Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. Rafael Sabatini

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СКАЧАТЬ intended purity. But soon thereafter, being men under their rough habits, and susceptible to the ambition that is man’s, upon the acquisition of power followed the acquisition of wealth. Their founders had accomplished a renascence of the original spirit of Christianity. But soon this began to undergo modification, and to respond to worldly influences, until the history of the friars-mendicant repeats and mirrors the history of Christianity itself. In a measure as they spread through Christendom, so they acquired convents, lands, and property as they went. The personal poverty of each brother remained, it is true; they still went abroad barefoot and coarsely garbed, “without staff, or bag, or bread, or money,” as their rule decreed. Individually they kept the vow of privation; but considered collectively their poverty “remained outside the convent gate,” as Gregorovius says, echoing what Dante had said before him.17

      For the service of the Church the friars-mendicant became a splendid army, and an army, moreover, whose maintenance made no draught upon the pontifical treasury, since, by virtue of their mendicancy, the orders were entirely self-supporting. And whilst both orders, magnificently organized, grew extremely powerful, the Dominicans became formidable through their control of that Inquisition whose early stirrings had inspired St. Dominic to his task.

      His aim had been to found a preaching order whose special mission should be the overthrow of heresy wherever found. The brethren were to combat it, employing their eloquence on the one hand to induce the heretic to abjure his error, on the other to inflame the faithful against him, so that terror should accomplish what might not be possible to persuasion.

      It may be that this mission which they had made specially their own, as their founder ordained, peculiarly fitted the Dominicans to assume the government of an ecclesiastical establishment whose aim was identical. It was this order of St. Dominic that was to erect the grim edifice of the Holy Office, and to develop and assume entire control of the terrible machinery of the Inquisition. Their persuasion was to be the ghastly persuasion of the rack; their eloquence was to be the burning eloquence of the tongues of material flame that should lick their agonizing victims out of existence. And all for the love of Christ!

      Although it might be difficult to show—as has been attempted—that Domingo de Guzman himself was actually the first ordained Inquisitor, nevertheless as early as 1224, within three years of his death, the Inquisition in Italy and elsewhere was already entirely in the hands of the Dominicans. This is shown by a constitution promulgated at Padua in February of that year by the Emperor Frederic II. It contains the following announcement:

      “Be it known to all that we have received under our special protection the preaching friars of the order of preachers, sent into our Empire on business of the Faith against heretics, and likewise all who may lend them assistance—as much in going as in abiding and returning—save such as are already prescribed; and it is our wish that all should give them favour and assistance; wherefore we order our subjects to receive benignly any of the said friars whenever and wherever they may arrive, keeping them secure from the enmity of heretics, assisting them in every way to accomplish their ministry regarding the business of the Faith.... And we do not doubt that you will render homage to God and our Empire by collaborating with the said friars to deliver our Empire from the new and unusual infamy of heretical pravity.”18

      The constitution decreed that heretics when so condemned by the Church and delivered over to the secular arm should be condignly punished; that if any, through the fear of death, should desire to return to the faith, he should receive the penance that might be imposed canonically and be imprisoned for life; that if in any part of the Empire heretics should be discovered by the inquisitors or by other zealous Catholics, the civil powers should be under the obligation of effecting their arrest at the request of the said inquisitors or other Catholics, and of holding them in safe custody until excommunicated by the Church, when they should be burnt; that the same punishment should be suffered by fautores—i.e. those guilty of concealing or defending heretics; that fugitives be sought for, and that converts from the same heresy be employed to discover them.

      Odious as was this last enactment, there was yet worse contained in the Emperor’s constitution. It was decreed that “the sin of lèse-Majesté divine being, as it is, greater than that of lèse-Majesté humaine, and God being the avenger of the sins of the fathers on the children, to the end that these may not imitate the sins of those, the descendants of heretics to the second generation shall be deemed incapable of honours or of holding any public office—excepting the innocent children who shall denounce the iniquity of their fathers.”19

      The barbarous provision here given in italics calls for no comment.

      Within four years of issuing that harsh proclamation against all rebels from the sway of Rome, Frederic himself, in rebellion against the pontiff’s temporal sway, was to feel the lash of excommunication. But with that we have no concern. After his reconciliation with the Pope he renewed the constitution of 1224, adding a provision concerning blasphemers, who, in common with heretics of whatever sect, should suffer death by fire; yet if the bishops should desire to save any such, this could only be done subject to the offender’s being deprived of his tongue, so that never again should he blaspheme God.

      In the year 1227 Ugolino Conti, who had been a friend of Dominic and of Francis, ascended the papal throne under the style of Gregory IX.

      It was this pontiff who, carrying forward the work that had been undertaken in that direction by Innocent III, gave the Inquisition a stable form. He definitely placed the control of it in the hands of the Dominican friars, giving them, where necessary, the assistance of the Franciscans. But the participation of the latter in the business of that terrible tribunal is so slight as to be insignificant.

      Gregory’s bull, given in “Raynaldus,”20 is one of excommunication against all heretics.

      Further, it ordains that all condemned by the Church shall be delivered to the secular arm for punishment, all clerics so delivered being first degraded from their orders; that should any wish to abjure his heresy and return to the Church, penance shall be imposed upon him, and he shall suffer perpetual imprisonment. Abettors, concealers, and defenders of heretics are similarly excommunicated; and if any such shall neglect to procure absolution within one year, he shall be accounted infamous, and shall be neither eligible for any public office nor the elector of any other, nor act as witness, testator, inheritor, nor have power to seek justice when wronged. If a judge, no proceedings shall be laid before him, and his sentences, where passed, shall be null and void; if an advocate, he shall not have faculty to plead; if a notary, his deeds shall be void; if a cleric, he shall be deposed from his office and benefices.

      Similarly, the ban of excommunication shall fall upon those who hold traffic with any who are excommunicated, and they shall further be punished with other penalties.

      Those who are under suspicion of heresy, unless they see to it that they overcome the suspicion either by canonical purgation or otherwise according to the quality of the person and the motives for the suspicion, shall be excommunicated, and if they do not give condign satisfaction within one year, they shall be deemed heretics. Their claims or appeals shall not then be admitted, nor shall judges, advocates, or notaries exercise their functions in favour of them; priests shall refuse to administer the sacraments to them and to admit their alms or oblations, and so shall the Templars and Hospitallers and other regular orders, under pain of loss of office, from which naught can save them but a mandate from the Holy See.

      Should any give Christian burial to one who has died under excommunication, he shall himself incur excommunication, from which he shall not be delivered until with his own hands he shall have exhumed the corpse, and so disposed that the place may never again be used for sepulture.

      Should any know of the existence of heretics or of any who practise secret conventicles or whose ways of living are uncommon, they are bound under pain of excommunication СКАЧАТЬ