Part 15 (1/2)

We know the names of many Inquisitors, monks and bishops.[1] There are some whose memory is beyond reproach; in fact the Church honors them as saints, because they died for the faith.[2]

[1] Mgr. Douais, _Doc.u.ments_, vol. 1, pp. cxxix-ccix.

[2] V.g., Peter of Verona, a.s.sa.s.sinated by heretics in 1252.

But others fulfilled the duties of their office in a spirit of hatred and impatience, contrary both to natural justice and to Christian charity. Who can help denouncing, for instance, the outrageous conduct of Conrad of Marburg. Contemporary writers tell us that when heretics appeared before his tribunal, he granted them no delay, but at once required them to answer yes or no to the accusations against them. If they confessed their guilt, they were granted their lives, and thrown into prison; if they refused to confess, they were at once condemned and sent to the stake. Such summary justice strongly resembles injustice.

But Robert the Dominican, known as Robert the Bougre, for he was a converted Patarin, surpa.s.sed even Conrad in cruelty. Among the exploits of this Inquisitor, special mention must be made of the executions at Montwimer in Champagne. The Bishop, Moranis, had allowed a large community of heretics to grow up about him. Robert determined to punish the town severely. In one week he managed to try all his prisoners. On May 29, 1239, about one hundred and eighty of them, with their bishop, were sent to the stake. Such summary proceedings caused complaints to be sent to Rome against this cruel Inquisitor. He was accused of confounding in his blind fanaticism the innocent with the guilty, and of working upon simple souls so as to increase the number of his victims. An investigation proved that these complaints were well founded. In fact, it revealed such outrages that Robert the Bougre was at first suspended from his office, and finally condemned to perpetual imprisonment.[1]

[1] Aubri des Trois Fontaines, ad ann. 1239, _Mon. Germ., SS_., vol.

xxiii, 944, 945.

Other acts of the Inquisition were no less odious. In 1280 the Consuls of Carca.s.sonne complained to the Pope, the King of France, and the episcopal vicars of the diocese of the cruelty and injustice of Jean Galand in the use of torture. He had inscribed on the walls of the Inquisition these words: _dominculas ad torquendum et cruciandum homines diversis generibus tormentorum_. Some prisoners had been tortured on the rack, and most of them were so cruelly treated that they lost the use of their arms and legs, ad became altogether helpless. Some even died in great agony of their torments.

The complaint continues in this tone, and mentions five or six times the great cruelty of the tortures inflicted.

Philip the Fair, who was n.o.ble-hearted occasionally, addressed a letter May 13, 1291, to the seneschal of Carca.s.sonne in which he denounced the Inquisitors for their cruel torturing of innocent men, whereby the living and the dead were fraudulently convicted; and among other abuses he mentions particularly ”tortures newly invented.” Another letter of his (1301) addressed to Foulques de Saint-Georges, contained a similar denunciation.

In a bull intended for Cardinals Taillefer de la Chappelle and Berenger de Fredol, March 13, 1306, Clement V mentions the complaints of the citizens of Carca.s.sonne, Albi, and Cordes, regarding the cruelty practiced in the prisons of the Inquisition. Several of these unfortunates ”were so weakened by the rigors of their imprisonment, the lack of food, and the severity of their tortures (_sevitia tormentorum_), that they died.”

The facts in Savonarola's case are very hard to determine. The official account of his interrogatory declares that he was subjected to three and a half _tratti di fune_. This was a form of torture known as the _strappado_. The Signoria, in answer to the reproaches of Alexander VI at their tardiness, declared that they had to deal with a man of great endurance; that they had a.s.siduously tortured him for many days with slender results.[1] Burchard, the papal prothonotary, states that he was put to the torture seven times. It made very little difference whether these tortures were inflicted _per modum continuationis_ or _per modum iterationis_, as the casuist of the Inquisition put it. At any rate, it was a crying abuse.[2]

[1] Villari, _La storia di Girolamo Savonarola_, Firenze, 1887, vol.

ii, p. 197.

[2] H. Lucas, _Fra Girolamo Savonarola, a Biographical Study_.

London, Sands, 1905.

We may learn something of the brutality of the Inquisitors from the remorse felt by one of them. He had inflicted the torture of the burning coals upon a sorceress. The unfortunate woman died soon afterwards in prison as a result of her torments. The Inquisitor, knowing he had caused her death, wrote John XXII for dispensation from the irregularity he had thereby incurred.

But the greatest excesses of the Inquisition were due to the political schemes of sovereigns. Such instances were by no means rare. Hardly had the Inquisition been established, when Frederic II tried to use it for political purposes. He was anxious to put the prosecution for heresy in the hands of his royal officers, rather than in the hands of the bishops and the monks. When, therefore, in 1233, he boasted in a letter to Gregory IX that he had put to death a great number of heretics in his kingdom, the Pope answered that he was not at all deceived by this pretended zeal. He knew full well that the Emperor wished simply to get rid of his personal enemies, and that he had put to death many who were not heretics at all.

The personal interests of Philip the Fair were chiefly responsible for the trial and condemnation of the Templars. Clement V himself and the ecclesiastical judges were both unfortunately guilty of truckling in the whole affair. But their unjust condemnation was due chiefly to the king's desire to confiscate their great possessions.[1]

[1] The tribunals of the Inquisition were perhaps never more cruel than in the case of the Templars. At Paris, according to the testimony of Ponsard de Gisiac, thirty-six Templars perished under torture. At Sens, Jacques de Saciac said that twenty-five had died of torment and suffering. (Lea, op. cit., vol. iii, p. 262.) The Grand Master, Jacques Molay, owed his life to the vigor of his const.i.tution. Confessions extorted by such means were altogether valueless. Despite all his efforts, Philip the Fair never succeeded in obtaining a formal condemnation of the Order.

Joan of Arc was also a victim demanded by the political interests of the day. If the Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon, had not been such a bitter English partisan, it is very probable that the tribunal over which he presided would not have brought in the verdict of guilty, which sent her to the stake;[1] she would never have been considered a heretic at all, much less a relapsed one.

[1] The greatest crime of the trial was the subst.i.tution, in the doc.u.ments, of a different form of abjuration from the one Joan read near the church of Saint-Ouen.

It would be easy to cite many instances of the same kind, especially in Spain. If there was any place in the world where the State interfered unjustly in the trials of the Inquisition, it was in the kingdom of Ferdinand and Isabella, the kingdom of Philip II.[1]

[1] The complaints of various Popes prove this. Cf. Hefele, _Le Carinal Ximenes_, Paris, 1857, pp. 265-274. Langlois, _L'Inquisition d'apres les travaux recents_, Paris, 1902, pp. 89-141; Bernaldez, _Historia de los Reyes: Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla, Fernandez y Isabel_, Madrid, 1878; Rodrigo, _Historia verdadera de la Inquisicion_, 3 vol., Madrid, 1876-1877.

From all that has been said, we must not infer that the tribunals of the Inquisition were always guilty of cruelty and injustice; we ought simply to conclude that too frequently they were. Even one case of brutality and injustice deserves perpetual odium.

The severest penalties the Inquisition could inflict (apart from the minor penalties of pilgrimages, weariltg the crosses, etc.), were imprisonment, abandonment to the secular arm, and confiscation of property.

”Imprisonment, according to the theory of the Inquisition, was not a punishment, but a means by which the penitent could obtain, on the bread of tribulation and the water of affliction, pardon from G.o.d for his sins, while at the same time he was closely supervised to see that he persevered in the right path, and was segregated from the rest of the flock, thus removing all danger of infection.”[1]