The rules of torture were carefully drawn out:  the prisoner was stripped naked, the hair cut off, and the body then laid on the rack and bound down; the right, then the left, foot tightly bound and strained by cords; the right and left arm stretched; the fleshy part of the arm compressed with fine cords; all the cords tightened together by one turn; a second and third turn of the same kind:  beyond this, with the rack, women were not to be tortured; with men a fourth turn was employed.  These directions were written in a Manual, used by the Grand Inquisitor of Seville as late as A.D. 1820.  An analysis is given by Dr. Rule, in his “History of the Inquisition,” Appendix to vol. i., pp. 339-359, ed. 1874.  Then we hear, elsewhere, of torture by roasting the feet, by pulleys, by red-hot pincers—­in short, by every abominable instrument of cruelty which men, inspired by religion, could conceive.  Let the student take Llorente and Dr. Rule alone, and he will learn enough of the Inquisition horrors to make him shudder at the sight of a cross—­at the name of Christianity.

Llorente gives the most revolting details of the torture of Jean de Salas, at Valladolid, A.D. 1527, and this one case may serve as a specimen of Inquisition work during these bloodstained centuries.  Stripped to his shirt, he was placed on the chevalet (a narrow frame, wherein the body was laid, with no support save a pole across the middle), and his feet were raised higher than his head; tightly twisted cords cut through his flesh, and were twisted yet tighter and tighter as the torture proceeded; fine linen, thrust into his mouth and throat, added to the unnatural position, made breathing well nigh impossible, and on the linen water slowly fell, drop by drop, from a suspended vessel over his head, till every struggling breath stained the cloth with blood (see “Histoire critique de l’Inquisition d’Espagne,” t.  II., pp. 20-23, ed. 1818).  This Spanish Inquisition, during its existence, punished heretics as follows:—­

Burnt alive .......................  31,912

Burnt in effigy....................  17,659

Heavily punished................... 291,450
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Total 341,021

(Ibid, t.  IV. p. 271).  Add to this list the ruined families, some of whose members fell victims to the Inquisition, and then—­remembering that Spain was but one of the countries which it desolated—­let the student judge of the huge total of human agony caused by this awful institution.  Nor must it be forgotten that its dungeons did not gape only for those who opposed the pretensions of Rome; men of science, philosophers, thinkers, all these were its foes; Llorente gives a list of no less than 119 learned and eminent scientific men who, in Spain alone, fell under the scourge of the Inquisition (see t.  II. pp. 417-483).

One special crime of the Church in this age must not be forgotten:  her treatment of Roger Bacon.  Roger Bacon was a Franciscan monk, who not only studied Greek, Hebrew, and Oriental languages, but who devoted himself to natural science, and made many discoveries in astronomy, chemistry, optics, and mathematics.  He is said to have discovered gunpowder, and he proposed a reform of the calendar similar to that introduced by Gregory XIII., 300 years later.  His reward was to be hooted at as a magician, and to be confined in a dungeon for many years.