An Account Of The Inquisition
When the reformed religion began to diffuse the gospel light throughout
church. He accordingly instituted a number of inquisitors, or persons
who were to make inquiry after, apprehend, and punish, heretics, as the
reformed were called by the papists.
At the head of these inquisitors was one Dominic, who had been canonized
by the pope, in order to render his authority the more respectable.
Dominic, and the
other inquisitors, spread themselves into various Roman
catholic countries, and treated the protestants with the utmost
severity. In process of time, the pope, not finding these roving
inquisitors so useful as he had imagined, resolved upon the
establishment of fixed and regular courts of inquisition. After the
order for these regular courts, the first office of inquisition was
established in the city of Thoulouse, and Dominic became the first
regular inquisitor, as he had before been the first roving inquisitor.
Courts of inquisition were now erected in several countries; but the
Spanish inquisition became the most powerful, and the most dreaded of
any. Even the kings of Spain themselves, though arbitrary in all other
respects, were taught to dread the power of the lords of the
inquisition; and the horrid cruelties they exercised compelled
multitudes, who differed in opinion from the Roman catholics, carefully
to conceal their sentiments.
The most zealous of all the popish monks, and those who most implicitly
obeyed the church of Rome, were the Dominicans and Franciscans: these,
therefore, the pope thought proper to invest with an exclusive right of
presiding over the different court of inquisition, and gave them the
most unlimited powers, as judges delegated by him, and immediately
representing his person: they were permitted to excommunicate, or
sentence to death whom they thought proper, upon the most slight
information of heresy. They were allowed to publish crusades against all
whom they deemed heretics, and enter into leagues with sovereign
princes, to join their crusades with their forces.
In 1244, their power was farther increased by the emperor Frederic the
Second, who declared himself the protector and friend of all the
inquisitors, and published the cruel edicts, viz. 1. That all heretics
who continued obstinate, should be burnt. 2. That all heretics who
repented, should be imprisoned for life.
This zeal in the emperor, for the inquisitors of the Roman catholic
persuasion, arose from a report which had been propagated throughout
Europe, that he intended to renounce christianity, and turn Mahometan;
the emperor therefore, attempted, by the height of bigotry to contradict
the report, and to show his attachment to popery by cruelty.
The officers of the inquisition are three inquisitors, or judges, a
fiscal proctor, two secretaries, a magistrate, a messenger, a receiver,
a jailer, an agent of confiscated possessions; several assessors,
counsellors, executioners, physicians, surgeons, door-keepers,
familiars, and visiters, who are sworn to secrecy.
The principal accusation against those who are subject to this tribunal
is heresy, which comprises all that is spoken, or written, against any
of the articles of the creed, or the traditions of the Roman church. The
inquisition likewise takes cognizance of such as are accused of being
magicians, and of such who read the bible in the common language, the
Talmud of the Jews, or the Alcoran of the Mahometans.
Upon all occasions the inquisitors carry on their processes with the
utmost severity, and punish those who offend them with the most
unparalleled cruelty. A protestant has seldom any mercy shown him, and a
Jew, who turns christian, is far from being secure.
A defence in the inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a
suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the
greater his wealth the greater his danger. The principal part of the
inquisitors' cruelties is owing to their rapacity: they destroy the life
to possess the property; and, under the pretence of zeal, plunder each
obnoxious individual.
A prisoner in the inquisition is never allowed to see the face of his
accuser, or of the witnesses against him, but every method is taken by
threats and tortures, to oblige him to accuse himself, and by that means
corroborate their evidence. If the jurisdiction of the inquisition is
not fully allowed, vengeance is denounced against such as call it in
question for if any of its officers are opposed, those who oppose them
are almost certain to be sufferers for their temerity; the maxim of the
inquisition being to strike terror, and awe those who are the objects of
its power into obedience. High birth, distinguished rank, great dignity,
or eminent employments, are no protection from its severities; and the
lowest officers of the inquisition can make the highest characters
tremble.
When the person impeached is condemned, he is either severely whipped,
violently tortured, sent to the galleys, or sentenced to death; and in
either case the effects are confiscated. After judgment, a procession is
performed to the place of execution, which ceremony is called an AUTO DE
FE, or act of faith.
The following is an account of an auto de fe, performed at Madrid in the
year 1682.
The officers of the inquisition, preceded by trumpets, kettle-drums, and
their banner, marched on the 30th of May, in cavalcade, to the palace of
the great square, where they declared by proclamation, that, on the 30th
of June, the sentence of the prisoners would be put in execution.
Of these prisoners, twenty men and women, with one renegade Mahometan,
were ordered to be burned; fifty Jews and Jewesses, having never before
been imprisoned, and repenting of their crimes were sentenced to a long
confinement, and to wear a yellow cap. The whole court of Spain was
present on this occasion. The grand inquisitor's chair was placed in a
sort of tribunal far above that of the king.
Among those who were to suffer, was a young Jewess of exquisite beauty,
and but seventeen years of age. Being on the same side of the scaffold
where the queen was seated, she addressed her, in hopes of obtaining a
pardon, in the following pathetic speech: "Great queen, will not your
royal presence be of some service to the in my miserable condition! Have
regard to my youth; and, oh! consider, that I am about to die for
professing a religion imbibed from my earliest infancy!" Her majesty
seemed greatly to pity her distress, but turned away her eyes, as she
did not dare to speak a word in behalf of a person who had been declared
a heretic.
Now mass began, in the midst of which the priest came from the altar,
placed himself near the scaffold, and seated himself in a chair prepared
for that purpose.
The chief inquisitor then descended from the amphitheatre, dressed in
his cope, and having a mitre on his head. After having bowed to the
altar, he advanced towards the king's balcony, and went up to it,
attended by some of his officers, carrying a cross and the gospels, with
a book containing the oath by which the kings of Spain oblige themselves
to protect the catholic faith, to extirpate heretics, and to support
with all their power and force the prosecutions and decrees of the
inquisition: a like oath was administered to the counsellors and whole
assembly. The mass was begun about twelve at noon, and did not end till
nine in the evening, being protracted by a proclamation of the sentences
of the several criminals, which were already separately rehearsed aloud
one after the other.
After this, followed the burning of the twenty-one men and women, whose
intrepidity in suffering that horrid death was truly astonishing. The
king's near situation to the criminals rendered their dying groans very
audible to him; he could not, however, be absent from this dreadful
scene, as it is esteemed a religious one; and his coronation oath
obliges him to give a sanction by his presence to all the acts of the
tribunal.
What we have already said may be applied to inquisitions in general, as
well as to that of Spain in particular. The inquisition belonging to
Portugal is exactly upon a similar plan to that of Spain, having been
instituted much about the same time, and put under the same regulations.
The inquisitors allow the torture to be used only three times, but
during those times it is so severely inflicted, that the prisoner either
dies under it, or continues always after a cripple, and suffers the
severest pains upon every change of weather. We shall give an ample
description of the severe torments occasioned by the torture, from the
account of one who suffered it the three respective times, but happily
survived the cruelties he underwent.
At the first time of torturing, six executioners entered, stripped him
naked to his drawers, and laid him upon his back on a kind of stand,
elevated a few feet from the floor. The operation commenced by putting
an iron collar round his neck, and a ring to each foot, which fastened
him to the stand. His limbs being thus stretched out, they wound two
ropes round each thigh; which ropes being passed under the scaffold,
through holes made for that purpose, were all drawn tight at the same
instant of time, by four of the men, on a given signal.
It is easy to conceive that the pains which immediately succeeded were
intolerable; the ropes, which were of a small size, cut through the
prisoner's flesh to the bone, making the blood to gush out at eight
different places thus bound at a time. As the prisoner persisted in not
making any confession of what the inquisitors required, the ropes were
drawn in this manner four times successively.
The manner of inflicting the second torture was as follows: they forced
his arms backwards so that the palms of his hands were turned outward
behind him; when, by means of a rope that fastened them together at the
wrists, and which was turned by an engine, they drew them by degrees
nearer each other, in such a manner that the back of each hand touched,
and stood exactly parallel to each other. In consequence of this violent
contortion, both his shoulders became dislocated, and a considerable
quantity of blood issued from his mouth. This torture was repeated
thrice; after which he was again taken to the dungeon, and the surgeon
set the dislocated bones.
Two months after the second torture, the prisoner being a little
recovered, was again ordered to the torture-room, and there, for the
last time, made to undergo another kind of punishment, which was
inflicted twice without any intermission. The executioners fastened a
thick iron chain round his body, which crossing at the breast,
terminated at the wrists. They then placed him with his back against a
thick board, at each extremity whereof was a pulley, through which there
ran a rope that caught the end of the chain at his wrists. The
executioner then, stretching the end of this rope by means of a roller,
placed at a distance behind him, pressed or bruised his stomach in
proportion as the ends of the chains were drawn tighter. They tortured
him in this manner to such a degree, that his wrists, as well as his
shoulders, were quite dislocated. They were, however, soon set by the
surgeons; but the barbarians, not yet satisfied with this species of
cruelty, made him immediately undergo the like torture a second time,
which he sustained (though, if possible, attended with keener pains,)
with equal constancy and resolution. After this, he was again remanded
to his dungeon, attended by the surgeon to dress his bruises and adjust
the part dislocated, and here he continued till their Auto de Fe, or
jail delivery, when he was discharged, crippled and diseased for life.