THE JURISPRUDENCE OF THE HOLY OFFICE--THE SECULAR ARM
The comparatively light sentences imposed upon those who came forward
to abjure heresies which they were suspected of harbouring, and upon
those who submitted to canonical purgation to cleanse them of “evil
reputation,” have already been considered.
It remains to be seen how the Holy Office dealt with
_negativos_--_i.e._ those who persisted in refusal to confess a first
offence of heresy or apostasy after their guilt had been established to
the satisfaction of the court--and with _relapsos_--_i.e._ those who
were convicted of having relapsed into error after once having been
penanced and pardoned.
Offenders in either of these two classes were to be abandoned to the
secular arm--the ecclesiastical euphemism for death by fire. The same
fate also awaited impenitent heretics and contumacious heretics.
He who after having been convicted by sufficient witnesses persisted
in denying his guilt should, says Eymeric, be abandoned to the secular
arm upon the ground that he who denies a crime which has been proved
against him is obviously impenitent.[116]
The impenitence is by no means obvious. It is possible, after all, that
the accused might deny because he was innocent and a good Catholic. And
whilst, as we shall see, this possibility is not altogether ignored,
yet it is given very secondary consideration. It was the inquisitor’s
business to assume the guilt of any one brought before him.
It is true, however, that Eymeric urges the inquisitors to proceed very
carefully in the examination of the witnesses against such a man; he
recommends them to give the accused time in which to resolve himself to
confess, and to employ every possible means to obtain such confession.
He counsels them to confine the prisoner in an uncomfortable dungeon,
fettered hand and foot; there to visit him frequently and exhort him to
confess. Should he ultimately do so, he is to be treated as a penitent
heretic[117]--in other words he is to escape the fire but suffer
perpetual imprisonment.
The term perpetual imprisonment, or perpetual immuration, is not to be
accepted too literally. It lay at the discretion of the inquisitors
to modify and commute part of such sentences, and this discretion
they exercised so far as the imprisonment was concerned. But the
confiscation of the prisoner’s property and the infamy attaching to
himself, his children, and his grandchildren--by far the heavier part
of the punishment--could not in any way be commuted.
However tardily confession might come from the _negativo_, the
inquisitors must accept and recognize it. Even if he were already bound
to the stake, and, at last, being taken with the fear of death, he
turned to the friar who never left him until the faggots were blazing,
admitted his guilt and offered to abjure his heresy, his life would be
spared. And this for all that they recognized that a confession in such
extremes was wrung from him by “the fear of death rather than any love
of truth.”
It must naturally occur to any one that, conducted in secret as were
the examinations of the witnesses, and no opportunity being afforded
the accused of demolishing the evidence offered against him, since he
was rarely informed of its extent, many a good Catholic, or, at least,
many a man innocent of all heretical practices, must have gone to his
death as a _negativo_. For the methods of the Holy Office opened the
door extraordinarily wide to malevolence; and human nature being such
as it is--and such as it was in the fifteenth century--it is not to be
supposed that malevolence never seized the chance, that it never slunk
in through that gaping door to vent itself in such close and sheltered
secrecy--to strike in the back, in the dark, with almost perfect
immunity to itself, at the man who was hated, or envied, or whom it was
desired to supplant.
It was not sufficient for the prisoner to protest his innocence. He
must prove it categorically. An innocent man might be unable to furnish
categorical proof; witnesses for the defence were extremely difficult
to obtain by one who was charged with heresy; it was a dangerous thing
to testify in favour of such a man; should his conviction none the less
follow, the witness for the defence might find himself prosecuted as
a befriender, or _fautor_, of heretics. Yet, even when testimony for
the defence was obtained, the judges leaned upon principle to the side
of the accusers; and since they considered it their mission to convict
rather than to judge, they would always assume that the accusers were
better informed than the defenders.
Therefore this danger of death to the innocent existed. The inquisitors
themselves did not lose sight of it, for they lost sight of nothing.
But how did they provide for it? Pegna has a great deal to say upon
the subject. He tells us that some authorities pretend that when a
_negativus_ protests that he staunchly believes all that is taught by
the Roman Catholic Church such a man should not be abandoned to the
secular arm.
But this is an argument mentioned by the scholiast merely that he may
demolish it. It is indefensible, he says with confidence; and, as
indefensible, it is almost universally rejected.
Torquemada most certainly did not favour it. He lays it down clearly in
Art. XXIV of his first “Instrucciones” that a _negativo_ must be deemed
an impenitent heretic, however much he may protest his Catholicism. The
accused will not satisfy the Church, which demands confession of his
fault solely that she may pardon it; and she cannot pardon it until it
is confessed. That is the inquisitorial view of the matter.
It is evident that the danger of occasionally burning an innocent man
did not perturb the inquisitorial mind. In fact, Pegna reveals to the
full the equanimity with which it could contemplate such an accident.
“After all,” says he, “should an innocent person be unjustly condemned,
he should not complain of the sentence of the Church, which was founded
upon sufficient proof, and which cannot judge of what is hidden. If
false witnesses condemned him, he should receive the sentence with
resignation, and rejoice in dying for the truth.”[118]
He is also, we are to suppose, to rejoice with the same
lightheartedness at the prospect of his children’s destitution and
infamy.
Anything, it seems, is possible to argument, and the craziest argument
may be convincing to him who employs it. Pegna makes this abundantly
clear.
An innocent man might be tempted to save his life by a falsehood, by
making the desired confession; and many a man may so have escaped
burning. This also the scholiast duly weighs. He propounds the question
whether a man convicted by false witnesses is justified in saving his
life by a confession of crimes which he has not committed.[119]
He contends that, reputation being an external good, each is at liberty
to sacrifice it to avoid torments that are hurtful, or to save his
life, which is the most precious of all possessions.
In this contention the scholiast lacks his usual speciousness. He has
entirely overlooked that whether an innocent man confesses or not,
whether he is burnt or sent to perpetual imprisonment, his reputation
is equally blasted. The inquisitors see to that. His silence is
interpreted as impenitence.
But it is evident that Pegna himself is not quite satisfied with what
he urges. He vacillates a little. Strong swimmer though he is, these
swirling waters of casuistry begin to give him trouble. He seems
here to turn in an attempt to regain the shore. “Who thus accuses
himself,” he concludes, “commits a venial sin against the love which
he owes himself and a falsehood in confessing a crime which he has not
committed. This falsehood is particularly criminal when uttered to a
judge who examines juridically, for it then becomes a mortal sin. And
even though it were no more than venial, it would not be permitted to
commit it for the sake of avoiding death or torture.”
“Therefore,” he sums up, “however hard it may seem for an innocent
man condemned as a _negativus_ to die under such circumstances, his
confessor must exhort him not to accuse himself falsely, reminding him
that if he suffers death with resignation he will obtain the martyr’s
immortal crown.”
In short, to burn at the stake for crimes never committed is a boon, a
privilege, a glory to be enjoyed with a profound gratitude towards the
inquisitors who vouchsafed it. One cannot help a pang of regret at the
thought that the scholiast himself should have been denied that glory.
* * * * *
A person was considered _relapsus_--relapsed into heresy--not only if,
as in the case of the self-delator who availed himself of the edict of
grace, he had once been pardoned an avowed heresy, but if he had once
abjured a heresy of which he had been suspected either vehemently or
violently. And it was of no account whether the heresy of which he was
now convicted was that particular one of which formerly he had been
suspected, or an entirely fresh one. Moreover, to convict as a relapsed
heretic one who had already abjured, it was sufficient to show that he
held intercourse with heretics.
Further, a person would be dealt with as _relapsus_ in the event of
formal proof appearing that he had actually committed the heresy which
he had abjured as suspect, although his conduct since abjuration might
have been entirely blameless. For it was argued that these fresh
proofs, although acquired after abjuration, revealed the person’s
real guilt, and showed that he had been judged too leniently in being
allowed to abjure merely upon suspicion.[120]
In fact, it was held that he had acted in bad faith towards the
inquisitors; that he had neglected to confess his sin when he was given
the opportunity; that he had attempted to defraud the treasury of his
property, which was due to it by confiscation. Since he had not made
an open and complete confession, it was argued that he was clearly an
impenitent heretic, for whom there could be no mercy--or only a very
slight one, as we shall see.
Canonical purgation entailed the same sequel as abjuration for one
against whom proofs of heresy were afterwards forthcoming. Thus,
to quote an instance given by Pegna: if a man should be suspected
of thinking that heretics should be tolerated, and if after being
canonically purged of the offence against the Faith contained in that
sentiment of which he was suspected, it should be proved against him
that his acts or words had actually expressed that sentiment, he must
be considered a relapsed heretic.
Torquemada further decreed that any who after reconciliation should
fail to fulfil the penance imposed upon him, or any part of it, must
be deemed relapsed. The argument, obviously, was that a neglect of
this penance showed a want of proper contrition, which could only be
explained in one way.
* * * * *
A relapsed heretic, once his guilt was thoroughly established, must be
“abandoned to the secular arm,” and this notwithstanding any repentance
he might manifest or any promises he might make for the future. “_Sine
audientia quacumque_,” says Eymeric.[121] “In effect,” adds his
commentator, “it is enough that such people should once have defrauded
the Church by false confession”[122]--a statement this, diametrically
opposed to the injunction of the Founder of Christianity on the score
of forgiveness.
All the mercy they vouchsafed a relapsed heretic who confessed and
expressed repentance was the mercy of being strangled at the stake
before his body was burnt.
Eymeric instructs inquisitors to see that the prisoner is visited and
entertained on the subject of contempt for this world, the miseries of
this life and the joys of Paradise. He should be given to understand
that there is no hope of his escaping temporal death, and he should
be induced to put the affairs of his conscience in order. He is to be
accorded the sacraments of Penitence and the Eucharist if he solicits
them with humility. Further, the inquisitor is advised not to visit him
personally, lest the sight of him should excite the sin of anger in the
doomed man, and so turn him from the sentiments of patience and penance
which are to be inspired in him.
It would seem at least that the inquisitors had no delusions as to
the sentiments which the sight of them inspired in their victims,
just as it seems that they were able to endure these with Christian
resignation--perhaps even with that sense of martyrdom of him who
accounts himself misunderstood or misjudged.
After some days thus employed in preparing the prisoner for death, the
inquisitor should advise the secular justices of the day and hour and
place when and where he would abandon to them a heretic. At the same
time an announcement should be made to the people inviting them to
attend, as the inquisitor is to preach a sermon of the Faith, and those
who are present will gain the usual indulgences.[123]
It is not necessary at present to enter into particulars of the
dread ceremonial, the ghastly, almost theatrical, solemnities that
went to compose the greatest horror that has sprung from the womb of
Christianity: the Auto de Fé.
“An Asiatic,” says Voltaire, “arriving in Madrid on the day of an
Auto de Fé, would doubt whether here was a festival, a religious
celebration, a sacrifice, or a massacre. It is all of these. They
reproach Montezuma with sacrificing human captives to God. What would
he have said had he witnessed an Auto de Fé?”[124]
Occasion to enter into these details will occur later. We are more
concerned at the moment with the words of the inquisitors than with
their acts, and it is necessary on the subject of the laws that
governed the Auto de Fé to touch upon quite the most extraordinary of
all the quibbles by means of which the Holy Office avoided--in the
letter--committing an irregularity.
Nothing in the whole of its jurisprudence savours more rankly of
hypocrisy than this matter of abandoning a heretic to the secular arm.
It is the very last word in that science which it is the fashion to
call “Jesuitism,” but which we think might quite as aptly and justly
be termed “Dominicanism.” Yet it would be very rash to say that these
men were prompted by conscious hypocrisy. Such is certainly not
the inference to be drawn from their jurisprudence. Stupidity--the
stupidity of the man of one idea, of the man who is able to perceive
but one thing at a time--was, rather than hypocrisy, responsible for
what they did.
They were imbued with a passion for formality, for procedure that
should be scrupulously correct, scrupulously in accordance with the
letter of the law; and they justified their circumvention, their
perversion of its spirit, with crazy arguments that must at least
have been convincing to themselves, obfuscated as they were by the
fanaticism that bubbled through their extraordinary intelligences.
We say that these arguments must have been convincing to themselves,
because we find them in books that were never intended to be perused
by any but inquisitors and ecclesiastics. Since these books were never
meant to be placed before the world, no suspicion can attach to them of
having deliberately and hypocritically resorted to sophistries for the
purpose of hoodwinking the lay mind.
It was themselves they hoodwinked--by the arguments they themselves
conceived--and although it is undeniable that they practised a
deception which must provoke the scorn of every thoughtful man, yet it
must be remembered that this deception was the self-deception that lies
in wait for every fanatic, whatever the subject of his fanaticism. By
staring too long and too intently at one object, that object itself
becomes blurred and indistinct.
“_Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine._”
That was the principle that governed them. Conceive it!
The tenet that a Christian must not be guilty of shedding blood or
causing the death of a fellow-creature has been touched upon more
than once in these pages. It has been seen how in the very dawn of
Christianity the Christian’s refusal to bear arms in the service of
the State gave rise to friction with the Roman authorities, and,
being construed into insubordination, was one of the causes of the
persecutions to which Christians were subjected in the first and second
centuries. As time went on, under stress of the necessities of this
world, the Christian was forced to abandon that fine and loftily
humanitarian ideal. Soon he had not only abandoned it under pressure
of expediency, but he had forgotten it altogether; so that he donned
the cross of the crusader, and went forth sword in hand, exultantly, to
shed the blood of the infidel in the name of that tender Founder Whose
disciple had brought to Rome the great Message of Forbearance.
But however much it might be accounted justifiable and even necessary
for the Christian layman to wield the sword, the priest still continued
under the prohibition to shed blood or compass the death of any man.
And if a priest lay under such an injunction, so must a tribunal that
was controlled by priests.
Therefore it follows that not only was it admittedly illicit for the
inquisitor to pass a capital sentence, to send a man to his death, but
even to be in any way a party to such an act.
This was the letter of the law, and, happen what might, that letter
must suffer no violence. Nor did it. When the accused was found guilty
of heresy, when he was impenitent, or relapsed, the inquisitor was
careful that the sentence he passed contained no single word that could
render him responsible for the delinquent’s death. Far from it. The
inquisitors earnestly implored the secular justiciaries to whom they
abandoned him not to do him any hurt whatever.
But consider the actual formula of the sentence as prescribed by
Eymeric. It concluded thus:
“The Church of God can do no more for you, since you have already
abused its goodness.... Therefore we cast you out from the Church, and
we abandon you to the secular justice, beseeching it none the less,
and earnestly, so to moderate its sentence that it may deal with you
without shedding your blood or putting you in danger of death.”[125]
* * * * *
They were careful not so much as to say that they _delivered_ him
to the secular arm; for delivery suggests activity in a matter in
which they must remain absolutely passive. They merely _abandoned_
him. Pilate-like, they washed their hands of him. If the secular
justiciaries chose to bear him away and burn him at the stake in spite
of their “earnest intercessions” to the contrary, that was the secular
justiciaries’ affair.
Thus was the letter of the law most scrupulously observed, and the
inquisitor displayed in his intercession on the heretic’s behalf the
benignity proper to his sacerdotal office. His conscience was entirely
at peace.
For the rest, he knew, of course, that there was a bull of Innocent IV,
known as “ad extirpanda,” which compelled the secular justiciaries,
under pain of greater excommunication, and of being themselves
prosecuted as heretics and _fautores_, to put to death within a term
of not more than five days any convicted heretic taken within their
jurisdiction.
Francesco Pegna recommends inquisitors to be careful not to omit
the intercession on the prisoner’s behalf, lest they should render
themselves guilty of an irregularity. At the same time he raises
the interesting question whether an inquisitor can reconcile this
intercession with his conscience--not, as you might suppose, upon the
score of the dissimulation it entails; but purely on the ground that it
is most strictly forbidden to intercede on behalf of heretics; to do
so, indeed, is to incur suspicion of being a befriender of heretics--an
offence as punishable as heresy itself.
This question he has no difficulty in answering. Thus:
“In truth it would not be permitted to employ for a heretic an
intercession that would be of any advantage to him, or which tended to
hinder the justice which is to be executed upon his crime, but only
an intercession whose aim it is to relieve the inquisitor of the
irregularity he might otherwise incur.”
He goes on to say that when the heretic has been abandoned to the
secular justiciaries, the latter must pronounce their own sentence and
conduct him to the place of execution, permitting him to be accompanied
by pious men, who will pray for him and not leave him until he shall
have delivered up his soul. And he reminds the inquisitors--though it
hardly seems necessary--that should the magistrates delay in putting to
death a heretic who has been abandoned to them, they must be regarded
as _fautores_ and themselves prosecuted.
* * * * *
Innocent IV, as we have seen, allowed the magistrates a term of five
days in which to do their duty in this matter, and in Italy it was
usual to take the heretics back to prison after sentence, and bring
them forth again upon a week-day--always within the prescribed term--to
be burnt. In Spain, however, the custom was that the magistrates having
pronounced their own sentence--as soon as the heretic was abandoned to
them--should immediately proceed to execute it.
According to some authorities the sentence, by which was meant the
Auto de Fé generally, should not take place in church. Pegna agrees
with these, but not upon the score of the desecration of sanctuary,
which was their reason. He agrees because in a large open space
higher scaffolds can be erected for the Auto, and greater multitudes
can assemble to witness this uplifting spectacle of the triumph of
the Faith. On the same grounds does he belittle those who maintain
that heretics should not be put to death on Sundays. He considers
it quite the best day of the week, and excellent the Spanish custom
that appoints it for the Auto, “for,” he says, “it is good that large
multitudes should attend, so that fear may turn them from evil ways;
the spectacle being one that inspires the attendance with terror and
presents a fearful image of the last judgment.”
That it is expedient to put heretics to death no pious authority has
ever ventured to dispute. But there have been differences of opinion on
the subject of the means by which this should be done. The scholiast
is entirely on the side of the large majority that considers fire the
proper instrument, and actually cites the Saviour’s own authority for
this: “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch that is
withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they
are burned” (John xv. 6).
* * * * *
If the accused should happen to be a cleric, he must be unfrocked and
degraded by a bishop before being arrayed in the hideous _sanbenito_
and abandoned to the secular arm, whilst those convicted of contumacy
were--if still absent at the time of the sentence--to be burnt in
effigy pending their capture, when, without further trial, they would
be burnt alive.
In effigy also were burnt those convicted after death, these effigies
being cast into the flames together with the remains of the dead man,
which were exhumed for the purpose.
* * * * *
Reference has several times been made here to the _sanbenito_ which was
imposed upon all whom the Holy Office found guilty of heresy, whether
reconciled or abandoned, and also upon those who were suspected in the
degree _violenter_.
In this garment they attended the Auto de Fé, and went to execution if
they were abandoned; or they might be required to wear it for varying
periods after reconciliation, and in some instances for as long as they
lived, to advertise their infamy.
It was the perversion into a garb of shame and disgrace of the
penitential garment originally prescribed by St. Dominic; for whereas
once it--or, rather, that from which it was derived--had been worn
even by princes as an outward mark of contrition for the sins into
which they had fallen, it was now imposed that it might subject its
wearer to opprobrium and contempt.
St. Dominic’s instructions were that it should be a sackcloth habit,
of the kind worn by his own brotherhood, and that its colour might be
at the discretion of the wearer so long as it was sombre. As it had
ever been the custom of the Church to bless the “sack” or tunic worn by
members of religious confraternities or by those upon whom it had been
imposed as a penance, such a garment was called a _saco bendito_, which
in course of time was contracted into _sanbenito_, though also known by
its proper Spanish name of _zamarra_.
When the crusade against the Albigensian heretics was at its height in
Southern France, not only did the crusaders wear the cross upon their
garments, but all faithful Catholics assumed it for their protection;
for--as on the night of the St. Bartholomew, some four centuries
later--no man’s life was safe if he did not display that device. St.
Dominic desired that the penitent should enjoy the same protection, but
so that his penance should still be proclaimed, he was ordered to wear
two crosses, one on each breast.
Later, when the wars of religion had ceased, and the general wearing
of the cross was abandoned, the Council of Toulouse decreed, in 1229,
that these penitential crosses should be yellow, whilst the Council of
Beziers, four years later, going further into the matter, ordained that
they should be two and a half hands long (vertical) by two hands wide
(horizontal), and that they should be made of cloth of the width of
three fingers. Instead of being worn upon the breast, as hitherto, they
were now placed one on the breast and one on the back, with a third on
the hood or veil if hood or veil were worn.
For abettors of heresy the following solemn penance was enjoined by
the Council of Tarragona in 1242:
“On All Saints’, on the First Sunday in Advent, on the feasts of
Christmas, the Circumcision, the Epiphany, St. Mary of February
(Purification), St. Mary of March, and all Sundays in Lent, the
penitents shall go to the Cathedral to take part in the procession.
They shall be dressed only in their shirts, barefoot, their arms
crossed, and they shall be whipped in the procession by the bishop or
parish priest. Similarly shall they repair to the Cathedral on Ash
Wednesday in their shirts, barefoot, their arms crossed, and submit
to banishment from church for all Lent; so that during that season
they must remain at the church door and hear the service thence. On
Thursday in Holy Week they shall come to the church to be reconciled
in accordance with the canonical provisions, it being understood that
this penance of remaining out of the church through Lent and of being
whipped in procession on the days appointed shall be performed yearly
for the remainder of the penitents’ lives.”
* * * * *
At first, and down to Eymeric’s day, the _sanbenito_ preserved its
original form--a tunic similar to that worn by the members of regular
orders. But in the fourteenth century it was altered to a scapulary or
tabard, with an opening at the top through which the head was passed;
it was to be of the full width of the body, and to descend no lower
than the knees, lest it should too closely resemble the scapulary
which the regulars wore in addition to their tunic. Soon after it was
resolved that it should be of yellow sackcloth, and that the crosses
should be red.
Once this stage was reached, it may be said that the transition from a
garment solely of penitence into a garment chiefly of shame and infamy
was complete. [Illustration:
_Photo by Donald Macbeth._
PROCESSION TO AUTO DE FÉ.
From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis.”]
We have said that the imposition of the _sanbenito_ had been falling
into desuetude during the fifteenth century. But for Torquemada it
might indeed have become entirely obsolete. It happened, however,
that the Prior of Holy Cross perceived the virtues of it, the salutary
results to be obtained from parading the victims of the Holy Office in
that hideous garb. Therefore he revived it, and strongly enjoined its
use by all offenders save those against whom there was no more than
evil reputation, and who submitted themselves to be purged of this
canonically.
It was not, however, until the famous Ximenes de Cisneros, who became
Grand Inquisitor some ten years after Torquemada’s death--that the
_sanbenito_ attained its full development, the form which it was to
preserve until the extinction of the Inquisition.
Cisneros substituted for the ordinary rectangular cross worn on back
and breast of the _sanbenito_ an _aspa_, or St. Andrew’s cross, and he
otherwise disposed that the _sanbenito_ might proclaim the offence and
sentence of its wearer. Three varieties were devised for those who were
abjuring a heresy of which they had incurred suspicion: the suspect of
the degree _leviter_ wore a perfectly plain _sanbenito_ without any
cross or other device; the suspect _vehementer_ wore upon back and
breast one arm only of the St. Andrew’s cross; the suspect _violenter_
was made to wear the full cross.
Those actually convicted of heresy wore in addition to the _sanbenito_
a tall mitre, or pyramidal cap, made of cardboard and covered
with yellow sackcloth; and that their precise condition might be
distinguished, the following differentiations were prescribed: the
heretic who repented before the passing of sentence, and who--not being
a relapsed--was not to die by fire, bore upon the breast and back of
his _sanbenito_ and upon the front and back of his _coroza_, as the
mitre was called, a full St. Andrew’s cross; the relapsed heretic
who had repented before the Auto bore, in addition to the crosses,
the device of a bust upon burning faggots on the nether part of his
_sanbenito_; further his _sanbenito_ and _coroza_ were flecked with
tongues of flame, which pointed downwards to signify that he was not
to die by fire, although his body was to be burnt. He had deserved
the charity of being strangled at the stake before the faggots were
ignited. And this mercy, be it added, the Holy Office conceded to any
heretic who at the eleventh hour confessed his guilt and desired to
make his peace with the Church and die, as it were, upon her loving
bosom. To this end the condemned was accompanied from the Auto to the
stake by two friars, who never ceased to exhort him to make confession,
save his body from the temporal torment of physical fire, and his soul
from the eternal torment of spiritual fire.
Finally, the impenitent heretic bore the same devices as the relapsed
penitent, but in his case the tongues of flame pointed upwards to show
that he was to die by them, and his _sanbenito_ was further daubed
with crude paintings of devils--horrible, grotesque caricatures--to
advertise the spirits ruling over his soul.
* * * * *
Something should by now have been gathered of the spirit of the
Inquisition as reflected in the pages of Eymeric and his commentator
Pegna in that “Directorium” upon which such copious draught has been
made for these chapters upon the Jurisprudence of the Holy Office. It
is worth while, before proceeding, to cite another author’s views upon
Justice and Mercy as understood by the Inquisition, and to consider an
illuminating passage from the pen of Garcia de Trasmiera.
This Trasmiera--to whom reference has been made already--was an
Aragonese, an inquisitor who lived in the seventeenth century--nearly
two hundred years after the epoch with which we are here concerned. We
might go to a score of other sources, from Paramo downwards, for very
similar sentiments, and the only reason for choosing this particular
passage from Trasmiera is that it is almost in the nature of an
epitome.
He seems to summarize the very arguments with which Torquemada and his
delegates convinced themselves not merely of the righteousness, but of
the inevitability--if they were to do their duty by God and man, and
fulfil the destinies for which they had been sent into this world--of
the task to which they had set their hands.
“These two virtues of Mercy and Justice,” says the Aragonese writer,
with all the authority of an Evangelist, “are so closely united in
God, although we imperfectly judge them to be opposed, that Divine
Wisdom but avails Itself of the one, the more gloriously to exercise
the other. The most proper effect of the Divine Mercy, none doubts,
is the salvation of souls, and who can doubt that what in this court
of the Inquisition appears to be rigour of Justice is really medicine
prescribed by Mercy for the good of the delinquents? Just as it would
be a barbarous judgment to attribute to cruelty on the part of the
surgeon the cautery of fire which he employs to destroy the contagious
cancer of the patient, so it would be crass ignorance to suppose that
these laws which appear to be severities are prescribed for any purpose
other than that which governs the surgeon in curing his patient, or
a father in punishing his child. Says the Holy Ghost: ‘Who does not
use the rod hates the child,’ and elsewhere: ‘God punishes whom He
loves.’”[126]
Could perversity of interpretation go further? In Rome, in Torquemada’s
day, the Father of Christianity was granting absolutions, commuting the
punishment of hanging to pecuniary penances where such penances were
solicited, and justifying such commutation by reminding Christianity
that God does not desire the death of a sinner, but rather that he
should live and be converted.
It would seem as if Inquisitor and Pontiff did not see eye to eye in
this matter of Mercy and Justice. To the credit of the Pontiff be it
said.
Trasmiera, echoing the inquisitorial casuistry of centuries, holds
that the rigour of Justice is prescribed by Mercy for the good of the
delinquents. The impenitent Judaizer was sent to the stake. How could
that redound to his good in this world or the next? We could admit a
certain logical consummation of their arguments if the inquisitors had
confined themselves to burning those who repented, or those who were
innocent even; by burning these whilst they were in a state of grace
they would have ensured their salvation by abstracting them from all
perils of future sin. But to burn the impenitent upon such grounds as
they themselves urged, believing, as they did, that just as surely as
his mortal part was burnt there at the stake, just so surely would his
immortal part burn through all eternity in hell--that was, clearly, by
their own lights, to perpetrate the murder of his soul.