0; _Decretales_, cap.
xiii, _De haereticis_, lib. v, tit. vii.

In practice, Innocent III, although very severe towards obdurate
heretics, was extremely kind to the ignorant and heretics in good
faith. While he banished the Patarins from Viterbo,[1] and razed
their houses to the ground, he at the same time protected, against
the tyranny of an archpriest of Verona, a society of mystics, the
Humiliati, whose orthodoxy was rather doubtful. When, after the
massacre of the Albigenses, Pope Innocent was called upon to apply
the canon law in the case of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, and to
transfer the patrimony of his father to Simon de Montfort, he was the
first to draw back from such injustice. Although a framer of severe
laws against heresy, he was ready to grant dispensations, when
occasion arose.

[1] _Gesta Innocentii_, cap. cxxiii, Migne, P.L., vol. ccxiv, col.
clxi.

We must remember also that the laws he enacted were not at all
excessive compared with the strict Roman law, or even with the
practice then in vogue in France and Germany. It has been justly
said: "The laws and letters of Innocent III never once mention the
death penalty for heresy. He merely decrees against them banishment,
and the confiscation of their property. When he speaks of having
recourse to the secular arm, he means simply the force required to
carry out the laws of banishment enacted by his penal code. This
code, which seems so pitiless to us, was in reality at that time a
great improvement in the treatment of heretics. For its special laws
prevented the frequent outbreaks of popular vengeance, which punished
not only confessed heretics, but also mere suspects."[1]

[1] Luchaire, Innocent III, _et la croisade des Albigeois_, pp. 57,
58. Julien Havet also says: "We must in justice say of Innocent III
that, if he did bitterly prosecute heretics, and everywhere put them
under the ban, he never demanded the infliction of the death penalty.
Ficker has brought this out very clearly." _L'heresie et le bras
seculier_, p. 165, n. 3. For Ficker's view, cf. op. cit., pp.
189-192.

In fact, the development in the methods of suppressing heresy from
the eleventh century, ends with Innocent III in a code that was far
more kindly than the cruel customs in vogue at the time.

The death penalty of the stake was common in France in the twelfth
century, and in the beginning of the thirteenth. Most of the
executions were due to the passions of the mob, altho