the limits of the law. For twenty years or
more their powers seem not to have been well defined. But in 1546 it was
decreed that no sentence whatever could be pronounced by an inquisitor
without the sanction of some member of the provincial council. Thus,
however barbarous the law against heresy, the people of the Netherlands
had this security, that it was only by their own regular courts of
justice that this law was to be interpreted and enforced.[390]

Such were the expedients adopted by Charles the Fifth for the
suppression of heresy in the Netherlands. Notwithstanding the name of
"inquisitors," the new establishment bore faint resemblance to the dread
tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition, with which it has been often
confounded.[391] The Holy Office presented a vast and complicated
machinery, skilfully adapted to the existing institutions of Castile. It
may be said to have formed part of the government itself, and, however
restricted in its original design, it became in time a formidable
political engine, no less than a religious one. The grand-inquisitor was
clothed with an authority before which the monarch himself might
tremble. On some occasions, he even took precedence of the monarch. The
courts of the Inquisition were distributed throughout the country, and
were conducted with a solemn pomp that belonged to no civil tribunal.
Spacious buildings were erected for their accommodation, and the
gigantic prisons of the Inquisition rose up, like impregnable
fortresses, in the principal cities of the kingdom. A swarm of menials
and officials waited to do its bidding. The proudest nobles of the land
held it an honor to serve as familiars of the Holy Office. In the midst
of this external pomp, the impenetrable veil thrown over its proceedings
took strong hold of the imagination, investing the tribunal with a sort
of supernatural terror. An individual disappeared from the busy scenes
of life. No one knew whither he had gone, till he reappeared, clothed in
the fatal garb of the _san benito_, to take part in the tragic spectacle
of an _auto da fe_. This was the great triumph of the Inquisition,
rivalling the ancient Roman triumph in the splendor of the show, and
surpassing it in the solemn and mysterious import of the ceremonial. It
was hailed with enthusiasm by the fanatical Spaniard of that day, who,
in the martyrdom of the infidel, saw only a sacrifice most acceptable to
the Deity. The Inquisition succeeded in Spain, for