s adopted, she endeavored to mitigate
the cruelty with which it was enforced. If this preoccupation is not
always visible--and it is not in her condemnation of obdurate
heretics--we must at least give her the credit of insisting that
torture "should never imperil life or injure limb:" _Cogere citra
membri diminutionem et mortis periculum_.

We will now ask how the theologians and canonists interpreted this
legislation, and how the tribunals of the Inquisition enforced it.

CHAPTER VIII
THEOLOGIANS, CANONISTS, AND CASUISTS OF THE INQUISITION

THE gravity of the crime of heresy was early recognized in the
Church. Gratian discussed this question in a special chapter of his
_Decretum._[1] Innocent III, Guala, the Dominican, and the Emperor
Frederic II, as we have seen, looked upon heresy as treason against
Almighty God, i.e., the most dreadful of crimes.

[1] _Causa_ xxii, q. vii, cap. 16.

The theologians, and even the civil authorities, did not concern
themselves much with the evil effects of heresy upon the social
order, but viewed it rather as an offense against God. Thus they made
no distinction between those teachings which entailed injury on the
family and on society, and those which merely denied certain revealed
truths. Innocent III, in his constitution of September 23, 1207,
legislated particularly against the Patarins, but he took care to
point out that no heretic, no matter what the nature of his error
might be, should be allowed to escape the full penalty of the law.[1]
Frederic II spoke in similar terms in his Constitutions of 1220,
1224, and 1232. This was the current teaching throughout the Middle
Ages.

[1] Ep. x, 130.

But it is important to know what men then understood by the word
heresy. We can ascertain this from the theologians and canonists,
especially from St. Raymond of Pennafort and St. Thomas Aquinas. St.
Raymond gives four meanings to the word heretic, but from the
standpoint of the canon law he says: "A heretic is one who denies the
faith."[1] St. Thomas Aquinas is more accurate. He declares that no
one is truly a heretic unless he obstinately maintains his error,
even after it has been pointed out to him by ecclesiastical
authority. This is the teaching of St. Augustine.[2]

[1] S. Raymundi, _Summa_, lib. i, cap. _De Haereticis_, sect. i, Roman
Edition, 1603, p. 39.

[2] _Summa_, IIa, IIae, quaest. xi, Conclusio; cf. ibid., ad 3um,
quotations from St. Augustine.

But by degr