Book contents
Question 5
from PART III
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2015
Summary
QUESTION about the status of the witnesses. Note that excommunicates are allowed to litigate and give testimony in any case involving the Faith, as are participants and associates in the charges, and the infamous, and criminal serfs against their masters. Also, a sorcerer is allowed to give testimony against a sorcerer in the same way that a heretic is allowed to do so against a heretic, though in default of other proofs and always against and never for. This is also the case with his wife, children and friends (demonstrated by Chapter “Filii,” Liber Sextus, “Heretics”). The reason for this is that their testimony is more effective as proof.
The first group is explained in Chapter “In fidei” (“Heretics” in the same place): “In favor of the Faith We grant that, in the business of the inquisition of heretical depravity, excommunicates and|participants or associates in the charges should be admitted in default of other proofs against heretics and their believers, harborers, abettors and defenders, if, on the basis of plausible conjectures and the number of witnesses or the quality of both the persons deposing and those against whom the case is lodged and the depositions given or on the basis of other circumstances, those giving this testimony are presumed not to be speaking falsehoods.”
When it is presumed that perjurers are deposing through zeal for the Faith is explained in the cited Chapter “Accusatus” § “Licet,” where it says, “Although perjurers are debarred, nonetheless, if those who, in the presence … ” and below, “ … if on the basis of manifest indications it appears that it is not through fickleness of spirit or the instigation of hatred or corruption by money but through zeal for the Orthodox Faith that these people wish to correct their statement and to reveal now what they previously concealed, then in favor of the faith, unless there is some obstacle, their attestations should be upheld, both against themselves and the others.”
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- The Hammer of WitchesA Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, pp. 512 - 513Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009