Gile. Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the history of philosophy.

Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at Kings College London and the LMU in Munich, online at History of Philosophy.net. Today's episode, cancel culture, the Inquisition.

It was a bleak time during a reign of pitiless oppression, Europe looked on in horror as one victim after another fell to a force led by calculating the Spanish leadership and powered by enormous financial resources.

Even the mightiest arsenal could not stop it.

Yet thanks to highly dubious methods,

its successes and achievements

served only to undermine the varied goals

for which it strove. But enough about Manchester City Football Club

because I'm here today to talk about something even worse, the Inquisition. If you know your

Monte Python you'll already have an idea of its main weapons,

surprise, fear, ruthless efficiency, nice red uniforms, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

Which, come to think of it, is almost the same as the main weapons of Manchester City,

worthless efficiency, nice blue uniforms, and an almost fanatical devotion to the PEP.

But with all due respect to Monte Python, they might not be the best guide to this historical phenomenon.

That sketch is specifically about the Spanish Inquisition, whose operations might have been

fearsome, but were more grindingly bureaucratic than ruthlessly efficient, and his relationship to the Pope in Rome was rather indirect.

Indeed, the first thing we need to get clear here is that the Inquisition was not only Spanish.

It was in Rome and in 1542 that six Cardinals, who to be fair do wear red, were appointed as commissaries and inquisitors general by Pope Paul the third. This so-called Holy Office was given universal

authority to pursue heresy across all Christendom. In the 1550s another

Pope, Paul the 4th, declared that the Holy Office in Rome has precedence

over all the other tribunals and that its ministers will be revered by all others who

will submit humbly and obey them in every circumstance.

...