Does anyone out there know about the Holy Inquisition? What it was, and what it did?

Question

Keeping the Inquisition out of history books has been one of the biggest and most successful snow jobs in recorded history. Lets see how good a job they did!

One of you so far has hit on an important detail, the Spanish Inquisition was only one of several.

Answer 1

FYI, it wasn't called the "Holy Inquisition". It was the "Spanish Inquisition".

The Spanish Inquisition was a legally constituted court decreed by Sixtus IV's Papal Bull and implemented under Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile beginning in 1478. As Christian European monarchs regained control of Spain from Muslim rulers, the Christian Monarchy gradually imposed and enforced certain legal restrictions on non-Catholics. Spaniards who were not Catholics were not allowed into any of the major professions. Similarly, non-Catholics were forbidden from civil service by royal decree. Other legal and property rights depended on being baptized as did entrance into schools and general social standing.

Many Muslims and Jews in Spain went along with the Crown in order to keep or get jobs, be considered part of Spanish society or simply to comply with the obvious wishes of the government. Many conversos were secular by upbringing and had little or no connection to their abandoned religions. But many who had converted during and after the massacres of 1391 did it simply to avoid death and had held onto what was, by 1478, more than a thousand years of Jewish culture and tradition in Spain.

The Crown and the Vatican were concerned with the idea of converts following non-Christian ways of life. There was also a realization in Spain and Rome that large amounts of wealth had been looted in 1468 and 1473 along with concern that those proceeds should have gone to the government and the Church. Certain behaviors (some actual religious practices - others created by the Inquisitors) were labeled by the Church as “Judaising” and were strictly prohibited under punishment of death. As of 1478, any convert suspected or accused (however haphazardly) of Judaising was tried and put through an “act of faith” (auto de fe), the result of which was always one form of horrible punishment or another. None of the accused was found innocent - the only two possible outcomes of the Church’s would-be trials were guilt by admission and guilt with denial, the latter being cause for Church and State sponsored execution. Certain Church historians have recently asserted that anti-Semitism was not one of the main motivators for Rome or Spain, pointing out that the Inquisition only targeted converted Jews accused of Judaising, not Jews who refused to convert. This argument seems less convincing in view of Ferdinand’s expulsion of the Jews (including and especially the ones who never converted) from the country of Spain in 1492. Any Jew who had not converted and did not leave Spain was thereafter legally executed by the Crown with the Pope’s knowledge and approval. Most historians[citation needed] would agree that practicing Jews had all left Spain by early August of 1492 and that those accused of heresy thereafter were people who a) had money and b) could be accused of having a Jewish or Muslim ancestor, whether it was true or not.

The Inquisition was removed during Napoleonic rule (1808–1812), but reinstituted when Ferdinand VII of Spain recovered the throne. It was officially ended on 15 July 1834. Schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoli, garroted to death in Valencia on July 26, 1826 (allegedly for teaching Deist principles), was the last person executed by the Spanish Inquisition.

Answer 2

A holy inquisition (or merely an 'inquisition'--there is frequently no longer some thing holy about it) is a tribunal set up by ability of the Roman Catholic Church to check out heresies. there have been many over the years, the most appropriate-huge-spread being the Spanish Inquisition set up by ability of Ferdinand and Isabella to make Spain -organic- once they threw Muslims and Jews in another usa. The Spanish Inquisition used torture and different brutal strategies to get human beings to admit to heresies--or although the inquisitors -wanted- them to admit to. once human beings confessed they were performed in very ugly strategies. The Spanish Inquisition lasted until eventually 1834, at the same time as it replaced into abolished lower than Queen Isabella II.

Answer 3

Supposing that you are talking about the Catholic Inquisition ( there was also the Protestant Inquisition, that burned Miguel Servet, discoverer of the blood circulation ) it was a tribunal founded by the Church to stop the kings from doing what should be done by an ecclesiastic commision.
Up to that moment, the kings were punishing sinners, but incuded also commun criminals.
The point is that there were sects that made war against the society and were a danger to the State. Therefore, kings punished them under the disguise of being sinners.
The Inquisition cleared that and separated common criminals and enemies of the State from real sinners, except when both cases came together

Answer 4

There were actually four Inquisitions, the first starting in Medieval times, the last in Spain in the 1800s. The Inquisitions were used by the Catholic Church as a way to consolidate their authority, wealth, and power. Hallmarks of the Inquisition was the burning of "heretics" usually opponents of the Pope.

Answer 5

It was a huge movement by the Catholic church to convert, if even by force, a mass number of non-believers. It took place during what is now called "the Dark Ages." It often involved torture, murder, blackmail, scare-tactics, etc. To me it was the worst thing done in the name of religion. I'm Christian, but I do not condone the events of the Inquisition. It does not represent true Christianity. I believe the Inquisition to be worse than even anything that has been done in the name of radical Islam.

Answer 6

Interesting question. I was a religion major in college, so I studied it a bit. The Church determined post-Renaissance that the people of Italy and elsewhere were becoming over-indulgent. It took it upon itself to determine who the sinners were and purge them from society unless they confessed to their guilt, and sometimes even this did not save the victims. Often, men and women and even children were tortured and killed.

One interesting fact is that some clergy utilized torture devices such as the thumb locks because they broke the bones, but did not spill blood. It was verboten for the clergy to actually spill blood....technicality which did not actually save the victims from pain. It simply forced the clergy to become more creative torturers.

Does this help?

Answer 7

I don't know what country you live in but the inquisition in my country is well documented, it was run by a few mad men , who were crazy not holy or faithful. Under cover of religion they tortured and killed a lot of people.

Answer 8

The inquisition wasn't holy.

Answer 9

the inquisition was anything but holy. The spanish inquisition had many torture devices. they whould torture people to get information about things the people didnt even do.

Answer 10

I'm sorry but since I learned about it in 5Th 7Th 9Th 11Th and 12Th grades and was mentioned in several college courses that I took,I have to say it is in a lot of history books, I've even been assigned to read passages from the witches hammer and do critical analysis of them.