| #### 5. THE INQUISITION |

| #### #### The troubles, civil and religious, of the unhappy provinces of the south of France were not ended by the decisions of the Lateran. Council of 1215. Raymond VI soon renewed the war, in the hope of dispossessing Simon de Montfort, and de Montfort himself quarrelled with the papal legate. In 1218 Simon was killed as he besieged Toulouse. His son, Amaury, who succeeded to his rights, was not so strong a character as his father. In the next six years Raymond won back some of his lost territories, and Amaury endeavoured to check his recovery by bringing in the King of France. He made an offer of his lands to Philip II in 1222 but the king refused. Two years later, after Philip's death, the offer was repeated to his son, Louis VIII. The new king accepted, and there now began a purely political war in which the French aimed at the annexation of Languedoc to the royal domain. #### The pope could not be indifferent to all the fluctuations of these eight years (1216-1224). Whatever the political ambitions of the French kings, the fact remained that the Counts of Toulouse were not to be trusted in the matter of repressing a singularly menacing anti-Catholic force. The French kings, on the other hand, would show it no mercy. Hence, on Louis VIII's determination to make himself master of Languedoc, Honorius III gave his expedition all the status of a crusade, with the usual indulgences and privileges for the crusaders. He also sent a subsidy in money. The English court, on the other hand, preferred to have Raymond VII [ ] -first cousin to the English king -- ruling the province which bordered Gascony, the one remaining possession of England in France, and at Rome the English worked hard to persuade the pope of Raymond's complete orthodoxy. The legate in Languedoc, too, was brought round to this opinion and, withdrawing the crusade privileges, he certified Raymond to the pope as a good Catholic. Louis VIII, thereupon, drew back. The Council of Montpellier (June, 1224) should have ended the affair. But the old story was repeated. Raymond, for all his oaths, did nothing to repress the heresy. The pope decided against him, and when Louis VIII, in 1226, marched south it was the end of the independence of Languedoc. City after city fell before the French advance. Louis himself died in the November of that year but his widow, regent for the boy king Louis IX, continued the policy. Raymond was forced to surrender. #### On Holy Thursday, 1229, like his father twenty years earlier, he appeared before the legates, outside the great door of Notre Dame at Paris, barefoot, clad only in his shirt, to be reconciled. He promised yet once again, to pursue heretics, to dismiss the brigands he employed, to restore the stolen Church property; he promised also to endow ten chairs in the University of Toulouse, two of theology, two of canon law and six of the liberal arts; he promised to take the cross and to spend five years crusading in Palestine. As to his dominions, part was made over at once to the crown. The remainder was to go after his death to his daughter Jeanne, and Jeanne was betrothed to the French king's brother, Alphonse of Poitiers. It was the end. Raymond gave no more trouble. He died in 1247. Twenty-five years later Jeanne, too, was dead and her husband. They had no heir, and the whole of the possessions of the Counts of Toulouse reverted to the French crown. #### It remains to be told how the pope, upon the surrender of 1229, provided for the extinction of heresy in the territory wrested from Raymond VII. This is the story of the origin of the Inquisition. #### The Inquisition was simply a reorganisation of existing institutions. The history of the repressing of heresy goes back to the first Christian emperors. Heresy meant civil commotion in addition to being an act of rebellion against the truth of God revealed through the Church. Whence a double reason for the prince -- zealous in God's service and bound by his office to maintain peace -- to restrain the heretic. The first ecclesiastical reference of any importance to the repression of the neo- Manicheans whom we call Albigenses, is the canon of the General Council of 1139, which calls on the civil power, in a general way, to repress them. Mobs, and the civil power itself, had already shown a disposition to deal severely with these heretics. Robert II of France had burnt them, and Henry II of England had them branded on the forehead. It was, apparently, the joint representation of Henry II and Louis VII of France that induced Alexander III to the next step. The pope began by deprecating undue severity in the matter. "It is better to absolve the guilt than to attack innocent life by an excessive severity. . . ." Scripture bids us beware of being more just than justice. [ ] The King of France was not convinced. He asked for the Archbishop of Rheims, whose extensive diocese was greatly troubled by the sect, complete freedom of action. The outcome of these representations was the decree of the Council of Tours in 1163. The four hundred and more prelates who, under the pope's presidency, took part in this council, declared that heretics were to be tracked down and that the princes should imprison them and confiscate their property. In England, about the same time, it was enacted -- by the civil authority -- that their houses should be destroyed. Sixteen years after this decree of Tours, the General Council of 1179 renewed the exhortation to the Christian princes. The great step forward in the matter was, however, the decree Ad abolendam of 1184, the outcome of the meeting of Frederick Barbarossa and the pope Lucius III at Verona. Once again we note the intervention of the State, and in the decree a new, and ordered, severity. This decree the Lateran Council of 1215 made its own, adding somewhat to its detail, and what it laid down was the law as Gregory IX found it when, after the French occupation of Languedoc, he called the Inquisition into being. #### By this law [ ] all heresies contrary to the profession of Faith set out in the first canon [ ] and those who professed them were condemned. The civil authority was charged to see to their suitable punishment. If they were clerics they were to be deposed, and their goods to be given to the church they served. If they were laity, their goods were to go to the State. Those suspected of heresy were to prove themselves innocent. Should they neglect to do so they were excommunicated; and if they persisted in the excommunication for twelve months they were to be condemned as heretics. The princes were to be admonished, persuaded, and if necessary compelled by ecclesiastical censures -- excommunication for example or interdict -- to swear that they would banish all whom the Church pointed out to them as heretics. This oath, henceforward, they must take on first assuming power. Princes who, after due warning, refuse to take this oath, or to purge their realms of heretics, are to be excommunicated by the metropolitan and his suffragans. If their refusal continues beyond a year, they are to be reported to the pope, that he may declare their vassals absolved from their oaths of allegiance and offer their territories for occupation to Catholics who will drive out the heretics -- saving always the right of such a prince's suzerain. Catholics who thus take up arms to fight the heretics are assimilated in all things to the crusaders in the Holy Land. #### Those who, in any way, support heretics are excommunicated. If within twelve months they have not made their submission, they become iure infames, lose all power of testifying in law suits, of sitting in councils, of electing others, of holding public office; they cannot make a valid will nor inherit; if they are judges their sentences are null and void; if notaries the instruments they draw up are invalid; if clerics they lose both office and benefice. They are not to be given the sacraments, nor, should they die, Christian burial. Their alms and offerings are not to be accepted and clerics who do not observe these laws are to be deprived. Clerics deprived for this particular negligence need a special dispensation from the Holy See before they can be reinstated. #### As to the detection of heretics, there is now laid upon all archbishops and bishops the duty of a periodical visitation, at least once a year, personally or by commission, of all those places within their jurisdiction where heresy is rumoured to exist. They are to take the sworn testimony of three or more witnesses of good standing -- if necessary the whole population is to be put upon oath. Those who know of heretics, of their secret meetings, or of any who differ in life or manners from the generality of the faithful, are to report the matter to the bishop at these visitations. He is to convoke the persons accused, and they are to prove their innocence. If they have already been accused, and have since then relapsed, they are to be punished canonically. If they refuse to put themselves on oath they are to be presumed heretics. Bishops who neglect this important duty are to be denounced to the Holy See and deposed. #### To the will to repress heresy and to fight the menace of the new paganism, as it shows itself in this legislation, nothing could be added. The weak point was that this legislation depended for its execution upon the local bishop, and it was impossible for the pope to supervise, as thoroughly as the state of things required all the activities of the Catholic episcopate throughout the world. Gregory IX solved the problem by substituting for the local bishop official inquisitors, sent out by himself from Rome, to whom, as the pope's representatives, the local bishop, in this matter, must give place. This was the novelty of the Inquisition. From this moment there began to develop around the Inquisitor a defined, ordered system of legal practice, which succeeding popes sanctioned and corrected. #### It was in 1233 that Gregory IX thus made the defence of the Faith in Languedoc his personal care, and appointed as his agents the Dominicans of that province. They were reluctant to take on the work, and, apparently, did not relish the prospect that the order would become identified with the Inquisition. Whereupon the pope called upon the order of St. Francis to share the burden. #### We have a fairly detailed knowledge of the procedure of the new institution, based on such of its own records as have survived, and also on the manuals written for the guidance of the Inquisitors. The popes were very exacting as to the qualifications of the Inquisitors themselves. They were to be men of mature years, of unimpeachable character, skilled in Theology and in Canon Law. Their conduct was strictly supervised, and there are sufficiently numerous instances of their deposition for breach of the rules to prove that the popes really had a care for the rights of those whom the Inquisitors pursued. Gregory IX, for example, condemned the French Inquisitor to lifelong imprisonment for cruelty to his prisoners. Over the Inquisitor there hung a sentence of excommunication that fell automatically if he used his extensive powers for any but their destined purpose. The manuals enable us to see the whole functioning of the machinery. The Inquisitors, arrived in a town, showed their credentials to the magistrates. The proclamations were made that all Catholics must denounce whatever they knew of heresy in the town, and the heretics given a set time in which to confess and abjure. The trials were conducted with great care. Those accused were allowed counsel [ ] and after their trial they had the right to appeal to the pope. They were not, it is true, given the names of their accusers, but they had the right to give in a list of their enemies, and if any of the witnesses against them appeared on this list their testimony was struck out. #### According to the gravity of the offence -- whether the accused was one of the Perfect or only a Believer, whether he was actually a heretic or merely a Catholic who had protected or sheltered heretics -- and according to whether the accused confessed or persisted in his heresy, the penalties differed widely. At the lightest they were purely spiritual, the obligation of additional prayers over a fixed time. The most severe were confiscation of property, imprisonment and, as the years went by, death by burning. #### These more severe penalties the Church did not invent, any more than it invented the practice of torturing the accused and witnesses. It took them over from the civil jurisprudence of the day, and the civil jurisprudence found a model and a warrant for them in the law of the Roman Empire, the revival of which had gone hand in hand with the growth of the Canon Law for now nearly a century. Torture, Pope Nicholas I had declared to be forbidden by all law, human and divine. Gratian had followed him in this. It was Frederick II who restored torture to its place in legal practice, in the Sicilian Constitutions of 1231. Twelve years later there is a record of the use of the rack by Inquisitors, and in 1252 it was formally prescribed by Innocent IV. [ ] It is to be noted that the use of torture was not left merely to the whim of the Inquisitor: the conditions for its use were carefully regulated. Nor does its use seem to have been an everyday matter. The Inquisitors whose writings survive express themselves sceptically as to the value of the confessions thus obtained. But torture was an approved part of the procedure, and from the time of Alexander IV the Inquisitor was present while it took place. #### It was apparently Gregory IX who, first of the popes, consented to accept the extreme penalty of death by burning, as the "due punishment" decreed by one after another of his predecessors. [ ] The Canon Law said the State must give the heretic "due punishment" [ ] and the State, from the last years of the twelfth century, began to interpret this, following perhaps the tradition of the Roman Law in cases of Manicheeism, as death by fire. Frederick II put that penalty into his Lombard Constitutions in 1224. It was applied by the Bishop of Brescia in 1230, and in that year or the next Gregory IX, perhaps under the influence of that bishop, with whom he was in very close relation, incorporated the imperial constitution in the register of his own acts. [ ] #### Such was the formidable weapon which the popes devised to root out the last traces of Manicheeism in Languedoc. Of the details of its operation in the thirteenth century we do not know very much. Certainly it succeeded. The Albigenses ceased to be a menace. But it is not possible to say with anything like exact statistics what proportion of the accused were proved guilty, what proportion of these remained true to their heresy, what proportion of them were punished and how many suffered death. [ ] ####  |