The Inquisition was a judicial police organisation instituted by the Roman church with the concurrence of temporal rulers for the purposes of suppressing heresy and blasphemy.... It has left an odious memory—and not without reason. Anyone who denies that atrocities were committed by the Inquisition must indeed be blinded by a foolish and prejudiced desire to apologise for the deeds of history. But why is it against the Inquisition that the indignation inspired to-day by the memory of early religious persecutions is particularly directed? Thousands of human beings were burned for their faith before the Inquisition existed.... There is one circumstance, however, among others, which explains and justifies the general sentiment, and that is that the Inquisition pretended to be—and was—a regular judicial organisation. The worst excesses are forgotten when they are not systematic. It is the long-continued travesties of justice perpetrated in the service of fanaticism or for reasons of state that arouse the more lasting resentment. Therefore it is that, whatever be their number, the victims of the Roman Inquisition weigh so heavy in the scales of history.—From the article “L’Inquisition,” by C. V. Langlois, in La Grande Revue (Paris, 1901).
All the gods have been addicted to jealousy. Their worshippers have accordingly usually felt and often acted towards heretics with the characteristic ruthlessness of the most merciless of passions.
Egypt was not free from religious reigns of terror, nor yet India, nor China, and even the genial creeds of Greece brought the mildly unorthodox Socrates to his death. Rome was comparatively tolerant of alien religions for political convenience, but there were laws against foreign rites in Rome; the prætor Hispalus was banished for worshipping Jupiter Sabasius, and the temples of Isis and Serapis were thrown down after they had been erected in the city. Augustus and Tiberius proscribed Egyptian and Jewish worship in Rome, the latter sending four thousand Jews to Sardinia. The hideous sufferings of the early Christians and the martyrdoms they underwent in the arenas are well known.
When at length the victims became the victors and the emperor Constantine was persuaded to Christianity, the same intolerant zeal from which the Christians had suffered now turned the tables on the pagans. At this time the Christians had not developed an idolatry of their own such as later brought on the terrors of the war of the image-breakers, so they heaped contempt upon the objects of worship revered by the pagans. The Jews were as usual the first and the worst sufferers. Then, again, as usual, the bitterest of all punishments were spent upon those who differed only slightly in doctrine. Constantine tried confiscation and exile on the Donatists, in 316 A.D.; he branded Arius as an infamous outlaw and had his writings burned.[a]
All the laws of Constantine were subsequently renewed by his successors, and applied with more or less rigour to the different heretical sects. By an edict published in January, 381 A.D., Theodosius the Great deprives heretics of all their churches, and annuls all edicts to the contrary into which preceding emperors had been surprised. In this edict he condemns by name the Photinians, Arians, and Eunomians; he recommends the Nicene Creed, and prohibits all assemblies of heretics within the walls of cities; adding, moreover, that if they attempted to cause any disturbance, they should be even banished from the cities.
In the same year he published a much more severe law against the Manichæans; he declared them infamous; deprived them totally of the power of making a will, or even of succeeding to their paternal or maternal property; and ordered all such property to be confiscated, except in the case of children, who were qualified, if they embraced a more holy religion, to inherit their father’s or mother’s property. Another law of Theodosius treats still more rigorously those Manichæans who disguised themselves under the names of Encratites, Saccophori, and Hydroparastates; he subjected them to capital punishment. To insure the execution of this law the emperor orders the prefect of the prætorium to appoint inquisitors, charged to discover heretics and to inform against them.
This is the first time that the name of an inquisitor against heretics occurs; but the Inquisition itself was of older standing, for we have already seen Constantine institute one precisely similar against the Arians and the other heretics of his time. These severe measures were provoked by the abominable doctrine of the Manichæans, which had drawn down on them, from the very origin of their sect, the severity of even the pagan emperors.[c]
When the Arians secured an emperor of their creed they enforced on the Athanasians a heavy usury of exile, punishment, torture, and even death, till the emperor Julian was driven to exclaim, according to Ammianus,[h] “Even beasts are not so cruel to men as the generality of Christians to each other.”
This work is not the place for an account of all the heresies that have complicated Christianity without cessation. The great feud of iconoclasm has already been described and the major disagreements between the Greek and Roman churches have been recounted in the history of the papacy, where it was also shown how the growth of papal supremacy brought about a constant duel with the kings and the emperor.[a]