The inquisitors themselves had no scruples on the subject...

The inquisitors themselves had no scruples on the subject, and condescended to no subterfuges respecting it, but always held that their condemnation of a heretic was a sentence of death. They showed this in averting the pollution of a Church by not uttering these sentences within the sacred precincts, this portion of the ceremony of an auto de fé being performed in the public square. One of their teachers in the thirteenth century, copied by Bernard Gui in the fourteenth, argues: “The object of the Inquisition is the destruction of heresy. Heresy cannot be destroyed unless heretics are destroyed: heretics cannot be destroyed unless their defenders and fautors are destroyed, and this is effected in two ways, viz., when they are converted to the true Catholic faith, or when, on being abandoned to the secular arm, they are corporally burned.”


Lea, Henry Charles. A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (Complete - Volume 1, 2 and 3) (pp. 576-577). Stingray. Kindle Edition.

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