Untitled - Shattering Denial

232
THE INQUISITION
would have been greatly scandalized. We might perhaps
have considered this domestic and paternal custom a
little severe, but perfectly consistent with the ideas men
then had of goodness. 1 But the rack, the strappado, and
the stake were peculiarly inhuman inventions. 2 When
the pagans used them against
the Christians of the first
centuries, all agreed in stigmatizing them as the extreme
of barbarism, or as inventions of the devil. Their
character did not change when the Inquisition began to
use them against heretics. To our shame we are forced
to admit that, notwithstanding Innocent IV s appeal for
moderation, 3 the brutality of the ecclesiastical tribunals
was often on a par with the tribunals of the pagan
persecutors. Pope
torture as a means of judical inquiry :
Nicolas I thus denounced the use of
"
Such proceedings,"
he says, "are contrary to the law of God and of man, for
a confession ought to be spontaneous, not forced; it ought
to be free and not the result of violence. A prisoner
may endure all the torments you inflict upon him without
confessing anything. Is not that a disgrace to the judge,
and an evident proof of his inhumanity! If, on the con
trary, a prisoner, under stress of torture, acknowledges
1 It must be noted that flogging
could be and was sometimes administered
in a cruel and barbarous manner, so that it became a frightful punishment.
Cf. Tanon, op. cit., p. 372.
2 This was the view of St. Augustine, Ep. cxxxiii, 2.
3 "Citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum." Bull Ad extirpanda,
in Eymeric, Directorium inquisitorum^ Appendix, p. 8.