unfortunately true that there has been persecution in our days; sometimes there is even organized legal persecution; but, since the suppression of the Spanish Inquisition by the Cortes in 1812 there has—with the single exception of Bolshevism-existed no such formidable and far-reaching machinery of organized intolerance as that which reigned through the later Middle Ages and beyond.

Let us look for a moment into this actual machinery of the Inquisition. That institution had, at the outset, this enormous power, that it fell in with the interests of all ecclesiastics and of many lay magistrates; moreover, it could trade upon popular beliefs and popular superstitions. Thus it had all the fighting force of patriotism in the narrowest and intensest form. And, from the point of view of procedure, this court was unique, even though scarcely any of its separate constituents were new. The man who first combined charcoal, saltpetre and sulphur made a new and devastating compound; so also this medieval combination of many scattered juridical tyrannies formed a compound of unexampled violence.

(1). The general theory of the procedure was adapted from Roman Imperial law. It amounts, briefly, to this: that, whereas modern English law presumes a man's innocence until his guilt is proved, the Inquisition assumed his guilt unless he could prove innocence. Public report (often defined as the belief of half-adozen trustworthy persons) had branded him as suspect; he must dissipate that suspicion or be condemned.

(2). His judges were purely ecclesiastical: the civil power tried vainly to assert the right even of consulting the documents. (3). The procedure was secret.

(4). The names of witnesses were also concealed; the accused had no chance of challenging them as partial or infamous persons.

*It is sometimes asserted that none were new; but Alphandéry quotes pertinently from the most systematic of medieval inquisitors, Bernard Gui, who says that in the procedure of the Inquisition there are many peculiarities" [multa specialia]. Moreover, in ethics a bad example does not go far to excuse bad actions; if judicial torture is wicked, then it was wicked of the Church to borrow this abuse from the civil courts. This is a point frequently insisted upon by medieval moralists; sin is not excused by the multitude of sinners; on the contrary (they argue) you will be more wretched in hell for the sight of these other wretches around you, and their combustion will raise the temperature of the general furnace.

(5). Indeed, infamous persons were expressly allowed to testify in this court, though in other courts their testimony was refused. So, again children were heard, even against their parents. This, however, was only in favour of the prosecution ; neither infamous persons nor infants might be heard in defence. (6). Advocates were nominally allowed at first; but it was made a punishable crime to appear in defence of a guilty person; and this was so shamelessly pressed that, finally, even the pretence of advocacy was abandoned.

(7). Again, it was quite useless to count on witnesses for the defence; and this is natural, for they would be practically certain to be suspected of complicity as abettors of the heretics.

(8). Torture might be inflicted not only on the suspect, but also on any witnesses from whom it was hoped to get evidence against him.

(9). Such torture had practically no legal limits. It was, indeed, forbidden to "repeat" torture; but the man who had been racked on Monday might be racked again on Tuesday under colour of the word "continuance."

When we realize that there were other minor rigours beyond these, it will easily be understood that an acquittal, pure and simple, is practically unheard of in these records. For instance, out of 200 cases enregistered at Carcassonne in 1249-58, there is not a single acquittal; the most we get is a "not proven," and sometimes the trial is resumed on a later occasion. However, just as men seldom use their full opportunities for good, so they rarely do all the evil within their power. Though Torquemada is recorded on good authority to have burned 2000 heretics, Bernard Gui, who in his lifetime convicted 930, committed only 42 to the stake; of the rest, 307 were condemned to prison, and all, of course, to confiscation of their goods.

This confiscation of goods was, indeed, a regular and most significant factor; Church princes and lay princes lost their zeal for the faith when it brought no pecuniary gain. On this point, Vacandard agrees with Lea. Nothing better illustrates the weakness of the apologists' case than their treatment of this economic factor. Mr. Maycock, to do him justice, does rehearse here, as often elsewhere, a good many of the unfavourable facts; he does not, like Douais and De Cauzons, allow himself practically to ignore the whole chapter which Lea has devoted to this subject. Yet he takes no notice of one of Lea's principal witnesses, Alvarus

Pelagius, Franciscan friar and Papal Penitentiary, who gives a lurid picture of medieval society as it appeared to an ardent papalist a few years before the Black Death fell upon Europe. His fellow-friars (Alvarus tells us), when they are employed against heretics, regularly pocket the spoils of their victims :Wherein these Inquisitors commit two mortal sins; for whereas, by papal privilege, this money [earned by the] inquisitor ought to be divided into three parts, one for the government of the land wherein the heretic dwelt, another to the officials of the Holy Office, and the third for the diocesan bishop to keep for necessary expenses of the Inquisition, yet these Inquisitors, though no share has [thus] been assigned to any one of them, usurp the whole for themselves, even though the Roman Church assigns to them no part for their expenses; and thus they are truly thieves and robbers of the Inquisition money, usurping it beside and against the will of the Roman Pontiffs, and spending it abusively at their own pleasure upon their brethren and their kinsfolk. Their second sin is that, whereas they ought to be Friars Minor and touch no money, yet they spend it as they please, and think themselves to be making a holy offering to God when they give alms of this money to their friaries or their brethren, literally of the mammon of iniquity, that is, of other men's money. And a third sin also, that they scarce punish any man accused of heresy except by condemning him to lose his money, in order that they may put it into their own purses [ut eam imbursent].* Therefore I can scarce believe that any one of them escapeth that papal excommunication which is rehearsed in Canon Law (Clement. lib. V, tit. iii, c. 1).†

Moreover, as Lea points out :

So assured were the officials that condemnation would follow trial that they frequently did not await the result, but carried out the confiscation in advance. . . . The Inquisition had so habituated men's minds to the belief that no one escaped who had once fallen into its hands, that the officials considered themselves safe in acting upon the presumption.‡ Even Vacandard ignores Alvarus, and thus convinces himself that such abuses were "too rare to deserve more than a passing mention." Yet he, and Mr. Maycock after him, do quote that other passage which Lea has brought forward from the Inquisitor Eymeric in 1375: "In our days there are no more rich heretics; so that princes, not seeing much money in prospect, will not put

*This, of course, goes far to explain why only the smaller fraction were executed. The Inquisitors, like the juries under the old English felony laws, were willing to forgo many chances of killing a man, but were less scrupulous in money matters.

+"De Planctu Ecclesiæ," lib. II, c. 77 (ed. 1517, fol. 219 b.). Vol. I, p. 517.

themselves to any expense; it is a pity that so salutary an institution as ours should be so uncertain of its future " (p. 204).

And, just as the Inquisition satisfied timorous religious zeal, just as it satisfied cupidity, so also it satisfied political ambitions and animosities. It had a permanent effect on continental jurisprudence in the Middle Ages. Lay princes utilized this new spiritual explosive as they utilized the invention of gunpowder at a later date. In 1200, secular justice was everywhere in a state of transition. Old Germanic justice had been mainly accusatorial and public; it was for the accuser to make good his case against the defendant. The study of Roman imperial law at Bologna did a good deal to popularize inquisitorial procedure, under which it was for the defendant to prove his innocence. These two elements, then, were fairly balanced in 1200; and the Inquisition turned the scale everywhere except in England and Scandinavia and parts of northern Germany. In France and Italy and Spain, and in a great part of the Empire, secular procedure became predominantly inquisitorial, with the accompaniments of arbitrary arrest, secret trial, torture and confiscation. This is why even the Tudors never reached within many degrees of the despotism which reigned and increased upon the continent during the later Middle Ages; and this is one cause of the contrast, which Commines noted with such deep interest, between the comparatively civilized character of English civil wars, as compared with the brutal cruelties elsewhere.

For, when once a prince had armed himself with this new weapon, he could use it against any political enemy with equally fatal effect. It was the Inquisition which enabled Philip the Fair to suppress the Templars with a refinement of cruelty which far overshadows the worst injustices of Henry VIII, and which rendered Joan a helpless victim in the hands of her country's enemies. To vary the metaphor slightly, when once the Church had introduced poison-gas, then the politicians retaliated by gassing a whole body of papal militia in the next century, and a saint in the century following. If there were no other counts against the Inquisition, those alone would suffice for its condemnation. It created a veritable scramble for heresy, and even a systematic manufacture of heresy, for, if your enemy was a heretic, then you were sure of your cause against him. When the Council of Pisa deposed two rival popes (1409), the assembled

fathers put this on the ground that both were heretics, since their action in rending the Seamless Robe amounted to a denial of the Creed: "I believe in one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church." This, after all, was no worse stretch of the theory than that to which popes themselves had long accustomed the world. The story is put with admirable brevity by Professor Alphandéry, who in general is distinctly more favourable to the Inquisition than Acton or Lea.

The Colonna [family] had a personal animosity against the Gaetani; therefore Boniface VIII, a Gaetano, declared the Colonna to be heretics. Rienzi was accused of heresy for having questioned the temporal sovereignty of the Pope at Rome. The Venetians, who in 1309 opposed the annexation of Ferrara by Clement V to the detriment of the house of Este, were proclaimed heretics and placed under the ban of Christendom. Savonarola was attacked [as a heretic] because he interfered with the policy of Alexander VI at Florence.

Clement V actually published a bull condemning resistant Venetians not only to excommunication and total confiscation, but to slavery. The punishment of slavery was also decreed for political reasons, but under the same excuse of heresy, against the Florentines by Gregory XI and Sixtus IV, against Bologna by Julius II, and against all English supporters of Henry VIII by Paul III. These facts explain the cases of the Templars and of St. Joan. The French King coveted the Templars' riches; therefore he persuaded the Church to fasten the tentacles of the Inquisition upon them. By dint of torture, they were made to confess to such abominations as had been alleged against the Albigensians things, the truth of which scarcely any modern Roman Catholic historian with a reputation to lose dares to maintain. No evidence could be got against them in England, where torture was not permitted by the law of the land. Therefore the pope, by threats and bribes, compelled Edward II to admit his Inquisitors and to allow torture; then the required evidence was procured. Thus, for a few months, the Inquisition worked among us for the first and last time until Mary's reign.

So, again, with St. Joan. The English wanted her life; few Frenchmen were really willing to risk anything serious in her defence; on the other hand, some were ready to sell her or help her to the stake; therefore the matter could scarcely have ended

*"Encyc. Brit.," 11th ed., vol. xiv. p. 593a.