Papal Power, the Portuguese Inquisition, and a Consilium of Cardinal Pier Paolo Pariseo (original) (raw)

For more than a century, Alexandre Herculano's probings into the origins of the Portuguese Inquisition have been held up as a model of archival investigation, textual pursuit, and persuasive argument. As Herculano described it, it was cynicism that led to Paul III's final capitulation and, most of all, to acquiescence to his venal court, with the consequence that the Portuguese Inquisition acquired a free hand to deal with suspect New Christians. This, as Herculano saw it, was the Renaissance papacy at its best—or should I say, its worst. But Herculano's conclusions have now been questioned. Giuseppe Marcocci has argued persuasively that there was more here than meets the eye. We should, he urges, focus on the pressure applied on the Portuguese court by the Spanish Inquisition and Crown, both anxious to ensure the prosecution of Portuguese New Christians. Likewise, we must pay close attention to the new counselors in matters of faith who entered Dom John III's court between the late 1520s and the beginning of the 1530s, and who, among other things, challenged the notion that the conversions of 1497 were truly forced. This last was critical in framing arguments for and against the establishment of a Portuguese Inquisition. 1 Herculano's investigation centered on the collapse of the pardon that Popes Clement VII and then Paul III gave to Portuguese New Christians, a pardon that put a moratorium of ten, if not thirty, years on hauling these unfortunates before the fledgling Portuguese Inquisition, a body to be modeled, or so King John III hoped, after the Spanish Inquisition and controlled by the Spanish themselves. In