By Mark Fellows
Taken from the August 1999 Issue of Catholic Family News

The donning of sackcloth and ashes for Lent may be as passe as the dogma that there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, but on Ash Wednesday, March 8, 2000, sackcloth and ashes will make a comeback when the Church performs a ceremony of "begging for forgiveness", and issues a statement of "repentance" for all the "sins" of the pre-Vatican II Church. 1

Due largely to the influence of His Holiness John Paul II, it is a virtual certainty that the Catholic Church will "repent" and "beg forgiveness" for the Catholic Inquisition � although like most of the apologies of the post-conciliar Church, forgiveness will be sought from man, not from God. Whether the world is as forgiving as its Creator remains to be seen, but the gesture � the latest shovelful of dirt tossed on the open grave of the pre-Conciliar Church � is sure to be memorialized by the worldwide media. What is all the fuss about? A Church that � horror of horrors � tried to keep its members Catholic.

"The sons of the Widow"

"Today foul rottenness crawls through the whole body of the Church!"

Who said that? Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre? The Abbe de Nantes? Father Andrew Greeley? Nope. The accuser was none other than St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 2 and he wasn�t referring to the neo-modernism of the post-conciliar Church, but the infiltration of the Medieval Church by a similar plague known as the Catharism. 3

Like modernism, the Cathar heresy had a long incubation period. Longer, in fact, since it arose from the durable heresy of Manicheanism, as espoused by the Persian philosopher Manes (c. 216-276). Ransomed from slavery by a rich Persian widow, Manes was known thereafter as "son of the widow." His disciples were called "the sons of the widow" � a term still in vogue, interestingly enough, in some Masonic lodges. Despite his low origins Manes had a formidable intellect:

"Professing great penetration and an inflexible will, he comprehended the expansive force of Christianity, and resolved to profit thereby, masking Gnostic and Cabalistic ideas under Christian names and rites. In order to establish this Christian revelation, he called himself the Paraclete announced by Christ to His disciples, attributing to himself, in the Gnostic manner, a great superiority over the Apostles..." 4

Manes, "revelation" was classic dualism: good and evil were evenly matched gods, or principles:

"The doctrine of Manes can be summed up as follows... Before the creation of the world the �people of darkness,� revolted against God, and God, incapable of withstanding the attack, gave to them a portion of His essence. Man is a mixture of two natures, the spiritual being the work of God, the body, and especially sex, the work of the Devil." 5

The object of religion then, was to release the "Portions of God�s essence" from their material prisons. According to Manes, he, Jesus, and Buddha had been sent by God to help mankind do just that. It was all a bit bizarre, but the surface similarities between the Manichean�s renouncing of the world and their severe ascetic practices, and Christianity, fooled many Christians; St. Augustine of Hippo was a Manichean for nine years. As for Manes, he wore out his welcome quickly. His religion proved so socially disruptive that he was flayed alive, and his followers dispersed. At the end of the first millennium they had regathered in Italy and Bulgaria, and spread across Europe.

"The Pure"

Although we moderns accept the caricature of Medieval Europe as a dreary desert of religious bigotry, superstitions and fanaticism, the new Manicheans found plenty of room to move in religiously tolerant Christendom. The "official" religion was Christianity, and this was reflected not only in the art, music, and politics of the period but in the smallest cultural customs and traditions as well. Yet the Church and the civilization it created tolerated the presence of Jews, Muslims, and pagans, who were free to practice their own religion, as long as they didn�t proselytize or publicly declare their errors. Then, as now, the Church condemned forced conversions or forced baptisms.

The Church also rejected Rabbinical justice, where violators of the Mosaic law were executed by "stoning, burning, the sword, and strangling". 6 Instead, wayward brethren were admonished, and if necessary, excommunicated. That was as far as punishment went, even after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. St. Augustine, St. Martin, and St. Ambrose all opposed state execution of heretics. That the Church involve herself in shedding blood was simply beyond the pale. Said St. John Chrysostom, "To put a heretic to death is an unpardonable crime." 7 This belief began slowly to change when the Manicheans (herein called the Cathari for convenience) invaded Christendom at the dawn of the second millenium.

Although their austere lives and outward pietky allowed them to blend into Christian culture, the Cathari (Greek for "the Pure") were not renouncing the physical world in imitation of the Word made flesh. In fact they believed that no God worthy of the name would choose to enclose himself in evil matter. What the Cathari were really renouncing was life. That is why they absolutely condemned marriage. In the words of the Cathari themselves:

"One of the purposes of marriage is the betting of children. But the propagation of the human species is plainly the work of the Evil Spirit. A woman with child is a woman possessed of the devil... The greatest evil that could befall a woman was to die enciente (pregnant)... for being in the state of impurity and in the power of Satan, she could not be saved." 8

Anticipating contemporary feminism, the "Pure" called marriage "legalized prostitution," and worse. According to inquisitor Bernard Gui, who prosecuted them for decades, the Cathari "maintain that it (marriage) is a perpetual state of sin; they deny that a good God can institute it. They declare the marital relation as great a sin as incest with one�s mother, daughter, or sister." 9 The logic, such as it is, is that a man would be ashamed of committing incest and repent. Marriage, however, was more insidious because it caused no shame, the parties entering into it being "invincibly ignorant" of their wickedness.

So why would anyone in their right mind want to be a Cathar? Most had no idea of the Cathari�s hateful view of life. Like the original "sons of the widow," the Cathari were an organized secret society with an elite inner circle, the "Perfected," who dispensed the "true religion" to the most promising adepts. By their preaching and external acts of piety, the Cathari were expert at attracting careless and curious Christians. As their influence grew the Cathari also proved expert at enraging their Christian neighbors. On Good Friday in 1140 one Peter of Bruys publicly burned crosses and roasted meat in the flames. Seized by his furious neighbors, Peter was Bruys was soon roasting in flames himself.

Kings and secular princes tried to end the mob violence against the "Pure" by burning at the stake or hanging those who refused to recant their errors. The logic behind the death penalty was that heresy was as dangerous as treason in a Christian state. And the Cathari

"... were not merely exponents of erroneous religious and intellectual beliefs by which they morally corrupted all who came under their influence, they were the avowed enemies of law and order, red-hot anarchists who would stop at nothing to gain their ends. Terrorism and secret murder were their most frequent weapons." 10

Their favorite target was the Church:

"They ridiculed the priests as singers, and it was one of their savage sports to beat them to death while mockingly begging their intercession... �Sing for us, you singer, sing for us�... the culmination of their... sacrilege was... their casting out and tramping on the holy wafers whose precious pyxes they eagerly seized." 11

The Cathari were joined by "rapacious noblemen and robber barons," who took advantage of the Cathari view that plundering the Church�s properties "was part of the just war against Anti-Christ." The looting of cathedrals, host desecrations, the torching of Churches and the holding of priests for ransom become commonplace. 12 And why not? Had not the critic aptly objected, "What abomination may not one expect of those who hold incest no worse a crime than marriage?"

Not content with mere pillage, the Cathari also infiltrated the Church in large numbers, not just as laymen but as priests; and not just as priests, but as priests who celebrated black mass rituals, and engaged in host desecration and other demonically inspired practices. The black masses were often performed in front of unwitting parishioners. It was the logical conclusion to the Cathari�s gnosticism.

Recall that the Cathari were Manicheans, and that the essence of Manicheeism is a radical gnosticism. All forms of gnosticism are based on a secret knowledge of God, a "gnosis" clutched to the chests of a small group of men, and imparted only to a chosen few. What the elite Cathari came to "know" was that God was perfectly good and perfectly evil. This gnosis was more important than Faith, good works, the sacraments, and even morals. It allowed beginners, known as "the Believers," to ascend to the inner elite, to become "the Perfected" without availing themselves of the Church.

From the secret knowledge of the Cathari it logically followed that a black mass � that is, the vile profanation of the holy and eternal Sacrifice of Jesus Christ � was a perfectly acceptable form of worship; superior, in fact, to the Mass celebrated by those benighted priests who lacked the true understanding possessed by the "Pure".

Their methods of infiltrating the Church were similar to the infiltration of modernism in our day, and equally diabolic:

"Outwardly perfectly orthodox, and utilizing the ordinary phraseology of the faithful, all theological references were given the unorthodox twist which brought them into conformity with the concept of the two-faced god who was good and evil by turns. When Peter Lombard spoke of an heretical Church, he was describing precisely that outward conformity which concealed an inward significance representative of the faith and practice of the Father of Lies.

"This is the kind of background out of which the Black Mass priest emerged. The Cathars had their own sacred ministry of Majors, Presbyters and Deacons. Perhaps the majority of them had already received the orthodox sacrament of holy orders. They continued to say their Masses, to baptized and absolve, interpreting all the ceremonies and the faith they represented in the Cathar instead of the Christian sense." 13

After spending years try to reconvert them, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux declared that virtually all the nobles in southern France were heretics. Calling the Cathari creed "the deceit of devils," he lamented:

"The Churches are regarded like synagogues, the sacraments are despised, festivals are no longer observed. Men die in their sins, souls appear before the terrible judgment seat without having been reconciled by penance or fortified by Holy Communion. Even the children of Christians are deprived of the Christian life by the refusal to give them the grace of baptism. How dreadful!" 14

Equally dreadful was the Cathari dogma of suicide. Known as the endura, it was administered in sickness and in health, or whenever there was danger of yielding to the temptations of a corrupt nature. The victim would choose to be a "martyr" and be suffocated, or to be a "confessor" and starve to death. The endura was also performed on children and infants, often by their parents. Just how seriously all this was taken is illustrated by a woman of Toulouse, France, who "began the endura by bloodletting, then weakened herself by taking long baths, finally drank poison, and finding herself still alive, swallowed ground glass to perforate her intestines." 15

The rationale for this deranged form of Extreme Unction was that it guaranteed the suicide against further sins. The other Cathari "sacrament" was the Consolamentum, a combination of Confirmation, Penance, and Eucharist that elevated "the believer" to the ranks of "the Perfected", and was thought necessary for salvation. Believing all matter to be evil, including bread and wine, the Cathari denounced the Catholic sacraments as satanic. Those children of Cathari who had been baptized were relieved of this misfortune by their parents, who "washed off the taint with dirty water". 16

It would be difficult to imagine a belief system more perverse, more calculated to outrage Christian culture than Catharism. Its spread was a dagger aimed at the heart of medieval Christendom. St. Bernard had tried to reconvert the Cathari, and so had St. Dominic, with the aid of a new prayer, the Rosary.

Both saints had dented but not defeated the heresy. By the end of the 12^th Century the Cathari ruled southern France and northern Italy. It was believed by some that the heretics were so powerful "the Church would end by perishing under their attacks". 17 Historical hindsight concurs. Hilaire Belloc�s observation that if the Cathari "counter-Church grew a little stronger all our civilization would collapse before it" 18 is echoed even by the anti-Catholic historian Henry Charles Lea, who admits:

"... the cause of (Catholic) orthodoxy was in this case the cause of progress and civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed to exist on equal terms, its influence could not have failed to prove disastrous... it was not only a revolt against the Church, but a renunciation of man�s domination over nature." 19

When the Cathari engineered the assassination of a papal legate, Pope Innocent III declared a Crusade against the heretics. A bloody, decades-long war to the death ended public Catharism, but the Crusade was unable to prevent the heresy from going underground, where it retained its potency. The Inquisition was begun in order to combat "the permanent conspiracy against the Church" 20 the Cathari had become.

It is generally thought that the Inquisition began in 1232, when Pope Gregory IX, fearing (with reason) that Emperor Frederick�s plan to hunt out the Cathari was motivated by politics rather than religion, trumped Frederick by instituting the Inquisition and appointing papal inquisitors. Yet a less forma Inquisition already existed at the episcopal level. There was little in the way of standardized procedures, however, and most early episcopal inquisitions were little more than attempts to circumvent vigilante mobs.

In addition, it seems that Pope Innocent III (Pope 1198-1216) privately bestowed inquisitorial duties on St. Dominic, the heroic laborer for souls in southern France. Existing documents contain his written penances for convicted heretics. Another account, accepted by professional scholars, has Dominic securing the release of a notorious Cathari due to Dominic�s intuition that the heretic would one day recant. Twenty years later, not only did the heretic repent, he "died in the odor of sanctity, clad in the Dominican habit". 21

In this account of saintliness and repentance we have the essence of the Inquisition:

"It was a penitential, not a penal, tribunal. Its purpose was not to punish but to reconcile. Imprisonment, for instance, was theoretically a penance rather than a punishment. Yet in case of obstinate refusal to abjure and seek reconciliation with the Church, the Inquisitor had not alternative but to withdraw the protection of the Church from the impenitent sinner by handing him over to the secular arm to be punished as a criminal." 22

The first inquisitors were Dominicans and Franciscans, "learned in theology, independent of local prejudice, not apt to be terrified by local influence, men who had given up everything so that they might better serve the Church". 23 They traveled in small groups directly to those territories most ravaged by heresy, and the social upheaval that always accompanied error. Upon arrival they announced a "time of grace," a period of several weeks which gave any and all heretics the opportunity to confess and be reconciled to the Church:

"Those who abjured (solemnly renounced their heresy) during this period were treated leniently and �reconciled�. If the heresy was secret, a secret penance was imposed; if public, a short pilgrimage, or one of the usual canonical penances." 24

No self-respecting heretic would avail himself of the "time of grace," but if he were denounced to the Inquisition by two good Catholics he would be arrested and tried for heresy. And whenever the Inquisition came to town there were plenty of accusations. It was the difficult job of the inquisitors to determine the veracity of the accusations and the credibility of the accusers. The stiff deterrent to false accusations was the fining, imprisonment, or in extreme cases, the execution of the false accuser. Another difficulty was violence against the accusers. So many "who had helped the inquiry ended with a dagger in his back or at the bottom of a ravine" 25 that eventually the names of the accusers were kept secret in an attempt to limit the violence.

Modern critics have, with some justification, criticized this secrecy as being unfair to the accused. Further exception is taken to Pope Innocent III�s forbidding of defense lawyers. In practice, however, his ban was seldom observed, as evidenced by an inquisitor�s manual:

"Defendants must not be deprived of legal aid; on the contrary, they must be allowed attorneys and advocates, provided these are honest men, not suspect of heresy, and of unquestioned Faith." 26

In addition to having a lawyer the suspected heretic was allowed to present a defense, to call witnesses, and to contest the specific charges against him. If the defendant was able to prove the accusations were made by a mortal enemy he was immediately freed. If the defendant admitted his guilt at this point in the Inquisition his penalty was usually a penance similar to those given for sacramental confession. Note the blending of legal and religious procedures here, and the role of the Inquisitor, who "was in the unique position of a judge who was always trying to turn himself into a father-confessor." 27

The tougher cases were those in which there was strong evidence of guilt, but the suspected heretic admitted nothing. Often the inquisitor�s summoned experts or other good Catholics to consult with on the difficult cases, and followed their considered judgment on the verdict and sentence.

"To be convicted of heresy meant death, in practice, in about one case out of ten. A prisoner found guilty could abjure his errors and accept a penance, or he could persist in his denial or in his opinion, and take the consequences. If he abjured, the Inquisitor dealt with him as he would with any other type of penitent, imposing a penance not as a punishment, but as �a salutary discipline to strengthen the weak soul and wash away its sin�." 28

Most convicted heretics recanted � at least until the Inquisition left town. Those few convicted heretics who refused to recant were excommunicated and turned over to the secular authorities. The most common state penalties were banishment, confiscation of goods, and imprisonment. A less frequent punishment was burning at the stake. It is estimated that ten out of every hundred convictions during the Medieval Inquisition resulted in a death sentence. 29 Unlike modern district attorneys who gain fame for spectacular convictions of hardened criminals, a death at the stake was a disappointment, "for the Inquisitor deemed it a failure when he could not win a man back to a sane Christian life, and had to turn him over to the State." 30

Yet not only did the Inquisition turn the convicted criminal � for heretics were viewed as criminals � over to the State, they would, on occasion, use torture to pry a confession from lying lips � at least that is how the Inquisitor saw things. Torture appears to have been introduced after the Inquisition began, and was generally reserved for cases of extreme gravity, or where the guilt of the defendant appeared certain but his confession was desirable. In 1252 Pope Innocent IV authorized,

"torture which will not imperil life or injure just as thieves and robbers are forced to accuse their accomplices, and to confess their crimes; for these heretics are true thieves, murderers of souls, and robbers of the sacraments of God." 31

Innocent IV also initiated a rough jury system consisting of "sound Catholics". And he requird the inquisitor to attend any attempts at torture in order to mitigate its length or severity. Abuses happened, of course; not nearly as often, fortunately, as some fevered imaginations would have it. It should be no surprise to anyone that the Inquisition, like our present legal system, was imperfect. Over the centuries some innocent souls were wrongly prosecuted. Some, like St. Joan of Arc, were wrongly convicted. Worse, a large number of less innocent souls escaped detection or prosecution by the Inquisition.

When inquisitorial abuses were discovered popes deposed the guilty parties, and elsewhere sought to make inquisitorial procedures as humane as possible. Despite their holy intentions, and the care and diligence of papal inquisitors (a number of whom were canonized) it is difficult to reconcile the image of Holy Mother Church with torture devices like the rack and strappado (imagine bungi jumping without the bounce). Perhaps a reconciliation is impossible.

Let us at least put things squarely in perspective, however. The Church used the judicial procedures and penalties of the times, often with mercy and patience, and for the most part without involving torture or capital punishment, to defend herself against an intractable, growing evil that had not only proven itself resistant to all lesser remedies, but had entered the bloodstream of the Church with the express intent of destroying the Church and Christian civilization. That this in fact nearly happened is attested to even by enemies of the Church.

The Inquisition was the vital response of a healthy organism to a destructive invader, during an age when heresy was a crime against the State and a sin against the Church. As William Thomas Walsh, the eminent American Catholic historian of this century, wrote:

"To most people of the 20^th century the word �heresy�, connotes merely an independence of thought, a difference of opinion. We are likely to forget that the mass of men in the Middle Ages nearly always associated it with some group whose tenets and activities appeared anti-social. In a dominantly Christian society, as Europe once was, heresy was something monstrous, diabolical. Men thought of heretics as respectable middle-class folk of our day think of militant anarchists. Even so gentle and charitable a woman as Saint Theresa of Avila considered heresy worse than any other sin." 32

Moreover, there is abundant evidence that the heresy of Catharism was every bit as diabolical and treasonous as the Church warned it was. In the Cathar stronghold of Toulouse, France, for instance, more heretics died from the suicidal sacrament, the enfada, than from the Inquisition. 33 Which then was more harmful: the disease or the cure?

If an institution is to be judged not only by the evils it caused but by those it prevented, 34 it can fairly be said that the Medieval Inquisition caused far more good than ill. One of the reasons the Inquisition was so hated was its supernatural mission � the reconciliation of Catholics with the Church. Who knows how many souls were saved by the removal of only one determined Cathar? Or the sincere reconversion of a Luciferian Bogomil? Only heaven knows for certain, but given the explicitly religious character of the Inquisition, such spiritual benefits intangible as they may seem to modern sensibilities � must not be ignored.

In preparation for the fast approaching Jubilee of the Year 2000, Pope John Paul II has asked Catholics to examine their consciences in order to recall "all those times in history when they (sic) departed from Christ and His Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of Faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter witness and scandal," particularly those sins "which have been detrimental to the unity willed by God for His people". 35

In other remarks the Holy Father has made it plain he considers the Inquisition as one of "all those times in history" where the Church was too human for her own good. Like the post-conciliar Church, human fallibility was certainly present in the Inquisition . And it was about the most unecumenical venture imaginable, so it is not surprising that an institution so Catholic has incurred the wrath of the post-conciliar reformers.

At any rate, to make further amends, John Paul is said to be "ready to confess the guilty of the Catholic Church for burning at the stake men such as the great Bohemian religious leader Jan Hus..." 36 Jan Hus was a 15^th Century heretic who inspired murder and anarchy in eastern Europe, a link in the anti-Catholic chain that connected the Medieval Manicheans to the Protestant revolutionaries, if John Paul does rehabilitate "the great" Jan Hus, he will be contradicting the (perhaps infallible) decision of the Council of Florence, who interrogated Hus and solemnly sentenced him to the stake. Such an act seems unlikely, however, at least if the Pope is willing to give dogmatic Church Councils the same deference he grants to the non-Dogmatic Second Vatican Council.

Yet even if John Paul formally denounces the Inquisition at some future date, say, during the ecumenical festivities of the Jubilee of the Year 2000, the Church�s divine authority would not be compromised, for:

"Her office on earth is to transmit to generation after generation the deposit of revealed truths necessary for man�s salvation. That to safeguard this treasure she uses means in one age which a later age denounces, merely proves that she follows the customs and ideas in vogue around her. But she takes good care not to have men consider her attitude the infallible and eternal rule of absolute justice... in social questions she ordinarily progresses with the march of civilization, of which she is ever one of the prime movers." 37

Perhaps those Catholics bent on doing penance for the sins of the Inquisition will also consider doing penance for the Catholics who apostatized and became Cathari. Surely the subversive religion of the "Pure" was a "form of counter witness and scandal" that was "detrimental to the unity willed by God". And it was the apostasy of bad Catholics that swelled the ranks of the Cathari, thus bringing the Inquisition into existence.

Footnotes:

1. As reported in CRC Journal No. 313, October, 1998, p. 1.

2. A. L. Maycock, M.A., The Inquisition From Its Establishment To The Great Schism, An Introductory Study, Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 1927, p. 49.

3. Actually, the Cathari were known by many names: the Cathars, Kathari, Catari, and the Cazari. Regional branches had other names, like the Bogomils, the Albigenses, the Patarenes, the Publicani, and so on. They were known generally as Neo-Manicheans, which was more or less true, although the Bogomils were overtly Luciferian.

The Waldenses are often called Neo-Manichean but they were more protestant; part of the confusion is caused by similarities between the two.

4. Charles William Heckethorn, The Secret Societies Of All Ages And Countries, Richard Bentley And Son, London, Publishers, Volum 1, pp. 136-137.

5. C. W. Olliver, An Analysis of Magic and Witchcraft, p. 103, as quoted in E.S. Miller�s Occult Theocracy, volume 1, pp. 109-110.

6. According to Oracle, a Jewish publication quoted in David Goldstein�s Letters to Mr. Isaacs, Radio Replies Press, 1943, p. 264.

7. Abbe E. Vacandard, The Inquisition, Longmans, Green, and Co., 1915, p. 22. Chrysostom held it acceptable to prevent public meetings and preachings of heresy, and Augustine thought it permissible to fine, flog, or exile heretics.

8. Ibid., p. 67.

9. Ibid., p. 68.

10. Moontague Summers, The History of Witchcraft, Reprinted 1994 by Studio Editions Ltd., p. 17.

11. Hoffman Nickerson, The Inquisition, A Political and Military Study of its Establishment, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1932, Second Edition, pp. 68-69.

12. Maycock, op. Cit., pp. 68-69.

13. Henry T.F. Rhodes, The Satanic Mass, 1954, republished by Citadel Press, 1974, p. 71. Much of the material in this sub-section, and "The Pure" subsection, originally appeared in a series (I wrote) called "The Heretical Church" that was published in The Remnant in 1998.

14. Jean Guiraud, The Medieval Inquisition, English translation by E.C. messenger, Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., London, 1929, p. 29.

15. William Thomas Walsh, Isabella of Spain, The Last Crusader, Robert M. McBride & Company, 1930, p. 175.

16. A.S. Turberville, Medieval heresy And The Inquisition, Crosby, Lockwood And Son, 1920, p. 27, note 4.

17. Guiraud, op. Cit., p. 124.

18. Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies, TAN Books And Publishers, Inc., 1991, p. 106.

19. Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, The Macmillan Company, 1908, Volume 1, p. 106.

20. Guiraud, op. Cit., p. 124.

21. Nickerson, op, cit., pp. 206-207.

22. Maycock, op. Cit., vii.

23. Nickerson, op. cit., p. 208.

24. Walsh, op. cit., p. 176.

25. Henry Daniel-Raps, Cathedral and Crusade, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1957, p. 548.

26. Ibid., p. 548. The manual belonged to the famous inquisitor Eymeric.

27. Nickerson, op. cit., p. 210.

28. Walsh, op. cit., p. 177.

29. William Thomas Walsh, Characters Of The Inquisition, P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1940, p. 56. The Inquisition as an institution spanned several centuries. The estimate given here concerns the Medieval Inquisition and the Cathar heresy.

30. Ibid., p. 56.

31. From his book Ad Extirpanda, as quoted in Vacandard, op. Cit., p. 107.

32. Walsh, Isabella, op. cit., p. 207.

33. Ibid., p. 175.

34. A paraphrase of Joseph de Maistre, ibid., pp. 274-275. There are many good books on The Inquisition. William Thomas Walsh�s Characters of the Inquisition is very balanced. Also excellent was a feature article on The Inquisition in Catholic Family News, written by Dr. Marian Horvat.

35. Tertio Millenio Adveniente, Pope John Paul II, 1994, Par. 33, 34. Emphasis in the original.

36. Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II And The Hidden History Of Our Times, p. 538.

37. Vacandard, op. cit., pp. 186-17.

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