How to execute an entire country

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

450 years ago, on February 16, 1568, the Spanish Inquisition sentenced an entire country to death - it was the Netherlands. A cruel but senseless decision was included in the list of historical curiosities: how did they imagine it ?! However, it would be wrong to consider the Inquisition a kingdom of absurd arbitrariness based on a desire to quickly send everyone to the stake.

This is nothing more than a myth. For example, few people know that the modern witness protection procedure originates from the practice of inquisitors. The main thing is not to blame or justify. The main thing is to try to understand what the Inquisition tribunal really was

In none of the archival documents, from the archives of the Inquisition, letters to Galileo Galilei and ending with other contemporary written sources, did the great scientist utter his most famous aphorism "But it still turns! …". For the first time this "catch phrase" appeared in the notoriously inaccurate "Literary Sources" of Abbot Irelli, who, it seems, invented it himself.

Protestant theologians have given a dark meaning to the words "inquisition" and "inquisitor", which in European languages have become synonymous with torment, torture and sophisticated sadists. The fathers of the Catholic Church did much the same earlier, securing the reputation of the Vandal tribe as destroyers of cultural values. Vandals have long disappeared from the face of the earth, the time of the Inquisition has passed, and the words-labels stuck to our language, interfering with the objective perception of historical phenomena.

Inquisition comes from the Latin word inquisitio, which means "search" or "investigation". Initially, it was a temporary institution, a kind of a commission convened on specific occasions - most often to fight the uprisings of heretics. However, nothing is more permanent than temporary. Since the 13th century, the Inquisition has become a permanent tribunal with significant powers. The Inquisition was founded in 1231 by the bull Excommunicamus ("We Excommunicate"), which Pope Gregory IX released against heretics. The last - the Spanish Inquisition - was canceled in 1834.

We find the origins of the creation of the religious police in ancient Palestine. Jewish law, following the precepts of Deuteronomy, prescribed the death penalty for heresy and blasphemy. The Essenes in this case turned out to be great liberals. They only expelled the culprit from their community. Emperor Constantine the Great and Theodosius the First, obsessed with the idea of Caesaropapism, equated heresy with such a crime as treason. The first in the list of executed heretics is the Spanish bishop Priscillian. He was beheaded in 386. Heretics were executed during the 11th-12th centuries.

Published in 1992, the French encyclopedia Les controverses du christianisme (Russian translation: Tristan Annagnel, "Christianity: dogmas and heresies") informs about the modern view of this issue: "Protestants opposed the Inquisition, but in the bosom of Catholicism, it almost did not provoke protests."

The historian Jean Sevilla, quoted by the writer and translator Sergei Nechaev in his biography of Torquemada, reports that “the fight against heretics was officially delegated to those who had experience in this: the mendicant orders. Mainly the Dominicans and Franciscans. After 1240, the Inquisition spread throughout Europe, excluding England. However, bonfires with heretics burned not only throughout Catholic Europe, that is, it would be unfair to associate them exclusively with the activities of the Inquisition.(For example, when a plague epidemic began in Pskov in 1411, 12 women were burned on charges of divination, although there was no Inquisition in Russia at that time.)

Interestingly, based on the statistics of those burned for witchcraft and divination (four-fifths of the condemned are women), we can say that the Holy Inquisition was a kind of organ of misogyny. True, it should be noted that the inquisitors were extremely rarely involved in cases of witchcraft (mostly secular, not ecclesiastical courts did it) and most of the verdicts in these cases by the inquisitors were acquittals. So, for example, at one of the XIV century trials in Spain, inquisitors out of 15 people suspected of witchcraft acquitted 13, and another was replaced by the death penalty with a long term of imprisonment. The last convict was nevertheless sent to the auto-da-fe, however, before the execution began, the inquisitors asked the local authorities to pardon the convict. As a result, none of the sorcerers was hurt!

"There is no one inquisition, but there are three inquisitions: the medieval inquisition, the Spanish inquisition and the Roman inquisition. From a historical point of view, mixing them is meaningless," continues Jean Sevilla. Sergei Nechaev picks up and expands the theme: "The legally independent medieval Inquisition, parallel to civil justice, was an ecclesiastical institution, and its servants depended only on the pope. At the same time, the Excommunicamus bull did not establish a clear procedure for its activities. The rules were established empirically, different in different territories."

The specialist on this issue, Jean Sevilla, points out that the inquisitor who came to investigate in a particular area published two decrees. In accordance with the decree of the faith, every believer was obliged to inform on heretics and their accomplices. The second - a decree of mercy - gave the heretic a period of 15 to 30 days to renounce, after which he was forgiven. After the expiration of his term, the stubborn heretic was handed over to the tribunal of the Inquisition.

“This is where historical reality turns upside down and is filled with all sorts of clichés,” notes Jean Sevilla. “The picture of the Inquisition is so negative that it seems that it was a kingdom of arbitrariness. In fact, everything was exactly the opposite: the Inquisition was justice is methodical, formalistic and full of paperwork, often much more moderate than civil justice."

For the defense, the accused invited witnesses and had the right to challenge the composition of the court and even the inquisitor himself. The first interrogations were attended by respected people - in the current way, elders or aksakals. The names of the informers were kept secret (witness protection), but in the event of perjury, the liar faced severe punishment. The Inquisition had no right to sentence to death, but only to various types of penance (to temporary or life imprisonment, to fines, to expulsion, to excommunication, etc.). Permission to use torture was obtained much later, and, as Sergei Nechaev notes, "there were many restrictions on torture (according to some sources, only two percent of those arrested by the Spanish Inquisition were tortured and did not last more than 15 minutes)."

Those who carefully read the classic work of Henry Charles Lee, "History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages", remember his conclusion: "In the fragments of the inquisitorial trials that have fallen into our hands, references to torture are rare." To carry out the execution, the victim was handed over to the secular authorities who practiced bonfires. And yet another myth - the victim was not burned alive, but first strangled.

In addition to temporary, there are also geographic differences between the inquisitorial tribunals. In Italy, the Inquisition is almost invisible. Extremely brutal persecution in the south of France and in Germany (XIII-XV centuries).

In Spain, the actions of the tribunals of the Inquisition differ from those of Germany and France. In these countries, repression was mainly carried out by sects gravitating towards the Reformation. Jean Sevilla adds: "In France, the end of the Inquisition was associated with the rise of the state. In Spain, it was the other way around."

In Spain itself, the so-called conversos - Jews and Moors who converted to Christianity - are persecuted. In Spain and Portugal, the term "converso" meant not only baptized Jews, but also their descendants. In the Netherlands subordinate to the Spanish crown, the persecution affected mainly Protestants. Tristan Annaniel ends his article on the Inquisition with these words: "Despite the severity of the Spanish Inquisition, the prevailing opinion among historians today is that it was neither the fiercest nor the bloodiest in Europe."