[1] The tribunals of the Inquisition were perhaps never more cruel than in the case of the Templars. At Paris, according to the testimony of Ponsard de Gisiac, thirty-six Templars perished under torture. At Sens, Jacques de Saciac said that twenty-five had died of torment and suffering. (Lea, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 262.) The Grand Master, Jacques Molay, owed his life to the vigor of his constitution. Confessions extorted by such means were altogether valueless. Despite all his efforts, Philip the Fair never succeeded in obtaining a formal condemnation of the Order.
Joan of Arc was also a victim demanded by the political interests of the day. If the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, had not been such a bitter English partisan, it is very probable that the tribunal over which he presided would not have brought in the verdict of guilty, which sent her to the stake;[1] she would never have been considered a heretic at all, much less a relapsed one.
[1] The greatest crime of the trial was the substitution, in the documents, of a different form of abjuration from the one Joan read near the church of Saint-Ouen.
It would be easy to cite many instances of the same kind, especially in Spain. If there was any place in the world where the State interfered unjustly in the trials of the Inquisition, it was in the kingdom of Ferdinand and Isabella, the kingdom of Philip II.[1]
[1] The complaints of various Popes prove this. Cf. Héféle, Le Carinal Ximénes, Paris, 1857, pp. 265-274. Langlois, L'Inquisition d'après les travaux recents, Paris, 1902, pp. 89-141; Bernaldez, Historia de los Reyes: Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla, Fernandez y Isabel, Madrid, 1878; Rodrigo, Historia verdadera de la Inquisicion, 3 vol., Madrid, 1876-1877.
From all that has been said, we must not infer that the tribunals of the Inquisition were always guilty of cruelty and injustice; we ought simply to conclude that too frequently they were. Even one case of brutality and injustice deserves perpetual odium.
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The severest penalties the Inquisition could inflict (apart from the minor penalties of pilgrimages, weariltg the crosses, etc.), were imprisonment, abandonment to the secular arm, and confiscation of property.
"Imprisonment, according to the theory of the Inquisition, was not a punishment, but a means by which the penitent could obtain, on the bread of tribulation and the water of affliction, pardon from God for his sins, while at the same time he was closely supervised to see that he persevered in the right path, and was segregated from the rest of the flock, thus removing all danger of infection."[1]
[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 484.