The Inquisition Read online

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  THE INQUISITION

  Michael Baigent was born in New Zealand in 1948 and obtained a degree in psychology from Canterbury University, Christchurch. Since 1976 he has lived in England. His most recent book was Ancient Traces, published in 1998. He has recently completed an MA in mysticism and religious experience at the University of Kent.

  Richard Leigh pursued his BA at Tufts University, Boston, his MA at the University of Chicago and his Ph.D. at the State University of New York. With Michael Baigent he has co-authored a number of books, including the international bestseller The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (with Henry Lincoln), The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception and, more recently, The Elixir and the Stone. Despite these works, he regards himself as primarily a novelist and writer of short stories. He lives in London.

  MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH

  THE INQUISITION

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published by Viking 1999

  Published in Penguin Books 2000

  16

  Copyright © Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, 1999

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-192834-0

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  1. A Fiery Zeal for the Faith

  2. Origins of the Inquisition

  3. Enemies of the Black Friars

  4. The Spanish Inquisition

  5. Saving the New World

  6. A Crusade Against Witchcraft

  7. Fighting the Heresy of Protestantism

  8. Fear of the Mystics

  9. Freemasonry and the Inquisition

  10. The Conquest of the Papal States

  11. Infallibility

  12. The Holy Office

  13. The Dead Sea Scrolls

  14. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

  15. Visions of Mary

  16. The Pope as the Problem

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  Acknowledgements

  As ever, we should like to thank Ann Evans and Jonathan Clowes, not only for being our agents, but also for being consultants, managers, counsellors, intercessors, advocates, pagan Cistercians and friends, through whom the puissance of Sainte Quittière is enabled to cast its protection over us.

  For their help and support in a diverse spectrum of ways, we should also like to thank Sacha Abercorn, John Ashby, Jane Baigent, Brie Burkeman, Bela Cunha, Helen Fraser, Margaret Hill, Tony Lacey, Alan McClymont, Andrew Nurnberg, Peter Ostacchini, David Peabody, John Saul, Yuri Stoyanov and Lisa Whadcock.

  Again, too, our debt to libraries is immense. We should like to thank the staffs of the British Library, St Pancras, the Library of the United Grand Lodge of England, Covent Garden, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

  Dedication

  On n'oubliera le hasard

  par un coup de dés

  et l'orme detachera

  le roi des aulnes.

  Une cité rosat abritera

  les têtes abattues et le

  suaire gêne la lumière.

  A contrejour sachant

  la cellule, la clarté

  entrera la garenne.

  Les belles éclaircies du vent

  poussent le chat à herisser ses poils.

  Ils se refugient dans les bruissements

  de la haleine de Mélusine.

  JEHAN L'ASCUIZ

  Introduction

  As the fifteenth century gave way to the sixteenth, Jesus returned. He reappeared in Spain, on the streets of Seville. There were no fanfares attending his advent, no choirs of angels or supernatural spectaculars, no extravagant meteorological phenomena. On the contrary, he arrived ‘softly’ and ‘unobserved’. And yet the passers-by quickly recognised him, were irresistibly drawn to him, surrounded him, flocked about him, followed him. He moved modestly among them with a gentle smile of ‘ineffable compassion’, held out his hands to them, conferred his blessings upon them; and an old man among the crowd, blind from childhood, miraculously regained the faculty of sight. The multitude wept and kissed the earth at his feet while children tossed flowers before him, sang and lifted their voices in hosannas.

  At the steps of the cathedral, weeping mourners were carrying inside a small open white coffin. Within it, almost hidden by flowers, lay a child of seven, the only daughter of a distinguished citizen. Urged on by the crowd, the bereft mother turned to the newcomer and beseeched him to restore the dead girl to life. The procession halted and the coffin was set down at his feet on the cathedral steps. ‘Maiden, arise!’ he commanded softly, and the girl immediately sat upright, looking about, smiling, with wide wondering eyes, still holding the cluster of white roses that had been placed in her hands.

  This miracle was witnessed, as he passed with his entourage of bodyguards, by the city's cardinal and Grand Inquisitor – ‘an aged man, almost ninety, tall and upright in stature, with a shrivelled face and deeply recessed eyes, in which, however, there still burned a gleam of light’. Such was the terror he inspired that the crowd, despite the extraordinary circumstances, deferentially fell silent, parted and made way for him. Neither did anyone dare to interfere when, at the old prelate's behest, the newcomer was summarily arrested by his bodyguards and led off to prison.

  Such is the opening of Fyodor Dostoevsky's ‘Parable of the Grand Inquisitor’, a more or less self-contained twenty-five-page narrative embedded in the 800 or so pages of The Brothers Karamazov, first published by instalments in a Moscow magazine during 1879 and 1880. The parable's real significance resides in what follows the dramatic prelude. For the reader expects, of course, that the Grand Inquisitor will be appropriately horrified when he learns the true identity of his new prisoner. That, however, is not to be the case.

  When the Grand Inquisitor visits Jesus's cell, it is clear that he knows only too well whom the prisoner is; but the knowledge does not deter him. During the prolonged philosophical and theological debate that ensues, the old man remains adamant in his position. In scripture, Jesus is tempted by the devil in the wilderness with the prospect of power, of earthly authority, of secular or temporal dominion over the world. Now, a millennium and a half later, he is confronted by precisely the same temptations. When he resists them, the Grand Inquisitor consigns him to the stake.

  Jesus responds only by conferring on the old man a kiss of forgiveness. Shuddering, the kiss ‘glowing in his heart’, the old man opens the door to the cell.
‘Go,’ he commands, ‘and come no more… Come not at all, never, never!’ Released into the darkness, the prisoner disappears, never to be seen again. And the Grand Inquisitor, in full consciousness of what has just transpired, continues to adhere to his principles, continues to enforce his reign of terror, continues to sentence other victims – often self-evidently innocent – to the flames.

  As can be seen from this perhaps oversimplified summary, Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor is no fool. On the contrary, he knows all too well what he is doing. He knows that he carries an onerous and debilitating responsibility on his aged shoulders – to maintain civic order, to uphold the status of the Church founded in the name of the man he has just been prepared to sentence to execution. He knows the Church founded in the man's name is ultimately incompatible with the teachings of the man himself. He knows that the Church has become autonomous, the proverbial law unto itself, no longer rendering unto Caesar but usurping Caesar, presiding over its own imperium. He knows that he has been entrusted with the role of custodian and ‘enforcer’ of this imperium. He knows that the edicts and acts he promulgates in that capacity will undoubtedly entail what his own theology forecasts will be his eternal damnation. He knows, in short, that he is martyring himself to evil. Because he knows that in functioning as the representative of secular and temporal power, and in tempting Jesus with such power, he is equating himself with the devil.

  Since The Brothers Karamazov was first published and translated, Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor has seared itself into our collective consciousness as the definitive image and embodiment of the Inquisition. We may appreciate the old prelate's agonising dilemma. We may admire the complexity of his character. We may even respect him for the personal martyrdom he is prepared to incur, his self-condemnation to perdition on behalf of an institution he deems greater than himself. We may also respect his secular realism and the brutally cynical understanding behind it, the worldly wisdom that recognises the mechanics and dynamics of mundane power. Some of us may well wonder whether – were we in his position and entrusted with his responsibilities – we might be impelled to act as he does. But for all the tolerance, the appreciation, perhaps the sympathy and forgiveness we might muster for him, we cannot escape the awareness that he is, by any honest moral standards, intrinsically evil – and that the institution he represents is culpable of a monstrous hypocrisy.

  How accurate, how representative, is Dostoevsky's portrait? To what extent does the figure in the parable fairly reflect the actual historical institution? And if the Inquisition, as personified by Dostoevsky's aged prelate, can indeed be equated with the devil, to what degree can that equation be extended to the Church as a whole?

  For most people today, any mention of the Inquisition suggests the Inquisition in Spain. In seeking an institution that reflects the Roman Catholic Church as a whole, Dostoevsky, too, invokes the Inquisition in Spain. But the Inquisition, as it existed in Spain and Portugal, was unique to those countries – and was accountable, in fact, at least as much to the Crown as it was to the Church.

  This is not to suggest that the Inquisition did not exist and operate elsewhere. It did. But the Papal or Roman Inquisition – as it was known at first informally, then officially – differed from the Inquisition of the Iberian peninsula. Unlike its Iberian counterparts, the Papal or Roman Inquisition was not accountable to any secular potentate. Operating throughout most of the rest of Europe, its allegiance was solely to the Church. Created in the early thirteenth century, it predated the Spanish Inquisition by some 250 years. It has also outlasted its Iberian counterparts. While the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal was extinct by the third decade of the nineteenth century, the Papal or Roman Inquisition survived. It exists and continues to function actively even today. It does so, however, under a new, less emotive and less stigmatised name. Under its present sanitised title of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith it still plays a salient role in the lives of millions of Catholics across the globe.

  It would be a mistake, however, to identify the Inquisition with the Church as a whole. They are not the same institution. Important though the Inquisition has been, and continues to be, in the world of Roman Catholicism, it remains only one aspect of the Church. There have been, and there still are, many other aspects, not all of which warrant the same opprobrium. This book is about the Inquisition in its various forms; as it existed in the past and as it exists today. If it emerges in a dubious light, that light need not necessarily extend to the Church in general.

  At its inception, the Inquisition was the product of a brutal, insensitive and ignorant world. Not surprisingly, it was itself in consequence brutal, insensitive and ignorant. It was no more so, however, than numerous other institutions of its time, both spiritual and temporal. As much as those other institutions, it is part of our collective heritage. We cannot, therefore, simply repudiate it and dismiss it. We must confront it, acknowledge it, try to understand it in all its excesses and prejudice, then integrate it in a new totality. Merely to wash our hands of it is tantamount to denying something in ourselves, in our evolution and development as a civilisation – a form, in effect, of self-mutilation. We cannot presume to pass judgement on the past by the criteria of contemporary political correctness. If we attempt to do so, the whole of the past will be found wanting. We will then be left solely with the present as a basis for our hierarchies of value; and whatever the values we embrace, few of us would be foolish enough to extol the present as any sort of ultimate ideal. Many of the past's worst excesses were caused by individuals acting with what, according to the knowledge and morality of their time, they deemed the best and worthiest of intentions. We would be rash to imagine our own worthy intentions as being infallible. We would be rash to fancy those intentions incapable of producing consequences as disastrous as those for which we condemn our predecessors.

  The Inquisition – sometimes cynical and venal, sometimes maniacally fanatical in its supposed laudable intentions – may indeed have been as brutal as the age that spawned it. It must be repeated, however, that the Inquisition cannot be equated with the Church as a whole. And even during the periods of its most rabid ferocity, the Inquisition was obliged to contend with other, more humane faces of the Church – with the more enlightened of the monastic orders, with orders of friars such as the Franciscans, with thousands of individual priests, abbots, bishops and prelates of even higher rank who sincerely endeavoured to practise the virtues traditionally associated with Christianity. Nor must one forget the creative energy the Church inspired – in music, painting, sculpture and architecture – which represents a counterpoint to the Inquisition's bonfires and torture chambers.

  During the latter third of the nineteenth century, the Church was compelled to relinquish the last vestiges of its former secular and political power. To compensate for this loss, it sought to consolidate its spiritual and psychological grip, to exercise a more rigorous control over the hearts and minds of the faithful. In consequence, the Papacy became increasingly centralised; and the Inquisition increasingly became the definitive voice of the Papacy. It is in this capacity that the Inquisition – ‘rebranded’ as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – functions today. Yet even now, the Inquisition does not have things entirely its own way. Indeed, its position is becoming ever more beleaguered as Catholics across the world acquire the knowledge, the sophistication and the courage to question the authority of its inflexible pronouncements.

  There have certainly been – and, it might well be argued, still are – Inquisitors of whom Dostoevsky's parable offers an accurate portrait. In certain places and at certain periods, such individuals may indeed have been representative of the Inquisition as an institution. That does not, however, necessarily make them an indictment of the Christian doctrine they sought in their zeal to propagate. As for the Inquisition itself, readers of this book may well find it to have been an institution at once better and worse than the one depicted in Dostoevsky's parable.

 
; 1

  A Fiery Zeal for the Faith

  Inspired by Saint Paul's dextrous salesmanship, Christianity has always offered shortcuts to paradise. Thus did it recruit adherents, even before its emergence as a recognisable religion. Through martyrdom, through self-mortification, through meditation and contemplation, through solitude, through ritual, through penance, through communion, through the sacraments – through all those avenues, the doors to the Kingdom of Heaven were reputedly opened to believers. Some of these access routes may have incorporated elements of pathology, but they were for the most part peaceable. And even when Christians of the first millennium fought – as they did, for instance, under Charles Martel and then Charlemagne – they did so primarily in self-defence.

  In 1095, however, a new route to God's domain was officially and publicly made available. On Tuesday, 27 November of that year, Pope Urban II climbed on to a platform erected in a field beyond the east gate of the French city of Clermont. From this eminence, he proceeded to preach a crusade, a war conducted on behalf of the Cross. In such a war, according to the Pope, one could obtain God's favour, and a seat at His throne, by killing.

  Not, of course, that the Pope was indiscriminate. On the contrary, he exhorted Christians to desist from their deplorable, if long established, practice of killing each other. He urged them instead to direct their murderous energies towards the Islamic infidels, who occupied the sacred city of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre, supposed site of Jesus's burial. In order to reclaim for Christendom the city and the tomb, European fighting men were encouraged to embark on a righteous war under the direct guidance of God.