The Medieval Inquisition 2

Abstract

It is rating one’s conjectures at a very high price to roast a man alive on the strength of them.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92)

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, 12 December 2002
Thursday, 01 June 2006

Inquisition Procedures

When the friar-inquisitors arrived at a town, they convened a solemn meeting of bishop, clergy, and people and announced that secret heretics were to be reported to them. There would be a “time of grace”, usually a month, and heretics who voluntarily came forward, and confessed and abjured, during that period received only the lighter penances, prayers, fasts, pilgrimages, fines, intended to confirm their faith.

After the period of grace, persons accused of heresy who had not abjured were brought to trial. The inquisitors published the edict of the faith which ordered all Christians, under penalty of excommunication, to denounce the heretics and those who protected them. The Inquisition counted upon the coercion of the Catholic people, acting as an oppressive apparatus of the State. Meantime the inquisitors, who were to “act with the bishop” though he had no power, had to choose an advisory council—twenty to fifty in number—and come to a decision only in conjunction with these. Innocent IV (1254), Alexander IV (1255 and 1260), and Urban IV (1264) prescribed the consultation of boni viri, experienced and irreproachable men, plainly meant to be a mockery of the Boni Homines, the name of the Cathar Parfaits.

A most beneficent provision! The beginning of the jury-system in Europe, say apologists and other types of Jesuits! But who were these men, and what did they do? They were mostly priests and monks, with a few orthodox laymen. In a few places, pious lawyers—the decree stipulated that they must be “zealous for the faith”. So far as the apologist is concerned, they considered the names of the accusers and might thus detect enmity or cupidity, being local men. A prescription is not, though, a rescription. It was a recommendation not an order, so need not be followed.

The leading inquisitors tell us the common practice is to conceal the names of the accusers even from these men, so few of them ever knew the name of the accused or the accuser, or saw all the evidence. They saw a summary of the evidence carefully prepared for them. An abstract case and selected evidence were laid before them. They did not know enough to decide a case, as honest Christians admit. They could give an opinion. This “jury” never hampered the inquisitors, who took up their quarters in a Dominican monastery and received their denunciations secretly. The inquisitors decided.

Before the Inquisition, judicial practice was that the accuser had to make the case against the defendant, there being no prosecuting lawyers, and any that failed to do so were guilty of false accusation and subject to the defendant’s punishment. Under the law of the Inquisition, the accuser no longer had to make the case or suffer the consequences of making false accusations. Clergy, mainly Dominican monks, prosecuted, judged, and convicted the accused, and ordered the extraction of confessions by torture.

Trial

The day the monks of the Inquisition marched with their golden cross into the town, the fear of the population began. The accused were notified and the terror began in earnest. It was not a trial as today. If someone was denounced, they were guilty:

If two witnesses, considered of good repute by the inquisitors, agreed in accusing the prisoner his fate was at once sealed, whether he confessed or not, he was at once declared a heretic.

Trial by the Inquisition did not mean an examination to find out if someone was a heretic. If two secret witnesses said that anyone was, they were, and all the “third degree” and torture was merely to make them confess that they were and abjure their heresy.

Joseph Blötzer in CE, says in most instances the accused denied the charges even after swearing on the four gospels, and this denial was the more stubborn the more the testimony was incriminating. The inquisitors, David of Augsburg pointed out, had four methods of extracting confession.

1. Fear of death. Saying death at the stake awaited anyone who did not confess. If this certain knowledge that victims would die a painful and lingering death unless they came and abjured their, perhaps imaginary, heresy did not move someone, they were confined to their house and harried and weakened in various ways.
2. Imprisonment. Close confinement, and starvation.
3. Persuasion. Visits of tried men, who would attempt to induce free confession.
4. Torture. If the victim still denied heresy, they received the grim summons to the Inquisition.

Plainly, in these recommendations, there was no recognition that the victim might have been innocent by false accusation or error. If someone honest and devout had been falsely or wrongly accused, the more stubborn their denial, the more guilty they were assumed to have been. Common sense says that anyone who had really been pretending to be Christian for ulterior motives, would do whatever was needed to get off with the minimum punishment. That meant that those who denied most vehemently were probably the ones who were innocent.

When no voluntary admission was made, the inquisitor sought evidence. At an early date it was decided by the popes that two accusers sufficed, although more could be called. These are called “witnesses”, but that is a parody of a judicial term. They were secret accusers, and not only were they never confronted with the accused, but their names were concealed. Gregory IX, Innocent IV, and Alexander IV forbade the inquisitors to reveal the names. Christians tell us that Boniface VIII set aside this usage and commanded that at all trials, even inquisitorial, the witnesses must be named to the accused. It is a lie. Boniface said:

Where there is no such danger, the names of accusers and witnesses must be published, as is done in other trials.

Danger? The inquisitors claimed that there was always danger of revenge. So, Boniface’s words never affected the procedure, and witnesses could not be confronted or cross-examined. Apologists tell us that false witnesses were punished without mercy. Bernard Gui tells of a father who falsely accused his son of heresy. The father was sentenced to life imprisonment when it was plain that the son was innocent. That is one case, probably utterly exceptional. How could such false witness be revealed without the right of examination? All that the victims could do was to name their enemies for the boni viri to confirm or deny. If the charge originated with confirmed enemies, it would be quashed, and this occasionally might happen. That, for the apologists makes the Inquisition just!

Once anyone was denounced for secret heresy, they were guilty of it. The only safegurds the accused had was to abjure the charge, conduct their own defence, and notionally reject a judge who had shown prejudice—though it is not hard to see that such an action might be a hostage to fortune. If an inquisitor or any high functionary of the Church had a grudge, woe betide the target. The Church had absolute power and the Inquisition was the way it impressed it. It was easy to fabricate a case because all accusations were taken seriously. even if many more were dismissed than is generally thought, as revisionists make out, it was a frightening experience because the outcome was never a foregone conclusion. Innocence was the hardest case to defend!

A nasty minded high cleric could easily bribe someone to accuse an enemy. The Inquisition, having the authority to torture the accuse, would then normally extract a confession with ease. Even being an exemplary Christian was no defence when someone up there did not like you. It was no use the victim protesting that they had attended mass regularly. Outward conformity did not count. Exemplary behaviour just showed how clever the Devil and his own were at undermining Christianity. No one entered a torture chamber as a prisoner and came out sound in mind and body. The Church was utterly beyong criticism for hundreds of years on pain of torture and death by burning.

By another refinement of clerical procedure, unknown in law, slaves, women, children, and convicted criminals could lodge an accusation. The Church had hitherto maintained that these and the testimony of a heretic, an excommunicated person, or a perjurer was worthless before the courts, but from early in the twelfth century, this old safeguard was ignored and any evidence was accepted in trials concerning faith. Religion alone listened to such witnesses, but then religion is so important, the apologists say. In 1261, Alexander IV (1254-1261) had the new principle formally adopted. Its justification was that only heretics knew what they were up to.

Witnesses for the defence rarely appeared, because they would be suspected of being heretics and be on the list of heretics themselves the next day, but witnesses could be put to the torture to force them to give evidence. If one witness cared to say that the accusation could be supported by so-and-so, they were brought and tortured until they told the desired lie. In practice one witness would suffice and in Spain they got their share of the spoils.

The victim could not in practice bring a lawyer. When lawyers were granted they had to be beyond suspicion, “upright, of undoubted loyalty, skilled in civil and canon law, and zealous for the faith”. No lawyer could meet these criteria and risk his reputation by seriously attempting to defend an accused heretic. That good and great pope, Innocent III, had in 1205 sternly forbidden lawyers to help heretics:

We strictly prohibit you, lawyers and notaries, from assisting in any way, by council or support, all heretics and such as believe in them, adhere to them, render them any assistance or defend them in any way.

Any lawyer who ventured to do so would soon be on trial. A saintly friar in France who defended a rich and pious patron of his order, whose goods the inquisitors wanted and got, ended in prison. Some Christians argue that the rule of excluding lawyers was soon relaxed, and “universal custom” allowed a legal adviser, but this is yet another lie and the truth was quite the opposite. Pope Innocent had meant “confessed” heretics when he said “all”, and at first inquisitors allowed lawyers to those merely suspected or accused, but soon anyone accused was an heretic. After 1254, though the accused had no right to counsel, those found guilty could appeal to the pope. Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) directed that trials must be conducted “simply, without the noise and form of lawyers”.

The oath was a weapon in the hands of the medieval judge. If the accused person kept it, the judge was favourably inclined, if they violated it, they lost credibility. Many sects, it was known, repudiated oaths on principle, hence violating an oath incurred suspicion of heresy in the guilty party. Besides the oath, the inquisitor might secure himself by demanding a sum of money as bail, or reliable bondsmen who would stand surety for the accused. It happened, too, that bondsmen undertook upon oath to deliver the accused “dead or alive”.

The goods of anyone imprisoned for life, or condemned to death were confiscated. Confiscation was of supreme importance for the economics of the Inquisition—it was financed out of confiscated property, so it had a built in reason for conviction. It was a strong motive for using torture to make people confess. Even the dead could be accused of heresy. The grave was no protection from having property confiscated. Corpses were dug up, and dead men and women were convicted of heresy. This allowed the inquisitors to take the property of the heirs of the dead heretics.

Let two unknown witnesses say that a man, even forty years dead, had been a secret heretic, and his children or even grandchildren were ruined. He was an unrepentant heretic—for him how could there be a chance of “repentance?” His bones were dug up, paraded through the street, and burned. His widow and children were robbed of every penny. Bernard Gui had eighty-eight of these posthumous cases in six hundred and thirty-six! In most countries, the money was divided between the inquisitors and the Vatican, but in Spain, the inquisitors usually got all of the money—an injustice, the Vatican thought!

Moreover, the inquisitors within ten years of the establishment of the inquisition got from the popes the right to impose fines, or to commute the lighter sentences for payments of money. If you did not want to wear a yellow cross on your coat for life, to spend three years in jail, to live on bread and water for two years—pay up! Apologists say people could appeal to Rome about the conduct of a trial. For this reason, Eymeric advises inquisitors to try a case in such a way that no fault could be found in its records. This ought to be reason to doubt the frankness of the records kept by the inquisitors. They would have been carefully written so as not to prejudice any such appeals. These same records are now taken at face value by the scholars who choose to ignore what the popes themselves decreed and what the inquisitors themselves often wrote. The Vatican loved this merciful safety valve against injustice—it brought the trial, and the payment of fines, to Rome!

Can any Christian see the Inquisition and therefore their church as anything other than horrific? It was a scramble for gold on a soil red with human blood. Who got the profit? First the secular authority, and that is in most cases the main reason why heresy was “a crime against the state”. That is why the kings of France permitted tens of thousands of their subjects in the south to be imprisoned for life or burned, why Venice dealt with its own heretics, why the popes so readily denounced inquisitors, like the Spanish, who were not under their own control. Secondly, the bishop and the inquisitors got a share. Thirdly, the Papacy got its share. Everybody hated heresy in those godfearing days! The Inquisition was designed to rob the rich to help the rich, as Catholic writers of the time admit. Eventually, the Inquisitor Eymeric bemoaned:

In our days, there are no more rich heretics, so that princes, not seeing much money in prospect, will not put themselves to any expense… it is a pity that so salutary an institution as ours should be so uncertain of its future.

No one could even seem doubtful or miss a mass. Those accused, unless they were of the stuff of martyrs, meekly acknowledged and abjured the heresy. They then had to name their accomplices—denounce others! By thus confessing their heresy and naming others, they merely got a heavy penance—a pilgrimage, to fast for several years, to build a church, to pay a heavy fine or wear a hideous cross sewn on their clothes. If they persisted in denying the heresy or refused to name others, they were tortured.

Christians had to sing the virtues of the Church and the fairness of the Holy Offices whatever they really thought, or discover how right they were! Christian apologists, obviously particularly Catholics, are still trying to justify it or play down its sheer horror and injustice, even still. It is possible to do it because those who escaped with their lives were forbidden to say anything, and rather to avoid a repetition of their suffering, had to say:

They were treated with much goodness and clemency, since their life was preserved to them, which they had justly forfeited.

Dellon 1788

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American white men happily created children with negro women in private while publicly hanging any black man who attempted to do the same with a white woman, and objecting vehemently to eating publicly with his black consort in a restaurant. Most of these white men professed Christianity but their own god had names for them—whitened sepulchres and hypocrites!