ANGELO CLARENO ON AN INQUISITORIAL TORTURE SESSION
Angelo Clareno joined the Franciscan order around 1274, just in
time to become involved in the first serious confrontation between
spiritual Franciscans and their leaders. It was in the province of
Ancona, and by the 1280s things were bad enough there so that
Angelo and others were thrown in prison for several years. They were
released when the newly-elected minister general, Raymond Geoffroi,
came through on an inspection tour. Raymond, the only minister
general whose sympathies lay with the spirituals, ordered Angelo and
his colleagues released and, realizing he could do little to protect
them from their superiors, sent them to Armenia. Eventually they fell
out with Franciscan leaders there too, and by 1294 they were back in
Italy presenting themselves to the new pope, Celestine V. He offered
them salvation by setting them up as a separate order, but four
months after his election Celestine became the only pope on record to
resign, the next pope, Bonificace VIII, canceled all his legislation, and
Angelo's group seemed about to be thrown back into the arms of the
Franciscan leaders , who by this point had even more to hold against
them than before. Angelo's group tried to settle the problem by
quietly moving to Greece, where they stayed for some years avoiding
first their leaders' efforts to get them back and then a papal
summons to face disciplinary action.
Around 1304, shortly after Boniface VIII's death, Angelo's group was
drifting back into Italy hoping to convince the new pope that they
should be recognized as a separate order. By the time they arrived the
new pope himself was on his deathbed and some of the brothers
settled into hermitages in the kingdom of Naples, where King Charles
II and the local inquisitor, Thomas of Aversa, conspired to make their
lives miserable. Angelo gives the impression that Thomas was
originally rather unconcerned and let the first group he encountered
go their way, but he soon learned that the king felt differently and he
hurriedly moved to make up for his error. He arrested the next group
of spirituals he came across and wrote the king telling him he had
captured, not spirituals, but members of Fra Dolcino's sect, which was
then considered the most dangerous heretical group in existence.
(They are described here as "Lombards" since Dolcino's group was
based in Lombardy.) The inquisitor was soon informed of his error,
but that only seems to have made him angrier.
Obviously Angelo, who by that point had become leader of the
Anconan spirituals, had about as little sympathy for the inquisitor as
the latter had for the Anconan spirituals in his clutches. Thus we can
hardly expect a balanced picture of what occurred, and Angelo was in
any case not with the group. Nevertheless, he received a full report
and, while this passage may not tell us exactly what happened, it at
least gives us a picture of the sorts of tortures used by the
inquisition.
A word is in order about the first torture described. The victim's
hands were tied behind his back and he was raised by a rope tied to
his wrists. He was then dropped a short distance. This was repeated
again and again. (For example, imagine him being raised around
twenty feet, then dropped a foot, then dropped another foot and so
on.) Eventually the victim's arm sockets and tendons. were
permanently damaged.
Then the Lord Andreo wrote the inquisitor informing him
trustworthy people had told him that among all those the inquisitor
had captured there was only one Lombard. He advised him to attend
to the dignity of his inquisitorial office. He advised him as a good
friend to stick to the truth in carrying out his duties, because without
it neither human nor divine justice is justly performed. When the
inquisitor read Lord Andreo's letter he was furious and vengefully
turned all his indignation and wrath on the poor brothers he currently
held. And he sent to the men of that town, who love the poor
brothers deeply, a summons to appear before him in the city of Trevi
after a certain number of days, with a fixed fine as penalty if they
failed to appear. When they came on the appointed day he had them
shut up in an old cistern and kept them there for five days, with no
more ventilation than if he'd shut them up in a wine cask, not even
letting them out to attend to the necessities of nature. After five
days this new Dacian had a certain place in the city hastily prepared
so they could be tortured by the executioners. But when he saw that
the bishop and other principle people in the city took the spectacle of
such men being tortured very poorly, he changed his mind and,
passing through Boiano, ascended to the castle of Maginando, a
remote place with a lord vicious enough to conspire in his own evil
plans. There he had the prisoners, whom he had dragged along behind
him in chains and who were exhausted by the trip, placed under heavy
guard. The next day he visited them and, binding himself with a
terrible oath, said, "Unless you confess to me that you are heretics,
may God do thus and so to me if I don't kill all of you right here with a
variety of tortures and torments. If, as I ask, you do confess to me
that you do or did err in something or other, I'll give you a light
penance and set you free immediately." The brothers replied that he
should not ask them to say something that wasn't true. Telling such a
wicked lie would cause death to their souls and offense to God. The
furious inquisitor selected one of them who seemed more fervent
than the others and was a priest, and ordered that he be tortured.
The torturer entered with his assistants and tied the prisoner's hands
behind his back. Then he had him raised up by means of a pulley
attached to the roof of the house, which was very high. After the
prisoner had hung there for an hour the rope was released suddenly.
The idea was that, broken by the intense pain, he would be defeated
and confess that he had once been a heretic. After he had been raised
and suddenly dropped many times they asked whether he would
confess that he was or had been a heretic. He replied, I'm a faithful
and catholic Christian, always have been, and always will be.. If I
said anything else to you shouldn't believe me, because I would only
have said it to escape the torture.. Let this be my perpetual
confession to you, because it's the truth. Anything else would be a lie
extorted by torture."
Driven out of his mind by anger, the inquisitor ordered that, dressed in
a short tunic, the prisoner be put first in a bath of hot water, then of
cold. Then, with a stone tied to his feet, he was raised up again, kept
there for a while, and dropped again, and his shins were poked with
reeds as sharp as swords. Again and again he was hauled up until, on
the thirteenth elevation, the rope broke and he fell from a great
height with the stone still tied to his feet. As that destroyer of the
faithful stood looking at him, he lay there only half alive, with his
body shattered. The treacherous man's servant's took the body and
disposed of it in a cesspool.
That inquisitor, although he was a learned man and of noble family,
was so demented by fury that he began to inflict torture with his own
hands. When one of the brothers who was to be tortured devoutly
recommended himself to Christ, he was so insane with anger that he
struck the man on the head and neck. He hit the man so hard that he
drove him to the ground like a ball. For days afterward the man's
neck and head hurt and his ears rang. Another brother had his head
bound in the inquisitor's presence, and the binding was tightened until
the torturers heard the bones in his head crack, after which they
ended the torture and took him away for dead.
Translation by David Burr [olivi@mail.vt.edu]. See his home page. He indicated that the translations are available for educational use. He intends to expand the number of translations, so keep a note of his home page.
Paul Halsall Jan 1996
halsall@murray.fordham.edu
The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is located at the History Department of Fordham University, New York. The Internet
Medieval Sourcebook, and other medieval components of the project, are located at
the Fordham University Center
for Medieval Studies.The IHSP recognizes the contribution of Fordham University, the
Fordham University History Department, and the Fordham Center for Medieval Studies in
providing web space and server support for the project. The IHSP is a project independent of Fordham University. Although the IHSP seeks to follow all applicable copyright law, Fordham University is not
the institutional owner, and is not liable as the result of any legal action.
© Site Concept and Design: Paul Halsall created 26 Jan 1996: latest revision 4 October 2024 [CV]
|