Spain, above every other country, has been afflicted and degraded by the court of inquisition. We have seen that it was introduced into its provinces at an early period, and several persons were publicly burnt, A.D. 1302, in Arragon, by Father Bernard; and one of the spectacles of burning heretics, A.D. 1325, was sanctioned by the presence of King James and his two sons. About A.D. 1356, Nicholas Eymerick, inquisitor-general of Arragon, wrote a book of rules, as “The Guide of Inquisitors;” and this was the chief directory, though the Inquisition greatly declined, until the union of the crowns of Arragon, Castile and Leon, Asturias and Granada, by the marriage of Ferdinand V. of Arragon, with Isabella, queen of Castile, A.D. 1474.

Spain being thus united under one government, the “Modern Inquisition” was established, in a new form, for the discovery of Moors and heretics, but especially Jews. This people, by diligence in trade, had acquired great wealth; they were celebrated for their learning, and some of them had risen to the highest offices in the state. Yet, even from the first, they were subjected to insult, on account of their religion, by the professors of Christianity. Many of the Jews, however, professed to be converted to the faith of Christ, and intermarried with the Spanish nobility; but no sooner had Ferdinand and Isabella ascended the throne, than the Romish prelates appealed to them, as Catholic princes, to give their sanction to an increased activity and power of the Inquisition.

Isabella was unwilling to become thus guilty of the blood of her subjects; but Ferdinand was led by the priests, and the queen at length yielded to their bigoted counsels. Pope Sixtus IV., therefore, A.D. 1471, at her request, granted a bull, enjoining the arrest and punishment of heretics and apostates. Gentle means were employed for two years, as was desired by Isabella; but it was then reported by the priests, that these were insufficient; and, A.D. 1480, Michael Morillo and John de San Martin, both Dominicans, were constituted inquisitors, with various subordinate officers.

Seville was the seat of their first operations. In their progress, they were furnished by the governors of provinces, according to royal orders, with whatever they required; and the citizens, though opposed to the institution, yielded to the royal commission. They issued their first edict, January 2nd, 1481; and many, dreading the vengeance of the Inquisition, fled from the city. The Spanish nobles were commanded by the inquisitors to seize the emigrants as heretics; their property was confiscated, and such numbers were arrested that they were obliged to provide a larger prison. On a tablet of this building was engraved the following, in barbarous Latin:—

“The Holy Office of the Inquisition, established against the wickedness of heretics, commenced at Seville in the year 1481, under the pontificate of Sixtus IV., who granted, and in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, who had asked for it. The first inquisitor-general was friar Thomas de Torquemada, prior of the convent of Santa Cruz, of Segovia, of the order of the Preaching Brotherhood. God grant that, for the propagation and maintenance of the faith, it may last until the end of the ages. ‘Arise, O Lord, be judge in thy cause—catch the foxes.’”

Terror might reasonably seize the minds of the people; for, January 6th, only four days after the first edict, six persons were publicly burnt to death by the inquisitors; and, about a month after, a much larger number. On account of the numerous victims, the prefect of Seville erected a stone scaffold. Upon this were placed four large hollow statues of plaster, called “the four prophets,” and within, or chained to these, the condemned wretches were burnt. Innocence was by no means a guarantee against imprisonment, confiscation of property, or even death; for the inquisitors invited accusations, and the accusers were secure, as their depositions were kept secret, and the parties accused knew nothing of their being suspected until they had been arrested and chained in the dungeons of the Inquisition.

These inquisitors travelled, and held their courts in different cities, where their agents had filled the prisons. Though the records of the tribunals were not accurately kept, the numbers convicted and punished were most frightful. Llorente estimates the numbers at Seville, A.D. 1481, at 2,000 burnt; 2,000 burnt in effigy; and 17,000 punished by penances; total, 21,000. In 1482, there were eighty-eight burnt; forty-four burnt in effigy; and 625 subjected to penances; total, 757!

Torquemada prosecuted his duties with such vigour and zeal that, A.D. 1483, Pope Sixtus appointed him inquisitor-general of Castile and Leon, and of Arragon. These powers being confirmed by Pope Innocent VIII., A.D. 1485, distinct tribunals were established at Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Villa-Real, and Toledo. King Ferdinand appointed a royal council of the Inquisition, and Torquemada as its president; and this council published, A.D. 1486, a code of laws for the tribunal. These were revised by the president, with additions, A.D. 1488, and again, A.D. 1498. These laws and rules for the Inquisition were worthy of the spirit of their authors, and the genius of the institution, indicating the cunning and malignity of a fiend, rather than the mind of a Christian. Their enforcement, therefore, threw all classes of society in Spain into the deepest misery, such multitudes being condemned and executed. Upwards of one hundred thousand families were reputed to have emigrated from the country. Absolution or redress might, indeed, be obtained at the court of Rome for money, and immense sums were expended, until it was found that it affected the salaries of the Inquisition; when the practice of such appeals was abolished, as being a violation of the agreement of the Pope with Ferdinand and Isabella.

Another expedient was adopted to enrich the Inquisition. The inquisitors charged the Jews with persuading their brethren who had professed Christianity to return to the faith of Israel; with crucifying children on Good Friday, in contempt of our Saviour; and with the fact of the Jewish physicians and surgeons, who were esteemed the most skilful of the medical practitioners, having caused the death of Henry III. In their alarm, they offered Ferdinand and Isabella thirty thousand pieces of silver, in aid of the war against Granada; and to refrain from all trades and professions that might be filled with Christians. Those sovereigns being about to accept the proposal, Torquemada rushed into their presence, holding a crucifix, and appealing to the king and queen—“Behold Him, whom Judas sold for thirty pieces of silver; do you sell Him for a greater sum?” Casting down the crucifix, the haughty priest left the royal apartment; but he gained his object, for the king and queen published a decree, March 31st, 1492, commanding all the Jews to leave the kingdom within three months, under the penalty of death and confiscation of their property. Christians were forbidden to afford them the least assistance. They were allowed to sell their stock, and take their furniture, but not any gold or silver with them. Some of them emigrated to the states of Barbary, where they were cruelly treated by the Moors; so that they returned to Spain and professed Christianity. Others retired to Portugal, where they were permitted to live for a time, and then they were sold as slaves.

How many Jews were thus expelled from Spain, through the Inquisition, cannot be correctly ascertained; some reckon 160,000, and others as many as 800,000. Mariana states that the number was estimated at 170,000 families, or 800,000 souls! But if we suppose only the smaller number, as the Jews were the most intelligent and wealthy part of the community, the expulsion of them was a serious national loss to Spain.

Torquemada having so far prevailed, exhibited his intolerant haughtiness in such a manner that he was dreaded by all. He was not satisfied with the condemnation of thousands of the rich among the laity, but he laboured to subject the bishops to his hated court. Pope Alexander VI. received continual complaints against him; but he feared to suspend him. However, he constituted four others as joint inquisitors-general, A.D. 1494; and Torquemada died in November, A.D. 1498, execrated by the whole community. Aware of the public hatred, he always kept a horn of a unicorn on his table, as the supposed means of discovering poison in his food; and in public he was guarded by a troop of fifty familiars of the Inquisition on horseback, and two hundred on foot, for which he obtained the licence of Ferdinand and Isabella.

During the period that Torquemada held the office of inquisitor-general, the total number of his victims was more than 10,000, committed to the flames: nearly 7,000 burnt in effigy; and upwards of 97,000 sentenced to confiscation, perpetual imprisonment, or infamy!

That terrible inquisitor was succeeded by Don Diego Deza, a Dominican, archbishop of Seville. He was confirmed in his office by the Pope’s bull, December 1, 1498; and proved himself worthy to follow the sanguinary Torquemada. He laboured to re-establish the Inquisition in Sicily and in Naples; and in Granada against the Moors, many of whom, as well as Jews, were cruelly harassed in Spain. Deza prosecuted some of the prelates and the nobility; and the number of his victims, during eight years, were reckoned at 38,440 persons; 2,592 burnt; 896 burnt in effigy; and 34,952 punished by penances.

Ximenes de Cisneros succeeded Deza. He is reported to have been far milder in his temper and administration than his predecessors; yet he re-organised or established the Inquisition in Seville, Cordova, Jaen, Toledo, Estremadura, Murcia, Valladolid, Calahorra, Barcelona, Saragossa, Pampeluna, Cuenca in Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia, the Canary Islands, Oran in Algiers, and America. Yet, with all his moderation, Llorente reckons his victims, during eleven years, as 3,564 burnt; 1232 burnt in effigy; and 48,059 punished by penances; total, 52,855!

Charles V. succeeded his father, Ferdinand, on the throne of Spain, in January, 1517; and during his reign the Cortes made various attempts to reform the Inquisition, that its dreadful proceedings might be conducted publicly, and according to the rules of the common law; but by means of immense presents to the chancellor, and by the representations of Cardinal Adrian, the inquisitor-general, Charles was induced to support the existing enormities of the terrible court. Adrian was elected Pope, in January, 1522; and during the five years of his office, his victims were 28,220; of whom, 1,344 were burnt; 672 burnt in effigy; and 26,214 were punished by penance.

Charles V. was elected emperor of Germany, A.D. 1520, and he became, during nearly forty years, the greatest sovereign in Europe. He sanctioned the Inquisition in persecuting the Lutherans, and all reformers of religion; and how he regarded that pernicious court will appear from his will, in which he commends it to his son Philip thus:—

“Out of regard to my duty to Almighty God, and from my great affection to the most serene prince, Philip II., my dearest son, and from the strong and earnest desire I have, that he may be safe under the protection of virtue, rather than the greatness of his riches, I charge him, with the greatest affection of soul, that he take special care of all things relating to the honour and glory of God, as becomes the most Catholic king, and a prince zealous for the Divine commands, and that he be always obedient to the commands of the church. And, amongst other things, this I principally and most ardently recommend to him, highly to honour and constantly support the office of the Holy Inquisition, as constituted by God against heretical pravity, with its ministers and officials; because by this single remedy the most grievous offences against God can be remedied. Also I command him, that he would be careful to preserve to all churches and ecclesiastical persons their immunities.” In a codicil to his will, also, he thus enjoins his son:—“I ardently desire, and with the greatest possible earnestness beseech him, and command him by his regards to me, his most affectionate father, that in this matter, in which the welfare of all Spain is concerned, he be most zealously careful to punish all infected with heresy, with the severity due to their crimes; and that to this intent he confer the greatest honour on the office of the Holy Inquisition, by the care of which the Catholic faith will be increased in his kingdoms, and the Christian religion be preserved.”

King Philip was obedient to these commands of his father, as the proceedings of the inquisitors in his several provinces proved, as well as his sanction to the horrid course of persecutions and martyrdoms under his queen, in England. See Chapter IX.

On Trinity Sunday, May 21, 1559, there was a most solemn auto da fé against the Spanish Lutherans, in the Great Square of Valladolid. The Princess Donna Juana (governess of the kingdom, in the absence of her brother, Philip II.), the Prince Don Carlos, and many grandees of Spain, as well as prelates and nobles of Castile, and a multitude of ladies and gentlemen, all assisted on that occasion. Sixteen persons were brought out in that auto, to be reconciled by penance; also, the remains and effigy of a lady, already dead, and fourteen living persons, to be consumed by the devouring element! The lady was Donna Eleonora de Vibero, proprietress of a convent in the city. Her daughter, Beatrice, and her two sons, Francis and Dr. Augustin Cazalla, were sacrificed at the stake in this dread auto, all being convicted of Lutheranism.

At Seville, the same year, another auto was celebrated, in which John Pontius, son of Roderic, earl of Villalon, was publicly burnt as a Lutheran. With him were executed, John Gonsalvus, a preacher, with four ladies of note; Bohorques, scarcely twenty years of age; Maria Viroesia, Cornelia, and Vœnia, in whose house assemblies were held for prayer. Besides these, were seven others, and among them, a student, a physician, and a nun. The sacrifice of this company of thirteen persons, besides several effigies, was attended with great pomp, yet it excited the indignation of not a few of the citizens. Two others escaped the fire, dying previously in prison; Dr. John Egidius, nominated by the emperor as bishop of Drossen, and Dr. Constantine Pontius, the confessor of Charles V. They were victims of the Inquisition, suspected of holding the doctrines of Luther.

Philip being alienated from his queen, Mary, left England in 1557, and proceeded to his army in Picardy; and after his arrival in Spain he demanded an auto da fé, which was celebrated with extraordinary magnificence. De Castro, in his very interesting volume, “Spanish Protestants and their Persecutions by Philip II.,” says:—

“Although so many were burnt or oppressed with ignominious penances at the before-mentioned auto da fé, the inquisitors reserved the greatest number, and most noted of the prisoners for Protestantism, in order to bring them to condign punishment on the arrival of Philip II.; a festival very appropriate to this monarch, whose reign in England, with the barbarous Mary Tudor, had terminated after broiling in the flames there a multitude of Protestants.

“This auto was celebrated on the 8th of October, 1559. In order to greater decorum and solemnity, this most pious monarch thought it opportune to assist, with all his court, in those horrors, and recreate himself in the frightful destruction of many of his subjects, illustrious for their birth, their virtue, and their learning.

“Don Diego de Simancas, then secretary of the holy office, says, ‘The auto of those heretics was most solemnly celebrated in the Great Square, upon a stage made upon a new plan, so contrived, that from all parts the culprits might be seen. Upon other stages were assembled the council and principal persons; and so great was the concourse of people, who came from all the country round, that it was believed the number of persons assembled, including those of the city, could not be less than 200,000! In this fashion the most pious king, the clergy, the nobility, and the people, with tumultuous haste, had recourse to a method of amusement worthy of cannibals, or the ancient Mexicans.’”

In the month of October, 1560, twenty-eight persons, many of them members of the noblest families in Spain, were tied to the stakes and publicly burnt, as Lutheran heretics, in the presence of the king at Valladolid.

Philip was not satisfied, however, with the sacrifice of his citizens; he extended the Inquisition to the navy, appointing an inquisitor to his fleet in the year 1571; so that, among the seamen of Spain, many were sacrificed in a public act of faith, in the city of Messina. He established this court at Lima, in 1571, and in Mexico; and in the year 1574, a public act of faith was held in the market-place of that city. In this, there were eighty penitents; two of them, an Englishman and a Frenchman, were released; some others, for judaising and sorcery, were reconciled; but many of them were burnt to death, in the presence of the viceroy, the senate, the priests, and a large concourse of the Mexicans.

Philip II. died in September, 1598, after having reigned forty-two years. His name was abhorred in his own dominions on account of his sanguinary bigotry, and his pernicious policy in government. Historians represent him as worthy to be classed with those monsters of cruelty, Nero and Domitian, deserving the execration of mankind.

The number of the victims of the Inquisition during the reign of Philip II. was estimated at not less than 40,664; of whom, 6,300 were burnt; 3,124 were burnt in effigy; and 31,240 were subjected to various humiliating penances. This was, therefore, the reign of terror in Spain.

Philip’s cruelty may be further illustrated by one act of his domestic administration; for he added his own son, and heir to his throne, to the number of his victims. Don Carlos being shocked at the cruelties exercised by the duke of Alva against the Protestants in the Netherlands, [see Chapter VII.] at the entreaty of several nobles, desired a commission to govern that country, as viceroy, that he might give toleration to those who rejected the domination of the Pope. But his father, attended by several of his privy counsellors and twelve guards, entered his chamber in the middle of the night, seized him, and threw him into prison. The nation was astonished at this outrage against the prince; and the Emperor Maximilian besought Philip to set him at liberty; but in vain. A junta, of whom the inquisitor-general was president, was appointed to try Don Carlos; and he was kept in close confinement. None were allowed to visit him, not even the queen, or the princess, Donna Juana, lest the complaints of the prince should become public; those officials only, with one physician, were permitted to see him, who were appointed by the king. Philip himself dared not see him, fearing the reproaches of the injured prince; and he appears to have been secretly murdered,—the prevailing opinion is, by poison,—July 24, 1568, at the age of twenty-three years!

Philip would never satisfy the public regarding the particulars of the prince’s death. De Castro says, “Don Carlos fell a victim to his desires to banish from Flanders the horrors of the Inquisition, and set all men’s consciences free in matters of religion. The greatest crime of which Carlos was held by his father, the palace favourites, and the inquisitors, to be guilty, was that of entertaining Protestant doctrines. This was the report in and out of Spain. There is one circumstance which confirms the opinion that Don Carlos was murdered, viz., that the Marquis de Bergnes died in the court under the suspicion of having been poisoned; the Baron de Montigny was secretly beheaded in the palace of Segovia, and the Counts of Egmont and Horn perished on a scaffold, before the populace of Brussels,—all of them for their secret correspondence with Don. Carlos!”

Spain greatly declined under this inhuman policy of Philip II., who was succeeded by his son, Philip III., who reigned twenty-three years, dying March 31st, 1621. The number of his victims in the Inquisition in that period was 15,824; of whom 1,840 were burnt; 736 were burnt in effigy; and 13,248 were subjected to penances. Philip IV. succeeded his father, and died in 1665, having reigned forty-four years; in which period the victims of the Inquisition were 18,304; of whom, 2,816 were burnt; 1,408 were burnt in effigy; and 14,080 suffered severe penances. Philip IV. was succeeded by his son, Charles II., only four years old; and at his marriage, in 1680, he was honoured with the celebration of an auto da fé, on a scale of great magnificence, at Madrid! A description of this will be found in Chapter XV.

CHAPTER VII.

THE INQUISITION IN PORTUGAL AND THE NETHERLANDS.

Portugal, as we have seen, received some of the Jews, who had been persecuted and driven from Spain under the inquisitor-general Torquemada. Every possible effort, by persecution and cruelty, was employed to convert them to a profession of Christianity. Their children were taken from them,—all under the age of fourteen,—and educated in the Catholic belief. Sismondi states,—“On the occasion of a newly-converted Jew, in 1506, who had appeared to disbelieve in some miracle, the people of Lisbon rose, and having assassinated him, burnt his dead body in the public square. A monk, in the midst of the tumult, addressed the populace, exhorting them not to rest satisfied with so slight a vengeance, in return for such an insult offered to our Lord. Two other monks, raising the crucifix, then placed themselves at the head of the seditious mob, crying aloud only these words, ‘Heresy! heresy! Exterminate! exterminate!’ And during the three following days, two thousand of the newly converted, men, women, and children, were put to the sword, and their reeking limbs, yet warm and palpitating, burnt in the public places of the city. The same fanaticism extending to the armies, converted Portuguese soldiers into the executioners of infidels and the tyrants of the east. At length, in the year 1540, John III. succeeded in establishing the Inquisition, which the progress of superstition had been long preparing.”

King John established the “Holy Office” in Portugal, on the model of that in Spain. “How great his zeal was to maintain the faith in its ancient splendour,” says a Catholic historian, “his introducing the sacred tribunal of the inquisitors of heresy into Portugal, is an abundant proof, bravely overcoming those difficulties and obstructions which the devil had cunningly raised in the city, to prevent or retard his majesty’s endeavours. For he learned experience from others, and grew wise by the misfortunes of many kingdoms, which, from the most flourishing state, were brought to ruin and destruction, by monstrous and deadly heresies. And it is very worthy of observation, that the year in which the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition against heretical pravity was brought into Portugal, the kingdom laboured under the most dreadful barrenness and famine. But when the tribunal was once erected, the following year was remarkable for an incredible plenty, commonly called ‘the year of St. Blaze,’ because before his festival the seed could not be sown in the ground for want of rain, whereas, afterwards, provision was so cheap, that a bushel of corn was sold for two-pence.”

Didacus de Silva was the first inquisitor-general in Portugal, and he erected tribunals in several cities, the first at Evora, A.D. 1537, appointing John de Mello the first inquisitor in that city. The tribunal at Lisbon was erected in 1539, by Cardinal Henry, the second inquisitor-general; and another court at Coimbra, in 1541.

Portugal possessed several foreign provinces, among which was Goa, on the Malabar coast of India. Francis Xavier, A.D. 1545, signified to King John III., “that the Jewish wickedness spread every day more and more, in the parts of the East Indies subject to the kingdom of Portugal; and therefore he earnestly besought the king, that to cure so great an evil he would take care to send the office of the Inquisition into those countries.” Upon this, Cardinal Henry, then inquisitor-general in the kingdom of Portugal, erected the tribunal of the Holy Inquisition in the city of Goa, the metropolis, and sent into those parts inquisitors, and other necessary officials, who should take diligent care of the affairs of the faith. Alexius Diaz Falcano entered upon his office, as inquisitor at Goa, A.D. 1541. And from that period this tribunal has continued, so that by its intolerance, victims, and cruelties, it has brought the province to the lowest stage of degradation, and a burden as well as a disgrace to Portugal.

On several occasions, general indulgences were granted to the Hebrew converts in Portugal, in hope of reconciling them fully to the papacy. The first was by Pope Clement VII., A.D. 1535; and this was confirmed by Pope Paul III., A.D. 1536. The second was issued by the same pontiff, A.D. 1547; at the same time the inquisitors were required to proceed with greater vigour against judaisers in that kingdom. Still he granted a general pardon to the new converts and their children.

Sebastian, king of Portugal, on the occasion of his preparation for his unfortunate expedition into Africa, in which he fell, granted to the descendants of the Jews, A.D. 1577, for a large sum of money, that their effects should not be confiscated for ten years. This pretended liberality, though sanctioned by Pope Gregory XIII., was contrary to the advice of Philip II., his uncle, the king of Spain; but upon the defeat of the king’s army by the Saracens, the same year, Cardinal Henry, the king’s great uncle, succeeding him on the throne, immediately recalled the said grant, with consent of the Pope, declaring, as the reason of this revocation, “that after the most mature consultation of learned men, they all agreed that he was bound to make such revocation, because the good of the faith required it.”

Cardinal Henry dying in the year 1580, the crown of Portugal fell to Philip, king of Spain; and the new Christians, as the conforming Jews were called, offered him a large sum of money, on condition of his obtaining for them a general indulgence from the Pope; but his divines declared, “that God was greatly offended with such money; and that he could not reasonably expect any prosperous success from it.” So Philip disregarded their offers of money, though he was engaged in an expensive war with England and France.

These Jewish Christians in Portugal continued for many years to endeavour, by repeated entreaties, to procure the abolition of the Inquisition, or at least the mitigation of its laws and policy. But they were only deluded by empty words and flattering promises: for they have remained liable to the penalties ordained against heretics, and to the terrors of the Inquisition, on being accused, as being in every way opposed to the principles and doctrines of Rome.

Charles V., the famous emperor of Germany and king of Spain, was the great supporter of the Inquisition in the Netherlands. These provinces, comprehending Belgium, Holland, and several adjacent countries, he inherited from his father. At an early period, many of their divines procured the writings and embraced the doctrines of Luther; and, therefore, the Inquisition was introduced there, A.D. 1521, by Francis Vander Hulst, chancellor of the emperor in Brabant, and Nicolas Van Egmont, a Carmelite friar. These were appointed inquisitors-general; and their characters and policy we learn from the celebrated Erasmus. He says, in a letter to the archbishop of Palermo, A.D. 1524, “Now the sword is given to two violent haters of good learning, Hulst and Egmont. If they have a spite against any man, they throw him into prison; here the matter is transacted among a few, and the innocent suffers barbarous usage, that they may not lose anything of their authority; and when they find they have done entirely wrong, they cry out, ‘We must take care of the faith.’” In another letter to a friend, he says, “There reigns Egmont, a furious person, armed with the sword, who hates me twice more than he doth Luther. His colleague is Francis Hulst, a great enemy of learning. They first throw men into prison, and then seek out for crimes for which to accuse them. These things the emperor is ignorant of, though it would be worth his while to know them.”

Many followers of Christ, therefore, suffered under these cruel inquisitors by various torments, and the Emperor Charles endeavoured to establish the Inquisition in the Netherlands, after the manner of its operations in Spain. For this purpose he published an edict against heretics; commanding all magistrates, when required by the inquisitors, and at the request of the bishops, to proceed against any in the affair of heresy, and to afford their utmost countenance and assistance in the execution of their office, discovering and apprehending those who might be infected with heretical pravity. This decree authorised them to proceed against transgressors by execution, whatever their dignity or privileges.

Terror filled the minds of the people on learning the character of this edict, and the most gloomy apprehensions excited many to prepare to emigrate from Antwerp. The magistrates, therefore, assembled the chief merchants and traders, to ascertain from them what losses had been sustained by the city, and what further damage was expected from the establishment of the Inquisition. They declared their minds; and a memorial was prepared and laid before Queen Mary, sister of Charles V., and at that time governess of the Netherlands, showing largely, from the edict of the emperor, from the instructions of the inquisitors, and from the privileges of Brabant, how many evils appeared to threaten the city and the whole country. They besought her to intercede with the emperor, that so rich and flourish a city might not be ruined by the operations of the Inquisition. The several orders of Brabant united with those of Antwerp; and the queen was prevailed on to undertake their cause. She at once proceeded to Augsburg, where she obtained another edict, allowing the ecclesiastical judges to demand some persons from the imperial courts to join with them in proceeding against any one accused of heresy. This did by no means meet the case; it was, therefore, received at Antwerp under protestation, that this edict should not derogate anything from the statutes and privileges of the citizens. Still they were ill at ease, such was the dread of the cruelty which had been known of the inquisitors; especially as they saw that those who were privately commissioned by the pope and the emperor to the office of inquisitors, acted as such by themselves, and by their commissaries. For several were shortly condemned as heretics, in many cities; of whom some were beheaded, others hanged, or burned, and some tied up in sacks and drowned!

King Philip succeeding his father, was appealed to against these enormities, and petitioned to grant religious toleration in the Netherlands. But superstition held the mind of the royal fanatic; and he prostrated himself before a crucifix, solemnly imploring—“I beseech the Divine Majesty, that I may never suffer myself to be, or to be called, the lord of those who deny Thee, the Lord!”

Resolved to annihilate the reformation in the Netherlands, Philip converted the three bishoprics into archbishoprics, and established seventeen bishoprics, with a court of inquisition, under the direction of Cardinal Granvile. The Prince of Orange, Count Egmont, and Count Horn remonstrated with the Duchess of Parma, against the Inquisition and Cardinal Granvile. This was in vain. The executions of the Inquisition became more frequent and more rigorous than before; and a general combination was resolved on, to procure a redress of the common grievances. The Duchess of Parma remonstrated with Philip; but the infatuated monarch was deaf to every argument; and the only concession which he made was, that, for the future, heretics, instead of being burnt, should be hanged.

Philip, influenced by superstition, and governed by the priests, supported the policy of the inquisitors in the Netherlands. Their cruelties, therefore, increased, until the people broke out into open revolt. The populace made disturbances, throwing down the images in the churches, and committing other acts of violence. The king threatened vengeance upon the transgressors; and submitted the case to the supreme court of inquisition in Spain, to know its judgment concerning the revolters—information and depositions being given by the inferior inquisitors among the disaffected, that court determined that the inhabitants of the Netherlands were guilty of treason.

Philip now indulged his bigotry to the utmost, regardless of the welfare of his subjects. He sent “the Duke of Alva, of infamous memory,” into the Netherlands, with a powerful army to destroy the heretics. That monster, whose bigotry, pride, and stubbornness corresponded with those of his royal master, is said to have “poured out the Protestant blood as water on every side; while one hundred and twenty thousand fled from the persecution.” Throughout all their cities, old and young, men and women, without any distinction of dignity, age, or sex, might be seen suffering by the sword, the gibbet, the fire, and other torments, until the wretched people, roused with indignation, arose as one man, and totally overthrew the horrid Inquisition. William, prince of Orange, undertook the deliverance of his native country, which he accomplished with troops levied among the refugees and the German Protestants. The mortified King of Spain recalled the Duke of Alva; but that “monster boasted that he had delivered into the hands of the executioners above eighteen thousand heretics and rebels, besides those who died in the war!”

Father Paul reckons the Belgic martyrs at 50,000; but Hugo Grotius estimates the numbers who suffered by the hands of the executioner at no less than 100,000. Popery, however, with the accursed Inquisition, was thus driven from the country, and the civil war terminated only with a new form of government, which formed a new Protestant state in Europe, under the title of “The Seven United Provinces.”

CHAPTER VIII.

THE INQUISITION IN FRANCE.

France supplied a large number of victims to the cruel bigotry of the Inquisition, at the period of the reformation, especially in the reign of Francis I. This great monarch was nephew to Louis XII., whom he succeeded on the throne at his death, January 21, 1515. Francis was then twenty-one years of age; and no sooner was he seated on the throne than he resolved on an expedition into Italy, in which he was successful. After the battle of Marignan, in which he was victorious, Francis entered Milan, October 23, 1515; and shortly after concluded a peace with Pope Leo X., by which he was confirmed in many privileges, he and the Pope making various concessions. Leo and Francis met at Bologna, where they drew up a treaty, known as the “The Concordat,” in virtue of which they agreed to sacrifice what were understood as the rights of the church, mutually sharing the spoils. The king conceded to the Pope his supremacy, independent of all councils of the church, while Leo despoiled the ecclesiastical corporations of France of the power to nominate to the bishoprics, bestowing this patronage upon the monarch. This treaty was ratified by the Pope making a public procession to the cathedral at Bologna, the king bearing the train of His Holiness! Francis felt conscious of the iniquitous character of the Concordat; and, turning to Duprat, his chancellor, whispered, “there is enough in it to damn us both!”

Francis and Leo having thus linked their interests together, separated, each to pursue his own course: but the king having afterwards been irritated by some delays of the Pope, complained to the papal legate of the conduct of Leo; adding, that if he were not speedily satisfied, he would countenance the Lutherans in his kingdom. The priestly ambassador replied in a manner that silenced the high-spirited monarch. “Sire,” said he, “you would be the first and greatest loser by such a step—a new religion demands a new prince!” By this means Francis was prepared, under the influence of superstition and fear for his crown, to show the most ardent zeal for the cause of the Pope and his Inquisition.

Two ladies, at this period, exercised extraordinary influence in religion in France. Margaret, the duchess of Alençon, sister of Francis, entertained opinions far different from those of the king; and she afforded her powerful protection to the reformers, who increased in several parts of France, especially at Meaux and Lyons. Louisa of Savoy, mother of Francis, professedly a Roman Catholic, but in reality a woman of no religious principle, was made regent of the kingdom, while he carried his arms into Italy, in 1524. He was, at first, successful; but, being eager to take Pavia, he was defeated near that city by the imperial forces, and taken prisoner by Lannoy, vice-king of Naples.

Francis I. became a captive in the power of the Emperor Charles V., and was carried a prisoner into Spain. During his absence the terrors of the Inquisition were felt in France. For, no sooner had Louisa obtained possession of the reins of government, by the captivity of the king, her son, than she wrote to the Pope, as the means of conciliating his favour, asking his advice as to the best mode of dealing with the heretics that infested France. Clement VII., exasperated by the failure of every attempt to arrest the progress of the reformation in Germany and Switzerland, was delighted with the message which laid the heretics throughout the “Most Christian kingdom of France” at the mercy of the sovereign pontiff. He responded with practical effect; and, by a papal bull, established the Inquisition in France.

For the purpose of carrying out his policy, the Pope appointed Chancellor Duprat to be archbishop of Sens, and created him a cardinal. Thus the Inquisition was, at once, constituted in France, as all the influential powers,—the regent, the chancellor, and the parliament,—were leagued with the Pope and the Sorbonne, to exterminate heresy with fire and sword. A commission was appointed, consisting of four priests, to whom was entrusted absolute power to proceed against all persons suspected of being tainted with Lutheran doctrines. The highest dignitaries were held responsible to this dread tribunal; and the first victim of the inquisitors was Briconnet, count of Montbrun, bishop of Meaux. He was compelled to answer, like the humblest priest, before two of the inquisitors, and every appeal that he attempted to make to the parliament, or to the regent, was rejected. He recanted the evangelical doctrines that he had preached; and Lefevre, an aged professor in the university, “the forerunner of the reformation,” fled to Strasburgh. But neither the fall of the bishop, nor the flight of the doctor, could satisfy the inquisitors of Paris. Jean Pavanne was burned at the stake in the Place de Grève, rejoicing that he was counted worthy to suffer death for Christ. Their next victim was “the good hermit of Livry.” As he had evangelised the villagers around his dwelling, about nine miles from Paris, it was resolved to make him a public example. A vast pile was raised in the open area in front of the cathedral of Notre Dame, in which this servant of Christ was sacrificed, in the presence of the whole of the clergy, and a multitude of the people, who had been called together by the great bell of the cathedral. To such humble victims others were added of higher rank, and by other means than the prison and the stake. Michael D’Arande, chaplain to the Princess Margaret, was threatened with death, and Anthony Papillon, chief master of requests to the Dauphin, was carried off by poison. The inquisitors, in a few months, had committed to the flames, or driven from France, nearly every individual who had been the object of their envy or suspicion. At length, after a year’s captivity in Spain, Francis obtained his freedom, on most humiliating conditions, to the performance of which he was bound by a solemn oath. From this oath to the emperor the Pope gave him absolution, and thereby bound him more closely to himself by such faithless bonds of perjury and deceit. But this favour rendered it the more difficult for him to change the policy which, under the regency of his mother, had delivered up the heretics of France to the inquisitors of Rome.

Francis returned to Paris in the character of a doubly perjured vassal of the Pope, bound to assume the office of the persecutor, and take the lead in devoting to tortures and to death the most virtuous, enlightened and faithful of his subjects. The great change which had taken place in the temper of Francis on his return from Spain, became remarkably manifest on his delivering up Louis Berquin, called “the most learned of the nobility,” to the vengeance of the inquisitors. His books were seized, and, in order to strike at the root of the heresy, Luther’s writings were publicly burnt before the cathedral of Notre Dame. Berquin remained faithful; he refused to purchase life by the sacrifice of his faith; and Francis ceased to be protector and king. When the parliament interfered with his early schemes of policy, his haughty reply had been, “There is a king in France;” and when the court, responding to the proud spirit of the sovereign, interfered on the former arrest of Berquin, the king exclaimed, “Of what is he accused? Of challenging the custom of invoking the Virgin in place of the Holy Ghost! Is it for such trifles that they imprison a king’s officer? It is an attack, aimed at literature, true religion, the nobility, nay, the crown itself.” But Francis had descended from this kingly standing to become the wretched tool of a bigoted priesthood. Berquin, the “king’s officer,” was abandoned to his enemies. He was condemned to have his tongue pierced and to be burnt alive; and the sentence was executed with the most merciless severity. Berquin held fast his faith; and his execution was followed by that of fourteen other reformers, who were burnt at the stake, maintaining, to their latest breath, the true faith of Christ.

Francis not only allowed a free course to the inquisitors, and abandoned the nobles of France to their fury, he was drawn to be their humble agent among the executioners of their cruelties. At the beginning of 1535, Jean Morin, the surintendant-criminel, flung into prison immense numbers of men, women, and children, who attended the religious meetings of the evangelicals. They were betrayed by a man named Guainier, who had been employed to keep watch at their secret religious assemblies. These furnished victims for a solemn procession, which the king ordered at Paris, January 21, 1535, in expiation of the offence pretended to have been committed in certain placards, which denied the Romish doctrine of transubstantiation.

Laval, in his “History of the Protestant Reformation in France,” describes this procession, thus expressed by a modern writer:—“Between the hours of eight and nine in the morning the procession began to issue from the church of Saint Geneviéve. There was a long line of priests, dressed in their gorgeous garments; the streets were strewed with flowers, and the windows were crowded with spectators. First were borne the bodies and relics of all the martyrs preserved in the different churches of Paris,—St. Germain, St. Merry, St. Marceau, St. Geneviéve, St. Opportune, St. Landré, St. Honoré; and all those relics of the Holy Chapel which had never been exposed to the public gaze since the grand and mournful day of the funeral of Saint Louis. Then followed a great number of cardinals in their scarlet robes; of bishops, abbés, and other prelates, and all the members of the University of Paris, marching in regular order. Then came Du Bellay, bishop of Paris, carrying in his hands the holy sacrament. Then the king, with his head bare, and bearing a large waxen taper in his hand; then the queen; the princes of the blood; two hundred gentlemen; the king’s guard; the court of parliament; the master of requests, and all the officers of justice. The ambassadors of the emperor, of England, of Venice, &c., were present. The procession, in grave order, proceeded through all the larger streets of Paris; and at six principal places there were erected at each a reposoir, or temporary altar, adorned with flowers, crucifixes, candlesticks, &c., &c. Little children, dressed as angels, or holding the lamb of peace, are usually to be seen at these reposoirs; but here was now a terrible spectacle prepared. At each altar a scaffold and a pile had been arranged, where were very cruelly burned six people, amid the marvellous shouts and rejoicings of the populace, so highly excited, that it was with difficulty they were prevented from snatching the victims out of the hands of the executioners and tearing them in pieces. But if the fury of these was great, the constancy of the martyrs was greater still. The cruelty of the people, in tearing these sufferers to atoms, would have been mercy, compared to the barbarity of the king. He had commanded that these victims should be fastened to a very lofty machine, the beam of which projecting, was, by means of pulleys, raised and lowered alternately; and as it rose and fell it plunged the martyr into a blazing pile below, and raised him up again in order to prolong his sufferings. This continued till the flames had destroyed the cords which bound him, and the body sank into the fire. This horrible machine was not set in motion till the king, queen, and all present might enjoy the satisfaction of seeing the heretic tormented with the flames; during which time the king, handing his torch to the Cardinal de Loraine, joined his hands, and prostrating himself humbly, called down the blessing of heaven upon his people; and in this attitude remained until the agonies of the victim had terminated.

“The procession ended where it began, at the church of St. Geneviéve. The holy sacrament was replaced in the tabernacle, and the mass was sung by the archbishop of Paris. After this there was a splendid dinner, at which the archbishop received the king, the peers, the ambassadors, the courts of parliament, &c., &c. At the conclusion of which entertainment, the king, addressing the numerous guests, after expressing his grief at the execrable opinions that were disseminated in his dominions, said ‘that he had determined and commanded that the most rigorous punishment should be inflicted upon the delinquents; and he required all his subjects to denounce every one whom they should know to be adherents unto, or accomplices in such blasphemies, without regard to alliance, lineage, or friendship. As for himself, if his very arm were thus corrupted, he would tear it from his body; and if his own children were found guilty of falling into such enormities, he would at once yield them up as a first sacrifice to God!’ To give force to his words, the king ordered the executions of the sacramentaries to continue; and from that time the numbers who perished by the balançoire (or swing) is appalling.”

Europe was filled with the reports of these cruelties on the French reformers, and the Protestant princes remonstrated with the king. But Francis had become the slave of superstition and priestly intolerance, and governed by the inquisitors of Rome. He continued his cruel and impolitic course, under the counsel of the inquisitors; and issued a terrible edict, in 1540, against the Vaudois, requiring “that the villages of Mirandol, Cabrieres, Les Aignes, and other places shall all be destroyed, the houses razed to the ground; their caverns and other subterranean retreats demolished; their forests cut down; their fruit trees torn up by the roots; the principal chiefs executed; and the women and children exiled for perpetuity.”

These people were reported as exemplary in their industry; that “they never say mass for the dead; they have prayer in the vulgar tongue; they have no bishops, nor priests, but men whom they elect as simple ministers.” The Papists, therefore, hated their religion, and envied their prosperity, resulting from industry; so that they prevailed on the king to abandon his deserving subjects to the exterminating sword and fire of the inquisitors. Men, women, and children were massacred with fiendish cruelty. Towns, villages, and hamlets were devoted to the flames. Death was threatened to all who should offer food or shelter to the fugitives, so that those who escaped the sword of the persecutors, perished in the mountains.

Francis is said to have been stung with remorse on reflecting upon this infamous massacre, especially on his death-bed. He died in 1547, as the persecutor dies,—despairing, dishonoured, and undeplored. His eldest son, the dauphin, died of poison, administered by his cup-bearer; and his own death is believed to have been caused by the same instrument of revenge, administered by the husband of a lady whom he had dishonoured. His character, therefore, was worthy of “the mystery of iniquity,” the Romish Antichrist.

France exhibited a long series of the most bloody scenes, after the decease of Francis I., the horrid fruit of the Inquisition, the detail of which would require a volume. Notwithstanding persecution, the Protestants increased greatly; so that, in 1570, it is recorded, there were two thousand one hundred and fifty congregations of Protestants in France, some of them containing two thousand members! Papal intrigues were long employed, under the direction of the inquisitors, for their extirpation; and the pages of history do not contain such another record of monstrous treachery and malignant barbarity, as that of St. Bartholomew, in 1572. It is to be remembered that the deed was perpetrated in the name of the religion of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace!

Charles IX., king of France, guided by his wicked mother, the infamous Catherine de Medicis, was induced, by the agents of the Pope, to resolve upon exterminating, by one decisive effort, all the dissenters from the Romish church. For this purpose, many of the principal Protestants were invited to Paris, under a solemn oath of safety, to celebrate the marriage of the king of Navarre with the French king’s sister. The queen dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, was destroyed before the marriage was solemnised, by means of poison, concealed in a pair of gloves. The inhuman butchery commenced at the tolling of the bell of the Palais de Justice, at two o’clock in the morning of the 24th of August (the Sabbath), by the murder of the Admiral Coligny, who had been shot at and wounded two days previously. The hypocritical king of France visited him, and declared the admiral’s wound was his own. But the shocking work was conducted by the Duke of Guise, urged on by the king himself in person!

Most dreadful was the scene. The shrieks of women and children rent the air, mingled with the shouts and blasphemous execrations of their murderers. “Imagine,” says a French author, “sixty thousand assassins, armed with pistols, stakes, cutlasses, poniards, knives, and other deadly weapons, rushing along the streets, blaspheming and abusing the sacred name of God, and murdering and mutilating the innocent and defenceless, amid a horrible tempest of yells and savage cries, and the piteous shrieks of those whom they dragged through the mire, or flung headlong into the bloody Seine!” Five hundred gentlemen, and ten thousand of the common people are believed to have been sacrificed in this horrid massacre, in three days, within the walls of Paris alone. But the bloody work extended to all places where these evangelical dissenters were known; and it is calculated that not less than a hundred thousand Protestants were at this time destroyed in France!

On the third day of the massacre, the priests led the king in royal state to the cathedral of Notre Dame, when high mass was performed; and then solemn thanksgivings to God were rendered, as for the victory which he had thus granted over the enemies of the church! This melancholy tragedy was known to have been contrived by the Romish inquisitors. The announcement of it was received by the clergy, at Rome and in Spain, with expressions of unbounded exultation. The messenger who brought the news to Rome was rewarded with a thousand crowns; and when the letters from the papal legate residing at the French court were read in the assembly of cardinals, it was decreed, that the Pope should march with his cardinals to the church of St. Mark, to offer solemn thanks to God for so signal a blessing conferred upon the see of Rome! Medals to commemorate this horrid deed were struck in Paris and in Rome, by order of the Governments; and that of Pope Gregory XIII., though proclaiming the everlasting dishonour of the papacy and the Inquisition, may still be obtained at the mint of Rome!

Charles IX. raged in savage cruelty against the Protestants. Even the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé were devoted to the same destruction; but their lives were spared on their professing to be reconciled to the Romish church; the king of France, with a terrible oath, proposing to them, “mass, death, or the Bastile for life!” This royal bigot, however, fell a victim to guilt and remorse; for he died, May 30th, 1574, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, after suffering dreadful bodily and mental anguish, poisoned, as many believed, by the hand of his own mother!

As to the sacrifices of the Protestants in France, it is collected from authentic records that during forty years, in the middle of this century, not less than a million were the victims of the unrelenting bigotry of the Romish inquisitors!

Protestantism still survived in France; and many again took up arms in their own defence, until 1598, when Henry IV., of Navarre, succeeded to the throne. He granted the famous “Edict of Nantes,” which was called “Irrevocable!” and by which the Protestants were allowed liberty of conscience, the free exercise of their religion, and access to all places of public trust and dignity. But the Papists continued by all kinds of intrigues to annoy them. One shameful invasion of their rights succeeded another, by the enactment of inhuman laws, until the reign of Louis XIV., who was prevailed on, in 1685, by the Popish bishops and the Jesuits, contrary to the most solemn obligations which human or divine laws can frame, to revoke the “Irrevocable Edict of Nantes.”

By this means it was intended, in one grand effort, to extirpate the very remembrance of the Protestant profession in France. Reconciliation with Rome was required, or banishment from the kingdom. Fifteen days were allowed to the preachers and professors, and many of them fled. About eight hundred thousand, chiefly artisans, escaped from the dragoons, who were commissioned to destroy those who would not conform. Many of the exiles, being weavers, were well received in England, where they contributed greatly to the wealth and prosperity of the nation, by their woollen factories in Yorkshire and the west, and by their silk works in Spitalfields, London.

Those who could not escape were treated with every species of brutality. “The troopers, soldiers and dragoons,” says a French Protestant author, in 1686, “went into the Protestants’ houses, where they marred and defaced their household stuff, broke their looking-glasses, and other utensils and ornaments. Those things which they could not destroy in this manner—such as furniture of beds, linens, wearing apparel, plate, &c.,—they carried to the market-place, and sold them to the Jesuits and other Roman Catholics. They turned the dining-rooms of gentlemen into stables for their horses; and treated the owners of the houses where they were quartered with the highest indignity and cruelty, lashing them about from one to another, day and night, without intermission, not suffering them to eat or drink. In several places the soldiers applied ret-hot irons to the hands and feet of men and breasts of women. At Nantes they hung up several women and maids by their feet, and others by their arm-pits, and thus exposed them to public view, stark naked. They bound to posts mothers that gave suck, and let their sucking infants lie languishing in their sight for several days and nights, crying, mourning, and gasping for life. Some they bound before a great fire, and, being half-roasted, let them go—a punishment worse than death. Amidst a thousand hideous cries and blasphemies, they hung up men and women by the hair, and some by their feet, on hooks in chimneys, and smoked them with wisps of wet hay till they were suffocated. They tied some under the arms with ropes, and plunged them again and again into wells; they bound others like criminals, put them to the tortures, and, with a funnel, filled them with wine, till the fumes of it took away their reason, when they made them say they consented to be Catholics. They stripped them naked, and, after a thousand indignities, stuck them with pins and needles from head to foot. They cut and slashed them with knives; and sometimes with red-hot pincers took hold of them by the nose and other parts of the body, and dragged them about the rooms till they promised to be Catholics. They beat them with staves, and thus bruised, and with broken bones, dragged them to the church, where their forced presence was taken for abjuration. In some places they tied fathers and husbands to their bed-posts, and, before their eyes, ravished their wives and daughters with impunity. With these scenes of desolation and horror the popish clergy feasted their eyes, and made them only a matter of laughter and sport. Though my heart aches, I beg the reader’s patience to lay before him two other instances, which, if he hath a heart like mine, he will not be able to read without watering these sheets with tears. The first is of a young woman, who being brought before the council, upon refusing to abjure her religion, was ordered to prison. There they shaved her head, singed off the hair from other parts of her body; and having stripped her stark naked, led her through the streets of the city, where many a blow was given her, and stones flung at her; then they set her up to the neck in a tub of water for awhile; they took her out, and put on her a shift dipped in wine, which, as it dried and stuck to her sore and bruised body, they snatched off again, and then had another ready dipped in wine to clap on her. This they repeated six times, thereby making her body exceeding raw and sore. When all these cruelties could not shake her constancy, they fastened her by the feet in a kind of gibbet, and let her hang in that posture, with her head downward, till she expired!

“The other is of a man in whose house were quartered some of these missionary dragoons. One day, having drunk plentifully of his wine, and broken their glasses at every health, they filled the floor with fragments, and by often walking over them reduced them to very small pieces. This done, in the insolence of their mirth they resolved on a dance, and told their Protestant host that he must be one of their company; but as he would not be of their religion, he must dance quite bare-foot; and thus bare-foot they drove him about the room, treading on the sharp points of the broken glasses. When he was no longer able to stand, they laid him on a bed, and, in a short time, stripped him stark naked, and rolled him from one end of the room to the other, till every part of his body was full of the fragments of glass. After this they dragged him to his bed; and, having sent for a surgeon, obliged him to cut out the pieces of glass with his instruments, thereby putting him to the most exquisite and horrible pains that can be possibly conceived!

“These, fellow Protestants, were the methods used by the ‘Most Christian King’s’ apostolic dragoons to convert his heretical subjects to the Roman Catholic faith! These, and many other of the like nature, were the torments to which Louis XIV. delivered them over to bring them to his own church; and as popery is unchangeably the same, these are the tortures prepared for you, if ever that religion should be permitted to become settled amongst you; the consideration of which made Luther say of it, what every man that knows anything of Christianity must agree with him in:—‘If you have no other reason to go out of the Roman church, this alone would suffice, that you see and hear how, contrary to the law of God, THEY SHED INNOCENT BLOOD. This single circumstance shall, God willing, ever separate me from the papacy. And if I was now subject to it, and could blame nothing in any of their doctrines; yet, for this crime of cruelty, I would fly from her communion, as from a den of thieves and murderers!’”