Chapter XIII: Part 13

Wickliff’s doctrine soon made its way into Germany. It was propagated by John Huss, one of the doctors at the University of Prague. When the University discovered this, it solemnly condemned Wickliff’s books, and prohibited them from being read. John Huss did not venture upon any overt opposition; but, as the doctors of the University were Germans, he called to his aid the vanity of the Bohemians and the personal ill-will of King Wenceslaus against the Germans, who had deposed him from the empire. The situation of the professors became untenable, and they left with their two thousand pupils for Leipsic, where they founded the University. John Huss was joined by several ecclesiastics, who were anxious to acquire liberty of action; but the leading Bohemian professors, convoked by the archbishop to examine the works of Wickliff which John Huss had distributed amongst the Bohemian nobles, decided that the possessors of these books should surrender them to be burnt. John Huss again endeavoured to temporise, promising the archbishop to correct in his preaching anything which might have escaped him contrary to Christian doctrine; for, in his view, this promise did not prevent him from propagating the doctrine of Wickliff, which he believed to be quite orthodox. He was supported by Jerome of Prague, a man of position, who, in addition to his ardour and daring, was a bachelor in theology, though a layman. The latter was so zealous in his partisanship, that he upon one occasion stopped three Carmelite monks who had been combating the theories of Wickliff, and threw one of them into the Moldau. Denounced to the pope by the clergy of Prague, John Huss and his adherents were declared heretics and excommunicated. A rebellion got up in Prague by his partisans, headed by the impetuous Jerome, cost a great number of them their lives, the senate visiting their crimes with capital punishment. John Huss appealed from the sentence of the pope to the next council; and this, which was held at Rome in 1413, condemned afresh the writings of Wickliff and excommunicated John Huss, who had not put in an appearance, although he was cited before the Council. The Chancellor Gerson, the illustrious Dean of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Paris, which had just condemned the nineteen errors of John Huss, wrote to the Archbishop of Prague, exhorting him to take the necessary steps for repressing this heresy.

That prelate, in conformity with Gerson’s advice, obtained the support of the King of Bohemia; and it was decreed that all those who still adhered to the condemned theories of Wickliff should be expelled from the kingdom. John Huss was thus compelled to leave the city, but he declaimed as vehemently as ever against the Church, and especially against the pope.

Fig. 315.--John Huss, the celebrated Heresiarch, born in Bohemia;
tried, condemned, and burnt at Constance in 1415.

Fig. 316.--Jerome of Prague, a Disciple of John Huss, born at
Prague about 1378; burnt alive for heresy at Constance in 1416.

After the “Vrais Pourtraits des Hommes Illustres:” Jean de Laon,
Geneva, 1581.]

The Council of Constance, convoked for the 1st of November, 1414, was ordered to examine his doctrines. John Huss, far from flinching at this decisive moment, vehemently called upon his adversaries, by public placards, to come and put him to confusion before the council. “If,” he stated in these placards, “I can be convicted of any error, or of having taught anything contrary to the Christian faith, I am ready to undergo the punishment inflicted upon heretics.” He then solicited and obtained from the Emperor Sigismund a safe-conduct, in which it was stated that, “out of respect for the imperial majesty he was to be let freely and safely pass, sojourn, remain, and return, and be provided, if necessary, with other fitting passports.” John Huss left Prague on the 11th of October (Figs. 315 and 316), and on the 20th, in a letter written from Nuremberg, he expresses his satisfaction at the reception which he has everywhere met with, especially from the ecclesiastics, who seemed disposed to accept his doctrine. Upon reaching Constance, on the 3rd of November, he expounded his ideas very freely, both by word of mouth and in writing; and, in spite of the excommunication hurled against him, he said mass every day in a private room, but without making any secret of it, to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Upon the 28th of November he was arrested and cast into prison. After many witnesses had been examined, thirty-nine articles taken from his speeches and writings were read in public, the most important of which declared “that the elect alone are members of the Catholic Church; that St. Peter neither is nor ever has been the chief of that Church; that by the commission of mortal sin the ecclesiastical and civil authorities lose their rights and privileges; and lastly, that the condemnation of the forty-five articles of Wickliff was unreasonable and unjust.” The venerable Peter d’Ailly exhorted John Huss to submit himself to the judgment of the council; the emperor did the same, threatening him, if he refused, with the rigour of the law. Upon the following day he was given a recantation to sign, which he would not consent to do. A fortnight afterwards, on the 24th of June, his books were condemned to be burnt. On the 6th of July the council declared him to be a heretic, and degraded him from his ecclesiastical orders, by which process he was handed over to the secular arm. The emperor, who was present, had him immediately seized by the count-palatine, and the civil law, which condemned stubborn heretics to the stake, was applied in all its rigour. John Huss submitted to his fate with courage. Jerome of Prague at first signed the formula of recantation, but he soon afterwards disavowed it; and, after publicly declaring that he adopted the whole doctrine of John Huss, he also was sent to the stake.

These pitiless measures failed to intimidate the partisans of John Huss; on the contrary, they became converted into a horde of fanatics, in which all the sects hostile to the Church became indiscriminately merged. Ziska, the chamberlain of King Wenceslaus, placing himself at their head, ravaged Bohemia, pillaged the monasteries, massacred the monks, constituted himself absolute master of the country, holding in check the whole military force of the empire. After his death (1424) the Hussites, far from giving in their submission and avowing their errors, continued supreme in Germany, so that Luther had only to cast seed upon the ground which they had bedewed with blood.

By a strange anomaly, the Hussites remained firmly attached to the dogma of the eucharist; and the chief inducement of the people to join their party was, in several cases, the privilege of being able to receive the communion in both kinds. The Hussites, assembled to the number of forty thousand in their celebrated camp of Tabor, by the wayside, without any preliminary confession, received the communion under the elements of bread and wine. Their leader signed himself Ziska of the Chalice; and when the moderate section of the party separated themselves from the more advanced section, he chose the name of Calixtines to indicate his own followers. The Protestants, on the contrary, were not long in coming to deny the real and abiding presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements. The importance attached to this dogma drew general attention to the extraordinary case of a woman possessed, who travelled through the dioceses of Laon and Soissons towards the middle of the sixteenth century. This was a young woman, recently married, of the name of Nicole, belonging to a humble but very honest family. There were many public exorcisms, and the paroxysms of the patient were always allayed by the giving of the sacrament. The case was much criticised; it was submitted to a scrupulous examination, and the agitation which it gave rise to was so great that the authorities intervened. Nicole was handed over to the royal delegates (Fig. 317), “who ordered that all the experiments should be made by physicians and surgeons officially appointed, and selected from among Catholics and Protestants alike, so that there should be no suspicion attaching to their reports.” The evidence of these doctors did away with all idea of fraud, which the judicial authorities would have had no hesitation in punishing had it been practised. The Prince de Condé, Governor of Picardy, and one of the warmest upholders of the Reformed Religion, so called, detained for several days at his residence the possessed woman, together with her parents, who accompanied her wherever she went; but his interrogatories failed to shake their conviction that Nicole had been possessed, and that the eucharist had restored her. At last, a royal order enabled these poor people to return to their own home at Vervins.

The ecclesiastical authority, seconded as it was by the orthodox sovereigns, had been nearly always sufficient to suppress the heretical movements, which were circumscribed within a few provinces or dioceses; but the violent dissensions of Rome with the Empire, the two rival camps, formed during two centuries between the popes and the anti-popes, the independent position acquired by the communes after reiterated uprisings against their bishops and nobles, rendered necessary the intervention of a judicial authority in the religious quarrels and contentions springing out of the heresies and schisms which were constantly arising. The creation of this authority, half civil and half ecclesiastical, emanating from the throne, was mainly with a view to protect the legacy of the past against the encroachments and the audacious claims of the future. This is how it came to pass that, from the fourteenth century, the courts styled Cours des Grand Jours, the presidential tribunals, the parliaments, and even the bailiwicks, together with the Châtelet of Paris, intervened in matters of worship, though their rulings were not always in accordance with canonical law. The Inquisition failed to effect a permanent lodgment in France, but the ordinary tribunals claimed for themselves the right to take cognizance of crimes of heresy without having recourse to the aid of the ecclesiastical authorities.

Fig. 320.--Ulrich Zwingle, the first champion of religious reform
in Switzerland; born and died at Wildhaus, in the Canton of St.
Gall, 1484–1531.

From the “Vrais Pourtraits des Hommes Illustres:” Jean de Laon,
Geneva, 1581.]

When Luther’s protests against Rome and Catholicism (1517) first burst upon the world, the heresy of Reform had long slumbered in a chrysalis state, so to speak, awaiting only some circumstance to favour its development. “The egg was laid,” as Erasmus remarked, “Luther had but to incubate and hatch it.” The corruption of the higher classes, of the clergy, and of the people, increased his chances of success. The suppression of celibacy amongst the clergy, and of monastic vows, was looked upon with secret favour by the depraved among the bishops, priests, and monks; the prospect of seeing all the property of the Church fall into their possession excited the cupidity of the princes and nobles; and the rejection of ecclesiastical teaching flattered the vanity of the people, who were made supreme judges of the dogmas through the right which had been given to them, themselves to interpret the Bible, now translated into the vulgar tongue. For two centuries Rationalism had been disseminating the leaven of revolt against the authority of the past, and the advent of printing lent it fresh force. The apostle of the new doctrine had only to pronounce the word negation, and an army of disciples rose up to follow him and fight under his banner--disciples who, at first obedient to his command, soon became rebellious, and impatient to obtain for themselves the liberty of inquiry and the independence of principles which Luther despotically endeavoured to reserve exclusively for himself. Carlstadt, Œcolampadius, Hutten, Zwingle (Fig. 320), Schwenckfeld, Munzer, Staupitz, Knox (Fig. 319), and many others, while following in the footsteps of the famous Wittenberg professor, had their own school: “The teachings crashed like avalanches, the doctrines rattled like the tempest; there was a dark abyss of neologies, inconsistencies, and contradictions, amidst which no ray of the eternal sun of grace was visible,” to quote the poetic simile of Wieland. The intellectual movement was none the less gigantic, especially in Germany and in the countries bordering on the Moselle. A deluge of statements, of pamphlets, and of stories, some true and others false, issuing, most of them anonymously, from an infinity of printing-presses, were rapidly disseminated, and made their way into every district; the allegorical eucharist of Zwingle, the revolutionary appeal of Munzer to the Franconian monks, the restoration of the _letter_ by Schwenckfeld, the _trope_ of Carlstadt against Luther, assumed a thousand different forms; while the indefatigable Luther himself, in turn a Demosthenes, a Petronius, a Danubian peasant, a beer-sodden drunkard, spun out in fifteen thousand folio pages his senseless Protestant theories--a chaos of eloquence, poesy, impassioned similes, tangible truths, audacious falsehoods, venom, hatred, jealousy, and filth. The famous Leipsic dispute, the sessions of Worms and of Augsburg, the war of extermination of the peasantry, the quarrel about images, the interview of Mauburg, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew in France (Fig. 321)--in a word, the numerous revolutions of this great religious drama which Europe was watching with nervous anxiety, are brought into less marked relief in the large works since published by learned controversialists, than in these desultory pages, scattered to the winds, sung at the street-corners, accompanied by denunciations, threats and sanguinary struggles between the irreconcilable factions of Catholic and Huguenot.

Lutheranism, in consequence of a revolt in the cloister, had led to anarchy in the Church, to the exile of Carlstadt, who was compelled to beg his bread from village to village, to the persecutions against Œcolampadius and Schwenckfeld, and to the massacre of a hundred thousand rebellious peasants in Thuringia and Swabia. A multitude of sects--the Sacramentarians, the Œcolampadians, the Antinomians, the Majorists, and the Anabaptists were given birth to by the heresy of Luther; there were as many popes as there were dissenting churches. The Lutheran creed was still confined to the countries on the other side of the Rhine, when the French sectaries, Farel and Froment (Fig. 324), set out to revolutionise Geneva and the neighbouring country. An unjust hatred for the House of Savoy attracted to their standard a large body of patriots, who, aspiring after a democratic independence, hoped to rid themselves of hereditary monarchy and to break with Catholicism, its main ally.

In England, the king separated himself from the Roman Church. Henry VIII., unable to obtain from Pope Clement VIII. a bull annulling his marriage with Catherine of Arragon, and permitting him to espouse Anne Boleyn, declared himself to be the supreme and only head of the Church in his own kingdom, but he did not touch upon the dogmas which he had defended against Luther; thus it was a schism rather than a heresy. Under his successors, in conformity with a decision of the English Parliament, a synod assembled in London drew up the Confession of Faith for the Anglican Church, which differs less than any other, in regard to dogma and discipline, from the traditions of the Catholic Church.

Calvin, upon arriving at Geneva, his mind imbued with those evangelical novelties which constituted a heresy essentially French, found the Reformation already accomplished there. Its passage was marked only too plainly by ruins and blood-stains; the stripping of the vanquished by their conquerors had turned a religious reform into a social revolution. Calvin, a jealous and inflexible sectary, laid hold upon reform as an instrument of despotism. In order to become head of the Church as well as head of the State, he proclaimed the doctrinal negation of authority, thus beginning where Luther ended. To the Saxon-like creed of the great Reformer, he adapted a mixed system concerning the Lord’s Supper borrowed from Zwingle and Œcolampadius; he was ardent and pitiless, as the sad fate of Servet and of Gruet too clearly prove; he was determined to reign by terror, for he was a slave of politics rather than of spiritual ideas. This it is which constitutes so marked and characteristic a difference between the two champions of Protestantism, between the rebellious monk of Wittenberg and the apostate priest of Noyon. Calvin entered upon an overt struggle with all the renegades of the Catholic school, with Gentilis, Ochino, Castalion, and Westphalz; his doctrine and his teaching were alike divergent from those of Zwingle in the mountains of Switzerland, of Melancthon in the University of Wittenberg, of Œcolampadius at the foot of the Hauenstein, of Martin Bucer at Strasburg, and of Brentzen at Tubingen. Amongst the Geneva sectaries, two friends, Farel and Beza, alone remained faithful to him, more through compatibility of temperament than from identity of principles. The French Huguenots had, however, accepted as their supreme chief a theocrat like Calvin, who, for four-and-twenty years, never stepped without an escort of swords, of faggots, and of executioners (Fig. 325).

It is therefore to Calvin and his personal influence that must be attributed the violent and merciless character which reform took during the sixteenth century, when the horrors of religious warfare were excused by the necessity of preaching the word of God to Christians who were anxious to hear it!

THE INQUISITION.

General Principles of the Inquisition; its Existence amongst
the Greeks and Romans.--The Papal Inquisition.--The Inquisition
in France.--The Albigenses.--The Royal Spanish Inquisition; its
Political Purpose; it is opposed by the Popes.--Inquisitors of
Toledo excommunicated by Leo X.--The Holy Hermandad.--The Spies
of the Inquisition.--The Holy Office and the Supreme.--The
Prisons of the Inquisition.--The _Auto-da-fé_.--The
Inquisition in the Netherlands.--The Protestant Inquisition in
Holland, Germany, France, England, and Switzerland.

At all times and in all places religion, which is the basis of society, has had to be protected and fostered in the public interest. This is why most men, especially those placed in authority, have always attached the highest importance to philosophical ideas and opinions, and still more to religious ideas. In fact, experience has shown only too plainly since the formation of civilised States, that a change of religious belief necessarily brings about a social transformation, and that a political revolution is but the putting into practice of a theory invented and propounded by a more or less hostile and mischievous philosophy; hence the established principle which ordains that human and divine law should alike be respected. It would therefore be erroneous to regard the Inquisition as an exceptional and abnormal fact, peculiar to the Middle Ages. The search into religious creeds--for such is the meaning of the word _inquisition_--was not only a natural consequence of the existence of forms of religion, but an imperious function of government. All history--of antiquity as well as that of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance--bears witness to this fact. It is consoling to find that, as a general rule, even in the midst of the fiercest persecutions, there were men of lofty views and generous sentiments who did not hesitate to protest with undaunted courage against the tyrannical and sanguinary excesses, by means of which it was attempted to impose upon nations and upon individuals a religious conviction which ought to be the offspring of reason, and which should be the sole result of liberty of conscience.

The Inquisition--that is to say, the research of religious orthodoxy--existed amongst the Greeks. The accusation of Melitus against Socrates, compassing his death, says in so many words, “Socrates is guilty because he does not recognise the gods of the republic, and puts demoniacal extravagancies in their place.” The judges, yielding to the influence of the democratic party, condemned Socrates to drink hemlock, but the breath was scarcely out of his body before the moderate men of all parties felt what an indignity had been committed in the name of religion; it was not, however, in the cause of religious tolerance, but by proving that Socrates had recognised and worshipped the gods of the republic, that they obtained the condemnation of Melitus his accuser, by way of reprisal.

At Rome as at Athens, we find the people full of suspicion and merciless towards those who refused to bow down to the gods of the republic; this was the cause of the cruel persecutions which, under the Roman emperors, led to the martyrdom of thousands. It was in vain that the Christians hid themselves in the recesses of the Catacombs to pray to the true God and partake of the holy mysteries--it was in vain that they rendered their lives irreproachable by fulfilling all their duties as citizens--their religious creeds, contrary to that of the State, could not be pardoned, and whenever they were discovered, they either had to offer incense to the gods of the republic or suffer death (Fig. 327). The mild Trajan replied to Pliny that it was unnecessary to seek out the Christians, but that if they were denounced and refused to change their faith, they must be punished. St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, was one of the many martyrs immolated during the reign of Trajan, who allowed men of the highest honour and virtue, whose only crime was their refusal to adore the image of the emperor and the pagan idols, to be put to death.

Under the reign of Alexander Severus, many illustrious martyrs were put to death: St. Cecilia, her husband, and her brother-in-law (Fig. 328) among the number. St. Cecilia was descended from a very ancient family which dated back to the time of Tarquin the Proud; she belonged to the same house as Metella, many of whose children were raised to the honours of triumph and of the consulate in the heyday of the Roman republic. Her parents gave her in marriage to a young Roman patrician, named Valerian. But Cecilia had dedicated her virginity to God, and her husband, converted to the faith by her arguments and entreaties, respected her vow, and himself converted his brother Tiburcius. They all three relieved their persecuted brethren, and this Christian charity betrayed them. In spite of their distinguished birth, their wealth and their connections, they were arrested, and their refusal to sacrifice to the false gods led to their being condemned to death. We find a multitude of analogous occurrences in Gaul (Figs. 329 and 330), and also in the most distant provinces of the East.

After the conversion of Constantine, when the religion of Christ was recognised as that of the State, the secular arm at once placed itself at the service of the Church to uphold the unity of the faith; but the civil power, instead of limiting itself to seconding the ecclesiastical authority in the repression of offences against the dogma as laid down by the councils, sought to obtain a sovereign influence in all the trials relating to religious matters, and hence arose deplorable abuses. The Italian Inquisition, under the immediate direction of the popes, made its appearance in the fifth century: Pope St. Leo, after having ordered a juridical inquiry to be held concerning the Manicheans who had taken refuge in Rome, stated, “What has been done is not enough; the Inquisition must continue not only as an inducement for the devout to hold fast by their faith, but in order that those who have been led astray may be converted from their errors.” The primitive and real object of the Inquisition was to discover errors in doctrine, to stop them from being propagated, and to endeavour to enlighten and to win back those who had been perverted by the apostles of error.

In the twelfth century Pope Lucius III., with a view of checking the progress of the Manicheans, who reappeared under the names of Catharists, Patarenes, the Poor of Lyons, &c., ordered “through the council of bishops, at the demand of the emperor (of Germany) and the lords of his court, that every bishop should visit the districts of his diocese which were suspected of containing heretics once or twice a year.” They were to be denounced by every one, so that the bishop might summon them before him, make them renounce their heresies, or inflict upon them the punishment awarded by canonical law. Thus we see that religious error was regarded as a breach of public order, and that the princes looked upon the heretics as rebels or conspirators. This was in keeping with the ideas of the Middle Ages, when the whole social system reposed upon the Catholic faith. We must in fairness admit that, if the Inquisition of Rome was the earliest, and the only one which outlasted the Middle Ages, it was also the most moderate, for it alone never ordered capital punishment.

The Inquisition was introduced into France through a heresy of Eastern origin, which endeavoured to associate the pagan ideas of Armenian Manicheism with the ceremonies of Christianity. Originally centred at Toulouse and Albi (whence the name _Albigenses_), the new heretics, numbering about one thousand and fifty, gradually made their way into Perigord and the neighbouring provinces. Towards 1160 another sect, the Waldenses, founded by Peter de Valdo or de Vaux, arose at Lyons, and gave great trouble to the papacy. The Albigenses were inferior in morality even to the Waldenses, and professed still more dangerous opinions. Immediate followers of Manes the Persian, they had adopted his doctrine of the double nature of man, of fatalism, of the origin of good and evil, &c.--a monstrous doctrine, the direct consequence of which was a life of unbridled license. In spite of the pious efforts of King Robert (1022) and the sentence of condemnation pronounced at the Council of Toulouse (1118), the Manichean heresy of the Albigenses continued to spread throughout the southern provinces of France, and obtained fresh adherents every day even amongst the clergy and the nobility. Innocent III., elected sovereign pontiff in 1198, took alarm at the danger to the Christian religion, and determined to reduce these daring sectaries to obedience, openly protected as they then were by the Counts of Toulouse, Foix, and Béarn, and by the Viscount of Béziers. But, before resorting to physical force, he at first tried persuasion.

Two monks, Guy and Raynier, of the Cistercian order, accordingly repaired to the south of France to seek out these heretics. They were the first commissioners of the Holy See to whom might properly belong the title of _inquisitors_. The failure of their mission decided Innocent III. to give full powers to Peter de Castelnau, Archdeacon of Magliano, and to another Cistercian monk named Ralph. These two monks, accompanied by Amalric, Abbot of Citeaux, preached against the heresy of the Albigenses at Toulouse, Narbonne, Viviers, Carcassonne, and Montpellier, but the heretics only displayed greater perseverance. Peter de Castelnau and Brother Ralph, disheartened at this result, enlisted in their difficult mission twelve brothers of their own order and two distinguished Spanish prelates--Diego de Azeles, Bishop of Osma, and the sub-prior of his cathedral, Dominic Guzman, who, having witnessed the progress of heresy in Languedoc, went to Italy to obtain the Holy Father’s permission to preach against it. Dominic had given proof of a gentleness, zeal, and piety worthy of the apostles, and the renown of his exemplary life was counted upon to give authority to his preaching (Fig. 331). Yet he was no less unsuccessful than the preceding commissioners sent by the pope. Insulted and mocked by an ignorant and brutal populace, he could not help exclaiming, “O Lord, let thy hand smite them, that thy punishment at least may open their eyes!” The legate Peter de Castelnau, in despair at the failure of his efforts to restore quietude and faith to men’s minds, determined to address himself directly to the Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI., and to formally demand of him to lend his aid to the papal legates, or else to proclaim openly that he sided with the heretics. After an interview during which bitter language was exchanged, two of the esquires of the Count of Toulouse believed that they would be complying with their master’s secret wishes by assassinating the courageous legate upon the banks of the Rhône (1208). Innocent III., when the news of this murder reached him, at once determined to set on foot a new crusade against the Albigenses. He appointed Milon in the room of Peter de Castelnau, and declared that he took under his immediate protection all the faithful who should take up arms for the defence of the Church. The Count of Toulouse did public penance, and his nephew Raymond Viscount of Béziers was handed over to the papal legates. The town of Béziers, taken by assault (July 22nd, 1209), was a scene of terrible carnage, for the crusaders gave no quarter--twenty thousand inhabitants were massacred without distinction of age or sex, and seven thousand were burnt in a church in which they had taken refuge.

Simon de Montfort, who was at the head of the expedition, accepted the effects of the Viscount of Béziers, and continued the war against the heretics. In 1213, before the walls of Muret, he defeated Peter II., King of Arragon, an ally of the Albigenses, who was besieging the town, and he afterwards stripped the Count of Toulouse of his domains, against the wish of Innocent III., who would have preferred that the count’s hereditary rights, and still more those of his son, should have been respected.

Simon was supported by Louis, son of Philip Augustus, who lost no time in fulfilling the vow which he had made to take up arms against the Manicheans of Languedoc, and, as the battle of Bouvines (1214) had led to a five years’ truce between the Kings of France and England, he joined the Catholic forces in the following year. In 1218 Toulouse rose in revolt, and Simon de Montfort was mortally wounded by a stone during the siege. His son Amaury put himself forward as heir to his father’s domains, and endeavoured to establish his claims to the countships of Béziers and Toulouse, but he eventually abandoned them in favour of the French monarch. Very rigorous measures were taken to put down the heretics. An order issued by the bishop of Toulouse decreed that “the inhabitants of the districts infected with heresy shall pay one mark in silver for every Waldensian found within their boundaries; the house in which he is captured, those in which he has preached, shall be razed to the ground, and the property belonging to the owner of these houses confiscated. The goods of the pervert shall also be confiscated, as well as those appertaining to any person neglecting to wear or to display the two coloured crosses which should be sewn on to the breast of the penitent’s garment.” The Holy See, on its part, was not remaining inactive during this time, as in 1215 the fourth Lateran Council had excommunicated the Manicheans, the Waldenses, and the Albigenses. The third canon of that council declared that “the heretics who are condemned shall be handed over to the secular arm, in order that they may receive their merited punishment; the clerks shall be previously unfrocked.”

Just before this council terminated its sittings, Dominic, presented to Pope Innocent III., obtained, as a recompense for the services which he had rendered to the Church militant, leave to found the order of Preaching-Brothers, who from him took the name, by which they are more generally known, of _Dominicans_.

Their pious founder battled against heresy with purely spiritual weapons, and it is perhaps scarcely necessary to mention that he it was who, with a view to obtaining the conversion of heretics, introduced the custom of reciting the rosary. On his return to Toulouse, which eventually became the centre of the Inquisition, he delegated to eight provincials of his order, in France, Provence, Lombardy, Romagna, Germany, Hungary, England, and Spain the special mission of preaching against heresy. And, lastly, in 1229 Raymond VII., who had succeeded to his paternal inheritance after doing public penance, was reconciled to the Church and reinstated in his countship of Toulouse. His only daughter married one of the king’s brothers, thus insuring the transmission of his lands to the French crown.

Louis IX. lost no time in taking measures to consolidate the results of this pacific arrangement. He addressed to all his subjects, in the dioceses of Narbonne, Cahors, Rodez, Agen, Arles, and Nîmes, a decree composed of ten clauses, by which it was sought to effect the repression of heresy with the help of the secular clergy. Any one who had been excommunicated for more than a year was to be compelled, by seizure of his goods, to return to the Church. The tithes, which had long been kept back, were re-established. The barons, the vassals, the large towns and royal bailiwicks were sworn to observe and execute this decree. Even the king’s brother, when he assumed possession of the country, took the same oath for himself and his subjects. The Inquisition soon appeared to be unnecessary in France, and, with the consent of the Holy See, it suspended its action in the countship of Toulouse in 1237.

In Spain, the Inquisition was royal rather than papal. If we would understand the part played by this remarkable tribunal, it must be remembered that Spain took seven centuries to conquer its independence against the Moors and the Jews. These latter, while feigning a readiness to be converted, none the less maintained their antipathy for the Christian religion and their hatred of the Christians. Thus, when Ferdinand and Isabella had the whole of Spain under their authority, they considered it necessary to establish religious unity, in order to preserve national unity, and the Moors and Jews were ordered to quit the country or abjure their creeds (Figs. 332 and 333). The two sovereigns, who looked at the question in a political light, had established in their dominions a special Inquisition placed under their immediate control. The popes protested at once against the pretension of the Catholic monarchs to themselves superintend the Inquisition, and, on the tribunal being formed, Pope Sixtus IV. recalled his legate from the Spanish Court, which latter in turn withdrew its ambassador from Rome. A reconciliation, however, was effected, and a bull legalising the Spanish Inquisition was granted; but Pope Sixtus IV. soon regretted what he had done when he came to know of its excesses. The Spanish sovereigns, upon the other hand, did all they could to prevent the appeals made by condemned heretics from being heard at the Court of Rome, while the popes were obliged to employ stratagem in order to protect the penitent heretics from the merciless severity of the Inquisition. Llorente tells us that on many occasions a great number of heretics received secret absolution by order of the pope, but he further adds that these papal amnesties were not always approved of by the Spanish government. Leo X. actually excommunicated the Inquisitors of Toledo, and Charles V., when he became emperor, pretended to lean in favour of the Lutheran reform in order to prevent Leo from interfering any further with the Spanish Inquisition. This Inquisition was assisted by three corporate bodies, namely, the Holy Hermandad, the Cruciata, and the Militia of Christ.

The Holy Hermandad (a corruption of the Latin word _germanitas_, confraternity) was at first an association of police officers employed in the protection of the streets and highways. Originally established in the three royal residences of Toledo, Cuidad-Real, and Talavera, it eventually became a military force, whose chief mission was to put into execution the orders of the Inquisition.

The Cruciata, a society composed of archbishops, bishops, and other personages of mark, was entrusted, under various circumstances, with the task of seeing that the laws of the Church were obeyed and carried out amongst Catholics.

The Family of the Inquisition, or the Militia of Christ, created during the pontificate of Honorius III., and analogous to the Order of the Templars, placed its forces at the service of the Inquisitors, and its pious zeal earned for it the good opinion of Pope Gregory IX.

As we have already mentioned, it was in 1481, during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, that the Inquisition, provided with a new code of regulations, acquired a formidable power. Chiefly intended to bring to trial the Jews and the Moors who had again relapsed into paganism, it was then that it got the name of _The Holy Office_, and was superintended by a grand inquisitor-general and a council, termed _The Supreme_, consisting of forty-five members. When the Holy Office had a heretic, or any one suspected of being one, arrested, its agents stripped the accused person of all he had about his person, and took a detailed inventory of his clothing and furniture, in order that they might be restored to him intact should he prove to be innocent. The money so seized, whether in gold or silver, belonged by right to the tribunal, and went to pay the costs of the procedure. These formalities over, the accused person was taken to prison.

Of prisons, the Inquisition had several kinds: 1st, the _common_ prison, in which were confined persons accused merely of ordinary misdemeanour, and who, consequently, were allowed to communicate with their families and friends; 2nd, the _prison of mercy_ or _of penitence_, which was set apart for those who were to be detained only temporarily; 3rd, the _intermediate prison_, reserved for those who had committed some ordinary delinquency which brought them within the jurisdiction of the Holy Office; 4th, the _secret prison_, the inmates of which were kept in solitary confinement. The dungeons of the Inquisition were like all those constructed in the Middle Ages.

After an incarceration which varied in length, the prisoner was conducted, when the day of trial arrived, to the large audience hall, which was hung with black, and adorned with a figure of Christ upon the cross, the body being of ivory and the cross of ebony. At the extreme end, before a circular table, sat the Inquisitor-general in a raised chair covered with black velvet and surmounted by a canopy of the same material. To his right and left, seats placed at a lower elevation were reserved for the Inquisitors, who, with the secretary, composed the tribunal. Two clerks of the court took down the questions put by the president and the answers made by the accused; behind them stood the spies of the Inquisition, and four men wearing long black robes, with their faces concealed by a mask with openings for the mouth, the nose, and the eyes.

The prisoner was seated upon a kind of raised stool placed opposite the Inquisitor; when, after a long interrogatory, he failed to avow his guilt, he was taken to the _torture-chamber_, preceded by the Inquisitor and the four mysterious men in black who had been present at the trial. Here he was again exhorted to abjure his errors, and, if these fresh entreaties were powerless to move him, he was handed over to the torturer, who put him to the torture with one of the four agencies employed by justice--the cord, the scourge, fire, or water (see the chapter on “Punishments,” in MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE MIDDLE AGES).

The torture as used by the tribunals of the Inquisition did not differ from that employed by the civil tribunals, which, using it as unsparingly, scarcely attained a more satisfactory result, for the victim steeled himself against the pain and generally refused to reply to this interrogatory, though accompanied by inconceivable tortures. The solemn delivery of the judgment of the Inquisition and the execution of its sentences were preceded by a peculiar ceremony, designated in Spain and its dependencies by the name of _Auto-da-fé_, or Act of Faith. In most Auto-da-fés, the dismal procession was headed by a double file of Dominican brothers, before whom was carried the banner of the Holy Office (Fig. 334), with the device, “_Justitia et misericordia_.” Behind them came the condemned, followed by the spies of the Inquisition and the executioner.

There were many kinds of _san-benito_ for different classes of penitents. The first, for heretics who were reconciled to the Church before sentence had been passed, consisted of a yellow scapulary, with large reddish-coloured St. Andrew’s cross, and of a round pyramid-shaped cap called _coroza_, of the same material as the san-benito and with similar crosses; but no flames were represented on the garments, as the accused by timely repentance had escaped the punishment of burning (Fig. 335).

The second, for those who, sentenced to be burnt, had subsequently recanted, was made up of a san-benito and a coroza of the same material. The scapulary was covered with tongues of fire pointing downwards, to indicate that the wearer (Fig. 336) would not be burnt alive, inasmuch as he was to be strangled before being placed upon the burning pile.

Fig. 336.--_Fuego revolto._ Garment worn by those who
escaped being burnt alive by making a confession after they had
been condemned.

Fig. 337.--_Samarra._ Garment worn by those who, refusing to
confess, were about to be burnt.

Fac-simile of Engravings on Copper in the work of Philip of
Limborch, entitled “Historia Inquisitionis:” in folio, Amsterdam,
1592.]

The third, worn by those who died impenitent, had at the lower end the head of a man in the midst of fire and enveloped in flames. The other parts of the garment were covered with forked flames shooting upwards, as a token that the heretic would actually be burnt alive. Grotesque figures of demons were also represented upon the san-benito and upon the coroza as well.

At the church whither the cortége repaired, chanting prayers on its way, ten white tapers were alight in silver candlesticks upon the high altar, which was hung in black; to the right, there was a kind of raised dais for the Inquisitor and his councillors; to the left, another such a one for the king and his court. Facing the high altar was a scaffolding covered with black cloth upon which the _reconciled_ stood to make their abjurations upon missals which had been opened and arranged beforehand.

After the reconciliation of these latter, the impenitent heretics were handed over to the secular power, together with the prisoners who had been guilty of ordinary misdemeanour. The Auto-da-fé was then over, and the Inquisitors withdrew. An historian, in giving a detailed account of a trial before the tribunals of the Inquisition, tells us that the civil punishment was not inflicted until the day after the Auto-da-fé. Nor was it always the case that it was followed by execution, for Llorente cites that of February 12th, 1486, at Toledo, when there were seven hundred and fifty heretics brought up for punishment, not one of whom was put to death, though they had to do public penance. At another great Auto-da-fé, also held at Toledo in April of the same year, out of nine hundred repentant or condemned persons none underwent the extreme penalty. A third, on the 1st of May, comprised seven hundred and fifty persons; and at a fourth, on the 10th of December, there were nine hundred and fifty, but in both these instances no blood was shed. Out of a total of three thousand three hundred persons who had to do penance for transgressing the rules of the Church at this epoch, Llorente states that only twenty-seven were put to death. It must be remembered that the Spanish Inquisition, in conformity with the royal decree, had to try not only heretics, but those accused of unnatural crimes, brigands, lay or clerical seducers, blasphemers, persons guilty of sacrilege, usurers, and even murderers and rebels. In addition to this, those who supplied the enemy with horses and stores in time of war, together with the then frequent cases of sorcery, magic, and other similar frauds, were also brought within the jurisdiction of the tribunals of the Inquisition. Thus the twenty-seven individuals who were executed in 1486 may have been made up of malefactors of every class.

The political aim of the kings of Spain was attained, for the maintenance of religious unity preserved the kingdom from the bloody catastrophes which at that period spread desolation throughout France and England. This is admitted even by Voltaire, in his “Essai sur l’Histoire Générale.” While deploring the horrors of the Inquisition, he says, “In Spain there were none of those bloody revolutions, conspiracies, or cruel reprisals which disgraced every other European nation. Neither Count Olivarès nor the Duke of Lerma sent their enemies to the scaffold, and sovereigns were never assassinated as in France, nor did they suffer beneath the headsman’s axe, as in England.”

The Inquisition was less successful in the Netherlands, for the Protestant cause made great progress in Holland during the reign of Charles V. The nobility and the upper clergy, indignant at the rigorous measures adopted by Philip II. (Fig. 338) in his efforts to put down heresy, countenanced the general uprising against the Spaniards. Emboldened thereby, the Protestants flew to arms, the churches were burnt, the priests and monks were massacred, and the Catholic form of worship suppressed in many localities. Philip dispatched thither the notorious Duke of Alva, who, on assuming the command, instituted the _council of troubles_, which the people nicknamed the _council of blood_. The religious question resolved itself into a struggle for national independence. A bitter war resulted in the definite separation of the United Provinces, which afterwards became the kingdom of Holland. Belgium, created an independent province, was handed over with hereditary rights to Archduke Albert and his wife Isabella, daughter of Philip II.

The United Provinces were no sooner constituted than, notwithstanding the Protestant principle of the liberty of free inquiry, they obeyed that instinct which impels all governments to religious unity--Spain was outdone in the refinement of punishments which they invented to use against the Catholics who refused to change their faith (Fig. 339). Nor was it against the Catholics only that the Protestant Inquisition exercised its rigorous authority. In countries where Calvinists and Lutherans were brought into juxtaposition, religious persecution broke out between the various reformed Churches, always, too, under the instinctive influence that religious unity was necessary to ensure the stability of the State. A distinguished writer, Menzel, in his “New History of the Germans since the Reformation,” gives some very interesting details concerning this internecine struggle. At the end of the sixteenth century, when, at the death of the Elector of Saxony, Christian I., on September 25th, 1591, the government of Saxony fell into the hands of Duke William of Altenburg, who was a rigid Lutheran, the Calvinist party in Germany thought that the golden age was about to return. Chancellor Crell, who in Christian’s lifetime had treated the Lutherans with slight show of mercy, was cast into prison, together with Gunderman, a Leipsic preacher. After five months’ incarceration, the latter signed the “Formula of Concord,” in order that he might be able to visit his wife, whom he had left _enceinte_, but he had no sooner appended his signature than he was told that she had hung herself in a fit of despair. The unfortunate man went out of his mind. Other preachers were treated with almost equal severity; and at Leipsic, in 1593, the Lutheran party set fire to the houses of the Calvinists, who had to fly from the city to escape assassination. Such was also the case in Silesia. Upon the 22nd of September, 1601, Chancellor Crell was condemned to death, after having been kept ten years in prison, and he was beheaded on the 10th of October.

At Brunswick, in 1603, the Lutheran preachers excommunicated the captain of the burghers, one Brabant; in 1604 it was rumoured that he had made a pact with the devil, and that the latter had been seen following them in the form of a crow. Brabant tried to escape, but broke his leg in the attempt. Brought back to Brunswick amidst the hootings of the populace, who regarded him as a traitor and a magician, he was three times put to the most cruel torture, to terminate which he avowed himself guilty of all the crimes laid to his charge. His companions in misfortune were treated with equal cruelty. While Zachary Druseman was suspended by the arms in the torture-chamber, his judges went off to their supper. The victim implored the executioner, by the wounds of our Lord Jesus Christ, to let him down for a single moment and loosen the screws which were crushing his feet, but the latter replied that he must wait until the judges returned. When they came in an hour afterwards, completely intoxicated, Druseman was dead. Menzel goes on to tell us that on St. Michael’s Day the Lutheran preachers, at the request of the town council, undertook to justify from the pulpit the executions which had been incessantly going on, and that on the 9th of December a thanksgiving service was held in all the churches, in front of which the gibbets and scaffolds were still displayed.

In the southern provinces of France, where the party of the Reformation acquired the upper hand, excesses were committed which were as much reprobated by the more enlightened of the Protestants as by the Catholics. The town of Angoulême in particular was the scene of many such cruelties (Fig. 340).

The dominant party was everywhere guilty of extreme intolerance, but nowhere was the persecution carried on upon so large a scale as in unhappy England. Protestant writers cannot find expressions strong enough to characterize the unheard-of violence to which Henry VIII. had recourse with a view to establish religious unity in his kingdom.

Cobbett, in his “History of the English Reformation,” says, “Previous to this reign of bloodshed not more than three persons on the average were tried in each county at the annual assizes, but now there were as many as sixty thousand persons in prison at a time. In a word, the Court of Henry was a regular slaughter-house of human flesh.”

Henry VIII., from the very fact of his having broken with the principle of authority in religious matters, found himself driven to an excess of severity, feeling that it was by terror alone that he could put down resistance; and, as the example of those who are placed high in authority exercises a decisive influence upon the masses, the king singled out for attack those who stood highest on the roll of magistrates and bishops--the Chancellor, Thomas More, and his illustrious friend Fisher, Bishop of Rochester (Fig. 341). They were both cited to appear before the King’s Council, and the Chancellor was condemned to die. More was passionately attached to his daughter Margaret, who, when the trial was over, threw herself upon her father’s neck, exclaiming, amidst her sobs, “My father, are you who are innocent to die?” To which, embracing her for the last time, and giving her his blessing, he replied, “Would you have me die guilty?” When he reached the foot of the scaffold he called upon the populace to witness that he died in the faith of the Catholic, Apostolic, and Roman Church. The executioner asked for his forgiveness, and More, embracing him, rejoined, “You are rendering me the greatest service that can be done to a Christian!” He met his death with joy, and his head was exposed for a fortnight upon London Bridge. His friend, the Bishop of Rochester, had been sent to the block a few weeks before (Fig. 341).