of Toulouse condemn some twenty or thirty penitents to perpetual imprisonment, confiscation is only threatened as an additional punishment in case they do not perform the penance. Imprisonment, however, finally was admitted by legists as the invariable test; although St. Louis, when in 1259 he mitigated his Ordonnance of 1229, ordered confiscation not only for those who were condemned to prison, but for those who contumaciously refused obedience to citations and those in whose houses heretics were found, his officials being instructed to ascertain from the inquisitors in all cases, while pending, whether the accused deserved imprisonment, and if so, to retain the sequestrated property. When he further provided, as a special grace, that the heirs should be restored to possession in cases where the heretic had offered himself for conversion before citation, had entered a religious order, and had worthily died there, he shows how universal confiscation had previously been and how ruthlessly the principle had been enforced that a single act of heresy forfeited all ownership. In fact, even at the close of the fifteenth century, the rule was laid down that confiscation was a matter of course, while restoration of property to a reconciled penitent required an express declaration.[1]
According to the most lenient construction of the law, therefore, the imprisonment of a reconciled convert carried with it the confiscation of his property, and as imprisonment was the ordinary penance, confiscation was general. There may possibly have been exceptions. The six prisoners released in 1248 by Innocent IV. had been in jail for some time — some of them for four years and more after confessing heresy — and yet the liberal contributions to the Holy Land which purchased their pardon show that they or their friends must have had control of property — unless, indeed, the money was raised on a pledge of the estates to be restored. So when Alaman de Koaix was condemned to imprisonment by Bernard de Caux, in 1248, the sentence provided for an annuity to be paid to a person designated, and for compensation to be made for the rapine which he had committed, which would look as though
- ↑ Harduin. VII. 203. — Concil. Biterrens. ann. 1233 c. 4 ; ann. 1246, Append, c. 35._Concil. Albiens. ann. 1254 c. 26. — Coll. Doat, XXI. 151. — Guid. Fulcod. Quaest. xv. — Isambert Anc. Loix Fran9aises, I. 257. — Arch, de Tlnq. de Carcassonne (Doat, XXXI. 263). — Bernard! Comens. Lucerna Inquisit. s. v. Filii.
