It seems even more incredible that men and women who had been buried for fifty or sixty years could be dug out of their graves, could be found guilty “in absentia” and that the heirs of people who were condemned in this fashion could be deprived of their worldly possessions half a century after the death of the offending parties.
But such was the case and as the inquisitors depended for their maintenance upon a liberal share of all the goods that were confiscated, absurdities of this sort were by no means an uncommon occurrence and frequently the grandchildren were driven to beggary on account of something which their grandfather was supposed to have done two generations before.
Those of us who followed the newspapers twenty years ago when Czarist Russia was in the heyday of its power, remember the agent provocateur. As a rule the agent provocateur was a former burglar or a retired gambler with a winning personality and a “grievance.” He let it be secretly known that his sorrow had made him join the revolution and in this way he often gained the confidence of those who were genuinely opposed to the imperial government. But as soon as he had learned the secrets of his new friends, he betrayed them to the police, pocketed the reward and went to the next city, there to repeat his vile practices.
During the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, southern and western Europe was overrun by this nefarious tribe of private spies.
They made a living denouncing those who were supposed to have criticized the Church or who had expressed doubts upon certain points of doctrine.
If there were no heretics in the neighborhood, it was the business of such an agent provocateur to manufacture them.
As he could rest assured that torture would make his victims confess, no matter how innocent they might be, he ran no risks and could continue his trade ad infinitum.
In many countries a veritable reign of terror was introduced by this system of allowing anonymous people to denounce those whom they suspected of spiritual deficiencies. At last, no one dared trust his nearest and dearest friends. Members of the same family were forced to be on their guard against each other.
The mendicant friars who handled a great deal of the inquisitorial work made excellent use of the panic which their methods created and for almost two centuries they lived on the fat of the land.
Yes, it is safe to say that one of the main underlying causes of the Reformation was the disgust which a large number of people felt for those arrogant beggars who under a cloak of piety forced themselves into the homes of respectable citizens, who slept in the most comfortable beds, who partook of the best dishes, who insisted that they be treated as honored guests and who were able to maintain themselves in comfort by the mere threat that they would denounce their benefactors to the Inquisition if ever they were deprived of any of those luxuries which they had come to regard as their just due.