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| Toledo branch of the Inquisition. Okay, where are the blood stained torture chamber walls? Where are the mass graves? Where are the remnants of torture devices? Where are the hand-written accounts of local citizen's hearing screams? And where are the nighttime haunting poltergeist sounds of the torture chamber victims, today? |
ONE anonymous tale, refuted by the THOUSANDS of Spanish Inquisition case files
All the nightmarish accusations of the Spanish Inquisition came from one 1567 writing published in Heidelberg ... and one 1570 letter proven to be a forgery. The letter claimed that the Inquisition targeted entire European populations for annihilation. That was it. There was nothing more than --- tabloid newspaper gossip.
Of course, anti-Catholic propagandists will deceive you into thinking that
numerous people witnessed horror and wrote about the Inquisition, when the truth is
that people who never experienced the Inquisition wrote about it hundreds of years after
1567. They wrote as if the horror stories which are easy to refute were still occurring hundreds of years later. This
included Voltaire. Voltaire was an arrogantly presumptive person who
like to belittle people.
The Spanish Inquisition horror story has zero physical evidence attached to it and zero documentation attached to it, as well. It was overly theatrical pre-war propaganda for the upcoming war which intended to be a war of succession from Spain --- for the Netherlands. It turned out to be the dreaded 80 Years War spanning from 1568 to 1648.
Actually, the war began in 1567, when Calvinists secretly entered the Netherlands as peasants. It was the European version of the 1968 TET Offensive of Vietnam. Thus, Martin Luther's Protestants & John Calvin's Protestants ... along with Zwingli's Protestants ... and the Puritans who had no objection to massacring Irish Catholics on Irish land ... were the opposite of peace-loving Christians. As a reminder, it was Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi, Anthony of Padua, Raymond of Pentafort, and Dominic Guzma who were the peace-loving Christians. They brought who did bring peace to their regions of Europe in the 13th Century.
Amongst the aforementioned saints, Raymond of Penyafort is the most forgotten. He is underrated and unappreciated in the modern Church. Yet, he was as much as a shaker, a mover, and a rebuilder of a church falling apart as were the Franciscans and St. Dominic. In fact, Saint Raymond was a Dominican. Moreover, the most influential saint of the following century would also be a Dominican. Her name is Catherine of Siena.
Starting Point
Did you believe in the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction? Almost everyone did, due to the relentless propaganda promoted by the one-sided, corporate-sized media. Yet, after hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and years of warfare, none were found. However, that wasn't the only fraud forced upon humanity throughout the ages.
We now adjourn to the modern-era reputation of the Spanish Inquisition. People have been led to believe in the horror story version of that judicial system as much as they were led to believe in the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. Being that your mind probably carries a cemented conclusion about the over-exaggerated Spanish Inquisition, take a moment to answer this question:
Firstly, you can find numerous pieces of evidence to prove the existence of the Nazi German mass-murder industry, to the point of touring the gas chambers and walking past the mass grave-sites, as well as seeing photographs of all the jewelry taken from the mass-murdered Jews, Gypsies, and even Roman Catholic priests who wore metal crosses and religious medals. Well, where can you find the evidence to support the horror-story version of the Spanish Inquisition?
You can definitely find evidence for the 20th Century Spanish Civil War. But what evidence can you produce about the Darth Vader version of 16th Century Spain? The Darth Vader version turned out to be merely the pre-war propaganda of 1567, just like the pre-war propaganda of 2003.
Now, it's important to note that each individual case which was brought before the Spanish Inquisition had a case file attached to it. Each case file was then consigned to the Spanish Inquisition Archive System. The archive system remained well-preserved throughout the centuries.
Decades ago, the Spanish government opened to the public the Spanish Inquisition archives. And of course, the world renown BBC took up the Spanish government on its open invitation and payed credentialed historians to report on their findings, after scouring through the Spanish Inquisition case files. That amounted to 356 years of case files, minus the few years when Napoleon put the Spanish Inquisition out of operation.
Directly below is the link to the 1994 documentary on the Spanish Inquisition, produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It's titled, the MYTH of the Spanish Inquisition, with the accent being on "myth." I would have called the documentary the Intelligence-insulting Farce of ... or the Hyper-exaggeration of ... or the False Light Defamation of ... or the Entirely Distorted Image of ... the Spanish Inquisition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY-pS6iLFuc
The Inquisition, itself, comprised 20 branch offices, otherwise known as tribunals ... otherwise equal to "district courts." The number of judges, aka Inquisitors, per tribunal was no more the two or three.
Technically speaking, it wasn't a church court operation. It was a
secular branch of the Castile & Aragon crowns, with imperial
immediacy attached to its jurisdiction. This meant that the operators
of the Inquisition had immediate recourse to and from the Spanish crown,
without having to go through a chain of command. It was equal to going straight to the U.S. Supreme Court, without having to go through district and then federal circuit appeals court.
None the less, the Spanish Inquisition was founded in 1478 by Queen Isabella, as an aid in her final war against Spain's Muslim invaders & occupiers of the previous 767 years. That inquisition was also useful in discerning the activities of the four major knightly orders in Spain. Thus, it was originally established to spy on the Moors and the Roman Catholic knights. [1] Martin Luther wasn't even born, yet (1483). [2] John Calvin was not yet born, as well (1509.) In fact, the Spanish Inquisition was established before the births of [3] John Knox (1514), [4] Menno Simons (1496), [5] Besançon Hugues (1487), [6] Huldrych Zwingli (1484), [7] Philip Melanchthon (1497), [8] Martin Bucer (1491), [9] Andreas Karlstadt (1986), [10] Thomas Müntzer (1489), William Farel (1489), etc, etc, etc. .
Queen Isabella asked the pope to grant official approval of this Spanish Inquisition, so that she could use official Catholic Church theologians to judge the cases there. These members of the Catholic Hierarchy were the final judges of each case brought before them. Yet, the Spanish Inquisition was a State Court that was granted autonomy. This means that laymen lawyers were also involved in investigating & presenting the cases. None the less, Catholic theologians were the judges. But, they were judges in the name of the queen and NOT in the name of the Roman Catholic Church.
There
simultaneously existed the Roman Inquisition. That WAS the official
Church inquisition. But, it didn't have attached to it the nightmarish
torture chamber stories attached to the Spanish Inquisition. This is
because Spain was the great imperial power of Europe at the time, and to defeat a
massive power, you must employ the use of lying propaganda and concentrate on the enemy, keeping attention away from anything or anyone else. The goal was to outrage the citizenry into rebelling for your
cause. The citizens of the Netherlands were manipulated to rebel against Spain who was the sovereign power at the time; not Rome.
Stats
Concerning statistics, the Spanish Inquisition endured for 356 years. Throughout the 356 year history
of the Spanish Inquisition, there was an average of no more than 9 to 14
executions per year. Throughout this time, the population of Spain
went from approx 9 million to 13.4 million. This makes the former claim
of 100,000 executions beyond ridiculous. Even
the modern Protestant claim of 32,0000 deaths is 6.5 to 10 times higher than the reality.
Now, during the last six years of the final war between the invader-occupier Muslims and the Catholics of Spain, there was an average of 77 executions per year, until 1492. This was 15th Century statistics. So, beware of how a stereotypical propagandist can twist the stats. None the less, Spain was at war with an opponent who occupied Spain for 767 years. So, the executions were not a matter of a crazed maniac with torture engines all around him.
All in all, it got to a point in time, when all Spanish Inquisition executions ceased for the most part. In fact, Napoleon and the Cortes Cadiz (which see) suspended inquisition operations from 1808 to 1814. All in all, the last execution was that of of a teacher who used Catholic Church property to advocate Deism. Deism claims that everything about the Catholic Faith is worthless, meaning that the Catholic Church should be dissolved and its property used for other things. This was in the Year 1826.
Now, experience in
Europe was that the preacher of any anti-Catholic doctrine is eventually
accompanied by armed persons ready to engage in warfare and commandeer Catholic Church real estate. The same was the case for the Orthodox religion, namely in Russia.
In conclusion, the
true nightmare of Spanish History was [1] Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 and [2] the 20th Century Spanish Civil
War, where even nuns were executed ... and where even statues of Christ
were the targets of firing squads.
In review, the closest iron maiden was discovered to have been in Germany; a very long jog from Spain. The Spanish Inquisition archives proved that 16th Century Spain was NOT any worse than France or Austria or Italy or Greece in matters of capital punishment, concerning the number of those executed. And it certainly wasn't worse than Russia which was, by far, worst in that department.
In fact, England was the monster of 16th Century Western Europe, in alternating intervals of time. Sometimes the British monster awakened. At other times, it was put to rest, When it came to executions, 16th Century England had low tide and high tide. And concerning the proverbial high tide, 200 to 300 Catholic martyrs of the Tudor reign ended up being beatified by the end of the 19th Century, in Vatican City. That is one step away from canonization.
Then came the Irish who were victimized by Oliver Cromwell. The estimate is that approx 520 Roman Catholics were put to death by the Tudor and Cromwell reigns, with much less of a number of Protestants being executed by the same British. Yet, the Spanish Inquisition gets the attention, even though Protestant England executed Protestant Lutherans ... and even though Protestant Switzerland executed Protestant Anabaptists. This included the execution of Mennonite, Felix Manz.
In sequence, seven years later, an Anabaptist cult took over the entire German city of Münster, and that resulted in warfare tactics being employed against the cult. Protestants were not reforming the Church. Protestants were killing each other, and constantly striving to take over Northern European Roman Catholic Church real estate & infrastructure.
The 16th Century was a time of chaos and bloodshed ... NOT freedom of thought. After all, wherever there is insanity, there is never any freedom of thought. Luther was nobody's liberator, especially the German peasants who were vehemently condemned by Luther ... after he previously wrote a piece that made him sound like their great protector. Well, 300,000 German peasants were NOT protected by Luther or anyone else. Approximately 100,000 of them died in the process of Luther seeing to it that the Elector of Saxony would ... would ... "push back" the advance of the primitively-equipped peasant army which was annihilated by a much smaller, yet more modernized alliance of [1] Swabians, [2] Hessians, [3] Saxons, and soldiers from Brunsewick-Wolfenbuttal.
In as much, you will find 16th Century mass graves in Luther's Germany, but you will NOT find them in Renaissance Spain. You will especially NOT see any near any district court of the Spanish Inquisition. This is super ironic for the anti-Catholic pro-Lutheran folks out there who have a seething hatred toward Roman Catholicism and Romans per se. HOWEVER, you need to understand that Martin Luther suddenly became terrified over the concept of Mob Rule in 1524, being that a mob of peasants was literally headed his way. All in all, the nightmare of Spain was the 20th Century Spanish Civil War and NOT the 16th Century Spanish Inquisition.
The accusation against Catholicism has been that it's "adherents" (church members) were mindlessly superstitious and anti-progress, as well as anti-science. At this point, observe the following list of Roman Catholic mathematicians, scientists & inventors. It includes several Catholics who are regarded as the "father of "this science and "the father of" that science. This includes Nobel Prize winners in one science category or the other. It shows that Catholicism was the opposite of the dark oppressor of invention and the suppressor of intellectual
thought. It shows that the very stiff-necked Jimmy Swaggart (born in 1945) to be all wrong, along with the ultimate objector-to & skeptic-of Catholicism, John Ankerberg (born in Chicago, 1945):
[1] Antoine Lavoisier (father of modern chemistry who was executed during the French Revolution), [2] Borelli (father of biomechanics), [3] Fabricius (father
of embryology), [4] Agricola, along with [5] Anselmus de Boodt (co-founders of mineralogy), [6] Andre Ampere
(co-formulator of the laws of Electromagnetism), [7] Marcello Malpighi (father of comparative physiology), [8] Luca Pacioli (father of accounting & bookkeeping), [9] Gregor Mendel (father of genetics), [10] Giuseppi Zamboni (inventor of the first electrostatic battery, [11] Benito Vines (founder of hurricane science), [12] Nicolas Steno (father of geology & stratigraphy, as well as Steno's Principles), [13] Antonio Neri (glass-making treatise), [14] Giuseppi Mercalli (Volcanology & the Mercalli Scale for measuring earthquakes), [15] Christian Mayer (pioneer in Binary Star Science).
Now, over 200 more names of Catholics can be added to the list. In as much, show me the discoveries, inventions, and/or scientific treatises of the anti-Catholic TV evangelists and their 16th Century Northern European Protestant counterparts. The Catholic Church is NOT the hider of the Bible. It's NOTthe oppressor of knowledge. It's the church of prolific writers ... and societal organizers ... and inquisitive scientists.
Note: John Hagee apologized for his assertions against Catholicism. So, we act as if it never happened when it comes to him, and we move on. That's called, "forgiveness." Try it some time in the near future.
The Jews of Spain: Both sides of the story
Whereas the Horror Story of the Inquisition detailed horrendous torture against Protestants, there wasn't enough Protestants in Spain to keep 20 district court tribunals busy. The true inquisition predominately focused on Jews, to see if those who went through public conversion to Catholicism secretly remained Jews, instead --- and to see if any Jews were still giving financial support to the Moors.
At this point stop
and acknowledge in your mind the predominate reason why Spaniards did
NOT trust Jews. It's simple. Jews were seen as the funding source of
the Moorish invaders and occupiers of Spain, especially in Granada where
they excelled economically. BUT ... the Moorish occupation was
basically in three different modes of time, with the middle era being
"warfare renewed."
When Umayyad Caliphate Commander Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād first captured Granada, Cordorba, and Astorga (in 711 C.E.), the Jews saw themselves as being relieved of the stress and oppression imposed by the Visigoths. As long as the Jews payed the Jizya tax to the Moors ... and as long as they abided by certain Muslims laws ... they could enjoy an affluent lifestyle. Yet, they and the Catholics were to be regarded as second class citizens, under Muslim Rule. Yet, the Jews in Granada were an effective source of income for the Moors, and they thrived with the Moors. The Moorish capital was Granada, and the Moors remained in Spain for 767 years, even calling Spain, Andalusia.
The great
animosity from the Jews came from the period when the Visigoths were
forcing baptism upon them. Yet, a Visigoth king recognized that it was a wrong thing to do, so he put it to an end. The official Catholic
Church teaching on forced baptism appears in Vatican II and in the Pope
Pius XII encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi. To make a
long story short, you cannot force doctrinal beliefs on a person. You
can enforce the natural law of moral conduct, though. Thus, you can
prohibit dangerous activities and unsafe practices. You can punish a
person for violent acts not done in self-defense or in the defense of a
third person. You can even inspect things, such as road vehicles, to make sure they are not a danger to anyone. But,
you cannot tell a person whom to believe is God ... or to believe in the existence of the Great Spirit
... or the godhead ... or the Unmoved Mover .. or Thor ... or Odin ... or Jupiter ... or Pachama, etc.
Ironically,
the non-Christians Moors were allowed to stay in Spain, after the 1492
liberation of the Moors. Then, in 1609, even Roman Catholic Moors were expelled.
They were all under suspicion of aiding the Berber pirates in the
Mediterranean Sea. The bottom line is that the Spaniards dreaded a
return invasion of the Moors. And they were sure that the Jews would
re-welcome them, due to the Moors not being as harsh as were the
Visigoths. The Visigoths should have let the matter of religion be in
the hands of unarmed missionaries who were more teachers than sales
professionals or census takers.
As
far as goes the forged letter, it stated that the Inquisition targeted
entire Western European populations for extermination. In addition to
proving the letter a fraud through forensic science, the circumstance of
the day proved it to be the most asinine of allegations. This is
because Spain had its hands full with none other than the FOURTH
Ottoman-Venetian War. This necessitated the Spanish, Sicilian, and
Neapolitan navy fleets to sail to Cyprus and to the Gulf of Patraikos. There wasn't the time or the resources to exterminate Protestant Europeans.
The Fourth Ottoman-Venetian War
was the war of the famous Battle of Lepanto of 1571 (which see.)
Europe was about to be overrun by Muslim invaders who would have turned
all the churches into mosques ... and many a young lady into harem girls
... against the ladies' wills. Yet, none of the official Protestant
nations cared to join in the defense of Europe, as if they were hoping
that the Ottomans would destroy the Catholic armies and end the Holy
Roman Empire ... and to end the Habsburg Dynasty.
At the same time, the dreaded 80 Years War was transpiring in the Netherlands. It involved a trade embargo
against England & those English "privateers" who were pirating Spanish &
Portuguese ships. Thus, there wasn't the time and the resources to even
think of exterminating entire Protestant populations within Europe. The letter was
a complete fake which caused an uproar.
The Montanus
Nightmare Tale included racist name-calling, all the while accusing the
common Spaniard of being the most depraved & most vile
low-life that humanity had to offer. Thus, you were considered to be the
worst of the worst dregs, simply because you were Spanish. That's racism.
Plus, the reasonable person would realize that the horrific tortures of the Montanus Tale involve repulsively shredded gore ... repulsive displays of carnage. Now, no human can endure the work of cleaning torture engines laced with torn human carnage, day after day after day.
Nearby Spanish residents would have eventually learned of
this torture, if the tortures had been occurring. There would have then been an uproar and lots of writings on the
subject would have been addressed to civil and religious leaders. The Vatican would have intervened as much as it did during the official banning of slavery in [1] the Canary Islands, [2] the Philippines, and [3] Latin America. The pope surely would have heard of it and then he would have commented on it ... or else he would have issued a papal bulletin, banning such conduct. Well, there is no physical evidence of any such tortures, and no evidence of letters to Rome, and no evidence of statements by any Vatican official at the time. This would logically mean that "it" wasn't happening the way Montanus stated that it was. Such a thing is usually called, False Light Defamation.
This means that there would
be mass graves of chaotically arranged human bones near each of the 20 district courts of the Spanish Inquisition, if that horror story were true. So, where are these mass graves? The people who still promote the hyper-exaggeration of the Spanish Inquisition need to become defendants in a multi-million dollar class action defamation lawsuit --- simply to finally shut them up. Their tale defames Catholics today, and it incites violence against Catholics. And of course, approximately 300 attacks upon Catholic Church infrastructure had recently occurred in America, along with church burnings in Canada, to the accompaniment of cheering voices. There was also the French churches that were sabotaged, as well.
At this point, one needs to acknowledge that those recent acts of American vandalism were suspected to have been done by pro-abortion political fanatics. Well, those fanatics were brainwashed at a young age to believe that the Catholic Church is equal to the Spanish Inquisition Horror Story. Yet, the history of Catholicism is marked by expanded undertakings of charity and the de-animalizing of man. Hospitals and schools of every academic grade were established. Mankind was being taken out of the darkness of ignorance is those many Roman Catholic cases. The illiterate were being educated. Religious orders emerged according to need. This included a religious order dedicated to paying ransom to Muslim pirates, for kidnapped European Christians. This also included a French religious order dedicated to giving formal education to orphans in France.
In addition, the Spanish were well known to be sensitive
enough to make notable artwork. Sensitive people abhor gore. Moreover, the
only known iron maiden of the era was in . . . Germany ... not Spain.
Plus, Spain was a Roman Catholic country, and Roman Catholicism forbade
bodily mutilation of any kind. Yes, the tortures described in the 1567 horror tale was a violation of canonical law. Spo, according to Montanus, the Catholic Church was breaking Catholic Church law, in order to make people become Catholic ... so that they could break Catholic Church law. Real smart there, Monty.
The real nightmare of Spain was in its 20th Century civil war. Nuns, priests, and Catholic laity were executed at the time. They weren't the oppressive "Bible-hiding" executioners. They were the executed. In fact, an order of priests martyred during that war were beatified at Vatican City in October of 1989. They were priests of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, also known as the Passionists. Each priest was placed one step away from the status of a canonized saint.
The
Renaissance Era Spanish did NOT arbitrarily kill people. There had to be a writ of
execution involved with every execution, being that the most powerful
empire in Western Europe always had due process of the law and
record-keeping. The Spanish kept a meticulous archive system. There
is no evidence of more than an average of 9 to 14 executions per year in the Spanish Inquisition,
and those people were burnt in flames. There weren't killed on torture
engines.
Also to be addressed is the fact that today's more
subtle anti-Catholic propagandists attribute the Montanus Horror Story to a
certain Spaniard who was an ex-monk versed in Hebrew and Greek. Well,
no sensible human would write so repulsively of his own people, because
to do so is to indict yourself. Since when does a sane Spaniard call all the Spanish "the children of Satan"? Hello? Is anybody home, upstairs?
No Spaniard would call his own people and own self the most sexually perverted, most murderous, and lowest of all animals who walk the Earth. In fact, how could the ultimate super power of Western Europe be a nation of brutal & mindless dregs, as well as sexually perverted animals? That, alone, shows that the Montanus Horror Story was hyped-up pre-war propaganda. Yet, the specific facts about the one Spaniard whom the anti-Catholics claim to be Montanus shows instantly that they are either deliberately lying or they are void of intelligence.
To make a long story short, that particular Spanish person would have been taken to the Netherlands Inquisition and NOT to the Spanish Inquisition as Montanus claimed to have been taken. Plus, the Spanish ex-monk would had exactly sixteen witnesses to corroborate at least part of his story. This is because 16 other monks simultaneously left the monastery with the Spanish gentleman claimed to be Montanus in disguise. Yet, no one ever corroborated anything that the Montanus Tale stated.
Plus, the Spanish man whom Protestants claim to be Montanus appeared in Geneva Switzerland healthy and enthusiastic, in 1568. By 1571, the same man became a citizen of Frankfort and then became a successful silk merchant. He lived to the age 74. If he were beaten badly at a horrific Spanish torture chamber, he would have died at a much younger age.
It is always wrong to present your hate-filled prejudice as
documented fact. And concerning the man claimed to be Montanus, it was
the Spaniard who translated the Bible into Spanish. The hate-filled
propagandists wanted to make it appear that Casiodoro de Reina was
tortured for translating the Bible into Spanish. This is where the
greatest lie of Protestant propagandists come to the fore. It's simular to the claim made of Wycliffe. For the record, John Wycliffe was NEVER burnt at the stake. John Wycliffe was NEVER executed. He died from a stroke, during the Christmas season.
Their great lie is the claim that the Catholic Church hid the Bible from humanity, and that the Protestants liberated mankind by distributing the Bible everywhere, beginning with the Gutenberg Bible. This is a 100,000% lie.
Firstly, Gutenberg was a devout Roman Catholic given ranking by the Bishop of Mainz, Germany. It has always been the case that the Catholic Church used & still uses the Bible far more often than the Protestants ever did . . . to the point where numerous Roman Catholic stained-glass windows ARE Biblical passage scenes in picture form . . . manufactured for the sake of the illiterate. Observe:
During any day, the Roman Catholic Church uses the Bible in its official prayers [1] EIGHT times everyday in the Divine Office, also known as the Book of Hours, [2] THREE times per every Sunday Mass, [3] TWO times per every weekend Mass . . . and in [4] numerous theology courses, being that the Roman Catholic Church has far more academic institutions of all academic levels than Protestantism ever had, [5] and the Bible is also used during official Catholic weekend retreats, depending on the discretion of the priest conducting the retreat.
[6] Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church grants a complete remission of the TEMPORAL PUNISHMENT due to sin (AFTER receiving priestly absolution) at the hour of death to those who spent their lives devoutly reading the Bible approximately a quarter-hour per day. This means that the Roman Catholic Church ENCOURAGES the reading of the Bible, "for devout purposes." [7] Also remember that the greatest Bible teacher of them all were the numerous Catholic Church stained-glass windows which each portray a Biblical scene on each window, be it the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Christ, St. Peter's commission, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Archangel Michael, Elijah, John the Baptist, etc, etc, etc.
Protestant preachers who wear business suits at the pulpit
lie about the Catholic Church as a business tactic. They defame the
Catholic Church, in the hope that Catholics will leave the True Church
and join the preachers' Protestant sect, so that the Catholics will
start putting their tax-free collection basket money into the Protestant
sect's collection baskets. For a Protestant preacher, defaming Catholics is profitable. That is equivalent to stealing money via "theft by deception." Those types of preachers are liars & thieves, for the sake of your "disposal income;" of your tax-free collection basket allowance money.
In this way, the Protestant preachers can buy more business suits ... and personal items. It's business to them. It's all business. It's how they make their income; killing off the Catholic Church so that they can live really really well. They are constantly looking for their Thirty Pieces of Silver, over and over, again and again.
