bunals of the pagan
persecutors. Pope Nicholas I thus denounced the use of torture as a
means of judical inquiry: "Such proceedings," he says, "are contrary
to the law of God and of man, for a confession ought to be
spontaneous, not forced; it ought to be free, and not the result of
violence. A prisoner may endure all the torments you inflict upon him
without confessing anything. Is not that a disgrace to the judge, and
an evident proof of his inhumanity! If, on the contrary, a prisoner,
under stress of torture, acknowledges himself guilty of a crime he
never committed, is not the one who forced him to lie, guilty of a
heinous crime?"[3]

[1] This was the view of St. Augustine, Ep. cxxxiii, 2.

[2] Bull _Ad Extirpanda_, in Eymeric, _Directorium inquisitorum_,
Appendix, p. 8.

[3] _Responsa ad consulta Bulgarorum_, cap. lxxxvi; Labbe,
_Concilia_, vol. viii, col. 544.

The penalties which the tribunals of the Inquisition inflicted upon
heretics are harder to judge. Let us observe, first of all, that the
majority of the heretics abandoned to the secular arm merited the
most severe punishment for their crimes. It would surely have been
unjust for criminals against the common law to escape punishment
under cover of their religious belief. Crimes committed in the name
of religion are always crimes, and the man who has his property
stolen or is assaulted cares little whether he has to deal with a
religious fanatic or an ordinary criminal. In such instances, the
State is not defending a particular dogmatic teaching, but her own
most vital interests. Heretics, therefore, who were criminals against
the civil law were justly punished. An anti-social sect like the
Cathari, which shrouded itself in mystery and perverted the people so
generally, by the very fact of its existence and propaganda called
for the vengeance of society and the sword of the State.

"However much," says Lea, "we may deprecate the means used for its
suppression, and commiserate those who suffered for conscience' sake,
we cannot but admit that the cause of orthodoxy was in this case the
cause of progress and civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or
even had it been allowed to exist on equal terms, its influence could
not have failed to prove disastrous. Its asceticism with regard to
commerce between the sexes, if strictly enforced, could only have led
to the extinction of the race.... Its condemnation of the visible
universe, and of matter in gene