[190] [Some Catholic writers would fain excuse St. Dominic from the imputation of having founded the Inquisition. It is true he died some years before the organisation of that tribunal; but he established the principles on which, and the monkish militia by whom, it was administered. The Sicilian Paramo,[i] traces it up to a much more remote antiquity. According to him, God was the first inquisitor, and his condemnation of Adam and Eve furnished the model of the judicial forms observed in the trials of the Holy Office. The sentence of Adam was the type of the inquisitorial “reconciliation,” his subsequent raiment of the skins of animals was the model of the san-benito, and his expulsion from paradise the precedent for the confiscation of the goods of heretics. This learned personage deduces a succession of inquisitors through the patriarchs, Moses, Nebuchadrezzar, and King David, down to John the Baptist, and even Christ, in whose precepts and conduct he finds abundant authority for the tribunal.[m]]
[191] [Among the modern apologists for the Inquisition may be named Rodrigo[ii] and Orto y Lara.[jj]]
[192] [Thus in Spain, Pope Sixtus IV, in a special bull of November 1st, 1478, quoted by Llorente,[k] conferring on Ferdinand and Isabella the power to appoint inquisitors, insisted that they be “two or three bishops or archbishops, or other competent and honest men, secular or regular priests upwards of forty years of age, of good life and customs, masters or bachelors of theology, and doctors or licentiates in canon law, by virtue of a strict examination.”]
[193] [In the tormento de toca, a gauze bag was placed in the throat and water poured in it, forcing the gauze gradually down the œsophagus into the stomach. Other torments were the gradual pouring of water drop by drop on one spot of the body, and the great swinging pendulum, or péndola, with the knife affixed, as described in Poe’s haunting story.]
[194] [The trampazo was an iron shoe heated red hot and clamped to the bare foot.]
[195] [Philip the Fair in the course of his war with Pope Boniface VIII condemned the Inquisition, though he burned the Templars; or as Dean Kitchin puts it, the Inquisition “was effectively used by Philip the Fair to crush the Templars, though that greedy prince quickly interfered when he found the Inquisition laying hands on his special preserves, the wealthy Jews.” See the Papacy.]
[196] L. Marineo[bb] diffuses the two thousand capital executions over several years. He sums up the various severities of the Holy Office in the following gentle terms: “The church, who is the mother of mercy and the fountain of charity, content with the imposition of penances, generously accords life to many who do not deserve it; while those who persist obstinately in their errors, after being imprisoned on the testimony of trustworthy witnesses, she causes to be put to the torture, and condemned to the flames. Some miserably perish, bewailing their errors, and invoking the name of Christ, while others call upon that of Moses. Many, again, who sincerely repent, she, notwithstanding the heinousness of their transgressions, merely sentences to perpetual imprisonment.”
[197] Bernáldez[cc] states that guards were posted at the gates of the city of Seville in order to prevent the emigration of the Jewish inhabitants, which indeed was forbidden under pain of death. The tribunal, however, had greater terrors for them, and many succeeded in effecting their escape.
[198] [The Spanish form is auto de fe, but the Portuguese form—auto da fé, was the first to obtain English usage.]
[199] So says Puigblanch[ee]: The inquisitors after the celebration of an auto da fé at Guadaloupe, in 1485, wishing probably to justify these bloody executions in the eyes of the people, who had not yet become familiar with them, solicited a sign from the Virgin (whose shrine in that place is noted all over Spain) in testimony of her approbation of the Holy Office. Their petition was answered by such a profusion of miracles that Dr. Francis Sanctius de la Fuente, who acted as scribe on the occasion, became out of breath, and, after recording sixty, gave up in despair, unable to keep pace with their marvellous rapidity, according to Paramo.[i]