The Inquisition: Legal and Historical Roots
The nightmare known as the Inquisition is many centuries
older than its first use against heretics at the end of
the twelfth century. It began with the degradation of the
once noble system of Roman justice in the first three centuries
of the Christian era. Its corruption proceeded from one
source above all others - the accumulation of power in
the hands of the emperor. Once it began and the ancient
rights and privileges of Romans began to disappear, there
was no stopping the process until Roman law, Roman religion,
and Roman government spoke with one voice - the emperor's.
And in the end, the entire concept of individual rights
that government and law must respect had been obliterated.
Edward Peters, a historian of the Inquisition, put it this
way:
With the transformation of the Roman Republic into the
Roman Empire during the reign of Augustus (31 BC - 14 AD),
an enormous number of powers came into the hands of the
emperor, and the structure of the Republic was transformed... it
is clear that the emperor and his servants assumed more
and more direct control of legal procedure, at first paralleling
surviving courts and procedures, but eventually superseding
them. Gradually the sources of law were narrowed down to
one - the edict of the emperor. [1]
Nor was this process limited to the legal sphere. Ancient
Rome became the world's first totalitarian state whose
high taxes and pervasive control of human life were upheld
by brute, often sadistically cruel force. When this process
ended, a new legal officer with extraordinary powers had
emerged, the inquisitor. In his hands lay the
entire judicial process from beginning to end: investigation,
accusation, and conviction. He was policeman, prosecutor,
judge, jury, and executioner rolled into one. To assist
him the inquisitor had an army of informers and the power
to torture those accused on even the flimsiest of evidence.
The effective chains of this totalitarian society grew
tighter with every increase of the inquisitor's power.
This was the characteristic of Roman criminal law when
the Empire converted to Christianity in the fourth century,
and this was the law that Christian emperors applied to
heretics. [2]
This "conversion" did not change the barbaric and unjust
Roman system of justice. Indeed, even the destruction of
the Empire did not, although her conquerors replaced Roman
justice with their own, often superior systems based on
the natural law. The Church did what the shattered
Empire could not do -- carefully preserve the 
detailed regulations
of the Inquisition and keep its memory alive. When she
decided to rule over men's thoughts and beliefs, there
was no greater weapon in her arsenal than the Inquisition. [3] It
was greater even than the internal crusades she launched
against European "heretics" like the Cathars in southern
France.
Papal supremacy, corresponding exactly in its effects
to the accumulation of imperial power, required the destruction
(or submission) of all other spiritual powers. The process
to elevate the bishop of one city, Rome, over all other
bishops and Christians, was relentless.
Indeed, it has continued to this present day until the
Catholic Church, an organization of over one billion souls,
speaks through the voice of one man. Starting in the late
twelfth century, and continuing for six centuries, that
power was guarded by the Inquisition, whose denial of rights,
oppression, use of torture and terror exceeds its dark
reputation.
The greatest pope of the Dark Ages, Pope Innocent III,
articulated with earthshaking clarity the nature of that
power when he took the throne in AD 1198. Papal supremacy
reached out from the church to encompass the world in
a bid for power undreamed of by the Roman emperors the
papacy was modeled after .
It is to me that applies the word of the Prophet: I have
appointed you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms,
that you may uproot and destroy, and that you may build
up and plant...
God has established us above peoples and kingdoms. Nothing
of what occurs in the Universe must escape the Pope's notice
and control...
He has instituted two high dignities in the world: the
papacy which reigns over the souls, and the royalty which
dominates the bodies. But the former is very superior to
the latter.
As the moon receives its light from the sun, which shines
much brighter than the moon, so the royal power draws all
its splendour and prestige from the power of the Pope.
Christ has not only given Peter ruling power over the Universal
Church, but over the whole age. The princes have been given
power on earth; the priesthood has been assigned the power
on earth as well as in heaven. [4]
Nor was this a mere empty word, the bombast of a deluded
religious leader. This was policy, which the Catholic Encyclopedia
approvingly notes that he consistently sought to carry
out. " There was scarcely a country in Europe over
which Innocent III did not in some way or other assert
the supremacy which he claimed for the papacy. " [5]
And this was the Europe of the Inquisition -- the Pope's
Europe.
[1] Edward Peters, The
Inquisition , The Free Press, New York, 1988, p.
14-15
[2] Peters, p. 16-17
[3] A very good case
could be made that George Orwell's "thought police" in
his famous novel, 1984 , is based on the structure
and tactics of the Inquisition, whose records of investigation,
trial, and punishment were excellent.
[4]DOCUMENTS ET
CIVILISATION, de la Préhistoire à nos jours ,
classiques Hachette, p. 37
[5] "Innocent III" (newadvent.org)
Back
