§ 86. THE INQUISITION. ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE. 515
and had shown an unwillingness to pay tithes to the archbishop of Bre men. When a husband put a priest to death for an indignity to his wife, the archbishop Hartwig II. announced penalty after penalty but in vain. Under his successor, Gerhard (1219-1258), the refractory peasants were reduced to submission. A synod of Bremen, in 1230, pronounced them heretics, and Gregory IX., accepting the decision, called upon a number of German bishops to join in preaching and prosecuting a crusade. The same indulgence was offered to. the crusaders in the North as to those who went on the Church's business to Palestine. The first cam paign in 1233 was unsuccessful, but a second carried all the horrors of war into the eastern section of the Stedingers' territory. In 1234 another army led by a number of princes completely defeated this brave people at Altenesch. Their lands were divided between the archbishop of Bremen and the count of Oldenburg.
§ 86. The Inquisition. Its Origin and Purpose.
The measures for the repression and extermination of heresy culminated in the organized system, known as the Inquisi tion. Its history presents what is probably the most revolting spectacle in the annals of civilized Europe.1 The repre sentatives of the Church appear, sitting as arbiters over human destiny in this world, and in the name of religion applying torture to countless helpless victims, heretics, and reputed witches, and pronouncing upon them a sentence which, they knew, involved perpetual imprisonment or death in the flames. The cold heartlessness, with which the fate of the heretic was regarded, finds some excuse in the pitiless penalties which the civil tribunals of the Middle Ages meted out for civil crimes, such as the breaking of the victim on the wheel, burning in caldrons of oil, quartering with horses, and flaying alive, or the merciless treatment of princes upon re fractory subjects, as when William the Conqueror at Alengon punished the rebels by chopping off the hands and feet of thirty-two of the citizens and throwing them over the walls. It is nevertheless an astounding fact that for the mercy of
1 Such a calm Church historian as Karl Miiller, an expert in mediaeval history, pronounces a similar judgment, " Die Thatigkeit der Inquisition ist vielleicht das entsetzlichste was die Gendiidite der Menschheit, kennt." Kir cheng esch., I. 590.
516 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
Christ the Church authorities, who should have represented him, substituted relentless cruelties. In this respect the dis senting sectaries were infinitely more Christian than they.
It has been argued in extenuation of the Church that she stopped with the decree of excommunication and the sen tence to lifelong imprisonment and did not pronounce the sentence of death. And the old maxim is quoted as true of her in all times, that the Church abhors blood — ecclesia non sitit sanguinem. The argument is based upon a pure techni cality. The Church, after sitting in judgment, turned the heretics over to the civil authorities, knowing full well that, as night follows day, the sentence of death would follow her sentence of excommunication.1 Yea, the Church, through popes and synodal decrees, again and again threatened, with her disfavor and fell spiritual punishments, princes and mu nicipalities not punishing heresy. The Fourth Lateran for bade priests pronouncing judgments of blood and being present at executions, but at the very same moment, and at the pope's persistent instigation, crusading armies were drench ing the soil of Southern France with the blood of the Albigenses. A writer of the thirteenth century says in part truly, in part speciously, " our pope does not kill nor con demn any one to death, but the law puts to death those whom the pope allows to be put to death, and they kill them selves who do those things which make them guilty of death." 2
The official designation of the Inquisitorial process was the Inquisition of heretical depravity.3 Its history during the Middle Ages has three main chapters: the persecution of doctrinal heretics down to 1480, the persecution of
1 The usual expression for turning heretics over to the civil tribunal was sceculari judicio relinquere, and for perpetual imprisonment, in perpetuum carcerem retrudi or perpetuo commorari.
2 Martene, Thes., V. 1741.
3 Inquis. hcereticce pravitatis. The first case, so far as I know, of the use of the expression "inquisition of heretics," inquis. hcereticorum, was by the synod of Toulouse, 1229. Heretical depravity was the usual expression for heresy, Inn. Ep., II., 142, etc.; Migne, 214. 698. The term " inquirare" was a judicial term in use before. See Schmidt.