The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 2

IX. Power of Persecution Employed Anew

Under Pius IV (1559-1565), Catholicism reached a low ebb. Everywhere it was on the defensive, as one stronghold after another had passed into the hands of a victorious Protestantism. Pius V (1566-1572) became the first fighting pope of the new Roman Catholicism. Behind him was the reorganization effected by the Council of Trent; the revived Inquisition ³⁴ and the Congregation of the Index; and, above all, the Company of Jesus. Catholicism once more boldly assumed the offensive. ³⁵ PFF2 479.2

The Papacy now put forth strenuous efforts to restrict the Reformation to the narrowest limits, and, as far as possible, to recover her lost ground. This was carried out not only by polemics and attack and by missions to the heathen but by the persecution and suppression of Protestantism. Three of the weapons of reaction Rome drew from Spain, which still retained the spirit of the Crusades—the Jesuits, their counterinterpretation of prophecy, and the Inquisition, which was revived in 1542, as the tribunal for the whole church. ³⁶ PFF2 479.3

1. VAST SCOPE OF REPRESSIVE MEASURES

The great papal reaction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included, according to Guinness, the founding of the Order of the Jesuits; the Marian persecutions in England; the wars in France against the Huguenots; the burning of heretics by the Inquisition in Spain; the decrees and anathemas of the Council of Trent; the attempt of the Duke of Alva to exterminate the Protestants in the Netherlands, with the slaughter of 18,000 in six years; the fearful Massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572; and the invasion of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Religious fanaticism, flamed to white heat by these controversies, can probably be traced as a motive for the Jesuit attempts on the life of Queen Elizabeth, the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, the outrages of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), the massacre of 20,000 Protestants in Magdeburg in 1631, and the barbarities of Count Tilly in Saxony, as well as the massacre of 40,000 Protestants in Ireland in 1641 and the wholesale slaughter of the Waldenses in 1655. ³⁷ PFF2 479.4

Picture 2: PAPAL MEDAL COMMEMORATES ST. BARTHOLOMEW’S MASSACRE
Pope Gregory XIII memorialized the dread St. bartholomew’s massacre of 1572, with a representation, on the reverse side of the medal, of the “staughter of the huguenots” (ugonottorum strages) (reproduced in insert), to commemorate the slaying of 50,000 of these french protestants
Page 480

By these acts the Papacy stood revealed again as the persecuting Antichrist. The ecclesiastical woman was riding hard upon the civil beast, with its claws and iron teeth in action, and strong horns, and its ferocity mounting. PFF2 480.1

2. RELENTLESSNESS OF THE INQUISITION

The Inquisition was the punishment of spiritual or ecclesiastical offenses by physical pains or penalties. The principle had existed since Constantine’s day. In medieval times it was employed by individual bishops, the church pointing out the heretics and the state punishing them. In 1203 Innocent III censured the indifference of the bishops and appointed the Abbot of Citeaux his delegate in matters of heresy, giving him power both to judge and to punish heresy. This was the beginning of the Inquisition as a separate institution, and as managed by the Dominican and Franciscan orders. ³⁸ PFF2 480.2

The Spanish Inquisition arose in the closing decades of the fifteenth century. It was a peculiar kind of Inquisition—under royal control, with the sovereigns appointing the Inquisitors, and the fines and confiscations flowing into the royal treasury. The first burning under its provisions took place in 1481, under the relentless inquisitor—general Torquemada. This was carried out under the terms of thirteenth-century decretals, which made the state subservient to the Holy Office and rendered any suspect or heretic incapable of public office. ³⁹ PFF2 481.1

Its close relation to civil authority, its terrible secrecy, and its relentlessness made it a dreadful curse to unhappy Spain. In a century and a third 3,000,000 are said to have perished in that land. Llorente has calculated that during the eighteen years of Torquemada’s presidency 114,000 persons were accused, of whom 10,220 were burned alive, and 97,000 were condemned to perpetual imprisonment or public penitence. This was the instrument used to bring the Spanish people into conformity with the Spanish Counter Reformation, and to crush the growing Protestantism of the Low Countries, Corsica, and Sardinia.” ⁴⁰ PFF2 481.2