CHAPTER XIV.

THE STAKE.

Like confiscation, the death-penalty was a matter with which the

Inquisition had theoretically no concern. It exhausted every effort to

bring the heretic back to the bosom of the Church. If he proved

obdurate, or if his conversion was evidently feigned, it could do no

more. As a non-Catholic, he was no longer amenable to the spiritual

jurisdiction of a Church which he did not recognize, and all that it

could do was to declare him a heretic and withdraw its protection. In

the earlier periods the sentence thus is simply a condemnation as a

heretic, accompanied by excommunication, or it merely states that the

offender is no longer considered as subject to the jurisdiction of the

Church. Sometimes there is the addition that he is abandoned to secular

judgment--"relaxed," according to the terrible euphemism which assumed

that he was simply discharged from custody. When the formulas had become

more perfected there is frequently the explanatory remark that the

Church has nothing left to do to him for his demerits; and the

relinquishment to the secular arm is accompanied with the significant

addition "_debita animadversione puniendum_"--that he is to be duly

punished by it. The adjuration that this punishment, in accordance with

the canonical sanctions, shall not imperil life or limb, or shall not

cause death or effusion of blood, does not appear in the earlier

sentences, and was not universal even at a later period.[501]

That this appeal for mercy was the merest form is admitted by Pegna, who

explains that it was used only that the inquisitors might seem not to

consent to the effusion of blood, and thus avoid incurring

"irregularity." The Church took good care that the nature of the request

should not be misapprehended. It taught that in such cases all mercy was

misplaced unless the heretic became a convert, and proved his sincerity

by denouncing all his fellows. The remorseless logic of St. Thomas

Aquinas rendered it self-evident that the secular power could not escape

the duty of putting the heretic to death, and that it was only the

exceeding kindness of the Church that led it to give the criminal two

warnings before handing him over to meet his fate. The inquisitors

themselves had no scruples on the subject, and condescended to no

subterfuges respecting it, but always held that their condemnation of a

heretic was a sentence of death. They showed this in averting the

pollution of a Church by not uttering these sentences within the sacred

precincts, this portion of the ceremony of an _auto de fé_ being

performed in the public square. One of their teachers in the thirteenth

century, copied by Bernard Gui in the fourteenth, argues: "The object of

the Inquisition is the destruction of heresy. Heresy cannot be destroyed

unless heretics are destroyed: heretics cannot be destroyed unless their

defenders and fautors are destroyed, and this is effected in two ways,

viz., when they are converted to the true Catholic faith, or when, on

being abandoned to the secular arm, they are corporally burned." In the

next century, Fray Alonso de Spina points out that they are not to be

delivered up to extermination without warning once and again, unless,

indeed, their growth threatens trouble to the Church, when they are to

be extirpated without delay or examination. Under these teachings the

secular powers naturally recognized that in burning heretics they were

only obeying the commands of the Inquisition. In a commission issued by

Philippe le Bon of Burgundy, November 9, 1431, ordering his officials to

render obedience to Friar Kaleyser, recently appointed Inquisitor of

Lille and Cambrai, among the duties enumerated is that of inflicting due

punishment on heretics "as he shall decree, and as is customary." In the

accounts of the royal _procureurs des encours_, the cost of these

executions in Languedoc was charged against the proceeds of the

confiscations as part of the expenses of the Inquisition, thus showing

that they were not regarded as ordinary incidents of criminal justice,

to be defrayed out of the ordinary revenues, but as peculiarly connected

with and dependent upon the operations of the Inquisition, of which the

royal officials only acted as ministers. The Inquisitor Sprenger had no

hesitation in alluding to the victims whom he caused to be

burned--"_quas incinerari fecimus_." In fact, how modern is the

pretension that the Church was not responsible for the atrocity is

apparent when, as late as the seventeenth century, the learned Cardinal

Albizio, in controverting Frà Paolo as to the control of the Inquisition

by the State in Venice, had no scruple in asserting that "the

inquisitors in conducting the trials, regularly came to the sentence,

and if it was one of death it was immediately and necessarily put into

execution by the doge and the senate."[502]

We have already seen that the Church was responsible for the enactment

of the ferocious laws punishing heresy with death, and that she

intervened authoritatively to annul any secular statutes which should

interfere with the prompt and effective application of the penalties. In

the same way, as we have also seen, she provided against any negligence

or laxity on the part of the magistrates in executing the sentences

pronounced by the inquisitors. According to the universal belief of the

period, this was her plainest and highest duty, and she did not shrink

from it. Boniface VIII. only recorded the current practice when he

embodied in the canon law the provision whereby the secular authorities

were commanded to punish duly and promptly all who were handed over to

them by the inquisitors, under pain of excommunication, which became

heresy if endured for a twelvemonth, and the inquisitors were rigidly

instructed to proceed against all magistrates who proved recalcitrant,

while they were at the same time cautioned only to speak of executing

the laws without specifically mentioning the penalty, in order to avoid

falling into "irregularity," though the only punishment recognized by

the Church as sufficient for heresy was burning alive. Even if the ruler

was excommunicated and incapable of legally performing any other

function, he was not relieved from the obligation of this supreme duty,

with which nothing was allowed to interfere. Indeed, authorities were

found to argue that if an inquisitor were obliged to execute the

sentence himself he would not thereby incur irregularity.[503]

We are not to imagine, however, from these reduplicated commands that

the secular power, as a rule, showed itself in the slightest degree

disinclined to perform the duty. The teachings of the Church had made

too profound an impression for any doubt in the premises to exist. As

has been seen above, the laws of all the states of Europe prescribed

concremation as the appropriate penalty for heresy, and even the free

commonwealths of Italy recognized the Inquisition as the judge whose

sentences were to be blindly executed. Raymond of Toulouse himself, in

the fit of piety which preceded his death in 1249, caused eighty

believers in heresy to be burned at Berlaiges, near Agen, after they had

confessed in his presence, apparently without giving them the

opportunity of recanting. From the contemporary sentences of Bernard de

Caux, it is probable that, had these unfortunates been tried before that

ardent champion of the faith, not one of them would have been condemned

to the stake as impenitent. Quite as significant was the suit brought by

the Maréchal de Mirepoix against the Seneschal of Carcassonne, because

the latter had invaded his right to burn for himself all his subjects

condemned as heretics by the Inquisition. In 1269 the Parlement of Paris

decided the case in his favor, after which, on March 18, 1270, the

seneschal acceded to his demand that the bones of seven men and three

women of his territories, recently burned at Carcassonne, should be

solemnly surrendered to him in recognition of his right; or, if they

could not be found and identified, then, as substitutes, ten canvas bags

filled with straw--a ghastly symbolic ceremony which was actually

performed two days later, and a formal notarial act executed in

attestation of it. Yet, though the De Levis of Mirepoix rejoiced in the

title of Maréchaux de la Foi, it is not to be assumed that this

eagerness arose wholly from bloodthirsty fanaticism, for there was

nothing to which the seigneur-justicier clung more jealously than to

every detail of his jurisdiction. A similar dispute arose in 1309, when

the Count of Foix claimed the right to burn the Catharan heresiarch,

Jacques Autier, and a woman named Guillelma Cristola, condemned by

Bernard Gui, because they were his subjects, but the royal officials

maintained their master's privileges in the premises, and the suit

thence arising was still pending in 1326. So at Narbonne, where there

was a long-standing dispute between the archbishop and the viscount as

to the jurisdiction, and where, in 1319, the former in conjunction with

the inquisitor Jean de Beaune relaxed three heretics, he claimed for his

court the right to burn them. The commune, as representing the viscount,

resisted this, and the hideous quarrel was only settled by the

representative of the king stepping in and performing the act. In so

doing, however, he carefully specified that it was not to work prejudice

to either party, while to the end the archbishop protested against the

intrusion upon his rights.[504]

If, however, from any cause, the secular authorities were reluctant to

execute the death-sentence, the Church had little ceremony in putting

forth its powers to coerce obedience. When, for instance, the first

resistance in Toulouse had been broken down and the Holy Office had been

reinstated there, the inquisitors, in 1237, condemned six men and women

as heretics; but the viguier and consuls refused to receive the

convicts, to confiscate their property, and "to do with them what was

customary to be done with heretics"--that is, to burn them alive.

Thereupon the inquisitors, after counselling with the bishop, the Abbot

du Mas, the Provost of St. Étienne, and the Prior of La Daurade,

proceeded to excommunicate solemnly the recalcitrant officials in the

Cathedral of St. Étienne. In 1288 Nicholas IV. lamented the neglect and

covert opposition with which in many places the secular authorities

evaded the execution of the inquisitorial sentences, and directed that

they should be punished with excommunication and deprivation of office

and their communities be subjected to interdict. In 1458, at Strassburg,

the Burgermeister, Hans Drachenfels, and his colleagues refused at first

to burn the Hussite missionary Frederic Reiser and his servant Anna

Weiler, but their resistance was overcome and they were finally forced

to execute the sentence. Thirty years later, in 1486, the magistrates of

Brescia objected to burning certain witches of both sexes condemned by

the Inquisition, unless they should be permitted to examine the

proceedings. This was held to be flat rebellion. Civil lawyers, it is

true, had endeavored to prove that the secular authorities had a right

to see the papers, but the inquisitors had succeeded in having this

claim rejected. Innocent VIII. promptly declared the Venetian demands to

be a scandal to the faith, and he ordered the excommunication of the

magistrates if within six days they did not execute the convicts, any

municipal statutes to the contrary being pronounced null and void--a

decision which was held to give the secular courts six days in which to

carry out the sentence of condemnation. A more stubborn contest arose in

1521, when the Inquisition endeavored to purge the dioceses of both

Brescia and Bergamo of the witches who still infested them. The

inquisitor and episcopal ordinaries proceeded against them vigorously,

but the Signiory of Venice interposed and appealed to Leo X., who

appointed his nuncio at Venice to revise the trials. The latter

delegated his power to the Bishop of Justinopolis, who proceeded with

the inquisitor and ordinaries to the Valcamonica of Brescia, where the

so-called heretics were numerous, and condemned some of them to be

relaxed to the secular arm. Still dissatisfied, the Venetian Senate

ordered the Governor of Brescia not to execute the sentences or to

permit them to be executed, or to pay the expenses of the proceedings,

but to send the papers to Venice for revision, and to compel the Bishop

of Justinopolis to appear before them, which he was obliged to do. This

inflamed the papal indignation to the highest pitch. Leo X. warmly

assured the inquisitor and the episcopal officials that they had full

jurisdiction over the culprits, that their sentences were to be

executed without revision or examination, and that they must enforce

these rights with the free use of ecclesiastical censures. The spirit of

the age, however, was insubordinate, and Venice had always been

peculiarly so in all matters connected with the Holy Office. We shall

see hereafter how the Council of Ten undauntedly held its position and

asserted the superiority of its jurisdiction in a manner previously

unexampled.[505]

In view of this unvarying policy of the Church during the three

centuries under consideration, and for a century and a half later, there

is a typical instance of the manner in which history is written to

order, in the quiet assertion of the latest Catholic historian of the

Inquisition that "the Church took no part in the corporal punishment of

heretics. Those who perished miserably were only chastised for their

crimes, sentenced by judges invested with the royal jurisdiction. The

record of the excesses committed by the heretics of Bulgaria, by the

Gnostics and Manichæans, is historical, and capital punishment was only

inflicted on criminals confessing to robbery, assassination, and

violence. The Albigenses were treated with equal benignity; ... the

Catholic Church deplored all acts of vengeance, however great was the

provocation given by the ferocity of those factious masses." So

completely, in truth, was the Church convinced of its duty to see that

all heretics were burned that, at the Council of Constance, the

eighteenth article of heresy charged against John Huss was that, in his

treatise _de Ecclesia_, he had taught that no heretic ought to be

abandoned to secular judgment to be punished with death. In his defence

even Huss admitted that a heretic who could not be mildly led from error

ought to suffer bodily punishment; and when a passage was read from his

book in which those who deliver an unconvicted heretic to the secular

arm are compared to the Scribes and Pharisees who delivered Christ to

Pilate, the assembly broke out into a storm of objurgation, during which

even the sturdy reformer, Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, was heard to

exclaim, "Verily those who drew up the articles were most moderate, for

his writings are much more atrocious."[506]

The continuous teachings of the Church led its best men to regard no act

as more self-evidently just than the burning of the heretic, and no

heresy less defensible than a demand for toleration. Even Chancellor

Gerson himself could see nothing else to be done with those who

pertinaciously adhered to error, even in matters not at present

explicitly articles necessary to the faith.[507] The fact is, the Church

not only defined the guilt and forced its punishment, but created the

crime itself. As we shall see, under Nicholas IV. and Celestine V., the

strict Franciscans were pre-eminently orthodox; but when John XXII.

stigmatized as heretical the belief that Christ lived in absolute

poverty, he transformed them into unpardonable criminals whom the

temporal officials were bound to send to the stake, under pain of being

themselves treated as heretics.

* * * * *

There was thus a universal consensus of opinion that there was nothing

to do with a heretic but to burn him. The heretic as known to the laws,

both secular and ecclesiastical, was he who not only admitted his

heretical belief, but defended it and refused to recant. He was

obstinate and impenitent; the Church could do nothing with him, and as

soon as the secular lawgivers had provided for his guilt the awful

punishment of the stake, there was no hesitation in handing him over to

the temporal jurisdiction to endure it. All authorities unite in this,

and the annals of the Inquisition can vainly be searched for an

exception. Yet this was regarded by the inquisitor as a last resort. To

say nothing of the saving of a soul, a convert who would betray his

friends was more useful than a roasted corpse, and, as we have seen, no

effort was spared to obtain recantation. Experience had shown that such

zealots were often eager for martyrdom and desired to be speedily

burned, and it was no part of the inquisitor's pleasure to gratify them.

He was advised that this ardor frequently gave way under time and

suffering, and therefore he was told to keep the obstinate and defiant

heretic chained in a dungeon for six months or a year in utter

solitude, save when a dozen theologians and legists should be let in

upon him to labor for his conversion, or his wife and children be

admitted to work upon his heart. It was not until all this had been

tried and failed that he was to be relaxed. Even then the execution was

postponed for a day to give further opportunity for recantation, which,

we are told, rarely happened, for those who went thus far usually

persevered to the end; but if his resolution gave way and he professed

repentance, his conversion was presumed to be the work of fear rather

than of grace, and he was to be strictly imprisoned for life. Even at

the stake his offer to abjure ought not to be refused, though there was

no absolute rule as to this, and there could be little hope of the

genuineness of such conversion. Eymerich relates a case occurring at

Barcelona when three heretics were burned, and one of them, a priest,

after being scorched on one side, cried out that he would recant. He was

removed and abjured, but fourteen years later was found to have

persisted in heresy and to have infected many others, when he was

despatched without more ado.[508]

The obstinate heretic who preferred martyrdom to apostasy was by no

means the sole victim doomed to the stake. The secular lawgiver had

provided this punishment for heresy, but had left to the Church its

definition, and the definition was enlarged to serve as a gentle

persuasive that should supplement all deficiencies in the inquisitorial

process. Where testimony deemed sufficient existed, persistent denial

only aggravated guilt, and the profession of orthodoxy was of no avail.

If two witnesses swore to having seen a man "adore" a perfected heretic

it was enough, and no declaration of readiness to subscribe to all the

tenets of Rome availed him, without confession, abjuration, recantation,

and acceptance of penance. Such a one was a heretic, to be pitilessly

burned. It was the same with the contumacious who did not obey the

summons to stand trial. Persistent refusal of the oath was likewise

technical heresy, condemning the recalcitrant to the stake. Even when

there was no proof, simple suspicion became heresy if the suspect

failed to purge himself with conjurators and remained so for a year. In

violent suspicion, refusal to abjure worked the same result in a

twelvemonth. A retracted confession was similarly regarded. In short,

the stake supplied all defects. It was the _ultima ratio_, and although

not many cases have reached us in which executions actually occurred on

these grounds, there is no doubt that such provisions were of the utmost

utility in practice, and that the terror which they inspired extorted

many a confession, true or false, from unwilling lips.[509]

There was another class of cases, however, which gave the inquisitors

much trouble, and in which they were long in settling upon a definite

and uniform course of procedure. The innumerable forced conversions

wrought by the dungeon and stake filled the prisons and the land with

those whose outward conformity left them at heart no less heretics than

before. I have elsewhere spoken of the all-pervading police of the Holy

Office and of the watchfulness exercised over the converts whose

liberation at best was but a ticket-of-leave. That cases of relapse into

heresy should be constant was therefore a matter of course. Even in the

jails it was impossible to segregate all the prisoners, and complaints

are frequent of these wolves in sheep's clothing who infected their more

innocent fellow-captives. A man whose solemn conversion had once been

proved fraudulent could never again be trusted. He was an incorrigible

heretic whom the Church could no longer hope to win over. On him mercy

was wasted, and the stake was the only resource. Yet it is creditable to

the Inquisition that it was so long in reducing to practice this

self-evident proposition.

As early as 1184 the Verona decree of Lucius III. provides that those

who, after abjuration, relapse into the abjured heresy shall be

delivered to the secular courts, without even the opportunity of being

heard. The Ravenna edict of Frederic II., in 1232, prescribed death for

all who, by relapse, showed that their conversion had been a pretext to

escape the penalty of heresy. In 1244 the Council of Narbonne alludes to

the great multitude of such cases, and, following Lucius III., orders

them to be relaxed without a hearing. Yet these stern mandates were not

enforced. In 1233 we find Gregory IX. contenting himself with

prescribing perpetual imprisonment for such cases, which he speaks of as

being already numerous. In a single sentence of February 10, 1237, the

inquisitors of Toulouse condemn seventeen relapsed heretics to perpetual

imprisonment. Raymond de Pennaforte, at the Council of Tarragona, in

1242, alludes to the diversity of opinion on the subject, and pronounces

in favor of imprisonment; and, in 1246, the Council of Béziers, in

giving similar instructions, speaks of them as being in accordance with

the apostolic mandates. Even this degree of severity was not always

inflicted. In 1242 Pierre Cella only prescribes pilgrimages and crosses

for such offenders, and, in a case occurring in Florence in 1245, Frà

Ruggieri Calcagni lets off the culprit with a not extravagant fine.[510]

What to do with these multitudes of false converts was evidently a

question which perplexed the Church no little, and, as usual, a

solution, at least for the time, was found in leaving the matter to the

discretion of the inquisitors. In answer to the inquiries of the Lombard

Holy Office, the Cardinal of Albano, about 1245, tells the officials to

make use of such penalties as they shall deem appropriate. In 1248

Bernard de Caux asked the same question of the Archbishop of Narbonne,

and was told that, according to the "apostolic mandates," those who

returned to the Church a second time, humbly and obediently, might be

let off with perpetual imprisonment, while those who were disobedient

should be abandoned to the secular arm. Under these instructions the

practice varied, though it is pleasant to be able to say that, in the

vast majority of cases, the inquisitors leaned to the side of mercy.

Even the ardent zeal of Bernard de Caux allowed him to use his

discretion gently. In his register of sentences, from 1246 to 1248,

there are sixty cases of relapse, none of which are punished more

severely than by imprisonment, and in some of them the confinement is

not perpetual. The same lenity is observable in various sentences

rendered during the next ten years, both by him and by other

inquisitors. Yet, with one exception, the codes of instruction which

date about this period assume that relapse is always to be visited with

relaxation, and that the offender is to have no hearing in his defence.

In the exceptional instance the compiler illustrates the uncertainty

which existed by sometimes treating relapse as punishable with

imprisonment and sometimes as entailing the stake. Relapse into usury,

however, was let off with the lighter alternative. The fact is that in

Languedoc, under the Treaty of Paris, as stated above, an oath of

abjuration was administered every two years to all males over fourteen

and all females over twelve, and any subsequent act of heresy was

technically a relapse. This, perhaps, explains the indecision of the

inquisitors of Toulouse. It was impossible to burn all such cases.[511]

Whatever be the cause, there evidently was considerable doubt in the

minds of inquisitors as to the penalty of relapse, and it must be

recorded to their credit that in this they were more merciful than the

current public opinion of the age. Jean de Saint-Pierre, the colleague

and successor of Bernard de Caux, followed his example in always

condemning the relapsed to imprisonment, and when, after Bernard's

death, in 1252, Frère Renaud de Chartres was adjoined to him, the same

rule continued to be observed. Frère Renaud found, however, to his

horror, that the secular judges disregarded the sentence and mercilessly

burned the unhappy victims, and that this had been going on under his

predecessors. The civil authorities defended their course by arguing

that in no other way could the land be purged of heresy, which was

acquiring new force under the mistaken lenity of the inquisitors. Frère

Renaud felt that he could not overlook this cruelty in silence as his

predecessors had done. He therefore reported the facts to Alphonse of

Poitiers, and informed him that he proposed to refer the matter to the

pope, pending whose answer he would keep his prisoners secure from the

brutal violence of the secular officials.[512]

What was the papal response we can only conjecture, but it doubtless

leaned rather to the rigorous zeal of Alphonse's officials than to the

milder methods of Frère Renaud, for it was about this time that Rome

definitely decided for the unconditional relaxation of all who were

guilty of relapsing into heresy which had once been abjured. The precise

date of this I have not been able to determine. In 1254 Innocent IV.

contents himself, in a very aggravated case of double relapse occurring

in Milan, with ordering destruction of houses and public penance, but in

1258 relaxation for relapse is alluded to by Alexander IV. as a matter

previously irrevocably settled--possibly by the very appeal of Frère

Renaud. It seems to have taken the inquisitors somewhat by surprise, and

for several years they continued to trouble the Holy See with the

pertinent question of how such a rule was to be reconciled with the

universally received maxim that the Church never closes her bosom to her

wayward children seeking to return. To this the characteristic

explanation was given that the Church was not closed to them, for if

they showed signs of penitence they might receive the Eucharist, even at

the stake, but without escaping death. In this shape the decision was

embodied in the canon law, and made a part of orthodox doctrine in the

Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas. The promise of the Eucharist frequently

formed part of the sentence in these cases, and the victim was always

accompanied to execution by holy men striving to save his soul until the

last--though it is shrewdly advised that the inquisitor himself had

better not exhibit his zeal in this way, as his appearance will be more

likely to excite hardening than softening of the heart.[513]

Although inquisitors continued to assume discretion in these cases and

did not by any means invariably send the relapsed to the stake, still

relapse became the main cause of capital punishment. Defiant heretics

courting martyrdom were comparatively rare, but there were many poor

souls who could not abandon conscientiously the errors which they had

cherished, and who vainly hoped, after escaping once, to be able to hide

their guilt more effectually.[514] All this gave a fresh importance to

the question of what legally constituted relapse, and led to endless

definitions and subtleties. It became necessary to determine with some

precision, when the offender was refused a hearing, the exact amount of

criminality in both the first and second offences, which would justify

condemnation for impenitent heresy. Where guilt was ofttimes so shadowy

and impalpable, this was evidently no easy matter.

There were cases in which a first trial had only developed suspicion

without proof, and it seemed hard to condemn a man to death for an

assumed second offence when he had not been proved guilty of the first.

Hesitating to do so, the inquisitors applied to Alexander IV. to resolve

their doubts, and he answered in the most positive manner. When the

suspicion had been "violent" he said, it was "by a sort of legal

fiction" to be held as legal proof of guilt, and the accused was to be

condemned. When it was "light" he was to be punished more heavily than

for a first offence, but not with the full penalty of relapse. Moreover,

the evidence required to prove the second offence was of the slightest;

any communication with or kindness shown to heretics sufficed. This

decision was repeated by Alexander and his successors with a frequency

which shows how doubtful and puzzling were the points which came up for

discussion, but the rule of condemnation was finally carried into the

canon law and became the unalterable policy of the Church. The

authorities, except Zanghino, agree that in such cases there was no room

for mercy.[515]

Besides these enigmas there were others respecting forms of guilt which

might reasonably be regarded as less deserving of the last resort. Thus

relapse into fautorship gave rise to considerable divergence of views.

The Council of Narbonne, in 1244, was of opinion that those guilty of

this offence should be sent to the pope for absolution and the

imposition of penance--a cumbrous procedure, not likely to find favor.

During the middle period of the Inquisition, the authorities, including

Bernard Gui, while not prescribing relaxation to the secular arm,

suggest that penance be imposed sufficiently severe to inspire wholesome

fear in others; while, towards the end of the fourteenth century,

Eymerich holds that a relapsed fautor is to be abandoned to secular

justice without a hearing. Even those defamed for heresy, if after due

purgation they again incur defamation, are strictly liable to the same

fate, though this was so hard a measure that Eymerich proposes that such

cases should be referred to the pope.[516]

There was another class of offenders who gave the inquisitors endless

trouble, and for whom it was difficult to frame rigid and invariable

rules--those who escaped from prison or omitted to fulfil the penances

assigned to them. According to theory, all penitents were converts to

the true faith who eagerly accepted penance as their sole hope of

salvation. To reject it subsequently was therefore an evidence that the

conversion had been feigned or that the inconstant soul had reverted to

its former errors, as otherwise the loving and wholesome discipline of

the benignant Mother Church would not be spurned. From the beginning,

therefore, these culprits were classed with the relapsed. In 1248 the

Council of Valence ordered them to have the benefit of a warning, after

which further persistence in disobedience rendered them liable to the

full penalty of obstinate heresy; and this was sometimes provided for in

the sentence itself, by a clause which warned them that any disregard of

the observances enjoined would expose them to the fate of perjured and

impenitent heretics. Yet as late as 1260 Alexander IV. seems at a loss

what rule to prescribe in such cases, and merely talks vaguely of

excommunication and reimposition of the penalties, with the assistance,

if necessary, of the secular authorities. Yet about the same period Gui

Foucoix pronounced in favor of the death-penalty for these offenders,

arguing that the offence proved impenitent heresy; but Bernard Gui held

this to be too severe, and advised leaving them to the discretion of

the inquisitor--a discretion which he himself had no hesitation in

exercising. The two most frequent varieties of the offence were laying

aside the yellow crosses and prison-breaking. The former was never, so

far as I have seen, punished with death, though visited with penalties

sufficiently sharp to serve as a deterrent. The latter, according to the

later inquisitors, was capital--the escaped prisoner was a relapsed

heretic, to be burned without a hearing. Some jurists argued that a

failure fully to betray all heretics of whom the convert had

knowledge--a pledge to do so forming a necessary part of the oath of

abjuration--constituted relapse, but Bernard Gui regards this as unduly

harsh. Absolute refusal to perform the penance enjoined was, of course,

evidence of obstinate heresy, leading inevitably to the stake. Such

cases were naturally rare, for penance was only prescribed for those who

had confessed, had professed conversion, and had asked for

reconciliation; but there is one on record of a woman, in the latter

half of the fifteenth century, before the Inquisition of Cartagena, who

was duly abandoned to the secular arm.[517]

* * * * *

Notwithstanding these extensions of the death-penalty, I am convinced

that the number of victims who actually perished at the stake is

considerably less than has ordinarily been imagined. The deliberate

burning alive of a human being, simply for difference of belief, is an

atrocity so dramatic and appeals so strongly to the imagination that it

has come to be regarded as the leading feature in the activity of the

Inquisition. Yet, frequent as recourse to the stake undoubtedly was, it

formed but a comparatively small part of the instrumentalities of

repression. The records of those evil days have mostly disappeared, and

there is now no possibility of reconstructing their statistics, but if

this could be done I have no doubt that the actual executions by fire

would excite surprise by falling far short of the popular estimate.

Imagination has grown inflamed at the manifold iniquities of the Holy

Office, and has been ready to accept without examination exaggerations

which have become habitual. No one can suspect the learned Dom Brial of

prejudice or of ordinary lack of accuracy, and yet in his Preface to

Vol. XXI. of the "Recueil des Historiens des Gaules" (p. xxiii.), he

quotes as trustworthy an assertion that Bernard Gui, during his service

as Inquisitor of Toulouse from 1308 to 1323, put to death no less than

six hundred and thirty-seven heretics. Now that, as we have seen, was

the total number of sentences uttered by the tribunal during those

years, and of these sentences only forty were capital--in addition to

sixty-seven dead heretics condemned to be exhumed and burned, for the

most part because they were not alive to recant. Again, no inquisitor

left behind him a more enviable record for zeal and activity in the

relentless persecution of heresy than Bernard de Caux, who labored in

the earlier period when the land was yet full of heresy, and heretics

had not yet been cowed into submissiveness. Bernard Gui characterizes

him as "a persecutor and hammer of heretics, a holy man and full of God,

... wonderful in his life, wonderful in doctrine, wonderful in

extirpating heresy;" he wrought miracles while alive, and in 1281,

twenty-eight years after his death, his body was found uncorrupted and

perfect, except part of the nose. Such a man is not to be accused of

undue tenderness towards heretics, and yet, in his register of sentences

from 1246 to 1248, there is not a single case of abandonment to the

secular arm, unless we may reckon as such the condemnations of

contumacious absentees, who were necessarily declared to be heretics.

These, indeed, were liable to be burned by the secular justice, but, in

fact, they could always save themselves by submission, and this very

register affords a very striking instance in point. There was no more

obnoxious heretic in Toulouse than Alaman de Roaix. He belonged to one

of the noblest families in the city, and one which furnished many

members to the heretic church, of which he himself was suspected of

being a bishop. In 1229 the Legate Romano had condemned him and had

imposed on him the penance of a crusade to the Holy Land, which he had

sworn to perform and never fulfilled. In 1237 the earliest inquisitors,

Guillem Arnaud and Étienne de Saint-Thibery, again took up his case,

finding him unremittingly active in protecting heretics and

disseminating heresy, spoiling, ransoming, wounding, and slaying priests

and clerks, and this time they condemned him _in absentia_. He became a

_faydit_, or proscribed man, living sword in hand and plundering the

orthodox to support himself and his friends. No more aggravated case of

obstinate heresy and persistent contumacy can well be imagined, and yet

when he acknowledged his errors, January 16, 1248, professed conversion,

and asked for penance, a score of years after his first conversion, he

was only condemned to imprisonment.[518]

In fact, as we have already seen, the earnest endeavors of the

inquisitors were directed much more to obtaining conversions with

confiscations and betrayal of friends than to provoking martyrdoms. An

occasional burning only was required to maintain a wholesome terror in

the minds of the population. With his forty cases of concremation in

fifteen years, Bernard Gui managed to crush the last convulsive struggle

of Catharism, to keep the Waldenses in check, and repress the zealous

ardor of the Spiritual Franciscans. The really effective weapons of the

Holy Office, the real curses with which it afflicted the people, can be

looked for in its dungeons and its confiscations, in the humiliating

penances of the saffron crosses, and in the invisible police with which

it benumbed the heart and soul of every man who had once fallen into its

hands.

* * * * *

A few words will suffice as to the repulsive subject of the execution

itself. When the populace was called together to view the last agonies

of the martyrs of heresy, its pious zeal was not mocked by any

ill-advised devices of mercy. The culprit was not, as in the later

Spanish Inquisition, strangled before the lighting of the fagots; nor

had the invention of gunpowder suggested the somewhat less humane

expedient of hanging a bag of that explosive around his neck to shorten

his torture when the flames should reach it. He was tied living to a

post set high enough over a pile of combustibles to enable the faithful

to watch every act of the tragedy to its awful end. Holy men accompanied

him to the last, to snatch his soul if possible from Satan; and, if he

were not a relapsed, he could, as we have seen, save also his body at

the last moment. Yet even in these final ministrations we see a fresh

illustration of the curious inconsistency with which the Church imagined

that it could shirk the responsibility of putting a human creature to

death, for the friars who accompanied the victim were strictly warned

not to exhort him to meet death promptly or to ascend firmly the ladder

leading to the stake, or to submit cheerfully to the manipulations of

the executioner, for if they did so they would be hastening his end and

thus fall into "irregularity"--a tender scruple, it must be confessed,

and one singularly out of place in those who had accomplished the

judicial murder. For these occasions a holiday was usually selected, in

order that the crowd might be larger and the lesson more effective;

while, to prevent scandal, the sufferer was silenced, lest he might

provoke the people to pity and sympathy.[519]

As for minor details, we happen to have them preserved in an account by

an eye-witness of the execution of John Huss at Constance, in 1415. He

was made to stand upon a couple of fagots and tightly bound to a thick

post with ropes, around the ankles, below the knee, above the knee, at

the groin, the waist, and under the arms. A chain was also secured

around the neck. Then it was observed that he faced the east, which was

not fitting for a heretic, and he was shifted to the west; fagots mixed

with straw were piled around him to the chin. Then the Count Palatine

Louis, who superintended the execution, approached with the Marshal of

Constance, and asked him for the last time to recant. On his refusal

they withdrew and clapped their hands, which was the signal for the

executioners to light the pile. After it had burned away there followed

the revolting process requisite to utterly destroy the half-burned

body--separating it in pieces, breaking up the bones and throwing the

fragments and the viscera on a fresh fire of logs. When, as in the cases

of Arnaldo of Brescia, some of the Spiritual Franciscans, Huss,

Savonarola, and others, it was feared that relics of the martyr would

be preserved, especial care was taken, after the fire was extinguished,

to gather up the ashes and cast them in a running stream.[520]

There is something grotesquely horrible in the contrast between this

crowning exhibition of human perversity and the cool business

calculation of the cost of thus sending a human soul through flame to

its Creator. In the accounts of Arnaud Assalit we have a statement of

the expenses of burning four heretics at Carcassonne, April 24, 1323. It

runs thus:

For large wood 55 sols 6 deniers.

For vine-branches 21 sols 3 deniers.

For straw 2 sols 6 deniers.

For four stakes 10 sols 9 deniers.

For ropes to tie the convicts 4 sols 7 deniers.

For the executioner, each 20 sols 80 sols.

-----------------

In all 8 livres 14 sols 7 deniers.

or, a little more than two livres apiece.[521]

When the heretic had eluded his tormentors by death and his body or

skeleton was dug up and burned, the ceremony was necessarily less

impressive, but nevertheless the most was made of it. As early as 1237

Guillem Pelisson, a contemporary, describes how at Toulouse a number of

nobles and others were exhumed, when "their bones and stinking corpses"

were dragged through the streets, preceded by a trumpeter proclaiming

"_Qui aytal fara, aytal perira_"--who does so shall perish so--and at

length were duly burned "in honor of God and of the blessed Mary His

mother, and the blessed Dominic His servant." This formula was preserved

to the end, and it was not economical from a pecuniary point of view. In

Assalit's accounts we find that it cost five livres nineteen sols and

six deniers, in 1323, for labor to dig up the bones of three dead

heretics, a sack and cord in which to stow them, and two horses to drag

them to the Grève, where they were burned the next day.[522]

The agency of fire was also invoked by the Inquisition to rid the land

of pestilent and heretical writings, a matter not without interest as

signalizing the commencement of its activity in what subsequently became

the censorship of the press. The burning of books displeasing to the

authorities was a custom respectable by its antiquity. Constantine, as

we have seen, demanded the surrender of all Arian works under penalty of

death. In 435 Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. ordered all Nestorian

books to be burned, and another law threatens punishment on all who will

not deliver up Manichæan writings for the same fate. Justinian condemned

the _secunda editio_, in which the glossators agree in recognizing the

Talmud. During the ages of barbarism which followed there was little to

call forth this method of repressing the human mind, but with the

revival of speculation the ancient measures were speedily again called

into use. When, in 1210, the University of Paris was agitated with the

heresy of Amaury, the writings of his colleague, David de Dinant,

together with the Physics and Metaphysics of Aristotle, to which it was

attributed, were ordered to be burned. Allusion has already been made to

the burning of Romance versions of the Scriptures by Jayme I. of Aragon

and to the commands of the Council of Narbonne, in 1229, against the

possession of any portion of Holy Writ by laymen, as well as to the

burning of William of St. Amour's book, "_De periculis_." Jewish books,

however, and particularly the Talmud, on account of its blasphemous

allusions to the Saviour and the Virgin, were the objects of special

detestation, in the suppression of which the Church was unwearying. In

the middle of the twelfth century Peter the Venerable contented himself

with studying the Talmud and holding up to contempt some of the wild

imaginings which abound in that curious compound of the sublime and the

ridiculous. His argumentative methods were not suited to the impatience

of the thirteenth century, which had committed itself to sterner

dealings with misbelievers, and the persecution of Jewish literature

followed swiftly on that of Albigenses and Waldenses. It was started by

a converted Jew named Nicholas de Rupella, who, about 1236, called the

attention of Gregory IX. to the blasphemies with which the Hebrew books

were filled, and especially the Talmud. In June, 1239, Gregory issued

letters to the Kings of England, France, Navarre, Aragon, Castile, and

Portugal, and to the prelates in those kingdoms, ordering that on a

Sabbath in the following Lent, when the Jews would be in their

synagogues, all their books should be seized and delivered to the

Mendicant Friars. A report of the examination which ensued in Paris has

been preserved, and shows that there was no difficulty in finding in the

Jewish writings abundant matter offensive to pious ears, though the

Rabbis who ventured to appear in their defence endeavored to explain

away the blasphemous allusions to the Christian Messiah, the Virgin, and

the saints. The proceedings dragged on for years, and sentence was not

finally rendered until May 13, 1248, after which Paris was edified with

the spectacle of the burning of fourteen wagon-loads at one time and of

six at another. Like the _luz_ or _os coccygis_, which the Rabbis held

to be indestructible, the Talmud could not be wiped out of existence,

and, in 1255, St. Louis, in his instructions to his seneschals in the

Narbonnais, again orders all copies to be burned, together with all

other books containing blasphemies; while in 1267 Clement IV. (Gui

Foucoix) instructed the Archbishop of Tarragona to coerce by

excommunication the King of Aragon and his nobles to force the Jews to

deliver up their Talmuds and other books to the inquisitors for

examination, when, if they contain no blasphemies, they may be returned,

but if otherwise they are to be sealed up and securely kept. Alonso the

Wise of Castile was wiser, if, as reported, he caused the Talmud to be

translated, in order that its errors might be exposed to the public. The

passive resistance of the faithful was not to be overcome, and in 1299

Philippe le Bel felt obliged to denounce the persistent multiplication

of the Talmud, and to order his judges to aid the Inquisition in its

extermination. Ten years later, in 1309, we hear of three large

wagon-loads of Jewish books publicly burned in Paris. How fruitless were

all these efforts is seen in a formal sentence recited by Bernard Gui in

the _auto de fé_ of 1319. Under the impulsion of the Inquisition the

royal officials had again made diligent perquisition and had collected

all the copies of the Talmud on which they could lay their hands.

Experts in the Hebrew tongue had then been employed to examine them

carefully, and after mature counsel between the inquisitors and the

jurists called in to assist, the books were condemned to be carried in

two carts through the streets of Toulouse, while the royal officers

proclaimed in loud voice that their fate was due to their blasphemies

against the Lord Jesus Christ and his mother the most holy Virgin and

the Christian name, after which they were to be solemnly burned. This is

the only case of execution occurring during Bernard Gui's term of

service as inquisitor, and, from two carts being required to accommodate

the obnoxious books, it was probable the result of search continued for

a considerable time. That he deemed the matter to require constant

vigilance is shown by his including in his collection of forms one which

orders all priests for three Sundays to publish an injunction commanding

the delivery to the Inquisition, for examination, of all Jewish books,

including "Talamuz," under pain of excommunication. The warfare against

this specially obnoxious work continued. In the very next year, 1320,

John XXII. issued orders that all copies of it should be seized and

burned. In 1409 Alexander V. paused in his denunciation of rival popes

to order its destruction. The contest is well known which arose over it

at the revival of letters, with Pfefferkorn and Reuchlin as the rival

champions, and not all the efforts of the humanists availed to save it

from proscription. Even as late as 1554 Julius III. repeated the command

to the Inquisition to burn it without mercy, and all Jews were ordered,

under pain of death, to surrender all books blaspheming Christ--a

provision which was embodied in the canon law and remains there to this

day. The censorship of the Inquisition was not confined to Jewish

errors, but its activity in this direction will be more conveniently

considered hereafter.[523]

This is not the place for us to consider the influence of the

Inquisition in all its breadth, but while yet we have its procedure in

view it may not be amiss to glance cursorily at some of the effects

immediately resulting from its mode of dealing with those whom it tried

and condemned or absolved.

On the Church the processes invented and recommended to respect by the

Inquisition had a most unfortunate effect. The ordinary episcopal courts

employed them in dealing with heretics, and found their arbitrary

violence too efficient not to extend it over other matters coming within

their jurisdiction. Thus the spiritual tribunals rapidly came to employ

inquisitorial methods. Already, in 1317, Bernard Gui speaks of the use

of torture being habitual in them; and in complaining of the Clementine

restrictions, he asks why the bishops should be limited in applying

torture to heretics, while they could employ it without limit in

everything else.[524]

Thus habituated to the harshest measures, the Church grew harder and

crueller and more unchristian. The worst popes of the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries could scarce have dared to shock the world with

such an exhibition as that with which John XXII. glutted his hatred of

Hugues Gerold, Bishop of Cahors. John was the son of an humble mechanic

of Cahors, and possibly some ancient grudge may have existed between him

and Hugues. Certain it is that no sooner did he mount the pontifical

throne than he lost no time in assailing his enemy. May 4, 1317, the

unfortunate prelate was solemnly degraded at Avignon and condemned to

perpetual imprisonment. This was not enough. On a charge of conspiring

against the life of the pope he was delivered to the secular arm, and in

July of the same year he was partially flayed alive and then dragged to

the stake and burned.[525]

This hardening process went on until the quarrels of the loftiest

prelates were conducted with a savage ferocity which would have shamed a

band of buccaneers. When, in 1385, six cardinals were accused of

conspiring against Urban VI. the angry pontiff had them seized as they

left the consistory and thrust into an abandoned cistern in the castle

of Nocera, where he was staying, so restricted in dimensions that the

Cardinal di Sangro, who was tall and portly, could not stretch himself

at full length. The methods taught by the inquisitors were brought into

play. Subjected to hunger, cold, and vermin, the accused were plied by

the creatures of the pope with promises of mercy if they would confess.

This failing, torture was used on the Bishop of Aquila and a confession

was procured implicating the others. They still refused to admit their

guilt, and they were tortured on successive days. All that could be

obtained from the Cardinal di Sangro was the despairing self-accusation

that he suffered justly in view of the evil which he had wrought on

archbishops, bishops, and other prelates at Urban's command. When it

came to the turn of the Cardinal of Venice, Urban intrusted the work to

an ancient pirate, whom he had created Prior of the Order of St. John in

Sicily, with instructions to apply the torture till he could hear the

victim howl; the infliction lasted from early morning till the

dinner-hour, while the pope paced the garden under the window of the

torture-chamber, reading his breviary aloud that the sound of his voice

might keep the executioner reminded of the instructions. The strappado

and rack were applied by turns, but though the victim was old and

sickly, nothing could be wrenched from him save the ejaculation, "Christ

suffered for us!" The accused were kept in their foul dungeon until

Urban, besieged in Nocera by Charles of Durazzo, managed to escape and

dragged them with him. In the flight the Bishop of Aquila, weakened by

torture and mounted on a miserable hack, could not keep up with the

party, when Urban ordered him despatched and left his corpse unburied by

the wayside. The six cardinals, less fortunate, were carried by sea to

Genoa, and kept in so vile a dungeon that the authorities were moved to

pity and vainly begged mercy for them. Cardinal Adam Aston, an

Englishman, was released on the vigorous intercession of Richard II.,

but the other five were never seen again. Some said that Urban had them

beheaded; others that when he sailed for Sicily he carried them to sea

and cast them overboard; others, again, that a trench was dug in his

stable in which they were buried alive with a quantity of quicklime, to

hasten the disappearance of their bodies. Urban's competitor, known as

Clement VII., was no less sanguinary. When, as Cardinal Robert of

Geneva, he exercised legatine functions for Gregory XI., he led a band

of Free Companions to vindicate the papal territorial claims. The

terrible cold-blooded massacre of Cesena was his most conspicuous

exploit, but equally characteristic of the man was his threat to the

citizens of Bologna that he would wash his hands and feet in their

blood. Such was the retroactive influence of the inquisitorial methods

on the Church which had invented them to plague the heretic. If Bernabo

and Galeazzo Visconti caused ecclesiastics to be tortured and burned to

death over slow fires, they were merely improving on the lessons which

the Church itself had taught.[526]

* * * * *

On secular jurisprudence the example of the Inquisition worked even more

deplorably. It came at a time when the old order of things was giving

way to the new--when the ancient customs of the barbarians, the ordeal,

the wager of law, the wer-gild, were growing obsolete in the increasing

intelligence of the age, when a new system was springing into life under

the revived study of the Roman law, and when the administration of

justice by the local feudal lord was becoming swallowed up in the

widening jurisdiction of the crown. The whole judicial system of the

European monarchies was undergoing reconstruction, and the happiness of

future generations depended on the character of the new institutions.

That in this reorganization the worst features of the imperial

jurisprudence--the use of torture and the inquisitorial process--should

be eagerly, nay, almost exclusively, adopted, should be divested of the

safeguards which in Rome had restricted their abuse, should be

exaggerated in all their evil tendencies, and should, for five

centuries, become the prominent characteristic of the criminal

jurisprudence of Europe, may safely be ascribed to the fact that they

received the sanction of the Church. Thus recommended, they penetrated

everywhere along with the Inquisition; while most of the nations to whom

the Holy Office was unknown maintained their ancestral customs,

developing into various forms of criminal practice, harsh enough,

indeed, to modern eyes, but wholly divested of the more hideous

atrocities which characterized the habitual investigation into crime in

other regions.[527]

Of all the curses which the Inquisition brought in its train this,

perhaps, was the greatest--that, until the closing years of the

eighteenth century, throughout the greater part of Europe, the

inquisitorial process, as developed for the destruction of heresy,

became the customary method of dealing with all who were under

accusation; that the accused was treated as one having no rights, whose

guilt was assumed in advance, and from whom confession was to be

extorted by guile or force. Even witnesses were treated in the same

fashion; and the prisoner who acknowledged guilt under torture was

tortured again to obtain information about any other evil-doers of whom

he perchance might have knowledge. So, also, the crime of "suspicion"

was imported from the Inquisition into ordinary practice, and the

accused who could not be convicted of the crime laid to his door could

be punished for being suspected of it, not with the penalty legally

provided for the offence, but with some other, at the fancy and

discretion of the judge. It would be impossible to compute the amount of

misery and wrong, inflicted on the defenceless up to the present

century, which may be directly traced to the arbitrary and unrestricted

methods introduced by the Inquisition and adopted by the jurists who

fashioned the criminal jurisprudence of the Continent. It was a system

which might well seem the invention of demons, and was fitly

characterized by Sir John Fortescue as the Road to Hell.[528]

APPENDIX.

I.

CATHARAN ARGUMENTS TO JUSTIFY THE ATTRIBUTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT TO

THE EVIL PRINCIPLE.

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne.--Doat, XXXVI. 91.)

The literature of the Cathari has been so successfully exterminated that

anything attributable to the sect is of interest. The following, from a

controversial tract, dating probably about the close of the thirteenth

century, may be regarded as a fair summary of the reasons alleged by the

sect to prove that the Creator, Jehovah, was Satan. There is sufficient

identity between them and those given by Moneta (adversus Catharos, Lib.

II. c. vi.) to show that they are in some sort the official and

customary arguments of the heretics. I omit the counter-arguments of the

writer, who generally follows Moneta, though he often reasons

independently.

Primo igitur objicitur illud, Geneseos tertio: _Ecce Adam quasi

unus ex nobis factus est_. Hoc dicit Deus de Adam postquam

peccavit, et constat quod dicit verum aut falsum: si verum, ergo

Adam factus erat similis ei qui loquebatur et eis cum quibus

loquebatur. Sed Adam post peccatum factus erat peccator; ergo

malus: si dixit falsum, ergo est mendax, ergo sic dicendo peccavit,

et sic fuit malus.

Item ad idem. Deus ille dicit, Geneseos primo: _Videte ne forte

sumat de ligno vitœ_ etc. Deus autem novi testamenti dicit,

Apocalipsis primo: _Vincenti dabo edere de ligno vitœ_. Ille

prohibet, iste promittit, ergo contrarii sunt ad invicem.

Item ad idem, Geneseos primo: _Tenebrœ erant super facie abyssi,

dixitque Deus: Fiat lux_. Ergo Deus veteri testamenti incepit a

tenebris et finivit in lucem; ergo est tenebrosus; ergo est malus,

qui prius fecit tenebras quam lucem.

Item ad idem, Geneseos tertio: _Inimicitias ponam inter te et

mulierem et inter semen tuum et semen mulieris_. Ecce Deus veteris

testamenti seminator est discordiæ et inimicitiæ. Deus autem novi

testamenti dator est pacis et solutor inimicitiarum, sicut legitur

Coloss. primo: _Quoniam in ipso placuit omnem plenitudinem deitatis

habitare, et per ipsum reconciliari omnia in ipsum, sive quœ in

cœlis, sive quœ in terris sunt_. Ecce ille seminat inimicitias,

iste vult omnia reconciliare et pacificare in se; Ergo sunt

contrarii sibi.

Item, Geneseos tertio: _Maledicta terra in opere tuo_. Ecce Deus

veteri testamenti maledicit terram quam Deus novi testamenti

benedicit, psalmo: _Benedixisti domine terram tuam_: Ergo sunt

contrarii.

Item, Genesi: _Omnis anima quœ circumcisa non fuerit peribit de

populo suo_. Apostolus autem e contra prohibet Galatis: _si

circumcidimini Christo nihil vobis prodest_: Ergo iste contrarius

illi.

Item ad idem, Exodi undecimo: _Postulet unusquisque a vicino suo et

unaquœque a vicina sua vasa aurea et argentea_. Ecce Deus veteris

testamenti præcipit rapinam. Deus autem novi testamenti _non

rapinam_ arbitratus est, ut dicit Apostolus: Ergo sunt contrarii.

Item ad idem, Matthæi quinto: _Dictum est antiquis: Diliges

proximum tuum et odio habebis inimicum tuum_. Sed constat quod hoc

dictum est a Deo veteris testamenti. Deus autem novi testamenti

dicit: _Diligite inimicos vestros_. Igitur contrariantur sibi

invicem.

Item ad idem, Matthæi quinto: _Dictum est antiquis: Oculum pro

oculo_ etc. _Ego autem dico vobis non resistere malo, sed si quis

percusserit_ etc. Ecce ille Deus vindictam, iste veniam imperat:

Ergo sunt contrarii.

Item ad idem, Exodi vicesimo primo dicit Deus veteris testamenti:

_Si occiderit quispiam proximum suum dabit animam pro anima_. Deus

autem novi testamenti dicit apud Lucam: _Non veni animas perdere

sed salvare_.

Item, Joannis primo: _Deum nemo vidit unquam_, et ad Timotheum:

_Quem nullus hominum vidit_. At e contra Deus veteris testamenti

dicit, Deuteron. tertio: _Si quis fuerit inter vos propheta_ etc.;

et paulo post: _At non talis est servus meus Moyses_ etc.; et

infra: _Ore ad os loquitur ei et palam non per ænigmata et figuras

Deum vidit_.

Item ad idem, Levitici vicesimo sexto: _Persequimini inimicos

vestros_; At e contra, Matthæi quinto: _Beati qui persecutionem

patiuntur_; et iterum: _Cum vos persecuti fuerint in unam

civitatem, fugite in aliam_. Ille præcipit persequi inimicos, iste

fugere: Ergo, etc.

Item, Deus veteris testamenti præcipit sibi immolari animalia, et

in illis delectatur sacrificiis; Deus autem novi testamenti,

secundum aliam translationem dicit in Psalmo: _hostiam et

oblationem noluisti, corpus autem aptasti mihi; holocaustomata pro

peccato tibi non placuerunt_. Ille Deus talia præcipit, iste

respuit: Ergo, etc.

Item ad idem, Deuteron. decimo tertio: _Si surrexerit de medio tuo

prophetes etc. et ita interficietur_; et iterum: _si tibi voluerit

persuadere frater tuus_ etc.; et infra: _non parcet ei oculus tuus

ut miserearis et occultes eum, sed statim interficies_. Deus autem

novi testamenti e contra dicit: _Estote misericordes_ etc. Hie

præcipit misereri, ille non miserere: Ergo etc.

Deus veteris testamenti dicit: _Crescite et multiplicamini_,

Geneseos octavo. Deus autem novi testamenti dicit, Lucæ decimo

octavo: _Vœ prœgnantibus et nutrientibus in diebus illis_; et in

eodem vicesimo: _Beatœ steriles quœ non genuerunt_. Item, Matthæi

quinto: _Qui viderit mulierem ad concupiscendam eam_ etc.

Ecce ille præcipit coitum, iste prohibet omnem coitum, tam uxoris

quam mulieris alterius: Igitur sunt sibi contrarii.

Item, Matthæi vicesimo, Lucæ vicesimo secundo: _Scitis quoniam

principes gentium dominantur eorum, et qui majores sunt_, etc. _et

non ita erit inter vos sicut inter gentes_. Ecce iste reprobat

principatus et dominationes, ille probat.[529]

Item, Deuteronomii decimoquinto multis gentibus concedit hic

usuram; Deus autem novi testamenti prohibet in Lucæ sexto: _Date

mutuum nihil inde sperantes:_ Ergo sunt contrarii.

Tentavit Deus veteris testamenti Abraham, Deus novi testamenti

neminem tentat; Jac. primo: _Ipse intentator malorum est_: Ergo

sunt contrarii.

Item ad idem, Deus veteris testamenti dicit_: Veniam ad te in

caligine nubis;_ Deus autem novi testamenti _habitat lucem

inaccessibilem_ ut legitur Hebræor. primo; Ergo sunt contrarii.

Item ad idem, Matthæi quinto: _Dictum est antiquis: non perjurabis,

reddes autem Deo juramenta tua; ego autem dico vobis non jurare

omnino_; quod ille concedit iste prohibet; Ergo etc.

Item, Exodi vicesimo primo: _Maledictus omnis qui pendet in ligno_;

Sed Paulus dicit Galat. quarto: _Christus nos redemit de

maledictione legis, factus pro nobis maledictum_; Ergo Deus veteris

testamenti, quem dicis patrem Christi, maledixit Christum, sed

constat quod pater non maledicit filium, ergo ille non est pater

ejus, imo est malus et contrarius cui maledicit.

Item ad idem, Deus veteris testamenti promittit terrain ut ibi;

_Dabo vobis terram fluentem lac et mel_. Ecce deliciæ terrenæ. Deus

autem novi testamenti promittit regnum cœlorum, requiem æternam,

delicias cœlestes ut ibi: _Invenietis requiem animabus vestris_.

Ergo ipsi sunt diversi et contrarii.

Item ad idem, Deus novi testamenti dicit Matthæi sexto: _Jugum meum

suave est et onus meum leve_. Deus autem veteris testamenti imponit

jugum importabile, Deuteronomii vicesimo octavo, ubi maledixit

illos qui non servaverunt illa quæ præceperat, de quo jugo dicit

Petrus: _cur vos imponere tentatis nobis jugum quod nec vos nec

patres vestri portare potuistis?_ Ergo sunt contrarii; ille enim

malus et iste bonus.

Item ad idem, Exodi quarto: _si dixerint mei, quod est nomen ejus

qui misit me etc. respondit Dominus: sic dices ad eos: qui est

misit me ad vos_. Ecce Deus veteris testamenti translator est, qui

non vult nomen ejus manifestare; sed dicit _qui est_ etc. Ita enim

asinus et bos est qui est. Deus autem novi testamenti nomen suum

manifestat per angelum suum, Lucæ secundo, _et vocabis nomen ejus

Jesum_.

Deus veteris testamenti dicit Geneseos sexto: _Pœnitet me fecisse

hominem._ Ecce qualis Deus quem pœnitet de opere suo; ergo mutatur.

Præterea pœnitentia est de peccato, ergo si pœnitet peccavit; Ergo

malus fuit.

Item ad idem, Exodi tricesimo secundo: Postquam filii Israel

adoraverunt vitulum, dicit Deus ille Moysi: _Dimitte me, ut

irascatur furor meus contra eos_, et infra: _Placatusque est Deus

ne faceret malum quod locutus fuerat adversus populum suum_. Ecce

quod mutatus est Deus veteris testamenti; Deus autem novi

testamenti (non) immutatur, juxta illud Jacobi primo: _Omne datum

est_ etc.; et infra; _Apud quem non est immutatio_ etc.

Item ad idem, Exodi vicesimo, Deus veteris testamenti dicit: Non

_mœchaberis_, et idem Deus dicit Numerorum duodecimo: _Ecce ego

suscitabo super te malum de domo tuo, et tollam uxorem tuam et dabo

proximo tuo, id est, filio tuo_. Ecce non solum mœchationis quam

ibi prohibuit, sed etiam incestus est procurator; ille Deus ergo

malus et mutabilis.

Item ad idem, Exodi vicesimo primo: _non facies tibi sculptile nec

aliquam similitudinem_, et infra, vicesimo quinto: _Facies duo

cherubim aurea_. Ecce quanta mutabilitas, _facies_ et _non facies_.

Qualis est Deus ille qui tot millia hominum submersit in diluvio

etc.; habetur Geneseos sexto; et in mare rubro, Exodi decimo

quinto; et in deserto, et in multis aliis locis. Si dicis quod non

est crudelitas punire malos etc. quæro, si erat omnipotens et

omnisciens, sciebat omnes peccaturos et futuros malos, et propter

hoc damnandos, quare ergo fecierat eos? Nonne crudelis est qui

homines ad hoc facit ut perdat?

Item ad idem, Exodi tricesimo secundo: _Hoc dicit Dominus_; et

infra: _Ponat vir gladium super femur suum_; et infra: _Et

occiderunt in illa die viginti tria millia_. Ecce qualis Deus quos

habet clericos et ministros siquidem totius crudelitatis. Deus

autem novi testamenti ministros pietatis; unde Joannes in canonica:

_Qui diligit Deum diligit et fratrem suum_. Iste præcipit fratrem

diligi, ille occidi.

Item ad idem, Numeror tricesimo quarto; Deus veteris testamenti

dixit filiis Israel de gentibus illis qui erant in terra Cham: _Si

nolueritis occidere eos, erunt clavi in oculis nostris et lanceæ in

lateribus_. Ecce crudelis Deus qui non vult injurias dimitti. Deus

autem novi testamenti dicit Matthæi sexto. _Si non dimiseritis

hominibus, nec pater vester cœlestis dimittet vobis peccata

vestra_.

Item ad idem, Geneseos decimo nono, ubi Deus veteris testamenti

justum simul et impium occidit, sicut patet in submersione Sodomæ

et Gomorrhæ, ubi parvulos et adultos simul extinxit.

Item ad idem, Judicum vicesimo legitur quod cum filii Israel

vellent pugnare contra filios Benjamin proper scelus quod

commiserant in uxorem cujusdam fratris sui, consuluerunt Dominum si

pugnandum esset contra eos, et quis esset dux belli, et expressit

illis Judas, et quod pugnandum esset; unde sub hac fiducia inierunt

bellum et occiderunt ex eis in primo conflictu viginti duo millia,

in secundo octodecim millia, in tertio pauciores. Ecce quam

crudelis et deceptor Deus, qui sic eos decepit ut perirent.

Item, Exodi quinto dicit Deus veteris testamenti: _Indurabo cor

Pharaonis et non dimittet populum_; ecce crudelis Deus qui indurat

ut occidat. Item, mendax Deus qui dicit _non dimittet_, et postea

dimisit.

Item ad idem, Numerorum decimo quinto: Deus ille lapidare præcepit

quemdam colligendum ligna in Sabbato, consultus super hoc a Moysi

et Aaron. Deus autem novi testamenti excusat discipulos fricantes

spicas Sabbato; Ecce quam contrarii iste et ille!

In Genesi promisit Deus ille se daturum terram Chanaan Abrahæ, nec

tamen dedit, ergo fuit mendax.... Quod autem objiciunt de illis qui

egressi sunt de Ægypto, quibus et promisit per Moysen terram illam,

et tamen omnes prostrati sunt in deserto.

Ad idem, Exodi tricesimo secundo: _Domine ostende mihi faciem tuam_

et Dominus respondit: _Ego ostendam tibi omne bonum_, et postea

ostendit ei omnia posteriora, id est, turpitudinem. Ecce qualis

Deus!

Ad idem, Geneseos undecimo de Gigantibus qui ædificabant turrim,

dixit ille Deus: _non desistent a cogitationibus suis donec eas

opere compleverint_; et tamen sequitur ibidem: _Et cessaverunt

ædificare_. Ecce quam mendax Deus!

Ad idem, Geneseos XXXII. dicit angelus Dei ad Jacob: _Nequaquam

vocaberis ultra Jacob, sed Israel erit nomen tuum_. Et postea dicit

in Exodo: _Ego sum Deus Abraham, Isaac, et Jacob_; et ita sibi

contradicit; mendax igitur est ille Deus.

Dicit ille Deus: _Quis decipiet nolis Achab?... Ego ero spiritus

mendax in ore omnium prophetarum ... Egredere et fac, decipies enim

et prævalebis ... Dedit Deus spiritum mendacii in ore omnium

prophetarum_. Ecce qualis Deus: si esset Deus veritatis constat

quod non diceret: _quis decipiet_ etc.

II.

BULL OF GREGORY IX. ORDERING AN EPISCOPAL INQUISITION.

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne.--Doat, XXXII, fol. 103.)

Gregorius episcopus servus servorum Dei venerabilibus fratribus

suffraganeis ecclesiæ Bisuntinensis salutem et apostolicam

benedictionem. Ad capiendas vulpes parvulas, hæreticos videlicet

qui moliuntur in partibus Burgundiæ tortuosis anfractibus vineam

Domini demoliri, et penitus eliminandas ab ipsa suscepti cura

regiminis nos hortatur. Ad nostram siquidem audientiam noveritis

pervenisse quod quidam hæretici in vestris diocesibus constituti,

qui metu mortis falso ad ecclesiam catholicam revertentes necnon et

plures alii de hæretica pravitate convicti, ad errorem pravitatis

ejusdem, quam a se abdicasse penitus videbantur, ut gravius

scindere valeant catholicam unitatem sæpius revertuntur. Ne igitur

per tales sub falsa conversionis specie catholicæ fidei professores

corrumpere contingat, universitati vestræ per apostolica scripta

præcipiendo mandamus, quatinus hujusmodi pestilentes, postquam

fuerint de jam dicta pravitate convicti, si aliter puniti non

fuerint, ita quod quilibet vestrum in suo diocesi ut ipsis det

vexatio intellectum, in perpetuo carcere recludatis, de bonis

ipsorum, si qua fortassis habent sibi vitæ necessaria prout

consuevit talibus ministrantes; alioquin noventis nos venerabili

fratri nostro Archiepiscopo Bisuntino nostris dedisse litteris in

mandatis ut vos ad id auctoritate nostra, sublato cujuslibet

appellationis impedimento, compellat. Datum Laterani, sexto

Kalendas Junii, pontificatus nostri anno septimo (27 Mai. 1234).

III.

BULL RELIEVING INQUISITORS FROM OBEDIENCE TO THEIR SUPERIORS.

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne.--Doat, XXXII. fol. 15.)

Clemens episcopus servus servorum Dei dilectis filiis fratribus

ordinum prædicatorum et minorum inquisitoribus hæreticæ pravitatis

per diversas Burgondiæ et Lotharingiæ partes auctoritate apostolica

deputatis et in posterum deputandis, salutem et apostolicam

benedictionem. Catholicæ fidei negotium quod plurimum insidet cordi

nostro in vestris prosperari manibus et de bono in melius procedere

cupientes, ac volentes omne ab eo impedimentum et omne obstaculum

removeri, præsentium vobis auctoritate mandamus quatinus in eodem

negotio de divino et apostolico favore et omni humano timore

postposito constanter ac intrepide procedentes circa extirpandam

hæreticam pravitatem, tam de Burgondia quam de Lotharingia cum omni

vigilantia omnique studio laboretis, et si forsitan magister et

minister generalis, aliique priores et ministri provinciales, ac

custodes seu guardiani aliquorum locorum vestrorum ordinum prætextu

quorumcumque privilegiorum seu indulgentiarum ejusdem sedis dictis

ordinibus concessorum ac concedendorum in posterum, vobis vel

vestrum alicui seu aliquibus injunxerint seu quoquo modo

præceperint ut quoad tempus et quoad certos articulos certasve

personas negotio supersedeatis eidem, nos vobis universis et

singulis auctoritate apostolica districtius inhibemus ne ipsis

obedire in hac parte vel intendere quomodolibet præsumatis. Nos

etiam privilegia seu indulgentias hujusmodi ad hunc articulum

tenore præsentium revocantes, omnes excommunicationis, interdicti

et suspensionis sententias, si quas in vos vel vestrum aliquos hac

occasione ferri contingerit, irritas prorsus decernimus et

inanes.... Non enim aliqua eis super hujuscemodi inquisitionis

negotio vobis immediate a prædicta sede commisso et committendo

facultas vel jurisdictio attribuitur seu potestas. Datum Viterbii,

Idus Julii, pontificatus nostri anno tertio (15 Jul. 1267).

IV.

EUGENIUS IV. TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF NARBONNE.

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne.--Doat, XXXV. fol. 184.)

Eugenius episcopus, servus servorum Dei, venerabilibus fratribus

Archiepiscopo Narbonensi et ejus suffraganeis Carcassonæ, Sancti

Pontii Thomeriarum, Agathensi et Aletensi episcopis, salutem et

apostolicam benedictionem. Scripsit nobis vestra fraternitas

dilectum filium fratrem Petrum de Turelule, inquisitorem hæreticæ

pravitatis in provincia Narbonensi, intendere a nobis aliqua suum

officium Inquisitionis et jurisdictionem vestram tangentia petere

et impetrare, supplicastisque ut eum in brevi de eo et

exorbitantiis suis a jure intenderetis sedem apostolicam informare,

nollemus interea quicquam prædicto in vestrum et prælatorum

provinciæ præjudicium facere aut concedere; ad quæ respondentes

fatemur prædictum Inquisitorem aliquando significasse justam sibi

fore quærimoniam adversus nonnullos vestrum se in suo

Inquisitionis officio injuste perturbantes, atque etiam pro viribus

impedientes, petens sibi per nos viam et modum ostendi quibus

taliter in posterum exercere possit officium, ut cum honore Dei et

sui officii integritati valeret lites, jurgia, et contentiones

ordinariorum effugere et declinare. Cum itaque sit nostræ

intentionis prout ex officio pastoralis curæ nobis incumbere non

ignoratis, et vos et ipsum Inquisitorem in vestris et suis juribus

confovere, et lites ac controversias quæ fortassis inter vos

vigerent cum justitia tollere ac terminare, hortamur in Domino

vestram fraternitatem ut attente considerantes quod hujusmodi

Inquisitores ab ecclesia fuerint instituti ad relevandum ordinarios

parte sollicitudinis incumbente illis in favorem et augmentum fidei

catholicæ, enervationemque ct extirpationem hæreticæ pravitatis,

contenti esse velitis in hac materia dispositionibus et institutis

sacrorum canonum, et ad negotium hoc hæresum quo nullum in ecclesia

habetur majus, prædictis Inquisitoribus assistere favoribus

opportunis. Nam sic gratum erit nobis et summe acceptum quicquid

favoris, commodi et adjumenti prædictis a fraternitatibus vestris

juxta spem nostram præstabitur, ita molestias et illata eorum

laudabili exercitio disturbia cum displicentia audiremus; pro bono

autem concordiæ volumus ut gravaminibus propter quæ ab ipso

Inquisitore per vos extitit appellatum ab eodem revocatis, lites

quæ hodie inter vos pendent indecisæ sopiantur penitus et

extinguantur, prout nos illas auctoritate apostolica in eventum

revocationis antedictæ ad nos advocantes, tenore præsentium

extinguimus, cassamus, et pro extinctis et cassatis haberi volumus

et mandamus. Datum Florentiæ anno Incarnationis Dominicæ MCCCC

quadragesimo primo Kalendas Julii pontificatus nostri anno

undecimo.

V.

DISABILITIES OF DESCENDANTS OF HERETICS.

(Registrum curiæ Franciæ Carcassonæ.--Doat, XXXII. fol. 241.)

Noverint universi prsesentes litteras inspecturi quod nos frater

Guillelmus de Sancto Sequano ordinis fratrum prædicatorum,

inquisitor hæreticæ pravitatis in regno Franciæ authoritate

apostolica deputatus attendentes quod secundum merita personarum

debent distribui officia dignitatum, et quia expedit crimina

nocentium esse nota, præsertim ilia per quæ extenditur ultio non

solum in autores scelerum sed in progeniem dampnatorum, ideo nos ad

instantiam procuratoris domini regis in seneschallia Carcassonæ de

infrascriptis sibi copiam fieri postulantis, ad honorem Dei et

fidei munimentum per nos ipsos exquisivimus et per discretum virum

dominum Raimundum rectorem ecclesiæ de Mouteclaro publicum notarium

Inquisitionis nostræ perquiri et inspici fecimus diligenter in

libris et actis publicis Inquisitionis prædictæ, et invenimus quod

anno Domini MCC quinquagesimo sexto Guiraldus de Altarippa quondam

de Graoleto qui dicitur fuisse pater Guiraldi de Altarippa

servientis armorum domini regis, confessus fuit in judicio coram

Domino Bernardo de Monte-Atono tunc inquisitore hæreticæ

pravitatis, quod viderat hæreticos et verba eorum audiverat. Item

invenimus quod Lombarda uxor dicti Guiraldi, quæ dicitur fuisse

mater præfati Guiraldi de Altarippa servientis armorum domini

regis, coram eodem inquisitore et eodem tempore confessa fuerit

quod multotiens in diversis locis vidit hæreticos ct eos pluries

adoravit misitque eis panem et poma et credidit eos esse bonos

homines et quod posset salvari in fide eorum. Item invenimus in

eisdem libris quod Raimundus Carbonelli de Graoleto, qui dicitur

fuisse avunculus dicti Guiraldi servientis domini regis fuit

hæreticus perfectus et per fratrem Stephanum Gastinensem et Hugonem

de Boniolis tunc inquisitores hæreticæ pravitatis, et tanquam

hæreticus curiæ sæculari relictus et per ministros curiæ domini

regis Carcassone publice, ut hæreticus et relapsus, combustus anno

Domini MCC septuagesimo sexto. De quibus omnibus de nostris libris

et actis publicis extractis fideliter dicto procuratori domini

regis copiam fecimus, et omnibus quorum interest per ipsum fieri

volumus, non ad suggilationem vel injuriam alicujus sed propter

bona quæ agit vel excipit, vel propter posteros in quos parentum

præfati criminis sceleratorum proserpit infamia, ne contra

constitutiones domini regis vel sanctiones canonicas ad honores vel

officia publica ullatenus admittantur. In cujus rei testimonium

sigillum nostrum præsentibus duximus apponendum. Datum Carcassonæ

decimo septimo Kalendas Julii, anno Domini MCC nonagesimo secundo.

VI.

MINUTES OF AN ASSEMBLY OF EXPERTS.

(Doat, XXVII. fol. 118.)

Anno Domini MCCC vicesimo octavo, indictione undecima, die Veneris

in festo Stæ. Leocadiæ virginis, intitulata quinto Idus Decembris

pontificatus SSmi. domini nostri Domini Joannis divina providentia

papæ XXII. anno decimo tertio, venerabiles religiosi et discreti

viri frater Henricus de Chamayo ordinis prædicatorum in regno

Franciæ auctoritate regia et Germanus de Alanhano archipresbyter

Narbonesii, rector ecclesiæ Capitistagni in civitate et diocesi

Narbonensi auctoritate ordinaria, inquisitores pravitatis hæreticæ

deputati, volentes in negotio fidei de consilio discretorum et

peritorum procedere, convocarunt in aula seu palatio majori

archiepiscopali Narbonæ dominos canonicos, jurisconsultos, peritos

sæculares et religiosos infrascriptos (sequuntur nomina 42) qui

omnes superius nominati juraverunt ad sancta Dei evangelia dare

bonum et sanum consilium in agendis, unusquisque secundum Deum et

conscientiam suam, prout ipsis a Domino fucrit ministratum et

tenere omnia sub secreto donec fuerint publicata, et ibidem

præstito juramento, lectis et recitatis culpis personarum

infrascriptarum, petierunt præfati domini inquisitores consilium ab

eisdem consiliariis quid agendum de personis prædictis, et divisim

et singulariter de qualibet, ut sequitur:

Super culpa fratris P. de Arris ordinis Cartusiensis monasterii de

Lupateria diocesis Carcassonensis omnes et singuli consiliarii

supradicti, tam sæculares quam religiosi consilium dando

concorditer dixerunt, contemplatione ordinis sui, quod assignetur

sibi pro carcere perpetuo claustrum ct ecclesia monasterii

supradicti, et etiam camera una, necnon et injungantur sibi certæ

pœnitentiæ, sicut orationes et jejunia et alia quæ non repugnant

observantiæ sui ordinis et regulæ supradictæ, et quod non puniatur

in sermone publico sed in secreto, præsentibus paucis personis.

Item de personis infra proximo nominatis, auditis corum culpis

dixerunt cas judicandas fore ut sequitur:

Richardum de Narbona, nulla pœna puniendum.

Guillelmum Mariæ de Honosio arbitrarie puniendum, cruces simplices,

peregrinationes minores.

Favressam matrem prædicti Guillelmi arbitrarie puniendam, sine

crucibus, pœnitentias minores.

Guillelmum Cathalani seniorem, Guillelmum ejus filium, Raymundum

Veysiani, Bernardum Baronis, P. Lunatii, tanquam impeditores

officii, cruces et pœnitentias minores.

Guillelmum Espulgue de Capitestagno immurandum.

Perretam de Flassacho valdensem impœnitentem fore exhumandum.

P. Guillelmi Canorgue de Capitestagno immurandum.

Vincentium Rayses de Caberia mortuum, si viveret, immurandum.

Gregorium Bellonis apostatam monachum, mortuum impœnitentem,

exhumandum.

Guillelmum Bocardi Bourserium de Agenno habitatorem Narbonæ,

mortuum, si viveret, immurandum.

Arnaudam uxorem Pontii de Biterris de Capitestagno immurandam.

Amicam uxorem P. Gaycons, ad murum.

Habitum fuit hoc consilium anno, indictione, die, loco, et

pontificatu prædictis, præsentibus Arnaldo Assaliti procuratore

incursuum hæresis domini regis, testibus et notariis qui hoc

prædictum consilium scripserunt, etc.

VII.

INNOCENT IV. ORDERS INQUISITORS TO DIMINISH THEIR RETINUE AND AVOID

EXACTIONS.

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne.--Doat, XXXI. fol. 116.)

Innocentius episcopus servus servorum Dei dilectis filiis

inquisitoribus hæreticæ pravitatis in terris nobilis viri domini

Comitis Tholosani et Albiensis constitutis salutem et apostolicam

benedictionem. Cum a quibusdam intellexerimus fidedignis quod vos

occasione inquisitionis vobis commissæ contra hæreticam pravitatem

superfluos scriptores aliosque familiares habetis pro vestræ libito

voluntatis et graves exactiones fiunt a conversis ab eadem ad fidem

et converti volentibus pravitate ad infamiam apostolicæ sedis et

scandalum plurimorum, præsentium vobis auctoritate præcipiendo

mandamus quatinus scriptorum et aliorum familiarium multitudinem

onerosam ad necessarium numerum protinus reducentes, a gravibus

exactionibus per quas infamia potest et scandalum generari, vos et

familiam vestram taliter compescatis quod honestatis vestræ titulus

conservetur illæsus, et nos discretionis vestræ prudentiam merito

commendare possumus.--Datum Lugduni secundo Idus Maii, pontificatus

nostri anno sexto (14 Maii, 1249).

VIII.

ABUSE OF THE NUMBER OF ARMED FAMILIARS IN FLORENCE.

(Arch. di Firenze, Riformagioni, Arch. Diplom. XXVII.)

Bertrandus miseratione divina archiepiscopus Ebredunensis

apostolicæ sedis nuncius circumspectis et religiosis viris

inquisitoribus hæreticæ pravitatis qui in civitate et dioc.

florentin. sunt et fuerint in futurum salutem in salutis autore.

Quia quidam potestate sibi tradita abutentes et concessis a jure

forma et modis debitis non utentes interdum favore seu alias

concedunt aliqua ex quibus dampna proveniunt et scandala

generantur, oportet talium abusus debito juris limitibus coartari.

Cum igitur fidedigna relatione ad nostram audientiam sit deductum

et nos fide probavimus oculata quod quidam inquisitores qui in

civitate et dioc. florentin. prædictis vos in inquisitionis officio

precesserint immoderatum et excessivum numerum consiliariorum

notariorum et aliorum officialium ac familiarium licet non

indigerunt eisdem sibi assumere curaverunt passim eisdem et aliis

sub familiaritatis vel officii titulo diversis quæsitis coloribus

portandi arma offensibilia et defensibilia licentiam concedendo ex

quibus multa provenerunt scandala et multis data fuit occasio aliis

qui arma portare non poterant offendendi. Nos juxta cominissam

nobis circa reformationem officii inquisitionis sollicitudinem

hujusmodi scandalis et quibusvis fraudibus occurrere cupieutes et

volentes præfatum inquisitionis officium sic laudabiliter et

feliciter servatis eidem suis privilegiis gubernari quod propterea

non offendatur justitia nec ex abusu privilegiorum aliis

præjudicium generetur, autoritate apostolica qua in hac parte

fungimur decernimus et statuendo tenore præsentium ordinamus quod

inquisitor florentinus qui est vel pro tempore fuerit possit

duntaxat quatuor consiliarios seu assessores, duos notarios, et

duos custodes carcerum et duodecim alios inter officiales et

familiares sibi eligere et assumere et non ultra quibus possit dare

licentiam arma prout consuetum est deferendi, hoc salvo quod si

urgens necessitas pro inquisitionis officio immineret, possit in

hujusmodi necessitatis articulo arma portandi licentiam impertiri.

Illud autem præsenti ordinationi ex superhabundanti duximus

inserendum quod ne ex limitatione prædicta inquisitionis detrahatur

officio et in executione ipsius dispendium patiatur potestas ac

priores artium florentini teneantur prout etiam sunt de jure

stricti inquisitori qui est vel erit pro tempore fideles et

diligentes existere et familiarios et etiam alios cum armis omni

difficultate sublata tradere quoties pro capiendis malefactoribus

et suspectis et aliis officium inquisitionis tangentibus exequendis

per inquisitorem hujusmodi fuerint requisiti. In quorum testimonium

præsentes literas fieri fecimus et nostri sigilli appensione

muniri. Dat. in Castro Scarparic florentin. dioc. die secunda Maii

sub anno Domini MCCCXXXVIL Indict. V. Pontificatus III. Domini

nostri summi pontificis.

IX.

REGULATIONS OF ARMED FAMILIARS BY THE COUNCIL OF VENICE.

(Archivio di Venezia, Misti Consiglio X. Vol. XIII. p. 192; Vol.

XIV. p. 29.) 1450, 19 Augusti.

Cum facta sit conscientia quod inquisitor hæreticorum qui stat

Venetiis dat licentiam XII. personis portandi arma et illam vendit

per pecuniam, quod non est bene factum quod XII persone pro

inquisitore portent arma per civitatem quum ad capiendos hereticos

datur super talibus inquisitoribus auxilium brachii secularis,

videlicet per dominos de nocte et per capita, Et propterea vadit

pars quod inquisitores de cetero non possint dare licentiam nisi

quatuor personis tantum sicut per consuetudinem antiquam solebant,

quos quatuor quilibet inquisitor faciat presentari capitibus hujus

concilii ut cognita condictione personarum possint provvidere sicut

fuerit opus.

De parte--14. De non--2. Non sinceri--0.

1450 (1451), 17 Februarii.

Quod ad complacentiam Generalis minorum qui supplicavit ne

inquisitori heretice pravitatis in civitate Venetiarum in suo

tempore fiat novitas super custodibus et officialibus suis quos

antiquitus inquisitores habuerunt. Vadit pars quod concedatur eidem

quod non obstante parte capta in isto concilio die 9 Augusti 1450

mandetur officialibus de nocte quod pro honore officii observet

inquisitori consuetudinem antiquam cum hoc conditione videlicet.

Quod ipsi officiales associent inquisitorem ad officium faciendum

et aliter sicut fuerit opus et sicut antiquitus faciebant; et

propterea dentur in nota officio de nocte et capitibus sexteriorum

ut videatur si actualiter faciant officium vel non, ita tamen quod

non excedant numerum XII.

De parte--10. De non--5. Non sinceri--1.

X.

TRANSFER OF PRISONERS FROM ITALY TO FRANCE.

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne.--Doat, XXXII. fol. 155.)

Nicholaus episcopus servus servorum Dei dilecto filio fratri

Philippo ordinis fratrum prædicatorum inquisitori hæreticæ

pravitatis in Marchia Trevisina auctoritate sedis apostolicæ

deputato salutem et apostolicam benedictionem. Significarunt nobis

dilecti filii Hugo de Boniolis et Petrus Arsini ordinis fratrum

prædicatorum, inquisitores hæreticæ pravitatis in regno Franciæ

auctoritate sedis apostolicæ deputati, quod dudum in diocesi

Veronensi quamplures hæretici de mandato tuo capti fuerunt et adhuc

eos facis detineri captivos, quorum aliqui fore dicuntur de regno

Franciæ oriundi, et unus eo in dicto regno pro episcopo hæreticorum

ipsorum, secundum eorumdem hæreticorum usum habetur. Cum autem,

sicut habeat eorumdem inquisitorum assertio, firma spes habeatur

quod eorumdem hæreticorum dicti regni præsentia in illis partibus

erit plurimum orthodoxæ fidei fructuosa, pro eo quod si contingat

eorum aliquos divina gratia operante redire ad ipsius fidei

unitatem, per ipsos multorum qui sunt in eodem regno prædictæ

pravitatis fermento aspersi, occultata nequitia detegi poterit, et

haberi plena notitia eorumdem. Nos qui tenemur exaltationem ipsius

fidei totis viribus procurare, discretioni tuæ per apostolica

scripta mandamus, quatinus tam illum qui, ut prædictum est,

episcopus reputatur, quam alios hæreticos supradictos ejusdem regni

præfatis inquisitoribus per eorum certum nuncium ad te propter hoc

specialiter destinandum, qui sumptibus ministrandis ab

inquisitoribus supradictis sub fida custodia hæreticos ducat

eosdem, deinceps sub ipsorum inquisitorum cura et jurisdictione

mansuros, prius tamen diligentius inquisitis ab eisdem hæreticis ad

præfatos fratres inquisitores ut præmittitur destinandis, quæ ad

utilitatem ejusdem fidei et utiliorem executionem commissi tibi

officii videris inquirenda transmittas. Nos enim prædictis

inquisitoribus nostris damus litteris in mandatis, ut eosdem

hæreticos ad ipsos per te taliter destinandos diligenter et

fideliter faciant custodiri, facturi nihilominus circa illos libere

in eos commissum sibi contra hæreticos officium exequendo, prout

secundum Dei honori et commodo ejusdem orthodoxæ fidei viderint

expedire. Datum Romæ apud Sanctum Petrum quarto Idus Februarii,

pontificatus nostri anno primo (10 Feb. 1289).

XI.

ORDER OF INQUISITOR-GENERAL TO MAKE TRANSCRIPT OF RECORDS.

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne.--Doat, XXXII. fol. 101.)

Joannes miseratione divina Sancti Nicolai in carcere Tulliano

diaconus cardinalis, religiosis viris in Christo sibi dilectis

fratribus ordinis prædicatorum et minorum inquisitoribus pravitatis

hæreticæ in Citramontanis partibus auctoritate sedis apostolicæ

deputatis, salutem in Domino nostro. Nil majus accedit affectui

quam quod fidei catholicæ puritas ubique terrarum ad Dei gloriam

valeat ampliari, et macula pravitatis hæreticæ de locis illis quæ

infecisse dinoscitur virtutis divine cooperante subsidio per nostræ

ac vestræ sollicitudinis ministerium penitus deleatur. Cum igitur

hujusmodi cura negotii sit nobis ab apostolicæ sede commissa nos

dilectorum nobis in Domino inquisitorum pravitatis ejusdem in regno

Franciæ condignis desideriis annuentes, universitati vestræ

auctoritate qua in hac parte fungimur, in virtute obedientiæ

districte præcipiendo mandamus quatenus depositiones testium super

pravitate ipsa jam receptorum a vobis vel recipiendorum in

posterum, quia negotium Inquisitionis in prædicto regno Franciæ

inquisitoribus commissum eosdem contingere dinoscitur, in eo

scilicet quod depositiones hujusmodi faciunt ad instructionem sibi

commissi negotii ut per eas de statu personarum præfati regni

habere possunt notitiam pleniorem, eisdem vel ipsorum certo et fido

nuntio ad transcribendum sine difficultatis obstaculo assignetis,

ut iidem inquisitores depositionibus ipsis pro loco et tempore uti

possint contra personas prædicti regni, quæ per depositiones ipsas

apparebunt de heresi culpabiles vel suspectæ. Datum apud Urbem

veterem, decimo quarto Kalendas Junii, anno Domini MCC septuagesima

tertio, pontificatus Domini Gregorii papæ decimi anno secundo.

XII.

BULL OF ALEXANDER IV. AUTHORIZING INQUISITORS TO ABSOLE EACH

OTHER.[530]

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne,--Doat, XXXI. fol. 196.)

Alexander episcopus, servus servorum Dei dilectis filiis fratribus

ordinis prædicatorum, inquisitoribus hæreticæ pravitatis in Tholosa

et aliis terris nobilis viri A. comitis Pictavensis, salutem et

apostolicam benedictionem. Ut negotium fidei valeatis liberius

promovere, vobis auctoritate præsentium indulgemus ut si vos

excommunicationis sententiam et irregularitatem incurrere aliquibus

casibus ex humana fragilitate contingat vel recolatis etiam

incurrisse, quia propter vobis injunctum officium ad priores

vestros super hoc recurrere non potestis, mutuo vobis super hiis

absolvere juxta formam ecclesiæ, ac vobiscum auctoritate vestra

dispensare possitis, prout in hoc parte prioribus ab apostolica

sede concessum est. Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat etc.... Datum

Anagniæ Nonis Julii pontificatus nostri anno secundo (7 Jul. 1256).

XIII.

CASE OF FALSE WITNESS.

(Doat, XXVII. fol. 204.)

Bernardus Pastoris de Marcelhano mercator, habitator Pedenacii

diocesis Agathensis, sicut per ipsius confessionem, sub anno Domini

MCCCXXIX., mense Maii XIX die factam et processum inde habitum

apparet, veniens spontanea voluntate, non vocatus nec citatus per

episcopum nec inquisitorem, sed per aliquos complices suos

inductus, in domo episcopali Biterris, ubi tunc nos, frater

Henricus de Chamayo, ordinis predicatorum, inquisitor Carcassonne,

eramus, quamdam papiri cedulam scriptam nobis presentari et tradi

per aliquos de familiaribus dicti Domini Episcopi procuravit et

fecit, cujus tenor sequitur in hec verba: Significatur religiose

majestati domini inquisitoris heretice pravitatis in seueschallia

Carcassonne, seu ejus locumtenentis, quod cum eo anno Begguini

heretici et de heresi dampnati fuissent combusti juxta castrum de

Pedenaco, mandate domini nostri regis et domini Inquisitoris,

mandato summi Pontificis et domini Episcopi Agathensis; hinc est

quod quidam perverso spiritu imbutus, adherens heretice pravitati,

perversum animum suum ad fidem heresis perversis operibus ac

hereticis et dampnosis suasionibus immittens, eorum perversa opera

sequendo, quadam die post combustionem hereticorum et specialiter

post combustionem cujusdam vocati Formayro et ejus sociorum,

Raimundus Barseti, notarius, catholice fidei spernens doctrinam, et

mandata Apostolica et domini nostri regis, et dicti domini

Agathensis Episcopi, si potuisset, impugnando, et, quod deterius

est, si adherentes habuisset, contra fidem Catholicam infringendo,

accessit ad locum ubi dictus Formayro et alii superius nominati

sunt combusti, et flexis genibus tanquam adoraret eorum nequitiam,

accepit de ossibus dictorum combustorum hereticorum et de heresi

dampnatorum et pro heresi, justo mandato domini nostri summi

pontificis ac domini nostri regis legitime combustorum, et ipsa

ossa in pallio sive sindone involvens cum multa reverentia ac si

essent reliquie sanctorum, accepit ac secum asportavit, et cum per

quosdam supervenientes peteretur quid faciebat ibi ipse Raimundus

respondit: "Ego colligo de ossibus istorum combustorum, vere

martirum, quia pro certo ipsi erant sanioris fidei quam illi qui

eos fecerant comburi, et de hoc habeo fidem meam, et ipsi erant

optimi Christiani, et cum magno prejudicio et contra jus sunt

combusti, et credo eos martires et eorum fidem laudo et credo quod

sunt in Paradiso." Sic tunc testes infrascripti ejus vesaniam et

incredulitatem ac etiam hereticam pravitatem increpantes, dixerunt

dicto Raimundo: "Ut quid talia facitis et talia dicitis ac

asseritis rebellionem Catholice fidei, quia certe nos credimus quod

quidquid per sanctam Ecclesiam fit, digne et juste fiat, quia si

non essent reperti heretici et pro heresi dampnati, jam non

devinissent ad taliam sententiam." Ad quod respondens dictus

Raimundus Barseti dixit hec verba vel similia: "Deberent teneri pro

bonos christianos et veros martires, et hic non possem non credere

quod non sint boni christiani," et nihil aliud posset sibi dari

intellegi contra suam opinionem predictam. Quare supplicatur vestre

Magnifice Dignitati ut ex vestro officio super premissis per vos

adhibeatur remedium opportunum, et ad informandum vos nominantur

testes, Imbertus de Ruppefixa, domicellus, Joannes Maurendi. Qua

quidem cedula ut premittitur presentata et per nos recepta, dictum

Bernardum ad nostram presentiam fecimus evocari, qui in judicio

constitutus, juratus de veritate dicenda postmodum recognovit se

fecisse fieri et dictari eamdem per magistrum Guillelmum Lombardi

clericum et procuratorem Pedenacii habitatorem et scribi per Petrum

clericum magistri Arnaudi Vasconis notarii dicti loci ad instantiam

et instructionem Guillelmi Masconis de Pedenacio apotecarii, qui

ipsam cedulam seu substantiam facti super quo formata fuit,

conscientibus aliquibus aliis complicibus inferius nominandis

primitus scripsit manu propria in vulgari, et postmodum eam sic in

vulgari scriptam fecerunt formari et transcribi in forma predicta.

Vocatis autem Joanne Maurendi, Guillelmo Masconis, Imberto de

Ruppefixa, Durando de Podio, Guillelmo de Casulis, a quibus idem

Bernardus primo asserebat se audivisse narrari factum predictum, in

dicta cedula expressum, et quod a principio, ut dixit, credebat

esse verum, et coram nobis, Inquisitore predicto, uno post alium

singulariter in judicio constitutis ac medio juramento

interrogatis, si sciebant factum, prout in ipsa cedula continebatur

fuisse verum, et primo respondentibus se nihil scire de ipso facto,

nisi per auditum dici alienum, excepto dicto Joanne Maurendi, qui

asseruit ipsum factum fore verum et deposuit de scientia et de

visu, tandem prefatis Joanne Maurendi et Imberto de Ruppefixa in

dicti Bernardi presentia affrontatis, et in judicio constitutis, et

de veritate dicenda juratis, negaverunt unus post alium se dixisse

predicto Bernardo factum predictum, et aliquid scire de ipso facto,

excepto dicto Imberto qui, cum dicto Joanne Maurendi, finaliter

asseruit se scire et vidisse, prout in culpa sua inferius postea

recitanda plenius est expressum. Quibus omnibus premissis sic

actis, habita suspicione per nos, Inquisitorem predictum, ex

verisimilibus conjecturis et circumstantiis in eisdem tunc notatis,

de consilio discretorum ibi presentium, eosdem Bernardum, Joannem,

Guillelmum et Imbertum in carcere fecimus detineri; qui omnes sic

detenti et in carcere reclusi, per paucos dies, apud Biterrim

fuerunt auditi, interrogati et super premissa cedula plenius

examinati, tandemque post multas exhortaciones, interrogationes et

requisitiones eis factas, falsitatem et machinationem per eos

factam inimicabiliter et dolose contra dictum Raimundum aperuerunt,

unus post alium, non tamen ex toto nec clare donec fuerunt in dicto

carcere per dies multos detenti et apud Carcassonam adducti. Dictus

tamen Imbertus fuit primus qui predictam falsitatem et

machinationem apperuit et detexit, non tamen ex integro donec omnes

predicti quatuor, scilicet Bernardus Pastoris, Joannes Maurendi,

Imbertus et Guillelmus fuerunt apud Carcassonam adducti et in ipso

muro detenti. Demum vero dictus Bernardus post multas

exhortaciones, inductiones et deductiones, effusis lacrymis, modum

et seriem totius tractatus et machinationis predicte, falsitatis et

cedule fabricationis et consentie in eis, corde gemebundo, detexit

ac confessus fuit, quod, licet a principio dixisset se credere

contenta in ipsa cedula fore vera, prout ab ipsis Joanne Maurendi,

Guillelmo Masconis, et Imberto predictis se audivisse asseruerat,

finaliter tamen bene perpendit ex dictis predictorum et ex

circumstanciis in dicto tractatu habitis, et firmiter credidit quod

predicta omnia in ipsa cedula contenta prout contra dictum

Raimundum Berseti proposita erant non essent vera sed falsa et

eidem Raimundo imposita falso et mendaciter, per malevolentiam et

inimicitiam quam ipse et alii predicti et quidam alii de Pedenacio

quos nominat, querebant vel habebant contra vel apud istum

Raimundum Berseti ex causas quas in sua confessione expressit, et

hoc etiam credebat et perpendebat antequam redderet cedulam

predictam, sicut dixit, quodque in itinere dum ipse qui loquitur et

dictus Joannes Maurendi ibant apud Biterrim ad redendam cedulam

predictam dixit ipse loquens dicto Joanni: "Pectus multum me

sollicitat non reddere istam cedulam," et dictus Joannes Maurendi

respondit quod bene redderet eam nisi esset ibi pro teste scriptus;

et hoc audito ipse Bernardus respondit: "Melius est quod estis

testes et ego ipsam presentabo, quia quando sunt plures testes

melius probabitur factum predictum." Item, quando fuerunt

Biterrim, ipse Bernardus Pastoris fecit dictum Joannem Maurendi

recedere et reverti postmodum, ne, si videretur per dominum

inquisitorem esset suspectus quod se ingereret in testem, non

vocatus nec citatus, et postea fecit eum cum aliis citari, et

eisdem citatis, ministravit expensas in cena, non tamen de pecunia

sua aliorum consentientium in predictis. Item, quamdam

informationem seu inquestam que fiebat in curia regia seu vicarii

regii Bitterris contra dictum Raimundum Berseti super quibusdam

casibus officium Inquisitionis minime tangentibus, tam ad expensas

proprias quam aliorum, prosequebatur pro viribus et ducebat in

odium et malum dicti Raimundi Berseti, non obstanti quod crederet

contenta in ipsa cedula non esse vera, et quod etiam dixisset

Joanni Maurendi et Guillelmo Mascon predictis se non credere ea

fore vera nec adhibere fidem dictis eorumdem, et quod etiam sibi

respondissent: "Vos, si est verum aut non, solus debetis ferre

testimonium." Interrogatus quare ergo reddebat dictam cedulam ex

quo sciebat eam contiuere falsitatem, respondit quod propter suum

malum et suam ruinam et quod volebat quod propter illa ipse

Raimundus Berseti haberet inde malum et dampnum. Interrogatus quare

credebat inde malum eventurum dicto Raimundo Berseti, si ipsa

cedula vel contenta in ea probarentur, respondit se nescire modum

curie domini Inquisitoris, tamen sciebat, ut dixit, eadem contenta

in ipsa cedula esse hereticalia, et quod dictus Raimundus propter

hoc caperetur et in carcere poneretur et detineretur et postmodum

remitteretur domino Episcopo Biterrensi et quod ipse episcopus

posset de ipso Raimundo facere inquestam, sciens tum, ut dixit,

quod dictus dominus Episcopus portabat tunc eidem Raimundo Berseti

malam voluntatem, et quod non fecisset illi nisi malum et dampnum,

credens tunc, ut dixit et desiderans quod ipse Raimundus

condempnaretur ad perdendum officium suum, scilicet notariatus, et

quod perderet magnam vel majorem partem bonorum suorum, et quod hoc

sibi dixerant aliqui de complicibus predictis et aliis, quod talia

erant in dicta cedula que, si probarentur, et causa bene duceretur,

dictus Raimundus perderet magnam partem bonorum suorum committens

predicta. Dixit se penitere de predictis.

XIV.

HOPELESSNESS OF DEFENCE.

(MSS. Bibl. Nat., fonds latin, nouvelles acquisitions, 139, fol.

33.)

Anno quo supra XIIII Kal. Februarii (19 Jan. 1252) P. Morret

comparuit coram magistris inquisitoribus apud Carcassonam et

requisitus si volebat se deffendere de hiis que in instructione

inventa sunt contra eum et si volebat ea recipere dixit quod non.

Item requisitus dixit quod habebat inimicos, videlicet B. de Beo et

sorores ejus pro eo quod habuit causam cum eis, tamen postmodum

pacificatum fuit inter eos. Item B. Seguini est inimicus suus. Item

Savrina est inimica sua quia ipsa dicebat quod rem habuerat cum

filia sua. Et requisitus si aliud volebat dicere vel proponere ad

deffensionem suam dixit se nichil aliud scire, et fuerunt sibi

publicata dicta testium in inquisitione contra ipsum inita in

præsentia domini episcopi et dictorum inquisitorum. Et facta

publicatione iterum fuit requisitus semel, secundo et tertio si

volebat aliquid aliud dicere ad deffensionem suam vel aliquas

legitimas exceptiones proponere, dixit quod non, nisi sicut

dixerat; et fuit sibi assignata dies super hiis que inventa sunt

contra eum in inquisitione et sibi publicatis in presentia

prædictorum ... ad audiendam deffinitionem suam in octava Sti

Vincentii (29 Jan.) in burgo. (Registre de l'Inquisition de

Carcassonne.)

XV.

BULL OF GREGORY XI. RELEASING A "PEXARIACH."

(Doat, XXXV. fol. 134.)

Gregorius episcopus servus servorum Dei dilecto filio inquisitori

heretice pravitatis in partibus Carcassonensibus, auctoritate

apostolica deputato, salutem et apostolicam benedictionem.

Humilibus supplicum votis libenter annuimus eaque favore

prosequimur opportuno; sane petitio pro parte Bidonis de Podio

Guillermi, laici, Burdegalensis diocesis, nobis nuper exhibita,

continebat quod ipse qui dudum cum nonnullis dampnatis societatibus

per regnum Francie discurrentibus, qui de Pexariacho nuncupabantur,

et de heresi fuerunt vehementer suspecte, per heresim hujusmodi

quam secundum quod testes contra cum super hoc producti

deposuerunt, confessus, extiterat ad perpetuum carcerem

condempnatus et in eo ex tunc continue stetit, suam penitentiam

humiliter faciendo, et vere penitens et a predicta heresi discedens

ad gremium et unitatem sancte matris ecclesie redire desiderat

quamplurimum et affectat; quodque illi qui eum propter hujusmodi

heresim auctoritate apostolica condemnarunt, liberandi eum ab

hujusmodi carceribus, quamvis sit contritus et redire velit, ut

perfertur, nullam habent potestatem, quare pro parte dicti Bidonis

nobis fuit humiliter supplicatum ut providere ei in premissis de

benignitate apostolica dignaremur; nos, hujusmodi supplicationibus

inclinati, discretioni tue prefatum Bidonem si in judicio

conscientie tue tibi videatur, quod ad hoc ipsius Bidonis merita

suffragantur, liberandi a predicto carcere et sibi alias

penitentias salutares auctoritate apostolica imponendi, hujusmodi

heresi per eum primitus abjurata, tibi tenore presentium concedimus

facultatem. Datum apud Pontem-sorgie, Avenionensis diocesis,

secundo Idus Maii, Pontificatus nostri anno primo (14 Maii, 1371).

XVI.

MONITION OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF NARBONNE IN 1329 TO PROTECT PENITENTS

WEARING CROSSES.

(Doat, XXVII. fol. 107.)

Quoniam illis qui pœnitentiam sibi impositam proper crimen hæresis

agunt improperia obloquentium vel detrahentium quandoque dant

materiam retrahendi a via veritatis et pœnitentias facere

omittendi, potissime quando de crucibus vel de pœnitentiis aliis

sibi impositis irrisiones et detractiones eis inferuntur, idcirco

nos Archiepiscopus, Episcopi, Inquisitores et Commissarii antedicti

volentes talium obloquentium detrahentium et deridentium

verbositatibus et malitiis obviare, et eos pœnitentiatos in suo

bono proposito confovere, monemus canonice semel secundo et tertio

ac peremptorie omnes et singulos utriusque sexus cujuscumque

conditionis aut status existant et nihilominus in virtute sanctæ

obedientiæ eisdem auctoritate apostolica inhibemus ne quis

cujuscumque conditionis aut status existat audeat vel præsumat

dictis personis pœnitentiatis vel crucesignatis occasione prædicti

criminis improperium dicere vel dictum crimen retrahere vel

quomodolibet imputare, intimantes omnibus tenore præsentis edicti

quod eisdem detractoribus improperatoribus irrisoribus et

oblocutoribus, si qui fuerint et de transgressione hujus edicti

nostri legitime constiterit, cruces similes imponemus et alias

procedemus contra eos secundum quod de jure ct provincialibus

conciliis prælatorum extiterit procedendum. Monemus insuper dictos

crucesignatos et pœnitentiatos ut dictas cruces eis impositas

humiliter continuo infra domum et extra portent, et sine ipsis

crucibus infra domum vel extra ullatenus incedant, intimantes

eisdem quod si eorum aliqui sine dictis crucibus prominentibus et

apparentibus infra domum vel extra incedere præsumpserint ipsos

tanquam hæreticos et impœnitentes reputabimus et eos puniemus

animadversione debita prout in Valentino et Biterrensibus conciliis

est ordinatum.

XVII.

OATH ADMINISTERED TO JAILOR OF INQUISITION.

(Archives de l'Inquisition de Carcassonne.--Doat, XXXII. fol. 125.)

Anno Domini MCC octuagesimo secundo, sexta feria (vel) Sabbato

infra octavas Apostolorum Petri et Pauli (3 Julii, 1282), fuit

injunctum et districte mandatum et per juramentum Radulpho custodi

immuratorum et Bernardæ uxori suæ per fratrem Joannem Galandi

inquisitorem, in præsentia fratris P. regis prioris, fratris

Joannis de Falgosio et fratris Archembaudi quod de cætero non

teneat scriptorem aliquem in muro nec equos, nec ab aliquo

immuratorum mutuum recipiant nec donum aliquod. Item nec pecuniam

illorum qui in muro decedunt, retineant, nec aliquid aliud, sed

statim inquisitoribus denuncient et reportent. Item quod nullum

incarceratum et inclusum extrahat de carcere. Item quod immuratos

pro aliqua causa extra primam portam muri nullo modo extrahat, nec

domos intrent nec cum eo comedant. Item nec servitores qui deputati

sunt ad serviendum aliis occupent in operibus suis, nec eos nec

alios mittant ad aliquem locum sine speciali licentia inquisitorum.

Item quod dictus Radulphus non ludat cum eis ad aliquem ludum, nec

sustineat quod ipsi inter se ludant, et si in aliquo de prædictis

inveniantur culpabiles ipso facto incontinenter de custodia muri

perpetuo sint expulsi. Actum coram prædicto inquisitore in

testimonio prædictorum et mei Pontii præpositi notarii, qui hæc

scripsi.

XVIII.

ROYAL LETTERS CONCERNING THE CONFISCATIONS AT ALBI.

(Doat, XXXIV. fol. 131.)

Universis presentes litteras inspecturis, Petrus Textor, notarius

Domini Regis, tenens locum nobilis viri domini Raynaldi de

Nusiacho, domini nostri regis militis, ejusque vicarii Albie et

Albigesii, salutem et presentibus dare fidem. Noveritis nos

vidisse, tenuisse et diligenter inspexisse quosdam patentes

litteras excellentissimi principis et domini clare memorie Sancti

Ludovici Dei gratia Francorum regis, ejus sigillo cereo viridi et

filis sericis viridibus et rubeis in pendenti sigillatas, inter

cetera continentes quoddam capitulum cujus de verbo ad verbum tenor

sequitur: "In hunc modum est sciendum quod immobilia que nobis et

successoribus nostris advenient de heresibus et faidamentis

hereticorum debemus nos et successores nostri et tenemur vendere

vel alienare infra annum, talibus personis que facient episcopo et

ecclesie Albiensi et successoribus suis servicium et alia que

tenebantur facere eis veteres possessores pro rebus iisdem; si vero

nos vel successores nostri non vendiderimus vel alienaverimus infra

annum immobilia hujusmodi, episcopus Albiensis vel successores sui

in secundo anno et in tertio accipiet auctoritate propria illa

immobilia et possidebit et faciet fructus suos, et si nos vel

successores nostri infra tertium annum non vendiderimus vel

alienaverimus predicta ut dictum est, episcopus Albiensis et

successores sui ex tunc habeant et retineant auctoritate propria

possessionem et proprietatem omnium predictorum pleno jure." In

cujus visionis et inspectionis testimonium, nos dictus locumtenens

dicti domini vicarii sigillum autenticum curie Albie domini nostri

regis huic presenti vidimus in pendenti duximus apponendum. Datum

Albie, die Veneris post festum beati Vincentii Martyris, anno

Domini MCCCIII. (23 Januarii, 1304).