Note 13 — Chapter III

The following affords a view of the secrecy with which the affairs of the holy office are conducted: "When the familiar is sent for to apprehend any person," says Limborch, "he has the following order put into his hand: 'By the command of the reverend father N. an Inquisitor of heretical pravity, let B. be apprehended, and committed to the prisons of this holy office, and not to be released out of them, but by the express order of the said reverend Inquisitor.' And if several persons are to be taken up at the same time, the familiars are commanded so to order things, that they may know nothing of one another's being apprehended. And at this the familiars are so very expert, that a father and his three sons and three daughters, who lived together in the same house, were all carried prisoners to the Inquisition, without knowing any thing of one another's being there until seven years afterwards, when they that were alive came forth to an auto-da-fé."