Persecution by The Roman Church



“The Inquisition”







Most people have some knowledge of the holocaust, the six years of torture, death, and atrocities that the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, and a number of other minority groups suffered under Hitler and the Nazis during the Second World War. While in no way downplaying the terrible events of the holocaust, such a massacre does not compare to the severity of the torture and murder that took place under papal authority during the 605 years of the Roman Catholic Inquisition.







From the beginning of the papacy, until the present time, it is estimated by credible historians that more than fifty million men and women have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy charged against them by Papal Rome. This is documented in John Dowling’s The History of Romanism, Book 8, Ch. 1, pp. 542, 543: “From the birth of Popery in 600, to the present time, it is estimated by careful and credible historians, that more than FIFTY MILLION of the human family have been slaughtered for the crime of heresy by popish persecutors, an average of more than forty thousand religious murders for every year of the existence of Popery.” The main credible historians on the Inquisition, besides Dowling himself are Lea, Vancandard, Maycock, Coulton, and Turberville.







Secondly, Scott’s Church History gives a few sets of numbers, with the qualification, “No computation can reach the numbers who have been put to death, in different ways, on account of their maintaining the profession of the Gospel, and opposing the corruption of the Church of Rome. A MILLION of poor Waldenses perished in France; NINE HUNDRED THOUSAND orthodox Christians were slain in less than thirty years after the institution of the order of the Jesuits. The Duke of Alva boasted of having put to death in the Netherlands, THIRTY-SIX THOUSAND by the hand of the common executioner during the space of a few years. The Inquisition destroyed, by various tortures, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND within thirty years. These are a few specimens, and but a few, of those which history has recorded; but the total amount will never be known till the earth shall disclose her blood, and no more cover her slain.”







The torture chambers of the Inquisition lasted 605 years and were found throughout the nations controlled by Rome. They had their beginning under Pope Innocent III in 1203 until the Inquisition's final dissolution in Spain, Portugal and South America in 1808.