Innocent IV authorizes torture for Inquisition

May 15, 1252

By the bull Ad Extirpanda, the pope allowed inquisitors to use torture to extract confessions from suspected heretics, provided no blood was shed and no limbs broken. The fine distinctions of medieval legal theory were folded into centuries of judicial cruelty. The bull specified that torture could be applied only once, a limitation that inquisitors circumvented by declaring each session a continuation rather than a repetition.