The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1561-62 | Page 3

he was thus accoutred, and just as he was leaving his cell, a
breakfast, consisting of every delicacy, was placed before him, and he
was urged, with ironical politeness, to satisfy his hunger. He was then
led forth into the public square. The procession was formed with great
pomp. It was headed by the little school children, who were
immediately followed by the band of prisoners, each attired in the
horrible yet ludicrous manner described. Then came the magistrates
and nobility, the prelates and other dignitaries of the Church: the holy
inquisitors, with their officials and familiars, followed, all on horseback,
with the blood-red flag of the "sacred office" waving above them,
blazoned upon either side with the portraits of Alexander and of
Ferdinand, the pair of brothers who had established the institution.
After the procession came the rabble. When all had reached the
neighborhood of the scaffold, and had been arranged in order, a sermon
was preached to the assembled multitude. It was filled with laudations
of the inquisition, and with blasphemous revilings against the
condemned prisoners. Then the sentences were read to the individual
victims. Then the clergy chanted the fifty-first psalm, the whole vast
throng uniting in one tremendous miserere. If a priest happened to be
among the culprits, he was now stripped of the canonicals which he had
hitherto worn; while his hands, lips, and shaven crown were scraped
with a bit of glass, by which process the oil of his consecration was
supposed to be removed. He was then thrown into the common herd.
Those of the prisoners who were reconciled, and those whose execution
was not yet appointed, were now separated from the others. The rest
were compelled to mount a scaffold, where the executioner stood ready
to conduct them to the fire. The inquisitors then delivered them into his
hands, with an ironical request that he would deal with them tenderly,
and without blood-letting or injury. Those who remained steadfast to
the last were then burned at the stake; they who in the last extremity
renounced their faith were strangled before being thrown into the
flames. Such was the Spanish inquisition--technically--so called: It was,
according' to the biographer of Philip the Second, a "heavenly remedy,
a guardian angel of Paradise, a lions' den in which Daniel and other just
men could sustain no injury, but in which perverse sinners were torn to
pieces." It was a tribunal superior to all human law, without appeal, and

certainly owing no allegiance to the powers of earth or heaven. No rank,
high or humble, was safe from its jurisdiction. The royal family were
not sacred, nor, the pauper's hovel. Even death afforded no protection.
The holy office invaded the prince in his palace and the beggar in his
shroud. The corpses of dead heretics were mutilated and burned. The
inquisitors preyed upon carcases and rifled graves. A gorgeous festival
of the holy office had, as we have seen, welcomed Philip to his native
land. The news of these tremendous autos-da fe, in which so many
illustrious victims had been sacrificed before their sovereign's eyes, had
reached the Netherlands almost simultaneously with the bulls creating
the new bishoprics in the provinces. It was not likely that the measure
would be rendered more palatable by this intelligence of the royal
amusements.
The Spanish inquisition had never flourished in any soil but that of the
peninsula. It is possible that the King and Granvelle were sincere in
their protestations of entertaining no intention of introducing it into the
Netherlands, although the protestations of such men are entitled to but
little weight. The truth was, that the inquisition existed already in the
provinces. It was the main object of the government to confirm and
extend the institution. The episcopal inquisition, as we have already
seen, had been enlarged by the enormous increase in the number of
bishops, each of whom was to be head inquisitor in his diocese, with
two special inquisitors under him. With this apparatus and with the
edicts, as already described, it might seem that enough had already
been done for the suppression of heresy. But more had been done. A
regular papal inquisition also existed in the Netherlands. This
establishment, like the edicts, was the gift of Charles the Fifth. A word
of introduction is here again necessary--nor let the reader deem that too
much time is devoted to this painful subject. On the contrary, no
definite idea can be formed as to the character of the Netherland revolt
without a thorough understanding of this great cause--the religious
persecution in which the country had lived, breathed, and had its being,
for half a century, and in which, had the rebellion not broken out at last,
the population must have been either exterminated or entirely embruted.
The few