The Inquisition: Hammer of Heresy

When I teach the unit on Medieval Iberia for my "History of Games" class, I
usually focus on the 13th and 14th centuries and tell my class that the
Spanish Inquisition really took hold in the late 15th century (circa 1478).
However, I was very unsatisfied with that point because I realized that I was
unfamiliar with the history of the Inquisition as a whole. Edward Burman's
The Inquisition: The Hammer of Heresy serves as a corrective to my
ignorance.

Did you know that there is still a spiritual descendant to the Inquisition? In
1995, it's name was changed from the "Congregation of the Holy Office" to
"The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith" and the current
pope was once in charge of it. Of course, we don't see the use of torture
and persecution in the current office, but Burman (without being a Catholic
apologist) observes that much of the abuse and horrifying torture we
ascribe to the Inquisition was actually perpetrated by secular authorities
who used the idea of preserving the faith as an opportunity for establishing
their own power. Yet, Burman describes some horrifying statistics of heretic
burnings that cannot be totally off-loaded to the secular authorities.

Certainly, one of my "take-away" lessons from the book is a warning to

modern civilizations who too easily give away their civil liberties for some
nice-sounding higher cause. The possibilities for corruption (of the
Inquisitors) were ever-present. In the 14th century, Inquisitors were granted
full indulgences (an opportunity for license to licentiousness?), allowed to
sell off the confiscated goods of convicted heretics (even though the
Dominicans and Franciscans were usually Inquisitors and had sworn a vow
of poverty, there is ample evidence that this money was kept by
aggrandizing Inquisitors), and able to accuse individuals of high social
standing and high office with impunity (hence, the possibility of using an
accusation for gaining political/social power or revenge). (See p. 53, also
201, 222, 223.)

While not dwelling on the techniques of torture, Burman cites the six most
common types of torture used in the Inquisition: 1) the ordeal of water
(sort of like medieval waterboarding except the victim was forced to drink
jug after jug or skin after skin of water until they risked drowning), 2) the
ordeal of fire (not what you think -- this isn't burning them up, it's placing
portions of the body, greased with animal fat, close to the fire so that one is
literally being gradually cooked), 3) the strappado (sometimes called the
"pulley torture," a manacled prisoner with hands tied behind his/her back
would be pulled up by those tied hands until suspended to hang heavily in
the air, painfully by the wrists), 4) the wheel (again, not what you'd think,
but one was tied to a cartwheel to be stretched out and exposed before
being beaten with bars, clubs, and hammers), 5) the rack, and 6) the
stivaletto (or brodequins, where thick boards are roped to the victim's legs
as tightly as possible so that when metal wedges were hammered between
the boards and the legs to cause the pressure to force the rope into the
victim's flesh). The worst thing about these means of torture was that they
were used on "suspects," not "convicted" heretics, used as a means to gain
"confession." (see pp. 64-65)

I was also amused how some things never change. At one point, accused
heretics sometimes "plea bargained" for the "lesser" charge of sorcery (p.
90). Burman also writes of how the Inquisition, much like any institution
which wanted to continue justifying its existence, was sometimes guilty of
creating heresies in order to fulfill its self-justifying need for heresies in
order to exist (p. 104).

Prior to reading this book, I was unaware of Pope John XXII's fascination
with and fear of magic (pp. 100-101), even to the attempt of using a curved
silver horn to try to ward off evil spells. I also learned that St. Thomas
Aquinas made a distinction between astrology (which he deemed
acceptable) and necromancy (which he deemed reliant upon demonic
forces and hence, unacceptable). What was interesting to me was that he
felt the need to make this distinction in the Summa Theologica (citing from
II-II, 96, 2 on p. 124).

Of course, I was fascinated by reading Burman's summary of the books

banned by the Inquisition. My own short list of banned books that surprised
me includes: An Enquiry into the Place and Nature of Hell (a 1743 work by
an English Protestant); the entire works of Dumas, Hobbes, Hume, Voltaire,
and Zola; Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution; Immanuel Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason; John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding;
Jean Jacques Rousseau's Du Contract Social; Daniel Defoe's History of
the Devil; and Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire. And that's only a sampling (from pp. 211-212).

The Inquisition: The Hammer of Heresy is a well-documented summary of

the uses and abuses of a historical institution that has been rightfully
maligned and denigrated, but rarely understood within its context. Burman
offers an easy-to-read approach that is both sound and objective in its
approach. He neither vilifies nor sanctifies this sad institution designed to
enforce orthodoxy.