The Holy Inquisition
The first victims of the church tribunals were the Cathars (also known as the Albigensians from the city of Albi), the inhabitants of Aquitaine, Languedoc and Provence, who had fallen into heresy. The name “Cathars” comes from the Greek word “pure,” but the “apostates” themselves usually called themselves “good people,” and their organization, the “Church of love.” In the XII century in the south of France, the Waldenses sect (named after the Lyon merchant Pierre Waldo) also appeared and gained great popularity, which was recognized heretical at the Verona Cathedral of 1184. Common to all such heretical sects was the condemnation of the acquiescence of the hierarchs of the official church, the denial of magnificent ceremonies and rites. It is believed that the Teaching of the Cathars came to Western Europe from the East, and is closely connected with the Manichaean sects and the Gnostic teachings. The immediate predecessors and "teachers" of the Cathars were probably the Byzantine Pavlikians and Bulgarian Bogomils. But, in general, there was no strict “canon” of the teachings of “good people”, and some researchers have different sects and trends before 40. Common was the recognition of the creator god of this World as an evil demon who captured particles of divine light, which are human souls. The soul consisting of light is striving towards God, but its body reaches for the Devil. Christ, however, is neither God nor man, he is the Angel who appeared to point out the only way to salvation through complete detachment from the material world. The preachers of the Cathars were called "weavers," since It is this profession that they most often chose for naturalization at a new place. They could be recognized by their emaciated appearance and pale faces. They were "perfect" - teachers, devotees of the faith, whose main commandment was the prohibition to spill someone's blood. The hierarchs of the Catholic Church sounded the alarm: entire regions of Europe were getting out of control of Rome because of a sect that preached some not entirely Christian humility and abstinence. The cover of secrecy that surrounded the heretics seemed the most terrible: “Swear and bear false witness, but do not reveal the secret,” the Cathars' honor code read. Dominic Guzman, a trusted employee of Pope Innocent III, went to Languedoc to strengthen the authority of the Catholic Church by his personal example, but "alone in the field is not a warrior: Dominic lost the competition in asceticism and eloquence" perfect ". Embittered by failure, he reported to his patron that heinous heresy Cathars can only be broken by military force and the invasion of the Crusaders into Languedoc was decided. This unworthy act did not prevent Dominic’s canonization, but centuries passed and in the poem “The Virgin of Orleans” Voltaire was merciless, described Vai hellish torments of the founder of the Dominican Order:
I deservedly brought upon myself.
I built persecution on the Albigensians,
And the world was not sent to destroy,
And here I am burning for the fact that he himself burned them.
The crusades to Languedoc are better known as the Albigoye Wars. They started in 1209. The issue of reconciliation with the official Catholic Church at first could still be resolved by monetary payments: “voluntarily repentant” paid the fine to the pope, people forced to “repent” at the episcopal court were sentenced to confiscation of property, the rest were awaited by the fire. Repentant never had too much. Dominique Guzmán became an adviser to the military leader of the Crusaders Simon de Montfort from the start of hostilities.
Our time has come up with an eerie description of the storming of the Albigoyan city of Beziers, which was left by Caesarium of Heisterbach
Despite the fact that the forces of the opposing sides were not equal, it was not until March 1244 that the last Cathar stronghold fell - Montsegur.
274 "committed" (they had no right to fight with weapons in their hands) then they went to the stake, the other defenders of the fortress (who happened to be about 100 people) the enemies offered to save their lives, recognizing the Holy Trinity, the sacraments and the pope. Some of them agreed, but some monk ordered to bring the dog and alternately offered the knife to the Barbians: in order to prove the truth of the abdication, they had to strike an animal with them. None of them shed the blood of an innocent creature and everyone was hanged. After this, the “cleansing” of rebellious areas from heretics began. In revealing secret Cathars, the crusaders assiduously helped both faithful Catholics and simply dishonest people, who with the help of denunciations sought to get rid of their enemies or creditors. It is curious that then all the thin and poorly dressed people, whom the crusaders often mistaken for wandering preachers of the Cathars, were under suspicion. In Spain, for example, five Franciscan monks were executed as a result of such an error. This situation required the creation of special commissions that would decide the question of the involvement of a particular person in heresy. Dominic often acted as an “expert” and, in recognition of his achievements, Simon de Montfort in 1214 gave him the “income” derived from the looting of one of the Albigoyan cities. In the same year, the rich Catholics of Toulouse donated three buildings to him. These gifts became the basis for the creation of a new religious order of Dominican monks (1216). The main kind of his activity was the fight against heresy in any of its manifestations, which was expressed, above all, in the collection of compromising materials to the citizens. Therefore, in 1235, the Dominicans were expelled from Toulouse (alas, two years later they returned to it) and were forced to take refuge in other cities in France and Spain. However, there too, the situation of general hostility forced them to settle far beyond the city limits. Dominic Guzman was canonized in 1234 (thirteen years after his death). According to inquisitor Guillaume Pelisson, the Toulouse Dominicans staged a gala dinner on this occasion, during which it was reported that one of the women dying nearby had received a “counselor” - the Qatari equivalent of a communion rite before death. The worthy successors of St. Dominic immediately interrupted the meal and burned the unfortunate on the Count's meadow.
At first, Dominicans sought out heretics on their own initiative, but already in 1233, Pope Gregory IX published a bull, which officially laid responsibility on them for eradicating heresies. Moreover, the Dominicans were given the power to detach the suspected clergymen of the dignity. Somewhat later, the establishment of a permanent tribunal was announced, of which only Dominicans could be members. This decision was the beginning of the official history of the papal Inquisition. The sentences handed down by the inquisitors were not subject to appeal, and their actions were so unceremonious that they caused legitimate indignation even from local bishops. Their opposition to the actions of the inquisitors was so open at that time that the 1248 Cathedral in a special message threatened disobedient bishops from being allowed into their own churches if they did not agree with the sentences of the Dominicans. It was only in 1273 that Pope Gregory X found a compromise: the inquisitors were ordered to act in cooperation with the local church authorities and there was no longer any friction between them. The interrogations of the suspects were accompanied by the most sophisticated torture, during which the executioners were allowed everything except for the spilling of blood. However, sometimes blood was still spilled, and Pope Alexander IV in 1260 gave the inquisitors permission to absolve one another for any "unforeseen accidents."
As for the legal basis of the Inquisition, they were the laws of the Roman Empire: Roman law contained around 60 provisions against heresy. Surrender to the fire, for example, in Rome was the standard punishment for patricide, desecrating the temple, arson, witchcraft and treason. Therefore, the largest number of victims burned was in the countries formerly belonging to the Roman Empire: in Italy, Spain, Portugal, the southern regions of Germany and France. But in England and Scandinavia, the actions of the inquisitors did not receive such scope, since the laws of these countries were not taken from Roman law. In England, moreover, torture was prohibited (this does not mean that they were not used). However, the processes against witches and heretics in this country were somewhat hampered.
How did the inquisitors work in practice? Sometimes the inquisitors came to the city or monastery secretly (as described in the novel “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco). But more often the population was informed about their visit in advance. After this, the secret heretics were given "grace time" (from 15 to 30 days) for which they could repent and return to the bosom of the church. As punishment to those, they promised the penance, which usually represented a public spanking on Sundays throughout life (!). Another form of penance was pilgrimage. The person who makes the “Small Pilgrimage” was obliged to visit the 19 local holy places, in each of which he was whipped with rods. The “Great Pilgrimage” envisioned a trip to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostelo or Canterbury. It lasted several years. During this time, the heretic’s affairs fell into decay and the family went bankrupt. Another way to earn forgiveness was to participate in the crusades (sinners had to fight from two to eight years). The number of heretics in the crusading armies gradually increased, and the Pope began to fear that the Holy Land would be "infected" with their teachings. Therefore, this practice was soon banned. Another very interesting and attractive (for the inquisitors themselves) form of penance became fines. Later, a bright thought came to the heads of the hierarchs of the Catholic Church that payment for sins could be taken in advance - and numerous “sky dealers” drove along the roads of Europe (as humanists writers of the Reformation era called sellers of notorious indulgences).
Having finished with the "volunteers", the inquisitors began to search for secret heretics. There was no shortage of denunciations: the temptation to settle scores with old enemies was too great. If a person was denounced by two witnesses, he was summoned to the Inquisition Tribunal and, as a rule, was taken into custody. Torture helped win confessions in almost all cases. Neither social status nor national fame saved from the sentence. In France, for example, on charges of dealing with demons, the people's heroine Jeanne d'Arc and her comrade-in-arms, Marshal of France Baron Gilles de Rey (who went into legends under the nickname "Duke Bluebeard") were executed. But there were also exceptions to the rule. So the famous astronomer Kepler, after many years of litigation, was able to prove the innocence of his mother, accused of witchcraft. Agrippa of Nestheim, who became the prototype of Doctor Faust, saved a woman sentenced to be burned at the stake for witchcraft, accusing the inquisitor of heresy: by insisting on the re-baptism of the accused, he declared that the inquisitor, by his accusation, denied the great sacrament to which the defendant was subjected, and he was even sentenced to fine.
Heinrich Agrippa Nestgames
And Michel Nostradamus, who received a call to the Inquisition, managed to escape from France. He traveled to Lorraine, Italy, Flanders, and when the inquisitors left the city of Bordeaux, he returned to Provence and even received a pension from the parliament of this province.
In Spain, the Inquisition initially acted no more actively than in other Western European countries. Moreover, inquisitors appeared in Castile, Leon, and Portugal only in 1376 — a century and a half later than in France. The situation changed in 1478, when the queen of Castile, Isabella and her husband, the future king of Aragon (from 1479), Ferdinand, established their own inquisition. In February, 1482 was appointed the prior of the monastery in Segovia, Thomas de Torquemada, as the Grand Inquisitor of Spain. It was he who became the prototype of the protagonist of the famous Parable of the Grand Inquisitor by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Brothers Karamazov. In 1483, he was appointed head of the supreme council of the Inquisition (Suprema) - the general inquisitor, and it was he who had the dubious honor of becoming the personification of the Inquisition in its most dismal manifestations.
Personality Torquemada very controversial: on the one hand, he was a strict vegetarian, refused the rank of cardinal, all his life he wore a coarse robe of a Dominican monk. On the other hand, he dwelt in magnificent palaces, and the people appeared accompanied by a retinue of 50 horsemen and 250 soldiers. A feature of the Spanish inquisition was its pronounced anti-Semitic orientation. So, of all those convicted by the Inquisition in Barcelona for the period from 1488 to 1505. The 99,3% were “converse” (forcibly baptized Jews convicted of performing Judaism rites), in Valencia between 1484-1530. those turned out to be 91,6%. The persecution of the Jews had unfortunate consequences for the country's economy, King Ferdinand understood this, but was adamant: “We go for it, despite the obvious harm to ourselves, preferring the salvation of our souls to our own advantage,” he wrote to his courtiers. Baptized descendants of the Moors were also persecuted. Carlos Fuentes wrote that at the end of the 15th century "Spain expelled sensuality with the Moors and intellect with the Jews." Science, culture, industrial production declined, and Spain for many centuries has become one of the most backward countries in Western Europe. The success of the Spanish royal inquisition in the fight against dissidents turned out to be so great that in 1542 the papal inquisition was reconstructed according to its model, which now became known as the “Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Ecumenical Inquisition” or simply “Sacred Office”. The decisive blow to the Spanish Inquisition was dealt in 1808, when Napoleon’s marshal Joachim Murat’s army occupied this country. Times have changed, but the inquisitors, who have found it possible to arrest Secretary Murat, a well-known philologist and militant atheist, have not changed. Murat did not understand the humor of the situation and, instead of having a good laugh at the successful joke of the “holy fathers”, sent his dashing cavalrymen to them.
In a short theological dispute, the dragoons proved themselves worthy heirs of the great French philosophers: they easily proved to their opponents both the profound fallacy of the position they occupied, and the absolute uselessness of the existence of their archaic organization. 4 December 1808 Napoleon signed a decree banning the inquisition and confiscating its property. In 1814, Ferdinand VII, restored on the Spanish throne, Bourbon issued a decree restoring the Inquisition, but it was like trying to reanimate a decayed corpse.
In 1820, the inhabitants of Barcelona and Valencia crushed the premises of the Inquisition. In other cities, the "holy fathers" also felt very uncomfortable. 15 July 1834 The royal ban of the Inquisition put an end to this agony.
While the “own” inquisition of the monarchs of Spain hunted secret Jews and Moriscos, the papal inquisition found a new enemy in Central and Northern Europe. The witches turned out to be the enemy of the church and of God, and in some villages and cities of Germany and Austria soon there were almost no women left.
Until the end of the 15th century, the Catholic Church considered witchcraft a deception that the devil sows. But in 1484, the pope recognized the reality of witchcraft, and the University of Cologne in 1491 issued a warning that any challenge to the existence of witchcraft would entail persecution of the Inquisition. Thus, if belief in witchcraft was previously considered heresy, now disbelief in it was declared as such. In 1486, Mr. Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger published the book The Witch Hammer, which some researchers call the “most shameful and indecent in all of Western civilization history”, others “the manual of sexual psychopathology”.
In this work, the authors stated that the forces of darkness are helpless in themselves and are capable of doing evil only with the help of an intermediary, which is the witch. The 500 pages detail the manifestations of witchcraft, various ways to establish contact with the devil, copulate with demons, describe formulas and recipes for exorcism, and rules that must be followed when dealing with witches. The chronicles of those years are simply full of descriptions of executions of unhappy women.
So, in 1585, in two German villages after the visit of the inquisitors, only one woman survived. And in Trier for the period from 1587 to 1593. one witch per week was burned. The last victims of the Hammer of the Witches were burned in Segedin (Hungary) on 1739.
In the 16th century, Protestants destroyed the centuries-old monopoly of the Catholic clergy on the knowledge and interpretation of the sacred texts of the Gospel and the Old Testament. In a number of countries translations of the Bible into local languages were carried out, the rapid development of typography sharply lowered the cost of books and made them accessible to the general population.
"Before printing, the reformation was only a split, - wrote V. Hugo, - typography turned it into a revolution. "
In an effort to prevent the spread of the ideas of the Reformation, the Inquisition Tribunals introduced a new form of censorship. In 1554, the infamous “Index of Forbidden Books” appeared, including works by Erasmus Rotterdam, Martin Luther, tales of King Arthur, the Talmud, 30 Bible translations and 11 translations of the New Testament, magic, alchemy and astrology. The latest full edition of Index appeared in the Vatican in 1948. Among the banned authors were Balzac, Voltaire, Hugo, father and son of Dumas, Zola, Stendhal, Flaubert and many others. It was only in 1966 that common sense nevertheless triumphed and the Index of Forbidden Books was abolished.
The XVIII century brought the Inquisition new concerns: July 25 The 1737 was held in Florence in the secret conference of the Holy Chancellery, which was attended by the Pope, three cardinals and a general inquisitor. The topic of discussion was the masons: the highest hierarchs of Rome were convinced that freemasonry was only a cover for a new and extremely dangerous heresy. 9 months later, Pope Clement XII issued the first of a long series of bulls devoted to the condemnation of Freemasonry. However, on this front, Catholic Rome was also expected to fail and fail, all the more offensive because the clergy themselves did not listen to the voice of the leadership. Threats and promises of the car did not work: in Mainz, the Masonic lodge almost entirely consisted of clergymen, in Erfurt the box was organized by the future bishop of this city, and in Vienna two royal chaplains, the rector of a theological institution and two priests, became active masons. Individual masons were arrested by the Inquisition (for example, Casanova and Cagliostro), but this did not affect the general trend of the spread of the "Masonic contagion".
An Inquisition called the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith still exists today. Moreover, this department is the most important in the hierarchy of the Vatican and is listed first in all documents. The official head of the Congregation is the pope himself, and the highest official (the current great inquisitor) is the prefect of this department. The head of the judicial department of the Congregation, and at least two of his assistants, are traditionally Dominicans. Modern inquisitors, of course, cannot endure death sentences, but Orthodox Christians who are not orthodox are still excommunicated from the church. Hering's father, a German moralist theologian, for example, considered his case to be dealt with by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith more humiliating than the four cases in which he appeared before the court during the time of the Third Reich. It may seem incredible, but in order to be not a faithful Catholic, nowadays, quite openly speak out for birth control (abortion, modern contraception), divorce, criticize the activities of the local bishop or pope (adopted in 1870). no one has canceled the infallibility of the Pope), to express doubt about the possibility of resurrection from the dead. The legitimacy of the Anglican Church of all parishioners, which the Vatican considers heretics, is still denied. Some of the most radical environmentalists among the “greens” in the 80 of the twentieth century were accused of deifying nature and, consequently, of pantheism.
However, time is moving forward, and encouraging trends are noted in the activities of the Vatican. Thus, in 1989, Pope John Paul II admitted that Galileo was right, this same Pope, on behalf of the Catholic Church, publicly repented of the crimes she had committed against dissidents (heretics) and Orthodox Christians. There are persistent rumors about the imminent recognition of Giordano Bruno’s righteousness. These events give reason to hope that the democratization processes of the Catholic Church will continue, and the papal inquisition will really and permanently cease its activities.
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