Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 227
hope of gain, or lust of blood or pride of opinion, or wanton
exercise of power, but sense of duty, and they but repre
sented what was universal public opinion from the thir
teenth to the seventeenth century."
It was, therefore, the spirit of the times, the Zeitgeist
as we would call it to-day, that was responsible for the
rigorous measures formerly used by
l
both Church and
State in the suppression of heresy. The other reasons
we have mentioned are only subsidiary. This is the one
reason that satisfactorily explains both the theories and
the facts.
But an explanation is something far different from a
defence.W an institution. To explain is to show the rela
tion of cause to effect ; to defend is to show that the effect
corresponds to an ideal of justice. Even if we grant
that the procedure of the Inquisition did correspond to a
certain ideal of justice, that ideal is certainly not ours
to-day.
Let us go into this question more thoroughly.
It is obvious that we must strongly denounce all the
abuses of the Inquisition that were due to the sins of in
dividuals, no matter what their source. No one, for in
stance, would dream of defending Cauchon, the iniquitous
nard Gui declares that he exercised Inquisitionis officium
contra labem
hcereticam auctoritate legati Apostolicoz sedis sibi commissum in partibus
Tholosanis. If he were not actually an Inquisitor, he at least was employed
by Gregory IX to prepare the way for the Inquisition, which was definitely
established in 1231.
1
Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 234.