Spirit of the inquisition alive and well in 2012

The Inquisition was based on certainty and Cullen Murphy argues that an equally aggressive certainty exists today. TP O’Mahony wonders if he’s right

God’s Jury

Cullen Murphy

Allen Lane;

€33.00

THE Inquisition conjures up such appalling images of horror that most of us are happy to consign it to another and more brutal age with which our own time has very little in common. We’re content to compartmentalise it, and treat it as we would tales of gladiators and the Circus of Nero — all in the distant past.

However, it is a key part of the author’s thesis that the Inquisition is “as robust as ever”. It is his central contention that many of the elements we associate with the Inquisition, and which are key components in the definition of it, are replicated in the modern world, especially in the post-9/11 world.

“The advent of the Inquisition offers a lens. Through it lies the world we inhabit now, one in which privacy and freedom of conscience are pitted against forces that would contain them. This is a central contest of the modern era and of the centuries that lie ahead. The issues posed by the Inquisition enfold the world we call our own.”

The sub-title of the book is “The Inquisition and the making of the Modern World”, and the author invites us to consider, not just the recurring debate over the historical Inquisition, but “the recurring behaviour that brings inquisitions into existence”. He labels this the “inquisitorial impulse”.

As for the origins of this impulse, he says it springs from certainty — from unswerving confidence in the rightness of one’s cause: “But conviction alone is never enough. What separates an inquisition from other forms of intolerance is its staying power. It receives institutional support — creating its own, or relying on what exists. It goes on and on. Today, the basic elements that can sustain an inquisition — bureaucracy, communications, the tools of surveillance and censorship — are more prevalent and entrenched, by many orders of magnitude, than they were in the days of Bernard Gui or Tomás de Torquemada. None of them will be reduced in significance in the years ahead. They will only become more powerful.”

Is he right? The post-9/11 experience in the US, which sees itself officially through the prism of its Constitution — and especially the Bill of Rights — as the great champion of democracy and liberty, lends cogent support to Murphy’s case.

The erosion of civil liberties has been frightening — detention without trial, rendition, the sanctioning of torture, widespread surveillance and invasions of privacy, censorship, these are all now part of the political culture in the United States.

Murphy, who is Vanity Fair’s editor at large, cites Jack Balkin of Yale University Law School, who has pointed out that the powers granted by acts of Congress in the period after 9/11 — the Authorisation of the Use of Military Force of 2001, the Patriot Act of 2001, the Military Commission Act of 2006, the Protect America Act of 2007, the 2008 Amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — have, taken together, “created a basic framework for the National Surveillance State”, which, in turn, could lead to “emergency government as a normal condition of politics”.

Murphy asks us to consider what an inquisition — any inquisition — really is: “a set of disciplinary procedures targeting specific groups, codified in law, organised systematically, enforced by surveillance, exemplified by severity, sustained over time, backed by institutional power, and justified by the vision of the one true path. Considered that way, the Inquisition is more accurately viewed not as a relic but as a harbinger”.

The mind-set persists. The tools are different, far more sophisticated, and so are the techniques of control and enforcement. Murphy makes a compelling case for the parallels between the era of Torquemada and that of Bush and Rumsfeld.

“The Inquisition — any inquisition — is the product of a contrary way of seeing things. It takes root and thrives when moral inequality is perceived between one party and anyone else. Inquisitions invite members of one group — national, religious, corporate, political — to sit in judgement on members of another: to think of themselves, in a sense, as God’s jury.

“Fundamentally, the inquisitorial impulse arises from some vision of the ultimate good, some conviction about ultimate truth, some confidence in the quest for perfectibility, and some certainty about the path to the desired place — and about whom to blame for obstacles in the way.”

We can see how the American “certainty” about its worldview spawned the “war on terror”, and its earlier certainty about “whom to blame” led to the tragedy of Vietnam.

The bulk of Murphy’s book deals with the historical Inquisition.

What we often forget is that, for the Inquisition to operate effectively there had to be a source of power, to ensure enforcement of its rulings and decrees. “From the outset, the religious aims of the Inquisition were enmeshed with the might of secular rulers.”

That was the key factor. The State and its agents would act as enforcers — mostly because it suited the purposes of secular rulers who, in turn, would benefit from entering into an alliance with a powerful ally — the Catholic Church and its Papacy. Alliances between throne and altar were a common feature of the politics of the West, especially in the period in question, from the 12th to the 19th century.

The Inquisition happened in phases or what the author calls chapters. What we call the Medieval Inquisition began in response to the menace posed to the Church by the Cathars of southern France. And it was the newly established Dominican Order who played the leading role in combating the Cathar heresy.

The Cathars were a sect consisting of a large group of dissenters who posed a serious challenge to the Church in the 12th and 13th centuries. They rejected the sacraments, the doctrine of hell, purgatory and the resurrection of the soul.

“The Albigensian Crusade” was launched by Pope Innocent III in 1208. The crusade set out to crush the Cathars, and really marked the start of the Inquisition, though it wasn’t until 13 years later that the term was used.

“Finally, in 1231, Pope Gregory IX issued two documents that effectively created what we know as the Inquisition.” It was this pope who first gave to papal agents the title of “inquisitor of heretical depravity”, according to Murphy.

“A second chapter, the Spanish Inquisition, commenced in the late fifteenth century. As King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile consolidated their rule, the Inquisition in a recently unified Spain pursued its targets largely independent of Rome. It was effectively an arm of the government, and the monarchs appointed its personnel.”

It wasn’t until the annexation of the Papal States in the mid-19th century during the Risorgimento that the Inquisition effectively ended. The mind-set, the impulse, endured however, as the treatment of theologians such as Hans Kung and Charles Curran illustrated, a treatment sanctioned by the man who is now Benedict XVI. While Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he served as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, successor to the Holy Office which, in turn, was the new name given to what, as late as 1908, was known as the Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition.