15. The Inquisition, both Spanish and Italian, is so pure a product of papal teaching on faith and morals, that there never was an Inquisitor who did not exercise his office by virtue of Papal authority and in the Pope's name, or whose power the Pope could not at any moment [pg 642] he chose have wholly or partially withdrawn. All essential laws and regulations of the Inquisition—the accused being deprived of any advocate to defend him, the admission of infamous and perjured witnesses, the frequent application of the torture, the obliging the civil magistrates to carry out capital sentences of the Inquisitors, the prohibition to spare the life of any lapsed heretic even on his conversion—all this emanates from the direct and personal legislation of the Popes, and has always been confirmed by their successors.
16. Gregory ix., Innocent iv., and Alexander iv. teach that it is in accordance with the principles of morality and the Gospel to condemn a heretic seized by the Inquisition, who has recanted, to lifelong imprisonment.[122]
17. Alexander iv. teaches that it is lawful for the Pope to have the goods of those condemned for heresy sold by his inquisitors, and to take the proceeds for himself.[123]
18. Innocent iii., Alexander iv., and Boniface viii. teach that it is just and consonant with the Gospel to deprive the sons and daughters of heretics, though [pg 643] themselves Catholics, of their hereditary property. But if the sons themselves accuse their parents and get them burnt, then their inherited property, according to papal doctrine, is exempt from confiscation.
19. According to papal teaching torture is an institution thoroughly in harmony with morality and the spirit of the Gospel, and should be employed particularly against those accused of heresy. Thus Innocent Iv. and many later Popes have directed, and Paul iv. ordered the rack to be very extensively used.
20. It is especially just and Christian, according to the teaching and regulation of Pius v. in 1569, to torture persons who have confessed or been convicted of heresy, in order to make them give up their accomplices.[124]
21. This same canonized Pope has ordered in a Bull that even the sons of a man who has once offended an inquisitor should be punished with infamy and confiscation of their goods.
22. There is a whole string of papal decrees declaring it a duty of conscience for every Christian to denounce even his nearest relations to the Inquisition, and give them up to prison, torture and death, if he perceives [pg 644] any trace of heretical opinions or of anything forbidden by the Church in them.[125]
23. The same Popes have declared it to be just and evangelical, and have ordered, that a relapsed heretic, even if he recants, should be put to death.[126] They have further declared it to be moral and Christian-like that in trials for heresy witnesses should be admitted to accuse or give evidence against the accused, whose testimony would not be admitted in any other court on account of their former crimes or their infamy.[127]
24. According to papal teaching it is just and Christian forcibly to deprive heretics of their children, in order to bring them up Catholics. Thus Innocent xii., by a sentence of the Holy Office at Rome, pronounced null and void the edict of Duke Victor Amadeus of Savoy in 1694 ordering their children, who had been forcibly taken from them, to be restored to the unfortunate and cruelly persecuted Waldenses under his government.[128]