Pope Gregory IX. dying in 1378, the Romans named Urban VI. as his successor; but several cardinals assembled out of Rome, and elected another Pope under the name of Clement VII.
The great schism of the West then began, and lasted till the election of Martin V., in the Council-general of Constance in 1417, where Don Gil Muñoz, who had been elected as Clement VIII., renounced the papacy. This revolution influenced the state of the Inquisition as much as the other points of ecclesiastical discipline. Castile followed the party of Clement VII., and Portugal that of Urban VI. The order of Dominicans was equally divided, and elected different vicars-general. Urban VI. died in 1389, and his party elected Boniface IX., who appointed F. Rodrigo de Cintra apostolical inquisitor-general of Portugal. He afterwards named F. Vicente de Lisboa inquisitor-general of Spain. Castile, Navarre, and Aragon were under the dominion of Benedict XIII., who was elected Pope after the death of Clement VII. Such was the state of the Inquisition in Spain towards the end of the fourteenth century.
It is uncertain if the Inquisition existed in Castile in the beginning of the fifteenth century; for, though Boniface IX. appointed F. Vicente de Lisboa inquisitor-general, his authority was not recognized, as that kingdom belonged to the party of Benedict XIII., who, after the Council of Constance, was designated as the anti-pope Peter de Luna. The town of Perpignan was the seat of one of the provincial Inquisitions of Aragon, whose jurisdiction extended over the countships of Rousillon and Cerdagne, and over the islands of Majorca, Minorca, and Iviza. Benedict XIII., who was recognized in this part of Spain, divided this province and appointed two inquisitors, who celebrated several autos-da-fé, and burnt a considerable number of people.
The election of Martin V. having put an end to the great schism of the West, the Portuguese monks ought to have submitted to the authority of the Provincial of Spain, who was then a monk of their nation, named F. Juan de Santa Justa; but the Dominicans who were at Constance persuaded the Pope that his jurisdiction was too extensive, which induced the pontiff to subdivide the province of Spain into three parts: the first part was named the province of Spain, and comprised Castile, Toledo, Murcia, Estremadura, Andalusia, Biscay, and the Asturias de Santillana; the second, Santiago, was composed of the kingdom of Leon, Galicia, and the Asturias of Oviedo; and the third, that of Portugal, extended over all the dominions of the monarch.
Martin V. established a provincial Inquisition at Valencia, in 1420, at the request of Alphonso V., King of Aragon; hitherto commissioners had only been sent there.
The Inquisitor of Aragon, 1441, was F. Michael Ferriz, and that of Valencia, F. Martin Trilles, who reconciled in their districts several Wickliffites, and condemned many others to be burnt. Several inquisitors succeeded these till 1474, when Isabella, wife of Ferdinand of Aragon, King of Sicily, ascended the throne of Castile, after the death of Henry IV. her brother. John II., King of Aragon, dying in 1479, his son, Ferdinand, united that kingdom to Sicily; he soon after conquered the kingdom of Grenada, which belonged to the Moors, and lastly that of Navarre, which was secured to him by the capitulation of the inhabitants.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE GOVERNMENT OF THE OLD INQUISITION.
ALTHOUGH the Popes, in establishing the Inquisition, had only proposed to punish the crime of heresy, yet the inquisitors were commissioned to pursue those Christians who were only suspected, because it was the only means of discovering those who were really guilty. There were many crimes which came under the jurisdiction of a civil judge, which the Popes considered no one could be guilty of without being tainted with a false doctrine; and although they were pursued by secular tribunals, the inquisitors were enjoined to consider the accused as suspected of heresy, and to proceed against them, in order to ascertain if they committed these crimes from the depravity natural to man, or from the idea that they were not criminal; which opinion caused a suspicion that their doctrine was erroneous. A species of blasphemy which was called heretical, belonged to this class of crimes; it was committed against God or his saints, and showed in the offender erroneous opinions of the omniscience or other attributes of the Deity. It rendered the blasphemer liable to be suspected of heresy, as the inquisitor might consider it a proof that his habitual thoughts were contrary to the faith.
The second species of crime which caused a suspicion of heresy, was sorcery and divination. If the offenders only made use of natural and simple means of discovering the future, such as counting the lines in the palm of the hand, they came under the jurisdiction of a civil judge; but all sorcerers were liable to be punished for heresy by the Inquisition, if they baptized a dead person, re-baptized an infant, made use of holy water, the consecrated host, the oil of extreme unction, or other things which proved contempt or abuse of the sacraments and the mysteries of religion.
The same suspicion affected those who addressed themselves to demons in their superstitious practices. A third species of crime was the invocation of demons. Nicholas Eymerich informs us that, in his office of inquisitor, he had procured and burnt, after having read them, two books which treated of that subject; they both contained an account of the power of demons, and of the mode of worshipping them. The same author adds, that in his time a great number of trials for this crime took place in Catalonia, and that many of the accused had gone so far as to worship Satan, with all the signs, ceremonies, and words of the Catholic religion.