Note 457 — Chapter V · - INQUISITORIAL PENALTIES

‘A legal fiction,’ is Vacandard’s way of putting it; a ‘hypocrisy,’ Lea’s. Langlois calls it ‘a miserable equivocation.’ See Vacandard, op. cit., pp. 178-9. ‘We regret to state, however, that the civil judges were not supposed to take these words literally. If they were at all inclined to do so, they would have been quickly called to a sense of their duty by being excommunicated. The clause inserted by the canonists was a mere legal fiction, which did not change matters a particle.’