Innocent the Third, a pope as enterprising as he was successful in his
enterprises, having sent Dominic with some missionaries into Languedoc,
these men so irritated the heretics they were sent to convert, that most
of them were assassinated at Toulouse in the year 1200. He called in the
aid of temporal arms, and published against them a crusade, granting, as
was usual with the popes on similar occasions, all kinds of indulgences
and pardons to those who should arm against these _Mahometans_, so he
termed these unfortunate Languedocians. Once all were Turks when they
were not Romanists. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was constrained to
submit. The inhabitants were passed on the edge of the sword, without
distinction of age or sex. It was then he established that scourge of
Europe, THE INQUISITION. This pope considered that, though men might be
compelled to submit by arms, numbers might remain professing particular
dogmas; and he established this sanguinary tribunal solely to inspect
into all families, and INQUIRE concerning all persons who they imagined
were unfriendly to the interests of Rome. Dominic did so much by his
persecuting inquiries, that he firmly established the Inquisition at
Toulouse.
Not before the year 1484 it became known in Spain. To another Dominican,
John de Torquemada, the court of Rome owed this obligation. As he was
the confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise,
that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to
extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Granada, and had
expelled from the Spanish realms multitudes of unfortunate Moors. A few
remained, whom, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they
at least assumed the name; but it was well known that both these nations
naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christians.
This race was afterwards distinguished as _Christianos Novos_; and in
forming marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its
purity by mingling with such a suspicious source.
Torquemada pretended that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the
interests of the holy religion. The queen listened with respectful
diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to
consent to the establishment of this unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada,
indefatigable in his zeal for the holy chair, in the space of fourteen
years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have
prosecuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were
condemned to the flames.
Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal
horror such proceedings spread. "A general jealousy and suspicion took
possession of all ranks of people: friendship and sociability were at an
end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children."
The situation and the feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the
Inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and
learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he
escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died
a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself
in the cell of the Inquisition. "Inclosed in this dungeon I could not
even find space enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I
felt my brain disordered. I frequently asked myself, am I really Don
Balthazar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so
greatly enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that
all my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in
this dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical
disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and præses!"
In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six
pillars surround this tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to
his being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, "If ever the
Jack Ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb,
this might serve as an excellent model."
The Inquisition punished heretics by _fire_, to elude the maxim,
"_Ecclesia non novit sanguinem_;" for burning a man, say they, does not
_shed his blood_. Otho, the bishop at the Norman invasion, in the
tapestry worked by Matilda the queen of William the Conqueror, is
represented with a _mace_ in his hand, for the purpose that when he
_despatched_ his antagonist he might not _spill blood_, but only break
his bones! Religion has had her quibbles as well as law.
The establishment of this despotic order was resisted in France; but it
may perhaps surprise the reader that a recorder of London, in a speech,
urged the necessity of setting up an Inquisition in England! It was on
the trial of Penn the Quaker, in 1670, who was acquitted by the jury,
which highly provoked the said recorder. "_Magna Charta_," writes the
prefacer to the trial, "with the recorder of London, is nothing more
than _Magna F----!_" It appears that the jury, after being kept two days
and two nights to alter their verdict, were in the end both fined and
imprisoned. Sir John Howell, the recorder, said, "Till now I never
understood the reason of the policy and prudence of the Spaniards in
suffering the Inquisition among them; and certainly it will not be well
with us, till something _like unto the Spanish Inquisition be in
England_." Thus it will ever be, while both parties struggling for the
pre-eminence rush to the sharp extremity of things, and annihilate the
trembling balance of the constitution. But the adopted motto of Lord
Erskine must ever be that of every Briton, "_Trial by Jury_."
So late as the year 1761, Gabriel Malagrida, an old man of seventy, was
burnt by these evangelical executioners. His trial was printed at
Amsterdam, 1762, from the Lisbon copy. And for what was this unhappy
Jesuit condemned? Not, as some have imagined, for his having been
concerned in a conspiracy against the king of Portugal. No other charge
is laid to him in this trial but that of having indulged certain
heretical notions, which any other tribunal but that of the Inquisition
would have looked upon as the delirious fancies of a fanatical old man.
Will posterity believe, that in the eighteenth century an aged visionary
was led to the stake for having said, amongst other extravagances, that
"The holy Virgin having commanded him to write the life of Anti-Christ,
told him that he, Malagrida, was a second John, but more clear than John
the Evangelist; that there were to be three Anti-Christs, and that the
last should be born at Milan, of a monk and a nun, in the year 1920; and
that he would marry Proserpine, one of the infernal furies."
For such ravings as these the unhappy old man was burnt in recent times.
Granger assures us, that in his remembrance a _horse_ that had been
taught to tell the spots upon cards, the hour of the day, &c., by
significant tokens, was, together with his _owner_, put into the
Inquisition for _both_ of them dealing with the devil! A man of letters
declared that, having fallen into their hands, nothing perplexed him so
much as the ignorance of the inquisitor and his council; and it seemed
very doubtful whether they had read even the Scriptures.[53]
One of the most interesting anecdotes relating to the terrible
Inquisition, exemplifying how the use of the diabolical engines of
torture forces men to confess crimes they have not been guilty of, was
related to me by a Portuguese gentleman.
A nobleman in Lisbon having heard that his physician and friend was
imprisoned by the Inquisition, under the stale pretext of Judaism,
addressed a letter to one of them to request his freedom, assuring the
inquisitor that his friend was as orthodox a Christian as himself. The
physician, notwithstanding this high recommendation, was put to the
torture; and, as was usually the case, at the height of his sufferings
confessed everything they wished! This enraged the nobleman, and
feigning a dangerous illness he begged the inquisitor would come to give
him his last spiritual aid.
As soon as the Dominican arrived, the lord, who had prepared his
confidential servants, commanded the inquisitor in their presence to
acknowledge himself a Jew, to write his confession, and to sign it. On
the refusal of the inquisitor, the nobleman ordered his people to put on
the inquisitor's head a red-hot helmet, which to his astonishment, in
drawing aside a screen, he beheld glowing in a small furnace. At the
sight of this new instrument of torture, "Luke's iron crown," the monk
wrote and subscribed the abhorred confession. The nobleman then
observed, "See now the enormity of your manner of proceeding with
unhappy men! My poor physician, like you, has confessed Judaism; but
with this difference, only torments have forced that from him which fear
alone has drawn from you!"
The Inquisition has not failed of receiving its due praises. Macedo, a
Portuguese Jesuit, has discovered the "Origin of the _Inquisition_" in
the terrestrial Paradise, and presumes to allege that God was the first
who began the functions of an _inquisitor_ over Cain and the workmen of
Babel! Macedo, however, is not so dreaming a personage as he appears;
for he obtained a Professor's chair at Padua for the arguments he
delivered at Venice against the pope, which were published by the title
of "The literary Roarings of the Lion at St. Mark;" besides he is the
author of 109 different works; but it is curious to observe how far our
interest is apt to prevail over our conscience,--Macedo praised the
Inquisition up to the skies, while he sank the pope to nothing!
Among the great revolutions of this age, and since the last edition of
this work, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal is abolished--but its
history enters into that of the human mind; and the history of the
Inquisition by Limborch, translated by Chandler, with a very curious
"Introduction," loses none of its value with the philosophical mind.
This monstrous tribunal of human opinions aimed at the sovereignty of
the intellectual world, without intellect.
In these changeful times, the history of the Inquisition is not the
least mutable. The Inquisition, which was abolished, was again
restored--and at the present moment, I know not whether it is to be
restored or abolished.