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

SPAIN FALLS BEFORE THE IXQUISITION. 440the dungeon, or expired amid the flames of thepublic autoda fe. The Jews were expelled, the Moors were reducedto submission, and the powers of the Holy Office were nowput in requisition to purge thesoil of Spain from the taintof Protestant pravity, both as regarded books and persons.In obedience to the behest of the Inquisition, Charles V.obtained from the University of Lorraine a list of hereticalworks. This list, printed in 1546, was the first Index Exjjurgatoriuspublished in Spain, and the second in the world.In 1559, as Llorente informs us, was held the first auto da,fe of Protestants at Valladolid. Men of learning were particularlyobnoxious to suspicion. Sanchez, who enjoyed thereputation of being the first scholar of his age ; Luis DELeon, an eloquent preacher and a distinguished Hebraist;Mariana, the prince of Spanish historians,—were all summonedto its bar, and made to promise submission to itsauthority. But not only so ;—princes of the royal blood,prelates of the highest rank, and men who had done goodservice to the cause of Rome, fell under its suspicion, andsuffered in its dungeons. This tyranny endured till the periodof the French invasionin 1808, when the Spanish Inquisitionwas abolished, to be restored on the accession ofFerdinand VII., who divided his time between the embroideringof petticoats and the worship of the Virgin.*It was under the reign of the Inquisition that the soul ofSpain expired, and that a greatpower in arms and in arts,* The object for Avhich the Inquisition was wrought may be gatheredfrom the following passage " In the presence of his [Louis XIV.] activeInquisition, it was much less dangerous to deny the existence of God, orthe immortality of the soxil, than to seek to explain either the love whichthe believer ought to feel for his Creator, or the liberty which he enjoysunder his providence. The prisons were filled with those who were heldto have erred on either of these subjects, while there was no instanceof a Lettre de Cachet having been issued against a free-thinker. In fact,the exercise of intellect was forbidden to every one who would have devotedit to religion." (Sismondi's Histoire de$ Francais, vol. xxvii. c.xliii.)2a