The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Complete (1555-66)Motley, John Lothrop
History
The Rise of the Dutch Republic — Complete (1555-66)
Motley, John Lothrop
Netherlands -- Church history; Netherlands -- History -- Eighty Years' War, 1568-1648
of spirituality and temporality belonging both to the bishops and to the
commissioners of the Roman see." The papal and episcopal establishments,
in co-operation with the edicts, were enough, if thoroughly exercised and
completely extended. The edicts alone were sufficient. "The edicts and
the inquisition are one and the same thing," said the Prince of Orange.
The circumstance, that the civil authorities were not as entirely
superseded by the Netherland, as by the Spanish system, was rather a
difference of form than of fact. We have seen that the secular officers
of justice were at the command of the inquisitors. Sheriff, gaoler,
judge, and hangman, were all required, under the most terrible penalties,
to do their bidding. The reader knows what the edicts were. He knows also
the instructions to the corps of papal inquisitors, delivered by Charles
and Philip: He knows that Philip, both in person and by letter, had done
his utmost to sharpen those instructions, during the latter portion of
his sojourn in the Netherlands. Fourteen new bishops, each with two
special inquisitors under him, had also been appointed to carry out the
great work to which the sovereign had consecrated his existence. The
manner in which the hunters of heretics performed their office has been
exemplified by slightly sketching the career of a single one of the
sub-inquisitors, Peter Titelmann. The monarch and his minister scarcely
needed, therefore, to transplant the peninsular exotic. Why should they
do so? Philip, who did not often say a great deal in a few words, once
expressed the whole truth of the matter in a single sentence: "Wherefore
introduce the Spanish inquisition?" said he; "the inquisition of the
Netherlands is much more pitiless than that of Spain."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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