How many people did the catholic church kill during inquisition?

Question

Killed by burning on wood fire...
Or crucified-tortured-
Because they had different opinions about spirituality!

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Answer 1

Pastor Billy says: what can I add except,

there is grave ignorance of what actually happened by Catholics, non-Catholics and especially anti-Catholics.

First of all which inquisition are we talking about?
1. the 3 main Catholic ecclesiastical ones?
2. the numerous Protestant ones?
3. the Jewish one that we read of in Deuteronomy?
4. the Spanish civil one?

Inquisition comes from the root-word of inquire or enquiry.

All four groups listed above engaged in inquisitional tribunals and which do you think were the most inhuman or lacking of justice? Surprise the Protestant ones.

Meticulous records were kept by the Catholic Inquisitions so we know several thousand person were accused of heresy and a fraction of that actually were put to death. If you have the courage to discover the truth please find a copy of The Minutes of the International Symposium The Inquisition.

As I've already stated many people have a warped view of reality (Rob is one he laughs at those who know the truth) when it comes to the Inquisition first off they automatically have this presupposition of all Inquisition being a creation of Catholicism something totally incorrect as more people died in Protestant Germany witch hunts and Protestant persecution of Catholics in both Germany and England than any of the other inquistions combine so much so that the administers stopped keeping records.

The best-known tribunal would have to be the Inquisition in Spain. This occurred between 1540 and 1700 and it held 44,674 trials. The accused who were condemned to death comprised 1.8%, including 1.7% condemned in contumacy, meaning they could not be executed as their whereabouts were unknown. In their stead dummies were burned or hanged.

thumbs up to reb who knows the truth about Spain. The Inquisition was not an attack on openly practising Jews or Muslims but those who claimed to convert and secretly practised something other than Christianity. As there was no Inquisition in any Protestant country, no Protestants ever fell under the tribunals of the Catholic Church and it is a complete myth to think otherwise.
In Spain's case the country had just finished a civil war and the last of the Muslim states had just been driven out of the Iberian Peniaula reunification of the Christian state in Spain was the driving force behind the civil authority not some witchhunt.

Basically this idea that the Inquisitions killed millions of people is propaganda used by anti-Catholics centuries ago and today other people assume it to be true and even hope it to be true.
The greatest killer of the population was not Inquisition but the black death, the plague. If numbers of millions killed by the Inquisitions was actually true there would have been not one soul left in all of the countries of Southern Europe nevermind the additional millions required from the rest of Europe to make this myth come true.

Final Thoughts: more people have been put to death in the last 100 years under the hand of non-religious and atheist secular authorities than all previous centuries combine.

Answer 2

There were lots of inquisitions. If you're speaking of the Spanish inquisition, the real answer is the most surprising - Zero.

I'm not Catholic, I'm Jewish, but the truth is the Catholic Church did not kill even one person during the SPanish Inquisition.

If a person was found guilty of heresy and would not "repent;" the Church would remove its protection from them. At that point they fell into the hands of the Spanish Monarchy which would kill or inprison them.

Another myth of the Inquisition is that it killed Jews. That's impossible. All faithful Jews had been expelled from SPain a year before, and the Inquisition had no power over non-Christians. The only Jews subject to trial by the inquisition were those who had given up their faith and been baptized rather than leave Spain. If they were found guilty they were turned over to the Monarchy.

Answer 3

About 3000 - 5000, though those against the catholic church weaved popular tales of millions they could not substantiate. The popular tales were similar to those now circulated by Chick publications today, a mouth organ of those with hatred against catholics and the catholic or organized churches. Most tortured during the inquisition were considered heretics by the catholic church, however that still did not give them license to kill on that basis.
Pope John Paul II has addressed the wrong actions of the Catholic Church throughout history, including the tortures and deaths related to the medieval Inquisitions. The following is a letter he wrote recounting his sorrow:

The institution of the Inquisition has been abolished...the children of the Church cannot but return with a spirit of repentance to "the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of the truth"
This spirit of repentance, it is clear, entails a firm determination to seek in the future ways to bear witness to the truth that are in keeping with the Gospel."

Put it this way, I expect that two thousand years from now, if for example, the evangelical Church remains, there may be some shameful bits of history that people who want to criticize the Evangelical Church will be able to seize upon. For instance, many southern Evangelical/Baptist Christians defended and participated in the slave trade which was responsible for thousands of beatings, tortures and deaths on slave ships. They did this with Bible in hand. The new false doctrine of Rapture is already turning out to be another invention that is an excuse for bankrolling any zionist policies, instead of exercising due deliberation, in order to "hasten" the coming of Jesus through war and chaos..

Answer 4

I've always assumed the Catholic Inquisition killed thousands, but some of the responses now have me questioning that--cool! I know that the Protestant witch hunts killed tens of thousands as well, most of them women. Any religious extremism is dangerous, and no one group should have to be the scapegoat for a particular crime.

Answer 5

Modern historians have long known that the popular view of the Inquisition is a myth. The Inquisition was actually an attempt by the Catholic Church to stop unjust executions.

Heresy was a capital offense against the state. Rulers of the state, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics. Neither did common people, who saw heretics as dangerous outsiders who would bring down divine wrath.
When someone was accused of heresy in the early Middle Ages, they were brought to the local lord for judgment, just as if they had stolen a pig. It was not to discern whether the accused was really a heretic. The lord needed some basic theological training, very few did. The sad result is that uncounted thousands across Europe were executed by secular authorities without fair trials or a competent judge of the crime.

The Catholic Church's response to this problem was the Inquisition, an attempt to provide fair trials for accused heretics using laws of evidence and presided over by knowledgeable judges.

From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and the king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep who had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring them back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.

Most people tried for heresy by the Inquisition were either acquitted or had their sentences suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ. The underlying assumption of the Inquisition was that, like lost sheep, heretics had simply strayed.

If, however, an inquisitor determined that a particular sheep had purposely left the flock, there was nothing more that could be done. Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Inquisition did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense, not the Church. The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule.

Where did this myth come from? After 1530, the Inquisition began to turn its attention to the new heresy of Lutheranism. It was the Protestant Reformation and the rivalries it spawned that would give birth to the myth. Innumerable books and pamphlets poured from the printing presses of Protestant countries at war with Spain accusing the Spanish Inquisition of inhuman depravity and horrible atrocities in the New World.

With love in Christ.

Answer 6

The amount of people executed is debated amongst different people.One of the most widely held views is that there were about 150,000 people questioned,and about 3000-5000 actually executed.I don't think anyone really knows for sure.

Answer 7

Nobody counted but I think it was a whole bunch. Well so what don't you thank God wanted all those Evil people kill for not believing in his church. Yes and good riddance it was just like God opened up the bowels of hell for them. xx

Answer 8

people don't realize this but the Catholic Church has killed more people then ANY other organization in history, we can't number the millions of people killed by the Catholic Church, we don't even know how many more millions were killed by them pulling a string here or there and having someone else do it. This church is "drunk off the blood of the saints". Also in reply to that other person, God didn't intervene I believe because he gave us free will, the will to love, the will to hate, its our choosing. Also God did protect a LOT of people during this time, he hid many in the mountains or took away the pain when they were burning. God is there, you guys just don't look for him.
Also in response to two other guys, the Catholics did kill more people then Stalin or those other Atheists, and to the Catholic guy your church admits that it killed the people throught the secular court, you church says that the secular court was just a tool for the Catholics. You can't say that the inquisition wasn't real when your own chruch admits it and says that it used other people to finish what they didn't want to finish.

Answer 9

Many ,many people ...... sadly many with knowledge of healing arts and practical skills such as midwifery ... many women were killed as witches for having a clitoris ' the devils teat ' ...... read 'the womens encyclopedia of myths and secrets ' .......some villages in europe lost all women and children .. not a fine moment for the collective consciousness of the world

Answer 10

They killed way too many. But both the Church and the Pope have repented and the Pope went to Israel to ask forgiveness. OK?