This brief column cannot cover all the details and provide extensive references. However, the Spanish Inquisition was run by the secular government, not by the Church.
Monsignor Pope Ping from his OSV column.
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!”
sorry....force of habit.
“Did the Church cooperate with the Spaniards? To some degree yes, to others degrees no. The Church’s hands are not likely pure in the matter. But neither are the Protestants who ran a tight ship in places like Geneva and England. There are many Catholic martyrs to show that Protestants, too, worked with local governments to shut down dissent from Protestant notions and punish noncompliance, often with death.”
This cries for dissection!
“Did the Church cooperate with the Spaniards? To some degree yes, to others degrees no.”
Let’s obscure this and put the best face on it! Jeb could speak like this.
“The Church’s hands are not likely pure in the matter. But neither are the Protestants who ran a tight ship in places like Geneva and England.”
We’re not that bad! Everyone does this!!! Look over there! Sinners!
“There are many Catholic martyrs to show that Protestants, too, worked with local governments to shut down dissent from Protestant notions and punish noncompliance, often with death. “
We are victims too!!!
Please also note the the Spanish Inquisition followed 700 years of mulsim rule.
muslim cruelty was the only model the Spaniards had for running a country.
They quickly got over it.
Anyone who is upset that some Catholic priest had a tendency to molest children needs to welcome the American Inquisition with open arms. I do.
Yeah like Mel Brooks once said
You can’t escape from Spanish inquisition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnF1OtP2Svk
“Captain From Castile”
The Black Legend - The Spanish Inquisition
The British Jewish historian Henry Kamen, well-known scholar of the Spanish Inquisition, has calculated a total of some 2,000 victims put to death along its four centuries of existence.
Kamen adds that “it is interesting to compare the statistics on sentences to death of civilians and inquisitorial tribunals between the 15th and 18th centuries in Protestant Europe: for every one hundred death sentences handed down by courts, the Inquisition (Catholic) issued one.”
According to Professor Philip Wayne Powell, were executed just over 100 people in the 250 years in which it was acting the Inquisition in the Spanish America.
The number of Protestants condemned to death by the Catholic Inquisition, from 1520 until 1820 that was deleted, or in 300 years, according to the German Protestant researcher who specialized in this subject, Schafer, was 220; of them, only 12 were burned.
Allow me to present historical facts regarding the Protestant Inquisition.
Luther, founder of Protestantism, in 1525 writes the nobles: “how many farmers can kill: wound, paste, disgorging to himself.” Happy if you die in it, you die in obedience to the word divine. More than one hundred thousand peasants perished. Luther also demanded that the heretics must be condemned without hearing them... “
(Amazing parallel with the current Islamofascism).
Luther wrote in July 1525 in his open letter against the peasants: “If you believe that this answer is too hard and that its only purpose is to let them shut up by violence, I reply that this is true - a rebel does not deserve to be replied with reasons, because does not accept them.” The appropriate response is a punch that causes you to bleed nose. The farmers don’t want to hear... need to open them ears with bullets until they their heads explode. Who does not want to hear the word of God when is told with goodness has to listen to the executioner when it arrives with his axe... I don’t want to hear or know nothing of mercy.”
About Jews in his famous lectures of desktop Luther said: “throwing the Jews sulfur and tar, if one could throw them fire from hell, so much better.... and this must be done in honor of our Lord and of Christianity…Their houses must be chipped and destroyed... be removed their books of prayers and Talmud, their rabbis are prohibited from teaching, under the penalty of death, from now on. And if all this were little, they must be expelled from the country as rabid dogs.”
In Protestant Germany, more than 100,000 witches were burned. Even children seven years old and dying elderly. A single judge burned in 16 years 800 witches (an average of 50 people a year).
In 1560 the Scottish Parliament decreed the death penalty against all Catholics. Here are some articles of the English code for Ireland:
“Catholic teaching to other Catholic or Protestant shall be hanged.”
“If a Catholic acquires land, all Protestant has the right to deprive him.”
“Perpetual exile to every Catholic priest; those who evaded it, be half hanged alive and then dismembered”.
The Calvinist communities of Paris, Orleans, Rouen, Lyon, Angey at their general synod in 1559, enacted death penalty to the heretics.
Should be taken into account that the Protestant Inquisition existed in most of Europe in which inmates lacked any legal protection and of which no one speaks.
Catholics on the other hand not enjoyed any legal protection under the Protestants, standing out for its cruelty the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I of England when Catholics were dismembered tied to the legs of four horses. They were times of great barbarity when attached to an English monarch the privilege of the divorce by beheading of his wife.
“Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it” Jorge Santayana
Catholics need to stop getting spooked when somebody mentions the Inquisition. The Inquisition was a force for good in its time and was yet another Catholic/Catholic-led organization that kept Europe safe from Islam, as many Protestants allied themselves with the Turks. Did they use some brutal methods? Yes, but so what? Everybody did. Did they make some mistakes? Yes, but nobody is perfect.
Okay, now tell the truth everybody....how many of you opened up this thread to look for the Monty Python references?
It’s important to note that at first, the Inquisition was asked for and appreciated by the Spanish laity. This begs the question why?
“The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control. It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Christian Inquisition along with the Roman Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition.
“The Inquisition was originally intended in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of those who converted from Judaism and Islam. This regulation of the faith of the newly converted was intensified after the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1501 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert or leave Spain.”
So, the historical context is that the Muslims had finally been kicked out of Spain, which had then become a unified kingdom under Ferdinand and Isabella.
But what was not mentioned was that with the end of the conflict, Catholic orthodoxy was in a sorry state. Many of the peasants reverted to pagan practices, and many of the clergy were corrupt and perverse. The faithful Catholic laity were horrified by it all, and wanted intervention to stop it.
The Medieval Inquisition was moribund, so a strong and determined Royal Inquisition was what the public wanted. At first it was very successful in rooting out things like pagan practices, and priests who had turned their churches into brothels. And there were so many problems that the largest of the Catholic orders were brought in to help clean up.
However, its successes were soon replaced by various Inquisitors who turned it into an extortion-protection scheme to enrich themselves. Thus wealthy, landed people soon had to protect themselves by hiring clergymen to swear on their behalf that they were righteous, so they would not have to forfeit their wealth.
Did you even read the article you posted?
Did the Church cooperate with the Spaniards? To some degree yes, to others degrees no.
Sounds like a typical Roman Catholic whitewash.
Revisionism.
There aren’t many religions, whose adherents haven’t committed atrocities in the name of their religion. Islam is the only one that still does.
Details and references are pesky things.
Oh Brother!!! Your Church owned and controlled the secular government...
The first stirrings of Due Process. i.e. we give the defendant a chance to speak/recant and then we burn them instead of just burning them first. Hey, its a start.
Candidates for their loving touch include Pelosi, Biden, Kerry, Kennedy (take your pick...or the whole lot of them), Kasper, Wuerl, Dolan, Mahony, the German, French, and Swiss bishops...and that's just a small start.
And if the State has a criminal penalty for heresy, so be it. If a person was to be found guilty of heresy and refuses to repent, they have already condemned themselves to eternal perdition...what happens to their earthly bodies as a result of government action pales in comparison to that.
1994 BBC documentary. Yes, it begins with the infamous Monty Python scene from which many people seem to get their information regarding the Spanish Inquisition.