Did Catholics really kill 95 million people? - The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition
Much like the Crusades, the Inquisition was not a single event, but can be generally broken into the following categories. Medieval Inquisition – 1184 AD through the 14th century. Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance – During this time the tribunal’s geographic scope was expanded to other European countries resulting most notably in: The Spanish Inquisition – 1478 AD – 1834 AD (this is the inquisition which is perhaps most widely misrepresented today.) Portuguese Inquisition – 1536 AD – 1821 AD The Roman Inquisition – 1588 AD – Present, in the form of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Spain and Portugal in particular operated inquisitorial courts throughout their respective empires with a particular focus on the issue of Jewish and Muslim converts to Catholicism – partly because these minority groups were more numerous in Spain and Portugal than in many other parts of Europe, and partly because they were often considered suspect due to the assumption that they had secretly reverted back to their previous religions. The concept and scope of these inquisitions were also significantly expanded in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The death toll numbers that you have heard are wrong. Flat out wrong. Protestant preacher Jimmy Swaggart claimed that 20 million people were murdered by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition.6 Another Protestant text, “The Mystery of Babylon Revealed” claims 95 million people were killed during the Inquisition. Really? 95 million? How is that even possible? It is not until modern times that the population of all of Europe even begins to approach 95 million. The present-day population of France, Spain, and Italy is about 150 million. To kill 95 million during just the Spanish Inquisition, the Catholic Church would have had to kill every man, woman, and child in all of Europe, then import millions more just to kill them too. In contrast to these claims, modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Spanish Inquisition. The archives of the Suprema, today held by the National Historical Archive of Spain (Archivo Histórico Nacional), conserves the annual relations of all inquisition processes between 1560 and 1700 AD. This material provides information about 49,092 judgements which were carefully studied by Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras. They calculate that only 1.9% of those processed were burned at the stake. Read more at: 7 Myths about the Inquisition adamncrawford.com/?p=1355
