IT being noted that, while only mortal enemies are debarred from bearing witness, as was discussed above in Question Five, it perhaps seems to a judge to be too murky or difficult a matter to determine such enmity on the basis of the discussions in the preceding chapter, and that the accused person or his legal representative would not be willing to acquiesce readily in his determination about this topic, that is, what is or is not mortal enmity, other methods should be described by which a judge comes to know of such enmity, so that he will by no means condemn an innocent person in this way, but will punish the guilty with due justice. These methods may be crafty or even deceitful, but the judge can nonetheless follow them for the sake of the Faith and of the common good, since even the Apostle says, “Being cunning, I caught them by deceit” [2 Cor. 12: 16]. In particular, these are methods followed in the case of those denounced people who have a bad reputation or those who do not even have the finger pointed at them by some indication of the deed, although the judge may follow them concerning any denounced people when they allege enmity against those giving depositions and want to learn the names of the witnesses by any means.

The first method is that the person denounced or his advocate is given a copy of the protocol on one side, that is, separately, and the names of those giving depositions or making denunciations on the other, but not in the order in which they give the depositions. Instead, they are listed in such a way that the name of the witness who is first in the copy is sixth or seventh in the list and the second in the copy is next to last or last. Hence, the denounced person will not to be able to recognize who gives this or that deposition and who is the first or second in his copy. Given this, he will either claim them all as enemies or not. If all, the denounced person will all the more quickly be censured for lying when the reason for the enmity is examined by the judge.