Accurate Inquisition Statistics?

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Does anyone know of any valid websites which accurately account for the number of individuals killed during the Inquisitions?

Catholic Answers has a tract which denies the claim: “95 million people died during the Inquisition”, but no where states what the actual statistic was.
 
Borromeo, who oversaw the volume, said that while there were some 125,000 trials of suspected heretics in Spain, researchers found that about 1 percent of the defendants were executed.
In Portugal, 5.7 percent of the more than 13,000 people tried before church tribunals in the 16th and early 17th century were condemned to death, he said. In many cases, courts ordered mannequins to be burned when the condemned escaped capture.
Many of the executions during the centuries spanned by the Inquisition were carried out by non-church tribunals — including witch hunts in Protestant countries, Borromeo said.
msnbc.msn.com/id/5218373/
 
Does anyone know of any valid websites which accurately account for the number of individuals killed during the Inquisitions?

Catholic Answers has a tract which denies the claim: “95 million people died during the Inquisition”, but no where states what the actual statistic was.
First, even one death is wrong. I find number of deaths argument totally irrelevant. One abortion does not make abortion any less evil than a thousand abortions.

Second, when something is wrong there should be no excuses for it. Just admit you were wrong and stop the evil practice.

Third, Calvin and Zwingli did the same thing to heretics. Luther, if he did not do it, at a minimum approved the practice. The only difference was that the Catholics prefered to fry 'em while the reformed drowned them.

Fourth, if someone or an organization has repented and stopped an evil practice, it is my duty as a Christian to forgive and not harp on it.

The best Catholic response to the inquisition would be “yes we did it, we were wrong, and we don’t do it any more (and oh BTW the reformed did it also)”.
 
First, even one death is wrong. I find number of deaths argument totally irrelevant. One abortion does not make abortion any less evil than a thousand abortions.
In one sense, I understand your sentiment. On the other hand, quoting numbers can signify the degree of atrocity committed.

6 million deaths in a concentration camp is grotesque–even if one death at the hand of a Nazi is significant.
 
First, even one death is wrong. I find number of deaths argument totally irrelevant. One abortion does not make abortion any less evil than a thousand abortions.
I agree with you in general: if one person was unjustly condemned, that is a travesty of justice and should be decried.

However, the point here is in not trying to excuse any abuses that did occur (as the CA tract points out), but to correct the wild rhetoric that is often associated with crass anti-Catholicism. Professional anti-Catholics make a lot of hay by exagerating and misrepresenting Catholic atrocities (while conveniently staying mum on those commited by Protestants). The truth is better served by presenting the facts. Instructing the ignorant is still one of the Spiritual Acts of Mercy.
 
My own article on Dave Hunt covers the Spanish Inquisition. A reasonable figure is about 5000-6000 put to death for the entire 350 year history. About 2000 occurred during the early years under Torquemada.

There are also the separate Medieval (e.g. Albigenses) and Roman (e.g. Galileo) inquisitions.

Phil P
 
Mozart-250, you wrote…
The best Catholic response to the inquisition would be “yes we did it, we were wrong, and we don’t do it any more (and oh BTW the reformed did it also)”.
You’re right! And I have talked to many Catholics teachers and pastors who have said exactly that. Most Catholics are ashamed of what happened during the inquisition.

And you’re also right that the protestants have done it too! In Zurich, Zwingli used the civil authorities to banish several “anabaptists” who were trying to make converts during a meeting in the town square. And there are many other accounts.

But, as the inquisition was used as a general authority to quell ANY idea oppositional to the Catholic teaching… and protestants, humanists, and many other religions were targetted… the “Anabaptists” ended up being the primary targets for persecution and indictation.

As PhilVas mentioned, the Albigenses were targeted (who were “anabaptists”, along with the Donatists, Waldensians, Paulicians, and many others. These groups of “nonCatholics” were around long before any Protestant Reformation, and their theology matched almost identically with the “Baptists” of today.

BTW: the name “Baptist” is a shortened version of the scornful name “anabaptist”. We call ourselves Baptists today only because that is what we have been known as. We would rather call ourselves “baptized believers”.

With all that said though… The Catholic Church still endorses the Inquisition and the persecution of heretics. I have proven that statement in an article I have written called…

“Catholic Persecution” Proof that the Catholic Doctrine and Canon Law Justifies the persecution of heretics.

John
www.gideonsword.net
 
As PhilVas mentioned, the Albigenses were targeted (who were “anabaptists”, along with the Donatists, Waldensians, Paulicians, and many others. These groups of “nonCatholics” were around long before any Protestant Reformation, and their theology matched almost identically with the “Baptists” of today.
You might want to read PhilVaz’s other article on whether the Albigenses were Anabaptists(modern baptists claim the Albigenses as their descendands. This is a gross misrepresentation of history.)
BTW: the name “Baptist” is a shortened version of the scornful name “anabaptist”. We call ourselves Baptists today only because that is what we have been known as. We would rather call ourselves “baptized believers”.
I am guessing you are one of the landmark baptists that claim a connection to the early church through the albigences, waldenses, and other heretics. Please do a little studying and you will see that those who were called ‘anabaptist’ before the reformation have no connection to the baptists. Baptists date back to the sixteenth century, and no earlier.
 
Catholic Answers has a tract which denies the claim: “95 million people died during the Inquisition”, but no where states what the actual statistic was.
This has been dismissed as an erroneous figure. If it were true, then virtually the entire population of Europe would have been wiped out.
 
This has been dismissed as an erroneous figure. If it were true, then virtually the entire population of Europe would have been wiped out.
Just to put the absurdity of the 95 million figure in perspective, the Black Plague killed 25 million people in Europe, and it changed European history forever, and the evidence for these figures is massive. Are we to believe that the Inquisition killed 4 times as many people with no evidence that it ever happened? For nobody, not one person, can point to legitimate historical evidence for a figure of 95 million, or 100 million, or 60 million, or any of the other preposterous figures that anti-Catholics throw around.
 
BibleApologist << As PhilVas mentioned, the Albigenses were targeted (who were “anabaptists”, along with the Donatists, Waldensians, Paulicians, and many others). These groups of “nonCatholics” were around long before any Protestant Reformation, and their theology matched almost identically with the “Baptists” of today. >>

The Albigenses, Donatists, Waldenses, Paulicians were not baptist nor anabaptist. The Waldenses were explicitly Catholic. The Albigenses denied the Incarnation so they were explicitly non-Christian. The Anabaptists were not the first baptists either. Read baptist historian James Edward McGoldrick’s chapter on them in Baptist Successionism: A Crucial Question in Baptist History (The American Theological Library Association and The Scarecrow Press, 1994)

“Although no reputable Church historians have ever affirmed the belief that Baptists can trace their lineage through medieval and ancient sects ultimately to the New Testament, that point of view enjoys a large following nevertheless. It appears that scholars aware of this claim have deemed it unworthy of their attention, which may account for the persistence and popularity of Baptist successionism as a doctrine as well as an interpretation of church history. Aside from occasional articles and booklets that reject this teaching, no one has published a refutation in a systematic, documented format. The present work is an effort to supply this need so that Baptists may have a thorough analysis of successionism, together with a reliable account of their origins as a Protestant religious body.” (McGoldrick, preface page iv)

“It is the purpose of this book to show that, although free church groups in ancient and medieval times sometimes promoted doctrines and practices agreeable to modern Baptists, when judged by standards now acknowledged as baptistic, not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist church. Baptists arose in the seventeenth century in Holland and England. They are Protestants, heirs of the Reformers.” (ibid, page 2)

There are many differences between the 16th century radical anabaptists attacked by Luther and Calvin, and the original baptists of the early 17th century (early 1600s). The latter did not arise from the former, according to McGoldrick.

Note Waldo’s confession of faith in the article below. The confession affirms the Trinity, that Mary is ever-Virgin, that the Church is One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, and outside that Church there is no salvation, that even sinful priests can rightly administer the sacraments, that alms, sacrifice, and good works can assist those who die, that faith without works is dead, etc. (McGoldrick citing Giorgio Tourn, The Waldensians : The First 800 Years tr. C.P. Merlino, pages 13-14).

Although some of them indeed later joined the Protestant Reformation, McGoldrick concludes: “Neither Waldo nor his early disciples could have subscribed to any historic Baptist confession of faith, and those doctrines that are peculiarly baptistic would have been unacceptable to Waldenses in any period of their history. Although successionists have hailed them as Baptists, medieval Waldenses were quite similar to the Catholic Franciscans, those of the Reformation were akin to Presbyterians, and those of today have become Methodists.”

Who Were the Waldenses?

Phil P
 
First, to answer Jimmy,

No, I am not a Landmark Baptist, although I do agree with Proverbs 22:28.

You stated…
Please do a little studying and you will see that those who were called ‘anabaptist’ before the reformation have no connection to the baptists. Baptists date back to the sixteenth century, and no earlier.
Are you referring to The Vale Olchan, The Bohemians of the Hercynian Forest, Balthasar Hubmaier, Menno Simons, The Vaudois, Barthelemy Hector, Felix Manz (evidence of Baptist distinctives in 1521 but martyred in 1527 for not joining Zwingli’s protestantism), or Joan Boucher? None of which were Protestants, nor had they been influenced with the reformation, but had their background in the several Anabaptist groups which existed before the 16th century.

What about this from the president of the Council of Trent in the early 16th century…
“Were it not that the Baptists have been grievously tormented and cut off with the knife during the past twelve hundred years, they would swarm in greater number than all the Reformers.” (Hosius, Letters, Apua Opera, pp. 112, 113) Cardinal Hosius (Catholic; President of the Council of Trent) 1524
Or a Protestant (not Baptist) historian…
“Before the rise of Luther and Calvin, there lay concealed in almost all the countries of Europe, particularly in Bohemia, Monrovia, Switzerland, and Germany, many persons who adhered tenaciously to the doctrine, etc., which is the true source of all the peculiarities that are to be found in the religious doctrine and discipline of the Anabaptists.” (Mosheim’s History of the Anabaptists, pp. 490, 491) Mosheim (Lutheran)
But of course no one is denying that the Anabaptists have existed before the 16th century. The question is… is there a connection between the Baptists of today, and the Anabaptists of yester-century.

John
www.gideonsword.net
 
No-one can deny (because of historical proof) that the first Church called “Baptist” was that which Thomas Hellwys pastored in England .(organized 1611). But, there is a very important element that seems to be missed when discussing Baptist Church history. An element that Cardinal Hosius, and Mosheim seemed to retain in their historicity.

Baptists differ from Catholics in some major areas as to how we view our history.
  1. Catholics view their existence as a continual existence through the Authoritative heirarchy of Popes and Bishops. Protestants refer back to Rome for their history. But, Baptists have no such continual existence can be traced because one distinctive of a “Baptist” is “independent Churches”. There is no appointment of churches or parishes, or succession of Bishops because each individual church exists independently with Christ as their Head, and refer to the doctrinal foundation of the 12 Apostles.
  2. Catholics, although they don’t deny the existence of “cafeteria Catholics”, rely on the historical adherance to the tenets of the Catholic Church, and the existence of those tenets to validate their historicity. Baptists on the other hand, view their historical roots as those who are identifiable by certain distinctives.

    a. Independent Churches
    b. Regenerate Church Membership
    c. Believers Baptism
    d. Baptism by immersion (an illustration of the new birth)
    e. Independent soul liberty
It seems that McGoldrick understands this to be the case, as these are the points of his arguments
“It is the purpose of this book to show that, although free church groups in ancient and medieval times sometimes promoted doctrines and practices agreeable to modern Baptists, when judged by standards now acknowledged as baptistic, not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist church. Baptists arose in the seventeenth century in Holland and England. They are Protestants, heirs of the Reformers.” (ibid, page 2)
McGoldrick is asserting that certain groups of Anabaptists did have certain Baptismic distinctives, and “sometimes promoted doctrines and standards agreeable to modern Baptists”, but “not one of them merits recognition as a Baptist Church”, because they did not agree completely on all points of doctrine I suspect. But then PhilVac strays from McGoldrick’s argument to state…
There are many differences between the 16th century radical anabaptists attacked by Luther and Calvin, and the original baptists of the early 17th century (early 1600s).
The argument isn’t that there were differences… the argument lies in whether or not these so-called heretical Anabaptist groups embraced the distinctives listed above.
  1. Catholics have taken great care to retain their history and preserve it intact to establish validity as “Christian”. Baptists (in distinctive), have not kept stringent records througout the past 2000 years because our “Christianity” is validated biblically. Though some of those anabaptist groups did in fact keep some records and historical accounts, because of the Catholic Church’s incessent struggle to be validated as “Christians” on this earth… they not only attempted to destroy the people but also the records. such as the Paulicians in Armenia. Their book *“The Key of Truth”, * remains as a testimony to the fact they were in fact Baptist in distinctives as early as 660 AD.
John
www.gideonsword.net
 
It is amazing how baptists and seventh day adventists will believe anything they read on the internet. Like this quote which you gave;

“Were it not that the Baptists have been grievously tormented and cut off with the knife during the past twelve hundred years, they would swarm in greater number than all the Reformers.” (Hosius, Letters, Apua Opera, pp. 112, 113) Cardinal Hosius (Catholic; President of the Council of Trent) 1524

The funny thing about this quote is that it doae not exist. The complete writings of Cardinal Hosius have been searched and that is not present in them. Here is a response to this quote.

angelfire.com/ms/seanie/forgeries/hosius.html
Or a Protestant (not Baptist) historian…
Where does that quote indicate that the anabaptists of the 12th century have any connection to the baptists of today? Anabaptist just means re-baptizers.
Baptists (in distinctive), have not kept stringent records througout the past 2000 years because our “Christianity” is validated biblically.
Do you honestly believe that? That takes a complete denial of rational thinking and it takes a great deal of blind faith. And this is reason to think that baptists are controled by satan.
  1. Catholics view their existence as a continual existence through the Authoritative heirarchy of Popes and Bishops. Protestants refer back to Rome for their history. But, Baptists have no such continual existence can be traced because one distinctive of a “Baptist” is “independent Churches”. There is no appointment of churches or parishes, or succession of Bishops because each individual church exists independently with Christ as their Head, and refer to the doctrinal foundation of the 12 Apostles.
So aparently the apostles couldn’t have been baptists since none of the individual churches were seperate from them.
 
95 million!!! LOL!

Talk about spinning statistics!

Yes. 95 million people probably died “during” the inquisition, but only a few thousand died due to the Inquisition.
 
Mozart-250, you wrote…

As PhilVas mentioned, the Albigenses were targeted (who were “anabaptists”, along with the Donatists, Waldensians, Paulicians, and many others. These groups of “nonCatholics” were around long before any Protestant Reformation, and their theology matched almost identically with the “Baptists” of today.
The Paulicians and Albigensians were in no way similar to the Baptists of today. They were Manichaean Dualists who believed that the earth (and the Old Testament) had been created by the counter-God Satan. You are so way-off on this one it is unbelievable!

The Donatists and Waldensians were super-rigorists who held to catholic beliefs such as salvation by Faith and Works. The Donatists were actually super-Catholics who held priesthood in a higher state.
With all that said though… The Catholic Church still endorses the Inquisition and the persecution of heretics. I have proven that statement in an article I have written called…
"
As far as the rubbish that the Inquisition killed “millions” of people this is black propaganda.

Read books like The Spanish Inquisition by Kamen, and other genuine scholarly works, which reveals that at the most, over four centuries of operation, the total inquisition deaths ran into the low thousands, most of these being Moriscos killed under Torquemada in the 15th century. A time when it was condemned by Pope Sixtus. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries fewer people were condemned to death by the Inquisition acroos Europe and the Americas than by the average civil court in a small town in the same period.

Genuine information on the Inquisitions is available here…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition
 
The Paulicians and Albigensians were in no way similar to the Baptists of today. They were Manichaean Dualists who believed that the earth (and the Old Testament) had been created by the counter-God Satan. You are so way-off on this one it is unbelievable!
That is why I mentioned “The Key of Truth”, a book that proved the Paulicians of 660 were not Manichaeans but held beliefs very similar to Baptists of today.

And you pretty much missed my point… even if they were Manichaeans it really doesn’t matter, they were an independent church such as we are, and they had the liberty to believe according to their conscience.

I don’t agree with Manichaeism, and if a Manichaeist were with me right now I would try to convince him otherwise… But as long as those distinctives I mentioned in my previous post were held to he would still be called a Baptist.

Catholics always try to bring up the issue that Baptist Churches believe differently on certain issues. I don’t understand why such a weak argument is constantly being used… Rather than saying there are 10,000 different denominations among Baptists (because there are 10 - 15,000 Independent Baptist Churches in America), why don’t you claim there are 500,000, I mean, we do have Independent Soul Liberty as individuals… every Baptist in the world could be considered their own denomination!

If you’re going to claim that, I guess that means there are 1.2 Billion denominations of Catholics. You cannot claim that every single Catholic believes exactly the same. That is obvious from reading these forums, and listening to Catholic Answers Live.

If you’re argument really stands, and if they don’t submit to EVERY tenet of the Catholic Church they can’t really be called Catholic can they? Then the Catholic Church really doesn’t have more adherants than Islam…

John
www.gideonsword.net
 
It is amazing how baptists and seventh day adventists will believe anything they read on the internet. Like this quote which you gave;
“Were it not that the Baptists have been grievously tormented and cut off with the knife during the past twelve hundred years, they would swarm in greater number than all the Reformers.” (Hosius, Letters, Apua Opera, pp. 112, 113) Cardinal Hosius (Catholic; President of the Council of Trent) 1524
The funny thing about this quote is that it doae not exist. The complete writings of Cardinal Hosius have been searched and that is not present in them. Here is a response to this quote.
So you reference some guy… from an internet website? Why should I believe him rather than J.M. Carroll? Do you have any information on Sean Hyland… can you verify he can interpret latin?

This article could very well contain lies, or discursive truths to discredit the Baptists like the article I have refuted and proven untruthful here. "Are Catholics Born Again".

John
www.gideonsword.net
 
So you reference some guy… from an internet website? Why should I believe him rather than J.M. Carroll? Do you have any information on Sean Hyland… can you verify he can interpret latin?

This article could very well contain lies, or discursive truths to discredit the Baptists like the article I have refuted and proven untruthful here. "Are Catholics Born Again".

John
www.gideonsword.net
My source is just as credible as your source. Until I see the actual source for this quote I will trust mine since mine fits the rest of the history of Christianity rather than some conspiracy that has no support.

Your article is wrong from the very beginning.
The “transformation” that this author is referring to is understood by Catholic teachers to be a metaphorical transformation, this is not a true transformation.
learn what Catholics teach about baptism.
The purpose of this article is two-fold; first, to convince non-Catholics (evangelicals) who truly are born-again, that Catholics also experience the “new birth”, but by a different system of events. Secondly, this article purposes to convince Catholics that they truly did experience a “new-birth”, when in fact what they experienced at their baptism and confirmation was nothing (spiritually).
Your conspiracy theories are rediculous.

I could quote you and then say. ‘the point of this statement is to convince you that he is actually a Christian when he is really a satanist.’ I might use that in the future in some of my posts.
 
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