The Grand Inquisitor's Manual (23 page)

In service to the legal fiction that the Inquisition imposed only penance and not punishment, the prisons were operated by the civil authorities rather than by the Inquisition. The inquisitor’s formula for sentencing a condemned heretic to prison consisted of yet another elaborate circumlocution. The heretic is “to take himself to the prison prepared for him,” and if he refuses to do so, the secular authorities are ordered to arrest the noncompliant convict and convey him to the place of incarceration. The passive voice in which the sentence was formulated, and the pious relinquishment of the heretic to the secular government, allowed the inquisitor to wash his hands of his victim’s fate.
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Inquisitorial prisons were of two kinds, the
murus largus
(wide walls) for suspects and ordinary prisoners, and the
murus strictus
(narrow walls) reserved for men and women whose confessions had been deemed unsatisfactory by the Inquisition or who had attempted to escape from an ordinary prison. In its architecture the
murus largus
was patterned after a monastery, with a series of cells along a common passage. The inmates were able to see and speak with others, spouses were allowed to visit on occasion, and a prisoner might be permitted other callers as well, sometimes a courageous friend and sometimes a spy sent into the cell by the Inquisition. We are told that a disguised
perfectus
might even succeed in calling on a dying Cathar behind bars and administering the
consolamentum
in secret, although the bribery of a guard was surely necessary to achieve such a daring exploit.

The
murus strictus,
by contrast, was essentially a dungeon, and the lost soul who ended up there might not see another human face throughout his confinement. The cells were just large enough for a single prisoner. Even so, the inmate’s hands and feet were chained, and sometimes the chains were affixed to the wall to ensure complete immobility. Here were imprisoned the men and women who had confessed only under torture or threat of burning at the stake; the inquisitors convinced themselves that such heretics were likely to “backslide” into the false beliefs that they had repudiated. For that reason alone, in fact, convicted heretics whose confessions were “imperfect” were generally sent into solitary confinement so that they would be “prevented from corrupting others” after the inevitable relapse into their bad old ways.
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A third kind of confinement, the
murus strictissimus,
was maintained for those whom the Inquisition regarded as the worst offenders, including men and women who had been members of Catholic religious orders at the time of their crime or conviction. When a nun called Jeanne de la Tour was convicted on charges of holding both Cathar and Waldensian beliefs, for example, she was placed in a sealed cell with only a single narrow opening through which a meager allotment of food and water, and nothing else, was provided. Confinement in the tomblike cell was the functional equivalent of a death sentence.

The inmates of all inquisitorial prisons were fed on bread and water only, a practice that was meant not only to punish but also to reduce the prison’s operating expenses. The short rations conferred a secondary benefit: men and women who lived on meager portions of bread and water did not live very long. “[I]f they perished through neglect and starvation,” the jailers calculated, “it was a saving of expense.” Prisoners might improve their lot if they could afford to bribe the jailors and bring in decent rations from outside the prison, or if they could call on someone who was both brave enough and wealthy enough to pay for such amenities. But even the richest convicts were generally impoverished by fines and confiscations before they ended up in prison, and their friends and relations on the outside were seldom willing to risk the charge of fautorship by sending money or provisions to the gates of the inquisitorial prison.
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The cost of keeping convicted heretics in “perpetual” confinement, even under such mean circumstances, turned out to be a considerable burden. As the Inquisition grew in size and scope—and as its jails filled up with accused and convicted heretics—the real price of persecution began to set the various players at odds with one another. Inquisitors, bishops, lords, and town councilors bickered among themselves over who ought to pay for the building of prisons, the salaries of jailors, and the cost of bread, water, and straw for the inmates. As a general rule, whoever seized the property of an accused heretic was supposed to pay for the costs of his or her imprisonment. As a practical matter, though, some inquisitors found it necessary to threaten prosecution on charges of fautorship against bishops or magistrates who were quick to seize the property of condemned individuals but slow to feed them.
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Now and then, the Inquisition was capable of an act of genuine mercy. A man named Sabbatier, who had been convicted of heresy and sentenced to prison on the basis of his own belief in Catharism, pointed out to the inquisitor that he was the sole support of his elderly father, “a Catholic and a poor man.” The inquisitor deigned to postpone Sabbatier’s punishment “as long as his father shall live; and meanwhile he shall wear a black mantle and on each garment a cross with two transverse branches, and he shall provide for his father as best he can.” But the quality of mercy was somewhat strained. On the death of his father, the original sentence was to be carried out.
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A few intrepid inmates managed to escape the custody of the Inquisition, as evidenced by the inclusion in the inquisitor’s handbooks of a form to be used in requesting the return of a fugitive. A man named Giuseppe Pignata, serving a sentence in the inquisitorial prison at Rome in 1693, demonstrated the skill, guile, and patience necessary to achieve such a feat. A gifted artist, he sketched a charming portrait of a guard’s lover and traded it for a penknife. Then he persuaded the prison doctor to provide him with a small brazier, pointing out that he had been badly injured during torture and needed a source of heat in his cold cell. He used the brazier as a forge, and turned the penknife into a boring tool that enabled him slowly to dig his way out of the cell. Finally, he resorted to the classic tool of the prison escape—a rope of knotted sheets—to put himself beyond the reach of the Inquisition.

Such exploits were rare. Far more often, victims remained in their cells, shackled and starved, until the inquisitor who put them there finally consented to release them. If convicted heretics seldom served life sentences, they might nevertheless wait years or even decades before the Inquisition bestirred itself to let them go. Even then, the release from prison might be conditioned on the wearing of crosses, the making of a pilgrimage, or some other lingering penance. And, once released, the man or woman who had once been convicted was now broken, impoverished, and disgraced.

The ultimate penalty for the crime of heresy—and the iconic scene of the Inquisition—was burning at the stake. The death penalty was reserved for convicted heretics who had refused to confess or who, having offered a confession, then dared to disavow their guilt. Strictly speaking, as we have seen, the inquisitor never sentenced a convicted heretic to death; rather, the victim was excommunicated from the Church and then “abandoned” to the public executioner. Yet again, the formbooks consulted by working inquisitors provided a script for the solemn occasion, a formula that first addressed the victim himself and then the public magistrates into whose custody he was now consigned.

“We relinquish him now to secular judgment and, by the authority which we wield, we not only condemn him as a heretic,” recited the inquisitor, “but also we bind him with the chain of excommunication as fautors, receivers, and defenders of heretics all persons who knowingly henceforth either harbour or defend him or lend him counsel, aid or favour.”
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The threat against “defenders of heretics” was directed at any public official who might hesitate to carry out the unspoken death sentence. Since the friar-inquisitor, as an ordained cleric, was forbidden by canon law to shed blood, the formula is pointedly silent on what will actually happen to the victim after he or she is abandoned by the Church. Indeed, the inquisitor was supposed to “pray that no death might ensue,” according to historian G. G. Coulton, “even while the utterer of that prayer would have been bound to excommunicate any secular judge who should neglect to inflict death.”
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The execution of a convicted heretic, like every other aspect of the Inquisition, was designed to inspire terror and horror in the general populace and, especially, in anyone who might be tempted to embrace a forbidden faith, but the grand inquisitor did not neglect the production values, “as if he were an entrepreneur offering a show.” Burnings were scheduled for feast days, both to emphasize the sanctity of the Inquisition and to build the crowd; after all, it was a day off from work for the whole populace, and the spectacle amounted to a highly theatrical if also grisly form of entertainment. To accommodate the greatest number of eager spectators, the preferred venue was the public square outside the cathedral where the formal ceremony of sentencing the heretics would take place.
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Cardinals and bishops in full regalia, richly dressed nobles and their ladies, even the king and queen were encouraged to attend the burning of condemned heretics as guests of honor. The square would be decorated with flags and banners, and the inquisitorial ranks swelled with priests and soldiers, drummers and trumpeters, heralds and flag bearers. Surely the presence of a crowd would have also attracted food vendors, street musicians, and perhaps more than a few pickpockets. As sheer entertainment, nothing could rival the Inquisition at the moment when its terrible power was on display.

By contrast, the victims presented a less festive sight. According to a pious tradition, a condemned woman would wash her face and remove any cosmetics “so as not to go painted before God.” If the victims had been recently questioned under torture, their hair would still be cut short or burned off and their wounds would be fresh; one victim, for example, was carried to the stake in a chair because his feet had been burned to the bone during an ordeal by fire. Even if the victim had spent months or years in an inquisitorial prison, he or she might be crippled by the instruments of torture that had been applied to joints and bones. At dawn on the day of judgment, they would be offered a meager last meal, if they still had any appetite as the last hour of their lives approached.
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Other preparations were made in the days before the spectacle. The pyre was made ready by erecting upright stakes in the public square—one for each victim—and then piling straw, kindling, and faggots of wood around the base of each stake. Some burnings were conducted at ground level or even in pits, especially in the earlier, more primitive years of the Inquisition, but a platform of wood and masonry was more often erected in the square to improve the sightlines for the audience. If royalty, aristocracy, or high clergy were in attendance, they would be provided seats on or near the platform so that they could see and be seen by the crowd. The victims were kept offstage to heighten the suspense in advance of the grand moment when they were presented to the crowd.

First, the inquisitors and the visiting dignitaries gathered in a church or cathedral, where a mass was conducted and a sermon preached. The self-confessed heretics who had recanted their false beliefs were welcomed back into the Church and then told what penances, light or harsh, they would be required to make as a condition for forgiveness of their sins. At last, the inquisitors and their distinguished guests exited the sacred precincts of the church or cathedral, which were thought to be unsuitable for the pronouncement of the death sentence, and entered the public square in a formal procession.

Then the condemned men and women, shackled and closely guarded, were escorted to the stake. On hand at all times were friars whose task was not to comfort the victims in the moments leading up to their death but to extract an eleventh-hour confession. Right up to the moment when the straw was set aflame, the friars urged the condemned heretics to save their souls—and possibly their lives, too—by admitting their guilt, recanting their false beliefs, and embracing the Catholic faith. Heretics who confessed in time were likely to spend the rest of their lives in prison, but at least they would not die then and there. By contrast, those who had already confessed to heresy on a previous occasion and had been sentenced to die as relapsed heretics would still be burned alive even if they confessed a second time, but at least—the friars told them—they would save their souls by dying as Catholics.

An admission of guilt, as we have seen, was always an urgent concern of the Inquisition, and never more so than when it came to capital punishment. Burning an unrepentant heretic posed the risk of presenting his fellow believers with a martyr; if we are to believe the evidence of the Inquisition itself, the bones of a dead heretic might be collected and preserved as relics. A display of courage in the face of death by a true believer in a dissident faith might make the wrong impression on the good Catholics in the crowd. For that reason, too, the condemned heretic was not permitted to speak and, in some cases, he was gagged to prevent him from addressing the crowd with some affirmation of faith before going up in flames.

One such gagging device, known as the mute’s bridle, consisted of an iron box that was inserted into the victim’s mouth and held in place by a collar around the neck. The gag itself might be used to inflict yet more pain and humiliation on the victim; when the Renaissance scholar and scientist Giordano Bruno was sent to the stake in Rome in 1600, he was wearing an elaborate contraption “so constructed that one long spike pierced his tongue and the floor of his mouth and came out underneath his chin, while another penetrated up through his palate.” Thus was the victim pointedly punished for his previous false utterings and prevented from making any new ones while, at the same time, he was prevented from uttering any screams that might have “interfered with the sacred music,” as Robert Held describes the scene.
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