THE POPE BLESSES TORTURE

For more than 500 years in Europe, from the l200s to the l700s, including the heyday of the Renaissance, torturing accused criminals was standard operating procedure most everywhere except England. This was the primary means of determining guilt (or rarely innocence) in a criminal investigation, not eyewitnesses, not physical evidence, hut confession. One of the prime reasons that the practice 0f torture survived and thrived was the stamp of approval given it early on by the enormously influential Catholic Church.
In 1252, Pope Innocent IV sanctioned torture as a way to help officials of the Holy Inquisition force heretics to confess. His papal bull ordained: "If torture is appropriate for those who break the laws of men, then it is more than fitting for those who break the laws of God." At first, Priests had to farm out their iron boot work to local lay thugs, hut just four years after in 1256, a second papal bull gave priests the right to absolve each other for such "irregularities."
England, to its credit throughout its History, rarely authorized legal torture. Cynics claim British judges were more han willing to convict without the fiction of forced confession.) And that refusal to ick and pincer infuriated the Vatican. Pope Clement V wrote to King Edward II (1284-1327): "We hear that you forbid torture as contrary to the laws of your land; but no state can over-ride Canon Law, Our Law. Therefore, I command you at once to submit these men to torture You have already imperilled your soul as a favourer of heretics." The English king in this instance caved in, and hundreds suffered.