It was first authorized by Innocent IV in his Bull "Ad exstirpanda" of 15 May, 1252, which was confirmed by Alexander IV on 30 November, 1259, and by Clement IV on 3 November, 1265. The limit placed upon torture was citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum — i.e, it was not to cause the loss of life or limb or imperil life. Torture was to applied only once, and not then unless the accused were uncertain in his statements, and seemed already virtually convicted by manifold and weighty proofs...
Had this papal legislation been adhered to in practice, the historian of the Inquisition would have fewer difficulties to satisfy. In the beginning, torture was held to be so odious that clerics were forbidden to be present under pain of irregularity. Sometimes it had to be interrupted so as to enable the inquisitor to continue his examination, which, of course, was attended by numerous inconveniences. Therefore on 27 April, 1260, Alexander IV authorized inquisitors to absolve one another of this irregularity. Urban IV on 2 August, 1262, renewed the permission, and this was soon interpreted as formal licence to continue the examination in the torture chamber itself. The inquisitors manuals faithfully noted and approved this usage. The general rule ran that torture was to be resorted to only once. But this was sometimes circumvented — first, by assuming that with every new piece of evidence the rack could be utilized afresh, and secondly, by imposing fresh torments on the poor victim (often on different days), not by way of repetition, but as a continuation...
But what was to be done when the accused, released from the rack, denied what he had just confessed? Some held with Eymeric that the accused should be set at liberty; others, however, like the author of the "Sacro Arsenale" held that the torture should be continued, because the accused had too seriously incriminated himself by his previous confession. When Clement V formulated his regulations for the employment of torture, he never imagined that eventually even witnesses would be put on the rack, although not their guilt, but that of the accused, was in question. From the pope's silence it was concluded that a witness might be put upon the rack at the discretion of the inquisitor. Moreover, if the accused was convicted through witnesses, or had pleaded guilty, the torture might still he used to compel him to testify against his friends and fellow-culprits. Catholic Encyclopedia>Inquisition; http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm
Pope Innocent IV, Bull Ad Exstirpanda (May 15, 1252). This fateful document introduced confession-extorting torture into tribunals of the Inquisition. It had already been reinstated in secular processes over the previous hundred years, during which Roman Law was being vigorously revived. Innocent’s Bull prescribes that captured heretics, being "murderers of souls as well as robbers of God’s sacraments and of the Christian faith, . . . are to be coerced – as are thieves and bandits – into confessing their errors and accusing others, although one must stop short of danger to life or limb." — Bull Ad Extirpanda (Bullarium Romanorum Pontificum, vol. 3 [Turin: Franco, Fory & Dalmazzo, 1858], Lex 25, p. 556a.)
Pope Innocent IV, Ad extirpanda (named for its Latin incipit):
A papal bull, promulgated on May 15, 1252, by Pope Innocent IV, which explicitly authorized (and defined the appropriate circumstances for) the use of torture by the Inquisition for eliciting confessions from heretics.[1]
The bull was issued in the wake of the murder of the papal inquisitor of Lombardy, St. Peter of Verona, who was killed by a conspiracy of Cathar sympathizers on 6 April 1252.
The bull argued that as heretics are "murderers of souls as well as robbers of God’s sacraments and of the Christian faith ...", they are "to be coerced—as are thieves and bandits—into confessing their errors and accusing others, although one must stop short of danger to life or limb." [2] The following parameters were placed on the use of torture:[1]
that it did not cause loss of life or limb (citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum)
that it was used only once
that the Inquisitor deemed the evidence against the accused to be virtually certain.
The requirement that torture only be used once was effectively meaningless in practice as it was interpreted as authorizing torture with each new piece of evidence that was produced and by considering most practices to be a continuation (rather than repetition) of the torture session (non ad modum iterationis sed continuationis).[1]
The bull conceded to the State a portion of the property to be confiscated from convicted heretics.[3] The State in return assumed the burden of carrying out the penalty. The relevant portion of the bull read: "When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podestà or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them."[4]
Innocent’s Bull prescribes that captured heretics, being "murderers of souls as well as robbers of God’s sacraments and of the Christian faith, . . . are to be coerced – as are thieves and bandits – into confessing their errors and accusing others, although one must stop short of danger to life or limb." — Bull Ad Extirpanda (Bullarium Romanorum Pontificum, vol. 3 [Turin: Franco, Fory & Dalmazzo, 1858], Lex 25, p. 556a.)
► http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt119.html
Tertullian (3rd century): [S]hall the son of peace take part in the battle when it does not become him even to sue at law? And shall he apply the chain, and the prison, and the torture, and the punishment, who is not the avenger even of his own wrongs?" (De Corona, 11)
St. Augustine lives under and comments upon in The City of God:
[The accused] is tortured to discover whether he is guilty, so that, though innocent, he suffers most undoubted punishment for crime that is still doubtful; not because it is proved that he committed it, but because it is not ascertained that he did not commit it. Thus the ignorance of the judge frequently involves an innocent person in suffering [and even in death, when the accused falsely confesses a capital crime out of sheer terror of unendurable pain]. — The City of God, 19: 6 ("Of the error of human judgments when the truth is hidden").
Catholicism has now been explicitly and emphatically the Roman state religion since the imperial edict of February 28, 380,6 but the laws remain to a great extent in fundamental continuity with the old pagan legislation – including its reliance on interrogatory torture (quaestio) as a standard part of judicial practice for serious crimes. It was even prescribed, under certain circumstances, for witnesses, not just those accused of a crime.7 Infliction of severe bodily pain is also included in the Code as punishment for those duly convicted of crime. We read, for instance, that corrupt public officials are to suffer "the punishment of flogging and torture".8 As for those guilty of crime against the Emperor in person (lèse-majesté), "tortures shall tear them to pieces".9 All in all, the Theodosian Code provides for torture, either as quaestio or as punishment for convicted criminals, in no less than 40 legally specified situations.10 However the higher clergy are exempt: bishops and priests (but not "clerics of a lower grade") "shall be able to give their testimony without the outrage of torture, that is, without corporal punishment"11
The treatment of heretics and schismatics in this original Christian respublica was severe, but milder than in subsequent mediaeval times. They were not put to death, but were reduced to poverty by the confiscation of their property, and were subject to legal disabilities (incapable of making testaments)...
Only Catholic houses of worship, however, could be dignified with the name of "churches"...
It is declared in the Constitutions that torture should be considered neither as always trustworthy, nor as always untrustworthy. And as a matter of fact it is a fickle and dangerous business that ill serves the cause of truth (etenim res fragilis est et periculosa, et quae veritatem fallat). For there are not a few who are possessed of such powers of endurance, or such toughness, that they scorn the pain of torture, so that there is no way the truth can be wrung from them. Others, however, have so little resistance that they will make up any kind of lie rather than suffer torment; and that can lead them to keep changing their story, even incriminating others as well as themselves. (Justinian; Digest, 48: 18, article 23 - translation).
By the time Augustine wrote The City of God (between 413 and 427), Catholic Christianity had been emancipated for over a century and had been the official and dominant religion of the Empire for nearly half of that period. In trying to discern what, if anything, the Church’s magisterium said about torture in the patristic era, we must add to Augustine’s explicit shoulder-shrugging resignation the silence of other successors of the Apostles before and after him, including, it seems, all the Bishops of Rome for as long as the abominable practice remained legal. It seems that as long as the old Western Empire lasted, many of its basic legal procedures and institutions – including slavery, of course, as well as judicial torture – were generally accepted without protest as facts of life and/or necessary evils by most of the Church’s pastors and faithful.
Pope St. Nicholas I, Response Ad Consulta Vestra, November 13, 866. If a [putative] thief or bandit is apprehended and denies the charges against him, you tell me your custom is for a judge to beat him with blows to the head and tear the sides of his body with other sharp iron goads until he confesses the truth. Such a procedure is totally unacceptable under both divine and human law (quam rem nec divina lex nec humana prorsus admittit), since a confession should be spontaneous, not forced. It should be proffered voluntarily, not violently extorted. After all, if it should happen that even after inflicting all these torments, you still fail to wrest from the sufferer any self-incrimination regarding the crime of which he is accused, will you not then at least blush for shame and acknowledge how impious is your judicial procedure?
St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century). The Angelic Doctor never treats of torture in secular judicial inquiries. However, without mentioning the word, he does justify the contemporary Inquisition’s use of torture (recently introduced in 1252 by Pope Innocent IV... in considering whether unbelievers may be "compelled" to the faith, he first acknowledges that those who have never been Christians (i.e., Jews, pagans and Muslims) may not be forced to embrace the faith, but then continues: "On the other hand, there are unbelievers who at some time have accepted the faith, and professed it, such as heretics and all apostates: such should be submitted even to bodily compulsion, that they may fulfil what they have promised, and hold what they, at one time, received".22
Cardinal Juan De Lugo (17th century). Nevertheless, against the kinds of arguments advanced by the aforesaid writers, this renowned Spanish Jesuit – possibly the most respected Catholic moral theologian of his century – maintains in his 1642 treatise De iustitia et iure (37: 13) that worse evils to the common good would follow if torture were not allowed. (Many other lesser known Catholic writers of this period continue to argue on similar lines.)..
St. Alphonsus Liguori (18th century). This saint and doctor of the Church – the "prince of moral theologians"... cites a total of ten earlier approved Catholic authors (de Lugo and others) whose teachings he synthesizes in this section of his own classic work. St. Alphonsus considers three questions: (a) Under what conditions can a judge proceed to have an accused person tortured (#202)? Answer: the judge may only "descend to torture" as a last resort, i.e., when full proof cannot be obtained by non-violent means; next, there must already be "semi-complete proof"...and finally, certain classes of persons are to be exempt from torture..(c) Whether one who has already been tortured may be tortured again (#204)? Answer: not if he refuses to confess during the first torture session (unless new independent evidence against him subsequently comes to light). In that case he must be set free. But if he confesses under torture, and then retracts that confession before the judge, he may be tortured again – and even a third time if the same thing happens after the second torture session. But if he confesses under torture a third time, and yet again subsequently retracts in the presence of the judge, he must be released. For the judge then must presume that his three confessions were all forced and involuntary – and therefore invalid.
Pope John Paul II, Address to the International Red Cross (Geneva, June 15, 1982)... And as for torture, the Christian is confronted from infancy onward with the account of Christ’s Passion. The memory of Jesus – stripped, flogged, and derided right up until the sufferings of his final agony – should always make him resolve never to see analogous torments inflicted on any one of his brothers in humanity. Spontaneously, the disciple of Christ rejects every recourse to such methods, which nothing could justify, and by which the dignity of man is as much debased in the torturer as in his victim. . . .
Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), on "Respect for bodily integrity".
#2298. In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture.
► The Church has the right, as a perfect and independent society provided with all the means for attaining its end, to decide according to its laws disputes arising concerning its internal affairs, epecially as to the ecclesiastical rights of its members, also to carry out its decision, if necessary, by suitable means of compulsion, contentious or civil jurisdiction. It has, therefore, the right to admonish or warn its members, ecclesiastical or lay, who have not conformed to its laws and also, if needful to punish them by physical means, that is, coercive jurisdiction. — Catholic Encyclopedia Jurisdiction http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08567a.htm
Thank you for that detailed response. There may be a pattern of behavior and attitude that calls for watchfulness.