Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 10.djvu/730

* INQUISITION. en INQUISITION. cepted. But if the accused refused to repeat his confession ho might Ik- tortured again. .s a puMishinent the condemned were sentenced to make pilgrimages, to wear sign>* of infamy such as tlic yellow cross, or to imprisonment, and in extreme cases were condemned to death. This extreme p«'nalty. however, could he inllicted only hy the ■State, and out of (>3ti per.sons condenmed hetween l.'iOS and i;i22 oidy 40 were turned over to the State. The State was required to enforce the laws of the t'hurcli as a part of the ruler's duty as a Christian. If the ruler refused he might be excommunicated or in extreme instances deposed. The I'apal Inquisition had no standing in Kngland and the northern ccmntries. where all such matters were attended to i-ither by the Hishops' Inquisition, or. as in Kngland. by the royal power. In Languednc the Inquisition was very active for about a century, hut hy the end of the first qtiarler of the foirteenlh century it had practically spent its force. In Xorthcrn !•" ranee the history of the Inquisiticm is more obscure, but by the end of the fourteenth century it is certain that it was decadent. Philip the Kair. however, made use of the Inquisition against the Templars and in l.'?12 made it a .State tribunal. In most of the Italian cities except Venice it was very powerful. In Germany it had a very slight influence. It is in Spain. Portugal, and their dependencies that the Inquisition attained its fullest develop- ment. As an ordinary tribunal similar to those of other countries it had existed in Spain from an early period. Its functions, however, in these times were little more than nominal; but early in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, in con- sequence, it is said, of the alarms created by the alleged discovery ot a plot among the .Tews and the .Jewish converts — who had been required either to emigrate or to conform to Christianity — to overthrow the ({overnment, an appliiation was made to Pope Sixtus IV. to permit its reorganization (1478) ; but in reviving tl)e tri- bunal the Crown assumed to itself the right of appointing the inquisitors, and. in fact, of con- trolling the entire action of the trilumal. The establishment of the tribunal of the Inquisition was sanctioned by the Cortes at Toledo in 1480, and from this date the Spanish Inquisition be- came a State tribunal, a character which is rec- ognized by Kanke. Cuizot. Leo. and even the great anti-Papal authority I.lorente. In order to prove that the Church generally, and the Roman See itself, was dissociated from that Stale tribtmal, the bulls of Pope Sixtus IV., which protest against it, are cited. Notwithstanding this protest, how- ever, the Spanish Crown maintained its control of the Inquisition. The work of the Inquisition began in 1481. when Miguel Morello and .Tuan Martin, mend)crs of the Dominican Order, were appointed inquisitors for Seville. In 1483 the Inquisition was extended over .Aragon and I>eon. and the Dominican Tomas de Torqucniada Iq.v.) became the first Grand Incjuisitor. The popes attempted to contnd the arbitrary action of the royal tribunal and to mitigate the rigor and in- justice of its proceedings, but these measures were inefTective to control the fanatical activity of the local judges. When, however. Spain sought to introduce its peculiar Inquisition into Naples also. Pope Paul IIT.. in l.'>4fi. exhorted the Neapolitans to resist its introduction. ITowever severe the weight of the Inquisition may have been on lieretics and unbelievers, the number of its victims as given by Llorenle, an historian of ilic Impiisition, is enormously exaggcratid. Ifis statements deserve no credence whatever, al- though he had excellent oppcutunities of learn- ing the truth, as lie was the secretary of the Inquisiti(jn for a time. He was a violent par- tisan, and his errors and exaggerations have U'en exposed, especially by llefele in his Life of Ciir- diiiiil .Xhnvin's ( Kng. trans., 2d cd., Lonilon, 1885) : Kanke does not hcsilate, in his Fihslrii und olhcr dm .liiillicliin IJiiropns^ (4th ed.. Leipzig!, to impeach his honesty. While he gives the number of executions as ,341,042, the ('atholi<" authority (ianis .states 4000 to have been thi' total. Protestant writers have usually given figures varying between the lowest and the high- est. Charles V. (l.-ilO-5t5) and Philip II. (l.V)- 98) made attenijits to transfer the Incpiisition also to the Netherlands, but there is no question that here it was political, intended to suppress a revolt rather than a heresy. The Spanish Inquisition is condemned by Protestants anil non-Spanish Catholics alike. .Spanish Catholics, however, are inclined to de- fend it, and ludd that its form of proceeding was not as usually stated, but was fair and equitable, considering what a fearful crime heresy was and is in the eyes of the Catholic Church. There is no doubt, moreover, that many of the crimes tried by the inquisitors in Spain were .such as would now be brought into our ordinary civil courts. The rigor of the Spanish Inquisition abated in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In the reign of Charles III. it was forbidden to punish capitally without the royal warrant ; and in 1770 the royal authority was required as a condition even for an arrest. In 1808, under King .To-seph Bonaparte, the Inquisition was sup- pressed. It was revived umler the Kestoration. was again suppressed on the establishment of the Constitution in 1820. but was partially restored in 182."), nor was it till 18.'i4 that it was finally abolished in .Spain, its property being applied two years later to the liquidation of the na- tional debt. From Spain the Inquisition was transplanted into all the Spanish-.merican coimtries. and it continued to exist in these countries until they be- came independent. From Portugal the Incpiisition was extended to the Portuguese colonies in India. The rigor of its process, however, was much mitigated in the eii.'htccn1h century, and under John VI. it fell entirely into disuse. The Inquisition in Rome and the Papal States never ceased, from the time of its establishment, to exercise a severe and watchful control over heresy, or the suspicion of heresy, which offense was punished by imprisonment and civil dis- abilities: but of capital sentences for heresy the history of the Roman Inquisition presents few in- stances, and according to Ralines. On CiriUzalion (flth ed., ^ladrid, IS7."i(. that tribunal "has never been known to order the execution of a capital sentence" for the crime of heresy. The tribunal still exists under the direction of a congrega- tion (confirefjatio unnrti officii), originally found- ed by Paul III. in l.')42, and reorganized by Six- tus v., but as by its very constitution it must call upon the State aid to enforce its decrees, and as such State aid can nowhere be obtained at the present day, its action is limited to the imposi-