The new Pontiff believed, heart and soul, in repression. He meant to fight the Reformation by the Inquisition and the Index; and these two instruments were unsparingly used.
CHAPTER VI.
THE INQUISITION AND THE INDEX.[724]
§ 1. The Inquisition in Spain.
The idea conveyed in the term Inquisition is the punishment of spiritual or ecclesiastical offences by physical pains and penalties. It was no new conception in the Christian Church. It had existed from the days of Constantine. So far as the mediæval Church is concerned, historians roughly distinguish between the Episcopal, the Papal, and the Spanish Inquisitions. In the half-barbarous Church of the early Middle Ages, in which a curious give-and-take policy existed between the secular and civil powers, a seemingly consistent understanding was arrived at between Church and State, which may be summed up by saying that it was recognised to be the Church’s duty to point out heretics, and that of the State to punish them—the Church being represented by the Bishops. This episcopal Inquisition took many forms, and was never a very effective instrument in the suppression of heresy.
In 1203, Pope Innocent III., alarmed at the spread of heresies through southern France and northern Italy, published a Bull censuring the indifference of the Bishops, appointing the Abbot of Citeaux his delegate in matters of heresy, and giving him power to judge and punish heresy. This was the beginning of the Inquisition as a separate institution. It was an act of papal centralisation, and a distinct encroachment on the episcopal jurisdiction. The papal Inquisition, thus started, took root. It did not displace the old episcopal Inquisition; the two existed side by side; but the “Apostolic Tribunal for the suppression of heresy” was by far the more effective weapon. It was usually managed by the Dominican and Franciscan Orders.
The Spanish Inquisition took its rise in the closing decades of the fifteenth century. The Popes had frequently desired to see the papal Inquisition introduced into Spain, and leave had always been refused by the sovereigns, jealous of papal interference. Pope Sixtus IV. had gone the length of granting to his Legate, Nicolo Franco, “full inquisitorial powers to prosecute and punish false Christians who after baptism persisted in the observance of Jewish rites,” but Isabella and Ferdinand did not allow him to exercise them. But the power and wealth of the Conversos—Jews who had nominally embraced Christianity—had made them detested by the Spanish people, and a large section of the clergy were clamouring for their overthrow. Thomas de Torquemada, the Queen’s confessor, eagerly pressed the Inquisition upon his royal penitent, and at last the sovereigns applied to the Pope for a Bull to enable them to establish in Spain an Inquisition of a peculiar kind. It was to differ from the ordinary papal Inquisition in this, that it was to be strictly under royal control, that the sovereigns were to have the appointment of the Inquisitors, and that the fines and confiscations were to flow into the royal treasury. The Bull was granted (November 1st, 1478), but the sovereigns hesitated to use the rights it conveyed. After a year’s delay, two royal Inquisitors were appointed (September 17th, 1480), and the first auto-da-fé, at which six persons were burnt, took place on February 6th, 1481. The succeeding years saw various modifications in the constitution of the Holy Office; but at last it was organised with a council, presided over by an Inquisitor-General, Thomas de Torquemada. He was a man of pitiless zeal, stern, relentless, and autocratic; and he stamped his nature on the institution over which he presided. The Holy Office was permitted to frame its own rules. The permission made it practically independent, while all the resources of the State were placed at its command. When an Inquisitor came to assume his functions, the officials took an oath to assist him to exterminate all whom he might designate as heretics, and to observe, and compel the observance by all, of the decretals Ad abolendum, Excommunicamus, Ut officium Inquisitionis, and Ut Inquisitionis negotium—the papal legislation of the thirteenth century, which made the State wholly subservient to the Holy Office, and rendered incapable of official position any one suspect in the faith or who favoured heretics. Besides this, all the population was assembled to listen to a sermon by the Inquisitor, after which all were required to swear on the cross and the Gospels to help the Holy Office, and not to impede it in any manner or on any pretext. The methods of work and procedure were also taken from the papal Inquisition. The Inquisitors were furnished with letters patent. They travelled from town to town, attended by guards and notaries public. Their expenses were defrayed by taxes laid on the towns and districts through which they passed. Spies and informers, guaranteed State protection, brought forward their information. The Court was opened; witnesses were examined; and the accused were acquitted or found guilty. The sentence was pronounced; the secular assessor gave a formal assent; and the accused was handed over to the civil authorities for punishment. When Torquemada reorganised the Spanish Inquisition, a series of rules were framed for its procedure which enforced secrecy to the extent of depriving the accused of any rational means of defence; which elaborated the judicial method so as to leave no loop-hole even for those who expressed a wish to recant; and which multiplied the charges under which suspected heretics, even after death, might be treated as impenitent and their property confiscated. The Spanish Inquisition differed from the papal in its close relation to the civil authorities, its terrible secrecy, its relentlessness, and its exclusion of Bishops from even a nominal participation in its work. Thus organised, it became the most terrible of curses to unhappy Spain. During the first hundred and thirty-nine years of its existence the country was depopulated to the extent of three millions of people. It had become strong enough to overawe the monarchy, to insult the episcopate, and to defy the Pope. The number of its victims can only be conjectured. Llorente has calculated that during the eighteen years of Torquemada’s presidency 114,000 persons were accused, of whom 10,220 were burnt alive, and 97,000 were condemned to perpetual imprisonment or to public penitence. This was the terrible instrument used relentlessly to bring the Spanish people into conformity with the Spanish Reformation, and to crush the growing Protestantism of the Low Countries. It was extended to Corsica and Sardinia; but the people of Naples and Sicily successfully resisted its introduction when proposed by the Spanish Viceroys.