MortalWombat

Bede, I would appreciate it if you would take out the "Originally posted by MortalWombat" part if you are going to change what I actually said.

Dr Rick

The Inquisition Legal Theory:

"Under Roman law torture had a place, but it was severely restricted. For example, a slave could not be tortured into testifying against his master. The law of lex talionis together with the assumption of the innocence of the accused served as an efficient deterrent to an unjust accusation which might result in the use of torture. Eventually, torture was restricted only to cases involving crimes against the state (for example, plotting to assassinate the emperor). European common law also had no place whatsoever for torture. Torture was introduced into European law by the Church as a consequence of the Church's routine use of torture during the Inquisition and remained in the European law codes for hundreds of years."

Henry Charles Lea, History of the Inquisition of Middle Ages, vol 1, (first edition 1888) [New York: Harbor Press, 1955 ] p. 559-561:

"On secular jurisprudence the example of the Inquisition worked even more deplorably. It came at a time when the old order of things was giving way to the new -- when the ancient customs of the barbarians, the ordeal, the wager of law, the wer-gild, were growing obsolete in the increasing intelligence of the age, when a new system was springing into life under the revived study of the Roman law, and when the administration of justice by the local feudal lord was becoming swallowed up in the widening jurisdiction of the crown. The whole judicial system of the European monarchies was undergoing reconstruction, and the happiness of future generations depended on the character of the new institutions. That in this reorganization the worst features of the imperial jurisprudence -- the use of torture and the inquisitorial process -- should be eagerly, nay, almost exclusively, adopted, should be divested of the safeguards which in Rome restricted their abuse, should be exaggerated in all their evil tendencies, and should, for five centuries, become the prominent characteristic of the criminal jurisprudence of Europe, may safely be ascribed to the fact that they received the sanction of the Church. Thus recommended, they penetrated everywhere along with the Inquisition; while most of the nations to whom the Holy Office was unknown maintained their ancestral customs, developing into various forms of criminal practice, harsh enough, indeed, to modern eyes, but wholly divested of the more hideous atrocities which characterized the habitual investigation into crime in other regions. Of all the curses which the Inquisition brought in its train this, perhaps, was the greatest -- that, until the closing years of the eighteenth century, throughout the greater part of Europe, the inquisitorial process, as developed for the destruction of heresy, became the customary method of dealing with all who were under accusation; that the accused was treated as one having no rights, whose guilt was assumed in advance, and from whom confession was to be extorted by guile and force. Even witnesses were treated in the same fashion; and the prisoner who acknowledged guilt under torture was tortured again to obtain information about any other evil-doers of whom he perchance might have knowledge. So, also, the crime of "suspicion" was imported from the Inquisition into ordinary practice, and the accused who could not be convicted of the crime laid to his door could be punished for being suspected of it, not with the penalty legally provided for the offense, but with some other, at the fancy and discretion of the judge. It would be impossible to compute the amount of misery and wrong, inflicted on the defenseless up to the present century, which may be directly traced to the arbitrary and unrestricted methods introduced by the Inquisition and adopted by the jurists who fashioned the criminal jurisprudence of the Continent. It was a system which might well seem the invention of demons, and was fitly characterized by Sir John Fortescue as the Road to Hell."

Bede

Dr Rick,

Has it not occured to you to use up to date scholarship? You provide a figure from Llarente from 1817, a rant by McCade from the 1920s (IIRC) and now Lea from the 1880s. In contrast, my bibliography's earliest book is from 1975 with many of the books from the 1990s. While I want to remain civilised, it gets very frustrating when my work, based on modern schoalrship, is being trumped by stuff from the internet written a hundred years ago.

Can you not accept the fact that what you believed might actually be mistaken, that the latest research does not show what you believe and that the church did not lead the way in torture and executions?

I think it best if you cease to post on this thread if all you have at hand is discredited material. Rather let us deal with the history as established by modern scholarship.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Dr Rick

An interview with Eamon Duffy. Commonweal, Jan 14, 2000, by Raymond De Souza

Eamon Duffy, professor in church history at the University of Cambridge, is one of the leading contemporary historians of the church. His landmark book, The Stripping of the Altars (Yale) challenged the reigning Protestant account of the English Reformation. He also authored a highly acclaimed book on papal history, Saints and Sinners (Yale). He was invited by the Vatican last fall to participate in the symposium examining the history of the Inquisition. Raymond De Souza spoke with Duffy in his office at Magdalene College in Cambridge, England.

"...Some Christian historians have been shabby workmen and rather economical with the truth....In fact, all historians, whether they are Christians or not, have a point of view, have a set of prejudices. The important thing is to know what you have got and to use it as a tool, not as a fortress wall."

"The historian has a great contribution to make in reminding the church of what actually happened and refusing to allow anyone, particularly the hierarchy, to sanitize it. The hierarchy is always looking, not in any malevolent sense, to the past to justify its own actions. It is very important that if the church goes to the past, then it should be the real past it goes to and not some fantasy or some heritage past that has been manicured and tidied up. It was interesting that among the historians called to the Inquisition symposium there were a large number of Catholics but also atheists, Jews, Protestants, and agnostics, because the Holy See recognized that you had to go to the people who knew the history. The primary qualification of the historians there was that they should be good historians, and not that they should be believers.

Some of the most telling interventions came from people who were non- Catholics and they were often extremely friendly. Indeed, one of the non- Catholic participants said that if he had been a sixteenth-century heretic he would have much rather been tried by the Inquisition than by any secular court. But there were also those who disagreed with that."

"I think the idea of "purification of memory" can be a dangerous concept. The idea of apologizing for the past and starting with a clean sheet in the third millennium-you cannot start with a clean sheet. You carry with you what you have done. People can forgive but the dead cannot forgive. There is a danger of thinking that if you say what you have done- that is it, it is finished. I am dubious about that.

One of the Jewish historians at the Inquisition symposium made a devastating intervention when talking about the church asking forgiveness. He said, "I don't believe in forgiveness. I don't believe in God. I don't believe there is anyone to forgive us. In any case, I think when people ask for forgiveness they are very often asking to be let off. What I did not hear the pope say and what I have not heard any of you say is that the church is ashamed of what it did." He got an ovation for that. Everybody felt he had said a true thing."

"...Some of the theologians, for example, wanted us to say that the church had done terrible things and murdered people for their beliefs in the past but that was not the magisterium. But the Inquisition was an arm of the papacy, and it was the uniform teaching of the church for a thousand years that heretics should be punished physically. And the church got that wrong. That teaching-which was practical teaching, if not doctrinal teaching-is contrary to the teaching of Vatican II. The church changed its mind about this in 1965 and there is no escaping it. It really frightens the theologians to say that, because the church cannot change its mind. There is a fear that, if we say that the church changed its mind, then Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was right and the Second Vatican Council was apostasy. But that cannot be true. That is a problem for the theologians, not for the historians. The historians can all see that the church has actually changed its mind.

It is very, very awkward but you have to live with the awkwardness. I think we have to be able and willing to say with integrity that the church was wrong. I think that historical work has serious implications for theology. People will think less of a theology that does not confront history truthfully. If our account of the magisterium is such that it cannot take account of facts that everybody can see, then it is the theology that must change, not the history. We must not put ourselves in the theological position of saying, "It is better not to believe the historians." If your theology cannot face the truth, then it's not itself telling the truth. It just means that we've got it wrong and have to go back and rethink. I don't want to hammer that point, but this is an area where theologians are clearly having a problem at the moment with facing up to a changed perception of history."

Christian -- Make That "Catholic" -- Revisionism

Along with the possibility of "sanitizing" records and omitting material which Church authorities may still wish to conceal, there is evidence that a campaign of "Catholic revisionism" may be getting underway to blunt the brutal truth of the three hundred-plus years of religious fanaticism and excess. A professor of church history, for instance, has described the Inquisition grilling sessions as "actually a very progressive tribunal (which) dispensed a very high level of law in 16th century." terms." That disingenuous claim confuses the formality of Inquisitorial procedures and courts with the fact that papal Inquisitors had near-total power over the fate of the accused. Suspects or witnesses who were thought to be lying, for instance, could be imprisoned. An ecclesiastical reign of terror which had begun with Pope Gregory IX in 1231 led to progressively more brutal abusers, and in 1252, Pope Innocent IV sanctioned the use of torture in order to extract confessions.

Other claims, such as the figure that less than 2% of the Inquisition's known subjects were executed -- a figure reported in the Times coverage -- should be considered highly suspect, or considered in context. Low figures and elaborate procedures typified the Medieval inquisition, but not its counterpart in Spain. There, the Inquisition was established by papal fiat in 1478 at the request of the monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. Its primary target at first was the Marranos, Jews who had converted to Christianity, but later Muslims and Protestants fell under Inquisitorial scrutiny. Excesses from these persecutions sometimes drew condemnation from the papacy, but the Vatican refused to take any tangible steps to intervene.

Later, the Inquisition evolved into yet another form. In 1542, the Roman Congregation of the Inquisition (also known as the Holy Office) was established to combat the Protestant Reformation; victims suffered torture, garroting or incineration at the stake until 1727. The leader of this Inquisitorial office, Cardinal Gian Pietro Carafa -- ironically identified in some texts as a "reformer" -- rose to the papacy and became Pope Paul IV in 1555, and began the Index Prohibitorum or Index of Forbidden Books. That branch managed to survive until 1966, and decreed which books were to be burned for their heretical content. Catholics found to be in possession of those tomes were often excommunicated unless they possessed a special church exemption, presumably for research and study purposes."

Calzaer

You know, Bede, every time you say something has been "discredited", you always back down before providing references for said assertion. Will this be another instance of the same pattern?

Bede

Calzaer, my FAQ is based on up to date scholarship and contradicts McCabe. Therefore McCabe is wrong. Anyone who reads him can see he is writing polemic, not history. I have frequently pointed out his errors on this board and can't be bothered to do so again.

Dr Rick, I agree with everything Duffy says. He is a great scholar and I'm looking forward to his lectures next year. Where, if anywhere, do you think he contradicts me? Your other quote is from American Athesits so hardly objective. It has to claim it hasn't examined are dodgy to escape an inconvenient figure of 2%. The rest is innuendo about sanitising and concealing without a shread of evidence. Even then it largely agrees with my FAQ on historical matters except I use less emotive language and have lots of references.

Will you now admit you were wrong about common law, wrong about inquisition meaning trial by ordeal and wrong to say the church led the way in torture?

B

Dr Rick

Here's what I really posted:
"Torture was introduced into European law by the Church during the Inquisitions and remained in the European law codes for hundreds of years. European common law never justified torture...

'Trial by ordeal' was actively practiced through-out the 13th and 14th centuries even though the Latern council "officially" banned it in 1215...

In stark contrast to Roman and modern European justice, the Inquisitional 'trial by ordeal' was predicated upon the belief that the innocent would be divinely protected from the pain and harm of torture. Unlike the Inquisitions, Roman law severely restricted torture."

Demon-Haunted World Ann Druyan, Carl Sagan, Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (February 25, 1997):

"In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning people to
death until the end of the eighteenth century, and
inquisitional torture was not abolished in the Catholic
Church until 1816. The last bastion of support for
the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punish-
ment has been the Christian churches."

The Dark Side of Christian History, Helen Ellerbe, Morningstar Books; (July 1995):

"There has been no more organized effort by a religion to
control people and contain their spirituality than the
Christian Inquisition. ... Pope Innocent III declared
"that anyone who attempted to construe a personal
view of God which conflicted with Church dogma
must be burned without pity." ...

The Church turned to its own canon law to authenticate
an agency which could enforce adherence to Church
authority. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX established the
Inquisition as a separate tribunal, independent of bishops
and prelates. Its administrators, the inquisitors, were to
be answerable only to the Pope. ...

The names of accusing witnesses were kept secret. One's
only recourse was an appeal to the Pope in Rome which
was so futile as to be farcical. The friar Bernard Deliceux
declared: "...that if St. Peter and St. Paul were accused of
'adoring' heretics and were prosecuted after the fashion
of the Inquisition, there would be no defense for them." ...

By far the cruelest aspect of the inquisitional system was
the means by which confessions were wrought: the torture
chamber. Torture remained a legal option for the Church
from 1252 when it was sanctioned by Pope Innocent IV
until 1917 when the new Codex Juris Canonici was put
into effect. ...

Thus, with license granted by the Pope himself, inquisitors
were free to explore the depths of horror and cruelty.
Dressed as black-robed fiends with black cowls over
their heads, inquisitors extracted confessions from nearly
anyone. The Inquisition invented every conceivable device
to inflict pain by slowly dismembering and dislocating the
body. Many of these devices were inscribed with the motto
"Glory be only to God."

The rack, the hoist and water tortures were the most common.
Victims were rubbed with lard or grease and slowly roasted
alive. Ovens built to kill people, made infamous in twentieth
century Nazi Germany, were first used by the Christian
Inquisition in Eastern Europe. Victims were thrown into a
pit full of snakes and buried alive.

One particularly gruesome torture involved turning a large
dish full of mice upside down on the victim's naked stomach.
A fire was then lit on top of the dish causing the mice to panic
and burrow into the stomach. Should a victim withstand such
pain without confessing, he or she would be burned alive at
the stake, often in mass public burnings called auto-da-fe. ...

The Inquisition often targeted members of other religions
as severely as it did heretics. The Inquisition now lent its
authority to the long-standing Christian persecution of Jews.
Particularly during the Christian Holy Week of the Passion,
Christians frequently rioted against Jews or refused to sell
them food in hopes of starving them.

At the beginning of the 13th century, Pope Innocent III
required Jews to wear distinctive clothing. In 1391 Arch-
deacon of Seville launched a "Holy War against the Jews.

The Inquisitors who wrote the Malleus Maleficarum, "The
Hammer of the Witches," explained that women are more
likely to become witches than men: 'Because the female
sex is more concerned with things of the flesh than men;'
because being formed from a man's rib, they are 'only
imperfect animals' and 'crooked' whereas man belongs
to a privileged sex from whose midst Christ emerged.


The witch hunts also demonstrated great fear of female
sexuality. The book that served as the manual for under-
standing and persecuting witchcraft, the Malleus Male-
ficarum, describes how witches were known to "collect
male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or
thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest..."


Pope John XXII formalized the persecution of witchcraft
in 1320 when he authorized the Inquisition to prosecute
sorcery. Thereafter papal bulls and declarations grew
increasingly vehement in their condemnation of witchcraft
and of all those who "made a pact with hell."

In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII issued the bull Summis desid-
erantes authorizing two inquisitors, Kramer and Springer,
to systemize the persecution of witches. Two years later
their manual, Malleus Maleficarum, was published with 14
editions following between 1487-1520 and at least 16
editions between 1574-1669.

A papal bull in 1488 called upon the nations of Europe to
rescue the Church of Christ which was "imperiled by the
arts of Satan."

The papacy and the Inquisition had successfully trans-
formed the witch from a phenomenon whose existence
the Church had previously rigorously denied into a phen-
omenon that was deemed very real, very frightening, the
antithesis of Christianity, and absolutely deserving of
persecution.

It was now heresy not to believe in the existence of
witches.

As the authors of the Malleus Maleficarum noted, "A
belief that there are such things as witches is so essential
a part of Catholic faith that obstinately to maintain the
opposite opinion savors heresy." Passages in the Bible
such as "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" were cited
to justify the persecution of witches. ...

The process of formally persecuting witches followed
the harshest inquisitional procedure. Once accused of
witchcraft, it was virtually impossible to escape convic-
tion. After cross-examination, the victim's body was
examined for the witch's mark. The historian Walter
Nigg described the process:

"...she was stripped naked and the executioner shaved
off all her body hair in order to see in the hidden places
of the body the sign which the devil imprinted on his
cohorts.

Warts, freckles, and birthmarks were considered certain
tokens of amorous relations with Satan. Should a woman
show no sign of a witch's mark, guilt could still be esta-
blished by methods such as sticking needles in the
accused's eyes. In such a case, guilt was confirmed if
the inquisitor could find an insensitive spot during the
process."

Unless the witch died during the torture, she was taken
to the stake. Since many of the burnings took place in
public squares, inquisitors prevented the victims from
talking to the crowds by using wooden gags or cutting
their tongue out."

Bede

Dr Rick,

You just don't get it, do you? You can post all the anti-Christian tosh you like. You can find as many 19th century books on the net as you like. You can even quote Carl Sagan who famously invented the story that Hypatia was burnt with the Great Library of Alexandria.

None of this helps you. You are up against sober, modern and accurate scholarship. You don't even bother answer questions but just copy and paste more useless stuff. Finally, you selectively quote yourself to evade your mistakes. You said "In stark contrast to Roman and modern European justice, the Inquisitional "trial by ordeal" was predicated upon the belief that the innocent would be divinely protected from the pain and harm of torture. Unlike the Inquisitions, Roman law severely restricted torture." Do you now admit that every word of this is wrong?

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Dr Rick

I have a great deal of respect for Gurdur's posts, too...

brighid

For those interested in reading the Papal Bull and the Malleus Maleficarum check out : http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/

Brighid