lip II. perhaps another 25,000 were sacrificed. Motley
(_Rise of the Dutch Republic_, vol. ii. p. 155) tells how in February
1568 a sentence of the Holy Office, confirmed by royal proclamation,
condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands, some three millions of
souls, with a few specially excepted persons, to death. It was customary
to burn the men and bury the women alive. In considering this
institution as a whole, we must bear in mind that it was extended to
Mexico, Lima, Carthagena, the Indies, Sicily, Sardinia, Oran, Malta. Of
the working of the Holy Office in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies we
possess but few authentic records. The _Histoire des Inquisitions_ of
Joseph Lavallee (Paris, 1809) may, however, be consulted. In vol. ii.
pp. 5-9 of this work there is a brief account of the Inquisition at Goa
written by one Pyrard; and pp. 45-157 extend the singularly detailed
narrative of a Frenchman, Dellon, imprisoned in its dungeons. Some
curious circumstances respecting delation, prison life, and _autos da
fe_ are here minutely recorded.]

The crimes of which the second or Dominican Inquisition had taken
cognizance were designated under the generic name of heresy. Heretics
were either patent by profession of some heterodox cult or doctrine; or
they were suspected. The suspected included witches, sorcerers, and
blasphemers who invoked the devil's aid; Catholics abstaining from
confession and absolution; harborers of avowed heretics; legal defenders
of the cause of heretics; priests who gave Christian burial to heretics;
magistrates who showed lukewarmness in pursuit of heretics; the corpses
of dead heretics, and books that might be taxed with heretical opinions.
All ranks in the social hierarchy, except the Pope, his Legates and
Nuncios, and the bishops, were amenable to this Inquisition. The
Inquisitors could only be arraigned and judged by their peers. In order
to bring the machinery of imprisonment, torture and final sentence into
effect, it was needful that the credentials of the Inquisitor should be
approved by the sovereign, and that his procedure should be recognized
by the bishop. These limitations of the Inquisitorial authority
safeguarded the crown and the episcopacy in a legal sense. But since
both crown and episcopacy concurred in the object for which the Papacy
had established the tribunal, the Inquisitor was practically unimpeded
in his functions. Furnished with royal or princely letters patent,