Innocent III: The Inquisition as a Model for Conquest and Atrocity: Well Rewarded Exterminations

            The belief in the superiority of Christianity and the resulting drive for knowledge,  conquest and wealth begins earlier than Columbus. The roots of 17th century Absolutism, in Spain, France or England,  by which time the Conquest was secure, are to be found in much earlier centuries. For instance, Pope Innocent III was already an absolutist monarch, in some respects. in 1200. Innocent held the Fourth Lateran Council which inaugurated  the Confession rite as obligatory on all Christians and set in motion the process that would lead to the declaration of the rite of Transubstantiation. Innocent III was perhaps the most powerful Pope since Justinian, and perhaps the most powerful pope in the whole history of Christianity.

            . But insofar as there is a late medieval Father of the Inquisition, it would be Innocent III, whose name quite belies his activities.  Of course, the Inquisition can be dated back at least to Augustine's campaign of extermination against the Donatists, or even further to statements attributed to Christ, such as the statement that "he that is not with us is against us". This attitude of "them verses us" characterizes most, if not all, destructive organizations. Innocent was sure of the power of the pope:  he did not know that the Donation of Constantine which was alleged to justify the Church of Rome was actually an 8th century forgery, and that thus the document that founded the Catholic Church was a fraud. But he probably would not have cared. He wrote that Christ "left to Peter not only the governance of the Church but also of the whole world".[1]  Innocent was sure that Christian knowledge of heavenly mysteries justified ruthless Christian supremacy over the world. The conjunction of political power and justifying ideology expressed by Innocent III can be traced back as far as Plato, for instance, who called for a "conjunction of political power and philosophical intelligence".[2]  Plato advocates a caste system, which follows quite naturally from his view that only men of superior intelligence can rule the state, and that eugenic breeding is necessary to rule the 'rabble'. [3] Innocent III held similar views about the supremacy of knowledge as reflected in a theocratic state, and these beliefs justified his resort to violence to surpress those who did not conform to the Christian system of knowledge. Innocent oversaw and largely directed  the murder of some 20,000 supposed heretics, according to contemporary reports, in the town of Beziers, France. Known as the Albigensian Crusade, Innocent writes proudly about this atrocity, complementing the picture of Himmler looking with detached, Hindu indifference on the murder of Jewish women in the showers:

God hath mercifully purged his people's land, and the pest of heretical wickedness, which has grown like a cancer and infected the whole of Provence, is being deadened and driven away.  His mighty hand hath taken away towns and cites wherein the devil dwelt in the person of those whom he possessed and a holy habitation is being prepared for the Holy Ghost, in the    persons of those whom he hath filled, in place of the expelled heretics [who will be murdered and then damned] . Wherefore we give praise and thanks to God Almighty, because, in one and the same cause of His mercy, He hath deigned to work two works of  justice, by bringing upon these faithless folk their merited destruction, in such a fashion as many as possible of the faithful should gain their well-earned reward by the extermination of these folk...He hath deigned, in their destruction, to grant a means of wealth- nay, more, of salvation- to the army of His Crusaders.[4]

            The logic by which Innocent justifies his atrocities could have been written by Columbus, Philip II or if put in slightly more spare and Protestant language, by the British or Dutch Imperial colonialists and slave traders, or if translated into a nationalist idiom such as  was used by the Nazis, could have been written by Himmler. Similar language appears in the Bible and the Koran as well as in the annals of the early American colonists. [5]Describing  the unnecessary slaughter of an entire Pequot village, John Mason, who led the massacre of mostly women and children, declared that the Indians who were massacred were in fact killed by god, With what   "dreadful Terror did the Almighty fall upon their Spirits.. Thus did the Lord judge among the heathen filling the place with their dead bodies" he writes. Cotton Mather called the massacre the "just Judgement of God". [6] The pattern appears again, exalted claims to knowledge justify atrocity and the benefits of a few secured from the punishment of many.

             The Puritans claim a divine right to Native lands, as Innocent the II claimed a right to the wealth of those whose murder he oversaw. What is most interesting about the above passage from Innocent III, is the explicit reference that he makes between the right to punish heretics and the right to steal their wealth. Salvation, it turns out, not only grants the right to steal property, but also the right to kill those who believe differently. The ultimate image that justifies Innocent III's racist greed is the image of Christ and the Holy Ghost.  For Himmler it was the Fuhrer, and for Innocent it was god, Christ or 'spirit' that acted as the justifying symbol or abstraction that enabled mass murder or capitalist plunder.  For Innocent, Christ or the Holy Spirit becomes the ultimate transcendent image or symbol of the doctrine, purpose and activity of world domination. The symbol defines the activity: the system of knowledge defines the nature and extent of the domination and power that is desired. In my view, Innocent has here defined the basic tie between culture and imperialism and knowledge and power that fuels the entire course of the Invasion of the Americas, not only in its Spanish form, but in its French, Dutch, English, American forms as well. Innocent is invoking the same transcendent logic of murder, conquest and profit that inspired Columbus and Himmler.        

            Himmler's biographer rightly compares Himmler to Torquemada, the head priest of the Spanish Inquisition, who in some respects he resembles. Both called for the total extermination of the Jews, and both went about accomplishing this convinced  of  a divine mission to which they were ascetically devoted. Both made a personal cult of purity, duty, renunciation and righteousness. 1492, the year Columbus set forth to the Americas, Ferdinand and Isabella had expelled the Jews and Moors from Spain,  and this was largely directed by Torquemada, the ascetic Grand Inquisitor, succeeded by Diego Deza, a friend and Patron of Columbus.  Columbus was deeply imbued with the mentality of the Inquisition: he longed for the extermination of Jews and infidels and is thought to have joined the Jesuit order, who were central to the Inquisition. One of Columbus' primary authorities, whose book Imago Mundi, he profusely annotated, was Pierre d'Ailly, a high Priest at the Inquisition and execution of John Huss.[7]

            The supremacy of Christ was obvious enough to Columbus and his contemporaries. Christ was the projected image of their beliefs about their own supremacy.  As a result of these beliefs, Columbus was sure of his destiny to explore, rule and rape the New World of its gold for the greater glory of god. Not only was the myth of Christ used to justify the atrocities in the new world, but Columbus and his contemporaries could quote Aristotle, who, in his Politics had written that some men, ruled by passion with strong bodies, deserved to be slaves, while other men, ruled by "reason" were free men and masters. [8] Just as Himmler thought himself a high caste free man and master, in imitation of Hinduism, Columbus was sure that his intelligence gave him the right to participate in the slave trade with the African Coast earlier in his life, and later to enslave perhaps millions, in the new world. Not only Christ, but Aristotle, 'the Master of them that know' sanctioned the atrocities, as the Bhagavad Gita , for Himmler, sanctioned Auschwitz: knowledge justifies power.

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