Untitled - Shattering Denial

concerned. 1
THE INQUISITION 141
This was also the practice of the Inquisitors
of southern France, as Bernard Gui tells us. _The_ ma
jority of the counsellors received a brief summary of the
case, the names being withheld. Only a very few of them
were deemed worthy to read the full text of all the in
2
terrogatories."
^e.^ can readily see how the periti or boni viri, who
were called upon to decide the guilt
or innocence of
the accused from evidence considered in the abstract,
without any knowledge of the prisoners names or motives,
could easily make mistakes. In fact, they
did not have
data enough to enable them to decide a concrete case.
For tribunals are to judge criminals and not crimes, just
as physicians treat sick people and not diseases in the ab
stract. We know that the same disease calls for different
treatment in different individuals; in like manner a crime
must be judged with due reference to the mentality of
1 Eymeric, Directorium, 3 a pars, quest. 80, Comm. 129, p. 632.
2 Tanon, op. cit., p. 421.
"
Ante sermonem vero, captato tempore oppor
tune, petitur per inquisitores consilium a prasdictis (bonis viris), facta prius
extractione summaria et compendiosa de culpis, in quo complete tangitur
substantia cujuslibet personas . . . sine expressione nominis alicujus persona
ad cautelam, ut liberius de p&nitentia pro tali culpa imponenda sine afjectione
persona judicent consulentes. Solidius tamen consilium, si omnia complete
exprimerentur, quod faciendum est ubi et quando possunt haberi personae
consulentes quibus non est periculum revelare; esset etiam minus calump-
niosum. Sed tamen non fuit usus inquisitonis ab antiquo, propter periculum
jam pra^tactum; verumptamen confessiones singulorum prius integraliter
explicantur coram doycesano vel ejus vicario, aliquibus peritis paucis et secretariis
et juratis." Bernard Gui, Practica, 3 a pars, p. 83. On the com
munication of the names, cf. a bull of Alexander IV. Layettes du tresof
des Charles, vol. iii, no. 4221.