Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/102

92 INQUISITION efoucrias, by the secular arm, enabled the church to achieve her object without dipping her own hands in blood. Thus, about 316, Constantino issued an edict condemning the Donatists to lose their goods ; and in 382 Theodosius declared the Manichceans guilty of death, and confiscated their goods. Later on, in 769, we learn in the capitularies of Chirles the Great that each bishop must visit all his "Paro3chia," or diocese, teach truth, correct morals, see that the clergy hold the right faith, and, on the Saxon border, stop the use of any pagan rites. Charles the Bald iu 844 orders the bishops to preach and confirm the people, and to inquire into and correct their errors, "ut populi errata inquirant et corrigant." In this inquisition, as in other matters, the church long felt the impress of the organizing power of Charles the Great; it helped forwards the episcopal dominance in the 9th and 10th centuries. Still, it claimed no special authority, and its action was very partial, and dependent on the temper and energy of each particular bishop. Sometimes it was raised into activity by some bolder movement of independence, as when in Italy in the 1 1th century the bishops attacked the Patarines, under the impulse of Hildebrand, or as when it was used as an implement for the reduction of the archbishopric of Milan under the papal authority. 2. But when a time of new life came to Europe early in the 13th century, and orthodoxy was threatened by the brilliant speculations of southern France, a great revival in the church met the independent movement outside, and the rise of the Preaching Friars gave a new direction to the relations between religion and the world. Then, as in later days, the " Renaissance shook off many restraints, the good with the bad "; and art went with religious speculation and moral licence. The action of the new orders, as a develop ment of the inquisitorial system, was directed almost entirely against opinions, and moral questions were left on one side. To this period we owe the technical use of the terms Inquisitor and Inquisition. Hitherto they had signified, specially in France, officers inquiring into matters of taxation ; henceforth they are applied to the more ominous inquiry into orthodoxy. At the council of Tours in 1163, iu the time of Alexander III., the title of Inquisitor was first applied in this sense ; and, at the council of Toulouse in 1229, the apostolical legate " mandavit inquisitionem fieri contra haereticos suspectosde hseretica pravitate." But the thing was far older than the name. In 1184 the synod of Verona cursed all heretics and their shelterers, ordered relapsed persons to be handed over to the secular arm for capital punishment, confiscated their property, and clearly indicated that the new Inquisition would go far beyond the older episcopal function. The synod did not hesitate to threaten easy-going bishops, urging them to more frequent and more searching visita tions, standing over them as a superior power. And hence forward Inquisition becomes more systematized, with papal not episcopal authority ; it was developed by those three masterful pontiffs, Innocent III. (1198-1216), Gregory IX. (1227-1241), and Innocent IV. (1243-1254), who all, re garding the supremacy of Rome as the keystone of society, claimed authority over men s souls and bodies, above the authority of prince or bishop. Thus, soon after his accession, Innocent III. sent two Cistercians, Guy and Regnier, to visit the dioceses of southern France and Spain, "to catch and kill the little foxes," the Waldensians, Cathari, and Patarines, to whose tails were fastened fire brands to burn up the good corn of the faithful. The bishops and lay authorities were instructed to give all help ; a new power, with special papal authorization, had come in, and would interfere with every bishop in his diocese, rouse new activity in the old system, and also act inde pendently as a new engine of inquiry. Similarly, in 1203, Innocent III. sent Peter of Castelnau and Ralph, two Cistercians of Fontevrault, to preach down the Albigensian heresy ; and when persuasion availed little he added to them Arnauld, abbot of Fontevrault, and named the three his apostolical legates, ordering them to deal more sharply with the heretics. The murder of Peter (hencefor ward styled St Peter Martyr) in 1209 led to the outbreak of that cruel and disastrous war, the crusade of Simon of Montfort against the Albigensians. But little success attended the effort of these earlier Inquisitors till they were joined by the too famous Castilian Dominic, who, having in 1215 accompanied the bishop of Toulouse to Rome, laid before the pope a scheme for a new order of preaching friars, whose special function should be the overthrow of heresy; Innocent III. approved the order in 1215, and Honorius III. confirmed it in 1216. It spread swiftly through Europe, and the charge of the Inquisition was soon entrusted almost entirely to it. Hitherto there had been no regular tribunal; now, as the war in southern France went on and the strife became more fierce, a stricter organization was introduced. While the strong current of independent opinion was being stemmed in Italy, Pro vence, France, and Spain, the resistance gave compactness to the new system. St Dominic established three orders (1) his friars, (2) a female order, and (3) the "Militia of Christ," an order of laymen, married chiefly and noble, who became the working force of the inquisitorial system ; they were also styled "the Familiars of the Holy Office." It is, however, to Gregory IX. that the Inquisition owes its definite form. In the synod of Toulouse in 1229 it was agreed that each bishop should appoint one priest, and one, two, three, or even more laymen, to inquire, under oath and with much secrecy, into heresy. In 1234 the Dominicans were specially entrusted with the inquisitorial office in Toulouse. From their tribunal there was no appeal to the bishop, who fell into the background, all appeals being directed to Rome alone. To this end Urban IV. appointed, in 1263, an inquisitor-general to be the medium of com munication between the papacy and the local inquisitors, in hopes of stopping the delay of business caused by the absence of officials in Rome on appeal questions. This office, however, fell into abeyance till revived by Paul III. in the person of Caraxfa in 1542. From Provence the organization of the Inquisition soon passed into France, where, in 1255, Alexander IV. named the provincial of the Dominicans and the head of the Francisians at Paris his inquisitors-general for France at the urgent request of Saint Louis, whose piety was of the narrowest crusading type. The Gallican Church stoutly resisted this ultramontane interference ; the bishops gave it no help; churches and abbeys became asylums for the victims of the Holy Office ; and the new movement had consequently but very partial success. It was more effectively used by Philip the Fair to crush the Templars, though that greedy prince quickly interfered when he found the Inquisition laying hands on his special preserve, the wealthy Jews. Charles V., moved to new efforts by Gregory XL, imprisoned large crowds of Frenchmen for heresy, and to meet the pressure erected several new prisons, among them the ill-omened Bastille. After this the Inquisition was quiet in France till the Reformation once more aroused it in the time of Francis I. In Spain it was introduced by Pope Gregory IX. in 1232, and had a far more active and con tinuous life ; we have a minute account of its system and procedure in the Directorium Inquisitorum of N. Eymerich, inquisitor-general for Castile in 1356. This work, based entirely on the writer s personal knowledge and experience, gives us full insight into the way in which cases were got up and handled : we see the spy system, the delation, the mysterious secrecy, the scandal of the " question " ; the