[FredZarguna]

Interesting defense: "We weren't evil. We didn't kill as many as some people say."

This leaves the question begging: by what authority did this alleged church kill or imprison anyone?

[Cronos]

The same authority that caused Elizabeth to persecute Catholics or the various Lutheran kings to do the same against Catholics and Calvinists and the Calvinist Netherlands and Geneva to do against Lutherans and Catholics -- the concept from Justinian times that the authority of the rulers came from God -- so if the ruler was a Lutheran, to follow something else was an act of treason.

The authority of the Inquisition was only over those baptised Catholics -- it did not prosecute more than 120 Protestants for the simple reason that there were hardly any Protestants in Spain -- it was not popular, being regarding as more a Germanic thing. There were 120 who were executed -- and that was 120 too many, but that is a small number compared to the rest of the religious wars fought in the same time period -- and remember that among those called Protestants - "Most of them were in no sense Protestants...Irreligious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions, were all captiously classified by the inquisitors (or by those who denounced the cases) as 'Lutheran.' " ---> we would not call such people Lutheran today