Over the various penalties of the Inquisition, the Popes likewise exercised a supervision which was always just and at times most kindly.
The greatest penalties which the Inquisition could inflict were life imprisonment, and abandonment of the prisoner to the secular arm. It is only with regard to the first of these penalties that we see the clemency of both Popes and Councils. Any one who considers the rough manners of this period, must admit that the Church did a great deal to mitigate the excessive cruelty of the medieval prisons.
The Council of Toulouse, in 1229, decreed that repentant heretics "must be imprisoned, in such a way that they could not corrupt others." It also declared that the Bishop was to provide for the prisoners' needs out of their confiscated property. Such measures betoken an earnest desire to safeguard the health, and to a certain degree the liberty of the prisoners. In fact, the documents we possess prove that the condemned sometimes enjoyed a great deal of freedom, and were allowed to receive from their friends an additional supply of food, even when the prison fare was ample.
But in many places the prisoners, even before their trial, were treated with great cruelty. "The papal orders were that they (the prisons) should be constructed of small, dark cells for solitary confinement, only taking care that the _enormis rigor_ of the incarceration should not extinguish life."[1] But this last provision was not always carried out. Too often the prisoners were confined in narrow cells full of disease, and totally unfit for human habitation. The Popes, learning this sad state of affairs, tried to remedy it. Clement V was particularly zealous in his attempts at prison reform.[2] That he succeeded in bettering, at least for a time, the lot of these unfortunates, in whom he interested himself, cannot be denied.[3]
[2] He ordered that the prisons be kept in good condition, that they be looked after by both Bishop and Inquisitor, each of whom was to appoint a jailer who would keep the prison keys, that all provisions sent to the prisoners should be faithfully given them, etc. Cf. Decretal _Multorum querela_ in Eymeric, _Directorium_, p. 112.
[3] His legates Pierre de la Chapelle and Béranger fr Frédol visited in April, 1306, the prisons of Carcassonne and Albi, changed the jailers, removed the irons from the prisoners, and made others leave the subterranean cells in which they had been confined. Douais, _Documents_, vol. ii, p. 304 seq. Cf. Compayré, Études historiques sur l'Albigeois, pp. 240-245.