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142 pages

English

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Refutes the many lies about the Inquisition raised by the enemies of the Church. Shows why it was instituted, the purpose it served, its long-term effects, and why it preserved Catholic countries from the infamous witch-hunts besmirching Protestant history. All this is achieved by narrating the stories of six Grand Inquisitors. Exonerates the Church of all wrong-doing. Really dispels the lies about this institution. 320 pgs,

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Christian theology

Catholic Church

History of religions

Christianity

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Publié par	TAN Books
Date de parution	01 janvier 2005
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781505102451
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Characters of the Inquisition
William Thomas Walsh
Copyright © 1940, William Thomas Walsh
TO
E. E. W.
Tomás de Torquemada (1420-1498), Dominican, first Grand Inquisitor of Spain (in office 1483-1498). Although the Spanish Inquisition had existed before him, Fray Tomás de Torquemada was its true organizer. He established tribunals in several cities and also instituted a High Council of five members whose chief duty was to assist him in the hearing of appeals. Fray Tomás refused all ecclesiastical preferments, choosing to remain a simple friar. A contemporary Spanish chronicler (Sebastian de Olmedo) calls him “the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the saviour of his country, the honor of his order.”
Foreword
T HE very word “Inquisition,” which once enjoyed the connotation, as well as the meaning, of “inquiry,” has become almost synonymous in the modern world with “bigotry,” “intolerance,” “cruelty.” Men who are not quite sure what are the essentials of Christian belief are convinced that the burning of a human being for denying certain dogmas is not reconcilable with the teachings of Christ and the profession of a Christian. Men who cannot agree on a definition of the word “God,” and are doubtful whether they believe in a God, will declare without hesitation that there is nothing godly about inflicting personal injury, or even deprivation of liberty, on those who do not agree with us. And since the Inquisitors were Catholics, it is clear that the Catholic Church in the modern world has suffered much in reputation on their account; the more so because the histories of the Inquisition have generally been written and disseminated by her adversaries.
A young Catholic sometimes is puzzled not only to answer the accusations of those not of his Faith but to satisfy the questionings of his own heart. He knows some priests, and whatever faults they have as human beings, they are not bloodthirsty men, quite the contrary as a rule; he knows Protestants and Jews, and sees nothing in them deserving of torment, much less hideous death. Some have left the Catholic fold, alleging this reason; others, attracted to her, have been kept outside by this one obstacle. No one sees Catholics today burning unbelievers, even in Ireland and Portugal, where the population is almost entirely Catholic; nor does any man of sense foresee the likelihood of a future persecution involving Catholics—except, perhaps, as victims. Yet vast numbers of persons continue to associate the word “Inquisition” with vague notions of Catholic dogma; as though the thing were essentially and peculiarly Catholic, and began and ended in the Catholic Church.
It must be obvious to anyone who thinks for a moment on the subject that intolerance, as such, was not the invention, much less the monopoly, of the Middle Ages. It was not the child of Christianity. Centuries before Christ came to the world, Plato set it down as a duty of government to show no tolerance toward those who denied the state religion. Even if dissenters were willing to live quietly without proselytizing, their example to others was so dangerous, he believed, that they ought to be incarcerated for five years in a “sophronisterion,” or place-for-growing-wise, and there be taught religion every day. Proselytizing dissenters were to be kept in dungeons for life and be denied burial after death. Centuries later we find Jews in Holland, whose ancestors had been victims of the Spanish Inquisition, establishing an Inquisition of their own. “The Amsterdam rabbis,” says Graetz, “introduced the innovation of bringing religious opinions and convictions before their judgment seat, of constituting themselves a sort of inquisitorial tribunal, and instituting autos-de-fe which, even if bloodless, were not less painful to the sufferers.” 1
This Jewish Inquisition was on a different plane from Plato’s, and a higher one. He was a totalitarian who conceded to the State the right to say what religion must be held. The rabbis were men who felt a certainty of a higher revelation, more precious to them than any other consideration; and the force they applied was to those who already belonged to the group that had received the revelation—in this instance, the Torah . It was not an intolerance in the name of an all-powerful state, representing the mere opinion of a group of human beings.
Now, when we examine the Inquisition of the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition more closely, we find certain peculiarities which bring them closer to the Amsterdam rabbis than to Plato. The impulse here is different from that swift blind anger and bloodlust of the mob from which defenseless Jews, women and children included, have suffered in pogroms in all parts of the world. It is not like the shootings of children and nuns by Cromwell’s Puritans in Ireland; or the lynchings of negroes; or the butchery of civilians, with or without a pretence of legal form, in the French Revolution, in Soviet Russia, and in Red Spain. Here, on the contrary, was a cold, deliberate attempt to set up a judicial instrument of conformity which would eliminate the caprice, the anger and the misinformation of the mob; which would inquire carefully, make distinctions, separate wheat from chaff, proceed not against particular men or members of particular races as such, but against members of the persecuting body—all this in the name of Almighty God, and apparently with a sense not only of representing the highest convictions of the community in general, but of being absolutely right about the whole matter, beyond any argument or need of apology.
There has been too much partisanship in most of the discussions of this subject; too much intolerance in the study of intolerance. The more popular expositions have been in the vein of Prescott’s famous comparison of the Inquisitors (unfavorably, of course) to the Aztecs sacrificing human blood to their idol Quetzalcohuatl; or some of Dr. Graetz’s angry generalizations, in which the Dominicans of the Holy Office appear as “Calibans” and “foul fiends in monkish cowls,” while the heretics punished by them are “victims to the Christian Moloch.” Later investigators have been more temperate in their epithets and more cautious in their methods of approach; but too many of them have leaned, with naïve credulity, upon the work of Llorente, a discredited official of the Holy Office, who proved his own bias by admitting that he had burned documents which did not serve his purpose. Lea has depended somewhat upon Llorente, but has also done some good source work, though prejudice has betrayed him into taking some unscholarly liberties with his material. G. G. Coulton has flayed the Inquisition with gusto, but when we look for his authority, we find it is principally Dr. Lea. The same is true of most of the work of Professor Merriman of Harvard on this subject. One great “authority” leans on another great “authority,” and so on back to the end of a chain, where often the searcher finds no fact at all, or the very opposite to what has been alleged to generation after generation of trusting readers and students. These modern “authorities,” writing with a greater air of scientific detachment, have probably been more effective, on the whole, than Prescott or Graetz.
It is rather startling, on turning from these types of criticism to the literature of Spain and Portugal, to find that men revealing intelligence, compassion, and other normal human traits in most matters, have been capable of writing about the institution, without a word of apology, yes, with unmistakable pride, as of something good, beneficent, holy. It is a bit of a jolt for one in youth illuminated by Dr. Lea and his disciples, to encounter, in the works of one of the most brilliant poets and historians of the Golden Age of Spain, the casual observation that the Inquisition was “the den of the lions of Daniel, which does no harm to the just, though it destroys the obstinate impenitent sinners; heavenly remedy, guardian of the Gates of Paradise.” 2 A man as gentle and holy as Fray Luis de Granada could call it “wall of the Church, pillar of truth, guardian of faith, treasure of religion, arm against heretics, light against the deceits of the enemy.”
Paramo goes even further, and tells us that the Great Inquisitor was Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; indeed, this author carries his investigation further back, and discovers that the first Inquisitor was our father Adam!
Now, there is no sense in reviving so painful and controversial a subject as the Inquisition, a thing which persecutes nobody today and has not the slightest chance of doing so, if the motive is merely to add fuel to ancient hatreds which still divide man from man, and men from God. To make Catholics, Protestants, or Jews odious one to another, or to the rest of mankind, would surely be a useless, indeed, a wicked performance; and it is one I wish to have nothing to do with. But there is always something to be gained in the search of truth for the sake of truth itself, beautiful truth, luminous and eternal, the Thing that is, and not what hatred or envy, or greed or fear or revenge would like to imagine. There is something, surely, to be gained in saying, “Let us look at the past, not merely to justify ourselves, for we frail mortals have all made mistakes, we have all been guilty one time or another of injustice toward others. Well, then, let us see, if possible, what the truth was, and what can be learned from it—if only to avoid the same mistakes in future.”
It would be fatuous to imagine that anything like the complete and absolute truth about so vast and so complicated a subject could be encompassed within the scope of the present study, even if the author were much more capable than he is. A lifetime of useful labor is still waiting for some man with the patience and industry of Lea, a far better historical imagination, and considerably less prejudice. All I attempt here is to