Feeling Inquisitive Part I
I find that to gain a better understanding of our own times, it's often helpful to read history. After all, despite all the material progress, people haven't really changed that much, and by looking closely at the events of the past, it is possible to see where certain ideas and actions can lead. In that spirit, I'm having a go at Henry Lea's monumental work on The Inquisition of the Middle Ages - the handy 900-page single volume abridgement of the 1912 three-volume set. Hey, it's raining up here in the Emerald City and there's not much else going on right now.
Unlike more contemporary scholars, Lea's view of the Inquisition is that it was necessary to re-infuse the Medieval Catholic Church with a new spirit of faith, since things had become rather corrupt and oppressive by that time (early 13th century). Indeed the picture he paints is rather grim, with the sale of offices (known as simony) and abuses of all kinds by the clergy completely pervasive, and the element of religious observance almost entirely absent. In passing, he notes that the origin of the institution of priestly celibacy, which dates from this era, was less a matter of scripture than of finances: the Church did not want clergy having (officially-recognized) children to make inheritance claims against Church property. The Church also wanted to guard against the formation of hereditary power structures, since by infusing its ranks with fresh blood, it maintained a unique institutional dynamism that gave it an advantage over the highly static social structures that pervaded feudal Europe. The psychological consequences of priestly celibacy in those days were no different from today, and its manifestations caused the lay public the same kinds of problems. The original sources cited by Lea are quite frank and outspoken in their depiction of these “beastly sins,” though Lea himself is mostly circumspect in his discussion of these matters. However he is extraordinarily perceptive on the more general way that the sexual repression of the more observant clergy contributed to the ferocity of the Church's response to a variety of issues throughout the Inquisition.
Because almost all of the historical record of the Inquisition comes from the Church itself, it is a fascinating look into the psychology of self-righteousness. Popes and prelates with profoundly materialistic motivations routinely convinced not only the public but themselves that even the most egregious offenses against human dignity were justified in defense of the faith. A huge intellectual, social and bureaucratic apparatus was called into being to rationalize and routinize horrible acts of torture and oppression. True believers who feel threatened by change are capable of anything. We would all do well to remember that.
The great object lesson in that point is the Third Crusade, the event that got the whole Inquisition rolling. Basically, a group of free-thinking Gnostics known as Cathars had cropped up in Southern France, preaching an odd brand of asceticism and utterly rejecting the Catholic Church and all its works as corrupt and diabolical. The Cathars, by all indications, were industrious, virtuous, intellectual and tolerant. Among their innovations were the introduction of women into the priesthood. They flourished under the rule of Raymond, the easy-going Count of Toulouse– apparently a just ruler with little religious feeling one way or the other. While Pope Innocent III fumed and fulminated against the heretics, nearby monarchs jealously eyed Raymond’s rich territories. Raymond played into his enemies’ hands by not according the papal legates proper respect or authority, and by steadfastly refusing to persecute his subjects over the matter of their consciences. Matters escalated, excommunications and interdicts were issued, and Innocent III wound up declaring a full-on Crusade against the unfortunate Raymond, the first use of the doctrine of Holy War on European soil. Raymond didn’t realize how bad his situation was until it was too late, when other monarchs with their own temporal ambitions eagerly accepted the Church’s preachings as a pretext to mount an invasion and seize his domains.
During the proceedings, a zealous monk named Dominic Guzman embraced the mission with such enthusiasm that he earned a Sainthood for his trouble and leant his name to the monastic order which was to carry out the Inquisition over the next several hundred years: the Dominicans. It is to this holy fellow that history attributes one of the great bons-mots of warfare. When asked if the Crusaders should make an effort to distinguish innocent Catholics from the heretics, Dominic replied, in a colloquial translation, “Kill ‘em all – let God sort them out!” (or, more conventionally, “Spare none, the Lord will know his own”).
The point here is that the liberal-minded Cathars practiced their beliefs in relative security for nearly 100 years under the protection of succeeding generations of tolerant monarchs. They debated freely, they treated equally with Catholics, Jews and occasional Moslem traders, they practiced unconventional lifestyles and flourished economically without preaching or doing harm to any of their neighbors. Nevertheless, their very existence threatened the moral and material interests of the Church to such a degree that, in the end, not even the ethical framework of Jesus’s teachings could stay the hand of the enraged believers. The slaughter was absolute, and the social progress made by the Cathars – extraordinarily significant by Medieval European standards – was utterly reversed and destroyed. It would be another 300 years before the Reformation would open the door to a comparable step forward in intellectual and political development.
We are well-advised to consider that history is not an inevitable march toward progress and betterment. The story of humanity is littered with false starts, dead-ends, and shocking reversals. The forces of progress, by their nature, consistently underestimate the ruthlessness of their adversaries. They assume that the advances they have made are permanent, the protections they have gained for their beliefs inviolate, and that simply by not taking actions to antagonize those who disagree with them, they win the right to be left in peace. How wrong they are. The constants of human behavior assert themselves with predictable regularity, and when fear and loathing gain the upper hand over hope, no institution is strong enough to resist the backward pull into violence, ignorance and oppression.
9:07:30 AM 
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