he most revolting details of the torture of Jean de
Salas, at Valladolid, A.D. 1527, and this one case may serve as a
specimen of Inquisition work during these bloodstained centuries.
Stripped to his shirt, he was placed on the _chevalet_ (a narrow frame,
wherein the body was laid, with no support save a pole across the
middle), and his feet were raised higher than his head; tightly twisted
cords cut through his flesh, and were twisted yet tighter and tighter as
the torture proceeded; fine linen, thrust into his mouth and throat,
added to the unnatural position, made breathing well nigh impossible,
and on the linen water slowly fell, drop by drop, from a suspended
vessel over his head, till every struggling breath stained the cloth
with blood (see "Histoire critique de l'Inquisition d'Espagne," t. II.,
pp. 20-23, ed. 1818). This Spanish Inquisition, during its existence,
punished heretics as follows:--

Burnt alive ....................... 31,912

Burnt in effigy.................... 17,659

Heavily punished................... 291,450
-------
Total 341,021

(Ibid, t. IV. p. 271). Add to this list the ruined families, some of
whose members fell victims to the Inquisition, and then--remembering
that Spain was but one of the countries which it desolated--let the
student judge of the huge total of human agony caused by this awful
institution. Nor must it be forgotten that its dungeons did not gape
only for those who opposed the pretensions of Rome; men of science,
philosophers, thinkers, all these were its foes; Llorente gives a list
of no less than 119 learned and eminent scientific men who, in Spain
alone, fell under the scourge of the Inquisition (see t. II. pp.
417-483).

One special crime of the Church in this age must not be forgotten: her
treatment of Roger Bacon. Roger Bacon was a Franciscan monk, who not
only studied Greek, Hebrew, and Oriental languages, but who devoted
himself to natural science, and made many discoveries in astronomy,
chemistry, optics, and mathematics. He is said to have discovered
gunpowder, and he proposed a reform of the calendar similar to that
introduced by Gregory XIII., 300 years later. His reward was to be
hooted at as a magician, and to be confined in a dungeon for many years.

The heretics spread and increased in this century, spite of the terrible
weapon brought to bear against them. The "Brethren and Sisters of