THE GENTLE ART OF WHITEWASHING
If the Inquisition really was the beneficent institution which some of
its apologists represent, it is singular that their defences should be
so weak and their admissions so damaging. The line taken is, in the
main, that heresy is a crime against social order, that the Holy Office
embodied the tendencies of the age, that its methods were no worse than
those of the secular powers--were, indeed, an improvement upon them, and
that no special reproach can be directed against the Church on the score
of inhumanity. It is claimed that the practice of the Inquisition,
though rigorous at the outset from the necessities of the case, was
modified by experience in the direction of mildness and mercy, and that
the frequent appeals to Rome implied the certainty of an indulgent
hearing.
Thus the Rev. J. Balmez, a Spanish writer who, in his _European
Civilization_, defends the Inquisition--on the whole in a fairly
judicious and tolerant spirit--alleges that the Inquisitorial “rigour
was the result of extraordinary circumstances--the effect of the spirit
of the nations and the severity of customs in Europe at that time.”[44]
No student of history will deny that there is some truth in this
contention, though he would naturally expect the Christian Church to
have made far greater efforts than it did to mitigate the “severity of
customs.” Its conceptions of social order were incompatible with
personal liberty. And it is curious that when in Southern France the
majority of the people were heretics they showed no tendency to
persecute, though they had the power. All the events, the movements, and
the personages of human history are necessarily the consequences of
their antecedents; but, unless we are to relieve all human beings from
responsibility for their actions, we cannot exonerate the Inquisition
from crimes of the greatest magnitude. It may have been established from
the best and purest motives; yet, though experience made it fully aware
of the terrible evils which resulted from its procedure, it deliberately
increased them. All the actions of virtuous men are not good actions,
and if, in putting into practice particular theories, they are found to
produce mischievous effects, a sacred obligation rests upon the holders
to revise their views in the light of the experience gained. Buckle,
with justice, maintains that moral feelings alone are not equal to the
task of preventing persecution. If the moral feelings are enlisted on
the side of what is erroneously believed to be the truth, the sincerity
of the persecutor only makes him the more dangerous to society. “That
the Inquisitors were remarkable for an undeviating and incorruptible
integrity may be proved in a variety of ways and from different and
independent sources of evidence.”[45] In admitting the general truth of
this remark, it must be borne in mind that the Inquisitorial system
facilitated grave abuses by officials whose integrity was far from
“undeviating.” Buckle adds: “The evidence decisively proves the utter
inability of the moral feelings to diminish religious persecution....
The great antagonist of intolerance is not humanity, but knowledge. It
is to the diffusion of knowledge, and to that alone, that we owe the
comparative cessation of what is unquestionably the greatest evil men
have ever inflicted on their own species. For that religious persecution
is a greater evil than any other is apparent, not so much from the
enormous and almost incredible number of its known victims as from the
fact that the unknown must be far more numerous, and that history gives
no account of those who have been spared in the body in order that they
might suffer in the mind. We hear much of martyrs and confessors--of
those who were slain by the sword or consumed in the fire; but we know
little of that still larger number who, by the mere threat of
persecution, have been driven into an outward abandonment of their real
opinions, and who, thus forced into an apostasy the heart abhors, have
passed the remainder of their lives in the practice of a constant and
humiliating hypocrisy. It is this which is the real curse of religious
persecution. For in this way, men being constrained to mask their
thoughts, there arises a habit of securing safety by falsehood and of
purchasing impunity with deceit. In this way fraud becomes a necessary
of life; insincerity is made a daily custom; the whole tone of public
feeling is vitiated, and the gross amount of vice and of error fearfully
increased. Surely, then, we have reason to say that, compared to this,
all other crimes are of small account; and we may well be thankful for
that increase of intellectual pursuits which has destroyed an evil that
some among us would even now restore.”[46] Notwithstanding the great
improvement in knowledge, however, the main body of the Christian Church
still holds that persecution of erroneous doctrines is not an evil, and
still officially teaches that their propagation should be punished with
death. A Dominican priest in 1782 ferociously argued that “the command
in Deuteronomy xiii, 6-10, to slay without mercy all who entice the
faithful from the true religion, is almost literally the law of the Holy
Inquisition; and proceeded to prove from Scripture that fire is the
peculiar delight of God, and the proper means of purifying the wheat
from the tares.”[47]
It is perhaps going too far to affirm that all the Inquisitors were men
of incorruptible integrity. From the first the motive of religious zeal
was alloyed with the desire of personal or corporate profit, and an
elaborate system of persecution and extortion was invented which
permitted the exercise of both passions, whereby the many suffered to
gratify the few.
Balmez remarks that “the Roman Inquisition has never been known to
pronounce the execution of capital punishment ... the facts show the
difference between the Popes and the Protestants. The Popes, armed with
the tribunal of intolerance, have not spilt a drop of blood; Protestants
and philosophers have shed torrents.”[48] The object of this impudent
lie is simply to score a point against Protestantism. That Protestants
persecuted vigorously when they had the power no one disputes; for a
long time they failed to understand their own principles. But they had
less power and fewer opportunities than the Church of Rome. The precise
degrees of culpability in the two bodies cannot be determined here. No
other Church but that of Rome has ever set up an Inquisition. The
preceding pages will have shown that the Popes many times officially
instituted crusades against Christians who rejected parts of their
teaching; that they expressly commanded human beings to be tortured and
put to death; that all through the Middle Ages the Church exerted a
dominant influence over the State, and, while affecting scruples as to
the actual shedding of blood, insisted on the secular power inflicting
death in a form infinitely more painful than that of the sword. Thus an
educated writer can actually maintain that, because a man does not
murder with his own hand, but induces another to murder for him, he has
no moral responsibility for the crime. What civil code would recognize
such a doctrine? The subterfuge merely adds hypocrisy to cruelty. The
admission will be noticed that the Popes were “armed with the tribunal
of intolerance.” The “facts” show unmistakably who created that
tribunal. They show with equal clearness how it was employed. It will
also be observed that in this passage Balmez suppresses the fact that
the Inquisition had been actively at work for 300 years before
Protestantism was heard of, and that its most frightful excesses were
committed against those whose moral sense was outraged by the conduct of
the clergy.
It is true that the practice of the Inquisition became milder in the
course of time. But to claim this as a merit is to falsify the plain
historical record. There were two principal reasons for the diminished
severity, neither of them reflecting special credit on the persecutors.
In Languedoc and Spain the Inquisition succeeded in exterminating
practically every heretic in the kingdom, so that the field of its
operations became gradually narrowed. The Inquisition ceased to burn
heretics only when there were no more heretics to burn. And a certain
inclination to milder penalties was made inevitable by an improvement in
secular morals which can hardly have been the work of the Church which
had seriously retarded it. In other countries the diffusion of knowledge
led even some ecclesiastics to perceive the futility of persecution, and
when that point was reached they became convinced of its inhumanity.
Balmez might as well have argued that the dying-out of the witchcraft
mania was due to the benevolent spirit of the witch-hunters.
A significant admission made by Balmez may be noticed. “I see,” he
remarks, “that from the earliest times, when the Church began to exert
political influence, heresy began to figure in the codes as a crime; and
I have never been able to discover a period of complete tolerance.”[49]
This means that the spirit of intolerance, so rapidly developed in the
Church, infected the State also. The fact is beyond dispute, but it
simply furnishes an additional testimony to the evils of
ecclesiasticism. Nor will any one deny that the Christian Church has
never yet shown to the world “a period of complete tolerance.”
The further argument of Balmez, that the Inquisition preserved Spain
from the “dangers” of Judaism and Protestantism, may also be admitted as
representing facts, though it is necessary to draw from them conclusions
other than his own. The material prosperity of Spain would have been
incalculably greater if the Jews had been allowed the free exercise of
their business abilities and the practice of their non-aggressive faith;
while, if Protestantism had been permitted the freedom which it secured
elsewhere, the cause of spiritual religion must have been promoted. As
to the Inquisition having averted civil war, if the Church had grasped
the idea of tolerance civil war over religious differences would have
been impossible. But even that serious peril would have been a less evil
than the extinction of liberty, the slow suffocation of the intellectual
life, the neglect of science, and the decay of commerce, which actually
resulted from the Inquisition’s policy. Civil war would have been at
least an indication of life. The Inquisition meant death.
Perhaps the best-known and most thorough-going apologist for the
Inquisition, so far as Spain is concerned, is Count Joseph De Maistre
(1754-1821), a Romanist layman who adopted a strongly ecclesiastical
point of view, and whose great ability was marred by a tendency to
paradox and dogmatism. His _Letters to a Russian Gentleman on the
Spanish Inquisition_ are full of a vivacious special pleading, which
perplexes without enlightening the reader. His main arguments group
themselves round three points: (1) That the Spanish Inquisition was a
purely secular institution; (2) that it did not condemn to death; (3)
that it did not punish the expression of opinion on questions of
religion.
With regard to the first point De Maistre says: “The Inquisition, by
virtue of the Bulls of the Sovereign Pontiff, and the King, by virtue of
his royal prerogative, constitute the authority which regulates, and has
always regulated, the tribunals of the Inquisition--tribunals which are,
at the same time, both royal and ecclesiastical; so that, if either of
the two powers happened to withdraw, the action of the tribunal would
necessarily be suspended” (p. 8). How this explicit admission that the
Spanish Inquisition was both a State and a religious organization is
reconcilable with the assertion that it was “entirely a royal
institution” must be left to the reader’s ingenuity to discover. De
Maistre effectively demolishes his own contention. It is still more
effectively confuted by a later and better authority. Dr. Pastor admits
that the Spanish Inquisition was “a mixed, but primarily ecclesiastical,
institution. The fact that the condemned were handed over to the secular
arm testifies to the correctness of this view. Had the Spanish
Inquisition been a State Inquisition, a royal court of justice, there
would have been no necessity for this. A court which invariably hands
over those whom it finds guilty to the secular arm for punishment
cannot itself be a secular tribunal. It was precisely the ecclesiastical
character of the new Inquisition which made its judges decline to
execute capital sentences and follow the custom always observed by the
ecclesiastical Inquisition, of requesting that the prisoner ‘might be
leniently dealt with’--a formality prescribed by the canon law.”[50] The
formula of mercy, of course, deceived no one. In another place Dr.
Pastor says: “It is important to note, as a significant fact bearing on
the character of this institution, that ‘not only the ecclesiastical
authorization of the first Inquisitors, but also the first regulations
as to the mode of procedure, emanated directly from the Pope.’”[51] Lea
states that the Inquisition even claimed that all civil statutes of
which it disapproved should be abrogated.[52] But if the responsibility
for the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition rests only partially
upon the Popes, there is no question of divided responsibility in the
case of the institution with which the present essay is concerned. That
was established, renewed, and supervised at every turn by the Papacy.
De Maistre’s second contention is that the Inquisition did not pass
sentences of death, but that if it virtually did so it merely followed
the practice of all other tribunals, which necessarily have the power to
inflict death for serious crime. “All tribunals condemn to death,” he
says, adding: “The Church so abhors blood that a priest cannot be a
surgeon, lest his consecrated hand should shed the blood of the patient”
(p. 11). It is sheer superstition to argue that a tribunal notoriously
prone to inflict excessive punishment is relieved of moral
responsibility by omitting a particular form of words, while taking
every possible precaution to ensure the punishment being mercilessly
inflicted. The argument is a dishonest shift, which “strains at a gnat
and swallows a camel.” The “consecrated hand” was too holy to practise
the art of saving life, but not too holy to employ an unconsecrated hand
to destroy it. In this connection De Maistre enlarges on the lenity of
Rome, which frequently protested against the severity of the laws
against heresy. That mildness was occasionally shown is true, but it is
forgotten that Rome itself--as the Papal Bulls ordering torture
prove--was very largely responsible for the severity. That the
tenderness was not due to an excess of humane feeling we may infer from
the savage rigour which in the thirteenth century became a feature of
the canon law. Had that law been a model of gentleness and love,
ecclesiastics would have found no difficulty in making it an engine of
cruelty and persecution, on the plea that concern for the heretic’s soul
made it necessary and wholesome to punish his body. As it was,
injunctions to deal mercifully with him were so systematically set at
naught that very little importance can be attached to their face value.
Inquisitors were seldom reproved for being zealous persecutors. De
Maistre’s verdict that the Inquisition was “mild, tolerant, charitable,
the bearer of consolation in every country of the world,” sounds like
irony, but was probably his sincere conviction. Polemical writers
sometimes empty words of all intelligible meaning.
In his third main argument De Maistre shows the cloven hoof. He
maintains that people are rightly punished if they “strike deadly blows
at the religion of their nation,” that “the propagator of heresy ought
to be classed among the greatest criminals,” and that it is positively
wicked to protest against the punishments of the Inquisition (p. 44). If
these contentions are sound, it is a waste of time to argue that the
Inquisition did not punish the expression of heretical opinions in
religion. It was established for that very purpose.
The following specimen of De Maistre’s reasoning will probably be
sufficient: “God has spoken; it is for us to believe. The religion which
he established is one, even as He is Himself. Truth being essentially
intolerant, to profess religious toleration is to profess scepticism; in
other words, to exclude faith. Woe, a thousand times woe, to the stupid
imprudence which accuses us of damning men. It is only God who damns; He
alone has said to His messengers: _Go, teach all nations! He that
believeth shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned_”
(p. 72). This passage is reproduced merely as a curious example of the
religious reasoning of a century ago. Fortunately for human happiness,
the world has condemned this point of view by abandoning it. The day has
gone by for arguments which seek to justify religious persecution, and
for appeals to supernatural authority in support of irrational dogmas.
In our own time the Inquisition has found a far more reasonable and
fair-minded apologist in the person of Monseigneur Celestin Douais,
Bishop of Beauvais, who published in 1906 a scholarly examination of the
Holy Office. The first sentence of this work is that “The Inquisition
was established by the Papacy, which alone was qualified to do so,” and
that “this fact is universally known and recognized.” The Bishop adds
that the Inquisitor Eymerich expressly lays it down that an Inquisitor
is not a secular judge, but a delegate appointed by the Pope. If, in his
calm and restrained historical exposition, he nowhere condemns the
organized barbarity of the system, he freely exposes its defects, and
only incidentally defends its proceedings. He is a historian rather than
an apologist. The few considerations he urges are of quite minor
importance; if they extenuate the guilt of the Inquisitorial practice,
they by no means disprove the enormous mischief it produced. Thus he
asserts, on the authority of Eymerich, that the names of witnesses were
suppressed because, if mortal enmity to the accused could be proved
against them, they were required to withdraw from the case. In practice
the accused gained no advantage from this provision, for he could only
guess at his possible enemy, and the Inquisitors were ingenious enough,
if they so desired, to prove his guesses wrong. The handicap to the
prisoner remained, and it is possible to assume that one reason for the
extreme secrecy was the determination to render the concession useless.
Monseigneur Douais states that ecclesiastical law was in general milder
than secular law, and that torture was interdicted by the canons until
1252. This may be so, but it was a Pope who in that year insisted on the
employment of torture, and it was again expressly authorized by Innocent
IV, Urban IV, and other Popes. In this, as in other matters, it is
useless to rely on provisions which were habitually set at naught. The
contention that torture was seldom used is perhaps the result of too
implicit a trust in formulas. According to M. Langlois, torture became
so much a part of the ordinary process that it was purposely left
unrecorded.[53] The great thing was to extract confession; it was easy
to preserve a discreet silence as to the means. In the civil records the
same peculiarity is observable.[54] No institution has ever exhibited
greater discrepancies between theory and practice than has the
Inquisition.
That provision was made for the mitigation and even remission of
penalties need not be doubted. But this was done in few and exceptional
cases only; the decision being customarily left to the Inquisitors’
discretion, it became the practice to ignore everything that tended in
favour of the persons accused.
That the co-operation of the Bishop of the diocese was necessary to give
validity to the Inquisitorial sentence is assumed by Monseigneur Douais
to have relieved the Inquisitors of some portion of their
responsibility. Probably it did sometimes make the trial a little less
serious for the accused, for the Bishops did not always share the
inflexibility of the Holy Office. But the argument merely lifts a part
of the responsibility from one department of the Church and places it on
another. Undeniably the Inquisition was set up by the Church of Rome.
The arrangement was, of course, no guarantee that justice would be done,
nor does it disprove the charge that the Inquisition was a serious
menace to civilization.
The point on which Bishop Douais lays most stress is that the delivery
of the heretic to the secular arm was a matter quite distinct from his
subsequent fate, with which neither Inquisition nor Church had any
concern. It was regrettable that people should be burnt alive, but that
was entirely the affair of the civil power. The Church could not carry
out a sentence which it had not delivered; its own sentence was merely a
harmless pronouncement that the heretic was cut off from the Church. And
the Church always took particular care to plead for his gentle and
merciful treatment. Now the formula, “Without shedding of blood,” was
known to be a callous and cruel pretence. The Inquisition was perfectly
aware of the result of its relinquishing the heretic to the secular arm.
If it objected to men being burnt alive, if the civil power exceeded the
intentions and wishes of the Church, why did the Church never raise a
word of protest? What it did was usually to send a secretary to see that
the burning was properly carried out, and if it was not the magistrate
himself was liable to the penalties for heresy.[55]
Finally, Monseigneur Douais claims that the Inquisition, by its wise
conformity with the social justice of the period, succeeded in reducing
heresy, and “separated the secular power from the spiritual domain of
the Church.”[56] Thus an arrangement by which the Church compelled the
State to do its dirty work is termed a “separation.” An ecclesiastic
sees separation where other people would see alliance. This is called
“reconciling the interests of God and Cæsar.” The blasphemy appears to
be quite unconscious.
An article on the Inquisition by a Jesuit priest, Joseph Blötzer, of
Munich, which appears in the _Catholic Encyclopædia_, contains one or
two statements which may be very briefly noticed. The assertion that the
Church was more merciful than the State is true only in comparatively
rare instances; but, considering the claims of the Church to a Divine
origin and also the general spirit of its founder’s teachings, one would
expect the difference to be very much more perceptible.
Heresy is said to have been primarily a political offence. On the
contrary, it was primarily a religious offence, as would naturally be
inferred from the flourishing condition of the Netherlands, the
Albigensian and other heretical communities, the remarkable industry of
whose members made them most valuable citizens. Throughout the shameful
story of religious persecution it was usually the Church which goaded
the sometimes reluctant State to suppress heresy; it was the Church that
nagged and bullied rulers into compliance with its will. They were
fools to comply, but comply they did, frequently under threat of
excommunication. Occasionally the Church and its favourite department,
the Holy Office, did have a fit of compassion, but it was the exception
that proved the rule. And the fit usually came on when there was money
to be made by clemency.
The Church, it is claimed, enjoined excommunication, but not death, as
the punishment of heresy. This is true of particular periods only; as
applied to the whole career of the Inquisition it is part of the
conventional hypocrisy. The Church disliked the term “blood,” but caused
it to be shed freely enough; it seldom used the word “death,” but it
handed over the heretic to the secular power with a perfectly clear
understanding that death was to be the penalty.
According to Father Blötzer, the general lay opinion was that heretics
should be severely punished, and the Church endeavoured to soften this
feeling. If the Church is entitled to the credit of its rare attacks of
tenderness, it must also take the discredit of its general barbarity. It
cannot be allowed to “have it both ways.” And in the Middle Ages it was,
of course, the clerical body that was the fount of lay opinion regarding
heresy. Some doubt as to the softening process is natural enough in view
of the Papal decree of 1184 previously referred to. Peter Cantor was
ordered not to put the Cathari to death immediately after the
ecclesiastical judgment had been delivered, for the significant reason
that the Church might not be compromised. This shows that the Church was
aware of its complicity in the proceedings and in the fate of its
victims. In their language dealing with these matters the apologists of
the Inquisition display no small skill in casuistry. The _Catholic
Encyclopædia_ palliates torture by saying that it was not intended as a
punishment, but as a method of eliciting truth. The person on the rack
failed to appreciate the distinction. As torture usually elicited error,
the Inquisitors cannot be complimented on the rationality of their
methods. Other Inquisitorial terms are juggled with in the same way by
the apologists. Confiscation of a heretic’s goods was simply a mode of
defraying the costs and expenses of his trial. Imprisonment, again, was
not punishment; it was nothing more than a useful discipline which
afforded an opportunity of repentance.
The Jesuit writer concludes that “the Inquisition marks a substantial
advance in the contemporary administration of justice, and therefore in
the general civilization of mankind.” If to prevent the honest
expression of thought is to advance civilization, the claim is just. If
the administration of justice is promoted by torture, when in the
extremity of pain people will confess anything, the correctness of the
assertion must be admitted. If to burn men and women alive is the way to
increase human happiness, the apologist is not audacious. Evidently the
Church has not yet repented of or profited by its own lurid past. It
would not be ashamed to persecute in the twentieth century if it had the
power. That power it still claims, and the right to exercise it even to
death is still maintained by its defenders.[57] In the middle of the
nineteenth century Rome was still able to imprison a vicar of the
Apostolic College who had embraced Protestant opinions.[58] The
Inquisitor-General of Ancona issued in 1843 a severe decree against
Jews, not as relapsed Christians, but simply as Jews.[59]
According to this authoritative _Encyclopædia_, the Inquisition still
preserves its official existence, and ranks as the “first among the
Roman Congregations.” “When momentous decisions are to be announced” the
Pope “always presides in person” over its deliberations; but in these
days the necessity for his attendance cannot frequently arise. The
Inquisition claims jurisdiction over all Christians, and even (as a
matter of theory) over the Cardinals of the Church, though in practice
the Cardinals are, as might be anticipated, exempt from any unwelcome
surveillance.
* * * * *
Readers who have thus far followed this brief account of the Inquisition
will have little difficulty in forming an opinion about it. Is it the
kind of institution they would like to see restored? Grant the
extravagant supposition that all the Inquisitors were men of probity,
kind, well-meaning, and conscientious--what we are chiefly concerned
with are the effects produced by the system of repression which they so
rigidly enforced. We have to judge whether it did or did not make for
human happiness and the advance of civilization. Intellectual freedom is
no less essential to progress than purity of morals. The Inquisition at
least temporarily destroyed the one, and certainly did not promote the
other. Knowledge grows by being shared; one idea leads, by association,
to others; one gleam of truth broadens into clearer light as the dawn
ushers in the day; one discovery affords a clue to another. For ever to
suppress truth is beyond the wit of man, but attempts to suppress it
have cumulative effects in prolonging the reign of ignorance. It is not
from the ignorant that intellectual greatness may be expected, and in
its effect upon public morals sheer ignorance is the mother of more
crime than some persons are willing to admit. Perhaps the Inquisitors
did not realize the evil of stifling thought for centuries; perhaps
they did not know that the assassination of ideas is a crime. But their
twentieth-century apologists cannot plead this ignorance. They enjoy the
blessings of liberty, and defend the persecutor! They profit by the
heroism of those thousands of unknown faithful men and women who died
for religious freedom, and they would hand the world back to
intellectual slavery!
No more summary verdict on the Inquisition can be given than the
concluding words of its chief historian: “It introduced a system of
jurisprudence which infected the criminal law of all the lands subjected
to its influence, and rendered the administration of penal justice a
grim mockery for centuries. It furnished the Holy See with a powerful
weapon in aid of political aggrandizement. It tempted secular sovereigns
to imitate the example, and it prostituted the name, of religion to the
vilest temporal ends. It stimulated the morbid sensitiveness to
doctrinal aberrations until the most trifling dissidence was capable of
arousing insane fury and of convulsing Europe from end to end. On the
other hand, when Atheism became fashionable in high places, its thunders
were mute. Energetic only in evil, when its powers might have been used
on the side of virtue, it held its hand and gave the people to
understand that the only sins demanding reparation were doubt as to the
accuracy of the Church’s knowledge and attendance on the Sabbath. In its
long career of blood and fire the only credit which it can claim is the
suppression of the pernicious dogmas of the Cathari; and in this its
agency may be regarded as superfluous, for those dogmas carried in
themselves the seeds of self-destruction, and higher wisdom might have
trusted to their self-extinction. Thus the judgment of impartial history
must be that the Inquisition was the monstrous offspring of mistaken
zeal, utilized by selfish greed and lust of power to smother the higher
aspirations of humanity and stimulate its baser appetites.”[60]
This is a severe, but perhaps not unjust, verdict. Some allowance,
however, must be made for the customs of an intolerant and
semi-barbarous epoch. Catholic apologists are justified in claiming that
the Inquisition should be judged in relation to the times in which it
flourished. But this does not explain how it was that many men, both in
the Church and out of it, were so much in advance of the Inquisition as
to disapprove of people being put to death for their religious opinions.
If Thomas Aquinas advocated the death penalty for heresy, several
eminent Fathers of the Church deprecated it, holding persuasion to be
the better method. Why was not the milder and more ancient view adopted?
It is suicidal to admit that the Church held back from torture and death
for centuries on the ground that they were inconsistent with the spirit
of Christianity. The assertion clearly implies a recognition of the
incompatibility of the spirit of Christianity with calculated cruelty,
and if this recognition was confined to a few superior minds so much the
worse for the Church which paid no heed to them. There is obvious
insincerity in the plea that the Church adopted only with reluctance the
fatal policy of persecution. It insisted on that policy, often against
the remonstrances of the State. It claimed to be superior to the spirit
of the age, yet, on its own admission, yielded to the inferior
influence. In reality it did more; it actively and spontaneously made
persecution a fine art, and coerced the State to carry out its behests.
When the Church excuses its cruelty by pointing to the equal cruelty of
the medieval State it omits to mention that the State did not persecute
opinion as such. The Christian Church did.
Let it be admitted that the Inquisitors--at least originally--were
well-intentioned men, who sought to promote religion as they understood
it. The question arises, Did they understand religion rightly? To them
religion was a complete and final revelation of a Divine will; the true
faith could be one only as God was one; all who sought to disturb that
faith, however good their intentions might be, were guilty of a sin
worse than temporal rebellion. Have we nothing to learn from their awful
error? If we may judge from the _Catholic Encyclopædia_, the Church of
Rome has not learned much. The attitude of the Inquisitors is not in the
least surprising when in the twentieth century we find persecution
defended as a religious duty. Another of its writers, Father Guiraud,
echoes De Maistre’s contention that the Church of Rome alone possesses
the truth, and therefore has a right to be intolerant.[61] The spirit of
orthodox clericalism unmistakably appears in the tendency common to all
these Romanist apologists to gloss over with a few smooth and
casuistical phrases the most appalling deeds of cold-blooded cruelty
which the world has ever seen. The commonwealth, says Father Guiraud,
“can no more recognize the maxim of unlimited and unbridled religious
freedom than it can adopt the suicidal principle of irreligion.”[62]
This implies that there is no _via media_ between the rejection of all
religion and a blind acceptance of dogmatic authority, and involves a
claim practically identical with that of the Inquisition. If religious
persecution is excusable when the spirit of the age permits it, what are
we to think of those who justify persecution in an age which deems it a
blunder and a crime?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
_Achilli, Dr. G. G._ Dealings with the Inquisition. 1851.
_Addis and Arnold._ A Catholic Dictionary.
_Balmez, Rev. J._ European Civilization. 1868.
_Buckle, H. T._ History of Civilization in England. 3 vols.
_De Maistre, J. M._ Letters to a Russian Gentleman on the
Spanish Inquisition. 1851.
_Douais, C., Bishop of Beauvais._ L’Inquisition. Paris, 1906.
_Draper, J. W._ History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.
_Langlois, C. V._ Histoire de l’Inquisition d’aprés des travaux
récents. Paris, 1902.
_Lea, H. C._ History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. 3 vols. 1906.
---- History of Sacerdotal Celibacy. 2 vols. 1907.
_Lecky, W. E. H._ History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of
Rationalism in Europe.
_Limborch, P. van._ History of the Inquisition. 1816.
_Milman, Rev. H. H._ History of Latin Christianity. 9 vols.
_Motley, J. L._ The Rise of the Dutch Republic.
_Pastor, L._ Lives of the Popes. 12 vols. 1891-1912.
_Prescott, W. H._ History of the Reign of Philip II.
_Puigblanch, A._ The Inquisition Unmasked. 1816.
_Ranke, L. von._ History of the Popes. 3 vols. 1908.
_Rule, W. H._ History of the Inquisition. 2 vols. 1874.
_Tanon, L._ Histoire des Tribunaux de l’Inquisition en
France. Paris, 1893.
_Vacandard, E._ The Inquisition. 1908.
_The Catholic Encyclopædia._
_Encyclopædia Britannica._
_Jewish Encyclopædia._
WATTS AND CO., PRINTERS,
JOHNSON’S COURT, FLEET STREET,
LONDON, E. C.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Addis and Arnold, _Catholic Dictionary_, p. 776.
[2] H. C. Lea, _History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages_, vol.
iii, p. 630.
[3] Lea, p. 639.
[4] _Ibid_, p. 642.
[5] _Ibid_, p. 644.
[6] _Ibid_, p. 648.
[7] Lea, p. 643.
[8] Lea, p. 645.
[9] H. C. Lea, _History of Sacerdotal Celibacy_, vol. ii, p. 347.
[10] _Ibid._, p. 319.
[11] L. Tanon, _Histoire des Tribunaux de l’Inquisition en France_
(1893), pp. 290, 306.
[12] Lea, _Inquisition of Middle Ages_, vol. ii, p. 344.
[13] _Ibid._, p. 330.
[14] Milman, _History of Latin Christianity_, vol. ix, p. 36.
[15] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. iii, p. 644.
[16] _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 346.
[17] Lea, _Inquisition in Middle Ages_, vol. i, p. 70.
[18] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. i, p. 85.
[19] Lea, _Inquisition of Middle Ages_, vol. i, p. 225.
[20] The organization of the Medieval Inquisition was practically the
same as, though less efficient than, that of the Spanish institution,
which is explained in the author’s _Spanish Inquisition_.
[21] Lea, _op. cit.,_ vol. i, p. 228.
[22] At a later date the Dominicans became known as _Domini canes_, or
“dogs of the Lord.”
[23] Hastings, _Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics_; art.
“Inquisition.”
[24] Addis and Arnold, _A Catholic Dictionary_; art. “Inquisition.”
[25] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. i, p. 430.
[26] _History of Latin Christianity_, vol. v, p. 316.
[27] Addis and Arnold, _Catholic Dictionary_, p. 459.
[28] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. i, p. 240.
[29] Ranke, _Lives of the Popes_, vol. i, p. 144.
[30] Motley, _Rise of the Dutch Republic_, part ii, ch. i.
[31] Motley, part ii, ch. iii.
[32] _Ibid_, part ii, ch. v.
[33] Motley, part ii, ch. viii.
[34] Motley, part ii, ch. v.
[35] Motley, part ii, ch. x.
[36] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. iii, p. 204.
[37] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. iii, p. 318.
[38] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. iii, p. 472.
[39] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. iii, p. 530.
[40] Lea, p. 534.
[41] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. iii, p. 544.
[42] _Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism_, vol. i, p. 3.
[43] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. iii, p. 625.
[44] Balmez, _European Civilisation_ (London, 1855), p. 186.
[45] Buckle, _History of Civilisation_, vol. i, p. 187.
[46] Buckle, p. 189.
[47] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. i, p. 228.
[48] Balmez, _European Civilisation_, p. 185.
[49] Balmez, p. 181.
[50] Pastor, _Lives of the Popes_, vol. iv, pp. 403-405.
[51] _Ibid_, p. 402.
[52] _Inquisition_, vol. i, p. 385.
[53] C. Langlois, _L’Inquisition_, p. 65.
[54] L. Tanon, _Histoire des Tribunaux de l’Inquisition en France_, p.
377.
[55] Douais, _L’Inquisition_, p. 265 et seq.
[56] _Ibid_, p. 273.
[57] See _The Popes and their Church_, by J. McCabe, page 211.
[58] See _Dealings with the Inquisition_, by Dr. G. G. Achilli (London,
1851).
[59] _Ibid_, p. 392.
[60] Lea, _Inquisition_, vol. iii, p. 650.
[61] _Catholic Encyclopædia_; art. “Toleration.”
[62] _Ibid._