The Real Inquisition: Investigating the popular myth.

National Review Online ^ | June 18, 2004 | Thomas F. Madden

[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.

[Petronski]

You want desperately to debate someone else on the points you've lost to so very many. You've lost all those arguments whether I was involved or not.

You are willfully guilty of bearing false witness against an entire faith. Good luck with that millstone. I shall continue to pray for you, and to flag your lies and hatred for the unaware.

[Havoc]

Right. You do that. Thanks for bumping the thread again. your mindless sniping is useful for something I guess, if for nothing else than getting people to ask me funny questions about ya. lol

[Havoc]

Actually, can you do me a favor? I mean if I have to put up with your baseless and ceaseless charges, can you at least quote us from your greatest hits? Plaese say "They're committing suicide at the city limits, there are no Americans in the city" again.

[Petronski]

Mixing humor into your lies will make them more palatable. You will not thereby find any more suckers for your hate, but at least your steaming heaps will not stink so badly.

You should steal more humor wherever you got that bit.

[GoLightly]

Let's go back to the original article.

Torture was rare and only about 1 percent of those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were actually executed.

1%?!? I don't think any modern madman was "successful" enough to achieve that rate. Never-mind, I have something more important to question.

Here it is. 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.

Gonna pause here, cuz I have to comment on this before going further. Death was more common during medieval times. Is the author trying to say life was more or less precious to those living at that time? Are our beliefs different & less important to us without a healthy fear of an immanent death? Is that the meaning of religion? Religion is something we're just supposed to do at church?

It was science, philosophy, politics, identity, and hope for salvation. It was not a personal preference but an abiding and universal truth.

When did it stop being about the 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.

IMO, this is just as true now as it was then. Should I try to make the author of this piece part of my mere 1%?

[185JHP]

It may not be a fixable problem - the "top down authoritarianism" I mean. It's not Biblical, it's evil. Powered by the idea that a human being can condemn someone to the fire. Sad. Thanks for your thoughtful reply.

[Havoc]

Right Bob, how bout another one. If you're going to sit and hurl baseless accusations you cannot back up to save your life, you should at least be entertaining. Come on Bob, say it, just once "they are committing suicide at the city limits" I know you can do it, I watched you on tv for a month.

[Petronski]

It sure must suck for you to be refuted and exposed post after post, thread after thread. If only someone would pay you per lie.

Anyway, if you're going to post to XBob, at least spell his name properly.

[Havoc]

Well, you're getting closer to humorous. Come on Bob. You can do it "they're committing suicide at the city limits" let's go. Or maybe you could give us one of those - there are no tanks speaches with a little graphic of a tank running by in the background - right behind you. I'm debunked just because you say so.. lol. Comeon Bob, if you're gonna do it poorly, you might as well do it with humor. Put on the hat for us too.

[Petronski]

Wonder of wonders! You've posted twice without even a drip of anti-Catholic hatred or blaming the President for your outsourcing.

[Havoc]

It would be fixable if there was a hint of the Holy spirit and a care for following scripture amongst them; but, the problem is, that the philosophy has supplanted scripture and truth a long time ago. This is why the inquisitions were even possible to come from something claiming to be Christian and last for what 700+ years. This is why the example of Christ in Telling Peter to put the sword away and the sinners to put down their rocks and leave the adulterous woman alone cannot penetrate them. Their philosophy is their master, not Christ's direction. They turn from his direction scoffing. They know better because they have reasoned it out and are wiser than all. They've been around for some 1500 years so they are right - or so the claim goes...

I too wish the Scriptures would penetrate. They can, but only if God allows it. When people are given over to strong delusion so that they will believe a lie, they will never accept the truth on their own. It's also a big part of why you see them projecting their own actions and their own problems on everyone else. But you can always pray that God will get hold of them.

[Havoc]

Well, Bob, you're repeating your hollow charges and they're beyond stale now. So I'll leave you to wallow in your misery at your continued missing of the target. Maybe you could come up with something original, like maybe accusing me of being a nice, good humored guy for poking fun at you instead of hitting abuse lol. Night. Hope God and the Holy spirit get hold of you and show you what love and loving your neighbor truly is one of these nignts. God loves ya, even if you do dispise his servant.

[185JHP]

Well said. Interesting times coming. I get comfort from Isaiah 66:24. God bless you.

[edsheppa]

Moral relativism asserts that morality is as good as another.

Again you are wrong.

Moral relativism refers to a view that claims moral standards are not absolute or universal, but rather emerge from social customs and other sources.

And that is exactly what the author is doing.

To be clear, I'm not condemning the author for being a moral relativist - I'm one myself but I also think that some moral systems are objectively superior to others. Consequently your observation that the Inquisition was, in certain respects, an improvement on what came before is a good one in my opinion.

Rather I think he's hypocritically making a morally relative argument for the Inquisition when he would take to task anyone doing so on behalf of say Islamic terrorists or the Iranian mullahs.

[Havoc]

Just saw this and was on my way to bed; but, had to stop and comment. Moral relativism is not the Christian standard, it is human reason at work trying to excuse application of human reason over the application of the reason of others in trying to say "our reason was an improvement over their reason."

Christianity isn't about reason or philosophical constructs of men competing to outdo the thinking of other men on what is morally better than something else. Chrisitanity is a covenant laid down By God.. A take it or leave it proposition dropped at mankind's doorstep By God for us to make a decision over. God handed us a completed work. And that completed work stated plainly that what was being done in the inquisitions was dead wrong 1000 years before it started brewing. There is no moral relativism with God. While we can sit back and reason out that a punch in the mouth is better than a broken leg, that's all fine and good but that is simple relativism. When you start talking about morality, God has given us a fixed and defined set of expectations and merely sitting back and saying "oops we made a mistake; but, we were still better than joe" don't quite cut it.

A mistake is "oops" and then we fix it. If I get mad and slap someone because I momentarily lose control, that is a mistake. When I beat them to death slowely for hours, we tend to call that deliberative. What then do you call it when it's ingrained for over 700 years such that it just about had to be the hand of God conquering them to put an end to it. Cause the Lord knows it wouldn't have ended otherwise. The greater point being it didn't stop because they saw the error of their ways and got right with God for fear of his vengeance at the least. No, they still haven't learned. The spirit of Christ in me is all I need in order to understand the abject poverty of this situation. The absence of God's will here makes the moral relativism a badge that should be one of shame. Instead of being able to say they learned and Got right with God, they can only say, well, we weren't as bad as someone else - whether it is true or not. And that grieves me - that people can be so blinded as not to see this.

These same people in their delusion will tell you that islam is evil and islamicists are evil; but, they act identical to one another with exception to what the content of their dogma is. The first world won't allow Rome to do what she once did while she still acts that way in the third world to a great extent - case in point being south america. But both act pretty much identically for their radical nature. Islam is just a tad more radical because they've been largely unrestrained for a long time whilest the world has slowly come to the realization that they could not be befriended or placated any more than "Holy Rome" could be.

If Christ were to stay his return for 500 years, the Islamicists would be acting by then just as Catholicism has to act in first world countries like the US today - restrained by a public that is wise to their ways and has long since determined not to be abused by them. That threat has been subdued to the extent that people have nearly forgotten in some cases what the threat was. Islam has reminded many of them. But those of us with Christ in our hearts have been awake and aware. And this moral relativism is not of Christ. Nor is it gonna pass muster before God.

Whatsoever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me. Moral relativism your way around that.

[RobbyS]

No, he is saying that one need not measure the Middle Ages by OUR standards. It is not OUR standards that tell us where Islamists or Medieval Christians were wrong; rather it is standards that transcend both theirs and our own. In certain ways, we are better men than the medieval Christians, but not in other ways. The progressive view is that we are always getting better,but the Augustan age of Rome was followed by the near collapse of the 3rd century. Augustine thought we were in the old age of mankind, and so did his disciple luther Maybe what we think is growth may be cancer which will drain the body of its vitality and kill it. I doubt our civilization can survive another crisis like the one of 1914-1945.

[RobbyS]

The Inquisitors did improve matters. On the other hand, the tools they devised were often inadequate. It is importsant to remember that our court system is medieval in origin, that the Common Law incorporates much of canon law, that our courts equitable jurisdiction comes directly from the example of the courts presidened over by clerical Lord Chancellors. But having sais that, it still remains that horrible injustices were committed, because even saints are fallible and are often so uncertain what to do in the face of evil that they end up doing evil. Let us learn from their bad example as well as by the good.

[Polybius]

The Spanish defeated Protestant armies on the battlefield? Where?

The Battle of Muhlberg.

The Battle of Gemblours.

The capture of Haarlem.

The capture of Leyden.

The capture of Namur.

The capture of Ghent.

The capture of Antwerp.

The capture of Ostend.

The capture of Brussels.

The capture of Breda.

The defeat of the Huguenot siege of Paris in 1590.

The reason that Belgium and France remained Catholic countries is because Protestant armies in those two countries were defeated by Spain.

The Surrender of Breda

**********************

Historical Bonus Question:

What is the significance of the year 1290 in English history?

Hint: Although the Spanish expulsion of the Jews in 1492 is taught to every school child, what happened in England in 1290 is never mentioned.

[edsheppa]

Maybe what we think is growth may be cancer which will drain the body of its vitality and kill it.

Oh my, a little gloomy aren't we.

The progressive view is that we are always getting better

And it is obviously true - over historical time we have "gotten better." The improvement isn't uniform, certainly, but it is definite and fairly steady. Being a conservative I think that trend will continue.

It is not OUR standards that tell us where Islamists or Medieval Christians were wrong; rather it is standards that transcend both theirs and our own.

I couldn't pass up commenting on this. It is clear to me that you (and I) are judging the actions of these long ago people based on our standards. It's unreasonable to claim that you are judging based on standards which transcend your own because you have no basis for knowledge of such standards. How can you know that, according to these transcendent values, they were not justified in torturing and executing these Jewish "heretics" and taking all their wealth?

[edsheppa]

Moral relativism ... is human reason at work trying to excuse application of human reason over the application of the reason of others in trying to say "our reason was an improvement over their reason."

So much error today. Didn't you read the definition in my post? I think it is very accurate. Pure moral relativists would not claim better or worse in any absolute sense. Their thinking is more or less that the morals suit themselves to the situation. I think the saying is "sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." The moral relativist might substitute good for evil but, being relative, that's more matter of spin.

As for the rest of your post, I think you have no basis for knowing that there is an absolute standard that God has handed down. For my own part, I think that even if there is such a standard it is unknowable by us.

And by the way, a punch in the mouth is virtually always better than a broken leg. If you were to offer the choice to say a hundred people, don't you think virtually all of them would choose the former? Thanks for that example of something that's (virtually always) objectively better than something else.