satisfied with adding a multitude of new rites and inventions, by way of ornaments, to this superstitious institution; but finding by experience that it added to the lustre and augmented the revenues of the Roman church, they rendered its return more frequent, and fixed its celebration to every five and twentieth year.*

CHAPTER V.

CONCERNING THE DIVISIONS AND HERESIES THAT TROUBLED THE CHURCH DURING THIS CENTURY.

1. We have no account of any new sects that arose among the Greeks during this century. Those of the Nestorians and Jacobites, which were settled in and Jacobites.

Nestorians

lent Lettres de M. Chais sur les Jubiles, that are mentioned more at large in the following note, tom. i. p. 53.

x The various writers, who have treated of the institution of the Roman jubilee, are enumerated by Jo. Albert Fabricius in his Bibliogr. Antiquar. p. 316. Among the authors that may be added to this list, there is one whom we think it necessary to mention particularly, viz. the reverend Charles Chais, whose Lettres Historiques et Dogmatiques sur les Jubiles et des Indulgences, were published at the Hague in three volumes 8vo. in the year 1751.

These letters of Mr. Chais, minister of the French church at the Hague, and well known in the republic of letters, contain the most full and accurate account that has been ever given of the institution of the jubilee, and of the rise, progress, abuses, and enormities of the infamous traffic of indulgences. This account is judiciously collected from the best authors of antiquity, and from several curious records that have escaped the researches of other writers; it is also interspersed with curious, and sometimes ludicrous anecdotes, that render the work equally productive of entertainment and instruction. In the first volume of these Letters, the learned author lays open the nature and origin of the institution of the jubilee; he proves it to have been a human invention, which owed its rise to the avarice and ambition of the popes, and its credit to the ignorance and superstition of the people, and whose celebration was absolutely unknown before the thirteenth century, which is the true date of its origin. He takes notice of the various changes it underwent with respect to the time of its celebration, the various colours with which the ambitious pontiff's covered in order to render it respectable and alluring in the eyes of the multitude; ond exposes these illusions by many convincing arguments, whose gravity is seasoned with an agreeable and temperate mixture of decent raillery. He proves, with the utmost evidence, that the papal jubilee is an imitation of the secular games, that were celebrated with such pomp in pagan Rome. He points out the gross contradictions that reign in the bulls of the different popes, with respect to the nature of this institution, and the time of its celebration. Nor does he pass over in silence the infamous traffic of indulgences, the worldly pomp and splendour, the crimes, debaucheries, and disorders of every kind, that were observable at the return of each jubilee year. He lays also before the reader an historical view of all the jubilees that were celebrated from the pontificate of Boniface VIII. in the year 1300, to that of Benedict XIV. in 1750, with an entertaining account of the most remarkable adventures that happened among the pilgrims who repaired to Rome on these occasions. The second and third volumes of these interesting Letters treat of the indulgences that are administered in the church of Rome. The reader will find here their nature and origin explained, the doctrine of the Roman catholic divines relating to them stated and refuted, the history of this impious traffic accurately laid down, and its enormities and pernicious effects circumstantially exposed with learning, perspicuity, and candour.

of the Roman

pontiffs with various sects, whom they branded indiscriminately

the remoter regions of the east, and who equalled the Greeks in their aversion to the rites and jurisdiction of the Latin church, were frequently solicited, by the ministry of Franciscan and Dominican missionaries sent among them by the popes, to receive the Roman yoke. In the year 1246, Innocent IV. used his utmost efforts to bring both these sects under his dominion; and, in the year 1278, terms of accommodation were proposed by Nicolas IV. to the Nestorians, and particularly to that branch of the sect which resided in the northern parts of Asia. The leading men both among the Nestorians and Jacobites seemed to give ear to the proposals that were made to them, and were by no means averse to a reconciliation with the church of Rome; but the prospect of peace soon vanished, and a variety of causes concurred to prolong the rupture. II. During the whole course of this century, the Roman pontiffs carried on the most barbarous and inhuThe contests man persecution against those whom they branded with the denomination of heretics, i. e. against all those who called their pretended authority and jurisdiction in question, or taught doctrines different from those which were adopted and propagated by the church of Rome. For the sects of the Catharists, Waldenses, Petrobrussians, &c. gathered strength from day to day, spread imperceptibly throughout all Europe, assembled numerous congregations in Italy, France, Spain, and Germany, and formed by degrees such a powerful party as rendered them formidable to the Roman pontiffs, and menaced the papal jurisdiction with a fatal revolution. To the ancient sects new factions were added, which, though they differed from each other in various respects, yet were all unanimously agreed in this one point, viz. "That the public and established religion was a motley system of errors and superstition; and that the dominion which the popes had usurped over Christians, as also the authority they exercised in religious matters, were unlawful and tyrannical." Such were the notions propagated by the sectaries, who refuted the superstitions and impostures of the times by arguments drawn from the Holy Scriptures, and whose declamations against the power,

with the name of heretics.

y Odor. Renaldus, Annal. Eccles. tom. xiii. ad A. 1247, § xxxii. and tom, xv. ad 1. 1303, § xxii. and ad A. 1304, § xxiii. Matth. Paris, Hist. Major, p. 372.

the opulence, and the vices of the pontiff's and clergy were extremely agreeable to many princes and civil magistrates, who groaned under the usurpations of the sacred order. The pontiffs therefore considered themselves as obliged to have recourse to new and extraordinary methods of defeating and subduing enemies, who, both by their number and their rank, were every way proper to fill them with terror.

Narbonne Gaul.

III. The number of these dissenters from the church of Rome, was nowhere greater than in Narbonne The rise of the Gaul, and the countries adjacent, where they are were received and protected, in a singular manner, by Raymond VI. earl of Toulouse, and other persons of the highest distinction; and where the bishops, either through humanity or indolence, were so negligent and remiss in the prosecution of heretics, that the latter, laying aside all their fears, formed settlements, and multiplied prodigiously from day to day. Innocent III. was soon informed of all these proceedings; and about the commencement of this century sent legates extraordinary into the southern provinces of France to do what the bishops had left undone, and to extirpate heresy, in all its various forms and modifications, without being at all scrupulous in using such methods as might be necessary to ef fect this salutary purpose. The persons charged with this ghostly commission were Rainier, a Cistercian monk, Pierre de Castelnau, archdeacon of Maguelonne, who became also afterward a Cistercian friar. These eminent missionaries were followed by several others, among whom was the famous Spaniard Dominic, founder of the order of preachers, who, returning from Rome in the year 1206, fell in with these delegates, embarked in their cause, and laboured both by his exhortations and actions in the extirpation of heresy. These spiritual champions, who engaged in this expedition upon the sole authority of the pope, without either asking the advice or demanding the succours of the bishops, and who inflicted capital punish

b

a

z That part of France, which in ancient times, comprehended the provinces of Savoy, Dauphine, Provence, and Languedoc.

a Instead of Rainier, other historians mention one Raoul, or Ralph, as the associate of Pierre de Castelnau. See Fleury, Histor. Eccles. livr. lxxvi. § xii.

b The greatest part of the Roman writers consider Pierre de Castelnau as the first inquisitor. It will appear hereafter in what sense this assertion may be admitted. For an account of this legate, see the Acta Sanctor. tom. i. Martii, p. 411.

ment upon such of the heretics as they could not convert by reason and argument were distinguished in common discourse by the title of Inquisitors, and from them the formidable and odious tribunal called the Inquisition derived its original.

Inquisition

settled.

Iv. When this new set of heresy hunters had executed their commission, and purged the provinces to The form of the which they were sent of the greatest part of the enemies of the Roman faith, the pontiffs were so sensible of their excellent services, that they established missionaries of a like nature, or, in other words, placed inquisitors in almost every city whose inhabitants had the misfortune to be suspected of heresy, notwithstanding the reluctance which the people showed to this new institution, and the violence with which they frequently expelled, and sometimes massacred, these bloody officers of the popish hierarchy. The council held at Toulouse, in the year 1229, by Romanus, cardinal of St. Angelo, and pope's legate, went still farther, and erected in every city a council of inquisitors consisting of one priest and three laymen." This institution was however superseded in the year 1233, by Gregory IX. who intrusted the Dominicans, or preaching friars, with the important commission of discovering and bringing to judgment the heretics that were lurking in France, and in a formal epistle discharged the bishops from the burden of that painful office. Immediately after this, the bishop of Tournay, who was the pope's legate in France, began to execute this new resolution, by appointing Pierre Cellan, and Guillaume Arnaud, inquisitors of heretical pravity at Toulouse, and afterward proceeded in every city, where the Dominicans had a convent, to constitute officers of the same nature, chosen from among the monks of that celebrated order. From this period we are to date the commencement of the dreadful tribu

Pc The term of heresy hunters, for which the translator is responsible, will not seem absurd, when it is known, that the missionaries, who were sent into the provinces of France to extirpate heresy, and the inquisitors who succeeded them, were bound by an oath, not only to seek for heretics in towns, houses, cellars, and other lurking places, but also in woods, caves, fields, &c.

d See Harduini Concilia, tom. vii. p. 175.

e Bernhard Guidonis in Chronico Pontif. MS. ap. Jac. Echardum Scriptor. Prædicator. tom. i. p. 88. Percini Historia Inquisit. Tholosant, subjoined to his Historia Conventuz FF. Prædicat. Tholosana, 1693, in Svo. Histoire Generale de Languedoc, tom. iii. p. 394, 395.

f Echard and Percinus loc. citat.

nal of the Inquisition, which in this and the following ages subdued such a prodigious multitude of heretics, part of whom were converted to the church by terror, and the rest committed to the flames without mercy. For the Dominicans erected, first at Toulouse, and afterward at Carcassone and other places, a tremendous court, beföre which were summoned not only heretics and persons suspected of heresy, but likewise all who were accused of magic, sorcery, Judaism, witchcraft, and other crimes of that kind. This tribunal, in process of time, was erected in the other countries of Europe, though not every where with the same success,"

v. The method of proceeding in this court of inquisition was at first simple, and almost in every respect similar to that which was observed in the ordinary courts of jus

g The accounts we have here given of the first rise of the Inquisition, though founded upon the most unexceptionable testimonies and the most authentic records, are yet very different from those that are to be found in most authors. Certain learned men tell us, that the Tribunal of the Inquisition was the invention of St. Dominic, and was first erected by him in the city of Toulouse; that he, of consequence, was the first inquisitor : that the year of its institution is indeed uncertain; but that it was undoubtedly confirmed in a solemn manner, by Innocent III. in the council of the Lateran, in the year 1215. See Jo. Alb. Fabricius, in his Lux Evangelii toti orbi exoriens, p. 569. Phil. Limborchi Historia Inquisit. lib. i. c. x. p. 39, and the other writers mentioned by Fabricius. I will not affirm, that the writers who give this account of the matter have advanced all this without authority; but this I will venture to say, that the authors whom they have taken for their guides, are not of the first rate in point of merit and credibility. Limborch, whose History of the Inquisition is looked upon as a most important and capital work, is generally followed by modern writers in their accounts of that odious tribunal. But however laudable that historian may have been in point of fidelity and diligence, it is certain, that he was but little acquainted with the ecclesiastical history of the middle age; that he drew his materials, not from the true and original sources, but from writers of a second class, and thus has fallen, in the course of his history, into various mistakes. His account of the origin of the Inquisition is undoubtedly false; nor does that which is given by many other writers approach nearer to the truth. The circumstances of this account, which I have mentioned in the beginning of this note, are more especially destitute of all foundation. Many of the Dominicans, who, in our times have presided in the court of Inquisition, and have extolled the sanctity of that pious institution, deny, at the same time, that Dominic was its founder, as also that he was the first inquisitor, nay, that he was an inquisitor at all. They go still farther, and affirm, that the court of Inquisition was not erected during the life of St. Dominic. Nor is all this advanced inconsiderately, as every impartial inquirer into the proofs they allege will easily perceive. Nevertheless, the question, Whether or not St. Dominic was an inquisitor, seems to be merely a dispute about words, and depends entirely upon the different significa tions of which the term inquisitor is susceptible. That word, according to its original meaning, signified a person invested with the commission and authority of the Roman pontiff to extirpate heresy, and oppose its abettors, but not clothed with any judicial power. But it soon acquired a different meaning, and signified a person appointed by the Roman pontiff to proceed judicially against heretics and such as were suspected of heresy, to pronounce sentence according to their respective cases, and to deliver over to the secular arm such as persisted obstinately in their errors. In this latter sense Dominic was not an inquisitor; since it is well known that there were no papal judges of this nature before the pontificate of Gregory IX. but he was undoubtedly an inquisitor in the original sense that was attached to that term