Roman Inquisition

“ And now that the Inquisitors in partibus are distributed over Christendom, and that they provide the Roman Inquisition with daily work from year's end to year's end, is among the things most certain,—even the most careless of Englishmen must acknowledge that we have all reason to apprehend much evil from the Inquisition as it is. And no Christian can be aware of this fact, without feeling himself more than ever bound to uphold the cause of christianity, both at home and abroad, as the only counteractive of so dire a curse, and the only remedy of so vast an evil. ”

“ Paul IV. died at Rome on the 18th of August, 1559, a few days before the auto-da-fé at Seville. When the Romans learnt this event, they went in crowds to the Inquisition, set all the prisoners at liberty, and burnt the house and the archives of the tribunal. It cost much money and trouble to prevent the enraged populace from burning the convent De la Sapienza of the Dominicans, who conducted all the affairs of the Roman Inquisition. ”

“ Inquisitors, therefore, were fully justified in laying it down as an accepted principle of law that disobedience to any command of the Holy See was heresy; so was any attempt to deprive the Roman Church of any privilege which it saw fit to claim. As a corollary to this was the declaration that inquisitors had power to levy war against heretics and to give it the character of a crusade by granting all the indulgences offered for the succor of the Holy Land. Armed with such powers, it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Inquisition as a political instrument. ”

“ This disgrace to humanity, whose entire history is a mass of atrocious crimes, committed by the priests of the church of Rome, in the name of God and of His Christ, whose vicar and representative the Pope, the head of the Inquisition, declares himself to be—this abominable institution is still in existence, in Rome and the Roman states. The Inquisition existed in full vigour during the whole period of the pontificate of Pope Gregory. ”

“ He admitted imprudent talk, while denying all lapse from the faith, but he confessed enough for the inquisitors to assume that he secretly cherished the opinions of the fashionable philosophy, and his condemnation was inevitable. We are told that a public auto was desired, in order to emphasize the warning, but it was felt that the occasion scarce justified such a solemnity, and the Roman Inquisition was consulted which suggested that the purpose would be answered by a private auto with a huge number of spectators. ”

“ Human nature being what it is, and priestly nature being subject to human infirmities, the violation of the seal has, at all times, been a source of anxiety and the object of rigorous punishment, administered to the secular clergy by the spiritual courts, and to the regulars by their superiors. The Roman Inquisition, in the first half-century of its existence, assumed exclusive cognizance of the offence, and demanded that all offenders, whether secular or regular, should be tried by its tribunals, but, in 1609, it abandoned its jurisdiction and left them to their bishops and prelates. ”

“ To be sure, we read many horrifying accounts of the Roman Inquisition, of the seduction of innocent females, by a priesthood, who live in celibacy,—much may be true and much untrue—if any part is true, so much to be deplored, and so much more can we see the corruption of the human heart, and the need of the gospel. ”

“ This necessarily applied to the citations and orders of arrest with which the Roman Inquisition was endeavoring to extend its jurisdiction over Naples. In April, 1564, Hieronimo de Monte, Apostolic Commissioner in Benevento (a papal enclave in Neapolitan territory) , in the case of the Marquis of Vico, was taking testimony to the effect that no one would dare to serve a summons from Rome on him without the vice-regal exequatur, as he would thus expose himself to punishment, including perhaps the galleys. ”

“ But these heroes who still keep up the empty title of Knights of Malta, ingloriously end their degenerate career in the ante-chambers of the Vatican, as the Pope's guards; for the Holy Office, when they are too old for more active service, no longer takes any care of them, nor does it allow them the smallest pension. Many Roman institutions have in the same manner flourished and fallen away; others, although useless, still continue, through a difficulty in getting rid of them.
It is now about four centuries since Rome instituted monkish and knightly orders for the service of the Inquisition. ”

“ The Roman Inquisition, in 1623, made a concession to this weakness, by providing that, when noble or modest women could not be induced to denounce, there might be granted to their confessors faculties to absolve them, on condition that, when the cause of fear was removed, they would fulfil the duty, but this permission apparently was abused for, in 1626, inquisitors and bishops were warned to grant such faculties only when there were serious grounds. ”

“ While the Roman pontiff opposes the worship of God, by enjoining the worship of images, of saints, and angels, and the authority of his laws, to enforce subjection to his own edicts, he himself may be called the great idol, as well as the great tyrant, of the Romish church!”
Human sagacity could by no means have conjectured such a character rising up among the people of God, and such deeds perpetrated in the name and form of religion. This required the prescience of the Infinite Mind. But we shall see them all in their dreadful enormity, as we pursue the history of the Romish Inquisition. ”

“ The Roman law rejected the evidence of accomplices, and the Church had adopted the rule. In the False Decretals it had ordered that no one should be admitted as an accuser who was a heretic or suspected of heresy, was excommunicate, a homicide, a thief, a sorcerer, a diviner, a ravisher, an adulterer, a bearer of false witness, or a consulter of diviners and soothsayers. Yet when it came to prosecuting heresy all these prohibitions were thrown to the winds. As early as the time of Gratian, infamous and heretical witnesses were receivable against heretics. ”

“ In Rome, in 1231, Gregory IX. drew up a series of regulations which was issued by the Senator Annibaldo in the name of the Roman people. Under this the senator was bound to capture all who were designated to him as heretics, whether by inquisitors appointed by the Church or other good Catholics, and to punish them within eight days after condemnation. Of their confiscated property one third went to the detector, one third to the senator, and one third to repairing the city walls. Any house in which a heretic was received was to be destroyed, and converted forever into a receptacle of filth. ”

“ It is, therefore, to unmask and to expose Popery, as it is at the present day, that I undertake the writing of this work; that the world may know that in Rome, and in the Roman States, excepting during the five months of the Republic, the infamous and hateful Inquisition has always been in existence. The fact is, that Christianity suffers more now than in former times, under this harsh slavery. Religion, being an affair between God and man, cannot be bound, limited, or prescribed, by human laws ”

“ The equitable system of procedure borrowed from the Roman law by the courts of the Ordinaries was cast aside, and the bishops were permitted and even instructed to follow the inquisitorial system, which was a standing mockery of justice—perhaps the most iniquitous that the arbitrary cruelty of man has ever devised. ”

“ Ultimate futility of such attempts to compel coherence is the lesson of every such effort from the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its pagan unity, the Inquisition, as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the Siberian exiles as a means to Russian unity, down to the fast failing efforts of our present totalitarian enemies. ”

“ But look at Rome. What is the Government of the Papal States, but just the Government of the Inquisition? There there are midnight apprehensions, secret trials, familiars, torture by flogging, by loading with irons, and other yet more refined modes of cruelty,—in short, all the machinery of the Holy Office. The canon law, whose full blessing Italy now enjoys, is the Inquisition; for wherever the one comes, there the other will follow it. Let me describe the secresy and terror with which apprehensions are made at Rome. ”

“ In 1497 the envoys from the Bohemian Brethren, Lucas and Thomas, found in Rome itself one of their faith, whom they bitterly reproached for concealing his belief. In Calabria, in 1530, it was estimated that they numbered ten thousand souls, in Venetia, six thousand. The fate of these poor creatures, after generations of peaceful existence which might well seem destined to be perpetual, belongs to a period beyond our present limits, but the fact that they could thus prosper and increase shows how rusty had grown the machinery of the Inquisition, and how incapable had become its officials. ”

“ When such were the persecutions to which the greatest were exposed it is easy to understand the tyranny exercised over the whole land by the irresponsible power of the inquisitors. No one was so loftily placed as to be beyond their reach, no one so humble as to escape their spies. When once they had cause of enmity with a man there was no further peace for him. The only appeal from them was to the pope, and not only was Rome distant, but the avenue to it lay, as we have seen, in their own hands. ”

“ Stick at nothing; hazard whatever may tend to discredit your adversary. In this way you will weaken his endeavours. What can he do to vindicate himself? Does he bring you into court? Shall you have to pay a fine?—Double the amount will be raised to pay it. Are you thrown into prison?—Call to mind the martyr of Turin. In short, earn a cardinal's hat"!!
The temptation is too powerful for a bishop of the Church of Rome. It is in this manner that the Inquisition manages its affairs throughout the whole world, and works so as to gain its ends, by promises and threats, by fraud and subterfuge. ”

“ No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, the boot and wedge, or other enginery of torture, soon supplied that defect, and, innocent or guilty, he accused himself!
Notwithstanding all this power, the Inquisition failed of its purpose. When the heretic could no longer confront it, he evaded it. A dismal disbelief stealthily pervaded all Europe,—a denial of Providence, of the immortality of the soul, of human free-will, and that man can possibly resist the absolute necessity, the destiny which envelops him. ”

“ There are appeals from the subaltern inquisitions in Italy, to the congregation of the holy office at Rome.
It is the constant practice of the inquisition to affect, in all their procedures, to inspire as much terror as possible; every thing is done with the most profound silence and secrecy, and with the greatest rigour and pretended impartiality. When a person is seized all the world abandons him; not the nearest friend dares to speak a word in his defence; that alone would be enough to render them suspected of heresy, and would bring them within the claws of the inquisition. ”

“ Strangers can no longer be gratified by the sight of priestly pageants and papal shows. But let us be thankful that, as the Pope hides his head, the civil power has risen; and now, in place of persecution, torture, and death for those who would not bow the knee to a corrupted religion, the Inquisition—that cruel, hateful instrument of religious intolerance and priestly tyranny—is at an end, and every one can worship God within the walls of Rome as his conscience dictates, none daring to make him afraid. ”

“ Thus we see that religious error was regarded as a breach of public order, and that the princes looked upon the heretics as rebels or conspirators. This was in keeping with the ideas of the Middle Ages, when the whole social system reposed upon the Catholic faith. We must in fairness admit that, if the Inquisition of Rome was the earliest, and the only one which outlasted the Middle Ages, it was also the most moderate, for it alone never ordered capital punishment. ”

“ Even the king himself did not dare to omit the customary “adoration” of the Perfects, for which he was duly excommunicated by the inquisitor, but the pope recognized the difficulty of his position, and wisely gave him a dispensation for associating with heretics. [346]
Although many Catholic churches were built, the legate reported, on a visit to Rome, that the land was too full of heresy for other cure than the sword. The king’s position was too insecure for him to venture on persecution, which would infallibly have led to a revolt. ”

“ But a resident at Rome in 1568, which is just about the time we are dealing with, wrote: “Some are daily burned, hanged, or beheaded; the prisons and places of confinement are filled, and they are obliged to build new ones.” The independence, the secrecy, and the far-extended power of the Inquisition made it formidable and terrifying while it lasted. The hideous cruelty and savage barbarity of its methods render the story of the Inquisition one of the blackest pages of the history of the world. ”

“ Yes, the Propaganda and the Inquisition alone are sufficient to vindicate the sacred claims of Rome. Compared with them, mere secular and human institutions, however exalted, sink into insignificance. ”

“ A man whose solemn conversion had once been proved fraudulent could never again be trusted. He was an incorrigible heretic whom the Church could no longer hope to win over. On him mercy was wasted, and the stake was the only resource. Yet it is creditable to the Inquisition that it was so long in reducing to practice this self-evident proposition.
As early as 1184 the Verona decree of Lucius III. provides that those who, after abjuration, relapse into the abjured heresy shall be delivered to the secular courts, without even the opportunity of being heard. ”