The Spanish Inquisition

[Ben]

This is one of the best things I've read on the Inquisition.

The following essay is taken the works of Jean Dumont, a professor of history at the Sorbonne in Paris. It is one of several essays in his book L'Eglise au Risque de l'Histoire - the Church at Risk from History. It is, in my opinion, the best work on this complex subject available. The translation for which I am responsible was approved by the author. I have tried without success to get it published in this country. Because of its importance, I have taken the liberty of placing it on my web page. -- Rama Commaraswamy


THE SPANISH INQUISITION


The Spanish Inquisition is a subject of passionate polemic born of national, confessional, and then ideological confrontation. History - the only trustworthy witness - has not been given the freedom to speak. So much is this the case that a response to this true witness is and has always been forbidden.[1]The basis of Father Lallemand's contention has been forgotten However, as modern day specialists have shown, there is no doubt but that in a number of spheres (in dealing with sorcerers, blasphemers, writers, etc.) the Spanish Inquisition showed itself much more moderate and understanding than the civil justices (parliaments, provosts, bailiffs) which usurped the powers of the Inquisition in other countries. 


TREMENDOUS SHAME AND INDIGNATION


Misinformed by the anti-inquisitorial attitudes promulgated successively and in a cumulative manner by the Protestants, the "philosophers," the revolutionaries, the  anticlericals and the liberals, Catholics themselves feel an insuperable shame and indignation whenever they hear the words "Spanish inquisition" mentioned. This is particularly true of French Catholics who have been subjected to additional anti-Spanish polemic, carried on since the sixteenth century by "politicized" Catholics allied with Protestant Huguenots against the League, and then by the pamphleteers who engaged Cardinal Richelieu in his struggle against the Spanish hegemony.[2] All this is further reinforced, even in our own times, by the official "secular" education.

This "black legend," as Pierre Chaunu has justly brought out, was only "a cynical tool of psychological warfare" up to the time of the Renaissance and the classical period. Yet it is the foundation on which all the usual presentations of the Spanish Inquisition are based.[3]


AN INAPPROPRIATE AND SHOCKING APOLOGETIC


What is worse is the inappropriate and totally unacceptable effort of Catholics, who in their desire to exculpate the Church, place the principal responsibility for this [seeming] abomination on the Spanish throne. Thus for example, at the start of the 19th Century, Joseph de Maistre in his Letters to a Russian gentleman on the Spanish Inquisition claimed that "everything attributed to this tribunal that was harsh or odious, especially the death penalty, should be charged against the government...While on the other hand, clemency was a characteristic of the Church."

The affirmation is both inexact and offensive. The Spanish Inquisition was clearly, as we shall see, both in its actions and its methods, much more an ecclesiastical than a governmental institution. The faithful should not seek to win the respect of anyone by passing the blame onto others.

How is it that Catholics do not see that imputing what they consider to be the evils of the Inquisition exclusively to the Spanish monarchs is an indefensible naivete; a naivete which leads their adversaries to laugh at them, for quite the opposite is the case. The Spanish monarchs only established the Inquisition by implementing the Papal Bull Exigit sincerae devotioinis of 1478. And in 1496, after sixteen years of intense inquisitorial activity, independent since 1494 from all possibility of appealing to Rome, these Monarchs, namely Isabelle and Ferdinand, by the Papal Bull Si convenit promulgated in the consistory of December 2, 1496. were given the official and unprecedented title of "Catholic Kings" which has always been retained by them.[4] And this was after Pope Sixtus IV in 1482 for Castile (Bull Apostolicae Sedis), and in 1483 for Aragon (brief Supplicari Nobis completed in 1486) had personally named the famous Tomas de Torquemada as Inquisitor and then as Inquisitor-general.[5]

Read more: http://www.the-pope.com/spaninqc.html

[Bonaventure]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMkjvCKTK3Q[/yt]

[EcceQuamBonum]

Well, I didn't expect that.

[Kaesekopf]

Well, I didn't expect that.

They never do!

[poche]

Here is more on the Spanish Inquisition from the Catholic League.

http://www.catholicleague.org/the-black-legend-the-inquisition/

[tmw89]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMkjvCKTK3Q[/yt]

Good video series - wonder if there's been a follow-up since the processing of all the documentation mentioned early on (I imagine they've finished sorting through it by now.)

[Bonaventure]

I haven't heard of one, but even my secular, non-believing colleagues and profs. reject notions of the Dark Ages and the Black Legend.

The truth always wins out.

[Ben]

I haven't heard of one, but even my secular, non-believing colleagues and profs. reject notions of the Dark Ages and the Black Legend.

The truth always wins out.

Shame it takes 400 years though.