« Now, random bloggage | Main | Losties... »
May 10, 2007
PBS on the Inquistion
Maclin Horton watched it and summarizes. Your thoughts?
Posted by Amy Welborn | Permalink
Comments
I only watched the second half of it, but it seemed to me to be the predictable anti-Catholic hatchet job you might expect from PBS. Maclin summarized the first half as:Cathars = good, Catholics = bad. The second half could be summarized as:
"Conversos" (Jews who pretended to convert to Catholicism) = good
Catholics = bad.
Posted by: Niall Mor at May 10, 2007 11:11:22 AM
I caught part of the second half and concur with Niall: conversos = good, Catholics = really, REALLY bad.
It didn't even make an attempt to be somewhat even-handed. How can they honestly bill this kind of thing as a documentary?
The BBC, of all places, did much better with The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition, a 1994 (joint production with A&E that has aired on the History Channel).
But one watches the PBS production and wonders if the researchers looked up anything. At all.
Posted by: CV at May 10, 2007 11:30:30 AM
I watched the first half-hour. It was easy to see where this thing was going, which is exactly as Maclin reports. I cussed at my TV, asked God to have mercy on fools and switched over to the Red Sox. They were pummeling the Blue Jays. A peaceful slumber overtook me along about the top of the eighth. I awoke this morning to find that the final score was 9-3, and that the Church had survived PBS on the Inquisition.
Posted by: Int'l Harvester at May 10, 2007 11:31:35 AM
I didn't see it but when I saw a feature article about it in the newspaper it brought to mind the disportionate media attention that is given to the Spanish Inquisition. This can be documented if you compare Google hits for the Spanish Inquisition and Google hits for La Vendee. Henry Kamen, a Jewish historian, estimates I believe that in the Spanish Inquisition 3,000 or so people were put to death, and this was over more than a century. In less then a year, in what was essentially the first modern genocide, the Jacobins killed approximately 300,000 innocent Catholics in La Vendee for their loyalty to priests approved by Rome. Google "Spanish Inquisition and Catholic" and you get 228,000 hits -- 76 hits for every person killed. Google "La Vendee and Catholic" and you get 14,000 hits -- 1/5 of 1 hit for every person killed. What this tranlates to is 380 times more attention given to the Spanish Inquistion than La Vendee, when adjusted for number of dead, and 16 times more attention without even considered the relative number of people killed.
Posted by: Dan at May 10, 2007 12:00:55 PM
Too bad. There was a superb documentary on the medieval inquisitions and the Spanish on BBC a number of years ago. They had as the principal presenters Henry Kamen and Bernard Hamilton. They are the authorities on those topics writing in English.
As the presentation represented mainline secular scholarly consensus, there were many complaints that the program was "pro-inquisition," etc. People always prefer what feeds the prejudices. I guess that's why PBS has produced its own version.
Posted by: Fr. Augustine Thompson O.P. at May 10, 2007 12:06:18 PM
I finally made the decision to longer support my local PBS station. I suppose a letter needs to be sent off to them to explain why. There are lots of good things on this station, but I feel I need to make a point. I don't know what else to do.
Posted by: Stephen at May 10, 2007 12:14:42 PM
I watched the first hour and a half before I fell asleep in the chair, only to wake up as the closing credits were going. Maclin's summary is exactly right on the first part, and the second half was even more biased (if that's possible).
At the end, one thought I had was that the whole thing was premised upon the notion that one's personal religious choices are paramount. Heresy doesn't matter because it's all individualistic. Taking that angle, of course, the Cathars and Conversos seem like the heroes of the story.
Posted by: Edmund C. at May 10, 2007 12:21:41 PM
Silly me...I got my degree in history. I actually worked to understand the stuff. Who'd've guessed that I could just make it up as I went along - and get away with it - and get paid for it.
Posted by: Mark Windsor at May 10, 2007 12:23:49 PM
Reminds me of elementary school where a teacher told us that the Cathars wanted to sing pretty hymns and the Church persecuted them for that.
Posted by: Eileen R at May 10, 2007 12:23:58 PM
Silly me...I got my degree in history. I actually worked to understand the stuff. Who'd've guessed that I could just make it up as I went along - and get away with it - and get paid for it.
Posted by: Mark Windsor at May 10, 2007 12:23:59 PM
Tedious. Aside from the many inaccuracies, it was just plain boring. I couldn't bring myself to watch the second hour.
Quite apart from the basic cartoonish portrayal of the angelic Cathars v. the demonic Catholics, just about every minute had some sort of historical inaccuracy in the "dramatic re-enactments." From the setup of the churches to the priest's vestments to the way Mass was celebrated, it was on a par with a community theatre production. Not to mention the errors of terminology, such as the priest and the woman "consummating" their relationship -- every Sunday. Hmmm. I thought consummation was only the first time.
All in all, not up to the standards of PBS. A plethora of small inacuracies makes me wonder if they even got the narrative correct, quite apart from the Bush-like depiction of absolute good v. absolute evil.
Posted by: Eric at May 10, 2007 12:26:48 PM
My reaction was the same as Maclin's. The show was just another hatchet job, with the content (whether or not the events depicted really occurred) a convenient stick to pick up and beat modern Catholics and Catholic priests with.
I thought about writing a letter to my PBS station and telling them I wouldn't support them anymore - but then how could I watch real news on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer?
Posted by: Kathleen Lundquist at May 10, 2007 12:46:50 PM
Does anybody know if the 1994 BBC/A&E "Myth of the Spanish Inquisition" is for sale online anywhere? Thanks.
Posted by: john at May 10, 2007 1:03:21 PM
Personally, I don’t see how it is possible to interpret the programs as anything other than an attempt to incite hatred against the Catholic Church. There were issues across the board - tendentious characterizations of what was known, mood music, Catholic beliefs placed at the center of the web of sinister motivations of some individuals guilty of despicable behavior, actors (well, overactors at least) conveying every possible negative stereotype through heavy-handed melodrama. It just goes on and on.
At one point I thought I heard the figure 1.2 million reported as the number of people killed as a result of the Crusade launched in the region, which I took to mean the Albigensian Crusade. Is such a figure historically supportable? Clearly, the casualty count was placed in a context designed to lead the viewer to associate it directly with the Inquisition itself, which of course, is one of the oldest tricks in the anti-Catholic book – ‘The Inquisition (sic – singular) killed millions, millions!”
It’s not as if an honest and straightforward examination of the facts of this issue or time period should be off limits. Far from it. We can all learn if we honestly examine the past. And Pope John Paul II put the Church through such a process of examination, including examination from outside itself, on the issues arising from the Inquisitions.
But I think it would be a mistake to pass off the issue of the programs lightly. They were – and should be considered – a declaration of all-out war to the very destruction of the Church. PBS placed the programs prominently, advertised them. Did PBS pay for them? It seems to me that PBS has chosen to place itself in a situation in which no Catholic of good conscience is able to contribute to or support public funds for PBS since it has decided to become an explicitly anti-Catholic organization.
This is no sputtering rage. It’s just simple logic. PBS exists to attack and destroy the Catholic Faith among other, and even worthy, purposes. Therefore unless the bigoted agendas as represented by these programs are disavowed (don’t hold your breath), it is neither logical, just, nor morally acceptable for Catholics to support PBS. We don’t have to be nasty, and of course we have an obligation to provide specific reasons when asked. We don’t need to “attack”, “blast” etc. any individuals. But, bottom line, Catholics cannot support this or any other anti-Catholic organization.
Look, I’m realistic. I don’t expect a collapse of contributions from Catholics to PBS, a solid “no” vote from Catholic politicians on public appropriations to PBS, or Catholics in foundations to consistently decline PBS grant applications. But we have an obligation to begin now, and to gradually educate unaware Catholics and train the new generation of Catholics to not support PBS – as long as it exists to destroy the Church.
Of course, better yet would be a situation in which PBS lived up to its charter and founding principles and the standards of historical truth. But given the arrogance of many of the influential individuals in early 21st century arts and academic fields, and the cultural/historical mindset they embrace, I would be surprised if such a turn-around were to happen.
Ultimately, though, we will win and in fact are winning. As the demographic shadows creep further across the face of the current populations of Europe and North America, little sub-groups of survival-level fertility will stand out more and more prominently. And their cultural influence will grow accordingly. As Catholics live out their vocations and are represented in those sub-groups, the culture will follow accordingly.
Posted by: Glenn Juday at May 10, 2007 1:29:48 PM
Despite disliking emperor's-new-clothes versions of our Religion, I turned it off quickly since art tends to lie in the nuances when applied to history. Picasso had said that "art is the lie that tells the truth" and we want art to lie when art depicts on a canvas a beach and surf and sand dunes with no empty coke bottles on the beach like in real life nor gull leavings on the dune fences. We need that lie because it is giving us the world renewed as it will be after history ends... per Isaiah and per Revelation. But when art enters the field of history, it lies in a lying manner as it has an inquisitor's face half in shadows under a hood as though he has a sociopathic problem best dealt with by prozac or paxil.
For the same reason, I don't like movies of Christ when he is depicted as having a face that belongs in GQ when in fact Isaiah 53:2 said that Christ would not come that way since it would have attracted people for reasons beside the point "..There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him."...(Isaiah 53:2) Dan's stats were more history than shadows on sociopathic visages.
Posted by: bill bannon at May 10, 2007 1:40:31 PM
Thanks for the link, Amy. As I mentioned in my email, I'm hoping someone with a lot more historical knowledge than I have will critique it in some detail.
It was really a pretty appalling piece of work, if the intention was to present serious history. 85% somewhat cheesy re-enactment, another 10% face time with a very beautiful young woman whom one assumed to be some kind of scholar, but turned out (thank you, Google) to be a novelist who's written a book set in the period. Presumably she did her research, but she didn't seem to have a deep grasp of the material. (The other 5% was spent with a guy who may have been a bit more of a scholar but didn't really have that much of interest to say and was far less photogenic. I think there was one brief comment from a Vatican spokesman.)
In sum, it was your average superficial History Channel sweep, with a (dare I say it?) rather Manichean point of view. PBS should have higher standards.
Maybe someone here can answer this question: the program asserts that the Albigensian Crusade killed two million people. Can that be accurate?
Posted by: Maclin Horton at May 10, 2007 1:40:34 PM
PBS can consistently be counted on to take an anti-Catholic stance. On the other hand, why do Catholics feel such compulsion to defend the indefensible? As if the Church were such a perfect institution, nothing that its members (all of whom have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God)do offends human decency and violates the law of God. (Recent history, if nothing else, should show us how bankrupt that notion is.) Please, friends, there may have been extenuating circumstances for the development of the Inquisition, but we ought not feel compelled to defend it.
Posted by: Dan Crawford at May 10, 2007 1:49:14 PM
Was someone defending the inquisition on this thread? If so, I missed it.
Posted by: Robert G at May 10, 2007 2:16:58 PM
We don't need to defend (and can't)the Inquisitions as such but let's stand up for the facts at least.
Another excellent book on the mythic aspects is INQISITION by Edward Peters (not our Ed).
I expected this show to be vile so I didn't watch it.
Posted by: Sandra Miesel at May 10, 2007 2:17:47 PM
I pretty much refuse to watch anything "historical" on television, and I tend to avoid most histories not written by professional historians for the same reason.
Posted by: alias clio at May 10, 2007 2:28:13 PM
My impression, after a visit to the web site created to market this "docu-drama" is that the chief purpose of the series is to air the preoccupations and grievances of its creator, David Rabinovitch. In future episodes, it seems, we're to be treated to demonisations of Pope Paul IV ("most hated pope in history", but you knew that, right?) and Pius IX.
Posted by: Romulus at May 10, 2007 2:31:09 PM
There were so many problems with that show! Where were references to the French monarchy's giant role? Where on earth did they get the estimated death toll of 2 million (?!?) in the crackdowns against the Cathars? I enjoyed the wierd suggestion that somehow people decided in roughly 1200 they needed a change from that mean ol' all-powerful and monolithic church, too. I mean, we all know there were no divisions within the church over doctine or the treatment of those outside the faith, and that everyone blindly paid and obeyed in those days of yore as they were hypnotized by that priestcraft in some strange latin tongue that no one knew anymore. Both Voltaire and my collection of Chick tracts told me so, and how could argue with them combined with public tv?
The lack of face time for the professor and the Vatican spokesman and the reliance on the historical novelist reminded me of that great vehicle of enlightenment, "In Search Of..." Once in a while, the show would give 20 seconds of air time to some square academic scientist in a grey suit who denied, say, a new ice age could start tomorrow. Then the rest of the show would have clips of some fine tan lesiure-suit clad madman declaring he saw yetis or that an asteroid was en route to destroy all life.
Posted by: Jeremy Rich at May 10, 2007 2:32:15 PM
I watched about 15 minutes of this show last night. Total waste of time. It was an amateurish dramatization of stereotypical "Black Legend" fare. The narrator made constant, anachronistic references to "Roman Catholics" and "the Roman Catholic Church" (terms that were not in use until hundreds after the period depicted).
Posted by: Mark at May 10, 2007 2:46:19 PM
Dan, I didn't notice anyone trying to defend what is evil. We would just like an attempt to put things in perspective, tell the truth, search for the balance, keep it fair, not exxagerate, not bloviate one way or the other. That's all. And PBS and many others can't seem to do that with regard to the Catholic Church. Not everybody, all the time has an anti-Catholic bias, but lots of people, lots of the time, in fact, do.
I listened to it from my non-Catholic relatives as a child and as an adult, I listened to it in history class in public high school, in the army, and in lots of other places from lots of people - including PBS.
Posted by: Stephen at May 10, 2007 3:03:30 PM
The show was comprised of alternating segments of, on the one hand, statements from historians (including someone from the vatican, apparently) and on the other hand dramatic reenactments with voice-over narration. The historians did not strike me as axe grinders. But when it came to the dramatizatons they were caricatured and maudlin.
Posted by: Sean at May 10, 2007 3:08:44 PM
Here is the novelist.
Here is the prof. Seems to be decidedly in the progressive Catholic camp, but not crazy.
Dan Crawford, as others have stated, there's been no defense of violence and oppression suggested by anyone in these comments, as far as I can tell. But what exactly is the point of studying history? To understand the past, or to demonize your enemies in the present? This program--the first hour, anyway, which is all I could take--is plainly an exercise in the latter.
Posted by: Maclin Horton at May 10, 2007 3:21:48 PM
p.s. I also heard "two million" as the body count for the Albigensian Crusade (although as far as I can remember they didn't use that term for it).
Posted by: Maclin Horton at May 10, 2007 3:23:42 PM
I was waiting to see if there would be an explanation of how the concept of a "grace period" -- during which one has the opportunity to change one's mind and recant without penalty -- was developed during the Inquisitions.
Or a few of the documented examples of prisoners being held in non-Inquisition jails blasphemed in order to be sent before the Inquisition so they could receive a more fair hearing. Most courts during that time did not have recorders writing things down, rules of evidence, or restrictions on the use of torture, which the Inquisitions generally did have and follow. Maybe those parts ended up on the cutting room floor.
A good line for PBS to have explored is how the black legend of the Spanish Inquisition is linked to relationship between England and Spain (and the Church) at that time and hence the Anglican-ization and de-Catholicizing of much of the history we have been taught.
Posted by: broed at May 10, 2007 3:41:13 PM
I was under the mistaken impression that this was the BBC production, so I started watching it, as I'd heard such good things about that, and perhaps had seen a portion of it. I was immediately disabused of that! This is definitely just a trite treatment of the subject.
One thing I thought of though, was, how much better and educational all these talking heads programs would be if they played the entire interviews with those speaking, instead of a few choice snippets, and without the questions asked which prompted the responses. They could just post those on the web somewhere, or at the very least, a transcript.
But, goodness, the public might learn something, which PBS seems determined to prevent. It's much better to validate stereotypes of those medieval evil Catholics and modern blessed Gnostics. It was to be expected, how they quickly passed right over the Cathar hatred of sex and materiality, and went straight to the libidious priest, presenting him as so enlightened. Ugh.
Posted by: Kevin P. Edgecomb at May 10, 2007 4:03:26 PM
I stopped supporting PBS after the Pensacola affiliate sold my name to NARAL about 10 years ago, and we've gradually decreased our TV watching, to the point that I can't remember the last time we watched a nonsports show. It's amazing how much more time we have now!
Posted by: Jeannette at May 10, 2007 4:21:39 PM
Two good articles by Thomas Madden, a history professor at St. Louis University, who has actually takenthe trouble to look things up:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp
http://www.crisismagazine.com/october2003/madden.htm
Posted by: CV at May 10, 2007 4:29:19 PM
I saw the first hour too and agree with the comments here. Another particularly goofy thing was the emphasis on how everything presented was taken from "secret Vatican files" that had been sealed for centuries.
Posted by: Sue T. at May 10, 2007 4:39:13 PM
CV
Compare your author, Madden who is determined to make the Church-clerical seem pacifist...compare him to the Inquisition article of the Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent.
Madden writes in your first reference: "Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense, not the Church."
Now here is the Catholic Encyclopedia saying the opposite: " In the Bull "Ad exstirpanda" (1252) Innocent IV says:
'When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podestà or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them.'
Moreover, he directs that this Bull and the corresponding regulations of Frederick II be entered in every city among the municipal statutes under pain of excommunication, which was also visited on those who failed to execute both the papal and the imperial decrees. Nor could any doubt remain as to what civil regulations were meant, for the passages which ordered the burning of impenitent heretics were inserted in the papal decretals from the imperial constitutions "Commissis nobis" and "Inconsutibilem tunicam". The aforesaid Bull "Ad exstirpanda" remained thenceforth a fundamental document of the Inquisition, renewed or reinforced by several popes, Alexander IV (1254-61), Clement IV (1265-68), Nicholas IV (1288-02), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and others. The civil authorities, therefore, were enjoined by the popes, under pain of excommunication to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake."
--------------------------
Now I am not arguing against death penalties though I do argue against burnings to death. Like Pius XII in 1952 and like Romans 13:4 and like the first Pope in Acts 5 who with God executed Ananias and Sapphira, I believe that death penalties have a place. But I am pointing out how there is a tendency in people like Madden to create history in favor of the Church clerical in terms of present pro-life pacifist values....and that is revisionism....just like Japan leaving out of her history books all references to her having done certain negative things in world war two. But we are called to be above Japan and above a salesmanship of the gospel of the lower sort.
Posted by: bill bannon at May 10, 2007 6:08:06 PM
Part of the problem is not only ideology but also sheer ignorance. The Alibensian Crusade, for example is a very complex event. In order to produce a show on the subject which conveys accurate information you need scholars who really understand the topic and can provide information on the period in a usable form for the typical viewer. This is not easy. What is easy is drawing a morality play with the "evil Catholic Church" confronting the "good Cathars". This plays well with the prejudices of more than a few members of the PBS audience who, while they would never dream of reading a Jack Chick tract, are quite willing to have some of their pledge dollars going to a little up-scale pope bashing disguised as an educational program.
Posted by: Donald R. McClarey at May 10, 2007 6:19:50 PM
Not too hard to believe that Monty Python is more accurate than PBS when it comes to the Spanish Inquisition:
http://people.csail.mit.edu/paulfitz/spanish/t1.html
Posted by: Mark Wyzalek at May 10, 2007 6:29:09 PM
"Alibensian" should have been "Albigensian". Simon de Montfort would have been appalled!
Posted by: Donald R. McClarey at May 10, 2007 7:19:43 PM
I knew what to expect when I saw the preview commercial for this program. I knew it was going to be a waste of my time and didn't bother. I instead enjoyed watching EWTN's re-broadcast of Pope Benedict's arrival in Brazil. It is much more uplifting watching the Holy Father on TV rather than most anything PBS produces these days concerning religion in general, and the Catholic Church in particular. Much of MSM just loves bashing the Church. You can't rely on them for fair and balanced reporting anymore on Catholic issues. Those days are over.
Posted by: Rivendell at May 10, 2007 7:46:50 PM
I was dissapointed with the first part of the show (all I watched) which was on the inquisition in the village of Montaillou. About 20 years ago I read the book "Montaillou' by Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie. I recall being struck at the time, by how mild the inquisition seems to have been there. It seemed there was more interest in getting information from the villagers than in meting out strict punishments.
Anyway, if people are intersted in the subject I reccomend Ladurie's book.
Posted by: Frank A. Hanincik at May 10, 2007 8:14:30 PM
I was dissapointed with the first part of the show (all I watched) which was on the inquisition in the village of Montaillou. About 20 years ago I read the book "Montaillou' by Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie. I recall being struck at the time, by how mild the inquisition seems to have been there. It seemed there was more interest in getting information from the villagers than in meting out strict punishments.
Anyway, if people are intersted in the subject I reccomend Ladurie's book.
Posted by: Frank A. Hanincik at May 10, 2007 8:18:25 PM
bill:
and like the first Pope in Acts 5 who with God executed Ananias and Sapphira, I believe that death penalties have a place
Bill, I have a problem with calling Acts of God the death penalty.
Posted by: Eileen R at May 10, 2007 8:44:50 PM
I love it! The Inquisitions were misunderstood--the Church never meant to torture or execute anyone.
According to the Wikipedia history of the Albigensian/Cathar crusade, it lasted 20 years and killed ten to twenty thousand people, Cathars and Catholics. Several hundred Cathars were captured and burnt at the stake.
How misunderstood, and how unfair of those secularists at PBS to remind us of these Church-led atrocities!
Posted by: George C. at May 10, 2007 9:47:26 PM
"This plays well with the prejudices of more than a few members of the PBS audience who, while they would never dream of reading a Jack Chick tract, are quite willing to have some of their pledge dollars going to a little up-scale pope bashing disguised as an educational program."
"How misunderstood, and how unfair of those secularists at PBS to remind us of these Church-led atrocities!"
Thank you George C. for helping me demonstrate my point. With your support, and those like you, PBS will have many years ahead of pandering to the anti-Catholic prejudice of its target audience, while deferring to the sensibilities of other religious denominations. Islam v. Islamist ring a bell? It is so much easier, and safer, to bash Catholics by presenting dumbed down morality tales from history where Catholics are cast as evil doers than examining jihadists and their influence in mosques in America. Such courage by PBS! They do know their target audience well.
Posted by: Donald R. McClarey at May 10, 2007 10:18:52 PM
It is always very dangerous to judge Historical events through 20th century liberal eyes and concepts of freedom and human rights.
Heresy in Medieval Europe and during and the immediate post Reformation period (in the case of England until 1834, the year of Catholic Emancipation)did not merely imperil one’s soul but also imperiled the State by introducing division.(For a modern similarity see Guantanamo and other security processes adopted even by the most liberal of modern states for the protection of itself and the peace and harmony among its citizens)
Indeed the Religious wars in Europe during and after the Reformation lead to the political theory and practice of “cuius regio eius religio”, literally translated as “whoever rules in a state, also determines the religion”. In so far as Spain had the Inquisition to enforce uniformity, every other State had its own “enforcement” court. Indeed, even the possibly most politically developed and liberal state of the time, England, had the Court of the Star Chamber (from which we get the modern expression "Star Chamber tactics" signifying "the most unjust judicial procedures"). A vast number of people dissenting from the Elizabethan and Jacobean Protestant settlement in England were tried for their lives in the Court of the Star Chamber: one of its principal “legal procedures” was the right to torture suspects and it was sufficient for the suspect to confess under torture to be found guilty under the principle of “ab ore tenus” i.e. “from his own mouth”.
The issue then becomes to what extent was the Inquisition as a religious Court taken over by the State for its own security, and thus becoming an instrument of enforcing state security rather than merely religious uniformity..
Posted by: LaVallette at May 10, 2007 10:23:52 PM
Eileen,
You wrote: "Bill, I have a problem with calling Acts of God the death penalty."
Acts 5 was not an "Act of God"...a legal term meaning a random death by extraordinary means... the way that tragedy several weeks ago was in the north east wherein a 5 year old child was killed by a flag pole that suddenly snapped.
One can tell this from Peter's words to Sapphira that she was about to die (non random) and from the concluding phrase of the section..."the whole community took fear"....i.e. it was meant as a deterrent.
The passage is a deliberate parallel to Moses and God having killed Dathan and Abiram and establishes that Peter is the leader of the new people of God as Moses was of the old people of God. Both men were violent/ both were humbled in respect to their violence by God...David by being made a shepherd for another man for decades after having grown up in pharoah's affluence/ and yet both were picked to lead the "people" since God saw in their violence a protective trace of fatherhood/ and yet in both cases He then asked them to kill two rebels not with their power of arms but with His power and their mere words. So both Moses and Peter announce the deaths but God does the deaths...in Moses' case, the earth swallows them and all their family and in Peter's case, they simply fall to the earth and none of their family also dies...two details...earth and family.... symbolizing how mercy and the non spectacular will predominate in the New Covenant whereas justice and the spectacular typfied the Old Covenant.
Job says in 13:15.... " Slay me though he might, I will wait for him." One of the most trusting sentences in the Scriptures.
God kills intimately in a number of cases in the OT...the sons of Aaron/Uzzah/
Achan/ the 40 chidlren who mock Elisha/ the 70 descendants of Jeconiah for not greeeting the ark/ David's son since David killed Uriah, a non Jew, who unlike the 70 descendants of Jeconiah...honored the ark saying, " will I return home while the ark has no resting place...I will do no such thing".
In the New Testament, Herod is also killed directly by an angel in Acts 12.
Posted by: bill bannon at May 10, 2007 11:02:46 PM
George C, the program stands condemned by your own testimony. As noted above, unless I heard wrong, it lays two million deaths to the Church (or, according to someone else's memory, 1.2 million). You give a figure that is roughly two orders of magnitude smaller. That is not a forgivable mistake in a work that purports to be giving us the historical truth.
Posted by: Maclin Horton at May 10, 2007 11:33:15 PM
Look, anti-Catholic commenters. Get this through your head.
The past was not like today. OK? Now say after me: The - past - was - not - like - today. Got it now? Refer back as often as needed.
Back in the times we are talking about, religion, spiritual belief, was universally popular, and considered absolutely necessary for a society. Got it? Notice how that is not like how you think today? See the difference?
OK. Now because that was true, people would riot and all sorts of things like that when they thought they detected something different in religion from what they thought people were supposed to do or believe. Rulers would follow, or lead, the popular passions with their toolkit of armed men, etc.
OK, now still with me? The Church (yes THAT Church), got to the point where it had to say, "Wait a cotton-pickin minute Mr. Ruler, just who are you to be saying what is and what isn't heresy (obstinate, post-baptismal denial of essential truth(s) of divine or Catholic Faith). So the Church, you see, had to set up courts of inquiry to see if the individuals whom the mobs or rulers were all hot to execute, were in fact, heretics.
You do see how that is different than now, right?
Yes, of course it got all institutionalized. Yes, of course, secular rulers took it over (against protests from Rome – the relative power equation then being about what it is now). Yes, there were injustices done. But go read the primary documents. You see, they kept good, complete records.
We have this thing available to us called scholarship. It allows us to be free from popular passions built on prejudice, fear, and superstition – the very faults that fueled the need for Inquisitions, and the very characteristics that modern day anti-Catholic myth-promoters show themselves vulnerable to. Your grandparents may have been anti-Catholic bigots, raised on lurid tales heard in camp meetings, or semi-religious social lodges, or communist cell meetings, or meeting rooms full of self-conscious young artistes.
But you do not have to be a bigot. You can access a world full of genuine scholarship with greater ease than at any time in history. And in doing so you can put down the burden of unreasoning hate that has to be stoked again and again until it twists your soul. Then, maybe “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Think about it. There is a good reason that it sounds attractive.
Posted by: Glenn Juday at May 11, 2007 3:28:52 AM
Does anyone else find it interesting that this "documentary" aired the day Pope Benedict landed in Brazil? What better way to stir the pot than by showing some mean ole priests harassing folks in the Old World, just like they're doing now in the New World.
Posted by: Dan at May 11, 2007 9:46:44 AM
"When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podestà or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them."
Actually, this supports what Madden said. Execution of the heretics were carried out by secular authorities. Death penalties for heresy existed well before the Inquisition.
Posted by: JonathanR. at May 11, 2007 11:39:08 AM
Immediately upon seeing the promos and hearing the title, I opted not to watch but read instead. Thank God there was not time wasted there. PBS seems to be going downhill. On our channel, before the Inquisition special, there was a doc about a number of Roman corpses lately discovered and exhumed in the city of York, England. During the Roman occupation of that country, York (or, as the Romans called it, Eboracum), was the military HQ for the region. The story of how these men met their deaths had the potential to be a gripping doc, but the cheesy re-enactments, the mispronunciations of the narrators, and the general shoddy quality of the writing, came close to sinking it. It was disappointing, and it's also disappointing (but not surprising) to learn that the Inquisition doc was pretty much the same. PBS, requiescat in pace.
Posted by: Patricia Gonzalez at May 11, 2007 12:39:44 PM
I urge everyone who posted here to write to the ombudsman at pbs.org and let him know how we feel about anti-Catholic bigotry. Suggest to him that we will no longer provide financial support to any organization that maligns our Faith.
Posted by: Ferde Rombola at May 11, 2007 12:41:08 PM
According to my historical atlas, France had a population of 14 million at the end of Middle Ages. The Albigensian Crusade took place in a fairly small area in the south - somewhat less that 1/10 of the total area, though maybe a greater proportion of the total population.
So for the 1.2 million figure to be accurate, they'd have to killed pretty much *everybody* in the region.
Wikipedia is a poor source some ways, since articles on controversial subjects tend to get dominated by one side or another, but for basic stats it isn't bad.
Posted by: Intellectual Pariah at May 11, 2007 12:56:51 PM
Hope somebody is still reading this thread. I didn't see the TV show, but about 3 or 4 years ago I did read the book "The Good Men" written by the novelist who is featured on the TV show.
From the descriptions of the show on this thread, it appears that it didn't even follow the book very well. The book makes it very clear how dangerous the Cathars beliefs were. The highest praise was accorded to people who starved themselves to death. The body and this world are evil and bringing a child into it was bad. Sex is bad. Enjoying food was bad. There were Cathars who pressed their family and neighbors to follow their precepts against their will. Things Cathars did in the book would have gotten folks hauled into court these days for child abuse and neglect, elder abuse, domestic abuse, negligent homicide, etc. etc. They weren't presented as admirable people in the book- misguided and deluded, yes.
There were plenty of bad actions going around among Catholics and all the different varieties of Cathars in the region. What was most striking in the book was the ignorance of all these really poor, rural people and the strange things that Catholics and Cathars believed and did.
The Inquisitor was shown as being sent to investigate what was going on in the area - reports had gotten to Rome that people were dying either by their own actions or the actions of their families and/or religious leaders. It was like looking into David Koresh's Branch Davidians or the James Jones doings in Central America.
It reminded me of what was happening with the Salem witch trials - rumors, superstitious beliefs and gullible, hysterical people among the Catholics and the Cathars.
The TV show seems to have focussed almost totaly on the bad Catholics. The book, as I recall, was not so exclusively leaning on Catholics - altho it did have a salacious irrelevant side story of a priest and a most inappropriate sex partner.
Anybody else read the book?
Also - my kids & I were at Carcassone in 2002 and we learned that a lot of the deaths were from military battles involving struggles for political power, not just executions for religious reasons. The era was really messy with a lot of bad actors on all sides.
Posted by: Julia at May 11, 2007 1:32:15 PM
I haven't read the book (obviously, from my comments above). I think it's fair to say that essentially none of the negative stuff about the Cathars got into the show. They were just pure, gentle, spiritual folk. Some of the facts were mentioned--the option of fasting unto starvation, for instance, but only for people who were dying anyway--but in a tone and context that seemed either neutral or admiring: oh look how spiritual they were. Somehow it managed to give the impression that it was the Catholics who were all hung up about sex. What you say makes me wonder how the novelist's comments were edited.
Posted by: Maclin Horton at May 11, 2007 3:15:49 PM
Jonathan
Read much slower when you have the opportunity to do so.
Posted by: bill bannon at May 11, 2007 4:34:32 PM
Y'all are the ones making up stuff.I was under the impression that the events described in the documentary were taken from transcripts kept by one of the Inquisitors for posterity's sake. At any rate, no one can deny that back in the Middle Ages there was no separation of church and state, and no liberty of conscience, and as a consequence, people got hurt, although some in the comments would like to quibble about the actual numbers. Also, no one can deny that the Roman Catholic church was used by the corrupt in the years before the Reformation to further their own ends. In turn, this corruption allowed the Reformation to gain traction. It doesn't do any good to cry "Bigotry" or point out abuses perpetrated by Protestant sects. As the documentary noted, John Paul II apologized for any harm done and moved on. Some of the posters here should follow his example.
Posted by: Anonymous at May 12, 2007 9:45:40 AM
