Antecedent imprisonment and torture, which played so important a part in the procedure of the Inquisition, were undoubtedly very barbarous methods of judicial prosecution. Antecedent imprisonment may be justified in certain cases; but the manner in which the Inquisitors conceived it was far from just. No one would dare defend to-day the punishment known as the carcer durus, whereby the Inquisitors tried to extort confessions from their prisoners. They rendered it, moreover, all the more odious by arbitrarily prolonging its horrors and its cruelty.
It is harder still to reconcile the use of torture with any idea of justice. If the Inquisitors had stopped at flogging, which according to St. Augustine was administered at home, in school, and even in the episcopal tribunals of the early ages, and is mentioned by the Council of Agde, in 506, and the Benedictine rule, no one would have been greatly scandalized. We might perhaps have considered this domestic and paternal custom a little severe, but perfectly consistent with the ideas men then had of goodness. But the rack, the strappado, and the stake were peculiarly inhuman inventions.[1] When the pagans used them against the Christians of the first centuries, all agreed in stigmatizing them as the extreme of barbarism, or as inventions of the devil. Their character did not change when the Inquisition began to use them against heretics. To our shame we are forced to admit that, notwithstanding Innocent IV's appeal for moderation,[2] the brutality of the ecclesiastical tribunals was often on a par with the tribunals of the pagan persecutors. Pope Nicholas I thus denounced the use of torture as a means of judical inquiry: "Such proceedings," he says, "are contrary to the law of God and of man, for a confession ought to be spontaneous, not forced; it ought to be free, and not the result of violence. A prisoner may endure all the torments you inflict upon him without confessing anything. Is not that a disgrace to the judge, and an evident proof of his inhumanity! If, on the contrary, a prisoner, under stress of torture, acknowledges himself guilty of a crime he never committed, is not the one who forced him to lie, guilty of a heinous crime?"[3]
[1] This was the view of St. Augustine, Ep. cxxxiii, 2.
[2] Bull Ad Extirpanda, in Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum, Appendix, p. 8.
[3] Responsa ad consulta Bulgarorum, cap. lxxxvi; Labbe, Concilia, vol. viii, col. 544.
The penalties which the tribunals of the Inquisition inflicted upon heretics are harder to judge. Let us observe, first of all, that the majority of the heretics abandoned to the secular arm merited the most severe punishment for their crimes. It would surely have been unjust for criminals against the common law to escape punishment under cover of their religious belief. Crimes committed in the name of religion are always crimes, and the man who has his property stolen or is assaulted cares little whether he has to deal with a religious fanatic or an ordinary criminal. In such instances, the State is not defending a particular dogmatic teaching, but her own most vital interests. Heretics, therefore, who were criminals against the civil law were justly punished. An anti-social sect like the Cathari, which shrouded itself in mystery and perverted the people so generally, by the very fact of its existence and propaganda called for the vengeance of society and the sword of the State.
"However much," says Lea, "we may deprecate the means used for its suppression, and commiserate those who suffered for conscience' sake, we cannot but admit that the cause of orthodoxy was in this case the cause of progress and civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed to exist on equal terms, its influence could not have failed to prove disastrous. Its asceticism with regard to commerce between the sexes, if strictly enforced, could only have led to the extinction of the race…. Its condemnation of the visible universe, and of matter in general as the work of Satan rendered sinful all striving after material improvement, and the conscientious belief in such a creed could only lead man back, in time, to his original condition of savagism. It was not only a revolt against the Church, but a renunciation of man's domination over nature."[1] Its growth had to be arrested at any price. Society, in proceeding against it without mercy, was only defending herself against the working of an essentially destructive force. It was a struggle for existence.
We must, therefore, deduct from the number of those who are commonly styled the victims of ecclesiastical intolerance, the majority of the heretics executed by the State; for nearly all that were imprisoned or sent to the stake, especially in northern Italy and southern France, were Cathari.[1]
[1] Jean Guiraud has proved that the Waldenses, Fraticelli, Hussites, Lollards, etc., attacked society, which acted in self-defense when she put them to death. La répression de l'hérésie au moyen âge, in the Questions d'histoire et d'archéologie Chrétienne, p. 24 and seq.
This important observation has so impressed certain historians, that they have been led to think the Inquisition dealt only with criminals of this sort. "History," says Rodrigo, "has preserved the record of the outrages committed by the heretics of Bulgaria, the Gnostics, and the Manicheans; the death sentence was inflicted only upon criminals who confessed their murders, robberies, and acts of violence. The Albigenses were treated with kindness. The Catholic Church deplores all acts of vengeance, however strong the provocation given by these factious mobs."[1]