The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1561-62 | Page 5

that is to say, with death,
by sword or fire. If the prisoner were an ecclesiastic, the inquisitor was
to deal summarily with the case "without noise or form in the
process--selecting an imperial councillor to render the sentence of
absolution or condemnation." If the prisoner were a lay person, the

inquisitor was to order his punishment, according to the edicts, by the
council of the province. In case of lay persons suspected but not
convicted of heresy, the inquisitor was to proceed to their chastisement,
"with the advice of a counsellor or some other expert." In conclusion,
the Emperor ordered the "inquisitors to make it known that they were
not doing their own work, but that of Christ, and to persuade all
persons of this fact." This clause of their instructions seemed difficult
of accomplishment, for no reasonable person could doubt that Christ,
had he re-appeared in human form, would have been instantly crucified
again, or burned alive in any place within the dominions of Charles or
Philip. The blasphemy with which the name of Jesus was used by such
men to sanctify all these nameless horrors, is certainly not the least of
their crimes.
In addition to these instructions, a special edict had been issued on the
26th April, 1550, according to which all judicial officers, at the
requisition of the inquisitors, were to render them all assistance in the
execution of their office, by arresting and detaining all persons
suspected of heresy, according to the instructions issued to said
inquisitors; and this, notwithstanding any privileges or charters to the
contrary. In short, the inquisitors were not subject to the civil authority,
but the civil authority to them. The imperial edict empowered them "to
chastise, degrade, denounce, and deliver over heretics to the secular
judges for punishment; to make use of gaols, and to make arrests,
without ordinary warrant, but merely with notice given to a single
counselor, who was obliged to give sentence according to their desire,
without application to the ordinary judge."
These instructions to the inquisitors had been renewed and confirmed
by Philip, in the very first month of his reign (28th Nov. 1555). As in
the case of the edicts, it had been thought desirable by Granvelle to
make use of the supposed magic of the Emperor's name to hallow the
whole machinery of persecution. The action of the system during the
greater part of the imperial period had been terrible. Suffered for a time
to languish during the French war, it had lately been renewed with
additional vigor. Among all the inquisitors, the name of Peter
Titelmann was now pre-eminent. He executed his infamous functions
throughout Flanders, Douay, and Tournay, the most thriving and
populous portions of the Netherlands, with a swiftness, precision, and

even with a jocularity which hardly seemed human. There was a kind
of grim humor about the man. The woman who, according to Lear's
fool, was wont to thrust her live eels into the hot paste, "rapping them
o' the coxcombs with a stick and crying reproachfully, Wantons, lie
down!" had the spirit of a true inquisitor. Even so dealt Titelmann with
his heretics writhing on the rack or in the flames. Cotemporary
chronicles give a picture of him as of some grotesque yet terrible goblin,
careering through the country by night or day, alone, on horseback,
smiting the trembling peasants on the head with a great club, spreading
dismay far and wide, dragging suspected persons from their firesides or
their beds, and thrusting them into dungeons, arresting, torturing,
strangling, burning, with hardly the shadow of warrant, information, or
process.
The secular sheriff, familiarly called Red-Rod, from the color of his
wand of office, meeting this inquisitor Titelmann one day upon the
high road, thus wonderingly addressed him--"How can you venture to
go about alone, or at most with an attendant or two, arresting people on
every side, while I dare not attempt to execute my office, except at the
head of a strong force, armed in proof; and then only at the peril of my
life?"
"Ah! Red-Rod," answered Peter, jocosely, "you deal with bad people. I
have nothing to fear, for I seize only the innocent and virtuous, who
make no resistance, and let themselves be taken like lambs."
"Mighty well," said the other; "but if you arrest all the good people and
I all the bad, 'tis difficult to say who in the world is to escape
chastisement." The reply of the inquisitor has not been recorded, but
there is no doubt that he proceeded like a strong man to run his day's
course.
He was the most active of all the agents in the religious persecution at
the epoch of which we are now treating, but he had been inquisitor for
many years. The martyrology of the