consisting of one priest and two laymen_" (Ibid). In A.D. 1233, Gregory
IX. superseded this tribunal by appointing the Dominican monks as
inquisitors, and the pope's legate in France thereupon went from city to
city, wherever these monks had a monastery, and there appointed some of
their number "inquisitors of heretical pravity." The princes of Europe
were then persuaded to lend the aid of the State to the work of blood,
and to commit to the flames those who were handed over as heretics to
the civil power by the inquisitors. The plan of working was most
methodical.

The rules of torture were carefully drawn out: the prisoner was stripped
naked, the hair cut off, and the body then laid on the rack and bound
down; the right, then the left, foot tightly bound and strained by
cords; the right and left arm stretched; the fleshy part of the arm
compressed with fine cords; all the cords tightened together by one
turn; a second and third turn of the same kind: beyond this, with the
rack, women were not to be tortured; with men a fourth turn was
employed. These directions were written in a Manual, used by the Grand
Inquisitor of Seville as late as A.D. 1820. An analysis is given by Dr.
Rule, in his "History of the Inquisition," Appendix to vol. i., pp.
339-359, ed. 1874. Then we hear, elsewhere, of torture by roasting the
feet, by pulleys, by red-hot pincers--in short, by every abominable
instrument of cruelty which men, inspired by religion, could conceive.
Let the student take Llorente and Dr. Rule alone, and he will learn
enough of the Inquisition horrors to make him shudder at the sight of a
cross--at the name of Christianity.

Llorente gives the 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.