Author Cullen Murphy talks to Terry Gross about the use of torture during the Inquisition:

Many people in the Bush administration were insisting [it] was not torture at all. The Inquisition was actually very clear on the matter. It obviously was torture. That’s why they were using it.

The director Kathryn Bigelow has faced a great deal of criticism for her depictions of torture in her film Zero Dark Thirty, about the killing of Osama bin Laden. She responded to that criticism this week in the LA Times. Here, too, is the Fresh Air interview from 2009 with Bigelow about The Hurt Locker.

Cullen Murphy tells Terry Gross about how the invention of the printing press impacted the third Inquisition:

For a long time, the church had had an effective monopoly on the intellectual life in Europe. Publishing was something that involved copying manuscripts. … Suddenly, there’s a new technology on the block. And the church sees this as a threat. So the church sees a combined attack — from the printing press and the Protestant Reformation — [and that] is really the thing that instigates the third Inquisition. … This is the Inquisition that puts Galileo on trial. … It’s the Inquisition that starts the index of forbidden books.

Image of the Gutenberg Bible via History.com

Many people in the Bush administration were insisting [it] was not torture at all. The Inquisition was actually very clear on the matter. It obviously was torture. That’s why they were using it.

— Writer Cullen Murphy, on waterboarding, which was used in the Inquisition against possible heretics. [complete interview here]

The idea that the Pope would authorize the use of something as heinous as torture by priests or people working for priests is a pretty astonishing development. Ultimately, the justification that it invokes is the same one anyone uses when they’re using torture for reasons that are not sadistic and that is, in essence: ‘The moral cause that we’re engaged in is too important to settle for half-measures.’ … When you read accounts of torture, you get the unmistakable impression that the people doing the torture or conducting the torture — somewhere inside them, they think they are saving souls.

— Cullen Murphy, on accounts of torturers from the first Inquisition.

A few years ago, the intelligence agencies had some transcripts released … of interrogations that were done at Guantanamo and the interrogations done by the Inquisition were surprisingly similar and just as detailed. … [They were] virtually verbatim.

— On today’s Fresh Air, Cullen Murphy draws parallels between some of the interrogation techniques used in previous centuries with the ones used today.

Monday’s show will be about The Inquisition with guest Cullen Murphy