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reminds me of The Grand Inquisitor, people do like their spectacles (like burning heretics) much more than them having to maintain a strict religious life
@@TheEsotericaChannelcan i please request a video about typhonian magik? I cant find to much online about it btw love your channel im new but been catching up on all your vids
There seem to be a lot of comments - Monty Python aside - on the Spanish Inquisition. To be clear, this episode only goes up to about 1321 with the execution of the last known Cathar. The Spanish Inquisition doesn't even begin until 1478 over 150 years later. In fact, as I point out in the episode, Spain under Alfonso X was the only region of Europe free of Inquisition during this period.
@@richardwebb9532because it was specifically created separately later on to operate in the territory the Spanish king ruled. Think of it like it's a species of animal where the genus is inquisition and the species name is Spanish. You could taxonomize all of the historic inquisitions like that if you wanted.
The Cathars walking out of their punishment and disappearing into the mountains makes me think of the joke "it's not illegal to do it, it's illegal to get caught". The more I read about the Middle Ages though, it really strikes me how decentralized the real violence against minorities was. We are so used to state monopoly of force that the idea of so many angry mobs breaking out without or even against the wishes of the central authorities can be quite shocking. It's also really eye-opening to anyone romanticizing pre-nation state pre-industrial rural life as some state of innocence. People were nasty!
Lol look what mobs of armed people could an have done today. The central authority's only do something if the mob is low in number compared to the amount of Leo's present an unlikely to fight back. They stand down an use technology experts to track those involved down which only really work's when someone gets lazy around cameras or online or cellphone.
The Marxist view of the wheel of history as well as Whig history has lead to overly linear views of society. Some monarchies were, even up until recently multicultural and multi ethnic, while many modern liberal states struggle with precisely that.
I'm LARPing as a early 14th century cistercian abbot on an event set in the Aragonese Pyrenees. A cathar conspiracy is part of the game, and in my research I have found catharism to be a concern until the late 13 hundreds. This kind of dense high quality deep dives help me a lot. Thank you very much.
Man, what a concept for a cop show, a priests with a secular partner who are looking for heretics. “Sir Francois we have to do this by the book.” “Your way never works, Father Peter, I’m hard boiled and I get stuff done.”
as someone descended from Anusim and who is getting better at deciphering Medieval Spanish Inquisition records: THANK YOU. This is extremely relevant to my interests! While some of the Mexican records are banal, others are indeed horrifying. It's chilling how pervasive this campaign was, and how many thousands of lives it touched, even to now.
Torture elicits confession, not evidence. That's more than a legal distinction. People confess in order to make torture stop. Jacques Fournier, the future pope, rarely used torture during his Cathar inquisition. Like all the best police interrogators, he preferred to develop rapport and have conversations with suspects.
@@TheEsotericaChannel Yes, I really like your nuanced approach to the topic. Torture is primarily a political act. Ingrouping/outgrouping heuristics are a helluva drug
Why can Great philosophers get away with the lamest quotes! …Meanwhile I spit straight fire with the most profound shit! And just because I’m not a household name, haven’t had a profound affect on western thought or I haven’t illuminated the intellectual world of philosophy with awe inspiring metaphysical speculations all I get is a nasty comment saying: “you’re not Plato asshole!” But thanks to you my friend I am now armed with the confidence to know exactly what I’ll fire back with: “Exactly! I know this! Because if I was, then I could be lazy and put no effort into it and you’d still be on my d*** ! …Asshole!” 😂😂😂 ☝️ love! Adonai! ✌️
I love this channel. There's another element to the inquisition that I think gets too little mention: Bored rural people forced into a small and limited worldview can get very excited about grisly public death. Where I'm from, people once went nuts at police murders and lynchings, cutting off body parts, singing and dancing as if the normally chill population was suddenly all violently psychotic. I imagine this same disturbing phenomena was behind the zeal that rural folk showed for public executions of select scapegoats in the inquisition. Maybe it gets less mention because It's not a proven science, maybe just because it makes everyone uncomfortable. I've seen it though and its totally real.
There are a lot of similarities that could be drawn between the catholic church and the "secular" authorities persecuting heretics in this story and the relationship between the US federal government and Jim Crow institutions. It's proof that large institutions are capable of exercising soft power to commit extra-judicial violence that the institution can disavow.
@@willmosse3684 Oklahoma. Parts of the US are still very dark and brutal culturally. I expect that aire of violent ignorance and boredom I remember from the american midwest in the 80s, must be like those small European towns that went Inquisition crazy.
Great video, as always. I had a professor in college who claimed that the early medieval church (pre-1000 CE) didn't have that much interest in what common people actually believed, so long as they were nominally Christian and didn't adhere to any major hetereodoxy, like Arrianism. It sort of made sense to me given the relatively limited reach of the church in Rome and the population shifts throughout western Europe. I never did see a source on that though, so it could have just been his wild speculation. Thanks so much Dr. Sledge. Your videos and livestreams are the best!
@@TheEsotericaChannel it's deeply rooted in our popular culture at this point, I remember watching the Netflix Castlevania series and thinking that the portrayal of the church seemed a bit stereotypical.
Excellent introduction. Almost every sentence had a character, practice and/or event that can lead to months or years of study. Thank you for condensing the early inquisition into a single captivating episode. Looking forward to more!
*Sighs Heavily* That really was what eventually caused me to leave the Orthodox services. Since I know myself to be absolutely heretical in a number of respects, I chose not to become a Catechumen. And because I chose not to become a Catechumen, I couldn't receive the Eucharist. So services would sometimes make me weep, I felt completely isolated.
Not sure when you started doing so, but the joke captions with the pictures are giving me a good laugh while taking in all the serious information you otherwise provide. Well, come to think of it, you've always had a good degree of humor in your work here, subdued though it may be. (the doubting thomas one is what brought me to write this, great double joke) I really do appreciate how layered your presentation has always been, communicating a great deal with slight pauses, changes in tone, facial expression, deliberate omission, etc.
I'm getting flashbacks to the wonderful movie version of _The Name of the Rose_ , both the debate about whether Christ owned his own clothes and the older Franciscan explaining gently to his young protege that a lot of what was considered sainthood or heresy was a matter of dumb luck. What was important was that in that time and place people were desperate and would support anything that promised a better life.
You got at a key piece of the inquisition and witch trials/heresy trials that a lot of people miss. The accuser received the accused’s lands and wealth if the accused was found guilty. There was MASSIVE ulterior motives. Any land owning person could become a target, any widow who inherited from her late husband…it was very little to do with genuine beliefs of “stamping out heresy”.
I appreciate the scholarly rigor and historical context and and intellectual nuance you provide with sharp wit and dry humor, as often rightly mentioned! Goes a long way to traversing the madness of religio-socio-political history! 15:50 who's not so innocent..." (insert meme) spot on zinger! En absentia of life? En absentia post-vita? Post-mortem?
Thank you for this intensely interesting synopsis of the early inquisition. As I listened to your explanation of the dynamics between the secular and ecclesiastical authorities, I could not help but notice that both the clergy and the local civil authorities were being pressured by the mutual interests of the Papacy and the fuedal Monarch's who reinforced each other's positions to the detriment of the common people, in spite of their own opinions concerning problem of heresy, on both sides. Perhaps an investigation of the relationship between Papal Rome and the monarchies of Europe could fill out our understanding of the early development of the Inquisition.
Truly fascinating. I'm a huge fan of your lectures-- especially Gnosticism and the Cathar heresies. In other words-- how the Catholic church reacted to those who had differing beliefs. The Inquisition falls into the category. Great work.
You are a magical genius. I've been looking for a proper introduction into alchemy and esoteric knowledge for quite some time now. You seem to know your stuff. I look forward to your future works.
The notion that it is exclusively for God to judge and punish is the only thing that has every made sense to me, nonbeliever that I may be. I simply cannot fathom where contemporary American Protestants get the idea that it is their job to pass laws in secular government to punish people now, here on earth, for offending their religious sensibilities, other than straight out of their own greedy asses, because they just can't help themselves from riding high on their self-righteous hatred, regardless of how utterly opposed what they do is to everything Jesus taught. If your faith is true, you shouldn't feel the need to punish anyone, you should have absolute faith that God will take care of that in his own way, in his own time. The hubris and arrogance of their outlook is shocking to me, given what the foundations of their faith ostensibly are. edit: Furthermore, does not the worldly, violent enforcement of faith, undermine the reality, seriousness, and purpose of faith itself? What use is faith if it is coerced?
I'd love to hear more about the history of Peter Waldo and the Waldensians. Thanks so much for your videos and all you do, always a treat every new Esoterica video.
I am of sefardi Jewish ancestry.. the Spanish Inquisition has been a traumatic fear pass down for generations in my family line. The elders of my family are terrified to even discuss their Jewish identity because they have a collective phobia that their Catholic community will shun them and turn their backs on them.
Phobia " cough, cough, " .. irrational fear of a given thing or situation. I honestly don't think let alone believe your family elders are being .. irrational. Other than the Spanish Inquisition, WW II did not help Jewish people or anyone else feel safe, then you had the Red Scare of communism. I will avoid typing five paragraphs covering what I have learn in my past 35 years growing up and living in the USA. Hope you have a good weekend, and G*D bless.
The Catholic church, the Nazis, and Spanish Kings anytime the coffers were empty it was time to harass anyone with money, whether it was Jews, the Albergenisans or the Templars.
@@krispalermo8133 wow, nice... What could they do with Ford, Nestle and IBM... The sequel would be focus on the family malpractice and the Reagan youth programs Ritalin abuse... They'll sell you stuff back during the gag reel play back... Cops on Fox... it's a good spoof.
Don't worry the Catholic church hates anyone who is non Catholic to the point of kidnapping torturing forced converting an murdering or as I see it martyring them. Especially the first Hebrew follower's of Christ still considered Jewish and the other original an early follower's of Christ. The Catholic church has been is an likely will continue to be involved in some of the most horrendous crime's against humanity committed. I pray the sincerely faithful to God an Christ people within the Catholic church get out quickly and safely.
Yeah, it's really sad because it's kind of meant sephardim get left out of discussions among the Ashkenazi and led to us often thinking of ourselves as the "default" Jews.
So there are two factors that I would add to this story. The first is that in Medieval European law, all civil status, from the right to access to food reserves in time of famine to the right to be party to a lawsuit (remember that criminal law won't show up as a concept for a few more centuries, "crimes" today are torts against victims or their families), derived from membership in the Church. This meant that excommunication wasn't just a peril to the soul - it was _de facto_ outlawry, and this in closed communities where "moving elsewhere" wasn't a real option. (New arrivals weren't automatically part of local churches!) The other is money: while this became a much bigger deal during the later Inquisitions, the funds and lands seized from heretics went _somewhere,_ usually into the pockets of local secular powers or (later) the inquisitorial orders themselves. This created one Hell of an incentive to accuse and convict certain people, and definitely contributed to the Inquisition's reputation.
So I studied the Eastern church during this time period and generally found that the Eastern Orthodox condemned the Western Church for these practices. That said, these are spurious, random sources so I always wondered if the Eastern church and/or the state ever committed to any "anti-heresy" campaigns, and if so, did they commit to any action aside excommunication like the West did, using state enforcement?
Do you mean like when Soviet authorities arrested Ukrainian Catholic bishops and sent them to the Siberian Gulag, forcibly convened a "synod" of priests to revoke the Union of Brest (which established ecclesiastic communion between the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and the Holy See), and "rejoined" Ukrainian Catholics to the Russian Orthodox Church? Look up Josef Slipyj (head of Ukrainian Catholic Church who, rejecting any offers of conversion, spent 18 years imprisoned, mostly in the Siberian Gulag)
@@MrKoalaburger I merely responded to the query about whether the Eastern Orthodox Church teamed up with a state in a similar campaign to that of the Inquisition by offering an historical example of such. Neither attack nor defense of Christianity here. Just a factual answer to a question with a bit of context.
You cleared up many of my questions about this dark period of the Middle Ages. History is much more murky than some would like us to believe. Thank you for your good work.
Since you brought up Kafka-esque themes, the inquisition heretics makes me think of Kafka's book the trial, where the court uses his refusal to admit to guilt as sign of it.
This is the best video, from a big channel, I ever saw about Inquisition. Me as a Catholic, disagree with some reactions you had commenting about the theme. But of course, I don't disagree with S. John Paull II's apology.
Brilliant and hilarious, thank you for another nite of learning and chuckling Dr. Sledge. So glad I found you among the ancient aliens rabbit holes I have traversed. Shalom, blessings of the great spirits to you and your wonderful collegues.
I mean when Jesus is alleged to have said things like "If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15:6)" you can kinda see it coming, sadly.
@@TheEsotericaChannel So it kind of led the way to treat nonbelievers like flammable trash, especially when people loved to interpret holy texts in a way that suits them... Great point.
@@TheEsotericaChannel makes me sympathetic to the Nietzsche quote along the lines of : There was only one Christian and he died on the cross". there was only one Socrates too. but all we know from them are the characters recorded into literature. perhaps its natural when you grapple with giant complex thoughts, your followers who are in awe of you, end up venerating you. 🙂
Popper talks about this sort of thing especially with Plato and Socrates, Paul might well be the same, when someone very important to you dies because of a very corrupt and unjust system, you may well be motivated to take some radical steps to safeguard and protect that persons legacy. doesnt seem like a religious issue, but a human issue.
im glad you made this video. the inquisition is such an important event and shapes the world we livve in today to a great degree but... it wasn't even mentioned in my history classes.
"The inquisition; what a show." "The inquisition; here we go. The inquisition and we're gonna saaaay. "The inquisition is here and it's here to staaaaay." ......thanks Mel Brooks
Admittedly a bit later, but I recently read _The Cheese and the Worms_ and material on Giordano Bruno. What comes through is that the inquiries went out of their way to bring the accused back to the Church. In the first case they spent several years excusing him on the grounds of being crazy and putting him in the care of family members. In Bruno's case they wasted, what, three years trying to get him to just shut up even when it was clear he wanted to be martyred and had done everything from publicly practicing sorcery and living with a woman while still in Holy Orders to sneaking back into a country where he was already under sentence of death. At the other end we have "Kill them all. The Lord will know His own" and Torquemada. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of the Catholic Church if the only other guy in the room is Henry VIII, but it's clear there was a lot of variation and nuance in the mission and priorities of the Inquisition.
Are there any other books you would recommend to read more on the early Inquisition besides 'A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages'? I have been buying the sources you usually list in the description to learn more about these subjects. Also thank you for all the research and videos you make. I have learned so much about history from you. I will admit I was very skeptical of your channel when I first stumbled upon it, but I am now a huge fan of yours. So thank you, Dr. Sledge!
So you're saying that Where's Waldo is an actual thing. There was a Waldo and he was hard to find. But, did he have a nifty red striped shirt and hat. I don't think so.
I get a big smile every time I hear you say merch… I can imagine your intellectual circles… You’re like the crazy eccentric one Dr. Justin has his own merch
Well, when I started today's episode, I wasn't expecting the inquisition. But then, noone ever expects the Spanish inquisition. Thankyou and goodnight... I'll see myself out.
So, at 25 min you say the Inquisitor could "depose" the entire area. What does that mean: What does "deposing" entail? Does that mean everybody who has land there would lose their land? Or does that only mean the authorities lose their positions? I don't quite understand that term in this situation.
@@AB-wf8ek Sorry, but your answer answers nothing. No offense, but yes, this is the meaning I usually subtract from this. It is because it doesn't seem to make sense to me that some random peasant (or, as he says in the video: An entire VILLAGE) would be deposed, as not everybody has a public office to be deposed from (if it even makes sense to talk about public office in the middle ages). The question is precisely: What are they being deposed of? Or is Deposed here in the sense the previous person used: That of testifying? But that doesn't seem to make sense in the sentence he used. Trust me, if this quick google could solve it I wouldn't have asked.
@@conradoccaminha My mistake, it's the second meaning of deposed: 2. testify to or give (evidence) on oath, typically in a written statement. Which means they were taken in for questioning
Wait how did i never know the waldensians still exist. Why aren't they talked about nearly as much as the Cathars? That's fascinating. Almost as cool as the Ismailis are the modern descendants of assassin's. I always love to learn about tenacious survivors of a minority group that was continually trying to be wiped out. I feel a sense of kinship with that as a Jew.
@@TheEsotericaChannel all of the "proto protestants" are annoyingly mostly talked about in how much they actually presaged protestantism, rather than taking them on their own terms. The Hussites and Lollards are a little better off on that front because they were connected to significant historic wars that people care about for non protestant reasons.
Its reassuring to know that, despite my faith being shattered a number of years ago by a Bible study of a previously unread Joshua, I still study scripture to make it all make sense. This means compared to most Christians of the first thousand years who hadn't even read the bible, my heresy can't be so bad right?
Loved the fleeting MP clip. no need to actual anything about it because it was on everyone's mind anyway. If it wasn't then the heretic is in need of some voluntary penitence. Like being chained in front of a monitor until all MP shows have been played.
What is the name of that final movement mentioned at 38:57 ? The subtitles render it as "cult of galima", but I can't find any mention of that. And the fact that google keeps thinking I want to know about Kali Ma from Indiana Jones isn't helping.
I have a memory that the spanish inquisition was created by secular authority without the approval of the pope at the time. I hope I'm not wrong. And yes my impression of the inquisition has long been that they were a sort of almost oversight committee that the secular government would make decisions based on more than anything else
You really outdid yourself today! First you had me Lmaooo @ 2:45 with: “…but I always want you to hear it with um… scare quotes. Because …well…I’m not exactly on Team Christian… Orthodoxy… ahhh… am I…?” Then @ 3:48 with: “…Now… That’s probably because of a bug and not a feature…” I must take a line out of your playbook and say: “I came for the occult philosophy… but I stayed for the dry sarcastic humor exasperated with the well timed punchlines” You know you liked that! You know you did! 😂😂😂
The secular laws were shaped directly through church. Why else would the secular authorities enforce a punishment for a religious infraction? Courtesy?
Though I understand your position on how the Church wouldn't WANT death and destruction, it always has struck me as though in all those monster movies when the evil scientist after the monster rampages looks to the heavens and proclaims "Oh, god, what have I DONE?!?". Evil is when you rack up a huge moral debt, and then pass it on to others to pay.
Hey, Doctor Sledge, there is a British witch called Hearthwitch...maybe you can livestream with her sometime, she seems pretty cool and open-minded and she does livestreams as well.
This is kind of why Dominicans were originally not very popular in Bosnia. Preference was for Franciscans. They tended to look the other way when people didn't do as told. Dominicans had much more influence in Croatia and among Croats in Bosnia. Due to many wars throughout centuries and much distrust among religiously mixed local population it just somehow worked itself out that some Bosnian Muslims and secular Bosnians begin to believe that Bosnian Franciscans are "true" Bosnians (or Bosniaks) and inheritors of medieval Bosnia. Weird.
Ah, the heretics often had the option to be strangled to death before they were burned on a pyre. Truly, this is a merciful organization, hardly worthy of reproach.
I can not solely believe what they wrote as their goals . However, people are animals and led by fear all too often . They wrote those records of course they would say things like we didn't mean for them to die, we wanted to save them. The further inquisitions were less apologetic about their intentions even on records.
