§ 87. THE INQUISITION. PROCEDURE AND PENALTIES. 527
cused from wearing the crosses, as it might interfere with their prospects of marriage. According to French law, pregnant women condemned to death, were not executed till after the birth of the child.
Local synods in Southern France ordered heretics and their defenders excommunicated every Sunday and that sentence should be pronounced amidst the ringing of bells and with candles extinguished. And as a protection against heresy, the bells were to be rung every evening.
Imprisonment for life was ordered by Gregory IX., 1229, for all induced to return to the faith through fear of punishment.1 The prisons in France were composed of small cells. The expenditures for their erection and enlargement were shared by the bishop and the Inquisitors. French synods spoke of the number sentenced to life-imprisonment as so great that hardly stones enough could be found for the prison buildings.2 The secular authorities destroyed the heretic's domicile, confiscated his goods,3 and pronounced the death penalty.
The rules for the division of confiscated property differed in different localities. In Venice, after prolonged nego tiations with the pope, it was decided that they should pass to the state.4 In the rest of Italy they became, in equal parts, the property of the state, the Inquisition, and the curia; and in Southern France, of the state, the Inquisitors, and the bishop. Provision was made for the expenses of the Inquisition out of the spoils of confiscated property. The temptation to plunder became a fruitful ground for spying out alleged heretics. Once accused, they were all but help less. Synods encouraged arrests by offering a fixed reward to diligent spies.
1 Potthast, 8445. The council of Toulouse, Canon XI. , prescribed that the expense of incarceration be met by the bishop, provided the culprit had no goods of his own.
2 Synod of Narbonne, 1243, etc.; Hefele, V. 1104. There were two forms of imprisonment, the murus laryus, giving the freedom of the prison and the murus strictus, or solitary imprisonment.
8 Synods of Toulouse, 1229 ; Albi, 1254. * Lea, I. 512.
528 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
Not satisfied with seeing the death penalty executed upon the living, the Inquisition made war upon the dead, and ex humed the bodies of those found to have died in heresy and burned them.1 This relentless barbarity reminds us of the words, perhaps improperly ascribed to Charles V. who, standing at Luther's grave, is reported to have refused to touch the Reformer's bones, saying, " I war with the living, not with the dead." The council of Verona, 1184, ordered relapsed heretics to be turned over forthwith to the secular authorities.2
In the period before 1480 the Inquisition claimed most of its victims in Southern France. Douais has given us a list of seventeen Inquisitors-general who served from 1229 to 1329.3 The sentences pronounced by Bernard de Caux, called the Hammer of the Heretics, 1244-1248 give the names of hundreds who were adjudged to the loss of goods or perpetual imprisonment, or both.4
During the administration of Bernard Guy, as inquisitor of Toulouse, 1306-1323, forty-two persons were burnt to death, sixty-nine bodies were exhumed and burnt, three hundred and seven were imprisoned, and one hundred and forty-three were condemned to wear crosses.5 A single instance may suffice of a day's doings by the Inquisition.
xThis was often done. The most famous case was that of Wyclif whose bones were exhumed and burnt by the order of the council of Constance. One of the notable instances of prosecution after death was that of Roger, count of Foix, surnamed the Good. His wife and a sister were Waldenses, and another sister a Catharan. In 1263, years after the count's death, proceedings were begun against him. See Lea, II. 53 sqq.
2 Lea, I. 533, in closing a long treatment says, " We are perfectly safe in asserting that but for the gains to be made out of fines and confiscations, the work of the Inquisition would have been much less thorough, and it would have sunk into comparative insignificance as soon as the first frantic zeal of bigotry had exhausted itself." The synods of Beziers, 1233 ; Albi, 1254, etc., made a silver mark the reward of ferreting heretics out. Hefele, V. 1035; VI. 50.
s Documents, etc., I. CXXIX-CCVI.
4 Douais, II. 1-89. Molinier, as quoted by Lea, II. 45, estimates the number of persons tried under this Inquisitor in two years at 8000 to 10,000.
5 Douais, I. CCV, where a table is given of the sentences passed under Guy.