and
Boniface VIII recommended them to reveal the names of the witnesses
to the prisoners if they thought that this revelation would not be
prejudicial to any one.[2] In a word, they wished the laws of justice
to be scrupulously observed, and at times mitigated.[3] But, examined
in detail, these laws were far from being perfect.

[1] Clementinae, _De Haereticis_, Decretal _Multorum Querela_, cap. i,
sect. i.

[2] Sexto, _De Haereticis_, cap. xx; cf. Tanon, op. cit., p. 391.

[3] Doellinger is very unjust when he says: "From 1200 to 1500 there
is a long uninterrupted series of papal decrees on the Inquisition;
these decrees increase continually in severity and cruelty." _La
Papaute_, p. 102. Tanon (op. cit, p. 138) writes more impartially:
"Clement V, instead of increasing the powers of the Holy Office,
tried rather to suppress its abuses."

. . . . . . . .

Antecedent imprisonment and torture, which played so important a part
in the procedure of the Inquisition, were undoubtedly very barbarous
methods of judicial prosecution. Antecedent imprisonment may be
justified in certain cases; but the manner in which the Inquisitors
conceived it was far from just. No one would dare defend to-day the
punishment known as the _carcer durus_, whereby the Inquisitors tried
to extort confessions from their prisoners. They rendered it,
moreover, all the more odious by arbitrarily prolonging its horrors
and its cruelty.

It is harder still to reconcile the use of torture with any idea of
justice. If the Inquisitors had stopped at flogging, which according
to St. Augustine was administered at home, in school, and even in the
episcopal tribunals of the early ages, and is mentioned by the
Council of Agde, in 506, and the Benedictine rule, no one would have
been greatly scandalized. We might perhaps have considered this
domestic and paternal custom a little severe, but perfectly
consistent with the ideas men then had of goodness. But the rack, the
_strappado_, and the stake were peculiarly inhuman inventions.[1]
When the pagans used them against the Christians of the first
centuries, all agreed in stigmatizing them as the extreme of
barbarism, or as inventions of the devil. Their character did not
change when the Inquisition began to use them against heretics. To
our shame we are forced to admit that, notwithstanding Innocent IV's
appeal for moderation,[2] the brutality of the ecclesiastical
tribunals was often on a par with the tri