50 million is an absolutely bogus and ridiculous figure, the stuff of wild Anti-Catholic polemics with no basis in actual history.
"That would mean that the Church killed as many people as the Black Death (Bubonic Plague), which wiped out about a third to half the population. I replied: “Please tell me the name of reputable historians who assert such an absolutely ridiculous figure.”
He said that he knew of an internet article that he couldn't locate, by one David A. Plaisted: who turned out to be a professor of computer science, not an academic historian at all. But when pressed, my fiend offered no actual historian to back up his assertion and quickly descended (as so often in these sorts of “discussions”) to mere insults and evasive tactics. Before I was banned from his site, I produced for him – upon being challenged to do so – two (non-Catholic) professors of history with vastly different opinions.
Edward Peters, from the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Inquisition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). Henry Kamen, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, wrote The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
These two books are in the forefront of an emerging, very different perspective on the Inquisitions: an understanding that they were exponentially less inclined to issue death penalties than had previously been commonly assumed, and also quite different in character and even essence than the longstanding anti-Catholic stereotypes would have us believe.
On page 87 of his book, Dr. Peters states: “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.”
Likewise, Dr. Kamen states in his book: Taking into account all the tribunals of Spain up to about 1530, it is unlikely that more than two thousand people were executed for heresy by the Inquisition. (p. 60)
. . . it is clear that for most of its existence that Inquisition was far from being a juggernaut of death either in intention or in capability. . . . it would seem that during the 16th and 17th centuries fewer than three people a year were executed in the whole of the Spanish monarchy from Sicily to Peru, certainly a lower rate than in any provincial court of justice in Spain or anywhere else in Europe. (p. 203)"
Taken from: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/were-50-million-people-really-killed-in-the-inquisition God Bless.
"That would mean that the Church killed as many people as the Black Death (Bubonic Plague), which wiped out about a third to half the population. I replied: “Please tell me the name of reputable historians who assert such an absolutely ridiculous figure.”
He said that he knew of an internet article that he couldn't locate, by one David A. Plaisted: who turned out to be a professor of computer science, not an academic historian at all. But when pressed, my fiend offered no actual historian to back up his assertion and quickly descended (as so often in these sorts of “discussions”) to mere insults and evasive tactics. Before I was banned from his site, I produced for him – upon being challenged to do so – two (non-Catholic) professors of history with vastly different opinions.
Edward Peters, from the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of Inquisition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). Henry Kamen, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, wrote The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
These two books are in the forefront of an emerging, very different perspective on the Inquisitions: an understanding that they were exponentially less inclined to issue death penalties than had previously been commonly assumed, and also quite different in character and even essence than the longstanding anti-Catholic stereotypes would have us believe.
On page 87 of his book, Dr. Peters states: “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.”
Likewise, Dr. Kamen states in his book: Taking into account all the tribunals of Spain up to about 1530, it is unlikely that more than two thousand people were executed for heresy by the Inquisition. (p. 60)
. . . it is clear that for most of its existence that Inquisition was far from being a juggernaut of death either in intention or in capability. . . . it would seem that during the 16th and 17th centuries fewer than three people a year were executed in the whole of the Spanish monarchy from Sicily to Peru, certainly a lower rate than in any provincial court of justice in Spain or anywhere else in Europe. (p. 203)"
Taken from: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/were-50-million-people-really-killed-in-the-inquisition God Bless.
