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Video Description
The Inquisition did not end with the Middle Ages. This video from the Conscious Radical channel argues it was the first permanent machine built to record what people believed, decide which ideas were too dangerous, and keep the file open for life.
In medieval Languedoc, belief-policing grew into a standing institution, and the same logic, the video suggests, still runs under newer names. The twist is poignant: the very machine that destroyed the Cathars is also the reason their words can still be heard, because it kept such careful records of what it silenced.
Full Video Transcript
The Vatican Library holds various books of interrogations and trial protocols, most famously
those relating to inquisitions, heresies and the Knights Templar. In this piece we’re going to focus
on the inquisitions that started in the 12th century Kingdom of France which were particularly
aimed at the Cathar and the Waldensians. Over 800 years ago ordinary people from a mountain village
in southern france were questioned one by one about what they believed and their answers were
written down the primary purpose was to investigate to suppress and eradicate religious dissent in the
southern region of long dock the inquisitors had been directed by the church to identify heretics
to urge them to repent and restore religious conformity by erasing these people and what
they believed from history. But instead their work is the reason we know so much about them today
and we can still hear their voices. I’ve just got back from a short visit to Catha country in the
south of France having visited Carcassonne, Minerve, La Grasse and a small village called
Ville Rouge Terminus where the last Cathar was burned alive in 1321. It is an exceptional place
to visit for the food for the faith and for the fortresses but it’s also where the first
inquisitions were established in 1184 initiated by pope lucius iii a system built to hunt heresy
so we might remember the crusades from our history lessons the armies the massacre at bezier where it
said that between 15 and 20 000 people died or the fortress at montségur which held out for months
before falling in 1244 where approximately 220 people were burned for refusing to renounce their
religion what the inquisitors created back then was so effective that it actually underpins our
data systems and collections today when the inquisitors sat across from the ordinary people
of long dog the farmers the shepherds the widows they wrote down everything that these people
believed. Now we might often imagine that there was torture and fire and there was
on occasion but it was mostly paperwork. The system for deciding which ideas were
too dangerous didn’t end at Montségur because that was actually just the
beginning. When you visit the region you are spoiled for choice by the number of
castles sitting on ridges, the views and the sunlight on the vineyards. Between
In the Abbey at Von Freud and the square at Ville Rouge, standing in a courtyard where
it all happened, you can’t help but feel the depth of emotion.
And I wonder whether the ground has soaked up all of the memories and just holds it for
us to remember.
To remember a time when people died for their beliefs, by a machinery that grinds into place
to retain order and control through records.
So I’ll start the journey at Von Freud, which is an abbey near Narbonne.
You can walk its cloisters, you can contemplate in its gardens, and I think you can still
hear the echo of monks chanting in the Abbey Church of Sainte-Marie.
In January 1208, a monk from Von Freud was named Pierre de Castelnau, and he was murdered
on the road home.
He was legate to Pope Innocent III and had been sent south to bring the Cathars back
into line. Now he had been trying and failing at that for years. While waiting to cross the Rhône
on his journey back to Rome, Castelnau was struck by a lance and his death gave Rome and Pope
Innocent III exactly what they needed. Pope Innocent III accused Count Raymond VI of Toulouse
of instigating the murder, triggering the Albigensian crusade, whereas prior to this
crusades had only been reserved for islam though direct orders from the count were never
definitively proven pope innocent iii used the event as justification to declare a massive
crusade against the qatar and the southern nobility a crusade against christians on christian
land the albert jensen crusade began in 1209 and it was savage as any war of its century lawrence
marvin a professor of history traces 20 years of siege and slaughter across the oxiton south
bezier in the first summer manoeuvred the year after where believers who would not recant were
burned in the town below the walls carcassonne was taken its young lord died in his own dungeon
by the winter at the age of 24. this continued until 1229 when a treaty ended the fighting
and folded the independent south into the kingdom of france now that could and possibly should have
been the end the war was won but the heresy continued believers went underground hiding
in the hills and mountain villages so rome realized they needed to find another way to
defeat a belief system four years later in 1233 pope gregory ix created something new
a permanent office run by professional dominican friars with the power to investigate beliefs
this is when the inquisition finally became an institution innovating away from the cruelty
which was incredibly common in the 13th century and creating a record-keeping process instead
malcolm barber is a british medievalist he describes the inquisitors not as omnipotent
rogue villains but as highly educated bureaucratic legal officials they could summon entire villages
they would ask the same questions in the same order and wrote down every answer with dates
they compared the answers given to those that their neighbor gave last year and the year
before that and with this attention to detail and a huge amount of patience they mapped the
inner lives of whole communities. In Carcassonne they wrote manuals with step-by-step instructions
on how to question suspects, how to break silences and how to spot evasions. One of these is known as
the Manual of the Inquisitors of Carcassonne. Another written later by Bernard Guy became such
a thorough guide to policing belief that it was still quoted centuries after its time. So these
weren’t zealots with torches they were the first professionals in a new kind of work. A single word
from an informer could get you summoned. One wrong answer could cost you your home or force you to
wear a yellow cross for life marking you for everyone to see. So people learned to police
themselves and others because they knew the file was always open and the questions kept recurring.
Your personal beliefs mapped and recorded. You can no longer have private faith. Instead you
become a record with a name, a date and a cross-reference. You are on a register for life.
Does this sound familiar to you? This system or machine was still running 100 years later.
Although the Cathars were nearly gone, a bishop named Jacques Fournier ran his own obsessive
Inquisition trapping people with logical inconsistencies. Between 1318 and 1325 he
questioned 578 people over 370 days. He recorded their confessions, what they ate, who they slept
with and what they said about God. Absolute completeness. So you may wonder with your modern
mind why people answered the questions of the Inquisitors and why they didn’t rebel. Well they
answered and rarely rebelled because the Inquisition was backed by the absolute
state and religious power. Refusing to answer was legally considered an
admission of guilt and rebelling meant committing high treason against both God
and the King. The system was designed to guarantee submission through pervasive
fear, meticulous procedure and overlapping loyalties. The scribes
recorded the real voices of medieval peasants their words their arguments their doubts their
jokes in a level of detail that is so rare in the middle ages when french historian emmanuel
leroy laduri found the register in the vatican in the 70s he was able to rebuild an entire village
house by house from the inquisition’s questions he called the book monte you it became famous
because for once you could hear the dead speaking preserved in the paperwork now faunier was elected
pope in 1334 and took the name benedict the 12th and took his register to the papal palace where
it remains in the library one name in that register is guillem belibast the last catholic
preacher he was hunted down in exile and betrayed by a spy placed by the inquisition in 1321 on
fournier’s orders he was brought to villarouge terminus the village that i mentioned earlier
they burned him in the square below the castle so this was so much more than a crusade and a
massacre where christians took the lives of other christians it became a method to track people’s
belief systems it became a record of hundreds of people’s lives the crusade wanted the land to be
absorbed into the crown of france but the inquisition wanted control over the mind and
beliefs the register kept the record forever so we like to think that this was just a religious
horror from the past something finished and belonging to monks and superstition
but when you look at what they really built a permanent institution meant to decide
which ideas were too dangerous to share a system that wanted to know what you believed and what
you might be convinced to believe next it wasn’t about your actions it was about something more
they created a searchable archive of people’s lives keeping a record regardless of whether
you were ever charged with anything and yet every part of this still exists today now we just keep
it on servers and we give up the answers ourselves the inquisitors wanted to know whether someone was
a heretic or likely to become one it also became the governing system and the decider of what is
a dangerous idea we might think that this is just history but it’s more alive now than it’s been in
800 years and most of us go along with it a man was burned there for choosing his own sacred path
and the record we have was kept by those who captured him the system that wanted to erase
these people from the face of the earth is also the same reason why we know about them
they wanted to rid the world of heretics but as i keep mentioning the true translation for heretic
is someone who chooses for themselves the inquisitor system and machine is still running
we all know that the people didn’t rise up and rebel because the system guaranteed submission
through fear and procedure but now we just seem to give our information clicking consent without
reading the small prints we all have a digital fingerprint even in the way we type on a keyboard
it’s become so ordinary as though it’s just the way things are but when did we agree so
what will you choose will you accept the machinery as inevitable or will you question
the systems that seek to know you better than you know yourself history remembers
those who chose for themselves perhaps it’s time we do the same
Source: The Conscious Radical