example, that in this twentieth century we saw an orthodox Jew
tried in a Russian court of law for having made a sacrifice of
Christian babies; nevertheless we know that the Jews represent a
considerable part of the intelligence and idealism of Russia. We
know in the same way that the Moors had most of the culture and
all of the scientific knowledge of Spain; that the Huguenots had
most of the conscience and industry of France; and we know that
they were massacred or driven out to death by the priestly castes
of the Middle Ages.


The Holy Inquisition

Let us have one glimpse of the conditions in those mediaeval
times, so that we may know what we ourselves have escaped. In the
fifteenth century there was established in Europe the cult of a
three-headed god, whose priests had won lordship over a
continent. They were enormously wealthy, and unthinkably corrupt;
they sold to the rich the license to commit every possible crime,
and they held the poor in ignorance and degradation. Among the
comparatively intelligent and freedom-loving people of Bohemia
there arose a great reformer, John Huss, himself a priest,
protesting against the corruptions of his order. They trapped him
into their power by means of a "safe-conduct"--which they
repudiated because no promise to a heretic could have validity.
They found him guilty of having taught the hateful doctrine that
a priest who committed crimes could not give absolution for the
crimes of others; and they held an auto de fe--which means a
"sentence of faith." As we read in Lea's "History of the
Inquisition":