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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dale_laroy who wrote (138921)	4/17/2001 1:47:58 PM
From: Gordon A. Langston	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

It is estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 Jews were executed for heresy in the Inquisition. More like 3,000. "....the Spanish Inquisition, in spite of wildly inflated estimates of the numbers of its victims, acted with considerable restraint in inflicting the death penalty, far more restraint than was demonstrated in secular tribunals elsewhere in Europe that dealt with the same kinds of offenses. The best estimate is that around 3000 death sentences were carried out in Spain by Inquisitorial verdict between 1550 and 1800, a far smaller number than that in comparable secular courts." (Peters, page 87, emphasis added) Only a small percentage of those convicted were executed -- at most one or two percent in a given region. Many more were sentenced to life in prison, but this was often commuted after a few years. The most common punishment was some form of public penance. (7) The dreaded Spanish Inquisition in particular has been grossly exaggerated. It did not persecute millions of people, as is often claimed, but approximately 44,000 between 1540 and 1700, of whom less than two percent were executed. hometown.aol.com

To: dale_laroy who wrote (138921)	4/17/2001 1:54:52 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 769667

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA Spain The Spanish Inquisition With its large Muslim and Jewish populations, medieval Spain was the only multiracial and multireligious country in western Europe, and much of the development of Spanish civilization in religion, literature, art, and architecture during the later Middle Ages stemmed from this fact. The Jews had served Spain and its monarchs well, providing an active commercial class and an educated elite for many administrative posts. But, inevitably, their wealth created jealousy and their heterodoxy hatred in a population that traditionally saw itself as the defender of Christianity against the infidel. The Catholic Monarchs, ever good tacticians, profited from this feeling. In 1478 they first obtained a papal bull from Sixtus IV setting up the Inquisition to deal with the supposedly evil influence of the Jews and conversos. Since the Spanish Inquisition was constituted as a royal court, all appointments were made by the crown. Too late, Sixtus IV realized the enormous ecclesiastical powers that he had given away and the moral dangers inherent in an institution the proceedings of which were secret and that did not allow appeals to Rome. With its army of lay familiars, who were exempt from normal jurisdiction and who acted both as bodyguards and as informers of the inquisitors, and with its combination of civil and ecclesiastical powers, the Spanish Inquisition became a formidable weapon in the armoury of royal absolutism. The Supreme Council of the Inquisition (or Suprema) was the only formal institution set up by the Catholic Monarchs for all their kingdoms together. Nevertheless, they thought of it primarily in religious and not in political terms. The Inquisition's secret procedures, its eagerness to accept denunciations, its use of torture, the absence of counsel for the accused, the lack of any right to confront hostile witnesses, and the practice of confiscating the property of those who were condemned and sharing it between the Inquisition, the crown, and the accusers--all this inspired great terror, as indeed it was meant to do. The number of those condemned for heresy was never very large and has often been exaggerated by Protestant writers. But during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs several thousand conversos were condemned and burned for Judaizing practices. The whole family of the philosopher and humanist Juan Luis Vives was wiped out in this way. Many more thousands of conversos escaped similar fates only by fleeing the country. Many Roman Catholics in Spain opposed the introduction of the Inquisition, and the Neapolitans and Milanese (who prided themselves on their Catholicism and who were supported by the popes) later successfully resisted the attempts by their Spanish rulers to impose the Spanish Inquisition on them. Even in Spain itself, it was the sumptuous autos-da-fé, the ceremonial sentencings and executions of heretics, rather than the institution and its members that seem to have been popular. But most Spaniards never seem to have understood the horror and revulsion that this institution aroused in the rest of Europe. britannica.com. By the way, only the conversos were subject to the Inquisition, practicing Jews (about 170,000) suffered expulsion. That is a terrible enough thing, but not extermination, and not genocide........