Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/370

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360 Reviews of Books as well. This was " material " heresy, voluntary and pertinacious error being " formal " heresy. But formal heresy comprised not only " ex- ternal ", which is manifested by word or act in private or in public, but " internal ", which is secretly entertained and never manifested at all. Not all, however, were ready to admit its exclusive jurisdiction as to heresy, and Mr. Lea illustrates at much length its controversies with the regular orders, with the bishops, and with the papal see, pausing for a chapter to tell of the " edict of faith ", by which every Spaniard was urged and equipped to become an informer. " No more ingenious device ", thinks Mr. Lea, " has been invented to subjugate a whole population, to paralyze its intellect and to reduce it to blind obedience." Under the organization of the Inquisition he treats not only its salaried officers — the Inquisitor-general and the Supreme Tribunal at its head and the permanent members of its local tribunals — but the vast army of unsalaried officials, into whose ranks by pride or perquisite was tempted nearly all the talent and energy of Spain : the calificadores, or censors, whose unpaid functions enlisted and burdened all orthodox scholarship, the honorary consultors, the well-feed commissioners, the host of officious familiars. A chapter deals with the peculiarly Spanish notion of limpiesa, or purity of blood, which made it infamy to be de- scended, no matter in how slight degree, from Jew, Moor, or heretic, and which, by thus making the Inquisition the custodian of the national vanity, put at its mercy the purse and the r.elf-respect of every Spaniard. A sordid side of the Inquisition's story is that laid bare by the com- mercial experience and insight of Mr. Lea in his chapters on its re- sources. Studying with him the confiscations and fines by which Spanish royalty knew how so opportunely to meet its own financial emergencies, it is not always easy to share his generous faith in the pre-eminence of piety among its motives. But the portion of the present volume which is likely to be of widest interest is that dealing with the practice of the Inquisition. Here less than elsewhere are manuscript sources the basis. The old printed manuals of procedure find here their use; and in a note (pp. 475-476) Mr. Lea gives a useful bibliography of these. It may be worth while to add that the original impression of Alberghini's Manuale is of Palermo, 1642, not of Sara- gossa, 1671, and that the treatises of Simancas may be found in his collected Opera as well as in the separate editions. Relentless as is Mr. Lea's analysis of the cruel unfairness of the Inquisition's methods, he feels constrained to admit their efficacy (p. 482) ; The situation of the accused, in fact, was helpless. Standing up alone before the stern admonitions of the trained and pitiless judge; brooding in his cell, cut off from all external communication, during weeks or months of interval between his audiences ; apparently for- gotten, but living in the constant uncertainty of being at any moment summoned to appear; torturing his mind as to the impression which his utterances might have made, or the deductions drawn from his admis-