Inquisition Manuals - The Rise of Torture & How Magic Became Heresy

it was the height of the Enlightenment reason reigning Supreme when in the summer of 1758 Andre morlet was visiting a friend actually a high-ranking church official over in Rome pursuing the shelves of his host as I'm sure all of us are out there want to do without the least bit of Judgment of course his eye caught a vast tome in folio ominously the spine red dorium in quy torum a church institution that still struck horror still strikes horror it evokes images of torture dank Dungeons and burning flesh and upon opening it he was revolted with what he saw the presumption of guilt and even demonic possession of suspected Heretics instructions for deceiving those suspects into confessing that meant excruciating death in detailed instructions for when and how to apply torture that could only end and just those confessions to share his disgust and contempt for what he took as the worst excesses of the medieval religious depravity that Enlightenment people so despised he published exerts of the inquisitor's manual in 1762 the men of the Enlightenment refer to the text as a mon ument of atrocity and Ridiculousness and Vol realized that candid should have killed a few more than just one Inquisitor and a few decades later over in America Edgar Alan Poe would include the dorium inquisit torum in his Litany of shocking and horrible volumes pondered by those within the walls of the doomed House of Usher alongside malus malarum the work of the 14th century kadal Inquisitor Nicholas immer came to represent absolute horror the absolute horrors of human cruelty manifest by religious Dogma run a muuk indeed it took none less then mine comp to steal that satanic Throne from malas and from the dorium of Emer but shock and disgust are not education and only only education can actually prevent those Horrors from reemerging thus to understand the directorial inquisit torum we must turn back to the Inquisition of the 14th century here we'll see the Inquisition in transition from its triumph over the kar to extend its reach into emergent other so-called heresies and becoming an enduring European religious institution indeed the most DEC decisive extension of the Inquisition will be the addition of magic to the realm of heresy one that would set the stage for The Witch Trials of the early modern period let's explore the Inquisition of the 14th century specifically by studying these these manuals of the Inquisition that bookend the 14th century the practica inquis heretis of Bernard G completed sometime around 1325 and the increasingly horrible dorium inquisit torum of Nicholas emmerich completed around 1376 if you're interested in the history of magic hermetic philosophy Alchemy cabala or just the history of things like this in the occult make sure to subscribe here to esoterica and check out my numerous other content on topics on esotericism also if you want to support work like this long form scholarly accessible and free content on topics and ESO terorism here for free on YouTube I hope you consider supporting my work over at patreon with a onetime donation you can use the super thanks below the video you can pick up some cool black metal merch and you can support the channel making long form content like this I mean I didn't exactly mean to make an hour plus video on the 14th century Inquisition but it happened and if you want to support work like that take a look at my patreon but now to the manuals of the Inquisition of the 14th century the Inquisition that saw the burning of Joan of Arc the execution of the last cathars the imulation of margarit pet and the persecution and suppression of the Templars and the hered aaction the making of heresy of magic itself I'm Dr Justin Sledge and welcome to esoterica where we explore the Arcane and history philosophy and religion [Music] [Music] as you might have guessed this episode is actually the second in our series on the origins and developments of the medieval Inquisition now you might want go check out that first episode either to better inform this one or you can check it out afterwards to get a more full vision of how the Inquisition developed prior to this episode that takes place primarily in the 14th century but this episode does basically pick off where the other one left off and it covers the rise of the medieval Inquisition now to clear up any confusion which seemed rather endemic weirdly enough in the comment section last time and before the ninth person leaves the Monty Python joke this is a series about the the medieval Inquisition the medieval one not the much later Spanish and Roman inquisitions that began in the 16th century this episode Spann the Inquisition as it was in the 14th century the 1300s that's about 200 years prior to the rise of the Spanish and Roman inquisitions also while the Spanish and Roman inquisitions were truly Affairs of State they were state backed and all the more horrible for it it would be wrong to think of the medieval Inquisition as a fully institutionalized office of either the church or the state at this period rather around this time it's better to think of inquisitions as more of ad hoc sorties little battles against perceived heresy in a region with some of them being more or less institutionalized though as we'll see by the end of the 14th century institutionalization of the Inquisition the Inquisition will certainly be on the agenda also just a note on my use of the word heresy for this episode I'm going to be using the terms heresy and heretic from the point of view of the Inquisition which puts me in a weird position but rather than just saying all the time so-called heresy and so-called heretic every single time I want to use that term I'm certainly not on team medieval Church much less on team Inquisition God forbid and I don't want my language use to muddle that fact I'm literally making episodes like this content like this in the hopes that we can learn from history and actively resist the combination of church and state which some hideous morons in this country are flirting with again along with resisting any form of Social Power which stems from basically medieval conspiracy theories it's in fact even arguable to what extent some of these heresies existed in the medieval period in the first place so again I use the term heretic and heresy is just a shorthand and definitely not an endorsement of anything argued in this episode but as we saw last time the medieval Inquisition or rather the technical title of the time the inquisitio herei pratis the investigation into heretical depravity depravity the Heretics were depraved it's an ironic title if you ask me evolv primarily in order to suppress both alleged duelist in the re region of Southern France and Northern Italy known to history now as the cathars as much as they really existed but also other r Catholics who took the spiritual importance of apostolic Poverty of Central and literal very literal value with the poverty the waldensians and eventually the spiritual franciscans along with the even later Apostolic Brethren or the pseudo Apostles as they're known to the Inquisition argued that literal poverty radical poverty was a Scenic quinone of Christian piety and that the church had basically betrayed all that for Pomp and luxury and decadence I mean St Francis did tell the Pope that Peter had no silver and gold any longer what a bamp so much so that the apostolic Brethren actually held that the Church of Rome was basically the Antichrist in order to deal with these Renegade movements the church actually first employed cyrian preachers to properly educate the population and then eventually they began to incorporate some of these preachers of poverty into the church as the medicate orders the medicate orders the begging poor orders especially the franciscans and the Dominicans who the Dominicans would themselves go on to become the shock troops of the early Inquisition however following the assassination of a Papal Leed in 128 and the blatant desire on the part of Northern Lords for southern land in France The alinan Crusade was launched from 1209 to 1229 and proved to be a horrifying bloodbath of Siege and Massacre of civilians in the lad do that is difficult to describe and it was in the aftermath of that nightmare that A New Nightmare began the Inquisition sought to root out and Destroy any remaining vestages of heresy in the region in the 50 years that followed with the last kathar profectus being burned alive in the Autumn of 1321 again if you want more of a primer on the origins and the mechanisms by which the early Inquisition operated you're going to want to check out the first episode in this series because you need to know more about that stuff because it's horrifying and we don't want to do it again also if you want to learn more about cathar beliefs and theology if again or if they really existed frankly I've also made a little cathar playlist I've made a little Kar playlist you can check that you can check that out too that was weird but by the early 14th century the subject of this video the Inquisition over the cathars was basically coming to a conclusion with the kathar Nearing Annihilation and the Wal denans now being pushed way off into the mountain regions of Italy where they actually survived down to this day there's still waldensians out there waldensians well done you beat the Inquisition you should get like a reward for that there should be a statue because you beat the Inquisition but with the defeat of catharism imminent and the first generations of the growing pains for the Inquisition complete we begin to see the first systematic treaties by inquisitors actually reflecting on the very process and Office of the Inquisition itself in a sense the first generation of the Inquisition was very much a startup it was in startup mode more or less making things up as they went you know basing themselves on canon law and theology but a lot of it was kind of ad hoc but with the end of that startup phase of the Inquisition came the earliest inklings of self-reflections by the inquisitors upon the very office they had helped to create and this couldn't have come sooner at a better time and as I mentioned in the introduction new heresies were on the horizon well at least they were making new heresies up the 14th century would see the burning of Joon of Arc it would see the burning of the beIN Margaret pet the persecution and suppression of the Templars don't uh don't loan the king of France any money and the hered ification of well magic all of it the annihilation of the cathars would only proved to be the opening Salvo in the medieval war against heresy and by 1317 the final can and powers of church law would be given over to the Inquisition in a sense the Inquisition saw itself become the little eye Inquisition well the baby Inquisition grew up it became self-conscious of itself it it became the Inquisition now to better understand that process this episode is going to to explore the development of the 14th century Inquisition by turning to a series of inquisitional manuals composed during that Century the first is going to be the practica inquisi hertis of Bernard G completed sometime around 1325 and the frankly horrible dorium inquisit torum of Nicholas emmerich completed sometime around 1376 about 50 years later and to a lesser degree we'll take a look at some of the text like deiko that was composed sometime between 1320 and 1325 along with ugin's track tat super Materia heter chorum composed around 1330 now Bernard ghee was a true soldier of the church born to minor Gentry he became a Dominican early on and served in various leadership roles slowly climbing up the church hierarchy he was studious and careful his inquisitorial manual is only a minor work compared to his other mountain of literature he produced for instance on history and it was perhaps this investigative mind along with a pinion for diplomacy he was a diplomat that led him to becoming Chief Inquisitor of tulus from 1307 to 1323 even his being appointed Bishop didn't take him away from his duties in what was among that time the final outposts of catharism however it would be during his posting that the final cathar perfector would actually be burned in 1321 in the Inquisition of pomier led by jacqu Fier who would later become Pope Benedict I 12th so The Inquisitor to Pope pipeline that was the thing ghee composed the practica about 2 years after his retiring from the post of Inquisitor and it was made as a guide for those who would succeed him in that post the practica while written in 1325 and surviving in six manuscripts wouldn't even be published in a modern Edition until 1886 and it still has no contemporary critical Edition much less an English translation though some chunks of it are translated it's a very strange book to modernize to be honest and and not just because of the whole you know torturing Heretics aspect it's composed of five parts many of which are just various documents and legal forms and formula stitch together with some commentary the first covers documents and form for summoning a suspected heretic and excommunicating those that refuse to show up remember in the early Inquisition they could call you and you could just run off the wal denans just ran the hell off the second and third are similar formulas for use during the sermones or sermons in which Heretics are variously condemned or given penances along with the various kinds of Oaths that were expected to be sworn by secular powers to support and back the Inquisition often rather turbulent Affair as we'll see it wasn't always happy between the Inquisition and the secular arm the fourth section are the various Cannon laws describing the office of the Inquisition basically justifying the inquisition's existence along with the acceptable behavior of an Inquisitor the kind of things you're expected to do and not to do finally the fifth and the most well-known section in fact the only part of the book of the practica translated into English details how to conduct interrogations the of various sex along with a kind of questionnaire to be used by The Inquisitor known as an interrogator that is specific to each form of heresy it's as a tayor made questionnaire to kind of diagnose a heretic as you're talking to them it also includes the final formulas for the most important aspect of the Inquisition the abjuration in which the convicted heretic secures Absolution from the church via The Inquisitor in some sense it's the whole point of the Inquisition at least from the point of view of the church now the first three sections are absolutely the most obscure to contemporary eyes especially for those of y'all who you know don't read medieval religious legal texts all day but uh the best way to think about these sections is if you've ever needed to fill out like a legal form like a promissary note for a loan or a house lease or a bill of sale and you just go to some website like a law website I don't know best law forms.com and you download some PDF with a bunch of lawyer jibber jabber and you just plug in a bunch of names and dates and signatures and things and you go down to the bank or the post office and you get it notorized and wham bam thank you ma'am magically you have a legally binding document maybe I'm not a lawyer I don't know well those first sections of the practica are kind of a version of that they're just a bunch of documents that were developed in the first generation of the Inquisition that were now organized and formalized by such that if you I don't know you needed a summons document to drag someone in to inquest about their heresy situation the wording of a local Lord to swear support to the Inquisition or you need them to declare that they're going to go out there and capture some Heretics or the official wording to seize property from a converted heretic and turn it into a trash Heap by the way that's what you would do you would take the heretic's property and turn it to a trash Heap you would just uh you would go to geese practica you get a notary to copy that section out and you kind of as an Inquisitor you you had it kind of readymade for you they're also ordered in in the way that you would study them for the in for the education of you know becoming an Inquisitor yourself so that's handy some of the forms even still have names and dates from previous Inquisition cases so they function as much as a historical witness to the actual Inquisition as mere templates though you got to wonder about the Privacy rights of those Heretics oh yeah it's the 14th century no one has rights Parts four and five are more directly compositions by ghee himself part four is actually based on a work that was produced during the northern Italian inquisition of around 1268 to 1277 you'll call that that was a region that produced one of the only alleged texts that we have that survive from a from an alleged cathar douas the book of the two principles you can learn more about that work above if you want to get into some cathar theology that work however gee greatly expands uh the Inquisition one not not the katar one he he wouldn't do that you know he was on he was on team Inquisition but basically it's a kind of running commentary describing the extent and nature of the powers of the Inquisition there are things that they could do and there are things that they simply couldn't do finally book five is perhaps the most interesting and accessible for contemporary readers and basically it's the only one that anyone reads now anyhow here G details the nature of five distinct heretical groups The manans Who who he would we would Now call cathars he always calls the manans the waldensians the pseudo Apostles the beIN and then a kind of grab bag of people relapsed Jews Sorcerers divers and those that that summon demons he knew it was going to get summoning demons in addition to each heresy there are also a series of interrogator or questions specific to those sects that Inquisitor should ask in order to secure a membership of said heretic and said hery more on the interrogations and the means by which you secure those confessions you guessed it Torture in a bit but if you only know gee from the book in the film of Umberto echo in the name of the Rose you'll have the impression of him as a kind of Steely eyed machine hellbent on rooting out heresy no matter what the toll taken on human life and dignity something of a I don't know medieval Catholic Reinhardt hydri or something G through a did but that's actually not really the impression that you get from reading the practica well he does lament the idea of letting a single heretic go uh rather than you know getting false convictions so that's kind of troubling it troubles him more the idea of one guy might get away than you could get a bunch of false confessions though gee sees himself as all many inquisitors did as doctors of the Soul honestly serving the task of rescuing Souls from heresy which would otherwise mean damnation for them he's trying to help them he often urges restraint and caution and even when it comes to torture while an option for the Inquisition since 1252 the bull ad extra Panda it was always a last resort for ghee something that we shouldn't take for granted it's going to change in just a minute in fact as we start to compare G and immer we're going to see two very different means by which the Inquisition should proceed and some of that horror that emmer inspired for the enlightenment guys and egel and PO is sadly horrifically going to come into much clearer Focus now before turning to imir however I should say a bit about the other two important manuals produced in the 14th century both produced in the Italian context the de oiko and the track tatus the later of which was printed first in 1579 these are both fundamentally legal texts they're being written for more or less incorporating the Inquisition into existing legal structures of the day the former outlines the role of the officials of the Inquisition the various legal categories of Heretics and finally the tasks to be performed by the Inquisition again limiting it as much as giving it power largely the text spells out and clarifies what up to that the point had been a rather halfhazard legal precedence as the Inquisition developed again no one knew what quite to do with this thing the tractus is similar in this regard but further intends to integrate the nature and scope of the Inquisition into the larger system of law which was frankly still integrating the shift to Roman law in the 13th century it's all being built at C now it does clarify several important matters of precedent especially the use of judical torture more about torture later and is more or less for an audience of jurists rather than being a manual for the inquisitors themselves as is the case for both the books of ghee and emmer those are the textbooks for heretic these are more textbooks for jurists that said the tra Titus is frankly by far the most comprehensible of any of these books to a contemporary audience even without medieval legal training it's basically a straightforward Guide to the relationship of the Inquisition as a Proto institution to the larger legal framework of the time including the limits on inquisitorial power again him they're very interested in making sure this thing is pretty circumscript for reasons we're going to get to in a minute but it's no surprise that this book went into four editions in the 16th century alone however the star or protagonist of this episode The 1376 dorium Inquisitor by the catalon chief Inquisitor for the kingdom of Aragon well when he wasn't in Exile from Aragon by Nicholas Emer represents a sea change in nearly every aspect of the Inquisition up to that point in time and it sets the stage for both the national in institutional Roman and Spanish inquisitions but also the early modern Witch Trials which would go on to claim the lives of between 40 and 60,000 people from 1450 to 1750 overwhelmingly women indeed it survives in 35 manuscripts attesting to its widespread and popularity and would see 13 full editions in the 16th and 17th centuries the SE 15 78 thought to be the most definitive that one composed under edition of Francisco Peña whose notes and comments by the way in that text are very very helpful if you decide to actually dare to read the thing however the text has no modern addition no complete English translation which is unsurprising considering it's a sprawling 800 page Scholastic tome in folio in folio like 10-point font however if you're familiar with the interrogative Scholastic method of the quiones the text is surprisingly handy it's structurally coherent it has a kind of logical flow typical of something that you would read like aquinus or scotus or aam but it's it's about torturing people and the Inquisition and if horrifying Inquisition manuals is what you wanted well that's what you'll get in the dorium why you would want that I don't know I have a copy over there from 1578 it's a stuff of nightmares now recall that I mentioned that emmer composed the text in Exile yes immer had a pinion for self-righteousness which I suppose is a virtue for inquisitors but also he greatly expanded the net of what was going to be constitutive of heresy and thus the scope of Any Given Inquisition now this would eventally lead him on an assault against his fellow Scholars especially the scholar the C scholar Ryman LOL who would he actually would get declared temporarily at least a heretic and all his followers declared Heretics along with those practicing sorcery and even non-converted Jews recall that typically to be a heretic you got to First be a Christian right at least in Aragon but in many other places Jews and Muslims actually enjoyed some degree of protection directly under the crown and were thus doubly outside the jurisdiction of the Inquisition they were not Christians and they were protected by the crown imir will begin to batter down those walls setting the stage for the mass prosecution of Muslims and especially Jews in the 15th century culminating in the alhamra decree of 1492 which eventually expelled all non-converted Jews from Spain and the subsequent Spanish Inquisition which followed to ensure religious compliance on the part of the converts this this is the part where you can make the Spanish Inquisition joke from Monte Pyon uh whereas Gees practica is just that it's a kind of work a day manual for the Inquisition down there in the trenches of Inquisition lamb the director is a more fully academic work meant to serve as an encyclopedic manual for both training of the inquisitors but also for use in the day-to-day Office of the Inquisition it's also a kind of theater for him to argue in defense of his persecution of the followers of rando LOL and especially his novel focus on those those who use sorcery to summon demons in addition for him to for him to just brag about the convictions he had secured especially against the alleged Jewish sorcerer asru deera over and against the Royal prerogative just to be clear they did not want him Prosecuting this Jewish guy he did it anyway he's innovating in this text as much as he is describing Inquisition in both theory and practice the text is normative just as much as it is descriptive now Emmer's tone is often detached though sometimes huy but mostly it's just coldly academic even when systematizing the proper grounds for torture those grounds proving all the more accessible in the dorium as we'll see in a moment the work is divided into three parts feel like I'm reading Caesar all of a sudden the first details the theological justification for the inquisitor's task of suppressing heresy using hundreds of pages of Canan law and Theological tracks from Augustine to graci the decretals various popes and especially his fellow Dominican Thomas aquinus emmerik loves Thomas remember when I said that the text follows the Scholastic system of The Quon well you'll maybe recall that that's where an initial thesis is subjected to a host of objections before the central argument and the final position are stated by the author Thomas does a pretty good job of that scotus does a good job of that Emme pretty much softballs those initial objections and mostly Cherry picks the historical data to justify the existence and role of the Inquisition especially as he defines it it all appears very academic when you actually look at the text on the surface but with more reflection it really comes across as as cheap cheating even it's not it's not good academic work for EMR the Inquisition is a foregone conclusion and this section provides what is effectively a veneer now A thick one hundreds of pages but only a really veneer of Scholastic justification especially for the finer points where he's really pushing the Inquisition into novel territory we'll see a similar pattern in his Arguments for extending the inquisition's jurisdiction to non-christians and for his Arguments for the hered ification of magic the second section outlines how immer understands heresy again taken from canon law and taken from theology along with the standard Encyclopedia of the sex of his time and the times just before him and thus of course what to do with said Heretics of course the standard Heretics here are enumerated you manquin and cathars and wans and blah blah blah but emmer also spells a lot of time on his pet Heretics the Lans the followers of rando LOL adhered as you might know to a computational system which they alleged was able to prove the truths of Christianity it was kind of able to prove the truths of anything all these cool wheels and you turn them and you could like logically prove things it's like early computational science LOL would also become associated with Alchemy and sorcery in the generations after his death giving him an even more Sinister veneer though there's no evidence he had anything to do with any of that probably hated it emmer for his part thought the whole matter entirely heretical and singled them out for prosecution his argument basically is you can't compute your way to Faith he would also argue for the persecution of non-christians especially Jews along with those who engage in the conjuration of demons now we're going to spend a lot of time on that last part the conjuration of demons part because it's esoterica so hold on to that just for a bit but all in all this section establishes the what and the who of heresy and attempts to argue for the expansion the big expansion of the jurisdiction of inquisitorial powers finally the third section lays out the nature and role of The Inquisitor in the process of Inquisition itself these sections are among the most horrible as they detail means by which to basically trig people into confession the detailed discussion of when and how to apply torture including greatly lowering the bar for when torture can be applied basically any suspicion of heresy is sufficient for Emer to begin the process of torturing people and his argument for the continuation of torture much longer much longer than what was traditionally allowed through Inquisition or jurus Prudence again they were rules immer breaks them immer even sometimes isues the importance of penance otherwise so key in inquisitional theory given that he suspects that most Heretics they're already possessed by demons and essentially Damned by the time they arrive for inter interrogation in the first place the confession is just a procedural in his thinking to some degree to ultimately arrive at the show trial of the thermog gines here Emirate contends that it is the public humiliation and horrible execution of the heretic that functions both as a standin for the devil you're you're burning the devil to some degree but also as a deterrent for any wouldbe Heretics out there lurking in the crowd writing in Exile again this is written in Exile one can detect emir's Fury his sense of self-importance and the dorium comes across much more as how the Inquisition should be run if Nicolas was in charge of it rather than how it was in fact rhyme yet immer would have the last laugh and the dorium would dramatically shape the trajectory of both the 16th century Roman and Spanish inquisitions but as I mentioned it would lay the groundwork for the early modern Witch Trials now as you can probably detect there is a surprising shocking amount of difference between the Inquisition of the time of ghe in the early 14th century and the period where the practica was composed and the Inquisition 50 years later just 50 years later around the time that the composition of the 1376 dorium was written by emmer for instance the funding structure of the Inquisition would actually change in G's day he was directly employed by the French state that largely paid Inquisition from confiscations especially of land taken from convicted Heretics and those that supported them recall that in G's lifetime the kathas were undergoing basically the final stages of their Annihilation and the period of the confiscations frankly were coming they were coming to an end meaning an end to the large revenue streams that were funding the very Inquisition in those regions worse at least for the funding of the Inquisition was that the new crime of Heretics especially the spiritual franciscans and the apostolic Brethren well remember they were heretic precisely on the grounds of their commitment to radical Apostolic poverty and their charge at the Roman Church was Antichrist because of its riches among other reasons well it should be obvious they didn't have any money or land to confiscate upon their conviction unlike the previous generations of Lords that were said to have sheltered the kathar perfecty emmer even complains that there aren't any Rich Heretics left he complains about this and I got to admit it's kind of funny just to him him huffing and puffing oh I had some rich Heretics to prosecute if I'm going to be honest it's kind of funny it's horrible but it's also kind of funny however as available confiscations dried up the Inquisition was basically forced to rely on Bishops to fund their work and it turns out Bishops don't care they got other things to do and they're rich they don't want to get involved in all this Inquisition business most of the time no or do you got to basically fund raise via penalties imposed upon pened Heretics or the rare confiscation you get from the spiritual franciscans that you just burned on the balance sheet this does actually work out better for the state though they do actually complain when they do get some confiscations those confiscations up in The Inquisitor persons and out the states and it also has the effect that it gave the Inquisition greater autonomy they weren't financially dependent upon the State anymore it also had the effect of increasing Financial penalties upon convicted Heretics over and against penances such as wearing crosses or prison time or forc pilgrimage that were more common in ge's day you were more likely to Su to sentence them to some kind of financial penalty and along with some other penances because how was she going to you know burn the the the spiritual franciscans over there now this greater amount of autonomy didn't always work out for The Inquisitor gee for his part was a very careful Diplomat remember he worked in that capacity as a professional prior to ever even becoming an Inquisitor but he also saw himself as appointed directly by God via the pope to work for the French state in tulus thus he really didn't he wasn't much of a guy who rocked the boat for a lot of reasons now he did resent the papal Bulls which did come out during his lifetime which forced any Inquisition to work in tandem with local Bishops for approval of torture and major trials they had to basically get a a signature from the bishop to torture people and conduct major trials now these were the result of some recent troubles let's call them where they were basically riots by the local population when an inquisition got out of hand and tried to subject an entire city to to trial but there's no evidence that g aroused local anger or Royal anger for that matter indeed he was actually very very careful in his coges to very clearly articulate his verdicts using evidence and even speaking in the vernacular oan for key sections of those speeches so that the crowd could follow along yeah it was a show trial but it was a show trial that the crowd had to agree with at least they had to come along with it to some degree and G knew that from his own experience in the riots that broke out in carcassone unlike popular imagination the Inquisition of this period just couldn't do anything they wanted with impunity by no means people would just Riot and kill them and he saw that in carcassone now immer however because of his greater autonomy the basic lack of other Heretics for him to prosecute and his conviction that blasphemy sorcery and some other Jews fell into his jurisdiction along with the followers of rando L he began to Target a wider slwa of people including members of the court from his writings it appears that he wanted to Target Sorcerers some Alchemists and certain astrologers as Heretics now this was a holy novel move this has not been done before and worse many of those that he wanted to Target were members of the elite they were members of the court and they were even members of his own order they were Dominicans now this cut two ways in one way it allowed for greater possibility of confiscations with new forms of heresy came new Heretics some of them very wealthy though interestingly enough immer does actually complain that such a direct funding of the Inquisition through direct confiscations well that created a significant conflict of interest I mean IM at least admits that but as he would learn on the other hand the locals and the Lords were also deeply off-put by him targeting Jews Lis and many others for those sorcery prosecutions because that brought a host of members of the Court into his net indeed this whole region had a reputation for sorcery and mysticism and astrology recall that the Zohar had produced not far away from here over in Castile under the rule of Alonso I 10th just a century prior also he was one of the few European monarchs that flatly refused to host the Inquisition in any form form or fashion I mean the dude wasn't called Alfonso the wise for nothing the patrix was also translated this time several different magical manuals are being produced through the 13th century and introduced in the 14th Michael Ryan's book by the way a kingdom of stargazers does a fantastic job describing this whole ulty 14th century Spanish milu but 's expansion of his jurisdiction earned him the ey of the secular arm and they sent him into Exile when he would ultimately end up writing the dorium himself so again the secular arm wasn't always eager or even willing to Aid the Inquisition in certain situations especially when those situations involved it turning on them now it's often passed over because of the horrible torture stuff that it's it's forgotten that the official goal of the Inquisition is the deracination of heresy from a local area and more importantly for the abjuration of convicted Heretics in the interest of reconciling their souls to God and securing their salvation indeed Deus Inquisition was devised in the aftermath of the alinan Crusades because killing Heretics massacring Heretics much less massacring innocent Christians wasn't the goal of the church and you can't provide salvation to a bunch of people who you just massacred at bezier you cannot help massacred unrepentant Heretics now now many people out there maybe all are cynical about these motives but those are the stated motives of the church via the Inquisition and we have to be honest about that but how does one get from the detection of heresy to the ultimate abjuration of heresy and reconciliation with the church well through the process of interrogation aided of course by torture and then confession before final public abjuration in the coges or the public sermon where the various verdicts of the inquis position were announced a sermon was preached to the popul to the population and The Condemned were relaxed to the secular arm outside the church for execution of course most often through burning and it's in the interrogation of heresy where ghee and Emir can again be very revealingly contrasted as I mentioned gee does see himself and I do believe him as he sees himself as a doctor of Souls and seems to honestly wish to cure Souls of damnable heresy however he knows that the heretic can employ guile and trickery to conceal their positions and protect their Confederates specifically he notes the use of a range of linguistic tricks especially employed by the waldensians and the apostolic Brethren the pseudo Apostles whereby they employ a series of equivocations to lead The Inquisitor to believe that they Ascent to Orthodoxy where they just actually are agreeing that they believe that the Inquisitor believes in Orthodoxy it's a funny trick and at least from the text I kind of believe that g himself might be speaking from experience I think he must have fallen for this trick at some point you know the old wal denian I believe that you believe otherwise the suspected heretic might Fain stupidity they might just say I have no idea what to believe tell me what to believe and I'll tell you what to believe to avoid questioning and ghee provides a wide ranging list of questions the interrogator of book five specific to each heresy to help guide the suspect toward confessing yes leading confessions leading questions were the rule to the uh interrogation system of the Inquisition not the exception leading questions all day every day here at Inquisition time once the confession was secured penises could be made and the abjuration reconciles the patient to the Salvation of the mother Church however if that failed if the interrogation did not result in a confession or some other form of acquittal and there was still strong suspicion of heresy and as a last resort ghee does advise the use of torture more on that in a moment now as you can probably predict the situation in emmer is rather different rather than lay out five distinct heresies as ghe does imir pass a wide net as possible in his definition of heresy it basically includes any beliefs or practices that insult or threaten the mother Church further immer is beginning at this time already to begin to link heresy with diabolism and thus with demonic possession for him the odds that anyone indulging in heresy has already surrendered their soul to the devil in this life such that well he can do very little to save them at this point thus his task to his mind is to extract a confession as quickly as possible to make an example of that alleged penitent so as to help the next would be heretic thus IM is willing to fight fire with fire in the interrogation he's he's dealing with the devil he thinks and he lists 10 culi or rules that an Inquisitor can use to basically trick a person into confessing now he knows that he can't outright lie but he can employ a range of pretty dirty tricks the worst among them at least to me is his own use of equivocation on the Latin word for Grace or gratia which can mean both Grace and pardon in Latin such that he would offer them graa pardon in exchange for a confession what the suspect he is of course are there being basically they're given the chance to confess and the charg is being dismissed it's a charges being dismissed in exchange for confession situation what immer means is in a technical sense of the theological idea of Grace graa as a pardon given to those who confess to be reconciled with the mother Church even if it means their confessions damning them to be burned alive there's something disgusting about this other tricks include feigning having documents that damn the suspect and threatening to use them threatening to leave them in the dungeon when chains for long periods of time while The Inquisitor is out there doing Inquisition stuff by the way ghee also threatened to do this emir's getting this from ghee so you're not getting off the hook ghee uh telling them that their Confederates have ratted them out prisoners dilemma putting them in feds for a while while then giving them just food and water and then bettering their conditions and offering them even better conditions if they confess visitations for their family the use of turn coats like jail house informance and of course finally comes the thread in reality of torture now many of these techniques are kind of known to us from like crime dramas or like Zero Dark 30 zero dark Inquisition but their duplicity is even for me so grossly shocking because they're coming from an alleged son of God acting to save the soul of his parishioners torture as I mentioned earlier has been a an interrogative tool for inquisitors since around 1252 about 30 years into the Inquisition for 30 years the Inquisition could not use torture FYI though inquisitorial torture was heavily circumscribed and it usually was limited to the strappado only one session of torture was allowed per day and just at all only one session was allowed and under depositions that were made under torture had to be confirmed in writing outside of torture the tortured confessions were not sufficient to achieve conviction indeed torture was introduced when sufficient evidence of heresy existed but not enough to secure a conviction the archetype form of evidence being personal confession thus torture was intended to quote make truth poor through torment and bodily suffering though evidence arrived at solely Through Torture was universally reviewed as suspect because people know then what we know now that with sufficient torture virtually anyone will confess to virtually anything and it's unclear to what degree ghee employed torture in his over 630 acts recorded in his senten a lengthy document recording the outcomes of his various Inquisitor cases I include a great book that has an analysis of the outcome of all these cases he adjudicated further what is clear is that he felt that torture should be employed as a last resort and only when very strong suspicion of heresy based on other evidence was available for the practic torture was a means to secure a weaker though still likely case of heresy or when it might be possible to decisively secure information from a central node in a heretic Network this is something like the I don't know the ticking Time Bomb scenarios that they use in movies to justify torturing people that we have to get to this one guy because he's linked to all the other ones and if we get that one guy then you know we can save everyone else's Soul something like that in this way geek continues as a relatively restrained impementation of torture typical of the early period of the Inquisition especially compared to the secular arm folks in which torture of people was just as much entertainment as it was a judicial process so again we have to compare the Inquisition to its time period and not hours in fact it was a tendency toward early sustained violent and widespread torture that helped spurned on that riot at carcassone that ghee remembered all too well I think he referred to it as the rage at carcassone the rased carcasson Onis and for what it's worth those two Italian manuals that I've been mentioning they basically follow G and they follow the precedent of restrain torture as the last result only once typically only with a strappado and any confession arrived at torture had to be secured outside of torture for it to be admissible of course with immer story is a bit different the dorium imagines a kind of spectrum from interrogation to what we would Now call Psych ological pressure even psychological torture before finally arriving at physical torture but what separates emmer is both his rationalization of the process of when an Inquisitor could introduce torture the systematic transition from psychological to physical torture itself and finally how long torture could be sustained unlike inquisitorial precedent and previous manuals all of the previous manuals immer argued that one could introduce torture as soon as a suspect provides inconsistent confused or even hesitant testimony on doctrinal questions you should just be able to know all of Catholic Doctrine upon ask even if there were no other evidence that would Elevate their status of Suspicion nor other evidence that might establish their guilt of course no one brought into the Inquisition is going to have a straight story or a robust theological educ a to exactly answer every question right and given that immer is happy to use those various rues to induce confusion this de facto establishes that torture becomes virtually accessible as soon as the heretic speaks or doesn't hesitancy opens the door as I mentioned the canonical form of torture here was the strap where the victim is bound with by with with rope tied with their hands behind their backs they're lifted into the air with sometimes weight attached to their feet they're raised and lowered into the air sometimes the Rope is struck um in the sense vibrations down to their body it's all meant to cause Agony On torn and ripped muscles and ligaments desperately trying to hold together the horribly distended and dislocated shoulders of of the victim the idea that serp torture is somehow more Humane something that inquisitors argued is emmer for his part draws this process out slowly increasingly proximate to the Implements of torture showing you the ropes and the pulley binding your hands lifting you slowly into the air for various periods of time before then attaching weights bouncing the victim up and down and striking the rope that suspends them further immer argues that the victim actually might just they might just be demonically possessed remember and thus they're magically immune to the pain of torture hence it might be necessary to extend the process of torture even if they aren't confessing now prior to the dorium torture was restricted as I mentioned to a single day per accused victim and again only as her last resort for his part emmer argues that as long as the interrogation must continue it's all one long interrogation and thus if torture happens on subsequent days he isn't repeating the torture which was forbidden to inquisitors he wasn't repeating it he was just continuing it thus for emeric torture had been subject to a certain rationalization considerably lowering the threshold for when torture could begin in the interrogation process as he had introduced a distinctly psychological component to the process and it could be continued well beyond what was previously considered Orthodox by inquisitorial standards as one might imagine following the director torture becomes increasingly the One-Stop shop for producing evidence in the centuries that followed for both the Roman and the Spanish inquisitions and of course with the early modern Wich trials all right now we get to the part about the magic I don't I know how this episode got so long he talked to my editor I am that all right let's talk about the differences between the practica and the dorium here that matter I think to most of us the hered ification of magic and again probably what you were here for all along sorry about the weight I mean there was a section there about torture to T tied you over but in general attitudes toward magic especially learn magic were already beginning to shift in the early 13th century probably because of the proliferation toward the end of the previous Century which saw the translation of the patrix the likely composition of the ARs notoria along with this swarm book of aorus along with a ton of other magical texts that have now been lost all foundational textbooks of Western magic thus the church was actually confronted with a weird situation it was concern it was confronted with a wave of learned magic perhaps for the first time in 500 years and the first such trials for the use of magic began to noticeably increase in the late 13th but especially in the 14th century now the the church had already basically laid out the its position on the sin of magic not the heresy of magic that's coming now magic is just a sin in the paper bull of Alexander IV accus satus in 1260 which concluded that fortune telling and the casting of spells deonis at sorig did not did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition unless Nimar manifeste it smelled or savored of manifest heresy I rather like how sensual the test is and it kind of reminds me of us laws like on obscenity like us obscenity laws basically something is obscene if a judge looks at it and says it's obscene they kind of know it when they see it the quz atus both forecloses upon the inquisitorial jurisdiction when it comes to the prosecution of magic but it also leaves open the possibility with that weird peculiar clause about savoring manifest heresy so to continue using that language what could flavor magic such that it ceases to be a mere sin among various sins where the only of confession maybe to a bishop and Penance to becoming heresy and thus requiring the intercession of the Inquisition the central concern is not the casting of spells but the operation of magic through demonic means when the procedure involves latria and duia of said demons that is giving worship and reverence to demonic beings otherwise uniquely reserved for God Mary and the Saints in exchange the efficient causation unique to Demons well magic such latria and dulia could tilt the scales from Magic as a mere sin to Magic as a heresy now for his part gee dedicates very little attention to Magic in the practica only basically affirming what the church had already made clear magic was ultimately demonic in nature it was a Pesce at error disease and an error and in hundreds of Trials gee presided over there's actually basically no evidence of magic being an important issue maybe not even an issue in all 600 and something plus trials and other cases magic was present in an inquisitorial proceeding of that time period it's almost always just an adjunct aspect of a larger heresy case it's the heresy matters the magic is just propping up the heresy now that change is going to come first with Pope John the 22nd and then in a more substantial way with surprise surprise emir's dorium now in 1317 it was revealed that the bishop of kahor had actually attempted to assassinate Pope John the 22nd by using both physical poison but also death magic and of course that Bishop was discovered and eventually burned alive for the plot but in 1320 the pope wrote a letter to the inquisitors of tulo and carcasson asking them to um hey guys do me a solid could you uh could you look into that whole demon summoning stuff cuz one of your Bishops nearly killed me with it now he's probably just paying lip service when G actually puts that question in the short remarks and the practica because he just asked him to look into it and he's probably just mentioning it to make sure that the pope sees it however the pope doesn't just leave the question to the inquisitors he also turns to a battery of theologians and Canon lawyers to better clarify the relationship between Magic sin and heresy he wants to get this whole thing sorted out concretely now the answers that they give are actually split and to understand why they're split we should divide magic into three groups the first first do involve giving duia and latria for demons in exchange for their efficient causation well those are always heretical and fully fall into the jurisdiction of the Inquisition no one ever doubted that that's basically what akuzat says however other forms of magic like using gems to produce various kinds of marvelous effects or reading the hands of a person chiromancy they're similarly worrisome but they're just using hidden signs in nature to various ends and while they can be sinful they're not necessarily so and they're certainly not a heresy however there is a middle test here however there are clearly cases where demons can be employed can be summoned though without giving them duia or lria even torturing them into the employe of The Necromancer now that doesn't seem like heresy at all perhaps it's even praiseworthy to crush demons under the thumb of a righteous priest like D and D Paladin style to force them to do good for a change like go clean the church or put my books back on the Shelf dust this damn place please however Thomas aquinus disagreed yeah Thomas ruins are fun thanks Thomas uh for Thomas there's a kind of tcid agreement with the demons the kind of wink wink nudge nudge you know that I know that you know kind of situation between the Necromancer and the Demonic being that he was allegedly impelling there's a tacit kind of well deal being Str here however even with this tacit agreement or the Tak for Thomas most canid lawyers and theologians actually cited with the president concluding that such cases while sinful still can't summon demons even you don't give them dulia they weren't matters of heresy they simply were not privately held publicly taught conscious deviations from Orthodoxy in fact this kind of necromancy could be well within the structure of Orthodoxy again Thomas just degrees now John the 22nd probably because of the magical plot to kill him was pretty interested in the Inquisition making this some heresy and then rooting it the out of there so he followed the minority descending voice on the panel folks like enrio deetto and more so Guido Trini and and to agree with the bishop Inquisitor to himself become Pope jacqu fornier and in 1326 Pope John the 22nd issued the bull super elot specula which came a hair's breath from making basically all magic especially magic involving demons or supernatural beings in any form or fashion patent heresy and thus under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition however a close reading of the bull actually reveals the pope was still trying to balance the majority precental view of aquatus with the minority descent that demonic magic was always hery so the bull seems to basically had no effect there's really no uptick and magical persecutions during this period and it isn't even mentioned again in the historical record so far as we can tell until our boy emmer invokes it in the dorium 50 years after it was issued why probably because law then like law now follows precedent and the bull is so weakly worded that it is hard to use it to you to achieve the escape Velocity one would need for the very firm ruling of Aku zantus secondly and I think this is more interesting is that if magic were to have been pursued vigorously by the Inquisition it may have proved to been an absolute disaster why because it was precisely churchmen and ranking Nobles that were the only people at this time that were were really capable of even performing such magic and as I mentioned earlier there was a ton of magic around the prosecutions would have turned on a population endemic to the church itself along with the very Nobles that hobnob with them it could have proven an inquisition on the church that was kind of what they were pointing to prevent with the spiritual wenan and all these people and the Nobles that supported them so no that that that wasn't that wasn't going to happen they were not going to unleash inquisitors on the clerical necromantic underground and like I said from what we can tell it had no effect G doesn't even mention it but he does mention the invocation of demons in the context of the practica again probably just a tip of the hat to John the 22nd more than anything else and the two intian Inquisition manuals we've been talking about they don't mention it either again they follow akuzat they follow the precedent necromancy is a sin maybe it needs to be judged by a bishop but definitely not by the Inquisition that is until immer dorium comes along where he accepts the dissenting minority View and he builds up a series of arguments that any invocation of demons is tantamount to at least latria via making a pack with them either explicitly or implicitly takita as Thomas aquinus had had it Trini for his part had argued that while such invocation wasn't manifest heresy it should be enough to suspectus De Inus it should be investigated as suspect in faith now that sounds like we're getting into Inquisition territory and to be sure we're definitely getting there but immer leaning on Thomas aquinus mounts up the argument that invocation is tet latria how because invocation required an agreement or PCT of Exchange change with the demon why else would a demon do something for someone they got to be getting something out of the deal such that the Necromancer agreed either openly or takita tacitly to trade or at least jeopardize their soul in exchange for access to alleged demonic efficient causation demonic efficient causation band name alert yeah it's alleged demonic efficient causation because remember back to Augustine and book nine of the of God the church's position is that demons can only perform Illusions and not real changes in nature without Divine sanction that is thus magic is always basically just a long con to damn the would be Necromancer by the demon in question the demon can't really do magic and they can just trick stupid necromancers into believing that they can for emmeric such a pact trading the Eternal Soul for worldly power or even jeopardizing the soul operated as a kind of inverse Sacrament Contra the salic power of the Eucharist for instance both engaging in sacrilege but also revealing the incorrect belief belief that the devil had similar powers to God to provide the Necromancer those kinds of powers that he wanted through the pack with the demon and the Demonic evision causation that implicit belief recall heresy just literally means belief in the power of the Demonic to have the power of The Godly that was an issue of Doctrine and thus any magic which invoked demons can be concluded to be heretical and should be investigated and thus fall under the persecution under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition it's a clever argument I mean I see what you're doing emeric I appreciate it of course the proof of the pudding is in the tasting and it's clear from 's action that he took this line of reasoning to Heart how do we know that because he began inquisitions into magic and Magic isation practices and beliefs especially forms of AST astrology practice and the kingdom of Aragon and recall what happened after pressing the issue with just that being magic and astrology being very much in Vogue among some clerics and some nobles emmer was exiled he was given the boot he lost the support of the secular arm and local religious leaders very probably the potential of the prosecutions would have set off a social Firestorm even his prosecution of an alleged Jewish sorcerer imich also argued that the Inquisition should be able to proceed against non-christians who violate religious laws that both Christians and those non-christians share in common in this case the prohibition on sorcery at least as far as immer understood it was a potential social problem because the Jews fell directly under the protection of the aragonese crown and were economically and socially important as a minority in the Kingdom that's something the king knew something the Nobles knew and it wasn't at all in the interest socially or economically for his realm for inquisitors to be targeting Jewish people so emmer C exiled they kicked them the hell out and in his Exile he he put pen to paper composing the dorium and slowly through the 14th century while magic persecution cases in the rest of Europe remain basically flat in Aragon where emir's influence could be directly felt you begin to slowly see the cases begin to rise with the proliferation of the dorium magic especially magic involving any invocation of spirits demons or packs would be now slow slowly heric all over Europe no longer a mere sin but heresy and now under the eye of the Inquisition again this is precisely because of the logic that an implicit or explicit pack with demons could only effectuate such magic and anyone doing such magic knew and believed this it was a belief it was Aras it was a belief of course this set learn magical practices learn learned magical practices like ceremonial magic encoded in books requiring Latin and religious education costly fabulous outfits and Equipment directly into the sites of the Inquisition and yet with only a few se exceptions such as czecho do scoli you can check out an episode about him and him being burned alive for astrological necromancy the Inquisition conspicuously avoided virtually all such prosecutions I wonder why however it would be Johan's ners for macarius written between 1436 and 1438 that would extend the idea of diabolism from learn magic to Witchcraft or mifia typically associated with unlearned women and form the theological connective tissue between imir dorium and the 1486 malas malarum those cases would be pursued of course with horrible Vigor killing tens of thousand thousands of well mostly women that text in a substantive sense ignited the early modern Wich trials and I have a whole another episode about the malas malarum Nicholas emmer in a sense transformed inquisitions into an inquisition the Inquisition and we still live with the legacy of that shift today now there's so much more to discuss in the Inquisition of of the 14th century even more just on ghee and Emer like the fact that ghee seems less evil at least in part but emmer actually allows a built-in system of appeals that could go directly to the pope and prevent torture or even prevent the whole trial from proceeding at least in Emir system their appeals geese not so much are the pageantry and performative theater that was the sermo GES became the AL defay in the Spanish Inquisition that said the medieval Inquisition developments in the 14th century are decisive in Western history and yet they go vastly underst studied the rest of stuff I studied around here most people even people interested in Western as of terorism or magic Etc they've never even heard or studied ghee or immer and frankly it's not their fault it's not their fault at all I mean there's no modern addition or translation of either text they remain totally buried in a mountain of obscurity to despite their incredible importance to history however if you want to do a careful study of both at least in secondary literature you absolutely can't do any better than Derek Hills Inquisition in the 14th century why I actually own several copies of both of those books they are positively ponderous tones and without Hill's work I couldn't have made this episode for sure so Derek Hill thank you for your work folks get that book it's amazing you can also read the fifth section of Gees practica and Wakefield and Evans heresies of the high Middle Ages a book that anyone watching this show should own it's fantastic I also include some other important books in the description along with the historical text unless you want to go you know look them up over in archive.org or Google books you can at least peruse the practica and the director there so witness the horror from afar but I don't think we're done with this period not about all I don't think we're done at all so more inquisi so more inquisi so more Inquisition topics even just in the 13th century to come you can tell I kind of find this stuff fascinating but I want to thank you if you've made it this long if you've watched this whole video my God you should get a medal you've been subjected to the Inquisition thank you thank you for watching I'm Dr Justin Sledge and thanks for watching esoterica where we explore the Arcane in history philosophy and religion

Channel: ESOTERICA

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Length: 75min 5sec (4505 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 26 2024