God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World by Cullen Murphy Page A
Authors: Cullen Murphy
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the Spanish Inquisition was created by the monarchy and was under the monarchy’s control.In our own age there is no shortage of polities in which religion or ideology is joined to the state in complicit and complicated ways. The Spanish Inquisition represents an early experiment.
“A Very Busy Year”
The city of Granada, in southern Spain, never experienced the Inquisition on the scale witnessed by Toledo or Seville, but Granada played a special role in the story nonetheless. Here, on a rugged spur of the Sierra Nevada, stands the Alhambra, the palace of the last Muslim dynasty to rule in Iberia. Walking up the escarpment, among olive trees and cactus, one can understand how the romantic Orientalism of the nineteenth century got its start. Washington Irving, the American minister to Spain in the 1840s, occupied a room in the palace when he wrote his
Tales of the Alhambra.
Below his window, Moorish gateways breach the ruddy walls.
The flag of Spain today flies over the Alhambra. So does that of the European Union. And so does the flag of Andalusia, the region of Spain where Muslim rule held on the longest, and one that is again home to growing numbers of Muslims, perhaps half a million, for the most part recent arrivals from North Africa. After decades of local opposition, a new Grand Mosque of Granada has been built in the steep hillside quarter known as the Albaicin.It is one of more than 600 mosques now active in Spain. From its promontory, the Grand Mosque offers a view directly onto the Alhambra, across the wide ravine of the Rio Darro. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups frequently call for the reconquest of Al-Andalus—the ancient Muslim name for Iberia as a whole.Members of the Al Qaeda cell that plotted the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which claimed the lives of some 200 people, were discovered to have kept a safe house in Granada.
As in other parts of Europe, the Muslim presence in Spain has elicited strong reactions. “They have a grander vision, which is an obsession with the demise of Al-Andalus,” said a member of Spain’s parliament after the train bombings. “We hear this in the sermons of the militant Islamic sheikhs.”In 2007, Spanish bishops turned down a request by Muslims that they be allowed to pray within the precincts of what was once Córdoba’s Great Mosque, the Mezquita, a sprawling place of worship that Christians took over at the time of the Reconquista, embedding an ornate cathedral in its heart. “Muslims,” the bishops decided, “cannot in any way pray in Córdoba cathedral.”In 2010, the bishop of Córdoba went further, launching a campaign to remove the word “mosque” from signs throughout the city that indicate the way to the “mosque-cathedral.”Seeds from another age continue to sprout.
Muslim warriors invaded Iberia early in the eighth century, scarcely a century after the emergence of Islam, a continent away. Before long, Islamic forces had surged beyond the peninsula and deep into France, until they were turned back by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, in 732. Had this battle gone differently, Edward Gibbon observed, “perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and the truth of the revelation of Mohammed.”The Muslims retreated across the Pyrenees, firmly entrenching themselves in what is now Spain. They did not disappear entirely from France, however. The Inquisition register of Jacques Fournier records that an itinerant cobbler from Montaillou, Arnaud Sicre, visited a local Muslim soothsayer on Christmas Day, 1318.
In its golden age, Islamic Spain was among the most civilized places on the planet—renowned for its scientists and philosophers, artists and architects, poets and musicians. The Muslim scholars of Spain helped restore the writings of antiquity to the Christian world. In the matter of religion, Islamic sultans generally
“A Very Busy Year”
The city of Granada, in southern Spain, never experienced the Inquisition on the scale witnessed by Toledo or Seville, but Granada played a special role in the story nonetheless. Here, on a rugged spur of the Sierra Nevada, stands the Alhambra, the palace of the last Muslim dynasty to rule in Iberia. Walking up the escarpment, among olive trees and cactus, one can understand how the romantic Orientalism of the nineteenth century got its start. Washington Irving, the American minister to Spain in the 1840s, occupied a room in the palace when he wrote his
Tales of the Alhambra.
Below his window, Moorish gateways breach the ruddy walls.
The flag of Spain today flies over the Alhambra. So does that of the European Union. And so does the flag of Andalusia, the region of Spain where Muslim rule held on the longest, and one that is again home to growing numbers of Muslims, perhaps half a million, for the most part recent arrivals from North Africa. After decades of local opposition, a new Grand Mosque of Granada has been built in the steep hillside quarter known as the Albaicin.It is one of more than 600 mosques now active in Spain. From its promontory, the Grand Mosque offers a view directly onto the Alhambra, across the wide ravine of the Rio Darro. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups frequently call for the reconquest of Al-Andalus—the ancient Muslim name for Iberia as a whole.Members of the Al Qaeda cell that plotted the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which claimed the lives of some 200 people, were discovered to have kept a safe house in Granada.
As in other parts of Europe, the Muslim presence in Spain has elicited strong reactions. “They have a grander vision, which is an obsession with the demise of Al-Andalus,” said a member of Spain’s parliament after the train bombings. “We hear this in the sermons of the militant Islamic sheikhs.”In 2007, Spanish bishops turned down a request by Muslims that they be allowed to pray within the precincts of what was once Córdoba’s Great Mosque, the Mezquita, a sprawling place of worship that Christians took over at the time of the Reconquista, embedding an ornate cathedral in its heart. “Muslims,” the bishops decided, “cannot in any way pray in Córdoba cathedral.”In 2010, the bishop of Córdoba went further, launching a campaign to remove the word “mosque” from signs throughout the city that indicate the way to the “mosque-cathedral.”Seeds from another age continue to sprout.
Muslim warriors invaded Iberia early in the eighth century, scarcely a century after the emergence of Islam, a continent away. Before long, Islamic forces had surged beyond the peninsula and deep into France, until they were turned back by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours, in 732. Had this battle gone differently, Edward Gibbon observed, “perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and the truth of the revelation of Mohammed.”The Muslims retreated across the Pyrenees, firmly entrenching themselves in what is now Spain. They did not disappear entirely from France, however. The Inquisition register of Jacques Fournier records that an itinerant cobbler from Montaillou, Arnaud Sicre, visited a local Muslim soothsayer on Christmas Day, 1318.
In its golden age, Islamic Spain was among the most civilized places on the planet—renowned for its scientists and philosophers, artists and architects, poets and musicians. The Muslim scholars of Spain helped restore the writings of antiquity to the Christian world. In the matter of religion, Islamic sultans generally
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