Dear Cyndy,

Thank you for your letter, and especially for your tolerance
of my teutonic deficiency of humor, my failure to perceive
the irony in Adam Gopnik's invocation of Monty Python to
illuminate the Inquisition. Irony, if you forgive the traumatic
metaphor, cuts both ways; it's a two edged sword.

Three factors of immediate interest: 1) It's not at all 
important whether you and I agree about Adam Gopnik's essay.
What's important is that Gopnik's article serves as a literary
reagent demonstrating that you and I are in whole-hearted
agreement about the Inquisition. That sympathy between
ourselves is all that matters. 2) Our reading of Gopnik's essay
corroborates my long-standing thesis about the communications
value of literature, that its function is not to establish
agreement betwen author and readers. Literature constitutes an
intellectual and emotional bridge on which two potential
readers have the opportunity and the occasion to embrace, to
hug and kiss one another. 3) The horror of the Inquisition and
of all other society-sponsored cruelty is not to be measured
numerically by the suffering inflicted. In a very superficial
review I've gleaned some numbers from the Internet of deaths
precipitated by various catastrophes with human and non-human
causes:

Sinking of the Lusitania: 1,198
Sinking of the Titanic: 1,517
9/11/2001 Terrorist attacks: 3,000
Spanish and Medieval Inquisitions: 4,450
Eruption of Vesuvius: 15,000
Firebombing of Dresden: 18,000
1755 Lisbon Earthquake: 100,000
2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami: 230,000
Estimated daily deaths from all causes: 250,000
Estimated daily deaths from Second World War: 32,037 (70,000,000/2,185)
Atombombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 350,000
U.S. Civil War: 618,000
Vietnam War: 5,000,000
First World War: 20,000,000
Bubonic Plague: 25,000,000
Second World War: 70,000,000

Having inadvertently lapsed into the role of Ludovico Settembrini of
Th. Mann's Magic Mountain who undertook to compile an encyclopedia of 
human suffering, I note that the terror inspired by a catastrophe
is related much less to the numbers of individuals killed than by 
the intent pursuant to which they died. The deaths from earthquakes,
volcanic eruptions, tsunamies, disease and famine I reckon as 
incident to nature, and hence devoid of tragedy. Even here. I'm subject
to correction since the optimistic activist will argue that with proper
ecologic planning and medical care such deaths might largely have been
prevented.  With respect to the wars, I would argue that their extent
ultimately makes them appear as phenomena of nature, even though all of
them might have been prevented, and even though, once they had broken
out, all of them could have been waged much less destructively.

What makes the Inquisition, notwithstanding the small number of its
victims, so especially frightening, is its expression of the fundamental
religious and social propensities of its perpetrators. Society, and 
especially religious society to which one owes ones physical and spiritual
existence and on which one depends for ones survival, uncloaks itself as
the enemy, bent on the destruction of some of its members. That's the
common theme of my experience as a child and as an adult, and that's what
I will have on my mind, foolishly and unrealistically or otherwise,
when I confront Judge Macdonald on April 5, and explain to him the
events on the Island.

I hope your income tax ordeal will soon be behind you. Please give
my best to Ned.

Jochen