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Excerpt 1

In the course of sacred history punishments became more and more severe and salutary. The Councils of Reims in 1157 and Oxford in 1160 had imposed facial branding on heretics. Even Innocent III threatened the Albigenses at first "only" with banishment and confiscation. But thereafter capital punishment became more and more frequent with various forms of execution appearing. In Cologne, Nuremberg and Regensburg “heretics” were occasionally drowned, in Würzburg beheaded, but death by fire became the rule for such an offense.

Death by fire, usually on a holiday, became a demonstration of the Church’s virtual omnipotence, as a grandiose ritual sacrifice, more popular than any other religious holiday. This human sacrifice was given a Portuguese name, autodafé, which in Latin is actus fidei. It was “an act of faith,” unquestionably the most ardent in the history of religion. Special couriers spread the invitation, the condemned were led forth before crowds of onlookers, special prices were paid for window seats, and every good Catholic who could bring forth wood for the fire was certain of a welcome absolution. This splendid opportunity has been denied the Catholic world since the 19th Century, for the last autodafé was probably celebrated in Mexico in 1815 (the first in 1481 in Seville).

Spiritual and worldly princes participated. The Grand Inquisitor handed over the condemned to the civil authorities following high mass and a sermon in a public square or house of God, not without expressing his heartfelt wish that the “life and limbs” of these people might be spared. The condemned were brought to the place of execution, usually wearing a fool’s cap to symbolize their mindless perversity, clothed in bright yellow sackcloth and covered with the most outrageous images of the Devil, so that even the most dimwitted Catholic might easily recognize the spiritual father of these miscreants. These bystanders would often express their brotherly love in the usual fashion: by beating the condemned with canes, pinching them with glowing tongs and sometimes chopping off their right hands. In order to spare the delicate sensibilities of God’s people, the “heretics” were often gagged to muffle their screams, so that nothing could be heard but the almost cozy crackling of the flames and the chanting of the priests. And while the victims, depending on wind direction, either suffocated or slowly roasted to death, the assembled Christian community, nobility, common people and clergy, all sang: “Almighty God, we praise Thee.”.

The courts of the Inquisition were the noblest courts of the Church and shielded from every profane influence. They were deemed immune to corruption; they usually adorned themselves with the attributes “holy” and “most holy.” For the filthier something is, the more it must be verbally rid of filth, embellished, ennobled, elevated to glory and majesty.

Official Church proclamations glorified the Inquisition, as did popes such as Innocent IV and Clemens IV in their papal bulls of March 23, 1254 and February 26, 1266. The inquisitors themselves were placed in an illustrious line of descent stretching back to an entire gallery of glorious Old Testament gangsters, with Saul, e.g., with David (I, 85 ff.!), Joshua (I, 83 f.) and others. But even Jesus, John the Baptist and Peter were numbered in the inquisitorial pedigree. Indeed, God Himself, the expeller of Adam and Eve from Paradise, was viewed as nothing less than the first “inquisitor.” These murdering thugs were in any case agents of the pope. Their derived their plenipotentiary authority everywhere and at all times from him alone..

Prisons of the Inquisitions, Places of Unspeakable Cruelty

The courts of the Inquisition were opened by an invocation to the Holy Spirit. Prayer also preceded the pronouncement of judgment. The verdict, however, even in cases of extreme doubt, was not subject to appeal to secular courts, which functioned merely as an executive tool of the Church courts, whose sentences they were to carry out “blindly” (coeca obedientia) and “with closed eyes” (oculis clausis).

Numerous papal bulls sharply admonished the princes to damn well do their duty. Not only the doges of Venice were finally obliged by their oath of office to burn heretics. Otto IV of the Welf dynasty promised “effective support” in the eradication of “evil heresies” as much as his opponent, Frederick II of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, who in fact went further and demanded of all his subordinates, consuls, and rectors that “they in their respective lands make every effort to exterminate everyone designated by the Church as a heretic.” This obligation was confirmed by a public oath, under penalty of deposition and loss of their lands. These oaths proved to be effective.

The popes did everything in their power to ensure that the demands and orders of the inquisitors be quickly obeyed, that the inquisitors themselves be granted armed escort, and especially that the inquisitorial decrees be incorporated into the secular law codes. Innocent IV wrote in his bull “Cum adversus haereticam” of May 28, 1252:
“As the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick has pass certain laws against the heretical evil, by which laws the spread of this plague might be hindered, and as we desire that these laws be observed for the strengthening of the faith and the salvation of the faithful, so we order the beloved sons who are in authority to incorporate these laws, whose exact wording is attached, into their statues, and to proceed against the heretics with great zeal. Therefore we order you [the inquisitors], when these authorities fulfill our orders carelessly, to force them to compliance by means of excommunication and interdiction ... We utterly curse those who have fallen from the Catholic faith, we pursue them with punishment, we rob them of their fortunes, deny them succession and revoke any and all their rights.”

The usual punishment for “heretics” was incarceration, often for life. In a partially preserved register of sentences of the Inquisition in Toulouse from the years 1246 to 1248, of 149 prisoners six were serving 10 years, 16 an indeterminate time based on the discretion of the Church, and 127 were serving life terms.

The prisons of the Inquisition were places of unimaginable cruelty, dark and confined by papal prescription, usually without any light or ventilation but full of filth and stench. The clergy filled these places to the point that Gregory IX ordered the building of more and promised generous indulgences to Christians who would contribute to their construction. Sentences served in these hellholes were far worse than any quick death by fire at the stake. Men and women often languished for years without being sentenced or acquitted. A man by the name of Wilhelm Salavert was first interrogated on February 24, 1300 and finally sentenced on September 30, 1319, after 19 years of uninterrupted misery. A woman in Toulouse was “reprieved to bearing the Cross” after lying in the local prisons for 33 years.

(taken from Karlheinz Deschner’s Christianity’s Criminal History, Volume 7, p. 260 ff.)

Excerpt 2

Torture, the Most Compelling Instrument of Christian Brotherly Love

Of the three types of Inquisitorial conviction -- purification, recantation, torture -- "torture is the most suitable. Because heresy is difficult to prove, the judge of the Inquisition should be inclined toward the use of torture: ad torturam judex debet esse promptior." (Antonius Diana, Consultant to the Sicilian Inquisition)

Augustine, both saint and doctor of the Church and the archetype of all medieval "heretic"-hunters, had already allowed torture against the Donatists, defending it as a trifle when compared to the agonies of hell. He called it a "cure," an "emendatio."

Bishop Anselm of Lucca among others in the 11th Century further developed Augustine's "heresy" argumentation. Expelled by his own clergy in 1080, he had a quite correct understanding of Augustine: proceeding against evil is not persecution but an expression of love. And Bishop Bonizo of Sutri, blinded and maimed by his own Christians in 1089, called for "combating" schismatics and worse dissenters "with all vigor and weapons." He did not hesitate to attribute to Augustine the view "that all those are blessed who persecute for the sake of righteousness."

This most compelling instrument of Christian brotherly love was already being employed north of the Alps during the Carolingian period but did not being to flourish until the 13th Century when Innocent IV, in his bull "Ad exstirpanda" of 1252, called for the use of torture and its canonical regulation in the fight against "heretics" in northern Italy. This policy expanded to include all of Italy in 1256 and was confirmed in the following years by Popes Alexander IV and Clemens IV. In 1261 Urban IV allowed inquisitors, under whose direction delinquents expired from this rather more robust manner of opinion research, to mutually absolve one another. It was after all not permitted to torture to death a person being questioned. In such a case the inquisitor would face excommunication, from which he could be immediately freed, however, by a priest of the Inquisition uttering the formula: Ego te absolvo.

(taken from Karlheinz Deschner’s Christianity’s Criminal History, Volume 7, p. 266ff)

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