medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Vatican Downsizes Inquisition
By Jason Horowitz
NY Times (in IHT), June 17, 2004
VATICAN CITY--The Vatican said Tuesday that fewer witches were
burned at the stake and fewer heretics tortured into conversion
during the dark centuries of the Inquisition than is generally
believed, but it also sought renewed forgiveness for sins
committed by Roman Catholics in the name of church doctrine.
.
In a statement, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the
Inquisition was widely viewed as one of the church's bleakest
periods and that it loomed as a symbol of scandal.
.
But he also asked, "To what degree is that image faithful to
reality? Before seeking forgiveness it is necessary to have
precise knowledge of the facts."
.
To better understand the causes and damage of the Inquisition,
the Vatican published a collection of scholarly essays on
Tuesday about the Inquisition, stitched together from a 1998
symposium of leading theologians and scholars.
.
Two years after the symposium, the pope made a sweeping apology
for the church's errors over the last 2,000 years.
.
"We cannot not recognize the betrayal of the Gospel committed by
some of our brothers, especially in the second millennium," he
said.
.
The Inquisition is widely considered to be among the deepest of
those betrayals.
.
It began in 1231 under Pope Gregory IX as a legal procedure to
root out heretics, but in later decades and centuries, the Roman
Catholic authorities began employing torture and execution to
enforce orthodoxy.
.
The Inquisition wreaked particular havoc in Spain, where
thousands were burned at the stake during the 15th and 16th
centuries.
.
But Agostino Borromeo, who edited the 783-page volume of essays
published Tuesday and who teaches history at Sapienza University
in Rome, said at a press conference here that of Spain's 125,000
heresy trials, only about 1 percent of the defendants were
condemned to death.
.
"Resorting to torture and sentences of death were not as
frequent as have long been thought," Borromeo said.
.
He and the cardinals who also participated in a panel on Tuesday
afternoon referred to hundreds of pages of research and tables,
including one that broke down the number of witches burned, per
capita, in European countries.
.
They said the numbers were relatively modest and countered what
they described as a widespread misconception about the extent of
Inquisition violence.
.
"You can't ask forgiveness for images that have been spread
throughout public opinion, that are more myth than reality,"
said Cardinal Georges Cottier, a Vatican theologian.
.
While many experts agree that the number of executions commonly
attributed to the Inquisition is inflated, some wondered if the
Church was practicing a sort of damage control on a
centuries-old blemish.
.
"Common perception is always exaggerated in terms of numbers,"
said Henry Kamen, author of the study "The Spanish Inquisition"
and a visiting history professor at the University of Chicago.
.
"But there are those who in reaction and self-defense
deliberately downplay the figures," he continued. "The Vatican
clergy might be in that category."
.
Other Cardinals present at the news conference said that it was
hard to judge the events of history from the perch of hindsight
and argued that getting to the fact of the matter was no easy
task.
.
"We are looking for a truth that has never fully been known,"
said Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, a high-ranking member of the
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
.
"Historical truth," he added, "is not easy to grasp in one's
hands."
.
The New York Times
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