Chapter 62. Enforcing Orthodoxy: The Inquisitions and the Trial of the Templars

The end of the Cathars (Chapter 61) left the Latin Church with a permanent machinery for detecting heresy. For nearly five centuries that machinery took several forms: the medieval papal Inquisition after 1231, the Spanish Inquisition set up at the request of the Catholic Monarchs from 1478, and the Roman Holy Office of the Counter-Reformation, which tried Giordano Bruno and Galileo. Few subjects divide the library’s sources more sharply. Natale Benazzi and Matteo D’Amico reconstruct the great trials from the documents while rejecting the Enlightenment’s “black legend”. The Vatican-sourced Vatican Secret Archives presents the Inquisition as a rational and comparatively lenient court. Helen Ellerbe, Michael Kerrigan and M. Donnelly describe a system of terror built on torture. The trial of the Knights Templar (1307-1314) is the central case study: an inquisition driven by a king. The Order’s alleged secret doctrines are left to Part 11.

From inquiry to tribunal: origins and procedure

Benazzi and D’Amico argue that we should speak of “Inquisitions” rather than “the Inquisition”, because the Spanish Suprema “meant something completely different from the Roman Holy Office”. They date its first definite form to 1180-1231, “in the setting of the struggle against the Cathar heresy” [Benazzi & D’Amico, Cartea neagră a Inchiziției, #18380, Introducere, “Motivele şi momentele apariţiei Inchiziţiei”]. Donnelly stresses that the word “simply means an official, judiciary inquiry”. He notes that “as late as 1139 the only punishment sanctioned by the Church for such activities was excommunication” and quotes Bernard of Clairvaux: “Faith is to be produced by persuasion, not imposed by force.” In Donnelly’s account Innocent III began in 1198 to equate heresy with treason, and in 1229 Gregory IX proposed a body of monks learned in heresy, the Inquisitores haereticae pravitatis. At first they had “no authority” to inflict physical harm; obstinate or relapsed heretics, “something less than 10 per cent”, were handed to the secular arm [Donnelly, The Big Book of Pain, #33280, “The Origins and Early Practices of the Inquisition”]. Lewis writes that the Inquisition “introduced by Pope Gregory IX in 1231 was designed to fight all heresy… but its first target” was the Cathars, and that Gregory “appointed the Dominican friars as chief investigators of heresy” [Lewis, Dark History of the Popes, #62536, “Genocide: The Cathars, Part II”]. Ellerbe adds that in 1231 the Inquisition became a tribunal “independent of bishops and prelates”, answerable only to the pope, and that its law replaced “innocent until proven guilty” with “guilty until proven innocent” [Ellerbe, The Dark Side of Christian History, #6699, ch. 6].

Benazzi and D’Amico define the inquisitorial method as resting on suspicion and a presumption of guilt. “The soul must be laid bare to be completely transparent during the trial; it must be ‘taken apart’ piece by piece, reassembled and broken again, until the orthodoxy is certain.” In this strategy abjuration is “the highest summit”: “the person investigated testifies against himself to everything the accuser wishes to hear” [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, Galileo chapters]. They print Torquemada’s instructions, including: “Art. 15. If there is a discrepancy between what the investigated person says and the testimony of the witnesses, the investigated person shall be tortured. If someone confesses under torture, after three days he must reconfirm the confession. If he does not reconfirm it, the torture shall be resumed.” Article 16 kept the witnesses’ names secret [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, Spanish section]. Donnelly describes the garrucha: the victim’s hands were tied behind the back and the body hoisted on a pulley “as their shoulder joints were slowly dislocated”, then dropped, and the procedure was repeated “with a heavy stone tied to the prisoner’s feet”. He also describes the water funnel, the “Spanish Chair” and five fixed stages, from the threat of torture to its repetition “until he or she either talked or died” [Donnelly, #33280, “Inquisition Torture Practices”]. Kerrigan quotes William Lithgow’s 1620 ordeal at Málaga, “above sixty different tortures of the most hellish nature”. He argues that “torture wasn’t an abuse of inquisitorial procedure, it was its very basis”, explicitly approved by Innocent IV in 1252 [Kerrigan, Dark History of the Catholic Church, #71131, ch. 6 “Enforcing Orthodoxy: The Inquisition”].

The Spanish Inquisition and the conversos

Benazzi and D’Amico trace the Spanish “hunt” to one case: “the burning at the stake of two converts in 1477 at Llerena”. The Dominican Alonso de Hojeda, prior of the Seville convent, then led an investigation which found “that almost all the converted Jews continued to practise Judaism in secret”. “Ferdinand seizes the occasion and immediately requests the introduction of the Inquisition.” On 6 February 1481 “the first auto da fé takes place, with all the obligatory pomp, in which six converts are led to the stake”. They also note the popular name for converts, marrani, “pigs” [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, Spanish section]. In February 1482 a papal letter confirmed seven inquisitors, all Dominicans, among them Tomás de Torquemada. The authors say a “good” inquisitor was “above all a ‘good’ man of State” [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380]. Donnelly gives 1478 as the year Ferdinand and Isabella asked Sixtus IV for their own Inquisition. He names Torquemada as its head and lists among its targets conversos, moriscos, unconverted Jews and Moors, Freemasons and “Protestants”. He also quotes Sixtus IV’s protest that “many true and faithful Christians” had been tortured “because of the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves” [Donnelly, #33280]. Kerrigan writes that crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims “undoubtedly did exist”, but that many sincere Christians of Jewish or Muslim descent “never could find full acceptance” [Kerrigan, #71131, ch. 6].

The Vatican volume answers with the figures of the 1998-2004 research in the opened archives. It says that “between 1478 and 1834 the Spanish Inquisition conducted about 130,000 heresy trials”, that “exactly 1.8 percent of the accused were condemned to death” and 1.7 percent in absentia, and that the Portuguese Inquisition, with 5.1 percent, was harsher. It calls the Spanish tribunal “a state institution, never a Church one”, whose sentences several popes protested [Unknown, Vatican Secret Archives, #68123, ch. 4 “The Spanish Inquisition”].

The witch hunts as an extension

Ellerbe treats the witch hunts as the Inquisition’s widest application. In 1484 Innocent VIII’s bull Summis desiderantes authorised the inquisitors Kramer and Sprenger “to systematize the persecution of witches”, and their Malleus Maleficarum followed two years later. She quotes the chronicler of Trier, via Barbara Walker, that in 1586 “the entire female population of two villages was wiped out by the inquisitors, except for only two women” [Ellerbe, #6699, chs. 7-8 “The Witch Hunts”]. Kerrigan quotes the Dominican authors, “All witchcraft stems from fleshly lust, which in women is insatiable”, and calls it “a tragic irony” that the reformers, having discarded so much Catholic doctrine, “should have held on to Malleus Maleficarum” [Kerrigan, #71131, ch. 10 “The Devil’s Century”]. Donnelly follows the panics through the Thirty Years War to England’s last witchcraft execution in 1716 [Donnelly, #33280]. The Vatican volume reverses the blame. Citing Brian Levack, it says about 300,000 women died as witches in sixteenth-century Europe, “almost two hundred thousand” in Protestant Germany and “seventy thousand” in Protestant England. Citing Agostino Borromeo, it gives fifty-nine for Spain, thirty-six for Italy and four for Portugal, and it reports that an assembly of inquisitors at Granada in 1526 declared flying witches “an impossibility” [Unknown, Vatican Secret Archives, #68123, ch. 4].

The Roman Inquisition: Bruno and Galileo

Benazzi and D’Amico reconstruct Giordano Bruno’s last night. At two in the morning of 16-17 February 1600 the Confraternity of San Giovanni Decollato received the order to prepare for the execution of an “impenitent” heretic. Bruno, dressed in the sanbenito, was led to Campo dei Fiori. His accuser of 1593, the Capuchin Celestino da Verona, had himself been burned there on 16 September 1599 [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, “Rugul fratelui Giordano”]. On Galileo, the authors analyse the denunciation by the Dominican Lorini. They note that he “does not speak about Galileo, but always about galileisti“, attacking a school rather than a man. They print the abjuration signed “in Rome, in the convent della Minerva, on 22 June 1633”: “I, Galileo Galilei, have abjured, sworn, promised and bound myself” [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, Galileo chapters]. Calvin’s burning of Servetus in Geneva (1553) belongs to the same pattern on the Protestant side. The Vatican volume uses it, together with a figure of five hundred dead in Calvin’s Geneva, to argue that Protestant persecution is “passed over” [Unknown, Vatican Secret Archives, #68123, ch. 4]. The Servetus case is treated in a later chapter.

The church’s own reappraisal opens Benazzi and D’Amico’s book. On 10 November 1979, at the Einstein centenary, John Paul II said that Galileo “had, unfortunately, much to suffer from men and representatives of the Church” and asked for “honest recognition of injustices, from whichever side they come”. The resulting commission ended its work on 31 October 1992, and the authors describe this as “the beginning of a road” towards reviewing “the case of the Inquisition” [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, Introducere, “Biserica îşi revizuieşte trecutul”]. Ellerbe opens with a 1994 confidential letter from the same pope to the cardinals, later leaked: “How can one remain silent about the many forms of violence perpetrated in the name of the faith—wars of religion, tribunals of the Inquisition and other forms of violations of the rights of persons?” [Ellerbe, #6699, Preface].

The Templars: a royal inquisition

The Vatican volume sets the Templar case within Philip IV’s finances. Philip, a “despot on the throne of France”, was compared by Bishop Bernard Saisset “to an owl”. “From the very beginning of his reign, his eyes were fixed on Aquitaine and Flanders”, and “constant wars swallowed up a great deal of money”. The volume lists what followed: debased coinage, the clash with Boniface VIII, Nogaret’s attack at Anagni (1303), the arrest and expulsion of about 100,000 Jews in 1306, and the plunder of the Lombard bankers in 1309. Citing Barbara Frale, it says de Molay refused the king a loan and opposed his leadership of a crusade. On 14 September 1307 sealed orders were sent out, and “on October 13, at dawn” the knights were seized across France [Unknown, Vatican Secret Archives, #68123, ch. 1 “Trial of the Knights Templar”]. Milan Vároš describes the evening before. On Thursday 12 October 1307 Nogaret was courteous to de Molay at the funeral of Catherine of Valois, and while the dignitaries rested in the Temple, “in the castles of France the sealed envelopes with the strictly secret order were being opened” [Varoš, Soarta comorilor de aur, #18139, “Procesul şi sentinţa”]. Sanford Holst calls his chapter “A River of Gold and Friday the 13th”. He argues that large sums were never left in the Templar vaults but were sent east along a “river of gold”, and that de Molay had “vigorously defended the Templars’ right to remain independent of the Hospitallers” at Poitiers [Holst, Sworn in Secret, #50535, ch. 10].

Tim Wallace-Murphy and Marilyn Hopkins write that “King Philippe le Bel was scrupulous in his actions, and extremely careful to explain that he was only acting at the request of Guillaume de Paris, the chief Inquisitor of France, a deputy of the pope and the king’s confessor”. Given the king’s hold over Clement V, “it is obvious that Philippe was the prime mover in the whole affair”. De Molay, they say, had prepared his case against amalgamation with the Hospitallers on grounds of service and of divine vocation [Wallace-Murphy & Hopkins, Custodians of Truth, #70623, ch. 14]. These authors’ Rex Deus theses are treated in Part 11.

Charges, confessions and suppression

On 14 October 1307 Nogaret told Sorbonne masters at Notre-Dame that the Templars were guilty “of denying Christ, profaning the cross, worshipping a deity with a human head, desecrating the Mass, and practicing homosexuality”. The charges grew from seven to “over seventy”, and “136” of 140 brothers arrested in France confessed. Frale, quoted in the Vatican volume, explains the spitting and denial as an initiation rite meant to prepare recruits for Saracen captivity, and suggests that the “head” may have been the Shroud of Turin [Unknown, Vatican Secret Archives, #68123, ch. 1]. The volume follows the case through Clement V’s bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae (22 November 1307) and the mass retractions. It then cites the Chinon Parchment found by Frale in 2001, in which the cardinals “did not find the accused guilty of heresy” and absolved them. Philip pressed the pope with the threat of a schism and with the burning of fifty-four retracting Templars on 12 May 1310. On 3 April 1312, at Vienne, Vox in excelso dissolved the Order “but did not condemn it”. On 18 March 1314 de Molay and Geoffroi de Charney retracted their confessions and were burned that same day on the Île-des-Javiaux [Unknown, Vatican Secret Archives, #68123, ch. 1]. Donnelly quotes Clement’s letter forcing Edward II to permit torture: “no state can override Canon Law, Our Law” [Donnelly, #33280]. Kerrigan puts the figure at “15,000 priests” arrested and says Philip “won twice over”, cancelling his debts and taking the Templars’ wealth [Kerrigan, #71131, Avignon papacy section]. Vároš concludes that “no one managed to take possession” of the treasure, not even Philip IV [Varoš, #18139, “Procesul templierilor”]. Nesta Webster, by contrast, holds that the dualist doctrines “attributed to the Templars” were those “professed by the Bogomils” [Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, #69057, Part I].

Contrasting judgements

The Vatican volume sums up its case with the caption that the Inquisition “was established to combat such heresy in a peaceful and orderly manner”. It cites Marian Małowist (“an attempt to rationalize the judicial process”) and Jean and Guy Testas (“the most objective institution of its time”), and it credits Gregory IX with defence counsel and access to the files. It reports Jean Dumont’s finding of torture in “twelve” of some two thousand Valencia trials and in “one case out of the 636” at Toulouse between 1309 and 1323 [Unknown, Vatican Secret Archives, #68123, ch. 4]. Benazzi and D’Amico place the “black legend” in the Enlightenment’s political struggle. They ask readers to “overcome the myth of its cruelty, without denying the real harshness that characterised it” [Benazzi & D’Amico, #18380, Introducere, “Dincolo de legendă”]. Kerrigan grants that the Leyenda Negra was propaganda but replies that “the Inquisition existed every bit as surely as the GULAG did”. He cites the itemised invoices sent to families for “interrogation, imprisonment, transportation and execution costs” [Kerrigan, #71131, ch. 6]. Ellerbe quotes an inquisitor: “the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to save the soul of the accused but to achieve the public good and put fear into others” [Ellerbe, #6699, ch. 6].

Key points

• The sources date the Inquisition’s formation to 1180-1231 against the Cathars. Gregory IX (1229 according to Donnelly, 1231 according to Lewis and Ellerbe) gave it to the Dominicans, and Innocent IV formally approved torture in 1252 (Kerrigan).
• Benazzi and D’Amico describe a method aimed at laying the soul bare, with abjuration as its culmination, and print Torquemada’s rule that unconfirmed confessions bring renewed torture.
• The Spanish Inquisition grew out of Llerena (1477), Hojeda’s Seville inquiry and Ferdinand’s request, and held its first auto-da-fé on 6 February 1481 (six converts burned).
• The figures are disputed. The Vatican volume gives 130,000 Spanish trials with 1.8 percent executed and blames the witch deaths mainly on Protestant lands. Ellerbe and Kerrigan stress the Inquisition’s role in the witch hunts and the Malleus.
• Bruno was burned at Campo dei Fiori in February 1600, and Galileo abjured on 22 June 1633. John Paul II reopened the Galileo case in 1979 (commission closed 1992) and asked in 1994 how one could “remain silent” about the tribunals.
• The Templar arrests (sealed orders opened on the evening of 12 October, seizures on 13 October 1307) served Philip IV’s finances. Wallace-Murphy and Hopkins call Philip, not the Inquisitor Guillaume de Paris, “the prime mover”.
• The Chinon Parchment records absolution, and Vox in excelso (1312) dissolved the Order without condemning it. De Molay was burned on 18 March 1314 after retracting.
• Royal plunder (Kerrigan, the Vatican volume), the lost treasure (Varoš) and Bogomil dualism (Webster) remain competing explanations of the Templar case.