METHOD Twelve of bringing an end to and finishing proceedings involving the Faith is when the person denounced for heretical depravity, after a careful examination of the merits of the proceedings with a good panel of legal experts, is found to be caught in heresy by evidence of the deed or the legal production of witnesses, but not by his own testimony. This is when the denounced person is legally convicted of some heretical depravity either through evidence of the deed in that he practiced heresy publicly, or through legal witnesses against whom the denounced person could raise no legal objection, but nonetheless the person convicted and caught in this way firmly persists in his denial and without exception according to the notes made by Hostiensis in his Summa (Title “Heretics” § “Qualiter quis in heresim deprehendatur”) and to the discussion above (Question Thirty-four).

The procedure to be followed in the case of such a person is as follows. He is to be held in harsh imprisonment, in fetters and an iron collar, and he should be frequently and earnestly warned by the officials, | together and separately, in their own person and through others, that he should reveal the truth to them, indicating to him that he should do this and confess his error in order to be granted mercy after first abjuring the heretical depravity, but that if he is unwilling and persists in his denial, in the end he will be abandoned to the secular arm and will not be able to escape temporal death.

If, after being informed of this and given some time, he continues to persist in his denial, the bishop and officials should, sometimes together, sometimes separately, and sometimes by themselves, sometimes through other respectable men, bring first one witness, then another before themselves. They should instruct each to consider carefully the deposition that he has made and whether he spoke the truth or not, because he is not damning himself eternally and someone else on earth, and because he would be afraid to tell them at least secretly, so that this denounced person would not die unjustly.