Dark Mysteries of the Vatican

by H. Paul Jeffers

  “The Inquisition itself was established by Pope Gregory IX in 1233 as a special court to help curb the influence of heresy. It escalated as Church officials began to rely on civil authorities to fine, imprison, and even torture heretics. It reached its height in the 16th century to counter the spread of the Protestant Reformation. The department later became the Holy Office and its successor is now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which controls the orthodoxy of Roman Catholic teaching. Its [former] head, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, declared the archives open at a special conference at which he recalled how the decision stemmed from a letter written to Pope John Paul II…by Carlo Ginzburg, a Jewish-born, atheist professor in Los Angeles. [The Pope wrote,] ‘I am sure that opening our archives will respond not just to the legitimate aspirations of scholars but also the Church’s firm intention to serve man helping him to understand himself by reading without prejudice his own history.’”

  Arguably the most infamous trial of the Inquisition was that of the astronomer Galileo Galilei. Born in 1574 in Pisa, Italy, he was determined to study medicine. He enrolled at the University of Pisa in 1581, but soon switched his scientific interests to study mathematics and physics. Among his experiments, it is said (but not confirmed), was taking his pulse to time the swings of a lamp hanging from a ceiling of the Pisa cathedral. In his subsequent experiments, he described the physics of the pendulum. By dropping balls of varying weights from the Tower of Pisa, he found that they fell with equal velocity and uniform acceleration.

  Forced because of financial reasons to leave the university without earning a degree, he returned to Florence, but eventually went back to the university as a teacher and became a lively participant in campus disputes and controversies. That there was a rebel within Galileo came to the attention of the faculty and students when he mocked the custom of wearing academic robes by declaring that they would be better to abandon clothing altogether.

  After the death of his father in 1591 left him responsible for supporting his mother and siblings, he accepted a more remunerative post at the University of Padua.

  Remaining there for eighteen years, he continued work in the area of motion, while widening his interests into astronomy by modifying a simple telescope into one that allowed him to study the mountains of the Moon, the phases of Venus, the moons of Jupiter, spots on the surface of the Sun, and the stars of the Milky Way. By publishing his findings in a booklet titled The Starry Messenger, he found that his scientific reputation rose like a skyrocket. But his further observations resulted in interest in theories proposed in 1543 by Nicholas Copernicus that the Sun was the center of the universe and that the Earth was a rotating planet that revolved around it.

  By embracing Copernicus, Galileo placed himself in conflict with the Church’s doctrine of Creation, based on the Bible’s account in Genesis. Known as geocentrism, it fixed Earth in the center of the universe with the Sun and stars circling it. Declaring the Copernican view dangerous to the faith in 1616, the Church summoned Galileo to the city of Rome. His “instruction” from Cardinal Robert Bellarmine was to not “hold, teach and defend in any manner whatsoever, in words or in print” the Copernican doctrine. It was a sobering warning. But four years later, Galileo learned that the pope, Urban VIII, had declared that “the Holy Church had never, and never would, condemn” Copernicanism as heretical, but “only as rash, though there was no danger that anyone would ever demonstrate it to be necessarily true.”

  Interpreting this as indirect permission to continue with his explorations of the Copernican view, Galileo plunged into six years of study. The result was a vigorous defense of Copernicus in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. By publishing it, Galileo found himself in Rome again on the charge of defying Cardinal Bellarmine’s instruction not to defend Copernicus in any way. The trial by a panel of cardinals began in the fall of 1632.

  When the inquiry ended a year later, the Church pronounced and declared that Galileo was “suspect of heresy” for having held and believed the “false doctrine” that the Earth was not the center of the universe. The cardinals informed Galileo, who was now seventy years old, that the Holy Office was willing to absolve him, provided that first, “with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, in our presence you adjure [recant], curse and detest the said errors and heresies.” Declaring the Dialogue prohibited, the panel of judges condemned him to “imprisonment in the Holy Office at our pleasure.” But they reserved “the power of moderating, commuting, or taking off” the sentence. What they might do depended on whether Galileo knelt before them to recant.

  Admitting on June 21, 1633, that he had defied the warning not to speak or write in defense of Copernicus, he said, “I abjure with a sincere heart deigned faith those errors and heresies, and I curse and detest them [and] I swear that for the future I shall neither say nor assert orally or in writing such as may bring upon me similar suspicions.”

  After a period of confinement, Galileo was allowed go to his home near Florence, where he lived in seclusion in failing health and going nearly blind. He died on January 8, 1642.

  Accounts of his submission to the Church, published more than a century later, contain a statement that may be a legend. As he rose from his knees after recanting, he may or may not have said quietly in Italian, “Eppur si mouve.” (Nevertheless, it [the earth] does move.)

  In November 1992, at a ceremony in Rome, before the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II officially declared that Galileo was right. The formal rehabilitation was based on the findings of a committee of the Academy the pope set up in 1979, soon after taking office. The committee decided the Inquisition had acted in good faith, but was wrong. Today the Vatican has its own celestial observatory.

  The Vatican noted that archives of the Inquisition and Index had not survived well through the centuries. Because the “Church had a tradition of burning many of the most delicate heresy files,” and the Inquisition’s archive was almost entirely burned on Pope Paul IV’s death in 1559, many documents had been lost. Some “were hauled off to Paris under Napoleon’s rule in 1810…and more than 2,000 volumes were burned. Some fell into rivers during transit, others were sold for paper or became mixed up with other files.” Today the Vatican possesses “around 4,500 volumes, of which only a small part refer to the heresy trials. The rest deal with theological controversies and spiritual questions.”

  A book that was never banned by the Church is Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, which is the basis of the theory of evolution. Unlike some Protestant fundamentalist churches that take the Bible literally on the subject of God creating mankind, the Earth, and the universe in seven days, the Vatican has recently stated that it is possible that some species, with the assistance of a higher power, were able to evolve into the species that exist in the world today.

  Reporting on the opening of an exhibit of Vatican Archive material in 2008, Newsweek magazine noted that the display included “documents about the Church’s restrictions on the movement of Jews, instructions for persecuting Protestants…. There were 18th-century maps outlining theghettos of Rome, Ancona and Ferrara, depicting where Jews could live in pink or yellow and where they were allowed to keep businesses in blue. There were documents with handwritten regulations describing when Jewish women could be out of the gated areas and what they could wear. There were sketches of prisons and extensive lists of banned books and written edicts…. One from 1611 outlined how inquisitors should com-port themselves both on the job and off and an illustration showing what their children should wear to school and to the beach. Investigators were even told what pajamas were acceptable.

  “Other documents targeted game hunters and fishermen who were thought to be poaching from Vatican grounds. And then there’s a gemencrusted pastoral staff taken in the nineteenth century from a man who was condemned to death for claiming he was a saint. Inquisitors had authority in areas ranging from iconography and the way images of saints and prelates coul
d be portrayed.

  “This wasn’t the first time that the Church tried to show that the judges of the Inquisition were not as brutal as previously believed. In 2004, the Vatican published an 800-page report claiming that of those investigated as heretics by the notorious Spanish Inquisition, which was independent of Rome in the fifteenth century, only 1.8 percent of the accused were actually executed. Nonetheless, Pope John Paul II referred to the Church’s 700-year campaign against heresy as a ‘tormented phase’ and the ‘greatest error in the Church’s history.’”

  One book that was not banned was the classic nineteenth-century novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. While it was being scrutinized by inquisitors in Rome, who formed a department known as the Sacred Congregation of the Index, one of the Vatican readers considered the story of slavery in the United States to be a coded appeal for revolution. When a second opinion on the book was sought from other inquisitors, they did not consider it harmful and no ban was ever pronounced.

  Prior to World War II, “Adolf Hitler’s hate-filled Mein Kampf was also never put on the Index…. The censors pondered what to do about the Nazi dictator, with the discussions in the office going on for years.” In the end, examination of Mein Kampf was simply terminated.

  More recently, letters sent by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to a German literary critic discussed the Harry Potter novels. “In March 2003, a month after the English press throughout the world falsely proclaimed that Pope John Paul II approved of Harry Potter, the man who was to become his successor sent a letter to a Gabriele Kuby outlining his agreement with her opposition to J. K. Rowling’s offerings” as “morally unhealthy reading” for children. On the issue of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood, “in a letter on March 7, 2003, Cardinal Ratzinger, thanked Kuby for her ‘instructive’ book (titled Harry Potter: Good or Evil?), in which Kuby stated the Potter books corrupted the hearts of the young, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus harming their relationship with God while that relationship is still in its infancy. ‘It is good, that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those are subtle seductions, which act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly,’ wrote Ratzinger.

  “The letter also encouraged Kuby to send her book on Potter to a prelate who had quipped about Potter during a press briefing which led to the false press about the Vatican support of Potter. At a Vatican press conference to present a study document on the New Age in April 2003,…Fr. Peter Fleetwood made a positive comment on the Harry Potter books in response to a question from a reporter. This resulted in headlines such as POPE APPROVES POTTER (Toronto Star), POPE STICKS UP FOR POTTER BOOKS (BBC Newsround), and HARRY POTTER IS OKAY WITH THE PONTIFF (Chicago Sun Times).”

  Largely because Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code presented a tale of an investigation into a centuries-old conspiracy by the Church and Crusaders known as the Knights Templar to keep a secret about Jesus, that if revealed would shake the foundations of Christianity, nothing in the Vatican Secret Archives has been more fascinating to millions of people around the world than finding out what lies within the archives about the notorious knights.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Truth About the Templars

  No pope has had a longer-lasting influence on the course of world history than Urban II. Today’s conflict between Christianity-based democracies of the Western world and Middle East Islamic-fundamentalist terrorists can be traced to his appeal to Christian princes in Europe for a crusade to rescue the Holy Land from Muslims.

  “In the speech given at the Council of Clermont in France, on November 27, 1095, he combined the ideas of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with that of waging a holy war…. He declared, ‘The noblerace of Franks (French) must come to the aid of their fellow Christians in the East. The infidel Turks are advancing into the heart of Eastern Christendom; Christians are being oppressed and attacked; churches and holy places are being defiled. Jerusalem is groaning under the Saracen (Muslim) yoke. The Holy Sepulchre [the church in Jerusalem that Christian tradition marks as the burial site of Christ] is in Moslem hands and has been turned into a mosque. Pilgrims are harassed and even prevented from access to the Holy Land. The West must march to the defense of the East. All should go, rich and poor alike. The Franks must stop their internal wars and squabbles. Let them go instead against the infidel and fight a righteous war. God himself will lead them, for they will be doing His work. There will be absolution and remission of sins for all who die in the service of Christ. Here they are poor and miserable sinners; there they will be rich and happy. Let none hesitate; they must march next summer. God wills it!’”

  Between 1095 and 1250, there were seven crusades, but after initial success in capturing Jerusalem, the crusaders failed to hold the Holy Land. Out of these nearly two hundred years of military expeditions in the name of God by medieval warriors came such romantic figures as the real King Richard the Lionheart and the fictional knights of the round table of King Arthur’s Camelot riding forth on a quest for the Holy Grail. But it was a twenty-first-century novel that lifted a group of Crusaders from history books to popular consciousness.

  Of the Knights Templar, an eyewitness, Archbishop William of Tyre, wrote in 1118 that “certain noble men of knightly rank, religious men, devoted to God and fearing him, bound themselves to Christ’s service” and promised to live “without possessions, under vows of chastity and obedience.” Their leaders were Hugues de Payens, a knight of Burgundy, and Godefroid (Geoffrey) de St. Omer, from the south of France. Because they had “no church nor any fixed abode” when they arrived in Jerusalem, they were allowed “a dwelling place near the Lord’s Temple” (the ruins of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem). Their primary duty was “protecting the roads and routes against the attacks of robbers and brigands.” This they did, William of Tyre noted, “especially in order to safeguard pilgrims.” For nine years following their founding, the Knights Templar wore secular clothing. They used “such garments as the people, for their soul’s salvation, gave them.”

  Taking the name “Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon,” they became known as Templars. Sanctioned by the Church in 1128 at the Council of Troyes, they were soon renowned, and feared, for their ferocity in battle. “Following the retaking of Jerusalem by Islam in 1239, they obtained the island of Cyprus as their headquarters of the Order and used their vast accumulation of rich spoils of war to establish themselves as international financiers.” Inventing banking, they set up a Temple in Paris, becoming the medieval equivalent of today’s World Bank and World Trade Organization. Richer than any government on the continent, these former “Poor Knights of Christ” had evolved from nine members to between 15,000 and 20,000, with 9,000 manors and castles.

  “They have now grown so great that there are in this Order today,” William of Tyre wrote at some time between 1170 and 1174, “about 300 knights who wear white mantles, in addition to the brothers, who are almost countless. They are said to have immense possessions both here and overseas, so that there is now not a province in the Christian world which has not bestowed upon the aforesaid brothers a portion of its goods. It is said today that their wealth is equal to the treasures of kings.”

  The Templars had become so rich and powerful, William noted, they “have made themselves exceedingly troublesome.”

  Their leader at this time was Jacques de Molay. “Born in 1244 in Vitrey, France, he entered the Knights Templar in 1265 at the age of twenty-one. After rising quickly through the ranks, he spent a great deal of time in Great Britain. Eventually appointed as visitor general and grand preceptor of all England, he was made head of the order following the death of its twenty-second grand master. He then moved from England to Cyprus. It was there in the autumn of 1307 that he found himself called back to France by order of King Philip IV, known as ‘the Fair,’ and Pope Clement V. It is believed that the summons was the result of kingly and papal fear and envy of the
power and wealth of the Templars. Another explanation is that Philip the Fair was so deep in debt to the Templars that he decided the only way to eradicate it was by eliminating the order.

  “On Friday, October 13, 1307, royal bailiffs entered Templar headquarters in Paris and arrested the knights. Imprisoned and tortured, they were forced to confess to heresies, among them devil worship and sexual perversions. They were offered a choice of recantation or death. While de Molay gave a confession under torture, he quickly renounced it. Condemned along with another Templar, he was taken to an island in the Seine River in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral and set ablaze in 1312.

  “A legend arose that as the flames raged around him, he prophesied that the king and pope would die within a year. The prophecy came true. But before his death the pope dissolved the order and warned that anyone even thinking about joining the Templars would be excommunicated and charged as heretics.” Despite King Phillip and Pope Clement’s decision to eradicate the Templars, some escaped their clutches and, it is believed, established the Order in Scotland. Today the Knights Templar survive as a component of Freemasonry.

  Although the archives of the Vatican and volumes of European history contain numerous accounts of interlacing objectives of kings and popes, and even instances of conspiracies, none matched the deal between Pope Clement V and Phillip the Fair to cloak avarice in religion. That Clement recognized the illegitimacy of the charges of heresy against the Knights Templar was recorded in a document that was placed in the Vatican’s secret archives and remained there for seven centuries.