quisitors should realise this fact.

If, on leaving the torture chamber, the prisoner reiterated his
confession, the case was at once decided. But suppose, on the
contrary, that the confession extorted under torture was afterwards
retracted, what was to be done? The Inquisitors did not agree upon
this point. Some of them, like Eymeric, held that in this case the
prisoner was entitled to his freedom. Others, like the author of the
_Sacro Arsenale_, held that "the torture should be repeated, in order
that the prisoner might be forced to reiterate his first confession
which had evidently compromised him." This seems to have been the
traditional practice of the Italian tribunals.

But the casuists did not stop here. They discovered "that Clement V
had only spoken of torture in general, and had not specifically
alluded to witnesses, whence they concluded that one of the most
shocking abuses of the system, the torture of witnesses, was left to
the sole discretion of the Inquisitor, and this became the accepted
rule. It only required an additional step to show that after the
accused had been convicted by evidence or had confessed as to
himself, he became a witness as to the guilt of his friends, and thus
could be arbitrarily (?) tortured to betray them."[1]

[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 425.

As a matter of course, the canonists and the theologians approved the
severest penalties inflicted by the Inquisition. St. Raymond of
Pennafort, however, who was one of the most favored counselors of
Gregory IX, still upheld the criminal code of Innocent III. The
severest penalties he defended were the excommunication of heretics
and schismatics, their banishment and the confiscation of their
property.[1] His _Summa_ was undoubtedly completed when the Dccretal
of Gregory IX appeared, authorizing the Inquisitors to enforce the
cruel laws of Frederic II.

[1] Lea writes (op. cit., vol. i, p. 229, note) "Saint Raymond of
Pennafort, the compiler of the decretals of Gregory I, who was the
highest authority in his generation, lays it down as a principle of
ecclesiastical law that the heretic is to be coerced by
excommunication and confiscation, and if they fail, _by the extreme
exercise of the secular power_. The man who was doubtful in faith was
to be held a heretic, and so also was the schismatic who, while
believing all the articles of religion, refused the obedience due to
the Roman Church. All alike were to be forced into the Roman