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The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God

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In the 12th century, early Christian heretics, the Cathars, are exquisitely tortured, their broken bodies a deterrent to those who would question the dictates of the True Faith. In the 15th century, the great Inquisitors don the solemn robes of office, casting impassive eyes on those who would commit heresy against a just and loving God, the accoutrements of torture designed in infinite detail for maximum effect. In Salem, Massachusetts, acolytes of the devil are tested, given opportunity to denounce evil between bouts of excruciating pain, all in the name of God's righteousness. Men began their ingenious methods of torturing for truth from religion's beginnings, purging the unacceptable, the tainted, cleansing society of those who would infect it.

Who would have imagined that Nazi Germany would dust off the pages of history, retrieve the arcane tools of torture and apply them even more broadly to an entire disposable people, the Jews? What the Inquisition wrought bloomed in the dark recesses of the human heart, bred in the devotion of fanatics, finding voice as each period of history offered opportunities. And even now, in an enlightened and educated world, such horrors have again emerged, this time focusing on Islamic fundamentalists. One of the fascinating threads in Kirsch's detailed accounting of torture in the name of God is the relentless pursuit of "others", particularly Jews, from the Spanish Inquisition, which pursued them from continent to continent, to Nazi extermination, in the name of an ideal, "purity of blood". The war on Jews is based on blood rather than belief, "the same visceral anti-Semitism that had blighted medieval Europe and prompted some of the worst excesses of the Spanish Inquisition". If the victim is demonized, the torturer is relieved of responsibility.

More sophisticated societies embellished their excesses, implementing useful codes to avoid the plain truth of their atrocities, such as Moscow's Great Terror in the mid-20th century, the Soviet counterpart to the Spanish Inquisition. While a heretical Cathar was a "traitor to God", the subject of The Great Terror was "a traitor to the fatherland". Likewise, taking advantage of the fears of others, associates can be enlisted to inform authorities of suspect behavior or statements, a rich source of collaborative evidence. The accused becomes isolated because of the danger of association (the Salem witch trials; Nazi Germany; the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s).

Drawing parallels between the past and the present (Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay), the author weaves atrocities "in the name of God" to more modern applications, a sleeping beast impossible to eradicate once released. The Grand Inquisitor's Manual transitions from the horrors of the past and the dark genius of the Inquisitors who wielded monstrous instruments designed by artisans to the more modern uses and rationalizations created to obfuscate the actions of religion and government in the name of oppression. Always, it is the hand of man, not God, inflicting the torture. "In the Name of God" suggests a divine source; yet Kirsch connects institutions, church, government, not a deity, but sanctioned terror. Kirsch outlines the path of history, the periodic emergence of evil, reminding us that we can only redress the past by acknowledging, not repeating it. It is fascinating to read of man's inhuman ingenuity, but disturbing to realize that the past reoccurs with alarming frequency. Luan Gaines/ 2008

In "The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God", author Jonathan Kirsch makes no pretense of cool, detached objectivity. He very obviously loathes the very notion of the Catholic Church's Inquisition (which formally existed from the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth centuries), and he displays open disdain for those revisionist historians who have sought to excuse or minimize the actions of the Inquisition in rooting out and destroying heretics, Jews, and Muslims.

"The Grand Inquisitor's Manual" abounds in vivid tales of the cruel excesses perpetrated by agents of the Catholic Church in the name of defending an ideal of a single orthodox faith, leaving no doubt that an appalling toll of fear and pain was levied against anyone suspected of deviating in the slightest manner from a narrow definition of what constituted a true Christian.

Kirsch's book is perhaps too anecdotal with too few detailed statistics to serve as a definitive history of the Inquisition; even after reading "The Grand Inquisitor's Manual" I do not feel I have a good grasp of how many people suffered directly in the hands of the Inquisition. Furthermore, the last section of the book, seeking to establish a relationship between the Inquisition and the activities of the Nazi Holocaust, Stalinist purges, the American "witch hunts" of McCarthy era, and the presentday excesses of the "War on Terror", seems to me to set awkwardly with the rest of the book.

For a > 250 page book, this one has a startling lack of actual history in it. Far too many pages are wasted on the author's reiterating points he made on earlier pages, and there is far too little diversity among his sources or actual use of source material. This book seems to have been intended for a less scholarly/wider audience (it is as much political commentary as historical analysis), but, even, so, I fault it for assuming that the modern, casual reader is a nitwit who lacks all capacity to retain what was said not once or twice, but again and again; and who would rather take the author's word that inquisitors said and did x, y and z than be introduced the words of those people.

Which is not to say that the book does not quote the inquisitors or reference source material; it does, sporadically. However, it is one of those books where, at the end of it, you're amazed at how many pages you read to come away with so little of actual substance.

Additionally, I would note that the title is rather misleading. "A History of Terror in the Name of God" this is not; it certainly starts as such (from a western, Christian perspective, at least), but then finishes with a look at secular state sponsored terror (again, from a western perspective). The author attempts to illustrate, with more success in some cases than others, that these later cases are products of the Inquisition, or at least influenced by it, but they are certainly not performed in "the Name of God". A more appropriate title would, perhaps, have been "The Legacy of Terror in the Name of God". I'm not meaning to nitpick here, but to include the godless regimes of Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany as illustrative of the "history of terror in the name of God" seems a bit silly.

Also, while the focus of this book is the influence of the Inquisition on similar state sponsored terror networks/state sponsored pursuits of "heretics"/undesirables/others, the author doesn't explore some obvious points, and leaves some interesting questions unanswered.

To address the first point, Jonathon Kirsch barely mentions states like England, which, while touched marginally (in England's case, once) by the Inquisition proper during its history, nonetheless employed many of the same tactics against "heretics" - be they witches, Jews, protestants, Catholics, etc. - and for the same reasons - genuine fear of "the other", superstition, and, of course, greed. What influence did the Inquisition have on England? What influence did England have on the Inquisition? Or did the two exist in veritable vacuums, uninfluenced by one another and yet doing the same work? Reading this book, one would never know, for Kirsch ignores the question entirely.

As to the other point (which, in some ways, ties to the previous), what was the influence of contemporary society on the inquisition? Again, Kirsch mentions the suspicions held against Christians by their earliest persecutors (before they took on the role of persecuting one another) - the pagan nations in which they dwelt; he notes how these same early accusations against Christians by pagans were reiterated nearly charge for charge against "heretics" by their fellow Christians during the Inquisitions. He also references that the Inquisition was not the first to employ torture against its enemies...but, while these points are noted, they are never explored fully or given any real context. Was the Inquisition simply a new, religious-ized, perhaps more effectively managed, version of what was already considered acceptable, or was it truly a revolutionary new way of doing things? This is not merely a point of interest or obscure history - it is crucial to the entire point of Kirsch's book, which is the legacy of the Inquisition. If the Inquisition is merely a product of the world about it, it would more properly be seen not as the propagator of this form of terror, but merely as a continuer of such - much as the Nazi and Stalinist (stripped of the God-element) regimes can be seen. And yet the author neglects to properly address this question.

Finally, the author's last points - where he attempts to extend the reach of the Inquisition beyond the actual Inquisition, to the current day Iraq/Afghanistan wars - are deeply flawed. The author attempts to equate the thought crimes for which "heretics" were burnt in droves with the more literal crimes for which "enemy combatants" are held by noting similarities between tactics employed to discover "heretics" and "terrorists". He overlooks an important distinction, however...In the days of the inquisitions, a *thought* (real or falsely attributed to the accused) outside of accepted boundaries was enough to merit "interrogations"; and, worse yet, so was something utterly outside the control of the victim - one's "blood" or descent. One can not control if one's ancestors were Jewish/Muslim/Cathar/etc.; one can control joining up to fight with someone, financially supporting them, etc. Which is not to say that everyone caught and accused is likely guilty, of course...however, this is a failing all justice systems must combat (the possibility of accusing innocents). The fact that innocents may have been accused wrongly of taking up arms against US is not the same thing as saying innocents were accused of *thinking* anti-US thoughts. Agree or disagree with the wars, Guantanamo Bay, etc., it is a ludicrous disservice to those dispossessed, brutally tortured, left to languish in prison, burnt to death, and otherwise abused, by the inquisitors of yesteryear for nothing more than thinking (or being accused of thinking) thoughts deemed unacceptable - or having a trace of "impure" blood - to equate their suffering and abuse with our current predicament.

The first part of the book (the discussion of the inquisition) I give 3 stars; an interesting enough examination of the history, but containing too little history and far too much repetition. The latter part, I give 2 stars; hurried and inadequate examinations of the history presumed to support his points. All in all, I say 3 stars...it's an interesting point of view, and a quick enough read that, even with its failings, you haven't wasted your time.

The inquisition is a tough topic for historians and here Jonathan Kirsch illustrates why, both purposefully and accidentally. There were actually three inquisitions perpetrated by the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, ebbing and flowing for about 600 years. Here Kirsch compiles previous research and sheds some light on the enormity of the operation and the trends that pushed medieval religious torture away from rigid theology and toward politics and profiteering. These are not really surprises, though Kirsch's organization of the material offers some useful insights.

The main problem is that Kirsch's historiography is based on little first-hand research and becomes almost entirely a compilation of existing sources, often leading the reader to wonder why they shouldn't just read the earlier authoritative works that Kirsch references again and again (such as books by Henry Charles Lea or Cecil Roth). While the basic historical facts are pretty well-explained here, Kirsch stretches way too far in trying to find moral lessons and historical trends. Throughout the book he vacillates between the notion that the inquisition was an unstoppable systematic force that operated relentlessly for 600 years, and the notion that it shifted and weakened periodically with larger social and religious forces. The latter is true but the former encourages more dramatic writing. Kirsch also takes the opportunity to comment on patterns of apologism and revisionism among historians but he doesn't have the gravitas to make that analysis believable.

The last couple of chapters are a serious misstep as Kirsch tries to tie the Inquisition into modern history. The Salem Witch Trials and Hitler's Final Solution are obvious comparisons, and Kirsch is right that the methods of political repression appear in history again and again, but he tries way too hard to find religious parallels in Stalin's purges in the Soviet Union, McCarthyism in America, and the modern war on terror. In the end, this book offers some useful historical knowledge but suffers from recycled research and unsupported moralizing. [~doomsdayer520~]

The Inquisition of the Middle Ages, the Spanish Inquisition and the Roman Inquisition provided for centuries of terror, torture and well documented strategies in annihilating mostly innocent people for heresy. While the original objective of the Inquisition was the Roman Catholic Church's fear of losing control over the thoughts and beliefs of Christians, the inquisitors, the Church and later, the kings of Spain and France, turned it into a strategy in profiteering and later, genocide.

Cloaking themselves with a language that played down what they were actually doing to the victims, the Inquisition laid the path for modern inquisitions such as the Nazi regime, the Soviet Gulag, the witch trials, the Japanese American internment, the McCarthy anti-Communist hunt and the American military proceedings in Abu Ghraib.

It's horrifyingly interesting to read how the Inquisition made heretics wear large fabric crosses on their garments to humiliate them, even if they had been released from trial, and that this practice was used by Hitler with the Jews in WWII. The practice of getting neighbors, friends, and relatives to spy on and denounce each other, and the purpose of a trial to get victims to name others were used also by the Nazis and McCarthy's committee. Even the Inquisition's practice of spreading imagined depravities against the targeted victims continues to be used today to build disgust and fear against them.

Even the tools of the Inquisition have not been destroyed or left to gather dust in some dark museum. Some of them have been used through the centuries and some, such as the water torture, now renamed waterboarding, and the humiliating dunces cap, are being used today.

It was appalling to see how easily it's been to press the panic button in people, and once pressed, how very quickly it can be to spread fear, distrust and the belief that inhumane treatment of those we fear is acceptable, because they are now seen as being less than human. Once the panic button is pressed, how ready are we to relinquish common sense, embrace the flimsiest of excuses to legalize the torture and incarceration of our imagined enemies.

Covering some very distasteful details of mainly the Inquisitions' strategies and practices, this is, however, a really good documentation of man's need to control that which he fears. It certainly made me realize that not only does history repeat itself, but that there are some who will actually try to justify evil actions.

The essays of Plutarch, the ancient Roman, are filled with anecdotes covering the words and deeds from the day-to-day lives of ancient Greeks and Romans. FDR later stated that whenever he faced a difficult decision, he found wisdom in Plutarch to reach a decision.

Similarly, Kirsch's book is vivid history as up-close and first-person as one often can hope to get. It is filled with the quoted words of the prosectors and the prosecuted, with all their rightheous indignation and agnonizing pain, calling out from across history. It is a compilation of the anecdotal, day-to-day details that led to the most famous to lesser known inquisitions throughout history: the Cathar Inquisition; the Knights Templar Inquisition; the Spanish Inquisition; the Great Terror; the Holocaust; the Salem Witch Trials; the Red Scare; and inquisitions into today. Like Plutarch's anecdotes - we can only gauge the level of their truth through the lens of history - but the wisdom that emerges is enduring and compelling.

Kirsch's broad coverage of persecution across history reveals strikingly deep and consistent patterns. In tragedy after tragedy, we witness the patterns of demonization, de-humanization, the use of codes in speaking plainly about atrocities, the characterization of objectors to the persecution as enemies themselves - all of which shaped people to have beliefs that lead them to become willing participants in the persecution of other humans.

Leaving the lessons of Kirsch's book - one sees the patterns in the world today that could lead to new inquisitions. It has been said, that if you can convince a person to believe a lie, then you can create a murderer. Hitler sold a lie to an entire nation and created an immense, political machine of death. How Hitler convinced a nation to believe his lies, how inquisitions were started from similar lies through history, and how to recognize those working to have us believe new lies, are profound and enduring insights that one can carry forever after reading Kirsch's book.

Efficiently told, often convincingly argued, this surveys the late medieval and Spanish secret police, courts, and prisons where "heretical depravity" could lead to execution, a life sentence, ostracization, or exile and destitution. Kirsch extends the parallels with Stalinist, Nazi, and contemporary applications of authoritarian suppression of what an authority deems thought-crime. He strives throughout to alert us to the parallels that for nearly seven hundred years have perpetuated the crushing of what "heresy" means in its Greek derivation: "choice."

That this choice lies within the individual dissenter infuriates the forces seeking monotheism, and/or conformity of expressed opinion. Kirsch cites Kafka's "The Trial": "You can't defend yourself against this court, all you can do is confess." The show-trials and the torture were applied to not only punish resistance, but to exact the ultimate humiliation-- to reduce the accused to admit accomplices, among his or her family and loved ones.

"Fautorship," the aiding and abetting of heresy however unintentionally by one's circle of friends and family, itself could land any sympathizer, entirely uncomprehending or wholly aware, into prison as a heretic. Such pressure ensured that the eradication of some heresies in medieval Europe was nearly total. For those "guilty" of having one-sixteenth in Spain or one-fourth in the Reich degree of "Jewish blood," there was no way to escape sentencing for ancestral ties. A cadaver decades later could be exhumed and found guilty; its descendants could then be found suspected of heresy. The wealth accrued by such ambitious investigations to snare the guilty or excuse the innocent, funded by those found guilty or seeking exoneration, furthermore, corrupted the institutions that ruled all the citizens, and by such data the apparatus of Church and State grew into its modern reach and cruel imposition. Naming names, Kirsch shows skillfully, became the goal of every inquisition. To catch one guilty party, one early functionary gloats, a hundred innocents merit pain.

Kirsch touches on intriguing sidelines: the revisionist historians who finesse legal vs. moral niceties, the inability of monotheism to compel fidelity among humans hard-wired for diversity in thought and belief, and the "free-associative sexual libel" of the biblically based "impulse to equate theological error with sexual adventure." (40) As an aside, I remained curious if the legality that allowed the Church to "abandon" heretics once tortured and sentenced as guilty into the secular authority for the death penalty to be carried out had any asserted Catholic medieval parallel in the infamous scripturally justified separation by the Jewish authorities of Christ's fate at the hands of Pilate, but Kirsch does not cite any medieval predecessors of this rationale from earlier exegesis.

Reviewers on Amazon have noted the same flaws I found: uneven documentation, a wavering attitude resisting any firm tally of how many medieval victims resulted, and a slanted, if humanist and understandably offended, tone. I would add an over-reliance on a few studies about the medieval period, too rapid a glance at witchcraft in the pre-early modern period, and a tendentious attitude regarding the McCarthy era, given that later historians have unmasked some "real" spies who were working during that period in the US. Their undercover presence does not excuse the excesses of the HUAC proceedings, but as a scholar, Kirsch should have nodded towards revisionist data recently uncovered for Cold War Soviet espionage as he had for those challenging the status quo in medieval studies.

However, the bulk of his readable, brisk presentation focuses on the lack of actual guilt among earlier prisoners for deviation vs. the inquisitorial topsy-turvy rationale. Without any knowledge of one's accusers, the evidence amassed, or the charges weighed, the accused might be charged with heresy. A vulnerable woman, especially from fifty to seventy, eccentric, might be blamed for witchcraft after a botched midwife's case, a bucket of spoiled milk, a neighbor's illness. Out of such coincidences, the devil was seen to infect the social order.

The family of one arrested might find themselves homeless and penniless; the crime could be charged for one nine or ninety-six; any who refused to confess were then made to be tortured, for rarely could any escape sentencing. If one refused to confess, one hid one's stubborn, devilish motivation, If one confessed, one betrayed one's complicity. If one gave the names of others to save one's soul, one showed one's terrible connection to a sinister underground network of diabolic fifth columnists. Under the Soviets, the Spanish, the Gestapo, one finds the same set-up repeated as with the Holy Office. Eradication of any rebellion demanded total compliance, for one's own soul and to terrorize one's neighbors and community into submission. By such reasoning, "the victims of torture were the only ones to blame for the necessity of putting them to torture." (98)

Alonzo Salazar y Frias, a Spanish friar-inquisitor, noted: "There were neither witches nor bewitched, until they were talked about." (147) He hunted Jews and Muslims instead. "I have not found the slightest evidence, from which to infer that a single act of witchcraft has really occurred." (188) Perversity, however defined, meant that the forces of clerical and monarchical power would crush those accused. Mercy seemed extremely rare, and cruelty became the norm, for hundreds of years.

As a lawyer as well as historian, Kirsch navigates the intricacies of such "logic" in the name of crushing conformity deftly. He integrates scholarly predecessors smoothly, and while he may not offer as much original research, he presents in an accessible fashion the best of what's been researched and argued for hundreds of years. The fate of the Spanish Jewish converts, or holdouts, is demythologized by Kirsch deftly, for he shows how most were ardent Christians rather than defiant crypto-Jews, but also how "purity of blood" strategies inspired future Nazi outrages. Kirsch reminds us how far the terrible continuum stretches-- just over a hundred years after the last Spanish execution, crackdowns under Hitler commenced.

And here Kirsch keeps the lessons of the fragile prisoner and defiant rebel fresh, those unfairly burnt, those whose consciences could not give in to false confessions, those tormented into delusion, those beaten to death or driven mad. He also portrays those incarcerated and/or burnt alive for the "crime" of greeting a Cathar "perfectus" unwittingly, or sheltering a persecuted freethinker on the run. Ensuring that none evaded such "justice" meant that cities and towns needed to coordinate testimonies and confessions. These reports were carefully kept, humble or outrageous the faint words exacted by fear and torture as set down by scribes may seem to us today.

They form our first international database, as the medieval friar-inquisitors stored duplicate records that allowed neither the accused nor his acquaintances to escape scrutiny, for long years after. The ranks of the tainted grew as names were named, a prerequisite of arrest being this duty for the accused to accuse others. Not even corpses of those sentenced were safe from immolation. One rarely escaped the inquisition's penalties once they were extended, and the reign of terror, although somewhat exaggerated by a few, for many thousands accused or associated with those found guilty of such defiance against the norm appears to be horrifying indeed.

As Kirsch sums up: "The fundamental fact that real human beings suffered and died at the hands of the inquisitors for nothing more than a thought-crime-- or no for no crime at all-- is sometimes overlooked in the scholarly debate over the Inquisition. Now and then, we need to recall the ordeal of the Jewish 'converso' named Elvira del Campo, stripped naked and put to torture by the Spanish Inquisition in 1568 because eating pork made her sick to the stomach, if only to remind ourselves of the human face of the Inquisition: 'Lord,' she cried, 'bear witness that they are killing me without my being able to confess!'" (210)

I love this book. It is well written, with style, grace and passion. The author calls the Inquistion what it was - a reign of terror that is the model for those that followed - the Nazis, the Stalinists, the Pol Pots, and the McCarthy witchhunts. John Calvin was running his own mini-Inquisition in Geneva and competed with the Catholics to see who could catch and murder Miguel Servetus first. I would add to those the Islamic fanatics who control Iran, and Bin Laden and his minions who will kill anyone who doesn't share the "one true faith" completely. The book reads like a well crafted thriller or suspense novel, but sadly it is not fiction. The writing is vivid enough that I woke up one night thinking one of the Inquisitors was standing over my bed.

Kirsch doesn't make excuses for the power mad clerics and their secular allies who ran an international police state. He doesn't brook apologists who would excuse these criminals on the grounds that torture was commonly used by secular authorities, and the victims had the "benefit" of a formal legal system. To me, as a lawyer, that makes what they did all the more sinister.

He reminds us that the current pope, the former Cardinal Ratzinger (what a name!) was the head of the Inquistion in its current incarnation.

If you enjoyed Hawkins' The God Delusion and his writing style, you'll love this one.

This is basically an interesting history lesson (it's not very sensationalistic if that's what you were looking for, though it does go into the torture methods to a certain degree) -- it follows the three main phases of Inquisitions (medieval, Roman, and Spanish) and also quickly delves into the modern scenarios where Inquisition-like tactics/methods were used (Hitler, Stalin, Bush, etc.).

Great Book! Full of interesting information on the subject.

"The meshing of religion and politics can always be detected in the working of the Inquisition and explains where and why it operated as it did."

Pg 47

The only drawback for me was the end where it discussed current terrorism. That part could have been excluded, I felt like it didnt belong. Despite that, I'd still recommend this to anyone who likes this kind of stuff. Its better than other books I have read on the subject.