Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/376

232 232 THE INQUISITION. PART I. Its introduc France, exterminating their inhabitants, and blast- ing the fair buds of civilization which had put forth after the long feudal winter, opened the way to the inquisition ; and it was on the ruins of this once happy land, that were first erected the bloody altars of that tribunal.^ After various modifications, the province of de- tecting and punishing heresy was exclusively com- mitted to the hands of the Dominican friars ; and in 1233, in the reign of St. Louis, and under the pontificate of Gregory the Ninth, a code for the regulation of their proceedings was finally digested. The tribunal, after having been successively adopt- ed in Italy and Germany, was introduced into tionintoAr- Aragon, where, in 1242, additional provisions were 1 Mosheim, Ecclesiastical His- tory, translated by Maclaine, (Charlestown, 1810,) cent. 13, P. 2, chap. 5. — Sismondi, Histoire des Fran9ais, (Paris, 1821,) torn, vi. chap. 24 - 28 ; torn. vii. chap. 2, 3. — Idem, De la Litterature du Midi de I'Europe, (Paris, 1813,) torn. i. chap. 6. — In the former of these works M. Sismondi has described the physical ravages of the crusades in southern France, with the same spirit and eloquence, with which he has exhibited their desolating moral influence in the latter. Some Catholic writers would fain e.xcnse St. Dominic from the imputation of having founded the Inquisition. It is true he died some years before the perfect or- ganization of that tribunal ; but, as he established the principles on which, and the monkish militia, by whom, it was administered, it is doing him no injustice to regard him as its real autiior. — Tlie Si- cilian Paramo, indeed, in his heavy quarto, (De Origine et Progressu Officii Sanctaj Inquisitionis, Matri- ti, 1598,) traces it up to a much more remote antiquity, which, to a Protestant ear at least, savours not a little of blasphemy. According to him, God was the first inquisi- tor, and his condemnation of Adam and Eve furnished the model of the judicial forms observed in the tri- als of the Holy Office. The sen- tence of Adam was the type of the inquisitorial reconciliation; his sub- sequent raiment of the skins of animals was the model of the san-bcnito, and his expulsion from Paradise the precedent for the con- fiscation of the goods of heretics. This learned personage deduces a succession of inquisitors through the patriarchs, Moses, Nebuchad- nezzar, and King David, down to John tiie Baptist, and even our Saviour, in whose precepts and conduct he finds abundant authori- ty for the tribunal ! Paramo, De Origine Inquisitionis, lib. 1, tit. 1, 2,3.