The "black legend" on the Inquisition has long been destroyed by professional historians, with a reduction of such proportions as to cause concern to one of the leading specialists Italian, Adriano Prosperi (in fact by far the most cited in the following pages), the transition to a legend rose. " The fear is that we end up not emphasize enough that the intolerance of ecclesiastical court which sought to unify all the ideas in a single movement, the sua. Prosperi: “La scoperta che i giudici di quel tribunale agivano sforzandosi in buona fede di fare correttamente il loro lavoro e che spesso riuscivano ad arginare ondate di sospetti e d’intolleranza, che la loro procedura era rigorosa, che non desideravano far soffrire gli imputati, non significa sostituire alla “1eyenda nigra” una “leyenda rosada”" (Inquisizione: verso una nuova immagine?, in “Critica storica” n. 25, [19881). Già. Ma il lettore comune quanto sa di tale “scoperta”?
Comunque, qui si ricade nel solito problema del “revisionismo” storico, termine d’origine marxista che postula una verità ` ufficiale” da salvaguardare to avoid the risk that someone could, by dint "revision", be nostalgic influence. But we are convinced that today, as today (but tomorrow and tomorrow) only a visionary could think of the restoration of a Ancien Régime where the Inquisition held the count of those who confess and receive communion . Therefore, we prefer to be supremely democratic temptation to let everyone know, even the average reader, what academic historians are well aware for some time. Because the reader (the only owner and employer of those like us, the only, therefore, of the opinion that we care) of a thorny issue as the Inquisition should continue to have only the picture provided by the novels "Gothic" as The Pit and the Pendulum or The Name of the Rose? It has yet to perpetuate the unpleasant distinction between high culture for the elites and "low" for the common people? Catholics in our country are many, and are certainly interested in the truth about a "skeleton in the closet of their history, even if some prelate or intellectual property rights may be annoyed by the reopening of old wounds.
However, the free market has a way - in this case wonderful: one is master or not to buy this book without Inquisition the processes for doing so.
The material on the Inquisition is now truly immense, and it is why the following pages will be mentioned only the most representative works in our opinion, reluctantly dismissing - ponderous but important things such as the five volumes of the History of the Inquisition in Italy by Romano Canosa and authors favoring anything but soft against the Inquisition. The decision to propose and comment on Directorium Eymerich of sixteenth-century version of the sentence was suggested by the remarkable revival of the medieval inquisitor suffers today, it is transformed into the star of science fiction novels by an author of Urania, Valerio Evangelisti. In this way there was the possibility of offering a kind of "summa" on the subject using a character that young people know, a manual by medieval inquisitors with an update of two centuries later, a brief overview of what the modern historiography has established . Who wants to get a feel "faster" than it really was the Inquisition, did not have to do is read this book.
* * * However, you just tell the reader, our lord and master, who would be making a big mistake if you read the words of Eymerich and Peña with glasses of the late twentieth century. For two reasons. The first is that the "tolerance", which today means thinking in "weak" and politically correct, five hundred years ago (time of Peña) and - even more so - seven hundred years ago (time of Eymerich) was instead taken in its literal sense of "tolerance." Enlightenment on "religious tolerance" meant indifference to any creed, religious or not, arguing that, if religion leads to wars and massacres, it is best relegated to the private sector. Unfortunately, the Jacobins did not find other means we insist on this idea with their wars and massacres, which brings us back to the starting point. Or rather, off the road because of a history book is a book of history you read it and then, if you will, expresses an opinion, that opinion is more polished if you had the chance to hear all the bells.
* * * Another error to avoid, read this in the Inquisitor's Manual , you think that the directives of the compilers of such texts would follow readily applied. The inquisitors consult this manual for the procedure. The daily practice of those who were still of the priests - and never ceased to be the fact that you are wearing a heavy and often dangerous - can generally be summarized in the formula "lightning from the pulpit and mercy in the confessional." Indeed, because his contemporaries could not bear the clericalis mollities and between control and being obeyed, in those days, there was running, Eymerich for him and who were seen forced to make matters worse, hoping that by the increase in verbal threats grew out of at least one ' acceptable success rate.
"demonized by the Protestant controversy, attacked vigorously by the Illuminati to defuse the link with the" secular arm ", the Inquisition and then drew the romantic fantasies." So Prosperi ( Introduction, p. XVII) in a volume that the reader will find mentioned in galore: courts of conscience. Inquisitors, confessors, missionaries, Einaudi, 1996. Centuries later there are those who publish books which shows another aspect of Nero; nothing wrong therefore to say that the interrogators were in fact the last hope of the offender, who is wanted as a subversive by the "secular arm" , that the civil power. If he repented and showed a desire to return to the Church, she protected him and saved his neck. Otherwise, rejected the last chance of salvation, it was forced to "abandon the secular arm", that is a fate that the offender had voluntarily and persistently pursued.
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This point, of paramount importance, it should be noted se si vuol comprendere il linguaggio crudo ed esplicito di Eymerich (e di Peña; del quale tuttavia, per non pesare troppo sui lettori, abbiamo preferito riportare solo i passi essenziali). Certo, oggi siamo abituati a ben altra prudenza da parte degli ecclesiastici.
Ma al tempo di Eymerich non c’era timore di venire equivocati. Anzi, una certa apparente spietatezza era quasi d’obbligo per non confermare A potere civile (e lo stesso popolo) nel sospetto che la Chiesa fosse di suo troppo indulgente con colpevoli del delitto più alto: lesa maestà, il crimine peggiore nel mondo antico, la cui pena fin dai tempi di Diocleziano era il rogo. La Chiesa aveva dovuto lottare a lungo e duramente per sottrarre l’eresia alla giurisdizione marital status: if he had shown too keen to save the heretics, that court (always periclitante) would have been subtracted el'eretico had no mercy. Were in fact the divergent interests of the two "arms": the spiritual, tend to fall into the fold of Peter the heretic, the secular, to eliminate any threat of subversion.
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phantasmagoria Another entry for all in our imagination is that he sees on the heretics of innocent martyrs of free thought. " "Now, as long as the literature on the Inquisition was mostly Protestant origin (...) it has been quietly demonizing that institution (an instrument of the Antichrist, it was said) and enhance the victims as martyrs of the truth. A concept schematic and superficial "( The Inquisition: towards a new image? , cit., Pp. 141-142). From the pages that follow you will see that the heresy was the subject of the Inquisition cares only minimally and at times limited. Most of the time devoted to the inquisitors the fraudsters posing as priests, bigamy or trigami, witches denounced by disappointed customers. Not only that the heretics themselves, especially during the fight against Protestantism, were almost all monks and priests. In addition, properly so-called heretics were a thousand miles away from the claim "tolerance" or equivalence of faiths. Able, they would behave (and where were the majority behaved) as the inquisitors, and even worse.
course, for contemporary sensibilities freedom is worth much more than the truth. Indeed, it is the only value, where the notion of "truth" we came up with the suspicious attitude of Pilate ("Quid est veritas?") Or, worse, with the condemnatory of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, the whose main character declares in no uncertain terms that the only insane passion which is necessary to rid the truth is precisely that. Those who believe that truth exists is a sognatore (secondo Pilato) o un pericoloso fanatico (secondo Eco).
Beh, la Chiesa crede alla verità, e anche l’Inquisizione ci credeva. Girando il problema all’ultimo grande inquisitore vivente, il cardinale Joseph Ratzinger (che è prefetto della Congregazione per la dottrina della fede, ex Sant’Uffizio) centra il tema in un suo libro: La via della fede. Le ragioni dell’etica nell’epoca presente (Ares, 1996). E ribatte: già, ma che cos’è la libertà? La definizione di libertà non deve essere completata mediante il legame con la ragione, pena la caduta nella tirannia dell’irrazionalità? Per esempio, il marxismo presented himself as a liberator but was resolved in the largest system of slavery in history. The French Revolution began as a constitutional democratic idea, in fact made her the idea of \u200b\u200bRousseau's individualistic anarchy, and became a bloody dictatorship and centralized. The Protestant Reformation "liberated" the individual from the church hierarchy and dogma, created the national churches and ended up strengthening the power of the state. Reading Sartre
we realize that the radical freedom, total, the individual does not lead nowhere, a failure is distressing and senseless. The old temptation ("... you like ...") is repeated the desire for independence from everything and everyone by law, by, from reality itself, as havens drogastici promise. In short, the problem is still and always theological, because only God can enjoy absolute freedom, whereas the man is all the more free the more freely accept the truth, the force of gravity up. Only by accepting the laws of physics, in fact, you can fly, if he refuses, one smashes.
Without adherence to the truth, says St. Augustine, there is no structural difference between a state and a well-organized band of robbers. And there can be no freedom without responsibility. But in what sense the responsibility today is determined by consensus. Only that the consent is manipulated, and myths are more attractive than the truth.
Ratzinger says: "The pathology of religion is the most dangerous disease of the human spirit. It is given in religion, but there is proper even where religion is dismissed as such and shall be given a role in overall assets relating to: the atheistic systems of the modern age are the most frightening examples of a religious passion alienated from his essence. " Moral: if the truth does not exist, there is not freedom. As the Gospel says, only the truth sets us free. This concept was very clear and peaceful for everyone at the time of the Inquisition.
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And let us further consideration. The recent sectarian follies of fanatics (The mass suicide in Guyana, the Swiss-Canadian Solar Temple, and U.S. Internet, and then "Satan" Manson, Waco or the nerve gas in the Tokyo subway) cause to suspect that perhaps the 'inquisitorial attention has really, in centuries past, saved the brains of European and postponed the possible disasters operated by utopias, ideologies and cults inhuman. Maybe. And, of course, history is not made with the "if." But, thank God, not even with moralism.
In any case, the player who dispute the legends of black or pink no matter nothing can enjoy reading this Manual, a cross-section of medieval life (and Renaissance) which is not always given to see directly the sources.
* * * One last thing. The Vatican has recently opened archives to scholars of the Inquisition. They ran on this strange urban legends archive, which "closure" was attributed to some secret to hide. Things, as usual, were easier. Almost five hundred years of documents represent a huge amount, a frightening jumble of cards that requires rating by experts. Finally, this work has been completed and a scholar interested can usefully ask that the document, knowing that the store is now able to find them in reasonable time the volume that contains it. Why did it take so long? Again, the answer is simple: the politics and the humanities. A pope dies, if he makes another (time passes), the archivist expert dies, there is not one that can replace it immediately, there is a war of half, and there is the pope, there is the 'archivist and there is no war, but the situation is strongly anti-clerical, better then postponed. And so on. There is another aspect to consider: the majority of scholars are curious of heresy trials, but these are only a tiny part of the archives of the Inquisition, as it is formed by the great theological controversies of the sixteenth century, the phenomena of false mysticism of the next century, the spiritual movements of the following year, the comparison with the Enlightenment in the seventeenth century with liberalism, Marxism, positivism, evolutionism in the nineteenth. He added that between 1816 and 1817 the entire stock was seized and brought to Paris by Napoleon, which caused the almost total loss of documents relating to the processes. At the Restoration, very little could be recovered (number of documents were used as a paper fire, others were found in the stalls of the fishmongers, who used them per avvolgere la merce), anche perché il governo francese non volle accollarsi le spese del trasporto a Roma. Nella vicenda rimasero coinvolti anche i documenti riguardanti i processi di Galileo e Giordano Bruno.
Le carte messe a disposizione degli studiosi arrivano fino al 1903. Qualche teologo sospeso a divinis se ne è lamentato, insinuando, anche qui, “cose da nascondere”. Ma la storia del XX secolo è nota, e l’attività inquisitoriale del Novecento al massimo riguarda Padre Pio o beghe di monaci. In quel tempo il pontefice san Pio X rimaneggiò completamente l’istituzione, preparando il terreno alla riforma di Paolo VI. Dunque, gli ultimi novant’anni sono di scarso interesse laico”.
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Il famigerato Indice dei libri proibiti ? E’ sempre stato, per ovvi motivi, a disposizione di tutti. Copie d’antiquariato possono reperirsi agevolmente sulle bancarelle dei Navigli a Milano. Tale Indice – è bene ricordarlo – serviva solo ai devoti obbedienti: a volte passavano quaranta, cinquant’anni prima che un libro venisse inserito nell’Indice. Infatti occorreva prima leggerlo, magari tradurlo, esaminarlo, sottoporlo agli esperti. Nel frattempo, quanti lo volevano leggere avevano avuto ogni agio per farlo. Non solo. Le censure dovevano essere apposte a mano, copia per copia, coprendo di inchiostro nero le righe censurate. Insomma, l’Indice aveva, di fatto, only one value, in fact, indicative for the believers.
* * * Here we are in this Manual. Eymerich's work was one of the most popular reference books, with the margin even greater than that, though celebrated, Bernardo Gui. One interrogator, because of the meticulousness with which the procedure should be applied, almost could not help it. Divided into parts, chapters and sections (even with on certain points, a digital scan-to-answer question that makes us easily imagine the inquisitor finger scroll on the rows looking for the answer that will work for her), assembled in one convenient volume a vast patchwork of the most disparate provenienti da bolle, concili, decreti, canoni. In più, metteva a disposizione per una vastissima gamma di situazioni la consumata esperienza di un inquisitore rinomato per dottrina e precisione. La sua validità sfidò i secoli, tanto che, mutati i tempi e le eresie, non si stimò necessario provvedere alla confezione di un nuovo manuale; fu sufficiente incaricare Francisco Peña di aggiornarlo qua e là nelle parti divenute obsolete. Così, un manuale concepito in tempi di catarismo poté essere tranquillamente utilizzato anche per far fronte al protestantesimo. In fondo, come ha detto qualcuno, le posizioni eretiche sono come quelle erotiche: combinazioni monotonamente diverse all’interno di una gamma tutto sommato rather narrow.
However, the discourse on the Inquisition (which is basically what we are interested) are likely to remain incomplete. The reader, in fact, he would have to have to do with a reference book designed to church seven hundred years ago, and the commentaries that made sense only in the sixteenth century. It was therefore necessary to provide a "third hand" of paint on everything, to show the reader a picture of the millennium as far as possible all-round phenomenon of the Inquisition. Where appropriate, like a modern lawyer (but this time with intent advisers), I added examples, explanations, comparisons, quotes, historical facts, hoping that the resulting mix of comments and documents delivers a general overview of what is not allowed to see the works that speak but do not speak of the Inquisition's inquisitors.
* * * And now, I apologize for too many details and brackets, pass the word to the book. But I wonder: who cares, after all, the true story of the Inquisition? Legitimate question, given that a large spread of Italian newspaper (The Unit), give notice of the opening of archives in the Inquisition, dated to 1442 the Lutheran Reformation, Pope Paul III and the Council of Trent. Which, as noted columnist Socci Il Giornale, "is set in 1848 as World War II and the atomic bomb." In short, l’Inquisizione? (Forse) molto rumore per nulla.
AVVERTENZA L’Inquisizione non fu affatto un’istituzione monolitica, ed è più corretto parlare non d’Inquisizione ma delle Inquisizioni. Sommariamente, esse furono: Inquisizione episcopale (sec. XII); Inquisizione legatizia (sec. XII-XIII); Inquisizione papale-monastica (sec. XIII-XV; Inquisizione romana (dal 1542 in poi), diventata nel 1588 Congregazione del Sant’Uffizio. Abbiamo poi quella dogale veneziana (1249-1289), quella règia francese (1251-1314) e quella règia spagnola (1478-1834). In più, quelle laiche e governative dei vari principati, repubbliche, signorie, ducati, eccetera, and those in the Protestant countries (Netherlands, England, Scotland, the English colonies of America, etc.)..
Here we are concerned about the Catholic Church.
It is also worth stating that the use of the term "Inquisition" is correct, in substance, by the Protestant regions, but not in form. In fact, the repression of heresy, there was entrusted to the clergy (a concept very vague and rough in the composite galaxy Protestant), but to the regular courts. It was a result of the merger of church and state, generated by the rise of "national churches". As in England, was the de facto head of state summit of the religious community.
