ity of their rules, and the severity which they were con tinually practising upon themselves, were not likely to allow them to have much feeUng for others. Lastly, they were zealous, as possessors of newly established re- ligions commonly are ; and they were learned, after the fashion of the times; that is to say, well versed in scho- lastic quibbles and in the new canon law\ ]M ore over, they had a particular interest in the suppression of her- etics, who were incessantly declaiming against them, and who spareel no pains to eliscredit them in the minds of the people. On these monks, therefore, the pope con- ferred the office of inquisitors of the faith, and they ac- quitted themselves in such a manner as not to disap- point his expectations" (Shoberl, Persecutions qfPojJtry, i, 103, 104). So much eagerness did they display in hunting up and prosecuting heretics, that a popular pun changed the name of Dominicans into Domini canes (the dogs of the Lord). To preserve the Church, however, from the charge of blood-guiltiness, the civil authorities were made the executioners of its judgments, and orders to that effect were caused to be issued jn 1228 by Louis IX of France, in 1233 by Kaymond of Toulouse, and in 1234 by Frederick II, the emperor of Germany. Accord- ing to the regulations, the suspicion of heresy was suffi- cient cause for imprisonment ; accomplices and culjirits were deemed competent witnesses ; the accused was nev- er informed of his accusers, nor confronted with tlicm; confession was extorted by torture, which, applied at first by the civil authorities, was afterwards, for the sake of secrecy, intrusted to the inquisitors themselves. To en- large also the sphere, and last, but hardly least, to in- crease the pecuniary income of the Inquisition, a very wide meaning was given to the word heresy. It was not confined to views which departed from the dogmas of the Church, or to sectarian tendencies, but was made to include usury, fortune-telling by tlie hands, signs, lots, etc., insulting the cross, despising the clergy, pre- tended connection with the leprous, with Jews, daemons, and the devil, daemonolatry, and witchcraft. The pun- ishments were of three kinds : Upon those who recant- ed, besides penance in the severest form wdiich the court might enact, was frequently inflicted even the depri- vation of all civil and ecclesiastical rights and privileges, and the sequestration of goods ; upon those not abso- lutely convicted, imprisonment for life ; upon the obsti- nate or the relapsed, the penalty of death — death at the stake, eleath by the secular arm. " The Inquisition, with specious hj-pocrisy, while it prepared and dressed up the victim for the burning, looked on with calm and approv- ing satisfaction, as it had left the sin of lighting the fire to pollute other hands." As if these horrible treatments of fellow-beings were not bad enough, pope Innocent IV, in a bull {Be ex(irpanda) in the year 1252, ordained that accused persons should be loriured, not merely to induce them to confess their own heresy, but also to compel them to accuse others. Such was the organiza- tion of the Inquisition in the 13th century — " a Chris- tian code, of which the basis was a system of delation that the worst of the pagan emperors might have shud- dered at as inicjiiitous; in which the sole act deser\-ing of mercy might seem to be the Judas-like betrayal of the dearest and most familiar friend, of the kinsman, the parent, the child. ... No falsehood was too false, no craft too crafty, no trick too base for this calm, sj's- tematic moral torture, which was to wring further con- fession against the heretic, denunciation against others. If the rack, the pulleys, the thumbscrew, and the boots were not yet invented or applied, it was not in merc}% . . . Nothing that the sternest or most passionate his- torian has revealed, nothing that the most impressive romance-writer could have imagined, can surpass the cold, systematic treacherj^ and cruelty of these so-called judicial formularies" (Jlilman, Latin 'Christianity, vi, 32, o3). The excessive cruelties, however, of the inquisi- tors, their knavcrj' even in accusing the innocent and robbing the m of their possessions, exasperated the peo- ple-, and they rose up against the inquisitors. At Tou-
INQUISITION
599
INQUISITION
louse and Narbonne the iiKiuisitors were banished in | 1235, and four of them killed in the former city in 1-24-2, and the pope was linally obliged to suppress the tribu- nal at the former place altogether. When at last re- stored, the inquisitorial tribunal resumed its former cru- elty, until Philip the Fair (A.D. 1291) ordered the civil officers to exercise great caution in acting on the accu- sations made by the inquisitors. But what insurrec- tions and royal edicts in France coidd not accomplish, ecclesiastico-poUtical events, such as the papal schism in the 14th, and the reformatory councils in the 15th century, were caused to bring about. The former crip- pled the power of the hierarchy with the latter, and lim- ited thereby the power of the Inquisition, so that it now proceeded against secret or suspected heretics only on the accusation of sorcery and connection with the devil (compare the Breve of Nicholas V, in Raynald, a. 1451). In the 16th century, the time of the Reformation, the clergy, supported by the (iuises, were able to rekindle violent persecutions against the Huguenots (q. v.), and endeavored to restore the Inquisition to its former pow- er, but it had now lost its territory. Paul lY, it is true, published a bull (April 25, 1557) to re-establish it (Ray- nald, a. 1557, no. 29), and Henry 11 com]iellcd Parlia- ment to pass a corresponding edict ; but Paul, who on his death-bed commended the Inquisition as the main support of the Romish Church (Schriickh, Kirchvrifn'sch. seit d. Reformation, iii, 248 sq.), died in 1559, and the new attempt to re-establish it failed ; so that in France, where it took its rise first, it was also first discontinued, in spite of priestcraft and Jesuitism.