Secrets of the Inquisition
February 29, 2008 | 10:26 pm | by t-blender |Rate It:
newsWeek.com: Back in the Middle Ages, the Inquisition was a byword for fear and terror in Europe. Its tribunals, set up by the Vatican to ensure that “heretics” did not undermine the authority of the increasingly powerful Roman Catholic Church, burned and tortured witches, blasphemers and members of other faiths. Its judges condemned Galileo for saying that the Earth revolved around the Sun and executed thousands over the course of several centuries. Often, the best that the condemned could hope for was that they’d be strangled before being set alight at the stake.
Now, after centuries of secrecy on the subject, the Vatican has launched a new phase in its campaign to show that the Inquisition wasn’t so bad after all. Church authorities have unveiled a temporary “Rare and Precious” exhibition at Rome’s Vittoriano Museum to “expose some myths” about this dark chapter of its past. The exhibit is also intended as a modern-day object lesson for governments and armies—particularly those in the United States and Europe—who torture enemies and suspected terrorists, says curator Marco Pizzo. Not only does the church have an obligation to expose its own mistakes, he says, but the exhibit is also meant to help foster understanding of the complex nature of the church’s history.
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