,
either expressly or virtually; any one who possessed any heretical book, or
the Koran, or the Bible in the Spanish tongue; or, in fine, if they knew
any one who had harbored, received, or favored heretics. If the accused did
not appear at the third summons he was excommunicated. From the moment that
the prisoner was in the power of the court he was cut off from the world.
Then followed tortures, solitary confinement, and death in flames, with
every attendant of abject humiliation, while his name, with that {84} of
his children and grand-children, was officially declared infamous. Napoleon
crushed this monstrous iniquity December 4, 1808. According to the estimate
of Llorente, the number of victims of the Spanish inquisition, from 1481 to
1808, amounted to 341,021 persons.

In Portugal the inquisition was established in 1557. Whence they also
carried a branch of it to Goa, in the East Indies; in like manner as the
Spaniards established one in America.[94]

From the earlier days, however, of the Christian religion we find a select
few known as the MYSTICS, steadily pursuing a peaceful course in the
investigation of truth. Of them it is said, that they exercised a powerful
influence both upon life and literature: and, although the inculcation of
meekness and self-humiliation paralyzed active exertion, and a life devoted
to emotions and sentiments occasionally produced fanaticism, yet this
influence, especially in the middle ages was highly beneficial. John
Tauler, of Strasbourg, Henry Suss, of Constance, and Thomas a Kempis, were
active mystics, and eminent among their fraternity which was called "the
brethren of the common life." Theirs was a religion of feeling, poetry, and
imagination, in contrast with philosophical rules and forms of reasoning,
as taught by the school-men. They excused their fanaticism, by appealing to
the words of St. Paul: {85} "The spirit prays in us by sighs and groans
that are unutterable." Now, if the spirit, say they, prays in us, we must
resign ourselves to its motions, and be swayed and guided by its impulse,
by remaining in mere inaction. Hence, passive contemplation they considered
the highest state of perfection. The number of the mystics increased in the
fourth century under the influence of the Grecian fanatic, who gave himself
out as Dionysius, the Areopagite, a disciple of St. Paul, and probably
lived about this period; and by pretending to higher degrees of perfection
than other Chri