Part 8

The Holy Office, as it was first called, was instituted early in the thirteenth century. Its practical founder was a Spanish monk, Domenigo de Guzman, who afterwards was known as St. Dominic. The Popes at first regarded the institution with disapproval, as it was set up as a quite independent body, and bishops even were not allowed to interfere with its proceedings. Towards the end of the fifteenth century it was re-established on a far more active basis under the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, who organized the most fiendish cruelties for which any human being has ever been responsible. The object of the Inquisition was to suppress heresy, that is to say, either force people into the Romish Church or, should they refuse, kill them or make their lives intolerable. The mildest form of punishment was called public penitence, which meant being made an outcast in society, closely watched by the ecclesiastical authorities, and heavily fined. Tortures of indescribable kinds were used; people were imprisoned for life or burned alive, though sometimes as a favor they might be strangled before they were burned. The burning of a heretic was a great public function which attracted crowds of spectators. In order to make the pageant more ghastly, grotesque dolls and corpses which had been dug up out of their graves were carried in the procession and made to dance round the flames.

In Spain the Inquisition directed its attention chiefly to Jews and Moors. But it became established in other parts of Europe, notably in the Netherlands and in Italy. Torquemada was Grand Inquisitor for eighteen years. During that time he had 10,220 people burned alive and 97,000 condemned to public penitence or perpetual imprisonment. The Inquisition was far more active and severe in Spain than in Italy, where it dealt chiefly with Protestants. But a resident at Rome in 1568, which is just about the time we are dealing with, wrote: “Some are daily burned, hanged, or beheaded; the prisons and places of confinement are filled, and they are obliged to build new ones.” The independence, the secrecy, and the far-extended power of the Inquisition made it formidable and terrifying while it lasted. The hideous cruelty and savage barbarity of its methods render the story of the Inquisition one of the blackest pages of the history of the world.

From such a body as this there was very little chance that a man with Bruno’s views would receive justice or mercy.

Venice was at this time an independent republic, and was a city of refuge for many who were expelled from other parts of Italy. Rome was jealous of the independent attitude of Venice, and the Pope demanded that all spiritual offenders should be delivered up to him. The Venetian authorities protested in this case, but were obliged to yield. A lawyer who was consulted during the dispute, while acknowledging that Bruno’s errors in heresy were very grave, declared that he possessed “a most excellent rare mind, with exquisite learning and wisdom.”

On his arrival in Rome he was at once cast into a dungeon, as the Pope hoped to break his spirit by prolonged imprisonment. For six whole years (1593 to 1599) nothing was heard of him. What his sufferings were in the dark dungeons of the Inquisition no one can tell. Whatever methods may have been used to overcome his obstinate determination, they were unsuccessful. For when at last he was visited in 1599 he said that “he ought not to recant and he would not recant; that he had nothing to recant, nor any reason to recant, nor knew he what he should recant.” Had he not written, too: “There are men in whom the working of the will of God is so powerful that neither threats nor contumely can cause them to waver. He who fears the body has never felt himself to be one with God. He alone is truly wise and virtuous who fears no pain, and he is happy who regards things with the eye of reason.”

At last sentence of death was passed on him. “Perhaps you pronounce your sentence with greater fear than that with which I receive it,” was his only reply to his inhuman judges. From the presence of the great assemblage of cardinals and theologians who sat in judgment over him, the man whom suffering could not move and for whom the condemnation of such a tribunal was no degradation was led from the judgment hall and handed over to the governor of the city. A day or two more in a solitary cell and the end came.

There was a multitude of pilgrims in Rome at the time. Some fifty cardinals were assembled to celebrate the jubilee of the Pope. The Church was mustered in all its glory. The last agony of the philosopher no doubt served to enhance these triumphant celebrations, although the burning of a heretic was such a common occurrence that it probably caused very little stir. The concluding scene has already been described.

Nearly three hundred years later, in 1889, a statue of Giordano Bruno, a picture of which is reproduced here, was erected on the very spot in the Campo dei Fiori at Rome where he was burned. The world is learning slowly to respect liberty of conscience, to admire sincerity, to detest intolerance, and to stamp out the spirit of persecution. We are beginning to understand that a really religious nature may exist apart from any profession of faith in any particular set of doctrines. And no sensible man now would condemn as wicked and irreligious a courageous thinker who fought throughout his career for freedom and independence of thought, and refused to alter his convictions to please others or even to save his own life.

A. P.

VI

GROTIUS

1583–1645

I shall never cease to use my utmost endeavors for establishing peace among Christians; and if I should not succeed it will be honorable to die in such an enterprise.

When we read history, what a lot we have to learn about wars! Invasions and conquests and sieges and battles seem to cover more pages than anything else. I think there is hardly a country in Europe that England has not fought against at one time or another, and not only in Europe, but in Asia, Africa, and America. And although nations are supposed to be getting more civilized, it does not seem to make any difference—they go on fighting one another just the same. If we took the wars from the Roman invasion of Britain down to 1914, it would be a very long list. We might be able to give the dates and name the chief battles, but I doubt if we could always say what was the cause of the war. The causes of war are generally most difficult to discover, and historians become rather confused and obscure when they deal with that part of the subject. The truth is that causes are very difficult to disentangle. Generally there is an occasion as well as a cause. The cause is the general state of feeling that exists between two countries, which again has to be traced back to a number of different incidents and accidents: the occasion may be some quite trifling event, which is just enough to set the fire blazing. Without the occasion the state of feeling might in time improve, and the same trifling event, or a more serious event which concerned two countries who were on friendly terms, might never lead to war at all.

In the more barbarous ages men fought one another because one race hated another race, or wanted to capture its goods and its property. Men walked about ready and eager to fight, and no one wanted to stop them. We pretend we are much more civilized now, and that we do not have these feelings, and yet without these excuses we have constant wars. It does not say much for what we are pleased to call our civilization. Because, after all, killing a large number of people, devastating countries, and destroying homes is not an occupation that any one approves.

Then a period came when kings and great conquerors wanted to win power and renown by leading their armies out to battle and subduing their neighbors. The motive was very much the same as that of the barbarous man, but it was less natural and spontaneous, because the people themselves were less inclined to fight. They were, however, prepared and drilled, and taught that their country’s greatness depended on its power of conquest and the size of its territory.

Then, too, a large number of wars were religious wars. Men feel very deeply about their own religion, and in the Middle Ages they were always ready to fight others who did not share their particular belief. The Crusades were by way of being religious wars, but they were more an opportunity for great fighters to go out and distinguish themselves on the battlefield. Civilized people do not fight about religion now, but there is no subject that makes them quarrel and dispute more violently.

When kings were no longer able to drive their people to fight just to satisfy their personal ambition, and when people became more tolerant about religious differences, other causes for wars arose. Governments became ambitious and wanted their countries to expand and acquire great colonial possessions, and acute rivalry grew up between nations. This was encouraged by the richer classes, who could profit by extended trade, and as the means of communication and of conveyance suddenly became much easier because of steamships, trains, and telegraphy, the desire as well as the possibility of building great Empires was very much increased. The governing classes and those who were rich and idle were not very much concerned about the pressing need for social reform which the vast mass of the people were longing for. They were interested in wars, and they could easily make them popular by means of the newspapers which they had at their command. Meanwhile, the people became gradually more peace-loving. But this made no difference, because they had no say in controlling the relations of their country with other nations; they were very easily misled because of their ignorance of foreign policy and foreign countries, and they could always be roused to fight by being told that their country was in danger.

A disbelief in force was, however, slowly growing up, and people were no longer impressed by the glory of war. In their relations with one another individual men left off fighting, because they found that quarrels were better settled by reason, and they knew that the man who happened to be the strongest physically or the most skillful with arms was not necessarily in the right, though he might kill or maim his opponent.

But while many nations within their own borders were able to establish peaceful relations between their citizens by means of law and order, the relationship between the nations themselves could not be regulated in the same way. In their infancy the nations recognized no law, no regulations for warfare, and no binding sense of obligation. There was no supreme authority who could insist on obedience, and the only way of settling differences was to fight it out. Agreements between one ruler and another were of little value; terrible barbarities and wholesale massacre were resorted to without protest; no sort of code of honor or humanity was recognized, and justification for hideous cruelty was often found by the Church in the pages of the Bible.

At a period when Europe was one broad battlefield, when wars were raging between races, between nations, and between religious sects, and hatred, misery, cruelty, and torture were filling the world with horror, and in a country that was suffering more than any other from these fearful evils, was born a man who, in spite of the darkness around him and in spite of the overwhelming forces which seemed to be subduing mankind, set to work to save civilization from ruin and to establish law and reason in the relations of nations. This man was Huig de Groot, known afterwards to the world as Hugo Grotius, who was born at Delft, in Holland, on Easter Day of 1583. He will be recognized for all time as the founder of international law, and as the first man who awakened the conscience of governments to a higher moral sense, to more humanitarian feelings, and to the recognition of the fact that there was such a thing as international duty. “I saw,” he said, “in the whole Christian world a license of fighting at which even barbarous nations might blush. Wars were begun on trifling pretexts or none at all, and carried on without any reverence of law, Divine or human. A declaration of war seemed to let loose every crime.”

The foundation of his idea was that the Law of Nations, that is to say, the agreements made between governments, should be brought into harmony with the principles of natural morality and the commands of justice written, as he said, by God on the hearts and minds of men. This he called the Law of Nature, which man could discover by right reason. He wanted, in fact, the same ideas of right and wrong which people were taught to adopt in their dealings with one another to be applied to the dealings of one nation with another. Instead of saying that justice, honor, generosity, and friendship meant one thing between man and man and quite another thing between nation and nation, he tried to combine the two and bring the lower one up to the level of the higher. Out of this union between the two sorts of law he hoped to create an international law which would put an end to the unreasonable, uncivilized, and perpetually dangerous relationship which existed between nations.

The great book he wrote was called “De Jure Belli ac Pacis” (Concerning the Law of War and Peace). He collected together in it quotations from a number of great men, and elaborated his argument with wonderful clearness and great learning. He condemned the atrocities of warfare, and more especially he pointed to a way in which war might be avoided. He examined various methods by which international questions might be settled without war, and proposed the idea of conferences and international arbitration. In fact, it may be said that the seed of arbitration was first sown when Grotius wrote the words: “But specially are Christian kings and States bound to try this way of avoiding war.” The book, indeed, in the hands of those who followed him, became a mighty weapon against the follies of rulers and the cruelties of war. It could not have been written by a mere scholar; it was not just a collection of quotations and clever theories; it was the work of a man whose nobility of heart and mind and whose earnestness and unselfishness made his voice echo through the nations and through the ages.

But you, who have known a war compared to which the wars of the past seem as little battles, may well ask whether the ideas of Grotius have really spread and become of any permanent good. Well, I will try to answer that question. The tremendous scale of the great European war of the twentieth century is not a measure of the wicked disposition of the nations concerned, but is due more especially to the easy methods of transport and communication, to the rapid manner in which munitions can be manufactured, and to the diabolical nature of modern inventions and engines of destruction. That war could not be prevented is not due to the frantic desire of the peoples to fight, but to the policy of governments and ministers, to the faulty methods of intercourse between nations, which is called diplomacy, and to the inability of the people to control their governments. So far from this catastrophe showing nations are more evilly disposed towards one another than formerly, it is undoubtedly true that mutual knowledge was beginning to produce a new sympathy and understanding, and though it has been checked, that movement will revive and continue, perhaps with greater vigor.

Although there may be much to alter and much to mend in ways that Grotius never dreamed of, the prospect of the cessation of war is decidedly nearer, in spite of this great failure. Such a prospect may still be very remote—we cannot say—but it is as inevitable as the rising of the sun, and we can either help or hinder its coming. Therefore, in considering the fact that the mind of man has been slowly preparing for the abolition of the rule of force and the establishment of the reign of reason, and that moral law has been slowly but surely gaining ground over belief in violence, we should ever turn with gratitude to the man who took the first and most difficult step, and who had sufficient foresight and courage, when things seemed most hopeless, to look into the future.

The publication of such a book naturally caused a great stir. It came out in 1625, and was immediately placed by the Pope upon the Index—that is, the list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read. It was not a popular book in the sense that it could be read by every one. The appeal was to thinking men. Its influence therefore was very gradual. But slowly the ideas set forth by Grotius found their way into laws and into treaties, and eminent lawyers in European universities took the great work as a starting-point of the further development of principles of international law. There are two interesting instances of how the influence of the book was immediately felt. Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, who was the greatest general of the time, made a careful study of “De Jure Belli ac Pacis”: he kept it by his bedside, and it was found in his tent after his death on the field of Lützen. Gustavus constantly stood for mercy, and began on a large scale the better conduct of modern war. He made speeches to his soldiers dissuading them from cruelty or rebuking them for it.

The other instance was in the case of the capture of La Rochelle by Cardinal Richelieu, who governed France in the name of Louis XIII. La Rochelle was the stronghold of French Protestantism. All Europe expected that the inhabitants would be massacred, in accordance with the spirit of cruel intolerance which was usual at that time, and which would certainly be expected from the merciless Cardinal. But to the amazement of the world there were no massacre, no destruction, and no plunder, and the Huguenots were treated with mercy and even respect. At a later period, indeed, Cardinal Richelieu freed the writings of Grotius from the French censorship, and declared him one of the three great scholars of his time.

The Treaty of Westphalia, which closed the Thirty Years War in 1648, may be added as another instance of how Grotius had brought in a new epoch in international affairs, for it contained principles which he had been the first to bring into the thought of the world. Nevertheless, the immediate influence of Grotius’ book was not so great as the lasting service he rendered in laying the foundation of a new science of International Law, on which succeeding generations slowly built up and strengthened the sense of morality between nations. There is still very much to be added; and new problems and new conditions require new plans and new designs. But the foundation was well laid and can never be shifted.

The book was criticized by some who declared that it was just a shapeless collection of quotations, and that the argument was lost under the mass of extracts from other authorities. It is true that its arrangement and style were rather heavy and clumsy, and there is much in the book that may appear to us, three hundred years afterwards, as rather crude, but attack has come for the most part from those who are quite unable to understand the high ideal toward which Grotius was reaching out. A prominent English international jurist, Sir James Mackintosh, has declared that this great work “is perhaps the most complete that the world has yet owed, at so early a stage in the progress of any science, to the genius and learning of one man.”

Now, I must give you some account of the life of the writer of this famous book. As you may imagine, a man of such decided character, who had the courage to express new and original views, was not allowed to live in peace and quiet.

His father, John de Groot, was four times burgomaster of Delft and one of the curators of the University of Leyden. He was a great scholar, and acted as tutor to his son Hugo. At a very early age the boy showed the most extraordinary powers. At ten, his Latin verses were praised by learned men; at eleven, poets declared that he would be a second Erasmus; at twelve, he was admitted to the University of Leyden. He was, in fact, very precocious. It very often happens with precocious children that they are made to show off, and are so spoilt by their parents that they become conceited, and when they grow up they disappoint the expectations formed about them when they were young. But his parents were sensible, and he himself was naturally humble and modest, and so he continued his studies and enriched his mind without any harm being done to his character. He produced immense learned books on many different subjects, and at the age of fifteen held public disputes in mathematics, philosophy, and law.

In 1598 he was appointed to accompany a special Embassy which was being sent by the Netherlands to the King of France, Henry IV. His reputation had gone before him. The men of the day crowded to see him, and the King received him and with his own hand hung his portrait round the youth’s neck. So much flattery might easily have turned his head, but he already showed a calm judgment and the wisdom of a man of long experience. He did not loiter in this pleasant atmosphere, but returned to his work in Holland. But there was another danger before him. He might have buried himself in his studies, and, like other learned men of his time, and, indeed, of all times, accumulated a lot of useless knowledge. So many great scholars have become experts in some particular subject, and have shut themselves off from contact with their fellow-men. Their mind becomes their idol, and they fail to see that mere brain-power is of little service if it is not used for some great purpose, and if it is not inspired by moral and humane sentiments. Grotius avoided this course; he was anxious for active life, and wanted to join in and help his country and humanity in some practical way. He had avoided becoming a prig, a prodigy, or a bookworm, and when he took up the career of a lawyer he also avoided using his rapid promotion for the purpose of money-making and personal success. His extraordinary talents were like the spreading sails of a ship. They might have capsized him if he had not had plenty of ballast.

How little he thought of fame and applause, and how he worked for true knowledge and in order to prepare himself for the future, is shown by the discovery at The Hague, two hundred years later, of a manuscript of a big book written by him when he was twenty-two, but never published. One of the chapters of this book he issued as a treatise under the title of “Mare Liberum.” It was an argument against the claim made by some nations, specially Portugal at this time, that the seas could be owned by a nation, and that no other nation could fish in them or navigate them without her permission. Grotius maintained the freedom of the seas was necessary to enable nations to communicate with one another, and it could not be taken away by any power whatever. James I very much disapproved of this book, as he thought it interfered with the rights of Great Britain. He ordered his Ambassador in Holland to take measures against the author. But as nothing could be done, the King instructed the great English lawyer, John Selden, to write a reply, which he did in a learned book called “Mare Clausum.” But Grotius really had the best of the argument, and his view was eventually adopted.