22. The increase of a people, whose sentiments were so opposite, as were those of the Waldenses, to the Church of Rome, filled the pope and his adherents with indignation, and the greatest efforts were made to suppress them. In the year 1181, pope Lucius III. issued his edict against them, by which not only they were anathematized, but also all who should give them support.

23. In the year 1194, Ildefonso, king of Spain, adopting the spirit of the pope, also issued his edict against such of his people as were to be found in his dominions, declaring it to be high treason, even to be present to hear their ministers preach.

24. But edicts and anathemas were insufficient to prevent the increase of the Waldenses. More vigorous measures were therefore adopted. In the year 1204, (some say 1206,) Innocent III. established the Inquisition, and the Waldenses were the first objects of its cruelty.

The inquisition owes its origin to the suggestions of Dominic, a descendant from an illustrious Spanish family. He was born in the year 1170. From his early years, he was educated for the priesthood, and grew up one of the most fiery and bloody of mortals. Being employed, with some others, in devising measures to suppress the heresy of the Waldenses, as the friends of Rome termed their faith, he suggested the appointment of men, who should seek out, and bring to suitable punishment, such as held doctrines at variance with the interests of the Church of Rome. At first the inquisition had no tribunals. They only inquired, (and from this were called inquisitors) after heretics, their number, strength and riches. When they had detected them, they informed the bishops, in whose vicinity they existed, and these were urged to anathematize, or banish, or chastise them. The bishops, however, were not in all cases sufficiently zealous, or sufficiently cruel, to meet the wishes of the pope. The bloody Dominic, therefore, was appointed chief inquisitor; rules were established for these courts; and under the sanction, even of princes, they were set in operation. The order of Dominicans, since the days of their master, has furnished the world with a set of inquisitors, in comparison with whom, all that have dealt in tortures, in former times, were only novices.

In the course of a few years, the system was brought to maturity; and branches of the "Holy Inquisition" were established in almost every province throughout Europe; at least, wherever people were suspected of heresy.

Tortures of the inquisition.

Never was a system better adapted to accomplish a purpose, than this. It was eminently calculated to afflict the true Church of God, and to perfect the system of pontifical depravity. The inquisitors were generally men from whose heart the last

feeling of compassion had departed, and who were ready to sacrifice even their souls, to increase the authority of the bishop of Rome.

When the inquisitors have taken umbrage against an innocent person, all expedients are used to facilitate his condemnation; false oaths and testimonies are employed to prove the accused to be guilty; and all laws and institutions are sacrificed to the bigoted revenge of papacy.

When a person accused is taken, his treatment is deplorable. The gaolers first begin by searching him for books and papers which might tend to his conviction, or for instruments which might be employed in self-murder or escape, and on this pretext they even rob him of his wearing apparel. When he has been searched and robbed, he is committed to prison. Innocence, on such an occasion, is a weak reed; nothing being easier than to ruin an innocent person.

The mildest sentence is imprisonment for life; yet the inquisitors proceed by degrees, at once subtle, slow, and cruel. The gaoler first of all insinuates himself into the prisoner's favor, by pretending to wish him well, and advise him well; and among other pretended kind hints, tells him to petition for an audit. When he is brought before the consistory, the first demand is, "What is your request ?" To this the prisoner very naturally answers, that he would have a hearing. Hereupon one of the inquisitors replies, "Your hearing is this: confess the truth, conceal nothing and rely on our mercy." Now, if the prisoner make a confession of any trifling affair, they immediately found an indictment on it; if he is mute, they shut him up without light, or any food but a scanty allowance of bread and water, till his obstinacy is overcome; and if he declare he is innocent, they torment him till he either die with the pain, or confess himself guilty.

On the re-examination of such as confess, they continually say, "You have not been sincere; you tell not all; you keep many things concealed, and therefore must be remanded to your dungeon." When those who have stood mute are called for re-examination, if they continue silent, such tortures are ordered as will either make them speak, or kill them; and when those who proclaim their innocence are re-examined, a crucifix is held before them, and they are solemnly exhorted to take an oath of their confession of faith. This brings them to the test; they must either swear they are Roman Catholics, or acknowledge they are not. If they acknowledge they are not, they are proceeded against as heretics. If they acknowledge they are Roman Catholics, a string of accusations is brought against them, to which they are obliged to answer extempore; no time being given even to arrange their answers. On having verbally answered, pen, ink, and paper are given them, in order to produce a written answer, which must in every degree coincide with the verbal answer. If the verbal and written answers differ, the prisoners are charged with prevarication; if one contain more than the other, they are accused of wishing to conceal certain circumstances; if they both agree, they are charged with premeditated artifice.

After a person impeached is condemned, he is either severely whippec violently tortured, sent to the galleys, or sentenced to death; and in either case his effects are confiscated. After judgment, a procession is formed to the place of execution, which ceremony is called an Auto da Fe, or Act of Faith.

AUTO DA FE, AT MADRID.

The following is an account of an Auto da Fe, at Madrid, in the year 1662.

The officers of the inquisition, preceded by trumpets, kettle-drums, and their banner, marched on the 30th of May, in cavalcade, to the palace of the great square, where they declared by proclamation, that on the 30th of June the sentence of the prisoners would be put in execution. There had not been a spectacle of this kind at Madrid for several years, for which reason it was expected by the inhabitants with as much impatience as a day of the greatest festivity and triumph.

Procession of criminals by the inquisition on the auto da fe.

When the day appointed arrived, a prodigious number of people appeared, dressed as splendidly as their circumstances would allow. In the great square was raised a high scaffold; and thither, from seven in the morning till the evening, were brought criminals of both sexes; all the inquisitions in the kingdom sending their prisoners to Madrid. Twenty men and women of these prisoners, with one renegado Mahometan, were ordered to be burnt; fifty Jews and Jewesses, having never before been imprisoned, and repenting of their crime, were sentenced to a long confinement and to wear a yellow cap; and ten others, indicted for bigamy, witchcraft, and other crimes, were sentenced to be whipped, and then sent to the galleys: these last wore large pasteboard caps, with inscriptions on them, having a halter about their necks, and torches in their hands.

On this solemn occasion the whole court of Spain was present. The grand inquisitor's chair was placed in a sort of tribunal far above that of the king. The nobles here acted the part of the sheriff's officers in England, leading such criminals as were to be burned, and holding them when fast bound with thick cords: the rest of the criminals were conducted by the familiars of the inquisition.

Among those who were to suffer, was a young Jewess of exquisite beauty, only seventeen years of age. Being on the same side of the scaffold where the queen was seated, she addressed her, in hopes of obtaining a pardon, in the following pathetic speech: "Great queen! will not your royal presence be of some service to me in my miserable condition? Have regard to my youth; and, oh! consider that I am about to die for professing a religion imbibed from my earliest infancy!" Her majesty seemed greatly to pity her distress, but turned away her eyes, as she did not dare to speak a word in behalf of a person who had been declared a heretic by the inquisition. Mass now began, in the midst of which the priest came from the altar, placed near the scaffold, and seated himself in a chair prepared for that purpose. Then the chief inquisitor descended from the amphitheatre, dressed in his cope, and having a mitre on his head. After bowing to the altar, he advanced towards the king's balcony, and went up to it, attended by some of his officers, carrying a cross and the

Gospels, with a book containing the oath by which the kings of Spain oblige themselves to protect the Catholic faith, to extirpate heretics, and support, with all their power, the prosecutions and decrees of the inquisition. On the approach of the inquisitor, and on his presenting this book to the king, his majesty rose up bareheaded, and swore to maintain the oath, which was read to him by one of his counsellors; after which, the king continued standing till the inquisitor had returned to his place; when the secretary of the holy office mounted a sort of pulpit, and administered a like oath to the counsellors and the whole assembly. The mass was begun about twelve at noon, and did not end till nine in the evening, being protracted by a proclamation of the sentences of the several criminals, which were all separately rehearsed aloud one after the other. Next followed the burning of the twentyone men and women, whose intrepidity in suffering that horrid death was truly astonishing: some thrust their hands and feet into the flames with the most dauntless fortitude; and all of them yielded to their fate with such resolution, that many of the amazed spectators lamented that such heroic souls had not been more enlightened! The situation of the king was so near to the criminals, that their dying groans were very audible to him: he could not, however, be absent from this dreadful scene, as it is esteemed a religious one; and his coronation oath obliges him to give a sanction by his presence to all the acts of the tribunal.

After a person has been seized, he undergoes an examination before the president and his assistants. First of all, the following question is put to him, "Will you promise to conceal the secrets of the holy office, and to speak the truth?" If he answers in the negative, he is remanded to his cell, where he is cruelly treated. Should he on a second examination continue obstinate, he is put to the torture.

Though the inquisitors allow the torture to be used only three times, yet at those three it is so severely inflicted, that the prisoner either dies under it, or continues always after a cripple. The following is a description of the severe torments occasioned by the torture, from the account of one who suffered it the three respective times, but happily survived its cruelties.

FIRST TIME OF TORTURING.

The prisoner, on refusing to comply with the iniquitous demands of the inquisitors, by confessing all the crimes they charged him with, was immediately conveyed to the torture room, which, to prevent the cries of the sufferers from being heard by the other prisoners, is lined with a kind of quilting, which covers all the crevices, and deadens the sound. The prisoner's horror was extreme on entering this infernal place, when suddenly he was surrounded by six wretches, who after preparing the tortures, stripped him naked to his drawers. He was then laid upon his back on a kind of stand, elevated a few feet from the floor. They began by putting an iron collar round his neck, and a ring to each foot, which fastened him to the stand. His limbs being thus stretched out, they wound two ropes round each arm, and two round each thigh; which ropes being passed under the scaffold, through holes made for that purpose, were all drawn tight at the same instant of time, by four of the men, on a given signal. The pains which immediately succeeded were intolerable; the ropes, which were of a small size, cut through the prisoner's flesh to the bone, making the blood gush out at eight different places. As he persisted in not making any confession of what the inquisitors required, the ropes were drawn in this manner four times successively.

A physician and surgeon attended, and often felt his temples, in order to judge of the danger he might be in; by which means his tortures were for a small time suspended, that he might have sufficient opportunity of recovering his spirits to sustain each ensuing torture. During this extremity of anguish, while the tender frame is being torn, as it were, in pieces, while at every pore it feels the sharpest pangs of death, and the agonized soul is just ready to burst forth, and quit its wretched mansion, the ministers of the inquisition have the obduracy to look on without emotion, and calmly to advise the poor distracted creature to confess his imputed guilt, on doing which, they tell him he may obtain a free pardon, and receive absolution. All this, however, was ineffectual with the prisoner, whose mind was strengthened by a sweet consciousness of innocence and the divine consolation of religion. While he was thus suffering, the physician and surgeon were so barbarous as to

declare, that if he died under the torture, he would be guilty, by his obstinacy, of self-murder. In short, at the last time of the ropes being drawn tight, he grew so exceedingly weak, by the stoppage of the circulation of his blood, and the pains he endured, that he fainted away; upon which he was unloosed, and carried back to his dungeon.

SECOND TIME OF TORTURING.

These inhuman wretches, finding that the torture inflicted, as above described, instead of extorting a discovery from the prisoner, only served the more fervently to excite his supplication to Heaven for patience and power to persevere in truth and integrity, were so barbarous, in six weeks after, as to expose him to another kind of torture, more severe, if possible, than the former; the manner of inflicting which was as follows: they forced his arms backwards, so that the palms of his hands were turned outward behind him; when, by means of a rope that fastened them together at the wrists, and which was turned by an engine, they drew them by degrees nearer each other, in such a manner that the back of each hand touched and stood exactly parallel to the other. In consequence of this violent contortion, both his shoulders were dislocated, and a considerable quantity of blood issued from his mouth. This torture was repeated thrice; after which he was again taken to the dungeon, and delivered to the physician and surgeon, who, in setting the dislocated bones, put him to the most exquisite torment.

THIRD TIME OF TORTURING.

About two months after the second torture, the prisoner, being a little recovered, was again ordered to the torture room, and there made to undergo another kind of punishment. The executioners fastened a thick iron chain twice round his body, which, crossing upon his stomach, terminated at the wrists. They then placed him with his back against a thick board, at each extremity whereof was a pulley, through which there run a rope that caught the ends of the chain at his wrists. Then the executioner, stretching the end of this rope, by means of a roller placed at a distance behind him, pressed or bruised his stomach in proportion as the ends of the chain were drawn tighter. They tortured him in this manner to such a degree, that his wrists, as well as his shoulders, were quite dislocated. They were, however, soon set by the surgeons; but the barbarians, not yet satisfied with this infernal cruelty, made him immediately undergo the like torture a second time; which he sustained (though, if possible, attended with keener pains) with equal constancy and resolution. He was then again remanded to his dungeon, attended by the surgeon to dress his bruises, and adjust the parts dislocated; and here he continued till their auto da fe, or gaol delivery, when he was happily discharged.

It may be judged, from the before mentioned relation, what dreadful agony the sufferer must have endured. Most of his limbs were disjointed; so much was he bruised and exhausted, as to be unable, for some weeks, to lift his hand to his mouth; and his body became greatly swelled from the inflammations caused by such frequent dislocations. After his discharge he felt the effects of this cruelty for the remainder of his life, being frequently seized with thrilling and excruciating pains, to which he had never been subject till after he had the misfortune to fall into the power of the merciless and bloody inquisition.

The unhappy females who fall into their hands, have not the least favor shown them on account of the softness of their sex, but are tortured with as much severity as the male prisoners, with the additional mortification of having the most shocking indecencies added to the most savage barbarities.

Should the above mentioned modes of torturing force a confession from the prisoner, he is remanded to his horrid dungeon, and left a prey to the melancholy of his situa tion, to the anguish arising from what he has suffered, and to the dreadful ideas of future barbarities. Should he refuse to confess, he is, in the same manner, remanded to his dungeon; but a stratagem is used to draw from him what the torture fails to do. A companion is allowed to attend him, under the pretence of waiting upon, and comforting his mind till his wounds are healed: this person, who is always selected for his cunning, insinuates himself into the good graces of the prisoner, laments the anguish he feels, sympathizes with him, and, taking advantage of the hasty expressions forced from him by pain, does all he can to dive into his secrets. This com