Untitled - Shattering Denial

ii2 THE INQUISITION
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. 1
Inasmuch as repentant 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-Cassino and Cava to do
1 "Omnes haeretici in Urbe . . . singulis annis a senatore, quando regiminis
sui praestiterit juramentum, perpetuo diffidantur. Item haereticos qui fuerint
in Urbe reperti praesertim per inquisitores datos ab Ecclesia vel alios viros
catholicos senator capere teneatur et captos etiam detinere, postquam fuerint
per Ecclesiam condempnati, infra octo dies animadversione debita puniendos."
Raynaldi, ad ann. 1231, sect. 16-17; Ficker, op. cit., p. 205. These statutes
are similar to those of Brescia (1230); the statutes of Bologna (1246) read:
"Haeretici et fautores eorum in perpetuo banno ponantur et alias paanas et
alias injurias sustineant secundum formam Statutorum Domini papae Gre-
gorii." Consequently, the podesta had to swear that he would banish all
heretics; if they remained in the city, and refused to abjure, they were con
demned and burned. Ficker, op. cit., pp. 205, 206. We see that the penalty
of the stake was enforced only when the penalty of banishment had proved
inefficacious. This reminds us of the law of Pedro, King of Aragon in 1197.