Investigating and punishing heresies

“Inquisition” means investigation. The Inquisition investigated, combated and punished heresies in the church. It lasted centuries and had different characteristics at different times and in different countries, although the common denominator was always intolerance and cruelty. The Inquisition began in the Middle Ages (1184) in Languedoc in southern France. Its original aim was to combat the heresy of the Cathars (from the Greek “katharoi”, the “pure ones”), who were also called Albigensians; this was the first organized heresy to defy the Roman church in a specific region. 

In the Lateran Council (1215), which was convoked and presided over by Pope Innocent III, the main topic of discussion was the problem of the heretics who at that time did not accept the official doctrines dictated by the Pope.   The Council issued a decree against the heretics that began thus: We excommunicate and censure every sort of heresy which militates against the holy, orthodox, catholic faith that we have just expounded. We condemn all heretics, by whatever name they are known, because even though they may appear different from one another in the light of day, they are all united in their clandestine activity; pride renders them all alike. 

In 1249 the Inquisition was set up in Aragon, Spain. With the unification of Aragon and Castille, the Spanish Inquisition was established in 1478, and it would last until 1821, always under the control of the Spanish monarchy. From Spain the Inquisition spread to the Spanish colonies in America. The Portuguese Inquisition lasted almost as long as the Spanish, from 1536 to 1821. The Roman Inquisition, directed by the papacy, lasted from 1542 to 1965, well into the 20^th century.

Being a heretic meant being a traitor

After Christianity became the state religion in the 4^th century with the “conversion” of the Roman emperor Constantine, heretics (that is, anyone dissenting from the official Christian doctrine, which in that century began to be the doctrine of the Popes) were considered traitors and enemies of the state: they were “political” criminals.

In the 12^th century the Cathars (or Albigensians) called the institution of the papacy into question and disparaged its power. They said the Pope was “the Antichrist” and the church of Rome was “the whore of Babylon”, thus evoking the image of the “great whore” in the Apocalypse. Condemning the opulence and the power of the Roman papacy, the Cathars were themselves very ascetical: they ate no meat and did not marry. They refused to use arms and rejected altars, saints, and devotion to images and relics.

Pope Lucius III (1181-85) decided to use military might to do away with the Cathars. He issued the bull “Ad Abolendam”, which required bishops to extirpate the heresy and gave them power to judge and condemn all heretics in their dioceses. This papal provision was the origin of the “Holy” Inquisition and the “Holy” Office. In this first stage the Inquisition was directly dependent on the bishops. In 1231 Pope Gregory IX established the pontifical Inquisition, which answered directly to the Pope and was administered by the Dominicans. In 1252 Pope Innocent IV authorized the use of torture to obtain the confessions of those accused.

Eradicating Jews and Protestants

The Spanish Inquisition functioned for more than 300 years. It was created in 1478 by a papal bull to combat the Judaizing practices of those Spanish Jews who were forced to become Christians. In the 15^th and 16^th centuries the Inquisition fought against Lutherans and witches, and in the 17^th and 18^th centuries against Masons and censured books. In 1559 the Roman Inquisition created the Index of Prohibited Books, a list of publications and authors that it was forbidden for Catholics to read, under pain of excommunication. For the books not totally forbidden by the Inquisition, the Index specified the chapters, pages or lines that should be censured (removed or blotted out).

For the Spanish Inquisition any girl over the age of twelve and any boy over the age of fourteen could be guilty of heresy. Heretics and persons who converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution were the principal objects of the inquiries and persecutions. The first Grand Inquisitor of Spain was the Dominican priest Tomás de Torquemada, confessor of Queen Isabel “the Catholic”, who presided over numerous inquisitorial processes and was responsible for the torching of Jewish and Arab libraries. The name “Torquemada” became part of the Spanish language, as an alias for intolerant fanatics. It is calculated that during Torquemada’s term of office more than ten thousands persons were burned to death, another 27 thousand were tortured, and some 114 thousand were sentenced for their “crimes”.

 After the conquest of the Americas tribunals of the Inquisition were installed in Mexico City, Lima (Peru) and Cartagena (Colombia). The Lima tribunal had jurisdiction over Peru, Panama, Quito, Cuzco, Rio de la Plata, Tucuman, Concepcion and Santiago de Chile. The Mexico tribunal exercised jurisdiction over all of Central America. In 1573 the Lima tribunal issued its first solemn proclamation, accusing the Frenchman Mateo Salado of being a Lutheran and ordering that he be burned alive. 

One verdict, dictated by a 16^th century inquisitor against Mariana de Carvajal, resident of Mexico, reads as follows:  I sentence her to be beaten with a club until she dies a natural death, and then that she be burned in hot flames until her body is converted into ashes and there remains of her not the least memory. This woman was condemned for her Judaizing tendencies. The sin of “sodomy” was one of the most fiercely persecuted by the tribunals of the Inquisition in Latin America.

The elimination of the Inquisition was a demand of all the protagonists of the Latin American independence struggles. The last person condemned to death by the Spanish Inquisition was a school teacher accused of being a deist. He was denounced because he did not take his students to mass and did not pray the Hail Mary in his school. He was hanged in 1826 in Valencia. His case had repercussion throughout Europe and finally put an end to that perverse institution in Spain. 

The trials of the Inquisition

Whenever the inquisitors arrived in a town they would issue two edicts. The “edict of faith” obliged the inhabitants, under pain of excommunication, to denounce all heretics and their accomplices, while the “edict of grace” granted any heretics who were denounced a grace period of 15 to 30 days to confess their guilt without having their properties confiscated or being sentenced to death or to life in prison. This procedure provoked many people to inform on others, especially since they were protected by anonymity and the use of self-incrimination. The people denounced were never told of what they were being accused.   The Holy Office made use of secret indictments in its trials to avoid reprisals, but these sowed great fear among the people and could turn any citizen into an informer and a collaborator of the tribunal.

The accused persons were imprisoned and remained incommunicado. Their properties were confiscated to finance the costs of the imprisonment and the trial. The trial itself consisted in a series of hearings in which the informers and the accused could be heard. The accused persons could have “defense” lawyers, but these did not really defend them; rather, they advised them to recognize their faults and confess their guilt. In order to obtain confessions, people were starved, tortured, or kept for long periods in prison. At first the church was opposed to torture, but in 1252 Pope Innocent IV authorized it, on the condition that the prisoners not be mutilated or killed by the torture. The tortures practiced by the tribunals of the Inquisition for centuries were indescribably cruel.

Only rarely did the trials end with the accused persons found innocent; most often they were found guilty. If they were found innocent, they were still fined and reprimanded, and they had to put one a distinctive robe so that everyone would know that they had passed through the tribunal. Those found guilty were executed. If they repented of their heresy and they were poor, they were hanged. Those of higher social state had their throats cut. If they did not repent they were burned alive. The executions took place during elaborate rituals called “autos de fé”, the first of which was held in Spain in 1845. 

One case, one example, one horror

The exhaustive study of Henry Charles Lea, History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, tells of a case that occurred in Spain in the 16^th century, after the Jews living in Spanish territory began to be persecuted.

A pregnant woman named Elvira del Campo was arrested by the Inquisition on the suspicion that she was Jewish. While in prison she gave birth to a baby boy. One year later she was taken before the tribunal of the Inquisition in Toledo. Two workers who were renting rooms in her house came forth as witnesses and said that Elvira did not eat pork and that on Saturdays she put on clean underwear. For having reported this conduct which made the woman suspect of practicing Judaism, the two witnesses were rewarded with three years of indulgences for their sins.

Under interrogation Elvira stated that she was Christian, and she said her husband and her father were as well. However, she said, her mother had Jewish ancestors. Elvira told the tribunal that she had not eaten pork since she was a little girl because it made her nauseous and that her mother had taught her to change her underwear every Saturday, a habit which she had never considered religiously significant. The tribunal threatened to torture here if she did not confess to being a Jew. Since she refused to do so, she was stripped naked. Her hands were tied with cords until the bones were broken, and with her hands still tied she was then lashed onto a table with sharp edges. In the course of the torture she confessed to breaking laws, but since she could not give details about which laws she had broken, she was subjected to water torture: her nose was blocked, and liters of water were poured down her throat through a funnel. Once her stomach was swollen, they beat her on it. Many victims subjected to this kind of torture would burst open or die from drowning. But Elvira did not die. After four days the torture was suspended, and she was shut up in a cell, where she finally confessed to being a Jew and pled for clemency. The clemency consisted in her not being killed, but all her property was confiscated and she was sentenced to three years in jail. After six months she was set free – completely mad.

The Roman Inquisition

The Roman Inquisition, sometimes called the Congregation of the Holy Office, was created by Paul Paul III in 1542, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, to examine the doctrinal errors that were spreading through Europe and to inflict severe punishment on their propagators.

In 1600 the Holy Office judged, condemned and burned alive the Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno for his novel ideas. In 1633 the scientific genius Galileo Galilei was tried and condemned for stating that the earth revolved around the sun, not the reverse. The Inquisition considered this theory to be contrary to the sacred scriptures. Fearful of being tortured, Galileo, who was then 70 years old, disavowed his theory and denied it before the Roman tribunal. 

It was not until 1965 that Pope Paul VI reorganized the Holy Office and renamed it the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.

An intolerant world

For centuries religious wars and the Inquisition smothered Europe with their intolerance and brutality. The Protestants also persecuted all the persons they considered heretics. In 1553 in Geneva a Calvinist tribunal, at the instigation of Calvin himself, burned at the stake Miguel Servet, the Spanish physician, theologian, and philosopher who discovered the circulation of the blood between the heart and the lungs. Contradicting both Catholics and Protestants, Servet denied the doctrine of original sin and the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and he rejected the baptism of children. Those who keep alive the memory of this humanist martyr say that he always believed that everything that can be thought can also be spoken, discussed and done. 

In 1536, before England separated from Rome and the Anglican Church was born, the British linguist and Catholic priest William Tyndale was strangled and then burned at the stake in Belgium, with the complicity of the King of England, Henry VIII. He had been accused of heresy for translating the Bible into English, thus reducing the importance of the Vulgate version, which was the official Latin translation imposed by Rome. Tyndale’s last words were these: Lord, open the eyes of the King of England! Just three years later, as a result of the Anglican schism, his translation of the Bible became official in all of England.

The “autos de fé” were among the most important public manifestations of the Inquisition’s power of intimidation. Both those acquitted and those condemned by the inquisitorial tribunals had to participate in these ceremonies, which sought to throw a solemn aura over the accused persons’ return to the fold or over their death, as the case might be. Held in public plazas and attended by huge crowds, the autos de fé were staged in a spectacular, dramatic fashion. The church hierarchs employed every possible device to instill fear in the spectators, respect for authority, morbid curiosity, repentance, repudiation of the heretics, and contempt for them.

The condemned persons would be taken at dawn from the prison of the Inquisition to the chapel of the Holy Office, and from there a procession would go forth, led by a green cross, symbol of the Inquisition. Those who had repented of their heresies went first, carrying lighted candles, and they were followed by Dominican friars, who for centuries were the ones in charge of the tribunals of the Inquisition. Next in the entourage came the persons condemned to death, wearing on their heads a paper cone painted with infernal symbols. Following these who were going to die at the stake or on the scaffold were the so-called “relatives of the Inquisition”, who are described in some texts as “the eyes and ears” of the Holy Office. The end of the procession was brought up by mounted lancers and the representatives of the religious communities that had houses in the city.

The greatest horror: the burning of witches

It was a world with little scientific knowledge about the causes of natural disasters and sicknesses. It was a world religiously dominated by a providentialist mentality, a magical mind frame and a way of thinking that was culturally modeled on masculine values. In such a world many women were thought to be witches, especially if they were “strange”. Women, whether very ugly or very pretty, whether very wise or very sick, whether very lonely or very free, were held responsible for catastrophes and evil spells. Sometimes accusing women of being witches was a way for their enemies to get rid of them and confiscate their property.

Belief in witchcraft and in witches was an expression of the rural folk culture of pre-modern times. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII officially recognized the existence of witchcraft. In his bull “Summis desideratis affectibus” he stated: It has been reported to us that a great many people of both sexes do not refrain from fornicating with demons, incubi, and succubi, and that by means of witchcraft, spells and incantations they smother, extinguish and destroy the fertility of women, the offspring of animals and the fruits of the earth. 

Once the Inquisition was created and its tribunals were functioning, these latter joined forces with the civil tribunals to search for witches and “hunt them down”. The persecution against them was especially brutal in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France and England. The period of greatest cruelty and slaughter was from 1560 to 1660. The German Dominicans Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger, appointed by Pope Innocent VIII to pursue and persecute witches, published in 1486 a horrifying book in which they described the torture methods that should be used to obtain the witches’ confessions. This book, called Malleus Maleficarum (“Hammer of Witches”), nourished the collective hysteria against witches that flourished throughout Europe for two centuries. Although it was officially forbidden by the church, dozens of editions of the book were printed in various countries. In effect, this book led to a “considerable increase” in the number of witches, simply because many women ended up confessing due to the cruelty of the tortures to which they were submitted.

Nothing more than a mere suspicion was required to denounce a woman for being a witch and therefore for being in league with Satan. No concrete proof was needed, and the women had no opportunity to defend themselves. Confessions and accusations obtained by means of torture were considered valid. If the suspected woman did not confess after being tortured, this was interpreted as an even clearer sign that she was possessed by the devil. And what were the crimes of which the witches were accused? They included blaspheming against God, worshiping the Devil, offering the Devil one’s children before they were born, killing children to make magic potions with them, eating human flesh, profaning corpses, drinking blood, poisoning people, and having “carnal contact” with the Devil.

Using data obtained from the records of the Inquisition trials, a Wikipedia article provides some approximate calculations of how many women were executed during these witch hunts:

            > in Switzerland 4 thousand (out of a population of one million),

            > in Poland/Lithuania 10 thousand (out of 3½ million),

            > in England an undetermined number (“thousands”),

            > in Germany 25 thousand (out of 16 million),

            > and in Denmark/Norway 1,350 (out of one million). 

Some countries had fewer: Spain executed only 59 women as a result of the 125,000 trials recorded, Italy only 36, and Portugal only 4.

The last woman executed in Spain, in 1611, was the Catalonian teenager Magdalena Duer. The last woman executed in western Europe, in 1782, was the Swiss Anne Goldin. Most of the women executed as witches were from rural areas. It is estimated that one half of all who were tried were executed. Some men were also accused of witchcraft, but in much lower proportion.

The “reasons” for the burning of witches

It is obvious that behind the burning of witches lay the misogynist ideology of the church functionaries: they despised women and feared them. The book Hammer of Witches gives some of the “reasons” they put forward in their attempts to explain why women were so inclined to witchcraft.

Using biblical texts and classical Greek culture, the inquisitors held that women were accustomed to love or to hate in extreme fashion and so were impelled to commit grievous evils, making themselves accomplices of the greatest evildoer, Satan. Furthermore, women were by nature gullible, and the devil therefore “attacks them first of all”, as was demonstrated clearly in the temptation of Eve in the garden of Eden. Moreover, since women had naturally treacherous tongues, they were quite capable of justifying their acts of witchcraft with deceitful words. Finally, women were inferior to men, so that their faith was more fragile and vulnerable. For the inquisitors the Latin word “femina” – which we still use today – aptly described and characterized women, since it signifies “fides minor” [Spanish: “fe menor”], that is, they have “lesser faith”. 

Right up till today

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, successor to the Holy Office, which in turn was fruit of the Inquisition, no longer sends heretics to be burned at the stake, but it does continue to condemn Catholic theologians, women and men from all over the world, by judging their ideas to be contrary to official doctrine. Using methods that are still medieval (secret sessions, anonymous denunciations, closed-door trials where the accusers are also judges, impossibility of appeal to an independent tribunal), the Congregation prohibits these “heretics” from teaching, condemns them to periods of silence, and censures their books. Among those who have been condemned in this way are the Swiss Hans Kung, the Sri Lankan Tissa Balasuriya, and the Brazilians Leonardo Boff and Ivone Gebara. 

The fanatical intolerance manifested in the Inquisition was born of an excess of power and arrogance. In 1979 Pope John Paul II proposed to review the case of Galileo, certainly the most scandalous case prosecuted by the Roman Inquisition, but even so, the review never fully rehabilitated that great scientist. Furthermore, as late as 1990, the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, later to be Pope Benedict XVI, stated: In the epoch of Galileo the Church was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself was. The trial of Galileo was reasonable and just.

Years later, shortly before being elected Pope, Ratzinger appeared on a German television program called “Kontraste”. When the interviewers dubbed him the “Grand Inquisitor”, he answered: That title is a historical term, but yes, in a way we give it some continuity. And according to our understanding of law, we still try today to do the same as what was done with the methods used then, which were to some extent wrong.   And Ratzinger actually justified that horrendous stage of ecclesiastical history by claiming that it had helped society to recognize the right of persons to be heard before being condemned: Nevertheless, it must be said that the Inquisition constituted an advance: nobody could be judged without being investigated. That is to say, the investigation had to be carried out first.

The fires were extinguished, but the arrogance continued.