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I suspect you are getting into some myth-making yourself here. The inquisition was not originally focused on witch-hunting, it was focused on heretics - people challenging or denying the the doctrines of the Church. Bernardo Gui and The Name of the Rose is 14th century, while the large scale witch-hunts only started in the 15th century with the publishing of "Malleus Maleficarum".

> The truth is that Inquisition aim was exactly opposite: to stop chasing and burning innocent woman (and man) by all kind of petty lords and civil "courts" who used witchcraft accusation to get rid of opponents.

I suspect you made that up, given the anachronisms in your account. Do you have any legitimate source which confirm this narrative?

Bernard Gui was certainly an educated man, and he is described as as such in Name of The Rose. He also was responsible for a lot of torture and death, persecution of Judaism and so on. You can consider this "decent" or not pending on your personal values. The Name of the Rose Eco actually has a reasonable good treatment of the philosophy behind the heretic movement and the inquisition, despite the book being fiction.

You are right about the heretics part. But he has a point in the sense that the Catholic Church mostly fought against witch hunts, look

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonso_de_Salazar_Fr%C3%ADas

Alonso de Salazar Frías has been given the epithet "The Witches’ Advocate"[1] by historians, for his role in establishing the conviction, within the Spanish Inquisition, that accusations against supposed witches were more often rooted in dreams and fantasy than in reality, and the inquisitorial policy that witch accusations and confessions should only be given credence where there was firm, independent, corroborating evidence. He was probably the most influential figure in ensuring that those accused of witchcraft were generally not put to death in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spain. The Spanish Inquisition was one of the first institutions in Europe to rule against the death penalty for supposed witches. Its Instructions of 1614, which embodied Salazar's ideas, were influential throughout Catholic Europe.

> the Catholic Church mostly fought against witch hunts

You should probably read about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum. The Catholic church was the cause of the which hunts, despite the moderating voices existing inside the church.

> The truth is that Inquisition aim was exactly opposite: to stop chasing and burning innocent woman (and man) by all kind of petty lords and civil "courts" who used witchcraft accusation to get rid of opponents. This was done in the name of Catholic Church so Rome decided to do something about this and stop that practice by introduction of pretty modern standards of court proceedings - this way Inquisition was born.

This is really not true. Handling Witchcraft trials better had absolutely nothing to do with why the Inquisition was established. Its original and foremost job was to stomp out heretics (and later, in Spain, Muslims and Jews) in an organized and efficient way. If anything, it used torture more than had previously been common.

But yes, it established standard procedures that were much less arbitrary and gave some rights to the defendant.

> In addition the punishment for heresy was rarely death penalty (about 1,5% of cases), which is less than 5 thousand executions during several centuries of Inquisition activity.

The main reason was that the death penalty was only given to unrepentant or repeat offenders.

It wasn't that simple. The problem of the conversos was a major political problem. This didn't happen over night. Jews had occupied many high positions in Spain and following the ultimatum that Jews either convert or leave, the widespread belief among the populace that many of those converting were merely simulating conversion simply to remain in those high positions was a threat to social order and probably even an existential threat to a Spain just recovered from Islamic Moorish rule. The Inquisition set out to determine whether these claims were true in a process that was actually much more just than was the norm during that time period.

All of which was of no consolation to the people being imprisoned, tortured or burned to death.

> The main reason was that the death penalty was only given to unrepentant or repeat offenders.

And even then in their spiritual world view the auto-da-fé was a last ditch effort to persuade the condemned to repent. It gave the sinner a taste of the eternal fires awaiting them and time enough to make an act of perfect contrition and be saved from hell.

This part of pop culture is interesting in that it all started with vivid depictions of torture and murder mass printed by the protestant Dutch (the depictions were made up but taken as truth)

This cultural trait of the west has remained intact until today. Popular TV still reinforces these claims from time to time

Powerful propaganda, that was

Also known as the black legend

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend_(Spain)

Just to be absolutely clear: The inquisition absolutely did torture people and condemn heretics to be burned at the stake. This is certainly not a myth.

But protestants did use this a propaganda against the Catholic Church.

Less than 100 people were killed by the Inquisition in Spain, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Number_of_alleged_witches...

"Number of alleged witches and wizards" - I assume this does not include heretics and Jews/conversos?

What is the source for the numbers? The label "Early modern area" does not inspire confidence.

Those accused of heresy were sentenced at an auto de fe, Act of Faith. Clergyman would sit at the proceedings and would deliver the punishments. Punishments included confinement to dungeons, physical abuse and torture. Those who reconciled with the church were still punished and many had their property confiscated, as well as were banished from public life. Those who never confessed were burned at the stake without strangulation; those who did confess were strangled first. ... In the beginning, the Inquisition dealt only with Christian heretics and did not interfere with the affairs of Jews. However, disputes about Maimonides’ books (which addressed the synthesis of Judaism and other cultures) provided a pretext for harassing Jews and, in 1242, the Inquisition condemned the Talmud and burned thousands of volumes. In 1288, the first mass burning of Jews on the stake took place in France.

In 1481 the Inquisition started in Spain and ultimately surpassed the medieval Inquisition, in both scope and intensity. Conversos (Secret Jews) and New Christians were targeted because of their close relations to the Jewish community, many of whom were Jews in all but their name. ... First, they arrested Conversos and notable figures in Seville; in Seville more than 700 Conversos were burned at the stake and 5,000 repented. Tribunals were also opened in Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia. An Inquisition Tribunal was set up in Ciudad Real, where 100 Conversos were condemned, and it was moved to Toledo in 1485. Between 1486-1492, 25 auto de fes were held in Toledo, 467 people were burned at the stake and others were imprisoned.

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-inquisition

> Coming back to Umberto Eco writing, he described in "The Name of the Rose" Dominican friar Bernard Gui as some bloody, mindless, cruel madman, medieval version of Doctor Mengele. While the truth was exactly the opposite - he was a decent and educated man.

Education and cruelty are not in opposition. And decency toward some people or in some situation is not in opposition to cruelty toward other people. The same guy who was great diplomat and writer, could also convict 636 individuals of 940 counts of heresy. And that involved torturing quite a few people.

So even if he was more lenient then some other guys, if you are around the situation where he is torturing, he will come across as cruel, cause that is what he does.

>So even if he was more lenient then some other guys, if you are around the situation where he is torturing, he will come across as cruel, cause that is what he does.

That is applying our modern standards to historical figures more or less. We should view history through a contemporary lens for a better picture of the different driving factors and their effects.

> That is applying our modern standards to historical figures more or less. We should view history through a contemporary lens for a better picture of the different driving factors and their effects.

That is actually not. Through contemporary lens, the contemporary person being tortured or someone who is close to that person, is in fact perceiving you as cruel.

Factoring in writing and diplomacy done in other situations is literally applying different standard.

The contemporary view as in how the populace at the time viewed it, not the condemned person.

There are a lot of practices in our prison system today (both inside the US and in other industrialised nations) that some people find questionable, but much of the populace accept. This window is constantly moving over time.

But the books the whole thread is about are written from the point of view of "someone who is close to that tortured person". It if point of view of third party witness of inquisition, not from the point of view of diplomat.

And they did perceived that as cruel and had emotional reaction to what is happening.

Moreover, if you want to know what "populace thought" you cant just decide to ignore some people.

Inquisition meant still burning or torturing people to death - or threatening of doing so, if they continue to speak heresy, like "the earth moves around the sun".

(Galileo and the Inquisition)

Inquisition (which still exists today! only with no physical authority anymore) might be a bit missrepresented in their thirst for blood - but the harm they done over the centuries to free thinking and therefore advancement of science and technology and therefore progress of humanity as its whole - is something on its own validating their bad reputation.

Do you know Galileo received a pension from the church? Galileo had many admirers among the clergy, including the pope himself, yet by publishing a book he broke an earlier agreement on not teaching his theory and this wasn't taken lightly. A modern analogy would be to break an NDA.

Yes I know, that Galileo prefered the money and luxery(and de facto imprisonment) over death. How noble of the inquisition to offer him that.

And comparing that with breaking an NDA, well I don't know. I didn't know NDA's contain that.

If violating your NDA reveals a trade secret you can face prison, yes[1].

[1] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/california-trade-sec...

with the alternative of death at the stake?

No, but that's why it's an analogy (and a reasonable one) rather than an exact equivalence.

You really think it is a reasonable analogy to threaten someone with burning at the stake and jailing someone because of a trade secret?

Yes, it follows from the definition of analogy. Perhaps you are thinking of equivalence instead? In that case you are correct that the two are not equivalent.

> torturing people to death

No, the Spanish Inquisition strictly forbid torturing people to death (death only happened when people were condemned to it). There were, in fact, regulations that required to not provoke any bleeding (even just a drop) during the torture -you can cause severe damage without bleeding of course-, and the process had to stop if it happened. A person was dedicated to oversee the entire process and stop it in these cases.

What people often misses is that these tortures weren't anything special at the time. The right to not be tortured is quite modern. The Inquisition just took a look at what the existing institutions were doing, and imitated it (regulating the entire process in the way: there were only three types of torture methods allowed, for example)

The Inquisition wasn't an unified entity either - Galileo was condemned by the Roman Inquisition, but the Spanish Inquisition didn't have any problem with his theories and didn't forbid his books.

Sorry, but for me burning to death is torturing to death.

And I am aware, that the real inquisition was much more restrained, than their image - but it doesn't change anything for the better, of what they did.

They represented the highest authority in terms of what was allowed to be thought and said. And they did use tortue and execution to cement their authority. Basically killing scientists for doing science. And stopping people to become scientists in the first place, as everyone knew what happened to free thinking scientists. Rather work your field, peaseant - or pray your prayers low monk.

I cannot see anything positive in that institution.

That's false. More like confronting Catholicism, but even monks did science. How do you think cathedrals were built in Middle Ages? Weapons? Armory? Trebuchets? Astronomics to sail to "The Indians"?

Monks were very faith-obsessed but not ultimately dumb to power.

Also, the School of Salamanca (around Don Quixote era) was the roots of Humanism.

Did I say no science happened?

I said it was blocked a lot.

Because when every research that you do, has to align to the literal words of a big book, under the explicit threat of burning at the stake - it is surprising, how much progress was possible despite of it.

OFC, but it wasn't just an empire made of castles, churches and hamlets.

> Inquisition meant still burning or torturing people to death - or threatening of doing so, if they continue to speak heresy, like "the earth moves around the sun".

A perfect example of the tidy little "big bad Church vs. SCIENCE (tm)" fables that refuse to die. The first problem with your statement is that somehow heliocentrism is heretical. Show me where this contradicts dogma. You can't because it's not true. A moment of reflection should make it obvious that it is utterly irrelevant, from a theological perspective, whether the ball of burning gas revolves around the rock or the rock resolves around the burning ball of gas. To claim that because the Bible uses language that speaks of the sun rising and setting, it must mean that such trivialities are theologically important is as absurd as claiming that geocentrism is widespread today because we still use that language. This is phenomenological and descriptive language that is only used as an occasion to convey some other point, not a scientific explanation. Common sense is easily blinded by bigotry.

> (Galileo and the Inquisition)

This whole "affair" actually lasted decades and really had nothing to do with heliocentrism. Galileo had made political enemies and was known for his harassment and vicious remarks directed at people in power, who, btw, were slow to anger; it took decades for him to finally be put under...house arrest overlooking the Vatican gardens. Seems pretty mild esp. given the witch hunts taking place in Protestant northern Europe at the time.

> Inquisition (which still exists today! only with no physical authority anymore) might be a bit missrepresented in their thirst for blood - but the harm they done over the centuries to free thinking and therefore advancement of science and technology and therefore progress of humanity as its whole - is something on its own validating their bad reputation.

Not this again. Show me where the brave, good, noble men of SCIENCE (tm) were prevented from climbing the hills of PROGRESS (tm) by the big, bad, mean old Church? If you peer a little more closely at the stock examples (Bruno is one), you find nothing of the sort. You find no such trend. This is a historically illiterate trope that, frankly, is embarrassing.

The church did also ban the astronomical works by Copernicus and Kepler.

For reference, here's an excerpt of Galileo's Papal Condemnation of 1633:

> We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare that you, the said Galileo, by reason of the matters adduced in trial, and by you confessed as above, have rendered yourself in the judgment of this Holy Office vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine—which is false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures—that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west and that the Earth moves and is not the center of the world; and that an opinion may be held and defended as probably after it has been declared and defined to be contrary to the Holy Scripture; [...]

Man, reading this thread makes me feel like I'm on some pro-christian, fringe, conspiracy-theory subreddit. This is what HN has become? How weird.

Catholic thinkers have been building a revisionist conternarrative to the prevalent "age of reason" narrative. The counter narrative is that the Church was actually the ones promoting science, Galileo was just being an asshole, and the inquisition was really a fair and decent institution which only tortured lightly and only burned people when it was absolutely unavoidable.

But yeah, I am surprised how prevalent this thinking is here on HN.

I don't entirely understand how burning some people to death and torturing others was supposed to encourage the rest to behave in a more civilised way.

The Inquisition was the first attempt at having a fair trial in an age of summary, brutal executions

Only the church had the moral authority to step into the void used by kings and lords to have justice their way

Burning and torture did occur, but what is missing from pop culture is that it also happened in a greater scale in territories not controlled by the Inquisition

Also "popular" trials were worse than the Inquisition, far, far worse. Do you know these countries today where they kill you in a horrible way for just stealing a hen? Heh, that was nothing about what would happen to you in the Middle Ages and later. People is delusional, as if the common Medieval folk was any better than the ruling powers. Hint: it wasn't.

> The Inquisition was the first attempt at having a fair trial

Except where it wasn't. Philip IV of France specifically sanctioned torture to obtain specific confessions of defined types of heresy, in order to support his wish to deband the Templars, allowing him to sieze their land, gold and other assets. This was done in the name of the Inquisition. Later Pope Clement V tried to step in and moderate things somewhat. Many Templars recanted their earlier confessions.

It's a strong, clear message. And it worked even better in a time when the vast majority of people had nothing but their health and lives to lose.

The purpose the the inquisition was to combat heresy.

Sorry but describing Umberto Eco as a pop writer is simply hilarious.

[historical citation needed]

It's not for nothing that Torquemada was a synonym for cruelty long before Eco was even born. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_de_Torquemada

It's also inextricable from the "holy wars" between the Catholic Spanish monarchy, the Muslim states of Spain, and the Jewish population of Spain. The expulsion and forced conversion of Jews was a foreshadow of the Holocaust.

(oh hey, we can find Bernard Gui source material on the Internet! https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/bernardgui-inq.asp )

Religions used to be a lot less tolerant of each other and anti-judaism was a thing in Christianity all over Europe. Comparing the Holocaust to anything other than the Holocaust can only serve to downgrade the severity of the Holocaust

I think there is value in acknowledging that the holocaust wasn't an isolated event but has centuries of context. Multiple times the only thing saving us from a holocaust-like event was that we didn't have the technical means and infrastructure to do it.

That doesn't make the holocaust less bad, if anything it means we have to be even more vigilant to make sure it doesn't happen again

I think that the Holocaust can't be compared to any event in history because the cold blooded mass murder of innocent civilians, including women and children is unprecedented. It's my opinion of course. I tend to get uneasy when people compare the Holocaust with other events because more often than not they have political motives and using the Holocaust as a comparison only serves to attack the compared idea/group of people. This is very unfair to the victims of the Holocaust. I repeat, it's just my opinion

Heh. Ironically they were more witch huntings and killings outside Iberia than inside. Ask the protestants.

Also, read about Salamanca's School on humanism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salamanca_school

The persecutions of the inquisition described in Name of the Rose is against heretics, not witches.

The witch craze happened later, and was just as widespread in protestant countries.

Basque here. I can relate to Zugarramurdi's witch hunting case, but compared to protestant countries' cases, that's nothing.

I'm tired of propaganda.

On the heretics, that happened across Europe... and the damn whole world.

But as I said, for its age, the Inquisition was born as a grant seeking institution, not the reverse.

Do you want something worse than the Inquisition? Search for the village idiocy generated mobs and trials, and you'll be "amazed" on how "kind" and "lovely" was that.

> Search for the village idiocy generated mobs and trials, and you'll be "amazed" on how "kind" and "lovely" was that.

Er...are you asking me to google something? It is not clear what you are getting at.

I mean, the Inquisition sucked, but the mob/knight based "justice" was far, far worse.

Well, the Spanish Inquisition didn't need to make up "witches", they had real Jews to burn.

(And they were supremely effective - they expelled, converted, massacred or exterminated the entire Jewish population. And then killed every one of them if they dared to convert back.)

That happened the same across Europe and the Islamic world.

No it didn't. Jews were often discriminated against in various ways, but weren't generally forces to convert under pain of torture. The Spanish Jews fled to other countries.

The Kaiser Wilhelm Institite of Anthopology, Human Heredity and Eugenics is the place responsible for conducting the scientific racism used by the nazis to justify the holocaust.

At that place, they studied the work of American eugenicists, like the founding president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan. And they received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in New York.

> The expulsion and forced conversion of Jews was a foreshadow of the Holocaust.

That's quite a leap...and historically illiterate.

In the Middle Ages, the Jew was primarily a theological concept, not a biological or ethnic one. To be a Jew was to be someone who rejected Christ. In the New Testament, "the Jews" as described as those who called on Jesus to be crucified. Now, who are "the Jews"? After all, Jesus was a Jew. His mother, Mary, was a Jew as were the apostles (from whom we receive the gospels themselves) as well as the many Jews who became the first Christians. Obviously, "the Jews" refers to those who took the negative theological position. The moment you convert to Christianity is the moment you stop being a "Jew" in the theological sense. The Nazi concept of the Jew was entirely biological and racial. You couldn't stop being a Jew simply because you assimilated into some other culture or adopted a different religion.

Now w.r.t. the Church's historical position toward the Jews, I suggest you look at the papal bull Sicut Judaeis[0]. To quote the Wikipedia article:

  The bull forbade Christians, on pain of excommunication, from forcing Jews to convert, from harming them, from taking their property, from disturbing the celebration of their festivals, and from interfering with their cemeteries. [...] The Bull said that Jews should be treated equitably and justly, that their property rights should be protected, and that they should keep their own festivals and religious practices.

(Worth adding is that Christians were at times also at a "disadvantage" given the universality of Christianity. For example, Christians were forbidden from engaging in usurious transactions with anybody, while the Talmud only forbade Jews from doing so with other Jews: Gentiles were fair game.)

More about the history of toleration [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicut_Judaeis

[1] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14761a.htm

The forcible conversion of Jews in Spain was in fact one of the first points where Jews were treated as a racial rather than religious category. There's a bit of detail on this in the Wikipedia page for Limpieza de sangre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpieza_de_sangre

Some of this happened more towards the Renaissance than the middle ages, of course, but it certainly disproves this rosy and ahistorical view of the Spanish Inquisition.

> Now w.r.t. the Church's historical position toward the Jews, I suggest you look at the papal bull...

You could also look at what the Church actually did towards Jews, for example in Spain.

It is both hilarious and chilling that you justify the persecution of Jews with Christians being "disadvantaged" in comparison because they couldn't lend money at interest.

Indeed. The Inquisition was actually innovative in the sense that it made courts more fair. You have to view these things in historical context. The events that motivated the Spanish Inquisition were, of course, a complicated political matter, too, but people don't like complicated things when all they want is an indictment and heads to roll. Such is bigotry.

In general, these sorts of myths were often the product of anti-Catholic propaganda produced long after the events in question happened. Both Protestants and Enlightenment figures had a vested interest in spreading vicious lies about the Church and they did so gladly.