Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1826 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. Kight first years of the administration of the Inquisitor General Valdes. Death of Charles V. An old man, of almost seventy, filled with pride and bitterness, as hard and as cruel as Torquemada, succeeded Cardinal Laoisa, as well in the archbishoprick of Seville, as to the functions of inquisitor general of Spain. This personage was Ferdinand Valdez. Heaven in its wrath permitted the life of this fanatic to be prolonged beyond the ordinary limits. Valdez lived to fill his office for twenty years. This eighth inquisitor general manifested a disposition the most sanguinary during the whole period of his administration; and as the trials for Judaism which had fed the funeral piles of the holy office before his nomination, had become much less numerous, Valdez found a grand compensation in those instituted against Lutherans. Whilst Paul 111. declared the Moors of Grenada eligible to all civil offices, and ecclesiastical benefices, and Charles V. was renewing the ordinances in favour of the Americans and converted Indians, the inquisitor general Valdez solicited from the same pontiff permission to condemn Lutherans to the fire when they had not even relapsed, and when they should demand to be reconciled. This system caused torrents of blood to flow, and carried terror throughout Spain, as well on account of the number as the rank of the victims, who were unmercifully persecuted by the inquisitors. Valdez was also the first and true cause of a false doctrine, which was established in ecclesiastical sciences, the progress of which was so general that, with the exception of a few minds, who knew how to secure themselves from it, it domineered in Spain from the establishment of the Jesuits until their expulsion. The funeral piles of...
