In the eyes of the Church the end in view could not fail to justify any means that might be employed. The extirpation of heresy was a consummation so very fervently to be desired that any steps—almost any sin—would be condonable if conducive to that end.
It has been argued that this crusade against heresy was political, a campaign waged by the Church to protect herself from the onslaught of liberty of thought, which was threatening her overthrow. Such no doubt had been the case in earlier centuries; but it was so no longer. Roman Catholicism had grown and spread like a mighty tree, until her shadow lay across the face of Europe and her roots were thrust far and wide into the soil. These had taken too firm a hold, they were too full of vigour, to permit that the withering of an occasional branch should give her concern for the vitality of the growth itself. She had no such concern. However abominable, however feral, however unchristian even, may have been the institution of the Holy Office, it is difficult to think that the spirit in which it was founded was other than pure and disinterested.
Photo by Lacoste.
ST. DOMINIC.
From the Painting in the Prado Gallery, attributed to Miguel Zittoz.
It may seem bitterly ironical that men should have been found who in the name of the meek and compassionate Christ relentlessly racked and burnt their fellow-creatures. It was—bitterly, deplorably, tragically ironical. But they were not conscious of the irony. In what they did they were sincere—as sincere as St. Augustine when he urged the extermination of heretics; and none can call in question his sincerity or the purity of his motives.
To understand their attitude it is but necessary to consider the absolute belief that was the Catholics’ in what Lecky calls “the doctrine of exclusive salvation.” Starting from the premise that the Church of Rome is the true and only Church of Christ, they held that no salvation was possible for any man who was not a member of it. Nor could ignorance—however absolute—of the true faith be urged as an excuse for error, any more than may ignorance of the law be pleaded in the worldly courts to-day. Thus, not only did they account irrevocably damned those who schismatically deserted from the Church, and those who like Jew and Moslem remained deliberately outside its walls, but similarly—such was man’s indifferently flattering conception of divine justice and divine intelligence—the savages who had never so much as heard the name of Christ, and the very babe who died before his heritage of Original Sin could be washed away by the baptismal waters. Indeed, fathers of the Church had waged heated wars of controversy concerning the precise moment at which pre-natal life sets in, and, consequently, damnation is incurred by the soul of the fœtus should it perish in the womb.
When it is considered that such doctrines were held dogmatically, it will be realized that in the sight of the Church—whose business was the salvation of souls—there could be no sin so intolerable, so execrable, as heresy. It will be realized how it happened that the Church could consider those of her children who were guilty of such crimes as murder, rape, adultery, and the sin of the Cities of the Plain, with the tolerance of an indulgent parent, whilst rising up in intolerant wrath to smite the heretic whose life might be a model of pure conduct. The former were guilty of only the sins of weak humanity; and sinners who have the faith may seek forgiveness, and find it in contrition. But heresy was not merely the worst of sins, as some have held. In the eyes of the Church it transcended the realm of sin—it was infinitely worse than sin, because it represented a state that was entirely hopeless, a state not to be redeemed or mitigated by good actions or purity of life.
Taking this view of heresy, the Church accounted it her duty to stamp out this awful soul-pestilence so as to prevent its spreading; and she had St. Augustine’s word for it that it was merciful to be merciless in the attainment of that object. When viewed, as it were, from within, there is nothing illogical in the attitude of the Church towards heresy. What is illogical is the conception of God that is involved in the doctrine of exclusive salvation.
Even if we survey the case of Galileo—one of the most illustrious prisoners ever arraigned before the tribunal of the Holy Office—we have no just cause to suppose that, in demanding his retraction of the theory of the earth’s movement round the sun, the inquisitors were inspired by any motives beyond the fear lest the spread of a notion—honestly deemed by them to be an illusion—should disturb man’s faith in the Biblical teaching with which it was in conflict.
CHAPTER IV
ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC
Llorente agrees with the earlier writers on the subject in considering the Spanish Inquisition as an institution distinct from that which had been established to deal with the Albigenses and their coevals in heresy. It is distinct only in that it represents a further development of the organization launched by Innocent III and perfected by Gregory IX.
Before entering upon the consideration of this Modern Inquisition—as it is called—it will perhaps be well to take a survey of the Spain of the Catholic Sovereigns—Ferdinand and Isabella—in whose reign that tribunal was set up in Castile.
For seven hundred years, with varying fortune and in varying degree, the Saracen had lorded it in the Peninsula.
First had come Berber Tarik, in 711, to overthrow the Visigothic Kingdom of Roderic, to spread the Moslem dominion as far as the mountains in the north and east and west from sea to sea. When the Berber tribe, the Syrians, and the Arabs had fallen to wrangling among themselves, Abdurrahman the Omayyad crossed from Africa to found the independent amirate, which in the tenth century became the Caliphate of Cordova.
Meanwhile the Christians had been consolidating their forces in the mountain fastnesses of the north to which they had been driven, and under Alfonso I they founded the Kingdom of Galicia. Thence, gradually but irresistibly, presenting a bold front to the Moorish conqueror, they forced their way down into the plains of Leon and Castile, so that by the following century they had driven the Saracens south of the Tagus. Following up their advantage, they continued to press them, intent upon driving them into the sea, and they might have succeeded but for the coming of Yusuf ben Techufin, who checked the Christian conquest, hurled them back across the Tagus, and, master of the country to the south of it, founded there the Empire of the Almoravides.
After these came the Almohades—the followers of the Mahdi—and the land rang for half a century with the clash of battle between Cross and Crescent, Castile, Leon, Aragon, and the new-born Kingdom of Portugal striving side by side to crush the common foe at Navas de Tolosa.
In 1236 Leon and Castile—now united into one kingdom—in alliance with Aragon, wrested Cordova from the Moors; in 1248 Seville was conquered, and in 1265 Diego of Aragon drove the Saracen from Murcia, and thereby reduced the Moslem occupation to Granada and a line of Mediterranean seaboard about Cadiz, in which they remained until Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, by virtue of their marriage, had united the two crowns on the death (in 1474) of Henry IV, Isabella’s brother.
Ferdinand brought, with Aragon, Sicily, Sardinia, and Naples; Isabella brought, with Castile, Leon and the rest of the Spanish territory, saving Granada and that portion of the coast still in Moorish hands. And thus was founded, by the welding of these several principalities into one single state, that mighty Kingdom of Spain which Columbus was so soon to enrich by a new world.
But though founded by this marriage, this kingdom still required consolidating and subjecting. Generations of misrule in Castile, culminating in the lax reigns of John II and Henry IV, had permitted the spread of a lawlessness so utter that its like was not to be found in any other state at that time. Anarchy was paramount mistress of the land, and Pulgar has left us a striking picture of the impossible conditions that prevailed.
“In those days,” he writes, “justice suffered, and was not to be done upon