r heresy was allied to sedition.

It must be remembered that in those days heresy, especially if outspoken,
was regarded not only as an offence against religion, but also as a crime
against the state, and was punished accordingly. This condition of things
was not confined to Catholic Spain, but prevailed across the sea in
Protestant England. We find Henry VIII. and his successors pursuing the
same policy in Great Britain toward their Catholic subjects and punishing
Catholicism as a crime against the state, just as Islamism and Judaism
were proscribed in Spain.

It was, therefore, rather a royal and political than an ecclesiastical
institution. The King nominated the Inquisitors, who were equally composed
of lay and clerical officials. He dismissed them at will. From the King,
and not from the Pope, they derived their jurisdiction, and into the
King's coffers, and not into the Pope's, went all the emoluments accruing
from fines and confiscations. In a word, the authority of the Inquisition
began and ended with the crown.

In confirmation of these assertions I shall quote from Ranke, a German
Protestant historian, who cannot be suspected of partiality to the
Catholic Church. "In the first place," says this author, "the Inquisitors
were royal officers. The Kings had the right of appointing and dismissing
them.... The courts of the Inquisition were subject, like other
magistracies, to royal visitors. 'Do you not know,' said the King (to
Ximenes), 'that if this tribunal possesses jurisdiction, it is from the
King it derives it?'

"In the second place, all the profit of the confiscations by this court
accrued to the King. These were carried out in a very unsparing manner.
Though the _fueros_ (privileges) of Aragon forbade the King to confiscate
the property of his convicted subjects, he deemed himself exalted above
the law in matters pertaining to this court.... The proceeds of these
confiscations formed a sort of regular income for the royal exchequer. It
was even believed, and asserted from the beginning, that the Kings had
been moved to establish and countenance this tribunal more by their
hankering after the wealth it confiscated than by motives of piety.

"In the third place, it was the Inquisition, and the Inquisition alone,
that completely shut out all extraneous interference with the state. The
sovereign had now at his disposal a tribunal from which no grandee, no
Archbishop, could withdraw himself. As Charles kne