Heaven or Heresy: A History of the Inquisition

Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/review/R11HID8OEQJ5YD/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

If you are looking either for horror stories or to confirm what you've always been told by Hollywood, then give this a miss.

On the other hand, if you want a clear, lucid and comprehensive survey of contemporary scholarship, this is an excellent source.

Professor Madden takes his time in developing the origin of the Inquisition from its Roman precedents before tackling the histories of the various Inquisitions - Spanish, Roman, and papal - that most people have conflated when they talk about “The Inquisition.” Along the way, Madden shares insights into the Inquisitions that often run counter to conventional wisdom. For example, the Inquisitions had broad popular support, limited the use of torture and appointed lawyers for the defense. That last surprised me. In addition, the numbers of people brought under inquisitorial scrutiny was always very small and the inquisitions had an acquittal rate exceeding that found in modern democratic legal systems, suggesting that the system was not rigged and that the judges were trying to reach an objective conclusion.

One of the negative reviewers says:

“Did the Inquisition burn 20,000 or was it 50,000? Did the Inquisition destroy the lives of 200,000 Jews or was it only 90,000 Jews? All of this is a distinction without a deference.”

To the contrary, Madden pointed out that over its more than 400 year history, the number for the Spanish Inquisition was closer to 3,000. The difference is that this proves the leniency of the Inquisition and the effectiveness of its system for defending the accused. This is particularly true, as Madden points out, when the secular states were using far more torture without defense counsels and killing ten or a hundred times as many.

In addition, the Inquisition had no jurisdiction over anyone but baptized Catholics. Thus, inquisitors did not see themselves as persecuting “Jews” but punishing Catholics for heresy. (This is not to say that in the Spanish Inquisition there was an element of racism against “New Catholics,” or that, in fact, some of the Catholics punished for “Judaizing” were Jews who did not want to convert and had no intention of actually converting. It is, nonetheless, anachronistic to accuse the inquisitors of destroying the lives of “Jews” since that was not what they thought they were doing. In addition, in many cases, it was not what they were doing at all, since there were many cases of bona fide conversions where Jewish family traditions placed the New Christians under suspicion of “Judaizing.”)

Madden also pointed out the significance of the notion of “relaxing” a convicted accused to the state. The state carried out punishment. Until the accused was given to the state, punishment could not be carried out. Thus, during that time, the Inquisition was free to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused under a fairer and more humane system than the state would have provided, which is why accused people often tried to get the inquisition to take jurisdiction over their case.

Anti-Catholics of whatever persuasion will find these lectures to be disappointing, but the facts are the fact.

A good companion text for seeing the kinds of cases that the Spanish Inquisition actually dealt with is “Inquisitorial Inquiries” - https://www.amazon.com/Inquisitorial-Inquiries-Brief-Secret-Heretics-ebook/dp/B005CVFIYU/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8