Untitled - Shattering Denial

158
THE INQUISITION
to use torture without the Bishop s consent,
be reached within eight days. 1
if he could
"Bernard Gui emphatically remonstrated against this
as seriously crippling the efficiency of the Inquisition, and
proposed to substitute for it the meaningless phrase
that torture should only be used with mature and careful
deliberation, but his suggestion was not heeded, and the
Clementine regulations remained the law of the Church." 2
The code of the Inquisition was now practically com
plete, for succeeding Popes made no change of any impor
tance. The data before us prove that the Church forgot
her early traditions of toleration, and borrowed from the
Roman jurisprudence, revived by the legists, laws and
practices which remind one of the cruelty
of ancient
paganism. But once this criminal code was adopted,
she endeavored to mitigate the cruelty with which it was
enforced. If this preoccupation is not always visible
and it is not in her condemnation of obdurate heretics we
must at least give her the credit of insisting that torture
"should never imperil life or injure limb": Cogere citra
membri diminutionem et mortis periculum.
We will now ask how the theologians and canonists
interpreted this legislation,
Inquisition
1
enforced it.
Decretal, Multorum querela.
and how the tribunals of the
2 Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 424; Bernard Gui, Practica, ed. Douais, 4 pars,
p. 188. Bernard Gui did not hesitate to assert (ibid., p. 174) that the bulls
of Clement V: Multorum querela and Nolentes ought to be modified or even
repealed so as to give more freedom to the Inquisitors: indigent ut remedientur,
suspendantur aut moderentur in melius, seu potius totaliter.