By Mark Owen - © 2010
Chapter 12 - The dark heart of religion
Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment. - attributed to Jesus of Nazareth (Matthew 5:21)
So single episode in history confirms the moral bankruptcy of the Church of Rome as does the 'Holy' Inquisition. The instrument that reduced the Templars to oblivion is often referred to as the Spanish Inquisition but while Spain was the centre of the worst human rights abuses by the Church, the Inquisition, otherwise known as the Holy Office, was active in several other countries, especially Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Apologists for the Church of Rome claim that it was not really the instrument of vengeance. It was the secular power, chiefly in Spain, that carried out the actual punishments. This is a completely specious contention. The Inquisition was given a formal structure (it was already operating) by Pope Innocent 3rd in 1248 as a tribunal of the Church 'for the discovery, repression and punishment' of heresy and unbelief. It was placed under the control of the recently-established Dominican Order and thereafter the Dominican friars were to be forever associated in people's minds with the horror unleashed upon them.
A wealth of material may be brought forward to substantiate the view that the Church itself was the very instrument of the terror. This is what the notable Lord Acton, a Roman Catholic historian, had to say in his Letters to Mary Gladstone (Macmillan, 1904):
The Inquisition is peculiarly the weapon and peculiarly the work of the Popes. It stands out from all those things in which they co-operated, followed or assented as the distinctive feature of papal Rome. It was set up, renewed and perfected by a long series of acts emanating from the supreme authority in the Church. No other institution, no doctrine, no ceremony is so distinctly the individual creation of the Papacy, except the dispensing power.
It is the principle thing with which the Papacy is identified, and by which it must be judged. The principle of the Inquisition is the Pope's sovereign power over life and death. Whosoever disobeys him should be tried and tortured and burnt. If that cannot be done, formalities may be dispensed with, and the culprit may be killed like an outlaw. That is to say, the principle of the Inquisition is murderous, and a man's opinion of the Papacy is regulated and determined by his opinion of religious assassination.
Dominic was the first Inquisitor-General and the first office was established at Toulouse, France, in 1233, followed by a second at Aragon five years later. By the year 1252 the Pope had issued a Bull authorising the use of torture. Soon this noisome pestilence had spread its tentacles over Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and the Netherlands. It never gained a foothold in Britain and indeed, in a later era fear of the Inquisition undoubtedly played some part in strengthening the resolve of Englishmen to resist the Armada. The English knew full well that behind the ships of war came the vessels bearing the holy friars with their instruments of torment. After all, many an Englishman had fallen into the hands of the Inquisition through the years and suffered terribly as a result.
Again, it should be noted that the most notorious of the infamous men who ran the engines of the Inquisition was a cleric, Frey Tomás de Torquemada, appointed Grand Inquisitor of Spain in 1483. Even today that name has a sinister ring to it. This fine upstanding Churchman was responsible not only for directing the whole cruel operation that engulfed so many of his fellow men but also for the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. As for the number of his victims, the totals given in the histories vary. Some record 'up to 9,000' human beings condemned to the flames during his 16 years' holy work. The highest figure given is 10,220. And it is estimated that another 100,000 men, women and children suffered varying torments under his hand. Of these tens of thousands went to a living death as galley-slaves. In fact, one figure given for those condemned to this particular hell is 97,371. If this is correct, the total of 100,000 is too low. And Spain was but one theatre of operations. There were many others. A contemporary historian, Llorente, collected evidence from the records kept by the council of the Inquisition itself in Spain, which indicated that over one period of less than 40 years (1481-1517), some 13,000 people were burnt at the stake. Other figures indicate that between 1481 and 1808, the number burnt at the stake or tortured reached a total of 341,000.
Even the Nazis and Fascists of the modern world could hardly better the apparatus of terror at the disposal of the Inquisition. A pious citizen going about his business, harmless, law-abiding, could be arrested on the flimsiest of evidence and thrown into a filthy dungeon. There were hundreds of such cells employed by the followers of the Christ-god. While so confined he or she would usually be fettered hand and foot and half-starved. Some of the prison cells were the worst rat-infested, water-logged hellholes imaginable. Rarely did the poor citizen know what the charges were until dragged before the hooded tribunal. And whose faces did those hoods hide? The clergy.
No specified period was set down for trial. It was held when it suited the judges. Prisoners were rarely able to get a lawyer to defend them, even if they had money. Lawyers were unwilling to appear for a simple reason: to do so might land the defender himself in trouble. By the time the prisoner actually faced the judges he might be nearly deranged by his treatment. Often the hapless victim would be left languishing in a dungeon for years before facing the tribunal. This was considered a part of the softening-up process. Or he might face the tribunal then be returned to the chains and darkness and left for months before facing the tribunal again. It was by no means unusual for five years or more to pass before a case was determined. In some instances decades passed! A prisoner at Carcassonne rotted in a dungeon for 30 years before his case was decided.
A great deal of subtlety went into the operations of the tribunal. The psychology at work was of quite an advanced nature, worthy of the Nazis at their most subtle or the North Koreans in modern times. Arrested people, already mentally weakened by being incarcerated incommunicado, starved and chained, would find themselves ushered not into an ordinary room but a veritable torture chamber, specially prepared for the macabre events to follow. It was soundproofed with heavy hangings.
The whole operation was designed to engender fear in the hardiest soul. The accused would find himself standing before a table, behind which were the frightening but anonymous figures of his tormentors, each clothed head-to-toe in a black garment, with a black hood on his head, equipped with holes through which peered two merciless eyes. [Let me remind my readers: these men claimed to represent Jesus of Nazareth; an infinity of space and time now lay between them and Jesus.] The depositions would be read out, the charges laid, and then, if the accused proved recalcitrant, he would find himself at the next stage. Some prisoners certainly weakened at this point, many of them admitting to crimes they had never committed - and were punished accordingly!
The prisoner who failed to confess would be forcibly stripped naked, have his hands bound behind his back and he would thus be prepared for his first session of torture. This procedure paid no regard to sex or age. Women, too, would be stripped, although some slight concession to modesty might be afforded by providing a female prisoner with a pair of drawers. And on some occasions even children were put through this cruel procedure. The last stage before the application of the actual torture was to show the prisoner the implements or engines to be used upon his or her body. This was followed by a conducted tour of the torture-chamber, with a suitable explanation of its operations. If this did not bring about the desired answers then pain followed, however much the accused might protest his or her innocence.
As ever hypocrisy reigned in matters religious. Torture was not called by that name. The friars employed a euphemism to serve their purpose. The prisoner was being put to The Question. In all, by some counts, about 14 main tortures were used by the Inquisitors. But there were three primary modes. These involves stretching, choking and, in some places, burning. It is easy for the average church member to be ignorant of what has transpired in past history. The Reverend J. Donnelly, a former Roman Catholic priest, wrote in 1896 of his horror when he was shown, and actually laid his own hands on, instruments of the Inquisition:
When I saw the tortures of walling up, the burning pile, the red-hot ovens, the deadly pulley, the iron virgin, the cold water-pressure on the brain; when I obtained sufficient evidence that priests, bishops and monks who claimed to be the representatives of the meek and lowly Jesus, helped to apply the torch to the limbs of their fellow men, I shed tears, and prayed God to show me the way out from such a system that strangled, burned and murdered.
Simplest was the torture of the pulley, or hoist, merely a rope through a pulley in the ceiling. The victim's wrists were bound behind him and the rope attached. Slowly his or her (for women were not spared) arms were drawn backwards and upwards until finally the feet left the floor. The question was again put. Refusal saw him raised yet higher. Painful, yes, but nothing compared to what would follow. There were, in fact, five degrees of severity recognized. The first degree saw the prisoner stripped and standing, hands bound behind his back and the rope ready, but not actually suspended from the floor. The 2nd degree saw him suspended for a relatively short period, but extremely painful for all that. The 3rd degree saw him raised and left hanging for a longer period. The 4th degree again saw him hanging but this time the ropes were jerked and shaken to increase the pain. The 5th degree saw the prisoner hanging with weights attached to his ankles, after which the ropes would again be shaken. This was considered to be one of the most terrible tortures known and at this point the victim's bones were usually broken and sometimes his limbs wrenched from his body. However, if still stubborn, the final stage occurred when the prisoner would be suddenly allowed to drop, almost to the floor. The jerk experienced when pulled out of his fall nearly wrenched his arms from their sockets. But his torment had not ended. If still reluctant to confess, the prisoner might be given some respite, for two or three days, then the same would happen all over again.
It may be wondered why people did not confess. Why suffer so? The reasons were many, but chiefly the prisoners found themselves in a double-bind. If they confessed to being 'secret Jews' or heretics of one sort or another this confession automatically sentenced them to death, or worse, a lifetime of hell-on-earth as a galley-slave. If he was sent to the galleys he was chained to a bench night and day, 365 days in a year, kept either completely naked or nearly so, in hot or cold weather, and required to eat, sleep, work and answer the calls of nature while helplessly confined to that one small moving spot on earth. And all the while his bared back was kept ready to receive the lashes of the overseer. Chevalier Langeron, captain of one ship, La Palme, was reported as having told his overseer: 'Go and refresh the backs of these Huguenots (Protestants) with a salad of strokes of the whip.' There are on record cases where boys as young as 12, sons of Huguenots, were sent to the galleys (Athanase Coquerel: Les Forcats pour la Foi, p.91). There was no real crime involved. Just meeting together and worshipping in a non-Catholic mode was sufficient cause, even in one's own home. In 1728, for example, thirteen adult Protestants were found worshipping together in an apartment at Montpelier. The three pastors and leaders were hanged, the other 10 laymen sent to the galleys for life.
En route to Marseille, the usual point of embarkation, each man was loaded down with about 70 kg of iron and as they marched the good Catholic populace spat upon them and abused them. If they spent time in Paris they were lodged in a huge underground dungeon in the Chateau de la Tournelle, which was - conveniently - under the spiritual direction of the Jesuits. This dungeon was of a peculiar design, calculated to provide maximum discomfort for prisoners confined there. Across the whole area ran huge solid beams of oak bearing hooks and placed at a certain height above the floor. Each man had a length of chain brought down from the beam and attached to the iron collar about his neck and each beam had 20 prisoners attached to it. In all the dungeon could hold about 500 men. It was when they were chained to their beams that the prisoners discovered the peculiarly sadistic nature of their imprisonment. The beams were placed at such a height above the floor that they could not sleep by lying down nor could they stand up at their full height. They could not even sit properly. They were forced to maintain a sort of squatting position all the time, night and day. Thus they were kept for some weeks in this extreme discomfort while more prisoners were herded in. And not only would the Huguenots lose life and liberty but their estates would be confiscated by the Church and their families thus be left destitute.
Also employed by the Inquisitors was the rack, so well known that a description of its operation is unnecessary here. Then there was strappado. If anything could possibly be worse than the pulley it was this last torture. The prisoner was strapped face-up on a narrow ladder-like structure, her head a little lower than her feet. A metal or leather band kept the head firmly in place while her arms and legs were bound so tightly to the sides of the ladder that any attempt at movement resulted in the flesh being lacerated. As if this were not enough, extra pain was produced by the use of garottes applied to thighs, arms and legs. By twisting the cords excruciating pain resulted as the cord sunk into nerves and sinews. (Again I must pause to remind my readers that all this misery and pain was being wrought by the followers of the simple preaching-man of Nazareth!).
Worse followed. A metal prong held open the prisoner's mouth and a long strip of linen was laid across it. Water was now poured little by little into the cloth which would be carried down into the victim's throat, choking and suffocating her. Every movement of struggle resulted in great pain, and this was increased by the use of the garottes. It was truly a fearful torture and if hell did exist it was already operative here on earth, administered by robed minions of the Church of Christ! There were many other tortures applied from time to time and place to place, as the fancy took the Inquisitors or devilish invention produced some new horror. In some places the victim would be strapped down to a bench, the feet anointed with oil and then toasted. The Casa de la Inquisicion in Cartagena, Colombia, used to have on display an iron bedstead. Victims were once chained to this bed and a fire lit beneath. Another device was a heavy iron tripod with a circular metal band at the top. The prisoner was clamped in the band, his arms were pinioned and the tripod legs adjusted so he could not straighten his back. It was said that a few hours in this contraption were sufficient to bring forth the desired confession.
Ordinary flagellation also occurred. This was particularly applied where prisoners caused trouble in their cells. All prisoners were to keep silence and were not allowed to converse with one another. Rebellious behaviour resulted in the prisoner being stripped naked, held down on the ground and flogged unmercifully with a whip made of cords stiffened by being dipped in molten pitch. Each stripe dragged the flesh away until the back was left a mass of bleeding flesh.
A special torture was devised for pregnant women. They were forced into iron hoops, which held them cruelly and forced pressure on the unborn child. A relatively short period so confined was sufficient to break a woman down. There are many stories of women being tortured by the Inquisitors. A typical case was that of Jane Bohorquia, from a noble Seville family, who simply discussed the Protestant religion with a friend. For this offence she was seized and thrown into prison, to appear before the tribunal. She was pregnant at the time; her tormentors at least waited until the baby was delivered, which was not always the case, and then, while she was still weak, applied the torture. Jane was racked so cruelly that the her flesh was ripped through to the bone and blood gushed from her mouth. She died a week later and her possessions were confiscated, as was the custom. However, soon after a proclamation was issued making out that the woman had expired of natural causes while in prison and that no guilt was found; her possessions were returned to her heirs!
Yet another woman, this time of English birth but married to a Spaniard named Vasconcellos, suffered an appalling period of torture. In 1704 she was charged with heresy at Lisbon and was dragged before the Inquisition. She was kept confined in a dungeon on bread and water for over nine months while she was beaten and tortured from time to time to extort a confession. She was whipped several times with a knotted cord and burnt with a red-hot iron, the wounds being left to heal without dressings. Finally, still holding out, she was taken to the torture chamber. Here an unusual torture was inflicted. She was bound tightly into a chair, so as to be quite unable to move a muscle. Then a shoe was removed from her left foot, leaving it bare. Previously an iron slipper had been prepared by heating it in a fire; this was now forced onto her foot, burning the flesh to the the bone. The woman, still bound tightly in the chair, fainted and was then whipped so severely across her bared back that from her neck to her waist was one bleeding mass. Threatened with having a hot iron shoe fitted to her right foot, she signed her confession.
Age was no protection. Henry Charles Lea, in his book, A History of the Inquisition in Spain (Macmillan, 1906) described how on 7 January 1607, at Valencia, a 13-year-old Morisca girl, Isabel Madalina Conteri, after being tortured and failing to confess, was given one hundred lashes. At Cordova, the Inquisitor Lucero was reported (in a letter of 1507 to the royal secretary) as having locked a 15-year-old girl in a room, where she was stripped naked and whipped unmercifully until she eventually consented to give testimony before the tribunal against her own mother.
Beyond prison walls other fiendish cruelties were imposed. In 1636 in Valladolid 10 Jews, convicted of having whipped a crucifix, were held standing, each with a hand nailed to a cross, while sentence was pronounced. They were then torched. Jews were specifically the subject of untold hatred and persecution, especially in Spain. Suffering the worst treatment were those who had converted to Christianity but who were suspected, for one reason or another (and often for no good reason) of being 'secret judaizers'. These people seemed to stir up a special measure of hatred. But with everyone, Jew, Gentile or Muslim, it was a case of damned if you did confess, and damned if you didn't. Being taken into custody was a virtual death sentence in itself - either actual death in the flames of the auto-da-fé (Portuguese for 'act of faith' - a cynical appellation) or a living-death in one form or another. Those who admitted to heresy and adopted the right attitude of repentance were made to wear special penitential garb in a public display of their repentant state. Many were given prison sentences, accompanied by weekly whippings. Those children not consigned to the flames with their parents were locked away in the convents, to be brought up as obedient Catholics.
The descriptions that have been preserved of the colourful processions of death wending their way to an auto-da-fé remove any lingering doubts there might be about the involvement of the clergy in the Inquisition horrors. The condemned were brought from their dungeons just before six a.m. Mainly they were men and women but not a few teenagers were among their number. Barefoot, each prisoner wore a bright yellow sanbenito, a hideous garment of shame which took one of three forms, depending on the nature of the crime alleged against its wearer. The impenitent heretic had upon his garment tongues of flame and crude grotesque paintings of devils. Upon the heads of convicted heretics were worn tall cardboard mitres, covered in yellow sackcloth, known as coroza. Around the prisoner's neck was a rope and his hands were bound in front of him with the other end. In these bound hands she was compelled to carry an unlit candle of green wax, later to be ceremonially lit.
At the head of this amazing procession marched a posse of familiars (or lay brothers) of the Confraternity of St Peter the Martyr, a black-draped cross at their head. Behind these 'soldiers of the faith' came a celebrant priest, borne upon a scarlet-and-gold litter by four acolytes. His purpose was to read the Mass and he bore with him the Sacred Host, before which the superstitious crowd fell on their knees, beating their breasts. More familiars followed, then the prisoners, each accompanied by two Dominican brothers in white cassocks and black cloaks, exhorting last-minute repentance. Further down the procession came the holy Inquisitors themselves, attended by mounted gentlemen.
The Churchmen were all present - the familiars, the priests, the Dominicans, the Inquisitors themselves, all actively participating in this human tragedy, this act of mass murder of innocents. The rest of the activities of this day, taken from an eyewitness account, have also been recorded, in great detail. The procession comes to a halt and Mass is celebrated. Then there is a sermon and the reading out, at great length, of the alleged crimes of each prisoner. Finally, in an act of utter cynicism, the Church authorities hand the prisoners over to the secular arm so as not to be involved directly in bloodshed! But of course they are deeply involved, and such a defence would hold no water in our courts of law! They are not only part and parcel of this massive conspiracy against their fellow humans, they are the instigators of it.
The poor terrified wretches are bound to stakes and the fire does the rest. Each dies cruelly and slowly but one last mercy is available - repentance brings the release of being strangled before the flames take hold. It will not, however, save the life. Before each prisoner is bound to the stake the sanbenito is removed and taken away. It will be displayed as a memento, hung in the church of the parish in which he or she once lived, loved, and even prayed, mute testimony of man's boundless inhumanity to man. And a reminder of the fearful end awaiting any who dare defy holy Church.
With the transformation of the European situation by the French Revolution there was a period of turmoil, after which the Congress of Vienna was convened and by the second decade of the 19th century many of the old laws were re-established. In Italy this meant the return, for a period, of the Holy Inquisition, along with public executions. When in 1849 the government of the Roman Republic opened some of the dungeons formerly used by the Inquisition in Rome, among the objects found were a small hat, belonging to a young girl of perhaps 10 or 11, children's playthings, and some infants' clothing. Niches were constructed in the walls of these underground chambers, which had been used to immure prisoners. Condemned heretics were buried alive, up to their shoulders, in earth mixed with lime. There were still the remains of corpses there. That they were alive when interred was indicated by the positions of the corpses; they showed convulsive efforts to extricate themselves from their graves. And as they died slowly and painfully over many days the holy monks working and living above evidently went about their daily business as if nothing unusual was occurring right beneath their feet.
Many opponents of Holy Church had suffered this terrible fate. Even one of their own. In 1564 Fra Tommaco di Mileton, a Franciscan, openly expressed doubts over the sinfulness of eating meat on Fridays. For his heinous offence Cardinal Carlo Borromeo ordered that the priest should be immured alive. The sentence read: 'I condemn you to be walled up in a place enclosed within four walls, there with anguish of heart and abundance of tears you shall bewail your sins and grievous offences committed against the majesty of God and Holy Mother Church.'
But lest we think the Church of Rome was alone in perpetrating such cruelties we might note that John Calvin, Protestant reformer and de facto dictator of Geneva, thundered from his pulpit against those who disagreed with him and presided over a system that imposed fines and imprisonment on any citizens who transgressed religious law, e.g. Calvin's law. The extreme penalties were exile and death and Calvin was directly responsible for the death by fire of Michael Servetus. Born in 1511, Servetus was a Spanish physician who discovered the pulmonary circulation of blood. He was also author of the theological works, De Trinitatis Erroribus (1531) and Christianismi Restitutio (published in 1553, the year of his death). The former book was effectively directed against the writings of the Calvin. In particular Servetus attacked the doctrines of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ, and for this sensible work (for both doctrines are absurdities) was brought before the Holy Inquisition.
Servetus had been living under an assumed name, Villeneuve, but was betrayed to the Church authorities indirectly by Calvin himself. He was found guilty and, having managed to escape custody, was condemned in his absence to be burnt alive. Many copies of his book were seized and burnt, as was an effigy of the theologian. En route to safety in Naples, Servetus made the mistake of stopping off at Geneva and, while attending a church service there on 13 August 1553, was recognized, reported to Calvin, arrested and imprisoned. Calvin was later to protest that he did not wish his death but it is evident that he hated Servetus over a period stretching back for seven years and he certainly aided in his detention and the preparation of the charges of heresy that were drawn up against him. Throughout his trial, Servetus was kept in a foul prison. Eventually he was condemned to death by fire and on the morning of 27 October 1553, was burnt alive on the hill of Champel, with the full approval of Calvin. In a polemical work issued later Calvin defended his actions, asserting that 'the glory of God must be maintained' regardless of all feelings of humanity. Others died, too, for example Gruet, who was tortured first, for in Calvin's Geneva torture was freely employed to extract confessions. And on one occasion a small child who struck its parents was beheaded.
The concept of government and social order taught by Calvin influenced the Puritans, who for a time triumphed in England and for a longer period in parts of America, imposing the same iron rule and the same misery upon the populace.
