[Sidenote: New World]
The New World was capable of offering less resistance. Nevertheless, for many years the inquisitorial powers were vested in the bishops sent over to Mexico and Peru, and when the Inquisition was established in both countries in 1570 it probably meant no increase of severity. The natives were exempt from its jurisdiction and it found little combustible material save in captured Protestant Europeans. A Fleming was burned at Lima in 1548, and at the first auto held at Mexico in 1574 thirty-six Lutherans were punished, all English captives, two by burning and the rest by scourging or the galleys.
[Sidenote: Roman Inquisition]
The same need of repelling Protestantism that had helped to give a new lease of life to the Spanish Inquisition called into being her sister the Roman Inquisition. By the bull Licet ab initio, [Sidenote: July 21, 1542] Paul IV reconstituted the Holy Office at Rome, directing and empowering it to smite all who persisted in condemned opinions lest others should be seduced by their example, not only in the papal states but in all the nations of Christendom. It was authorized to pronounce {417} sentence on culprits and to invoke the aid of the secular arm to punish them with prison, confiscation of goods and death. Its authority was directed particularly against persons of high estate, even against heretical princes whose subjects were loosed from their obligation of obedience and whose neighbors were invited to take away their heritage.
[Sidenote: Procedure]
The procedure of the Holy Office at Rome was characterized by the Augustinian Cardinal Seripando as at first lenient, but later, he continues, "when the superhuman rigor of Caraffa [one of the first Inquisitors General] held sway, the Inquisition acquired such a reputation that from no other judgment-seat on earth were more horrible and fearful sentences to be expected." Besides the attention it paid to Protestants it instituted very severe processes against Judaizing Christians and took cognizance also of seduction, of pimping, of sodomy, and of infringment of the ecclesiastical rules for fasting.
[Sidenote: Italy]
The Roman Inquisition was introduced into Milan by Michael Ghislieri, afterwards pope, and flourished mightily under the protecting care of Borromeo, cardinal archbishop of the city. It was established by Charles V, notwithstanding opposition, in Naples. [Sidenote: 1547] Venice also fought against its introduction but nevertheless finally permitted it. [Sidenote: 1544] During the sixteenth century in that city there were no less than 803 processes for Lutheranism, 5 for Calvinism, 35 against Anabaptists, 43 for Judaism and 199 for sorcery. In countries outside of Italy the Roman Inquisition did not take root. Bishop Magrath endeavored in 1567 to give Ireland the benefit of the institution, but naturally the English Government allowed no such thing.
[Sidenote: Censorship of the press]
A method of suppressing given opinions and propagating others probably far more effective than the {418} mauling of men's bodies is the guidance of their minds through direction of their reading and instruction. Naturally, before the invention of printing, and in an illiterate society, the censorship of books would have slight importance. Plato was perhaps the first to propose that the reading of immoral and impious books be forbidden, but I am not aware that his suggestion was acted upon either in the states of Greece or in pagan Rome. Examples of the rejection of certain books by the early church are not wanting. Paul induced the Ephesian sorcerers to burn their books; certain fathers of the church advised against the reading of heathen authors; [Sidenote: c. 496] Pope Gelasius made a decree on the books received and those not received by the church, and Manichaean books were publicly burnt.