ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Espionage and Intelligence, Early Historical Foundationscourts, so messages were carefully delivered verbatim bycouriers, or clergy acted as scribes.Espionage remained mostly limited to battlefield operations,but the development of the feudal system, inwhich lords swore fealty to monarchs, created a complicatedallegiance network. The web of allegiances gave riseto laws prohibiting treason, double allegiances, and politicalespionage against allied lords.In the eleventh century, the Catholic Church rose tothe fore in European politics. With a large bureaucraticnetwork, the resources of feudal military forces, and thelargest treasury in the world, the Church formed policythat governed all of Europe. Throughout the course of theMiddle Ages, two events, the Crusades and the Inquisition,solidified the power of the Church and created theonly long-standing, medieval intelligence community.In 1095, Pope Urban II called for the first Crusade, amilitary campaign to recapture Jerusalem and the HolyLands from Muslim and Byzantine rule. The Church massedseveral large armies, and employed spies to report ondefenses surrounding Constantinople and Jerusalem. Specialintelligence agents also infiltrated prisons to freecaptured crusaders, or sabotage rival palaces, mosques,and military defenses. The Crusades continued for nearlyfour centuries, draining the military and intelligence resourcesof most of the European monarchs.The Crusades also changed the tenor of espionageand intelligence work within Europe itself. Religious fervor,and the desire for political consolidation, promptedthirteenth century church councils to establish laws regardingthe prosecution of heretics and anti-clerical politicalleaders. The ensuing movement became known as theInquisition. Although the Church used its political force asimpetus for the Inquisition, enforcement of religious edictsand prosecution of violators fell to local clergy and secularauthorities. For this reason, the Inquisition took manyforms throughout Europe. The same movement that wasterror-filled and brutal in Spain, had little impact in Englandand Scandinavia.Espionage was an essential component of the Inquisition.The Church relied on vast networks of informantsto find and denounce suspected heretics and politicaldissidents. By the early fourteenth century, Rome and theSpanish monarchs both employed sizable secret policeforces to carry out mass trials and public executions. Insouthern France, heretical groups relied on intelligencegathered from their own resistance networks to gauge thesurrounding political climate, and assist in hiding refugees.In 1542, the process of Inquisition was centralizedwithin the Church. Pope Paul III established the Congregationof the Holy Office, a permanent council, composed ofcardinals and other officials, whose mission was to maintainthe political integrity of Church. The council relied oncensure and excommunication to coerce problematic individuals,forsaking the brutal cloak and dagger methodsof early Inquisitors. The council maintained spies andinformants, but shifted their focus to scrutinizing the actionsof Europe’s monarchs and prominent aristocrats.The advent of the Renaissance in Italy in the mid-fifteenthcentury quelled much of the fervor and political fear thatdrove the Inquisition, and the movement faded.The RenaissanceThe Renaissance marked the eclipse of the Church dominatedworld. Europe transitioned to more localized, nationalisticmodels of government, with each nation or citystateemploying its own intelligence force. As nations andcity-states became wealthier and gained more power,espionage enjoyed a resurgence. Competition for dominanceover trade and exploration of the New World changedthe political climate of Europe, and forced regimes toadopt increasingly deft measures of protecting political,military, and economic interests.In response to the changing world, Niccolo Machiavelli,a Florentine political philosopher, published a series ofbooks detailing the qualities and actions of effective rulers.In his works, The Prince, and The Art of War, Machiavelliadvocated that rulers routinely employ espionagetradecraft, engaging in deception and spying to insureprotection of their power and interests. His advice, muchof which was culled from rediscovered works of Aristotleand Cicero, was intended for the ruling Medici princes ofFlorence. However, the works gained popularity severalcenturies after their 1520 publication.In the late 1500s, the English royal court developedthe premier Renaissance era spy network. Religious reformsand a schism with the Catholic Church under therule of Henry VIII, prompted the creation of a large secretpolice force, commanded by the military, to locate andinfiltrate Catholic loyalist cells that threatened the Englishmonarchy. When his daughter, Elizabeth I, ascended tothe throne, political tensions threatened her reign. Elizabethchose to rebuild the flagging military to rebuff oppositionfrom disloyal lords and their forces, but especiallylobbied for the expansion of the Navy and intelligenceservices. The new navy dispatched foreign threats, defeatingthe Spanish Armada in 1558, while the intelligenceservices dispatched several conspiracy plots that threatenedto topple Elizabeth I’s reign.The Elizabethan court gained a reputation for theruthlessness of its spies, several of whom double andtriple crossed those with whom they dealt. The Elizabethanespionage system was highly effective, but its novelcontribution to the development of espionage lay in itsemployment practices. Instead of relying on haphazard,ill-trained volunteers, or military men, the Elizabethanintelligence community employed linguists, scholars, authors,engineers, and scientists, relying on professionalexperts to seek and analyze intelligence information.Technological development in the Renaissance alteredthe practice of espionage. The development of small418 Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security