116 HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY. 



faces, are executioners ; those on the right hand side of the foreground are 

 spectators. To the left of the criminal may be seen a contrivance of 

 cruelty, worthy the inventive genius of the Inquisition. An accused was 

 not allowed to sit down on a common bench, but only on the sharp edge 

 of a triangular bar, supported by two cross-shaped feet. This seat was 

 named 'potro. The prisoner who refused to confess to the crimes laid to 

 his charge was forced to sit or kneel, often for two or three hours, upon the 

 potro, a torture which was applied in the very chamber of justice* In 

 pi. 31, fig. 1, we have the cord and pulley ordeal ; fig. 2, the water, torture ; 

 fig. 3, one form of fire torture ; pi. 30, fiig. 5, fire torture by the wheel ; 

 ]>l. 31, fig. 4, auto da fe in Spain ; fl. 30, fig. 2, the punishment of flogging ; 

 fig. 3, neo-Christians nailed through the hand and exposed in the pillory. 

 This punishment was inflicted upon such as relapsed into Judaism, and the in- 

 quisitors termed it retaliation for the crucifixion of Christ, Fig. 4, the pro- 

 cess of strangling before burning ; fig. 6, burning of heretics in the furnace, 

 at Seville. 



From an examination of this whole subject, it is easy to see how the 

 priesthood of the middle ages exerted so unlimited a control over the 

 fortunes of mankind. They even ventured to punish kings and princes. 

 Thus we see, in the commencement of the thirteenth century, French kings 

 publicly endure the corrections of the church, as for instance, scourging (p/. 

 2S,fig. 4), and Henry IV. do penance, barefoot and in penitential garments, 

 before Gregory VII. at Canossa ; every new triumph over the secular author- 

 ities leading to new and grosser abuses of clerical poAver, already sufiiciently 

 degraded by the freest indulgence in the lowest passions, avarice and voluptu- 

 ousness. 



The Inquisition had full sway until the eighteenth century, when its 

 horrors were gradually diminished, and the dreadful auto da f^ was very 

 rarely seen. In 1770 a royal decree prohibited the arrest of any subject 

 before the full establishment of the accusation ; and in 1784 another law 

 was passed, making it obligatory on the inquisitors to submit to the king 

 for his approval the proceedings against every noble, minister, ofiicer, or 

 person employed by the state. The . holy ofiice was first peremptorily abol- 

 ished by Napoleon in 1808. Ferdinand VII., after his return to Spain, rein- 

 stated it ; but it was effectually abolished by the constitution of the Cortes, in 

 1820. 



The Crusades. 



The crusades, as has been previously stated, were expeditions which many, 

 nay, all Christian nations, undertook in common ; uniting upon one object, that 

 of guarding the pilgrims to the Holy Land against the attacks of the Saracens 

 and other savage hordes, and of wresting from the hands of these heathenish 

 people the dominion over the land where Christ had lived and died. Reli- 

 gious, not political motives, actuated the crusading hosts. 



Pilgrimages to spots whose memory was hallowed by religious associations 

 288 



