medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
At 02:27 PM 6/16/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>You are misled by the IHT/NYTimes editorializing, smart-aleck headline
>about "Downsizing the Inquisition" and the distortions found in
>Horowitz's statements in the article. If yuou look at the quotation
>attributed to Henry Kamen and at the quotations from the various Vatican
>officials, gross numbers are only part of the issue. As with the
>revisionist literature in general, among the questions addressed are the
>purpose, procedures, percentages of various sentences and punishments,
>percentage of commuted sentences etc. Above all, the revisionist
>scholarship appropriately places the question of coercion in religious
>matters in the context of its times rather than assuming an air of
>self-righteous modern superiority.
you mean, "this stuff was okay back then, don't project modern values back."?
are you seriously going to tell me that the people whom the inquisition was
crushing didn't think it was a grotesque distortion of xnty to coerce
faith? that we only discovered modern principles in the modern world (when
they finally became the rule rather than the exception). that there were
no xns in the 11th-13th cns who viewed the growing resort to legalized
violence by the church as anti-christian? were they anachronisms?
r
>(Even in the modern West we still
>coerce in matters of religion and philosophy and politics but with less
>severe penalties ([professional, taxation etc.]).
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