On Wed, 16 Jun 2004, the Guardian was quoted as saying
> Historians say Inquisition wasn't that bad
This reads like an Onion parody of recent US government statements on our torture policy:
> According to the documents from Vatican archives relating to the trials
> of Jews, Muslims, Cathars, witches, scientists and other non-Catholics
> in Europe between the 13th and the 19th centuries, the number actually
> killed or tortured into confession during the Inquisition was far fewer
> than previously thought.
>
> Estimates of the number killed by the Spanish Inquisition, which Sixtus IV
> authorised in a papal bull in 1478, have ranged from 30,000 to 300,000.
> Some historians are convinced that millions died.
>
> But . . . other experts told journalists at the Vatican yesterday that
> many of the thousands of executions conventionally attributed to the
> church were in fact carried out by non-church tribunals.
Phew!
Are non-church tribunals like "other government agencies" (OGA, the euphemism for the CIA)? Or is more a subcontracting kind of thing?
> What the church initiated as a strictly regulated process, in which
> torture was allowed for only 15 minutes and in the presence of a doctor
Based on what, a 15th century justice department memo?
> got out of hand when other bodies were involved.
See how prone people are to jump from unsanctioned cases of excess to thinking there's a policy? It's just an unfortunate fact of human nature.
> For centuries people were burned at the stake, stretched to death or
> otherwise tortured for failing to be Roman Catholic. But, if research
> released by the Vatican is right, the Inquisition was not as bad as one
> might think.
And see? According to "research released by the White House," things are vastly overblown today as well. History repeats itself.
> The church does not deny its responsibility for atrocities committed by
> Catholics in its name. In 2000 the Pope publicly apologised for the
> unnecessary "violence" used.
>
> But he is not keen to be made to repent for sins the Vatican can prove
> it did not commit.
Bush feels exactly the same way. People just keep refusing to accept the proof they are offered -- in official documents, no less. It's just perverse on our part.
Michael