When the historian Carlo Ginzburg died last week, I decided to look at his early book The Cheese and the Worms. I'm not sure when I'll read the whole thing, but I was gobsmacked by something in the translators' foreword.
Furthermore, while moral justice was impossible in a context where the Catholic Church felt, together with virtually all other secular and religious authorities on both sides of the Alps, that it had the right, even the duty, to persecute those who differed in their religious beliefs, legal justice in sixteenth-century terms was dispensed by the Roman Inquisition. It was not a drumhead court, a chamber of horrors, or a judicial labyrinth from which escape was impossible. Capricious and arbitrary decisions, misuse of authority, and wanton abuse of human rights were not tolerated. Rome watched over the provincial tribunals, enforced the observance of what was, for the times, an essentially moderate code of law, and maintained, to the extent that a consensus existed, uniformity of practice.
This didn't reassure me. They conceded that moral justice was impossible in that historical and cultural context, but insisted that the persecution of those who differed in their religious beliefs could be done without capricious and arbitrary decisions, misuse of authority, or abuse of human rights. This was "an essentially moderate code of law" because people were persecuted uniformly. The Nazis made similar claims, with as much validity; or if that's too extreme for you, so did Dante for his Hell, or the architects of the US invasion of Vietnam.
Then, just a couple of paragraphs later, the translators added:
A permanent and indispensable member of every inquisitorial court was the notary (or a cleric deputized to assume this function), who transcribed in writing as the legal manuals required “not only all the defendant’s responses and any statements he might make, but also what he might utter during the torture, even his sighs, his cries, his laments and tears” (E. Masini, Sacro Arsenale [Genoa, 1621], p. 123).
"During the torture." Well! As long as the torture was transcribed by a notary or a properly deputized substitute, the procedure was "not a drumhead court, a chamber of horrors, or a judicial labyrinth from which escape was impossible." This technocratic amorality is impressive, and what's more, I don't understand why the translators felt it necessary to write this apologia for it in the second half of the twentieth century.
I then opened my copy of Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, a revised edition published in 1970. The book is widely acclaimed and often cited. I read it long ago, in the 1980s, and I'd been meaning to find a passage that made a very strong impression on me back then. It's mainly about the Brothers of the Free Spirit, a movement that spread over much of Europe for more than a century despite the Inquisition's determined campaign to wipe it out. I found the passage I wanted more easily than I expected:
Brussels continued to harbour Brethren of the Free Spirit. In 1410 the Bishop of Cambrai appointed two inquisitors to extirpate what was still called ‘Bloemardinne’s heresy’; but they found themselves helpless in the face of the popular enthusiasm. Songs were sung after them in the streets and attempts were even made upon their lives.
Songs were sung after them in the streets! Attempts were even made on their lives! This demonstrated to Cohn how wicked the Free Spirit were, and how gullible the masses were to fall for their evil teachings, which Cohn presented as the precursors of later Communism and Marxism. (As usual, he neglected to notice that those teachings had their origin in the New Testament.) When The Pursuit of the Millennium was first published in 1957, Nazism was still fresh in adults' memories, the Cold War was in full swing, and Cohn's contemporaries were sure that Elvis Presley's hips were sucking modern youth into the same mass insanity. What I thought when I read it was that it was entirely reasonable and to be expected that torturers and murderers whose methods would later be used by Stalin and the Third Reich would encounter popular resistance when they swaggered into town.
This long section of Cohn's book consists largely of a litany of heretics who were burned alive by the Inquisition. Here are a couple of examples out of many.
During eighteen months’ imprisonment Marguerite steadfastly refused to purchase absolution by recantation. In 1310 her book was condemned by a committee of theologians; and she herself was excommunicated and sentenced to death by burning. This woman seems to have had many followers, for some months after her death Clement V was bidding the inquisition at Langres to proceed with vigour against the heretics who were multiplying there so rapidly that they were becoming a grave danger to the faith....
The heretics of Cologne had found a remarkable leader in a certain Walter, who came from Holland and who had already been active as a missionary at Mainz. This man was a preacher of great eloquence and persuasiveness; and he wrote various tracts in German which circulated secretly amongst his followers. In the end he was caught; and having refused under the worst tortures to betray his associates or to recant he was burnt. According to one source Walter was an apostate priest, and the head of a large secret group which was captured by a ruse in 1325 or 1327. As many as fifty Brethren of the Free Spirit are said to have been executed on that occasion, some by burning and some by drowning in the Rhine.
But not to worry, a notary or a deputized clerk was no doubt present to record everything Marguerite and Walter said under torture, so everything was done decently and in order.
One more anecdote. These heretics didn't just worry the Roman Catholics, the Protestants agreed that they must be eliminated.
To counter these activities, the French Protestant community in Strasbourg sent one of their ministers to Tournai, where however he was caught by the Catholic authorities and burnt.
You see, the Inquisition didn't discriminate: all mortal threats to the Christian faith must be extirpated. And I imagine that if the Free Spirit had acquired enough institutional power, they'd have returned the favor. It was out of this context, and the religious wars that followed, that freedom of religion became an ideal and a founding principle of the American republic. As Ginzburg's translators say, such freedom wasn't a virtue in Europe before that; Catholics and Protestants agreed that it was their duty to punish those who held different religious beliefs. At most each side wanted toleration for itself.
I suppose I should reread The Pursuit of the Millennium and, if possible, Cohn's 1975 book on the struggle against European witchcraft, Europe's Inner Demons. As I recall, Cohn was as confused about that issue as most academics were at the time - were the witches mentally ill, or were they really worshipping the Devil? it didn't occur to them that if anyone was mentally ill, it might have been the Inquisitors. Not that I think so either: the medicalization of evil is not an improvement on treating it as a sin. As Hugh Trevor-Roper said in his essay on the European witch-craze, the complex demonology that gave the witch-hunters an ideology for their campaign was a triumph of Reason comparable to Aquinas' philosophical work. (Remember: Garbage In, Gospel Out!) But that's for another day.
