It might be supposed that relaxation meant either release from custody or mitigation of punishment. The Holy Office, however, rose superior to verbal conventionalities, and defined the term to mean that the accused person should, after condemnation, be handed over to the civil power. It was equally well understood that the duty of the civil power was to burn him alive. The condemned was delivered to the magistrates with an appeal for mercy, which every one knew to be a transparent piece of hypocrisy. The Church was mainly responsible for these ferocious laws, and insisted on their being carried out, salving its conscience by giving out publicly that it had nothing more to do with the matter. Pope Boniface VIII embodied in the Canon Law rigid instructions for the punishment of those condemned by the Inquisition, and all magistrates who failed to carry out those instructions were cautioned to speak only in a general way of punishment, though the only penalty for obstinate heresy recognized by the Church was death by fire. Usually the civil authorities carried out willingly enough the behests of the Church, but they made occasional protests, and relaxation was not always treated as equivalent to death. Several of these protests are on record, but they were overruled, and the magistrates did their duty. Under the teaching of the Church the best men of the time regarded heresy as a manifest crime and the burning of heretics as an act of righteousness. Sham and enforced conversions were numerous, and resulted in a large number of relapses, which were punished mercilessly, though not always by burning. The definition of relapse became more and more difficult, and some Inquisitors were not disposed to bring every trifle under that category. Bernard de Caux and his successor, Jean de St. Pierre, usually condemned to imprisonment, and the latter frequently protested against the indiscriminate burnings inflicted by the civil authorities of Toulouse. It is indeed remarkable that burnings were not more numerous. Thus Bernard Gui, the celebrated Inquisitor of Toulouse, is said to have declared that between 1308 and 1328 he had put to death 637 heretics. It appears, however, from the records that this figure represents the total number of sentences passed by him; of these only 40 were of condemnations to the stake of living persons, and 67 more were of persons already dead and therefore not personally interested in the proceedings. Evidently the chief efforts of the Inquisitors were directed to the exaction of confessions, with, of course, confiscation of goods, rather than to create a host of martyrs, an occasional cremation being merely a salutary example. The Church was not slow to profit by the experience of the Inquisition, and its spiritual courts rapidly extended the use of torture and other methods of persuasion. Probably an even more disastrous effect was produced upon the civil law