Posted on 07/18/2015 11:11:54 AM PDT by Gamecock
How Many Protestants Were Killed in the Inquisition?
A friend asked me that question earlier this week. And so I thought it might be helpful to share a few thoughts, from a historical perspective.
Opinions about how to answer the question vary widely. Some suggest that just a few thousand people were executed during the Inquisition, while others project that there were tens of millions of victims. So how can the estimates be so widely divergent?
There seem to be several explanations:
1. First, the imprecise nature of the historical records means that contemporary historians are forced to extrapolate on the basis of the limited information they possess.
One of the first accounts of the Inquisition came from a former Spanish secretary to the Inquisition named Juan Antonio Llorente (1756–1823). According to Llorente, the total number of “heretics” burned at the stake during the Spanish Inquisition totaled nearly 32,000. Llorente adds that another 300,000 were put on trial and forced to do penance (cf. Cecil Roth, The Spanish Inquisition [W. W. Norton, 1964; reprint, 1996], 123).
But there is considerable controversy about the accuracy of Llorente’s figures. As a result, historians must decide whether or not to take those numbers at face value. Some believe his numbers are too low, and should be adjusted higher. However, the majority of modern scholars believe his numbers are too high.
William D. Rubinstein summarizes the consensus of modern scholarship:
Nothing in the whole history of the Catholic church did more than the Inquisition to damn it in the eyes of rational, enlightened thinkers, or to give it the reputation for medieval barbarism it held in many quarters until recently. The Inquisition was only formally abolished in the early nineteenth century. Yet it also seems clear that the number of victims of the Inquisition can easily be exaggerated. Juan Antonio Llorente (1756–1823), a fierce enemy of the Inquisition, whose Critical History of the Inquisition of 1817–19 remains the most famous early work attacking everything connected with it, estimated the number of executions carried out during the whole of the period that the Spanish Inquisition existed, from 1483 until its abolition by Napoleon, at 31,912, with 291,450 “condemned to serve penances.” . . . Most recent historians regard even this figure as far too high (William D. Rubinstein, Genocide [Routledge, 2004], 34).
The conservative approach of modern scholarship can be seen in the writings of Henry Kamen, who is one of the leading authorities on the Spanish Inquisition. His work on The Spanish Inquisition is published by Yale University Press (Fourth Edition, 2014). Kamen’s research has led him to conclude: “We can in all probability accept the estimate, made on the basis of available documentation, that a maximum of three thousand persons may have suffered death during the entire history of the tribunal” (p. 253). Kamen’s estimates may be too low, but they represent the general perspective of contemporary scholars.
Modern historians also note that sixteenth-century Spain (during the height of the Spanish Inquisition) only had a total population of around 7.5 million people (cf. John Huxtable Elliott, Spain and Its World, 1500–1700 [Yale University Press, 1989], 223). Consequently, the notion that the Spanish Inquisition could be executing tens of millions of people during that same time period seems mathematically untenable.
2. Second, some earlier historians seem to have conflated the number of people killed with the number of people persecuted by the Inquisition. In other words, when they spoke of “victims of the Inquisition” they did not specify between those who were executed and those who were merely imprisoned or forced to flee because of the erupting persecution. Obviously, depending on how one defines a victim, the number of victims could vary widely. Perhaps only tens of thousands were executed, but hundreds of thousands were victimized in some way.
David Plaisted (a professor of computer science at UNC) notes that possibility in his paper titled, “Estimates of the Number Killed by the Papacy in the Middle Ages and Later” (http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/estimates.doc). He thinks the number of executions during the Spanish Inquisition could be quite a bit higher than just a few thousand. However, he acknowledges that the very large numbers (given by some earlier historians) might include everyone who was put on trial, and not just those who were killed. Also, some of the largest estimates likely include non-Protestants (such as Jewish and Muslim populations) who were expelled from Spain as a result of the persecution. If so, it helps explain where those very large estimates originated.
3. Third, confusion also stems from the conflation of the Inquisition with other events in European history. In the narrow sense, the term “Inquisition” refers to official trials conducted by Roman Catholic authorities in places like Spain and Portugal. When the question is limited to just those Inquisitions, the number of Protestants executed is likely in the thousands or tens of thousands.
However, if the term is used in a broad sense—to represent all Roman Catholic activity against non-Catholics—then the numbers rise dramatically. If the historian includes forms of torture and killing that did not involve a formal trial, along with religious wars and other forms of Catholic violence enacted against Protestants and other non-Catholics (in areas outside of Spain and Portugal), then one can easily speak in terms of millions of people who were killed.
David Plaisted acknowledges that reality in his study: namely, that the really big estimates of Protestants killed by the papacy throughout European history necessarily include those who died in religious conflicts like the Thirty Years War.
So … how many Protestants were killed during the Inquisition?
Well, that depends on how you are using the word “Inquisition.” And even then, the reality is that no one knows for sure.
However, if we are simply talking about official executions during the Spanish Inquisition, most contemporary experts would place the total number of executions between 3,000 and 10,000, with perhaps an additional 100,000 to 125,000 dying in prison as a result of torture and maltreatment. The Inquisition in neighboring Portugal resulted in even fewer such deaths (cf. Joseph Pérez, The Spanish Inquisition [Profile Books, 2006], 173; R. J. Rummel, Death by Government [Transaction Publishers, 2009], 62).
Is that supposed to be a sarcastic or cynical statement, Game?
One is one too many. Satan had control of church hierarchy for those years. That is the only explanation for the atrocities committed in the name of God.
People also forget that many Christians were Muslim converts who converted to avoid deportation or death but who still saw the world through the barbarous lense of the Islamic faith they were indoctrinated with from birth.
It’s easy for a religious system, no matter how sincerely it first believes it is about the revelation of a deity that is due service, to decay into being about itself. This is a very human failing.
This is making it about the packaging rather than about what is inside.
Anyhow the current disunited situation, Babelish as it looks, might be the only defense against the whole edifice turning into a synagogue of Satan.
That could partially explain the ruthlessness, though one would think that it would have decayed as the Muslim population of Spain dwindled during the Inquisition.
Satan? Yep! Muslim converts to be exact!
here is wiki link to a Muslim convert that is responsible for 2,000+ deaths during the inquisition!
Tomás de Torquemada
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_de_Torquemada
Did I really need a Hillary hashtag? Evidently so.
That wiki article says that some of Torquemada’s ancestors were Jewish converts to Catholicism not muslim.
Highly unexpected, either way.
You link your own article...Thanks for being honest!
wow, your right. I miss-read that.
Sorry about that.
Conflating the Spanish Inquisition with the Thirty Years War is just dumb and bad history. The Thirty Years War wasn’t as simple as “Protestant vs Catholic”; there were Catholics and Protestants on both sides. And it was a *war*, not a judicial proceeding.
no need to say sorry :)
Better than me running around telling everyone he was a muslim convert.
No direct answers in the article.
Sort of like what I posted this morning.
There are a lot more religious “yeses” to your list. Could you give us the source where you found it all?
It had an inescapable logic. It would have explained Torquemada perfectly.
Is significantly different than the thesis question, How Many Protestants Were Killed in the Inquisition?
The answer to the thread's title is "not nearly enough." My answer to the second question is that I don't know of any who were.
(And, by the way, I wish that the Holy See would have never gotten rid of the Inquisition...we need it more now than ever)
Why the difference?
First, the Inquisition was not a period of time. The Inquisition was an office of the Holy See, established in approximately 1225 by Pope Gregory IX. Interestingly, he established it to reign in the actions taken by the civil ruler Frederick II, who was in the process of taking care of heretics in France on his own (mostly without any justice: in Frederick's France, if you were accused, you were guilty).
Secondly, as far as I could tell, the targets of the Inquisition were "Catholic". Catholics who embraced heretical doctrines. Its purpose was to root out those heretics and have them removed from the Church so they couldn't spread their rot further. As the Protestant's King James Version says:
[1Ti 6:20-21 KJV] 20 O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane [and] vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: 21 Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace [be] with thee. Amen.
[Tit 3:10-11 KJV] 10 A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject; 11 Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.
Yes, I do wish the Inquisition existed today. There are so many people today who profess to be Catholic while professing the exact opposite, they need to be rooted out and expelled. Consider public political figures like the Kennedy clan, Pelosi, Biden, Kerry, and so on...and religious figures like Kasper, Bernardin, Wuerl, Mahony, etc., and their ilk. If the State where they live had a criminal penalty for heresy, so much the better.
The comfy chair is still in use today, the horror!!
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