On this episode of The Sofa King Podcast, we travel back to castle times and look at one of the worst crimes the Catholic Church ever committed: The Inquisition. While the Spanish Inquisition is the most famous, there were inquisitions in Rome, Portugal, The New World and tons of colonies in Central and South America. The Inquisition was based on a series of edicts passed by the Catholic church and enforced by local kings and queens.

The purpose? To eradicate heretics, supposedly. And who were heretics? Well, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Protestants, those who committed sodomy, families that couldn’t produce children, and many more. In some areas of the world, the Inquisition was pretty mild. The point of the Inquisition was to get heretics to confess, and a few lashes later they were free to go on about their business (as long as the converted to Catholicism or got the hell out of town). But in other areas such as Spain, it got medieval.

People were tortured on The Rack, The Catherine Wheel, and the Strappado. They were burned and water boarded. They were imprisoned for years with no real trial, and they were often burned at the stake. Historians vary wildly from this being a pandemic of murder to being a mild case of murder, but death was the result. (Estimates we read were between 1250 and 300,000 deaths…)

Spain had it the worst. For one thing, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella just ended a civil war and needed a legal way to get rid of their enemies. Heretics! Second, they needed money to fight a crusade where they would make more money. Heretics! The Inquisition is seen by many as a power grab and last gasp of the old monarchy and papal structure trying to hold on to power. As the world changed, fear of torture and death kept everyone avoiding the change. And for the record, I’m not going to make a “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition” joke here.

 

Visit Our Sources:

https://www.history.com/topics/religion/inquisition

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition

https://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/spanish-inquisition.htm

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-inquisition

https://www.historyrevealed.com/eras/medieval/in-a-nutshell-spanish-inquisition/

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/the-inquisition/the-truth-about-the-spanish-inquisition.html

https://historycollection.co/snap-crackle-pop-torture-methods-of-the-spanish-inquisition/