Trivia and Quotes
Trivia
(gdpit.com)
 It was a reign of terror that would endure for more than 600 years. At the dawn of the second millennium, the Roman Catholic Church reigned supreme throughout the kingdoms of Europe. But by the 13th century, emerging Christian sects like the Cathars were challenging the Pope`s authority. To counter their influence, the Church unleashed a new weapon: the Inquisition. This $3-million-plus international co-production was filmed in High Definition on location in Italy, France and Spain. It was produced and directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Rabinovitch, and features narration by actor Colm Feore (`Trudeau`). Said Alberta Nokes, VisionTV`s Director of Independent Production: “ `Secret Files of the Inquisition` is one of the biggest and most ambitious productions with which our network has ever had the privilege to be associated. It is a dramatic examination of religious intolerance and the drive to crush dissent and independent thought – historical themes that also have great resonance for us in the here and now.” Established by Pope Gregory IX in 1233, the Inquisition was charged with enforcing Catholic orthodoxy and stamping out heresy. Inquisitors pursued their mission with a vengeance, subjecting countless thousands across Europe to arrest, torture, secret trial and public execution. They also bureaucratized the business of terror, writing manuals on torture and keeping meticulously detailed files on their activities for centuries. Some scholars say the Inquisition exists to this day, in the form of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office that was headed until recently by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – now Pope Benedict XVI. For centuries, the Church kept the records of the Inquisition under lock and key. But in 1998, the Vatican opened the archives to scholars for the first time – on a limited basis. Drawing on these documents and on historical research, the Secret Files series tells its tale through painstakingly detailed recreations of pivotal events – from the Inquisition`s all-out war on the Cathars in 13th- and 14th-century France, to its last determined effort to maintain power in the face of the 19th-century`s rising democratic tide. The four-part series is at once epic and intimate, focusing attention on compelling characters in this 600-year drama , from the ruthless architects of the Inquisition to its helpless victims. Each episode features first-person testimonies taken directly from the files: verbatim accounts from nobles and peasants alike, as they defend themselves and often their families against accusations of heresy – literally arguing for their lives. The Secret Files series also includes insights from some of the world`s foremost experts on the Inquisition, including Medieval scholar David Gitlitz , historian Stephen Haliczer , novelist Charmaine Craig , acclaimed author of `The Good Men` , which was inspired by historical accounts of the Inquisition, historian David Kertzer , author of `Prisoner of the Vatican` and `The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara` , and theologian Rev. Joseph A. Di Noia , the Vatican undersecretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. `Secret Files of the Inquisition` was produced by Inquisition Productions in association with VisionTV, France5, Insight, New Atlantis and Beyond International. David Rabinovitch is Executive Producer, and Kirk Shaw is Co-Executive Producer. The four-part series was written by David Rabinovitch, Colin King, Lauren Drewery and Michael Alcock. The production design is by award-winning feature film art director Gumersindo Andres (`The Monk`). `Secret Files of the Inquisition` – Creator David Rabinovitch David Rabinovitch is the creative force behind the four-part docudrama mini-series `Secret Files of the Inquisition`. As Executive Producer, he assembled the international consortium that backed the C$3.5-million project. And as filmmaker, he directed the series on location in Europe. David Rabinovitch, the producer/director of `Secret Files of the Inquisition`, has written an article about the "behind-the-scenes" and "making of ..." process for the Jan. 26 issue of the UK trade magazine Broadcast.Click here to read the article. Rabinovitch has three decades of film and television production experience in Canada and the U.S. He has produced for broadcasters such as CBC, CTV, Discovery Channel, TLC, A&E, The History Channel, PBS, FOX, NBC and CBS, and has created co-productions with international partners such as Carlton, TWI, NHK, France5, C4, FilmAustralia, Beyond International and Alliance Atlantis. Rabinovitch began his career with CBC-TV in Toronto, writing and producing programs such as `Take 30`,`Adrienne at Large` and `Hard Times`. After moving to Los Angeles in 1977, he produced the Emmy Award-winning magazine series `Here & Now` for CBS. In 1978, Rabinovitch created a documentary unit at San Francisco-based NBC affiliate KRON, where he produced `Shanghai Shadows` (1980), the first American documentary filmed in China. He later became a partner with Moving Images Production Group, a California-based company specializing in high-end documentaries. Rabinovitch has produced episodes for such series as `Frontline` (PBS), `Investigative Reports` (A&E) and `Ancient Mysteries` (A&E), and has contributed to the network magazine programs `Front Page` (FOX) and `Dateline NBC`. He was also Series Producer for the three-hour PBS mini-series `Crime & Punishment in America` , the hour-long documentary `Minidragons: Korea` (PBS) and the 26-part syndicated series `Hollywood Babylon` with Tony Curtis. From 2000-2003, Rabinovitch was Vice President for Production at KCTS/Seattle, one of the leading public television stations in the U.S. During his tenure, he oversaw productions such as `The Perilous Fight: America`s World War II – in Color `, `Perfect Illusions: Eating Disorders and the Family`,`Stranded Yanks` and `The Rohna Disaster`. Since leaving KCTS, he has represented Detroit Public Television as its National Production Consultant. As a producer, director and writer, Rabinovitch has received many honours, including two Emmy Awards, 4 CINE Golden Eagles, the Peabody Medal and the Gold Medal from the New York International Festivals. Rabinovitch also develops feature films and television movies based on true stories. From 1988-1990 he was an executive with Blum-Ganz Productions (Disney Studios), where he developed feature film projects and supervised writers.
`Secret Files of the Inquisition` – Episodes Note: All characters and their words are drawn directly from transcripts of the Inquisition. Root Out Heretics: The rise of the dissident Christian movement known as Catharism in southern France during the 13th century poses a growing threat to the power of the papacy. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX charges the Dominican Order with the task of wiping out heresy. It is the birth of the Inquisition. The Inquisitors ruthlessly hunt down the Cathars, turning those few who escaped their grasp into desperate fugitives. Finally, in 1308, they descend upon the remote French village of Montaillou, the last stronghold of the Cathars, and take the entire community prisoner. Years of interrogation and condemnation, suspicion and fear will follow. Among those caught in the terrifying grip of the Inquisition are Beatrice de Planisoles, a beautiful noblewoman, and village priest Pierre Clergue, her secret lover – and betrayer. The Tears of Spain: Until the late 14th century, Spain is a land where Christians, Jews and Muslims live together peacefully. But this will soon change. Attacks from Catholic zealots lead many Jews to convert in the name of self-preservation. But as these “conversos” prosper, emerging as a new urban middle class, they find themselves again the target of increasing resentment. Then, in 1478, the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella – who dream of uniting all Spain under the Catholic faith – pressure Pope Sixtus IV into launching the Spanish Inquisition. Under the merciless leadership of Dominican priest Tomas de Torquemada, the Inquisition zeroes in relentlessly on conversos, tearing the community asunder.
The Spanish Inquisition will become notorious for its cruel practices – in particular, the auto-da-fe (“act of faith”), a ritual of public penance whose punishments include burning at the stake.
This episode recalls some of those who fell victim to the Spanish Inquisition, like the respected judge Jaime de Montessa, and the young wife and mother Cinfa Cacavi. It also dramatizes the vicious reprisals that follow the assassination of one Inquisitor (dozens of alleged conspirators were burned alive), and re-enacts Torquemada`s horrifying final solution for the conversos: the expulsion of all Jews from Spain in 1492. The War on Ideas: Venice, in the early 1500s, is a major centre for trade, the publishing capital of Europe, and the conduit through which the teachings of dissident German monk Martin Luther make their way into Italy. In Rome, the decadence of the papal court fuels the fanaticism of Bishop Giovanni Carafa, who becomes obsessed with reforming the Church through the extermination of heretics. By 1542, he succeeds in convincing Pope Paul III to establish an Inquisition. In the years that follow, the Palace of the Inquisition will become Rome`s most feared address, while the growing climate of terror will stifle the free exchange of ideas in Venice. When Carafa himself becomes Pope Paul IV in 1555, the Inquisition emerges as the Church`s most powerful institution. Under Paul IV, its most notorious acts will include the targeting of Jews – who are stripped of their rights and property and forced into ghettos – and the issuing of a list of prohibited books, which will remain in place until 1966. This episode memorializes forgotten victims like Baldo Lupetino , the Franciscan friar who spends the last 14 years of his life in solitary confinement for teaching Protestant ideas, and Pomponio Algerio , the freethinking student who is boiled alive for his beliefs. It recalls also the wild celebrations that rock the streets of Rome when the hated Paul IV, architect of the Roman Inquisition, dies in 1559. The End of the Inquisition: Napoleon`s conquest of Europe and the spread of Enlightenment ideas mark the beginning of the end for the Inquisition. In 1808, Napoleonic forces occupy Madrid and abolish the Spanish Inquisition. The artist Goya depicts for the first time its cruelties, while an insider, Father Juan Antonio Llorente , publishes the first written history of the Inquisition, giving voice to its victims and severely damaging the reputation of the Church. By 1809, Napoleon strips the Pope of his authority and orders the Vatican archive shipped to Paris, hoping to use the contents to undermine and humiliate the Church. With Napoleon`s defeat in 1814, the Inquisition makes a resurgence – but its reign will be short-lived, as the rise of the Italian unification movement sees the Pope`s temporal kingdom steadily diminished. This episode chronicles events from the dying days of the Inquisition: the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara , a young Jewish boy, and his father Momolo`s long struggle to reclaim him from the Church. This strange case, which brings international condemnation, will mark one of the last times in 600 years that the Inquisition manages to exert its once-great power. Secret Files of the Inquisition – Narrator Colm Feore Colm Feore is one of Canada`s most versatile and respected actors. Born in Boston, he moved to Ottawa with his family at the age of three. He went on to attend the National Theatre School in Montreal and then joined the prestigious Stratford Theatre Festival, becoming Associate Director in 1981.
During his 13 seasons at Stratford, Feore played almost all of Shakespeare`s leading men, from Richard III to Iago, as well as characters from many other classic and contemporary plays. In 1993, Feore won acclaim for his performance in the lead role of the feature film `Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould`. Since then, he has made notable appearances in many films, including `Face/Off`, `City of Angels`, `The Red Violin`, `The Insider`, `Pearl Harbor`, `The Chronicles of Riddick and Chicago`.
On television, he has landed many roles, including guest spots on series such as `War of the Worlds`, `Due South`, `La Femme Nikita`, `The West Wing` and `Boston Public`. In 2002, he earned a Gemini Award for his performance as Canada`s most flamboyant and controversial Prime Minister in the CBC mini-series `Trudeau`.
Most recently, he has starred as Cassius opposite Denzel Washington in the Broadway production of Julius Caesar , played Caesar in the ABC mini-series Empire and appeared with Laura Linney in the hit feature film `The Exorcism of Emily Rose`.SECRET FILES OF THE INQUISITION Broadcast: On Location-
By David Rabinovitch, director, SECRET FILES OF THE INQUISITION.
Men and women are tied to stakes on platforms in the main plaza of a Spanish town. Facing them on a dais, an inquisitor in hooded robes condemns them. As the crowd jeers, guards with torches light the pyres.. We have stepped back in time more than 500 years, to 1484, and the awesome terror of the Spanish Inquisition. It is a day of hell, in high definition.
It is September 24, 2004, and we are on location in the remote 14 th century Spanish village of Maderuelo shooting scenes for the docudrama miniseries SECRET FILES OF THE INQUISITION. Based on original archival research, we have set out to re-create the personal stories of some of the victims of the Inquisition, set against the larger backdrop of history.
A Spanish actress is playing one of those victims – a woman named Cinfa Cacavi who has been charged with heresy for continuing to observe Jewish customs after she is baptized. She has been tortured to obtain her confession, and now – we are back on the day of hell set – we are filming her inserts, her reactions as she is forced to watch her husband being consumed by the flames. The intensity of the moment is enhanced by the authenticity of the setting. The location where we have built our set for this dark pageant had been the site of similar ceremonies. Everything is true. Of course, no one will be burned here. We are shooting through a flame bar. The fire marshals will shut down the set when the wind comes up.
I found Cinfa Cacavi`s story in the municipal archive of Zaragossa, Spain. Since the Inquisition was a legal procedure, every interrogation was transcribed by notaries. There are said to be more than 85,000 files of the Spanish Inquisition still in existence – some, like Cinfa`s, more than 500 years old. Under a green glass desk lamp, I turn the pages of the centuries-old parchment-bound book, scanning the beautiful calligraphy that will reveal Cinfa`s haunting story. When we have her file translated, we will learn every detail of her life, in her own words.
Historical documents like the transcript of Cinfa Cacavi provide the original characters for the series. Every word spoken in the characters` voices comes from their transcripts. (Later, in post-producton, we will work with a very talented group of voice actors, reading from inquisition transcripts and other documents.) As we shoot, I am inspired by the idea that we are honoring the tragic memories of these victims of the inquisition by bringing them to life, on film. Some of their voices speak across more than seven centuries.
The series has an epic sweep - episode one is set in medieval France, episode two in Spain during the late middle ages, episode three in renaissance Italy, and episode four across all three countries during the 19 th century. Locations in Spain will stand in for locations in France and Italy.
The company will grow to more than fifty crew members. We cast more than 40 principal roles, hundreds of extras, horses, sheep, dogs, and pigs. The crowd scenes are populated by local villagers whose reactions to scenes like the day of hell bring a natural emotion to their sun-etched faces. Many of the non-professionals will turn in powerful performances – the limping villager who plays the head of the heretic family in episode one, the student from Cordoba who plays the Venetian Inquisitor in episode three, the Spanish production accountant who, upon donning Dominican robes, announced that he had become the Inquisitor of Bologna, or the boy chosen from a monastery school who portrays Edgardo Mortara in episode four.
Film pioneer John Grierson once said that documentary is the creative re-arrangement of reality. Docudrama combines the documentary sensibility for realism and impromptu human moments with the craft and invention of drama. We shoot with two hi-def cameras. Behind the A camera is Pieter Stathis, a young lighting cameraman with experience in Canadian feature films. Behind the B camera is Tim Metzger, a seasoned documentary cinematographer. Their complementary styles become the cinematic expression of docu+drama - interpretive lighting on the master shots from Pieter, up-close-and-natural angles from Tim. As the schedule is tight, we take to shooting the rehearsals. Tim rarely takes his eye from the viewfinder or his finger off the trigger, capturing many stolen moments that will help us incredibly when we come to editing – another exploration of the docu+drama approach.
Our search for authentic locations takes us across Spain, from the thousand year old castle of Calatrava, where all of the gear must be hiked up to the pinnacle of a mountain fortress, to Moorish palaces in the south and the sixteenth century monastery at Ucles, which we rent for a week. The only location impossible to duplicate is Venice during the Renaissance. As it is far too expensive to shoot in modern Venice, the establishing shots are ultimately portrayed through a CGI treatment of paintings by Canaletto.
In addition to my directing responsibilities, I am also the executive producer. Through years of negotiation the series has assembled the backing of an international group including broadcasters from Canada (VisionTV) and France (FR5), an Australian distributor (Beyond), and production partners in Spain (New Atlantis) and Canada (Insight. The crew includes Canadians, Spanish, Bulgarian, Argentinian, Chilean, Australian, French.
The production is financed in multiple currencies – and the exchange rates become our enemy. When the production was budgeted, the euro bought only 90 cents U.S. At the start of pre-production the euro has risen to $1.20. The falling dollar against the rising Euro will result in hundreds of thousands of (pick your currency) vanishing like smoke from special effects. After two weeks of shooting we are in danger of shutting down.
On a cool October evening, after an exhausting 12 hours of shooting, I am leaning over a parapet of a fourteenth-century fortification, holding my mobile phone in the only spot where I can manage faint reception. Across a nine-hour time difference, I am talking to Marty Thompson, our lawyer in Vancouver, trying to get a bank loan approved. We have 36 hours to transfer funds so that we can carry on. We spend the weekend cutting scenes, slashing whole story lines, to bring the production in line with the new reality of the rapidly changing global economy. Finally, Marty comes through. More important, so does the bank loan. We pare down the crew – and keep shooting.
After a hundred days in Spain, we are shooting the final scene. We are at a decrepit former monastery called Talamanca. The crew is shivering with cold, and rats are running through the centuries-old rafters. The designers have dressed an elbow set (a corner) to represent the medical amphitheatre at the University of Padua in 1547. It has to match the reactions of our student characters, shot on a stairwell in a palazzo in Cordoba a month earlier. I have promised the crew that I will play the corpse on the table being dissected. But I have had a terrible flu for a week, it`s too cold, and I am too ill. The extras coordinator is the only body available – he`ll play the corpse. We get the shot. It`s time to go home. We have survived the inquisition.
November, 2005. A year later, SECRET FILES OF THE INQUISITION is edited, scored, mixed, and ready for its premiere on VisionTV..Broadcast: On Location
(visiontv.ca)
Conversos and the Spanish Inquisition-
By David M. Gitlitz,
University of Rhode Island
(edited from an interview by David Rabinovitch).
The End of Tolerance:
Spain had an enormous Jewish community in the middle ages and toward the end of the 14th century large numbers of
them were converted to Catholicism. A “converso” is literally someone who was formerly Jewish and is now Catholic.
They converted for all kinds of reasons. Some of them were forced; some of them went willingly into Catholicism. The
term converso was applied not only to the generation that converted but also to their children and their grandchildren and
on down through the generations.
In 1391 there were terrible riots sweeping across southern Spain. People were offered the choice of converting or being
killed. Some 20,000 converted under those circumstances. They had no intention of becoming Catholic. They were not
educated in Catholicism and they went on living their Jewish lives as they wanted. Twenty years later there were a series
of preaching campaigns run by the Dominicans, which converted many tens of thousands of Jews, largely by persuasion.
These people were interested in becoming Catholic, of joining the mainstream Catholic society, and they were given open
access to jobs and to possibilities that they’d never had before. By the time the Inquisition was founded, a couple of generations
later, there were the children and grandchildren of people who had been converted with no intention of becoming
Catholics and others who had, who were the grandchildren of people who were trying very hard to put their Jewish
past behind them - all of them in extended families with people who were still Jewish. They attended Bar Mitzvahs, they
attended circumcisions, they attended Easter holiday processions and these different groups co-mingled in ways that were
very complex in Spain.
Why they converted:
One of the things that encouraged people to convert was the fact that, as Christians, they would have access to parts of
society which had previously been denied to them. By the 1450’s, the converts had become the new urban middle class.
They were dominant in business. The «old Christians» were folks who had been Christian for many generations and the
«new Christians» were the recent converts. The Spaniards felt it was important to make the distinction difference between
old Christians and new Christians, because they were afraid that the new Christians were taking over certain key middle
class positions in society and that troubled them greatly.
Some people converted because they had swords to their throats and they had a choice of converting or dying. Others
were offered the opportunity of social mobility or economic mobility. Many converted because they fell in love with
someone who was Catholic and the only way they could marry them was to convert to Catholicism, there were dozens and
dozens of those. Many people bought the argument of the Dominican preachers who said, believe in a God who is all powerful
and all knowing and is just. All you had to do was look at the soaring cathedrals and the squalid Jewish synagogues
to know that while God once favored the Jews he had changed sides. Many of the converts joined the Church as monks,
as priests, some of them rose to positions of great power. Some of them even became Inquisitors because they believed in
their heart of hearts that Christianity was now the true religion.
The consequences:
The effort to convert people was designed by the Church to promote unity but the society was not willing to accept this
and certain groups within the church were not willing to accept it either. They were not willing to accept the converts as
fully equally participating Christians and, increasingly, barriers were erected to try to keep them separate. Rather than
decreasing the number of categories in society it actually increased them over the long haul and produced incredible tensions.
The Spaniards officially tried to get the converts to assimilate. They passed laws prohibiting them from following their
former Jewish customs or from fraternizing with their former Jewish friends and relatives but there was no enforcement
mechanism and those laws had very little effect. They tried separating the Jewish community from the convert community
by ghettoizing the cities for the first time in serious forced ways and that didn’t do succeed either. They expelled the
Jews from cities like Seville to try to isolate the converso community from contact with the Jews and that didn’t promote
assimilation either. Increasingly there were voices that said we need an enforcement mechanism, a policing mechanism to
ensure that the converts don’t continue to identify as Jews and to practice as Jews and the only way to do that is to separate
them from the Jews and to punish them or coerce them from continuing their Jewish practices in any way.
The Spanish Inquisition officially had no jurisdiction over Jews. It only had jurisdiction over Catholics. Once a Jew had
converted and accepted the waters of baptism then they were officially Catholic and it was the job of the Church to ensure
that they were fully believing, fully practicing Catholics and that they shed their Jewish beliefs and customs. The Inquisition
was focused on that.
David M. Gitlitz
David M. Gitlitz is a writer, former provost and currently Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Rhode Island.
David Gitlitz holds a B.A and Ph.D. from Harvard University. He divides his time among research on three broad
areas: the Golden Age of Spanish literature, Spanish-Jewish history, and pilgrimages. He has authored or co-authored
several books on Hispanic literature, Sephardic history, and pilgrimage, including:
`Secrecy And Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews`: Culled from Inquisition documents, David Gitlitz documents the
religious customs of the Iberian Jews who converted to Catholicism, largely under duress, in the 14th and 15th centuries
in Spain, Portugal, and their American colonies.
`A Drizzle Of Honey: an Inquisition cook-book`: Forced to convert to Catholicism during the Inquisition, many Jews in
Spain kept alive their culture and identity in secret. Their food traditions have been re-created in these recipes, which
are mingled with stories about the people who created them. Conversos and the Spanish Inquisition
(pbs.org)
Decoding the Inquisition-
Think Da Vinci`s was difficult? Spellbinding TV series gets helping hand from an inside source: the Vatican
May 03, 2007 - Michael Elkin, Arts & Entertainment Editor
"Secret Files" gives a heads up to the horror of a 600-year moral schism.
Torture and Torquemada crossed paths and pathology with the Catholic Church on the ruinous road to the Inquisition as the Spanish steps toward ethnic cleansing sent non-Catholics careening into a tailspin of fiery 15th-century moral turpitude.
It is no secret that the Spanish Inquisition`s inequities inveighed against its Jews, forced to convert or be condemned by a church hell-bent on hewing to an unconscionable moral code that tore Torah from its roots and offered Jews a catechism of catastrophe.
What is surprising is how seemingly interminable the Inquisition proved to be, lasting 600 years and encompassing enough countries to form a United Nations of neglect and noxiousness that cross-cut the world, to this day recovering from the scars of its stigmata.
"Secret Files of the Inquisition" is a revelation, a riveting open-book look at material declassified by the Vatican in 1998; it is a poetic justice of an answer to the question of what man has made of man some 700 years after the horrors began.
PBS`s multimillion dollar mini-series of four episodes over two weeks beginning on Wednesday, May 9, at 9 p.m., on WHYY-TV12, is all about four-part disharmony that overtook humankind in its crusade to crucify and theologically castrate the catholic community dogged by the Catholic Church for not adhering to its dogma.
No better time than the new millennium to examine why the old one left a legacy of a million questions unanswered, until now.
Leading the charge of this anything-but-light brigade which spent three years of principal shooting in Spain, is David Rabinovitch, a Jewish Indiana Jones-type who made his jones over the years as an investigative journalist, film producer and director, collecting a cache of acclaim and awards.
But this accomplishment tops the collection as Rabinovitch and PBS pry open the past filled with parchment papers of protests and pleas by those stampeded into dirt and damnation by the Inquisitors.
Continuing May 16, "Secret Files" secretes and oozes fascinating historical fillips, with wonks wide-eyed over how much was not known about seven-centuries of evil empirical data that now, revealed, deciphers and codifies countries` acts of inhumanity.
Even for those already conversant with conversos, engaged with the era`s ethos, there are shocks and awes amid the archives. Surprises? "The whole thing was surprising," reveals Rabinovitch, whose raid of the lost story arc was facilitated by the Vatican as Pope John Paul II offered an invitation to be a party to history.
Rabinovitch`s RSVP was fast and focused as he brought to the party a guest list of noted scholars and experts who could handle the truths -- as well as ancient papers -- awaiting them.
"Six hundred years of history? I said, there`s got to be a story there!"
He filed in along with the others for a firsthand look at the files, manuscripts illuminated with social ills and decrees that decimated peoples, as well as archival anecdotal evidence that bias is a longstanding by-product of human nature.
Not that Rabinovitch was without a sense of humor on this serious task. "I had few assumptions of what I was going to discover. I hate to admit it, but most of what I knew about the era was colored by Monty Python and Mel Brooks," he chuckles.
But this was no Tin Pan Alley toast to "The Inquisition" as imagined by the lovingly lunatic Brooks; the evidence instead sang as a lament of lunacy, a jeremiad of Jewish suffering and evil against many peoples.
"Once we started digging in, we saw how more deep, pervasive it was -- and how it took on different forms in different countries."
But the library pass to the past that was the Vatican invitation didn`t come unrestricted. Limitation: Only two parchments allowed to circulate at one time? Hardly.
"Just because the Vatican gave access doesn`t mean you can just walk in and use it like a library," says the filmmaker.
A Jewish father writes to the Vatican to reclaim his absconded son.
And it`s one thing for readers to do so silently, but what happens when the books speak a different language that shouts of unfamiliarity and frustration?
"Most of the official documents are in Latin with transcripts in medieval languages," says Rabinovitch.
Lost in translation? But not lost as to what to do. The team conscripted translators to take the past at its word.
"But where do you begin?" reasoned Rabinovitch of an ever-shifting starting point. "What is in the Vatican is not the entire record of the Inquisition; for that, we would have to go to many other sources. Spain alone had more than 85,000 [files] recorded" that bore examination. "It would take a huge team and a century to go after and over it all."
But the numbers were in his favor: "There are 24 scholars who really know about the Inquisition worldwide; eight were our consultants."
God was in the details; godlessness even more so. And yet, Torquemada, arguably the best-known of the Spanish Inquisitors with a torque-drive to destroy Jews, is left on the rack here, mentioned more or less in passing.
"As a filmmaker and storyteller," says Rabinovitch, "I made a storytelling decision, to confine each episode to as small a locality as possible."
Torquemada had torn his page out of history already. "We felt his story was already well-known and documented."
But those tales that needed to be recounted went far beyond the mensch of La Mancha, where quixotic fates awaited those not of the Catholic faith.
The solitary life awaited victims of the Inquisition.
Medieval Venice was rooted in an evil canal of cabals. But its Inquisition involvement was not as much faith-based, according to Rabinovitch, as it was focused on the political system, where "it was a struggle between the papacy and the domination of the the Italian peninsula. Venice was an autonomous state, and we illustrate how Venetians would stand up [against the pope] for their rights. We don`t deal with any case [against the] Jews."
Indeed, the "creation of the Inquisition in Italy was a response to the Reformation."
History could stand some reformation in one aspect: "One of the major misconceptions about the Inquisition," says Rabinovitch, "is that it was only about the Church and the Jews."
Go tell it on the mountain of revealed evidence that it also encompassed the Muslims and the Protestants.
There are also enough unlikely historical heroes to warrant a TV series of their own. Napoleon`s complex characterization here shows he had a hand in more than his vest.
"The story of Napoleon`s relationship with the Church and Jews is an amazing one," says Rabinovitch, as the Little Emperor stood tall against the Inquisitors when he and his troops occupied Madrid in 1809.
In essence, says the filmmaker, Napoleon defanged and destroyed the movement, metaphorically ripping off the pope`s epaulets and eviscerating his power. Even after Napoleon`s defeat five years later, the Inquisition had been effectively interred in Spain.
"There is even a Hebrew prayer written in honor of Napoleon," says Rabinovitch.
If Rabinovitch has a prayer himself, it is in the purpose behind doing this searing documentary in the first place. "Turning 500-year-old documents over in my hands ... I knew I had an obligation to these victims, to let their voices speak."
And they do so eloquently through the efforts of some 600 extras and 40 principals, many of them acting for the first time. Perhaps their most challenging role was in coming to terms with what a Jew actually was.
"It`s safe to say that 95 percent of those in Spain had never seen a Jew," says Rabinovitch.
They probably will now. "Many places there are beginning to capitalize on this history," with tourist attractions being created or unpacked from the past. There is one site, 60 miles from Barcelona, reveals the documentarian, where "they`ve restored a synagogue as a museum."
Since the Jews were expelled in 1492, left to fall flat on their faces off the edge of the earth even as Spain`s potentates empowered Columbus to find a brave new world for Catholics, cleaning house -- especially this house of worship -- must have been a major affair involving more than brooms and dust pans.
But the sweep of history is apparent throughout the series and the lessons vast and voluminous, befitting a project about the historical misfits who were the victims of the Inquisition. "We want people to look at this dark history and say, `How do we learn from all this?` "
Unquestionably, he has learned much himself, says Rabinovitch, of the limitations imposed by the impossible time period tackled in "Secret Files." "This thing is so big that one of my regrets is not being able to make more than just a reference to the Inquisition`s forces used against the Muslim population," he allows.
Sequel? A non-Brooks "History of the World: Part Two" that brooks the hardships and hate endured by other groups as well? "We`re sketching ideas," he says.
But before a continuation -- and this current series concludes with a gasp-inducing indictment of the Inquisitors shown kidnapping a Jewish youngster and absconding with him to Rome, where (holy ghost!) he was raised as the pope`s "son" -- there is another era of history to be channeled: "The Hidden World of the Harem," about the Ottoman empire and its sultans.
In a way, Rabinovitch has become an historical sultan of swat, a man carrying a big bat of a burden on his shoulders -- to bring the past to the present while guarding the integrity of the home plate that is history. A pinch-hitter for the past? There is more to it than that.
Importance of Mitzvah
"As a Jew, of course, it is also important to me," he says of getting the story right and written. "As Jews, we are commanded to love life. Our common humanity is to follow the mitzvah and live life by example."
"Secret Files" is a sterling example of work well done, "to make something unassailable in its factual reporting, to make people want to examine themselves and society."
Society, heal thyself? It is not without its more modern-day incarnations, with the filmmaker alluding to another heinous act of horror as avatar. "The Inquisition is, in some ways, so similar to the Holocaust -- it is about real people, with names, addresses, families -- not just numbers and files."
In filing this four-part series under accomplishment, Rabinovitch has achieved a milestone, a masterful work that works as history and entertainment and one that may exact change in a change-challenged society. What better confessional and vote of confidence in its future could Spain elect than to do what it is doing, restoring its Jewish icons of eras gone by?
Of course, notes Rabinovitch wryly, some changes are more mouth-watering than others: What could top tapas of tongue and pastrami?
Even if progress does have its limits, his optimism is boundless: "I`m waiting for a good deli to open near the statue of Maimonides in Cordoba." Decoding the Inquisition
(jewishexponent.com)
Juan Antonio Llorente-
Excerpts from A Critical History of the Inquisition of Spain
in his own words.
History of the Inquisition Chapter 1
The Christian religion was scarcely established before heresies arose among its disciples. The Apostle St. Paul instructs
Titus, the Bishop of Crete, in his duty towards heretics, saying, that a man who persists in his heresy, after the first and
second admonition, shall be rejected but St. Paul does not say that the life of the heretic shall be taken and our Saviour,
addressing St. Peter, commands that a sinner shall be forgiven, not only seven times, but seventy times seven, which infers
that he ought never to be punished with death by a judgment of the church. Such was the doctrine of the church during
the three first centuries, until the peace of Constantine. Heretics were never excommunicated until exhortation had been
employed in vain...
From the Fourth to the Eighth Century...
If the primitive system of the church towards heretics had been faithfully pursued, as it ought to have been, after the
peace of Constantine, the tribunal of the Inquisition would never have existed, and, perhaps, the number and duration
of heresies would have been less but the popes and bishops of the fourth century, profiting by the circum- stance of the
emperors having embraced Christianity, began to imitate, in a certain degree, the conduct which they had reprehended in
the heathen priests.
These pontiffs, though respectable for the holiness of their lives, sometimes carried their zeal for the triumph of the Catholic
faith, and the extirpation of heresy, to ensure success, engaged Constantine and his successors
to establish civil laws against all heretics. This first step, which the popes and bishops had taken contrary to the doctrine
of St. Paul, was the principle and origin of the Inquisition for when the custom of Punishing a heretic by corporeal pain,
although he was a good subject, was once established, it became necessary to vary the punishments, to augment their
number, to render them more or less severe, according to the character of each sovereign, and to regulate the manner of
prosecuting the culprit. The Emperor Theodosius published, in 382, an edict against the Manicheans, decreeing that they
should be punished with death, and their property confiscated for the use of the state, and commissioning the prefect to
appoint inquisitors and spies to discover those who should conceal themselves. It is here that inquisition and accusation
are first mentioned in relation to heresy, for until that time only those great crimes which attacked the safety of the empire
were permitted to be publicly denounced. The successors of Theodosius modified these edicts, some of which menaced
heretics with the prosecutions of the impartial judges, if they did not voluntarily abjure their errors. Notices were given
to known heretics who did not abjure after the publication of the edicts, that if they were converted in a certain time, they
would be admitted to a reconciliation, and would only suffer a canonical penance. When these conciliatory measures were
unavailing, various punishments were adopted. Those doctors who, in contempt of the laws, promulgated their false opinions,
were subjected to considerable fines, banishment from cities, and even transportation. In certain cases, their property
was confiscated; in others they were obliged to pay a fine of ten pounds of gold, or they were scourged with leathern
thongs, and sent to islands from whence they could not escape. Besides these punishments, they were forbidden to hold
assemblies, and the offenders were liable to proscription, banishment, transportation, and even death in some cases. The
execution of these decrees was intrusted to the governors of provinces, magistrates charged with the administration of
justice, commanders of towns and their principal officers, who were all liable to various punishments in case of negligence.
The establishment of most of these laws had been solicited by popes and bishops of known sanctity, and it must be allowed,
that it was not their intention to carry those which decreed the punishment of death into execution, they only
desired to intimidate innovators by their publication. The church of Spain continued faithful to the general discipline,
under the authority of the Roman emperors. The Arian heresy was afterwards established among them under the Goths;
but since their princes have embraced the Catholic faith, the lams and councils of Spain inform us of their treatment of
heretics. The fourth Council of Toledo, assembled in 633, at which St. Isidore, Archbishop of Seville, assisted, was occupied
with the Judaic heresy. It was decreed, with the consent of King Sisinand, that they should be at the disposal of the
bishops, to be punished, and compelled by fear to return to Christianity a second time, they were to be deprived of their
children, and their slaves set at liberty. In 655, the ninth Council of Toledo decreed, that baptized Jews should be obliged
to celebrate the Christian festivals with their bishops, and that those who should refuse to conform to this discipline
should be condemned either to the punishment of scourging, or abstinence, according to the age of the offender. We find
that greater severity was shown towards those who returned from Christianity to idolatry. King Rccarede I. proposed to
the third Council of Toledo, in 589, that the priests and civil judges should be commissioned to extirpate that species of
heresy, by punishing the culprits in a degree proportioned to the crime, yet without employing capital punishment. These
rigorous measures did not appear sufficient, and the twelfth Council of Toledo, in 681, at which King Erbigius assisted,
decided that, if the offender was noble, he should be subject to excommunication and exile if he was a slave, he should be
scourged and delivered to his master loaded with chains, and if the proprietor could not answer for him, that he should be
placed at the disposal of the king.
In 693, the sixteenth Council of Toledo assembled in the presence of King Egica, added, to the measures already established,
a law, by which all who opposed the efforts of the bishops and judges to destroy idolatry were condemned, if noble,
to be excommunicated and pay a fine of three pounds of gold and if of a low condition, to receive a hundred strokes of
a whip, and have half his property confiscated. Recesuinte, who reigned from 663 to 672, established a particular law
against heretics; it deprived them indiscriminately of the wealth and dignities they might possess, if they were priests, and
added to these punishments, perpetual banishment for laymen, if they persisted in heresy... Fr. Juan Antonio Llorente
(pbs.org)
Murder, betrayal, terror and torture
— every detail of the Inquisition was
documented by the Catholic Church in
secret files that have been locked away
for centuries. But in 1998, more than
700 years after the Inquisition began, the
Vatican finally opened the heretofore sealed
archives of the longest and most notorious
suppression in religious history.
As Pope John Paul II said at the time,
“the Inquisition belongs to a tormented
phase in the history of the Church, which
… Christians [should] examine in a spirit of
sincerity and open-mindedness.”
PBS presents the American television
premiere of Secret Files of the Inquisition,
an extraordinary look at one of the darkest
chapters in Christianity’s history. Narrated
by actor Colm Feore, the four-part
docudrama portrays the true stories of the
tragic victims of the religious intolerance of
the Inquisition.
The series includes commentary from
Catholic theologian Rev. Joseph A. Di Noia,
undersecretary of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican.
Wednesday, May 9 at 9 pm
Root Out the Heretics
High in the Pyrenees in the southwest
of what is now France, in a time when the
Church of Rome proclaims itself the one true
religion, heresy has taken hold. The Pope
sends the Inquisitors of Heretical Depravity
to exterminate the heresy. Unbelievers are
hunted down, condemned and burned.
In 1308 the entire village of Montaillou is
taken prisoner of the Inquisition.
Wednesday, May 9 at 10 pm
The Tears of Spain
Spain 1468 is a land where Christians,
Muslims and Jews have lived in tolerance
for centuries. But that time is ending. A
young king and queen bent on immortality
proclaim themselves the Catholic monarchs
and start an Inquisition.
Wednesday, May 16 at 9 pm
The War on Ideas
The decadence of a Medici pope in
Rome in 1522 outrages Martin Luther, a
devout priest in Germany. In the face of the
Protestant Reformation, a fanatical monk
sets out to exterminate the heresy. On his
path to power he will create the Roman
Inquisition and will become the most hated
pope in history.
Wednesday, May 16 at 10 pm
The War on Ideas
The secret files of the Inquisition are
locked away for centuries. Napoleon
spreads the ideas of the Enlightenment. He
conquers Italy, abolishes the Inquisition and
orders its files sent to Paris. Spain’s greatest
painter, Goya, will depict the Inquisition for
the first time — and then run for his life. The
Roman Inquisition leaves a legacy that lasts
into the 20th century. SECRET FILES OF THE INQUISITION
(westernreservepublicmedia.org/hcircle/images/may07.pdf)
VATICAN OFFICIAL SAYS INQUISITION WAS A
MISTAKE BUT LEGALLY JUSTIFIED-
Friday Church News Notes, February 3, 2006,
http://www.wayoflife.org
According to a high Vatican official, the torture and burning
of “heretics” during the Roman Catholic Inquisition were
“mistakes” but they were also legal and are understandable
in light of the times. Dominican priest Joseph Augustine
Di Noia, undersecretary of the Congregation of the
Doctrine of the Faith (formerly called the Office of the
Inquisition), is interviewed in a documentary that examines
the Inquisition in light of research gleaned from Vatican
files opened to scrutiny in 1998 (“Inquisition Was a
Mistake but Legally Justified,” The Telegraph, Jan. 30,
2006). “The Secret Files of the Inquisition,” a four-part
documentary, begin airing on Monday, Jan. 30, on the
UKTV History channel. Di Noia says: “It was a mistake
to torture people. However, torture was regarded as a perfectly justified, legitimate way of producing evidence
and it was therefore legally justified.” He also argues that torture and burning were explicable in the context of
the times. In fact, neither “legality” nor the context of the times is a justification for a so-called “church” to
torment and murder those who do not agree with its doctrine. Those that persecute and kill are the devil`s
wolves and not the Lord`s sheep. The current Pope, Benedict XVI, is the former head of the Congregation of the
Doctrine of the Faith. source
(www30.pageplanet.com/media/fridaynews/pdf/2006/20060203.pdf)
Facing the Inquisition.
A pope seeks pardon.
IVAN J. KAUFFMAN | DECEMBER 10, 2007.
With its vividly re-enacted scenes of torture, book burning and violence, the PBS series “Secret Files of the Inquisition” made clear that stereotypical views of the Inquisition are not going away anytime soon. It also ensured that a negative interpretation of this Catholic history will be embedded in popular culture, the history as told by those who view the Catholic Church as the foremost obstacle to everything modern and progressive.
Although advertised as based on recently opened Vatican archives, the series contained little that is new. Despite the interviews with Catholic historians, it ignored virtually all the recent scholarship that could have produced a much more complete view of the Inquisition. Its biggest omission, though, was ignoring the story of Pope John Paul II’s efforts to bring the Inquisition into the open. That effort constituted a major chapter in John Paul’s long, eventful papacy, yet it is little known even within Catholic circles.
Finding the Facts:
When John Paul II came to Rome in 1978, he brought with him a deep awareness that two historical events—the condemnation of Galileo and the Inquisition—were essential to anti-Catholicism, and he was determined to deal with both.
In the first year of his papacy, the pope formed a commission to study the Galileo incident, asking the group to tell the church: “What happened? How did it happen? Why did it happen?” The commission issued a report 14 years later supporting neither the ecclesiastical right, which seems to hold that the Catholic Church can never err, nor the secular left, which seems to hold that the Catholic Church can do nothing right. John Paul said of the report, “Often, beyond two partial and conflicting perceptions, there exists a wider perception which includes them and goes beyond both of them.”
He addressed the Inquisition in the same way in 1994, including an inquiry into its history among the preparations for the Jubilee year 2000. In a memo outlining the plans, John Paul told the world’s cardinals that confessing institutional sin would be a prominent part of the event. “How can we be silent about so many kinds of violence perpetrated in the name of the faith?” he asked, specifically mentioning “religious wars, courts of the Inquisition, and other violations of the rights of the human person.” He went so far as to compare them to “the crimes of Hitler’s Nazism and Marxist Stalinism.”
“The church must on its own initiative examine the dark places of its history and judge it in the light of Gospel principles,” he wrote to the cardinals. “The church needs a metanoia,” he added, “a discernment of the historical faults and failures of her members in responding to the demands of the Gospel.” The memo was an internal document, which allowed John Paul to speak more directly than he would have in public, but it was leaked to the press—a rather rare event in Vatican circles—giving the public an uncommon glimpse into the pope’s thinking.
John Paul’s 1994 proposal did not meet with an enthusiastic reception by all the cardinals. Many Europeans saw it as aiding their longtime critics; many from Africa and Asia regarded the Inquisition as a European issue from the distant past that would only confuse their people and give ammunition to their enemies if an apology were aired at the papal level. Some more conservative cardinals were troubled by the doctrinal innovation it seemed to involve.
Despite these objections, voiced with unusual openness by several cardinals, John Paul proceeded. When the program for the Jubilee 2000 was announced later that year in the apostolic letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente, the issue of confessing the church’s past sins was prominent. “Acknowledging the weaknesses of the past,” it said, “alerts us to face today’s temptations and...prepares us to meet them.”
A Meeting of Minds:
Georges Cottier, O.P., then the pope’s personal theologian, was asked to form a historical commission on the Inquisition modeled after the Galileo commission. He enlisted prominent scholars, Catholic and not, who were given complete freedom in their proceedings. The commission included 30 scholars from nine European nations and the United States and Canada.
When the commission met at the Vatican in October 1998, John Paul told members he could not take “an action based on ethical norms, which any request for pardon is, without first being informed of exactly what happened.” His first step was to ask historians to reconstruct the events of the Inquisition “within the context of that historical period.”
The appointment of the commission was largely ignored in the U.S. press, and even in those Catholic areas of Europe where it was reported, it was soon forgotten. For the next six years the effort appeared to have been quietly shelved. In 2004, however, the Vatican held a heavily promoted press conference, which included three cardinals, to announce that the papers from the 1998 conference had been published by the Vatican Press in its prestigious series Studi e Testi. To demonstrate that his Inquisition project had not been forgotten, John Paul issued a personal statement strongly supporting the publication. The overall tone of his message made rather clear that he regarded the actions of the Inquisition as contrary to the Gospel.
The book itself was a collection of papers written by experts, largely for other experts, and typical of the results of a scholarly conference. Its editorial matter and 10 of the 30 papers were in Italian, with other papers in French (11), Spanish (6) and English (3). The authors were major authorities in their fields. The papers ranged across the entire history of the Inquisition, from its origins in southern France in the 13th century to the development of the Spanish Inquisition in the 16th century, its institutionalization in Rome and its post-Reformation history.
The volume also included an effort by several Catholic scholars to acknowledge the essential sinfulness of the Inquisition. The commission included scholars who maintained the traditional belief that the negative effects of heresy on civil society were so great that capital punishment was justified, but on the whole the revolution in Catholic doctrine that took place at Vatican II when the “Declaration on Religious Liberty” was adopted prevailed in the reports. One author, for example, referred to the execution of heretics under Pope Pius V as “legal murder.” Jean-Miguel Garrigues, O.P., a member of the Pontifical Theological Academy, took both St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas to task in no uncertain terms for having provided the theological rationale for the Inquisition, and called their justification of religious coercion a prime example of the “ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal,” quoting John Paul’s words in Tertio Millennio Adveniente.
Despite all this, the book was virtually ignored in the United States. And while it received widespread coverage in Europe, a headline in the British paper The Guardian was typical: “Historians Say Inquisition Wasn’t That Bad.” That report claimed that Agostino Borromeo, the volume’s editor (and a Catholic commentator for the PBS series), had told reporters that “many executions attributed to the church ‘were in fact carried out by non-church tribunals.’” Of course, to many historians the distinction between declaring someone a heretic, knowing that doing so will result in her or his death, and actually executing that person might seem insignificant.
But the book’s primary significance lay less in its contents, valuable as they are, than in its history. That the Vatican would initiate an open-ended process in which previous popes and other high-ranking clerics would almost certainly be condemned—as indeed they were—was surely a historic event. In the 19th century, Pope Gregory XVI had called it “insulting” to “infer that the church could be subject to any defect.” Pope John Paul II obviously had a somewhat different perspective.
The Church’s Mea Culpa:
In fact the Inquisition project was part of a larger effort that seems likely to gain significance in Catholic history as we acquire perspective on John Paul’s papacy. Almost from the start of his pontificate, John Paul began asking, in the name of the church, for forgiveness for actions taken by his predecessors. These included the role of Catholics in dividing Christianity, in promoting hatred of Jews, in mistreating Native Americans and in enslaving Africans, to mention only a few cases. The public apologies were chronicled by Luigi Accattoli, the Italian reporter who covered the pope for the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera, and published in 1998 with the English title When A Pope Asks Forgiveness: The Mea Culpas of John Paul II.
John Paul’s apologies in effect subjected the Catholic Church to the same standards to which business corporations are now held in civil law, whereby corporations take responsibility for the decisions of officials no longer living and who had no way to know their actions would cause grave damage in the future.
This admission of fault stirred much controversy. In response John Paul asked Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to form a theological commission to study the issues involved. It was this commission’s report which provided the theological foundations for a historic penance service known as the Day of Pardon, which took place at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on the first Sunday of Lent 2000.
At the press conference beforehand, the Vatican announced that “the church today, through the Successor of Peter,” would name and confess “the errors of Christians in every age,” including “acts of violence and oppression during the Crusades,” and the “methods of coercion employed in the Inquisition.”
John Paul was willing to admit that the sins of intolerance committed by Christians “in the name of faith and morals” had “[sullied] the face of the church.” Such an admission does not require acknowledging doctrinal error, since the Inquisition was never formally approved either by a council or an infallible papal declaration. It does, however, require abandoning dogmatic triumphalism. It also necessitates learning from the past. That requires us to face the facts, all the facts, fearlessly and honestly, and to ask why actions were taken by our predecessors which now shame us so deeply.
John Paul’s penitential initiative provides a way for Catholics to create a narrative of the Inquisition that tells the whole story, as opposed to any selective, biased account that Catholicism’s severest critics have fashioned or might fashion. That is the road John Paul has set us on, and surely it is the way to free us from this ghost in the Catholic closet.
Ivan J. Kauffman, of Washington, D.C., is a Catholic co-founder of Bridgefolk, a Mennonite and Catholic ecumenical group Facing the Inquisition
(americamagazine.org)
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