The medieval Inquisition: A study in religious persecution

by Charles T. Gorham

The Netherlands.

In the middle of the sixteenth century the most prosperous portion of Europe was the Netherlands or Low Countries, which comprised the provinces now forming the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. Many large towns adorned these fertile plains, inhabited by an energetic and hard-working people, whose vast commerce extended to every quarter of the globe. Antwerp, the banking centre of Europe, contained nearly as many people as then inhabited London; and splendid public buildings testified to the taste, wealth, and civic spirit of its citizens. The municipal institutions of the country were in advance of those of any other, and even the poorer classes lived in something like comfort, while education was so diffused that there was scarcely a peasant who was unable to read and write. As in the south of France 300 years earlier, a rich and progressive civilization had been developed by a self-reliant and independent people, and had created a predisposition to heresy—that is, it stimulated men’s minds in every department of life, and in none more powerfully than in that of religion. The Church had succeeded in destroying the civilization of Languedoc. It joined zealously in a similar attempt in the Netherlands. But it had to do with a different people.

In 1520 the Emperor Charles V, of whose dominions the seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands formed part, issued the first of his nine Edicts for the purpose of enforcing religious uniformity. These made up a complete system of persecution, and included the introduction of the Inquisition, not after the Spanish model with which Charles was familiar, but in the somewhat less efficient and imposing form instituted by the Papacy in the thirteenth century, and perfected by long experience. Certain safeguards were insisted upon by the Netherlands, such as the vesting of inquisitorial powers in laymen, and confirmation of sentences by members of provincial councils. The Emperor appointed a supreme Inquisitor for the whole country, and the Edicts were so efficiently carried out as to render the Spanish organization superfluous. These “placards,� as they were termed, were directed against Protestantism, which had made remarkable progress among a people to whose temperament it strongly appealed, and had not been repressed by the local tribunals of the episcopal Inquisition. Under Charles’s Edicts great numbers of persons were put to death for such enormous offences as reading the Bible, ridiculing the sacred wafer, or even casting a disapproving glance on a graven image. Motley states that in 1546 the number of victims had been estimated by the Venetian Envoy at 30,000, and it is accepted by most historians as true that during Charles’s reign from 50,000 to 100,000 persons suffered death for their religious opinions, and that his son Philip caused at least half as many to be executed.

These figures are in all probability exaggerated, but they at least indicate very severe and prolonged persecution. The mere terms of the Edict of 1550 compel this conclusion. They provide that the crimes of printing, copying, possessing, or circulating the works of the Protestant Reformers, image breaking, unauthorized worship or discussion whether in public or in private, disputes upon or exposition of the Scriptures, or preaching openly or secretly, were to be punished by death; “the men with the sword and the women to be buried alive, if they do not persist in their errors; if they do persist in them, then they are to be executed with fire; all their property in both cases being confiscated to the Crown.�[30] The Edict also forbade any aid or favour of suspected heretics, and provided that persons who failed to denounce them became thereby liable to the same punishments as the heretics themselves. In order to forestall any softening of the hearts of the judges, they were forbidden, under the threat of severe penalties, to grant or request pardons, or to relax the severity of their instructions.

This barbarous Edict, which merely completed previous enactments of almost equal ferocity, was renewed and confirmed by Philip II when, in 1555, he assumed the reins of power on the Emperor’s abdication. Though egregiously in error in yielding to the counsels of his spiritual advisers, Charles was an able and prudent ruler, who persecuted only for supposed reasons of State, and did not scruple to employ Protestants in his service, provided they were fit men. His appointment of an Inquisitor-General for the Netherlands was confirmed by Pope Adrian VI in 1522, thus establishing the Papal Inquisition; but, the official being dismissed for forgery, fresh Inquisitors were nominated to see that the Edicts were obeyed. “They were empowered,â€� says Motley, “to inquire, proceed against, and chastise all heretics, all persons suspected of heresy—and their protectors. Accompanied by a notary, they were to collect written information concerning every person in the provinces ‘infected or vehemently suspected.’ They were authorized to summon all subjects of his Majesty, whatever their rank, quality, or station, and to compel them to give evidence, or to communicate suspicions. They were to punish all who pertinaciously refused such depositions with death. The Emperor commanded his presidents, judges, sheriffs, and all other judicial and executive officers to render all ‘assistance to the Inquisitors and their familiars in their holy and pious Inquisition, whenever required so to do,’ on pain of being punished as encouragers of heresy—that is to say, with death. Whenever the Inquisitors should be satisfied as to the heresy of any individual, they were to order his arrest and detention by the judge of the place, or by others arbitrarily to be selected by them.... In conclusion, the Emperor ordered the ‘Inquisitors to make it known that they were not doing their own work, but that of Christ, and to persuade all persons of this fact.’â€�[31]

The strangely perverted vision which could thus see the work of Christ in the merciless cruelty of the Inquisition need not be analysed. The mean-souled bigot Philip made the most desperate efforts to break the will and enforce the submission of a high-spirited and resolute people, among whom the tenets of Protestantism had made remarkable progress. For details of the appalling and well-nigh incredible horrors perpetrated by the Inquisitors, the monster Titelmann in particular, the reader is referred to Motley’s great work.

The persecutions produced the effects which might have been foreseen. They caused the immortal revolt of the Netherlands. “Nothing was talked of but the Edicts and the Inquisition. Nothing else entered into the minds of men. In the streets, in the shops, in the taverns, in the fields; at market, at church, at funerals, at weddings; in the noble’s castle, at the farmer’s fireside, in the mechanic’s garret, upon the merchants’ exchange, there was but one perpetual subject of shuddering conversation. It was better, men began to whisper to each other, to die at once than to live in perpetual slavery. It was better to fall with arms in hand than to be tortured and butchered by the Inquisition.�[32]

Eminent men inveighed against the tyranny of the Government, and several of the nobles refused to obey the Edicts. At first it was debated whether Philip would be mad enough to enforce them, but all doubt as to his intentions was removed by the Inquisition being formally proclaimed in every town and village throughout the country. The Netherlanders steeled their hearts, and prepared to resist to the death. As Motley remarks: “They knew that the obligation of a King to his vassals was as sacred as the duties of the subjects to the sovereign.� Philip was not unaware of the peril, but, like the wooden-headed bigot that he was, considered the danger of discrediting the Inquisition greater than any inconveniences that were likely to result from its rigour. The general indignation became so pronounced that Philip was urged to modify his instructions in some important particulars, the chief of which were the repeal of the Edicts and the abolition of the Inquisition. Very reluctantly he agreed to make certain concessions, but the sincerity of his compliance may be estimated from the facts that he withdrew the Papal but maintained the Episcopal Inquisition, stimulating the latter to fresh exertions, and that he agreed to relax the penalty of death for heresy, though, considering the promise extorted from him, he declined to be bound by it. He wrote to his envoy at Rome that this was, perhaps, the best arrangement, “since the abolition would have no force unless the Pope, by whom the institution had been established, consented to its suspension. This matter, however, was to be kept a profound secret.... The Papal institution, notwithstanding the official letters, was to exist, unless the Pope chose to destroy it; and his Holiness had sent the Archbishop of Sorrento, a few weeks before, to Brussels, for the purpose of concerting secret measures for strengthening the Holy Office in the Provinces.�[33] The severity of the Edicts Philip declined to mitigate; his secret resolve was not only to keep them in full force, but so efficiently to support the Inquisition that all his heretic subjects could be exterminated, even if it cost him his realm and his life.

All this time persecution was going on, and men and women were being daily tortured, beheaded, strangled, and burnt alive. Did the Church of Christ utter one word of protest? Let the Archbishop of Cambrai answer. An intercepted letter written by him to Cardinal Granvelle in 1565 contained these words: “Since the pot is uncovered and the whole cookery known, we had best push forward and make an end of all the principal heretics, whether rich or poor, without regarding whether the city will be entirely ruined by such a course. Such an opinion I should declare openly were it not that we of the ecclesiastical profession are accused of always crying out for blood.�[34]

An even more precise indication of the general feeling in the Church is found in the resolution passed at a great meeting of the rulers and nobility in the same year. The question debated was whether any change should be made in the treatment of heretics. The lay doctors present were all in favour of the death penalty being abolished. All the ecclesiastics stoutly maintained the opposite opinion, and unanimously resolved that no attempt should be made to improve a system which had hitherto worked so well, and that heretics were to be rigorously chastised, as before. That Philip shared to the full their truculent zeal is shown by his fury when he learnt that in May, 1567, a decree of slightly mitigated ferocity had been issued by his representative, the Duchess of Parma. He ordered its immediate revocation, on the ground that its excessive clemency was indecent and contrary to the Christian religion. The clemency consisted in permitting heretics to be hanged instead of being burnt alive. This royal fanatic personally commended the outrageous Titelmann for his persecuting energy.

When the Prince of Orange, who had earnestly defended the cause of freedom, left the Netherlands for Germany in 1567, the country, says Motley, “was absolutely helpless, the popular heart cold with apprehension. All persons at all implicated in the late troubles, or suspected of heresy, fled from their homes. Fugitive soldiers were hunted into rivers, cut to pieces in the fields, hanged, burned, or drowned, like dogs, without quarter and without remorse. The most industrious and valuable part of the population left the land in droves. The tide swept outwards with such rapidity that the Netherlands seemed fast becoming the desolate waste they had been before the Christian era. Throughout the country those Reformers who were unable to effect their escape betook themselves to their old lurking-places. The new religion was banished from the cities, every conventicle was broken up by armed men, the preachers and leading men were hanged, their disciples beaten with rods, reduced to beggary, or imprisoned, even if they sometimes escaped the scaffold. An incredible number, however, were executed for religious causes. Hardly a village so small, says the Antwerp chronicler, but that it could furnish one, two, or three hundred victims to the executioner. The new churches were levelled to the ground, and out of their timber gallows were constructed. It was thought an ingenious pleasantry to hang the Reformers upon the beams under which they had hoped to worship God.�[35]

The troubles became more and more serious, and at length culminated in open revolt. In 1567 the Duke of Alva arrived in Brussels with a well-appointed army of Spanish veterans, and at once began his career of blood and cruelty. When he left the country, six years later, a baffled man, he is said to have boasted that he had caused 18,600 persons to be executed during that period. On the 16th February, 1568, the Inquisition framed the most comprehensive death-warrant ever issued, and ten days later Philip confirmed it; the whole of the inhabitants of the Netherlands were regarded as heretics and condemned to death, a few persons only being excepted by name. Motley appears to have no doubt as to the authenticity of this appalling document, but Prescott states that he can find no Spanish record of it, and that it is related by only two Dutch historians. In 1568 the rebellion broke out in earnest, and led to that great and glorious war which lasted, with intervals, for eighty years, with the result that the Low Countries were delivered from the oppressor, and one of the noblest of nations secured its independence and religious freedom.