the sufferings of the victims of the Inquisition were not deemed worthy of mention in the records, they were none the less real and severe. Imprudent or heartless judges were guilty of grave abuses in the use of torture. Rome, which had authorized it, at last intervened, not, we regret to say, to prohibit it altogether, but at least to reform the abuses which had been called to her attention. One reform of Clement V ordered the Inquisition never to use torture without the Bishop's consent, if he could be reached within eight days.[1]
[1] Decretal, Multorum querela.
"Bernard Gui emphatically remonstrated against this, as seriously crippling the efficiency of the Inquisition, and proposed to substitute for it the meaningless phrase that torture should only be used with mature and careful deliberation, but his suggestion was not heeded, and the Clementine regulations remained the law of the Church."[1]
[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 424; Bernard Gui, Practica, ed. Douais, 4a pars, p. 188.
The code of the Inquisition was now practically complete, for succeeding Popes made no change of any importance. The data before us prove that the Church forgot her early traditions of toleration, and borrowed from the Roman jurisprudence, revived by the legists, laws and practices which remind one of the cruelty of ancient paganism. But once this criminal code was adopted, she endeavored to mitigate the cruelty with which it was enforced. If this preoccupation is not always visible—and it is not in her condemnation of obdurate heretics—we must at least give her the credit of insisting that torture "should never imperil life or injure limb:" Cogere citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum.
We will now ask how the theologians and canonists interpreted this legislation, and how the tribunals of the Inquisition enforced it.
CHAPTER VIII THEOLOGIANS, CANONISTS, AND CASUISTS OF THE INQUISITION
THE gravity of the crime of heresy was early recognized in the
Church. Gratian discussed this question in a special chapter of his
Decretum.[1] Innocent III, Guala, the Dominican, and the Emperor
Frederic II, as we have seen, looked upon heresy as treason against
Almighty God, i.e., the most dreadful of crimes.
[1] Causa xxii, q. vii, cap. 16.
The theologians, and even the civil authorities, did not concern themselves much with the evil effects of heresy upon the social order, but viewed it rather as an offense against God. Thus they made no distinction between those teachings which entailed injury on the family and on society, and those which merely denied certain revealed truths. Innocent III, in his constitution of September 23, 1207, legislated particularly against the Patarins, but he took care to point out that no heretic, no matter what the nature of his error might be, should be allowed to escape the full penalty of the law.[1] Frederic II spoke in similar terms in his Constitutions of 1220, 1224, and 1232. This was the current teaching throughout the Middle Ages.