Inquisition

The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics lasting from 1184 - 1834.

Emblem of the Inquisition

Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but that cases of repeat unrepentant heretics were handed over to the secular courts, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment.

Estimates of total executions across Inquisitions from all territories over the course of 700 years vary widely with a range from 2,000 to more than 50 million. However, there is a generally-accepted scholarly consensus of between 30,000 - 150,000. The official number of executions recognized by the Catholic Church in the modern era is 6,000.

Definition and goals

Today, the English term "Inquisition" is popularly applied to any one of the regional tribunals or later national institutions that worked against heretics or other offenders against the canon law of the Catholic Church. Although the term "Inquisition" is usually applied to ecclesiastical courts of the Catholic Church, in the Middle Ages it properly referred to a judicial process, not any organization.

The term "Inquisition" comes from the Medieval Latin word inquisitio, which described a court process based on Roman law, which came back into use during the Late Middle Ages. It was a new, less arbitrary form of trial that replaced the denunciatio and accussatio process which required a denouncer or used an adversarial process, the most unjust being trial by ordeal and the secular Germanic trial by combat.

Theoretically, the Inquisition, as a church court, had no jurisdiction over Muslims and Jews as such. Despite several exceptions, like the infamous example of the Holy Child of La Guardia, the Inquisition was concerned mainly with the heretical behavior of Catholic adherents or converts (including forced converts).

History

Galileo testifying before the Inquisition

The Inquisition had its start in 12th-century Kingdom of France, with the aim of combating religious deviation (e.g. apostasy or heresy), particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians. The inquisitorial courts from this time until the mid-15th century are together known as the Medieval Inquisition. Other groups investigated during the Medieval Inquisition, which primarily took place in France and Italy, including the Spiritual Franciscans, the Hussites, and the Beguines. Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from members of the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges.

During the Late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the scope of the Inquisition grew significantly in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. During this period, the Inquisition conducted by the Holy See was known as the Roman Inquisition. The Inquisition also expanded to other European countries, resulting in the Spanish Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions focused particularly on the anusim (people who were forced to abandon Judaism against their will) and on Muslim converts to Catholicism. The scale of the persecution of converted Muslims and converted Jews in Spain and Portugal was the result of suspicions that they had secretly reverted to their previous religions, although both religious minority groups were also more numerous on the Iberian Peninsula than in other parts of Europe.

During this time, Spain and Portugal operated inquisitorial courts not only in Europe, but also throughout their empires in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. This resulted in the Goa Inquisition, the Peruvian Inquisition, and the Mexican Inquisition, among others.

Witch-hunts

Margaret Aitken being burned alive during the Scottish Witchcraft Panic

The fierce denunciation and persecution of supposed sorceresses that characterized the cruel witch-hunts of a later age were not generally found in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era. While belief in witchcraft, and persecutions directed at or excused by it, were widespread in pre-Christian Europe, and reflected in old Germanic law, the growing influence of the Church in the early medieval era in pagan areas resulted in the revocation of these laws in many places, bringing an end to the traditional witch-hunts. Throughout the medieval era, mainstream Christian teaching had disputed the existence of witches and denied any power to witchcraft, condemning it as pagan superstition.

Black magic practitioners were generally dealt with through confession, repentance, and charitable work assigned as penance. In 1258, Pope Alexander IV ruled that inquisitors should limit their involvement to those cases in which there was some clear presumption of heretical belief, but slowly this vision changed.

The prosecution of witchcraft generally became more prominent in the late medieval and Renaissance era, perhaps driven partly by the upheavals of the era – the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and a gradual cooling of the climate that modern scientists call the Little Ice Age (between about the 15th and 19th centuries). Witches were sometimes blamed. Since the years of most intense witch-hunting largely coincide with the age of the Protestant Reformation and Counter-Reformation, some historians point to the influence of the Reformation on the European witch-hunt. However, witch-hunting began almost one hundred years before Luther's ninety-five theses.

Malleus Maleficarum

Dominican priest Heinrich Kramer was assistant to the Archbishop of Salzburg, a sensational preacher, and an appointed local inquisitor. In 1484, Kramer requested that Pope Innocent VIII clarify his authority to conduct inquisitions into witchcraft throughout Germany, where he had been refused assistance by the local ecclesiastical authorities. They maintained that Kramer could not legally function in their areas. Despite some support from Pope Innocent VIII, he was expelled from the city of Innsbruck by the local bishop, George Golzer, who ordered Kramer to stop making false accusations.

Golzer described Kramer as senile in letters written shortly after the incident. This rebuke led Kramer to write a justification of his views on witchcraft in his 1486 book Malleus Maleficarum ("Hammer against witches"). The book distinguishes itself from other demonologies by its obsessive hate of women and sex, seemingly reflecting the twisted psyche of the author. Historian Brian Levack calls it "scholastic pornography."

Despite Kramer's claim that the book gained acceptance from the clergy at the University of Cologne, it was in fact condemned by the clergy at Cologne for advocating views that violated Catholic doctrine and standard inquisitorial procedure. In 1538 the Spanish Inquisition cautioned its members not to believe everything the Malleus said. Despite this, Heinrich Kramer was never excommunicated and even enjoyed considerable prestige till his death.

End of the Inquisition

By decree of Napoleon's government in 1797, the Inquisition in Venice was abolished in 1806. In Portugal, 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. The wars of independence of the former Spanish colonies in the Americas concluded with the abolition of the Inquisition in every quarter of Hispanic America between 1813 and 1825.

The last execution of the Inquisition was in Spain in 1826. This was the execution by garroting of the Catalan school teacher Gaietà Ripoll for purportedly teaching Deism in his school. In Spain the practices of the Inquisition were finally outlawed in 1834. In Italy, the restoration of the Pope as the ruler of the Papal States in 1814 brought the Inquisition back to the Papal States. It remained active there until the late-19th century, notably in the well-publicised Mortara affair (1858–1870).

The institution has survived as part of the Roman Curia, but in 1908 it was renamed the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office. In 1965, it became the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Sentences

The overwhelming majority of guilty sentences with repentance seem to have consisted of penances like wearing a cross sewn on one's clothes or going on pilgrimage.

When a suspect was convicted of major, willful, unrepentant heresy, canon law required the inquisitorial tribunal to hand the person over to secular authorities for final sentencing. A secular magistrate, the "secular arm," would then determine the penalty based on local law. Those local laws included proscriptions against certain religious crimes, and the punishments included death by burning in regions where the secular law equated persistent heresy with sedition, although the penalty was more usually banishment or imprisonment for life, which was generally commuted after a few years. Thus the inquisitors generally knew the expected fate of anyone so remanded. The "secular arm" didn't have access to the trial record of the defendants, only declared and executed the sentences and was obliged to do so on pain of heresy and excommunication.

Current position of the Catholic Church

Reflection on the inquisitorial activity of the Catholic Church began to be seriously undertaken in the period of preparation for the Great Jubilee of 2000, on the initiative of John Paul II, who called for repentance for "examples of thought and action that are in fact a source of anti-witness and scandal." On 12 March 2000, during the celebration of the Jubilee, the Pope, on behalf of the entire Catholic Church and all Christians, apologized for these acts and in general for many others. The Pope asked for forgiveness for seven categories of sins: general sins; sins "in the service of truth"; sins against Christian unity; sins against the Jews; against respect for love, peace and cultures; sins against the dignity of women and minorities; and against human rights. Some theologians were of the opinion that this unprecedented apology would undermine the authority of the Church.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger gave an apology on behalf of his office, the successor to the Roman Inquisition: "Even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel."