At the solicitation of Turrecremata (or Torquemada) a brother of the dominican order, and grand-inquisitor of Spain, the same Ferdinand, who was surnamed the catholic, banished from his kingdom all the Jews, allowing them three months from the publication of his edict, after the expiration of which period they were not to be found in any of the Spanish dominions under pain of death. They were permitted, on quitting the kingdom, to take with them the goods and merchandize which they had purchased, but forbidden to take out of it any description of gold or silver.

The brother Turrecremata followed up and strengthened this edict, in the diocese of Toledo, by prohibiting all christians, under pain of excommunication, from giving anything whatever to the Jews, even that which might be necessary to preserve life itself.

In consequence of these decrees, about a million Jews departed from Catalonia, the kingdom of Arragon, that of Valencia, and other countries subject to the dominion of Ferdinand; the greater part of whom perished miserably: so that they compare the calamities that they suffered during this period to those they experienced under Titus and Vespasian. This expulsion of the Jews gave incredible joy to all catholic sovereigns.

Some divines have blamed these edicts of the king of Spain; their principal reasons are, that unbelievers ought not to be constrained to embrace the faith of Jesus Christ, and that these violences are a disgrace to our religion.

But these arguments are very weak; and I contend, says Paramo, that the edict is pious, just, and praiseworthy, as the violence with which the Jews are required to be converted is not an absolute but a conditional violence, since they might avoid it by quitting their country. Besides, they might corrupt those of the Jews who were newly converted, and even christians themselves; but, as St. Paul* what com

* Corinthians vi. 14, 15.

says,

munion is there between justice and iniquity, light and darkness, Jesus Christ and Belial?

With respect to the confiscation of their goods, nothing could be more equitable; as they had acquired them only by usury towards Christians, who only received back, therefore, what was in fact their own.

In short, by the death of our Lord, the Jews became slaves, and everything that a slave possesses belongs to his master. We could not but suspend our narrative for a moment, to make these remarks, in opposition to persons who have thus calumniated the piety, the spotless justice, and the sanctity of the catholic king.

At Seville, where an example of severity to the Jews was ardently desired, it was the holy will of God, who knows how to draw good out of evil, that a young man who was in waiting in consequence of an assignation, should see through the chinks of a partition an assembly of Jews, and in consequence inform against them. A great number of the unhappy wretches were apprehended, and punished as they deserved. By virtue of different edicts of the kings of Spain, and of the inquisitors, general and particular, established in that kingdom, there were, in a very short time, about two thousand heretics burnt at Seville, and more than four thousand from 1482 to 1520. A vast number of others were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, or exposed to inflictions of different descriptions. The emigration from it was so great, that five hundred houses were supposed to be left in consequence quite empty, and in the whole diocese, three thousand, and altogether more than a hundred thousand heretics were put to death, or punished in some other manner, or went into banishment, to avoid severer suffering. Such was the destruction of heretics accomplished by these pious brethren.

The establishment of the inquisition at Toledo was a fruitful source of revenue to the catholic church. In the short space of two years, it actually burnt at the stake fifty-two obstinate heretics, and two hundred

and twenty more were outlawed: whence we may easily conjecture of what utility the inquisition has been from its original establishment, since in so short a period it performed such wonders.

From the beginning of the fifteenth century, pope Boniface IX. attempted in vain to establish the inquisition in Portugal, where he created the provincial of the dominicans, Vincent de Lisbon, inquisitor-general. Innocent VII. some years after, having named as inquisitor the Minim Didacus de Sylva, king John I. wrote to that pope, that the establishment of the inquisition in his kingdom was contrary to the good of his subjects, to his own interests, and perhaps also to the interests of religion.

The pope, affected by the representations of a too mild and easy monarch, revoked all the powers granted to the inquisitors newly established, and authorised Mark, bishop of Senigaglia, to absolve the persons accused; which he accordingly did. Those who had been deprived of their dignities and offices were reestablished in them, and many were delivered from the fear of the confiscation of their property.

But how admirable, continues Paramo, is the Lord in all his ways! That which the sovereign pontiffs had been unable effectually to obtain with all their urgency, king John granted spontaneously to a dextrous impostor, whom God made use of as an instrument for accomplishing the good work. In fact, the wicked are frequently useful instruments in God's hands, and he does not reject the good they bring about. Thus, when John * remarks to our Lord Jesus Christ, Lord, we saw one who was not thy disciple casting out demons in thy name, and we prevented him from doing so," Jesus answered him, "Prevent him not; for he who works miracles in my name will not speak ill of me; and he who is not against me is for me.'

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Paramo relates, afterwards, that he saw in the library of St. Laurence, at the Escurial, a manuscript in the hand-writing of Saavedra, in which that knave

Mark ix. 37,39.

details his fabrication of a false bull, and obtaining thereby his entrée into Seville as legate, with a train of a hundred and twenty domestics; his defrauding of thirteen thousand ducats the heirs of a rich nobleman in that neighbourhood, during his twenty days residence in the palace of the archbishop, by producing a counterfeit bond for the same sum, which the nobleman acknowledged, in that instrument, to have borrowed of the legate when he visited Rome; and finally, after his arrival at Badajos, the permission granted him by king John III. to whom he was presented by means of forged letters of the pope, to establish tribunals of the inquisition in the principal cities of the kingdom.

These tribunals began immediately to exercise their jurisdiction; and a vast number of condemnations and executions of relapsed heretics took place, as also of absolutions of recanting and penitent heretics. Six months had passed in this manner, when the truth was made apparent of that expression in the gospel, "There is nothing hid which shall not be made known." The marquis de Villeneuve de Barcarotta, a Spanish nobleman, assisted by the governor of Mora, had the impostor apprehended and conducted to Madrid. He was there carried before John de Tavera, archbishop of Toledo. That prelate, perfectly astonished at all that now transpired of the knavery and address of the false legate, despatched all the depositions and documents relative to the case to pope Paul III.; as he did also the acts of the inquisitions which Saavedra had established, and by which it appeared that a great number of heretics had already been judged and condemned, and that the impostor had extorted from his victims more than three hundred thousand ducats.

The pope could not help acknowledging in all this the finger of God and a miracle of his providence; he accordingly formed the congregation of the tribunal of the inquisition, under the denomination of "The

* Matthew, x. 26. Mark, iv. 22. Luke, viii. 11.

Holy Office," in 1545, and Sixtus V. confirmed it in 1588.

All writers but one agree with Paramo on the subject of the establishment of the inquisition in Portugal. Antoine de Sousa alone, in his "Aphorisms of Inquisitors," calls the history of Saavedra in question, under the pretence that he may very easily be conceived to have accused himself without being in fact guilty, in consideration of the glory which would redound to him from the event, and in the hope of living in the memory of mankind. But Sousa, in the very narrative which he substitutes for that of Paramo, exposes himself to the suspicion of bad faith, in citing two bulls of Paul III. and two others from the same pope to cardi-nal Henry, the king's brother; bulls which Sousa has not introduced into his printed work, and which are not to be found in any collection of apostolical bulls extant; two decisive reasons for rejecting his opinion, and adhering to that of Paramo, Hiescas, Salasar, Mendoça, Fernandez, and Placentinus, &c.

When the Spaniards passed over to America, they carried the inquisition with them; the Portuguese introduced it in the Indies, immediately upon its being established at Lisbon, which led to the observation which Louis de Paramo makes in his preface, that this flourishing and verdant tree had extended its branches and its roots throughout the world, and produced the most pleasant fruits.

In order to form some correct idea of the jurisprudence of the inquisition, and the forms of its proceedings, unknown to civil tribunals, let us take a cursory view of the "Directory of Inquisitors," which Nicolas Eymeric, grand inquisitor of the kingdom of Arragon about the middle of the fourteenth century, composed in Latin, and addressed to his brother inquisitors, in virtue of the authority of his office.

A short time after the invention of printing, an edition of this work was printed at Barcelona, and soon conveyed to all the inquisitions in the christian world. A second edition appeared at Rome in 1578, in

VOL. IV.