THE FOUNDING, CONSTITUTION, AND PRACTICE OF THE INQUISITION
It is extremely doubtful whether Dominic actually founded the
Inquisition, for as an organization it did not exist till ten years
after his death. He was, however, an Inquisitor in all but the
possession of full judicial powers. There was, in fact, no formal
founding of the Holy Office; it simply grew by degrees out of the social
and religious conditions of the early thirteenth century. Nor was it
exclusively confided to the Dominican Order, but, as that was the most
intolerant and the most zealous in heresy-hunting, its members were,
from the outset, more closely associated with that occupation.[22]
Commissions were frequently entrusted to the Franciscans also, but most
of the early Inquisitors were Dominican monks. The jealousies and
quarrels between the two Orders which their holy labours occasioned were
so frequent as to be a source of scandals in the Church, which
threatened to last for ever.
Under ecclesiastical tuition the people of Europe had, during the
twelfth century, developed, in what passed for religion, a spirit of
rancour that went beyond even the cruel legislation of the time. Heresy
had previously been detected mainly by means of ordeals, but these were
found to be somewhat unreliable in the matter of results. The Bishops,
under the authority of the State, had usually controlled the
proceedings, but they had now grown sluggish and lax, and their
machinery had become rusty. Pope Alexander III, in 1179, “invited
sovereigns to employ force of arms and protect Christian people from the
violence [!] of the Cathari,” and “offered indulgences to those who
should accomplish this work of piety.”[23] The decrees of Lucius III in
1184 might, had they been put into effective operation, have resulted in
an episcopal instead of a Papal Inquisition. Not only were rulers bound
by oath to assist the Church in rooting out heresy, but all prelates
were compelled to visit towns and villages, to call the people together,
and take evidence as to the existence of suspected heretics. The Bishops
were, indeed, by virtue of their office, Inquisitors also,[24] but of so
lukewarm a description that a sterner organization was deemed necessary.
Thus the ancient civil and canon law furnished the basis of the
Inquisitorial procedure, and the first detectors of heresy were the
laymen of each locality, with whom priests were afterwards associated.
For various reasons the Bishops, as a body, proved unequal to their
task; trained experts were needed, and the Church was impelled to action
both by the force of public opinion and by the logic of its dogmas. The
hands of the Church were strengthened by a secular legislation which
recognized a gigantic evil, but failed to combat it with vigour and
uniformity. Under the presidency of Pope Innocent III, the Lateran
Council of 1215 framed a number of severe regulations, but did not
succeed in getting them consistently enforced. From 1220 to 1239,
therefore, Rome elaborated a series of enactments, based on the Lateran
regulations, which amounted to a complete system of persecution. The
chief of these enactments was Gregory IX’s Bull of 1231, under which
suspected persons were required to prove their innocence or lose their
civil rights. Very trivial circumstances, even such as a pale face, were
enough to arouse suspicion. Heretics were to be outlawed, and, when
condemned, to be burnt, all their property being in that case
confiscated and their heirs disinherited. Their houses were to be
destroyed, and never rebuilt. The evidence of a heretic was not to be
received in a court of justice _except against another heretic_. All
rulers and magistrates had to swear, not that they would do justice, but
that they would exterminate all heretics. The lands of nobles who
favoured the unorthodox were to be forfeited. Every thinker was in a
permanently tight corner. Refusal to submit to ecclesiastical authority
was the greatest of sins. The Papal zeal for reform took a peculiar
shape when it established the Inquisition.
The whole Church hailed these savage laws with joy, and they soon became
a terrible reality. The fact that secular Inquisitions were established
in Sicily during the same year shows that public opinion was too strong
for even a royal Freethinker like Frederick II to resist, though he was
reproached with occasionally burning Catholics instead of heretics--not
a very common miscarriage of justice. A commission issued in 1227 may be
taken as giving the Inquisition a start. Its tone and its provisions are
somewhat indefinite, but it led in a short time to the selection of
suitable priests to undertake the duty of detecting and examining
heretics, and this remained a permanent feature of the Inquisitorial
system. The round holes were provided with round pegs.
At the time, however, there seems to have been little thought of a
permanent system which should take the place of the Bishops’
jurisdiction. The basis of the persecuting body was more thoroughly
settled at the Council of Narbonne in 1244, when the control of heresy
was surrendered by the Bishops to the Inquisition, with the prudent
proviso that the prelates reserved to themselves the pecuniary results.
This transfer was not everywhere made complete, for even after that date
many Inquisitors recognized the authority of episcopal tribunals, and in
1273 Gregory X also admitted their supremacy. Evidently the Holy Office
was long regarded as a temporary expedient, and every Pope had renewed
its charter.
In May, 1252, Innocent IV issued his famous Bull _Ad Extirpanda_, which
was a complete exposition of the laws against heresy, and set up the
machinery for its detection. In addition to all the known regulations,
it laid down further provisions binding all rulers to outlaw heretics
and empowering any one to seize suspected persons and take possession of
their goods (being thereby entitled to a share of the proceeds). This
vigilance was rewarded by exemption from public services and by freedom
of personal action. Every one, including all State officials, was bound
to give assistance; men of good repute had to be sworn to reveal
anything they knew, or suspected, of any person in their district. The
State was responsible for the seizure of heretics; it was commanded to
execute judgment against them and to torture those who would not confess
and betray their accomplices. Lists of suspected persons were to be made
out and read in public three times a year, and copies given to the
Bishops, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans.
The provisions of this Bull were strictly enforced, and it is
significant of the state of public opinion that it aroused no effective
resistance. By a later Bull of 1265, Pope Urban IV confirmed its
instructions, and made the Inquisition supreme in all countries. It
became a maxim of law that all statutes which interfered with the
Inquisition were void and their authors punishable. The Holy Office had
a free hand, and was not liable to excommunication in the discharge of
its sacred duties, or to suspicion by even a Papal Legate. Nicholas IV
gave a finishing touch by making the Inquisitors’ commissions perpetual.
Bishops were not liable to be judged by Inquisitors, but nevertheless
had to obey them, and, though at times they tried cases of heresy in
their own courts, they were compelled to allow an Inquisitor to take
part in the sentence.
Popular feeling, it is true, occasionally revolted against this tyranny;
but, as any one who in any way opposed the Inquisition was thereby
excommunicated, the resistance was easily and remorselessly crushed. The
tenacious memory and sleepless vigilance of the Inquisition hunted out
persons who years before had said a kind word to a heretic, or sent a
copper to a sick person under suspicion. Public confidence was destroyed
by the general dread that a careless word might ruin a man; that stories
might, unknown to him, be circulated about him and come to the
Inquisitors’ ears; that an enemy might secretly and safely gratify an
old grudge, until at last poor wretches would inform against others
rather than be themselves betrayed.
It was a rule of the Inquisition that all testimony should be taken down
in the presence of two impartial persons unconnected with the
institution, but sworn to absolute secrecy. This precautionary act of
justice was soon disregarded, and the bulky documents of the Inquisition
were generally held to be unworthy of trust. In some of the revolts
against its tyranny the populace were careful to destroy the records,
for it was well known that the Inquisitors had an unpleasant habit of
discovering among them facts damaging to those whom they desired to
injure.
As if the Inquisitors themselves were not dangerous enough, they were
allowed to employ a swarm of hangers-on known as Familiars (by a
pleasing fiction they became part of the family), who were permitted to
carry the arms denied to ordinary civilians, and who enjoyed immunities
and powers which they abused with the utmost freedom. For the most part
they were a rabble of unruly ruffians, who squeezed money out of people
under the threat of accusing them of heresy or of impeding the
Inquisition in its beneficent duties. Any restriction in the number of
these rascals was resented as unlawful; but the State did sometimes, as
at Venice in 1450, succeed in reducing their numbers. They were wholly
unnecessary, as the Holy Office could command the services of the State,
as well as the assistance of the clergy and of the civil population.
As a precaution against miscarriages of justice, there was held at
irregular intervals an assembly which finally determined the fate of
accused persons. At these gatherings learned Bishops were supposed to be
present in order to give the Inquisitors the benefit of their advice,
but they were so little zealous for popular rights that it became a
practice for an Inquisitor to represent one or more Bishops. It was
doubtful whether the Inquisition ought to obey the finding of the court,
and the occasion became a mere form, from which the episcopal
co-operation was frequently absent. Sometimes a number of sentenced
persons remained in gaol, and were added to from time to time, so that
the _auto de fe_ could be made more impressive. At one of these
ceremonies held in Toulouse in 1310, out of 108 persons sentenced 18
were burnt alive. In the previous year one unfortunate had hit upon the
expedient of voluntary starvation. The Inquisition had a more effective
retort than forcible feeding; its preparations were hurried on, and the
solitary victim was burnt, a similar case occurring four years later.
Very seldom did any one escape by flight from the clutches of the Holy
Office. Its agents were everywhere, its jurisdiction had no limits, a
complete network of private information existed, and flight was a sure
presumption of guilt. A boy of fifteen, sentenced after two years’
imprisonment to wear the crosses which indicated his punishment, at
length threw them off, and worked as a boatman on the Garonne. He was
discovered, cited to appear, and in default was excommunicated and
condemned as a heretic in an _auto_ of 1319. Two years later he was
arrested, escaped, was recaptured, and finally sentenced to imprisonment
on a diet of bread and water. His original crime was that he, a mere
boy, had “adored” a heretic at the command of his father.
_The Inquisitorial Method._
The duty of the Inquisitor was the detection of heresy--that is, to
ascertain the secret thoughts of the accused. External acts were of
consequence only as they indicated a particular frame of mind. This was
a task possible to omniscience only, but the Inquisitor willingly
undertook it, preferring to sacrifice a hundred innocent persons rather
than let one guilty person escape. The safeguards of justice were
nominal; it was found convenient to assume guilt from the outset. In the
secular courts there were a few provisions which gave an accused some
faint chance of obtaining justice; but these, under the pressure of the
Inquisition, gradually fell into abeyance. Even death was no escape so
far as the culprit’s property was concerned. At Ferrara the Bishop and
the Inquisitor squabbled for thirty-two years over the remains of a
heretic, and in 1313 a Florentine family found themselves the victims
of a prosecution brought against an ancestor who had died sixty-three
years before.
Delation was an indispensable and certainly very useful feature of the
Inquisition’s procedure. A woman of Toulouse in 1254 furnished a list of
169 persons incriminated by her, and all the names, with addresses, were
carefully noted for later use. Each of these persons would be persuaded
to supply further names, and so the Inquisition’s net was constantly
growing larger. To give information against others was the truest sign
of repentance, and the Inquisitors were untiring in their efforts to
secure it. In order to elicit confession every conceivable means were
employed: if kindness seemed to promise the best results, kindness would
be shown; an emissary would visit the prisoner’s cell urging confession
and promising mercy--with the mental reservation that severity was the
truest mercy to a heretic. Sometimes a man’s wife and children were
permitted in his dungeon that they might work upon his feelings. On
occasion protracted delay was used to break the prisoner’s spirit; he
would be tried, receive no definite sentence, and be left in gaol
perhaps for many years. Thus a woman who was imprisoned and confessed in
1297 was not formally sentenced for thirteen years, while at Carcassonne
a man made his confession in 1321 after an imprisonment of thirty years.
If, on the other hand, it was thought desirable to hasten the sinner’s
repentance, the confinement was made so terribly harsh that it
frequently brought about the result desired. Torture had not been
greatly employed in the earlier half of the thirteenth century, but Pope
Innocent’s Bull of 1252 expressly authorized its use by the secular
authorities to discover heresy. The secular courts were slow to adopt
it, but its rapid extension by the Holy Office showed how useful it was.
Although not frequently mentioned in the records, various indications
prove that it was freely employed. Not only accused persons, but
witnesses whose statements appeared doubtful or unsatisfactory, were put
to the torture; and the Inquisition had an ingenious way of
manufacturing witnesses, for a person who had confessed his own offence
would be treated as a witness to the guilt of others, and was tortured
to betray them. Confessions made under torture were subject to
confirmation; if they were not confirmed, but denied, the accused was
treated as an obstinate impenitent and perjurer, and handed over to the
secular arm.
_Evidence._
Lea remarks that “the matter-of-course way in which rules destructive of
every principle of justice are laid down by men presumably correct in
the ordinary affairs of life affords a wholesome lesson as to the power
of fanaticism to warp the intellect of the most acute.”[25] Such rules
as there were for the protection of accused persons were systematically
set aside, and the lives of even devout Catholics hung on the merest
trifles and technicalities. A new crime termed “suspicion of heresy” was
invented, and of this three degrees were formulated--light suspicion,
vehement suspicion, and violent suspicion, all of which offered ample
scope to inquisitorial ingenuity. A merchant found it a dangerous
civility to bow to acquaintances who, unknown to him, were heretics. Two
witnesses were required to prove heresy, but at a pinch one was made to
suffice, and if the one witness revoked testimony in favour of the
accused his revocation annulled the evidence, while if the original
testimony was adverse to the defence it was the revocation that became
void! The minimum age of witnesses was also liable to fluctuation. By
the Italian civil law it was twenty years, but the Holy Office was not
particular to a year or two, and a case is recorded in which the
evidence of a boy of ten was accepted against his own family and
sixty-six other people who had listened to a heretical sermon a year
before. Wives, children, and servants could not testify in favour of an
accused; against him their evidence was readily accepted. The only thing
that disabled a witness was proof that he was actuated by mortal enmity
against the accused; but, as the accused was kept in ignorance of the
witness’s identity, proof of this sort was made practically impossible.
Witnesses seldom refused to testify. If they did, the torture chamber
generally induced them to reconsider the matter; in fact, an unlucky
witness ran as great a risk as the defendant of an acquaintance with the
rack or the pulleys. Nor was the secrecy of the confessional of much
avail, for all priests were instructed to use every means in their power
to induce confessions of heresy, and the results were conveyed to the
tribunals in a judiciously indirect manner.
All these precautions, thorough and effective as they were, were not
thought sufficient, and were supplemented by instructions to the
Inquisitors that less evidence was needed to prove heresy than to prove
any other crime. The crowning infamy of keeping secret the names of
witnesses was a peculiarity of the ecclesiastical procedure, of which
its administrators were a little ashamed; but the feeble protests of one
or two councils were ignored. As a slight concession to justice the
accused was, though rarely, shown a list of names, but without being
told which of them applied to his own case; and also a witness would
sometimes be sworn in the presence of the accused, but _examined apart_.
On occasion the whole of the evidence was withheld from the knowledge
of the accused, and if a witness retracted his testimony the fact was
not revealed to the interested party. In practice it was found best to
leave all these details to the Inquisitors’ discretion.
The field which all this secrecy opened to malice, slander, and perjury
may be faintly imagined. Serious abuses in connection with the handling
of evidence were exposed in the fourteenth century by conscientious
Inquisitors themselves, and the fact suggests that an appalling amount
of injustice remained undiscovered. The extraordinary rule by which a
perjured witness was to be punished, but his testimony was to hold good,
was a development that might have been expected from an organization
bent on the manufacture of criminals. And, because it was fairly safe,
perjury by witnesses for the prosecution was by no means uncommon.
_The Defence._
The whole tendency of the Inquisitorial procedure was to afford as few
opportunities as possible for an effective answer to a charge of heresy.
Inquisitors were expressly ordered not to worry about legal forms, but
to extract confessions. In the early part of the thirteenth century the
accused was gratuitously allowed an advocate, but, as the lawyer
entrusted with this delicate duty rendered himself liable to a charge of
heresy if he showed zeal on behalf of his client, the office became
little sought after, and the benefit inappreciable. In time the practice
was more honoured in the breach than in the observance; and, as the
Inquisition could deprive an advocate of his papers and put him in the
dangerous position of a witness, it is doubtful whether his services
were of much value, or, indeed, whether, in many cases, they were
rendered at all. It was sometimes impossible to secure advocates, and
instances are known in which prisoners, in despair, declined to exercise
their right to call for copies of the evidence against them. The
Inquisitors then placed on record that the privilege had been offered
and refused, without superfluous detail as to reasons. Denial of the
accusation of heresy, or refusal to plead, rendered the person charged
liable to torture or the stake. If the Inquisitors did happen to break
the rules and expose themselves to appeal against their judgments, there
were manuals available in which they were instructed in the numerous
devices and deceptions by which they could escape responsibility. An
acquittal never took place; the Inquisitors were expressly authorized to
pronounce no one innocent, as it was always desirable to leave a
loophole for future proceedings. The rare verdict, “Not proven,” was the
utmost length to which the mercy of the Holy Office would extend.
_Sentence._
Strange though it may appear, what the Inquisition really wanted was the
salvation of the sinner’s soul, the appropriation of his goods being
quite a secondary consideration. Its penalties were benevolently
designed to wash away the stain of mortal guilt, and thus prepare him
for a future state of bliss. Assuming the reality of this state, its
enjoyments would certainly be enhanced by contrast with the heretic’s
earthly experiences. The exact condition of the soul, however, being
difficult to ascertain, the chastisement of the body was believed to
afford the most efficacious means of purification. Accordingly the
Church, in its tenderness, did not condemn to death; it merely withdrew
its protection from the unrepentant. It did not confiscate his property;
all it did was to declare him guilty of a crime which rendered him
incapable of holding property. If it imposed a fine, it was because the
proceeds were to be employed in works of charity, which, of course,
included the upkeep of its own organization. The ultimate disposal of
the condemned heretic could safely be left in the hands of the obedient
civil power.
The Church must receive whatever credit may be due for its kindly
intentions, though they sometimes worked out strangely. Almost always
the heretic came off disastrously, but there were episodes of mildness
for which it is not easy to account. When, at the end of the thirteenth
century, an Inquisitor was murdered, the man who hired the assassins was
merely ordered to present himself to the Pope and receive penance. Even
his neglect to do this was visited by nothing worse than a mild order to
arrest him if he could be found. We shall meet with more of this
unaccountable clemency.
The light penances imposed by the Inquisition were Prayers, Churchgoing,
Discipline, Fasting, Pilgrimages, and Fines. As punishments these
penances do not sound excessive, but, as interpreted by the elastic
discretion of the Holy Office, they could make a penitent extremely ill
at ease, and when several were combined in one sentence life became a
heavy burden. During a long pilgrimage a man’s family might starve. In
1322 pilgrimages were imposed on three men who nearly twenty years
before had seen some Waldenses in their father’s house without knowing
that they were heretics. Fines naturally gave opportunities for
extortion which only exceptional men were able to refrain from using. As
already mentioned, the Inquisition appropriated the property of all
persons sentenced for heresy. A man who died in 1252, before completing
a five years’ pilgrimage, left an estate of twenty livres, and the
Inquisitors promptly claimed the whole of this immense sum. Bail was
simply another word for bribery, and extortion became a system
exploited to the utmost by men who were sleeplessly on the look-out for
plunder.
The second grade of penance was the compulsory wearing of yellow
crosses, sewn on to the clothing as an indication that the wearer had
been condemned for heresy. This badge, which corresponded to the _san
benito_ commonly used in Spain, was so great a disgrace that efforts
were constantly made to avoid it; but though, for special reasons,
permission was sometimes given to dispense with it, usually it was
insisted upon, and escape from the vigilant eye of the Inquisition was
impossible.
Penance became far more severe in the third grade, which was
imprisonment for life. A comprehensive penalty of this character was
incurred by every one who did not come forward within the time specified
by the Edict of Grace, confess his own sins, and denounce those of
others. The Inquisition of Toulouse, between 1246 and 1248, records 192
cases, of which 127 were of perpetual imprisonment, 6 for ten years, 16
for an indefinite term in the discretion of the Church, and the
remaining 43 were of absentees. The Council of Narbonne, in 1244, made
the sentence invariably for life. The confinement was solitary; the diet
consisted of bread and water, and in the harsher sentence the penitent
was chained by the feet, sometimes by the hands as well, and, in extreme
cases, to the wall of a dark, noisome dungeon. It is not surprising that
prisoners did not attain a green old age.
The Inquisition reserved the right, in the exercise of its discretion,
to mitigate or re-impose its penalties. This right was frequently used,
especially in regard to the wearing of crosses; but seldom did the
prisoner find his punishment any the lighter. If he had the unusual good
fortune to be released, he might, for the slightest lapse, be punished
again, and this time without mercy and without the formality of a fresh
trial. Every victim relinquished by the Holy Office was a
ticket-of-leave man, liable at any moment to utter ruin. He could never
feel sure that something might not be discovered, perhaps a youthful
indiscretion of his grandfather’s, which would require his appearance
before the dread Tribunal, or that for some unguarded act or expression
he might not bring himself under the most effective of all
excommunications--that of the Holy Inquisition.
_Confiscation._
By decree of Innocent III in 1215 and the Bull of Innocent IV in 1252,
confiscation of the property of heretics and their children was made a
necessary penalty, and all temporal rulers were required to enforce it.
Of the proceeds one-third was to go to the State, one-third to the
Papacy, and one-third to the Inquisition. Each party, as a matter of
course, tried to cheat the others; but the wily Inquisitors almost
invariably obtained the lion’s share of the spoil, which was, nominally
at any rate, devoted to the furtherance of their own method of
propagating the Gospel. Between them the victim had as much chance of
escape as a mouse in a trap. The Church had some difficulty in getting
confiscation sanctioned by the State, but it succeeded.
The heretic was not permitted to dispose of his property, but if he did
succeed in doing so the transaction was void; and, even though the
property had passed through several hands, the last possessor was
cheerfully deprived of it. As debts due to heretics and securities for
loans by them were also void, business became almost impossible.
Numerous complaints of the Inquisition’s rapacity show that no possessor
of property felt safe. It is not easy to understand how society could
continue to hold together when a stimulus was thus deliberately given
to fraud, jealousy, quarrelling, litigation, commercial anarchy, and
domestic misery. Possibly religious zeal was the original motive of the
folly, but when persecution is made a paying concern the reins are given
to greed and injustice of every conceivable kind.
Venice made a stand against ecclesiastical corruption, and in 1289
enacted that the whole proceeds of confiscation should go to the State;
and in the latter part of the fifteenth century Piedmont adopted a
similar course, allowing the Inquisition only its expenses.
A further abuse was that, from the beginning of its career, the
Inquisition frequently made confiscations before the accused had been
convicted, sometimes before he confessed. In 1319 sentence was passed in
southern France on a man who had been charged in 1284, yet in 1301 the
officials were quarrelling over his estate. These legal robberies were
carried out with relentless severity, everything being seized to the
last penny. On arrest for suspicion of heresy, the Holy Office took
possession of a person’s property, promising that if the charge was not
proven (a rare event) some of it would be returned for the support of
his family. In the meantime the family were turned into the streets to
starve, or to live on such charity as they could get. The case of one
secret heretic, Gherardo, a rich noble of Florence and consul of the
city, was a bad one. Between sixty and seventy years after his death the
Inquisitor of the city started a successful persecution against his
memory, and eleven of his descendants, who were not heretics, were
included in the condemnation, and presumably reduced to penury.
It was confiscation that kept alive religious persecution, because the
heretics were ingeniously made to furnish the means for their own
destruction, and when all the heretics had been disposed of the
languishing state of the Holy Office began to arouse real concern on the
part of those who made good livings out of it. Confiscation of property
for an assumed crime was one of the most effectual agencies for the
destruction of civilization, and it is strange that Rome did not see the
error of its ways when countries that had no Inquisition were increasing
in prosperity and happiness.
_Relaxation and the Stake._
It might be supposed that relaxation meant either release from custody
or mitigation of punishment. The Holy Office, however, rose superior to
verbal conventionalities, and defined the term to mean that the accused
person should, after condemnation, be handed over to the civil power. It
was equally well understood that the duty of the civil power was to burn
him alive. The condemned was delivered to the magistrates with an appeal
for mercy, which every one knew to be a transparent piece of hypocrisy.
The Church was mainly responsible for these ferocious laws, and insisted
on their being carried out, salving its conscience by giving out
publicly that it had nothing more to do with the matter. Pope Boniface
VIII embodied in the Canon Law rigid instructions for the punishment of
those condemned by the Inquisition, and all magistrates who failed to
carry out those instructions were cautioned to speak only in a general
way of punishment, though the only penalty for obstinate heresy
recognized by the Church was death by fire. Usually the civil
authorities carried out willingly enough the behests of the Church, but
they made occasional protests, and relaxation was not always treated as
equivalent to death. Several of these protests are on record, but they
were overruled, and the magistrates did their duty. Under the teaching
of the Church the best men of the time regarded heresy as a manifest
crime and the burning of heretics as an act of righteousness.
Sham and enforced conversions were numerous, and resulted in a large
number of relapses, which were punished mercilessly, though not always
by burning. The definition of relapse became more and more difficult,
and some Inquisitors were not disposed to bring every trifle under that
category. Bernard de Caux and his successor, Jean de St. Pierre, usually
condemned to imprisonment, and the latter frequently protested against
the indiscriminate burnings inflicted by the civil authorities of
Toulouse. It is indeed remarkable that burnings were not more numerous.
Thus Bernard Gui, the celebrated Inquisitor of Toulouse, is said to have
declared that between 1308 and 1328 he had put to death 637 heretics. It
appears, however, from the records that this figure represents the total
number of sentences passed by him; of these only 40 were of
condemnations to the stake of living persons, and 67 more were of
persons already dead and therefore not personally interested in the
proceedings. Evidently the chief efforts of the Inquisitors were
directed to the exaction of confessions, with, of course, confiscation
of goods, rather than to create a host of martyrs, an occasional
cremation being merely a salutary example. The Church was not slow to
profit by the experience of the Inquisition, and its spiritual courts
rapidly extended the use of torture and other methods of persuasion.
Probably an even more disastrous effect was produced upon the civil law
of Europe, the increased severity and flagrant injustice of which are
largely traceable to the influence of the Holy Office.