[1] _Ordonnances des roys de France_, vol. xii, pp. 319, 320.
Louis IX re-enacted this law in the following terms: "We decree that our barons and magistrates ... do their duty in prosecuting heretics." "_De ipsis festinanter faciant quod debebunt_."[1] These words in themselves are not very clear, and, if we were to interpret them by the customs of a few years later, we might think that they referred to the death penalty, even the stake; but comparing them with similar expressions used by Lucius III and Innocent III, we see that they imply merely the penalty of banishment.
[2] Ibid., vol. i, p. 51; Labbe, _Concilia_, vol. vii, col. 171.
However, a canon of the Council of Toulouse in 1229 seems to make the meaning of these words clear, at least for the future. It decreed that all heretics and their abettors are to be brought to the nobles and the magistrates to receive due punishment, _ut animadversione debita puniantur_. But it adds that "heretics, who, _through fear of death_ or any other cause, except their own free will, return to the faith, are to be imprisoned by the bishop of the city to do penance, that they may not corrupt others;" the bishop is to provide for their needs out of the property confiscated.[1] The fear of death here seems to imply that the _animadversione debita_ meant the death penalty. That would prove the elasticity of the formula. At first it was a legal penalty which custom interpreted to mean banishment and confiscation; later on it meant chiefly the death penalty; and finally it meant solely the penalty of the stake. At any rate, this canon of the Council of Toulouse must be kept in mind; for we will soon see Pope Gregory IX quoting it.
[1] D'Achery, _Spicilegium_, in-fol., vol. i, p. 711.
In Italy, Frederic II promulgated on November 22, 1220, an imperial law which, in accordance with the pontifical decree of March 25, 1199, and the Lateran Council of 1215, condemned heretics to every form of banishment, to perpetual infamy, together with the confiscation of their property, and the annulment of all their civil acts and powers. It is evident that the emperor was influenced by Innocent III, for, having declared that the children of heretics could not inherit their father's property, he adds a phrase borrowed from the papal decree of 1199, viz., "that to offend the divine majesty was a far greater crime than to offend the majesty of the emperor."[1]