to the conquering barbarians, the old practice continued, or revived with the study of the Roman
law. In Southern France and in Spain the torture was an unbroken ancestral custom. Alfonso the
Wise, in the thirteenth century, in his revision of Spanish jurisprudence, known as Las Siete Partidas,
retained the torture, but declared the person of man to be the noblest thing on earth,^367 and required
a voluntary confession to make the forced confession valid. Consequently the prisoner after torture
was brought before the judge and again interrogated; if be recanted, he was tortured a second, in
grave cases, a third time; if he persisted in his confession, he was condemned. During the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries the system of torture, was generally introduced in Europe, and took the
place of the ordeal.
The church, true to her humanizing instincts, was at first hostile to the whole system of
forcing evidence. A Synod of Auxerre (585 or 578) prohibited the clergy to witness a torture.^368
Pope Gregory I. denounced as worthless a confession extorted by incarceration and hunger.^369
Nicolas I. forbade the new converts in Bulgaria to extort confession by stripes and by pricking with
a pointed iron, as contrary to all law, human and divine (866)^370 Gratian lays down the general rule
that "confessio cruciatibus extorquenda non est."
But at a later period, in dealing with heretics, the Roman church unfortunately gave the
sanction of her highest authority to the use of the torture, and thus betrayed her noblest instincts
and holiest mission. The fourth Lateran Council (1215) inspired the horrible crusades against the
Albigenses and Waldenses, and the establishment of the infamous ecclesiastico-political courts of
Inquisition. These courts found the torture the most effective means of punishing and exterminating
heresy, and invented new forms of refined cruelty worse than those of the persecutors of heathen
Rome. Pope Innocent IV., in his instruction for the guidance of the Inquisition in Tuscany and
Lombardy, ordered the civil magistrates to extort from all heretics by torture a confession of their
own guilt and a betrayal of all their accomplices (1252).^371 This was an ominous precedent, which
did more harm to the reputation of the papacy than the extermination of any number of heretics
could possibly do it good. In Italy, owing to the restriction of the ecclesiastical power by the emperor,
the inquisition could not fully display its murderous character. In Germany its introduction was
resisted by the people and the bishops, and Conrad of Marburg, the appointed Inquisitor, was
murdered (1233). But in Spain it had every assistance from the crown and the people, which to this
day take delight in the bloody spectacles of bullfights. The Spanish Inquisition was established in
the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella by papal sanction (1478), reached its fearful height under the
terrible General Inquisitor Torquemada (since 1483), and in its zeal to exterminate Moors, Jews,
and heretics, committed such fearful excesses that even popes protested against the abuse of power,
although with little effect. The Inquisition carried the system of torture to its utmost limits. After
the Reformation it was still employed in trials of sorcery and witchcraft until the revolution of
(^367) "La persona del home es la mas noble cosa del mundo."
(^368) Can. 33: "Non licet presbytero nec diacono ad trepalium ubi rei torquentur, stare." See Hefele III. 46.
(^369) Epist. VIII. 30.
(^370) Responsa ad Consulta Bulgarorum, c. 86. Hefele IV. 350. Lea, p. 305.
(^371) In the bull Ad extirpanda: "Teneatur potestas seu rector, omnes haereticos ... cogere citra membri diminutionem et
mortis periculum, tamquam vere latrones et homicidas animarum ... errores suos expresse fateri et accusare alios haereticos
quos sciunt, et bona eorum." ... Innoc. IV. Leg. et Const. contra Haeret. § 26. (Bullar. Magn. in Innoc. IV. No. 9). Comp.
Gieseler II. 564-569.