INQUISITION. - A special ecclesiastical tribunal for combating and suppressing heresy.
I. THE MEDIEVAL INQUISITION.
I. ORIGIN
The essential mission of the episcopate is not only to teach the truths of the faith, but also to defend them against those who attack them. Now, it proved powerless to repress the disturbing advances made in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries especially by the Cathars (called Patarines in Italy, Albigensians in Languedoc, from the name of the region in which they swarmed) and by the Waldensians. The papacy therefore, to avert the grave danger threatening Christendom, created a special tribunal: the I. But it proceeded in stages. At first Lucius III, at Verona, in 1184, establishing the principle of a more expeditious procedure than that of public accusation, inherited from Roman law, obliged the bishops to visit once or twice a year, personally or through substitutes, the parishes contaminated by heresy in order to hear, under the binding of an oath, the testimonies of persons worthy of belief. To them belonged moreover the ex officio search (inquisitio) for the guilty, their reconciliation with the Church or their punishment, should they refuse to purge themselves, by oath, of the accusation of heresy or become recidivists. The episcopate had jurisdiction also over the exempt, because it proceeded as delegate of the Holy See (9, X, V, 7). Various constitutions issued by Innocent III in the years 1205, 1206 and 1212 and canon 3 of the Ecumenical Council of the Lateran (1215) completed the prescriptions of Lucius III (17-19, 21, X, V, 5; 13, X, V, 7).
Since the episcopate was still not sufficient for this task, the Holy See entrusted temporary powers to delegates, the most active of whom were, in France: Peter of Castelnau, murdered on 15 Jan. 1208, and Romanus, cardinal of S. Angelo; in Italy: Card. Ugolino. Once the crusade that brought down the power of the Albigensians in Languedoc had ended, Raymond VII, count of Toulouse, King Louis I and the Roman legate signed the Treaty of Paris of 12 Apr. 1229 which assured the Church the cooperation of the State (text reproduced in J. Guiraud, Histoire de l'Inquisition au moyen âge, II, Paris 1938, p. 8).
For his part the emperor Frederick II promulgated constitutions against heretics in 1220, 1224 and 1231 (J.-L.-A. Huillard-Bréholles, Historia diplomatica Frederici II [Paris 1852], p. 4, 421 and 19, X, V, 7). It was then that Gregory IX instituted for Europe, from 1231 to 1234, tribunals of the I., presided over by permanent inquisitors, who exercised their powers within determined districts. For this purpose he chose Franciscans and Dominicans, designated for that office by their hierarchical superiors (L. Auvray, Registres de Grégoire IX [ibid. 1890], pp. 539-41 and Th. Ripoll, Bullarium Ordinis Pratum Praedic, I [Rome 1720], p. 47) or later, by the Holy See itself.
II. THE INQUISITORS
Dominicans and Franciscans displayed an ardent zeal against heretics. In Italy they clashed with the local authorities who protected them, and with the Ghibellines who had made league with them. Peter of Verona paid with his life for the exercise of his functions as inquisitor in the Milanese territory and at Florence (29 April 1252). But despite the resistance, the Cathar heresy was declining toward the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th. As for the Waldensians, persecuted everywhere, they emigrated into the Alps of the Dauphiné, then, driven out of their refuges, they passed into Piedmont, where they still exist. In the 14th and 15th centuries the inquisitors persecuted the pseudo-apostles, disciples of Fra Dolcino (v.), and the degenerate lovers of Franciscan poverty, known under the name of Beghards, Spirituals and Fraticelli. Before them also appeared converted Jews who apostatized, blasphemers, the excommunicated, after a year of contumacy, those guilty of witchcraft, of divination, of sorcery, of spells, of invocation of the devil, of crimes against nature, of adultery, of incest, of concubinage, of usury and, finally, violators of the Sunday rest.
In their capacity as delegated judges of the Holy See, the inquisitors enjoyed exceptional powers, which made them independent of the Ordinary, at least as regarded the exercise of their office. Some committed abuses, but the fault was more often that of their subordinates, such as, for example, the notaries. The Holy See punished the guilty without pity, for example, Robert le Bougre, who incurred perpetual imprisonment. To put an end to any arbitrariness, Clement V decreed that the use of torture, the promulgation of definitive sentences, the supervision of prisons should be within the competence jointly of the bishops and the inquisitors (1, 2, V, 3 in Clem.). Subsequently John XXII obliged the judges of the Inquisition to communicate the proceedings to the Ordinaries (J.-M. Vidal, Bullaire de l'Inquisition française au XIVᵉ siècle, Paris 1913, nos. 40, 55, 56).
III. THE PROCEDURE
The inquisitorial procedure is known in its smallest details, thanks to the manuals drawn up by Nicholas Eymerich, Bernard Gui and others. Suspicions, denunciations, accusations, and even public rumor were enough for the inquisitor to summon the persons implicated to appear before him, or to have them arrested, whether by the civil authorities or by his own subordinates (sergeants, messengers, notaries, jailers). The interrogation had to take place in the presence of two witnesses. A notary — or, in his absence, two suitable persons — wrote down the minutes of the depositions or at least their substance.
Exempt from every jurisdiction, the inquisitor, save for exceptions, dispensed himself from observing the procedure of common law, in order to follow at his pleasure the one brought into honor by Clement V and called summary; he passed over every privilege, dilatory proceeding, appeal, and the application of can. 37 of the Fourth Lateran Council, which forbade citations to more than two days' journey (dietae) from the domicile of the accused. The inquisitor therefore had a discretionary power.
Guilt was established either by the confession of the persons concerned or by testimonial evidence. As witnesses, even heretics and persons of ill repute could be heard, though their depositions were subjected to serious examination. The mortal enemies of the person concerned were excluded. Two testimonies of persons worthy of belief were sufficient to establish guilt; the depositions of the witnesses were communicated to the accused, but their names were kept hidden for fear of reprisals. For this, however, after Boniface VIII, it was necessary that the danger be judged very grave (20, V, 2 in 6°).
There existed various means of forcing the accused to confess: the regime of close imprisonment, which entailed fasting, deprivation of sleep, confinement in the dungeons, fetters on the feet and chains on the wrists, and even crueler torments. If he persisted, the detainee was subjected to torture, that is, to the rack, the strappado, burning coals, or the torment of the boot. Nevertheless, mutilation and danger of death always had to be avoided.
By virtue of the decretal Si adversus (11, X, V, 7), the advocate or the notary who lent the assistance of their office to a heretic or to a supporter of heresy exposed themselves to the loss of their office and incurred infamy. Consequently the accused remained defenseless. At most the advocate was permitted to advise the guilty party to confess. Once proof of the crime of heresy had been obtained, the inquisitor assembled a jury composed of religious, secular clerics, persons of weight, and jurists, in considerable number, reaching as many as about forty. Having heard their opinion, he pronounced the sentence either in public, solemnly, in the so-called "general sermon," or outside of it. If the heretic persisted in refusing to recant his errors, or if he relapsed after having abjured them (in which case he was judged a relapsed heretic), the inquisitor abandoned him (relinquimus) — deliberately he did not use the verb tradimus — to the secular arm, beseeching it to spare the guilty party mutilation and death. In practice, however, this recommendation had no effect; it only preserved the judge from the irregularity he would have incurred by participating in a capital sentence. If the lay court of justice had not given the impenitent or the relapsed heretic over to the flames, it would have been liable to excommunication, inasmuch as it favored heresy (C. Douais, Practice Inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, auctore Bernardo Guidonis, Paris 1886, pp. 88 and 127).
Conducted to the place of execution, if the condemned person declared that he repented and renounced his errors, the tribunal returned him to the inquisitor, who subjected him to a very rigorous interrogation in order to avoid any trickery. The penitent had to denounce, presumably without any physical coercion, his accomplices and to abjure his heresies one by one. As a punishment he was condemned to perpetual imprisonment. If his conversion in extremis appeared feigned, the original sentence took effect again. The relapsed heretic who converted at the last hour obtained only the grace of receiving the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist before dying at the stake: the crime of heresy was comparable to a case of lèse-majesté against God.
If the guilty party was a cleric or had received Orders, the ecclesiastical authority proceeded to degrade him before abandoning him to the civil power.
On the basis of the apostolic constitutions, of the Liber Sextus (18, V, 2, in 6°) and of imperial legislation, some authors have imagined that appeal was permitted only in the case of an interlocutory sentence, but excluded for definitive sentences, in particular for condemnations that entailed recourse to the secular arm. The papal registers have demonstrated, at least as regards the 14th century, the falsity of such assertions (v. J.-M. Vidal, Bullaire de l'Inquisition française, pp. LXXII-LXXX). Among the penalties inflicted on heretics who abjured their errors, that of reclusion seems to have been the one most widely employed by inquisitors. The penitentiary regime varied according to cases and places: the "wide prison" excluded irons and dungeons, penalties reserved for those condemned to the "close prison" or the "very close prison."
In any case, however, the detainees received no other food than "the bread of sorrow and the water of tribulation."
IV. THE PENITENTS
Sometimes the prisoners obtained provisional or definitive freedom. They were required, however, to wear on their clothing marks of infamy: pieces of yellow or red cloth, of various shapes, which exposed them to every kind of harassment, insult and inconvenience, which made their lives difficult. Indeed, good Christians refused to have dealings with them, or to give their own children in marriage to their sons and daughters. Insults and persecutions were not spared them.
Slanderers and false witnesses were harshly punished: for two consecutive days, from sunrise until none, and on the four following Sundays, they were hoisted onto a ladder, with hands bound and head bare, dressed in a tunic without a belt, before the doors of the churches, so that the crowd might heap abuse upon them.
At other times, the inquisitors imposed on the penitents pilgrimages more or less distant. The major pilgrimages were to St. James of Compostela, to Rome, to St. Thomas of Canterbury, to the Sts. Three Magi of Cologne. On their return the pilgrims presented certificates attesting to the journey accomplished and to the obligatory visits to the sanctuaries. With the pilgrimages and the marks of infamy there ordinarily went public flogging. On certain feast days or Sundays, the penitent attended the parish Mass, presenting himself to the celebrant with a candle in one hand and rods in the other, and received the flagellation. The ceremony could also take place during processions. The flogged man announced to the assembled people that he had deserved his fate, because he had committed misdeeds against the inquisitors and the tribunal of the I. Other duties then weighed upon the penitents, such as attending the sermon and the sung Mass, abstaining from servile works on the forbidden days, receiving the Sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist on the appointed dates, fasting, etc. The punishments inflicted on the guilty were esteemed by the Church, more than punishments, as penances useful for the salvation of the penitents, who had returned to the true Christian faith. Thus, on the first Sunday of the month, the parish priest explained the penitential letters in the possession of a penitent and reminded him of the obligations to which he was bound.
V. FINANCING
The search for and capture of heretics or of those who favored them entailed heavy expenses. To offset these, the inquisitors imposed fines, both as a principal penalty and as compensation for severe penalties commuted into lighter ones. The rest of the profits was devoted to pious works, such as the construction or maintenance of churches, bridges, fountains, and the purchase of sacred vestments and sacred vessels destined for buildings of worship.
Total confiscation fell upon the property of obstinate and relapsed heretics, even if penitent, who had been handed over to the secular arm, as well as upon the property of those who had been condemned to perpetual imprisonment. In France a royal official called the "receveur des encours" collected the proceeds of confiscations, which allowed him to assume the expenses of the tribunal of the Inquisition that fell upon the king. In Italy the revenues of the tribunal of the Inquisition were divided into three parts, among the cities, the lay officials, and the tribunal itself.
VI. CONSEQUENCES OF THE CONDEMNATIONS
The stain of heresy did not cease with death: according to the provisions of the Decretals (12, X, III, 28 and 8, X, V, 7) the presence of a heretic's body profaned the cemetery where it was buried, and the inquisitor ordered that the bones be exhumed and reduced to ashes on the pyre.
Certain apostolic constitutions and an edict of Frederick II prescribed the total destruction of the houses in which the Cathars, called "perfect" or "perfect women," had been arrested, or had hidden, or had preached or administered the consolamentum, a sort of sacrament that replaced those of the Church. In reality the inquisitors applied such decrees only to the houses in which died persons who had received the consolamentum at the point of death, with the owner's knowledge, or in which they had been elevated to the rank of "perfect."
Finally, certain civil and ecclesiastical incapacities struck ipso facto all heretics reconciled with the Church, down to the second generation in the paternal line and down to the first in the maternal line; clerics became incapable of holding ecclesiastical dignities and benefices; laypersons could not exercise public offices nor perform certain acts of civil life (L. Tanon, Histoire des Tribunaux de l'Inquisition en France, Paris 1893, pp. 539-45).
The inquisitors often granted remissions and commutation of penalties, but always subject to review.
VII. THE NUMBER
What was the number of heretics and relapsed persons who suffered the torture of fire? Insufficient documentation makes it impossible to determine this with exactness. There are precise indications only concerning the activity, in the 14th century, of the tribunal of Pamiers, where, out of 64 persons condemned, 5 were handed over to the secular arm, and concerning that of the inquisitor Bernard Gui in the Toulousain, where out of 930 persons 42 perished at the stake (cf. J.-M. Vidal, Le tribunal d'Inquisition de Pamiers, Toulouse 1906, p. 329; C. Douais, Documents pour servir à l'histoire de l'Inquisition dans le Languedoc, I, Paris 1900, p. ccv).
Modern writers have judged the institution of the I. severely and have branded it as contrary to freedom of conscience. But they forget that in the past this freedom was unknown and that heresy inspired horror in right-thinking people, who were certainly the great majority even in the countries most infected with heresy. Nor should it be forgotten that in some countries the Tribunal of the I. lasted a very short time and had a quite relative importance: thus in southern Italy, in the Spanish kingdoms during the 13th and 14th centuries, and in Germany. In Rome itself it disappeared very early: the trial against Luther in 1518 was conducted by the Auditor General of the Apostolic Chamber. As for the Tribunal of the Roman I. from the 16th century onward, v. CONGREGAZIONI ROMANE: II, I, S. Congr. del S. Ufficio.
Bibliography23 works
XXII., in Quellen und Forschungen, 26 (1936), pp. 21-142; 27 (1937), pp. 109-34; C. Della Veneria, L'I. medievale e il processo inquisitorio, Milan 1939; P. Ilarino da Milano, Le eresie popolari del sec. XI nell'Europa occidentale, in Studi gregoriani, 1 (1947), pp. 43-89; R. Morghen, Osservazioni critiche su alcune questioni fondamentali riguardanti le origini ed i caratteri delle eresie medievali, in Miscellanea storica in memoria di Pietro Fedele, Rome 1946, pp. 97-151.
II. THE SPANISH INQUISITION.
I. INSTITUTION
The Jews, very numerous in Spain, had attained a preponderant position there thanks to their commercial skill. Their arrogance, their luxury and their wealth, besides the practice of usury, stirred up public exasperation against them, which from time to time burst forth in fierce reprisals and massacres. Repeated preachings, particularly through the work of St. Vincent Ferrer, and severe edicts in 1412-13 induced many of them to pass over to Christianity. But too often such conversions were brought about by self-interest or fear without leading to any change of customs and occupations; many of these conversos, or marronos as they were called, practiced Jewish rites in secret, others even returned to Judaism, particularly at the point of death; so that they were considered by the Spaniards worse than those who had not converted.
To provide for this state of affairs and for the religious reorganization of Spain, yielding to the entreaties of authoritative personages of the high clergy and of the laity, the sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella asked Sixtus IV for the reestablishment of the I.
II. ORGANIZATION
By the bull of Nov. 1, 1478, the Inquisition was in fact restored. It assumed, however, a more decidedly national character because, although they received their powers from the pope, the inquisitors were appointed on the proposal of the sovereigns, who could remove and replace them whenever they did not suit them. The sovereigns also had their share in the confiscations that struck the accused. The first three inquisitors were appointed in 1480; the Pope added seven more, and in order to give uniformity and discipline to their procedure, the two sovereigns, alongside the other councils of the crown, instituted the Council of the Suprema y General Inquisición (more briefly called the Suprema) with jurisdiction over everything that concerned the faith. At the head of this council was placed an inquisitor general with full power over the judges of the individual subordinate tribunals. The inquisitors began their activity in Seville, a city populated by converts, from which many fled. An edict of Jan. 2, 1481, imposed on anyone who gave them asylum the obligation to hand them over to the Inquisition. A second edict, called the edict of grace, promised pardon to the penitent; when the granted delay expired, the denunciation of the guilty or of those suspected of apostasy became obligatory, and in order to ferret out false Christians a memento in 37 articles was compiled in which their characteristic observances were indicated.
Many complaints, brought all the way to Rome, against the manner of proceeding of the inquisitors, decided Sixtus IV to take away the appointment of these from the crown and to create in Castile a court of appeal for heresy trials (May 25, 1483); but the attempt did not succeed. The Pope then appointed Torquemada (v.) inquisitor general, who exercised his functions first in Castile (1483), then in Aragon (1484), and then in the rest of Spain (Apr. 3, 1487). For his subordinates he composed a code which, integrated with subsequent additions, was published in Madrid in 1576 under the title Compilación de las instrucciones del officio de la Sancta Inquisición. It was not an original work, because it condensed the doctrine set forth by Bernard Gui in the Practica Inquisitionis and by Nicholas
Eymerich in the Directorium Inquisitorum. It brought to it only clarifications of detail and occasional directives.
In Aragon the Inquisition encountered strong opposition. The conversos of Saragossa hatched a plot against the two inquisitors Pedro Arbues de Epila and Yuglar. On the night of Sept. 14, 1485, Pedro was killed by a sword blow. His death (Sept. 17) stirred in Saragossa a revolt of the population against the conversos. The repression was severe and the conspirators all perished at the stake.
In 1492 all the Jews who did not accept becoming Christians were forced to leave Spain, because of the disorders and conspiracies that they were fomenting; from then on there were only occasional trials, although those Christians who traced their origin to converted Jews were regarded with suspicion or contempt. What had happened to the marranos also happened to the Moors remaining in Spain after the conquest of Granada (1492), who in 1498 were ordered to become Christians or to leave. Thus a class of converts (moriscos) was created who were only superficially Christian, and against them the activity of the Inquisition was directed. The errors of the alumbrados (v.) in the 16th-17th centuries also kept the Inquisition occupied, and to its judgment were moreover subjected crimes of common law that had very little to do with heresy; and this was done with a view to the better functioning of its procedure in comparison with the other tribunals, to its secrecy and to the greater integrity of the judges. It did not forget the medieval tradition, which was to lead the guilty to penance in order to remove them above all from being handed over to the secular arm and from the related consequences; it did not, however, escape the prejudices of the times in the application of corporal punishments and in the solemn apparatus of the auto da fé (v.). It is certain that with the broadening of the powers of the Inquisition in Spain the episcopal tribunals suffered for it, since they came to lack almost entirely coercive power. Indeed, it would have been the intention of the Suprema to subject the bishops themselves to itself (v. CARRANZA); but Rome was unwilling to consent to this. Numerous, moreover, were the clashes with the papal authority, which intervened to moderate the zeal of the inquisitors and to prevent excesses, without always succeeding in correcting their harsh spirit of independence and their inflexible and hard conduct. The attempts of King Philip II to introduce the Inquisition into his dominions of Naples and Milan and into the Netherlands are well known, meeting with the resolute resistance of the inhabitants. In Spain the Inquisition, suppressed a first time by the French domination in 1809, was re-established in 1814 and then definitively suppressed in 1821.