The Inquisition Myth... The Black Legend:
We must remember again that every government in Europe punished
treason and heresy by painful death, usually by burning in a public
place... though the Black Legend paints it as an exclusive atrocity
of the Spanish Inquisition... Yes, the Inquisition is to be blamed
for many things, but not as badly as the Black Legend says.
The Inquisition Myth, which Spaniards call The Black Legend, did
not arise in 1480. It began almost 100 years later, and exactly one
year after the Protestant defeat at the Battle of Muhlberg at the
hands of Ferdinand's grandson, the Emperor Charles V. In 1567 a
fierce propaganda campaign began with the publication of a
Protestant leaflet penned by a supposed Inquisition victim named
Montanus. This Protestant character painted Catholic Spaniards as
barbarians who ravished women and sodomized young boys. The
propagandists soon created hooded fiends who tortured their
victims in horrible devices like the knife-filled Iron Maiden which
never was used in Spain.
The BBC/A&E special plainly states a reason for the war of
words: the Protestants fought with words because they could not win
on the battlefield.
Please, take a look at the BBC/A&E special program, "The Myth
of the Spanish Inquisition"
ABSTRACT: The 1994 BBC/A&E production, "The Myth of the Spanish
Inquisition" exposes the common understanding that the Inquisition
was a vast pogrom of non Catholics as largely the creation of
Protestant propaganda. In explaining the historical context, the
program shows that the Spanish were not acting odd by their
contemporary standards...
... And most significantly, historians have declared fraudulent a
supposed Inquisition document claiming the genocide of millions of
heretics. What is documented in the program is that 3000 to 5000
people died during the Inquisition's 350 year history, which pale
in comparison to the 150,000 documented witch burnings elsewhere in
Europe over the same centuries.
American historian William T. Walsh writes: "In Britain, 30,000
went to the stake for witchcraft; in Protestant Germany, the figure
was 100,000"
The Inquisition was fiercely attacked with gross exaggeration.
Thus, a combination of political rivalry, contempt for the Catholic
faith, and anti-Spanish racism created a distorted image of the
Inquisition... serving as a handy stick with which to beat the
Catholic Church or Spain, whatever you hate most.
For example, Fray Tomas de Torquemada, the Inquisitor General of
Spain whose very name is now a symbol of ruthless cruelty, actually
checked the excessive zeal of the earlier inquisitors in many ways,
including the limiting and mitigating of torture. After the
appointment of Fray Tomas de Torquemada as Inquisitor General in
1483 its tribunals were so fair that many preferred to have it hear
their cases rather than the regular courts.
Walsh thinks that torture under Torquemada was no worse than that
used by American police in the 1930s. Also, under Torquemada's
entire tenure as Inquisitor General (1483-149
, 100,000
prisoners passed before his various tribunals throughout Spain. Of
this number, less than 2% were executed. In Barcelona, from 1488 to
1498, "one prisoner out of 20 was put to death" (23 executions).
Torquemada is not the monster of the Black Legend; still, he was
responsible for, as an estimation, between 1,000 and 1,500
deaths... those death sentences were not at stake, but always
pronounced by the civil court where the heretics were turned... and
mostly by burning, the common method for those times.
http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ442.HTM
In Dostoyevski's famous novel The Brothers Karamazou, his imaginary
Grand Inquisitor is a sinister horror who is master of Spain and
who intends to put Christ to death after He returns to 16th-century
Spain. Dostoyevski's Grand Inquisitor is a phantom, a creature of
delusion, spawned in ignorance. How can one believe in the Russian
novelist's scenario? Can great art be built on lies? Torquemada was
not master of Spain and would not murder Christ.
And what of Poe's tale of the condemned man in The Pit and the
Pendulum?. Since the setting and the plot are wildly false, what is
left? But because of the power of art, these writings will continue
to haunt the imagination and work against the truth. They will
remain as literary thorns in the side of the Church. I doubt if
people will discard so handy a weapon as the Inquisition with which
to beat Catholics over the head. The Spanish Inquisition: Facts
versus Fiction
This collection of bitter fables, with their overtones of bigotry
and racism, proves once more that a lie told often enough and
convincingly enough will in the end be accepted as gospel.
There was in historical fact no single or monolithic "Inquisition",
but several Inquisitions. Dostoyevsky may be forgiven for inventing
the "Grand Inquisitor", such a daunting, haunting figure.
Dostoyevsky wrote fiction, and everyone knows it. The inventors of
the "Myth of the Inquisition" should not be so readily pardoned,
and the Myth should be carefully studied and re-evaluated . Here is
the second pertinent history, the tale of a fiction with enough
traces of authenticity to fool a lot of folks, much like a
contemporary television "docudrama," or an Oliver Stone movie, or
one of the recent political party conventions.
The Myth of the Inquisition was the work of Protestants and others
united at about the time of the Enlightenment's deification of
scientific reason. Their design was to turn people against revealed
religion and, especially, the Roman Catholic Church. They
transformed the Inquisitions into a flaming scourge which swept
through Europe, its sanguinary effects touching virtually every
hamlet, every family... The Myth of the Inquisition is just that:
phony, made up, bogus.
"A New Industry: The Inquisition", exposes the big business of
writing about the Inquisition today, and makes some good well
studied remarks:
"Edward Peters, for example, goes to great pains to develop an
interpretation of three layers: institution, legend, and myth. Much
of what the world thought about the Spanish Inquisition came from
Protestant propaganda in the Low Countries during the interminable
war there in the seventeenth century. The Vietnam of the period was
the war in the Spanish Netherlands. Dutch and English Protestants
hesitated to attack the King of Spain directly, because they
themselves had kings in an era when monarchies were less and less
stable. Charles I lost his head, and Cromwell represented a sizable
anti-monarchist point of view. But it was "safe" to attack Spain's
religion, and you could get at the religion through the institution
which supposedly promoted or represented it. Dutch Calvinists
spared no effort, aided by their German and English allies, in
painting a picture of the religion of Rome in the most negative of
terms. The Black Legend was the result of Protestant propaganda,
according to Peters and other historians. Even if there was a
Catholic version, a sort of White Legend, have you ever heard of
it?...
The Inquisition was really a court system, and jurists keep good
records, clean records, and abundant records. Curialists write
neatly".
I wish this humble writings would do a little the job of a Fair
Legend.
