Nobody Expects a Post on the Spanish Inquisition! (Notes on Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor)

 

The Spanish Inquisition Monty Python style: Cardinal Ximénez (Michael Palin), 

Cardinal Biggles (Terry Jones) and Cardinal Fang (Terry Gilliam)  

 

 

I. 

 

I have to admit that until very recently my knowledge of the Spanish Inquisition was largely shaped by a famous Monty Python sketch [1] which, when I was a child, I found frightening rather than funny: I think it was the red robes that scared me, although I was from a very early age highly sensitive to any display of religiosity and resistant to the idea of attending Sunday school.   

 

Having just read Dostoevsky's tale of the Grand Inquisitor, however - and having studied the history of the Spanish Inquisition in a little more detail - I now fully appreciate that it was no laughing matter for the thousands of people who were terrified, tortured, and killed and that I was right to childishly sense something sinister and malevolent about priests of every description.   

 

 

II.  

  

The Inquisition was originally established in 1231 by Pope Gregory IX, in an attempt to combat the spread of heresy; i.e., beliefs or opinions contrary to the established teachings of the Church. God may have given mankind free will, but make the wrong choice and you will be judged and punished accordingly. 

 

Inquisitors were allowed to investigate anyone, even on the slightest suspicion of wrongthink - regardless of whether there was or was not sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation - and those accused of heresy were not allowed to challenge their accusers. Cruel and ingenious methods of torture were often used in order to extract confessions of guilt.

 

The Spanish Inquisition, established by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478, was an early-modern revival of a medieval institution that had largely become irrelevant. D. H. Lawrence describes it as a "new fangled thing, peculiar to Spain, with her curious death-lust and her bullying; and, strictly, a Spanish-political instrument" [2] - i.e., both rabidly national in character and diabolic.  

 

Monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I were determined to maintain Spain as a devoutly Catholic country and the Inquisition operated more under royal control than papal authority, primarily targeting Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity who were suspected of secretly practicing their former faiths [3], although it later gleefully targeted Protestants as a new type of heretic [4]. 

 

Under the first Inquisitor Generalis, Tomás de Torquemada, prosecutions rapidly expanded throughout Spain and the areas it controlled and more than 2,000 accused individuals were burnt at the stake as an auto da fé. The name Torquemada is now rightly associated with religious intolerance and fanaticism [5]. 

 

All in all, it has been estimated that 150,000 people were prosecuted by the Inquisition and of these, perhaps as many as 5,000 were executed. Others were either flogged in public, enslaved on ships, forced into exile, or imprisoned (sometimes for life). Any properties belonging to these poor souls were, of course, confiscated by the State (nudge, nudge, wink, wink - say no more).  

 

 

III. 

 

While history records the bureaucratic greed and physical cruelty of the real inquisitors, it took a novelist to lay bare the disturbing, inverted logic driving the institution's zeal. 

 

In Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor' [6], Jesus himself has finally returned and is brought before the Inquisition in Seville, where the Grand Inquisitor defends the following crucial argument: only by adopting the principles of the Devil - not the Gospels - can the Catholic Church bring about mankind's unification. 

 

Thus, the Church no longer has any need for Jesus: We are not with Thee, but with him, and that is our secret! 

 

The Grand Inquisitor also informs Jesus he was fundamentally mistaken - that he should have given in to temptation - which, you have to admit, is a terrifically provocative and amusing idea and one which D. H. Lawrence not only picks up on, but ultimately endorses.   

 

 

IV.

 

In his younger days, when he first read Dostoevsky's story of the Grand Inquisitor, Lawrence was not impressed. It seemed to him rubbish: "just a piece of showing-off: a display of cynical-satanical pose which was simply irritating" [7].

 

But by the end of his life, Lawrence is able to admit that its central argument is depressingly true and it makes his heart sink: "I still see a trifle of cynical-satanical showing-off. But under that, I hear the final and unanswerable criticism of Christ [...] borne out by the long experience of humanity" [8]. 

 

Any thoughtful and naturally questioning person who thinks the story of Christ (and what becomes known as Christianity) through to the bitter end will, according to Lawrence, come to the same conclusion: Jesus was a kind of идиот whose teachings were inadequate and a fatal misunderstanding of the nature (and limits) of man. 

 

Ultimately, man doesn't want freedom (or even salvation), he demands rather miracle, mystery, and an authority to whom he must submit. Only a very rare few can live without these things and enjoy individual sovereignty. Jesus either couldn't or wouldn't see this and via his ideal teaching he makes "demands greater than the nature of man can bear" [9]. 

 

Thus, if you want to establish a Christian Church and State, you're going to have to turn to "that other great Spirit" [10] who loves man for what he is and not for what he ought to be: Satan. Dostoevsky is a marvellous visionary, but he is also a thinker of evil (which is at last merely a term for vivid life) and his diagnosis of human nature "is simple and unanswerable" [11]. 

 

What this means, then, is that Jesus should have been a little more Wildean and given in to temptation. Lawrence writes: "Jesus refused the three offers out of pride and fear: he wanted to be greater than these, and 'above' them. But we now realise that no man, not even Jesus, is really 'above' miracle, mystery, and authority." [12] 

 

And Jesus cannot be above money either: it cannot simply be rendered unto Caesar or left to the Devil: 

 

"Money is not life, it is true. But ignoring money and leaving it to the devil means handing over the great mass of men to the devil: for the mass of men cannot distinguish between money and life. It is hard to believe: certainly Jesus didn't believe it: and yet, as Dostoevsky and the Inquisitor point out, it is so." [13] 

 

So, where does this all leave us: must we too side with the Devil? 

 

Readers can decide that for themselves, but Lawrence suggests it may be possible to borrow certain things from the Devil without actually serving him or selling our souls. 

 

However, I'm a bit sceptical about that, although, unlike Lawrence, I don't worry about being seen as - what was the phrase he used to condemn Dostoevsky - cynical satanic and, push comes to shove, I'm sympathetic with the Devil and would always side with the anti-Christ, whatever the cost of so doing [14].   

 

 

 

A 1948 edition featuring wood engravings 

by Fritz Eichenberg  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, this satirical (and unexpected) reimagining of the Spanish Inquisition became a running gag in the classic British sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. It first featured in the second episode of series two, broadcast on BBC1 on 22 September 1970. The catchphrase - 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!' - is now ingrained in the cultural imagination and lives on as an internet meme. 

      For those who wish to view the first sketch, please click here. I still don't find it funny, but no longer find it frightening either. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 131.

 

[3] The regulation of faith intensified following royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to either convert to Catholicism, go into exile, or face death. Hundreds of thousands of forced conversions, mass expulsions, and executions all resulted.

 

[4] The Inquisition wasn't only interested in identifying what we might think of as common or garden heretics; witches, sodomites, and Freemasons were also targeted. 

 

[5] Torquemada died in 1498 and was interred in the monastery to which he had semi-retired. His tomb was ransacked in 1832 - just two years before the Spanish Inquisition was finally disbanded - and his remains were allegedly stolen and ritually incinerated.

 

[6] 'The Grand Inquisitor' is a story contained within Fyodor Dostoevsky's philosophical novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880). It was first translated into English by Constance Garnett in 1912 (published by Heinemann).

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, p. 127. 

 

[8] Ibid. 

 

[9] Ibid., p. 128. 

 

[10] Ibid. p. 129. 

 

[11] Ibid. 

 

[12] Ibid., p. 130. 

 

[13] Ibid. For a sister post to this one on the tempation of Christ and Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor', please click here.  

 

[14] Funnily enough, in a letter to Else Jaffe written in June 1929, Lawrence concedes to his sister-in-law that she is right, in a sense, to see him as siding with the anti-Christ, and a touch Satanisch (although he is not anti-life): "I am all for Lucifer, who is really the Morning Star." 

      See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 331-332. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on the tempation of Christ and Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor', please click here.

 

 

Get Knotted: In Praise of the Hanky as Headwear and Why I Hate the Gumbys

Steve Jones wearing an Anarchy in the UK knotted hanky 

and establishing himself as the coolest Sex Pistol

 

The fashioning of a handkerchief into protective headwear on a hot sunny day by tying knots together at the corners is, sadly, a practice that has mostly died out amongst Englishmen. 

 

In fact, the last champion of this do-it-yourself look that I can think of was Sex Pistol Steve Jones, who, by coupling it with a mohair string jumper, gave it a brilliantly avant-garde punk edge, whilst remaining true to the working class tradition from which it came.

 

Partly, this look has declined due to the triumph of the ubiquitous baseball cap and other more trendy forms of headgear. But it's also due to the continuous and contemptuous mocking of British working class culture by the media, including Oxbridge educated comedians such as the Pythons. 

 

One recalls, for example, the brick-carrying Gumbys, who would wear knotted white handkerchiefs on their heads and have shirts rolled up to the elbows and trousers rolled up to the knees. They would usually behave in a violent and oafish manner and speak as if mentally retarded.

 

Even at a very young age, it was clear to me that John Cleese and his privileged friends were sneering at men of my father's generation and background. However, rather than make me ashamed of the latter, it made me despise the former and their condescending classism; the fact that they thought it funny to punch down.

 

And so, I would sincerely encourage readers next time they venture out in the sun to knot a hanky and wear it on their head with pride, à la Steve Jones - oh, and when I say a hanky, I mean a hanky (i.e., a thin cotton square) and not some poncy attempt to reimagine and refine the hanky-as-hat for which you have to pay through the nose like a tweed pig.

 

  

The Carolina Parakeet - He's Not Extinct, He's Resting ...

Cornuropsis carolinensis


"This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 
'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 
'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, 
run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!"*

I.

Bird lovers the world over were delighted to hear that scientists have managed to sequence the genome of a dead (and, in fact, stuffed) Carolina parakeet; although saddened to have their suspicions confirmed that North America's only native parrot** was driven into the void primarily due to human activity. 

For the genetic evidence suggests that populations were buoyant until the arrival and spread of European settlers. The bird's DNA showed no signs, for example, of the inbreeding that is characteristic of species that have been in decline for many generations, across thousands of years. 

Only when the White Man arrived in the Americas, did this brightly-coloured bird - with its green plumage and distinctive yellow head that was once found inhabiting forests from New England to Colorado - face extinction. Having abruptly disappeared from the wild, the last known specimen in captivity died in the Cincinnati Zoo, in February 1918.     

Quite what happened to the bird, no one knows for sure - though we can be fairly certain that deforestation and hunting played significant roles in its demise. Like other parrots, they liked to congregate in large, noisy flocks which made their slaughter by men with guns easy to accomplish (like shooting fish in a barrel).    

II.

You might think that this, then, would be the end of the story ... That having become extinct, the Carolina parakeet, is no more: that he has ceased to be; gone to meet his maker and joined the bleedin' choir invisible, etc. But you'd be mistaken ...

For like the passenger pigeon, the heather hen, and the dodo, the Carolina parakeet is a candidate for de-extinction or bio-resurrection; i.e., the process of bringing an extinct organism back from the dead, via cloning, genome editing, or selective breeding.

Of course, this has never been done before and presents enormous technical challenges. But just because something is incredibly difficult to do, doesn't make it impossible ...

As well as birds, scienists working in this area are also hoping to bring back a species of giant tortoise, a ground-dwelling frog native to Australia, and a whole list of mammals including the European cave lion, a prehistoric wolf, and - of course - the woolly mammoth.

I have to say, I find all this very exciting to consider in a way that conservation projects, sadly, never are. It's always disconcerting, however, to discover that here - as elsewhere - the Nazis led the way, producing a breed of aggressive supercows in the 1930s, based on a species of extinct wild bull that once roamed the forests of Europe.***

Still, never mind the aurochs - bring back the dead parrots!   

Notes

* The lines quoted (pretty much from ingrained cultural memory) are from the 'Dead Parrot Sketch', written by John Cleese and Graham Chapman, and performed by Cleese and Michael Palin in S1/E8 of Monty Python's Flying Circus (7 December 1969). Click here for the version of the sketch featured in the Python film And Now for Something Completely Different (1971).

** It's true that the thick-billed parrot once lived in the American Southwest, but I think of this more as a Mexican bird that had extended its range northwards, rather than as a true native of the United States.   

***The cows, bred from wild genes extracted from domestic descendants of the aurochs, were produced by German zoologists Heinz and Lutz Heck, whom the Nazis commissioned to produce a type of Aryan cattle with muscular physiques, deadly horns, and a fighting temperament. How far they succeeded in this is debatable (criticism can certainly be made of their methodology and, physically, the Heck cattle bear little resemblance to aurochs, being shorter and fatter, for example).    

Evolution Needs Death More Than It Loves Life: Reflections on Extinction Rebellion

Poster by Extinction Rebellion Art Group

rebellion.earth/act-now/resources/art-group/

What does it mean to rebel against extinction?

Ironically, it means one is opposed to the driving force of evolution; which is to say, one is anti-life understood in the immoral terms of difference and becoming.

For whether we like it or not, mass extinctions periodically destroy up to 95% of life forms in giant orgies of death and scientists think that 99.9% of all species that have ever lived have now - like the Monty Python parrot - passed on, ceased to be, joined the choir invisible. It's simply pointless protesting the fact that evolution needs death more than it loves life.          

We used to think the sun revolved around the earth. Then we discovered it wasn't so. Now there are young people who sincerely believe the earth revolves around them. The overly-privileged and self-righteous children of generation snowflake who talk about saving the planet are, ultimately, only concerned about protecting their own future.

But alas, everything isn't all about them - anymore than it's all about the polar bears or coral reef - and their will to conserve and self-preserve has become a form of mania expressed as moral and political alarmism.

Whisper it quietly, but every species is ultimately endangered and will one day topple into the abyss of non-existence. And if, as certainly seems to be the case, humanity is giving profligate Nature a helping hand by rapidly speeding up the extinction rate and destroying the environment, it might be remembered that we too are part of the biosphere and our actions just as natural as those of any other species.

In other words, there's no need to feel guilty or sinful; the so-called sixth extinction event lacks moral significance, even if we're the causal agents. Besides, as biologist R. Alexander Pyron has pointed out:

"Unless we somehow destroy every living cell on Earth, the sixth extinction will be followed by a recovery, and later a seventh extinction, and so on. [...] Within a few million years of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, the post-apocalyptic void had been filled by an explosion of diversity - modern mammals, birds and amphibians of all shapes and sizes. This is how evolution proceeds: through extinction."

Professor Pyron also reminds us that whatever effort we make to stabilise and maintain present conditions, sea-levels and temperatures will continue to rise and fall and the climate as we know it today will eventually be "overrun by the inexorable forces of space and geology".

Finally, it should be noted that even the most rebellious of extinction rebels doesn't object to the planned eradication of deadly diseases such as HIV, Ebola, and malaria, even though these are "key components of microbial biodiversity, as unique as pandas, elephants and orangutans". As indicated earlier, the campaign to save the Earth is really a campaign to save the Earth for us: Extinction Rebellion is just another exercise in anthropocentric conceit and hypocrisy.   

Thus, whilst it's true that climate change may have certain dramatic effects - such as coastal flooding and widespread famines - and whilst it makes sense to take action to mitigate these things, I refuse to be lectured by adolescent eco-warriors, bandwagon jumping celebrities, or grey-bearded old hippies with an apocalyptic worldview.

In fact, push comes to shove, I remain more sympathetic to the arguments put forward by members of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, founded by Les U. Knight in 1991. For like Rupert Birkin, I regard people as an obstruction and a hindrance to the future unfolding of evolution and believe that only our self-extinction will allow life to continue perfect and marvellous in all its inhuman splendour.


See: R. Alexander Pyron, 'We don’t need to save endangered species. Extinction is part of evolution.' The Washington Post (22 Nov 2017): click here.

And click here for my post on Voluntary Human Extinction (published 12 October 2013). 

Easter with the Anti-Christ: (2019 Version)

Eric Idle and Graham Chapman in The Life of Brian (1979)

I.

Although Voltaire advised that we crush the Church and its vile superstitions - and whilst Nietzsche became increasingly hostile towards der Gekreuzigte, pitching his own Dionysian philosophy in direct opposition to Christianity conceived as "the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity [...] the one immortal blemish of mankind" - I'm increasingly coming round to the view that the best thing to do is simply laugh at Jesus hanging on his Cross, just as the Monty Python cast laughed in The Life of Brian and as Larry David often laughs in Curb Your Enthusiasm ...

II. 

One of the most controversial scenes in The Life of Brian (1979) is the ending in which Brian Cohen - who has been mistaken for the Messiah throughout his life - is crucified. Christian critics and protesters said it was mocking the Passion of Christ, which, of course, it is, no matter what the makers or defenders of the film may like to pretend.

But then that's precisely why it's so amusing and subversive of all the unnecessary suffering and pain that Christianity fetishises and foists upon us. I agree with director Terry Jones, when he argues that any creed that transforms a form of torture and execution into an iconic symbol before which to kneel, is a perversely corrupt form of religion.   

In just eight words, the Pythons perform a magnificent revaluation: Always look on the bright side of life. Such stoicism and, more importantly, gay insouciance, is profoundly anti-Christian and lyricist Eric Idle is to be congratulated. If only Jesus had of cared less about sin and dared to give his followers a grin ...


III.

In a season five episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry's father-in-law has purchased a nail on the internet and is wearing it proudly around his neck. The nail, he says, was used in The Passion of the Christ (2004) - Mel Gibson's anti-Semitic piece of Christian torture porn.

Clearly, not the kind of film likely to appeal to Larry (or any sane individual), he can't resist trying to provoke Cheryl's idiot father:

"'You're nuts about this Jesus guy, aren't you?'
'Yeah, I have a personal relationship with Christ.'
'Really?'
'Yeah.'

'I can see worshipping Jesus if he were a girl, like if God had a daughter. Jane. I'll worship a Jane.' 

'No.'
'But, you know, to worship a guy, it's like a little, you know, it's a little gay, isn't it?'
'It's the Son of God! What's the matter with you?'
'I'm just saying. A girl ... I would worship Jane, if he had a daughter Jane. I could have a relationship with a Jane.'
'He didn't have a daughter!'
'It's a shame it wasn't a girl. That's all I have to say. Good-looking woman, zatfig, you know? Good sense of humour.'   

'No! No! No!'

'If he had a daughter, everybody - everybody - would worship Jane.'"

This scene isn't perhaps as outrageous or as provocative as the Python scene, but it's beautifully blasphemous in its own way. It's worth noting also that, later in the episode, Larry takes the nail and uses it to hang a mezuzah to the door before his own father's arrival.

And on that note ... Happy Easter to all torpedophiles. 

Notes

In a letter to the mathematician and philosopher Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762), Voltaire famously wrote: Quoi que vous fassiez, écrasez l'infâme, et aimez qui vous aime. Those interested in Voltaire's correspondence can visit Oxford University's Voltaire Foundation: click here.   

Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), section 62.

Click here for the end scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979). The song, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life', can be found on the film soundtrack album released by Warner Bros. Records (1979).  

Click here for the scene transcribed above from 'The Christ Nail' (S5/E3), Curb Your Enthusiasm, written by Larry David,  dir. by Robert B. Weide, (2005). 

Finally, for the 2013 version of Easter with the Anti-Christ, click here.