Chapter III: The Inquisition and the Index (3)

The action of Rome under the influence of the Counter-Reformation was clearly guided by two objects: to preserve Catholic dogma in its integrity, and to maintain the supremacy of the Church. She was eager to extinguish learning and to paralyze intellectual energy. But she showed no unwillingness to tolerate those pleasant vices which enervate a nation. Compared with unsound doctrine and audacious speculation, immorality appeared in her eyes a venial weakness. It was true that she made serious efforts to reform the manners of her ministers, and was fully alive to the necessity of enforcing decency and decorum. Yet a radical purification of society seemed of less importance to her than the conservation of Catholic orthodoxy and the inculcation of obedience to ecclesiastical authority. When we analyze the Jesuits' system of education, and their method of conducting the care of souls, we shall see to what extent the deeply seated hypocrisy of the Counter-Reformation had penetrated the most vital parts of the Catholic system. It will suffice, at the close of this chapter, to touch upon one other repressive measure adopted by the Church in its panic. Magistrates received strict injunctions to impede the journeys of Italian subjects into foreign countries where heresies were known to be rife, or where the rites of the Roman Church were not regularly administered.[155] In 1595 Clement VIII. reduced these admonitions to Pontifical law in a Bull, whereby he forbade Italians to travel without permission from the Holy Office, or to reside abroad without annually remitting a certificate of confession and communion to the Inquisitors. To ensure obedience to this statute would have been impossible without the co-operation of the Jesuits. They were, however, diffused throughout the nations of North, East, South, and West. When an Italian arrived, the Jesuit Fathers paid him a visit, and unless they received satisfactory answers with regard to his license of travel and his willingness to accept their spiritual direction, these serfs of Rome sent a delation to the central Holy Office, upon the ground of which the Inquisitors of his province instituted an action against him in his absence. Merchants, who neglected these rules, found themselves exposed to serious impediments in their trading operations, and to the peril of prosecution involving confiscation of property at home. Sarpi, who composed a vigorous critique of this abuse, points out what injury was done to commerce by the system.[156] We may still further censure it as an intolerable interference with the liberty of the individual; as an odious exercise of spiritual tyranny on the part of an ambitious ecclesiastical power which aimed at nothing less than universal domination.

[Footnote 155: Any correspondence with heretics was accounted sufficient to implicate an Italian in the charge of heresy. Sarpi's Letters are full of matter on this point. He always used Cipher, which he frequently changed, addressed his letters under feigned names, and finally resolved on writing in his own hand to no heretic. See _Lettere_, vol. ii. pp. 2, 151, 242, 248, 437. See also what Dejob relates about the timidity of Muretus, _Muret_, pp. 229-231.]

[Footnote 156: 'Treatise on the Inquisition,' _Opere_, vol. iv. p. 45.]