I tried in my last article not to justify the Crusades, but to put aside any self-righteousness and to try to understand the events which gave rise to the crusading movement.
In this article I shall attempt an even more difficult task – to place the inquisitions within their milieu. It is a difficult task because the very word ‘Inquisition’ conjures up the vilest of images.
There was, however, no such thing as ‘The Inquisition’. ‘The Inquisition’ – an organisation, staffed by fanatics, which terrorised all of Europe – is a creation of polemicists, Protestant propagandists and early secularists.
Today, there are many contemporary historians who are helping separate fact from fiction; two of note are Edward Peters in his Inquisition and Henry Kamen in his The Spanish Inquisition.
The Inquisitions have their origins in Roman law and practice. As the Republic gave way to the Empire, legal instruments for dealing with criminal and civil wrongs developed. There was nothing particularly sinister about this and the word inquisitio did not send shivers down people’s spines. Peters explains how Roman jurisprudential practice was adopted by the Church after it emerged from persecution. The Church of the first millennium, however, remained wary of coercive power especially with regard to faith.
Nonetheless, over time various inquisitional tribunals came to be established and people were tortured, unjustly punished and burnt at the stake. These are terrible aspects of history which cannot be denied. However, we do not need to look far afield to find contemporary examples of torture and failure of natural justice. Remember Abu Ghraib and extraordinary rendition? Our outrage in Australia at these discoveries was muted compared to that in other countries even though our government was hardly lily-white.
There are contemporaries of ours who argue that torture is a necessary weapon in the arsenal of our intelligence agencies – incredible though this seems to most of us today.
The inquisitions were by and large initiatives of temporal powers responding to perceived threats. In a world in which religion was intertwined with regional identity, heresy or deviance was seen not just as a threat to good religion; it was a threat to good order in the world.
We in secular societies think, mistakenly, that truth is relative and that each person has his own truth. In older societies people were not so jejune when it came to truth. Truth was one and was integral to good order as well as to salvation.
In post-Reformation Europe, rulers, both Catholic and Protestant, believed that the rooting out of dissent was vital to the unity their realms. I focus on the inquisitions of the Catholic Church, but Protestant communions and rulers also had their tribunals. This sad history is one which all Christians have to confront.
If we have regard to the mores of the times, Church tribunals do not come off too badly. Recent studies have shown that they tended to be more lenient than their secular counterparts.
The Inquisition, which is now a byword for terror, is the Spanish Inquisition. It was fearsome at times, but not throughout all its long existence. Its origins are bound up with the struggles between old established families and new Christian converts from Judaism.
Xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racialism played a role in the rise of the Spanish Inquisition. This racialism and anti-Semitism was condemned at various times by Bishops and Popes, eg Humani Generis Enemicus of Pope Nicholas, but these denunciations had limited effect (Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition).
The Holy Office of the Inquisition in Spain was to perdure for hundreds of years. In the period 1559-1565 when King Philip II sought to ensure that the Reformers gained no toehold in his realms, about a hundred people were burnt at the stake in Spain by the tribunals of the Inquisition.
This was a hundred too many but we do not often hear that three times the number were cruelly executed by Elizabeth I in England.
Popular imagination has the Spanish fires being stoked day and night and thousands going to the pyre.
Another common misconception is with regard to the relationship between the Roman pontiffs and the various Inquisitions.
The Popes at various times did lend their authority to the work of the inquisitors, but they also tried to restrain their excesses.
Papal authority, however, came up against the will of emerging temporal rulers; papal jurisdiction in practice only obtained where the local lords permitted it.
There were several attempts to reform and limit the Spanish Inquisition by both Popes and Spanish prelates. These in the main foundered on the rocks of Imperial obduracy. Kamen tells of a papal decree of Sixtus IV.
The Pontiff condemned the excesses of the Spanish Inquisition and its methods: “many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves … have without legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons … to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example, and causing disgust to many.”
The bull was not favourably received by King Ferdinand who demanded its withdrawal. It was not the first or last attempt to ameliorate the workings of the Spanish tribunals. One could argue that the Inquisitions were as much instruments of state policy as of Church discipline.
A final myth regards the attitude of the Inquisitions to witchcraft. Early Mediaeval Inquisitions and Church courts tended to take a rather sceptical view of tales of witchcraft.
When they started to deal with them, Church tribunals asked for evidence. This was a dramatic development; manor courts and the like could be inclined to dispense with such trivialities in the face of fearful accusations of curses and strange goings-on. David Bentley Hart in his Atheist Delusions tells the amusing tale of 12th century Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais who dealt with a woman who claimed to be a witch and to be able to slip through keyholes by locking the door and chasing the deluded creature with a stick while telling her to escape if she could.
Churchmen, at their best, were sceptical of pretensions to magical powers because they believed in a reasonable world under the sovereignty of the Creator.
Much of the hysteria surrounding witchcraft arose because of a superstitious and ill-catechised laity rather than a fearful and credulous hierarchy. As religious certainties broke down, as Church structures came under threat and schism threatened, the old tranquillity gave way to a fear of maleficent forces threatening Church and society. This grievous development was born of a lack of faith rather than of strength of faith.
Reading various books and articles on the Inquisitions made me aware of the complexity of their history. I think we should grieve for evil done. I think we should seek to understand our history because we, sinful human beings, are ever prey to the same fears and ever tempted to violence.
However, bombasts who claim that the Catholic religion gave rise to violence, do not know their history; and they wash their hands, Pontius Pilate-like, of present evils. Even in the case of the Inquisitions, the Church’s use of violence was constrained by pastoral considerations; ‘secular’ tribunals suffered no such inhibitions.
We all wish that Church leaders had acted more consistently with their faith, that they had not allowed themselves to be co-opted by temporal powers, but they were just as frail as we are; we hold a treasure in earthen vessels. Our faith tells us that each human person has dignity and is created in the image of God. It continues to offer a critique of discourses which diminish us.
It offers a counter-narrative to the tempting myths of national and racial superiority which allow us to mistreat the ‘stranger in our midst’.
It tells us that we are all brothers and sisters and there is one who is Father of us all and who causes His light to shine on good and bad alike. Remember how Ferdinand was outraged at the ecclesiastical censure of his Inquisition?
We have our contemporary Ferdinands who want us to be silent and go away. They must not succeed; the prophetic message of the Gospel must be heard no matter whom it may discomfit.