Jesus was surrounded by men to preach the good news, his Gospel; a logical
thing in a patriarchal context in which each man was grateful, through
prayer, for not being born a pagan, a slave or a woman. There is no
indication that he has been married, although his relationship with woman
was very normal; but his supposed celibacy was the ulterior motive, plus
other economic and administrative ones, to enforce the celibacy of the clergy of
the future Church. At the same time, he generated the prohibition on women
to enter the priesthood; the hierarchy says that such prohibition
corresponds to the express will of Jesus, which, besides being false -it does
not appear anywhere- it is impossible to demonstrate. What is absolutely
true is that women's fundamental rights are violated by being marginalized.
Jesus, as his apostles, believed in the end of the world, the Parousia (the
coming of the Son of the man, at the end of times) was imminent, with the
subsequent advent of the Kingdom of God. Clearly stated in Matthew 16:
27-28:
The Son of the man shall come in his Father's glory with the angels, and
then would give to each one according to his works. Truly, I should say that
there are some among the audience who will not taste death before they see
the Son of the man coming to his kingdom.
And in Matthew 24, 34,
it is added: Verily I say unto you that this
generation shall not pass away before all this happens.
Peter, James,
John and Paul also shared this great error of unfulfilled prophecy. The end of
the world did not come with the expected coming of the Son of the man, but
certainly in this context no one could think in the possibility of a new
church, when there was no intention, no space or time to create a new one.
It would be Paul, who later could create the foundation for a new church; a
process that would last centuries.
The early Christian communities, upon seeing that the Parousia, the
end of the world, did not arrive, took a big shift to soteriology or saving
issues. They began to speak of the redemption and salvation, of Jesus as a redeemer and
savior, through his ignominiously death on the cross, scandal for everyone
except for the Christians. The truth is that the idea of the Parousia
remained in the collective consciousness of the Christians, who continued
caressing and waiting it ("millenarianism”). There is talk about the sin,
the souls, and
the other world, which presupposes immortality. Topics served in tray by
Egyptian religions, Mesopotamian, Persian and Indian, by Jews in the Old
Testament and by Plato, one of the great philosophers of the immortality
of the soul that had so much influence on Christianity, filtered by Philo,
by the Stoics and by Augustine of Hippona.
When the masses oppressed by the Romans, who had heard his preaches, found
that the expected socio-political changes that they hoped to accomplish
through the promised Messiah did not come, deeply disappointed, they began
to withdraw their support. The added value of the growing hostility of the
Jewish religious authorities towards Jesus and their absolute conviction of the imminent
end of the world forbid them to try to prevent his arrest and they took him to
the gallows.
The Inquisition and the Inquisitors upon condemning to the fire the crypto-Jews (Jewish
converts who continued to practice Jewish laws and customs) and the corresponding forfeiture of their possessions.
They forgot that Jesus,
like all his apostles, was a Jew and no one of them left being so; it is one of the
many contradictions of the so called Holy Inquisition.
PETER’S CONFESSION.
SOURCES OF THE GOSPELS
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St. Peter in tears by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo.
Peter's confession is one of the major issues in dispute.
The Protestant Reform denied all
its value.
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The context has to be searched at Caesarea of Philippi when Jesus asked his
disciples:
- Who do the people say that the Son of the Man
is?
They replied:
-
Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets
He told them:
And who do you say that I am?
Simon Peter answered:
-
You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
Matthew (16, 13-16).
Jesus changed Simon's name to Kepha or Cephas, which means stone or rock and
took the Latin form of Peter's, hence the pun on Simon Peter.
Mark and Lucas end Peter's confession only with: You are the Christ,
without the paragraph of the confession, which gives rise to the powers that
Popes will assume as successors of Peter; John the Evangelist,
also omitted it. All the three silence, in the confession of Peter, the
expression the son of
alive God, that was the key to grant such powers, which were bound to be
allegorical and symbolic, never legal.
Matthew added:
Jesus replied,
"Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you
by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter,
and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not
overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever
you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on
earth will be loosed in heaven."(Mt.16, 17-19).
The omission in the other gospels of this text, the most emblematic and
important of the future church, since it is supported by theologians to create their ecclesiology
with all its powers, remains highly surprising and eloquent. The text of
Matthew is spurious and added later with apologetic and dogmatic purposes. It is
totally impossible for the three synoptic Gospels remaining, aware of its
importance, that they had omitted it. Mark, a disciple of Peter, could not
ignore a text that favored his teacher so much. Anyway, theologians
overstayed its interpretation and meaning. This text was also used to
demonstrate the divinity of Jesus, but it seems that the other three
evangelists did not realize that.
The bishops of the East, in the fourth century, stated that this text of
Matthew had been very late interleaved or interpolated by supporters of the
Bishop of Rome in the power struggles among the bishops for the Primate.
Peter said that Jesus is the living stone, as also are the believers:
He is the living stone, rejected by men, chosen and valued by God, hence,
to approach Him, also like living stones, are involved in building a
spiritual temple and are a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices,
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. I Peter 2.4-5.
The believers are
the stones of the temple and they are priests. And Paul adds:
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which
is Jesus Christ. I Cor. 3, 11.... built upon the foundation of the
apostles, with Jesus Christ as the cornerstone. Eph. 2.20.
The argument that Peter is the rock upon which is founded the Church
has no exegetical basis as we have seen. Neither during the first ten centuries,
the bishops of Rome could claim to be successors of Peter. Ecumenical
Councils, the first eight, were held in Asia, without the direct intervention
of the Pope or Rome. There were the emperors who gathered and led the councils. The papacy
is beginning to consolidate as the supreme authority from the eleventh
century. Rome was in constantly fight for Primacy against Jerusalem, Antioch and
Alexandria, founded by the apostles. The primacy of the Bishop of Rome comes
to history and has nothing to do with Peter neither with Jesus. All its powers
are based solely and exclusively on the theologians and canonists of the
late Middle Ages, with no divine intervention.
There is another fact that cannot be ignored: Most of the New Testament
was not written by apostles, but for collectors who did not know Jesus.
The Gospel of Mark is the oldest document of the life of Jesus, but
Marcos was not a disciple of Jesus nor he knew him personally; he writes
what he had listened to Peter.
The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, essential
documents to understand the origin and development of the early church,
were written by the same author who was not an apostle and who composes his texts
from plagiarizing passages of various documents from different sources and
from what he listened to Paul.
The Gospel of Matthew was not written by the apostle Matthew, as it was
believed. Today, due to compelling reasons, it is known that the author was
a Christian of second generation, from the Judaism of the Diaspora, who
wrote in Greek, using documents from Mark, the first gospel written and that
just does not have the famous text of Peter's powers. It seems that it was
written
in Antioch around the year ninety.
The Gospel of John and the Apocalypse, as it is commonly
believed, are not works of the apostle John, "the beloved disciple," but
of John the
Elder, a Greek Christian who relied on Hebrew and Essene texts and on the memories
he got from John the apostle.
All Catholic biblical scholars today, there might be some rare exception,
accept that the gospels were not written by the apostles. As they accept
that they are not historical books, in the sense that today we understand history,
but they are doctrinal and apologetic books.
Besides these four Gospels, called synoptic or canonical, chosen as the
best, were other different gospels that were called apocrypha, hidden
texts. Later, they were considered as of doubtful authenticity and, finally,
as not
recommended or suspected of heretical doctrines.
Among the apocryphal gospels, which were many, there were texts
older than the synoptic ones and some of them were attributed directly to the Apostles. It is curious how many Fathers
and early Christian apologists quote the Apocryphal gospels in preference to
canonical ones.
The selection of the canonical Gospels was held at the Council of Nicaea in 325 and was ratified in Laodicea, 365. The way the four canonicals were chosen among
the rest, more than fifty apocryphal, miraculous legends are recounted: that
all were on the altar and, after invocation of the Council Fathers, the
apocryphal fell to the ground and only left the four canonical; another says that
they previously selected those four ones, placed them on the altar and ordered to God that,
if they had a wrong word, fall to the ground, but they all stayed on the altar;
and this one which explains that if four were the regions in the world, four should be the Gospels. The divine
inspiration of the Sacred Text, as the inerrancy, they are still free tenets
of theologians to give unquestionable weight to their dogmatic assertions.
STIGMA OF SIN, INSTRUMENT DOMESTICATION PAUL
OF TARSUS
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Primer and Christian doctrine. Catechism of the sixteenth
century.
Diocesan Archive of Cuenca.
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Sin is the secret weapon of all monotheistic religions, Judaism,
Christianity and Islam, that the Church used to frighten -pedagogy of
fear- the believers, to delve into their inner life, thus violating their right to
privacy, and, at the same time, as a flock or herd, to drive them into the
fold of submission and vassalage. The simile of sin with a big nose, that
the bull is placed in the nose to lead him meekly, despite its wildness, is very successful. Sin is
the theological concept that makes the main contribution to the church
institution, which, as time goes on, goes away at top speed from those simple first
episodes of Jesus and his fishermen, who were risen to galactic heights by a
mythologizing process.
The sin is the religious stigma that the Inquisition
used to rationalize its procedures and justify its crimes and atrocities.
It is the backbone of the redemptive theology, which comes to be
the reason of its being: saving souls, that is nothing else than to liberate
them of sin, according to
its theology. And, therefore, it is central to the control and domination
of the faithful or members of the Church in the daily aspect of their
lives.
Let us analyze its first orthodox truth: We all were born in sin. "In sin my mother
conceived me," said David. The origin goes back to the myth of Eden, where
the first couple, created by God, delighted in Paradise,
created by God as well. And a women, just Eve, the mother of every living thing -
a symbol -, not without reason, thought it was good to eat from the tree of science.
And so cleanly, in a mysterious way, without eating or drinking it, we all
inherited the sin of disobedience of the first humans. According to serious
church councils, early human, farmers or shepherds, were created immortal,
but sin turned them into deadly beings and loaded them with all sorts of
ailments and diseases. And Catholic theology insists that sin enslaved and
denigrated us, corrupting our human nature.
The Synod of Carthage, 418, against the followers of Pelagius who deny original sin and
whose doctrine had been formally declared heretical by the Council of Carthage, in
the year 411, and whose sentence was ratified by Pope Innocent I in 417,
says:
Can. 1: It pleased all
the bishops gathered in the holy [...] Church Council of Carthage: Who
so ever shall say that the first man Adam was created mortal, so that
whether or not sinned must die in the body, i.e., that the dead of the body would
not be punishment for sin, but by necessity of nature, let him be
anathema (excommunicated).
Can. 2: It also pleased that whoever denies that newborn children from their
mothers, have not to be baptized or say that, indeed, they are baptized for the
remission of sins, but they bring nothing of Adam's original sin that has to
be atone
by the washing of regeneration; hence consequently it follows that in them
the formula of baptism "for the remission of sins" is to be understood not
true but false, is anathema.
[7]
The first thought that springs spontaneously is this: If the first couple
never really existed -it could be a symbol- where from do we inherit a sin
which doesn't exist?
The Church, before accepting the
evidence of evolution, so as not to demolish its dogmatic building and its
reason of being, clings to the puerile and absurd, as did St. Anselm in the
eleventh century: I believe because it is absurd (credo quia absurdum
est), but it does not stop it to torture and to lead to the burning those
who
deny these childish fantasies.
Paul, in his letter written to the Romans, said:
"We know that the
law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin." Rom 7.14.
"Now
if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but
it is sin living in me that does it.." Rom. 7.20.
Our freedom, says the commentator of the New American Bible, is
powerless against sin, that is, nothing can be done against the evil forces
that drag the whole humanity. The "meat" makes us be accomplices in all this.
[8]
Manichaeism cannot be disguised, and the moral problem of determinism, that
restricts freedom necessary for sin, complicates the affair: If not me who does
evil, but sin that is in me, the sin is the sinner. For the Church
there is no problem of
determinism, everything is all right. The Fathers proclaim that where sin abounded,
the grace
abounded more. Besides this, the sin, which corrupts human nature, was necessary to
justify the grace and redemption in soteriological theology, that was put into
action, when the liberating political messianism, expected by the Jews, was
not fulfilled. Since then, sin is a key part of Catholic theology, and even
its raison of being, although it be a human destroyer stigma.
Paul ends chapter seven:
"So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the
sinful nature a slave to the law of sin." Rom. 7.25,
and continues:
"God then, to deal with sin, sent his own Son and somehow put him in
carnal and sinful condition,
and so he condemned sin".
Rom. 8,13.
The amazing expression "carnal and sinful condition" is a Pauline stigma of
Manichean inheritance, disrespectful and shameful for human beings by
assimilating flesh with sin. But, in fact, we are made of flesh and of substance,
the same as our brain. Paul influenced
and greatly affects even today all Christians, and his prejudices and doctrinal
aberrations invaded Christianity. He, who was not an apostle but
declared himself as apostle, corrected the Teacher. He, who was a
persecutor of Christians, became the apostle of the Gentiles, who did not
hesitate to confront Peter. We are slaves of the law and sin; it is the seal of
Christian slavery.
"Wherefore,
as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned" Rom. 5.12..........."Therefore
as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation;
even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto
justification of life." Rom. 5.18.
The
Pauline thought, its body of doctrine, is mythical, it is based on myths.
Saul of Tarsus also believed in Adam and his immortality, and he was the
support of the synods and councils against Pelagius, who denied original
sin and defended free will against Paul's theology of slavery. Pelagius, in
these doctrinal points, was right. He was defender of human dignity, free
and not slave of sin; baptism was not necessary to erase a sin that did not
exist. But the Church used the pretext of the original sin to incorporate
the baptized in its flock and make him part of its herd, as it did with the
forced baptisms of the Jews and Muslims, who, once inside, were tread as
heretics for following their ancestral traditions and habits, for their
refusing of a trans-cultural education.
The misogynism of Paul of Tarsus is proverbial. Not only he denies the vote
to women, even the voice: Mulieres in ecclesia
taceant (Women in the Church to shut up). That the human being, man and woman, is free and independent, fundamental
priority embedded in human nature, is recognized in all jurisdictions
worldwide; only religions, carried by ancient beliefs, do not accept them in full,
the same as with equal gender rights, men and women. The woman continues to be
marginalized and subordinated in patriarchal society. Catholic Church
forbids them the access to the priesthood and, therefore, they cannot become bishops
or higher
ecclesiastical authorities: In the marriage, she has to accept the charge until the end
of her days, and sexuality is that every sexual act must be open to procreation,
ignoring the most basic of human sexuality and marital happiness. All this
due to Manichaean prejudices, such the one that states the sex is bad in
itself,
and that we are simple stewards of our bodies,
because they belong to God for the creation myth.
The human being is not a means to anything or anyone. The law, against Paul, is for the human being,
the opposite is false: no human being is for for the law. Human being
is always sovereign, never is medium or belongs to anyone. Nobody can impose moral
burden to his conscience, as did the Church ever to print the marks of sin
in his conscience and make him to feel himself as a sinner. Power is not in God but in the people, in the Citizens Assembly.
The religious elites seek the source of power on topics very easy to erect,
very difficult to disassemble and decisive in the structuring of society to
suit them. The Inquisition not only constrained the freedom of thinking, feeling,
believing and living, but it also constrained the freedom of investigation, discovery and progress;
all that under the symbol of
holiness (the holy Inquisition, Holy
Office, ad maiorem Dei gloriam )and the accomplishment of the divine will. Everything was possible when
the Power, who came from God, embodied in his delegates, the Pope, the
King or the Emperor, by the laying on of hands (quirofanía), while the citizen,
deprived of adequate rights and the right skills, was helpless at the mercy
of the arbitrary exercise of powerful men, who based on their caesarian-papist
theocracies, were ignoring that the real power belongs to and resides in the
people. But the church hierarchy always snatched it. Democracy in the
Church was always a utopia, and it remains so. The dogmatic thesis supporting
that the Church is essentially hierarchical is false, it is a later product of
theologians and canonists subservient to the Pope. It was not so in the first
centuries of Christianity.
The stigma of sin brings about, as related corollary, the complex of guilt
and remorse. That inner fire, maddening, burns without consuming consciences,
who can hardly get rid of so many conscience taboos, prejudices and existing
laws on religion; and it allows the grantors of forgiveness, through the
sacrament of confession, to fumble in the morbidly interior of conscience to
discover intimacy and impose guidelines to follow. These advisers of the
divine had great influence even on the decisions of kings, as was the influence
of the Dominican Torquemada on Isabella and Ferdinand, who took the decision
to expel the Jews, although since the third century they were already in
Spain and to their race belonged, it is believed, a grandmother of the king.
PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS:
THE
HYLEMORPHISM
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Provincial Library of Huelva.
An edition of Aristotle's Logic printed in Lyon in 1570.
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Aristotle, 384-322 BC, one of the greatest philosophers of antiquity,
together with Socrates and Plato, gives reality to the ideas by understanding
them as the essence of the reality: there is nothing in the mind that
was not previously in the senses.
His Hylemorphic conception (hyle -matter- and -morphos- form) is that the
essences or substances of things have a dual reality: matter and form, which
are interrelated and from their interrelationship emerge the Psychology,
the Sociology,
the Politics and a new philosophical Anthropology. For the essence of man, the
body is the matter and the form is the soul, which, in turn, is the first principle,
first force or energy that gives rise to life, to feel, to insight, to the
integrated structure into the biological, intellectual and thoughtful terms
of man.
The Aristotelian Hylemorphism implies a rejection of the immortality of the
soul, defended by Plato and the Pythagoreans. The soul not survives the body,
Aristotle says, because it cannot exist without the body, although it is
not a body, only its form, its functionality.
The scholastics with Thomas Aquinas, who follow Aristotle's hylemorphism
theory,
give a qualitative leap: the human soul is a pure, spiritual form, created by God, and that can exist independently of matter or body;
it seems a too
metaphysical and mythical conception. Thomas adds more: "Matter exists for the
form", it is a second step, the subordination of the material to
the spiritual. The human being, according to the Scholastics, made up
of 'materia prima' (first matter)
and of substantial form, earthly body and spiritual soul, it would be a kind of
minotaur or centaur, spirit and body. Aristotle is more logical and
consistent in his doctrine.
The form is not spiritual,
nor can it survive the matter, it is mortal. Immortality
is not feasible, it belongs to the mythical realm. Beyond life, only death.
Brain death, scientists say, is final and irreversible.
Substance is any piece of matter that shares certain intensive properties,
is the kind of matter of which bodies are formed.
Plato and Aristotle developed the concept of form, corresponding and opposed
to matter. But it was Aristotle who developed the more complete concept of
matter, but the metaphysical aspect of the matter was relegated to
the scholastics. The fundamental characteristic of matter is the receptivity
of the form, therefore it is potential to be something, something being
determined by the form. This theory is intended to explain the motion,
generation and corruption, which demand form changes and involve concepts of
potency and act. The matter, as substance and subject, is the very
possibility of movement. To explain the substantial change, it is needed the
metaphysical concept of materia prima, which is a mere potential power that is nothing, since
it has nor a determination form or a new form.
Scholasticism, which takes the hilemorphic concept of Aristotle to also
explain the reality of things, of movement and of substantial change, defined the
'materia prima'
as : It is not a what (substance), not a quality, not
a quantity or any
other thing by which the being is determined. This negative definition contradicts
the laws of logic, which states that the definition can not be negative;
moreover, it is nothing, it is all a pipe dream, a metaphysical free quote.
To the Greeks, the 'materia prima' is no generable, it is eternal; eternity of matter and
motion, but as the matter does not need a cause, the
movement does. It always demands an engine and that is precisely how
Aquinas goes to show, in one of his five ways, the need for a first
mover: God. Note that the concept of creation is alien to Aristotelian
thought, as to the Greek thought in general. And so it will be for the
future science that
postulates: Matter is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.
The concept of creation is mythological. stw
The creation myth is almost universal in religions; there are also myths of
appearance (in which the human being without being created, has its origin
in certain American mythology), all of them masterfully handled. According
to them God, the Creator, owns everything created by Him: the cosmos, plants,
animals, humans... Everything, absolutely of everything, God is the owner.
Therefore we would not be free, as our owner would be God and we would have
the duty, therefore, to worship him in gratitude and allegiance, and we would
be merely
stewards of our own. But as God does not act directly, there will be his
representatives, the bridges or pontiffs, who interpret the silence of God and
act accordingly, but always in his name. This explains why Pope
Alexander VI divided the newly discovered America between the Spaniards and
Portugueses, as if it were his private estate, and that the church prohibits euthanasia, as
life does not belong to us, but to its creator. The myths, as we see, are not
harmless legends or naive fables, they have a high burden of ideological depth.
Returning to the philosophical concept, let us say that it is really very simple,
inadequate and inaccurate, because the 'materia prima' as it is defined is nothing, nor would
be its compound. It is only a metaphysical assumption to explain the motion and the
substantial changes.
Only in current Physics we can obtain a rigorous and scientific conceptualization
of the matter. Without forgetting the immense and evolutionary complexity of
the
subject, as shown by quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, astrophysics,
realities that go beyond the material chemistry or crystallography. And
this, without considering the physical concept of antimatter.
As basic data, and in contrast to the simplistic Hylemorphism, matter means
any physical entity that is part of the observable universe, which has
energy and it is measurable. All forms of matter have energy, but only
some have mass, what is called mass matter.
Physics tells us that the components of matter are:
Electrons: leptonic particles with negative electric charge.
Protons: baryonic particles with positive electric charge.
Neutrons: baryonic particles without electric charge, but with
magnetic moment.
These particles, in turn, are composed of subatomic particles that are the last
components of matter. The baryons in the nucleus, protons and neutrons, have
lower-level constituents, the quarks, held together by exchanging virtual
gluons.
And the physical state of a substance can be solid, liquid, gaseous and
plasma, depending on its kinetic and potential energy. If the kinetics
(which tends to separate) is less than the potential (which tends to put it
together), it is solid; if both energies, the kinetic and potential are equal,
it
is liquid; if the kinetic energy is greater than the potential, it is a gas; if
the kinetic energy is such that the electrons have a positive total energy
it
is plasma.
The mass matter has dimensions, occupies a place in space; it has inertia,
which is the resistance of the material to change its state of rest or
motion. The matter is also the cause of gravity or gravitation, that is the
attraction that always acts in the material objects, no matter the distance at
which they are. However, the bulk of matter in the cosmos
corresponds -according to astrophysicists- to particles or fields that have no
mass, such as light, electromagnetic radiation, which are composed of mass-less photons. The neutrins, particles that flood the entire universe
and are responsible for much of its energy, it is unclear whether they have
mass, if they are massive. There is also the dark matter, which could form a
quarter of the total energy of the universe.
The law
establishing the conservation of matter is due to the French chemist
Lavoisier, the father of chemistry, which showed that by measuring the mass
before and after taking part in a chemical reaction, matter measured by
mass is nor created or destroyed, it is only transformed. This had been discovered
by Mikhail Lomonosov, who had established that the mass of a substance is
constant, regardless of internal processes attached to it
(Lomonosov-Lavoisier law).
But this (here is another advantage of science over religious dogma and ideas
about beliefs) is not quite true, as Einstein proved to establish the
equivalence of mass and energy. In an atomic explosion, or behind the
constant output of energy that made the stars, there is a loss of rest mass,
gravitational mass, while emitting radiation. Thus, we can say that the
relativistic mass equivalent (the total material mass plus energy ) is
preserved, but change the rest mass. The conventional mass is not
conserved, because mass and energy -according to Einstein-are
inter-convertible. The rest mass can change in relativistic processes, in
which a portion of matter is converted into photons.
Aristotelian physics is shattered, as it was his astrology with the invention
of the telescope and Galileo's observations. There is no doubt that Aristotle
was a genius and an encyclopedic of his time, but most of his knowledge
has been happily overcome by science. The Church, in the course of time,
used them to develop its dogmas: substance, nature, person, geocentric...
But if the premises are false, the conclusion is false as well.
Here are some dogmatic statements of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
made with wrong Greek concepts of physics.
253 The Trinity is One. Do not confess three Gods, but one God in three
persons: "consubstantial Trinity" (cc. Constantinople, in 553: DS 421). The
divine persons do not share the one divinity, but each is fully God:
"Father is like the Son, the Son is the same as the Father, the Father and
the Son as well as the Holy Spirit, i.e, by nature one God "(CC, Toledo
XI, year 675: DS 530). "Each of the persons is that reality, i.e,
substance, essence or divine nature" (cc. Lateran IV, 1215: DS 804).
479 In the time prescribed by God, the Father's only Son, the eternal Word,
that is, the Word and Image substantial Father, became flesh: without losing
the divine nature he assumed human nature.
480 Jesus Christ is true God and true man in the unity of his divine person,
that is why he is the only mediator between God and men.
481 Jesus Christ possesses two natures, divine and human, not confused, but united in the one Person of the Son of God.
482 Christ, being true God and true man, has an intelligence and human will,
in perfect agreement and subject to his intelligence and his divine will
that he has
in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
251 In order to articulate the dogma of the Trinity, the Church had to
develop its own terminology with the help of notions of philosophical
origin: "substance", "person" or "hypostasis", "relation" and so on. By
doing this, did not subject the faith to human wisdom, but gave a new
meaning, surprisingly, these terms also used to signify an ineffable mystery
onwards, infinitely beyond all that we conceive as the human dimension "(
Paul VI, CPG 2).
253 The Church uses the term "substance" (rendered also at times by
"essence" or "nature") to designate the divine being in its unity, the term
"person" or "hypostasis" to designate the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit in
its real distinction among them, the term "relation" to designate the fact
that their distinction lies in the relationship of each other.
[9]
The notion of substance, nature or essence slips away,
like water in the basket, of hyhlemorphic categories, which define very little
and this incorrectly. Modern physics demonstrates its complexity and
subtlety.
The terms and concepts that emerge from human perception only
can be applied to the humans. Trying their extrapolation to the divine is like trying to
imitate Phaeton driving the car in the sun. They are human terms, too human
to be divine. The projection of the human over God makes him human. Its hypothetical substance, nature or essence, according to the
hypothetical attributes of divinity, should be very different in nature,
unless we wanted to get into pantheism.
The wise and naive Servet, as we all, did not understand the Trinitarian
mystery, because it is a jumble of contradictory terms that say nothing and
mean less, and his disagreement with Calvin about the Trinitarian formula
cost him his life. At least, Arius, in denying the Son consubstantial with
the Father, was more logical and consistent.
It is said that the God of the Old Testament is in little resemblance to
the New; the truth is that the new God, the triune God, is truly new at
least in the unsuccessful attempt of its definition. Look, trying to define God....is
like trying to put doors to the countryside or dykes to the sea!
The
Christ with two natures, two intelligences, two wills and a single person
who is divine, it not the historical Jesus, who is the son of Mary... Nobody,
or His apostles, could recognize him; luckily there is William of Ockham for
terms not intimidate us, knowing that they are pure names.
But the Church needed an orthodoxy as a cohesive identity to mark its
territory, to establish and consolidate its power and ideology and carry out
checks on its members. To do this, the church was developing dogmas, by using an accommodating interpretation of
the Scriptures and a conditioned vision of the Fathers of the Church, by using the
Councils that were summoned by history when its needs required it and that
were built by the elite of ecclesiastical power, and also by using the
philosophical doctrines, vain attempt to prop up its beliefs because they
are based on legend. As if these dogmas
said or might say something of the infinite reality always conceived as an
act pure, or pure energy in action, using vague terms of dubious meaning and
trying to lock the infinite reality, overwhelming rality, in a static moment, woven
with the simplicity of a few terms.
William of Ockham (c. 1280/1288-1349), Franciscan friar and English scholastic
philosopher, together with Duns Scotus, one of the brightest minds
in speculative metaphysics and deep throughout the Middle Ages, advocates
the economics of science, which is called Ockham's penknife that today it might be
called Ockham's scissors. It states that every phenomenon can be explained
without assuming a hypothetical entity and must be explained by the fewest
possible causes, factors or variables; if two are enough, you should not use
three.
Nominalism, against the existence of universals (concepts) or
universals (ideas) that unreasonably were believed to represented the essence of
things, holds that universals are merely names, i.e. words,
but not reality existing. For some, nominalism leads to conceptualism,
which states that the names are concepts that only exist in the human
mind, because they proceed from it. The universal does not exist outside
the mind, outside the understanding; it is a fiction of ours. Universal is a mere term,
which is used to mean many similar, unique and individual objects. So if I
want to say that every member of the human race is mortal, I have not to list by name
all human beings to deduce it, it is enough to include all in one term: man (human
being). By saying any man is mortal, the word man does not represent
the essence of man neither is real, it is a fiction of human intelligence
practice, a supposition, a word, a term.
Universals are explained as entities that exist in themselves, with their
own reality, independent of mind, transcending the course of time, timeless,
eternal, like the Good, the Beautiful, Justice, and are defended by Catholic
thinkers to support their morals, their value systems and beliefs with their
dogmas, that transcend human beings of any era or culture. These universals
are based on the theory of Ideas of Plato, who overcoming the relativistic theory
of sensation of Protagoras and Socrates, enters into an ethics,
metaphysic and mystical theory of knowledge. Intelligence, in Plato, through
the dialectic, ascends to the ideas, i.e., to the absolute essences or
unconditioned realities: eidetic passion.
The Pythagoreans had provided an early escape from the sensible to analyze
things in their essentials (we would say in their commons), but neither
Socrates nor the Pythagoreans transcend the material world. This
metaphysical leap is done by
Plato by putting the research into the supersensible, where, by
intuitive contemplation, is performed the genuine philosophical knowledge,
whose own object is the essence, which is reached only by intuitive contemplation of
ideas. This design is copied by Catholic theology.
Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), on his ontologism about the universals
and unchanging ideas, asks: what is their source? They can not come from the senses,
which capture only the singular and the concrete; nor from the imagination, mere
residue of sensations; nor from reason, because producing an idea is to create,
and human reason nothing can create. Consequently, the only explanation for
the origin of ideas is that they are coming from God; this does not mean that God creates
the ideas in our reason, but the ideas are grasped by our mind in God, where they are located. Malebranche's epistemology is not only an
exaggeration of Augustinian doctrine, but also it violates the principle of Ockham's
economy, besides the blowing up of the theory of knowledge. Malebranche does not
explain how our minds can grasp the ideas in God. But in mythology anything is
possible.
Plato thinks that only in the ideas (eidos) things reach security and
consistency. What's more, over the ideas in a lower case letter, Plato puts the
Ideas themselves, supreme realities, absolutely consistent, but
also quite indefinable. And there are three such realities: the Good,
the Beautiful and Justice. Plato's dialectic is primarily
metaphysical, ontological, theological and, deductively,
physical, anthropological, ethical and political. Platonic ideas are universal
beings,
eternal archetypes, which are in the supersensible world. Plato, through the
Pythagoreans, through Philo of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo, enters the
Catholic theology and morality.
Speaking of Augustine, I am reminded of that legend of his walk on the
beach, thinking about the mystery of the Trinity. He found a child
playing on the beach and when asked what he was doing, he answered that he
was putting
the whole water of the sea into a bucket. And always comes the same moral:
that
is easier than to
understand the mystery that occupied his mind. The term sea does not cover
or understand the sea; or the term ocean, the ocean; or the term human
being, the essence of human being; or goodness, justice, happiness, substance, person, freedom... are realities in themselves, nor are
comprehensive of all; they are always highly relative products of the human
mind to mean different things.
The essence does not exist, nor could be captured; every idea comes from the
senses and it is a product of the mind. The senses only capture the phenomenon,
the peripheral or superficial, not the essence or the Kantian noumenon. Every
real thing is individual. There is no full happiness, truth, beauty, justice,
there are just parts of them all and always conditioned by the historical moment. There is a
cultural constant in all peoples, according to anthropologists: Do good
and avoid evil, but good and evil are defined by each company or
group of people at each moment in history: moral relativism. There is
nothing static, as he thought Parmenides of Elea, for whom the true reality is the
'being' (ens-entis), which is the unity, the immobility, the eternity, but the entity with
ontological reality does not exist. The truth is closer to Heraclitus of
Ephesus, as his 'being' is racked with dynamism, as it is the life itself; only
the becoming exists, everything flows, nothing stands still. The bottom line is
really a ceaseless becoming; at our core we are and are not flowing.
The same evolution is the struggle of opposites, only in the struggle the
life is possible.
The dogmas born of such pompous terms, as matter-form, substance-accident,
potential-act, universal-particular, abstract-concrete,
predicable-predicament, guilt-penalty, try to raise to substantive category what is
pure nominalism. And from an impossible orthodoxy into all these, it is born
a possible, better, inevitable heterodoxy, whose members are potential victims of ecclesiastical
inquisitions.
Behind these dumb dogmas, there is a whole theoretical amount of power and a
waste of psychology in the domain of the masses, as well as an effective
pedagogy of promises, first, and of punishment, later.
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opinion in the
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FUSION
OF THE SPIRITUAL AND THE TEMPORAL
Betrayal of Judas
Giotto di Bondone, 1302-05.
On the left, another priest tries to convince Judas to betray Christ.
Gone are the days of repression against the followers of Christ. Constantine
shows a benevolent attitude toward Christians.
For the first time an emperor declared himself
Christian
though it should further
be investigated the genuineness of the faith of Constantine.
The Edict of Milan put an end to the era of persecution and
inaugurates a new period in the history of Christianity.
The name of the Theory of Two Swords expresses the spiritual
supremacy of the Pope over the temporal power of the Emperor. Such power of
the Church is that which allows the aberrant idea of establishing the
tribunals of the Inquisition.
CHRISTIANS BEFORE CONSTANTINE.
THE
PERSECUTION
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Fresco of Niccolo Circignani, 1583
Torments of martyrs who preferred to die rather than renounce the faith of
Christ.
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It is said that the first Christians professed a religion of peace and love.
They sanctified life and abominated violence, they were not supporters of the
Roman circuses or go and fight in the battlefield, thus ignoring the law of
the Roman emperors.
They also refused to worship the emperor. Divinity always provided good
returns to power and tried to make Rome the center of Christianity, they
would achieve it over time, but for the moment it was too much to ask for. Christianity,
from the beginning, was a threat to the Greco-Roman domestic religion, from
which emanated the assumptions of Ius (right) and Lex (law),
according to Fustel de Coulanges in his work The Ancient City.
Fifty days after Jesus' death, on the feast of Pentecost, they formed the
first Jewish-Christian community, chaired by James the apostle and it was
decided the colossal task of extending the doctrine of Jesus throughout the
known world.
Rome was tolerant of all religions, as was the Greece of Pericles, but, when
Rome realizes that the new Christian religion begins to destroy social order and
beliefs of its citizens, the persecutions
began.
Christianity besides denying the cult of the emperor, questioned the disparity
between masters and slaves and was opposed to pagan religious practices.
They are the first signs of intolerance in
the Empire.
The first
pursuer, who falsely blamed the Christians of burning Rome, was Nero.
Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom.
Domitian banished from Rome John the Apostle. After Domitian, the pursuers would
be
Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Septimus Severus, Maximus, Decius and Diocletian,
who tried to exterminate the Christians, who fought, in the name of their
God, traditions and Roman laws. Galiano, in 260, published the first
Edict of Toleration, which would be revoked by Diocletian in 303.
State administrators come to the wise
conclusion that the persecution would completely fail. It was said that the blood of the
martyrs was the seed of new Christians. In the year 312, Valerio gives the
final step to allow Christian worship in all his territories and, in 313, a
year later, the Emperor Constantine, with the Milan Edict, granted
complete religious freedom and equal rights to
Christians. He also restores the Church the confiscated property.
We ran so into the first important reflection for understanding the
phenomenon of later heresies.
Already during the Roman Empire religious punishment was a social
punishment. There is a close relationship between the belief
largely accepted
in a society and the
authority that makes the power in the same society. The Romans knew that religion is one of
the most important logistical equipment for the maintenance of social
cohesion and, therefore, while possible, they harassed Christians who
undermined the foundations of established order.
Christians
ceased to be pursued only
when the persecution itself threatened to destabilize the Empire.
They were only accepted when they became elements of stability.
The religious Roman elite
realized, in the
early fourth century, that nothing could be done against the religiosity of
the working classes, who embraced the creed
born with Jesus of Nazareth. [10]
THE CHURCH
CONSTANTINIZATION
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Statue of Emperor Constantine.
Found in Rome in a disused drain, would date from AD 312
Constantine helped to change the identity of the Church. |
Constantine Statue at York, where he was proclaimed emperor
|
The Catholic Church is the product of historical circumstances, not an
institutional foundation emanating from the will of Jesus.
We can not forget that its origins are Jews who spoke Aramaic, but later, with
the new Gentile Christians and Hellenized Jews, like Paul, were slowly away
from the foundations of Judeo-Christianity
that,
in Jerusalem, led James and
Peter. The small Jewish-Christian sect was transformed into a relatively
large church, made up of uneducated masses who do not hesitate to mix
Christian base with the remains of pagan Hellenism in decline.
Between 250-323, after suffering major Roman persecutions inflicted on the
Christians in order to eradicate Christianity from their territories and
that they were counterproductive as well as unfair -violence was never the
proper solution to the problems- the church began to engage in
the pursuit and consolidation of political power for its institutional
stability. From the pax of Constantine, 310, begin to flourish as a
first-class political power.
The churches, in economic need to keep their nascent structure and worship
as well as to serve the needy, were demanding more freedom and accumulating income
and capital in order to strengthen their legal status, which was precarious.
At the same time they were losing their autonomy, the independence they
had in their first two centuries of existence, to approach the State and
flirting with its power to preserve their heritage, their prestige and
capacity for influence
and proselytizing. And Pax of Constantine came and, with it,
came the beginning of the
end of the Church as well:
allied with power, installed in the State, one more power,
supplementary to the state and to the state functions. Christian citizens, from
now, will have double economic burden, dual control and dual allegiance, the
external, in state hands and the internal, in the hands of the Church.
They
said that Constantine seized the ecclesiastical apparatus to strengthen
his empire and
the truth
is that he succeeded.
After subjecting
with his
army Italy and North Africa, he returned confiscated property to the church
and provided a valuable contribution of the Imperial Treasury.
He
helped, at the same time, to strength and create its own dogmas, to beat the Christians dissidents living in northern Africa and other parts of Asia, as,
from the outset,
emerged different beliefs within the Christian community.
Constantine called councils, christianized imperial laws, bought the wills
of bishops and, in return, he grew in power and wealth the Patrimonium Petri,
the famous and controversial heritage of Peter. He acknowledged to the
episcopal jurisdiction in civil cases. In 318, it is established that any
citizen who had a civil dispute could go to the bishop, whose decision would
be "holy and healthy" and whose ruling could not be appealed, the state limited
to the execution of the power of the secular arm, as, in centuries later,
would do the Inquisitors. He authorized churches to receive inheritances, 321.
He declared national holiday on Sunday, the day of the Sun. Large areas and buildings
were donated to the Church throughout the empire and, with money from public
funds, built luxurious houses of worship.
Constantine, the usurper of Church powers, summoned the Council of Nicea, 325, to combat one of the many heresies of the early centuries of
Christianity: that of the bishop Arius, 256-336, who claimed the absolute uniqueness
and transcendence of God and conceived therefore, the Son as a prophet, a
creature created by the Father, that is, made by Him and he is God just as
involved in his grace, but not of the same nature as the Father.
The
Trinitarian concept is well established in other religions, like some
Egyptian and Asian. Jesus was a normal prophet in his time. Neither he nor
his disciples and followers saw and perceived him as the Son of God, the Second
Person of the Trinity, as declared in the Council of Nicea, where Constantine,
in keeping with his advisor, Osio, Bishop of Cordoba, called for nearly
three hundred bishops.
Osio's
thesis, contrary to that of Arius was that the Son is "consubstantial with the
Father" (homoousios), of the same divine nature as the Father, which not only to Arius and his supporters,
but also to other bishops, was
an openly wrong formula. But Constantine with his gifts and banquets, first
and
then with his threats of banishment if the formula was not accepted, got the most
signatures. Only Arius and his Egyptians supporters resisted and had to
choose the path of exile. Some bishops, such as Eusebius of Nicomedia, Maris
of Chalcedon and Theognis of Nicaea, declared that they had signed the article of
faith for fear of the Emperor and they came to recant.
Constantine banished them from their
dioceses and they were replaced.
The Trinitarian creed
was established by the grace of Constantine, who frequented pagan practices,
cruel and bloodthirsty, responsible for massacres of entire villages, who
slew his own son Crispus, strangled his wife and murdered his brother and
his father. It's the same church that he used at will for the unification of
his empire under one religion, the Catholicism, and dared to call himself the
thirteenth apostle. Even his mother, with a life not entirely clear, in
reward, would be Saint Helena.
Constantine,
Christian Prince, was baptized before his death.
As suggested by Voltaire: "They thought that they found a way to live as
criminals and die like saints," and as baptism, according to the
Church, erased every sin of the baptizing, so he could enter directly into
heaven.
Constantine agreed to be baptized only on his deathbed. He was baptized by Eusebius,
bishop promoter of
Arianism;
interestingly, the heresy that Constantine had
pursued.
The route
of the current church began with Constantine.
That Kingdom of God, that Jesus preached
and seconded his
fishermen
apostles, became, by the magic of power,
a powerful institution rooted in the wealth and, given its academic
qualifications, it reached the performance of functions in the higher echelons of the
State administration.
From
being persecuted it became persecutor, from redeeming
solidarity it passed to oppressive situations, from being relatively
tolerant it passed to be intolerant, arrogant, dogmatic and
overpowering.
The conquest of power was the Achilles heel of the church, his weakness.
Constantine changed its identity, its DNA we can say. That is the milestone
showing the beginning of the end; an end
lengthened by the ignorance of their faithful people, by the fearful
apparatus
of repression, by the alliance with political powers in office and by the
creation, with the help of its lawyers, of laws
and documents to its benefit.
We should not forget, to remind the supporters of the Papacy, that during the
first Christian millennium, the eight Ecumenical Councils held, had their
headquarters in the East, under the initiative of the Emperors of Byzantium or
Constantinople. And that the Nicene symbol, the Creed, was written there,
step by step, without any direct intervention of the Bishop of Rome.
DONATION OF CONSTANTINE. BORN PAPAL STATES..
|
 |
Map of the Papal
States.
The reddish area was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1860.
|
Gregory VII writes a letter to all the princes who want to travel to
Spain
to encourage them to recover those lands from the hands of infidels
and Saracens and return to its rightful owner, Saint Peter, i.e, the
Pope.
We are aware, he says, from old, that the Kingdom of Spain
was under the jurisdiction of
Saint
Peter
and although that territory
had been occupied so long by the pagans, it still belongs, by the law of
justice, only to the Holy Apostolic and no to other mortal.
In another
letter to the king of Castile and Leon, Alfonso VI, the Pope warns that the
Almighty has given to Peter and his successors "all the principalities and
powers of the earth."
Everything is heading toward theocracy, the government of the Pope,
converted to "vice-God." Such claims, almost universal, are based on the famous document
of the Donation of Constantine: Apocryphal imperial decree attributed to
Constantine whereby, while the Pope Sylvester was recognized as sovereign,
he donated him the city of Rome as well
as the
provinces of Italy and the rest of the whole Western Roman Empire.
It is a gift the Emperor makes the
Pope
for having cured him of the leprosy. But Constantine never suffered such an
illness, hence the rest of the legend is just that, legend. The
counterfeiting of the document emerges, it seems, in the mid-to late eighth
century.
Pope Stephen II in 752, when he turns to France for help against the Lombards, alludes to the Donation of Constantine. He frees
Pepin
from the oath
of allegiance he had promised Hilderic and he is anointed as king.
Later, on Christmas Eve of the year 800, Pope Leo III crowned
his son Charlemagne as Emperor and declared that, henceforth,
kings
would be elected from the Pepin's family. That is the end of the Merovingian dynasty
and
the
beginning of the
Carolingian. The Frankish troops, in return, handed to the Pope a strip of
land of 42,000 square kilometers in central Italy. With the Donation of
Constantine at hand, the Pope said that the king had only given him what belonged to
Church
according to that document. Leo IX, in 1054, using this document to warn the
Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, that the Roman Pontiffs are
the inheritors the most powerful
in the earth, thanks to the lofty and imperial
generosity of Constantine, who received it from God and it will be given back to God through
his ministers. Europe is from now a papal feud.
The
Dictatus
Papae contain the solemn proclamation of a universal
and absolute theocracy. Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085, determines that his
power is unlimited. Today we flush with the thought of such nonsense, but it was used as a weapon
against kings and emperors for many centuries, about six. Here are
its 27 sentences, which formed the basis of the canonical law that has survived to
this day.
-
1. The Roman Church was founded exclusively
for the Lord.
2. Only the Roman Pontiff is justly called "universal".
3. Only the Pope can absolve or depose bishops.
4. A papal legate presides over all bishops in the councils, even
inferior to them by their management and may depose them.
5. Even the Pope may depose the absent.
6. You can not hold any communication with the excommunicated by the
Pope.
7. Only the Pope can establish new laws in keeping with the times, meet
new people, transform into an Abbey a sinecure and back, split a rich
episcopacy and gather poor bishops.
8. Only the Pope can use the imperial insignia.
9. The Pope is the only man that all the princes kiss his foot.
10. The Pope is the one whose name should be pronounced in all churches.
11. The title of Pope is unique in the world.
12. The Pope has power to depose emperors.
13. The Pope is permitted to transfer bishops from one diocese to
another.
14. The Pope has the right to ordain a cleric of any church, to where
he wants..
15. One who has been ordained by the Pope in the church can order in
other's church, but not to do the war; he should not receive a higher
grade from another bishop.
16. No general council can be convened without his order.
17. No text of any book can be considered canonical without his
authorization.
18. His judgments can not be revoked by anyone and only he can revoke
all.
19. No one can judge the Pope.
20. Nobody can condemn one who appeals to the Apostolic See.
21. The major causes of any church should be referred to the Pope.
22. The Roman Church never made a mistake and, according to testimony of
Scripture, can not ever go wrong.
23. The Roman Pontiff, if it is canonically ordained, is a saint by the
merits of blessed Peter, as bishop San Enodio and many holy fathers
testify, as affirm the decrees of pious Pope Symmachus.
24. For the Pope's consent and order subordinates are allowed to blame.
25. The Pope can depose bishops and acquit, regardless of the synod
meeting.
26. There is no Catholic who disagrees with the Roman Church.
27. The Pope can absolve subjects from their oath of allegiance to
unfair kings.
Papal
power projects in concentric circles. The Pope is the epicenter. The curia
and the bishops, clergy and people revolve around the Pope. There is a
tendency to centralism. Everything is good with Rome and all bad without
Rome. The early Christian communities were small and closed, autonomous and
self-sufficient, cultural subgroups which, with the passing of time, constitute the
Church that becomes one of the most impressive, absolutist and
bureaucratic
organizations
of the world.
In the
first communities, the unit was in a shared faith, rather than in institutional
structures. Above the local Church there was no standing organizational
apparatus. In the first communities there was some degree of anarchism,
without
bureaucracies or pontificates. The ultimate and absolute boss was the
bishop and only there was a certain reverence for the churches founded
by the apostles as Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Rome.
Everything changed when Constantine, with great political tact, use the
church as a cohesive force to implement its program of government. It's then
when it is born the path of ecclesial power which will strengthen, with ups and downs, until
today.
When
disagreements arise between the churches, the Emperor invites all community
leaders, bishops, to sit together and resolve the problem. He begins the
practice of convening councils, task that inherit his successors until the year
one thousand. The first eight ecumenical councils were convened by
the emperors.
At Nicaea, First Ecumenical Council, begin to build that massive dogma
which crushes Jesus' word. At Nicaea
was proclaimed the divinity of Jesus. The idea
of a substantial Son to the Father was unknown at the Scripture, such words
were introduced by the theologians of Nicaea. Dogmas are created. He who accepts them is good, he
who refuses will be pursued. It solves a problem of public order.
The
Emperor should exile or imprison heretics, even bishops. Theology, that is, the
doctrine that outlines and clarifies the nature of divinity and the Church
itself, was born in Nicaea as mandatory structure. And it will be very useful,
because it has the
centralizing capacity the Church needs to unify the
belief and that Constantine, in turn, needs to structure his empire.
Thus theology
creates the need for a central
and unique
authority, superior to local churches
and their bishops, to adequately monitor the orthodoxy of the doctrine.
Until the
fall of Western Roman Empire, that authority was embodied in the Emperor and
from the eleventh century, lies in the Pope, assisted by a large curial
apparatus. Theological unit carries unity of language, of liturgy and
ceremonial. Pius V, 1566-1572, Inquisitor General, will implement a single
Roman Catechism, which specifies what is to be believed, a Roman
Breviary with the recitation of the priests, a Roman Missal for
the rite of the Mass to be identical anywhere. The Roman rites wipe out the indigenous rites
bursting with beauty, color and, many of them, with cultural content. This happens in Spain
with the rites of Toledo, for example and the Mozarabic liturgy. The Curia
was able to standardize and control the dogmas, “lex-credendi”, the
manner of praying, "lex orandi”, and the way of thinking, "ratio
cogitandi". When
Pope Pius V promulgated the Roman Missal, all missals
or ritual manuals circulating in the Church had to be burned, unless they
were two centuries old.
Since the
eleventh century papal legacies are created by the curiae, which reduce the
powers of the national primates. Similarly the appointment of bishops,
a right rescued with much slaughter from the princes through the long War of
Investiture, is now reserved to the Pope. In the ritual form there is coined the
phrase: "Bishop by the grace of God and the Holy Apostolic See". The period of
the Popes in Avignon,1305-1378, coincides with the roof of the
institutional power of the Church: Never before had been so powerful and severe
control of the Western Church by the Popes, nor it will be again. Avignon marks
the highest point in the process of growth of the medieval Curia and the
Papacy. The exile reinforces the absolute power of the Popes. There were economic and
geographical reasons underpinning that fact: Avignon was more accessible than
Rome.
Pope Gelasius I, the year 493, is the author of the first declaration of
independence of the Papacy against the highest authority of the Council and
of political power.
The first Christian communities were characterized by low interest on money
and for the generosity with which they surrendered it. "The money from the Christians,
Tertullian says, is to provide bread for the poor, to pay their graves,
to feed
orphans and to help the elderly." In general, there is no treasurer or
treasury in the second century because the Church lacks economic structure. At
that time, the various churches have two sources of income that were spent
at the moment: cash handouts spontaneously deposited by the faithful in a box ready
for it and in-kind offers. Exceptionally a church leads to another for help,
as it is the case of the bishops of Numidia, who write to Carthage and Rome to
send them money to rescue virgins and Christian children kidnapped by
barbarians. While the church functions as an artisan organization, comprised
of small communities, convinced of the imminence of the apocalypse, the end
of the world, -eschatology-, money is considered a bad travel companion.
The early Christian writers reflect that common view. St. Jerome came to
write that "all
rich is a criminal, or the heir of a criminal." But from the third
century and specially from the IV, the growth of the Church brings a change in
attitude: to increase in size it increases the volume of needs and birth of a
new approach. In short, the process that changed the meaning of money in the
Church can be summarized in four phases that offers Antonio Castro:
-
1.- At the
beginning and as the chronicles tell (Acts 4:32) Christians put their assets
available to other members of the community even sell their properties to
make them money to help the priests and the poor.
-
2.-The Church organizes its Thesaurus and makes up the Patrimonium Sancti Petri (St.
Peter's Heritage) with the avalanche of gifts and bequests: then
creates a legal space to possess. The properties are not sold and revenues are
dedicated only to aid.
-
3.-Triumph of
the canon law: the revenues are divided into four equal parts that are
distributed each among bishops, clergy, the poor and the fourth for the
maintenance costs.
-
4.-The law
provides that the usufruct of the property of the Church is for the clerics.
Each of
these phases is the result of a long process. First they had to justify
retention of the property received. Then the circle of the Roman Curia
will apply to donations the sense of Roman law: any donation is final and
irrevocable.
Popes accumulate wealth under the title of Patrimonium Petri:
monuments, books, paintings and sacred vessels, movable property and real
estate. Hence the logic words of the governor of Rome, Praetextatus, when
he says:
"make me Bishop of Rome and immediately I will Christian".
The document that has given the Catholic Church the most profitability is the
famous forged decree known as The Donation of Constantine
–Constitutium Constantini or Privilegium Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae-, dated March, 30th, AD 315.
.... in
this text, which was presented as written by Constantine himself, apart from
describing his conversion process, at the hands of Pope Sylvester, the
Emperor made it clear that:
"the more so as our imperial power is
earthly, we
come to decree that His Most Holy Roman Church will be honored and revered
and the holy seat of blessed Peter will be gloriously exalted even above our
empire and its
earthly
throne [...]
This See will govern the
four main headquarters of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople and Jerusalem,
just as all the churches of God throughout the world. [...] Finally, we
inform
that we transfer to Silvestre, universal Pope, our palace and all the
provinces, palaces and districts of the city of Rome and Italy as well as
the regions
further west."
This criminal forgery, produced by order of Pope Stephen II, 752-757, was
employed by him to force the military alliance of the Frankish king Pepin
and his son Charlemagne with the Church to fight the Lombards, who
threatened the wealth and power of Roman Pope. After the defeat of the Lombards, King Pepin, convinced by the delusion that Stephen II was the
successor of St. Peter and of the Emperor Constantine, restored the Catholic
Church all lands that rightfully belonged to it through the Donation of Constantine.
With this
scam the Catholic Church has accumulated a wealth and power so immense that
still it lives off the income of that grand and infamous crime, origin of the
state of the Church. The oldest text known of this Donation appears in the
manuscripts of the pseudo Isidorian Decretals (c.850), but was not used
publicly until the eleventh century, when it all was taken for real and that very
few had seen it. Pope Leo IX, 1049-1054, in his writings, he quoted large passages
from the false donation to justify the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, but it was not until
Pope Gregory VII, 1073-1085, that legal doctrine designed
by deception becomes an essential foundation of canon law. Subsequent Popes,
as Urban II, 1088-1099, Innocent III, 1198-1216, Gregory IX, 1492-1503, used
it hard to prevail upon princes, to annex territories and so on.
[11]
The
Emperor Otto III, 983-1002, knowing the deceit, denounced falsehood to the
Pope
Sylvester II, leaving it null and void. In their paper, 1001, after
denouncing and repudiating the corruption and misappropriation of wealth
that characterized the Papacy, said that the Popes:
"twisted papal laws and
humiliated the Roman Church and some Popes were gone so far as to pretend most of
our empire. They did not ask for what they had lost for their own fault,
they did not worry for how much they had wasted in their madness, but having scattered
their possessions to the winds,
through their own negligence, vented their guilt on our
empire and sought the property of others, namely, our property and our
empire. They are lies invented by themselves (ab illis ipsis inventa) and
among them the deacon John, nicknamed cut-Finger, who wrote a paper with
gold letters and feigned a long lie under the name of Constantine the Great
(sub titulo longi mendacii tempora Constantini magni finxit).
The
falsehood was discovered by the papal secretary and canon of the Lateran,
Laurenzi Vall, in 1440, but he did not made it public for fear of Pope. It came to light in
1519, the same year that Martin Luther harshly criticized the papal blatant
business of indulgences. The Church defended the authenticity of the
document until the nineteenth century, under pressure from the leaders of
European nations, weary of the extortions of the Vatican. In this false
document the Church supported the creation of the Papal State and its primate,
but
it did not ask pardon for the stolen riches or expressed a desire to
return them or to clarify the issue of primacy, just against its moral
standards. [12]
Boniface
VIII, with the Document of the Donation and with the help of Roman law, becomes
head of State and, to express it in symbols, added a third crown to
his tiara,
which also had appeared in the thirteenth century, to symbolize the
temporary power. First, the tiara had only one crown and then two, which, as the
two keys, symbolizes the dual power: the order and the jurisdiction of
bishops.
Boniface
VIII feels imbued with an
authoritarian power, as Philip the Fair and in his person merges absolute
power, the religious and political.
The latter in his own state.
THEORY OF THE TWO SWORDS
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Tiara: Touched high.
With three triple crowns symbolizing his authority as Pope,
bishop and king.
|
Pope Gelasius, in the late V, proposes the organization of dual society corresponding to
the two kinds of values that should be preserved. The Church would be
responsible for the spiritual interests and eternal salvation.
The temporal or secular interests, the maintenance of peace, order and
justice, would be granted to civil power.
This doctrine is commonly accepted in the first part of the Middle Ages,
when the rivalry between the Pope and the emperor became a controversial
relationship between the temporal and spiritual.
In matters of doctrine, the emperor should be subordinated - it was thought- to the
Church and the clergy should be subject, in criminal cases, to
ecclesiastical authority or ecclesiastical courts, not the civilians. This
theory follows the teaching of Augustine of Hippo, who defends the
distinction between the temporal and spiritual and he considers pagan the union in
the same person of the secular and spiritual authority.
Loyalty and obedience of man, with the advent of Christianity, would be divided
into two ideals, two governments and two contributions: tithes and first
fruits to the Church, personal services and contributions to the state.
The economic burden of the people was increased greatly and also moral and
religious pressures weighed heavily on their consciences.
Gelasius, writing against the Church's subordination to the imperial court
of Constantinople, made it clear that the responsibility of the priest was
heavier than the king because it was the eternal salvation of souls. Hence
it would be easy to infer that the ideal society should be the Christian and
the leadership or main power should belong to the Church. In fact, Pope Gregory VII, supported in this doctrine, sought to exercise
on the Emperor
the same right to discipline which, as Pope, he had on every Christian, and
so to become the moral arbiter of Europe.
In a
Council held at Rome, 1080, he wrote to the council fathers:
I ask, then, most holy fathers and princes
act
so that everyone understands and knows that, if you can bind and loose in
Heaven, on Earth you can remove and give to anyone, on their merits, empires,
kingdoms,
duchies,
principalities, trademarks, counties and possessions of all men....
That Kings and all secular princes understand how
great you are, how great is your power and that they fear to disobey in the least to your churches.
[13]
The qualitative leap, made by
the Pope
in the theory of power, is
hallucinating.
The Church becomes the main power of society over the Emperor and,
therefore, of the kings and feudal lords.
The foundations for the struggle between the Papacy and the Empire were
served: The fights between Gregory VII and Henry IV, the Wars of
Investiture, the alliances with the power to the detriment of the Christian
people. Everything was a product of the ideology geared to the interests of the
Church, drawn from accommodative
interpretations. Myths are handled, as well
as the doctrines and ideologies derived from them. The Patristic
and
Tradition sometimes saw to interpret and sometimes to say what the Scriptures
had omitted, always carrying water to their mill. Those in power always
rationalize their behavior and auto-suggest that they are doing the right
thing, even if it means having to lie and invent texts and documents; they
are
even able to believe and convince themselves that they act for the greater
glory of God. Here it is applied the iron law of oligarchy of Milchels, chain of
events that lead to the concentration of power; it is also applied the elite theory of Mills and the
iron law of Mosca, who study the metamorphosis of power and the influence
of circles
or elites on the ruler.
Your
opinion in the
Guestbook
PRECEDING AND BIRTH OF THE INQUISITION
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On the origin and development of the Holy
Inquisition
Office.
Louis de Paramo, Madrid, 1598. |
The church
invested with new powers emanating from the Edict of Milan, takes action to
repress any idea that does not fit the official version.
The threat posed by the Cathars against the Church of that time was an
excuse to treat them as heretics, as social rebels, to exterminate them,
joining the
powers of the church and the state.
At this time, in an effort to save what was called "purity of faith or
dogma," the Inquisition was born. In the fateful year of 1223, Pope
Gregory IX issued a bull establishing the "Holy Roman and Universal
Inquisition” whose purpose would be “rooting out heresy wherever
it could be found”.
The writings of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation are examined
thoroughly to detect their heresies and condemn them.
THE CATHARS
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Cathar Cross.
The bloody crusades during the 13th century against the Cathars razed the ancient
Occitan civilization, the civilization of the troubadours, courtly love, tolerance
and democracy too soon, leaving only ruins.
|
The Occitan (Languedoc), in
southern France, in the mid-twelfth century, is a neutral space
limited by the French power in the North, by the English rule in Aquitaine to the west,
by the imperial authority to the east,
and by the influence of the kingdom of Aragon in the south. In his region
the clergy was characterized by
the relaxation of their customs and by their dissipated, corrupt and
parasitic life. They lived bleeding people dry with the tithes tax and
enjoyed of cohabitation with mistresses.
In these circumstances,
they begin to reach the Languedoc some special characters who dress in
poverty, with long beards and living in their own work, and practiced the most absolute austerity, so they
were called "good
men" or "pure". They are the Catars, from the Greek
term Kataroi, which means pure or perfect.
Later, they would also be called Albigenses, having been the city of Albi one of the initial focuses of the Cathars. As many of them
were weavers, the word tisserand (weaver) was also synonymous of Cathar
or
heretic. They declare themselves Christians, they seem priests, but are
humble, simple and austere in their habits. Their message, in the preaching
in the squares and markets, is that of the early Church: love, tolerance,
common share, freedom... They attack with energy, but without violence, the
Church of Rome calling it the "Great Babylon", the "Basilica of Devil", the
"Synagogue of Satan."
Their doctrine enclosed some singularities, which did not pass without
notice, they are innovative. Here are some of its proposals:
-Do not build churches, but rather destroy the already built, because
prayer is equally beneficial in a tavern or in a public square or in the
interior of a temple, at the foot of the altar.
-The bread
blessed and consecrated by the hands of a priest is not unlike the bread
blessed and consecrated by secular hands.
-The
charity is not good, given that Christians should act so that between them
had not rich nor poor, nor should they have the means to succor the needy
and no opportunity to exert such an act of charity.
-And they
added that the Roman Church was a den of thieves: Speluncam latronum esse.
[14]
The
Cathars are Manichean, advocates of the dual principles the Good and
the
Evil, with Gnostic links, Jewish and Christian, with esoteric contributions,
but
with important theoretical coherence that brings them the sympathy
of all classes, both in Languedoc and in northern Italy.
The
Catholic Church always frightened the people of faith with the fear of hell.
For the sins, the medieval man felt and feared being condemned to eternal
fire. The Cathars, however, say the opposite: that man was destined to
salvation so inevitable. Fear was not part of their message because sooner or
later the purification will be reach, and the triumph of Good over Evil
will be reached as well. The Hell of the Cathars, being related to the matter, a product of evil, was here on earth.
Through various incarnations the person is released to achieve full spirituality,
perfection, purity. In future incarnations, the creature could become male
or female, regardless, because the soul has no sex, hence the men and women
are equal before God. Another revolutionary idea for that time.
The same
doctrine, but perhaps with more moderation, was professed the Waldenses, so
called by Peter Waldo, but they added a very important assumption: that there
is not the least legitimate reason to take the life to anyone, not for criminal
reasons and less for a question of doctrine.
Cathars
and Waldensians introduce a democratic movement within the Church, defending
the abolition of privileges of the clergy and supporting the universality of
the priesthood among Christians. Every Christian, for being it, participates in
the priesthood of Christ and he can bless the bread, preach and practice the
worship their
conscience dictates.
The
Church lost the opportunity to assimilate this democratic doctrine, even
more, was extremely
irritated
with it, because it violated their privileges and wealth and it was against their
spiritual and earthly power, against their arrogance and abuse of authority.
Let us that the Cathars criticized the pomp and opulence in which bishops
and the Pope lived and claimed that, through baptism, every Christian is a
priest. This Catholic theological truth is not put into practice since it
would eliminate the privileged priestly class. It is also worth to recall that neither Jesus nor
the apostles were priests, but prophets, preachers of the word,
never rites administrators, which became the typical role of the priest.
In its
structure there were three categories corresponding to the three degrees of
initiation: supporters, believers and perfects.
Most
Cathars belonged to the single degree of supporters who must practice
the perfectionism, a rite which consisted of kneeling when a Perfect
passed to get his blessing. The
Catholic clergy said that the Perfect made to worship himself, but this was not
the sense of that ritual.
Believers
were the second category and should practice humility, love of neighbor and
truth. The Perfects revealed them one of their secrets, the esoteric, and
taught them the effectiveness of the Paternoster (Our Father).
The third
stage consisted of the Perfect (men) and also of the Perfect (women) because women were
not barred from the priesthood. The name of Perfect was not a vain
superlative, but it designated those who had completed the initiation and
it was a development idea.
The
Perfect had received the consolamentum (consolation), a sort of priestly
anointing and baptism, deserved only the righteous who had become worthy of
the liberation of matter, which was obtained by the imposition of hands by
another Perfect and by the delivery of the only prayer recited, the Our Father. The
morality that the prefect should observe was much stricter than that of
the believer: totally abstention from worldly pleasures, to lead an ascetic life,
not to eat meat and even to practice endura or voluntary suicide,
consisting of starving themselves to get rid of the vile matter where they were
imprisoned. Instead, the believer could take a less rigorous life, have his own
property, he could eat meat and even practice free love, because they regarded marriage as a
contrafornicatio (against
fornication).
Do not
forget that the Cathars argued that the tangible world was a prey of evil,
that is why it could not be created by the extremely good God. This world is the work of
the Demiurge, Satan, whom they call the Great Arrogant.
By his
spirit, man is part of the good god, of the immaterial world of light, but, by
his body, is a prisoner of the evil Demiurge. Hence his hostility towards
procreation, cruel act as a soul was locked in the dungeon of matter. Perfects refused, therefore, that marriage
be for the procreation.
They were
tolerant regard to sexuality of believers, otherwise Occitan society
had not heeded them; and they preached contraception.
Believing
in the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis or transmigration of
souls, the Cathars believed that after death the spirit could be reborn
into a lighter, more ethereal or immaterial being if it had been virtuous, or
in a
more heavy being, in an animal for example, otherwise.
So Perfects could not eat those animals that may have a lost or in transit
soul embodied in them. They ate fish because they were convinced that fish
reproduce by spontaneous generation. The eternal soul, say using a textile
metaphor, can take one by one, various body wraps. The man, after his last mortal breath, can be transformed into a beast or an angel.
It is
true that the Catholic Church does not accept transmigration, metempsychosis,
of the souls, but it is not less true that it is dualistic as the Cathars, who were also
Christians and as such they believe in God and the Devil or Satan,
rebellious
Angel,
and that the good is pneumatic or spiritual while the bad
is the corporeal appearance, the world and
the flesh. Common to both faiths is to see the body as a keeper of the spirit,
both of them could could agree to that expression "I
die because I do not die" of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila,
and all of tem consider the world as the enemy of human beings.
Let's look a little
more certain positions of the Church regarding these issues. For the
Catholic doctrine, there are three enemies of man: the world,
the devil and the flesh, says the catechism.
Sexual pleasures are bad, sinful, and all sexual acts must be open to procreation.
The deprivation and asceticism are good and cleansing, sexuality is bad in
itself, say the Popes. Gregory the Great, 590-604, was the first to
establish that sexual desire is a sin in itself, it is only acceptable for the
purpose of procreation.
What
matters is the afterlife, the life beyond the greave, Heaven, which is eternal and, for Catholics,
it is the view face to face with God, which contains all the goodness and
beauty. Paradise is more attractive for Muslims, which is in the highest, a delicious
and refreshing spot watered by rivers and where leafy trees pour their shade with magnificent
fruits. The participants of the heavenly
banquet, dressed in tuxedos, silk and brocade, get everything they wish.
Young men beautiful as pearls come and go pouring a delicious drink that
does not induce to say nonsense or to commit reprehensible actions.
As a company and as wives, the blessed
receive the black-eyed houris, specially created by Allah for the eternal
enjoyment of men.
This side, the world, this
life and the matter are bad and evil. Certainly this is a kind of... psychological, anthropological and
cosmological
heresy. It is against the logic of life and
it travels through mythical
worlds, from where the souls or spirits come from. That is the world that
feeds Plato. The symbolic
thinking is not the scientific one and the Church continues confusing them,
with its, to a certain point,
Manichean and dualistic
mentality.
In 1209,
Pope Innocent III preached a crusade against the heretic.
Now there are
not the unbelievers who die at the
hands of the cruciform sword, but Christians themselves. In less than half a
century, the Cathar heresy is destroyed by theforce of arms. In 1231, another
Pope, Gregory IX, instituted the Inquisition.
Everything for the
maintenance of social order. With it begins the actual killing. In
partnership with the civil power, anyone who opposes papal statements or merely
who is annoying
shall be sentenced to the stake or killed by hanging. In 1252,
Pope Innocent IV officially introduces the use of torture in his bull Ad extirpanda. The heretics have no rights.
In
the manuals used by judges that were written at the time, you can read
sentences like this:
"It is better a hundred
people die innocent than a single heretic is freed".
It begins the era of terror.
All
is allowed to
the inquisitors, who, in many cases, behave as genuine psychopaths. It would
seem that they could not ever go wrong. It seemed that they could do
nothing that was
reprehensible. Those who dared question their authority were declared
heretics.
Catholic intellectuals like Siger
of Brabant, Meister Eckhart, William of Ockham and Marsilius of Padua, among
many others, were under suspicion or condemned and their works were declared
heretical. In many cases, heresy takes the form of social protest. They are
the national heresies:
In England
there
were
the Lollards
of John Wycliffe; in Bohemia, the Hussites, in the shelter of the memory of
Jan Huss; in Spain, the heretics of Durango, with Alonso de Mella in the lead.
[15]
EXTERMINATION ORDER
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Camp dels cremats.
Field of the burned, situated on the slopes of Montségur.
|
It was in the castle of San Felix de Caraman, the road from Toulouse to
Revel (France), where in May 1167 it was held the first council of the Occitan
Cathars; a Bulgarian bishop named Nikita and nicknamed "the Pope of the Cathars",
came on purpose from Constantinople to preside it. Delegates to the Champagne
and Lombardy were present and, of course, there were
also
in the
castle the Occitan Cathar clerics.
To start,
acting by the absolute dualism and unlike the mitigated dualism,
it was set the doctrine that granted the same power to God and to the Evil Demiurge, which still
dug a deeper doctrinal gulf between Cathars and Catholics. Then they dealt
with the organization. The Occitan Cathar Church was divided into the four
dioceses of Touluose, Albi, Carcassonne and Agen, whose respective bishops were elected
just there, namely, Bernard Raymond, Guiraud Mercier, Raymond of Casalis and Cellerier Sicard.
The open day celebration of the council, the geographical extent of the
diocese, all show that the Cathars, who had appeared in the region half a
century earlier, had quickly become the national religion of the Occitan.
[16]
Catharism
quickly spread throughout the Occitan and surrounding regions, protected by
the counts of Toulouse and Foix and also by Raymond Roger de Trencavel. The
Cathars enjoyed certain privileges, such as being exempt from 'carving' taxes and
military service.
The Roman
Catholic Church, amazed at the spread of Cathars, thought at first to contrast
preaching against preaching, doctrinal arguments against doctrinal
arguments. Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian abbot, was one of the preachers
without success.
The
ambitious Earl Lothario di Segni was elected Pope with the name of Innocent
III, 1198. He sent Pierre de Castelnau to Occitania with a large group of
missionaries. In a debate in the castle of Foix, the sister of the Earl of Esclarmonde, defender of the Cathars and
known by her knowledge, heard from the monk Stephen
of Minia, to the outrage of the Cathars assistants, these offensive words:
Dedicate
to spin in your spinning wheel! Here the word is not granted to women!
Between
1203 and 1205, Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Dominicans, try to solve the
problem through preaching and theological disputes, but faith is a matter of
belief and not a matter of ideas or logical debates. It is not easy to
give up on certain beliefs to take others. Belief against belief, the failure was
inevitable. The only solution would be tolerance, but the Catholic Church could not, in the least,
boast about it.
In a
painting by Pedro Berruguete, Saint Dominic appears with the Albigenses and
there are subjected to God's judgment the two opposing doctrines. He
yields two books on the fire, one Cathar and the other Catholic. The Cathar,
obviously, burns and the Catholic rises through the air miraculously
escaping the flames.
It was a
premonitory sign of burning o the Cathars. First there were the books, then
it would
be people.
The most disastrous mistake of the Church.
It is
said that Dominic de Guzman, when he withdrew from the Languedoc after his dismal failure, made this fatal threat:
where there is no point preaching,
stake will prevail.
And
there
begins the hunt for the Cathars, Waldenses and Albigenses. Pierre de
Castelnau, legate of the Pope in the Languedoc, is killed trying to cross
the Rhone. They blamed for the crime the Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, Cathar
believer who used to be accompanied by Cathar Perfects. This is what Pope
Innocent III needed to organize for the first time ever, a crusade against
the Christians. Transcendent milestone.
There is no doubt that the position of the Cathars against the Roman Church
was like that of other dualistic schools : rejection of baptism, of the Old Testament
and of the belief that Jesus was a being created by God. His incarnation was
illusory and neither suffered nor died or rose again. But the
Church, to justify its repression and intolerance, wove a tissue of
lies:
That they were celebrating Sabbats, in which Satan offered to attendees in the form of animal from
whose ears flames were coming out and, with his terrible voice, he put
some into a trance for several hours, while others lost consciousness.
That the devil
president was anally copulating with women, forcing them to remain as the goats
to be penetrated by the male, resting on the soles of the feet and palms of
hands and that his semen was yellow and smelly. After that they copulated among
themselves, mainly through homosexual practices. To Invent these tales helped the Church
to weaken, before the Christian believers, the image and value of the
persecuted, and to justify its own crimes.
On March,
6th, 1208, after a campaign in which it was claimed that it was the Count of Toulouse,
Raymond VI, who had armed the murderer's arm of the legacy of Pope
Innocent III, he launched the call for holy war:
"We deem
it a duty to warn our venerable brothers, bishops and voters, urging them
on behalf of the Holy Spirit and ordering strictly to make bloom the
word of peace and of faith sown by Pedro de Castelnau. And those who, armed with the true
faith, attack those who reject it, we promise them complete remission of
their sins".
It was
not only the remission of their sins what Innocent III promised the
crusaders, but also the right to pillage:
"We want the bishops declare detached by apostolic authority those who
are under the yoke of the Count of Toulouse by an oath of allegiance and
grant to all true Catholics, not only the right to persecute heretics,
but also to take their lands and domains so that hereby they expunged
their disloyalty to Christ and to keep it clear of all blame the
territories which have been shamefully stained by ofevil of that count.
Come on, soldiers of Christ! Pacify these people in the name of the God
of peace and love! Apply yourself to destroy heresy by all means that
God will inspire you!."
[17]
Pope
promises to attackers, armed with the true faith, the complete remission of
their sins. The use of sin, purely religious concept, is a religions
lethal weapon used to subdue and enslave their believer members, to poke and
violate the privacy of human consciousness, to hoard wealth through the sale
of indulgences which are nothing, but remission of sins. This is called
simony.
The
Pope,
normal thing in his time, invades the civil power with an undeniable air of
superiority. He orders bishops to release from the oath of allegiance to
those who are under the yoke of the Count of Toulouse.
The
feud is the essence of medieval social structure determined by the
vassalage, the basis of feudalism. The relationship between a lord and a vassal
is established through the oath of allegiance, under which, most of the
rights fall on the master and most of the obligations on his vassals.
By the oath of allegiance, the vassal can not fool his lord, attack him,
stain his honor or prejudice his interests in the feud, in the usufruct of
the land. The Lord promises to give the vassal protection and security.
To untie
the oath
of allegiance is to leave the master without his subjects, it is his death sentence
as a feudal lord. The Pope, clearly ultravires, beyond his
authority, is abusing his power and his perceived authority. The Crusaders
are allowed to invade lands that are not theirs or belong to them, allowed
to occupy them for the crime of disloyalty to Christ. And in the name of the God
of peace and love, a whole theological nonsense, he tells them:
apply
yourself to destroy heresy by all means that God will inspire you.
With death, obviously.
Innocent
III and Gregory IX, considered the two great Popes of the Middle Ages, began
to develop an authoritarian thinking, to exercise centralized sovereignty
and they resort to temporary power to preserve the spiritual one. They chose
the easy option: the use of violence, the result of intolerance, which more
than solution it was the opening of the serious problems to come.
Lacking
self-criticism, the necessary humility to learn from others, they did not know or
could not appreciate the terrible consequences of their decisions, dictated
by impatience and by the search of immediate effectiveness, so contrary to the
spirit of the Gospel. They fell into the trap of authoritarianism that the
practice of Roman law inevitably develops. The constitutions of Justinian
sent to kill the heretic, that's the worst thing that the Church could have done
because they are crimes they never prescribed and that history will never
forget and never forgive. Believes and rituals are free actions. Nothing
belongs to the realm of freedom as religion, because it concerns free
will, said Lactantius, the
Christian Cicero, already in the fourth century.
The phrase in the name
of the God
of
peace and love
makes shudders. Semantics, Logic and
even Theology jump through the air, blown by ambition and
arrogance without limits of Innocent III. Destroying the heresy was one of
the motivations, not always the principal. At the same time there was to destroy the
people who, with their behavior of evangelical poverty, complained of luxuries and
wealth
of the Church. The Pope added:
"With
regard to the Count of Toulouse, although providing satisfaction to us and
to the Holy Church, do not let that the burden of oppression ceases weighing on him.
Throw them, he and his henchmen, from their castles
and
take away their lands".
He also
was looking for castles and lands to reward those kings and princes who fought with
him. Political and economical reasons, conservation and progression of ecclesiastical
power always stood behind the crusades and the heretical persecutions. In
addition there were ethnical or racist motivations, as that would be made with the
Jews and Muslims. And all ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
Raymond
VI, aware of imminent danger to his territory, sought a commitment to
saving the Pope, but he ordered him:
Raymond
shall waive all rights on the bishops and abbeys, prevent the Jews from
public offices and hand over all that be reported as heretics.
Raymond was submitted to the dictates of the Pope.
Stripped to the waist,
the bare feet, the rope around his neck, went to the church of St. Gilles
where he suffered the torture of flogging as a price for his acquittal.
When he
realized he had been duped, made a bold political stroke: he joined the
Crusaders, which, according to predetermined arrangements, made his lands
to be
untouchable and can thus avoid appropriating them. Land of the Crusaders
were untouchable.
The North French barons saw in the crusade of Innocent III against the
Cathars a wonderful chance to conquer the South and thus
to broaden their areas of influence to the Perineum
and to put boundaries to the kingdom of Pedro II of Aragon. The Languedoc
feudatory lands were his and, therefore, Pedro II was forced to pay
attention to them, what would end up with his life by attending Raymond's call and
fighting in his defense.
Philip Augustus, King of France, had declared himself undecided at the
beginning of
the crusade, but he ends giving up by the political benefits that it brings
and, in the
spring of 1209, he authorizes the recruitment of his vassals. The Crusaders
are concentrated in Lyon and they form a large army - made up, it is said, of sixty thousand
people
between horsemen and foot soldiers- that the chronicler and poet William of Tudela
describes thus:
"It was like an army of petty ideals,
an army armed from head to toe,
wrong villagers, obtuse peasants,
not counting the priests and all the nobility."
Arnaud Amaury, Abad of
Citaux, was in charge. On July, 20th, they camped in front of Béziers and
request the population the delivery of all Cathar heretics. Raymond-Roger de Trencavel, Viscount of
Bézeirs, Carcassonne, Albi and Razes, tried to negotiate with the
papal legate Arnaud Amaury, but the latter rejected the peace proposal. Trencavel entrenched
himself there in Carcassonne to organize resistance. To the
proposal of hand over the heretics, the elected magistrates and municipal judges
indignantly rejected the offer thus:
We prefer
to drown in the sea thant give you our citizens and give up defending the city
and our freedoms with it.
The city of Béziers was well fortified and well furnished with sufficient
food, but the besieged committed a serious indiscretion. They went out in
full day to harass the attackers who were lying and they left the
doors of the walled city opened on their backs. Realizing that, the
attackers took advantage to penetrate in the city with thousands of
crusaders and launch plunder and pillage, rape of women and killing their
inhabitants. The citizens of Béziers, terrified, took refuge in churches and
rang the bells asking for help. The Catholic priest, not a heretic one, was
clothed with the sacred vestments thinking it would save his life, but
all in vain. The Magdalena church was sumptuously decorated to celebrate
its holiday, the chroniclers say there were about seven thousand crowded people, men, women and children
included. No one was spared, nor the Catholic priest
dressed in the vestments at the altar. The massacre, in macabre procession,
followed by the entire city, which, after the looting and pillage, was burned with
his church. Everything was turned to ashes that emitted smell of crimes and
death.
Twenty
thousand people were killed in the looting of the city of Béziers, as stated
in the letter that the legacy Arnaldo Amalric sent to Innocent III:
On this
day, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword without distinction of
age or sex.
It is
said that some soldiers, before starting the slaughter, knowing that in the
city there
were Catholics Christians besides the heretics, they asked the papal
legate, the Abad of Citaux, Arnaud Amaury, how they might
distinguish the Cathars from the Catholics among the population. He
responded with this
sad famous phrase that History will keep indelible :
Kill them all. God will recognize those of him.
One
scholar, in 1866, -according the French archivist Pernoud Regine in What is
the Middle Ages? - showed that those words were never spoken, because
they are not in any historical document of the time and can only be read in
the Dialogus Miraculorum (Dialogue of Miracles). This Dialogue was written some sixty
years after those events by the German monk Caesarius of Heisterbach and it
is considered as little historic and highly imaginative. Regardless of the
historicity of the sentence, which many authors writing on the subject
mentioned it as historical, the reality is that they killed everyone, men, women,
children, Cathars and Catholics, including the priest clad in sacred
ornamentation. The slaughter terrified all Cathars of
neighboring regions
and many of them had to take the flight to save their lives.
The first
of August, the Crusaders appeared before the walls of Carcassonne and
proposed
its defender, Trencavel, a young man of twenty five, to hand over the Cathar
heretics. Trencavel, just as the magistrates of Béziers, replied:
I'd rather die at the stake
to surrender the humblest of my subjects.
After
heavy fighting that lasted two weeks, the Crusaders failed to take the city
stoutly walled, but the summer was hot, water was lacking and food was
spoiling,
especially meat. Given the circumstances, Trencavel began negotiations with the Crusaders
and he gets that the people lives, in exchange for leaving the town, should
be respected, leaving Trencavel himself hostage for as long as the duration
of the evacuation.
Far
from obtaining the agreed freedom, Trencavel was imprisoned with chains on his feet in the
Painted Tower of the town of Carcassonne, where he died three months later.
Eight centuries later, Trencavel, a Cathar knight, a model of generosity and
altruism, who sacrificed his life for his subjects, is a national hero
for Occitan people.
But not
all citizens of Carcassonne came through the gates of the city. Many, using
a tunnel which ran under the river Aude, gained access to the Black
Mountain, where there were four castles, one in each of the four peaks and from
there they decided to continue the resistance led by the master of those places,
Pierre Roger de Cabaret, Trencavel's friend and adviser.
Simon de
Montfort suffered the first defeat when he tried to take by assault the
fortress of Pierre-Roger de Cabaret.
The military victory of the Papacy's crusade was delayed due to the high
resistance of the villagers refugees in the mountains and castles. The harsh
winter forced the Crusaders to rest and return to their land. During the
spring of 1210, Simon de Montfort and Arnaud Amaury, supported financially
by the Pope, resumed military operations against the Cathars. In Bram, a
town near Carcassonne, Arnaud and Simon ordered to cut the lips and noses and
empty the eyes of all defenders of the population, but one was left with
only one eye to
guide them in the region.
In
Minerve, the Cathars were suggested that if they abjure their beliefs, would save
their lives. The Cathars, about one hundred and forty men and women, replied:
Neither
life nor death will get to tear our faith.
All died
at the stake on July, 22nd, 1210, a year after the massacre of Béziers.
The
Crusaders, later, laid siege to Toulouse, but before it sixty Cathars were burned
in Les Cassés. The murderers were led by Dominic, today Saint Dominic,
the founder of the
Dominican Order from which came the first inquisitors, called Domini canes
(dogs of the lord), for their repressive work against heresy. The
Toulousian people fell suddenly upon the attackers who had to flee, but Simon of Montfort
would achieve,
within a year, the recovery of everything lost.
Raymond
VI was called in Montpellier, where he was required to obliterate all his
fortresses, to license his army, to force the Occitan nobility to reside outside the
town, in the countryside, as the villains, not to eat meat and to wear coarse
brown layers and that he, Raymond, was to leave to the Holy Land, where he
should be within the Knights Templar until it would please the Church and that
his territory to be reduced to mere colony. Without answering,
Raymond returned to Toulouse and it is, in this circumstance, when Raymond
calls to his aid his brother in law, King Pedro II of Aragon, who had just finished winning
the Almohads in the famous battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, 1212.
Pedro II is not going to defend the Languedoc Cathar heresy, but to enforce the
rights of his subjects against the French conquest. Pedro II arrived in
Toulouse with his cavalry and infantry, over a thousand men in total.
The Occitan
and the Aragon people, on 12th, September 1213, at the orders of King Peter II of Aragon, faced the Crusaders, led by Simon de Montfort who, seeing his handicap, he
studied the strategy to kill Pedro II and demoralize the army and win the
battle.
Pedro II,
it seems, wanted to fight as a plain soldier, for that he wore an ordinary armor and
he was
only distinguished by his enormous height. Suddenly, the reckless Aragonese
monarch was surrounded by men of Alain of Roucy and he expired
pierced by their arrows. Killed the king, his army was defeated in the flight
while Raymond VI and his son took refuge in Provence.
Simon de Montfort takes the title of Count of Toulouse and abolishes all its
municipal liberties. Arnaud Amaury was proclaimed bishop, duke of Narbonne
and Marquis of Gothia, 1215, what greatly annoyed Simon de Montfort.
In Montségur, in the height of the sacred mountain, there were about five
hundred men and women Cathars. Leading them there were the Lord of Montségur, Raymon of Perella or Parella and his wife Corba and the command was the
lord of Mirepoix, Pierre Roger de
Belissa
with twenty knights and a hundred armed men. Also at Montségur was the cream
of the Cathar clergy.
This place, before
being fortress, was a temple to worship.
The army of the French king, Louis IX, advances to Montségur, chanting a
Te Deum, with the inquisitor Ferrier, a worthy successor of
Arnaud
for his
fiendish cruelty, and behind them an army of ten thousand men.
But Montségur was hardly feasible.
The entire
summer passed without the besiegers could achieve its goal, the taking and
killing of Montségur.
Back in March, the conditions of the Cathars in the fortress were very difficult
after ten months of siege and a merciless winter.
These were the conditions of peace: The castle would be surrendered to the
king
Louis IX
of France and to the Holy See. Its defenders would be absolved of their
sins and, after fifteen days, they should withdraw with their arms
and baggage. Those who abjure their errors, after confession, would also be
acquitted. Raymon of Perella and Peter Roger of Belissa, on their return to Montségur, presented the conditions for peace. There were two hundred and fifteen
who
preferred the flames to have to give up their Cathar faith.
On 16 March
1244, at dusk,
the Cathars came out
of Montségur and the soldiers made them prisoners. At the foot of the mountain, in a closed field,
they had erected a
giant bonfire which was lighted by the soldiers of the French king. The Cathars, caught
everyone's hand and singing hymns, went to the bonfire, where they were
burned alive and so, from that moment, it is known as Camp dels cremats
(Field of burnt). Louis IX would be canonized, Saint Louis of France.
THE INQUISITION
SPINS ITS NET
|
 |
Saint Dominic chairing an auto-da-fé, by Pedro Berruguete (c.
1490).
The Dominican friars, because of their excessive zeal in the
defense of orthodoxy, were called Domini canes, the dogs of the
Lord. |
Simon de
Montfort was killed at the site of the Crusaders in Toulouse, with a
crossbow in
his temple. The treaty of
peace
signed at Meaux by
Raymond VII, Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1229), had two consequences: the
return of Toulouse to the sovereignty of the King of France and the
beginning of the Inquisition. From that treaty follows the alignment of the
crime of heresy with high treason (“high majesty”), under
which the civil power, from that moment, would be obliged to collaborate
with the ecclesiastical power in the pursuit and punishment of heretics.
Innocent III reached a goal impossible to disengage in the
future: the ethical-religious issue of the fight against heresy would
become a legal issue. Popes Honorius III and Gregory IX completed the
task: first, by approving the rule of the Dominican Order and the second, lawyer
as the first, in establishing the canonical legislation of the Court and extending its
power to all
Christianity
countries.
Emperor Frederick II established civil law in this area, drawing on the
councils against the heretics.
The persecution of heresy would be a matter of public law, besides the
ecclesiastical.
With cruel edicts, emanating
between
1220 and 1239, he imposed the penalty for heretics: confiscation of property,
exile and imprisonment which could be for all life and, ultimately, the
bonfire.
Frederick offered the Church the secular
judicial intervention as the intervention of blood, and freed the
Church of the unacceptable, the physical realization of the death sentence
for heretics, the same time that the issue of heresy became an
exclusive concern of
the Church.
The difficult and contentious relationship throughout the Middle Ages of
two swords, ecclesiastical power and secular power, was clarified and
finalized with the peace of Meaux:
The crime against the faith should be considered a crime of high
treason, the greatest felony that would become a terrible sin
which should be pursued, even beyond death, with the exhumation of
heretic cadaver,
with the display of his bones
placed
over hurdles, in dark and macabre procession through the streets of the city,
to be cremated after. No one would be free from the Inquisition, from that Holy Tribunal, not even the dead, who should be allowed to rest in peace.
The
primary trial corresponded to the Church, but the sentence could refer the
case to the civil and criminal branch: the soul belonged to the Church,
which investigated to save, and the body belonged to the king, who executed
to ran
justice.
Two years
after Meaux, in 1231, Gregory IX completed the work of reorganizing the
Court of the Inquisition, by establishing a network of courts in all major
cities of Europe.
It was in
1236, when the Dominicans were entrusted with the management of the courts.
Thirteen years later, they joined the Friars Minor of the Franciscan Order, in
order to temper the excessive zeal and cruelty that put the Dominican
inquisitors in the exercise of their functions.
This
heinous Court was not welcomed. Its entourage meant fighting, bonfires,
natural and legal violations, atrocities, cruelty and deprivation of
freedom of belief and worship. Soon uprisings broke out in all populations
south of France against the inquisitors, who were forced to leave the
villages where they exercised their office, for lack of support and
for hostility overdose. They were the subject of public aversion and generalized
hatred, what was fully deserved by them.
Peter of
Verona, the Dominican inquisitor, was ambushed in Seveso, between Milan and
Como, by the heretics he pursued. They waited him in a bush called "Fargo"
and killed him by sticking a sword in the center of his head. Two years
later, in 1254, he will be canonized by Innocent IV.
It was said that Peter, son of heretics, was
killed for defending the truth against heresy. He was the
perfect inquisitor
who, on behalf
of the "inquisitio veritatis", had met his death. The
truth doest not exist, it is distorted, always has been. The universals, as the word
truth, we have said, only
are in our minds and are manipulated...
Saint Peter Martyr, the first inquisitor killed, but he would be neither the
only nor the last.
The IV Lateran Council, called by
Pope Innocent III
in 1215, officially condemned the Cathar doctrine.
Pope Innocent thinks he has accomplished his mission and that he already can
sleep peacefully, what happens a year later with his death, 1216.
The
North French feudal lords had obtained a double gain: the domain of Languedoc
and the triumph of French feudalism, opposite the urban initiatives of the
Occitan Cathars.
Thus
were aborted the seminal initiatives for a new social order led by the
Cathars, Waldenses and Albigenses.
In
1226,
the French King Louis VIII requested a new crusade against the Cathar
heretics still surviving in the area,
with the clear intention to establish the French domination there.
That's in 1231 when Pope Gregory IX formally established the Inquisition in
the whole Church, and entrusts it to the Order of Preachers, Dominicans, so
called because of their founder Dominic, dead ten years before in
1221. These "Domini
canes" were ardent defenders of Catholic orthodoxy.
The Inquisition was created, among other things,
to
keep fighting against the
Cathars still alive and hiding in some fortresses and cities.
To this
degree was the zeal of the Dominicans, who were eager to exhume the bodies
themselves to burn them at the stake, as it was in Albi, in 1234.
When the civil authorities refused to
unearth the bodies of the heretics who had been condemned as such by the
Court, the Dominicans went to the cemetery and proceeded to dig themselves
the dead so that their remains be publicly burned at the stake.
Faced with this relentless inquisitorial persecution, many Cathars chose
exile, particularly to the cities of northern Italy, others opted for the
mountains to the fortresses, such as Montségur.
|
THE
FORERUNNERS OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION
John Wycliffe was one of the first people to make a direct
translation of the Latin Bible, known as the Vulgate, to a vernacular
langue. |
Martin Luther, Augustinian monk, promoter of the Reformation Church.
With his wife, the former sister Katharina von Bora and their
children. |
John
Wycliffe, John Huss and Jerome of Prague
were precursors of the Reformation, two centuries before Luther.
The life of John Wycliffe passes in the
England
of the second half of XIV century,
where he explained the chair of theology at Oxford and, in the English
Court, was personal tutor of King Richard II of England.
At that time he began his radical criticism toward the Church which was very
far from the early Church. The Bishop of London, Guillaume Courtenay, invited
him to present his doctrine. Wickliffe denies transubstantiation in the
Eucharist, what caused uproar in the English Christian society and it involves
his removal of the chair of Oxford and his departure from the Court.
Defying the ban of the Church, Wickliffe and his friends from Oxford, began
the English translation of the Vulgate Bible that St. Jerome, towards 382 in
Palestine, had translated into Latin, but the Church had forbidden its
translation into local languages;
no surprising if we consider the interest in maintaining absolute control of the
Holy Scriptures behind the mob that did not know Latin, only known by churchmen
and by very few others.
This position, so
daring for the time, aroused such disapproval that his friend and supporter,
Jean de Gand, withdrew his support.
The
Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is a Catholic doctrine, established
in the Roman Council of 1079, that affirms the real presence, not symbolic, of
Christ in the sacrifice of the Mass through the bread and wine. Wickliffe
deny that the bread becomes the body of Christ and wine into his blood
He
attacked the Church's wealth and power and demanded a return to poverty and
egalitarianism of the early Christian centuries. He states that God is the
one who owns the domain and He is everywhere. In a perfect and ideal society
you do not need priests or bishops, God does not need delegates and
intermediaries;
it is a theory similar to that used Martin Luther of
the Christians in a state of grace. He denied, therefore, the
hierarchical authority in the Church and said that the Pope could be
elected by drawing lots.
He denied the clergy the
power to forgive sins, if they had committed a mortal sin. The official
Church doctrine holds that the sacraments act on their own virtue "ex opere operato" and not by the minister
"ex opere operantis
".
The sacrament is valid even if the minister is in sin, but Wickliffe asserts its
invalidity.
He states
that there are two churches, the visible and invisible, the latter would be
composed of the elect -predestination theory- and it is the only true,
as later also affirm Hus and Calvin among the reformers.
Here is
the Gordian knot of the ecclesiology of Wickliffe, Prague and Hus. The true
Church is invisible, that of the predestined by God in his divine plan and
the predestinated will not fail to be, whether he sins, for he has been
chosen by God. Hence it is easy to
deduce that the Church visible or earthly, formed by the Pope, the Curia,
bishops and priests is inauthentic and therefore a public nuisance to the
viability of the true Church. The whole structure of
the Church on earth is visible or widely panned by the three theologians and they
all return to defend the Holy Scriptures, the theory of "biblical", where real
power lies not in the Church, salvation comes from God directly, without
intermediaries, and they highlight the unique value of the Bible as the
sole source of power, salvation, revelation and authority. These theories
are devastating to the existing church structure, that relies more on
tradition and the laws and customs of the Roman Empire than in the Bible itself;
these are very deep ideas that Protestant Reformers take successful advantage of, two centuries later. The doctrine was served to
those reformers and to Henry VIII in achieving his independence from Rome and
for the
creation of the Anglican Church.
John Hus met and shared the doctrine of Wickliffe, although he lived in
Bohemia, Czechoslovakia. The defense of freedom was the common denominator
of his work
and ecclesiastical authority would be subjected to a rigorous examination, that
would not pass. The starting point of Hus was the honest indignation of his
soul at the corruption and scandals of the Church. He wanted to strip
the Christianity of
the fancy decoration with which the Roman Church had invested
it.
Hus wanted to return the clergy
to
discipline and healthy habits, either
depriving them of interfering in temporal matters, either stripping them of
the many assets they abused of. Apostle of freedom, he defended
not only individual liberties, freedom of conscience, but he also defended
freedom for Bohemia in its incipient nationalism, while he was the president of the
University of Prague. Czech nationalism and the reform movement had been
initiated by another Bohemian religious, Jan Milic, whom
Hus
endorsed and
supported.
In one of his major works, "De ecclesia", Huss
said that the Papacy was not an institution of divine origin and therefore
could be eliminated in case of making an error and heresy. That was
happening with Pope John XXIII, called Balthazar Cosa, who was Pope from 1410 to 1415,
described
by
Draper as:
a man
as capable as perverse
who was forced not only to
provide a
largest
simonist
traffic of the ecclesiastical corridors,
but to create income with the licensing of brothels and gaming and usurers.
Already in the twentieth century, between 1958 and1963, there was another
Pope John XXIII, whose name was Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, initiator of the
most important and revolutionary Ecumenical Council of modern times, Vatican Council
II, whose Papacy, an exemplary life
and
apostolate, was the obverse of his homonym deposed in
Constance.
THE CONVICTIONS
|
 |
Martyrdom of Jan Hus.
Called the Council of Constance in order to reunify the
Catholic Church, Hus came to defend his points of view, but
there was sentenced to be burned at the stake, on July, 6th, 1415.
|
In 1382,
the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Courtenay, called a synod to
analyze
John Wycliffe's doctrine, which is finally declared
heretical. His contacts in the Court save him, for the second time, to enter
prison. There began to emerge his followers, the Lollards; but
in the Council of Constance, 1414, Wickliffe
dead, he is declared a
heretic. His books are burned and it was ordered the exhumation of his body and
the burning of his bones, whose ashes would be strewn at the Swift River as it
passes through Lutterworth, where he had been pastor.
Hus
also dared to translate the Bible into Czech and preach in the same
language, contrary to what they did his fellow priests, who preached in
German. So, when the Council of Constance, 1415, calls him to explain his
ideas, it was created around his figure a genuine movement of
social, religious and nationalistic
dissent, round the person who was
considered a leader
of freedom. With a pass granted by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxembourg,
made the big mistake of wanting to defend his thesis or theological
theories in front of the council fathers; but the safe conduct was not good for
heretics, they notify him. In the diatribe, in the presentation of Huss and
the answers
from the council, one of them rebuked him:
-
If the
council say that you only have one eye, even having two, the Council would be right.
-
I should never accept this reason,
said Huss, even if the whole universe compelled me to do it.
He was
subjected to interrogation and torture, and was declared a heretic. When he
was ordered to withdraw and stop preaching, he refused categorically. The
council condemned him to death at stake after burning his books. On
July, 6th, 1415 he was relaxed (burnt) at the stake. His countrymen, angered by
his death, proclaimed him authentic Christian martyr and national hero. His
followers, called Hussites, provoked the outbreak of the Hussite Wars in
Bohemia, four years later.
Jerome of Prague,
the closest collaborator of Huss, who had brought the writings of Wickliffe
to Bohemia, which he shared with his teacher Hus, also had to appear before
the Council of Constance. He entered the city in a cart, surrounded by
guards and chained;
it happened
this,
as related by Emile of Bonnechose:
The
custody of the prisoner was entrusted to Juan de Walendrod, archbishop of
Riga, who made drive him that same night to the bottom of a tower in the cemetery of
St. Paul. He ordered to heavily chain him and his irons to be nailed to a
wooden column, so that he could not sit down; with both hands passed through
its chains, which weighed on his neck and forced him to bow his head. This
is how ancient authors and those who saw him described him in his prison.
Two days was in this sad situation on bread and water, without his
Bohemian friends being aware of such cruelty; finally, Peter, the notary, knew
it by the mouth of one of the guards and obtained to give him better food.
But Jerome of Prague fell gravely ill and being in danger of death, asked for a
confessor. Then they loosened the bonds and he escaped, as with John Hus, his
illness through the ordeal and remained a whole year, sick and imprisoned
in that place of pain.
In
1416, after the burning of Huss, he was
brought before the council to retract himself. Completely Fallen and to escape death, he recanted. Returning to prison, decided
not to deny his faith again and, back to the Council of Constance, on his knees,
made the defense of his creed. He was condemned and burned.
Wickliffe, Huss and Jerome, in addition to being great intellectuals
familiar with the Scriptures and theology, they were sensitive human beings and
authentic apostles of the word, consequential to the end in their beliefs
and in their fight for freedom.
We must distinguish between beliefs and ideas.
The
beliefs have to do with faith, with the mystery, they are very intimate
experience, not always rational or conscious, that rely on arguments of
authority. They are rooted in the sacred books, theoretically revealed by a
deity; in the religious customs received and inherited from our ancestors,
they are ancestral; in the interpretations of the texts considered sacred and
personal and collective experiences of the believer group. Their last point
of support will be the authority of the speaker, to whom they usually
attribute extrasensory powers and other esoteric, mysterious and awful
qualities, able to
subjugate and terrorize at the same time. The believes affect intelligence, the will and
feeling, the conscious and the unconscious, the entire human life. So it is
so difficult, once assimilated and integrated, change the beliefs. And for them
and in their name it is allowed to kill. There is no more dangerous than someone who
believes and feels that acts on behalf and for the glory of God. Also for
them, the beliefs, they may die, as we are seeing with these wonderful heretics and
the martyrdom of early Christians, who are no different because they all died
in
the right of defending their beliefs.
The ideas, however, rely on the data, verification and in contrast;
they
belong to reason, are supported by experimental methods and the scientific
argument. They can be easily changed, when the arguments
convince us that their content is not true or correct -the
ethical aspect-. The
reason is a personal activity that takes time and effort; creativity and
research, capacity for change and, therefore, uncertainty, mishap and risk.
In the medieval times people was gregariously led by beliefs that they
neither could
nor should be questioned, on pain of high treason, with the possible death
after torture, as a result.
The absolute political and religious powers, the two powers, the two swords
had
interferences
in theoretically opposed areas, but in reality it was only one power,
as demonstrated by the issue of the War of Investitures. The emperors appointed bishops and
owned
dioceses, which generated for them social control and
untold wealth. Religious power has
also
in itself temporal power, since
Constantine, in virtue of the counterfeiting
undertaken
by the Roman Curia with the
Donation of Constantine, which justifies the civil power of the Pope and the
Roman Curia, in addition to the
possession of absolute
religious
power.
After much infighting among the Christian churches in search of the Primate,
the Pope began to believe himself vicar of Peter. With the aid of theologians and
canonists he passes from vicar of Peter to Vicar of Christ. And later, in the
Inquisition and its Autos-da-fé, he acts on behalf of the Trinity, without
complexes and without apparent problems of conscience.
Some
theologians rightly wonder whether the God in the Old Testament is
the same God found in the New.
Of course not,
he neither is the same nor seems
it. It had not yet reached the Council of Nicaea (325),
that would
dogmatize,
as we have seen, that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, of the same
substance, the divine, of course; but we never will know what is this divine
substance; not even know if the divine,
being spiritual, has substance. The
God of Old
Testament is One and that of the New is Trinitarian, a concept that it was very
difficult to be accepted by the converted Jews and by the Muslims, as
their Yahweh and Allah are
one.
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opinion in the
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BRE
EDING GROUNDS OF THE INQUISITION
|
Goya 's
masterpiece.
The first trip of the
novice witch. |
Witches preparing ointments,
by Goya
|
At this
dark time
s
of
gloomy culture,
it
was
easy
to
fill people
minds
with ideas completely
inconsistent
for us.
Although the presence of belief in higher beings is latent since ancient
times, especially witchcraft meant a particular historic event in Europe
during the Middle Ages. In this crazy environment it appears the
"Malleus
Maleficarum ",
the bedside reading of the Inquisitors. It is possibly the most frightening
book ever written. Its content defines who were the witches, what they were
doing, and it analyzes the legal proceedings to be followed to condemn them.
Belief in the devil was the basis of superstitious influence that
degenerated into mental pathology. The history of witchcraft will always
present the history, legend and myth of the enigmatic Doctor Faustus. This
infernal and necromancer character has not only been present as a legend or
myth, but existed at the time of Martin Luther, as it is known by scholars.
We are immersed in that dark age in which everything fit. Even the pseudo illuminati and
petitioners.
CHRISTIAN MENTALITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES
|
 |
Coven around the crowned
goat, Goya
|
The social and mental
structures are based on ternary organizations: those who pray,
those who fight and those who work. As the centuries passed,
attitudes are changing: there are new attitudes towards the time, the money, work and
family.
Famines are a constant threat, violence is omnipresent, social struggles are
bitter and constant.
The medieval epoch combines material realities
with the symbolic ones. It is a time that runs between the towers of the
clergy and the watchtowers of the laity, between eschatology and miracles,
between
diabolical and divine epiphanies. A time that runs among the circular time
of the liturgical calendar, the linear time of history, of storytelling,
and that mechanically quantifiable by clocks; between the real and
imaginary, the material and the symbolic. It is a world of liturgical gestures and
asceticism whose social realities are complemented by the social imaginary,
whose daily realities and religious symbols are mixed.
This crippling design that prevents man to attack the building of the earthly
society without making shake at the same time the heavenly society, that imprisons the
mortals into the
meshes of the angelica net, adds to the weight of the masters on the
shoulders of the vassals the burden of the angelic hierarchy of the seraphim, the
cherubim and thrones, the dominations, virtues and powers of the
principalities of the archangels and angels. Men of the Middle Ages
struggled between the clutches of demons and the obstacle that involve the
millions of wings that beat both on earth as in heaven and make life a
nightmare of winged palpitations. Because the issue is not that the
celestial world is as real as terrestrial, but they constitute only one
world in an inextricable mixture that imprisons men in the nets of a
supernatural living.
[18]
Time, which is linear, not circular and only belongs to God, can only be
lived. To take it, to measure it, to take advantage or exploit it is a sin. Time is a
moment of eternity. The story has a beginning, starting in Adam, and an end,
the final trial. All medieval chronicle is "a story of universal History".
The global reference is one aspect of medieval totalitarianism. Time is
history and history has its Christian meaning. The most important historic
effort of medieval Christian thinkers is to try to stop the story and finish
it. The feudal society, with its two dominant classes cavalry and
clergy, as says Chretien de Troyes, is considered the end of the
History.
It's as if Jacob's ladder, that connects heaven and earth, was in constant
motion, in direct communication without barriers, customs or tolls. Life on
earth is not autonomous, secular and independent; everything depends on the
future life
and it is conditioned by it. It is the right atmosphere for the rule of the
clergy; human values are the spiritual, the soul, not the body that should
always be subject to asceticism and renunciation, as an enemy of the soul,
in a perfect Manichean dichotomy.
During the Middle Ages it was created an apocalyptic mood, flight of the world
and longing for death. Both in art and literature it was developed the daunting
issue of expiration of life: the hourglass, as a symbol, and
"Sic transit
gloria mundi " (thus passes the glory of the world), as a
rhetoric convention inspired by the idea of death. For the medieval Christian life is the
way to true life, towards Second Life, to the serene abode, to eternal rest:
|
This world
is the way
to the other that is abode
without regret;
It is better to have good sense
to walk this journey
without err:
We leave when we are born
we walk when we live
and we gather
while we perish;
so when we die
we rest.
Couplets of Jorge Manrique to the
death of his father,
Don Rodrigo Manrique, Master of Santiago. |
Este mundo
es el camino
para el otro que es morada
sin pesar;
mas cumple tener buen tino
para andar esta jornada
sin errar:
Partimos cuando nascemos
andamos cuando bivimos
y allegamos
al tiempo que fenescemos;
así que cuando morimos
descansamos.
Coplas de Jorge Manrique a la muerte
de su padre, don Rodrigo
Manrique, Maestre de Santiago. |
For the believer, death is not the end,
because it is the gate of life
"mors janua vitae ",
it is the beginning of an eternal
spiritual life;
however Science tells us that after this life
it is only the death,
because brain death is irreversible. If life is only transit, why worry
about
worldly vanities? Hence in the literature of the late Middle
Ages it is
constant the memory of death (memento mori), the contempt of the world
(contemptu Mundi), the theme of living death or dying life and
the
longing for
liberating
death.
|
Do not delay,
Death, that I die;
come, that I live with you:
love me, as I love you,
with your coming I hope
not to have war with me.
Jorge Manrique |
No tardes,
Muerte, que muero;
ven, porque biva contigo:
quiéreme, pues te quiero,
que con tu venida espero
no tener guerra conmigo.
Jorge Manrique |
The Christian concept of life is actually an anti-life, a true
anti-humanism, as well as an anti-vitalism. From the pulpit, the gravelly and threatening
voice of mendicant preachers, Franciscans and Dominicans,
reminded the faithful that terrible corruption of what had been human
beauty: vanity of vanities (vanitas vanitatum). The Christian worldview is
negative, terribly negative, of all human values, of the universe and of the
socio-economic and, therefore, very harmful to progress and to human happiness.
Alienating ideologies cause a very unfortunate social impact, all in the
name of pseudo-values that are considered superior to or from the invocation
of divinity. The Church planted all
human fields of prejudice and counter values.
These medieval Christian concepts have their continuity in that
"I die because I
do not die ", of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila, a paradox used by
sixteenth century Spanish mystics.
|
This life I
live
deprivation of life is
and so, is continuous die
until I live with you.
Hey, my God, what I say:
that I do not love this life,
I die because I do not die.
Saint John of the Cross |
Esta vida
que yo vivo
es privación de vivir
y así, es continuo morir
hasta que viva contigo.
Oye, mi Dios, lo que digo:
que esta vida no la quiero,
que muero porque no muero.
San John of the Cross |
We recognize the worth and poetic
delicacy of these two great mystics, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross,
experts in mystical experiences and in he management of symbols and the
metric. Despite their virtue and learning they also are imbued with Christian philosophical vitalism,
demonstrating how difficult it is to escape the dominant ideology and
the Inquisition controls, that they did not succeed completely. What is no less certain is that preconceptions about life
values, and life itself, violate human dignity by inventing and imposing values
anchored in spiritual realities, that religious fantasy has drawn.
THE
STIGMA OF THE WITCH: UNDERVALUATION OF
WOMEN
|
 |
The
flight of witches.
Volaverunt
of
Goya. |
The woman had pre-eminence in
agrarian society, where it was revered the Great Mother Earth, Gea, as it
provided shelter and food needed to survive through its cycles.
Earth is also responsible for her own fertility, as was for the plants and
the wildlife. Agrarian society reflects these religious attitudes in its structure and its values.
The community was ruled by a queen who was the greatest priestess of the
Great Mother Goddess. The woman exercised priestly functions through the
rituals and social values promoted by the institutions. The family was vital
in this matriarchal community. The social position, inheritance and
the name came from the mother, who, accompanied by a brother, ruled the family.
The father's role was negligible, it was even thought that he was not necessary
for procreation.
Motherhood was a mystery, a miraculous event, possibly aided by the
fertilizing wind and
by water. In this society, the first ethical and moral obligation
was to the mother and sisters; it is a peaceful society, focusing on the family
rather than on the conquest of the kingdoms. Mother's love was a humane and
peaceful influence, creating an aura of honor, of trust, of hospitality and
generosity, and of reverence for everything related to life.
The time was measured
by the
nights, by the moons, and religious rituals were done just at night. The moon
was more important than the sun. The months were calculated by the cycles of
the moon, producing uniform seven-day weeks, months of twenty eight uniform
days and a lunar year of thirteen months plus one day.
The main male deity, Zeus, and the main oracle, Apollo at Delphi, appear
with the arrival of the warrior tribes of Greece and the enthronement of the
male gods in Olympus; the matriarchy gave way to patriarchy, where
the man, aided by the lance and by his patron gods, is mainly warrior and conqueror.
The woman will change, gradually, her roles and she will end subjected to man. The
daughters will be property of their brothers, the wives will belong to
her husbands, and parents will decide the marriage of their daughters.
Patriarchal society became more aggressive, more militarized, as promoter of heroic deeds in battles with
neighbors, and more ambitious of wealth and conquests. The myths and
their manipulation changed the gender perspective 180 degrees.
In the Old Testament, in Genesis, in the myth of creation, God
created man of clay and the wife of Adam's rib. The woman never will be like the
man, she was not created in the same form and manner; here is the primordial
and fundamental injustice. From the myth of the sin of knowledge "you will be like
God, knowing good and evil", badly interpreted and worse applied as the sin of disobedience,
will emerge the woman as the instigator of sin, the mother of all thunder,
Pandora's box. The die had been cast for the woman. Jews, Christians and Muslims
will consider her as a being inferior to men. In the description of
paradise of the Mohammedans, already described when speaking about the Catars, the role of the houris is to
serve the man in a thousand ways and manners. In the Catholic Church women can not be priests
or bishops and impossible to be Popes; and they say
this is by express will of Jesus, blaming the Lord to marginalize women,
creating the doubt, at the same time, of how they know it is Jesus' will if he
never said that. He did not chose women for apostles, because that was impossible in
the culture of that society, that strongly discriminated against women and
separated them from the reading and interpretation of scripture and
realization of Jewish worship; all these were in the hands of the Jewish men.
The gradual loss of the importance and value of
women is exacerbated in these obscure times.
During the Middle Ages the Church
reinvented witchcraft as significant antagonistic to the will of God and a
challenge to its legitimate representatives on earth. The Wicked Witch, an
invention of Christian theology. Everything against its rules would fall under
the sign of sin, the stigma par excellence of political violence of the Church.
Under its charters would be proscribed any knowledge about the body and
sexuality to the realm of the taboo subject; especially of women, inevitably
subjected to a culture of patriarchal subordination by order or curse of God
the Father in Genesis: "... with pain you will give birth to your children and
you will crawl to your husband, who will rule over you". Once invented the enemy,
its legends multiplied and society was marked by an irrational fear [...].
The witch became everything that was rejected[...], people were convinced of the existence of devil,
of evil witches and the veracity of the associated legends".
[19]
The Church managed to master the stigmata, and
at this time many women were marked with the incandescent and cutting
attribute of 'witches'. This brand, like all the stigmata, excludes from a normal status, marginalizes and excommunicates, while
it includes in a derogatory and slanderous category, through the so called
in sociology "the role assigned." The heretic, a believing person that the
power judges as deviant, ends assimilating the role of heretic with witch
they have labeled him. The concept of guilt, remorse, low self-esteem takes
possession of his conscience and emerges inside him the imperative of
seeking forgiveness and reconciliation, whose administration is in the
religious power hands.
Stigma plays an insurmountable
domesticating role and, therefore, a role of social control. The stigma
is not rational, but it is functional, because much of its power operates from
symbols deeply rooted in the subconscious, as it befits everything related to
the feeling. Self-esteem and religion have much to do with this sentimental
human aspect.
THE HAMMER OF THE
WITCHES (MALLEUS MALEFICARUM)
|
|
Malleus Maleficarum.
A comprehensive guide to identify, pursue and punish witches.
|
Henry Charles Lea, in his book The Inquisition in the Middle Ages,
tells us that the persecution that took place between the thirteenth and
fifteenth centuries was not but a prelude to the blind and crazy orgies of
destruction that inflamed the
next
and a half century.
It seemed as if Christianity had rooted in delirium.
Pope Innocent VIII gave a definitive step forward by publishing the bull Summis
desiderantes affectibus in 1484, to open the insane stage of witchcraft.
Two years later, in 1486, Pope appoints two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich
Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, the persecution of witchcraft in Germany and, for
that, they write the infamous book, Malleus Maleficarum, known as the
Hammer of Witches.
Krämer and Sprenger
submitted
the Malleus Maleficarum to the Faculty
of Theology at the University of Cologne in the hope that it would be approved, but
it was declared illegal and unethical, as his demonology was not consistent with
Catholic doctrine.
Krämer,
however, inserted a false note in support of the University of Cologne in
subsequent editions. It becane a real best seller and, for three centuries, it was
a required reading for inquisitors and judges. The theologian Peter de la
Rosa in his seminal and unorthodox book Vicars of Christ writes:
Today is
a bedside book to learn about the hardships imposed on the witches. It contains
a full theological "corpus" about the witchcraft that is unsurpassed for nonsense
presented as scientific analysis. For three centuries, it was found on the
platform of every judge, on the table of every judge. The preface of the
many editions of this book full of doom was the bull of Innocent VIII.
The intricate world of magic, so exciting and attractive to the masses, with
unimagined and unimaginable hypothetical connections with the devil, left
profuse mark on medieval Christians, prone to all beliefs, more credible
when more absurd. Spirits, good and bad join the Heaven to Earth, they cohabit with humans beings. This rather
uneducated people, of agricultural profession the majority, with long, cold nights,
dark as the lion's den, feed on all sorts of imaginative
representations, to the point of conceiving the devil copulating and agreeing with women,
branded as witches. Under this satanic pact, it was believed that they had power to do harm,
to cause
serious illness or to cause death, to ruin crops, among other infinite woes
and wonders, as to be able to fly or attend meetings, the famous witches' sabbath,
held at a great distance.
The Malleus Maleficarum revolves around the
curses that were attributed to witches. The authors, supported by the biblical phrase
"To the witches do not will leave them alive" (Exodus 22, 18), supported in other texts of
Scripture, in Augustine of Hippo, in Thomas Aquinas and in other important
theologians, develop their doctrine of witchcraft with a sexist concept full
of prejudices of women.
In the
first part of the book, obviously they assume that witchcraft and sorcery exist.
They believe that witches and sorcerers perform a wide variety of ailments
"with the permission of Almighty God" so that the devil not win an
unlimited power and he can destroy the world.
The
second part of the book describes the ways of witchcraft, how they cast spells and
how their actions can be prevented or remedied. Sprenger and Kramer in their
inquisitorial trials, with the help of torture, obtained much information on
spells, demonic pacts, sacrifices and intercourse with the Devil.
The third
part details the methods to detect, destroy, prosecute and convict witches.
Torture is a common practice in any inquisitorial trial. Faced with a stubborn
reluctance, medical torture makes the accused say any more than the inquisitor
would like to listen.
In the
excerpt of the Malleus Maleficarum presented by Agustin Celis, when
answering the question that the authors themselves made of why superstition
was mainly found in women, you can read a real bunch of misogynistic niceties:
The woman
is a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic
danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with bright
colors!
[...]
In his second book The Rhetoric, Cicero says:
"The
many
man's desires lead them to one sin, but the only appetite of women leads them to all
sins, because the root of all female evil is greed ”.
And Seneca says in his tragedies:
"A
woman loves or hates, there is no third alternative. And the tears of a
woman are a deception as they may arise from a real penalty, or a trap. When
a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil."
Regarding the first question, why is there a
lot of witches in the fragile feminine sex, a greater proportion than men,
it is indeed a fact that it would be idle to contradict and experience
confirms that, apart from verbal testimony of trustworthy witnesses [...].
The
second reason is that by nature women are more impressionable and more ready
to receive the influence of a disembodied spirit and that when they use
this quality well, are very bad. The third reason is they have a mobile
tongue,[...]
"That, as
they are weaker in mind and body, no wonder they fall further under the
spell of witchcraft".
[...]
And there
is the story of a man whose wife drowned in a river, who while searching for
the corpse out of the water, walked upstream. And when asked why, since
heavy bodies do not rise, but fall and he sought against the current of the
river, he said:
"When
this woman lived, always in word and in deed, contradicted my orders, so I
look in the opposite direction, as if now, even dead, she retains her
contradictory provision.
[...]
If we
investigate, we see that almost all the kingdoms of the world have been
overthrown by women.[...]
The
kingdom of the Romans endured much evil because of Cleopatra, queen of
Egypt, the worst of women.[...]
It means
that a woman is beautiful in appearance, she contaminates the touch and it is deadly to live with it.
[...]
More
bitter than death, i.e, the devil: Apocalypse, VI, 8: "I was
named Death".
More
debasement and
compliance of a human being is
impossible. As if those monks had not ever born, as if they never had
sisters, because they had no wives or daughters due to their celibate, as if
they all suffered a serious pathology.
Behind all
this are the prejudices against sex, which are disguised as carnal lust.
It is a pathological obsession
of Manichaean misogynists.
And in
its support are many myths that patriarchy fabricated with evil intention.
It should be added the
ignorance of the psychology of women, which was total.
No doubt that from a matriarchal point of view, with these kinds of myths,
sexist
prejudices and stereotypes,
there
could be written similar or worse things of men.
The inquisitors
acted charged with a
religious and dogmatic ballast,
which, coming from ancient religions, affected their lives, their values and
their worldview.
They themselves were victims of indoctrination, received in their education
process in the convents and religious institutions, which was permeated of Manichaeism and other errors on the design of life, as
guilt
complexes
and anguish for their salvation. Driven by these
prejudices, they
acted projecting
them on other human beings, who were greatly harmed,
but, in a pseudo-mystical autosuggestion,
they thought it was very good.
The religious conventions against women subjected them to endless indignities
and humiliations
to the point of being marginalized and be assigned
roles of subordination and submission. And in the beginning of all this
madness is the Encyclical of Pope Innocent VIII, ultimately responsible for all the
disorders produced by the witch-hunt.
THE
WITCH-HUNT:
THE ORGY OF DESTRUCTION
A
sketch of Nicholas of Cusa
In Bressanone on the occasion of a witches process
In 1457, Nicholas of Cusa,
philosopher, mathematician, theologian and bishop, preached in Bressanone on the occasion of a witches process,
held that year in the city against two women. Somewhat prone to be guided by popular fantasies and
imaginations that rather perplexed him, skeptical of the facts of witchcraft,
he stated in his homily that the two women were half-delirious (mad), who saw
visions that they had nothing to do with reality, what was unfounded
nonsense:
[...] It was said the
good lady, that is, Richella, had come to them at night in a car. She looked
like a well-dressed woman, but they had not seen her face... She had
touched them and from that moment they had been forced to follow. After having
promised her obedience, they had renounced the Christian faith. Then they had
reached a place filled with people dancing and having a party: some men, covered with fur, had devoured men and boys who had not been baptized by
the rules. [21]
Nicholas, after
talking to them and try them back to reason, he
imposed them
a slight penance as
punishment. He was trying to avoid such trivialities, which could only serve
to increase fear of the devil and the idea that this could be more powerful
than God himself. And he endorsed the question we all ask: Is it not true
that this superstition, which makes us fear the devil, is not very different
from the superstitions, apparently harmless, which make us pray to God to have
good children, optimal harvest, curses against enemies,...?.
He thinks
that
there are fundamental problems in popular religion and should
be found ways to
get out of the confusion between faith and superstition, and ways to affirm a
faith that does not confuse the Creator with the inner forces of creation.
Nicholas was aware
of the power of oral traditions that supported the existence of very
powerful and invisible forces, that defended the Greek and Roman paganism, and
the rural animism. That made it difficult to separate the Christian faith from
superstition, which attributed to the devil the ability to attract, deceive and
mislead the believers, who lived earthly realities and ignored the forces of
nature. Forces that regulate the cycle of seasons; unseen forces that affect
the flora and fauna and human life itself, the production of disease and
pestilence; forces that, even, act on love and hatred.
The power and the
phenomenon of witchcraft, the coven, it is within the frame of pagan
superstitions that coexist with Christianity, powered by the popular
imagination. In these fields, the bishop Nicholas
thinks, what matters is
not its truth or falsity, but its credibility. He sensed and despised this
power: to endorse the myth of witchcraft means an invitation to consider
it true.
In this trap, to
endorse the myth of witchcraft, fell Pope Innocent VIII, who did not know or
forgot the reasonable doubt that the wise philosopher and Bishop Nicholas
had raised thirty years before. To follow such myth so ingrained in the
minds of normal people, led to a phenomenon of unexpected and terrible consequences: the
witch hunt, cannon fodder for the most gruesome and imaginative
novelists and for filmmakers with high macabre creative potential.
The doctrine of
Nicholas of Cusa, that is supported by Ulrich Mukker, 1498, whwn he says
that witches are
poor women who live more a satanic illusion than a demon reality. And Andrea Alciato, 1544, adds
that not legal persecution is warranted for women who, in fact, are victims of illusions. Earlier, in his
Flagellum Maleficarum, Pierre Marmoris even speaks of the Sabbath
as a derivation of the Jewish holiday. The problem of witchcraft, conclude
some humanistic authors, rather than a religious problem is medical, rather than
ask for a
priest it would be better to look for a doctor, a psychiatrist or
a psychologist.
This slaughter, the
witch hunt, that lasted three centuries and produced between seventy
thousand and three hundred thousand relaxed or killed in the fires, not
counting those who managed to save their lives after incarceration, torture
and abuse, was initiated by Pope Innocent VIII and by the
misogynist best-seller of Jacob and Heinrich, Malleus Maleficarum.
They all were helped by
Emperor Maximilian I of Austria, who, in the November, 6th, 1486, had invited all
good Catholics and respectable citizens of the Empire to cooperate with the
misogynist Dominicans.
The Pope, the
Emperor, Krämer and Sprenger, everyone is convinced, firmly convinced, that
witches exist, that they obey the devil with whom they have a deal and are very
dangerous to the health of body and the salvation of the soul. The Malleus
Malificarum states categorically that most of heresy is not to believe in
witches, when it should be said that belief in witches is the greatest of
heresies.
The elements of
witchcraft, the existence of the devil and its powers is the doctrine of
the Church, "but who can be so foolish as to believe that all this happen?",
asks the Canon Episcopi, where we can read:
Do not forget
the unfortunate fact that women have offered themselves to Satan and, seduced by spells and
ghosts of diabolical origin, they believe that they have ridden
animals at night,
after the pagan goddess Diana and that they have done this in the company of many
of other women, or that they crossed large tracts of land with the complicity of
the deep silence of death [...] Many have been fooled by these things and
they believe that everything is true andthey moved away of true faith [...] But who can be
so foolish as to believe that all this happens [...] even bodily?
[22]
Innocent VIII
presents, in his bull Summis deriderantes affectibus, legendary
descriptions of the power of witchcraft, but these incredible
superstitions are given as true:
Wishing with all
my heart, as it wants our pastoral concern, that grow and spread all over
the Catholic faith, while
any
ruinous heresy
is put far from Christianity,
of good will we proclaim these orders and regulations, so that our pious vow
becomes effective and, after all the errors are removed through the action of
our ministry [...], place in the souls of the faithful the zeal and the observance
of faith. With sadness we have learned recently that in many parts of
northern Germany [...] several people, both male and female, are offered to
devils incubus and succubus, leaving the path of true faith. They make through
spells, incantations and spells, all that is abhorrent and criminal in the
field of witchcraft, for the evil of the others: abortions occur in women;
they sterilize or kill fetuses in animals, products of the soil, grape
vines, fruit trees, men and women, pets and jobs, plus all kinds of
livestock, from countryside
animals to integer
crops: vineyards, orchards,
meadows, cereals, grasses, wheat, all vegetables. They want to prevent
that
man procreates,
that woman conceives, the spouses meet the conjugal rights.
They are not afraid to renege, sacrilegiously, the faith which were given
through the holy baptism; they do not go away fearful of violence, of the
offences
to which they are instigated by the Adversary of mankind [...].
[23]
Let us clarify two terms by the Royal Spanish Academy:
Succubus. Such a spirit, devil or demon that, according to people
superstition, has sexual intercourse with a male under the guise of a woman.
Incubus. It
was said
of the devil that, according to common opinion, with the appearance of man, had
sexual intercourse with a woman.
The papal text is
really amazing, because it is contrary to the theology and science, but
was the catalyst for all future crimes committed on grounds of witchcraft.
The Pope begins by
granting more powers to the inquisitors:
[...] By virtue
of our apostolic dignity, we want to eliminate any
capable obstacle to hinder the
inquisitors activity [...] Prompted by concerns of faith,
we sanction that [...] inquisitors are to be allowed to fulfill their duty
and proceed, with complete freedom, to punishment, incarceration and the amendment of
those people because of the excesses and crimes listed above [...].
We attach also the
Inquisitors the right to preach the Word of God in any church and how often
they want [...].
We ordered the
bishop of Strasbourg [...] to protect and sustain the action of the
Inquisition, as a way to suppress those who want to harm them, prevent them,
contradict them and rebel [...] with the help of the secular arm.
[24]
To understand the
social roots of these fables -which deserve no other name-, in the
disclosure of which also the inquisitors were involved, when treating them
as something actually existing and actually prosecuted and punished, let's
look closely at some stories related by Natale Benazzi. Notice the
resemblance, its consistency, its durability through the years. They seem
fireproof through the passage of time. Three centuries passed, from 1390 until 1692
(see below), and they are not the first nor the latest:
Paris, 1390.
The
case of the prostitute Macete is more complex and reveals a world of
wrenching physical and moral poverty. Macete, gripped by nostalgia, with the
attempt to make her lover come back, because instead of marrying her, as
promised, left her for another woman of ill repute, performs a spell: she has
memorized the preamble of John's
Gospel and through this formula, recited
aloud, achieves contact with the devil, called Haussibut. The lover is
forced, against his will, to return with her, but refuses to marry. Sad, Macette repeats the formula, but more potent with the help of wax
and pitch with which it makes a paste that extends, three consecutive nights,
on the shoulders of her lover while evoking Satan. He finally relents and
marries her. But love does not arise. The years that followed are difficult.
He mistreats her, beats her. Macete does not know, but yet again to entrust
her
devil: she kneads again wax and pitch, with which she forges a
boy
figure that
floats on straw in a pot of boiling water. Macete is still being abused. Then
she
desperate
goes out to the countryside to look for toads that
after
she
sticks with a
needle.
Nevertheless, the husband beat her until he finds her doing spells and
makes a denunciation to the Inquisition. The proof of her guilt is a dead toad.
Mirandola,
1522-1523:
The process of Mirandola remains one of the important and cruel
witch-hunts, as it recalls the terrible title of Pogrom of Mirandola; it
involves the prince of Carpi, Gian Francesco Pico. The violence with which
they treat the accused is such as to make witnesses of the people
exclaim: "It's
not fair that these men had been killed so cruelly".
Zurich, 1546.
The
procedural
testimonies relate the case of
Agatha
Stuodlerin, daughter of a canon,
dedicated to prostitution. She wuld have sold her soul to the devil holding a
series of sinister crimes: to poison some men, to lead to impotence to others, whom
she would have
asked the compensation money for restoring their virility. A baker and his
wife, suffering from impotence and frigidity, denounce her and attended the torture. As
she does not stand the bitterness of her jailers, Agatha throws herself through a window
and breaks a leg. The judges
suspect
even more: did she want to kill herself
(an offence against the faith) or to fly away? They increased the torture. Agatha,
finally, admits the crimes asking the sole grace of not being burned. The court decides
to grant it because of the apparent conversion had occurred. She was drowned on
27th
,
February.
Salem (Massachussets), 1692.
A colored slave, named Tituba, accused of being invited
to a night dance, with probable voodoo practices, the girls in the region,
she confesses her guilt and gives the names of some notable people of the
village.
It triggers a form of collective hysteria that lead to the death of many
people, uniting for the future Salem's name to a form of horror.[25]
FLY TO THE WITCHES SABBATH
|
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Witches Sabbat traveling, accompanied by various
demonic creatures.
|
Lamia,
maker of spells, harpy, sorceress, witch, devil, Tarascan, summoner of
demons, Satan worshiper, idolater.
The nomenclature is plentiful and its abundance perfectly covers the two
areas at stake: the superstition and the crime against the faith, going, almost
imperceptibly, from one to another and astonishing anyone who startles into the rainforest of
the testimonies and of the events.
Moreover, what makes possible the confluence of those two rivers is the certainty
that witches existed. What allowed the Inquisition (but before it to the
political and ecclesiastical powers) to act to convert, was the realization
that it was necessary to unmask and to defend against them.
If one could question the human beings who lived the period between the
fourteenth and the seventeenth century, they would answer undoubtedly: yes,
witches exist among us. The affirmative answer covers all social classes and
all kinds of people from the poorest to the rich and the nobles. The witches
exist and perform so many operations and are so terrible that just to name some of
their gestures can lead to mishaps, if you are not adequately protected.
Their
power is great, large their sect and deceptive their appearance.
The witches have the ability to fly, to transport themselves and transport the
others, even during sleep and wakefulness, to far-away places, in the
twinkling of an eye. Some have the gift of metamorphosis: they change their shape by
animals, like cats and thus they enter the houses...
[26]
Vicente Risco, speaking of the Galician witches or meigas, said:
"Although I did not believe them, “they to be, they are ". As if there were doubts, the Inquisitors were responsible for the evil
superstitions became a thing of faith and real at the same time. All
categories of people, from the simple to the nobles, intellectuals, clergy
and theologians, believed that witches existed and that, through the pact
with the Devil, had immense power. We must be cautious to repel their charms,
even a simple evil eye. The witch does evil because she is a slave of evil
by her
own free choice, say the judges of the soul, the inquisitors. They had to
fight The Demonic Conspiracy [...] in the form of the Sabbath of witches.
The Church, in her desire to have a monopoly and control of real and magical
rites, under the guise of protecting the faithful so they do not depart from
the path of faith, showed a great credulity in the devil or Satan, what
seems to be a real heresy and a great ignorance of human psychology. Most of the cases
were psychological problems, but focused especially from a religious
perspective, distorted and wrong, and it was carried away by gender bias,
that, in
varying degrees, depending on the times, it always maintained.
The Church also showed an unusual cruelty against the poor and sometimes ill
women, questioning, very seriously, its message of peace and love, and
questioning the credibility in that God, in whose name so many crimes were
committed.
THE MINISTRY OF THE DEVIL
|
 |
Wait they oint you,
by Goya.
Implementation of magic ointment, applied to a goat.
|
The monotheistic religions, Jewish, Christian, Moslem, enthroned
the figure of
the evil and gave him the name and his peculiar characteristics. All potential calamities
were the result of his wicked arts and sin was due to the temptations of
Satan as an enemy not only of man, but of God himself.
The Middle Ages represented Satan as a hybrid, a goat with human traits and
evil, who was revered by magicians and witches, regarded as his priests. Since there was
the concept of good, there was that of the evil, like day and night, light and
darkness, God and the Devil. With these ancient dualistic concepts, the imagination of believers was filled with superstition and devil
worship was magically linked to witchcraft and black magic.
Their rites were often parodies of Catholic ceremonies, which was officiated
by following the ritual in reverse, turning the black mass in the most
solemn ritual of Satanism. Its symbolism was also used in reverse: the cross was
placed face down, prayers were recited backwards, from end to beginning and
the name of God or Jesus Christ would be replaced by that of Satan. The
sacred ornaments, the chasuble, for example, would have satanic inspired
embroidery, as the effigy of a goat.
And for their bloody sacrifices, the officiant, behind a mask,
was wearing a
hooded cloak of black or red color and text orientation were diabolical. One
of the most common practices was to celebrate the sacrifice on the naked
body of a young woman, placed on a platform; herself became the altar. To
its
right, was the only white candle lit permitted, he embodied the "hypocrisy
of white magicians" and to its left, there lit one or more blacks
candles, which
represented the power of darkness. On the black candles were burnt papers
written with satanic blessings and the curses were burned on the white ones; the candles
were the only light in the room. The candle wax came either from the
leftovers of a wake, from the fat of a goat or from a man who had been hanged.
The psalms were praising Satan as a Yahweh of sins, God of the scandal, benefactor
of all crimes. - Oh, Satan!, God of the ancient hatreds! Come to us and
grant the wish that this, your candidate, you pray.
They also use magic potions to achieve their desires.
THE FAUSTIAN PACT
|
 |
Faust, semi-legendary
figure who made a pact with the devil to gain wisdom.
|
The Faustian pact is between myth and reality. Faust was a real person
transformed by the mythical legend. Johannes Faust was born in Württemberg
in 1480 and educated at the University of Ingolstadt. Man of extraordinary
intelligence, he continued his studies at Hidelberg tat he expense of an uncle who
paid his studies pretending him to be a priest, for what he had no vocation.
He met Cornelius
Agrippa, doctor, a student of the Kabbalah and magic, by means of which he performed, it
was said, miraculous healings that exceeded normal knowledge of medicine.
They
traveled together to Prague, where they met Theophrastus Paracelsus,
whose philosophical ideas were similar to those that they farmed. All the three
shared and studied esoteric concepts, prohibited doctrines and occult sciences.
Faust became
convinced of the great opportunities available to the occult and then guided
his life and studies to unravel the great mysteries. For some time, Faust
was drawn by Luther and his Reformation. They say that, because of this meeting, Luther
came one day to say:
- I need the
help of God to save me from the demons that Faust has invoked against
me.
Faust admired the
Manichaean doctrine, diligently studied magic and alchemy and maddened
with the powers of demon in which he firmly believed. His servant and secretary
commented, deforming, doctrines and practices of his employer, whom they
described as a magician and worshiper of the Devil.
From the real life of this man, of his friends and of theories he defended, literature
spawned a series of myths, possibly originating from actual events
attributed to Faust. What, in fact, was due to the reality of time in which he lived
was the interest in the occult and in the called demonic pacts.
The bookseller
Johann Spiesz, 1587, wrote:
...
a full moon
night, Faust goes to the forest of
Spesser.
At a crossroads he traces with his
stick in the ground two concentric circles, he places in the middle and
utters some magic words. It is heard music and sounds of swords when suddenly a
beast appears like a faucet, carrying a fire star that he drops and in the fall
it
continues to grow, to become one big ball. Suddenly, a human figure outline,
cast into the fire, begins to revolve around the magic circle. It disappears and
in its place is a monk who is close to Faust and greets him. They set a
meeting for the following day. (Hemmert
and Roudene. Historia da magia, do ocultismo e das sociedades secretas.)
Faust restarts the
ritual at home. The spirit emerges and the magician offers him a pact, but the envoy of hell can not make a decision without consulting the Prince
of Darkness. For the third time Faust invokes the spirit that is evident in
human form and requires the collection of his body and his soul forever.
But his word is not enough, he has to take the oath in writing, a document
sealed with his blood. The deal is valid for a few years, during which the
devil will relinquish its powers to Faust, this time served, he will return to take him
back.
- What is your
name?
- Mephistopheles,
the devil answered.
The document signed by Faust, reads:
I, Dr. Joanne
Faust, I write with my hand and acknowledge publicly that, having speculated
on the elements with the help of the gifts that were granted to me and not getting
to find in my intelligence the necessary talent to understand
them, I subordinate to the
spirit I have been sent, called Mephistopheles, who is one of the servants of
the infernal
Prince of the East. The same spirit is committed to be submissive and
obedient to me. In return, I promise that after 24 years, completed after the date
of this document, he may dispose of my person, govern, carry and command me the way
he
wants: in body, soul, flesh, blood and goods throughout eternity. Furthermore
I disclaim all who live in this world and all the heavenly host. To certify
the authenticity of the document, I wrote it with my hand and sealed with my
blood, in full possession of my senses, my head, my intelligence and my
will. The undersigned: Johannes Faust, skilled in the science of the
elements and doctor of theology.
Many witnesses at
that time said the agreement existed and that, from 1525, Faust began to
publicly demonstrate his gifts and to use the wealth that Mephistopheles
had given him. Magician himself claimed to have visited hell and that,
despite the violence of fire, suffered no burn, or even feel the heat of the
flames.
One day, in Leipzig,
when he served as a guide to some students, he saw some men who, evidently tired,
tried to get out of Auerbach's cellar a wine barrel. Faust, approaching them
jokingly asked:
- Why
are needed so many
men for a job that just one can do?
Listening to him,
thinking it was a joke, the owner of the winery came up, wiping his hands
on his apron.
-I offer a cask of
wine to anyone who can take it out of my parking and roll into the street
without help.
Faust dropped to the damp
cellar, got astride a barrel and took it to the street, as if it was horse and
rider, to the astonishment of people who had gathered curious.
The development of
this scene was imprinted for posterity on the walls of the tavern. The
drawings and the allegorical phrases inspired
one day the pen and the talent of a
man who, seduced by the myth, wrote some of the most beautiful pages of
German literature. A man who was also a student of the occult, astrology and
magic: Johann Wolfgang van Goethe. From his hand emerges a Faust dissatisfied, a
misunderstood hero who does not find meaning in life, an intellectual who
walks with Mephistopheles and makes Auerbach's tavern the world stage. This
Faust scientific and poor attempts suicide, but is saved by a choir of
angels.
With the help of
the devil, dissolved in the love potion from a witch, with flattery and gifts,
he seduces Margaret, a peasant whom he leaves when she expected a child of
his. Later,
repentant, requires to Mephistopheles to reveal the whereabouts of the
beloved and he tells she is in jail and will be executed. Faust wants to save
her, but was not on time. Margarita has been slaughtered and her immortal soul
ascends to heaven. At the end of a life passed among witches, Greek myths,
emperors and monsters, always with personal or spiritual company of Mephistopheles,
Faust dies. The devil comes to take possession of his soul, as it was agreed,
but again the angels involved and prevented it. Faust's spirit
is finally with Margarita.
One of the
more descriptive scenes
is the assistance of Faust to the sabbath Walpurgis Night,
where they meet all kinds of monstrous beings to celebrate their festival.
Spiesz details the
last moments of life of his hero... The 24-year
pact
of Doctor comes to an end.
The spirit appeared to him and, showing him the document,
he announced
that the devil
would be the next day to pick up his body and soul. Faust invited his
best friends to spend the night at his home and over dinner he confessed:
"Dear and
intimate friends, I have summoned you because you know me for many years,
ending tonight. The hourglass in front of me tells me to be ready.
When it empties the devil will came to take me. I beg you, my good and dear sirs,
you drink a toast with me in a friendly farewell and salute to all those who
keep a good memory of me. Do not be disturbed by the cries and noises you
will hear in the house. Nothing bad will happen to you, but stay in your
beds. If you find my corpse, command to be buried. My soul is grieving for a
genuine repentance. I wish you all a good night. Mine certainly will be bad,
painful and terrible".
All men came to
embrace his friend, their eyes were filled with tears, their faces marked by
sadness.
During the night
they heard the agonizing screams of Faust imploring relief, whistles and
scary
screams, but nobody stood up as promised. In the morning they entered the
room of their friend. He was full of blood, part of the brain stamped against
the wall, some bones and teeth on the floor. They found the body outside the
home next to a manure pit. They order to bury him in the village, but his coffin disappeared and was never found. They said that his ghost
appeared to the people of the villages and towns where he lived. On foggy
nights, people avoided looking through the windows. The spirit of Faust
was wandering,
repentant, the streets.
Although lost in the many legends that
have spread over him and that the evidence of his passage through life
is confined to a parchment, a bag and little else, Faust remains for almost 500
years in the minds of many scholars, who thus make him timeless.
[20]
PSEUDO
enlightened AND PETITIONERS
|
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Young witch riding a goat, symbol
|
...that they
have them so subject and rendered in doing nothing, even pious and holy,
without their permission or command; and tacitly or explicitly tell them to
give them obedience and they are punished when they disobey.
Alvaro Huerga.
Alongside the enlightened themselves, there appeared dark and unscrupulous
religious, who,
in the sacrament of penance and under the authority of false
mystic-ecstatic outbursts, ask their female parishioners carnal contact or sex. It
was the solicitation of those false enlightened and opportunistic swindlers,
of very degraded ethics. Sometimes, especially the enlightened of Extremadura
and Andalucia, mingled heterodox doctrines with sensual mystical raptures,
scatological ravings with diabolical presences, mixing heretic with moral
depravity.
In the act of the inquisitorial process against the religious John of Villalpando
you can read: In the act of confession
he drooled the women on their face and put his
hands on their breasts and hidden parts, by saying that there it was to enter
the spirit and that it was the best way to be in grace...
The solicitation was widespread, as evidenced by the Edict of Grace, enacted
by the General Inquisitor Andres Pacheco, 1623, affirming the thousand ways
that the confessor used to obtain sexual favors from his penitents. These
edicts, when the obscene practices of these shameless religious were known, produced
the usual scandal. To justify their sexual abuse and overcome the logic scruples
of the penitents, these religious invented false doctrines, making
them understand and saying that those touching were not sin, that they did
it to cheer, comfort and help them. To
subjugate and humiliate women through the
confessional, they often confess their disciples in secret locations and always
removed from the temples and churches where attends parochial Christian
people....The disciples were the illuminati devotee.
Who
could know better the weaknesses of these women penitents, who were obliged,
as commanded by catechisms, to reveal the innermost secrets of their inner
erotic, their carnal desires and their remorse? Moreover, these confessors
took advantage of the discourse on the sixth commandment, a fundamental
theme in confession, to cause, with their questions, the penitents sensual
temptations. Even the confessor could teach with his unseemly questions,
new sins and new erotic passions. These women, who sought the acquittal in
repentance and release from guilt, were offered remedies and formulas that,
far from providing the domestic tranquility, sank them in a sea of
worries, doubts and fears. It was a sad irony that this holy sacrament
stained them with new
sins of sacrilegious character. Many of them no doubt that the confessor
was who first induced them to certain sexual practices, which explains some of
their behaviors.
Widespread outcry was the need for drastic reform of the morality of many
of the clergy. The illicit relations between clergy and women, cohabitation,
was a scandal that could not continue. As Adelina Sarrión Mora described very well in her book Sexuality and Confession,
"at mid-sixteenth century, when Protestant
reformers attacked the sacramental doctrine of the Church, claiming it was
an invention of the clergy to exploit the faithful, the Catholic hierarchy
proposes to clean out of objective suspicion the sacraments. Given the
importance acquired by penance, confession solicitation became a very
special offence". But this struggle against
the religious claimants submitted very
distinctive characteristics that here we cannot analyze thoroughly, but
it forced the Inquisition to adapting their methods of control under various
circumstances. Among these religious seekers, hoarders of devotees, it was
established a silent struggle to maintain in their fold the victims and prevent
them falling under the seductive influence of another rival in love. There
were even accusations between these confessors, womanizers. [27]
The Church, despite being aware of the issue of celibacy, it
continued undaunted in its rules that established the practice that, apart
from being unnatural, They have not been observed or respected by the majority
of the clergy in all periods of History. It is one more of the Church hypocrisies,
which generates clerical pathologies and conditions of abuse and humiliation
of the
confused and ignorant penitents. The Church itself is gripping, it wants
clarity in the confession of mouth, and, if it is not clear, it agrees the
celibate give help to clarify all the commandments, with special emphasis
on the sixth.
And here emerges the
predictable plot. No wonder that reformers say clearly that the confession
was "an invention of the clergy to exploit the faithful".
Christopher Chamizo, the youngest in the group and the most luxurious,
deprived many naive devotees of their virginity, telling them that it was not sin and
that he would absolve that all. "And spent a night in bed with three devotees"
also told that "if they felt pregnant had to notice him, who would give
them with what to throw the creatures; and that if they had to marry, he would
give them how to look like
they were with their virginity, and having one of the devotees asked for this
remedy, after done and applied, he returned to take her, saying he
wanted to prove that it was true. He used "spells and incantations" and "did
not want to confess, but the girls" and forced to" all those devotees
to
render obedience "and" forbid them to confess to another."
[28]
"Initium sapientiae, timor
Domini" (Proverbs I, 7): The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. Fear
is the most useful of the brakes, and the Inquisition, from the Latin
inquisitio - "investigating" -, was a tribunal designed to
frighten and to create terror in the believers, in the opinion of experts in the
field. And nothing was left to chance, the manuals were setting out full
details to follow in the methods and techniques, that the inquisitor should
follow in his mission of eradicating heresy.
We will see various steps and procedures of this court, since the process
was initiated to its outcome, which used to be the stake: The
report, the grace period, procedures to interrogate, torture, sanbenitos,
autos-da-fé, torture, prisons and others.
THE INQUISITORIAL PROCEDURE. FIRST
MANUALS.
|
 |
Manual of inquisitors, Directorium Inquisitorum,
by Fray Nicolas Eymeric, 1376, Inquisitor General of the Kingdom of Aragon.
The manual coding practices and arguments, both theological and
ideological, that justified the existence of this repressive
apparatus of the Church.
|
The procedures of the Inquisition were well structured books prepared for
that purpose.
One of the first books for the inquisitors was the Directorium
Inquisitorum (Manual for Inquisitors)
of Fray Nicolas Eymeric, written about 1376 in Avignon, by this
Catalan
Dominican
born in Gerona in 1322. It is a treaty that compiles the existing
inquisitorial
laws and rules that every inquisitor should know and practice
in the proper use of his functions. Brother Nicholas was a controversial
inquisitor who pursued with extreme rigor the followers of the doctrines
of Ramon Llull; for that reason he fell out with Peter the Ceremonious, who ordered him
to be expelled from Gerona in 1375. Then it would also be expelled by John I of Aragon, but he
enjoyed the favor of Popes Clement VII and Benedict VIII.
The Inquisitors Manual of Eymeric is a synthesis of existing literature up to
date; in it, the structure of the repressive
apparatus of the Church
was uphold and justified,
and everything was coded for the eventual use of the
inquisitors.
A true
legal set-up, reprinted many times, to eradicate the plague of heresy.
Previously, between 1244 and 1254, in the Languedoc, four Dominican friars
had written another manual. It also became famous, the manual of Bernardo Gui
Practica Hereticae Inquisitionis pravitatis, written
toward
1320. And, among the necessary
forms, it
is the collection of Decretals
established by Raimon de Penyafort in 1230, by order of Pope Gregory IX.
A
century later we witness the birth of the above cited gem of the Inquisition: the Malleus Maleficarum.
Given the results of these
procedures do not ring hollow the words of Samuel Usque when he speaks of the
Inquisition in the sixteenth century:...
a savage monster, of so strange and terrible countenance, that all Europe
trembles at the mere mention of his name.
The truth shall make you free,
Jesus said in the Gospel of John, 8,32.
The freedom brought about by these procedures can not be seen anywhere.
Rather, one can speak of terror and slavery.
GRACE PERIOD
|
 |
Delegations of the Holy Inquisition.
Reception of the Inquisitor, accompanied by family members (collaborators.
His flag flying with pealing
drums and the people waiting.
|
Before the arrival of
the Inquisitor with the retinue of his family (collaborators), the
presence and the sermon of the Inquisitor at the main temple of the city was
officially notified to all the relevant authorities and in all the churches
of the region.
When the day and time arrive, the temple was crowded; there
was no room for anybody else. The parishioners were tense and anxious. Once the Holy Mass started and already made the appropriate liturgical
readings, epistle and gospel, the Dominican inquisitor, invested with the
sacred vestments, and knowing his role as papal delegate (all other
attendees, bishop, priests, public authorities, lords and vassals, were
under his power and authority), prepares himself for the homily. He, of
humble birth, possessing only some knowledge of scholastic philosophy, of
some precepts and a little of Theology, began his climb by the stairs
of the pulpit, full of power and arrogance, aware that as plenipotentiary
judge, the lives of those poor human beings, that with reverence and fear
were expecting his doctrine and his threats, were in his hands. He starts the homily in the name of the
Pope and, with a throaty
voice, proclaims:
God, to save us from
our sins, sent us our lord Jesus Christ, who suffered for us agony on the
cross. God did not pardon his own Son, he sacrificed him for our redemption
and salvation. In his loving decree Jesus had preached the Gospel and love
and understanding among men. Jesus is the good shepherd. I assure you that
who does not enter through the door to the sheepfold, but jumping by other
side, he is a thief and a robber. The one who enters by the door is the
shepherd of the flock. The keeper opens him, the sheep’s hear his voice, he
calls them by their name and leads them to grass, walking ahead of them
and they follow him because they recognize his voice. They did not follow a
stranger, but instead escaped from him, because they did not recognized the
voice of strangers.
The Inquisitor voice is calm, reassuring, and continues:
Jesus said: I assure you that I am the
door of the flock. All who came before me were thieves and robbers but the
sheep did not
listen them. I am the door, whoever enters by me will be saved; he could come
and go and find pasture. The thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy. I
came for you to have life in abundance.
The silence was sepulchral; not even could be
heard the breathing of those poor people that filled the temple.
I am the true grapevine, Jesus says, and my Father is the
grape grower. He cut the branches that do not bear fruit in me, and those
that gives fruits he prunes them to give even more.
Jesus, our Master and Savior, to be understood by his
disciples used parables: the kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good
seed in his field. But while people slept, one of his enemies sowed weeds
among the wheat and left. When the stem came out and showed the spikes, the
weeds also appeared. Then the servants told the owner: Lord, did not you sow good
seed in the field? From where then comes the chaff? He replied: An enemy
has done, the servants told him: do you want that we uproot it? He
replied: No, because, uprooting will take the wheat out. Let them grow
together until harvest. When the time comes, I will tell the harvesters:
uproot first the weed and, once tied, throw it to the fire, then collect the wheat
and put it in my barn.
Another parable,
brought by
the Inquisitor, is the wedding banquet.
One of the guests, at hearing it, said: - Blessed is the
one who sits at the banquet of the kingdom of God! Jesus replied:
A man gave a great banquet, to which he invited many. By the
time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell the guests, ‘Come, everything is
ready". But all, one after another, apologized.
The first said: I bought some land and I have to go to
examine it, I beg you to forgive me.
The second said: I have bought five yoke of mules and I am
going to try them, I beg you to forgive me.
The third said: I just got married and I can not go.
The servant came to
inform the homeowner.
He angrily told the servant: Go quickly to the squares and
streets of the city and bring here all the poor, crippled, blind and lame.
The servant returned and said: lord, what you ordered has
been done and still there is place.
The lord said to the servant: Go to the roads and paths and
compel them to enter until the house is full. Because I say to all of you
that none of those guests will taste my banquet.
The Inquisitor,
raising his voice, continued:
Compelle eos intrare, compel them to enter.
We have the
power to force them to entry into the Church and, once inside, to force them
not to go out; that is the will of the Lord.
Outside the Church there is no salvation, Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus.
God delegated in our holy, catholic and apostolic Church the mission and the
obligation of completing the redemptive work of our Lord. We are his
messengers, we are his disciples.
The Inquisitor paused and breathed deeply. Raising his voice, thundered from
the pulpit:
Our ears have heard rumors that there are wolves among you, dry branches,
sewers of weed in the field of the Lord.
It was silence. A cold fear ran among all banks and sacred
spaces. The attendees bowed their heads and began to tremble. The preacher,
tightly clutching the pulpit, using his entire well studied oratory skills, knowing the suggestibility of the masses and the great weight the
divine has on them, with deep and powerful voice continues:
There are heretics in this flock, pestiferous people, and
transgressors of the heretical depravity. St. Jerome reminds us how Arius
was not repressed on time in Alexandria and for that his error spread “per
totum orbem", around the world. Heresy is rotting meat, mangy sheep that
infects the entire flock; it must be detected, sliced, and separate from the
flock, for the flock not to suffer the bad. St. Paul in his Epistle to
Titus says: "To the sectarian, after two warnings, avoid him, you know
that such a person is perverted and continues sinning so he condemns
himself".
The Inquisition is the safeguard of orthodoxy; so those who
opposes the inquisition, opposes also the orthodoxy. You are in danger,
danger of serious infection. Heresy is a crime of high treason, because is
God who is offended, it is the worst of crimes, deserves the worst
punishment, but the merciful God wants to give you an opportunity in this
period of grace, you can, in front of us, expose your error, with the
certainty that you will be treated with indulgence, if you repent and
promise not to repeat the mistake.
The sermon concludes with an invitation that leaves no doubt:
Understanding the value of the things we just discussed,
everyone must know that, if has knowledge of words or acts against the
faith, must reveal it to the inquisitor. To denounce friends or neighbors is
not an embarrassment. Rather it should be considered a wonderful gesture of
obedience to the law of Jesus our Lord. So, avoiding any confusion, listen
well what the notary will read.
In the cathedral, the silence is absolute. The notary steps
in the pulpit, where he takes place at the side of the inquisitor father
and, unrolling a scroll, he rises his voice to be solemnly heard by
everybody and by himself.
We, Brother Nicholas, a Dominican, delegate inquisitor of
the Apostolic in these areas [...], having learned that the snakes of
heresy wanted to spread their poison in this country, that the heretics
want destroy your souls, as foxes are devastated the vineyard of the Lord
of the Army, cursing against the God of gods and the Lord of lords.
We, our viscera are shaking with fear and disgust at the idea
that the poison of heresy has poisoned many souls.
We, with the authority of the Pope, which we are endowed, by
virtue of holy obedience and under penalty of excommunication, we ordain
and establish that each and every one, laity, members of the secular
clergy and the regular clergy, living in the confines of this city and
within a radius of four miles outside the walls, that in six days from
today, you must say if you know or have heard that any person is a
heretic, known as heretic, suspected of heresy or speak against such or
that article of faith or against the sacraments or do not behave like the
others, or avoid contact with believers or invoke demons and worshiping them.
The notary twists the
parchment with the ordinance and goes, accompanied by the faint murmur that
runs through the crowd. But there is no time for any comment; and again the
Inquisitor took the word and harasses.
Anyone -God not want it!- that does not abide our order
of denouncement and that way neglect the salvation of his own soul, must know that he is subject to excommunication.
Those who instead, help us accomplish our task can enjoy
three years of forbearance. The notary, that has read to you these last
words, has just won his three years of forbearance. Be obedient; do not
lose the opportunity of gaining the indulgences. [29]
If after this period of grace, "Edict of Grace", the
expected denunciations are not carried out, we will proclaim the "Edict of
Faith", by which we will order to all Christians of this country, under
penalty of excommunication, to accuse and inform all suspects of heresy,
whether parents, siblings, children, relatives or friends; nobody can be
excluded. The obligation of cleaning up the community of heretics is above
all kinship and affinity. I remind you that this is about excommunication,
which only his holiness the Pope, or I, as Inquisitor, could lift up.
We opened the Edict of Grace. May the peace and grace of
God’s be with all of you.
Christians frightened
and terrified after the downpour that fell on them, once the mass
finished, left the temple.
If the simple name of the Inquisition was terrifying, much more
when the sword of Damocles was threatening over each of their heads. Anyone
could be betrayed for any insignificance if he was a suspect of heresy by
any of the anxious and frightened citizens, even by relatives. That night,
few could sleep; everyone felt that he was in serious risk, the enemy could
be at home or sleep in the same bed. The plague of repression was at their
doors in the name of God. The edict was a public letter of the Inquisition.
There were several types of edicts:
Edict of Grace, that was published with a promise of
forgiveness to all whom voluntarily accused themselves as repentant
heretics, without public penance.
Edict of faith, by which, if the person did not confess
his sin of heresy voluntarily, other parishioners, who may be the
father, a brother, the husband, a child, a relative, a friend, were
obliged to betray the suspect of heresy to the inquisitors, under penalty
of excommunication.
Edict of accusations, that was read a Sunday of Lent,
every year, forcing believers, within six days, to betray to the Holy Office
any person suspected of having committed a heresy.
Edict of the
anathemas,
which was held eight
days after the one of the accusations, also once a year, in which every
believer who had not betrayed a heretic or suspected of being, was
threatened of excommunication.
Edict to summon, which was the one intended to those
fled or absent, that already had a case before, they were called to appear
personally before the inquisitors at a certain time, otherwise would be
deemed as convicted heretic, obstinate and unrepentant.
THE REPORT
|
 |
Like in Spain, in Germany, the tongue of
blasphemous is cut before burning.
German Etching.
National Library
in Madrid.
|
After the grace period, the heretic risked falling into the clutches of the
Inquisition post if he was object of an
accusation,
indictment or inquisition.
The difference between accusation and indictment
was as subtle as important:
to accuse a heretic meant not only a formal but also
a personal accusation.
This means the accuser had to be sure
not only
of the charges he argued but he had to be sure of the trial
that he deserved.
If he made
a mistake, it will pay dearly for it: the Talion Law would be applied
to him, and he would
suffer the punishment that would be applied to the accused. However, when it
was a simple indictment there was no danger for the complainant that merely
informs the Inquisitor simple reports, and sometimes, not even that, only
suspicions. It was the Holy Office who had to decide whether it was
worthwhile to prosecute the suspect.
It is easily understandable that in such circumstances, there were few
accusations and mountains of indictments. Moreover, the accusation almost
disappeared and the law of Talion was not applied but to
those who, knowingly,
had provided the Inquisition erroneous
reports, with the sole and deliberate purpose of injuring someone. The base that
supported the building was inquisitorial indictment.
[30]
The
confessors, hearing the sins and problems of awareness of the true
believers, who feared for the salvation of their souls, when they were
suspected of heresy, forced them to betray to the Inquisition those
suspected heretics, even if they were close relatives. If they refused, they did not
receive the
absolution. Therefore confessors were always collaborating agents of
indictment.
The believer,
involved in the networks
of the
Inquisition, had very little chance to evade it.
The canonical
penalties, including excommunication, were intolerable burdens on their
consciences troubled, because they were excluded from the Church and, therefore,
sentenced to eternal damnation of hell, in which they firmly believed.
There is
a case of a sick old Cathar woman who was waiting for the visit of the
Perfect for spiritual solace at her death time. Aware of this, one monk dressed
as Perfect and, after obtaining evidence that she was Cathar, she was tried and
sentenced to death by fire, despite her age and her status of health.
Christians, for the simple fact of being, had to exercise inquisitorial
tasks by betraying and denouncing the suspect of heresy, whoever he or she
was, as are countless sad cases where this happened. Father Fray
Juan Iriarte, for example, Dominican monk, denounced his brothers, Tomas and
Bernardo, who used to argue with him on religious themes, of having committed
heresy; this originated them a complex and lengthy process with serious
consequences.
It is a
clear example of the immense burden that the Inquisitors, in their
zeal to find heretics, laid on the consciences of believers, which
was a clear alienation of minds.
Christians
did not enjoy the right of not to incriminate themselves; by contrast, they
were
obliged, under severe canonical penalties, such as excommunication, to betray themselves and to betray the others. Inquisitorial courts move from a legal approach
based on the presumption of guilt, not of innocence, as it is usual today.
The Inquisition came directly in the privacy of conscience, because
the only thinking or desiring could be a crime when they were contrary to
orthodoxy, to the customs or rituals established by the Church.
All the suspects were prosecuted and the least suspicion was a source of
deep research: The suspects, therefore accused, were summoned by a written
summons or by the same parish priest who was obliged, together with
some witnesses, to appear in the house of the accused and submit the subpoena.
Typically, the summons was unique, 'urgent', but if there were problems,
there could be up to three consecutive times.
The
refusal to appear exposed the defendant to be held in contempt and he
incurred excommunication.
When the arrest of the accused entailed danger, or when he absconded, the inquisitors
called for assistance to civil authorities so that they be in charge of the
arrest.
The Inquisition took into account all reports, even anonymous ones. The
informer had, after being sworn to tell the truth, to state the facts giving
rise to his indictment and to state the names of persons likely to confirm the
heretical nature of the suspect. Their declaration with that of the first witness was the summary (summary information or
preparatory education) upon which the inquisitors were based to deliver the
qualification, i.e, officially declare whether the facts alleged by the
complainant and confirmed by witnesses enter or not within the realm of
heresy.
But how serious the matter was that the witnesses were not asked to
confirm or challenge the testimony of the informer declared,
but only to declare that "if they had not seen or heard anything to appear to them
contrary to the Catholic faith or the rights of the Inquisition" without
being informed of the identity of the accused. Clever way to get a
multiplicity of information from a single report. Eventually the system
will be refined further and when a court decides, on the basis of
a preliminary-open case, others will reach a circular asking the courts
review records, i.e, all the information available in their files and
which may be added to the statement of charges against the accused
[31]
HOW DID THE INQUISITION
INTERROGATE
|
 |
Courtroom of the Inquisition. The dreaded Inquisition
interrogation.
Headed by a great Christ. On the right is the defendant, the
prosecutor in the center with his ecclesiastical clothing, and
on left the clerk taking notes.
Recorded at the National Library, Madrid.
|
They
proceeded from the assumption that the suspect of heresy was clever
and cunning, and he would undoubtedly try to fool the religious who interrogated
him twisting the answers to the questions that the inquisitors would make
him, so that he can hide his crime. To make his responses appropriate and
satisfactory, in order to mislead the interrogated, Eymeric presents ten tips
or tricks that normally use the heretic:
The first is the ambiguity, so when they are ask about the real body of
Jesus Christ, they answer the mystic or if they are asked: Is this the body of
Christ?, say yes, meaning by this his own body or an immediate stone, as
all the bodies that the world contains are of God and therefore of Jesus
Christ who is God. If they are asked: Do you think Jesus Christ was born of the
Virgin? Respond: Finally, meaning that remain firm in their heresy.
The second trick that they use is the addition of an implied condition,
mental restriction. When asked: Do you believe in the resurrection of the
flesh? answer: Yes, if God willing and assume that God does not want to
believe in this mystery.
The third is to twist the question, so that when you tell them: Do you
believe that usury is sin? they answer: well, do you believe? When they are replied: We believe, as every Catholic or Christian, that usury is a sin,
they replicate : We too think so, this is, that you believe it.
The fourth is to respond as shocked, when asked: Do you believe that Jesus
Christ took flesh in the womb of the Virgin? they say: my God, what for do you
do these questions? If I were a Jew? I am a Christian!... and I believe
everything any true Christian believes... unspecified.
The fifth is used frequently of prevarication, responding to what they are
not asked and not answering what asked.
The sixth cunning is to evade the answer. If they are asked: Do you think Jesus
was alive when his side was pierced with a lance on the cross? respond: On
this point I have heard several opinions, no less than about the beatific vision.
Gentlemen, you bring people in an uproar with these disputes. Tell us, for
God's sake, what we must believe, because I would not like to err in faith.
The seventh is to make his own apology. When they are asked questions about an
article of faith, they answer: "Father, I am a poor ignorant, who simply
believe in God and do not understand these subtleties you ask me, I will
easily fall into the trap, for the love of God, stop these issues."
The eighth guile of heretics is to pretend lightheadedness when viewed in a
hurry with the questions. They feign a headache, that they cannot keep in
their
feet and ask to suspend the declaration and go to the bedroom, to think
about what they have to respond. This trick is worth especially when they
see that their pay will be the torture, saying that they are very weak and
they will lose their
life, and women protesting about infirmities of their own sex, to prolong the
beginning of the torture and deceive the inquisitors.
The ninth trick is to feign mad.
The tenth,
to affect modesty in dress, in
the face and in every action.
To counteract this picaresque, Eymeric proposed the inquisitors other
measures, equally capable and prepared to let them fall into the confession,
paying the heretics with the same coin. The main gear that the
inquisitors must use against heretics are:
First, they must be urged with repeated questions to respond openly and
categorically to the questions that were done.
Secondly, if the inquisitor presume that the apprehended accused is resolved not to declare
his offence (which he finds out before taking
statements by the warden or as undercover spies have much), he will speak with
great softness, by giving to understand that he knows everything and saying these
or similar reasons: Look, my son, I am very sorry, they misled your candor
and you are lost miserably. No doubt you have erred but more than you are to be blamed who deceived
you; do not charge for the sins of others or try to be a master being a disciple;
confess me the truth, as you see I know all, to keep your good reputation and
I may put you early in release, pardon and peace you and return to your
house; tell me who tricked you when you lived innocent. So must
speak the inquisitor to him, paying him with kind words (bona verba), undeterred
ever, assuming the fact is true, without taking any statement but on the
circumstances.
As shown, the trick of using alternatively the
friendly and hard tone used for the police is far older than we imagined. It
also happens with
the trick, we thoughtit was the invention of the German Gestapo or the Soviet GPU,
of pretending to have written evidence of the crime of which he is charged.
Let us see now the third trick.
When the statements of witnesses against the heretic is not full of proof
but they present vehement evidence and he goes negative, he will appear in
front of the
inquisitor who will ask vague things and when the accused refuses anything, the judge
will browse the orders where are the previous interrogations, saying: It is
clear that you do not report the truth, no more hide. Thus the defendant
believes he is
convicted and thinks the file is in evidence against him.
The inquisitor can also browse any bundle and, when the
defendant denies something, pretend to be stunned, saying: How can you deny
such a thing, being so true? Then he will read his paper, turning the leaves and
added: Did not I say so? Confess the truth.
But in all this the inquisitor has to escape to explain suspicious
circumstances where the defendant can suspect he does not know anything, he
has not to leave general terms.
Knowing that one of the greatest anguish of the prisoner is not knowing how
long his confinement is going to be, Eymeric advised to keep the suspense on the
subject:
Fourthly, if the defendant insists on denying the crime, the inquisitor will tell
him he's going to make a long journey and not know when he will return,
that he feels very much being forced to leave him in prison, that what he most wants
is to
know the truth from his mouth to complete his cause, but he is still
determined not to confess, he must stay in jail until he returns, which
gives him much compassion, as the prisoner of delicate complexion will
undoubtedly fall ill.
And of course, insist again and again in questions without letting them
breathe...
Fifth, if the defendant is negative, the inquisitor will multiply interrogations and questions and then either
he confess, or the inquisitor will vary his
questions. If he varies, it's enough, to give him torment, the experts' opinion and previous
evidences and thus he will be urged to tell the truth, since the questions have
not to be multiplied when the defendant is not very reticent, because
when the statements are very common on the same matter, at different
times, it is very easy to get the answers vary and everyone can fall into
the trap.
The sixth trick reaches the summit of
cynicism. After flattering the defendant, the inquisitor will promise
forgiveness, knowing that it will never arrive, but relying on the incredible claim
that "everything is forgiveness and penance and remedies are favors".
If the offender persists in the negative, the Inquisitor can talk with
softness and treat him less stringently in terms of food and drink, making
people go to visit him, talk to him, they inspire confidence and advised him
to confess promising the Inquisitor will forgive him and that they will work towards
his favor. The Inquisitor can also give the accused word that he will forgive
him
and in fact he is being forgiven (because in the conversion of heretics, all
forgiveness and penance are favors and remedies). So when the offender
apologizes to confess his crime, will be answered in general terms that it will
be done with him more than he might desire, so as to learn the truth and
convert
the heretic, saving at least his soul.
The suggestion is so severe that the same Eymeric wondered how far it is permissible
to deceive to humans but, relying on authors of the same ilk, he answers
himself affirmatively.
You may wonder about the word of the inquisitor to use mercy
and forgiveness with him by confessing his crime; first, if the inquisitor can lawfully
use this trick to find the truth and, secondly, whether, given the word, is
bound to it. The first question is made by the doctor Jerome Cuchalon by
approving this fails and justifying it with the example of Solomon, when he
judged the two women. Well that Julio Claró and other jurists disapprove
this fiction in regular forum, I think that it can be used in the courts of
Inquisition and the reason for this difference is that an inquisitor has
much wider powers than the other judges and can dispense at will of
penitential and canonical penalties. So that if he does not promise total impunity
to the accused, he can give words of forgiveness and keep his word to decline
some of these canonical penalties, which depend entirely on him. About the
second question there are two opposing views. Many serious doctors feel that
the inquisitor who promised impunity to the accused is not obliged to keep
his word, besides this fraud to be useful and helpful for the public good,
if it is justifiable to extract the truth of the accused with
torture, "a fieri" it
will be reasonable to use dissimulation and pretense, and this is the opinion of Propósito, Geminiano, Pelyn, Hugocio, Soto, Cycco, etc..
There is a certain logic in his argument: if
accepted to harass a defendant to extract the truth, why not also lying?
... truth is that others have the contrary sentence; but these two options,
saying the words that give the inquisitors only be interpreted from the
penalties that can dispense, which are the canonical and penitential, not
the law, so that whatever slight remission of the canonical sentence granted by the
inquisitor to the prisoner, plays the first his promise, since
for more security of conscience the words that gave the inquisitors must be
in vague terms, without promising more than they can deliver.
He can also enter into the cell a spy, as will be in much closer time in
the Nazi or Communist jails...
The seventh trick the Inquisitor will have gained a friend of the
defendant, or another subject alone and draw out his secret. If necessary,
he will just pretend to be of the heretic opinion, saying that for fear of
the Inquisitor he
abjured and misled, and one night, extending the conversation
late, tell him that it is no time to go home and will keep with him in jail,
having in a site on purpose hidden witnesses who heard the conversation
and if possible, a notary who certifies what the heretic says, ensuring that
the bribed subject discovers the defendant's chest. Note that who is charged
with ferreting out the defendant, under color of friendship, the confession
of his crime, can pretend to be of the same sect, but not to speak it, because if
he says it at least is committing venial fault and it is known that this is not to
commit for any reason, whatever it may be. In a word, in the tricks that are
used it is to avoid saying a lie.
Here rightly notes the translator Marchena: It
is difficult to determine the difference between that the spy pretend to be of the
sect of the accused, or that he says it.
It was one of the many contradictions impossible to resolve in which religious institutions
fell trying to achieve, even by immoral means, the
salvation of a soul.
Obtaining a confession is so important that the interrogator must sacrifice
his daily routine to give no occasion to change the defendant's mind.
By these and other similar media inquisitor
must get the confession, even
delaying lunch or dinner, or even not eating or dinning that day, because
interrupted confessions are never enough to learn the truth and there are
repeated examples of defendants who, having started to confess, they retract
in the
following statement, returning to their past reluctance. [32]
Eymeric ends this chapter by recalling that this system can be applied to
obtain the truth "without having recourse to the rack and torture," which is
always welcome.
The systems of the inquisition, as we have just seen, left nothing to
chance, everything was coldly calculated and the set-up was perfectly structured.
The poor wretch who fell on it had little or no chance to succeed. It was an
infernal machine, conceived and planned by very special minds.
The interrogation was conducted in the presence of two priests and a notary,
who used to be a religious, who would write the report of the statements. The
religious
interrogators induced to confessions by promising leniency of the court and
they accumulated evidence by introducing a so-called friend or other person
appearing to be from the same sect or doctrine, and living him in the same cell in
order to pump him for his secrets.
The simple report was accepted, accompanied by the testimony of
witnesses. The really surprising is that the defendant never knew what he was
charged with or why he was there, so that, when they tried in vain to defend
themselves, usually saying more things than the Court knew, they further
complicated the situation. Neither would ever know who had accused
him, to avoid possible reprisals, in the unlikely event that come out
innocent. The judicial anomaly of not knowing neither the content of the
report,
nor the identity of the informers or their confrontation, further
complicated the plight of the detained and it precluded any kind of defense; the secret that the inquisitors
kept in these areas was almost
sacramental.
The accused would never face the witnesses, whose names were kept in
strictest confidence. At this time, both civil and criminal justice in the
courts of the Inquisition, they move from a legal approach based on the presumption of guilt. After filing the
report, the defendant is guilty
and has to defend his innocence, which is very unlikely, for his disastrous mood,
for total ignorance of the report and witnesses, and for the absence of
lawyers.
The panic of the Church towards heresy was so great that often it accepted as
valid the testimony of infamous persons: bullies, thieves, excommunicated
and perjury. It seemed that the end justified the means, even if they were
intrinsically evil. For example Alexander IV, in 1261, granted permission
for the heretics witness testimony could be considered. Innocence III, in
the bull Si adversus vos, barred lawyers and notaries to defend those
accused of heresy.
The Council of Valence, in 1248, also rejected the presence of lawyers.
Bernardo Gui, the writer of the famous manual Practica Inquisitionis
Hereticae Pravitatis, 1320, flatly refused to listen to them. However,
Nicholas Eymeric agreed to let the defending of the accused in judicial
hands of prosecutors or lawyers, unless they were suspected of heresy. The
truth is that their role in defending the accused was very poor, they used to be
appointed by the Inquisitor or at least required his approval. A lawyer who
speaks only to the accused in open court, when the accused had confessed his
crimes in the torture room and could not communicate with him alone, could
do little more defensive role than merely ask the court a reduction in
sentence for his client.
THE TORTURE
|
Inquisition torture chamber.
"
The pulley,storm water and the brazier. Inquisitors and
executioners.
Eighteenth-century engraving by Bernard Picart.
|
Partial plan of torture chamber.. |
The Inquisition preferred the
confessions of the accused to the evidence of witnesses, because they
considered them more convincing, but if the defendant was stubborn in his
refusal, which is quite normal, the inquisitors could use two means of violence, preventive
detention and torture.
The issue of torture
created endless questions and produced streams of charges against the Church,
that boldly strayed from Jesus' preaching of the Gospel and the Beatitudes.
Jesus himself had been a victim of intolerance. The first centuries of
Christianity were of persecution and violence that Christians suffered in
the flesh, even with martyrdom. These early communities of love and
brotherhood called and demanded for themselves and for their Church the
freedom to live, believe and think, according to their beliefs and according
to their consciences. A few years later, after the constantinization of
the Church, at the beginning of the fourth century, that same
institution, or perhaps already another once installed on the civil and religious
power, becomes intolerant and persecutes dissidents. The Church soon
forgot that itself had been a sect within the Judaism, as a dissident, and that its
members had been persecuted and massacred by the Roman Empire.
The Church inherited religious prejudices from various sources. From the Mazdaism they take the idea that matter, body and everything that has to do
with it is evil and sinful; while the spirit, the soul, the afterlife, are
the supreme values. From the Platonism they take the theory of
universals, in which they support the right doctrine, the true orthodoxy and
the autosuggestion according to which the Church is the sole possessor of
truth. Such prejudices are the greatest treasure that the Church must keep
with all its might and by all means.
The Church, once installed in
power, became obsessed with its magnetism, its privileges and prebends:
tithes, first fruits, rents and profits, grants. It was the great golden
calf, the Power, whom it worshiped. It developed dogmas, invented laws,
justified lifestyles and developed a theology of great subtlety and
speculations.
The theologians established
theories, they judged scientific, on the divine nature such as transcendental
relationships, with intrinsic foundation in re, in the Trinity, three distinct persons and one divine nature;
theories on Jesus Christ, of the
same nature as the Father, possessor of two intelligences, divine and human,
two wills, divine and human, but only one person, which is the second of the
Trinity; theories on grace, that is the participation of the divine nature in human
beings; on the salvation of souls; on the resurrection; on the revelation... and
on many other topics and themes, all unintelligible, but about what the accused was examined, with dire consequences if he did not know
them or made mistakes.
We have tried to clarify the
impossibility of orthodoxy. The terms used, such as substance, nature
or person were unintelligible and
not correct. The concepts and universal ideas of Platonic origin are
philosophical fictions are unreal, nonexistent; any idea originates in the
human senses and is made in the intelligence and only exists in it. The
terms, always limited, can not contain physical reality or be the essence of
things, which is impossible to lock. The divine reality, the spiritual, exceeds and
escapes from the human mind, as it happens with the words or terms invented by
the theologians. The assumption of a spiritual
soul, as the form of matter in the human beings, apart its no viability, it turns us into a species of Minotaur
or Centaur. The soul does not exist; what exists is the human
brain that exerts its functions. Orthodoxy, then, becomes a logical
impossible. We know nothing of the divinity and our terms are not applicable
to it, but it is a practical postulate that the Church created to easily move
in
it, to create and build its ideology, to define its
living space and exert its dominance and power.
All the philosophers of the
world, had told us Marsilius of Padua, are unable to prove the
immortality by demonstration. And we add that the same is for the existence of God,
for the divinity
of Jesus and the divine origin of the Church, the soul or revelation.
What we recognize is that there have been many myths about all these issues, but
not true science. Those statements are not verifiable or testable; they are
beyond our intelligence.
Well, and all these, what for? To
simply say that if there is no orthodoxy, neither is the heterodoxy, by
means of which the Church appropriated the right to detain, interrogate and torture
the dissident, who thinks and believes differently, and he is called heretic. The
thinking and the believes belong to the realm of freedom of conscience. They are
primordial and paramount
rights that the human being own by birth and that no
institution, human or divine, may violate, without exceeding its
authority and rights; it would do that ultra vires, beyond its
jurisdiction and powers, as the Inquisition did.
When the Church perceived that
its ideology is weakened and consequently its power is broken, turn to
violence to produce the pedagogy of fear, of the terror, and thus be
able to restore control over its flock. It is a sociological phenomenon,
typical of closed and totalitarian societies. To dissent or to innovate are perceived as dangerous and destabilizing, so the Church becomes
intolerant. When proclaiming the divine foundation of the institution,
heresy is a deadly threat, which is classified as a serious offence against
God, but what they really fear is their survival as an institution, so they
attack with all available weapons.
One could even think that the
barbarity of torture was something unique to a deranged mentally, to a
psychopath, sometimes sociopath, to a sadistic, a sadomasochistic, or a
practice in a particular time, but no, it was the work of the Church and it
lasted many long centuries. The torture sessions the
victims of the Inquisition were
subjected to, have led to a unanimous
indignation any time and anywhere. "A no does not have more letters
than a yes"( Un no no tiene más letras que un sí),
say Cervantes by the mouth of Ginés de Pasamonte, that is the same difference between
guilty and innocent, between a convicted and a free man.
According to Simancas, in his De
Catholicibus institutionibus, 1552:... the inquisitors should be
more inclined to torment than other judges because the crime of heresy is hidden
and difficult to prove. Earlier, Bernardo Gui, in his Manual, defended the
use of such procedures and said that, if well dosed, they open the spirit.
Pope Innocent IV, by the bull Ad extirpanda, 16th, May 1252, authorized the use of torture, that Alexander IV, 1259,
and Clement IV confirmed some years later. At first, judges could
choose between flagellation, torture rack, the strappato
(in Italy) and garrucha (in Spain) and the embers; then it will
be added other more sophisticated tortures, that the inquisitors exchanged to
cause the most intense pain to the prisoner and so they had to incriminate
themselves, as the pulley, the stocks, the crushing thumbs, the torment of
water, the tablets and the iron maiden.
The following is a slight allusion to two of
these horrific practices.
The foal. It consisted of a
long narrow wooden table on which the accused was tied with ropes around the
wrists and ankles. The strings of the dolls were fixed to the table and those of the legs were rolling to a rotating wheel. Every movement of the wheel meant a
tension of the members. The pain caused
at stretching the
muscles and stretching the bone structure was very deep and insufferable, which
increased with the spinning wheel, that could lead to dismemberment. It
stopped, at half torment, to require the defendant to tell the truth; if he
did not, the torment went on.
The pulley. The accused was
tied around his wrists to the back and he was dropped from a height. The
length of the rope was so far that he did not hit the ground, but the jolt
left him dislocated.
The accused, as if all this was
not enough,
could be subjected to torture not only to confess to his detriment (tormentum
in caput proprium), but also to the detriment of others (tormentum in caput
alienum).
When given the torture, the
confession was not obtained, the logical conclusion, if torture proved
anything, was that the accused was innocent. According to the legal
phrase, he had purged the test and deserved an acquittal, but the reluctance of
the inquisitors to be unauthorized by the facts made them to find excuses to avoid
it. The 1561 Instructions tell the inquisitor that, in such cases, must consider
the nature of the evidence, the degree of torture applied and the age and
condition of the accused; if it seems clear that the accused has fully purged,
should be acquitted without reservation; but if he believes the defendant has not been
sufficiently tortured, he may be required to abjure of mild or strong suspicion,
or subject to any pecuniary penalty, although this should be done only with
great consideration.[37]
THE WORDS IN TORTURE
The
torment of water.
It was not morbid curiosity but to
register any expression, even the most common, that could indicate persistence or
regret. So does the person in charge of registering the torture given to Rodrigo
Mendez Silva, who was paralytic, in 1659.
While in the torture chamber he
was told to tell the truth or the minister (executioner) will come. He was
told to download his consciousness or the minister will come. He said tell
everything, ow!, I do not even have the strength to hold the hat in my hand.
The minister entered and swore. He was told to tell the truth or will order
to take out his clothes. He said: I am telling the truth, please read again
what has been already read, all of that is true, please read again, maybe I
could remember. He does not undress, he throw in on the floor saying kill
me. And then he said look here, I am naked, and say to me what I have to
say, I do not say yes. He was told to tell the truth or he will be sent to
the rack. He said he was ready to talk. He was told then told it [...]. He
was told to tell the truth or he will be placed on the rack. He said
everything is true; said: tell the truth, you do not want to see you in so
much work. He said he will tell the truth, I do not remember, some people
were found and yes that is true, but he does not remember and he does not
want to condemn his soul. He was told: tell the truth or you will be tie
around the neck. He said: Kill me, those two who are not called gentlemen. I deny that this is something worthy to put me in this way, ow!, sirs this,
ow!, await your grace, oh, my God, Don Gregory, who I remember, ow!, wretched
me, a wretched paralytic, ow!. He was told: tell the truth, if you do not want to
see you in so much work [...] He was told: you must download your
consciousness or the torture will continue [...]. Bind the left arm was
ordered [...]. He was told: tell the truth, do not want to see you in so
much work [...]. His right foot was tied [...]. His left foot was tied
[...]. He was told: tell the truth or you must be tied by your fleshy parts
[...].His left fleshy part was tied [...].His right fleshy part was tied
[...]. He said for God's sake, tell me what is missing [...]. He was told:
tell the truth or you will be sent to the line for the rack [...]. He was
put the rope [...]. Handed it the first round of the rack [...]. He said: I
do not know, God's righteousness, God, for God's sake, I do not know,
gentlemen, oh, Lord, have mercy on a sad man, I do not know, I do not know,
Mr. Don Gregorio, ow!, ow!. It was done. He said, ow!, ow!, I do not know, I do
not know, Lord, have mercy. He was told: tell the truth, you do not want to
see you in so much work. He said: Sir, I do not know, I cannot remember,
sir, I do not know, for the high God, if I know, condemn me, Don Juan de
Vallejo, remember this paralytic, I do not know who they are, there entered
a lot of people, they brought me, I'm dying, gentlemen, if something is
needed I will say it. He was told: tell the truth, you do not want to see
you in so much work [...]. I no longer feel my legs [...]. Second round on
the rack [...], ow!, ow!, ow![...]. This diligence was completed at twelve
o'clock as signaling the small clock. And it seemed that the said Rodrigo
Mendez Silva did not received any injury.
[38]
Kafka, in his novel The
Trial, masterfully narrates the plight of the person who accepts being a
criminal but who has no idea of his crime.
Cervantes, in the chapter entitled Of the
freedom Don Quixote gave many
unfortunates who, against their will, where taken to where they did not want to go,
presents, with musical humor, an obvious reference to this nothing humorous
practice of making someone sing.
"The Don Quixote asked the same question to the second, which
did not reply, so sad he was and
melancholy, but the first answered for him, and said:
-This, sir, goes as a canary, I mean, musician and singer.
But how?
Said Don Quixote. For being musicians and singers is people also going in the galleys?
-Yes, sir, replied the galley slave, there is nothing worse than singing
under suffering.
-Before I have heard say, said Don Quixote, who sings scares away his woes.
-Here is the opposite - said the galley slave, he who sings once weeps all his
life.
-I do not understand, said Don Quixote.
But one of the guards said,
-Sir, to sing in the anxiety it is said among these non holy people to confess
under torture. To
this sinner they gave the torture and confessed his crime, which was to be a
bandit,
which is to be a thief of beasts,
and
on his confession they sentenced him to six years, to galleys, besides two
hundred lashes, which he carries on his
backs".
(Don Quixote de la Mancha. Part I, Chapter XXII)
In all these tortures, the
general rule was stripping the victims. Regardless of being men or women
they were completely
naked, except those minimal clothing to cover their "shame", regardless of
age or physical condition of tortured. Many who were tortured were in
deplorable condition, some with broken limbs hopelessly, sometimes with
wrecked health and reason, and, in some cases, they came to die as a result of
torture.
THE
PRISONS OF INQUISITION
|
|
Prison of the Inquisition of Cuenca, remodeled.
|
If I were in a civilian prison, then
you could at least come to see me, weep, sigh with me [...], but here it is not
permitted to enter any living soul, as if our real or supposed crimes were
of greater consequences than those of a thief, those of a murderer, of a
bandit... Happy, oh, you prisoners in public prisons! [...] That you know
who accused you, which allows you to defend. (Cornelia Bororquia to his
father from the prison of the Inquisition). [39]
It's classic the creepy scene of the
prisons of the Inquisition, with emaciated prisoners shackled in dark and
dismal dungeons, with icy sadomasochistic monks, hooded in their monk robes, while a
clerk or notary took notes of the statements of the prisoner, who was
unaware of why he was there and who had denounced and betrayed him. At
the bottom,
hooded executioners, surrounded by their instruments of torture, prepared to take action, if so requested by the
inquisitor, the investigator of the mind and feelings of the accused of heresy,
of misconduct, adultery, bigamy, bestiality or blasphemy. The whole surreal scene was chaired by a crucifix, always visible.
Several authors, according to
their beliefs and ideologies, they immersed themselves in sterile diatribes, if
the prisons were as they are painted, if they were more or less inhospitable
than civilians, if the justice of the Inquisition was more or less
soothing, more or less cruel than the civil or secular.
There is a clear premise. The
mission of the Church, as deduced from Scripture, was not imprison, torture
and kill, so never had that right. The only clear text of the New
Testament, that of Paul to Titus: the sectarian, after two warnings,
avoid him, does not included that right. Forcing them to enter, compelle eos
intrare, is taken from the parable of the
wedding feast, which can not be source of legal right and neither are the
allegories of the branches or the barren fig tree; furthermore, although the New Testament said
it, which does not happen, someone would have
misspelled it when writing or interpreting it.
Faith, it is entirely clear,
comes from the word, from preaching; the word is the only sword and the consent is
free. The human being is free to believe or not to believe, to enter the Church or
get out
of it. The apostles were not going with a praetorian guard forcing to believe, or
imprisoning those who failed to believe, or persecuting other religions.
They would not have made a single step in their apostolate, they would have been
entirely dismissed.
They openly preached a religion of promises: the Kingdom of God, the imminent coming
of the end or love as a way of life.
Neither the Church was repressive and punitive in the first three centuries.
The Inquisition had no right to deprive of liberty, to torture or kill human
beings in God's name, what kind of god could be that one who was not worthy
of condemnation and reproach? There is no creation, from mud or from
nothing, nor hypothetical divine delegations, which justify the creation of
prisons for those who simply question invisible things.
Juan Antonio Llorente, a former
secretary of the Holy Inquisition, distinguishes three categories of
prisons: public, family and secret. Into the first are going those who
"without
being accused of crimes against the faith, they are accused of crimes that, by
secular privilege, fall under the jurisdiction of the Holy Office." In the
second, are the employees of the Inquisition who had legal or administrative
offences in the development of their roles, as helpers of the Inquisitor, who
were called family, and other secular or religious members of that institution,
but they had not reached the heresy. In both prisons, detainees had privileges,
such as communication with outsiders.
The third one, the secret prison, is intended to heretics or to those suspected of being. In
this case the isolation was complete, the suspect could only speak with the
judges and only when they required it. One of the peculiarities of the
inquisitorial procedure that raised so much criticism was the refusal to
disclose the reasons for detention. The detainee did not know why he had
been detained and he could spend years in court cell without ever knowing it. The
inquisitors, instead of accusing the prisoner, came to him and admonished him
to confess the truth and trust in the mercy of the court. In the end, it was
the warning that if he did not confess the truth, the prosecutor would presented
the charges, which should be worse. The inquisitors tried to incriminate the
accused and to make it possible depress and break his morale. It was all a
trick to confess alleged crimes they did not know, because the defendant was
totally confused and distressed, and to confirm those of which he had already
been charged.
Finally, when the warnings had not taken the desired effect, the prosecutor
read the articles of impeachment and required that the defendant, without
counsel, replied to the charges immediately. Any response, in such
circumstances, could finished as a personal indictment. The lawyers were not admitted in
the middle Ages, but in the Spanish Inquisition. They ended up being
members of the Inquisition, with no effective defense role, except the
appearance and the mere fulfillment of requirements. The witnesses were anonymous
and their names were deleted to avoid
reprisals, and their information, without factual and
circumstantial, could be freely manipulated by the inquisitor at his will and
convenience.
Besides the physical part of the punishment,
in those infamous
dungeons, it is the prisoner's psychological
and moral part, the intimate pressure that goes through the accused hardly
he crosses the
threshold of the prison. To begin with, in addition to freedom, he loses his
reputation and his social prestige. Before the public opinion, for the simple fact
of being arrested by the Inquisition, the person becomes an enemy of faith
and of
the church, and he is doomed to eternal damnation in hell. Not only him, but his family
also suffers from the stigma of being contaminated with heresy and their
souls poisoned. If the alleged heretic was the head of household, the economic
poverty that entailed his arrest caused a deep family chaos.
To this stigma of heresy it binds total
solitude, physical and moral, as the accused is completely
isolated, without knowing anything about neither his family nor the progress
of his process. This loneliness and isolation is the worst torture
of prisoners in the secret prisons of the Court, considered one of the greatest
misfortunes that could suffer a human being, taking into account, as an
added value, the indelible stain that made it to the prisoner, to his family
and his descendants.
Not only the prison is secret, the prisoner is
also kept in the utmost secrecy, deprived even of spiritual aid,
because it was thought that the mere fact of being suspected of heresy made
him, ipso facto, excommunicated, and that he could have
access to the sacrament of penance and the Eucharist only in danger of death. In fact the
constant claims of Fray Louis de Leon, to receive the sacraments, were denied
in his five years of confinement in the prison of Valladolid.
The cruelest feature was to ban
the
prisoner the communication with the outside world. He could learn
nothing about his family, the loved ones, and they could not hear of him until, perhaps
years later, appeared in an auto-da-fé in which he was to be burned at the
stake, or that he would be assigned to the galleys or life imprisonment. The prisoner
felt himself buried alive. Based on the presumption of guilt, the total
isolation was the excuse offered by the Holy Office to prevent
that the communication with friends could help him in his defense, what,
according to its legal perception totally distorted, would be a
fraudulent defense.
Pedro Ruiz, forty years old and
with a
large family of five children, and his wife waiting
the sixth, was arrested by the Inquisition and, after fifty days of
confinement, June, 22nd, 1524, he wrote to the inquisitor Mariana a letter in
which he says: Look, your grace, how you got me
here with such hard prison and five children that I have and my wife that is
waiting to give birth and she has no other income than that I win. The letter, if
it reached its
destination, fell on deaf ears. The inquisitors only cared about Catholic
orthodoxy and power.
Individuals, families, the economic position, they did not mind about it,
and,
intentionally and as punishment, they aggravated their situation by the confiscation of all their
properties, which passed into the hands of the Inquisition and the Crown.
The misery and hunger knock at
the door of the heretics and their families day after day, and, if that was
not
enough, they had to suffer the terrible shame that the children were disqualified
for the exercise of charges or benefits and honors of any kind, "because
they retain the stain of infamy from their parents".
Are disabled children of
heretics to the possession and acquisition of all kinds of trade and profit;
thing most just, because they retain the stain of infamy from their parents
and these are withdrawn the criminal act of fatherly affection. Some authors
think that this sentence does not include children born before his father
incurred the heresy, but this distinction has no solid foundation, as
imagined knowing this punishment in order to restrain the parents through
the bonds of parental love, should reach everyone, because parents love the
same way those born before and after the crime.
[40]
They think that punishment to the children
will deter to engage in heresy. It is not enough for them to arrest the father and
stigmatize him, the children, in an inhuman and
anti-evangelical manner, shall be deprived of any type of work, what will lead to hunger and misery, both
moral and physical. If the heretic was the mother,
the children also were disqualified. In the case of heresy of the father, he lost
parental custody and his wife was relieved of conjugal rights and children also were disqualified. As
it clearly appears, the Church
not only believes itself as the owner and the guardian of the faith, but of human life itself
in all its facets. With the excommunication it frees the vassals from personal
contract they had with their master. With heretics, it disposes of their freedom, their
property, their children, their marriage, annulling the marriage intimate promises that spouses had sworn.
The prison rules controlled the
use of light, which was banned from four in the afternoon until seven
o'clock the next day, and the use fire, that it was banned to light it in the cold and long winter
nights.
And if at the end of the
auto-da-fé, the few prisoners set free, were subjected to notices of
prisons, where they were interrogated, under oath, about what they had
seen and heard in the prison; and compel them, under severe penalties, not to
reveal anything about their personal experiences.
The defendant was
rarely
declared innocent. The possible ratings ranged in order of severity: mildly... very seriously suspect of heresy
-"levi... vehementer suspectus
haeresis"- or formal heretic.
As for the convicts, said
Egido López, can be said that they die several deaths before reaching the fire.
The uncertainties of the anomalous process without knowing who or why they
had been betrayed; the helplessness and the impossibility of
contradiction; the systematic presumption of guilt; the application of
torture to extract confessions; the loneliness of solitary confinement and
fear to auto-da-fé, produced the first fatality suffered in secret
prisons. [41]
In the case of Agustín de Cazalla, it is written: According to eyewitnesses,
the night before the fulfillment of his sentence, Agustín de Cazalla,
who had spent six hours confessing, on hearing his sentence to death, "he
fainted and was transposed for an hour and, after he returned in himself, with the
true color of the deceased, said to the father if there was any remedy for
not to die".
It is very possible
-continued Egido López- that the fact of appearing in an auto-da-fé
constitutes the most subtle punishment, if not the most inhumane. At least for
those fully integrated into the structures of social value.
[42]
One of the worst problems, from the
standpoint of the accused, was the interminable length of trials,
which not only took away years and health, but they resulted in the seizure
of property, retained to ensure the costs that might arise. Another very
important problem was the useless effectiveness of the defense, which came to mean that, in
fact, the inquisitors were both judge and jury, prosecution and defense,
and, according to Henry Kamen, the fate of prisoners depended entirely on
the mood or character of the inquisitors.
Many prisoners, unable to endure
the hardships of prison, died in it, but this did not save them of being
judged, convicted and their bodies burned at the stake, if they were declared
heretics. All that happened everywhere for centuries.
SANBENITOS (SACCUS BENEDICTUS)
|
Sanbenito of a penitent with the Cross of St. Andrew. |
Drawing of Goya, Museo del Prado
They put gagged on him because he spoke and gave him sticks in the face. |
|
Drawing
of Goya, Museo del Prado.
For having loved a donkey, bestiality.
|
Penitent women with sanbenito. |
The
"sanbenito",
a corruption of
the word "sack benito", from the Latin "saccus benedictus", because it is blessed
before it is put on, was a penitential garment already used by the medieval
Inquisition and adopted by the Spanish inquisition.
It was a very feared
punishment, since it represented the condemned to contempt and humiliation.
The cross, a sign of infamy. At first, the crosses of sanbenito were yellow felt and
had two and a half feet long and three inches wide.
They
should be worn very visible on the
dress, one on the chest and the other on the back.
The
relaxed, those intended to be burned after the auto-da-fé, wore black sanbenitos
with drawings of flames and demons, clearly alluding to the end that
awaited the accused. When
it was
used as a penance, sanbenito was yellow with one or two crosses of St.
Andrew on the back and on the chest.
In the early decades of the Inquisition, the damned to wear it had to take
it
every time he left the house, which meant the mockery and derision of all.
The use of such infamous habit involved a punishment for the offender, for
the embarrassment caused not only to him, but to his entire family and even
his
offspring. Since the early sixteenth century there was led the custom of
wearing sanbenitos in churches and the custom became widespread by the "Instructions" of
1561: All of those sanbenitos of the convicted living and dead, present or
absent, are placed in churches where they are neighbors,...
to always have memory of the infamy of the heretics and their descendants.
That
was a way to perpetuate the punishment. They were placed in
cathedrals and parish churches, in highly visible locations and, when
deteriorated, they were replaced by others, in which it appeared the name,
lineage, guilt and punishment of the offender.
Of
course, the descendants tried to make them disappear, which led to establish
as one of
the obligations of the Inquisitor to verify that the sanbenitos were at
their place and
in good condition. Already in the nineteenth century, according to Martin
Walker, they could still be seen, hanging in some churches, these shameful garments.
The pointed hood is the indispensable complement of sanbenito, consisting of a miter or hood,
of paste
paper, which
was put on the head of the prisoners, as shame and
punishment, decorated with scenes from the penalty.
Undoubtedly, the infamy was the worst punishment it could be imagined in those
days. In the ordinary criminal courts, the punishments entailed
embarrassment or public ridicule were more feared than death sentence
themselves, for ruining one's reputation in the community forever, bringing
shame on the family and other relatives. Similarly, in the court of the
Inquisition, the "honor" of an individual could be tainted by humiliating
punishments received (as flogging), but the most serious of all punishments
was sambenito, as its duration was perpetual and carried the dishonor both
the family and the community. When the young Anne Enriquez, daughter of the
Marquis de Alcañices and sister in law of Francisco de Borja, was condemned by the
Inquisition in 1559 to keep sanbenito, for participating in the activities of
the Protestant group in Valladolid, Borja used all his influence to ensure not to comply with the ruling as it related to the use of sanbenito: with
it, he got the honor of the family safe.
[43]
We are again faced with a mark, a sign or an an iron with which certain black
sheep of the flock were marked by shepherds.
This idea is reflected by Gazir Sued in
these words:
"As in ancient times, the stigma, the power to make a distinctive and
differential sign with other human beings, remains as always: by the
resort to a
higher power in force but not in reason".
AUTOS-DA-FE
|
Enlarge the image |
Auto-da-fé,
in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid, 1680,
by F. Rizzi,
Museo del Prado.
This Auto, the
best known and spectacular, was organized in honor of the French
wife of King Charles II, newly incorporated in the Court.
|
"All this makes one think that this great machine for the punishment of a few
beggars is rather a desire to flaunt the inquisitors that a true zeal
for religion". (The French ambassador, Marquis de Villars,
writing on the auto-da-fé in de Madrid, 1680.)
In the early history of the Court, the audience almost did not attend the
autos-da-fé. Instead of an elaborate ceremonial, it was little more than a religious act
in which heretics were condemned to certain sentences and it could be hold
on any day, though it was not a holiday.
The
painter Peter Berruguete, invented a picture representing an auto-da-fé,
which is Saint Dominic of Guzman, chairing a session of the medieval court.
Dominic, founder of the Order of the Dominicans, 1215, although he had died almost ten
years before the founding of the Inquisition, 1231, he certainly had participated in
the evangelization effort of the Cathars and in the the death of some of them. The
picture, though not historic, served as a model to follow in subsequent
autos-da-fé.
At
mid-sixteenth century, the Inquisitor General Fernando de Valdés drafted a
set of rules for representing a dazzling public ceremony, with the
premeditated intention to note the presence of the Holy Office and reassert
its power. It seems that the first of this kind was held in Valladolid,
before the Court in 1559. Philip II had witnessed an auto-da-fé held in Toledo
in
1550, but of modest size and spectacle. It was determined that the
auto-da-fé was to held on holidays, to ensure maximum public
participation. Both civil and ecclesiastical high officials were asked to take an oath
of loyalty to the Inquisition; that fact caused immediately conflicts between the
authorities.
There is no doubt that the autos-da-fé ended up being popular, their novelty attracted high
levels of assistance, looking for morbidity and entertainment, at
a time
devoid of them. The inhabitants of remote regions flocked. In 1610, the auto of Logroño, population of about 4,000 inhabitants, attracted, according
to officials of the Inquisition, about thirty thousand people from France,
Navarra and the Basque Country.
Juan
Antonio Llorente defined the autos-da-fé thus:
The
public and solemn reading of the offences and penalties by the Court, in the
presence of the defendant or his effigy, respectable corporations, people
and secular authorities to whom it was given, in the spot, the person or effigy meant to be
relaxed, so they decide and implement "ipso facto" punishment, in accordance
with the laws of the kingdom, against heresy. [44]
Theophanes Egido López, in 1986, writes:
... The
Inquisition, a court first of all, not confined to legal "entity"
: it was much more complex.., it became the triumphant apotheosis of faith from the
assaults of heresy, in manifestation, as an act of affirmation of the orthodoxy,
the state, of the social order of the Inquisition itself (which was tied around
then). It was the exaltation of a pedagogy of fear, as he had seen Bennassar,
for "criminals" and hesitant; medicine for the regretful survivors, deterrent instrument; occasion of grace, to win some more indulgences, of pilgrimage for
some, of special holiday for all. Despite the preference of Hispanics
comparison, the
auto-da-fé
was more
and distinct than the function of the Bulls,
despite the death and blood.
[45]
In
contrast to the simplicity and efficiency of the autos-da-fé in the early years of
the Inquisition, we have the example of the great auto-da-fé, held on 30th, June,
1680, in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid, in the presence of the King and his
Court. The scene was collected in a huge canvas by Francesco Rizzi, whose
work now hangs in the Prado Museum. In 1748, it
was published in London a very condensed version of the account
of this auto-da-fé, which reads as follows:
A gallery
of fifty feet long was erected in the square, being raised at the same
height of the balcony where the King was sitting. In the end and along the
entire width of the platform, right from the balcony of the King, rose an
amphitheater, which amounted to 25 or 30 steps for the Council of the
Inquisition and the other councils of Spain. On these steps, under a canopy,
was placed the "rostrum"
of the Grand Inquisitor, so that it rose to higher than the balcony of the
King. To the left of the platform and of the balcony, one second amphitheater
was erected the same size as the first, where criminals were to appear.
...In this auto-da-fé, 11 people abjured their errors and 56 were reconciled,
two of them in effigy because they had died in prison. There were 53
relaxations, of which 19 were in person, including a woman over 70 years of
age.
[45b]
The 53 relaxations were the people they burned at the stake. The detailed description reflects all the
details and pomposity of the autos-da-fé. It is a fully sociological
and revealing
picture.
INQUISITORIAL TERRORISM
|
 |
Message of a prisoner who tried to send it out of jail.
Mending a piece of cloth,
eighteenth-century.
Symbol of loneliness and isolation of prison.
|
The mechanism of the secret: The accused is in court without knowing yet what they will ask; he is asked to swear on the truth of
his own statements; he is questioned about
his habits and behaviors and, finally, he is asked if he knows why he was
summoned to that place.
The accused can only imagine, fight
against the ghosts that creates his personal imagination.
He knows nothing about the cause by which he has been submitted, he does not know his
accusers or informers; and he has no contact at all with friends and family.
The memory of infamy: It
requires wearing the sanbenito to perpetuate the memory of the conviction
and infamy, that falls on their families and their children. Once the
defendants returned to the community or were executed, their sanbenitos were
hung in the churches. This shameful practice continued until the nineteenth
century and the Inquisitors watched over their implementation.
The declaration of unfitness: That
is the deprivation of all civil rights and the inability to develop
professional civil or religious, extend to the descendants of those
sentenced to death.
The threat of poverty: It is an obvious
consequence of previous point - entire families at risk of being
unexpectedly in the street-, but often it was the coup de grace given to
people who were already poor. The family of the heretic is doomed to further
destitution and helplessness, which is surprising and grabbing the
attention, because this is not a mistake or ignorance of the Inquisitors, as
they are fully aware of the economic situation in which the family remains.
They care less about the person than about the deterrent power of
punishment, albeit unfair and unjust.
Listen to Peña, doctor of canon and civil law in
his comments to Directorium Inquisitorum:
"Nothing
so glorious to holy faith as to confuse the heresy publicly.
And for that, there is no doubt that educate and terrify the
people with the proclamation of the sentences, the imposition of sambenitos,... is a good act". Here, from the pen of one of the most
experienced theorists of the Holy Office, the inquisitorial system
foundation: to terrorize.
The
action of the Inquisition does not intend so much to reconcile the heretic
as to impress the masses.
Again is Peña who affirms:
"the primary purpose of prosecution and death sentence is not to save
the soul of the accused, but to seek the public good and terrorize the
people.
"
More clear, impossible: win better than
convince.
From "militat gladio militat spiritu
(fight with sword, fight with the spirit) of Scripture,
he only retains the first
part.
And what finally perfects this organization of terror was built in the complete
secrecy system that came with no one, nor members of the Holy Office, or
reconciled, or witnesses, no one could tell what was happening inside the
court of the Inquisition.
That was how the Inquisition in Spain and abroad, achieved a mythic
dimension that even today, despite the best efforts of historical research,
is far from having lost it.
[46]
THE BONFIRE
|
|
Heretics at the stake in Lisbon.
The
Penitents
carrying the sanbenito; monks by giving them the crucifix, the
rosary and offer of pardon to save their soul, as it is not
possible to save the body to be eaten on the pyre in flames.
Auto-da-fé. by Bernard Picart, eighteenth-century engraving.
|
The conclusion can only be the fire. The
absolute and final act of the inquisitorial action, as the imaginative
act each one represents it on his way. The fire, as a simple stack of firewood or
burning ground, which consisted of a stone platform, hollow inside, filled
with firewood, with two side ports that act as an oven; on that platform they lean four statues, those of
the great biblical prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel).
The statues are hollow and their function is atrocious: they must contain the
living bodies of the damned, they will die slowly, suffering the torments of
hell in advance.
Heretics, witches, murderers, Moors or hogs are released from prison, as the
crowd, attracted by the cries of the messengers and the news spreads quickly
around, squeezes in the way of the cross and around the scaffold.
Defendants appear, upset by the last days, by the repeated promises, by the lies
they had to rely on; the faces of some, unrepentant and proud, continue
straight and tall, while climbing to the cart, bound hand and foot and are
preparing the last voyage: they do not wear modest clothes, but the signs of the
Church, embroidery sambenitos, together with their crimes, which the tunic
narrates, and
with http://boriken.info/images of fire and dragons.
A rope keeps their hands at their sides and it closes around the throat.
The procession starts. In front they walk the soldiers of faith, followers of
Peter of Verona, martyr of the Cathar madness, protector of the Inquisition; it follows the
green cross, of the color of the wood that does not burn, shrouded in a
black veil, tragic as the destiny of those who certainly will burn.
Then they come
four carriers with a scarlet hand chair -the color of the
Passover and Christ's saving blood-, where is
sitting the priest who will celebrate the Mass while he takes the monstrance
with the host.
A fifth man marks the time with a bell: it is the pace of progress and
undergoing genuflections to the faithful, crossing themselves, terrified.
After passing the host, pass the other victims: the contrast is evident
between the glorious God and the poor human monstrance that follows it.
The crowd, first shouting, now is impressed.
Beside the damned, another glory, the brothers; their white robes and the
black cloaks describe the contrast between life and death. They looked
serious, noble, austere.
In
the stunned silence, their voices resonate inviting anyone who still has not
confessed: grace time is short, and narrow is the way of life.
Among
the procession and the crowd there are a few troops of the Church and
secular, allies in the carnage; their
armor is shining,
they are shining the swords, on their side, and
halberds, alongside their shoulders.
The children see and understand: yes, at adult age they will be like them and
defend the faith.
The procession is long, the impression remains unchanged: still the effigies
of those convicted in absentia.
Shameful, grotesque, ironic and cruel.
Those who escaped the burning process do not escape the satire: these
straw figures
wave - they will burn before the damned-, awful in their sambenitos.
The children understand: these are the creatures that disturb their dreams,
the faith and peace of those who believe.
The
inquisitors close the procession.
Seated on asses, a donkey female and her colt, as Christ in Jerusalem.
To them belongs the color of mourning, adorned with a white cross. It follows
a banner that does not change: Exsurge, Domine, et tuam causam Judica
(come up, Lord, and judge thy cause).
On the banner are the signs of forgetfulness, a peace that the judge has
looked with all his might, the sword, which hurts those who do not want
peace.
The
procession continues through the crowd and smoothly goes to the cathedral.
The strees are
crowded,
the mass increases, the smell of burning flesh expands
in the air
and penetrates the soul, before the nose can smell it.
They lower the convicts from the cart and take them to the gallery in order:
a convict and two Dominicans on his sides; an effigy of a stubborn and two
Dominicans.
The
lighted candles with flickering flame in the wind.
An omen.
The smell of incense is preparing the Holocaust.
The priest takes his place,
prepared for his homily, in which he shows to all the people how the faith is
the salvation of the soul and body, while the error is the sentence
of man pronounced against himself.
The names of the criminals are mentioned for eternal disgrace, accompanied
by the list of their crimes, so that everyone knows. To
each name corresponds
a man, to each man a conviction.
The Church makes the gesture that rejects the sinner and trust him to the secular arm.
The homily is concrete, well constructed and appropriate for the audience.
Everyone is aware there is no room for distraction.
Finally, the condemned is tied to a pole on top of the pile
that they lighten. The square is surrounded with cries and another light in the metallic light
of day. The tongues of fire surround the meat, the tongues of the preachers
surround the crowd; example and prayer appear as associate partners.
In the eyes of the condemned arms and crosses are waving, invitations to
confess, to repent. The fire reaches the bare feet, surrounds the clothes, goes
up the waist,
wraps the body.
The smoke release http://boriken.info/images of
convulsed
demons, leaving the body of the
condemned and precede to hell.
Children see and understand:
there is evil to be defeated.
The well should be followed.
Tomorrow they will play as Inquisitors, of fellows of darker skin.
The
fire and smoke cover http://boriken.info/images of screaming men, while they have used the
silent ones of the
puppets, the stubborn.
Some have screamed their conversion, others the final blasphemy. The flames
have consumed the worthy and unworthy.
It only remains to return home. [47]
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LAST REMARKS
===========
Impact of
the Inquisition in Literature and Science
Under the eyes of Bruno, Copernicus and Galileo
The case of Galileo and the Pope John Paul II
The Inquisition
is still a contentious issue and a subject of countless studies devoted
specifically to analyze the impact of its decrees for the banning or
expurgation of books in the development of Spanish culture. Finally the winds are
favorable to an objective and
unbiased reflection.
The Galileo case has been for over three centuries a constant source of
controversy between the world of science and the Catholic Church. In 1992
John Paul II publicly acknowledged the mistakes made by the ecclesiastical
court that tried Galileo's science teaching. The case has been settled for
many. Others, however, we think that there still remain many questions to answer
in this dark side of the Church.
IMPACT OF THE INQUISITION IN
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE
|
List of authors and works cited in the text, which are included in
the Index of Books banned by the Church.
|
|
 |
We must get
rid of all forms of prejudice and we must doubt everything before having any
certainty of knowledge,
Cartesian proposition formally condemned in 1691.
The Inquisition expressed an obsessive concern for keeping Europe at its
orthodoxy, closed to any ideology and social movement that did not fit into
their Christian scheme. It self-perceived as the incarnation of morality,
of the norms and of scientific parameters; it regarded the Bible as the only
source of science and the Church as the exclusive carrier of the faith,
of the knowledge and salvation. During these centuries, it tried to
restrict and to close Europe to every wind that smelled of Reform and scientific
progress, to everything which did not agree with the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy.
The Inquisition systematically opposed the freedom of research, publication,
discussion and education in the chairs and Universities. It anathematized if
the researched, published or taught, did not agree with its orthodoxy, with
its dogmas, taboos and prejudices held by the Holly Fathers, by councils and by
the laws of each historical moment created by the ecclesial establishment.
All this in defense of its ideological positions and its dominant social class,
before cultures totally ignorant and defenseless. They were aware of the
immense power of knowledge, that was provided to the priesthood while
the faithful people were deprived of it.
The Church has never facilitated the culture and the knowledge to the
people, except its religious doctrines. It appears always as an indefatigable seeker of
tithes and first fruits, and of unpaid labor of its subjects and vassals. These were taught in the contempt of the worldly pleasures to get the reward of
this valley of tears in a promising heaven, with the beatific vision of God face
to face. Meanwhile, they enjoyed all the honey and sweets of power without
scruples or remorse, from the wealth accumulated without having to go
through the effort of producing it. No investing to produce wealth and paid sources of employment,
they only accumulated wealth, that they parked in the sidings of a
train, in the words of Mendizabal, on the occasion of the Spanish
confiscation. The capitalism, emerged from the Protestantism, could never
spring from the Catholicism.
Not only they had to maintain the status quo, but it should be perpetuated until the “parousia”,
the end of the world, which was reluctant to appear, despite all the
prophecies and belief that spread from Jesus and his apostles. They had
managed that heresies and deviations, with the timely help of Roman Law
in fashion in newly established universities, were classified as crimes "laesae
majestatis" (crimes of high treason), that consists of the aggression against the person or
authority of the sovereign, the highest felony. In the case of heresy, the attack,
that was going against God, covered to think, to pray or to live differently from
the way of Holy Mother Church, of its priests and of its inquisitors.
Since the beginning, the Inquisition was interested in literature. If in the
hands of the
converts was found the Talmud or other Hebrew book, it was confiscated and
destroyed. There are references, in the late 1480s, to the burning of large
quantities of books from the University of Salamanca. With the printing
press in operation across Europe and the knowledge each time more accessible to scholars, the state and the church authorities were very aware of the
danger that ideas would have, and they pointed their guns against them, to control
their production and distribution.
On July, 8th of 1502, Ferdinand and Isabella enacted in Castile, but no in Aragon,
a Pragmatic, which imposed the need for licenses to print books in Castile,
also for the import of books from abroad, by fear of being contaminated by the Lutheran
doctrines and those of other reformers. Those authorized to grant
such license were the presidents of the Chanceries of Valladolid and the
Granada, and the bishops of Toledo, Seville, Granada, Burgos and Salamanca.
In the rest of Spain, publishing firms were free from state control.
The pre-printing censorship was new. The Church, through its councils, Lateran,
1515 and Trento, 1564, granted to the bishops of Europe the power to grant print
licenses. England enacted laws regulating the licensing, in 1538, and Italy
adopted similar edicts.
The Inquisition, between 1520 and 1550, issued few licenses of printing and
informally. After the 1550s, it merely relied on the censure after the
publication of the book. A papal order, that the Grand Inquisitor Cardinal
Adrian of Utrecht enacted in 1521, was the origin of the first banning of
books in Spain. From 1540, the Court of the Inquisition issued lists of
banned books regularly, giving rise to the infamous Index of Forbidden
Books which did much harm to the science. It is unfortunate that the
church aimed to establish itself as the arbiter and censor of issues, which
exceeded it
by far, and to become a powerful brake on scientific progress,
being all branches of knowledge under its censure and stigma.
In 1558, to everyone's surprise, Protestant books were discovered in Spain.
This fact prompted the Regent, Dona Joanna, to promulgate a decree of
strict scrutiny, which banned the entry of books in Spanish that would have been
published in other realms, and that required to submit all published in the
kingdom to the approval of its content. Repressive censorship.
The first Spanish Index appeared in 1551 (it was a re-edition of the one
published in Louvain, 1546). The Index of Valdes, all its own, regardless of
that of Louvain, takes into
account the special Spanish circumstances. This new Spanish index appeared
in
1559, anticipating the Tridentine or papal Index, published in 1564.
The Spanish index, unlike the Roman, makes distinction between works totally
reprehensible and works that were reprehensible only partially, that is works totally banned and works that could be published and read by removing only objectionable fragments.
In Expurgatorius Index, first published in Antwerp, 1571, under the
supervision of Arias Montanus, were compiled partially censored works.
Chronology of Spanish Index: Index of Valdes, 1559; Index of Quiroga,
1583-1584; Index of Sandoval, 1612; Index of Zapata, 1632; Index of
Sotomayor, 1640; Index of Valladares-Marin, 1707; Index of Perez Prado,
1747; Index of Rubin de Ceballos or last index, 1790.
[102]
The violation of any of these provisions is punishable by death penalty and
confiscation of property.
Philip II was in Brussels, where he passed all the measures taken by his
sister. And he corroborated them by forbidding his subjects from the Netherlands to
study in France, and by forcing his subjects of the Crown of Castile who studied
or taught abroad (except in the schools of Bologna, Rome, Naples and
Coimbra) to return within four months to Castile. There was no
precedent for such measures which, fortunately, only affected Castile. So that
these measures might have validity in other realms, he was forced to convene the
Courts, which he chose not to do at that moment, but he would end doing so: in
Catalonia since 1573, in Valencia since 1580, and in Aragon, in 1592.
Although sometimes they printed without a license, we are not aware of any author
or printer, except those convicted of Protestants, who were punished by
death.
Humanists and the university people saw how the academic freedom was crumbling and, with it, the
dream of a republic of letters from international areas crumbled as well.
The scholars were forced to
stay within their borders and not to write in Latin for the rest of the
Europe intellectuals, but in their native languages. Protestantism was being
firmly felt in the religious, political and in the economical
affairs. This last aspect is the starting point of the capitalism, that emerges
in this territory as a result of those ideologies.
The Index of Valdes is accompanied by the Index of the University of
Paris, 1542, the Index of the University of Louvain, 1546 and that of Italy,
that had been done in the 1540s. In those years, entered in
Spain a large number of Bibles and New Testaments without a
license. The Inquisition ordered, in 1552, to collect all the units that were
found. The Inquisitor Fernando Valdes, in 1554, to confront these sacred
texts without licenses, issued a general censorship of Bibles and New
Testaments, that were identified in 65 editions of the Scriptures, that
had been printed in Lyon, Antwerp, Paris..., and should be banned.
The question of Erasmus of Rotterdam, eminent humanist thinker of undeniable
influence, as it reached all schools of thought of his time, provoked many
headaches to his advocates and to his detractors. Francisco Sanchez, the Brocense
(from Brozas, Cáceres), in an academic event, in 1595, said:
Whoever speaks ill of Erasmus is a friar or a donkey! This, obviously,
brought him a lot of trouble with the friars who were in the Inquisition.
The Spanish Index
of 1559 included fourteen titles of Erasmus, including the Enchiridion. From this, his name
fell in disgrace. The index of 1612 of
Bernardo Sandoval y Rojas, archbishop of Toledo and Inquisitor General,
completely banned all his works in Spanish and included him in the category of
“auctores damnati”.
Among the literary writers affected by the index, there were Gil Vicente,
Hernando de Talavera, Bartolomé Torres Navarro, Juan de la Encina and Jorge
Montemayor. It was forbidden to read the Lazarillo de Tormes and the
Cancionero General.
The inquisitors distrusted Protestant currents, the Illuminati
and their possible mutual relationship. Precisely because of this, there were
banned spiritual masterpieces, such as Audi Filia of Juan de Avila,
the Prayer book of Fray Louis de Granada and the Christian Works
of Francisco de Borja. Melchor Cano, a Dominican and a declared enemy of the
Jesuits, attacked the book of Borja, former Duke of Gandia and former
Viceroy of Catalonia, the most distinguished member who had entered to the
Society of Jesus. The Inquisition also banned the Spiritual Exercises
of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Company of the Society of Jesus.
The Index of 1559, Kamen said, opened an era of repression of Spanish
culture. The Indexes controlled the literary creation in general and
that of science in particular, while they showed signs of hostility and censorship
towards the
elements of indigenous spirituality.
Censorship led a practice that later became commonplace: the burning of
books. This was, of course, a traditional remedy used by Christians against
their enemies: for example, the Emperor Constantine had used it against the
Arian books, and in 1248 the clergy of Paris had burned four cars full
of Jewish writings. The medieval Inquisition was thus set the example, that,
in the sixteenth century, became common practice in Italy and France. At
the time, Torquemada had also organized a book burning in his monastery of
Salamanca, while books considered sacred by the Jews had been reduced to a
pile in Toledo in May 1490, when "they burned in the public square many books
of the mentioned heretics".
In October 1501, under a royal decree it was ordered the burning of
Arabic books found in Grenada, for which they mounted a huge fire under the
supervision of Cisneros. Since March 1552, the Inquisition ordered that
heretical books should be publicly burned. He ordered to burn about 27 books at a ceremony held
in Valladolid in January 1558.
By mid-century, the Spaniards turned to burning books, because it was the
easiest method to get rid of the offending material. An enormous amount of
work was so destroyed. "For seven or eight times we burned here at home
heaps of books," said a Jesuit priest serving in the Holy Office in
Barcelona in 1559.
In 1561, an officer in Seville asked what should be done with the many books
he had collected. Among them were a number of books of hours, he said, that
could be easily censored. "Burn them", replied the Inquisition. What about
the Bibles? "Burn them." And the medical books, many of then with superstitious
contents ? "Burn them".
Not always was applied this drastic solution. Later, when the court had made a new
expunged system replacing the conviction, the books were stored in a
warehouse and, generally, not destroyed. [103]
The scope of the Index of 1583 was apparently overwhelming. In its immense
volume was included the entire European intellectual world, past and
present: editions of classical authors and Church Fathers, the complete
works of Peter Abelard and Rabelais, the collected works of William of
Ockham, Savonarola, Jean Bodin, Machiavelli, Juan Louis Vives, Marsilius of
Padua, Ariosto, Dante, Thomas More (vir alius pius et catholicus, as
admitted the Index itself, but whose Utopia was banned until it was purged),
all
were among those affected. At first glance it seemed that the Inquisition
was declaring war on the whole European culture.
[104]
Saint John of the Cross was examined whether he sinned of enlightenment or
illumination, and there were expunged works like the Spiritual Canticle,
formerly known as Songs of Christ and the soul, of an overwhelming mystic lyricism. The same thing happened to
St.Teresa, of Jewish origins, with the
work of His Life, in which she reflected her very special experiences. A campaign
against Teresa was unleashed, in 1573, induced by the monastic frustrations of the
Princess of Eboli when she was rejected by Teresa. In that campaign they criticize the
book on His Life and make fun of her ecstasy. Even she, a remarkable
and learned woman, could not manage to escape the Inquisition, but she obtained an
acquittal. After, she wrote
The Way of Perfection and The Lodgings (Las Moradas). The Inquisition, by his fear of the Enlightenment, suppressed spiritual
spontaneity and free literary expression. As for Teresa, see the comment
of Llamas:
Mother Teresa wrote his biography in mind of the Court [...]. Indeed, the
Inquisition sinned sometimes of over-concern [when] these censors lacked
sufficient doctrinal, spiritual or theological preparation. They had no
humility and honesty to recognize that a mere novice or an anonymous friar
could be an excellent teacher in terms of spirit. This defect
resulted in many processes, that today we judge substantially absurd and
inexplicable. The misogynist environment played its trump card here.
[105]
We know nothing of what that repression resulted in self-censorship.
No doubt it existed and it is logical to assume it, due to the nagging fear that
should lift the sentences imposed by the ominous, omnipresent and abominable
Inquisition.
Then it would be Miguel de Molinos, 1628-1696, whose doctrine would be
condemned, and he would be sentenced to life imprisonment in the Castel of Sant'
Angelo in Rome, where he died; all by the grace of envy, in this case of
some Jesuits. His Spiritual Guide is a model of language and
spirituality, but the Roman Inquisition condemned him in an embarrassing public
event, and also condemned his doctrine: "quietism," which was disparagingly called
"the molinosismo" by allusion to
M. de Molinos.
Today it would be very difficult to find heresy in his doctrine, says Alcala.
The Inquisition set up a monitoring system in culture, becoming a supervisor
and controller, first of literature, then of the writings around the Enlightenment and
Quietism, and always looking for traces of the Reformation in all
kinds of books, including the scientific ones. Nobody, absolutely nobody, is beyond
its control. Even Lope de Vega appeared in the Index, but a century
after his death.
Besides these obvious and overt attacks against freedom of thought, there
were other more difficult to detect and to qualify, such as self-censorship,
hidden damage, that should be imposed for authors to avoid
the terrible encounter with the cold Inquisition. They were forced to use coded
language with words of double meaning, like Don Quixote who says: “with the
Church we have come across, friend Sancho”, this sentence was not in the open and pejorative
sense, which we rightly attribute it today. Authors, like
Kamen, criticize the Inquisition of having created and practiced a system
of thought control, which has fossilized academic culture for three hundred
years.
It has been argued that the literary renaissance has been excellent despite
the Inquisition, but we shall never know what would have happened if there
had been
freedom to choose topics that should not revolve necessarily around the
conceived Catholic orthodoxy. One thing is the shape, style, meter, and
another is the thematic richness of ideas that could have fed and born fruit in Human, Political, Economic and Technical
Sciences.
The Inquisition, as an institution of the Church, marked the roads, installed
the rails, imposed blinders, threatened and punished those who walked out of
its ways and who dared to glimpse beyond the horizons set by it previously.
If it did not completely eliminate the freedom of research and publication was
because it could not. The truth is that it conditioned and limited academic freedom
and scientific research and it delayed the development in all fields of knowledge
in hundreds of years, while they humbled reason and intelligence, by subjecting them
to the trial and test of faith of ignorant monks and fanatics friars, members
of the Holy Office, who were lacking the watchdog right on other sciences
different from their theology and ecclesiastical sciences. The Church wasted, for
many centuries, great minds that devoted to supposedly sciences, which cannot
be verified, and put all other sciences and arts to the old
prejudices that religions originated. It was not only a loss of talent but a
great disservice for the rest of human knowledge, by damaging the natural
right to think freely and to investigate for the people and not at the
service of preconceived religious ideas. The Church was a real ballast on
Culture and Science. The Indexes with their two hundred and fifty
years of existence proclaim it from the rooftops.
It is clear that English and Dutch intellectuals had become pioneers of
the scientific and medical research. And because they were Protestants, their works,
which fell automatically in the banned area of "auctor damnatus",
were beyond the reach of
Catholic European intellectuals.
Kamen brings the reports of the young doctor, John of Cabriada, who
echoing the view of his generation, 1687, on this subject, said:
That is a pathetic and
yet shameful thing, that, as if we were Indians, we had to be the last to receive
the news
and the public light already scattered throughout Europe.
The Holy Office
would continue blocking the dissemination of the new knowledge, which, besides
being very detrimental to mental and physical health of Christians, it was
still a tyranny.
No doubt the negative impact of inquisitorial censorship in the dynamics of
science. Works of great scientific value were banned because their author was convicted
as a Protestant, even if it was not touched any religious issue. Censorship created
insurmountable borders between peoples, caused misgivings in the spirit of
free inquiry and a silent opposition to new methods of science, which, for the simple fact of their rising in Protestant countries, were considered synonymous with Protestantism
and heresy, what discouraged the intellectuals to follow those paths,
preferring to avoid inquisitorial problems and to follow the beaten tracks in the
humanities. The editorial production in Catholic countries was much poorer
than that of protestant ones.
In the case of Spain, Angel Alcalá, in his book Literature and Science
before the Spanish Inquisition, among other things, writes:
This means that the focus, the perspective from which the inquisitors
censored scientific works was not scientific, that is, they did not prohibit
the
science as such, but because, in their opinion, those works provided data, assumptions or
trends that did not add up in their interpretation of what they believed dogma or
common theological opinion. However, the inquisitorial censor
mechanism was not only painfully slow, with consequent detriment of scholars
and booksellers, but a priori it was ballasted with prejudices, that, maintained over
two centuries, brought very indirect serious consequences for the scientific
activity in Spain.
There are several elements that contribute to this final conclusion. More
than half of those scientific works, 349 were published by Protestant
writers between 1560 and 1630, key stage of the momentous scientific
revolution that made possible the technical and economic development of Europe.
As Protestants and mostly German, Swiss, Flemish and English (respectively,
191, 32, 25 and 20), each one of their authors was automatically qualified as
"damnatus auctor". This meant that the Inquisition took towards their work
an attitude of preventive banning in accordance with the First basic
Rule of
practicing control:
In the first [class]
it does not put the books but the writers and authors
who were suspected of heresy or heretics, for it is understood that all
their
works are banned, not just those that they have written and make known, but
also those they will publish ahead except those in the same first class
are declared
to be allowed, without purging or with it [...].
With them (the Rules), the Holy Office stood as police in every book that
arrived in Spain, although not concerned with religious themes (hence the constant
surveillance of borders, ships, bookstores and libraries) and as guarantor
of the total orthodoxy, sacrificing everything needed, as encroaching on the freedom
of study and research: only would be permitted "without purging or with
it" books
whose circulation the Inquisition considered helpful, as they say in this
other rule of the Index of 1640:
Banning books is, or because they have not reached us,
or because it is no evidence of their utility and, although it was, it is not well
to allow them to all subjects; and to observe the
style of the Church which, in penalty for their crime, does not allow to run
and read even those that do not contain heresies.
The impact of inquisitorial censorship in the march of Spanish science was
immense. Live or direct impact in a few instances, but mostly indirect. For
banning in principle any book only by the religious affiliation of the author, and
for its
inability to examine scientifically and to allow scientific works, in theory,
prohibited by the mere religious affiliation of the authors. Then, sometimes
dozens of years later, in the few cases that were allowed, it was enough to attach the note
of "damnatus" to move further away or to frighten the scholar.
The inquisitorial censorship apparatus caused a serious injury that
hampered, even more than the royal prohibitions by own ideological reasons,
the normal movement of European books in Hispanic territory... without
making of that its main objective, the Holy Office made extraordinarily difficult
the free movement of the printed work of these scientists and the communication
between the Hispanic growers and those of the Protestant Europe [...] If we add an
undeniable distrust of ideas, innovations or "curiosities" coming from
outside the peninsular borders, we shall understand better the true extent of the
impact that the inquisitorial censorship could have on the scientific communication of
Spain with the rest of Europe.
The trouble is that, in addition to this purging preventive attitude, the
Inquisition was officially infusing wariness into the spirit of free inquiry; and
that oppressive atmosphere, father of fear, along with many other social
factors, whose specific detail is beyond the spirit of these pages, parched the
scientific creation initiative, that could germinate and give better results
in countries where it flourished
what, through the mouth of the Moor Ricote, Cervantes called "freedom of
conscience."
[106]
“Currently, the only vestige of the former Inquisition is the Congregation
of the Saint Office, established by Paul III, in 1542, to combat the
Reformation. In 1965, after the Council Vatican II, it was renamed the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith, whose object is to safeguard the doctrine on faith and morals.
Lost its repressive and inquisitorial character, it acquired a tone for
positive promotion of Catholic doctrine”, Joseph M. Walker.
Joseph
Ratzinger, former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, is the current Pope Benedict XVI.
UNDER THE LOOK OF BRUNO,
COPERNICUS AND GALILEO
|
Giordano Bruno
|
Experts reconstructed the face of someone who, supposedly, is
Copernicus. |
Galileo
|
Today, the knowledge
of astrophysics and the planetary science confirm the theories of Copernicus, Giordano Bruno and Galileo. We know that dark matter curtains prevent us
from observing a very important part of the over three hundred billion of stars
that inhabit our galaxy, the Milky Way. We know not only that the earth is
not the center, as it was believed in the Middle Ages, but neither is the solar
system, that is not in the center of our galaxy, which is a million times
larger than the solar system. We know the Sun, along with other bodies that make up
the solar system, was formed in one of the outermost spiral arms of the
Milky Way, which is located about twenty seven thousand light years from the
galactic halo or center, and about which revolves around, taking two hundred
and thirty million years to complete one galactic year. We know that to cover the
distance of our galaxy, from one extreme to another, we need a hundred
thousand light years, at a speed of light, three hundred thousand
kilometers per second, and that there are more than fifty billion galaxies of
similar dimensions as ours.
Here the mind is troubled and
the figures are beyond normal human comprehension. The omnipresence of God
would be easier to understand the astrology of Ptolemy and Aristotle and the heavens are
easier to visualize in medieval concentric spheres than in these galactic
dimensions with not apparent proportion and apprehension, inconceivable.
All beliefs collapse. We cannot hold on to the mythical-religious
explanations to answer our questions and feed our fantasies and hopes.
In this context we encounter one of the basic principles of
the Church's theological framework, an endless source of inspiration for the
inquisitors.
It is the dogma of God's creation, hard to maintain in the biblical
interpretation supported by the classical theologians.
Something remains, that "we are dust and to dust we shall
go back '.
Astrophysics tells
us that we are star dust. From them, by the explosion of supernovae, it
is created the carbon and the oxygen, foundation on our constitution, the calcium that
forms our bones, the iron in our red blood cells... The elements of the
periodic table are born of dead stars, that give us life. Helium (He) and
hydrogen (H) were the elements of the early universe, which were generated in
what is called core-primary synthesis. The earliest galaxies were
huge clouds of hydrogen and helium that, under gravity, were compressed to form
millions of stars. The supernova explosions and the chain reactions were the
other elements, like the oxygen, which served to form the waters, and from
them the beginning of the human life, already in our planet.
Thus it fades the myth of creation, the paradise and
the first couple, including their sin, the disobedience for them, and the
original sin for us: we are children of the stars. All those
simple myths of creation, sin, guilt, reward, punishment... of ancient religions, are light
years away.
Pope JOHN PAUL II AND GALILEO
Monday February, 16th, 2009
The Vatican Mass dedicated to Galileo for the first time in 445 years
|
SECTION II THE SPEECH OF HIS
HOLINESS Pope JOHN PAUL II ON THE CASE OF GALILEO
View full text in the Supporting Documents
|
In 1992, 31st,
October, Pope John Paul II, to mark the 350th anniversary of Galileo's
death, in a speech to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, said it was "a
fair recognition of errors whatever the part from which they proceed.” The Galileo
affair, "is not a case filed for a long time and there have not been
yet
recognized the mistakes made? Certainly, this is true," says Pope.
The truth is that the Galileo case is not closed and never it will be. The
Pope,
political and polite, speaks on the defensive, accepting without admitting completely and carrying
the water to his mill. The speech, with sleek and polished
style, acknowledges the mistakes "whatever the part from which they
proceed," and
highlights the key points of the Galileo case, but not with the impartiality
expected.
The section 9, states:
If contemporary culture is marked by a
tendency to scientism, the cultural horizon of the time of Galileo was unitarian and bore the stamp of a particular philosophical training. This unitary
character of culture, which in itself is positive and desirable even today,
was one of the causes of the condemnation of Galileo.
Obvious contradictions are hidden in the text. We read that the
unitary culture of the time "was one of the causes", but the truth is that
the cause of the condemnation of Galileo was only one: the
Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy and its theocracy. That was the unitary culture of
the time.
The unitary character of culture, "positive and desirable even today", it
sounds like nostalgia for the lost theocratic power. Cultural unity is the
essence of religious fundamentalism which is also in essence obscurantist
and unscientific. And it was the cause of the Galileo case. That's why we
see contradictions between apologizing for the Galileo case and, at the same
time, to desire as optimum the circumstances that produced it, "the unitary
nature of culture", typical of medieval times.
In the same section 9, we read:
Indeed, as
recalled by Cardinal Poupard, Robert Bellarmine, who had caught what was
really at stake in the debate, defended by his part that, before any
scientific evidence about the Earth's orbit around the Sun, anyone had to
"walk with consideration in explaining the Scriptures that seemed contrary
to the mobility of the earth, and rather say that we do not understand them,
than to say that is false what is proved" (Letter to Fr. A. Foscarini, 12th,
April 1615 cf. Op.cit. vol. XII, p. 172).
This paragraph seems to be intended to support
the clairvoyance of the Church, in the person of Cardinal Bellarmine. From
Bellarmine's letter to Foscarini, Paul II extracts this wise and prudent
phrase: " it would need to walk with consideration in explaining the
Scriptures that seemed contrary to the mobility of the earth, and rather say
that we do not understand them, than to say that is false what is proved."
But it ignores the immediately following: "But I do not believe there is
such a demonstration, until it is shown me." These words would also be
prudent and wise, if not for the number of free statements that fill the
following fifteen lines: Solomon ("the wisest and most learned in human
sciences") said it; the appearances are deceptive when believe that the ship
is still and the seashore is moving away, but they are not deceptive
when we watch the sun rise and set, etc..
Bellarmine clairvoyance is not true. His letter blindly insists that the
truth is only well understood by Solomon and the Holy Fathers. It is not a
faint opening but a resounding stubbornness. This letter can be read
entirety above. Judge by yourselves the content that follows the pope's
quote:
But I do not
believe there is such a demonstration, until it is shown me: it is not
the same thing to prove that the sun is in the center and the earth in
heaven, because I think that the first demonstration may exist, but
about the second I have a very great doubt, and if in doubt you should
not leave the holy Scripture, explained by the Fathers. I would add that
the one who wrote: Oritur sol et occidit, et ad locum suum revertitur,
etc. [Ecclesiastes 1, 5] was Solomon, who spoke not only inspired by God
but was a wise man above all others and most learned in human
sciences and the knowledge of created things, all this was God's wisdom
and hence it is unlikely that affirm one thing that was contrary to the
truth that was proven or could be demonstrated. And if I shall say that
Solomon speaks, according to appearance, seeming to us that the sun
rotates, while the earth revolves, as one who turns away from the coast
thinks the coast goes away from the ship, I will answer that who turns
away from the coast, although it seems that the coast goes away from
him, however he knows that this is wrong and corrects it, seeing clearly
that the ship is moving and not the coast: but with regards to the sun
and the earth, there is no wise man who needs to correct the error,
because he clearly experiences that the earth is stopped and that the
eye is not deceived when it judges that the sun moves, nor is deceived
when it judges that the moon and the stars move. This is sufficient for
now.
With that cordial greetings to Your Paternity, and I pray to God all
happiness.
In section 10 it
is said:
From the century of the lights to this day, the Galileo case has been a
kind of myth, in which the image of events that was built was quite
unrealistic. In this perspective, the Galileo case was the symbol of the
alleged rejection of the Church of scientific progress, or even the 'dogmatic'
obscurantism opposed to the free search for truth.
This myth has played a considerable cultural role; this myth has helped to
establish in many bona fide scientists the idea that there would be an
incompatibility between the spirit of science and its research ethics, on the
one hand, and the Christian faith, on the other. A tragic mutual
incomprehension has been interpreted as reflecting a constitutive opposition
between science and faith. The clarification given by recent historical
studies enables us to state that this sad misunderstanding now belongs to
the past.
From a kind of myth, first paragraph, they pass into myth, in the second.
The funny thing is that the Galileo case and its aftermath are not myths, but
historical and sociological realities verified and contrasted.
There is a constitutive opposition between science and faith. The faith
rests on myths: the divinity, the creation, the revelation, the sin, the redemption, the
soul, the immortality, the existence of heavens and hells. Its method is
speculative, metaphysical and deductive. Its blocks are the beliefs and
the dogmas. Its foundations are the Revelation, the authority of the revealing and
its intermediary bridges. They believe under an authority: God, the Council,
the Pope; it is a mere gesture of consent. Its thinking is symbolic,
metaphysical, mythical..., because the reality of faith is mythical,
metaphysical, symbolic...
Science is based on verifiable and testable. The scientific method starts
from the hypothesis covered by scientific theories, that, with the
collection of verified and
contrasting data, empirical method,
become new theories. The whole of theories make up the science. The method begins
as empirical and inductive; once the theory is established it can also be
deductive. The new evidence make change the earlier theories, science is never
dogmatic. The research method, which Galileo initiates and that was
condemned, consists of three phases: observation, hypothesis and
verification. Its blocks are the ideas. Its foundation is the evidence that
results from
the investigation. Its thinking is rational. The method of Cartesian
doubt, accepted by science, was also condemned by the Church. The School
of the
suspicion
of Paul Ricoeur would never have space in the field of faith.
The faith uses the universals for its absolute dogmas and morals that
transcend the times and that adapt to any type of society. It does not accept the
historicism nor the moral of situation, which conditions the truth and
morality to social situations and historical concrete personal moments, and
to a change in assumptions: cultural relativism. The faith only
knows of absolutes that do not exist. However in science everything is
relative: the principle of relativity.
From the foregoing follows that the faith and the science are constitutively opposed.
The misunderstanding, that the Pope referred to, will never belong to the past.
We understand the desire of being so, but that's not the reality. The
misunderstanding with Galileo is the thorn in the heart of the Church
and, though they dream of disguising, it belongs to the historical memory.
Late, too late, an apology and an admission of error is no more than a nice
symbolic gesture, art in which the Church is an undisputed master, since
its entire liturgy consists of symbolic gestures, but they cannot correct or
remedy the damage to people, towns and science. The lives, suffering and
humiliation are irrecoverable, as it is the social, economic and scientific
damage committed against the society. The Galileo case is for the Church,
which was the case of Servetus for the Reformed churches with Calvin at the
head: a death trap. The Church
lost its scientific reputation and with it its arguments settled in
the Bible and in the Holly Fathers. If to the Galileo case, we add the many thousands cases
that the Inquisition produced in its deplorable history, the result cannot be
more stark and revealing.
We respect the desire of John Paul II in wanting
to heal that historical wound. Perhaps someday the Church goes beyond and
recognizes all the miseries of the past. Only then, with a new exegesis of
the grazing of Catholic flock through the centuries and a new interpretation
of the Bible, outside the dogmas born in minds immersed in a world of
darkness, it may reborn a new institution, with a credible role in today's
society.
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opinion in the
Guestbook
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS
Presentation by Dr. Antonio M. Trivino at the
University of Puerto Rico
The Grand
Inquisitor
Order Of Arrest Of The Templar, 14th, September 1307
Defence of the Orthodox Faith against the Errors of
Servetus. (Writing of Calvin refuted by Castellio)
Discourse of John Paul II on the Galileo
Excerpts from the Malleus Maleficarum
Legends of Witches
Torture techniques
Auto-da-fé in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid, 30th, June, 1680.
Identity issues of Jewish People
New Court, Reasons for its creation by the Catholic
Kings
Ad perpetuam Rei Memoriam
Archbishop Carranza
Process of Giordano Bruno
DISCOURSE OF JOHN PAUL II ON THE CASE OF
GALILEO
SECTION II OF THE SPEECH OF HIS HOLINESS Pope JOHN
PAUL II on the
occasion of the presentation of the conclusions of the papal
study commission on the Ptolemaic-Copernican controversy in the XVI-XVII
Centuries (Rome, CdV,
31-10-1992). (…)
4. I was moved by similar concerns, the 10th of November 1979, on the occasion
of the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Albert Einstein, when
I expressed to the same Academy the desire that theologians, scientists and
historians, animated by a spirit of genuine collaboration, press ahead with
the examination of the Galileo case, in a fair recognition of errors
whatever the part they could proceed, do away with the distrust that this case is still
facing, in many minds, respect a fruitful concord between the science and the
faith (AAS 71, 1979, pp. 1464-1465). A study committee was formed to this
effect on 3rd, July 1981. And now, in the same year that marks the 350th
anniversary of Galileo's death, the committee presents, at the end of its
work, a series of publications that I vividly esteem. I express my sincere
gratitude to Cardinal Poupard, who coordinated the research of the
Commission in the final phase. To all the experts involved in various ways in
the work of the four groups that have carried out this multidisciplinary
study, I express them my deep appreciation and my gratitude. The work carried out
over ten years reflects an orientation suggested by the Second Vatican
Council and allows better illuminate several important points of the issue.
In the future, you can no longer ignore the findings of that Commission.
Perhaps anyone be surprised that by the end of a week of study at the
Academy, on the theme of the emergence of complexity in the various
sciences, I return over the Galileo case. It is not a case filed for a long
time and have not been recognized the mistakes already made?
Certainly this is
true. However, the underlying problems in this case affect both the nature
of science and the message of faith. It cannot be excluded therefore that we
find ourselves one day before a similar situation, which require everyone a
conscious awareness of the bounded field and the limits of the respective
competences. The approach to the issue of complexity could provide an
illustrative example.
5. A double issue is at the heart of the debate whose center was Galileo
Galilei.
The first is epistemological and concerns the biblical hermeneutic. In this
respect there are two points to underline: First of all, like most of his
opponents, Galileo does not distinguish between what is scientific analysis
of natural phenomena and the reflection on the nature, of philosophical
feature, that it claims. So he absolutely rejected the suggestion that was made
to him to
present as hypothesis the Copernican system, while not confirmed by some
irrefutable evidence. This was, moreover, a requirement of the experimental
method which he himself was the brilliant founder.
Furthermore, the geocentric representation of the world was commonly
accepted in the culture of the time in full accordance with the
teachings of the Bible, in which some expressions, taken at face value, appeared to be geocentric
assertions. The problem raised by theologians of
that time was that of the compatibility of heliocentric theory
and Sacred
Scriptures.
Thus, the new science, with its methods and freedom of research they entail, compel the theologians to question about their criteria for
interpreting Scriptures. Most of them did not know how to do it.
Paradoxically, Galileo, sincere believer, was more circumspect on this point
than his theologian opponents. "While the Scripture cannot err -he
wrote to Benedetto Castelli-, they could, however, err, may be, some of its
interpreters and exhibitors, in various ways "(letter of 21st, December 1613, in Edizione nazionale delle Opere di Galileo Galilei, dir. A.Favoro, reprint
1968, vol. V, p. 282). It is also known the letter to the Grand Duchess (1615),
which is like a small treatise on Biblical hermeneutics (ibid., pp.
307-348).
6. At this place, we are already able to make a first conclusion. The irruption of a new
way to study natural phenomena requires some explanation of all the
disciplines of knowledge. That irruption forces them to better define their own
field, their angle of approach, their methods, and the exact scope of their conclusions.
In other words, this innovation forces each of the disciplines to take a
more rigorous awareness of its own nature.
The shift caused by the Copernican system demanded, therefore, an effort of
epistemological reflection on biblical studies, an effort that later was to
bring abundant fruits in the modern exegetical works and it has found in the
Council Constitution " Dei Verbum" its consecration and a new impetus.
7. The crises that I hardly have evoked are not the only factor that had an
impact on the interpretation of the Bible. We touch here the second
aspect of the problem, the pastoral aspect.
Under the proper mission, the Church has the duty to be attentive
to the pastoral implications of its word. Let it be clear, first, that this
word must correspond to the truth. But the question is how to take into
account a new scientific fact when it seems to contradict truths of faith.
The pastoral that required the Copernican theory was difficult to express
in so far as the geocentric one seemed part of the same teaching of Scripture.
It would have been necessary under the circumstances to overcome the habits
of thinking and invent a pedagogy able to enlighten the people of God. Say, in
general, that the pastor has to show to be willing a real courage, by avoiding the
dual pitfalls of unsafe attitude and hasty judgment, both being able to do great
damage.
8. It can be evoked here a crisis analogous to that which we are speaking
about. In
the last century and at the beginning of ours, the progress of historical
studies permitted to acquire new knowledge about the Bible and biblical
environment. The rationalist context in which, typically, those acquisitions
were made could make them appear as ruinous to the Christian faith. Some,
worried about defending the faith, thought they should be rejected some historical conclusions
firmly based. That was a hasty and unhappy
decision. The work of a pioneer as the Father Lagrange was able to make the
necessary discriminations on the basis of certain safe criteria.
It is necessary to repeat here what was said above. It is a duty for
theologians to be informed regularly on the progress in science to examine, in
each case, to what extent it is necessary to take it into account in their
thinking or to make revisions in their teaching.
9. If contemporary culture is marked by a tendency to scientism, the
cultural horizon of the time of Galileo was unitarian and bore the stamp
of a particular philosophical training. This unitary character of culture,
which in itself is positive and desirable even today, was one of the causes
of the condemnation of Galileo. Most theologians did not perceive the formal
distinction between Sacred Scriptures and their interpretation, which led them
unduly to transpose into the field of doctrine of faith a matter that, in fact,
belonged to scientific research.
Indeed, as recalled by Cardinal Poupard, Robert Bellarmine, who had caught
what was really at stake in the debate, defended by his part that, before any
scientific evidence about the Earth's orbit around the Sun, anyone had to "walk
with consideration in explaining the Scriptures that seemed contrary to the
mobility of the earth, and rather say that we do not understand them, than to say
that is false what is proved" (Letter to Fr. A. Foscarini, 12th, April 1615 cf. Op.cit. vol. XII, p. 172). Before him, the same wisdom and the same respect
to God's word had led St. Augustine to write: "If to a self-evident
and safe reason someone pretended to oppose the authority of the Scriptures, who does this
does not
understand anything and opposes the truth not the genuine sense of Scripture, which
he has failed to penetrate, but the very personal thought, that is, not what he
found in Scripture, but what he has found in himself, as if he was in them.”
(Epistle 143, n. 7: PL 33, col. 588). A century ago, Pope Leo XIII echoed
this thought in his encyclical Deus Providentissimus: "Since the true cannot
in any way contradict the truth, it is can be sure that a mistake has been
made or in the interpretation of the sacred words, or elsewhere in the
discussion "(Leonis XIII Pont. Max. Acta, Volume XVIII, 1894, p, 361)
Cardinal Poupard has also reminded us that the sentence of 1633 was not
irrevocable and that the debate, which had not ceased to develop, was closed
in 1820 with the imprimatur given to the work of the canon Setteke (cf.
Pontificia Academia Scientiarum, Copérnico, Galilei e la Chiesa. Fine de la
controversia
(1820). Gli atti of Sant'Uffizio, a cura di W. Brandmuller e E.J. Greipl,
Firenze, Olschki, 1992)
10. From the century of the lights to this day, the Galileo case has been
a kind of myth, in which the image of events that was built was quite
unrealistic. In this perspective, the Galileo case was the symbol of the
alleged rejection of the Church to the scientific progress, or even the "dogmatic"
obscurantism opposed to the free investigation of truth.
This myth has played a considerable cultural role, this myth has helped to
establish in many bona fide scientists the idea that there would be an
incompatibility between the spirit of science and research ethics, on the
one hand, and the Christian faith, on the other. A tragic mutual
incomprehension has been interpreted as reflecting a constitutive opposition
between science and faith. The clarification given by recent historical
studies enables us to state that this sad misunderstanding now belongs to
the past.
11. From Galileo's case it can be drawn a lesson that remains topical in relation
to similar situations occurring today ; in times of Galileo it was
inconceivable to imagine a world that was devoid of an absolute physical
reference point. And since the known cosmos at that time, so to speak, was contained
only in the solar system, you could not locate this reference point anywhere
else than in the Earth or in the Sun. Today, after Einstein and in the
perspective of Contemporary cosmology, none of these benchmarks is so important
as it was then. This
observation obviously does not concern the validity of Galileo's position in
the debate, it seeks rather to indicate that often, beyond two partial
and contrasting visions, there is a broader vision that includes both and
exceeds them.
12. Another lesson to be drawn is that the various disciplines of knowledge
require a variety of methods. Galileo, who practically invented the
experimental method, understood, thanks to his great physical intuition
and relying on different arguments, why only the sun could have the role of
center of the world, as it was then known, namely as a planetarium system. The
error of the theologians of the time, arguing the centrality of the Earth,
it was to think that our knowledge of the structure of the physical world was,
somehow, imposed by the literal meaning of Scripture. But it must remember
the famous statement attributed to Baronius: "Spiritui Sancto mentem fuisse
nos docere quomodo ad coelum eatur, nom quomodo coelum graditur." (The Holy
Spirit's purpose was to teach us how to go to sky ( heaven), not how the sky is
structured). In fact, Scripture does not see to the details of the physical
world, whose knowledge is entrusted to the experience and human
reasoning.
There are two fields of knowledge, that which has its source in Revelation and
the one that the reason can discover alone with its strength. To the latter belong the experimental sciences and philosophy. The distinction between the two
fields of knowledge should not be understood as an opposition. The two
sectors are not fully strangers to each other, but they have meeting points. The
methodologies of each one allow to highlight different aspects of reality.
[107]
Quotations
Fragments of Malleus Maleficarum
========================
The woman
is a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic
danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with bright
colors! Therefore, if divorce is a sin when we should keep her, it is indeed a
necessary torture. Then or we commit adultery when we divorce, or should we endure a
daily struggle.
In his second book The Rhetoric, Cicero says:
"The
many
man's desires lead them to one sin, but the only appetite of women leads them to all
sins, because the root of all female evil is greed ”.
And Seneca says in his tragedies:
"A
woman loves or hates, there is no third alternative. And the tears of a
woman are a deception as they may arise from a real penalty, or a trap. When
a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil."
Regarding the first question, why is there a
lot of witches in the fragile feminine sex, a greater proportion than men,
it is indeed a fact that it would be idle to contradict and experience
confirms that, apart from verbal testimony of trustworthy witnesses [...].
Then some
wise men propose this reason: that there are three things in nature: the
Language, an Ecclesiastic and a Woman, which know no moderation in goodness
or vice and, when they exceed the limits of their capacity, they reach the
largest heights and the deepest depths of goodness and vice [...].
And from
the evil of the women they spoke in Ecclesiasticus xxv: "There is no
higher thing than the head of a snake and there is no greater anger than
that of a woman. I prefer to live with a lion and a dragon than to live with
a wicked woman".
"I found
that the woman is more bitter than death and a good woman is subjected to
the carnal appetite”.
Others
have suggested other reasons why there are more superstitious women than
men. And the first is that they are more gullible and as the main objective
of the devil is to corrupt the faith, prefers to attack them. See
Ecclesiastucus, XIX: "Who
is quick to credulity, is weak-minded and will be diminished".
The second reason is that by
nature women are more impressionable and more ready to receive the influence
of a disembodied spirit and that, when they use well this quality, they are very
bad. The
third reason is they have a mobile tongue, unable to conceal to other women things they know
by evil arts and, as they are weak, they find an easy and secret way of
holding on witchcraft. See Ecclesiasticus, as quoted above: "I'd
rather live with a lion and a dragon than dwell with a wicked woman".
"That, as
they are weaker in mind and body, no wonder they fall further under the
spell of witchcraft". St.
Jerome in his Contra Loniniann says: "This
Socrates had two wives who endured with much patience, but could not
discharge their vociferous and vituperative contumelies. So one day when he
complained, left the house to escape their harassment and sat before it and
then the woman threw boiling water on him. But the philosopher did not bother with
it and said: "I knew that after the thunder comes the rain".
And there
is the story of a man whose wife drowned in a river, and when he was searching for
the corpse out of the water, walked upstream. And when they asked why, since
heavy bodies do not rise but fall,he was he seeking against the current of the
river, said: "When
this woman lived, both in words and in deeds, she contradicted my orders, so I
am
looking in the opposite direction, as if now, even dead, she retains her
contradictory provision.
If we
investigate, we see that almost all the kingdoms of the world have been
overthrown by women. Troy, a prosperous kingdom, was destroyed by the
rape of a woman, Helena, and many thousands of Greeks were killed. The kingdom of
the Jews suffered great misery and destruction caused by the cursed Jezebel
and her daughter Ataliah, Queen of Judea, who made the children of his son
be dead, so that, at their death, she could come to reign; but each of them was
killed.
The
kingdom of the Romans endured much evil because of Cleopatra, queen of
Egypt, the worst of women. And so with others. So no wonder the world is
suffering now from the malice of women. And then
examine the carnal desires of the body itself, of which there have been
extensive damage to human life. We can justly say with Cato of Utica: "If the
world could be free of women, we should not lack of God in our relationships".
For
indeed, without the malignancy of women, to say nothing of witchcraft, the
world would remain safe from many dangers. Listen
what Valerio said to Rufino: "You do not know
that woman is the Chimera, but it's good youknow it, because this monster
had three forms, its face was that of a radiant and noble lion, it had the foul
womb of a goat and it was armed with the virulent tail of a snake".
It means
that a woman is beautiful in appearance, she contaminates the
touch and it is deadly to live with it. More
bitter than death, i.e, the devil: Apocalypse, VI, 8: "It was
named Death".
For,
though the devil tempted Eve to sin, Eve seduced Adam. And as the sin of Eve
had not brought death to our soul and body, unless the sin passed to
Adam, who was tempted by Eve and not by the devil, then she is more bitter
than death. And more bitter than death, too, because it is natural and
destroys only the body, but the sin which arose from woman destroys the soul,
by stripping it of grace, and delivers the body to the penalty for sin.
And more bitter than death because
the body
death is an open and terrible enemy, but the woman is a whiner and secret
enemy. And the fact that she is more dangerous than a snare does not refer
to the snares of the hunters, but of demons'.
For men are caught, not only by
their lust, when they see and hear the women, because St. Bernard says:
"The sterile matrix".
Therefore, to satisfy their appetites, they bind even the demons.
Many more reasons should be presented,
but
for the mind it is clear that it is not surprising that there are more
women than men infected by the heresy of witchcraft. And because of
that, it is better to call the heresy of witches than of wizards, since the name
comes from the most powerful group. And blessed be the Almighty, who until
now protected the male sex from
a
so great crime; for
He was ready to be
born and suffer for us and therefore granted this privilege to men.
[48]
Legends of
witches
=============
Milan, 1384.
Women Sibilla and Pierina, confess having participated in a grim game:
the game of Diana (or Herodiade) that presided over a certain Madonna Oriente,
who confided
the participants the mysteries of the future. Ahead of this Oriente nobody could
pronounce the name of God. Moreover
Oriente
teaches how to cure diseases,
to find
stolen goods and to break spells. The two women were sentenced to death in
1390.
Zion, 1420.
The devil appears to a sectarian group in
the form of
bear or mutton; the followers of the sect massacre men, children and
animals. The investigations lead to the discovery that some 700 men set up
the group. One hundred of them are burned alive after having made a full
confession under torture.
Rouen, 1430.
On
March, 18th, she is sentenced to death Joan of Arc. The accusation is both of heresy
and of witchcraft. The process is obviously political.
Arras, 1459.
Robinet de Vaulx, hermit, is tried for the crime of witchcraft. Before dying
he reports a prostitute, Demiselle, and a painter, Jean Lavit: again two
marginal. Interrogated and tortured, they burned both of them at the stake in 1460. In
turn, they
have confessed and reported other accomplices: the
chain of
Inquisition
can continue its work of purification.
Fie, 1506.
A woman,
Anna Jobstin, confessed under torture that she is responsible for the hail that
destroyed the neighboring fields. Finally, her mind is clouded: she blamed
herself of all the disasters that recently affected the whole Tyrol.
Derneburg (Rheinstein),
1555.
It is again two women: Groebesche and Gisserlche,
who confess
having had sex
with the devil;
Groebesche
admits that these practices lasted 11 years. The
demonic connection is thus extremely strong: when they carry her to the fire,
Satan materializes before the people, assembled under the gallows,
and
kidnaps
on a flight both sentenced ; it is the 1st October.
Two days later,
Gisserlsche
appears in the house
of her husband, who dies of fright at the time;
the episode is witnessed by a neighbor who claims to have seen her dancing
around the dead, as in a cloud of fire.
The 12th,
October, Groebesche's husband
is
arrested, accused of having copulated with
his woman's
sister. The inquisitorial
investigation continues and the 14th of that month, a third woman named
Serckschen is jailed on charges of producing paralysis to the neighbors, and
of burying
frogs at the entrance to their homes. With no
demonic
relief she is burned
a few
days later.
Paris, 1565-1640.
In seventy-five years, 1119 persons were prosecuted; the number testifies to
the wild work of the inquisitors. Hundreds of these people will find death
at the end of the process. Unlike other cases, here it is almost always
about men and women of a certain social category, guilty of magical
practices.
Lucerne, 1517. A
midwife confesses having killed several babies at birth, piercing them with a pin.
When they prolonged the wait for the fire, hoping to wrest other faiths, it happens
that the guards do not find her in the cell: instead, only her skin, swollen
like a pimple. The popular rumor says that the devil flayed her away.
Genf, 1571.
A
horrendous
women
carnage: twenty-one were burned during the month of May.
Zurich, 1571.
A
woman living in squalor, Varena Keretzin, who needs basic things like food
and clothing, she sees a gentleman who
is coming and introduces himself
as one of the
richest and most powerful of all in the earth. The terrified woman hears the
proposal he makes her: if you join carnally to me, I will fill you in goods, you
will be strong and respected. The mind of the woman hesitates, while she
does not
know what to answer, although inwardly she is very tempted to respond in the
affirmative way. The man expects no more and seal the pact biting her arm and then
he copulates with her. Since then Varena feels that she has not fear any
more; a new
force seizes her. Armed with a cane she starts wandering through the fields where
she pursues
cows and pigs to death. She produces disease in men that in the past
refused to give her protection or alms ; she makes
hail to
destroy crops throughout the
area. Finally they caught her. The 10th of September she is condemned to the stake.
Lorraine,
1576-1606.
The judge Nicholas Remy boasts to have sent to the stake, in this
period of time, from two to three thousand witches.
Bordeaux, 1577.
The
inquisitor Pierre de L 'Ancre in a report on achievements in legal
proceedings, said that the sovereign Court of Bordeaux has sent to death four
hundred witches.
Val Mesolcina, 1593.
Not even the most famous pastors evade ritual
condemnation of witches: Cardinal Carlo Borromeo makes his contribution to
the hunting favoring the conviction
upside down
of several women; witnesses say they
probably died reconciled, since many of the listeners heard them invoke, in the flames,
"the most holy name".
Pitoia, 1593.
Some
prostitutes, between these Fiore di Francesco da Crispoli, avoid the fire
by forcing them into exile.
Bazuel (Cambrésis),
1599-1627.
An elderly widow, Reine Percheval, ends at the stake after
confessing to witchcraft practices with which she would have got the death of her
granddaughter,
to affect
with a serious illness a notable, to cause birth
deformities in cows. Before the fire, it is repeated a miserable rite: Reine
takes revenge on her accusers by identifying them as accomplices of her own
crimes. One of these, Aldegonde of Rue, will follow her in the violent death
after a trial that lasted two years and ended up finding in her body
insensitive
points to pain, which testified
her diabolical treatment. Three
other women suffered the same end.
Jura, 1600.
Rolanda
and Claudia di Vernois confess the judge, Henri Boguet, have caused hail,
mixing their urine with green branches. The devil
defends them
in the fire,
making rain several times, which puts out the flames. Finally, the ritual of
death takes place the 7th of September.
Aix-en-Provence,
1609.
This time it's a nun: after the rite of exorcism which was applied to her because it was obvious she was possessed, she accuses the priest of
Marseille, Don Gaufridy, of having bewitched her. The priest, tortured,
resists for two years before
admitting Sabbath practices and sexual violence in the nun.
He died burnt on
30th,
April, 1611.
Zugarramurdi (Basque Country), 1614.
After an interrogation that affects 300 people and lasts four years, are
pleaded guilty 12 witches. Seven are condemned to the stake, of the other
five, died during the procedure, are burn http://boriken.info/images that represent them.
Paderborn, 1631.
Lisa Tutka, arrested on the accusation of witchcraft, confessed under torture
that her father (killed in his turn by the violence of the judges in previous
proceedings) has taught her to do spells since she was young, delivering her
to a
man who sexually abused her: that the man could be the devil is witnessed by the
fact that during the relationship, Lisa felt no heat, but cold. Lisa reported
six other people.
Oppenau, 1631-1632.
A process that marks a record, led to the stake the 8 percent of the
population.
Palermo, 1640.
The
Holy Office condemned Caterina Bunia "who was going out with women at night and
promised to bring people to her and that she wanted them to ride a goat, as
she did".
Auch, 1644.
Régine, woman of the village, is captured and thrown into the river Gers
with a stone around her neck. The vigilantes, this time without trial, are
soldiers who, at the instigation of the people of the city, accuse her of
evil practices.
Monthéliard,
1646.
Thirty-two statements accuse the widow, Adrienne d'Heur, of having
caused the death of a child by offering him bread; of having made lose sight to a
man, a woman and two children; of having spoiled milk from a cow; of having
caused the death of a horse; of having tried to abduct a child; of having
threatened many others; of having introduced herself at night into houses without
opening the doors; of being transformed into a cat, irritating the cat
of the house. Like Percheval, she is pinned to the whole body: the needle enters the
bone and stays there, without pain and without blood flow, for a quarter of
an hour. Adrienne, however, denies everything and she is hung from the rope.
At that point confesses: Sabbath, intercourse with the devil, spells,
transformations. They burn her on September, the 11th.
Juergensburg, 1692.
A man of eighty, Thiess, confesses being a werewolf, but of the good ones,
who chase and fight against devils and witches. The judges sentenced him to
ten lashes.
Techniques of
Torture
The foal. It consisted of a
long narrow wooden table on which the accused was tied with ropes around the
wrists and ankles. The strings of the dolls were fixed to the table and those of the legs were rolling to a rotating wheel. Every movement of the wheel meant a
loosening of the members. The pain caused
at stretching the
muscles and stretching the bone structure was very deep and insufferable, which
increased with the spinning wheel, which could lead to dismemberment. It
stopped, at half torment, to require the defendant to tell the truth; if he
did not, the torment continued.
Twines and clubs.
There were the
ropes and clubs, whose implementation was one of three ways: the turn of
trap, the "handrope" and to hang the accused on the rack. They prepared
the defendant for the torment by putting him a
belt with which he was balanced from the ground; both arms were tied to his breast
and bound with ropes to rings on the wall. For the trap or big-trap, the
ladder of the rack had one of its steps removed, to allow the legs pass
trough it; there was
another bar of sharp edge underneath it, and through this narrow opening
legs were forced by a rope tight around the fingers with a turn around the ankle.
Each
turn or twist given to the string represented about three inches and a half,
three were ordinary practice, even with the most robust ones. Leaving him stretched
in this position, the next step was the "handrope": They passed a rope around
his
arms and the executioner, after tying them around his body, drew back,
dropping all his weight and pressing his feet against the rack. The rope came
then
to cut the skin and muscles to the bone, while the patient's body was
stretched like in a rack, between this and the strings of the feet. The belt,
being subjected to such alternative forces, it also moved back and forth,
with which the suffering was greater. This was repeated six to eight times
with the "hand-rope", in various parts of the arms, and patients often faint,
especially women.
After that
the rack
came into
play. The patient was saved from the trap and from the "hand-rope" and he was put on the eleven sharp steps of the rack, with the ankles tied to the sides and his head
in a depression, where it was
immobilized by a rope across the front. The belt was
loosened so he could turn, three ropes were passed around each arm, tying
the ends into rings or the sides of the rack, using sticks to keep them tight;
two others similar ropes were put on each thigh and one in each calf, resulting
in a total of twelve. The ends were tied to a master club, with which the
torturer could control them all at once. They worked not only for
compression, but also sliding on the members, in which they tore skin and flesh. Each half turn is considered a return, the maximum being six or
seven, but generally they did not exceed five, even with strong men. In the early
days they did the same with the rope around their forehead, but the
practice was left since they saw that it could expel the eyes of their orbits.
All this, concludes the
court of Cordoba, is very violent, but it is less dangerous than the methods
already abandoned.
The pulley. The accused was
tied around his wrists to the back and he was dropped from a height. The length
of the rope was so far that he did not hit the ground, but the jolt left him
dislocated. [33]
The first, known in Italy as the
strappato, consisted of tying the patient's arms behind his back and then,
with a rope around the wrists, they lift him from the ground, with or without
weights at his feet, keeping him suspended for the time that is desired and
occasionally dropping a short distance at a stretch. By 1620, one author
recommends that the lifting motion be slow, because, if it is fast, the pain
does not last
enough, the patient should be kept some time on the toes, so they
barely touch the ground; when lifted, he should stay like that the time it takes to
repeat three times slowly and silently the psalm Miserere, while admonishing him
repeatedly to tell the truth. If this fails, he will be taken down, he will
be tied with weights to the feet and he will be fixed up by the time of two Miserere (prayer
timely if any), repeating the operation, with increasing weights, as long
and
repeated as it is considered appropriate. [34]
The brazier. The accused was hung
by his arms from a rope attached to a ring. He was risen, they greased his feet and
put a brazier under him. Some judges approached coals to the body of the prisoner.
The torment of water.
The person was
holding down and they placed a piece of iron so he could not close
his mouth. They introduced a strip of linen through the mouth into the
interior of the throat and with a pitcher they were pouring water through the
strip of cloth, slowly. The tortured gasped and choked. Torment was measured
by the number of jugs of water that were being introduced.
Another version of water
torture.
The patient should be placed on a ladder or rack, a kind of easel
with sharp steps, across, like a steep staircase, so that the head was lower
than the feet; at the lowest point there was a dip in which they placed the head,
while an iron strap around the forehead or throat kept the head still. The
strings, which penetrated the flesh, held the arms and legs to the sides
of the rack, and others, known as clubs, sticks put into them and that were twisted like
a tourniquet until the lines were going deep into the flesh, were tied to
the arms and forearms, thighs and calves. An iron head distended
the mouth and a veil, or strip of linen, was introduced through the throat to
put in slowly flowing water from a jug, which generally contained a little
more than a liter. The patient gasped and, at intervals, removing the veil,
he was conjured to tell the truth. The severity of punishment was
measured by the number of pitchers used, which sometimes reached six or
eight. [35]
Splints.
In each foot and each
hand they placed a narrow table with five holes in which fingers were introduced
by force.
The iron maiden.
It consisted of an
iron sarcophagus whose interior was covered with spikes. There were few
sarcophagi of this type (the most famous was that of Nuremberg) and in fact
it was
an element intended to produce terror. Any of the previous tortures, albeit
of more modest appearance, allowed an application of variable intensity, as
required, while the maiden did not allow adjustments.
The trap.
The prisoner stayed for a long time
with his feet (and sometimes his hands) subject to a board with several
holes of different section for different sizes of ankles or wrists.
The crushing thumbs.
It was an
instrument which, by turning a screw, was used to tighten the fingers or
toes. There were greater variations for other body joints: elbows, knees and
so on.
Friend's foot.
Another
instrument of punishment was the friend's foot, an iron fork attached to
the chin and secured by a bandage around the prisoner's neck or waist, so it
kept his
head up and rigidly fixed. Its regular use was with inmates whipped in the
streets or with those who were forced to parade in shame. [36]
Auto-da-fé,
held on 30th, June, 1680,
in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid
===================================================
...After a
month of having been made the proclamation of the auto-da-fé, began the
ceremony with a procession [that took place the day before, June, 29th] in the
church of Santa Maria, with the following order: the march was preceded by a
hundred colliers, all armed with pikes and muskets, as they provided the
fuel with which criminals were burned. They were followed by Dominicans,
preceded by a white cross. Then came the Duke of Medinaceli, carrying the
banner of the Inquisition. Then came a large cross draped in black, followed by
several large and some quality people who were familiar of the Inquisition. The
march was closed for 50 guards of the Inquisition, clad in black and white and
commanded by the Marquis of Pova, hereditary protector
of the Inquisition. Having gone this order the procession in front of the Palace,
then it went to the Plaza, where the banner and Green Cross were placed in the
gallery, where there were only Dominicans, retiring others. These monks
spent most of the night singing psalms and held several masses at the altar
from dawn till six in the morning. An hour later appeared on the balcony the
Kings of Spain, the Queen Mother and many ladies of quality.
At eight
o'clock the procession began, following the same order of the day before,
with the Society of Colliers, which were placed to the left of the balcony of
the King and with the guards to its right (the rest of the balconies were
occupied by the ambassadors, the nobility and gentlemen). Then came 30 men,
carrying life-size cardboard portraits. Some of these represented those who
had died in prison, whose bones were also brought in crates, where they had
painted flames; and the rest of the figures represented those who had
escaped the hands of the Inquisition and they were outlawed. These figures
were placed at one end of the amphitheater.
After
them came a dozen men and women, with ropes around their necks and candles
in hand, with cardboard pointed hood three feet high, on which there were written their
actions, or represented in various ways. They were followed by another 50,
who also carried candles in their hands, dressed in a yellow sanbenito or in
a sleeveless
green jacket, with a large red cross of St. Andrew in front and
another behind. These were criminals, who (having been this the first time they were
incarcerated), had repented of their crimes; they are usually sentenced to
several years in prison or to wear the sanbenito, which is the greatest
misfortune that can befall a family. Each of these offenders was carried by
two familiar of the Inquisition. Then came twenty more offenders of both
sexes, who had relapsed three times in their earlier errors and who were
condemned to the flames.
Those who had given
some signs of repentance would be strangled before being burned, the
others, having persisted obstinately in their errors, they would be burned
alive. These wore sambenitos of fabric, on which were painted devils and flames,
as in their pointed hoods. Five or six of them, who were more stubborn than the
rest, were gagged to prevent them uttering phrases
with blasphemous doctrines. Those
sentenced to die were surrounded, in addition to two familiar (members of
the Inquisition), by four or five monks who prepared them for death as they
walked.
They passed these criminals in the order above, under the balcony of the
King, and, after going around the platform, they were placed in the amphitheater
on the left, each surrounded by the familiar and monks in attendance. Some of the
Great, who were familiar, sat on benches that were ready for them at the
bottom of the other amphitheater. Officials of the Supreme Council of the
Inquisition, the Inquisitors, the officials of all other boards and several
other distinguished personages, both of the regular clergy and of the secular
clergy, all of them on horseback, came after with great solemnity and placed
themselves
in the
amphitheater to the right side, on both sides of the rostrum where he was to
sit the Grand Inquisitor.
This was the last
to arrive, dressed in purple, accompanied by the President of the Council of
Castile and, once he was seated, the President retired.
Then began
the celebration of Mass...
At about twelve o'clock they began to read the sentence to convicted criminals.
First they read that of those who died in prison or were banned.
Their figures of cardboard were uploaded to a
small platform and stuffed into small cages made for that purpose.
Then they continued reading the sentence to each offender, who, straight
afterwards, were stuck
singly into cages so that they all knew them.
The
ceremony lasted until nine o'clock at night and, when it was finished the
celebration of Mass, the king went away and criminals, who were condemned to be
burned, were delivered to the secular arm and, being mounted on donkeys,
they were taken through the so called Foncaral door and, near this place at midnight,
all they were executed.
The Jews: Identy problem
=====================
... In
medieval society, each group (each ethnicity, each class within an ethnic
group, each of the multiple and fluid subdivisions within the class, each
sex, of course) had its own value of a sign and it was into this
sign where the individual found his own social reality; outside the group,
his
existence was merely physical.
The Jewish converts always lived a life
of distress, precisely because they were not built either in the group who had
left or in the new group they had chosen. Wanting to break free from the
bondage of their parents, they fell into a disturbing and unexpected servitude.
Already in Las Siete Partidas of Alfonso X, we read the terrible fate that
always chased the Jews:
"Et (and) the reason why the Church, et emperors, et kings et the other
princes suffered the Jews living among Christians is this: because they
would live forever as in a captivity, et it would be to remember the
humans that the parents they come from are the lineage of those
who crucified our Lord Jesus Christ."
The
persecutions of 1391, with the sudden creation of a new and controversial
social group nominally Christian, the "New Christians", converted by
force or
by calculated convenience, open a new stage: the
problem of converts.These mass conversions will occur
specially in the days preceding
the expulsion in 1492. Prior to these new unfortunate stages, the existence
of the "convert" (some of sincere conversion) was culturally border,
as it
combined, in one subject, old and new parameters of ethnic definition and
the difficulty in finding a new place in society, a new entity. The
Jewish converts
of the
Middle Ages, having left, so false in most cases, the religion of their
parents, not having been fully integrated into the new Christian faith,
they lived apart from social constituted groups and outside the function these groups performed. Their walk was uncertain and anguished their existence.
Their
life and property was in constant danger and their religious attitude
was dubious for some and questioned by others. In the Christian society the
convert was an impostor
and a hypocrite and neophyte, and before his former blood brothers he was an
negligible apostate. Many of them, to expel from their interior the remains
of guilty, to forget everything they had lived and to provoke a total rupture with the past
legacy, had to suppress certain memories (motivated forgetting, as Jose
Louis Pinillos
says) so that the access to their memory did not cause them major conflicts. The human
drama of
jewish converts
was essentially a moral drama. Man lives primarily under the sign of guilt.
Faced with the moral failure, the puzzled convert looked for an acquittal and
it is well
known that the sense of frustration, of guilty, becomes a struggle against
oneself, against others or against life. Although some leaders and some
powerful noble families tried to protect them, the hatred of ordinary people
had been sharpened so that it led to different pursuits. This hostility to
the enriched convert, and sometimes lofty, crystallized in scenes of violence,
both in Toledo (1449 and 1467) and in other cities.
The
converts, upon receiving a new religion, were obliged to delve into it. They
all
had to became "a little theologians." This search, attempting to penetrate the
mysteries and rituals, made their spiritual world be peopled with deep
spiritual questions and concerns of inner peace yearnings and regrets...
These religious concerns were, certainly, more intense than those of old
Christians who had inherited the rituals of their elders and that they hardly
raised the origin of these external ceremonies.
Faced
with the intellectual concerns of the descendants of Jewish blood, the old
Christians flaunted a "carelessly living," staking their obsessive
concerns in motives of honor and reputation, which were linked to a sense of
honor, opinion and purity of blood. The dominant society of Old Christians opposed an
attitude of contempt for science. The important thing for the old
Christian was gentry, which was acquired when there was no Hebrew or
Moorish mark; that is why Sancho tells the
hidalgo
(lesser nobleman)
Don Quixote:
- "For God's sake that I am an old Christian, and to be a count that is
enough."
- "And yet
you've got enough, said Don Quixote, and even if you were not Christian, the case
would not matter at all because, being me the king, I am certainly able able to give you nobility without you purchase
it or serve me
with nothing".
And
that is why,
in The Alcalde (Mayor) of Zalamea, Pedro Crespo reminds his son the caste to which he
belongs, the clean seed:
|
"As long as he fits
Mr. Don Lope, son,
in front of your cousin and your sister
listen what I say to you.
By the grace of God, John,
you are clean in lineage
more than the sun, but villain "...
|
-"En tanto que
se acomoda
el señor don
Lope, hijo,
ante tu prima y
tu hermana
escucha lo que
te digo.
Por la gracia
de Dios, Juan,
eres de linaje
limpio
más que el sol,
pero villano"...
|
The grievance was washed with blood, "because a
well-born man, If he is offended, he does not live", says Clotaldo in La
Vida es Sueño (Life is a
dream); that is why he brings the sword (symbol) to Rosaura (dressed as a man) so
she can
cleanse her honor:
"Take the polished steel
you brought; that I know
that, in blood-stained
of your enemy,
it is sufficient to avenge you;
because a steel that was mine
will know how to revenge you. "
|
"Toma el acero
bruñido
que trajiste;
que yo sé
que él baste,
en sangre teñido
de tu enemigo,
a vengarte;
porque acero
que fue mío
sabrá
vengarte".
|
The confrontation between the
Church and the Synagogue was dating back to medieval times of the Middle Ages.
For centuries, there were predictions that the Antichrist would be a Jew
from the tribe of Dan and this idea had spread so much in the Middle Ages,
that it was even accepted by scholars of a certain prestige. Like the
Antichrist, it was thought that Jews were demons of destruction, whose only
goal was to kill Christians and Christianity...
[55]
The New Tribunal. The reasons of the
Catholic Kings
============================================
...Given the
antiquity of anti-Semitism in Spain, it would be of no concern -in a sense, at least- the replacement of an inquisition by other to address exclusively the
problem of Jewish converts; on the other hand, when between 1391 and 1420
mass conversions occurred, it's then when the new inquisition should have been established and not so
many years later: Therefore, the religious factor -specifically the Jewish
problem- does not seem decisive, concludes Garcia Carcel, for the
establishment of the modern Inquisition.
In these
and other considerations, it appears that the fundamental difference between
the two Inquisitions was the political role, for the Crown service. The modern
Inquisition had a role that the medieval one did not have and otherwise it
was somewhat discredited
by its ineffectiveness. Its use as a political tool by the monarchy,
especially between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, is indisputable
(it even came to persecute money crimes), being the only body of state
administration which allowed the monarch to skip jurisdictional boundaries of
the charters of the Crown of Aragon. If the king was able to name the general
inquisitors, to control the resources of the Holy Office and to decide on
jurisdictional litigation, the Pope, meanwhile, was the final repository of the
legitimacy and he always claimed the spiritual base of that power.
Interestingly, in France, ruled by an absolute monarchy, the Inquisition
never existed, corresponding to the Parliament to initiate proceedings
against heretics. In Portugal it was not until 1533. In Italy there
were no similar courts until the late sixteenth century and in Rome, Paul
III, founder of the Reformation, created in 1542 a tribunal, with the name
of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that has survived until
today. In their turn, the countries where Protestantism took root also had
their own inquisitions.
This new Court had
little in common with the Aragon or European model, as it was, in fact,
an instrument of the Crown, although ecclesiastical, serving sovereigns.
This way it was achieved the whole implant of the royal power in every corner of the kingdoms of Spain,
kingdoms that until then, done their foral rights, escaped the action of the
Crown. Because of this power of territorial jurisdiction, monarchs had no
remorse to resort to them when other coercive means failed.
Anti-Semitic writers of the time claimed that the converts were still Jews in
secret. The Dominican Alonso Hojeda branded them as rebels and said they were
about to preach in the law of Moses and they could not hide being Jewish, which
was not true, relying for that claim in the attachment that they were showing
to the customs and traditions of their ancestors, as if it was possible to
change in a few years the habits acquired and preserved for centuries. At
this point lies, then, one of the causes of the creation of the Inquisition,
as requested from some sectors of society not so much for a clean and religious feeling
but for the desire of the old Christians, with interest in government and
the Church, to avoid having to share power with men of mixed blood, in
addition, they were more successful in public and commercial life.
As an ecclesiastical tribunal, the Inquisition depended directly on the Holy
See, though, in fact, it was the real Crown the true director of the institution.
Perhaps, to understand this apparent paradox, we should remember certain
details of European and Spanish
history
at the time of its creation, when
the Papacy was not at its best moment.
It could not, therefore, a nascent
and strong
state, as it was the Spanish one,
allow its hegemony to be challenged and so it took full control since
the founding of the new Court.
[56]
Ad
perpetuam Rei Memoriam:
Bull
of Sixtus IV (May, 31st, 1484)
This solemn bull
Ad perpetuam Rei Memoriammemoriam, which unpublished, contains
great historical and legal terms related to the Hebrews and to the Spanish Mudejar.
This document bears the number 27 in the first volume of the
original Apostolic Briefs and bulls that belonged to the Supreme Council of the
Inquisition and today is on the National Historical Archive.
Sixtus
episcopus, servus servorum dei, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.
Intenta semper
salutis operibus apostolice sedis circunspecta providentia, indulta sibi desuper
potestatis plenitudine nonnunquam per eam concessa, suadentibus rationabilibus
causis, revocat et immutat, prout negociorum personarum locorum et temporum
qualitate pensata id in domino, presertim pro auimarum salute et fidei catholice
conservanda puritate, conspicit salubriter expedire. Sane, sicut non sine
displicentia accepimus, in Ispaniarum Regnis, et presertim in provincia Vandalie,
Judei et Sarraceni insimul permixti cum christianis habitare et indistinctum a
christianis habitum deferre, servos et servitores christianos ac pro eorum
pueris Nutrices christianas eis cohabitantes habere, et qui ex eis Medici sunt
christianis mederi, ac qui Aromatarie exercitio insistunt ordinatas a Medico
hebreo medelas componere et christianis exhibere, fructus redditus et proventus
etiam ecclesiasticorum beneficiorum arrendara et locationem recipere, mercimonia
quecunque cum christianis facere passim et indifferenter permittuntur, et
preponuntur persepe exactioni publicarum functionum, nec possunt ut asseruut ne
id faciant quomodolibet impediri, obstantibus super hiis concessis etiam a sede apostolica privilegiis quibus etiam asserunt se munitos, non sine domini
nominis offensa, fidei catholice
obprobrio et grandi detrimento ac periculo animarum simplicium christifidelium,
qui ex huiusmodi mutua conversatione nonnunquam in illorum prolabantur errores.
Nos igitur
volentes super hiis et aliis, que eis utriusque iuris censura prohibita sunt, ne
pretextu quorumvis privilegiorum fiant, oportunum adhibere remedium, motu
proprio non ad alicuius nobis super hoc oblate petitionis insiantiam, sed de
nostra mera deliberatione omnia et singula privilegia super hiis per sedem
prefatam vel alias quomodolibet hactenus concessa, que hic etiam si de eis
eorumque toto tenore specialis et speciffca seu quevis alia expressio habenda
esset volumus pro expressis haberi, auctoritate apostolica tenore presentium
revocamus cassamus et annullamus, ac volumus pro infectis et non concessis
haberi, locorum Ordinariis Regnorum predictorum et temporale dominium ipsorum
Regnorum obtinentibus, cuiuscunque status et conditionis existant, districte
precipiendo mandantes ut in premissis omnibus et aliis eosdem Judeos et
Sarracenos concernentibus faciant sanctorum patrum decreta et canonicas
sanctiones, ac quatenus illis non contrariantur sacratissimas leges
inviolabiliter observari, christianos et Judeos ac alios infideles ut a
premissis et aliis que eis de iure comuni permissa non sunt prorsus abstineant,
iuris remediis oportunis compescentes, et non permittentes eosdem in premissis
uti privilegiis quibuscunque, que eis nolumus ut prefertur suffragari. Et quia
difficile foret presentes litteras ad singula loca deferre quibus expediens
fuerit, volumus quod earum Transumpto, sigillo alicuius Prelati ecclesiastici et
publici Notarii subscriptione munito, eadem prorsus fides adhibeatur in indicio
et extra, que ipsis presentibus originalibus litteris adhiberetur, si forent
exhibite vel ostense.
Nulli ergo
omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam nostre voluntatis revocationis cassationis
anuullationis et mandati infringere, vel ei ausu temerario contraire. Siquis
autem hoc attemptare presumpserit indignationem omnipotentis dei ac beatorum
Petri et Pauli Apostolorum eius se noverit incursurum.
Archbishop Carranza
=================
The new archbishop -Kamen writes- clearly had enemies.
They only lacked the
weapon for the attack. And this was provided by Carranza himself with his
Comentarios (Comments) about the Christian catechism, published in 1558, in
Antwerp.
The Comments were considered completely orthodox in doctrine. The Council
of Trent considered and approved the work and many distinguished theologians
of Spain agreed with this decision. But apparently, Carranza was a little
careful theologian. Hostile critics, especially Cano, fell on a few phrases
of his work, which were denounced as heretical.
The Archbishop of Granada labeled the Comments as a work "safe, true, pious and
Catholic"; The bishop of Almeria said the book "did not contain any heresy but a
very good teaching". However, Melchor Cano claimed that the book contained
many propositions outrageous, reckless, swearing; others taste of heresy,
others are wrong and even there are a few that are heretical, in the sense
they do".
Guided by Valdes, the Inquisition accepted the view of Cano. No wonder that
Pope Pius V exclaimed: "The theologians of Spain have committed to make him a
heretic!". If Carranza had not committed heresy, why was he regarded with
suspicion by their enemies? The personal enmity was very influential,
because both Valdes and Cano detested Carranza.
Others mortal enemies were Pedro de Castro, bishop of Cuenca, who had
nurtured hopes of occupying the seat of Toledo and his brother Rodrigo. Both,
sons of the Count de Lemos, were resentful aristocrats, because a man of
humble birth had risen to positions of influence, and they would play a key role
in the arrest and the final imprisonment of the Archbishop.
[69]
The Inquisitor Valdés, aware of the hierarchy of the Primate of Toledo,
never stopped plotting against Carranza and seeks permission from the Pope
to obtain a Brief to authorize prosecution of a Primate. To get it he sent
his nephew to Rome, with the utmost secrecy and he got from the Pope Paul IV
the Brief Cum Sicuti Nuper, January, 7th, 1558, which begins its justification as
follows: As recently, not without bitterness of soul, we learned that in the
kingdoms of Spain, inciting the enemy of mankind, they have begun to swarm the
Lutheran and other heresies born in this century and they appear to
penetrate more extensively, so that it may also plausibly be suspected of some
prelates...
The enemy of mankind that the Pope speaks of is Satan, no doubt. The Pope
believes in the devil's power to harm the Church. Prelates are the bishops,
but Carranza suspects that it is about a single bishop, himself, it
was a tailor-made suit by "Satan", but a human Satan. Here are some phrases
culled from the charter or papal brief: For two years, during a biennium,
the board of the dear children of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition...
can stop or arrest such.., whether bishops, archbishops, Patriarchs,
Primates... For achieving all this it is granted full and free authority to the Supreme
Council of the Inquisition...
The inquisitorial process was legally justified by a delegated authority of the
Pope to the inquisitors. Nobody could imagine that the
Inquisition, that was created to attack the Cathars, Jews, Muslims and
heretics in general, besides being a political weapon in the hands of the
Kings, could be upon the jurisdiction of bishops, archbishops and primates in
this way, and, furthermore, that they should fall directly under its court
to be judged by it.
With this, the Pope and the King strengthened their absolute and
all-embracing power. But, according to history, once invented the guillotine, the Kings did not escape the edge
of the knife. The invention of the Inquisition began to
defend the orthodoxy and
it ended up being very harmful to the rights of bishops, who each time have less jurisdiction and power, despite some competing explanations of the
Popes.
But the facts speak for themselves, rather than the speech and papal
writings. Afterwards another Motu Proprio should be addressed to Philip II.
The prosecutor of the Inquisition drafts the relevant warrant:" for
preaching, writing and having dogmatized many heresies of Luther." Melchor Cano
stated that his work contained numerous propositions: "that taste of
heresy, others that were wrong and some of them that are heretical in the
sense that they do". The King gave his approval for the arrest.
The archbishop was asked to turn up in Valladolid, the 6th, August.
Fearing the meaning of this subpoena, Carranza got on the road, but
traveling as slowly as possible. On August, 16th, he met a Dominican fellow and
friend from Alcala, who warned him that the Inquisition was seeking to
arrest him. Moved by this news, the archbishop continued his journey and
four days after he arrived safely at Torrelaguna, a village north of Madrid,
where he met his friend Fray Pedro de Soto, who had come from Valladolid to
warn him as well. But it was too late.
Carranza was unaware that four days before his arrival, the officers of the
Inquisition had established their residence in Torrelaguna and were waiting for
him. Carranza arrived in town on Sunday August, 20th. Early on the morning of
Tuesday, August, 22th, the Inquisitor Diego Ramirez and Rodrigo Castro, a member of
the Supreme, along with about ten armed familiar, made their way into
the bedroom and demanded Carranza:
- "Open to the Holy Office!".
The intruders were allowed to enter and an officer went to the archbishop
saying:
- "Illustrious Lord, I am commanded: be
arrested Your Reverend by the Holy Office."
Carranza said quietly:
- "Do you have enough
warrant to that?" He then read
the order signed by the Supreme Court.
Carranza protested:
- "Do not those gentlemen know that they
cannot be my judges, for being on my
dignity and dedication directly subject to the Pope and not to any other?".
This was the moment to display the trump card. Ramirez said:
- "To do that Your Reverend will be
given complete satisfaction," and showed him the papal
brief.
That day the archbishop was kept under house arrest and it was imposed the curfew
in the town at dusk. [70]
He was
kept in the dungeons of the Inquisition of Valladolid and, according to Lea," out of sight of humans as fully as if it had been swallowed by the earth".
He remained there for over seven years, deprived of Mass and sacraments;
those were the
rules of the Spanish Inquisition and of the Roman as well, as the heretic fell in
excommunication. They fumbled in his writings which were interpreted according to
the censor who read them. Tellechea says: "If he appeared extolling the faith
they deduced that
he denied his own merits or works. If he spoke of security and confidence,
it was assumed that he denied the fear of God. If he required an alive and
active faith, he was accused of denying the so-called dead faith". They were
looking for any Lutheran trail in his writings.
Generally speaking, Carranza ends his brilliant and laureate career and, as
a human element, he becomes a mere token or a game ball between the authorities in
dispute for the coveted prize, in a theatrical drama riddled
with jealousy and bitterness, and with strife among the Monarchy, the Papacy
and the Inquisition.
Pope Pius IV sent to Madrid a special delegation, including three bishops
who would later be Popes, to negotiate, and one of them wrote to Rome:
Nobody dares to speak up in favor of Carranza for fear of the
Inquisition. No Spanish would dare to acquit the archbishop, however
innocent he was believed, as this would be to oppose the Inquisition. Its
authority should never consent to a declaration that Carranza could be
imprisoned unjustly. The most ardent defenders of justice argue that here it
is better to convict an innocent person than the Inquisition suffer the
least diminution. [71]
This was the cause that drew the highest
number of illustrious
people: kings, Popes, cardinals, bishops, aristocrats... and the longest
cause of
the Spanish Inquisition: the trial lasted for 16 years. It was also the most
notorious of the era, not only for the quality and rank of the accused, but
also by the exaggerated interest which the Inquisitors showed at all times.
Whatever they did was to attack the Primate Archbishop of Toledo, whose arrest and
detention was an injustice, a true scandal, and a further sign of the ideological
fanaticism and the arrogance of the Inquisition.
Carranza had brave and fearless defenders, who risked a lot in his
defense, and some went even up to the Pope. Martin de Azpilicueta, called
doctor Navarro, took his defense, and so he sacrificed his brilliant career.
The hope for Carranza was born with the ascent to the papal throne of Pope
Pius V, to whom, secretly and in code, he sent this message:
Lord, if are you, bid me come to you on the water.
That's what the Pope did, ordered the Spanish authorities to send him with
all the documentation to Rome, under pain of excommunication. As an old man,
arrived Carranza to Rome and was confined in the Castel of Sant 'Angelo, where
he spent nine years in prison. Pius V died in 1572 without having made a
decision on the case. Gregory XIII, his successor, finally issued the ruling
in April 1576, made to not offend Spain.
The sentence, says Kamen, satisfied King Philip and the Inquisition, for
which an acquittal would have been a serious setback; it also satisfied Rome
that was vindicating its exclusive authority over the bishops, And Carranza,
despite the condemnation of the Comments, had not been charged with any
heresy. The justice had been replaced by a political commitment.
The
Comments were forbidden and condemned, and
Carranza had to recant a list of errors and was ordered to retire to a
monastery in Orvieto. The Papacy would manage the rich See of Toledo.
Bartolomé de Carranza y Miranda, eighteen days after the verdict was read
to him, contracted a disease from which he died on May, 2nd, 1576.
NOTES REFERENCES
1- Fiodor M.
Dostoievski,
Los hermanos Karamázov, Cátedra, Madrid, 2001, pp. 399-424.
2- Luigi Sanzoni,
La Inquisición, Grupo
editorial G.R.M., Barcelona, 2007, p.11.
3- Jean Pierre Leduc,
Los Cátaros, Grupo editorial G.R.M., Barcelona, 2007, pp. 28-29.
4- Pepe Rodríguez,
Mentiras fundamentales de la Iglesia Católica, Ediciones B,
Barcelona, 2004, p.31.
5- Pepe Rodríguez,
Mentiras fundamentales de la Iglesia Católica, Ediciones B,
Barcelona, 2004, p. 109.
6- Pepe Rodríguez,
Mentiras fundamentales de la Iglesia Católica, Ediciones B,
Barcelona, 2004, p.198.
7- Agustín Celis
Sánchez,
Herejes y Malditos en la Historia, Alba Editores, Madrid, 2006, pp.
202-203.
8- La Biblia
latinoamericana,
Ediciones Paulinas-Verbo Divino, Madrid, edición LXXII, 1972, p.298.
9- Catecismo de
la Iglesia Católica,
Asociación de Editores del Catecismo, 1993, p. 63-64; 113-114.
10- Agustín Celis
Sánchez,
Herejes y Malditos en la Historia, Alba Editores, Madrid,
2006, p. 20.
11- Pepe
Rodríguez, Mentiras fundamentales de la Iglesia Católica, Ediciones
B, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 340-342.
12- Pepe
Rodríguez, Mentiras fundamentales de la Iglesia Católica, Ediciones
B, Barcelona, 2004, pp. 342-343.
13- George H.
Sabine, Historia de la teoría política, Fondo de Cultura Económica,
México, 1945, p.179.
14- Jean Pierre
Leduc, Los Cátaros, Grupo editorial G.R.M., Barcelona, 2007, p. 34.
15- Agustin Celis
Sánchez, Herejes y malditos en la historia, Alba editiores, Madrid,
2006, p. 17.
16- Jean Pierre
Leduc, Los Cátaros, Grupo editorial G.R.M., Barcelona, 2007, p. 57.
17- Jean Pierre
Leduc, Los Cátaros, Grupo editorial G.R.M., Barcelona, 2007, p. 69.
18- Jacques Le
Goff, La civilización del occidente medieval, Ediciones Paidós
Ibérica, Barcelona, 1999, p. 142.
19- Nelson Varas Díaz y
Francheska Cintrón Bou, editores, Estigma y salud en Puerto Rico:
consecuencias detrimentales de lo alterno,
Publicaciones Puertorriqueñas, San Juan, 2008, pp.283-289.
20- Consuelo Valero
de Castro, Magia, hechicería y supersticiones de la historia. Lo oculto y
desconocido a través de los ritos, Editorial Libsa, Madrid, 2003. pp.
101-104.
21- Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, p. 190.
22- Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, p. 195.
23- Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición,
Ediciones Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, p. 193.
24- Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, p. 200.
25- Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 203-208.
26- Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 208-209.
27- Pedro
Santonja, Herejía de los alumbrados y la espiritualidad en la España del
siglo XVI, Biblioteca Valenciana, Valencia, 2001, pp. 166-167.
28- Pedro
Santonja, Herejía de los alumbrados y la espiritualidad en la España del
siglo XVI, Biblioteca Valenciana, Valencia, 2001, p.169.
29- Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 34-35.
30- Gerard Dufour,
La Inquisición española. Aproximación a la España intolerante,
Montesinos editor, Barcelona, 1986, p. 27.
31- Gerard Dufour,
La Inquisición española. Aproximación a la España intolerante,
Montesinos editor, Barcelona, 1986, p. 30.
32- Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial
Edaf, Madrid, 1996, pp. 143-150.
33- Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial
Edaf, Madrid, 1996, pp. 203-204.
34- Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial
Edaf, Madrid, 1996, pp. 200-201.
35-Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial
Edaf, Madrid, 1996, p. 201.
36-Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial
Edaf, Madrid, 1996, pp. 201-206.
37-Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial
Edaf, Madrid, 1996, p. 206
38-Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial
Edaf, Madrid, 1996, pp. 207-209.
39-José Antonio
Escudero, editor. Intolerancia e Inquisición, Eduardo Galván
Rodríguez, "Orígenes del secreto en la Inquisición española", Sociedad
Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo II, p. 57.
40-Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial Edaf,
Madrid, 1996, p. 239.
41-Joseph M.
Walker, Historia de la Inquisición española, Edimat libros, Madrid,
2004, pp. 421-422.
42-Joseph M.
Walker, Historia de la Inquisición española, Edimat libros, Madrid,
2004, p. 422.
43-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 236.
44-Joseph M.
Walker, Historia de la Inquisición española, Edimat libros, Madrid,
2004, p. 419.
45-Joseph M.
Walker, Historia de la Inquisición española, Edimat libros, Madrid,
2004, p. 419.
45b-
Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española. Una revisión histórica, Crítica,
Barcelona, 2004, pp.202-204
46-Gerard Dufour,
La Inquisición española. Aproximación a la España intolerante,
Montesinos editor, Barcelona, 1986, pp. 38-39.
47-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 260-262.
48-Agustín Celis
Sánchez, Herejes y Malditos en la Historia, Alba Editores,
Madrid, 2006, pp. 218-230, Heinrich Kramer/Jacobus Sprenger, Malleus
Maleficarum (El martillo de los Brujos), Círculo Latino,
Barcelona, 2005.
49-Jorge Francisco
Ferro, Los templarios y el grial: leyenda y realidad, Grupo editorial
Lumen, Buenos Aires, 2005, pp. 22, 24-25.
50-Caballeros templarios,
wikipedia, http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templarios, Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc., modif. Marzo 2008
51-Caballeros
templarios,
wikipedia, http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templarios, Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc., modif. Marzo 2008
52-Georges Lizarand,
Le dossier de l’ affaire des Templiers, Les Belles Lettres, Archives
Nationales de France J 413 N.˚ 22, París, 1964.
53-Joseph M.
Walker, Historia de la Inquisición española, Edimat libros, Madrid,
2004, p. 31.
54-Pedro Santonja,
Herejía de los alumbrados y la espiritualidad en la España del siglo XVI,
Biblioteca Valenciana, Valencia, 2001, p. 173.
55-Pedro Santonja,
Herejía de los alumbrados y la espiritualidad en la España del siglo XVI,
Biblioteca Valenciana, Valencia, 2001, pp. 175-178.
56-Joseph M.
Walker, Historia de la Inquisición española, Edimat libros, Madrid,
2004, p. 52-53.
57-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 53.
58-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, pp. 53-54.
59-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 55.
60-Gerard Dufour,
La Inquisición española. Aproximación a la España intolerante, Montesinos editor, Barcelona, 1986, p. 58.
61-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 58.
62-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 58.
63-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 26.
64-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 26.
65-Fernando Díaz
–Plaja, La vida cotidiana en la España de la Inquisición, Editorial
Edaf, Madrid, 1996, pp. 28-30.
66-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 209.
67-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 216.
68-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 220.
69-Henry Kamen, La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, pp. 158-159.
70-Henry Kamen,
La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
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72-José Antonio
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Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, p. 84.
73-José Antonio
Escudero, editor. Intolerancia e Inquisición, ángel Alcalá, "La
sinrazón de la intolerancia en Tomás de Aquino y Juan Calvino: su rechazo
por Miguel Servet, origen de la libertad de conciencia", Sociedad Estatal de
Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, p. 98.
74-José Antonio
Escudero, editor. Intolerancia e Inquisición, ángel Alcalá, "La
sinrazón de la intolerancia en Tomás de Aquino y Juan Calvino: su rechazo
por Miguel Servet, origen de la libertad de conciencia", Sociedad Estatal de
Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, p. 99.
75-ángel Alcalá,
Literatura y ciencia ante la Inquisición española, Ediciones del
Laberinto, Madrid, 2001, p. 25.
76-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 184-185.
77-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, p. 187.
78-José Antonio
Escudero, editor, Intolerancia e Inquisición, José A. Ferrer
Benimeli, "Calvino y Servet: otra forma de inquisición", Sociedad Estatal de
Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, pp. 78-79.
79-Agustín Celis
Sánchez, Herejes y Malditos en la Historia, Alba Editores,
Madrid, 2006, p. 89.
80-Agustín Celis
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Madrid, 2006, p. 91.
81-Agustín Celis
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82-José Antonio
Escudero, editor, "Calvino y Servet: otra forma de inquisición", José
A. Ferrer Benimeli Intolerancia e Inquisición, Sociedad
Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, pp. 66-68.
83-José Antonio
Escudero, editor, "Calvino y Servet: otra forma de inquisición", José
A. Ferrer Benimeli, Intolerancia e Inquisición, Sociedad Estatal de
Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, p. 103-107.
84-José Antonio
Escudero, editor. Intolerancia e Inquisición, Eduardo Vinatea, "El
conflicto entre filosofía y teología en el proceso de Giordano Bruno",
Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, pp.
140-141.
85-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 128-129.
86-José Antonio
Escudero, editor. Intolerancia e Inquisición, Eduardo Vinatea, "El
conflicto entre filosofía y teología en el proceso de Giordano Bruno",
Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, pp.
147-149.
87-José Antonio
Escudero, editor. Intolerancia e Inquisición, Eduardo Vinatea, "El
conflicto entre filosofía y teología en el proceso de Giordano Bruno",
Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, Madrid, 2005, tomo I, p.
150.
88-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, p. 140.
89-Jacques Le
Goff, La civilización del occidente medieval, Ediciones Paidós
Ibérica, Barcelona, 1999, p. 131.
90-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 144-145.
91-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 146-147.
92-José Antonio
Yoldi, El caso Galileo: Elementos para una lectura postcartesiana.
Conflicto entre investigación y ciencia, Instituto de Teología
Fundamental, pp. 32-34.
93-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición,
Ediciones Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 147-152.
94-José Antonio
Yoldi, El caso Galileo: Elementos para una lectura postcartesiana.
Conflicto entre investigación y ciencia, Instituto de Teología
Fundamental, p. 19.
95-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 152-153.
96-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 154-156.
97-Benazzi y
Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición,
Ediciones Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, pp. 159-160.
98-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, p. 162.
99-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones
Robinbook, Barcelona, 2000, p. 168.
100-Natale Benazzi
y Matteo
D’Amico, El libro negro de la Inquisición, Ediciones Robinbook,
Barcelona, 2000, pp. 141-142; 169-170.
101-Zuraya Monroy
Nasr, La muerte de Bruno, la condena de Galileo y la prudencia de
Descartes, pp. 73-84.
102-Pedro
Santonja, Herejía de los alumbrados y la espiritualidad en la España del
siglo XVI, Biblioteca Valenciana, Valencia, 2001, pp. 279-280.
103-Henry Kamen,
La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, pp. 112-113.
104-Henry Kamen,
La Inquisición española: una revisión histórica, Crítica, Barcelona,
1999, p. 114.
105-ángel Alcalá,
Literatura y ciencia ante la Inquisición española, Ediciones del
Laberinto, Madrid, 2001, p. 58.
106-ángel Alcalá,
Literatura y ciencia ante la Inquisición española, Ediciones
del Laberinto, Madrid, 2001, pp. 158-160.
107-José Antonio
Yoldi, El caso Galileo: Elementos para una lectura postcartesiana.
Conflicto entre investigación y ciencia, Instituto de Teología
Fundamental, Apéndice II, pp. 35-38.
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