The Inquisition

WWJT (Who Would Jesus Torture)?

What was a nightmare in Protestant folktales generations ago became, in the skits of Monty Python, a joke.

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency ... and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four ... no ... Amongst our weapons ... Amongst our weaponry ... are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.

In contemporary Catholic apologetics, however, the Inquisition is just a regrettable historical incident (perhaps) that must be interpreted according to the ethics of the time.

James Hitchcock of St. Louis University is one such apologist. He argues that the Inquisition was not as bad as its critics have suggested and was in fact somewhat more just than secular tribunals of the day. It was run by "professional legists and bureaucrats who adhered closely to rules and procedures," he says. It only tortured those it believed to be lying. It only killed 1% of those brought before it (or about 1250 people). Some Protestant states also tortured and executed heretics, he argues.

Hitchcock admits that some Catholics have gone too far in defending it.

Some traditional Catholic apologetics about the Inquisition is untenable, for example, the claim that the Church did not put heretics to death, the state did. Yes, but the Church urged the state to do so, and churchmen hardly escaped responsibility through this legal maneuver.

Thomas F. Madden, another historian at St. Louis University, makes similar arguments in a 2004 National Review article. He, too, asserts that "the Inquisition was not so bad after all. Torture was rare and only about 1 percent of those brought before the Spanish Inquisition were actually executed." He also engages in historical relativism:

To understand the Inquisition we have to remember that the Middle Ages were, well, medieval. We should not expect people in the past to view the world and their place in it the way we do today.

He depicts the Inquisition as the Church's response to a merciless state.

From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community. ...

Compared to other medieval secular courts, the Inquisition was positively enlightened. Why then are people in general and the press in particular so surprised to discover that the Inquisition did not barbecue people by the millions? First of all, when most people think of the Inquisition today what they are really thinking of is the Spanish Inquisition. No, not even that is correct. They are thinking of the myth of the Spanish Inquisition. Amazingly, before 1530 the Spanish Inquisition was widely hailed as the best run, most humane court in Europe.

Like other Catholic apologists, both of these historians suggest that the horror stories of "The Black Legend" were spun by Protestants who had polemical motives. They cite Henry Kamen (The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, 1997) to vindicate the tribunal. Kamen's name was invoked by many apologists, such as Bill Donohue, in May 2007 when PBS aired "Secret Files of the Inquisition" (dramatizing events while reading from Inquisition files).

Let's take a look at what Kamen says--and what he does not.

Kamen argues that the Inquisition was "designed to cause fear" (I might call it state and church sponsored terrorism). He quotes Francisco Pena, who noted in his 1578 commentary on an inquisitorial manual that "the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to save the soul of the accused but to achieve the public good and put fear into others." (174) The atmosphere of fear it created was centered on the fact that it relied upon anonymous accusations--the victim could never know who accused him or what the precise charges were (182, 194-195). This sort of a system was "open to abuse at every stage" (197).

Petty denunciations were the rule rather than the exception. The Inquisition became a useful weapon for paying off old scores. 'In Castile fifteen hundred people have been burnt through false witness', a villager asserted in the 1480s. When the Lutheran crisis burst upon Seville in 1559-60, a stream of people turned up every day at Triana castle, the offices of the Inquisition, to report what they claimed to know. We have this information from the lips of one of the informants, who subsequently admitted that he had fabricated accusations out of malice. (176)

Kamen says, contrary to the apologists, that "Judicially, the Inquisition was neither better nor worse than the secular courts." But the cult of secrecy that developed around it, a secrecy imposed upon all participants by the Inquisition itself by the turn of the 16th century, meant that people would imagine the worst, extrapolating from what was known. Kamen concludes from this that "The Inquisition was therefore largely to blame for the unfounded slanders subsequently cast upon it" (182, 186).

There were theoretical safeguards against false testimony and false arrest, but these were often ignored--"Zeal of officials and inquisitors alike often outran discretion" (183).

Property was seized upon arrest, depriving family members of sustenance. Prisoners were cut off from contact with the outside. Cells were dark, unheated, and over crowded. Though the church claimed to be interested in the salvation of those in its grip, it denied them the sacraments. Prisoners would be chained; the recalcitrant would be gagged and their heads held erect with an iron fork. Death rates from incarceration alone were high--especially from imprisoned children (186-187).

The use of torture had been authorized by Pope Innocent IV in 1252 (Ad Extirpanda). Inquisitors theoretically couldn't use confessions made under torture--so they employed the legal fiction of having them repeat the confession after the torture had stopped. There were other loopholes:

As the rules forbade anyone to be tortured more than once, the end of every torture session was treated as a suspension only, and refusal to ratify the confession would be met with a threat to 'continue' the torture. Besides being compelled to confess their own heresies, accused were often also tortured in caput alienum, to confess knowledge of the crimes of others. (188)

Some say torture wasn't used often and so wasn't very important. Kamen says that may be correct "in statistical terms," but

This ignores its very real impact at select periods on the group that most suffered from it: the alleged judaizers. It was applied rigorously after the early sixteenth century in cases of suspected Protestantism and Judaism. Lea estimates that in the Toledo tribunal between 1575 and 1610 about a third of those accused of heretical offences were tortured. In the late seventeenth century at least three-quarters of all those accused in Spain of judaizing--several hundreds of people--were tortured. In 1699 the inquisitors of Seville complained that they hardly had the time to carry out all the tortures required. Supporting evidence for the frequency of the punishment in this tribunal comes from the doctor who in 1702 claimed back-payment for his presence at 434 sessions of torture. (189)

There were three primary tortures: the garrucha or pulley (used to stretch and dislocate limbs), the toca (water torture), and the potro (in which the person was wrapped with cords which were tightened gradually). They were applied to men and women, children and the aged, "completely naked except for minimal garments to cover their shame" (190).

As noted, even the apologists agree that perhaps 1250 people met "the ultimate penalty" of the Inquisition--burning at the stake. This penalty was not unique to Spain, but had become "a commonplace of Christendom."

It had been the practice, hallowed by the mediaeval Inquisition, for Church courts to condemn a heretic and then hand him over, or 'relax' him, to the secular authorities. These 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.

I've italicized that sentence because it directly contradicts a major argument of contemporary apologists. Likewise, Kamen refuses to follow the apologists in minimizing the deaths. "Nothing, certainly, can efface the horror of the terrible first twenty or so years." He gives a 2% figure, not the 1% of the apologists (which would give us about 2000 burning victims), and this was "heavily weighted against people of Jewish and Muslim origin" (202-203).

There was no age limit for those condemned to the stake: women in their eighties and boys in their teens were treated in the same way as any other heretics. (212)

Foreigners were another target. Kamen argues that "a good part of the Inquisition's zeal for religion was little more than active xenophobia" (276ff). A Barcelona inquisitor said, "I certainly think autos [which didn't always include a burning] necessary in order to induce fear both among foreigners who come here, and among the people of this country" (212) .

The secrecy of the Inquisition, its deliberate terroristic intent (to inspire fear), and its application to foreign nationals (including seamen visiting ports) , all helped create the legends that Catholic apologists want to dismiss. These things had an impact on Protestant controversialists.

But "a second major source of anti-Inquisition propaganda was, by contrast, Catholic in origin," coming in particular from Italy and France. Italian diplomats "described a poor and backward nation dominated by a tyrannical Inquisition." Others wrote of the terror it inspired (308-309).

So Kamen doesn't make all the points that those who cite him claim that he does. And we are still left with a Church-authorized institution that lasted for 300 years, that inspired fear, that tortured and murdered, that acted under a cloak of secrecy and relied upon anonymous accusations--and it did this in the name of Jesus.

Catholic Answers urges its readers not to get hung up on numbers.

The crucial thing for Catholics, once they have obtained some appreciation of the history of the Inquisition, is to explain how such an institution could have been associated with a divinely established Church and why it is not proper to conclude, from the existence of the Inquisition, that the Catholic Church is not the Church of Christ. This is the real point at issue, and this is where any discussion should focus.

Catholic Answers goes on to say that Protestants did the same, and found inspiration in the commands of God to Israel in the Old Testament.

The fact that the Protestant Reformers also created inquisitions to root out Catholics and others who did not fall into line with the doctrines of the local Protestant sect shows that the existence of an inquisition does not prove that a movement is not of God.

But there's a major difference--Protestantism doesn't claim infallibility. And that is the issue. Is the Catholic Church a divine institution, imbued with the authority (and reliability) of Christ himself? If you think that, then you need to answer the question, "Who would Jesus torture?"