Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 127
This is readily understood, for they would almost inevi
tably have been suspected as accomplices and abettors
of heresy. For the same reason, the accused were prac
tically denied the help of counsel. Innocent III had for
bidden advocates and scriveners to lend aid or counsel
to heretics and their abettors. 1
This prohibition, which
in the mind of the Pope was intended only for defiant and
acknowledged heretics, was gradually extended to every
suspect who was striving to prove his innocence. 2
Heretics or suspects, therefore, denounced to the In
quisition generally
before their judges.
found themselves without counsel
They personally had to answer the various charges of
the indictment (capitula) made against them. It certainly
would have been a great help to them, to have known
the names of their accusers. But the fear well-founded
it was true 3
that the accused or their friends would
1 Decretals, cap. xi, De hareticis, lib. v, tit. vii.
2 Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorurn, 3 a pars, quaest. xxxix, p. 565; cf.
446; Lea, op. cit., vol. i, 444. Sometimes, however, the accused was granted
counsel, but juxta juris formam ac stylum et usum officii Inquisitionis; cf.
Vidal, Le tribunal d? Inquisition, in the Annales de Saint-Louis des Franfais,
vol. ix (1905), p. 299, note. Eymeric himself grants one (Directorium, pp.
451-453). But this lawyer was merely to persuade his client to confess his
heresy; he was rather the lawyer of the court than of the accused. Vidal,
op. cit., pp. 302, 303. Pegna, however, says (in Eymeric, Directorium a a pars,
ch. xi, Comm. 10) that in his time the accused was allowed counsel, if he
were only suspected of heresy. Cf. Tanon, op. cit., pp. 400, 401.
3 Guillem Pelhisse tells us that the Cathari sometimes killed those who
had denounced their brethren.
^ Persecutores eorum percutiebant, vulnerabant
et occidebant," Chronique, ed. Douais, p. 90. A certain Arnold Dominici,
who had denounced seven heretics, was killed at night in his bed by "the