"In the territories subject to our temporal jurisdiction," adds the Pope, "we declare their property confiscated; in other places we order the podestà and the secular princes to do the same, and we desire and command this law enforced under penalty of ecclesiastical censures."[1]
[1] Letter of March 25, 1199, to the magistrates and people of Viterbo; constitution of September 23, 1207, Ep. x, 130.
We are not at all surprised at such drastic measures, when we consider the agreement made by Lucius III with Frederic Barbarossa, at Verona. But we wish to call attention to the reasons that Innocent III adduced to justify his severity, on account of the serious consequences they entailed. "The civil law," says the Pope, "punishes traitors with confiscation of their property and death; it is only out of kindness that the lives of their children are spared. All the more then should we excommunicate and confiscate the property of those who are traitors to the faith of Jesus Christ; for it is an infinitely greater sin to offend the Divine Majesty than to attack the majesty of the sovereign."[1]
[1] Letter of March 25, 1199, to the magistrates of Viterbo, Ep. ii, 1.
Whether this comparison be justified or not, it is certainly most striking. Later on Frederic II and others will quote it to justify their severity.
The Lateran Council in 1215 made the laws of Innocent III canons of the universal Church; it declared all heretics excommunicated, and delivered them over to the State to receive due punishment. This _animadversio debita_ entailed banishment with all its consequences and confiscation. The council also legislated against the abettors of heresy, even if they were princes, and ordered the despoiling of all rulers who neglected to enforce the ecclesiastical law in their domains.[1]
[1] Labbe, _Concilia_, vol. xi, col. 148-150; _Decretales_, cap. xiii, _De hæreticis_, lib. v, tit. vii.
In practice, Innocent III, although very severe towards obdurate heretics, was extremely kind to the ignorant and heretics in good faith. While he banished the Patarins from Viterbo,[1] and razed their houses to the ground, he at the same time protected, against the tyranny of an archpriest of Verona, a society of mystics, the Humiliati, whose orthodoxy was rather doubtful. When, after the massacre of the Albigenses, Pope Innocent was called upon to apply the canon law in the case of Raymond, Count of Toulouse, and to transfer the patrimony of his father to Simon de Montfort, he was the first to draw back from such injustice. Although a framer of severe laws against heresy, he was ready to grant dispensations, when occasion arose.