In Arras a charter of 1335, confirmed by Charles V. in 1369, protected the burghers from confiscation when condemned for crime by any competent tribunal.—Duverger, La Vauderie dans les États de Philippe le Bon, Arras, 1885, p. 60.
[486] C. 6, 8, 9, 14, Sexto XII. 26.—Bernardi Comensis Lucerna Inquis. s. v. Bona hœreticorum.—Eymeric. Direct. Inquis. pp. 570-2.—Zanchini Tract. de Hæret. c. xxiv.—J.F. Ponzinib. de Lamiis c. 76.
Severe as was the contemporary English law against felony, it had at least this concession to justice, that a felon had to be convicted in his lifetime; his death before conviction thus prevented confiscation (Bracton, Lib. III. Tract. ii. cap. 13, No. 17).
[487] Lami, Antichità Toscane, pp. 497, 536-7.—It is true that when, in 1335, Henri de Chamay, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, sent to the papal court the depositions against the memory of eighteen persons accused of heretical acts committed between 1284 and 1290, and asked for instructions, the decision was that no reliance was to be placed on the testimony of witnesses who mostly contradicted themselves, and who only swore to what they had heard long before. Three previous investigations against the same persons had been held without reaching a conclusion, and the papal advisers assumed that there had been good reasons for dropping the matter.—Vaissette, Éd. Privat, IX. 401.
How the system worked is seen in the complaint made in 1247 to St. Louis, by Guillem Pierre de Vintrou, that the royal seneschal of Carcassonne had seized his property derived through his mother, because his grandfather, seventeen years after death, had been accused of heresy. St. Louis thereupon ordered an examination and report.—Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VIII. 1196.
[488] Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VIII. 1641.
[489] Zanchini Tract. de Hæret. c. xxvii.—Isambert, Anc. Loix Françaises, I. 257.
Yet there is a case in 1269 in which a creditor of two condemned heretics applies to Alphonse of Poitiers to be paid out of the confiscations, and Alphonse orders an inquiry into the circumstances.—Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VIII. 1682.
[490] Lami, Antichità Toscane, p. 593.—Archivio di Firenze, Riformagioni, Classe v. No. 110.
[491] MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 14930, fol. 228.—Guid. Fulcod. Quæst. III.—Archivio di Napoli, Regist. 6, Lett. B, fol. 35; Reg. 10, Lett. B, fol. 6, 7, 96; Reg. 11, Lett. C, fol. 40; Reg. 13, Lett. A, fol. 212; Reg. 51, Lett. A, fol. 9; Reg. 71, Lett. M, fol. 382, 385, 440; Reg. 98, Lett. B, fol. 13; Reg. 113, Lett. A, fol. 194; Reg. 253, Lett. A, fol. 63; MSS. Chioccorello, T. VIII.