Chris Weimer

Wow! I agree!!

Reena

My Catholic friend often says that the Inquisition the Church conducted was really very mild when compared to what the secular authorities were doing. He also claims that in fact comparatively few people were killed/hurt by the Church's Inquisition.

Do any of you know much about Inquistion? Are there good sources on it? (I have heard that the Church keeps the records somewhat secret.)

I would like to know how violent it was, what they stood for, what they did, whether they really tortured people, wether they were officially supported by the Church etc.

Thomas II

Chili,
welcome home,Chili...Welcome home...


To the servants: Kill the fatten cow!! Prepare for the feast!!

Chili

Thanks and I do not mean to be obnoxious but I happen to agree with the Church-State relationship of those days in those days for those days.

The Church is like the subconscious mind behind our faculty of reason

or like a good woman behind a successful man

or a sound mythology behind a great civilization.

Destruction comes easy enough but not until after success is known.

No Robots

Absolutely right. And this is the general pattern of human folly: a loudmouth levels a charge, and a bully acts on it.

No Robots

There's another active thread on this topic.

Chili

But what if they were right?

NOGO

Actually it is not that simple.

What needs to be understood is that independently of who carried out what, the inquisition was Godly justice as perceived by the Christian church.
By Christian chirch I mean not only the clergy but all members of the church as well.

The inquisition was derived from the faith and the holy book.

It is absolutely useless to try and clear the clergy of this crime. The problem is deeper than that.

Yes, it was a tool used by the powerful to get rid of unwanted elements in society but the Church gave the moral justification and collaboration.

Chili

Of course they did because they had the insight to justify the action for the same reason that Pilate did not (and cannot) re-cognize the will of the Jews to crucify Jesus . . . which is the best thing he ever did and that makes the inquisition the second best thing they ever did.

The difference between these two forms of execution is that Pilate (the Church here) performs the divine comedies while the Inquisitor prevents Senecan tragedies so that divine comedies may abound.

No Robots

If we go down this road with regard to the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, we cannot avoid the question of antisemitism. Was it wrong for the Jews to live apart as a nation within a nation? Was it wrong for Church and government to force them to choose between conversion and exile? Was it wrong to suspect conversos of insincerity? Here is what Spinoza, a descendant of those who were targets of the Inquisition, has to say:

That they [Jews] have been preserved in great measure by Gentile hatred, experience demonstrates. When the king of Spain formerly compelled the Jews to embrace the State religion or to go into exile, a large number of Jews accepted Catholicism. Now, as these renegades were admitted to all the native privileges of Spaniards, and deemed worthy of filling all honourable offices, it came to pass that they straightway became so intermingled with the Spaniards as to leave of themselves no relic or remembrance. But exactly the opposite happened to those whom the king of Portugal compelled to become Christians, for they always, though converted, lived apart, inasmuch as they were considered unworthy of any civic honours.

Spinoza. TTP. Bk 1, chap. 3

He is saying that if the government opts for coercive measures against Jews, it should grant them full rights if they comply with those measures. He is silent on the wisdom of the measures. The overall point is that Judaism in its outer manifestations would disappear if it were not an object of hatred. It is a vicious cycle: hatred arises from separation, separation arises from hatred. I hope that we will someday see the last of this.