[CTRL] The Holy Inquisition: Myth and Reality?

[Kris Millegan]

 -Caveat Lector-

from:
http://www.catholictradition.org/inqui.htm
<A HREF="http://www.catholictradition.org/inqui.htm">CATHOLIC FAMILY NEWS- THE
INQUISITION</A>
-----
". . .For eternal salvation must be regarded as greater than temporal
property, and the welfare of all must be regarded as greater than the welfare
of the individual.

 These affirmations have consequences painful for the liberal spirit of
our days. For, if the State proclaims that one single religion is the
true one, it has an obligation in principle to prohibit the diffusion of
sects of a heretical character. It is understood that in Catholic
society the highest purpose of the State lies in recognizing the
Catholic Church, in defending her, in applying her laws, in serving her.
In a Catholic society, the Pope has an indirect authority over all that
touches on the interests of the Church. In this way, the Pope is
elevated above all the temporal powers."

Oh yeah, and the horse ya  . . . .

Om
K
-----
SEPTEMBER 15, 1998

 The Holy Inquisition:
Myth and Reality?

Dr. Horvat holds a Ph.D. in Medieval History

Editor's Note: Centuries of false propaganda have convinced most people,
good Catholics included, that the Inquisition was one of the most evil
institutions ever devised. Presented here is a long-overdue defence in
which Dr. Marian Horvat, Professor of Medieval History, sets the record
straight by completely debunking five of the most common myths about the
Holy Inquisition.

 To 20th Century sensibilities, to speak of Holy and Inquisition in the
same phrase would seem a contradiction. Never has a subject seen so much
ink-slinging � or whitewashing � as the Holy Inquisition. The modern
mentality has a natural difficulty in understanding an institution like
the Inquisition because the inquisitorial process was not predicated on
liberal doctrines such as freedom of thought, which became central in
Western culture in the 18th Century. The modern mind has difficulty in
grasping religious belief as something objective, outside the realm of
free private judgment. Nor does the modern mind see the Catholic Church
as a perfect and sovereign society where orthodoxy should be maintained
at any cost.

 Religious intolerance is not a unique product of the Middle Ages:
everywhere and always in the past men believed nothing disturbed
commonweal and public peace so much as religious dissensions and
conflicts. By the Middle Ages, it had become accepted that the gravest
kind of crisis was that which threatened the unity and security of the
Latin Church, and not to proceed against the heretics with every means
at the disposal of Christian society was not only foolish, but a
betrayal of Christ Himself. The modern concept of the secular State,
neutral toward all religions, would have shocked the medieval mind.

 Modern men experience difficulty in understanding this institution
because they have lost sight of three facts. First of all, they have
ceased to grasp religious belief as something objective, as a gift of
God, and therefore outside the realm of free private judgment. Second,
they no longer see in the Church a perfect and sovereign society, based
substantially on a pure and authentic Revelation, whose first and most
important duty must naturally be to retain unsullied this original
deposit of faith. That orthodoxy should be maintained at any cost seemed
self-evident to the medieval mind. Heresy, since it affected the soul,
was a crime more dangerous than murder, since the eternal life of the
soul was worth much more than the mortal life of the flesh.

 Finally, modern man has lost sight of a society in which the Church and
the State constitute a closely-knit polity. The spiritual authority was
inseparably intertwined with the secular in much the same way as the
soul is united with the body. To divide the two into separate,
watertight compartments would have been unthinkable. The State could not
be indifferent about the spiritual welfare of its subjects without being
guilty of treason to its first Sovereign, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Before
the religious revolution of the 16th Century, these views were common to
all Christians.1

 As William Thomas Walsh points out in Characters of The Inquisition,
the positive suppression of heresy by ecclesiastical and civil
authorities in Christian society is as old as monotheism itself. (In the
name of religion, Moses put to death far more people than Torquemada
ever did).2 Yet the Inquisition per se, as a distinct ecclesiastical
tribunal, is of much later origin. Historically, it operated as a phase
in the growth of ecclesiastical legislation that adapted certain
elements of Roman legal procedure. In its own time, it certainly would
not have been understood as it is presented today.3 For, as Edward
Peters points out so well in his landmark study Inquisition, "the
Inquisition" was an "invention" of the religious disputes and political
conflicts of the 16th Century. It was later adapted to the causes of
religious toleration and philosophical and political enlightenment in
the 17th and 18th Centuries. This process, which was always
anti-Catholic and usually anti-Spanish, became universalized. Thus, even
tually the Inquisition became representative of all repressive religions
that opposed freedom of conscience, political liberty, and philosophical
enlightenment.

Myth #1
 Myth: The medieval Inquisition was a suppressive, all encompassing, and
all-powerful, centralized organ of repression maintained by the Catholic
Church.

 Reality: Except in fiction, the Inquisition as a single all-powerful,
horrific tribunal, "whose agents worked everywhere to thwart religious
truth, intellectual freedom, and political liberty until it was
overthrown sometime in the enlightened 19th Century" simply did not
exist. The myth of the Inquisition was actually shaped in the hands of
"anti-Hispanic and religious reformers in the 16th Century."4 It was an
image assembled from a body of legends and myths, which took shape in
the context of the intense religious persecution of the 16th Century.
Spain, the greatest power in Europe, who had assumed the role of
defender of Catholicism, was the object of propaganda that decried "the
Inquisition" as the most dangerous and characteristic of Catholic
weapons against Protestantism. Later, critics of any type of religious
persecution would adopt the term.

 In fact, there was not one monolithic Inquisition, but three distinct
inquisitions.
 The Inquisition of the Middle Ages began in 1184 in southern France in
response to Catharist heresy, and dissolved at the end of the 14th
Century as Catharism died out. Modern studies show conclusively that
there is no clear evidence that people in medieval Europe conceived of
the Inquisition as a centralized organ of government. The Popes of the
times had no intention of establishing a permanent tribunal.5 For
example, not until 1367 does the title inquisitor hereticae pravitatis
even appear when the Dominican Alberic was sent to Lombardy.

 Pope Gregory IX did not establish the Inquisition as a distinct and
separate tribunal, but appointed permanent judges who executed doctrinal
functions in the name of the Pope. Where they sat, there was the
Inquisition. One of the most damaging legends that was spun through the
centuries is the image of an omniscient, omnipotent tribunal whose
fingers reached into every corner of the land. The small number of
inquisitors and their limited scope far belie the exaggerated rhetoric.
At the end of the 13th Century, there were two inquisitors for the whole
of Languedoc (one of the hotbeds of the Albigensian heresy), two for
Provence and four to six for the rest of France.6

 As for the accusation that the Inquisition was an omnipresent body
throughout Christendom, the Inquisition did not even exist in northern
Europe, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, or England, Wales, Ireland, and
Scotland. The vast majority of cases in the 13th Century were directed
against the Albigensian heretics in southern France. It was not even
established in Venice until 1289 and the archives of that city show that
the death penalty was inflicted by the secular power on only six
occasions in totu.7

 El Santo Oficio de la Santa Inquisition, better known as the Spanish
Inquisition, started in 1478 as a State institution appointed to
discover heresy, deviations from the true Faith. But Ferdinand and
Isabella also instituted it to protect the conversos, or New Christians,
who had become victims of popular indignation, prejudices, fears and
greed.8 It is important to note that the Inquisition had authority only
over baptized Christians, and that the unbaptized were completely free
of its disciplinary measures unless they violated natural law.

 Finally, The Holy Office at Rome was begun in 1542, the least active
and most benign of the three variations.9 A recent study by John
Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy, deals with the Roman Inquisition
and the procedures it followed after its reconstitution in the mid-16th
Century in its struggle to preserve the faith and to eradicate heresy.
The value of Tedeschi's study is that it overturns long-standing
assumptions about the corruption, inhumane coercion, and injustice of
the Roman Inquisition of the Renaissance, assumptions that Tedeschi
admitted he harbored when he began his extensive work in the documents.
What he "very gradually" began to find was that the Inquisition was not
a "drumhead court, a chamber of horrors, or a judicial labyrinth from
which escape was impossible". Tedeschi points out that the inquisitorial
process included the provision of a defense attorney. Further, the
accused was given right to counsel and even received a notarized copy of
the entire trial (with the names of prosecution witnesses deleted) so
that he might make a response. In contrast, in the secular courts of the
time, the defense attorney was still playing only a ceremonial role, the
felon was denied the right to counsel (until 1836), and evidence against
the accused was only read in court, where he had to make the defense on
the spot. Tedeschi concluded that the Roman Inquisition did dispense
legal justice in terms of the jurisprudence of early modern Europe and
even goes so far as to say, "it may not be an exaggeration to claim, in
fact, that in several respects the Holy Office was a pioneer in judicial
reform".10

Myth #2
 Myth: The Inquisition was born from the bigotry, cruelty and
intolerance of the medieval world, dominated by the Catholic Church.

 Reality: The Inquisition found its beginnings in a calm, measured, and
deliberate attempt to set up a juridical instrument of conformity that
would eliminate the caprice, anger, and bigotry of the mobs. Further,
the medieval inquisitors were combating a social, and not just
theological, danger.

 At the end of the 12th Century, the Inquisition was established in
southern France in response to the Albigensian heresy, which found
particular strength in the cities of Lombardy and Languedoc. It is
important to point out the social dangers presented to all society by
this group, which was not just a prototype of modern Protestant
fundamentalism, the popular view of our day. The term Albigensian
derives from the town of Albi in southern France, a center of Cathar
activity. The Cathars (the name refers to the designation of its
adherents as cathaaroi, Greek for the "pure ones") held that two
deities, one material and evil, the other immaterial and good, struggled
for the souls of man. All material creation was evil and it was man's
duty to escape from it and reject those who recognized it as good. The
God of the Old Testament, who created the world, which is evil, was
repudiated. It was the New Testament, as interpreted by the Cathars,11
that acted as guide for man to free his spiritual soul from evil matter,
the body. A 13th Century authority, Rainier Sacconi, summarized the
belief of the Cathars thus:
 "The general beliefs of all the Cathars are as follows:

 The devil made this world and everything in it. Also, that all the
sacraments of the Church, namely baptism of actual water and the other
sacraments, are of no avail for salvation and that they are not the true
sacraments of Christ and His church but are deceptive and diabolical and
belong to the Church of the wicked. . . . Also a common belief to all
Cathars is that carnal matrimony has always been a mortal sin and that
in the future life one incurs no heavier a penalty for adultery or
incest than for legitimate marriage, nor indeed among them should anyone
be more severely punished on this account. Also, Cathars deny the future
resurrection of the body. Also, they believe that to eat meat, eggs, or
cheese, even in pressing need, is a mortal sin; this for the reason that
they are begotten by coition. Also that taking an oath is in no case
permissible, this consequently, is a mortal sin. Also that secular
authorities commit mortal sin in punishing malefactors of heretics. Also
that no one can attain salvation except in their sect."12

 The Cathars thus held that the Mass was idolatry, the Eucharist was a
fraud, marriage evil, and the Redemption ridiculous. Before death,
adherents received the consolamentum, the only sacrament permitted and
this permitted the soul to be free from matter and return to God. For
this reason, suicide by strangulation or starvation was not only
permitted, but could even be laudable.

 To preach that marriage was evil, that all oaths were forbidden, that
religious suicide was good, that man had no free will and therefore
could not be held responsible for his actions, that civil authority had
no right to punish criminals or defend the country by arms, struck at
the very root of medieval society. For example, the simple refusal to
take oaths would have undermined the whole fabric of feudal legal
structures, in which the spoken word carried equal or greater weight
than the written. Even Charles Henry Lea, a Protestant amateur historian
of the Inquisition who so strongly opposed the Catholic Church, had to
admit: "The cause of orthodoxy was the cause of progress and
civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed
to exist on equal terms, its influence could not have failed to become
disastrous."13

 In response to the severity and frequent brutality with which the
northern French waged the Albigensian Crusade, in which many heretics
were killed without formal trial or hearing, Pope Innocent III set in
motion a process of investigation to expose the secret sects. Another
problem confronting the papacy was the willingness on the part of the
laity to take the most severe steps against heresy without much concern
for the heretics' conversion and salvation. The real father of the
medieval institution is considered to be Pope Gregory IX, friend of both
St. Francis and St Dominic. He would call upon the newfound mendicant
orders to assume the dangerous, arduous, and unwanted task of
inquisitors.

 What Pope Gregory IX instituted was an extraordinary court to
investigate and adjudicate persons accused of heresy. The unprecedented
growth of the Albigensians in southern France surely played into his
decision. In northern France as well, the Church was facing sporadic mob
violence that often fell on the innocent. The practice of putting
heretics to death by burning at the stake was assuming the force of an
established custom. The Pope was also concerned about the reports coming
from Germany about a sect known as the Luciferians, a secret society
with fixed rituals that profaned the Sacred Host.14

 On the secular plane, the Pope was facing a formidable power, Emperor
Frederick II, the supposedly "modern" and "liberal" Hohenstaufen, a
ruler utterly indifferent to the spiritual welfare of the Church and
continually at loggerheads with the Papacy. A Christian ruler in name
only, Frederick II was heavily influenced by astrologers and Muslim
customs (he kept a harem); he ruined two crusades, and was
excommunicated twice. As early as March 1224, he ordered that any
heretic convicted in Lombardy be burned alive (the ancient Roman penalty
for high treason) or as a lesser penalty, their tongues torn out. Pope
Gregory, fearful that Frederick was committing to flames men who were
not heretics but merely his own personal enemies, sought to find a more
measured way to deal with the problem.

 In 1233 Pope Gregory IX responded with his own solution: to replace the
lynch law with a regular legal process headed by the mendicant
Dominicans and Franciscans. They would be examiners and judges specially
trained for the detection and conversion of heretics, protected from
avarice and bribery by the vow of poverty, and devoted to justice.

 The first point, therefore, to be noted in connection with the
mendicant Inquisition is that it came into being in response to a
defined need. In the matter of heresy, it introduced law, system, and
even justice where there had been limitless scope for the gratification
of political jealousy, personal animosity, and popular hatred. When we
find one historian describing the introduction of the Inquisition as a
"step forward in juristic theory," we must understand him in that
sense.15 Inquisitio means investigation, and this was the Pope's
concern: a real investigation, a judicial procedure, instead of outright
lynching, instead of acts motivated by irrational mob emotions and
private vengeance.

 The second point is that the mendicant orders were charged with the
task of preserving the integrity of the Faith as well as the security of
society. The failure to stem the tide of this heresy would have allowed
a collapse of Western Christendom. One of the most thoroughly successful
tribunals in all history, it succeeded in extirpating the anti-social
poison of the Albigenses and thus preserved the moral unity of Europe
for another three hundred years.

Myth #3
 Myth: The hideous procedures of the Inquisition were unjust, cruel,
inhumane, and barbaric. The Inquisition roasted their victims' feet over
fire, bricked them up into walls to languish for all eternity, smashed
their joints with hammers, and flayed them on wheels.

 Reality: Despite the compelling Gothic fictions, the evidence leads us
to a wholly different conclusion. The procedures of the Inquisition are
well known through a whole series of papal bulls and other authoritative
documents, but mainly through such formularies and manuals as were
prepared by St. Raymond Pe�aforte (c1180-1275), the great Spanish
canonist, and Bernard Gui (1261-1331), one of the most celebrated
inquisitors of the early 14th Century. The Inquisitors were certainly
interrogators, but they were theological experts who followed the rules
and instructiones meticulously, and were dismissed and punished when
they showed too little regard for justice. When, for example, in 1223
Robert of Bourger gleefully announced his aim to burn heretics, not to
convert them, he was immediately suspended and imprisoned for life by
Gregory IX.16

 The inquisitorial procedures were surprisingly just and even lenient.
In contrast with other tribunals throughout Europe at the time, they
appear as almost enlightened. The process began with a summons of the
faithful to the church where the inquisitor preached a solemn sermon,
the Edit de foi. All heretics were urged to come forward and confess
their errors. This period was known as the "time of grace," which
usually lasted between 15-30 days, during which time all transgressors
had nothing to fear, since they were promised readmittance to the
communion of the faithful with a suitable penance after confession of
guilt. Bernard Gui stated that this time of grace was a most salutary
and valuable institution and that many persons were reconciled
thereby.17 For the principal aim of the process was to draw the heretic
back into the grace of God; only by persistent stubbornness would he be
cut off from the Church and abandoned to the scantier mercy of the
State. The Inquisition was first and foremost a penitential and
proselytizing office, not a penal tribunal. Unless this is clearly
recognized, the Inquisition appears as an unintelligible and meaningless
monstrosity. In theory, it was a sinner, and not a criminal, who stood
before the Inquisitor. If the lost sheep returned to the fold, the
Inquisitor counted himself successful. If not, the heretic died in open
rebellion against God, and, as far as the Inquisitor was concerned, his
mission was a complete failure.

 During this time of grace, the faithful were commanded to provide full
information to the Inquisitor concerning any heretics known to them. If
he thought there were sufficient grounds to proceed against a person, a
warrant was dispatched to him ordering his appearance before an
Inquisitor on a specified date, always accompanied by a full written
statement of evidence held by the Inquisitor against him. Finally, a
formal order of arrest could be issued. If the accused failed to appear,
which rarely occurred, he would become an excommunicate and a proscribed
man, that is, he could not be sheltered or fed by anyone under pain of
anathema.

 Although the names of witnesses against the accused were suppressed,
the accused was given an opportunity to protect himself from false
accusations by giving the Inquisitor a detailed list of the names of
personal enemies. With this, he could conclusively invalidate certain
testimony against him. He also had the power to appeal to a higher
authority, even the Papacy if need be.18 A final advantage of the
accused was that false witnesses were punished without mercy. For
example, Bernard Gui describes a father who falsely accused his son of
heresy. The son's innocence quickly came to light, and the father was
apprehended and sentenced to prison for life.

 In 1264 Urban IV further added that the Inquisitor should submit the
evidence against the accused to a body of periti or boni viri and await
their judgment before proceeding to sentencing. Acting more or less in
the capacity of jurymen, this group could number 30, 50, or even 80.
This served to lessen the enormous personal responsibility of the
Inquisitor. Again, it is important to emphasize that this was an
ecclesiastical court, which neither claimed nor exercised any
jurisdiction over those outside the household of faith, that is, the
professing infidel or the Jew. Only those who had been converted to
Christianity and had subsequently reverted to their former religion came
under the jurisdiction of the medieval Inquisition.19
 Torture was first authorized by Innocent IV in the bull Ad exstirpanda
of May 15, 1252, with limits that it could not cause the loss of a limb
or imperil life, could only be applied once, and then only if the
accused seemed already virtually convicted of heresy by manifold and
certain proofs. Certain objective studies carried out by recent scholars
have argued that torture was practically unknown in the medieval
inquisitorial process. The register of Bernard Gui, the inquisitor of
Toulouse for six years who examined more than 600 heretics, shows only
one instance of where torture was used. Further, in the 930 sentences
recorded between 1307 and 1323 (and it is worthwhile to note that
meticulous records were kept by paid notaries chosen from civil courts),
the majority of the accused were sentenced to imprisonment, the wearing
of crosses, and penances. Only 42 were abandoned to the secular arm and
burned.20

 Legends about the brutality of the Inquisition in regard to the numbers
of persons sentenced to prison and of those abandoned to the secular
power to be burned at the stake have been exaggerated through the years.
Working carefully from extant registers and available documents,
Professor Yves Dossat estimated that in the diocese of Toulouse 5,000
people were investigated during the years 1245-1246. Of these, 945 were
judged guilty of heresy or heretical involvement. Although 105 persons
were sentenced to prison, 840 received lesser penances. After
painstaking analysis of all the available data, Dossat concluded that in
the mid-13th Century, only one out of every hundred heretics sentenced
by the Inquisition was abandoned to the secular power for execution, and
 only ten to twelve percent even received prison sentences. Further, the
Inquisitors often reduced sentences to lesser penances and commuted
others.21 The large numbers of burnings detailed in various histories
are generally unauthenticated, or are the deliberate invention of anti-
Catholic propagandists of later centuries. From the growing evidence, it
seems safe to assert that the general integrity of the Holy Office was
maintained at an extraordinarily high level, much higher than that of
contemporary secular courts or later.

Myth #4
 Myth: It was the Spanish Inquisition that exceeded all barbarousness,
terrorizing all of society with its tyrannical and cruel practices.

 Reality: On November 6, 1994, the London BBC aired an amazing testimony
to the falsity of these claims in a documentary titled "The Myth of the
Spanish Inquisition." In it, historians admitted that "this image is
false. It is a distortion disseminated 400 years ago and accepted ever
since. Each case that came before the Spanish Inquisition in its
300-year history had its own file." Now, those files are being gathered
together and studied properly for the first time. Prof. Henry Kamen, an
expert in the field, admitted candidly that the files are detailed,
exhaustive, and bring to light a very different version of the Spanish
Inquisition.

 Protestant antipathies nourished this propaganda campaign against the
Catholic Church and the powerful leader of the Hapsburg dynasty who
commanded the most powerful armies in Europe, Charles V, Holy Roman
Emperor. Their fears intensified especially after the battle of Mulburg
in 1547, where Charles' enemies were virtually annihilated.22 Philip
II's succession to the Spanish throne and his own dedicated opposition
to Protestantism fanned such fears. As Philip wrote to his ambassador in
Rome in 1566, "You may assure His Holiness that rather than suffer the
least damage to religion and the service of God, I would lose all my
states and a hundred lives if I had them. For I do not propose nor
desire to be ruler of heretics."23 Yet while the Spanish often triumphed
 in the field of battle, they were abject losers in the propaganda war.
They made no defense against the legend of Spanish cruelty and barbarism
created so that Europe would sympathize with the Protestant revolt in
Netherlands. Defaming the Inquisition came to be the most natural choice
of weapon to achieve this end.

 Many pamphlets and brochures, too numerous and horrendous to enumerate
here, have been written since the 16th Century. It suffices to mention
only a few: The Apologie of William of Orange, written by the French
Huguenot Pierre Loyseleur de Villiers in 1581, enshrined all the
anti-Inquisition propaganda of the past forty years into a political
document that "validated" the Dutch Revolt. In 1567, Renaldo Gonz�lez
Montano published his Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes aliquot
detectae ac palam traductae, which was soon translated into all the
major languages of Western Europe and widely circulated. It contributed
decisively to what became known as the "Black Legend" that associated
the Inquisition with the horrors of the torture chamber.24 Such accounts
were enlarged upon by other Protestant writers, such as the Rev. Ingram
Cobain in the 19th Century, who described one of its fictitious items of
torture: a beautiful full-size doll that cut up the victim with a
thousand knives when he was forced to embrace. The myth had been created
and would assume proportions bordering on the ridiculous in the
literature, travelers' reports, masonic narratives (see illustration),
satires (Voltaire, Zaupser), plays and operas (Schiller, Verdi),
histories (Victor Hugo) and gothic novels of later centuries.25

 Concerning torture, Prof. Kamen recently said, "In fact, the
Inquisition used torture very infrequently. In Valencia, I found that
out of 7,000 cases only two percent suffered any form of torture at all
and usually for no more than 15 minutes. � I found no one suffering
torture more than twice." Prof. Jaime Conterras agreed: "We find when
comparing the Spanish Inquisition with other tribunals that the Spanish
Inquisition used torture much less. And if we compare the Spanish
Inquisition with tribunals in other countries, we find that the Spanish
Inquisition has a virtually clean record in respect to torture."26

 During this same period in the rest of Europe, hideous physical cruelty
was commonplace. In England, transgressors were executed for damaging
shrubs in public gardens, poaching deer, stealing a woman's handkerchief
and attempting suicide. In France, those who stole sheep were
disemboweled. During the reign of Henry VIII, the recognized punishment
for a poisoner was to be boiled alive in a cauldron. As late as 1837,
437 persons were executed in England in one year for various crimes, and
until passage of the Reform Bill, death was the recognized penalty for
forgery, coining, horse thieving, burglary, arson, robbery and
interference with the postal service, and sacrilege.27 It is clear that
in indicting the Spanish Inquisition upon specific charges of physical c
ruelty and callous brutality, we must proceed with some circumspection.

 The myth of unlimited power and control exercised by the Spanish
Inquisition has also been found to be groundless. In 16th- Century
Spain, the Inquisition was divided into twenty tribunals, each covering
thousands of square miles. Yet each tribunal had no more than two or
three inquisitors and a handful of administrative clerks. Prof. Kamen
has noted: "These Inquisitors had no power to control society in the way
historians have imagined they had. They had no power. They had no
function, they had no tools to do the job. We, enforcing that image,
have given them the tools that never existed."28

 In reality, the Inquisition's limited contact with the population
comprised part of the reason it did not attract the hostility of
Spaniards. Outside major cities, towns might see an inquisitor once
every ten years or even once in a century. One reason people supported
the Inquisition was precisely because it was seldom seen, and even less
often heard. Kamen also records that at every period in its history,
there are records of strong criticism and bitter opposition. Yet based
on the exploitation of inquisitorial documents first by Llorente, and
then by Henry Charles Lea, scholars have made the error of studying the
Inquisition in isolation from all other dimensions of Spanish culture
and society, as though it had played a central role in the religion,
politics, culture, and economy and as though no opposition or criticism
was permitted.29 Menendez y Pelayo's satire on those who have blamed the
tribunal for all the ills of Spain underscores this view:

 "Why was there no industry in Spain? Because of the Inquisition. Why
are we Spaniards lazy? Because of the Inquisition. Why are there
bullfights in Spain? Because of the Inquisition. Why do Spaniards take a
siesta? Because of the Inquisition."30

 The Inquisition cannot be blamed for the "decadence of Spanish learning
and literature," states Peters in his acclaimed objective study
Inquisition, despite the claims of Protestant historian Charles Lea or
Catholic historian Lord Acton. "After the thunderclap of the 1559
Index," he states, "which was directed mainly against vernacular piety,
no attacks were mounted against Spanish literature and not one in a
hundred Spanish writers came into conflict with the Inquisition. Indeed,
long after the measures of 1558-59 Spain continued to have an active
intellectual life based on a world experience vaster than that of any
other European nation."31
 A final and most important myth remains to be examined.

Myth #5
 Myth: Man is more free and happy when the State or Nation does not make
public profession of any one true religion. Therefore, true progress
lies in separation of Church and State.

 Reality: This is the crux of the question. The most dynamic element,
the most essential matter is found in the attitude of the human spirit
in relation to the questions of religion and philosophy. To fully
understand the response, it is necessary to assume several
presuppositions.

 The Catholic concept of history is based on the fact that the Ten
Commandments are fundamental norms of human behavior that correspond to
natural law. To aid man in his weakness, to guide and direct him and to
preserve him from his own tendency toward evil and error resulting from
original sin, Jesus Christ gave the Church an infallible Magisterium to
teach and guide the nations. The adhesion of man to the Magisterium of
the Church is the fruit of faith. Without faith, man cannot durably know
and entirely practice the Commandments.

 Therefore, as man elevates himself in the order of grace by the
practice of virtue inspired by grace, he elaborates a culture, a
political, social, and economic order in consonance with the basic and
unchanging principles of natural law. These institutions and this
culture so formed in its ensemble can be called Christian Civilization.
Further, nations and peoples can only attain a perfect civilization, a
civilization in complete harmony with the natural law in the framework
of a Christian civilization and through correspondence to grace and the
truths of the Faith.
 For this, man must give his firm recognition to the Catholic Church as
the one true Church of God and to its authentic universal Magisterium as
infallible. Therefore, man must know, profess, and practice the Catholic
faith.

 Historically, one must ask when this Christian civilization existed.
The answer may shock and even irritate many. There was a time when a
large portion of humanity knew this ideal of perfection, knew and tended
toward it with fervor and sincerity. This period, sometimes referred to
as the Golden Age of Christianity, is the epoch of the 12th and 13th
Centuries, when the influence of the Church in Europe was at its zenith.
Christian principles then dominated social relations more fully than at
any other period before or since, and the Christian State then
approached most nearly its full development. Leo XIII referred to this
period in his encyclical Immortale Dei (1885) in these terms:

 "There was a time when the philosophy of the Gospel ruled the States.
In this epoch the influence of Christian Wisdom and its Divine Wisdom
penetrated the laws, institutions and customs of the people, all the
categories, all the relations of civil society. The religion instituted
by Jesus Christ, solidly established in all dignity due it, flourished
everywhere, due to the favor of Princes and the legitimate protection of
the magistrates. In this time, the Priesthood and Empire were linked
with a happy concord and the friendly exchange of good offices.
Organized in this way, civil society gave fruits superior to all
expectations and its memory persists and will continue to persist, and
no artifice of its enemies will be able to corrupt and obscure it."

 A portrayal of Catholic society implies above all else an exact idea of
what the relationship between the Church and temporal society should be.
The State in principle has the obligation to profess officially the
truth of the Catholic faith, and, as a consequence to prohibit the
functioning and proselytizing of heretics. For not only the Church, but
all of temporal society was created for the salvation of our souls, as
St. Thomas Aquinas shows conclusively in De Regimine Principum. In it,
St. Thomas shows us how absolutely all things created by God were
created for the salvation of our souls and must be means that serve
positively for our sanctification. Men themselves were created for the
salvation of one another. This is why they live together in society. Th
us, temporal as well as spiritual society should assist in the primary
purpose of man's existence, the salvation of his eternal soul.

 This exposition of society implies an understanding of the hierarchy of
values, wherein spiritual values have a greater worth than material
ones. For example, in the Summa Theologica (II, II, ii, 3), St. Thomas
notes that if it is just to condemn counterfeiters to death, then surely
it is necessary to put to death those who had committed the far worse
crime of counterfeiting the Faith. For eternal salvation must be
regarded as greater than temporal property, and the welfare of all must
be regarded as greater than the welfare of the individual.

 These affirmations have consequences painful for the liberal spirit of
our days. For, if the State proclaims that one single religion is the
true one, it has an obligation in principle to prohibit the diffusion of
sects of a heretical character. It is understood that in Catholic
society the highest purpose of the State lies in recognizing the
Catholic Church, in defending her, in applying her laws, in serving her.
In a Catholic society, the Pope has an indirect authority over all that
touches on the interests of the Church. In this way, the Pope is
elevated above all the temporal powers. When a head of State is
heretical, the Pope has the right to depose him, as in the case of Henry
IV of France, the legitimate pretender to the French throne. In other
words, a heretic does not have the right to govern a Catholic country

 As Father Denis Fahey points out in The Kingship of Christ, in the
Middle Ages the State fulfilled its obligation of professing that
religion which God Himself had established and through which He wanted
to be adored and worshipped � the Catholic religion. When Catholics
answer the objections of non-Catholics to the Inquisition, they
sometimes seem to lose sight of the formal principle of order animating
the civilization of the Middle Ages. If a State proclaims a religion as
being the true religion, it has an obligation as a matter of principle
to prohibit the diffusion of heresy and heretical sects. This obligation
is a most painful one for the liberal mentality to accept. Heresy was
considered a crime because the State recognized the Catholic religion
for what it objectively is, the one true Religion established by God,
and not a simple temporary arrangement, here today, gone tomorrow.

 In presenting the principles of the social Kingship of Christ, Father
Denis Fahey says:
 "The truth is that the State then grasped the formal principle of
ordered social organization in the actual world and that the Inquisition
was set up to defend the hold of the world on order against the
fomenters of disorder. . . That same principle is meant by God to mold
the new matter and the new circumstances of all succeeding ages.
Socially organized, man in the world redeemed by Our Lord is not as God
wants him to be unless he accepts the supernatural, supra-national
Catholic Church.

 The modern world has turned aside from order and is suffering for its
apostasy and disorder. This great truth needs to be proclaimed
unequivocally, so that the interior life with which we celebrate the
feast of the Kingship of Christ may be deepened. It is infinitely better
to go down struggling for the integral truth than to win a seeming
victory by whittling it down."32

 Blackening the name of the Holy Inquisition has obviously found root in
this widespread tendency, even among princes of the Church, to "whittle
down" these principles of the Catholic social order. While, at base, the
problem of the Holy Inquisition must be examined at the philosophical
level, there is also no doubt that through the centuries "the
Inquisition" has assumed a monstrous dimension out of proportion to the
facts.

 The pens of Protestant propagandists during the Reformation began the
myth-making process by depicting the Inquisition as just another example
of the evils of Rome. In their works the tribunal was presented as the
supreme instrument of intolerance. Wherever Catholicism triumphed, they
claimed, not only religious but civil liberty was extinguished. The
Reformation, according to this interpretation, brought about the
liberation of the human spirit from the fetters of darkness and
superstition. Propaganda along these lines proved strikingly effective.

 However, as the scholars of the last decade have begun to examine the
archives, their studies are showing that the interests of truth demand
that the Inquisition be reduced to its proper dimensions. Its
significance can be grossly exaggerated if we rely on thelargely
fictitious images presented by the propagandists and philosophes of the
Enlightenment and age of Romanticism and liberalism that followed. These
writers, who even included Lord Acton, falsely assumed the Inquisition
was part and parcel of a special philosophy of blatant intolerance and
cruelty. In reality, it evolved as a product of the society it served.
In sum, for those objective Catholic minds who are militant against the
errors of liberalism and modernism of our own age and who look with admi
ration on the spirit and institutions of the Age of Faith, there can
still remain a healthful admiration for the Holy Inquisition.

Endnotes:
1. The Lutheran ideal, recognized at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648,
permitted each Protestant State to organize its particular form of
religion as a department of State. That "peace," said Rev. Denis Fahey,
"has been well termed the funeral of the Catholic order of the world.
Luther's separation of the Christian from the Citizen prepared the way
for the deification of the State, realized in modern times, and the
social influence of Protestant society thus made easy the advent of the
modern public man who may, as a private citizen, be a Catholic, but as a
public man will get himself represented at Protestant worship or even on
occasion assist thereat." The Kingship of Christ, 3rd ed., (Palmdale,
Ca: 1990), 40-41.
2. (Rockford, Ill: 1987), pp. x-xi.
3. By 1230 a substantial revolution in legal thought and procedure had
taken place throughout most of Western Europe, which included the
introduction of the Roman-inspired inquisitio procedure, which in many
respects could be regarded as a modernization of the legal practices of
the time. Edward Peters, Inquisition, (New York, London: 1988), pp.
52-57.
4. Peters, Inquisition, pp. 231, 3.
5. Kieckhefer has pointed out that it would be inappropriate to even
speak of "the Inquisition" in a medieval context. The sources themselves
show that even regional and local institutionalization of the
inquisitorial procedure was partial and fragile, depending mainly on the
dedication and organizing power of the individual inquisitor and on the
concrete need for action perceived in a specific time and place. Richard
Kieckhefer, "The Office of Inquisition and Medieval Heresy: The
Transition from Personal to Institutional Jurisdiction," Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 46 (January 1995), 59; Kieckhefer, Repression of
Heresy in Medieval Germany, Philadelphia-Liverpool: 1979, p. 5.
6. A. L. Maycock,the Inquisition from Its Establishment to the Great
Schism, (New York: 1969), 117.
7. Ibid, 100.
8. There were incidents of mob violence in Toledo in 1449, civic riots
in 1470 in Valladolid, and the murders of conversos in Ja�n and Cord�ba
three years later. The direct instrument of violence in all these cases
was the populace. Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain,
(Bloomington, Ind.: 1985), pp. 30-31.
9. By the 18th Century, the Congregation of the Holy Office had
virtually no power or influence outside the Papal States. In its
principal tasks, the censorship of clergy and of printed books, it
overlapped with the Congregation of the Index. It was closed during the
Pope's exile from Italy in 1809-1814, after which it was restored with
further curtailed powers. In 1965, Pope Paul VI changed its name to
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and in 1966 he
abolished the Index.
10. The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on The Inquisition in
Early Modern Italy. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, Vol. 78,
(Binghampton, NY: 1991), XI-XIV, 7-9.
11. Albert Clement Shannon gives a detailed explanation of the beliefs
of the Cathars and their biblical proofs taken from one of the
Albigensian treatises written toward the end of the century. For
example, to prove that man comes from the devil, the Cathars quoted John
8:44: "Your father is the devil." and 1 John 3:8: "The man who sins is
the child of the devil." The Medieval Inquisition, (Washington D.C.:
1983), 2-19.
12. Summa of Rainerius Sacconi, trans. in Walter L Wakefield and Austin
P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, (New York: 1969), 330.
13. H.C.Lea, A History of The Inquisition in the Middle Ages, Vol. I,
(New York: 1906-08), 1064.
14. Maycock, The Inquisition. pp. 77, 52-53; Walsh, Characters of the
Inquisition, 41-3.
15. Gustav Schn�rer, Kirche und Kultur in Mittelalter, (Paderborn,
1926), II, p. 434.
16. Maycock, The Inquisition, 128-29.
17. In 1323, the inquisitor Bernard Gui (unjustly maligned in Umberto
Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose) produced the Practica officii
inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, an elaborate and balanced
inquisitorial manual. The doctrines and procedures of the inquisitors
derived from both theology and canon law, as well as from the early
works of Church Fathers and general council and popes. Peters,
Inquisition, pp. 60-64.
18. Despite the apparent prohibition of appeals (appelatione remota),
Gregory IX and his successor Innocent IV repeatedly entertained appeals
made by complainants and voided unjust decisions. Throughout this whole
period it appears that appeals found their way to Rome for redress. In
fact, modeled on the long forgotten regulations of the Justinian Code,
through the inquisitorial process the Church brought the appeals
procedure into the legislation of the Middle Ages, for appeals were
quite out of character for the local, feudal manorial courts. The
success of the Church system of justice was not lost on secular rulers,
who eventually adopted appeals as regular procedure in their own
reorganized and centralized court systems. Shannon, The Medieval
Inquisition, pp.139-40.
19. Hamilton, Inquisition, pp. 150-51, 130-33, 140-41.
20. Ibid., p. 160.
21. Ives Dossat, Les Crises de l'inquisition toulousaine au XIIIe si�cle
(1233-1273), Bordeaux: Imprimerie Bi�re, 1959, 247-268.
22. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, pp. 252-54.
23. Peters, Inquisition, 131.
24. Foxe, The Book of Martyrs, London: 1863, p. 1060; Peters,
Inquisition, 133; Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, p. 254, Peters,
Inquisition, 152-4.
25. For a more detailed account of how the myth took shape in
literature, see Peters, Inquisition, pp.152-262.
26. "The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition," BBC documentary, Nov. 6,
1994.
27. Maycock, The Inquisition, p. 41, 259.
28. "The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition," BBC documentary, Nov. 6,
1994.
29. Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition, pp. 257-58.
30. La Ciencia Espa�ola , Madrid 1953, pp. 102-3.
31. Peters, pp. 260-61.
32. Kingship of Christ according to the Principles of St. Thomas
Aquinas, (Palmdale, Ca: 1931, 1990 rep.), p. 38.
******
 "Justice forbids and reason itself forbids that the State should be
godless, or that it should adopt a line of action which would end in
godlessness � namely, to treat the various religions (as they call them)
alike, and to bestow upon them promiscuously equal rights and
privileges. � Yet, with the discernment of a true mother, the Church
weighs the great burden of human weakness, and well knows the course
down which the minds and actions of men in this age are being borne. For
this reason, while not conceding any right to anything save what is true
and honest, she does not forbid public authority to tolerate what is at
variance with truth and justice, for the sake of avoiding greater ills.
� But to judge aright, we must acknowledge that the more a State is dr
iven to tolerate evil, the further is it from perfection."
- Leo XIII, Encyclical Libertas Praestantissimuym,
June 1988.



This article was reprinted from the March, 1998
issue of Catholic Family News � a Roman Catholic monthly
published 12 times a year.:
Catholic Family News
M.P.O. Box 743, Niagara Falls, NY 14302
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris

DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing!  These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically  by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.

Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html

http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Om