Did you know that:
·
The murderous Spanish Inquisition condemned less
than 3,000 people during its 350 year history, with 75% of that number during
the first twenty years of its existence?
·
The Spanish Inquisition employed torture only
rarely – far less often than secular criminal justice systems in other
countries – such that in major heresy cases only 25% of accused were subject to
torture and only 5% in minor cases?
·
Other countries, including England, continued to
burn heretics until well into the seventeenth century?
·
The Spanish Inquisition decided that witchcraft
accusations were not supported by the evidence such that “[w]hile worshippers
of Satan and the devil were burned at the stake in Germany and England by secular
courts until at least the end of the seventeenth century, in Spain they were
deemed to be engaging in a harmless illusion”?
·
The Spanish Inquisition was lenient in its
punishment of homosexual conduct such that “[p]unishments issued by
inquisitorial courts became less severe at a time when other, arguably more progressive,
countries such as England and the Netherlands were routinely executing
homosexuals “?
A final note - the last time anyone was executed under the Spanish Inquistion was in
1781, not 1826, as Murphy claims. Murphy's claimed last victim - Cayetano
Ripoll, a "Spanish schoolmaster convicted of heresy" - was actually hung by the
Spanish state and not burned by the Inquisition. The actual last victim was
Dolores of Seville, who sounds crazy in her claims of being in contact with the
Virgin Mary and releasing thousands of souls from purgatory and who was executed
in 1781, when in our more enlightened age she probably would have been given
anti-schizoid medication. In truth, by the late eighteenth century, English
travelers were commenting on the freedom of movement given to Jews and the
absence of heresy trials. Why Murphy seeks to invent a final "burning" when the
Inquisition had done no such thing for nearly half a century is probably due to
his ignorance and his self-admitted polemical agenda.
These are facts from a historian, not arguments from an
apologist.
Check out my review of Helen Rawlings' The Spanish Inquisition (Historical Association Studies) and give my review a helpful vote.
Thanks.
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