Part 2: The Real Spanish Inquisition

Above:  The Peace of Munster Oath, ending the 80 Yrs War.  The end of that war coincided with the end of the very traumatic 30 Yrs War.  Protestantism did NOT bring peace to 16th Century Europe, as St Francis of Assisi brought peace to 13th Century Italy.  Protestantism brought War.  The true church reformer was Francis.  Neither Luther nor Calvin nor Simons had the stigmata of Christ's crucifixion wounds.  Francis did, though.  Take a hint from God.

Thesis:

European governments of the 16th Century either began as ... continued as ... or transformed into ===> Theocracies.  There was no concept of individual choice in one's religion.  However, there was a major irony & contradiction in this, in that:

Catholics could individually make their own personal choice in spirituality, in choosing between [1] Franciscanism (taught by the Order of the Friars Minor), or [2] Dominicanism (taught by the Order of Preachers which ironically included the writings of a woman named Catherine of Siena) or [3] Carmelitism which included devotion to Elijah and John the Baptist, or [4] Augustinian Spirituality,  [5] the charity of the "ransom orders," such as the Trinitarians and the Mercedarians, which were dedicated to freeing captive & persecuted Catholics, [6] even the knightly orders, [7+] as well as other specific devotions.  

Yet, there would be an elaborately compiled  'official prayer of the Church' known as the Liturgy of the Hours ... or the Divine Office .. which gravitated around the Psalms, Book of Wisdom, Book of Sirach, and other Biblical texts.  Priests would be bound to pray a small fraction of this each day.  

None the less, in 16th Century Catholicism, there had been 1,450+ years of synods, ecumenical councils, theological writings and debate, to figure things out.  Protestantism had a handful of guys who said that things are going to be this way ... or that way ... in a profession of faith called "a confession," and if you don't publicly agree with that new profession of faith written by two or three well-fed guys (especially in Protestant Switzerland), then you die (died).  This included other Protestants, such as in Switzerland, where Anabaptists were drowned-to-death.

Plus, in Catholicism, there would be a specific theology on the nature of God and the nature of man.  The theology on the nature of man included moral theology which was taught as law and NOT as suggestion or opinion.  This was regarded as Natural Law.  

Even a person electing to become a monk would choose the monastic order of his choice, provided that the monastic order found him to be fit to serve.  However, when it came to Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Puritanism, there was a tight grip on the adherents of those religions.  Freedom of thought was thrown out the door.

In matters of faith and fidelity to the true God, there is a process.  There was even a process of God's Revelation to man, as was charted in Scriptural text.  After all, it took approximately one thousand year to complete the Old Testament.  With the New Testament, it was a matter of manpower --- in the number of people it took to complete the New Testament --- from Mark to Luke to Peter to Paul to James to Jude and then John, not to mention Matthew and all of the assistants involved.  

There was no one Martin-Luther-Only doing the job of defining Catholic dogma, as if Luther were a divine being unto himself.  There was no sole-John-Calvin in Catholicism, bringing forth all knowledge to all mankind.  There were ecumenical councils which involves every available bishop, time after time, along with one presider, the pope, to prevent confusion.

Then came a council where it was formally declared infallibly, that no pope could delete a single infallible statement established in any previous ecumenical council, once the presiding pope of that previous council signed it into doctrine.  Thus, no subsequent pope can change the doctrine declared as such by previous popes and their advisory --- and scholarly --- councils.  

If memory serves me correctly, that decisive council was the Council of Basel, in the 1430s.  It was  associated with the Councils of Florence and Ferrara which were councils intended to rid religious life and the priesthood of chaos and confusion.  That infallible statement was in one of those three councils, where a pope can NEVER invalidate, abrogate, repeal, delete, discard any previous infallible statement of an ecumenical council that was affirmed by the presiding pope.  God is changeless.  Thus, the doctrine of God, God's nature, & God's will are unchangeable.  Sort of like an evergreen tree.  For those uninformed, Germans used evergreens for Christmas trees to symbolize the changelessness of God.  So stated for the record.

Now, Protestantism was a case of one-man-shows, with an assistant here and an assistant there.  There are a number of examples of 15th & 16th Century Shape-Shifters of the Church, where Christianity was presented as a one-man show.  The one-man shows ended up splintering and becoming new one-man shows with a new preacher man, over and over again.  Protestantism came to be spiritual cell division.  Split after split after split after split.

Remember the theme of the anti-Catholics obsessed with perpetuating the Nightmarish Inquisition Tale which had long since been proven to be a myth:

It's very simple:  "The Catholic haters" are obsessed with clinging to the mostly fabricated 1567 Inquisition Tale so that, in 2023, "they" can officially declare the One Holy, Catholic & Apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ to, instead, be the Whore of Babylon ... instead of being the only Bride of Christ.  Catholicism was the FIRST CHRISTIANITY, and God is changeless.  So, do the math on this topic.   

Protestants condemned and still condemn "tradition," because Protestantism had no tradition.  It was a new start-up religion in 1521 ... without a past and therefore zero tradition.  That amounted to approximately 1461 years AFTER the original surviving apostles ... and St. Matthias ... distributed their first official teaching on Christianity.  It was called, the Didache and it was/is 16 chapters in length.

Now, St. Paul ... in the Bible ... instructed his converts to also adhere to all that Paul taught them "orally" ... "in spoken word."  Spoken word is known as tradition.  Therefore, adhering to Tradition IS BIBLICAL.  

Catholicism has tradition.  Protestantism does NOT.  This makes Protestantism fake Christianity.  After all, Lutheranism didn't start until 1,493 years after the Star of Bethlehem was seen by learned Magi.  Protestantism is equivalent to the fraudulent marathon runner who sneaks into the race at the 25th mile mark, making it look as if the fraudulent competitor started at the beginning.

The same anti-Catholic propagandists who assert that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon also assert that there is very little evidence of the Inquisition, but that the Heidelberg text of one Reginaldus Gonslavius Montanus is true anyway.  Well, that assertion is a compound falsehood.  Take Note:::

[1] There is no evidence which supports the ridiculously hyped-up overkill of the Heidelberg publication.  But, there are literally TONS of pages of evidence attached to the Spanish Inquisition, in the form of case files; 356 years of such files.  Every case brought before the Inquisition (which operated from 1478 to 1834) had a case file attached to it.  

Spanish Inquisition case files were kept well-preserved in the Inquisition archive system throughout the centuries.  This amounts to the undeniable records of approximately 130,000 cases that were brought before the Inquisition.  In contrast, one and only one horror story was written by an anonymous person shortly before the start of the 80 Years War.  The whole thing was pre-war propaganda.

[2] Being that there has never been found any mass graves, any bloodstained torture chamber walls, any blood-soaked road that leads to any mass grave, and no bloodstained torture devices, the 1567 Inquisition horror story is most probably a fraud composed with malice aforethought --- and not an error made in good faith.  The reasonable person would conclude the that whole damn thing is a premeditated lie.  Moreover, that 1567 tale was sheer, hate-ridden racism, evidenced by the anonymous writer calling the Spanish (per se) "the children of Satan."

Now, it's hard to fathom Ricardo Montalban as being the Son of Satan.  None the less, according to Montanus, the Antichrist will be Spanish.  But in reality, the real antichrist will simply claim himself to be the Messiah prophesied by the ancient Jewish prophets.  HOWEVER, anyone who professes belief in the Nicene Creed is not possibly the Antichrist.  This is because the creed states that Jesus the Nazarene is the Christ.  The moment you state that Jesus the Nazarene is the Son of God made man, you disqualify yourself as a candidate for the long awaited Antichrist.

Dozens of popes came after Luther's bold "Antichrist accusation of 1520."  Yet, no pope claimed himself to be the Messiah, and no pope forced humanity to wear "the engraving of the Beast."  In fact, they all prayed the following: "I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of the Father.  God from God.  Light from Light.  True God from true God.  Begotten, not made.  One in being with the Father.  Through him all things were made."  In as much, it's impossible to be the Antichrist if you can vocally pray the Apostle's Creed.

Now, Martin Luther claimed that the pope of 1520 (Leo X) was the Antichrist.   Well, Leo died in 1521 without ushering in the Great Apostasy and without declaring himself the Messiah.  Luther was a false prophet.  Then, the next pope (Adrian VI) died in 1523, making Luther a double false prophet.  This is because Adrian did NOT claim himself to be the Christ, either ... and he did not require anyone to wear the "Mark of the Beast."  (Actually, it's "the engraving of the Beast" --- the charagma, in Greek).  And Pope Adrian surely didn't make anyone worship the Beast.  Thus, he was NOT the Antichrist Luther made him out to be.  

Then came Clement VII who died in 1534 without ushering in the Age of the Antichrist, either.  This made Luther a triple false prophet.  Next came the Pope Paul III who faithfully adhered to Catholic Church marriage law.  He did NOT claim himself to be the Messiah, and he did NOT make anyone wear the "mark of the beast" on the forehead or on the hand, either.  This made Luther a QUADRUPLE FALSE PROPHET, invalidating the ornery Martin Luther completely. 

Luther spent his life doing nothing more than setting the stage of nearly two centuries of European warfare.  Luther died in 1546, and in the past 477 years, no pope turned out to be the Antichrist, and no pope presented to humanity any Antichrist, as messiah.  All popes until at least 2013 claimed that Jesus Christ is the Messiah prophesied by Isaiah and other Jewish prophets.  To claim Jesus to be the Messiah is to instantly disqualify yourself as the dreaded Antichrist. 

Luther was and is a defamatory liar.  Luther died in his defamatory sins and in his false prophesying.  If you are a follower of him, then you are wasting your life away.  BTW, the Elector of Saxony (Freddy III) and the King of Denmark (Christian III --- more like "anti-christian" III) did more to establish the Lutheran religion than did Luther and his academic confreres.  Through edict, Lutheranism was literally forced upon the people of [1] Norway, [2] Denmark, [3] Sweden, [4] Finland, [5] Saxony, and [6] Brandenburg.  Wherever there was Lutheranism, there was no freedom of religion.  In fact, wherever there was the 16th Century, there was no freedom of religion.  Religion was seen as a cultural identifier & the definer of a nation's boundaries.   Religion was like a sports team's uniform or a military uniform.  You weren't allowed to be out of uniform, back in those days.

Take note that these anti-Catholic propagandists state that the One Holy Catholic & Apostolic Church guided by God the Holy Spirit is the great persecutor of Holy Holy "Bible-Believing-People."  Well, Protestants stole the Bible from Jews & Catholics, with the New Testament being a sole Catholic production.   The Catholic Church has always used the Bible far far far more often than the Protestants ever did.  Here is a vivid example:

You have heard of the Gregorian Chant ... correct?  Well, what exactly are monks chanting when they do the Gregorian Chant?  ANS:  Passages of the Bible, in the Liturgy of Hours, also known as the Divine Office --- along with devotional reflections written after the New Testament texts.  The monks chanted the Psalms, among other things.   Catholics use and always have used the Bible far more often than do Protestants.  

The Protestant obsession with "Bible Only" is because they had no tradition

The claim that Catholics hid the Bible from humanity is like a candidate defaming his opponent in the upcoming election.  The big problem is that Christianity is a monarchy, and NOT a congress of politicians who use the art of lying to get elected.   Christ the King is not amused when the only church he ever founded is called invalid.  To claim such a thing is to claim that Christ and his Spirit committed gross dereliction of duty from 325 AD to 1517 AD --- or that evil evil popes stuffed God away and made God accessible to man, as if God weren't all-powerful.  You can see Bible passages, in picture-form, on stained-glass Medieval church, shrine, and cathedral windows.

Anglo America's original hatred of Catholicism dating back to backwoods hicks 

Anti-Catholic American Protestants simply hate anything as classical as the Gregorian Chant.  Those anti-Catholics simply prefer what a city slicker calls hick music -- hoopie music ... yee-haw music --- briar hopper music --- twanging guitar (pronounced ghi-tar & "ghit-tar," as in "Play this here ghittar.")  This is ironic, because at the start of Luther's rebellion, the European city slicker chose Protestantism, while the country folk of Europe retained Catholicism.  Today, it's quite the opposite, especially in America.

Protestantism is the act of taking the profane and calling it sacred.  It calls being "boldly sinful" salvation.  It's Orwellian, and it led to the consolidation of the Nazi Party.  And yes, Luther advocated that the Jews should have been expelled from Germany ... by government authorities and not by lynch mobs.  Well, a very deadly German government followed Luther's advice ... in the 1930s & 1940s.

All in all, if it were not for the Catholic Church's existence, from the Years 26 to 1517 C.E. (A.D.), no Protestant alive today would have even heard the name, Jesus.  The Catholic Church had been the promoter of ... the protector of ... the steward of ... the Holy name of Jesus & the New Testament, long before Luther had his first seizure.  Moreover, European Protestants all have ancestors who were Roman Catholic for 400, 600, and even 900 years running.  They can't deny that.  This means that shelf of the ancestors are burning in Hell for all Eternity ... either for being Roman Catholic, from the 500s to the 1400s ... or for being Protestants from 1521 to present. 

None the less, John Adams used to belittle the Catholic Mass, as if it were a superstitious ritual.  But, in reality it consisted in basic intellectual things.  The Mass comprises [1] An entrance song or the reading of one Biblical sentence,  [2] an opening prayer that acknowledged mankind's sinfulness as it applied to each individual present, followed by a repetition of 'Lord/Christ have mercy."  Such a thing is called, "the Confiteur, which means "I confess,"   [3] Then comes Bible reading.  [4] Then comes homily/sermon time.  [5]  Then comes the consecration of unleavened bread and grape wine.  

Apparently, John Adams had the hardest time believing in transubstantiation and the concept of "the Body, Blood, Soul, & Divinity of Jesus Christ" in a cosmological venue that is not instantly understand by man's very finite and very limited ... and often distracted ... mind.  Adams needed to meditate on the Biblical account of the Road to Emmaus.  All Catholic haters who read the Bible should do so.

The Sacred vs the Secular (synonymous with the "profane")

In Protestantism, there is no such thing as differentiating the sacred from the secular.  So, they claim secular hillbilly hick music to be the sacred music played by angels in Heaven.  They claim secular hoopie music of briar hoppers to be the choice of the very Jewish Jesus Christ who, instead hearing a hick guitars, heard Greek chants in his lifetime.  After all, Nazareth was a heavily Greek-influenced city.  In fact, the renown St Paul of Tarsus was known as a "Hellenistic Jew," aka a "Greek Jew."  In fact, the author of this discourse has Greek ancestry.  This shows that the world really is round and its trails intersect each other.

None the less, Protestantism is a very profane religion that has no concept of consecrating anything or anyone.  After all, its preachers wear business suits, and NOT consecrated garments as did the ancient Jewish religion and all forms of sacramental Christianity which includes Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

The sacred Music of the middle & western Mediterranean regions is regarded as Satanic by more rural American Anglo factions of humanity --- because it's foreign to them, and anything foreign is not seen as fascinating, but rather, it's seen as evil.  That's the mindset of the Isolationist.

At this point, remember the following: The lower the education level of the person the more fear the person carries.  Greta Thunberg and her complete absence of knowledge in Atmospheric Science & Meteorology is today's brightest example --- the example of Fear in the Place of Ignorance.  This is especially the case in 2023, being that, in merely 7 months after the "perpetual 'climate change' drought prediction" was consolidated by the media & UN, Planet Earth instead enjoyed record snowpacks, ample rain, the opposite of global warming, and the bountiful replenishment of dams.  It didn't take 7 year for that doomsday prediction to be proven false.  It took only 7 months.  In her uneducated state and in crippling fear, Greta was suckered into believing such predictions which have now quickly blown away with the wind.

So, Anglo-Saxons of low education hate the concept of Latin.  The great irony with them is that the English language is half Latin, being that the Roman Empire ruled parts of England for centuries.  Way to go, Anglo-Saxon Roman Haters.  If you hate Italians that badly, then you need to stop speaking zee Englishia which happens to be semi-Latin.

For the record, the music of the Eastern Mediterranean region is in 2/4 time, and it's very much different than the Greco-Roman "sound modes" of the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydia, etc, "tonalities."  2-4 time is called, "Tribal Time" in music school.  The Jews identified as tribes.  The Greeks and Romans were a bit more sophisticated in managing their societies.  I'll stop here, before turning this text into a music history class. 

Concerning the 1567 horror story of "Montanus," it's an easily understood premise that, before one goes to war, one needs to make sure that he does it when his enemy has a full schedule --- when the enemies' hands are full and are unable to dedicate their full strength to the war you are trying to hatch.  And coincidentally enough, Spain was  [1] in its tenth year of war against France,  [2] while the Habsburg Dynasty which controlled Spain & the Netherlands was in its 40th consecutive year of warfare against the Ottoman Empire.  

Plus, there was [3] Spain's Conquest of the Inca Empire [4] and trouble in the Philippines with the "Dagohoy Rebel Group" there.   This caused a distancing between England and Spain.  So, that alliance was fading away.  After all, Spain was really really busy in those days and didn't have time for England, even though it really could have used England against the rebellions in the Netherlands.

The Final Muslim/Catholic War in Spain

And yes, I'm well aware of the 77 executions per year, in the last six years of the Granada War against the occupier Moors.  Divide 77 by 20 tribunals, aka "district courts," and it only amounts to 4 executions per year per district tribunal, on the average.  But of course, the executions would logically have been concentrated at the one tribunal (district court);the one nearest to Granada, the former capital of Andalusia ... aka Moorish Spain.   This would translate into approximately 5 1/2 executions per month in one district court throughout the duration of that war.  War brings an increase in executions anywhere there is war.  However, this number isn't anywhere near the number used by anti-Catholics in 19th & 20th Century America, when anti-Catholicism was a religion onto itself.

Even in the newly formed British American colonies, you could be put to death for stealing a horse in New England.  You could even be put to death in South Carolina, for wrecking a tobacco crop.  This is because, at one time, tobacco leaves were colonial currency.   In fact, in the Wild Wild West, a person could get hung for stealing a horse.

The thesis statement is that Spain did nothing more violent than any other European sovereignty at the time.  Moreover, the Spanish Inquisition did NOT perform any of the sick & twisted tortures mentioned in the one Reginaldus Montanus tale published in 1567.  The French, British, Scottish, etc individually had their executions too, relatively close to the same statistical number as did the Spanish.  The nation which went overboard in executions was none other than . . . Russia.

And of course, neither in British America nor in Spain were there iron maidens, plums of agony, or similar torture devices of a sick & twisted nature. 

29 Years Later

It has now been 29 years since the production of the the BBC Spanish Inquisition documentary.  The most important point at this point is that, in the past 28 years, numerical statistics on the Spanish Inquisition have become much more exact ... concise ... like a major league team's scorecard ... like an accountant's tax return ... like an almanac author's weather history report.  This included the number of executions which occurred in the Inquisition's 356 year history, as well as the number of people investigated and brought to trial ... and even the categories of cases.  

For example, the number of people who were investigated for advancing the Lutheranism which stole Roman Catholic real estate in Northern Europe ... done under the guise of being moved by the Holy Spirit ... were 3,499, between 1560 and 1700.   That also amounts to an average of 25 Lutheran cases per year, in a 140 year period.  That also amounts to an average of  ONLY 1.25 Lutheran cases a year, per tribunal court.  

The reality was that accusations of secret Lutherans undermining the Church occurred mostly in the Valladoid and Seville regions of Spain, starting in 1558, where there already were Protestant communities.  The reality was 25 cases per year at Seville.  It was NOT the 100,000 that were asserted during the early decades of Anti-Catholic 20th Century.  

In the 1550s, Catholic Spain and Protestant England were allies against Catholic France.  England regarded Lutherans as the enemy to the Church of England, founded by Henry.  Thus, both Spanish Catholics and British Anglican Church authorities saw Lutherans as a very hostile enemy.  After all, Lutherans successfully stole Roman Catholic Church property in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Saxony, and Brandenburg.  For some reason, 16th Century Lutherans did NOT have the concept of building their own churches.  Ironically, the Church of England which stole all Roman Catholic Church real estate didn't want Lutherans taking over their turf.

The daughter of Henry VIII, namely Elizabeth, put Lutherans to death during her reign.  In like manner, approximately 100 Lutherans were executed by the Seville tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition ("district court") between 1558 and 1562.  And of course, 1558 was the year when Elizabeth I became  Queen of England.  Thus, the Spanish Inquisition was acting in tandem with Elizabeth I.  The goal was to keep the Lutherans of Central Europe out of Western Europe.   

Only in the 1580s did Elizabeth end friendly relations with Spain.  She then ordered a full persecution of Catholicism in England.  It came as a result of Elizabeth knowing that Catholics wanted England to return to the Roman Catholic status it had since 597 A.D.  This would include deposing her ... overthrowing the House of Tudor.  Elizabeth was not going to have anything to do with that.  So, the persecution which was started by her father was resumed by her.

Q ::: Concerning the Lutherans in the Seville area, here is a question:  Who would have reported them to the Inquisition?  ANS:  The Moriscos (Muslim converts.)  Seville was thriving.  It was an Indies Trade post, 25 miles from the Gulf of Cadiz.  Yet, it was a refuge for the poor and the displaced.  So, "runaway Lutherans" would find their ways there.

Moriscos knew how Luther advocated the ousting of the Jews from Germany.  Moriscos were not too far away from that destiny in Europe.  Lutherans in Spain could easily sabotage the hopes of the Moriscos and have them be treated like Jews.  So, the Lutherans had to go away --- the hard way.  Yet, the Inquisition was actually marked with numerous cases where leniency was granted --- even to Lutherans.

It was the BBC who claimed that Leniency was the Policy of the Spanish Inquisition 

Now, the 1994 BBC documentary's mentioned that the Spanish Inquisition employed a lot of leniency.  An example I found is that, from 1563 to the end of the 16th Century, an additional 200 persons were put on trial in Spain for propagating the Lutheran Agenda.   Yet, only 12 of those 200 people were executed.  Thus, 15 out of 16 Lutheran-promoters were allowed to live, after a Spanish Inquisition judgment was rendered.  This is fact, and this is opposite of the asininity hyper-exaggerated Montanus Tale.

Executions came in waves,  usually during wartime.  But, at no time did the Spanish use the ridiculously narrated torture chamber antics mentioned in the very fraudulent 1567 tale.  War propaganda & pre-war propaganda is expected to be a hyper-exaggerated lie.  But, that lie has been used by Catholic-hating Protestants for 400+ years, and the incessant lying about the Inquisition needs to stop. 

Concerning Seville, the Montanus Tale was asserted to have been written by a Spaniard once stationed near Seville, as a monk.  Well, this Spaniard was burnt in effigy three or four year prior to the publication of the Montanus Tale.  

Q:: Do you know what it means to be burnt in effigy in 16th Century Spain?  ANS:  It means that they haven't caught up to you and did NOT burn the real you.  It means that you evaded capture --- that you "got away" and were free.  Thus, a person burnt in effigy is one who never appeared before Inquisition lawyers or judges.  In as much, if that certain Spanish person did write the 1567 Montanus Tale, it was NOT written from personal experience, being that he was never caught by the Inquisition.  It was NOT an eyewitness account.  It was deliberate pre-war propaganda.

The Newly  Found Letter

I mentioned a newly found and authenticated letter of the 16th Century which reported that the former inhabitant and monk of Seville was gone --- went awol ---  having left Spain with 16 other monks.  It was one of TWO newly found 16th Century letters, concerning 16th Century Seville.  

The letter also mentioned that the authorities intended on searching for him and the 16 other ex-monks . . . in Northern Europe.  Thus, he would have been taken to the Netherlands Inquisition, if he were ever caught.  Rather, he ended up healthy and alive in Geneva, in 1568.  He eventually moved to Frankfort, to work and make his livelihood.   He died in 1594, if memory serves me correctly.   So, he had a long life.  If he were tortured by the Inquisition, he would have died a bit earlier.  He would have died a lot earlier.

The truth about 1567 is that the Dutch wanted to declare Independence from Spain.  So, they incited severe hatred of the Spanish, instead of promoting the concept of civil rights and a nation's right to self-determination.  The concept of allowing freedom of religion was going to have to wait for the births of John Adams, John Jay, and Ben Franklin, apparently.  The Dutch were going to have none of that civilized stuff.  Nor were the Swedes.  In fact, the Swedes were the demons of the 30 Years War.  It would necessitate the Reign of Napoleon to allow freedom of religion in Western Europe.  The Dutch and Swedes were simply going to demonize the Spanish, attack them, and kill as many as they could.  How Christian of them!  BTW, during the 30 Years War, it was the Swedes who were the demons ... in a very sick & twisted way.  If there were a Nuremberg Trial at the end of that war, numerous Swedes would have ended up there.  The Swedes were horrifying at the time.

Now, keep in mind that the 1567 horror story led people to believe that executions were occurring at a rate of dozens a day.  So, in the early 20th Century, media outlets claimed that the number of people executed by the Spanish Inquisition was between 100,000 to 1,000,000 people.  Then, by the time the 21st Century came into existence, even the most hate-filled anti-Catholic propagandist knew that the number of executions were nowhere near that numerical range.  They concluded that 32,000 people were executed, in 356 years.  Well, that number turned out to be 12 times higher than the reality.

The actual number turned out to be 2,600 persons (approximately), in 356 years.  This amounts to ONLY SEVEN executions per YEAR.   This means that there was an average of ONE execution in any one tribunal court every THREE years ... approximately speaking, of course.  

The 1994 BBC documentary estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 persons were executed in the Inquisition's 356 years of operation.  The BBC was close.  Yet, even the BBC's highest estimated number averaged only 1 and a half executions every TWO years, for each of the 20 tribunal courts.  Observe:  5000 divided by 356 years = 14.4, divided by 20 court jurisdictions = 0.7 =  2.1 executions every three years ... or 1.5 executions every two years.   None the less, the average number of executions per year ... for all 20 tribunals combined ... was 9 to 14.

When reducing the estimate of executions to 3,000, the average becomes 3,000 divided by 356 = 8.4, divided by 20 jurisdictions = 0.42 (or 1 execution per jurisdiction, every TWO years.)  Thus, the horror story told by the anonymous "Montanus" in 1567 was one huge insult to the intelligence of the average modern human.   

Now, if you insist on believing in the claim of 32,000 executions, this only amounts to 4.5 (four and a half) executions per year for each tribunal, individually.  Observe:  32,000 divided by 356 years = approx 90 per year divided by 20 tribunals =  4.5 executions per year per tribunal (otherwise known as "per district court.")

Even the anti-Catholic's high number is actually a low number.  Now, divide that exaggerated number by 12, and you have approximately the real number.  This is why you cannot find bloodstained torture chambers, or mass graves, or bloodstained streets leading to any cemetery.  It's because they didn't exist in the first place. 

In conclusion, the tales of torture chambers and iron maidens were myth ... false ... bull crapola ... a class-action-defamation-lawsuit-waiting-to-happen, etc.   This is because that mythical version of the Spanish Inquisition is said to be a reflection on Catholicism today, and such defamation incites violence.  There has been enough violence done to Catholic churches recently.

In conclusion, the Number One Killer of 16th & 17th Century Europe was NOT the Spanish Inquisition.  Next to war, the Number 1 Killer of Europeans was . . . 

THE BUBONIC PLAGUE.   Observe:::   [1563, London  |  1582, Tenerife Spain  |  1592, Malta  |  1592, also London  |  1596, Spain (second plague pandemic --- 600,000+ losses)  |  1603, London (40,000 losses)  |  1629, Italy (one million losses)  |  1632, Augsburg Germany  |  1636, London again  |  1647, Seville (500,000 losses)  |  1656 Naples Italy (1,250,000 losses)  |  1663, Amsterdam  |  1665 London again (100,000+ losses)  |  1668, France (40,000 losses)  |  1675, Malta again  |  1676 Spain again  |  1679, Vienna (76,000 losses)  |  1681 Prague (83,000 losses).]  

Note About 1527 Wittenberg and Luther's 14-page note on the Plague

NOTE:  Protestants claim that the plague reached Wittenberg in vast casualty numbers in 1527, and that the holy holy divinely inspiring Martin Luther opened his home to the plague sufferers, all the while issuing a writing which stated that he'll trust in God and go about freely.  HOWEVER:

[1] The Protestant propaganda squad failed to mention the entire content of that letter, especially the part where he warned people to not go about freely, lest they become contagious.  He even stated to be irresponsible with infectious disease equaled suicide or murder.

[2]  His "home" was sizable Roman Catholic Church property stolen by the corrupt actions of Frederick III, elector of Saxony.   It wasn't a small cottage.

[3a] Secondly, I could not find one statistical plague timeline chart (or graph ... or numerical table) which mentioned Wittenberg.  There was NEVER a plague outbreak in Wittenberg that resulted in large numbers of patients or deaths.   IF there were an outbreak in Wittenberg, it was too small for the records.  So, we again have predictable exaggerated Protestant propaganda. 

[3b] Ironically enough, in 1505, as a student, Luther was amidst the plague  in Erfurt, Germany.  The added irony to this is that Erfurt is the place where 3,000 Jews were killed by Germans, in a lynch-a-thon, in March of 1349.  This was during the massive version of the Bubonic Plague, and of course, in Germany, the Jews were blamed for causing & spreading the Plague.  

[3c] For those unaware, Luther wrote that the Jews needed to be expelled from all of Germany in the 16th Century.  His qualifying statement was that the expulsion needed to be done by government officials and NOT lynch mobs.  But, Luther was extremely antisemitic, even calling the Jews the Children of Satan in his writings.  So, this would make Jesus Christ a son of Satan too, being that Jesus was quite Jewish. 

Back to the Spanish Inquisition's 20 district courts (aka "tribunals.")

As far as record keeping goes, 20 tribunals (district courts) each had 356 yearly time segments, for record-keeping purposes.  This translates into boxes - windows -cells.  Now, 356 years x 20 tribunals = 7,120 time segments, for the record-keeping purposes.   In as much ...

The statistical summary of the number of cases brought before the entire Spanish Inquisition, in its 356 year history is approximately 131,000.  It sounds like a lot to a member of the American public school system.  HOWEVER, 131,000 cases divided by 356 years of operation =  an average of  368 cases per year.  

Now divide 368 yearly cases by 20 tribunals (district courts).  This equals 368 DIVIDED BY the 20 tribunals = 18 and a third cases per year per tribunal.  18.333 divided by 365  = 1 Spanish Inquisition case every 20 days.   This means that there were years when the Spanish Inquisition was basically on vacation.  So, you Dan-Brown-Types can take your paranoiac tales and . . . Well, you know the drill.

Now, in the last six years of the Granada War which ended in 1491, there was an average of 77 executions --- wartime executions --- in Spain's effort to win back all of Spain to the Spanish, for the first time in 767 years.  The Granada War was the effort to finally defeat the final Moorish stronghold in Spain.  Thus, you would expect a higher number of executions during wartime.  

This stat also means that there were many years when there were NO EXECUTIONS ordered by the Spanish Inquisition.   Plus, the BBC pointed out that the number of executions in 16th & 17th Century Spain was not greater than those which individually occurred in any other European nation, be it France individually, England individually, etc.

The Pertinence

Perhaps you saw a smug-faced anti-Catholic gloat with certainty that the one ... and only one ... Spanish Inquisition horror story narrative was 100,000 % true.  Perhaps you saw the arrogant & smirking facial expression of someone who believes he has all Catholics "busted" --- that he has all the proof needed to declare Catholicism a fraud that has to be  wiped off the Planet Earth.  This has occurred amongst anti-Catholic Atheists and Protestants and Neo-Pagan New Agers alike.  The Montanus Tale is their "Gotcha Moment."  There is one huge problem to this arrogance.

If you ever do come to read the Montanus Horror Story that was first published in Heidelberg in 1567, you will immediately see --- in your technologically advanced & psychologically advanced 21st Century mind --- that only an easily fooled buffoon would fail to instantaneously catch the contradictions and logistic problems in the uncorroborated account.   Rather, these smug faced anti-Catholics never asked to learn of the evidence.  

Example:  The Montanus Tale claims that the remains of gore and shredded flesh were all over the torture devices which Montanus claimed existed.  This includes the mention of an Iron Maiden.  Okay then.  Which humans had the capability to constantly clean human gore & carnage off of torture machines ... or to even endure such a repulsive sight ... throughout full-time employment?  

Plus, how could someone be so stupid as to believe that young Spanish males were too idiotic to detect a mechanical woman at least 20 to 30 feet away. 

The biggest indictment of the hate-filled anti-Catholics is that the Montanus Tale is sheer racism, to the depths of the definition of racism.  It calls the Spanish vile animals, low-lifes, and the children of Satan.  Okay then.  Ricardo Montalban, Antonio Banderas, Plácido Domingo, neurosurgeon Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, famed math teacher Jaime Escalante, Nobel Prize Winner Luis Alvarez, NASA Astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz, etc, etc, etc, are all vile trash and the sons of Satan simply because they have the Spanish DNA . . . according to anonymous Montanus.   Well, people with common sense don't think so.

Concerning Montanus' identity, the anti-Catholics did name a person.  I addressed that particular person in this discourse.  Well, if he were dragged into the Spanish Inquisition, then the anti-Catholics can hire a historian to go to Seville's meticulously kept Inquisition case files, find that particular person's case file, make copies of it, and show it to the world. 

The interesting thing about those who believe the Montanus' Tale is that they claim that the Spanish Inquisition dragged people into torture chambers, to force them to become Catholic.  Observe the asininity of these super smug buffoons:  

To become Catholic, you have to go through the "Rite of Christian Initiation."  It used to be called "the Catechumenate."  This means that you have to go to a series of catechism classes and then show that you have at least a minimum-marginal understanding of the articles of the Faith ... in the Faith of Peter.  In years past, the catechumens would leave Mass before the Consecration of the bread & wine and then go to another room for classroom instruction on the Faith.  That is not going to happen in any torture chamber.

Next, you had to wait until the soonest Palm Sunday, where you would be introduced at a Mass.  Oh, and you also had to find a "catechumen's sponsor," and I don't think that you'll being walking into a Catholic man's house all bloody and chained-up with hooded torturers dragging you into that house, just so that you can ask that man to be your sponsor.  

 In fact, you wouldn't be going to the Palm Sunday Mass all bloody and chained-up to a torture wheel, either.  Nor do I think that you would go to catechism classes all bloody and chained up.

Here is the other asininity:  Jews who refused to become Catholic were expelled from Spain ... NOT tortured in a torture chamber and forced to become Catholic.  This, alone, proved the Montanus Tale to be complete bull crap.  Jews got the Pink Slip.  They got fired.  They weren't set on fire.  They were told to leave Spain.

PLUS ... if you were a Catholic who publicly denounced the Faith of Peter and joined another religion such as Lutheranism or Calvinism or Anabaptism, then you were AUTOMATICALLY EXCOMMUNICATED and you were banned from walking into a Church and joining in the sacraments.  There was an entirely different process to observe, for you return to the Faith, and it had nothing to do with whips, chains, torture wheels, iron maidens, and hooded monks with vampire fangs.

You need to understand that Catholicism is a process, and the ultimate process is that of transforming into Christ.  All other processes in Catholicism are designed to get you to achieve the ultimate process of transforming into the Divine Nazarene who was born in the City of David, namely in Bethlehem.  Actually, Bethlehem means "City of Bread." 

There's a process for becoming Catholic, as well as a process for returning to the church after you left it for whatever reason.  There was a process in 382 A.D. to have those ancient writings of the Bible be declared the Inspired Word of God, too.   There is a process to ordination ... confirmation ... marriage ... canonization, etc.   There is NO rite in the Catholic Church where a monk puts a gun to your head and says, "Become Catholic right now or I'm gonna blow your brains out."  

That scene is basically the 1567 Spanish Inquisition horror story.  Whoever wrote it and published thought that people were really stupid and gullible in the 16th Century.  Today, only a hick from the sticks would believe such a story.  The problem in the 16th Century was that hicks from the stick couldn't read, in the first place.  So, there only heard the rumors and instantly believed them, instead of reading the text and judging for themselves.

The Catholic Church does the opposite of those Tent Revival Protestants who do commit bully tactics in their services, as in literally pushing a person to walk up to the front of the tent and do what Protestants call "an altar call."  

For the record, there is no altar at the front of those tents.  You are then coaxed into suddenly declaring the Nazarene as your Lord and "personal savior," followed by you being instantly declared "saved" for all time and eternity  This is followed by you hearing the echoing of "Praise the Lord."  

The Catholic Church knows that we live in time & space ... and that God is the God of providence ... not the God of pushy & impatient Born-again Tent Revivalists whose final goal is an increase of tax-free collection basket revenue ... and an increase in donations-through-the-mail or through paypal or through venmo.  

All in all, no monk is going to pull you into a torture chamber, if you're excommunicated.  He will instead give you the address of the church official who can lift the sanction of excommunication from you.  Thus, the Montanus Tale is instantly recognized as bull crap yet again, being that no amount of torturing done by any monk is going to get the sanction of excommunication lifted from you or anyone else.  

Rather, the monk would need the approval of the Vatican to grant absolution for a "reserved sin" and to bring you "back into communion with the See of Peter."  Thus, the main weapon of a Spanish clergy member was a quill and ink well ... along with a new commodity called paper ... which replaced vellum and parchment ... and smoke signals.

Moreover, there are people perceived as so vile that no self-respecting Catholic wants him anywhere near Catholic Church property.   No monk is going to be forcing that type of guy to "become a Catholic," being that such a person will only sabotage and vandalize the Faith, in one way or another.

By the way, inquisitions weren't operated by "monks."  They were operated by commissioned laymen and "friars."  The laymen were law school grads, usually.  I mentioned previously that there is a huge difference between a friar and a monk.   So, when you hear a nightmarish Spanish Inquisition tale by a guy constantly using the word, "monk" "monk" "monk," he's full of crap and doesn't know what he's talking about.  He's trying to get Catholics appalled, so that they will leave the True Church and join one of Protestantism's many Fake Churches.  

Those fake churches do NOT have absolution from sin.  They do not have the consecration of the Eucharist.  They do NOT have the Sacrament of Confirmation.  They do not have Christ's priesthood.  And they certainly do NOT have the Power of the Keys that Christ gave to Peter and his successors until the End of Time.  Their Spanish Inquisition horror tales are as fake as their Protestant Churches.

Moreover, throughout the history of Catholicism, the technique that the Church used to get people to become Catholic is called "going out and talking to people."  This is traditionally called "missionary work."  

For example, a priest rents a place and invites people to come and listen to him.  If he is convincing enough, they will eventually become Catholic.  Sometimes, it will take more people to convince someone to become Catholic.  In fact, it might take a bit of book reading to convince that person.  So, how many books are mentioned in the Montanus Tale?

So, in review, the thing that Catholics do to convince you to become Catholic is called "writing books" and "publishing books." ... not torture in Spain.  In order to get someone to become Catholic, you first have to teach him what Catholicism is.  You don't merely drag him into a torture chamber and force him to become something he knows nothing Catholicism.  That's like forcing someone to sing a song when he doesn't know the lyrics.  Such a person first needs to read ... or have read to him ... a catechism book ... even a penny catechism pamphlet.  There are no torture wheels or iron maidens on Roman Catholic altars, and there never was.

As you can now see, the anti-Catholics who rest their condemnation of Catholicism upon the blatantly fictitious "Montanus Tale" are so easily deceived ... and so void of common sense ... that they literally are a danger to society.  After all, look what happened to the easily deceived Germans of the 1930s as soon as Hitler was granted a few "speaking engagements."   He ended up owing the German radio airwaves.

Ironically, Germany was the first place where the Montanus Tale was published.  Germany is the same place where millions of people were deceived by Adolph Hitler.  The same nationality of people who accepted the Montanus Tale also accepted the Hitler Tale.  

Montanus damned the Spanish and Hitler damned the Jews.  Racist hatred prevailed in Germany throughout all those centuries, until the rest of the Western world got sick of it all and then turned Germany into the craters of the Moon, compliments of the B-17, the B-24, British Lancasters, the P-51, the P-38, and the P-47, as well as other airborne vehicles that did NOT drop cotton candy and balloons from their bombers and "pursuit aircraft."

White Anglo-Saxon Prejudice Across the Atlantic, in America

Jimmy Swaggart called the religion of intellectuals and scholars such as Aquinas, Liguori, von Hildebrand, Chesterton, Garrigou-Lagrange, Bede the Venerable, and Luis de Molina a church of superstition.  It's also a religion followed by many an Italian-American engineer, lawyer, and architecture, as well as followed by Hispanic teachers and professors.  Thus, Swaggart is simply a liar marketing fear of Latin People.

Jimmy Swaggart's biggest lie is in him denying that the Bible came from the Catholic Church.  Well, Martin Luther said the opposite.  He said that his Lutheran people needed to give credit to the Catholic Church for preserving and passing on the Bible.  After all, it was Catholic monks who made copies of the Bible.  Protestants didn't have anyone man-enough --- or disciplined enough -- to be a monk, as well as being literate enough to read the Psalms in the Catholic Church's official prayer.  The official prayer of the Catholic Church is the Divine Office ... the Liturgy of the Hours.  The central prayer is the Mass.  And the most advocated prayer by popes and canonized saints ... and yours truly ... is the Rosary and rosary-like devotions, such as honoring the 7 Sorrows and 7 Joys of St. Joseph.

As a quick note, in the 1520s & 1530s, it was the rural people --- the country folk --- who remained Roman Catholic.  The Northern European city slickers were the ones supporting the Protestant takeover of Catholic Church real estate.  Today, country folk in America are usually Protestant, and the American city slickers who have any faith in Christ are are usually Catholic ... or Episcopalian ... or Presbyterian ... or Orthodox.  For some reason the urban blacks in America decided to adhere to the religion of their great grandparents' slave owners.  Well, "the slave Bible" was very much truncated.   It omitted all Biblical passages dealing with becoming free from slavery.

None the less, the collection of writings known as the Bible was declared "the Inspired word of God" in 382 C.E., long before Hus, Luther, and Jimmy Swaggart were even born.  Swaggart is simply a feisty guy with a brawler's mindset.  He's a spiritual thug.  HOWEVER, do NOT bother him.  If you see him in a public venue, such as in a restaurant, leave him alone.  Do NOT harass him.  Do NOT publish any address or phone number of his.  NEVER make the enemies of God look like martyrs.

There is a civilized reason why there exists the written word and audio recording devices.  You can do videos exposing his doctrinal untruths.  You are not going to get him to do it, for you.  So, don't waste your time, unless you are going to pray and offer sacrifices for his conversion.  And that is a legit thing to do with any enemy of the Church, be it Jimmy Swaggart, fake Catholics, corrupt politicians as anti-Catholic you-know-whom, and bully celebrities who get to sit and B.S. away on a TV talk show, thereby wasting people's time every weekday.

Now, concerning today's Protestant attacks against Catholicism, in the 450 year tradition of Protestants defaming the only church ever founded by Christ, the motive has been this:  The renewed defamation is the attempt to create a horror for Catholicism in the minds of Catholics, in the hope that Catholics will leave the True Church, then join a fake church, and then put disposable income into the tax-free collection baskets of the defamer Protestants.  It's business.  It's all business.   After all, these Protestant TV preachers do wear business suits at their pulpits, as they pretend to be Biblical scholars.

Catholicism is the largest and oldest Christianity ever.  This means that Catholicism is the lead competitor of the product being sold by TV preachers.  Now, these defamatory preachers approach their pulpits in business suits ... when not dressed in graduation gowns.  So, the Catholic Church has the greatest number of potential customers. The constant defaming of Catholicism is an element of Business Suit Protestantism.   It's their way of saying that their product is better than the product of the leading competitor.  It's their way of getting more customers ... and more income.  

You gotta admit that these TV evangelists are really really really rich, thereby showing humanity that Americans are not very bright.  Americans have a way of throwing away their money.

And remember, Protestantism began in the 1520s & 1530s by stealing Catholic Church real estate and infrastructure.  This was done, by means of a king's decree here and an elector's decree there, to the point where a new Protestant religion was suddenly declared the official state religion in England, Scotland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Jurisdiction of Saxony, the Jurisdiction of Brandenburg, the City of Zurich, etc.  Even Munster Germany was temporarily commandeered by a cult of Anabaptists who had the reputation of a sex cult . . . like the Ranters (which see) 

Protestantism was NOT the people's choice, being that it was too new to have been test-driven by any 16th Century Northern European nation.  The only place where it showed itself to exist according to the People's will was in a pocket or two of Southern France, where the Huguenots lived ... and in Zurich, as well as in Geneva.   Protestantism elsewhere was imposed upon the People by the sword.  This has been already outlined, in other articles at this site.

The fact that there were Catholic-Protestant wars throughout the 16th & 17th Centuries shows that Protestantism wasn't as popular as the propagandists make it out to be.  Luther advocated the death penalty for anyone who didn't believe his specific heretical doctrines, and he did the OPPOSITE of allowing for freedom of thought.   Yet, people claim that he was the champion of freedom of thought.  This is why this site is here.  Luther was not what his propagandists made him out to be, and even his medical condition was "well-documented,"  including his "seizure disorder."  But, his followers won't admit that he was a pathological mess.

There's more.  That's why there is now need to address all of the anti-Catholic propaganda.  It has quickly become the anti-Catholic 1800s in America, again.   See:  Know-Nothing Party (Political Party).

As an example of misunderstanding & false light defamation, the statue of St. Louis was vandalized under the claim that Louis was a white racist.  King Louis was half Hispanic, and in today's America, Hispanics are regarded as a racial minority, by American society ... as opposed to the Census Bureau.  So, people vandalized the statue of a minority person who actually began the free-of-charge hospital system in Western Europe.  That's the thanks Louis got ... for his charity.

Part 3: The Real Spanish Inquisition

Toledo branch of the Inquisition.  Okay, where are the blood stained torture chamber walls?  Where are the mass graves?  Where are the remnants of torture devices?  Where are the hand-written accounts of local citizen's hearing screams?  And where are the nighttime haunting poltergeist sounds of the torture chamber victims, today? 

ONE anonymous tale, refuted by the THOUSANDS of Spanish Inquisition case files

All the nightmarish accusations of the Spanish Inquisition came from one 1567 writing published in Heidelberg ... and one 1570 letter proven to be a forgery.  The letter claimed that the Inquisition targeted entire European populations for annihilation.   That was it.  There was nothing more than --- tabloid newspaper gossip.  

Of course, anti-Catholic propagandists will deceive you into thinking that numerous people witnessed horror and wrote about the Inquisition, when the truth is that people who never experienced the Inquisition wrote about it hundreds of years after 1567.  They wrote as if the horror stories which are easy to refute were still occurring hundreds of years later.  This included Voltaire.  Voltaire was an arrogantly presumptive person who like to belittle people.

The Spanish Inquisition horror story has zero physical evidence attached to it and zero documentation attached to it, as well.  It was overly theatrical pre-war propaganda for the upcoming war which intended to be a war of succession from Spain --- for the Netherlands.  It turned out to be the dreaded 80 Years War spanning from 1568 to 1648.  

Actually, the war began in 1567, when Calvinists secretly entered the Netherlands as peasants.  It was the European version of the 1968 TET Offensive of Vietnam.  Thus, Martin Luther's Protestants & John Calvin's Protestants ... along with Zwingli's Protestants ... and the Puritans who had no objection to massacring Irish Catholics on Irish land ... were the opposite of peace-loving Christians.  As a reminder, it was Francis of Assisi, Clare of Assisi, Anthony of Padua, Raymond of Pentafort, and Dominic Guzma who were the peace-loving Christians.  They brought who did bring peace to their regions of Europe in the 13th Century.  

Amongst the aforementioned saints, Raymond of Penyafort is the most forgotten.  He is underrated and unappreciated in the modern Church.  Yet, he was as much as a shaker, a mover, and a rebuilder of a church falling apart as were the Franciscans and St. Dominic.  In fact, Saint Raymond was a Dominican.  Moreover, the most influential saint of the following century would also be a Dominican.  Her name is Catherine of Siena.

Starting Point 

Did you believe in the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction?  Almost everyone did, due to the relentless propaganda promoted by the one-sided, corporate-sized media.  Yet, after hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and years of warfare, none were found.  However, that wasn't the only fraud forced upon humanity throughout the ages. 

We now adjourn to the modern-era reputation of the Spanish Inquisition.  People have been led to believe in the horror story version of that judicial system as much as they were led to believe in the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction.  Being that your mind probably carries a cemented conclusion about the over-exaggerated Spanish Inquisition, take a moment to answer this question:

Firstly, you can find numerous pieces of evidence to prove the existence of the Nazi German mass-murder industry, to the point of touring the gas chambers and walking past the mass grave-sites, as well as seeing photographs of all the jewelry taken from the mass-murdered Jews, Gypsies, and even Roman Catholic priests who wore metal crosses and religious medals.  Well, where can you find the evidence to support the horror-story version of the Spanish Inquisition?  

You can definitely find evidence for the 20th Century Spanish Civil War.  But what evidence can you produce about the Darth Vader version of 16th Century Spain?  The Darth Vader version turned out to be merely the pre-war propaganda of 1567, just like the pre-war propaganda of 2003.

Now, it's important to note that each individual case which was brought before the Spanish Inquisition had a case file attached to it.  Each case file was then consigned to the Spanish Inquisition Archive System.  The archive system remained well-preserved throughout the centuries.  

Decades ago, the Spanish government opened to the public the Spanish Inquisition archives.  And of course, the world renown BBC took up the Spanish government on its open invitation and payed credentialed historians to report on their findings, after scouring through the Spanish Inquisition case files.  That amounted to 356 years of case files, minus the few years when Napoleon put the Spanish Inquisition out of operation. 

Directly below is the link to the 1994 documentary on the Spanish Inquisition, produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation.  It's titled, the MYTH of the Spanish Inquisition, with the accent being on "myth."  I would have called the documentary the Intelligence-insulting Farce of ... or the Hyper-exaggeration of ...  or the False Light Defamation of ...  or the Entirely Distorted Image of  ... the Spanish Inquisition.   

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY-pS6iLFuc

The Inquisition, itself, comprised 20 branch offices, otherwise known as tribunals ... otherwise equal to "district courts."  The number of judges, aka Inquisitors, per tribunal was no more the two or three.   

Technically speaking, it wasn't a church court operation.  It was a secular branch of the Castile & Aragon crowns, with imperial immediacy attached to its jurisdiction.  This meant that the operators of the Inquisition had immediate recourse to and from the Spanish crown, without having to go through a chain of command.  It was equal to going straight to the U.S. Supreme Court, without having to go through district and then federal circuit appeals court.

None the less, the Spanish Inquisition was founded in 1478 by Queen Isabella, as an aid in her final war against Spain's Muslim invaders & occupiers of the previous 767 years.  That inquisition was also useful in discerning the activities of the four major knightly orders in Spain.  Thus, it was originally established to spy on the Moors and the Roman Catholic knights.  [1] Martin Luther wasn't even born, yet (1483).  [2] John Calvin was not yet born, as well (1509.)  In fact, the Spanish Inquisition was established before the births of [3] John Knox (1514), [4] Menno Simons (1496), [5] Besançon Hugues (1487), [6] Huldrych Zwingli (1484), [7] Philip Melanchthon (1497), [8] Martin Bucer (1491), [9] Andreas Karlstadt (1986), [10] Thomas Müntzer (1489), William Farel (1489), etc, etc, etc.   .  

Queen Isabella asked the pope to grant official approval of this Spanish Inquisition, so that she could use official Catholic Church theologians to judge the cases there.  These members of the Catholic Hierarchy were the final judges of each case brought before them.  Yet, the Spanish Inquisition was a State Court that was granted autonomy.  This means that laymen lawyers were also involved in investigating & presenting the cases.  None the less, Catholic theologians were the  judges.  But, they were judges in the name of the queen and NOT in the name of the Roman Catholic Church.  

There simultaneously existed the Roman Inquisition.  That WAS the official Church inquisition.  But, it didn't have attached to it the nightmarish torture chamber stories attached to the Spanish Inquisition.  This is because Spain was the great imperial power of Europe at the time, and to defeat a massive power, you must employ the use of lying propaganda and concentrate on the enemy, keeping attention away from anything or anyone else.  The goal was to outrage the citizenry into rebelling for your cause.  The citizens of the Netherlands were manipulated to rebel against Spain who was the sovereign power at the time; not Rome.

Stats

Concerning statistics, the Spanish Inquisition endured for 356 years.  Throughout the 356 year history of the Spanish Inquisition, there was an average of no more than 9 to 14 executions per year.  Throughout this time, the population of Spain went from approx 9 million to 13.4 million.  This makes the former claim of 100,000 executions beyond ridiculous.  Even the modern Protestant claim of 32,0000 deaths is 6.5 to 10 times higher than the reality.

Now,  during the last six years of the final war between the invader-occupier Muslims and the Catholics of Spain, there was an average of 77 executions per year, until 1492.  This was 15th Century statistics.  So, beware of how a stereotypical propagandist can twist the stats.  None the less, Spain was at war with an opponent who occupied Spain for 767 years.  So, the executions were not a matter of a crazed maniac with torture engines all around him.

All in all, it got to a point in time, when all Spanish Inquisition executions ceased for the most part.  In fact, Napoleon and the Cortes Cadiz (which see) suspended inquisition operations from 1808 to 1814.  All in all, the last execution was that of of a teacher who used Catholic Church property to advocate Deism.  Deism claims that everything about the Catholic Faith is worthless, meaning that the Catholic Church should be dissolved and its property used for other things.  This was in the Year 1826.

Now, experience in Europe was that the preacher of any anti-Catholic doctrine is eventually accompanied by armed persons ready to engage in warfare and commandeer Catholic Church real estate.  The same was the case for the Orthodox religion, namely in Russia.

In conclusion, the true nightmare of Spanish History was [1] Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 and [2] the 20th Century Spanish Civil War, where even nuns were executed ... and where even statues of Christ were the targets of firing squads. 

In review, the closest iron maiden was discovered to have been in Germany; a very long jog from Spain.  The Spanish Inquisition archives proved that 16th Century Spain was NOT any worse than France or Austria or Italy or Greece in matters of capital punishment, concerning the number of those executed.  And it certainly wasn't worse than Russia which was, by far, worst in that department.  

In fact, England was the monster of 16th Century Western Europe, in alternating intervals of time.  Sometimes the British monster awakened.  At other times, it was put to rest,  When it came to executions, 16th Century England had low tide and high tide.  And concerning the proverbial high tide, 200 to 300 Catholic martyrs of the Tudor reign ended up being beatified by the end of the 19th Century, in Vatican City.  That is one step away from canonization.  

Then came the Irish who were victimized by Oliver Cromwell.   The estimate is that approx 520 Roman Catholics were put to death by the Tudor and Cromwell reigns, with much less of a number of Protestants being executed by the same British.  Yet, the Spanish Inquisition gets the attention, even though Protestant England executed Protestant Lutherans ... and even though Protestant Switzerland executed Protestant Anabaptists.  This included the execution of Mennonite, Felix Manz.  

In sequence, seven years later, an Anabaptist cult took over the entire German city of Münster, and that resulted in warfare tactics being employed against the cult.   Protestants were not reforming the Church.  Protestants were killing each other, and constantly striving to take over Northern European Roman Catholic Church real estate & infrastructure.  

The 16th Century was a time of chaos and bloodshed ... NOT freedom of thought.  After all, wherever there is insanity, there is never any freedom of thought.  Luther was nobody's liberator, especially the German peasants who were vehemently condemned by Luther ... after he previously wrote a piece that made him sound like their great protector.  Well, 300,000 German peasants were NOT protected by Luther or anyone else.   Approximately 100,000 of them died in the process of Luther seeing to it that the Elector of Saxony would ... would ... "push back" the advance of the primitively-equipped peasant army which was annihilated by a much smaller, yet more modernized alliance of [1] Swabians, [2] Hessians, [3] Saxons, and soldiers from Brunsewick-Wolfenbuttal.

In as much, you will find 16th Century mass graves in Luther's Germany, but you will NOT find them in Renaissance Spain.  You will especially NOT see any near any district court of the Spanish Inquisition.  This is super ironic for the anti-Catholic pro-Lutheran folks out there who have a seething hatred toward Roman Catholicism and Romans per se.  HOWEVER, you need to understand that Martin Luther suddenly became terrified over the concept of Mob Rule in 1524, being that a mob of peasants was literally headed his way.  All in all, the nightmare of Spain was the 20th Century Spanish Civil War and NOT the 16th Century Spanish Inquisition.

The accusation against Catholicism has been that it's "adherents" (church members) were mindlessly superstitious and anti-progress, as well as anti-science.  At this point, observe the following list of Roman Catholic mathematicians, scientists & inventors.  It includes several Catholics who are regarded as the "father of "this science and "the father of" that science.  This includes Nobel Prize winners in one science category or the other.  It shows that Catholicism was the opposite of the dark oppressor of invention and the suppressor of intellectual thought.  It shows that the very stiff-necked Jimmy Swaggart (born in 1945) to be all wrong, along with the ultimate objector-to & skeptic-of Catholicism, John Ankerberg (born in Chicago, 1945):

[1] Antoine Lavoisier (father of modern chemistry who was executed during the French Revolution),  [2] Borelli (father of biomechanics),  [3] Fabricius (father of embryology),  [4] Agricola, along with [5] Anselmus de Boodt (co-founders of mineralogy),  [6] Andre Ampere (co-formulator of the laws of Electromagnetism),  [7] Marcello Malpighi (father of comparative physiology),  [8] Luca Pacioli (father of accounting & bookkeeping),  [9] Gregor Mendel (father of genetics),  [10] Giuseppi Zamboni (inventor of the first electrostatic battery,  [11] Benito Vines (founder of hurricane science), [12] Nicolas Steno (father of geology & stratigraphy, as well as Steno's Principles), [13] Antonio Neri (glass-making treatise), [14] Giuseppi Mercalli (Volcanology & the Mercalli Scale for measuring earthquakes),  [15] Christian Mayer (pioneer in Binary Star Science).

Now, over 200 more names of Catholics can be added to the list.  In as much, show me the discoveries, inventions, and/or scientific treatises of the anti-Catholic TV evangelists and their 16th Century Northern European Protestant counterparts.  The Catholic Church is NOT the hider of the Bible.  It's NOTthe oppressor of knowledge.  It's the church of prolific writers ... and societal organizers ... and inquisitive scientists.

Note: John Hagee apologized for his assertions against Catholicism.  So, we act as if it never happened when it comes to him, and we move on.  That's called, "forgiveness."  Try it some time in the near future.

The Jews of Spain:  Both sides of the story

Whereas the Horror Story of the Inquisition detailed horrendous torture against Protestants, there wasn't enough Protestants in Spain to keep 20 district court tribunals busy.  The true inquisition predominately focused on Jews, to see if those who went through public conversion to Catholicism secretly remained Jews, instead --- and to see if any Jews were still giving financial support to the Moors.  

At this point stop and acknowledge in your mind the predominate reason why Spaniards did NOT trust Jews.  It's simple.  Jews were seen as the funding source of the Moorish invaders and occupiers of Spain, especially in Granada where they excelled economically.  BUT ... the Moorish occupation was basically in three different modes of time, with the middle era being "warfare renewed." 

When Umayyad Caliphate Commander Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād first captured Granada, Cordorba, and Astorga (in 711 C.E.), the Jews saw themselves as being relieved of the stress and oppression imposed by the Visigoths.  As long as the Jews payed the Jizya tax to the Moors ... and as long as they abided by certain Muslims laws ... they could enjoy an affluent lifestyle.  Yet, they and the Catholics were to be regarded as second class citizens, under Muslim Rule.  Yet, the Jews in Granada were an effective source of income for the Moors, and they thrived with the Moors.  The Moorish capital was Granada, and the Moors remained in Spain for 767 years, even calling Spain, Andalusia.  

The great animosity from the Jews came from the period when the Visigoths were forcing baptism upon them.  Yet, a Visigoth king recognized that it was a wrong thing to do, so he put it to an end.  The official Catholic Church teaching on forced baptism appears in Vatican II and in the Pope Pius XII encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi.  To make a long story short, you cannot force doctrinal beliefs on a person.  You can enforce the natural law of moral conduct, though.  Thus, you can prohibit dangerous activities and unsafe practices.  You can punish a person for violent acts not done in self-defense or in the defense of a third person.  You can even inspect things, such as road vehicles, to make sure they are not a danger to anyone.  But, you cannot tell a person whom to believe is God ... or to believe in the existence of the Great Spirit ... or the godhead ... or the Unmoved Mover .. or Thor ... or Odin ... or Jupiter ... or Pachama, etc.

Ironically, the non-Christians Moors were allowed to stay in Spain, after the 1492 liberation of the Moors.  Then, in 1609, even Roman Catholic Moors were expelled.  They were all under suspicion of aiding the Berber pirates in the Mediterranean Sea.  The bottom line is that the Spaniards dreaded a return invasion of the Moors. And they were sure that the Jews would re-welcome them, due to the Moors not being as harsh as were the Visigoths.   The Visigoths should have let the matter of religion be in the hands of unarmed missionaries who were more teachers than sales professionals or census takers. 

The forged letter of 1570

As far as goes the forged letter, it stated that the Inquisition targeted entire Western European populations for extermination.  In addition to proving the letter a fraud through forensic science, the circumstance of the day proved it to be the most asinine of allegations.  This is because Spain had its hands full with none other than the FOURTH Ottoman-Venetian War.  This necessitated the Spanish, Sicilian, and Neapolitan navy fleets to sail to Cyprus and to the Gulf of Patraikos.   There wasn't the time or the resources to exterminate Protestant Europeans.

The Fourth Ottoman-Venetian War was the war of the famous Battle of Lepanto of 1571 (which see.)  Europe was about to be overrun by Muslim invaders who would have turned all the churches into mosques ... and many a young lady into harem girls ... against the ladies' wills.  Yet, none of the official Protestant nations cared to join in the defense of Europe, as if they were hoping that the Ottomans would destroy the Catholic armies and end the Holy Roman Empire ... and to end the Habsburg Dynasty. 

At the same time, the dreaded 80 Years War was transpiring in the Netherlands.  It involved a trade embargo against England & those English "privateers" who were pirating Spanish & Portuguese ships.  Thus, there wasn't the time and the resources to even think of exterminating entire Protestant populations within Europe.  The letter was a complete fake which caused an uproar.

The Montanus Nightmare Tale included racist name-calling, all the while accusing the common Spaniard of being the most depraved & most vile low-life that humanity had to offer.  Thus, you were considered to be the worst of the worst dregs, simply because you were Spanish.  That's racism.

Plus, the reasonable person would realize that the horrific tortures of the Montanus Tale involve repulsively shredded gore ... repulsive displays of carnage.  Now, no human can endure the work of cleaning torture engines laced with torn human carnage, day after day after day.  

Nearby Spanish residents would have eventually learned of this torture, if the tortures had been occurring.  There would have then been an uproar and lots of writings on the subject would have been addressed to civil and religious leaders.  The Vatican would have intervened as much as it did during the official banning of slavery in [1] the Canary Islands,  [2] the Philippines, and [3] Latin America.  The pope surely would have heard of it and then he would have commented on it ... or else he would have issued a papal bulletin, banning such conduct.  Well, there is no physical evidence of any such tortures, and no evidence of letters to Rome, and no evidence of statements by any Vatican official at the time.  This would logically mean that "it" wasn't happening the way Montanus stated that it was.  Such a thing is usually called, False Light Defamation.

This means that there would be mass graves of chaotically arranged human bones near each of the 20 district courts of the Spanish Inquisition, if that horror story were true.  So, where are these mass graves?  The people who still promote the hyper-exaggeration of the Spanish Inquisition need to become defendants in a multi-million dollar class action defamation lawsuit --- simply to finally shut them up.  Their tale defames Catholics today, and it incites violence against Catholics.  And of course, approximately 300 attacks upon Catholic Church infrastructure had recently occurred in America, along with church burnings in Canada, to the accompaniment of cheering voices.  There was also the French churches that were sabotaged, as well. 

At this point, one needs to acknowledge that those recent acts of American vandalism were suspected to have been done by pro-abortion political fanatics.  Well, those fanatics were brainwashed at a young age to believe that the Catholic Church is equal to the Spanish Inquisition Horror Story.  Yet, the history of Catholicism is marked by expanded undertakings of charity and the de-animalizing of man.  Hospitals and schools of every academic grade were established.  Mankind was being taken out of the darkness of ignorance is those many Roman Catholic cases.  The illiterate were being educated.  Religious orders emerged according to need.  This included a religious order dedicated to paying ransom to Muslim pirates, for kidnapped European Christians.  This also included a French religious order dedicated to giving formal education to orphans in France.  

In addition, the Spanish were well known to be sensitive enough to make notable artwork.  Sensitive people abhor gore.  Moreover, the only known iron maiden of the era was in . . . Germany ... not Spain.  Plus, Spain was a Roman Catholic country, and Roman Catholicism forbade bodily mutilation of any kind.  Yes, the tortures described in the 1567 horror tale was a violation of canonical law.  Spo, according to Montanus, the Catholic Church was breaking Catholic Church law, in order to make people become Catholic ... so that they could break Catholic Church law.  Real smart there, Monty.

The real nightmare of Spain was in its 20th Century civil war.  Nuns, priests, and Catholic laity were executed at the time.  They weren't the oppressive "Bible-hiding" executioners.  They were the executed.  In fact, an order of priests martyred during that war were beatified at Vatican City in October of 1989.  They were priests of the Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ, also known as the Passionists.  Each priest was placed one step away from the status of a canonized saint.

The Renaissance Era Spanish did NOT arbitrarily kill people.  There had to be a writ of execution involved with every execution, being that the most powerful empire in Western Europe always had due process of the law and record-keeping.  The Spanish kept a meticulous archive system.   There is no evidence of more than an average of 9 to 14 executions per year in the Spanish Inquisition, and those people were burnt in flames.  There weren't killed on torture engines.

Also to be addressed is the fact that today's more subtle anti-Catholic propagandists attribute the Montanus Horror Story to a certain Spaniard who was an ex-monk versed in Hebrew and Greek.  Well, no sensible human would write so repulsively of his own people, because to do so is to indict yourself.   Since when does a sane Spaniard call all the Spanish "the children of Satan"?  Hello?  Is anybody home, upstairs?

No Spaniard would call his own people and own self the most sexually perverted, most murderous, and lowest of all animals who walk the Earth.  In fact, how could the ultimate super power of Western Europe be a nation of brutal & mindless dregs, as well as sexually perverted animals?  That, alone, shows that the Montanus Horror Story was hyped-up pre-war propaganda.  Yet, the specific facts about the one Spaniard whom the anti-Catholics claim to be Montanus shows instantly that they are either deliberately lying or they are void of intelligence.  

To make a long story short, that particular Spanish person would have been taken to the Netherlands Inquisition and NOT to the Spanish Inquisition as Montanus claimed to have been taken.  Plus, the Spanish ex-monk would had exactly sixteen witnesses to corroborate at least part of his story.  This is because 16 other monks simultaneously left the monastery with the Spanish gentleman claimed to be Montanus in disguise.  Yet, no one ever corroborated anything that the Montanus Tale stated.   

Plus, the Spanish man whom Protestants claim to be Montanus appeared in Geneva Switzerland healthy and enthusiastic, in 1568.  By 1571, the same man became a citizen of Frankfort and then became a successful silk merchant.  He lived to the age 74.  If he were beaten badly at a horrific Spanish torture chamber, he would have died at a much younger age.  

It is always wrong to present your hate-filled prejudice as documented fact.  And concerning the man claimed to be Montanus, it was the Spaniard who translated the Bible into Spanish.  The hate-filled propagandists wanted to make it appear that Casiodoro de Reina was tortured for translating the Bible into Spanish.  This is where the greatest lie of Protestant propagandists come to the fore.  It's simular to the claim made of Wycliffe.  For the record, John Wycliffe was NEVER burnt at the stake.  John Wycliffe was NEVER executed.  He died from a stroke, during the Christmas season.

Their great lie is the claim that the Catholic Church hid the Bible from humanity, and that the Protestants liberated mankind by distributing the Bible everywhere, beginning with the Gutenberg Bible.  This is a 100,000% lie.  

Firstly, Gutenberg was a devout Roman Catholic given ranking by the Bishop of Mainz, Germany.  It has always been the case that the Catholic Church used & still uses the Bible far more often than the Protestants ever did . . . to the point where numerous Roman Catholic stained-glass windows ARE Biblical passage scenes in picture form . . . manufactured for the sake of the illiterate.  Observe:

During any day, the Roman Catholic Church uses the Bible in its official prayers [1] EIGHT times everyday in the Divine Office, also known as the Book of Hours,  [2] THREE times per every Sunday Mass,   [3] TWO times per every weekend Mass . . . and in  [4] numerous theology courses, being that the Roman Catholic Church has far more academic institutions of all academic levels than Protestantism ever had, [5] and the Bible is also used during official Catholic weekend retreats, depending on the discretion of the priest conducting the retreat.  

[6]  Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church grants a complete remission of the TEMPORAL PUNISHMENT due to sin (AFTER receiving priestly absolution) at the hour of death to those who spent their lives devoutly reading the Bible approximately a quarter-hour per day.  This means that the Roman Catholic Church ENCOURAGES the reading of the Bible, "for devout purposes."  [7]  Also remember that the greatest Bible teacher of them all were the numerous Catholic Church stained-glass windows which each portray a Biblical scene on each window, be it the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of Christ, St. Peter's commission, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Archangel Michael, Elijah, John the Baptist, etc, etc, etc.  

Protestant preachers who wear business suits at the pulpit lie about the Catholic Church as a business tactic.  They defame the Catholic Church, in the hope that Catholics will leave the True Church and join the preachers' Protestant sect, so that the Catholics will start putting their tax-free collection basket money into the Protestant sect's collection baskets.  For a Protestant preacher, defaming Catholics is profitable.  That is equivalent to stealing money via "theft by deception."  Those types of preachers are liars & thieves, for the sake of your "disposal income;" of your tax-free collection basket allowance money.

In this way, the Protestant preachers can buy more business suits ... and personal items.  It's business to them.  It's all business.  It's how they make their income; killing off the Catholic Church so that they can live really really well.  They are constantly looking for their Thirty Pieces of Silver, over and over, again and again.

Part 4: The Real Spanish Inquisition

A nation of mindless animals can't construct things like this, because it required diligence, intellectual capacity, and discipline.  These types of structures are throughout Spain.  Thus, the Montanus Tale of Spaniards being beastly Satanic terrorists was the Montanus Farce.  The year after it's publication, the 80 Years War began.  Propaganda does start wars.  However, Calvinist fanatics were infiltrating the Netherlands in disguise, in 1567.  Thus, it was actually the 81 Years War.

The great outrage in anti-Catholic propagandists harping on the anonymous & uncorroborated 1567 horror story for the past 450 years ... without first consulting the vast Inquisition archives ... and without acknowledging the entire absence of physical evidence ... is that those people are condemning the existence of the Catholic Church today, by pushing a 450 year old war propaganda that was proven to be a hideous exaggeration, in the first place.   They are basically saying, "You have to shut down ... or shun ... or destroy ... the Catholic Church of today, for something that was said to have happened 450 years ago, without evidence to prove that it happened."  Even today, Protestant preachers outright claim ... or insinuate  ... that the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon ... and that the pope is the Antichrist.  

For the record, the Herod Dynasty was the Whore of Babylon of the Apocalypse, and ancient Rome was the Beast of the Apocalypse.  And of course, Herod mocked Jesus, while waiting for him to perform magic tricks.  Rome then executed him.

This endless promotion of the Montanus Tale is especially a defamatory outrageous, in light of the fact that Henry VIII's England was the true nightmare, as was the German Peasant Rebellion opponents who saw to the killing of 100,000 of the 300,000 participating peasants.  Oliver Cromwell's massacre of the Irish in Drogheda was just as true a nightmare as the German Peasant Massacres, and Elizabeth II calling for an all-out persecution of the Catholic Church in the 1580s is a continuation of the same nightmare.   Yet, Protestant propagandists shown themselves to have no sense of compassion or empathy.

Now, even the British government posthumously condemned Cromwell as a criminal.  Yet, the Protestant preachers of today never acknowledge the murderous acts of Cromwell.  They simply insert, upon occasion,  mention of the Montanus horror story version of the Spanish Inquisition.  It was easily proven to be a hoax, through the employment of non-lazy historians who have no trouble over the idea of scouring through ... sifting through ... the 130,000 case files in the Spanish Inquisition archives. 

Once again, the 1994 BBC documentary titled, THE MYTH OF THE SPANISH INQUISITION, is linked directly below, for your convenience.

See:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhlAqklH0do      

In having stolen all Roman Catholic Church property in England, and after having killed Roman Catholics by the cartload, Tudor England needed to develop an exaggerated and therefore false excuse for the murders and thefts.  They had to demonize Roman Catholics, even though England was Roman Catholic for the prior consecutive centuries.  So, they officials declared the only church which traces back to the original apostles the Whore of Babylon.    

Thus, British Protestants were out to defame their own ancestors.  Or at the least, they would find a way to make their ancestors look like the repressed victims of that evil evil Catholic Church known for minstrels, fairs, knights, castles, religious charity organizations, monks making hand-written copies of the Bible, religious pilgrimages, cathedrals, and Saint Francis of Assisi, as well as Clare of Assisi; not to mention Thomas a Becket, and the Thomas More who was executed directed through Henry VIII.

Being that there was a rebellion in the Netherlands against the Hapsburg Dynasty who happened to also rule Spain, war propagandists needed to make the Spanish look so horrifying that the Dutch would want all links to Spain severed. 

Central Europe's Lutherans and Calvinists needed to do the same, being that the King of Spain was also the Holy Roman Emperor.  Thus came the hyper-exaggerated horror story of the Spanish Inquisition, published in Heidelberg in 1567.  However, more people were executed in the Netherlands for heresy than in Spain, between 1557 and 1562.  So, where are all the horror stories about the Dutch Inquisition?  Well, the horror story about the Dutch would come to be that they would rise as the literal masters of the Atlantic Slave Trade, adversely affecting the lives of 500,000 black (sub-Saharan) Africans.

Now see historian & researcher Henry Kamen, fellow of the Royal Historical Society:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akzLwWRKi1c

Below:  The Toledo branch of the Spanish Inquisition, slightly south of Madrid.   

That overly theatrical & anonymously written 1567 text resulted in the 80 Years War, one year later.  It would result in the NORTHERN Dutch leaving the Roman Catholic Church and then becoming the literal masters of the Atlantic slave trade, until 1814.  

The Dutch trafficked in approximately 500,000 African lives, thereby causing tremendously more harm on humanity than any European inquisition ever could.  The Netherlands would also be a nation of legalized piracy, in hijacking hundreds of Portuguese & Spanish ships, while claiming to be "predestined" to Heaven, according to the Calvinist Protestant doctrine.   

Moreover, on two historic occasions, popes shut down the slave trade, even 16 years before Columbus was even born; [1] Canary Islands, January 13, 1435, Pope Eugene IV. [2] Philippines, April 18, 1591, Pope Gregory XIV.

In a third instance, in 1537, the reigning pope at the time officially banned slavery in the Americas.

All in all, the demonizing of the Roman Catholic Church was done, in order to justify the stealing of Catholic Church real estate, via edict & decree in the following European places:

[1] England, by secular edict, [2] Scotland, by secular edict, [3] Denmark, by secular edict,  [4] Norway, by secular edict, but not until two years after Henry VIII robbed the Church in England,  [5] Sweden, by secular edict that was "abrogated" for a short while and which was later placed back into force,  [6] Finland, by secular edict,  [7] Saxony, by outright disobedience to imperial orders,  [8] Brandenburg, by "elector's discretion," concerning a 1526 law, until the law was "reversed" in 1529,  [9] Zurich Switzerland, Geneva Switzerland, and other German and Swiss territories.

Furthermore, the 1567 horror story coincidentally was published when the Catholic government of the Netherlands counter-attacked the rebels who were literally rioting and smashing Catholic church statues without paying for the damages caused.  Statue Smashing is called Iconoclasm.  In as much, the statue smashers could now use the very defamatory 1567 horror story to claim that the Catholics of the Netherlands were evil and must be defeated.  However, the irony to this consists in the fact that European law always used to require TWO corroborating witnesses, in order to effect a conviction.  The Montanus Horror Story did NOT have a corroborating witness account.   

Shock Troops like Ninjas & the Trojan Horse

In 1568 Calvinist "shock troops" came into the Netherlands dressed like beggars, in a tactic much like the Trojan Horse event.  They were called the Geuzen, and they came to kill.  Thus, the 1567 horror story published in Heidelberg was deliberate war propaganda for the Protestant-Catholic (or Catholic-Protestant) wars.

And remember:  The King of Spain also was the King of the Netherlands, and he also was the Holy Roman Emperor.  Thus, the propagandist who fabricated the "Montanus Tale" painted the picture of a common Spaniard so vile that the Dutch would want to have nothing to do with the king of those Spaniards.  That same king who happened was also the king of the Dutch.  In this way, the lying propagandist(s), "Montanus" was trying to recruit soldiers for the Catholic-Protestant wars.  And of course, Winston Churchill once stated that, "The first casualty of war is the truth."  Before evil people attack, they first lie about the enemy.   They demonize their targeted victims.

The 16th Century Version of Tokyo Rose

You need to read about the Hapsburg Dynasty.  In as much, the Protestant Revolt was not against Catholicism alone.  It was also against the Hapsburg Dynasty.  Thus, the 1567 horror story about the Spanish Inquisition which has ZERO EVIDENCE to support its claims was nothing more than war propaganda.  Whoever wrote it was the 16th Century version of "Tokyo Rose."  (which see)

Also remember that, at its beginning, Protestantism was literally forced upon Northern Europeans, via governmental decrees, aka kings' edicts.  It was shoved down Northern European Roman Catholic throats, under penalty of law.  Protestantism was too new to have been the popular religion of the People.  And of course, by the death penalties given by the "Protestant Reformers,"  the number 2 casualty in the "Protestant Reformation" was "freedom of thought."  The Number 1 casualty was Truth & Kindness. (Biblical phrase from Isaiah.)

The Protestant movement was the act of secularizing Christianity.  It was the act of taking a cult founded by a seizure disordered German and turning it into a national religion throughout Northern European jurisdictions.  The act of shoving 16th Century Protestantism down Europeans' throats was no different than Lenin, Mao, and Madalyn Murray O'Hair shoving atheism down 20th Century people's throats. 

Now think! Volumes of evidence exist for the Nazi Holocaust.  None exist for the Darth Vader version of the Spanish Inquisition.  You don't have to be the useful idiot of the anti-Catholic megachurch & backwoods preachers out there.

For those who missed it, the Spanish Inquisition is entirely on record, in archives

Concerning the true horror story of the 16th Century, between 1557 and 1562, more executions transpired in the Netherlands than in Spain.  Yet, the Castile Crown's population was 7 million and Aragon was an additional million, while the Netherlands' population was 2.4 million.  This means that Spain should have had at least three times more executions.

Here's something the brainwashed will refuse to believe:  Spain did NOT execute women for witchcraft.  In the Spanish Inquisition data that I personally saw, I saw a grand total of ONE woman in Spain who was executed for witchcraft.   Now, let's follow a trail of facts:

A Matter of Identity

There is the matter of the identity of the author(s) of the 1567 Heidleberg publication that detailed the overly theatrical accusations against Roman Catholic Spain, where within the Spanish were called "animals."  Great racism there, Montanus.  The writer identified himself as "Reginaldus Gonsalvius Montanus."  Needless to say, there is no such case file in the Spanish Inquisition archives.  So, the pro-protestant people who make the conjectures ... as well as the disingenuous propaganda, claim that Montanus was Casiodoro of Reina.  

Well, years after the modern Protestant conclusion as to the identity of Montanus, TWO authentic letters of the time span were found by a certain historical society.  Casiodoro de Reina was definitely mentioned in one ... but only one ... and only in the footnotes. 

That letter mentioned that 17 Spanish monks had gone awol (absent without leave) and apparently traveled north, to Protestant country.  De Reina was mentioned as one of the 17 monks.   Mention was made that the run-away monks would be sought, in northern Europe.

This means that Casiodoro de Reina was reported as being at-large ... and NOT in a Spanish Inquisition torture chamber.   And then, Casiodor was "heard from again."  He was in GENEVA SWITZERLAND, saying that Geneva was the new Rome.

The one blatant piece of evidence which proves 100,000% that either Casiodoro was deliberately lying in the Montanus Tale or else he never wrote the Montanus Tale in the first place:

An official letter which served the purposes of a dispatch reported that Casiodoro and 16 other Spanish clergymen renounced their Catholic Faith and made it into Northern Europe.  The same dispatch stated that any available soldiers under his Highness, Ferdinand I, would search for those 17 ex-clergymen.  Got it so far?   

Okay now, IF Casiodoro had been found by any of the king's soldiers, he would have been sent to none other than THE NETHERLANDS, and NOT to the Spanish Inquisition.  This is because the King of Spain and the King of the Netherlands was the same one Hapsburg family member.  Moreover, you are sent to the jurisdiction of your crime.  Conspiracy to harm Northern European Catholics ... or to steal Catholic Church real estate ... or to damage Catholic Church property is such a crime.  And a lot of that type of activity was occurring in Northern Europe, including Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Being sent to an inquisition meant that you were going to "go in for questioning," and the jurisdiction where a crime was committed was important.  Now, there is no crime in walking away from your monastery in Spain.  The question was what were Spanish ex-clergymen doing in a geographic area where ex-clergyman promoted the attacking of Roman Catholics and the acquisition of Roman Catholic Church property without paying for it.  So, what was the intent of the Spanish clerics who denounced their faith and went to the Catholic-Protestant war zone? 

A decisive question to Casiodoro would have been what was he doing in Northern European, when he was known to have no business there, and when he was a Spanish monk either lived off of the donations of the people or lived off of the selling of monks' bread or other food source?  These men did take vows of poverty, after all.

As a quick note:  There is a difference between a monk and a friar.  A friar is usually the member of a mendicant order.  A Mendicant Order is one were the order lives off of the donations of the people.  Monks create a product to sale.  In the Trappist monastery where I was a long-term guest, the Trappists made jam and sold it at the grocery stores.

The fact that Montanus claimed to have been a witness to the transpiration of the Inquisition in Spain, amongst "vile Spanish animals," instead of IN THE NETHERLANDS, shows us that Casiodoro de Reina either did NOT write the Montanus Tale or that he wrote it with the full intent to tell defamatory falsehoods in his writings.  If he did write the tale which had zero evidence to support it and zero corroborating witnesses to support it, he wasn't making a honest mistake.  He was engaged in severe malice.

Now, if any of you out there insist on pushing the defamatory version and the Montanus Tale, while declaring Casiodoro the poor poor victim of the Spanish Inquisition, when he showed up in Geneva in one piece, then we can continue this conversation before an United States federal magistrate, in a multi-million dollar class action (AND DIVERSITY ACTION) lawsuit.  And of course, from my personal experience, Catholic Bashers have a severe mental & emotional illness where they will not rest until the see every Catholic on Planet Earth is dead.  They are obsessed to a deadly degree . . . from my very unfortunate personal experience.  Also from my recent personal experience, lawyers are very expensive today, if you're not related to one.

More about the Casiodoro de Reina who would have been taken to the Netherlands Inquisition and NOT to the Spanish one, if any law enforcement official of the king would have caught up with him.

He is the one who translated the Bible into Spanish.  HOWEVER, there were previous translations of some of the Bible into Spanish.  None the less, the motive of modern Protestant propagandists in presenting him as the sure author of the UNSUBSTANTIATED & UNCORROBORATED Montanus Tale is to enable the propagandists to present Casiodor as this holy and heroic martyr going up against the evil evil Bible suppressing & Bible hiding Catholic Church.  The great lie of this is that, if not for the Roman Catholic Church, there would be no Bible:

[1] The Roman Catholic Church preserved and made copies of the Bible from the first day the Council of Rome declared the specific books of the Bible to be THE BIBLE.  [2] The Catholic Church several times each day in official church liturgy.  This include EIGHT time daily in the Divine Office, aka the Book of Hours, and three times per mass, each mass, on Sundays, as well as TWO times per each weekday Mass.  [3] And there are Bible class throughout Catholic academia in Church history. used th all the way until the 1054 Schism with Greek Christians. [4] Roman Catholic Church stained-glass windows often are illustrations of Bible passages.  Such was the act of beginning the Gospel to the Poor.

It has been a deliberate lie of the Protestants to state that Catholic never use the Bible.  As an example, go through this one website and count the Bible quotes in the most recent 5 posts.  Catholic writers use a lot of Biblical citations-references.  None the less, Casiodoro was used in the modern Protestant story of the Montanus Horror Story, to make him look like he was being tortured for making the Bible available to the People, behind the Catholic Church's back.  The truth is that the Catholic Church has been the care-taker of the Bible who even made Bible Picture Stories out of stained-glass for everyone to see.  

Protestants defame the Catholic Church so hideously, because there is a lot of tax-free collection basket money in conning Catholics to leave the True Church for their very fake church.  That fake church is comprised of hundreds of splinter churches.  Those splinters are known as denominations.  Protestants don't even agree with each other.

And of course, anti-Catholic propagandists of today make it sound as if Johannes Gutenberg began the Protestant "Reformation" by printing a copy of the Bible and by separating himself from the Catholic Church as much as possible.  The truth is that the  Roman Catholic archbishop of Mainz (Archbishop Adolph von Nassau) declared Gutenberg "a hofmann" (a gentleman of the Court)  This means that Gutenberg had a financial stipend, as well as free grain and wine, along with a court outfit each year.  Moreover, Gutenberg died a Roman Catholic.

Incidentally, the Gutenberg Bible was only 42 lines in length.  After that was the Mainz Psalter.  It was commissioned by the archbishop of Mainz, in 1457.  Thus, Gutenberg was NOT printing against the Catholic Church.  He was printing while being commissioned to do so, by the Catholic Church.

Protestant Propagandists are deliberate liars.  After all, John Wycliffe was often said by these Protestants to have been burned at the stake by Roman Catholics.  That was another big Protestant lie.  John Wycliffe died on New Year's Eve 1384, from a stroke that he had three days prior.  After 500 years, we vividly have learned that all that you are going to get from Protestant propagandists is lies, lies, and more lies. 

The Other Proof that Shoots Down the Casiodoro Conjecture

Concerning the Protestant claim that Casiodoro de Reina was Montanus, there is one flaming piece of blatant evidence which proves that claim to be either [1] a total falsehood as to it having been written by Casiodoro or [2] a deliberately written lie, by Casiodoro:

There were 16 other renegade Spanish clergymen who left the St. Isidore Monastery the same time Casiodoro did.  This means that several other runaway Spanish monks in Casiodoro's group would have also been witnesses to horrific acts in Spain.  Thus, they would have written their own damning eye-witness accusations against the Spanish Inquisition.  Needless to say, none of the other 16 associates of Casiodoro wrote any such damning testimony.  

The great problem was that they were posing as Roman Catholics while being Lutherans.   And of course, Lutherans already stole immense amounts of Roman Catholic real estate in Northern Europe, though the edicts of kings & electors.

The obvious conclusion is that the horrific Montanus Tale is an account that had ZERO CORROBORATING WITNESSES to it, and therefore, it was no more than a political HIT PIECE that served the function of war propaganda in the Protestant side of the Catholic-Protestant wars.  Such uncorroborated writings are usually deliberate lies.

In Retrospect

 Iron maiden type devices don't show up in history, until the early 19th Century ... in places such as PENNSYLVANIA.  Let's review:  A torture device that an easily deceived person would expect to find at a Spanish Inquisition office was found in PENNSYLVANIA ...  after the Napoleonic Era. (It was found during an investigation of governmental abuse ... a prison warden thing.)

Concerning the Pear of Agony, no mention of such a device shows up, until the 1700s, except for one mention made by a member of the House of Bourbon in the 1600s.  But no mention is made in the 1500s or at any time before the Heidelberg publication of the Montanus book.  Bourbons were NOT know for torturing people.  They were known for warfare and land acquisition, as well as luxurious living.  

I can assure you that the aristocrats of France preferred going to the theater far more than torturing people's non-sunlit anatomical sections.  In fact, the French literally used to take to theater productions persons diagnosed as mentally ill.  So, the French didn't have the Martin Luther mindset, as when Luther told a certain prince to drown a certain mentally ill child in a nearby river.

That piece of Luther's advice is a matter of written record.  Many things about Luther were heavily documented, because they were turning Luther into the Elvis Presley of his day --- into the "beloved Fuhrer" of his day --- the Hollywood star of his time.  Something like that.  And of course, this is what cults do.

For the record, during the 18th Century, the French called the mentally ill "the alienated."  And they did take them to theater productions, as an act of kindness.

Moreover, the French had an aversion to any type of torture, evidenced by the use of the painless guillotine.  And remember, Joan of Arc was given a torturous death in England ... not France.  Very painful and repulsively gore-ridden forms of execution were practiced in England and Scotland long before Henry VIII commandeered every acre of Roman Catholic Church property there.

The Baptismal Certificates of the time are evidence . . . for proving the tale to be a lie.

Oh, and concerning the claim that mass quantities of people were being forced to become Catholic in Spain, okay then, do this:   Show me all of the baptismal certificates of all of the tortured people who gave-in and became Catholic.  When you become Catholic, you go on record, and your record is filed in a parish church.   Ask ancestry experts.

Catholic parishes have registries, you know.  Even the day you received the Sacrament of Confirmation is recorded, along with that of your wedding and funeral -- and perhaps that of priestly ordination which is only done by a bishop.  So, where is evidence of suddenly elevated numbers of memberships of parishes near the torture chambers?  In fact, where are these Spanish torture chambers, anyway?

You would think that, after 456 years of horror stories, at least one blood-stain torture chamber would have been found . . . or at least one Iron Maiden . . . or at least one pear of agony . . . or least one hundred "missing persons reports" filed by wives or adult children or by siblings.  Apparently, people were not being arrested in the middle of the night and taken to torture chambers which didn't exist in the first place.

One more pivotal fact:  You have to go through the Rite of Christian Initiation, before you get baptized.  So, where is evidence of blood-soaked religion textbooks or manuals or handbooks?  Where are the blood-stained classrooms?  Catholicism is NOT the Pentecostal religion, where a guy walks to the front of the congregation, does the "Lord & personal savior" incantation, raise his arms, and then shouts, "Parrrrraise the Lord!  I've bin saved!"  

Moreover, for a Catholic baptism, you need "a baptismal sponsor."  So, where is the paperwork showing all the extra baptismal sponsors of 16th Century Spain?  Plus, plus, plus, baptismal "candidates" are presented to a parish ... or at a cathedral ... at a Palm Sunday Mass.  Where's the evidence of a church-load of torture victims being presented throughout Spain on Palm Sunday?   Even furthermore, it requires approval from a high ranking bishop to have the ordinary baptismal process waived.  Okay then, show me the signed and sealed pages showing the waivers.  Even at that, the names of baptized Catholics still go on record somewhere.  Well, let's see the records.

If the Spanish Inquisition were the horror that "Montanus" claimed it to have been, there would be a lot of documentation of excess Catholic parish membership occurring in the parishes near the torture chambers.  Where is it?

And where are all the skeletal remains and the mass graves?  What happened to the massive population of execution victims Montanus claimed to have existed in 16th Century Spain?  There should be evidence similar to the Jewish Holocaust.  It's NOWHERE to be found in Spain.  

So, this leaves us with a question:  Why are people ... especially in Germany and America ... so easily deceived?   The burden of proof is on all of the anti-Catholic propagandists.   Where's their evidence?   If you don't have any evidence, then you have to make retractions.  It's called "making restitution" for lying to the public on a massive scale.  But of course, Germans have repeatedly been deceived on a mass scale, including during the lifetime of Adolph Hitler ... the Austrian Jew-hater.

Evidence is everywhere for the existence of the Jewish Holocaust.  Evidence is nowhere for the hyper-exaggerated horror story version of the Spanish Inquisition.  Americans need to start using their brain cells, for a change.  There is no law which says that Americans have to remain the useful idiots of lying propagandists.

Okay then, we review:

There's widespread evidence of the existence of the Nazi Holocaust.  There's undeniable evidence that Planet Earth is spherical.  There is no evidence for the "horror-story-version" of the Spanish Inquisition.  In fact, from 1557 to 1562, Spain had less executions than did the much smaller Netherlands.  Even at that . . . 

... Do you really think that people back then were so stupid that they couldn't detect a mechanical dummy ten to fifteen feet away?  And don't you think that there would have been puddles of blood all around, to warn the next guy who walked into that hallway?   The inquisition did NOT set-up Iron Maidens in their courts.  And iron maidens do NOT look like real women.  All in all, the Montanus Inquisition Tale is so ridiculously absurd that no sane person could take it seriously.  Monty Python's cast surely didn't.

Background

One of the Montanus tales was that prisoners would walk up to sharp-bladed mechanical dummy dressed like a seductive woman, only to violently die when they put their arms around it.  Uhhhm, don't you think that each guy would have first said, "Hello," while waiting to hear, "Hello" spoken back to him?  Don't you think that an attempt at a conversation would have started, followed by the Spaniard immediately realizing that he was talking to a mechanical dummy?

Men can tell the difference between a really hot chick and a mechanical device.  Plus, the blood stains would have been everywhere.   All in all, it's very simple to conclude.  The people who believe in the horror-story version of the Spanish Inquisition never read it. It's super blatant bull crap to the sophisticated, 21st Century, high-tech mind reader.  Come out of the Protestant Dark-Minded Ages, people.  Come out of the Protestant Paranoia, before you hurt someone.

Protestants brought no freedom of thought, evidenced by the executions of their opposition.

Let us not forget that Luther was the first German to advocate in writing the expulsion of the Jews from German boundaries.  Luther furthermore directed that it only be done at the hands of government officials in Germany, and not by the common folk.  Well, centuries later, a certain German government complied with Luther's suggestion and turned it into a graphic reality.  

 

 

Here are the fruits of Martin Luther's "reformation" and writings.

                    “Hitler's Kampf und Luther's Lehr Des deutschen Volkes gute Wehr."                           "Hitler’s struggle and Luther’s teaching are the German people’s sure defense."

Luther's Literature:  The Undoing of Christ's Work

Do not be deceived.  Stealing Catholic Church real estate, by the acre, does NOT constitute a Reformation.   There was NO Protestant Reformation.  There was only war after war, even into 1712.   In fact, the 1555 Peace of Augsburg was merely a temporary truce between Catholics and the newly formed Lutherans.  All other religions were left out of the equation.  

Despite the 1555 truce, Protestant-Catholic warfare continued in France, until 1598.  The events, politics, and scorecard on that time span was super complicated, especially the deadly & vengeful dominoes effect of 1572.  It was even cloak & dagger in the unfolding of events thereafter.  That time span would be for its own discourse ... chapter ... article ... webpage.  It can't be reduced to one paragraph.  So we move onward.

St. Francis of Assisi Was the Most Epic & Effective Church Reformer in human history

All in all, Martin Luther's century ... and the century to follow ... were the centuries of War.  In as much, it was St. Francis of Assisi who brought peace to his geographic setting, in the 13th Century.  It was St. Dominic who brought peace to Southern France, during the lifetime of St. Francis.  Luther brought mass amounts of death, even centuries later, at the hands of Adolph Hitler who literally used Luther as a Nazi Party Poster Boy.  St. Dominic literally brought mass conversions to the Catholic Faith, mostly through advocating devotion to the Rosary.

As a review ... in the need to review, review, review:  the hatred of the Jews is a part of Luther's literature, as in the Jews and Their Lies.  Hitler ran with it ... with Luther's hatred of the Jews.   Luther literally advocated running all Jews out of Germany.  HOWEVER, he stated that only the government should do so ... not the common German citizen.  Well, a German government got the common German citizen to exterminate as many Jews as could be captured.

Theft the size of a continent

Luther heavily advocated stealing Roman Catholic Church property, as well.  But of course, he didn't regard it as theft.  He regarded it as driving the wolves from the sheep fields and then having good and holy stewards manage the stolen property.  This would be followed by the stealing of Jewish property, centuries later.  He who started the divisive Protestant religions was also the poster-boy at the start of the Nazi Religion.  Luther was originally Hitler's pope, dating back to 1933.  Very simply, evil is attracted to evil.  

In addition, it was a complete lie to have asserted that Luther "had a premonition of his own death" and that he confessed his sins shortly before dying.  Firstly, he predicted that he would die in Wittenberg.  Luther died in Eisleben (in Saxony-Anhalt.)  Plus, he was aging and simply talked about aging and what was the point in being alive in the first place.  When you get older, death comes to mind.  Therefore, bitterly complaining about life, while drinking pints of beer and/or ale, is NOT the act of confessing your sins, especially when your writings and advice resulted in the deaths of literally over 100,000 people, in the 1520s, alone.

Hitler's Birthday Gift to Luther

Ever-so-ironically, the ruthless Krystallnacht of November 9 & 10 (1938), took place on the 455th birthday of Martin Luther, and it was triggered by a young Polish Jew in France who assassinated a German diplomat, on Nov 7 of that year.  Herschel Feibel Grynszpan killed Ernst vom Rath, triggering tens of thousands of Jews being immediately sent to concentration camps which were actually ready for business in 1933.  

In less than one year after Grynszpan's act of hot-blooded rage, Poland was invaded.  WWII began.  More importantly, in less than one week, Jewish property was vandalized at the point of torches and bricks.  A youth would end up causing another world war.

Incidentally, the first class of people to receive Nazi concentration camp hospitality were the disabled.  Then the gypsies were soundly exterminated.  In fact, 2,579 Catholic priests were sent to Dachau, to die, proving that Hitler and Pius XII were NOT conspiratorial pro-Nazi buddies.  There were not that many priests in Central Europe, to begin with.  Priests are naturally a minority everywhere, due to the nature of their work.  Yet, Hitler gave priests the big x-out ... the big black-out ... the big Nazi farewell.

All in all, the tragic occurrences of  WWI and WWII were both triggered by asinine youths with guns, causing millions of deaths after their acts of murder.  So, if you are wondering how WWIII is going to start . . .

Protestants didn't merely separate themselves from the Catholic Church.  They separated themselves from each other, in forming sect after sect after sect.  After all, Martin Luther and his sidekick, Phillip Melanchthon, condemned the Anabaptists, expressly stating that every member of that sect deserved the death penalty.  In Switzerland, Anabaptist leaders got the death penalty Luther suggested.   Zwingli was soundly condemned by Luther also, as well as was Thomas Muntzer, in his adopted project.  That adopted project was the supporting of the German Peasant Rebellion of 1524-25. 

In addition, the Swiss Protestant Ulrich Zwingli most certainly was in the possession of deadly armaments  when he died in the Second Battle of Kappel, in 1531.  He regularly carried a sword AND a halberd which is carried by the Vatican's Swiss Guard to this day.   It's just that the armies of the five Catholic cantons performed a surprise attack, when a lot of the Swiss Protestant soldiers had their pants down ... sometimes literally.  Zwingli was in the "second line," and he still was caught off-guard.  Thus, he was NOT a mild, unarmed chaplain, as lying propagandists made him out to be.  Even today's Protestants lie and lie and lie some more, to make their founders look good.

Zwingli had his share of personal armaments which easily could take a human life or two or more.  He was as willing to kill as much as he was willing to "live in sin."  Meanwhile, Protestant propagandists are willing to lie in their writings, probably for the sake of getting added tax-free collection basket donations and book sales.  Don't be deceived.  Zwingli was no saint.  

In addition, there were certain Catholic commanders during the Protestant-Catholic wars who were no saints, either.  Add the Spanish Catholic commanders who oversaw the sacking of Catholic Rome.

At this point remember that the geographic region which gave humanity Martin Luther also gave humanity Adolph Hitler.  There were massacres centuries prior to Hitler's reign, dating back to the Black Death of 1348 - 1350, and also during other times --- in the same Germanic region.  Yes, Jews were blamed for the Black Death.  None the less, always remember:  Martin Luther was the undoing of Christ.  Hitler was the confirmation thereof.

In the modern era, Protestant sects even have sub-subsects, as is the case with Pentecostalism which has 32 sub-subsects divided between two subsects.   In fact, there's even a Bapticostal Movement.  Protestantism is a tossed salad.   It's a grab bag used as a party favor.  It's an abstract art painting on a museum wall which compels a viewer to say, "What the Hell is that?"

To divide and conquer has been the game Satan has been playing all along, in splintering the Church of Christ as if it were a board of thinned-out wood.  And remember, Satan is envious of mankind, because God willed to become Man, instead of angel.  Thus, Satan wants mankind annihilated.   After all, it is written, "However, through the envy of the Devil, death came into the world." Wisdom 2:24.

Disunity is the definition of Protestantism, in its divergent sects and in its dissimilar doctrines between the sects.  And of course, division is the Way of  Satan, as in "My name is Legion, for we are many." (Luke 8:30 & Mark 5:9)  

Protestantism discards Mary, as if she were the most worthless being in existence.  The fact that God the Father called Mary, "highly favored daughter," (through the Archangel Gabriel) means nothing to the Protestant world.  The fact that Christ's closest apostle, John, took in Mary and made her a member of his household for life, equally means nothing to these people.  The fact that the Early Church Fathers regarded Mary as the Ark of the Covenant is even more meaningless to these people.   

Even though the Tilma of Guadalupe shows all the science markers of a miraculous image, it means nothing to the Protestant world.  Lourdes Water is ignored by these apathetic people, too.  Their indifference also applies to miraculous hosts, miraculously produced oils, and stigmatic saints, as well as authentically incorruptible saints such as Louis of Montfort, Bl Margaret of Savoy,  St. Savina Petrilli, and Ubald of Gubbio.   Yet, they all claim that God talks to them, in "a word of knowledge."  

They talk about being baptized in the Spirit and performing long-distance miracles, as well as performing a version of exorcism.  So, they do not deny supernatural phenomenon.  They only deny the existence of miracles when Catholics perform the miracles.

TV evangelists, since the beginning of broadcasting, claimed numerous miracles with zero investigators confirming the claims.  That is to say, they have no Lourdes Bureau to investigate anything.  They will say that someone far away here and someone far away there were miraculously cured of this and miraculously cured of that.  Yet, never mentioned the who and the where.  Their followers apparently don't believe that people on TV are capable of lying ... or of even being criminally indicted for fraud in a 4th Circuit district court, on 24 counts of mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy ... or for racketeering & grand theft in Florida ... or embezzlement ... etc.  (All the aforementioned things actually occurred.)

A certain low-level church employee who was caught stealing from his employer on a long-term basis once said that adhering to a Protestant sect "is just another way to go to Heaven."  No, it isn't.  It's just another way to go to Hell.   At its inception, it was a way of bringing Hell to the people of Planet Earth.  Those were brutal times.

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For further learning, there is "Defense against Catholic Bashers.  Part 1 is found through here: http://www.theheartofmary.com/2023/02/summit-of-truth1.html

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