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Inquisition

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Edward Peters presents a tour-de-force of "Inquisition" as both history and myth. He declares at the outset: "There was never, except in polemic and fiction, 'The Inquisition', a single all-powerful, horrific tribunal, whose agents worked everywhere to thwart religious truth, intellectual freedom, and political liberty. That is 'The Inquisition' of folklore, martyrology artwork, and post-Enlightenment fiction." He traces the development of Roman Catholic inquisitions from their inception in the 900's, "pre-inquisitions" involving popular lynchings, secular judgments, and other forms of harsh coercion by Europe's laity, in contrast with the patient and persuasive methods used by the clergy. By the late 1100's and early 1200's, however, patience and persuasion ran their course, and inquisitions were officially chartered. The medieval inquisitions of the 1200's-1500's proceeded as formal but secret trials, guided by a doctrine of torture (outlined and explained at some length by the author), and they operated throughout Europe according to discretion, based on local needs. With the advent of the Protestant Reformation, they faded from history, and the Roman Inquisition (1542-1908) was chartered in their place to combat the new "heresy" tearing apart Europe, then later to focus almost exclusively on internal ecclesiastical discipline. It was the Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834), originating as a national and public institution to deal with problems unique to Spain, whose character -- especially when the nation became the great world power in the 1500's -- shaped, dramatically, subsequent perceptions of "The Inquisition", the (supposed) singular, malevolent Catholic tribunal inflicting tyranny and intellectual oppression everywhere. Unlike the medieval inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition performed its function with aggressive popular support and governmental backing, and it focused on preserving orthodoxy in a national and xenophobic manner, publicly punishing Jews as "heretics". The procedures and personnel of the Spanish Inquisition were soon transformed by polemic, artwork, and fiction into the myth of "The Inquisition", a process begun in the 1500's and continuing to the present day (as evidenced in some of the misguided customer reviews below).

This book is an instructive lesson not only in inquisition history, but in the way myth and history often compete with one another. It is not, by any means, a "whitewash" of the phenomenon, nor is it apologetic revisionism. It is an honest and accurate analysis of a religious-legal procedure which developed, changed, did good and bad, over the course of many centuries.

Edward Peters' book "Inquisition" is the furthest thing from a whitewash. Peters marshals facts neatly, cleanly, and readably, seperating the facts from the fictions. Tracing the notion of inquistion from its linguistic roots (inquire, inquest) all the way to the parodies of Monty Python and Mel Brooks, he shows how what we think of as THE INQUISITION is a composite of some historical fact and a lot of (truth to tell) whitewash and propoganda.

One of Peters' central arguments revolves around the printing press. The moveable type printing press was developed in /northern/ Europe and, as the Protestant Reformation spread, so did the printing press -- primarily into Protestant lands. Spain, the largest empire in Europe at the time, was also ardently Catholic. The printing press was therefor enlisted as a propoganda tool. Many lurid pamphlets, of at best questionable veracity, were spread by Protestants to show the levels of evil, the depravity to which the Spanish had sunk; Peters also points out how several of these same charges had been levelled against other groups both prior to Spain's rise and then later against new foes, but due to the new power of the written word, and the rise in literacy, the charges truly struck home.

On the other hand Peters does not shrink from the vile acts of the inquistion, Spanish or otherwise. He points to the origins of what we now collectively recognize as "The Inquisition" during the 12th century, citings boths its powers and its limits. He shows the later abuses, especially in Spain and the New World, including torture, forced conversions, endless imprisonments, and the rest. He also is meticulous in pointing out the comparative small numbers of people these horrors were visited upon, as the inquisitions (yes, plural) tended to keep fairly tight records.

The last part of the book is probably the most interesting, because here Peters deals with the /idea/ of The Inquisition. Based on the pamphlets of the 16th and 17th centuries, later writers grab up what has become a stock image. The Gothic writers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries drive these fictionalized visions even deeper into the collective set of themes of European literature. By the end of the 19th century and certainly in the 20th and 21st centuries, it is nearly impossible to erradicate the /vision/ of the Inquisition (NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquistion!) from the reality of the times.

No one wants a return of the inquistion. Conversely, its excesses have been decried to the point of shrillness and amplified to a degree of groteque improbability. Peters work is the single most solid, credible and even-handed works on the topic to date. Unlike many other works that rely on secondary sources or the oft-repeated pamphlets of the Protestant north, Peters looks into papal records, notes from both sides, histories, diaries, letters, and all the minutiae that go into making a true historical and historilogical work. On top over everything else, the work is neither dry nor dull -- it is a solid read for either the casual reader or the scholar. I cannot help but recommend this volume to anyone who would like a better understanding of both the abuses and the truth behind the inquistion.

My introduction to the notion that most of us believe a lot
of exaggerations and falsehoods about "the Inquisition"
was William Walsh's book, "Characters of the Inquisition."
Walsh was an ardent Catholic and a great admirer of Queen Isabella.

As a novice reader on the Inquisition, I had little
way to gauge how serious might be his bias. Then, along came
Edward Peters! His book is hardly a whitewash of the goal of a
confessional state (everybody believes in the same religion or
you leave), nor of the methods used in Spain and other places
to try to enforce this. But it does give us 20th Century
folks a clearer picture of 15th and 16th Century thinking
that heresy was treason, and treason then like today was a
serious crime against the state.

After giving facts of the inquisitions, Peters uses the second
half of the book to describe how the facts of the inquisitions
got exaggerated and embellished with falsehoods over
the centuries, eventually becoming what he calls the "Myth of
the Inquisition."

After reading Peters, I can even more enthusiastically recommend Walsh.

--- One chapter I would have like to have seen in Peters
is a review of inquisitions done by Protestants in Geneva,
Germany, and England, including the Witch Hunts. It would
be good to have something to compare to the Spanish, Portuguese,
Romans and Venetians.

I won't go into more detail about the book except to confirm the positive reviews below about the book's accuracy and thoroughness. I do want to note, for the benefit of those who might take "Jean Plaidy" as any kind of serious source, that Jean Plaidy is one of several pseudonyms used by Eleanor Hibbert, a mid-century pop British historical novelist who cranked out dozens upon dozens of novels, had no academic credentials and whose "historical fiction" is widely regarded as far more fiction than history. Might as well cite Danielle Steel.

Don't get me wrong...I like scholarly books very much, only in this case I guess I was caught off guard. You see, several months ago some friends and I were enjoying a drink or two and pondering the Inquisition. We got to talking about the Autos-da-fe' (literally Acts of faith, but actually the medieval equivalent of rock concerts in which heretics were tied to sticks and burned alive in front of cheering throngs), the dank torture chambers with unthinkable apparatus for inflicting human suffering (no, not TV sets...), and the hideous inquisitors preparing the next day's human barbecue menu for "god". So that's what I was seeking in book form, some unthinkably gruesome recounting of the specific horrors and characters etc.,... Excepting for some tantalizing doses of this (for instance, the mention of a nut-case vigilante named "John The One-Eyed" who roamed the countryside during the 1220's killing and maiming those who didn't share his true religion), what I got was an exceptionally intellectual overview of the religious, political and social forces which led to the first inquisitions, the history of the most prominent ones (The Roman, The Spanish, and The Portugese), and quite interestingly, the evolution of the MYTH that there was ever simply one gigantic inquisition. Like a child, shoved against his will into a classroom on a holiday, I slogged through the book in its entirety, and at the end, I was the richer for it in my understanding of this important series of horrid phenomena in history...however I was denied the blood-soaked and crispy-fried details I had so keenly sought originally. Not to leave the issue of further avenues for study unaddressed, our author concludes the book with a 32 page "Bibliographical Essay" which assures us that we may read on this subject for the next 4 lifetimes uninterrupted, in the language of our choice. I, for one am seeking a biography of John The One-Eyed.

Peters has provided an invaluable analysis of the Inquisition. For the longest time, the Inquisition (especially the Spanish Inquisition) has been a mainstay of rationalistic mythology in its attacks on Christianity. No wonder that the numbers of its victims had been bloated a thousandfold, and that several reviewers have attacked this book as a whitewash of the Inquisition. (And never mind the fact that far more people were killed by atheists (such as the Jacobins during the French Revolution, and especially the Communists of the 20th century) than by all the Inquisitions and all religious wars combined).

Peter's book is aptly summarized by the following quotation (p. 87): "...The Spanish Inquisition, in spite of wildly inflated claims of the numbers of its victims, acted with considerable restraint in inflicting the death penalty, far more restraint than was demonstrated in secular tribunals elsewhere in Europe that dealt with the same kinds of offenses. The best estimate is that around 3,000 death sentences were carried out in Spain by Inquisitorial verdict between 1550 and 1800, a far smaller number than in comparable secular courts." Need any more be said?

This book's single best aspect is that it doesn't deal with just the Spanish Inquisition, as so many others do. Peters shows us that the Spanish Inquisition didn't spring into existence fully formed. Towards that end Peters starts with an overview of the evolution of Roman and Latin law theory and then discusses the medieval inquisitions that formed the basis of the more infamous Spanish Inquisition. Peters also discusses the Italian Inquisitions, a welcome addition.

Peters attemps to show the inquisitions in the context of religious and secular realities of the time. Peters contention is that the inquisitions were not especially notable in either the kinds of crimes they prosecuted, the ways they prosecuted them, and the severity of punishments meted out. He is not wholly successful in this.

Part of the problem is that the book is rather poorly structured. While each individual sentence and paragraph is written well enough, there often seem to be little in the way of guiding purpose forming everything into a coherent whole. This often makes it difficult to understand what, if any, point the author is trying to make. There are several instances where the author clearly expects the reader to understand a reference -- Languedoc stands out in my memory -- without adequately explaining the relevance. At other points Peters will eventually explain the relevance, but dozens of pages after he has originally made the reference. This can make for frustrating reading.

Another problem is that the author's main contention is that the inquisitions need to be examined in relation to the efforts of other judicial bodies of the time. Unfortunately, Peters rarely offers much other than saying essentially "others were even worse".

After reading both this and Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition I found some discrepancies that make me question Peters' bias. For instance on p.94 Peters says that "...the Spanish Inquisition was not permitted to sentence anyone to death." Kamen on p.202-3 offers a slightly different take, "[The secular authorities] were obliged to carry out the sentence of blood which the Holy Office was forbidden by law to carry out. In all this there was no pretence that the Inquisition was not the body directly and fully responsible for the deaths that occurred." Peters' statement comes across as a whitewashing of responsibility.

There are several other points on which Kamen contradicts Peters. As Kamen was a much better book I would recommend reading it before Peters', especially given my concerns about Peters' bias.

Finally, some scholars are getting to the truth of the Inquisition. Peters deftly lays aside the general impression of Catholics killing tens of thousands, even millions, of Jews, Muslims, and assorted Protestants. And of so-called 'widespread torture...' It's about time! Very well researched.

The author brings out some interesting points.
Such as did the Inquisition exist in the way it is most thought of?

"There was never, except in polemic and fiction, 'The Inquisition', a single all-powerful, horrific tribunal, whose agents worked everywhere to thwart religious truth, intellectual freedom, and political liberty. That is 'The Inquisition' of folklore, martyrology artwork, and post-Enlightenment fiction."

This book is as close to a whitewash of the Inquisition as a scholar can get without losing credibility. Peters does seem to get his basic facts right and in this regard his account actually agrees in large part with the Protestant scholars who have been most critical of the Inquisition. It is Peters emphasis which is troubling. When Peters does present information embarrassing to the Catholic Church (such as the Pope's letter declaring death as the appropriate punishment for heretics)it is presented only briefly. His pro-Catholic spin can be blatant at times. For example, he refers several times to the 13th century papal legate, Castelnau, who was murdered most likely by anti-Catholic foes. While this ONE death is regretable, in this same time period many THOUSANDS were killed by the Catholics - many of whose names we do know and whose stories would be illustrative, but Peters is vague about these victims and mentions none by name. The overall effect of this book is to play down the Inquisition as really no big deal.