The Inquisition

There were several inquisitions: the Medieval (1184), the Spanish (1478), a state institution, and the Roman (1542), the most benign. Their abuses are real, but critics' statistics are wildly inflated, the Cathars were not proto-Fundamentalists, and the existence of an inquisition no more disproves the Church than Protestant inquisitions disprove Protestantism.

Several inquisitions

The Medieval Inquisition began in 1184 in southern France against Catharism and faded as Catharism disappeared. The Spanish Inquisition, from 1478, was a state institution to identify conversos, Jews and Muslims who feigned conversion, and also to clear those falsely accused; in popular imagination it has the worst record. The Roman Inquisition, from 1542, was the least active and most benign.

Don't fear the facts

Critics rely on Henry C. Lea and G. G. Coulton, who got most facts right but weighed them with hostility. Some Catholics have whitewashed the facts, fearing what critics hope: that they disprove the Church. They do not. The Church contains sinners, some in authority, as Paul and Christ warned of wolves among leaders (Acts 20:29; Matthew 7:15). Catholics should learn what happened, understand it in its time, and explain why it does not prove what critics think.

Phony statistics

One popular book claims 95 million victims. The countries with inquisitions, mainly southern France, Italy, Spain and parts of the Holy Roman Empire, did not have that many people until modern times. Historians credit the plague with major social change, but the Inquisition with little, because its victims were comparatively few. Recent studies indicate at most a few thousand capital sentences for heresy in Spain over several centuries.

What does it prove?

Ask what critics think it proves. That Catholics sin, that authorities erred, that zeal lost balance? All true, and not disproof of the Church. Many Fundamentalists imagine the Cathars were "Bible Christians," but Catharism, from what is now Bulgaria, mixed Gnosticism and Manichaeism: two gods, matter evil, marriage scorned while fornication was allowed, ritual suicide encouraged, and oaths refused, undermining all authority. Even Lea admitted that its dominance would have been disastrous.

The Inquisition's punishments were similar to, even lighter than, those of secular courts, and many preferred Church courts for their safeguards.

Why its leaders thought it justified

God commanded Israel to "inquire diligently" into secret worship of other gods and punish it (Deuteronomy 17:2-5; cf. 13:6-11), even in whole cities (13:12-18), to purge the evil from their midst (Deuteronomy 13:5; 17:7, 12), a principle Paul repeats (1 Corinthians 5:13). Medieval Christian kingdoms read these texts the same way. So did the Reformers: Luther and Calvin endorsed the state's purging false religion; Calvin's Geneva executed Jacques Gouet (1547) and burned Michael Servetus (1553); and thousands of English and Irish Catholics were put to death for their faith. If an inquisition proved a movement not of God, the argument would backfire on Protestants.