How many people were executed by the Inquisition?

Answer 1

Roman Catholic Answer:

Few Jews died during the Spanish Inquisition. As a matter of fact, despite the overheated hype developed by anti-Catholics during the last several centuries, very few people died during the Inquisition. As for Jews, the Inquisition only had authority over professed Catholics. In Spain, at that time, there were not a few Jews who "converted" to the Catholic Church for one reason or another. St. Teresa of Avila came from a family of Jews who had converted. Those who used their conversion for purely political reasons, and were not sincere Catholics came under investigation by the Inquisition, but, even then, very few were turned over to the State - only the State had the authority to execute anyone, and anyone turned over to the state for treason was always accompanied by a plea for mercy. For a complete discussion of this please read "Seven Lies About Catholic History" by Diane Moczar.

Answer 2

Thousands of Jews were tortured and murdered in the Spanish inquisition, besides the fact that hundreds of thousands were expelled from Spain by the Church. No historic source puts the number of Jews killed by the Inquisition at less than several thousand, while some sources name higher numbers. Over 150,000 were tried and investigated, and of these, some thousands were killed. Horrible forms of torture were used, and the records and illustrations of this are still extant. No whitewashing or disingenuousness will change that.

Answer 3

The Spanish Inquisition had no authority over Jews or Muslims. However, the civil authorities ordered all Jews and Muslims to convert to Christianity or leave Spain.

Some Jews went through the motions of converting, while secretly continuing to observer Judaism, so that they could remain in their ancestral homeland. Having been baptised, they were considered Christians and subject to the authority of the Inquisition. If they refused to recant, they could be convicted and turned over to the civil authorities for execution. At least compared to the Medieval Inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition was quite moderate and preferred live Christians to dead Jews, so the numbers were not as large as some believe.