[Buddha-l] buddha-l Digest, Vol 103, Issue 6

[Dan Lusthaus]

Briefly, since this has moved far beyond matters related to Buddhism:

>> Of the non-conversos -- who were the initial victims of the 
>> inquisition --  which "religions" do you imagine they were importing 
>> from? That's not what it was about.
>
> If you think non-converts were the initial people investigated by the 
> Inquisition, then you are showing your ignorance of the Inquisition as a 
> whole, perhaps because you are focusing on only one brief episode, namely, 
> the Spanish Inquisition.

The inquisition -- as the various things grouped under that label from the 
12th-19th c -- was about stamping out heresies, i.e., schismatics. It was, 
from the Christian point of view, a matter of eliminating deviant forms of 
Christianity. In the Iberian peninsula, in particular, it became complicated 
by the extensive "convert or leave" policies adopted in Portugal and Spain, 
which created masses of "converts" -- leaving became impossible for many, 
with too few boats available to carry everyone out by the deadline (failure 
to meet the deadline resulted in becoming slaves), and often the children 
were not allowed to accompany their parents (so they could have the benefit 
of hearing the wonderful Gospel while still innocent and be raised 
Christian); Muslims in Portugal petitioned for and received permission to 
leave by land rather than sea, meaning that they moved back to Spain, where 
they faced the convert or leave option. On how muslims navigated the 
inquisition, see the very informative L.P. Harvey, _Muslims in Spain: 1500 
to 1614_, Chicago Univ. Press, 2006. Note the dates. There were no Jews in 
Spain during this period; many of the Muslims had become morerias (the 
muslim counterpart of conversos).

At the beginning the inquisitions aimed at heresies, such as Cathars and 
Waldensians, which -- like ALL Christians, I might add -- retained gnostic, 
neoplatonic and manichaean elements, as early on formulated by groups like 
Paulicians. As for the Protestant period -- during which, e.g., Waldensians 
made common cause with Calvinists -- it was still an internal Christian 
matter concerning schismatics, not international religious samplings.

There is nothing in the suppression of schismatic heresies that supports 
your contention that the inquisition was about persecuting people sampling 
"other" religions. I asked you to name which "other" religions you imagined 
those targetted were importing or sampling. Instead, you gave a long 
excursus that simply repeated in simplistic fashion (with a sneer) that the 
notion of one religion per customer is supposed to be my idea. It's not my 
idea; it's the case.

Dan