Originally Posted by
seven_segment
whew! but many is ignorant...that the Inquisition was not conducted by the Church, but by the government!..
People accused of crimes would confess to witchcraft in order to be tried by the more lenient Church....
Yes! Na surprised jud ko...to learn that in reality people wanted a Church trial...rather than a government trial simply because the Church might actually give them mercy while the government absolutely would not. They preferred the Inquisition. Egh, how horrible was justice way back then?
Just read this somewhere:
Although the Inquisition (and any torture or deaths associated with it) is nothing Catholics should be proud of - and they should not try to gloss over the facts - it may be useful to place the charges in context. The figure of millions is most certainly an exaggeration - it seems to be a vague figure which is merely "thrown out" and it creates a shock factor. There will never be exact figures, but some scholars estimate that the total number of deaths over the whole course of the Inquisition was about four thousand. One cannot expect an anti-Catholic to accept such a paltry figure. Jimmy Swaggart has claimed that the Catholic Church murdered about twenty million people during the Inquisition, another anti-Catholic author gives a figure of ninety million. In the Middle Ages, 90 million executions would have wiped out the whole population of Europe several times! Also, remember that the Inquisition never operated in England or Northern and Eastern Europe. In fact the Inquisition operated almost exclusively in Spain, France and Italy - although, as I say, we cannot try to deny the horrors of the Inquisition, a figure of millions or even hundreds of thousands is very far off the mark. As a comparison, in Britain and Germany - where the Inquisition never operated - the numbers burned at the stake for witchcraft were thirty thousand and one hundred thousand respectively.
At any rate, what does the Inquisition prove about the Church? It doesn't disprove the truths which it has professed since the time of Christ - it shows....that it is a church full of sinners! Whoever said otherwise? As for the charge about people being in ignorance with regard to the Bible - this is absolute rubbish. The Church never denied people access to authorised editions of the Bible. Anyway, even if the Church had given every person a Bible, it would have been of no use since most people couldn't read - hence one reason for magnificent stained glass windows and wonderful sculptures in the great European cathedrals of the Middle Ages. Such a claim also inevitably leads us to the fact that millions of people in the early centuries of the Church lived and died without having the version of the Bible as we have it today, they relied completely on the teachings of the Apostles and their successors.
Nevertheless, the Inquisition tortures and death were inexcusable. I echo the voice of
John Paul II "Forgive us Lord, Never Again"
The Inquisition - The Catholic Church's Enforcer
VATICAN CITY (AFP) - The Roman Catholic Inquisition, for which Pope John Paul II sought forgiveness Sunday, was a 700-year campaign of persecution of heretics in which hundreds of thousands of people were tortured and killed.
“Making every allowance required of an historian and permitted to a Christian, we must rank the Inquisition, along with the wars and persecutions of our time, as among the darkest blots on the record of mankind, revealing a ferocity unknown in any beast.” (Will Durant, “The Age of Faith”, p. 784)
The Inquisition was one of the great blights in the history of Christianity. No other institution in the history of the Christian Church was so horrible, so unjust, so...un-Christian. When it was finally brought to a halt in 1834, thousands of lives had been lost, and tens of thousands of lives ruined through imprisonment and confiscation of property. Whole populations were driven from their homelands, and
the Roman Church had earned a blight against its name that still resonates to this day.
This booklet will present an overview of the Inquisition, including a look at the “justification”, methodologies, victims, and results of the 600-year reign of this most dreaded institution.
Foundations of the Inquisition
Historical foundations
Heresy (Greek hairesis) – “An opinion or doctrine not in line with the accepted teaching of the church; the opposite of orthodoxy” (Holman Bible Dictionary)
In late-20th century America, with its extreme separation of church and state, it is hard to imagine that there was a time when heresy was considered not only an ecclesiastical crime, but a secular one too. However, during the Middle Ages, church and state were often united in the cause of maintaining social order. During Medieval times, it was often difficult to distinguish between the secular and the ecclesiastical – Catholic bishops installed emperors and kings; those same emperors and kings provided protection for the church and its ministers. To rebel against the church (either in matters of theology or matters of organizational hierarchy) was to question the legitimacy of the whole social, political, economic, and (of course) religious structure of medieval society.
The Inquisition, which lasted for 600 years, was the product of a tight (and very successful) marriage of church and state. The church hunted down and prosecuted heretics, and the state punished them, often by burning at the stake.
The idea that heresy was both an ecclesiastical as well as secular crime has a long pedigree. In Rome, for example, heresy was considered treason, punishable by death, as is witnessed by the early Christian martyrs – many of them were murdered for failing to accept that the current emperor was akin to God. A Roman judge could make an inquisition into the case of a suspected heretic – the nomenclature from which “Inquisition” would come.
Later, the great law code of Justinian (483-565 A.D.) codified (Da haereticis) the equation of heresy with treason, thus punishable by the secular arm – to death, if necessary. Justinian, of course, was a Christian, so earlier Roman laws that persecuted Christians for their beliefs were now applied against those that did not hold Christian beliefs.
During the Middle Ages, the burning of heretics was not unusual in the two hundred years leading up to the Inquisition (which
officially started in 1227/31 A.D.). Often, the burnings were instigated by secular authorities, or by mob action. One of the first known Medieval burnings of heretics was by Robert the Pious, King of France, in 1022 A.D., who ordered unrepentant heretics to the flames. Mob actions in Milan in c. 1028, in Soissons in 1114, and in Cologne in 1143 resulted in the death of heretics at the stake, when angry mobs pulled unrepentant heretics out of ecclesiastical prisons. Thus, the idea of consigning “heretics” to burning at the stake was well ingrained by the time of the start of the Inquisition in 1227/31.
In 1184,
Pope Lucius III issued a bull against heretics, which would establish many of the principals of jurisprudence later adopted by the Inquisition. Among those principals was the idea that anyone that shielded or succored heretics would be liable to the same punishment as the heretic themselves, that unrepentant heretics should be turned over to secular arm for punishment, and that “relapsed” heretics should receive steeper sentences (including confiscation of property). Also of interest is the fact that two main targets of the Inquisition of 40 years later were identified by name – “Catharists”, and the “Poor of Lyons” (a.k.a. Waldensians).
The Medieval (or Papal) Inquisition
A group of mendicant friars in the Middle Ages – mendicant friars provided both the main source for Inquisitors (Domincans, Franciscans), as well as the main targets for the Inquisition (Cathar pefectis, Waldensians, Fraticelli, etc.) (Engraving from Wylie)
By the 13th century, the dream of a lasting crusader kingdom in the Holy Lands was starting to fade.
Pope Innocent III then turned the zeal of the crusaders against fellow Christians. In 1202, the Fourth Crusade was launched which later captured Constantinople. Next, in 1209, Innocent III launched a crusade against the Cathars (see next section) in southern France (Languedoc region). This bloody action, known to history as the Albigensian Crusade, would directly lead to the establishment of the first Inquisition.
The Albigensian Crusade (so named, because the French city of Albi was a Cathar stronghold), lasted for 20 years, from 1209 to 1229. While authorized by the pope, the actual fighting was carried out primarily by secular forces, especially under Simon de Montfort. The suppression of the Cathar heresy established new “standards” for ferocity for the Roman Church in dealing with its own flock. Perhaps the most famous example was on July 22, 1209, when the city of Beziers was sacked, with over 20,000 men, women and children killed by crusaders. The event will forever be framed in history by the words of papal legate Arnaud, whom, when asked if Catholics should be spared during the assault, answered
“Kill them all, for God knows His own”.
“Kill them all, for God knows His own.” - papal legate Arnaud, when asked if Catholics should be spared during the assault on Beziers in 1209
Wholesale burnings of Cathars were carried out during the Crusade, including 400 burnt after the fall of Lavaur in 1211, and 94 burnt after the fall of Casses in the same year. It was against this backdrop that
Pope Gregory IX instituted the Papal Inquisition in 1227/31. While the Albigensian Crusade had wiped out most of the Cathar strongholds, there were still heretics to be hunted down and burned – many of whom had gone into hiding during the years of the Crusade. Examples of post-Crusade slaughter of the Cathars include 183 burned in Montwimer (Marne) in 1239, and the burning of 215 Cathar perfecti at the Castle of Montsegur in 1244 (sometimes referred to as the Massacre at Montsegur.)
And while the Cathars were the initial targets of the Inquisition (so much so that, for many years, the term “Cathar” was used synonymously with “heretic”), the scope of the Papal Inquisition would eventually range much wider and further than the Cathars. Ultimately, it would include victims such as the Waldensians, Fraticelli (a splinter group of the Franciscans), the Knights Templar, and (much later) – Protestants.
By 1233, the Dominicans (the order founded by St. Dominic in 1217) were given the primary charter to act as Inquisitors, j
oined shortly after by the Franciscans (founded by St. Francis of Assisi in 1209/10). Curiously, the first 100 years of the Papal Inquisition could be said to have been a battle between ascetic groups. Many of the members of these groups were referred to as mendicant friars, meaning they received sustenance by begging.
By the 12th/13th centuries, many members of the Roman Catholic clergy were known for their rather profligate living styles, including many monastics. A number of groups rose up during this period that believed that the church should return to the example set by the apostles in Acts – the church should own no possessions. Further, they believed that clergy should earn the respect of the people by giving up worldly goods, and going out into the world to preach the gospel. (The argument between the ascetics and the status-quo-Church is well laid out in the book (and resulting movie)
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco).
Today, it can initially be difficult to understand why some ascetic groups (such as the Dominicans and Franciscans) were openly welcomed by the church (and indeed, were the first Inquisitors), while other ascetic groups (the Waldensians, the Cathars, the Fraticelli) were hunted down and burned at the stake. The answer, though, is rather clear – the former groups submitted to the authority of the Church, while the latter groups ultimately rejected the authority of pope and clergy.
It should be noted that prior to the institution of the Papal Inquisition in 1227/31, local bishops had the authority to investigate, and try heretics in local ecclesiastical courts.
What made the Inquisition distinctive is that the Inquisitors theoretically answered only to the pope – not to the local bishop, nor even to the heads of their Order. T
his autonomy allowed the Inquisition to act as an independent tribunal, able to go where it wanted, when it wanted, and try whom it wanted – with no interference allowed from local secular or ecclesiastical authorities. (Those that tried to interfere with the autonomy of the Inquisition were, of course, branded as heretics themselves).
The runaway train of Inquisitorial power, which lasted in various parts of the world for the next 600 years (!) had started its journey.
Source:
"A Brief History of the Inquisition", by: Robert Jones
The Inquisition
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