The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

448 INFLUENCE OP POPERY ON GOVERNMENT.the country of heresy by fire and sword. Spain, Portugal,and Italy were decimated by this tribunal. In an unhappyhour for her liberty and her commerce, Venice opened hergates to the familiars of the Holy Office. The shirri andspies of the Inquisition swarmed on all sides. Stone wallswere found to have ears and eyes. Secret denunciationspoured in. Snares were sowed in the paths of citizens.Dark mistrust and suspicion banished the happiness of thehearth and the convivialities of the board ; and the heapsof dead found in the canals, and seen on the public gibbets,told how well this secret tribunal did its work. If any commiseratedthe fate of the victim, that fate speedily becamehis own. If any doubted the justice of so cruel and summarya vengeance, he was sure to be himself ere long overtakenby it. Some deep pit became his prison, whose dampatmosphere froze his limbs, and whose mephitic vapoursconsumed his lungs ;or a leaden furnace became his abode,where the powerful rays of a vertical sun, heightened by thenature of the prison, speedily brought on a burning fever orinflammation of the brain, and the wretched being, shut upin this terrible abode, ended his days as a raging madman,or sunk into heavy hopeless idiotcy. Such were the deathsreservedfor the free and proud citizens of the Adriatic republic.Venice was unable to bear up under such a tyranny.Her ships disappeared from the ocean, and her merchantsceased to hold the first place on the bourse of the world.But the country in which the Inquisition has reached itsmost flourishing estate is Spain. This tribunal was first introducedinto Catalonia in 1232, and propagated over allSpain. It was re-established in greater pomp and terrorin 1481 by Ferdinand and Isabella, chiefly for the spiritualgood of the Jews, then numerous in Spain. The bull ofSixtus V. instituted a grand inquisitor-general and supremecouncil to preside over the working of the Holy Office;andunder that bull commenced that system of juridical exterminationwhich is said to have cost Spain upwards of fivemillions of her citizens, who either perished miserably in