The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition

[Stunster]

Atheist regimes slaughtered tens of millions of people during the 20th century. But, oddly enough, I find that this is rarely brought up in discussion by atheists. Instead, they like to focus on the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition. Some Protestant extremists do this too.

But what are the facts?

More here.

[slutticus]

1. Yeah. I heard that whole Holocaust thing was a myth too...

:eyes:

[Stunster]

2. And your point was....

that the BBC had a program entitled 'The Myth of the Holocaust'?

Well, they didn't. The BBC did have a program entitled 'The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition', however.

Are you suggesting the BBC is controlled by Catholic history forgers?

[slutticus]

3. No, that wasn't my point at all

I was making a sarcastic reference to other sympathizers of murderers.

There are many who claim the holocaust was a myth. I was surprised to find the same for the inquisition.

Whether the church murdered thousands or just tens of people is irrelevant IMO.

Just because the numbers of people murdered may have been exaggerated doesn't make it a myth.

[Stunster]

4. The BBC program was not sympathizing with murderers

and nor was I. And I very strongly resent your insinuation that I was.

"The Church" is not the Spanish Inquisition either. So even if the latter can be said to have murdered people, it doesn't follow that the Church did.

The Inquisition in Spain was legally an instrument of the Spanish government, not of the Church.

A legally administered death penalty may be immoral, but it's misleading to describe it in every case as murder.

Murder is wrong. So is fabricating accusations of murders which never took place. And so is repeating such fabricated accusations.

And so is reckless insinuation that someone sympathizes with murder. It's the sin of calumny, in fact.

[slutticus]

5. I was always under the impression that Spain...

..had to ask the Pope for permission to begin the inquisition in 1478, for the purpose of "purifying" Spain. Are you suggesting that there was somehow a distinction between "church and state" during the time of the inquisition? Please.

Perhaps "sympathizing" was a bit strong and I apologize, but calling the inquisition a "myth" is also reckless. Like I said, whether it was thousands murdered or just a few...it doesn't matter. It's not a myth.

[Stunster]

6. We disagree

Are you suggesting that there was somehow a distinction between "church and state" during the time of the inquisition?

Yes. There very obviously was, as a matter of fact.

but calling the inquisition a "myth" is also reckless

"The Spanish Inquisition, in spite of wildly inflated estimates of the numbers of its victims, acted with considerable restraint in inflicting the death penalty, far more restraint than was demonstrated in secular tribunals elsewhere in Europe that dealtwith the same kinds of offenses. The best estimate is that around 3000 death sentences were carried out in Spain by Inquisitorial verdict between 1550 and 1800, a far smaller number than that in comparable secular courts."

If the above statement is true, then I don't think it's reckless to talk about myths regarding the Spanish Inquisition. The BBC program was entitled 'The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition'. One could talk about the 'Myth of Christopher Columbus' without necessarily implying that there was no such person, or that he never sailed across the Atlantic. I can easily imagine a book about Columbus with such a title, dedicated to showing all the mythical aspects surrounding Columbus and his 'discovery' of the New World, etc. Use of the term 'myth' is also justified by observations like these:


"The special includes commentary from historians whose studies verify that the tale of the darkest hour of the Church was greatly fabricated."

"The long-held beliefs of the audience are sufficiently weakened by the testimony of experts and the expose of the making of the myth."

"In 1567 a fierce propaganda campaign began with the publication of a Protestant leaflet penned by a supposed Inquisition victim named Montanus."

"The propagandists soon created 'hooded fiends' who tortured their victims in horrible devices like the knife-filled Iron Maiden (which never was used in Spain)."

"And most significantly, historians have declared fraudulent a supposed Inquisition document claiming the genocide of millions of heretics."

"The experts - once true believers in the Inquisition myth - were not out to do a feminist canonization of Isabella or claim that Tomas de Torquemada was a Marxist. Henry Kamen of the Higher Council for Scientific Research in Barcelona said on camera that researching the Inquisition's archives 'demolished the previous image all of us (historians) had.'"

" There is no question that the number of these has been greatly exaggerated in popular belief, an exaggeration to which Llorente has largely contributed by his absurd method of computation...."

Such language justifies the use of the term, in my opinion, just as much as discovery of major facts drastically challenging popular beliefs regarding Columbus would justify talk of a 'Columbus Myth', even if Columbus was a real person.

[DemBones DemBones]

7. So much of the history that we "know" is shrouded in myth.

Most progressives KNOW this -- they've been enlightened by people like Howard Zinn. They know they've been lied to all their lives about the history of this country.

But try to say that the Inquisition wasn't quite the horror it was portrayed to be and it's like being a Holocaust denier.

Many people simply insist that any questioning of the numbers killed during either the Holocaust or the Spanish Inquisition is wrong. But, if we've been lied to about so many events, why not those events, too? There's no question that the Holocaust and the Inquisition took place. The question is how much the accounts were exaggerated, how much myth grew up around them.

I've also observed that modern-day Germans are not held responsible for the Holocaust, which occurred less than a hundred years ago, yet the Roman Catholic Church today is considered responsible for the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, the Inquisition is a favored argument among those seeking to discredit Catholicism. "These are the people who sponsored the Inquisition!" is a sentence that's supposed to overwhelm us, render us mute.

[Maeve]

8. Part of the problem is the word "myth"

It's a slippery little devil with too many meanings and has been abused often (like "theory" in the evolution debate--means different things to different people).

Fact-based reporting is a modern concept in many ways--"Truth" was the story behind the story, the point you wished to make, the judgment you wanted others to make about the issue at hand. Exaggeration and hyperbole were acceptable rhetorical tools. But that was then, this is now. Getting to the facts is one of our best tools for lowering prejudice and bigotry (anyone seen "Sister Rose's Passion"? Looks like a wonderful documentary!)

[Matilda]

9. One person being tortured and burned in the name of Christ

is too many.

The whole concept of trying anyone for heresy is an abomination, and
not for a minute would I believe that it would have been condoned
by Christ.

I don't care if they killed 10 people or 100,000 - the Inquisition
was completely unchristian, and the Church should acknowledge that.

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Yes, that's true, but the Church has acknowledged that.

Sometimes I think "never apologize, never explain" is a better way to go. Ever since JP II made a formal apology about Galileo, the bigots say "Oh, the Catholics only figured out Galileo was right a few years ago, hyuck, hyuck." In fact, Catholics had known and acknowledged that Galileo was right for centuries but small-minded people only remember the apology. I have seen similar reactions to John Paul's other well-intentioned efforts to apologize for wrongs of the past. Issues are not put to rest, but stirred up again. Has he done right from a moral sense? Yes, but the public relations result has been very bad.

[Matilda]

11. The Pope has issued an apology of sorts,

but only for those who acted in the name of the Church. There has
never been a complete apology for the Church's actions, nor has
there been an admission that the whole concept of trial, torture
and death for heresy is wrong.

Apologists for the Church even now (they're invariably hardliners,
of course) still maintain that the Church acted in the best
interests of lost souls, while subscribing to the ideas posted above
that the Inquisition wasn't really all that bad. I just can't see
how a good Christian can ever accept that violence, intimidation,
and death threats are a good way to win souls. Nowhere in the
Gospels did Jesus say that anyone who didn't believe should be
persecuted, so the ideas behind the Inquisition should be
acknowledged as totally unchristian. Other people behaving badly
is no excuse - love, compassion, and intelligent debate are by far
the best way to win people over, and I think that's what Christ was
trying to tell us.

[Stunster]

16. Hold it

Look, the issue is not whether the Inquisition was a good thing. Nobody is saying it was a good thing.

The issue is the double standard used by atheist critics of the Church, by which they use this bad thing as a stick with which to beat the Church, while not using the VASTLY WORSE THING that was atheistic governments slaughtering TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE during the last century as a stick with which to beat atheism.

I'm not defending the Inquisition. I'm attacking the moral inconsistency of the Church's critics.

[Stunster]

12. How many people were hung for sheep-stealing?

Any is too many, right?

Well, more people were executed for stealing sheep in England under Elizabeth I than were executed by the Spanish Inquisition in its history. Yet how many people constantly criticize the institution of the English monarchy because it put to death loads of people for stealing sheep in the 16th century?

I've not encountered anyone who does so.

Does that mean that by not criticizing the English monarchy on those grounds, one is condoning the death penalty for sheep-stealing?

No, it doesn't.

So the question is why is there so much less antipathy towards the English monarchy for executing sheep-stealers in the 16th century than there is to the Catholic Church because the Spanish monarchy executed heretics in the 16th century?

We find both practices barbaric. But there's a DOUBLE STANDARD IN THE CONTEMPORARY ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE INSTITUTIONS INVOLVED, ISN'T THERE?

In one case, the practice is routinely touted as evidence of the institution's corrupt nature. In the other case, it's hardly even thought about, let alone considered as evidence of the institution's corrupt nature.

In other words, there's an OBVIOUS BIAS at work.

[Matilda]

13. I don't know if that's the best analogy to use.

I take your point, but in the case of sheep-stealing, there was a
civil crime, with a penalty set down by law. Of course the penalty,
as with all crimes until fairly recent times was way too harsh, and
no such thing as mitigating circumstances, such as starvation, was
taken into account, and it's totally unacceptable to us today.

But with heresy, the most disturbing thing is that the Church, which
has always taught the love and mercy of Our Lord, decreed these
dreadful punishments because some people dared to think differently
to Church doctrine, or even to just ask questions.

So I think the Church is judged more harshly than civil legislators
because of the dichotomy between its message of love, mercy and
forgiveness and the dreadful punishments devised for those whose
"crimes" were of the mind and heart, and harmed nobody.

[Stunster]

14. Oh, but it is

Heresy was a civil crime, punishable by the civil law, and enforced by the Spanish crown via the Spanish Inquisition, in accordance with legal procedures.

[DemBones DemBones]

15. No one lost his soul for sheep stealing, either.

The Inquisition was, at its base, concerned with the loss of souls to eternal damnation, something not taken very seriously today but taken very seriously in those times.

[Stunster]

17. This is a good point

In modern times, large majorities of people in places such as America and Britain have supported the death penalty for murder.

To think of how people could have thought it was ok to execute heretics, one would have to grasp how they viewed heresy as being even worse than murder. For them, murder was the mere killing of the body. Jesus had said, do not fear him who can only kill the body. Rather, fear him who can throw both body and soul into hell. Medieval thinking was that heresy was a killing of the soul, because it was a denial of some divinely revealed truth. To allow the denial of divinely revealed truths to spread in society would have been, in their minds, far worse than if a murderer was let loose.

Also, from a political point of view, it was seen in that era as being of key importance to social unity and national peace that the religion of the monarch be the religion of the realm over which the monarch ruled. Why? Because if a royal subject had a different religion, this would be viewed as insubordination to the king by implying that the subject believed the king was in error.

[DemBones DemBones]

18. You make good points about the viewpoint in the past that

social unity is best achieved if everyone in the country follows the same religion, and about deviating from the state religion being insubordination to the king or queen. From the time Henry VIII broke from Rome and declared himself head of the Church of England, controversy began. Under Henry, those who remained faithful to the Roman Catholic Church were persecuted, with St. Thomas More being a notable example. Under Henry's elder daughter Mary, Protestants were persecuted, but once Bloody Mary died and Elizabeth ascended to the throne, England was again declared Protestant, and stayed so, though James was a secret Catholic. Some people must have changed their religious allegiance several times during those years, and to be agnostic or atheistic was truly beyond the pale.

This is all well-known, of course, but was particularly brought out in two books I just read, Anthony Burgess's "A Dead Man in Deptford," about Christopher Marlowe, and Anna Beer's "My Just Desire," a biography of Bess Throckmorton Ralegh, wife of Sir Walter Ralegh. According to Burgess's account, Marlowe, who was raised Protestant but became an atheist, worked as a spy for Sir Francis Walshingham, spying on the Catholics who were plotting to overthrow the monarchy and put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. Religion was less of an issue in the Ralegh biography but the absolute power of the British monarch was made clear. From the moment they married without the Queen's consent, Bess and Walter Ralegh began a life of struggling to have their own life without causing themselves problems with the monarch. Walter was falsely accused of treason and thrown in the tower under both Elizabeth and James, with James having him beheaded. I learned from the Marlowe book that Marlowe was one of a circle of men who met in Ralegh's study to smoke tobacco (which Ralegh called "the nymph") and discuss philosophy. At the end of one such meeting, Ralegh stated that his servants were spies and it would be wise for the group to kneel and pray the Our Father loudly for the servants' benefit. There were suggestions that Ralegh was an atheist, which would buttress the treason accusation. Marlowe is murdered by some of Walsingham's people he used to work with -- and atheism is mentioned in the final encounter, before he is stabbed in the eye.

[Matilda]

19. Your arguments are very good,

and I do see that we can't judge the ideas of the past by the
standards we have today (not that today's standards are necessarily
more correct in all things).

I understand the theory of the religious thinking, but how a soul
was supposed to be saved by being beaten, tortured and burnt is quite
beyond me - if they couldn't convince someone to change their mind
by example and debate, they were simply condemning both body and soul
to hell. Unfortunately I think that then - and today - the Church
was way too political, and much of what they did was motivated as
much and sometimes more, on maintaining their hold on power. There
were some popes who acted from total cynicism, and others I'm sure
who acted from the best of motives, albeit constrained by the
thinking of their times.

And yes, I do think there is a certain anti-Catholic bias in the
indignant moralism of many who call the Church to account for all
the misdeeds of past centuries. And only a full apology, by and
on behalf of Mother Church, without reservation, will clean the
slate. It won't happen, because there are still too many in the
hierarchy to whom protecting the Church's self-interest is still
the most important thing.