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The Inquisition Invented Peer Review – Ada Palmer
TL;DR
The Inquisition mostly targeted religion and social control, not science — Ada Palmer says there were only 12 total trials of scientists “about science,” just 3 convictions, and Giordano Bruno was the only one executed, versus hundreds of thousands of trials for things like Judaizing and indigenous “paganism.”
Kepler’s real danger was Lutheranism, not planetary motion — while working through Tycho Brahe’s data and serving the Habsburg emperor as an “imperial mathematician” doing astrology for generals, Johannes Kepler was excommunicated for being Lutheran, and his mother was tried for witchcraft for the same reason.
Milton’s free-press classic came out of a censorship panic, and it lost — Palmer frames Areopagitica as John Milton’s beautiful argument against England’s first systematic state censorship regime, built amid anti-Catholic anxiety and a politically whipped-up moral panic about books and pamphlets.
Censors often miss the real threat and fixate on the absurd — Palmer’s favorite example is that Paradise Lost passed censorship despite Satan’s anti-monarchical rhetoric and the book’s wild theology, but Milton was told to change one line about astrology because that, supposedly, might “confuse people’s souls.”
The Inquisition effectively invented peer review after Galileo — citing scholar Daniele Maccaglia, Palmer says inquisitors saw themselves as guarantors of truth and built experimental labs to replicate claims in books they were censoring, creating a “second laboratory trying to recreate the results of the first.”
The Breakdown
Science Was Barely the Inquisition’s Main Target
Palmer opens by puncturing the modern myth: despite the Inquisition’s reputation, only 12 scientists were tried about science, only 3 were convicted, and Giordano Bruno was the lone execution. She contrasts that with hundreds of thousands of trials tied to policing religion and identity — Judaizing, indigenous “paganism,” and other machinery of oppression.
Kepler’s Trouble Was Theology, Not Astronomy
She then detours into Johannes Kepler, whose path to the laws of planetary motion she calls whimsical because of his fascination with Platonic solids. But the striking point is that while he was crunching Tycho Brahe’s data and serving as imperial mathematician to the Habsburg emperor — basically doing astrology for generals — he got excommunicated for being Lutheran, not for his science.
Even Kepler’s Family Got Swept Into Religious Persecution
The same pattern hit close to home: Kepler’s mother was tried for witchcraft, again not because of science but because she too was Lutheran. Palmer’s point lands clearly here: what looks from a distance like “science versus religion” was often, in practice, sectarian conflict and state power working through other charges.
Milton Fights England’s Coming Censorship Machine
From there she jumps to early-1600s England, where John Milton writes Areopagitica, the great defense of free press, just as the country debates creating a systematic censorship regime. Palmer says the push was fueled by anti-Catholic fear, political opportunism, and a full-on moral panic about dangerous books and pamphlets — like comic books in 1954 or Dungeons & Dragons in the 1990s.
The Beautiful Argument That Lost
Milton’s case was that if writers must write for the censor first and the public second, thought itself gets chilled. Palmer calls it a beautiful rhetorical defense of trusting truth to rise on its own — and then reminds us it failed, because the censorship regime passed anyway.
Paradise Lost and the Absurdity of What Censors Notice
Her funniest example comes next: Paradise Lost survives the censors even with Satan as a charismatic protagonist, God coming off badly, and revolutionary anti-monarchical rhetoric in Satan’s speeches. The one line they force Milton to change is about astrology, because that was what they feared would mislead souls — a perfect illustration, in Palmer’s telling, that censors are almost always wrong about what the actual danger is.
The Inquisition’s Weird Afterlife: Inventing Peer Review
The clip ends with Palmer correcting a question about the Vatican: not the biggest library, but the most extensive experimental laboratory in Europe after Galileo, according to scholar Daniele Maccaglia. Because inquisitors saw themselves as guarantors of truthful information, they started replicating experiments described in censored books — effectively, as Palmer puts it with a laugh, the Inquisition invented peer review.
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