We must rank the Inquisition... as among the darkest blots on the record of mankind, revealing a ferocity unknown in any beast.
-Will Durant, Historian
There is perhaps no other period in history which serves as a better illustration of the destructive effects of organized religion than the Spanish Inquisition.
The Inquisition, perpetrated against an innocent Spanish population by the vile Roman Catholic Church, began in 1478.
Its reign of tyranny wouldn’t end until 1834, when finally the humane gods of the Enlightenment pulled mankind back to its senses.
Over the course of those nearly four centuries, the death toll of people burned at the stake — or otherwise killed in torture dungeons — ranges from no-less-than 31,000 to as-much as 3,000,000 poor souls!
A sadistic and deranged class of priests — known as inquisitors — sought out the innocent in order to heinously torture them in the name of a so-called “loving” God.
The Inquisition, then, has rightfully been called by many historians as “one of the darkest blots on the record of mankind.”
In 1554, the English protestant John Foxe wrote of the inquisition —
“The extreme dealing and cruel ravening of these Catholic Inquisitors of Spain, who, under the pretended visor of religion, do nothing but seek their private gain and spoiling of other men’s goods.”
Being such a human rights catastrophe — on par with the Holocaust — the inquisition continues to serve as a centerpiece in arguments against organized religion… a bleak reminder of the dangers of fanatical religious thought.
———
The only problem with this account? It’s absolute garbage.
The popular narrative of the inquisition that many of us grew up learning is — in a word — totally bunk.
Fake news, propaganda, false witness — in short, it’s a myth.
Today, I will prove it to you.
What Even Is The Inquisition?
As I have recently discovered, some of us may need a bit of a refresher on the Inquisition — particularly my generation — and some of us may have never heard of it before.
So, before I go and debunk the mainstream narrative, let’s get a sense of what we are even talking about.
The Spanish Inquisition, or simply “the Inquisition,” refers to a period in Spain of roughly three centuries (mainly two centuries) when the Roman Catholic Church conducted certain investigations and court proceedings into the general populace.
These “investigations” were ostensibly focused on identifying two groups of people living in Spain in secret — 1) witches, and 2) Marranos, or crypto-jews (or Muslims, or protestants, etc).
The Inquisition was established by the infamous (famous?) Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478, in order to purge the population of these secretive, devilish, groups.
The movement — we are told — quickly turned into something very nefarious, setting its sights not only on heretics and witches, but also homosexuals and minor doctrinal offenders.
The popular narrative maintains that once a certain villain, by the name of Tomas de Torquemada, became Grand Inquisitor in 1483 the institution began killing enormous numbers of innocents.
As l described above, the inquisition is supposed to have been a prime example of horrible injustice, torture, mass-execution, and complete lack of godliness.
Fortunately for Catholics, this narrative, which is so dominant in our popular imagination, is totally and completely false.
How could I know that? I’ll show you.
The Alternative Story.
In his 2016 book, Bearing False Witness, historian Rodney Stark dedicates a chapter to setting the record straight — starting with what actually happened.
Stark surveys the work of several distinguished historians who have published revisionist accounts of the Inquisition based on — and get this — historical data.
Those historians include:
Carlo Ginzburg of the University of California, Los Angeles
Oxford trained historian Henry Kamen at the University of Wisconsin
E.W. Monter, who is a leading historian of the inquisition from Princeton University.
See the Further Reading for their bios and selected bibliographies.
And what have these modern historians found out?
Surprisingly, they all conclude that the inquisition was “in contrast with the secular courts all across Europe… a consistent force for justice, restraint, due process, and enlightenment.”
Rather than being a harbinger of death and torment, the Inquisition courts were actually the most just courts in Europe at the time!
Rather than killing millions of innocent people, the Inquisition executed far fewer people than courts in England and Denmark over the same period!
Rather than being crazed witch-hunters needing the Reason of the Enlightenment, the Inquisitors actually executed fewer “witches” than the so-called “enlightened” thinkers!
How Do We Know?
Before we get into the actual account of the Inquisition, I’d like to anticipate an objection —
Well, if so many historians have thought the Inquisition was evil, why should we believe these guys?
There are two reasons —
First, the popular narrative is based primarily on writings from English and Dutch propagandists at a time when these nations were at war with Spain.
Is it likely that protestant English philosophers, or Dutch merchants, accurately reported the activities of their theological and political enemies?
Does the US media often report good information on Russia, or vice versa?
Secondly, and more importantly, the revisionists base their conclusions on data coming from the inquisitors themselves.
Over the two centuries when the Spanish Inquisition was actually active, there were 44,674 cases brought to their courts — so much for there being millions of deaths, but I digress.
The inquisitors kept careful records of these cases, including their interrogations, court proceedings, tortures, and executions — as well as their releases and pardons.
Stark further elaborates why these records are more reliable than the traditional narrative —
“At the time they were written, these records were secret so there was no reason for the clerks to have misrepresented the actual proceedings. Not only are these cases a goldmine of historical detail, historians have entered each in a database in order to facilitate statistical analysis. In addition, these historians have done an immense amount of more traditional research, pouring over diaries, letters, decrees, and other old documents. The results are solidly undeniable.”
Given that the revisionist narrative is championed by leading scholars in the field, based on the most recent research, with a large preponderance of evidence on their side — it seems we have better reason to trust the arguments of these historians than those of Wikipedia.
So, then, what exactly happened during the Inquisition?
The Real Origins Of The Inquisition
First, let’s get the origins of the Inquisition right.
The standard story argues that the Inquisition was founded to root out so-called “crypto-Jews” and hidden Muslims.
In truth, the Inquisition was organized to deal with a crisis that did involve these groups, known as conversos.
Conversos were Jews (or Muslims) that had converted to Christianity, and as Stark points out, the phenomenon of mass Jewish conversion is not unique to the history of Spain.
Rather, wherever Jews have enjoyed good social relations, their conversion often follows. This occurred in Spain in the 14th and 15th centuries.
The popular narrative would have you believe that the Christians in Spain never trusted in the faithful conversions of these conversos, but it was in fact the Jewish communities that insisted on the insincere conversions of their old compatriots.
In truth, “these conversions were so sincere that soon many of the leading Christians in Spain, including bishops and cardinals, were of converso family origins.”
Stark mentions a few notable examples —
“Indeed, in 1391 the chief rabbi of Burgos had himself and his whole family baptized and eventually he became the bishop of Burgos.”
Even more remarkably, King Ferdinand himself was of converso origins!
The large numbers of conversions led to conflicts between the “old Christians” and these “new Christians” with the old Christians often accusing the new of being “crypto-Jews.”
Urged on by many Spanish Jews, these “old Christians” eventually began attacking conversos in violent mobs.
And it was that crisis that the Inquisition was commissioned to sort out — namely resolving mob violence and protecting converso families.
The data from the Inquisition has shown that of all 44,000+ cases, only 942 involved Marranos (secret-Jews), and only 16 were ever executed.
Stark concludes, “So much then for claims such as that by Cecil Roth, who wrote that Marranos ‘furnished a disproportionately large number of those condemned to death.”
Deaths
Okay, so let’s get to the brass-tax — how many people did the ruthless inquisitors actually kill?
Well, technically the answer is — zero.
That’s because the Inquisition courts didn’t have any authority to kill anyone — they had to turn their prisoners over to the government, which would then execute the sentence.
Technically speaking, then, the government of Spain could have pardoned, remitted, or forgiven any of the condemned, but executed them instead — people often miss that little fact…
Nevertheless — the Inquisition was commissioned by the government, and entrusted with sentencing authority, so let’s examine how many people they sentenced to death.
Historians agree that the first 50 years of the Inquisition were its bloodiest, and most poorly documented, with as many as 1500 people sentenced to death.
In the fully documented period of 44,674 cases brought to the Inquisition, only 826 persons were executed, or 1.8 percent of those brought to trial.
That’s roughly 10 deaths per year over the course of nearly three centuries of the Inquisition (1480-1700).
By comparison, the US has a rate of death sentencing of 2.2% of eligible prisoners brought to trial, and in the mid 1990s was putting more than 300 prisoners to death every year.
Wow, so maybe not the humanitarian crisis we were all led to believe in.
How did the other courts of Europe match up to the Inquisition?
Henry VIII, the great protestant monarch of this time, is credited with the deaths of 72,000 Lutherans and Catholics (not to mention two of his wives).
Then, in the period from 1530 to 1630, England averaged a yearly death toll of 750, often for minor crimes.
(Adam Smith, writing in 1776, describes how in England someone caught selling fabric without a Royal patent will spend a year in prison, lose their left hand, and have their hand nailed to a post for a month).
We can do away, then, with this nonsense about the Inquisition being some “dark blot” on human history or religious parallel to the Holocaust.
The Inquisition courts were some of the most “survivable” courts in Europe!
Torture
What about torture? Didn’t the Inquisition torture people to compel their confessions?
Weren’t the Christians just so sadistic, not to mention sexually-repressed, that they tortured the innocent for the fun-of-it?
Right, let’s kill that myth too.
As John Dowling once put it, “Of all the inventions of popish cruelty the Holy Inquisition is the masterpiece… it was impossible for even Satan himself to conceive a more horrible contrivance of torture and blood.”
And as Stark rightly identifies — “This may be the biggest lie of all!”
All the courts of Europe used torture, but the Inquisition courts used torture to a much lesser extent than did other major European courts.
To begin with, Church law prohibited any torture that threatened “life or limb,” lasted “longer than a period of fifteen minutes” or, remarkably, “shed any blood.”
Historian Helen Rawlings has also added that the inquisitors were reluctant to use torture as they were “skeptical of the efficacy and validity of torture as a method of conviction.”
It’s almost like, as Christians who believed in a morally perfect God that calls all to eternal salvation in Himself, the inquisitors were primarily concerned with honest conversions and the true execution of justice….
Go figure.
If torture was used, it was carefully recorded in the archives for the Vatican. Based on those documents, Thomas Madden has estimated that only about 2 percent of cases involved any torture.
Stark also adds —
Moreover, it is widely agreed that prisons operated by the Inquisition were by far the most comfortable and humane in Europe — instances have been reported of "criminals in Spain purposely blaspheming so as to be transferred to the Inquisition’s prisons."
Stark sums it up nicely —
Contrary to the Black Legend, the Inquisition made little use of the stake, seldom tortured anyone, and maintained unusually decent prisons.
Witchcraft and the Myth of the Enlightenment
To wrap up, I’d like to address the final charge that the Catholics were driven by a witch-crazed frenzy, only pacified by the secular reasoning of the so-called Enlightenment.
Throughout Europe, during the period of 1450 to 1700, witchcraft was a capital offense, with several authors estimating the final death toll at nine million(!).
Historians have traditionally stressed the leading role that the Inquisition played in this forgotten Holocaust of witch-burning, which is supposed to have ended with the Enlightenment.
Total nonsense.
Stark points out —
Consider that the witch hunts reached their height during the so-called Enlightenment! Indeed, writing in his celebrated book Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes, the famous English philosopher and proponent of the Enlightenment, wrote that "as for witches… they are justly punished."
On top of that, recent scholarship has shown that the accepted numbers of those executed are utterly fantastic. The most reliable estimate is roughly sixty-thousand for the whole period, not nine million.
Granted, even sixty-thousand is horrifyingly tragic, but consider whether that’s truly tragic for the time.
As I have already mentioned, there were more Christians executed in the life of a single monarch (Henry VIII) than there were witches burnt in the whole period of 250 years!
Further, it should be acknowledged that the Inquisition is responsible for a mere 12 of these deaths (from the period of 1530-1630).
Even historian Henry C. Lea (no friend of Catholics) was forced to admit that witch-hunting was “rendered comparatively harmless” in Spain, due “to the wisdom and firmness of the Inquisition.”
Stark covers in detail that the charge of witchcraft mostly involved unsanctioned uses of “white magic” that is normally performed by priests — e.g. blessings, sacraments, holy water, etc.
This “white magic” was used by the Church all the time, but laymen were not permitted to perform such rituals.
Oftentimes, however, local wise men would perform ritual healings or prayers for their village, involving no invocation of demons, but still outside the auspices of the Church.
These local personages, if brought before the Inquisition, usually had no idea that they had done something offensive to the Church, repented, and went on their merry way.
It was only for the dozen or so repeat offenders and actual “black magic” users — people who purported to invoke the Devil in their incantations — that faced execution.
Even more remarkably, the Inquisition often protected the accused from mob violence.
Stark recounts one story which occurred in Barcelona in 1549 —
“Local officials accused seven women as witches… The Suprema (the ruling body of the Inquisition) … sent the Inquisitor Francisco Vaca to investigate. Upon arrival, he sacked the local representative of the Inquisition and ordered the immediate release of two women still under sentence of death. After further investigation, he dismissed the charges of witchcraft as ‘laughable’ and wrote ‘one of the most damning indictments of witch persecution ever recorded.’”
Conclusion
Today, arguments involving the Inquisition as an example of the horrors of religion still capture the common imagination.
Such popular figures as Sam Harris — despite being evidently ignorant of history — have cited the Inquisition in efforts to normalize the belief that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is evil.
The Inquisition, along with the Crusades (yet another mythologized piece of history), fits nicely into a narrative designed to show what awful, oppressive people those Christians really are.
Yet, the data is squarely in favor of the Inquisition. Perhaps nowhere else in the world was there such a humane, just, and careful court system than in Spain over the same period.
Even compared to today’s standards, the Inquisition appears to be a progressive court, with fewer executions per capita than the United States.
Certainly compared to its peers in Europe, it’s hard to imagine how anyone comes to the conclusion that the Inquisition was anything other than the best possible justice system available.
Could it be that opponents of the Inquisition, and of organized religion in general, actually have little-to-no-knowledge of what they're talking about?
The world may never know.
Further Reading
Rodney Stark,
Bearing False Witness: De-Bunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History, Templeton Press, 2016.
The Rise of Christianity, Harper Press, 1997
Carlo Ginzburg — Dr. Ginzburg is the son of a Jewish father who was murdered by the Gestapo in 1943 for publishing an underground newspaper in Turin, Italy. Ginzburg received his PhD in history from the University of Pisa in 1962 and then joined the faculty of UCLA.
The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1983.
Henry Kamen — is a British historian who received his PhD from Oxford. He accepted a distinguished professorship at the University of Wisconsin in 1984 and was elected a felloiw of the Royal Historical Societyy in 1992. He moved to the University of Barcelona in 1993 in order to study the files of the Inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1993.
E.W. Monter —received his PhD from Princeton University and went on to be a professor at Northwestern University, before playing a leading role analyzing the Inquisition files, Monter gained reputation for his studies into the European witch-hunting craze.
Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily, Cambridge University Press, 1990.
The Spanish Inquisition by Helen Rawlings