Chapter 8 7. Inquisition

In 1198, Lotario, Duke of Segny, succeeded Paul, who had been on the throne for only a few years, on the throne of Pope. This was Innocent III. He was the most eminent of all those who ruled the Lateran Palace.Thirty-seven years old when he took the throne, a top student at the Universities of Paris and Boulevard, rich, intelligent, energetic, ambitious, and good at using power, he declared with a clear conscience that he "not only managed the church, but also controlled the church." the whole world." He drove out the imperial officials stationed in Rome, reconquered the part of the Balkan Peninsula controlled by the imperial army, and finally excommunicated the heir to the throne, so that the poor prince was in a difficult situation and obediently abandoned the Alps. frontier territory.Thus Lotario freed Italy from the Germans.

He organized the famous Fourth Crusade, but he didn't go to the "Holy Land" at all, but rushed to Constantinople, killed a large number of residents in the city, and plundered all the gold and silver treasures. It was so outrageous that the Crusaders who came to the port of Greece later were all worried, for fear of being hanged as desperadoes.Innocent III also expressed his disapproval of this tragic act of disheartening a few venerable Christians.But he is a pragmatic man.He was very good at changing the direction of the wind, and made a Venetian bishop of Constantinople.This clever trick made the Orthodox Church fall into the claws of Rome again, and at the same time won the favor of the Republic of Venice. From then on, the Republic of Venice regarded the Byzantine territory as its own oriental colony and issued orders arbitrarily.

Spiritually, the Pope is also a man of profound attainments and smooth wrists. After nearly a thousand years of indecision, the Church has finally decided that marriage is not just a civil contract between a man and a woman, but a sacrament, valid only after the public blessing of the priest.Philippe Auguste of France and Alfonso IV of Leon, who had been determined to govern the country according to their own likes and dislikes, were soon warned to remember their duty, and because they had lived their lives carefully, they Immediately acted according to the Pope's will. Even in the northern highlands, despite the recent introduction of Christianity, there was a clear sense of who the real master was.King Haakon IV ("Old Haakon" as his fellow pirates used to call him) had just conquered a small empire which, besides his own Norway, included a part of Scotland, all of Iceland, Greenland, the Orkney Islands, and The Highbury Islands, but before he is crowned in the old Catholic Church, he must also explain his complicated life experience to the Roman court.

Year after year, the power of the Church became entrenched. The Bulgarian king massacred Greek prisoners of war and occasionally tortured the Byzantine emperor.He was not interested in religious thought at all, yet he traveled thousands of miles to Rome, humbly begging the Pope to admit him as a subject.In England, when a few barons came up with rules to restrain the emperor, the church unceremoniously declared their charter invalid because "it was obtained by force"; and then because of the famous document they brought to the world " excommunicated them for the Magna Carta.

All this suggests that Innocent III would not easily let go of the demands of the humble weavers and the uneducated shepherds who challenged the laws of the Church. In the end, though, there are some people who can muster up the courage and do what we are about to see. The subject of heresy is really puzzling. Pagans are mostly poor people, and they have no talent for propaganda.They occasionally wrote a few pamphlets to expound their opinions in order to protect themselves against the enemy, but they would soon be caught by the astute eagle dogs sent by the religious court in power at that time, and catastrophe was imminent.Their enemies also wrote articles to expose the "new Satan's rebellion" in order to make an example to others and deceive the world. Our understanding of heresy is based on these articles and trial records.

As a result, we usually get the impression that these complex images of these people are little people who make decent people sick, disheveled and shabby, living in the empty cellars of the lowest slums, refusing Do not eat the noble Christian food, chew vegetables and leaves blindly, drink only plain water, avoid women, mutter about the prophecy of the second coming of the savior, scold the vulgarity and evil of priests, and maliciously attack the inner nature of all things law. Of course, many heretics are a nuisance, and that may be the destiny of the pretentious. Many people pursue the holy life with unholy zeal, are devilishly dirty and stinky, and the peaceful life of the country is disturbed by grotesque ideas about the existence of the real Christ.

Nevertheless, their courage and sincerity are to be commended. They gained little and lost everything. As always, they get nowhere. However, everything in this world tends to be organized.Finally, even people who don't believe in organization at all have to form an "unorganized promotion association" in order to achieve anything.The medieval pagans, who loved mythology and indulged in emotion, were no exception.Their survival instincts brought them together, and a sense of insecurity compelled them to wrap their sacred teachings in a dozen layers of esoteric ritual. But the public, loyal to the Christian Church, cannot distinguish between these denominations.They lump all heretics together, call them dirty Manichaeans, or use some other disrespectful term, and think that's the end of it all.

In this way, the Manichaeists became the Bolsheviks of the Middle Ages.Of course I do not mean that there was a political party with a clear program at that time, like the ruling power established in the Russian Empire a few years ago.I mean a kind of vague swearing, which is also used nowadays to curse the landlord who demands rent from the boy who runs the elevator if he thinks he hasn't parked it properly. In the eyes of the best Christians in the Middle Ages, the Manichaeists were the most annoying fellows.But they did not conduct a trial based on real evidence, so they slandered with hearsay.This method is quite effective in private meetings, and it is faster than ordinary court trials, but it is often inaccurate and has led to many wrongful cases.

Things went from bad to worse for the poor Manichaeists, for the founder, Mani the Persian, was the embodiment of generosity and mercy.He is a historical figure, born in a small town called Ekbatana in the first half of the third century, his father Pathak was an influential rich man. He was educated on the banks of the Tigris River, and the environment he lived in in his youth was like New York today, with world affairs, mixed languages, sanctimonious, godless, materialistic, and full of fantasy.Heresies, religions and sects of all kinds had their followers among the throngs of people who came from east, west, south and north to visit the great commercial center of Mesopotamia.Mani listened to all kinds of sermons and prophecies, mixed Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism, and added a little bit of ancient Babylonian superstition to form his own set of philosophies.

Mani merely revived the good and bad gods of ancient Persian mythology, without considering that the Manichaeists sometimes took their teachings to extremes.Bad God is always against the soul of man. Mani linked the God of all evil with Yahweh in the Old Testament (then Yahweh became a devil), and regarded the God of All Blessings as the "Father" in the Gospel of Matthew. ".Moreover, (the influence of Buddhism can be felt here) Mani believes that human flesh and blood are evil and dirty things, and their nature is despicable. All people should constantly sharpen their bodies and skin, endure hunger and food, in order to get rid of their ordinary ambitions , in order not to fall into the clutches of the god of all evil, and not to be burned to ashes by the fire of hell.He restored a large number of taboos, you can't eat this, you can't drink that, and the recipes for followers are only cold water, hay and dead fish.This last doctrine may surprise us, but the congregation has always held that the cold-blooded creatures of the sea are less injurious to man's immortal soul than his warm-blooded kin on land, who would rather die than eat a steak, and that Eat fish with relish, without feeling disgusted or disgusted.

Mani regarded women as worthless, which also shows that he is an out-and-out Oriental.He banned believers from marrying and advocated the gradual extinction of human beings. As for baptism and other ceremonies initiated by the Judaizers and instituted by John the Baptist, Mani abhorred them.Therefore, the clergy who are about to take office do not have to immerse their bodies in water, but lay their hands on it. At the age of twenty-five, the eccentric began to explain his ideas to all mankind.He first came to India and China with considerable success.Then he returned to his native land to bring the blessings of the doctrine to his neighbors. But the Persian clergy, feeling that the success of their otherworldly teachings had deprived them of large secret incomes, turned against Mani and demanded his execution.At first Mani was protected by the king, but after the death of the old king, the new king had no interest in religious affairs and handed Mani over to the clergy for adjudication.The priests took Mani to the city wall, crucified him, and flayed his skin and hung it on the city gate as a warning to those who were interested in the heresy of the prophet. The Manicheean Church fell apart as violent conflicts with leading figures took place.However, the fragmented thoughts of the prophet were like numerous spiritual meteors, which spread widely in Europe and Asia, and aroused great repercussions among the simple and poor people in the following centuries, and the people unconsciously picked up Mani's thoughts , looked at it carefully and found that it was very much to my taste. When and how Manichaeism entered Europe, I do not know. It is likely that it came via Asia Minor, the Black Sea, and the Danube.Then it crossed the Alps and soon enjoyed a high reputation in Germany and France.Followers of the new teachings gave themselves an Eastern name: Caeseri, or "one who lives a pure life."Anguish spread so quickly that throughout Western Europe the word was compared to "hereism." But please don't think that "Katheri" thus formed a fixed sect, and no one tried to create a new sect at all.The ideas of Manichaeism exerted a great influence on many people, but these people insisted that they were only the devout sons of the Christian Church.This makes this particular form of heresy very dangerous and difficult to detect. Some germs are so large that they can be seen under the microscope of the provincial health department, and it is relatively easy for ordinary doctors to diagnose diseases caused by these germs. But the gods protect us from the little creatures that can remain invisible under ultra-ultraviolet radiation, because these little things still inherit the world. From the Christian point of view, Manichaeism is the most dangerous social plague, which fills the minds of the upper echelons of the organization with terror, which cannot be felt until various spiritual distresses come. These were whispers, but the staunchest supporters of early Christianity did show symptoms of the disease.Take, for example, St. Augustine, the brilliant and brave defender of the Crusaders who led the way in destroying the last bastion of paganism, but who was said to have had Manichaeism at heart. The Spanish bishop Priscillin, who was burned at the stake in 385, was accused of leaning towards Manichaeism and received the honor of being the first sword-tester of the Law Against Heresy. Even the leading figures of the Christian Church were gradually attracted to the terrible Persian teachings. They began by admonishing theological laymen not to read the Old Testament, and finally, in the twelfth century, issued the famous decree that all priests must remain celibate.Don't forget that stubborn Persian ideals soon made their mark on the principal figures of the spiritual revolution, causing the most beloved Francis of Isis to formulate a new monastic order of strict Manichean purity for him. Earn the title of "Shakyamuni of the West". But when the lofty ideals of voluntary poverty and humility of soul slowly seep into the hearts of the masses, when another war between the emperor and the pope is on the verge of breaking out, when foreign mercenaries, each bearing banners with crosses and goshawks, march to the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. When precious small pieces of land are fighting to the death, when a large number of crusaders flock home with ill-gotten gains plundered from friends and enemies, when the abbot raises a group of flatterers to live in the palace of extravagance By the time the priests rode their horses through the morning crowds to feast on their hunting breakfast, something bad was bound to happen, and it did. It is not surprising that dissatisfaction with the present state of Christianity arose first in that part of France where, though the Roman cultural tradition lasted longest, barbarism had not been able to melt into civilization. This place can be found on the map.It is called Provence, including the Mediterranean Sea-Rhone River-Alps such a triangle.The Phoenician colony of Marseilles was and still is an important port in the region, where there are many wealthy towns and villages with fertile land, plenty of rain and sunshine. While the rest of medieval Europe listened to barbaric tales of long-haired Teutonic heroes, Provence folk singers and poets invented new literary forms that laid the foundations for the modern novel.The Provencals had close commercial links with neighboring Spain and Sicily, which provided timely access to the latest books in science, which were scarce in northern Europe. In this country the movement to reproduce early Christianity became apparent in the first decade of the eleventh century. But however far-fetched, none of this constituted open rebellion.In some hamlets it is sometimes implicitly pointed out that the clergy should be as plain as the parishioners; they refuse to go to war with the lords (oh, what a memory of the victims of antiquity!); they want to learn a little Latin , in order to read the Gospels for themselves; they professed disapproval of the death penalty; they denied the existence of "Purgatory," which was officially considered part of Christ's kingdom as early as six centuries after Jesus' death; and (which is more important details), they pay nothing to the Church. Rebellious leaders who opposed the authority of the priests were detected whenever possible, and, if they refused to repent, secretly removed from their houses. But the evil continued to spread, and finally a meeting of bishops from all over Provence had to be called to discuss what could be done to stop this very dangerous seditious disturbance.Their quarrel lasted until 1056. By this time it had become clear that general punishment and excommunication were futile.The simple villagers who want to live a "pure life" are very happy as long as they have the opportunity to show Christ's benevolent and generous creed behind the bars of the prison. If they are lucky enough to be sentenced to death, they will go to the stake like a lamb.Moreover, the position left by a victim will always be filled immediately by a dozen newcomers with holy thoughts. The representatives of the Church insisted on more brutal persecutions, while the local nobles and clergy (who knew what the common people meant) refused to carry out the Roman order, protesting that violence would only strengthen the heathen against the voice of reason. Waste of time and energy.In this way, the opinions of the two sides have been arguing for a whole century. By the end of the twelfth century, the movement was spurred northward. In a small town of Lyon across the Rhone from Provence, there lived a businessman named Peter Waldo.He is serious, kind-hearted, generous and generous, and he is a little crazy because he only wants to follow the example of the savior.Jesus once said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich young man to go to heaven.Thirty generations of Christians have racked their brains trying to figure out exactly what Jesus meant when he said this.Not so Peter Waldo, who read the sentence with conviction.He gave away all he had to the poor, and retired from business to accumulate new wealth. John wrote, "You need to find the Bible for yourselves." Twenty popes commented on the sentence, carefully framing it.It stipulates the conditions under which a layman can study the holy books without the guidance of the priests. Peter Waldo didn't see it that way. Since John said, "You need to find the Bible for yourselves." Well, then, Peter Waldo is going to read it himself. Finding something that did not agree with St. Jerome's conclusions, he translated the New Testament into his own language and distributed the manuscripts throughout Provence. At first his activities did not attract much attention.His passion for poverty seemed innocuous.He was likely to be persuaded to establish a new type of monastic asceticism for those willing to live a life of real hardship, and he accused existing monasteries of being a bit too luxurious and too comfortable. Rome is very good at finding suitable venues for people who are too passionate about their beliefs and often make troubles. But everything must be done according to routine and precedent.So the "pure people" of Provence and the "poor people" of Lyon are really tricky.Not only did they not tell the Pope what they were doing, but they even had the audacity to declare that they could be perfectly good Christians without the advice of a professional priest, and that the Bishop of Rome had no authority outside his own jurisdiction to tell people what to do and what to do. Believe in anything, just as the Grand Duke of Tartali or the Caliph of Baghdad have no such power. The Church was in a dilemma and, to be honest, he said it waited a long time before finally deciding to resort to force to eradicate these heresies. But if an organization is based on the principle that there is only one right way of thinking and way of life and that all others are disgraceful, it is bound to resort to extreme measures when its authority is questioned. The Church could not survive without this, and this finally forced Rome to take decisive action and institute a system of punishments that would strike fear into the hearts of future dissenters. The Albigens (the pagans named after the city of Albi, which was the birthplace of the new teachings) and the Waldos (named for their founder Peter Waldo) did not have high political status in the country, so unable to effectively protect themselves.They were chosen as the first victims. A representative of the Pope ruled Provence for several years, lording it over as a conquered territory, and was killed.This provided a pretext for Innocent III's intervention. He raised a regular crusade against the Albigensians and Waldorians. Those who volunteered to join the expedition against the heretics within forty days were freed from interest on their debts, pardoned from all past and future sins, and were exempt from ordinary courts for a period of time.These favors are truly impressive, and people in northern Europe are desperate for them. Attacking the rich cities of Provence can get spiritual and economic rewards, and the benefits and honors that can be obtained from fighting thousands of miles to the east are only so. What about some places? The "Holy Land" was then forgotten, and the scum of the nobility and gentlemen of Northern France, Southern England, Austria, Saxony, and Poland flocked south to escape the magistrates, to refill the already empty coffers, and to refill all disasters. Push on wealthy Provencals. The number of men, women, and children who were hanged, burned, beheaded, or dismembered by the Crusaders varies, and I have no idea how many thousands died.Localities rarely provide specific figures after official mass executions, but they usually range between 2,000 and 20,000, depending on the size of the town. After the city of Beziers was occupied, the Crusaders couldn't tell which were heretics and which were not, so they were in a dilemma.The question was sent to the Pope's representative spiritual advisor accompanying the army. The guy said, "Boys, go ahead and kill them all. The Lord knows the good people." There was an Englishman named Simon de Montfort, a seasoned crusader.He is extremely cruel, bloodthirsty, and constantly conjures up new tricks to kill and plunder.As a reward for his "merits", he got a large piece of land that he had just looted, and his subordinates were also rewarded according to their "merit". The few remaining Waldos who escaped the killing hurriedly fled into the inaccessible Piedmont Valley and established a church of their own until the Christian Reformation in the sixteenth century. The fate of the Albicus was even worse.After a century of torture and hanging, their names disappeared from the reports of the Inquisition.However, three centuries later, their teachings were slightly changed and made a comeback. The advocate was a Saxon priest named Martin Luther.This teaching set off a reform that broke the monopoly of the Holy See for 1,500 years. Of course, all this was hidden from the astute eyes of Innocent III, who thought that the difficult situation had been terminated and the creed of absolute obedience had been successfully established. There is a famous command in the Gospel of Luke about a man who wanted to throw a party, and finding that there were vacancies at the banquet, and a few guests had not arrived, he said to his servant, "Go out into the road and pull them away." Come in." Now the command was fulfilled again. "They," the heathen, were drawn in. How to retain them was a problem faced by the church, which was not resolved until many years later. As the magistrates failed to fulfill their mission, special investigative courts, such as those organized during the first Albian rebellion, were established in other European capitals.The courts were dedicated to all heresies, and later people simply called them "inquisitions". Even today, when the Inquisition has long since ceased to function, the name still scares us.We seem to see the black cells of Havana, the torture chambers of Lisbon, the rusty iron pots and branding instruments of Krakow, the yellow hoods and black veils, and a king with a broad forehead gazing at the rows of endless rows. All the men and women walked slowly towards the gallows. The few popular novels of the late nineteenth century did describe heinous barbarism, and we could attribute twenty-five percent to the author's imagination and twenty-five percent to pagan prejudices, even though The remaining horrors are enough to prove that all secret courts are intolerable devils, and will never be tolerated in the civilized world. Henry Charleigh recounted the activities of the Inquisition in eight painstakingly written volumes.I have reduced it here to two or three pages, and it is of course impossible to give an incisive explanation of the most complex problem of the Middle Ages in such a short space, since no religious court can compete with the Supreme Court or the International Court of Arbitration today. Compare. There are various religious courts in different countries, and they all have different missions. The most famous are the Royal Inquisition of Spain and the Holy Inquisition of Rome.The former was of a partial nature, supervising the pagans of the Iberian peninsula and the American colonies. The claws of the latter extended to all parts of Europe, burning Joan of Arc in the north of the continent and Giordano Bruno in the south. Strictly speaking, it is true that the Inquisition killed no one. After a court of clergy pronounced the sentence, the heretic criminal was delivered to the secular authorities, who could deal with him as they thought fit.However, if the authorities failed to sentence him to death, he would cause a lot of trouble, even be excommunicated or lose the support of the Holy See.If the criminal escaped the ordeal and was not sent to the local authorities, as happened, he suffered even more because he would spend the rest of his life in the solitary cell of the Inquisition. Since dying at the stake was less frightening than dying slowly insane in the black hole of a rock castle, many innocent prisoners pleaded guilty to various charges in the hope of being convicted of heresy and out of misery. . It is difficult to speak on this subject without prejudice. It is hard to believe that for more than five centuries, tens of thousands of peaceful civilians all over the world have been dragged from their beds in the middle of the night and locked up in filthy dungeons simply because of the hearsay of their talkative neighbors. months or years, waiting impatiently for the trial of a judge who neither named nor identified. They were not told what the charges were and what the charges were, they were not allowed to know who the witnesses were, they were not allowed to contact their relatives, and they were not allowed to hire a lawyer.If they persisted in their innocence, they were tortured until their limbs were broken.Other heretics can denounce and accuse them, but no one will listen to their good words.In the end they were executed without even knowing the reason for their bad luck. What is even more incredible is that men and women who have been buried in the ground for fifty or sixty years will also be dug out of their graves and convicted in absentia, and the descendants of those convicted in this way will be deprived of their property half a century after the criminal's death . But it is true, since the Inquisitors enriched themselves by sharing all the confiscated items, so this kind of absurdity is not uncommon. After two generations, the grandfather is said to have done something that caused the grandson to die. It is not uncommon for them to be driven into poverty. Anyone who read the newspapers of Tsarist Russia in its heyday twenty years ago remembers what a spy was.The spy always appears with a striking personality and a "sad" appearance, posing as a true thief or a washed-up gambler.He made it known that he had joined the revolution through trauma, and he often won the confidence of those who were sincerely opposed to the imperial government.But once he finds out the secret of his new friend, he informs the police, pockets the payment, and travels to another city to repeat his dastardly deeds. During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, southern and western Europe was populated by these malicious private spies. They make a living by denouncing people who are said to have criticized the Church or who are skeptical of certain points in the teachings. If there were no heretics around, the spy would artificially create a few. He knew in his heart that no matter how innocent the defendant was, he would confess to the crime under torture.He takes no risks and can pursue the profession indefinitely. In many countries, people can anonymously report on other people's bad ideas, a system that hangs terror over people's heads.In the end, when even the closest friends can't believe it, the family needs to be wary of each other and watch their words. The dervishes who presided over much of the work of the Inquisition took full advantage of the fear they created, and for almost two centuries they plundered much of the people. Yes, we can say without hesitation that the chief cause of the Reformation was the general public's disgust with these domineering beggars who, in a cloak of piety, break into the homes of modest citizens and sleep in the best beds. , eating the best meals, and babbling that they should be treated as guests, and should live in supreme comfort.Their only skill was to intimidate people into denouncing their benefactors to the Inquisition if they did not receive the luxuries they deserved. The Church could of course reply that the Inquisition was acting in this way solely as censors of mental health, and that it was its sworn duty to prevent the spread of false ideas among the masses.It may exemplify the impunity of heretics who, out of ignorance, have gone astray.It could even claim that almost no one was ever executed except apostates and inflexibles. But so what? A trick can turn an innocent man into death row, or make him appear repentant. Spies and forgers have always been good friends. In the business of spies, why should there be a few fabricated documents?