Inquisition
Edward Peters
Number of quotes: 12
Book ID: 116 Page: 1
Section: 3A1
Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries in western Europe, the Latin Christian Church adapted certain elements of Roman legal procedure and charged papally appointed clergy to employ them in order to preserve orthodox religious beliefs from the attacks of heretics.
Quote ID: 2737
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 116 Page: 2
Section: 3A2A
The ecclesiastical courts that were technically called inquisitions, and were later mythologized into The Inquisition, had their origins in several procedural changes in Roman law that occurred no later than the late first century B.C. Inquisitorial procedure existed first in Roman and then in canon law, long before there were inquisitors.
Quote ID: 2738
Time Periods: 07
Book ID: 116 Page: 11
Section: 3A2A
Long before the Christian Church possessed any judicial apparatus at all, long, in fact, before it even became a legally recognized part of the religions of the Roman world, Roman law had devised the inquisitorial procedure that later, adapted to different historical periods and problems, shaped the ecclesiastical and secular inquisitions of medieval and early modern Europe.
Quote ID: 2740
Time Periods: 07
Book ID: 116 Page: 29
Section: 3A2A
But heterodoxy was no longer, and had never exactly been, a crime against an individual. It was a crime against the ecclesiastical community, and once that community became identical with the empire, a crime against it became a crime against the empire—treason—as well.
Quote ID: 2741
Time Periods: 47
Book ID: 116 Page: 32
Section: 1A
The conversion of the Empire had transformed the Church, and the absorption of the Church had transformed the Empire. When the Roman Empire ceased to exist in the west after the fifth century, a number of its institutions, practices, and values survived in the Latin Christian Church, including the disciplinary practices that had emerged over two centuries of cooperation.
Quote ID: 2742
Time Periods: 1456
Book ID: 116 Page: 36
Section: 1A
When an individual entered the Church as a cleric, however, most early medieval laws recognized him as having, in a sense, come under another personal law, and one of the early legal codes phrased this difference in clerical status nicely: ecclesia vivit lege romana “the church man lives according to Roman personal law” meant that clergy were expected to abide by whatever Roman law had survived in their particular community, ...
Quote ID: 2743
Time Periods: 6
Book ID: 116 Page: 48
Section: 3A2A
But in 1199 Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) issued the decretal Vergentis in senium, which constituted a major step in the formalization of the prosecution of heretics. Besides repeating much of Ad abolendam, Innocent’s decretal for the first time identified heresy with the doctrine of treason as found in Roman law.
Quote ID: 2744
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 116 Page: 64/65
Section: 3A2A
The medieval rules of evidence recognized only full proofs and partial proofs. The only full proofs were the testimony of two eyewitnesses, catching the criminal in the act, or confession. All other evidence constituted partial proof, and no amount of partial proof could add up to full proof in cases of capital crimes.. . . .
If enough partial proofs were at hand, they were considered justification for the seeking of a full proof, which, in the absence of eyewitnesses or the defendant’s having been caught redhanded, could only be confession.
At this point, the doctrine of torture came into play.
. . . .
Technically, therefore, torture was strictly a means of obtaining the only full proof available (and absolutely necessary in a capital crime) when a great mass of partial proofs existed and no other form of full proof was available.
Quote ID: 2745
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 116 Page: 80
Section: 3A2A
Not even the argument of forced baptism protected Jews from the inquisitors. In a trial held at Pamiers in southern France in 1320, Baruch, a converted Jew who was accused of having relapsed into Judaism, argued that he had been forced to submit to baptism under the threat of death. His arguments, however, were rejected by the inquisitorial tribunal on the grounds that Baruch had not been subjected to “absolute coercion,” by which appears to have been meant forcible immersion in the baptismal font accompanied by protests on the part of the defendant. Baruch’s response that he had not been forcibly held at the font and that he did not protest at the time because he had been told that to protest meant death did not satisfy the inquisitors, who argued that only in such circumstances as they had specified could a defense of coerced baptism be recognized.
Quote ID: 2746
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 116 Page: 82
Section: 3A2A
Although most of the conversions were forced, Christian canon law held that even a forced conversion was binding, and the conversos, against their will or not, were now fully privileged members of Spanish Christian society.
Quote ID: 2747
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 116 Page: 85
Section: 3A2A
When an alleged converso plot to take arms against the inquisitors was uncovered in Seville in 1481, the first large-scale condemnation of Judaizing conversos was held, along with the first public burning of condemned heretics. The public sentencing of convicted heretics came to be known as the auto-de-fé, the ‘act of faith.”
Quote ID: 2748
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 116 Page: 123
Section: 3A2A
Every Reform movement that succeeded in the sixteenth century did so either because a state protected it or because it came to control a state. Reformers who found no state or state protection suffered as much from Protestant state religions as from Catholicism.Pastor John’s note: survived
Quote ID: 2749
Time Periods: 7
End of quotes