the Spanish Inquisition and its shorter-lived Portuguese cousin were “a significant force in four continents for more than three centuries”, operating in their homelands and in colonies from Brazil to Angola and the Philippines.
In Green’s analysis, the Iberian inquisitions were tools of the state, not of the church, but in the long run the state was weakened by their excesses. Their stifling effect on intellectual enquiry fuelled the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese empires and opened fissures in Spanish political life which reached their head in the civil war and still exist today.
The Inquisition might appear quintessentially medieval. But Green sees it as a precursor to modern totalitarianism.
The Inquisitions were fuelled by corruption and malice, and many inquisitors were sexually predatory. The downfall of Archbishop Carranza of Toledo at the hands of Inquisitor-General Fernando Valdes was set in motion by Valdes’s jealousy at Carranza’s appointment; it was abetted by the enmity of the Dominican theologian Melchor Cano. But jealous spouses, embittered in-laws and envious neighbours all provided the underpinning for the grand persecution. One of Green’s examples stands out: a gardener quarrelled with an inquisitor’s page who had snatched a toy from his child, and spent the next nine months imprisoned in chains.
The Inquisitions hungered for new scapegoats. After Jews and Muslims came converts. Then Protestants were the bogeymen: English sailors were pulled off ships and tortured, catechisms scrutinised for signs of crypto-Lutheranism. By the mid-18th century, Freemasons were the target.
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Inquisition
Review by David Honigmann
Published: July 28 2007 01:40 | Last updated: July 28 2007 01:40
Inquisition: The Reign of Fear
By Toby Green
Macmillan £20, 458 pages
FT bookshop price: £16
Between 1478 and 1812, the Spanish Inquisition tried more than 100,000 people for heresy, and executed thousands of them. Revisionist historians have minimised its horror, but as Toby Green sets out in his thematic history, the Spanish Inquisition and its shorter-lived Portuguese cousin were “a significant force in four continents for more than three centuries”, operating in their homelands and in colonies from Brazil to Angola and the Philippines.
In Green’s analysis, the Iberian inquisitions were tools of the state, not of the church, but in the long run the state was weakened by their excesses. Their stifling effect on intellectual enquiry fuelled the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese empires and opened fissures in Spanish political life which reached their head in the civil war and still exist today.
The Inquisition might appear quintessentially medieval. But Green sees it as a precursor to modern totalitarianism. The Inquisitions were inherently bureaucratic: they are easy for historians to study because they recorded everything. Green’s work in the archives focuses on individuals, which prevents the victims becoming mere statistics.
There is a pathos in the inventory of the possessions of Francisco Pinero, arrested in 1636: “One mattress ... four cedar chairs with broken seats... An old parasol.” As well as being bureaucratic, the Inquisitions were modern in their love of euphemism. Orwell would have appreciated the use of “relaxed”, meaning “tortured to death”, or auto da fe as an anaesthetic term for a public judicial killing.
The Inquisitions were fuelled by corruption and malice, and many inquisitors were sexually predatory. The downfall of Archbishop Carranza of Toledo at the hands of Inquisitor-General Fernando Valdes was set in motion by Valdes’s jealousy at Carranza’s appointment; it was abetted by the enmity of the Dominican theologian Melchor Cano. But jealous spouses, embittered in-laws and envious neighbours all provided the underpinning for the grand persecution. One of Green’s examples stands out: a gardener quarrelled with an inquisitor’s page who had snatched a toy from his child, and spent the next nine months imprisoned in chains.
The Inquisitions hungered for new scapegoats. After Jews and Muslims came converts. Then Protestants were the bogeymen: English sailors were pulled off ships and tortured, catechisms scrutinised for signs of crypto-Lutheranism. By the mid-18th century, Freemasons were the target.
For the most part, the Inquisition abstained from the witch-hunts that flourished in northern Europe, but as Green says, it had “other scapegoats to persecute without the need to invent witches”. The Inquisition cast a long shadow, and in the 20th century, many learnt from its techniques.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
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