tile and Leon, and the bishops there maintained their exclusive jurisdiction in spiritual matters. But a change afterwards took place; and while, in other countries of Europe, the inquisition could never obtain a firm footing, but in some fell entirely into disuse, as in France, and in others, as in Venice, was closely watched by the civil power, an institution grew up in Spain, towards the end of the 15th century, which was the most remarkable of all the inquisitorial courts of the middle ages, and differed much from the rest in its objects and organization. Ferdinand of Arragon, and Isabella of Castile, having united their power, made many efforts to break the strength of the nobles, and to render the royal authority absolute. The inquisition was used as a means of effecting their plans. There were three religious parties in Spain, Christians, Jews and Mohammedans. The Moors still maintained possession of the last remnant of their empire, the kingdom of Grenada, which was, however, already threatened by the arms of Ferdinand and Isabella. The Jews had their synagogues, and formed a distinct class in the principal cities of Spain. Commerce was principally in their hands; they were the lessees of the king and the nobles, and suffered no oppression, being subject only to a moderate capitation tax, which they had been obliged to pay to the clergy since the year 1302. The riches which they had amassed by their industry, exposed them to great envy and hatred, which was nourished by the ignorant priests. The sermons of a fanatical monk, Fernando Martinez Nuñez, who preached the persecution of the Jews as a good work, was the principal cause of the popular tumults in many cities, in 1391 and 1392, in which this unhappy people was plundered, robbed and murdered. Many Jews submitted to baptism, to save their lives, and the descendants of these unfortunate men were, for about 100 years, the first victims of inquisitorial zeal. In 1477, when several turbulent nobles had been reduced in the southern part of Spain, queen Isabella went to Seville with the cardinal Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza: there this prelate, as archbishop of Seville, made the first attempt to introduce the inquisition. At his command, punishments were publicly and privately inflicted, and it was discovered, among other things, that many citizens of Seville, of Jewish origin, followed, in private, the manners and customs of their fathers. The cardinal charged some of the clergy privately to enlighten

the faith of these people, and to make the hypocrites true sons of the church. These teachers brought back many to the faith; but many, who persevered in their opposition to the doctrines of the church, were condemned and punished. After this prelude, the design was disclosed of extending the inquisition over the whole country; and Mendoza laid the project before the sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella. They approved of an institution, which, at the same time, suited the persecuting spirit of the age, and could be used as a powerful engine of state. The design was, by means of this institution, which was to be entirely dependent on the court, to oppress those who were, either secretly or openly, Jews or Mohammedans (and many Christian nobles belonged to the party of the Mohammedaus, the standing allies of malcontents), to enrich the royal treasury, to which the property of the condemned was confiscated, and to limit the power of the nobles, and even of the clergy. In the assembly of the estates, held at Toledo, 1480, the erection of the new tribunal was urged by the cardinal. After the superior branches of administration-the supreme council of Castile, the council of state, the board of finance, and the council of Arragon-had been confirmed by the estates, the cardinal declared that it was necessary to establish a permanent tribunal, to take cognizance of matters of faith, and administer the ecclesiastical police. In spite of all opposition, it was determined to establish a tribunal, under the name of the general inquisition (general inquisicion suprema), and the new court was soon opened in Seville (1481). Thomas de Torquemada, prior of the Dominican convent at Segovia, and father-confessor to the cardinal Mendoza, had already been appointed by Ferdinand and Isabella, the first grand inquisitor, in 1478. He had 200 familiars and a guard of 50 horsemen, but he lived in continual fear of poison. The Dominican monastery at Seville soon became insufficient to contain the numerous prisoners, and the king removed the court to the castle in the suburb of Triana. At the first auto da fe (act of faith), seven apostate Christians were burnt, and the number of penitents was much greater. Spanish writers relate, that above 17,000 gave themselves up to the inquisition, more than 2000 were condemned to the flames the first year, and great numbers fled to the neighboring countries. Many Jews escaped into Portugal, Africa and other places. The pope, however, had

opposed the establishment of the Spanish inquisition, as the conversion of an ecclesiastical into a secular tribunal. Soon after the appointment of the new inquisitor, he had directed the archbishop of Toledo, a warm enemy of Mendoza, to hold a solemn court over a teacher in Salamanca, who was charged with heretical opinions, and the inquisitor-general was repeatedly summoned to Rome. Torquemada, however, did not obey the summons, but sent a friend to defend his cause. The contest between the pope and the Spanish court, was carried on with heat, until 1483, when Sixtus IV was obliged to yield, and acknowledge Torquemada as inquisitorgeneral of Castile and Leon. He was also authorized, by the papal bull, to establish inferior courts at pleasure, to remove those judges who had been appointed by the pope, and to regulate the manner of proceeding in inquiries respecting matters of faith according to the new plan. A later bull subjected Arragon, Valencia and Sicily, the hereditary dominions of Ferdinand, to the inquisitor-general of Castile; and thus the inquisition was the first tribunal whose jurisdiction extended over the two Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Arragon; the Arragonese estates, at their session at Tarragona, in 1484, being obliged to swear to protect the inquisition. The introduction of the new tribunal was attended with risings and opposition in many places, excited by the cruelty of the inquisitors, and encouraged, perhaps, by the jealousy of the bishops; several places, particularly Saragossa, refused admission to the inquisitors, many of whom lost their lives; but the people were obliged to yield in the contest, and the kings became the absolute judges in matters of faith; the honor, the property and the life of every subject was in their hands. They named the grand inquisitor, and by them, or under their immediate influence, were his assessors appointed, even the secular ones, two of whom were of the supreme council of Castile, laymen being permitted to hold the office. This tribunal was thus wholly dependent on the court, and became a powerful instrument for establishing the arbitrary power of the king on the ruins of the national freedom; for putting down the clergy, who had previously acknowledged only the jurisdiction of the Roman see; for oppressing the bold nobles, and taking away the privileges of the estates. The property, of those who were condemned, fell to the king; and, although it had been granted to the inquisition, it was still at his dispo

sition. Ferdinand and Isabella, indeed, devoted a part of this property to found convents and hospitals; but the church, notwithstanding, lost many possessions by means of the inquisition; and an ordinance, drawn by Torquemada (1487), proves that it was a source of revenue to the king, supplying the treasury, which was exhausted by the war: the inquisitorial chest was, indeed, at that time, drained by so many royal drafts, that the officers could not obtain their salaries. The first ordinance, by Torquemada, dedicating the tribunal to the service of God and their majesties, bears date 1484. Among other articles are the following, showing the political importance of the institution. In every community, the grand inquisitor shall fix a period, from 30 to 40 days, within which time, heretics, and those who have relapsed from the faith, shall deliver themselves up to the inquisition. Penitent heretics and apostates, although pardoned, could hold no public office; they could not become lessees, lawyers, physicians, apothecaries or grocers; they could not wear gold, silver or precious stones, or ride, or carry arms, during their whole life, under penalty of being declared guilty of a relapse into heresy; and they were obliged to give up a part of their property for the support of the war against the Moors. Those who did not surrender themselves within the time fixed, were deprived of their property irrevocably. The absent also, and those who had been long dead, could be condemned, provided there was sufficient evidence against them. The bones of those who were condemned after death, were dug up, and the property which they had left reverted to the king. Torquemada died in 1493, and was buried in the Dominican convent at Avila, which had been built with the property taken from heretics, and was a monument of his cruel zeal. He had resigned his office two years before, being afflicted with the gout. According to another account, Torquemada did not retire so quietly from the stage. It is said that, suspecting that Ferdinand and Isabella, whom the wars with the Moors had involved in great pecuniary embarrassments, would be moved, by the great sums which were offered them, to limit the privileges of the inquisition, and disturbed by this apprehension, he went to the royal palace, with a crucifix under his mantle. "I know your thoughts," said he boldly to the sovereigns; "behold the form of the crucified one, whom the godless Judas sold to his enemies for 30

pieces of silver. If you approve the act, yet sell him dearer. I here lay down my office, and am free from all responsibility; but you shall give an account to God." He then laid down the cross, and left the palace. At first, the jurisdiction of the inquisition was not accurately defined; but it received a more regular organization by the ordinance of 1484, establishing branches in the different provinces of Spain, under the direction of the inquisitor-general. In later times, the supreme tribunal was at Madrid. The inquisitor-general presided. Of the six or seven counsellors, whom he appointed on the nomination of the king, one, according to an ordinance of Philip III, must be a Dominican. He had a fiscal, two secretaries, a receiver, two relators, and several officials, as they were called, who were appointed by the grand inquisitor, in concurrence with the king. The inquisitorial council assembled every day, except on holydays, in the royal palace; on the last three days of the week, two members of the council of Castile were present at the meeting. It was the duty of some of the officers (calificadores) to explain whether any act or opinion was contrary to the doctrines of the church; others were lawyers, who merely had a deliberative voice. The sentence of the inquisition was definitive. It was the duty of the fiscal to examine the witnesses, to give information of criminals, to demand their apprehension, and to accuse them when seized. He was present at the examination of the witnesses, at the torture, and at the meeting of the judges, where the votes were taken. It was the duty of the registers, besides the preparation of the necessary papers, to observe the accuser, the witnesses and the accused, during their legal examination, and to watch closely the slightest motion by which their feelings might be tray themselves. The officials were persons sent by the court to arrest the accused. A secuestrador, who was obliged to give sureties to the office, kept an account of the confiscated property. The receiver took the money which came from the sale of sequestered property, and paid the salaries and drafts on the treasury. It is computed, that there were in Spain above 20,000 officers of the inquisition, called familiars, who served as spies and informers. These places were sought even by persons of rank, on account of the great privileges connected with them. As soon as an accuser appeared, and the fiscal had called upon the court to exercise their authority, an order was issued to seize the

accused. In an ordinance of 1732, it was made the duty of all believers, to inform the inquisition if they knew any one, living or dead, present or absent, who had wandered from the faith, who did observe or had observed the law of Moses, or even spoken favorably of it; if they knew any one, who followed or had followed the doctrines of Luther; any one who had concluded an alliance with the devil, either expressly or virtually; any one who possessed any heretical book, or the Koran, or the Bible in the Spanish tongue; or, in fine, if they knew any one who had harbored, received or favored heretics. If the accused did not appear at the third summons, he was excommunicated. From the moment that the prisoner was in the power of the court, he was cut off from the world. The prisons, called holy houses (casas santas), consisted of vaulted apartments, each divided into several square cells, which were about 10 feet high, and stood in two rows, one over the other. In the upper cells, a dim ray of light fell through a grate; the lower were smaller and darker. Each dungeon had two doors. The inner, which was bound with iron, had a grate through which food was introduced for the prisoner. The other door was opened, early in the morning, to air the cell. The prisoner was allowed no visits from his friends or relations; no book of devotion was given him; he was compelled to sit motionless and silent in his dark cell, and, if his feelings found vent in a tone of complaint, or even in a pious hymn, the ever-watchful keeper warned him to be silent. Only one captive was usually placed in each cell, unless for the purpose of making discoveries. At the first hearing, the accused was called upon to confess his guilt. If he confessed the crime of which he was accused, he pronounced his own sentence, and his property was confiscated. If he declared himself innocent, contrary to the testimony of the witnesses, he was threatened with torture. The advocate who was appointed to defend him, could not speak to him, except in the presence of the inquisitors. The accused was not confronted with the accuser nor the witnesses before the court, neither were they made known to him; and he was often subjected to the torture (q. v.), to extort a confession or to explain circumstances which had not been fully explained by the witnesses. Those who escaped death by repentance and confessions, were obliged to abjure their errors, and to swear to submit to all the pains and penalties which the court

ordered. Imprisonment, often for life, scourging, and the loss of property,were the punishments to which the penitent was subjected. He was made infamous, as well as his children and grand-children. Wearing the san-benito (the blessed vest of penitence, a sort of coarse, yellow tunic, with a cross on the breast and back, and painted over with devils) was a common method of punishment. An accused person, who was fortunate enough to escape before the officers of the inquisition could seize him, was treated as an obstinate heretic. Summonses were posted up in all the public places, calling on him to appear. If he did not do this within a certain time, and if the evidence of the witnesses proved the charges, he was delivered over to the secular power, and burnt in effigy. Persons who had been dead more than 40 years, were condemned, and, though their children retained possession of the property they had inherited, yet they were dishonored, and rendered incapable of holding any public office. When sentence of death was pronounced against the accused, the holy auto da fe was ordered. This usually took place on Sunday, between Trinity Sunday and Advent. At day-break, the solemn sound of the great bell of the cathedral called the faithful to the dreadful spectacle. Men of high rank pressed forward to offer their services in accompanying the condemned, and grandees were often seen acting as familiars to the inquisition. The condemned appeared barefooted, clothed in the dreadful san-benito, with a conical cap (caroza) on their heads. The Dominicans, with the banner of the inquisition, led the way. Then came the penitents, who were to be punished by fines, &c., and after the cross, which was borne behind the penitents, walked the unfortunate wretches who were condemned to death. The effigies of those who had fled, and the bones of the dead who had been condemned, appeared in black coffins, painted over with flames and hellish forms; and the dreadful procession was closed by monks and priests. It proceeded through the principal streets of the city to the church, where a sermon was preached, and the sentence was then pronounced. The convicted stood, during this act, before a crucifix, with an extinguished taper in their hands. As "the church never pollutes herself with blood," a servant of the inquisition, when this ceremony was finished, gave each of those who had been sentenced a blow with the hand, to signify that the inquisition had no longer any

This

power over them, and that the victims were abandoned (relaxados) to the secular arm. A civil officer, "who was affectionately charged to treat them kindly and mercifully," now received the condemned, bound them with chains, and led them to the place of execution. They were then asked in what faith they would die. Those who answered the Catholic, were first strangled; the rest were burnt alive. The autos da fe were spectacles to which the people thronged as eagerly as to the celebration of a victory. Even the kings considered it a meritorious act to be present, with their courts, and to witness the agonies of the victims. In this manner did the inquisition proceed, in the times of its most dreadful activity. The Spaniards found their personal freedom so much restrained, even in the early period of the existence of this office, that one of the principal requests of the disaffected, in the reign of Charles I, was, that the king should compel the inquisition to act according to the principles of justice. But the important influence which this court had, in the course of the following century, both on the state and on the moral character of the Spaniards, could not, at that time, have been anticipated. noble and high-spirited people were more debased by the dark power of the inquisition than by any other instrument of arbitrary government, and the stagnation of intellectual action, which followed the discovery of America, concurred, with other fatal causes, to diminish the industry of the people, to weaken the power of the state, and to prevent, for a long time, any progress to higher degrees of moral and intellectual improvement. In more modern times, when the spirit of persecution was restrained in almost all other countries of Europe, the original organization of the inquisition was but little changed; still the dread of this dark court gradually diminished. The horrible spectacle of an auto da fe was seldom witnessed during the last century, and the punishments of the inquisition were confined, in a considerable degree, to those men who had become obnoxious to justice. In 1762, the grand inquisitor having, contrary to the express will of the king, published a bull, excommunicating a French book, was exiled to a monastery at a distance from Madrid. A royal decree forbade the inquisition to issue any commands without the consent of the king, and required the grand inquisitor, in the condemnation of books, to conform to the laws of the land, and to make known his prohibition only

by virtue of the power given him by his office, and not with the citation of bulls. The decree also ordered that, before prohibiting any book, the author should be cited, that his defence might be heard. In 1770, during the administration of Aranda, the power of the inquisition was limited to the punishment of obstinate heretics and apostates, and it was forbidden to imprison any of the king's subjects, without first fully proving their guilt. In 1784, it was determined that, if the inquisition instituted a process against a grandee, a minister, or, in short, against any officer of rank, its acts must be subjected to the royal inspection. If we consider the principal acts of the inquisition during the 18th century, we shall see that, notwithstanding the restraint exercised over it, it still remained an instrument which, under favorable circumstances, might exert a terrible influence. There were 16 provincial inquisitions in Spain and the colonies, all subject to the supreme tribunal. As late as 1763, we find that, at an auto da fe at Llerena, some obstinate heretics were committed to the flames, and, in 1777, the inquisition armed itself with all its terrors against a man who was guilty of nothing more than imprudence-the celebrated Olavides (q. v.); and, in 1780, a poor woman of Seville was declared guilty of witchcraft, and was burnt alive at the stake. With all the limits which had been set to its power, with all the mildness of the tribunal, whose principal officers, under the preceding reigns, had been mostly men of intelligence and moderation, still the odious spirit of the institution, and the unjust form of procedure, survived; and, until the moment when it was abolished by Napoleon (Dec. 4, 1808), the inquisition continued to be a powerful obstacle to the progress of the human intellect. The inquisition published annually a catalogue of prohibited books, in which, among some infidel and immoral works, many excellent or innocent books were included. All the attempts of enlightened men, towards effecting the destruction of this antiquated instrument of a dark policy, during the two last reigns, were without connexion, and therefore without effect, and they sunk under the artifices which an all-powerful favorite, the clergy and the inquisition employed for their common advantage. The process, concluded as late as 1806, against two learned and excellent canons-Antonio and Geronimo Cuesta, whose destruction their unworthy bishop, under the protection of the prince of peace, had striven to

effect-was the last sign of life in this terrible court, and plainly shows that intrigue, when united with the secret power of the inquisition, had great influence in Spain, even in recent times; and the decision of the king, which declared the accused innocent, and condemned the proceedings of the inquisition as contrary to law, was yet tender towards the inquisitors, and confirmed the general opinion, which punished those who had fallen into the power of the inquisition with the loss of public esteem. According to the estimate of Llorente, the number of victims of the Spanish inquisition, from 1481 to 1808, amounted to 341,021. Of these, 31,912 were burnt, 17,659 burnt in effigy, and 291,456 were subjected to severe penance. Ferdinand VII reestablished (1814) the inquisition, which had been abolished during the French rule in Spain; but, on the adoption of the constitution of the cortes (1820), it was again abolished, and was not revived in 1823, by the advice of the European powers.-In Portugal, the inquisition was established, after a long contest, in 1557. The supreme tribunal was in Lisbon; inferior courts, established in the other cities, were subject to this. The grand inquisitor was nominated by the king, and confirmed by the pope. John of Braganza, after the delivery of the country from the Spanish yoke, wished to destroy the inquisition. But he succeeded only in depriving it of the right of confiscating the property of the condemned. On this account, he was excommunicated after his death, and his wife was obliged to permit his body to receive absolution. As the Spaniards took the inquisition with them to America, so the Portuguese carried it to India, and established it at Goa. In the 18th century, the power of the inquisition in Portugal was restrained by the ordinance which commanded that the accuser of the court should furnish the accused with the heads of the accusation and the names of the witnesses, that the accused should be allowed to have the aid of counsel, and that no sentence of the inquisition should be executed until confirmed by the royal council. The late king abolished the inquisition, not only in Portugal, but also in Brazil and the East Indies, and caused all its records at Goa to be burnt.-The inquisition restored in Rome by Pius VII, has jurisdiction only over the clergy, and is not therefore dangerous to those who are not Catholics. In 1826, it condemned to death Caschiur, a pupil of the Propaganda, who was appointed patriarch of