Tag: Inquisition

On the Portuguese Empire

We all remember our history of the world’s great empires; names like Persia, Greece, Rome, England, and others bring to mind vast areas of land under the control of one leader or government. Those areas that differed in culture and language and were under the control of a powerful military–that is one definition of empire. What we often forget is that, at one time, the small nation of Portugal was once one of the world’s largest empires.

Today, Portugal is about the size of the US state of Indiana. In the 1400s through the early 1800s, Portugal controlled about 25% of the globe’s population, making up over 5,000,000 square miles of territory spread literally around the world. And the person probably most responsible for the power Portugal wielded was a crown prince of the country, a man we now call Prince Henry the Navigator (although he wasn’t called that at the time). It was Henry, the third son of King John I of Portugal, who first advised his father in the early 1400s to send ships along the northwest coast of Africa, to explore and to find trade goods.

Now, up until that time, Portugal, a Catholic nation, had had their hands full fighting off the Muslims who had occupied much of the Iberian Peninsula and also their neighbor, Castille (Spain). But John and his immediate ancestors had been able to establish a modicum of stability, and it was in this time when Portuguese exploration flourished along the western African Coast.

And Portugal’s ships brought back so, so many wonderful trade goods from Africa. They raided the interior of the continent for precious metals, ivory, and people. All of this brought wealth to the nation. Forts were set up to protect the trade routes. And, the ultimate prize for Portugal, was that they believed Africa was much smaller than it is–and that they could simply sail around the bottom of the continent and hit India, the crown jewel in trade for spices, cloth, and all sorts of goods that people in Europe would literally kill for.

But, as we now know, Africa is much larger than the Portuguese thought. It took them until 1488–some 30 years after Henry died–to reach the point where they rounded the Cape of Good Hope (they named that, by the way) and knew they were in the Indian Ocean. By then, their way was clear. They had the exclusive route along Africa to all of India’s (and Africa’s) wealth. The Catholic pope insured that they and only they could have this route. For a percentage of the take, of course, but yeah. They won the race to get to India first by sea.

That’s why the Spanish, finally kicking out the Muslims (and other non-Christians) and unifying the various kingdoms and principalities in their area, were late to the game. They, too, wanted a taste of the goods from India. But, realizing that the route along the African Coast belonged to Portugal, Spain grew desperate.

That’s why, in 1492, Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella hired this Italian guy named Columbus who had a crazy idea to get to a route for them to India–by sailing west.

On a Heresy

The issue with using religion as a base to write and enforce laws is that religion is man-made and subjective. Your religious beliefs, even if they are different from mine, are no more or less right or good. And the same is true for my religious beliefs. Two people can look at the same thing or idea or work of “scripture,” express our individual interpretations about it, and suddenly my orthodoxy becomes your heresy. And so laws based on these opinions–and that’s all that they are–are not only wrong on their faces, but they also go against basic human freedoms of liberty, justice, and equality (none of which are so-called Biblical principles, by the way).

And all of that that takes us to a case of heresy that was brought against a man in the 17th Century. At this time in what is now Italy, the Catholic Church held political as well as religious power. They prosecuted and persecuted people who did not follow the letter of the Catholic ordinances and beliefs to their interpretation of religious perfection. In this particular situation, a man simply did not agree with the church that the earth was the center of the universe, that all objects circled around our globe.

Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer and thinker, had posited a different idea, that the earth revolved around the sun instead of the Catholic model of the opposite. Now, Copernicus wasn’t the first to hold this belief; Greek astronomers and others had made the same claims centuries earlier including the concept that the earth rotated on its axis. Islamic astronomers confirmed these Greek ideas. However, it was the Copernicus proposal that this man had espoused, and it’s what the Catholic church prosecuted him for. One major reason for their prosecution at this time was because Copernicus had published his findings a century before; he drew the known planets in correct order radiating out from the heliocentric system. Many people began listening to the theory, and the Catholic Church saw this as a threat to their ways of belief and their control over what people believed.

So, they put this poor man on trial for agreeing with Copernicus. During his cross examination by the Church’s prosecutor, the man walked back his belief out of a sense that he knew the punishment for his “crime” could be severe. He said that, after careful consideration, that rather than a “belief” in the heliocentric idea, he wanted merely to use that concept as merely a starting point for scientific discussion.

We must remember that this period saw the Catholic Church under attack from the surging Protestant movement. Printing presses published ideas that countered the Church. The Renaissance and the early beginnings of the Age of Enlightenment further challenged the orthodox and monolithic Catholic faith and power. That is why trials such as this one, while seemingly over a trivial matter, were so important to the Catholic hierarchy. While this doesn’t excuse the severe abuses the Catholic Church committed during this period of the rise of heterodoxy in Europe, it does help to explain it. Sadly, similar behavior is occurring across the globe as extremists in all nations are demanding that laws be passed that match their beliefs and not that protect basic freedom of thought and belief.

The argument of the man that he didn’t actually believe Copernicus but only wanted to use his ideas as discussion points did not sway the Catholic court. They found him guilty of crimes against the Church and against God. His sentence was to be under house arrest for the remainder of his life. And that’s what happened to him.

It would take the Catholic Church 300 years before it admitted it was wrong and exonerated Galileo for his “crime.”