Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 211
heretics rebelled against the law of banishment. But
when the emperor Frederic had revived the legislation
of his Christian predecessors of the fourth, fifth, and sixth
centuries, 1 and had made the popular custom of burning
heretics a law of the empire, the Papacy could not resist
the current of his example. The Popes at once ordered
the new legislation vigorously enforced everywhere, es
pecially in Lombardy. This was simply the logical
carrying out of the comparison made by Innocent III
between heresy and treason, and was due chiefly to two
Popes: Gregory IX who established the Inquisition under
the Dominicans and the Franciscans, and Innocent IV
who authorized the Inquisitors to use torture.
The theologians and casuists soon began to defend the
procedure of the Inquisition. They seemed absolutely
unaffected, in theory at least, 2
by
the most cruel tor-
verted, they were to be arrested and sent to the stake. Ficker, op. cit., pp.
205, 206.
1 Cf. the law of Arcadius of 395 (Cod. Theodos., xvi, v. 28), which says:
"Qui vel levi argumento a judicio catholicae religionis et tramite detect!
fuerint deviate," and the Sicilian constitution Inconsutilem tunicam (in
Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum, Appendix, p. 14), where we read: "Si
inventi fuerint a fide catholica saltern in articulo deviare," and again: "Prout
veteribus legibus est indictum."
2
Practically speaking, the Inquisitors often remained unmoved at the lot
of heretics. The following fact is a proof. "It was in the year 1234, the
day on which the news of St. Dominic s canonization reached Toulouse.
The Bishop, Raymond du Felgar, had just said solemn mass in the Dominican
convent, in honor of this canonization, and was on his way to the refectory
with the brethren, when some one came from the city saying that they were
about to hereticate an old woman, sick with the fever. The Bishop at
once went with the prior to this house, approached the sick woman, who,