p. 1 | THE INQUISITION AND PAPAL INTOLERANCE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 22, 1874

THE INQUISITION AND PAPAL INTOLERANCE

By John Norton Loughborough

BY ELD. J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.

One might suppose, on reading the utterances of Romish priests of the present day, that all the accounts of torture under the surveillance of the inquisition were invented by the Protestants in order to obtain sympathy for themselves, and to arouse feelings of indignation and disgust against the papists. We have learned, however, from the statement of Rome’s Moral Theology, a sample of which we quoted in our last article, to look with suspicion on what the priests say, till we have examined the facts.

The Catholic church may argue that they are not using the rack, the torture, and stake now. Is that proof that they never have used them? As Rev. John Hemphill of San Francisco says, “No thanks to the cat that she does not scratch when her claws are cut, or to the thief that he does not steal when confined in prison walls.” We shall inquire, not simply what Rome is doing now, but what has she done? What has she taught should be done? If she never changes, and is infallible in her teachings, then, at heart, she has no more respect for heretics to-day than in the past.

Let her claws be grown, or release her from the prison, by giving her the power to suppress heretics, and she is just the same as ever. As we have already quoted from her own periodicals, she says if she once “gets a numerical majority in America, religious freedom is at an end.”

Father Buchard, the Jesuit, in a lecture in St. Ignatius’ church, Market St., San Francisco, delivered Aug. 5, 1873, said of the inquisition, “We deny not the excesses of the inquisition; but we affirm that the reproaches cast upon it cannot, with rigorous justice, be applied to the church. If the inquisition has subjected itself to the criticism of the world, it must stand alone. The action of the church in the matter was indirect. If a new doctrine arose, the church visited it with her anathema. If heretics submitted, no penalty was incurred; but if they persisted, they were consigned to the secular arm to undergo condign vengeance in proportion to their criminality.”

On the above, Mr. Hemphill says, “The lecturer, either from accident or design, failed to tell us the relative positions of the civil and ecclesiastical powers in the days of the inquisition. Here, obviously, is a point on which we require accurate information. So utterly have times changed that we are hardly able to picture to ourselves the awful power of the Catholic church in the days of its greatness. Does the reverend lecturer forget that the State was the bond-slave of the church for more than a decade of centuries? Does he forget how the emperor of Germany held the stirrup for Pope Gregory VII. to mount his mule? How Henry Plantagenet, of England, walked barefoot through the streets of Canterbury and knelt in the chapter house to be flogged by the monks? Does he forget how the Roman Pontiff opened the campaign against the British John by a national interdict? How the institutions of religion were suspended? the churches closed? the images of the saints laid on the ground, and the bells ceased to toll? How the dead were deposited in pits like dogs, without ceremony or funeral solemnity? How the English king was excommunicated, and all were forbidden to hold any communication with him? How, in 1212, he was deposed, his people’s oath of allegiance rescinded, and his kingdom transferred to Philip of France? How British independence yielded to Roman tyranny, and John, in an assembly of nobility and clergy, took the crown from his head and delivered it, in token of subjection, to the papal nuncio? Does he forget that pope after pope claimed, as the vicegerents of God, the right to dethrone princes, and that these king-deposing claims were sanctioned by eight general, holy, apostolic, Roman councils?”

“Let not this clerical casuist shirk the question by misrepresentation and evasion. At the time we speak of, the church ruled the State with a rod of iron. From the throne downward, every secular office was dependent on the church. These are facts; and you may form some notion from them what a tremendous power the church must have exercised in Catholic Europe before the Reformation.”

“‘Kings and princes are responsible for the deeds of the inquisition, not the Roman pontiff.’ The Reverend Father might as well say ‘the pistol is responsible for the shooting, not the man who fires the shot.’ We admit that princes and kings wielded the secular arm against the abettors of heresy. But why? Because they were admonished to purify their dominions from heretical perversity; and if they refused, their crowns and lands might, without hesitation, be seized by the champion of Catholicism.”

“Again, the Catholic church is responsible for the acts of the inquisition, because she consented thereunto. I ask the reverend lecturer to tell me what pope or General Council condemned the cruelties of the inquisition. I can produce scores on the other side. Pope Urban II., for example, in 1090, decreed that ‘the person, who, influenced with zeal for Catholicism, should slay any of the excommunicated, was not guilty of murder.’ Lucius III. fulminated red-hot anathemas against the Waldenses, and consigned them to the secular arm to undergo condign vengeance. Innocent IV. sentenced heretics to be burned alive.”

“And the bulls of popes were sanctioned by the edicts of General Councils. The third General Council of the Lateran excommunicated the Cathari of Gascony, Albi and Tolosa, confiscated their possessions, and consigned them to slavery. The fourth and fifth General Councils of the Lateran, the Council of Constance, and the Council of Sienna, published persecuting enactments of a similar kind. The General Council of Trent also sanctioned persecutions. This assembly, in its second session, ‘enjoined the extermination of heretics by the sword, the fire, the rope, and all other means, when it could be done with safety.’ And, again, in its last session, it admonished ‘all princes to exert their influence to prevent the abettors of heresy from misrepresenting or violating the ecclesiastical decrees; and to oblige these objectors to accept and to observe the canons with devotion and fidelity.’ Clearly this was an appeal to the secular arm.”

Let us now hear Gavazzi, on the responsibility of the church, in this matter of the inquisition. “‘Oh! but,’ cry some, ‘the Romish Catholic church is not guilty of the inquisition.’ In England and Scotland I often hear it said, first, that the inquisition was not an ecclesiastical tribunal, and that, therefore, the church could not be made accountable for its acts; secondly, that the church of Rome never persecutes any one for his religious opinions. Hum! inquisitions not ecclesiastical, and the church never a persecutor! You will oblige me by answering a few questions. Was or was not the inventor of the inquisition, one St. Dominic Guzman, also founder of the Dominican order of friars?

“Did or did not the first approval of the inquisition come from one Innocent III., an infallible pope of Rome? Did or did not twenty-four different popes (not kings or laymen), but infallible popes, vicars of Christ on earth, and so forth, issue twenty-four different bulls in favor of the inquisition?”

“And are not the judges of the inquisition always prelates, priests, and especially Dominican and Franciscan friars? Are not the tribunals of the inquisition held in the monasteries of Franciscan or Dominican friars? To the present day, is not the pope himself, and always and forever shall not the pope himself be, the supreme head and prefect of the inquisition? To the dishonor of the church and priesthood of Rome, is not Pius IX. at this moment the supreme head and prefect of the holy inquisition? And, therefore, are not all cruelties, perpetrated in the inquisition, done by the authority of this angel of goodness, His Holiness, Pius IX.? Therefore, my dear Catholics, the inquisition is really an ecclesiastical tribunal.”

“But the church of Rome never persecuted! This is the preaching and writing of some Roman priests! Really, did it never persecute? A hundred thousand Waldenses slaughtered under the commandment of the cruel Montfort, and the direction of St. Dominic Guzman are nothing! Forty thousand Huguenots slaughtered on the eve of St. Bartholomew are nothing! Thousands and thousands of women and men, thousands of children and boys, perishing in the flames, in the slaughter of the templars and Mirandoles, are nothing! Three hundred and twenty-four thousand victims of the Spanish inquisition in those countries are nothing! Six and a half millions of Indians, native Americans (as say La Casas and Pallafox, Dominican friar and Catholic bishop) hunted down like wild beasts by enraged bulldogs, by order of the inquisition, and assistance of its holy ruffians, are nothing! Hundreds of thousands of victims in France, Portugal, Sicily, Lombardy, in the secret prison of the inquisition, and in the auto-da-fé, are nothing! The church of Rome has never persecuted any one for religious opinions! Oh! shame and curse for the lie!”

Again Gavazzi says: “The ancient popes had their inquisition, and so, too, have the modern. Pius IX., that angel of God, grateful to God for his restoration to the Vatican throne by means of holy Austrian guns, and very Christian French bayonets, Pius IX. made it his first care to re-establish the inquisition in Rome. We, Italian liberals, are called infidels and atheists. After the flight of Pius IX., one of our first cares was to open the dungeons of the inquisition, to free its many victims, to destroy the relics of these priestly cruelties, and to change the inquisitorial apartments into almshouses for the poor people deprived of their habitations during the Roman siege. But the first care of Pius IX. on his return was to renew those inquisitorial prisons. To destroy the inquisition it was necessary to be Italian patriots; to restore it, it was necessary to be the vicar of Christ, and the protégé of Paris.”

Of the nature of the trial by the inquisition, Gavazzi says, “In the inquisition all is secret; the incarceration is executed by means of secret ruffians; the trial is secret; the accused may be anonymous, and the accuser is always secret; the witnesses are all kinds of persons, even those condemned to the galleys, and (mark the inconsistency) even heretics are admitted to testify. There are also witnesses against nature, because all relatives are obliged to testify, even fathers and mothers against their own offspring. But never are the witnesses and actors in this trial confronted with the accused, because they, under an oath of silence, are assured of never being known.”

“There is no free defense, no public sentence, all is done in the private room of the inquisitor. All is secret, unless when the dreadful drama of an auto-da-fé is given to the world. The consequence is, that all kinds of partiality and cruelty are exercised.”

“A victim, after having fulfilled the years of his imprisonment, in leaving, is obliged to swear upon the gospel never to reveal anything of what passed in his prison; thus his lips are sealed, until he leaves the place where the Roman Catholic church is dominant.”

The inquisition, as we have before quoted, was founded by Saint Dominic who was born A. D. 1170 and died 1221. “This man suggested to Pope Innocent III. the erection of this tribunal; and having given abundant proofs that his own genius lay in that way, he was appointed Inquisitor General by the pope, in the beginning of the thirteenth century. . . . A pope, Sextus IV., sent a bull to Ferdinand and Isabella, bearing date Nov. 1, 1478, authorizing them to appoint two or three ecclesiastics as inquisitors, for the detection and suppression of heresy throughout their dominions. . . . Five years later we find the same pope encouraging Ferdinand and Isabella to proceed in the great work of purification, and in the course of the same year, he expedited two briefs appointing Thos. de Torquemada Inquisitor General of Castile and Aragon. This was the origin of that terrible tribunal, the Spanish or modern inquisition, familiar to most readers, whether of history or romance.”

“Of the cruelty of priests Gavazzi says: ‘A clergy, bachelor by system, must necessarily

be cruel. The Romish Catholic clergyman takes an oath of perpetual celibacy; he has no domestic affection, as husband or father; he has no relation at all; he denies all love of native country; he lives as only one of a sect, a caste, a party, and a cruel party and a pernicious sect; because, to revenge themselves upon the happiness of society, they display cruelty in the inquisition, unexcelled in the ancient times of Rome, unsurpassed by Tiberius, Dionysius of Syracuse and Caligula; for those tyrants invented but one kind of torture against Christians, who were accused as guilty of treason against those Caesars and their religion; but what name will you give to the Roman Catholic priesthood, who have invented, not one, but fourteen species of torture, not against enemies, but against brethren; not against traitors, but against Christians?’”

“No! I respect, in this point, the authority of Diderot, who said, ‘When you speak of the inquisition, do not exaggerate, because the simple truth will appear so enormous, so incredible, that the future generations will call the simple truth an exaggeration.’”

(Concluded next week)