ed instrumentality in the prosecution of
heresy, and the next year he repeated Innocent's emphatic order to
the Inquisitors to enforce the insertion of his legislation and that
of his predecessors upon the statute books everywhere, with the free
use of excommunication and interdict."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 339.

A little later, Nicholas IV, who during his short pontificate
(1288-1292), greatly favored the Inquisition in its work, re-enacted
the bulls of Innocent IV and Clement IV, and ordered the enforcement
of the laws of Frederic II, lest, perchance, they might fall into
desuetude.[1]

[1] _Registers_, published by Langlois, no. 4253.

It is therefore proved beyond question that the Church, in the person
of the Popes, used every means at her disposal, especially
excommunication, to compel the State to enforce the infliction of the
death penalty upon heretics. This excommunication, moreover, was all
the more dreaded, because, according to the canons, the one
excommunicated, unless absolved front the censure, was regarded as a
heretic himself within a year's time, and was liable therefore to the
death penalty.[1] The princes of the day, therefore, had no other way
of escaping this penalty, except by faithfully carrying out the
sentence of the Church.

[1] Alexander IV decreed this penalty against the contumacious.
Sexto, _De Haereticis_, cap. vii. Boniface VIII extended it to those
princes and magistrates who did not enforce the sentences of the
Inquisition. Sexto, _De Haereticis_, cap. xviii in Eymeric, 2a pars,
p. 110.

. . . . . . . .

The Church is also responsible for having introduced torture into the
proceedings of the Inquisition. This cruel practice was introduced by
Innocent IV in 1252.

Torture had left too terrible an impression upon the minds of the
early Christians to permit of their employing it in their own
tribunals. The barbarians who founded the commonwealths of Europe,
with the exception of the Visigoths, knew nothing of this brutal
method of extorting confessions. The only thing of the kind which
they allowed was flogging, which, according to St. Augustine, was
rather akin to the correction of children by their parents. Gratian,
who recommends it in his _Decretum_,[1] lays it down as an "accepted
rule of canon law that no confession is to be extorted by
torture."[2] Besides, Nicholas I, in his instructions to the
Bulgarians, had formally denounced the torturing of prisoners.[3