Note 527 — Chapter XIV · THE STAKE.

I have treated this subject at some length in an essay on torture (Superstition and Force, 3d Edition, 1878), and need not here dwell further on its details. The student who desires to see the shape which the inquisitorial process assumed in later times can consult Brunnemann (Tractatus Juridicus de Inquisitionis Processu, Ed. octava, Francof. 1704), who attributes its origin to the Mosaic law (Deut. XIII. 12; XVII. 4), and vastly prefers it to the proceeding per accusationem. Indeed, a case in which accusatio failed or threatened to fail could be resumed or continued by inquisitio (op. cit. Cap. I. No. 2, 15-18). It supplied all deficiencies and gave the judge almost unlimited power to convict.

The manner in which the civil power was led to adopt the abuses of the Inquisition is well illustrated in a Milanese edict of 1393, where the magistrates, in proceedings against malefactors, are ordered to employ the inquisitorial process “summarie et de plano sine strepitu et figura juditii” and to supply all defects of fact “ex certa scientia” (Antiq. Ducum Mediolan. Decreta. Mediolani, 1654, p. 188). A comparison of this with the Milanese jurisprudence of sixty years earlier, quoted above (p. 401), will show how rapidly in the interval force had usurped the place of justice.