THE SENTENCE.
The penal functions of the Inquisition were based upon a fiction which
must be comprehended in order rightly to appreciate much of its action.
Theoretically it had no power to inflict punishment. Its mission was to
save men's souls; to recall them to the way of salvation, and to assign
salutary penance to those who sought it, like a father-confessor with
his penitents. Its sentences, therefore, were not, like those of an
earthly judge, the retaliation of society on the wrong-doer, or
deterrent examples to prevent the spread of crime; they were simply
imposed for the benefit of the erring soul, to wash away its sin. The
inquisitors themselves habitually speak of their ministrations in this
sense. When they condemned a poor wretch to lifelong imprisonment, the
formula in use, after the procedure of the Holy Office had become
systematized, was a simple injunction on him to betake himself to the
jail and confine himself there, performing penance on bread and water,
with a warning that he was not to leave it under pain of
excommunication, and of being regarded as a perjured and impenitent
heretic. If he broke jail and escaped, the requisition for his recapture
under a foreign jurisdiction describes him, with a singular lack of
humor, as one insanely led to reject the salutary medicine offered for
his cure, and to spurn the wine and oil which were soothing his
wounds.[413]
Technically, therefore, the list of penalties available to the
inquisitor was limited. He never condemned to death, but merely
withdrew the protection of the Church from the hardened and impenitent
sinner who afforded no hope of conversion, or from him who showed by
relapse that there was no trust to be placed in his pretended
repentance. Except in Italy, he never confiscated the heretic's
property; he merely declared the existence of a crime which, under the
secular law, rendered the culprit incapable of possession. At most he
could impose a fine, as a penance, to be expended in good works. His
tribunal was a spiritual one, and dealt only with the sins and remedies
of the spirit, under the inspiration of the Gospels, which always lay
open before it. Such, at least, was the theory of the Church, and this
must be borne in mind if we would understand what may occasionally seem
to be inconsistencies and incongruities--especially in view of the
arbitrary discretion which left to the individual inquisitor such
opportunity to display his personal characteristics in dealing with the
penitents before him. He was a judge in the forum of conscience, bound
by no statutes and limited by no rules, with his penitents at his mercy,
and no power save that of the Holy See itself could alter one jot of his
decrees.[414]
This sometimes led to a lenity which would be otherwise inexplicable, as
in the case of the murderers of St. Peter Martyr. Pietro Balsamo, known
as Carino, one of the hired assassins, was caught red-handed, and his
escape by bribery from prison created a popular excitement leading to a
revolution in Milan. Yet, when recaptured, he repented, was forgiven,
and allowed to enter the Dominican Order, in which he peacefully died,
with the repute of a "_beato;_" and though the Church never formally
recognized his right to the public worship paid to him in some places,
still, in one of the stalls of the martyr's own great church of Sant'
Eustorgio, he appears, with the title of the blessed Acerinus, in a
chiaroscuro of 1505, among the Dominican saints. Not one, indeed, of
those concerned in the assassination appears to have been put to death,
and the leading instigator of the crime, Stefano Confaloniere of
Aliate, a notorious heretic and fautor of heretics, after repeated
abjurations, releases, and relapses, was not fairly imprisoned until
1295, forty-three years after the murder. It was the same when, soon
afterwards, the Franciscan inquisitor, Pier da Bracciano, was
assassinated, and Manfredo di Sesto, who had hired the assassins, was
brought before Rainerio Saccone, the Inquisitor of Milan. He confessed
the crime and other offences in aid of heresy, but was only ordered to
present himself to the pope and receive penance. Contumaciously
neglecting to do this, Innocent IV. merely ordered the magistrates of
Italy to arrest and detain him if he should be found.[415]
Yet the theory which held the Church to be a loving mother unwillingly
inflicting wholesome chastisement on her unruly children only lent a
sharper rigor to most of the operations of the Inquisition. Those who
were obdurate to its kindly efforts were ungrateful and disobedient when
ingratitude and disobedience were offences of the most heinous nature.
They were parricides whom it was mercy to reduce to subjection, and
whose sin only the severest suffering could expiate. We have seen how
little the inquisitor recked of human misery in his efforts to detect
and convert the heretic, and it is not to be supposed that he would be
more tender in his ministrations to the diseased souls asking for
absolution and penance--and it was only the penitent who had confessed
and abjured his sin who came before the judgment-seat for punishment.
All others were left to the secular arm.
The flimsiness of this theory, however, is manifest from the fact that
it was not only heretics--those who consciously erred in matters of
faith--who were subjected to the jurisdiction and chastisement of the
Inquisition. Fautors, receivers, and defenders--those who showed
hospitality, gave alms, or sheltered or assisted heretics in any way, or
neglected to denounce them to the authorities, or to capture them when
occasion offered, also rulers who omitted to execute the laws against
heresy, however orthodox themselves, incurred suspicion of heresy,
simple, vehement, or violent. If violent, it was tantamount to heresy;
if simple or vehement, we have seen how readily it might, by failure of
purgation, or by repetition, grow into technical heresy and relapse,
incurring the gravest penalties, including relaxation to the secular
arm. Not less conclusive to the real import of the inquisitorial
organization is the argument of Zanghino, that if a heretic repents,
confesses to his priest, accepts and performs penance and receives
absolution, however he may be relieved from hell and pardoned in the
sight of God, he is not released from temporal punishment, and is still
subject to prosecution by the Inquisition. It would not abandon its
prey, while yet it could not impugn the efficacy of the sacrament of
penitence, and such difficulties were eluded by forbidding priests to
take cognizance of heresy, which was reserved for bishops and
inquisitors.[416]
* * * * *
The penances customarily imposed by the Inquisition were comparatively
few in number. They consisted, firstly, of pious observances--recitation
of prayers, frequenting of churches, the discipline, fasting,
pilgrimages, and fines nominally for pious uses, such as a confessor
might impose on his ordinary penitents. These were for offences of
trifling import. Next in grade are the "_pœnœ confusibiles_"--the
humiliating and degrading penances, of which the most important was the
wearing of yellow crosses sewed upon the garments; and, finally, the
severest punishment among those strictly within the competence of the
Holy Office, the "_murus_," or prison. Confiscation, as I have said, was
an incident, and the stake, like it, was the affair of the secular
power; and though both were really controlled by the inquisitor, they
will be more conveniently considered separately. The Councils of
Narbonne and Béziers, in addition, prescribe a purely temporal
punishment--banishment, either temporary or perpetual--but this would
appear to have been so rarely employed that it may be disregarded,
although in the earlier period it occasionally occurs in sentences, or
is found among the penances to which repentant heretics pledged
themselves to submit.[417]
The sin of heresy was too grave to be expiated simply by contrition and
amendment. While the Church professed to welcome back to her bosom all
her erring and repentant children, the way of the transgressor was made
hard, and his offence could only be washed away by penances severe
enough to prove the robustness of his convictions. Before the
Inquisition was founded, about 1208, St. Dominic, while acting under the
authority of the Legate Arnaud, converted a Catharan named Pons Roger,
and prescribed for him a penance which has chanced to be preserved. It
will give us an insight into what were considered reasonable terms of
readmission to the Church, at a time when it was straining every nerve
to win the heretics back, and before it had fairly resorted to the use
of force. On three Sundays the penitent is to be stripped to the waist
and scourged by the priest from the entrance of the town of Tréville to
the church-door. He is to abstain forever from meat and eggs and cheese,
except on Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas, when he is to eat of them in
sign of his abnegation of his Manichæan errors. For twoscore days, twice
a year, he is to forego the use of fish, and for three days in each week
that of fish, wine, and oil, fasting, if his health and labors will
permit. He is to wear monastic vestments, with a small cross sewed on
each breast. If possible, he is to hear mass daily, and on feast-days to
attend church at vespers. Seven times a day he is to recite the
canonical hours, and, in addition, the Paternoster ten times each day
and twenty times each night. He is to observe the strictest chastity.
Every month he is to show this paper to the priest, who is to watch its
observance closely, and this mode of life is to be maintained until the
legate shall see fit to alter it, while for infraction of the penance he
is to be held as a perjurer and a heretic, and be segregated from the
society of the faithful.[418]
This shows how the various forms of penance were mingled together at the
discretion of the ghostly father. The same is seen in an exceedingly
lenient sentence imposed in 1258 by the inquisitors of Carcassonne on
Raymond Maria, who had confessed to various acts of heresy committed
twenty or thirty years before, and who, for other reasons, had strong
claims for merciful treatment. It further illustrates the practice of
compounding pious observances for money. Raymond is ordered to fast
from the Friday after Michaelmas until Easter, and to eat no meat on
Saturdays, but he can redeem the fast by giving a denier to a poor man.
Every day he is to recite seven times the Paternoster and Ave Maria.
Within three years he is to visit the shrines of St. Mary of
Roche-amour, St. Rufus of Aliscamp, St. Gilles of Vauverte, St. William
of the Desert, and Santiago de Compostella, bringing home testimonial
letters from the rector of each church; and in lieu of other penances he
is to give six livres Tournois to the Bishop of Albi to aid in building
a chapel. He is to hear mass at least every Sunday and feast-day, and to
abstain from all work on those days. Another penance belonging to the
same general category is that inflicted on a Carthusian monk of la
Loubatière who was guilty of Spiritual Franciscanism. He was ordered not
to leave the abbey for three years, and during that time not to speak
except in extreme necessity. For a year he was to confess daily in the
presence of his brethren that John XXII. was the true pope and entitled
to obedience; and, in addition, he was to undergo certain fasts and
perform certain recitations of the liturgy and psalter. Penances of this
character could be varied _ad infinitum_ at the caprice of the
inquisitor.[419]
In all this there is no mention of flagellation, but that was so general
a feature of penance that it is frequently taken for granted in
prescribing pilgrimages and attendance at church. We have seen Raymond
of Toulouse submitting to it, and however abhorrent it may be to our
modern ideas, it did not carry with it that sense of humiliation which
to us appears inseparable from it. In the lightest penalties provided
for voluntary converts, coming forward within the time of grace, the
Councils of Narbonne and Béziers, in 1244 and 1246, and that of
Tarragona, in 1242, order the discipline. It was no light matter.
Stripped as much as decency and the inclemency of the weather would
permit, the penitent presented himself every Sunday, between the Epistle
and the Gospel, with a rod in his hand, to the priest engaged in
celebrating mass, who soundly scourged him in the presence of the
congregation, as a fitting interlude in the mysteries of divine service.
On the first Sunday in every month, after mass, he was to visit,
similarly equipped, every house in which he had seen heretics, and
receive the same infliction; and on the occasion of every solemn
procession he was to accompany it in the same guise, to be beaten at
every station and at the end. Even when the town happened to be placed
under interdict, or himself to be excommunicated, there was to be no
cessation of the penance, and apparently it lasted as long as the
wretched life of the penitent, or at least until it pleased the
inquisitor to remember him and liberate him. That this was no idle
threat is shown by these precise details occurring in a formula given by
Bernard Gui, about 1330, for the release from prison of penitents who by
patience and humility in their captivity have earned a mitigation of
their punishment, and virtually the same formula was employed
immediately after the organization of the Inquisition.[420]
The pilgrimages, which were regarded as among the lightest of penances,
were also mercies only by comparison. Performed on foot, the number
commonly enjoined might well consume several years of a man's life,
during which his family might perish. A frequent injunction by Pierre
Cella, one of the most moderate of inquisitors, comprehended Compostella
and Canterbury, with perhaps several intermediate shrines, and in one
case a man over ninety years of age was ordered to perform the weary
tramp to Compostella simply for having consorted with heretics. These
pilgrimages were not without peril and hardship, although the
hospitality exercised by the numerous convents on the road enabled the
poorest pilgrim to sustain life. Still, pilgrimages were so habitual a
feature of mediæval habits, and entered so frequently into ordinary
penance, that their use by the Inquisition was inevitable. When the
yearning for salvation was so strong that two hundred thousand pilgrims
arriving in Rome in a single day is said to have been no uncommon
occurrence during the Jubilee of 1300, the penitent who escaped with the
performance of such pious observances might well regard himself as
mercifully treated.[421]
The penitential pilgrimages of the Inquisition were divided into two
classes--the greater and the less. In Languedoc the greater pilgrimages
were customarily four--to Rome, Compostella, St. Thomas of Canterbury,
and the Three Kings of Cologne. The smaller were nineteen in number,
extending from shrines of local celebrity to Paris and Boulogne-sur-mer.
The cases in which they were employed may be estimated by the sentence
passed by Bernard Gui, in 1322, on three culprits whose only offence was
that, some fifteen or twenty years before, they had seen Waldensian
teachers in their fathers' houses without knowing what they were.
Commencing within three months, the penitents were required to perform
seventeen of the minor pilgrimages, reaching from Bordeaux to Vienne,
bringing back, as usual, from each shrine testimonial letters of the
visit. In this case it is specified that they were not obliged to wear
the crosses, and I think it probable that this exempted them from
scourging at each of the shrines, to which penitents with crosses would
naturally be subjected. In one case, occurring in 1308, a culprit was
excused from pilgrimages on account of his age and weakness, and was
only required to make two visitations a year in the city of Toulouse.
Considerate humanity such as this is not sufficiently common in the
annals of the Inquisition for an example of it to be passed in
silence.[422]
At the inception of the Inquisition the pilgrimage universally ordered
for men was that to Palestine, as a crusader. Indeed, the legate,
Cardinal Romano, commanded this for all who were suspect of heresy. It
seems to have been felt that the best use to which a heretic could be
put, if he was to escape the fagot, was to make him aid in the defence
of the Holy Land--a service of infinite hardship and peril. In the
wholesale persecutions in Languedoc the numbers of these unwilling
crusaders were so great that alarm was excited lest they should pervert
the faith in the land of its origin, and about 1242 or 1243 a papal
prohibition was issued, forbidding it for the future. The Council of
Béziers, in 1246, commits to the discretion of the inquisitors whether
penitents shall serve beyond seas, or send a man-at-arms to represent
them, or fight the battles of the faith nearer home, against heretics or
Saracens. The term of service was also left to the inquisitors, but was
usually for two or three years, though sometimes for seven or eight, and
those who went to Palestine, if they were so fortunate as to return,
were obliged to bring back testimonial letters from the Patriarch of
Jerusalem or Acre. When Count Raymond was preparing to fulfil his
long-delayed vow of a crusade, in his eagerness for recruits he procured
in 1247, from Innocent IV., a bull empowering the Archbishop of Ausch
and Bishop of Agen, within Raymond's dominions, to commute into a
pilgrimage beyond seas the penance of temporary crosses and prison, and
even when these were perpetual, if the consent could be had of the
inquisitor who had uttered the sentence; and the following year this was
extended to those in the territories of the Counts of Montfort. Under
this impulsion, the penance of crusading became common again. There is
extant a notice given by the inquisitors of Carcassonne, October 5,
1251, in the church of St. Michael, to those wearing crosses and those
relieved from them, that they must without fail sail for the Holy Land,
as they had pledged themselves to do, in the next fleet; and in the
Register of Carcassonne the injunction of the crusade is of frequent
occurrence. With the disastrous result of the ventures of St. Louis and
the fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem this form of penance gradually
diminished, but it continued to be occasionally prescribed. As late as
1321 we find Guillem Garric condemned to go beyond seas with the next
convoy and remain until recalled by the inquisitor; if legitimately
impeded (which was likely, as he was an old man who had rotted in a
dungeon for thirty years) he could replace himself with a competent
fighting-man, and if he neglected to do so, he was condemned to
perpetual prison. This sentence, moreover, affords one of the rare
instances of banishment, for Guillem, besides furnishing a substitute,
is ordered to expatriate himself to such place as shall be designated,
during the pleasure of the inquisitor.[423]
These penances did not interfere with the social position and
self-respect of the penitent. Far heavier was the apparently simple
penalty of wearing the crosses, which was known as a _pœna
confusibilis_, or humiliating punishment. We have seen that already, in
1208, St. Dominic orders his converted heretic to wear two small crosses
on the breast in sign of his sin and repentance. It seems a
contradiction that the emblem of the Redemption, so proudly worn by the
crusader and the military orders, should be to the convert an infliction
almost unbearable, but when it became the sign of his sin and disgrace
there were few inflictions which might not more readily be borne. The
two little crosses of St. Dominic grew to conspicuous pieces of
saffron-colored cloth, of which the arms were two and a half fingers in
breadth, two and a half palms in height, and two palms in width, one
sewed on the breast and the other on the back, though occasionally one
on the breast sufficed. If the convert during his trial had committed
perjury, a second transverse arm was added at the top; and if he had
been a "perfected" heretic, a third cross was placed upon the cap.
Another form was that of a hammer, worn by prisoners temporarily
liberated on bail; and we have seen the red tongues fastened on
false-witnesses, and the symbol of a letter inflicted on a forger, while
other emblematical forms were prescribed, as the fancy of the inquisitor
might dictate. They were never to be laid aside, in doors or out, and
when worn out the penitent was obliged to renew them. During the latter
half of the thirteenth century those who went beyond seas might abandon
their crosses during their crusade, but were obliged to reassume them on
returning. In the earlier days of the Inquisition a term ranging from
one year to seven or eight was usually prescribed, but in the later
period it was always for life, unless the inquisitor saw fit, as a
reward of good behavior, to remit it. Thus in the _auto de fé_ of 1309
Bernard Gui permitted Raymonde, wife of Étienne Got, to remove the
crosses which she had been condemned to wear, some forty years before,
by Pons de Poyet and Étienne de Gâtine.[424]
The Council of Narbonne, in 1229, prescribed the wearing of these
crosses by all converts who voluntarily abandoned heresy and returned to
the faith of their own free will, as an evidence of their detestation of
their former errors. Apparently the penance was found hard to bear, and
efforts were made to escape it, for the statutes of Raymond, in 1234,
and the Council of Béziers of the same year, threaten confiscation for
all who refuse to wear them, or endeavor to conceal them. Subsequent
councils renewed and extended the obligation on all who were reconciled
to the Church; and that of Valence, in 1248, decreed that all who
disobeyed should be forced without mercy to resume them, and that
abandoning them after due monition should be visited, like
jail-breaking, with the full penalties of impenitent heresy. In a case
recorded in 1251, a penitent preparing for a crusade seems to have
thought himself authorized to abandon the crosses before starting, and
was sentenced to come to Carcassonne on the first Sunday of every month
until his departure, barefooted and in shirt and drawers, and visit
every church in the city, with a rod, to undergo scourging.[425]
Though this penance was regarded as merciful in comparison with
imprisonment, it was not easily endurable, and we can readily understand
the sharp penalties required to enforce obedience. In the sentences of
Pierre Cella it is only prescribed in aggravated cases, and then merely
for from one to five years, though subsequently it grew to be universal,
and without a limit of time. The unfortunate penitent was exposed to the
ridicule and derision of all whom he met, and was heavily handicapped in
every effort to earn a livelihood. Even in the earlier time, when a
majority of the population of Languedoc were heretics, and the
cross-wearers were so numerous that their presence in Palestine was
dreaded, the Council of Béziers, in 1246, feels obliged to warn the
people that penitents should be welcomed and their cheerful endurance of
penance should be a subject of gratulation for all the faithful, and
therefore it strictly forbids ridicule of those who wear crosses, or
refusal to transact business with them. Though penitents were under the
special protection of the Church, it had too zealously preached
detestation of heresy to be able to control the feelings of the
population towards those whom it thus saw fit to stigmatize. A slight
indication of this is seen in the case of Raymonde Manifacier, who, in
1252, was cited before the Inquisition of Carcassone for abandoning the
crosses, when she urged in extenuation that the one on her cloak had
been torn and she was too poor to replace it, while as regards that on
her cape, her mistress, whom she served as nurse, had forbidden her to
wear it and had given her a cape without one. A stronger case is that
already cited of Arnaud Isarn, who found, after year's experience, that
he could not earn a living while thus bearing the marks of his
degradation.[426]
The Inquisition recognized the intolerable hardships to which its
penitents were exposed, and sometimes in mercy mitigated them. Thus, in
1250, at Carcassonne, Pierre Pelha receives permission to lay aside the
crosses temporarily during a voyage which he is obliged to make to
France. Bernard Gui assures us that young women were frequently excused
from wearing them, because with them they would be unable to find
husbands; and among the formulas of his "_Practica_" one which exempts
the penitent from crosses enumerates the various reasons usually
assigned, such as the age or infirmity of the wearer (presumably
rendering him a safe object of insult) or on account of his children,
whom he may not otherwise be able to support, or for the sake of his
daughters, whom he cannot marry. Still more suggestive are formulas of
proclamations threatening to prosecute as impeders of the Inquisition
and to impose crosses on those who ridicule such penitents or drive them
away or prevent them from following their callings; and the
insufficiency of this is shown by still other formulas of orders
addressed to the secular officials, who are required to see that no such
outrages are perpetrated. Sometimes monitions of this kind formed part
of the regular proceedings of the _autos de fé_. The wearing of the
symbol of Christianity was evidently a punishment of no slight
character. The well-known _sanbenito_ of the modern Spanish Inquisition
was derived from the scapular with saffron-colored crosses which was
worn by those condemned to imprisonment, when on certain feast-days they
were exposed at the church doors, that their misery and humiliation
might serve as a warning to the people.[427]
* * * * *
It will be remembered that at the outset there was some discussion as to
whether it should be competent for the inquisitors to inflict the
pecuniary penance of fines. The voluntary poverty and renunciation of
money of the Mendicants, to whom the Holy Office was confided, had not
yet become so obsolete that the incongruity could be overlooked of their
using their almost limitless discretion in levying fines and handling
the money thence accruing. That they commenced it early is shown by a
sentence of 1237, already quoted, in which Pons Grimoardi, a voluntary
convert, is required to pay to the order of the inquisitor ten livres
Morlaas, while in 1245, in Florence, one rendered by the indefatigable
inquisitor, Ruggieri Calcagni, shows that already fines were habitual
there. It was not without cause, therefore, that the Council of
Narbonne, in 1244, in its instructions to inquisitors, ordered them to
abstain from pecuniary penances both for the sake of the honor of their
Order and because they would have ample other work to do. The Order
itself felt this to be the case, and as inquisitors were not yet, at
least in theory, emancipated from the control of their superiors,
already, in 1242, the Provincial Chapter of Montpellier had endeavored
to enforce the rules of the Order by strictly prohibiting them from
inflicting pecuniary penances for the future, or from collecting those
which had already been imposed. How little respect was shown to these
injunctions is visible from a bull of Innocent IV., in 1245, in which,
to preserve the reputation of the inquisitors, he orders all fines paid
over to two persons selected by the bishop and inquisitor, to be
expended in building prisons and in supporting prisoners, in compliance
with which the Council of Béziers, in 1246, abandoned the position taken
by the Council of Narbonne, and agreed that the fines should be employed
on the prisons, and in defraying the necessary expenses of the
Inquisition, possibly because the good bishops found that they
themselves were expected to meet these demands as appertaining to the
episcopal jurisdiction. In an inquisitorial manual of the period this is
specified as the destination of the fines, but the power was speedily
abused, and in 1249 Innocent IV. sternly rebuked the inquisitors in
general for the heavy exactions which they wrung from their converts, to
the disgrace of the Holy See and the scandal of the faithful at large.
This apparently had no effect, and in 1251 he prohibited them wholly
from levying fines if any other form of penance could be employed. Yet
the inquisitors finally triumphed and won the right to inflict pecuniary
penances at discretion. These were understood to be for pious uses, in
which term were included the expenses of the Inquisition; and as they
were payable to the inquisitors themselves, they doubtless were so
expended--it is to be hoped in accordance with the caution of Eymerich,
"decently and without scandal to the laity." In the sentences of Frà
Antonio Secco on the peasants of the Waldensian valleys in 1387, the
penance of crosses is usually accompanied with a fine of five or ten
florins of pure gold, payable to the Inquisition, nominally to defray
the expenses of the trial. An attempt of the State to secure a share was
defeated by a council of experts assembled at Piacenza in 1276 by the
Lombard inquisitors, Frà Niccolò da Cremona and Frà Daniele da Giussano.
A more decent use of the power to inflict money payments was one which
Pierre Cella, the first inquisitor of Toulouse, frequently employed, by
adding to the pilgrimages or other penances imposed the obligation of
maintaining a priest or a poor man for a term of years or for life.[428]
In the later period of the Inquisition it was argued that fines were
inadmissible, because if the accused were a heretic all his property
disappeared in confiscation, while if he were not he should not be
punished, but the inquisitors responded that, although this was true,
there were fautors and defenders of heresy, and those whose heresy
consisted merely in a thoughtless word, all of whom could legitimately
be fined; and the profitable abuse went on.[429]
Scarcely separable from the practice of fines was that of commuting
penances for money. When we remember how extensive and lucrative was the
custom of commuting the vows of crusaders, it was inevitable that a
similar abuse should flourish in the Church's dealings with the
penitents whom the Inquisition had placed within its power. A ready
excuse was found in the proviso that the sums thence arising should be
spent in pious uses--and no use could be more pious than that of
ministering to the wants of those who were zealously laboring for the
purity of the faith. In this the Holy See set the example. We have seen
how, in 1248, Algisius, the papal penitentiary, ordered the release, by
authority of Innocent IV., of six prisoners who had confessed heresy,
alleging as a reason the satisfactory contributions which they had made
to the Holy Land. The same year Innocent formally authorized Algisius to
commute the penalties of certain heretics, without regard to the
inquisitors, and he further empowered the Archbishop of Ausch to
transmute into subsidies the penances imposed on reconciled heretics.
Raymond was preparing for his crusade, and the excuse was a good one.
The heretics were eager to escape by sacrificing their substance, and
the project promised to be profitable. In 1249, accordingly, Algisius
was sent to Languedoc armed with power to commute all inquisitorial
penances into fines to be devoted to the needs of the Church and of the
Holy Land, and to issue all necessary dispensations notwithstanding the
privileges of the Inquisition. It is not to be supposed that the example
was lost upon the inquisitors. Naturally enough, the cases which have
reached us usually specify some pious work to which the funds were to be
devoted, as when, in 1255, the inquisitors of Toulouse allowed twelve of
the principal citizens of Lavaur to commute their penances into money to
be contributed to building the church which was afterwards the Cathedral
of Lavaur; and in 1258 they assisted the church of Najac in the same way
by allowing a number of the inhabitants to redeem their penalties for
its benefit. The public utility of bridges caused them to be included in
the somewhat elastic term of pious uses. Thus, in 1310, at Toulouse,
Mathieu Aychard is released from wearing crosses and performing certain
pilgrimages on condition of contributing forty livres Tournois to a new
bridge then under construction at Tonneins; and in a formula for such
transactions given by Bernard Gui, absolution and dispensation from
pilgrimages and other penances are said to be granted in consideration
of the payment of fifty livres for the building of a certain bridge, or
of a certain church, or "to be spent in pious uses at our discretion."
This last clause shows that commutations were by no means always thus
liberally disposed of, and in fact they often inured to the benefit of
those imposing them. We have a specimen of this in letters of the
Inquisitor of Narbonne in 1264, granting absolution to Guillem du Puy in
consideration of his giving one hundred and fifty livres Tournois to the
Inquisition. The magnitude of these sums shows the eagerness of the
penitents to escape, and the enormous power of extortion wielded by the
inquisitor. If he was a man of integrity he could doubtless resist the
temptation, but to the covetous and self-indulgent the opportunity of
oppressing the helpless was almost unlimited. The system was kept up to
the end. Under Nicholas V. Fray Miguel, the Inquisitor of Aragon, gave
mortal offence to some high dignitaries in following certain papal
instructions, whereupon they maltreated him and kept him in prison for
nine months. It was a flagrant case of impeding the Inquisition, and in
1458 Pius II. ordered the Archbishop of Tarragona to dig up the bones of
one of the offenders who had died, and to send the rest to the Holy See
for judgment--but he added that the archbishop might, at his discretion,
substitute a mulct for the war against the Turks, to be transmitted to
the papal camera. It goes without saying that the death-penalty could
never legally be commuted.[430]
Penitents who died before fulfilling their penance afforded a specially
favorable opportunity for such transactions as these. Death, as we have
seen, afforded no immunity from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition and
in no wise abated its energy of prosecution. There might be a
distinction drawn in practice between those who were taken off while
humbly performing the penance assigned to them, but before its
completion, and those who had wilfully neglected its commencement; but
legally the non-fulfilment of penance entailed condemnation for heresy
whether in the dead or living. In 1329, for instance, the Inquisition of
Carcassonne ordered the exhumation and cremation of the bones of seven
persons declared to have died in heresy for not having fulfilled the
penance enjoined on them, which of course carried with it the
confiscation of their property and the subjection of their descendants
to the usual disabilities. The Councils of Narbonne and Albi directed
the inquisitors to exact satisfaction at discretion from the heirs of
those who had died before judgment, if they would have been condemned to
wear crosses, as well as those who had confessed and been sentenced, and
who had not lived, whether to commence or to complete their penance. Gui
Foucoix expresses his belief that in these cases the penitent is
admitted to purgatory, and he decides that nothing should be demanded
from his heirs; but even his authority did not overcome the more
palatable doctrine of the councils, and a contemporary manual directs
the inquisitor to exact a "congruous satisfaction." There is something
peculiarly repulsive in the rapacity which thus followed beyond the
grave those who had humbly confessed and repented and were received into
the bosom of the Church, but the Inquisition was unrelenting and exacted
the last penny. For instance, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne had
prescribed five years' pilgrimage to the Holy Land for Jean Vidal, who
died before performing it. March 21, 1252, his heirs, under citation,
swore that his whole estate was worth twenty livres, and gave security
to obey the decision of the inquisitor, which was announced the
following August, and proved to be a demand for twenty livres--the
entire value of his property. In another case, Raymonde Barbaira had
died before accomplishing some pilgrimages with crosses to which she had
been sentenced. An inventory of her property showed it to consist of
some bedding, clothing, a chest, a few cattle, and four sous in money,
which had been divided up among her kindred, and from this pitiful
inheritance the inquisitor, on March 7, 1256 demanded forty sous, for
the payment of which by Easter the heirs had to give security. Such
petty and vulgar details as these give us a clearer insight into the
spirit and working of the Inquisition, and of the grinding oppression
which it exercised on the subject populations. Even in the case of
fautors who were not heretics, the heirs were obliged to perform any
pecuniary penance which had been inflicted upon them.[431]
A more legitimate source of income, but yet one which opened the door to
grave abuses, was the custom of taking bail, which of course was liable
to forfeiture, serving, in such cases, as an irregular form of
commutation. This custom dated from the inception of the Inquisition,
and was practised at every stage of the proceedings, from the first
citation to the final sentence, and even afterwards, when prisoners were
sometimes liberated temporarily on giving security for their return. The
convert who was absolved on abjuring was also required to give security
that he would not relapse. Thus, in 1234, we see Lantelmo, a Milanese
noble, ordered to give bail in two thousand lire, and two Florentine
merchants bailed by their friends in two thousand silver marks. So, in
1244, the Baroni, of Florence, gave bail in one thousand lire to obey
the mandates of the Church; and in 1252 a certain Guillem Roger pledged
one hundred livres that he would go beyond seas by the next fleet and
serve there for two years. The security was always to be pecuniary, and
the inquisitor was warned not to take it of heretics, for their offence
implied confiscation, but this was not strictly observed, as in special
cases friends were found who furnished the necessary pledges. Forfeited
bail was payable to the inquisitor, sometimes directly, and sometimes
through the hands of the bishops, and was to be used for the expenses of
the Inquisition. The usual form of bond pledged all the property of the
principal and that of two sureties, jointly and severally; and as a
general rule bail may be said to have been universal, except in cases
where the offence was regarded as too serious to admit of it, or when
the offender could not procure it.[432]
It was impossible that these methods of converting the sentences of the
Inquisition into current coin could flourish without introducing
wide-spread corruption. Admission to bail might be the result of
favoritism or degenerate into covert bribery. The discretion of the
inquisitor was so wide that bribery itself could be safely indulged in.
A crime necessarily so secret as this form of extortion cannot be
expected to leave traces behind it, except in those cases in which it
proved a failure, but sufficient instances of the latter are on record
to show that the tribunals were surrounded by men who made a trade of
their influence, real or presumed, with the judges. When these were
incorruptible the business was suppressed with more or less success, but
when they were acquisitive, they had ample field for unhallowed gain, to
be wrung without stint or check from the subject populations both by
bribery and extortion. Considering that every one above the age of seven
was liable to the indelible suspicion of heresy by the mere fact of
citation, it will be seen what an opportunity lay before the inquisitor
and his spies and familiars to practise upon the fears of all, to sell
exemptions from arrest, as well as to bargain for liberation. That these
fruitful sources of gain were not abundantly worked would be incredible
even in the absence of proof, but proof sufficient exists. In 1302
Boniface VIII. wrote to the Dominican Provincial of Lombardy that the
papal ears had been lacerated with complaints of the Franciscan
inquisitors of Padua and Vicenza, whose malicious cupidity had wronged
many men and women by exacting from them immense sums and inflicting on
them all manner of injuries. When the pope naïvely adduces in cumulation
of their villainy that these wrong-doers had not employed the illicit
gains for the benefit of the Holy Office, or of the Roman Church, or
even of their own Order, he affords ground for the suspicion that a
judicious distribution of the spoils secured silent condonation of such
offences in many cases. He had sent Gui, Bishop of Saintes, to
investigate these complaints, who reported them well founded, and he
orders the provincial to replace the delinquents with Dominicans. The
change brought little relief, for the very next year Mascate de'
Mosceri, a jurist of Padua, appealed to Benedict from the new Dominican
inquisitor, Frà Benigno, who was vexing him with prosecutions in order
to extort money from him; and in 1304 Benedict was obliged to address to
the inquisitors of Padua and Vicenza a grave warning as to the official
complaints which still arose about their fraudulent prosecution of good
Catholics by means of false witnesses. It is easy to understand the
complaint made by the stricter Franciscans that the inquisitors of their
Order rode around in state in place of walking barefoot as was
prescribed by the rule. At this very time, moreover, the Dominicans of
Languedoc were the subject of precisely similar arraignment on the part
of the communities subjected to them. Redress in this case was long in
coming, but at last the investigation set on foot by Clement V.
convinced him of the truth of the facts alleged, and at the Council of
Vienne, in 1311, he caused the adoption of canons, embodied in the
Corpus Juris, which placed on record conspicuously his conviction that
the inquisitorial office was frequently abused by the extortion of money
from the innocent and the escape of the guilty through bribery. The
remedy which he devised, of _ipso facto_ excommunication in such cases,
was complained of by Bernard Gui on the ground that it would invalidate
the rightful acts, as well as the evil ones, of the wrong-doer; which
only serves to show the vicious circle in which the whole business
moved. Yet neither the hopes of Clement nor the fears of Bernard were
justified by the result. The inquisitors continued to enrich themselves
and the people to suffer untold miseries. In 1338 a papal investigation
was made of a transaction by which the city of Albi purchased, by the
payment of a sum of money to the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, the
liberation of some citizens accused of heresy. In 1337 Benedict XII.
ordered his nuncio in Italy, Bertrand, Archbishop of Embrun, to
investigate the complaints which came from all parts of Italy that the
inquisitors extorted money, received presents, allowed the guilty to
escape, and punished the innocent, through hatred or avarice, and
empowered him to make removals in consequence; and the exercise of this
power shows that the complaints were well founded. The effects of the
measure, however, were evanescent. In 1346 the whole republic of
Florence rose against their inquisitor, Piero di Aquila, for various
abuses, among which figured extortion. He fled and refused to return
during the investigation which followed, in spite of the offer of a
safe-conduct. A single witness swore to sixty-six cases of extortion,
and in a partial list of them which has been preserved the sums exacted
vary from twenty-five to seventeen hundred gold florins, showing how
unlimited were the profits which tempted the unscrupulous. Villani tells
us that in two years he had thus amassed more than seven thousand
florins, an enormous sum in those days; that there were no heretics in
Florence at the time, and that the offences which thus proved so
lucrative to him consisted of usury and thoughtless blasphemy. As for
usury, Alvaro Pelayo tells us that at that time the bishops of Tuscany
set the example by habitually so employing the church funds, but the
inquisitors did not meddle with the prelates. As for blasphemy, the
subtle refinements which converted simple blasphemous expressions into
heresy, as set forth by Eymerich, show how readily a skilful inquisitor
could speculate on idle oaths. Boccaccio doubtless had Frà Piero in
memory when he described the recent inquisitor of Florence who, like all
his brethren, had an eye as keen to discover a rich man as a heretic,
and who extracted a heavy _douceur_ from a citizen for boasting in his
cups that he had wine so good that Christ would drink it. The keenness
which thus made profitable business for the Holy Office, when heresy was
declining, is illustrated by the case of Marie du Canech, a
money-changer of Cambrai, in 1403. In a case before the Ordinary she
incautiously expressed the opinion that when under oath she was not
bound to give evidence against her own honor and interest. For this the
deputy inquisitor, Frère Nicholas de Péronne, prosecuted her and
condemned her to various penances, including nine years' abstention from
business and eighty gold crowns for expenses.[433]
These abuses continued to the last. Cornelius Agrippa tells us that it
was customary for inquisitors to convert corporal punishments into
pecuniary ones and even to exact annual payments as the price of
forbearance. When he was in the Milanese, about 1515, there was a
disturbance caused by their secretly extorting large sums from women of
noble birth, whose husbands at length discovered it, and the inquisitors
were glad to escape with their lives.[434]
I have dwelt at some length upon this feature of the Inquisition because
it is one which has rarely received attention, although it inflicted
misery and wrong to an almost unlimited extent. The stake consumed
comparatively few victims. While the horrors of the crowded dungeon can
scarce be exaggerated, yet more effective for evil and more widely
exasperating was the sleepless watchfulness which was ever on the alert
to plunder the rich and to wrench from the poor the hard-earned gains on
which a family depended for support. It was only in rare cases that the
victims dared to raise a cry, and rarer still were those in which that
cry was heard; but sufficient instances have reached us to prove what a
scourge was the institution, in this aspect alone, on all the
populations cursed by its presence. At a very early period the wealthy
already recognized that well-timed liberality was advisable towards
those who held such power in the hollow of their hands. In 1244 the
Dominican Chapter of Cahors lifted a warning voice and ordered
inquisitors not to allow their brethren to receive presents which would
expose the whole Order to disrepute; but this scrupulousness wore off,
and even a man of high character like Eymerich could argue that
inquisitors may properly be the recipients of gifts, though he dubiously
adds that they ought to be refused from those under trial, except in
special circumstances. As the accounts of the Inquisition were rendered
only to the papal camera, it will be seen how little the officials had
to dread investigation and exposure. As little had they to fear the
divine wrath, for their very functions, while thus engaged, insured them
plenary indulgence for all sins confessed and repented. Thus secure,
here and hereafter, they were virtually relieved from all
restraint.[435]
* * * * *
There was one purely temporal penalty which came within the competence
of the Inquisition--the designation of the houses which were to be
destroyed in consequence of the contamination of heresy. The origin of
this curious practice is not readily traced. Under the Roman law,
buildings in which heretics held their conventicles with the owner's
consent were not torn down, but were forfeited to the Church. Yet as
soon as heresy began to be formidable we find their destruction
commanded by secular rulers with singular unanimity. The earliest
provision I have met with occurs in the assizes of Clarendon in 1166,
which order the razing of all houses in which heretics were received.
The example was followed by the Emperor Henry VI. in the edict of Prato,
in 1194, by Otho IV. in 1210, and by Frederic II. in the edict of
Ravenna, in 1232, as an addition to his coronation-edict of 1220, from
which it had been omitted. It had already been adopted in the code of
Verona in 1228 in all cases in which the owner, after eight days'
notice, neglected to expel heretic occupants; it is found in the
statutes of Florence a few years later, and is included in the papal
bulls defining the procedure of the Inquisition. In France the Council
of Toulouse, in 1229, decreed that any house in which a heretic was
found was to be destroyed, and this was given the force of secular law
by Count Raymond in 1234. It naturally forms a feature of the
legislation of the succeeding councils which regulated the inquisitorial
proceedings, and was adopted by St. Louis. Castile, in fact, seems to be
the only land in which the regulation was not observed, owing doubtless
to the direct derivation of its legislation from the Roman law, for, in
the Partidas, houses in which heretics were sheltered are ordered to be
given to the Church. Elsewhere such dwellings were razed to the ground,
and the site, as accursed, was to remain forever a receptacle for filth
and unfit for human habitation; yet the materials could be employed for
pious uses unless they were ordered to be burned by the inquisitor who
rendered the sentence. This sentence was addressed to the parish priest,
with directions to publish it for three successive Sundays during divine
service.[436]
In France the royal officials in charge of the confiscations came at
length to object to this destruction of property, which was sometimes
considerable, as the castle of the seigneur was as liable to it as the
cabin of the peasant. In 1329 it forms one of the points for which the
Inquisitor of Carcassonne, Henri de Chamay, asked and obtained the
confirmation of Philippe de Valois, and the same year he had the
satisfaction, in an _auto_ held in September, to order the destruction
of four houses, and a farm, whose owners had been hereticated in them on
their death-beds. Some fifty years later, however, a quarrel on the
subject between the king's representatives and the inquisitors of
Dauphiné resulted differently. Charles le Sage, after consulting with
the pope, issued letters of October 19, 1378, ordering that the penalty
should no longer be enforced. The independent spirit of northern Germany
manifested itself in the same manner, and in the Sachsenspiegel there is
a peremptory command that no houses shall be destroyed except for rape
committed within them. In Italy the custom continued, as there the
confiscations did not inure to the sovereign, but it was held that if
the owner had no guilty knowledge of the use made of his house he was
entitled to keep it. Lawyers disputed, however, as to the perpetuity of
the prohibition to build on the spot, some holding that possession by a
Catholic for forty years conferred a right to erect a new house, which
others denied, arguing that a perpetual and imprescriptible servitude
had been created. The inquisitors, in process of time, arrogated to
themselves the power to issue licenses to build anew on these sites, and
this right they exercised, doubtless, to their own profit, though they
might not have found it easy to cite authority for it.[437]
Another temporal penalty may be alluded to as illustrating the unlimited
discretion enjoyed by the inquisitors in imposing penance. When, in
1321, the town of Cordes made humble submission for its long-continued
insubordination to its bishop and inquisitor, the penance assigned to
the community by Bernard Gui and Jean de Beaune was the construction of
a chapel of such size as might be ordered, in honor of St. Peter Martyr,
St. Cecilia, St. Louis, and St. Dominic, with the statues of those
saints in wood or stone above the altar; and, to complete the
humiliation of the community, the portal was to be adorned with statues
of the bishop and of the two inquisitors, the whole to be finished
within two years, under a penalty of five hundred livres Tournois, which
was to be doubled for a delay of another two years. Doubtless the people
of Cordes built the chapel without delay, but they hesitated at this
glorifying of their oppressors, for, twenty-seven years afterwards, in
1348, we find the municipal authorities summoned before the Inquisition
of Toulouse and compelled to give pledges that the portal shall
forthwith be completed and the inquisitorial effigies be erected.[438]
The severest penance the inquisitor could impose was incarceration. It
was, according to the theory of the inquisitors, not a punishment, but a
means by which the penitent could obtain, on the bread of tribulation
and water of affliction, pardon from God for his sins, while at the same
time he was closely supervised to see that he persevered in the right
path and was segregated from the rest of the flock, thus removing all
danger of infection. Of course it was only used for converts. The
defiant heretic who persisted in disobedience, or who pertinaciously
refused to confess his heresy and asserted his innocence, could not be
admitted to penance, and was handed over to the secular arm.[439]
In the bull _Excommunicamus_ of Gregory IX., in 1229, all who after
arrest were converted to the faith through fear of death were ordered to
be incarcerated for life, thus to perform appropriate penance. The
Council of Toulouse almost simultaneously made the same regulation, and
manifested its sense of the real value of the involuntary conversions by
adding the caution that they be prevented from corrupting others. The
Ravenna decree of Frederic II., in 1332, adopted the same rule and made
it settled legal practice. The Council of Arles, in 1234, called
attention to the perpetual backsliding of those converted by force, and
ordered the bishops to enforce strictly the penance of perpetual prison
in all such cases. As yet the relapsed were not considered as hopeless,
and were not abandoned to the secular court, or "relaxed," but were
similarly imprisoned for life.[440]
The Inquisition at its inception thus found the rule established, and
enforced it with the relentless vigor which it manifested in all its
functions. It was represented as a special mercy shown to those who had
forfeited all claims on human compassion. There were to be no
exemptions. The Council of Narbonne, in 1244, specifically declared
that, except when special indulgence could be procured from the Holy
See, no husband was to be spared on account of his wife, or wife on
account of her husband, or parent in consideration of helpless children;
neither sickness nor old age should claim mitigation. Every one who did
not come forward within the time of grace and confess and denounce his
acquaintances was liable to this penance, which in all cases was to be
lifelong; but the prevalence of heresy in Languedoc was so great, and
the terror inspired by the activity of the inquisitors grew so strong,
that those who had allowed the allotted period to elapse flocked in,
begging for reconciliation, in such multitudes that the good bishops
declare not only that funds for the support of such crowds of prisoners
were lacking, but even that it would be impossible to find stones and
mortar sufficient to build prisons for them. The inquisitors are
therefore instructed to delay incarceration in these cases, unless
impenitence, relapse, or flight, is to be apprehended, until the
pleasure of the pope can be learned. Apparently Innocent IV. was not
disposed to leniency, for in 1246 the Council of Béziers sternly orders
the imprisonment of all who have overstayed the time of grace, while
counselling commutation when it would entail evident peril of death on
parents or children. Imprisonment thus became the usual punishment,
except of obstinate heretics, who were burned. In a single sentence of
February 19, 1237, at Toulouse, some twenty or thirty penitents are thus
condemned, and are ordered to confine themselves in a house until
prisons can be built. In a fragment which has been preserved of the
register of sentences in the Inquisition of Toulouse from 1246 to 1248,
comprising one hundred and ninety-two cases, with the exception of
forty-three contumacious absentees, the sentence is invariably
imprisonment. Of these, one hundred and twenty-seven are perpetual, six
are for ten years, and sixteen for an indefinite period, as may seem
expedient to the Church. It apparently was not till a later period that
the order of the Council of Narbonne was obeyed, and the sentence always
was for life. In the later periods this proportion will not hold good,
for all inquisitors were not like the fierce Bernard de Caux, who then
ruled the Holy Office in Toulouse; but perpetual imprisonment remained
to the last the principal penance inflicted on penitents, although the
decrees of Frederic and the canons of the councils of Toulouse and
Narbonne were not held to apply to those who abjured heartily after
arrest.[441]
In the later sentences which have reached us it is often not easy to
guess why one prisoner is incarcerated and another let off with crosses,
when the offences enumerated as to each would seem to be
indistinguishable. The test between the two probably was one which does
not appear on the record. All alike were converts, but he whose
conversion appeared to be hearty and spontaneous was considered to be
entitled to the easier penance, while the harsher one was inflicted when
the conversion seemed to be enforced and the result of fear. Yet how
relentlessly a man like Bernard Gui, who represents the better class of
inquisitors, could enforce the strict measure of the law is seen in the
case of Pierre Raymond Dominique, who had been cited to appear in 1309,
had fled and incurred excommunication, had consequently, in 1315, been
condemned as a contumacious heretic, and in 1321 had voluntarily come
forward and surrendered himself on a promise that his life should be
spared. His acts of heresy had not been flagrant, and he pleaded as an
excuse for his contumacy his wife and seven children, who would have
starved had they been deprived of his labor, but in spite of this he was
incarcerated for life. Even the stern Bernard de Caux was not always so
merciless. In 1246, we find him, in sentencing Bernard Sabbatier, a
relapsed heretic, to perpetual imprisonment, adding that as the
culprit's father is a good Catholic and old and sick, the son may remain
with him and support him as long as he lives, meanwhile wearing the
crosses.[442]
There were two kinds of imprisonment, the milder, or "_murus largus_,"
and the harsher, known as "_murus strictus_" or "_durus_" or "_arctus_."
All were on bread and water, and the confinement, according to rule, was
solitary, each penitent in a separate cell, with no access allowed to
him, to prevent his being corrupted or corrupting others; but this could
not be strictly enforced, and about 1306 Geoffroi d'Ablis stigmatizes as
an abuse the visits of clergy, and laity of both sexes, permitted to
prisoners. Husband and wife, however, were allowed access to each other
if either or both were imprisoned; and late in the fourteenth century
Eymerich agrees that zealous Catholics may be admitted to visit
prisoners, but not women and simple folk who might be perverted, for
converted prisoners, he adds, are very liable to relapse, and to infect
others, and usually end with the stake.[443]
In the milder form, or "_murus largus_," the prisoners apparently were,
if well behaved, allowed to take exercise in the corridors, where
sometimes they had opportunities of converse with each other and with
the outside world. This privilege was ordered to be given to the aged
and infirm by the cardinals who investigated the prison of Carcassonne
and took measures to alleviate its rigors. In the harsher confinement,
or "_murus strictus_," the prisoner was thrust into the smallest,
darkest, and most noisome of cells, with chains on his feet--in some
cases chained to the wall. This penance was inflicted on those whose
offences had been conspicuous, or who had perjured themselves by making
incomplete confessions, the matter being wholly at the discretion of the
inquisitor. I have met with one case, in 1328, of aggravated
false-witness, condemned to "_murus strictissimus_," with chains on both
hands and feet. When the culprits were members of a religious order, to
avoid scandal the proceedings were usually held in private, and the
imprisonment would be ordered to take place in a convent of their own
Order. As these buildings, however, usually were provided with cells for
the punishment of offenders, this was probably of no great advantage to
the victim. In the case of Jeanne, widow of B. de la Tour, a nun of
Lespenasse, in 1246, who had committed acts of both Catharan and
Waldensian heresy, and had prevaricated in her confession, the sentence
was confinement in a separate cell in her own convent, where no one was
to enter or see her, her food being pushed in through an opening left
for the purpose--in fact, the living tomb known as the "_in
pace_."[444]
I have already alluded to the varying treatment designedly practised in
the detentive imprisonment of those who were under trial. When there was
no special object to be attained by cruelty, this probably was as mild
as could reasonably be expected. From occasional indications in the
trials, it would seem that considerable intercourse was allowed with the
outside world, as well as between the prisoners themselves, though
watchful care was enjoined to prevent communication of any kind which
might tend to harden the prisoner against a full confession of his
sins.[445]
The prisons themselves were not designed to lighten the penance of
confinement. At best the jails of the Middle Ages were frightful abodes
of misery. The seigneurs-justiciers and cities obliged to maintain them
looked upon the support of prisoners as a heavy charge of which they
would gladly relieve themselves. If a debtor was thrust into a dungeon,
although the law limited his confinement to forty days and ordered him
to be comfortably fed, these prescriptions were customarily eluded, for
the worse he was treated the greater effort he would make to release
himself. As for criminals, bread and water were their sole diet, and if
they perished through neglect and starvation it was a saving of expense.
The prisoner who had money and friends could naturally obtain better
treatment by liberal payment; but this alleviation was not often to be
looked for in the case of heretics whose property had been confiscated,
and with whom sympathy was dangerous.[446]
The enormous number of captives resulting from the vigorous operations
of the Inquisition in Languedoc had rendered the question as to the duty
of building and maintaining prisons one of no little magnitude. It
unquestionably rested with the bishops, whose laches in persecuting
heresy were only made good by the inquisitors, and the bishops, at the
Council of Toulouse, in 1229, had admitted this, only excepting that
when the heretic had property those to whom the confiscations inured
should provide for him. The burden, however, proved unexpectedly large,
and we find them, in the Council of Narbonne, in 1244, trying to shift
their responsibility by suggesting that the penitents who, but for the
recent papal command, would be sent on crusades, should be utilized in
building prisons and furnishing them with necessaries, "lest the
prelates be overburdened with the poor converts, and be unable to
provide for them on account of their multitude." Two years later, at
Béziers, they declared that provision for both construction and
maintenance ought to be made by those who profited by the confiscations,
to which might be added the fines imposed by the inquisitors, which was
not unreasonable; but in 1249 Innocent IV. still asserted that it was
their business, and scolded them for not attending to it, and ordered
that they be compelled to do it. At length, in 1254, the Council of Albi
definitely decided that the holders of confiscated property should make
provision for the imprisonment and maintenance of its former owners, and
that, when heretics had nothing to confiscate, the cities or lords on
whose lands they were captured should be responsible for them, and
should be compelled by excommunication to attend to it. Still, the
responsibility of the bishops was so self-evident that some zealous
inquisitors talked of prosecuting them as fautors of heresy for
neglecting to provide prisons, but Gui Foucoix discreetly advises
against this, and recommends that such cases should be referred to the
Holy See.[447]
The fate of the unfortunate captives was evidently most precarious while
their oppressors and despoilers were thus squabbling as to the cost of
keeping them in jail and providing them with bread and water. There was
evident fitness that those who profited by the enormous confiscations
resulting from persecution should at least provide prisons and
maintenance for the unhappy victims of fanaticism and greed; and St.
Louis, to whom the chief profits came as suzerain of the territories
ceded at the Treaty of Paris, recognized in part his responsibility. In
1233 he undertook to provide prisons in Toulouse, Carcassonne, and
Béziers. In 1246 he ordered his seneschal to provide for the inquisitors
competent prisons in Carcassonne and Béziers, and to furnish daily bread
and water for the prisoners. In 1258 we find him ordering his seneschal
of Carcassonne to bring to speedy completion those which had been
commenced; he assumes that the prelates and barons on whose lands
heretics are captured should provide for their maintenance; but, in
order to avoid trouble, he is willing that expenditures for this purpose
shall be made from the royal funds, to be subsequently collected from
the seigneurs. With the death of Alfonse and Jeanne of Toulouse, in
1272, all the territories lapsed to the crown, and, with insignificant
exceptions, all the confiscations fell to the king. Henceforth the
maintenance of prisons and prisoners, and the wages of jailers and
attendants, were defrayed by the crown, except perhaps at Albi, where
the bishop shared in the spoils, and seems to have been held to a
portion of the expenses. Among the requests of Henri de Chamay, granted
in 1329 by Philippe de Valois, is that the inquisitorial prison at
Carcassonne shall be repaired by the king, and that all who have shared
in the confiscations shall be made to contribute _pro rata_. Thereupon
the seneschal assessed the Count of Foix to the extent of three hundred
and two livres eleven sols nine deniers, which the latter refused to
pay, and appealed to the king, with what result is not known. From a
decision of the Parlement of Paris in 1304 it appears that the royal
allowance for maintenance was three deniers per diem for each convicted
prisoner, which would seem liberal enough, though Jacques de Polignac,
who had charge of the prison at Carcassonne, and who was punished for
his frauds, made out his accounts at the rate of eight deniers. This
extravagance was not a precedent, and in 1337 we find the accounts still
made out at the old rate of three deniers. For the accused detained and
awaiting trial the Inquisition itself presumably had to provide. In
Italy, where the confiscations, as we shall see, were divided into
thirds, the Inquisition was self-supporting. In Naples the royal prisons
were employed, and a royal order was required for incarceration.[448]
While the penance prescribed was a diet of bread and water, the
Inquisition, with unwonted kindness, did not object to its prisoners
receiving from their friends contributions of food, wine, money, and
garments, and among its documents are such frequent allusions to this
that it may be regarded as an established custom. Collections were made
among those secretly inclined to heresy to alleviate the condition of
their incarcerated brethren, and it argues much in favor of the
disinterested zeal of the persecuted that they were willing to incur the
risk attendant on this benevolence, for any interest shown towards these
poor wretches exposed them to accusation to fautorship.[449]
The prisons were naturally built with a view to economy of construction
and space rather than to the health and comfort of the captives. In fact
the papal orders were that they should be constructed of small, dark
cells for solitary confinement, only taking care that the "_enormis
rigor_" of the incarceration should not extinguish life. M. Molinier's
description of the Tour de l'Inquisition at Carcassonne, which was used
as the inquisitorial prison, shows how literally these instructions were
obeyed. It was a horrible place, consisting of small cells, deprived of
all light and ventilation, where through long years the miserable
inmates endured a living death far worse than the short agony of the
stake. In these abodes of despair they were completely at the mercy of
the jailers and their servants. Complaints were not listened to; if a
prisoner alleged violence or ill-treatment his oath was contemptuously
refused, while that of the prison officials was received. A glimpse into
the discipline of these establishments is afforded by the instructions
given, in 1282, by Frère Jean Galande, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, to the
jailer Raoul and his wife Bertrande, whose management had been rather
lax. Under pain of irrevocable dismissal he is prohibited in future from
keeping scriveners or horses in the prison; from borrowing money or
accepting gifts from the prisoners; from retaining the money or effects
of those who die; from releasing prisoners or allowing them to go beyond
the first door, or to eat with him; from employing the servants on any
other work or sending them anywhere, or gambling with them, or
permitting them to gamble with each other.[450]
Evidently a prisoner who had money could obtain illicit favors from the
honest Raoul; but these injunctions make no allusion to one of the most
crying abuses which disgraced the establishments--the retention by the
jailers of the moneys and provisions placed in their hands by the
friends of the imprisoned. Frauds of all kinds naturally grew up among
all who were concerned in dealing with these helpless creatures. In 1304
Hugolin de Polignac, the custodian of the royal prison at Carcassonne,
was tried on charges of embezzling a part of the king's allowance, of
carrying the names of prisoners on the rolls for years after their
death, and of retaining the moneys contributed for them by their
friends; but the evidence was insufficient to convict him. The cardinals
whom Clement V. commissioned soon after to investigate the abuses of the
Inquisition of Languedoc intimate broadly the nature of the frauds
habitually practised, when they required the new jailers whom they
appointed to swear to deliver to each captive without diminution the
provisions supplied by the king, as well as those furnished by
friends--an intimation confirmed by the decretals of Clement V. Their
report shows that they were horror-struck with what they saw. At
Carcassonne they took the control of the prison wholly from the
inquisitor, Geoffroi d'Ablis, and placed it in the hands of the bishop,
ordering the upper cells to be repaired at once, in order that the aged
and sick should be transferred to them; at Albi they struck the chains
off the prisoners, commanded the cells to be lighted and new and better
ones built within a month; at Toulouse things were equally bad.
Everywhere there was complaint of lack of food and of beds, as well as
of frequent torture. Their measures for reformation consisted in
dividing the responsibility between bishop and inquisitor, whose
concurrence was requisite to a sentence of imprisonment, and each of
whom should appoint a jailer, while each jailer should have a key to
each cell, and swear never to speak to a prisoner except in presence of
his colleague. This insufficient remedy was adopted by Clement, and can
hardly be imagined to have worked much improvement. Bernard Gui bitterly
complained of the infamy cast on the Inquisition by the papal assertion
of fraud and ill-treatment in the management of its prisons, and he
pronounced the new regulations impracticable. Slender as was the
restraint which they imposed on the inquisitors, we may feel sure that
it was not long submitted to. In a few years Bernard Gui, in his
Practica, assumes that the power of imprisoning lies wholly with the
inquisitor; he contemptuously cites the Clementine canon by its title
only, and proceeds to quote a bull of Clement IV. as if still in force,
giving the authority to the inquisitor, and making no mention of the
bishop. In fact, before the century was out, Eymerich considered the
Clementine canons on this subject not worth inserting in his work,
because, as he tells us, they were nowhere observed in consequence of
their cost and inconvenience. About 1500, however, Bernardo di Como
admits that the Clementine rule may be observed in punitive confinement
after sentence, but holds that the inquisitor has sole control of the
detentive prisons used before and during trial.[451]
With such jailers it is probably rather to their corruption than to any
lack of strength in the buildings that we may attribute the occasional
escape of the inmates, which appears to have been by no means an
infrequent occurrence. Even those who were confined in chains sometimes
effected their liberation. More sufficient, however, as a means of
release from the horrors of these foul dungeons was the excessive
mortality caused by their filthy and unventilated squalor. Occasionally,
as we have seen, the unfortunate were unlucky enough to live through
protracted confinement, and there is one case in which a woman was
graciously discharged, with crosses, in view of her having been for
thirty-three years in the prison of Toulouse. As a rule, however, we may
conclude that the expectation of life was very short. No records remain,
if any were kept, to show the average term of those condemned to
lifelong penance; but in the _autos de fé_ there occur sentences
pronounced upon prisoners who had died before their cases were ended,
which show how large was the death-rate. These cases were despatched in
batches. In the _auto_ of 1310, at Toulouse, there are ten, who had died
after confessing their heresy and before receiving sentence; in that of
1319 there are eight. The prison of Carcassonne seems to have been
almost as deadly. In the _auto_ of 1325 we find a lot of four similar
cases, and in that of 1328 there are five. It is only under these
peculiar circumstances that we have any chance of guessing at the deaths
which occurred in prison, and from these scattered indications we can
assume that the insanitary condition of the jails worked its inevitable
result without human interference.[452]
* * * * *
Imprisonment was naturally the most frequent penance inflicted by the
inquisitors. In Bernard Gui's Register of Sentences, comprising his
operations between 1308 and 1322, there are six hundred and thirty-six
condemnations recorded, which may be thus classified:
Delivered to the secular court and burned 40
Bones exhumed and burned 67
Imprisoned 300
Bones exhumed of those who would have been imprisoned 21
Condemned to wear crosses 138
Condemned to perform pilgrimages 16
Banished to Holy Land 1
Fugitives 36
Condemnation of the Talmud 1
Houses to be destroyed 16
---
636
and this may presumably be taken as a fair measure of the comparative
frequency of the several punishments in use.
* * * * *
One peculiarity of the inquisitorial sentence remains to be noted. It
always ended with a reservation of power to modify, to mitigate, to
increase, and to reimpose at discretion. As early as 1244 the Council of
Narbonne instructed the inquisitors always to reserve this power, and it
became established as an invariable custom. Even without its formal
expression, Innocent IV., in 1245, conferred on the inquisitors, acting
with the advice and consent of the bishop of the penitent, authority to
modify the penance imposed. The bishop, in fact, usually concurred in
these alterations of sentences, but Zanchini informs us that though his
assent should be asked, it was not essential, except in the case of
clerks. The inquisitor, however, had no power to grant absolute pardons,
which was reserved exclusively to the pope. The sin of heresy was so
indelible that no authority short of the vicegerent of God could wash it
out completely.[453]
This power to mitigate sentences was frequently exercised. It served as
a stimulus to the penitents to give evidence by their deportment of the
sincerity of their conversion, and, perhaps, also, it was occasionally
of benefit as a means of depleting overcrowded jails. Thus in Bernard
Gui's Register of Sentences there occur one hundred and nineteen cases
of release from prison, with the obligation to wear the crosses, and of
these fifty-one were subsequently relieved from the crosses. Besides
these latter, there are also eighty-seven cases in which those
originally condemned to crosses were permitted to lay them aside. This
mercy was not peculiar to the Inquisition of Toulouse. In 1328, in a
single sentence, twenty-three persons were released from the prison of
Carcassone, their penance being commuted to crosses, pilgrimages, and
other observances. What the measure of mercy was in such cases may be
guessed from another sentence of commutation at Carcassonne in 1329,
liberating ten penitents, among them the Baroness of Montréal. They were
required to wear the yellow crosses for life and to perform twenty-one
pilgrimages, embracing shrines as distant as Rome, Compostella,
Canterbury, and Cologne. They were to hear mass every Sunday and
feast-day during life, and present themselves with rods to the
officiating priest and receive the discipline in the face of the
congregation; and also to accompany all processions and be similarly
disciplined at the final station. Existence under such conditions might
well be regarded as a doubtful blessing.[454]
These mitigatory sentences, moreover, like the original ones, strictly
reserved the power of alteration and reimposition, with or without
cause. When the Inquisition once laid hands upon a man it never released
its hold, and its utmost mercy was merely a ticket-of-leave. Just as no
verdict of acquittal ever was issued, so the Council of Béziers, in
1246, and Innocent IV., in 1247, told the inquisitors that when they
liberated a prisoner he was to be warned that the slightest cause of
suspicion would lead him to be punished without mercy, and that they
must retain the right to incarcerate him again without the formality of
a fresh trial or sentence if the interest of the faith required. These
conditions were observed in the formularies and enjoined in the manuals
of practice. The penitent was made to understand fully that whatever
liberty he enjoyed was subject to the arbitrary discretion of his judge,
who could recall him to dungeon or fetters at any moment, and in his
oath of abjuration he pledged his person and all his property to appear
at once whenever he might be summoned. If Bernard Gui in his Formulary
gives a draft of pardon for person and property and disabilities of
heirs, he adds a caution that it is never, or most rarely, to be used.
When some great object was to be attained, such as the capture of a
prominent heretic teacher, the inquisitors might stretch their authority
and hold out promises of this kind to his disciples to induce them to
betray him--promises which, it is pleasant to say, were almost
universally spurned. If special penances had been imposed, on their
fulfilment the inquisitor, if he saw fit, might declare the penitent to
be a man of good character, but this did not alter the reservation in
the original sentence. The mercy of the Inquisition did not extend to a
pardon, but only to a reprieve, _dum bene se gesserit_, and the man who
had once undergone a sentence never knew at what moment he might not be
summoned to hear of its reimposition or even of a harsher one. Once a
delinquent, his fate forever after was in the hands of the silent and
mysterious judge who need not hear him nor give any reason for his
destruction. He lived forever on the verge of ruin, never knowing when
the blow might fall, and utterly powerless to avert it. He was always a
subject to be watched by the universal police of the Inquisition--the
parish priest, the monks, the clergy, nay, the whole population--who
were strictly enjoined to report any neglect of penance or suspicious
conduct, when he was at once liable to the awful penalties of relapse.
Nothing was easier for a secret enemy than to destroy him, safe that his
name would never be mentioned. We may pity the victims of the stake and
the dungeon, but their fate was scarce harder than that of the
multitudes who were the objects of the Inquisition's apparent mercy, but
whose existence from that hour was one of endless, hopeless
anxiety.[455]
The same implacability manifested itself after death. Allusion has
frequently been made to the exhumation of the bones of those who by
opportunely dying had seemed to exchange the vengeance of man for that
of God, and it is only necessary to mention here that the fate of the
dead was harder than that of the living. If he had died after confession
and repentance, it is true, his punishment was only that which he would
have received if alive, the digging up replacing imprisonment, and his
heirs being forced to perform or compound for any lighter penance; but
if he had not confessed and there was evidence of heresy he was classed
with the impenitent heretics, his remains were delivered to the secular
arm, and his property hopelessly confiscated. This will account for the
large number of these executions as shown in the records quoted above.
If the secular authorities hesitated to perform the task of exhumation,
they were coerced with excommunication.[456]
The same spirit pursued the descendants. In the Roman law the crime of
treason was pursued with merciless vindictiveness, and its provisions
are constantly quoted by the canon lawyers as precedents for the
punishment of heresy, with the addition that treason to God is far more
heinous than that to an earthly sovereign. It was, perhaps, natural that
the churchman, in his eagerness to defend the kingdom of God, should
follow and surpass the example of the emperors, and this will explain,
if it may not justify, much that is abhorrent in the inquisitorial
procedure. In the Code of Justinian, treason is made especially odious
by inflicting on the sons disability to hold office and to succeed to
collateral estates. By the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, even
spontaneously converted heretics were declared ineligible to public
office. It was natural, therefore, that Frederic II. should apply the
Roman practice to heresy, and should extend its provision to
grandchildren. This, like the rest of his legislation, was eagerly
adopted and enforced by the Church. Alexander IV., however, in a bull of
1257, repeatedly reissued by his successors, explained that this did not
apply in cases where the culprit had made amends and performed penance,
and this was still further lightened by Boniface VIII., who removed the
incapacity from grandchildren by the female line of those who had died
in heresy. In this form it remained permanently in the canon law.[457]
The Inquisition depended so much upon secular officials for assistance
that there was some justification in its seeking to prevent those who
might be suspected of sympathizing with heresy from holding office in
which they could thwart its plans and aid the offender. Yet as there was
no prescription of time as to proceedings against the dead, so was there
none in invoking disabilities against their descendants, and the records
of the Inquisition were an inexhaustible treasury of torment for those
who were in any way connected with heresy. No one, in fact, could feel
sure that evidence might not at any moment be discovered or manufactured
against some long-deceased parent or grandparent, which would ruin his
career, and that some industrious searcher into the archives might not
find some blot on his genealogical tree. In 1288 Philippe le Bel writes
to the Seneschal of Carcassonne that Raymond Vitalis of Avignon is
exercising the office of notary in Carcassonne, though his maternal
grandfather, Roger Isarn, is said to have been burned for heresy. If
this is the fact, the seneschal is ordered to deprive him of the
position. In 1292 Guiraud d'Auterive, a sergeant-at-arms of the king,
was proceeded against on the same grounds, and we find Guillem de S.
Seine, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, furnishing to the royal procureur
evidence that, in 1256, Guiraud's father and mother had confessed to
acts of heresy, and that, in 1276, his uncle, Raymond Carbonnel, had
been burned as a perfected heretic. In these cases we see the royal
power invoked for the dismissal of the official, but in the perfected
theory of the Inquisition the inquisitor had the power to deprive of
office any one whose father or grandfather had been a heretic or
defender of heretics. In order to avoid questions like these, when a
penitent had fulfilled his penance, prudent children would take out
letters declaratory of the fact, so as to have evidence of capacity to
hold office. In special cases the inquisitor had power to relieve
descendants of these disabilities, and this was occasionally done; but,
like the remission of penance, this relief was only a suspension, liable
at any moment to forfeiture on the slightest manifestation of heretical
tendencies.[458]
Underlying all these sentences was another on which they, and, indeed,
the whole power of the Inquisition, were based in last resort--the
sentence of excommunication. Theoretically the censures of the
Inquisition might be the same as those of any other ecclesiastics
authorized to cut men off from salvation, but the latter had so
habitually abused their functions that the anathema, in the mouth of
priests who were neither feared nor respected, lost, at times at least,
its awe-inspiring authority. The censures of the Inquisition were in the
hands of a smaller body of men, selected for their implacable vigor, and
no one ever disregarded them with impunity. The secular authorities,
moreover, were bound to put to the ban and confiscate the property of
any one whom the inquisitor might excommunicate for heresy or
fautorship. In fact, as the inquisitors were fond of boasting, their
curse was stronger in four ways than that of the secular clergy. They
could coerce the temporal government to outlaw the excommunicate; they
could force it to confiscate his property; they could condemn any one
remaining under excommunication for a year; and they could inflict the
major excommunication upon any one communicating with their
excommunicates.[459] Thus they enforced obedience to their citations and
submission to their penances. Thus they made the secular power execute
their sentences; thus they swept aside the statutes that interfered with
their proceedings; thus they proved that the kingdom of God which they
represented was superior to the kingdoms of earth. Of all
excommunications that of the inquisitor worked the speediest vengeance
and inspired the sharpest terror, and the boldest shrank from provoking
it.