false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1255891644m/3770198.jpg 3770198 1 <blockquote> <p><i>"The inquisitorial apparatus that was first invented in the Middle Ages remained in operation for the next six-hundred years, and it has never been wholly dismantled. As we shall see, an unbroken thread links the friar-inquisitors who set up the rack and the pyre in southern France in the early thirteenth century to the torturers and executioners of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia in the mid-twentieth century. Nor does the thread stop at Auschwitz or the Gulag; it can be traced through the Salem witch trials in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the Hollywood blacklists of the McCarthy era, and even the interrogation cells at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."</i></p> </blockquote> <p>The twelfth century birthed a new and sinister brand of sanctioned terror, an international network of secret police and courts, an army of inquisitors whose sworn duty was to seek out anyone regarded as an enemy, and a casualty list numbering in the tens of thousands. The original agents of the Inquisition&#8212;priests and monks, scribes and notaries, attorneys and accountants, torturers and executioners&#8212;were deputized by the Church and their worst excesses were excused as the pardonable sins of soldiers engaged in a holy war against heresy that became the obsession of Christendom. Yet the first rumblings of Western civilization's great engine of persecution provided no indication of the ultimate scope and influence of the inquisitorial toolkit and how the crimes of the first inquisitors were perpetrated again and again into the twentieth century and beyond. Despite the importance of this legacy, the history of the Inquisition remains a subject that has largely been overlooked by general historians.</p> <p>With <i>The Grand Inquisitor's Manual</i>, national bestselling author Jonathan Kirsch delivers a sweeping and provocative history that explores how the Inquisition was honed to perfection and brought to bear on an ever-widening circle of victims by authoritarians in both church and state for over six hundred years. Ranging from the Knights Templar to the first Protestants, from Joan of Arc to Galileo; from the torture and murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent women during the Witch Craze to its greatest power in Spain after 1492, when the secret tribunals and torture chambers were directed for the first time against Jews and Muslims to the modern war on terror&#8212;Kirsch shows us how the Inquisition stands as a universal and ineradicable symbol of the terror that results when absolute power works its corruptions.</p> <p>The history of the Inquisition is draped in myth and mystery, a favorite theme of both artists and propagandists throughout the six hundred years of its active operations. Yet when we pull aside the veil, what we see are the original blueprints for the machinery of persecution that was invented in the High Middle Ages and applied to human flesh ever since. <i>The Grand Inquisitor's Manual</i> exposes the dangerous circular logic of the Inquisition so that we do not perpetuate its brand of terror.</p> 3814200 1 9 2008 The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God total:23|5:5|4:9|3:6|2:3|1:0| 23 85 58 8 5 2 false false Fri Aug 22 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 21 22:43:04 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 04 17:47:14 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Tue Nov 04 11:34:09 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 04 11:44:20 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jan 16 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 10:48:11 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 19 11:04:42 -0800 2009
...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 22 16:51:59 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 22 16:58:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> 2 0 false false Fri Jan 09 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Thu Dec 04 14:44:15 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 16 10:09:19 -0800 2009 1 Jonathan Kirsch’s work, beginning with The Harlot by the Side of the Road. In his earlier books, he’s an engaging writer able to winkle out some of the lesser known aspects of commonly accepted ideas and stories in Western history – as in his first book, Harlot, which highl...more...]]> 4 0 false false Sun Mar 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 22 12:49:01 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 22 12:55:24 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 25 23:27:36 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 14:46:08 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Nov 05 05:39:45 -0800 2008 Mon Jul 20 07:03:44 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Oct 30 13:05:09 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 13:05:09 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Oct 28 17:09:13 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 28 17:09:13 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Sep 18 15:47:21 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 18 15:47:23 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Aug 08 16:37:39 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 08 17:35:04 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Aug 02 20:51:29 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 02 20:51:29 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jul 03 11:20:44 -0700 2009 Mon Nov 02 15:35:19 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Thu Jul 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 02 20:25:23 -0700 2009 Thu Jul 09 19:28:11 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Jun 23 12:02:05 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 23 12:02:05 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Mon Jun 01 11:51:05 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 18:02:53 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 01 11:51:05 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu May 07 19:51:50 -0700 2009 Thu May 07 19:51:50 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Apr 28 17:24:32 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 28 17:24:32 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Apr 21 09:01:39 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 21 09:01:39 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3770198