Posted on 06/18/2004 9:55:45 AM PDT by xsysmgr
When the sins of the Catholic Church are recited (as they so often are) the Inquisition figures prominently. People with no interest in European history know full well that it was led by brutal and fanatical churchmen who tortured, maimed, and killed those who dared question the authority of the Church. The word "Inquisition" is part of our modern vocabulary, describing both an institution and a period of time. Having one of your hearings referred to as an "Inquisition" is not a compliment for most senators.
But in recent years the Inquisition has been subject to greater investigation. In preparation for the Jubilee in 2000, Pope John Paul II wanted to find out just what happened during the time of the Inquisition's (the institution's) existence. In 1998 the Vatican opened the archives of the Holy Office (the modern successor to the Inquisition) to a team of 30 scholars from around the world. Now at last the scholars have made their report, an 800-page tome that was unveiled at a press conference in Rome on Tuesday. Its most startling conclusion is that the Inquisition was not so bad after all. Torture was rare and only about 1 percent of those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were actually executed. As one headline read "Vatican Downsizes Inquisition."
The amazed gasps and cynical sneers that have greeted this report are just further evidence of the lamentable gulf that exists between professional historians and the general public. The truth is that, although this report makes use of previously unavailable material, it merely echoes what numerous scholars have previously learned from other European archives. Among the best recent books on the subject are Edward Peters's Inquisition (1988) and Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition (1997), but there are others. Simply put, historians have long known that the popular view of the Inquisition is a myth. So what is the truth?
To understand the Inquisition we have to remember that the Middle Ages were, well, medieval. We should not expect people in the past to view the world and their place in it the way we do today. (You try living through the Black Death and see how it changes your attitude.) For people who lived during those times, religion was not something one did just at church. It was science, philosophy, politics, identity, and hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth. Heresy, then, struck at the heart of that truth. It doomed the heretic, endangered those near him, and tore apart the fabric of community.
The Inquisition was not born out of desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw them as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath. When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig or damaged shrubbery (really, it was a serious crime in England). Yet in contrast to those crimes, it was not so easy to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. For starters, one needed some basic theological training — something most medieval lords sorely lacked. The result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge.
The Catholic Church's response to this problem was the Inquisition, first instituted by Pope Lucius III in 1184. It was born out of a need to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.
As this new report confirms, most people accused of heresy by the Inquisition were either acquitted or their sentences suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ. The underlying assumption of the Inquisition was that, like lost sheep, heretics had simply strayed. If, however, an inquisitor determined that a particular sheep had purposely left the flock, there was nothing more that could be done. Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense, not the Church. The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule.
During the 13th century the Inquisition became much more formalized in its methods and practices. Highly trained Dominicans answerable to the Pope took over the institution, creating courts that represented the best legal practices in Europe. As royal authority grew during the 14th century and beyond, control over the Inquisition slipped out of papal hands and into those of kings. Instead of one Inquisition there were now many. Despite the prospect of abuse, monarchs like those in Spain and France generally did their best to make certain that their inquisitions remained both efficient and merciful. During the 16th century, when the witch craze swept Europe, it was those areas with the best-developed inquisitions that stopped the hysteria in its tracks. In Spain and Italy, trained inquisitors investigated charges of witches' sabbaths and baby roasting and found them to be baseless. Elsewhere, particularly in Germany, secular or religious courts burned witches by the thousands.
Compared to other medieval secular courts, the Inquisition was positively enlightened. Why then are people in general and the press in particular so surprised to discover that the Inquisition did not barbecue people by the millions? First of all, when most people think of the Inquisition today what they are really thinking of is the Spanish Inquisition. No, not even that is correct. They are thinking of the myth of the Spanish Inquisition. Amazingly, before 1530 the Spanish Inquisition was widely hailed as the best run, most humane court in Europe. There are actually records of convicts in Spain purposely blaspheming so that they could be transferred to the prisons of the Spanish Inquisition. After 1530, however, the Spanish Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth.
By the mid 16th century, Spain was the wealthiest and most powerful country in Europe. Europe's Protestant areas, including the Netherlands, northern Germany, and England, may not have been as militarily mighty, but they did have a potent new weapon: the printing press. Although the Spanish defeated Protestants on the battlefield, they would lose the propaganda war. These were the years when the famous "Black Legend" of Spain was forged. Innumerable books and pamphlets poured from northern presses accusing the Spanish Empire of inhuman depravity and horrible atrocities in the New World. Opulent Spain was cast as a place of darkness, ignorance, and evil.
Protestant propaganda that took aim at the Spanish Inquisition drew liberally from the Black Legend. But it had other sources as well. From the beginning of the Reformation, Protestants had difficulty explaining the 15-century gap between Christ's institution of His Church and the founding of the Protestant churches. Catholics naturally pointed out this problem, accusing Protestants of having created a new church separate from that of Christ. Protestants countered that their church was the one created by Christ, but that it had been forced underground by the Catholic Church. Thus, just as the Roman Empire had persecuted Christians, so its successor, the Roman Catholic Church, continued to persecute them throughout the Middle Ages. Inconveniently, there were no Protestants in the Middle Ages, yet Protestant authors found them there anyway in the guise of various medieval heretics. In this light, the medieval Inquisition was nothing more than an attempt to crush the hidden, true church. The Spanish Inquisition, still active and extremely efficient at keeping Protestants out of Spain, was for Protestant writers merely the latest version of this persecution. Mix liberally with the Black Legend and you have everything you need to produce tract after tract about the hideous and cruel Spanish Inquisition. And so they did.
In time, Spain's empire would fade away. Wealth and power shifted to the north, in particular to France and England. By the late 17th century new ideas of religious tolerance were bubbling across the coffeehouses and salons of Europe. Inquisitions, both Catholic and Protestant, withered. The Spanish stubbornly held on to theirs, and for that they were ridiculed. French philosophes like Voltaire saw in Spain a model of the Middle Ages: weak, barbaric, superstitious. The Spanish Inquisition, already established as a bloodthirsty tool of religious persecution, was derided by Enlightenment thinkers as a brutal weapon of intolerance and ignorance. A new, fictional Spanish Inquisition had been constructed, designed by the enemies of Spain and the Catholic Church.
Now a bit more of the real Inquisition has come back into view. The question remains, will anyone take notice?
— Thomas F. Madden is professor and chair of the department of history at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri. He is the author most recently of Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice and editor of the forthcoming Crusades: The Illustrated History.
You are not the subject of this command. Typical Biblical illeteracy. Just cause you are reading it, doesn't mean you are the one being commanded here.
SD
You're not this stupid. The response we have to something, of course, depends on the circumstances. A child running around aimlessly through a field of flowers is a joy. One doing so through city traffic is a different thing.
The fact you refuse to look at is what "heresy" is and how it can be a destabilizing factor. Just assuming that every person and every time is like 20th Century secular America is foolish.
SD
Activity with the aim of bringing down the state.
Suppose the little old lady were able to convince the ENTIRE POPULATION that the RC church is the whore of babylon, but the police and the power structures are still in your hands.
My hands? Or the hands of the Church? In any event, this is not the situation. We have seperated church and state.
If you want a hypothetical answer, you will need to engage in hypotheses. If the entire population was against the RC Church then there is no way that it could maintain hold of power. Because there would be no one left, right?
Either you don't mean the "entire population" or you consider the church's leaders and priests to be something other than "population."
The idea of seperating heresy from sedition is a modern one, an artifact of seperating Church and State. Where the two are not seperated, any act of heresy is an act of sedition.
SD
At the time of much of the Inquisition, was "The State" always determined as one clear cut entity or was it a time when who's rule you were under was in a constant, ongoing state of flux? Did the religious leaders of the times help the situation or were they part of the problem?
Would that be your opinion or would it be something you know, without question? If it's something you know, I'd be interested in hearing some proof to back it up.
Is Scripture good?
Matt 28: 16 Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.
17 And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted.
18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
19 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
"And Jesus came and spoke unto them"
Who them?
"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee..."
It is clear Jesus is talking here to His Apostles. He is telling them to go out to teach. Not any Joe Schmo that can pick up this book and read a sentence.
SD
That's way too broad of a question. The Inquisition operated under various forms for centuries under various controls and in various territories.
SD
You know, there is similar confusion about the crusaders war against the Islamic expansion in the holyland.
Well of course. You list these societal stages as if you are pondering various salads on a menu.
By all civilized consensus the copulation of church and state was an abomination. We expect the state to gobble power wherever the lizard finds it; but the church's assent and use of that arrangement is all the more execrable because we expect more from her. When a pimp acts like a pimp we are not shocked; when a virgin signs on with him one might use the word "whore" out of injured affection.
And their divorce was a monumental moral advance.
So those who tell me that it was in some sense better that heretics were killed (depite, apparently, the church's best efforts to contain the definition of "exterminate") -- better, you say, because, after all, heresy was just a species of sedition.
So the virgin acted like a whore because she had previously become a whore. I see.
Duke of Burgundy was waging civil war against the rest of France and the French King and that Joan was captured by Burgundian troops
That statement is overreaching & more wrong than right. BTW, Joan was captured by Luxemburg's troops.
The Burgundians were the allies of the English in 1431 just as the Vichy French were the allies of the Germans in 1942.
Bad analogy.
However, today, only the Catholic religious intolerance of past centuries is criticized and exaggerated while Protestant religious intolerance is never mentioned unless, as in the case of the Salem Witch Trials, it is depicted as amusing entertainment.
I have a bone of contention with many of the actions of some Protestant leaders too, but that's beside the point or it should be in this discussion.
Well of course. You list these societal stages as if you are pondering various salads on a menu.
No, I point out what to us may seem obvious, but to many here is unthought. Many give the impression that they think it as simple as one side thinking the moon is green cheese and killing others cause they think it is blue.
We must examine what happened in context, not to excuse it, but to get a realistic understanding of why things happened. Of course, for some, this is unnecessary. They desire Catholic to be pure evil and no amount of understanding why things happen is required.
And their divorce was a monumental moral advance.
Yes, the affiliation with secular power was corrupting of the Church. But still pure secular power with no heed given to any higher authority is not a bed of roses either.
So those who tell me that it was in some sense better that heretics were killed -- better, you say, because, after all, heresy was just a species of sedition.
No, I said heresy and sedition were the same thing. We only now seperate them. We are so used to relativism in matters of religion that the entire concept of a person's belief impacting on society is unclear to us. We are used to not caring what the guy down the street believes. That is because, in a large part, we have become indifferent to him and we have become comfprtable with the idea that there is not so much truth to be known that is worth defending from error.
SD
Christ said let the one among you without sin cast the first stone. He said put down the sword for he who takes it up will die by it. Rome picked up the sword and swung it, picked up the Rock and threw it and kept doing both for the better part of 1000 years. What anyone else did is moot to the point. It doesn't mean they aren't wrong too. It means it matters not a whit to what Rome did. Rome taught it, did it and compulsed others into it. They wrote manuals on it and taught the Protestants through it to do exactly the same things. Rome taught and lived doctrinal error for over 1000 years on just this point alone. Rome cannot admit that without shaking itself to it's foundations. So, we get the handwringing from you guys. No breaks. Stow the handwringing and tell the truth, then fix the error. Then you might get somewhere.
Read it again. I didn't say I'm the one being commanded there. Christ is commanding the Apostles to go forth and teach all nations - Every living soul - teaching them to observe "ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER I HAVE COMMANDED YOU"... Hint, the passage is a command which would fall into the "all things I have commanded you" grouping. All things. At the end of that passage it then becomes Christ speaking to me, you, and anyone else that has been taught. What were you saying about illiteracy?
Bunk. Situational ethics is the secular garbage of the 60s that is largely responsible for the mess the US is in now. Christ didn't teach situational ethics. He taught "it is written" and "i am the same yesterday, today and forever" Sin today was sin yesterday and will be sin tomorrow. The situation has nothing to do with the definition of sin. If you murder someone it's still murder, regardless of the handwringing you go through to try and explain it away.
Actually, I'm more of an agnostic than anything else and a big part of the reason is that I see the spread of Christianity directly related to the force of arms.
If Western Europe became Christian, it was in large part due to the Imperial mandate of the Roman Empire and then the Christianized barbarians. At the time of the Christian (Arianism-variety) Visigothic invasion of Roman Spain, most of the rural population of Hispania was still pagan.
When the supposed Protestant "Reformation" came about, it was begun and carried out by men that would be considered homicidal fanatics by today's standards.
LOL. You're hilarious. So who taught you what needed to be observed? And how does he trace his lines to the Apostles?
Oh, that's right. You're self-taught. So much for that theory.
Just pick up the book and apply whatever you like to yourself however you would like to. That's your style. LOL
SD
Bunk....The situation has nothing to do with the definition of sin.
Of course it does. If I kill a man in self-defense it's different from killing in cold blood. Though in both cases the same weapon would be used in the same way and with the same result.
You set yourself up as the highest authority to pass judgment on those in the past that don't meet up to your superior standards. It's a bit puffed-up of you. Why not thank God that you have the benefit of a civilization that has given you better values? Why not ask God to have mercy on these, instead of condemning them?
SD
In NIV Matt 28:19 is translated as
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Most other versions I looked at were closer to this traslation, than the one in the KJV.
Back to KJV & looking at verse 20, Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
I suppose the part I put in bold could be taken a couple of different ways. However, I fail to find any sort of exclusive responsiblity to be given to a select few in any way here. Instead, I see it written to teach the people to observe *all* things He commanded of the Apostles.
Yes. And who is being addressed here? The Apostles.
I suppose the part I put in bold could be taken a couple of different ways. However, I fail to find any sort of exclusive responsiblity to be given to a select few in any way here.
The Apostles are beign told to teach and to baptise. This is not Jesus telling a crowd to go ut and teach and baptise. Do you see the difference?
Instead, I see it written to teach the people to observe *all* things He commanded of the Apostles.
Yes. After they teach them. Who taught you?
SD
Yes, it is broad & I can't think of a better way to put it.
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