The duty of the Inquisitor was the detection of heresy—that is, to ascertain the secret thoughts of the accused. External acts were of consequence only as they indicated a particular frame of mind. This was a task possible to omniscience only, but the Inquisitor willingly undertook it, preferring to sacrifice a hundred innocent persons rather than let one guilty person escape. The safeguards of justice were nominal; it was found convenient to assume guilt from the outset. In the secular courts there were a few provisions which gave an accused some faint chance of obtaining justice; but these, under the pressure of the Inquisition, gradually fell into abeyance. Even death was no escape so far as the culprit’s property was concerned. At Ferrara the Bishop and the Inquisitor squabbled for thirty-two years over the remains of a heretic, and in 1313 a Florentine family found themselves the victims of a prosecution brought against an ancestor who had died sixty-three years before.
Delation was an indispensable and certainly very useful feature of the Inquisition’s procedure. A woman of Toulouse in 1254 furnished a list of 169 persons incriminated by her, and all the names, with addresses, were carefully noted for later use. Each of these persons would be persuaded to supply further names, and so the Inquisition’s net was constantly growing larger. To give information against others was the truest sign of repentance, and the Inquisitors were untiring in their efforts to secure it. In order to elicit confession every conceivable means were employed: if kindness seemed to promise the best results, kindness would be shown; an emissary would visit the prisoner’s cell urging confession and promising mercy—with the mental reservation that severity was the truest mercy to a heretic. Sometimes a man’s wife and children were permitted in his dungeon that they might work upon his feelings. On occasion protracted delay was used to break the prisoner’s spirit; he would be tried, receive no definite sentence, and be left in gaol perhaps for many years. Thus a woman who was imprisoned and confessed in 1297 was not formally sentenced for thirteen years, while at Carcassonne a man made his confession in 1321 after an imprisonment of thirty years.
If, on the other hand, it was thought desirable to hasten the sinner’s repentance, the confinement was made so terribly harsh that it frequently brought about the result desired. Torture had not been greatly employed in the earlier half of the thirteenth century, but Pope Innocent’s Bull of 1252 expressly authorized its use by the secular authorities to discover heresy. The secular courts were slow to adopt it, but its rapid extension by the Holy Office showed how useful it was. Althoughnot frequently mentioned in the records, various indications prove that it was freely employed. Not only accused persons, but witnesses whose statements appeared doubtful or unsatisfactory, were put to the torture; and the Inquisition had an ingenious way of manufacturing witnesses, for a person who had confessed his own offence would be treated as a witness to the guilt of others, and was tortured to betray them. Confessions made under torture were subject to confirmation; if they were not confirmed, but denied, the accused was treated as an obstinate impenitent and perjurer, and handed over to the secular arm.
Lea remarks that “the matter-of-course way in which rules destructive of every principle of justice are laid down by men presumably correct in the ordinary affairs of life affords a wholesome lesson as to the power of fanaticism to warp the intellect of the most acute.â€�[25]Such rules as there were for the protection of accused persons were systematically set aside, and the lives of even devout Catholics hung on the merest trifles and technicalities. A new crime termed “suspicion of heresyâ€� was invented, and of this three degrees were formulated—light suspicion, vehement suspicion, and violent suspicion, all of which offered ample scope to inquisitorial ingenuity. A merchant found it a dangerous civility to bow to acquaintances who, unknown to him, were heretics. Two witnesses were required to prove heresy, but at a pinch one was made to suffice, and if the one witness revoked testimony in favour of the accused his revocation annulled the evidence, while if the original testimony was adverse to the defence it was therevocation that became void! The minimum age of witnesses was also liable to fluctuation. By the Italian civil law it was twenty years, but the Holy Office was not particular to a year or two, and a case is recorded in which the evidence of a boy of ten was accepted against his own family and sixty-six other people who had listened to a heretical sermon a year before. Wives, children, and servants could not testify in favour of an accused; against him their evidence was readily accepted. The only thing that disabled a witness was proof that he was actuated by mortal enmity against the accused; but, as the accused was kept in ignorance of the witness’s identity, proof of this sort was made practically impossible.
Witnesses seldom refused to testify. If they did, the torture chamber generally induced them to reconsider the matter; in fact, an unlucky witness ran as great a risk as the defendant of an acquaintance with the rack or the pulleys. Nor was the secrecy of the confessional of much avail, for all priests were instructed to use every means in their power to induce confessions of heresy, and the results were conveyed to the tribunals in a judiciously indirect manner.
All these precautions, thorough and effective as they were, were not thought sufficient, and were supplemented by instructions to the Inquisitors that less evidence was needed to prove heresy than to prove any other crime. The crowning infamy of keeping secret the names of witnesses was a peculiarity of the ecclesiastical procedure, of which its administrators were a little ashamed; but the feeble protests of one or two councils were ignored. As a slight concession to justice the accused was, though rarely, shown a list of names, but without being told which of them applied to his own case; and also a witness would sometimes be sworn in the presence of the accused, butexamined apart. On occasion the wholeof the evidence was withheld from the knowledge of the accused, and if a witness retracted his testimony the fact was not revealed to the interested party. In practice it was found best to leave all these details to the Inquisitors’ discretion.
The field which all this secrecy opened to malice, slander, and perjury may be faintly imagined. Serious abuses in connection with the handling of evidence were exposed in the fourteenth century by conscientious Inquisitors themselves, and the fact suggests that an appalling amount of injustice remained undiscovered. The extraordinary rule by which a perjured witness was to be punished, but his testimony was to hold good, was a development that might have been expected from an organization bent on the manufacture of criminals. And, because it was fairly safe, perjury by witnesses for the prosecution was by no means uncommon.
The whole tendency of the Inquisitorial procedure was to afford as few opportunities as possible for an effective answer to a charge of heresy. Inquisitors were expressly ordered not to worry about legal forms, but to extract confessions. In the early part of the thirteenth century the accused was gratuitously allowed an advocate, but, as the lawyer entrusted with this delicate duty rendered himself liable to a charge of heresy if he showed zeal on behalf of his client, the office became little sought after, and the benefit inappreciable. In time the practice was more honoured in the breach than in the observance; and, as the Inquisition could deprive an advocate of his papers and put him in the dangerous position of a witness, it is doubtful whether his services were of much value, or, indeed, whether, in many cases, they were rendered at all. It was sometimes impossible to secure advocates,and instances are known in which prisoners, in despair, declined to exercise their right to call for copies of the evidence against them. The Inquisitors then placed on record that the privilege had been offered and refused, without superfluous detail as to reasons. Denial of the accusation of heresy, or refusal to plead, rendered the person charged liable to torture or the stake. If the Inquisitors did happen to break the rules and expose themselves to appeal against their judgments, there were manuals available in which they were instructed in the numerous devices and deceptions by which they could escape responsibility. An acquittal never took place; the Inquisitors were expressly authorized to pronounce no one innocent, as it was always desirable to leave a loophole for future proceedings. The rare verdict, “Not proven,� was the utmost length to which the mercy of the Holy Office would extend.
Strange though it may appear, what the Inquisition really wanted was the salvation of the sinner’s soul, the appropriation of his goods being quite a secondary consideration. Its penalties were benevolently designed to wash away the stain of mortal guilt, and thus prepare him for a future state of bliss. Assuming the reality of this state, its enjoyments would certainly be enhanced by contrast with the heretic’s earthly experiences. The exact condition of the soul, however, being difficult to ascertain, the chastisement of the body was believed to afford the most efficacious means of purification. Accordingly the Church, in its tenderness, did not condemn to death; it merely withdrew its protection from the unrepentant. It did not confiscate his property; all it did was to declare him guilty of a crime which rendered him incapable of holding property. If it imposeda fine, it was because the proceeds were to be employed in works of charity, which, of course, included the upkeep of its own organization. The ultimate disposal of the condemned heretic could safely be left in the hands of the obedient civil power.
The Church must receive whatever credit may be due for its kindly intentions, though they sometimes worked out strangely. Almost always the heretic came off disastrously, but there were episodes of mildness for which it is not easy to account. When, at the end of the thirteenth century, an Inquisitor was murdered, the man who hired the assassins was merely ordered to present himself to the Pope and receive penance. Even his neglect to do this was visited by nothing worse than a mild order to arrest him if he could be found. We shall meet with more of this unaccountable clemency.
The light penances imposed by the Inquisition were Prayers, Churchgoing, Discipline, Fasting, Pilgrimages, and Fines. As punishments these penances do not sound excessive, but, as interpreted by the elastic discretion of the Holy Office, they could make a penitent extremely ill at ease, and when several were combined in one sentence life became a heavy burden. During a long pilgrimage a man’s family might starve. In 1322 pilgrimages were imposed on three men who nearly twenty years before had seen some Waldenses in their father’s house without knowing that they were heretics. Fines naturally gave opportunities for extortion which only exceptional men were able to refrain from using. As already mentioned, the Inquisition appropriated the property of all persons sentenced for heresy. A man who died in 1252, before completing a five years’ pilgrimage, left an estate of twenty livres, and the Inquisitors promptly claimed the whole of this immense sum. Bail was simply another word for bribery, and extortionbecame a system exploited to the utmost by men who were sleeplessly on the look-out for plunder.
The second grade of penance was the compulsory wearing of yellow crosses, sewn on to the clothing as an indication that the wearer had been condemned for heresy. This badge, which corresponded to thesan benitocommonly used in Spain, was so great a disgrace that efforts were constantly made to avoid it; but though, for special reasons, permission was sometimes given to dispense with it, usually it was insisted upon, and escape from the vigilant eye of the Inquisition was impossible.
Penance became far more severe in the third grade, which was imprisonment for life. A comprehensive penalty of this character was incurred by every one who did not come forward within the time specified by the Edict of Grace, confess his own sins, and denounce those of others. The Inquisition of Toulouse, between 1246 and 1248, records 192 cases, of which 127 were of perpetual imprisonment, 6 for ten years, 16 for an indefinite term in the discretion of the Church, and the remaining 43 were of absentees. The Council of Narbonne, in 1244, made the sentence invariably for life. The confinement was solitary; the diet consisted of bread and water, and in the harsher sentence the penitent was chained by the feet, sometimes by the hands as well, and, in extreme cases, to the wall of a dark, noisome dungeon. It is not surprising that prisoners did not attain a green old age.
The Inquisition reserved the right, in the exercise of its discretion, to mitigate or re-impose its penalties. This right was frequently used, especially in regard to the wearing of crosses; but seldom did the prisoner find his punishment any the lighter. If he had the unusual good fortune to be released, he might, for the slightest lapse, be punished again, and this time without mercy and withoutthe formality of a fresh trial. Every victim relinquished by the Holy Office was a ticket-of-leave man, liable at any moment to utter ruin. He could never feel sure that something might not be discovered, perhaps a youthful indiscretion of his grandfather’s, which would require his appearance before the dread Tribunal, or that for some unguarded act or expression he might not bring himself under the most effective of all excommunications—that of the Holy Inquisition.
By decree of Innocent III in 1215 and the Bull of Innocent IV in 1252, confiscation of the property of heretics and their children was made a necessary penalty, and all temporal rulers were required to enforce it. Of the proceeds one-third was to go to the State, one-third to the Papacy, and one-third to the Inquisition. Each party, as a matter of course, tried to cheat the others; but the wily Inquisitors almost invariably obtained the lion’s share of the spoil, which was, nominally at any rate, devoted to the furtherance of their own method of propagating the Gospel. Between them the victim had as much chance of escape as a mouse in a trap. The Church had some difficulty in getting confiscation sanctioned by the State, but it succeeded.
The heretic was not permitted to dispose of his property, but if he did succeed in doing so the transaction was void; and, even though the property had passed through several hands, the last possessor was cheerfully deprived of it. As debts due to heretics and securities for loans by them were also void, business became almost impossible. Numerous complaints of the Inquisition’s rapacity show that no possessor of property felt safe. It is not easy to understand how society could continue to hold together when a stimulus was thusdeliberately given to fraud, jealousy, quarrelling, litigation, commercial anarchy, and domestic misery. Possibly religious zeal was the original motive of the folly, but when persecution is made a paying concern the reins are given to greed and injustice of every conceivable kind.
Venice made a stand against ecclesiastical corruption, and in 1289 enacted that the whole proceeds of confiscation should go to the State; and in the latter part of the fifteenth century Piedmont adopted a similar course, allowing the Inquisition only its expenses.
A further abuse was that, from the beginning of its career, the Inquisition frequently made confiscations before the accused had been convicted, sometimes before he confessed. In 1319 sentence was passed in southern France on a man who had been charged in 1284, yet in 1301 the officials were quarrelling over his estate. These legal robberies were carried out with relentless severity, everything being seized to the last penny. On arrest for suspicion of heresy, the Holy Office took possession of a person’s property, promising that if the charge was not proven (a rare event) some of it would be returned for the support of his family. In the meantime the family were turned into the streets to starve, or to live on such charity as they could get. The case of one secret heretic, Gherardo, a rich noble of Florence and consul of the city, was a bad one. Between sixty and seventy years after his death the Inquisitor of the city started a successful persecution against his memory, and eleven of his descendants, who were not heretics, were included in the condemnation, and presumably reduced to penury.
It was confiscation that kept alive religious persecution, because the heretics were ingeniously made to furnish the means for their own destruction, and whenall the heretics had been disposed of the languishing state of the Holy Office began to arouse real concern on the part of those who made good livings out of it. Confiscation of property for an assumed crime was one of the most effectual agencies for the destruction of civilization, and it is strange that Rome did not see the error of its ways when countries that had no Inquisition were increasing in prosperity and happiness.
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 bestmen 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 of Europe, the increased severity and flagrant injustice of which are largely traceable to the influence of the Holy Office.
TheInquisition had uphill work before it in the South of France. There was plenty of heresy, but also plenty of popular sympathy with it. The Church’s repressive powers were not fully organized, the clergy were unpopular, the Bishops looked with a jealous eye on the Inquisition, and the Papal commands to assist the Inquisitors were frequently disobeyed. The Dominican priesthood, however, was burning with zeal, and succeeded in so far inflaming the popular feeling as to be able to commit serious acts of persecution without episcopal protest. The notorious Inquisition of Toulouse was set up in 1233, and, although for some years the Bishops maintained their superior jurisdiction, the Inquisitors seized every opportunity to disregard it and act independently. A revolting case occurred in 1234, when a dying woman confessed her heresy to the Bishop of Toulouse under the impression that he was a heretic Bishop. She was carried off on her bed and burnt, and the Bishop was able to go back to an interrupted dinner and return thanks to God for his achievement.
The popular sentiment vented itself many times in risings and tumults, especially at Albi and Toulouse, but with only temporary effect, though in 1234 a civil war broke out in Narbonne which lasted for three years. Count Raymond of Toulouse (the seventh of his name)was, like his predecessor, placed in a very difficult position between a persecuting Church and an angry people. His indifference to religion exposed him to the accusation of heresy, and, life being unbearable with the Church at constant enmity, he was compelled to persecute his own people, and his natural slackness in that unpleasant task kept him plentifully supplied with trouble. Bigotry was at that time less tinctured with financial greed than it afterwards became; the persecutors were mostly good men, whose sincerity brings into stronger relief the appalling results of their actions.
By about 1237 the Inquisition had established a definite supremacy over the Bishops, and reduced the terror-stricken people to obedience—a result to which the conversion of Raymond Gros, one of the heretical leaders, strikingly contributed. By the execution, two years later, of 180 Cathari at Montwimer, the heretical sect received a blow from which it never recovered. Count Raymond, however, actually succeeded in getting the Inquisition suspended in his dominions for three years, during which time his people were at least able to breathe; but by 1241 the Inquisitors, knowing the negligence of the Bishops and emphasizing to Rome the growing power of heresy, were able to resume active persecution. In that year occurred the death of Pope Gregory IX, one of the principal founders of the Inquisition, and for two years the Papal throne was virtually vacant. But the Inquisition had sufficient authority to proceed with vigour, and that it did so is shown by the large number of sentences and the speed with which the criminal list was got through. At the small town of Montauban, in one week of May, 1242, no fewer than 252 persons were sentenced for heresy—a plain indication that the infection was general. The punishments were mostly penances, but some of them involved real hardship. Three pilgrimages—one of 500 miles—for eating at the same table with heretics was a severe return for a friendly action, and showed the need of carefully choosing one’s company. These harsh penalties became so frequent that some localities were almost depopulated.
The massacre of a whole tribunal of Inquisitors and their Familiars in 1242, at a castle in the neighbourhood of Toulouse, was followed by war, in which Count Raymond was defeated; and his reconciliation with the Church marked the triumph of the Inquisition. A determined band of heretics threw themselves into the strong castle of Mont Ségur, and held out till 1244, when the place was captured by treachery and 205 men and women were cast into the flames. The energetic labours of the Inquisitors extended over half Languedoc, and some thousands of heresy cases were dealt with in the space of two years. Count Raymond, who had, in the latter part of his life, become a vigorous persecutor, died in 1249, and the Inquisition, relieved of its doubtful ally, had a halcyon time for the next twenty years. A more troublous period followed, for with the diminution of the power of great nobles, such as the Counts of Toulouse and Foix, that of the Crown became consolidated, and men began to turn to it for relief from the insufferable tyranny of the Inquisition. Opposition to its secret and arbitrary influence arose, not from heretics only, but also from good Catholics, who perceived that the land was being ruined, and whose humanity was outraged by the constant use of torture. With its superior concentration of purpose, the Inquisition fully held its own until, in 1291, Philippe le Bel, the King of France, ordered his officials to disobey the commands of the Inquisitors, except in the case of confessed heresy. Under threat of excommunication Philippe came to an understanding with the Pope which lasted for two years,when the quarrel broke out afresh, and the Carcassonne Inquisition had to suspend operations for three months.
A case occurred in 1300 which illustrates the power of the Inquisition. The Pope, Boniface VIII, had sworn to burn all the inhabitants of Carcassonne, because one of its citizens had declined to bribe a Papal Cardinal when proffering complaints. Gastel Fabre, the man’s father, who had died in 1278, was declared a heretic (the documents are believed to be forgeries); an ineffectual appeal was made, but the man’s estates were confiscated, and so long after as 1329 the bones of his wife were exhumed by the vengeful Inquisition. The sharp quarrels which arose early in the century between the Franciscans and the Dominicans led to the powers of the Inquisition being in some respects curtailed, and thus brought about a slackening of persecution, which proved to be only temporary. A more decided check was experienced in 1308, when Pope Clement V and his Cardinals gave a judgment against the Holy Office, which was considered responsible for the evil condition of the South of France.
Certain reforms were outlined by the Council of Vienne in 1312, particularly in regard to the use of torture, the improvement of the loathsome dungeons of the Inquisition, and the conduct of its officials; but the restrictions imposed were evaded with the customary ingenuity, and soon became a dead letter. With the accession of John XXII to the Papal chair matters became easier for the Inquisition. In 1319 the esteemed Franciscan, Bernard Delicieux, the only man who had dared to offer consistent opposition to the Holy Office, was tried on numerous charges, tortured in spite of his advanced age, and condemned to degradation from Holy orders and life-long imprisonment in chains, with a diet of bread and water, in the prison at Carcassonne.Under these severities his death in a few months relieved the Inquisition of a formidable enemy.
The reaction went on rapidly. The cities which had struggled against the Inquisition were reduced to subjection and public repentance in 1319, and the persecutors were at length free to reap the fruits of their victory. The Catharist leaders were sent to the stake, and the heresy became practically extinct. Its fate was not entirely unmerited, but the agency that brought it about must be wholly condemned. It had propagated a queer medley of doctrines, the anti-social effect of which was not fully perceived by their advocates, though the Church understood from the first how its privileges would fare if liberty of thought were allowed to the people.
In that beautiful, sunny land of Languedoc a civilization of splendid promise, reaching out far in advance of the age into civic activities, industry, art, and science, had been developed by an energetic and patriotic people. Unfortunately for them, their civilization was not of the ecclesiastical type, and the Church felt that it had a legitimate grievance. The Inquisition left Languedoc in ruins; it found a garden, and made it a wilderness. It descended upon happy homes, and left them in desolation and mourning. External unity of faith was achieved, but with it the moral debasement of the Church. By the unscrupulous, systematic, and long-continued abuse of power it gained a triumph for the evil effects of which no repentance can atone.
The moving finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your piety nor witShall lure it back to cancel half a line,Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
The moving finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your piety nor witShall lure it back to cancel half a line,Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
The moving finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all your piety nor witShall lure it back to cancel half a line,Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
The only good result of the Inquisition’s activities was one which it never intended. In its greed for money it forgot an equally greedy and much more deserving rival.The Crown, seeing how profitable persecution had become, at length exercised the right, when it possessed the power, to take the proceeds, and seized for more useful purposes the confiscations of heretic property. The estates of a ruined nobility were taken over by the king’s officers, and the Holy Office unwittingly aided the consolidation of a secular power which in the end reduced it to a nullity.
In the year 1233 a relentless Dominican bigot named Friar Robert was appointed Inquisitor for Western Burgundy. This crazy fanatic raged through the north of France, burning large numbers of people. So notorious became his excesses that after some years his commission was withdrawn, and he spent the rest of his days in prison. Persecution was not greatly checked, for the intensity of the general feeling against heresy was such that even the saintly Louis IX declared that the only argument to use with a heretic was to thrust him through with a sword up to the hilt. In the hands of the Dominicans persecution went on vigorously all over France, then a much smaller country than now, and the zeal of the orthodox was frequently stimulated by Papal Bulls urging greater vigour. Milman relates a terrible occurrence in 1239, but does not state that it took place by order of the Inquisition. In the presence of the Archbishop of Rheims, seventeen bishops, and 100,000 persons, no fewer than 183 Manichæans were burnt outside the city of Rheims, and all of them perished without fear.[26]The right of asylum in churches was withdrawn from heretics in 1281 by Pope Martin IV.
Not until 1310, however, did the first formal burning alive by the Inquisition take place in France. TheManichean holocaust, formal enough in a practical sense, appears to have been an irregularity. On May 30 of that year a woman who had advocated free love and other heresies died at the stake with such devotion that the spectators were moved to tears. The sect to which she belonged, the Brethren of the Free Spirit, furnished a good many victims in the course of the next few years, when the Inquisition reached the height of its power. But with the growth and consolidation of the authority of the Crown the Inquisition was absorbed by the secular courts till it became little more than a department of the State. Its comparative impotence was made more perceptible by the removal of the Holy See from Rome to Avignon, and by the Great Schism (1378-1447) which shook the Papacy to its foundations. The wars with the English, which were then so frequent and prolonged, also made conditions unfavourable to the Inquisition by causing the withdrawal of the royal stipend; and the University of Paris to a large extent took its place as an investigator of heresy cases. When the wars were over an attempt was made by Pope Nicholas V in 1451 to revive and increase the activity of persecution, but with no permanent success. So far had the Holy Office become out of touch with the spirit of the times that the roving commissions which were frequently granted to special Inquisitors also failed to re-establish the authority of the institution. The people of Lyons in 1458 were even bold enough to throw their Inquisitor into prison, and it was only with difficulty that he was released. A few years later Jean Laillier, a priest in Paris, spoke his mind freely about the clergy, and the Inquisition did not feel strong enough to burn him. Two other priests, who at mass threw the Host on the floor and trampled on it, committed an unpardonable crime, and duly suffered at the stake.
In the south of France the Waldensians remained powerful in the fourteenth century, even after the terrible persecutions through which they had gone. The most obnoxious of their tenets appears to have been the not unreasonable proposition that the sacraments were valueless when administered by sinful priests. To stamp out this peculiar heresy vigorous efforts were made by Pope Gregory XI in 1375, and a little later great hauls of heretics were made, and many burnings resulted. Men and women were torn from their homes to rot in the overcrowded prisons, yet still the remorseless pontiff reproached the Inquisitors with their slackness, and spurred them to greater energy. One ecclesiastic, St. Vincent Ferrer, hit upon a daring novelty, and tried the effect of kindness; but, although he made many converts, who were content to lose some of their property to save the rest, the Church was dubious about such experiments, and went on methodically with its burnings. In 1393 Inquisitor Borel of Grenoble is credited with having brought to the stake 150 persons in one day. This exceptional achievement was followed by a prolonged lull, and in 1478 Louis XI issued an ordinance limiting the powers of Inquisitors and clearly establishing the supremacy of the State. Five years later the king’s death gave the Church another opportunity, which was quickly utilized. Innocent VIII determined to suppress the Waldensian heresy once for all. He ordered a crusade against the heretics, and after stubborn resistance they submitted. In one valley many of them took refuge in a remote cave, but were discovered and suffocated by the smoke of fires built at its mouth. Relief was once more gained when Louis XII came to the throne of France, and the Waldenses secured a certain liberty of worship until, in the times of the Reformation, they became absorbed in the Calvinist body. So hatedby the Roman Church was the grim faith of Calvin that in 1538 a Grand Inquisitor was burnt for embracing it.[27]A few years later Pius V ordered the Catholics to slay every Huguenot who fell into their hands.
The Inquisition was established in Aragon in 1238, but a long time elapsed before it was organized with anything like efficiency. A nest of Catharans had been rooted out in 1237, but the records are scanty, the principal incident being the stoning to death of an Inquisitor by the inhabitants of Urgel, the chief centre of heresy. Greater vigour was shown at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and Pope Clement VI urged the kings of Aragon and Navarre to track down the many Waldenses who had fled from Toulouse. About the middle of the century the Inquisition was concerned in a heated dispute which arose between the Dominican and Franciscan Orders regarding one of those fatuously futile subjects on which men were roused to the extremity of passion in the Middle Ages. The Franciscans maintained that the blood of Christ after his death remained on earth—a proposition which filled the Pope and the Dominicans with horror. After this interesting question had been wrangled over for 122 years a great debate took place at Rome, when the warmth of the disputants was not moderated by the bitterly cold weather. Neither party could prove its case, but neither would give way, and as the Pope at last forbade further discussion the vital question of what became of Christ’s blood remains to this day unsolved. In Aragon neither the Crown nor the bishops supported the Inquisition with any particular ardour; the burning of heretics was an occasional luxury, confiscations were few, and the Inquisitors had failed togain the popular sympathy. Not until about 1481, when the Spanish Inquisition was established on a sound commercial basis, did the persecutors show great activity or inspire profound terror.
Castile also was little troubled by the Inquisition until the latter part of the fifteenth century. In 1401 Pope Boniface issued a Bull for the repression of heresy, but only a slight effect was produced. It is worth noting that the heresy was not that of daring to think for one’s self (such boldness was then rare in Spain), but the idolatrous worship of plants, trees, and stones—the relics of pagan practices which the Church had incautiously permitted to survive. Aversion to the Papal Inquisition continued until the energetic measures of Ferdinand and Isabella rendered its manifestation dangerous, and smoothed the path of the orthodox.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Italy was in such a state of anarchy, due to the constant wars between its petty States, that heresy found a congenial soil, though the work of the Inquisition was not made easier. Catharism flourished in Lombardy, and propagated itself all over Europe. Its openly taught doctrines were soon met by violent repression. The Waldensian refugees from the south of France settled in the Cottian Alps, where they supported themselves only by the most remarkable industry. The freethinking emperor, Frederick II, did not respond warmly to the urgent appeals made by the Popes to suppress the heretics, for he knew the value of an increasing body of well-conducted and hard-working citizens.
In 1224, however, Pope Honorius appointed two Bishops with special powers, which they at once proceeded to exercise. The first result was an insurrectionat Brescia, in which several churches were burnt. These disturbances were repressed and the ringleaders lightly punished by fines, and it was not until Gregory IX placed the matter in the hands of the Dominicans that satisfactory progress was made. The power of the episcopate had waned, and the Inquisition was free to use its new authority almost as it pleased. It was not welcomed by the people, and its officials were at times roughly handled; but its grip was gradually tightened, largely owing to the zeal and eloquence of the Dominican Giovanni da Vicenza, who performed innumerable miracles, including the raising to life of ten dead persons. This man, whose burning of heretics did not imperil his great reputation as a peacemaker, was appointed Perpetual Inquisitor in 1247, and is believed to have perished in 1265 in a crusade against Manfred, King of Naples. The death in 1250 of Frederick II deprived the heretics of a certain measure of protection, and removed a powerful obstacle to the Inquisition’s activity. The power of bigotry to stifle humane feeling is exhibited by Fra Giovanni Schio, who, though personally one of the gentlest of men, could, after preaching a beautiful sermon on love, calmly have sixty people burnt alive.[28]A still more remarkable figure is that of Peter of Verona, commonly known as St. Peter Martyr, who was one of the most renowned of all Inquisitors. His great gifts of preaching and his wonder-working powers were employed in the suppression of heresy, then rapidly growing in the northern and central parts of Italy. At Milan, and later at Florence, he carried on the holy work of burning, headed an army of the faithful, and in two deadly battles broke the strength of heresy, and with it that of the Ghibelline party, which was opposed to the Papacy.It is said that Peter never broke his fast before sunset, and passed most of the night in prayer—habits which may have had something to do with his persecuting zeal. The murder of this godly man in 1252 by a band of heretics whom he had driven to extremities did not, strangely enough, result in any barbarous vengeance being inflicted on the assassins, who escaped very lightly. One of the perpetrators, after due repentance, was allowed to die peacefully as abeatoof the Dominican Order. He even figures among the saints in the church erected to the memory of the man he helped to murder. None of the guilty men appears to have been executed; and one of them, though a notorious heretic, was only imprisoned after a lapse of forty-three years. In this the Church probably acted shrewdly, for the martyr’s halo and the saint’s wonderful miracles redounded to its credit in a striking degree, and one of the first results was the formation of a society, the Crocesegnati, or Knights of the Cross, by persons of station, who swore on the holy cross to devote their lives to the extermination of heresy and heretics. This society, which had branches in most of the Italian cities, greatly aided the Inquisition, and remained in existence until the nineteenth century.
Another energetic bigot, Rainerio Saccone, formerly a Catharian, extended the power of the Holy Office, supported by repeated Papal Bulls and the appointment of fresh Inquisitors. These efforts were impeded by Ezzelin da Romano, whose evil reputation has been, perhaps, somewhat exaggerated, and who, as a ruler, possessed at least one good quality—that he would permit no religious persecution. In 1241 he was condemned as a heretic—an operation several times repeated without result, until at length, in accordance with time-honoured custom, a crusade was organized against him, one of the Papal Bulls containing a provision that persons found inpossession of stolen property might receive absolution if they applied it to the purposes of the Crusade. At the outset victorious, Ezzelin was at last defeated, and received wounds from which, refusing all aid, he died. The victor, Pallavicino, was, however, no friend of the Inquisition, and, being irritated by the Pope’s ungrateful treatment of him, he used every opportunity to prevent the Inquisitors from carrying on their work. Pallavicino was summoned to the Papal presence to answer for his heresy, and, disregarding the summons, became involved in war, and died in 1268, when besieged in one of his castles.
In spite of occasional but determined opposition, the Inquisition was by this time supreme all over the Peninsula; the temporal power of the Church grew with its triumph, and heretics were burnt in considerable numbers. It was hardly possible, says an Italian writer, for a man to be a Christian and die in his bed.[29]At one small town seventy persons, and at Piacenza, it is said, twenty-eight wagon loads of human beings, were thus put to death. It is curious that of one man who secretly propagated heretical opinions, while professing to be a devout Catholic, many miracles were recorded after his death. When the evidence of his heterodoxy was found to be conclusive, they ceased, and the quarrel which arose about his sanctity lasted for thirty-two years, until the Pope decreed that the charge of heresy was proved, that his bones should be burnt, all his property confiscated, and all sales or transfers of it declared void.
In the kingdom of Naples and Sicily, Charles of Anjou, whose ambition to dominate Italy had been fostered by the Papacy, established the Inquisition about 1268 or 1269. It looked sharply after the financial results, but,although its operations were at first carried on with vigour, it did not assume the compact and effective form which it possessed in the South of France. Heretics were occasionally burnt, but numbers remained unmolested—a fact which implies some inefficiency on the part of the Inquisitors. At Venice the success of the persecutors was still more meagre, for the Republic jealously kept them in subordination. Its lack of persecuting zeal aroused the ire of the Pope, but his peremptory orders were complied with only in such a way as to leave the supremacy of the State unimpaired. Reserving the right to control confiscations, it undertook only to defray the Inquisitors’ expenses. The Inquisition was becoming no longer a paying concern, and its decay in Italy, as in France, went on steadily during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Catharism had been virtually stamped out, but the Waldenses remained obstinate, strong in their simple faith and hopefulness, their incessant industry, and hardy virtues. In spite of the burning of some of their number in 1312, they flourished in their remote villages until a pitiless persecution by Gregory XI, in 1375, thinned their ranks and avenged the murder of two Inquisitors. About the middle of the fifteenth century a zealous priest in one raid burned twenty-two relapsed heretics, whose property was confiscated. A respite then ensued, but persecution was shortly recommenced, in the form of a crusade. On one occasion five heretics were sentenced to be burnt, but managed to escape. Determined not to be baulked of his prey, the Inquisitor burnt in their stead three other persons whose confessions had secured their pardon. The Waldenses fought bravely, and once nearly annihilated the crusading army, but in the end they were overpowered. Many emigrated to more peaceful districts, where they maintained a precarious existence till 1530,when, like their brethren in France, they were merged in the Calvinist body.
In the Sicilies the Jews were the chief objects of the Inquisition’s activities, but its power, although stimulated in the middle of the fifteenth century by an impudent forgery of the Inquisitor of Palermo, was not equal to its ambitions; its judgments continued to be subject to revision by the State, and were largely nullified by the opposition of the people until the Reformation gave a fresh impetus to the sacred duty of persecution.
The strength and persistence of the Catharan heresy determined Innocent III to convert the nominal allegiance of the Slav race in the south-east of Europe into a definite submission to the rule of Rome. Driven from the Adriatic shore, the Cathari of Italy went to Bosnia, where a considerable number of their faith already flourished. Although the sword supplemented the love of God, the efforts of the Church resulted in only a temporary obedience. Under the relentless pressure of Rome, Dominican Inquisitors arrived in Bosnia by instalments during the thirteenth century, and the martyrdom of some of them only inflamed the zeal of the rest. Holy crusaders ravaged the country, repeating the horrors of the Albigensian wars. Time after time heresy was to all appearance extirpated, but it raised its head again as soon as the pressure was removed. More than a century of hopeless confusion and strife between Dominicans and Franciscans, as well as between them and heretics, followed, and in 1331 it was found that the worship of trees and fountains still prevailed among the “Christian� population. The progress of heresy may be estimated from the fact that early in the fifteenth century Catharism became the State religion of Bosnia.Matters were complicated by the invasion of the Turks, to whose Sultan, Mohammed II, the King rendered allegiance on the fall of Constantinople in 1453, not because of any admiration for Islam, but because he could obtain military assistance from Christendom only on terms of complete submission to Rome, which meant a free hand for the Inquisition. Under another King, who refused payment of the agreed tribute to the Turkish Sultan, the country was conquered, almost without a struggle, by the Ottomans. Most of the Cathari embraced the Moslem faith, and thus a sect which had existed for more than a thousand years became extinct. The majority of the orthodox left the country rather than practise their religion under Moslem tolerance.
It was discovered in 1209 that the diocese of Strassburg was gravely infected with heresy, and a large number of unfortunate persons perished at the stake. On one day in that city the episcopal authorities caused to be burnt eighty persons who had failed to pass successfully through the ordeal of the red-hot iron. Catharism was little known in Germany, and the heretics were mainly Waldenses. A body allied to them, known as the Ortlibenses, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, founded by one Ortlieb, of Strassburg, held that God was the essence of all creatures, and invisible except through them. From this it followed, or was believed to follow, that man, being an embodiment of the spirit of God, was incapable of sin. This doctrine swept away, not merely the entire apparatus of theology, but the whole system of observances which constituted the religion of the Church and the source of its wealth. And as it was broad enough to include the Prince of Darkness himself in the possibility of redemption, its advocates becameknown as Luciferans, a designation which gave rise to many scandalous reports. The tenets of the Ortlibenses were doubtless capable of being abused, though there is little evidence to show that they were so to any serious extent. Spurred on by Gregory, the cruel fanatic, Conrad of Marburg—whom he had appointed first Inquisitor of Germany—carried on the work of persecution to the utmost of his power, but his success failed to satisfy the merciless Pontiff. Transparently-invented confessions, detailing hideous and absurd orgies of devil-worship, which Conrad extracted from the Luciferans and forwarded to the Pope, drove him almost insane with wrath, and persecution was carried on with such frantic intensity that even the Bishops protested against its excesses. Conrad was greatly mortified by the acquittal of a powerful noble, Count Sayn, who had been accused of the deadly crime of riding on a crab! During this reign of terror the Ortlibenses were suppressed, with the burning of ten of their leaders, who met their fate with calmness; and a few years afterwards, on July 31, 1233, Conrad was murdered. In this case, also, a singular leniency on the part of the Church towards serious crime was observed, the guilty parties being punished merely with excommunication. Strangely enough, the Church has not manufactured a saint out of Conrad of Marburg, whether because of his brutal treatment of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, or because of the unpopularity caused by his excessive zeal, history does not record. It is to the credit of the German Bishops that they declined to give any public approval of his actions. Another persecuting Conrad, who had much to do with the troubles, was slain, and his assistant hanged. The number of these men’s victims is not known, but that it must have been large is shown by the profound impression produced in Germany by the persecution. It should be mentionedthat the secular code and episcopal laws of Germany made ample provision for the suppression of heresy without reference to the Inquisition.
The doctrines of the Ortlibenses embodied a mixture of ascetic and pantheistic tendencies which, though at first pure, were afterwards so developed as to be made a cloak for immoral practices. The original ideal seems to have been fairly well maintained, and it is doubtful whether there was any foundation for the charges made by some Italian ecclesiastics, that the ideas of sinlessness and of bodily nakedness as a state of grace were deliberately employed for the corruption of women. Another notorious sect, calling themselves the Friends of God, held the daring conception that it was possible for Jews and Moslems to obtain salvation, and refused to denounce heretics as long as God tolerated them.
The episcopal Inquisition was not organized in Germany until 1317, and was directed mainly against the Beghards (known also as the Lollards), who originated in the Netherlands and taught that poverty was the greatest virtue. Upon these inoffensive people the Archbishop of Cologne had opened war a few years earlier. The female heretics, known as Beguines, were severely persecuted, though not to death; and it is said that on his death-bed Pope Clement V bitterly regretted authorizing the proceedings against them. Walter the Lollard, the most dangerous heretic of the Rhine provinces, was terribly tortured in 1322, and, on the special instructions of the Pope, he and many of his followers perished in the flames, meeting their fate with undaunted cheerfulness. In 1353 renewed attempts were made to establish the Inquisition in Germany, but without success. The well-known mania of the Flagellants was persecuted as heresy, and many people were burnt, while manyothers were left to rot in underground dungeons. Another sect, called the “Friends of God,� furnished more victims, and during the great plague the murder of Jews was thought to be pleasing to God. In 1369 the Emperor Charles IV took the Inquisition under State protection, and it was organized for work, five Inquisitors being appointed, though it still lacked houses and prisons. The unfortunate Beghards and Beguines were turned out of their houses, which were appropriated by the Inquisitors, of course without paying compensation, and not without opposition from the Bishops, who saw their own prerogatives threatened. The Beghards had been allowed to make their opinions public by means of tracts written in the vernacular; the censorship vested in the Holy Office rectified the oversight. Both the Bishops and the civil authorities objected to indiscriminate persecution, and even succeeded in obtaining from Gregory XI authority to restrict the Inquisitors’ activity in regard to the Beghards and Beguines. Being almost unmolested for a time, the Waldensian heretics again came into prominence, and from 1393 to 1397 suffered severely from persecution. At Steyer, in the latter year, more than a hundred Waldenses of both sexes were burnt. Of the followers of Conrad Schmidt, of Thuringia, many were discovered in 1414, and ninety-one were burnt in one town, forty-four in another, and many more in the villages of that province. A still more horrible case occurred two years later, when 300 of the Flagellants, penitent as well as impenitent, suffered at the stake in one day.
The superiority of the episcopate over the Inquisition was asserted by a Bull of Eugenius IV in 1431, which had the novel effect of rendering the Inquisitors liable to excommunication if they interfered with the Bishops. Persecution went on, however, until, in the time of theReformation, most of the heretical bodies lost their identity in the spread of Lutheranism. One of the precursors of that great movement was Gregory of Heimburg, who for twenty-five years boldly wrote and preached against the Papacy and the abuse by the Church of its power. A similar campaign was carried on by Hans of Niklaushausen, who proclaimed that the wickedness of the clergy was bringing about the destruction of the world. He was seized by the episcopal tribunal of Wurzburg, and silenced in the customary manner. In spite of intermittent activity and a large number of burnings in Germany, the Inquisition never obtained a firm foothold in that country; while in Bavaria it was not formally established till 1599, and did not retain power for long. Had it been as strong and efficient as it proved in Spain, the career of Martin Luther would have been a brief one, and the Reformation would have been postponed indefinitely.
In 1257, owing to a request by the King of Bohemia for aid in suppressing heresy, the Inquisition was, under episcopal sanction, established in his dominions, and two Inquisitors were appointed. The people evidently thought them more than sufficient, for when, in 1341, another ecclesiastic was empowered to act he was speedily slain by the angry populace. Bohemia was in the fourteenth century one of the most prosperous countries in Europe; but the state of its morals was far from satisfactory, the clergy in particular being worldly and depraved, and almost universally practising concubinage. The privileges of the Church were habitually sold for cash, and the land was full of vagrants, whose clerical immunities enabled them to gamble, brawl, drink, and rob at their pleasure. Thedemand of Innocent VI in 1354 for a tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues of the Empire to enable him to carry on his Italian wars threw Germany into an uproar. The scandalous moral laxity of the clergy passed almost unreproved, but an attack on the Church’s money bags was a much more serious matter. The clergy sheared their flocks without mercy, but they had the strongest objection to being shorn. Eighteen years elapsed before the Papal Inquisition was set up in Bohemia by Bull of Gregory XI, and it was then confined to five of the more important provinces, Prague being omitted. Many forerunners of the reformer John Huss appeared in Bohemia, and the general dissatisfaction with the Church had given rise to a powerful movement on behalf of liberty—a movement stimulated by the influence of John Wycliffe, whose writings were greatly esteemed in Prague. Wycliffe and his followers boldly taught that the Pope was Antichrist, and that excommunications might be disregarded. The clergy were vicars of Satan, their churches dens of thieves and habitations of fiends. It is curious that the Inquisition, relentless in its persecution of the Waldenses, appears to have seen nothing specially objectionable in the doctrines of Huss. At any rate, it took no official part in his trial, which, however, was modelled on the familiar Inquisitorial procedure. The controversy between orthodoxy and heresy now centred on points of doctrine rather than on the purification of the Church. The reformers contended that the Papal claim to the power of the keys was either essential to salvation or a cunning lie to gratify power and self-interest. Huss was excommunicated; and, although victorious in argument, his injudicious reliance on the Emperor’s honour led to his terrible end in 1415. Sigismund’s violation of his safe conduct was expressly recommended and defended by the clergy, on the ground that, under the law, a heretic couldneither expect nor receive protection, and that the word of a king could not be allowed to prejudice the Catholic faith. Technically the contention was sound, for the law was largely an ecclesiastical creation, which reversed the accepted ideas of morality, and a word from Rome could absolve men from the most sacred obligations. The Council of Constance, having rid the world of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, began to apply the methods of the Inquisition to the whole kingdom of Bohemia, while making no attempt to check the corruption which had been the chief cause of the growth of heresy. A Bull of Martin V in 1418 urged prelates and Inquisitors to track out the heretics and deliver them to justice, and all secular rulers were commanded to aid the work. In the following year rebellion broke out, and the hardy zealots rivalled the persecutors in atrocities of cruelty. After ten years of struggle peace was restored. The more moderate among the reformers accepted the dogmas of the Church, while the extremists held firmly to their anti-sacerdotal opinions. They were met by another revival of bigotry. An energetic Inquisitor appointed by the Pope in 1436 persecuted throughout Hungary and Austria with extreme severity, but no detailed record of his victims remains. From the rude and miserably poor Hussites arose the sect of Moravian Brethren, which has existed for 400 years to the present day, preserving amid sore trials and persecutions the simplicity and purity of its faith.
In the middle of the sixteenth century the most prosperous portion of Europe was the Netherlands or Low Countries, which comprised the provinces now forming the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. Many large towns adorned these fertile plains, inhabited by anenergetic and hard-working people, whose vast commerce extended to every quarter of the globe. Antwerp, the banking centre of Europe, contained nearly as many people as then inhabited London; and splendid public buildings testified to the taste, wealth, and civic spirit of its citizens. The municipal institutions of the country were in advance of those of any other, and even the poorer classes lived in something like comfort, while education was so diffused that there was scarcely a peasant who was unable to read and write. As in the south of France 300 years earlier, a rich and progressive civilization had been developed by a self-reliant and independent people, and had created a predisposition to heresy—that is, it stimulated men’s minds in every department of life, and in none more powerfully than in that of religion. The Church had succeeded in destroying the civilization of Languedoc. It joined zealously in a similar attempt in the Netherlands. But it had to do with a different people.
In 1520 the Emperor Charles V, of whose dominions the seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands formed part, issued the first of his nine Edicts for the purpose of enforcing religious uniformity. These made up a complete system of persecution, and included the introduction of the Inquisition, not after the Spanish model with which Charles was familiar, but in the somewhat less efficient and imposing form instituted by the Papacy in the thirteenth century, and perfected by long experience. Certain safeguards were insisted upon by the Netherlands, such as the vesting of inquisitorial powers in laymen, and confirmation of sentences by members of provincial councils. The Emperor appointed a supreme Inquisitor for the whole country, and the Edicts were so efficiently carried out as to render the Spanish organization superfluous. These “placards,� as they were termed, weredirected against Protestantism, which had made remarkable progress among a people to whose temperament it strongly appealed, and had not been repressed by the local tribunals of the episcopal Inquisition. Under Charles’s Edicts great numbers of persons were put to death for such enormous offences as reading the Bible, ridiculing the sacred wafer, or even casting a disapproving glance on a graven image. Motley states that in 1546 the number of victims had been estimated by the Venetian Envoy at 30,000, and it is accepted by most historians as true that during Charles’s reign from 50,000 to 100,000 persons suffered death for their religious opinions, and that his son Philip caused at least half as many to be executed.
These figures are in all probability exaggerated, but they at least indicate very severe and prolonged persecution. The mere terms of the Edict of 1550 compel this conclusion. They provide that the crimes of printing, copying, possessing, or circulating the works of the Protestant Reformers, image breaking, unauthorized worship or discussion whether in public or in private, disputes upon or exposition of the Scriptures, or preaching openly or secretly, were to be punished by death; “the men with the sword and the women to be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if they do persist in them, then they are to be executed with fire; all their property in both cases being confiscated to the Crown.�[30]The Edict also forbade any aid or favour of suspected heretics, and provided that persons who failed to denounce them became thereby liable to the same punishments as the heretics themselves. In order to forestall any softening of the hearts of the judges, they were forbidden, under the threat of severe penalties, to grant orrequest pardons, or to relax the severity of their instructions.
This barbarous Edict, which merely completed previous enactments of almost equal ferocity, was renewed and confirmed by Philip II when, in 1555, he assumed the reins of power on the Emperor’s abdication. Though egregiously in error in yielding to the counsels of his spiritual advisers, Charles was an able and prudent ruler, who persecuted only for supposed reasons of State, and did not scruple to employ Protestants in his service, provided they were fit men. His appointment of an Inquisitor-General for the Netherlands was confirmed by Pope Adrian VI in 1522, thus establishing the Papal Inquisition; but, the official being dismissed for forgery, fresh Inquisitors were nominated to see that the Edicts were obeyed. “They were empowered,â€� says Motley, “to inquire, proceed against, and chastise all heretics, all persons suspected of heresy—and their protectors. Accompanied by a notary, they were to collect written information concerning every person in the provinces ‘infected or vehemently suspected.’ They were authorized to summon all subjects of his Majesty, whatever their rank, quality, or station, and to compel them to give evidence, or to communicate suspicions. They were to punish all who pertinaciously refused such depositions with death. The Emperor commanded his presidents, judges, sheriffs, and all other judicial and executive officers to render all ‘assistance to the Inquisitors and their familiars in their holy and pious Inquisition, whenever required so to do,’ on pain of being punished as encouragers of heresy—that is to say, with death. Whenever the Inquisitors should be satisfied as to the heresy of any individual, they were to order his arrest and detention by the judge of the place, or by others arbitrarily to be selected by them.... In conclusion, theEmperor ordered the ‘Inquisitors to make it known that they were not doing their own work, but that of Christ, and to persuade all persons of this fact.’â€�[31]
The strangely perverted vision which could thus see the work of Christ in the merciless cruelty of the Inquisition need not be analysed. The mean-souled bigot Philip made the most desperate efforts to break the will and enforce the submission of a high-spirited and resolute people, among whom the tenets of Protestantism had made remarkable progress. For details of the appalling and well-nigh incredible horrors perpetrated by the Inquisitors, the monster Titelmann in particular, the reader is referred to Motley’s great work.
The persecutions produced the effects which might have been foreseen. They caused the immortal revolt of the Netherlands. “Nothing was talked of but the Edicts and the Inquisition. Nothing else entered into the minds of men. In the streets, in the shops, in the taverns, in the fields; at market, at church, at funerals, at weddings; in the noble’s castle, at the farmer’s fireside, in the mechanic’s garret, upon the merchants’ exchange, there was but one perpetual subject of shuddering conversation. It was better, men began to whisper to each other, to die at once than to live in perpetual slavery. It was better to fall with arms in hand than to be tortured and butchered by the Inquisition.�[32]
Eminent men inveighed against the tyranny of the Government, and several of the nobles refused to obey the Edicts. At first it was debated whether Philip would be mad enough to enforce them, but all doubt as to his intentions was removed by the Inquisition being formally proclaimed in every town and village throughout the country. The Netherlanders steeled their hearts, andprepared to resist to the death. As Motley remarks: “They knew that the obligation of a King to his vassals was as sacred as the duties of the subjects to the sovereign.� Philip was not unaware of the peril, but, like the wooden-headed bigot that he was, considered the danger of discrediting the Inquisition greater than any inconveniences that were likely to result from its rigour. The general indignation became so pronounced that Philip was urged to modify his instructions in some important particulars, the chief of which were the repeal of the Edicts and the abolition of the Inquisition. Very reluctantly he agreed to make certain concessions, but the sincerity of his compliance may be estimated from the facts that he withdrew the Papal but maintained the Episcopal Inquisition, stimulating the latter to fresh exertions, and that he agreed to relax the penalty of death for heresy, though, considering the promise extorted from him, he declined to be bound by it. He wrote to his envoy at Rome that this was, perhaps, the best arrangement, “since the abolition would have no force unless the Pope, by whom the institution had been established, consented to its suspension. This matter, however, was to be kept a profound secret.... The Papal institution, notwithstanding the official letters, was to exist, unless the Pope chose to destroy it; and his Holiness had sent the Archbishop of Sorrento, a few weeks before, to Brussels, for the purpose of concerting secret measures for strengthening the Holy Office in the Provinces.�[33]The severity of the Edicts Philip declined to mitigate; his secret resolve was not only to keep them in full force, but so efficiently to support the Inquisition that all his heretic subjects could be exterminated, even if it cost him his realm and his life.
All this time persecution was going on, and men and women were being daily tortured, beheaded, strangled, and burnt alive. Did the Church of Christ utter one word of protest? Let the Archbishop of Cambrai answer. An intercepted letter written by him to Cardinal Granvelle in 1565 contained these words: “Since the pot is uncovered and the whole cookery known, we had best push forward and make an end of all the principal heretics, whether rich or poor, without regarding whether the city will be entirely ruined by such a course. Such an opinion I should declare openly were it not that we of the ecclesiastical profession are accused of always crying out for blood.�[34]
An even more precise indication of the general feeling in the Church is found in the resolution passed at a great meeting of the rulers and nobility in the same year. The question debated was whether any change should be made in the treatment of heretics. The lay doctors present were all in favour of the death penalty being abolished. All the ecclesiastics stoutly maintained the opposite opinion, and unanimously resolved that no attempt should be made to improve a system which had hitherto worked so well, and that heretics were to be rigorously chastised, as before. That Philip shared to the full their truculent zeal is shown by his fury when he learnt that in May, 1567, a decree of slightly mitigated ferocity had been issued by his representative, the Duchess of Parma. He ordered its immediate revocation, on the ground that its excessive clemency was indecent and contrary to the Christian religion. The clemency consisted in permitting heretics to be hanged instead of being burnt alive. This royal fanatic personally commended the outrageous Titelmann for his persecuting energy.
When the Prince of Orange, who had earnestly defended the cause of freedom, left the Netherlands for Germany in 1567, the country, says Motley, “was absolutely helpless, the popular heart cold with apprehension. All persons at all implicated in the late troubles, or suspected of heresy, fled from their homes. Fugitive soldiers were hunted into rivers, cut to pieces in the fields, hanged, burned, or drowned, like dogs, without quarter and without remorse. The most industrious and valuable part of the population left the land in droves. The tide swept outwards with such rapidity that the Netherlands seemed fast becoming the desolate waste they had been before the Christian era. Throughout the country those Reformers who were unable to effect their escape betook themselves to their old lurking-places. The new religion was banished from the cities, every conventicle was broken up by armed men, the preachers and leading men were hanged, their disciples beaten with rods, reduced to beggary, or imprisoned, even if they sometimes escaped the scaffold. An incredible number, however, were executed for religious causes. Hardly a village so small, says the Antwerp chronicler, but that it could furnish one, two, or three hundred victims to the executioner. The new churches were levelled to the ground, and out of their timber gallows were constructed. It was thought an ingenious pleasantry to hang the Reformers upon the beams under which they had hoped to worship God.�[35]