Inquisition_3of4_The Templars and Cathars
Transcript
00:00The Inquisition swept like a plague across medieval Europe.
00:04It was without question one of the darkest and bloodiest episodes in human history.
00:09A time when thousands of people accused of heresy by the Catholic Church
00:13were arrested, tried and put to death.
00:17It was ethnic cleansing on a huge scale.
00:21It was one faith trying to exterminate another.
00:26There were Inquisition tribunals going on all over the country.
00:31It really was a people living in fear.
00:34This religious fanaticism spread to Tudor England
00:38where Catholics and Protestants did their best to wipe each other out.
00:42The persecution continued in the 18th century
00:45when countless ordinary women were drowned or burned at the stake
00:49after they were accused of being witches.
00:51One third of the entire population was accused of heresy and witchcraft
00:56by the other two thirds.
00:58The Christians were actually aiming to stamp out something
01:01that had been in place for thousands of years before them.
01:05This was a war of magical witchcraft,
01:08but what it really was was a war of people that couldn't fight back.
01:13The world lived in the shadow of Inquisition and persecution
01:19for over 500 years.
01:22You would think we would have learned our lesson.
01:26Thousands of heretics in this country died
01:30under the knife, the axe or in the flames.
01:35The horrors of the Albigensian crusade against the Cathars in southern France,
01:40the persecution of the Knights Templar
01:42and the arrest and burning at the stake of Joan of Arc.
01:45We look at all of these extraordinary stories in this episode of Inquisition.
01:50At the end of the day, these Inquisitions are all about control and wealth.
01:54If there's an upsurge in movement, if it's religious, if it's political,
01:58they are going to be taken down because they are a threat.
02:15Inquisition
02:26The early years of the 13th century were dominated
02:29by two great religious power bases.
02:32One was the Holy Roman Empire, which controlled most of Europe.
02:36The other was the Islamic Empire,
02:38which controlled Arabia, Palestine and southern Spain.
02:43It was a time of conflict and war between the East and the West.
02:53The crusades to take back control of the Holy Lands from the Saracens
02:57were well under way.
02:59This was an age of boiling religious fervour
03:02and the Holy Roman Empire was determined to rid its lands
03:05of anyone who challenged its beliefs or dared to oppose its authority.
03:10Those that did were branded as heretics.
03:14In the year 1208, Pope Innocent III launched a crusade
03:18against a radical sect of Christians
03:21based in the Languedoc area of south-west France.
03:24They were called the Cathars.
03:27The Cathars were a bunch of way-out Christians
03:30who hung out in south-western France at the end of the 12th century.
03:34We're talking around 1180, 1190.
03:37Their belief is there is a good true God, but He didn't make the world.
03:42To them, the explanation for why the world is so screwed up
03:46is it was made by a wrong God, a lesser God,
03:49and we are His imperfect creations.
03:51So the best thing anybody can want to do is get out of the world
03:54and get up to heaven to the true God.
04:01They didn't have a lot of belongings,
04:03they didn't own a lot of property
04:05and they went around preaching to people, usually in pairs,
04:09and delivering that message.
04:12People responded to that with alacrity
04:15because they were approachable, they were accessible.
04:19They seemed to be embodying this idea of the early church
04:23in a way that the, how shall we call it, the institutional church,
04:27if you like, at that time wasn't doing.
04:30So one of the problems that the church had
04:33and one of the reasons that they found these groups alarming
04:36was that they presented a kind of competition.
04:41The biggest difference between Cathars and Rome
04:44is that the Cathars had a religious belief system
04:48that they were devout to.
04:50It wasn't about profit, it wasn't about power,
04:53it was about what they believed was the purest way to reach their God.
05:03I believe that Rome attacked the Cathars purely and simply
05:06because the Cathars were fed up with the bigotry and the greed
05:11and the terror that was being reigned upon the world by the Catholic Church.
05:16They had slightly different views on religion.
05:19They didn't believe in purgatory, they didn't believe in celibacy.
05:23They hated killing.
05:25And purely and simply,
05:27the Catholic Church was starting to lose a little bit of ground
05:30and so they decided the only way to do something about it
05:33was to slaughter them, to kill them,
05:36which is what they did, in great numbers.
05:50Rome sent a huge army of mainly French soldiers against the Cathars.
05:55Its goal was simple,
05:57to destroy them completely and to seize their assets.
06:03It was the beginning of a brutal 20-year campaign
06:08which was marked by the indiscriminate slaughter
06:11of thousands of innocent people.
06:14This was ethnic cleansing on a grand scale.
06:20Historian Andrew Goff has spent years researching and investigating
06:24the history of the Cathars and the mercenary army behind it.
06:30It's important to remember that the Inquisition army
06:33was not a foreign force.
06:36No, they were actually comprised entirely of French troops
06:40who belonged to the barons and lords of Catholic northern France.
06:45So these northern crusaders would have been happy to come down
06:49and beat up on these southern heretics.
06:52I'll tell you the real reason for this crusade.
06:55The truth is they wanted to acquire new lands.
06:59Their motivation was simple.
07:01They wanted to line their own pockets.
07:08Rome's issue with the Cathars is simply that they caused
07:11a large, rich, important slice of France
07:14to declare independence from the Roman Catholic Church.
07:17Now, the Roman Catholic Church was getting used to heretics,
07:20who would usually hang out in mountain valleys or secret meetings.
07:24This is an open rebellion or the secession
07:27of a very important bit of territory from the Church.
07:30So the Pope and his friends thought about it for a moment
07:33and declared war on them.
07:36HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH
07:48In July 1209, Rome's army arrived outside the hilltop city of Béziers.
07:54Its commanders demanded that the city surrender,
07:58but the Cathar-sympathising inhabitants refused.
08:03What happened next would go down
08:05as one of medieval history's most ruthless and cruel acts.
08:11In a single day, almost the entire population of Béziers was slaughtered
08:16and the city was razed to the ground.
08:19Contemporary sources estimated the number of dead
08:22to be at least 10,000 people.
08:26The bloody stain of the massacre at Béziers remains to this very day.
08:32So imagine the scene, 21st of July 1209.
08:35A huge army, some say 30,000 soldiers,
08:39amassed in the fields behind me, outside of the city walls.
08:43Inside, the 10,000 residents of Béziers
08:46are protected by only a couple hundred soldiers
08:49of the local lords and barons who are faithful to the Cathars.
08:57The bishop fears retaliation.
09:00He fears a slaughter.
09:02He attempts to negotiate.
09:04The inquisitors want him to give up the city's heretics.
09:07They give him a list of 222 people accused of heresy,
09:11mostly Cathars, but the city refuses to comply.
09:23The next day, according to reports,
09:25a skirmish breaks out between some of the inquisition army
09:28and the local lightly armed residents of Béziers.
09:31This results in the troops storming the city en masse.
09:35Carnage is a result.
09:37Thousands of men, women and children are slaughtered.
09:40The Cathars would refer to this as a day of butchery.
09:45SHOUTING
09:56The sack of Béziers is the first great atrocity
09:59of the crusade against the Cathars,
10:01and it was utterly shocking,
10:03because until now, towns change hands,
10:06but they're good bits of real estate with useful people inside,
10:09so you try not to damage them too much.
10:12The problem with Béziers was that the town was treated
10:15as though it were a non-human, non-Christian community
10:19by fellow Christians.
10:21The slaughter was just unchecked, uncontrolled,
10:25and there is a famous story that when one of the people in charge
10:30actually had scruples about the fact that regular Catholics
10:34were getting killed alongside heretics by the crusaders,
10:37somebody else just answered,
10:39No, you kill the wrong people, they're going to go to heaven.
10:42Lighten up, don't worry.
10:49About 20 years later, a local historian has this account of the attack.
10:54When they discovered from the admissions of some of them
10:57that there were Catholics mingled with the heretics,
11:00they said to the abbot,
11:02Sir, what shall we do?
11:04For we cannot distinguish between the faithful and the heretics.
11:07The abbot replied, Kill them all, for the Lord knoweth them that are his.
11:23News of the slaughter at Béziers quickly spread,
11:26and as a result, many other Cathar settlements
11:28simply surrendered without a fight.
11:31It seemed that their will and spirit had been broken.
11:35The next major target for the Inquisition army
11:38under General de Montfort was Carcassonne,
11:41and it was soon besieging that well-fortified city.
11:45But the siege didn't last long.
11:47Within two weeks, it had surrendered without a fight.
11:52Imagine the scene. It's 1209, the 1st of August,
11:55and every man, woman and child is painfully aware of the fact
11:59that the last place these crusaders visited was carnage.
12:03Only this time would be different.
12:05De Montfort had a plan.
12:07He shut down the food and water supply to the city,
12:10and within two weeks, there was surrender,
12:12forcing every man, woman and child
12:16to exit the city through the gates behind me.
12:21Rome went after the Cathars
12:23because they believed in the wrong religion,
12:26and to Rome, that's not only an insult,
12:28but it diminishes the glory of the true God.
12:30If you don't go after these guys,
12:32then you're not actually a true Christian.
12:34But they enlisted the services of thousands and thousands
12:38of greedy, landless Cathars,
12:40and they were able to make their way to Rome.
12:43They were able to make their way to Rome.
12:45They were able to make their way to Rome.
12:47They enlisted the services of thousands and thousands
12:50of greedy, landless, penniless knights and men-at-arms
12:53who wanted very much to get rich by plundering Cathar territory,
12:57and that's exactly what they did.
13:06After the surrender of mighty Carcassonne,
13:08other Cathar towns in the region also quickly fell.
13:12Bordery, Fanjo, all surrendered to Rome's army.
13:17It's not surprising at all that Carcassonne surrendered
13:20without any scuffle whatsoever.
13:22There was no slaughter, there was no battle.
13:25What happened at Béziers sent a loud and clear message
13:28throughout the entire region.
13:31Renounce your faith or prepare to die.
13:35The Inquisition continued to hunt down the remaining Cathars
13:39in the Languedoc region.
13:41Eventually, most sought refuge in the remote
13:43but imposing hilltop castle at Montségur.
13:49It was perched high up in the Midi-Pyrenees,
13:52it had good supply lines,
13:54and it was virtually impossible to attack.
13:59Basically, the Cathars had been hounded
14:03to say the least, but they got themselves a base
14:06in a place called the Chateau de Montségur,
14:09and they literally holed up there.
14:12It was their last bastion, for want of a better word,
14:15and they ran the Cathar church from there,
14:18and something like 10,000 troops were actually sent
14:22to besiege the chateau.
14:25Montségur is not particularly interesting as a defensive place
14:30because it's surrounded by the mountains,
14:32so it's only good as a safe place,
14:34but it also means that it's incredibly hard to break into.
14:37And because it's quite a big mountain,
14:40the army was not able to surround it.
14:43There was literally only hundreds there,
14:46and of course the Cathars didn't fight, they didn't kill,
14:51and there was something like 210 perfectaires, they were called,
14:55that were there, and about 100 defenders, 100 fighters.
14:59They held out for many, many months,
15:01but eventually, of course, 10,000 troops against them,
15:04they actually invaded the place,
15:07and just before they actually smashed in the walls,
15:11they gave in.
15:13They were taken out, tried,
15:17and all of them were burnt at the stake, burnt alive at the stake.
15:29On March 16, 1244, the remaining Cathars were led down the mountain
15:34into the pyre that was constructed by the Inquisition army.
15:38There, they voluntarily martyred themselves in the flames.
15:48It had taken the best part of 40 years
15:52and had claimed upwards of 50,000 lives,
15:55but the Albigensian crusade against the Cathars
15:58had finally achieved the Church of Rome's goal
16:01of clearing out what it saw as southern France's nest of heretics.
16:08It had also seized control of huge amounts of land,
16:13and, just as importantly, the crusade had also been the proving ground
16:17for the Church's new Holy Inquisition,
16:20which would grow both in power and reach over the coming centuries.
16:26Beating the Cathars gave Rome a sense of how it could deal with heresy.
16:30It gave it a structure of investigation, the Inquisition,
16:34with, pretty nearly, a professional,
16:37interrogators who knew how to hunt down heretics
16:40and the kind of questions to ask to get them to confess.
16:43It also gave them this fallback position
16:45that, if anything went seriously wrong,
16:47they could simply declare a crusade against other sorts of Christian,
16:51as opposed to non-Christians,
16:53which had been the usual target of a crusade hitherto.
16:57The brutal destruction of the Cathars sent shockwaves across Europe.
17:02It had proved just how powerful Rome's forces were
17:06and how far it would go to destroy what it considered to be heresy.
17:10And to Rome, a heretic was simply anyone who dared to oppose the Church.
17:18The Catholic Church was the only Catholic Church in the world
17:22and to Rome, a heretic was simply anyone who dared to oppose it.
17:31The Catholic Church was terrified of anyone who had unorthodox views,
17:35which was in their eyes.
17:37I mean, anybody that was anything to do with magic,
17:40with sorcery, mediumship, science, philosophy,
17:45was all not good for the Catholic Church, to be quite honest with you.
17:53In Rome, it was clear that the Holy Inquisition
17:57was an efficient way to do away with any challenges
18:00to its authority and doctrine.
18:03It was also a useful method for getting its hands
18:06on vast amounts of land, assets and wealth.
18:13In 1233, Pope Gregory IX issued a papal bull
18:19setting up a formal tribunal to eradicate heresy altogether.
18:24It was to be run by Dominican friars
18:26and it was the beginning of what we now know as the Inquisition.
18:31The Inquisition, as such, is a branch of the Church
18:35which is staffed by experts and the experts are Dominican monks.
18:40They look a bit creepy to modern eyes because they wear black habits
18:44and cowls and they are trained to be able to detect wrong belief.
18:48They're very good at doing it.
18:50They're not necessarily nasty people.
18:52If you examine the characters, some of them are really quite warm-hearted,
18:55but their sacred duty is to rescue Christians
18:58from soul-destroying beliefs.
19:05The tribunal would work by an inquisitor or two inquisitors
19:11arriving in a region and announcing a general sermon
19:14where he would call all the populace in a town or village
19:17to hear him deliver a sermon in which he would announce
19:20his intention to carry out an Inquisition.
19:23He would remind them of his powers and he would announce a period of grace
19:27during which time people could come to him
19:30and tell him about things that they knew about heresy
19:33and in return receive a mitigating effect.
19:37In return, receive a mitigated sentence
19:41for anything they might have done wrong.
19:44HE SPEAKS FRENCH
20:05For those who didn't or wouldn't confess their sin,
20:09a dreadful fate lay in store.
20:12The Inquisition's prisons were bad enough,
20:15but it was torture that those accused of heresy really feared.
20:19It was an important and awful weapon for the Inquisition
20:22and was liberally used.
20:43Richard Felix is an author and historian
20:46who studied torture methods through the ages.
20:49Chillingham Castle in England has an impressive collection
20:52of some of the most barbarous devices that were used by the Inquisition.
21:00This is the torture chamber of Chillingham Castle.
21:04This is a place of terror, pain, anguish, torture.
21:11And death.
21:12There's well over 500 years' worth of European torture equipment
21:17here in this torture chamber.
21:20This hideous contraption here is the wheel.
21:24The whole idea was to break you on the wheel.
21:29They chained you onto this wheel, spread eagle,
21:33and then they cut open parts of the body
21:39with a knife
21:41and then poured boiling lead into the wounds
21:46just to make you suffer a little more
21:50before they broke you.
21:52The executioner had a sledgehammer
21:54and he smashed your legs, both of them, in two places.
21:59And then he smashed your arms, exactly the same, in two places
22:05and left you there to die slowly.
22:09But if it was a kindly executioner, most of them weren't,
22:14most of them were sadists, but if he was,
22:16then he'd smash you in the stomach
22:19and that would probably be the end of you.
22:22A quick death.
22:35Whee!
22:43Onwards here to the strapado.
22:46This was the main implement of torture during the Inquisition.
22:51Your hands were tied behind your back.
22:54This noose was tied around your arms
22:58and you were then hoisted up onto a beam.
23:03Huge weights were then attached to your legs
23:09and they left you there with the weight dragging you down,
23:13stretching the arms higher and higher,
23:17waiting for you to confess to your heresy.
23:20If you didn't confess, then the executioner let you drop
23:26but stopped it before you touched the ground
23:28and, of course, the jolt would tear sinews
23:31and probably dislocate your shoulders.
23:34Then you probably would confess.
23:37HE SPEAKS FRENCH
23:57The records of the Inquisition imprisonment and torture in southern France
24:01are available to scholars today.
24:03Professor Peter Biller of York University
24:06has discovered the story of one particular man
24:09who confessed his crimes
24:11after he was subjected to the horrors of the rope and pulley.
24:15He confessed in January 1311.
24:18There's a summary of his confession.
24:20And at the end it's noted that...
24:26..he committed all of these things in the year and a half
24:29before he was captured
24:31and he did not wish to confess about these things
24:36until he was held in prison...
24:42This is the Latin.
24:44..and raised in the cord aliquantulum a little bit.
24:50So we have here the first in the Inquisition of Languedoc,
24:58the first very precise specification of a person
25:02and the fact of torture and also the mode of torture,
25:05because this is the mode where someone's hands were tied behind their back.
25:10The rope was then thrown over a beam and they were hauled up
25:15and sometimes weights attached to them.
25:23This is the Iron Maiden.
25:26This contraption here inside is full of spikes and they're still here.
25:32Now, they were not designed to kill you.
25:35They were designed to torture you.
25:37Up here there are spikes that actually pierce the eyes.
25:41Down here there are more spikes that actually pierce the body
25:45but not vital organs.
25:46And the whole idea was for it to be slammed shut
25:49and for you to be tortured and to bleed and to confess.
25:57Who is it?
25:58It's a heretic.
26:02We have met him before.
26:05No, no, no.
26:06A carcass.
26:08Put your head down.
26:14Confess your sins or you will be tortured much worse than that.
26:19Confess or you will be saved.
26:23No, no, no.
26:30Second most used bit of equipment, the rack.
26:33Basically, you were laid as this poor guy is here on the rack.
26:37Ropes here.
26:39Your hands put through them.
26:41And then down here, exactly the same.
26:44The ropes tied around your feet.
26:47And then they would start, very gently at first,
26:53to turn the pulleys.
26:57You can almost imagine the sinews starting to stretch
27:02as you were pulled more and more.
27:06No, no, no.
27:12Silence.
27:14I think you have to remember that there were tens of thousands of people
27:18who were being accused right, left and center.
27:21And most of them were innocent.
27:23I mean, there were inquisition tribunals going on all over the country.
27:29It really was a people living in fear.
27:33Not only were the inquisitors hunting down heretics,
27:36they were also keen to seize their written material.
27:41They suspected that there were large numbers of secret libraries
27:44containing ancient pagan texts and manuscripts,
27:48which were considered contrary to church doctrine.
27:51In many cases, these libraries were hidden away inside monasteries and castles,
27:56as it was only the clergy and the nobility
27:59that could actually read and write.
28:04Mostly when the Inquisition hunts books,
28:06it hunts them under people's beds or in their cellars
28:09and their rafters hidden in their houses.
28:11But also it needs to keep an eye on monasteries
28:14because monasteries are the libraries of the time.
28:17Really, they and cathedrals are the only places
28:20that have the storage space and the literacy to handle that.
28:24And it's a really difficult problem of what you do with a monastery
28:27library if you've got heretical books in it.
28:29I mean, do you keep them so the right kind of person
28:32can inform themselves on what these horrid heretics believed,
28:36or do you annihilate them completely so the heresy is gone for good?
28:40It's a tough question.
28:44It was bad enough to have heretical thoughts and to be a heretic,
28:48but to actually have things written down was, of course, even worse,
28:51because it could be passed down from generation to generation.
28:54So the inquisitors were literally hunting down books
28:58that had any text in them that was not going along the lines
29:02of the Catholic Church.
29:04Whole libraries were actually investigated,
29:08some closed down, and hundreds and hundreds of books were burnt.
29:16Inquisitors do go after books, and they know perfectly well
29:19that books are forever if they're properly kept.
29:22So a heresy can lie concealed in one like an anthrax virus
29:25or something like that, and another 100 years,
29:28an impressionable person will read the book,
29:30and the heresy will spring to life again.
29:33That's why going after books is rooting out heresy at the base.
29:42With Cathar heresy largely wiped out in southern France,
29:46the Inquisition turned its attention to the Knights Templar.
29:51The Knights were a mysterious order
29:54surrounded by rumours of bizarre rituals,
29:57occult practices and peculiar beliefs,
30:00a juicy target for Rome.
30:04With the help of the French king,
30:06the Inquisition accused the Knights Templar of devil worship
30:09and of defiling the cross during their secret ceremonies.
30:13By the rules of Rome, the Knights Templar
30:16Knights Templars were targeted by the Inquisition
30:19because they'd become too powerful, too mystical, and too wealthy.
30:24They were all good Christians. They were good Catholics.
30:28Hundreds of them had died in the name of God and of the Catholic Church.
30:34They were sacrilegious.
30:36They were devout.
30:38They were faithful.
30:40In the name of God and of the Catholic Church,
30:44they were set up really as crusaders
30:48and then ended up by guarding the roads to Jerusalem.
30:52They were doing a good job, but they'd become international bankers.
30:57They were terribly wealthy.
30:59The king of France owed them a lot of money
31:02and it was all back to greed again.
31:04Basically, they were targeted,
31:06saying that they'd become bad Christians, they were heretics,
31:10they were practising homosexuality,
31:13and basically it was purely and simply greed.
31:16The king of France and the Catholic Church wanted their money.
31:29We are gathered here one more time,
31:31one last time, before we must depart these lands.
31:34We all know what we must do.
31:37Here we shall swear, as we have done before.
31:41First, we will drink of the blood.
31:48The Knights Templar were accused of horrific heresies.
31:51I mean, this was a pious order,
31:54and the accusations included things like spitting on the cross,
31:58worshipping idols, homosexuality.
32:01I mean, this was liable stuff and it was difficult to refute.
32:07The Knights Templar were accused of all manner of atrocities
32:11against the Church, including homosexuality,
32:15urinating on the cross, inverting the cross, mystical deeds.
32:21They were accused of worshipping a deity called Baphomet.
32:27They were slightly like the Freemasons
32:30in the fact that they had their own secret rituals,
32:33and basically this was, to the inquisitors, heresy on a grand scale.
32:50The person who takes out the Knights Templar
32:52is Philip the Handsome of France,
32:54and we can never get inside his head and know why he did it.
32:58It's absolutely certain the Templars are underemployed,
33:02incredibly rich and politically powerful,
33:05so the King of France doesn't have a use for them at all,
33:09but he has a wonderful use for all their cash and their lands.
33:12We'll never know, however, whether Philip himself
33:15really believed the stories he told about the Templars.
33:18He claimed to be convinced they worshipped the devil
33:21with all sorts of hideous anti-Christian acts,
33:24and they were put on trial for that.
33:26They were put on trial for their unashamed confession,
33:29and the leaders were put to death.
33:31So either way, Philip the Handsome doesn't come out looking very handsome.
33:35He's either a demented religious bigot who believes in lies
33:40which no credible historian has ever endorsed,
33:44or he's utterly unscrupulous
33:47and framing a bunch of innocent people in order to steal their cash.
33:51Either way, it's a horror story.
33:56On Friday the 13th, 1307, the French King, Philip IV,
34:01issued orders for all Knights Templar to be arrested
34:05and for their properties and assets to be seized.
34:17Hundreds of Knights were put on trial for heresy.
34:20Even the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay,
34:23was eventually dragged out before the public
34:25and burned at the stake in the centre of Paris.
34:30There's a delicious irony in the fact that Jacques de Molay,
34:33as he's being burned at the cross,
34:36curses the King and he curses the Pope for the way he was treated
34:40but also the way his entire order was treated.
34:43And guess what? Within a year, they're both dead.
34:52With the Templars now out of the way,
34:54the Inquisition carried on with its ruthless elimination of heresy
34:57throughout France.
35:00On the 4th of April, 1323,
35:03hundreds of heretics were burned alive in the city of Carcassonne,
35:07the very place where the Cathars had been besieged
35:09more than 100 years before.
35:13The original notes of the Inquisitors
35:15have survived down through the centuries
35:17and they make for fascinating, if gruesome, reading.
35:22We actually have a contemporary account
35:24of one of these burnings here in Carcassonne.
35:29The heretics, stripped naked,
35:31were smeared on both sides with wax
35:34and they were then fastened to high poles,
35:37from the top of which they continued to pour down
35:41burning pitch and lard,
35:43a spike fastened under the chin,
35:46preventing the excruciated victims
35:48from turning their heads to either side,
35:51so as to escape the liquid fire
35:54until their whole bodies were literally clad,
35:57encased in flame.
36:02A brutal scene, to say the least.
36:04You can imagine, right here,
36:06what a spectacle it would have been.
36:08And it would have served two purposes.
36:10The first, to penalize the victim
36:14for their heretical sins.
36:17But the second, to send a strong message
36:20to the hundreds and thousands of people
36:22who would have witnessed the spectacle.
36:24This is your fate too, if you are also a heretic.
36:31It's often thought the threat of being burned
36:33is enough to get people to confess,
36:35but if you confess, you might get burned.
36:38Now, it depends where you are.
36:40In places with a regular professional Inquisition,
36:43almost nobody's going to get burned.
36:45Instead, they will interrogate you again and again,
36:47compare your confessions
36:49or your refusals to confess
36:51with the statements of witnesses.
36:53It's like a court of law,
36:55a well-run court of law anywhere in the world.
36:57But if you're in a panic situation,
36:59a place that doesn't have the professionals,
37:01then they will do anything.
37:03They'll threaten to burn you unless you confess,
37:05and they'll burn you when you confess.
37:07They will make you scream and scream
37:09until you're prepared to say anything,
37:11and they'll get you to denounce
37:13you to the world.
37:27With most of France now submitted to its will,
37:30the Inquisition was to claim
37:32one other famous victim.
37:34She was Joan of Arc,
37:36the maid of Orléans,
37:38who was born a peasant girl
37:40in what is now eastern France.
37:42Convinced she was blessed with divine guidance,
37:45Joan rose to lead the French army
37:47to several important victories over the English
37:50during the Hundred Years' War.
38:13Joan of Arc was a fighting woman,
38:16an Amazon,
38:18a second Boudicca,
38:20which, of course, the English remembered.
38:22She was leading the French against us
38:24and doing very well.
38:26She was having voices from God
38:28and visions,
38:30dressing in armour
38:33like a man,
38:35and this was frowned upon.
38:37She was obviously a heroine to the French,
38:39but hated by the English,
38:41and she was known as the French witch.
38:43And this is what they used, of course,
38:45when they captured her.
38:47She was given over by the Burgundians to the English,
38:49and they tried her as a heretic
38:52and burnt her at the stake.
39:05Joan of Arc will be brought before this court
39:08in the eyes of God
39:10to answer the charge of heresy.
39:13You did take up arms against your rightful king
39:16and did appear in public dressed as a man.
39:23You also claim to have heard the voices of demons
39:26and familiars.
39:28You are hereby charged as a heretic.
39:31How plead you to these charges?
39:34I do not recognise the authority of this court.
39:37Silence!
39:39So there's a sort of irony here,
39:41that this woman, this heroine,
39:44was obviously tried by the English
39:47as a heretic.
39:49And yet she was...
39:51She was getting voices from somewhere
39:54and the English wanted to get rid of her.
39:57And so the best way of doing it
39:59was to brand her a witch
40:01and a heretic
40:03and burn her at the stake.
40:06Joan of Arc,
40:08by the power vested in me by this court,
40:10I do declare you guilty
40:12of the charge of heresy.
40:14Not saying the deed to the court.
40:18I do not recognise the authority of this court!
40:22You are to be taken away
40:24to a place of execution
40:26where you will be burned at the stake
40:28and your ashes spread on unhallowed ground.
40:31Take her away.
40:33Take her away.
40:45After her trial,
40:47Joan of Arc was dragged to the stake
40:49in the old market in Rouen,
40:51where she died slowly in the flames.
40:54Her ashes were then unceremoniously dumped
40:57into the River Seine.
41:03The End of the 15th Century
41:20By the end of the 15th Century,
41:22the Inquisition had ravaged most of France and Northern Europe.
41:26These were now lands gripped by fear,
41:29ruthlessly controlled by the Pope and the Church in Rome,
41:32and policed by roving Inquisition tribunals
41:35supported by armed troops.
41:38Hardly a city or major town
41:40escaped a visit from the dreaded Dominicans.
41:43But if the heretics had been beaten and largely defeated,
41:47they didn't disappear altogether.
41:50They simply went underground.
41:53The Albigensian Crusade wasn't really that successful
41:58in broad terms.
42:00It did a lot to put a dent in heresy
42:05because it just killed a lot of people.
42:08It also killed a lot of people who weren't heretics,
42:11and so it also did a lot to kind of reinforce a Southern identity.
42:15You have to wonder if the Pope and his advisors actually said,
42:19you know, this whole crusade, this whole Inquisition,
42:22that worked really well in France.
42:24And guess what? We have upstarts in Spain. Let's do it again.
42:31And that's exactly what they did.
42:33Emboldened by the success of their efforts in France
42:36and hungry to track down other heretics,
42:39as well as grabbing their lands and wealth,
42:42Rome began to cast its eyes further afield, to Spain.
42:46What ensued there was one of the darkest chapters of Europe's history.
42:51This was the time of the bloody Torquemada.
42:55I really don't think you could underestimate
42:58how much the Inquisition and the tribunals
43:01affected the mindset of the people in Spain.
43:07After the great success that the Inquisitors had
43:10in stamping out the Cathars, the Waldensians, the Albigenses,
43:14and, of course, the Templars, they were looking for new lands,
43:17they were looking for new money, and they turned to Spain.
43:21And two groups stood out, the Jews and the Muslims,
43:26and the Spanish Inquisition started.