Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 145
liable to excommunication and their rebellious cities to
interdict. 1
Innocent IV, in 1252, enacted a law still more severe,
insisting on the infliction of the death penalty upon
heretics. "When," he says, "heretics condemned by the
Bishop, his Vicar, or the Inquisitors, have been aban
doned to the secular arm, the podesta or ruler of the city
must take charge of them at once, and within five days
enforce the laws against them." 2
This law, or rather the bull Ad Extirpanda, which con
tains it, was to be inscribed in perpetuity in all the local
statute books. Any attempt to modify
which condemned the offender to perpetual infamy, and
it was a crime,
a fine enforced by the ban. Moreover, each podesta, at
the beginning and end of his term, was required to have
this bull read in all places designated by the Bishop and
the Inquisitors, and to erase from the statute books all
laws to the contrary. 3
At the same time, Innocent IV issued instructions to
1 "Eis excummunicatione ligandis et terris ipsorum
interdicto Ecclesiae
supponendis. Civitas autem quae his institutis duxerit resistendum vel . . .
. . .
punire neglexerit aliarum carat commercio , civitatum," etc. Decretal
Ad abolendam, in the Decretals, cap, ix, de Hareticis, lib. v,
tit. vii. Cf.
Sexto, lib. v, tit. ii, c. 2. Ut Officium; Council of Aries, 1254, can. iii; Coun
cil of Beziers, 1246, can. ix.
2 "Damnatos de haeresi . . . potestas vel rector . . . eos sibi relictos re-
cipiat statim, vel infra quinque dies ad minus, circa eos constitutiones contra
tales editas servaturus." Bull Ad extirpanda, May 15, 1252, in Eymeric,
Directorium, Appendix, p. 8.
3 Ibid.
II