Chapter 9 The Takeover of the Roman Inquisition Elena Bonora1 1 Introduction In Montesquieu’s famous epistolary novel, two Persians travelling to Europe describe their adventures to one of their compatriots in the Far East.2 Two men coming from another culture tell of another world, trying to make sense of the strange behaviors of westerners. Through this literary device, Montesquieu creates a critical distance that allows the European readers to view themselves and their world through new eyes. In letter 29, the Enlightenment philosopher uses the unsophisticated and wide-eyed account of the two observers from a faraway place to denounce the absurdity of the Inquisition tribunals that were burning men as if they were straw. In The Great Dictator (a film shot in the United States, far from the trag- edy that was consuming Europe), Charlie Chaplin staged the famous scene in which Adenoyd Hynkel, a parody of Adolf Hitler, played with an inflatable world map. It was 1940 and at the time, the Nazi dictator ruled the Old World. Despite his temporal proximity to the film’s subject matter, Chaplin succeeded in finding the intellectual and moral distance necessary to lampoon Hitler. It is a credit to Chaplin’s talent that he was able to achieve this critical distance. As Voltaire writes, “That which has been made ridiculous can no longer be dangerous.”3 In the popular imagination, the Roman Inquisition (like the two other in- quisitions, the Spanish and Portuguese,) is generally associated with fanati- cism and with abuses of power, to the point of excesses such as torture and witch hunts. Today these phenomena are met with widespread disapproval. But moral condemnation of the past is different from critical distance founded on knowledge. Paraphrasing Voltaire, if we want to keep that which now ap- pears ridiculous (i.e., that which is foreign to us because it appears irrational and because it breaks from contemporary culture) from becoming dangerous in the future, it is important to understand how and why people espoused 1 This chapter was translated by Travis Stevens. 2 Montesquieu, Lettres persanes, 1721. 3 Voltaire, The Age of Louis xiv, Chapter 37. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���9 | doi:�0.��63/9789004393875_0�� <UN> 250 Bonora religious intolerance in the past and why it was for so long such a serious mat- ter for thousands of women and men. In the case of the Roman Inquisition, this means reconstructing how the ideology and values of the inquisitors managed to impose themselves over and above other available options in the Catholic Church. It means analyzing its origins as well as understanding how it continued for so long. In other words, this means considering the Inquisition as a system rather than an accidental episode caused by fanaticism of zealous friars or by a non-existent inflexible Grand Inquisitor. 2 Jurisdiction, Organization, and Resources Pope Paul iii Farnese established the Roman Inquisition or Holy Office with the bull Licet ab initio on 21 July 1542. With this formal document, the pon- tiff created a congregation or commission of cardinals (in this case there were six, but the number varied from pope to pope) charged with the fight against heresy. The inquisitor cardinals and their delegates had the power to prose- cute crimes against the faith “in every single city, village, land and place in the Christian republic” (“in ogni singola città, villaggio, terra e luogo della cristiana repubblica”),4 without regard for possible privileges and exemptions of the ac- cused, whether kings or cardinals. It is important to emphasize that the bull presented the provision as a tem- porary solution until the council (convened in Trent in 1542, but begun only in 1545), which would enact general reforms in the Church. At the time therefore it was impossible to foresee the centrality and the enduring role that this judi- cial institution, created in an emergency situation, would play in subsequent history. Unlike the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, both conceived to oppose ethnic-religious pluralism in the Iberian Peninsula, the Roman Inquisition was established to fight the Protestant heresy that was spreading in every social class in the cities of the Italian peninsula. Another important difference is that the Iberian Inquisitions depended on the king: they had indeed been created by papal concession, but were in fact autonomous from Rome. They rapidly became a powerful instrument of consolidation for the monarchy. The Roman Inquisition however depended directly on the pope. 4 The text of the papal bull can be found in Bullarum diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum romanorum pontificum, vol. vi, Augustae Taurinorum, Seb. Franco et Henrico Dalmazzo edi- toribus, 1860, 551–556. <UN>.