rated the judicial method, so as to
leave no loophole of escape even for those who showed a wish to be
converted, empowering the use of torture, precluding the accused from
choosing their own counsel, and excluding the bishops from active
participation in the sentence. The fourth multiplied the charges under
which suspected heretics, even after their death might be treated as
impenitent or relapsed, so as to increase the number of victims and
augment the booty.

The two most formidable features of the Inquisition as thus constituted,
were the exclusion of the bishops from its tribunal and the secrecy of
its procedure. The accused was delivered over to a court that had no
mercy, no common human sympathies, no administrative interest in the
population. He knew nothing of his accusers; and when he died or
disappeared from view no record of his case survived him.

The Inquisition rested on the double basis of ecclesiastical fanaticism
and protected delation. The court was _prima facie_ hostile to the
accused; and the accused could never hope to confront the detectives
upon whose testimony he was arraigned before it. Lives and reputations
lay thus at the mercy of professional informers, private enemies,
malicious calumniators. The denunciation was sometimes anonymous,
sometimes signed, with names of two corroborative witnesses. These
witnesses were examined, under a strict seal of secrecy, by the
Inquisitors, who drew up a form of accusation, which they submitted to
theologians called Qualificators. The qualificators were not informed of
the names of the accused, the delator, or the witnesses. It was their
business to qualify the case of heresy as light, grave, or violent.
Having placed it in one of these categories, they returned it to the
Inquisitors, who now arrested the accused and flung him into the secret
prisons of the Holy Office. After some lapse of time he was summoned for
a preliminary examination. Having first been cautioned to tell the
truth, he had to recite the Paternoster, Credo, Ten Commandments, and a
kind of catechism. His pedigree was also investigated, in the
expectation that some traces of Jewish or Moorish descent might serve to
incriminate him. If he failed in repeating the Christian shibboleths, or
if he was discovered to have infidel ancestry, there existed already a
good case to proceed upon. Finally, he was questioned upon the several
heads of accusation condensed from the first delation and the