A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages Volume I Part 19

The bishops of Albi were especially active and fortunate in this saturnalia of plunder. During the confusion of the wars and the settlement they a.s.sumed rights, including _haute justice_ and the confiscations, which led to contests with the representatives of the crown, lasting for thirty years. They were specially active in the pursuit of heretics, which they thus found profitable as well as praiseworthy. In 1247 Bishop Bertrand procured from Innocent IV. a special deputation of inquisitorial power, probably to strengthen his claims, and the next year he drove a thriving business in selling commutations for confiscation to condemned and repentant heretics--an expedient more lucrative than regular, for when Alphonse of Poitiers, in 1253, endeavored to speculate in the confiscations in the same way, he was compelled to desist by the Archbishop of Narbonne and the Bishop of Toulouse, who declared that it would lead to the scandal of the faithful and the destruction of religion. Finally, to settle the claims of the bishop on the confiscations, St. Louis, in December, 1264, made with Bernard de Combret, the inc.u.mbent of the see, a convention, promptly confirmed by Urban IV., by which the prelate was ent.i.tled to one half of all confiscations of realty and personalty within the diocese, with the further advantage that the king's share of the real estate pa.s.sed into possession of the bishop if it was not sold within a twelvemonth, and became his absolute property if not sold within three years.

Accordingly in the accounts of the royal _procureurs des encours_ of Carca.s.sonne we constantly find the confiscations in Albi shared with the bishop. Although between St. John's day 1322 and 1323 this share in money amounted only to one hundred and sixty livres, there were times when it was much greater. About the year 1300 Bishop Bernard de Castanet generously gave to the Dominican Church of Albi his portion of the estates of two citizens, Guillem Aymeric and Jean de Castanet, condemned after death, which amounted to more than one thousand livres. It can readily be imagined that this arrangement with the crown gave rise to constant quarrels. In vain Philippe le Bel, in 1307, ordered the observance of the agreement with rest.i.tution for any infractions. In 1316 we find the bishop claiming properties which had not been sold within the three years, and Arnaud a.s.salit, the _procureur_, arguing that he had been prevented from effecting sales by just and legitimate causes, when the seneschal, Aymeric de Croso, decided that the impediments had been legitimate, and that the rights of the king were not forfeited.[477]

These were not the only questions arising from this wholesale spoliation which afforded an ample harvest to the legal profession. A suit brought by the bishops of Rodez for some lands held by the crown as heretic confiscations dragged on for thirty years until it reached the Parlement of Paris, which coolly annulled all the proceedings on the ground that those who had acted for the crown had lacked the requisite authority.

Almost equally protracted and confused was a suit between Eleanor de Montfort, Countess of Vendome, and the king over the lands of Jean Baudier and Raymond Calverie. The confiscations occurred in 1300; in 1327 the suit was still pursuing its weary way, to be finally compromised in 1335.[478]

All prelates were not as rapacious as those of Albi, one of whom we find still, in 1328, complaining of the evasions resorted to by the victims to save a fragment of their property for their families; but the princes and their representatives were relentless in grasping all that they could lay their hands on. I have mentioned that as soon as a suspect was cited before the Inquisition his property was sequestrated to await the result, and proclamation was made to all his debtors and those who held his effects to bring everything to the king. Charles of Anjou carried this practice to Naples, where a royal order, in 1269, to arrest sixty-nine heretics contains instructions to seize simultaneously their goods, which are to be held for the king. So a.s.sured were the officials that condemnation would follow trial that they frequently did not await the result, but carried out the confiscation in advance. This abuse was coeval with the founding of the Inquisition. In 1237 Gregory IX. complained of it and forbade it, but to little purpose, for in 1246 the Council of Beziers again prohibited it, unless, indeed, the offender had knowingly adhered to those who were known to be heretics, in which case, apparently, it was sanctioned. When, in 1259, St. Louis mitigated the rigors of confiscation, he indirectly forbade this wrong by instructing his officials that, when the accused was not condemned to imprisonment, they should give him or his heirs a hearing to reclaim the property; but, if there was any suspicion of heresy, it was not to be restored without taking security that it should be surrendered if anything was proved within five years, during which period it was not to be alienated. Yet still the outrage of confiscation before conviction continued with sufficient frequency to induce Boniface VIII. to embody its prohibition in the canon law. Even this did not put a stop to it.

The Inquisition had so habituated men's minds to the belief that no one escaped who had once fallen into its hands, that the officials considered themselves safe in acting upon the presumption. By an unusual coincidence we have the data from various sources in a single case of this kind which is doubtless the type of many others. In the prosecutions at Albi in 1300, a certain Jean Baudier was first examined January 20, when he acknowledged nothing. At a second hearing, February 5, he confessed to acts of heresy, and he was condemned March 7. Yet his confiscated property was sold January 29, not only before his sentence, but before his confession. Guillem Garric, charged with complicity in the plot to destroy the inquisitorial records of Carca.s.sonne in 1284, was not sentenced until 1319, but in 1301 we find the Count of Foix and the royal officials quarrelling over his confiscated castle of Monteirat.[479]

The ferocious rapacity with which this process of confiscation was carried on may be conceived from a report made by Jean d'Arsis, Seneschal of Rouergue, to Alphonse of Poitiers, about 1253, as an evidence of the zeal with which he was guarding the interests of his suzerain. The Bishop of Rodez was conducting a vigorous episcopal inquisition, and at Najac had handed over a certain Hugues Paraire as a heretic, whom the seneschal burned "incontinently" and collected over one thousand livres Tournois from his estate. Hearing, subsequently, that the bishop had cited before him at Rodez six other citizens of Najac, d'Arsis hastened thither to see that no fraud was practised on the count. The bishop told him that these men were all heretics, and that he would make the count gain one hundred thousand sols from their confiscations, but both he and his a.s.sessors begged the seneschal to forego a portion to the culprits or their children, which that loyal servitor bluntly refused. Then the bishop, following evil counsel, and in fraud of the rights of the count, endeavored to elude the forfeiture by condemning the heretics to some lighter penance. The seneschal, however, knew his master's rights and seized the property, after which he allowed some pittance to the penitents and their children, reporting that in addition to this he was in possession of about one thousand livres; and he winds up by advising the count, if he wishes not to be defrauded, to appoint some one to watch and supervise the further inquisitions of the bishop. On the other hand the bishops complained that the officials of Alphonse permitted heretics, for a pecuniary consideration, to retain a part or the whole of their confiscated property, or else condemned to the flames those who did not deserve it in order to seize their estates. These frightful abuses grew so unbearable that, in 1254, the officials of Alphonse, including Gui Foucoix, endeavored to reform them by issuing general regulations on the subject, but the matter was one which in its inherent nature scarce admitted of reform. Yet Alphonse, with all his greed, was not unwilling to share the plunder with those who secured it for him, and several of his not wholly disinterested liberalities of this kind are on record. In 1268 we have a letter of his a.s.signing to the Inquisition a revenue of one hundred livres per annum on the confiscated estate of a heretic; and in 1270 another, confirming the foundation of a chapel from a similar source.[480]

Nothing could exceed the minute thoroughness with which every fragment of a confiscated estate was followed up and seized. The account of the collections of confiscated property from 1302 to 1313 by the _procureurs des encours_ of Carca.s.sone is extant in MS., and shows how carefully the debts due to the condemned were looked after, even to a few pence for a measure of corn. In the case of one wealthy prisoner, Guillem de Fena.s.se, the estate was not wound up for eight or ten years, and the whole number of debts collected foots up to eight hundred and fifty-nine, in amounts ranging from five deniers upward. As the collectors never credit themselves with amounts paid in discharge of debts due by these estates, it is evident that the rule that a heretic could give no valid obligations was strictly construed and that creditors were shamelessly cheated. In this seizure of debts the n.o.bles a.s.serted a right to claim any sums due by debtors who were their va.s.sals, but Philippe de Valois, in 1329, decided that when the debts were payable at the domicile of the heretic they inured to the royal fisc, irrespective of the allegiance of the debtor. Another ill.u.s.tration of the remorseless greed which seized everything is found in a suit decided by the Parlement of Paris in 1302. On the death of the Chevalier Guillem Prunele and his wife Isabelle, the guardianship of their orphans would legally vest in the next of kin, the Chevalier Bernard de Montesquieu, but he had been burned some years before for heresy, and his estate, of course, confiscated. The Seneschal of Carca.s.sonne insisted that the guardianship which thus subsequently fell in formed part of the a.s.sets of the estate, and he accordingly a.s.sumed it, but a nephew, an Esquire Bernard de Montesquieu, contested the matter and finally obtained a decision in his favor.[481]

Equal care was exercised in recovering alienated property. As, in obedience to the Roman law of _majestas_, forfeiture occurred _ipso facto_ as soon as the crime of heresy was committed, the heretic could convey no legal t.i.tle, and any a.s.signments which he might have made were void, no matter through how many hands the property might have pa.s.sed.

The holder was forced to surrender it, nor could he demand rest.i.tution of what he had paid, unless the money or other consideration were found among the goods of the heretic. The eagerness with which, in such cases, the rigor of the law was enforced may be estimated from one occurring in 1272. Charles of Anjou had written from Naples to his viguier and sous-viguier at Ma.r.s.eilles telling them that a certain Maria Roberta, before condemnation to prison for heresy, had sold a house which was subject to confiscation; this he ordered them to seize, to sell by auction, and to report the proceeds; but they neglected to do so. The viguiers were changed, and now the unforgetful Charles writes to the new officials, repeating his orders and holding them personally responsible for obedience. At the same time he writes to his seneschal with instructions to look after the matter, as it lies very near to his heart.[482]

The cruelty of the process of confiscation was enhanced by the pitiless methods employed. As soon as a man was arrested for suspicion of heresy his property was sequestrated and seized by the officials, to be returned to him in the rare cases in which his guilt might be declared not proven. This rule was enforced in the most rigorous manner, every article of his household gear and provisions being inventoried, as well as his real estate.[483] Thus, whether innocent or guilty, his family were turned out-of-doors to starve or to depend upon the precarious charity of others--a charity chilled by the fact that any manifestation of sympathy was dangerous. It would be difficult to estimate the amount of human misery arising from this source alone.

In this chaos of plunder we may readily imagine that those who were engaged in such work were not over-nice as to securing a share of the spoliations. In 1304 Jacques de Polignac, who had been for twenty years keeper of the inquisitorial jail at Carca.s.sonne, and several of the officials employed on the confiscations, were found to have converted and detained a large amount of valuable property, including a castle, several farms and other lands, vineyards, orchards, and movables, all of which they were compelled to disgorge and to suffer punishment at the king's pleasure.[484]

It is pleasant to turn from this cruel greed to a case which excited much interest in Flanders at a time when in that region the Inquisition had become so nearly dormant that the usages of confiscation were almost forgotten. The Bishop of Tournay and the Vicar of the Inquisition condemned at Lille a number of heretics, who were duly burned. They confiscated the property, claiming the movables for the Church and the inquisitor, and the realty for the fisc. The magistrates of Lille boldly interposed, declaring that among the liberties of their town was the privilege that no burgher could forfeit both body and goods; and, acting for the children of one of the victims, they took out _apostoli_ and appealed to the pope. The counsellors of the suzerain, Philippe le Bon of Burgundy, with a clearer perception of the law, claimed that the whole confiscations inured to him, while the ecclesiastics declared the rule to be invariable that the personalty went to the Church and only the real estate to the fisc. The triangular quarrel threatened long and costly litigation, and finally all parties agreed to leave the decision to the duke himself. With rare wisdom, in 1430, he settled the matter, with general consent, by deciding that the sentence of confiscation should be treated as not rendered, and the property be left to the heirs, at the same time expressly declaring that the rights of Church, Inquisition, city, and state, were reserved without prejudice, in any case that might arise in future, which was, he said, not likely to occur. He did not manifest the same disinterestedness in 1460, however, in the terrible persecution of the sorcerers of Arras, when the movables were confiscated to the episcopal treasury, and he seized the landed property in spite of the privileges alleged by the city.[485]

In addition to the misery inflicted by these wholesale confiscations on the thousands of innocent and helpless women and children thus stripped of everything, it would be almost impossible to exaggerate the evil which they entailed upon all cla.s.ses in the business of daily life. All safeguards were withdrawn from every transaction. No creditor or purchaser could be sure of the orthodoxy of him with whom he was dealing; and, even more than the principle that ownership was forfeited as soon as heresy had been committed by the living, the practice of proceeding against the memory of the dead after an interval virtually unlimited, rendered it impossible for any man to feel secure in the possession of property, whether it had descended in his family for generations, or had been acquired within an ordinary lifetime.

The prescription of time against the Church had to be at least forty years--against the Roman Church, a hundred, and this prescription ran, not from the commission of the crime, but from its detection. Though some legists held that proceedings against the deceased had to be commenced within five years after death, others a.s.serted that there was no limit, and the practice of the Inquisition shows that the latter opinion was followed. The prescription of forty years' possession by good Catholics was further limited by the conditions that they must at no time have had a knowledge that the former owner was a heretic, and, moreover, he must have died with an unsullied reputation for orthodoxy--both points which might cast a grave doubt on t.i.tles.[486]

Prosecution of the dead, as we have seen, was a mockery in which virtually defence was impossible and confiscation inevitable. How unexpectedly the blow might fall is seen in the case of Gherardo of Florence. He was rich and powerful, a member of one of the n.o.blest and oldest houses, and was consul of the city in 1218. Secretly a heretic, he was hereticated on his death-bed between 1246 and 1250, but the matter lay dormant until 1313, when Fra Grimaldo, the Inquisitor of Florence, brought a successful prosecution against his memory. In the condemnation were included his children Ugolino, Cante, Nerlo, and Bertuccio, and his grandchildren, Goccia, Coppo, Fra Giovanni, Gherardo, prior of S. Quirico, Goccino, Baldino, and Marco--not that they were heretics, but that they were disinherited and subjected to the disabilities of descendants of heretics. When such proceedings were hailed as pre-eminent exhibitions of holy zeal, no man could feel secure in his possessions, whether derived from descent or purchase.[487]

An instance of a different character, but equally ill.u.s.trative, is furnished by the case of Geraud de Puy-Germer. His father had been condemned for heresy in the times of Raymond VII. of Toulouse, who generously restored the confiscated estates. Yet, twenty years after the death of the count, in 1268, the zealous agents of Alphonse seized them as still liable to forfeiture. Geraud thereupon appealed to Alphonse, who ordered an investigation, but with what result does not appear.[488]

Not only were all alienations made by heretics set aside and the property wrested from the purchasers, but all debts contracted by them, and all hypothecations and liens given to secure loans, were void. Thus doubt was cast upon every obligation that a man could enter into. Even when St. Louis softened the rigor of confiscation in Languedoc, the utmost concession he would make was that creditors should be paid for debts contracted by culprits before they became heretics, while all claims arising subsequently to an act of heresy were rejected. As no man could be certain of the orthodoxy of another, it will be evident how much distrust must have been thrown upon every bargain and every sale in the commonest transactions of life. The blighting influence of this upon the development of commerce and industry can readily be perceived, coming as it did at a time when the commercial and industrial movement of Europe was beginning to usher in the dawn of modern culture. It was not merely the spiritual striving of the thirteenth century that was repressed by the Inquisition; the progress of material improvement was seriously r.e.t.a.r.ded. It was this, among other incidents of persecution, which arrested the promising civilization of the south of France and transferred to England and the Netherlands, where the Inquisition was comparatively unknown, the predominance in commerce and industry which brought freedom and wealth and power and progress in its train.[489]

The quick-witted Italian commonwealths, then rising into mercantile importance, were keen to recognize the disabilities thus inflicted upon them. In Florence a remedy was sought by requiring the seller of real estate always to give security against possible future sentences of confiscation by the Inquisition--the security in general being that of a third party, although there must have been no little difficulty in obtaining it, and though it might likewise be invalidated at any moment by the same cause. Even in contracts for personalty, security was also often demanded and given. This was, at least, only replacing one evil by another of scarcely less magnitude, and the trouble grew so intolerable that a remedy was sought for one of its worst features. The republic solemnly represented to Martin IV. the scandals which had occurred and the yet greater ones threatened, in consequence of the confiscation of the real estate of heretics in the hands of _bona fide_ purchasers, and by a special bull of Nov. 22, 1283, the pontiff graciously ordered the Florentine inquisitors in future not to seize such property.[490]

The princes who enjoyed the results of confiscations recognized that they carried with them the correlative duty of defraying the expenses of the Inquisition; indeed, self-interest alone would have prompted them to maintain in a state of the highest efficiency an instrumentality so profitable. Theoretically, it could not be denied that the bishops were liable for these expenses, and at first the inquisitors of Languedoc sought to obtain funds from them, suggesting that at least pecuniary penances inflicted for pious uses should be devoted to paying their notaries and clerks. This was fruitless, for, as Gui Foucoix (Clement IV.) remarks, their hands were tenacious and their purses constipated, and as it was useless to look to them for resources, he advises that the pecuniary penances be used for the purpose, providing it be done decently and without scandalizing the people. Throughout central and northern Italy, as we have seen, the fines and confiscations rendered the Inquisition fully self-supporting, and the inquisitors were eager to make business out of which they could reap a pecuniary harvest. In Venice the State defrayed all expenses and took all profits. In Naples the same policy was at first pursued by the Angevine monarchs, who took the confiscations and, in addition to maintaining prisoners, paid to each inquisitor one augustale (one quarter ounce of gold) per diem for the expenses of himself and his a.s.sociate, his notary, and three familiars, with their horses. These stipends were a.s.signed upon the Naples customs on iron, pitch, and salt; the orders for their payment ran usually for six months at a time and had to be renewed; there was considerable delay in the settlements, and the inquisitors had substantial cause of complaint, although the officials were threatened with fines for lack of promptness. In 1272, however, I find a letter issued to the inquisitor, Fra Matteo di Castellamare, providing him with a year's salary, payable six months in advance. When, as mentioned above, Charles II., in 1290, divided the proceeds according to the papal prescription, he liberally continued to contribute to the expenses, though on a somewhat reduced scale. In letters of May 16, 1294, he orders the payment to Fra Bartolomeo di Aquila of four tareni per diem (the tareno was one thirtieth of an ounce of gold), and July 7 of the same year he provides that five ounces per month be paid to him for the expenses of his official family.[491]

In France there was at first some question as to the responsibility for the charges attendant upon persecution. The duty of the bishops to suppress heresy was so plain that they could not refuse to meet the expenses, at least in part. Before the establishment of the Inquisition this consisted almost wholly in the maintenance of imprisoned converts, and at the Council of Toulouse they agreed to defray this in the case of those who had no money, while those who had property to be confiscated they claimed should be supported by the princes who obtained it. This proposition, like the subsequent one of the Council of Albi, in 1254, was altogether too c.u.mbrous to work. The statutes of Raymond, in 1234, while dwelling elaborately on the subject of confiscation, made no provision for meeting the cost of the new Inquisition, and the matter remained unsettled. In 1237 we find Gregory IX. complaining that the royal officials contributed nothing for the support of the prisoners whose property they had confiscated. When, in 1246, the Council of Beziers was a.s.sembled, the Cardinal Legate of Albano reminded the bishops that it was their business to provide for it, according to the instructions of the Council of Montpellier, whose proceedings have not reached us. The good bishops were not disposed to do this. As we have seen, they claimed that prisons should be built at the expense of the recipients of the confiscations, and suggested that the fines should be used for their maintenance and for that of the inquisitors. The piety of St. Louis, however, would not see the good work halt for lack of the necessary means; with a more worldly prince we might a.s.sume that he recognized the money spent on inquisitors as profitably invested. In 1248 we find him defraying their expenses in all the domains of the crown, and we have shown above how he a.s.sumed the cost of prisons and prisoners; in addition to which, in 1246, he ordered his Seneschal of Carca.s.sonne to pay out of the confiscations ten sols per diem to the inquisitors for their expenses. It may fairly be presumed that Count Raymond contributed with a grudging hand to the support of an inst.i.tution which he had opposed so long as he dared; but when he was succeeded, in 1249, by Jeanne and Alphonse of Poitiers, the latter politic and avaricious prince saw his account in stimulating the zeal of those to whom he owed his harvest of confiscations. Not only did he defray the cost of the fixed tribunals, but his seneschals had orders to pay the expenses of the inquisitors and their familiars in their movements throughout his territories. He paid close attention to detail.

In 1268 we find Guillem de Montreuil, Inquisitor of Toulouse, reporting to him the engagement of a notary at six deniers per diem and of a servitor at four, and Alphonse graciously ordering the payment of their wages. Charles of Anjou, who was equally greedy, found time amid his Italian distractions to see that his Seneschal of Provence and Forcalquier kept the Inquisition supplied on the same basis as did the king in the royal dominions.[492]

Large as were the returns to the fisc from the industry of the Inquisition, the inquisitors were sometimes disposed to presume upon their usefulness, and to spend money with a freedom which seemed unnecessary to those who paid the bills. Even in the fresh zeal of 1242 and 1244, before the princes had made provision for the Holy Office, and while the bishops were yet zealously maintaining their claims to the fines, the luxury and extravagance of the inquisitors called down upon them the reproof of their own Order as expressed in the Dominican provincial chapters of Montpellier and Avignon. It would be, of course, unjust to cast such reproach upon all inquisitors, but no doubt many deserved it, and we have seen that there were numerous ways in which they could supply their wants, legitimate or otherwise. It might, indeed, be a curious question to determine the source whence Bernard de Caux, who presided over the tribunal of Toulouse until his death, in 1252, and who, as a Dominican, could have owned no property, obtained the means which enabled him to be a great benefactor to the convent of Agen, founded in 1249. Even Alphonse of Poitiers sometimes grew tired of ministering to the wishes of those who served him so well. In a confidential letter of 1268 he complains of the vast expenditures of Pons de Poyet and etienne de Gatine, the inquisitors of Toulouse, and instructs his agent to try to persuade them to remove to Lavaur, where less extravagance might be hoped for. He offered to put at their disposal the castle of Lavaur, or any other that might be fit to serve as a prison; and at the same time he craftily wrote to them direct, explaining that, in order to enable them to extend their operations, he would place an enormous castle in their hands.[493]

Some very curious details as to the expenses of the Inquisition, thus defrayed from the confiscations, from St. John's day, 1322, to 1323, are afforded by the accounts of Arnaud a.s.salit, _procureur des encours_ of Carca.s.sonne and Beziers, which have fortunately been preserved. From the sums thus coming into his hands the _procureur_ met the outlays of the Inquisition to the minutest item--the cost of maintaining prisoners, the hunting up of witnesses, the tracking of fugitives, and the charges for an _auto de fe_, including the banquets for the a.s.sembly of experts and the saffron-colored cloth for the crosses of the penitents. We learn from this that the wages of the inquisitor himself were one hundred and fifty livres per annum, and also that they were very irregularly paid.

Frere Otbert had been appointed in Lent, 1316, and thus far had received nothing of his stipend, but now, in consequence of a special letter from King Charles le Bel, the whole acc.u.mulation for six years, amounting to nine hundred livres, is paid in a lump. Although by this time persecution was slackening for lack of material, the confiscations were still quite profitable. a.s.salit charges himself with two thousand two hundred and nineteen livres seven sols ten deniers collected during the year, while his outlays, including heavy legal expenses and the extraordinary payment to Frere Otbert, amounted to one thousand one hundred and sixty-eight livres eleven sols four deniers, leaving about one thousand and fifty livres of profit to the crown.[494]

Persecution, as a steady and continuous policy, rested, after all, upon confiscation. It was this which supplied the fuel to keep up the fires of zeal, and when it was lacking the business of defending the faith languished lamentably. When Catharism disappeared under the brilliant aggressiveness of Bernard Gui, the culminating point of the Inquisition was pa.s.sed, and thenceforth it steadily declined, although still there were occasional confiscated estates over which king, prelate, and n.o.ble quarrelled for some years to come. The Spirituals, Dulcinists, and Fraticelli were Mendicants, who held property to be an abomination; the Waldenses were poor folk--mountain shepherds and lowland peasants--and the only prizes were an occasional sorcerer or usurer. Still, as late as 1337 the office of bailli of the confiscations for heresy in Toulouse was sufficiently lucrative to be worth purchasing under the prevailing custom of selling all such positions, and the collections for the preceding fiscal year amounted to six hundred and forty livres six sols.[495]

The intimate connection between the activity of persecuting zeal and the material results to be derived from it is well ill.u.s.trated in the failure of the first attempt to extend the Inquisition into Franche Comte. John, Count of Burgundy, in 1248, represented to Innocent IV. the alarming spread of Waldensianism throughout the province of Besancon and begged for its repression. Apparently the zeal of Count John did not lead him to pay for the purgation of his dominions, and the plunder to be gained was inconsiderable, for, in 1255, Alexander IV. granted the pet.i.tion of the friars to be relieved from the duty, in which they averred that they had exhausted themselves fruitlessly for lack of money. The same lesson is taught by the want of success which attended all attempts to establish the Inquisition in Portugal. When, in 1376, Gregory XI. ordered the Bishop of Lisbon to appoint a Franciscan inquisitor for the kingdom, recognizing apparently that there would be small receipts from confiscations, he provided that the inc.u.mbent should be paid a salary of two hundred gold florins per annum, a.s.sessed upon the various sees in the proportion of their forced contributions to the papal camera. The resistance of inertia, which rendered this command resultless, doubtless arose from the objection of the prelates to being thus taxed; and the same may be said of the effort of Boniface IX., when he appointed Fray Vicente de Lisboa as Inquisitor of Spain and ordered his expenses defrayed by the bishops.[496]

Perhaps the most unscrupulous attempt to provide for the maintenance of the Inquisition was that made by the Emperor Charles IV. when, in 1369, he endeavored to establish it in Germany on a permanent basis. Heretics were neither numerous nor rich, and little could be gained from their confiscations to sustain the zeal of Kerlinger and his brethren; and we shall see hereafter how the houses of the orthodox and inoffensive Beghards and Beguines were summarily confiscated in order to provide domiciles and prisons for the inquisitors, while the cities were invited to share in the spoils in order to enlist popular support for the odious measure; we shall see also how it failed in consequence of the steady repugnance of prelates and people for the Holy Office.[497]

Eymerich, writing in Aragon, about 1375, says that the source whence the expenses of the Inquisition should be met is a question which has been long debated and never settled. The most popular view among churchmen was that the burden should fall on the temporal princes, since they obtained the confiscations and should accept the charge with the benefit; but in these times, he sorrowfully adds, there are few obstinate heretics, fewer still relapsed, and scarce any rich ones, so that, as there is little to be gained, the princes are not willing to defray the expenses. Some other means ought to be found, but of all the devices which have been proposed each has its insuperable objection; and he concludes by regretting that an inst.i.tution so wholesome and so necessary to Christendom should be so badly provided.[498]

It was probably while Eymerich was saddened with these unpalatable truths that the question was raising itself in the most practical shape elsewhere. As late as 1337 in the accounts of the Senechaussee of Toulouse there are expenditures for an _auto de fe_ and for repairs to the buildings and prison of the Inquisition, the salaries of the inquisitor and his officials, and the maintenance of prisoners, but the confusion and bankruptcy entailed by the English war doubtless soon afterwards caused this duty to be neglected. In 1375 Gregory XI.

persuaded King Frederic of Sicily to allow the confiscations to inure to the benefit of the Inquisition, so that funds might not be lacking for the prosecution of the good work. At the same time he made a vigorous effort to exterminate the Waldenses who were multiplying in Dauphine.

There were prisons to be built and crowds of prisoners to be supported, and he directed that the expenses should be defrayed by the prelates whose negligence had given opportunity for the growth of heresy.

Although he ordered this to be enforced by excommunication, it would seem that the constipated purses of the bishops could not be relaxed, for soon after we find the inquisitor laying claim to a share in the confiscations, on the reasonable ground of his having no other source whence to defray the necessary expenses of his tribunal. The royal officials insisted on keeping the whole, and a lively contest arose, which was referred to King Charles le Sage. The monarch dutifully conferred with the Holy See, and, in 1378, issued an _Ordonnance_ retaining the whole of the confiscations and a.s.signing to the inquisitor a yearly stipend--the same as that paid to the tribunals of Toulouse and Carca.s.sonne--of one hundred and ninety livres Tournois, out of which all the expenses of the Inquisition were to be met; with a proviso that if the allowance was not regularly paid then the inquisitor should be at liberty to detain a portion of the forfeitures. No doubt this agreement was observed for a time, but it lapsed in the terrible disorders which ensued on the insanity of Charles VI. In 1409 Alexander V. left to his legate to decide whether the Inquisitor of Dauphine should receive three hundred gold florins a year, to be levied on the Jews of Avignon, or ten florins a year from each of the bishops of his extensive district, or whether the bishops should be compelled to support him and his officials in his journeys through the country. These precarious resources disappeared in the confusion of the civil wars and invasion which so nearly wrecked the monarchy. In 1432, when Frere Pierre Fabri, Inquisitor of Embrun, was summoned to attend the Council of Basle, he excused himself on account of his preoccupation with the stubborn Waldenses, and also on the ground of his indescribable poverty, "for never have I had a penny from the Church of G.o.d, nor have I a stipend from any other source."[499]

Of course it would be unjust to say that greed and thirst for plunder were the impelling motives of the Inquisition, though, when complaints were made that the fisc was defrauded of its dues by the immunity promised to those who would come in and confess during the time of grace, and when Bernard Gui met this objection by pointing out that these penitents were obliged to betray their a.s.sociates, and thus, in the long run, the fisc was the gainer, we see how largely the minds of those who urged on persecution were occupied by its profits.[500] We therefore are perfectly safe in a.s.serting that but for the gains to be made out of fines and confiscations its work would have been much less thorough, and that it would have sunk into comparative insignificance as soon as the first frantic zeal of bigotry had exhausted itself. This zeal might have lasted for a generation, to be followed by a period of comparative inaction, until a fresh onslaught would have been excited by the recrudescence of heresy. Under a succession of such spasmodic attacks Catharism might perhaps have never been completely rooted out.

By confiscation the heretics were forced to furnish the means for their own destruction. Avarice joined hands with fanaticism, and between them they supplied motive power for a hundred years of fierce, unremitting, unrelenting persecution, which in the end accomplished its main purpose.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE STAKE.

Like confiscation, the death-penalty was a matter with which the Inquisition had theoretically no concern. It exhausted every effort to bring the heretic back to the bosom of the Church. If he proved obdurate, or if his conversion was evidently feigned, it could do no more. As a non-Catholic, he was no longer amenable to the spiritual jurisdiction of a Church which he did not recognize, and all that it could do was to declare him a heretic and withdraw its protection. In the earlier periods the sentence thus is simply a condemnation as a heretic, accompanied by excommunication, or it merely states that the offender is no longer considered as subject to the jurisdiction of the Church. Sometimes there is the addition that he is abandoned to secular judgment--"relaxed," according to the terrible euphemism which a.s.sumed that he was simply discharged from custody. When the formulas had become more perfected there is frequently the explanatory remark that the Church has nothing left to do to him for his demerits; and the relinquishment to the secular arm is accompanied with the significant addition "_debita animadversione puniendum_"--that he is to be duly punished by it. The adjuration that this punishment, in accordance with the canonical sanctions, shall not imperil life or limb, or shall not cause death or effusion of blood, does not appear in the earlier sentences, and was not universal even at a later period.[501]

That this appeal for mercy was the merest form is admitted by Pegna, who explains that it was used only that the inquisitors might seem not to consent to the effusion of blood, and thus avoid incurring "irregularity." The Church took good care that the nature of the request should not be misapprehended. It taught that in such cases all mercy was misplaced unless the heretic became a convert, and proved his sincerity by denouncing all his fellows. The remorseless logic of St. Thomas Aquinas rendered it self-evident that the secular power could not escape the duty of putting the heretic to death, and that it was only the exceeding kindness of the Church that led it to give the criminal two warnings before handing him over to meet his fate. The inquisitors themselves had no scruples on the subject, and condescended to no subterfuges respecting it, but always held that their condemnation of a heretic was a sentence of death. They showed this in averting the pollution of a Church by not uttering these sentences within the sacred precincts, this portion of the ceremony of an _auto de fe_ being performed in the public square. One of their teachers in the thirteenth century, copied by Bernard Gui in the fourteenth, argues: "The object of the Inquisition is the destruction of heresy. Heresy cannot be destroyed unless heretics are destroyed: heretics cannot be destroyed unless their defenders and fautors are destroyed, and this is effected in two ways, viz., when they are converted to the true Catholic faith, or when, on being abandoned to the secular arm, they are corporally burned." In the next century, Fray Alonso de Spina points out that they are not to be delivered up to extermination without warning once and again, unless, indeed, their growth threatens trouble to the Church, when they are to be extirpated without delay or examination. Under these teachings the secular powers naturally recognized that in burning heretics they were only obeying the commands of the Inquisition. In a commission issued by Philippe le Bon of Burgundy, November 9, 1431, ordering his officials to render obedience to Friar Kaleyser, recently appointed Inquisitor of Lille and Cambrai, among the duties enumerated is that of inflicting due punishment on heretics "as he shall decree, and as is customary." In the accounts of the royal _procureurs des encours_, the cost of these executions in Languedoc was charged against the proceeds of the confiscations as part of the expenses of the Inquisition, thus showing that they were not regarded as ordinary incidents of criminal justice, to be defrayed out of the ordinary revenues, but as peculiarly connected with and dependent upon the operations of the Inquisition, of which the royal officials only acted as ministers. The Inquisitor Sprenger had no hesitation in alluding to the victims whom he caused to be burned--"_quas incinerari fecimus_." In fact, how modern is the pretension that the Church was not responsible for the atrocity is apparent when, as late as the seventeenth century, the learned Cardinal Albizio, in controverting Fra Paolo as to the control of the Inquisition by the State in Venice, had no scruple in a.s.serting that "the inquisitors in conducting the trials, regularly came to the sentence, and if it was one of death it was immediately and necessarily put into execution by the doge and the senate."[502]

We have already seen that the Church was responsible for the enactment of the ferocious laws punishing heresy with death, and that she intervened authoritatively to annul any secular statutes which should interfere with the prompt and effective application of the penalties. In the same way, as we have also seen, she provided against any negligence or laxity on the part of the magistrates in executing the sentences p.r.o.nounced by the inquisitors. According to the universal belief of the period, this was her plainest and highest duty, and she did not shrink from it. Boniface VIII. only recorded the current practice when he embodied in the canon law the provision whereby the secular authorities were commanded to punish duly and promptly all who were handed over to them by the inquisitors, under pain of excommunication, which became heresy if endured for a twelvemonth, and the inquisitors were rigidly instructed to proceed against all magistrates who proved recalcitrant, while they were at the same time cautioned only to speak of executing the laws without specifically mentioning the penalty, in order to avoid falling into "irregularity," though the only punishment recognized by the Church as sufficient for heresy was burning alive. Even if the ruler was excommunicated and incapable of legally performing any other function, he was not relieved from the obligation of this supreme duty, with which nothing was allowed to interfere. Indeed, authorities were found to argue that if an inquisitor were obliged to execute the sentence himself he would not thereby incur irregularity.[503]

We are not to imagine, however, from these reduplicated commands that the secular power, as a rule, showed itself in the slightest degree disinclined to perform the duty. The teachings of the Church had made too profound an impression for any doubt in the premises to exist. As has been seen above, the laws of all the states of Europe prescribed concremation as the appropriate penalty for heresy, and even the free commonwealths of Italy recognized the Inquisition as the judge whose sentences were to be blindly executed. Raymond of Toulouse himself, in the fit of piety which preceded his death in 1249, caused eighty believers in heresy to be burned at Berlaiges, near Agen, after they had confessed in his presence, apparently without giving them the opportunity of recanting. From the contemporary sentences of Bernard de Caux, it is probable that, had these unfortunates been tried before that ardent champion of the faith, not one of them would have been condemned to the stake as impenitent. Quite as significant was the suit brought by the Marechal de Mirepoix against the Seneschal of Carca.s.sonne, because the latter had invaded his right to burn for himself all his subjects condemned as heretics by the Inquisition. In 1269 the Parlement of Paris decided the case in his favor, after which, on March 18, 1270, the seneschal acceded to his demand that the bones of seven men and three women of his territories, recently burned at Carca.s.sonne, should be solemnly surrendered to him in recognition of his right; or, if they could not be found and identified, then, as subst.i.tutes, ten canvas bags filled with straw--a ghastly symbolic ceremony which was actually performed two days later, and a formal notarial act executed in attestation of it. Yet, though the De Levis of Mirepoix rejoiced in the t.i.tle of Marechaux de la Foi, it is not to be a.s.sumed that this eagerness arose wholly from bloodthirsty fanaticism, for there was nothing to which the seigneur-justicier clung more jealously than to every detail of his jurisdiction. A similar dispute arose in 1309, when the Count of Foix claimed the right to burn the Catharan heresiarch, Jacques Autier, and a woman named Guillelma Cristola, condemned by Bernard Gui, because they were his subjects, but the royal officials maintained their master's privileges in the premises, and the suit thence arising was still pending in 1326. So at Narbonne, where there was a long-standing dispute between the archbishop and the viscount as to the jurisdiction, and where, in 1319, the former in conjunction with the inquisitor Jean de Beaune relaxed three heretics, he claimed for his court the right to burn them. The commune, as representing the viscount, resisted this, and the hideous quarrel was only settled by the representative of the king stepping in and performing the act. In so doing, however, he carefully specified that it was not to work prejudice to either party, while to the end the archbishop protested against the intrusion upon his rights.[504]

If, however, from any cause, the secular authorities were reluctant to execute the death-sentence, the Church had little ceremony in putting forth its powers to coerce obedience. When, for instance, the first resistance in Toulouse had been broken down and the Holy Office had been reinstated there, the inquisitors, in 1237, condemned six men and women as heretics; but the viguier and consuls refused to receive the convicts, to confiscate their property, and "to do with them what was customary to be done with heretics"--that is, to burn them alive.

Thereupon the inquisitors, after counselling with the bishop, the Abbot du Mas, the Provost of St. etienne, and the Prior of La Daurade, proceeded to excommunicate solemnly the recalcitrant officials in the Cathedral of St. etienne. In 1288 Nicholas IV. lamented the neglect and covert opposition with which in many places the secular authorities evaded the execution of the inquisitorial sentences, and directed that they should be punished with excommunication and deprivation of office and their communities be subjected to interdict. In 1458, at Stra.s.sburg, the Burgermeister, Hans Drachenfels, and his colleagues refused at first to burn the Hussite missionary Frederic Reiser and his servant Anna Weiler, but their resistance was overcome and they were finally forced to execute the sentence. Thirty years later, in 1486, the magistrates of Brescia objected to burning certain witches of both s.e.xes condemned by the Inquisition, unless they should be permitted to examine the proceedings. This was held to be flat rebellion. Civil lawyers, it is true, had endeavored to prove that the secular authorities had a right to see the papers, but the inquisitors had succeeded in having this claim rejected. Innocent VIII. promptly declared the Venetian demands to be a scandal to the faith, and he ordered the excommunication of the magistrates if within six days they did not execute the convicts, any munic.i.p.al statutes to the contrary being p.r.o.nounced null and void--a decision which was held to give the secular courts six days in which to carry out the sentence of condemnation. A more stubborn contest arose in 1521, when the Inquisition endeavored to purge the dioceses of both Brescia and Bergamo of the witches who still infested them. The inquisitor and episcopal ordinaries proceeded against them vigorously, but the Signiory of Venice interposed and appealed to Leo X., who appointed his nuncio at Venice to revise the trials. The latter delegated his power to the Bishop of Justinopolis, who proceeded with the inquisitor and ordinaries to the Valcamonica of Brescia, where the so-called heretics were numerous, and condemned some of them to be relaxed to the secular arm. Still dissatisfied, the Venetian Senate ordered the Governor of Brescia not to execute the sentences or to permit them to be executed, or to pay the expenses of the proceedings, but to send the papers to Venice for revision, and to compel the Bishop of Justinopolis to appear before them, which he was obliged to do. This inflamed the papal indignation to the highest pitch. Leo X. warmly a.s.sured the inquisitor and the episcopal officials that they had full jurisdiction over the culprits, that their sentences were to be executed without revision or examination, and that they must enforce these rights with the free use of ecclesiastical censures. The spirit of the age, however, was insubordinate, and Venice had always been peculiarly so in all matters connected with the Holy Office. We shall see hereafter how the Council of Ten undauntedly held its position and a.s.serted the superiority of its jurisdiction in a manner previously unexampled.[505]

In view of this unvarying policy of the Church during the three centuries under consideration, and for a century and a half later, there is a typical instance of the manner in which history is written to order, in the quiet a.s.sertion of the latest Catholic historian of the Inquisition that "the Church took no part in the corporal punishment of heretics. Those who perished miserably were only chastised for their crimes, sentenced by judges invested with the royal jurisdiction. The record of the excesses committed by the heretics of Bulgaria, by the Gnostics and Manichaeans, is historical, and capital punishment was only inflicted on criminals confessing to robbery, a.s.sa.s.sination, and violence. The Albigenses were treated with equal benignity; ... the Catholic Church deplored all acts of vengeance, however great was the provocation given by the ferocity of those factious ma.s.ses." So completely, in truth, was the Church convinced of its duty to see that all heretics were burned that, at the Council of Constance, the eighteenth article of heresy charged against John Huss was that, in his treatise _de Ecclesia_, he had taught that no heretic ought to be abandoned to secular judgment to be punished with death. In his defence even Huss admitted that a heretic who could not be mildly led from error ought to suffer bodily punishment; and when a pa.s.sage was read from his book in which those who deliver an unconvicted heretic to the secular arm are compared to the Scribes and Pharisees who delivered Christ to Pilate, the a.s.sembly broke out into a storm of objurgation, during which even the st.u.r.dy reformer, Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, was heard to exclaim, "Verily those who drew up the articles were most moderate, for his writings are much more atrocious."[506]

The continuous teachings of the Church led its best men to regard no act as more self-evidently just than the burning of the heretic, and no heresy less defensible than a demand for toleration. Even Chancellor Gerson himself could see nothing else to be done with those who pertinaciously adhered to error, even in matters not at present explicitly articles necessary to the faith.[507] The fact is, the Church not only defined the guilt and forced its punishment, but created the crime itself. As we shall see, under Nicholas IV. and Celestine V., the strict Franciscans were pre-eminently orthodox; but when John XXII.

stigmatized as heretical the belief that Christ lived in absolute poverty, he transformed them into unpardonable criminals whom the temporal officials were bound to send to the stake, under pain of being themselves treated as heretics.

There was thus a universal consensus of opinion that there was nothing to do with a heretic but to burn him. The heretic as known to the laws, both secular and ecclesiastical, was he who not only admitted his heretical belief, but defended it and refused to recant. He was obstinate and impenitent; the Church could do nothing with him, and as soon as the secular lawgivers had provided for his guilt the awful punishment of the stake, there was no hesitation in handing him over to the temporal jurisdiction to endure it. All authorities unite in this, and the annals of the Inquisition can vainly be searched for an exception. Yet this was regarded by the inquisitor as a last resort. To say nothing of the saving of a soul, a convert who would betray his friends was more useful than a roasted corpse, and, as we have seen, no effort was spared to obtain recantation. Experience had shown that such zealots were often eager for martyrdom and desired to be speedily burned, and it was no part of the inquisitor's pleasure to gratify them.

He was advised that this ardor frequently gave way under time and suffering, and therefore he was told to keep the obstinate and defiant heretic chained in a dungeon for six months or a year in utter solitude, save when a dozen theologians and legists should be let in upon him to labor for his conversion, or his wife and children be admitted to work upon his heart. It was not until all this had been tried and failed that he was to be relaxed. Even then the execution was postponed for a day to give further opportunity for recantation, which, we are told, rarely happened, for those who went thus far usually persevered to the end; but if his resolution gave way and he professed repentance, his conversion was presumed to be the work of fear rather than of grace, and he was to be strictly imprisoned for life. Even at the stake his offer to abjure ought not to be refused, though there was no absolute rule as to this, and there could be little hope of the genuineness of such conversion. Eymerich relates a case occurring at Barcelona when three heretics were burned, and one of them, a priest, after being scorched on one side, cried out that he would recant. He was removed and abjured, but fourteen years later was found to have persisted in heresy and to have infected many others, when he was despatched without more ado.[508]

The obstinate heretic who preferred martyrdom to apostasy was by no means the sole victim doomed to the stake. The secular lawgiver had provided this punishment for heresy, but had left to the Church its definition, and the definition was enlarged to serve as a gentle persuasive that should supplement all deficiencies in the inquisitorial process. Where testimony deemed sufficient existed, persistent denial only aggravated guilt, and the profession of orthodoxy was of no avail.

If two witnesses swore to having seen a man "adore" a perfected heretic it was enough, and no declaration of readiness to subscribe to all the tenets of Rome availed him, without confession, abjuration, recantation, and acceptance of penance. Such a one was a heretic, to be pitilessly burned. It was the same with the contumacious who did not obey the summons to stand trial. Persistent refusal of the oath was likewise technical heresy, condemning the recalcitrant to the stake. Even when there was no proof, simple suspicion became heresy if the suspect failed to purge himself with conjurators and remained so for a year. In violent suspicion, refusal to abjure worked the same result in a twelvemonth. A retracted confession was similarly regarded. In short, the stake supplied all defects. It was the _ultima ratio_, and although not many cases have reached us in which executions actually occurred on these grounds, there is no doubt that such provisions were of the utmost utility in practice, and that the terror which they inspired extorted many a confession, true or false, from unwilling lips.[509]

There was another cla.s.s of cases, however, which gave the inquisitors much trouble, and in which they were long in settling upon a definite and uniform course of procedure. The innumerable forced conversions wrought by the dungeon and stake filled the prisons and the land with those whose outward conformity left them at heart no less heretics than before. I have elsewhere spoken of the all-pervading police of the Holy Office and of the watchfulness exercised over the converts whose liberation at best was but a ticket-of-leave. That cases of relapse into heresy should be constant was therefore a matter of course. Even in the jails it was impossible to segregate all the prisoners, and complaints are frequent of these wolves in sheep's clothing who infected their more innocent fellow-captives. A man whose solemn conversion had once been proved fraudulent could never again be trusted. He was an incorrigible heretic whom the Church could no longer hope to win over. On him mercy was wasted, and the stake was the only resource. Yet it is creditable to the Inquisition that it was so long in reducing to practice this self-evident proposition.