When the Inquisition was fully developed it covered Western Christendom with a net from the meshes of which it was difficult for a heretic to escape.  The inquisitors in the various kingdoms co-operated, and communicated information; there was “a chain of tribunals throughout continental Europe.”  England stood outside the system, but from the age of Henry IV and Henry V the government repressed heresy by the stake under a special statute (A.D. 1400; repealed 1533; revived under Mary; finally repealed in 1676).

In its task of imposing unity of belief the Inquisition was most successful in Spain.  Here towards the end of the fifteenth century a system was instituted which had peculiarities of its own and was very jealous of

[60] Roman interference.  One of the achievements of the Spanish Inquisition (which was not abolished till the nineteenth century) was to expel the Moriscos or converted Moors, who retained many of their old Mohammedan opinions and customs.  It is also said to have eradicated Judaism and to have preserved the country from the zeal of Protestant missionaries.  But it cannot be proved that it deserves the credit of having protected Spain against Protestantism, for it is quite possible that if the seeds of Protestant opinion had been sown they would, in any case, have fallen dead on an uncongenial soil.  Freedom of thought however was entirely suppressed.

One of the most efficacious means for hunting down heresy was the “Edict of Faith,” which enlisted the people in the service of the Inquisition and required every man to be an informer.  From time to time a certain district was visited and an edict issued commanding those who knew anything of any heresy to come forward and reveal it, under fearful penalties temporal and spiritual.  In consequence, no one was free from the suspicion of his neighbours or even of his own family.  “No more ingenious device has been invented to subjugate a whole population, to paralyze its intellect, and to reduce it

[61] to blind obedience.  It elevated delation to the rank of high religious duty.”

The process employed in the trials of those accused of heresy in Spain rejected every reasonable means for the ascertainment of truth.  The prisoner was assumed to be guilty, the burden of proving his innocence rested on him; his judge was virtually his prosecutor.  All witnesses against him, however infamous, were admitted.  The rules for allowing witnesses for the prosecution were lax; those for rejecting witnesses for the defence were rigid.  Jews, Moriscos, and servants could give evidence against the prisoner but not for him, and the same rule applied to kinsmen to the fourth degree.  The principle on which the Inquisition proceeded was that better a hundred innocent should suffer than one guilty person escape.  Indulgences were granted to any one who contributed wood to the pile.  But the tribunal of the Inquisition did not itself condemn to the stake, for the Church must not be guilty of the shedding of blood.  The ecclesiastical judge pronounced the prisoner to be a heretic of whose conversion there was no hope, and handed him over ("relaxed” him was the official term) to the secular authority, asking and charging the magistrate “to treat him benignantly and mercifully.”  But this