Monty Python’s Flying Circus was one of the most important and influential cultural phenomena of the 1970s. The British program was followed by albums, stage appearances, and several films, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian,and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. In all, the comic troupe drew on a variety of cultural references that prominently figured in their sketches, and they tackled weighty matters that nonetheless amused their audiences. In Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition:Cultural Contexts in Monty Python, Tomasz Dobrogoszcz presents essays that explore the various touchstones in the television show and subsequent films. These essays look at a variety of themes prompted by the comic geniuses: Death The depiction of women Shakespearean influences British and American cultural representations Reactions from foreign viewers This volume offers a distinguished discussion of Monty Python’s oeuvre, exhibiting highly varied approaches from a number of perspectives, including gender studies, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies. Featuring a foreword by Python alum Terry Jones, Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition will appeal to anyone interested in cultural history and media studies, as well as the general fans of Monty Python who want to know more about the impact of this groundbreaking group.

A narrative history of the Inquisition, and an examination of the influence it exerted on contemporary society, by the author of ARE WE ROME?

Thirty-five years ago, Kamen wrote a study of the Inquisition that received high praise. This present work, based on over 30 years of new research, is not simply a complete revision of the earlier book. Innovative in its presentation, point of view, information, and themes, it will revolutionize further study in the field.

This book challenges the reputation of the Spanish Inquisition asan instrument of religious persecution, torture and repressionandlooks at its wider role as an educative force in society. A reassessment of the history of the Spanish Inquisition. Challenges the reputation of the Inquisition as an instrumentof religious persecution, torture and repression. Looks at the wider role of the Inquisition as an educativeforce in society. Draws on the findings of recent research by American, Britishand European scholars. Includes original documentary evidence in translation.

This collection of pithy, brilliantly acerbic pieces is a companion to Sixty Stories, Barthelme's earlier retrospective volume. Barthelme spotlights the idiosyncratic, haughty, sometimes downright ludicrous behavior of human beings, but it is style rather than content which takes precedence.

As we all know and as many of our well-established textbooks have argued for decades, the Inquisition was one of the most frightening and bloody chapters in Western history; Pope Pius XII was anti-Semitic and rightfully called “Hitler’s Pope,” the Dark Ages were stunting the progress of knowledge to be redeemed only by the secular spirit of the Enlightenment. The religious Crusades were an early example of the rapacious Western thirst for riches and power. But what if these long held beliefs were all wrong? In this stunning, powerful, and ultimately persuasive book, Rodney Stark, one of the most highly regarded sociologists of religion and bestselling author of The Rise of Christianity (HarperSanFrancisco 1997), argues that some of our most firmly held ideas about history, ideas that paint the Catholic Church in the least favorable light are, in fact, fiction. Why have we held these wrongheaded ideas so firmly and for so long? And if our beliefs are wrong, what is the truth? In each chapter, Stark takes on a well-established anti-Catholic myth, gives a fascinating history of how each myth became conventional wisdom and presents a startling picture of the real truth. For example, instead of the Spanish Inquisition being an anomaly of torture and murder of innocent people persecuted for “imaginary” crimes such as witchcraft and blasphemy, Stark argues that not only did the Spanish Inquisition spill very little blood, but it was a major force in support of moderation and justice. Stark dispels the myth of Pope Pius XII being apathetic or even helpful to the Nazi movement, such as to merit the title “Hitler’s Pope,” and instead shows that the campaign to link Pope Pius XII to Hitler was initiated by the Soviet Union, presumably in hopes of neutralizing the Vatican in post-World War II affairs. Many praised Pope Pius XIIs vigorous and devoted efforts to saving Jewish lives during the war. Instead of understanding the Dark Ages as a millennium of ignorance and backwardness inspired by the Catholic Church’s power, Stark argues that the whole notion of the “Dark Ages” was an act of pride perpetuated by anti-religious intellectuals who were determined to claim that theirs was the era of “Enlightenment.” In the end, readers of Bearing False Witness will have a more accurate history of the Catholic Church and will also understand why it became unfairly maligned for so long. Bearing False Witness is a compelling and sobering account of how egotism and ideology often work together to give us a false truth.

B. Netanyahu revolutionized accepted belief concerning the causes of the Spanish Inquisition in his volume of 1995, The Origins of the Inquisition. Toward the Inquisition is another major contribution to this historiographic revolution. Made up of seven of Netanyahu's essays, published over the last two decades and collected here for the first time, it further illuminates Jewish and Marrano history from the mid-fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth. Forming as they do a unified whole, the essays are provocative and boldly interpretive, yet meticulously documented from a wealth of sources. The essays throw light on such long-obscured phenomena as the rise of the Nazi-like theory of race which harassed the conversos for three full centuries, or the abandonment of Judaism by most conversos decades before the Inquisition was established.

Next to Luther himself, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) was probably the most important and certainly the most influential of the early Protestant reformers. His Commentary on True and False Religion, addressed to King Francis I of France and published by the printer Froschauer in Zurich in 1525, contrasted what Zwingli regarded as the true religion of the Protestants, grounded in Scripture, with the false religion of tradition and reason advocated by the opponents of the Reformation. In twenty-nine chapters Zwingli discussed all of the principal topics of Christian theology, from the meaning of the word "religion" itself to the role and place of images in Christian worship. All the disputed issues of the early Reformation--the doctrine of Church and ministry, baptism, penance, eucharist, the nature of civil authority--are explained lucidly and concisely. The Commentary makes clear not only the grounds for Zwingli's break with the medieval Catholic tradition in which he had been raised but also the nature of his disagreements with Erasmus, Luther, and the Swiss Anabaptists. The result is the most significant dogmatic work which Zwingli ever wrote and the most important systematic statement of Reformed theology before Calvin's Institutes.

Conspiracy theories have a bad reputation. In the past, most philosophers have ignored the topic, vaguely supposing that conspiracy theories are obviously irrational and that they can be easily dismissed. The current philosophical interest in the subject results from a realisation that this is not so. Some philosophers have taken up the challenge of identifying and explaining the flaws of conspiracy theories. Other philosophers have argued that conspiracy theories do not deserve their bad reputation, and that conspiracy theorists do not deserve their reputation for irrationality. This book represents both sides of this important debate. Aimed at a broad philosophical community, including epistemologists, political philosophers, and philosophers of history. It represents a significant contribution to the growing interdisciplinary debate about conspiracy theories.

The Spanish Inquisition remains a fearful symbol of state terror. Its principal target was theconversos, descendants of Spanish Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity some three generations earlier. Since thousands of them confessed to charges of practicing Judaism in secret, historians have long understood the Inquisition as an attempt to suppress the Jews of Spain. In this magisterial reexamination of the origins of the Inquisition, Netanyahu argues for a different view: that the conversos were in fact almost all genuine Christians who were persecuted for political ends. The Inquisition's attacks not only on the conversos' religious beliefs but also on their "impure blood" gave birth to an anti-Semitism based on race that would have terrible consequences for centuries to come. This book has become essential reading and an indispensable reference book for both the interested layman and the scholar of history and religion.