A RELATIVISTIC APPROACH? UP TO A POINT...
Adriano Prosperi
How did the Symposium go, and what were its “findings”?
The meeting proceeded just like an ordinary academic conference, on the basis of specific competencies and freedom of debate. The Inquisition as an institution was examined in the various phases of its medieval origins and its activities in various contexts, ranging from the Netherlands to Goa (India), from anti-protestant action to witch-trials and censorship of books. Its history, its rules, its mechanisms… As for the Inquisition’s victims, their overall number was debated and some figures drawn from the surviving trial documents were proposed. For instance, a scholar such as Gustav Henningsen (Copenhagen), who can certainly not be suspected of any confessional bias, showed that in terms of percentages of women placed on trial, more witches were put to death in Sweden and Poland than in France or Italy. Others maintained that it is hard to establish any reliable figures since the majority of the trial records have been destroyed, and in many cases, due to the lengthiness of the procedures, the persons accused died in prison.
What overall judgement has emerged from the Symposium?
The conference has shown that the Inquisition’s historical image as a killing machine is unfounded. The “black legend” of the Inquisition as a cruel and arbitrary “caricature of justice”, as it was defined in the 19th century, has been replaced for some time now by much less clear-cut judgements. The polemical spirit of protestant and liberal origin has ceased to prevail, the knowledge we now possess has brought to light the Inquisition’s specific attention to the rules of court procedure, its concern with the painstaking verification of accusations, the care it took to record in writing and evaluate all witnesses’ statements.
Harsh and cruel proceedings are in fact more readily found in the papers regarding the medieval origins of the Inquisition or reporting what went on in the anti-heretic (but non-Inquisitorial) persecutions conducted in England by the Catholic queen Mary Tudor in the 16th century.
What of the papacy’s responsibilities for “witch-hunting”?
Carlo Ginzburg (UCLA, Los Angeles) has pointed out that when the papacy sanctioned the reality of the sabbat (at which “witches” were said to dance with the devil) and condemned witchcraft as apostasy, expressing this condemnation in 1484 in the clearly-defined and authoritative form of Pope Innocent VIII’s bull Summis desiderantes, it actually laid the theoretical and legal foundations for the subsequent epidemic of persecution.
I too am convinced that the attempt to understand is in danger of leading to the full justification of what the Inquisition did. Indeed, once one rejects the romantic cliché of a bloodthirsty Inquisition governed by blind intolerance it is easy to lean over to the other extreme, and depict this institution as a place of justice where the rules were scrupulously observed. That they were observed is true enough, but they were the rules created by the Inquisition itself.
Have you examined the consequences, on people’s everyday lives, of the climate of suspicion and fear produced by the Inquisition?
This point was not dealt with; however, I think it is a very important issue. This is the crux of the relationship between confession (sacramental, auricular, to a priest) and the Inquisition, which means the creation of a context of generalized suspicion and ordinary repression extending even to people’s most secret thoughts. From 1559 onwards, on a systematic basis, it became obligatory for confessors in the Catholic world to ask first of all, whenever any penitents came to confess their sins (and everyone had to do so at least once a year), not only if they themselves had committed anything of inquisitorial relevance in deed or in thought, but also if they knew anything of interest to the Inquisition about other persons, including family members. If the reply was affirmative, the confession was suspended and the penitent was sent to the Inquisition tribunal for questioning. From then on, the majority of the cases investigated by the Inquisition originated in this manner, out of a compulsory accusation (which, however, was hypocritically termed a “spontanous appearance”). This consequently gave rise to systematic and generalized internal control over people’s consciences.
The effects of this climate of suspicion on books, and on the Bible in particular, were truly devastating: to read a Bible in the vernacular was a crime; reading books indicated an independent personality, one might as well say a potential heretic. More than just the Index of prohibited books, in those days a generalized suspicion fell upon whoever possessed and read books. The positive model for the faithful was that of someone who passively agreed to believe “whatever the Holy Mother Church believes”, without any further questions.
The censorship of books in Italy and in the Iberian peninsula caused a profound regression, not only and not so much in cultural life in general as in religious culture, knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and intense personal questioning in the matter of faith. Preference was given to external obsequiousness and simulation.
In fact, as was recalled at the Symposium by Gigliola Fragnito (University of Parma), Italy, which had previously led all other countries in translating and printing editions of the Bible (in the 16th century), became the most backward country of all, a place where the Bible ranked as the least-known of books. All this has heavily conditioned Italy’s human and cultural development over the past centuries. Today, of course, this problem may seem far away, because there is no longer any internalized control mechanism even remotely comparable to the one set up by the Inquisition.
At the Symposium, some churchmen maintained that today, now that ecclesiastical control no longer exists, in our society there are nonetheless other forms of control that are certainly no more desirable; and added that such pressure on inner convictions belonged to an age when this was considered “normal”. But I ask myself: was it really “normal”? Let us say, rather, that this is what happened in history.
Why seek to minimize the Inquisition?
For many years now, the historigraphic atmosphere surrounding the Inquisition is that of comprehension and objectivization. In other words, it is as though the applicable principle were “understanding everything means forgiving everything”. Perhaps this attitude may also be influenced by the memory of this century’s tragic events, as what had, from the liberal and protestant viewpoint, been deemed the tragedies of past ages, appear today – one might say – almost minor, as compared to those of the 20th century. But it seems to me that these more recent tragedies in no way justify the institution of the Inquisition.
A theologian stated at the Symposium that when Thomas Aquinas found it natural for Catholics who had become “heretics” to be burned, he represented the culture, the collective mentality, of his times. But someone replied: “St. Thomas represented only himself. In fact in his times (the 13th century) others thought quite differently”. If you take a thinker for an exemplar of the collective mentality, the rest of the trick is easy.
The fact that the Inquisition prevailed does not mean that the culture of its times envisaged no other solutions, as opposed to sending heretics to the stake. But the Symposium did not devote attention to this issue. This seems to me to be a weak point in the Vatican’s programme: I think it should have foreseen a report investigating the victims’ world, and what the victims thought about the Inquisition that killed them,
What timespan did the Symposium investigate?
From the Inquisition’s origin (13th century) up to its abolition between the late 18th and the early 19th century (in Spain). There was no specific paper on the Inquisition’s lengthy span in Italy. This was a gap. And there was nothing on the 20th century, nothing on the repression of Modernism under Pius X. It was said, indeed, that in concrete terms the style of the Roman Inquisition continued, despite a change of name, right up to our present century, but no-one examined what it actually did in these far more recent years.
And when we take into account the fact that the turning-point was Vatican II, an ecumenical Council convened by a pope (John XXIII) who, when just a priest, had also been reported upon by the Holy Office, I should say that it would be very worthwhile to know more about what went on in this century. Incidentally, unlike the Holy Office archives, as a rule other public archives normally allow access to all documents that are at least fifty years old.
Was there any discussion of the relationship between the Inquisition and the seeking of truth?
A historian asks himself this question: how can one justify an institution that has a notion of truth on the basis of which it passes judgement and condemns to death? How is this notion formed? Someone at the Symposium did some brilliant hairsplitting about the difference between heresy in the strict sense, and inquisitorial heresy. Which seems to mean that there is a doctrinal type of heresy, one which goes against the basic principles of faith, and an inquisitorial one, which comes into being at the time when the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office establishes certain rules.
This distinction was in fact coined at the beginning of the 20th century in relation to the Galileo trial, a case in which the scientific refutation of Rome’s condemnation was the “scandal” of the entire modern era. In this context the Copernican heresy (the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice-versa), for which Galileo was condemned, was said to be an inquisitorial heresy: meaning that this is a case in which the Inquisition asks, for prudence’s sake, that certain topics be left aside; whoever deals with them is disobeying. Which implies less gravity for the person who commits the error, but above all less gravity for those who define it, and who punish it. This way, the ecclesiastical authority that defined such a doctrine is let off completely, without having to pay any penalty.
Can one foresee what the “mea culpa” announced by the Pope will be like?
As father Cottier said, memories that do not rise up to the surface, that do not reach consciousness, weigh heavily. So it is necessary for this memory of the Inquisition’s actions to surface in the memory of the Church. But what is meant by a request for forgiveness, as foreshadowed by pope Wojtyla? None of the historians gave us any indications. A colleague, when interviewed by an English TV channel, was asked: ‘In your opinion, what should the pope do?’, and he replied: ‘He should say: “I feel shame for the Inquisition”‘. But it is, perhaps, unlikely that John Paul II will say this.
(Interviewed by David Gabrielli)
Translated by Lisa Stace
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