Nickerson, Hoffman. The Inquisition. With a pref. by Hilaire Belloc. 1923

By an Episcopalian, and NY State assemblyman, who was moved to write by the idiocies of Prohibition, which he calls a taboo, typical of the Puritan mind. The bulk of the book is on the Albigensian crusade. The preface by Belloc is good on the manner of writing history: clearing away accumulated rubbish.

1: Protestantism's abandonment of theology and concentration upon taboos

‑: men of science: morally, and therefore politically, such men may be, and often are, grossly ignorant and stupid

3: The 13th Century was astonished, not like the 19th by mastery over nature, but by the discovery of the great moral forces in human nature

‑: prying impudence

4: the dogma of the infallibility of the press

8: the tie of personal devotion and loyalty to a chieftain belongs not only to every barbarian, but to every schoolboy

10: Many of our politicians think of government, not as something to live under, but to live upon

17: The guilds guaranteed to the workman his independence and security so well that our labor unions grope after them like blind giants

24: our industrial societies with their exaltation of power

49: the Albigensians believed, not in marriage, but in promiscuity. [The heresy included a penchant for suicide]

81: dabbling in bigamy on the modern American plan

122: Innocent 3 had the high sense of fairness often bred in upright natures by the study of law, and the exercise of power

233: on the connection between industrial capitalism, Edward 6, Elizabeth and laws against drunkenness (the result of poverty)