A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume I Part 18

While the penance prescribed was a diet of bread and water, the Inquisition, with unwonted kindness, did not object to its prisoners receiving from their friends contributions of food, wine, money, and garments, and among its doc.u.ments are such frequent allusions to this that it may be regarded as an established custom. Collections were made among those secretly inclined to heresy to alleviate the condition of their incarcerated brethren, and it argues much in favor of the disinterested zeal of the persecuted that they were willing to incur the risk attendant on this benevolence, for any interest shown towards these poor wretches exposed them to accusation to fautorship.[449]

The prisons were naturally built with a view to economy of construction and s.p.a.ce rather than to the health and comfort of the captives. In fact the papal orders were that they should be constructed of small, dark cells for solitary confinement, only taking care that the "_enormis rigor_" of the incarceration should not extinguish life. M. Molinier's description of the Tour de l'Inquisition at Carca.s.sonne, which was used as the inquisitorial prison, shows how literally these instructions were obeyed. It was a horrible place, consisting of small cells, deprived of all light and ventilation, where through long years the miserable inmates endured a living death far worse than the short agony of the stake. In these abodes of despair they were completely at the mercy of the jailers and their servants. Complaints were not listened to; if a prisoner alleged violence or ill-treatment his oath was contemptuously refused, while that of the prison officials was received. A glimpse into the discipline of these establishments is afforded by the instructions given, in 1282, by Frere Jean Galande, Inquisitor of Carca.s.sonne, to the jailer Raoul and his wife Bertrande, whose management had been rather lax. Under pain of irrevocable dismissal he is prohibited in future from keeping scriveners or horses in the prison; from borrowing money or accepting gifts from the prisoners; from retaining the money or effects of those who die; from releasing prisoners or allowing them to go beyond the first door, or to eat with him; from employing the servants on any other work or sending them anywhere, or gambling with them, or permitting them to gamble with each other.[450]

Evidently a prisoner who had money could obtain illicit favors from the honest Raoul; but these injunctions make no allusion to one of the most crying abuses which disgraced the establishments--the retention by the jailers of the moneys and provisions placed in their hands by the friends of the imprisoned. Frauds of all kinds naturally grew up among all who were concerned in dealing with these helpless creatures. In 1304 Hugolin de Polignac, the custodian of the royal prison at Carca.s.sonne, was tried on charges of embezzling a part of the king's allowance, of carrying the names of prisoners on the rolls for years after their death, and of retaining the moneys contributed for them by their friends; but the evidence was insufficient to convict him. The cardinals whom Clement V. commissioned soon after to investigate the abuses of the Inquisition of Languedoc intimate broadly the nature of the frauds habitually practised, when they required the new jailers whom they appointed to swear to deliver to each captive without diminution the provisions supplied by the king, as well as those furnished by friends--an intimation confirmed by the decretals of Clement V. Their report shows that they were horror-struck with what they saw. At Carca.s.sonne they took the control of the prison wholly from the inquisitor, Geoffroi d'Ablis, and placed it in the hands of the bishop, ordering the upper cells to be repaired at once, in order that the aged and sick should be transferred to them; at Albi they struck the chains off the prisoners, commanded the cells to be lighted and new and better ones built within a month; at Toulouse things were equally bad.

Everywhere there was complaint of lack of food and of beds, as well as of frequent torture. Their measures for reformation consisted in dividing the responsibility between bishop and inquisitor, whose concurrence was requisite to a sentence of imprisonment, and each of whom should appoint a jailer, while each jailer should have a key to each cell, and swear never to speak to a prisoner except in presence of his colleague. This insufficient remedy was adopted by Clement, and can hardly be imagined to have worked much improvement. Bernard Gui bitterly complained of the infamy cast on the Inquisition by the papal a.s.sertion of fraud and ill-treatment in the management of its prisons, and he p.r.o.nounced the new regulations impracticable. Slender as was the restraint which they imposed on the inquisitors, we may feel sure that it was not long submitted to. In a few years Bernard Gui, in his Practica, a.s.sumes that the power of imprisoning lies wholly with the inquisitor; he contemptuously cites the Clementine canon by its t.i.tle only, and proceeds to quote a bull of Clement IV. as if still in force, giving the authority to the inquisitor, and making no mention of the bishop. In fact, before the century was out, Eymerich considered the Clementine canons on this subject not worth inserting in his work, because, as he tells us, they were nowhere observed in consequence of their cost and inconvenience. About 1500, however, Bernardo di Como admits that the Clementine rule may be observed in punitive confinement after sentence, but holds that the inquisitor has sole control of the detentive prisons used before and during trial.[451]

With such jailers it is probably rather to their corruption than to any lack of strength in the buildings that we may attribute the occasional escape of the inmates, which appears to have been by no means an infrequent occurrence. Even those who were confined in chains sometimes effected their liberation. More sufficient, however, as a means of release from the horrors of these foul dungeons was the excessive mortality caused by their filthy and unventilated squalor. Occasionally, as we have seen, the unfortunate were unlucky enough to live through protracted confinement, and there is one case in which a woman was graciously discharged, with crosses, in view of her having been for thirty-three years in the prison of Toulouse. As a rule, however, we may conclude that the expectation of life was very short. No records remain, if any were kept, to show the average term of those condemned to lifelong penance; but in the _autos de fe_ there occur sentences p.r.o.nounced upon prisoners who had died before their cases were ended, which show how large was the death-rate. These cases were despatched in batches. In the _auto_ of 1310, at Toulouse, there are ten, who had died after confessing their heresy and before receiving sentence; in that of 1319 there are eight. The prison of Carca.s.sonne seems to have been almost as deadly. In the _auto_ of 1325 we find a lot of four similar cases, and in that of 1328 there are five. It is only under these peculiar circ.u.mstances that we have any chance of guessing at the deaths which occurred in prison, and from these scattered indications we can a.s.sume that the insanitary condition of the jails worked its inevitable result without human interference.[452]

Imprisonment was naturally the most frequent penance inflicted by the inquisitors. In Bernard Gui's Register of Sentences, comprising his operations between 1308 and 1322, there are six hundred and thirty-six condemnations recorded, which may be thus cla.s.sified:

Delivered to the secular court and burned 40 Bones exhumed and burned 67 Imprisoned 300 Bones exhumed of those who would have been imprisoned 21 Condemned to wear crosses 138 Condemned to perform pilgrimages 16 Banished to Holy Land 1 Fugitives 36 Condemnation of the Talmud 1 Houses to be destroyed 16 --- 636

and this may presumably be taken as a fair measure of the comparative frequency of the several punishments in use.

One peculiarity of the inquisitorial sentence remains to be noted. It always ended with a reservation of power to modify, to mitigate, to increase, and to reimpose at discretion. As early as 1244 the Council of Narbonne instructed the inquisitors always to reserve this power, and it became established as an invariable custom. Even without its formal expression, Innocent IV., in 1245, conferred on the inquisitors, acting with the advice and consent of the bishop of the penitent, authority to modify the penance imposed. The bishop, in fact, usually concurred in these alterations of sentences, but Zanchini informs us that though his a.s.sent should be asked, it was not essential, except in the case of clerks. The inquisitor, however, had no power to grant absolute pardons, which was reserved exclusively to the pope. The sin of heresy was so indelible that no authority short of the vicegerent of G.o.d could wash it out completely.[453]

This power to mitigate sentences was frequently exercised. It served as a stimulus to the penitents to give evidence by their deportment of the sincerity of their conversion, and, perhaps, also, it was occasionally of benefit as a means of depleting overcrowded jails. Thus in Bernard Gui's Register of Sentences there occur one hundred and nineteen cases of release from prison, with the obligation to wear the crosses, and of these fifty-one were subsequently relieved from the crosses. Besides these latter, there are also eighty-seven cases in which those originally condemned to crosses were permitted to lay them aside. This mercy was not peculiar to the Inquisition of Toulouse. In 1328, in a single sentence, twenty-three persons were released from the prison of Carca.s.sone, their penance being commuted to crosses, pilgrimages, and other observances. What the measure of mercy was in such cases may be guessed from another sentence of commutation at Carca.s.sonne in 1329, liberating ten penitents, among them the Baroness of Montreal. They were required to wear the yellow crosses for life and to perform twenty-one pilgrimages, embracing shrines as distant as Rome, Compostella, Canterbury, and Cologne. They were to hear ma.s.s every Sunday and feast-day during life, and present themselves with rods to the officiating priest and receive the discipline in the face of the congregation; and also to accompany all processions and be similarly disciplined at the final station. Existence under such conditions might well be regarded as a doubtful blessing.[454]

These mitigatory sentences, moreover, like the original ones, strictly reserved the power of alteration and reimposition, with or without cause. When the Inquisition once laid hands upon a man it never released its hold, and its utmost mercy was merely a ticket-of-leave. Just as no verdict of acquittal ever was issued, so the Council of Beziers, in 1246, and Innocent IV., in 1247, told the inquisitors that when they liberated a prisoner he was to be warned that the slightest cause of suspicion would lead him to be punished without mercy, and that they must retain the right to incarcerate him again without the formality of a fresh trial or sentence if the interest of the faith required. These conditions were observed in the formularies and enjoined in the manuals of practice. The penitent was made to understand fully that whatever liberty he enjoyed was subject to the arbitrary discretion of his judge, who could recall him to dungeon or fetters at any moment, and in his oath of abjuration he pledged his person and all his property to appear at once whenever he might be summoned. If Bernard Gui in his Formulary gives a draft of pardon for person and property and disabilities of heirs, he adds a caution that it is never, or most rarely, to be used.

When some great object was to be attained, such as the capture of a prominent heretic teacher, the inquisitors might stretch their authority and hold out promises of this kind to his disciples to induce them to betray him--promises which, it is pleasant to say, were almost universally spurned. If special penances had been imposed, on their fulfilment the inquisitor, if he saw fit, might declare the penitent to be a man of good character, but this did not alter the reservation in the original sentence. The mercy of the Inquisition did not extend to a pardon, but only to a reprieve, _dum bene se gesserit_, and the man who had once undergone a sentence never knew at what moment he might not be summoned to hear of its reimposition or even of a harsher one. Once a delinquent, his fate forever after was in the hands of the silent and mysterious judge who need not hear him nor give any reason for his destruction. He lived forever on the verge of ruin, never knowing when the blow might fall, and utterly powerless to avert it. He was always a subject to be watched by the universal police of the Inquisition--the parish priest, the monks, the clergy, nay, the whole population--who were strictly enjoined to report any neglect of penance or suspicious conduct, when he was at once liable to the awful penalties of relapse.

Nothing was easier for a secret enemy than to destroy him, safe that his name would never be mentioned. We may pity the victims of the stake and the dungeon, but their fate was scarce harder than that of the mult.i.tudes who were the objects of the Inquisition's apparent mercy, but whose existence from that hour was one of endless, hopeless anxiety.[455]

The same implacability manifested itself after death. Allusion has frequently been made to the exhumation of the bones of those who by opportunely dying had seemed to exchange the vengeance of man for that of G.o.d, and it is only necessary to mention here that the fate of the dead was harder than that of the living. If he had died after confession and repentance, it is true, his punishment was only that which he would have received if alive, the digging up replacing imprisonment, and his heirs being forced to perform or compound for any lighter penance; but if he had not confessed and there was evidence of heresy he was cla.s.sed with the impenitent heretics, his remains were delivered to the secular arm, and his property hopelessly confiscated. This will account for the large number of these executions as shown in the records quoted above.

If the secular authorities hesitated to perform the task of exhumation, they were coerced with excommunication.[456]

The same spirit pursued the descendants. In the Roman law the crime of treason was pursued with merciless vindictiveness, and its provisions are constantly quoted by the canon lawyers as precedents for the punishment of heresy, with the addition that treason to G.o.d is far more heinous than that to an earthly sovereign. It was, perhaps, natural that the churchman, in his eagerness to defend the kingdom of G.o.d, should follow and surpa.s.s the example of the emperors, and this will explain, if it may not justify, much that is abhorrent in the inquisitorial procedure. In the Code of Justinian, treason is made especially odious by inflicting on the sons disability to hold office and to succeed to collateral estates. By the Council of Toulouse, in 1229, even spontaneously converted heretics were declared ineligible to public office. It was natural, therefore, that Frederic II. should apply the Roman practice to heresy, and should extend its provision to grandchildren. This, like the rest of his legislation, was eagerly adopted and enforced by the Church. Alexander IV., however, in a bull of 1257, repeatedly reissued by his successors, explained that this did not apply in cases where the culprit had made amends and performed penance, and this was still further lightened by Boniface VIII., who removed the incapacity from grandchildren by the female line of those who had died in heresy. In this form it remained permanently in the canon law.[457]

The Inquisition depended so much upon secular officials for a.s.sistance that there was some justification in its seeking to prevent those who might be suspected of sympathizing with heresy from holding office in which they could thwart its plans and aid the offender. Yet as there was no prescription of time as to proceedings against the dead, so was there none in invoking disabilities against their descendants, and the records of the Inquisition were an inexhaustible treasury of torment for those who were in any way connected with heresy. No one, in fact, could feel sure that evidence might not at any moment be discovered or manufactured against some long-deceased parent or grandparent, which would ruin his career, and that some industrious searcher into the archives might not find some blot on his genealogical tree. In 1288 Philippe le Bel writes to the Seneschal of Carca.s.sonne that Raymond Vitalis of Avignon is exercising the office of notary in Carca.s.sonne, though his maternal grandfather, Roger Isarn, is said to have been burned for heresy. If this is the fact, the seneschal is ordered to deprive him of the position. In 1292 Guiraud d'Auterive, a sergeant-at-arms of the king, was proceeded against on the same grounds, and we find Guillem de S.

Seine, the Inquisitor of Carca.s.sonne, furnishing to the royal procureur evidence that, in 1256, Guiraud's father and mother had confessed to acts of heresy, and that, in 1276, his uncle, Raymond Carbonnel, had been burned as a perfected heretic. In these cases we see the royal power invoked for the dismissal of the official, but in the perfected theory of the Inquisition the inquisitor had the power to deprive of office any one whose father or grandfather had been a heretic or defender of heretics. In order to avoid questions like these, when a penitent had fulfilled his penance, prudent children would take out letters declaratory of the fact, so as to have evidence of capacity to hold office. In special cases the inquisitor had power to relieve descendants of these disabilities, and this was occasionally done; but, like the remission of penance, this relief was only a suspension, liable at any moment to forfeiture on the slightest manifestation of heretical tendencies.[458]

Underlying all these sentences was another on which they, and, indeed, the whole power of the Inquisition, were based in last resort--the sentence of excommunication. Theoretically the censures of the Inquisition might be the same as those of any other ecclesiastics authorized to cut men off from salvation, but the latter had so habitually abused their functions that the anathema, in the mouth of priests who were neither feared nor respected, lost, at times at least, its awe-inspiring authority. The censures of the Inquisition were in the hands of a smaller body of men, selected for their implacable vigor, and no one ever disregarded them with impunity. The secular authorities, moreover, were bound to put to the ban and confiscate the property of any one whom the inquisitor might excommunicate for heresy or fautorship. In fact, as the inquisitors were fond of boasting, their curse was stronger in four ways than that of the secular clergy. They could coerce the temporal government to outlaw the excommunicate; they could force it to confiscate his property; they could condemn any one remaining under excommunication for a year; and they could inflict the major excommunication upon any one communicating with their excommunicates.[459] Thus they enforced obedience to their citations and submission to their penances. Thus they made the secular power execute their sentences; thus they swept aside the statutes that interfered with their proceedings; thus they proved that the kingdom of G.o.d which they represented was superior to the kingdoms of earth. Of all excommunications that of the inquisitor worked the speediest vengeance and inspired the sharpest terror, and the boldest shrank from provoking it.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONFISCATION.

Although, for the most part, as we shall see, confiscation was technically not the work of the Inquisition, the distinction was rather nominal than real. Even in times and places in which the inquisitor did not p.r.o.nounce the sentence of confiscation, it was the accompaniment of the sentence which he did p.r.o.nounce. It was, therefore, one of the most serious of the penalties at his disposal, and the largeness of the results effected by it give it an importance worthy a somewhat minute examination.

For the source of this, as of so much else, we must look to the Roman law. It is true that, cruel as were the imperial edicts against heresy, they did not go to the length of thus indirectly punishing the innocent.

Even when the detested Manichaeans were mercilessly condemned to death, their property was confiscated only when their heirs were likewise heretics. If the children were orthodox they succeeded to the estate of the heretic parent, who could not execute a will and disinherit them. It was otherwise with crime. Any conviction involving deportation or the mines carried with it confiscation, though the wife could reclaim her dower and any gifts made to her before the commission of the offence, and so could children emanc.i.p.ated from the _patria potestas_. All else inured to the fisc. In _majestas_ or treason, the offender was liable to condemnation after death, involving the confiscation of his estate, which was held to have lapsed to the fisc at the time when he first conceived the crime. These provisions furnished the armory whence pope and king drew the weapons which rendered the pursuit of heresy attractive and profitable.[460]

King Roger, who occupied the throne of the Two Sicilies during the first half of the twelfth century, seems to have been the first to apply the Roman practice by decreeing confiscation for all who apostatized from the Catholic faith--whether to the Greek Church, to Islam, or to Judaism does not appear. Yet the Church cannot escape the responsibility of naturalizing this penalty in European law as a punishment for spiritual transgressions. The great Council of Tours, held by Alexander III., in 1163, commanded all secular princes to imprison heretics and confiscate their property. Lucius III., in his Verona decretal of 1184, sought to obtain for the Church the benefit of the confiscation which he again declared to be incurred by heresy. One of the earliest acts of Innocent III., in his double capacity of temporal prince and head of Christianity, was to address a decretal to his subjects of Viterbo, in which he says,

"In the lands subject to our temporal jurisdiction we order the property of heretics to be confiscated; in other lands we command this to be done by the temporal princes and powers, who, if they show themselves negligent therein, shall be compelled to do it by ecclesiastical censures. Nor shall the property of heretics who withdraw from heresy revert to them, unless some one pleases to take pity on them. For as, according to the legal sanctions, in addition to capital punishment, the property of those guilty of _majestas_ is confiscated, and life simply is allowed to their children through mercy alone, so much the more should those who wander from the faith and offend the Son of G.o.d be cut off from Christ and be despoiled of their temporal goods, since it is a far greater crime to a.s.sail spiritual than temporal majesty."[461]

This decretal, which was adopted into the canon law, is important as embodying the whole theory of the subject. In imitation of the Roman law of _majestas_, the property of the heretic was forfeited from the moment he became a heretic or committed an act of heresy. If he recanted, it might be restored to him purely in mercy. When the ecclesiastical tribunals declared him to be, or to have been, a heretic, confiscation operated itself; the act of seizing the property was a matter for the secular power to whom it inured, and the mercy which might spare it could only be shown by that power. All this it is requisite to keep in mind if we would correctly appreciate some points which have frequently been misunderstood.

Innocent's decretal further ill.u.s.trates the fact that at the commencement of the struggle with heresy the chief difficulty encountered by the Church in relation to confiscation was to persuade or coerce the temporal rulers to do what it held to be their duty in taking possession of heretical property. This was one of the princ.i.p.al offences which Raymond VI. of Toulouse expiated so bitterly, as explained to him by Innocent in 1210. His son proclaimed it as the law in his statutes of 1234, and included in its provisions, in accordance with the Ordonnance of Louis VIII., in 1226, and that of Louis IX., in 1229, all who favored heretics in any way or refused to aid in their capture; but his policy did not always comport with its enforcement, and he sometimes had to be sternly rebuked for non-feasance. After all danger of armed resistance had disappeared, however, sovereigns, as a rule, eagerly welcomed the opportunity of recruiting their slender revenues, and the confiscation of the property of heretics and of fautors of heresy was generally recognized in European law, although the Church was occasionally obliged to repeat its injunctions and threats, and though there were some regions in which they were slackly obeyed.[462]

The relation of the Inquisition to confiscation varied essentially with time and place. In France the principle derived from the Roman law was generally recognized, that the t.i.tle to property devolved to the fisc as soon as the crime had been committed. There was therefore nothing for the inquisitor to do with regard to it. He simply ascertained and announced the guilt of the accused and left the State to take action.

Thus Gui Foucoix treats the subject as one wholly outside of the functions of the inquisitor, who at most can only advise the secular ruler or intercede for mercy; while he holds that those only are legally exempt from forfeiture who come forward spontaneously and confess before any evidence has been taken against them. In accordance with this, there is, as a rule, no allusion to confiscation in the sentences of the French Inquisition, though in one or two instances chance has preserved for us, in the accounts of the _procureurs des encours_, or royal stewards of the confiscations, evidence that estates were sold and covered into the fisc in cases in which the forfeiture is not specified in the sentence. In condemnations of absentees and of the dead, confiscation is occasionally declared, as though in these the State might need some guidance, but even here the practice is not uniform. In a sentence issued by Guillem Arnaud and etienne de S. Thibery, November 24, 1241, on two absentees, their estates are adjudged to whom it may concern. In the Register of Bernard de Caux (1246-1248), in thirty-two cases of contumacious absentees confiscation is included in the sentence, and in nine similar ones it is omitted, as well as in one hundred and fifty-nine condemnations to prison in which it was undoubtedly operative. In the Inquisition of Carca.s.sonne, a sentence of December 12, 1328, on five deceased persons, who would have been imprisoned had they lived, ends with "_et consequenter bona ipsorum dicimus confiscanda_," while a previous sentence, February 24, 1325, identical in character, on four defunct culprits, has no such corollary appended. In fact, strictly speaking, it was recognized that the inquisitor had no power to remit confiscations without permission from the fisc, and the custom of extending mercy to those who came forward voluntarily and confessed was founded upon a special concession to that effect granted by Raymond of Toulouse to the Inquisition in 1235. As soon as a suspected heretic was cited or arrested the secular officials sequestrated his property and notified his debtors by proclamation. No doubt, when condemnation took place, the inquisitor communicated the result to the proper officials, but as a rule no record of the fact seems to have been kept in the archives of the Holy Office, although an early manual of practice specifies it as part of his duty to see that the confiscation was enforced. At a later period, in 1328, in a record of an a.s.sembly of experts held at Pamiers, the presence is specified of Arnaud a.s.salit, royal _procureur des encours_ of Carca.s.sonne, so that probably by this time it had become customary for that official to attend these deliberations and thus obtain early notice of the sentences to be pa.s.sed.[463]

In Italy it was long before any settled practice was established. In 1252 a bull of Innocent IV. directs the rulers of Lombardy, Tarvisina, and Romagna to confiscate without fail the property of all who were excommunicated as heretics, or as receivers, defenders, or fautors of heretics, thus recognizing confiscation as a matter belonging to the secular power. Yet soon the papal authority succeeded in obtaining a share of the spoils, even beyond the limits of the States of the Church, as is seen in the bulls _Ad extirpanda_ of Innocent IV. and Alexander IV., and the matter thus became one in which the Inquisition had a direct interest. The indifference which so well became the French tribunals was therefore not readily maintained, and the share of the inquisitor in the results led him to partic.i.p.ate in the process of securing them. Yet there were variations in practice. Zanghino tells us that formerly confiscations were decreed in the States of the Church by the ecclesiastical judges and elsewhere by the secular power, but that in his time (circa 1320) they were everywhere (in Italy) included in the jurisdiction of the episcopal and inquisitorial courts, and the secular authorities had nothing to do with them; but he adds that confiscation is prescribed by law for heresy, and that the inquisitor has no discretion to remit it, except in the case of voluntary converts with the a.s.sent of the bishop. Yet though the forfeiture occurs _ipso facto_ by the commission of the crime, it requires a declaratory sentence of confiscation. This consequently was expressed in the most formal manner in the condemnation of the accused by the Italian Inquisition, and the secular authorities were told not to interfere unless called upon.[464]

At a very early period in some places the Italian inquisitors seem to have undertaken not only to decree but to control the confiscations.

About 1245 we find the Florentine inquisitor, Ruggieri Calcagni, sentencing a Catharan named Diotaiuti, for relapse, with a fine of one hundred lire. Ruggieri acknowledges the receipt of this, to be applied to the pope, or to the furtherance of the faith, and formally concedes the rest of the heretic's estate to his wife Jacoba, thus exercising ownership over the whole. Yet this was not maintained, for in 1283 there is a sentence of the Podesta of Florence, reciting that the inquisitor Fra Salomone da Lucca had notified him that the widow Ruvinosa, lately deceased, had died a heretic, and that her property was to be confiscated; whereupon he orders it to be seized and sold, and the proceeds divided according to the papal const.i.tutions. At length, however, the inquisitors a.s.sumed and exercised full control over the handling of the confiscations. In the conveyance of a confiscated house by the munic.i.p.al authorities of Florence, in 1327, to the Dominicans, the deed is careful to a.s.sert that it is made with the a.s.sent of the inquisitor. Even in Naples we see King Robert, in 1324, ordering the inquisitors to pay out of the royal share of the confiscations fifty ounces of gold to the Prior of the Church of San Domenico of Naples, to aid in its completion.[465]

In Germany the Diet of Worms, in 1231, indicates the confusion existing in the feudal mind between heresy and treason by allowing the allodial lands and personal property of the condemned to descend to the heirs, while fiefs were confiscated to the suzerain. If he was a serf, his goods inured to his master; but from all personal property was deducted the cost of burning its owner and the _droits de justice_ of the seigneur-justicier. Two years later, in 1233, the Council of Mainz protested against the injustice, which quickly showed itself in Germany as elsewhere, of a.s.suming guilt as soon as a man was accused, and treating his property as though he were convicted. It directed that the estates of those on trial should remain untouched until sentence was rendered, and any one who meanwhile should plunder or part.i.tion them should be excommunicated until he made rest.i.tution and rendered satisfaction. Finally, however, when the Emperor Charles IV. endeavored to introduce the Inquisition into Germany, in 1369, he adopted the Italian custom and ordered one third of the confiscations to be made over to the inquisitors.[466]

The exact degree of criminality which entailed confiscation is not capable of very rigid definition. Even in states where the inquisitor nominally had no control over it, the arbitrary discretion lodged with him as to the fate of the accused placed the matter practically in his hands, and his notification to the secular authorities would be a virtual sentence. It is probable that custom varied with time and with the temper of the inquisitor. We have seen that Innocent III. commanded it for all heretics, but what const.i.tuted technical heresy was not so easily determined. The statutes of Raymond decreed it not only for heretics, but for those who showed them favor. The Council of Beziers, in 1233, demanded it for all reconciled converts not condemned to wear crosses, and those of Beziers, in 1246, and Albi, in 1254, prescribed it for all whom the inquisitors should penance with imprisonment. Still, in a sentence of February 19, 1237, in which the inquisitors of Toulouse condemn some twenty or thirty penitents to perpetual imprisonment, confiscation is only threatened as an additional punishment in case they do not perform the penance. Imprisonment, however, finally was admitted by legists as the invariable test; although St. Louis, when in 1259 he mitigated his Ordonnance of 1229, ordered confiscation not only for those who were condemned to prison, but for those who contumaciously refused obedience to citations and those in whose houses heretics were found, his officials being instructed to ascertain from the inquisitors in all cases, while pending, whether the accused deserved imprisonment, and if so, to retain the sequestrated property. When he further provided, as a special grace, that the heirs should be restored to possession in cases where the heretic had offered himself for conversion before citation, had entered a religious order, and had worthily died there, he shows how universal confiscation had previously been and how ruthlessly the principle had been enforced that a single act of heresy forfeited all ownership. In fact, even at the close of the fifteenth century, the rule was laid down that confiscation was a matter of course, while restoration of property to a reconciled penitent required an express declaration.[467]

According to the most lenient construction of the law, therefore, the imprisonment of a reconciled convert carried with it the confiscation of his property, and as imprisonment was the ordinary penance, confiscation was general. There may possibly have been exceptions. The six prisoners released in 1248 by Innocent IV. had been in jail for some time--some of them for four years and more after confessing heresy--and yet the liberal contributions to the Holy Land which purchased their pardon show that they or their friends must have had control of property--unless, indeed, the money was raised on a pledge of the estates to be restored.

So when Alaman de Roaix was condemned to imprisonment by Bernard de Caux, in 1248, the sentence provided for an annuity to be paid to a person designated, and for compensation to be made for the rapine which he had committed, which would look as though property were left to him; but as he had for ten years been a contumacious and proscribed fugitive, these fines must have been taken out of his estate in the hands of the State. Apparent exceptions such as these can be accounted for, and the proceedings of the Inquisition as a whole indicate that imprisonment and confiscation were inseparable. Sometimes, even, it is stated in sentences pa.s.sed upon the dead that they are p.r.o.nounced worthy of imprisonment in order to deprive the heirs of succession to the estates.

At a later date, indeed, Eymerich, who dismisses the whole matter briefly as one with which the inquisitor has no concern, speaks as though confiscation only took place when a heretic did not repent and recant before sentence, but his commentator, Pegna, easily proves this to be an error. Zanghino a.s.sumes as a matter of course that property is forfeited by the act of heresy; and he points out that pecuniary penances cannot be imposed because the whole estate is gone, although there may be mercy shown at discretion with the a.s.sent of the bishop, and simple suspicion is not subject to confiscation.[468]

In the early zeal of persecution everything was swept away in wholesale seizure, but, in 1237, Gregory IX. a.s.sumed that the dowers of Catholic wives ought to be exempt in certain cases, and in 1247 Innocent IV.

erected it into a rule that such dowers should be restored to the wives and should not be included in future forfeitures, although heresy would not justify divorce, and, in 1258, St. Louis accepted this rule. It was subject to serious limitations, however, since under the canon law the wife could not claim it if she had been cognizant of the husband's heresy when she married, and, according to some authorities, if she had lived with him after ascertaining it, or even if she had failed to inform against him within forty days after discovering it. As the children were incapable of inheritance, she only held the dower for life, after which it fell into the fisc.[469]

Although in principle confiscation was an affair of the State, the division of the spoils did not follow any invariable rule. Before the organization of the Inquisition, when the Waldenses of Stra.s.sburg were burned, it is mentioned that their forfeited property was equally divided between the Church and the secular authorities. Lucius III., as we have just seen, endeavored to turn the forfeitures to the benefit of the Church. In the papal territory there could be little question as to this, and Innocent IV., in his bull _Ad extirpanda_ of 1252, showed disinterestedness in devoting the whole proceeds to the stimulation of persecution. One third was given to the local authorities, one third to the officials of the Inquisition, and one third to the bishop and inquisitor, to be expended in the a.s.sault on heresy--provisions which were retained in the subsequent recensions of the bull by Alexander IV.

and Clement IV., while forfeited bail went exclusively to the inquisitor. Yet this was speedily held to refer only to the independent states of Italy, for, in 1260, we find Alexander IV. ordering the inquisitors of Rome and Spoleto to sell the confiscated estates of heretics and pay over the proceeds to the pope himself; and a transaction of 1261 shows Urban IV. collecting three hundred and twenty lire from some confiscations at Spoleto.[470]

At length, both in the Roman province and elsewhere throughout Italy, the custom settled down to a tripart.i.te division between the local community, the Inquisition, and the papal camera, the reason for the latter, as given by Benedict XI., being that the bishops appropriated to themselves the share intrusted to them for the persecution of heresy. In Florence a transaction of 1283 shows this to be the received regulation; and doc.u.ments of various dates during the next half-century indicate that it was the custom of the republic to appoint attorneys or trustees to take seisin of confiscated property in the name of the city, which in 1319 liberally granted its share for the next ten years to the construction of the church of Santa Reparata. That the amounts were not small may be guessed from a pet.i.tion of the inquisitors to the republic in 1299, setting forth that the Holy Office must have funds wherewith to pay its stipendiary officials, and therefore praying leave to invest in real estate the sums accruing to the Inquisition from this source--showing acc.u.mulations prudently garnered for the future. The request was granted to the extent of one thousand lire, with the proviso that none of the city's share be taken. This latter precaution would seem to argue no great confidence in the integrity of the inquisitors, nor was the insinuation uncalled for. By this time the money-changers had fairly occupied the Temple, and, as we have seen in the last chapter, it seemed almost impossible to preserve official honesty when persecution had become almost as much a financial speculation as a matter of faith. That plain-spoken Franciscan, Alvaro Pelayo, Bishop of Silva, writing about the year 1335, bitterly reproaches those of his brethren who act as inquisitors with their abuse of the funds accruing to the Holy Office. The papal division into thirds he declares was generally disregarded; the inquisitors monopolized the whole and spent it on themselves or enriched their kindred at their pleasure. Chance has preserved in the Florentine archives some doc.u.ments confirmatory of this accusation. It seems that in 1343 Clement VI. obtained evidence that the inquisitors of both Florence and Lucca were habitually defrauding the papal camera of its third of the fines and confiscations, and accordingly he sent to Pietro di Vitale, Primicerio of Lucca, authority to collect the sums in arrears and to prosecute the embezzlers. How it fared with them we have no means of knowing, but the camera seems not to have gained much. In filling the vacancies thus occasioned Pietro di Aquila, a Franciscan of high standing, was appointed in Florence, who fell at once into the same evil ways, and within two years was obliged to fly from a prosecution by the primicerio, in addition to the charges of extortion brought against him by the republic.[471]

In Naples, under the Angevines, when the Inquisition was first introduced, Charles of Anjou monopolized the confiscations with the same rapacity that was customary in France. As early as March, 1270, we find him writing to his representatives in the Princ.i.p.ato Ultra that three heretics had recently been burned at Benevento, whose estates he orders looked after and accounted for in detail. In 1290, however, Charles II.

ordered the fines and confiscations to be divided into thirds, of which one should inure to the royal fisc, one be used for the promotion of the faith, and one be given to the Inquisition. Feudal lands, however, were to revert to the crown or to the immediate lord as the case might require.[472]

In Venice the compromise reached in 1289 between the signiory and Nicholas IV., whereby the republic permitted the introduction of the Inquisition, provided that all receipts of the Holy Office should be for the benefit of the State, and this arrangement seems to have been maintained. In Piedmont the confiscations were divided between the State and the Inquisition until, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, Amedeo IX. took the whole, allowing to the Holy Office only the expenses of the proceedings.[473]

In the other Italian states the papal curia grew dissatisfied with its share, when there was no longer a necessity of purchasing the co-operation of the civil power with a third of the spoils. It is a disputed point with the jurists when and how the change was effected, but in the first quarter of the fourteenth century the Church succeeded in grasping the whole of the confiscations, which were divided equally between the Inquisition and the papal camera. The rapacity with which this source of income was exploited is ill.u.s.trated in a case occurring at Pisa in 1304. The inquisitor Angelo da Reggio had condemned the memory of a deceased citizen, Loterio Bonamici, and confiscated his property, part of which he then gave away and part he sold at prices which the papal curia esteemed too low. Benedict XI. thereupon ordered the Bishop of Ostia not to punish the inquisitor, but to use freely the censures of the Church in hunting up the a.s.sets in the hands of the holders and to take it from them. Finally, in 1438, Eugenius IV.

generously handed back to the bishops the share of the papal camera in order to stimulate their slackness in persecution, and, where the bishop was also the temporal lord of his see, the confiscations were to be equally divided between him and the Inquisition. Bernardo di Como, however, writing about the year 1500, a.s.serts that the whole confiscations inure to the inquisitor to be expended at his discretion; but he subsequently admits that the subject is confused and uncertain, owing to contradictory papal decisions and conflicting jurisdictions in different territories.[474]

In Spain the rule was laid down that if the heretic were a clerk, or a lay va.s.sal of the Church, the confiscation went to the Church; if otherwise, to the temporal seigneur.[475]

This greed for the plunder of the wretched victims of persecution is peculiarly repulsive as exhibited by the Church, and may to some extent palliate the similar action by the State in countries where the latter was strong enough to seize and retain it. The threats of coercion, which at first were necessary to induce the temporal princes to confiscate the property of their heretical subjects, soon became superfluous, and history has few displays of man's eagerness to profit by his fellow's misfortunes more deplorable than that of the vultures which followed in the wake of the Inquisition to batten on the ruin which it wrought.

In Languedoc at first the Inquisition endeavored to control the confiscations for the purpose of building prisons and maintaining prisoners, but these pretensions received no attention. Under the feudal system, the confiscations were for the benefit of the seigneur haut-justicier. The rapid extension of the royal jurisdiction, in the second half of the thirteenth century in France, ended by practically placing them in the hands of the king, but during the earlier and more profitable period there were quarrels over the spoils. After the treaty of Paris, in 1229, St. Louis, in granting fiefs in the newly-acquired territories, seems to have endeavored to provide for these questions by reserving the confiscations for heresy. The prudence of this is shown by the suit brought by the Marechaux de Mirepoix--one of the few families founded by the adventurers who accompanied de Montfort--who claimed the movables of all heretics captured in their lands, even if the goods were in the lands of the king--a demand which was rejected by the Parlement of Paris, in 1269. The bishops put in a claim to the confiscations of all real and personal property of heretics living under their jurisdiction, and at the Council of Lille (Comtat Venaissin) in 1251, they threatened with excommunication any one who should dispute it. The groundlessness of this claim is seen in an agreement made under the auspices of the Legate Romano in December, 1229, between the Bishop of Beziers and the king, in which the royal right to the confiscations is recognized as incontestable, and the bishop only stipulates that in case of fiefs they shall, if granted, be held subject to his seignorial rights, or if the king retains them some compensation shall be made for the loss of the suzerainty. This indicates a source of reasonable complaint, for, in the annexation of fiefs to the crown, the bishops found themselves losing in place of profiting by persecution. Various efforts were made to adjust these conflicting claims over the spoil. By a transaction of 1234 we see that the king had subjected himself to the stipulation of parting with all confiscated property within a year and a day. The Council of Beziers, in 1246, adopted a canon on the subject, but it could not be enforced, and at length, about 1255, St. Louis agreed upon a compromise, whereby all confiscated lands subject to the bishops were equally divided, with a right on the part of the prelates to buy out, within two months, the royal share at a price fixed by arbitration; if this right was not exercised the king was bound, within a year and a day, to pa.s.s the lands out of his hands into those of a person of the same condition as the former owner, to be held under the same terms of service or villeinage; but all movables were declared to belong unreservedly to the crown. Under this arrangement the temporalities of the sees grew rapidly. We have seen the apostolic poverty which afflicted the bishops of Toulouse prior to the crusades: during the succeeding century the whole land was impoverished and the cities suffered especially, yet when, in 1317, John XXII. carved six new bishoprics out of the see of Toulouse, his reason was found in the excessive revenues of the bishop, amounting to forty thousand livres Tournois per annum, although it had already been shorn of nearly half of its territory by Boniface VIII. to form the see of Pamiers.[476]