The havoc of war and the massacres due to sudden eruptions of popular fury have frequently surpassed these hecatombs in number of victims. But in sustained and cold-blooded ferocity authentic history contains nothing, and feverish fiction little, that can compare with one of them. And yet the Inquisitors were men--no doubt honest, pious, and honourable men, most of them; some perhaps amiable, nay even charitable men. Unfortunately they imagined themselves to be something more--ministers of Heaven’s will on earth. It was this fatal certainty of the righteousness of their cause that turned the Inquisitors into monsters. Man would less often become a fiend if he never mistook himself for an angel. Torquemada himself, who has been execrated through the ages as the red-handed protagonist of the appalling tragedy, hardly deserves his great reputation. There is little originality in his crime. He was not more cruel, but only more conscientious, courageous, and consistent than millions of the men of his generation and creed. When in the nineteenth century we find Cardinal Newman--an English gentleman and scholar--preaching that “To spare a heresiarch is a false and dangerous pity. It is to endanger the souls of thousands, and it is uncharitable towards himself,”[72] can we wonder that a Spanish priest should have acted on that principle in the fifteenth century? Strong convictions do not, of course, excuse unscrupulous and unrelenting brutality, but they explain it. Given such a conviction, persecution becomes a duty and toleration a sin. If the persecutor cannot command our respect, he is at least entitled to our compassion. Torquemada deserves our pity almost as much as his victims. The drama in which he distinguished himself was an example of that highest kind of tragedy which needs no villain. Faith had spun the plot; chance supplied the actor. Year after year the hunt went on. But, in spite of Torquemada’s unremitting endeavours, few Israelites hesitated in the option between the font and the stake offered to them. Few chose the first, and, even with these, conversion was merely a device for escape from death. Inquisitors come and Inquisitors go, but Israel endures for ever; and the hope of a better future supplied an indomitable patience with the present. Disappointment infuriated the persecutors, but failed to increase the ranks of the proselytes. It was in vain that ancient calumnies were revived, and fresh ones invented. It was in vain that the spies redoubled their activity, and the judges strained their murderous ingenuity. It was in vain that a tempest of execration and derision raged round the children of Israel. Torquemada and his accomplices were at last forced to recognise the fact that Judaism could not be extirpated, save by the extirpation of the Jews. And forthwith all his influence was brought to bear on persuading the sovereigns to drive the unclean and accursed race out of the country.