War flared between Catholic and Protestant princedoms, drawing in supportive religious armies from Germany, Spain, England, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, France and Italy. It was he who expanded the fledgling organization into a system with 24 Holy Offices in Spain. The Roman Catholic Inquisition was one of the greatest disasters ever to befall mankind. Well, besides him! It's a black mark, for sure. The death toll numbers that you may have heard are wrong. The Inquisition everyone has heard of is the Spanish Inquisition, but there was more than one Inquisition, and the earliest, at the start of the 13th century, wasn't in Spain. 19th century historians ascribed the persecution to religious hysteria. For more detailed information, read The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It depends on the source and whether you consider the direct or indirect death toll. Death tolls are given by historians such as Will Durant, who, in The Reformation (1957), cites Juan Antonio Llorente, General Secretary of the Inquisition from 1789 to 1801, as estimating that 31,912 people were executed from 1480-1808. He also cites Hernando de Pulgar, a secretary to Queen Isabella, as estimating 2,000 people were burned before 1490. It began in 1618 when Protestant leaders threw two Catholic emissaries out of a Prague window into a dung heap. If the conversos were guilty at all, it was merely of ignorance, not willful heresy. A new, fictional Spanish Inquisition had been constructed, designed by the enemies of Spain and the Catholic Church. Spanish Inquisition (1478–1834), judicial institution ostensibly established to combat heresy in Spain. The greatest killer of the population was not Inquisition but the black death, the plague. Flat out wrong. An issue of the scholarly Catholic Dossier magazine (Nov/Dec 1996), edited by Ralph McInerny, was dedicated to the history and "myths" of the Inquisition, with articles by noted Catholic historians that analyzed the work of the most recent Inquisition scholarship, including a review of a 1994 BBC/A&E documentary "The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition" which has been replayed on the … 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. 1517: Martin Luther (or see a Catholic take on him) begins his protests 1540: Jesuit Order founded 1542: Bernardino Ochino flees Italy, converts to Protestantism Paul III establishes the Roman Inquisition Limited press censorship, banning of Ochino's works . For centuries people were burned at the stake, stretched to death or otherwise tortured for failing to be Roman Catholic. No, absolutely not. The Inquisition was an ecclesiastical court and process of the Roman Catholic Church setup for the purpose towards the discovery and punishment of heresy which wielded immense power and brutality in medieval and early modern times. Torquemada oversaw the Spanish Inquisition for fifteen years until his death. Death was a mercy The inquisition was created to deal with people who contradicted Roman Catholic teachings. According to myths and legends, the Holy Inquisition death toll is about 600,000 to millions of victims. The Catholic Church was the NKVD and KGB of the Middle Ages. Seriously, Holy Inquisition is a Catholic Inquisition that used to expel heretics through making a … Pope John Paul II publicly apologized the Inquisition in 2000. They fear, while the others hope, that the facts about the Inquisition might prove the illegitimacy of the Catholic Church. The Spanish Inquisition was a tribunal started in 1478 in Spain. 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