Fig. 325.—Violence of the French Huguenots against the Catholics.—A. Noble lady of Montbrun (Charente) being tortured by soldiers whom she had hospitably welcomed. They are burning the soles of her feet with red-hot irons, and with the sharp edges of the irons cutting the skin from her legs in strips.—B. Master Jean Arnould, Procureur-Royal at Angoulême, after having had his limbs mutilated, is strangled in his own house.—C. The widow of the Procureur at the criminal court of that city, seventy years of age, being dragged by the hair through the streets.—Fac-simile of a Copper-plate in the “Theatrum Crudelitatum nostri Temporis” (4to, Antwerp, 1587).
Fig. 326.—Seal of an imaginary Bull of Lucifer, taken from the “Roi Modus,” a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Burgundian Library, Brussels. The inscription on the seal seems to be cabalistic; at any rate, it is unintelligible.
It is therefore to Calvin and his personal influence that must be attributed the violent and merciless character which reform took during the sixteenth century, when the horrors of religious warfare were excused by the necessity of preaching the word of God to Christians who were anxious to hear it!
THE INQUISITION.
General Principles of the Inquisition; its Existence amongst the Greeks and Romans.—The Papal Inquisition.—The Inquisition in France.—The Albigenses.—The Royal Spanish Inquisition; its Political Purpose; it is opposed by the Popes.—Inquisitors of Toledo excommunicated by Leo X.—The Holy Hermandad.—The Spies of the Inquisition.—The Holy Office and the Supreme.—The Prisons of the Inquisition.—The Auto-da-fé.—The Inquisition in the Netherlands.—The Protestant Inquisition in Holland, Germany, France, England, and Switzerland.
At all times and in all places religion, which is the basis of society, has had to be protected and fostered in the public interest. This is why most men, especially those placed in authority, have always attached the highest importance to philosophical ideas and opinions, and still more to religious ideas. In fact, experience has shown only too plainly since the formation of civilised States, that a change of religious belief necessarily brings about a social transformation, and that a political revolution is but the putting into practice of a theory invented and propounded by a more or less hostile and mischievous philosophy; hence the established principle which ordains that human and divine law should alike be respected. It would therefore be erroneous to regard the Inquisition as an exceptional and abnormal fact, peculiar to the Middle Ages. The search into religious creeds—for such is the meaning of the word inquisition—was not only a natural consequence of the existence of forms of religion, but an imperious function of government. All history—of antiquity as well as that of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—bears witness to this fact. It is consoling to find that, as a general rule, even in the midst of the fiercest persecutions, there were men of lofty views and generous sentiments who did not hesitate to protest with undaunted courage against the tyrannical and sanguinary excesses, by means of which it was attempted to impose upon nations and upon individuals a religious conviction which ought to be the offspring of reason, and which should be the sole result of liberty of conscience.
