How many deaths did the Inquisition cause?

1 • The “genocide” of the Inquisition… yes, but how many?

When people think of the Inquisition, they usually imagine something like this:

Last year, I asked in a story on the Instagram page of the blog:

The answers I received ranged from “I don’t know” to “several hundred thousand”…

…let’s try to see it clearly:

• Was it really a “massacre“?
• What numbers are we talking about?
• Tens? Hundreds? Hundreds of thousands? Millions?

In this case too, I could only look for the answer in some boring history book interesting academic monograph (choosing the texts to study based on the rules I had already specified here on the blog: only books by impartial historians – no books of apologetics or anticlerical atheists).

2 • A very fragmented collection of data

As I explained last year, there was not just one “Inquisition“… but at least three:

• The Spanish Inquisition, which operated on the Iberian Peninsula, under the control of King Ferdinand of Aragon;
• The Portuguese Inquisition, which – similar to the Spanish Inquisition – was controlled by the Portuguese monarchy;
• The Roman Inquisition, which operated in Italian territory (although it is wrong to speak of it in a generic way, as each Italian tribunal was in a different state – the Duchy of Milan, the Kingdom of Naples, the State of Florence, etc. – and each followed different rules).

Imagine how complicated it must have been for historians to collect statistical data on the number of death sentences by various tribunals, navigating through various documents and historical events…

Despite all these difficulties – which some serious scholars have tried to address in the last fifty years (*) – since the sixteenth century, people have been tossing out all sorts of numbers about the deaths caused by the various inquisitions, none of which have any real historical foundation….

(*) (All aware that the work to trace a complete statistical profile is still very extensive)

3 • The Factory of “Fake News”

Simon Whitechapel (I tried to search for his curriculum on Google, or at least some information on who he is… but I didn’t find any) wrote a rather sensationalistic book in 2002 titled “Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition.” In this book, he claims that when Torquemada was in charge of the Spanish Inquisition, over 100,000 people died…

…I couldn’t figure out from which sources (or previous studies) he drew this figure… (not to mention that Whitechapel candidly declares to hold a grudge against the Church – on page 5 of the aforementioned book, he writes: “I should make one thing clear from the start: I despise the Catholic Church”).

John Mackinnon Robertson, a British journalist, claimed in 1902 that the Inquisition burned “almost 200,000 people […] in thirty-six years” (JOHN M. ROBERTSON, A Short History of Christianity, Watts & Co, London 1902, p. 290).

… in this case too, I have many doubts about the reliability of these numbers (considering that Robertson was a convinced anticleric, who wrote several essays denying the historical existence of Jesus – nonsense I had talked about on the blog at the time)…

David Hunt, author of sensational bestsellers on religious themes (also with a grudge against the Church), claims that the Inquisition condemned over three million people, “of whom about 300,000 were burned at the stake” (DAVE HUNT, A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days, Harvest House, Eugene (OR) 1994, p. 79).

… unfortunately, in this case too, I fear that the numbers are more a result of his bile-soaked anticlericalism than a well-considered historical investigation…

…among other things, these inflated numbers are not even a recent invention; already in the 16th century, the English and Dutch press (during their respective conflicts with Spain) contributed to providing “an image of Spain as a nation of fanatic bigots” (HELEN RAWLINGS, L’Inquisizione spagnola, Il Mulino, Bologna 2008, p.1).

I mean: how reliable or honest do you think the Nazi press was in the 1930s when describing – I don’t know – France or England?

Well, the same goes for the descriptions of the Spanish Inquisition made at the time by its enemies.

Now.

It’s one thing for these distorted descriptions of the Inquisition to circulate in the 16th century (and around that time), amidst Reforms, Counter-Reforms, religious wars, propagandistic printing, and whatnot…

…but with all the serious studies emerging in recent decades, if a modern book still insists on inventing figures like those in the examples I gave above, it is only fueling fake news.

In the next three paragraphs, I will summarize the information I have gathered on:

• how many deaths were caused by the Roman Inquisition (click here to jump directly to the paragraph);
• how many deaths were caused by the Spanish Inquisition (click here for the paragraph on the topic);
• how many deaths were caused by the Portuguese Inquisition (link to the paragraph)

…and then – thanks to a complex algebraic calculation (a simple sum) – we will try to calculate the total (but if you want to go straight to the final paragraph, avoiding the rant I’m about to launch into, click here).

4 • How many deaths did the Roman Inquisition cause?

The Roman Inquisition (operating in Italy) is the one for which it is most difficult to find precise data on the number of death sentences.

In fact, unlike the Spanish Inquisition (whose data were archived in a much more orderly and centralized manner), the paperwork of the various Italian tribunals was mostly scattered at the local inquisition offices (Milan, Naples, Florence, Venice, etc.), and only a few reached the central archive of the Holy Office in Rome (*).

(*) (Not to mention that both the Jacobins at the end of the 18th century and the looting during the Napoleonic wars caused the destruction and/or loss of a lot of material…)

For this reason, the most rigorous studies that collect statistical data on the “Roman Inquisition” do not consider the entire Italian territory but the activity of specific local tribunals to understand “what the X tribunal did” in a specific period…

…let’s take some examples:

• From an estimate, it seems that in Venice, between 1553 and 1588, there were 14 capital executions, to which 4 deaths in prison and 4 extraditions of convicts who would later be executed in Rome between 1555 and 1593 should be added (see PAUL F. GRENDLER, TL’inquisizione romana e l’editoria a Venezia, Il Veltro, Roma 1983);
• In the second half of the 16th century in Milan, there were 12 capital executions for heresy (however, these data are based on partial documentation), and one in Modena in 1567 (DOMENICO MASELLI, Saggi di storia ereticale lombarda al tempo di S. Carlo, Società Editrice Napoletana, Napoli 1979);
• In the documents of a Confraternity in Rome that spiritually accompanied the condemned to death until the execution, the names of 97 condemned were found between 1542 and 1761 (DOMENICO ORANO, Liberi Pensatori Bruciati in Roma Dal XVI al XVIII Secolo, Typographic Union Cooperative ed., Roma 1904);
• Between 1551 and 1647, a thousand defendants appeared before the Aquileia-Concordia tribunal; of these, only 4 were sentenced to death (LUIGI DE BIASIO, MARIA ROSA FACILE, 1000 processi dell’Inquisizione in Friuli (1551-1647), Centro di catalogazione dei beni culturali della Regione autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, Udine 1976 (notebook no.4));
• In the years 1537/1572 in Sicily, there were 22 death sentences: 17 for Protestants, one for a Jewish woman, and four for apostates from Islam who were captured at Lepanto. In the years 1573/1618, there were 10 death sentences: seven for Lutherans, two for Calvinists, and one for a materialist (CARLO ALBERTO GARUFI, Fatti e personaggi dell’Inquisizione in Sicilia, Sellerio, Palermo 1978).

So, what can we say?

There are still many documents to study, and we always have to consider that much material has been lost…

…However, in all the books I have read on the subject, it is clear that:

4.1 • Well, there isn’t an exact number… but can’t we make an estimate?

Andrea Del Col (born in 1943) is an Italian historian.

From his personal profile on Ereticopedia.org, you can see that he is a specialist in the field: among his many roles, he directs the Research Center on the Inquisition at the University of Trieste.

From his curriculum, you can see that he is no pushover.

Well.

In 2006, he published a hefty tome (963 pages) containing the results of his investigations (L’Inquisizione in Italia. Dal XII al XXI secolo, Oscar Mondadori, Milano 2006)…

… his data is also based on the recent opening of the Archive of the Holy Office in Rome in January 1998 (the opening was ordered by the then-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, according to the intentions of Pope John Paul II)…

According to his studies, Del Col calculated that the percentage of death sentences by the Roman Inquisition ranges from 1.6% to 2.4% of the total number of trials (cf. his aforementioned book, p.781-782).

So, he collected data related to the number of trials in various Italian tribunals.

With these two numbers, you can obtain the total number of death sentences by the Roman Inquisition:

In short, city by city:

• Venice: between 1541 and 1794, there were 3497 accused (however, the records for the period 1592-1615 are missing; therefore, by approximation, it comes to about 4400);
• Udine (Aquileia and Concordia): until 1798, there were 3136 accused;
• Modena: between 1541 and 1784, there were 5464 accused (including the cases in Ferrara in 1599);
• Siena: between 1580 and 1787, there were 6893 accused;
• Naples: about 4390 (with a similar estimate to that of Venice for the “gaps”);
• etc.

… for a total that ranges between 51,000 and 75,000 trials (“trials,” not “death sentences”).

(For all these numbers, see CHRISTOPHER F. BLACK, Storia dell’Inquisizione in Italia. Tribunali, eretici, censura, Carrocci, Roma 2018, p.211-212)

…using the little formula I wrote above, Del Col estimates that the death sentences under the Roman Inquisition were around 1250 (see ANDREA DEL COL, L’Inquisizione in Italia. Dal XII al XXI secolo, Oscar Mondadori, Milano 2006, p.779-782).

Christopher Black (English historian, professor emeritus at the University of Glasgow) adds that:

5 • How many deaths did the Spanish Inquisition cause?

Regarding the Spanish Inquisition, the data available has been much easier for historians to find.

This is because:

• Unlike Italy (which was divided into microstates), the Spanish territory was under the control of a single monarchy;
• The Spanish Inquisition had an excellent bureaucratic system whereby all local courts had to send “annual reports” to their respective central offices.

All the books I’ve read (see bibliography) agree that the percentage of death sentences in the trials of the Spanish Inquisition was 6%.

And given the vast amount of material available, even the estimate of the number of trials of the Spanish Inquisition is very precise: there are about 200,000 trials in its three and a half centuries of existence (1478-1834).

With a calculator in hand, therefore, the death sentences by the Spanish Inquisition hover around 12,000 (see DEL COL 2006, p.779-782; BLACK 2018, p.213).

…I don’t know how many of these were prosecuted under the infamous Tomás de Torquemada…

6 • How many deaths did the Portuguese Inquisition cause?

As for the Portuguese Inquisition (which, as usual, nobody cares about), the percentage of convictions is similar to the Spanish one – about 6% (*).

(*) (This percentage – “strangely” high for this “unknown” inquisition – probably depends on the fact that a good portion of the Portuguese population consisted of “conversos,” many of whom had migrated to Portugal after the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, see MONTER 1992).

The trials were obviously fewer than the Spanish ones (the Portuguese Inquisition had three European courts plus an overseas court; not to mention that the population of Portugal was much smaller than that of Spain): scholars estimate that in the approximately 250 years of its existence, the Portuguese Inquisition had a number of trials ranging from 30,000 to 45,000…

…resulting in a number of death sentences ranging from 1,800 to 2,700 (see DEL COL 2006, p.779-782; BLACK 2018, p.213).

7 • Proportions matter

Overall, the three inquisitions caused the death of about 15,000/16,000 people.

Is that a lot or a little?

The fact that even one person is unjustly accused, detained, and – alas – sentenced to death is a terrible thing.

Many of the victims were criminals who would still be severely punished in our day (thieves, fraudsters, murderers, rapists); others were not (heretics, “moriscos,” “marranos“).

This does not negate that many injustices occurred in the various inquisition tribunals…

…but…

…but…

…but…

…let’s try to put it into perspective.

The Inquisition (Roman, Spanish, and Portuguese) existed for about three and a half centuries.

And because of it, 15,000 people died.

Indeed! Let’s give ourselves some leeway compared to what all the historians I mentioned have said: round it up to 20,000 deaths and cut the bull’s head.

20,000 deaths in 350 years make about 57 deaths per year.

Without invoking Hitler (according to an estimate by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, deaths due to Nazism range from 15 to 17 million), Stalin (we don’t have official figures on the victims of Soviet communism, but estimates by many historians speak of several tens of millions of deaths), or some other crazy dictator from the 20th century, I would like to draw your attention to two other historical events.

7.1 • Henry VIII and the Anglican Church

Do you remember Henry VIII (1491-1547)?

He was that English king who got angry with Pope Clement VII because he didn’t grant him permission to divorce… and out of spite, he founded the Anglican Church, of which he proclaimed himself the “Primate.”

With the First Succession Act of March 1534, Henry ordered his subjects to accept his new marriage to Anne Boleyn as “undoubtful, true, sincere, and perfect” (you can read the full text here)…

…and sentenced to death as heretics all those who did not accept this act, along with many political opponents and potential rivals to the throne.

In the carnage that Henry VIII perpetrated during his 36-year reign, it is estimated that between 57,000 and 72,000 people died (among the victims who lost their heads are also two of his six wives – check Wikipedia if you don’t believe me) (*).

(*) (Unfortunately, these numbers are not precise, being an estimate: unlike the various inquisitions – which kept records of trials and endless paperwork – Henry VIII did “whatever the hell he pleased,” without too much “inquisitorial bureaucracy”…).

(However, if you want to delve into Henry VIII, I happened upon the book “Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and His Six Wives Through the Writings of the Spanish Ambassador Eustace Chapuys” by the English historian Lauren Mackay, specializing in the Tudor period and the early modern world… I haven’t read the book, but the title inspires me…)

7.2 • Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité… and the Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror is the period following the French Revolution, spanning from September 5, 1793, to July 28, 1794 (lasting less than a year in total).

During this time, under the cry of «Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité», an impressive number of people were sentenced to death, including political opponents, “enemies of liberty,” priests, nuns, and so on…

… Similarly to Henry VIII, the numbers are not precise in this case either. A very detailed study on these figures was conducted by Donald Greer, a French historian born in 1896.

Greer calculates that the Revolutionary Tribunal (and various other “courts of justice”) sentenced 16,594 people to the guillotine (see DONALD GREER, The Incidence of the Terror during the French Revolution: A Statistical Interpretation, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (USA), 1935).

If we add the various victims of extrajudicial executions – which occurred particularly in the repressions of Lyon and Toulon – the death toll rises to 35,000/40,000 (see ALBERT SOBUL, Storia della Rivoluzione francese, Rizzoli, Milano, 1997, p. 349).

F-o-r-t-y-t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d!

In less than a year!

«Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité»? Or, as the English scholars might put it: “Yeah, my arse!“

Conclusion

Unfortunately, after the paragraph on “proportions,” I fear that someone will label me a “well-others-too-ist”…

…what can I say?

I tried to gather sources as honest as possible on the inquisition (or at least, that’s my impression reading them)…

…and I attempted (as much as possible) to look at it from different angles and to try to have a less approximate picture…

…in short, if someone thinks this work was done in bad faith, I surrender… 😅

sale

(Spring 2021)

(Final footnote for the more scrupulous and/or wary: in addition to the books I have put in the bibliography, the question “how many deaths did the Inquisition do?” can be further explored on these other texts here – which to be fair I have not read, but I’m marking them below as a reminder for the future…)

• JAIME CONTRERAS, GUSTAV HENNINGSTEN, Forty-four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540-1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank, in GUSTAV HENNINGSTEN, JOHN TEDESCHI (eds.), The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sources and Methods, Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb 1986, p. 100-129
• JAMES B. GIVEN, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY 1997
• STEPHEN HALICZER, Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia. 1487-1834, University of California Press, Berkeley 1990
• GUSTAV HENNINGSTEN, L’avvocato delle streghe: stregoneria basca e Inquisizione spagnola, Garzanti, Milano 1990
• BRIAN P. LEVACK, La caccia alle streghe: in Europa agli inizi dell’età moderna, Laterza, Roma 1988
• WILLIAM E. MONTER, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1990
• J.PEREZ VILLANUEVA, La Inquisiciòn Espanola. Nuoeva Visiòn, Nuevos Horizontes, Madrid 1980
• BARTOLOMÉ BENNASSAR, L’Inquisition Espagnole, XIe-XIXe siècle, Paris 1979