Article V

Self-delators who seek reconciliation to Holy Mother Church shall be required publicly to abjure their errors, and penance shall publicly be imposed upon them at the discretion of the inquisitors, using mercy and kindness as far as it is possible for them to do so with an easy conscience.

The inquisitors shall admit none to secret penance and recantation unless his sin shall have been so secret that none else knows or could know of it save his confessor; such a one all inquisitors may reconcile and absolve in secret.

Llorente says that the admission to secret penance was a source of much gold to the Roman Curia, as thousands appealed to the Pope offering a secret confession and firm purpose of amendment if secretly absolved, for which a papal brief was necessary.

A word must here be said on the score of ABJURATION. It was the amende provided by Eymeric87 for those who by their speech or conduct should have fallen into suspicion of heresy; those, for instance, who abstained from the sacraments imposed by Mother Church being liable to this suspicion.

There were three degrees of suspicion into which a man might fall: light, vehement, and violent. The abjuration required was practically the same in all three cases, but the punishment imposed upon the abjurer varied according to the degree. This abjuration must be publicly made in church before the assembled people, the suspects being placed—like all penitents or convicts of heresy—upon a raised platform in full view of the assembled faithful. The inquisitor would read out the Articles of the Christian Faith, and a list of the principal errors against it, laying particular stress upon those errors of which the penitents were suspected, and which they were required to abjure with both hands upon the Gospels, and according to the formula laid down by Eymeric.

Those who are suspected lightly (leviter) are admonished that should they again fall into error they will be abandoned to the secular arm for punishment. With that admonition, and the imposition of a penance which may take the form of fasts, prayers, or pilgrimages, they are dismissed.

Those suspected vehemently (vehementer) are similarly admonished, but in addition they may be sent to prison for a time, whereafter they must undergo a heavy penance, such as standing on certain days at the door of the principal church or near the altar during the celebration of Mass holding a candle—but not wearing a sanbenito, as, properly speaking, they are not heretics—or they may be sent upon a pilgrimage.

He who is violently suspected (violenter) shall be absolved of the excommunication incurred, but as his crime may not go unpunished, and to the end that he may suffer less severely in the next world, he is sentenced to a term of imprisonment, whereafter he shall be condemned to stand at the church door during the great feasts of the year wearing the penitential scapulary known as the sanbenito, that all may be made aware of his infamy.

After passing sentence, the inquisitor shall admonish the penitent in these terms:

“My dear Son, be patient and do not despair; if we observe in you the signs of contrition we shall soften your penance; but beware of departing from what we have prescribed for you; should you do so you shall be punished as an impenitent heretic.”

The punishment for the impenitent was, of course, the fire.

The inquisitor shall conclude the ceremony by granting an indulgence of forty days to all who have attended it and an indulgence of three years to those who shall have taken part in it.

The sentence of prison, with its bread-and-water diet, might be relaxed; but never that of the sanbenito, which is considered by Eymeric—and inquisitors generally—as the most salutary of penances for him that undergoes it and the most edifying to the public generally.

The self-delators admitted by Torquemada to abjuration were treated as suspects of the first degree—leviter.