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Title: Inquisition by Edward M. Peters ISBN: 0-520-06630-8 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Convincing, especially after reading Wm Walsh
Comment: My introduction to the notion that most of us believe a lot
of exaggerations and falsehoods about "the Inquisition"
was William Walsh's book, "Characters of the Inquisition."
Walsh was an ardent Catholic and a great admirer of Queen Isabella.
As a novice reader on the Inquisition, I had little
way to gauge how serious might be his bias. Then, along came
Edward Peters! His book is hardly a whitewash of the goal of a
confessional state (everybody believes in the same religion or
you leave), nor of the methods used in Spain and other places
to try to enforce this. But it does give us 20th Century
folks a clearer picture of 15th and 16th Century thinking
that heresy was treason, and treason then like today was a
serious crime against the state.
After giving facts of the inquisitions, Peters uses the second
half of the book to describe how the facts of the inquisitions
got exaggerated and embellished with falsehoods over
the centuries, eventually becoming what he calls the "Myth of
the Inquisition."
After reading Peters, I can even more enthusiastically recommend Walsh.
--- One chapter I would have like to have seen in Peters
is a review of inquisitions done by Protestants in Geneva,
Germany, and England, including the Witch Hunts. It would
be good to have something to compare to the Spanish, Portuguese,
Romans and Venetians.
Rating: 5
Summary: Far from a whitewash
Comment: Edward Peters' book "Inquisition" is the furthest thing from a whitewash. Peters marshals facts neatly, cleanly, and readably, seperating the facts from the fictions. Tracing the notion of inquistion from its linguistic roots (inquire, inquest) all the way to the parodies of Monty Python and Mel Brooks, he shows how what we think of as THE INQUISITION is a composite of some historical fact and a lot of (truth to tell) whitewash and propoganda.
One of Peters' central arguments revolves around the printing press. The moveable type printing press was developed in /northern/ Europe and, as the Protestant Reformation spread, so did the printing press -- primarily into Protestant lands. Spain, the largest empire in Europe at the time, was also ardently Catholic. The printing press was therefor enlisted as a propoganda tool. Many lurid pamphlets, of at best questionable veracity, were spread by Protestants to show the levels of evil, the depravity to which the Spanish had sunk; Peters also points out how several of these same charges had been levelled against other groups both prior to Spain's rise and then later against new foes, but due to the new power of the written word, and the rise in literacy, the charges truly struck home.
On the other hand Peters does not shrink from the vile acts of the inquistion, Spanish or otherwise. He points to the origins of what we now collectively recognize as "The Inquisition" during the 12th century, citings boths its powers and its limits. He shows the later abuses, especially in Spain and the New World, including torture, forced conversions, endless imprisonments, and the rest. He also is meticulous in pointing out the comparative small numbers of people these horrors were visited upon, as the inquisitions (yes, plural) tended to keep fairly tight records.
The last part of the book is probably the most interesting, because here Peters deals with the /idea/ of The Inquisition. Based on the pamphlets of the 16th and 17th centuries, later writers grab up what has become a stock image. The Gothic writers of the late 18th and early 19th centuries drive these fictionalized visions even deeper into the collective set of themes of European literature. By the end of the 19th century and certainly in the 20th and 21st centuries, it is nearly impossible to erradicate the /vision/ of the Inquisition (NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquistion!) from the reality of the times.
No one wants a return of the inquistion. Conversely, its excesses have been decried to the point of shrillness and amplified to a degree of groteque improbability. Peters work is the single most solid, credible and even-handed works on the topic to date. Unlike many other works that rely on secondary sources or the oft-repeated pamphlets of the Protestant north, Peters looks into papal records, notes from both sides, histories, diaries, letters, and all the minutiae that go into making a true historical and historilogical work. On top over everything else, the work is neither dry nor dull -- it is a solid read for either the casual reader or the scholar. I cannot help but recommend this volume to anyone who would like a better understanding of both the abuses and the truth behind the inquistion.
Rating: 5
Summary: Well-researched and readable
Comment: I won't go into more detail about the book except to confirm the positive reviews below about the book's accuracy and thoroughness. I do want to note, for the benefit of those who might take "Jean Plaidy" as any kind of serious source, that Jean Plaidy is one of several pseudonyms used by Eleanor Hibbert, a mid-century pop British historical novelist who cranked out dozens upon dozens of novels, had no academic credentials and whose "historical fiction" is widely regarded as far more fiction than history. Might as well cite Danielle Steel.
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Title: The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision by Henry Kamen ISBN: 0300078803 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 August, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.80 |
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Title: Characters of the Inquisition (1053) by William Walsh ISBN: 0895553260 Publisher: T A N Books & Publishers Pub. Date: 01 December, 1987 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Flesh Inferno : Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. (The Blood History Series) by Simon Whitechapel ISBN: 1840681055 Publisher: Creation Books Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain by B. Netanyahu ISBN: 0940322390 Publisher: New York Review of Books Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $37.50 |
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Title: Torture by Edward Peters ISBN: 0812215990 Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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