Chapter III: The Founding, Constitution, and Practice of the Inquisition

It is extremely doubtful whether Dominic actually founded the Inquisition, for as an organization it did not exist till ten years after his death. He was, however, an Inquisitor in all but the possession of full judicial powers. There was, in fact, no formal founding of the Holy Office; it simply grew by degrees out of the social and religious conditions of the early thirteenth century. Nor was it exclusively confided to the Dominican Order, but, as that was the most intolerant and the most zealous in heresy-hunting, its members were, from the outset, more closely associated with that occupation.[22] Commissions were frequently entrusted to the Franciscans also, but most of the early Inquisitors were Dominican monks. The jealousies and quarrels between the two Orders which their holy labours occasioned were so frequent as to be a source of scandals in the Church, which threatened to last for ever.

Under ecclesiastical tuition the people of Europe had, during the twelfth century, developed, in what passed for religion, a spirit of rancour that went beyond even the cruel legislation of the time. Heresy had previously been detected mainly by means of ordeals, but these were found to be somewhat unreliable in the matter of results. The Bishops, under the authority of the State, had usually controlled the proceedings, but they had now grown sluggish and lax, and their machinery had become rusty. Pope Alexander III, in 1179, “invited sovereigns to employ force of arms and protect Christian people from the violence [!] of the Cathari,” and “offered indulgences to those who should accomplish this work of piety.”[23] The decrees of Lucius III in 1184 might, had they been put into effective operation, have resulted in an episcopal instead of a Papal Inquisition. Not only were rulers bound by oath to assist the Church in rooting out heresy, but all prelates were compelled to visit towns and villages, to call the people together, and take evidence as to the existence of suspected heretics. The Bishops were, indeed, by virtue of their office, Inquisitors also,[24] but of so lukewarm a description that a sterner organization was deemed necessary.

Thus the ancient civil and canon law furnished the basis of the Inquisitorial procedure, and the first detectors of heresy were the laymen of each locality, with whom priests were afterwards associated. For various reasons the Bishops, as a body, proved unequal to their task; trained experts were needed, and the Church was impelled to action both by the force of public opinion and by the logic of its dogmas. The hands of the Church were strengthened by a secular legislation which recognized a gigantic evil, but failed to combat it with vigour and uniformity. Under the presidency of Pope Innocent III, the Lateran Council of 1215 framed a number of severe regulations, but did not succeed in getting them consistently enforced. From 1220 to 1239, therefore, Rome elaborated a series of enactments, based on the Lateran regulations, which amounted to a complete system of persecution. The chief of these enactments was Gregory IX’s Bull of 1231, under which suspected persons were required to prove their innocence or lose their civil rights. Very trivial circumstances, even such as a pale face, were enough to arouse suspicion. Heretics were to be outlawed, and, when condemned, to be burnt, all their property being in that case confiscated and their heirs disinherited. Their houses were to be destroyed, and never rebuilt. The evidence of a heretic was not to be received in a court of justice _except against another heretic_. All rulers and magistrates had to swear, not that they would do justice, but that they would exterminate all heretics. The lands of nobles who favoured the unorthodox were to be forfeited. Every thinker was in a permanently tight corner. Refusal to submit to ecclesiastical authority was the greatest of sins. The Papal zeal for reform took a peculiar shape when it established the Inquisition.

The whole Church hailed these savage laws with joy, and they soon became a terrible reality. The fact that secular Inquisitions were established in Sicily during the same year shows that public opinion was too strong for even a royal Freethinker like Frederick II to resist, though he was reproached with occasionally burning Catholics instead of heretics--not a very common miscarriage of justice. A commission issued in 1227 may be taken as giving the Inquisition a start. Its tone and its provisions are somewhat indefinite, but it led in a short time to the selection of suitable priests to undertake the duty of detecting and examining heretics, and this remained a permanent feature of the Inquisitorial system. The round holes were provided with round pegs.

At the time, however, there seems to have been little thought of a permanent system which should take the place of the Bishops’ jurisdiction. The basis of the persecuting body was more thoroughly settled at the Council of Narbonne in 1244, when the control of heresy was surrendered by the Bishops to the Inquisition, with the prudent proviso that the prelates reserved to themselves the pecuniary results. This transfer was not everywhere made complete, for even after that date many Inquisitors recognized the authority of episcopal tribunals, and in 1273 Gregory X also admitted their supremacy. Evidently the Holy Office was long regarded as a temporary expedient, and every Pope had renewed its charter.

In May, 1252, Innocent IV issued his famous Bull _Ad Extirpanda_, which was a complete exposition of the laws against heresy, and set up the machinery for its detection. In addition to all the known regulations, it laid down further provisions binding all rulers to outlaw heretics and empowering any one to seize suspected persons and take possession of their goods (being thereby entitled to a share of the proceeds). This vigilance was rewarded by exemption from public services and by freedom of personal action. Every one, including all State officials, was bound to give assistance; men of good repute had to be sworn to reveal anything they knew, or suspected, of any person in their district. The State was responsible for the seizure of heretics; it was commanded to execute judgment against them and to torture those who would not confess and betray their accomplices. Lists of suspected persons were to be made out and read in public three times a year, and copies given to the Bishops, the Dominicans, and the Franciscans.

The provisions of this Bull were strictly enforced, and it is significant of the state of public opinion that it aroused no effective resistance. By a later Bull of 1265, Pope Urban IV confirmed its instructions, and made the Inquisition supreme in all countries. It became a maxim of law that all statutes which interfered with the Inquisition were void and their authors punishable. The Holy Office had a free hand, and was not liable to excommunication in the discharge of its sacred duties, or to suspicion by even a Papal Legate. Nicholas IV gave a finishing touch by making the Inquisitors’ commissions perpetual. Bishops were not liable to be judged by Inquisitors, but nevertheless had to obey them, and, though at times they tried cases of heresy in their own courts, they were compelled to allow an Inquisitor to take part in the sentence.

Popular feeling, it is true, occasionally revolted against this tyranny; but, as any one who in any way opposed the Inquisition was thereby excommunicated, the resistance was easily and remorselessly crushed. The tenacious memory and sleepless vigilance of the Inquisition hunted out persons who years before had said a kind word to a heretic, or sent a copper to a sick person under suspicion. Public confidence was destroyed by the general dread that a careless word might ruin a man; that stories might, unknown to him, be circulated about him and come to the Inquisitors’ ears; that an enemy might secretly and safely gratify an old grudge, until at last poor wretches would inform against others rather than be themselves betrayed.

It was a rule of the Inquisition that all testimony should be taken down in the presence of two impartial persons unconnected with the institution, but sworn to absolute secrecy. This precautionary act of justice was soon disregarded, and the bulky documents of the Inquisition were generally held to be unworthy of trust. In some of the revolts against its tyranny the populace were careful to destroy the records, for it was well known that the Inquisitors had an unpleasant habit of discovering among them facts damaging to those whom they desired to injure.

As if the Inquisitors themselves were not dangerous enough, they were allowed to employ a swarm of hangers-on known as Familiars (by a pleasing fiction they became part of the family), who were permitted to carry the arms denied to ordinary civilians, and who enjoyed immunities and powers which they abused with the utmost freedom. For the most part they were a rabble of unruly ruffians, who squeezed money out of people under the threat of accusing them of heresy or of impeding the Inquisition in its beneficent duties. Any restriction in the number of these rascals was resented as unlawful; but the State did sometimes, as at Venice in 1450, succeed in reducing their numbers. They were wholly unnecessary, as the Holy Office could command the services of the State, as well as the assistance of the clergy and of the civil population.

As a precaution against miscarriages of justice, there was held at irregular intervals an assembly which finally determined the fate of accused persons. At these gatherings learned Bishops were supposed to be present in order to give the Inquisitors the benefit of their advice, but they were so little zealous for popular rights that it became a practice for an Inquisitor to represent one or more Bishops. It was doubtful whether the Inquisition ought to obey the finding of the court, and the occasion became a mere form, from which the episcopal co-operation was frequently absent. Sometimes a number of sentenced persons remained in gaol, and were added to from time to time, so that the _auto de fe_ could be made more impressive. At one of these ceremonies held in Toulouse in 1310, out of 108 persons sentenced 18 were burnt alive. In the previous year one unfortunate had hit upon the expedient of voluntary starvation. The Inquisition had a more effective retort than forcible feeding; its preparations were hurried on, and the solitary victim was burnt, a similar case occurring four years later. Very seldom did any one escape by flight from the clutches of the Holy Office. Its agents were everywhere, its jurisdiction had no limits, a complete network of private information existed, and flight was a sure presumption of guilt. A boy of fifteen, sentenced after two years’ imprisonment to wear the crosses which indicated his punishment, at length threw them off, and worked as a boatman on the Garonne. He was discovered, cited to appear, and in default was excommunicated and condemned as a heretic in an _auto_ of 1319. Two years later he was arrested, escaped, was recaptured, and finally sentenced to imprisonment on a diet of bread and water. His original crime was that he, a mere boy, had “adored” a heretic at the command of his father.

_The Inquisitorial Method._

The duty of the Inquisitor was the detection of heresy--that is, to ascertain the secret thoughts of the accused. External acts were of consequence only as they indicated a particular frame of mind. This was a task possible to omniscience only, but the Inquisitor willingly undertook it, preferring to sacrifice a hundred innocent persons rather than let one guilty person escape. The safeguards of justice were nominal; it was found convenient to assume guilt from the outset. In the secular courts there were a few provisions which gave an accused some faint chance of obtaining justice; but these, under the pressure of the Inquisition, gradually fell into abeyance. Even death was no escape so far as the culprit’s property was concerned. At Ferrara the Bishop and the Inquisitor squabbled for thirty-two years over the remains of a heretic, and in 1313 a Florentine family found themselves the victims of a prosecution brought against an ancestor who had died sixty-three years before.

Delation was an indispensable and certainly very useful feature of the Inquisition’s procedure. A woman of Toulouse in 1254 furnished a list of 169 persons incriminated by her, and all the names, with addresses, were carefully noted for later use. Each of these persons would be persuaded to supply further names, and so the Inquisition’s net was constantly growing larger. To give information against others was the truest sign of repentance, and the Inquisitors were untiring in their efforts to secure it. In order to elicit confession every conceivable means were employed: if kindness seemed to promise the best results, kindness would be shown; an emissary would visit the prisoner’s cell urging confession and promising mercy--with the mental reservation that severity was the truest mercy to a heretic. Sometimes a man’s wife and children were permitted in his dungeon that they might work upon his feelings. On occasion protracted delay was used to break the prisoner’s spirit; he would be tried, receive no definite sentence, and be left in gaol perhaps for many years. Thus a woman who was imprisoned and confessed in 1297 was not formally sentenced for thirteen years, while at Carcassonne a man made his confession in 1321 after an imprisonment of thirty years.

If, on the other hand, it was thought desirable to hasten the sinner’s repentance, the confinement was made so terribly harsh that it frequently brought about the result desired. Torture had not been greatly employed in the earlier half of the thirteenth century, but Pope Innocent’s Bull of 1252 expressly authorized its use by the secular authorities to discover heresy. The secular courts were slow to adopt it, but its rapid extension by the Holy Office showed how useful it was. Although not frequently mentioned in the records, various indications prove that it was freely employed. Not only accused persons, but witnesses whose statements appeared doubtful or unsatisfactory, were put to the torture; and the Inquisition had an ingenious way of manufacturing witnesses, for a person who had confessed his own offence would be treated as a witness to the guilt of others, and was tortured to betray them. Confessions made under torture were subject to confirmation; if they were not confirmed, but denied, the accused was treated as an obstinate impenitent and perjurer, and handed over to the secular arm.

_Evidence._

Lea remarks that “the matter-of-course way in which rules destructive of every principle of justice are laid down by men presumably correct in the ordinary affairs of life affords a wholesome lesson as to the power of fanaticism to warp the intellect of the most acute.”[25] Such rules as there were for the protection of accused persons were systematically set aside, and the lives of even devout Catholics hung on the merest trifles and technicalities. A new crime termed “suspicion of heresy” was invented, and of this three degrees were formulated--light suspicion, vehement suspicion, and violent suspicion, all of which offered ample scope to inquisitorial ingenuity. A merchant found it a dangerous civility to bow to acquaintances who, unknown to him, were heretics. Two witnesses were required to prove heresy, but at a pinch one was made to suffice, and if the one witness revoked testimony in favour of the accused his revocation annulled the evidence, while if the original testimony was adverse to the defence it was the revocation that became void! The minimum age of witnesses was also liable to fluctuation. By the Italian civil law it was twenty years, but the Holy Office was not particular to a year or two, and a case is recorded in which the evidence of a boy of ten was accepted against his own family and sixty-six other people who had listened to a heretical sermon a year before. Wives, children, and servants could not testify in favour of an accused; against him their evidence was readily accepted. The only thing that disabled a witness was proof that he was actuated by mortal enmity against the accused; but, as the accused was kept in ignorance of the witness’s identity, proof of this sort was made practically impossible.

Witnesses seldom refused to testify. If they did, the torture chamber generally induced them to reconsider the matter; in fact, an unlucky witness ran as great a risk as the defendant of an acquaintance with the rack or the pulleys. Nor was the secrecy of the confessional of much avail, for all priests were instructed to use every means in their power to induce confessions of heresy, and the results were conveyed to the tribunals in a judiciously indirect manner.

All these precautions, thorough and effective as they were, were not thought sufficient, and were supplemented by instructions to the Inquisitors that less evidence was needed to prove heresy than to prove any other crime. The crowning infamy of keeping secret the names of witnesses was a peculiarity of the ecclesiastical procedure, of which its administrators were a little ashamed; but the feeble protests of one or two councils were ignored. As a slight concession to justice the accused was, though rarely, shown a list of names, but without being told which of them applied to his own case; and also a witness would sometimes be sworn in the presence of the accused, but _examined apart_. On occasion the whole of the evidence was withheld from the knowledge of the accused, and if a witness retracted his testimony the fact was not revealed to the interested party. In practice it was found best to leave all these details to the Inquisitors’ discretion.

The field which all this secrecy opened to malice, slander, and perjury may be faintly imagined. Serious abuses in connection with the handling of evidence were exposed in the fourteenth century by conscientious Inquisitors themselves, and the fact suggests that an appalling amount of injustice remained undiscovered. The extraordinary rule by which a perjured witness was to be punished, but his testimony was to hold good, was a development that might have been expected from an organization bent on the manufacture of criminals. And, because it was fairly safe, perjury by witnesses for the prosecution was by no means uncommon.

_The Defence._

The whole tendency of the Inquisitorial procedure was to afford as few opportunities as possible for an effective answer to a charge of heresy. Inquisitors were expressly ordered not to worry about legal forms, but to extract confessions. In the early part of the thirteenth century the accused was gratuitously allowed an advocate, but, as the lawyer entrusted with this delicate duty rendered himself liable to a charge of heresy if he showed zeal on behalf of his client, the office became little sought after, and the benefit inappreciable. In time the practice was more honoured in the breach than in the observance; and, as the Inquisition could deprive an advocate of his papers and put him in the dangerous position of a witness, it is doubtful whether his services were of much value, or, indeed, whether, in many cases, they were rendered at all. It was sometimes impossible to secure advocates, and instances are known in which prisoners, in despair, declined to exercise their right to call for copies of the evidence against them. The Inquisitors then placed on record that the privilege had been offered and refused, without superfluous detail as to reasons. Denial of the accusation of heresy, or refusal to plead, rendered the person charged liable to torture or the stake. If the Inquisitors did happen to break the rules and expose themselves to appeal against their judgments, there were manuals available in which they were instructed in the numerous devices and deceptions by which they could escape responsibility. An acquittal never took place; the Inquisitors were expressly authorized to pronounce no one innocent, as it was always desirable to leave a loophole for future proceedings. The rare verdict, “Not proven,” was the utmost length to which the mercy of the Holy Office would extend.

_Sentence._

Strange though it may appear, what the Inquisition really wanted was the salvation of the sinner’s soul, the appropriation of his goods being quite a secondary consideration. Its penalties were benevolently designed to wash away the stain of mortal guilt, and thus prepare him for a future state of bliss. Assuming the reality of this state, its enjoyments would certainly be enhanced by contrast with the heretic’s earthly experiences. The exact condition of the soul, however, being difficult to ascertain, the chastisement of the body was believed to afford the most efficacious means of purification. Accordingly the Church, in its tenderness, did not condemn to death; it merely withdrew its protection from the unrepentant. It did not confiscate his property; all it did was to declare him guilty of a crime which rendered him incapable of holding property. If it imposed a fine, it was because the proceeds were to be employed in works of charity, which, of course, included the upkeep of its own organization. The ultimate disposal of the condemned heretic could safely be left in the hands of the obedient civil power.

The Church must receive whatever credit may be due for its kindly intentions, though they sometimes worked out strangely. Almost always the heretic came off disastrously, but there were episodes of mildness for which it is not easy to account. When, at the end of the thirteenth century, an Inquisitor was murdered, the man who hired the assassins was merely ordered to present himself to the Pope and receive penance. Even his neglect to do this was visited by nothing worse than a mild order to arrest him if he could be found. We shall meet with more of this unaccountable clemency.

The light penances imposed by the Inquisition were Prayers, Churchgoing, Discipline, Fasting, Pilgrimages, and Fines. As punishments these penances do not sound excessive, but, as interpreted by the elastic discretion of the Holy Office, they could make a penitent extremely ill at ease, and when several were combined in one sentence life became a heavy burden. During a long pilgrimage a man’s family might starve. In 1322 pilgrimages were imposed on three men who nearly twenty years before had seen some Waldenses in their father’s house without knowing that they were heretics. Fines naturally gave opportunities for extortion which only exceptional men were able to refrain from using. As already mentioned, the Inquisition appropriated the property of all persons sentenced for heresy. A man who died in 1252, before completing a five years’ pilgrimage, left an estate of twenty livres, and the Inquisitors promptly claimed the whole of this immense sum. Bail was simply another word for bribery, and extortion became a system exploited to the utmost by men who were sleeplessly on the look-out for plunder.

The second grade of penance was the compulsory wearing of yellow crosses, sewn on to the clothing as an indication that the wearer had been condemned for heresy. This badge, which corresponded to the _san benito_ commonly used in Spain, was so great a disgrace that efforts were constantly made to avoid it; but though, for special reasons, permission was sometimes given to dispense with it, usually it was insisted upon, and escape from the vigilant eye of the Inquisition was impossible.

Penance became far more severe in the third grade, which was imprisonment for life. A comprehensive penalty of this character was incurred by every one who did not come forward within the time specified by the Edict of Grace, confess his own sins, and denounce those of others. The Inquisition of Toulouse, between 1246 and 1248, records 192 cases, of which 127 were of perpetual imprisonment, 6 for ten years, 16 for an indefinite term in the discretion of the Church, and the remaining 43 were of absentees. The Council of Narbonne, in 1244, made the sentence invariably for life. The confinement was solitary; the diet consisted of bread and water, and in the harsher sentence the penitent was chained by the feet, sometimes by the hands as well, and, in extreme cases, to the wall of a dark, noisome dungeon. It is not surprising that prisoners did not attain a green old age.

The Inquisition reserved the right, in the exercise of its discretion, to mitigate or re-impose its penalties. This right was frequently used, especially in regard to the wearing of crosses; but seldom did the prisoner find his punishment any the lighter. If he had the unusual good fortune to be released, he might, for the slightest lapse, be punished again, and this time without mercy and without the formality of a fresh trial. Every victim relinquished by the Holy Office was a ticket-of-leave man, liable at any moment to utter ruin. He could never feel sure that something might not be discovered, perhaps a youthful indiscretion of his grandfather’s, which would require his appearance before the dread Tribunal, or that for some unguarded act or expression he might not bring himself under the most effective of all excommunications--that of the Holy Inquisition.

_Confiscation._

By decree of Innocent III in 1215 and the Bull of Innocent IV in 1252, confiscation of the property of heretics and their children was made a necessary penalty, and all temporal rulers were required to enforce it. Of the proceeds one-third was to go to the State, one-third to the Papacy, and one-third to the Inquisition. Each party, as a matter of course, tried to cheat the others; but the wily Inquisitors almost invariably obtained the lion’s share of the spoil, which was, nominally at any rate, devoted to the furtherance of their own method of propagating the Gospel. Between them the victim had as much chance of escape as a mouse in a trap. The Church had some difficulty in getting confiscation sanctioned by the State, but it succeeded.

The heretic was not permitted to dispose of his property, but if he did succeed in doing so the transaction was void; and, even though the property had passed through several hands, the last possessor was cheerfully deprived of it. As debts due to heretics and securities for loans by them were also void, business became almost impossible. Numerous complaints of the Inquisition’s rapacity show that no possessor of property felt safe. It is not easy to understand how society could continue to hold together when a stimulus was thus deliberately given to fraud, jealousy, quarrelling, litigation, commercial anarchy, and domestic misery. Possibly religious zeal was the original motive of the folly, but when persecution is made a paying concern the reins are given to greed and injustice of every conceivable kind.

Venice made a stand against ecclesiastical corruption, and in 1289 enacted that the whole proceeds of confiscation should go to the State; and in the latter part of the fifteenth century Piedmont adopted a similar course, allowing the Inquisition only its expenses.

A further abuse was that, from the beginning of its career, the Inquisition frequently made confiscations before the accused had been convicted, sometimes before he confessed. In 1319 sentence was passed in southern France on a man who had been charged in 1284, yet in 1301 the officials were quarrelling over his estate. These legal robberies were carried out with relentless severity, everything being seized to the last penny. On arrest for suspicion of heresy, the Holy Office took possession of a person’s property, promising that if the charge was not proven (a rare event) some of it would be returned for the support of his family. In the meantime the family were turned into the streets to starve, or to live on such charity as they could get. The case of one secret heretic, Gherardo, a rich noble of Florence and consul of the city, was a bad one. Between sixty and seventy years after his death the Inquisitor of the city started a successful persecution against his memory, and eleven of his descendants, who were not heretics, were included in the condemnation, and presumably reduced to penury.

It was confiscation that kept alive religious persecution, because the heretics were ingeniously made to furnish the means for their own destruction, and when all the heretics had been disposed of the languishing state of the Holy Office began to arouse real concern on the part of those who made good livings out of it. Confiscation of property for an assumed crime was one of the most effectual agencies for the destruction of civilization, and it is strange that Rome did not see the error of its ways when countries that had no Inquisition were increasing in prosperity and happiness.

_Relaxation and the Stake._

It might be supposed that relaxation meant either release from custody or mitigation of punishment. The Holy Office, however, rose superior to verbal conventionalities, and defined the term to mean that the accused person should, after condemnation, be handed over to the civil power. It was equally well understood that the duty of the civil power was to burn him alive. The condemned was delivered to the magistrates with an appeal for mercy, which every one knew to be a transparent piece of hypocrisy. The Church was mainly responsible for these ferocious laws, and insisted on their being carried out, salving its conscience by giving out publicly that it had nothing more to do with the matter. Pope Boniface VIII embodied in the Canon Law rigid instructions for the punishment of those condemned by the Inquisition, and all magistrates who failed to carry out those instructions were cautioned to speak only in a general way of punishment, though the only penalty for obstinate heresy recognized by the Church was death by fire. Usually the civil authorities carried out willingly enough the behests of the Church, but they made occasional protests, and relaxation was not always treated as equivalent to death. Several of these protests are on record, but they were overruled, and the magistrates did their duty. Under the teaching of the Church the best men of the time regarded heresy as a manifest crime and the burning of heretics as an act of righteousness.

Sham and enforced conversions were numerous, and resulted in a large number of relapses, which were punished mercilessly, though not always by burning. The definition of relapse became more and more difficult, and some Inquisitors were not disposed to bring every trifle under that category. Bernard de Caux and his successor, Jean de St. Pierre, usually condemned to imprisonment, and the latter frequently protested against the indiscriminate burnings inflicted by the civil authorities of Toulouse. It is indeed remarkable that burnings were not more numerous. Thus Bernard Gui, the celebrated Inquisitor of Toulouse, is said to have declared that between 1308 and 1328 he had put to death 637 heretics. It appears, however, from the records that this figure represents the total number of sentences passed by him; of these only 40 were of condemnations to the stake of living persons, and 67 more were of persons already dead and therefore not personally interested in the proceedings. Evidently the chief efforts of the Inquisitors were directed to the exaction of confessions, with, of course, confiscation of goods, rather than to create a host of martyrs, an occasional cremation being merely a salutary example. The Church was not slow to profit by the experience of the Inquisition, and its spiritual courts rapidly extended the use of torture and other methods of persuasion. Probably an even more disastrous effect was produced upon the civil law of Europe, the increased severity and flagrant injustice of which are largely traceable to the influence of the Holy Office.