“I have read thy article, wherein thou hast refuted in detail the terrible blasphemies of Servetus and therefore I thank the Son of God who has given thee the victory in this thy struggle. The church is greatly indebted to thee for it, now and in all future time. I wholly agree with thy opinion and claim that your highness (eure Obrigkeit) has acted wholly in accordance with justice in executing a blasphemous person after a regular examination.”
In addition I will note that Theodore Beza also wrote an article De hereticis a magistrau civili puniendis and that many others besides Servetus, as Valentine Gentilis, Bolsec, Carlstadt, Grüet, Castellio, the councillor Ameaur, and others, could convince themselves through imprisonment, banishment, and death that in the Protestant church there was no milder an inquisition than in Spain. This is acknowledged even by many Protestants, as for example by Prescottm in his history of Ferdinand and Isabella.
But we do not need to go back to the 16th century or even to consider the terrible mistreatment of the Catholics in England,[207] in order to discover counterparts to the Spanish Inquisition among the Protestants. A remarkable case of this kind from the eighteenth century is related by Pfeilschifter: In the year 1724 at Rendsburg a young soldier, because he had wished to make a compact with the devil, as an act of royal favour was merely beheaded. Even more recently, e.g. in the year 1844, on the third of April the painter J. O. Nilson in Sweden was banished on account of “apostasy from the Lutheran faith and of going over to a mistaken religion” (the Catholic) and was declared to have forfeited all civil rights and rights of inheritance; this decision was confirmed by the highest court of the land in the year 1845. The unfortunate Nilson died in February 1847 at Copenhagen, in poverty.
I say all this not in reproach but only to show that the Protestants also have recognised the sanguinary rule: “Deviation from the state religion is to be punished with death.” If any one had any doubts as to the justice of this principle in the 16th and 17th centuries, it seems to me that these doubts should first have arisen in the minds of the Protestants, because their own apostasy from the church should have taught them to think more leniently of other apostates.
Among the victims of the Inquisition the so-called witches and sorcerers held a considerable place, and it would be superfluous to expend many words in proving that these unfortunates were just as severely persecuted in Germany as in Spain and in just as sanguinary a fashion by Protestants as by Catholics. Not only a Torquemada, but also a Benedict Carpzov two hundred years later, erected a stake for burning witches. Even the reformer Beza reproached the French parliament for being too lax in seeking out witches, and Walter Scott acknowledges that the stronger Calvinism grew in England the more numerous were the processes against witches. The Jesuit Frederick Spee of Langenfeld overthrew the belief in witches among the Catholics seventy years earlier than the Protestant Thomasius, and even in the year 1713 the legal faculty of Tübingen condemned a witch to death; indeed just a year later than in Spain, was the last witch burned in the canton of Glarus by a reformed court, in 1782.[208] On the whole, a comparison of the German processes against witches with the workings of the Spanish Inquisition, could hardly be made to appear to the advantage of the former.
Moreover it must not be forgotten with all this that the tribunal of the Inquisition always delivered only the sentence, that the accused was more or less, wholly or partly, or not at all guilty of heresy, blasphemy and the like. It itself never condemned to death though its decisions led to this penalty, in that the one found “guilty of heresy” by the Holy Office was turned over to the secular arm and by this, namely by the council of Castile, was led before the highest Spanish court for death or imprisonment.
The Spanish Inquisition is often declared to be a product of the Roman doctrinal despotism, without attention being given to the fact that it was precisely the popes who were least inclined to this institution and who at nearly all times tried to limit it. Even Llorente,k who can be accused of partiality to the popes no more than of a Jacobite partiality for the kingdom, shows this in almost innumerable instances and examples.
Stories are told of the cruel torments and tortures which the unfortunate beings in the dungeons of the Inquisition had to suffer, but even the most gentle character must not forget that the torture was used in those days in all secular courts in all countries, that it even existed legally in many German states in the 19th century and did not go out of general use until about the middle of the 18th century, in the courts of inquisition at the same time as in the secular courts. Besides execution by fire, sword, quartering, the wheel, gallows, and water, the Carolina speaks of burying alive, of tearing with glowing tongs, of cutting off the tongue and ears, of hacking off fingers and the like. Of all these ignominious and painful punishments, however, the Inquisition knows nothing. Moreover, at a time when in all Europe prisons were dark damp holes and real graves, full of mould, filth, and pest-breeding smells, the Inquisition brought its prisoners, to use the words of Llorentek into “well arched, light and dry rooms where they could make some movement.” No more did any prisoner of the Inquisition, as again Llorente testifies, groan under the weight of chains, hand cuffs, iron neck bands etc., and Llorente tells of only one on whom fetters were put, in order to keep him from suicide. The prisoners were asked if the gaoler treated them well and good care was also taken of the sick. Special buildings, by the name of “penitence houses,” were erected for the prisoners for life and these were subject to vistation from time to time.
It has furthermore become customary to think of the Inquisition as an ever-threatening and never-satisfied catch-and-seize-institution, whose polyp arms greedily grasped the poor unfortunate at the least sign of suspicion. But this view, which has such a drastic effect in historical romances and in romantic histories is wholly wrong and mistaken and must be entirely abandoned, unless Llorente is to be accused of partiality for the Inquisition. In the first place, every tribunal of the Inquisition began its activity by promulgating a time of grace and proclaimed publicly that: “whoever is conscious of apostasy from the faith but within the fixed time will voluntarily come forth and do penance, shall be absolved in grace and protected from severe penalty.” After the expiration of the term, however, the severity of the law was to be exercised towards the apostates; but again and again were the times of grace renewed and lengthened.
Further, the statutes of the Inquisition regarding young heretics deserve attention. “If sons and daughters of heretics,” so ordained Torquemada, “who have fallen into error through the teachings of their parents, and have not reached the age of twenty years, themselves apply to be taken back into favour, the inquisition shall receive such young people kindly, even if they should come after the time of reprieve, shall impose lighter penances upon them than upon grown persons and shall take pains that they receive instruction in the faith and the sacraments of the Holy Mother, the church.”
It is said that the least expression, often an innocent one, brought an unfortunate into the prisons of the Inquisition. But the second great inquisitor, Deza, who is considered even stricter than Torquemada himself, issued the order on June 17th, 1500 that “no one may be arrested for trivial reasons, not even on account of blasphemy which was uttered in anger.” There was no inclination to take the testimony of any person who happened to make an accusation before the tribunal of the Inquisition; on the contrary Llorente himself tells of cases in which only repeated accusations against a person could move the inquisitors to action and they were very much inclined to ascribe the mad behaviour of many heretics to mental aberration.
Wonderful stories are told of the incomes of the inquisitors, who are said to have condemned many only in order to enrich themselves from the confiscated goods. It is true that the cause of justice is in a bad way when condemnation is to bring a pecuniary profit to the judge and it would have been truly a dangerous and disreputable arrangement if the income of the inquisitors had depended on the number of those they condemned. Prescottm (I, 287) would really like to make us believe that such was the case, but we know from Llorente that the confiscated goods of the condemned fell to the royal treasury, and that the Inquisition officers of all kinds had a fixed salary which they received quarterly. Hence it comes that Llorente accused the Spanish king of avarice and not the inquisitors, in which Rankemm bears him out.
Terrible is the picture which we make to ourselves of an auto da fé (actus fidei, i.e., “an act of faith”) as if it were nothing else than an enormous fire and a colossal stewing pan, around which the Spaniards sat like cannibals, in order to enjoy the spectacle of the roasting and broiling of several hundred unfortunates, four or five times a year. But let me be allowed to state that in the first place an auto da fé did not consist of burning and killing but, in part, of the exculpation of those who had been falsely accused and in part of the reconciliation of the repentant with the church, and there were even many autos da fé at which nothing burned but the candles which the penitent carried in their hands in token of the light of faith rekindled in their hearts.
Furthermore it must not be overlooked that those who were condemned by the Inquisition were not only heretics, but also such as lived in polygamy, priests and monks who had married, laymen who exercised clerical functions, deacons who heard confessions and those who falsely gave themselves out to be commissioners of the Inquisition, which as we know from Gil Blas happened not infrequently.
If in the little Protestant city of Nördlingen, as Soldan shows in his history of the witch processes, out of a total population of 6,000, not less than 35 witches were burned in the four years from 1590 to 1594; this ratio, applied to Spain for four years, would give at least 50,000 witches, whereas Llorente himself gives the number of those condemned to death by the Inquisition during the 330 years of its existence as only 30,000, including heretics, witches, sorcerers, smugglers and all the rest; this even if we wish to accept Llorente’s figures as not exaggerated.
But I think I may claim and can prove that they are exaggerated. Above all we must never forget that Llorente’s figures are not taken from official registers, not even from private records, but originated only from a system of probable reckonings which in part rests on false premises. He himself confesses this unreservedly, and often describes the theory he has used in his conjectural reckoning. Llorente’s arbitrariness and injustice are most clearly shown in regard to Ximenes. Llorente states explicitly that this archbishop tried to make the Inquisition less severe, that he removed bad officials, that he pardoned many of the accused, etc. Nevertheless, that does not hinder him from supposing just as many executions annually under Ximenes as under Deza and his helper Lucero, both of whom he repeatedly accuses of the most boundless cruelty and severity. That such a reckoning is untrue and unjust needs no proof.
After all these observations we are still far removed from wishing to justify the Spanish Inquisition; on the contrary we would everywhere oppose the right of a secular power to interfere with the conscience, but we wished to prove that the institution of the Inquisition was not the outrageous monstrosity which party passions and lack of knowledge have often made it out to be.oo
Opinions differ as to the character of the Spanish Inquisition. A number of scholars (Hefeleoo, Gamspp and others) claim that it was purely a state institution, whereas the Spanish writers emphasize its ecclesiastical character, without denying the great influence of the crown upon it. The correct view is probably given by Rodrigoii and Orti y Lara.jj The former says (I, 276): “The tribunals of the Holy Office had no secular character of themselves. They were ecclesiastical tribunals in respect to the cases which they judged and in respect to the authority which created them. In respect to the royal delegation, however, which was granted to the judges, it may be said that they had a mixed character.” Orti y Lara expresses himself in like manner. According to him (p. 27), “the Inquisition united the papal sword of the church and the secular sword of the king into one single sword.”
The accusation that the Spanish Inquisition was unpopular is just as false as the statement that it caused the ruin of science and literature in Spain. As Balmes testifies (Protestantismus and Katholicismus, I, 412, et seq.), the Catholic kings fulfilled the universal wish of the people by establishing the Inquisition; the people were always in sympathy with it, whereas it was opposed by the nobility and higher clergy. The decline of literary activity moreover can not have been caused by the Inquisition for the reason that the golden age of Spanish literature coincided with the time when the Inquisition was in full sway. The greatest theologians, philosophers, and poets, whose works were approved by the Inquisition, lived at that time. Schools were founded and classical studies diligently pursued.
One of the chief accusations brought against the Spanish Inquisition is the alleged extraordinary number of its victims. This accusation is based chiefly on the statements of Antonio Llorente.k But it needs only a nearer acquaintance with the character of this embittered free mason and with his proofs, to perceive the incorrectness of his statements. Far from citing historical documents he builds up his argument upon evident falsification, arbitrary assumptions which are in wide contrast with the authorities, and, as the Protestant Peschelrr says (page 151), upon a “frivolous calculation from probabilities,” so that he cannot be trusted in regard to his data. According to Gamspp (III, 274) the number of those executed for heresy during the whole period of the Inquisition was about four thousand, a number not equal to that of the victims of the witch processes in Catholic and Protestant Germany.ss
[187] [This brief study, inserted here because Spain and Portugal were the chief centres of the fury of the Inquisition, will afford glimpses also of its development in other countries.]
[188] Confusion has been introduced by both friend and foe into the history of the Waldenses. At first they were confounded with the Cathari or Albigenses by Catholics in order to represent them as Manichæans; by reformed writers in order to clear the Albigenses also from the charge of Manichæism. Further, the origin of the Waldenses is often referred to an earlier period than that of Peter Waldensis, though it is so clearly proved by the witness of contemporaries that he is the founder of the sect.
[189] [This terrible man, in his letter to Innocent III announcing his victories, relates himself with triumph: “Our troops sparing neither sex nor age put to the sword nearly twenty thousand; splendid deeds were accomplished in the overthrow of the enemies, the whole city was sacked and burned by a divine revenge marvellous fierce.”]
[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]
[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. Marineobb 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] Bernáldezcc 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 Puigblanchee: 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
[200] Voltairedd remarks (Essai sur les Mœurs, Chap. cxl) that “An Asiatic, arriving at Madrid on the day of an auto da fé, would doubt whether it were a festival, religious celebration, sacrifice, or massacre; it is all of them. They reproach Montezuma with sacrificing human captives to the gods. What would he have said had he witnessed an auto da fé?”
[201] The government, at least, cannot be charged with remissness in promoting this. We find two ordinances in the royal collection of pragmáticas,ff dated in September, 1501 (there must be some error in the date of one of them), inhibiting, under pain of confiscation of property, such as had been “reconciled,” and their children by the mother’s side, and grandchildren by the father’s, from holding any office in the privy council, courts of justice, or in the municipalities, or any other place of trust or honour. They were also excluded from the vocation of notaries, surgeons, and apothecaries. This was visiting the sins of the fathers, to an extent unparalleled in modern legislation. The sovereigns might find a precedent in a law of Sulla.
[202] The Aragonese made a manly though ineffectual resistance, from the first, to the introduction of the Inquisition among them by Ferdinand. In Castile, its enormous abuses provoked the spirited interposition of the legislature at the commencement of the following reign. But it was then too late.
[203] By an article of the primitive instructions, the inquisitors were required to set apart a small portion of the confiscated estates for the education and Christian nurture of minors, children of the condemned. Llorentek says that, in the immense numbers of processes which he had occasion to consult, he met with no instance of their attention to the fate of these unfortunate orphans!
[204] Torquemada waged war upon freedom of thought in every form. In 1490 he caused several Hebrew Bibles to be publicly burned and some time after, more than six thousand volumes of oriental learning, on the imputation of Judaism, sorcery, or heresy, at the autos da fé of Salamanca, the very nursery of science. This may remind one of the similar sentence passed by Lope de Barrientos, another Dominican, about fifty years before, upon the books of the marquis of Villena. Fortunately for the dawning literature of Spain, Isabella did not, as was done by her successors, commit the censorship of the press to the judges of the Holy Office, notwithstanding such occasional assumption of power by the grand inquisitor.
[205] The prodigious desolation of the land may be inferred from the estimates, although somewhat discordant, of deserted houses in Andalusia. Garibaygg puts these at three thousand, Pulgarhh at four, L. Marineobb as high as five thousand.
[206] [This may be roughly translated “The man that rules the region, rules also its religion.”]
[207] [The reader will find full treatment of Protestant excesses in the histories of Germany, Switzerland, and England. The persecution of Catholics in England is discussed, in vol. XIX, pp. 148-155, 159-161, 199-200, 354-355, 406-408, 444-453, including an account of tortures used in England during Elizabeth’s reign, and a comparison of her cruelties with those of “Bloody Mary.” As part of religious history, one should also note the persecutions inflicted on dissenters by the Church of England, in Scotland and Ireland, as discussed in the histories of those countries.]
[208] [The reader will find in vol. XXIII page 177, a statement that a man was “swam for a wizard” in England in 1825. He should consult this same volume, pages 171-177, for an account of the witchcraft persecutions in the United States, at Salem, in 1692, and pages 177-178 for an account of the mutilation and execution of Quakers in Massachusetts.]