The Grand Inquisitor's Manual

The word “Inquisition” is, in many ways, one of the most dreadful to hear. When one looks at it objectively, at the level of basic vocabulary, it seems almost innocent, associated as it is with the words “inquiry” and “inquire,” words associated with ideas of polite but focused curiosity. But there is absolutely nothing polite or merely curious about the movement known as the Inquisition, as any student of history knows.

The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God is author Jonathan Kirsch's attempt to describe the Inquisition in all its horrific glory - its motivations, its mechanisms, and its failures - but Kirsch describes the Inquisition not as a historical curiosity, locked in its place in time, but as a continuing, evolving machine. Kirsch insists that, for as long as there are people who wish to control or cleanse the world, for whatever reason, then the Inquisition will never truly die.

And indeed, it was because of control - religious control - that the Inquisition began in the first place. Kirsch begins his history with the persecution of the Cathars in southern France in the Middle Ages. At the time Christianity, which was (and still is, truth be told) never a stable religion to begin with, was still ironing out some kinks in its dogma, still trying to determine what was acceptable in the religion and what was unacceptable. This fluidity of belief allowed for various other movements to evolve, all of them operating under the umbrella term of Christianity, though not under the control of the Church.

It was this inability to totally control what people believed and the way they worshiped that troubled Pope Innocent III, and it would be the impetus behind his creation of the Holy Office of Inquisition into Heretical Depravity - what is now known simply as the Inquisition. Indeed, Kirsch points out that this inability to completely monopolize faith and later on knowledge and learning would be the driving force behind the Medieval and Roman Inquisitions. It was this drive to monopolize what its flock were allowed to know and believe that would later lead to the infamous episode with Galileo and the Inquisition.

But Kirsch makes clear that the Inquisition was also very much grounded in less ephemeral concerns - political power and finance being the two other legs of the Inquisition, and the two main reasons why it lasted as long as it did, beyond the extermination of perceived heretics. Both the Church and Kings saw the Inquisition as a useful tool for gaining more money and more power, and so used it to those ends - oftentimes solely for those reasons. Kirsch offers up the Knights Templar as an example, whose wealth and power were the envy of not just certain members within the Church itself, but also of Philip the Fair. Given the nature of the Inquisition, which allows the inquisitor to take as evidence even the flimsiest of rumor, Philip was able to use the Inquisitorial machine to rid himself of the Templars, gaining both political and spiritual power from their extermination.

This thread of power and greed continues throughout all the variations of the Inquisition, but Kirsch draws an even further distinction when he begins talking about the most infamous of its iterations: the Spanish Inquisition. In Spain, Kirsch claims, the driving force was not so much the thought-crime of heresy, as it was elsewhere in Europe where the Inquisition had a foothold, but it was rooted in the concept of “limpia de sangre:” purity of blood. The Spanish Inquisition was driven by an overpowering anti-Semitic sentiment, and it used the machinery developed since the Medieval period to its own advantage in destroying and rooting out those who were not “Old Christians.” Just like with the Inquisition as it appeared in France and in Italy, there was a thread of monetary and political advantage running as an undercurrent throughout the persecution of the Jews: the excuse simply shifted from “heretical thoughts” to “impure blood.”

Towards the latter end of the book, Kirsch begins to describe the Inquisition not as a movement that died before World War II, but as a machine that could be used by whoever decided it would be a good idea to do so. Thus he calls the Nazi extermination of the Jews an Inquisition, specifically the kind rooted in the Spanish iteration of the movement. The Soviet Union's political machinery while under Stalin's grasp is also considered a variation of the Inquisition, since it uses the machinery of the movement as a means of controlling those who lived within its grasp.

Even the United States, Kirsch argues, is not completely innocent in this. He points to the imprisonment of hundreds of Japanese-Americans in camps during World War II, and then to McCarthyism and HUAC, as primary examples of the machinery of the Inquisition being put to use. Torture might not have occurred, that he agrees with, but the fact that a governing body attempted to police thought-crimes (McCarthyism) and imprisoned people based on their heritage (Japanese-Americans) is enough to dub these moments in American history as Inquisitions in their own right.

While this is all well and good, there are some areas that I feel Kirsch does not explore to my satisfaction, no matter how interesting it might seem. One of those is the link between witch-hunts and the Inquisition. It is clear that witch-hunters used the techniques of the Inquisition when judging their victims, but the Inquisition itself was not very concerned with witchcraft. In fact, Kirsch seems to say that inquisitors were more inclined to let suspected witches go, believing them to be insane, or judging their acts to have originated with a possession by demons, and hence not entirely their fault. The Inquisition, it appears, was more concerned with heretical ideas than with witchcraft. And yet, since the witch-hunters were using the same techniques as the Inquisition, and since the Inquisition was later on allowed to prosecute witches, Kirsch seems to argue that the two were linked.

I feel that the connection between the witch-hunts and the Inquisition is a little loose, despite Kirsch's argument that they are linked. Kirsch has already established that the Inquisition was about policing blood heritage or thought-crimes, so this association with witch-hunting seems rather tenuous. Also, Kirsch has difficulty in explaining why witch-hunts were far more prevalent than the Inquisition, occurring as they did in countries where the Inquisition had very little to no power, such as England and the Netherlands. Even the Salem Witch Trials are described as a mini-Inquisition, but the only similarity I see between them is the machinery of the Inquisition, and not necessarily the motives.

In the final chapter of the book, Kirsch attempts to link the Inquisition with the events in Guantanamo and the war on terror. That link, however, is extremely weak. While it may be argued that the methods of torture developed by the Inquisition were used on the prisoners at Guantanamo in order to extract information, and the Inquisitorial concept of “naming names” was certainly in force, I have difficulty seeing the link between the modern war on terror and the Inquisition as Kirsch has described it beyond those few points of reference. If Kirsch had written more on it, described it more concretely, I suppose I would have seen the connection, but as it stands, the chapter - which could have been the most powerful and most controversial - is the weakest of the lot.

Overall, this book is an interesting and provocative read. On one hand, it can be read as a guide to understanding the Inquisition, and on the other, it can be read as a testament to the fact that, when given power or the chance to gain it, human beings can and will do whatever they think is necessary to achieve and control that power. The Inquisition itself might no longer be around as it existed in its most infamous forms, but that does not mean the machinery has ceased to exist - it is still there, and was used, and will still be used, when those in power deem it necessary.