17. Even if she refutes the evidence and accounts for all the separate charges, they neither notice nor record it. The charges retain their strength and validity, no matter how well her answers strip them away. They just order her to be led away in chains, so that she may carefully consider whether she wishes to persist in her obstinacy. For she is already obstinate, since she has defended herself. In fact, if she thoroughly vindicates herself, then this is new evidence, since naturally they say that she would not be so eloquent if she were not a witch.
18. After she has considered matters, they lead her back in again the next day and read the decree of torture to her, just as if she had not said anything in reply to the accusations and refuted them.
19. However, before he tortures her, the torturer leads her aside. So that she may not strengthen herself against the pain with some kind of magic charm, he shaves and searches her entire body—even that part by which her sex shows is most impudently searched. Of course to this day nothing has ever been found.
20. But why not do that to a woman when it is also done to consecrated priests, even by the inquisitors and ecclesiastical officials of Church princes? For German judges do not consider the brute thunderbolts which the bull Coena casts at those people who try clerics without the special and specific permission of the Apostolic Chair. But the inquisitors make sure that the most pious princes, those most obedient to the Roman See, learn nothing and thus do not rein in the trials.
21. Once Gaia has been searched and shaved, she is tortured so that she recounts the truth, that is, she simply pronounces herself to be guilty. Whatever else she might say is not the truth, nor can it be.
22. However, they subject her to torture of the first kind, that is, the more mild kind, which one should understand this way: it is actually very severe, but it is mild in comparison with the following kinds. Therefore, if she confesses they say and circulate that she confessed without torture.
23. Who among the princes and others who hear this would not think that she is most certainly guilty, since she admitted of her own accord without torture that she is guilty?
24. After this confession she is executed without a thought. She is executed even if she did not confess, for once the torture has begun then the die has been cast, she can no longer escape, she must die.
25. So either she confesses or she does not. Whatever happens, she is done for in either case. If she confesses, the matter is clear, as I said, and she is executed. Any retraction is made completely in vain, as we showed above. If she does not confess, then the torture is repeated two, three, or four times. Whatever the judges want is permitted. For there is no rule governing the duration, severity, or repetition of torture in excepted crimes. The judges do not think that they have committed any sin here which they will have to confront in the court of their own conscience.
26. Should Gaia in her torment roll her eyes in agony or stare, then this is new evidence. If she rolls her eyes, look! they say, she is searching for her concubine! If she stares, look! they say, she has already found him, she is looking at him. But if she does not break her silence after several rounds of torture, if her face is twisted in pain, if she sinks into unconsciousness, etc., they shout that she is laughing or sleeping during the torture, that she is using the sorcery of silence, and she must be so much the guiltier. How fitting then that she be burned alive. This was recently done to several women who did not want to confess despite being tortured repeatedly.
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