THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE
INNOCENTS, FEAST OF THE HOLY: A church festival in honor of the children slain by Herod in Bethlehem (Matt. ii. 16-18). They were very early regarded as Christian martyrs, as Irenseus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and many later authors speak of them in that way. At what time the festival became commonly celebrated is not known. In the fifth century the holy innocents were commemorated in connection with the adoration of the Magi at the feast of Epiphany. The Carthaginian calendar, edited by Mabillon from a manuscript of the seventh century, has the entry opposite Dec. 28 " (the day) of the holy children slain by Herod." This day is still kept by the Roman Catholic and Protestant Episcopal churches, but the Greek Church observes Dec. 29. In course of time the feast received an octave. (A. Hauck.)
In the Saturnalia (II., 4, 11) of Macrobius, the Roman writer in the fifth century, is this anecdote: "When he (Augustus) heard that among the boys whom in Syria Herod, the king of the Jews, had ordered to be killed there were infants of two years and under, he exclaimed: ' I had rather be a pig of Herod's than a son.' " As the Saturnalia contains many anecdotes which carry with them indubitable evidence of being of contemporary origin, there is no reason for supposing that this one was the creation of a time subsequent to Augustus , but every probability that it, too, was contemporary, and so is an incidental, undesigned, but striking witness to the truthfulness of the Gospel story. E. G. Sihler.
Bibliography: Bingham, Origines, XX., vii. 12; J. C. W. Augusti, Denkwilrdigkeiten, i. 304 aqq., Leipsic, 1817; P. Gueranger, L'Annee liturgique, i. 366 aqq., Paris, 1880; W. E. Addis and T. Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, pp. 487- 48S, London, 1903; G. Wissowa, Analecta Macrobiana, in Hermes, xvi. 499 sqq.
INQUISITION.
T. In the Older Church. II. The Inquisition in the Middle Ages. Organization and Competence (§ 1). Relation to the Secular Powers (§ 2). In Italy (§ 3). France (§ 4). Spain (§ 5).
Germany, the Netherlands, and England (§ 6). III. The Inquisition and the Counter-Reformation. The Reformation Suppressed in Italy (§ 1). In Spain and the Netherlands (§ 2).
I. In the Older Church: The Inquisition (Inquisitio hwreticce pravitatis) or the " Holy Office " (Sanctum officium) is the name of the spiritual court VI.— 1
of the Roman Catholic Church for the detection and punishment of those whose opinions differ from the doctrines of the Church. It was a comparatively late outgrowth of ancient ecclesiastical discipline. " In the primitive Church there was no arrangement that could have borne even a remote resemblance to the Inquisition. The whole instinct and the prevailing cast of thought of Christendom in the first four centuries was opposed to compulsion in religious affairs." (J.J. I. von Dollinger, Kleinere Schriften, p. 295, Stuttgart, 1890.) The institution of " elder for repentance " (see Penitentiary), which occurs in the third century, bears quite a different character, as the very name denotes. Of course deviations in the sphere of Christian doctrine were combated, but hardly with other than spiritual weapons; and this practise continued until Theodosius (d. 395), before a Christian emperor found it advisable to impose an ultimate death penalty on (Manichean) heresy. Chrysostom repudiated such action: "It is not right to put a heretic to death, since an implacable war would be brought into the world " (Horn. xlvi. on Matt. xiii. 24-30); and still in the neighborhood of 450 the church historian Socrates characterized persecution for heresy as foreign to the orthodox Church. Nevertheless, in the meantime Augustine, in his conflict with the Donatists, had set up the contrary doctrine in the West and had recommended compulsion as well as penalties against heretics (Epist. xciii., clxxxv.), though he did not approve the death penalty. Six centuries more passed before the theory of religious compulsion and of the violent extirpation of heresy came to have universal validity, although Pope Leo I. (Epist. xv., ad Turribium) had approved it in the fifth century. This long season of comparative tolerance is the more impressive in view of the circumstance that in Italy under East Gothic and Lombard rule, Catholics and Arians lived whole centuries in close proximity, or even together (as in Ravenna). The impulse to more, severe methods came from the decision that the numerous remnants of paganism must be finally rooted out; and certain measures in this direction were devised by the Carolingian legislation (Capitularia Caroli Magni of 769 and 813). The beginnings of episcopal inquisition are thus to be sought in the synodal courts for investigations with reference to heresy (see Synodal Courts; and cf. P. Hinschius, Katholisches Kirchenrecht, v. 427, Berlin, 1895).
Inquisition