The south of France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries became a scene of blood, the immediate cause of which was the erections of the "tribunals of faith," better known to us as a secret society called "THE INQUISITION." Innocent III., who ascended the papal chair in 1198, conceived the project thereof, to extirpate the rebellious members of the church--the Albigenses--and to extend the papal power at the expense of the bishops: and his successors carried out his plan. This tribunal, "_the holy office_" or "inquisition" (sanctum officium), was under the immediate direction of the papal chair: it was to seek out heretics and adherents of false doctrines, and to pronounce its dreadful sentence against their fortune, their honor, and _their lives_, without appeal. The process of this tribunal differed entirely from that of the civil courts. The informer was not only concealed, but rewarded by the inquisition. The accused was obliged to be his own accuser. Suspected persons were secretly seized and thrown into prison. No better instruments could be found for inquisitors than the mendicant orders of monks, particularly the Franciscans and Dominicans, whom the pope employed to destroy the heretics, and inquire into the conduct of bishops. Pope Gregory IX., in 1233, completed the design of his predecessors, and, as they had succeeded in giving these inquisitorial monks, who were wholly dependent on the pope, an unlimited power, and in rendering the interference {80} of the temporal magistrates only nominal, the inquisition was successively introduced into several parts of Italy, and into some provinces of France; its power in the latter country being more limited than in the former. The tribunals of faith were admitted into Spain in the middle of the thirteenth century, but a firm opposition was made to them, particularly in Castile and Leon, and the bishops there maintained their exclusive jurisdiction in spiritual matters. For a time this power waned, when, afterward in the fifteenth century, it assumed an aspect truly alarming. Three religions then prevailed in Spain: Christians, Jews, and Mahommedans. The power of the nobles was a bar, at the same time, to the absolute power of Ferdinand and Isabella. But this engine of religious tyranny accomplished their ends, and became the most powerful instrument of their policy. Owing to the fanatical preaching of Fernando Nunez, who taught the persecution of the Jews to be a good work, popular tumults prevailed, in which this people was plundered, robbed, and murdered. Cardinal Mendoza, at Seville, in 1477, condemned and punished many who persevered in opposition to the doctrines of his faith.