Roland Routier

The Tribunal of the Office of the Holy Inquisition operated in Spain under a papal Bull. When heated with a suspect inside, the shrieks of the victim made the Bull bellow amusingly
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I have been relieved to discover in the museum dedicated to the practice that the Spanish Inquisition and the Catholic Church were not as bad as we thought. It was all the fault of the secular authorities if there was any nastiness.
Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile persuaded the Pope Sixtus IV to establish a Tribunal in Spain, commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition. Their aim was to create religious unity and weaken local political authorities and family alliances in the newly united Aragon and Castile.
Another motive was money. The Church made a profit by confiscating property from the accused in order to fund the administration of the Tribunals. The government made a profit by confiscating what was left of their property when found guilty of heresy. Historians speculate that the monarchy convinced Pope Sixtus IV to allow the inquisition by threatening to remove Spanish troops from Rome, where they were needed to prevent an attack by Turkey.
The museum is full of the standard methods of interrogation of the time, invented to inflict the maximum amount of pain without spilling blood which the Dominicans were expressly forbidden to do. Although mutilation was technically forbidden, Pope Alexander IV had decreed previously in 1256 that inquisitors could clear each other from any wrongdoing they might have done during torture sessions. Capital punishment did allow for burning at the stake, although the church kept its hands clean by allowing the secular authorities to carry out the sentence. In some cases, accused heretics who had died before their final sentencing had their corpses or bones dug up, burned and cast out.
In Spain we are told that most people who confessed, (which entailed dobbing in someone else,) were not killed. And most of them were not real Christians anyway. Many Sephardic Jews converted to Catholicism rather than lose their capital and right of residence. They were called marranos (Spanish for "pig",) and accused of secretly continuing to practice Judaism, so became targets of the Inquisition.
After the 'Reconquista' of Moorish Spain Muslim converts to Catholicism, called Moriscos (Spanish for "Moorish"), were targeted for the same reasons as Jewish converts. In the late 16th century, Protestants, mainly Lutherans, also became the target of the Inquisition.

I was inspired to build my own bonfire after my visit, and all the heretical prunings from the garden have now been saved for eternity.

CODA
In the end even Pope Sixtus IV was disgusted with the Spanish Inquisition: on 18th April 1482, wrote to the bishops of Spain:
"In Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca, and Catalonia the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls but by lust for wealth. Many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves, and other lower and even less proper persons, have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example, and causing disgust to many."

But he did not stop it.
The Office survives as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the FaithRead more