This new society is the “conflict society” referred to above,
the one gradually replacing the older medieval “convivencia.” The Inquisition
must be understood in the broader terms of Spanish social history and the development
of its institutions. The lack of perspective of earlier English Protestant propagandists
or even modern Jewish apologists is insufficient, for it often had less to do
with religion taken for itself than with politics and fratricidal rivalries. The
papacy tried at times, and sometimes failed, to mitigate the effect of the Spanish
Inquisition. Economics, too, played its part, especially when we recall that
the inquisitors, forever in search of revenue, were usually paid out of their
confiscations, not by a salary meted out by the crown from other sources or taxation.
Until the themes of the evolution of Spanish “conflict society,” “closed society,”
and “conservative xenophobia society,” are explored fully, and the Inquisition
is not excised from the whole to be looked at in distorted isolation — and
Kamen insists the work has just begun — we will not have an adequate appreciation
of the phenomenon of the Inquisition. The word “appreciation” is operative, because
it is a departure from the stereotype of The Black Legend. This is no mere revisionism,
either. What can increasingly be understood and appreciated by specialists of
Spanish history must be popularized to prevent it from becoming one of those “best
kept secrets” of Church history or even world history. While Henry Kamen is the type of historian who “tells the story” so the record can be clarified, Edward Peters is more concerned with The Black Legend aspect of the Spanish Inquisition. One of the reasons for the legend is the secrecy of the Inquisition when it came to procedures:
Judicially, the courts of the Inquisition were no worse and no better than the secular courts of the day. Faults existing in the procedure of the Holy Office would be no less evident in the royal courts where reforms were instituted by the famous Cortes of Toledo in 1480. The distinguishing feature of the Inquisition — its absolute secrecy — was the one which made it more open to abuses than any public tribunal. This secrecy was not, it seems, originally a part of the inquisitorial framework, and early records refer to public trials and a public prison rather than a secret one. But by the beginning of the sixteenth century secrecy became the general rule and was enforced in all the business of the tribunal. Even the various Instructions of the Inquisition, although set down in print, were for restricted circulation only and not for the public eye. What this necessarily involved was general public ignorance of the methods and procedure of the Inquisition — an ignorance which in its earlier period helped the tribunal by creating reverential fear in the minds of evildoers, but which in its later period led to the rise of fear and hatred based on a highly imaginative idea of how the tribunal worked. The Inquisition was therefore largely to blame for the unfounded slanders cast upon it in the eighteenth century or before. The natural outcome of this enforced ignorance is shown by the debates of the Cortes of Cadiz in 1813, on the projected decree to abolish the Inquisition. If the defenders of the tribunal relied on the argument of a mystical and mythical unity given to Spain by the Inquisition, its detractors relied almost completely on legendary misapprehensions about the entire structure and function of the institution.
We see from this that the Inquisition, in a later age, was its own worst enemy and that it opened itself to misunderstanding precisely on grounds of procedure which had been secret, often to protect the witnesses who had come forward. For example, a sufficient number of them had been assassinated to warrant their protection, so thought the tribunals.
Edward Peters employs terminology which is useful for us in making distinctions: When I use the term inquisition (lower case), I address the function of institutions that were so called, as historical research has described them. When I use the term Inquisition (upper case) I always refer in shorthand to a particularly constituted, specific institution (such as the Spanish Inquisition or the Venetian Inquisition). When I use the term The Inquisition, I am referring in one form or another to an image, legend, or myth, usually in polemic. These decisions will not satisfy everyone, but they at least make an honest attempt to remove some of the dangerous presuppositions that often creep into even the most evenhanded attempts at historical neutrality.
