Chapter 3 MARGINALIZING THE BIBLE

EVERY RULED SOCIETY has some form of holy scripture. The holy scriptures of Caesarean Rome were the prophecies and ritual directions contained in the ten Sibylline gospels and Virgil’s Aeneid.

The Aeneid implied that every Roman’s duty was to sacrifice his individuality, as heroic Aeneas had done, to the greater glory of Rome and Pontifex Maximus. The Sibyllines, borrowing from Isaiah’s much earlier prophecy of Jesus Christ, prophesied that when Caesar Augustus succeeded his uncle Julius as Pontifex Maximus he would rule the world as “Prince of Peace, Son of God.”

Augustus would issue in a “new world order,” as indeed he did. The Sibyllines and the Aeneid were so beloved by the government priests that they were considered part of the Roman constitution. The same scriptures were made part of the United States

Constitution when the mottoes “ ANNUIT COEPTIS ” and “NOVUS ORD O SECLORUM,” taken from the Aeneid and the Sibyllines respectively, were incorporated, by the Act of July 28, 1782, into the Great Seal of the United States.1

The Sibyllines and the Aeneid were open only to priests and certain privileged persons. The people learned their sacred content by the trickle-down of priestly retelling. When the Old and New Testaments were adopted as the Empire’s official sacred writings they, too, were given to the exclusive care of the priests. And in accord with Roman tradition, the people learned sacred content from discretionary retelling. This had to be, for the sake of the Holy Empire. For should the people acquire biblical knowledge, they would know that Pontifex Maximus was not a legitimate Christian entitlement. Knowing this, they would not bow to his supremacy. The Empire could collapse. And so the monarchial Roman Church forcibly suppressed the Bible’s intelligent reading. This is why the millennium between Constantine and Gutenberg is known as “the Dark Ages.”

Sprinkled throughout the Empire, however, were isolated Christian assemblies who had preserved Scripture from the days of the early Church. For them the Bible invited an ongoing, personal communion with the Creator of the universe. They lived by the writings of which Rome was so jealous. By the thirteenth century, these assemblies had grown so vibrant that Pope Gregory IX declared unauthorized Bible study a heresy.2 He further decreed that “it is the duty of every Catholic to persecute heretics.” To manage the persecution, Gregory established the Pontifical Inquisition.

The Inquisition treated the slightest departure from the life of the community as proof of direct communion with the Bible or Satan. Either instance was a sin worthy of death.³ Cases were prosecuted according to a strict routine. First, the inquisitors would enter a town and present their credentials to the civil authorities. In the pope’s name, they would require the governor’s cooperation. Next, the local priest would be ordered to summon his congregation to hear the inquisitors preach against heresy, which was defined as anything the least bit opposed to the papal system. A brief grace period followed the sermon, wherein the people were given an opportunity to step forward and accuse themselves of crimes. Those who did were usually punished mildly. Later, the inquisitors would receive at their lodgings unverified accusations, guaranteeing in the pope’s name the anonymity of informants. Many innocent lives were ruined by false testimony.

Trials were conducted arbitrarily and secretly by tribunals consisting of the inquisitors, their staffs, and their witnesses, all concealed under hoods. The accused were never told the charges against them, and they were forbidden to ask. No defense witnesses were permitted. The accused had but one option: to confess guilt and die. Those who refused to confess (and witnesses who balked at testifying) were carried to the dungeon for torture sessions (boys under fourteen and girls under twelve exempted). Inquisitors and executioners were commanded by papal edict to show no mercy. No acquittal was ever recorded. Every fully prosecuted case ended in the death of the defendant and the forfeiture of his or her property, since it was assumed (as in American forfeiture cases since 1984) that the property was gained in sin. Sometimes the property of family members for generations to come was forfeited. These forfeitures were paid out in expenses to the scribes and executioners, half of the remainder going into the papal treasury and half to the inquisitors. Although popes and inquisitors amassed great fortunes from the Inquisition, its greatest beneficiary was, and has been, the Roman system.⁴

The Inquisition was most effective against the isolated truth- seeker in an ignorant community. As communities became more literate, the Inquisition grew subtler. What brought literacy to communities was the epidemic of Bible-reading made possible by the perfection of Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type.

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