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There have been 13 popes named “Innocent,” and one Antipope, because that’s a thing, and I doubt any of them were all that innocent. Number IV definitely wasn’t. On May 15, 1252, he was the one who proclaimed the papal bull Ad extirpanda, and it had nothing to do with cute Chinese bears. It was an authorization to torture people who prayed wrong.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: May 15, 1252--
This was the Medieval Inquisition, almost three centuries before Martin Luther said hey Catholics here are 95 reasons you can get fucked with a crucifix, I’m starting Protestantism. Pope Innocent IV was concerned with stamping out heretical movements such as Catharism, which was taking off in Southern Europe, so he established 38 laws for their systematic persecution.
The previous April one of the pope’s inquisitors, Peter of Verona, was murdered by Cathar sympathizers. Of course, that made Peter a martyr and the church later made him into St. Peter. Not the St. Peter. A different St. Peter. There is more than one. Anyway, his death gave the pope the excuse to lay down the literal pain. But there had to be rules regarding its infliction. Because Jesus.
The pope said these heathen motherfuckers were “assassins of souls,” but we need to take some fucking high ground here, so don’t break any bones or cut off any limbs, k? The goal was to get those subjected to such torture to “confess their errors and accuse other heretics whom they may know” without killing them. And then after they confess, we’re gonna confiscate their shit.
You want to know what else is fucked up? This wasn’t just about torturing the heretics, but the witnesses for the prosecution. In particular, witnesses who weren’t all noble and shit. Like, slaves, lower classes, actors . . . Fucking actors! Torture them to make sure their testimony is legit. So if you were accusing someone of being a dirty Cathar heretic, and you’re just some fucking peasant, or a peasant who acts, they’d take your testimony and say okay that’s great thanks for that now we’re going to question you again while inflicting a shit-ton of pain just to make sure your answers don’t change. Talk about being motivated to mind your own fucking business.
The papal bull was kind of like creating a secret religious police force motivated by money, where “good Catholics” were nominated to seek out and prosecute heretics and take their stuff and deliver it to the church saying yeah these fuckers are guilty here is the shit we seized. And then they got a third of the value of the fines and confiscated goods from convicted heretics. Nice!
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When the Christian Dominionist fucks say America should be a "Christian nation," don't kid yourself that it's the "Love thy neighbor" version of the religion they're talking about.
One of many reasons why I can’t stand the “organized” part of organized religion.