He does not consider it worth while to add that the “Directorium” in which he found that rule points out, as we have seen, how it may be circumvented
It is much easier to set up a case for the other side, to show that the greater mercy in the matter of torture was practised by the secular courts. In these, for instance, a nobleman was immune from torture. Not so in the courts of the Inquisition, which proceeded, no doubt, upon the grounds that all are equals in the sight of God. No exception was made there in favour of any man. And in Aragon, where the torture was never applied in civil trials, it was none the less resorted to by the inquisitors.
When the accused shall have endured torture without confessing, the inquisitors may order his release by sentence, stating that after careful examination they are unable to find anything against him on the score of the crime of which he is accused—which, of course, is no acquittal, since he may at any time be re-arrested and put upon his trial once more.
In his commentaries Pegna tells us[110] that there are five degrees of torture. He does not mention them in detail, saying that they are sufficiently well known to all. These five degrees are given in Limborch.[111]
The first four are not so much torture as terror—or mental torture; it is only in the fifth degree that this becomes physical. The conception is of an almost fiendish subtlety; and yet its aim, we must believe, was merciful, since they accounted it more merciful to torture and terrify the mind than to bruise the flesh.
Eymeric’s directions are the basis of this, although Eymeric himself does not break up the procedure into degrees. These are:
(1) The threat of torture.
(2) Being conducted to the torture-chamber and shown the implements and their functions.
(3) Stripping and preparing for the ordeal.
(4) Laying and binding upon the engine.
(5) The actual torture.
The actual torture was of various kinds, any of which the inquisitor might employ as he considered most suitable and effective, but Pegna admonishes him not to resort to unusual ones. Marsilius, the scholiast informs us, mentions fourteen different varieties, and adds that he had imagined others, such as that of depriving a prisoner of sleep. In this he appears to have received the approval of other authors, but he does not receive Pegna’s. Even the scholiast is shocked at an ecclesiastic’s fertility of invention in this branch, and confesses that such researches are better suited to executioners than theologians.
It must be admitted that the records show none of that fiendish invention which is so widely believed to have been exercised. The cruel subtleties of the inquisitors were spiritual rather than physical, and we have just seen Pegna’s censure of an inquisitor who gave his attention to the devising of novel and ingenious torments.