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.
Your implication was that Spain never won a battle against Protestant armies. I refuted that point.
In regards to "winning the war", Spanish arms did win the wars to keep both France and Belgium Catholic.
Be that as it may, the inter-Christian religious intolerance on both sides was very unfortunate for Europe.
A much better use of resources would have been a united Christian front against militant Islam that was still knocking at the gates of Vienna in 1683.
Um, excuse' but how impartial does one need to be to list the torture devices used by the inquisition? It isn't his partiality or impartiality that bugs you - its his clarity that gets straight to the gut which bothers you. I didn't quote him for anything other than the list of devices and how they were used. The guy happens to be accurate.
Funny... That's not all how that reads to me. It says they must be doing so in defense of the Church.
Ah, so murder in defense of the church isn't counted as a murder. Gee, I think that's pretty much the same thing I noted. If it isn't, the difference is not sufficient to bicker about. I definitely see no ground for picking knits. And it is still standing as an affront to what Christ him self told us on two seperate occasions.
No actually, being excommunicated is far worse and far rarer than being termed a heretic..
Really, That is not shown in Canon 3. It is not shown in civil law. Canon law demanded the death penalty for heresy. It only excommunicates people from your religious organization for listening to heretics. If they recanted, they could be brought back in - just as with the nobles; but, if after a year they had not recanted, then they were deemed heretics and their lives were then considered forfeit. Your story doesn't jibe with the conciliar documents or Papal bulls or the civil law in the larger picture. As with Dave, you seem to be mistating willfully what is there in effort to lessen the blow of what Rome ACTUALLY says behind the scenes. It is noteworthy that Lateran IV Canon 3 is still the Law of the Church and that it is still lawful in the church of Rome to murder heretics.. or should we qualify that and say "people whom Rome deems to be heretics". It is a relative term. Islam uses the term infadel.
BTW in Pennsylvania a "creek" is sometimes called a "kill" so when Dave says "kill" he probably means "creek".
You should know what you are talking about before you begin spouting falsehoods.
Nice to believe in inevitable progress but that is a matter of faith. For certain individuals , the only thing that is certain to them was that the river has risen up to their necks and they will surely drown. Only in retrospect do things always "come out right." I should think that after looking at the events of the 20th Century that you might see that things can turn out very badly indeed. Wilhemine Germany was a safe haven for German Jews and they became great German patriots. Then along came Hitler. Or imagine yourself a peasant of the 14th Century. Along comes bad weather, famine and the sudden onslaught of the Black Death. For surviving members if your village, there is a slight economic advantage, but death from epidemics will remain a harsh reality of life until the 18th Century. The theory of progres goes from peak to peak and ignore the valley's below, and even the facts of history which tell us that sometime peaks disappear entirely and we are taken down to a plain reaches to the horizon.
You should know what you are taking about. Eveyr Catholic has to be exposed to the entire Bible every three years. It's a mortal sin not to be. But that's just the minimum.
In the meanwhile you paint a picture of yourself as a sniveling coward.
The article was written by a professional apologist. What else do you expect from him?
I've already said that the other Catholics on this thread have well documented misstatements by Havoc and others. Your (plural) behavior on this thread is well documented...on this thread. I have no desire or time to play your silly word games, and there is no need to re-cover the same old ground over and over and over again. As for charges of cowardice, well I'll leave that to the judgment of the entire group.
And I (continue to) leave the snivelling to Havoc.
Show me the relevant teaching from the Catechism or any official Church document.
I say there is none. You say there is. That should be easy for you to prove.
You made good points, and I especially agree with the one about uniting to fight the Muslim incursions. We might have a very different world picture today had the Turks been weakened earlier on.
Judging by the actions of the church during the Medieval inquisition, "exterminate" meant rendering them incapable of spreading the heresy, either though imprisonment, execution, or getting them to recant. It did not involve indiscriminant slaughter of large masses of people. Even during during the peek of the Medival inquisition, the numbers of executed heretics did not amount to more than a few hundred.
Again, let me stress, the 4th Lateran Council was dealing with the Albigensian heretics, who, frankly, deserved extermination in the above sense of the word. It was not dealing with Protestants, seeing as how the council met 2 centuries before the reformation.
I know Mel Brooks movies have their audience, but they seem to put me to sleep. Popular American knowledge passes me by, but a lot of the stuff I'm interested in causes people's eyes to glaze over if I try to talk about it.
Back to the issue at hand, kinda. I heard that the tradition of serving ham on Easter began during the Spanish Inquisition. Hanging hams by doorways & serving pork became a way of proving conversion to Christianity.
See, you deal in dates & big events, while I deal in minutia. lol
I kinda knew Charlemagne was in power around the earlier date you mentioned & I also knew he has been credited with upholding & spreading Western Christianity, so I wanted to find out what part, if any he played into it all. I find him making an alliance with an Islamic ruler against Christian Spain? Then again, he was German & he ruled France... :::snicker:::
Thank you for sharing your interesting knowledge.
BTW, I looked back at your list of victories for Roman Catholic Spain & somewhere in the back of my mind I find myself reaching for an Italian name... Catherine de' Medici & all of the intrigue that swirled around her & her family. Didn't assassinations & brokered deals have a lot to do with France finally settling down to be a Roman Catholic nation?
No, I do not.
Without the inquisition, the accused were usally killed. With the inquiisition, 99% of them are spared. That's pretty amazing actually.
The only thing that would convince me a 99% survival rate is good, would be New Testament justification for one execution for the sin/crime of heresy.
What he is saying is that the Inquisition was a remarkable leap forward in justice, which demonstrates a respect for life.
The black death was part of his point, which you seem to have dropped, when I think it's a key to the point he was attempting to make. Include the black death & I find myself thinking he's steering modern minds to a conclusion. Do you need me to spell it out?
>> When did it stop being about the universal truth?<<
When Protestants decided that that they could have 15,478,386 opinions on any moral standard, and they were all okay, as long as they disagreed with Catholic tradition.
Tsk, tsk.
>> IMO, this is just as true now as it was then. <<
Well, your flat out wrong then. OUR society is built on religious pluralism and secualr standards of law, and loyalty. There are very few institutions which rely *directly* on religion in America.
We seem to define "fabric of a community" differently. What do you think allowed/allows us to build community as you described?
There is a Portuguese dish, carne de porco com ameijoas (pork and clams) that served the same purpose. However, since Muslims could eat neither pork nor shellfish, it was a double whammy. :-)
I find myself reaching for an Italian name... Catherine de' Medici & all of the intrigue that swirled around her & her family.
Catherine de Medici was Queen of France, ruled as Regent for he second son, Charles IX, and continued to dominate him even after he reached his majority. She played a balance of power game between the Huguenots and the Roman Catholics led by the house of Guise.
As I recall, the Pope once asked his Papal Ambassador to France what Catherine's true beliefs were, Catholic or Protestant. The Ambassador replied, "Your Holiness, the Queen does not believe in God."
Didn't assassinations & brokered deals have a lot to do with France finally settling down to be a Roman Catholic nation?
When the Protestant Henry of Navarre was foiled in his attempt to capture Paris by force of arms by Spanish intervention in 1590, he decided to renounce Protestantism and convert to Catholicism. He was then accepted and crowned as King Henry IV of France in 1594.
His comment was, "Paris vaut bien une messe (Paris was worth a Mass)."
Tell me "execute" doesn't leave you dead. Tell the same to SpinMaster.
Wow. It's about time.
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