September 28, 2006
HISTORY ACCORDING TO THE QUEEN OF HEARTS
While we’re at it (Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, June,/July, 2006) (Scroll down)
It becomes wearying to point out that the Inquisition of the thirteenth century resulted in the deaths of about three people per year; that the Spanish Inquisition of the late fifteenth century was a matter of crown policy and was significantly moderated by the Church; that at the time rulers thought that religious uniformity was necessary to the safety of the state; and that the same assumption in England, where there was no Inquisition, resulted in numerous deaths of both Protestants and Catholics. The Inquisition in its various forms over three hundred years accounted for fewer deaths—about three thousand in all, according to modern scholars—than the number of people killed on any given afternoon under the fanatically anti-religious regimes of Stalin and Hitler. Yet in the hysterical polemics about the threat of an American theocracy, the Inquisition is right up there with the Gulag Archipelago and the Holocaust. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying the Inquisition was a good thing. The pertinent fact, however, is that secular rulers believed heresy was a threat to the state and were determined to stamp it out. The Church, mainly in the form of the Dominicans, was enlisted to conduct legal inquiry (inquisitio) into whether an accused person was really guilty of heresy. Most of those charged were acquitted, and those who recanted their heresy were given penances of the same kind as those imposed in the Sacrament of Penance, such as fasting, pilgrimage, or the wearing of distinctive crosses on their clothes. Unlike other penances, those imposed by the Inquisition were legally enforceable. Should the Church have stepped in to moderate and bring under control the determination of rulers to stamp out heresy? Today almost everybody would say no. It is, however, no more than a chronological conceit of superior righteousness to claim that the answer was self-evident at the time. For St. Thomas More against Protestants, Queen Elizabeth against Catholics, and Ferdinand and Isabella against Jews and Muslims, there was no doubt that religious uniformity was essential to the well-being of the state. If an argument can be made that it was the case then, it is certainly not the case now.
Arguing about history with a leftist or libertarian is, as Fr. Neuhaus says, often wearisome. They are just so fiercely glued to the ideological principle that the modern is superior to the past by definition at all times and in all ways (and just wait for the future!). If you point to a problem such as substance abuse or STD’s as an incident of modern culture, you will be quickly assured there is little to worry about as it was much worse sometime somewhere in the 19th century. (One is thankful the folks of the 19th century weren’t so smug and sanquine about their superiority to the 14th century.) If you try to engage them in the idea that maybe, just maybe, the unspeakable slaughters and genocides of the last hundred years have something to do with modern thinking, you are waved aside brusquely so they can talk about a real outrage like Galileo’s trial. But the most charming conceit by far is the notion that pre-Enlightenment secular leaders were proto-human rights activists struggling to throw off an oppressive theocracy in the name of freedom and independent scientific inquiry.
A dispassionate reading of Western history reveals to all but the most ideologically hidebound that were it not for the Church (es) there would have been no universities, scientific inquiry, fair trials, abolitionist movement, rights for women, limited government, international law, rules of warfare, protection for serfs, aboriginal rights, and many, many other rather important things. There would, however, have been lots of torture and some really great parties.