Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekinona Show.
If you're watching the video, you probably recognize that face. Aaron,
how are you doing?
Speaker 2: What's going on? Man?
Speaker 1: We missed you in Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, I am a slaved capitalism and I love it.
Speaker 1: Oh and Carden's show up either, so.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, no excuse.
Speaker 1: Oh I'm I'm livid with that person, but.
Speaker 2: So very busy rotating shapes.
Speaker 1: So I asked you to do this with me. Imperium
Press put this out. I think it was six months
ago or so, and Joseph de maiestra in in letters
that he's sending to a Russian aristocrat and we don't
even know who the Russian aristocrat is, which is really cool.
I actually like that he defends ends the Spanish Inquisition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something that you know, I think before the
before the Holocaust, there was the Spanish Inquisition as something
that ship libs can point to as to why we
need a secular society and the dangers of theocracy. And uh,
going through this first letter that we're about to read it, uh,
it pretty much confirmed my suspicion that, like most things
that are shoved down our throat, there's a there's a
pretty good argument for some revisionism. Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: So uh, Before we do that, I wanted to give
a little background for people who don't know Joseph de Maistra.
I'll read what what was put in Imperium Presses, volume
one of his major works in the front, and then
I'll read a little bit from Wikipedia, because I looked
at Wikipedia and it's pretty good too. What might get
Imperium press put in here was that Josein Demestra was
one of the strongest voices in the eighteenth and nineteenth
century reaction. In some places you'll read they'll call him
the original reactionary, like the first reactionary, probably because he's
a Frenchman and in his lifetime, in his adult life,
the French Revolution happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would change some minds. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So. Born into minor savoyored nobility in seventeen fifty three,
he enjoyed a distinguished law career until he fred fled
the French Republic's annexation, whereupon he acted as chief magistrate
to Charles Emmanuel's Sardinian court, later attaining a number of
high offices. Maestra distinguished himself as a political commentator in
considerations on France, publishing many works over his life to
great acclaim, particularly the posthumous Saint Petersburg Dialogues. So when
you come over to Wikipedia says he was a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer,
diplomat who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period
immediately following the French Revolutions. A polymath, many men of
his day would have end of his statue would have
had to have been polymouth. Despite his close personal and
intellectual ties with France, Maiestra was throughout his life a
subject of the Kingdom of Sardinia, where he served as
a member of the Savoy Senate seventeen eighty seven seventeen
ninety two, Ambassador to Russia eighteen oh three eighteen seventeen,
and Minister to the Court of Turin eighteen seventy one
to eighteen twenty one. A key figure of the counter
Enlightenment and a precursor of Romanticism, he regarded monarchy and
regarded monarchy both as a divinely sanctioned institution and as
the only stable form of government. So I'm sure doctor
Happa probably uh I would agree with the maestro on
a few things.
Speaker 2: Is uh, Hapa is not Catholic, is he?
Speaker 1: Uh? Let's see, he's German. He could be a lot
of things. Yeah, so all right, so let's get into this.
So they're in this in this edition it's called uh
on the Spanish Inquisition that Imperium Press put out. It
has five letters that Demaiestra wrote to a Russian nobleman
and he seeks to defend the Spanish Inquisition.
Speaker 2: Which pologism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which seems would seem insane to some people what
it did to me at first.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So all right, let's get this shared, it up on
the screen. All right. I'm gonna start reading, and as always,
oh I should mention this. I think you'll like this.
I mean contacted two separate times, once by the same
person twice that if I'm going to do these readings,
I should take some lessons. Oh yeah, on how to
you know, on how to read these things properly. And
one point was you mispronounced some things and you stumble
on something. I'm gonna do that on purpose.
Speaker 2: Now, I'm just.
Speaker 1: Going to do it on purpose. You do not know me.
I am not a fucking aristocrat. I am from the
freaking streets to the bronx shut the fuck up, respectfully.
Not to the lady. I'm not saying that to the
lady who sent me the letter. She was very nice,
very nice. The other gentleman. The gentleman is like to
write an article about you, all right, whatever, dude, Nope,
you read good I read good enough, all right, So
let's start reading this. The first letter de Maestra writes
to defend the Spanish Inquisition to a Russian nobleman. I've
had the satisfaction of exciting both your interest and your
astonishment in the course of our conversations on the subject
of the Inquisition. You have therefore, for your own use
and convenience, requested me to commit to writing the different
reflections which I have presented to you concerning this celebrated institution.
With this request, I now most willingly with this request,
I now most willingly comply. Those two people are just
screaming right now, just screaming at me, so let me
start that again. With this request, I now most willingly comply,
and I will take this opportunity to collect in place
before you a certain number of observations and authorities which
I could have adduced in the course of a simple conversation.
Without any other preface than this, I shall begin my
dissertation with the history of the awful tribunal.
Speaker 2: Is setting us up to knock us down. Yep.
Speaker 1: Though as a lawyer, I remember having remarked to you
in general terms that one of the most honorable attestations
in favor of the inquisition is the official report itself
of the Philosophical Cortes, which in the year eighteen twelve
suppressed this tribunal, but which, by the exercise of their
brief and arbitrary power, contrived to satisfy nobody but themselves.
The Cortes is basically the the I mean Congress of
Spain historically, the I mean, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Thought it was the judiciary body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's more than that, though,
it's it's it's like the government. But it was even
a government in the time of I mean, it was
a government during the Spanish Civil War. They speak of
the courts Eus all the time, but the this was
like the I guess, the parliamentary bureau to the Crown
at the time. So if you consider the character and
the spirit of this assembly, but particularly of its own,
of its committee which drew up the decree of suppression.
You cannot but own that any acknowledgment in favor of
the Inquisition coming from such authority is itself a circumstance
which admits of no reasonable reply. Certain modern unbelievers, the
echoes of ignorance and illiberality, have contended, have a contended
that Saint Dominic was the author and founder of the Inquisition,
and for this reason they have not failed declaiming against
him with all the fury of their indignation. Now, the
fact is that Saint Dominic neither ever exercised any act
of an inquisitor, nor had he anything to do with
the inquisition. The origin of the Inquisition is dated from
the Council of Verona in the year eleven eighty four,
and the superintendence of it was confided to the Order
of the Dominicans only in the year twelve thirty three,
that is at least twelve years after the death of
Saint Dominic.
Speaker 2: Yep, the prons deboomed.
Speaker 1: Oh well they get debooked. Well it gets it gets
worse for them as this goes along.
Speaker 2: Yes, in the.
Speaker 1: Twelfth Yeah, and the atheists in the twelfth century. The
heresy of the Manicheans, who in our times are better
known under the name albe I looked up Albigens Albigensis, yeah, Albigensis, yeah,
Albigenzis appeared to threaten both the peace of the church
and the stability of the state. For the security therefore
of both, it was deemed necessary to send among them
certain ecclesiastical commissioners to inquire after the guilty. These commissioners
call themselves Inquisitors, and their institution was approved by Innocent
the Third in the year twelve four. You're already hear
people are probably already screaming. He was the one of
the worst popes ever.
Speaker 2: Got to disagree with you, there, bud.
Speaker 1: At first, the Dominicans acted as delegates from the Pope
and his legates, As the Inquisition was then but an
appendage to their preaching. They derived from this their principal
function the name of the preaching Friars, a name which
they have always retained. Like all institutions which are destined
to produce any great effects, the Inquisition was, by no
means in its commencement the powerful instrument which subse which
subsequently it became. These kinds of inquisitions, all of them
grow and establish themselves, one knows not how called in
and introduced by circumstances. Opinion, in the first instance, approves
of them ere long authority, sensible of the advantages it
may derive from them, sanctions them, and models them into
form and order. For these reasons, it is not an
easy matter to assign the precisely fixed epoch of the Inquisition, which,
from feeble beginnings advanced gradually towards its full dimensions, which
is the case with everything that is destined to last.
Excuse me, however, this is what may, with confidence be
asserted that the Inquisition, properly so called, with all its
attributes and its real character, was never legally established before
the year twelve thirty three, in virtue of the bull
illhumany generis of Gregory the ninth, addressed April the twenty
fourth to the Provincial to the Provincial of Toulouse. While moreover,
it is equally uncontestable that the first inquisitors opposed no
other arms to the growing heresy save those of prayer, patience,
and instruction.
Speaker 2: So this is kind of multifaceted. So he's basically saying
that the acquisition as it first began officially, was purely
to investigate the guilt, to determine the guilt of people
that were a threat to the Spanish state and the
Spanish Church, the Catholic Church. If you were a Spaniard
in Spain, you had to be Catholic in order to
be considered a Spain. If you were something other than
a Spanish Catholic and you were doing something bad, then
that was a direct attack on the state or the
church and the pope. It was in the Pope's interest
to see what was going on, and he was very
careful to state there at the end that you know,
these inquisitors, uh, they and he goes on to in
this letter make great pains to say that the inquisitors
were never whenever the ones initiating the violence, whenever the
ones advocating any type of corporal punishment or capital punishment.
And you know this is it was merely an investigative
tool by the Pope at first. Yeah, yep, yeah, and
its finding mission.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it grows to be a lot more. We'll get
to for an ANSL eventually.
Speaker 2: So if we were I also kind of gleaned it
gleaned this little thought thought process from this paragraph. What
stage of the inquisition are we in right now? Are
we in the nonviolent stage when we commit our hereses? Yeah?
Or are we a little more advanced.
Speaker 1: I think we're a little more advanced.
Speaker 2: So we're we're probably in like the thirteen to fourteen
hundreds Spain. Yeah, we're not quite burning people the steak yet,
but it's.
Speaker 1: Getting there early fourteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Allow me, sir, to make here just one passing observation.
It is this that it is always wrong and injudicious
to conf found the character, or, if I may say so,
express it, the primitive spirit of any institution, with the
changes in variations which circumstances and the ones and passions
of men compel it to undergo in the process of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's that's hard to swallow. Yeah, that's basically saying
you can't apply the law of unintended consequences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of its own name.
Speaker 2: He's a fellow Catholic, so I'll buy it for now.
I'm willing to hear about.
Speaker 1: Of its own nature. The inquisition is a good, mild
and conservative tribunal.
Speaker 2: All right, He's won me. You're back, yep.
Speaker 1: Such, in fact, is the universal the unvarying and the
indelible character of every ecclesiastical institution, such as you cannot
but have observed is the case at Rome and such
Also you will equally find is the case wherever the
Church commands. But should the civil power adopting this institution
think proper for its own security to render it more severe?
The Church, then, in this case, is no longer responsible
for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. How many examples can you think of where let's say,
the private sector comes out with a new technology and
then you know, the state sweeps in and starts using
it for nefarious purposes. Yeah, or or bad just bad
actors in general. Many such cases. So he's basically saying,
it's it's not the it's it's not the originator's fault
that his idea gets used for nefarious purposes. I don't
know how I feel about that, but uh yeah, we'll keep.
Speaker 1: Going at some good parts here. Toward the end of
the fifteenth century, the prevalence and power of the Jews
were so great in Spain, and Judaism had everyone where
spread and fixed the truth so deeply as absolutely to
threaten the destruction both of the national religion and of
the national prosperity.
Speaker 2: The riches of the.
Speaker 1: Jews quoted says the Annals of that period, their influence,
their alliances with most illustrious families of the monarchy were
circumstances which rendered them infinitely formidable. They really formed a
nation within a nation. Many many such case. Doesn't sound
like them, many such cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean the Iberian Peninsula after the Reconquista,
as as I learned from Thomas seven seven to seven,
was just a hodgepodge of different power centers, the foremost
of which was the Spanish, you know, the Spanish monarchy,
and then the Jews.
Speaker 1: In addition to these dangers resulting from the power or
in influence of the Jews, there came in also to
augment them, and to augment them frightfully, the growth and
propagation of Mohammed Mohammadenism. I always love that word, Mohammedanism.
The tree in Spain had been shivered and blown down,
but its roots still lived. The question therefore was to
ascertain whether there should still exist such a thing as
a Spanish nation, or whether Judaism and Islamism should possess
and divide between themselves its rich and beautiful provinces. That is,
whether superstition, despotism, and barbarity should triumph over the piety,
the liberty, and then happiness of mankind.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, when you're trying to form a national identity,
you can't have multiple power centers that have adversarial interest
to you, especially when you're you just reconquered the Iberian
Peninsula and your grip on power is tenuous at best.
What do you have to do? And you have to
you have to subdue those other power centers.
Speaker 1: When you're trying to form a covenant community.
Speaker 2: Or just a community. Yes, I mean you could apply
this to your local school board election. There are people
that want to read books about gay pornography to your kids.
You have to subdue them.
Speaker 1: Like the Jews were at this time nearly the masters
of Spain, and there existed between them and the Catholic
body a mutual and mortal hatred. The Cortes therefore now
demanded the introduction of severe and coercive measures against them.
In thirteen ninety one, they rebelled and multitudes of them perished.
As however, the danger was every day increasing. Ferdinand, urnamed
the Catholic, conceived that in order to save Spain. Nothing
would contribute more effectual effectually than the Inquisition. To this.
Isabella at first made strong objection, but at length she
was induced to consent, and Sixtus to fourth in the
year fourteen seventy eight, issued out the Bowls of Institution.
Speaker 2: All right, so yeah, it started off as ecclesiastical. The
civil authorities said, hey, we could use this to tighten
our grip and get rid of our enemies. So we're
going to We're going to kind of mesh the two together.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if he talks about it in this
letter or coming letters, but basically one of their main
inquisitions was to there was a point where the Spanish
the court has said you either convert to Catholicism or
you get kicked out. Said that to the Jews, said
that to the.
Speaker 2: Isis And that was the Cortes, not the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: Right, it was the Cortes that said that. And so
what they did was, I got to the point where
there was still a lot of buckery going on. So
they said, we want the inquisitors to be able to
question to make sure their conversion and their practice was genuine.
And from what I understand, they were given I think
we'll go over. They were given ample opportunity to stay
up front. Yes, I've been faking. I'm going to leave
the country, or I'm going to repent and I'm going
to convert. But many decided that they were going to
fight against this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or keep lying again, completely surprised.
Speaker 1: Permit me again, my lord, before I proceed any farther,
to suggest to your consideration another important observation. It is
this that never can any great political disorder, but above all,
any violent attack upon the body of the state be
prevented or repelled, but by the adoption of means alike
violent and energetic. Energetic is a good word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's He's absolutely right. And what I
what I gleaned from this is, you know, whenever, whenever
an institution is threatened, especially when force gets involved, that
force is met with equal and opposite energy in order
to contain that threat. So to apply that to today,
what forces that truly threaten uh the state or you know,
wol corporations or whatever whatever you want to what like
name name an institution, what forces are threatening them? And
how much energy is being put into combating that. Because
I don't think they view, Let's say, Uh, joggers and
scholars and uh people that might push push women onto
subway tracks. Uh, they're not fighting them too hard, so
they must not be a threat to whoever whoever is
in charge their interests because they're not combating them with
the equal energy that the joggers are. You know, the
the joggers kinetic force is pushing the lady onto the
third rail.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only isn't it a threat to them, but
it can also be used by them.
Speaker 2: Yeah absolutely, yep. So if you're trying to measure like
what is a threat to the state, look at what
they're really cracking down.
Speaker 1: On mm hm, the family of the church.
Speaker 2: And yeah, and how much energy is being used in
that crackdown. And that's why I'm kind of not I'm
not in a collapsitarian mindset anymore, because they're I don't
think they're exercising as much energy as they could be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which is why it's not guaranteed that they're
going to win.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yep, whether due doing competence or miscalculation, or
the fact that we're just we're just not resisting that much.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is one of the most incontestable axioms in the
code of politics in all real and imminent dangers. The
rule of Roman prudence, let the consuls see it, see
to it that the state receive no harm. Is the
dictate of enlightened policy. Yes, that's just yeah.
Speaker 2: I got a little ahead of myself, but that's the
quote that kind of got me thinking.
Speaker 1: In regard of the methods to be employed or actually
employed on such occasions, the best are those, I of
course exclude crime and injustice. The best are those which succeed.
If you could kind ard argue with that, if you
consider only the severities of Torquemada, without calculating the evils
which they prevented, you in this case cease to reason.
I love the way the way he writes is amazing,
It really is.
Speaker 2: That is pretty good.
Speaker 1: Wherefore, let us constantly bear in mind this fundamental truth
that the Inquisition, in its origin, was an institution demanded
and established by the Kings of Spain under very difficult
and extraordinary circumstances. This is expressly acknowledged by the Committee
of the Cortes, and the reason which that assembly assigns
for its suppression is simply the consideration that, as circumstances
are now changed, so the inquisition is now no longer necessary.
I think some people in the thirty eighteen thirties would.
Speaker 2: Have yeah, are you knowing what they know? Now? This
was like right before the revolutions of eighteen forty eight
and the Paris Commune and all the fun stuff really
popping off.
Speaker 1: People have often expressed their surprise at seeing the inquisitors overload,
overload and accused person with a multiplicity of questions in
order to ascertain the fact whether or not in his
genealogy he retained any portion or drop of Jewish or
Mohammedan blood. What matters it, they say, to know who
was the grandfather or the great grandfather of the accused?
What matters it? It at that time mattered greatly because
both of the prescribed races, being still intimately connected and
allied with the great families of the state, must necessarily
either have trembled or have created terror.
Speaker 2: So even back then they recognize that ethnicities have in
group preference. Shocking. Yeah, yep, he's trying to explain in
group preference they have it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is bad enough if you have to if
the Spanish have to explain it to themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well at that time, at the time of the Inquisition,
the Catholics had in group preference too, So that's what
made it, you know, a dialectic battle.
Speaker 1: Under these circumstances, it became a concern of prudence to
strike and alarm the imagination by constantly holding out the
threat of the anathema attached to the suspicion of Judaism
and Mohammedanism. It is a great mistake to suppose that
in order to get rid of a powerful enemy it
suffices always merely to arrest him. You must subdue him
or you have done nothing.
Speaker 2: Yep. I hinted at that at the conversation about you know,
the school board, the school board candidate that wants to
read gay porn into your kids. It's not simply enough
to get rid of them. You need to subdue them
and make sure that they're never a threat again. Yeah,
getting arrested whatever, I mean, it sucks, But like oftentimes
they make a martyr out of you.
Speaker 1: A Malcolm X quote comes to mind. With the exception
of a small number of enlightened individuals, you hardly ever
in society meet with a person who, speaking of the Inquisition,
is not impressed with three capital errors, and these so
fast riveted to the mind as Nazi yield to the
very plainest demonstrations. For example, the public everywhere believe that
the Inquisition is a purely ecclesiastical tribunal, a notion which
in the first place is false. Secondly, they believe that
the ecclesiastics who sit in this tribunal condemned certain accused
criminals to death. This again is false. Thirdly, they believe
that the tribunal condemns men for entertaining mere simple opinions.
This too is another falsehood. The tribunal, then, of the Inquisition,
is purely and completely royal. It is the king alone
who appoints the Inquisitor General, and the Inquisitor General, in
his turn, nominates the particular inquisitors, subject to the approval
of the King.
Speaker 2: So got just to stop you for a second, all
of those things that he listed, I myself was under
the impression of being true that the Spanish Inquisition was
headed up by the Catholic Church. Maybe the crown was
involved a little bit, but it was all the Catholic
Church that priests condemned people to death, and that you know,
they could condemn you to death for very little reason.
Speaker 1: Well, not to mention you could we could throw a
fourth one on there. That the priests actually carried out
the commission of the of the acts.
Speaker 2: Heavily implied, yeah, the entire time, Like what little bit
I've learned about it in high school or whatever. Heavily
implied that the Catholic Church were the axe swingers.
Speaker 1: And the Inquisitor General, in his turn, nominates to particular
inquisitors subject to the approval of the King. The constitutional
rules and Order of the Tribunal were drawn up and
published in the year fourteen eighty four by Cardinal Torquemada,
in concert with the King the Inferior. The inferior inquisitors
possessed no power to do anything without the approbation of
the Grand Inquisitor. Neither could the latter do aught without
the a concurrence and sanction of the Supreme Council. This
council was not established by any bull of the Pope,
so that in the case of the general inquisitors charged
becoming vacant, the members of the Tribunal proceeded to act alone,
not as ecclesiastical but as royal judges.
Speaker 2: So the formal structure of the Inquisition really was headed
up by the Spanish Crown's that's what I gather from that,
Like all of those layers of you know, judiciary and
investigation and the processes that they abide by and who
answers to who, that really was formed by the Crown
and or at least the Crown had approval authority over
pretty much everything. That's what That's what I gather from that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were not going to act unless the Crown,
unless the Crown told them to. They were just they're
basically an advisory board that did strenuous interviews.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a special investigator that just makes recommendations.
Speaker 1: The Inquisitor General, in virtue of the bulls of the
sovereign Pontiff, and the King in virtue of his royal prerogatives,
constitute the authority which has always regulated the tribunals of
the Inquisition. These tribunals are thus at once ecclesiastical and royal,
so that on the supposition of one or other of
the two powers receiving the actions of these tribunals would
in such case be necessarily suspended. The Committee of the
Cortes and their report have thought proper to represent the
two powers as in a state of equilibrium in the
tribunals of the Inquisition. But no one surely can be
the dupe of such misrepresentation, or of the falsehood of
this pretended equilibrium. The inquisition is purely a royal instrument,
completely and exclusively under the control of the King, and
powerless to do evil save through the fault of his ministers.
If the proceedings in any cause are not regular, or
the proofs not clear, the king's counselors can always where
there is a question of capital punishments at once and
by one word, a null the whole process. Neither religion,
nor neither religion nor the priesthood have in such cases
anything at all to do in the concern. If unhappily
it do so chance that the accused is punished without
being guilty, the fault and the injustice would be would
then be either in the King, whose laws had unjustly
ordained the punishment, or else in the magistrates who unjustly
inflicted it. But of this I will cite the proofs hereafter.
Speaker 2: So it sounds a lot like he's trying to head
off a lot of criticism of the Catholic Church. That
was probably happening at his time as the Inquisition was ending,
and I'm sure that the Spanish civil authorities were all
too willing to let them take the brunt of the
bad pr.
Speaker 1: More than willing. Yeah, okay, you may remark, my lord,
that among the numberless declamations which have been published against
the Inquisition, you never trace so much as one word
respecting this distinctive character the tribunal, a circumstance, however, which
in justice all writers on the subject ought essentially to
have remarked. Thus. Voltaire, for example, in a hundred passages
of his work, describes a tribunal as the instrument exclusively
of priestly cruelty and in justice. This is quoting Voltaire,
This bloody tribunal, that frightful monument of Monkish power, which
Spain has received, but which she herself abores, which avenges
the altars but dishonors them, which all covered with blood,
encircled by flames, slaughters mortals with a sacred sword.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Valtaire. Original.
Speaker 1: Shoot, it's just like a a freaking a nineteen year
old libertarian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a cringe fedora wearing atheists. Yeah, I mean, it's
same thing. It sounds a lot like the Spanish civil
authorities were more than happy to shovel the blame on
the Church, and even though they have a long history
and a structural history of them actually being the ones
that were doing the burning and act swinging and beheading.
Speaker 1: Now, this tribunal, although thus frightfully depicted, is nevertheless the
tribunal of a nation distinguished for its wisdom, its moderation,
and its high sense of honor. This is all true
by the way fifteen sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain is considered,
I mean, the way Spangler talks about it in Prussianism
and Socialism, he just he can't say enough good things
about about fifteen sixteen seventeenth century Spain.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, like Thomas says, they were kind of a
Westphalian nation state before the treat the piece of West Failure. Yeah,
and they kind of get a They're at the apex
of their power throughout all that age of exploration, even
through the well kind of fallen off at the Enlightenment
and Queen Anne's War and all that kind of fuck them.
But yeah, I mean they were pretty cool. I wish
I learned more about I'm growing up.
Speaker 1: And they couldn't keep their empire.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so.
Speaker 1: That's what, more than anything, really starts leading to the
downfall and how the poverty that you see and they
start seeing in the eighteen hundreds, in the early nineteen hundreds,
which basically leads up to the war.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I was always taught that after the Spanish
Armada got destroyed, that was kind of the what sealed
their fate when they went after England.
Speaker 1: It is a tribunal strictly royal, composed of such members
only of the clergy as are remarkable for their learning
and their abilities, and who, judging of real crimes in
virtue of the public and pre existing laws, pronounced their
sentence with a measure of equity and wisdom which perhaps
could nowhere be found in any other court of justice,
has really tickle on their balls.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this is the best special investigator we've ever had.
He's completely objective and all he does is make recommendations.
Speaker 1: They never condemn anyone, however, criminal to death. Hence, then
in what terms can I express the infamy of the
base calminiator that's really doing damage to a word that
I'm really familiar with. But wow, calumniator who in the
above verses thus insolently misrepresents an order of men who,
so far from being cruel, are even remarkable for their
clemency and moderation. But the truth is, Valtaire had his
reasons for hating all authority. If men were all of
them wise and well instructed, the absurdities and falsehoods like
the fourth goo like the foregoing would incite only their
rich and contempt. But unfortunately, such as not the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Unfortunately Alberts still exist, and they're not laughed out
of the public square.
Speaker 1: The public ignorant and prejudice are easily imposed upon and deceived,
and the consequences that cheated by the gross misrepresentations of
a host of caluminating writers. They look upon the inquisition
as a club of stupid and ferocious monks who roast
men for their own amusement. Nay, it is even true,
such as the force of prejudice and ignorance, that the
same erroneous and unjust notions prevail even in the minds
of a multitude of individuals who, in other regards are
distinguished for their good sense.
Speaker 2: Many such cases, I mean, I was one of those
people like that thought that the priests were swinging the
axes and like I'm I'm Catholic, I should know better,
Like there's there's no way that a priest, that a
non excommunicated priest can recommend the death penalty or can
can you know, cause physical harm to somebody or even
like promoted like they would be excommunicated. Like it's that's
just not something that they do.
Speaker 1: I mean they have to in order to do it,
they have to demonize a whole brotherhood, like the Dominicans. Yeah,
let's say, oh, they were a rogue, they were a
rogue element.
Speaker 2: Or like one of the few goodes, few good orders.
Speaker 1: You may find them moreover in the works, not unfrequently
of the very defenders of sound and virtuous principles. Thus,
for example, in the Journal de la Empire, you may
read the following strange passage we go to the English.
It is true, whatever else may be said of them,
that the inquisitors had maintained until seventeen eighty three, the
somewhat severe habit of so of solemnly burning people who
did not but believe in God. This was their habit.
But apart from this point they were a very good character.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Like again that never happened, Like a priest did
not say this guy should be burned for not believing
in God.
Speaker 1: Surely the author of this passage could never have reflected
seriously upon what he writes. Where, then, in what nation
of the globe does there exist a tribunal which never
condemned anyone to death?
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the civil authorities were not that far off
from doing that.
Speaker 1: Or what crime does any civil tribunal commit which condemns
the accused to death in virtue of a law of
the state ordaining such punishment for the crime of which
he has proved to have been guilty. And where again
is the Spanish law which ordains that the deists shall
be put to death? The boldness of such assertion an
is as impudent an attempt to impose upon the credulty
of the public as an injustice or bigotry could well
have invented. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's just breaking
the liars man. I mean, it's just flat out as
flat out fiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You can't call the punishment that's dealt out by
a lawful, a lawful, legitimate institution a crime unless you're
unless you're trying to win hearts and minds for some purpose.
Speaker 1: Right amid the numberless errors which the enemies of our
religion have propagated, and with two deplorable success impressed deeply
on the minds of the public. I hardly know any
that have surprised me more than the supposition and belief
that priests are ever per to condemn anyone to death.
Men may be excused for not knowing the religions of Foe,
of Buddha, or of someone on condom, although still whoever
undertakes to defame even these preposterous systems ought first in
justice to understand something at least about them.
Speaker 2: I'm on Europeans.
Speaker 1: But for a Christian to be ignorant of the laws
of Universal Christianity, this surely is a disorder which no
apology can justify. For what eye has not seen the
immense and lucid orb suspended for eighteen hundred years between
Heaven and Earth, or what ear has not heard the
eternal axiom of our religion that the Church abhores blood.
Who does not know that the priests is even forbidden
to be a surgeon, lest his consecrated hands shed the
blood of a man, although it be even for his
cure who does not know that in many Catholic nations
the priest is dispensed with from appearing as a witness
in trials of life and death, and that even in
countries where such condescendants is not allowed, he is still
allowed to enter his protests, that he only appears as
such in obedience to the laws and in order to
plead for mercy. Never does the priests erect the scaffold.
He ascends it only as the martyr or the comforter.
He preaches not but clemency and pity. And in no
corner of the globe does he shed any other blood
but his own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's you know, I'd liked. I did a little
bit of research into looking for any instances where any
instance throughout history where a member of the Catholic clergy
has ever advocated for capital punishment or physical harm. And
the one instance that came up first was some priest
and VC France that collaborated with the Nazis to root
out Jews and get them deported. And I can't find
anything about him. In English.
Speaker 1: The church says Pascal, the chaste spouse of the Son
of God is always an imitation of this merciful being
prepared and ready to shed her blood for the sake
of others, but not to shed that of others for
her own sake. She entertains the most decided horror of
bloodshed proportioned to that particular light which God has communicated
to her. She considers men not simply as men, but
as the images of the God whom she adores. She
cherishes for each and every individual that holy respect which
renders them all venerable in her sight, as having been
purchased and redeemed at an infinite price in order to
become one day the temples of the Living God. For
these reasons, it is that she looks upon the death
of an individual inflicted without an order from God not
only as an active murder, but as a sacrilege moreover,
depriving her thus of one of her members, because whether
the person thus sacrificed be one of the faithful or not,
she still always considers him either as being one of
her children or else capable of becoming such.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, getting into uh, you know, a doctrine of salvation.
And that's the other one. I forget. I'm not that
good of a Catholic.
Speaker 1: They really aren't a lot and as somebody who grew
up Catholic and graduated Catholic school, and it's.
Speaker 2: Got a part of the deal. Yes, I am a
piece of shit. Nice to be here.
Speaker 1: I went to a Jesuit school for a couple of
years and I still don't know shit. It is very
well known that no private individual is permitted to require
the death of another. Whence it became necessary to establish
public officers to do this by the authority of the King,
or rather by that of the Almighty, and hence again,
in order to act as the faithful dispensers of the
divine power in all cases of life and death. The
magistrates have no liberty of judging and deciding, save by
the testimony and the depositions of witnesses, in consequence of
which they can neither unconscious, pass any inconscience, pass any sentence.
But according to the dictator of the law, nor condemn
anyone to death but him whom the law condemns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the civil law condemns yep.
Speaker 1: And then two, if the order of God obliges them
to consign the body of the wretched criminal to punishment,
the same order of God obliges them again to take
care of his guilty soul. In all this there is
nothing but what is right and completely innocent. And still
so much does the Church abore the shedding of blood,
that she declares all those incapacitated for the service of
her altars which have ever participated in a sentence of death.
Although this were attended all the by all the aforesaid
religious circumstances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a again, just making very clear that line
that priests will not cross. And when civil authorities do
cross it, then the priest has a role too. But
it's not a nefarious or harmful role. It's praying for
their soul.
Speaker 1: You cannot, sir, but admire the beauty and own the
wisdom of the above theory. Perhaps, however, you may wish
likewise to know by experience the true spirit of the
priesthood in relation to this interesting object, Well, well then
study and consider this. In those countries or places where
the priesthood once held or still holds the scepter, a
series of extraordinary circumstances had formerly established in Germany a
multitude of ecclesiastical sovereignties. To judge of these under the
heads of clemency and justice, you need only call to
your recollection the old German proverb it is good to
live under the croucher.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It made me wonder, like what the difference was
between living, you know, in let's say medieval Germany that region,
like under a bishopric or a duchy or a county,
you know, or or a free city, Like what were
the difference, Like what was your interaction with civil authorities
like in each one of them, Like how do they compare?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would think that those were they could actually
be an arctic Yeah. Yeah, you're not really dealing with
them unless you get on someone's radar.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Or they need to raise some levies, or yeah,
you know that the taxman comes to take some wheat
or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Proverbs which are the fruit of public experience, are testimonies
which never deceive us. I therefore appeal to this authority,
which is still farther confirmed by the sanction of every
man who possessed either memory or judgment. Never under those
mild and pacific governments was there any question of persecution,
nor of any capital sentence against the spiritual enemies of
the reigning powers. And what sir, shall I say of Rome,
It is no doubt under the government of the sovereign
Pontius that the spirit of the priesthood should manifest itself
the most unequivocally, unequivocally. Now it is an now, it
is now. It is an incontestable and universally admitted truth
that never was. Has this government been reproached with aught?
But it's too great mildness. Nowhere does there exist a
more paternal administration, a more impartial distribution of justice and
order of punishment, more gentle and humane, a measure of
toleration more complete. Rome is perhaps the only place in
Europe where the Jew is neither humbled nor ill treated.
At all events. It is most certainly the place where
he is the happiest. For Rome has always been proverbially
called the paradise of the Jews.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean first century was a little rough, Yeah, yeah,
for a little bit. Well they you know, once again,
there's some backstory to that. But it got me thinking, like,
I wonder what it would be like to live in
the Vatican, like that is a true theocracy. And then
I went and looked up their crime rate, and of
course it's abysmally low. I know that, you know, only
certain people can live in the fat It has about
a thousand permanent residents. And then you get the gendarme,
how do you say.
Speaker 1: The Swiss army.
Speaker 2: This was yeah, you know, you get their barracks there.
But you know it, it was very recently that a
guy tried to run the run the gate at h
at the Vatican and the Swiss guard like shot out
his tires. He crashed his car and then they they
took that guy to the hospital and like gave him
medical treatment and like just like sent it, like sent
them away for investigation and then like let him go. Yeah,
and uh, who is it? A Pope Benedict, the guy
that tried to assassnate Pope Benedict, who was like a
Turkish hit man. Pope Benedict like went to his prison
cell and they didn't record the conversation, but he gave
him a box with rosary beads and then petitioned the
Italian president to pardon him. And the guy got pardoned
and then like converted to Christianity, converted to Catholicism afterwards.
This is like a Turkish hitman. And like so I
think that probably characterizes living in a in a true theocracy.
More more so, like I I can't characterize living in
a democracy or in a dictatorship or anything like that.
There's just it's so inconsistent. Yeah that you know, I
might get pushed on the third rail of the subway tomorrow,
or I might you know, I might get promoted at
my job. I don't know, but uh yeah, that's that's
what I gather from that. Like, huh, I wonder if
the if Attican's a nice place to live. That's really
the only the last remaining truth. Theocracy today, in like manner,
consult the voice of history. What government do you anywhere
find that has been less severe than that of modern
Rome in relation to every kind of anti religious offenses
and disorders? Even during those periods which are called the
ages of ignorance and fanaticism, not even then did its
spirit or its practice vary. Thus, let me just cite
to you the example of Clement I absolutely scolding the
King of France. And this king was San Luis himself
for having made certain laws against blasphemers, which that pontiff
thought too severe. In treating him at the same time
very urgently in his Bowl of July twelfth, twelve sixty eight.
Speaker 1: To mitigate them. He moreover, in another bowl of the
same date, addressed to the King of Navar remarks to
this prince, it is by no means advisable to imitate
the example of our very beloved son in Jesus Christ,
the illustrious King of France, in regard to those two
rigorous laws which has which he has published against these
kinds of crimes.
Speaker 2: I never knew that. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting that this was so famous an
incident that he could just reference it to the King
of Navarre and he knows exactly what he's talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's not something you think would have Like, again,
going back to being taught, you know, and the implications
of what I was taught growing up is that, you know,
the when when a civil authority passed a blasphemy law,
it was at the behest of the pope, And that's
not the case. Finding out actually the Pope didn't like
that at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was the civil authority. Voltaire, in some of
those moments when his common sense was not obscured by
the clouds or fever of irreligion, has on several occasions
borne very honorable testimony to the papal government. Thus, in
his poem de de la Loi natural Aurelius, Trajan, princes
of renown, the Poncefs, bonnet war, an emperor's crown. The
world depended on their care alone, and the school's vain
disputes were then unknown. Those legislators, those legislators with sage maxims,
fraught nere for their sacred birds with fury, fought on
the same principle. Rome now holds command the throne and
altar by their union stand.
Speaker 2: Hmm, it's like bringing up an old tweet. Oh, I
thought you.
Speaker 1: Liked this, That's so funny. Where such, then, is the
evidence of the general character of the Church. Why should
it anywhere be called in question? Mild, tolerant, charitable, in
every nation of the globe? Why or by what magic
does it so chance that she is cruel alone in Spain,
a nation eminently distinguished for its high sense of honor
and for the generosity of its subjects.
Speaker 2: And he's foondewing a lot of balls.
Speaker 1: I must hear premise and important observation. It is this that,
in the discussion of all questions, be these what they may,
there is nothing so essential as to avoid a confusion
of ideas. Wherefore, when we speak or reason about the inquisition.
Let us always separate and distinguish accurately the conduct of
the state from the conduct of the Church. Whatever in
this tribunal is rigorous and frightful, But above all the
punishment of death, all this is purely the concern of
the civil government. It is its affair, and it alone
is accountable for it. Whereas all the clemency which is
so remarkable in this tribunal is the act and influence
of the Church, which interferes with punishments only in order
either to suppress or to mitigate them. Such it is
indelible and never varying character. Not only is it an error,
it is even a crime to maintain or yet to
suppose that the priesthood can ever pronounce the sentence of
death upon anyone.
Speaker 2: Hmm. It's like, uh, I feel like if antaps read this,
they would, uh, they would come to the conclusion that
the Church ch was better at better at anarchism than
than than any other institution has been. You know, what
what is sideline the state more? Uh, you know, and
an archo capitalism or all of the successful the successful
conversions to clemency that the Church you know, gave to
the state on behalf of the people they're accusing. Yeah,
I mean, which is saved more lives. Maybe we should
tell the church about Ross Albert. Yeah, yeah, yep, I
guarantee they would be better advocates than a lot of
other people. Yeah, in history, more effective.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, it would be less of a virtue signal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's you're not looking at somebody like
myself that posts the N word on Twitter all day
suddenly pivoting to you know, we should really uh like
I oh my heart bleeds for now, let's say Ross
Olbrich like that. That doesn't sound right coming from somebody
like me, but from somebody whose heart bleeds daily on
Twitter like so as a little more weight to it, yeah,
a little more credibility.
Speaker 1: In the history of France, there is a great event
which is not sufficiently noticed. It is that which regards
the templars, these unfortunate beings, whether guilty or not, this
is not here the question petitioned earnestly to be tried
by the Tribunal of the Inquisition, knowing well, say they're historians,
that if they could only succeed in obtaining its members
for their judges, they should run no risk of being
condemned to death. The King of France, however, aware of this,
and of the inevitable consequences of this appeal of the templars,
formed now his own determination, he shut himself up alone
with his Council of State, and at once hastily condemned
them to death. This is a fact which is not,
i believe, sufficiently or generally known.
Speaker 2: I agree that yeah me.
Speaker 1: Either at the earlier periods of the Inquisition, and when
the greatest severity was chiefly needed, the inquisitors in Spain
used not to inflict any punishment more rigorous than the
confiscation of the criminal's property, and even this was always
remitted whenever he thought proper to abjure his errors within
the term so within the term so called of grace.
It does not appear quite clear from the instrument thus
referred to, at what exact period it was that the
Tribunal of the Inquisition began to pass the sentence of death. This, however,
is not material. It suffices to know what cannot be
called in question, that it could only have acquired this
right by having become a royal institution, and that with
the sentences of death, the priesthood from the nature of
their character, had not could not have anything at all
to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I said, there's multiple, multiple rules bestowed by
the Magisterium that forbid priests from being involved in any
advocation of capital punishment. And it's been that way forever.
Speaker 1: In our times, the matter is no longer an object
of incertitude. It is now well known that every important sentence,
even the sentence of simple arrest, was decided by the
advice of the Supreme Council, without whose authority nothing was
in fact determined. Now this is a circumstance which presupposes
and implies both the greatest prudence and the most careful circumspection.
But in short, if it did so happen that the
accused was pronounced a heretic, the tribunal in this case,
after having ordered the confiscation of his property, made him
over for the legal punishment to the secular arm, that is,
to the Council of Castile, a body of men than
whom nothing in any nation could be more enlightened, more learned,
or more impartial. If the proofs alleged against the accused
did not appear evident, or if even though guilty, he
did not remain obstinate. The only punishment which then was
inflicted on him was simply an act of abjuration performed
in the church and attended by certain prescribed ceremonies. Did
you look up what abjuration is?
Speaker 2: I could do that right now. I'm guessing it has
something to do with like anathematizing. Yeah, solemn repudiation, abandonment
or renunciation. So yeah, anathematizing excommunicating along those lines, but
in a formal official capacity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is true. All this implied a certain measure
of disgrace to the family of the criminal and to
the criminal himself. It involved the incapacity of exercising any
public employment. I am, however, perfectly convinced that in regard
to these latter dispositions, they were but the artifices of clemency,
invented for the express purpose of sheltering the greatest criminals.
Certain facts which have come to my own knowledge, and
above all, the character itself of the Tribunal, leave no
doubt whatsoever upon my mind in these respects. But in
order not to dwell any longer upon this part of
my subject, I will at once place before you one
of the sentences of the inquisition of the most severe
and rigorous character. It is one which, without ordering the
death of the criminal, still draws that punishment after it,
on the supposition that the guilt be such as the
law ordains, shall be visited by this infliction. The following, then,
is the form and nature of the sentence. We have declared,
and do hereby declare that the accused n N sorry,
is convicted of being an apostate heretic, an encourager and
concealer of heretics, a false and pretended confessant, and a
relapsed impenitent, by which crimes he has incurred the punishment
of the greater excommunication and the confiscation of all his goods,
to the profit of the Royal Chamber and of His
Majesty's Attorney General. We moreover declare that the accused ought
to be left as we now leave him to justice
and to the secular arm in treating these and very
affectionately and in the best strongest manner that we can,
charging them to treat the criminal with kindness and compassion.
Speaker 2: Oh on a left field, that's not the church that
Voltaire was talking about.
Speaker 1: Or anyone really.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Spanish author of the Inquisition unmasked, who has furnished
me with the above details, pretends it is true that
the clause thus recommending mercy is no other than a
mere unavailing formality, and of no service to the criminal.
And in order to prove this he cites the words
of n Espen, according to whom the protestation made by
the tribunal is little else than a kind of external formality,
which nevertheless is dear to the Church.
Speaker 2: They had to say that, yeah, it didn't really mean it.
Speaker 1: Now this objection does not, after all, in any degree
weaken the general proposition that the Inquisition never itself condemns
anyone to death, and that on no occasion will there
be found the name of any priest inscribed in any
warrant for such execution. Where the laws of Spain ordain
the punishment of death for such or such a crime,
the courts of justice cannot of course oppose them. Thus,
if the Inquisition, after the most diligent investigation and from
the clearest evidence, find the accused guilty of the crimes
imputed to him, it's judgment, then if it be a
case of death regulated by the laws, will therefore be
followed by death. But with this the tribunal itself has
nothing at all to do, and it is and forever
will be true that it never condemns anyone, however guilty
to death.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's it's kind of like a special investigation,
you see. You know that we that we saw a
lot of with the last president. Their job is to
find out the facts, determine if any crimes were committed.
Only instead of recommending, recommending sentencing, they don't even do that.
All they do is investigate. And he's he goes through
great pains and uses primary sources to basically prove his point.
Speaker 1: The civil power acts and has the authority to act
as it thinks proper. But if, by virtue of the
foregoing clause dear to the Church, it judges condemned any
innocent man to death themselves, in such case would be
the great offending criminals. Hence, then that unceasingly repeated expression
calling the inquisition a bloody tribunal is not merely groundless
but absurd. There does not there cannot exist anywhere at tribunal.
But what unhappily is sometimes under the necessity of condemning
the criminal to death, and which is irreproachable for doing so,
provided it but executes the law upon the most positive
and clearest evidence, and which even would be justly reproachable
if it did not execute the law upon such testimony.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If if you don't, if your judicial system doesn't
carry out your you know, the sentencing guidelines for whatever crime,
then what good is it? That's that's kind of what
we have now, where you know, you could I won't
go with that example, but you could murder somebody and
some and depending on who you are, you might get
off with, you know, six months of prison, or you
might go on the fast track to you know, the
electric chair, you know, that whole anarcho tyranny thing that
we have right now. Yeah, my cat, My cat's going
crazy out of here.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean I was thinking that, Yeah, it's
a narco tyranny if you don't. Yeah, and that's what
we're under right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The idea that you could have a judicial system
that just does whatever they feel, like, whatever they want,
is a completely foreign concept to somebody like Demeestro. Like
a tribunal is what it is, and the laws are
what they are, and the maximum sentences are also what
they are, Like.
Speaker 1: And they don't even have to do the maximum sentence.
They can decide they want to give somebody a slap
on the wrist.
Speaker 2: But it's just right back out to rape again.
Speaker 1: But they are listening to what you know, this tribunal
is saying in its investigation. Yeah, it is moreover a
fact that the Inquisition does not itself condemn anyone to
the punishment of death ordained by the dictator of the laws.
This is a matter purely and essentially civil. Be the
appearances ever so much, be the appearances ever so much
against it. And upon this point, the Committee itself of
the Courts as agrees with the author of the Inquisition unmasked,
who I have cited already. Philip the second says the
committee the most absurdive. Princes was the real founder of
the inquisition. It was his refined policy that exalted.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It was his refined policy that exalted it to the
height of authority to which it rose. Monarchs have always
rejected the councils and suspicions which at times have been
addressed to them against the Tribunal, and their reasons were
because in every case there were the absolute masters of naming, suspending,
and dismissing the inquisitors, whilst at the same time themselves
had nothing to apprehend from the tribunal. From these concessions
of the Committee, I think it is evident that the
Tribunal of the Inquisition was completely under the control, not
of the priesthood, but of the civil or royal authority.
Or if the preceding passage did not convince you of this,
I will cite to you another from the same report,
in which the Committee observes that in no papal bull
can it be found that the Supreme Council has the
right to decide any cause in the absence of the
Grand Inquisitor, but which however, is constantly done without the
slenderest difficulty. Once the reporter of the Committee concludes that
in these cases the councilors act not as ecclesiastical but
as royal judges. But beyond all this, as it is
not an incontestable fact that neither at present nor formerly
could any order of the Inquisition be I do not
say executed, but so much as published without the previous
consent of the King.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything went by him. It was for this reason.
Speaker 1: But no, it was for this, for these reasons that
the kings of Spain have at all periods been strongly
attached to the Inquisition. Thus, Charles the Fifth, when petitioned
by the states of Aragon and Castile to render the
proceedings of the Inquisition less severe, replied, for he was
a prince who pretty well understood the art of ruling
to their addresses in terms the most in terms, the
most ambiguous, seeming to grant everything, and yet in reality
granting nothing.
Speaker 2: Yep, truth. Uh, I'm like Charles the Fifth at my job,
I totally get it. Game recognizes the game.
Speaker 1: Wentz Garnier, an historian who on this subject is, of
all others, the least to be suspected, very candidly allows
that the religious Inquisition was nothing more nor less than
a political institution. It is a fact which merits noticed
that in the year fifteen nineteen the Aragonese had obtained
from Leo the tenth the complete concession of all their
petitions upon this subject, a circumstance which strikingly points out
the spirit of the Church and the character of her pontiffs. However,
Charles the Fifth opposed the execution of the papal bulls
and Leo in order that he might not discuss the
King issued in fifteen twenty the Bull in which he
approves of Charles's conduct.
Speaker 2: Huh, so I guess there was some drama. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I have thus stated to your lordship the character of
the Inquisition. From it and from the facts which I
have cited, you will be convinced how groundless are the
notions which the public everywhere entertained of this tribunal, and
how unjust the columnies with which the Infidel and the
Protestant writers have so bitterly assailed. It's had to get
that in there at the end.
Speaker 2: Yep. I love it. Yeah this, Uh, reading this the
past few days, I it it makes me want to
look at what else Imperium Press has.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a there's a lot there there. I've read
a good amount of their of their work, and uh,
they're putting out stuff that not only revision, but a
lot of reaction. I mean, they have their own own
version of the Iliad. Oh, really classics stuff. Yeah, it's
a good, good website to just go and browse and you'll,
uh you'll you'll find great stuff. But the I think
Thomas said it properly in the episode. It's like before
the Internet, everybody believed the Inquisition was about these executions
by the Church and everything. But then like after after
the Internet, when you can just climb, you know, climb
on your computer and find out, oh, it actually wasn't
like this at all. There's proof out here that you
know that it's you know, it's exactly what Demester was
was says it is that. Now you just look foolish
if you, uh, if you're holding to that.
Speaker 2: So some of the prep work I tried to do
for this episode was looking into primary source documents for
any type of case notes or interrogations, any any type
of official documentation of them. And then also there's a
there's actually there actually exists a inquisitors manual. It's literally
called like manual Inquisitorum. Unfortunately, the vast majority of primary
source documents I could find have not been translated into English.
So I think that's kind of the next great leap
as far as uh, you know, just this this whole
react reaction thing is translating, translating as many things as
we can, because that's where the revision's going to come from.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was thinking about this the other day, and
when you think about it, it's such a black pill.
How much of history just are we never going to know?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean ninety percent of the things that
we know about history have been translated from other languages,
but you know by people that don't may not may
not like the original interpretation. Well, also just.
Speaker 1: How much wasn't written down, how much has been lost,
how much has been hidden? How much it's I mean,
I mean look at like Nagamadi. Yeah, those texts and everything.
Finding those texts, it's like how it's like when however,
you find something new, it's just like, oh, you know it,
it seeks to revise what you know, what people have known.
But you find out that even even in the twenty
first century, if people if something is uncovered, that basically
shows that anything that you know, anything you've held, and
especially if you've held it close to your estimated a
part of you, is wrong. You're going to fight against
it as much as the what's the story of the
priests that didn't want to look through the telescope?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, but no, man, we got some more
letters to go through here, and the more as you
read the letter, as you if there's any if you're
reading and you think there's any that like repeat too
much and you think we should we should skip, let
me know, I'm gonna I'm going to read them as
we go. As we I've already read the whole book,
but I've been I reread this first letter again today.
I'll reread it as we go through it, and maybe
there are some ones we can skip, but there are
someones coming up that have that have sorry about that,
that have some really good stuff in them, that uh,
some really good points. And especially when he starts talking
about the bloody Revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's another thing I was going to bring
up as I didn't know that there was a Jewish
revolution in what thirteen nineteen.
Speaker 1: Oh, thirteen ninety one the other Yeah, that I was
reading another source on that the other day. Yeah, that's
considered to be a pogrom. Yeah, that rose up and
they they were put down, put down hard. Yeah, I
mean there was no there was no mercy on that one.
So that the conversos, yeah, I think they dealt with them. Well,
it's a converted leave, yeah, I mean convert relief. I
mean a little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's I think it's missed by a
lot of nominal Christians that uh, and Michael Jones hits
on this all the time. It's like, your duty is
to convert the Jews. Yeah, but if you were to
ever come out and say that in any official capacity
as any type of religious institution, you would be immediately
tossed of the fire. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean Tim Kelly from the Our Interesting Times podcast
is a you know, he knows Michael Jones has him
on at least once a month.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and you.
Speaker 1: Know Tim said that. He said it on my show
or when I was on his show one of the times.
I can't remember, but he's like yeah, he's like, well,
I mean he's like half of my podcast is complaining,
complaining about you know, these Jewish elites and everything, and
really the only way, you know, his way to deal
with them is they have to be converted. They I
mean not you know, they need to find Christ. But yeah,
you say that and people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's literally the Christian answer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like you say that, and it's just like
all right, well, you know you're some you know, you're
an inquisitor of some sort.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I suck at it. That's one thing that I
suck at is evangelization. I know, it's like our duty
to spread the word. But I also know that I'm
retarded and uh, I have the memory of a goldfish.
So I'm not very good at quoting scripture.
Speaker 1: And that's why you why you became a Catholic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don't need to now. I
heard a couple of times a week, and I'm good.
Speaker 1: I've told people that, like in when I went to
the Jesuit school I went to we studied scripture. Oh yeah,
we like we study people. I find that hard to believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's I mean I went through a rigorous,
just invest investigative process about you know, all everything I
hear about the Catholic Church, like why do they do this?
Why is there a liturgical structure? Why is their liturgy
structured like this? And they always managed to base it
on scripture or tradition, And at least in my in
my idiot brain, I think I was being pretty objective
when I was kind of going through my crisis of faith,
Like it seems satisfactory. No, maybe not.
Speaker 1: Somebody, let's get out of here for an hour and
a half. I did a live streamer earlier.
Speaker 2: I'm dying, yep, go to bed go to bed old Man.
Speaker 1: T l E. Timeline Earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you can find me on a Timeline Earth
sometimes more or less, and then you can also find
me on Twitter at BTWA Underscore returns.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you very much. Until the next one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanana Show.
Aaron's back and we're gonna talk about torture and stuff
like that. Hey, you doing air?
Speaker 2: I am rock hard right now?
Speaker 1: You ready for it?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want to just jump in?
Speaker 3: Let me.
Speaker 1: Let me get the screen up so we can look
at this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'll stop you if I have any valuable
insights or just insights.
Speaker 1: Awesome. All right, there's five letters in this, and I
don't know that we're gonna do every letter, but I
looked at the second letter and just the way it
started out was, you know, like amazing. But it's also
shorter than the first letter, and this gets into some
things the second the first letter didn't. So if I
see any overlap in other letters, I'm gonna skip over them.
But all right, So to Maestro talking to a anonymous
Russian nobleman. After the supposition that the Inquisition is a
purely ecclesiastical tribunal, and that priests can condemn men to death.
After this, there needed but one other supposition to complete
the absurd phantom of malevolent ignorance, namely that the Inquisition
condemned men for their simple opinions, and that a Jew,
for example, was burnt for no other offense than being
purely and simply a Jew. This, indeed, is an exertion
which has been so often repeated that multitudes actually believe
the preposterous tale among the least excusable, among the least
excusable calumniators of the insulted institution. I regret and am
surprised to find so distinguished a character Montesque, But so
it is. We, unfortunately see this great writer with the
boldest intrepidity, intrepid intrepidity, pouring out the most virulent language
against it on the occasion of a pretended remonstrance of
a pretended jew us. He even makes this the subject
of a chapter in his Espirit de.
Speaker 2: Come montesquie.
Speaker 1: Now, the fact is that the very idea of burning
a young innocent girl in this too, in one of
the great grand capitals of Europe, for no other offense
than that of believing in her own religion. There is
in this something too horrible to be conceived. The reality
of such act would form a national crime sufficient to
call down the deepest disgrace upon a nation, Nay, perhaps
even upon a century. I'm getting ideas.
Speaker 2: I think I see where this is going. Yeah, this
is kind of thing.
Speaker 1: History repeats itself a lot, doesn't it. The accusations repeat
themselves a lot. But happily the whole tale is a
pitiful calumny, disgraceful only to the writer whose malignant ingenuity
invented it. How long, then, has it been allowed to culminate?
Why does he keep using this word over and over again?
Culminate nations and to insult the institutions which they have
thought proper to establish among themselves? Or where is the
decency or the justice of attributing to these institutions acts
of the most atrocious tyranny?
Speaker 2: This has some very striking similarities to a more recent
historical event.
Speaker 1: And to do this, moreover, not only without the sanction
of any testimony or proof, but in face of the
most notorious evidences to the contrary in Spain and in
Portugal equally as In fact, it is the case everywhere
no one is ever molested who keeps himself quiet. I
heard that Charles Haywood recently. I think Tommy Simmons was
talking to him and they were talking about like a
red Caesar, and Charles had made the point. He's like,
and people on the right are worried about that. He's like,
as long as you're not a parasite, what are you
worried about?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I would prefer, Like,
if I were to be an anti authoritarian, I would
still prefer right wing takeover, only because I wouldn't have
a whole lot to worry about. My preferences already a
line mostly and the ones that don't I and I
can play the game. Yeah, that's pretty much what it
comes down to. Can you play the game with with?
You know, progressive technocracy? Not so much.
Speaker 1: As for the imprudent enthusiast who dogmatizes and disturbs the
public order of things. He, if checked in his career,
has no one to complain of but himself. This is
nowhere in any nation a well regulated There is nowhere
in any nation a well regulated government. But what imposes
restraints or some punishment or other upon the daring attempts
to overturn religion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're witnessing that right now with our current religion,
our current national religion. Any attempts to overthrow it or
criticize it are dealt with swiftly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the inquisition has already started here. I think
we made that clear the last episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, they're not They're not burning us, but they're
you know, burning our lively odes gleefully.
Speaker 1: No one has any right to demand of the Kings
of Spain, why or for what reasons they have thought
proper to ordain such and such punishments for such and
such offenses. They knew best what were the ons and
the interests of the nation. They knew the character of
their enemies, and they restrained them, and the way which
which they judged most prudent. The grand and only question,
and this too incontestable, is this that, in regard to
the offenses of which I am speaking, no one is
ever punished but in virtue of a universal and well
known law, according to established and invariable forms of justice,
and by lawfully constituted judges deriving their whole authority from
the king and acting completely under his control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean at the time, I'm sure that made
a whole lot of sense, and it was, you know,
generally worked out well for people of demeistrous persuasion. Where
we're experiencing that right now. That's I mean everything, everything
in regards to these norms are are internalized right now
in the American psyche. Only instead of a king, it's
you know, democracy or what whatever you want to say.
It is progress equality. But yeah, I mean, so, I
guess one way to look at this, uh, if you
want to parse out what we can what we can
apply today is like, like we said in the last episode,
like you just said, picture ourselves as subjects of an
inquisition right now, only the inquisition that we were taught
at as you know, as as kids in school, like
that version of the inquisition they are now projecting onto
us right.
Speaker 1: Under the circumstances. Then, how ill founded are all the
declamations against the tribunal of the inquisition, and how little
reason has any Spaniard to complain? It is true man
justly dislikes to be judged by man, because, knowing himself,
he knows also of what man is capable when once
he is either blinded by his passions or pushed on
by prejudice. But where there is a question, but where
there is question of law, to this, men ought to
be submissive. There ought to there ought not to attempt to.
They ought not to attempt to disturb the public peace. Libertarians,
blown the fuck out reason and instincts of nature, admit
no better rule in these points than the general, enlightened
and disinterested will of a legislature substituted everywhere in place
of the particular, ignorant and partial will of man. See
the biggest album with this.
Speaker 2: Is impartial legislature.
Speaker 1: Well, well, I mean everyone's going to hold the mirror,
hold this up to the mirror of the legislature they
live under, and considering the one the one that we
live under, right now, you know, I mean right, you know,
proper right. People on the right are appalled by it,
people on the left applaud it, or I don't even
know if it's left. I mean, yeah, it's it's it's
a weird dichotomy. Now, it's like people who it's it's
hard to describe.
Speaker 2: Your your episode on the consequences of the Civil Rights Act.
I'm sorry, I forget his name, the co host of Forgetting. Yeah,
he's exactly right that people are drawn to power, and
they will subsume their identity, even even to the point
that they that they believe it, in order to maintain safety.
Speaker 1: And like.
Speaker 2: At one point, what Demeistra is saying here is how
people did that. They you know, submitted themselves to the
will of a monarch and under the assumption that the
monarch knowses people the best and acts prudently in you know,
meeting out, meeting out punishment and uh enforcing the law.
And it was the the people outside of that, like
like we're going to read later the Jays that were
the ones. I mean, I don't want to say they're
kind of in our position, but you know, they were
the ones trying to overthrow a culture that they disagreed with.
And I don't I'm not saying I agree with them,
but they were eventually they were successfully able to do that,
you know, in the early eighteen hundreds, and that's why
Demistress pissed off in these letters. And you know, like
it kind of gives us hope. I mean, I think
up about ten IQ points lower than the average Askinazi
but I don't know.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get up to that point. If
they're far, If therefore the laws of Spain compose and
ordained for the peace and security of the whole nation,
If these inflict the punishments of exile, imprisonment, or even
death itself against the declared and public enemies of religion.
In this case, neither should anyone excuse the criminal who
has thus called down the punishment upon himself. Neither should
the criminal himself complain, seeing that he promised to the
most simple means of avoiding it, that of holding his tongue.
Speaker 2: Yes, all you have to do is shut your fat
mouth and then you'll be fine. Nobody wants to hear you.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing. The difference today is we you're
guilty if you keep your mouth shut. Yeah, you have
to be actively anti racist.
Speaker 2: Silence is violence, yep. Yeah, Yeah, that's the inversion.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In regard to the Jews in particular, everyone knows or
should know that the Inquisition does not in reality punish
any of these save such as relapse, that is, such
as having solemnly adopted the Christian religion return again to Judaism.
That's what this was it was the same thing with
the Muslims. It was the same. Yeah, it was the
same deal.
Speaker 2: I mean from the last letter I I understood that
they were offered, you know, leave the contrary. You know,
you could practice your religion all you want, leave yep.
And then they said, okay, well, well we'll convert to Christianity.
And then what are you saying right here? They go back,
you know, they relapse and uh, like do you want
like you're now you're just purposefully subverting the culture that
we're that the people in power are trying to create.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and you.
Speaker 1: Go back. There was a time when when people gave
their word, they meant something. They yeah, they understood that
there were consequences if they were proven to be lying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, Yeah. This was back when reputation was a thing,
and uh, you know, how your community felt about you,
how trustworthy you were, how how respectable you were, meant something.
And now we live in an online age now and
reputation doesn't mean doesn't mean a whole lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the laws are indeed more or less severe against
these as well as against the preachers of Judaism. But
then the remedy was easy. The Christian or the converted
Jew who chose against Judeas were always at full liberty
to quit the country.
Speaker 2: Huh.
Speaker 1: They knew, as did also the Jew who undertook to
seduce to christian They knew to what they exposed themselves
by remaining. No individual has any right to complain of
a law which is equally made for all.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you don't like our rules, get out, or
if you don't like the letter of the law that
you are knowingly violating, then.
Speaker 1: And anyone who does you know, studies read Sulcianes and
or or Sombart who go over a history of Jewish
communities in you know, countries in that they went to,
that they that they settled in, knows that they are
constantly over and over again arguing for special rights.
Speaker 2: Right. It's yeah, it's not just that they're practicing Judaism.
It's not that they're lighting a minora and going to
temple like That's if if that was all they were doing,
then this wouldn't be a thing. But there's there's a
whole other bag of tricks that come with that.
Speaker 1: Men loudly declaim against the tortures employed in the tribunals
of the Inquisition and above all against the punishment of
burning inflicted for the crimes against religion. All the thunders
of eloquence and indignation, particularly among the French infidel writers,
are directed against these alleged atrocities.
Speaker 2: The fury if he's talking about the Jacobins or the Huguenots.
Speaker 1: The fury of their declamation gives a pathos to their philosophy. However,
this vanishes at once if once the subject be but
calmly considered according to the rules of sober and calculating logic.
The inquisitors, it is true, did ordain the infliction of
torture for certain crimes against religion. But then they did
it in the virtue of the laws of Spain, and
because it was prescribed by all the tribunals of that nation.
It was a punishment adopted anciently by the laws of
Greece and Rome. Insomuch to Athens, the school of Liberty
ordained it even in regard of its own free citizens.
Among modern nations, all these have employed it in order
to discover the truth. I am not going to examine
how far all this was either wise or unwise, or
whether in former times there was not as much reason
to employ the instrument of torture, as now in these days,
there is every reason to suppress it. Be all this
as it may, the case is that, since this punishment
was no more attributable to the Inquisition than to every
other tribunal, so it is un us to reproach it
alone with imputation of cruelty. Let the eloquence of the
virulence of Protestant animosity describe all the horrors, or depict
in every hateful color, the real or imaginary torments inflicted
by the judges of the Inquisition. All this, in fact,
matter is little. The blame or the oat or the
odium rests not with the institution itself, but with the
policy of the princes who established it.
Speaker 2: This was a less than two hundred years from the
Thirty Years War. If the Protestants want to point at
the Catholics and accuse them of uh wrote, you know,
wrote violence and torture and all these injustices, I mean, look,
take a look at the Thirty Years War and tell
me if one side or the other was more humane,
Like there's I don't know, like it's I'm trying not
to be like, Oh imagine if imagine, if you imagine
if the shoes on the other foot, right. But you
know he's right, like, there's that all of this is
pure propaganda, pure religious, religiously motivated, right, right, rivalrous propaganda.
And that's fine. But you know, your your average loping
doesn't really realize that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you know, once again, when you look back on
on situations like this, much like the arguments that you
see happening today, the only reason why it isn't restricted
to academics and clerics today and politicians is because we
have the Internet and people and we have people have
access to centuries, millennium of information and they can educate
themselves about these things and join in the conversation. Back then,
I mean, who was arguing over this back then?
Speaker 2: It's two people spending waiting two weeks for a response.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then what one does is they write a
history book and then we start to believe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So.
Speaker 1: All right, and let me, my lord just remark here
that according to the report of the Committee of the Cortes,
not only the inquisitors themselves were obliged to attend at
the infliction of the torture, but the bishop also was
ordered to assist at the awful ceremony, although his place
was usually supplied by his delegate. Now all this presupposes
and implies and this act of rigor not only a
great deal of attention, but all the charity that is
allowed to judges.
Speaker 2: So again this is him saying, this wasn't the Catholic Church.
All the inquisitors were part of the Catholic Church, but
they were following the letter of the law of the
Spanish State. Yep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this wasn't. Yeah, this wasn't what we said. It
was that the Catholic Church was running rampant over Spain
and had total control over Spain. No, the king and
the courts has had control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Catholic Church's interest was to make Span Span Catholic.
Help help make Span Catholic. The Spanish thrones interest was
to get rid of their enemies.
Speaker 1: Yep. And not only this, but as every decree of
any moment, even that of a simple arrest, could on
no occasion be executed without the previous approbation of the
Supreme Council. So it is also certain that the preliminary
sentence or gaining the application of torture was subject to
the same formality. Under these circumstances, it cannot but be
owned that this punishment was accompanied in the tribunal. So
the Inquisition, with every precaution that the nature of things admitted.
Speaker 2: Should they had a pretty rigorous bureaucratic system of checks
and balances. That's That's also what I'm getting from everything
he's writing so far. As now they they've really they've
really kind of cared about like making sure they got
the right people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we're gonna we'll talk about like some specific cases.
I don't remember if it's in this letter or or
the next, but there were a couple of specific cases
that were pretty fun that were one of them was hilarious.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of waiting for that, Like I'm convinced to Master,
You've convinced me, all.
Speaker 1: Right, Should the King of Spain think proper? The should
the King of Spain think proper to abolish the punishment
of torture in his dominions as he'd been done, as
had been done in France, England and Sardinia, etc. He
would no doubt act wisely, and the very first to
applaud his conduct would be the inquisitors themselves. But it
is unjust and unreasonable to reproach them with a practice
which until lately had always and everywhere prevailed in regard
to the punishment of burning. This, again, however horrible, was
still a universal practice. Without referring to the Roman laws
which sanctioned it, we find that all nations pronounced it
against such crimes as violated the most sacred laws of religion. Thus,
throughout Europe it was the custom to burn for sacrilege, parricide,
and high treason. The latter crime was, according to the
principles of criminal jurisprudence then adopted, divided into two parts
divine and human high treason. That today huh, every great
and enormous crime against religion was considered as an act
of high treason against God, which therefore could not be
less severely punished than the offense of high treason against man.
And hence the custom of burning heresy, heresy arcs, and
obstinate heretics. The fact is that in all ages there
are certain general notions and ideas which possess and draw
men after them, and whose wisdom or want of wisdom
is never so much as called in question. The reproach
in such cases should be cast not upon any individual,
but upon the times and upon mankind in general. He's
appealing to the spirit of the you know, the spirit
of the age at whatever moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, yeah, whatever was his ze ghost. You know,
the punishment of burning is pretty common in this time
and here here's here's why that's okay.
Speaker 1: I will not enter, lest I should seem to quit
my subject upon the great question of crimes and punishments.
I will not examine whether the punishment of death be
just and useful or not, or whether it be wise
to increase the severity of punishments according to the atrocity
of crimes, and what ought to be limits of this
awful and terrific act. These are all of them questions
far into that which I am now discussing to acquit
the inquisition from peculiar reproach or censure. This alone is
here sufficient that its tribunals judged and decided, like all
other tribunals everywhere, that they condemned none to death, except
such as we're notoriously guilty, and that they never acted.
But as the authorized instruments of the law, awful and
written will of the sovereign.
Speaker 2: H can you go back, go back up.
Speaker 1: Sovereign is capitalized there too.
Speaker 4: So you.
Speaker 2: So, what was I gonna say? Yeah, it's uh, he's
definitely subordinating himself to a will that's higher than him. Yeah,
you know, whether that's the sovereign as in God or
the sovereign as in you know, the Spanish throne. I
I myself, I've kind of come around to not being
a huge fan of capital punishment, and I don't I
don't get the I don't get the feeling that he
is a huge fan of capital punishment either.
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, I mean it's really once at this point,
he's alright, I guess he's witnessed a French revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean that wasn't capital punishment.
Speaker 2: That was just straight up execution, summary execution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I will let me see question I said,
there are Okay, there we go. It is, however, my
opinion that the Haress, the arc, and the propagators of
impiety ought very properly to be ranked in the class
of great criminals. What deceives us in these points is
the unfortunate circumstance of our judging in these matters under
the influence of that indifference, which in these times pervades
everything relating to religion, whereas we ought to take as
the rule and measure of our judgment, the gone by
zeal of olden days, which men, if they like, may
call fanaticism. The word making no difference in the thing,
I think he may be called appealing to.
Speaker 3: The uh.
Speaker 1: Talking about the revolution. Here in some way, shape or form,
it looks like he may be referring to it. The
modern sophist, seated at his ease in his cabinet, cares
not one jot whether the doctrines of Luther were the
cause of the thirty years Frightful War or not. But
the legislators of ancient days, knowing well the consequences and
miseries which to propagation of heresy is calculated to produce,
and has produced, in society shaking its very foundations and
deluging its walks, not unfrequently with blood. Knowing this, they
deemed it an act of prudence to punish the crime
with severity and rigor.
Speaker 2: Look what happens when you stop, A new religion takes over,
and then they punished the crime verity and rigor.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think most you know, anyone who's listening, who's
you know, just absolutely appalled. They're just appalled because religion
had anything, you know, had anything to do with this.
Yeah no, no, God's no. Master's kind of people who
just yeah, have no have no understanding of what of
what these times were like, and of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a it's a classic case of applying modern
standards to history and then judging them that way, and
then of course after that, using that for a you know, uh,
persuasive argument.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: It is true. There is no longer now any reason
for entertaining the same alarms. And yet when we reflect
that the Inquisition, by its restrictions and authority, would have
prevented the French Revolution, it is hard to say whether
the sovereign, who holy and without reserve, gave us this instrument,
would not in reality be doing an injury to humanity.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, if if if you had a way to
prevent the worst catastrophe of your life, but it involved
violating people's rights, would.
Speaker 1: You do That's a great question, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Would you say the N word to save ten waves?
Speaker 1: It like twenty times today? I live in Alabama. Just
kidding at a time, jazz kidding. The abbit of Arak
is the first French writer that I know who has
spoken with consistency and wisdom on the subject of the Inquisition.
But even at that period, in seventeen thirty one, he despaired,
amid the clamors of ignorance and prejudice, of making any
favorable impressions in its regard. I am convinced. He says
that if the men who declaim so loudly against the
Inquisition considered only the characters of the person who compose it,
they would speak of it very differently from what they do.
But what is the most to be lamented is the
fact that such are the public prejudices. I do not
entertain the slenderest hope of engaging my fellow countrymen to
believe that the virtues which particularly characterize the inquisitors are circumspection, wisdom, justice,
and integrity. The man who is punished or reprimanded by
this triumbunal must be either a great criminal or a
very weak personage.
Speaker 2: So in my Lawlberd days, I I completely empathize with
this guy because I knew a lot of you know you. You
actually introduced me to a lot of people that, uh,
you know, we were in the higher rungs in the ladder,
and we're awesome people. And I just I I had
it in my head that if if if people just
knew how how great these guys were, like, we could win.
And unfortunately that's that's not the case. Nobody. Nobody looks
at the author of well maybe we do sometimes, but
nobody looks at the author of a of a of
a manifesto or or I don't know, a leaflet like
they look at the content and and if if, if
you're ideologically opposed to them, then they're gonna pick that apart,
regardless of how you know, regardless of if they if
they could have a beer with the author. Right, So
that's kind of again a scales fall from the eyes moment,
like nobody gives a shit about how how good of
a person you are?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and that can only really be done
on a personal level anyway.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, oh yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: In fact, whoever candidly considers the quality of its judges
cannot but allow all this. In the first place, nothing
can be more upright, more learned, or more incorruptible than
the Grand tribunals of Spain. And then if to this
general character we add that of the Catholic priesthood. It
is impossible, even without any appeal to experience, not to
feel and be convinced that nothing in the universe can
really be more calm and gentle, more impartial and humane
than the Tribunal of the Inquisition.
Speaker 2: He makes a lot of assumptions. I mean, maybe it is,
maybe that was the case in his time, like the
priesthood was looked upon as you know, the lambs. But yeah,
that would be a that'll be a tough sell.
Speaker 1: Now, I mean they they've also suffered a lot in
the last thirty years. Yeah, yeah, they It was funny
all that, all that surfaced right around the time when
a certain group was cut off from the Bank of Rome.
Oh well, let's let's let's let's leave that alone.
Speaker 2: Let's let's not get into the statistics of the sexual
orientation of alone. Yeah, that's my favorite thing. Yeah, every
time somebody says, like pedophile priests, I just put gay asterisks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean most people don't know
that the Italian and Irish mothers. Yeah, in the mid
mid twentieth century, to even to into the seventies and eighties,
push if they knew they had a gay son, they
pushed them into the priests.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, there was so much systemic, systemic celebration of homosexuality.
Like I think I might have mentioned it on what
a different show of yours I was on. But even
in seminary they did get I forget where I read it,
but and if anybody can pull it up, I'd be grateful.
But in seminary they would do exposure therapy where they
would show a group of seminarians gay porn for hours
on end, you know, all together. And that was meant
to expose them and discuss them so much that they
just couldn't you know, they couldn't tolerate it anymore. But
it had predictably the opposite results.
Speaker 1: In this tribunal, which is established indeed to strike and
alarm the imagination, and which therefore, in order to produce
a designed effect, ought necessarily be surrounded with certain severe
and mysterious forms in this tribunal. Nevertheless, the religious principle
preserves always its leading and unextinguishable character. Even amid the
terrors or threats of punishment. It is still merciful and mild.
It is because the priesthood forms a portion of this
tribunal that it ought not, that it ought not, does
not resemble any other tribunal. In reality. The very device
of its banners, mercy and justice, is such as is
unknown to any other tribunal of the universe elsewhere elsewhere,
in every country, justice alone is the appendage and prerogative
of their tribunals. Mercy is the exclusive attribute and property
of the sovereign. The judges would even be deemed rebels
did they presume of themselves to grant pardons, for this
would be abrogating the rights and privileges of the sovereignty.
But let only the priesthood be called in and take
place among the judges. They will do this upon the
express condition alone that the sovereignty shall concede to them.
They're great prerogative mercy. Mercy therefore, is thus seated alone
with justice, and even takes the presidents over it, and
takes the precedence of it, Presidents of it. Presidents of it.
You hear those two people screaming, The accused criminal is
at liberty before this tribunal, to confess his fault, to
ask pardon for having committed it, and to submit to
certain religious expiations. This done behold at once, his crime
is charged into a sin and his punishment into an
easy and simple penance.
Speaker 2: So this is where I've heard all my life that
you know, you see it in movies all the time,
where you know, confess your sins confessed, confess, confess, and
then they beat them and whip them and then they
end up forcing a confession. And that was always my
take on the Inquisition. It was that everybody was beaten
into false confessions and then and then burned, and that
justified you know, they're they're mad march through you know,
three hundred years of or is it no, it's more
than that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean even Demeistros says it. He's like,
oh well it really started in twelve hundred.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, six hundred years of like just absolutely insane
abuse by the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: But it's more like four it's like four hundred.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was formalized and uh nevertheless, letter was Yeah.
Speaker 1: He fasts, praise and mortifies himself. Instead of being dragged
to punishment, he recites palms, goes to confession, and here's mass.
Thus prepared and exercised, he is absolved and restored to
his family. And to society.
Speaker 2: The greatest punishment ever be a good Catholic.
Speaker 1: No, I was good. I can't say that you might
have to work. I was. It's going to reference another
group that was forced to work and complained about it.
But if the crime be of a very heinous character,
and the criminal continue obstinate, if he must be condemned
to death, the priest in this case retires and he
appears upon the scaffold only to console the unhappy victim.
Speaker 2: So once again, the priest did not condemn anybody to death.
Speaker 1: No, it is a singular circumstance that this distinctive character
of the inquisition has been solemnly acknowledged by one of
the side.
Speaker 2: What is that you know?
Speaker 1: That word ce ministers of the French Republic most I
think that's more going. Yeah, in his nouveaux voyage and Espana,
and it is hard I'm sorry, guys. I'm good with Spanish.
I'm good with Spanish, and I'm good with a couple
other I am terrible with French. I apologize, I really do.
And it is hardly less singular to observe the manner
in which one of the journalists of that period gives
an account of the above writer's work. Take for example,
the following extract, where says the journalist, quote is the
tribunal in Europe save that of the Inquisition that acquits
the criminal, provided only that he repents and confesses his repentance.
Where is the individual who maintaining doctrines subversive both of
faith and morality, and proclaiming principles destructive of peace and
social order. Where is the individual who, notwithstanding these offenses,
has not been twice admonished of his guilt by the
members of the Inquisition before they proceed to any farther
act against him. If in spite of their advice, he
still persists in his irreligious conduct, he is, in this
case arrested. If he repent, he is said at liberty,
monsieur Bourgoing, whose religious opinions are anything but favorable to religion,
speaking of the Holy Office, says, I will own it
in order to pay that homage, which is due to truth,
that the Inquisition might be cited in these days as
the model of equity. This is a singular concession, but
the fact that is Amberggonne saw nothing in the Tribunal
of the Inquisition save what is save what it really
is the instrument of the laws for the preservation of
peace and order.
Speaker 2: So not only was the inquisition, did the inquisition that
that the tribuneal have all the legal trappings of every
other tribunal known to exist, but it was also the
most forgiving and the most merciful tribunal ever do exist.
And like they, like the priest viewed it as a
spiritual victory if they got somebody to like, a full
restoration of justice, if they got somebody to confess their
sins and repent, which that makes perfect sense to me,
having you know, been in the Catholic Church for even
just a little while. Yea, like when I when I
go to confession, I come out feeling like I like
I like I was just in the Spanish Inquisition and
got out.
Speaker 1: Oh I remember going to confession.
Speaker 2: It wasn't that bad, No, it really is.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In regard to those cruel and frightful forms so often
reproached and imputed it to this tribunal, it is my
misfortune to give little or no credit to them at
all events. I should like to be upon the spot
in order to judge them properly. Be the case, however,
what it may, if the revolution which has of late
years taken place in the habits and opinions of the public,
requires certain mitigations. In these points it is in the
power of the monarch to ordain them, and to such
alteration the inquisitors would lend themselves most willingly. We know
this well. Nothing human can be perfect, and there is
no institution. But what is attended by some abuse or
other you will, I think, do me the justice to
believe that no man is less disposed than myself to
justify any useless of severities. The religious inquisition of Spain was,
in my opinion, not unlike the public inquisition of Venice,
which reigned over the imaginations of the peace by the
display of certain terrors composed of little or nothing else
than mere fantastic forms and delusions, and which had the
happy effect of maintaining order without shedding one single drop
of blood.
Speaker 2: That's the ideal. Yeah, it seems like they kind of
unlocked something. I don't know why anybody would want to
subvert that.
Speaker 1: Well, it is false. Moreover, even in regard of Portugal,
that any however slender and accusation is looked upon as
a sufficient, sufficient reason for casting an accused person into
prison as it is just equally false that they deny
him the heads and motives of the accusations alleged against him,
or the knowledge of his accusers. False again that they
refuse to allow him proper defenders to plead his case,
or that the accusers who have caluminated him remain unpunish Yeah.
I know indeed that in Spain the defenders of the
accused prisoners had the freest and most confidential access to them,
and that even the judges themselves took particular care to
inquire and ascertain whether or not these men had done
their duty in this regard.
Speaker 2: They they seem more progressive than I mean what we
have now. Yeah, like actual progress, Like they were ahead
of their time.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again. In relation to Portugal, it is a fact that
the tribunal of its inquisition never pronounces any sentence respecting
the temporal punishment. It simply declares that the criminal is
guilty of the crimes imputed to him. It then leaves
it to the civil judges to decide what punishments they
may think proper to inflict, precisely in the same way
as it is done in Spain. As for all confiscations,
these all go to the prophet of the king. The diocese.
The diocesan bishops have also the right to take cognizance
of any crime along with the inquisitors of the tribunal.
Speaker 2: If even fifty of the things he says are true,
then that is already the greatest system of justice I've
ever heard of, Like the greatest judicial system I've ever seen.
If even half of that's real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, when you you know how many people
have read like democracy the God that Failed and seeing
the argument that that monarchy is preferable to democracy, lower
time preference and all, and you know, a lot of
people can't get a lot of people just don't go
as far as Happa into anarcho capitalism, you know, which
he argues for in the book after he explains everything.
But when you look at this, I mean, would you.
I mean, I'm sure there are some people who would
say they would rather live under what we're living under
now than live under this, But I would rather live
under this. It's just it's it just makes more sense
to me. It's it seems it's going to bring about order.
Speaker 2: YEA.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a narco tyranny is not going to exist when
you when you have a king that is, you know,
seeking to pass down to you know, his progeny, know
what he.
Speaker 2: Dosesses the idea of repentance. If you, if you kind
of a juxtapose that into this, the the system that
we have now with our our our criminal justice system,
what's the uh, what's the recidivism rate for for violent criminals?
Speaker 1: It's it's insane, it's insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's because we where we have no concept of
are you actually repentant of your crimes? I mean, I
know that's a question they ask usually after a sentence
has passed or or right before, but like to have
it actually mean something, and and for them to be
able to discern whether whether the accused actually means it.
That's just that's a level of human connection that I
don't think can exist now, Like civilization is just I
don't know, evolved past that unfortunately.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, Yeah.
Speaker 1: All right. Besides all this, I ought still farther to
observe to you that in regard to the more or
less severe form of forms of justice, there has never
existed anywhere so much as one enlightened nation, which, from
time to time and for great urgent motives, has not
instituted certain extraordinary tribunals divested almost wholly of the usual
forms of justice. Thus, I will cite to you as
an example the ancient Provotou order of justice of the French.
It was the will or whim of the kings of
France that all the great public roads should be everywhere
completely safe for travelers. Early libertarian work. Here, every traveler
was placed directly under their special protection, and the slenderest
attempt upon his person or his safety was looked upon
as a kind of high treason, which the law punished
with the utmost severity and with the rapidity of lightning.
The poor wretch who had robbed a travel or upon
the high road, although it was but a few of
a few levier livers. I can't remember how that perse
levers was seized by the marshasse a, delivered over to
be judged by the Grand Provo, and two excessors, and
in the course of twenty four hours broken alive upon
the rack. And all this too under the eyes of Parliament,
which never interfered, because not allowed to do so. In
the business that just completely destroys an episode of that
I really sed earlier.
Speaker 5: Oh oh yeah, because I mean I guess I should
have just kept it till like iron iron maidens, Like
you know, the iron maiden was never used as.
Speaker 1: A as a torture device. It was something invented for
nineteenth century like freak shows and circuses and stuff like that.
But I guess somebody, I mean, maybe if people were
the racks used, but it's hard to find evidence of them.
Speaker 2: That is, I mean, that's I think that's fucking awesome.
Like these roads are basically they belong to the king,
and if you fuck with anybody on them, like not Onli,
not only are you getting executed, but it's going to
be very painful. I wonder what that did for the
crime rate. Like something tells me that the king just
didn't arbitrarily come up with that punishment. There was probably
a time where like you could travel on the roads.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and then.
Speaker 2: The pendulum swung the other way and now you're getting
the fucking racked.
Speaker 1: That in Russia and its territories in the late eighteen hundreds,
and maybe Stalin wouldn't have made it anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It is no doubt true that the jurisprudence was severe,
but then it was completely at the option of every
Frenchman whether or not to rob upon the high roads.
The will the king was that the public road travel,
that the public road should travel upon them, The public
should travel upon them in perfect security, and even sleep
upon them with impunity. Men have each their own peculiar
notions and ideas. From what I have already said, you cannot,
my lord, but be sensible. How many errors and injustices
our modern sophice have placed to the account of the Inquisition.
They represented as a tribunal purely ecclesiastical, whereas I have
shown you by the most incontestible authorities that it is
nothing of the nature. They boldly assert that the priests
and this institution contempt condemned men to death, and this
too even for simple opinions. And I have convinced you
that this is false. They maintain that the Inquisition is
the artful invention of the popes, whereas, referring to history,
you have seen that the institution was conceded by the
poet hopes only at the urgent solicitation of sovereigns, and
often with much reluctance, at least in relation to those
inflictions which appeared to them too severe. They have contended
that the Inquisition enslaves the human mind, and that the
writers of Spain all disappeared the instant it was introduced.
Whereas what is the fact the brightest age of Spanish
literature is the very age of Philip the second, the
prince most loudly accused of being the great promoter of
the Inquisition. Whilst moreover, it is like likewise true that
the writers who have principally distinguished Spain all printed and
published their works with the express permission of the Holy Office. Mathematics, astronomy, chemistry,
all the natural sciences, philology, philology, philology is like touching
faces philology, history and antiquity, etc. All these are fields
in which the human mind may range without control and
without any of the slenderest opposition of the Right Reverend Father,
the Grand Inquisitor. It surely is not enslaving the human mind,
merely to ordain and require that a set of profane
and impious writers shall not insult religion and revile the
dogmas of the state.
Speaker 2: See, we have all of that right now, except for
the good parts. You can replace mathematics and philology with you. Yeah,
here's how to chop your dick off and keep an
open wounds.
Speaker 1: Try to keep maggots out of it.
Speaker 2: Well that was it was kind of repetitive from the
first letter, but yeah, I like how he went into
a little more detail about the just how fucking awesome
the that that whole uh, the whole process was.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it's I think it's taken as a
given by most people that justice in times as such
would be, you know, just oh, that person's guilty, just
chopped their head off, chopped their hands off to everything,
and to actually create something as such, and I would
have to believe that they would. In wanting the church
to be the inquisitors, to be the investigators, they were
hoping that they would. They were finding the most moral
men to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which at the time they were.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: From the from the propaganda's standpoint, it's and even for me,
it's it's easy to assume that people, the people in
charge of the justice system take joy in punishing punishing
people arbitrarily. And you know, so a standpoint that's never
considered is you know, what if what if people don't
take joy in executing people or hurting people, Like, what
if you had a system where people actually look for
reasons to be merciful and reasons to forgive and reasons
to you know, rehabilitate. And that's a pie in the
sky fantasy right now because we don't have a culture
that that can withstand that. We're seeing that right now
with you know, the decarceration movements and just you know,
you you can goes back to what we all know
is you can only have that kind of system and
a culture that that is united.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, I forget what rappers said in
the nineties. You said, you can't have justice on stolen land.
You can't. You can't have justice in a multi multicultural society.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's yeah, everything's about gaining power for your for
your in group.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean every land is stolen, every line is stolen
from someone else, So it's retarded. That's retarded. But you
can't have justice in a multicultural society. It's just it's impossible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred competing power groups. Yeah, and you know,
like like your guests said during your last episode, the
system is remarkably resilient. The fact that you know where
we're we're seeing it slip right now, but who knows
how who knows how long this inquisition is gonna last.
It could very well be for six hundred years. Like
I mean, it's it's a crapshoot right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no mercy, no mercy associated with it whatsoever.
Speaker 2: No, nope, no.
Speaker 1: And it's and it's horrific in its nature. It's anti
human and its nature.
Speaker 2: And that's that's the difference.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: As much as I can extrapolate parallels between the Spanish
Inquisition and what what what our side's going through right now,
the difference is, uh, where the good guys being being acquired?
Speaker 1: All right, well we'll check out. I'll look at the
next letter and see how that. See how much difference
we have in that. Try to try to reduce relap
on the next one that we read, and we'll go
from there. Hey, I, you were on an episode this
week of Timeline Earth. That was that was crazy man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I made my triumph triumphant return, you know, to
fulfill my minimum minimum obligations, which is all I really
try to do. The astitute in next one should be
good for next Wednesday too, But the fuck knows.
Speaker 1: Let me take a jab jabb at Pause. You show
up more than Pause does.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, but when he shows up.
Speaker 1: I love you, pause, I love you.
Speaker 2: When he shows up, it's like twelve of my twelve
of me showing up.
Speaker 1: All right, man, you have a good night.
Speaker 3: Thanks man.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peking Show.
I think three episodes is enough. We're going to finish
this up.
Speaker 2: Hey, doing eron, Hey, how's it going? Man?
Speaker 1: Doing good? Man doing good. So what we are going
to do today is the book we've been going through
on the Spanish Inquisition by Joseph demeistra Is, has five
letters in it. We've read one and two. One was
very long, two is short. We're going to read four
to finish it off, but we're in four is very
short actually, So we're going to have some discussion time
about everything that we've read. But we want to start
off by reading a section out of letter three that
I think is interesting because it references a specific case
where a criminal was charged and sentenced to a punishment,
and it talks about how the punishment was carried out
and it's rather interesting. So anything you want to say
before we start.
Speaker 2: No, let's get right into it, all right, Let's do this.
Speaker 1: All right, So this is in the middle of letter three.
If you go up here a little bit. He talks
about how somebody had said, oh, there's this scaffold. There's
an edifice designed, this a scaffold for the burning of heretics.
And he goes, it's such an edifice designs to such
a purpose, would of course burn itself as the first experiment.
But yeah, so all this preposterous stuff. But he says,
there's a mister He cites a mister Townsend. He says,
but I will cite to you another example of mister
Townsend's abhorrence and reprobation of the Inquisition. It is the
account of a very frightful Auto da fay, which took
place a little while before his reverence arrived in Spain.
Speaker 2: I just thought of a joke about that which field
doesn't not melt wood beams?
Speaker 3: Uh oh.
Speaker 1: Ah, he says. A beggar tells us named Ignacio Rodriguez
was condemned by the Tribunal of the Inquisition for having
distributed certain love potions of a very indecent nature, and
of having, in the administration of the infamous remedy, pronounced
certain words of necromancy.
Speaker 2: Old blue choo.
Speaker 1: Or is this the original Spanish fly.
Speaker 2: That could very well be it.
Speaker 1: It was, moreover, proved that he had administered the disgusting
dose to all ranks of persons. Rodriguez had two accomplices
in his crimes who were equally condemned as he was.
Their names Juliana Lopez and Angelo Barrios. One of these
imploring the judges to spare her life. They told her
that it was not the practice of the Holy Office
to condemn anyone to death. Rodriguez was condemned to be
led through the streets of madri mounts It on an
ass and to be whipped. They likewise imposed upon him
certain practices of religion, and to be banished from the
capital for five years.
Speaker 2: All right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reading of the sentence was frequently interrupted by peals
of laughter, in which the beggar himself joined.
Speaker 2: It's probably an interesting trial.
Speaker 1: Accordingly, the criminal was led through the streets but not
whipped on the way, and during the procession the people
offered him wine and biscuits, cruel creatures to refresh him,
such as the narrative given by mister Townsend says. Now,
I do think that nothing can be more lenient and
humane than all this process. If here the tribunal deserves
any reproach, it is for the excess of its indulgence.
For if we only consider the words of the traveler,
we find that the ingredients employed by Rodriguez were such
as would in any other country. He had condemned him
to the pillory, to the galleys, or even to the gallows. However,
all this does not satisfy mister Townsend. The crime, he remarks,
was far below the dignity of the tribunal, and that
it would have been been much better to have punished
the miserable wretch secret by the vilest minister of justice.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it seems like they, uh, they got it
in a little deeper than they wanted to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, so amare Yeah, Yeah, it's like and
you have to imagine these you know, these priests and
these Dominicans just they're like really yeah, really Spanish lie huh.
Speaker 1: Right, this is great. We gotta we gotta listen to this. Yeah,
all right, let us read the fourth fourth Letter in
its entirety and bring this to a halt, and bring
this to a close. Yes, all right. In the natural sciences,
there is always question of mean quantities. Thus we speak
of the mean distance, the mean movement, the mean duration,
et cetera. It would be well if the same notion
were applied also to politics, and that men would feel
and be convinced that the best institutions are not those
which present the greatest degree of possible happiness as such
or such a given period, but those which ensure the
greatest sum or measure of possible happiness to the greatest
number of possible generations. This, and I think to point
quite and I think the point quite evident is mean happiness.
Speaker 2: All right, yeah, yeah, I guess you know. The state's
job isn't to make everybody happy. It's to create the
conditions so that the vast majority of people can become happy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, de maestra and characteristically inserting a little classical
liberalism in here.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, happens to the best of us.
Speaker 1: Upon this principle, I should be curious and should like
to know what the bitterest enemy of the inquisition would
reply to the Spaniard who, passing over what I have
just said, should undertake to defend it in terms like
the following, Sir, He says to the supposed accuser, you
are my ops, you are shortsighted and see but a
single object. Our legislatures. Our legislators looked down from an
eminence and saw the great hule. At the opening of
the sixteenth century, they beheld Europe as it were in flames.
In order to secure themselves from the general conflagration, they
employed the position, which is the political instrument. They made
use of both to preserve the unity of faith and
to prevent the war of religion, the wars of religion.
You have done nothing like this, but now trace and
remark the result. I appeal but to experience. For experiences,
the best criterions direct men's judgment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, when you look at what the Reformation
eventually led to for the vast majority of Europe, especially
the Thirty Years War, you know, if you were on
the outside looking in on that, you would have to
ask yourself, Okay, how do I have this not happen
in my country? Like the Thirty Years War devastated Europe,
like per capita it was the per capita it was
one of the most devastating wars in Europe in terms
of like just the destruction of productive capacity. I mean,
it changed the landscape. And I don't blame countries like
Spain that kind of escaped it from you know, in
the in the sixteenth or seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, being like, let's, uh,
let's make sure that that never and anything like that
ever happens to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And as Thomas has pointed out, uh, Machiavelli, yeah,
wrote about how you know, one hundred years before the
Thirty Years wore, one hundred years before the Treaty of Westphalia,
Spain was a state, was a was a true Westphalian
kind of was was a true state. And that's the
reason they were able to accomplish so much while everybody
else was.
Speaker 2: Just so from my understanding, it was kind of a
proto Westphalian state because even though the monarch did represent
national sovereignty or how do I want to phrase this,
the monarch was understood and articulated as the national sovereign
of Spain, whereas every other country it was just you know,
the dukes, the counts, the whatever, the barons that held sovereignty. Right,
but within the context of feudalism.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Behold. Then the Thirty Years War enkindled by the doctrines
of Luther. Look at the unheard of excesses of the Anabaptists,
the civil wars of France, of England and of Holland.
Consider the massacres of the Saint Bartholomew of Merindal and
the Savells, the murder of Queen Mary Stewart, that of
Henry the third, of Henry the fourth, of Charles the First,
of the Prince of Orange, et cetera. A ship might
float in the ocean of blood which your innovators have shed.
The Inquisition would have punished only those disturbers of the
public peace and order. It ill becomes you, ignorant and
presumptuous as you are, you who had foreseen nothing and
have deluged Europe and blood. It will be it ill
becomes you to blame our monarchs who had foreseen everything
and secured their kingdom from devastation.
Speaker 2: This is a very interesting approach he's taken in something
that I mean, I it makes me empathize even more
with the Spanish monarch with a Ferdinand the seventh, and
I guess his predecessors too, like just what can we
do to insulate ourselves from the conditions that led to
all these religious based civil civil wars and sectarian violence?
Like yeah, I guess I would too, Like if you know,
if we have to institute the Inquisition, even even at
its most most ill willed, uh, lying propagandistic description like
it's it's still better than what was going on in
other countries.
Speaker 1: Yep, all right, don't tell me that the Inquisition has
produced such and such abuses at such and such a time.
This is not the question. The question is to know whether,
during the last three centuries there has been, by virtue
of the Inquisition a greater enjoyment of peace and happiness
in Spain than in the other nations of Europe. To
sacrifice present generations to the problematic happiness of future generations.
This may be a calculation of a philosopher, but it
is not that of an enlightened legislation legislator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's right, he's making the making the utility the
utilitarian argument, which I mean, he's right.
Speaker 1: But if this observation, but if this observation does, But
if this observation do not suffice to convince you, I
will then appeal to what we have witnessed during the
late conflicts with the gigantic power of France, wielded by
the greatest of all modern conquerors and heroes. It was
the Inquisition which, then, far beyond any other instrument, saved
Spain and immortalized it. It preserved and kept alive that
public spirit, faith, that faith, that religious patriotism, which produced
those wonders which we have all witnessed, and which it
may be, by saving Spain saved Europe itself from tyranny
and oppression, from the summits of the Pyrenees. The Inquisition
frightened away that profane philosophism which had, it is true,
it's great good reasons for hating the Inquisition. Its eye
was always open, watching the dangerous works which, like so
many dreadful avalanches, fell down from the mountains. And although
unhappily too many of these poisonous instruments did escape its
vigilance and served to seduce and corrupt a considerable number
of individuals, still the great body of the people remained
faithful and unimpaired. It was the Inquisition alone that could restore,
and that actually, far beyond any other aid, did restore.
Such was the noble ardor which it inspired the monarch
to his throne.
Speaker 2: For talking about Ferdinand the seventh.
Speaker 1: At this point, I would yeah, fernand the seventh was
monarch in.
Speaker 2: The eighteen fourteen after the Peninsular War, they did the
Constitution of eighteen twelve, which was a bunch of liberal reforms,
and then Ferdinand the seventh was restored and basically did
away with it. And then there was some some type
of uprising where they brought it back from like eighteen
teen twenty to eighteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, and then after Ferdinand the seventh died
in like the eighteen thirties, Isabella pretty much did away
with the Inquisition. Yeah, and then they had they had
the first Carloss.
Speaker 1: The first Carlist War, and yeah, I mean it just and.
Speaker 2: Then what a fucking mess, what a mess of a
country it was.
Speaker 1: I mean during the eighteen hundreds, it was just one
violent conflict out the other.
Speaker 2: It was like, you have all this peace time with
a strong bonarc in the Inquisition and then it's like
it had to had to make up for lost time
in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: And then, as we were talking about before we went live,
Marxism gets introduced, oh yeah, to the to the mix,
and what a fertile ground that was for for that
to take take hold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, oh, yeah.
Speaker 1: Far more so than I mean, infinitely more so than
the Soviet than Russia was even in nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like similar, similar conditions to Russia. They were
both like backwards, like just industrially not there not a
whole lot of or I should say, a whole lot
of loopen proletariats around just not really giving a shit.
But uh, yeah, I mean, I guess it was just
ripe for both right wing and left wing revolutions, Marxistan,
fascist and monarchist.
Speaker 1: For my part, I do not see what reasonable reply
could well be made to these striking observations. What here, however,
is extraordinary, and I believe very little known, is the
complete apology for the inquisition made by Voltaire himself, and
which I will lay before you as a remarkable monument
of that good sense which sees and admits facts, and
at the same time of that prejudice which is blind
to their causes. Many such cases, well, during the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, says Voltaire, there were not in Spain
any of those sanguinary revolutions, of those conspiracies, of those cruelties,
which were so common in the other nations of Europe.
Neither the Duke of Lerma, nor the Count nor the
Count Olivaris ever shed the blood of their enemies upon
the scaffold. Kings were never assassinated there, neither did any
of them perish there, as they did in England by
the hand of the executioner. In short, were it not
for the horrors of the Inquisition, there was nothing then
wherewith Spain could be reproached.
Speaker 2: Yeah, huh, man, the only mistake Spain made was the Inquisition,
which also happened to insulate themselves from the horrors he
just mentioned. Oh man, it's like you can't really draw
the connection, I guess, or maybe Kennedy just doesn't want to,
because it's.
Speaker 1: Like, it's like the connection of why why economics, economic
theory aside. Sweden could start having this gigantic like welfare
state in the fifties and sixties, and no one in
the country is you know, very few people in the
country are complaining about it. I wonder why that is.
I mean, could it be that every it could could
it be a monoculture? I have no idea.
Speaker 2: If it weren't for Sweden's resistance to mass immigration, it's
the only thing we could hit them on. Otherwise they're great.
Speaker 1: No blindness surely can be well greater than this. Without
the horrors of the Inquisition, there would be no room
to cast any approach on Spain, which, only by the
power and influences of the Inquisition escaped those horrors which
disgraced every other nation. Thus, rejoice at the circumstance. Thus
does Genius chastise itself condemned to descend to the lowest absurdity,
even to the most pitiful nonsense, as a just punishment
for having prostituted itself to the defense of error.
Speaker 2: All right, well, he said what we said, only much
more eloquently, I guess.
Speaker 1: Very much so many such cases. Again, I am less
gratified with the natural superiority of men's talents than with
their nullity, whenever they forget their proper destination. Yeah, that's
a good line. It's a really good line.
Speaker 2: Know your place, bitch.
Speaker 1: After witnessing all the horrors which have disgraced and afflicted Europe,
how or with what face can men reproach Spain for
having possessed an institution which would effectually have prevented them
all the Holy Office with but sixty sentences or trials
in a century would have saved us the frightful spectacle
of those heaps of human bodies mountain high as the
Alps and sufficient to stop the course of the Rhine
and the po.
Speaker 2: So he already in the first in the first couple episodes,
like what we gathered was that the Spanish Inquisition was
fairly minimalist. It was not like a just a mass
tirade of executing people left and right. That it was
actually pretty minimalist, pretty pretty organized, pretty pretty orderly and
regulated and like put putting numbers to that sixty cases
in a century, and that's all it took to insulate
themselves from again, like the religious strife that ever that
every other country was like bathed in. I mean, I
don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. And something that I think Thomas said
in the first episode of the Spanish Civil War series
was in the span of four to five centuries their
report three to six thousand people were put to death
in Spain after going before the Inquisition and then having
the state hand down a sentence of death, whereas in
the first like six months of the Spanish Civil War,
three thousand priests and nuns were killed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're murdered. Yeah, it's like, let's let's let's balance
this out.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: But of all Europeans, the French, considering the calamities which
they have brought upon them the world, and the still
more dreadful evils which they brought upon themselves and still do,
the French are beyond all dispute the most unpardonable critics
of the of the Inquisition, ridiculing Spain, as some of
their writers do, for the very wisdom of the institutions,
which alone had so long preserved it.
Speaker 2: Oh, man, if he gives us some numbers on the
reign of terror versus the entire Spanish Inquisition.
Speaker 1: Man, let us do justice to this illustrious nation. She
is one of the few nations that never became an
accomplice of the French Revolution. She did, indeed, at length
become its victim. But the blood of four hundred thousand
strangers sufficiently avenged her cause, and the Spaniard again resumed
his ancient maxims.
Speaker 2: All right, there it is now. Is he talking about
four thousand French casualties?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that has to be my assumption.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or that could be Napoleonic War casualty. Either way,
it's probably no content three thousand for the Spanish equi.
Let's let let's bring let's bring that back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Committee of the Cortes, whom I have cited already,
were fully sensible of the force of the argument in
favor of the Inquisition, which results from the consideration of
the evidence that its tribunal prevented the introduction of innumerable
evils into the country. In order, however, to elude this
powerful attestation, the reporter of the said committee has ingeniously
found out an expeditious and conveniently and convenient expedient which
is at once to deny the influence of the Inquisition.
The authority of the bishops, he said, had this only
been preserved, would have sufficed to defend Spain against the
late Harris Harris heresy. Heress the arcs it is not
the Inquisition that we are indebted. It is not to
the Inquisition that we are indebted for this happiness.
Speaker 2: Oh saying that if the bishops had just maintained their
original authority, that this aull could have been avoided.
Speaker 1: It looks like he's saying that the authority of the bishops,
had this only been preserved, would have sufficed to defend
Spain against the latest. He s arcs, it is not
to the Inquisition that we are indebted for this happiness.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that. I mean, maybe in like
the early church days where you had like Arius and
all them getting slapped down by ecumenical councils. But I
mean when you're talking about the Reformation, I don't know
if like the the I really don't know what the
structure was in Spain at the time, but it wouldn't
surprise me if it wasn't strong enough to kind of
beat down, you know, whatever sex of Protestantism would have
arose in Spain and the Inquisition not been in place.
Speaker 1: Now, sir, only remark how little prejudice and passion pay
attention to what they say. You have seen already in
my preceding letter the second, that the bishops, so far
from complaining of the Inquisitors, considered them on the contrary,
as their faithful allies in the preservation of the purity
of faith, but conceding everything to the Committee that it
may itself refute itself. If the ordinary authority of the
bishops was alone sufficient to repel error and to secure
Spain from the intrusions of heresy come. How comes it
that this same authority usurped by the Inquisition, and moreover
increased and improved by a multitude of important reforms. How
comes it, or how imagined that this said institution had
been of no use to Spain.
Speaker 2: The fact is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, The fact is certain and notorious that our modern
heress heressi archs could never set foot in Spain. Surely
then something must have sufficed to prevent their intrusion.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's the answer to my question. The original authority
of the bishops didn't extend to not letting, not letting
heretics physically enter the country, whereas the Inquisition did.
Speaker 1: It was not the power of the bishops, since the
Inquisition had deprived them of it. Neither, according to the
Committee of the Cortes, was it the Inquisition itself. Again,
it was not to the civil tribunals nor to the
governors of provinces, etc. That the above benefits are to
be attributed, because the Inquisition possessed the exclusive jurisdiction in
all matters relating to religion. Therefore, once more, since something
or other did suffice, what was that all sufficient instrument?
If the Committee did not see this. The sole reason
must have been that they shut their eyes and would
not see it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's leading the question, Well, yeah, in a good way,
like come on, you idiot, But.
Speaker 1: I defy any man who has eyes and is willing
to see not to be convinced that since every European
nation span alone, and certain states which had more or
less adopted the jurisdiction and forms of the Inquisition expected,
it is consequently but just and reasonable to attribute the
preservation and peace of Spain to the power and influence
and to the power and influence alone of the Inquisition
above all, since no other cause can be assigned. Suppose,
for example, that in the fourteenth century, one single nation
had alone escaped the dreadful pestilence which then desolated Europe.
This fortunate country hereafter boasted that it possessed a system
of prophylactics, a remedy announced and prepared for the salutary
for the salutary effect, a remedy long and constantly made
use of, and whose healthy and preservative ingredients it was
willing to make known. It surely would in such case
be utterly unreasonable to tell such nation that it owed
nothing to the boasted remedy, and that other remedies would
have equally sufficed for the same purpose, whereas all other
remedies neither had nor would have anywhere sufficed save in
this one nation. A line I love.
Speaker 2: I love the implicit comparison of Protestantism and Judaism and
Islam to the bubonic plague. I love it. I am
fucking rock hard right now.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for that, and not for you to
get rock hard, for you to say, well, maybe I
don't know. In making this apology for the Inquisition, I
should pass over an important circumstance. If I did not
request you to remark the influence of this institution upon
the Spanish character. If this nation so long preserved its maxims,
its unity of faith, its public spirit, it was solely
to the Inquisition, and that it owed these benefits. For
only look at that miserable host of men who have
been formed in the schools of modern philosophy. What did
these men do for Spain? Evil and nothing else but evil?
They alone called in or promoted tyranny. They alone, instead
of rousing a noble resistance and a spirit of unshaken fidelity,
preached only those half measures which had well nigh ruined
the nation obedience to the Empire, of circumstances, timidity, weakness, delays, concessions, etc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that one goes out to you, Voltaire.
Speaker 1: If Spain be ever destined to perish, it is these
or such men as these that will prove the authors
of her ruin. That was so prophetic, so prophetic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's talking about liberals.
Speaker 1: There are indeed multitudes of superficial men who believe and
have contended that in her late struggles she was saved
by the Cortes, whereas she was saved directly in spite
of the Cortes. It was the people that did everything.
There were it may be among the enemies of the
Inquisition and among the partisans of philosophy, a few individuals,
true Spaniards who were capable of laying down their lives
for their country. But what could these men have done
without the people? And in their turn, what could or
would the people have done had they not led had
they not been led on by their national ideas and
animated above all by what men now call superstition. Yeah,
he's he's preaching.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like hammering it home. Yeah, But uh, I
was like all right, get to your next point. I'm convinced.
I was convinced five paragraphs ago.
Speaker 1: If you wish to extinguish that enthusiasm which inspires great
thoughts and impels to noble enterprises, if you wish to
render men's hearts cold and unfeeling, it's a substitute egotism
in the room of generous and ardent patriotism. If you
wish to do this, only take away from the people
their faith and make them philosophers. Oh it's a fucking
line in the whole book.
Speaker 2: Let me frame that. Let me frame that and put
that on my wall.
Speaker 1: That's the best line in the whole book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there really is so true, so true.
Speaker 1: Oh man, all right. There is not in Europe one
single nation or one body of people so little known
or so much calmulated as the Spaniards. Spanish superstition has
become a proverb, and yet nothing is more groundless. The
higher orders of the nation are as well educated and
as enlightened as we are.
Speaker 2: And who is in charge of their education? Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: In regard to the lower classes, it may be, for example,
in relation to the veneration paid to the saints, and
rather to their images. It may be that they sometimes,
and here and there exceed the measure of wise devotion.
But as here the dogma itself is neither violated nor denied.
So the trifling abuses prevailing amongst a certain portion of
the ignorant and the simple matter very little in these regards. Nay,
they are not, even as I could easily show you
without their advantages.
Speaker 2: Talking about uh, like saying that they might be a
little bit iconoclastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: Uh or or I guess their critics might be a
little iconoclastic, I should say, why is usually a Protestant
critique of any Catholic nations? You know, you worship statues
and Mary, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1: But at all events, that is true that the Spaniard
has less prejudice and fewer superstitions than those very people
who laugh at him, without ever having reflected upon themselves us.
You know, I dare say, a number of respectable individuals
in the first rank of society who sincerely and firmly
believe in amulets, apparitions, sympathetic remedies, dream fortune tellers, and
many such like fooleries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean he's writing this in the early
eighteen hundreds they were. I mean, they still had an empire,
you know, and I'm sure, like I guess who imported
from who those superstitions, because you know, you go to
Latin America and I am that's now if you wanted
to make fun of them for being superstitious, I totally
get it. I don't know enough about like European Spaniards
to make any judgment on like if they're in any
way comparable to your average Spanish descended Latin American.
Speaker 1: They they're very different people.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all you have to do is go to Puerto
Rico and you can you can tell the people who
are descended from Spain and the people who are the
Tayana who are native to the quote unquote native to
the island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a big difference.
Speaker 1: You have seen persons refuse to sit at the table
where unfortunately the number of the uninvited guests was twelve.
Speaker 2: Who I'm going to start doing that? I agree that again,
that's pretty good.
Speaker 1: You have seen persons refuse to sit at a table
where unfortunately the number of the invited guests was twelve.
Who would change color if an unlucky waiter chanced chance
profanely to overturn the salt cellar, who, upon no consideration whatsoever,
would set out on a journey on such and such
a day, etc. Well, sir, go into Spain. There you
will be surprised to me with none of these silly
and humiliating superstitions. The reason is that as real religious
principle is essentially opposed to all such empty fancies and beliefs,
so whersoever it prevails, it is sure always to despise
and disregard them.
Speaker 2: I wish you would name the people that had those
superstitions that he just mentioned, like, I guarantee it the
English like I've heard like spilling assault is bad luck,
and I think that's a pretty well known one. But
like the number of guests being twelve, that has to
be like an old Anglo Saxon fucking superstition.
Speaker 1: That that wouldn't be shocking at all.
Speaker 3: You. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The reason is that as religious, real religious principle is
essentially opposed to all such empty fancies and beliefs, so
wheresoever it prevails, it is sure always to despise and
disregard them. At the same time, it is also true
that the contempt of such follies is founded more or
less upon the national good sense of the Spaniard.
Speaker 2: But okay, yah, all right, yeah.
Speaker 1: You give it, allow it. But after all there is
no mercy for Spain. Not only do the English writers
in particular incessantly invey against the Inquisition, but even its
ministers declared in Parliament this was in the year eighteen fourteen,
that they had that they had done everything in their power,
by the way of remonstrances and representations, to oppose the
shameful measures of the Spanish authorities, and above all the
re establishment of the detestable Inquisition. Yep, that is so British.
That is such a British sentence right there.
Speaker 2: It's just yeah, yeah, yeah, were what were they doing
in eighteen fourteen? Were weren't they across the ocean doing
something stupid? I wonder how many sailors the Spanish impressed.
Speaker 1: Now, for my own part, and I will say it
with all the sincerity of my feelings, and after reflecting
upon what I have written upon the subject, for my
own part, I cannot discover what there is so detestable
in the famous Inquisition. However, an accusation so solemn as
the above and made in so honorable an assembly calls
upon me to devote it to a few particular observations.
I hope, therefore, in the succeeding letter to convince your
Lordship that amid all the nations of Europe, the English
have the least right to reproach Spain with its inquisition.
Speaker 2: I can't wait.
Speaker 1: And judge. And that's the ending of the that's the
ending of the fourth letter.
Speaker 2: Oh damn it.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean part of this is I got microm
Imperium Press to give the Okay, I'm doing this, and
part of this is to get people to go to
Imperium Press and see the incredible, the incredible literature they're
putting out, and especially this one. This is a quick read.
I mean you could read all the letters in an afternoon.
The notes are really good too, So we didn't read
any of the notes, but there are some notes in
there that are good explainers. But yeah, the this letter
particularly hit me hard because of the the way he
just went after the philosopher of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep, the the justification just based on body count
alone when you compare it to other European countries. That
that was, Yeah, that that got me. My co host.
Speaker 1: Always does that, always does that, always has to make
a make an appearance. But the.
Speaker 2: But yeah, think about it, like and how many other
instances have there been in history, like from a country
that's been maligned, uh, like you know, from the from
the spear, the spirit of the day. They just happen
to be the country that's behind the times on whatever
insane things going on, and is maligned and is constantly
invoked as tyrannical and evil and repressive, when if you
compare them to other countries, you know, aren't by whatever metric,
they're not they whatever they whatever evil they've done, they've
they probably spared themselves compared to other countries. But you
know that transition.
Speaker 1: Really what happens here is if you want to take
I mean, I know Demeestra says that the uh he
considers the Inquisition to have started in the twelve hundreds,
but really you're talking about fourteen ninety two ish, the
fourteen nineties. But Conquista what happens twenty what starts happening
twenty five years later? The Protestant Protestant revolt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: What do you get? You get all of these writings
and these these screeds and books written against the Catholic Church,
and the easiest, the easiest thing to do would be
to point the finger at a country that these people
didn't go to. I mean they didn't you know, they
didn't visit.
Speaker 2: They just heard stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and it you know, there was no internet,
you know, there was no carrier pigeon probably.
Speaker 2: Hearing the stories from the people that got kicked out. Yeah,
oh it was awful. Yeah, and they took all my sheckles.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, when you're when you feel like when you've
just revolted against something, you're going to do everything. You know,
a lot a lot of times you're going to do
everything you can, especially in this case because there were persecutions.
And not going to say I'm not going to accuse
anybody of making stuff up. I'm not going to accuse
anybody of lying, but I will say that it is
when at a time when conspiracy theories were I mean
they were everywhere. I mean, conspiracy theories started the Revolutionary
War in this country. It's without a doubt. I mean
that's that's been proven over and over again. When can
when you just have all these stories about what's coming
out of a nation that is probably the most at
that time, the most connected to Rome, to the Vatican.
Well there they become an easy at.
Speaker 2: That point, oh yeah, absolutely, and the entirety of the
rest of Europe was embroiled. And you know, in the
in the sixteenth century you had the Reformation and then
you know, war after war after war, and then when
that kind of settled down, you had the Enlightenment, which
also made an enemy out of Spain. Like you know,
they didn't stand a chance. And and yet they they
managed for up until the eighteen hundreds to kind of
insulate themselves from the consequences of both of those those
those ages.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, while everybody else was I mean there was
in the later half of the century and the I
guess the the mid to the later half of the
century when yeah, we had the war here and there
were some wars happening, but it was almost like the
old old kind of wars where they were localized. And
but Spain is having like revolutions after I mean, just
one after another, and it's just internal turmoil and then
you throw when you heap Marxism being created onto it,
and many people in in Spain very open to it.
Who have I mean immediate, almost immediately upon a hearing,
hearing it become anarchists start calling themselves anarchists. I mean,
you're just you're going off a cliff. Yeah, I mean
they also lose your You also lose your world empire,
you lose your you lose land to the to America
and yeah.
Speaker 2: And the Napoleonic Wars just fun everything like it was.
If you were a country in Europe after the Napoleonic Wars,
you either successfully restored your monarchy and reacted against all
these bourgeois revolutions by consolidating your power, or you didn't.
You ended up not reacting enough and then becoming like
just a fucking a war torn hellhole between competing ideologies.
Speaker 1: Many such cases.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yep. It kind of begs the question, like where
are we at as far as competing ideologies go. I mean,
if we can glean and I know that like history
doesn't actually repeat itself. Everything's unique, but like, is there
anything we can glean from just the history of Spain
or anything to apply to today. When I think of
Spain in the eighteen hundreds and how maligned it was,
I think think of Russia today, and like has Russia
done anything to insulate itself after the fall of the
Soviet Union from you know, the effects of packs Americana.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the things that I see in some
people have commented to me is that the way the
United States is right now could very well doesn't mirror perfectly,
but definitely mirrors Spain in the early nineteen thirties the.
Speaker 2: Earlier Yeah, yeah, I mean it there's a chance though.
I mean, on my most black pilled moments, I would
probably say it could also mirror Spain and the fifteen
fifties at the apex of its power, like the monarchy's consolidated,
and we got a little while before anything pops off. Yeah, well,
you know, I mean, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's I was just writing on this
today where it's just the worst thing about what we're
going through now is just the fact that rage porn,
Yeah is you just open any social media app and
it's rage porn. You can any browser and you have
rage porn right on the front, and it is. Yeah.
People contact me all the time and they're just like,
I don't know what to do, you know. It's just like,
I mean, you know, and I just say you got
a family to take care of. Yeah, that's what you
should be concentrating on right now.
Speaker 2: And like even that approach, I guess that you're trying
to wake You're trying to make people conscious of what
what they're what their interests are. And I think that,
I mean, I I completely agree no matter who you are,
if you're looking at the world and falling into despair
or getting angry, if you want to, if you want
to immerse yourself in some type of consciousness like race
or class or whatever, no matter what, like taking care
of your family, getting involved in your community, and you know,
just insulating yourself from the rest of the world. You
can get as mad about it as you want, but uh,
you know that's that's that's your obligation, your primary obligation,
no matter what where you find yourself being drawn to
ideologically because ideology doesn't exist in reality, but your family does. Yeah,
you community does.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know Alabama is a you know, a
super majority red state and everything, but you know I do,
at least for a few more our weeks living in
college town. And like today when I went to the
grocery store, was the first time I like actually saw
something that was like eye rolling, you know, yeah, some
you know, a woman wearing a read banned book shirt,
and I don't think she wasn't talking about like, you know,
mine comfer. So I'm pretty I'm pretty sure it wasn't that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I know that. I was posted on
some some college professor was bitching about like, oh, they're
banning like basically the the gay porn from kindergartener's libraries.
And I was like, I was like, I listed a
bunch of books that, like, you know, some of them
that we've we've done live readings on and a couple
of ones that I read. I was like, I want
these books of those libraries because I think, you know, naturally,
my kids are just going to grow up to be
an eth internationalist totally organically.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I think we need We definitely could
definitely use some.
Speaker 2: It was like the Turner Diaries or high school for kids. Yeah,
mine comp like, can we can we get them in
some libraries?
Speaker 1: That a new nobility of blood and soil for for kids?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm yeah, that's what I said, Like, Oh, yes,
I'm I'm a I'm a publisher of children's books. I'm
making versions of my comp I've really I've really loved
to know where your public library is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that. Did you get any response on that?
Because yeah, yeah, I get responses on that. I get
called the Nazi all the time.
Speaker 2: So yeah, well that means you must be doing something right.
Speaker 1: Yes, somebody today, Oh, you're a Nazi and you're a racist,
and it's like and what what what where are we
going with this?
Speaker 2: I'm trying to get called a Nazi and a communist
on the same day, that's my holy girl.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: Somebody at National Review did a very shitty review of
Paul Gottfried the thing he just did, Palo Conservative Anthology yep,
and called them said it was right wing Marxism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, buddy, I wish.
Speaker 1: And it's funny as they Chronicles podcast, which has become
like a staple of mind, they did Paul Paul did
that and they answered that, and it was like, what
are you talking about? And they mentioned Sam Francis. I mean,
can you imagine calling Sam Francis a Marxist?
Speaker 2: No, Like, I mean, I I could maybe infer that
he's he's some things I don't like, but like not
a Marxist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's just.
Speaker 1: What is that gonna be the new the new quote
unquote right wing conning cope and everything everything I don't
like to the right of me as a Marxist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're They're perfectly fine with calling anybody they don't
like Marxists one day, and then they'll call them a
fascist the next day a nazi. You know, depends on,
uh depends on who they're trying to, you know, get
get their donations from at the time. Yeah, we really
need a spot on CNN. Let's call them a nazi.
Speaker 1: Yeah, MSNBC. I'm sure you see as Rachel Maddow even
on TV anymore. I don't even know who's on TV anymore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't. I mean, I don't care. The
last vestige of uh like cable news that I watched
was Tucker and that's gone. So I really have no
reason to turn on like nationally syndicated news anymore. If
I watched my local channel every once in a while,
it's about it.
Speaker 1: And if I want to hear leftists, I'll turn on
like Jimmy dor or something like that. Yeah, he's at
least he's entertaining and funny and what's his name? His
co host? I think it's Tom Metzger had a shirt
on the other day l g B t q c.
Speaker 2: I A so true.
Speaker 1: I was like, it's well, if you understand uh, you know,
feminism and where like Andrea's working and all those and
they were just all c I as that's it's come
to light.
Speaker 2: It's it's a recruiting tool now.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: LGBT friendly Yeah, uh yeah, get that dee I money coming,
come in some trash bags.
Speaker 1: Let's close this out, man, Well, thank you. I yeah,
the great. The thing I love the most about this
one is is just such a learning experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very enlightening, like lifting the veil. Well, it's turning
turned everything I thought I knew, and I didn't know much,
but I thought I was sure on a lot of things,
and this just kind of, you know, broke my mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even if people don't believe, you know, even people
don't want to believe it. Oh, Demestra, was you know saying,
you know, he's lying, he's what would be the opposite
of exaggerating, he's just understating or what yeah, understating it.
Speaker 2: It's just a side apologism.
Speaker 1: It still makes you think, you know, it's like okay,
well yeah, does it make sense from what we know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the people that are critiqued, the people that
are going to be critiquing demeister are utilitarian one hundred
percent of the time. So you can even talk to
them in utilitarian terms like now three thousand people versus.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you can, you can try to talk to them.
I don't really want to talk to them anymore. But
the other commerce time for commerce stations is over. It's
you know, it's it's so when you encounter somebody on
like social media, who it's almost like immediate you can
tell whether that whether it's an honest actor or not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, if they have the potential it like whether
it's entertainment or or actually having a good conversation that
benefits you know, anybody, or if they're you know, the
I don't like I really don't like the word NPC,
but it's like the best we have right now.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And there are people who are just out there spreading
lies on purpose, Yeah, and they know not even can
we get some base lies.
Speaker 2: I'm all for it, just as long as they serve
things that I like.
Speaker 1: All right, do you want to plug anything? I mean
it even is it even a podcast? If car has
do solo episodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I told them earlier that day. I was
seventy five percent sure I was gonna make it. Uh yeah.
You can sometimes find me at uh what's it called
Timeline Earth. Yeah, that's find me on Twitter at bt
W A Underscore returns bt W A stands for Boystown
with Aaron. That's my solo show that.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I have an idea. I have an idea
for an episode.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's all I have is ideas. Yeah, I've
written down somewhere I have.
Speaker 1: An I have an idea for an episode. I'll do
it with you for your show if you want, all right,
I think it will be it'll be enjoyable. And some
people just be like, oh shit, I'm down. It'll be
a reading of something I already said, of something I
already sent you. Then I'm gonna let you get kicked
off of a of all podcasters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me let me face consequences for once.
Speaker 1: All right, man, I appreciate it, Thank you, yep, thanks man,