Citation Needed - The Spanish Inquisition

Episode Date: January 1, 2020

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control. It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition along with the Roman Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition. The "Spanish Inquisition" may be defined broadly, operating in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Kingdom of Naples,[citation needed] and all Spanish possessions in North, Central, and South America. According to modern estimates, around 150,000 were prosecuted for various offenses during the three-century duration of the Spanish Inquisition, out of which between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed (~2.7% of all cases). --- Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.

Tom folding a pizza in half doesn't make it a calzone. Okay, well then what does make it a calzone? Just order a calzone! Ordered a pizza? Fold it in. No, still nothing. Dunkin' again then. Guys, guys, what are you doing?

Why are you dunkin' no-end at pitch? Is that pitch? Oh, this? Well, this was inspired by this week's episode, but you were inspired by the Spanish Inquisition. Yeah, Tom, you know how we're always trying to figure out a gimmick to give us our first big break as a podcast? Nobody but you is doing that.

No, no, what? Just you, you're the one who's doing this. I figured out what is holding us back. No, yes, I'm glad someone said it. Finally, it's, I mean, it's here. No, yes, I'm glad someone said it finally. It's, I mean, it's here. No, no, we should stop. It's that we're not Christians. Think about it.

Dan Carlin, Christian, I reglass, Christian. It's like the least Christian person ever. Anyways, Keith, Keith was sold right away and it was my idea, so all we had to do was figure out Noah. Really, Heath, Eli said we get crackers. And I mean, you do get crackers. And we do. Yeah, go ahead.

No, no, wait, wait, wait. I'm confused. Why are you letting them torture you Noah? Like, like why like this? Why don't you just like yell at them or something? Oh, dude, this is the first distraction I've had from wanting to say, I'm like three weeks.

Now hurry up and dunk me guys, I'm Jonesin'. Okay, Max, the moment's gonna be so exciting. I can't get to toad you. I wanna go next. I got next. To dunk or be dunked. Yup. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. The podcast we choose to subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend

we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm Cecil and I'll be introducing the Ministry of Silly Walks tonight. First up, a master of the fall shuffle and a guy who hates ancient Rome. Eli and Tom. How else was I going to convince people that wasn't Kaiser Soce, Cecil? Thank you. Ancient Roman never met with a good reception. Also with us two fellows who love the chill out and smoke a jaunt

Heathen Noah That's just how I stroll see so Join I get it. We're still doing it. We're we quite the pair Grin nation sorry I had to Sorry, I had to go last. Somebody had to go last. I'm not going to work. I'm not going to work. We're taking. Hey, non patrons, you have your marching orders.

Get over to Patreon and join up with those bad asses that give us funding to Trudge on. We'll tell you how at the end of the show. And with that, tell us Eli, what person, place, thing, concept, phenomenon, or event. We'll be talking about today. Today we'll be talking about the Spanish Inquisition. And Noah, you watched all the episodes of Flying Circus to get ready for this.

Can you give us an idea of what to expect? Nope. Okay, well that's exactly what you would say. All right, so what was the Spanish Inquisition? Well, the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition or Tribunal, so Santo of Fisio de la Inquisition, no, some more commonly called the Spanish Inquisition was a centuries-long process of Spanish Catholics really fucking mean in it. It was originally established in 1478 by King Ferdinand II of Erragán and Queen Isabella I of Castile who were second cousins because royalty is gross.

When they married, they unified Spain for, you know, what passes for unification in Spain. And they do it a bang up job on that. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, exactly. And one of the first things they said about doing was ensuring it was sufficiently Catholic. Gross inappropriate touching is actually

trademarked by the church and they pay a lot of money a year to protect that intellectual property. Let me tell you. I'm bored with the TPP. All right, so the Spanish Inquisition wasn't the first Inquisition or even the only Inquisition game in town in 1478. The broad swath of history that the Spanish Inquisition operated over also contained the Roman Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition, but Catholics like to split them up historically so they can spread out that death toll a bit. Yeah, six million is a high number. People just throw that.

You're conflating the German Holocaust lit and the Poland Holocaust lit and all those other ones. Kind of exactly. and the Poland Holocaust lit and yeah, kind of exactly my dog would like to be president of France now please. All right, so the point of the inquisition at least at first was to make sure that all the people they were forcibly converting from Islam and Judaism were just pretending. Eventually it would expand its mission to kill him pretty much whoever the fuck the inquisitors thought needed killing them. To be awkward, right?

Hey, Juan, can I get my lawnmower back? You've had it for like three months. Dude, you're being super Jewish about this. Super Jewish. You know what? It's fine. It's fine. It's what I thought.

So the inquisition, you know, the one that Catholics would like you to think of as several distinct geographically bound centrally controlled concurrent isolated beds, which created through Paypal Bull at the end of the 12th century. The Pope issuing this particular bull was Lucius III and his immediate goal was tamping down on some heresy in France, but it quickly turned into a way of the Pope, Dejure, exerting influences on surrounding monarchries. So naturally, the papacy found a reason to set up an inquisition in every majority Catholic nation. You know, Lucius, it's getting the point

where there's a rock donalds on every corner. I'm just in the context. I love it right now. Somebody somewhere thought they could manage the optics on torturing and burning people to death through a series of rebranding efforts. Like really create an extraordinary rendition of rebranding efforts. Like really created an extraordinary rendition of the Inquisition.

So you can spin this. And a Wikipedia article about it. Yeah. Can you spin it? Now obviously the monarchs are going to resist every effort to subordinate their authority. But the papacy exerted an insane amount of power at this point in history. So they couldn't resist altogether. So they couldn't resist altogether. So they watered out the Inquisition's power as much as possible, but damn near every Western European kingdom wound up with a tribunal of the papal Inquisition of some sort, just

festering, right? They just gaining historical precedent, like a virus that hadn't quite reached its critical load. Like that red part of the electoral map, we all saw it. That's, yes, exactly. Yeah. I should point out to that there are a couple of reasons why we remember the Spanish Inquisition more than the others beyond just the money Python skit. You have to keep in mind that Spain A controls a huge chunk of the world and was at the top of their game through the heyday of the Inquisition and B was sort of the front line in the war between

Islam and Christendom, right? Like it tended to swing back and forth as the two religions waxed and waned in power, especially in Europe. Also, worth noting that Spain was real easy to demonize for all the Protestant countries and they went on to take over the world once Spain got all tuckered out. Yeah, the historical view of the Inquisition isn't so much accurate as it is the rest of the world passing Spain their nipple tongs, and then whistling when they thought people might be watching.

Yeah, right. Yeah, it's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool.

It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool.

It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. It's really cool. Equally accurate. Now, there's no historical consensus on exactly why the Spanish Inquisition got started. Or at least if there is, it's not a strong enough consensus to keep Wikipedia editors from arguing about it. So the WikiLists, nine different hypotheses. I'm obviously not gonna go over all of them because it doesn't fucking matter and everybody wants me to get to the torture stuff.

But I have to toss out a little of this stuff for context. Yeah. Please. I mean, a little bit of foreplay before you break out that gimp mask, that's just polite. That's exactly. So anyway, here's Spain, two major world religions rubbing up against each other constantly. See, there's the foreplay. Exactly.

Yeah. And by the way, there's the culture is tolerant about this for a really long time. Muslims had taken it over in the early 700s, but it's still at a huge Christian population. And then 500 years or so later, the Christians take it back and it still has a huge Muslim population. There was also a pretty significant Jewish population. And even as anti-Semitism rose throughout the European continent during the plague years to the point where England and France literally expelled their Jewish population, things remained relatively common Spain.

But that's, you know, that's relative to literally kicking out the population. So starting in the early 1300s, you see a steady rise of anti Jewish sentiment that culminates in huge programs in several Spanish cities in the summer of 1391. It's getting all mad. Like why aren't these Jewish people dying as much as us? Well, I'm the plagues Is it from like preparing the playgrounds and the cheese on different cutting boards? So with anti-Semitism on the rise a lot of Jews chose to do the sensible thing and pretend to believe in somebody else's

God until they calm the fuck down thing and pretend to believe in somebody else's God until they calm the fuck down. Problem with doing that though is that it teaches the bigots that all they need to convince people of other religions to convert is a credible threat of violence. I mean, historically they're correct. I'm just throwing... I will fucking kill you if you don't believe my thing. Okay. Okay, shit.

I believe it. No, god damn it. You're... I was just saying that so I don't kill you. No, really. I totally believe your thing. Okay, okay, shit, I believe it, believe it. No, good dammit, you're, and we're just saying that so I don't kill you. No, really, I totally believe your thing. No, you don't, no, you're just scared because of the killing thing I mentioned. Oh, I mean, that's the point of the threat. And I don't, I'm just,

I'm just gonna go ahead and kill you anyway. It sends a message, I already said that I believe it. No, no, no, too late. You ruined this for me, I hope you're happy. Oh. Yeah, that is the Spanish Incosition right now that you guys nailed it in like 10 lines or something.

Also Christmas dinner. So it works. Thanks. All right. So at the same time, this religious unrest is bubbling over. You have Ferdinand and Isabella getting married and effectively joining two nations, Castile and Erdogan.

And like think about how fucked up that's got to be at this particular point in history. Isabella getting married and effectively joining two nations, Castile and Erdogan, and like, think about how fucked up that's got to be at this particular point in history. Like, to a certain degree, nation states are kind of a new thing that everybody's still figuring out, and they're trying to lock down uniform legal codes and taxations and all that shit. And then suddenly two kingdoms that are on different tracks towards that end suddenly come effectively together into the same country, right? So there are a lot of good reasons for the monarchy to have plenty of tools that their disposal to enforce uniformity, especially of religion.

Fuck your Hanukkah. We're making a shit log. We're singing shit log song. Jesus. Yes. But yeah, like this, this whole essay came about because I was trying desperately to understand where the shit log thing came from. And I think this might be a part of it. But regardless of why our story begins when a Dominican friar convinces the queen that

there are dangerous crypto Jews in the royal court. That's stupid. See, now we call them the deep stay. Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So they request a paper bull establishing an Inquisition in Spain, which Pope 6 is the fourth,

eagerly grants in November of 1478. Takes a minute for the thing to get off the ground, but within two and a half years, they have their first auto defay, which I'm probably mispronouncing, but that's a ceremony where all the condemned people tell God they're super, super sorry, even though they're still going to get gruesomely executed afterwards. The first one of these took place in Seville in February of 1481, where six people were

burned alive. Mid-evil fire festival was lit, bitches. And better, better than the modern version. Yeah. More clean water. So, yeah. So, from Seville, the Inquisition started popping up unexpectedly all over Castile. So by 1482, there were tribunals in eight cities.

And since it would be boring for me to just like list eight Spanish cities. And since Eli made the mistake of blaming each spoke Spanish the other day. And last. Amazing. Amazing. We're gonna laugh. And let's take a short break. Let's take a short break.

Let's take a short break. Let's take a short break.'m gonna talk about it. I'm gonna take a chance. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it.

I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it.

I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. I'm gonna talk about it. Wow. Segovia is next on the list. Is that what you meant? Six Influenza. Seguenza?

Poblerone. Lado. Come on, you know that one. Vellal Idiot. And that would be via Delid, I believe. Great nailist. So, thank you. Thank you.

We did it together. Eli, you guys nailed that together. So now the official history of this talks a lot about how the Pope was, you know, just try it as darned as terrain in those out of control and quizzers and shucks. Some of the six of us is best friends were Jewish, but even after he saw what this was going to be, he issued another bull in 1483 that reaffirmed its authority as part of the Catholic church and also named Thomas de Torcmada as the grand inquisitor.

So Torquimada is basically the main bad guy in this story. He's the one that establishes the practices the Spanish inquisition is going to follow and his basic theory on every problem is well then torture them better. The Dick Cheney approach. Making them W voters proud. Yeah. That doesn't work. Shoot them in the face.

There you go. It was Lazy John's bear. Then make them apologize to you after you. What we're saying is that Cheney was worse than the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was bad, but you know, now ultimately the Inquisition would be turned against virtually everybody, but it started off almost exclusively as a device for rooting out secret juice. Under Torkmata, once somebody was accused of being Jewish, they'd be given 30 days to confess while evidence was gathered against them.

And among the evidence listed in this article, by the way, is shit like, quote, the absence of chimney smoke on Saturdays, assign the family might secretly be honoring the Sabbath, or the buying of many vegetables before Passover. And quote, just hang in by your ankles over an open flame really Susan just had to make stew this weekend. My famous vegetable stew. Of course, was it collected enough evidence that you had an unchristian volume of vegetables or chimney smoke? They still wanted a confession and would use no end of barbarous torture to extract it.

Well, now comes the part of our story. We take a quick break so we can prepare ourselves for making fun of some truly horrible shit. So cue the music for apropos and nothing. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha position will now come to order. Err, err, err, err, heath and right, and mushy Goldsteinberg, you stand accused of secret jury. How do you plead? Not guilty. Not guilty.

Yes, what do you have to say in your defense? Your honor, if I may, it's a little drafty in here and I don't want to be trouble, but could we nudge the fires a little? It's called in flu season. I wish. Yeah, I think we could do that seriously though. Do that. I know, I know.

Get the flu shot, but he is my thing. You go to the doctor's office who's there, people with the flu, you can't win. Are you guys seeing this? Are you hearing what's happening? So I call the insurance company and I say, can I speak to a manager right away? Because I know the first guy that answers the first time he's not going to be able to do anything for me. But of course, just as soon as I get someone on hold, my mother calls. Okay, come on. And she's losing her mind at me because she's

red in the New Yorker that everyone has the measles now and she thinks I'm gonna get it and I say ma I'm getting the flu shot. Not the measles shot. She says well, can you get both? What could an extra hurt? So I of course now I got to call them back and I asked them if they can do some kind of two for one deal. It's a whole thing and you know, a whole other person on the phone now. Okay.

Well, Mr. Gordon Steinberg, you seem to have obviously gone through enough this week. You are free to go in God's grace. Oh, thank you so much. Big fan of the God fell in his kid. Love him. And Mr. Enright. Yeah. You bought a lot of vegetables on a Friday.

Yeah. Yep. Take him away. Seriously? Okay, but that yep, take him away seriously. Okay, but that guy is super duper just come on. Super what you know, you know, you don't, you don't, I don't just, you know, seriously, he's obviously, never mind, I get, come on.

So we're back after that very tasteful sketch. Just noting it was written by a Jew, so if you don't like it, you're the anti-Semitic one. That's on you. Anyway, Noah, how did they kill all these Jews? Tell us because I'm anxious to know. All right. So I want to be clear here on the power struggle at the heart of this first, because way too much of this shit in the Wikipedia article reads like the Pope was just heartbroken about the way all these poor Jews were being treated and he kept trying to put out the fires

of the Spanish Inquisition and that's fucking bullshit, right? Like, yes, he did try to stop the Inquisition, but that was because they were insufficiently subordinate to him. Right? So yes, he did stuff like saying that people condemned the Inquisition could appeal to Rome, and then for an end would be like, new rule, anybody who appeals to the court in Rome gets executed and I get all their stuff. But ultimately, there's no reason to assume

humanitarian motives on the part of the pope, other than the fact that by 1484 they had a dude named innocent. Pope innocent. The pope names needed to go. Pope admission, Pope contrition, and then Pope reparations one through 25. That's how it needs to go. Pope cemetery fund gets released. Fuck you.

Yeah. 30 did that episode. I should also drill down at least a little on the confiscations because that's a huge part of the story. Oh, we tend to focus on the part where the condemned prisoner is set on fire and then screams until they die while other people watch it like it's the playoffs because how good you're not. Those regular season execution fans are way more upset.

Yeah. Just sucks getting hurt in the preseason on that one. You're like, I've looted all ahead of time. I didn't even count. Are you keeping up the whole fantasy league? I'm just sucks get hurt in the preseason on that one. You're like, I've looted all ahead of time. I didn't even count. You keep it in the whole fantasy league. Yeah, right. But if you were found guilty of secretly chewing

when you were supposed to be Catholicing, the crown would also take all of your property. Okay, so that's probably not a huge factor in starting the acquisition, or at least that's what most historians seem to think, but it's been proposed as one of the main reasons it has so much momentum once it got going. Libertarian Spanish guy turns to his fellow prisoners. Okay.

Okay. This. This is that. That's what I'm not right. Yeah. Now we just call that civil forfeiture. And I'm, I keep waiting to part of the story where I get to feel morally superior and I haven't.

It's coming. It's coming. It's the torture part. Well part of it. Yeah, of course two thirds of the torture part Of course the inquisition only had jurisdiction over Christians, right? So if you were a professed Jew or Muslim, they had no authority over you at all of course the king did, and according to the Alhambra decree of 1492, Jews had the option to either convert or get the fuck out of the Spain. So like, basically you could admit to being Jewish or claim to be Jewish regardless of your beliefs, but that's, and that would be like being on base for the Spanish acquisition. But ultimately, you would just be choosing to get killed by a different team.

Now like I said, early on the Inquisition is almost entirely focused on recent converts to Catholicism from Judaism. The stat the Wiki article points to is the fact that 91.6 of the people judged by the Tribunal in Valencia between 1484 and 1530 were of Jewish origin. In Barcelona, that number goes up to 99.3%. But after 1530, the Inquisition really started to spread its wings and the percentage of recent converts of any kind drops to about 3%. There's like one anti-Semitic protestor in 1530 trying to awkwardly hide the Jews will

not replace us sign behind his back. Again, this whole thing doesn't just feel like be Christian or else, then some guy converts and it's like, well, okay. And then there's still like Boonert and they burn him anyway. There's a lot of extra steps in this. Yep. Yeah, no, that's exactly what it's like. No, I should be clear though that they didn't just limit their size to recent converts

at any point. There were also plenty of heretics to kill. And of course, heretic in this instance refers to any non-catholic Christian. The first trial against accused Lutherans started in 1558 and 1562 and around a hundred executions took place. Say cannibal cracker motherfuckers say it. No. It's such a small difference. We're like the same religion. No. So fucking stupid. But that seems to have pretty much taken care of the Lutheran problem they were having in Spain. Yeah, if you wanted to destroy Lutherans, now you have to propose a vote on literally anything.

Oh, of course, just because there weren't any Protestants left, didn't mean they stopped killing people for being Protestant. Of course, that would be stupid. Well, look, I mean, suspiciously large carrot purchase could do you in. You can imagine the mistaken conviction rate is crazy high in these days. Okay. But if I'm being totally honest, I want to know which Americans are buying crazy amounts of carrots. I don't know. What are you going to do with that information is what do you do with all those carrots? Just explain. If you're doing something normal, just explain. I don't have to.

Okay, so over the last couple of decades, that's crazy. Of the 1500s, about 200 people were tried for Protestantism. Of course, not everybody who was tried was convicted, not everybody who was convicted, was executed, not everybody who was executed was burned alive. But some of them were, and that automatically makes it a really high number. I think killing Protestants, testing. Don't they protest too much? Yes, more now.

You're a Protestant. No, I'm not, well, you're protesting now. And I should also point out that if I've sounded at all like a Spanish and acquisition of colleges during this essay, it's because it's really hard not to working from my source material. This Wikipedia article has been going over with a fine tooth comb by fucking Spanish and acquisition of colleges that are desperately trying to soften the image of the Spanish fucking acquisition. I'm not sure who's motivated to do

that, but somebody clearly is throughout the article, I keep coming across stuff like this. This is from the subsection on Sodomy. They have an entire subsection for that. Cool. No, entire yep, yep, yep, as every good Wikipedia article does

sir. Wow. Quote, nearly all of almost 500 cases of Sodomy between persons concerned the relationships between an older man and an adolescent often by coercion with only a few cases where the couple were consenting homosexual adults. End quote. Doesn't seem like it would raise suspicion at all in the Catholic church.

I don't know. Basically ends with you're welcome. What the fuck? Yeah. Well, yeah, right. Like they seem to feel like they burned way few people alive for consensual sex Then you might think is a defense worth fighting to keep on the page Of course if you read a few sentences further you realize that in those cases of the older man coercing the adolescent They still punished both of them

What quote? Adolescents were generally punished more leniently than adults, but only when they were very young They still punished both of them. Jesus. What? Quote. Adolescents were generally punished more leniently than adults, but only when they were very young and quote. Yeah. If only we could take it up with Wikipedia editor B Donna Hugh 44. We will find him. Punished him less.

It's like we burn him alive, but the fire is worn as hot. No, that's worse. Okay, next time, what are your solutions, Alan? Yeah, I keep coming to me with problems. All right, so the tribunals themselves consisted of a number of different officers. The Fiskal is the person in charge of presenting the ask accusation, investigating the denunciations,

and interrogating the witness, as Wikipedia puts it, by the use ofations and interrogating the witness as Wikipedia puts it by the use of physical and mental torture. Just Eli spelling your and your okay, I'm a Lutheran. Okay. We also have the calipis adoris, which were the theologians that had to watch the accused and try to figure out if they were taken the torture like a real Christian or not, I guess. But these people are resurrecting. Burn them. Just go ahead and burn them.

And there were also three other important secretaries. The notario desuquestros whose job it was to register all the stuff that the crown would get to confiscate if a person was ultimately condemned. And two other people to make it seem like that wasn't the point. Okay. Say what you will, but those are good quality local jobs. Make the inquisition great again. They're so close to that and don't know it. So when the inquisition would arrive in a city, they'd announced their arrival after Sunday mass with a proclamation called the Edict of Faith that encouraged people to come forward if they thought that somebody in their

community wasn't Christian enough or was faking it. Interesting side note, when they first started this was called the Edict of Grace, but they took so much of the grace parts of this ceremony out by the early 1500s. They felt like they needed to change the goddamn name. Marketing man, the name was important back then. This is back in a time when proper branding was done with literal hot irons. So you have to do that. That is true.

All right. So after that, there's a period of anonymous denunciations where anybody who hates anybody can come in and say he's secretly a Jew. Okay. It's the third time you've been here this week, he they can't all be secret Jews. What? it's the third time you've been here this week. He they can't all be secret Jews Who have to decide whether it merits investigation and of course their qualifications for making this determination is knowing a lot of

Imaginary stuff about Jesus. Now, technically nobody's detained until these guys determine that the denunciation has merit, but sometimes those people would be like held in preventative custody. Man, we still can't feel merely superior. No, no, no. But basically, once somebody accuses you, they can jail you all they want, or when nobody accuses you since it's all anonymous and fucking way. So it's like how YouTube handles copyright strikes. Is that?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We're beating a handles fatty. All right. So the second they detain you, by the way, they also detain all of your property. So your family can go fuck themselves. And even if you're ultimately exonerated, they'll generally keep at least a huge chunk of that property and call it your legal defense fee. But seeing as how the alternative is you melting and comparing it to the fees people pay for legal defense when they are like hit by patent trolls and shit, I gotta imagine their legal fees would seem reasonable by today's standards. Yeah, talk about an anti-slapsuit.

No shit. Oh. So if the calificiadoras decided that you smelled guilty or whatever, you'd go on trial. The trial consisted of a series of hearings in which both the denouncers and the defendant gave testimony. The dude acting as the defense lawyer was assigned to you and was a member of the tribunal. His job was basically just turned to the accused now and again and tell them not to lie. That's about what you get in terms of defense. But, you know, considering the quality of most of your court appointed attorneys today, this probably

sounds a lot like a modern court. So I should add that the whole time the defendant is being questioned, they're also being tortured. Sarah Kohnig just sitting in the back. What can we learn from this? We may never know. No. No. Wait a minute, no, it just to be clear, they are being tortured during the trials. That is fucking barbaric. See, now we skip the trial and send him to Cuba,

still don't feel good about this. Yeah, no, not this part. Now in troubles. The segment on torture opens with the apologist again, quote, torture was employed in all civil and religious trials in Europe. The Spanish Inquisition was no exception. Its main differentiation characteristic was that God, I love how wiki editors fuck you. It had very strict regulations regarding when, what, to whom, how many times,

for how long and under what supervision it could be applied? Welcome again. Yeah. Rest of your work was like, we torture, but not us. Not us. We said, what would Jesus do to torture people? Seriously. Yeah. And by the way, after that article, it

hopefully lists the regulations for all those categories. So for like, when it says, according to the Inquisition rules, you weren't allowed to torture people until you were pretty darn sure they were guilty. And for what it points out that they weren't allowed to quote, maim, mutilate, draw blood or cause any sort of permanent damage, though there is a very accusatory citation needed tag at the end of that sentence that's been there since June of this year, last year now. And if we ever find out who Wikipedia author G. Pell 47 is, we'll ask you the rules. So the fact that the rule is you can torture someone any way you want so long as it's possible

for them to heal. That's a weird hill to die. The perfectly reasonable hill to eventually heal on Tom. Just go back on the healing hill. You're being a baby. Go back on the healing. All right. So after a really long series of paragraphs pointing out that England and Russia were

also a bunch of evil fox in the 1500s and Spain was only speeding to keep up with traffic It eventually details some of the tortures they use The one that I always think of when I think of the Spanish Inquisition is the Strapado it's where you're suspended from your wrists for a really long time Which doesn't sound all that bad until I point out that beforehand your wrists are tied behind your back It sounds like a musical term that would describe that situation somehow sound all that bad until I point out that beforehand, your wrists are tied behind your back. It sounds like a musical term that would describe that situation somehow.

I don't know what that would be. Yeah, exactly. I'm not even gonna fucking ask if somebody's being tortured with wrist hanging stuff. I don't know. Yeah. So yeah, but so visualize that shit, right? So visualize your hands are tied behind your back.

You're being suspended by your wrists and then just imagine they had a bunch of weight tied to your back, you're being suspended by your wrists. And then just imagine they had a bunch of weight tied to your ankles and occasionally pick it up and drop it. They also used waterboarding, again, make all those W voters proud. But the torture device they most often used, according to some sentences in the Wikipedia article and not adjacent ones, is the rack, which is where you chain the angles and the wrists and then pull them ever further apart

from one another. Okay, yeah, they're gonna break your arms and legs, but not like permanently break them. Revolete your brakes at all. Yeah, I'm gonna change you. Yeah, Jesus. Now, what? Your mom signed the permission to slip?

You're fine for this. Now, as trivial a point as this is, I should note that the inquisition didn't actually have the power to condemn anyone to die. If they found you guilty, technically what they did was turn you over to the secular arm which then killed you, right? Like usually, again, by burning you at the stake.

If you were lucky and repented enough though, they would occasionally slit your throat before burning you. I'm just drag over your used stretch arm strong of a corpse to the cops. Um, not guilty. The cops walk through on the body like he's checking a rental car look Look at the permanent damage. That was already there. That was already that he was already fucking nine feet tall.

Stop writing. Stop writing. Yes, sir. It's Bill writing. Sure thing. I see you writing. All right. So this shit lasted for a really long time. Like until the 18 fucking hundreds, of course, the Wiki article argues with itself about why the Inquisition ended, but ultimately it was because the European peasantry was coming down with a bad case of the chopping the heads off of despotic rulers, and the Spanish came one in a little preventative matters.

Right? Yeah. There's a strange correlation between revolts and certain kinds of oppression ending. Yeah, right. So if you take in notes and home kids, yeah. So before it was officially disbanded in 1820, the inquisition prosecuted about 150,000 people

and executed somewhere between two and three percent of those, or about three to 5,000 people. And I want to close on one of the most bullshit apologetics in this entire article. So in the segment that deals with the death toll, it points out that even if you accept a high end estimate of 5,000 people, quote, this is significantly lower

than the number of people executed exclusively for witchcraft and other parts of Europe during the same time span as the Spanish Inquisition estimated at circa 40,000 to 60,000 end quote. Yeah, I'm glad that, but her emails has been circulating now for about 500 years. So,

and yet Wikipedia author Willie Craig 69 refused to answer our emails. So, we may never know. Yeah. Right. Well, okay, so let's bring that down very quickly for people who aren't great with math. Yes, 40 to 60,000 is indeed a much larger

number than 5,000. Well done. It's worth tempering that though with the fact that Spain is only 5% of Europe, right? 5,000 is more than 5% of both 40 and 60,000 is 5% of both of those put together motherfuckers. So it's a mathematical magic trick. Again, meant to soften the image of the Spanish infosition. They do end the article with, but what was she wearing? I mean, yes, she's wearing. Oh, she wearing. All right, now if you had to summarize what you learned in one sentence, what would it be? There was absolutely zero hope of a future where Catholics hold the child rape and

Abel is accountable. So, do you ready for the chris? I am ready to go back. No, we expect the Spanish Inquisition Inquisition. All right. No, because of your obvious anti-Catholic bias, you left out some of the major benefits of the Spanish Inquisition. What was the biggest benefit? A, still nicer than Twitter. B, free stuff. C, a quarter-pointed defense attorney, which the United States didn't grant until

1963. Or D, less juice. Oh, okay. Well, it's obviously not D because Jews are a discrete item and thus it would be fewer Jews. I'm gonna go with B because if stealing from wrongly accused people and calling it court fines wasn't awesome, why would we still be doing it? That's correct. Impackable logic. Yeah. All right. No, the Spanish Inquisition is obviously a black spot on our collective human history, but in the spirit of apologists everywhere, it wasn't like the only black spot. So what other terrible events make the Inquisition less awful? Hey, I reject the premise. You should always reject this premise. You should always reject this premise.

See, seriously, this isn't a fairly worded question or D, when did you stop beating your wife? All right. I think you're trying to get tricky with me here. I reject the premise that A is reject the premise and go with secret answer E reject the premise. Spoiled again. All right. reject the premise and go with secret answer E reject the premise spoiled again. All right. Noah.

The grand acquisition had a side gig as a game show host. What was his show named? Yeah. Hey, the match game. Yeah. Match game. Wheel of torsion. See. Lash cam or D.

Survivor. Oh, lash cow or survivor. So all right, that is a really good question, Cecil. I only know the answer because it's my third favorite porn hub tab. The answer is C lash cow. My two. That's true. Absolutely true. All right, last one for you know, other than resurrection, how can you tell if someone's

taking their torture like a Christian? A, they walk on waterboard. They point out all the Arab looking guys that are walking by and yell about that. Or C, they scream freedom and then they explain how the Jews started all the wars to a police officer. Always gotta be C. That is correct. and then they explain how the Jews started all the wars to a police officer. Oh, he's got a B.C. That is correct.

And then they go to jail for the DUI and they are Mel Gibson. That is Mel Gibson. It was a case of him. It was not clear Mel Gibson is trying to get there. It was the moment. Because he explained his question so well, he wins this week. Thank you. There you go.

All right, I get to pick next week. I would like an essay from Tom. Yes, no, wait, that's a lot of work. All right, well for Heath, Tom, Eli and Noah, I'm Cecil, thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and by then, Tom will be an expert on something else between now and then. Check out all our other side projects at citationpod.com.

If you'd like to help keep this show going and make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. Also, please share this show with your friends, acquaintances and frenemies. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect to this on social media or check the show notes, be sure to check out citatienpod.com. So I say to him, I'm saving your money by making one appointment for two procedures. Oh, obviously, yes. Guys, the least you can do is find some kind of discount for saving you the trouble.

Get in, tortured over here. And he says, we don't have discounts like that. So I ask, can I speak to your supervisor? Well, of course you would, guys. Torturing. discounts like that. So I ask, can I speak to your supervisor? Well, of course you would, guys. You're touring.