George Bush's Inquisition

It has been a few days since I have had a moment to call my own. I am editing a series of books, and when I ask questions, the author keeps adding new material so that I have to go over the same ground again and again. Frustrating.

In the back of my mind, during these days building up to the so-called Iraqi Election, I have been thinking about the example of the Crusade against the Cathars in another context: the creation of the Inquisition.

Many people think of the Inquisition as something that was started to eliminate witches and Devil worship, and the word conjures images of the rack and iron maidens and all kinds of bizarre and twisted torture equipment. Sure, torture was a big part of the Inquisition, but not as much as some people might think. You have to remember that the Inquisition began during a period of history when human life was treated so casually that cutting off noses or ears or hands, or gouging out eyes was not unheard of as a legal punishment.

After years of brutal massacres, of destruction of the land, of some of the most horrible events ever to bear witness of man’s inhumanity to man, Pope Gregory IX decided that it was only results that counted. He intended to wipe Catharism from the face of the earth. He must have sat up at night to create the bizarre system that was put into place to deal with heresy.

First, he created special papal legates who were granted wide powers of prosecution similar to what we have today in the Homeland Security nonsense, and sent them out all over Europe. The men chosen for this task were clearly psychopaths, and their mission was to spread terror all over Europe.

Gregory staffed the episcopal palaces of the South of France with psychopathic bishops who offered a cash bounty to anyone who betrayed a heretic. The inducements to betray one's neighbor were surely tempting in the best of times. But in a time when starvation and destruction was everywhere after more than 20 years of the rampaging of the Crusading armies, it was well-nigh impossible to resist. The terms were that the property confiscated from the heretic was divided between the informer, the church and the crown. Naturally, in a land that was financially devastated, where people were displaced and starving after years of being battered by this same church and crown, there were a lot of individuals offering up their neighbors for blood money.

Robert le Bourgre, which means "the bugger", suggesting the contempt in which he was held by the peopele, terrorized formerly peaceful northern France. Another legate, Conrad of Marburg found unsuspected heretics everywhere in the Rhineland. Thousands were sent to the stake, often on the same day that they were accused. Again, sure sounds like Bush and his private torture chamber at Guantanamo. Conrad rode about on his mule with two assistants, bringing terror to every village and town they approached. Apparently, even the regular clergy saw through this nonsense and finally decided to do something about it. On July 30, 1233, a Franciscan friar, driven to act in the name of justice, intercepted Conrad and murdered him.

The pope had had enough. He turned to the Dominicans. In the spring of 1233, papal inquisitors were appointed in Toulouse, Albi, and Carcassonne. These inquisitors were succeeded in an unbroken line for 600 years.

Hundreds of people were summoned to testify before inquisitors. The questions were repetitive, designed to plant doubt in the mind of the person being interrogated as to what, exactly, the inquisitor knew, and who had told him. Hmmm... Sounds like "Total Information Awareness," doesn't it?

A person suspected of Cathar sympathies was not always informed of the charges hanging over his head; if apprised of the danger, he had no right to know who his accusers were; and if he dared to seek legal help, his lawyer could be charged with abetting heresy.

Sounding more and more like George and his War on Terrorism ...

Whatever the verdict of the inquisitor - who was prosecutor, judge and jury - no appeal was allowed. Anyone could be held indefinitely in prison for further questioning without cause of explanation.

Yes. Enemy Combatants, no doubt.

The inquisition destroyed the bonds of trust that hold societies together. Informing on one’s neighbor became not only a duty, but a necessary survival strategy. And so it is becoming in America today.

For 100 years, the inquisition was a fact on the ground of life in the Languedoc. The arrival of an inquisitor in a town was the occasion for demeaning displays of moral collapse just as the arrival of George W. Bush is the occasion for legislators and journalists to take off their shirts and display the wide yellow streaks down their backs.

In theory, of course, no one could be punished if no one talked because the inquisitor could not act without a writ of denunciation, but in practic, no community possessed the cohesion needed to combat the power of a secret tribunal.

The same is true in America today. Everyone has been adequately conditioned by watching "reality TV" and "Survivor," and they know the rules: Do unto others before they do unto you.

And so it was in the Languedoc, the historical model for what is happening in the United States today, and for what happened in Germany under Hitler.

Upon his arrival in a town, the inquisitor consulted with the local clergy. All males over the age of 14, and females over the age of 12, were required to make a profession of faith in the Catholic church. Those who didn’t were the first to be questioned.

Then, the inquisitor would give a speech in which he invited the people to spend some days thinking very, very hard about their activities past, present and future, and to come forward in the following week to give confidential depositions. After a seven day grace period, those who had not denounced themselves would be issued a summons.

The punishments ranged from loss of property , to loss of life. Aside from the capital crime of being a Cathar, punishable offenses included sheltering a Cathar, or even failing to report any instance of heresy.

The real proof of genuine piety toward the Catholic Church was defined as the number of people the sinner was willing to betray!

It only took ten years for the Inquisition to become the work of a few psychopathic fanatics, to being a proficient bureaucracy that lasted for 600 years. It employed hundreds of individuals who interrogated thousands of people with such monotonous regularity that a regular "glossary" was established for the "workers".

Armed with a list of proposed offenses to be considered "heretical" or "supporting heretics," which included just knowing that a heretic had crossed one's property and failing to report it, the Inquisition proceeded to intimidate the population of Europe on a scale that was impossible to imagine. The sheer numbers of people called to testify, and re-called to testify again and again, was staggering. In a strange twist of historical irony, the Catharas - who believed that the material world was evil and irrelevant - inspired the codification of the Police State.

A cross-referenced compendium of the confessions extracted from tens of thousands of people was compiled, creating a map of the mental landscape of the Languedoc. The more than 5 thousand transcripts of interrogations that survive represent only a small fraction of the work of the Inquisition.

Inquisitors manuals were created to serve as guides for the growing number of Papal courts in Europe. These manuals reminded the inquisitors that they were in the business of saving souls, but I think that the distinction was lost on those whose lives were lost or ruined by the judgments of the Inquisition.

Languedoc was, essentially, the laboratory for repression. The reputation of the Inquisition was enhanced by the talented Inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui, who was the villain in Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose."

The Inquisitors persuaded a handful of captured Cathars to convert and sell their testimony. Sicard of Lunel of Albi gave the friars and exhaustive list of Cathar sympathizers, even fingering his own parents. Anyone who had ever helped him in his life as a Cathar, whether they had just given him a bed for the night, a bit of food, or even a jar of honey, were hauled in to be punished - just on the his word. He and several others like him were lodged thereafter in a castle outside of Toulouse in the medieval version of the "witness protection program." Sicard was well paid for his perfidy and lived to a ripe old age. One wonders how peaceful it was.

The use of torture was delicately referred to as "putting the question." In the Languedoc, successive waves of highly trained inquisitors, aided by informers and torturers, fired by the totalitarian creed of the Catholic church, with detailed manuals and expanding registers of "intelligence," slowly but surely ground Catharism into oblivion. Thousands of dramas of conscience ended in the dungeons or in fires quenced with blood. By the end of the century, only the truly heroic dared to say that this world was evil...

It was not a legal system; it was a system designed to create fear.

And so is the War on Terror in America today.