Edited from the National Review:
The Office of the Inquisition was instituted to give people a fair trial and put an end to widespread and often unjust executions for a theological office, by those who had little or no theological grounding, insight or understanding.
The temporal authorities saw their rule as a Divine Right, and the heretic as someone who challenged both God and the entire social order. There was little patience with heretics. The common folk tended to regard heresy as something liable to bring down divine retribution.
If accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, the accused was brought before the local lord for judgment as was everyone else who broke the law. Yet basic theological training was not a requirement among lords, sheriffs and circuit judges. The result was that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge. The death penalty was the norm for a vast range of offences, heresy just one among them.
The Inquisition was instituted in 1184 to provide fair trials for those accused of heresy, in a court presided over by judges who knew something about the issue under trial. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and king, and therefore deserved death. From the Church viewpoint, heretics were lost sheep who needed to be shepherded back to the flock. To be a proper heretic, one first needs a proper theological education. So, on the one hand the accused was faced with a secular authority who would use draconian measure to preserve the kingdom and the rule of law, on the other, a Church trying to save souls.
Hardly surprising then, then when accused of heresy, the majority chose the Inquisition over the local curcuit judge.
The evidence indicates that most people tried for heresy by the Inquisition were either acquitted or their sentences were suspended. Those found guilty were allowed to confess their sin, and so do penance. Usually a pilgrimage, or the wearing of sackcloth and ashes for a prescribed period.
When the inquisitor determined that the heretic was unrepentant, they were excommunicated and given over to secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offence, not the Church. (The Church knew full well what was going to happen — but then so did the heretic.)
The evidence makes clear that the Office of the Inquisition saved thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been executed by secular authorities or mob rule.
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By the 13th century the Inquisition represented the best legal practices in Europe.
By so doing, royal authorities sought to control the Inquisition in their own kingdoms. Instead of one Office of the Inquisition, there were now many. Despite the prospect of abuse, there were some monarchs who did their best to make sure their inquisitions remained efficient and merciful.
During the 16th century, when the witch craze swept Europe, it was those areas with the best-developed inquisitions (thus Catholic) that stopped the hysteria in its tracks. In Spain and Italy, trained inquisitors investigated charges of witches’ sabbaths and baby roasting and found them to be baseless. Elsewhere, particularly in Germany, secular or religious courts burned witches in large numbers.
Compared to other medieval courts, the Inquisition was positively enlightened. As someone pointed out, Galileo's house arrest was an unheard-of humanity, especially when Galileo had ensured that he had offended so many people (it was the scientific community who first complained to the religious authorities that Galileo was teaching a non-Biblical astronomy, because they were based in pre-Copernican and Aristotelian cosmologies.)
Why the credibility gap?
When most people think of the Inquisition, they think of the Spanish Inquisition.
Monty Python. Torquemada, The Three Musketeers and the evil cardinal Richelieu. The widespread and wholesale burning of witches.
They are repeating mythological memes.
Prior to 1530, the Spanish Inquisition was widely hailed as the best run, most humane court in Europe. There are records of convicts in Spain purposely blaspheming so that they could be tried by the Inquisition rather than the state.
After the Reformation however, new rivalries would give birth to the myth.
Spain was the wealthiest and most powerful country in Europe. The glut of gold and silver from her New World colonies destabilised European markets. Europe did not have the military clout, but it did possess a new weapon: the printing press. Spain lost the propaganda war.
The 'Black Legend' of Spain was forged.
The same propaganda machine was deployed to explain how the Reformers were not, as accused by Catholics, of inventing a new religion. Where were they in the previous 1500 years? The counter was it had been forced underground by the dogmatic Catholic Church. Where the Romans had persecuted Christians, the Roman Catholic Church had persecuted ... heretics! (Something increasingly harder to make stick as the Protestants began burning their own heretics.)
The Inquisition was an attempt to crush the hidden, true church, and the Spanish Inquisition, still active and extremely efficient at keeping Protestants out of Spain, was for Protestant writers merely the latest version of it.
By the 17th century, Enlightenment ideas were the talk of coffeehouses and salons across Europe. Inquisitions, both Catholic and Protestant, withered. The Spanish stubbornly held on to theirs, and for that they were ridiculed. Voltaire saw in Spain a model of the Middle Ages: weak, barbaric, superstitious. The Inquisition was derided by Enlightenment thinkers as a brutal weapon of intolerance and ignorance and a new, fictional Inquisition was constructed by those intent on seeing the end of religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.
The Office of the Inquisition was instituted to give people a fair trial and put an end to widespread and often unjust executions for a theological office, by those who had little or no theological grounding, insight or understanding.
The temporal authorities saw their rule as a Divine Right, and the heretic as someone who challenged both God and the entire social order. There was little patience with heretics. The common folk tended to regard heresy as something liable to bring down divine retribution.
If accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, the accused was brought before the local lord for judgment as was everyone else who broke the law. Yet basic theological training was not a requirement among lords, sheriffs and circuit judges. The result was that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent assessment of the validity of the charge. The death penalty was the norm for a vast range of offences, heresy just one among them.
The Inquisition was instituted in 1184 to provide fair trials for those accused of heresy, in a court presided over by judges who knew something about the issue under trial. From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and king, and therefore deserved death. From the Church viewpoint, heretics were lost sheep who needed to be shepherded back to the flock. To be a proper heretic, one first needs a proper theological education. So, on the one hand the accused was faced with a secular authority who would use draconian measure to preserve the kingdom and the rule of law, on the other, a Church trying to save souls.
Hardly surprising then, then when accused of heresy, the majority chose the Inquisition over the local curcuit judge.
The evidence indicates that most people tried for heresy by the Inquisition were either acquitted or their sentences were suspended. Those found guilty were allowed to confess their sin, and so do penance. Usually a pilgrimage, or the wearing of sackcloth and ashes for a prescribed period.
When the inquisitor determined that the heretic was unrepentant, they were excommunicated and given over to secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offence, not the Church. (The Church knew full well what was going to happen — but then so did the heretic.)
The evidence makes clear that the Office of the Inquisition saved thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been executed by secular authorities or mob rule.
+++
By the 13th century the Inquisition represented the best legal practices in Europe.
By so doing, royal authorities sought to control the Inquisition in their own kingdoms. Instead of one Office of the Inquisition, there were now many. Despite the prospect of abuse, there were some monarchs who did their best to make sure their inquisitions remained efficient and merciful.
During the 16th century, when the witch craze swept Europe, it was those areas with the best-developed inquisitions (thus Catholic) that stopped the hysteria in its tracks. In Spain and Italy, trained inquisitors investigated charges of witches’ sabbaths and baby roasting and found them to be baseless. Elsewhere, particularly in Germany, secular or religious courts burned witches in large numbers.
Compared to other medieval courts, the Inquisition was positively enlightened. As someone pointed out, Galileo's house arrest was an unheard-of humanity, especially when Galileo had ensured that he had offended so many people (it was the scientific community who first complained to the religious authorities that Galileo was teaching a non-Biblical astronomy, because they were based in pre-Copernican and Aristotelian cosmologies.)
Why the credibility gap?
When most people think of the Inquisition, they think of the Spanish Inquisition.
Monty Python. Torquemada, The Three Musketeers and the evil cardinal Richelieu. The widespread and wholesale burning of witches.
They are repeating mythological memes.
Prior to 1530, the Spanish Inquisition was widely hailed as the best run, most humane court in Europe. There are records of convicts in Spain purposely blaspheming so that they could be tried by the Inquisition rather than the state.
After the Reformation however, new rivalries would give birth to the myth.
Spain was the wealthiest and most powerful country in Europe. The glut of gold and silver from her New World colonies destabilised European markets. Europe did not have the military clout, but it did possess a new weapon: the printing press. Spain lost the propaganda war.
The 'Black Legend' of Spain was forged.
The same propaganda machine was deployed to explain how the Reformers were not, as accused by Catholics, of inventing a new religion. Where were they in the previous 1500 years? The counter was it had been forced underground by the dogmatic Catholic Church. Where the Romans had persecuted Christians, the Roman Catholic Church had persecuted ... heretics! (Something increasingly harder to make stick as the Protestants began burning their own heretics.)
The Inquisition was an attempt to crush the hidden, true church, and the Spanish Inquisition, still active and extremely efficient at keeping Protestants out of Spain, was for Protestant writers merely the latest version of it.
By the 17th century, Enlightenment ideas were the talk of coffeehouses and salons across Europe. Inquisitions, both Catholic and Protestant, withered. The Spanish stubbornly held on to theirs, and for that they were ridiculed. Voltaire saw in Spain a model of the Middle Ages: weak, barbaric, superstitious. The Inquisition was derided by Enlightenment thinkers as a brutal weapon of intolerance and ignorance and a new, fictional Inquisition was constructed by those intent on seeing the end of religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular.
