Edward O'Brien
We're all familiar with the popular idea of the Spanish Inquisition,
which for centuries has been depicted as a monstrous tyranny imposed upon
Spain by sinister Church and state officials. Bent on wiping out heresy,
the Inquisition, we were told, arbitrarily arrested innocent Spaniards
accused of heresy and browbeat them during endless and unjust
interrogations, often torturing the accused to secure meaningless
confessions. The condemned were then sent to vile prisons, there to await
death by burning at the stake. Some fundamentalists have claimed that
millions died in this fashion.
Bigoted, ignorant, and fanatical Dominican friars are shown zealously
directing this cruel and dark page of Spanish history. What Protestant or
Catholic child has not heard of the fearful, macabre horrors of the
dungeons of the Inquisition? Men of great imaginative genius such as Edgar
Poe have written of inquisitorial terrors as though they were worse than
the Gestapo's. I remember being appalled by the powerful prose of Poe's
The Pit and the Pendulum.
Historians have known for some time that the popular view of the Spanish
Inquisition is only part of the "Black Legend"—that
body of writings which, since the 16th century, has vilified both Spain
and its Catholic faith. In the 16th century, Catholic Spain was the great
continental power. Her Protestant enemies were jealous of Spain and many
resorted to lies to help bring down Spanish power and control. Spaniards
were described by Northern Europeans as dark, cruel, greedy, treacherous,
ignorant, and narrow. The Inquisition was fiercely attacked with gross
exaggeration. Thus, a combination of political rivalry, contempt for the
Catholic faith, and anti-Spanish racism created a distorted image of the
Inquisition.
Now, however, new and startling information is beginning to blow away the
dark cobwebs of lies and myths—that
racist distortion of the Spanish national character and and Hispanic
culture. On June 9th, 1995, the BBC documentary, The Myth of the
Spanish Inquisition was aired on Ancient Mysteries. TV often
trashes the Church, but not this time. Spanish scholars using computerized
searches through the actual records left by the officers of the
Inquisition are showing that the Inquisition had neither the power nor the
desire to put Spain under its control.
Historians interviewed on the program claimed that four out of five
Spaniards in the 16th century lived in the countryside, far from the
cities where the Inquisition operated. Transportation was primitive by our
standards. The inquisitors had to journey to the country to question
people about heresy. But the roads were bad in winter, while the summers
were fearfully hot. The inquisitors, citified university lawyers, were
often reluctant to make the journey. Furthermore, the Spanish countryman
was unversed in matters of sophisticated theology: He was concerned with
physical survival. Heresy was not likely to arise. And the parish priest
of a village, informed that inquisitors were finally making a visitation,
would tell his flock not to make any accusations against anyone, to say as
little as possible, and the inquisitors would go away. Such details are
not the stuff of macabre legends, but they ring true. In fact, the whole
tone of the BBC presentation was cool, crisp, factual, low-key, and
convincingly modern.
A most important point made by the Spanish scholars is that the
inquisitional courts of the Church were both more just and more lenient
than civil courts and religious courts elsewhere in Europe at the time.
Prisoners in Spanish secular courts, knowing this would sometimes
blaspheme in order to be sent to the courts of the Inquisition where
conditions were better.
Modern Spanish scholars point out that other nations have worse records
than Spain in dealing with heretics. English Catholics suffered horribly
under Protestant regimes. American historian William T. Walsh writes: "In
Britain, 30,000 went to the stake for witchcraft; in Protestant Germany,
the figure was 100,000" (Isabella of Spain, p. 275). In Scotland,
too, alleged witches were cruelly put to death. Karl Keating quotes from
the Catholic Encyclopedia: "It is well-known that belief in the
justice of punishing heresy with death was so common among the
16th-century Reformers—Luther,
Zwingli, Calvin, and their adherents—that
we may say their toleration began where their power ended" (C.E., s.v.,
"Inquisition," 8:35). Such facts are embarrassing to lovers of the Black
Legend.
Two books useful for Catholics who want to learn about the real
Inquisition of history are Characters of the Inquisition by William
T. Walsh, and Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating. Both
authors are Catholic but neither whitewashes the Spanish Inquisition.
There were abuses: instances of cruelty, persecution, and personal
vengeance. It would be strange if there were no abuses in a human
institution that lasted so long. The BBC documentary says torture was
used, but it could not last more than 15 minutes and could never be used
twice on the same person. Walsh says that for torture to be used, a doctor
had to be present, and at his command it had to be stopped. And there were
other safeguards.
In any case, no Catholic should ever whitewash the Inquisition. We must
honestly acknowledge that three Popes—Sixtus
IV, Innocent VIII, and Alexander VI—tried
to moderate the undue severity of the early Spanish Inquisition. We must
also face this question: Why should anyone ever be put in prison or put to
death for believing heresy? That is not the way of the Gospel, nor the
path of reason. Walsh pointedly says that no Catholic today wants a return
to the Inquisition. Nor do we want cover-ups of the past, for as Leo XIII
said, "The Church has no need of any man's lie."
We do serve God in truth and so we should know the full truth about the
Inquisition and refute the preposterous myths made up by enemies of the
Church.
For example, Fray Tomas de Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor whose very
name is now a symbol of ruthless cruelty, actually checked the excessive
zeal of the earlier inquisitors in many ways, including the limiting and
mitigating of torture. Walsh thinks that torture under Torquemada was no
worse than that used by American police in the 1930s. Also, under
Torquemada's entire tenure as Grand Inquisitor (1483-1498), 100,000
prisoners passed before his various tribunals throughout Spain. Of this
number, less than 2% were executed. In Barcelona, from 1488 to 1498, "one
prisoner out of 20 was put to death" (23 executions). Torquemada is not
the monster of the Black Legend; still, he was responsible for, as an
estimation, between 1,000 and 1,500 deaths. And by burning, the common
method for those times.
For those who want to be able to defend the Church on this matter, there
is much additional information. For example, Keating points out that there
were three Inquisitions: the medieval, begun in 1184, which died out as
the Catharist heresy waned; the Roman, begun in 1542, which was "the least
active and the most benign." And the Spanish, which he says had "the worst
record." The Roman tribunal tried Galileo, who was not tortured but put
under house arrest and later died in his own bed, after enjoying a papal
pension!
The Inquisition never operated in England, Scandinavia, northern Europe,
or eastern Europe. l have never heard of it being in Ireland or Scotland.
This is significant, for though the medieval Catholic Church flourished in
these areas, the Inquisition didn't exist there. Catholic medievalism is
not synonymous with courts of orthodoxy. Finally, Keating reminds us that
the Inquisition does not prove the Church to be false, but only that there
are some misguided people within her courtyards.
The relationship of the Inquisition to art is now a troubling matter,
after the new research which the BBC revealed. For example, in
Dostoyevski's famous novel The Brothers Karamazov, his imaginary
Grand Inquisitor is a sinister horror who is master of Spain and who
intends to put Christ to death after He returns to 16th-century Spain.
Dostoyevski's Grand Inquisitor is a phantom, a creature of delusion,
spawned in ignorance. How can one believe in the Russian novelist's
scenario? Can great art be built on lies? Torquemada was not master of
Spain and would not murder Christ. And what of Poe's tale of the condemned
man in The Pit and the Pendulum? Since the setting and the plot are
wildly false, what is left? But because of the power of art, these
writings will continue to haunt the imagination and work against the
truth. They will remain as literary thorns in the side of the Church. l
doubt if people will discard so handy a weapon as the Inquisition with
which to beat Catholics over the head.
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