It would be gratuitously harrowing to multiply such instances of human misery, and we may return to the chronicle of the progress of the Inquisition, leading up to its culmination in Spain and Portugal, instances of whose severity have already been quoted. It is a pitiful chronicle, and one that the humanitarian might well wish to pass over in silence; but one which the historian cannot altogether ignore.[a]
The notion of heresy was enlarged so as to comprehend not only the slightest deviation from the creed of the church, but also usury, sorcery, contempt of the cross and clergy, dealings with Jews, etc.
The people in many places rose up against the inquisitors, as in Albi, and Narbonne (1234), and Toulouse; and in France, where the Inquisition had first been put in force, it was first abolished.[195] The Jesuits sought to restore the Inquisition in Bavaria (1599), and during the Thirty Years’ War found an occasional victim; but Maria Theresa abolished it in her kingdom, and it soon afterwards disappeared in Germany. It had no hold in England, Sweden, Norway, or Denmark; but in Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands it enjoyed a luxuriant growth.[z]
The tribunal, after having been successively adopted in Italy and Germany, was introduced into Aragon, where, in 1242, additional provisions were framed by the Council of Tarragona, on the basis of those of 1233, which may properly be considered as the primitive instructions of the Holy Office in Spain.
This “ancient” Inquisition, as it is termed, bore the same odious peculiarities in its leading features as the modern; the same impenetrable secrecy in its proceedings, the same insidious modes of accusation, a similar use of torture, and similar penalties for the offender. A sort of manual, drawn up by Eymerich,[p] an Aragonese inquisitor of the fourteenth century, for the instruction of the judges of the Holy Office, prescribes all those ambiguous forms of interrogation by which the unwary and perhaps innocent victim might be circumvented. The arm of persecution, however, fell with sufficient heaviness, especially during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, on the unfortunate Albigenses, who, from the proximity and political relations of Aragon and Provence, had become numerous in the former kingdom. The persecution appears, however, to have been chiefly confined to this unfortunate sect, and there is no evidence that the Holy Office, notwithstanding papal briefs to that effect, was fully organised in Castile before the reign of Isabella. This is perhaps imputable to the paucity of heretics in that kingdom. It cannot, at any rate, be charged to any lukewarmness in its sovereigns; since they, from the time of St. Ferdinand, who heaped the fagots on the blazing pile with his own hands, down to that of John II, Isabella’s father, who hunted the unhappy heretics of Biscay like so many wild beasts among the mountains, had ever evinced a lively zeal for the orthodox faith.
By the middle of the fifteenth century, the Albigensian heresy had been nearly extirpated by the Inquisition of Aragon; so that this infernal engine might have been suffered to sleep undisturbed from want of sufficient fuel to keep it in motion, when new and ample materials were discovered in the unfortunate race of Israel, on whom the sins of their fathers have been so unsparingly visited by every nation in Christendom among whom they have sojourned, almost to the present century.
Under the Visigothic empire the Jews multiplied exceedingly in Spain, and were permitted to acquire considerable power and wealth. But no sooner had their Arian masters embraced the orthodox faith than they began to testify their zeal by pouring on the Jews the most pitiless storm of persecution. One of their laws alone condemned the whole race to slavery; and Montesquieu[aa] remarks, without much exaggeration, that to the Gothic code may be traced all the maxims of the Modern Inquisition, the monks of the fifteenth century only copying, in reference to the Israelites, the bishops of the seventh.
State of the Jews in Spain
After the Saracenic invasion, which the Jews, perhaps with reason, are accused of having facilitated, they resided in the conquered cities and were permitted to mingle with the Arabs on nearly equal terms. The Jews accordingly, under these favourable auspices, not only accumulated wealth with their usual diligence, but gradually rose to the highest civil dignities, and made great advances in various departments of letters.