Dr Rick

Yes, Tim; history is best understood not as a series of isolated events, but in its context. The orders of the Pope against heretics were approved at the twelfth general synod (1215). They were, in substance, that all rulers should tolerate no heretics in their domains: if a ruler refused to clear his land of heretics at the demand of the Church, and should persist in his refusal, he should be deprived of his authority, and even ejected from it by force: to every one who joined in the expeditions against heretics, like favors should be granted as were granted to crusaders.

The Church did not invent torture, and the judicial system, per inquisitionem which was used during the Inquisitions was put in place by Emperor Charlemagne in the 9th century, but the Church adopted such methods later to satisfy its own goals and purposes. In stark contrast to Roman and modern European justice, the Inquisitional "trial by ordeal" was predicated upon the belief that the innocent would be divinely protected from the pain and harm of torture. Unlike the Inquisitions, Roman law severely restricted torture. For example, a slave could not be tortured into testifying against his master (which was permissible under Grecian law), and in later times it was used only in cases against the State such as plotting to kill the Emperor.


These acts are equally repugnant regardless of the underlying ideology. You are right, but that other motives may compel people to committ atrocities does not mitigate the ones that inspired the Inquisitions.

To say the least.

Gurdur

um, just sorry all round for quibbling again; Bede and Dr Rick, forgive me if I go slightly off-topic.
Um, that may well have been a novelty introduced in Europe by the Church; I'm not competent to judge.
It does have some kind of reflection in the old medieval Chinese legal system, but that's way off-topic.
um, sorry, but there were certain cases, such as murder in the household, where testimony by slaves was demanded but inadmissable without torture; the premise was that under those certain conditions, slaves could not be trusted in court unless they had been tortured.

None of that detracts from your observations on the Church; I just wanted to point out the Romans were a lot of right old bastards too, often.
No argument there.

MortalWombat

So what's the take home message? That the Catholic Church's slogan should be "The Catholic Church: We didn't kill and torture quite as many people as you think." ?

Bede

This is false.

There is also no such thing as Inquisitorial 'trial by ordeal'. The inquisitorial process was what REPLACED the trial by ordeal once the later had been banned by the church. This took several centuries with the church taking the lead in legal reform. To be clear - modern European justice IS the inquisitorial method. It is still used throughout continental Europe.

Also, the inquisition restricted the use of torture far more than ancient Roman law. It also used torture much less than secular courts which is much of the reason witchcraft accusations rarely resulted in the Inquisition convicting. One could argue that by banning trial by ordeal and replacing it with variations of Roman law the church brought in torture, but that is a real stretch.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Bede

A lengthy extract from my work on the Middle Ages. Note this work was highly commended by one of the UK's top inquisition experts.

Legal reform in the High Middle Ages is among the period’s defining features and has given us one of the words most associated with it: ‘inquisition’. The traditional form of legal process was called the accusatio where a case had to be brought by an accuser who was held responsible if the defendant was not convicted. The verdict was reached either through a preponderance of character witnesses or else by a trial by ordeal. However, at the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, the Church instructed its clerics to withdraw their support for trial by ordeal and repeated previous prohibitions against duelling, which made such practices more difficult. This gave an impetus to reform which, while it was never an exclusively ecclesiastical preoccupation, was led by the Church. The accusatio was gradually replaced by the inquisitio whereby an accuser was no longer required and instead a magistrate investigated any cases brought to his attention before reaching a conclusion based on the evidence. This reform was a resounding success which has formed the basis of the justice system in continental Europe ever since.

The inquisitio system’s most notorious guise was what developed into the Inquisition. This grew from the fear of heresy spreading out of its Cathar strongholds of southern France and overwhelming the Church’s efforts to deal with it. There were a series of papal bulls, councils and handbooks of practice that equipped inquisitors to deal with heresy as they came across it. Pope Lucius III (d. 1185) “supported by the power and presence” of the Frederick II Barbarossa, issued the bull Ad abolendum in 1184, as a response to the growing Cathar crisis, in which he stated that unless heretics return immediately to the Church, they be “left to the discretion of the secular power to receive due punishment” which was widely understood to mean burning under the law codes of the Empire. Furthermore, those “convicted of having relapsed into abjured heresy,” were supposed to be “left to the secular judgement” as well. Using words similar to Lucian’s, heresy itself was widely defined in canon 3 of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 and here also the requirement of both clerics and laity to hunt down heretics on pain of excommunication is made explicit with the need for regular visitations set out. The canon does, however, allow suspects to prove their innocence with a “proper defence”. The procedure of the inquisitors was laid out in field manuals that began to be produced around this time while councils and bulls continued to define what was permissible.

Gregory IX issued the two important bulls in 1231 that explicitly authorised the use of force rather than simply handing the prisoner to the secular arm. In Excommunicamus he specified, or rather admitted, that heretics were to be punished according to the animadversio debita or “debt of hatred” towards heretics that meant that they were deserving of execution. Then in the same year he issued Ille humani generis, a letter to two Dominicans in Regensburg, Bavaria, which for the first time authorised papal sponsored inquisitors, who acted independently of the local diocese, and so deserves the title of the start of the Inquisition proper. In the letter, Gregory provided for the use of torture by granting the “free facility of using the sword against enemies of the faith” as well as granting absolution to those who did so.

Now the Church had explicitly signed up to both capital punishment and torture in a way that it had avoided in the past de iure if not de more. However, inquisitors were sparing in their use of torture, especially by the standards of contemporary secular regimes, and were more interested in reconciliation than revenge. Capital punishment was only used after a second offence, where the heretic had previously confessed and done penance, or in the case of stubborn and impenitent heretics. Even then it was not compulsory and both the Council of Toulouse in 1229 and the Council of Tarragona in 1242 only called for lapsed heretics to be imprisoned if they adjure again. Bernardo Gui (fl. 1307 – 1324), who spent ten years tracking down the last vestiges of Catharism in Toulouse during the early fourteenth century, executed forty of the seven hundred defendants who he sentenced. More common forms of penance were fines, pilgrimages, prayers and sometimes imprisonment. Bernardo Gui is also well known for his Practica inquisitionis, a practical manual of the work of an inquisitor. It was by no means the first. In Carcasonne in 1248, Processus inquisitoris was produced by an experienced Dominican inquisitor for his underlings and sets out exactly how to go about the business of hunting heretics. While not a tolerant document, it declares that “to no one do we deny a legitimate defence, nor do we deviate from the established legal procedure except that we do not make public the names of witnesses because of the decree of the Apostle’s see.” Unlike the manuals, the bulls of Lucius III, Gregory IX as well as the canons of the Lateran Council applied to all ecclesiastical justice and not just the inquisitors who were simply freelance investigators outside the control of local bishops and had a mandate directly from the Pope.

Bede

Gurdur

Um ? I know I'm simply going to get myself disliked by everyone on this thread, , but I feel the need to quibble a bit more.
I think you can only say that of pure Napoleonic code justice systems, where the magistrate is simultaneously investigator; and that today is true of France, Spain and Italy (and oddly enough, is a throwback itself to the Roman system --- befitting the Romanesque-language countries of today), but it isn't true of other continental European countries, such as Germany, where the magsitrate/judge is kept very seperate from the investigation.

Bede

An accurate quibble. I should have been more exact.

B

Dr Rick

...to the best of my knowledge, "trial by ordeal" is not generally practiced in Europe anymore; not even in France .

It's just considered bad form these days to extract a confession of heresy by lighting a grease fire under someone's feet and assume that the innocent will be divinely protected from harm during the process...

Bede

You did note that the inquisitorial method is NOT trial by ordeal, didn't you?

It was also considered bad form in the Middle Ages.