from: Oak Knoll Press, Publishers of Fine Books About Books, Autumn, 1999. www.oakknollpress.com

On a cold, damp day in February 1870, the Correctional Tribunal of Paris sentenced Vrain-Denis Lucas [c. 1818 (page 59) - ?] to prison for forging and selling over 27,000 historical letters to many of France's leading collectors. The sensational trial exposed the most colossal literary fraud ever perpetrated. The trial revealed that for 19 years, Lucas created fake literary masterpieces, mostly letters to and from famous or historical figures, and became a very wealthy man because of it.

At first, Lucas used quills, inks, papers, and styles of writing used by historical French authors. As the years passed and his forgeries were accepted into the foremost collections in the nation, his ego got the best of him. When he produced a host of letters written by Mary Magdalene to Lazarus, Cleopatra to Caesar, Pompey to Cato, IN FRENCH NO LESS, and boldly sold them to one of France's leading collectors, Lucas's shameless audacity reached new heights.

This edition is the first English translation of the rare French title, Une Fabrique de Faux Autographes, Ou Recit de L'Affaire Vran Lucas (Paris 1870) by Henri Bordier and Emile Mabille. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of literary forgeries, manuscripts, and autographs.

1998, hardcover, 6 x 9 inches, illustrated, 200 pages....$39.95"

PAGE 1450

He would leave his house at eleven o'clock and lunched, sometimes at the café Riche, when he had money, sometimes at a small restaurant, when money was lacking. All day he would work at the Imperial Library, and at night he would return to his house after having dined. He would not speak to anyone, and he went only to the house of M. Chasles.

Perhaps he gave the money to his mistress, who found ways to spend it while he toiled. LUCAS HIMSELF, AS THE PRESIDING JUDGE NOTED, WORKED LIKE A MONK. For at least eight years forgery was Lucas' job; and if he was well paid, in terms of effort he earned every sou [(probably: "every sou" = every little bit) French coin: from Old French sol, from late Latin solidus]. What became of Lucas after he served his two-year sentence is uncertain. Chasles continued to devote himself to matters mathematical.' [7].

'THE STORY OF LUCAS AND CHASLES IS THUS FASCINATING BUT HARDLY UNIQUE. FORGERY IS AS OLD AS LITERATURE ITSELF.

In the catalogue of ships in Book II of the Iliad are the lines, "And Ajax led from Salamis twelve ships, and stationed them where the battalions of the Athenians stood" (lines 557-558). Aristarchus of Samothrace (c. 215-143 B.C.), head of the Alexandrian Library, rejected the Athenian allusion as a sixth-century B.C. interpolation designed to enhance the prestige of Athens. As Anthony Grafton writes in Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990),

"FOR 2,500 YEARS AND MORE, FORGERY HAS AMUSED ITS UNINVOLVED OBSERVERS, ENRAGED ITS HUMILIATED VICTIMS, [AND] FLOURISHED AS A LITERARY GENRE" (p. 5).

From a pseudo-Sophoclean play, the Parthenopaeus, created in the fourth century B.C. by Dionysius the Renegade, to the Hitler Diaries and the spurious documents linking President Kennedy to Marilyn Monroe, greed and credulity have joined with other motives such as patriotism, filial piety,⁹ or the imp of the perverse to bedevil scholars and entertain everyone else. If Lucas' story does not point a moral, it does adorn a tale.' [9] [End of Introduction].

PAGE 1453

from: Selections from Bayle's Dictionary, Edited by E.A. Beller and M. du P. Lee, Jr., Greenwood, 1969 (c1952) (1697).

'"Mr. McLean said, he had a confutation of Bayle [Pierre Bayle 1647 - 1706], by Leibnitz....Johnson [Dr. (Samuel) Johnson 1709 - 1784]: 'A confutation of Bayle, sir! What part of Bayle do you mean? The greatest part of his writings is not confutable: it is historical and critical.'"--Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.'

By far the most expensive item on a list of 148 books compiled for a friend's library by Thomas Jefferson on August 3, 1771, was "Bayle's Dictionary, 5v. fol." The wide disparity of price between the Bayle volumes, marked at £7. 10s., and the 147 other selections suggests that Jefferson must have attached considerable importance to a work famous in its day but now all but forgotten. The choice, however, is significant for reasons beyond mere cost; it reflects the then-prevailing impact of Bayle's ideas on religion and superstition, on a new approach to the writing of history and biography, on the implications of the new scientific method, and on the new vistas revealed by the Enlightenment. This choice, above all, gives testimony to the influence of Bayle's monumental work in behalf of tolerance." [vii].

"Hobbes (Thomas) [1588 - 1679], one of the greatest geniuses of the XVIIth century, was born at Malmesbury in England the fifth of April 1588." [125].

'They* ["*Ed. Note: i.e., those who have written his life."] honestly confess, that in his youth he [Thomas Hobbes] was a little given to wine and women;⁵⁶ but that nevertheless, he lived a bachelor, that he might not be diverted from his study of Philosophy. He had meditated much more than he had read;⁰ [see footnote, below] and he never cared to collect a great library.

[[footnote 0] It is ingenuously confessed in his [Thomas Hobbes] Life, that for a man who lived so long, his reading was inconsiderable. Nay he was used to say, that if he had bestowed as much time on reading, as other men of letters, he should have been as ignorant as they.⁵⁷ He considered another thing, which induced him to make no great account of vast libraries; which is, that most books are extracts, and copies of others. "His reading, for a man of his years, was not great; he was well acquainted with a few, and those the best authors. He was a great admirer of Homer, Virgil, Thucydides, and Euclid. He made no great account of large libraries, observing that men for the most part following one another's steps like sheep, have seldom the courage to go out of the trodden path and roads, which are prescribed to them by their guides."⁵⁸ ["⁵⁸Vita Hobbes. pag. 112."]]

He [Thomas Hobbes] died the fourth of December, 1679, at the earl of Devonshire's, after a sickness of six weeks.⁵⁹' [142].

PAGE 1454

from: A History of Freethought, Ancient and Modern, to the Period of the French Revolution, J.M. Robertson, Fourth Edition, Revised and Expanded, In Two Volumes, Vol. I, Watts, 1936.

"It was about that time ["415 B.C."] that the poet Diagoras of Melos ["active in Athens in the last decades of the 5th cent. BC" (Ox. Classical Dict., 1996)] was proscribed for atheism, he having declared that the non-punishment of a certain act of iniquity proved that there were no Gods.³ It has been surmised, with some reason, that the iniquity in question was the slaughter of the Melians by the Athenians in 416 B.C.,⁴ and the Athenian resentment in that case was personal and political rather than religious.⁵ For some time after 415 the Athenian courts made strenuous efforts to punish every discoverable case of impiety; and parodies of the Eleusinian mysteries (resembling the mock Masses of Catholic Europe) were alleged against Alkibiades and others.⁶ Diagoras, who was further charged with divulging the Eleusinian and other mysteries, and with MAKING FIREWOOD OF AN IMAGE OF HERAKLES, TELLING THE GOD THUS TO PERFORM HIS THIRTEENTH LABOUR BY COOKING TURNIPS,⁷ [see footnote, below] became thenceforth one of the proverbial atheists of the ancient world,⁸ and a reward of a silver talent was offered for killing him, and of two talents for his capture alive;¹ despite which he seems to have escaped." [173-174].

[footnote] "⁷Athenagoras, Apol., ch. 4; Clem. Alex., Protrept. ch. 2. See the documentary details in Meyer, iv, 105." [173].

'....Theodoros [Theodorus of Cyrene, "fl. late 5th cent. BC"], was like Diagoras labelled "the Atheist"³ by reason of the directness of his opposition to religion; and in the Rome of Cicero [106 - 43 B.C.E.] he and Diagoras are the notorious atheists of history.⁴ ["⁴Cicero, De natura Deorum, i, 1, 23, 42."]

To Theodoros, who had a large following, is attributed an influence over the thought of Epicurus,⁵ who, however, took the safer position of a verbal theism. The atheist is said to have been menaced by Athenian law in the time of Demetrius Phalereus, who protected him; and there is even a story that he was condemned to drink hemlock;⁶ but he was not of the type that meets martyrdom, though he might go far to provoke it.⁷ Roaming from court to court, he seems never to have stooped to flatter any of his entertainers. "You seem to me," said the steward of Lysimachos of Thrace to him on one occasion, "to be the only man who ignores both Gods and kings."⁸' [200].

PAGE 1455

'To compare...Seneca with Lactantius, "the Christian Cicero"; Maximus with Arnobius; Epictetus with Tertullian; the admirable Marcus [Marcus Aurelius], and his ideal of the "dear city of Zeus," with the shrill polemic of Augustine's City of God and the hysteria of the Confessions--is to prove a rapid descent in magnanimity, sanity, self-command, sweetness of spirit, and tolerance. What figures as religious intolerance in the Caesars was, as we have seen, always a political, never a religious animosity. Any prosecution of Christians under the Antonines was certainly on the score of breach of law, turbulence, or real or supposed malpractices, not on that of heresy--a crime created only by the Christians themselves, in their own conflicts.

The scientific account of the repellent characteristics of the Fathers ["Christian Fathers"], of course, is not that their faith made them what they were, but that the ever-worsening social and intellectual conditions assorted such types into their ecclesiastical places, and secured for them their influence over the types now prevailing among the people [see #3, 79, 408.-409., 80, 410.; #4, 124, 547. ((except 408.) Galton)]. They ["Christian Fathers"] too stand for the intellectual dissolution wrought by imperialism. When all the higher forms of intellectual efficiency were at an end, it was impossible that on any religious impulse whatever there should be generated either a higher code of life or a saner body of thought than those of the higher paganism of the past. Their very arguments against paganism are largely drawn from old "pagan" sources. Those who still speak of the rise of Christianity in the ancient world as a process of "regeneration" [compare: Pagan Regeneration, Willoughby, 1930] are merely turning historical science out of doors, having indeed no scientific sociology [that is: part of a long line of ignorant and/or lying propagandists]. The Christian Fathers had all the opportunity that a life of quasi-intellectual specialism could supply; and their liberty of criticism as regarded the moribund pagan creeds was a further gymnastic; but nothing could countervail the insanity of their ["Christian Fathers"] intellectual presuppositions, which they could not transcend....' [236].

PAGE 1456

'The new Church organization was above all things a great economic endowment for a class of preachers, polemists, and propagandists; and between the closing of the old spheres of public life and the opening of the new,¹ the new faith [Christian] was established as much by political and economic conditions as by its intellectual adaptation of an age of mental twilight.

To the last, probably, there survived in the decaying Empire representatives of the various forms of atheism and attenuated theism which had existed in pre-Christian Greece. Epictetus [c. 55 - c. 135 C.E.] probably spoke for both Rome (where he had lived) and Greece (where he taught) when about the end of the first century he thus delivered himself:--²

With respect to the Gods, [1] there are some who say that a divine being does not exist; [2] others say that it exists, but is inactive and careless and takes no forethought about any thing [Epicurus 341 - 271 B.C.E.]]; [3] a third class say that such a being exists and exercises forethought, but only about great things and heavenly things [the normal belief of savages about the "High" or Creator God]; [4] a fourth class say that a divine being exercises forethought both about things on the earth and heavenly things, but in a general way only and not about things severally [the "philosophic" form of modern theism]. [5] There is a fifth class to whom Ulysses [Odysseus, hero of the "Odyssey", probably 8th century B.C.E., by Homer] and Socrates [469 - 399 B.C.E.] belong, who say, "I move not without thy [Athenes] knowledge." [Illiad, x, 278.] [brackets are the author's (J.M. Robertson)]

The fifth class included Epictetus [c. 55 - c. 135 C.E.]; and failing as he necessarily did to bring his theism into consistency with his ethics, he constantly strove to put it as an appeal to reason, as the semi-theists by implication put theirs. However inconclusively he may reason, his teaching is reasoning, not mere dogmatism.' [237].

PAGE 1457

from: A Short History of the Inquisition, What It Was And What It Did, To which is appended an Account of Persecutions by Protestants, Persecutions of Witches, The War Between Religion and Science, and the Attitude of the American Churches Toward African Slavery...., Illustrated, New York, The Truth Seeker Company, 1921.

[See: 1465].

'....

The Inquisitor's Manual 222

Stories of the Inquisition... 234 to 243

The Martyrdom of Bruno 244

The Persecution of Galileo 250

The Judicial Murder of Vanini 253

The Persecution of the Jews 257

The Expulsion of the Moors 267

About the Popes and the Inquisition 270

The Waldenses 283

The Albigenses 287

The Huguenots 291

The Jesuits 305

The Jesuits in Japan 314

The Crusades 323

Persecutions by Protestants 335

The Witchcraft Delusion 373

The War Between Religion and Science 410

The Attitude of the Church Toward Slavery 528

Index 619

Inquisition Building at Seville, Spain Frontispiece.

A Prisoner of the Inquisition 15

Standard of the Inquisition of Valladolid 34

Questioning Under Torture in the Inquisition at Madrid Facing 40

Philip II of Spain 46

Procession of the Heretic Judges and of Heretics

Condemned by the Church to Death by Fire 52

Old Print Showing Various Modes of Torture--

Men being Flogged, Flayed, Hanged, Broken

on Wheel, etc. 58

Heretics being Tortured previous to being Burned,

at Bruges 58

An Auto-de-fe Procession 64

Recording a Confession 70

Judgment of the Inquisition Held in the Mayor's

Plaza, at Madrid 76

PAGE 1458

Standards and Criminal Habits Used by the Inquisition

in Spain and Portugal 82-84

Regulus Headed in a Barrel, with Spikes, Preparatory

to being Rolled Down Hill 88

Hanging, Breaking on Wheel and Decapitation of Heretics 88

Heating Metal Bull Preparatory to Placing Heretics Inside,

to be Roasted to Death 94

Man Stretched Perpendicularly, and being Flayed Alive 94

An Auto-de-fe at Goa, East Indies Facing 100

Torture of a Freemason by Inquisition of Lisbon, 1746 106

Man on Stretching-Bench, Preparatory to Flogging 112

Geleyn Cornelius Tortured--Hung by his Thumb, with Weight

to his Foot: Afterward Burned 118

Geleyn Cornelius Roasted 124

Iron Virgin (closed) 130

Iron Virgin Ready to Receive Victims 136

Iron Virgin, Nuremberg Relic of 142

The Plain Rack, The Iron Bed, and Torture Stocks 146

The Spider; Stocks on Wheels; Pincers for Pulling out

the Tongue; Mask to be used red-hot, one with

Tunnels at Ears, for Pouring in Melted Lead; Metal

Scourge; Mouth-Pear, or Spanish Gag; the Hot Mitten 154

Breaking Bones with Wheel; the Execution Bell; Thumbscrew 160

Rack Called "Spiked Hare"; Crown, to be worn red-hot;

Stretching Gallows: Chair of Torture; Thief Catcher 166

Leg Crusher; Knobby Crown for the head; Iron Boot; Man on

the Cross Ready to be Quartered 172

Burning of Laurence Sanders at Coventry 174

Burning of John Rogers 176

Bartholomew Legate on Way to Stake. The Last Smithfield

Martyr 178

The Last Farewell of Calas 180

Massacre by Order of the Duke of Alva 184

Torture Room in Inquisition Cathedral at the Hague 190-202

Woman's Chamber in Inquisition Cathedral at the Hague 196

Heretic Catcher; Burning on the Wheel; Thumbscrew; Leg

Crusher: Spanish Collar Facing 208

Caricature of the Duke of Alva 214

Standard of the Inquisition at Goa, East Indies 226

The Monk and the Nun in Their Cell. After Anonymous

Woodcut of the Reformation Period 232

Monk and Confession Penitent. (Middle Age Satire on

the Confessional) 238

Burning of Bruno 244

Blinding of a Heretical Bishop with a Sharp-pointed Iron 250

PAGE 1459

A Heretic (Jew) Burning. After a Nuremberg Woodcut from

the year 1493 256

The Plundering of the Jewish Quarters at Frankfurt-on-the

Main, in the year 1614. After a copperplate

Engraving by Hans Merian 262

Torture of Jews on Wheel. A Woodcut of the year 1475 268

The Pope-Ass. Caricature of the Middle Age Papacy.

Flyleaf from the Reformation times 274

Tabor, the Stronghold of the Hussites. After a copperplate

engraving by M. Merian 280

Waldenses Tortured 286

Archbishop Cranmer Burned 286

Bloodbath among the Huguenots 292

Death of Admiral Coligny. From the picture in the

Vatican by Vasari 298

The St. Bartholomew Massacre 304

Ignatius Loyola 310

Martyrdom and Execution of the Leaders of the

Anabaptists 316

Scene at the Capture of Munster (1533) 322

A General Massacre of the Captured Enemy Facing 328

John Calvin 334

Arrest of the Anabaptists, in Amsterdam, Who Walked

Naked through the Streets, Preaching Their Gospel 340

Michael Servetus 346

The Puritan 352

Religious Cruelty in Ireland 354

Racking Mrs. Askew 354

Massacre of the Danes 358

Hanging Quakers in New England 360

Burying the Hanged Quakers 362

Flogging a Woman at Carttail 364

Quakers Banished to the Wilderness 366

Imprisoned for Breaking Ecclesiastical Law 368

Puritans Punishing Quakers 370

Quakers in the Stocks 372

Burning of Witches in Derneburg in the year 1555.

(German Handbill) 376

Walburgis Night. (Witches' Sabbath.) Yearly Meeting

of the Witches and the Devil on Brocken on Hartz

Mountain 382

A Witch who Milked Milk from an Axhelve [ax-handle] 388

The Ducking-Stool Cage 394

The Witch on the Goat. After a copperplate engraving

by Albert Durer 400

Pressing Giles Corey to Death 406

PAGE 1460

The Witch Trial. The Oath and Water Test. After a

Handbill, about 1250 412

Two Witches Make Thunder and Hail. After a Woodcut

of the year 1489 418

The Sorcerers Take Flight to Blocksberg. After a

Woodcut of the year 1489 424

Albert Durer, the Hermit. After an

Original Etching, from the year 1519 Facing 430

An Unchaste Monk is thrown into the Tiber by two

Devils. Illustration of an Old Legend 436

The Devil Himself. After a Stone Figure in the Notre

Dame Cathedral at Paris. From the 12th Century 436

The Round Table of the Vices. A Satirical Representation

of the Dissolute Mode of Life of the Highest Clergy,

Kings and Princes of the time of the Reformation.

A German Woodcut of about the year 1546 442

View of Nuremberg, about 1450 448

Nunnery in Bepenhausen, Wittenberg. Taken from the

Catholics by Duke Ulrich, in 1516, and converted

into an Evangelical School 454

A Rich Nunnery Establishment of the Middle Ages 460

The Vatican in Rome, at the Summer Solstice of the 16th

Century 466

The Monk-Calf. Caricature of the Ignorance of the

Middle Age Monks. Flyleaf of the Reformation times 472

Pilgrimage Church and Plague Prayer-Bands. After a Woodcut

from about the year 1500 478

A Self-Flagellating Penitent. After a Woodcut by Albert

Durer, from the year 1510 484

Servants' Fight about Religion in the Swiss See.

Reformation period, about 1518 490

The Provisioning of the Cloister. A Satirical Engraving

on the Monks 496

Title Page of the New Testament. The first German Issue

of the Bible. From about the year 1523 508

Luther Nailing his Theses against Indulgences on the

Castle Church at Wittenberg. A Contemporary Allegorical

Woodcut Facing 514

A Leipsic Protestant Flyleaf of the year 1617 in Memory

of the Nailing of Luther's Theses 520

Luther's Caricature of the Jesuits 526

Branding a Negress 532

Inspection and Sale of a Negro 544

PAGE 1460

A Christian Slaveholder's Court; Arresting a Fugitive Slave.

From an Old Anti-slavery Tract 562

Christians Taking a Child from Its Mother; A Christian

Plantation Overseer's Job. From an Old Anti-slavery

Tract 568

A Christian Auction; Christians Letting the Oppressed go

Free, From an Old Anti-slavery Tract 574

A Preacher Swapping a Horse for a Slave. From "Pictures

of Slavery in the United States." 1834 580

Rev. Mr. Wilson and his Runaway Slave. From "My Southern

Home," by W.W. Brown, M.D. 604

' [4-10] [End of entries].

PAGE 1462

from: Museum of Man, Balboa Park, San Diego, California, at entrance to: "Inquisition: Torture and Intolerance" (exhibited for the first time in the United States [the exhibition had been shown for many years]) exhibit [7/2/2000 - 11/30/2000 (extended to May, 2001)], 7/16/2000.

[Note: I saw (with my friend Bill B., book dealer) a similar exhibit, and more strikingly presented, in Tijuana, Baja California, Fall 1996. That exhibit, reportedly, was not shown in the United States.

[In Tijuana, and, San Diego, a similar large paperback book, corresponding to the specific exhibit, was for sale].

It is a little known fact that there were three Inquisitions. The first has become known as the Mediaeval or Papal one. It may be thought of as beginning with the ever more violent suppression of the Cathari and the Waldenses by both Church and state towards the middle of the twelfth century. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX, seeing the papal prerogatives encroached upon by secular power, reserved the apprehension, trial, and punishment of heretics for the Church and its agents, the Inquisitors. Soon an apparatus of terror spread throughout Germanic Europe, southern France, northern Italy and, to a lesser extent, the Christian parts of Spain. Accusations of heresy, apostasy, and recusancy ["nonconformity", etc.] could be leveled against everyone by anyone, and confirmed before the inquisitors by the sworn testimony of two adult males. Torture was authorized in 1251 by Pope Innocent IV. The inquisitorial court could condemn only to imprisonment, exile, LOSS OF PROPERTY, and sometimes mutilation, but not to death--the maximum penalty within its power was life-imprisonment. However, the condemned person could be turned over ["relaxed"] to the secular arm of justice [sic!], there TO BE DISPOSED OF IN ANY OF THE WAYS SHOWN IN THIS EXHIBITION. By about 1400, the Catharistic heresy had been stamped out and the first Inquisition began to fade out of late mediaeval life, save for its presence in witchcraft trials.

The second or Roman Inquisition was established in 1543 by Pope Paul III specifically for the suppression of Protestantism. Its purview was intended to be limited to Italy, or rather, to those parts of Italy not under Spanish dominion, and in fact its efficacy outside the peninsula was circumscribed by foreign and in particular by Hapsburgian interests. But in Italy ["Roman Inquisition"] it was prodigious, especially under Popes Paul IV (1555-59) and Pius V (1566-72). PAUL, A DOMINICAN AND ONE-TIME GRAND INQUISITOR, WAS HIMSELF A MASTER OF TORTURE.

PAGE 1463

It is the Spanish Inquisition that is generally referred to when one speaks of the "Inquisition." The genesis of this still not fully explored nor clearly understood episode in European history lay in the need of the new Spanish state, born out of the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castile in 1469, to consolidate and extend its power on the Iberian peninsula. Since the economic, literary, artistic, scientific, and general intellectual life of Spain had long been flourishing less in the Christian than in the Hebraic and Islamic spheres, IT WAS NATURAL FOR THE FORMER ["Christian"] TO WANT TO DESTROY THE LATTER ["Hebraic and Islamic spheres"]. To that end Pope Sixtus IV in 1478 granted a bull authorizing the Catholic Kings to establish an inquisition, called the "Tribunal of the Holy Office," that would eliminate those Marranos and Moriscos--the nominally baptized Jews and Muslims--suspected of secret recidivism and recusancy, which was to say virtually all of them. Soon the Inquisitors, who had begun their labours in Seville, were rejoicing in blood and roasting flesh with such abandon that even the pope was so startled that he sought to impose limitations of some sort. But this attempt came too late since the Spanish rulers now had a weapon so invincible that they had no intention of abandoning or curtailing it. Indeed, in 1483 they ["Spanish rulers"] compelled Sixtus ["Pope Sixtus IV"] to authorize the appointment by the Spanish crown of a Gran Inquisitor, or Inquisitor-General, whose power spread throughout Castile, Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia.

THE FIRST GRAND INQUISITOR WAS THE DOMINICAN [DOMINICANS: "THE HOUNDS OF HELL"!] FRIAR TOMAS DE TORQUEMADA (1420-89). His name has become synonymous with ferocious cruelty for he was in a position of power granted to no other man in Europe. He was also a powerful force behind the royal edict of 31 March 1494, which expelled all Jews from Spain--that crippling blow worsened still further by the expulsion of the Muslims ten years later.

BY 1500, THE INQUISITION HAD BEEN EXTENDED TO THE NEW WORLD, PARTICULARLY TO PERU AND MEXICO, WHERE IT WAS PART OF A SERIES OF TRAGEDIES [enslavement, torture, murder (genocide!)] WHICH DESTROYED ENTIRE CIVILIZATIONS. By 1517, Sicily, too, had become infested. In 1522, the emperor Charles V introduced the system in the Netherlands in order to wipe out Protestantism, but this effort failed. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Inquisitions raged wherever Spain ruled. In 1808, it was reinstituted by Ferdinand VII, in 1820 again suppressed, in 1823 again restored, and only in 1834 was it finally abolished forever."

PAGE 1464

from: Bank of Wisdom, P.O. Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201 bank-of-wisdom.com

"CD #8 The Un-Holy Inquisition....

This book is the first of a Bank of Wisdom CD-ROM series on the true History of Christianity. This Series will present the highest Authorities and the most Scholarly Works on the subjects under consideration. We start this Series with The Un-Holy Inquisition because

HISTORY SHOWS NO MORE HORRIBLE CRIMES BY ANY RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION IN ITS DETERMINATION TO MAINTAIN ABSOLUTE POLITICAL CONTROL OVER AN ENTIRE POPULATION THAN THE CRIMES THE CHURCH COMMITTED IN DEFENSE OF ITS INSANE DOCTRINES.

The primary Historian presented on this subject is the greatest recognized Authority on the Inquisition, Henry Charles Lea [1825 - 1909].

> The History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages

3 Volumes--by Henry Charles Lea

> A History of the Inquisition of Spain--4 Volumes

--by Henry Charles Lea

> The Inquisition in Spanish Dependencies

by Henry Charles Lea

> The History of the Inquisition of Spain

by D. Juan Antonio Llorenta--1827

> The History of the Inquisitions: Including Secret Transactions

--by J.J. Stockdale--1810

> A Short History of the Inquisition; What it was and What It Did

--Illustrated [see 1458-1462]

> Mexico in Transition--by William Butler, D.D.

> The Inquisition from Encyclopedia Britannica--1910

> The Inquisition from the Catholic Encyclopedia--1910

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PAGE 1465

from: Comparative Religion: Its Genesis and Growth, Louis Henry Jordan [1855 - 1923], Scholars Press, 1986 (1905). [a Classic!].

Mr. Jordan is an earnest and laborious student, whose book needs no introduction from me. Its merits are sufficient to commend it to all who are interested in the study of Religions, or who may wish to know them both in themselves and in their comparative relations. Mr. Jordan has made many sacrifices for the work which he now gives to the world. He has for years sundered many friendships, surrendered his pastoral ties, wandered and dwelt in lands remote from his delightful Canadian home, that he might with a freer and more unfettered mind pursue the studies which have taken shape in this book. He has not only steeped himself in the literature of his subject, but has also visited the great Universities. English, Continental, or American, where he could, by the help whether of the library or the living voice, acquaint himself with what had been, and was being, thought and accomplished in the field which he has cultivated with such remarkable pains. And now he here lays at our feet the fruit of these years of labour, that we may eat while we rest, and reap the profit of his toil.

For the many studious men who seek to know the Religions of Man, this work ought to have distinct value. First, it should inform them as to the best literature which has been written on the subject, and the problems inquiry has raised in the minds of those scholars and thinkers who have investigated the questions which concern Man and his Religions...." [vii].

"It was certainly not my intention, when I commenced that course of study to which so many successive years have been devoted, that I would myself attempt to prepare the Handbook which had so often been looked for in vain...." [xii].

PAGE 1466

"I am now free to confess that, when I began my task, I had not fully counted the cost; and, in consequence, my somewhat ambitious project was more than once on the eve of being abandoned. Inasmuch as, even still, the literature of the subject has never been sifted and catalogued, I was at first amazed to discover that the books I needed to consult were fairly bewildering in number. Moreover, they were found scattered throughout almost every domain of authorship. It is little wonder if, before long, I began to feel distinctly discouraged: I had no one to show me the way, and (as I cut a path of my own) the route contrived often to be exceedingly tortuous. Nevertheless, now that the work has been completed, I trust that something of value has been accomplished. This Text-book admittedly falls short of the ideal of its author; no doubt, had that ideal been fully reached, it itself would have been capable of indefinite improvement. Yet further, where such a mass of detail has been passed under review, differences of opinion as to the principles which ought to govern its ultimate selection and distribution are quite certain to assert themselves; but it will be very much easier to modify the present scheme of arrangement, should such modification appear to be necessary, than it was at the outset to devise that scheme and then gradually to elaborate it. In a word, criticism of various kinds is anticipated, and such criticism is frankly invited. All that is claimed for this volume is that it undertakes to discharge the functions, even though it cannot hope to escape the faults, of an adventurous literary Pioneer. It summarises the results of investigations which have engaged my attention during the last fifteen years; and, in addition, it directs the student to those sources of information whence he can draw for himself such details and authoritative expositions as shall best serve the ends he may have in view...." [xiv-xv].

PAGE 1467

'The Religion of the New Testament stands closely related to that of the Old Testament; and the Religion of the Old Testament, in turn, stands closely related to various antecedent Faiths. Confucius ever laid special stress upon the precept that "To understand the present, we must study the past." Moreover, as the late Professor Robertson Smith used to say, "IN ALL TRUE RELIGION, THE NEW RESTS UPON THE OLD."¹ These declarations are unquestionably true; and their truth can quite easily be established, in so far as Christianity is concerned. Far from its being an entirely new Religion, introduced and established without regard to the religious beliefs which were current in Christ's day, Jesus distinctly connects Christianity with that Judaism by which it had been preceded. "Think not," He says, "that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."² And the successors of Jesus, in their office as Fathers of the Church, scrupulously imitated in this particular the Master's example: instead of inaugurating previously unheard-of rites, they imparted new and profounder meanings to old and familiar observances. Already existing practices they deliberately adopted, although afterwards by degrees they skillfully adapted them to the needs of a changing environment. Moreover, when we press still further back in history,--when we reach that Faith out of which Christianity has demonstrably been developed,--investigation reveals that even Judaism was not an entirely new Religion either. It likewise, whilst introducing from time to time certain essential modifications, consciously adhered to and defended the retention of a large number of religious institutions and beliefs which first emerged at a considerably remoter period.' [73-74]. [See: #1, 11, 88., etc. (Shires)].

"(a) Judaism regarded as a more highly developed form of previously existing religious beliefs and practices.--It can easily be shown that, during the passing centuries, the particular Faith now under consideration has undergone very material modification. It represents a system which has always been, and which still is, intensely conservative in its genius; and yet, constrained by the universal law of growth, it also has experienced a series of inevitable transitions and changes. To its alleged origins, which are still admittedly obscure, reference will be made in a moment.¹ But, as regards at least a very considerable part of its subsequent history, we can speak with absolute confidence. We are able clearly to trace the influences which entered into it from Mesopotamia, from Persia, and from Greece,--not to mention other lesser tendencies incorporated in it from without, and whose silent but persistent operations has produced effects which are without any difficulty discoverable by every unbiased investigator. The contact of Judaism with Egypt also, and with Arabia, must not be overlooked. These varied influences, it need scarcely be said, did not in all cases prove helpful.² Oftentimes they served only to interrupt and befoul the waters of a refreshing though narrow stream. Nevertheless, as the volume of this river of life increased, it rose superior to the majority of its numerous temporary impediments; and to-day, still flowing majestically onward, it is the central spiritual fountain of those millions who honour it with an unmistakable and unswerving reverence." [76-77]. [See: 1469-1470].

PAGE 1468

'(b) The New Testament.--If one examine closely the sacred canon of this later Faith, it will be found, as in the case of the canon of the Old Testament, that it has undeniably been coloured by the influences amid which it was gradually written. In truth, it openly claims to continue and expand the teachings that are contained in the Jewish Sacred Books which preceded it.² And this assertion it abundantly justifies. Even had Christ not intended that Christianity should be the direct continuation of some older Religion, the Faith that bears His name could not wholly have been disassociated from its predecessors; for, to quote again that remark which was so often repeated by the late Professor W. Robertson Smith [1846 - 1894]: "IN ALL TRUE RELIGION, THE NEW RESTS UPON THE OLD."¹ Mr. Andrew Lang [1844 - 1912] also has convinced us, by means of an array of carefully selected examples, that literally EVERY FAITH IS FULL OF "SURVIVALS."² In the very nature of the case it must be so; and no better illustrations of this law could possibly be desired than those which abound in the pages of the New Testament.' [85-86]. [See: #1, 11, 88., etc. (Shires)].

'One or two specimens of the diversity of opinion that has prevailed touching the sources of Judaism will best serve to make clear how exceedingly puzzling is this quest. The late Sir William Jones [1746 - 1794], for example, declared it to be his conviction that "Moses drew his narrative, through Egyptian conduits, from the primeval fountains of Indian literature." This view, it scarcely needs to be stated, is now everywhere discarded [still discarded?]. It was never endorsed by the verdict of competent opinion. Though Sir William was an excellent Sanskrit scholar, he allowed himself in this instance to be unduly influenced by his partiality for studies which, after all, were one-sided and limited. To take, however, the case of some well-known and influential teachers of our own times, Professor [Sir] George Adam Smith [1856 - 1942] of Glasgow affirms it to be his belief that the Religion of Israel began just as other Semitic Religions began, viz., in Polytheism; and that Monotheism, which has long been held to be an original and distinctive feature of Judaism, became a reality only during a later stage in Jewish history. Professor Hugo Winckler [1863 - 1913] of Berlin has often told his students that not only the Book of Genesis, but almost every part of the Old Testament, reveals Babylonian influence....' [491]. [See: 1468].

PAGE 1469

'A great deal is hoped for from the investigations of Professor Herman V. Hilprecht [1859 - 1925] of Philadelphia, whose recent "find" embraces the great library of the Temple of Bel at ancient Nippur. The University of Pennsylvania, under whose auspices these explorations have so energetically been carried forward, has secured through its four expeditions¹ a Babylonian library of nearly 30,000 Tablets. These ancient writings, together with over 20,000 Inscriptions which have also been acquired, date from a period long prior to the days of Abraham; and Dr. Hilprecht has reason to believe that, when he secures the Tablets which are buried beneath those he has already excavated, he will obtain important records which date from at least 7000 B.C. Professor Lewis B. Paton of Hartford says: "As a result of these discoveries, the oldest human civilisation lives anew before our eyes. The history of ancient Babylonia from 4000-2280 B.C. is made as familiar as the history of Greece or Rome. A flood of light is also thrown upon the Bible; for we are shown the political and social conditions that prevailed throughout Western Asia in the age that preceded the beginning of the Hebrew nationality. We see the circumstances that made the migration of Abram a necessity, and understand why the civilisations of Canaan and of the ancient Hebrews were so leavened with Babylonian elements." From that centre, as a starting-point, the races of mankind scattered far and wide, carrying with them the stories of the Creation, the Garden, the Tree of Life, the Serpent, the Flood, etc. etc.²

Anthropology³ also, within recent years, has compelled a revision of many beliefs which were once universally held. The antiquity of man, for example, has been carried back thousands of years. Moreover, the persistent varieties of human types are found to be traceable to the remotest historic ages. But, neglecting these items in the meantime, it can safely be said that, "in the recovered literary treasures of the East, we find that a noble conception of God prevailed ages before the date which until recently was assigned for the Creation of Adam."⁴ Scholars are not yet agreed as to the exact contributions which Egypt made to the Religion of Israel; but, "graven in the hard syenite ["variety of granite" ("anciently quarried at Syene in Upper Egypt") (Webster's Third)] of the obelisk of Thothmes III., dating from a time long antecedent to the birth of Moses, we may yet read that Egyptian King's petition for light and guidance, and in words that recall Solomon's prayer at his accession to the throne of Israel."¹ In like manner, "the Penitential Psalms, dug up beside the Euphrates, parallel the cry of David: 'Create in me a clean heart, O God'; while the gypsum slabs of Nineveh yield a version of the Genesis-story"¹ which shows a remarkable likeness to our own.

And he who keeps himself informed as to what Assyriology is teaching to-day, knows that its foremost representatives are practically a unit in maintaining that BABYLONIA WAS THE QUARRY OUT OF WHICH NO INCONSIDERABLE SECTION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT WAS ORIGINALLY EXTRACTED. Under the guiding hand of God, the Hebrew race no doubt monotheised and spiritualised the religious materials which they found already available; but the materials themselves, far from being new, were the familiar possessions of an earlier age. The novelty of the situation consisted in the altered meaning which was attached to old beliefs and venerated rites, rather than in the introduction of a creed and cultus that were entirely strange, altogether foreign in their origin, and abrupt and revolutionary in their consequences.'

[493-494] [End of Note V]. [See: 1468].

PAGE 1470

Of immense value, not only because of the light it incidentally throws upon the advanced standard of Babylonian civilization at a very early day, and also because it demonstrates that an elaborate and written legal document was not beyond the capacity of a people who lived in so remote a past, is the monumental pillar which was recently found at Susa.¹ ["¹Once known as Perespolis, in Elam. It was the ancient capital of Persia."] This discovery, however, is perhaps especially noteworthy because of its possible relation to the history of the Hebrews. Hammurabi has been identified with "Amraphel, King of Shinar," who is referred to in Genesis xiv. 1. His dates have been placed approximately between 2297 and 2254 B.C.;² that is to say, he lived some eight hundred years before Moses. On that polished shaft, to study which many a special pilgrimage has lately been made to Paris, the likeness of King Hammurabi is depicted as he is in the act of receiving from the Sun God, "the Judge of heaven and earth," the laws which he was afterwards to publish broadcast throughout his dominions. Not only so; in the substance of the legislation in question, in the phrasing of many of its sentences, in the class of actions which are condemned, etc., there is a closeness of resemblance between the Babylonian Code and the later Hebrew Code which at first excites surprise, and then inevitably awakens the idea that the latter body of statutes was to some extent dependent upon the former. In the earlier Law Book we read: "If a man destroy another's eye, his own shall be destroyed. If a man dash out another's teeth, his own teeth shall be dashed out." In Deuteronomy xix. 21 we read: "Life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot"; and a score of similar comparisons have been instituted with a like result. Thus, at many points, the latter Code seems to be an echo--often faint, yet instantly suggestive--of the Code by which it was preceded. There exist, indeed, marked differences which separate these two great systems of legislation from each other. Professor Sayce [A.H. Sayce 1845 - 1933] has very properly drawn attention to these dissimilarities, and has laid strong emphasis upon them.¹ He [Professor Sayce] has shown, for example, that the provisions contained in the Mosaic Statutes seem intended for a people much more backward in civilisation than those evidently were for whom Hammurabi had to legislate. But to admit this conclusion, and to admit also that the Hammurabic Code deals exclusively with civil enactments, whereas the Hebrew Code is distinctly religious in its purpose, is perhaps merely an explanation why the two schemes do not resemble each other more closely than is actually the case. Their aim was different, and so they themselves differed; but herein we find no proof that they were entirely unrelated. We know, on the other hand, that the Babylonian Code was framed in that very region whence Abraham is represented to have come. It might also, quite easily, have been known to Moses: it was not only ancient in his day, but it was in actual force in countries within which (or contiguous to which) he lived for longer or shorter periods. There is nothing impossible, therefore, in the suggestion that the Mosaic Lawgiver may have made deliberate use of it; whereas a good deal can be said in support of the view which maintains that he unquestionably did use it.' [495-496]. [See: 1472].

PAGE 1471

from: A Rationalist Encyclopaedia, A Book of Reference on Religion, Philosophy, Ethics, and Science, Joseph McCabe, Watts, 1950 (1948).

"Hammurabi Code, The. In 1901, while theologians were still describing how the Hebrew religion had brought the idea of justice into the ancient world, and preachers and popular writers were shuddering at the repute of Babylon, a copy of a very early code of Babylonian law was discovered in Persia. It was carved on an eight-foot block of black stone, and seems to have been removed from some temple at Babylon by the Persians. At the foot, King Hammurabi, one of the earliest Babylonian monarchs (1958-1916 B.C.), tells that he is its author. A carving at the head represents him standing before the god Shamash with a sceptre in his hand, and some--the error got into Well's Outline of History--erroneously said that it figured the King receiving the code of law from the god. It is more interesting that, in point of fact, Hammurabi expressly says that he compiled the code himself, thus excluding religious influence. The entire code, which is more than a thousand years older than the first Hebrew prophet, is more strictly and comprehensively based upon principles of justice than any known code until modern times. From certain archaic features--the inclusion of the lex talionis (an eye for an eye) and the death-penalty for adultery--experts conclude that the laws are much older than 2000 B.C. and go back to the Sumerians; and it is an ironic comment on the Hebrew "genius for morality" that in borrowing from the Babylonian for the so-called Mosaic Code, 1,300 years later, the Jews omitted the best features (justice to woman, minimum wage for the workers, etc.) and retained such principles as the lex talionis. In the Hammurabi Code priests have no privileges and are mentioned only as citizens; and it is noteworthy that, while the Code envisages every aspect of life and work, there is no reference in any clause to the compulsory prostitution in temples before marriage which religious writers quote, in spite of the warning of experts, from Herodotus. On the other hand, sex-crimes are the most heavily punished. Even in the case of adultery, which civil law very rarely treats as a crime, the penalty is death ([section] 129) unless the King forgives the man, and the husband forgives his wife: which suggests that it is an old law that was not strictly enforced. The penalty for incest and rape also is death; and a priestess who incurs suspicion of looseness is condemned to death. These penalties, however, do not mean that, as in the Semitic world generally, the wife is a man's property and treated as such. Justice to woman, who in Babylon, as in Egypt, was the equal of man, is a conspicuous feature of the Code. If a man divorces his wife, or even a concubine, he must return her dowry ([section] 137); a wife may on liberal grounds divorce her husband, and she retains her dowry ([section] 142); and a man cannot divorce his wife to marry a concubine ([section] 144). There are sixty clauses regulating marriage, divorce, and property on a basis of justice. Forty-four clauses secure justice and a minimum wage to workers of all classes ([sections] 234-77). BRITISH AND AMERICAN LAW WAS, UNTIL LESS THAN A CENTURY AGO, BARBARIC IN COMPARISON, while the notion that Hebrew prophets began to teach the world justice twelve or thirteen centuries after the time of Hammurabi is one which any writer ought now to be ashamed to repeat. An excellent translation, available in a cheap edition, is C. Edward's Hammurabi Code (1904). For comparison with the much later Mosaic Code see S.A. Cook's Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi (1903)." [276-277] [End of entry]. [See: 1471].

PAGE 1472

from: My Holy Satan, A Novel of Christian Twilight, Vardis Fisher, Pyramid Books, Pb. 1960 (c1958). [See: 1377-1408 (Vardis Fisher (Biography 1407-1408))].

"This novel is part of THE TESTAMENT OF MAN, the moving and unforgettable chronicle of mankind's long journey from cave to civilization. Hailed by the critics of every leading newspaper in the country, the series was acclaimed as "the most ambitious project of the imagination in present-day fiction" by The New York Herald Tribune." [opposite title page].

"My Holy Satan

Vardis Fisher's most compelling novel from his famous Testament of Man series [see 1377, 1407-1408] is a brilliant portrayal of one of the basest ages of civilized man--a time when the Inquisitor was omnipotent, when the refinements of torture...."

[back cover].

[from the Novel] "Gerart had told them that all over Europe warfare, among Christians, was almost as common as hunting. He had told them how war was waged. When siege was laid to a castle by a lord who envied and coveted another lord's possessions, the first task was to destroy the outworks, the posterns, barbicans and other barriers. Most of these were of wood; they were hacked to pieces or fired with burning arrows steeped in sulphur. Moats were filled and ladders were then reared against the ramparts. The attackers would dig under a wall and prop it with timbers and then fire the timbers. They used huge battering rams covered with an iron head, and from huge catapults projected stones and dead horses and cats and dogs, or fireballs of inflammable materials. For weapons in hand-to-hand combat they used hammer-axes; sticks fitted with iron hooks; the guisarme, a weapon like a scythe with which they cut legs off, or the fauchard, a scythelike instrument that opened ghastly wounds; the espadon, a two-handed sword; the espringale, a contraption mounted on wheels that hurled arrows and javelins; and a ball of iron or of lead attached to an iron chain. They fought for conquest, for loot and plunder and rape. They fought, Gerart said, because they were so damned bored with living and had nothing else to do [extent of validity?]...." [121-122].

PAGE 1473

My extensive reading in the records of the past has discovered no subject that has called forth more distortion and misrepresentation of the facts than the Christian Church of the Middle Ages. Its apologies are many, and include some scholars who are able and detached when their theological prepossessions are not engaged....

Coulton...quotes Cardinal Newman: "Unless one doctored all one's facts one should be thought a bad Catholic...a man who is not extravagant is thought treacherous." Lord Acton, famous British Catholic of the 19th century, was almost excommunicated for publishing such statements as this about papal infallibility: "It not only promotes, it inculcates distinct mendacity and deceitfulness. In certain cases it is made a duty to lie." The curious reader who would see for himself with what thoroughness Coulton exposes certain untrustworthy scholars is referred to various appendixes in his Medieval Village and to his Five Centuries of Religion.' [251].

'The topics, as in former volumes [see 1378] in this Series, are in alphabetical order, so that the reader can quickly find those items that interest him. CE, where these letters appear, indicate the monumental Catholic Encyclopedia. In the space here I have tried to give a fair picture of this period ["the Middle Ages"], as the abler scholars have made it out, but I obviously do not accept the magazine Life's characterization of it as "that time of singular sweetness."

PAGE 1474

' [252-253].

PAGE 1475

'AUGUSTINE It has been pointed out that apparently it was Augustine who applied the words, Compel them to enter in to religious persecution. Humphrey: "Augustine's works became the great source of justification for intolerance."' [257]. [End of entry].

'CHRISTIANITY What had it become? Just before the Reformation, says Réville, "nothing short of a terrible perversion of true Christianity." Jackson: "had tended to become a cult of relics and holy places, martyrs, and sacred symbols." Klausner: "the religion has stood for what is highest ethically and ideally, while the political and social life has remained at the other extreme of barbarity and paganism." Gilbert Murray: "The polemic literature of Christianity is loud and triumphant; the books of the Pagans have been destroyed." Robertson puts it best: "It is not Christianity that has civilized Europe, but Europe--the complex of political and cultural forces--that has civilized Christianity."' [259]. [End of entry].

'CRUELTY CE: "The custom of burning heretics is really not a question of justice, but a question of civilization." Aquinas: "In order that nothing may be wanting to the felicity of the blessed spirits in heaven, a perfect view is granted to them of the tortures of the damned." Gregory the Great, says Lea, "had argued that the bliss of the elect in heaven would not be perfect unless they were able to look across the abyss and enjoy the agonies of their brethren in eternal fire." The Old Testament is replete with passages which gave to Christians their sanction for every form of cruelty: "And if a man take a wife and her mother it is wickedness; they shall be burnt with fire....And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the whore...shall be burnt with fire...." Constantine, first Christian emperor, decreed that a slave who had intercourse with a free woman should be burnt alive.

Farrer: "NOR HAS THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH FROM THE TIME OF ITS CONQUEST UNDER CONSTANTINE ONWARDS FOR MORE THAN A MILLENNIUM BEEN ANYTHING ELSE BUT THE HISTORY OF CRUELTIES, RIOTS, WARS, PERSECUTIONS, THE HORROR OF WHICH IN ITS ENTIRETY THE HUMAN MIND IS INCOMPETENT TO GRASP, BUT THE LIKE OF WHICH MAY BE SEARCHED FOR IN VAIN IN THE PRE-CHRISTIAN ANNALS OF THE WORLD." Summer: "The Middle Ages reveled in cruelty to men and beasts....The Church was venal, sensual, gross and inhuman." Meller: "To torture prisoners to slay women and children wholesale...was held by the Christian knight as lawful....Robert Fitzgerald, near Antioch, brought back into camp a hundred heads of Turks....Saracens' noses and ears were spitted on a lance as a trophy. A boat's load of Greek noses and thumbs were sent to Byzantium....Bohemund killed and roasted some prisoners as a jest....Some of the Christians (it is stated in their own chronicles) ate the flesh of Turks....Knights who on first catching sight of the Holy City...slaughtered so vast a number of unbelievers in the Mosque of Omar that the reins of their horses were bathed in blood." Scott: "The populace, instead of rearing up in hot indignation at the cruelty, the barbarity, and the inhumanity of burning alive the victims of the Inquisition, cheered with gusto....In the early days the feet and hands were often amputated in toto, but Justinian tempered the severity of this law, restricting it to the amputation of one hand only." William the Conqueror: "We decree that no one shall

PAGE 1476

be killed or hung for any misdeeds, but rather that his eyes be plucked out and his feet, hands and testicles be cut off."

Reinach: "I execrate these judicial murders, the accursed fruits of a spirit of oppression and fanaticism....There are zealots still among us who glorify these crimes, and would wish to see them continued. If they attack my book, they will do both me and it a great honor." The extermination of the Albigenses is, says Whittaker, "by general consent the most atrocious in the annals even of Christendom." Lecky: "what strikes us most in considering the medieval tortures is not so much their diabolical barbarity which it is indeed impossible to exaggerate, as the extraordinary variety, and what may be termed the artistic skill, they displayed." H.W. Smith: "extraordinary variety and elaborated with artistic skill by men who pondered long on the best methods of evoking the most intense and prolonged human suffering." Barnes: "it was not uncommon for the victim to be snatched from the flames after being thoroughly seared, left to suffer with his burns and then be returned to the flames." Michelet: "The judge is always sure of doing justice; anyone brought before him is inevitably guilty, and if he defends himself, doubly guilty." Lea: "At best the jails of the Middle Ages were frightful abodes of misery....a living death far worse than the short agony of the stake." Women, says Michelet, died "of the terror of being walled up in the little black hole....One word recurs continually, like a bell of horror tolled, and tolled again, to drive the dead in life into despair--always the same word, Immured." Jurgen: "The largest lake in Hell is formed by the blood which the followers of the 'Prince of Peace' [Jesus] have shed in advancing his cause."'

[263-264]. [End of entry].

PAGE 1477

'CRUSADES See also under Cruelty. Lea: "it was a commonplace of the jongleurs that the crusader, if he escaped the perils of sea and land, was tolerably sure to return home a lawless bandit." Hearnshaw: "their progress through Constantinople to the Holy Land was marked by orgies and excesses, murders and debaucheries, which were a disgrace not only to their religion but to humanity itself....we hear of nothing more absolutely wanton that the crucifixion of the captives of Edesa, or the sending to the Greek emperor...of a whole cargo of sliced-off noses and thumbs." CE: "These Holy Wars were essentially a papal enterprise....the Christians entered Jerusalem from all sides and slew its inhabitants regardless of age or sex."' [265]. [End of entry].

'FAITH Clifford: "Aristotle whose writings had been found to be so disastrous to the temper of faith." CE: "The integrity of the rule of faith is more essential to the cohesion of a religious society than the strict practice of its moral precepts." Tennant: "The medievalist calls the times of darkest ignorance and superstition the 'ages of faith', the same subjective psychological process is involved as led half-civilized man to dream of a simpler and happier world long before his time." Coulton: "society oscillated between this childish credulity and childish indifference or petulance....It is only loosely that we can call the Middle Ages an age of faith; it would be more strictly true to call this period an age of acquiescence."' [266].

[End of entry].

PAGE 1477

'FORGERY See chiefly notes to my two more recent novels. Prof. Bergen Evans: "All tyranny rests on fraud." CE: "the forging of papal letters was even more frequent in the Middle Ages than in the early Church....Substitution of false documents and tampering with genuine ones was quite a trade in the Middle Ages. Innocent III (1198) points out nine species of forgery which had come under his notice....In all these departments forgery and interpolations as well as ignorance had wrought mischief on a great scale." Robertson: "corruption of the texts of the Fathers is a scandal since the time of Erasmus." Reinach says the second decretals of Isidore "is a series of impudent forgeries, supporting the pretensions of the Pope and the bishops....Never yet has the papacy acknowledged that for a thousand years it made use of forged documents to its own profit." For the amazing record see Wheless, Forgery, passim, but especially 260 ff.' [266-267]. [End of entry].

'HELL Dujardin: "Hell as a torture-chamber was unknown to primitive religions and to ancient Judaism." C.H. Moore: "the horrors which the medieval Christian loved to depict...were first devised by the Orphics." Reinach: "The Greeks even invented...a Purgatory, where a certain mild chastisement purified souls."' [267]. [End of entry].

"HERESY"

'Michelet: "in the 13th century everything is heresy; in the 14th, magic." The Church, Lea points out, "had always held the toleration of others to be persecution of itself....it could brook no rivalry in its domination over the human soul...." ....

Reinach: "I defy anyone to name a single opinion persecuted by the Church in the Middle Ages, the adoption of which would not have brought about a diminution in her revenues ["follow the money!"]."' [267, 268]. [End of entry].

'INCEST Michelet: "Incest is the ordinary condition of serfs....The eldest only of the brothers married, so hiding under a Christian mask the polyandry ["having many men", etc.] that was the actual fact."' [268]. [End of entry].

PAGE 1478

'INQUISITION Robertson: "Religious fanaticism, the last and lowest form of moral energy..." CE: [note the following (bolded) heinousness] "the much-abused Inquisition...the Inquisition marks a substantial advance in the contemporary administration of justice, and therefore, in the general civilization of mankind." Rev. Father Vincent, quoted by Reinach: "The Church has received from God the power to reprove those who wander from the truth, not only by spiritual but by corporeal penalties, such as imprisonment, flagellation, mutilation and death."

M.S. Bates: "From the two Testaments taken together the dogmatist, the bigot, the man of faction, the literalist, the bureaucrat, the disciplinarian, the sadist have been able to justify their will, from that day until now." Lord Acton, Catholic, wrote to the daughter of Gladstone: "the principle of the Inquisition is murderous" and added that a later time "swept away that appalling edifice of intolerance, tyranny, and cruelty which believers in Christ built up..." Catholic Isabel Burton [wife of Sir Richard Francis Burton]: "I do not know why we find many Catholics, even at the present day, who dislike writing or talking about the Inquisition. I always conclude that it results from a want of reading or from ignorance....I think there is but one opinion for an educated, well-read, honest-minded Catholic to hold upon the subject: Horrors were committed by unscrupulous people in the name of Christ which can never be glossed over and excused." Two popes, Clement VIII and Paul V, declared that anyone should be delivered to the Inquisition who said that kissing, touching or embracing for sexual pleasure was not a grievous sin. Instituted by Innocent III it was not formally founded until 1233, and its complete and dreadful powers were not fully granted until 1252. Newman: "The Dominican Order ["The Hounds of Hell"!] was in large measure responsible for the establishment of the Holy Office of the Inquisition."

Workman: "the horrible vindictiveness of the Inquisition." Coulton: "The Church anticipated in discipline the Soviet-Nazi theory of Totalitarianism...after 1150, no bishop, I believe, can be found protesting against the ever-increasing severities...burning alive had never before been carried out in anything like this wholesale and official fashion, torture was now being applied with equally unprecedented frequency and cold-blooded cruelty...no clear case of a verdict of not guilty seems ever to have been recorded. Accusers were commonly sheltered by anonymity; and unfavorable, as apart from favorable, evidence was accepted even from infamous persons, or was extracted from the man's own children....We are told that, out of the 930 accused before Bernard Gui, 139 were acquitted altogether, and that this is a proof on inquisitorial justice. Yet in fact it is now confessed...that this assertion has rested upon a misunderstanding so gross as to be almost inexplicable....It is natural enough that the advocates of a Church which thought and acted for so many centuries on the principles described above, and which has never yet repudiated them...should push their apologetics to the point of demonstrable, though doubtless unintentional, suppressio veri and suggestio falsi." G.R. Scott: "when the Spanish Inquisition was functioning at its mightiest, the horrors of the tortures were sufficient to cause men to go to any lengths to prevent themselves from falling alive into the clutches....an inquisitor had boasted that if he could place the Pope on the rack he would guarantee to induce him to plead guilty....The vast power of the inquisitors...enabled them to secure a conviction with ease against anyone against whom they had a grudge." Lord Acton: "the Papacy contrived murder on the largest and also on the most cruel and inhuman scale. They were not only wholesale

PAGE 1479

Newman: "the triumphant Church did not hesitate to make use of the death penalty whenever it could prevail upon the temporal power to enforce it." Reinach: "Not only was the papacy responsible for the Inquisition; it actively encouraged and excited its ferocity....Frightful as were the punishments inflicted by the Inquisition--and imprisonment for life in pestilential gaols was perhaps worse than death at the stake--its methods of procedure were still more abominable

....indulgencies were promised to those who provided faggots....As a well-meaning old woman at Constance deposited a faggot at the feet of John Huss, 'Oh! sacred simplicity' said the martyr." Abbe Vacandard: "It is proved beyond question that the Church, in the person of the Popes, used every means at her disposal, especially excommunication, to compel the State to enforce the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics."

PAGE 1480

The standard authority is still, of course, Lea's three monumental volumes. I now offer a few sentences from him: "inquisitors would pass calmly on, leaving a neighborhood well-nigh depopulated--fathers and mothers dispatched to distant shrines for months or years, leaving dependent families to starve, or harvests ungathered to be the prey of the first-comer, all the relations of a life, hard enough at best, disturbed and broken up....It required courage to foolhardiness for any one to raise hand or voice against an inquisitor, no matter how cruel or nefarious were his actions...fanatic zeal, arbitrary cruelty, and insatiable cupidity rivalled each other in building up a system unspeakably atrocious...the trained inquisitor left no method untried which promised victory in the struggle between him and the helpless wretch abandoned to his experiments...one of the most efficient was the slow torture of delay...everything that could affect the accused injuriously was eagerly sought...the most devout Catholic could never feel safe for a moment....Wives and children and servants were not admitted to give evidence in favor of the accused, but their testimony if adverse to him was welcomed, and was considered peculiarly strong...withholding from the accused all knowledge of the names of the witnesses against him...a witness who withdraws testimony adverse to a prisoner is to be punished for falsehood, while his testimony is to stand...the only source of disability in a witness" was mortal enmity and there "must have been bloodshed between the parties...men of wealth whose whole property was at stake might well consent to divide it with the papal court, whose all-powerful intervention would thereby be secured...if he would not abjure and give satisfaction he was to be handed over to the secular arm; if he confessed and sought reconciliation he was to be imprisoned for life....He was tied living to a post set high enough over a pile of combustibles to enable the faithful to watch every act of the tragedy to its awful end...the accused was treated as one having no rights, whose guilt was assumed in advance, and from whom confession was to be extorted by guile or force...."

[The author (Vardis Fisher), reacting to (mocking) a tyrannical, and, a stupid statement] The "much-abused Inquisition" [see 1479] in "that time of singular sweetness." [see 1474]' [269-272]. [End of entry].

[Comment: obviously, influences of the Inquisitions, are still extant. One example, from (caution: highly emotionally and politically charged subjects. Research to evaluate validities): Dissecting the Holocaust, The Growing Critique of 'Truth' and 'Memory', Ernst Gauss [Germar Rudolf], editor, Theses & Dissertations Press, July 2000 (German c1994 ("first seize-and-destroy order...carried out...1995" [24])), 565:

"Prologue

In German history, censorship unfortunately has been more of a rule than an exception. It was introduced by the Catholic Church in the form of the Inquisition...."].

PAGE 1481

'PAGAN ELEMENTS It is by this time well known that the Christians adopted pagan holy days, sacraments and liturgy, inventing practically none of their own. Carus: "The rosary is unquestionably of pagan origin." E. Carpenter: "the festival of John the Baptist in June took the place of the pagan midsummer festival of water and bathing; the Assumption of the Virgin in August, the place of Diana in the same month; and the festival of all Souls early in November, that of the worldwide pagan feasts of the dead and their ghosts at the same season." And so on: see Notes to my preceding Christian volumes.' [275]. [End of entry].

'PAPACY Hobbes: "If any man will consider the original of that great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the Papacy is none other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof."' [275]. [See: #16, 351 (Hobbes)].

'RELICS There was a huge traffic in relics; the sale of them, says Fisher, "grew to be a lucrative branch of trade. Vast sums of money...were expended in the purchase of pieces of apparel or other objects believed to have once belonged to Christ or the Virgin....For the disputed possession of relics there were fierce contests between rival monasteries." A statue of the Seventh General Council (787) said: "If any bishop from this time forward is found consecrating a temple without holy relics, he shall be deposed as a transgressor." Robertson: "To find what might pass for the bones and relics of saints and martyrs, to frame false tales concerning them...these were, by the grieving admission of many Church historians, among the common activities of the Church from the second or third century onwards...abbots and monks who sold the privilege of seeing and kissing holy relics...and intense anxiety to possess or benefit by holy relics, the easy manufacture of which must have enriched myriads..." Lea: "How sedulously this fetichism was inculcated by those who profited from the control of the fetiches is shown by a thousand stories and incident's [incidents] of the time." B.Z. Goldberg says that until recently there were 12 holy prepuces of Jesus in European churches and one of them "the pride and possession of the Abbey Church of Coulomb, in the diocese of Chartres, France, was believed to possess the miraculous power of rendering all sterile women fruitful." Goodenough: "The revering of the bodies of martyrs and other saints led to their use as charms in the old pagan magical fashion."' [278-279]. [End of entry]. [See: #6, 167, etc.].

'SAINTS Reinach: "the worship of the martyrs, the origin of the worship of saints, took the place of the worship of the Greek heroes, and sometimes adopted even their names and their legends."' [279]. [End of entry].

PAGE 1482

'SATAN Aquinas: "All the changes capable of occurring naturally and by way of genus, these the Devil can imitate." Lecky: "It was firmly believed that the arch-fiend was for ever hovering about the Christian; but it was also believed that the sign of the cross, or a few drops of holy water, or the name of Mary, could put him to an immediate and ignominious flight." Anatole France: "The Middle Ages frightened us with a lugubrious phantasmagoria of devils snapping at a sinner's soul as it passed." Lea: "We cannot understand the motives and acts of our forefathers unless we take into consideration the mental condition engendered by the consciousness of this daily and hourly personal conflict with Satan." Barnes: "Medieval peoples feared above all else the activities of the Devil and his evil associates." Jastrow: "The same scholastic ingenuity...could calculate, as did Weirus, by methods beyond our comprehension, that there were just 7,405,926 devils divided into 72 companies, each under a captain." Rudwin: "Of all the myths that have come down to us from the East, and of all the creations of Western fancy and belief, the Devil has exercised the strongest attraction upon the human mind."' [279-280]. [End of entry].

'SCIENCE St. Francis: "Books are a temptation; the brethren who cannot read shall not seek to learn." ....

Michelet: "Name me one science that has not been a rebel! Every new one has ben Satan...the Church has declared accursed, the vast edifice of the sciences and of modern institutions which she has excommunicated stone by stone....Is there one science you can name that was not originally a revolt against authority?...Medicine above all was truly and indeed Satanic, a revolt against disease, the merited scourge of an offended God....It is expressly forbidden to invent, to create."' [280].

"SEX"

'Inman: "a confessor of the Roman church, who wears the crux ansata, the Egyptian symbol of life....It is remarkable that a Christian church should have adopted so many pagan symbols as Rome has done." Such a statement has been made by many, all of whom overlook the fact that there was no Christian church, as distinct from paganism--that the church was a slow accretion of so-called pagan elements.'

[281, 282]. [See: Appendix VI, 761-777; etc.].

'SIMONY CE: "Simony...was the evil so prevalent during the Middle Ages." A.L. Smith: "You could buy off everything..." Simony, says Lea, "was the corroding cancer of the Church throughout the whole of the Middle Ages--the source whence sprang almost all the evils with which she afflicted Christendom. From the highest to the lowest, from the pope to the humblest parish priest, the curse was universal."' [282].

PAGE 1483

'SUPERSTITION Until 1250 says CE Christians were "almost wholly absorbed in the supernatural." Lea: "St. Augustine, who did so much to transmit pagan superstitions to succeeding ages..." Coulton: "the Church deliberately inculcated further ignorance of great portions of human life....A modern antiquary has unearthed documentary evidence for 86 cases of animal excommunication....the medieval custom of condemning and executing criminal beasts--the sow which has devoured a child, or the ox which has gored a man." (The Greeks also did, of course.) Barnes: "The most eminent philosopher, say an Aquinas, was as much absorbed in the supernatural as was the most superstitious peasant." Halliday: "Respect for authority...completely shackled criticism." Farrer: "Philosophy...ceased to operate as a moral influence over the lives of men; and human reason was given over entirely to the uncontrolled tyranny of priests ad monks and to the wasting debility of insoluble ["incapable of being solved"] theological discussion." Pico della Mirandola: "No science yields greater proof of the divinity of Christ than magic...."' [283]. [End of entry].

'WOMEN Dr. H.W. Haggard: "The Middle Ages were the most unfortunate period in the history of woman-kind." ....

Michelet argues that so many women surrendered themselves to Satanism because Satan elevated them above the position assigned to them by the Church. "The Church keeps her down at the lowest level of degradation--she is Eve, and sin incarnate. In the house she is beaten....At bottom she is nothing, and has nothing....This is the horror of the Middle Ages." Sprenger, most notorious of the witch-murderers, said that Fe-mina came from fe and minus, because a woman has less faith than a man. It is little wonder, as Taylor says, that many a woman "felt a passionate love for the spiritual bridegroom." The first plea for the emancipation of women came, says Coulton, not from Christians but from the Arab philosopher Averroes.' [284, 285, 286]. [Last page of text].

PAGE 1484

from: Insurgent Mexico, by John Reed, International Publishers, 1982 (c1969) (1914). [See: 1442 (Conquest of Mexico)].

"Publisher's Note

First published in 1914, Insurgent Mexico has been out of print for many years and is almost entirely unknown to present day readers. Toward the end of 1913 John Reed [1887 - 1920] was sent to cover the revolution in Mexico by Metropolitan, a widely read magazine whose writers included the leading muckrakers and reformers of the time. He was also commissioned as a correspondent by the New York World. Then twenty-six years of age, Reed had already won some fame as a journalist...." [9].

"John Reed died of typhus in Moscow on October 17, 1920, three days before his thirty-third birthday." [10].

"Preface to the New Edition

In this preface I [Renato Leduc] intend to tell the story of how I discovered that the simpático gringo journalist, Juanito Reed--whom I had met in Chihuahua in 1914--was none other than John Reed, author of the extraordinary Ten Days That Shook the World...." [13].

"The last time I saw Johnny [John Reed] was on a spring morning of 1914, through the window at the telegraph office in Ciudad Juárez. He came to send a dispatch, leaving behind three or four dollars as a gift to the clerk who took care of him. On July 3 of the same year, in New York, he [John Reed] wrote the dedication for this book to his professor at Harvard, Charles Townsend Copeland.

Meanwhile in Mexico, his ragged old friends, the peons of the Northern Division whom he loved, led by Francisco ["Pancho"] Villa [1878 - 1923], destroyed the brilliant [Mexican] Federal Army....

Mexico City Renato Leduc

September 1968

(Translated from the Spanish by Tana de Gámez.)" [27].

"Villa's great passion was schools. He believed that land for the people and schools would settle every question of civilization. Schools were an obsession with him. Often I have heard him say: "When I passed such and such a street this morning I saw a lot of kids. Let's put a school there." Chihuahua has a population of under 40,000 people. At different times Villa established over fifty schools there. The great dream of his life has been to send his son to school in the United States, but at the opening of the term in February he had to abandon it because he didn't have money enough to pay for a half year's tuition...." [130].

PAGE 1485

'Letcher

[Marion Letcher, died 1948, at 76. "While at Chihuahua Mr. Letcher conducted an unsuccessful investigation into the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce [1842 - 1914? "witty and caustic writer" (Webster's Bio. Dict.). Influence on H.L. Mencken. See: Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce, 1906 (reprinted)], American author, wit and soldier, who joined Villa's rebel forces in 1913. Among the conflicting reports of Bierce's death was one that he had fallen in an attack on Chihuahua City." (New York Times, June 25, 1948, 23)],

the American consul, said: "General [Francisco Villa], I don't question your motives, but I think you are making a grave political mistake in expelling the Spaniards. The government at Washington will hesitate a long time before becoming friendly to a party which makes use of such barbarous measures."

"Señor Consul," answered Villa, "we Mexicans have had three hundred years of the Spaniards. They have not changed in character since the Conquistadores. They disrupted the Indian empire and enslaved the people. We did not ask them to mingle their blood with ours....

THEY [SPANIARDS] THRUST ON US THE GREATEST SUPERSTITION THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN--THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. THEY OUGHT TO BE KILLED FOR THAT ALONE.

I consider we are being very generous with them."

....Some particularly obnoxious political enemies were promptly executed in the penitentiary. The Revolution possesses a black book in which are set down the names, offenses, and property of those who have oppressed and robbed the people. The Germans, who had been particularly active politically, the Englishmen and Americans, he does not yet dare to molest. Their pages in the black book will be opened when the Constitutionalist government is established in Mexico City; and there, too, he [FRANCISCO VILLA] WILL SETTLE THE ACCOUNT OF THE MEXICAN PEOPLE WITH THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.'

[131-132]. [I thank Eloy Rodriguez, for this paragraph, and, its source--this book].

PAGE 1486

from: The Manipulated Man, Esther Vilar, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, Fourth Printing, 1973 (1972) (1971 German (Der dressierte Mann)). [c1973 Spain: El Varon Domado]. [Scarce book. Much suggestion, etc.].

[reprinted 1998 (Great Britain) (revised (lacking chapter: "American Man--the Most Successfully Manipulated Male on Earth"))].

"Esther Vilar was born in 1935 of German parents in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She was trained as a physician and in 1960 went to West Germany to continue her studies in psychology and sociology. She worked as a staff doctor in a Bavarian hospital for a year, and has also been a translator, a saleswoman, an assembly-line worker in a thermometer factory, a shoe model, and a secretary. She was married to German author Klaus Wagn for two years and they have a seven-year-old son."

[dust jacket, c1972 edition].

"If a woman chooses to believe in God, it is for one reason only: she wants to go to heaven. And what, after all, is the dear Lord but yet another man who will arrange things for her?" [45-46].

"The majority of men prefer to subjugate themselves, to an exclusive deity, woman (they call this subjection love). This sort of personal deity has excellent qualifications for the satisfaction of religious needs. Woman is ever-present, and, given her own lack of religious need, she is divine. As she continuously makes demands, man never feels forsaken. She frees him from collective gods, for whose favors he would have to compete with others. He trusts in her because she resembles his mother, the deity of his childhood. His empty life is given an artificial meaning, for his every action is dedicated to her comfort and, later, to the comfort of her children. As a goddess, she can not only punish (by taking away his sense of belonging) but she can reward as well (through the bestowal of sexual pleasure)." [48].

"Women are protected by a screen of pomp, mummery, and mystification as much as any Pope or dictator: they cannot be unmasked and will increase their power unhindered, gaining strength as they go. In return man is guaranteed, for the duration, a divinity in which he can deeply believe." [49].

"Any religious system must be based on manipulation since it consists of a series of rules and taboos, with a catalogue of penalties for trespass against those rules. These trespasses are called sins [fears! (see 1488)]...." [94].

PAGE 1487

"in reality, neither women nor their chosen police force, the clergy, are really interested in man's sexual drive. The taboo did not have to apply to this particular instinct. They merely chose it because it is man's greatest--and purest--pleasure. Had he derived as much satisfaction from smoking or eating pork, woman would have equated smoking or eating pork with sin. THE POINT IS TO KEEP HIM IN A STATE OF SIN (FEAR), THUS OPEN TO MANIPULATION. This is one of the reasons why the catalogue of sins varies according to a man's age. For a small child, the taboo is lying, coveting the property of others, and not honoring one's father and mother. For an adult, it is sexual desire and lusting after one's neighbor's wife." [96].

"Women have taken great care to ensure that their lobby, the clergy, are always men...." [97].

"We have already mentioned MAN'S DESIRE TO BE UNFREE. This leads to religious fervor and prayer, a fact which is still true today, for pop songs are only a modified version of childhood prayers...." [104].

"Prayers and religious songs, i.e., prayers to music, ease existential anxiety. They appeal to a superego on whose every whim happiness depends. This superego allows us to relax and accept life, and frees us from the pursuit of happiness, for everything lies in the hands of our god. As man grows older, his fear increases. He has come to realize why it is justified, and, increasingly, his wish to let go grows too, this need to relax for a few moments at least and to commit himself to this almighty power. In the old days intellectual men used to work out their fears by writing love poems which took the place of prayer and calmed them down. ...." [105]. [compare: the employment of alcohol, etc.].

"Women could survive easily without the Church (they only need it for the training of men and children, or as a setting for the display of specialized wardrobes), but the Church would be ruined without the support of women." [97].

'In the Soviet Union "Marriage Palaces" have taken their ["churches"] place as a wedding background. IF THIS BECAME THE FASHION, PEOPLE WOULD SEE CHURCHES FOR WHAT THEY REALLY ARE-- RELICS OF A LONG-DEAD AGE. They would withdraw their financial support, both public and private, which in the last analysis has always been provided by men. IT IS MAN WHO PAYS HIS OWN TORMENTORS. So when we hear someone say what magical power the Church has, since it still draws people to it after many hundreds of years, the circumstance has obviously been misunderstood. It is not the Church which possesses a magical power--it is women. All such institutions have long since become mere tools in the hands of women, and it is unlikely that they will ever do anything other than fulfill women's expectations.' [98].

PAGE 1488

"Modern theology, of course, is useless for conditioning purposes now that it has renounced the carrot-and-stick principle. WOMEN NEED THOSE MOTH-EATEN TALES OF HEAVEN AND HELL, OF DEVILS AND ANGELS, OF PARADISE AND JUDGMENT DAY. Death is only a useful means of manipulation if it is a door leading either to eternal happiness or to eternal damnation. To which of these two realms this door may lead is dependent on a kind of point system, scored according to earthly achievement and calculated by women....

WOMEN THEMSELVES ARE, OF COURSE, QUITE UNMOVED BY ALL THESE MYTHS. They go to church only if and when they want: their consciences do not bother them either way. For the big ceremonies which are really attempts at intimidation--on the part of women, not on that of clergymen--they array themselves in suitable attire: wedding dresses, christening clothes, mourning clothes, confirmation dresses, their men in the usual dark suits. They enact the roles of believer, superstitious person, or skeptic--but in reality their minds are elsewhere. They are not interested in male speculations on the possibility of walking on water, turning water into wine by magic, or by achieving, also with the help of magic, an immaculate conception. As usual their interest does not concern itself with the essence of the thing as such, but with its POSSIBILITIES OF EXPLOITATION. If a man of another faith wants to marry a woman and demands her conversion in exchange for his own promise to work for her, no woman would hesitate for a moment

[this sentence describes one of my favorite, amusing observations: the inferences, concerning women and religion and marriage]."

[99-100] [End of chapter: "Manipulation Through Bluff" [see #2, 31, 184.]].

PAGE 1485

from: NPR [National Public Radio], January 7, 2001, Hour 2, transcript.

'LIANE HANSEN, host:

Pope John Paul II [Pope 1978 - (1920 - )] marked a milestone of his papacy yesterday. He solemnly closed the Jubilee Year that ushered in the third millennium of Christianity. The Jubilee, or Holy Year, was filled with thousands of events, spectacular liturgies and visits to Rome by millions of pilgrims. Pope John Paul himself made his own long-awaited pilgrimage to the Holy Land. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli has followed many of those events and now joins us from Rome to review the Jubilee Year.

Good morning, Sylvia.

SYLVIA POGGIOLI reporting:

Good morning, Liane.

HANSEN: Give us a sense of the scope of events that have gone on this past year.

POGGIOLI: The Vatican says that 25 million pilgrims, or 2.5 percent of the world's one billion Catholics, came o Rome. It was one big, huge media spectacle. Four hundred Jubilee hours were broadcast to the world on TV. That's an average of more than one hour of coverage a day. There were more than 3,000 events. There were theme pilgrimages based on professions, age groups or social conditions. It would have made Chaucer, the chronicler of pilgrim [also, pilgrimage], ecstatic. You had days for politicians, for entertainers, for prison inmates and even pizza makers. The biggest event of all was in August when two million young cheering Catholics descended on Rome for Youth Day. So the Jubilee offered basically a great platform for the Catholic Church to reinvigorate the faithful and promote its position on numerous social issues.

HANSEN: When John Paul was elected [Pope] in 1978, one of his fellow cardinals, a Pole, said to him, 'God has chosen you to lead the church into the next millennium.' You mentioned a platform for issues. What were some of the issues that the pope actually focused on during the Jubilee Year?

PAGE 1490

POGGIOLI: The main issues were spiritual[?]--topics like forgiveness and reconciliation. One of the most important events was the Day [convenient!] of Atonement, when the pope issued a document acknowledging past sins and errors committed by the sons and daughters of the church. It was an unprecedented apology for sins such as the church's treatment of Jews and the use of violence in forced conversions [for examples: intimidation, torture, death, the Inquisitions!]. And in a memorable moment DURING THE SOLEMN MASS, THE POPE EMBRACED A WOODEN STATUE OF CHRIST CRUCIFIED AND UTTERED THE MEA CULPA FIVE TIMES. The pope left another very powerful image when he VISITED THE WESTERN WALL IN JERUSALEM last March when he stretched out his trembling hand and PLACED A COPY OF THE CHURCH APOLOGY IN A CRACK OF THE WALL. It reminded me of the image of Adam stretching out his hand to God in Michelangelo's frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceilings.

HANSEN: Those are some of the high points, but this Jubilee Year was not without moments of controversy. Well, what were some of those?

POGGIOLI: Well, there were quite a few. One of the events that drew strong criticism in Italy and abroad was the beautification of Pius IX [Pope 1846 - 1878 (1792 - 1878)]. Pius reigned in the first half of the 19th century. He was the one who created the dogma of papal infallibility. He was the last pope to enact the death penalty. And he approved the kidnapping of a Jewish boy who had been secretly baptized, not exactly an inspiring role model for contemporary Catholics.

Another incident occurred just a few weeks ago when violent clashes broke out in Rome between police and demonstrators. They were protesting the pope's meeting in the Vatican with the Austrian ultra-national Joerg Haider, who is anti-immigrant and has often praised the policies of the Nazis.

Then there was the event that angered the Vatican, the weeklong gay pride festivities last summer when tens of thousands of gays came to Rome from all over the world. The Vatican unsuccessfully tried to pressure the Italian government to cancel or postpone the event, which the pope called an affront to Holy Year. Now that reaction provoked countercriticism that the Vatican is insensitive to civil rights issues.

HANSEN: Interfaith dialogue was also a goal for the pontiff this Jubilee Year. Did it go well?

POGGIOLI: Not well. The pope had hoped to visit Russia this year, and in the Apostolic Letter he issued yesterday, he voiced disappointment that he was unable to repair the 1,000-year-old schism with the Orthodox Church. Relations with other religions actually worsened after another key document was issues [issued]:

PAGE 1491

THE LORD JESUS DOCUMENT. IT ASSERTED THE PRIMACY OF CATHOLICISM OVER ALL OTHER RELIGIONS AND CLAIMED THAT SALVATION IS POSSIBLE ONLY THROUGH THE CATHOLIC FAITH. [see: JESUS SLAVE SHIP, 1135]

[see Addition 30, 1338]

Now this angered Protestants in particular but also the Orthodox ["Orthodox Church"] and Jews who in protest boycotted some interfaith meetings. In fact, several critics say the Jubilee ["Jubilee Year"] inspired too much CATHOLIC TRIUMPHALISM and that the church is arrogantly trying to wage influence in politics. And the Vatican had other setbacks: John Paul's appeal to world governments to cancel all Third World debt and pass a sweeping amnesty for prisoners were more or less ignored.

HANSEN: How did the pope fare? There's been a lot of speculation certainly this past week about his health, that he suffers from Parkinson's disease. He had a pretty grueling schedule during the year.

POGGIOLI: Well, there were some days he looked so bad it was hard to believe he could get through the ceremony, but then there were days when he appeared tremendously invigorated. This happened a lot during the trip to the Holy Land and especially on Youth Day in Rome in August when he appeared 10 years younger. Yesterday, he sounded quite forceful and he ruled out rumors that he might step down. He said he has no plans to take a rest.

HANSEN: NRP's Sylvia Poggioli in Rome. Thank you, Sylvia.

POGGIOLI: Thank you, Liane.'

PAGE 1492

from: The American Rationalist, The Alternative to Superstition and Nonsense, September/October 1999. [reproduced, thanks to a letter of encouragement from the author (Bernard Katz)].

'Commentaries by Bernard Katz

One of the important questions people ask me when I give lectures on the Bible is what's going on in the so-called New Age religions. A few of the lectures I give deal with the history of the Bible; the question of whether archeology "proves the Bible"; the Bible, magic and science; the Higher Criticism; God incarnated into an animal; astrology and the Bible; Gnosticism and the Christian Bible; the anti-Semitic passages in the Christian Bible; temple prostitution; homosexuality; circumcision; the Virgin Birth; and Jesus Christ and his sexual proclivities. By the time I get done I've more than tickled the class's curiosity about other religious byways. Thus, the questions about New Age religion.

The New Age implies an older age, and of course there were many religions in each of the previous ages. As each age flowed from a previous one into the newer one, religions were not created from scratch, but took on many of the trappings of the mother religions from which they were born. You could say that every new religion started out as a cult, some dying in infancy, while others becoming main stream denominations. Judaism, for instance, incorporated many of the pagan elements it found in the cultures in which it lived. Thus, a good bit of Canaanite and Babylonian religious strands were absorbed. Christianity and Islam are also bastardized religions, the former ["CHRISTIANITY"] SWALLOWING HUGE AMOUNTS OF GREEK PAGANISM WITH ITS JUDAISM, and the latter assimilating parts of Judaism and Christianity as well as the paganism it found in its midst as Mohammed was putting his religion together.

It must seem strange indeed to see that

THIS WHOLE PROCESS OF RELIGIOUS BUILDING IS NOTHING MORE THAN THE ACCRETION OF EARLY PAGANISM INTO NEWER VERSIONS [see #6, 166 (Newer Paganism)], AND THAT THESE IN TURN BECOME FOUNDATIONS FOR EVEN NEWER VERSIONS, AND SO ON AD INFINITUM.

This can be traced in all ages: primitive animism, shamanism, the Hellenistic period, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Rosicrucians, the Reformation and Protestantism, the eighteenth century and Deism, Spiritualism and the nineteenth century, Theosophy, New Thought, and the imports from the East like Zen and Buddhism.

PAGE 1493

It should be noted that Eastern religious elements found their way into the West much earlier than you would suspect via the Greek philosopher, mystic and mathematician Pythagoras (c. 582-507 BCE); the Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 BCE); the conquests of Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE); and later religious delegations to mainland Greece and to the cultural metropolis Alexandria, Egypt--these sent by King Asoka of India (c.273-232 BCE); plus the establishment of trading stations all over the known world by Jewish merchants who brought their religion with them.

We can see this same process in the New Age: the borrowing, the modification, the creative theological spins put on interpretation. One of the reasons the New Age is hard to pinpoint is that these religions are, like the predecessors, large mixtures of Eastern and Western religious motifs, plus a sprinkling of far-out "scientific" concepts. This is what is called "syncretism" in official parlance, and all religions demonstrate this principle of mongrelization.

Some of the new vessels for old religious wine can be found in groups whose goals are to enlighten us with ancient wisdom. The Theosophical Society of America, the Full Moon Meditation Groups, Anthroposophy, Rosicrucianism, Modern Gnosticism, The "I Am" Activity, The Church Universal and Triumphant, and The Liberal Catholic Church.

Another slice of the New Age deals with "the descent of the mighty ones." Here we run into Spiritualism and UFO believers. To understand this genre better, you can turn to The Spiritual Churches, Understanding, Inc., Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America, and The Aetherius Society.

Another facet is the initiatory groups: Gurdjieff Groups, Scientology, and the Builders of Adytum.

Then we find the rebirth of paganism in such outfits as Feraferia, Wicca, The Moon Birch Grove, Native American Spirituality Revived, The Dreamweavers, Ceremonial Magic, The O.T.A., Ordo Templi Astartes, and Satanism.

Then we see the flow from the East in such groups as The Ramakrishna Mission and Vedanta Societies, The Self-Realization Fellowship, The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation Movement, Yoga in America, The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), Rajneesh International Foundation, The Satya Sai Baba Movement, The Lovers of Meher Baba, Eckankar, Western Zen, Tibetan Buddhism in America, Nichiren Shoshu Academy, The Baha'i Faith, Subud, and The Unification Church.

There are also religious movements using a sociological and psychological approach such as The Black Muslims (American Muslim Mission) and The People's Temple.

This is quite a display of religious fireworks, isn't it? Investigators have discovered that even though attendance at mainline churches have decreased for many years, the growth of New Age religions has been on the rise.

What are we to make of this, especially in the midst of prosperity?

There seems to be a sociological principle at work here: The more wealth, the higher standard of living until that appetite is satisfied. This is turn leads to the search for the satisfaction of our inner realm, or what we identify as the spiritual side of man. Hence the multiplication, the fervent grasping for the straws of spirituality, the magnetism of these cults.

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So what's wrong [with] this spiritual quest after "knowledge?"

Plenty!

Every criticism leveled at our more traditional religions can be applied here.

> There is no secret wisdom, no special revelations from on high, nothing more than man-made creations and fictions.

> There are no esoteric formulas and magical rituals designed to elevate our inner selves.

> There is nothing but ourselves, no para-normal, no meta-physics, no super-natural.

> There are no special emissaries sent from the spiritual world to guide us, and no earthly representatives of that other world.

> There is no God, no Supreme Deity, no Absolute Being, no The Holy, no the All Knowing, no Almighty, no the All Wise, no Ancient of Days, no Brahma, no Creator, no Divinity, no Eternal, no Father, no Holy Spirit, no Godhead, no Infinite, no King of Kings, no Lord of Lords, no Supreme Soul, no Omnipotent Being, no Varuna, no World Spirit, no Yahweh. Whatever you call it, there is nothing outside of ourselves.

> There is a definite loss of talent, energy, helpfulness and money in working toward the solution of our urgent problems.

> There is a proclivity to credulity, to swallow mythology and magic as reality, to open the door to things that go bump in the night, to denigrate science and technology, to substitute the wishful thinking of divine revelation for the hard frustrating work but highly beneficial results of science and technology.

Since the 1960s the once dominant Protestant ethos has been broken. The multiplication of religions encouraged and protected under our Constitution for most of our history has prevented the usual bloodshed done by competing religions. But now we are reaping the whirlwind of this policy of pluralism: the division brought about by too many alleged centers of spirituality and their attempts to divert attention from one of the few areas capable of solving our massive problems--science and technology.

A powerful searchlight must be turned on these spiritual absurdities so everyone can see what the bright light exposes.' [3-4] [End of article].

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