Therefore while these things were happening, Urban called to the aforesaid Basilium who by the same pope was given the chief role in torturing the said cardinals, because the order, I saw, was sufficiently agreeable to him.He was of a malignant nature, a conspicuous pirate who hated clerics and ecclesiastics and those who served God, who in his youth always tortured captured Christians and was accustomed to live off ill gotten gains and robbery, but as, at last, his piratical wiles deserted him and served him to poor effect, he approached the said Urban who made him a brother of the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem (the Knights Hospitaller), not on account of his piety, but so that he was able to be a guest of the priory when he was in the Kingdom of Sicily....

In Raymond's presence, in a public meeting, the said Urban had the same cardinals led out of the underground dungeon in which they had been imprisoned and brought into his presence. He offered them pardon, if they should make a clear confession, on the spot, to the charge he had laid against them. They said they were innocent and that thanks were due to them, but nevertheless they made passionate pleas to Urban. He ordered them to be put back in the same place or rather sump as before. There they remained until his departure from that castle on the 8th day of the aforesaid month of August. They were in a wretched state and it could be said, as I have often heard remarked, that they were tortured by hunger, cold, thirst and lice, and that never was the heart of Urban moved by pity for them. When it came to feeling pity for their case, his heart was harder than Deucalion's stones or flint. He heard entreaties offered to him on their behalf from many quarters and, I believe, would rather have endured death than restore them to their former state of liberty. But some said that if the cardinals had confessed publicly, when they had been led out, Urban would have wished to strip them of their office and hand them over to Raymond and his companions for execution, together with some who supported the cause of Clement. Urban decided to conduct a second enquiry, through investigation, concerning those cardinals. Within three days after he had held them in the castle, as it was reported, he brought out me and the others named above, in the evening twilight, to a large cellar in the castle, for the purpose of making such an enquiry. This was the cellar that lord Otto, ruler of Tarentum, had had made during his reign. As we all stood there, the aforesaid lord, the cardinal de Sangro, was brought out by guards with iron shackles on his feet, wearing an ankle length tunic without a lining and a short double coat round him. This was because of the strong, very cold winds that often blow round the castle, located as it is on a large, open and high mountain site. When he had come almost to the end of the cellar, he saw there ropes hanging from the roof, prepared for him. He was swiftly stripped of his clothes by the guards who had brought him there and left with just trousers and shirt. He was then tightly bound by those butchers. When he saw this, Francis (the pope's nephew), who was standing not far off, began to laugh loudly. I, on the other hand, who had a strong affection for the cardinal, began to shake and groan, and there was nowhere suitable for us to escape.......

Theoderic de Niem, De Schismate book L