I have a friend who is doing his doctoral research on the Spanish Inquisition. He says MAYBE in a century or two, 1k-2k people died in Portuguese,Spanish, and Italian Inquisitions.
This wide divergence of figures suggests to me that the term is being used in different ways by either side.
For example, I would distinguish between the inquisition of Albigensians and the War against them. If the latter were included in thhe former, which I think would be unjustified, since it's unclear how/whether piety motivated de Montfort, that would bump the figures up right smart.
I think exaggerated description and figures about thhe various inquisitions, along with the tendency to lump them all together as "the" inquisition, serve as a "reinforcing myth," like the myth that secualrrulers were in the pocket of the Church. Tell that to Thomas a Becket the martyred bishops of Europe, or the Guelphs and Ghibellines. It's handy, but it's just not true. Even the dread Unam Sanctam arose, I believe, because of strife between secular and religious leaders.
- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review
The millions of deaths figure attributed to the inquisition is by all appearances way over the top unless the intent of whoever visualized the number was to include all direct and indirect deaths from forced conversions to Christianity in both the old and the new world for as long as the practice continued.
And likewise, the claim from the Vatican that the inquisition wasn’t that bad is self-serving. Notice the careful wording (emphasis mine:)
If we did, there would be no accountability for indirect deaths caused by the deplorable conditions of the death camps or the incarceration itself, the loss of life due to people being moved out of their homes etc.
Also whether one is looking at forced conversions of Jews and Muslims in Europe or Indians in Mexico or Aztecs, etc. – one must question the statistics per se since people of color and abhorrent beliefs were often not considered people at all but savages or pagans or something less than a person.
So if a local arm of the government or military unit slaughtered a village of savages, or indirectly killed them by merely burning their village and livestock - would they have reported it? Would they have considered them animals? How many of them would have been counted in the first place?
Jeepers, one of the big problems with nailing down the true damage of man-eating tigers in the past was that the villagers themselves did not keep records.
Remember that Rummel's PhD is in Political Science. His interest is in the deadly nature of centralized political power, e.g. communism.
Rummel considers all such things and lays the blame on the government authorizing the death whether directly, indirectly. In the case of the inquisition, he includes both Catholic and Protestant inquisitions (inquisition in Spain, Portugal, Netherlands and New World) from the 16th to 18th centuries. And Rummel puts the deaths of Aztecs, American Indians et al in separate categories on the same table even though many would reasonably argue that it was part of "winning" the world for Christ, i.e. forced conversions.
To account for this less-than-human valuation of certain peoples, in estimating deaths he is known to take the estimated population before versus after an event in question.
I have no idea at all what if anything Rummel thinks of the findings of these newer studies – or how he would weight the documents offered by the Vatican. But I’m fairly confident, if he believed the numbers to be better than his own, he would want to update his own statistics as he has done before. If nothing else, it could affect the "minimum" on the table.
As his website says, contact him at Hawaii.edu. His eaddy is at the bottom of his C.V.
Natural Law and vladimir998, I am pinging you only as a courtesy. I choose not to reply to ad hominems whether directed at Rummel or me.