The Inquisition was adopted by the count of Toulouse in 1229, and
confided to the Dominicans by Pope Gregory IX. in 1233; Innocent IV. in
1251 established it in the whole of Italy, with the exception of Naples.
At the commencement, indeed, heretics were not subjected in the Milanese
to the punishment of death, which they nevertheless so richly deserved,
because the popes were not sufficiently respected by the emperor
Frederick, to whom that state belonged; but a short time afterwards
heretics were burned at Milan, as well as in the other parts of Italy;
and our author remarks, that in 1315 some thousands of heretics having
spread themselves through Cremasco, a small territory included in the
jurisdiction of the Milanese, the Dominican brothers burned the greater
part of them; and thus checked the ravages of the theological pestilence
by the flames.
As the first canon of the Council of Toulouse enjoined the bishops to
appoint in every parish a priest and two or three laymen of reputation,
who should be bound by oath to search carefully and frequently for
heretics, in houses, caves, and all places wherever they might be able
to hide themselves, and to give the speediest information to the
bishop, the seigneur of the place, or his bailiff, after having taken
all necessary precautions against the escape of any heretics discovered,
the inquisitors must have acted at this time in concert with the
bishops. The prisons of the bishop and of the Inquisition were
frequently the same; and, although in the course of the procedure the
inquisitor might act in his own name, he could not, without the
intervention of the bishop, apply the torture, pronounce any definitive
sentence, or condemn to perpetual imprisonment, etc. The frequent
disputes that occurred between the bishops and the inquisitors, on the
limits of their authority, on the spoils of the condemned, etc.,
compelled Pope Sixtus IV., in 1473, to make the Inquisitions independent
and separate from the tribunals of the bishops. He created for Spain an
Inquisitor-general, with full powers to nominate particular inquisitors;
and Ferdinand V., in 1478, founded and endowed the Inquisition.
At the solicitation of Turrecremata (or Torquemada), a brother of the
Dominican order, and grand inquisitor of Spain, the same Ferdinand,
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 merchandise 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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