[2] it was practically an authorization to
assist at the interrogatories at which torture was employed. From
this time the Inquisitors did not scruple to appear in person in the
torture chamber. The manuals of the Inquisition record this practice
and approve it.[3]

[1] Douais, _Documents_, vol. i, p. xxv, n. 3.

[2] _Regesta_, no. 18390.

[3] Eymeric, _Directorium_, 3a pars, p. 481.

Torture was not to be employed until the judge had been convinced
that gentle means were of no avail.[1] Even in the torture chamber,
while the prisoner was being stripped of his garments and was being
bound, the Inquisitor kept urging him to confess his guilt. On his
refusal, the _vexatio_ began with slight tortures. If these proved
ineffectual, others were applied with gradually increased severity;
at the very beginning, the victim was shown all the various
instruments of torture, in order that the mere sight of them might
terrify him into yielding.[2]

[1] A grave suspicion against the prisoner was required before he
could be tortured.

[2] Eymeric, _Directorium_, 3a pars, p. 481, col. 1.

The Inquisitors realized so well that such forced confessions were
valueless, that they required the prisoner to confirm them after he
had left the torture chamber. The torture was not to exceed a half
hour. "Usually," writes Lea, "the procedure appears to be that the
torture was continued until the accuser signified his readiness to
confess, when he was unbound and carried into another room where his
confession was made. If, however, the confession was extracted during
the torture, it was read over subsequently to the prisoner, and he
was asked if it were true.... In any case, the record was carefully
made that the confession was free and spontaneous, without the
pressure of force or fear."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i. p. 427.

"It is a noteworthy fact, however, that in the fragmentary documents
of inquisitorial proceedings which have reached us, the references to
torture are singularly few.... In the six hundred and thirty-six
sentences borne upon the register of Toulouse from 1309 to 1323, the
only allusion to torture is in the recital of the case of Calvarie,
but there are numerous instances in which the information wrung from
the convicts who had no hope of escape, could scarce have been
procured in any other manner. Bernard Gui, who conducted the
Inquisition of Toulouse during this period, has too emphatically
expressed his sense