The Sun.
London, England, 1859-11-24 00:00:00

211 E INQUISITION.

(From the Morning Advertiser.)
A small item of news of intense significance ap-
peared in our telegraphic intelligence of last Thurs-
day morning. It was simply this :—The Governor
of Bologna has decreed the suppression of the tri-
bunal of the Inquisition." This is one of the in-
stances which show how sometimes a great fact
may be communicated in a few plain words. As-
suming the correctness of the information, all that
such a decree includes can never be fully appre-
ciated by any living man; even those who are
intimate with the bloodstained history of Popery
from the beginning of the thirteenth century to
the end of the seventeenth, can realise it only in
part ; for the unwritten atrocities of this horrible
Court must be imagined, as a sequel to what is
actually known, before the appalling story of the
Romish Inquisition can be at all apprehended. Be-
yond all question this awful tribunal is the most
gigantic iniquity that ever oppressed mankind.
British Protestants of the present day seldom think
of the priceless freedom from liability to torture and
death, under the hands of priestly tormentors,
effected for them by the overthrow of Papal su-
premacy in these islands rand if they are indifferent
to the sleepless efforts of Romanism to regain that
lost supremacy, they may discover the unutterable
value of Protestantism when it is a day too late.
We sound no needless alarm, as our columns
every day furnish evidence that the emissaries of
Rome are making systematic efforts to plant on
English soil a system which has long desolated Italy,
which the Italians are determined to shake off for
ever the moment they can stand upon their feet as
freemen, and one of whose peculiar institutions the
Governor of Bologna 11:,s just resolved to. abolish;
and we bring no accusation against living Roman
CatholiCs when we say, that the history of the In-
quisition is a more terrible indictment of Romanism
than all the charges brought against it by Luther,
Calvin, and Knox. Be it understood we are not
speaking of religious dogma at all, but of the fact
that the Church of Rome, dominating the Statn,
usurped and, wielded the powers or the civil magis-
trate, for politico-ecclesiastical purposes, in the
much abused name of our benign Christianity, and
in so doing horribly plagued the nations of Europe
with an institution which has never been equalled
in tormenting cruelty—the Tribunal of the Inqui-
sition. That is all we say, and it may still more
deeply determine the friends of Italy to abolish the
temporal power of the Pope—without which, of
course, an Inquisition is impossible—and the friends
of Protestantism, to retain their present freedom
pure and simple, without foreign alloy, if we briefly
refer to a few facts and figures in proof of our as
sertion.

This iniquitous Court was instituted in the year
1203, by Pope Innocent 111., and a few years
afterwards Gregory IX. extended its powers, and
placed it under the control of the bishops. Shortly
after this, however, that amiable pontiff, thinking
the bishops too merciful in the exercise of their in-
quisitorial functions, committed the operations of
the tribunal to the cruel hands of the Dominican
friars. The thing gradually grew in merciless seve-
rity, the clerical butchers setting themselves to
discover new modes of torture for their hapless vic-
tims, while terror and consternation spread through-
out Europe on the intelligence of this awful insti-
tution, respecting which Pope Paul 111. declared
that it was "the only means of destroying heresy,
and the only fort of the Apostolic See." Crimea
agc:inst morality or humanity were light and
trifling, but to differ in opinion from a priest to
doubt the infallibility of the Pope, to express a de-
sire for the reformation of glaring abuses, or to in-
sinuate aught against the perfection of the Church,
was an inquiry to be visited with the dire penalties
of the Inquisition. Innocent 111., exhortinc.
hi
servants to destroy the IVCdenses, said, " s
hort you to destroy-the wicked heresy of the ex-Albi-
genses, and to do this with more severity than you
would use towards the Saracens themselves
secute them with a strong hand ; depriveihemeorf-
houses and lands, and put true Roman Catholics in
their places ;" and to give the sanction of religion
to this ferocious command, he assured the persecu-
tors that their conduct would be h • •hly pleasing to
God, and that, as the reward of their obedience,
their sins should all be forgiven.
Pius V., writing to the Icing of France in 1569
counselled him to destroy all the enemies of the' :
Church, to tear them up by the toots, and not to

low the smallest fibre of a root to remain. To thp
infamous Catherine de Medici he wrote, " Pursue
the enemies of the Catholic religion until they shall
be all massacred, for it is only by the entire destruc-
tion of the heretics that the Catholic worship can be
restoied." All this time the inquisitors were busy
with their deadly work, and deeds were done on
the persons of men, women, and children, at the
barerecital of which humanity instinctively recoils.
This is not the place to en ter into the harrowing
details; but a few general facts will convince the
reader that the blood of millions cries for ven-
geance upon the Romish Inquisition. Its victims
were generally seized at dead of night, and hurried
to the loathsome dungeons with the greatest se-
crecy, and without being informed why they were
arrested, while their frirnds were often denied the
melancholy satisfaction of seeing them. Cardinal
Ximdnes was Inquisitor-General for 11 years, dur-
ing which time 53,000 persons received his sen-
tence of condemnation of whom about 3,600 were
burned to death ; yet this very man, was extremely
simple in his habits, and spent a large portion of
his enormous income in works of charity and in
the promotion of learning ; and his great work,
the " Complutensian Polyglot," is the typo and
forerunner of all subsequent ones. During the 16
years Torquemada filled the office, more than
10,000 persons were burned alive, and more than
97,000 were sentenced to lose their property or
perish in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Llorente
says the victims of the Inquisition in Spain from
1481 to 1808, that is, three centuries end a quarter,
were more than 341,000, or an average of 1,040
persons every year of that very long period, of whom
not less than 30,000 were burnt to death. And the
thing has come down to our day. There are men
in this city who can give you some idea of the
Inquisition from painful personal experience.
We all remember some of its doings against the
patriots of 1848, after Louis Napoleon had restored
the Pope, and with him all the apparatus of. the
Church to power. An eloquent priest, Ugo Bassi,
who had protested against the clerical despotism
under which Italy has so long groaned, was
dragged, with others, before this holy tribunal.
And how did it use him ? After divesting him of
his priestly character, as his judges pretended, and
before delivering him over to the Austrians by
whom he was shot, they skinned the palms, fore-
fingers, and thumbs of both his hands ! In one
word, many million of human beings have been
destroyed by this diabolical Romish Inquisition,
and we wonder not that the Italians are eager to
destroy it and all of which it forms part.
But will this heaving of the breast and panting
of the soul of a nation ready to spring into liberty,
and which has so far sprung into it as to decree the
abolition of an infernal machine that has been at
work for six centuries and a half, be much longer
allowed by the Dictator of Europe ? Will the man
who says, in truly Imperial style, before summon-
ing a Congress to dispose of the destinies of nations,
" The part of France is traced beforehand," permit
a nation struggling for freedom, and to which he
promised freedom—but that, between ourselves, is
neither here nor there—thus to destroy the play-
things of the Pope and Cardinals, and to endanger
the very existence of the Church whose infallible
head he has promised to succour in case of any dan-
ger to the triple crown ? We fear that the Impe-
rial policy, traced beforehand, is very unlikely to
harmonise with the ideas of liberty entertained by
the Bolognese patriots, and as Victor Emmanuel is
no longer an independunt Sovereign, but the Vice-
regal representative in Italy of the Emperor of the
French, we must not yet congratulate the people of
Central Italy on entire deliverance from the
tyranny of which the Inquisition is the suggestive
symbol.