Torquemada
The Roman see is charged with duplicity, characteristic of Alexander VI, in making a gainful traffic by the sale of dispensations from the penalties incurred by such as fell under the ban of the Inquisition, provided they were rich enough to pay for them, and afterwards revoking them, at the instance of the Castilian court. Meanwhile, the odium excited by the unsparing rigour of Torquemada raised up so many accusations against him that he was thrice compelled to send an agent to Rome to defend his cause before the pontiff; until, at length, Alexander VI, in 1494, moved by these reiterated complaints, appointed four coadjutors, out of a pretended regard to the infirmities of his age, to share with him the burdens of his office.
This personage, who is entitled to so high a rank among those who have been the authors of unmixed evil to their species, was permitted to reach a very old age, and to die quietly in his bed. Yet he lived in such constant apprehension of assassination that he is said to have kept a reputed unicorn’s horn always on his table, which was imagined to have the power of detecting and neutralising poisons; while, for the more complete protection of his person, he was allowed an escort of fifty horse and two hundred foot in his progresses through the kingdom.
This man’s zeal was of such an extravagant character that it may almost shelter itself under the name of insanity. His history may be thought to prove that of all human infirmities, or rather vices, there is none productive of more extensive mischief to society than fanaticism. The opposite principle of atheism, which refuses to recognise the most important sanctions to virtue, does not necessarily imply any destitution of just moral perceptions, that is, of a power of discriminating between right and wrong, in its disciples. But fanaticism is so far subversive of the most established principles of morality, that, under the dangerous maxim, “For the advancement of the faith, all means are lawful,” which Tasso has rightly, though perhaps undesignedly, derived from the spirits of hell, it not only excuses, but enjoins the commission of the most revolting crimes as a sacred duty. The more repugnant, indeed, such crimes may be to natural feeling or public sentiment, the greater their merit, from the sacrifice which the commission of them involves. Many a bloody page of history attests the fact that fanaticism armed with power is the sorest evil which can befall a nation.[m]
Under Charles I (the emperor Charles V) the cortes sought for a modification of the laws of the Inquisition; but under Philip II the flames burned brightly again, at first in Seville and Valladolid (1559 seq.). But by the end of the seventeenth century all vestiges of the Reformation were effaced, and the activity of the Inquisition became limited to the destruction of prohibited books, of which an Index had been prepared in 1558. Under Charles III, in 1770, an edict was passed, securing an accused party from arbitrary imprisonment; and other regulations were passed, curtailing the powers of the Inquisition, until, in 1808, Joseph Bonaparte abolished it entirely. In 1814 Ferdinand VII restored it; but the popular rage in 1820 destroyed the inquisitor’s palace at Madrid, and the cortes again abolished it. But in 1825, by the efforts of the clergy, another inquisitorial commission was appointed. It continued till 1834, when it was finally abolished, and its property applied to the payment of the public debt. But it may be a long while before the country will revive from the effects of the court which, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, extinguished her active literary life and placed this nation, so richly endowed, almost outside of the circle of European civilisation. Spain, it is true, remained free from heresies and religious wars; but her rest was the rest of the grave, so far as religious vitality was concerned.
The fortunes of the Inquisition in Portugal were similar to those which it had in Spain. In the reign of John VI (1818-1826) it was finally abolished. The last relics of the Italian Inquisition disappeared at the unification of the nation. The Congregation of the Inquisition at Rome, appointed by Sixtus V in 1587, is all that remains of it. In its day it likewise had crushed out the Reformation, and had raged the most fearfully in Venice; but there its activity seems to have ceased in 1781, and in 1808 Napoleon abolished it. Restored under Pius VII in 1814, it directed its energies to prevent the diffusion of the Italian Bible, and to check the introduction of evangelical truth.
In the Netherlands, where the Inquisition was first introduced in the thirteenth century, it became a terrible weapon in the time of the Reformation. In 1521, Charles V passed a rigorous edict against heretics, and appointed Franz van der Hulst inquisitor-general. In 1525 three inquisitors-general were appointed, in 1537 the number was increased to four, and in 1545 one was appointed for each of the provinces. According to Grotius, a hundred thousand victims died under Charles V; according to the prince of Orange, fifty thousand. Both computations are probably too large. Under Philip II the inquisitors developed the most zeal; and the duke of Alva, in 1567, appointed the Bloody Council, which proceeded with unheard-of cruelty against those whose wealth excited their avarice, or whose heresy aroused their suspicion. In 1573 Alva was recalled; and three years later the provinces concluded the League of Ghent, whose fifth article abolished the edicts against heresy.[z]
Torture lasted as late as 1817 in Spain, where Van Halen suffered it, notwithstanding the papal bull of 1816; and, according to Mackenna,[t] it lasted in Spanish America until 1809.
In conclusion it is possible to present a fairly accurate total of the ruinous sweep of the Inquisition. The historian Llorente[k] accomplished the seemingly impossible task of unearthing the records. He was a Spanish priest, and from 1785 was an officer of the Inquisition in its then milder form. In 1808 he became a Bonapartist, and was concerned in the suppression of monastic orders. The archives were at his disposal, and he studied them thoroughly. He fled to France on the Restoration in 1814, and there brought out his monumental work in French. His life was not safe even there, and he suffered much persecution. His work has been convicted of many faults, but not of dishonesty, and his conclusions may be quoted with a reasonable amount of confidence.[a]