Note 444 — Chapter XII · THE SENTENCE.
Reading edition
Arch. de l’hôtel-de-ville d’Albi (Doat, XXXIV. 45).—Bern. Guidon. Gravam. (Doat, XXX. 100).—Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 32, 200, 287.—Arch. de l’Inq. de Carcassonne (Doat, XXVII. 136, 156).—MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 9992.
The cruelty of the monastic system of imprisonment known as in pace, or vade in pacem, was such that those subjected to it speedily died in all the agonies of despair. In 1350 the Archbishop of Toulouse appealed to King John to interfere for its mitigation, and he issued an Ordonnance that the superior of the convent should twice a month visit and console the prisoner, who, moreover, should have the right twice a month to ask for the company of one of the monks. Even this slender innovation provoked the bitterest resistance of the Dominicans and Franciscans, who appealed to Pope Clement VI., but in vain.—Chron. Bardin, ann. 1350 (Vaissette, IV. Pr. 29).
The hideous abuse of keeping a prisoner in chains was forbidden by the contemporary English law (Bracton, Lib. III. Tract, i. cap. 6).