The manner in which the civil power was led to adopt the abuses of the Inquisition is well illustrated in a Milanese edict of 1393, where the magistrates, in proceedings against malefactors, are ordered to employ the inquisitorial process “summarie et de plano sine strepitu et figura juditii” and to supply all defects of fact “ex certa scientia” (Antiq. Ducum Mediolan. Decreta. Mediolani, 1654, p. 188). A comparison of this with the Milanese jurisprudence of sixty years earlier, quoted above (p. 401), will show how rapidly in the interval force had usurped the place of justice.
[528] Fortescue de Laudibus Legum Angliæ cap. xxii.—As late as 1823 there is a case in which a court in Martinique condemned a man to the galleys for life for “vehement suspicion” of being a sorcerer (Isambert. Anc. Loix Françaises, XI. 253).
[529] There is evidently something lacking here. It can doubtless be supplied from Moneta, p. 151. “Et e contrario Deuteronomii, 15, v. 9, dicit legislator: Dominaberis nationibus plurimis et nemo tibi dominabitur.”
[530] It was this bull which enabled inquisitors to administer torture. A date several years later has usually been assigned to it.
