01x02 - Le secret et le faste

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The Inquisition was established
at the beginning of the world.

The first inquisition began
when God cried out,

"Adam!

Adam! Where are you hiding?"

God flushed out Adam and Eve

who were hiding in shame
at their nakedness.

He asked Adam questions
to which He knew the answers,

forced him to confess,
to denounce Eve and the serpent,

then punished them.

Not by putting them
to death Himself,

but by banishing them from Paradise.

That's one version of the story,
but there are many others.

For Catholic propaganda,

inquisitors were pious
and merciful men

who risked their lives
hunting down heretics.

For 19th-century anticlericalists,

they were depraved
and corrupt monsters,

who preyed on beautiful young women.

Between these two extremes

lies the long history
of a unique invention:

a police of souls, both secret

and spectacular, which spread fear

in the name of faith

and practiced a pedagogy of terror

the effects of which
can still be seen today.

SECRECY AND POMP

By the end of the 14th century,

the great anticlerical heresies
had virtually disappeared.

To continue existing,

the inquisitors
had to find new targets.

HANSEL AND GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS
TOMMY WIRKOLA - 2013

Chief among them: witchcraft.

Previously treated
as mere superstition

which the Inquisition
needn't concern itself with,

at the turn of the 15th century
it took on

the terrifying face
we still associate with it today.

It is on the shores of Lake Geneva

that we find the earliest traces,

in the confessions
of a young peasant,

recorded in 1438
by the Inquisitor of Lausanne.

One night,
his father mounted a small black ox

and made him climb on behind

and they rode to a place near Basel,

where they met many people.

He thought there were
more than a hundred,

both men and women.

Then came a black man
who was the devil

and who told Aymonet
he must renounce God

and accept him as his God.

Then he transformed
into a great black oil lamp

which had an opening at the back,

and then he transformed
into a black cat

and each went up
to kiss him on the arse.

Aymonet did the same.

The devil gave him five sous,

but he could not remember
what became of them.

After worshipping the devil,

men and women began to copulate

with one another like dogs.

When asked how the women
positioned themselves,

he said and showed that they
placed their hands on the ground

and the men mounted them

from behind.

After doing this,
they drank and ate,

and his father brought him bread
with a piece of meat,

but he didn't know
what kind of meat it was.

It was in fact children's flesh,

roasted or boiled.

This extraordinary confession
repeats word for word

the wild theories
from demonology treatises

written in the early 15th century
by theologians

and inquisitors
with fertile imaginations.

Everything is already there:

night flights, abominable feasts,

and above all, devil worship
in all its forms,

making witchcraft a
heresy in its own right.

The young peasant
obviously hadn't read

this scholarly literature,

unlike the inquisitor

who was the true author
of the confession.

In a witchcraft trial,
it was never, of course,

the free and spontaneous word
of an individual.

It was testimony
that had been shaped

by the judges' questions,
by the extremely

directed and precise questions
of the inquisitors.

A suspect would answer yes or no
to a question that was asked.

They never gave their account.

And it was the role of the notaries,
the Inquisition clerks,

to construct a narrative.

Witchcraft trials

were rhetorical constructions.

A questionnaire
with about fifteen articles

would be submitted to the accused,

and in this questionnaire
they would ask

whether the accused
flew through the air

using a broomstick or a chair,

whether they had received from the
devil a spell sewn into their skin,

whether they ate children,

whether they k*lled
their own children

to bring them to the sabbath.

This questionnaire
was extremely elaborate

and was like a machine
used to crush individuals.

The other depositions gathered
by the Lausanne inquisitors

repeat the same language.

They are annotated so that
the most striking confessions

could quickly be located:

"idolatry",

"apostasy",

"devil worship", "accomplice".

Each accused was required
to denounce several others

to fuel new trials.

The Devil's Church
was consistently called

"Synagogue",

and the great witches' festivals
were called "Sabbath".

These words refer to Judaism,
the Church's traditional enemy.

The sabbath was composed
of recycled materials

that had proved effective
in previous centuries.

And that's why it worked,
because it felt

like the return
of a dangerous heresy

that was a threat
to Christian society.

Yet at the same time,
it was even more dangerous,

even worse than previous heresies,

as the texts and inquisitors said,

because it could potentially
affect anyone.

It was no longer just
isolated heretics,

who could be defined
by their beliefs.

With the witches' sabbath,
absolutely anyone

could be suspected
of joining the devil's sect.

The fantasy of a satanic conspiracy

against the Christian world spread
across Northern Europe,

where women accused of pledging

allegiance to the devil
were burnt in their thousands.

Two German inquisitors

wrote a new practical manual,

The Hammer of Witches.

Among other things, it teaches

how to deprive the witch
of the spell of silence,

a diabolical charm

that allowed her to endure t*rture
and the stake in silence.

When a witch is arrested at home,

she must not be given the time
to enter her chamber,

as witches are known to use
this time to take certain spells

that give them the power of silence.

Hence the question:

is it permitted
when arresting a witch

to lift her suddenly from the ground
and carry her in a net

or basket to prevent her

from touching the earth?
It is permitted,

because examples
and confessions of witches

show that when arrested
in this manner,

they lose the spell of silence.

The spell

may be hidden in clothing
or body hair.

To remove them,

clothes are changed
and hair is shaved.

The Inquisitor of Como
told us that last year,

the 41 witches
he had ordered to be burnt

had been shaved
all over their bodies.

The myth of the great
witches' sabbaths stopped

north of the Alps.

In Italy,
witchcraft remained on the scale

of small individual enterprises:

healers, spell-casters,

makers of potions and love-philters.

Death sentences at the stake
were rare.

One exception:

in 1498, in Bologna, on the steps
of the Basilica of Saint Dominic,

a young woman, Gentile Budrioli,
was burnt for witchcraft.

Her portrait, entirely fictional,

became the archetype
of the beautiful sorceress.

But why was Gentile Budrioli
put to the stake when others

did not climb the same scaffold?

This is because Gentile,
according to sources -

we have city chronicles
to help us since

sadly, many trial records
are missing -

struck with these spells,
these curses,

the family of Bologna's lord,
the Bentivoglio family.

She even struck Lord Giovanni II
Bentivoglio himself.

But the source tells us,

"Fortunately the
inquisitor had her burnt.

It would have been the destruction
of all Bologna".

And so, probably, having targeted
the gentleman citizen,

with intent, perhaps even to change,

to overthrow through possible death,

a political regime,

this led to her being found guilty
by the Inquisition.

This is a rather specific case,

but it illuminates

a long-standing relationship between
the Inquisition and politics.

As Gentile Budrioli burned,

municipal officers
threw gunpowder on the pyre.

And the crowd of spectators
was convinced

that the devil himself

had come to claim the witch's soul.

But the most spectacular collusion

between the Inquisition and politics

took place in 1431 in France
with the trial of Joan of Arc,

who was sentenced to the stake
by a tribunal

entirely in thrall to the English.

THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
CARL THEODOR DREYER - 1928

They accused her of witchcraft.

It was impossible,
they said, that a woman

could have defeated them
without the devil's help.

Who can believe
a person can fly through the air

and travel a hundred leagues
in an hour?

That a woman can slip through

a space where even a fly
couldn't pass?

That one can become invisible?

That one can bathe in a river

or in the sea without getting wet?

Or that a witch
can be simultaneously

in her bed and at the sabbath,

and take any form,

becoming a fly or a raven?

In truth,

these claims go beyond human reason,

and perhaps even exceed

the limits permitted by the devil.

Astonishing as it may seem,

this systematic demolition
of the witch myth

was written by an inquisitor,

belonging to the Spanish
Inquisition no less,

reputed to be
the most terrible of all.

That of Torquemada,
the Grand Inquisitor,

source of Edgar Allan Poe's
nightmarish tales

and countless horror films.

But beyond the caricature,
the Spanish Inquisition

was a formidable machine
of repression

that ushered in
the era of what is known

as the modern Inquisition
at the turn of the 16th century.

In the Inquisition
prison of Palermo,

one prisoner drew from memory
a map of Sicily,

a possession of the Spanish Crown.

In a neighbouring cell,

Christ carrying his cross.

His tormentors are dressed
in the typical costumes

of Spanish soldiers.

The Spanish Inquisition
was founded in 1478.

Barely established, it commissioned
the painter Berruguete

to create this allegory,

an auto-da-fé presided over
by Saint Dominic himself.

The propaganda intent was modern,

but the small scale
and informal nature of the ceremony

were still those
of the medieval Inquisition.

Here is an auto-da-fé from
a few decades later in Valladolid.

This was the new image
of modern Inquisitions,

grandiose and orderly.

But the language of excommunications
hurled against heretics

had not changed.

May the curse of Almighty God

and of the blessed Virgin Mary
descend upon you

for not obeying
the divine commandments.

May your children be orphaned,

banished from your burnt houses,

may all the world detest you,

may your animals perish,

may God send rain and fertility

to your neighbours' fields,

whilst yours wither without fruit.

May you lose your reason and sight,

may light become darkness.

The Spanish Inquisition
and its Portuguese sister

had no need for witchcraft.

They had their own sources
of raw materials.

At the end of the last century

these statues of Jews,
murderers of Christ,

could still be seen
in the Portuguese countryside,

displayed during Holy
Week processions.

Here is a 14th-century
Spanish legend:

a Jew steals an image of the Virgin.

Driven by the devil,
he throws it in the latrines.

But while demons
carry off the miscreant,

the Virgin's image emerges
from the latrines,

perfumed with the
sweetest fragrance.

This miracle leads the Jews
to convert en masse.

Mass conversions

did indeed take place
throughout the 15th century,

but they owed nothing to miracles.

They were the result of persecution,

the constant threat
of massacres and expulsions.

Conversion was also a trap.

Jews, as infidels,
were exempt from the Inquisition.

Once converted,
they fell under its jurisdiction

and became its prime targets,

consistently accused
of secretly returning

to their former religion.

The large Muslim population
suffered the same fate.

There were mass baptisms,
not always voluntary,

then accusations of continuing
to practice Islam in secret.

To this we can add

the traditional accusations
of ritual crimes,

entirely imaginary.

In 1491 the Inquisition
condemned to the stake

converts and Jews from Ávila,

accused of crucifying
a Christian child

to steal his blood.

In 1632 in Madrid,

Christian converts were accused
of gathering on Fridays as a family

over several generations

to whip a statue of Christ.

The entire family was burnt.

The key was blood.

To be descended
from converted Jews or Muslims

was to be guilty in advance.

To be an enemy of Christians,

of Christ and Divine Law,

one needn't be Jewish on both sides.

One parent is enough.

It matters not that
the father is not one,

it suffices that the mother be so.

And even if she is not entirely so,

it suffices that she be half so.

And even if she be less,
a quarter suffices,

nay...an eighth.

The Holy Inquisition
has discovered in our time

people practicing Judaism
despite 21 degrees

separating them from an
ancestor of Jewish blood.

Nearly 30 years ago,

it came to pass in
the city of Valladolid

that Don Lope de Vera,
native of La Mancha,

was burnt alive
for practising Judaism.

It transpired that this man
was of noble blood,

but it was discovered that the
wet nurse who had suckled him

was of tainted blood.

The pride of every


a certificate of purity of blood

proving that its Christian bearer

had no Jewish or Muslim ancestors,

an essential requirement

for access to many civil
or religious positions.

Thanks to its archives,

the Inquisition became
the main provider

of certificates.

This was its contribution
to ethnic cleansing,

undertaken by Spain's monarchs

who wanted absolute power
over a unified country.

A desire for centralised
territorial control

which the Inquisition also shared.

The modern tribunals
of the Inquisition

were "verticalised".
They had a central court.

This anticipated the process

of the centralisation of
all magistrates across Europe,

not just ecclesiastical ones.

The Inquisition became
"regionalised" with seats becoming

permanent rather than mobile,

with magistrates appointed
from above,

and not by religious orders,
with close control through

a more efficient postal system

of regional branches
that had to report

constantly
back to central headquarters.

A local inquisitor
had to justify buying

a candle or changing his robes.

The central court

overseeing all Spanish
inquisitorial tribunals

was the "Suprema",

created by Grand
Inquisitor Torquemada,

shown in this painting
behind the King of Spain.

A position that marked the authority
of the Crown over the Inquisition.

The Suprema is regular
in its movements,

like a sundial,

and all the Inquisitions under it

are like the lines of the dial,

measuring the fine harmony
of the Catholic sphere.

And the sun is you, Your Highness,

for we find in Your Highness,
as in the sun,

light for justice,

and in the tribunal,
as in the sundial,

shade for our protection.

As an instrument of royal power,
the Inquisition

extended the concept of heresy

to areas unrelated to religion,

such as counterfeiting.

Counterfeiting was a
crime of treason.

Because using the sovereign's effigy
on a false coin

was an attack, an act of treason.

But since heresy was divine
treason, and since the Inquisition

worked better than other magistrates

of the monarchy,

often, counterfeiting cases

in the Iberian world
fell to the Inquisition,

which even dealt
with horse smuggling

around the Pyrenees,
which risked favouring

the Huguenot minority
in south-west France.

So who was entrusted
with controlling

the horse trade?

The Inquisition,
because it had a more

extensive network
than secular tribunals, for example.

These were the paradoxical effects,
especially in the Iberian world,

of a machine so powerful
that the monarchy

began using it for things
that had nothing

to do with doctrine.

And this is one aspect
of the extension of

the Inquisitions' jurisdiction.

This also applied to sodomy,
to some extent.

Sodomy, in the strict sense,

had no connection to any doctrine.

Yet in the modern era,

the Aragonese
and Portuguese tribunals

classified sodomy as heresy.

So the Inquisition
dealt with h*m*.

This is Alhama de Granada
in Andalusia,

a former Moorish citadel

taken by Christians
in the late 15th century.

It is also the birthplace
of Elena de Céspedes,

condemned by the Inquisition
for changing sex

from Elena to Eleno.

Eleno married a woman.

For the Inquisition,
this was sodomy,

a term it applied indiscriminately

to any h*m* relationship.

Right next to Alhama's church

was one of those local tribunals

through which the Inquisition
controlled the entire country.

On a completely different scale,
money from confiscations

and fines imposed on heretics

funded the construction
of new Inquisition palaces.

Serving as both tribunal and prison,

they were cleverly designed

to allow them to hold
as many prisoners as possible.

In the Inquisition palace of Évora,

responsible for
all of southern Portugal,

the cells were on the ground floor,

while the tribunal
sat on the first floor,

beneath an imposing ceiling adorned
with the Inquisition's emblem.

For the pleasure and relaxation
of the inquisitors,

there was a delightful patio,
decorated with some

of the finest frescoes
of the Portuguese Renaissance.

Beside it was a garden

in place of a former
prison courtyard

that served as a rubbish dump.

During restoration work,

the skeletons of twelve prisoners
were discovered,

men who had been
thrown there without burial,

unknown to their families,

victims of the Inquisition.

"A. Prisoners will disappear
without trace.

B. No information will be given

about their destination or fate."

Decree by German General Keitel
on Operation

"Nacht und Nebel", "Night and Fog"

in which resistance fighters from
occupied countries disappeared.

Secrecy is the fixed point

on which the Inquisition's
government balances

and which commands
the faithful's veneration.

It facilitates
witness denunciations.

It's the basis and foundation
of this tribunal.

Were it deprived of this,

the entire edifice would collapse.

"Is there anything less reasonable

than wanting to make
accomplices of the Prophets

and crimes of riddles?"

This may seem obscure,

but the Inquisition understood
its meaning perfectly.

The author clearly
wants to challenge

the methods and secrecy
of the Holy Office.

His allusion to the prophet

means the accused must guess
who testified against him,

and by calling the crime "a riddle",

he implies
we want to force the accused

to guess what he's
being charged with.

The author's aim

is to discredit our Holy Office

and encourage heresy.

He must be pursued,

arrested for questioning

and forced to explain
his insinuations.

The author of this veiled criticism
of the cult of secrecy,

Portuguese convert
Manuel de Villa Réal,

was arrested in 1649.

Accused of crypto-Judaism,

he was confined to a special cell

where prisoners were watched
around the clock

through a tiny secret opening
in the wall.

They hoped to catch them

in the act of Jewish practices,

prayers or fasting,

to strengthen the charges
against them.

Manuel de Villa Réal
discovered the scheme,

blocked up the hole
and sealed his fate.

He was clever enough

to discover the spy holes
in the observation cells.

Left alive,

he could cause serious harm

to the Holy Office
by making this secret public.

We have every reason to fear

that if his life were spared,

he could considerably damage
the Inquisition Tribunal

and its rightful procedure.

A barely visible inscription

on a wall of the Inquisition prison
in Palermo:

"21st July 1646.

A spectacle with 33 men and women."

This spectacle was the auto-da-fé.

The Inquisition [What a show!]

The Inquisition [Here we go!]

We know you're wishing
that we go away

But the Inquisition's here
and it's here to stay

Hey Torquemada, whaddaya say?

I just got back from the auto-da-fé

Auto-da-fé? What's an auto-da-fé?

It's what you oughtn't to do
but you do anyway

The auto-da-fé, from 'act of faith',

was a grand spectacle
where the condemned were displayed

after months, even years
of secret imprisonment.

The ceremony would begin,
as in Palermo in 1724,

with an endless procession.

Inquisitors and religious orders
at the front,

followed by heretics
under close guard,

while Palermo's nobility
brought up the rear.

The cl*max of the spectacle,
the reading of sentences,

took place on a grand
platform, erected

in the town's main square.

A temporary stage in the tradition
of Spanish street theatre.

On the stands, on either side,

inquisitors and heretics
faced each other.

Sometimes, a large canopy

shielded both the judges
and those condemned to the stake

from the sun.

Even before the sentences were read,

the crowd already knew
what to expect

from the symbols

adorning the condemned's garments,
the sanbenitos,

indicating the crime
and the punishment.

Upright flame and lit candle:
the stake.

Inverted flame and snuffed candle:

only prison, often for life.

Condemned in absentia,

fugitive or dead heretics were
present in the form of effigies.

The defiant were silenced
using muzzles.

The secrecy of the procedure
was offset by a very high degree

of spectacle
that created the scenario

of the "autos-da-fé"
as they were called in Spanish,

spectacles
where abjuration became public,

far more ritualised
than in the Middle Ages.

The public spectacle

became a display
of solemn authority,

"the splendour of punishment",
as Foucault would say.

These were spectacles
where the authorities

punished the body
and ecclesiastical authority

punished the gravest
form of disobedience - heresy.

The great autos-da-fé,
like Madrid's in 1681,

attended by the royal family,
were exceptional events,

designed to show
both the power of the Inquisition

and the virulence
of the heretical threat,

measured by the number of accused
on the platform.

But by the 17th century,
heretics were becoming rare.

And the resource had to be managed
by building up, months in advance,

a sufficiently large stock
of heretics

for a quality spectacle.

It was a mass,
in reality, an auto-da-fé.

There was a priest
who began by saying mass,

then, at the offertory,
all the sentences were read,

then those condemned to death
were expelled,

those who had not repented.

Those who had repented were kept

and the mass was completed
in the presence of God.

People fully understood all this

and fully understood
what heresy meant:

expulsion from the Church,
rejection of divine grace.

In short, spiritual death
as much as physical death.

Inquisitorial propaganda
glorified the auto-da-fé,

but didn't show the stakes,

which played a major role
in the collective imagination.

Contrary to what
this reconstruction suggests,

inquisitors didn't
attend executions,

which were entrusted
to the civil authorities,

as the Church had no right
to shed blood.

And the condemned were never burnt
wearing their sanbenitos.

These were removed before the pyre,

and displayed on church walls

to perpetuate the memory of infamy.

"Forever",
stated the Inquisition decree.

The inquisitorial machine
wanted to go on eternally.

Like any bureaucracy,

its priority was long-term survival,

and so it had to constantly find
new resources

to pay officials and servants,

by targeting offences
that were minor

but widespread, like blasphemy.

The inquisitors became
interested in blasphemy

for financial reasons.

In the first half
of the 16th century,

they had no more crypto-Jews.

The great crypto-Jew
hunts were over.

So they started conducting
all these small trials

for what I'd call trivial matters.

They'd go to a village,
set up at the inn,

"Anyone who's blasphemed,
come see me."

All the card players who'd said,

"Reniego de Dios" - I renounce God.

"You renounce God,
so you're not a Christian."

"What? What are you saying?"

"But it's just a figure of speech!"

Figure of speech or not: "penance".

And you find thousands

of cases of "Reniego de Dios".

Some historians, and notable ones,

saw this as proof of atheism.

And even more, the other blasphemy:
"I don't believe in God",

"no creo en Dios".

But if all of Castile

in the 16th century
had been atheist, we'd have known.

So here too, we must read in detail.

Because occasionally, you find

the complete text:

"I don't believe in God
for three weeks."

In the Inquisition building
in Bologna

can be found
portraits of all the inquisitors

who succeeded each other here
from the late 13th century onwards,

as if there had been
no break in continuity

between the medieval
and modern Inquisition.

Yet in 1540,

the Pope re-established
the Inquisition in Italy

by instituting
strict control from the Vatican,

following the Spanish model
of total centralisation,

but without the spectacular

manifestations
of the Iberian inquisitions.

Here, discretion was the rule.

Even the courtroom,

with its painted ceiling
and trompe-l'oeil,

has an almost welcoming air.

At the back of the room,

the classic allegory
of the inquisitorial mission:

a dog protecting a flock
representing the faithful

from the beast of heresy.

But the dog looks like
a friendly mutt,

and heresy itself
is not particularly frightening.

Yet in the 16th century,
heresy had a new face,

that of the monk Luther,
the devil's instrument

who rejected the Pope's authority
and his entire Church apparatus.

With the triumph of Protestantism

across much of northern Europe,

the fantasy of
a counter-church, the obsession

of the medieval Inquisition,
had become reality.

The emergency perceived
by the Roman Curia,

by the pontiffs,
was that of a heresy from the North.

These were the Protestant heresies.

It meant Luther, it meant Zwingli,

it meant much,
from the 1540s onwards,

Calvinism,
but it also meant the circulation

of texts by Erasmus of Rotterdam,

texts even of
Italian anticlericalism

that easily led to heterodoxy

and contempt for papal
and clerical authority.

So the Roman Inquisition
was born to stem,

to build a bulwark across
much of the Italian peninsula.

Because Italy,
the Italian peninsula,

was the Pope's garden
and this garden could not

be defiled,
soiled by heresy and dissent.

That would spell defeat, at a time
when the papacy was losing

England too, risked losing France,

and had lost much of Germany.

It could not afford to lose Italy.

With the spread of Protestantism,

the Roman Church lost,
for the first time,

its monopoly on speech
and control of its image.

This is what she
didn't want to show:

the horror of t*rture.

The student Algerio Pomponio,
ex*cuted using boiling oil

in Rome in 1556.

A Protestant engraving,
like all those

that denounced
from the 16th century onwards

the atrocity of the stakes

and showed the Inquisition's victims
as martyrs.

The new invention of printing

ensured these images
circulated widely,

as well as testimonies
from former prisoners

who exposed the workings
of Catholic repression,

like this one, entitled
The Slaughterhouse.

The Inquisition responded by hunting
down all intellectual dissenters

in the Italian peninsula.

In 1600 it burnt
the philosopher Giordano Bruno

who wrote that the
universe is infinite,

which contradicted
the teaching of the Bible.

Then there was the case
of controlling science.

The most striking case there
is obviously that of Galileo.

When Galileo went on to ridicule

the Aristotelian tradition
of science,

which was still embraced
by the Jesuits,

disobeying the command not to speak

explicitly
about the heliocentric theory,

even then,
the trial wasn't as dramatic

as Bruno's, but it still meant
teaching a lesson

that remained throughout
the Italian peninsula.

Few people after Galileo

devoted themselves
to physics in Italy.

Many turned to biology
or other sciences,

as they were obviously
less complicated

than the doctrine of the heavens.

Gutenberg invented printing,
the Church invented the Index,

a catalogue of all forbidden works,

chief among them
all translations of the Bible

into the vernacular,
Spanish or Italian.

The Church's idea was essentially
that books were

a vehicle for subversion.

After all, it had been writing,

reading Scripture
that sparked Luther's rebellion;

and so not allowing
the Bible to be read

in the vernacular meant preventing
laypeople from forming their own

interpretation of scripture
without the mediation

of ecclesiastical tradition
and the clergy.

It was better that laypeople
say rosaries,

limit themselves to reciting
the rosary of Our Lady

and rattling off their beads,
rather than having direct access

to more complex texts.

In less dangerous books,
only certain passages

were censored.

But it would be unfair

to say that the Inquisition
didn't like books.

It simply preferred those
it wrote itself,

to recount the most important events
of the great auto-da-fés.

This criminal struck terror
with the blasphemies

he uttered on the way
to his t*rture.

Even the mule he rode
began kicking furiously,

as if sensing the iniquity
of its infernal burden.

It was impossible to control her.

She kicked through the crowd

to rid herself
of the apostate's weight,

whose fierce appearance was enough
to terrify even animals.

And this was no accident,

but divine will.

For they brought six other beasts

that had carried
other condemned men.

Previously, they had been docile.

As soon as this cursed heretic
was on their backs,

they too began to kick
as if they could not bear him.

The crowd murmured,

"This heretic is so
possessed by the devil

that even the mule won't carry him,

for fear of offending heaven".

This took place

during the great auto-da-fé
in Mexico in what was called

the "New World".

In the 16th century Spain

and Portugal conquered
vast territories in Asia,

Africa and America.

Faced with the indigenous
populations of the new colonies,

a question resurfaced
that had already arisen

regarding unconverted Jews
and Muslims:

did the Inquisition have the right
to prosecute infidels,

as claimed
in the inquisitors' manual

written by Nicolas Eymerich,
which remained authoritative?

All men, faithful and infidel alike,

are, by the mere fact
of having been created,

the flock of Christ.

Even though not all the flock belong

to the Church's fold.

It necessarily follows

that the Pope's power
extends over all men.

And let none tell us
we have no right to judge

what is foreign to us,

or that we cannot force
infidels to believe,

neither through trials
nor excommunication,

for God alone
calls through His grace alone.

Those who claim to strip us thus

of our judicial powers are mistaken.

If the Church cannot inflict

spiritual punishments upon infidels,

it can inflict temporal ones
upon them.

A prescription the conquistadors

followed to the letter.

The conquest brought an improvised

and savage inquisition,

designed to eradicate
indigenous religions

through massacres
and forced conversions.

But by the mid-16th century,

Spain had banned these practices.

Mistreating the natives too harshly

hindered evangelisation
and colonial order.

The Indians now depended
on a separate institution,

supervised by missionaries
and bishops,

while proper tribunals

of the Inquisition
were established in the colonies

under strict supervision
from Madrid and Lisbon.

Their primary task
was to hunt down converts

who thought they could find refuge
across the Atlantic.

But they also had to protect
colonial society

from a new danger:
the mixing of beliefs.

The sl*ves from Guinea
brought with them

the mysteries of Obeah

and their dark magic.

The indigenous Indians
have their own catalogue of spells

to heal, to harm,

to provoke love or hatred.

And the colonists

believe in all sorts
of superstitions

to which they don't hesitate

to add those of
these inferior races.

All levels of society

commonly turned to curanderos

and curanderas, healers

who invoked both

ancient pre-Columbian deities

and the Christian Holy Trinity
to heal the sick,

predict the future, k*ll a rival

or win a woman's love.

The Inquisition
particularly targeted

hallucinogenic plants,

essential ingredients
in these ceremonies.

In Peru it banned
the consumption of coca leaves

which, it claimed,
encouraged idolatry

and magical superstition.

In Mexico it banned peyote,

a hallucinogenic mushroom

that the Indians called
"the flesh of the gods"

and the inquisitors
"the devil's herb".

But repression mainly targeted
Europeans and mixed-race people.

Learning that Indians
in a distant village

continued to practice it,

an Inquisition official
investigated and concluded:

Indians cannot be trusted
to keep and maintain

the secrecy required
by the Holy Office oath.

To avoid the risk

of our secret procedures
being revealed,

we have decided to close
the investigation.

The millions of African sl*ves,

essential to the colonial economy,

met a different fate.

Belonging to Christian masters,

they were declared Christians
by default.

They were mainly prosecuted
for blasphemy,

which paradoxically
made the Inquisition

a refuge from their
masters' cruelty.

From now on, at the first lash,

the sl*ve hastens to renounce God

to fall under our
exclusive jurisdiction.

The punishment is suspended
and he's handed back to us.

And he gets away
with just a reprimand,

which, when it keeps happening,

undermines the discipline essential

to sl*very.

By the 18th century,

the era of the great
autos-da-fé had passed.

In the colonies as in the homeland,

repression changed scale.

In 1775
the Mexican Inquisition seized

and condemned to the flames
five handkerchiefs.

The reason?

They bore a biblical image,

which a new decree
deemed blasphemous.

At the same time, in Europe,

the Inquisition was
living its final days.

In a century and a half,

the triumphant auto-da-fé
celebrating the harmonious union

of Inquisition and State
had been replaced

by Goya's auto-da-fé,

a heavy, sombre anachronism

serving as a foil
to the new Europe of Enlightenment,

of tolerance
and freedom of conscience.

In Milan, Parma and Palermo

the emblems of the Inquisition
were destroyed,

the last prisoners freed,
the archives burnt.

It was a political act,
abolition from above,

ordered by civil powers

who now felt strong enough to claim

for themselves alone
the power to prosecute and judge.

"The Nation and Constitution
banish the Inquisition",

says this flag from 1830

celebrating the final abolition
of the Spanish Inquisition.

An inquisitor at the photographer's.

The last inquisitor of Bologna,

where abolition only came in 1860.

His final exploit

was the abduction
of a six-year-old Jewish boy,

Edgardo Mortara,

whom his wet nurse
claimed to have secretly baptised.

Mandated by the Inquisition
to free the Christian child

from the clutches
of his Jewish family,

the carabinieri seized him
and delivered him to the Vatican.

If his parents wanted
to see him again,

said the Pope,
they needed only to convert.

Public opinion was outraged
and the image

of the Inquisition emerged
even more tarnished.

It became the embodiment

of all the perversions
of religious fanaticism

and of that absolute power

which a critic of the Inquisition
said "corrupts absolutely".

But these fanciful images
of bygone tortures

mask the very real legacy
of the Inquisition:

its innovations in
policing, justice,

and methods used
for control and submission.

A toolkit that today's world

knows how to use so well.

The idea was to surveil:

even more than punish,
to surveil and discipline.

There was a penitential aspect to
modern Inquisitions that is central.

Humiliation,
whether public or private,

was an attempt to force obedience

or to silence.

It didn't matter
if one truly believed,

but that one at least
appeared to believe.

The community could not
be torn apart

by the scandal
of public disobedience.

In this sense,
the Inquisition tribunals,

in my view,
truly succeeded in their mission

to keep parts of Europe Catholic
and shape the conscience

of the faithful and a certain
obedience to authority

that would endure for centuries.

In the year 2000 Pope John Paul II
asked for forgiveness

for all crimes committed by the
Church in the name of religion.

If there is life after death,

the prisoners
of the Chiaramonte Steri palace

must be pleased.

If not, then it doesn't matter.

Giovanni Battista Guido,

arrested for calling
the Virgin a wh*re

after losing at cards.

Sentenced to three years
in the galleys, his fate is unknown.

Giovanni Andrew,

an English sailor accused
of Protestant propaganda,

imprisoned for three years
at Chiaramonte,

then sentenced to three years
in the galleys.

His fate is unknown.

Gabriel Tedesco,

known only by his initials "G.T.",

a Muslim sl*ve, accused of apostasy,

sentenced to seven years
in the galleys.

Escaped, recaptured, burnt.

And all the anonymous captives,

the forgotten,
the rebels, the defeated.

Here, I think of them
and many others.