The Inquisition Part 14

If, on leaving the torture chamber, the prisoner reiterated his confession, the case was at once decided. But suppose, on the contrary, that the confession extorted under torture was afterwards retracted, what was to be done? The Inquisitors did not agree upon this point. Some of them, like Eymeric, held that in this case the prisoner was ent.i.tled to his freedom. Others, like the author of the _Sacro a.r.s.enale_, held that "the torture should be repeated, in order that the prisoner might be forced to reiterate his first confession which had evidently compromised him." This seems to have been the traditional practice of the Italian tribunals.

But the casuists did not stop here. They discovered "that Clement V had only spoken of torture in general, and had not specifically alluded to witnesses, whence they concluded that one of the most shocking abuses of the system, the torture of witnesses, was left to the sole discretion of the Inquisitor, and this became the accepted rule. It only required an additional step to show that after the accused had been convicted by evidence or had confessed as to himself, he became a witness as to the guilt of his friends, and thus could be arbitrarily (?) tortured to betray them."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 425.

As a matter of course, the canonists and the theologians approved the severest penalties inflicted by the Inquisition. St. Raymond of Pennafort, however, who was one of the most favored counselors of Gregory IX, still upheld the criminal code of Innocent III. The severest penalties he defended were the excommunication of heretics and schismatics, their banishment and the confiscation of their property.[1] His _Summa_ was undoubtedly completed when the Dccretal of Gregory IX appeared, authorizing the Inquisitors to enforce the cruel laws of Frederic II.

[1] Lea writes (op. cit., vol. i, p. 229, note) "Saint Raymond of Pennafort, the compiler of the decretals of Gregory I, who was the highest authority in his generation, lays it down as a principle of ecclesiastical law that the heretic is to be coerced by excommunication and confiscation, and if they fail, _by the extreme exercise of the secular power_. The man who was doubtful in faith was to be held a heretic, and so also was the schismatic who, while believing all the articles of religion, refused the obedience due to the Roman Church. All alike were to be forced into the Roman fold, and the fate of Core, Dathan and Abiron was invoked _for the destruction of the obstinate_." (_Summa_, lib. i. t.i.t. v, 2, 4, 8; t.i.t. vi, i.) This is a travesty of the mind, and words of Saint Raymond. He merely called attention to the lot of Core, Dathan and Abiron to show what a great crime schism was. He never a.s.serted that heretics or schismatics, even when obdurate, ought to be "destroyed."

_Summa_, lib. i, cap. _De Haereticis_ and _De Schismaticis_.

But St. Thomas, who wrote at a time when the Inquisition was in full operation, felt called upon to defend the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics and the relapsed. His words deserve careful consideration. He begins by answering the objections that might be brought from the Scriptures and the Fathers against his thesis. The first of these is the well-known pa.s.sage of St. Matthew, in which our Saviour forbids the servants of the householder to gather up the c.o.c.kle before the harvest time, lest they root up the wheat with it.[1] St. John Chrysostom, he says, "argues from this text that it is wrong to put heretics to death."[2] But according to St. Augustine the words of the Saviour: "Let the c.o.c.kle grow until the harvest,"

are explained at once by what follows: "lest perhaps gathering up the c.o.c.kle, you root up the wheat also with it." When there is no danger of uprooting the wheat and no danger of schism, violent measures may be used:" _c.u.m metus iste non subest ... non dormiat severitas disciplinae_."[3] We doubt very much whether such reasoning would have satisfied St. John Chrysostom, St. Theodore the Studite, or Bishop Wazo, who understood the Saviour's prohibition in a literal and an absolute sense.

[1] Matt. xiii. 28-30.

[2] _In Matthaeum_, Homil. xlvi.

[3] Augustine, _Contra epistol. Parmeniani_, lib. iii. cap. ii.

But this pa.s.sage does not reveal the whole mind of the Angelic doctor. It is more evident in his exegesis of Ezechiel xviii. 32, _Nolo mortem peccatoris_. "a.s.suredly," he writes, "none of us desires the death of a single heretic. But remember that the house of David could not obtain peace until Absalom was killed in the war he waged against his father. In like manner, the Catholic Church saves some of her children by the death of others, and consoles her sorrowing heart by reflecting that she is acting for the general good."[1]

[1] St. Thomas, _Summa_, loc. cit., ad. 4m.

If we are not mistaken, St. Thomas is here trying to prove, on the authority of St. Augustine, that it is sometimes lawful to put heretics to death.

But it is only by garbling and distorting the context that St. Thomas makes the Bishop of Hippo advocate the very penalty which, as a matter of fact, he always denounced most strongly. In the pa.s.sage quoted, St. Augustine was speaking of the benefit that ensues to the Church _from the suicide of heretics_, but he had no idea whatever of maintaining that the Church had the right to put to death her rebellious children.[1] St. Thomas misses the point entirely, and gives his readers a false idea of the teaching of St. Augustine.

[1] Ep. clx.x.xv, ad _Bonifacium_, no. 32.

Thinking, however, that he has satisfactorily answered all the objections against his thesis, he states it as follows: "Heretics who persist in their error after a second admonition ought not only to be excommunicated, but also abandoned to the secular arm to be put to death. For, he argues, it is much more wicked to corrupt the faith on which depends the life of the soul, than to debase the coinage which provides merely for temporal life; wherefore, if coiners and other malefactors are justly doomed to death, much more may heretics be justly slain once they are convicted. If, therefore, they persist in their error after two admonitions, the Church despairs of their conversion, and excommunicates them to ensure the salvation of others whom they might corrupt; she then abandons them to the secular arm that they may be put to death."[1]

[1] _Summa_, IIa IIae, quaest. xi, art. 3.

St. Thomas in this pa.s.sage makes a mere comparison serve as an argument. He does not seem to realize that if his reasoning were valid, the Church could go a great deal further, and have the death penalty inflicted in many other cases.

The fate of the relapsed heretic had varied from Lucius III to Alexander IV. The bull _Ad Abolendam_ decreed that converted heretics who relapsed into heresy were to be abandoned to the secular arm without trial.[1] But at the time this Decretal was published, the _Animadversio debita_ of the State entailed no severer penalty than banishment and confiscation. When this term, already fearful enough, came to mean the death penalty, the Inquisitors did not know whether to follow the ancient custom or to adopt the new interpretation. For a long time they followed the traditional custom. Bernard of Caux, who was undoubtedly a zealous Inquisitor, is a case in point. In his register of sentences from 1244 to 1248, we meet with sixty cases of relapse, not one of whom was punished by a penalty severer than imprisonment. But a little later on the strict interpretation of the _Animadversio debita_ began to prevail. In St. Thomas's time it meant the death penalty; and we find him citing the bull _Ad Abolendam_[2]

as his authority for the infliction of the death penalty upon the relapsed, penitent or impenitent, in ignorance of the fact that this doc.u.ment originally had a totally different interpretation.

[1] Decretals, in cap. ix, _De haereticis_, lib. v, t.i.t. vii.

[2] _Summa_, IIa IIae, quaest. ix, art. 4: _Sed contra_.

His reasoning therefore rests on a false supposition. He advocates the death penalty for the relapsed in the name of Christian charity.

For, he argues, charity has for its object the spiritual and temporal welfare of one's neighbor. His spiritual welfare is the salvation of his soul; his temporal welfare is life, and temporal advantages, such as riches, dignities, and the like. These temporal advantages are subordinate to the spiritual, and charity must prevent their endangering the eternal salvation of their possessor. Charity, therefore, to himself and to others, prompts us to deprive him of these temporal goods, if he makes a bad use of them. For if we allowed the relapsed heretic to live, we would undoubtedly endanger the salvation of others, either because he would corrupt the faithful whom he met, or because his escape from punishment would lead others to believe they could deny the faith with impunity. The inconstancy of the relapsed is, therefore, a sufficient reason why the Church, although she receives him to penance for his soul's salvation, refuses to free him from the death penalty.

Such reasoning is not very convincing. Why would not the life imprisonment of the heretic safeguard the faithful as well as his death? Will you answer that this penalty is too trivial to prevent the faithful from falling into heresy? If that be so, why not at once condemn all heretics to death, even when repentant? That would terrorize the wavering ones all the more. But St. Thomas evidently was not thinking of the logical consequences of his reasoning. His one aim was to defend the criminal code in vogue at the time. That is his only excuse. For we must admit that rarely has his reasoning been so faulty and so weak as in his thesis upon the coercive power of the Church, and the punishment of heresy.

St. Thomas defended the death penalty without indicating how it was to be inflicted. The commentators who followed him were more definite. The _Animadversio debita_, says Henry of Susa (Hostiensis + 1271), in his commentary on the bull _Ad Abolendam_, is the penalty of the stake (_ignis crematio_). He defends this interpretation by quoting the words of Christ: "If any one abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him _and cast him into the fire_, and he burneth."[1] Jean d'Andre (+ 1348), whose commentary carried equal weight with Henry of Susa's throughout the Middle Ages, quotes the same text as authority for sending heretics to the stake.[2] According to this peculiar exegesis, the law and custom of the day merely sanctioned the law of Christ. To regard our Saviour as the precursor or rather the author of the criminal code of the Inquisition evidences, one must admit, a very peculiar temper of mind.

[1] John, xv, 6; Hostiensis, on the decretal _Ad Abolendum_, cap. xi, in Eymeric, _Directorium inquisitorum_, 2a pars, pp. 149, 150.

[2] On the decretal _Ad Abolendum_, cap. xiv, in Eymeric, ibid., pp.

170, 171.

The next step was to free the Church from all responsibility in the infliction of the death penalty--truly an extremely difficult undertaking.

St. Thomas held, with many other theologians, that heretics condemned by the Inquisition should be abandoned to the secular arm, _judicio saeculari_. But he went further, and declared it the duty of the State to put such criminals to death.[1] The State, therefore, was to carry out this sentence at least indirectly in the name of the Church.

[1]_Summa_, IIa, IIae, quaest. xi, art. 3.

A contemporary of St. Thomas thus meets this difficulty: "The Pope does not execute any one," he says, "or order him to be put to death; heretics are executed by the law which the Pope tolerates; they practically cause their own death by committing crimes which merit death."[1] The heretic who received this answer to his objections must surely have found it very far-fetched. He could easily have replied that the Pope "not only allowed heretics to be put to death, but ordered this done under penalty of excommunication." And by this very fact he incurred all the odium of the death penalty.

[1] _Disputatio inter catholic.u.m et Paterinum haeretic.u.m_, cap. xii, in Martene, _Thesaurus Anecdotorum_, vol. v. col. 1741.

The casuists of the Inquisition, however, came to the rescue, and tried to defend the Church by another subterfuge. They denounced in so many words the death penalty and other similar punishments, while at the same time they insisted upon the State's enforcing them. The formula by which they dismissed an impenitent or a relapsed heretic was thus worded: "We dismiss you from our ecclesiastical forum, and abandon you to the secular arm. But we strongly beseech the secular court to mitigate its sentence in such a way as to avoid bloodshed or danger of death."[1] We regret to state, however, that the civil judges were not supposed to take these words literally. If they were at all inclined to do so, they would have been quickly called to a sense of their duty by being excommunicated. The clause inserted by the canonists was a mere legal fiction, which did not change matters a particle.

[1] Eymeric, _Directorium Inquisitorum_, 3a pars, p. 515, col. 2.

It is hard to understand why such a formula was used at all. Probably it was first used in other criminal cases in which abandonment to the secular arm did not imply the death penalty, and the Inquisition kept using it merely out of respect to tradition. It seemed to palliate the too flagrant contradiction which existed between ecclesiastical justice and the teaching of Christ, and it gave at least an external homage to the teaching of St. Augustine, and the first Fathers of the Church. Moreover, as it furnished a specious means of evading by the merest form of prohibition against clerics taking part in sentences involving the effusion of blood and death, aud the irregularity resulting therefrom, the Inquisitors used it to rea.s.sure their conscience.

Finally, however, some Inquisitors, realizing the emptiness of this formula, dispensed with it altogether, and boldly a.s.sumed the full responsibility for their sentences. They deemed the role of the State so unimportant in the execration of heretics, that they did not even mention it. The Inquisition is the real judge; it lights the fires.

"All whom we cause to be burned," says the famous Dominican Sprenger in his _Malleus Maleficarum_.[1] Although not intended as an accurate statement of fact,[2] it indicates pretty well the current idea regarding the share of the ecclesiastical tribunals in the punishment of heretics.

[1] _Malleus maleficarum maleficas et earum haeresim framea conterens_, auct. Jacobo Sprengero, Lugduni, 1660, pars ii, quaest. i, cap. ii, p. 108, col. 2.

[2] We must interpret in the same sense the decree of the Council of Constance p.r.o.nouncing the penalty of the stake against the followers of John Huss, John Wyclif and Jerome of Prague. Session xxiv, no. 23, Harduin, _Concilia_, vol. viii, col. 896 et seq. The Council here indicates only the usual punishment for the relapsed, without really decreeing it.

It is evident that the theologians and canonists were simply apologists for the Inquisition, and interpreters of its laws. As a rule, they tried, like St. Raymond Pennafort and St. Thomas, to defend the decrees of the Popes. We cannot say that they succeeded in their task. Some by their untimely zeal rather compromised the cause they endeavored to defend. Others, going counter to the canon law, drew conclusions from it that the Popes never dreamed of, and in this way made the procedure of the Inquisition, already severe enough, still more severe, especially in the use of torture.

CHAPTER IX THE INQUISITION IN OPERATION

We do not intend to relate every detail of the Inquisition's action.

A brief outline, a sort of bird's-eye view, will suffice.

Its field, although very extensive, did not comprise the whole of Christendom, nor even all the Latin countries. The Scandinavian kingdoms escaped it almost entirely; England experienced it only once in the case of the Templars; Castile and Portugal knew nothing of it before the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella. It was almost unknown in France--at least as an established inst.i.tution--except in the South, in what was called the county of Toulouse, and later on in Languedoc.

The Inquisition was in full operation in Aragon. The Cathari, it seems, were wont to travel frequently from Languedoc to Lombardy, so that upper Italy had from an early period its contingent of Inquisitors. Frederic II had it established in the two Sicilies and in many cities of Italy and Germany. Honorius IV (1285-1287) introduced it into Sardinia.[1] Its activity in Flanders and Bohemia in the fifteenth century was very considerable. These were the chief centers of its operations.

[1] Potthast, no. 22307; _Registres d'Honorius IV_, published by Maurice Prou, 1888, no. 163.

Some of the Inquisitors had an exalted idea of their office. We recall the ideal portrait of the perfect Inquisitor drawn by Bernard Gui and Eymeric. But, by an inevitable law of history, the reality never comes up to the ideal.