ude themselves with the notion that these
fanatic decrees were only intended to inspire terror, not for practical
execution, the sovereign continued to ordain--"to the end that the judges
and officers may have no reason, under pretext that the penalties are too
great and heavy and only devised to terrify delinquents, to punish them
less severely than they deserve--that the culprits be really punished by
the penalties above declared; forbidding all judges to alter or moderate
the penalties in any manner forbidding any one, of whatsoever condition,
to ask of us, or of any one having authority, to grant pardon, or to
present any petition in favor of such heretics, exiles, or fugitives, on
penalty of being declared forever incapable of civil and military office,
and of being, arbitrarily punished besides."

Such were the leading provisions of this famous edict, originally
promulgated in 1550 as a recapitulation and condensation of all the
previous ordinances of the Emperor upon religious subjects. By its style
and title it was a perpetual edict, and, according to one of its clauses,
was to be published forever, once in every six months, in every city and
village of the Netherlands. It had been promulgated at Augsburg, where
the Emperor was holding a diet, upon the 25th of September. Its severity
had so appalled the Dowager Queen of Hungary, that she had made a journey
to Augsburg expressly to procure a mitigation of some of its provisions.
The principal alteration which she was able to obtain of the Emperor was,
however, in the phraseology only. As a concession to popular, prejudice,
the words "spiritual judges" were substituted for "inquisitors" wherever
that expression had occurred in the original draft.

The edict had been re-enacted by the express advice of the Bishop of
Arras, immediately on the accession of Philip: The prelate knew the value
of the Emperor's name; he may have thought, also, that it would be
difficult to increase the sharpness of the ordinances. "I advised the
King," says Granvelle, in a letter written a few years later, "to make no
change in the placards, but to proclaim the text drawn up by the Emperor,
republishing the whole as the King's edict, with express insertion of the
phrase, 'Carolus,' etc. I recommended this lest men should calumniate his
Majesty as wishing to introduce novelties in the matter of religion."

This edict, containing the provisions which have been laid before the
reader, was