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Backstory

So, the Kingdom of Maliscyle used to have an inquisition, to weed out the cult of the horned lord (a terrible demon). But... they found they were almost as bad as the cultists, as they just started doing what inquisitors are now known for. So, the inquisition was purged, and the kingdom settled for a time of peace and prosperity.

...Until the demon cults started flaring up again, and they remembered why they had an inquisition in the first place.

So, the next king made a hard decision, and decided to organize the inquisition 2.0; now with less tortured confessions, guaranteed! ...But is it guaranteed?

Goal for the Inquisition

The inquisitorial organization has two branches. One is basically the police, who enforce religious laws, cracking down on demon cults.

The second branch is legislative and more ecclesiastical in nature. They decide what is and isn't heresy. In the past, this lead to them deciding whatever was convenient to them was heresy, and using the enforcement branch as hitmen.

Now, though, they still need someone to decide matters of the kingdom's religious laws (freedom of religion kind of exists in Maliscyle). They don't want the king or anyone else to do it, because they think it's too much power for other government institutions. Instead, they're hoping to let the ecclesiastical branch handle it, but this time with some sorts of checks and balances to prevent the runaway corruption of last time.

Proposed solution

The general idea they had, was that the legislative branch is made up of a large council (about 300 members). Most actions require a two thirds majority, and passing a harsh law requires a 90% majority to agree.

Their second idea for a check, was that if a large enough number of the nobility (including the king) disagree with the law, then it is annulled.

The details would be rather complex, but the general thing is that as little as 18.75% of the nobles, if the king supports them, can annul a decision; if they're properly concentrated into one demographic. If the voters are spread out, and the king does not support them, then it could take up to half the nobles, 50%, in order to annul a decree of heresy.

Police

The police branch would be put under the authority of the secular police. In effect, it'd be just another branch of law enforcement, similar to NARCs.

They also gave them the equivalent of an internal affairs division, to keep an eye on them. Finally, they removed a lot of their powers to torture for information, and reduced the credibility of unverifiable confessions of magical events, which were impossible to prove.

They hope this is enough to prevent the inquisition from assassinating people with false reports.

Outcome

The general idea for the story was that, surprisingly, it seems to be working out. The inquisitors are checked by the king and nobles, so most of their decisions are semi-democratically approved by the oligarchy, without giving the nobles or king direct control of church matters. The close scrutiny of the inquisitorial police reduces corruption, until the corrupt feel quite out of a job.

That's when the Horned Lord would spring his own plan into action, subverting their little dream society.

Question

So, to clarify, there are two elements to this question:

  1. How can the Inquisition be reformed to do its job? I offered one proposal I thought was interesting, but I wanted to hear others, and hear opinions on that proposal.

  2. As an optional additional point, how do you think the Horned Lord could exploit the system I suggested, or the one you suggest, in order to break down the society? Most societies have some weakpoint that can be exploited, so a demonic influence could whisper suggestions and corrupt certain officials, or could send his cultists to infiltrate offices or take advantage of loopholes.

In other words, I'd like you to describe a reform program for the inquisition, but to also point out the exploitable weak points of the system you present.

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    $\begingroup$ My first thought about exploiting this system is to just block everything. If 200 out of 300 people have to agree, that's...exceptionally easy to devolve into endless debates. Even without demonic influence. But with some corruption (doesn't even need to be supernatural), the whole system can grind to a halt. You can additionally throw bureaucracy at the process. Forget demonic entities, I suspect just simple humans can exploit this at ease. $\endgroup$
    – VLAZ
    Jan 4, 2021 at 0:45
  • $\begingroup$ At any rate, please only ask one question at a time. Right now you seem to have two distinct ones - how to bring about this reform and how to break down afterwards. $\endgroup$
    – VLAZ
    Jan 4, 2021 at 0:47
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    $\begingroup$ The help center states "To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where every answer is equally valid and your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more answers." Please either remove your proposed solution or convert the question to a reality-check question asking us to evaluate your solution. $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Jan 4, 2021 at 3:11
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    $\begingroup$ "I dead later" *facepalm* It should have been "I saw it was dead later". $\endgroup$
    – VLAZ
    Jan 4, 2021 at 20:13
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    $\begingroup$ @Johnny I presume that your kingdom already have some kind of legislative body, so having 2 would be very difficult, unless we say that secular legislation always takes precedence over religious one (or the other way around). $\endgroup$
    – Alexander
    Jan 4, 2021 at 20:21

8 Answers 8

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Institutions grow if they work to grow their own power, and shrink if they do not.

Homeostasis is nearly impossible.

In your case, you have an endevour that is extremely important. People will believe that whatever they do to make your inquisition stronger is justified, and others in opposition to it are helping the demon.

To maintain some kind of temporary stability, you'll want to have multiple institutions with as many opposing interests as you can manage.

In modern justice systems, there is investigation, enforcement, legislative, prosecution, defence, judges and juries.

  • A detective or a FBI agent is Investigative. They seek to find people who broke the law.

  • Enforcement is a beat cop or SWAT team. They catch people who broke the law.

  • Judges check that the rules are followed.

  • Legislative set the rules.

  • Prosecution proves that the Investigative successfully found someone who broke the law.

  • Defence proves that the Investigative didn't find someone who broke the law.

  • Juries determine which one of the Prosecution and Defence got it right.

Each of these "institutions" has some opposing goals, and philosophically there is an agreement that all of these institutions are legitimate and deserve to have their goals exist.

In practice they aren't as divorced as they look. Judges and Prosecutors and Investigators often end up in cahoots, "on the same side", and Investigative and Enforcement are grouped in many western countries (as "police", just different sub-jobs).

Seek to generate separate institutions that jealously guard their independent from each other, and in the friction generate stability.

I don't think it is important than the same split of institutions is needed. Like, a Jury of the People isn't fundamental to this balance; the fact that the Jury's wishes and wants as an insitution are distinct from the other institutions is, and that the Jury cannot be crushed by the other institutions, is.

Your system only seems to have three institutions -- the king, nobles and the church. Far too much of the inquisition is centralized inside the church, and the king/nobles only set the rules.

If the Church is finding the heretics, catching the heretics, determining if they are guilty, and determining if they are following the rules, then what does it matter what the rules say?

You split the inquisition into two -- "Investigate" and "Enforce" on one side, and everything else on the other. You need more pieces.

What other power centres do you have in your society? Is there a merchant class? Trade guilds?

You need strong, independent institutions, in at lease procedural opposition to each other, throughout the system. Expect the institutions to develop animosity to each other and attempt to undermine the other institutions power.

When your enemy is a secret cult that could legitimately infiltrate the other institutions, this is going to be crazy hard.

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  • $\begingroup$ I really enjoyed reading this. Thanks very much, Yakk. If you feel like discussing the subject further, I made a chat room: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/118030/xce21-4 . My general hope was that there would be a deep sense of cooperation in the government. Each institution needs the other institutions to advance their goals, and the separations are often on practical ground as much as for division of power, was the philosophy for the kingdom. A merchant class is actually something they generally lack, but they do have various factions of nobles, like priests and senators. $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 4, 2021 at 21:57
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Accountability.

All the Inquisition's actions are subject to review. For the determinations regarding declaration of heresy, outside experts in religions (and the Horned God's cults) review the evidence to verify if an accusation of heresy was justified. Their enforcement actions, likewise. And there's one prime law: an unjustified declaration of heresy and subsequent action is itself heresy and thus the same punishment would be imposed.

You can think of a secular equivalent that states that if police investigators and/or prosecutors knowingly convicted the wrong person of a crime, they are then guilty of aiding and abetting the true criminal and thus are accessories to the crime and subject to the same punishment.

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks, Keith. To clarify, what do you mean by outside experts in religions? That might be tricky, just because they're concentrating their religious experts in the organization, so I'm not sure where they'd get additional third party experts. Good idea on the law and punishment being applied if they're found setting up cases. $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 4, 2021 at 9:46
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    $\begingroup$ Qui custodiet ipsos custodes $\endgroup$
    – Separatrix
    Jan 4, 2021 at 17:33
  • $\begingroup$ @Johnny Although the inquisitors and the reviewers may both work for the Church and theoretically believe in the same tenants, they are not the same people and they do not have the same goals, so the fact that they both work for the same bureaucracy is not important. I think a better comparison than investigators and prosecutors would be police and internal affairs. $\endgroup$
    – Nosajimiki
    Jan 4, 2021 at 21:52
  • $\begingroup$ "Freedom of Religion" tends to imply that one is free to study a religion while not necessarily being part of it: there are, for instance, Muslim experts on Christianity, Christian experts on Hinduism, and atheist/agnostic experts on all of them. It would thus be reasonable to expect that there would be someone who, even if they might not personally believe in tenets of a religion (and thus not belong to it) to know about that religion's doctrines and thus be able to tell when someone in that religion violates their own beliefs. $\endgroup$
    – Keith Morrison
    Jan 4, 2021 at 23:34
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The Inquisition is unfairly singled out

As this thread from AskHistorians (which is moderated to only allow well-researched answers by real historians) says, the Inquisition was not significantly worse than what one found in the justice system of the rest of Europe at the time. It got a bad rap apparently because Protestants with an axe to grind took it out of context later and vilified them. (Not that, by the standards of the later time - or ours - what the Inquisition did looks good in comparison; it doesn't. It just wasn't out of line with what everyone else was doing back then.)

It just took time for people to accept that torture really isn't a reliable way of sussing out guilt or innocence, and to develop better rules.

What this means for you

So in your society there exist cults serving an actual demon that presumably are doing all kinds of horrible stuff hidden in the shadows. That sounds like a pretty good reason to have an Inquisition. It's pretty much the same reason why we have to have police: to maintain order. In other words - there does not have to be any real difference between your Inquisition, and any other kind of police force. Only their jurisdiction will be different.

Just because we need police, though, doesn't mean they can operate without meaningful controls on them. And even though if (as many people say nowadays) those controls are lacking, that just means the system will have issues - that's no reason to get rid of it entirely.

In our world, we have designed bureaucracies that split power up, leaving no one person in complete control of it. This solution brings its own problems, but it's the best one we've found so far.

Your Inquisition has one clear advantage for it: The demon exists, and its agenda is terrible and terrifying. Make the Inquisition keenly aware that every innocent person that falls into their hands (because of course they will) only plays into the hands of their Adversary, and your Inquisition will naturally be highly motivated to co-operate with its equivalent of Internal Affairs.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the great answer, Ton. I wonder if they were a bit too soft on the Inquisition. There were the witch trials of Basque, so they did prosecute witches, even if it wasn't their main interest. The second reply in that reddit did mention that some of the inquisitors were as brutal as their reputation implies, burning huge numbers of people, and it's well known they persecuted protestants. But anyway, that aside, you're correct that an inquisition to look for demon cultists seems reasonable, like a police. The largest concern is that they control your culture, by deciding what is heresy. $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 4, 2021 at 11:27
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    $\begingroup$ Yeah, I mean, they were not, um, good. My point is while it feels intuitive, the leap to "an Inquisition must be a bad thing" doesn't actually follow. Any kind of justice system, civil or otherwise, using actual period-accurate practices from the time periods a lot of fantasy likes to be set around - will be highly problematic. Your story already has an out to avoid this anyway: the country didn't like what old school Inquisitiors got up to, and (presumably) their law enforcement has undergone legal reforms since. The new Inquisition likely follows suit. $\endgroup$
    – Ton Day
    Jan 4, 2021 at 12:10
  • $\begingroup$ That is a fair point, Ton. I do wonder if they were really no worse than other institutions of the time, but your point stands. Especially in this case, since they're working against a literal demon. Do you have any feedback on the system of reform I proposed? I feel it follows your advice about separation of powers and overwatch of the institution. $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 4, 2021 at 12:52
  • $\begingroup$ Anything requiring a 90% basically means "never". 2/3 in our world is a really high bar to meet. Which brings me to the second point: If the body requires 2/3 to do anything, it will likely force the body to quell dissent internally so everyone in the assembly more or less shares the same viewpoints. I think you went too far in the other way: this is set up to either be a body of 100% identical membership, or it will never get anything done. And it's too easy to check them; I don't have to corrupt many nobles before I can shut them down. It's a good start, but you should tweak the numbers. $\endgroup$
    – Ton Day
    Jan 5, 2021 at 5:42
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the great feedback, Ton. In our world, everything is ruled by bipartisan politics, where politicians are divided and competing for votes. But many governments in history did work by even unanimous consent, such as the Iroquois Confederacy. As it is, the government doesn't really need new heresy legislation on a regular basis, so new religious laws should not be passed lightly, was the general idea. I made a chatroom where we could discuss it more, if you'd like to: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/118030/xce21-4 $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 5, 2021 at 13:14
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now with less tortured confessions, guaranteed! ...But is it guaranteed?

You have the right to remain silent (but nobody does)

In many modern criminal cases, the police will question you for days and lie that your buddy has ratted you out, and if you don't want a super harsh sentence you've got to rat him out too.

There is no torture involved. If you wanted to make sure the defendant isn't tortured for a confession just make any statement from the defendant inadmissible in court. Now you just have to figure out how to make sure witnesses are not harassed.

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  • $\begingroup$ This is true. Thanks for the answer. $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 4, 2021 at 15:23
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The Inquisition's Corruption Stemmed from Unrestrained Powers

These powers included the unrestrained power of interrogation, the unrestrained scope of authority, and unrestrained accountability for their actions.

Unrestrained power of interrogation meant that they could torture a person to get information without ever needing just cause or a conviction. So, punishments could be served without trial or evidence. Even if they 100% knew a person was innocent, they could take someone and interrogate them to death... and even if they got a false confession, they would then have all the evidence they needed to bring that person to trial where they would be convicted and killed. One wide-spread example of this abuse was the use of the Inquisition to disfigure British Longbowmen. The French hated British longbowmen so much that when they captured them, they would turn them over to the inquisition to break their shooting fingers "just to see if they are heretics" before ransoming them back to England with everyone else.

Next was their unrestrained scope of authority. Anything could be considered Heresy that was not Catholic. Since no two people ever believe the exact same set of things, it means that a general Inquisition can be used to root out any undesirable subculture... or just that person down the street you don't like. The Catholic Inquisition was not just purging Paganism, but every variety of Christian Church that taught anything that opposed the Papacy. So, you did not need to be able to show that a person was a witch to incite an investigation. You just needed to show that they believed something uncatholic.

Lastly, Inquisitors were not accountable for their actions. Because they were sanctioned by the Papacy, whatever they did was considered above contestation. This meant they could knowingly do wrong without fear of reprisal.

How this applies to your setting

Since you say your inquisitors are like modern police, you've solved for the unrestrained power of interrogation issue. So your inquisitors can arrest, ask questions, and hold for a short while, but they can not harm or hold indefinitely without trial. Also, modern forensics has a lot of non-harmful tools for finding the truth that the old inquisition did not have. Your inquisitors could use Internet Search histories, GPS tracking, phone tapping, etc. to build a case on someone before they even know they are under investigation. So, by the time an inquisitor shows up at your door to arrest you, they have no need or torture you since they already have all they need to prove your guilt to a judge.

You have also fixed the scope issue by limiting their authority to targeting a specific cult. This gives them much less leeway to abuse their powers going after groups that they are not intended to investigate.

Thirdly, you've given them an internal affairs division to hold them accountable for their actions which solves the third major issue.

All-in-all, it would be very hard for your inquisition to become any more corrupt than any modern police force. You'd probably see a few small town inquisition forces become incredibly corrupt here and there just like we see today, but by in large your inquisitors would be well meaning law enforcement agents doing the best they can to protect and serve, and your internal affairs would likewise mostly be well meaning law enforcement agents keeping the agency free of corruption.

How would the Horned One combat this Inquisition?

The best way to undermine a modern police force is by mimicking the actions of Anonymous and BLM ✝ where you stir up hate issues to make the police force seem like the real enemy. Every time a non-cultist gets killed in the crossfire, every false accusation, every failure is hyper publicized unto the point that the inquisition comes under too much scrutiny to properly do its job. Even if 1 innocent is harmed for every 1000 guilty cultists you eliminate, the only stories people will hear or care about will be where things went wrong.

Then you further inflame the issue with things like Gender or Race discrimination. Historically, most witches were women; so, if inquisitors start profiling women for witchcraft, you could start slamming them for being a symptom of "toxic masculinity" or "patriarchy". Illegal activity is also most often seen among desperate populations; so, if most cultists are found in poor communities, you could make it look like the inquisition is targeting the minorities who tend to make up these poorer populations.

Once you get to to the point that people do not trust the inquisition, you then follow up with campaigns like "defund the inquisition".

Burying the inquisition in layer after layer of regulations to prevent them from ever doing any harm whatsoever combined with defunding them would mean you take away the tools they need to be able to actual subdue suspects wielding the arcane powers of the Horned One, but more importantly it would take away the tools they need to find the cultists at all allowing the cult to grow and thrive without adequate opposition.

Not only does this give the cultists more freedom to grow in numbers, but it will also polarise the society making it easier for the horned one to attack the structure of the current powers that be. With everyone ready to turn on the current leadership, it makes inserting a new government more friendly to his agendas much easier.

✝ This is not meant to say anything good or bad about the actions or motivations of such groups in the real world, only to point out the strategies that they use.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hey Nosajimiki, thank you for the excellent, thorough answer! You also worked out a strategy for the horned lord. If you're interested, I'd enjoy discussing the matter with you further. I started a chatroom for it: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/118030/xce21-4 $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 4, 2021 at 22:09
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Just like in our world, you need an independent judiciary as well as the executive (police) and legislature. The judges will help to prevent police excess and ensure that the laws are interpreted in a reasonable fashion. Make sure that none of the three branches can influence recruitment or promotion in either of the other two.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, Mike. Those are good principles. $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 4, 2021 at 10:15
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Don't make the religion the focus of your laws, make their practices the focus.

Prosecute human sacrifices as murder. Prosecute animal sacrifices as animal cruelty. Make lobbying illegal. Enforce "separation of church and state" by prosecuting any official that makes a blatant or thinly veiled attempt to create laws that favor the cults. Mobs/riots that damage property and/or are violent against people have their punishments multiplied if done as a hate crime.

Prosecute witnesses as accomplices. Prosecute influencers as treason or sedition.

Also, you really want to go after the leaders, not the peasants they duped into joining the cult. You charge the leaders with the same crimes as anyone they have under their influence.

You also give witnesses a chance to "get out of jail", but also have a "3 strikes"-like system. Some people might be at a ceremony the first time or didn't understand what was happening until it was too late. And have a system in place to make sure that "repeat offenders" are discovered. It might be reasonable for someone to get lied to and be talked into witnessing a human sacrifice once, but not twice. It might be reasonable to be in the room next to an animal sacrifice twice and not hear anything due to the party the acolytes are throwing, but not 3 times. An official repeatedly listening to the same influencers that gets his laws rejected and has maybe 2 chances to report them. Someone stating they were simply a witness, but reliable others say they participated gets their charges upgraded.

Make sure that "bearing false witness" or otherwise "lying under oath" is a crime, to help prevent actual innocents aren't wrongly prosecuted by the lies of cultists. You want to avoid people falsely denouncing each other and you might even want to prosecute those making repeated false statements.

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  • $\begingroup$ This is good advice. While it seems secular, it's really just defining the wrongful action in clearer terms, which would suit the kingdom. It's especially true about false denunciation, and this is something medieval societies handled reasonably well, punishing people who made clearly false charges. Your strikes system could also be valuable. If you're interested in discussing this further, I started a chatroom for it: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/118030/xce21-4 $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 4, 2021 at 22:13
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    $\begingroup$ @Johnny, you're correct that it's secular. I didn't want people of the cult(s) to even remotely be able to claim "religious persecution". You don't want them to get any sort of sympathy, which is part of what your Q tries to avoid. You might not say so explicitly, but part of the public thinking the gov't is "horribly corrupt and despotic" or draconic could stem from the gov't "attacking innocent religious customs". Or however people would spin reality back then. $\endgroup$
    – computercarguy
    Jan 4, 2021 at 22:54
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So, the next king made a hard decision, and decided to organize the inquisition 2.0; now with less tortured confessions, guaranteed! ...But is it guaranteed?

Of course not! The original christian mediaeval inquisition was "bona fide" created. Nothing but good "christian valour". Do you remember? Jesus Christ, the guy who said:

Luke 6:29:If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.

Luke 23:34:Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

People following him burned inocent people alive!

No, no way it could work. Like people have answered above, you need an impartial secular judiciary to do the job the way a REAL christian could do.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hey Smile, welcome to WBSE! The issue with this case, is if it's a trial for a religious matter, you need a religious expert to handle it. This makes it difficult for the judiciary to be considered truly secular or impartial. I think it might be worth editing your answer to make it a bit more clear, as I suspect you have some interesting points there, but I wasn't able to follow. Thank you! $\endgroup$
    – Johnny
    Jan 5, 2021 at 4:16

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