The Spanish Inquisition was a horrific use of torture that scared the populace just so that the European people would stop deserting the catholic faith during the late 1400s all the way until the early 1800s. The tortures that the Catholic Church implemented on deserters of the faith and those that were implemented by King Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain were devastating to the morale of the European people. The methods were often unfair and could be considered “over kill” to the crimes the defendant had committed. (How the Spanish Inquisition Worked, by Shanna Freeman)
The goals of the Spanish inquisition were to counter the heresy in Spain. In the year 1478 Pope Sixtus IV issued a law that allowed all Catholic Monarchs to name inquisitors …show more content…
The decision to use brutal torture methods came about because the church was afraid that imprisonment or banishment would not get their message across clear enough. The varieties of tools that the Inquisitors had at their disposal were truly terrifying. One example of a horrific torture device was simply called the “Pear”, this device was placed in an orifice on the body (nose, ear, mouth, eye, etc...). After the device was inserted a screw would be turned which opened up the whole like pliers, ripping apart the flesh and often causing fatal bleeding. The article “Spanish Inquisition Torture Devices” by the website GlobeRover states that “Many torture devices were not used to extract confessions from the Inquisition’s victims, they were simply methods of a slow and painful death…(Lines 9-10),” this statement explains how the Inquisitors strayed away from their initial goal set by the Pope to slow the desertion of the church. Another widely used Torture method was much more brutal and savage, the victim would be tied to a wooden cross and the inquisitor would break the bones in the legs and their arms with a large hammer or metal bar. Even though this had a huge impact on the morale of the former Jewish population and Marranos, it did not satisfy the thirst for blood of the common folk who viewed this as their daily entertainment. Perhaps the slowest method of this so called
The goals of the Spanish inquisition were to counter the heresy in Spain. In the year 1478 Pope Sixtus IV issued a law that allowed all Catholic Monarchs to name inquisitors …show more content…
The decision to use brutal torture methods came about because the church was afraid that imprisonment or banishment would not get their message across clear enough. The varieties of tools that the Inquisitors had at their disposal were truly terrifying. One example of a horrific torture device was simply called the “Pear”, this device was placed in an orifice on the body (nose, ear, mouth, eye, etc...). After the device was inserted a screw would be turned which opened up the whole like pliers, ripping apart the flesh and often causing fatal bleeding. The article “Spanish Inquisition Torture Devices” by the website GlobeRover states that “Many torture devices were not used to extract confessions from the Inquisition’s victims, they were simply methods of a slow and painful death…(Lines 9-10),” this statement explains how the Inquisitors strayed away from their initial goal set by the Pope to slow the desertion of the church. Another widely used Torture method was much more brutal and savage, the victim would be tied to a wooden cross and the inquisitor would break the bones in the legs and their arms with a large hammer or metal bar. Even though this had a huge impact on the morale of the former Jewish population and Marranos, it did not satisfy the thirst for blood of the common folk who viewed this as their daily entertainment. Perhaps the slowest method of this so called