Inquisition

The Inquisition, Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis (inquiry on heretical perversity), was the "fight against heretics" by several institutions within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. It started in the 12th century, with the introduction of torture in the persecution of heresy.[1] Inquisition practices were used also on offences against canon law other than heresy.

Contents

Definition

The term "Inquisition" can apply to any one of several institutions which fought against heretics (or other offenders against canon law) within the justice-system of the Roman Catholic Church. The term "Inquisition" is usually applied to that of the Catholic Church. It may also refer to:[2]

Generally, the Inquisition movement was concerned only with the heretical behaviour of Catholic adherents or converts, and did not concern itself with those outside its jurisdiction, such as Jews or Muslims.[3]

Inquisition tribunals and institutions

Before the 12th century, the Catholic Church already suppressed heresy, usually through a system of ecclesiastical proscription or imprisonment, but without using torture[1] and seldom resorting to executions.[4][5] Such punishments had a number of ecclesiastical opponents, although some countries punished heresy with the death penalty.[6][7]

In the 12th century, to counter the spread of Catharism, prosecution of heretics by secular governments became more frequent. The Church charged councils composed of bishops and archbishops with establishing inquisitions (see Episcopal Inquisition). The first Inquisition was established in Languedoc (south of France) in 1184.

In the 13th century, Pope Gregory IX (reigned 1227–1241) assigned the duty of carrying out inquisitions to the Dominican Order. They used inquisitorial procedures, a legal practice common at that time. They judged heresy alone, using the local authorities to establish a tribunal and to prosecute heretics. After the end of the twelfth century, a Grand Inquisitor headed each Inquisition. Grand Inquisitions persisted until the 19th century.[8]

By the start of the 16th century the Catholic Church had reached an apparently dominant position as the established religious authority in western and central Europe dominating a faith-landscape in which Judaism, Waldensianism, Hussitism, Lollardry and the finally conquered Muslims al-Andalus (the Muslim-dominated Spain) hardly figured in terms of numbers or of influence. When the institutions of the church felt themselves threatened by what they perceived as the heresy, and then schism of the Protestant Reformation, they reacted. Paul III (Pope from 1534 to 1549) established a system of tribunals, administered by the "Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition", and staffed by cardinals and other Church officials. This system would later become known as the Roman Inquisition. In 1908 Pope Saint Pius X renamed the organisation: it became the "Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office". This in its turn became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith[9] in 1965, which name continues to this day.

Functional role

In practice, the Inquisition would not itself pronounce sentence, but handed over convicted heretics to secular authorities.[10] The laws were inclusive of proscriptions against certain religious crimes (heresy, etc.), and the punishments included death by burning. Thus the inquisitors generally knew what would be the fate of anyone so remanded, and cannot be considered to have divorced the means of determining guilt from its effects.[11]

Purpose

The 1578 handbook for inquisitors spelled out the purpose of inquisitorial penalties: ... quoniam punitio non refertur primo & per se in correctionem & bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, & a malis committendis avocentur. Translation from the Latin: ... for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit."[12]

Inquisition movements

Historians distinguish four different manifestations of the Inquisition:

  1. the Medieval Inquisition (1231–16th century)
  2. the Spanish Inquisition (1478–1834)
  3. the Portuguese Inquisition (1536–1821)
  4. the Roman Inquisition (1542 – c. 1860)

Because of its objective — combating heresy — the Inquisition had jurisdiction only over baptised members of the Church (which, however, encompassed the vast majority of the population in Catholic countries). Secular courts could still try non-Christians for blasphemy; most witch trials went through secular courts.

Different areas faced different situations with regard to heresies and suspicion of heresies. Most of Medieval Western and Central Europe had a long-standing veneer of Catholic standardisation over traditional non-Christian practices, with intermittent localized occurrences of different ideas (such as Catharism or Platonism) and periodic anti-Semitic/anti-Judaic activity. Exceptionally, Portugal and Spain in the late Middle Ages consisted largely of multicultural territories fairly recently re-conquered from the Islamic states of Al-Andalus control, and the new Christian authorities could not assume that all their subjects would suddenly become and remain orthodox Catholics. So the Inquisition in Iberia, in the lands of the Reconquista counties and kingdoms like Portugal, Leon, Castile and Aragon, had a special socio-political basis as well as more conventional religious motives. With the Protestant Reformation, Catholic authorities became much more ready to suspect heresy in any new ideas,[13] including those of Renaissance humanism,[14] previously strongly supported by many at the top of the Church hierarchy. The extirpation of heretics became a much broader and more complex enterprise, complicated by the politics of territorial Protestant powers, especially in northern Europe. The Catholic Church could no longer exercise direct influence in the politics and justice-systems of lands which officially adopted Protestantism. Thus war (the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Years War), massacre (the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre) and the educational[15] and propaganda work[16] of the Counter-Reformation came to play larger roles in these circumstances, and the judicial approach to heresy represented by the Inquisition became less important overall. Inquisition tribunals only functioned in Catholic territories, but secular law in both Catholic and Protestant countries could address the criminal offences of heresy and witchcraft.

Medieval Inquisition

Main article: Medieval Inquisition

Historians use the term "Medieval Inquisition" to describe the various inquisitions that started around 1184, including the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230s) and later the Papal Inquisition (1230s). These inquisitions responded to large popular movements throughout Europe considered apostate or heretical to Christianity, in particular the Cathars in southern France and the Waldensians in both southern France and northern Italy. Other Inquisitions followed after these first inquisition movements. Legal basis for some inquisitorial activity came from Pope Innocent IV's papal bull Ad extirpanda of 1252, which authorized and regulated the use of torture in investigating heresy.

Spanish Inquisition

Main article: Spanish Inquisition

King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. In contrast to the previous inquisitions, it operated completely under royal authority, though staffed by secular clergy and orders, and independently of the Holy See. It operated in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Spanish Netherlands, the Kingdom of Naples, and all Spanish possessions in North, Central, and South America. It targeted primarily converts from Islam (Moriscos or secret Moors) and converts from Judaism (Conversos and Marranos) — both groups still resided in Spain after the end of the Islamic control of Spain — who came under suspicion of either continuing to adhere to their old religion or of having fallen back into it. Somewhat later the Spanish Inquisition took an interest in Protestants of virtually any sect, notably in the Spanish Netherlands. In the Spanish possessions of the Kingdom of Sicily and the Kingdom of Naples in southern Italy, which formed part of the Spanish Crown's hereditary possessions, it also targeted Greek Orthodox Christians. The Spanish Inquisition, tied to the authority of the Spanish Crown, also examined political cases.

In the Americas, King Philip II set up two tribunals (each formally titled Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición) in 1569, one in Mexico and the other in Peru. The Mexican office administered Mexico (central and southeastern Mexico), Nueva Galicia (northern and western Mexico), the Audiencias of Guatemala (Guatemala, Chiapas, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica), and the Spanish East Indies. The Peruvian Inquisition, based in Lima, administered all the Spanish territories in South America and Panama. From 1610 a new Inquisition seat established in Cartagena (Colombia) administered much of the Spanish Caribbean in addition to Panama and northern South America.

The Inquisition continued to function in North America until the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821). In South America Simón Bolívar and Jose de San Martin abolished the Inquisition; in Spain itself the institution survived until 1834.

Portuguese Inquisition

Main article: Portuguese Inquisition

The Portuguese Inquisition formally started in Portugal in 1536 at the request of the King of Portugal, João III. Manuel I had asked Pope Leo X for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515, but only after his death (1521) did Pope Paul III acquiesce. The Portuguese Inquisition principally targeted the Sephardic Jews, whom the state forced to convert to Christianity. Spain had expelled its Sephardic population in 1492 (see Alhambra decree); after 1492 many of these Spanish Jews left Spain for Portugal, but eventually were targeted there as well. The Portuguese Inquisition came under the authority of the King. At its head stood a Grande Inquisidor, or General Inquisitor, named by the Pope but selected by the Crown, and always from within the royal family. The Grande Inquisidor would later nominate other inquisitors. In Portugal, Cardinal Henry served as the first Grand Inquisitor: he would later become King Henry of Portugal. Courts of the Inquisition operated in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, and Évora.

The Portuguese Inquisition held its first auto-da-fé in 1540. It concentrated its efforts on rooting out converts from other faiths (overwhelmingly Judaism) who did not adhere to the observances of Catholic orthodoxy; the Portuguese inquisitors mostly targeted the Jewish "New Christians" (i.e. conversos or marranos). The Portuguese Inquisition expanded its scope of operations from Portugal to Portugal's colonial possessions, including Brazil, Cape Verde, and Goa, where it continued as a religious court, investigating and trying cases of breaches of the tenets of orthodox Roman Catholicism until 1821. King João III (reigned 1521–57) extended the activity of the courts to cover censorship, divination, witchcraft and bigamy. Originally oriented for a religious action, the Inquisition had an influence in almost every aspect of Portuguese society: politically, culturally and socially. The Goa Inquisition, an inquisition largely aimed at Catholic converts from Hinduism or Islam who were thought to have returned to their original ways, started in Goa in 1560. In addition, the Inquisition prosecuted non-converts who broke prohibitions against the observance of Hindu or Muslim rites or interfered with Portuguese attempts to convert non-Christians to Catholicism.[3] Aleixo Dias Falcão and Francisco Marques set it up in the palace of the Sabaio Adil Khan.

According to Henry Charles Lea[18] between 1540 and 1794 tribunals in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Évora resulted in the burning of 1,175 persons, the burning of another 633 in effigy, and the penancing of 29,590. But documentation of fifteen out of 689[19] In the wake of the Liberal Revolution of 1820, the "General Extraordinary and Constituent Courts of the Portuguese Nation" abolished the Portuguese inquisition in 1821.

Roman Inquisition

Main article: Roman Inquisition

In 1542 Pope Paul III established the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition as a permanent congregation staffed with cardinals and other officials. It had the tasks of maintaining and defending the integrity of the faith and of examining and proscribing errors and false doctrines;[20] it thus became the supervisory body of local Inquisitions. Arguably the most famous case tried by the Roman Inquisition involved Galileo Galilei in 1633.

The penances and sentences for those who confessed or were found guilty were pronounced together in a public ceremony at the end of all the processes. This was the sermo generalis or auto-da-fé.[21] Penances might consist of a pilgrimage, a public scourging, a fine, or the wearing of a cross. The wearing of two tongues of red or other brightly colored cloth, sewn onto an outer garment in an x pattern, marked those who were under investigation. The penalties in serious cases were confiscation of property or imprisonment. The most severe penalty the inquisitors could themselves impose was life imprisonment.

Following the French invasion of 1798, the new authorities sent 3,000 chests containing over 100,000 Inquisition documents to France from Rome. After the restoration of the Pope as the ruler of the Papal States after 1814, Roman Inquisition activity continued until the mid-19th century, notably in the well-publicised Mortara Affair (1858–1870). In 1908 the name of the Congregation became "The Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office", which in 1965 further changed to "Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith", as retained to the present day. The Pope appoints a cardinal to preside over the Congregation, which usually includes ten other cardinals, as well as a prelate and two assistants, all chosen from the Dominican Order. The "Holy Office" also has an international group of consultants, experienced scholars in theology and canon law, who advise it on specific questions.

The reputation(s) of the Inquisition(s)

With the sharpening of debate and of conflict between the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, Protestant societies came to see/use the Inquisition as a terrifying "Other" trope,[22] while staunch Catholics regarded the Holy Office as a necessary bulwark against the spread of reprehensible heresies. Some of the fictional works mentioned below reflect the popular reputation of the Inquisition as much as its historicity.

Derivative works

The Inquisitions appear in many cultural works. Some include:

See also

Documents and works

Notable inquisitors

Notable cases involving the Inquisition

References

  1. ^ a b Lea, Henry Charles (1888). "Chapter VII. The Inquisition Founded". A History of the Inquisition In The Middle Ages. 1. ISBN 1152296213. http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/mm/inquisition/Chapter7.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-26. "The judicial use of torture was as yet happily unknown [...]" 
  2. ^ Medieval Sourcebook: Inquisition - Introduction
  3. ^ a b Salomon, H. P. and Sassoon, I. S. D., in Saraiva, Antonio Jose. The Marrano Factory. The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians, 1536-1765 (Brill, 2001), Introduction pp. XXX.
  4. ^ Foxe's Book of Martyrs Chapter V
  5. ^ Blötzer, J. (1910). "Inquisition". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-26. "... in this period the more influential ecclesiastical authorities declared that the death penalty was contrary to the spirit of the Gospel, and themselves opposed its execution. For centuries this was the ecclesiastical attitude both in theory and in practice. Thus, in keeping with the civil law, some Manichæans were executed at Ravenna in 556. On the other hand. Elipandus of Toledo and Felix of Urgel, the chiefs of Adoptionism and Predestinationism, were condemned by councils, but were otherwise left unmolested. We may note, however, that the monk Gothescalch, after the condemnation of his false doctrine that Christ had not died for all mankind, was by the Synods of Mainz in 848 and Quiercy in 849 sentenced to flogging and imprisonment, punishments then common in monasteries for various infractions of the rule" 
  6. ^ Blötzer, J. (1910). "Inquisition". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-26. "[...] the occasional executions of heretics during this period must be ascribed partly to the arbitrary action of individual rulers, partly to the fanatic outbreaks of the overzealous populace, and in no wise to ecclesiastical law or the ecclesiastical authorities." 
  7. ^ Lea, Henry Charles. "Chapter VII. The Inquisition Founded". A History of the Inquisition In The Middle Ages. 1. ISBN 1152296213. http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/mm/inquisition/Chapter7.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-14. 
  8. ^ [1]
  9. ^ Profile
  10. ^ Lea, Henry Charles. "Chapter VII. The Inquisition Founded". A History of the Inquisition In The Middle Ages. 1. ISBN 1152296213. http://bulfinch.englishatheist.org/mm/inquisition/Chapter7.htm. Retrieved 2009-10-07. "Obstinate heretics, refusing to abjure and return to the Church with due penance, and those who after abjuration relapsed, were to be abandoned to the secular arm for fitting punishment." 
  11. ^ Kirsch, Jonathan. The Grand Inquisitors Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God. HarperOne. ISBN 0060816996. 
  12. ^ Directorium Inquisitorum, edition of 1578, Book 3, pg. 137, column 1. Online in the Cornell University Collection; retrieved 2008-05-16.
  13. ^ Stokes, Adrian Durham (2002) [1955]. Michelangelo: a study in the nature of art. Routledge classics (2 ed.). Routledge. p. 39. ISBN 9780415267656. http://books.google.com/?id=_E7epqLi2CwC. Retrieved 2009-11-26. "Ludovico is so immediately settled in heaven by the poet that some commentators have divined that Michelangel is voicing heresy, that is to say, the denial of purgatory." 
  14. ^ Erasmus, the arch-Humanist of the Renaissance, came under suspicion of heresy, see Olney, Warren (2009). Desiderius Erasmus; Paper Read Before the Berkeley Club, March 18, 1920.. BiblioBazaar. p. 15. ISBN 9781113405036. http://books.google.com/?id=EdsdOSs6VRgC. Retrieved 2009-11-26. "Thomas More, in an elaborate defense of his friend, written to a cleric who accused Erasmus of heresy, seems to admit that Erasmus was probably the author of Julius." 
  15. ^ Vidmar, John C. (2005). The Catholic Church Through the Ages. New York: Paulist Press. p. 241. ISBN 9780809142347. 
  16. ^ Soergel, Philip M. (1993). Wondrous in His Saints: Counter Reformation Propaganda in Bavaria. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 239. ISBN 0520080475. 
  17. ^ Page of the painting at Prado Museum.
  18. ^ Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, vol. 3, Book 8
  19. ^ Saraiva, António José; Salomon, Herman Prins; Sassoon, I. S. D (2001) [First published in Portuguese in 1969]. The Marrano Factory: the Portuguese Inquistion and its New Christians 1536-1765. Brill. p. 102. ISBN 9789004120808. http://books.google.com/?id=eG8xUFivagkC. Retrieved 2010-04-13. 
  20. ^ The Galileo Project | Christianity|The Inquisition
  21. ^ Catholic Encyclopedia
  22. ^ Compare Haydon, Colin (1993). Anti-Catholicism in eighteenth-century England, c. 1714-80: a political and social study. Studies in imperialism. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p. 6. ISBN 0719028590. http://books.google.com/?id=GR68AAAAIAAJ. Retrieved 2010-02-28. "The popular fear of Popery focused on the persecution of heretics by the Catholics. It was generally assumed that, whenever it was in their power, Papists would extirpate heresy by force, seeing it as a religious duty. History seemed to show this all too clearly. [...] The Inquisition had suppressed, and continued to check, religious dissent in Spain. Papists, and most of all, the Pope, delighted in the slaughter of heretics. 'I most firmly believed when I was as boy', William Cobbett [born 1763], coming originally from rural Surrey, recalled, 'that the Pope was a prodigious woman, dressed in a dreadful robe, which had been made red by being dipped in the blood of Protestants'." 

Bibliography

Online works

External links

Jesus and the Apostolic Age
Ante-Nicene Period
Christian Empire
Eastern Christianity
Middle Ages
Protestant
Reformation
Catholicism
Modern Christianity
and Revivalism
Industrial Age
Age of Ideologies