Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION
Gaula maintained that all heretics deserved the
stake.
Pope Gregory IX adopted this stern attitude, probably
under the influence of the Bishop of Brescia, with whom
he was in frequent correspondence. 1 The imperial law of
1 224 was inscribed in 1230 or 1231 upon the papal register,
where it figures as number 103 of the fourth year of
Gregory s pontificate. 2 The Pope then tried to enforce
it, beginning with the city
m
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 im
prisoned for life, without prejudice to the other penalties
for heresy, such as confiscation. 2
About the same time, Annibale, the Senator of Rome,
1 Cf. Picker, op. cit., p. 200. Gregory IX was four years Pope before he
enacted these new laws.
2 Dampnati vero per ecclesiam seculari judicio relinquantur animadversione
debita puniendi, clericis prius a suis ordinibus degradatis. Si qui autem
de predictis, postquam fuerint deprehensi, redire voluerint ad agendam con-
dignam pcenitentiam, in perpetuo carcere detrudantur. Registers of Gregory
IX, n. 539; Raynaldi, Annales, ad ann. 1231, sects. 14-15; inserted in the
Decretales, cap. xv, De hareticis, lib. v, tit. vii, where, in place of redire vol
uerint, we read noluerint. Voluerint is the true reading, as we may prove
by comparison with the text of the Council of Toulouse (1229), and the
imperial law of 1231, in which Frederic II, writes: "Si qui de predictis,
postquam fuerint deprehensi, territu mortis redire voluerint ad agendam
pcenitentiam, in perpetuum carcerem detrudantur." Cap. ii, Man. Germ.,
Leges, sect, iv, vol. ii, p 196.