despotically attempting to control all religious thought, socalled heretics arose, and with them their persecution. The decision of Pope Urban II. that the murder of an excommunicated person was no crime became civil law, as also the doctrine of St. Augustine, that the extermination of heretics was a duty to the Church and a kindness to the heretic himself. Thomas of Aquinas (1224-1274) adopted the doctrine of St. Augustine; the "angelic" teacher expounded the words of the apostle, that we ought to avoid a heretic twice admonished, by saying that the best way to avoid him was to burn him. On this principle acted Henry II., king of England, who, together with Louis VII. of France, acted as the grooms of Pope Alexander III. on his entering Couci (Comes); the English king, who, in the Abbey of BourgDieu, was too overawed by the Pope to sit on a chair in his presence, but, like a dog, cowered on the floor, this king ordered the first execution for heresy in his kingdom by having a sect called Publicans or Patari put to death because they rejected baptism and submission to the Pope. The Patari had arisen in Italy, and spread over the European continent, and were so terribly persecuted that at last they retaliated; but the Church was too strong for them, and we frequently in the history of those times find notices similar to the following: "In this year the Most Reverend Archbishop William of Rheims, Legate of the Apostolic See, and the illustrious Count Philip of Flanders, burnt many heretics alive."

219. Council held at Toulouse.-In May 1163 a council, attended by seventeen cardinals, one hundred and twentyfour bishops, hundreds of abbots, and priests without number, was held at Tours, where the Inquisition, which had, as we have seen, existed for centuries in spirit, was put into shape and assumed a definite form. "An accursed heresy," said the holy speakers, "has recently arisen in the neighbourhood of Toulouse, and it is the duty of bishops to put it down with all the rigour of the ecclesiastical law. Innocent III., in 1198, sent the first two travelling Inquisitors to France, empowered to judge heretics, "the foxes called Waldenses, Cathari, and Patari, who, though they have different faces, yet all hang together by their tails, and are sent by Satan to devastate the vineyard of the Lord," which "foxes" were to be caught for them by ecclesiastical and secular princes, "to be judged and killed," an order which the said princes obeyed with such alacrity, that the progress of the two Inquisitors was everywhere signalised by the bonfires of burning heretics.

But these were persecuted not in France only, but wherever the power of the popes could reach them, first of all, of course, in Italy, where one of the most distinguished victims, Arnold of Brescia, had some time before the above-mentioned occurrences been strangled in prison, and his body publicly burnt at Rome in 1155. His heresy consisted in having preached against the crimes of the Papal See.

220. Establishment of the Inquisition.-We have elsewhere more particularly spoken of the heretical sects which in the tenth to the twelfth century existed in Italy and the south of France (168-185). Peter of Castelnau having been sent to preach against the Albigenses, was slain by them. As soon as his death became known he was canonised, and the fourth Council of the Lateran, in 1228, at the instigation of Pope Honorius III., sanctioned and organised the Inquisition, the original idea of which was due to Dominique de Guzman, who also founded the order of Dominican friars. The Council, or rather the Pope, decreed that all heretics should be delivered over to the secular arm and their property confiscated. Sovereigns were called upon to drive all heretics from their states; in case of non-obedience, the Pope would offer their territory to whosoever could conquer them. Persons who had favoured heretics or received them into their houses were to be excommunicated and declared infamous, incapable of inheriting property, and not entitled to Christian burial. Guzman, rightly considering that the foul band of preaching friars, whom he had associated with himself, were not the sort of people to further his viewsfor those men were too fanatical not to be violent, which would have been injurious to the new institution—further organised his "Militia of Christ," a religious police, composed of bigoted men and women, belonging to all classes of society, even to the highest-the head of the house of Medina-Cœli down to 1820 enjoyed the high privilege of carrying the standard of the Faith in all autos-da-fé, and other solemnities of the Inquisition-of criminals, as we shall see in the account of the "Garduna" (Book IX.); of fools and knaves. The invisible troop of spies and denouncers, these familiars of the Inquisition, as they afterwards called themselves, formed the secret portion of the Inquisition, and were none the less formidable on that account. From 1233,

when the Inquisition was established in Spain, to the beginning of the next century, it made rapid progress, spreading into Italy and Germany. In 1308 the Inquisition persecuted the Templars à outrance; autos-da-fé,

"acts of faith," as the burning of heretics was called, shed their lurid light over many a Spanish city, at which the royal family frequently were present. In 1415 the Inquisition burnt John Huss at Constance; Platina, a papal writer, in his "Lives of the Popes" thus pleasantly speaks of it :-" In the same Council, John Huss and Jerome were burnt, because they affirmed, among other errors, that ecclesiastical men ought to be poor . . . matters being thus composed," &c. Burning your opponents certainly is composing matters; but the author was a Papist.

221. Progress of Institution.-Until the joint reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Inquisition in Spain had been confined to the kingdom of Arragon. But about 1481 the queen established it in Castile, and the king gradually extended its jurisdiction over all his states. Like James of Scotland, the king of Spain always wanted "siller;" the Inquisition offered him a third of all the property it confiscated, and promised him a large share of the riches of the thousands of Jews then living in Spain; the nobles of Arragon and Castile were always conspiring against him, the Inquisition would quietly amd secretly get hold of their persons, and thus rid him of these enemies; heaven was to be gained by putting down heresy; here surely were reasons enough for protecting the Inquisition and investing it with full powers. The queen also-alas, that it has to be said of her! -was greatly in favour of it, and even requested the Pope to declare the sentences pronounced in Spain to be final and without appeal to Rome. She complained at the same time that the people accused her of having no other view in establishing the Inquisition than that of sharing with its officers the property of those condemned by them. The Pope, Sixtus IV., granted everything, and appeased her conscientious scruples as to confiscations. A bull, dated 1483, named Father Thomas de Torquemada, an atrocious fanatic, Grand Inquisitor of Spain. For eighteen years he held the office, condemning on the average ten thousand victims annually to death by fire, starvation, torture. In the first six months of his sanguinary rule 298 marranos-Moors or Jews that had been converted to Christianity-were burnt at the stake in Seville alone, and seventy condemned to imprisonment for life. During the same space of time 2000 marranos were burnt alive in various other places; a greater number, who had been fortunate enough to make their escape before they were seized-for when once in the power of the terrible tribunal there was little chance of evasion

were burnt in effigy; and about 17,000 persons, accused on the charge of heresy, underwent various other punishments. Upwards of 20,000 victims in half a year! Torquemada was so abhorred that he never stirred abroad without being surrounded by 250 familiars, and on his table always lay a horn of the unicorn, which, according to Moorish superstition, was supposed to possess the virtue of discovering and nullifying the force of poison. His cruelties excited so many complaints that the Pope himself was startled, and three times Torquemada was obliged to justify his conduct. During the fifteenth century so many executions took place at Seville, that the prefect of that city had the diabolical idea, in order to expedite the process, to erect, outside the city, a permanent scaffold in stone, on which he placed four gigantic statues in plaster, hollow inside, into which New Christians, accused of having relapsed into their old faith, were forced, and slowly calcined to death, as in a kiln. This scaffold was called quemadero (the burner), and the ruins of it could be seen as late as the year 1823.

222. Judicial Procedure of the Inquisition. Before proceeding with our historical details, let us briefly state the mode of procedure adopted by the execrable tribunal of the Inquisition.

A denunciation, verbal or in writing, and it little mattered from what impure source it proceeded, formed the startingpoint. Every year, on the third Sunday in Lent, the "Edict of Denunciation" was read in the churches, enjoining every person, on pain of major excommunication, to reveal within six days to the Holy Office, as the Inquisition was now styled, facts opposed to the purity of faith that might have come to their notice. Denunciation also had its rewards. Plenary indulgence was granted by the popes to whoso was good Christian enough to denounce his father, son, brother, or other near relation. Charles V. relieved every one who had denounced ten heretics, or became a familiar of the Inquisition, from all taxation and statute labour. And the most trifling acts exposed persons to the charge of heresy; to put a clean cloth on the table on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, smelled of Judaism; to put on clean linen on a Friday, the Mahometan Sunday, betrayed Mahometanism. The opinions of Luther, casting horoscopes, eating with Jews, dining or supping with friends on the eve of a journey, as the Jews do, these and a hundred other things equally innocent might lead to the stake. William Franco, a citizen of Seville, whose wife had been seduced by a priest, which he dared not resent, having casually observed

that his wife was in purgatory, this expression was reported to the Inquisitors, who thereupon condemned him to imprisonment for life in the cells of the Inquisition.

The arrests were generally made at night, and the victims taken off in a carriage, the wheels of which had tires made of leather, whilst the mules, which drew it, were shod with buskins, the soles of which consisted of tow between two thick pieces of leather, so as to prevent their approach being heard. These buskins were an invention of Deza, the second Grand Inquisitor. Some of them were found in the inquisitorial arsenal at Malaga when its doors were broken open in 1820. General Torrijos, who for two years had been a prisoner of the Inquisition, and who was treacherously shot by order of Ferdinand VII. in 1831, carried off one of these buskins. Two others were appropriated by an Englishman, a Mr. Thomas Wilkins, of Paddington Place (Street?), London, who as late as the year 1838 would show them to his friends. Where are they now?

The prisoner having been incarcerated in the dungeons of the Inquisition, his property was put under sequestration, and the claw of the Holy Office was one which seldom released its prey. According to its statutes, indeed, it was compelled to release the accused if twelve witnesses, of pure Catholic blood, testified in his favour. But it was very seldom twelve such witnesses could be brought together, for in most cases persons who gave evidence in favour of the victims of the Inquisition ran the risk of being themselves charged with heresy.

The prisoner, on his apprehension, was carried to a dungeon, generally underground, sometimes at a depth of thirty feet. Each cell was about twelve feet by eight, with no accommodation but a plank bed, and a utensil, which was emptied every three or four days, and sometimes but once in a week. From eight to ten prisoners were shut up in such a cell when the Holy Office had many victims. They were not allowed to make any complaints; if they did so, they were gagged and cruelly flogged. Such treatment naturally often led to suicide. To mention a comparatively recent instance in 1819 six prisoners were in one of the dungeons of the Inquisition at Valencia. A gaoler, instructed to try one of them, that is, to get a confession out of him, told him that if he did not reveal what he knew, he would be racked next day. The prisoner confessed nothing, but next day the six prisoners were found dead; they had strangled one another, and the last had asphyxiated himself by inhaling

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