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A penitent Vatican releases collection of essays on 'The Inquisition'
LISA PALMIERI-BILLIG Jun. 21, 2004
The Vatican has published an 800-page tome of essays on The Inquisition, based on a 1998 international symposium requested by John Paul II in the framework of soul-searching on past sins of the Catholic Church.
This, and another symposium, on "The Roots of Anti-Judaism in Christian Ambiance" in 1997, formed the basis of two of the seven prayers of request for forgiveness offered by the pope on March 12, 2000: one for the Inquisition and one for the centuries of suffering inflicted on the Jewish people by the Church.
The Inquisition contains the views of 32 scholars in French, English, Spanish, and Italian. It was launched last week in the Vatican Press Room by cardinals Cottier, Etchegaray, and Tauran with a special message from the pope.
Without denying the need for asking pardon, they said, the myth of evil surrounding the Inquisition needs downsizing since the facts have been distorted. Quoting statistics, the Church officials maintained that, for example, the Catholic Inquisition caused only one percent of the burnings of accused witches – the rest were enacted by the state authorities of Christian Europe.
In their presentation, only one of the cardinals made a passing reference to the Inquisition's persecution of converted Jews; no one else raised the topic. "Judeophobia," however, appears in nearly every essay as a basic reason for the Church's decision to launch the Inquisition.
Skimming through the essays, one finds that the numbers of trials and executions vary greatly from country to country. In the Portuguese colony of Goa in India, for example, the "New Christians" accused of "Judaizing" represented 9% of the number of people arrested, but 71% of those condemned to death.
Apparently the underlying motive for persecuting the conversos was economic envy, quickly transformed into ideological accusations.
In his essay on "The Roman Inquisition and Judaizers in Italy," Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini traces the evolution of this motive by comparing two Venetian Edicts of Expulsion against conversos, one in 1497 and another in 1550, after the Venetian ghetto had existed for 30 years. Though according to Zorattini neither of the edicts was rigidly applied, their semantics are significant.
"The analysis of the texts of the two edicts offers an interesting consideration: from one persecution to the next, a stereotype of the converso was formed. From the beginning, the converso was perceived as an element of potential danger, above all economic – wealth permitted him a freedom of action and impunity which obviously provokes fear in local merchants, a fear expressed in the first edict...Very quickly however, this danger finds justification in reasons of a moral order. In the 1550 edict, the conversos in fact become "unfaithful people, without religion and strong enemies of the Lord God..."
In Italy, the Inquisition was relatively mild, says Zorattini, with a few major exceptions – such as the Ancona burnings at the stake of 25 Portuguese conversos who refused to negate their Judaism in 1556 under Paul IV, and the 1583 burning at Rome's Campo de Fiori of Yosef Saralvo alias Gabriel Henriques who "circumcised hundreds of Judaizing conversos."
A more basic motivation, going even beyond that of envy, was the quest for power.
Grado Giovanni Merlo, in his essay "Origins of the Medieval Inquisition," writes: "The inquisitors were agents of a power that wanted to dominate the world and in its defense of orthodoxy... finds one of the strongest elements for legitimization. The main victims of the Inquisition after the 'Judaizers' were the other 'heretics' such as Protestants and 'crypto-Muslims' converted to Christianity, 'witches,' free thinkers accused of blasphemy, homosexuals, 'magicians,' 'bigamists,' those who professed thoughts in line with the Enlightenment or read forbidden books, and in general those with free sexual mores."
According to Bernard Vincent, author of The Inquisition and Islam, the early years of the Inquisition focused on conversos, while in following years other categories of heretics were added to the list of the persecuted. He says the Inquisition was a bit less hard on new Christians of Muslim origin because Islam represented a power not altogether conquered, and "the inquisitors were aware that they might one day find themselves in the shoes of those under trial."
A penitent Vatican releases collection of essays on 'The Inquisition'
LISA PALMIERI-BILLIG Jun. 21, 2004
The Vatican has published an 800-page tome of essays on The Inquisition, based on a 1998 international symposium requested by John Paul II in the framework of soul-searching on past sins of the Catholic Church.
This, and another symposium, on "The Roots of Anti-Judaism in Christian Ambiance" in 1997, formed the basis of two of the seven prayers of request for forgiveness offered by the pope on March 12, 2000: one for the Inquisition and one for the centuries of suffering inflicted on the Jewish people by the Church.
The Inquisition contains the views of 32 scholars in French, English, Spanish, and Italian. It was launched last week in the Vatican Press Room by cardinals Cottier, Etchegaray, and Tauran with a special message from the pope.
Without denying the need for asking pardon, they said, the myth of evil surrounding the Inquisition needs downsizing since the facts have been distorted. Quoting statistics, the Church officials maintained that, for example, the Catholic Inquisition caused only one percent of the burnings of accused witches – the rest were enacted by the state authorities of Christian Europe.
In their presentation, only one of the cardinals made a passing reference to the Inquisition's persecution of converted Jews; no one else raised the topic. "Judeophobia," however, appears in nearly every essay as a basic reason for the Church's decision to launch the Inquisition.
Skimming through the essays, one finds that the numbers of trials and executions vary greatly from country to country. In the Portuguese colony of Goa in India, for example, the "New Christians" accused of "Judaizing" represented 9% of the number of people arrested, but 71% of those condemned to death.
Apparently the underlying motive for persecuting the conversos was economic envy, quickly transformed into ideological accusations.
In his essay on "The Roman Inquisition and Judaizers in Italy," Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini traces the evolution of this motive by comparing two Venetian Edicts of Expulsion against conversos, one in 1497 and another in 1550, after the Venetian ghetto had existed for 30 years. Though according to Zorattini neither of the edicts was rigidly applied, their semantics are significant.
"The analysis of the texts of the two edicts offers an interesting consideration: from one persecution to the next, a stereotype of the converso was formed. From the beginning, the converso was perceived as an element of potential danger, above all economic – wealth permitted him a freedom of action and impunity which obviously provokes fear in local merchants, a fear expressed in the first edict...Very quickly however, this danger finds justification in reasons of a moral order. In the 1550 edict, the conversos in fact become "unfaithful people, without religion and strong enemies of the Lord God..."
In Italy, the Inquisition was relatively mild, says Zorattini, with a few major exceptions – such as the Ancona burnings at the stake of 25 Portuguese conversos who refused to negate their Judaism in 1556 under Paul IV, and the 1583 burning at Rome's Campo de Fiori of Yosef Saralvo alias Gabriel Henriques who "circumcised hundreds of Judaizing conversos."
A more basic motivation, going even beyond that of envy, was the quest for power.
Grado Giovanni Merlo, in his essay "Origins of the Medieval Inquisition," writes: "The inquisitors were agents of a power that wanted to dominate the world and in its defense of orthodoxy... finds one of the strongest elements for legitimization. The main victims of the Inquisition after the 'Judaizers' were the other 'heretics' such as Protestants and 'crypto-Muslims' converted to Christianity, 'witches,' free thinkers accused of blasphemy, homosexuals, 'magicians,' 'bigamists,' those who professed thoughts in line with the Enlightenment or read forbidden books, and in general those with free sexual mores."
According to Bernard Vincent, author of The Inquisition and Islam, the early years of the Inquisition focused on conversos, while in following years other categories of heretics were added to the list of the persecuted. He says the Inquisition was a bit less hard on new Christians of Muslim origin because Islam represented a power not altogether conquered, and "the inquisitors were aware that they might one day find themselves in the shoes of those under trial."
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