nquisitors produce an imperial
privilege of December 1224, which shows the tribunal in full action
under Honorius III.: "Sub nostrae indignationis fulmine praesenti edicto
districtius praecipiendo mandamus, quatenus inquisitoribus haereticae
pravitatis, ut suum libere officium prosequi et exercere valeant, prout
decet, omne quod potestis impendatis auxilium" (Franchina, _Inquisizione
di Sicilia_, 1774, 8). This document may be a forgery of the fifteenth
century; but the whole of the Dominican version is dismissed by Mr. Lea
with contempt. He has heard that their founder once rescued a heretic
from the flames; "but Dominic's project only looked to their peaceful
conversion, and to performing the duties of instruction and
exhortation." Nothing is better authenticated in the life of the saint
than the fact that he condemned heretics and exercised the right of
deciding which of them should suffer and which should be spared.
"Contigit quosdam haereticos captos et per eum convictos, cum redire
nollent ad fidem catholicam, tradi judicio saeculari. Cumque essent
incendio deputati, aspiciens inter alios quemdam Raymundum de Grossi
nomine, ac si aliquem eo divinae praedestinationis radium fuisset
intuitus, istum, inquit officialibus curiae, reservate, nec aliquo modo
cum caeteris comburatur" (Constantinus, _Vita S. Dominici_; Echard,
_Scriptores O.P._, 1. 33). The transaction is memorable in Dominican
annals as the one link distinctly connecting Saint Dominic with the
system of executions, and the only security possessed by the order that
the most conspicuous of its actions is sanctioned by the spirit and
example of the founder. The original authorities record it, and it is
commemorated by Bzovius and Malvenda, by Fontana and Percin, by Echard
and Mamachi, as well as in the _Acta Sanctorum_. Those are exactly the
authors to whom in the first instance a man betakes himself who desires
to understand the inception and early growth of the Inquisition. I
cannot remember that any one of them appears in Mr. Lea's notes. He says
indeed that Saint Dominic's inquisitorial activity "is affirmed by all
the historians of the order," and he is a workman who knows his tools so
well that we may hesitate to impute this grave omission to
inacquaintance with necessary literature. It is one of his
characteristics to be suspicious of the _Histoire Intime_ as the seat of
fable and proper domain of those problems in psychology against which
the certitud