God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World

 

BOOK REVIEW - FIVE STARS

God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World by Cullen Murphy

Intensely thought provoking, this extremely in-depth and well researched book covers more than a thousand years of mind control and takes you up to the present day.

Recommended reading for all free-thinking people.

Excerpts:

Torquemada, who was the head of the Inquisition.

No series of events in recent times has produced more invocations of the Inquisition than the prosecution of the war on terror since September 11, 2001. The enactment of tough new legal instruments, the use of extralegal surveillance, the detention without trial of suspected enemies, the reliance on torture in interrogations, the pervading atmosphere of religious suspicion: taken together, these developments help account for the fact that a Google search of “inquisition” today yields upward of eight million entries.

In the year 1231 Pope Gregory IX appointed the first “inquisitors of heretical depravity” to serve as explicit papal agents. Thus began what is called the Medieval Inquisition, which was launched to deal with the menace posed to the Church by Christian heretics, notably the Cathars of southern France. The newly established Dominican Order, whose priests and nuns are identifiable to this day by their white habits, was instrumental in combating the Cathar heresy. Its founder, Dominic Guzmin, is the man celebrated in the 1963 song “Dominique,” by the Singing Nun (said to be the only Belgian song ever to hit No. 1 on the American charts). The inquisitors solicited denunciations and, as their name implies, conducted interrogations. Their efforts were highly localized, there was no central command. The inquisitors were aided in their work by the papal bull Ad extirpanda, promulgated in 1252, which justified and encouraged the use of torture, wielding philosophical arguments that have never wanted for advocates and that would eventually echo in the White House and the Justice Department. Within a century, the work of the Medieval Inquisition was largely done. One modern writer, reflecting on what makes inquisitions come to an end, calls attention to a simple reason: an eventual shortage of combustible material. The Dominicans were nothing if not thorough. As a Catholic growing up with many Jesuit friends, I remember hearing a comment about the difference between Dominicans and Jesuits: Both orders were created to fight the Church’s enemies, Cathars in the one case, Protestants in the other.