It is a part of church history one does not want to be made aware of.
No… it’s a very interesting party of history & is FAR more complex than people know.
It wasn’t just Church history… it was secular history too. The inquisition were called and the tribunals in place to protect people when they were accused of heresy.
Heresy was against CIVIL LAW in Europe. Even in England at this time, the official religion was the Church of England… others were persecuted or the civil authorities were suspicious of them.
In Spain, for example, after freeing the nation from Muslim rule in the south, Catholicism was eventually made the official religion of the Kingdom by the King & Queen. Non-Catholics had to either leave or faithfully convert. These converts (who were mostly of Jewish background) we called “Conversos.”
However, many lay people feared that many of the Conversos converted without faithfully converting and were secretly still practicing their old religion even though they were now Baptized & Confirmed Catholics. Even worse, these lay people felt that they were doing that to their baptized Catholic Children. Then, conspiracy theories started to grow that the Conversos were plotting against the King & Queen, which the King eventually bought into because he had a number of Conversos in the Spanish court.
Lynch mobs started breaking over fear of the Conversos, which lead to the Spanish Inquisition. The reason for the Inquisition was to stop the mob violence and determine if accused Conversos were really Catholic or not. If they were faking it, then the secular authorities would deal with them and issue punishment based on why the person was faking (aka: were they a threat to the Crown or just didn’t want to convert)
The Inquisition kept very detailed records and were the first courts in Europe to require a defense attorney and required that the accused be aware of their charges before their court date, so they could prepare a defense.
The Tribunals were so fair, that criminals, when arrested, would commit blasphemies after being arrested so they could be transferred to ecclesiastical courts instead of civil ones.
There are A LOT historians (even atheists) who are discovering the truth about the Inquisitions, Crusades, etc thanks to computerized searching of charters & court records.
We also have to keep in mind that the British and Spanish were at war with each other often during this time. So the British often used anti-Catholic propaganda (especially about the Inquisition) against the Spanish in an attempt to discredit them, because of their power in the New World, with other protestant nations and even with Catholic ones like France.
Remember anything the British (especially the British East India Company) could do to weaken the Spanish Crown was a win for British and the EIC in the New World.