Inquisition and liberty

This new book by the stern censor of the human frailties of mediaeval Christianity is ostensibly less a new history of the papal Inquisition than an attempt to find in the Middle Ages a justification for a sweeping condemnation of that authoritarianism which threatens the ideal of individual liberty today. And yet, if it is not a new history of the Inquisition, neither is it a very successful final judgment of authoritarian intolerance, for the exact nature of present dangers to liberty is left undefined, except for a passing reference or so to Abyssinia and Spain and to the problem of individual responsibility and freedom in contemporary England; and the connection between mediaeval universalism in the Church and modern totalitarianism in the State is not at all clear. Nevertheless, it is a significant book, and it is necessary to consider it seriously from the point of view of the premise which is the real foundation of Coulton's attitude towards the human failure of mediaeval Christianity: Can the historian not condemn the mediaeval Inquisition as a violation of the eternal law of humanitarian and social justice, as a violation of the modern ideal of individual liberty, and as a violation even of the primitive (therefore eternal) Christian ideal of toleration. -- From (August 28, 2013).