The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India c5.s3.7

c5.s3.7

To return to the medieval period. Religious wars between Christians and Muhammadans alone did not account for killings on a large scale. The Christians also fought bloody and long-drawn wars among themselves. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648), for instance, decimated one-fifth population of the region affected by it. Then there was the Inquisition. Inquisition was a court or tribunal established by the Roman Catholic Church in the twelfth century for the examination and punishment of heretics. England never introduced it, Italy and France had only a taste of it. But in Spain it became firmly established towards the end of the fifteenth century. It is computed that there were in Spain above 20,000 officers of the Inquisition, called *familiars*, who served as spies and informers. Imprisonment, often for life, scourging, and the loss of property, were the punishments to which the penitent was subjected. When sentence of death was pronounced against the accused, burning the heretic in public was ordered as the church never polluted herself with blood. The number of victims of the Spanish Inquisition from 1481 to 1808 amounted to 341,021. Of these nearly 32,000 were burned at the stake.³¹