Is it true, that the Church and State was the same during the Inquisition?

Answer 1

No, the Church was the Church and the state was the state. Mostly they exerted influence (or tried to) over each other. In the end , the state is the wielder of force and corporal power. The Church is the wielder of Grace and moral dogma.

Answer 2

Yes and no... The state was at the service of the inquisition and did the heavy lifting for them in terms of military action and punishment. The arrest of heretics was done by the state at the behest of the church, which identified them. Interrogation (torture) was done by the church, Dominicans usually, and the state administered the frequent death sentences. It's true that the inquisition could not function without the enthusiastic cooperation of the state.

It is also importatn to distinguish between the inquisition--completely a Roman Catholic thing--and the witch hunts, which were both Catholic and Protestant, with maybe Protestants more active. Luther was a big fan of witch hunts, pogroms, and other things most civilized people find distasteful, for example. But that's a whole other topic.

Answer 3

Pretty much. The Kings/Queens had to do what the papacy said. Refusal was war - other nations would war against them, some of their own people, and the papacy had it's own army. Not to mention the fear of hell the papacy threatened them with.

It wasn't until Henry VIII that someone finally stood up to the papacy and created a new church - run by the King of course, so that wasn't better, just different.

Then the Reformers came and gave people a Bible in their own language and people learned that each of them had a conscience before God that they needed to follow. Much persecution followed because the state (papacy & other countries) didn't want to give up it's control over the people.

The Bible talks of a beast (Bible calls a beast a kingdom) with a deadly wound - that occured in 1798 when a general (from the French army, I believe) captured the Pope and the Pope died in captivity. It wasn't until Mousolini gave back land & power to the Vatican that the deadly wound was healed.

This power is always trying to gain control. When the USA (2nd beast of Rev 13) makes a law that supports this power (image to the beast) the Church & State will be reunited again and we will see that the papacy has never changed.

Answer 4

In some ways the Church and State were difficult to differentiate, because the Church had so much political and legal authority. One interesting example is the old law that allocated a certain portion of a State's land to the Church. In these days Catholic priests were allowed to marry and have children. But with children, inheritance law sometimes conflicted with the land laws, so the Church began to gradually lose some of its land and even buildings. The Pope realized this and decided that priests could no longer marry. I believe this unfortunate decision has largely resulted in the epidemic of pedophilia in the Catholic church today. Thus, the greed of the Church has indirectly led to its pedophilia epidemic.

Answer 5

Not exactly. The State and the Church did have different functions and areas of responsibility, but all the doors in the system did lead to one of two places, the accused and the guilty were pretty much the same, dead. The innocent did not resist paying their dues to the system whatever the price.
The State and the Church would both condemn people, but the State would generally kill them and the church would bury them all, often under the Cathedral.

Answer 6

The Catholic church was the POWER until Henry 8th of England wanted an English church and Martin Luther of Germany argued about religion.
Popes were ALL POWERFUL.
A pope often had girl-friends. One of the Medicci family was a pope. He had a daughter called Lucrecia. He raped her and when their baby was born he took it from her. Then he ordered soldiers to take the man she loved and tear the young man in half by tying him to horses going opposite ways.He forced Lucrecia to marry an old ugly man. He went to war with several people and organised the mass murder of many people.He did spend a lot of money on beautiful buildings so some people say he was O.K.
The inquistion could - put you on the 'Rack' and stretch you till your bones broke and you died; could torture with fire, burning you till you died; - cut off various body parts, no pain killers of course, a favourite was blinding and cutting out your tongue.
There were worse tortures but they were a bit too gruesome to describe. When you died the church then raped your women and took your money
Thes things happened if you - criticised the pope / church or some-one rich. If you disagreed with some authority or thought for yourself or read a book that did not belong to the church, or went some-where with-out permission.One nasty was that on your wedding night your masters could have sex with your wife 1st ( it was called droit de segneur - right of your seniors) and if you complained you would be taken to be tortured.
Most of us have no idea how evil life was.

Answer 7

Yes it was.

Did a paper on the inquisition.
One part of the inquisition was the state doing it ok'ed by Rome.
Ferdinand and Isabella.

As a side line--I saw their burial sites.
They are beneath the alter in one of the Cathedrals in Spain.
There is an entrance right there on the main alter.

Answer 8

The Church had great influence over the affairs of state. There was no separation forbidding one to influence the other... That's how terrible things happen.

Answer 9

The State was afraid of the power of the Church and it's influence it had over people. That's is how they acquired so much political power and why they continue to support politics today.

Answer 10

Not exactly the same, but closely allied. The state was the servant of the church. As the church could not condemn anyone to death, after torturing the person into a confession, they would hand him over to the state to be condemned to death.