The Inquisition
The Inquisition, from its Establishment to the Great Schism: By A. L. Mayeock. With Introduction by Father Ronald Knox. (Constable. 12s. 6d.) To an English Protestant reader the mere word Inquisition conjures up horrors unspeakable. We live in an age when toleration is a fashionable virtue, though it is not alwav practised, and we look back on the long ages of intolerance with wonder that men could behave so ill to one another. Furthermore, we remember that many Protestants suffered under the attentions of the Holy Office, and we are tempted to assume that all the blame lies with the Roman Catholic Church for the cruelty that has stained the history of Europe for many centuries. Yet the honest Protestant must admit that such views are unhistorical. Intolerance has not been shown by Roman Catholics alone. The Bolsheviks of Russia, the Fundamentalists of Tennessee and the Ku-Klux-Klan, and the anti-Clericals of France display at the present moment the temper of Calvin and Loyola in the sixteenth century, and of St. Dominic and Bernard Gui in the thirteenth. If we are to understand the Inquisition and judge it fairly, we must begin by realizing that intolerance has been the rule rather than the exception in human society, and that saints as well as sinners have at all times been reluctant to let other meg preach and practise creeds of which they did not approve.
Mr. Maycock's new book on the origin of the Inquisition is peculiarly interesting because it treats the subject historically and on the whole dispassionately. Father Ronald Knox in his lively dogmatic introduction is inclined as usual to ridicuk Protestant sentiment. Mr. Maycock, who is also a Roman Catholic, shows greater wisdom in stating the facts and avoiding theological controversy. The Inquisition, as he says, was tentatively established towards the close of the twelfth century to combat the Albigensian or C,atharist heresy in Languedoc. It was transferred from the Bishops to the new Dominican order in the early thirteenth century, and became der the friars so potent an instrument that Catharism was n rooted out. The Church did not originate heresy hunts the practice Of burning heretics. It followed slowly, and mewhat reluctantly, in the wake of public opinion. There much truth in Mr. Maycock's remark that, to the men of the ddle Ages, heresy was "an assault upon Society, for it ruck at the Church which was the foundation of Society."
explains the savage treatment accorded, early in the eventh century, to a few Albigensians who penetrated into orthem France and the Rhineland. .Thirteen of them, hiding two secular canons, were burnt at Orleans in 1022 the civil power. Several heretics found at Goslar—who re proved to be Albigensians because they declined to kill
d eat a chicken—were hanged by order Of the Emperor. .1debrand himself (Pope Gregory VII.) excommunicated ose who took part in burning a heretic at Crimbrai. Popular ling was clearly hostile to heresy long before the Inquisition
s founded. And, curiously enough, it was the Emperor crick IL, the "wonder of the world" and the bitterest emy of the Papacy, who ordained that heretics should be nit at the stake and gave the sanction of law to what had g been a custom.
It is possible that Mr. Maycock's account of the Catharist resy as thoroughly immoral and anti-social may be contro- rted. We know it mainly from the testimony of its Catholic emies. Yet it does seem to have been a creed which made r loose living, since it condemned marriage ; and its central trine of the unlawfulness of taking life, whether of a man of an 'animal, was decidedly inconvenient. The Catharists re, of course, definitely anti-Christian, like the Persians and bs from whom their beliefs were derived. Such a heresy, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was calculated to ite violent indignation among the faithful, and it was all e easier for the Church to lead Northern Frenchmen in a sade against Languedoc when the French Kings_ coveted
t rich province. The Catharists, forgetting their dislike killing, resisted violently and slew many an inquisitor and seder before they were put down. Mr. Maycock's elaborate d detailed account of the inquisitorial system is -v-rell done. shows incidentally that the Dominicans, though they used rture and the stake, strove mainly to restore heretics to the d. While the Count of Toulouse, in capturing Montsegur, nit two hundred Catharists without trial, Bernard Gui, chief Inquisitor at Toulouse, pronounced 930 sentences in teen years and sent only forty-two of the accused to the ke. Many an auto-da-ft was bloodless. It may be noted, that while the Catharist heresy disappeared, the earlier aldensian heresy—a kind of primitive Christianity closely n to the Franciscan movement—has survived though it s bitterly persecuted. This goes to show that beliefs which 'e a sound ethical basis will endure, whatever may happen their founders.
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