Releasing new study, Catholic Church again says "sorry"
for inquisition
June 16, 2004
Agence France Presse
VATICAN CITY, June 16 (AFP) -
 A
new set of historical studies published by the Roman Catholic
Church has found that one of the main skeletons in its cupboard
-- the centuries-long campaign against heretics called the
Inquisition -- may have involved somewhat less torture and
killing than was commonly believed.
One of the studies blames civil authorities rather than
the church for a wave of witch-burning in Europe and the Americas
that saw tens of thousands of women burned at the stake.
Nevertheless, the nearly 800-page study includes a letter
from Pope John Paul in which he again apologized -- as he
did for the first time in 2000 -- for the church's role in
the Inquisition, which tortured and ordered the jailing and
execution of uncounted numbers of people on the mere suspicion
of heresy.
Christians on occasion "indulged in ways of thinking
and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal,"
the pope said, adding that the inquisition was one example
of such scandal.
The study consists largely of the minutes of a groundbreaking
symposium in 1998 that prepared the ground for the pope's
historical apology four years ago.
The fact that it took the Vatican six years to publish the
volume was not because it was afraid to face the past, but
because of the illness of several people who took part in
the symposium, according to Cardinal George Cottier.
Cottier, the pope's in-house theologian, is a member of
the Dominican order that was largely responsible for carrying
out the Inquisition.
The pope said the Vatican had sponsored the study because
"before asking for forgiveness, it is necessary to know
exactly what are the facts." Cottier added at a news
conference that an apology had to be grounded on facts rather
than "myths" that are "widely held by public
opinion."
The first formal inquisition was set up in 1184 in response
to the Catharist heresy in southern France. In 1231, Pope
Gregory IX decreed life imprisonment for repentant heretics
and death for those who did not repent.
Gregory left it up to civil authorities to carry out the
sentences, enabling the church in later years to decline its
responsibility for mass executions known as autos-da-fe carried
out by the Inquisition in Spain and Latin America. The last
mass burning was carried out as late as 1850 in Mexico, after
the Spanish Inquisition had been abolished.
Burning at the stake as punishment for heresy was established
by the Synod of Verona in 1184 and several times reaffirmed
by the Roman Catholic Church.
But burning was by no means a Catholic monopoly. Witch-burning
was prevalant in parts of northern Europe not under the control
of the Roman church.
Calvinist Scotland had one of the most dismal records of
witch-burning, and in Geneva, the Protestant leader Jean Calvin
had no hesitation in sending his opponents to the stake, including
the pioneering Spanish physician and scholar Michael Servetus,
who rejected the doctrine of the Trinity.
Historian Antonio Borromeo, the editor of the Vatican study,
said one study showed that civil tribunals sent tens thousands
of women to the stake as witches, compared to fewer than 100
by the Inquisition.
At the end of the 15th century, King Ferdinand and Queen
Isabella set up an independent Inquisition in Spain as an
early form of ethnic cleansing to root out remnants of Islam
and Judaism. The Spanish Inquisition -- made famous by Franciso
Goya's dark sketches and paintings -- has remained a byword
for oppression and torture.
Elsewhere the church tried to bring local inquisitions under
central control by placing them under a supervisory body later
known as the Holy Office. This became the current Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, which still has the task of
repressing heresy.
Presenting the volume at the Vatican, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray,
81, a close confidant of the pope, said that acknowledging
the past was all the more relevant given the continued use
of torture in the 21st century, most notably by US troops
on prisoners in Iraq.
"The lessons that come to us from history never come
to an end," he said. The Inquisition was "a sad
chapter which Christians must look into with an open spirit
of repentance."
Etchegaray said it was hoped that the book, "Minutes
of the International Symposium 'The Inquisition,'" would
become a reference point for future historians. More than
30 experts, non-Catholics as well as Catholics, took part
in the symposium.
|
