Historians say Inquisition wasn't that bad

[emad]

SNIP:

Sophie Arie in Rome
Wednesday June 16, 2004
The Guardian

For centuries people were burned at the stake, stretched to death or otherwise tortured for failing to be Roman Catholic. But, if research released by the Vatican is right, the Inquisition was not as bad as one might think.

According to the documents from Vatican archives relating to the trials of Jews, Muslims, Cathars, witches, scientists and other non-Catholics in Europe between the 13th and the 19th centuries, the number actually killed or tortured into confession during the Inquisition was far fewer than previously thought.

Estimates of the number killed by the Spanish Inquisition, which Sixtus IV authorised in a papal bull in 1478, have ranged from 30,000 to 300,000. Some historians are convinced that millions died.

But according to Professor Agostino Borromeo, a historian of Catholicism at the Sapienza University in Rome and curator of the 783-page volume released yesterday, only 1% of the 125,000 people tried by church tribunals as suspected heretics in Spain were executed.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1239763,00.html

Whatever next? "Hitler was quite a nice chap really?" or "Mussolini quite a cuddly character after all?"

Just more revisionist bullshit after all that whitewash at Ronnie Raygun's funeral last week where there was no mention of the Iran Contra biz........and only a reported 23 mourners in the Cathedral who were not white. Any more need be said?

[punpirate]

1. Umm, amend that subject line to read:

"Vatican Historians Say Inquisition Wasn't that Bad"

Same people who only took 400 years to say, "well, Gallileo, maybe we made a teensy-weensy little mistake in keeping you under house arrest for so long. You just might have been right."

Somehow we go from millions to 1200 executed? What difference does that make--they dispatched other people because they were Jews or Muslims and they adhered to their faiths instead of converting to Catholicism.

Vatican + Science = WTF?

Vatican + Truth = WTF?

Gimme a break. If the Vatican had its way around the world, we'd be tripping over starving babies everywhere and everyone would be wondering if cursing at `em underfoot was a sin.

Jaysus.

[Art_from_Ark]

10. They probably decided not to count

the millions of indigenous peoples in the Americas, the Philippines, Cuba, Bimini, etc., who resisted the Spanish brand of religion that was being foisted upon them.

[meow2u3]

15. Let's say it's OPUS DEI "historians" say the Inquisition...

...wasn't all that bad.

[emad]

26. Let's not get started on Opus Dei, it makes Guantanamo and

Abu Ghraib enthusiasts seem like wooly liberals....

[patcox2]

30. Saying it does not make it true.

Which ones are conected to Opus Dei, and what is there connection?

Fact is you would have a hard time finding a historian who would disagree with the proposition that the inquisition was sensationalized and exagerated, for political reasons, by the English, for hundreds of years.

Don't fall prey to ancient propaganda. Look at the geopolitical context of all this. Our american culture is largely english protestant. You are unaware of the biases inherent in this background which you have unkowingly assimilated.

During and after the time of the inquisition, Spain and England were the major rivals for dominance in world power. Then, as now, rivals tend to demonize each other, to use propaganda. The English propaganda from the time painted catholic spain as vicious and bloodthirsty and evil, and this ancient propaganda is still current in popular uninformed opinions about this subject.

The English protestants were in fact far more vicious and committed far greater atrocities. The English protestants and their cultural heirs, of which you are one, committed the most thorough and complete genocide in human history in the annihilation of the native americans, the remnants of whom still live in concentration camps we call reservations here in this country, your country.

All this moral posturing and holier-than-thou crap about the inquisition is ridiculous coming from people who live in a country stolen from another people through genocide.

The catholic church has done nothing to match the native american genocide, nothing close.

And don't even start with the "great libel" (thats what its called) about the ruthlessness of spanish colonizers. Its a lie. The truth is apparent if you just look around. Look at an ex-spanish colony, like Mexico. The majority of the population is still native american. They may have been converted, but they were not slaughtered wholesale with only the few survivors driven to reservations in the most barren lands. Then look at the US, where the English and later the US government were much more efficient in committing genocide, in removing any trace of those who once owned this land.

Spare me the hypocritical indignation. You don't know it but you are just repeating the propaganda from one side in a war where both sides were equally evil.

[clidaw]

42. Good point on English propaganda.

History is written by the winners, so much of what we learned on the inquisition was colored by those old wars between England and Spain. Spain and, by extension, the Catholic Church, is just as guilty as England for what they did to native americans in the portions of the new world they conquered. They came close to wiping out civilizations in Peru and Mexico helped along by the heavy-handed missionary work of the Catholic church. Perhaps both sides weren't equally quilty, but they weren't very far apart.

[missile_bender]

2. Religion is about faith;

facts don't enter into it.

[emad]

4. Like, believing you can get away with it? That's Faith!

???

[missile_bender]

12. Well, they did

get away with it. The Vatican has as much accountability as the Bush Administration.

[emad]

16. Vatican just the Italian outpost of the BFEE. But all scams come

to an end sooner or later and both these are past their sell-by.

[BiggJawn]

3. Hitler WAS quite a nice chap. didn't you get the memo?

I maen, come on, now, he's DEAD, and as so many here pointed out during the Reagasm for Ronaldus Rex, it's just the plain, decent, human thing to do, this not speaking ill of the Dead....Gotta consider the feelings of all those Neo-Nazis who miss him something terribly and still celebrate his birthday every year, y'know.....

Oh, and those 6,000,000 that supposedly died in the camps? Well, turns out, according to Nazi historians, that it was really only about 3-400 or so. the rest of those bodies? Uh, victims of 8th AF bomb runs...Yeah, that's the ticket...

<CAUSTIC sarcasm>

[emad]

5. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Pa says it wasn't 6,000,000 that got

incinerated, only a few 000s because the rest emigrated to US, Australia and UK...............
Woulyabelieveit??????

[UpInArms]

11. didn't he and Mel Gibson's pa attend the same school

together?

[myopic4141]

50. In reality.

While Hitler ordered the death of many Jews and others, there is no actual proof that he did any of the killing himself; therefore, .... (Lot's of sarcasm in case someone tries to take me seriously)

[Spentastic]

6. Well it wasn't

It was all comfy chairs and cushions.

Other news frothe Vatican "pope actually not infallible?"

and "we actually don't have that much gold"

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

27. The Inquicushion?

:shrug:

[sam sarrha]

7. it was all about getting rid of the widows from the hundreds of years of

needless wars. the widows owned so much property and were defenseless. so the church too the land and possessions.

there was also a factor of the new 'Doctors'. no one wanted to go to them because you might not survive a treatment. the village healers were much more effective.. so the government made it a death sentence for a woman to treat a medical condition.. that was witchcraft.. there was a lot of money and power in the system that became an industry to persecute WOMEN... maybe thats why it wasn't so bad .. it was mostly done against WOMEN. often treated by Religion as soulless hollow shells whose only use is for slavery and producing male babies.

I think one could use the treatment of woman by a religion to determine if it truly serves the god it professes to praise.

[SpiralHawk]

17. The Burning Times

Millions of women were burned or otherwise murdered in Europe for practicing the healing arts of the Earth. You want the facts? Just google The Burning Times.

You will find arguments on all sides about how severe it was, and what it was all about. Sift through enough, and you will have a sense of what went on.

[patcox2]

31. So religion was just a tool, an excuse, manipulated for economic purposes.

I agree, Which means that the fault is not intrinsic in religion, but rather that religion was used as a justification by people with other motives.

Look at the world today. GW claims we are waging war and will wage war to spread freedom and democracy. Does this mean that freedom and democracy are evil? Or that wicked men with evil motives use the doctrine of democracy to advance their own agenda?

A little Marx would help this analysis. Ideologies don't cause events. Ideologies are the tools of the economic-class interests that drive events.

[Trajan]

41. WE havent argued this in a while ....

Hi ...

I disagree ...

IF: a theology promotes the notion that believers are 'pious', 'holy', or 'righteous', (superior before 'god') and that NONbelievers are 'heretics', 'evil' or 'sinners' (inferior before 'god') .... then inhumanity by the godly superiors against the godless inferiors cannot be restrained for long ...

When 'god' declares (though the canon) that sinners should suffer for their sins, and 'god', himself or through his agents, is depicted in the canon as committing abuses and indignities against human beings for various causes: it does not take a great stretch for theological adherents to abuse 'heretics', since heretics are despised in god's eyes, as explained in the theology itself ... Believers add the niceties and commit the atrocities, but it is THEOLOGY that creates the divisions, and feeds the adherents with notions of holy righteousness and collective superiority ...

So: any theology that divides mankind into 'sinners' and 'saints', inevitably leads (I believe) to inhumane abuses by the saintly against the sinners ... When men are taught by theology that men are evil when in disbelief, then the THEOLOGY is itself just as responsible for that inhumanity as those who commit assault, theft, rape and murder in it's name ...

My opinion ...

Nice to see you, btw ...

[patcox2]

49. I see it as more genetic. We are pack animals.

We are genetically designed to form groups, we are social monkeys. We are genetically designed to have loyalty to our group and to be distrustful or hostile to outsiders. And we will use any pretext handy to define our groups. We will use religion, we will use ideology (way too many debates here about who is a true progressive and who is an evil psuedo-progressive). We will ( as a species) use skin color, language, any and every reason to reinforce and strengthen our identity with our group and our hatred of those who are not members of our group.

I just don't see that religion has anything inherent in it that alters this innate human behavior, or that exacerbates it, for that matter. I have seen precisely the same irrational, spittle emitting rage and hate exhibited by religious fanatics and by political fanatics, by atheists and by conspiracy theorists. Its not holiness alone that justifies killing, its simple superiority. And thats the common denominator, some animals are more equal than others, you see. Whether because they are holy and blessed by god, while the others are diabolical, or because they are doctrinally pure, while others are corrupt compromisers, or because only they are intelligent enough to see the conspiracy, and all others are either stupid or a member of the conspiracy, or because they are truly rational and logical and don't need the crutch of religion, unlike the others who are weak and mentally deluded for beleiving in fantasies. In every case, the important thing is that the dichotomy creates an "us (brave, strong, right) vs. them (weak, evil, wrong) situation. We tend too easily to view those not of our group as less than human. The troops who dehumanize the Iraqis by calling them towelheads are not motivated by religion, the racists who lynched blacks were not motivated by religion. (even though they sometimes use religion to justify themselves) There are hundreds of reasons that people will view other people less than human and unfit to live, religion is just one of many.

Perhaps we must simply agree to disagree.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

8. Consider the world population in 1500 -- about 425 million,

as opposed to over 6 billion in 2000.

1,250 people killed was aproximately 3% of the entire population.

3% of today's population would be over 180 million people.

And that's just taking into account the number of people who were killed. It speaks nothing of those permanently scarred by torture, widowed, orphaned, and otherwise ruined in the name of Christ.

So, even if the lowest set of statistics is correct, we're talking about human carnage on a grand scale.

[patcox2]

23. Check your math, you are off by a few orders of magnitude.

But what are facts when you have faith that the church is evil, right? 1250 is a few thousandths of one percent of 450 million, not 3%.

[gpandas]

37. the fact is that a church that names itself after a man who taught...

" whatever you do to the least of them you do to me" does this ever at all. it is astonishing to me that anyone believes the lies of all organized religions

[ArkDem]

47. 425,000,000 / 1250 = 0.00000294117

[underpants]

9. Nobody expected THAT

[SpiralHawk]

13. Envoy from Skull & Bones meets with Pope

Do you suppose that when Commander Bush visited with the Pope a couple of weeks ago, envoy Temporary slyly suggested to the Papa that the current US Mass Torture and Atrocity Scandal was an opportune moment to propogate some strategic re-writing of history?

I mean, think of the sales points on this deal -- it's a Total Trifecta.

1. The church gets to absolve itself of sin and guilt once again.

2. The re-spin of inquisition history casts current US tortures in a more understandable historical context.

3. Bush family Skull & Bones perversities appear altogether insignificant in the light of what we now "understand."

Nah. Could never happen. I'm sure they just talked sports or whatever.


"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history." - - - Dan Quayle

[impe]

14. I guess they had to come out

with that since Pops mea culpa in 2000 regarding the church's crimes towards humanity during the grand inquisition. The church historians further show their cleverness by saying the executions were civil and not religious tribunals. Sort of like burning Joan of Arc at the stake as a heretic and now... voila, she's a Saint. Hardy ha ha ha.

[displacedtexan]

19. Famous Flip Flop?

Burn the girl

Public Outrage

Canonize her to please the rabble


Rinse and repeat.

[noonwitch]

18. "Constantine's Sword" by James Carroll can refute much of that

It's a very long book about the church's treatment of jews over the centuries.

As far as burning witches goes, it doesn't matter if it was 1000 or 1 million burned. It was the horrific and manipulative methods used-it was religious terrorism directed at women. You can read the books that the inquisitors used-they describe torture methods that were used, suggested ways to kill the victims. It's frightening.

[displacedtexan]

20. I've visited some of those dungeons in Europe.

Using those instruments to torture even one person to death was a crime against humanity.

[Bridget Burke]

21. Dungeons weren't monopolized by the Inquisition.

Lots of nobles & civil governing bodies used torture. And some of the witches were even burned by Protestants.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

25. So, does that excuse in any way what the Catholics did during the...

...Inquisition? I'm not sure I understand your post unless you're attempting to dilute the practices of the Catholic Inquisition.

[Bridget Burke]

29. No.

I was responding to a post about dungeons in Europe. Not all the torture was done by the Inquisition.

And, alas, not all Catholics who tortured were employed by the Holy Office.

[emad]

22. Here's a memorial to the estimated 1,000,000 cathars murdered

in the French Pyrenees:


It's an image of a dove carved in rock, in Cahors I think.

[recidivist]

34. Orders of magnitude do make a difference.

Does it matter if 1,000,000 "witches" were burned, or only 1,000? Of course it does.

I live in Washington, D.C. where somewhere around 260 people, give or take, will be murdered this year. Is it really your position that -- since one is too many -- it makes no difference if the actual number is 260 or 260,000?

The former represents a high rate of attritition in turf wars among bad guys, with a scattering of innocent victims thrown in. The latter would mean the death of half the folks in town. By the same token, 1,000 witches burned across Europe over the span of several centuries represents scattered, episodic events. 1,000,000 would represent large scale, systematic,sustained killing.

Only someone entirely removed from the reality of the situation would regard three orders of magnitude as of no account.

[Judi Lynn]

24. Rummaging for Inquistion info., found the following

...examples of torture were:

• Tomas de Leon at Valladolid in 1638 was racked until his left arm broke.
  
• Florencia de Leon was tortured with the balestilla, the mancuerda and the potro but still would not speak.
  
• Engracia Rodrigues at sixty years old had an arm broken and a toe torn off in the balestilla but would not confess.
  
• Rochus was burnt alive for heretically despoiling an image of the Virgin. He was a wood carver, and refused to give an inquisitor a fine carving of the Virgin for a trifling sum. Expecting to have it stolen, he spoiled his own carving.
  
• A dungeon keeper at Triano, Spain, was sentenced to 200 lashes and six years as a galley slave for being too kind to prisoners.
  
• A maid of the Inquisition was also too kind to prisoners, so she was publicly flogged.
  
• A Protestant writing master of Toledo decorated his room with the Ten Commandments written in full, even though the Catholic cardinals omitted the part of the second commandment that forbade the worship of graven images. He was burnt alive for it in 1676.
  Protestants were invariably burnt alive unless they recanted, when they were burnt dead, having been strangled.

http://www.askwhy.co.uk/christianity/0816Inquisition.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did the part bolded seem familiar, considering they were driven to "rough up" two people who were kind to prisoners? It reminds me of what has happened to the chaplain and one or two interpreters at Guantanamo Bay. Damned creepy.

[emad]

28. A second opinion from Thespoof.com: (says it all...)

Vatican Report: The Inquisition wasn't that bad...George W. Bush Agrees


Written by Chuck Terzella


Vatican Officials have released a report saying that although the Inquisition burned people at the stake, stretched them to death on the rack, maimed and abused tens of thousands and possibly millions just because they weren’t Roman Catholic, it really wasn’t all that bad.

In the year 2000, Pope John Paul II publicly apologized for the use of unnecessary force in the murder of Jews, Cathars, Muslims and scientists saying, “ We should have just cut their Heathen, Devil worshiping heads off, chop-chop, without all that silly torture. Sorry about that. Thank God they were all going to burn in Hell anyway.”

Vatican Theologian Cardinal Georges Cottier said, “We were very strict about following the Torture Rules Handbook. It said right on page eight...Fifteen minutes of stretching a guy on the rack before you burned him to death and not a second more. It’s when the Vatican’s Private CIA (Catholic Inquisition Agents) Contractors got involved that things got out of hand.”

Cardinal Cottier continued, “So if you crunch the numbers the right way you could say that instead of the millions of deaths that have been attributed to the Inquisition, the Catholic Church is really only responsible for one: a guy named Giuseppe from Verona who refused to put a coin in the collection plate.”

President George W. Bush, commenting on the Vatican’s logic said, “Hey, that’s good...we can use that with Abu Grab and Guantanamo. Have Karl Rove get in touch with this guy Cottier. I want him on my team, even if he is a stinking Catholic.”

http://www.thespoof.com/news/spoof.cfm?headline=s3i4684&rating=1

[Liberal Veteran]

32. It was more in the nature of "frat prank"?

:eyes:

[recidivist]

33. I hate to break up the lynching bee, but this isn't news.

Sober historians have been looking at the Inquisition for decades, reexamining the records, and sorting out the superstitions from the facts. Everyone who looks at the subject seriously -- as opposed to cut and paste artists out to do a hit job -- has come to the same conclusion, which is that folkloric accounts of the Inquisition far outrun the historical reality. (The same is true, by the way, of the witch burning craze.)

That is not to justify the Inquisition. Nor is it to excuse its somewhat robust methods. However, even on that score, one must recognize that various forms of torture were commonly used all over Europe and pretty much everywhere else in the world at that time . It was a rough age, and we need to be careful about naively imposing our own 21st century sensibilities on it.

In addition, this business of apologizing for historial wrongs gets pretty tricky. The Roman Catholic Church stands out not because its record is uniquely stained but rather because it is the oldest continuously operating institution in the world and so has a longer record upon which to reflect. The modern Church has confessed many historical errors, repudiated them, and apologized. I suppose this is appropriate, but I often wish others would follow suit. I see no particular reason Christians should apologize for the Crusades, for example, until the Moslems start apologizing for 1500 years of jihad against everyone else. And anyone who wants to dump on Catholics for the Church's behavior during the European wars of religion needs to recognize that the Protestant treatment of Catholics in Protestant domains was every bit as bad.

I am not Roman Catholic by the way. I just think we should respect history enough to get the numbers right when we can, even if hysterical cause-mongerers have grown attached to lurid fairy tales.

[Bridget Burke]

38. Not up for "Bash the Papists"?

What are you, a party pooper?

I'd also read the "new" information. For all the evil the Inquisition did, its legend has been blown out of proportion.

[recidivist]

39. Legends have a way of doing that.

Many of the comments on this thread are so one-sided and culturally conditioned as to be laughable.

Granted, war is hell, and wars of religion are especially so. In the religious wars of the 15th and 16th centuries, passions ran high. Each side demonized the other -- literally. Each believed the worst in atrocity stories and, of course, there were enough real atrocities to keep things bubbling.

Fast forward a couple of hundred years and you will find a old-stock American population of largely Protestant origin (English and German) ready to go off at a moment's notice about the Papist threat. That remains the almost subconscious baseline historical understanding of the Reformation era in this country. I find it fascinating that so many DU posters -- who mostly have abandoned any pretence of religiosity themselves -- still remain attached to the ancient Protestant wartime propaganda. It's also interesting that so few of them have any idea that the Catholics have their own traditional, and equally one-sided, history of the period in which Protestant outrages loom just as large.

Interestingly, even during the worst of the religious wars, both Protestants and Catholics believed the Moslems to be the worst of all. Turkish cruelty is still a byword. And even the hard-bitten Spanish conquistidores were utterly horrified by what they found in Mexico. It would be interesting to sort that out sometime.

Not that religion has any monopoly on the misuse of violence. After Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, et. al., the atheists hold pride of place in that deparment.

[ArkDem]

48. But But.....THEY DIDN'T treat their maids well!!!!!!

[pschoeb]

35. His interpretation is based on a "new understanding" of sentences

His interpretation is based on a "new understanding" of sentences
supposedly, also he has to believe he actually has all the records of sentences.

He doesn't give the percentage that were sentenced to imprisonment for life - to be honest I would rather be burned at the stake than eek out a horrible existence in a medieval Spanish dungeon. Any who were sentenced to death or life imprisonment had all their property confiscated which meant that their children and spouses would now be sentenced to pauperism.

Supposedly the reinterpretation of sentences, was that a type of sentence for life had erroneously interpreted as a sentence for death. This supposed error made the documented Spanish Inquisition murdered at 100,000. If he is right it still makes the number imprisoned for life at a very large amount. These sentences could be commuted, mostly because the Church and Crown had gotten what they wanted, the property, why deal with holding the person in jail. These people would now be paupers, who no one would help, being sentenced heretics. One also wonders what the extra judicial murder rate of such released prisoners was? and if such murder was an "expected" outcome.

From another story on this, I guess the Pope has determined that 2000 prayers for pardon should be just the right amount for all the Inquisitions(not just the Spanish).

Agostino Borromeo is a Milanese Count(and very very proud of his lineage), his ancient relative the Cardinal Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan was a chief player in the Counter-Reformation in Upper Italy, Cantons of Switzerland and the Grisons. This Cardinal suppressed the order of the Humiliati and executed many for heresy. He was also big on getting supposed witches and sorcerers.

He has also written apologetic history on the Thirty Years War and the Valtellina valley, which his relatives certainly played a role in, one has to wonder where his biases are.


Patrick Schoeb

[emad]

36. A very good book on Vatican revisionism is The Broken Cross

by Piers Morgan, who details Cold War whitewashing by the P2 Lodge and its political wing Opus Dei.

[Raster]

40. keep in mind this is the vatican saying the inquisition wasn't so bad...

I'm sure goebbels or goering would say the Holocaust wasn't that bad either.

VRB! (vatican revisionist bullshit)!

[yellowcanine]

43. Roman historians say the crucifixion wasn't that bad......

HIstorians in Rome have reexamined the records of the Roman Empire and concluded that the Roman practice of crucifying condemned prisoners wasn't that bad because most prisoners died quickly and only suffered a little bit of actual pain. In fact, some prisoners apparently even survived the ordeal and went on to live happy and productive lives. One Jesus of Nazareth even became a cult hero and founded the Christian religion after surviving crucifixion, according to the historians. The historians went on to say that crucifixion wasn't used that much anyway and was generally reserved for celebrity prisoners as a way of entertaining the public and building civic pride - much like the celebrated feeding of Christians to lions in the Colliseum - which, according to the historians, was not that bad either.

[clidaw]

44. What historians?

I am not aware of any historical data supporting the theory that anyone survived a crucifiction in the early first century and subsequently started Christianity. If you have any names of historians who assert this, I would love to know who they are.

[yellowcanine]

45. I can't tell from your post whether you realize mine was a spoof - Of

course there aren't any such historians. But if there were their conclusions would be as valid as the conclusion of Vatican historians about the Inquisition.

[clidaw]

46. My apologies.

After pointing it out to me, I now realize it was a spoof. There actually are some crazy theories out there that someone named Jesus did survive the crucifiction, taking up shop in places like India. Some very strange stuff.

[tom_paine]

51. Bullshit. Totalitarian Lies and Revisionist History are on the rise

all over the world, following the Bloodless Coup of 2000 and their rise here in Imperial Amerika.

[Bridget Burke]

52. Some of us enjoy revisionist history.

In fact, I'm eagerly awaiting the true story of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor & their daughter. It's due out this month, I've heard.

By the way, the National Cathedral is not a nest of those evil Romans, but run by the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. Quite a beautiful building & worth a visit.

[MikeG]

53. Pope didn't expect Spanish Inquisition about Spanish Inquisition.

[bex]

54. Spanish Catholics and slavery

...Las Casas went back to Spain in 1540 where he spearheaded a drive to reform laws that regulated relations between the races. The so-called “New Laws” were adopted in 1542, which mandated the protection of certain Indian rights and the abolition of slavery....

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1120.html

[leyton]

55. Sorry, you're not aloud to revise casualty counts downward.

It's not politically correct.

[amjsjc]

56. No, it was just like that bit in the Mel Brooks movie...

WIth the singing, and the dancing, and the swimming nuns...

[fedsron2us]

57. The Spanish Inquisition

was really established by Ferdinand and Isabella the rulers of Castille and Aragon. It was essentially an arm of the Spanish state not an ecclesiastical organisation and was never under the control of the Papacy.

[bex]

58. Anglo-Saxons V. Rome

Protestantism attracted people who were repelled by the
Vatican's alliance with the "heretical" humanism of
Valla, Aurispa, Bruni, Alberti, Pico, Ficino and others. 
The Church ignored Galileo until had to assert a
fundamentalist attitude to stop defections to Protestantism.
The English labored tirelessly to reverse this dynamic and
present itself as progressive. Google "Mary
worshippers" for U.S. version.

Does this make me a self-hating Unitarian?