December 27, 2000 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The Roman Catholic inquisition against those who refused to submit to its authority and doctrine lasted for hundreds of years. It did not end in some countries until the 1800s (Protestants were still being imprisoned in Italy in the mid-1800s), and Roman Catholic priests continued to confiscate and burn Bibles and New Testaments as late as the first half of the twentieth century. (We have carefully documented this in our 327-page book Rome and the Bible.) There were a wide variety of punishments used against the objects of the inquisition. Some were imprisoned in desolate dungeons for years; some were left poverty stricken after all of their goods were confiscated; all sorts of ingenious forms of torture were used against dissidents; countless numbers of inquisition victims were burned at the stake, beheaded, and hanged. A lesser known inquisition torment was a sentence to labor on the galley ships.

A.J. Wylie, author of The History of Protestantism (1899), describes the arduous journey to the French galleys:

ãOf all the punishments to which the proscribed Protestants of France were doomed, the most dreadful was the galleys. The more famous galleys were those of Marseilles, and the journey thither entailed hardships so terrible that it was a common thing for about three-fourths of the condemned to die on the road. They marched along in gangs, carrying heavy irons, and sleeping at night in stables or vaults. ÎThey chained us by the neck in couples,â says one who underwent this dreadful ordeal, Îwith a thick chain, three feet long, in the middle of which was a round ring. After having thus chained us, they placed us all in file, couple behind couple, and they passed a long thick chain through these rings, so that we were thus all chained together. Our chain made a very long file, for we were about four hundred.â The fatigue of walking was excessive, each having to carry about fifty pounds weight of chains. One of their halting-places, the Chateau de la Tournelle, he thus speaks: ÎIt is a large dungeon, or rather spacious cellar, furnished with huge beams of oak placed at the distance of about three feet apart. To these beams thick iron chains are attached, one and a half feet in length, and two feet apart, and at the end of these chains is an iron collar. When the wretched galley-slaves arrived in this dungeon, they are made to lie half down, so that their heads may rest upon the beam; then this collar is put round their necks, closed, and rivited on an anvil with heavy blows of a hammer. And these chains with collars are about two feet apart, and as the beams are generally about forty feet long, twenty men are chained to them in file. This cellar which is round, is so large that in this way they can chain up as many as five hundred. There is nothing so dreadful as to behold the attitudes and postures of these wretches there chained. For a man so chained cannot lie down at full length, the beam upon which his head is fixed being too high; neither can he sit, nor stand upright, the beam being too low. I cannot better describe the posture of such a man than by saying he is half lying, half sitting, ÷ part of his body being upon the stones or flooring, the other part upon this beam. The three days and three nights which we were obliged to pass in this cruel situation so racked our bodies and all our limbs that we could not longer have survived it ÷ especially our poor old men, who cried out every moment that they were dying, and that they had no more strength to endure this terrible torture.â

ãThis dreadful journey was but the prelude to a more dreadful doom. Chained to a bench of his galley, the poor prisoner remained there night and day, with felons for his companions, and scarcely any clothing, scorched by the sun, frozen by the cold, or drenched by the sea, and compelled to row at the utmost of his strength ÷ and if, being exhausted, he let the oar drop, he was sure to be visited with the bastinado. Such were the sufferings amid which hundreds of Protestants of France wore out long years. It was not till 1775, in theÊ beginning of Louis XVI's reign that the galleys released their two last Protestant prisoners, Antoine Rialle and Paul Archardä (Wylie, Book 22, Chapter 6).

Sixteenth-century historian John Foxe, who lived in the days of the galley ships, describes it this way:

ãThey were subjected to the absolute control of the most inhuman and barbarous wretches who ever disgraced the human form. The labor of rowing, as performed in the galleys, is described as being the most excessive that can be imagined; and the sufferings of the poor slaves were increased many fold by the scourgings inflicted on them by their savage taskmasters.ä John Dowling, who wrote The History of Romanism, said those who were sent to the galleys from the inquisition in France were ãconfined÷wretchedly fed on disgusting fare÷and wrought in chains for many years. The prisoners often died under their sufferings. When they did not acquit themselves to the mind of their taskmasters, or disregarded any of their persecuting enactments, they were subjected to the lash. Fifty or sixty lashes were considered a punishment severe enough for the criminals of France÷men who were notorious for every species of profligacy; but nothing less than one hundred to one hundred and fifty would suffice for the meek and holy saints of God. They were considered a thousand times worse than the worst criminalsä (Dowling, pp. 594,595). Marolles, a French minister ãof eminent piety and extensive scientific attainments,ä wrote to his wife about his days of slavery on a galley, describing it in terms of beatings, chains, and ãthe horrid and blasphemous sounds with which those places continually echoä (Ibid., p. 596). Pierre Mauru is another example of the countless Christians who were tormented on they galleys. He was cruelly beaten with 20 to 40 stripes at a time, for several days in succession, all the while being blasphemously mocked by the ships officers. He testified that ãthe excessive toil of rowing, and the blows I received, often brought me to the brink of the grave.ä The captainâs steward called the beatings ãpainting Calvinâs back,ä in mockery of Mauruâs Protestant faith. ãWhen he saw me sinking from day to day under cruelties and fatigue, his happiness was complete. The officers, who were anxious to please him, had recourse to this inhuman sport for his entertainment, during which he was constantly convulsed with laughterä (Dowling, p. 597).

Through these examples one has a little glimpse into the terrible plight of the thousands of Bible-believing Christians who were sentenced to the galleys.Ê