The Inquisition Part 9

The princes, who did not concern themselves with these heretics while they merely denied the teachings of the Church, at last found themselves attacked just as vigorously. The Catharan absolute rejection of the oath of fealty was calculated to break the bond that united subjects to their suzerain lords, and at one blow to destroy the whole edifice of feudalism. And even granting that the feudal system could cease to exist without dragging down in its fall all form of government, how could the State provide for the public welfare, if she did not possess the power to punish criminals, as the Cathari maintained?

But the great unpardonable crime of Catharism was its attempt to destroy the future of humanity by its _endura_, and its abolition of marriage. It taught that the sooner life was destroyed the better.

Suicide, instead of being considered a crime, was a means of perfection. To beget children was considered the height of immorality. To become one of "the Perfected," which was the only way of salvation, the husband must leave his wife, and the wife her husband. The family must cease to exist, and all men were urged to form a great religious community, vowed to the most rigorous chast.i.ty. If this ideal had been realized, the human race would have disappeared from the earth in a few years. Can any one imagine more immoral and more anti-social teaching?

The Catholic Church has been accused of setting up a similar ideal.

This is a gross calumny. For while Catharism made chast.i.ty a _sine qua non_ of salvation, and denounced marriage as something infamous and criminal, the Church merely counsels virginity to an elite body of men and women in whom she recognizes the marks of a special vocation, according to the teaching of the Savior, "He that can take, let him take it." _Qui potest capiare capiat_.[1] She endeavors at the same time to uphold the sacrament of marriage, declaring it a holy state, in which the majority of mankind is to work out its salvation.

[1] Matt. xix. 11, 12.

There is consequently no parity whatever between the two societies and their teachings. In bitterly prosecuting the Cathari, the Church truly acted for the public good. The State was bound to aid her by force, unless it wished to perish herself with all the social order.

This explains and to a certain degree Justifies the combined action of Church and State in suppressing the Catharan heresy.

CHAPTER VI FIFTH PERIOD GREGORY IX AND FREDERIC II THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE MONASTIC INQUISITION

THE penal system codified by Innocent III was rather liberally interpreted in France and Italy. In order to make the French law agree with it, an oath was added to the coronation service from the time of Louis IX, whereby the King swore to exterminate, i.e., banish all heretics from his kingdom. We are inclined to interpret in this sense the laws of Louis VIII (1226) and Louis IX (April, 1228), for the south of France. The words referring to the punishment of heretics are a little vague: "Let them be punished," says Louis VIII, "with the punishment they deserve." "_Animadversione debita puniantur_. The other penalties specified are infamy and confiscation; in a word, all the consequences of banishment."[1]

[1] _Ordonnances des roys de France_, vol. xii, pp. 319, 320.

Louis IX re-enacted this law in the following terms: "We decree that our barons and magistrates ... do their duty in prosecuting heretics." "_De ipsis festinanter faciant quod debebunt_."[1] These words in themselves are not very clear, and, if we were to interpret them by the customs of a few years later, we might think that they referred to the death penalty, even the stake; but comparing them with similar expressions used by Lucius III and Innocent III, we see that they imply merely the penalty of banishment.

[2] Ibid., vol. i, p. 51; Labbe, _Concilia_, vol. vii, col. 171.

However, a canon of the Council of Toulouse in 1229 seems to make the meaning of these words clear, at least for the future. It decreed that all heretics and their abettors are to be brought to the n.o.bles and the magistrates to receive due punishment, _ut animadversione debita puniantur_. But it adds that "heretics, who, _through fear of death_ or any other cause, except their own free will, return to the faith, are to be imprisoned by the bishop of the city to do penance, that they may not corrupt others;" the bishop is to provide for their needs out of the property confiscated.[1] The fear of death here seems to imply that the _animadversione debita_ meant the death penalty. That would prove the elasticity of the formula. At first it was a legal penalty which custom interpreted to mean banishment and confiscation; later on it meant chiefly the death penalty; and finally it meant solely the penalty of the stake. At any rate, this canon of the Council of Toulouse must be kept in mind; for we will soon see Pope Gregory IX quoting it.

[1] D'Achery, _Spicilegium_, in-fol., vol. i, p. 711.

In Italy, Frederic II promulgated on November 22, 1220, an imperial law which, in accordance with the pontifical decree of March 25, 1199, and the Lateran Council of 1215, condemned heretics to every form of banishment, to perpetual infamy, together with the confiscation of their property, and the annulment of all their civil acts and powers. It is evident that the emperor was influenced by Innocent III, for, having declared that the children of heretics could not inherit their father's property, he adds a phrase borrowed from the papal decree of 1199, viz., "that to offend the divine majesty was a far greater crime than to offend the majesty of the emperor."[1]

[1] _Monum. Germaniae, Leges_, sect. iv, vol. ii, pp. 107-109.

This at once put heresy on a par with treason, and consequently called for a severer punishment than the law actually decreed. We will soon see others draw the logical conclusion from the emperor's comparison, and enact the death penalty for heresy.

The legates of Pope Honorius were empowered to introduce the canonical and imperial legislation into the statutes of the Italian cities, which hitherto had not been at all anxious to take any measures whatever against heretics. They succeeded in Bergamo, Piacenza, and Mantua in 1221; and in Brescia in 1225. In 1226, the emperor himself ordered the podesta of Pavia to banish all heretics from the city limits. About the year 1230, therefore, it was the generally accepted law throughout all Italy (recall what we have said above about Faenza, Florence, etc.) to banish all heretics, confiscate their property, and demolish their houses.

Two years had hardly elapsed when, through the joint efforts of Frederic II and Gregory IX, the death penalty of the stake was subst.i.tuted for banishment; Guala, a Dominican, seems to leave been the prime mover in bringing about this change.

Frederic II, influenced by the jurists who were reviving the old Roman law, prolmulgated a law for Lombardy in 1224, which condemned heretics to the stake, or at least to have their tongues cut out.[1]

This penalty of the stake was common--if not legal--in Germany. For instance, we read of the people of Strasburg burning about eighty heretics about the year 1212[2], and we could easily cite other similar executions.[3] The emperor, therefore, merely brought the use of the stake from Germany into Italy. Indeed it is very doubtful whether this law was in operation before 1230.

[1] A Const.i.tution sent to the Archbishop of Magdeburg, in the _Mon.

Germ., Leges_, sect. iv, vol. ii, p. 126. [2] _Annales Marbacenses_, ad ann. 1215, in the _Mon. Germ. SS_., vol. xvii, p. 174. . [3] Cf.

Julien Havet, op. cit., pp. 143, 144.

But in that year, Guala, the Dominican, who had become Bishop of Brescia, used his authority to enact for his episcopal city the most severe laws against heresy. The podesta of the city had to swear that he would prosecute heretics as Manicheans and traitors, according to both the canon and the civil law, especially in view of Frederic's law of 1224. Innocent III's comparison between heretics and traitors, and between the Cathari and the Manicheans, now bore fruit. Traitors deserved the death penalty, while the old Roman law sent the Manicheans to the stake; accordingly Guala maintained that all heretics deserved the stake.

Pope Gregory IX adopted this stern att.i.tude, probably under the influence of the Bishop of Brescia, with whom he was in frequent correspondence.[1] The imperial law of 1224 was inscribed in 1230 or 1231 upon the papal register, where it figures as number 103 of the fourth year of Gregory's pontificate. The Pope then tried to enforce it, beginning with the city of Rome. He enacted a law in February, 1231, ordering, as the Council of Toulouse had done in 1229, heretics condemned by the Church to be handed over to the secular arm, to receive the punishment they deserved, _animadversio debita_. All who abjured and accepted a fitting penance were to be imprisoned for life, without prejudice to the other penalties for heresy, such as confiscation.[2]

[1] Gregory IX was four years Pope before he enacted these new laws.

[2] Cap. ii, _Mon. Germ., Leges_, sect. iv, vol. ii, p. 196.

About the same time, Annibale, the Senator of Rome, established the new jurisprudence of the Church in the eternal city. Every year, on taking office, the Senator was to banish (_diffidare_) all heretics.

All who refused to leave the city were, eight days after their condemnation, to receive the punishment they deserved. The penalty, _animadversio debita_, is not specified, as if every one knew what was meant.

Inasmuch as reluctant heretics were imprisoned for life, it seems certain that the severer penalty reserved for obstinate heretics must have been the death penalty of the stake, for that was the mode of punishment decreed by the imperial law of 1224, which had just been copied on the registers of the papal chancery. But we are not left to mere conjecture. In February, 1231, a number of Patarins were arrested in Rome; those who refused to abjure were sent to the stake, while those who did abjure were sent to Monte Ca.s.sino and Cava to do penance. This case tells us instantly how we are to interpret the _animadversio debita_ of contemporary doc.u.ments.

Frederic II exercised an undeniable influence over Gregory IX, and the Pope in turn influenced the emperor. Gregory wrote denouncing the many heretics who swarmed throughout the kingdom of Sicily (the two Sicilies), especially in Naples and Aversa, urging him to prosecute them with vigor. Frederic obeyed. He was then preparing his Sicilian Code, which appeared at Amalfi in August, 1231. The first law, _Inconsutilem tunicam_, was against heretics. The emperor did not have to consult any one about the penalty to be decreed against heresy; he had merely to copy his own law, enacted in Lombardy in 1224. This new law declared heresy a crime against society on a par with treason, and liable to the same penalty. And that the law might not be a dead letter for lack of accusers, the state officials were commanded to prosecute it just as they would any other crime. This was in reality the beginning of the Inquisition. All suspects were to be tried by an ecclesiastical tribunal, and if, being declared guilty, they refuse to abjure, they were to be burned in the presence of the people.[1]

[1] _Const.i.tut. Sicil_., i, 3, in Eymeric, _Directorium inquisitorum_, Appendix, p. 14.

Once started on the road to severity, Frederic II did not stop. To aid Gregory IX in suppressing heresy, he enacted at Ravenna, in 1237, an imperial law condemning all heretics to death.[1] The kind of death was not indicated. But every one knew that the common German custom of burning heretics at the stake had now become the law. For by three previous laws, May 14, 1238, June 26, 1238, and February 22, 1239, the emperor had declared that the Sicilian Code and the law of Ravenna were binding upon all his subjects; the law of June 26, 1238, merely promulgated these other laws throughout the kingdom of Arles and Vienne. Henceforth all uncertainty was at an end. The legal punishment for heretics throughout the empire was death at the stake.

[1] _Mon. Germ., Leges_, sect. iv, vol. ii, pp. 196.

Gregory IX did not wait for these laws to be enacted to carry out his intentions.

As early as 1231 he tried to have the cities of Italy and Germany adopt the civil and canonical laws in vogue at Rome against heresy, and he was the first to inaugurate that particular method of prosecution, the permanent tribunal of the Inquisition.

We possess some of the letters which he wrote in June, 1231, urging the bishops and archbishops to further his plans. He did not meet with much success, however, although the Dominicans and the Friars Minor did their best to help him. Still some cities like Milan, Verona, Piacenza and Vercelli adopted the measures of persecution which he proposed. At Milan, Peter of Verona, a Dominican, on September 15, 1233, had the laws of the Pope and the Senator of Rome inscribed in the city's statutes. The _animadversio debita_ was henceforth interpreted to mean the penalty of the stake. "In this year," writes a chronicler of the time, "the people of Milan began to burn heretics." In the month of July, sixty heretics were sent to the stake at Verona. The podesta of Piacenza sent to the Pope the heretics he had arrested. Vercelli, at the instance of the Franciscan, Henry of Milan, incorporated in 1233 into its statutes the law of the Senator of Rome and the imperial law of 1224; it, however, omitted in the last named law the clause which decreed the penalty of cutting out the tongue. In Germany, the Dominican, Conrad of Marburg, was particularly active, in virtue of his commission from Gregory IX. In accordance with the imperial law, we find him sentencing to the stake a great number of heretics.

It may be admitted, however, that in his excessive zeal he even went beyond the desires of the sovereign pontiff. Gregory IX did not find everywhere so marked an eagerness to carry out his wishes. A number of the cities of Italy for a long time continued to punish obstinate heretics according to the penal code of Innocent III, i.e., by banishment and confiscation.

That the penalty of the stake was used at this time in France is proved by the burning of one hundred and eighty-three Bulgarians or Bugres at Mont-Wimer in 1239 and by two important doc.u.ments, the _etabliss.e.m.e.nts de Saint Louis_ and the _Coutumes de Beauvaisis_.

"As soon as the ecclesiastical judge has discovered, after due examination, that the suspect is a heretic, he must hand him over to the secular arm; and the secular judge must send him to the stake."[1] Beaumanoir says the same thing: "In such a case, the secular court must aid the Church; for when the Church condemns any one as a heretic, she is obliged to hand him over to the secular arm to be sent to the stake; for she herself cannot put any one to death."[2]

[1] _etabliss.e.m.e.nts de Saint Louis_, ch. cxxiii.

[2] _Coutumes de Beauvaisis_, xi, 2; cf. x.x.x, 11, ed. Beugnot, vol.

i, pp. 157, 413.

It is a question whether this legislation is merely the codification of the custom introduced by popular uprisings against heresy and by certain royal decrees, or whether it owes its origin to the law of Frederic II which Gregory IX tried to enforce in France, as he had done in Germany and Italy. This second hypothesis is hardly probable.

The tribunals of the Inquisition did not have to import into France the penalty of the stake; they found it already established in both central and northern France.

In fact, Gregory IX urged everywhere the enforcement of the existing laws against heresy, and where none existed he introduced a very severe system of prosecution. He was the first, moreover, to establish an extraordinary and permanent tribunal for heresy trials--an inst.i.tution which afterwards became known as the monastic Inquisition.

The prosecution and the punishment of heretics in every diocese was one of the chief duties of the bishops, the natural defenders of orthodoxy. While heresy appeared at occasional intervals, they had little or no difficulty in fulfilling their duty. But when the Cathari and the Patazins had sprung up everywhere, especially in southern Italy and France and northern Spain, the secrecy of their movements made the task of the bishop extremely hard and complicated.

Rome soon perceived that they were not very zealous in prosecuting heresy. To put an end to this neglect, Lucius III, jointly with the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa and the bishops of his court, enacted a decretal at Verona in 1184, regulating the _episcopal inquisition_.

All bishops and archbishops were commanded to visit personally once or twice a year, or to empower their archdeacons or other clerics to visit, every parish in which heresy was thought to exist. They were to compel two or three trustworthy men, or, if need be, all the inhabitants of the city, to swear that they would denounce every suspect who attended secret a.s.semblies, or whose manner of living differed from that of the ordinary Catholic. After the bishop had questioned all who had been brought before his tribunal, he was empowered to punish them as he deemed fit, unless the accused succeeded in establishing their innocence. All who superst.i.tiously refused to take the required oath (we have seen how the Cathari considered it criminal to take an oath) were to be condemned and punished as heretics, and if they refused to abjure they were handed over to the secular arm.[1] This was an attempt to recall the bishops to a sense of their duty. The Lateran Council of 1215 re-enacted the laws of Lucius III; and to ensure their enforcement it decreed that every bishop who neglected his duty should be deposed, and another consecrated in his place.[2] The Council of Narbonne in 1227 likewise ordered the bishop to appoint synodal witnesses (_testes synodales_) in every parish to prosecute heretics.[3] But all these decrees, although properly countersigned and placed in the archives, remained practically a dead letter. In the first place it was very difficult to obtain the synodal witnesses. And again, as a contemporary bishop, Lunas de Tuy, a.s.sures us, the bishops for the most part were not at all anxious to prosecute heresy. When reproached for their inaction they replied: "How can we condemn those who are neither convicted nor confessed?"[4]

[1] Lucius III, Ep. clxxl, Migne, P.L., vol. cci, col. 1297 and seq.

[2] The Bull _Excommunicamus_, Decretals, cap. xiii, in fine, _De haereticis_, lib. v, t.i.t. vii.