Wherein Bill Donohue defends the Inquisition

[Craig B]

It was the church that declared these people heretics so claiming the church tried to "save' the heretics is quite disingenuous.

Absolutely. And it went looking for them. When it found suspects it killed a few, tortured some more and plundered practically the whole lot of most of their possessions; often it did the last two of these things, even if they were merely detained on suspicion and never tried: it terrorised everyone. It censored books, with severe effect on both Iberian countries and the Papal States. It harassed Jews, Muslims and others. It was involved in the expulsion of Jews and "Moors" from Spain, which resulted in murder and plunder on a vast scale, as we have seen.

It harassed people on account of sexual activities such as bigamy and "sodomy". Some of the latter offenders were executed. It participated in the witch hunts of the period, although I concede that it was not the worst offender in that campaign.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I would also like to add a bit more about how the whole thing worked with the inquisition, because this focusing on how many burned out of how many accused, is painting a wrong image and probably deliberately.

To start less with the numbers than with the delusion that, see, it was other people who were the bad guys accusing people of heresy, and the church was merely trying to help defend them... many of those investigated were not denounced by other people, but by the inquisitor himself or the local priest. Even failing to come to the town square when the inquisitor dropped by (e.g., because you were sick or whatever) made one automatically a suspect.

Also, a lot of "see, other people accused them" BS is actually an effect of the fact that it was not considered a "full" confession and repentance unless it implicated other heretics in town. You could be tortured or held in prison pretty much indefinitely, until your confession was "full" enough to the inquisitor's satisfaction. Read, until you accused others.

Even when torture was not used, and that's a big "when", a "full" confession was the only way to get a lighter punishment. Because, see, that's what the BS apologists don't tell you when they focus only on those executed: it's not like the rest just got to walk away scot-free. You'd generally get SOME form or another of punishment even if you otherwise confessed and repented and all. More so if you were one of those "obstinate and unrepentant" heretics that didn't give a "full" confession, read, name more people. Sure, they might not outright burn you, but you better accuse someone, mister, or bad things could still happen to you.

Also, while some of the punishments like being just banished from your village, or forced to do some pilgrimage, don't sound too bad to us, they were as good as a delayed death sentence for a bare-subsistence farmer family. But for example long term imprisonment was an option too.

So a lot of people were not accused because oh, woe is us, the other people just wanted to accuse them, and the Inquisition was there to save them. They were accused because those other people were tortured or at least threatened by the Inquisition into naming others.

But that in turn created another problem, if the Inquisitor did decide that some of those were innocent. Now those who accused them would get prison for life, for falsely accusing their fellow countrymen. So, yeah, after you got tortured until you named a few innocents, you could be thrown into prison for life for it.

 

[Craig B]

Here's how things worked in the intellectual domain under the Inquisition. http://www.answers.com/topic/index-of-prohibited-books (Extracts)

The Inquisition in Rome prepared the first Roman Index, issued by Paul IV in 1559 ... For the entire modern era, the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions also issued their own catalogues, which had authority in the Iberian Peninsula as well as in their American, African, and Asian colonies. The Spanish and Portuguese Indices were at the same time prohibitory and expurgatory, while the Roman Indices, with rare exceptions, were exclusively the former.
... The reading of the Bible in the vernacular was permitted only to persons holding a written license issued by an inquisitor or bishop. Other rules added to the Index in the course of the centuries prohibited other categories of books as well ...
The presence in the Index of works by the great philosophers is quite remarkable, such names as Blaise Pascal, René Descartes, Nicolas de Malebranche, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, David Hume, George Berkeley, and of the greatest French writers of the Enlightenment, Pierre Bayle, Denis Diderot, Jean d'Alembert, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The interdiction of the writings of Nicolaus Copernicus in 1616 and of Galileo Galilei in 1634, not removed from the Index until 1822, is the most glaring example of the chasm separating the church and science.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

And again I'd add that although the index was created in the 16'th century, forbidding books was much older. As I was saying, they tried to forbid Aristotle in 1210.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Except with Hiroshima, the alternative was that millions of Allied soldiers would have died storming Japan, which was a brutal aggressor. WTH is the equivalent of THAT for the Inquisition? Were the heretics slaughtering good Catholics wholesale, or what?

Even if you look at what prompted creating the more centralized inquisition, namely the brutal suppression of the Cathars, it wasn't the Cathars that were the aggressors. The Cathars just wanted to be left in peace. It was the Catholics that declared a crusade on them, and proceeded to exterminate them, forming an organized Inquisition to be organized about it.

No, you don't get to compare that to Hiroshima. You don't get to compare X to the USA in WW2, when X is the aggressor there.

But it was better than having cardinals putting whole towns to death with the logic "slay them all, the lord will know his own". So it was kind of an improvement I guess.

 

[Craig B]

And again I'd add that although the index was created in the 16'th century, forbidding books was much older. As I was saying, they tried to forbid Aristotle in 1210.

And much newer too. The index was abolished in June 1966. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum

 

[GDon]

It was the church that declared these people heretics so claiming the church tried to "save' the heretics is quite disingenuous.

If you read the articles by Madden, he claims that the heresy charges were being laid -- and punishment meted out -- by secular authorities. The Inquisition, according to Madden, "brought order, justice, and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics".

This reminds of the HJ threads, where if you defend any type of HJ, it is almost inevitable that you will be charged with "believing in Jesus" and "believing that the Gospels are true." And a closet believer, to boot.

To be clear: Did the Inquisition kill people because of heresy? Yes! Was that a bad thing? Yes! Similarly, was Bruno persecuted for his views? Yes! Was that a bad thing? Yes!

But has the Inquisition been blackened by history? And was Bruno a martyr for science? Those are the points being referred to by Donohue, at least according to the OP. If the Cosmos program is giving the wrong views on this, then good for Donohue to bring this up, and shame on the Cosmos program for perpetrating untruths.

Here is the view of a blogger on the Science2.0 website: http://www.science20.com/science_20/blog/cosmos_spacetime_odyssey_review-131240

It starts out well. Tyson tells us we are going to explore the very large and the very small and then he flies us through space, a lot like he does in his brilliant Hayden Planetarium show. We get rogue planets, distant suns and 100,000 light years of context in just a few minutes.

Then suddenly we get a claim that Giordano Bruno is responsible for the concept of the universe - because he read 'banned' books. Lucretious wasn't science - there was no scientific evidence for his claim that wind caused earthquakes or worms spontaneously generated - it was philosophy, and his book was not rare in 1600 AD, people were also not martyred for reading it, and yet we get told a philosophical belief in infinity was what got Bruno into trouble.

It's an immediate disconnect for people who know science history because it smacks of an agenda. I instead object because it is flat-out incorrect...

Bruno's "science" was never mentioned during his trial, he was on trial for being a cult worshiper... Bruno was only revived as a 'scientist' and a martyr for science by anti-religious humanists in the 19th century.The church didn't even bother to ban his writing until well after he was dead.

Bruno was not a martyr for science, the way the cartoon in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey alleges, he was a martyr for magic. He actually was a heretic. Sorry, but 400 years ago when you repeatedly lecture about what was regarded as a cult and insist Catholics and Protestants need to accept Hermetism as fact, you are getting into trouble. He also taught that demons caused diseases. No matter how little you may know about the 16th century, you know they were not teaching that demons cause diseases.

Roman Catholics gave him 10 years to back off from his claim that his alternate religion was empirical fact they needed to accept. Hardly a sign of rushing to judgment or pop culture beliefs about religion of the time. He instead wanted to be a poster child for the Inquisition. He was clearly mentally ill.

It sets an unfortunate tone that they slipped revisionist history in with science - it is the story of Bruno as if it were written by a blogger on some "free thought" site. Are humanists and atheists the key market for this program? That wasn't the case for Sagan.​

It's interesting reading the comments on that blog page, since the author, Hank Campbell, is accused of defending the church. As he responds to one poster: "You are arguing a point no one made. No one said he should have been killed or the Inquisition was good, it is simply the case that he was not martyred for science."

 

[Craig B]

But it was better than having cardinals putting whole towns to death with the logic "slay them all, the lord will know his own". So it was kind of an improvement I guess.

It was the papal legate who did that. The local bishop tried to save some of the people. No luck.

Commanded by the Papal legate, the Abbot of Citeaux Arnaud Amalric,[2] the crusader army reached the outskirts of Béziers on July 21, 1209. As they started to pitch their camp, the Bishop of Béziers, Renaud de Montpeyroux, tried to avert bloodshed and to negotiate. He came back to Béziers with the message that the town would be spared provided it would hand over their heretics.

No luck. As the legate put it:

Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt...

The Inquisition was founded in consequence of that war, but if it was protecting heretics against anyone (which it wasn't) it could have started by protecting them not, as the OP claims, against feudal bosses and the mob, but against the Pope and his representatives like Arnaud Amalric.

 

[Craig B]

To be clear: Did the Inquisition kill people because of heresy? Yes! Was that a bad thing? Yes! Similarly, was Bruno persecuted for his views? Yes! Was that a bad thing? Yes!

But has the Inquisition been blackened by history? And was Bruno a martyr for science? Those are the points being referred to by Donohue, at least according to the OP.

Here is the important point. Was the world a better place than it would have been otherwise, because it had the inquisition in it? A resounding NO is the proper response to that.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

If you read the articles by Madden, he claims that the heresy charges were being laid -- and punishment meted out -- by secular authorities.

The problems with that rationalization are many.

For a start, the arrangement did exist, where the state did the enforcing of church doctrine... but it wasn't something that appeared out of secular people's minds. It essentially dates back to the religiously motivated Edict of Thessalonica of Theodosius I.

The church hadn't stopped demanding that the temporal rulers and nobles should do its dirty work... or else, ever since. So it seems to me disingenuous to act as if those secular powers came up with it on their own, and the church was just stopping them. They did it in the first place because of an arrangement between the church and the state where the state had no choice but to enforce the church power.

Also, the thing usually rationalized as why those authorities were doing that, in a way that absolves the church of responsibility, is to point out that it was in late Roman law. The fly in the ointment is that Roman law didn't really make a comeback until much later. The Codex Of Justinian for example, wouldn't even be known in the west until the 16'th century.

Then there's the fact that there is actually little evidence of much religious persecution of heresies, or even much mention of them, during the early middle ages. It's only around the same time as the Bishops' Inquisition appears and starts splitting hairs about exact theological meanings, that you start finding lots of talk of heresy everywhere.

Presumably also because, as that article does mention, your average medieval lord was thoroughly uneducated in the finer points of theology. How could they? The vast majority were illiterate.

But what this means isn't just that trials for heresy were more hap-hazard, but also why they're almost non-existent until the church starts sending its doctors of theology around to see who's believing the wrong stuff. Those barons and shire reeves just weren't educated nearly enough to know whether it's heresy or not, and as long as you didn't publicly challenge the lord or the local priest, essentially most seemed to not care either.

 

[NearlySane]

I haven't seen the programme but spent some time debating the questions after a friend posted about it. I find it odd that it si being touted as a relative standard by some that in doing 'philosophy' Bruno wasn't doing science. That seems to me to misunderstand both philosophy and sceince. It also shows little regard for history in the claims that because Bruno could be claimed as part magician in the 16th centruy that this means he wasn't a scientist. Also I've seen a lot of arguments stating that because his infinite universe ideas were not backed by evidence at the time that his speculation was not science.

Some of Bruno's writings covering maths and cryptography are definitely what we might now classify as science - in that and indeed his mysticism he is mirrored by John Dee, often presented as some crazed necromancer. It should also be remembered that Keynes called Newton, the last magician, and indeed many of Newton's beliefs would be seen as magical. Also of course given Newton's doctrinal views had he been in Italy at that time, he could have had the same fate as Bruno.

It's all very while for people to point out that it was, in the main, Bruno's challenges to dogma that was the bulk of his charge but in the end that's the real issue. If you think that challenges to dogma can be met with being burned to death then why specualte based on logic, why investigate based on evidence, why think at all.

Bruno wasn't killed because of a challenge to science as the difference placed on the realms of magic/science were not seen in the same way then as now. But the reasons he was killed in terms of shutting down dissent and challenge are anti science and anti skepticism

 

[GDon]

Here is the important point. Was the world a better place than it would have been otherwise, because it had the inquisition in it? A resounding NO is the proper response to that.

That's actually a very good question to ask here. For me: If what Madden writes was actually the case (that "the Inquisition brought order, justice, and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics"), then the answer is a probable "yes". But I'd need to confirm Madden's views.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

From Madden:

But not so with the Spanish Inquisition. In its 350-year lifespan only about 4,000 people were put to the stake.

Is it just me, or is it repulsive to combine "only" with "4,000" referring to people being killed by one of the most painful ways imaginable?

 

[catsmate]

And here's me, thinking the Malleus Maleficarum was a tool of the Inquisition.

The hammer had no offical status and Kramer was widely regarded within the church as a dangerous idiot and borderline heretic.

 

[Craig B]

From Madden:



Is it just me, or is it repulsive to combine "only" with "4,000" referring to people being killed by one of the most painful ways imaginable?

The number put to death after official prosecution, and by judicial methods, was only a small part of the total death toll occasioned by the Inquisition's activities during these centuries. We have looked at the deaths during the expulsions of Jews and "Moors" from Spain, but there are many other examples.

 

[zugzwang]

That's actually a very good question to ask here. For me: If what Madden writes was actually the case (that "the Inquisition brought order, justice, and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics"), then the answer is a probable "yes". But I'd need to confirm Madden's views.

I think one of the problems is that the various inquisitions were often traditionally described via the 'black legend', that is, anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish propaganda, and modern historians, naturally enough, began to peel some of this back, and argued that they had been described too harshly.

I have heard the argument that the inquisitions were an improvement on secular courts - in fact, James Hannam has argued that church courts were more lenient than secular ones.

However, it's difficult for the amateur to adjudicate in matters like this; I suppose you have to read a lot of history books, and make up your mind.

Edward Peters has argued in his book 'Inquisition', that "The Inquisition was an image assembled from a body of legends and myths which, between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries, established the perceived character of inquisitorial tribunals and influenced all ensuing efforts to recover their historical reality." Modern historical studies of the inquisitions can therefore be seen as a kind of revisionism, which sought to look behind these myths. Whether you can get a neutral view, I don't know.

 

[Resume]

There is no such crime as heresy.

Or am I missing something?

 

[Craig B]

The hammer had no offical status and Kramer was widely regarded within the church as a dangerous idiot and borderline heretic.

Here's its early publication history in wiki. If it was so dangerous, why did it not join so many better works on the Index?

The book became the handbook for secular courts throughout Renaissance Europe, but was not used by the Inquisition, which even cautioned against relying on the work. Between 1487 and 1520 the work was published thirteen times. It was again published between 1574 and 1669 a total of sixteen times. Regardless of the authenticity of the endorsements [seemingly false ones from Cologne University and the Pope] appearing at the beginning of the book, their presence contributed to the popularity of the work.

Why was it not put on the Index?

 

[GDon]

I think one of the problems is that the various inquisitions were often traditionally described via the 'black legend', that is, anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish propaganda, and modern historians, naturally enough, began to peel some of this back, and argued that they had been described too harshly.

I have heard the argument that the inquisitions were an improvement on secular courts - in fact, James Hannam has argued that church courts were more lenient than secular ones.

However, it's difficult for the amateur to adjudicate in matters like this; I suppose you have to read a lot of history books, and make up your mind.

Edward Peters has argued in his book 'Inquisition', that "The Inquisition was an image assembled from a body of legends and myths which, between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries, established the perceived character of inquisitorial tribunals and influenced all ensuing efforts to recover their historical reality." Modern historical studies of the inquisitions can therefore be seen as a kind of revisionism, which sought to look behind these myths. Whether you can get a neutral view, I don't know.

Yes, well said. I've relied on Madden and, to a certain extent, Hannam. Both are scholars of history, but perhaps there are biases there that I need to be careful about (especially my own, of course). I really need to do more reading there myself, since there are elements about the Inquisitions relationship with the wider Church and secular society that needs to be taken into account.

 

[zugzwang]

GDon

It's very difficult for the amateur to look into some of this stuff. Take, for example, the argument (now quite a common one), that the secular courts were harsher than the inquisition ones. You even find the claim that some prisoners tried to get transferred from one to the other, as they would get better treatment.

I know that some of the inquisitions' records have become available, so you can go and study them, I guess. But then you would have to study the records of the secular courts, and then try to get to some sense of comparison between them.

Well, the professional historian has the time and money and training, to do this, but I don't!

PS. I forgot to say that some trial records have been published, but they tend to be the spectacular ones, e.g. an archbishop, and the like. But many have been lost, although in Spain, the relaciones de causa have survived in large numbers - they are trial summaries, and are stored in Madrid.