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THE CREATION OF THE INQUISITION OFFICE
Just before the commencement of the above Crusade, a certain Spanish
priest (from Aragon) called Dominic came across the Cathars in France
on his way back from Rome and was horrified. With his travelling
companion, his local bishop, he devised a scheme to counter the Cathars
which was to have a sinister future. The Cathars were noted for being
well read and having a logical and persuasive manner. The local
Catholic priests were just the opposite, being mainly unread and
resorting to extortion and moral blackmail. Dominic in conjunction with
the local French Bishops set up a team of travelling Christian
preachers who were trained in the scriptures and trained in the method
of verbal delivery. The also mimicked the Cathars in wearing the
simplest clothes very often woven from horse hair and no shoes. The
results were excellent and he soon teamed up with Simon de Montfort,
the two quickly getting a reputation for ruthless effectiveness.
Many
applauded his clandestine methods of seeking out information, trial
without jury, and burning at the stake for those found guilty of being
a Cathar or “heretic”. He was given three houses in
Toulouse for his headquarters one of which still stands. 20 Similar
operational HQ were quickly set up as far afield as Paris, Bologna and
various towns in Spain.
Dominic died in 1221 but the Dominican movement was by then firmly
established and was supported by the next Pope Gregory 9th who was a
friend of Dominic and who fashioned the Dominican movement as the
official intelligence gathering and Heretic extermination arm of the
Catholic Church. The Inquisition office was now official. The many
hundreds of simply dressed but well trained itinerant friars were
ideally suited to this task and operated in a horrifyingly similar way
to Stalin’s secret police or the Nazi Gestapo and SS of 60
years
ago.
750 YEARS AGO
The story moves on to one of the most infamous early Dominican
Inquisitors, one Bernard Gui. He was entrusted by the Pope to pacify
northern Italy which was suffering a bout of Heresy. He personally
eliminated some 636 Heretics between 1308 and 1322. More importantly he
is noted for producing the first manual for Inquisitors, the
“Practice of Inquisition”. Completed around 1324.
Copies of
this manuscript survive today.
The next 200 years c.1250- 1450 saw the creation of many new religious
groups in Europe particularly covering the areas across the whole of
the south from Bosnia through Italy and southern France and into
northern Spain. The founding members were generally responding to the
endemic corruption in the Catholic Church particularly the amassing of
huge wealth, through moral blackmail and the sale of Indulgencies. All
these new pious groups were labelled as Heretics by the Church and
summarily burnt at the stake by officers of the Inquisition who were
generally Dominican Friars. Other names for Dominicans were Black
Friars or Friar Preachers. Not all Dominicans must be labelled as
Gestapo, one Friar Thomas Aquinas also known as Doctor Angelicus is a
respected theologian and philosopher even to day.
The Extermination of the Knights Templar.
King Philippe 4th of France 1268-1314
His son in law King Edward 2nd of England. 1285-1327
C.1120. The Knights Templars or “Poor Knights of Christ and
of
the Temple of Jerusalem” were created by a group of devout
French
Knights at the same time c.1120 as the Knights of St John of Jerusalem,
or Hospitallers, both with the objective of protecting the Crusaders as
they approached Jerusalem. After the fall of Jerusalem 1187 both were
forced to retreat to nearby Acre and then to Cyprus. Cyprus was too
small for both of these freelance military groupings and the Templars
looked to Southern France as a better HQ. This was both a threat and
opportunity for King Philippe as he had just expelled all his financial
sources from France, namely the Jews, and now eyed the huge wealth of
the Templars amassed during the Crusades and said to be of the same
magnitude as the Catholic Church itself, as a suitable financial
alternative. The threat was the Templars themselves who were not only
wealthy but also had commandeered many ships providing them with the
biggest navy in the Mediterranean at the time. How to deal with the
Templars?
King Philippe was no wimp himself and had already got rid of one Pope
and installed his own puppet Pope in Rome. He then went further to
hijack the whole of the Vatican and install them in Avignon in southern
France. With the Vatican came the leaders of the Inquisition Office.
Philippe persuaded the Pope to declare all Templars heretics which gave
the King unofficial control of the Inquisition office whose clandestine
duty was to rid the territory of Heretics. Step by step, Gestapo style
the Inquisition in the guise of Dominican Monks routed out the leaders
of the Templars and burnt them at the stake.
In England although the Inquisition did not operate the Templars did.
Philippe asked his son-in-law Edward 2nd to copy his grisly actions in
England which would have involved clandestine information gathering,
torture of suspects to gain confessions and death by burning at the
stake. Good for Edward, he refused at first but later bowed to the
might of the French King. However “surprisingly”
very few
Templars were found, no torture was allowed and the friendly jailors
allowed most to escape. Most were absorbed into the Monasteries both in
England and Scotland and given a pension for life.
It is interesting to note that even at this early time the English
judicial system was way ahead of the French which still followed
ancient Roman law. The English had trial by Jury while the French still
had trial by a single Judge.
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