Costume of a condemned Person who had not confessed
(From Historia Inquisitionis, 1592)
It was a peculiar horror of the Inquisition that while almost anyone might be haled before it, even on an anonymous complaint, hardly anyone ever escaped certain penalties. If the fate of the wretch was heavy, who, being innocent of heresy would not confess his guilt and therefore was tortured until he confessed imaginary guilt, and was then burned to death, hardly less was the misery of the victim who repented or recanted and was freed from the death penalty. The penalty for recantation can hardly be more plainly stated than an actual order quoted by Llorente,[k] giving the punishment awarded by St. Dominic himself to a repentant heretic even before the actual organisation of the Inquisition.[a]
“To all faithful Christians to whom these presents may come. Friar Dominic, canon of Osma, the least of the preachers, greeting in Christ. By the authority of the lord abbot of Cister (Citeaux), legate of the apostolic see (whose power we exercise) we have reconciled the bearer of these presents, Poncio Roger, converted from the sect of the heretics by the grace of God; and we have enjoined him in virtue of the sworn promise which he has made to comply with our precepts that on three Sunday festivals he be led, stripped, by a priest, who shall scourge him from the gates of the city to those of the church.
“We further lay upon him, by way of penance, that he abstain from eating flesh meat, eggs, cheese, and other foods derived from animals, forever. Save only on the day of the resurrection, of Pentecost, and of the Lord’s nativity, on which days we command him to partake thereof as a mark of his detestation of his former error. He shall observe four Lents in the year, abstaining from fish, and shall forever fast and abstain from fish, oil, and wine three days in the week, save only when physical infirmities or the labours of his station require a dispensation. He shall wear religious garments both in shape and colour, with two small crosses sewn on each side of his breast. He shall hear mass every day when occasion serves, and on feast days he shall assist at vespers in the church. Every day he shall recite the Hours for the day and night, and shall repeat the prayer ‘Our Father’ seven times during the day, ten times in the night, and twenty times at midnight. He shall observe chastity, and shall present this letter one day, in the morning, every month, in the town of Cereri to his parish priest, whom we enjoin to watch over the conduct of Poncio, who shall faithfully observe all that is here expressed until the lord legate shall manifest his will. And should Poncio fail in his observance we command that he be held perjured, heretic, and excommunicated, and be separated from the company of the faithful.”[k]
THE HISTORY OF TORTURE
If the above document gives a foreshadowing of the rigours of the Inquisition towards those whose only error was a temporary wavering of opinion, what can be expected as the fate of those who persisted in their error, or denied it in spite of witnesses?—surely some distinguished form of punishment. Death was not enough, for thus the heretic instantly escaped the clutches of the disciplinarians. Torture was the resource. Before taking up this blackest subject on the page of human history, it is desirable to trace briefly its evolution, for torture was by no means the invention or monopoly of the Inquisition, though it has come to be thought so in the popular mind.
It is only justice to the church and to the zealots of that time to emphasise the fact that when the inquisitors sought a tool for special punishment, they found it ready at hand, made familiar and natural by the civil law of the day. Furthermore torture was a venerable institution.
The Greeks used torture for cross-examining slaves and at times nonresidents and even free citizens; the Romans under the republic practised it on slaves, and under the empire on citizens; the man accused of treason was always liable to it, as well as those whose testimony was open to the charge of confusion or inconsistency. Even in Cicero’s time there was a grim machinery for the purpose. Torture in England though not legal was practised, as it was on the continent, and in Scotland where it had the best civil sanction. Even in the United States there is one instance of torture, but that was during the Salem witchcraft insanity, though, like the inquisitorial processes, it was conducted by the church and civil government, and like so many of the inquisitorial punishments was due to an accusation of sorcery. The belief in witchcraft, now obsolete among even the common people, was once supported by a papal bull and by Sprenger’s[l] tremendous work, called The Hammer of Witches, which Henry C. Lea[n] calls “the most portentous monument of superstition which the world has produced.”
The civil powers had then used torture from time immemorial. The people were as used to it in that day as we of to-day are to certain torments of animals cooked alive or otherwise worried to death. The crime of treason was specifically devoted to torture. As heresy was in the days of temporal church power distinctly a crime of treason, the secular authorities were ordered to punish it. In fact the church took the stand that it was simply hunting for justice, and when it found the accused innocent, it technically “intervened” in his behalf and “stayed the arm of the law.”[191]