Refutes the many lies about the Inquisition raised by the enemies of the Church. Shows why it was instituted, the purpose it served, its long-term effects, and why it preserved Catholic countries from the infamous witch-hunts besmirching Protestant history. All this is achieved by narrating the stories of six Grand Inquisitors. Exonerates the Church of all wrong-doing. Really dispels the lies about this institution. 320 pgs, PB
A graduate of Yale University, William T. Walsh was a Catholic historian, educator, and author. He received international attention for his biographies Isabella of Spain and Philip II. In 1941, he was given the Laetare Medal by the University of Notre Dame. In 1944, he was given Spain's highest cultural honor, the Cross of Comendador of the Civil Order of Alfonso the Wise, and also the 1944 Catholic Literary Award of the Gallery of Living Catholic Authors.
Oddly enough, my dad picked up an old book by a historian of Spain named William Thomas Walsh called Characters of the Inquisition, so I read it. It's from 1940, which was a very dramatic time in secular history to be writing the book in general. He is obviously a committed and pretty conservative Catholic, and set himself the task of trying to understand why the Church resorted to something like the Inquisition, what it actually did, why it was set up when it was, and how it interfaced with secular governments. It's a...what's the word...challenging read.
He has a lot to say in criticism of the Inquisition and various of its participants. On the other hand, he has a lot to say about what was going on in medieval culture that provoked this new response. I marked a few points in the book for reference:
p. 25 - The Inquisition arose as the challenges to medieval society from Manichaean-type movements intensified. Walsh argues very forcefully that these challenges were real and dangerous; to update his language to turn of the 21st century lingo, for "heretic" in a lot of cases we should read "cultist" as in David Koresh or Jim Jones. He likens the establishment of the Inquisition to the serious increase in penalties for kidnapping in the early 20th century in response to the increase in kidnappings and the danger to the kidnapped. [Obviously one can debate whether that was the right approach either.]
p. 41 - Burning at the stake was a Roman penalty, brought back into fashion in the 13th century by the very irreligious Emperor Frederick, and used by him on heretics / cultists. Pope Gregory IX accepted this arrangement, although he admonished Frederick not to use it on political rivals [a fond hope], and either instituted or approved the arrangement that ecclesiastical courts would turn those found guilty of heresy over to the secular ruler for punishment. At the bottom of this page Walsh begins a description of the "Luciferians" whose rituals sound like contemporary descriptions of "Satanists."
p. 47 - The friars who were the ordinary judges of the Inquisition were instructed to be much more lenient than the civil courts of the time. It was also worth noting that many Inquisitors were assassinated. Again, the procedure was for the Inquisition to interrogate the accused and, if they considered him to be a heretic, they handed him over to the civil authority; they did not punish him themselves. His discussion of the Spanish Inquisition is extremely tense, and takes up a huge chunk of the mid-late part of the book. Spain in the 15th century was a political minefield, and many of the Jews in the Christian territories took political sides with the Muslim states. The book's date of 1940, when it was clear that Nazi Germany was persecuting Jews with lethal force, gives Walsh pause and probably makes him more careful than he might have been had he been writing the book 40 years earlier to clarify that in many cases Jews in Spain were unfairly targeted... but he makes it clear that he thinks the record shows numerous cases when they were either siding with external enemies or the cultists.
A major point of the book is that in retrospect, Protestants and anticlericals have created a cartoon version of the Inquisition [today we would of course point to the Monty Python sketch] that had no purpose for existing other than to impose an irrational religious intolerance. Walsh, again, argues very forcefully that there were real and high political stakes for everyone involved, including the general public.
Here we have a fantastic overview of the Holy Office of the Inquisition from its beginning pre-Spanish Inquisition until the end of the Spanish Inquisition. It goes through some of the key characters throughout the life of the Inquisition, and it is a great corrective to both Lea and Llorente.
Llorente is the first person to write a history of the Inquisition. He was Inquisitor, and Catholic priest. He was a traitor to the Faith, and virulent Freemason. This so called “historian” who fled Spain with stolen documents from the Inquisition to live off the Masonic dole, destroyed all documents he could that showed the goodness of the Inquisition. Thank God he did not get so many as he fled in haste. How he can be used as a reference by anyone as a reliable source is beyond me. Thanks to Walsh, I understand this.
In this beautifully written book you will get a small biography, a fair biography, of Fray Tomas de Torquemada, O. P. from a Catholic worldview. As far as I can tell, it is the only biography of the Good Friar in English, for I have searched in vain for a whole book. I can only find anti-Catholic drivel when it comes to a full length biography of Torquemada.
So, I would urge you to read this book l, followed by Walsh’s “Isabella” to get a deeper understanding of the Inquisition. Walsh also wrote “Philip II” which I am told is excellent, and will read in the next month or two.
All said, these books were written many decades ago, and there has been much more scholarship, research and investigation of troves of historic documents that had been sealed for centuries, only opened in the mid 1970s for research purposes. Of the modern scholars, Kamen stands out, he is most certainly the foremost scholar on the Inquisition. That said, he is quite biased against the Inquisition and not a fan of the Catholic Church. In spite of that, he is extremely honest on facts. One may be deceived by his opinions if one is mot trained to separate the two. His book “The Inquisition a Historical Revision” (1997) is a book he published after becoming one of the team members that was researching the Inquisition documents between the mid 1970s to late 1980s. He learned that he was wrong in his previous book about the Inquisition which he wrote in the 1960s. He was humble enough to eat crow, and correct his errors in writing. He is to be commended for this.
There are two other books I am set to read on the Inquisition, one that was written by another of the research team mentioned above, and one written at an even later date with more unique research uncovered. I will share reviews and analysis of them as well.
Walsh paints an interesting perspective of the Inquisition by presenting the individuals most closely associated with the period and method of inquiry. He defends the Roman Catholic Church's methods to bringing stability not only to the faith, but to entire nations. The bulk of Walsh's commentary is well supported by historical facts, as well as the consequences resulting for the Inquisition.
The final chapter concerning Llorente is rather interesting from a time perspective. Walsh published his book in 1940, as war was beginning to rage in Western Europe. The United States had not yet entered the war. The final pages discuss Jews and their persecution through the ages. Walsh states: The poor Jews! It is always so convenient to blame them when anything goes wrong! ... There are many signs among them of doubt, weariness and bewilderment as they face a future full of uncertainty. Perhaps it will bring the wonderworld ... perhaps it will be just the same old world of futility, misunderstanding and persecution."
Walsh ties his final message to the late 1930s instability resulting from diminishing Catholicism and the rise of Protestant religions that, he argues, did not strengthen Christian faith, but rather benefited nations and individuals associated with nation building and power (e.g., Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin). Rather than organizing nations based on solid foundation of Christian faith, nations had become over the past 200 years more focused on the individual serving the nation and its leaders (i.e., Liberalism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism). Walsh's point, whether one agrees with it or not, is well taken given the enormous suffering of Jews during World War II.
The thesis of this extraordinary whitewash of the Inquisition is that the victims deserved it, and that the Inquisition was doing a good ethical job fighting its enemies. It is no surprise that Walsh was granted the Cross of Comendador of the Civil Order of Alfonso the Wise by Franco in 1944, that is, less than 10 years after Franco had liquidated tens of thousands of his opponents through cold-blooded executions: how convenient it must have been to have a "scholar" justify his genocidal activities!
The most remarkable aspect in this extraordinarily biased book by a Catholic writer who does everything he can to defend the Catholic Church is that Walsh published this book in 1940, at the same time as Hitler was starting to put Communists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Gays and many other oppressed groups into concentration camps.
This book is a good representation of the moral attitude of many in the Catholic Majority during the second world war, in many countries controlled or conquered by the Nazis---Germany, Austria, France, Belgium etc.: "Hitler has some bad ideas but also many good ones." As I read this book I could remember the very similar lies that I encountered reading primary sources when researching the Vichy regime's collaboration politics in France.
A despicable book that has no place in a modern library.
The history of the Inquisition is a topic that can not be brought up with rational discussion. Generally, it provokes the worst in people who scream and foam at the mouth for the "evil" done by the Church. If people do not like the fact that the Inquisition took place, then they can blame secular governments for starting them, not the Church. And inquisitions did not occur solely among Catholic countries but in Protestant and Jewish communities as well. Walsh gives a thorough account of some of the most well known characters during the height of their influence. Yes, there were some atrocities but relatively few compared to the exaggerated, wild claims that priests literally grabbed people in the street and set fire to them. Unfortunately, opportunists took advantage of the Inquisition in order to eliminate opponents for personal gain rather than ridding the Church of some of the cults that infiltrated Church and State. But as always, the Church has been blamed for the crimes of selfish, greedy individuals. The Church in time will be vindicated.
The title is deceiving because the chapters are not solely on the characters. This book gives a well written account of the different periods of the Inquisition with sources from differing points of view. The last 20 pages are the best pages of the book (in my opinion) but you need the material from the first 280 pages in order to have the best understanding of those last 20. Enjoy learning the history of not only the Inquisition but also of history during those ages.
I was looking for a book on the Inquisitions written from a Catholic perspective so that I could hear another side of the story. We've all heard about the atrocities, the burnings at the stake, the violence associated with this movement but I've never actually sat down to listen to a voice that tries to paint the scene from a Catholic point of view. It was important for me to do this because, after all, this was a Catholic movement backed to some degree on Catholic teachings. In other words, one can't understand the Inquisitions without having a firm understanding of what Catholicism is about. No Protestant or secular writer will do this topic justice unless they simply write a book presenting cold, soulless numbers and empirical facts. There was much more to this movement than that because a lot of this battle took place in the spiritual realm.
I was not disappointed with Walsh's work. The author does not support the Inquisitions but he tries to show, firstly, that the violence has been greatly exaggerated and secondly, that the Inquisitions were at least sometimes about protecting the populace more than anything else. Of course there were abuses of power, but where have we not seen that? What Walsh shows is that the people at the time saw their identity deeply embedded in Christianity and they thought that this was a good worth protecting. The Inquisition wasn't the way to go about it, but the ideas behind it were correct.
The one thing that Walsh failed to discuss is the possibility that the Inquisitions were at times a show of weakness by the Church in reverting to violence at a time when it was losing the immense control that it had had over the world. H. Belloc discusses this brilliantly in "The Crisis of Civilisation".
But, like I said, this book gives an interesting perspective and one that should be emphasised more often in this debate.
I'm not sure what this book is trying to be. (Full disclaimer: I am not an historian; I am someone who is trying to read as much as possible about the Inquisitions.) The book starts with an interesting premise: using Moses as a forerunner of sorts of the Inquisitions. Each character Walsh covers is relevant, and ranges in time from Moses to Llorente and historiography of the Inquisitions.
I was a little frustrated by the the construction of the chapters. They are all (or almost all) between 25-50 pages, and each chapter has distinct - but unmarked -sections. Each page is a giant wall of text, with nothing separating long quotes and the actual author. Walsh gives as complete a biography as space allows and reason dictates, before moving on to the character's involvement in the Inquisition. It would have been an enormous help to add some divisions or subsections to each chapter. Walsh also likes to quote documents - at considerable length. There is no indication that he is about to launch in a paragraph-long quote, other than a quotation mark at the beginning of the sentence. Perhaps I've been reading too many articles that follow the same format, but it would be a courtesy to the reader to format long quotes as block quotes. Walsh's method made it difficult for me to tell when he was talking, he was paraphrasing, or he was quoting.
My last concern is about his presentation of his research. His actual research - in my limited knowledge - seems solid. He could have cited some more hard numbers, in my opinion, but maybe he wanted to stay away from quantitative research. I am wary of writings on history that use phrases such as, "One can almost see," "We can imagine that," "It is possible that," - and so on. Walsh uses these liberally, to speculate on not only how historical figures acted, but how they looked, where they were, what they wore, and how they felt. Some of these instances are probably fine, but they happen far too frequently for me, and they add nothing to the historical narrative. I want to concern myself with what we know happened (or what most likely happened); I don't need speculations with no basis in the relevant texts.
What is even more perplexing is his last chapter, on Juan Antonio Llorente. Only part of the chapter is actually on Llorente. The rest of it is on Freemasonry, the French Revolution, and the state of 20th century Catholicism. On the one hand, there is a connection: Walsh connects Llorente's unraveling of the Spanish Inquisition to the Freemason's conspiracies against Christianity. I am not opposed to the content of this chapter; I suppose this is another criticism of the layout of the book. This chapter should have at least been split up into distinct sections. Ideally, it should be two chapters: one on Llorente and one as a conclusion to the book. Walsh tries to do a lot with the last chapter, and I think he packs too much in.
This is one of the oddest books on the Inquisitions I've read, because I think it tries to paint images, recreate atmospheres, or put the reader in the shoes of the character. It gets caught up in reimagining scenarios, in a way that I found unhelpful. I skimmed sections of the book, because they appeared to be unnecessarily long summaries of sections of the Bible. There were moments when Walsh hit his stride: his discussion on the political situation in Spain in the chapter on Cardinal Ximenes was incredibly dense, but also incredibly helpful. (That was my first in-depth reading of any era of Spanish history, so I cannot speak to its accuracy, just its level of detail and thoroughness.) Walsh's ability to lay out the complex chess-like situations in 16th century Spain makes his moments of total speculation that much more jarring for me.
Walsh also has a stealthy sense of humor, that can either come across as snarky and delightful, or smug and superior. I /think/ he intends his humor to be lighthearted; I'm just not sure if it was the best of choices.
TL;DR: I am ultimately glad that I read the book, because it gives me more names, events, and documents to research. I would not recommend this book to someone who wanted to start learning about the Inquisitions. I needed to be on my toes while reading this book, to see if Walsh ever supported a speculation with a citation, or if he simply let the statement stand alone. I also had to reread and pre-read many sections, so that a) I could see where long quotes ended, and b) what direction the rest of the chapter would take. In my opinion, this is more suited for someone who has done research on this subject already, and wants to add more perspectives and commentaries to their academic arsenal.
Excellent defense of the Inquisition, with a clear explanation of what it was actually about. If I had to criticize the book at all, it would have to be that the author focused almost exclusively on the Spanish Inquisition. Personally, I would have liked more information on the Roman Inquisition.
I had an inkling that this book would be a great read. I have no coherent words for this book right now, other than that it was fascinating from a historical stance and rather insightful as to what's currently happening in our world.