§ 117.2. =The Inquisition=, since A.D. 1232 under the direction of the Dominicans (§ 109, 2), spread through all European countries during the 14th century. While the papal court resided at Avignon the Inquisition was at its height in =France=, where Waldensians and Albigensians, Beghards and Lollards, Fraticelli and Fanatical Spiritualists, were brought in crowds to the stake and subjected to the most cruel tortures. Bernard Delicieux, a Franciscan, raised his voice, A.D. 1300-1320, against the inhuman cruelty of the inquisitors, and with noble independence and heroic bravery appealed to king and pope against the merciless sacrifice of so many victims. He was shut up for life in a dark dungeon, and fed on bread and water.--In =Germany=, where, from the murder of Conrad of Marburg in A.D. 1233 (§ 109, 3), for almost a century and a half we find no trace of a regularly constituted Inquisition, it made its appearance again in A.D. 1368. During that year Urban V. issued a bull, by which he required that the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of Germany should support with their counsel and influence the two inquisitors who were searching out the heretical Beghards and Beguines (§ 116, 5), and place their prisons at the disposal of the Holy Office, which had still no prison of its own. His successor, Gregory XI., in A.D. 1372 increased the number of inquisitors in Germany to five, one in each of the archdioceses of Mainz, Cologne, Salzburg, Magdeburg, and Bremen; while his successor, Boniface IX., in A.D. 1399 added a sixth for North Germany. But these papal bulls would probably, owing to the disinclination of the Germans to the Inquisition, like the attempts of Gregory IX., never have been put in force, had not Charles IV. (§ 110, 4, 5) taken up the matter with an ardent zeal that even went beyond the intentions of Urban and Gregory. During his second journey to Rome, in A.D. 1369, he issued from Lucca four imperial decrees, and in A.D. 1378 from Treves a fifth, by which he granted to the Inquisition throughout Germany all the rights, powers, and privileges which it had anywhere, and required that all civil and ecclesiastical authorities, under pain of severest penalties and confiscation of all their goods, should support the Inquisition in its search for heretics and in its discovery and burning of all religious writings in the vulgar tongue composed and circulated by laymen or semi-laymen.--The =Spanish Inquisition= was re-established under Ferdinand and Isabella in A.D. 1480, and thoroughly organized by the grand-inquisitor Torquemada, A.D. 1483-1499. One of the first inquisitors appointed by him in A.D. 1484 was an Augustinian, Pedro Arbires, who amid the most unrelenting cruelties performed the duties of his office with such zeal, that in sixteen months many hundreds had perished at the stake;