Dave Hunt: A Woman Rides the Beast, Harvest House Publishers (1994)

Page 124.
It is a matter of incontrovertible historical record that many of the popes were as contemptible of human life as they were of freedom. Pope Gregory IX (1227-1241) declared it the duty of every Catholic "to persecute heretics". A heretic was anyone who did not give complete allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church. Such a person were to be tortured, imprisoned, and slain. Disloyalty to the pope was the same as treason, so closely were state and Church allied. "Of eighty popes in a time from the thirteenth century on," writes de Rosa, "nor one of them disapproved of the theology and apparatus of Inquisition. On the contrary, one after another added his own cruel touches to the workings of this deadly machine."

Page 79.
One things of the Inquisitions (Roman, Medieval and Spanish) which for centuries held Europe in their terrible grip. In his History of the Inquisition, Canon Llorente, who was the Secretary of the Inquisition in Madrid from 1790-92 and had access to the archivies of all the tribunals, estimated that in Spain alone the number of condemned exceeded 3 million, with about 300,000 burned at the stake. (R.W. Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power, New York, 1876, p.82)

Page 80.
In a book published in Spain in 1909, Emelio Martinez writes: "To these three million victims (documented by Llorente) should be added the thousands upon thousands of Jews and Moors, deported from their homeland… In just one year, 1481, and just in Seville, the Holy Office (of the Inquisition) burned 2000 persons; the bones and effigies of another 2000… and another 16,000 were condemned to varying sentences. (Emelio Martinez, Recuerdos [Memoirs] de Antano, CLIE, 1909, pp. 105-106.)

Page 81.
Pagan Rome made sport of throwing to the lions, burning and otherwise killing thousands of Christian an d not a few Jews. Yet "Christian" Rome slaughtered many times that number of both Christians and Jews. BePage those victims of the Inquisition, there were Hugenots, Albigenses, Waldenses, and other Christians who were massacred, tortured, and burned at the stake by the hundreds of thousands simply because they refused to align themselves with the Roman Catholic Church and its corruption and heretical dogmas and practices.

Page 250.
Eventually you would confess to anything to end the torment, but no matter what you confess it never fits the secret accusation, so the torture continues until at last you expire from the unbearable trauma. Such was the fate of millions. These were real people; mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters - all with hopes and dreams, with passions and feelings, and many with a faith that could not be broken by torture of fire. Remember that this terror, this evil of such proportions that it is unimaginable today, was carried on for centuries tin the name of Christ by the command of those who claimed to be the vicars of Christ. They are still honored with that title by the Church, which has never admitted that the Inquisitions were wrong.

Page 253.
BePages the Spanish Inquisition there were the Roman and Medieval Inquisition as well. Emmet McLoughlin, who spent years researching relevant historical records in the New World, writes: "There were no Moors and few Jews in Peru, where I saw the Hall of the Inquisition, the dungeons of imprisonment, and the gorgeously carved door with… an opening made at mouth height so that the witness could testify against the accused heretic without being seen or indentified…" (Emmet McLoughlin, An Inquiry into the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, The Citadel Press, 1977, pp-27-28).

Page 131.
About 8000 were confined to the papal jails under intolerable conditions, "Many chained to the wall and not released even for exercise or sanitary purposes. The English ambassador called the dungeons of Pius IX 'the opprobrium of Europe.' An eyewitness described this monument to the pope's infallibility: "From dawn till nightfall, the miserable captives would cling to the iron bars of their horrible dwellings, and perpetually call upon the passer-by for alms in the name of God. A Papal prison! How I shudder in writing the words… human beings were heaped confusedly together, covered with rage, and swarming with vermin." (Arribavene, op. cit, vol. II, p.389). Rome's Palace of the Inquisition still stands next to the Vatican, the headquarters of that same infamous institution, now called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Halley's Bible Handbook, Zondervan Publishing House, (1962).

Page 776-777.
Papal Power Maintained by the Inqusition

The Inquisition, called the "Holy Office", was instituted by Pope Innocent III, and perfected under the second following Pope, Gregory IX. It was the Church Court for Detection and Punishment of Heretics. Under it everyone was required to inform against heretics. Anyone suspected was liable to torture, without knowing the name of his accuser. The proceedings were secret. The Inquisitor pronounced sentence, and the victim was turned over to Civil Authorities to be imprisoned for life, or to be burned. The victim's property was confiscated, and divided between the Church and the State.

In the period immediately following Pope Innocent III, the Inquisition did its most deadly work against the Albigenses, but also claimed vast multitudes of victims in Spain, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.

Later on the Inquisition was the main agency in the Papacy's effort to crush the Reformation. It is stated that in the 30 years between 1540 and 1570 no fewer than 900,000 Protestants were put to death in the Pope's war for the extermination of the Waldenses.

Think of Monks and Priests, in holy garnments, directing, with heartless cruelty and inhuman brutality, the work of torturing and burning alive innocent men and women, and doing it in the Name of Christ, by the direct order of the "Vicar of Christ."

The Inquisition was the most infamous and devilish thing in human history. It was devised by popes, and used by them for 500 years, to maintain their power. For its record none of the subsequent line of "Holy" and "Infallible" popes have ever apologized

Page 785.
Albigenses. By 1167 they embraced possibly a majority of the population of South France, by 1200 very numerous in North Italy. In 1208 a crusade was ordered by Pope Innocent III; a bloody war of extermination followed; scarcely paralleled in history; town after town was put to the sword and the inhabitants murdered without distinction of age or sex; in 1229 the Inquisition was established and within a hundred years the Albigenses were utterly rooted out.