No one Expects the Spanish Inquisition!

In his most recent post on Cadre Comments BK writes: "There is no question that Christianity in the West is under attack from some in the public square."[1] BK wrote a fine article and he identifies five areas of attack: "(1) Biblical patriarchy is little more than a mask for men’s will to power; (2) Christians view the Bible as something which allows them to keep their power and privilege – it’s a product of its times; (3) Christianity is the Enemy of Science; (4) the Spanish Inquisition was a bloodbath motivated by religious fanaticism; and (5) Christianity promotes Victimhood Culture." BK focuses on 4. He discusses a book by Dr. Foley and quotes him as saying:

The Spanish Inquisition has become a favorite bludgeon to use against the Catholic Church in particular and against Christianity in general – to “prove” that Christians who care about sound doctrine are repressive, bloodthirsty, and insanely power-hungry. Reports of its atrocities are greatly exaggerated. Indeed, the methods of the Inquisitors were more human than those of any contemporary secular court. One historian has compared the level of brutality of the Spanish Inquisition’s interrogation methods to American police departments in the 1930s. Of the 44,701 Inquisition cases on record, only 2 percent involved the use of torture. The Spanish Inquisition never executed a single individual: as a Church tribunal, the most it could do was declare someone guilty of a capital crime and then hand him over to the State, which wielded the power to execute. In fact, Planned Parenthood kills more people every six days than the Spanish Inquisition did in 350 years.[2]

Atheists who try to use the Inquisition argumet to indict all of Christianity are really flying n the face of a major trend in modern historiography. This goes for the entire narrative of modernity,and it is one of the most amazing things I learned when I first started doctoral work in history of ideas; the entire modern enlightenment narrative has been re-written. Atheists in the popular sphere are one thing, but the direction of actual academic historians is going in the  opposite direction. Historians think less in terms of time periods and more in terms of movements. So the Renaissance is not a time period as much as it is a movement of certain classes and occupations and thinkers. Nor was the Renaissance a time of abandonment of religion or of great secularism. In fact the vast majority of people in Renaissance Italy were never aware there was a Renaissance.[3]

The new take on the enlightenment understands enlightenment not as a time period that unfolded out of the dark ages into a brilliant time of modern progress,but as a series of moments that must be understood in national context. The French enlightenment was anti-calearical and anti-Catholic owing to the relationship of Catholicism to French monarchy. But The English and Scottish enlightenments (to which the French are deeply indebted) were led by Christian thinkers such as Newton,  Boyle, and Reid. The rise of modern science was shepherded into place by such Christian thinkers.[4] Similarly the Spanish inquisition has been reevaluated by modern secular historians. 

The Spanish Inquisition has always generated huge literature and has been  a political football as long as history has been academic. There were inquisitions in other couturiers such as France, but the Spanish version has the reputation as most brutal because it was state sponsored and it's brutality was driven as much by political repression as by fanatical religious ideas.[5] Transitionally modern historians have looked at the subject from a variety of perspectives, but the major view point fell to the Protestant historians who saw it as the arch lesson in not letting the RCC have governmental power.Starting at the early  20th  century Henry Charles Lea published History of the Inquisition in Spain.[6] He set the stage for the major view point for remainder of the century.  "For him the Inquisition also exemplified 'theocratic absolutism' at its worst, a power that had so weakened Spain that it was helpless in the face of Yankee might to defend what little remained of its vast overseas empire during the Spanish-American War of 1898."[7]

By mid century,however, the first major work to challenge this view was produced by Henry Kamen (The Spanish Inquisition (1965) [8] who was a British gradate student at the time. The work was controversial, as he argued that the Inquisition was not as brutal as thought and not powerful enough to have precipitated Spain's 's decline. But the book was a landmark as it kicked off a spate of quantitative articles that sought to produce hard data supporting or disproving that view point.[9]

These initial quantitative studies led to a whole new school of historiography of the Inquisition starting in the 1970s. This school is multidisciplinary, and seeks a more objective view, and challenges traditional view. One common concession traced this this wors is summed up by Rawlings:

Spanish Inquisition was a far less repressive instrument of ideological control than had hitherto been thought,and that torture and the death penalty were only rarely applied–almost exclusively during the first two decades of its existence. By comparison, other European countries, including England, France and Germany, continued to burn heretics until well into the seventeenth century.... Nor was the Holy Office as powerful an institution as previously envisaged.In practice it had to accommodate itself to the jurisdiction of other organs of government,as well as to that of the Church and the Crown. It frequently wrestled with conflicts of authority within its own ranks.[10]

How many people died the Inquisition? Estimates very wildly. The Secretary to the inquisition, Juan Antonio Llorente (1756–1823), placed it at 32,000.[11] The view among modern  historians  tends to discount this figure seeing it as greatly exaggerated. Kamen laces it at about 3,000.[12] Roth also numbers 300,00 as put on trial and forced to do penance,[13]

Despite the lesser scope of abuse there is no mistaking the fact that there was abuse. Death is not the only harm. Being put on trail led to mocking and ridicule, loss of property and reputation, and imprisonment. Moreover, the Spanish inquisition was used as a political weapon against Jews and other minority groups. Yet atheists seeking to use the Spanish Inquisition as an indictment against Christianity are setting themselves upon a dead ed path. There were inquisitions in France, Italy,and other countries they did not lead to the  abuse nor lend themselves as tools of oppression, the major difference was not religion, these were all Christian countries. Rawlings sums up the difference: "the Spanish Inquisition was different in one fundamental respect: it was responsible to the Crown rather than the Pope and was used to consolidate state interest. It soon acquired a reputation for being a barbarous, repressive instrument of racial and religious intolerance that regularly employed torture as well as the death penalty as punishments and severely restricted Spain’s intellectual development for generations."[14] 

It is neither religion in general nor Christianity specifically that led to the abuse but the conflation of temporal power and political agenda with the Gospel and the will of God that made the difference in the Spanish Inquisition. It is always a mistake to assume that the City of man can be turned into the City of God. As Saint Augustine tells us these are two different cities with different ends the latter can  ever be the  former.





Sources

[1] BK, "Responding to the 'Crimes of Christianity,' the Inquisition," Cadre Comments, (January 17, 2018)
http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2018/01/responding-to-crimes-of-christianity.html
(accessed 1/20/18)

[2] Foley quoted in Ibid,

[3] Peter Burke, The Renaissance, NY:St Martin's Pressinc,second edition, 1987.1-7.

the Chapter Title":The Myth of the Renaissance." The professes pointed out that 82% of artistic commissions were for religious purposes, But according to Brukhardt Renaissance art was a secular awaking,

[4] Roy Porter  Mikalas Teich, ed. Enlightenment in National Context. Cambrodge, London: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

[5] Helen Rawlins , "Historiography of the Inquisition," pdf from work by the author The Spanish Inquisition,  Wiley-Blackwell; 1 edition (July 1, 2005)
thttp://www.blackwellpublishing.com/content/BPL_Images/Content_store/Sample_chapter/0631205993/0631205993_4_001.pdf
(accessed 1/20/18)

[6] Henry Charles, Lea, The History of The inquisition in Spain. New York : Macmillan, 1906.

[7] Richard Kagan, "A Kinder, Gentler Inquisition," New York Times Book Review (April 19,1998).
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/19/reviews/980419.19kagent.html
(accessed 1/20/18)

[8] Henry Kamen The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. New Haven: Yale University Press, fourth ed., 2014 first ed  by Widenfeld and Nichloson, 1965.

[9] Kagan, NYT, op cit.

[10] Rawlings, Op cit.

[11] Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1964; reprint, 1996, 123

[12] Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition...op. cit. (Fourth Edition, 2014), 253.
[13] Roth, Op Cit