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- VATICAN CITY (AFP)
- The Roman Catholic Inquisition, for which Pope John Paul II sought forgiveness
Sunday, was a 700-year campaign of persecution of heretics in which hundreds
of thousands of people were tortured and killed.
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- The Inquisition -- from the Latin verb "inquiro",
meaning to inquire into -- was initiated by Pope Gregory IX in 1231 when
he wrote to French bishops informing them that he intended to repress heresy,
witchcraft, alchemy and deviations such as devil worship.
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- At first the inquisitors were drawn almost exclusively
from the Franciscan and Dominican orders, who travelled around seeking
out heresy. Later they acquired the right to summon suspects from their
homes to the Inquisition centre. The medieval Inquisition was employed
mostly in southern France and northern Italy.
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- In 1252 a papal bull by Innocent IV authorised torture
as a means of extracting confessions.
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- In 1478, Sixtus IV authorised the Spanish Inquisition.
This reached its apogee under the rule of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella
of Castille whose armies swept across the Iberian peninsula in the 15th
and 16th centuries, forcing Jews and Moslems to convert to Christianity.
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- The Inquisition's most notorious enforcer was Tomas de
Torquemada (1420-1498), who burnt an estimated 2,000 "heretics"
at the stake in his role as Grand Inquisitor.
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- By the time it officially ended in 1808, the Spanish
Inquisition had burned more than 300,000 people, not including a further
18,000 burnt in effigy.
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- In 1768 a gradual process of dismantling the Inquisition
began, first in Portugal then in some Italian states and Spain.
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- In 1908 the Vatican wound up what remained of the institution,
creating the Holy Office in its place to deal with discipline and excommunications.
This was reorganised in 1965 and renamed the Congregation of the Doctrine
of the Faith.
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- In 1966, the Vatican finally abolished its Index of Forbidden
Books.
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- Notable victims of the Inquisition were Roger Bacon (1220-92),
a Franciscan friar considered one of the fathers of modern science, who
served two years in prison for his work on experimental science; Gordiano
Bruno (1548-1600), a former Dominican who was burnt at the stake for heresy;
and Galileo (1564-1642), the astronomer who was forced to recant as heresy
his correct opinion that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the
other way round.
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