#inquisitions

By almost 20 million! 

Have a hard number before I get into context and quotations. From 1540-1700, Contreras and Henningsen (cited below) calculate the number of executions of the Spanish Inquisition to be 826. 

Secondly, a quick note of context: 

The inquisitions can be categorized into two eras.

Medieval or papal. Started in 1230′s, mostly concerned the Albigensians in Southern France, although there were some tribunals elsewhere in Europe. 

Modern. Started around the 15th century, and lasted for several centuries, with greatly varying intensity. The primary nations involved were Spain, Italy, and Portugal. 

Each era, and each country, had its quirks and phases. Italy, for example, was the most obsessed with types of witchcraft. Spain was the inquisition least under papal/Church control, and was very concerned about Jews and conversos. 

On to the fun! Here are several things to consider when you hear claims like this: 

Fordham University’s Medieval Sourcebook speculates that the estimated population of medieval (1340) France was 19 million. 

They also speculate populations of early modern (1450) Italy and Spain/Portugal are 7.3 million and 7 million, respectively. 

A popular estimate of the Black Death’s toll is 50 million lives.

So assuming these numbers are reasonable, there are literally not enough people in the relevant countries to justify that claim. Even if you look at the broadest date range possible, you’re still looking at 20m out of 33.3m people killed. That’s bonkers. And that’s saying its toll was over a third of the Black Death’s toll! Insane! 

Let’s look at some real numbers, or at the least best estimates based on extant records (which we’d have MORE of if Protestants hadn’t burned them): 

1) Albert Shannon, The Medieval Inquisition (1991)

“After a painstaking analysis of all available data Professor Dossat concludes that for the middle of the thirteenth century only one out of every hundred heretics sentenced by the Inquisition was abandoned to the secular power, while between ten and twelve percent received prison sentences. Further, the Inquisitors reduced sentences to lesser penances and commuted others. Indeed on occasion they reduced the sentences of even the relapsed heretics to the wearing of crosses. It becomes quite obvious, then, that the number thought to have been sent to the stake must be considerably reduced.” 

2) E. William Monter and John Tedeschi, “Toward a Statistical Profile of the Italian Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries”. The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods (1986)

“Despite popular notions to the contrary, only a very small percentage of cases ended with capital punishment…In his studies of the Friuli witchcraft trials, Carlo Ginzburg encountered neither the use of torture in the proceedings nor a single execution; in fact, only rarely was a case brought to a conclusion.”

3) Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen (transl. by Anne Born), “Forty-four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540-1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank”. The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods (1986)

Second, these summaries demonstrate that relatively few people were executed by the Spanish Inquisition after 1540; a single tribunal (Valencia) killed almost as many people during its first fifty years as the entire group of twenty did over the next century and a half. [43]

[FOOTNOTE 43] From 1484 to 1530 the inquisition of Valencia executed 754 persons, or 32 percent of the 2,354 people tried in this period.

I”m not sure I’m confident enough to give an exact number, but you can see from the numbers we’re dealing with - 826, 754, less than 10 per cent, long stretches with no executions at all - that we’re barely in the “thousands” category. “Tens of thousands” is outrageous; “millions” is, frankly, unhinged. 

uptown girl: what’s your favourite book trope?

dunno that this is a trope per se, but. you know when they just casually slip in some gay romance on the side? when it’s not a love story and it’s not ‘and he realized he was GAY’ but it’s just two characters who were friends happening to become romantically involved alongside the rest of the plot? fucking love that shit.

living on a prayer: which was the song of your childhood?

red and black. yes from les mis.

like a virgin: share a controversial opinion. 

bbc sherlock is a good show and s4 will be validated, fuck off.

It only took me a year and a half, but I finally finished my very first playthrough of Inquisitions. I still need to run through Tresspasser though. I tried to run through it last night, but it doesn’t like my mods. I’m hoping it’s just the beardless Blackwall mod causing it, which I can live without for now.