Читать книгу History of the Inquisition from Its Establishment Till the Present Time - William Sime - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Persecution for religious opinions, opposed to the spirit of Christianity—its increase with the growth of the Papal authority—the foundation of the Inquisition laid by Regnier and Guy—Birth and education of St. Dominic—his erection of the Inquisition, and thirst for human blood—procedure of the first Inquisitors—erection of inquisitorial tribunals in different countries.

Nothing is more evident to every candid reader of the inspired volume, than that persecution in any form is utterly opposed to the spirit of genuine Christianity. "Learn of me," said the Saviour, when he proposed himself as a model for his followers, "for I am meek and lowly in heart;" and following up his principles of mildness, he reproved the indiscreet zeal of James and John, when they sought to call down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans, because they refused to receive them into one of their villages. Nay, so far from giving his disciples a power to persecute, the Divine Founder of the Christian religion foretold them that they must suffer persecution for his name. This they soon experienced; but, instead of rendering evil for evil, they "approved themselves as the ministers of God, by much patience, by afflictions, necessities, distresses, stripes, and imprisonments;" thus showing by example, as well as by precept, that "the weapons of their warfare were not carnal, but spiritual."

While the objects of persecution, the Christians acted agreeably to these principles, and for three centuries contended, that persecution for religious opinions is not only absurd, but unjust and cruel in the highest degree. "Every one," says Tertullian, "hath a natural right and power to worship according to his persuasion; for no man's religion can be hurtful or profitable to his neighbour." "There is no need of compulsion and violence," says Lactantius, "because religion cannot be forced, and men must be made willing, not by stripes, but by arguments." The maxims of mildness towards those who were called heretics, are also inculcated by Chrysostom, in the following among many similar passages of his works:—"We ought to fight against heretics, not to throw down those who are upright, but to raise up those who are fallen; for the war which is incumbent on us is not that which gives death to the living, but that which restores life to the dead, seeing that our arms are meekness and benignity. In dealing with heretics, we ought not to injure them in person, but seek to remove the error of the understanding, and the evil of the heart. We ought always to be disposed to submit to persecution, and not to persecute; to suffer grievances, and not to cause them. It is in this manner Jesus Christ conquered, since he was nailed to a cross—he did not crucify others." Even so late as the fifth century, St. Martin, in France, excommunicated a bishop, for accusing certain heretics to the usurper Maximin, by whose means they were put to death; adding, in the spirit of genuine Christianity, that he looked upon that man as a murderer, who procured the destruction of a fellow-creature, chargeable, in strict justice, with nothing else than being mistaken in his opinions.

But in despite of the mild spirit of the gospel, exemplified in every page of the sacred writings, and of the opinions of the primitive fathers, who unanimously condemned persecution for conscience sake, it was not long before those who pretended to be the disciples of Jesus began to imitate the conduct which they had censured in the heathen emperors. When the Roman empire became Christian, it still appeared to the civil magistrate that he was bound to support the religion adopted by the state.—"Hence it was that laws were enacted against heretics, subjecting them to fines, imprisonment, and banishment; with this limitation, however, in every case, that the ecclesiastical judge was to determine whether the opinions professed were heretical or not. The party accused, besides, was usually charged at the same time with the crime of sedition or rebellion; and whenever the punishment was capital, it was understood to be the result chiefly of a criminal opposition to the civil authorities." The law and practice respecting heresy continued in this situation till the commencement of the ninth century. The trial of the whole case was in the hands of the civil magistrate; and, with the exception of ecclesiastical censures, it belonged to councils merely to determine whether the doctrine libelled was or was not heretical.

In succeeding centuries, however, the power of the ecclesiastical tribunals, and of the papacy itself, increased in a most extraordinary degree. The zeal which animated the Church against heretics became fierce and ungovernable, and all who dared to advance sentiments opposed to those enjoined by the Romish hierarchy, were subjected to persecution in every form. "In the following ages," says Limborch, when speaking of the sixth and subsequent centuries, "the affairs of the Church were so managed under the government of the Popes, and all persons so strictly curbed by the severity of the laws, that they durst not even so much as whisper against the received opinions of the Church. Besides this, so deep was the ignorance that had spread itself over the world, that men, without the least regard to knowledge and learning, received, with blind obedience, every thing that the ecclesiastics ordered them, however stupid and superstitious, without any examination; and if any one dared in the least to contradict them, he was sure immediately to be punished; whereby the most absurd opinions came to be established by the violence of the Popes."

The chief aim of the Roman Pontiffs, indeed, now was to crush in its infancy every doctrine which had the smallest tendency to oppose their exorbitant power. In the year 1163, the Synod of Tours commanded all the bishops and priests in the country of Toulouse, "to take care, and to forbid under pain of excommunication, every person from presuming to give reception, or the least assistance, to the followers of heresy, wherever they should be discovered." This decree had in view, more particularly, the Waldenses and Albigenses, an eminent Christian community who inhabited the valleys of Piedmont and the south of France, and who held doctrines different from those which were commanded by the Popes, on pain of death, to be implicitly believed. The Waldenses, whose religious sentiments were similar to those of the Protestants at the present day, had long continued to reject the absurdi ties of Popery; [1] and though, for several ages, they had escaped the notice of the Holy See, yet having in the twelfth century become exceedingly numerous, they excited the utmost hatred of the Pope and his adherents. About the year 1200, accordingly, Pope Innocent III. wrote to several archbishops and bishops in Guienne, and other provinces in France, enjoining them to banish the "Waldenses, Puritans, and Paternines," from their territories, and commissioned Regnier and Guy, two zealous monks, to repair to France, for the purpose of discovering and subduing heresy. These two apostles of the Holy See may now be considered as having laid the foundation of the Inquisition, though the honour, or rather infamy, of erecting that horrid court, is due to another individual no less cruel. Regnier was subsequently appointed the Pope's legate in the four provinces of Narbonne, Aix, Arles, and Embrun: but having fallen sick, Innocent joined to him Peter of Castelnau—one, says Sismondi, "whose zeal, more furious than that of his predecessors, is worthy of those sentiments which the very name of the Inquisition inspires."

For many ages the method of proceeding against heretics was committed to the bishops, with whom the government and care of the churches were entrusted, according to the received decrees of the Romish church. But imagining that they did not proceed with sufficient severity against the opponents of the Romish faith, and especially against the Waldenses, the Pope had recourse to other methods for the purpose of more effectually extirpating heresy. With this view, Innocent, in the year 1204, instituted two orders of regulars, namely, those of St. Dominic and St. Francis. Dominic and his followers were sent into the country of Toulouse, where they preached with great vehemence against all who held opinions different from those of Rome; in consequence of which, the order of Dominic received the name of Predicants. Francis and his disciples acted a similar part in Italy. Both saints, as they are impiously called, were commanded by the Pope, "to excite the Catholic princes and people to extirpate heretics; in all places to inquire into their number and quality; and to transmit a faithful account to Rome." Hence they were called Inquisitors.

The erection of that extraordinary court, "the Inquisition," is, indeed, uniformly ascribed to Dominic, a man of the most blood-thirsty disposition, and whose deeds of cruelty may not unjustly be compared with those of the infamous Nero. Dominic was born at the village of Cabaroga, in Spain, in the year 1170. Previous to his birth, his mother, Joanna, is said to have dreamed that she was with child of a pup, carrying in its mouth a lighted torch; and after its birth, it put the world in an uproar by its fierce barkings, and at length set it on fire by the torch which it carried in its mouth. His followers have interpreted this dream, of his doctrine, by which he enlightened the world; while others, with far more reason, consider the torch to be an emblem of that fire and faggot by which an almost infinite multitude of persons were burnt to ashes. Dominic "was educated for the priesthood," says a modern writer, "and grew up the most fiery and the most bloody of mortals. Before his time, every bishop was a sort of Inquisitor in his own diocese; but Dominic contrived to incorporate a body of men, independent of every human being, except the Pope, for the express purpose of ensnaring and destroying Christians. He was well aware, that however loudly the priests declaimed against heresy, the lords of the soil would not suffer them to butcher their tenants under any such vain pretences. In Biscay, the priesthood was at a very low ebb in the eleventh century, and the clergy complained to the King of Navarre, that the nobility and gentry treated them very little better than their slaves, employing them chiefly only to breed up and feed their dogs. Nearly a century after that time in a neighbouring state, when the renowned St. Bernard began, in a sermon to a crowded audience to inveigh against heresy, the nobility and gentry all rose up and left the church, and the people followed them. The preacher came down and proceeded to the market-place, where he attempted to harangue on the same subject; but the populace, wiser than the preacher, refused to hear him, and raised such a clamour as drowned his voice, and compelled him to desist. Only one expedient remained. Bernard recollected that Jesus had ordered his apostles, in certain cases, to shake off the dust of their feet, and, as though he were an apostle, and had received the same command, he affected to imitate the example. He left the city, shook his feet, and exclaimed, "May the Almighty punish this city with a drought." Thus far went the rage of Catholicism at the beginning of the twelfth century, and here its proud waves were stayed; but at the commencement of the thirteenth, about the year 1215, [2] Dominic broke down the dam, and covered Toulouse with a tide of despotism stained with human blood. Posterity will scarcely believe that this enemy of mankind, after forming a race like himself, first called preaching, and then Dominican friars, died in his bed, was canonized as a saint, worshipped as a divinity, and proposed as a model of piety and virtue to succeeding generations."

The Inquisitors, at first, had no tribunals; they simply inquired after the number, strength, and riches of heretics, and gave information of all these particulars to the bishops, who at that time had the sole power of judging in ecclesiastical matters; urging them to anathematize, or otherwise to punish, such heretical persons as they brought before them. Sometimes they excited princes to arm their subjects against those whom they denounced as heretics, and at other times they inflamed the populace to take up arms and unite in extirpating them. Nay, in his zeal for the Popish faith, Dominic, amidst a vast concourse of people, in one of his sermons openly declared, "That he was raised to a new office by the Pope; that he was resolved to defend with all his power the doctrines of the faith; and that, if spiritual and ecclesiastical weapons were not sufficient for this purpose, it was his fixed determination to call on princes to take up arms against heretics, that their very memory might be entirely destroyed. Nor was this an empty threat. Instigated by this inhuman monk, and by his adherents, armies were raised, styled cross-bearers, or crusaders, who massacred thousands of the Albigenses, laid their cities in ruins, and compelled the few who escaped to seek refuge in other parts of the world."

In course of time the Inquisitors took cognizance of other crimes, from their being supposed to have some affinity with, or to bear suspicion of, heresy: such as heretical blasphemy, witchcraft, belief in omens, confessional seduction, and even polygamy. "The original simplicity of the Inquisition," says Dr. M'Crie, "soon gave place to a system of the most complicated and iniquitous circumvention. Inflamed with a passion for extirpating heresy, and persuading themselves that the end sanctified the means, they, (the Inquisitors) not only acted upon, but formally laid down as a rule for their conduct, maxims founded on the grossest deceit and artifice, according to which they sought in every way to ensnare their victims, and by means of false statements, delusory promises, and a tortuous course of examination, to betray them into confessions which proved fatal to their lives and fortunes. To this mental torture was soon after added the use of bodily tortures, together with the concealment of the names of witnesses."

Innocent died in 1216, and was succeeded by Honorius III. who used every effort to give permanency to the Inquisition; which was not, however, accomplished till 1227 under the pontificate of Gregory IX.

The growth of the Inquisition was very gradual, and not a few obstacles had to be surmounted previous to its complete establishment in the different popish countries of Europe. Two objections in particular were raised against its erection; the one, that it was an encroachment on the authority of the bishop of the place; the other, that it deprived the civil magistrate of the trial and punishment of heretics, a privilege which he formerly enjoyed. To remove the first of these difficulties, the Pope appointed the bishop of the place to act in concert with the Inquisitor: this, however, was but a name, the Inquisitor having the sole power lodged in his hands. To remedy the second, the civil magistrate was allowed to appoint the subordinate officers, and to inflict the legal punishment, after trial and condemnation by the Inquisitors. [3]

Notwithstanding the opposition of the people to this novel tribunal, therefore the Popes, aided by the sovereigns of Europe, not only obtained its erection, but additional authority to the Inquisitors. These hitherto unprecedented judges were soon afterwards empowered, as the representatives of the Pope, to sit and pronounce sentence on those whom they stigmatized by the name of heretics. Their efforts were greatly assisted by Frederick II., King of the Romans, who, in 1224, issued no fewer than four edicts against heresy, addressed "to his beloved princes, the venerable archbishops, bishops, and other prelates of the Church; to the dukes, marquises, earls, barons, governors, judges, ministers, and all other his faithful subjects throughout the empire." In these edicts "he takes the Inquisitors under his protection, imposes on obstinate heretics the punishment of being burnt to death, and of perpetual imprisonment on the penitent, committing the cognizance of the crime to the ecclesiastical, and the condemnation of the criminals, as well as the infliction of the punishment, to the secular judges."

The "Holy Office" soon extended its authority, and enlarged the number of its tribunals, in almost every kingdom of Europe where any were suspected of heresy. It was established in Toulouse in 1229, where it was first given in charge to the monks of the Cistercian order, and afterwards in 1233 to the Dominicans. Innocent IV. extended it to all Italy, except Naples, where its introduction was always opposed. In 1231, several Waldenses being discovered in the city of Rome, they were all either consigned to the flames, or imprisoned till they should retract their errors. It soon declined, however, in Italy, and even in Rome itself, till, in 1545, it was restored by Paul III. who created the Congregation of the Inquisition, composed of cardinals presided over by the Pope. From Toulouse the Inquisition was brought to Spain in the year 1233; but did not go out of the kingdom of Arragon, till after its union with that of Castile, when, in 1480, it was established in Seville by Ferdinand and Isabella, under the authority of Sixtus IV. It was afterwards extended to more distant provinces, and every where entrusted to the management of Dominican friars. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and numerous other places, were soon compelled to receive these bloody tribunals. Portugal was subjected to its tyranny, in 1536; and, latterly, in 1571, Philip II. introduced it into America. "During the pontificate of Gregory," says the author of "Sketches of the Spanish Inquisition," "it was introduced into the Christian kingdoms of Spain, (meaning those parts of Spain where Christianity was professed, to distinguish them from those possessed by the Moors;) and the Dominicans of that country soon found an ample field for the exercise of their office among the Jewish and Moorish proselytes, whom interest or fear had drawn within the pale of the Catholic Church. From this period the institution went on increasing in extent and activity, till Ferdinand and Isabella became the sovereigns of all Spain. During their reign, it became the subject of much controversy between the courts of Spain and Rome. Isabella, a woman of considerable talents, appears to have foreseen the encroachments which the Inquisition would make upon the royal prerogatives, but her resistance was overruled, and, in 1482, the famous Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor-general of Castile. In the succeeding year his commission was extended to Arragon; and following the successes of Ferdinand and Isabella, he successively planted the Inquisition in the Moorish kingdoms of Seville, Cordova, Jaen, and Villa Real."

The following letter from Pope Gregory IX. to the Inquisitors of Navarre, may serve as a specimen, both of the cruelty of the papal see, and of the horrid use which these designing men made of the Scriptures of truth. "Since, therefore," says his Holiness, "according to the office enjoined us, we are bound to root out all offences from the kingdom of God, and, as much as in us lies, to oppose such beasts, (the Waldenses and other heretics,) we deliver into your hands the sword of the word of God, which, according to the words of the prophet, Jer. xlviii. 10, ye ought not to keep back from blood! but, inspired with a zeal for the Catholic faith, like Phineas, make diligent inquisition concerning these pestilent wretches, their believers, re ceivers, and abettors, and proceed against those who, by such inquisition, shall be found guilty, according to the canonical sanctions and our statutes, which we have lately published, to confound heretical pravity, calling in against them, if need be, the assistance of the secular arm!" Similar directions were given to the Inquisitors in other countries, all of whom, actuated by the same spirit, obeyed the barbarous orders of their master with the utmost alacrity. To regulate the procedure of these courts, the Pope framed thirty-one rules, defining their jurisdiction and powers; and all rulers and magistrates were commanded, by a Papal bull, issued for the purpose, to give, under the pain of excommunication, the most punctual obedience, and every possible assistance to these spiritual courts of judicature.

Notwithstanding all the efforts of the Sovereign Pontiff, however, many of the Roman Catholic states of Europe successfully resisted the introduction of the Inquisition. Though it was brought into France at a very early period, yet it was soon afterwards expelled, in a manner so effectual, as to preclude any renewal of the attempt. In several other countries, the inhabitants sometimes proceeded to open violence, and had they not been overawed by an armed force, they would have put the Inquisitors to death, and demolished their iniquitous tribunals. These commotions were excited partly by the conduct of the Inquisitors themselves, whose severity, avarice, extortion, and cruelty, were quite unbearable, and partly by the great expenses which that extraordinary court entailed on the community.