Did the Church officially order so-called "Inquisition"?

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agangbern

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As far as I know, the so-called inquisition of the past was a work of the civil government at that time. The Church simply intervened to minimize, if not prevent, abuses in the government’s process of inquisition. In effect, the Church saved many from the fatal effects of the Inquisition.
How come now, many use the Inquisition to attack the Church?
 
The Church did not do anything about it though… and the grounds used for the Inquisition were religion related. An order of the pope to stop would have been sufficient.

Also, the crusades did fill Jerusalem with blood, and that was definitely Catholic… there was a city of Christians that was ransacked by the crusaders simply because they needed food. The crusaders were promised forgiveness, in exchange for their taking of arms.

I don’t agree with this event as a Catholic.
 
Definitely Catholic?
There were no Protestants at the time of the Crusades.
 
ABiii said:
The Church did not do anything about it though… and the grounds used for the Inquisition were religion related. An order of the pope to stop would have been sufficient.

Also, the crusades did fill Jerusalem with blood, and that was definitely Catholic… there was a city of Christians that was ransacked by the crusaders simply because they needed food. The crusaders were promised forgiveness, in exchange for their taking of arms.

I don’t agree with this event as a Catholic.
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An order of the Pope to stop the civil government in its Inquisition program? That would have been direct intervention on the affairs of the state! But the Church did not sleep. It surely somehow intervened in the process of Inquisition.
Regarding the crusades, I hope you put in here the links to it so that we may study it on line.
 
I believe that around that time, the pope still had some sort of say with state affairs… hmm… there were times when the pope himself could depose a king from his throne… and vice versa

I read a book by the controversial Hans Kung about the history of the Catholic Church… and the A & E documentary about the second millenium of Christianity. Those are my sources.

Why those? Simply because they seem less biased than Catholic sources (those never talk about the mistakes).
 
ABiii said:
Why those? Simply because they seem less biased than Catholic sources (those never talk about the mistakes).
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I guess if you don’t use Catholic sources, you really don’t know if mistakes were admitted or not, would you?
 
I would suggest that before you start commenting on the Inquisition that you learn something about it. It was definitely sanctioned by the Church. The Office of the Inquisition existed for hundreds of years.

You may wish to start with the Catholic Encyclopedia, although it is a decidiedly biased account. You may then wish to look at articles written by neutral historians.

newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm
 
SyCarl said:
You may then wish to look at articles written by neutral historians.
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Having known a few historians, I don’t believe there is such a thing.:rolleyes: My suggestion would be to read several accounts from different points of view written by serious historians.
 
ABiii said:
I believe that around that time, the pope still had some sort of say with state affairs… hmm… there were times when the pope himself could depose a king from his throne… and vice versa

I read a book by the controversial Hans Kung about the history of the Catholic Church… and the A & E documentary about the second millenium of Christianity. Those are my sources.

Why those? Simply because they seem less biased than Catholic sources (those never talk about the mistakes).
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Are those sources available on line? If not available, maybe you can just quote here the most revealing paragraph?
 
Actually, Hans Kung is a prominent Catholic, albeit controversial (under Wikipedia)

Hans Küng (born March 19, 1928 in Sursee, Canton of Lucerne), is a Catholic priest, a Swiss theologian, and a prolific author. Since 1995 he has been President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos). Küng remains a Catholic priest in good standing,[1] but the Vatican has rescinded his authority to teach Catholic theology. Though he had to leave the Catholic faculty, he remained at the University of Tübingen as a professor of Ecumenical Theology, serving as Emeritus Professor since 1996. Neither his bishop nor the Holy See have revoked his priestly faculties.

That is impartial to me. I have read several Catholic books on history, and all give no mention of mistakes. That is why I say Catholic books are biased… at least if they mentioned some… I would believe them.
 
ABiii said:
Actually, Hans Kung is a prominent Catholic, albeit controversial (under Wikipedia)

Hans Küng (born March 19, 1928 in Sursee, Canton of Lucerne), is a Catholic priest, a Swiss theologian, and a prolific author. Since 1995 he has been President of the Foundation for a Global Ethic (Stiftung Weltethos). Küng remains a Catholic priest in good standing,[1] but the Vatican has rescinded his authority to teach Catholic theology. Though he had to leave the Catholic faculty, he remained at the University of Tübingen as a professor of Ecumenical Theology, serving as Emeritus Professor since 1996. Neither his bishop nor the Holy See have revoked his priestly faculties.

That is impartial to me. I have read several Catholic books on history, and all give no mention of mistakes. That is why I say Catholic books are biased… at least if they mentioned some… I would believe them.
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I visited Wikipedia hoping to see anything that Huns Kung might have about the Inquisition. But there was none in it. The reference would seem not to serve anything.
 
Sorry, I don’t have the book on me.

It’s authored by Hans Kung: the history of the Catholic Church.

The A & E documentary is entitled “Christianity, the Second Millenium”
 
Not that the internet has made us perfect but in an age before the internet I would suppose mistakes were made. What we do know is that many who were accused of capitol crimes by the state often appealed to the Church inquisitors in order to receive penance and not execution. We also know that if one were to compare the numbers of executions attributable in any way to any of the inquisitions (Spanish and Roman are the two primary ones) one would rightly come away with the distinct impression that compared to the modern world the inquisitors were gentle bringers of civilization to the world and you would be correct.

I don’t like to post on this board but just a word of encouragement to our friend from the Philippines, "keep up the good research. You are on the right track. Don’t let misinformation spread by the Church’s enemies get you side tracked.

A good secondary source is Crocker, “Triumph”. Some may not like him. After all he is Catholic. He could never be telling the truth, according to some, if he is Catholic. However, as a college professor who teaches Church history, I attest to his truthfulness.

CDL
 
agangbern said:
An order of the Pope to stop the civil government in its Inquisition program? That would have been direct intervention on the affairs of the state! But the Church did not sleep. It surely somehow intervened in the process of Inquisition.
Regarding the crusades, I hope you put in here the links to it so that we may study it on line.
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I’d read some Catholic Church history if I were you. The inquistors were Catholic officials for starters. The church was inextricably tied up in “state” business as it were. The Church does not even dispute the sad state of affairs of either the Inquisition or the Crusades. Many many Jews were murdered indiscriminately by the Crusaders, many of whom were mere peasants led by their noblemen for whom they worked the land. Raiding of innocent villages occured more than once since food and supplies were never adequately provided by the Crusade leaders. The church doesn’t deny these things.
 
agangbern said:
As far as I know, the so-called inquisition of the past was a work of the civil government at that time. The Church simply intervened to minimize, if not prevent, abuses in the government’s process of inquisition. In effect, the Church saved many from the fatal effects of the Inquisition.
How come now, many use the Inquisition to attack the Church?
Click to expand...

One can scarcely get more official than Popes & Councils & bishops:​

  • Lateran III (1179)
  • Gregory IX
  • Innocent IV
  • Paul IV
  • Pius V
    all encouraged or legislated for the various forms of it, medieval or later.
It was anything but a purely civil tribunal - Adrian Cardinal Dedel succeeded Cardinal Ximenes (who was Primate of Spain)as Inquisitor-General; & became Pope as Adrian VI. They were both clerics. Jurisdiction over the Protestants put to death in England from 1555 to 1558 was not Inquisitorial - it was episcopal; as it had been throughout the West before the Inquisition was founded. Bernard Gui OTOH was first an Inquisitor (from 1307 to 1321), & then a bishop. Pierre Roger was first a bishop (and has left a register of heresy trials), then became Pope. The Templars in 1314 were tried by Church tribunals, & then burned by the French Inquisition.

As for the trial of Joan of Arc, it was not free of clerics, including a bishop:
  • Joan of Arc#Capture, trial, and execution
  • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Cauchon
    Several Inquisitors have been beatified or canonised - Pius V is one: as Cardinal Alessandrino, he was extremely energetic in stamping out the Reformation in Italy; that’s why Paul IV admired him so much. Another is Pedro Arbues (who got the chop in 1485 - his murder led to a pogrom, which kept the Inquisition well-supplied with BBQ material for a long time to come). There are several beatified or canonised Franciscan & Dominican inquisitors - Peter Martyr O.P. (killed in 1252) is one.
Innocent IV (1241-54) legislated in 1252 for its use of torture - & did so as Pope. How official are the Pope’s acts as a legislator ? Pretty much, surely.

It is a great mistake to imagine that because we might want the “official Church” (i.e., the clerical part of it) to be free of involvement, this was its attitude in the period during which it was active. That doesn’t make its use of torture, denunciation, imprisonment & death for doctrinal failings any more Christian. 😦
 
As someone who has studied the Crusades and the numerous Inquisitions (e.g. the Albigensian, Spanish, Italian, etc.) for nearly 20 years, both as an atheist and then as a Catholic, I can say that none of the posts I have seen on this thread, on either side, are accurate or even-handed.

Fist, the Crusades, except for the Albigensian one in the early 13th century, had absolutely nothing to do with the Inquisition. Since this thread is about the Inquisition, any discussion of the the Crusades is, therefore off-topic.

Secondly, when one is speaking of the “Inquisition” in the manner that it has been on this thread, it should not be capitalized. There were numerous inquisitions, all established for different reasons, all having different durations, and all of them were completely separate from criminal and civil courts in their respective countries.

Finally, if you want to fund source material regarding the inquisitions, the notorious A&E presentation, the one produced by the BBC, previous referred to in this thread has about the same credibility as an Oliver Stone documentary on Ronald Reagan would.
 
Gottle_of_Geer said:
As for the trial of Joan of Arc, it was not free of clerics, including a bishop:
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You do realize that the articles you list on Joan of Arc point out that the trial that condemned her was called illegitimately, found that there were no grounds for opening a trial, the bishop was corrupt and working for the English government under their payroll to find Joan guilty, and that the pope declared her innocent of all heresy charges. Plain and simple, her trial was a rigged kangaroo court used to discredit the French government during the Hundred Years’ War.
 
The Inquisition was a Church institution, set up to check the spread of heresy. Actually the “Inquisition” most people know of is the Spanish Inquisition, which had the most excesses. The Roman Inquisition (the one which tried Galileo) was the most benevolent.

This has been beaten to death on another thread, but the fact is, impenitent heretics were considered a threat to society (and indeed they were), such that the civil government found it in their best interests to execute them. The Church handed them over for the civil government for punishment according to civil law (heresy was not a death-penalty offense in the Church).

As for the Crusades, the reasons were justified: the protection of the holy sites and passage for Christian pilgrims. Yes, there were abuses, but I do wish the Crusades had succeeded. That would have been possible only of the Crusaders behaved like the Christians they claimed to be.
 
ABiii said:
I believe that around that time, the pope still had some sort of say with state affairs… hmm… there were times when the pope himself could depose a king from his throne… and vice versa

I read a book by the controversial Hans Kung about the history of the Catholic Church… and the A & E documentary about the second millenium of Christianity. Those are my sources.

Why those? Simply because they seem less biased than Catholic sources (those never talk about the mistakes).
Click to expand...
Blatently false. I just finished a history of the Catholic Church (“A popular history of the Catholic Church” I think) written by a Catholic that readily admitted any errors made by Catholic Popes, Bishops, Priests and leity. Your oversimplification of these issues speaks volumes of your lack of true study.

Further, the way that the inquisitions related to religious matters was that in the countries involved, heresy was considered as treason by the state, not something implemented by the Church, and was considered punishable by death. The Church, as pointed out by the OP, made sure the trials were as fair as possible rather than a witch hunt like the governments were conducting.

As for the Crusades, the claim of it being a Catholic thing is yet another lack of historical knowledge. Jeruselem was a Catholic mainstay from the start of the Church until islam invaded and took over. People who were Christian (Catholic) in those areas were in mortal danger at all times and people who tried to go to the Holy Land on pilgrimage were also in danger. The Crusades were an effort to make the areas safe and to bring Christianity back to where it rightly belonged.
 
(1) Medieval… 1233
This was considered to be the first of the Inquisitions. It was convened specifically to combat the Albigensian heresy. This was a cancerous heresy which threatened the very foundations of the Church.

(2) French…1306
This Inquisition was called again to combat the Albigensian (or Cathari) heresy.

Here is how one dictionary defines it.
  1. It is the act of inquiring into a matter; an investigation.
  2. A tribunal formerly held in the Roman Catholic Church and directed at the suppression of heresy.
Deut 13:5-12, “The Lord, your GOD, shall you follow, and Him shall you fear; His commandment shall you observe, and His voice shall you heed, serving Him and holding fast to Him alone. But that prophet or dreamer shall be put to death, because, in order to lead you astray from the way which the Lord, your GOD, has directed you to take,** he has preached apostasy from the Lord, your GOD**, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and ransomed you from that place of slavery. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst. If your own full brother, or your son or daughter, or your beloved wife, or your intimate friend, entices you secretly to serve other gods, whom you and your fathers have not known, gods of any other nation, near at hand or far away, from one end of the earth to the other: do not yield to him or listen to him, nor look with pity upon him, to spare or shield him, but kill him. Your hand shall be the first raised to slay him; the rest of the people shall join in with you. You shall stone him to death, because he sought to lead you astray from the Lord, your GOD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that place of slavery. And all Israel, hearing of it, shall fear and never again do such evil as this in your midst.”

Deut 13:13-16, “If any of the cities which the Lord, your GOD, gives you to dwell in, you hear it said that certain scoundrels have sprung up among you and have led astray the inhabitants of their city to serve other gods whom you have not known, you must** INQUIRE **carefully into the matter and investigate it thoroughly. If you find that it is true and an established fact that this abomination has been committed in your midst, you shall put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, dooming the city and all life that is in it, even its cattle to the sword.”

Deut 17:2-7, “If there is found among you, in any one of the communities which the Lord, your GOD, gives you, a man or a woman who does evil in the sight of the Lord, your GOD, and transgresses His covenant, by serving other gods, or by worshiping the sun or the moon or any of the host of the sky against My command; and if, on being informed of it, you find by careful investigation that it is true and an established fact that this abomination has been committed in Israel: you shall bring the man (or woman) who has done the evil deed out to your city gates and stone him to death. The testimony of two or three (a tribunal. See definition 2 above) witnesses is required for putting a person to death; no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness. At the execution, the witnesses are to be the first to raise their hands against him; afterward all the people are to join in. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst.”

Deut 19:18-19, “…And if after a **thorough investigation **the judges find that the witness is a false witness and has accused his kinsman falsely, you shall do to him as he planned to do to his kinsman. Thus shall you purge the evil from your midst.”

Est 2:23, “And when INQUISITION was made of the matter, it was found out; therefore they were both hanged on a tree: and it was written in the book of the chronicles before the king.”

Wisdom 1:9, "For INQUISITION shall be made into the thoughts of the ungodly, and the hearing of his words shall come to GOD, to the chastising of his iniquities.
 
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