§ 86. THE INQUISITION. ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE. 523
Iii 1233, Gregory took the decisive step of substitut ing the Dominicans for the bishops as agents of the In quisition, giving as his reason, the multitude of cares by which the bishops were burdened.1 The Inquisitors were thus made a distinct clan, disassociated from the pastoral care of souls. The friars were empowered to deprive sus pected priests of their benefices, and to call to their aid the secular arm in suppressing heresy. From their judgment there was no appeal except to the papal court. The Francis cans were afterwards joined with the Dominicans in this work in parts of Italy, in France, and later in Sardinia and Syria and Palestine. Complaint was made by bishops of this interference with their prerogatives,2 and, in 1254, In nocent IV. listened to the complaint so far as to decree that no death penalty should be pronounced without consulting with them. The council of Vienne ordered the prisons con taining heretics to be guarded by two gaolers, one appointed by the Inquisitor and one by the bishop.
One more step remained to be taken. By the famous bull ad exstirpanda, of 1252, Innocent IV. authorized torture as a measure for extorting confessions. The merciless use of this weapon was one of the most atrocious features of the whole procedure.
The Inquisitors, in spite of papal authority, synodal action, and state legislation, did not always have an easy path. In 1235, the citizens of Narbonne drove them out of their city. In 1242, a number were murdered in Avignon, whom Pius IX., in 1866, sought to recompense by giving them the honor of canonization as he had done the year before to the blood iest of Inquisitors, the Spaniard Arbues, d. 1485. Parma, according to Salimbene,3 was placed, in 1279, under interdict
1 Potthast, 8932, 9126, 9143, 9152, 9153, 9235. From the appointment of the Dominicans grew up the false notion that Dominic was the founder of the Inquisition. So Limborch (I. ch. X.) who calls him a "cruel and bloody man." Lacordaire, I. 197 sqq. shows Limborch's authorities to be unre liable. But the eloquent French Dominican, in his zeal, goes too far when he declares Philip II. the author of the Inquisition. Philip II. had enough sins to bear without this one being added to the heap.
2 See Lea, I. 348 sq. 8 Coulton, p. 203.
524 THE MIDDLE AGES. . A.D. 1049-1294.
for three years, the punishment for the act of " certain fools " who broke into the convent of the Dominicans and killed one or two friars in retribution for their having burned for heresy a certain noble lady and her maid. The distinguished Inquisitor, Peter of Verona, otherwise known as Peter Martyr, was murdered at Como, 1252. In Germany the resistance of the Inquisition was a frequent occurrence and more than one of its agents atoned for his activity by a violent death. Of these, Konrad of Marburg was the most notorious.
Down to the very close of the Middle Ages, the pages of history were disfigured by the decrees of popes and synods, confirming death as the penalty for heresy, and for persons supposed to be possessed with witchcraft. The great council of Constance, 1415, did not get away from this atmosphere, and ordered heretics punished even by the flames, — puniantur ad ignem. And the bull of Leo X., 1520, condemning Luther, cursed as heresy the Reformer's liberal statement that the burning of heretics is contrary to the will of the Spirit.
To the great humiliation of the Protestant churches, re ligious intolerance and even persecution unto death were continued long after the Reformation. In Geneva, the per nicious theory was put into practice by state and church, even to the use of torture and the admission of the testimony of children against their parents, and with the sanction of Calvin. Bullinger, in the second Helvetic Confession, announced the principle that heresy should be punished like murder or treason. The treatment of the Anabaptists is a great blot on the page of the Reformation, Strassburg being the only centre that tolerated them. Cranmer per suaded Edward VI. to burn women. Elizabeth saw the death penalty executed upon Puritans. The spirit of intolerance was carried across the seas, and was as strong in the seven teenth and eighteenth centuries in the American colonies, with some exceptions, as it was in Europe. The execution of Quakers in Boston, and of persons accused of witchcraft