Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1

by Isaac Disraeli

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.