CHAPTER XI.

THE HOLY OFFICE OR INQUISITION.

THE "Holy Office," says the Penny Cyclopedia, "is the name of an ecclesiastical tribunal established in the 13th century by popes Honorius III., Gregory IX., and Innocent IV., to try heretics, blasphemers, apostates, relapsed Jews or Mohammedans, witches and wizards, polygamists, and other persons charged with infractions of the canons of the Church. The judges of this court were called inquisitors, whence the tribu nal itself has been commonly styled the Holy Inquisition.' The punishment of heresy and the name of inquisitors were not, indeed, new. In A.D. 325, the emperor Constantine banished the Arians and threatened death to those who should keep and use the books of Arius. Constantius, A.D. 353, forbade heathen sacrifices under pain of death. The first law under the Christian emperors for punishing heresy with death was set forth by Theodosius I. against the Manicheans, &c., A.D. 382, and Priscillian, a Spanish Gnostic, was beheaded for heresy A.D. 385. The trial and punishment in all such cases were left to the civil magistrate. In process of time, however, councils not only condemned certain doctrines as heretical, but sometimes specified the punishments for heretics, Jews, and apostates; and bishops, after examining the accused, admonished them, if guilty, and then handed them over, if obstinate, to the secular courts.

Pope Innocent III., who considered heresy the deadliest of sins, sent 2 legates with the title of "inquisitors" into the south of France, to extirpate the heresy of the Albigenses (see

Chap. XII.). These legates, by the pope's authority, held their own court, summoned before it suspected heretics, tried, condemned, and punished them even with death. In 1206, Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Dominicans, was associated with them and became one of their most zealous agents. But this was only a local and temporary commission.

In 1215 the 4th council of the Lateran enacted new and severe canons against heretics, and made it the chief business of the bishops' synodal tribunals to search out and punish heretics. Pope Honorius III. issued new provisions against heretics, which were enforced by the emperor Frederic II. in 1224, condemning impenitent heretics to death, and penitent ones to perpetual imprisonment. The council of Toulouse, in which a papal legate presided, ordered in 1229 the establishment of a board of inquisitors in every city, composed of a clergyman and 3 laymen. But as many bishops were accused of remissness or partiality, pope Gregory IX. in 1232 and 1233 altered the institution, and established in Germany, Aragon, Southern France, Lombardy, &c., inquisitors' courts or "inquisitorial missions," appointing generally Dominican monks as inquisitors. Says the Penny Cyclopedia:

"The Inquisition was introduced into Rome as well as other parts of Italy by Gregory IX., and intrusted to the Dominicans, but it was a long time before it was established as a distinct and permanent court. Inquisitors were appointed by the pope on particular occasions, who visited the various provinces and towns, proclaiming to all persons the obligation they were under of informing against those whom they knew or suspected of being heretics, under pain of excommunication. At the same time they also made it known that all persons guilty of heresy who came of themselves before the inquisitor within a certain fixed period, and accused themselves and professed repentance, should receive absolution and be only subject to a canonical penance. These penan

ces were public, humiliating, and very severe, as may be seen by a letter of St. Dominic concerning a heretic whom he had converted, by the acts of the council of Béziers, A.D. 1233, and of the council of Tarracona in 1242. After the expiration of the period of grace, the inquisitor

proceeded ex-officio against those who were denounced, the name of the informer being kept secret: he examined witnesses privately in presence of a notary and 2 priests, and having taken down the evidence in writing, he read it over to the witnesses,' who were asked whether they confirmed what had been read. If there appeared to be sufficient grounds for proceeding against the accused, the inquisitor or dered his arrest by the municipal officers, and he was taken to the convent of the Dominicans, if there was one in the town, or to the prison of the ecclesiastical court. He was then interrogated by the inquisitor, and his answers might be used afterwards as evidence against him. If the accused denied the charge of heresy, he was supplied with a copy of the instruction and depositions, but without the names of the accuser and witnesses, and with the omission of such circumstances as might discover them. The accused having made his answer or defense, which was taken down in writing, if he denied the charges, the inquisitor, together with the bishop of the diocese or his delegate, if they thought proper, ordered him to be put to the torture in order to obtain his confession. The torture might be repeated 3 times, but it was afterwards ordered to be applied only once; this regulation however was often evaded by suspending the torments and then resuming them, and considering the whole as one torture. If in the end there were not sufficient grounds for the conviction of the prisoner, he was declared to be suspected of heresy,' was obliged to make a public abjuration of all heresies, and was subject to certain penalties, according to the nature of the case. If the accused was convicted of heresy, but professed his repentance, he was condemned to prison for life, a penalty which however might be mitigated by the inquisitor. But if he was a 'relapsed, that is to say, had been tried before, and found guilty, or only strongly suspected, there was no mercy for him;

2

1 The councils of Béziers and Narbonne, and pope Innocent IV., allowed criminals and infamous persons and accomplices to be witnesses, and conviction of heresy to be effected by their testimony.

2 According to the Penny Cyclopedia, the first trace of any ecclesiastical sanction of the use of torture, even in the case of heresy or apostasy, is found in a decree of pope Innocent IV. in 1252; and this decree does not authorize the inquisitors to use it, but calls on civil magistrates to press offenders to confession against themselves and others by torture; but subsequently the necessity for secrecy in the proceedings of the inquisition led to the use of torture by the inquisitors themselves.

he was relaxatus,' that is to say, given over to the lay magistrate, who, according to the civil and canon laws, was bound to put him to death upon the sentence of the inquisitor which declared him a heretic. The only favor shown to the relapsed heretic who confessed and abjured his guilt was, to be strangled before he was burnt. If the convicted heretic was not relapsed, but impenitent, a respite of the sentence was granted in order to effect his conversion, and if he at last abjured, his life was spared, and he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment. If he persisted in his impenitence, he was publicly burned alive. Such were the principal characteristics of the old or delegated Inquisition as it existed from the 13th century to the latter part of the 15th, and the regulations of which are found in the Directorium Inquisitorum' [= Directory of Inquisitors] of Friar Nicholas Eymeric, a native of Catalonia, and a Dominican monk of the 14th century, who held the office of chief inquisitor in Aragon for 42 years."

In the 15th century the Inquisition had nearly fallen into disuse in Aragon from the extermination of the heretics who had occasioned its introduction; but it had not yet taken. permanent root in Castile and Leon and Portugal. What is called the "Modern or Spanish Inquisition" was introduced into Spain in 1480. Alfonso de Hodeja, Dominican prior in Seville, and Friar Philip de Barberis, inquisitor in Sicily, had suggested to Ferdinand and Isabella in 1477 the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain for punishing those Christians who secretly relapsed to Judaism. Isabella hesitated; but means were found to alarm her conscience; and she solicited and obtained in 1478 a papal bull authorizing Ferdinand and Isabella "to appoint 2 or 3 bishops or other dignitaries of the church, aged at least 40 years, of irreproachable character, graduates in theology, and the canon law, who were to be commissioned to seek after and discover, throughout the dominions of the Spanish sovereigns, all apostates, heretics, and their abettors, with full power to proceed against them according to law and custom." After the execu tion of the bull had been suspended for 2 years by Isabella, the sovereigns appointed two Dominicans as inquisitors, with an assessor and a fiscal attorney. Of the commencement of

their work the Penny Cyclopedia thus speaks, a principal authority being the Jesuit Mariana's History of Spain:

"The inquisitors established their court in the Dominican convent of St. Paul of Seville, whence, on the 2d of January, 1481, they issued their first edict, by which they ordered the arrest of several new Christians, as they were styled [= converts from Judaism or their children], who were strongly suspected of heresy, and the sequestration of their property, denouncing the pain of excommunication against those who favored or abetted them. The number of prisoners soon bebecame so great, that the Dominican convent not being large enough to contain them, the court was removed to the castle of Triana, in a suburb of Seville. The inquisitors issued another edict, by which they ordered every person, under pain of mortal sin and excommunication, to inform against those who had relapsed into the Jewish faith or rites, or who gave reason for suspecting them of being relapsed, specifying numerous indications by which they might be known. Sentences of death soon followed; and in the course of that year, 1481, 298 new Christians' were burnt alive in the city of Seville, 2,000 in other parts of Andalusia, and 17,000 were subjected to various penalties. The property of those who were executed, which was considerable, was confiscated."

The terror excited by these executions caused a vast number of new Christians' to emigrate; some, condemned as contumacious, appealed to the pope, who revoked the authority previously given to the sovereigns to appoint other inquisitors, recommended mildness and moderation, and appointed Thomas de Torque. mada inquisitor-general of the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, with full jurisdiction over all inquisitors in Spain and its dependencies. Torquemada chose 2 jurists as his assessors and councilors, and created 4 subordinate courts, at Seville, Cordova, Jaen, and Villa Real (afterwards at Toledo). The organic laws or "instructions" of the new tribunal were framed by Torquemada and his assessors and promulgated in 1484; new articles were added in 1488 and 1498; and the inquisitor-general Valdez in 1561 compiled a new series of or dinances which regulated ever after the practice and proceed