Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 197
We notice at Pamiers that only one out of thirteen,
while at Toulouse but one in twenty-two, was sentenced
to death. Although terrible enough, these figures are
far different from the exaggerated statistics imagined by
the fertile brains of ignorant controversialists. 1
It is true that many writers are haunted by the cruelty
of the Spanish or German tribunals which sent to the
stake a great number of victims, i.e. converses and witches.
From the very beginning, the Spanish Inquisition
acted with the utmost severity.
versos, penitents, obdurate and relapsed
"Twelve hundred con-
heretics were
present at the auto de fe in Toledo, March, 1487; and,
according to the most conservative estimate, Torquemada
sent to the stake about two thousand heretics
twelve years.
"
2
eighty heretics to be burned at Berlaiges, near Agen, after they had confessed
in his presence, without giving them the opportunity of recanting. As Lea
says: op. cit., vol. i, p. 537, "From the contemporary sentences of Bernard
of Caux, it is probable that, had these unfortunates been tried before that
ardent champion of the faith, not one of them would have been condemned
to the stake as impenitent."
1 Of course we do not here refer to honest historians like Langlois who
estimates that one heretic out of every ten was abandoned to the secular
arm (op. cit., p. 106). Dom Brial erroneously states in his preface to vol. xix
of the Recueil des Historiens des Gaules (p. xxiii) that Bernard Gui burned
637 heretics. This figure represented the number of heretics then known to
be condemned, but only 40 of these were abandoned to the secular arm. Cf.
Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 550. The exact number is 42 out of 930. Cf. Douais,
Documents, vol. i, p. ccv, and Appendix B.
2 Langlois, L Inquisition d apres
in
des tableaux recents, 1902, pp. 105, 106.
This number, without being certain, is asserted by contemporaries, Pulgar
and Marineo Siculo. Cf. Hefele, Le Cardinal Ximenes, Paris, 1856, pp.
290, 291. Another contemporary, Bernaldes, speaks of over 700 burned