God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World

by Cullen Murphy

“The Inquisition is a dark mark in the history of the Catholic Church. But it was not the first inquisition nor the last, as Cullen Murphy shows in this far-ranging, informed, and (dare one say?) witty account of its reach down to our own time, in worldly affairs more than ecclesiastical ones.” — Margaret O’Brien Steinfels, former editor, Commonweal

The Inquisition conducted its last execution in 1826 — the victim was a Spanish schoolmaster convicted of heresy. But as Cullen Murphy shows in this provocative new work, not only did its offices survive into the twentieth century, in the modern world its spirit is more influential than ever.

God’s Jury encompasses the diverse stories of the Knights Templar, Torquemada, Galileo, and Graham Greene. Established by the Catholic Church in 1231, the Inquisition continued in one form or another for almost seven hundred years. Though associated with the persecution of heretics and Jews — and with burning at the stake — its targets were more numerous and its techniques more ambitious. The Inquisition pioneered surveillance and censorship and “scientific” interrogation. As time went on, its methods and mindset spread far beyond the Church to become tools of secular persecution. Traveling from freshly opened Vatican archives to the detention camps of Guantánamo to the filing cabinets of the Third Reich, Murphy traces the Inquisition and its legacy.

With the combination of vivid immediacy and learned analysis that characterized his acclaimed Are We Rome? , Murphy puts a human face on a familiar but little-known piece of our past, and argues that only by understanding the Inquisition can we hope to explain the making of the present.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Religion, Politics, Christianity, Audiobook, European History

310 pages, Hardcover

First published January 17, 2012

About the author

John Cullen Murphy, Jr. (born September 1, 1952) is an American writer and editor probably best known for his work at The Atlantic, where he served as managing editor (1985–2002) and editor (2002-2006).

He was born in New Rochelle, New York, and grew up in Greenwich, Connecticut. He was educated at Amherst College, from which he graduated with honors in medieval history in 1974. Murphy's first magazine job was in the paste-up department of Change, a magazine devoted to higher education.

He became an editor of The Wilson Quarterly in 1977. Murphy, along with his father, John Cullen Murphy, wrote the comic strip Prince Valiant from the mid 70s to 2004. He is also the author of The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own (1999) and Are We Rome? (2007), which compares the politics and culture of Ancient Rome with that of the contemporary United States.

He currently serves as editor at large for Vanity Fair and lives in Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Murray's book is a brief, impressionistic survey of the various Inquisitions pursued by the Catholic Church: the Medieval (mid-13th century to roughly the mid-14th)), the Spanish (late 15th Century to mid-19th), and the Roman (mid-sixteenth century to the present). The Medieval was waged against the Cathari of Southern France, the Spanish against heretical “conversos” (former Muslims and Jews), and the Roman against the explosion of suspicious print material in the post-Gutenberg age. In addition, Murray deals extensively with the infrequently mentioned Inquisition in the Southwestern United States, a natural extension of the Spanish Inquisition to “conversos” among both the emigrant and indigenous populations.

Murray possesses a clear, forthright style, and reveals a good eye for the illuminating image, the illustrative anecdote. Best of all is his artful, apparently off-hand way of drawing parallels between Catholic and recent historical and contemporary practices, such as the maintenance of extensive archives (the Third Reich), the prurient minutiae of detailed depositions (Kenneth Starr's pursuit of the Lewinsky affair) and the handing over of condemned heretic to the secular arm for execution (the U.S. Government's practice of “extraordinary rendition”.)

This technique of Murray's, however, is more than an effective stratagem for keeping his reader awake and rooted in the present. It is also central to his thesis: although it is common for us to think of inquisitions as primitive survivals rooted in superstition, they are only possible in complex urban societies with sophisticated communication and information resources, such as reliable postal and transportation systems as well as extensive, well-indexed archives. Prejudice and popular madness inevitably lead to pogroms, but only an efficient modern bureaucracy can produce the systematic evils of an inquisition or a holocaust.

I like Murray's approach because--in addition to his gift for choosing useful details and illuminating facts--he seems to have no axe to grind. This is important because most writers on the inquisition seem to be eager to prove either how bloody and horribly evil they were, or to demonstrate that their evil has been grossly exaggerated, and that whatever evil there may have been is primarily due to the excesses of secular governments, not the responsibility of Holy Mother Church. Murray, however, does not take sides, and his work is clearer and more persuasive because of it.

My principal problem with the book is that the first two-thirds, which treat the historical inquisitions in detail using contemporary illustrations) is much better than the last third, which deals more directly with the nature of archives and inquisitorial practices in the modern age. It seems to me that Murray had a lot of interesting material left over, but had no clear idea how to effectively integrate it, and therefore crammed it into the last few chapters of his book.

Still, give it a look. You'll learn a good deal, hear more than a few good stories, and receive a fascinating glimpse into some of the most closely-guarded archives of all time.

[Kimba Tichenor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Persecution is old as man, but as Cullen Murphy notes what distinguishes Inquisitions are communications, bureaucracy, and singled-mindedness. With this as his guiding principle, Murphy weaves an entangled history of the Medieval, Spanish, and Roman Inquisition that demonstrates how the mindset and machinery of these past terrors have informed contemporary late twentieth and early twenty-first century persecutions, such as those committed by Stalinist Russia, Argentina's military junta, and the post-9/11 US government. In what is perhaps the most chilling passage of the book, he compares point by point Bernard Gui's medieval guide for Inquisitors of heretics and the US army manual's interrogation techniques for terrorists. The similarities are truly eerie: good cop/bad cop routine; creating a sense of futility; rapid fire questioning; and the use of "enhanced" techniques (aka torture) to gain (false) confessions. A must-read for those interested in history and contemporary politics.

[David Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview of the history of the Inquisition and the parallels to modern inquisitions and government security apparatus. An enlightening read for historical context on the development of bureaucracy, institutionalized torture, censorship, surveillance and the modern world. 4/5 stars.

[Dj · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went into the book expecting to read about the Spanish Inquisition. Like most people I don't know a great deal about the actual Inquisition, but I do have a great many references from popular sources. This book isn't about the Spanish Inquisition though, or more to the point it is about so much more. It covers all three of the Church's Inquisitions as well as a number of later events that are more secular in nature but no less Inquisitions.
The three Inquisitions of the Church are the 1st against the Cathars, the second against in Spain and the last one mostly focused on Protestants. The author shows how each of these were different one from the other, but also how in many ways they were the same. Interestingly enough he also shows that these movements were originally intended to focus more on internal members of the church as opposed to external threats. Even more eye opening is the world wide influence of the Spanish Inquisition, to include that of Portugal. This wasn't just focused on the Iberian Peninsula but spread to their world wide empire as well.
The later day Inquisitions, or more to the point the Secular ones have two very interesting focus points. Elizabeth's England and post 9/11 USA. The major point that comes up that relates to all of them, Church and Secular is the way a Bureaucracy takes on a life of its own and while it may be easy enough to start it is very difficult to put an end to it.
All in all this is a wonderful book, full of information and presenting the facts with very little overt bias. It shows the pitfalls that await those that are both sure and committed.

[Whitley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an exceptional and important vision of the Inquisition that illustrates the relationship between the justifications being offered for torture in the modern United States. What is so appalling, is that the Spanish Inquisition, after its initial fury under Tomas Torquemada, became significantly more moderate than, for example, the process of extreme rendition as it has been practiced in our time. It is startling to see the examples he offers of the parallels between Inquisitorial interrogation manuals and those of the US Army. God's Jury offers a powerful warning. In the end the Inquisition, for all of its efforts to end heresy in the Catholic world of the Middle Ages, only brought the Church into disrepute and helped to make its decline inevitable. Since the era of torture began in the United States after 911, it has become institutionalized here in such a way as to invalidate our own claims to being a just and fair society. If it is not stopped, it will discredit our claims to fairness and justice in precisely the same way that the Inquisition discredited the Church it was intended to protect.

[Dan Petegorsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. For me this one should have been either a lot more or a lot less. I’d expected a more illuminating account of what we now know about the Inquisitions, with lessons for today. But the actual historical sections are pretty cursory, while the contemporary parts are all too familiar for anyone who follows the news. It’s more or less a long essay on how the inquisitional impulse continues in the bureaucratized national security state, and how strongly religious and political intolerance continue to motivate censorship and repression (or just plain surveillance). But at some point this becomes almost more banal than provocative – as if one were to go from a history of, say, the Salem witch trials to all the ways we can talk about contemporary “witch hunts.”

[Side note: this was the first book I've read in e-book format, on a Nook Simple Touch. I'm actually very impressed with the Nook - very small, lightweight, and extremely easy on the eyes. And reading the book over the course of around 8 days used just around 25% of the battery life]

[Miles · Rating 4 out of 5]

God's Jury is an interesting, if rather too thinly detailed, history of the Inquisition, combined with an extensive contextualization of Inquisitorial institutions in history, from the Church to England, Germany, the Soviet Union and right down to the present day US government and Guantanamo Bay. I enjoyed it for its historical presentation of the Inquisition, and for the historical contextualization. Murphy reminds us that there were really three Inquisitions, the Medieval, the Spanish and the Roman, each with its own orrery of horrors. We get some good detail about inquisitorial practices and the social and political historical context of their enactment, and learn a great deal about modern scholarly and theological debates about what the Inquisition really was and meant.

That said, I found this to be a flawed book, in a moral sense. Murphy seems determined to not only describe the Inquisition but to normalize it. By lengthy descriptions of other despotic regimes, ancient and modern, which practiced horrible tortures, relished bureaucratic cataloging of heresy, deviance and political subversion, and obsessed over the private lives of each and every citizen, we are given an impression that the Inquisition's greatest significance is merely perhaps that it was among the first in a long line of modern tortuous bureaucratic pursuers of deviance. This seems, on balance, far too kind, far too understanding. It gets worse as we come to understand that, while the Inquisition no longer exists in name, there exists in the modern day Roman Catholic Church a direct institutional descendant of the Office of the Inquisition, and that in some sense the contemporary Catholic Church and its offices are in a line of direct continuity with the Inquisition. Understanding this, the effort to say "but of course everybody does it" begins to sound suspiciously close to an effort to justify, and not merely to understand.

I don't know what I would do if I were a Catholic, as Murphy seems to be, but I don't think I would be able to live in a relationship to an institution that is unable to separate itself more fundamentally from its evil past, or to feel a part of an institution that is so intimately connected to this history. Germany after all went through a flawed but real de-Nazification, but it is not clear to me that the Catholic church has de-Inquisitioned itself in the same sense.

There is a fine line between historically contextualizing evil, and making peace with it, and I'm not comfortable that Murphy stands on what I consider to be the right side of that line.

In the end Murphy presents a history that is plausible in its details, but misguiding. For someone truly interested in Inquisition history, there must surely be better books (and I'll seek one now, and am grateful for Murphy's reintroduction to this is topic.) As an effort to understand what the Inquisition was, and is, in a deeper historical and theoretical sense, God's Jury is not satisfying to me, nor do I think it would be satisfying to anyone who does not, at a basic level, see the Catholic Church as a fundamentally sound and reasonable institution. This book is ultimately about being Catholic when the Catholic Church has this history. It's a solution to a special problem that Catholics must have, but it is not my problem and may not be your problem either. Non-Catholics have the freedom to see the modern Church for what it is, an organization that is theologically contiguous with the men and institutions who burned Jews and other heretics at the stake, who sought out deviance and discovered it, whether it was there or not, and which has never, really, fully renounced its intolerance for divergent beliefs, but instead merely altered, perforce, its methods and strategies. The modern Catholic Church is the still the very same Church of the Inquisition, and this reality is something that God's Jury does us a favor in acknowledging, even highlighting, but frustratingly seems to avoid confronting or challenging. It is well worth reading, but it may leave you disturbed less for the horrors that it presents than by the author's presentation of the modern Catholic Church, an institution that attributes those horrors not to itself, but merely to its misguided followers. This position, ultimately, is unacceptable to me, and I don't really feel confident that the author finds it as unacceptable as I do.

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

"No one expects the Spanish Inquisition." At least so says Monty Python. And who knew that the Spanish inquisition was one of many inquisitions? In this fascinating history, Cullen Murphy tells us not only about the inquisition in Spain, and many others that are less well known -- certainly not well known enough to be the subject of Monty Python jokes about the "comfy couch" torture anyway. Murphy doesn't stop with history though, and brings the reader up to date. Right up to Guantanamo and the "harsh interrogation techniques" a/k/a torture employed by the US, or for the US by its friends via extraordinary rendition. Lest you think an inquisition is merely about torture & interrogation, Murphy makes clear that inquisitions are inherently information gathering, record-keeping bureaucracies. Interrogation and torture are merely means to that end. The unsettling conclusion left to the reader is that while few if any of us can ever expect to see the inside of a cell at Guantanamo, quite a few of us are captured in government records concerning loyalties, contacts, travels, commercial transactions, and the like. We just haven't been called in for interrogation yet.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inquisition Fun Facts: There were really three Inquisitions: the Medieval Inquisition (1241), the Spanish Inquisition (late 15th C.), and the Roman Inquisition (16th C.)
The Medieval was set against the Cathars of France. Cathars were dualists who believed that a good God could not be responsible for the eveil in the world. So, Evil mush have been a separate creation. (Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code invokes the Cathars).
The Spanish was run almost entirely by the King and Queen of Spain (Fer. and Isabella) and the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada. It sought out Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity (conversos) who were secretly practicing their old faiths.
The Roman was a result of the Reformation and particularly of the widespread printing (Gutenberg) of anti-Catholic thought.
Three basic techniques of torture: the Potro ("the rack"), the Strappado ("suspension by ropes""), and the Toca ("waterboarding"). Ancient even by medieval standards, these tortures are still employed by various regimes (wink, wink) and movie plots.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inquisition ...Yadda Yadda Yadda ... 9/11

The book makes the fascinating case that the rise of the inquisition as an international and global enterprise gave birth to the modern staple of statecraft: bureaucracy. The invention of organic systems of record keeping, data retrieval and copying was a whole new enterprise in the 16th century.

These efforts to record and continue the inquisition even into the hinterland of New Mexico suggests the scale and conviction with which it was undertaken. The pursuit of and possible survival of crypto Jews in the rural reaches of new Mexico was especially thought provoking.

Where the book seemed less secure was when it attempted to draw modern parallels especially to the post 9/11 war on terror. While certainly torture and various other chilling parallels exist, the author seems to want to imply a connection where there isn't one, or a tenuous one at best.

The strength of the book is not in the horrific details of the inquisition and it’s modern counterparts but rather in the mundaneness of the inquisition. How it’s army of clerks and copyists, librarians and record keepers, are facets of nearly every organization

[Jason Golomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

“God’s Jury” author Cullen Murphy spent a lot of time in archives while researching this book. He writes extensively on the mad amounts of Inquisition-related documentation that exists world wide, much of which is only recently being uncovered and researched. Some documents are surprisingly damning in their straightforward accounting of the mechanisms of its own atrocities.

What Cullen makes clear is that the Inquisitions (and they can be categorized into multiple phases) weren't just an effort in blind religious passion and uncontrolled violence (there were certainly those aspects at times). The discipline and energy that went into the attempts to control people, their beliefs, and their minds was extensive and planned. Cullen writes, “Repressive regimes are recordkeeping regimes. Repression demands administration.”

Cullen succeeds at consolidating hundreds of years of history into a readably, but concise and broad, accounting of the Catholic Church’s Inquisition(s) and how glimmers of their activities still shine in our modern world.

My personal view of the Inquisition was formed by Mel Brooks in his classic “History of the World, Part 1”. Torquemada and his Spanish torturers gaily sing along with jews in mid-torture who happily play the role of background vocalists. Cullen even references this pop culture image and notes that rather than the affable Mel Brooks comic character; Torquemada was uncompromising and "full of pitiless zeal".

The Inquisitions grew out of the decentralization of Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire. And while secular institutions supported the investigations into heresy and their related punishments, it was decidedly the non-secular institutions, which propelled the machinery that drove the Inquisitions.

There were three distinct inquisitorial periods – the Medieval, The Spanish and the Roman. As offshoots of the second two, there developed a worldwide Inquisition as well; something that was felt from the Spanish conquests in the New World, to colonies as far flung as Africa and Asia. Generally speaking, each of these Inquisition ‘flavors’ followed its predecessor in time. But more importantly, each successive Inquisition became more organized, more thoughtful, and more coordinated. And while the organizational capabilities and necessities continued to grow, the root core focus of each Inquisition continued to be religion. Even beyond religion as an institution, the root of the severity of these conflicts stems from an individual or group’s rabid belief in its own moral certainty, and the equally violent belief that all alternatives are flat out wrong.

Cullen ties specific medieval, Roman and Spanish Inquisition examples to contemporary analogies. Most of the comparisons make sense, though I found some a bit obtuse. His contemporary references fall well short of being essays, or politically preachy, though he does spend a bit more time comparing the inquisitional behavior with the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. Unsettlingly, many of the interrogation techniques at the U.S. base in Cuba are near exact replicas of some techniques used hundreds of years ago that we now call ‘torture’. Far from being overly political, I found Cullen’s representations to be evenhanded and well documented.

While the majority of Cullen’s book focuses on the historical aspects of the Inquisitions, he spends a good amount of ink relating history to what we find in our own contemporary mindset. And religion, forever connected to its historical forbearer, remains at the core. Cullen writes, “For most people in the developed world, memories of outright religious warfare, once a gruesome fact of life, have long been buried. The past decade, with its ominous references to a “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West, has revived them.”

What Cullen’s book does better than anything else is synthesize and contextualize the Inquisition. It’s a short read…only 250 pages before the notes and bibliography.
In wrapping up his work, Cullen revisits a renovated building at the Vatican that acts as the Inquisition’s vast repository and research facility. It’s been completely modernized since his last visit and he reflects on the last half century of academics surrounding this translucent time period.

“…Independent scholars have added texture and nuance to the seven-hundred-year story of the Inquisition. They have put it into social context. They have documented its unhappy consequence but also shown is limitations – the wide gap between plans and performance, ambitions and competence. The Inquisition emerges in a somewhat fuller light…It attempted to codify its practices and place restrictions on its behavior. In other ways, the Inquisition emerges as more horrifying than ever – because it could persist for so long in such a mindless way, sustained and perpetuated by larger forces that no one could quite perceive, let alone understand, much less control. At the same time, it comes across as a bureaucracy like any other subject to the same myopic imperatives, the same petty ambition sand animosities that one finds in ‘Dilbert’ or ‘The Office’.”

It’s this relatively recent work which Cullen deftly ties together in “God’s Jury”. The book is notated in great detail and Cullen references a plethora of independent and original sources. And through it’s strong academic credibility; the book is an extremely interesting and smooth read. The book is not merely informative, it’s enlightening, interesting and engaging.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think i would've been more into it if it was solely about "The Inquisition" and not so much "the making of the modern world." like yea i can see the parallels between the Church's justification of medieval torture and like the US's justification of 'enhanced interrogation techniques' or whatever. seems kinda tired tho. like 10 twitter threads saying the same thing pop up every day i feel. just give me more inquisition stories!!

however i did like how much of this was about bureaucracy. i would read more books about catholic bureaucracy.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book seems to violate the basic laws of modern historical inquiry by repeatedly toggling between the historic Inquisition and modern examples of authoritarian surveillance, investigation, and torture. But somehow I felt the comparisons were thought-provoking and productive. Although there may or may not be any direct genealogy of investigatory techniques, examining the tactics of Earl Modern thought police sheds light on today’s thought police, and vice versa.

[Stewart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cullen Murphy’s 2012 book, “God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World” is not a dry academic tome on a phenomenon that happened centuries ago. It is a lively and well-written look at the Inquisition and how its intellectual rationale forms the basis for the mass repression and state-sponsored violence that plagued the 20th century and continues into this century.
“There were many inquisitions,” Murphy explains, dividing this intermittent 700-year religious persecution sponsored by the Catholic church into the medieval, Spanish, and Roman inquisitions. The Inquisition can be traced to 1231 when Pope Gregory IX appointed the first “inquisitors of heretical depravity” as papal agents.
“The inquisitors were aided in their work by the papal bull 'Ad extirpanda,' promulgated in 1252, which justified and encouraged the use of torture, wielding philosophical arguments that have never wanted for advocates and that would eventually echo in the White House and the Justice Department.”
The medieval inquisition targeted the Cathar heresy, the more secular Spanish inquisition went after converted Jews whose conversion was suspect, and the Roman inquisition had victims that included Giordano Bruno and Galileo.
The Spanish inquisition spread across the Atlantic Ocean to New Spain, including what is now New Mexico and California. In one of the more interesting asides, Murphy writes, "The sole trial held in Spanish California involved a man named Ramon Sotilo, in Los Angeles, who was accused ‘of having expressed views on religion that not even a Protestant would dare hold.’”
The most important aspect of the book is the examination of how and why the Inquisition started and why its secular successors, including Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, fascist Spain, to name a few, used its rationales and brutal techniques. In his last chapter, “With God on Our Side: The Inquisition and the Modern World,” Murphy turns from history to philosophy and political science, examining the 20th and 21st centuries and their rampant intolerance, censorship, torture, and moral certainty. (Numerous names from the past 80 years come to mind: the SS, Stasi, Gulag, the Dirty War in Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, the use of torture in many Middle East and African countries, and Guantanamo.)
“Meanwhile, there is the phenomenon itself to consider – not the recurring debate over the historical Inquisition but the recurring behavior that brings inquisitions into existence. Call it the inquisitorial impulse. It springs from certainty – from unswerving confidence in the rightness of one's cause.”
“In a world of moral certainty, the unthinkable becomes permissible.” Or, to put it more plainly, the ends justify the means.
“Moral certainty ignites every inquisition and then feeds it with oxygen.”
Murphy’s point is, I think, that the impulses, justifications, bureaucracies, the will to gain power over others, and the dangerous belief in one’s own moral certainty that propelled the Inquisition are alive and well now. Not just 200 or 700 years ago, not just in other countries but in the 21st century and in the United States.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting premise that is flawlessly documented. The information on the Inquisitions (there were several) alone is worth reading. The parallels to modern events are as chilling as Orwell's 1984. During an interview the author speculated if someone in the US during the 50's was told that in the near future torture would be sanctioned by law they would be appalled. Yet, thanks to the Bush administration, that's exactly what happened.

During an interview with NPR the author says, "There isn't a trick that is used nowadays that wasn't in use by the Inquisition. The psychology of interrogation, the ruses that people would use when you're questioning, there's nothing new under the sun when it comes to interrogation."

I was surprised to learn that attempts to restrain torture were proposed during the Inquisition and that several of the techniques that are used today were used then including waterboarding. There are even standard terms for them. Also interesting are the justifications for the use of torture.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really, really interesting and original argument. I was fascinated by the thesis: that the Inquisition was actually the harbinger of the modern totalitarian state rather than a relic of the dark ages. Unfortunately, the book looses something in the execution. More than anything it ends up giving a fascinating view into the current state of Inquisition and Vatican archives and the work that goes into maintaining them. But beyond this,it feels at a number of points that Murphy ends up strugglingas he tries draw frequent connections with modern American politics and ends up diminishing the overall strength of his argument. Maybe this would have been better with a different organizational structure? I'm not sure, but its a pity because the book has many good points

[Nicole Schwenkbeck · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at the history of the inquisition and how modern secular governments have used many of the tactics the catholic church employed for centuries against its "enemies". The church developed a massive if not always efficient system of censure and documentation in order to control the very beliefs of those within its realm. In this age of institutions, public as well as private, collecting massive amounts of personal data, the inquisition doesn't seem quite so far in the past.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book traces the history of the Inquisition, and shows how the methods of the Inquisition continue today in secular form. That is because the methods of the Inquisition are essentially the methods of a state bureaucracy. Very interesting read. The most salient point I take from it is to beware of moral certitude: moral certitude can justify anything.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent explanation of how the Inquisition's tactics and organization led to, and influenced, government intelligence techniques used (and taken for granted) today.

Explains how the inquisition was directly responsible for modern concepts such as bureaucracy, surveillance, and even archives!

Very fun read, though a bit paranoid in its final pages.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I remember most from this is that the Inquisitors transcribed all their interrogations and torture sessions and would even make note of the physical reactions of their victims, like stage directions. Ex): "God, oh God! [screams] Please, please! God, God, God!" [writhes in agony]

The Vatican still has miles of shelving full of this stuff in its archives.

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book details the ~700 year history of the Catholic Church's inquisitions in Europe: from the Medieval inquisition to the Spanish to the Roman. Each had a different flavor in terms of how they were administered and what impact they had on history. Other inquisitions are decried, some Catholic (like the one in Santa Fe, New Mexico) and others modern (Brazil, Argentina, US McCarthyism, and even, Murphy argues, the American War on Terror since 2001).

Most interesting to me was what these Inquisitions reveal about human nature, as they offer a fresh perspective on how Totalitarianism in the 20th Century could have come about, as well as the risks we face in the 21st Century, which are playing out across the world, all in different ways. "The inquisition, Church and State courts, and the legal codes of the Church's lateran council (1215), taken together, meant that early modern Europeans inherited a fully fledged apparatus of persecution and in intellectual tradition that justified killing in the name of god. A set of disciplinary procedures, targeting specified groups, codified in law, organized systematically, enforced by surveillance, exemplified by severity, sustained over time, justified by a vision of the one true path, backed by institutional power. Following this definition, inquisitions are not hard to find."

Some interesting ideas:
- "Underlying the Medieval legal revolution ... was one big idea: when it came to discovering guilt or innocence ... there was no need to send the decision up the chain of command to god. When god is the judge, no other standard of proof is needed. But when human beings make themselves the judges, the question of proof comes very much to the fore. What constitutes acceptable evidence? How does one decide between conflicting testimony? In the absence of a voluntary confession... what means of questioning can properly be employed to induce one? And in the end, how does one know that the full truth has been exposed?"
- Torture as allowed via a Papal Bull in 1252, but was to be done not by the church but by the state. This evolved for the Spanish and Roman inquisitions years later to where the Church was administering torture themselves
- How torture becomes systematic: Michael Ignatiev calls torture chambers "intensely moral places [because] those who wish to do torture don't do so by avoiding moral thinking. Rather, they override the obvious immorality of the specific act by the presumptive morality of the larger endeavor."
- "The Spanish Inquisition was bound up not only with religion but with and ideology of ethnicity." It was also created by the Spanish monarchy and entirely under their control (and lasted for hundreds of years).
- Today, you can visit sites in Spain marking the location of great crimes against humanity committed during the Spanish Inquisition. With reference to museums of torture in Spain "this sort of commercial showcase seems obligatory in cities where religious persecution was once endemic. It's part of the taming process. Someday, when strife has subsided and tempers have cooled, there will no doubt be an Abu Ghraib museum..."
- In the so-called 'Bybee memo', "the Bush administration argued that interrogators could not be prosecuted for their deeds if they were acting in good faith... the Bush administration also asserted a very narrow definition, arguing that for an action to be deemed torture, (per the Torture memos) it must produce suffering "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death. To put this standard in perspective, the Bush administration's threshold for when an act of torture begins is that point at which the Inquisition stipulated that an act of torture must stop."
- The idea of torture creep: "In the aftermath of the killing of Osama Bin Ladin in 2007, a number of commentators asserted that the Al Quaeda leader's hideout had been discovered owing mainly to information gleaned from torture, demonstrating just how worthwhile torture can be. The claim was not true, but the fact tht it was made illustrates a moral slide. Where once torture was justified only by some ticking time bomb scenario, now it was seen as justifiable for obtaining useful intelligence of a lesser kind.
- Both Dominicans and Jesuits were organizations created to fight the Church's enemies: Cathars (dualists) for the former and Protestants for the latter. A dark joke from the book: "The difference between Dominicans and Jesuits? Have you ever met a Cathar?"
- The story about "and yet it moves"
- Lord Acton's remark "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" was a reaction to the first Vatican council creation of the doctrine of Papal infallibility
- The Roman Inquisition was run through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an office within the Catholic Church. Joseph Ratzinger eventually came to run the CDF before becoming Pope. He became known as the Grand Inquisitor, by silencing several priests, and trying to force professors in Catholic universities to take an oath to advance whatever doctrines come out of Rome
- John Searle and the construction of social reality
- What makes inquisitions come to an end? An eventual shortage of combustible material

[Élizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sujet sinistre et controversé qui fait froid au dos. L’auteur fait un bon travail de nous transporter à travers les siècles pour raconter l’histoire de l’inquisition comme premier institution moderne (oui, moderne).

“Modernity itself is not the culprit, but it is an accomplice. It transforms an impulse into a process.”

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cautionary tale, describing The Inquisition as an ongoing institution, characterized by zeal, righteousness, and dogged attention to administrative and bureaucratic detail. Look no farther than your newspaper's front page.

[Julian Haigh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is not a history of a/the inquisition but a survey of interesting facts pertaining to the idea of inquisition focused on how it relates to modern times. Bit of a grab bag.

[Shiona Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm still thinking about it, processing it. A slow read but a full read. Truly contemplative of the Catholic Church and the history of the Inquistion. I found it astonishing how convinced I found myself at the arguments made around the influence of the Inqusition on modern life; especiallysurrounding the practises of censorship and survillanence. I liked that Murphy didn't alienate himself from any part of the world and was international in his 'peeling' of the Inquisition. It's one of those books that I think should be made available to everyone and everyone should read it; ironic to say as that contradicts part of what 'God's Jury' is trying to say about society. I'm left contemplating, are we truly free or are we simply a social construct that is moulded as whoever in charge at the present times so wishes through controls that are invisible unless forcibly searched for and uncovered...

Regarding the latter, Murphy makes an interesting example of Texas' states' revisal of their textbook through several means including pro-NRA propaganda and anti-islamic rhetoric. He highlights whilst academics will always see past bais like this and search for truth (as shown by many throughout history incl. Galileo), give it 100 years and public opinion will be altered. All those students in Texas prejudiced in a manner they can't see or control. The examples Murphy finds are shocking.
In parts he is very graphic about torture and death - a huge tool used during the Inquisiton to find heretics but he shows and explains how the church, like America, found loopholes (see Guantanmo Bay).

An interesting food for thought was this quote:

... Created a basic framework for the National Survelliance State which in turn could lead to 'emergency politics as a condition of normal politics' - Jack Balkin (Yale Uni) pg. 237



Made me think about the 'exit plan' of lockdown and reversal of governmental powers - will they let them go?

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book at its simplest is a brief examination of some of the inquisitorial bodies set up by/or with the approval of the catholic church (the inquisitions in the Americas and in places like Goa are barely mentioned). But as a history of 'The Inquisition' something massive and top down or 'the Inquisition' diffuse, varied and local in scope and control, the book is really limited; what it is very good at is examining the process the various inquisitions used to gather extract information and the legacy the mindset of controlling individuals beliefs and thoughts passed on to other organisations.

I think it particularly important to understand the deep roots and ongoing consequences of so much that catholic church stood for espoused until very recently. When I attended Easter services as a child in the early 1960s Jews were referred to in Easter services as 'perfidious' and in Sunday school we were taught that non catholics went to hell and that the church and popes did nothing wrong. Now-a-days the catholic church gives off a much more touchy feely human rights supporting vibe - but that is a few seconds in its long history. The church may be happy to condemn the 'excesses' of the Spanish Inquisition (always beware those who acknowledge excesses because they are usually desperate to hide more mundane but shocking things) but they really don't want anyone looking to closely at their recent condemnation of things like religious freedom, civil rights for non catholics, individual conscience, etc., etc. While it had the upper hand it wasn't keen on any of these things, oh I also forgot freedom, freedom to publish what you like, and it's desire to control suppress has provided the template for most 20th dictators and abuses of power - don't imagine, and the certainly doesn't, that the only abusers of power are dictators.

A really excellent and thought provoking book. It should be more widely read.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cullen Murphy chronicles the religious Inquisition into the period of Modernism and Post-Modernism into present day issues that embody the very nature of what characterized Inquisitions. Cullen Murphy states, "In our imaginations, we offhandedly associate the term "inquisition" with the term "Dark Ages." But consider what an inquisition - any inquisition - really is: a set of disciplinary procedures targeting specific groups, codified in law, organized systematically, enforced by surveillance, exemplified by severity, sustained over time, backed by institutional power, and justified by a vision of the one true path. Considered that way, the Inquisition is more accurately viewed not as a relic but as a harbinger." The any Inquisition is a harbinger for eliciting change. Viewed in this way, we can come to a better understanding of the social issues that plague America today. I read this book as part of my independent research into the phenomenon known as Group (Gang) Stalking with electronic targeted physical assaults and psychotronic torture which possess a common narrative across cases as reported by one research study. A narrative that those individuals who claim to be Targeted Individuals are "mentally ill." An interesting association is the deployment of the Lesser Tradition of Specialized Torture manifests long-term psychological side-effects.

In any event, Cullen Murphy's book is a great read for anyone interested in history and the subject matter of historical Inquisitions and how those human behaviors transformed to create modern day phenomenon of former "Red Scares" which began in 1919 down to the more recent acts of torture deployed at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay Cuba.

[David Farrar · Rating 4 out of 5]

review of god’s jury

If you’re looking for a graphic description of the tortures of the inquisition this isn’t the book for you. The descriptions the book does have are awful enough, but the main thrust of the book is how the inquisition that we know from the Middle Ages is not as unique as we’d like to think.

In fact, the author establishes that inquisition like bureaucracies grow wherever there are the right conditions. The right conditions include the problems the society is facing such as economic dislocation, threats from outside and a significant minority that challenges the status quo. What enables the inquisition to thrive and succeed is things like an established state bureaucracy, and advanced communications.

Much of the latter part of the book draws parallels between the traditional Spanish Inquisition and the practices of torture and extraordinary rendition sanctioned by western governments as part of the war on terror.

The author describes the job of listing all the forms of abuse employed at Guantánamo and then finding the Spanish terms for the same techniques from the Inquisition, assuming he could find a match. He found a corresponding term for just about everything. That is truly frightening reading.

The books ends on a positive note. What ultimately sent the Inquisition into decline (specifically the Spanish and Roman Inquisitions) was something that had no physical existence at all: the slow advance of Enlightenment notions of tolerance, freedom of conscience, and freedom of expression. That could be a rallying point for everyone who is concerned about civil rights in the modern world.

[Doug Adamson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a well-written, enjoyable read. It is only in part a history of the inquisition. It is an argument against the idea of inquisitions in general and frequent reference (denunciation) is made to modern practices such as church discipline in the Catholic Church, totalitarian governments (i.e. Nazi Germany and East Germany), and the surveillance state (i.e. Britain and Bush's America). Murphy makes some good points but he fails to apply his argument equally to those on the left. Is it necessarily wrong for a church or group to set boundaries for its membership and especially for it's authorized teachers and voices? Is it only those on the right who seek to silence or do away with those who disagree with them? This book is worth reading but one needs to ask "what is not being said?" and "who is getting a pass?". For example, the practices and abuses of Bush's government in fighting terrorism are frequently condemned but the continuation of these practices and abuses by Obama's government are rarely discussed and then only indirectly. The only mention, by name, of Obama is positive in nature and is juxtaposed with the condemnation of his critics.

[Manuel Barahona · Rating 5 out of 5]

Origen y vigencia del impulso inquisidor

Cullen Murphy rastrea los orígenes del “impulso inquisidor” que surgió en el Siglo XIII en el seno de la Iglesia Católica y el combate de la disidencia pero que fue asimilado en el mundo moderno tanto en sus sistemas religiosos como civiles para dar paso a formas de control de la ciudadanía hoy potenciadas por el uso de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación. Al cierre, el autor recupera el valor del escepticismo, recordando que: “La certeza puede ser una trampa. La duda puede ayudar. Considérese la lista de teólogos que fueron blanco del Santo Oficio –Teilhard de Chardin, John Courtney Murray, Yves Congar– sólo para verse “rodeados de un halo entusiasta” en un momento posterior, como señaló el cardenal Avery Dulles. Cuando la Iglesia dice “no temer a la verdad histórica”, debería dar a entender esto: que no le teme porque, si algo demuestra la verdad histórica es que seguiremos tomando el camino equivocado, y que reconocer este hecho nos mantiene en el correcto. La humildad es el mejor aliado de la contrainquisición. No puede legislarse, pero sí abrazarse.”