Intellect and Faith.
A religion which imagined that it was the repository of a full and final revelation, that it possessed the keys of the invisible world, and which regarded every doubt as a heresy born of the devil, naturally became in practice a vast machine for persecution. When mental activity was thus a crime, and any attempt to increase knowledge an act of rebellion against God, it was clear that human progress was brought to a standstill. No one can tell what progress would have been made had the Inquisition not existed; that it kept Europe for hundreds of years in mental torpor, and did what it could to make the reign of stupidity eternal, does not admit of question. What the magnificent brain of Roger Bacon could have achieved is matter for speculation. It has been disputed, but seems to be true, that he was imprisoned for his advanced opinions, and died a captive; but, however that may be, it is certain that the Church succeeded in preventing mankind from benefiting by his researches. Anything like modern Freethought was out of the question, but distinct approaches to it were made in the twelfth century by Averrhoes, whose particular tenets were that matter is uncreated and eternal, that the soul dies with the body, only collective humanity being immortal, and that all religions are of human origin and, though useful incentives to virtue, contain only relative truth. These doctrines, which were looked upon as deadly heresies, surprisingly anticipate some of the speculations of our own times. It is remarkable that under the rigorous conditions which prevailed Averrhoism should have spread so rapidly as it did, but it could have been only among the scholarly few; and in the thirteenth century, which was in certain respects more advanced than the fifteenth, these opinions made some slight impression on the popular mind. Had the impression been deeper, the results might have been in some respects more disastrous. The general ignorance was so great that a premature abandonment of the orthodox faith might have been made the occasion of even more flagrant moral licence than actually existed, and so have strengthened the hands of the persecutors. A system which held all religions to be untrue, especially the religion of the Christians, who daily ate their God, would naturally enough be thought to emanate from the bottomless pit, and it is an astonishing circumstance that for a long time the Inquisition left Averrhoism alone. Herman of Ryswick, the most famous successor of Peter of Abano, after being sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, continued to propagate his errors, and in 1512 was burnt at the Hague by order of the Inquisition. It is evident that at times considerable freedom of speech existed, or Laurentius Valla would scarcely have been able, in the middle of the fifteenth century, to assail the “Donation of Constantine,â€� or to declare that the Papacy should be deprived of its temporal power. Valla got off cheaply by a simple declaration that he believed as Mother Church believed, though Mother Church, he added, knew nothing about it. Ultimately this restless disputant obtained a clerical sinecure in Rome, and died in peace. Several other unbelievers escaped the customary doom of mental independence. It is one of the anomalies of ecclesiastical history prior to the Reformation that, while the most trifling variations from orthodoxy were relentlessly crushed, a philosophical humanism hardly distinguishable from downright Atheism was fashionable among the intellectual classes, even those in clerical orders, and frequently went unpunished. The writings of the famous Raymond Lully—perhaps the most voluminous author on record, for he is credited with 321 volumes—brought him into conflict with the Inquisition; and long after his death in 1315 Eymeric, the Inquisitor of Aragon, sought to have his memory condemned. This was partially done in 1620, though the main object of Lully had been to suppress the heresy of Averrhoism, and many miracles wrought by his remains had evidenced his saintliness. Not many figures of the Middle Ages have had the doubtful honour of being both heretic and saint.
In 1331 Pope John XXII had imprisoned an English priest who maintained that the saints after death are at once admitted to the presence of God. This doctrine, known as the “Beatific Vision,� had aroused the Pope’s anger, but he was subsequently compelled by the strength of the general opinion in its favour to accept it, after a controversy which nearly cost him his tiara. Years of bitter dispute ensued on a subject about which no human being knew anything whatever, and it even became a question of grave political consequence, for the monarchs of the time ventured to differ from the Papal opinion. The Inquisition espoused the popular view, and made questions on the subject an important part of the interrogatories addressed to the unlucky persons brought before its tribunals.
About the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, a purely dogmatic development, a further mass of superstition spread, and gave rise to bitter controversies, the Franciscans and Dominicans quarrelling so fiercely that in 1482 popular tumults broke out in Italy on this mysterious topic, of which everybody was supposed to know something. The theory that the Virgin Mary never from the moment of her conception shared the sinful tendencies of ordinary mortals was something of a novelty, and the Dominicans who rejected it had tradition in their favour, but they were overborne by the increasing power of the new superstition. An Italian priest who in 1504 maintained that Christ was conceived in the Virgin’s heart was seized by the Inquisition, and had a narrow escape from death by fire. A special appearance of the Virgin herself, who expressed her annoyance at the doctrine, caused an immense sensation until it was discovered that the manifestation was a trick got up by the Dominicans, and four of the culprits were burnt. Not until 1854, after five centuries of struggle, was the doctrine officially proclaimed as a formal act of faith, when the Dominicans obediently began to find reasons in its favour. It would seem to be a logical sequence that the reputed father of the Virgin was no more concerned in her birth than Joseph was supposed to be in that of Jesus, but for maintaining this thesis a man was condemned so recently as 1876.