Article VIII

Should any person guilty of the said crime of heresy fail to present himself within the appointed period of grace, but come forward voluntarily after its expiry and make his confession in due form before having been arrested or cited by the inquisitors, or before the inquisitors shall have received testimony against him, such person shall be received to abjuration and reconciliation in the same manner as those who presented themselves during the term of the said edict, and he shall be submitted to penances at the discretion of the inquisitors. But such penances shall not be pecuniary because his property is confiscate [so that his admission to abjuration is not quite upon the same terms].

But if at the time of his coming to confess and seek reconciliation, the inquisitors should already be informed by witnesses of his heresy or apostasy, or should already have cited him to appear before the Court to answer the charge, in such a case the inquisitor shall receive the penitent to reconciliation—if he entirely confesses his own errors and what he knows of the errors of others—and shall impose upon him heavier penances than upon the former, even up to perpetual imprisonment should the case demand it.

This is merely one of those quibbles that permeate this jurisprudence. The article in this last respect is so framed as to make it appear that under such circumstances the inquisitors would be acting more mercifully than against an accused heretic; but the latitude of punishment is such that they need display no such mercy—perpetual imprisonment being the punishment prescribed for any heretic (who is not “relapsed”) seeking reconciliation.

But no persons who shall come to confess after expiry of the period of grace shall be subjected to pecuniary penances—unless their Highnesses should mercifully condescend to remit all or portion of the confiscation incurred by those so reconciled.

This last clause seems rather in the nature of a provision against any merciful weakness on the Sovereigns’ part.