ns_, so he
termed these unfortunate Languedocians. Once all were Turks when they
were not Romanists. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, was constrained to
submit. The inhabitants were passed on the edge of the sword, without
distinction of age or sex. It was then he established that scourge of
Europe, THE INQUISITION. This pope considered that, though men might be
compelled to submit by arms, numbers might remain professing particular
dogmas; and he established this sanguinary tribunal solely to inspect
into all families, and INQUIRE concerning all persons who they imagined
were unfriendly to the interests of Rome. Dominic did so much by his
persecuting inquiries, that he firmly established the Inquisition at
Toulouse.

Not before the year 1484 it became known in Spain. To another Dominican,
John de Torquemada, the court of Rome owed this obligation. As he was
the confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise,
that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to
extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Granada, and had
expelled from the Spanish realms multitudes of unfortunate Moors. A few
remained, whom, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they
at least assumed the name; but it was well known that both these nations
naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christians.
This race was afterwards distinguished as _Christianos Novos_; and in
forming marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its
purity by mingling with such a suspicious source.

Torquemada pretended that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the
interests of the holy religion. The queen listened with respectful
diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to
consent to the establishment of this unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada,
indefatigable in his zeal for the holy chair, in the space of fourteen
years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have
prosecuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were
condemned to the flames.

Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal
horror such proceedings spread. "A general jealousy and suspicion took
possession of all ranks of people: friendship and sociability were at an
end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children."

The situation and the feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the
Inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio,