METHOD Eight of bringing to an end and finishing proceedings involving the Faith and of passing sentence 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 have confessed heresy, to be penitent, and not otherwise to have relapsed in fact. This is when the denounced person confesses |in court before the bishop and inquisitor under oath that is it true that for such-and such length of time he remained and persisted in that sort of heretical depravity for which he was denounced or in another, and believed and adhered to it, but afterwards, at the urging of the bishop and of the others, wishes to veer back and return to the embrace of the Church and to abjure both that heresy and every other one and to make satisfaction in the manner that they choose to ordain, and it is not found that he ever made an abjuration of any other kind of heresy but is now prepared to make an abjuration with a ready spirit.

The procedure to be followed in the case of such a person is as follows. Granted that he remained for many years in this heresy and in any other ones, and believed and practiced them, and led many others to errors, if in the end he agrees to abjure those heresies in reality and to make appropriate satisfaction at the discretion of the bishop and ecclesiastical judge, he is not to be handed over to the secular arm to be stricken with the death penalty, nor, if he is a cleric, is he to be defrocked, but he is to be granted mercy according to Chapter “Ad abolendam,” § “Praesenti” (Extra, “Heretics”). Having first abjured the heretical depravity, he is to be remanded to life imprisonment | according to the second Chapter “Excommunicamus” § “Si quis,” once the benefit of Absolution has been granted to him and what is customarily enjoined upon such people according to Chapter “Ut Officium” has been enjoined upon him, provided that careful precaution is taken to make sure that he is not returning fraudulently with feigned pretence.