iversis generibus tormentorum_. Some prisoners
had been tortured on the rack, and most of them were so cruelly
treated that they lost the use of their arms and legs, ad became
altogether helpless. Some even died in great agony of their torments.
The complaint continues in this tone, and mentions five or six times
the great cruelty of the tortures inflicted.

Philip the Fair, who was noble-hearted occasionally, addressed a
letter May 13, 1291, to the seneschal of Carcassonne in which he
denounced the Inquisitors for their cruel torturing of innocent men,
whereby the living and the dead were fraudulently convicted; and
among other abuses he mentions particularly "tortures newly
invented." Another letter of his (1301) addressed to Foulques de
Saint-Georges, contained a similar denunciation.

In a bull intended for Cardinals Taillefer de la Chappelle and
Berenger de Fredol, March 13, 1306, Clement V mentions the complaints
of the citizens of Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes, regarding the
cruelty practiced in the prisons of the Inquisition. Several of these
unfortunates "were so weakened by the rigors of their imprisonment,
the lack of food, and the severity of their tortures (_sevitia
tormentorum_), that they died."

The facts in Savonarola's case are very hard to determine. The
official account of his interrogatory declares that he was subjected
to three and a half _tratti di fune_. This was a form of torture
known as the _strappado_. The Signoria, in answer to the reproaches
of Alexander VI at their tardiness, declared that they had to deal
with a man of great endurance; that they had assiduously tortured him
for many days with slender results.[1] Burchard, the papal
prothonotary, states that he was put to the torture seven times. It
made very little difference whether these tortures were inflicted
_per modum continuationis_ or _per modum iterationis_, as the casuist
of the Inquisition put it. At any rate, it was a crying abuse.[2]

[1] Villari, _La storia di Girolamo Savonarola_, Firenze, 1887, vol.
ii, p. 197.

[2] H. Lucas, _Fra Girolamo Savonarola, a Biographical Study_.
London, Sands, 1905.

We may learn something of the brutality of the Inquisitors from the
remorse felt by one of them. He had inflicted the torture of the
burning coals upon a sorceress. The unfortunate woman died soon
afterwards in prison as a result of her torments. The Inquisitor,
knowing he had caused her death, wrote John XXII for dispensat