And in the market-place the people must
often have seen the dreadful procession by means of which the Church
sought to strike terror into the souls of men. Those public orgies
of clerical intolerance were the suitable consummation of the crimes
which had been previously committed in the private conclave of
the Inquisitors. The burning or strangling of a heretic was not
accompanied by so much pomp and circumstance in small towns like
Furnes as in the great centres, where multitudes, led by the highest
in the land, were present to enjoy the spectacle; but the Inquisition
of the Netherlands, under which Flanders groaned for so many years,
was, as Philip himself once boasted, 'much more pitiless than that
of Spain.'
The groans of the victims will never more be heard in the
torture-chamber, nor will crowds assemble in the market-place to
watch the cortege of the _auto-da-fe_; but every year the famous
Procession of Penitents, which takes place on the last Sunday of
July, draws many strangers to Furnes.
It is said in Bruges that the ghost of a Spanish soldier, condemned
to expiate eternally a foul crime done at the bidding of the Holy
Office, walks at midnight on the Quai Vert, like Hamlet's father
on the terrace at Elsinore; and superstitious people might well
fancy that a spectre appears in the market-place of Furnes on the
summer's night when the town is preparing for the annual ceremony.
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