Inquisition time of existence. What is the Inquisition? The reasons are the history and essence of the Inquisition. The Inquisition as an Organization in the Russian Empire

When King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, with the approval of Pope Sixtus IV, established the Spanish Inquisition. The Congregation of the Sacred Chancellery was established in 1542, replacing the "Great Roman Inquisition", and in 1917 it was also transferred the functions of the abolished Congregation of the Index. In 1908 it was renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith ( Sacra congregatio Romanae et universalis Inquisitionis seu Sancti Officii). The work of this institution was built in strict accordance with the legislation then in force in Catholic countries.

Goals and means

Torture applied to those accused of heresy. Engraving 1508.

The main task of the Inquisition was to determine whether the accused was guilty of heresy. Since the end of the 15th century, when ideas about the massive presence of witches who concluded an agreement with evil spirits among the ordinary population begin to spread in Europe, the processes of witches begin to enter into its competence. At the same time, the overwhelming number of judgments about witches was passed by the secular courts of Catholic and Protestant countries in the 16th and 17th centuries. While the Inquisition did persecute witches, virtually every secular government did the same. Towards the end of the 16th century, Roman inquisitors began to express serious doubts in most cases of accusations of witchcraft. Since the year, Pope Nicholas V has also transferred cases of Jewish pogroms to the competence of the Inquisition. The Inquisition was supposed not only to punish the rioters, but also to act preemptively, preventing violence. The Inquisition did not allow extrajudicial reprisals. In addition to the usual interrogations, torture of a suspect was used, as in the secular courts of the time. Catholic lawyers attached great importance to frank confession. In the event that the suspect did not die during the investigation, but confessed to his deed and repented, the case materials were transferred to the court.

Judicial procedure

VIII. The inquisitor questioned the witnesses in the presence of a secretary and two priests, who were instructed to observe that the testimony was correctly recorded, or at least be present when it was given, in order to listen to it in full during the reading. This reading took place in the presence of witnesses who were asked if they would confess what had now been read to them. If a crime or suspicion of heresy was proved during the preliminary investigation, then the agreed person was arrested and imprisoned in a church prison, if there was no Dominican monastery in the city, which usually replaced it. After the arrest, the defendant was interrogated, and a case was immediately started against him according to the rules, and a comparison of his answers with the testimony of the preliminary investigation was made.

IX. In the early days of the Inquisition, there was no prosecutor who was required to prosecute suspects; this formality of legal proceedings was performed verbally by the inquisitor after hearing witnesses; the consciousness of the accused served as an accusation and a response. If the accused pleaded guilty to one heresy, he vainly assured that he was not guilty in relation to others; he was not allowed to defend himself because the crime for which he was being tried had already been proven. He was only asked whether he was inclined to make a renunciation of the heresy of which he had pleaded guilty. If he agreed, then he was reconciled with the Church, imposing canonical penance on him simultaneously with some other punishment. Otherwise, he was declared a stubborn heretic, and he was betrayed into the hands of the secular authorities with a copy of the verdict.

The death penalty, like confiscation, was a measure that, in theory, the Inquisition did not apply. Her business was to use every effort to bring the heretic back into the fold of the Church; if he persisted, or if his conversion was feigned, she had nothing more to do with him. As not a Catholic, he was not subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, which he rejected, and the Church was forced to declare him a heretic and deprive him of her patronage. The original sentence was only a simple condemnation of heresy and was accompanied by excommunication or a declaration that the guilty party was no longer considered to be within the jurisdiction of the Church; sometimes it was added that he was being handed over to the secular court, that he was released - a terrible expression that meant that the direct intervention of the Church in his fate had already ended. With the passage of time, the sentences became more lengthy; a remark often already begins to come across, explaining that the Church can no longer do anything to atone for the sins of the guilty, and the transfer of him into the hands of secular power is accompanied by the following significant words: debita animadversione puniendum, that is, "let him be punished according to merit." The hypocritical treatment, in which the Inquisition implored the secular authorities to spare the life and body of the fallen, is not found in ancient sentences and was never formulated precisely.

Inquisitor Pegna does not hesitate to admit that this appeal to mercy was an empty formality, and explains that they resorted to it only for the purpose that it would not seem that the inquisitors would agree to the shedding of blood, as this would be a violation of canonical rules. But at the same time, the Church was vigilant to ensure that its resolution was not misinterpreted. She taught that there can be no question of any condescension if the heretic does not repent and testifies to his sincerity by betraying all his like-minded people. The inexorable logic of St. Thomas Aquinas clearly established that the secular government could not but put the heretics to death, and that only because of her boundless love, the Church could turn to heretics twice with words of conviction before handing them over to the secular authorities for a well-deserved punishment. The inquisitors themselves did not hide this in the least and constantly taught that the heretic they had condemned should be put to death; this is evident, among other things, from the fact that they refrained from pronouncing their sentence on him within the confines of the church fence, which would have been desecrated by the death penalty, but pronounced it in the square where the last action of the auto-da-fe took place. One of their 13th century doctors, quoted in the 14th century by Bernard Guy, argues this: “The purpose of the Inquisition is to destroy heresy; heresy cannot be destroyed without the destruction of the heretics; and heretics cannot be destroyed unless the defenders and supporters of heresy are also destroyed, and this can be achieved in two ways: by converting them to the true Catholic faith or by turning their flesh to ashes after they are handed over to the secular authorities. "

The main historical stages

Chronologically, the history of the Inquisition can be divided into three stages: 1) pre-Dominican (persecution of heretics until the 12th century) 2) Dominican (since the Toulouse Council of 1229) 3) Spanish Inquisition. In the first period, the trial of heretics was part of the functions of episcopal authority, and their persecution was temporary and accidental; in the second, permanent inquisition tribunals are created under the special jurisdiction of Dominican monks; in the 3rd, the inquisitional system is closely linked with the interests of monarchical centralization in Spain and the claims of its sovereigns to political and religious supremacy in Europe, first serving as an instrument of struggle against the Moors and Jews, and then, together with the Jesuit Order, being the fighting force of the Catholic reaction of the 16th century ... against Protestantism.

Persecution of heretics until the 12th century

We find the embryos of the Inquisition in the first centuries of Christianity - in the duty of deacons to seek out and correct errors in the faith, in the judicial power of bishops over heretics. The episcopal court was simple and not distinguished by cruelty; the most severe punishment at that time was excommunication.

Since the recognition of Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, civilians have also joined the ecclesiastical punishments. In 316, Constantine the Great issued an edict ordering the Donatists to confiscate their property. The threat of death was first pronounced by Theodosius the Great in 382 in relation to the Manicheans, and in 385 it was carried out over the Priscillians.

In Charlemagne's capitularies, there are ordinances that oblige bishops to monitor the morals and correct confession of faith in their dioceses, and on the Saxon borders - to eradicate pagan customs... In 844 Charles the Bald ordered the bishops to establish the people in the faith through sermons, to investigate and correct their errors (“ut populi errata inquirant et corrigant”).

Dominican period

At the end of the XII and the beginning of the XIII century. the literary and artistic movement in southern France and the associated teaching of the Albigensians threatened serious danger to Catholic orthodoxy and papal authority. To suppress this movement, a new monastic order is called to life - the Dominicans (X, 862). The word inquisition, in a technical sense, was used for the first time at the Cathedral of Tours, in 1163, and at the Cathedral of Toulouse, in 1229, the apostolic legate “mandavit inquisitionem fieri contra haereticos suspectatos de haeretica pravitate”.

Even at the Synod of Verona, in 1185, precise rules were issued regarding the persecution of heretics, obliging bishops to revise their dioceses as often as possible and select wealthy laity who would assist them in finding heretics and bringing them to the episcopal court; secular authorities were ordered to provide support to bishops, on pain of excommunication and other punishment.

The Inquisition owes its further development to the activities of Innocent III (1198-1216), Gregory IX (1227-1241) and Innocent IV (1243-1254). Around 1199, Innocent III commissioned two Cistercian monks, Guy and Rainier, to travel as papal legates to the dioceses of southern France and Spain to eradicate the heresy of the Waldensians and Cathars. This created a kind of new spiritual power, which had its own special functions and was almost independent of the bishops. In 1203, Innocent III sent there two other Cistercians, from the monastery of Fontevrault - Peter Castelnau and Ralph; soon the abbot of this monastery, Arnold, was added to them, and all three were elevated to the rank of apostolic legates. The prescription to treat the heretics as strictly as possible led, in 1209, to the assassination of Peter Castelnau, which served as the signal for a bloody and devastating struggle known as the Albigensian Wars.

Despite the crusade of Simon Montfort, the heresy continued to persevere until it was opposed by Dominic Guzman (X, 959), the founder of the Dominican order. The inquisitorial courts were everywhere taken over by this order, after the latter were withdrawn from episcopal jurisdiction by Gregory IX. At the Council of Toulouse in 1229, it was decreed that each bishop should appoint one priest and one or more lay persons to secretly search for heretics within a given diocese. A few years later, inquisitorial duties were removed from the competence of the bishops and were specially entrusted to the Dominicans, who represented the advantage over the bishops that they were not associated with either personal or public ties with the population of the area, and therefore could act, of course, in the papal interests and not give mercy to the heretics.

Installed in 1233, the inquisitorial courts provoked a popular uprising in Narbonne in 1234, and in Avignon in 1242. Despite this, they continued to operate in Provence and were even extended to the sowing. France. At the insistence of Louis IX, Pope Alexander IV appointed one Dominican and one Franciscan monk in Paris in 1255 as inquisitors general of France. Ultramontan interference in the affairs of the Gallican church met, however, incessant opposition from its representatives; starting from the 14th century, the French Inquisition was subject to restrictions by state power and gradually fell into decay, which could not be kept even by the efforts of the kings of the 16th century who fought against the reformation.

The same Gregory IX introduced the Inquisition in Catalonia, Lombardy and Germany, and everywhere the Dominicans were appointed inquisitors. From Catalonia, the Inquisition quickly spread throughout the Iberian Peninsula, from Lombardy - in various parts of Italy, not everywhere, however, differing in the same strength and character. So, for example, in Naples, she never enjoyed great importance, due to incessant strife between the Neapolitan sovereigns and the Roman curia. In Venice, the Inquisition (Council of Ten) arose in the XIV century. for the search for accomplices of the Tiepolo conspiracy and was a political tribunal. The greatest development and strength of the Inquisition reached in Rome. The famous fresco by Simon Memmi, entitled "Domini canes" (a pun based on the consonance of these words with the word dominicani), which has been preserved in the Florentine church S. Maria Novella, testifies to the degree of influence of the Inquisition in Italy and the impression it made on the minds. -white dogs, driving wolves away from the herd. The Italian Inquisition reaches its greatest development in the 16th century, under the popes Pius V and Sixtus V.

In Germany, the Inquisition was initially directed against the Steding tribe, who defended their independence from the Archbishop of Bremen, Here it met with a general protest. The first inquisitor of Germany was Konrad of Marburg; in 1233 he was killed during a popular uprising, and the next year his two chief assistants were subjected to the same fate. On this occasion, the Worms Chronicle says: "thus, with God's help, Germany was freed from the vile and unheard-of judgment." Later, Pope Urban V, with the support of Emperor Charles IV, again appointed two Dominicans to Germany as inquisitors; however, even after that, the Inquisition did not develop here. The last traces of it were destroyed by the reformation. The Inquisition even penetrated England to fight against the teachings of Wyclef and his followers; but here its significance was negligible.

Of the Slavic states, the Inquisition existed only in Poland, and even then for a very short time. In general, this institution took more or less deep roots only in countries inhabited by the Romanesque tribe, where Catholicism had a profound influence on the minds and education of character.

Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition, which emerged in the 13th century as an echo of modern events in southern France, is reviving with renewed vigor at the end of the 15th century. , gets a new organization and acquires enormous political significance. Spain represented the most favorable conditions for the development of the Inquisition. The centuries-old struggle with the Moors contributed to the development of religious fanaticism among the people, which the Dominicans who settled here successfully took advantage of. There were many non-Christians, namely Jews and Moors, in the areas reclaimed from the Moors by the Christian kings of the Iberian Peninsula. The Moors and the Jews who assimilated their education were the most enlightened, productive and prosperous elements of the population. Their wealth inspired the envy of the people and presented a temptation to the government. Already at the end of the XIV century. a mass of Jews and Moors were forced to accept Christianity (see Marrano and Moriscos), but many even after that continued to secretly profess the religion of the fathers.

The systematic persecution of these suspicious Christians by the Inquisition begins with the unification of Castile and Aragonia into one monarchy, under Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand the Catholic, who reorganized the inquisitorial system. The motive for the reorganization was not so much religious fanaticism as the desire to use the Inquisition to strengthen the state unity of Spain and increase state revenues by confiscating the property of convicts. The soul of the new Inquisition in Spain was Isabella's confessor, the Dominican Torquemada. In 1478, a bull was received from Sixtus IV, allowing the "Catholic kings" to establish a new Inquisition, and in 1480 its first tribunal was established in Seville; he opened his activities at the beginning of the next year, and by the end of it he could already boast of the legend of the execution of 298 heretics. The result was a general panic and a series of complaints about the actions of the tribunal, addressed to the pope, mainly from the bishops. In response to these complaints, Sixtus IV in the city ordered the inquisitors to adhere to the same rigor in relation to heretics, and entrusted the consideration of appeals against the actions of the inquisition to the Archbishop of Seville, Iñigo Manriquez. A few months later, he appointed a great gene. Inquisitor of Castile and Aragon Torquemado, who completed the transformation of the Spanish Inquisition.

The Inquisitorial Tribunal initially consisted of a chairman, 2 legal assessors and 3 royal advisers. This organization soon turned out to be insufficient and instead a whole system of inquisitorial institutions was created: the central inquisitorial council (so-called Consejo de la suprema) and 4 local tribunals, the number of which was later increased to 10. The property confiscated from heretics constituted a fund of which raised funds for the maintenance of the inquisitorial tribunals and which, at the same time, served as a source of enrichment for the papal and royal treasury. In the city of Torquemada, he appointed a general congress of all members of the Spanish inquisition tribunals in Seville, and a code was developed here (first 28 decrees; 11 were added later), regulating the inquisition process.

Since then, the work of cleansing Spain of heretics and non-Christians began to move rapidly forward, especially after the city, when Torquemada succeeded in getting the “Catholic kings” to expel all Jews from Spain. The results of the extermination activities of the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada, from the year to 1498, are expressed in the following figures: about 8,800 people were burned at the stake; 90,000 people were subject to confiscation of property and church punishment; in addition, images were burned in the form of effigies or portraits; 6,500 people who escaped execution by flight or death. In Castile, the Inquisition was popular with the fanatical crowd who gladly ran into the auto da-fé, and Torquemada was held in high esteem until his death. But in Aragon the actions of the Inquisition repeatedly provoked outbursts of popular indignation; during one of them, Pedro Arbues, the president of the inquisitorial court in Zaragoza, who was not inferior in cruelty to Torquemada, was killed in a church in the city of Torquemada's successors, Diego Des and especially Jimenez, archbishop. Toledo and Isabella's confessor, completed the work of the religious unification of Spain.

Several years after the conquest of Granada, the Moors were persecuted for their faith, despite the provision of religious freedom for us by the terms of the surrender agreement. In the city, they were ordered to either be baptized or leave Spain. Some of the Moors left their homeland, the majority were baptized; however, the baptized Moors (Moriscos) did not get rid of persecution and, finally, were expelled from Spain by Philip III, in the city. incalculable losses to Spanish agriculture, industry and trade. Over the course of 70 years, the Spanish population fell from 10 million to 6 million.

Jimenez destroyed the last remnants of the episcopal opposition. The Inquisition was introduced in all colonies and areas that depended on Spain; in all port cities, its branches were established, serving as a quarantine against the introduction of heresy and disastrously reflected in the Spanish trade. The Spanish Inquisition infiltrated the Netherlands and Portugal and served as a model for the Italian and French inquisitors. In the Netherlands, it was established by Charles V, in, and was the reason for the falling away of the northern Netherlands from Spain, under Philip II. In Portugal, the Inquisition was introduced in 1536 and from there spread to the Portuguese colonies in the East Indies, where Goa was its center.

Other countries

On the model of the Spanish inquisitorial system, in 1542 a "congregation of the Holy Inquisition" was established in Rome, the authority of which was unconditionally recognized in the Duchies of Milan and Tuscany; in the Kingdom of Naples and the Republic of Venice, its actions were subject to government control. In France, Henry II tried to establish the Inquisition on the same model, and Francis II, in 1559, transferred the functions of the Inquisitorial Court to Parliament, where a special department was formed for this, the so-called. chambres ardentes.

The actions of the Inquisitional Tribunal were clothed with strict secrecy. There was a system of espionage and denunciations. As soon as the accused or suspect was brought to trial by the Inquisition, a preliminary interrogation began, the results of which were presented to the tribunal. If the latter found the case to be subject to his jurisdiction, which usually happened, then the informers and witnesses were again questioned and their testimony, along with all the evidence; were submitted to the Dominican theologians, the so-called qualifiers of the Holy Inquisition.

If the qualifiers spoke out against the accused, he was immediately taken to a secret prison, after which all communication between the prisoner and the outside world ceased. This was followed by the first 3 audiences, during which the inquisitors, without announcing the points of accusation to the defendant, tried to confuse him in the answers by means of questions and, by cunning, would siphon off his consciousness in the crimes being charged against him. In the case of consciousness, he was placed in the category of "repentant" and could count on the leniency of the court; in the case of persistent denial of guilt, the accused, at the request of the prosecutor, was brought into the torture chamber. After the torture, the tortured victim was again brought into the audience room and only now was she introduced to the charges, to which they demanded an answer. The accused was asked whether he wished to defend himself or not, and, if the answer was yes, he was asked to choose a defense lawyer from the list of persons drawn up by his own prosecutors. It is clear that the defense under such conditions was nothing more than a gross mockery of the victim of the tribunal. At the end of the process, which often lasted several months, the qualifiers were invited again and gave their final opinion on the case, almost always - not in favor of the defendant.

Then came the verdict, which could be appealed to the Supreme Inquisitional Tribunal or to the Pope. However, the success of the appeals was unlikely. "Suprema" as a rule did not overturn the sentences of the inquisitorial courts, and for the success of the appeal to Rome, the intercession of wealthy friends was necessary, since the convict, whose property was confiscated, no longer had significant sums of money. If the sentence was canceled, the prisoner was released, but without any remuneration for the torture, humiliation and losses experienced; otherwise, sanbenito and auto-da-fe were in store for him.

In addition to religious fanaticism and greed, the motive for persecution was often the personal revenge of individual members of the tribunal. Once the intended sacrifice could no longer escape the hands of the holy tribunal: neither a high position in the church or state, nor the glory of a scientist or artist, nor an impeccably moral life could save it. Even the sovereigns were in awe of the Inquisition. Even such persons as the Spanish Archbishop Carranza, Cardinal Cesare Borgia, and others could not escape her persecution.Any manifestation of independent thought was persecuted as heresy: this can be seen in the examples of Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Pico della Mirandola and others.

The influence of the Inquisition on the mental development of Europe in the 16th century becomes especially disastrous, when it, together with the Jesuit order, managed to master the censorship of books. In the XVII century. the number of its victims is significantly reduced. XVIII century with his ideas of religious tolerance was a time of further decline and finally the complete abolition of the Inquisition in many European states: torture is completely eliminated from the inquisition process in Spain, and the number of executions is reduced to 2 - 3, or even less, per year. In Spain, the Inquisition was destroyed by decree of Joseph Bonaparte on December 4, 1808. According to the statistics collected in Loriente's work, it turns out that there were 341,021 people persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition from 1481 to 1809; of which 31,912 were personally burned, 17,659 - in effigie, 291,460 were imprisoned and other punishments.

Victims of the Inquisition. Criticism

People

In his book Tales of Witchcraft and Magic (1852), Thomas Wright, Corresponding Member of the National Institute of France, states

“Of the multitudes of people who died for witchcraft at the stake in Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century, there were many whose crime was their adherence to the religion of Luther<...>and the petty princes were not opposed to seizing any opportunity to replenish their chests ... the most persecuted were those with significant fortunes ... In Bamberg, as in Würzburg, the bishop was a sovereign prince in his domain. The prince-bishop, John George II, who ruled Bamberg ... after several unsuccessful attempts to uproot Lutheranism, glorified his rule with a series of bloody witch trials that disgraced the chronicles of this city ... We can get some idea of the deeds of his worthy agent (Frederick Ferner, Bishop of Bamberg) according to the most reliable sources that between 1625 and 1630. at least 900 trials took place in two courts of Bamberg and Zeil; and in an article published by the authorities in Bamberg in 1659, it is reported that the number of persons whom Bishop John Georg had burnt at the stake for witchcraft reached 600 "

Also Thomas Wright gives a list (document) of the victims of twenty-nine burnings. In this list, people professing Lutheranism were designated as "strangers." As a result, the victims of these burnings were:

"Alien" men and women, that is, Protestants - 28
Citizens, wealthy people - 100
Boys, girls and small children - 34

“Among the witches,” says Wright, “there were little girls between seven and ten years old, and twenty-seven of them were sentenced and burned,” in other brande, or burnings. “The number of those brought to trial with this terrible legal proceeding was so great that the judges did not really understand the essence of the case, and it became common occurrence that they did not even take the trouble to write down the names of the accused, but designated them as the accused No.; 1, 2, 3, etc. ".

Professor D. W. Draper, in The History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874), writes:

“The families of the convicts were subjected to complete ruin. Llorente, the historian of the Inquisition, estimates that Torquemada and his henchmen burned 10,220 people at the stake for eighteen years; images of human burned 6819; 97321 people were punished in other ways! With unspeakable disgust and indignation, we learn that the Papal government has received large sums of money by selling the rich permits exempting them from the encroachments of the Inquisition. "

Animals

Also, the Church conducted mass trials of animals. In these courts, the defendants were flies, caterpillars, locusts, cats, fish, leeches and even May beetles. Over the last garden pests, also called May beetles, in 1479 in Lausanne (Switzerland) a loud process took place, which lasted two years. By a court decision, the six-legged criminals were ordered to immediately leave the country. Many such court cases are described in J. Fraser's classic Folklore in the Old Testament:

“In Europe, until comparatively recently, the lower animals fully bore equal responsibility with people before the law. Pets were tried in criminal courts and punished with death if the crime was proven; wild animals were subject to the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts, and the punishments to which they were subjected were exile and death by spell or excommunication. These punishments were far from being funny, if it is true that St. Patrick drove all the reptiles of Ireland into the sea with spells or turned them into stones, and that St. Bernard, having weaned off the flies buzzing around him, laid them all dead on the floor of the church. The right to bring domestic animals to justice was based, like a stone rock, on Jewish law from the Book of the Covenant. In each case, a lawyer was appointed to protect the animals, and the entire process - judicial investigation, sentence and execution - was carried out with the strictest observance of all forms of legal proceedings and the requirements of the law. Thanks to the research of French antiquities lovers, the protocols of 92 trials that passed through the French courts between the 12th and 18th centuries were published. The last victim in France of this, one might say, Old Testament justice was a cow, which was sentenced to death in the city of our chronology. "

The trials with mass defendants usually took a long time. For example, the litigation between the Saint-Julien community and the beetles continued intermittently for about forty years. If isolated creatures were accused, then retribution for witchcraft deeds overtook them quickly. In 1474, in the midst of the beetle trial, an old rooster was tried in Basel for allegedly laying an egg. Naturally, there were witnesses to such an act who, "personally saw everything," and the prosecutor shook the courthouse with horrific stories about how Satan puts witches on rooster eggs so that they, like hens, incubate the most harmful creatures for Christians, and about how that rooster eggs are used to make witchcraft. It is significant that the accused rooster's defense attorney did not even try to challenge such charges, since, as Frazer notes, "All these facts were too obvious and well-known to be denied"... As a result of this process, "the rooster was sentenced to death as a sorcerer or devil, who took the form of a rooster, and together with the laid egg was burned at the stake with all solemnity, as if it were the most ordinary execution."

Granger, a contemporary of the events, spoke of the horse's trial. Animal “Was trained to recognize the number of characters on playing cards and also tell you what time it is on the clock. The horse and its owner were both accused by the Holy Inquisition of intercourse with the Devil, and both were burned with great ceremony on auto-da-fe, in Lisbon in 1601 as sorcerers! " ...

Literature

Pre-revolutionary research

V. Velichkina. Essays on the History of the Inquisition (1906).
N.N. Gusev. Tales of the Inquisition (1906).
N. Ya. Kadmin. The Philosophy of Murder (1913; reprinted 2005).
A. Lebedev. Secrets of the Inquisition (1912).
N. Osokin. History of the Albigensians and Their Time (1869-1872).
M.N. Pokrovsky. Medieval heresies and the Inquisition (in the Book for reading on the history of the Middle Ages, ed. By PG Vinogradov, issue 2, 1897).
M.I.Semevsky. Word and deed. Secret search of Peter I (1884; reprinted, 1991, 2001).
J. Kantorovich. Medieval Witch Trials (1899)

N.V. Budur. The Inquisition: Geniuses and Villains (2006).
M. Ya. Vygodsky. Galileo and the Inquisition (1934).
S.V. Gordeev. History of Religions: Major World Religions, Ancient Ceremonies, Religious Wars, Christian Bible, Witches and the Inquisition (2005).
E. F. Grekulov. From the history of the Holy Inquisition in Russia (1929; two reprints, 1930); Orthodox Church- the enemy of education (1962); Orthodox Inquisition in Russia (1964).
I.R. Grigulevich. Inquisition (1970; 1976; 1985; reprinted, 2002); Papacy. Century XX (1981; reprinted, 2003).
M.I. Zaborov. Papacy and Crusades (1960).
I. A. Kryvelev. Bonfire and torture against science and scientists (1933; republished, 1934).
A. E. Kudryavtsev. Spain in the Middle Ages (1937).
S.G. Lozinsky. History of the Inquisition in Spain (1914; reprinted, 1994); History of the Papacy (1934; reprinted, 1961, 1986); Holy Inquisition (1927); The fatal book of the Middle Ages.
L.P. Novokhatskaya. Witch-hunt". From the History of the Church Inquisition (1990).
M. A. Orlov. The history of man's relationship with the devil (1992).
Z.I. Plavskin. Spanish Inquisition: Executioners and Victims (2000).
V.S. Rozhitsyn. Giordano Bruno and the Inquisition (1955).
Prisons and punishment. Inquisition, prisons, corporal punishment, executions (1996).
M. I. Shakhnovich. Goya against the Papacy and the Inquisition (1955).
M. M. Sheinman. With Fire and Blood in the Name of God (1924); Papacy (1959) Pius IX to John XXIII (1966).

Translated editions

HA. Llorente. A Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition. In 2 vols. (1817).
R. Altamira-i-Crevea. History of Spain. In 2 vols. (1951).
A. Arnu. History of the Inquisition (1926; reprinted 1994).
M.V. Barro. Torquemada (1893).
Baidzent M., Lee R. Tsepnye dogs of the church. Inquisition in the service of the Vatican
Scourge and Hammer. The witch hunt in the 16th-18th centuries. Collection (2005).
L. Gallois. History of the Inquisition. In 2 vols. (1845; republished, 1873).
E. Gergey. History of the Papacy (1996).
B. Dunham. Heroes and Heretics (1984).
Sh. V. Langlois. Inquisition for Recent Research (1903; reprinted 2001).
G. Ch. Lee. History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages. In 2 vols. (1911-1912; reprinted 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001, 2002).
J. A. Llorente. A Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition. In 2 vols. (1936; republished, 1999).
A. Manhattan. State of the Vatican. How the Catholic Church is governed. - M. 1950, in sb. History of the Vatican. Power and the Roman Curia. - M., 2002 .-- ISBN 5-93662-012-3.
A. L. Meikok. History of the Inquisition (2002).

Origin of the term

The ecclesiastical tribunal, which was entrusted with the "detection, punishment and prevention of heresies", was established in southern France by Gregory IX in 1229. This institution reached its climax in 1478, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, with the approval of Pope Sixtus IV, established the Spanish Inquisition.

The Congregation of the Sacred Chancellery was established in 1542, replacing the "Great Roman Inquisition", and in 1917 it was also transferred the functions of the abolished Congregation of the Index.

Goals and means

Torture applied to those accused of heresy. Engraving 1508.

The main task of the Inquisition was to determine whether the accused was guilty of heresy.

IX. In the early days of the Inquisition, there was no prosecutor who was required to prosecute suspects; this formality of legal proceedings was performed verbally by the inquisitor after hearing witnesses; the consciousness of the accused served as an accusation and a response. If the accused pleaded guilty to one heresy, he vainly assured that he was not guilty in relation to others; he was not allowed to defend himself because the crime for which he was being tried had already been proven. He was only asked whether he was inclined to make a renunciation of the heresy of which he had pleaded guilty. If he agreed, then he was reconciled with the Church, imposing canonical penance on him simultaneously with some other punishment. Otherwise, he was declared a stubborn heretic, and he was betrayed into the hands of the secular authorities with a copy of the verdict.

The death penalty, like confiscation, was a measure that, in theory, the Inquisition did not apply. Her business was to use every effort to bring the heretic back into the fold of the Church; if he persisted, or if his conversion was feigned, she had nothing more to do with him. As not a Catholic, he was not subject to the jurisdiction of the Church, which he rejected, and the Church was forced to declare him a heretic and deprive him of her patronage. The original sentence was only a simple condemnation of heresy and was accompanied by excommunication or a declaration that the guilty party was no longer considered to be within the jurisdiction of the Church; sometimes it was added that he was being handed over to the secular court, that he was released - a terrible expression that meant that the direct intervention of the Church in his fate had already ended. With the passage of time, the sentences became more lengthy; a remark often already begins to come across, explaining that the Church can no longer do anything to atone for the sins of the guilty, and the transfer of him into the hands of secular power is accompanied by the following significant words: debita animadversione puniendum, that is, "let him be punished according to merit." The hypocritical treatment, in which the Inquisition implored the secular authorities to spare the life and body of the fallen, is not found in ancient sentences and was never formulated precisely.

Inquisitor Pegna does not hesitate to admit that this appeal to mercy was an empty formality, and explains that they resorted to it only for the purpose that it would not seem that the inquisitors would agree to the shedding of blood, as this would be a violation of canonical rules. But at the same time, the Church was vigilant to ensure that its resolution was not misinterpreted. She taught that there can be no question of any condescension if the heretic does not repent and testifies to his sincerity by betraying all his like-minded people. The inexorable logic of St. Thomas Aquinas clearly established that the secular government could not but put the heretics to death, and that only because of her boundless love, the Church could turn to heretics twice with words of conviction before handing them over to the secular authorities for a well-deserved punishment. The inquisitors themselves did not hide this in the least and constantly taught that the heretic they had condemned should be put to death; this is evident, among other things, from the fact that they refrained from pronouncing their sentence on him within the confines of the church fence, which would have been desecrated by the death penalty, but pronounced it in the square where the last action of the auto-da-fe took place. One of their 13th century doctors, quoted in the 14th century by Bernard Guy, argues this: “The purpose of the Inquisition is to destroy heresy; heresy cannot be destroyed without the destruction of the heretics; and heretics cannot be destroyed unless the defenders and supporters of heresy are also destroyed, and this can be achieved in two ways: by converting them to the true Catholic faith or by turning their flesh to ashes after they are handed over to the secular authorities. "

The main historical stages

Chronologically, the history of the Inquisition can be divided into three stages:

pre-Dominican (persecution of heretics until the XII century);
Dominican (since the Cathedral of Toulouse in 1229);

In the first period, the trial of heretics was part of the functions of episcopal authority, and their persecution was temporary and accidental; in the second, permanent inquisition tribunals are created under the special jurisdiction of Dominican monks; in the 3rd, the inquisitional system is closely linked with the interests of monarchical centralization in Spain and the claims of its sovereigns to political and religious supremacy in Europe, first serving as an instrument of struggle against the Moors and Jews, and then, together with the Jesuit Order, being the fighting force of the Catholic reaction of the 16th century against Protestantism.

Persecution of heretics until the 12th century

The embryos of the Inquisition can be found even in the first centuries of Christianity - in the duty of deacons to seek out and correct errors in the faith, in the judicial power of bishops over heretics. The episcopal court was simple and not distinguished by cruelty; the most severe punishment at that time was excommunication.

In Charlemagne's capitularies, there are ordinances that oblige bishops to monitor the morals and correct confession of faith in their dioceses, and to eradicate pagan customs on the Saxon borders. In 844, Charles the Bald ordered the bishops to establish the people in the faith through sermons, to investigate and correct their errors (“ut populi errata inquirant et corrigant”).

In the 9th and 10th centuries. bishops achieve a high degree of power; in the 11th century, during the persecution of the patarens in Italy, their activities are distinguished by great energy. Already in this era, the church more readily turns to violent measures against heretics than to means of exhortation. The most severe punishments for heretics already at that time were confiscation of property and burning at the stake. This is how Anna Comnena describes in the "Alexiada" the burning at the stake of Bogomil Basil in 1118, speaking of the emperor that he made a decision "new, unusual in character, unheard of in his courage."

Dominican period

The word "Inquisition", in a technical sense, was used for the first time at the Cathedral of Tours in 1163 (English) Russian , and at the Council of Toulouse in 1229, the apostolic legate “mandavit inquisitionem fieri contra haereticos suspectatos de haeretica pravitate”.

In Germany, the Inquisition was initially directed against the Steding tribe, who defended their independence from the Archbishop of Bremen, Here it met with a general protest. The first inquisitor of Germany was Konrad of Marburg; in 1233 he was killed during a popular uprising, and the next year his two chief assistants suffered the same fate. On this occasion, the Worms Chronicle says: "thus, with God's help, Germany was freed from the vile and unheard-of judgment." Later, Pope Urban V, with the support of Emperor Charles IV, again appointed two Dominicans to Germany as inquisitors; however, even after that, the Inquisition did not develop here. The last traces of it were destroyed by the reformation. The Inquisition even penetrated England to fight against the teachings of Wycliffe and his followers; but here its significance was negligible.

Of the Slavic states, the Inquisition existed only in Poland, and even then for a very short time. In general, this institution took more or less deep roots only in Spain, Portugal and Italy, where Catholicism had a deep influence on the minds and character of the population.

Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition, which emerged in the 13th century as an echo of modern events in southern France, is reviving with renewed vigor at the end of the 15th century, acquiring a new organization and acquiring enormous political significance. Spain represented the most favorable conditions for the development of the Inquisition. The centuries-old struggle with the Moors contributed to the development of religious fanaticism among the people, which the Dominicans who settled here successfully took advantage of. There were many non-Christians, namely Jews and Moors, in the areas reclaimed from the Moors by the Christian kings of the Iberian Peninsula. The Moors and the Jews who assimilated their education were the most enlightened, productive and prosperous elements of the population. Their wealth inspired the envy of the people and presented a temptation to the government. Already at the end of the XIV century, a large number of Jews and Moors were forced to accept Christianity (see Marrans and Moriscos), but many even after that continued to secretly profess the religion of the fathers.

The systematic persecution of these suspicious Christians by the Inquisition begins with the unification of Castile and Aragon into one monarchy, under Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand the Catholic, who reorganized the inquisitorial system. The motive for the reorganization was not so much religious fanaticism as the desire to use the Inquisition to strengthen the state unity of Spain and increase state revenues by confiscating the property of convicts. The soul of the new Inquisition in Spain was Isabella's confessor, the Dominican Torquemada. In 1478, a bull was received from Sixtus IV, authorizing the "Catholic kings" to establish a new Inquisition, and in 1480 its first tribunal was established in Seville; he opened his activities at the beginning of the next year, and by the end of it he could already boast of the legend of the execution of 298 heretics. The result was a general panic and a series of complaints about the actions of the tribunal, addressed to the pope, mainly from the bishops. In response to these complaints, Sixtus IV in 1483 ordered the inquisitors to adhere to the same rigor towards heretics, and entrusted the consideration of appeals against the actions of the Inquisition to the Archbishop of Seville, Iñigo Manriquez. A few months later, he appointed a great gene. Inquisitor of Castile and Aragon Torquemado, who completed the transformation of the Spanish Inquisition.

The Inquisitorial Tribunal initially consisted of a chairman, 2 legal assessors and 3 royal advisers. This organization soon turned out to be insufficient and instead of it a whole system of inquisitorial institutions was created: the central inquisitorial council (so-called Consejo de la suprema) and 4 local tribunals, the number of which was later increased to 10. The property confiscated from heretics constituted a fund of which raised funds for the maintenance of the inquisitorial tribunals and which, at the same time, served as a source of enrichment for the papal and royal treasury. In 1484, Torquemada appointed a general congress of all members of the Spanish Inquisitional Tribunals in Seville, and a code was developed here (first 28 decrees; 11 were added later) regulating the inquisition process.

Since then, the work of cleansing Spain of heretics and non-Christians began to advance rapidly, especially after 1492, when Torquemada succeeded in getting the Catholic kings to expel all Jews from Spain. The results of the extermination activities of the Spanish Inquisition under Torquemada, in the period from 1481 to 1498, are expressed in the following figures: about 8,800 people were burned at the stake; 90,000 people were subjected to confiscation of property and church punishment; in addition, images, in the form of effigies or portraits, were burned, 6,500 people who escaped execution by flight or death. In Castile, the Inquisition was popular with the fanatical crowd who gladly gathered at the auto da-fé, and Torquemada was held in high esteem until his death. But in Aragon the actions of the Inquisition repeatedly provoked outbursts of popular indignation; during one of them, Pedro Arbues, President of the Inquisition Court in Zaragoza, who was not inferior in cruelty to Torquemada, was killed in a church in the city of Torquemada's successors, Diego Desa and especially Jimenez, the Archbishop of Toledo and Isabella's confessor, finished the work of the religious unification of Spain.

Several years after the conquest of Granada, the Moors were persecuted for their faith, despite the provision of religious freedom for them by the terms of the 1492 surrender treaty. In 1502, they were ordered to either be baptized or leave Spain. Some of the Moors left their homeland, the majority were baptized; however, the baptized Moors (Moriscos) did not escape persecution and were finally expelled from Spain by Philip III in 1609. The expulsion of Jews, Moors and Moriscos, who made up more than 3 million of the population, and, moreover, the most educated, hardworking and wealthy, entailed incalculable losses for Spanish agriculture, industry and trade, which did not prevent Spain from becoming the richest country, creating a powerful fleet and colonizing large open spaces in the New World.

Jimenez destroyed the last remnants of the episcopal opposition. The Spanish Inquisition infiltrated the Netherlands and Portugal and served as a model for the Italian and French inquisitors. In the Netherlands, it was installed by Charles V in 1522 and was the reason for the falling away of the northern Netherlands from Spain under Philip II. In Portugal, the Inquisition was introduced in 1536 and from here spread to the Portuguese colonies in the East Indies, where Goa was its center.

Inquisition in the Russian Empire

In the Russian Empire, an organization with a similar name, the Order of Proto-Inquisitorial Affairs, was created in 1711 by decree of Peter I to supervise bishops in their ecclesiastical economic and judicial activities in matters of little importance. The spiritual inquisitors included representatives of the black and white clergy. All of them were subordinate to the provincial inquisitors of the cities where the bishops' houses were located. The provincial inquisitors were subordinate to the Moscow proto-inquisitor. Paphnutius, Archimandrite of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, was appointed the first Moscow proto-inquisitor. In turn, he obeyed the Synod. Before sending his denunciation, the spiritual inquisitor had to notify the higher authorities of the accused by him or the local bishop. If the case ended in a fine, after its appointment and payment, half of the money was due to the informer. In 1724, the Order of Proto-Inquisitorial Affairs ceased to exist, but the positions of inquisitors were abolished only on January 25, 1727.

Other countries

On the model of the Spanish inquisition system, in 1542 a “congregation of the Holy Inquisition” was established in Rome, whose authority was unconditionally recognized in the Duchies of Milan and Tuscany; in the Kingdom of Naples and the Republic of Venice, its actions were subject to government control. In France, Henry II tried to establish the Inquisition on the same model, and Francis II, in 1559, transferred the functions of the Inquisition Court to Parliament, where a special department was formed for this, the so-called. chambres ardentes (chamber of fire).

If the qualifiers spoke out against the accused, he was immediately taken to a secret prison, after which all communication between the prisoner and the outside world ceased. This was followed by the first 3 audiences, during which the inquisitors, without announcing the points of accusation to the defendant, tried to confuse him in the answers by means of questions and by cunning to siphon off his consciousness in the crimes against him. In the case of consciousness, he was placed in the category of "repentant" and could count on the leniency of the court; in the case of persistent denial of guilt, the accused, at the request of the prosecutor, was brought into the torture chamber. After the torture, the tortured victim was again brought into the audience room and only now was she introduced to the charges, to which they demanded an answer. The accused was asked whether he wished to defend himself or not, and, if the answer was yes, he was asked to choose a defense lawyer from the list of persons drawn up by his own prosecutors. It is clear that the defense under such conditions was nothing more than a gross mockery of the victim of the tribunal. At the end of the process, which often lasted several months, the qualifiers were invited again and gave their final opinion on the case, almost always - not in favor of the defendant.

Even the sovereigns were in awe of the Inquisition. Even such persons as the Spanish Archbishop Carranza, Cardinal Cesare Borgia, and others could not escape her persecution.

The influence of the Inquisition on the intellectual development of Europe in the 16th century becomes especially disastrous, when it, together with the Jesuit order, managed to master the censorship of books. In the 17th century, the number of her victims decreases significantly. XVIII century with his ideas of religious tolerance was a time of further decline and finally the complete abolition of the Inquisition in many European states: torture is completely eliminated from the inquisition process in Spain, and the number of executions is reduced to 2 - 3, or even less, per year. In Spain, the Inquisition was destroyed by decree of Joseph Bonaparte on December 4, 1808. According to the statistics collected in Loriente's work, it turns out that 341,021 people were persecuted by the Spanish Inquisition from 1481 to 1809; of which 31,912 were personally burned, 17,659 - in effigie, 291,460 were imprisoned and other punishments. In Portugal, the Inquisition was severely limited to the ministry of Pombal, and under John VI (1818 - 26) it was completely destroyed. In France, it was destroyed in 1772, in Tuscany and Parma in 1769, in Sicily in 1782, in Rome in 1809. In 1814 the Inquisition was re-established in Spain by Ferdinand Vll; destroyed for the second time by the Cortes in 1820, it is revived again for a while, until, finally, in 1834, it is abolished forever; her property is used to pay off the state debt. In Sardinia, the Inquisition lasted until 1840, in Tuscany - until 1852; in Rome, the Inquisition was restored by Pius VII in 1814 (existed until 1908)

Major historical dates

Victims of the Inquisition. Criticism

In his book Tales of Witchcraft and Magic (1852), Thomas Wright, Corresponding Member of the National Institute of France, states:

Of the multitudes of people who died for witchcraft at the stake in Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century, there were many whose crime was their adherence to the religion of Luther.<…>and the petty princes were not opposed to seizing any opportunity to replenish their chests ... the most persecuted were those with significant fortunes ... In Bamberg, as in Würzburg, the bishop was a sovereign prince in his domain. The prince-bishop, John George II, who ruled Bamberg ... after several unsuccessful attempts to uproot Lutheranism, glorified his rule with a series of bloody witch trials that disgraced the chronicles of this city ... We can get some idea of the deeds of his worthy agent (Frederick Ferner, Bishop of Bamberg) according to the most reliable sources that between 1625 and 1630. at least 900 trials took place in two courts of Bamberg and Zeil; and in an article published by the authorities in Bamberg in 1659, it is reported that the number of persons whom Bishop John George committed to burning at the stake for witchcraft reached 600.

“Alien” men and women, that is, Protestants - 28.
Citizens, wealthy people - 100.
Boys, girls and small children - 34.

Among the witches were little girls from seven to ten years old, and twenty-seven of them were sentenced and burned. The number of those brought to trial with these terrible legal proceedings was so great that the judges did not delve deeply into the essence of the case, and it became commonplace that they did not even bother to write down the names of the accused, but designated them as the accused No.; 1, 2, 3, etc.

Thomas Wright, Tales of Witchcraft and Magic

Literature

Pre-revolutionary research

V. Velichkina. Essays on the History of the Inquisition (1906).
N.N. Gusev. Tales of the Inquisition (1906).
N. Ya. Kadmin. The Philosophy of Murder (1913; reprinted 2005).
A. Lebedev. Secrets of the Inquisition (1912).
N. Osokin. History of the Albigensians and Their Time (1869-1872).
M.N. Pokrovsky. Medieval heresies and the Inquisition (in the Book for reading on the history of the Middle Ages, ed. By PG Vinogradov, issue 2, 1897).
M.I.Semevsky. Word and deed. Secret search of Peter I (1884; reprinted, 1991, 2001).
J. Kantorovich. Medieval Witch Trials (1899)

Literature of the Soviet and post-Soviet period

N.V. Budur. The Inquisition: Geniuses and Villains (2006).
M. Ya. Vygodsky. Galileo and the Inquisition (1934).
S.V. Gordeev. History of Religions: Major World Religions, Ancient Ceremonies, Religious Wars, Christian Bible, Witches and the Inquisition (2005).
I.R. Grigulevich. Inquisition (1970; 1976; 1985; reprinted, 2002); Papacy. Century XX (1981; reprinted, 2003).
M. I. Zaborov... The Papacy and the Crusades (1960).
I. A. Kryvelev... Bonfire and torture against science and scientists (1933; republished, 1934).
A. E. Kudryavtsev... Spain in the Middle Ages (1937).
S.G. Lozinsky. History of the Inquisition in Spain (1914; reprinted, 1994); History of the Papacy (1934; reprinted, 1961, 1986); Holy Inquisition (1927); The fatal book of the Middle Ages.
L.P. Novokhatskaya. Witch-hunt". From the History of the Church Inquisition (1990).
Z.I. Plavskin. Spanish Inquisition: Executioners and Victims (2000).
V.S. Rozhitsyn. Giordano Bruno and the Inquisition (1955).
Prisons and punishment. Inquisition, prisons, corporal punishment, executions (1996).
M. I. Shakhnovich. Goya against the Papacy and the Inquisition (1955).
M. M. Sheinman. With Fire and Blood in the Name of God (1924); Papacy (1959) Pius IX to John XXIII (1966).

Translated editions

I. was founded mainly to combat those who transgress the dogmas and rituals of the Catholic Church. The courts were named "I.", that is, "investigation". Thus, it became possible to bring a person to court in the absence of a private (personal) plaintiff.

I. began to function as early as the 13th century. with the aim of destroying heresy, persecuting alchemists, sorcerers and soothsayers. The censorship of books was transferred to I.'s jurisdiction in order to detect the presence of heretical content in them.

The mortality rate among the prisoners I. was very high. Those of them who, after imprisonment and torture, remained sane, were called in the sentence for the last time to repentance. For those who repented, the death penalty was replaced by life imprisonment. The unrepentant were burned at the stake. The property of executed I. was confiscated in favor of I. and the state treasury (see Autodafe *).

At first, I. almost did not persecute Jews; there were only isolated cases of burning of religious books. However, over time, the persecution of forcibly baptized Jews began.

I., introduced by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the united kingdom of Castile, Aragon and Navarre, persecuted baptized Jews and Moors. During the period of severe persecution in 1391, many Jewish families went over to save their lives. They were called "conversos" (converts), new Christians, or Marranos. Many secretly remained faithful to Jewry and observed Jewish rites. At the end of 1480, in Seville, the center of "" (forcibly converted), the first tribunal was created. I., suspected of adherence to Judaism, were thrown into prison. The promise of pardon at the cost of complete repentance led to countless denunciations. Surveillance methods were widespread, and searches and arrests became a daily occurrence.

From time to time, the tribunal published an "Act of Faith" urging believers, under threat of excommunication, to hand over to I. any suspected heresy. Heresy, first and foremost, was understood as the customs of the Jewish religion.

Those arrested were tortured with the aim of extracting from them a confession of heresy. The arrested person had to answer all the questions of the investigators and name the people who should have been invited as witnesses for the defense. At the end of the hearing, the judges decided the fate of the accused. If his answers and evidence in his favor did not satisfy the judges, and the evidence from the prosecution was insufficient to incriminate, the defendant was sentenced to torture. The torture was carried out in a special cell in a dark basement. Throughout the entire time of torture, the inquisitor persuaded the unfortunate man to confess to heresy, demanding that he not give false testimony either against himself or against others. If the prisoner did not confess, he was tortured for an hour. If the torture did not extract confessions from him, they proceeded to water torture. The prisoner was laid on his back on a wooden bed, in the center of which a rail was fixed. It happened that the pole broke his back, causing incredible suffering. Torture with water: a prisoner was forced to drink and then squeezed with movable plates using a screw. Torture by fire: they seated a prisoner on the floor, smeared his feet with flammable ointment and set fire to them.

Bonfires blazed in all the cities of Spain. Several years after the emergence of I., the torture chambers were expanded, and the title of Grand Inquisitor was awarded to Torquemada, whose name has become an eternal symbol of cruelty. Moloch I. swallowed many people. Orphans of the executed were transferred to monasteries.

History has brought to us the story of the greatness of the spirit of the victims of I., who took inhuman torment, but did not renounce Jewishness.

Encyclopedia of Judaism. - Publishing house "MASSADA" Jerusalem - Tel Aviv. Shlomo-Zalman Ariel. 1983 .

Synonyms:

See what "Inquisition" is in other dictionaries:

INQUISITION- (lat.inqnisitio, etitol. see the previous word). The spiritual court, established by the popes for the search and punishment of heretics, in the 6th century; from the XIII century. became famous for its terrible cruelty in terms of torture and executions. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Inquisition- in the Catholic Church in the 13th-19th centuries. special ecclesiastical courts for heretics. From the 13th century. all functions for the search, trial and punishment of heretics were transferred to special authorized inquisitors (from among the Dominicans, and later also the Franciscans). Sphere … Historical Dictionary

inquisition- and, w. inquisition f., isp. inquisition, it. inquisitione, lat. inquisitio. outdated. Investigation. Fiscals should observe this, and protest against those violators at the Commissariat, and protest against the mentioned fiscal ... ... ... Historical Dictionary of Russian Gallicisms

inquisition- torture, torment, torment, mockery, torment Dictionary of Russian synonyms. Inquisition see flour Dictionary of synonyms of the Russian language. Practical guide. M .: Russian language. Z.E. Aleksandrova. 2011 ... Synonym dictionary

Inquisition- Inquisition ♦ Inquisition The original meaning of this word is search or investigation. However, the Inquisition with a capital letter means a very specific type of investigation, which sets itself not theoretical, but police goals. ... ... Sponville's Philosophical Dictionary

INQUISITION Modern encyclopedia

INQUISITION- (from Lat. inquisitio search) in the Catholic Church in the 13th-19th centuries. special courts of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, independent of the bodies and institutions of secular power. Basically, they fought against dissent (heresies). The so-called. the inquisition process with a special ... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Inquisition- (lat.inqusitio - search) - in the Catholic Church in the 13th - 19th centuries. forensic police agency for the fight against heresies. The proceedings were conducted in secret with the use of torture. In the XVI-XVII centuries. one of the main weapons of the Counter-Reformation. Especially… … Encyclopedia of Cultural Studies

Inquisition- (from Lat. inquisitio search) in the Catholic Church in the 13th-19th centuries, special courts of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, independent of the bodies and institutions of secular power. Basically, they fought against dissent (heresies). The inquisition process was distinguished by a special ... ... Political science. Dictionary.

Inquisition- (Inquisition), an ecclesiastical court, created ca. 1232 to combat heresy at a time when the religion. sectarianism began to threaten not only the Catholic. church, but also the stability of the state. I. arose after the publication of an edict by Frederick II, which entrusted the state. ... ... The World History

Inquisition- (from the Latin inquisitio search), in the Catholic Church in the 13th-19th centuries, special courts of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, independent of the bodies and institutions of secular power. Basically, they fought against dissent (heresies). The so-called inquisitorial ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

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The Inquisition, I.R. Series: Library of Atheistic Literature Publisher:

lat. inqusitio - search) - in the Catholic Church in the 13th - 19th centuries. a judicial and police institution for the fight against heresies. The proceedings were conducted in secret with the use of torture. In the XVI-XVII centuries. one of the main weapons of the Counter-Reformation. The Inquisition was especially rampant in Spain.

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INQUISITION

from lat. inquisitio - search, investigation) - an institution created in the 13th century. Catholic church to combat heresy. I. carried out the search, trial and reprisals together with the secular authorities, resorting to their help to carry out the execution of convicts. Initially, the functions of I. were entrusted to the bishops. Ordinances of the 3rd Lutheran Council 1179 and Pope Lucius III (1184) obliged the secular authorities to carry out the sentences passed by the bishops, because "the church has an aversion to blood," as Lucius III hypocritically declared. Pope Innocent III transferred the leadership of India to special papal legates from the Cistercian monks in 1209. Pope Gregory IX in 1231–35 subordinated I. directly to his leadership, transferring its functions in the localities to "mendicant monks" - Dominicans and partly Franciscans, who were sent in large numbers to "eradicate heretics" in France, Germany, and other countries. The inquisitors acted completely uncontrollably, elevating espionage and denunciation into a system, while ensuring the secrecy of the names of the informers and their testimonies, extracting confessions from their victims with the help of sophisticated torture. The zeal of the inquisitors and their agents was stimulated by the division between them of most of the property confiscated from the convict. Thomas Aquinas (see "Summa Theologiae", II, 2, qu. XI, a. 3) and other theologians theoretically "substantiated" not only the right, but also the obligation to mercilessly deal with heretics, putting them to death. Condemning for the most part her victims to be burned, I. covered herself with a deceitful, hypocritical formula: to punish "without shedding blood." Burning as a form of execution was also justified by reference to the Catholic. the dogma of purgatory, the earthly prototype of which is supposedly the fire of I. Expandingly interpreting the concept of heresy, I. subjected to equally fierce persecution of "witches", soothsayers, astrologers, alchemists. I. was especially zealous in persecuting scientists. Standing on guard for anti-science. statements of Christian dogma, I. persecuted any idea that was at odds with Scripture or the church. authorities. The heralds of new scientific ideas, defenders of materialistic ideas were persecuted. views, atheists and many others. others. In 1327 Cecco d'Ascoli was burned, in 1600 - G. Bruno, in 1619 - L. Vanini, in 1689 - K. Lyschinsky. G. Galilei was severely persecuted. The most sinister character I. received in Spain, where her activities were directed by the "suprema", which consisted of several. clergy and secular persons headed by the general (grand) inquisitor. According to incomplete estimates, the number of victims of Spanish I. was St. 300 thousand people, of which 30 thousand were burned. Socio-political the role of I. was characterized by Marx, who noted that in Spain "... thanks to the Inquisition, the church turned into the most indestructible instrument of absolutism" (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 10, p. 431) ... In 1542, Pope Paul III reorganized India anew, giving it the character of a world supreme, headed by the Pope, a Catholic. judgments (Sanctum Officium), to which the local inquisitors were subordinate. tribunals. Although the activity of I. since the 18th century. It has significantly weakened, Catholicism has been preserved by I. to this day. Despite harsh criticism of I.'s activities, Catholic authors and official publications (encyclopedias, papal appeals, etc.) praise the Middle Ages. I. These attempts to rehabilitate I. especially intensified in connection with anti-communist. propaganda of Catholicism. Statement by Pope Pius XII: "We will fight communism with the same ruthlessness with which the church fought against heresy in the Middle Ages" 1959 convincingly testifies to the fact that India continues to be a tool with which the Vatican is trying to oppose the forces of democracy and progress. Lit .: K. Marx, Revolutionary Spain, K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., Vol. 10, p. 425-33; his, [Chronological extracts], in the book: Archives of Marx and Engels, vol. 7, [L.], 1940; Lee G. Ch., History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, trans. from French, v. 1–2, St. Petersburg, 1911–12; Lozinsky S.G., History of the Inquisition in Spain, St. Petersburg, 1914; Llorenge J.-A., A Critical History of the Spanish Inquisition, trans. from French, t. 1–2, M., 1936; Molinier Ch.,? Inquisition dans le midi de la France au XIIIe et au XIVe si? Cle, P., 1880; Vacandard E.,? Inquisition. E? Tude historique et critique sur le pouvoir coercitif de? Eglise, 1907; Lea H. C., The inquisition in the Spanish dependencies: Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, Milan, the Canaries, Mexico – Peru – New Grenada – N. Y., 1908; Turberville A. S., Medi? Val heresy and the inquisition, L., 1920; Kramer G., Die Greuel der Heiligen Inquisition, B.,; Maisonneuve H., E? Tudes sur les origines de? inquisition, P., 1942; Deromieu G., L'inquisition, P., 1955. B. Ramm. Leningrad.

In the XII century. The Catholic Church faced the growth of oppositional religious movements in Western Europe, primarily with Albigensianism (Cathars). To combat them, the papacy has entrusted the bishops with the obligation to identify and judge "heretics" and then hand them over for punishment to secular authorities ("episcopal inquisition"); this order was fixed in the decrees of the Second (1139) and Third (1212) Lateran Councils, the bulls of Lucius III (1184) and Innocent III (1199). For the first time these regulations were applied during the Albigensian Wars (1209-1229). In 1220 they were recognized by the German emperor Frederick II, in 1226 - by the French king Louis VIII. From 1226-1227, burning at the stake became the capital punishment for "crimes against the faith" in Germany and Italy.

However, the "episcopal inquisition" turned out to be ineffective: the bishops were dependent on the secular authorities, and the territory subordinate to them was small, which allowed the "heretic" to easily hide in the neighboring diocese. Therefore, in 1231 Gregory IX, referring cases of heresy to the sphere of canon law, created for their investigation a permanent organ of ecclesiastical justice - the Inquisition. Initially directed against the Cathars and Waldenses, it soon turned against other "heretical" sects - the Beguins, Fraticelli, Spirituals, and then against the "sorcerers", "witches" and blasphemers.

In 1231 the Inquisition was introduced in Aragon, in 1233 - in France, in 1235 - in Central, in 1237 - in Northern and Southern Italy.

Inquisition system.

Inquisitors were recruited from members of monastic orders, primarily Dominicans, and were directly subordinate to the Pope. At the beginning of the 14th century. Clement V set for them age qualification at forty. Initially, each tribunal was headed by two judges with equal rights, and from the beginning of the 14th century. - by only one judge. From the 14th century. they consisted of lawyers-consultants (qualifiers) who determined the "heretical" statements of the accused. In addition to them, the number of employees of the tribunal included a notary who certified the testimony, attesting witnesses who were present during interrogations, a prosecutor, a doctor who monitored the state of health of the accused during torture, and the executioner. Inquisitors received an annual salary or part of the property confiscated from the "heretics" (in Italy, one third). In their activities, they were guided by both papal decrees and special manuals: in the early period, it was most popular Practice of the Inquisition Bernard Guy (1324), in the late Middle Ages - Hammer of witches J. Sprenger and G. Institoris (1487) .

There were two types of inquisitorial procedure - general and individual investigation: in the first case, the entire population of a given area was interviewed, in the second, a call was made to a certain person through the priest. If the summoned did not appear, he was subjected to excommunication. The one who appeared swore an oath to tell sincerely everything that he knew about the "heresy." The very course of the proceedings was kept in deep secrecy. Torture authorized by Innocent IV was widely used (1252). Their cruelty sometimes provoked condemnation even among the secular authorities, for example, Philip IV the Handsome (1297). The accused was not given the names of the witnesses; they could even be excommunicated, thieves, murderers and perjurers, whose testimony was never accepted in secular courts. He was denied the opportunity to have a lawyer. The only chance for the condemned was to appeal to the Holy See, although formally it was forbidden by the bull of 1231. A person who had once been convicted by the Inquisition could be brought to justice again at any time. Even death did not stop the investigation procedure: if the deceased was found guilty, his ashes were removed from the grave and burned.

The system of punishments was established by Bull 1213, decrees of the Third Lateran Council and Bull 1231. Those convicted by the Inquisition were transferred to civilian authorities and subjected to secular punishments. A "heretic" who "repented" already during the trial was entitled to life imprisonment, which the Inquisitorial Tribunal had the right to reduce; this type of punishment was an innovation for the penitentiary system of the medieval West. The prisoners were kept in cramped cells with a hole in the ceiling, they ate only bread and water, sometimes they were shackled and chained. In the late Middle Ages, imprisonment was sometimes replaced by hard labor in galleys or in workhouses. A stubborn "heretic" or again "fallen into heresy" was sentenced to be burned at the stake. Conviction often entailed the confiscation of property in favor of the secular authorities, who reimbursed the expenses of the inquisitorial tribunal; hence the special interest of the Inquisition in wealthy people.

For those who confessed to the Inquisition Tribunal during the "period of mercy" (15-30 days, counting from the moment the judges arrived in a particular locality), assigned to collect information (denunciations, self-incriminations, etc.) about crimes against faith, church punishments were applied. These included interdict (a ban on worship in a given area), excommunication, and different types penances - strict fasting, long prayers, scourging during mass and religious processions, pilgrimage, donations for charitable deeds; the one who had time to repent wore a special "penitential" shirt (sanbenito).

Inquisition since the 13th century to our time.

The 13th century was the culmination of the Inquisition. The epicenter of its activity in France was the Languedoc, where the Cathars and Waldenses were persecuted with extraordinary cruelty; in 1244, after the capture of the last stronghold of the Albigensians of Montsegur, 200 people were sent to the fire. In Central and Northern France in the 1230s, Robert Lebugre acted on a special scale; in 1235 in Mont-Saint-Aim, he arranged the burning of 183 people. (in 1239 he was condemned by the Pope to life imprisonment). In 1245, the Vatican granted the inquisitors the right of "mutual forgiveness of sins" and freed them from the obligation to obey the leadership of their orders.

The Inquisition often encountered resistance from the local population: in 1233, the first inquisitor of Germany, Konrad of Marburg, was killed (this led to an almost complete cessation of the activities of the tribunals in German lands), in 1242 - members of the tribunal in Toulouse, in 1252 - inquisitor of Northern Italy Pierre of Verona; in 1240 the inhabitants of Carcassonne and Narbonne revolted against the inquisitors.

In the middle of the 13th century, fearing the growing power of the Inquisition, which became the fiefdom of the Dominicans, the papacy tried to put its activities under stricter control. In 1248 Innocent IV subordinated the inquisitors to the Bishop of Azhansky, and in 1254 transferred the tribunals in Central Italy and Savoy to the hands of the Franciscans, leaving only Liguria and Lombardy to the Dominicans. But under Alexander IV (1254-1261), the Dominicans took revenge; in the second half of the 13th century. they actually ceased to reckon with the papal legates and turned the Inquisition into an independent organization. The post of Inquisitor General, through which the popes supervised her activities, remained vacant for many years.

Numerous complaints about the arbitrariness of the tribunals forced Clement V to reform the Inquisition. On his initiative, the Vienne Cathedral of 1312 obliged the inquisitors to coordinate the judicial procedure (especially the use of torture) and sentences with the local bishops. In 1321, John XXII further restricted their powers. The Inquisition gradually fell into decay: judges periodically recalled, their sentences were often cashed. In 1458 the inhabitants of Lyons even arrested the president of the tribunal. In a number of countries (Venice, France, Poland), the Inquisition came under state control. Philip IV the Handsome in 1307-1314 used it as a tool to defeat the wealthy and influential Templar order; with its help, the German emperor Sigismund dealt with Jan Huss in 1415, and the British in 1431 with Jeanne d'Arc. The functions of the Inquisition were transferred into the hands of secular courts, both ordinary and extraordinary: in France, for example, in the second half of the 16th century. about "heresies" were considered both by parliaments (courts), and specially created for this "chambers of fire" (chambres ardentes).

At the end of the 15th century. the inquisition has experienced its rebirth. In 1478, under Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, it was established in Spain and for three and a half centuries was an instrument of royal absolutism. The Spanish Inquisition, created by T. Torkvemada, became famous for its special cruelty; Its main target was the recently converted to Christianity Jews (Maranas) and Muslims (Moriscos), many of whom secretly continued to profess the old religion. According to official data, in 1481-1808 in Spain at the auto-da-fe (public execution of "heretics") almost 32 thousand people died; 291.5 thousand were subjected to other punishments (life imprisonment, hard labor, confiscation of property, pillory). The introduction of the Inquisition in the Spanish Netherlands was one of the reasons for the Dutch revolution of 1566–1609. From 1519 this institution operated in the Spanish colonies of Central and South America.

At the end of the 15th century. the inquisition has acquired particular importance in Germany; here, in addition to "heresies", she actively fought against "witchcraft" ("witch hunt"). However, in the 1520s, in the German principalities, where the Reformation won, this institution was done away with forever. In 1536, the Inquisition was established in Portugal, where the persecution of the "new Christians" (Jews who converted to Catholicism) began. In 1561, the Portuguese crown introduced it to their Indian dominions; there she took up the eradication of the local "false teaching" that combined the features of Christianity and Hinduism.

The successes of the Reformation prompted the papacy to transform the inquisitorial system towards greater centralization. In 1542, Paul III established the permanent Holy Congregation of the Roman and Ecumenical Inquisition (Holy Chancellery) to oversee the activities of local tribunals, although in reality its jurisdiction extended only to Italy (except Venice). The office was headed by the pope himself and consisted first of five and then ten cardinals-inquisitors; an advisory council of specialists in canon law functioned under her. She also exercised papal censorship, publishing the Index of Forbidden Books from 1559. The most famous victims of the papal inquisition were Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei.

Starting from the Age of Enlightenment, the Inquisition began to lose its position. In Portugal, her rights were significantly curtailed: S. de Pombal, the first minister of King Jose I (1750-1777), in 1771 deprived her of the right of censorship and liquidated the auto-da-fe, in 1774 he forbade the use of torture. In 1808 Napoleon I completely abolished the Inquisition in Italy, Spain and Portugal that he had captured. In 1813, the Cadiz Cortes (parliament) abolished it in the Spanish colonies. However, after the fall of the Napoleonic Empire in 1814, it was rebuilt in both Southern Europe and Latin America. In 1816, Pope Pius VII prohibited the use of torture. After the revolution of 1820, the institution of the Inquisition finally ceased to exist in Portugal; in 1821 he was abandoned by the Latin American countries that had freed themselves from Spanish rule. The last executed by the verdict of the inquisitorial court was the Spanish teacher K. Ripoll (Valencia; 1826). In 1834, the Inquisition was liquidated in Spain. In 1835, Pope Gregory XVI officially abolished all local inquisitorial tribunals, but retained the Holy Chancellery, whose activities from that time were limited to excommunication and publication Index.

By the time of the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965, the Holy Office remained only an odious relic of the past. In 1966, Pope Paul VI effectively abolished it, transforming it into a Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with purely censorship functions; The index has been canceled.

In a landmark act, John Paul II (1978–2005) reevaluated the historical role of the Inquisition. On his initiative, Galileo was rehabilitated in 1992, Copernicus in 1993, and the archives of the Holy Chancellery were opened in 1998. In March 2000, on behalf of the church, John Paul II brought repentance for the "sins of intolerance" and the crimes of the Inquisition.

Ivan Krivushin

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