Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/378

234 234 THE INQUISITION. PART principles, on which the ancient Inquisition was — '■ established, are no less repugnant to justice, than those which regulated the modern ; although the former, it is true, was much less extensive in its operation. The arm of persecution, however, fell with sufficient heaviness, especially during the thir- teenth and fourteenth centuries, on the unfortunate Albigenses, who from the proximity and political relations of Aragon and Provence, had become nu- merous in the former kingdom. The persecution appears, however, to have been chiejEly confined to this unfortunate sect, and there is no evidence that the Holy Office, notwithstanding papal briefs to that effect, was fully organized in Castile, before the reign of Isabella. This is perhaps imputable to the paucity of heretics in that kingdom. It can- not, at any rate, be charged to any lukewarmness in its sovereigns ; since they, from the time of St. Ferdinand, who heaped the fagots on the blaz- ing pile with his own hands, down to that of John the Second, Isabella's father, who hunted the unhappy heretics of Biscay, like so many wild beasts, among the mountains, had ever evinced a lively zeal for the orthodox faith. ^ 4 Mariana, Hist, de Espaiia, lib. clothes and beaten xoith rods by a 12, cap. U ; lib. 21, cap. 17. — priest, three Sundaj/s in succession, LlorciUe, Hist, dc I'lnquisition, Jromthegatcoftheciti/ to the doorof torn. i. chap. 3. — The nature of the church; not to eat any kind of the penance imposed on reconciled animal food during his whole life ; heretics by the ancient Inquisition to keep three Lents a year, without was much more severe than that even eating fish ; to abstain from of later times. Llorcnte cites an fish, oil, and wine three days in act of St. Dominic respecting a the week during life, except in person of liiis description, named case of sickness or excessive labor; Ponce Roger. The penitent was to wear a religious dress with a conunanded to be " stripped of his small cross embroidered on each