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The Criminal History of the Papacy

The papal office has an unparalleled record of corruption and criminality over the centuries, and the true history of the popes is one of scandals, cruelty, debauchery, reigns of terror, warfare and moral depravity.

Part 1 of 3

Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 14, Number 1 (December 2006 - January 2007)
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by Tony Bushby © November 2006
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Most Catholics go through life and never hear a word of reproach for any pope or member of the clergy. Yet the recorded history of the lives of the clerical hierarchy bears no resemblance to its modern-day portrayal, and the true stories of the popes in particular are among the most misrepresented in religious history.

The Catholic historian and Archbishop of New York, John Cardinal Farley (d. c. 1916), subtly admitted that the "old legends of their dissolute lives may be partly true...that they didn't sternly insist upon sexual virtue and injustice was a general licence of the papal court, but it is probable that moral improvement was at the vanguard of their thinking" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., 1897, iii, p. 207). The real character of the popes as a rule has been so falsely represented that many people don't know that so many popes were not only decadent but were also the most savage and perfidious of military strategists ever known. Cardinal Farley added this comment:

"The popes were temporal rulers of the civil territory and they naturally had recourse to force the re-establishment or extend the States of the Church until the conclusion of peace was confirmed ... their attempts to purify particularly the Duchy of Rome caused them considerable distress and the need to resort to violence, but always on the side of mercy ... lives were lost in the service of truth but the legal basis for the Christian Church to hold and transmit properties for the benefit of revenues was given to them [the popes] by Emperor Constantine in 312." (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., ii, pp. 157—169)

The comments of the cardinal warrant our attention, for within them rests a little-known story of the leaders of the Christian religion and reveals that today's presentation of popes as incorruptible moral oracles is untrue. The hidden history of doctrinal foundations that permitted a papal alliance with conflict and licentiousness, and to what degree decadence among the clergy is "partly true", provides for an extraordinary story—one that has no precedent or parallel in the history of world religions. In the preface to an official papal record commissioned for publication by the Holy See, called The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, the Christian reader is tactfully prepared for some upcoming and unpleasant facts about popes with this apologetic admission: "Some Catholics may find surprises when they read the papal biographies in this book. The part we are accustomed to think of the pope playing in the Church may need a little adjustment." (The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, Eric John, ed., Burns & Oates, Publishers to the Holy See, London, 1964, p. 19, published under the imprimatur of Georgius L. Craven)

This comment provides readers with a note of caution in dealing with papal history, but in this biographical history the Holy See did not think it prudent to publish full details of the true nature of the papal court. Its real history is intermingled with "centuries of trafficking in ecclesiastical appointments, deceit, scandals, immorality, aggression, frauds, murder and cruelty, and the true disposition of the popes is knowingly falsely presented by the Church today" (A History of the Popes, Dr Joseph McCabe [1867—1955], C. A. Watts & Co., London, 1939). For centuries, the Church maintained a comprehensive account of the lives of the popes who, up until the 11th century, called themselves "ecumenical patriarchs", and amazing excesses are recorded. Official Catholic records provide extraordinary confessions of wickedness in the whole Christian clergy, and the implications surrounding this knowledge begin to assume major new proportions when considered in light of the central Church claim of unquestionable piety in the clerical hierarchy.

The editorial committees of the Catholic Encyclopedia claim that their volumes are "the exponent of Catholic truth" (preface), and what is presented in this overview is assembled primarily from those records and without prejudice. In the same spirit, we also have available several papal diaries, letters and reports from foreign ambassadors at the Holy See to their governments, monastic documents, senatorial Roman records as well as access to the official and ancient registers of the ecclesiastical courts of London. Also of great help in this investigation was the availability of an original version of Diderot's Encyclopédie, a tome that Pope Clement XIII (1758—69) ordered destroyed immediately after its publication in 1759. These documents uniformly report a condition of centuries of extraordinary debasement in the papal hierarchy and, when considered in conjunction with the circumstances of their production, their contents can only be classed as astounding. The pretended holiness and piety of popes as publicly presented today is not represented in the records of history, and that provides proof of the dishonesty of the Church's own portrayal.

Pious Catholic historian and author Bishop Frotheringham extended this summary of Christian leaders up to his time:

"Many of the popes were men of the most abandoned lives. Some were magicians (occultists); others were noted for sedition, war, slaughter and profligacy of manners, for avarice and simony. Others were not even members of Christ, but the basest of criminals and enemies of all godliness. Some were children of their father, the Devil; most were men of blood; some were not even priests. Others were heretics. If the pope be a heretic, he is ipso facto no pope." (The Cradle of Christ, Bishop Frotheringham, 1877; see also Catholic Encyclopedia, xii, pp. 700-703, passim, published under the imprimatur of Archbishop Farley)

And heretics they were, with many popes publicly admitting disbelief in the Gospel story, as we shall see. These facts are well known to Catholic historians who dishonestly tell their readers that the popes were virtuous and competent men with "soaring religious minds" (The Papacy, George Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd, London, 1964). The reality of the matter is that they were intent only upon their own interests, not those of God, and cultivated a system of papal vice more assiduously than Catholic writers of Church history dare to reveal openly. They were resented by the laity and, when better economic conditions awakened the minds of a developing European middle class, there was widespread rebellion against them. Christian records show that popes were clearly a long way removed from the modern-day presentation of their character, and in trying to portray them with a pious past the Church developed a doctrinal fa�ade that brazenly and deceptively presents them as devout.

With the late-20th-century model of the papacy in one's mind, it is difficult to imagine what it would have been like in the 16th or 14th centuries, let alone the 10th or the eighth. The now-called expounders of "Christian virtue" were brutal killers, and "crimes against the faith were high treason, and as such were punishable with death" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., xiv, p. 768). Popes waded through rivers of blood to attain their earthly objectives and many personally led their episcopal militia into the field of battle. The Church ordered its "secular arm" to force its dogma upon humanity by "mass murder" (The Extermination of the Cathars, Simonde de Sismondi, 1826), and "the clergy, discharging in each district the functions of local state officials, seem never to have quite regained the religious spirit" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., i, p. 507). Apologetic contributors to Christian history vainly try to portray an air of sophistry about a papal past that scandalised Europe for centuries and one that is clearly unsophisticated and primitive.

As the line of popes begins obscurely, we shall begin our assessment in the year 896 when "a body of nobles with swinish and brutal lusts, many of whom could not write even their own names" (Annals of Hincmar, Archbishop of Reims; pub. c. 905), captured the papacy and drew it to a close 631 years later in 1527 when, under the subterfuges of Pope Clement VII (1523—1534), Rome fell to the army of Emperor Charles V.

In this brief evaluation of just a few popes of these centuries, we read:

"On the death of Pope Formosus (896) there began for the papacy a time of the deepest humiliation, such as it has never been experienced before or since. After the successor of Formosus, Boniface VI, had ruled only fifteen days, Stephen VII [VI] was raised to the papal chair. In his blind rage, Stephen not only abused the memory of Formosus but also treated his body with indignity. Pope Stephen was strangled in prison in the summer of 897, and the six following popes (to 904) owed their elevation to the struggles of the rival political parties. Christophorus, the last of them, was overthrown by Sergius III (904—911)." (Catholic Encyclopedia, ii, p. 147)

Such periods of "deepest humiliation" to the papacy were quite recurrent, and have been even into the 21st century when the extent of priesthood paedophilia was publicly exposed (Apology of Pope John Paul II, March 2002). It was Pope Stephen VII (VI), "a gouty and gluttonous old priest" (Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, c. 922—972), who ordered the rotting corpse of Pope Formosus to be exhumed from its grave of eight months, tied upright in a chair and put on trial for transgressions of the canons. In front of his putrefying body and dressed in purple and gold regalia stood the pope, his bishops, the nobles of Rome and Lamberto of Tuscany. The "trial" was a grotesque and obscene farce. The pope paced backwards and forwards and shrieked at the corpse, declaring it guilty. A deacon, standing beside the decomposing body of the ex-pope, answered on its behalf. In this macabre incident, today piously called the "Cadaver Synod", the deceased pope was duly condemned, stripped of his vestments, three fingers cut from his right hand and his remains dumped into the River Tiber. "In this disgusting business, he [Pope Stephen VII (VI)] cannot be excused for what followed. In declaring the dead pope deposed he also annulled all his acts, including his ordinations. His grim and grisly role provoked a violent reaction in Rome, and in late July or early August Pope Stephen was imprisoned and later strangled." (The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, ibid., p. 160)

Morbid in its realism, the mental limitations of ancient popes is thus shown. From these and similar displays, we understand why the monks at the Eulogomenopolis monastery, today called Monte Cassino, described the Asinarian Station (later renamed the Lateran Palace) as "an abode of wrath, a charnel-house...a place of exotic vice and crime".

The Unholy Reign of the Whores:

Bishop Liutprand of Cremona, whose Antapodosis treats papal history from 886 to 950, left a remarkable picture of the vice of the popes and their episcopal colleagues, maybe with a little jealousy: "They hunted on horses with gold trappings, had rich banquets with dancing girls when the hunt was over, and retired with these shameless whores to beds with silk sheets and gold-embroidered covers. All the Roman bishops were married, and their wives made silk dresses out of the sacred vestments." Their lovers were the leading noble ladies of the city, and "two voluptuous Imperial women", Theodora and her daughter Marozia, "ruled the papacy of the tenth century" (Antapodosis, ibid.). Renowned Vatican historian Cardinal Caesar Baronius (1538—1607) called it the "Rule of the Whores", which "really gave place to the even more scandalous rule of the whoremongers" (Annales Ecclesiastici, folio iii, Antwerp, 1597). All that Bishop Liutprand reveals in detail about Theodora is that she compelled a handsome young priest to reciprocate her passion for him and had him appointed Archbishop of Ravenna. Later, Theodora summoned her archiepiscopal lover from Ravenna and made him Pope John X (pope 914—928, d. 928).

John X is chiefly remembered as a military commander. He took to the field in person against the Saracens and defeated them. He indulged in nepotism, or the enrichment of his family, and his conduct prepared the way for a deeper degradation of the papacy. He invited the Hungarians, who at this time were still half-civilised Asiatics, to come and fight his enemies and thus he brought a new and terrible plague upon his country. He had no principles in his diplomatic, political or private conduct. He spurned Theodora and enticed the charming young daughter of Hugh of Provence into his papal bedroom. Spurned, Theodora then married Guido, Marquis of Tuscany, and together they carried out a coup d'état against John X. Theodora died suddenly by suspected poisoning, and John X entered into a bitter quarrel with Marozia and the leading nobles of Rome. John had brought his brother Peter to Rome, raised him to the rank of nobility, and heaped upon him the profitable offices which the elder nobles had come to regard as their preserve. It was an internal struggle for power. The nobles, led by Marozia, drove Peter, Pope John and their troops from the city. The pope and his brother increased their army and returned to Rome, but a body of Marozia's men cut their way into the Lateran Palace and murdered Peter before the pope's eyes. John was captured, declared deposed in May 928 and smothered to death with a pillow in the Castel Sant' Angelo.

Marozia and her faction then appointed Leo VI (928) the new pope, but replaced him seven months later with Stephen VIII (VII). He ruled for two years and then Marozia gave the papacy to her son, John XI (c. 910—936; pope 931—35). He was illegitimately fathered by Pope Sergius III, as "confirmed by Flodoard, a reliable contemporary writer" (The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, ibid., p. 162). Sergius had previously taken the papacy by force with the help of Marozia's mother, Theodora. Both Theodora and Sergius took a leading part in the earlier outrage on the corpse of Formosus, and Sergius was later accused of murdering his two predecessors. The Church defended itself, but in doing so revealed that he wasn't the only pope sexually involved with Marozia: "It is commonly believed that Pope Sergius, although a middle-aged man, formed a union with the young Marozia and by her had a son, the future Pope John XI. Most of the information we have on the career of Marozia and the Roman scandals in which she and a series of popes were involved is derived from hostile sources and may be exaggerated." (The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, ibid.)



This rare painting is reproduced from a 17th-century edition of Antapodosis, a 1,000-year-old text written by Bishop Liutprand of Cremona who died c. 972. It purports to show Pope Stephen VII (VI) overseeing the exhumation of Pope Formosus's corpse in readiness for its trial. An interesting aspect of this painting is the pope's headgear, reminiscent of the "crown of horns" worn by the Caesar clan.

With sacerdotal dictatorship, Marozia ruled Christianity for several decades from the papal castle near St Peter's, and dealt with everything Christian except routine matters. She could not sign her own name, yet she was the head of the Christian Church—a fact known to historians who have at least an elementary acquaintance with the papal record. She was amorously aggressive, callous, densely ignorant and completely unscrupulous. She appointed ruthless warrior-bishops to strengthen her factions, and she triumphed in her rule over opponents. To translate the words of the Roman people literally, they called her "the Popes' whore" (plural) and she was directly responsible for selecting and installing at least four popes. Modern-day apologists say her promotions were "scandalous", but those popes are now accepted by the Church as "legitimate" successors of St Peter. At the time, however, large bodies of good folk deeply resented the obscene farce the papal religion had become and turned upon it with disdain and anger.

Later in his papacy, Pope John XI took ill and Marozia temporarily installed an elderly monk in the papal chair. He subsequently refused to resign and was forcibly removed to a prison cell to be starved to death. John XI then resumed his position and exhausted his remaining wealth hiring soldiers to restore order in Rome. The city was heavy with a feeling of revolt against the Church and the appalling clerical morals that existed throughout Italy. John XI then set out to recover and secure the rich temporal domains of the papacy, but in 936 he died. Thus, in this condensed description, we learn with amazement of the days when loose women ruled the Holy See and a Christian doctrine had not yet been developed.

The Papacy Sold amidst New Depths of Wickedness:

As incredible as it may seem, the papacy then sank to a lower depth of wickedness and remained in this condition for nearly a thousand years. Christian historians airily brush aside the true nature of the popes, saying that they never regarded them as "impeccable" and ignoring the fact that they committed outrages against every standard of human decency.

Pope John XII (Octavian, c. 937—964, pope 955—964, The Popes, A Concise Biographical History, ibid., pp. 166-7) was another in the succession of impious popes and he opened his inglorious career by invoking pagan gods and goddesses as he flung the dice in gambling sessions. He toasted Satan during a drinking spree and put his notorious mistress/prostitute Marcia in charge of his brothel in the Lateran Palace (Antapodosis, ibid.). He "liked to have around him a collection of Scarlet Women", said the monk-chronicler Benedict of Soracte, and at his trial for the murder of an opponent his clergy swore on oath that he'd had incestuous relations with his sisters and had raped his nuns (Annals of Beneventum in the Monumenta Germaniae, v). He and his mistresses got so drunk at a banquet that they accidentally set fire to the building. It would be difficult to imagine a pontiff who was farther removed from saintliness, yet in an age when the average life of a pope was two years, he held the throne for 10 years. However, his life came to a sudden and violent end when, according to pious chroniclers, he was killed by the Devil while raping a woman in a house in the suburbs. The truth is that the Holy Father was thrashed so severely by the enraged husband of the woman that he died of injuries eight days later. Emperor Otto then demanded that the clergy select a priest of respectable life to succeed John XII, but they could not find one. The new pope, Leo VIII (963—965), was a layman drawn from the "civil service who was put through all clerical orders in one day" (ibid.). Leo VIII is reckoned by the modern-day Church to be "a true Pope", but "his election is a puzzle"—one that canonists have not cared to unravel (ibid.).

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives additional accounts of papal debasement:

"The Popes 'Benedict' from the fourth to the ninth inclusive (IV—IX) belong to the darkest period of papal history... Benedict VI (973) was thrown into prison by the anti-pope Boniface VII (d. 983), and strangled by his orders in 974. Benedict VII was a layman and became pope by force, and drove out Boniface VII. Pope Benedict IX [c. 1012—1055/1065/1085; pope 1032—45, 1047, 1048] had long caused scandal to the Church by his disorderly life. His immediate successor, Pope Gregory VI [1044—46], had persuaded Benedict IX to resign the Chair of Peter, and to do so bestowed valuable possessions on him." (Catholic Encyclopedia, i, p. 31)

Anti-pope Boniface VII was described by Gerbert (to become Pope Sylvester II, 999—1003) as "a horrible monster that in criminality surpassed all the rest of mankind", but the "scandal" of Pope Benedict IX deserves special mention. His name was Grottaferrata Teofilatto (Theophylact, in some records) and in 1032 he won the murderous scramble for the wealth of the papacy. He immediately excommunicated leaders who were hostile to him and quickly established a reign of terror. He officially opened the doors of "the palace of the popes" to homosexuals and turned it into an organised and profitable male brothel (The Lives of the Popes in the Early Middle Ages, Horace K. Mann, Kegan Paul, London, 1925). His violent and licentious conduct provoked the Roman people, and in January 1044 the residents of the city elected John of Sabine, under the name of Pope Sylvester III, to replace him. But Sylvester was quickly driven out by Benedict's brothers and fled for his life into the Sabine hills.

Benedict IX then sold the papacy to his godfather, Giovanni Graziano, who assumed the papal chair as Pope Gregory VI, but in 1047 Benedict reappeared and announced he was reclaiming the papacy. The Church added that he was "...immoral...cruel and indifferent to spiritual things. The testimony to his depravity shows his disinterest in religious matters, and his disrespect for an ascetic life was well known. He was the worst pope since John XII" (The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, ibid., p. 175). Upon his death, undertakers refused to build him a coffin. He was surreptitiously buried in a cloth under the cover of darkness. Four succeeding popes then briefly held the papal position, and the following paragraph from the Catholic Encyclopedia is pregnant with evidence of the moral depravity of the entire priesthood:
"At the time of Leo IX's election in 1049, according to the testimony of St Bruno, Bishop of Segni, 'the whole Church was in wickedness, holiness had disappeared, justice had perished, and truth had been buried; Simon Magus was lording it over the Church, whose popes and bishops were given to luxury and fornication. The scientific and ascetic training of the popes left much to be desired, the moral standard of many being very low and the practice of celibacy not everywhere observed. Bishops obtained their offices in irregular ways, whose lives and conversations are strangely at variance with their calling, who go through their duties not for Christ but for motives of worldly gain. The members of the clergy were in many places regarded with scorn, and their avaricious ideas, luxury and immorality rapidly gained ground at the centre of clerical life. When ecclesiastical authority grew weak at the fountain head, it necessarily decayed elsewhere. In proportion, as the papal authority lost the respect of many, resentment grew against both the Curia and the papacy.'" (Catholic Encyclopedia, vi, pp. 793-4; xii, pp. 700-03, passim)

Pope Leo IX (b. 1002, d. 1054) was an unscrupulous adventurer who spent his pontificate touring Europe with a quota of armed knights and left the world worse than he found it. The Church called him "Lapsi" (lapsed), coyly admitting that "he defected from the faith...he fell away by actually offering sacrifice to the false gods (thurificati)...it is not known why he recanted his religion" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., iii, p. 117).

St Peter Damian (1007—72), the fiercest censor of his age, unrolled a frightful picture of decay in clerical morality in the lurid pages of his Book of Gomorrah, a curious Christian record that remarkably survived centuries of Church cover-ups and book-burnings. He said: "A natural tendency to murder and brutalise appears with the popes. Nor do they have any inclination to conquer their abominable lust; many are seen to have employed into licentiousness for an occasion to the flesh, and hence, using this liberty of theirs, perpetrating every crime."
After a lifetime of research into the lives of the popes, Lord Acton (1834—1902), English historian and founder-editor of The Cambridge Modern History, summarised the militarist papal attitude when he observed: "The popes were not only murderers in the great style, but they also made murder a legal basis of the Christian Church and a condition of salvation." (The Cambridge Modern History, vol. 1, pp. 673-77)

Maybe they took their example from Jesus Christ who, after being made king, issued this murderous instruction: "Bring my enemies here that did not wish me as king, and kill them in my presence" (Gospel of Luke, 19:27, Mount Sinai Manuscript of the Bible, British Museum, MS 43725, 1934). The Catholic Bible provides a softer approach: "But those, my enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me" (Luke 19:27). Popes today do everything in their power to present Jesus as a harmless religious preacher and a prophet of peace, but carefully refrain from entering into discussion about this Gospel passage, one that nullifies everything that Christianity purports to represent.

Papal Warships and Rival Imperialist Popes:

Around the time of St Peter Damian, we find a reference to the existence of a papal navy crewed by Christian warrior-sailors. It was originally founded in 881 by Pope John VIII (pope 872—882; d. 882), but details of its size or missions do not publicly exist (Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 6, 1973, p. 572). However, from a later solitary reference to "the Pope's fighting fleet" recorded in 1043 (Diderot's Encyclopédie, 1759), it was still operational at that time. This extraordinary record was found in documentation once belonging to the powerful Roman Crescenti family, who played an important part in papal coups from the middle of the 10th century to the beginning of the 11th century. The Pope's Navy was still operational in the 16th century, some 700 years after its inception, for Pope Gregory XIII (b. 1502; pope 1572—85) commissioned Giorgio Vasari (1511—74) to paint a picture of the fleet while it was moored at the port of Messina in Sicily. The true significance of records of such a military force nullifies the modern-day presentation of the "sweetness and light" that the Church today says Christianity brought to the world.

Further apologising for centuries of pandemonium caused by popes, and giving a smear of whitewash to their actions, the Vatican has admitted that at the time of Pope Alexander II (1061—73) "the Church was torn by the schisms of anti-popes, simony and clerical incontinence" (Catholic Encyclopedia, i, p. 541). The development of a multiplicity of popes simultaneously operating in confliction with each other is a little-known episode in Christian history and provides clear evidence of the existence of powerful factional opponents scheming to gain solitary control of the Papal States. "The Church was disturbed many times in her history by rival claimants to the papacy...the strife that originated was always an occasion of scandal, sometimes of violence and bloodshed" (Catholic Dictionary, Virtue & Co, London, 1954, p. 35). Initially, rival imperialist popes were elected by noble French families to root out Roman ecclesiastical vice, and subsequently new elements appeared in a variety of ways, enduring for 400 years.

In modern times, the Church labelled the anti-popes "devils on the chair of St Peter", claiming that they were unlawfully appointed (Catholic Dictionary, ibid.). That distinction, however, is purely arbitrary, for each multiple pope was canonically elected at Church conclaves. Here is an extraordinary confession from the Church: "At various times in the history of the Church, illegal pretenders to the papal chair have arisen and frequently exercised pontifical functions in defiance of the true occupant. According to [Cardinal] Hergenrother (d. 1890), the last anti-pope was Felix V (1439—49). The same authority enumerates twenty-nine in the following order... [naming them]." (Catholic Encyclopedia, i, p. 582)

Each opposing papal hierarchy was supported by formidable military factions, and the subject of popes warring against each other is a topic too vast even to summarise here. Their struggles for power were conducted with amazing bitterness, and the word "schism" is not strong enough to describe the depth of the fury that raged for centuries within the Christian religion. Catholic historians admit that "even now it is not perhaps absolutely certain from the two lines of popes who was pope and who was anti-pope, or which anti-pope was a legal anti-pope" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., iii, 107; also, Catholic Dictionary, ibid.).

This is luminous clerical reasoning, but there is more to this peculiar side of Holy See history and it is found in a book called Secrets of the Christian Fathers, written in 1685 by Roman Bishop Joseph W. Sergerus (d. c. 1701). He provides evidence from Church archives at his disposal that at some periods in papal history there were four popes occupying the papal chair(s), each in a different building, city or country, operating independently with their own cardinals and staff and holding their own canonical councils. He names them, and one example from 12 quadruple sets of popes is that of the self-declared Pope Benedict XIV (1425) who, for years, rivalled popes Benedict XIII (1427), Clement VIII (1429) and Martin V (1431). In more recent times, Church historians have ingeniously referred to the fourth member of the quadruple set as "a counter anti-pope" (The Popes: A Concise Biographical History), and stated that "this is not the place [in Church reference books] to discuss the merits or motives of the multiple claimants" (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., iii, pp. 107-8; Catholic Dictionary).

The introduction of the word "anti-pope" was a retrospective move by the Church to eliminate the reality of simultaneously serving popes and thus provide itself with a singular continuous ministerial succession of popes from St Peter to Benedict XVI today. Investigation of the Church's own records, however, reveals that the claim of an unbroken papal continuity is false. Bishop Bartolomeo Platina (1421—81), a Christian historian and the first prefect (1475—81) of the embryonic Vatican Library, admitted that direct lineage "was interrupted by repeated periods after Nicholas I (pope 858—867); an interregnum of eight years, seven months and nine days, etc., etc.". Those breaks are piously called "vacations" and are recorded by Bishop Platina as totalling "127 years, five months and nine days" (Vitae Pontificum ["Lives of the Popes"], Bishop Platina, first pub. c. 1479; also Catholic Encyclopedia, xii, pp. 767-68). However, Platina failed to record the "vacations" that occurred in the nine centuries or so preceding Nicholas I, for "unfortunately, few of the records (of the Church) prior to the year 1198 have been released" (Encyclopaedia Biblica, Adam & Charles Black, London, 1899). Clerical insiders know writings purporting to record the lineage of popes are false, saying: "As for the pretend catalogues of succeeding bishops of the different assemblies from the days of the apostles, exhibited by some ecclesiastical writers, they are filled up by forgeries and later inventions. Thus diocesan bishops came in, whose offices are considered as corruptions or dishonest applications, as dictated by the necessities of the Church, or of instances of worldly ambition." (The Authentic and Acknowledged Standards of the Church of Rome, J. Hannah, DD, 1844, p. 414)

However, humanitarian and biblical scholar Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466—1536) got it right when he frankly stated that "succession is imaginary" (Erasmus, in Nov. Test. Annotations, fol. Basle, 1542), simply because its modern-day portrayal is contrary to recorded historical fact.

Around 50 years after the time of Pope Alexander II (d. 1073), an influential and opposing faction elected Lamberto of Bologna as Pope Honorius II (1124—30) and the Church maintained its two rival popes, each bitter and warring opponents both living murderous, debauched and luxurious lifestyles. There is no doubt that Honorius was determined to buy or force his way into the papal chair and he succeeded, preserving his position for the term of his life. Upon his death, two new popes, Anacletus II (1130—38) and Innocent II (1130—43) were elected and consecrated on the same day by opposing clerical factions. Before his election, Pietro Pierleoni (anti-pope Anacletus II) was military leader of a rival army whose family had fought for 50 years (in total) for control of the Holy See—a confrontation subtly called the "Fifty Year War" by the Church today. If we can believe his enemies, he disgraced the papal office by his gross immorality and his greed in the accumulation of lucre. When Pierleoni died in 1138, his faction elected Victor IV to the papal chair (Catholic Encyclopedia, i, p. 447). The Church remained in bitter conflict, still under the divided control of two popes, neither possessing a Bible and each operating independently (Confessions of a French Catholic Priest, Mathers, New York, 1837).

The extent of papal transgression is expanded by the words of the Church through the Pecci edition (1897) of its Catholic Encyclopedia:

"At the time of Gregory VII's elevation to the papacy (1073—85), the Christian world was in a deplorable condition. During the desolating period of transition, the terrible period of warfare and rapine, violence, and corruption in high places, which followed immediately upon the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, a period when society in Europe seemed doomed to destruction and ruin, the Church had not been able to escape from the general debasement to which it had so signally contributed, if not caused. The tenth century, the saddest perhaps in Christian annals, is characterised by the remark of Cardinal Baronius (Vatican historian, 1538—1607) that 'Christ was asleep in the vessel of the Church'." (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci ed., ii, pp. 289, 294, passim; also vi, pp. 791-95)

Another peculiar event from the annals of Christianity takes us into the 12th century and this piece of evidence makes us wonder just what was going through the minds of the popes. After an intriguing conclave lasting 10 weeks, Gherardo Caccianemici was elected pope in 1144 and adopted the name of Lucius II. Modern Catholic historians look upon him as "a pillar of the Roman Church" (The Popes: A Concise Biographical History, ibid., p. 215), but the truth of the matter is much different. The Italians saw with dismay the new papal policy in which Pope Lucius II ordered a crusade against his own flock in Rome. Eleven months later, he personally led papal troops into battle and stormed the city. However, the residents, led by Giordano (Jordan) Pierleoni, rose up against him and the pope's army was defeated with great loss of life. Badly wounded in the battle, Lucius II died of injuries on 15 February 1145 (The Pope Encyclopedia: An A to Z of the Holy See, Matthew Bunson, Crown, New York, 1995).

The Inquisition and the Crusade against the Cathars:

The "glorious 12th century", which for some reason the faithful exalt proudly above all others of the Dark Ages of Faith, was ushered in with the horrific Inquisition and the 35-year crusade against the Cathars (sometimes called the Albigenses). "By this term [Inquisition] is usually meant a special ecclesiastical institution for combating or suppressing heresy" (Catholic Encyclopedia, viii, p. 26)—"heresy" simply meaning "holding a different opinion". Its introduction was the only time in Christian history when the Church was united in purpose and spoke with one voice. The Inquisition became a permanent office of Christianity and, to justify the tribunal's principles, the popes introduced a potent instrument in the form of an additional series of fictitious documents called the "Forged Decretals of Gratian". The assembled forgeries are some of the greatest impostures known to mankind, the most successful and most stubborn in their hold upon unenlightened nations.
The darker features of this period are not in dispute among authoritative historians, and here, if ever, we must proceed with severe discrimination. In this period of Christian history, hundreds of thousands of people were butchered by the Church and the fairest half of France was laid desolate. In 1182, Pope Lucius III (1181—85; d. 1185) gained control of the official apparatus of the Church, and in 1184 declared the Cathars heretics and authorised a crusade against them. A crusade is a war instigated by the Church for alleged religious ends, and was authorised by a papal bull.

Eighty-six years earlier, in 1096, Pope Urban II (1042—99; pope 1088—99) sanctioned the first of eight Church crusades that extended in time to a total of 19, and they continued unabated for 475 years (1096—1571). Heresy, said the Church, was a blow in the face of God and it was the duty of every Christian to kill heretics. Earlier still, Pope Gregory VII (1020—85; pope 1073—85) officially declared that "[t]he killing of heretics is not murder" and decreed it legal for the Church and its militants to kill non-believers in Christian dogma. Up until the 19th century, popes compelled Christian monarchs to make heresy a crime punishable by death under their civil codes, but it was not heresy that instigated the crusade against the Cathars: its purpose was to "yield the papacy additional land and revenues, and the popes engaged in brutalities, threats and all kinds of stratagems to attain their ends" (The Story of Religious Controversy, Dr Joseph McCabe, 1929, p. 40).

The Cathars, a peaceable and pious body of people, were now singled out by the Christian hierarchy for total destruction. We find it hard today to realise the commotion raised by Christianity and the ardour of the popes' bitter campaigns against the Cathars, and later against the progeny of Frederick II and then the Knights Templar. Pope Celestine III (1106—98; pope 1191—98) supported the earlier decision of Pope Lucius III to annihilate every Cathar from the face of the Earth. To do this, now early in the 13th century, Pope Innocent III (Lotario di Segni, 1161—1216; pope 1198—1216), "one of the greatest popes of the Middle Ages" (Catholic Encyclopedia, viii, p. 13), ordered Dominic de Guzm‡n (1170—1223) to develop a troop of merciless followers called "the Catholic army" (Catholic Encyclopedia, v, p. 107), and an initial force of 200,000 foot troops was established with assistance from 20,000 mail-clad, horse-mounted knights. The general populace labelled them the "Throat-cutters" but Dominic deemed them the "Militia of Jesus Christ" (ibid.), and he later increased the army by an additional 100,000 troops. The Catholic writer Bishop Delany (d. c. 1227) said that the Church's fighting force developed into 500,000 troops against a body of ordinary, unarmed folk who saw that, in practice, the papal system of religion was frivolous and false.




This mosaic of Pope Innocent III, showing him around the time he became pope at the age of thirty-seven (c. 1198), is from the old basilica of St Peter. Innocent III ruled "one of the most shameful episodes in Christian history" (The Papacy, ibid., p. 67). Because of his vehemence in dealing with "the menace of heresy" (Catholic Encyclopedia, viii, p. 16), his name in later times became a synonym for cruelty (Diderot's Encyclopedie).

The crusade against the Cathars began on 22 July 1209, and it was a ruthless demonstration of the Church Militant. Arnaud Amaury (d. 1225), the Abbé of C”teaux, commanded troops bearing a banner with a green cross and a sword, and members of the French nobility, including the Duke of Burgundy and the Count of Nevers, accompanied him. The truth of the matter is that when the army was activated, it was directed and manipulated unequivocally under the control of the Church of Christ. With the instructions of Abbé Amaury, the Church undertook one of the most gruesome massacres of human beings in world history. What followed was horrific. The crusade started at Béziers, and some chroniclers say that all inhabitants of the city were massacred within one week. Some put the number of the dead at 40,000 men, women and children. It is said that during the first few days, 6,000 or 7,000 people were systematically taken to the Church of St Magdalene and individually slaughtered. It is a great pity that we have no reliable records of the population of Béziers. One can only point out that it was one of the great cities of the prosperous and, for those days, highly populated Languedoc. What stands out with certainty about the massacre on 22 July 1209 is its appalling extent and its indiscriminate nature. But there was worse to come.

It is remarkable that, until recent times, there has been little comment on the extent of the Church's horrors against the Cathars. With the increasing interest in Catharism in the last few decades, there have been attempts on the part of Catholics to seriously minimise the extent of this outrage and conveniently downgrade the magnitude of the carnage to irrelevancy. Such efforts to suppress the truth of Christian history, while not wholly successful, seem to have strengthened the faith of those who wish to believe. The way in which Catholic writers now make light of this appalling papal outrage is shameful. The fact that popes carried out these murders in the name of Christ is especially unfortunate for Christians. If we accept the Church's excuse that the crusaders were men in a mood of deep religious sentiment who set out to repress a body of people who did not believe the Christianity formally professed, then we are accepting an untruth. What is beyond doubt is that when the Catholic army was mobilized, it was the most appalling killing machine Europe had ever seen.

The consequence of the sack of Béziers was stunning and was something analogous to the effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the Second World War. It was a horror of a magnitude exceeding anything in the memory of the people of the Midi. That popes could authorise such human tragedies to occur in a purportedly enlightened age is grim proof of the sightlessness that can be engendered by "blind faith".
After Béziers, Church troops marched triumphantly to Carcassonne, the greatest fortress of the day. It could justifiably have been regarded as a prize which could only fall after months or years of siege, but it succumbed in less than a month after the sack of Béziers (The Great Heresy, Dr Arthur Guirdham, Neville Spearman, Jersey, 1977). Europeans shuddered when they heard that another 5,000 people were slaughtered at Marmande on 26 September 1209, and Guillaume de Tud�le records a dreadful description of men, women and children being hacked to pieces by the Militia of Jesus Christ. That the supposed preaching of Christ ever came to be the basis of such exuberant aggressiveness against human beings is a matter for reflection. The records and literature of the Cathars were as ruthlessly destroyed by the Church as were the living exponents of the faith, and this evidence is provided in the Catholic Encyclopedia (iii, pp. 435-37) under a sterilised entry headed "Cathars".

Unable to achieve constant, crushing victories in battle because of the Cathars' fortifications, the popes embarked upon an official policy of systematic devastation of their farms, buildings, vineyards, wheat fields and orchards. The devastation caused by the Catholic army was immense and the loss to civilisation is difficult to comprehend. Historians estimate that more than 500 towns and villages disappeared from the map as a result of its depredation. After three and a half decades of brutality and ruthlessness, the disdain of Europe deepened when the final battle against the Cathars took place at their castle stronghold, Montségur, in 1244.

In later times, the Church naively confessed that the motive for its unprecedented butchery and devastation of the Cathars was "their wealth...and their contempt for the Catholic clergy, caused by their ignorance and the worldly and the too-frequently-scandalous lives of the latter" (Catholic Encyclopedia, i, p. 268). "The Inquisition," said Bishop Bruno of Segni, a 16th-century Catholic writer, "was invented to rob the rich of their possessions. The pope and his priests were intoxicated with sensuality; they despised God because their religion had been drowned in a deluge of wealth" (A History of the Popes, McCabe, ibid.). Around the same time we have the complaint of the papal legate Elmeric, who said that the popes were relaxing their zeal to persecute because there were "no more rich heretics". Is there a parallel to these motivations in the history of religion? We are thought to be offensive if we refuse to speak devoutly of a divinely guided "Holy Roman Church". Christian writers, with a habitual indifference to the truth, would have us forget these facts and accept their artifice that the "Holy Fathers" were men of pious integrity. But the worst was yet to come.

Continued next issue... (Go to Part 2)
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/Papacy2.html

Author's Note:

Some of the dates for the popes and events in papal history are estimates; even the Church admits as much. The dates were further complicated by the changes made to the Julian calendar by Pope Gregory XIII (pope 1572—85) in 1582.

__________________
"Illegal aliens have always been a problem in this country, ask any indian"


The "educated" and "intellectuals" are the most vulnerable to propaganda because they absorb
the largest amount of secondhand information and consider themselves to be "above" the effects of propaganda.


"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." Thomas Jefferson

great article sailor!

There is one part that is misleading though: The "quote" from Jesus is part of a parable, and is here taken out of context and misrepresented.

Jesus was never made King, although it was his right.

__________________
A LIE BELIEVED BY EVERYBODY IS NOT THE TRUTH

U.S. High-Level Officials Are Only Subservient Vassals For Vatican Power and Witchcraft
Luciferian Skull and Bonesman and illegal occupant of the White House, George W. Bush, has consitently appointed Roman Catholics loyal to the Vatican-led and Jesuit controlled New World Order.
9 Nov 2006

By Greg Szymanski

Original link:
http://www.arcticbeacon.com/9-Nov-2006.html


Although Americans are hoping the recent mid-term elections provided a glimmer of hope, it should be understood that the U.S. is really only a subservient vassal under the immense control of Vatican witchcraft and power.

For example, five of the eight U.S. Supreme Court Justices are Roman Catholic with their first allegiance to the Pope and his fascist agenda, not America.

Besides the corrupted judiciary, the U.S. is being used to subdue and destroy the Middle East for the Vatican, as many of America's top military leaders are Roman Catholics with their first allegiance to Rome, not America.

In fact every major political appointment made by the illegal occupant of the White House and Luciferian Skull and Bonesman, George W. Bush, has been consistently Roman Catholic.

Listen to a Vatican researcher who connects the dots among the Illuminati, the Bush administration and the Vatican, all trying to destroy America silently from within with lies and deceptions:

"Examples include Opus Dei John Roberts, Samuel Alito appointed to the Roman Rota of the U.S. empire- the U.S. Supreme Court, Gen. Peter Pace (Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Michael Peter Jackson to the SS of the American Reich the Department of Homeland (Romeland) Security, Alberto Gonzales to the post of U.S. Attorney General and many, many more.

"Honorary Shriner and Knight of Malta former President Ronald Reagan's administration was the most Roman Catholic but I think the Bush administration now holds that record. Former CIA director Knight of Malta George J. Tenet, Jesuit-trained at the Walsh School of Foreign Service was rewarded for his bold act of high treason with a professorship at his alma mater. Former CIA director Skull and Bonesman, Porter Goss, will be rewarded for his secretive actions. I wouldn't surprised if Georgetown or Fordham soon gives him a professorship.

"The fact that the Bush Administration is predominately Roman Catholic might be an indication that a concordat with the Unholy See was secretly signed during one of Bush's audiences with Papal Antichrist JPII. I don't know for sure.

"Recently, Luciferian Emperor Bush said that his brother Jeb became a Third Degree Knight of Columbus. And 33rd Degree Freemason, Southern Baptist devotee of the pagan goddess Gaia Al Gore is also one of them.

"It doesn't matter who the Archbishop of New York selects the same wicked Jesuit agenda will be served by his puppet in the White House who is nothing more than a slave to the Jesuits of Georgetown University, his local boss Theodore Cardinal McCarrick who was trained by Jesuits at Fordham and ordained to the Romanist priesthood by Francis Cardinal Spellman in 1958 and his national political boss Jesuit-trained Edward Cardinal Egan."

There of course would be no problem with Catholics involved in government if history hasn't already proved that the Vatican and Jesuit Order's intentions have always been to destroy freedom, not advance it.

Here again listen to a Jesuit and Vatican researcher connect the dots between high military leaders trained at Jesuit-Georgetown and connected to the Knights of Malta, a powerful organization in America fronting Vatican power and dominance over U.S. foreeigh and domestic policy.

"According to a February 2006 speech by Georgetown president Jesuit-trained Knight of Malta and CFR member John "Jack" J. DeGioia USMC Gen. Peter Pace Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff successor of CFR member Richard Myers is a Georgetown alum having been "a member of the School of Foreign Service's Leadership Seminar 14 years ago.

"He has also come back several times to speak to current seminars as an alumnus, and has publicly lauded the program for the manner it enables connections and friendships to be made around the globe." and was awarded the President's Medal (of Georgetown University Other recipients of this award include according to DeGioia, "It has been presented to heads of state during their visits to campus, as well as three guests this evening: President Aznar, [SMOM] Secretary Nicholson in his previous role as Ambassador to the Holy See, and [Jesuit-trained] Senator Leahy. I take great pride in adding General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to that distinguished list. General Pace, please step forward.

"SMOM DeGioia said, 'Our motto here at Georgetown is "Utraque Unum" or, "Both and One." It is often used to ensure we look at two sides of things-so it can sometimes refer to art and science, sometimes to body and soul, sometimes to mind and spirit. The motto of the Marine Corps is another Latin phrase: "Semper Fidelis" or, "Always Faithful.

'Would you please all join me in a two-part toast? First, to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Pete Pace. His "always faithful" service, integrity and loyalty as a joint officer and a Marine, as a scholar and a warrior, and as an officer and a gentleman are an inspiration to leaders everywhere. And second, to his wonderful wife, Lynne. Her care and mentorship of others at the USO, with at American With Disabilities, at overseas orphanages, and at so many other places of need show that her inner core values are easily the equal of any Marine, and of any Jesuit.'

According to another recent article, Gen. Pace in his speech to the John Carroll Society said

"I stand before you as someone who is appreciative... who truly does believe this award is in anticipation of future conduct," Pace said.

And the Vatican researcher wondered after hearing this speech:

"Could the true meaning of this quote be that the future betrayal of U.S. troops in the Middle East is anticipated by Jesuit-trained Pace and his masters-the Jesuits of Georgetown? I think so. He is being rewarded for his obedience to the Order and his future complicity in the destruction of the U.S. Armed Forces most of whom unknowingly serve the Papacy.

"I honestly believe Jesuit-trained Pace, NATO Supreme Commander James L. Jones, George Casey Jr., Georgetown Law dropout Donald Rumsfeld and CFR member John Abizaid will very soon at the command of their Jesuit masters and their Council on Foreign Relations betray U.S. troops in the Middle East. The Jesuit connection to this war of annihilation against the Muslim peoples and at the same time U.S. soldiers most of whom are unaware that they are cannon fodder for a Jesuit-led Papal Crusade is unmistakable. It is no coincidence that these are connected to Georgetown University, Opus Dei, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

"I suspect Pace is also a member of Opus Dei given his connection to Jesuit-trained Romanist priest Peter Vaghi of the Church of the Little Flower and chaplain of the John Carroll Society of which Peter Pace, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts who has ties to Jesuit Georgetown having been an Adjunct Professor in London, Jesuit-trained Supreme Court Justice and Opus Dei member Antonin Scalia are members." http://www.johncarrollsociety.org/new_page_7.htm

To illustrate how President Reagan sold out his country by re-establishing diplomatic relations with the Vatican, read this portion of Chapter 1. Subliminal Rome, from Tupper Saussy's book, Rulers of Evil.

When a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter announced in

his 1992 Time Magazine cover story that a "conspiracy"

binding President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II

into a "secret, holy alliance" had brought about the demise of

communism, at least one reader saw through the hype.



Professor Carol A. Brown of the University of Massachusetts

fired off a letter to Time's editors saying,



Last week I taught my students about the separation of
church and state. This week I learned that the Pope is running
U.S. foreign policy. No wonder our young people are cynical
about American ideals.



What Brown had learned from Carl Bernstein I had discovered
for myself over several years of private investigation: the papacy
really does run United States foreign policy, and always has.



Yes, Bernstein noted that the leading American players behind the
Reagan/Vatican conspiracy, to a man, were "devout Roman
Catholics" - namely, William Casey (Director, CIA),
Richard Allen (National Security Advisor), Judge William Clark
(National Security Advisor), Alexander Haig (Secretary of State),
Vernon Walters (Ambassador-at-Large), and William Wilson
(Ambassador to the Vatican State).


But the reporter neglected to mention that the entire Senate
Foreign Relations committee was governed by Roman Catholics,
as well. Specifically, Senators Joseph Biden (Subcommittee on European Affairs),
Paul Sarbanes (International Economic Policy, Trade, Oceans, and Environment),
Daniel P. Moynihan (Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs),
John Kerry (Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Communications) and…
Christopher Dodd (Western Hemi-sphere and Peace Corps Affairs).



Bernstein would have been wandering off-point to list the
Roman Catholic leaders of American domestic policy, such as
Senate majority leader George Mitchell and Speaker of the House
Tom Foley. In fact, when the holy alliance story hit the stands, there was
virtually no arena of federal legislative activity, according to The
1992 World Almanac of US Politics, that was not directly controlled
by a Roman Catholic senator or representative. The committees
and subcommittees of the United States Senate and House of Representatives
governing commerce, communications and telecommunications,
energy, medicine, health, education and welfare, human services,
consumer protection, finance and financial institutions,
transportation, labor and unemployment, hazardous materials,
taxation, bank regulation, currency and monetary policy,
oversight of the Federal Reserve System, commodity prices, rents
services, small business administration, urban affairs, European
affairs, Near Eastern & South Asian affairs, terrorism/narcotics/

international communications, international economic/trade/

oceans/environmental policy, insurance, housing, community

development, federal loan guarantees, economic stabilization

measures (including wage and price controls), gold and precious

metals transactions, agriculture, animal and forestry industries,

rural issues, nutrition, price supports, Food for Peace, agricultural

exports, soil conservation, irrigation, stream channelization, floodcontrol,

minority enterprise, environment and pollution, appropriations,

defense, foreign operations, vaccines, drug labeling and

packaging, drug and alcohol abuse, inspection and certification of

fish and processed food, use of vitamins and saccharin, national

health insurance proposals, human services, legal services, family

relations, the arts and humanities, the handicapped, and aging -

in other words, virtually every aspect of secular life in America -

came under the chairmanship of one of these Roman Catholic

laypersons:



Frank Annunzio

Joseph Biden

Silvio Conte

Kika De la Garza

John Dingell

Christopher Dodd

Vic Fazio

James Florio

Henry Gonzalez

Thomas Harkin

Edward Kennedy

John Kerry

John LaFalce

Patrick Leahy

Charles Luken

Edward Madigan

Edward Markey

Joseph McDade

Barbara Mikulski

George Miller

Daniel Moynihan

John Murtha

Mary Rose Oakar

David Obey

Claiborne Pell

Charles Rangel

Dan Rostenkowski

or Edward Roybal.



Vatican Council II's Constitution on the Church (1964) instructs

politicians to use their secular offices to advance the cause of

Roman Catholicism. Catholic laypersons, "whoever they are, are

called upon to expend all their energy for the growth of the

Church and its continuous sanctification," and "to make the

Church present and operative in those places and circumstances

where only through them can it become the salt of the earth" (iv,

33).



Vatican II further instructs all Catholics "by their competence

in secular disciplines and by their activity [to] vigorously contribute

their effort so that … the goods of this world may be more

equitably distributed among all men, and may in their own way

be conducive to universal progress in human and Christian freedom

… and [to] remedy the customs and conditions of the world,

if they are an inducement to sin, so that they all may be conformed

to the norms of justice and may favor the practice of virtue rather

than hinder it" (iv, 36).



Vatican II affirms Catholic doctrine dating back to 1302, when

Pope Boniface VIII asserted that "it is absolutely necessary for the

salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman

Pontiff." This was the inspiration for the papacy to create the

United States of America that materialized in 1776, by a process

just as secret as the Reagan-Vatican production of Eastern Europe

in 1989. What? American government Roman Catholic from the

beginning?



Consider: the land known today as the District of Columbia

bore the name "Rome" in 1663 property records; and the branch

of the Potomac River that bordered "Rome" on the south was

called "Tiber." This information was reported in the 1902 edition

of the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Daniel Carroll. The article,

specifically declaring itself "of interest to Catholics" in the

1902 edition, was deleted from the New Catholic Encyclopedia

(1967).



Other facts were reported in 1902 and deleted from 1967.

For example, when Congress met in Washington for the first time,

in November, 1800, "the only two really comfortable and imposing

houses within the bounds of the city" belonged to Roman

Catholics. One was Washington's first mayor, Robert Brent. The

other was Brent's brother-in-law, Notley Young, a Jesuit priest.



Daniel Carroll was a Roman Catholic congressman from Maryland

who signed two of America's fundamental documents, the

Articles of Confederation and the United States Constitution.

Carroll was a direct descendant of the Calverts, a Catholic family

to whom King Charles I of England had granted Maryland as a feudal

barony. Carroll had received his education at St. Omer's Jesuit

College in Flanders, where young English-speaking Catholics were

trained in a variety of guerrilla techniques for advancing the cause

of Roman Catholicism among hostile Protestants.



In 1790, President George Washington, a Protestant, appointed

Congressman Carroll to head a commission of three men to

select land for the "federal city" called for in the Constitution. Of

all places, the commission chose "Rome," which at the time consisted

of four farms, one of which belonged to… Daniel Carroll. It

was upon Carroll's farm that the new government chose to erect

its most important building, the Capitol.



The American Capitol abounds with clues of its Roman origins.

"Freedom," the Roman goddess whose statue crowns the

dome, was created in Rome at the studio of American sculptor

Thomas Crawford. We find a whole pantheon of Roman deities in

the great fresco covering the dome's interior rotunda: Persephone,

Ceres, Freedom, Vulcan, Mercury, even a deified George Washington.

These figures were the creation of Vatican artist Constantino

Brumidi.



The fact that the national Statehouse evolved as a "capitol"

bespeaks Roman influence. No building can rightly be called a

capitol unless it's a temple of Jupiter, the great father-god of Rome

who ruled heaven with his thunderbolts and nourished the earth

with his fertilizing rains. If it was a capitolium, it belonged to Jupiter

and his priests.



Jupiter's mascot was the eagle, which the founding fathers

made their mascot as well. A Roman eagle tops the governing idol

of the House of Representatives, a forty-six-inch sterling silverand-

ebony wand called a "mace." The mace is "the symbol of

authority in the House." When the Sergeant-at-arms displays it

before an unruly member of Congress, the mace restores order. Its

position at the rostrum tells whether the House is in "committee"

or in "session."



America's national motto "Annuit Coeptis" came from a prayer

to Jupiter. It appears in Book IX of Virgil's epic propaganda, the

Aeneid, a poem commissioned just before the birth of Christ by

Caius Maecenas, the multi-billionaire power behind Augustus

Caesar. The poem's objective was to fashion Rome into an imperial

monarchy for which its citizens would gladly sacrifice their lives.

Fascism may be an ugly word to many, but its stately emblem is

apparently offensive to no one. The emblem of fascism, a pair of

them, commands the wall above and behind the speaker's rostrum

in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. They're called

fasces, and I can think of no reason for them to be there other than

to declare the fascistic nature of American republican democracy.









A fasces is a Roman device. Actually, it originated

with the ancient Etruscans, from whom the earliest Romans

derived their religious jurisprudence nearly three thousand

years ago. It's an axe-head whose handle is a

bundle of rods tightly strapped together by

a red sinew. It symbolizes the ordering of

priestly functions into a single infallible

sovereign, an autocrat who could require life

and limb of his subjects. If the fasces is

entwined with laurel, like the pair on the House wall, it signifies

Caesarean military power. The Romans called this infallible sovereign

Pontifex Maximus, "Supreme Bridgebuilder."



No Roman was called Pontifex Maximus until the title was given to

Julius Caesar in 48 BC. Today's Pontifex Maximus is

Pope John Paul II.



As we shall discover in a forthcoming chapter, John Paul does

not hold that title alone. He shares it with a mysterious partner, a

military man, a man holding an office that has been known for

more than four centuries as "Papa Nero," the Black Pope. I shall

present evidence that the House fasces represent the Black Pope,

who indeed rules the world.



Later, I will develop what is sure to become a controversial

hypothesis: that the Black Pope rules by divine appointment, and

for the ultimate good of mankind.

Greg Szymanski
Greg also has his own daily show on the Genesis Communications Network. Go to www.gcnlive.com Greg Szymanski is an independent investigative journalist and his articles can been seen at www.LewisNews.com. He also writes for his own site www.arcticbeacon.com

Listen to my Radio Broadcast live Monday night at 8pm Pacific time on LewisNews, returning Jan. 1 2006 Radio http://webs.lewisnews.com/radio/index.htm. Greg is also regular on Rense.com the first Thursday of every month at 9-10 pm pacific time.

__________________


"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend." --Alexander Hamilton

I placed this information above, in the Heirarchy of the Catholic Church, but thought I would place it down here as well. I wanted to make sure everyone got a chance to see this and read it through or at least skim it. It is very long, but very good.

Enjoy-
phil :)

*****************************************


JESUIT Vatican Tyranny

http://members.foothills.net/ricefile/JesVat.htm

ORIGINALLY INSTITUTED (Portugal/Spain,1534) BY THE VATICAN, FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF EXTERMINATING THE REFORMATION,

THE ORDER WAS SUPPRESSED 21 JULY 1773 BY POPE CLEMENT IV (for which he was promptly poisoned). THE ORDER WAS

RE-INSTITUTED 1814 AND GIVEN THE "SECRET TREATY OF VERONA"

FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF CARRYING OUT ITS DICTATES.

THIS EDICT WAS FINALLY RATIFIED BY ITS CONTRACTING PARTIES OCT 1822: CAUSING PRESIDENT JAMES MONROE, WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THOMAS JEFFERSON, UPON LEARNING OF ITS EXISTENCE, TO WRITE THE MONROE DOCTRINE, AS RECORDED IN THE: CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE., VOLUME 53, PART 7, PAGE 6781 OF THE 64th CONGRESS, 1st SESSION, 25 April 1916.


THIS WORK IS DEDICATED TO EX-JESUIT PRIEST: DR. ALBERTO ROMERO RIVERA, WHO'S LIFES STORY INSPIRED.

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

(Matt,7:15)

I read a book some years ago that started my research that I am still involved in today. The information I have, I believe, if it were ever brought to a trial, would prove so conclusively of what I am about to tell you that not even the perpetrators themselves would try to deny it. In the past, when confronted with their prior history of atrocities, their only response has been: "we don't do that anymore", or sneer at its improbability, or a gratuitous imputation of bigotry and intolerance against the writer, while at the same time telling all their followers: "we never change".

Before I begin, and you start thinking I'm an "extremist", let me say that I'm not the only person to find this information. It is readily available (at the finger tips of those on the internet) to anyone willing to put in a little time and research. I have found, what I believe to be, the common denominator for a very large percentage (if not all) of the events perpetrated and/or carried out by departments of government and/or its agencies, that are totally negative to the rights and freedoms of the American people. This organization is responsible for the wholesale slaughter of multi-millions of peoples all over the world. It is responsible for the "Dark Age" (inquisitions) period leading up to (and long after) the founding of this country.

A zeal for the discovery of new territory marked the fifteenth century. The first navigations for this purpose were concerted and directed by prince Henry. Born 1394, the fourth son of John I. king of Portugal. His valor in the assault and capture of the city: Ceuta in Africa 1415, presaged the fame he afterward acquired. From this period he devoted himself to naval expeditions for the discovery of unknown countries. His ships subjected divers parts of Africa and the neighboring islands to the dominion of Portugal. After the success in doubling cape Bojadoy, he gave to his father and successors all the land he discovered, or might discover, and applied to Pope Martin V to ratify the donation. He engaged that in all their expeditions the Portuguese should have mainly in view the extension of the Roman church and authority of its pontiff. Pope Martin granted the prince's request. In his bull of ratification, which was about the year 1430, it is declared that: "whatever might be discovered from the said cape to the utmost India, should pertain to the Portuguese dominion."

Edward, brother of prince Henry, succeeded to the throne of Portugal 1433, on the death of John I. Pope Eugene IV. by his bull in 1438, ratified, to Edward, the grant made by Martin V. A bull of Nicholas V. dated 8 Jan 1454, refers to the aforesaid bulls of his predecessors, Martin and Eugene. It recites the declaration prince Henry made of his achievements "that for 25 years he had not ceased to send annually almost an army" of Portuguese, "with the greatest dangers, labors and charges, in the most swift ships, to search out the sea and maritime provinces toward the southern parts and Antarctic Pole." that these ships "came at length to the province of Guinea, and took possession of some islands, havens and sea adjoining" that "sailing further, war was waged for some years with the people of those parts, and very many islands near thereunto were subdued and peaceably possessed, and were still possessed with the adjacent sea" that "many Guineans and other negroes were taken then by force, and some by barter." The bull describes Henry as "a true soldier of Christ, a most courageous defender and intrepid champion of the faith, aspiring from his early youth with his utmost might to have the glorious name of Christ published, extolled and revered throughout the world." It recognizes the exclusive right of Portugal to the acquisitions and possessions aforesaid, in virtue of the letters of Popes Martin and Eugene, which granted to the king of Portugal and prince Henry "free and ample faculty to invade, search out, expunge, vanquish and subdue all pagans and enemies of Christ whosesoever placed, and their persons to reduce to perpetual slavery, and all their kingdoms, possessions and goods to apply and appropriate," etc.

Pope Nicholas's letter then goes on to "decree and declare, the acquests already made, and what hereafter shall happen to be acquired, after that they shall be acquired, have pertained, and forever of right do belong and pertain to the aforesaid king and his successors, and not to any others whatever." It forbids, on the severest penalties, all Christian powers from settling in the countries discovered by the Portuguese, or any way molesting them in their expeditions for the discovery and conquest of unknown countries. It speaks of prince Henry's plan and his prosecution of it as "a most pious work, and most worthy of perpetual remembrance, wherein the glory of God, where the interest of the commonwealth of the universal church are concerned."

Thus was prince Henry's views and operations sanctioned by the highest authority, at that time, acknowledged in Christendom. A right derived from a source so venerable was then undisputed. The Roman pontiff bound princes at his pleasure, and as Vicar of Christ, was allowed to have at his disposal all the kingdoms of the earth. This grant of Pope Nicholas was confirmed by his successor: Calixtus III. 6 August 1458.

On the death of Edward, his son Alphonsus, then in his minority, succeeded to the throne of Portugal, 1438, and died 1481. Prince Henry died 1460-63. At his death the spirit of discovery languished, but revived with the accession of John II., son of Alphonsus. The year after his accession (1482), sent an embassy to Edward IV. of England, to acquaint him with the title acquired by the Pope's bull to the conquest in Guinea: requesting him to dissolve a fleet, which some English merchants were fitting for the Guinea (slave) trade. The king of England showed great respect to the ambassadors and granted all they required. The king of Portugal assumed, and the king of England gave him, this style, Rex Portugalie et Algarbiorum citra at ultra mare in Africa. Pope Sixtus IV., not long before his death(12 Aug 1484), confirmed all the grants made by his predecessors, to the kings of Portugal and their successors.

In 1481 John II. sent 100 artificers, 500 soldiers, and all necessities to build a fort in Guinea. The large kingdoms of Benin and Congo were discovered 1484-85, and the Cape of Good Hope 1486. The Portuguese built forts and planted colonies in Africa: established a commercial intercourse with the powerful kingdoms, and compelled the petty princes, by force of arms, to acknowledge themselves vassals.

At this period, and by these means, the power and commerce of the Portuguese in Africa were well established. The wholesome decrees of five successive Roman pontiffs granted, conveyed and confirmed to the most faithful king a right to appropriate the kingdoms, goods and possessions of all infidels, wherever to be found, "to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery or destroy them from the earth", for the declared purpose of bringing the Lord's sheep into one dominical fold, under one universal pastor. Succeeding kings of Portugal have not forfeited the large grant by any undutiful ness to their holy father. Portugal long enjoyed the trade to Africa and the East Indies without interference of any European power. For more than half a century, before exporting any negroes from Africa, she made and held them slaves in their native country.

The Portuguese first imported slaves into Hispaniola 1508, and into their Brazilian colonies 1517. Their sugar works were first set up in these colonies 1580. Their union with Spain, at that time, was most unfortunate for them. The Dutch became their enemy, who took their East-India and Brazilian conquests and parts of their African colonies. They recovered Brazil and their African establishments 1640, but not that of India.

After the Dutch gave up Brazil and the gold mines were discovered, the trade of Portugal improved and a great importation of slaves took place: carrying yearly from Loangro to Brazil: 25,000, also many thousands from Goango and Cape Lopos. They themselves say they carry to Brazil 50,000 and more every year from Melinda, on the Mozambique coast. Such had been the increase of their Brazilian and African colonies for a century that their increase in English goods, annually, was greater than that of Portugal and Spain combined prior to 1700.

Spanish America received slaves from the Genoese, Portuguese, French and English. States purchased from Spain were the first to secede from the union: 1861. Before, during and long after the african slave trade ended: the heads of state of Spain and Portugal were addressed(and may still be), in formal title, by foreign dignitaries/heads of state, as: "His/Her Catholic Majesty"(U.S. State Dept. records): thereby acknowledging them, only, as emissaries of the pope.

Catholic priest's dealing in the African slave trade is testified to, in this poem, by the famous nineteenth century poet, J.G. Whittier:


A poem, on the slave block in New Orleans.

THE CHRISTIAN SLAVE

BY J. G. WHITTIER

A CHRISTIAN! going, gone!
Who bids for Gods own image?-for His grace
Which this poor victim of the market-place
Hath in her suffering won?

My God! can such things be?
Hast thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one,
Is even done to thee?

In that sad victim, then,
Child of Thy pitying love, I see Thee stand,
Once more the jest-word of a mocking band,
Bound, sold, and scourged again!

A Christian up for sale!
Wet with her blood your whips-o'ertask her frame,
Make her life loathsome with your wrong and shame,
Her patience shall not fail!

Cheers for the turbaned bey
Of robber-peopled tunis! he hath torn
The dark slave-dungeons open, and hath borne
Their inmates into day:

But our poor slave in vain
Turns to the Christian shrine her aching eyes-
Its rites will only swell her market price,
And rivet on her chain.

God of all right! how long
Shall priestly robbers at Thine alter stand,
Lifting in prayer to thee the bloody hand
And haughty brow of wrong!

O, from the fields of cane,
From the low rice-swamp, from the traders cell-
From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell,
And coffle's weary chain-

Hoarse, horrible, and strong,
Rises to heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
How Long, O Lord, how long!


For those who think the Vatican's attitude, toward black people, may have changed through the ages bear this in mind: (1)the biggest race riot in American history(1864, Brooklyn, New York City) was instigated by Archbishop Hughes (in response to Lincoln creating a draft for more union soldiers), including the burning, and trampling to death of the occupants, of a black orphanage. (2)when the U.S. Army occupied Rome during WWII, Pope Pius XII made it clear to American generals there were to be no black soldiers garrisoned in Rome. (3)over 95% of St. Louis, New York City, Chicago etc. police are Knights of Columbus: bear this in mind when reviewing the facts of the Malcolm-X murder by the Chicago police: every shot fired in the apartment was from fully automatic weapons used by the police; Amadou Diallo: 41 shots fired, 17 striking the body: Diallo was unarmed: police in plain cloth's and unmarked car, never identified themselves. The cops, lawyers and judge all had a party after the trial.

Every unarmed black being shot in New York City (by police) is a working immigrant. Special Forces Group's (snipers) have been giving weapons training (and illegally selling weapons) to the KKK in Alabama in exchange for info on black leaders that lead to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and was financed through, New Orleans godfather: Carlos Marcello (direct associate of J. Edgar Hoover). Portuguese, Raul Maori (actual shooter who killed Martin Luther King) was a drugs and weapons smuggler for Carlos Marcello. Blacks are being systematically squeezed out of welfare, while legal and illegal catholic immigrants receive unending welfare. Blacks fear the police more than street gangs. Every American city has a predominate catholic influence, and the proportion of mafia/catholic power and influence and crime rate is consistent from city to city.

Entire tribes of western American Indians were annihilated under the direct orders of the brown robed butchers, i.e. Coronado and his Spanish Conquistadors 1519-1540's. Not to mention the Aztecs and Incas of Mexico, Central and South America, Cuba, Haiti, Grenada, Guam, Philippines etc. With the likes of Almagro, Cortez, Pizarro, Valverde, de Meza, Gregory, Sepulveda, Valega and, yes, Christopher Columbus (imprisoned by Queen Isabella of Spain for his atrocities against the natives of Grenada), robbing them of all their national wealth and enslaving the people (try finding that in your public school history books.

In the late middle age discoveries, the Vatican viewed all natives of the Americas as "indigenous natural slaves". Until 1960 you could read, in any public library, books detailing Vatican/Jesuit atrocities throughout the European middle age/dark age inquisitions, since 1960 there has been a systematic removal of all publications(after web pages, like this one, became known, several hundred books suddenly disappeared from the Library of Congress; example: "Confessions of The Conspirators"{to Lincoln's assassination}): evidencing a systematic takeover of all educational material: remember the "book burnings" in Berlin 1933?). This is further evidenced by the remote location of Machu Picchu. And all in the name of their "holy mother", the Church of Rome.

Our own war of independence was called a war of spiritual freedom: after seeing the purposeful destruction of every church and synagogue in every city, village and town the British Red Coats marched through. Every church that is except Roman Catholic. That's recorded in: "The Light and the Glory", by: Peter Marshall and David Manuel. Though the authors never mention the Jesuit's as the perpetrators of these atrocities other records leave little doubt ["British Canadian Sir Henry Clinton: commander-in-chief in North America, his troops made up of Oliver Delaney's and Cortlandt Skinner's brigades, New York Volunteers, Queens Rangers, Orange Rangers, Loyal Americans, Pennsylvania Loyalists, Maryland Loyalists, Roman Catholic Volunteers, West Jersey Volunteers, Chasseurs, Royal Americans Reformees, Volunteers of Ireland(Catholic), British Legion, Guides and Pioneers" (Secret History of the American Revolution, by: Carl Van Doren)]. In fact the authors try to exonerate the Jesuits. However in that attempt they accept the information of a man who was on the team of translators of the "American Standard version" of the bible. How anyone could put their trust in a person who would associate himself with a group of men of which 33% were known affiliates with communist fronts and causes is beyond me ("None Dare Call It Treason", by: John H. Stormer,1964). A synopsis of Vatican orchestrated atrocities can be seen when reading: "Foxe's Book of Martyr's".

This book also shows the direct correlation between the submission demands placed on the inquisition victims, by Priests, and the Papal encyclical to the Second Vatican Council, promulgated 25 May 1995 i.e. recognizing the Pope as the vicar of Christ(Christ incarnate); taking part in communion that recognizes the wafer of unleavened bread (Eucharist) as the literal body and blood of Christ, and making it an essential part of being a member of the body of Christ. For this to be a part of R.C. dogma is of no consequence, but to say that the R.C. Church has not only the authority, but the obligation and duty to God to apply it to every person, of every religion, that has been baptized in Christ's name (willing or unwilling), and that the sole purpose of the Vatican and its ecuminical movement is to bring about this end, is to expose the fact that the Vatican has not changed its dogma, stand, purpose or methods since the start of the inquisitions.

Here are a few paragraphs: "We can now ask how much further we must travel until that blessed day when full unity in faith will be attained and we can celebrate together in peace the Holy Eucharist of the Lord. The greater mutual understanding and the doctrinal convergences already achieved between us, which have resulted in an affective and effective growth of communion, cannot suffice for the conscience of Christians who profess that the Church is one, holy, Catholic and apostolic. The ultimate goal of the ecumenical movement is to re-establish full visible unity among all the baptized"(page 35, last paragraph). "It is already possible to identify the areas in need of fuller study before a true consensus of faith can be achieved: 1) the relationship between sacred scripture, as the highest authority in matters of faith, and Sacred Tradition, as indispensable to the interpretation of the Word of God; 2) the Eucharist, as the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, an offering of praise to the Father, the sacrificial memorial and Real Presence of Christ and the sanctifying outpouring of the Holy Spirit; 3) Ordination, as a Sacrament, to the threefold ministry of the episcopate, presbyterate and diaconate; 4) the Magesterum of the Church, entrusted to the Pope and the Bishops in communion with him, understood as a responsibility and an authority exercised in the name of Christ for teaching and safeguarding the faith; 5) the Virgin Mary, as Mother of God and Icon of the Church, the spiritual Mother who intercedes for Christ's disciples and for all humanity" (page 36, paragraph 7). "Consequently, for the out come of dialogue to be received, there is needed a broad and precise critical process which analyzes the results and rigorously tests their consistency with the Tradition of faith received from the Apostles and lived out in the community of believers gathered around the Bishop, their "legitimate" pastor"(page 37, paragraph 3). The enormity of the implications of this edict so staggers the imagination that to refuse to acknowledge this threat to American freedoms and rights, and the enormity of its scope, can only be construed as complicity with its intentions. If you have any doubts at all about this all you have to do is read this edict. It is titled: "That They May Be One". It is interesting that the pope uses the word "they" and not "we", obviously excluding himself. After all, being the vicar of Christ(Christ incarnate), he can't consider himself a mere mortal(power is intoxicating, even to the extent of total distortion of logic). This edict has been given full approval by Skull & Bones: Pat Robertson, of the 700 Club. Also read the first and second points of the second week of "The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola".

Ignatius of Loyola, who's real name was Inigio Lopez De Recalde, founded the Society of Jesus(Jesuits)1534 in Spain, and also the Illuminati (holder of the light) [later instituted 1 May 1776 by Adam Weishaupt (German Jesuit, who's picture is on our one dollar bill) at Ingelstadt University, where he was Professor of Cannon Law, under the direct orders of the "Black Pope"(who is a member of the Masonic Lodge of Europe and, in all likelihood, was picked from the House of Rothschild) and financed by the "House of Rothschild" (In 1777 Weishaupt was initiated into the Masonic Order, the Lodge of Good Council, in Munich, to infiltrate and control it. At the Masonic International Congress at Wilhemsbad July 1782 the Masonic leaders received Illuminati indoctrination) (U.S. branch of the Illuminati is: "Council on Foreign Relations", of which U.S. Supreme Court judges: Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Catholic), Stephen Breyer(Catholic) and Sandra Day O'Conner are members, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Newt Gingrich, etc.); "Trilateral Commission" and "Skull & Bones" of Yale University]. De Recalde was also a Crusader (Vatican army that raped Israel, and most of Europe, in the dark age inquisitions). Interlocked Illuminati fronts are: United Nations, Bilderberg Group, Club of Rome, Royal Institute For International Affairs(England), Tri-Lateral Commission and Council On Foreign Relations.

Jesuit spiritual exercises are a daily ritual for Jesuits. A copy is easily obtainable thru the Internet. Let me quote a couple of lines: "The first point is to put before me a human king chosen by God our Lord, whom all Christian princes and men reverence and obey. The second, to look how this king speaks to all his people, saying: It is my will to conquer all the land of unbelievers. Therefore, whoever would like to come with me is to be content to eat as I, and also to drink and dress, etc., as I: likewise he is to labor like me in the day and watch in the night, etc., that so afterwards he may have part with me in the victory, as he has had it in the labors". Third week, first day, fifth point: "The fifth to consider how the Divinity hides itself, that is, how it could destroy its enemies and does not do it, and how it leaves the most sacred Humanity to suffer so very cruelly". In the bull: Unam Sanctam (by: Pope Boniface VIII, promulgated 18 Nov 1302) we see the Vatican's intention of using governments and their agencies to achieve Vatican goals: "We are informed by the texts of the gospels that in this church and in its power are two swords; namely the spiritual and the temporal. For when the Apostles say: "Behold here are two swords"[Lk 22:38] that is to say, in the church, since the Apostles were speaking, the Lord did not reply that there were too many, but sufficient. Certainly the one who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter has not listened well to the word of the Lord commanding: "Put up thy sword into thy scabbard"[Mt 26:52]. Both, therefore, are in the power of the church, that is to say, the spiritual and the material sword, but the former is to be administered-for-the Church but the latter-by-the Church; the former in the hands of the priests; the latter in the hands of kings and soldiers, but at the will and sufferance of the priest".

This alone should be sufficient to convince you of the militancy of the Vatican, Illuminati and their method of administration [now we know what was behind the Waco raid (pilot program to establish future policy)]. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Balkans. The "Dogmatic Constitution on The Church" proclaimed by pope Paul VI, 21 Nov 1964: 20. Paragraph 3: "with priests and deacons as helpers, the bishops received the charge of the community, presiding in Gods stead over the flock, of which they are the shepherds in that they are teachers of doctrine, ministers of sacred worship and holders of office in government." Ireland is a typical example of this policy.

Ironically the Jesuits are feared(and highly disliked) among the Catholic clergy more than anywhere else (there is inner-clergy rivalry within the R.C. orders, not unlike that of the upper-echelon of the Third Reich). Not too surprising since the Jesuits answer only to the "Black Pope". The Jesuits do for the Vatican what the, Jesuit trained, S.S.,S.D., S.A. and Gestapo did for the Third Reich.

Frans Von Papen, Jesuit, Hitlers mentor, chancelor of Germany(June 1932-March 1933) and first vice-chancellor of the Third Reich, stated in his book: "My Conversations with Hitler": "Hitler has put into practice the high ideals of the papacy". This statement was made in reference to the death camps. As chancellor, von Papen's first act was to dissolve the Reichstag; his second was lifting the ban on Hitlers "Brown Shirts"(SA); he then integrated Catholic youth groups into the "Hitler Youth": setting the stage for Hitler and the Third Reich to move into power. "Mein Kampf" was written for Hitler by Jesuit Staempfle. As papal nuncio to Germany(1917-1929), Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli worked with Germany's Illuminati bankers and industrialist's(I.G. Farbin), preparing the way for the Third Reich to move into power. Thousands of Jews were hidden in the Vatican, as a precaution, in case Hitler lost the war.

"Yea the time cometh when he that killeth you will think that he doeth God service." (John 16:2)

The fact that the Vatican entered into a concordat with Hitler [signed in the Vatican by Von Papen and Cardinal Secretary of State: Eugenio Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII), 20 July 1933], as with Mussolini, Franco and Salazar is no secret. But the Vatican's attempt to seduce Hitler into extending the provisions of that concordat to include every country he raped and pillaged is not so well known, but is recorded in Hitler's own words in his book: "Hitler's Secret Conversations" i.e. "I have shown myself unresponsive to the attempts of the Vatican toward the extension of the provisions of the concordat to embrace the newly acquired territories of the Reich. The Saar, Sudetenland, Bohemia and Moravia, the Reichsgau Danszig-East Prussia, the Warthegau, a large part of Silesia and Alsace-Lorraine have, in fact, no relations with the Roman Catholic Church which are supported by formal international agreement"(page 516). "The attitude of the Bishop von Galen affords just one more argument in favor of terminating the Concordat after the war, substituting for it regional regulations and immediately withholding from the Church the financial support at present guaranteed to it by that treaty"(page 520). Pacelli(negotiating the concordat provisions) insisted, the German State, within the dictates of the concordat, "be bound by any and all proposals of the local bishop regarding teachers of religion, and that the state would be obliged to fire such teachers if the bishop so demanded; meanwhile, the state would be required to meet all financial obligations, and at the same time, guarantee the application of cannon law to the faithful";[Bill Bennett(and his, Jesuit, brother Bob(now senator(R)from Utah) are KNOWN operatives in CIA/MK-Ultra/Project Monarch-extreme trauma induced multiple personality mind control sex deviates and pedophiles), self professed Jesuit, Secretary of Education under Reagan, propagator of Outcome Based Education (OBE), stated: "All children should be taught by Jesuits"]. This makes me very curious of the content of the concordat: "Conciliar Document on Religious Freedom", being pushed in Washington by John Courtney Murray (R.C. Priest).

It becomes apparent that a chain of events of influence by certain people directed R.C. Hitler's life. Leopold Poetsch, his (Catholic) teacher; Mein Kampf: written, for Hitler, by German Jesuit: Staempfle; his "recruitment" into the Thule Society, 1919 (totally racial, religious, ethnic biased and anti-Semitic satanic cult. Read: "The Occult and The Third Reich"), as stated in (web page) "Illuminati Outline of History". All of Hitler's "inner circle" were members e.g. Himmler, Goebbels & Hoess etc. (and still good Catholics) which were among the thousands of Nazi and Ustasha fascist war criminals smuggled to Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Australia, Canada and the U.S.(with 10,000+) by the Vatican (using forged documents, with Vatican seal, on stolen Red Cross travel cards with Vatican Visa's). The mass evacuation ("Ratlines") being coordinated by a small cabal of Vatican officials ("Intermarium") such as Giovanni Montini(later Pope Paul VI), Hubal and Dragonovic(worked with U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) organizing the escape of Gestapo head and war criminal Klaus Barbie to South America) under the direction of Pope Pius XII(1945-1950) "Unholy Trinity" by: Mark Aarons and John Loftus); "Those who did rescue the mass murderers from the hand of justice were not Peron(Argentine populist dictator) and his secret police but the [Roman] Catholic Church and its emissaries.

It was the [Roman] Catholic Church, which, through its priests, church's, monasteries and forged Vatican passports, managed to foil the post-war hunt for Nazi war criminals. Nor was the church's rescue operation inconsistent with the policy it had pursued throughout the Nazi era. Henri du Lubac, a Jesuit theologian, filed a report in 1944, well before the end of the war, on the collaboration of the [Roman] Catholic Church with the pro-Nazi Vichy (French) regime. Hidden until this month, the report condemns what du Lubac calls the moral and spiritual abdication of Roman Catholic Bishops under the Nazis. For decade's French cardinals, monks and nuns had helped one of France's worst war criminals, Paul Touvier, escape justice.

It is difficult to imagine that it was possible, in the monolithic [Roman] Catholic Church, for so many to act so uniformly for so long without the knowledge and approval of the highest levels of the Vatican. Israelis have found it difficult to understand why the Vatican has refused to recognize the State of Israel." Jerusalem Post, editorial: "Maxima Culpa" 14 Feb 92; Adolf Eichmann was issued a Vatican visa and passport (in the name of Ricardo Klement, dated: 14 July 1950) by Franciscan monks in a Catholic monastery in Italy, giving him free passage to Argentina. At his trial in Jerusalem, raising his right hand in swearing to tell the truth, Adolf Eichmann gave the hand sign of the Pope. Hitler was backed by Illuminati bankers[the reason Rudolph Hess flew to Scotland(home of the Rothschild's)], in London, New York City and Berlin, after approval by Ivy Lee (probably chosen due to his successful promotion of the image of John D. Rockefeller), who was hired by I.G. Farben for that purpose [I.G.Farben, who fed the notorious "Farben buna soup" to the inmates working at "I.G. Auschwitz" factory (specially formulated to starve them to death in three months) and invented Zyklon B, the poison used to gas the Jews(according to Franciscan Duns Scotus, Jews were slaves by divine decree), Gypsies etc. and now controls the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S., the A.M.A. and the F.D.A. That's why Laetrile was outlawed without ever being tested and not allowed to be tested. It's a food, (not a drug) vitamin B-17, derived from apricot seeds(and other food sources), that has been proven to cure three out of five "terminal" cancer patients. That's also why the F.D.A. "requires" $210,000,000 and 10 years in research to put a vitamin on the market (effectively stopping all new vitamin company manufacturing). It really doesn't take much imagination to figure out the annual multi-million dollar income these pharmaceutical companies are raking in ($29 billion in 25 years) from federal grants, which would come to a sudden stop if their were no more "cancer industry"(read: "World Without Cancer", by: G. Edward Griffen). Now you can see why Dr. Burzynski is being prosecuted in Texas for curing cancer patients. They will put him away because he is too much of a threat to their mega-buck industry](in 1996 over 600 hospitals merged with Catholic institutions in 19 states, from Portland Maine to Oakland California).

Kernersville N.C.: a cancer patient was told, by his doctor, he would have to have half his jaw removed to stop the cancer. The man went to Tijuana(Dr. Ernesto Contreras: Contreras Oasis Hospital, Playas De Tijuana, Mexico) and was treated with Laetrile and the cancer cleared up. The man told his doctor about the treatment and the doctor(by federal law) reported it to the American Medical Association: federal agents came and searched the mans home for the Laetrile. In the U.S: I.G. Farben is BASF, Bayer and Hoechst.

Hitler stated in "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", page 44: "Regardless of how much room for criticism there was in any religious denomination, a political party must never for a moment lose sight of the fact that in all previous historical experience a purely political party has never succeeded in producing a religious reformation." Compare this with page 486-487: "These peoples looked longingly toward their "mother" countries, Hungary, Russia and Germany respectively, though the Sudeteners had never belonged to the German Reich (except as a part of the loosely formed Holy Roman Empire) but only to Austria". Obviously Hitler saw his Third Reich as a Roman Catholic enterprise ["Center Party"(re-established as Christian Democratic Party" following WWII)Catholic Church political party, who's president was Bishop Ludwig Kaas {one of its political protégés is in Peru with the same name and for the same purpose}), of Germany was disbanded by Cardinal Pacelli, throwing all of its support behind Hitler]. Hitler was baptized in Linz, paid the German state tax (Kirchensteuer) to the Vatican (still required of every German citizen today), was in communion and carried out cannon law and policy until his demise. With this in mind we can see why Hitler stayed true to his other concordat allies: Franco(who was put into power and assisted for his entire reign by Catholic order Opus Dei(founded by José Maria Escriva), who also assisted the Ustasha in Croatia during WWII and still assists Vatican mercenaries in Bosnia and Kosovo today)(an annual mass is celebrated in Hitler's memory in Madrid)(the present day Irish Catholic press is full of flattering illusions to Franco of Spain and Salazar of Portugal) and Mussolini (who was put into power by the Vatican) while breaking every other international treaty. It is significant that Germany, Italy and Spain are together again as they were with Hitler, Mussolini and Franco(with their "Pact of Steel", signed, 22 May 1933).

2 March 1939: Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli was sworn in as Pope Pius XII; four days later(as Hitlers tanks are rolling into Poland) Pacelli wrote to Hitler: "To the illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler, Fuhrer and chancellor of the German Reich! Here at the beginning of our pontificate we wish to assure you that we remain devoted to the spiritual welfare of the German people entrusted to your leadership. During the many years we spent in Germany, we did all in our power to establish harmonious relations between church and state. Now that the responsibilities of our pastoral function have increased our opportunities, how much more ardently do we pray to reach that goal? May the prosperity of the German people and their progress in every domain come, with Gods help, to fruition!" Pacelli maintained a papal nuncio(Archbishop Orsenigo) in Berlin throughout the Third Reich. At Pacelli's express wish(20 April 1939) Orsenigo opened a gala reception for Hitler's 50th birthday, which became a tradition throughout the Third Reich, along with Cardinal Bertram sending "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the Bishops and dioceses in Germany", to which he added "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their alters": "Hitlers Pope: The Secret History of Pius VII", by, John Cornwell (all research for this book was done in the Vatican Library).

Chick Publications, in Ontario California, prints gospel tracts, storybooks and other Christian literature. (Internet word search: Jesuit, click on "Bible believers resource page") This company is very important to this subject matter. As are the names of Joseph McCabe (former Franciscan monk and internationally famous atheist and author of almost 250 books); ex-Dominican monk: Walter M. Montano, author of "Behind the Purple Curtain"; ex-priest: Bernard Fresenborg, author of: "Thirty years in hell" and "Uncle Sams New Fiancee". Chick Publications has, in print, the true story of a former Jesuit who, after many years in the service of the Vatican, came out of the Church of Rome and put his story into print, as did Montano, McCabe and Fresenborg. This former Jesuit (Dr. Alberto Romero Rivera) and Jack Chick, of Chick Publications, have had many attempts made on their lives for publishing these materials, (Dr. Rivera, being poisoned by a dentist breaking off an infected needle in his jaw and systematically fed poison for many years, succumbed 20 June 1997) as have other authors and publishers of like subject matter. The Vatican does not take lightly the exposing of its practices, or of its secret books i.e."Secret book of instructions for the Jesuits", LCCN: BX3705.A2 M65; "Secret History of the Jesuits": Edmond Paris 1975, LCCN: BX3706.2 .P3713 (these are two books you should definitely read). They expose the unquestionable clear methods and intentions of the Vatican for the future, (their own publications). There are enough books, by such a variety of authors, from different time periods, writing from first hand knowledge, saying the same thing that the evidence is inescapable. Denial of this information can only be done with total bigotry and abstinence of logic, and therefore can only be construed as complicity with its intentions (yes it does bear repeating). It is very true that tyranny can only prevail when good men do nothing e.g. Chamberlain and the Treaty of Versailles.

"Romes responsibility for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln" (LCCN: E457.5.H316), author: Thomas M. Harris, Late Brigadier General U.S.V.(and a presiding judge over the trial of the conspirators), "The assassination of Abraham Lincoln" (LCCN: E457.5.H28 or .H31), also by Thomas M. Harris; "Behind the Purple Curtain"(LCCN: BX1773.M6); "The Great Conspiracy"; "The suppressed truth about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln"(LCCN: E457.5.M27) by Burke Mccarty; "Fifty years in the Church of Rome" by Charles Chiniquy, ex-catholic priest; "Treason History of the Order of the Sons of Liberty"(LCCN: E458.8.S85) by Felix G. Stidger; "Washington in the Lap of Rome"(LCCN: BXI770.F9) by Justin D. Fulton; "History of the Plots and Crimes of the Great Conspiracy to overthrow Liberty in America"(LCCN: E310.D983) by John Smith Dye; "The Trial of John Surratt" by: John Surratt [John Surratt hid in Catholic monasteries in Canada (6 weeks); England (4 weeks); became member of Zuaves (personal body guard to the Pope, in the Vatican) before, eventually, being extradited back to Washington D.C. to stand trial where (full row of Jesuits paraded, in file, up to John Surratt, at every break in the trial, to shake his hand and making sure the jury saw them) he got off on a hung jury]. "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies" series II volume III (federal depository library) shows the Vaticans involvement, on the side of the Confederacy, its complicity in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and attempted assassination of Secretary of State William H. Seward.

As well as their planned control of politics, education [Bill Bennett(and his, Jesuit, brother Bob(now senator(R)from Utah) are KNOWN operatives in CIA/MK-Ultra/Project Monarch-extreme trauma induced mind control sex deviates and pedophiles), self professed Jesuit, Secretary of Education under Reagan(Reagan was shot after balking at assigning Bill Bennett as Secretary of Education) propagator of Outcome Based Education (OBE), stated: "All children should be taught by Jesuits"], immigration [St. Leopold Foundation (Vatican spy network, founded: Vienna Austria, 1828)] and their already, at that time, control of much of the press(which has grown to include every other mode of media communication).

Pope Pius wrote a letter to Jefferson Davis, with the specific instruction to have it printed in the Richmond newspaper to get the Irish Catholic's in the Union army to desert. He did and they did (144,000+ deserted in one week). When Lincoln initiated a draft for the Union Army, in New York City(1864), Archbishop Hughes instigated the biggest race riot in American history, including the burning to the ground of a black orphanage and trampling to death of its occupants. We know the Illuminati's international bankers supplied Jeff Davis(who's secretary of state, Judah P. Benjamin, was a House of Rothschild agent), J.Wilkes Booth, Sons of Liberty, Knights of the Golden Circle (J. Wilkes Booth was seduced to assassinate Abraham Lincoln by a woman, Ella Turner, and joined Knights of The Golden Circle for the sole purpose of obtaining their assistance to that end; Leon Czolgosz joined Knights of The Golden Eagle and was seduced to assassinate president William Mckinley by a woman: Emma Goldman), Order of American Knights (Copperhead organizations) etc. with money thru the Bank of Ontario, Montreal Branch, thru Jeff Davis's "Canadian Cabinet", which was planned in detail in the Vatican before Brig. Gen. Beauregard (Catholic) fired on Fort Sumter: "We have the proof that the company which had been selected and organized to murder me was led by a rabid Roman Catholic named Byrne; it was almost entirely composed of Roman Catholics. More than that, there were two disguised priests among them to lead and encourage them. Professor Morse, the learned inventor of electric telegraphy, tells me that recently, when he was in Rome, he found the proofs of a most formidable conspiracy against this country and all its institutions.

It is evident that it is to the intrigues and emissaries of the Pope we owe, in great part, the horrible civil war which is threatening to cover the country with blood and ruin."(Abraham Lincoln). All this is in the Library of Congress, along with U.S. State Department record of the U.S. Government breaking off diplomatic relations with the Vatican on 30 June 1867 (for refusing to allow non-catholic religious worship inside the walls of Rome: which should tell you how TBN now has an international religious TV broadcasting station in Rome), which was re-established by Ronald Reagan, 10 Jan 1984. Reagan only authorized the raid on Moammar Gahdafi after Gahdafi's terrorists set off bombs in Rome, even though he knew about Gahdafi's terrorism and counterfeiting activities for years.

According to Alberto Rivera there have been over two thousand Jesuits in U.S. government positions prior to 1980. If this is true, and all indications appear so, there's no telling how many there are now, and how much power they wield in Washington and state governments. The Jesuits control the entire CIA/MK-Ultra/Project Monarch(extreme trauma induced multiple personality: Jesuit/Vatican mind control) program. These robotic victims are used as sex slaves and to deliver drugs/money and/or encrypted messages to heads of state and/or their drug operatives all over the world. They are also used to carry out murders[Eric Harris and Dyland Klebold (Al Gore and his goons wore black trench coats while he made his speech at Columbine High School: identifying with the "Trench Coat Mafia")].

Operatives within Project Monarch program: Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, George Bush Jr., Bill & Hillary Clinton, Robert C. Bird, Alan Cranston, Madeleine Albright, Dick Cheney, Bob(drug czar) & Bill Bennett (Jesuits), Alan Simpson, Arlen Spector, Jim Traficant, Governor Mellon, Bob Clement, Pierre Trudeau(Canadian President/Jesuit), De la Madrid(Mexico), Michigan governor: Blanchard, Prince Bandar Ben Sultan, Dr. Steve Hassen, Dr. Jolyn West, Civia Tamarkin, Sue Carper, Joe Casey, William Casey, Dennis Delaney, William Dieh, Lloyd Lindroth, Jimmy Buffett, Rev. Billy Roy Moore, Larry Flint, Charlie Pride, Jack Greene. Country music operatives: Alex Houston, Lee Atwater, Boxcar Willy, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Walker, Tommy Overstreet, Lee Greenwood, Jerry Reed, Kris Kristopherson, Wayne Cox, Ken Riley, R.C. Bannon. Baseball operatives: Tommy Lasorda, Nolan Ryan. Others: Don & Guy Vanderjagt, Bud Crammer, Steve Hassen, J. Bennett Johnston (Louisiana Senator), David Rorick, Patrick Leahy, George Lucas, Michael Dante'(Michael Viti), Reggie "Mac" McLaughlin, Hal Meadows, Dick Thornburgh, Mickey Miller, Ray & Regina Myers, Scott Rosenburg, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, H.R. Gibson, Gary Ackerman, Lamar Alexander(ritual Satanist), General Cedras, Lt. Col. Michael Aquino, Jack Valenti, Jose Busto(Puerto Rican drug lord).

Catholic priest operatives:

Vesbit, father Don, James Thaylen. Centers for mind control experimentation: Branson Missouri Country Music Center, Lords Chapel Church(Brentwood Tenn.), St. Frances of Assisi Catholic Church/Catholic Center high school(Muskegon, Michigan), Jesuit College(Wheeling W.V.), Boys Town Orphanage({incorporated}Omaha Neb.), Mormon Church(Salt Lake City, Utah), Church of Scientology, Andrews A.F. Base, Barksdale A.F. Base, McDill A.F. Base, Offutt A.F. Base, Plattsburgh A.F. Base, Tinker A.F. Base, Warner-Robbins A.F. Base, Ft. McLelland, Ft. George Meade, Ft. Campbell, NASA: Cape Canaveral; Washington D.C.; Marshall Space Flight Center, Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville Al., Harvard University("Trance-Formation of America", by Cathy O'Brian and Mark Phillips). Advocacy Committee for Human Experimentation Survivors-Mind Control(ACHES-MC) is an organization dealing with survivor/victims of this heinous Jesuit/CIA program.

The Vatican bought 26.8 million dollars in gold from the U.S. reserves, at a dollar an ounce under market value ($34 an ounce) and sold it back to the Government at market value [$35 an ounce (United Nations World Magazine, Dec.1952)]; With 5500+ schools, colleges and universities (Clinton was educated at Jesuit Georgetown University, where he and Fidel Castro were trained in communist philosophies; Jefferson Davis at St. Thomas Catholic college in Kentucky) all receiving government subsidies. Marymount College in Boca Raton, Florida is typical: Founded in 1963 and having a student body of 350 in 1968, it received, from the government, two million in housing grants, a $55,000 anti-poverty grant to study migrant children and a $10,000 education grant; In 1965 in Mississippi a $7,000,000 government-sponsored program for the retraining of unemployed was run by an agency organized by a Roman Catholic Diocese, the $7,000,000 was financed by the government via the Hillburton Act (1954, 1964).

From 1947 to 1964 7,372 such projects were approved; HUD condemning public lands and giving it to the Catholic Church, along with protestant tax money to develop the land [build Catholic schools or hospitals(since 1961 the Catholic Church has been receiving $83,000+ a day for such projects)]. HEW should be renamed CPA(Catholic Property Acquisition); Jesuit Fordham University acquired a valuable piece of Lincoln Square in New York City for a fraction of its worth, then got federal aid to develop the property; Manhattan College, famous for its wines and brandy, obtained a large factory and financial assistance from New Yorks Dormitory Authority; In Chicago HEW donated a sixty-acre, 4.5 million dollar tract at the Hines Veterans Administration Hospital to Jesuit Loyola University. When V.A. general councilman Fred B. Rhodes Jr. balked at the giveaway a devout Catholic replaced him. New York State banking records shows us that in 1962 the Catholic Church owns stocks and bonds in hundreds of corporations. Among others: Baltimore & Ohio R.R., Rock Island, Erie, Sea Board, Missouri Pacific, Pere Marquette, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, Firestone, Fisk, U.S. American Smelting, Commonwealth Edison, Brooklyn Edison, N.Y. Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, West Penn Power, American Commonwealth Power, Texas Electric, Atlantic City Convention Hall, Louisiana Hotel Company, Squire Building, Lane Bryant, Fox Playhouses, Fox Theater(St. Louis), Denver Joint Stock Land Bank, Savoy Plaza Hotel, National Dairy, Thermoid, Washington Silk, Pillsbury Flour, Yankee Stadium, Watergate, General Motors, General Electric, Shell Oil, Bethlehem Steel, Gulf Oil, IBM, Boeing, Lockheed, Douglas, Curtis Wright, Phillips Oil Co., Creole Petroleum Co. And all tax-free.

In Massachusetts its hard to distinguish between the Catholic Church and the state government, every time a public school closes the Catholic Church buys it for a dollar; The Catholic Church never loses a "sealed" bid on public land auctions. This is done via an open and devious by-passing of the U.S.Constitution, by the hidden Catholic pressure group within the U.S. Government, state and local, by the legal, semi-legal and dubious politico-financial manipulations of sly Catholic dealers relentlessly operating in the legislative, financial and real estate fields on behalf of the Catholic Church. At one time the Catholic Church owned more land area than the entire state of Connecticut. The Catholic Church has been "buying" land and constructing buildings in New York City at a rate second only to the city itself (being all tax exempt: care to take a guess why New York City went bankrupt twice when George "Mr. Cocaine" Bush was in the Whitehouse?) and all thanks to Cardinal Francis "burn-em alive" Spellman (read "The Vatican Billions" by Avro Manhattan); [The Popes banker, Michele Sindona, was a very busy boy before being sent to federal prison in New York State for causing the default of Franklin National Bank. It appears he was not only the Popes banker but also the banker for: IOR [Vatican bank (Societa General Immobilaire), Italian Masonic Lodge, P2(Italian Masonic Lodge political arm), Vatican political party, Sicilian mafia and Cosa Nostra (Sindona set up the system for Sicilian mafia and Cosa Nostra to launder their drug money thru Vatican owned banks in Switzerland). He, in all likelihood, set up the program of $900,000,000 in counterfeit bonds for the Vatican, to be pushed in this country. When it was discovered that the Vatican Bank (IOR) and Cardinal Tisserant (second only to the Pope) were the main offenders, and an investigation was certain to follow, Tisserant conveniently died, requesting before his death that his diaries be removed from the Vatican.]; The I.R.S. classifying people who stand up for their rights as nonfilers, knowing full well there is no I.R.S. code or law requiring anyone to assess themselves for any tax (article five of the Bill of Rights) and then turning them over to the B.A.T.F. who (by computer program automatically) classifies them as drug smugglers with their semi-secret "T" code system["T5"(I.R.S.6209 manual)], to give them the appearance of legality, to confiscate properties [If you go to court(Title 4(annotated) U.S. Code, Chapter 1: u.S. flags in federal court rooms are military Ceremonial/Parade Flags(gold fringe), AR840-10(b-1): under which the u.S. Constitution is suspended{two gold-knotted-tasseled ropes are admiralty flag: again the u.S. Constitution is suspended}) with the I.R.S. they ask you about your U.S. citizenship and if you don't answer just right they classify you as a citizen of Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa or the U.S. Virgin Island's[the "other" united states that are owned by the District of Columbia(acquired from the Spanish American War) and run by the Catholic Church]. Care to guess why? (Because that's the only place the I.R.S. & B.A.T.F. have "legal" jurisdiction).

The I.R.S. is a department of the Treasury of Puerto Rico. The title heading of the I.R.S. reads: "Internal Revenue Service a Department of The Treasury", it does not tell whose treasury it's a department of. Look in 31 USC under Dept. of U.S. Treasury and look for the agencies they authorize: guess who is missing, that's right, the B.A.T.F. & I.R.S. Why do you make checks payable to the I.R.S. and not the U.S. Treasury? That's how the I.R.S. diverts your money to the international bankers (IMF)]; The I.R.S. tax file on every member of the jury pool, in a tax case, is given to the U.S. Attorney prosecuting the case: securing a partial jury for the I.R.S. If you, or any one you know, is having problems with the I.R.S. contact, tax expert, Ben Houck Ph:(614)532-9669 or Fax: (614)532-3570. Ben knows more about income tax codes than the I.R.S.

The Jesuits own fifty one percent of Bank of America, the Vatican owns stock in hundreds of banks all over the world; Banca Nazionale de Lavoro(the Pope owns controlling interest), through its branch in Atlanta Georgia, laundered over $5 billion of American taxpayers money from the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture to pay for Saddam Hussein's war machine, including his "super gun"; Railroading Rep. George Hansen (R-Id.) into prison and physical torture("Diesel Therapy", that left his wrist's crippled for life) by judge Edward Lodge, after he called for a congressional investigation of the Justice Department and wrote the book: "To Harass Our People, The IRS and Government Abuse of Power"(assault on religion)[In this book Representative Hansen exposes the I.R.S.'s practice of selectively prosecuting church's for income tax evasion(Sun Myung Moon,1981, for not reporting interest on 112,000 in Chase Manhattan bank. Do not be deluded that this has anything to do with a zeal for collecting tax's for the United States Treasury.

The tax, fine and penalties combined do not amount to a fraction of what the I.R.S. spent in prosecuting the Moon case. Not three miles from the court house where he was prosecuted, Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York: Terence Cooke, held personally in his own name, assets worth a thousand times that which Moon was charged with evading. In fact Catholic church law requires the reigning ordinary own its property in his own name: known in law as: "corporate sole", for which, of all the hundreds of Catholic Archdioceses reigning Cardinals and Bishops in the U.S., not one has ever been looked at by the I.R.S., much less brought up on any charge, showing conclusively, who the I.R.S. selects and why)]; Ruining Rep. Joseph Montoya (D-N.M.) for pushing for reforms of I.R.S. agency crimes exposed by him in Senate hearings in the 1970's; F.D.A., H.R.S. etc. arresting people, ransacking health food stores, confiscating property, killing animals, destroying property, and all without a court order and in deliberate violation of article five of the Bill of Rights, throwing peoples right of habeas corpus (assumed innocent until proven guilty) out the window; with immigration (totally controlled by Jesuits) bringing in Hispanics (all Catholic) by the boat loads (legally and illegally) to feed off our welfare system and further deplete the economy [which explains the planned failure of Nafta and Gat (sending companies and jobs to dominant Catholic countries) thru Vatican controlled Mexico] and influence federal, state, county and city legislation and elections[the unofficial private corporation:

News Election Service (NES) has sole physical control of the counting and dissemination of every vote, in our national elections, and does not allow the public to know how it is done] and will be the only ones to receive unending welfare when welfare "officially" comes to an end. At or near every immigration office in the U.S. is a Catholic law firm to give free legal assistance to any Catholic immigrant entering this country. Anyone doubting this should read: "Illegal Emigration movements In And Through Italy", by: Vincent La Vista, declassification no. NND 760050, 4-11-90, National Archives Record Group No. 59, Center For Legislative Archives, Washington D.C. Why else would we have immigration offices in Rome and Mexico City?

Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon used the WWII fascist war criminals smuggled into this country(Nazi war criminal, Walter Dohrnberger, sentenced to be hung at Nuremberg, is head of Bell Aerospace Corp. R & D dept.) thru the Vatican "Ratlines" to get the ethnic votes that put them in the Whitehouse. Ronald Reagan, while governor of California, set a day of recognition for the Ustasha of Yugoslavia until the Yugoslavian government protested; on his visit to a concentration camp in Europe: Reagan laid a wreath on the grave of an S.S. officer. "The Church can dispense from a promissory oath.

This power belongs to the Pope and Bishops, who exercise it either by themselves or by their delegates." p.203; "The civil laws(of Christendom) are binding in conscience so long as they are conformable to the rights of the Catholic Church."p.278 "Abridged Course of Religious Instruction for the Use of Colleges and Schools" by: Rev. F.X. Schouppe (Jesuit); federal judges controlling the juries to the extent that they have no choice but to rule the way they say, or overruling them and passing his own judgement on the defendants(which moves sovereignty from the people to the courts), e.g. Walter Smith Jr.(Judge Roy Bean) of Waco Texas. The list of federal agency violations of "citizens rights" is a bottomless pit. Like the threat made on myself by an I.R.S. special agent from Pikeville Ky. in the I.R.S. office in Ashland Ky.(28 April 1995) when he laid a loaded snub nose cal.38 revolver on the desk in front of me, with the barrel pointed at me, while being witnessed by collections agent John T. Yewell.

Then there's Waco, with its trumped up charge of a methamphetamine laboratory(never mentioned again after the raid started) to give assistant U.S. attorney Bill Johnston an excuse to get his warrant and special forces training for his B.A.T.F. goons; and with the B.A.T.F. agent Robert Rodriguez having been in Mount Carmel (day before the raid) where he inspected all the firearms and knew what was and was not there, and with further inspection of the weapons "requested" of the B.A.T.F. by David Koresh and "refused" by the B.A.T.F.(which would have left them without an excuse for their murder and mayhem). Now we know why Slick Willy replaced the Attorney General with Janet Reno after the raid started. I'm sure Bill Johnston was expecting a turkey shoot, and all with 100% support from the controlled(Skull & Bones) media, before, during and ever since("The Massacre of The Branch Davidians" by Carol Moore, 28 Jan 1994).

Ever notice how the media never misses an opportunity to jump on preachers who make statements concerning government policy, screaming: "separation of church and state"? And when the Pope comes to this country making speeches on the same issues their silence is deafening! The only person to voice a negative response to the Popes statements to abortion was Madelin Murrey O'Hair, whose statements have not been published since. Just before O'Hair, and her family, was to go to New York, to protest the Pope, she and her family disappeared without a trace. Again the media's silence was deafening. Ever notice the A.C.L.U. in all of its ranting about separation of church and state is stone silent about government(protestant taxpayer) moneys going to Catholic schools? (Federal grants and loans to Jesuit colleges, universities and their programs are in the billions).

At the turn of the century Pope Leo XIII was raking in over one and a half million dollars annually from: (1) Peter's pence contribution (over $415,000); (2) Apostolic Chancellery aggregate ($520,000); (3) Interest of the vast sum left by Pius IX in the Pontifical treasury, invested chiefly in English Consols ($625,000). Notice the Pope trusted the securities of a Protestant nation and not a Catholic as France, Spain or Mexico. These figures would hardly make a dent in those of today.

The Jesuits rake in over $280 million annually. The assets of Grey Nuns of Charity $3.5 million; Sisters of the Immaculate Heart $7.5 million; Sisters of Saint Joseph of Newark $17,899,384; Little Sisters of the Poor $25 million; Sisters of Mercy $39,754,132; Sisters of Charity $66,533,833; Sisters of Charity of Providence $90,187,000; Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother $93,636,516; Sisters of the Holy Cross $110,892,759. There are 539 such orders of nuns and monks. All tax-free! AND THE I.R.S. NEVER LOOKS AT!! Read: "Praise The Lord For Tax Exemption", by: Stanley Lowell and Martin Larson.

If you think my thesis untenable then please prove me wrong. Simply run a background check (personnel file) to see which (if any) Jesuit schools were attended by (or: Knights of Columbus; Knights of Malta): publishers of public school history books; federal judges: Joyce Hens Green, Manuel L. Real, Tanner, Hodges, Thomas P. Griesa, Milton Pollack, John W. Walker Jr., Kimba Wood, Clifford Weckstein, Richard A. Posner, Richard Maich, Ranck, James F. McClure and definitely Walter "Roy Bean" Smith Jr. of Waco; Assistant U.S. Attorney's Bill Johnston, John Maisto (U.S. diplomat), Leslie Brydon, Herschel Lock, Jeffery Mench,[the previous three, along with Tom Bowman(personal aid to Skull & Bones Senator Arlen Spector), Richard Medellin, Judges: Rank and James F. Mcclure being instrumental in the kidnapping (the children were taken without the parents being present or even notified when the charges were presented in court) of the children of Steven and Dawn Ames in the court of common plea's of Northumberland County Pennsylvania.

The sole charges being:

Teaching their children the Bible and the U.S. Constitution], and B.A.T.F's: John Magaw, Davey Aguilera and Lloyd "Bilderberg" Bentsen [who was C.F.R. (Illuminati)]; Peter Galbraith: U.S. Ambassador in Zagreb; Bob Bartel of "The Spotlight" newspaper (his political tabloid is anti-Semitic and denies the Holocaust, which was orchestrated in the Vatican); Tom Metzger, who's skinhead organization uses R.C. symbology [the mirror image dragon/bird, used by the Skinheads, is identical to that used by the Nazi's and Albanian KLA(Stash)] and doctrine (with the names changed) and has direct links with skin head/nazi organizations in Germany; US Magistrate: Richard Kop, US Attorney Thomas Taken, FBI head: Nicholas O'Hara, Mickey Mott (the last four being Satan worshiping pedophiliac of Omaha Nebraska); Frank Liberto(New Orleans godfather/close associate to J. Edgar Hoover and key figure in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.).

Every Government official, especially C.I.A., graduate from Yale University should be checked for Skull & Bones membership (which had its origin in the University of Berlin. Founded at Yale by Alphonso Taft and William H. Russell and exists only at Yale University

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"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend." --Alexander Hamilton

This is a truly amazing and shocking video. Another must see! Documents in hard, real time, the Vatican's pedophile policies, and it seems to be a systematic policy of destroying children.

Tears-
phil

[GVideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1713587532999179450&q=nazi[/GVideo]

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"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend." --Alexander Hamilton

I just heard about a documentary called, "Deliver Us From Evil." It is about Father O'Grady, who is also shown in the video posted above.
He was moved all over northern California, from one unsuspecting parish to the next. The documentary is up for an Oscar tonight, it will be interesting to see whether it wins. The web site for the film is http://www.deliverusfromevilthemovie.com

I thought this was an interesting find....

http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/vatpr.html


November 23, 2001

Vatican Bank Top 10 Money Laundering Destination


According to one global source, the Vatican is the main destination for over $55 billion in illegal Italian money laundering and the number 8 destination worldwide for laundered money, ranked well ahead of such offshore havens as the Bahamas, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein.

In a recent report by the London Telegraph and the Inside Fraud Bulletin, the Vatican was named as a top "cut out" country along with the offshore banking centers of Nauru, Macao, and Mauritius. A "cut out" country is one whose banking secrecy makes it is all but impossible to trace laundered funds back to their source.

The Vatican Bank is desperately resisting a legal action for an accounting of stolen World War II assets in a San Francisco Federal court (Alperin v. Vatican Bank) filed by Serb and Jewish Holocaust survivors. Contrary to the above reports, a declaration filed under penalty of perjury by the Vatican Bank's attorney, Franzo Grande Stevens, states in part that the Vatican Bank's "fundamental purpose is to promote pious acts" and that its depositors "are essentially limited to Vatican state employees, members of the Holy See, religious orders, and persons who deposit money destined, at least in part, for works of piety." Stevens also declared to the court that the Pope controls the Vatican Bank and that bank records are not retained after ten years.

It seems that the Vatican Bank, a major illegal money laundering operation, is hiding behind the benign image of John Paul II. Given the Vatican Bank's alleged involvement with Nazi loot and current links to organized crime, a reckoning cannot be far off. The accumulating evidence points to a more piratical than pietical Vatican Bank.

Another one:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/62/275.html

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Jesus is the Way, the TRUTH, and The Life - the 9/11 truth WILL come out, He will not let the LIE stand! The word is getting out by leaps and bounds - let's stand together and be ready - because "the glass is about to overflow"!! ;)
-Kathy

Here's another link I found...

http://www.dccsa.com/greatjoy/ortho2.htm

The 2000 Year Vatican Roma War on Orthodoxy

ORTHODOX or HETERODOX

That is the QUESTION?

Vatican Roma, The Catholic Church, has no equal in terms of age, experience and above all, in her determination to dominate the human race. Vatican Roma will tolerate no rivals, tolerate no competitors, put up with no enemies.

Vatican Roma has led many kings and emperors to their destruction. Vatican Roma has subjugated other religions and will rule over all religions in the antichrist new world order. Few have resisted and escaped all her wily and deceitful cunning. More than one has still survived, and even fought relentless battles for centuries that are still being fought today as strongly as in the past.

Vatican diplomacy is the oldest diplomacy in the world. Vatican Roma's diplomacy can explain much of the mind-boggling events of our day.

One of the few ancient foes of the Vatican that remains is the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church, along with very few Protestant churches, and the Jews, are still trying to resist this apostate giant of antichrist religion.

You may say what about Islam? The reality is that Islam is a useful tool of Vatican Roma today. Islam today is used by Vatican Roma to kill real Christians and Jews today. Vatican Roma today still is working covertly to bring about a much greater slaughter of real Christians and Jews who will not submit to Vatican Roma's control. When Vatican Roma's net of control is fully in place, those in Islam who will not submit to Vatican Roma's control will be slaughtered as well. All the real Jews and Christians who will not bow to the antichrist that the pope will anoint as the messiah of the world are being set up for slaughter. Today Islam is a useful tool of Vatican Roma which will be discarded when Vatican Roma is finished with it.

We will begin with the oldest and strongest of Vatican Roma ancient foes, the Orthodox Church. The war between Vatican Roma and the Orthodox Church is the longest diplomatic war in the history of man, which is still being fought as fiercely, as ruthlessly and as unscrupulously as ever. Catholic intrigues against Orthodoxy, since its inception, are uncountable. They fill the annals of the first millennium; and from the beginning of the second, when in 1054 the Orthodox Patriarch, Michael Cerulanius, brought about the final breach between the Eastern and Western Churches, until the fall of Constantinople, they remained paramount in the history of medieval Europe.

The goal of this thousand-year war is simple: the destruction or subjugation of the Orthodox Church or its voluntary or forcible integration into the Catholic Church. Most Protestant churches today, and the so called mega Television ministries, have already submitted to the Vatican. No diplomacy compares to the intrigues cunning and double-dealing of Vatican Roma.

Councils, religious compromises, political bargaining, secret negotiations with Orthodox patriarchs, pacts with the Byzantine emperors - everything and every device was used at one time or another to put Orthodoxy in bondage to Vatican Roma. Rome struck a deal with the last Orthodox emperor of Constantinople. Rome promised to help in the defense of the Orthodox capital against the gathering Islamic armies, in return for his pledge to Vatican Roma of the mass conversion of the Orthodox Church.

__________________
Jesus is the Way, the TRUTH, and The Life - the 9/11 truth WILL come out, He will not let the LIE stand! The word is getting out by leaps and bounds - let's stand together and be ready - because "the glass is about to overflow"!! ;)
-Kathy

The Holy Roman Inquisition:


This is an extensive and very long article. Yet I highly suggest people take the time to read through it at least once; I have read this article through at least twice and am due to read it through again, so I can learn the material better and retain the pertinent information to memory;

You will be shocked at what this article contains, and it will also reshape your false history that you were taught in the Public Fool System. I called this guy on the phone, and we both spoke for a good long time; And went over this information as well as how criminal the Papacy is, and has always been. David Plaisted is a very good researcher. And the numbers given here are by no means conclusive or complete, as he even admitted on the phone with me. For instance the article doesn't contain the tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people killed by all the Wars the Vatican has started and/or controlled.

And it doesn't include the World Wars, I & II, which were started by the Vatican. World War I & II were merely the Inquisition by another name; I will find and post what the World Almanac states are the numbers of people killed in World War II by class of people; And then ask you if it is a likely thing that of the 90,000,000 people killed in WW II, that 2/3 of these were Christians! What are the odds of that happening?

Make sure you at least read this once through and aquaint yourself with the truth of the Roman Papacy!

David Plaisted is a very careful researcher. And gives both sides of the story as well as estimates. The truth isn't always pleasant! But is is needful to know--

Enjoy-
Phil Jayhan

Perhaps you prefer viewing this in a Word Pad Document;

Original link:

Estimates of the Number Killed by the Papacy in the Middle Ages and later



Chapter 0. Introduction

For two or three centuries, many Protestants have given figures concerning the total number of people killed directly or indirectly by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The numbers given include 50 million, 68 million, 100 million, 120 million, and 150 million. Roman Catholics typically give much smaller numbers. Frequently the figures are stated without any information about where they came from or how they were computed. The purpose of this note is to describe where some of these figures come from and to comment on their reliability. Surely nearly all Roman Catholics as well as Protestants disapprove of past religious persecutions, so this discussion should not reflect negatively on current members of the Roman Catholic Church. However, events in Nazi Germany show how easily persecution can revive, so it is necessary to be on guard against it and maintain an awareness of its history. Of course, many other groups besides the Papacy have persecuted. And all of us, without Christ, have the roots of sin in ourselves. The reason the Papacy stands out is that it has ruled for such a long period of time over such a large area, exercised so much power, and claimed divine prerogatives for its persecutions. The magnitude of the persecutions is important for the following reason: One can excuse a few thousand cases as exceptional, but millions and millions of victims can only be the result of a systematic policy, thereby showing the harmful results of church-state unions.

In this study I have attempted, with some success, to penetrate the veil of obscurity that surrounds the Middle Ages in order to determine the true history of this period.

In order to consider this subject, it is necessary to recall many unpleasant events. The dreadful totals, computations, and examples that follow, one after another, are not for the faint hearted. These atrocities should convince us not so much of the evils of a particular religious system as of the depravity of the sinful human heart, and lead us to turn to Christ for repentance and salvation that we might have new hearts and be cleansed from sin.


Chapter 1. Examples of figures concerning the number killed

Here are some of the places where figures about religious persecutions are given. Dowling in his History of Romanism says

• "From the birth of Popery in 606 to the present time, it is estimated by careful and credible historians, that more than fifty millions 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."

• -- "History of Romanism," pp. 541, 542. New York: 1871.

Commenting on this quote, a fundamental Baptist web site says the following:

• For example, it has been estimated by careful and reputed historians of the Catholic Inquisition that 50 million people were slaughtered for the crime of "heresy" by Roman persecutors between the A.D. 606 and the middle of the 19th century.

• This is the number cited by John Dowling, who published the classic "History of Romanism" in 1847 (book VIII, chapter 1, footnote 1). Only seven years after its first printing, it could be said of Dowling’s book, "it has already obtained a circulation much more extensive than any other large volume ever published in America, upon the subject of which it treats; or perhaps in England, with the exception of Fox’s Book of Martyrs." Clark’s Martyrology counts the number of Waldensian martyrs during the first half of the 13th century in France alone at two million. From A.D. 1160-1560 the Waldensians which dwelt in the Italian Alps were visited with 36 different fierce persecutions that spared neither age nor sex (Thomas Armitage, A History of the Baptists, "Post-Apostolic Times - The Waldensians," 1890). They were almost completely destroyed as a people and most of their literary record was erased from the face of the earth. From the year 1540 to 1570 "it is proved by national authentic testimony, that nearly one million of Protestants were publicly put to death in various countries in Europe, besides all those who were privately destroyed, and of whom no human record exists" (J.P. Callender, Illustrations of Popery, 1838, p. 400). Catholic historian Vergerius admits gleefully that during the Pontificate of Pope Paul IV (1555-1559) "the Inquisition alone, by tortures, starvation, or the fire, murdered more than 150,000 Protestants." These are only small samples of the brutality which was poured out upon "dissident" Christians by the Roman Catholic Church during the Inquisition.

Concerning the figure of two million killed, Bourne writes

• Bertrand, the Papal Legate, wrote a letter to Pope Honorius, desiring to be recalled from the croisade against the primitive witnesses and contenders for the faith. In that authentic document, he stated, that within fifteen years, 300,000 of those crossed soldiers had become victims to their own fanatical and blind fury. Their unrelenting and insatiable thirst for Christian and human blood spared none within the reach of their impetuous despotism and unrestricted usurpations. On the river Garonne, a conflict occurred between the croisaders, with their ecclesiastical leaders, the Prelates of Thoulouse and Comminges; who solemnly promised to all their vassals the full pardon of sin, and the possession of heaven immediately, if they were slain in the battle. The Spanish monarch and his confederates acknowledged that they must have lost 400,000 men, in that tremendous conflict, and immediately after it-but the Papists boasted, that including the women and children, they had massacred more than two millions of the human family, in that solitary croisade against the southwest part of France.

• -- Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 402-403.

In only one crusade, two million Albigenses were killed. How many must there have been altogether, and how many millions more must have been killed during the entire Middle Ages! Another source writes

• The Catholic crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France (from 1209-1229), under Popes Innocent III., Honorius III. and Gregory IX., was one of the bloodiest tragedies in human history. … The number of Albigenses that perished in the twenty years’ war is estimated at from one to two millions.

• -- Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XIV.

W. E. H. Lecky says:

• 
  "That the Church of Rome has shed more innocent blood than any other institution that has ever existed among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant who has a competent knowledge of history. The memorials, indeed, of many of her persecutions are now so scanty, that it is impossible to form a complete conception of the multitude of her victims, and it is quite certain that no power of imagination can adequately realize their sufferings." -- "History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe," Vol. II, p. 32. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910.

The following quotation is fromThe Glorious Reformation by S. S. SCHMUCKER, D. D., Discourse in Commemoration of the Glorious Reformation of the Sixteenth Century; delivered before the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of West Pennsylvania, by the Rev. S. S. Schmucker, D.D., Professor of Theology in the Theological Seminary at Gettysburg. Published by Gould and Newman. 1838.

• Need I speak to you of the thirty years’ war in Germany, which was mainly instigated by the Jesuits, in order to deprive the Protestants of the right of free religious worship, secured to them by the treaty of Augsburg? Or of the Irish rebellion, of the inhuman butchery of about fifteen millions of Indians in South America, Mexico and Cuba, by the Spanish papists? In short, it is calculated by authentic historians, that papal Rome has shed the blood of sixty-eight millions of the human race in order to establish her unfounded claims to religious dominion (citing Dr. Brownlee’s “Popery an enemy to civil liberty”, p. 105).

Estimates range up to 7 to 12 million for the number who died in the thirty years’ war, and higher:

• This was the century of the last religious wars in “Christendom,” the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, fomented by the Jesuits, reducing the people to cannibalism, and the population of Bohemia from 4,000,000 to 780,000, and of Germany from 20,000,000 to 7,000,000, and making Southern Germany almost a desert, ...

• -- Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII.

Concerning the Irish rebellion, John Temple's True Impartial History of the Irish Rebellion of 1641, written in 1644, puts the number of victims at 300,000, but other estimates are much smaller. Some estimates are larger:

• In addition to the Jesuit or Catholic atrocities of this century already enumerated with some particulars, they massacred 400 Protestants at Grossoto, in Lombardy, July 19th, 1620; are said to have destroyed 400,000 Protestants in Ireland, in 1641, by outright murder, and cold, and hunger, and drowning; …

• -- Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII.

In fact, the population of Ireland is estimated to have decreased from 2 million in 1640 to 1.7 million in 1672, according to R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1972 (198. However, this could have resulted from British reprisals to some extent and from emigration, forced or voluntary. The population should have increased by about 200,000 during this period, assuming a 30 percent growth rate per century. This implies that 500,000 people in excess of normal either died or left Ireland during this time, and is consistent with 300,000 or more Protestants being killed in 1641.

The figure of 68 million appeared in Schmucker’s talk in 1838, in Brownlee’s book of 1836, and also in a book “Plea for the West” by Lyman Beecher (Cincinnati, Truman and Smith, 1835), pp. 130-131:

• And let me ask again, whether the Catholic religion, in its union with the state, has proved itself so unambitious, meek, and unaspiring so feeble, and easy to be entreated, as to justify-a proud, contempt of its avowed purpose and systematic movements to secure an ascendancy in this nation? It is accidental that in alliance with despotic governments, it has swayed a sceptre of iron, for ten centuries over nearly one-third of; the population of, the globe, and by a death of violence is estimated to have swept from 'the' earth about sixty-eight millions of its inhabitants, and holds now in darkness and bondage nearly half the civilized world?

The exact quote of Brownlee referenced above is as follows:

• In one word, the church of Rome has spent immense treasures and shed, in murder, the blood of sixty eight millions and five hundred thousand of the human race, to establish before the astonished and disgusted world, her fixed determination to annihilate every claim set up by the human family to liberty, and the right of unbounded freedom of conscience.

• -- Popery an enemy to civil liberty, 1836, pp. 104-105.

Also, in another work Brownlee states

• Papal Rome has shed the blood of fifty millions of Christians in Europe!

• -- The Roman Catholic Religion viewed in the light of Prophecy and History, New York, Charles K. Moore, 1843, page 60.

And later in the same work,

• The best writers enumerate fifty millions of Christians destroyed by fire, and the sword, and the inquisition; and fifteen millions of natives of the American continent and islands; and three millions of Moors in Europe, and one million and a half of Jews. Now, here are sixty-nine millions and five hundred thousands of human beings, murdered by “the woman of the Roman hills, who was drunk with the blood of the saints.” And this horrid list does not include those of her own subjects, who fell in the crusades in Asia, and in her wars against European Christians, and in South America!

• -- page 97.

These quotations make it clear that the figure of 50 million refers only to Christians in Europe, and does not include Christians killed elsewhere. It is also clear that Brownlee is taking these figures not from just one person, but from at least two, “the best writers,” and ignoring others that he feels are less qualified. Many others must have been convinced of the reputation of these individuals as well, judging from the frequency with which the figure of 50 million is quoted.
Brownlee further comments on the number killed by the Papacy in another work as follows:

• When Laguedoc was invaded by these monsters, one hundred thousand Albigensees fell in one day! See Bruys vol. iii. 139.

• -- page 346

• There perished under pope Julian 200,000 Christians: and by the French massacre, on a moderate calculation, in 3 months, 100,000. Of the Waldenses there perished 150,000; of the Albigenses, 150,000. There perished by the Jesuits in 30 years only 900,000. The Duke of Alva destroyed by the common hangman alone, 36,000 persons; the amount murdered by him is set down by Grotius at 100,000! There perished by the fire, and tortures of the Inquisition in Spain, Italy, and France 150,000. … In the Irish massacres there perished 150,000 Protestants!

• To sum up the whole, the Roman Catholic church has caused the ruin, and destruction of a million and a half of Moors in Spain; nearly two millions of Jews South America in Europe. In Mexico, and , including the islands of Cuba and St. Domingo, fifteen millions of Indians, in 40 years, fell victims to popery. And in Europe, and the East Indies, and in America, 50 millions of Protestants, at least, have been murdered by it!

• Thus the church of Rome stands before the world, “the woman in scarlet, on the scarlet colored Beast.” A church claiming to be Christian, drenched in the blood of sixty-eight millions, and five hundred thousand human beings!

• -- W. C. Brownlee, Letters in the Roman Catholic controversy, 1834, pp. 347-348.

Brownlee apparently revised the 69 million figure downwards to 68 million. So the figure of 68 million has several sources in the early 1800’s. The source for some of Brownlee’s figures appears in the following quotation:

• These forced baptisms, and the consequent claims which the pope set up over “his slaves,” caused the death of one million five hundred thousand Moors, and on the most moderate calculation, that of two millions of Jews! See Dr. M. Geddes’s Tracts on Popery, vol. i.

• -- W. C. Brownlee, Popery the Enemy of Civil and Religious Liberty, J. S. Taylor, New York, 1836, p. 88.

The work of Michael Geddes referred to may have been Miscellaneous Tracts …, 3rd ed., London, 1730, 3 volumes. In 1678 Geddes went to Lisbon, and returned to England in 1688. During his stay in Lisbon, he collected many documents concerning Spanish and Portuguese history, and in 1714 published his “Tracts on Divers Subjects” in three volumes, a translation of the most interesting documents he obtained. In 1715 a posthumous volume of tracts against the Roman Catholic Church appeared. In addition to those killed, many were exiled:

• It has been calculated that, from the time of the conquest of Granada until 1609, three millions of Arabs were exiled from Spanish soil; and never have the plains of Valencia, Murcia and Granada recovered the flourishing aspect that they wore when cultivated by their former masters. The decree of 1609 was as fatal to Spain as the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was to France nearly a hundred years later.

• -- Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian’s History of the World, vol. 8, p. 259.

• In 1492, persecution was begun against the Jews, of whom 500,000 were expelled from Spain and their wealth confiscated. In seventy years the population of Spain was reduced from 10,000,000 to 6,000,000 by the banishment of Jews, Moors and Morescoes (“Christianized” Moors), the most wealthy and intelligent of the inhabitants of that country.

• -- Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XV.

In fact, the population of Spain had at one time been twenty million higher:

• It is estimated that the total population in the middle of the tenth century was about thirty millions: a phenomenal increase of population, betokening of itself a very high degree of civilization. A population normally, with fair sanitation and hygienic conditions, doubles in a quarter of a century. It will tell you in a word what the Moors had done, and what the Spaniards afterwards undid, if you reflect that this Spanish population, which was thirty millions in the tenth century, is now only twenty- two millions. The figure of thirty millions in the tenth century is an extraordinary tribute to the science and wisdom of the Moors. England, for instance, had then a population of about two or three million people.

• -- Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, Chapter XXV.

This suggests that the Christian reconquest of Spain cost this country alone over 20 million lives. This loss could not have resulted from the Plague, because the loss from the Plague was recovered by 1500.
The figure of 68 million appears again in a later work:

• Alexander Campbell, well known religions leader of the nineteenth century, stated in debate with John B. Purcell, Bishop of Cincinnati, in 1837 that the records of historians and martyrologists show that it may be reasonable to estimate that from fifty to sixty-eight millions of human beings died, suffered torture, lost their possessions, or were otherwise devoured by the Roman Catholic Church during the awful years of the Inquisition. Bishop Purcell made little effort to refute these figures. (Citing A Debate on the Roman Catholic Religion, Christian Publishing Co., 1837, p. 327.)

• Walter M. Montano, a former Catholic priest, asserts in his book, Behind the Purple Curtain that it has been estimated that fifty million people died for their faith during the twelve hundred years of the Dark Ages. (Citing Walter M. Montano, Behind the Purple Curtain, Cowman Publications, 1950, page 91.)

• -- The Shadow of Rome, by John B. Wilder; Zondervan Publishing Co., 1960, page 87.

Campbell may be referring to the martyrology of Samuel Clarke, written in 1651. Perhaps this figure of 68 million came from Brownlee or somewhere else, possibly the writings of Llorente or Clark’s Martyrology, cited above.

Such figures sometimes appear in recent books, such as Wilder’s, but in general, all the figures about the number killed by the Papacy go back many years and have reputable sources. It is interesting that Campbell implies that the figure of 68 million includes many who were not killed, but just persecuted, while the three earlier references, including Brownlee, state that this number were killed. Campbell may have taken the earlier figure and misread it as including those who were persecuted but not killed. Here are more quotations about the number killed by the Papacy:

• For professing faith contrary to the teachings of the Church of Rome, history records the martyrdom of more then one hundred million people. A million Waldenses and Albigenses [Swiss and French Protestants] perished during a crusade proclaimed by Pope Innocent III in 1208. Beginning from the establishment of the Jesuits in 1540 to 1580, nine hundred thousand were destroyed. One hundred and fifty thousand perished by the Inquisition in thirty years. Within the space of thirty-eight years after the edict of Charles V against the Protestants, fifty thousand persons were hanged, beheaded, or burned alive for heresy. Eighteen thousand more perished during the administration of the Duke of Alva in five and a half years.

• -- Brief Bible Readings, p. 16.

• This great antichristian power robbed the church of its gospel light and plunged the world into the Dark Ages. It put to death and thus took away the lives of from fifty to one hundred millions of the saints of the Most High.

• -- Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, 1950, p. 170.

• One thousand years covers the crest of the persecutions when from 50,000,000 to 150,000,000 martyrs died of the sword, at the stake, in dungeons, and of starvation because of the confiscation of their earthly possessions.

• -- Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, 1950, p. 185.

• In like manner the blood of a hundred million martyrs cries for justice to the One who says, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay saith the Lord.” Rom 12:19.

• -- Bunch, Taylor, Studies in the Revelation, 1933?, p. 105.

• Let us keep a sense of proportion. The record of Christianity from the days when it first obtained the power to persecute is one of the most ghastly in history. The total number of Manichaeans, Arians, Priscillianists, Paulicians, Bogomiles, Cathari, Waldensians, Albigensians, witches, Lollards, Hussites, Jews and Protestants killed because of their rebellion against Rome clearly runs to many millions; and beyond these actual executions or massacres is the enormously larger number of those who were tortured, imprisoned, or beggared. I am concerned rather with the positive historical aspect of this. In almost every century a large part of the race has endeavored to reject the Christian religion, and, if in those centuries there had been the same freedom as we enjoy, Roman Catholicism would, in spite of the universal ignorance, have shrunk long ago into a sect. The religious history of Europe has never yet been written.

• -- The Story Of Religious Controversy Chapter XXIII by Joseph McCabe (an atheist) who lived from 1867 to 1955.

• 'The church,' says [Martin] Luther, has never burned a heretic.' . . I reply that this argument proves not the opinion, but the ignorance or impudence of Luther. Since almost infinite" numbers were either burned or otherwise killed,' Luther either did not know it, and was therefore ignorant, or if he was not ignorant, he is convicted of impudence and falsehood, —for that heretics were often burned by the [Catholic] Church may be proved from many examples.

• -- Robert Bellarmine, Disputationes de Controversiis, Tom. ii, Lib. III, cap. XXII, “Objections Answered,” 1682 edition. (Bellarmine was a Roman Catholic.)

• Some have computed, that, from the year 1518 to1548, fifteen million of Protestants have perished by war and the Inquisition. This may be overcharged, but certainly the number of them in these thirty years, as well as since is almost incredible. To these we may add innumerable martyrs, in ancient, middle, and late ages, in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, France, England, Ireland, and many other parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

• (from the commentary on the book of Revelation in Wesley’s “Explanatory Notes on the New Testament,” fifth edition, 178, in which the comments on the book of Revelation are translated from the work of the German scholar John Bengel, and Wesley stated that he did not necessarily defend all of Bengel’s statements.)

Writing about the Jesuits, Lord states

• They are accused of securing the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,-- one of the greatest crimes in the history of modern times, which led to the expulsion of four hundred thousand Protestants from France, and the execution of four hundred thousand more.

• -- John Lord, Beacon Lights of History, volume VI, p. 325.

Some estimate that a million or even two million Huguenots fled France as a result, and a million and half converted, willingly or otherwise, to Catholicism. In fact, even before the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenot wars took place in France, and many perished as well:

• Some two millions of lives had perished since the breaking out of the civil wars.

• -- James A. Wylie, The History of Protestantism, Vol. 2, Book 17, Chapter 19.

One estimate (Mariejol) is as high as four million. In 1660 there were about 1,200,000 Huguenots (Protestants) in France, according to one source. In 1562, 10 to 20 percent of France’s population of 16 million were Huguenots. At one point, the (Catholic) Cardinal of Sainte-croix estimated that more than half of the French population were Huguenots. It is estimated that more than one million Huguenots were slain trying to escape or became slaves in the galleys of the King of France.
A final figure:

• Mede has calculated from good authorities “that in the war with the Albigenses and Waldenses there perished of these people, in France alone, 1,000,000.”

• -- Christ and Antichrist, by Samuel J. Cassels, 1846, page 257.

And many similar figures could be given.


CHAPTER 2. The plausibility of massive persecution

The following quotation shows the attitude of the Papacy towards heretics, which lends ample credibility to a large figure for the number persecuted and killed in the Middle Ages:

• Treason. The following paragraph from the “Review of the principles and history of Popery” contains an accurate summary of Romanism, as it involves the interest and safety of Protestant governments and nations. “Refractory princes who have not been disposed to glut Rome’s insatiable thirst with enough of Christian blood, or who have not assented to all the Papistical usurpations and arrogant claims, have experienced no mercy. The right of succession has been denied and subverted, for the smallest personal taint of Anti-Romanism, or for the toleration of it in others; and indescribable difficulties always were interposed against the rebellious ruler's restoration to power, even after he had made every possible renunciation, and degraded himself to the most humiliating penances, and received the amplest pontifical absolutions. For suspected and actual heresy, sentence of excommunication and deposition was fulminated against governors, more than for any other causes. Treasonable plots, conspiracies, insurrections, and rebellions, were formed, promoted, executed, and by pretended pleas of religion were justified, delighted in, and eulogized. Those infernal proceedings were blasphemously ascribed to the inspiration of God, and when any success attended the scheme, it was imputed to the divine approval, and unquestionable miraculous interposition. To execute those traitorous machinations, or to die in the attempt, was pronounced to be infallible proof of the most exalted piety, and the certain path to eternal felicity; entitling the actor to the honour of saintship, and the glorious crown of martyrdom. On the contrary, obedience and loyalty on the part of Papists to Protestant governments, are declared damnable sins, for which there is no pardon either in this world, or in eternity. To convince the bigoted adherents of the Papacy, that all such treasons are works of pre-eminent piety, pretended prayers, discourses, sacraments, ecclesiastical censures, absolutions, oaths, and covenants, with all that is apparently sacred and imposing in religion, have been prostituted; and all that is exciting and fascinating in superstition has been effectually employed among the votaries of the Romish Priesthood, who are divested of every sentiment of religion, virtue, or humanity. The absolute duty of assassinating Protestant rulers, especially after sentence has been pronounced against them by the Pope, is constantly taught and vehemently proclaimed; with the most deliberate resolution, and after the most solemn preparations, that nefarious criminality has frequently been perpetrated; although it has more often been unsuccessfully attempted: but in all cases the remorseless murderers have been exalted in Popish estimation to the very highest honours: and some of them were worshipped with the same adoration which is performed to the Romish canonized saints.”

• -- Bourne, George, The American Textbook of Popery, Griffith & Simon, Philadelphia, 1846, pp. 410-412.

The following statement concerning England in about the year 1400 gives more insight into the extent of the persecutions.

• By this it was enacted that any one whom an ecclesiastical court should have declared to be guilty, or strongly suspected, of heresy, should, on being made over to the sheriff with a certificate to that effect, be publicly burnt.

• [footnote, page 298] It is remarked that England was the only country where such a statute was needed, as elsewhere the secular powers at once carried out the sentence.

• -- James C. Robertson, History of the Christian Church, The Young Churchman Co., 1904, p. 297.

These persecutions were not necessarily directed by the hierarchy of the church, but for the most part probably originated at a much lower level, from the “ecclesiastical feudalism” of the Middle Ages, as described by Williams:

• Abbes and bishops in consequence became suzerains, temporal lords, having numerous vassals ready to take up arms for their cause, counts of justice – in fact all the prerogatives exercised by the great landlords. … This ecclesiastical feudalism was so extensive, so powerful, that in France and England it possessed during the Middle Ages more than a fifth of all the land; in Germany nearly a third.

• -- Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian’s History of the World, vol. 8, p. 487.

Probably the greatest number of those who perished by the Papacy in Europe did so at the hands of these local authorities, on the grounds of suspected heresy or opposition to the church, and not necessarily at the direction of the Pope, preceded by a trial, nor mentioned in records. Who would there have been to interfere with the actions of the local abbes and bishops? The constant elimination of a few heretics here and there, in many locations, continued for many years, could easily have added up to a total of millions without making much of an impression on recorded history. Throughout the Middle Ages as the possessions of the church increased, so would the number and power of these officials have increased, together with the number of their victims. During the Crusades, their attention may have been externally directed, but with these ending in about 1272, the number of martyrs within Europe could have greatly increased.

The persecutions were not at all limited to the Inquisition, but took many forms. Many of the victims were killed secretly and never brought to trial or sentenced. These deaths would never have appeared in the official records of the Inquisition. Such persecutions even continued until very recent times, as illustrated by the following quotation from W. C. Brownlee, Popery the Enemy of Civil and Religious Liberty, J. S. Taylor, New York, 1836, page 124:

• I beg to direct you to the history of Spain, which, at length, is beginning to raise her head from the dust; and of Austria, Italy, and Naples. There everything is exclusive and sanguinary. Utter a word against the priest, or his senseless mummery, or refuse to fall down before the wafer god, and the dagger is plunged into your heart!

Note that it was common knowledge in Brownlee's day that such executions of dissenters from Catholicism took place. Another quotation from Brownlee, p. 115 gives further support to this fact:

• Listen, I beseech you, to your fellow-citizens, who have returned from their travels in Italy, Austria, and Naples, or South America. In these lands the drawn sword of papal myrmidons is put to the throats of every public speaker, and editor, and author! One unpopish idea,--one single charge against despotism,--one word in praise of liberty,-one innuendo against priestcraft, even although you say no more than that you have seen them in their priestly robes, at the cockpit; and deeply engaged, publicly, in gambling, with their mistresses, and licentious companions: one appeal, even though feebly uttered, for a free press,-for pure Christianity, and the rights of human conscience, will cost a man his liberty, or life, in one brief hour! Men may be as wicked as any of the ghostly leaders of the fashion that way; men may blaspheme God, and set heaven and hell at defiance, providing they do it with all due courtesy to the priests: they may, be consummate profligates, but it must be according to canonical rule. Crimes and vices contravene no law, providing the church be respected, and her dues be paid! But woe to the patriot who shall whisper an insinuation, or print an effusion of a noble spirit, bursting with holy indignation against the hypocrisy, the priestly espionage, and despotism of popery! This is the only unpardonable sin at Rome. It can never be forgiven him, either in this world, or in purgatory! The dungeon cells, placed by papal care, at the bishop's service, in each cathedral; and the cells of the inquisition, and the agonies, and moanings, and shrieks of the oppressed, breathed only on the ear of heaven -these-these are the overwhelming proofs of popery's deadly hostility to the freedom of speech, and the press!

This description of persecution derives from the testimony of many travelers to Catholic countries at that time. If such persecution took place in the early nineteenth century, how much more must it have occurred in the Middle Ages when the Papacy was at the height of its power! For example, M’Crie relates (The Reformation in Spain, pp. 181-18 how a Spaniard in the year 1546 converted to Protestantism and was in consequence killed by his brother, who never was punished for his deed. There must have been many such assassinations in the Middle Ages by loyal Catholics who were jealous for the reputation of the Virgin Mary. In fact, threats and persecution even took place in the United States, according to Brownlee, pp. 210-211:

• Who have their dungeon cells under their cathedrals, in which they claim, as inquisitors of their own diocese, to imprison free men in our republic? Foreign popish bishops! And the facts respecting a man being so confined and scourged, in the cells at Baltimore, until he recanted, have been published, and not to this day contradicted! ... Who are in the habit of uttering ferocious threats "to assassinate and burn up" those Protestants who successfully oppose Romanism? The foreign papists! I have in my possession the evidence of no less than six such inhuman threatenings against myself.

Persecution also took the form of murders by corrupt authorities, as described in the following passage from Peter’s Tomb Recently Discovered in Jerusalem, by F. Paul Peterson, 1960, p. 45:

• At length a Sclavonian waterman came to the palace with a startling story. He said that on the night when the prince disappeared, while he was watching some timber on the river, he saw two men approach the bank, and look cautiously around to see if they were observed. Seeing no one, they made a signal to two others, one of whom was on horseback, and who carried a dead body swung carelessly across his horse. He advanced to the river, flung the corpse far into the water, and then rode away. Upon being asked why he had not mentioned this before, the waterman replied that it was a common occurrence, and that he had seen more than a hundred bodies thrown into the Tiber in a similar manner.

Even as recently as the mid twentieth century, dissenters from Catholicism were in danger, according to the following quotations:

• But to even bring things closer home; an acquaintance told me of a recent conversation between a Protestant relative of hers and a Roman Catholic. The Catholic said, "I would like to see the blood of Protestants flow down the streets of this city." The Protestant was rightly surprised and said, "How can you say that, we are friends and you know that I am a Protestant?" The Catholic responded, "Yes, I know, but the greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward." Since they teach Catholics from childhood on, that to kill a Protestant is to do God a service, we had better be careful how we put Catholics in public office [but note that such teaching does not appear to be continued today, and also other quotations show that many Catholics oppose such persecution].

• While I was in Ohio recently, I was told the same story by two people at different times, of a pastor who has a Christian broadcast. Through the preaching of the Gospel, this pastor at times would have Roman Catholics tell him of their difficulties and ask for advice. One case was of a lady who implicated a priest in a scandal. The pastor would always advise all those who came to him, according to the Scripture, and would urge all to trust only in Jesus Christ for their salvation. Several times, this pastor received strange telephone calls. Once a woman called and advised the pastor never to have communications with Catholics who call or write in to him. He responded that it was his God-given duty to help in any way possible, all those who came to him, and that he could not comply with her request. She then said that bodily harm could come to him or those Catholics who communicated with him. The pastor responded that surely the Catholic Church would not be guilty of such an unchristian act. The answer came that the Catholic Church was too "holy" to shed blood, but they had their agents who would. Mark you, what an outrage on human intelligence, to leave the impression that the instigators of bloodshed are innocent. This is a perfect example how they do their nefarious acts, whether to individuals or nations, and manage to keep hidden from the public.

• -- Peterson, 1960, pp. 50-51.

• While travelling on a train in Spain I talked with quite a number of Spanish Catholics, and some of them in hushed voices said, while armed soldiers were passing to and fro outside our compartment door, "I am a Catholic, but I do not agree with the way the priests are persecuting the Protestants." You hear such statements in all Catholic countries. Six months ago, in Brazil, a fanatical mob led by a priest destroyed a Baptist and a Presbyterian Church. It got out into the papers there, and honest Catholics all over the land raised their voices against such barbarity. The same is true of the priestly murders of Christians in Colombia. But Rome does not mind, nor is she checked by mere protests.

• -- "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Catholic Church" by F. Paul Peterson, published privately, 1959, page 21.

• A pastor in Britain, who had been a missionary in Lebanon, told me the following story: A young man had visited America when World War II had broken out, and remained there until the war was over. He then returned to Lebanon enquiring about his relatives. He was told that only a cousin remained and she had entered a Convent. He went there and saw her and they decided to be married, which is lawful in Lebanon. They spoke to the Superior about it and it was agreed that he should come back the next day to take her away. When he came back the Superior said that she had already given him the girl. He responded, "Why no, you did not give me the girl." The Superior insisted and called two nuns and asked them if it was not true that they had given him the girl, and they bore testimony to the statement. His first thought was to notify the police, but then he realised that he would have to give an account as to what had been done with the girl, since there were testimonies against him. But murder will out. Next door to the Convent lived an old couple. The man was not feeling well, and he asked his wife to make him some tea from the lemon blossoms of a tree which they had in their back yard. The wife climbed the tree, picked the blossoms, when she noticed that over the high wall the nuns were digging a large hole in the ground. She told her husband of the strange incident, who accused her of being mad to say that at night the nuns were digging a large hole in the ground. But he went out and verified the fact. They reported the incident to the police, who were directed to the spot, and excavation was made and the girl was found. She had been poisoned. The Convent was made into a Government institution, and the nuns were judged according to the law. A large book could be written over modern occurrences of this type. Rome never changes.

• -- Peterson, 1959, pp. 44-45.

• A British Consul in Yugoslavia told the following incident to a good friend of mine, which happened in the early days of Marshall Tito. There was a boys' school run by priests and, not far away, was a small village made up of Protestants. One day the priests told the boys that the Protestants should be killed and, together with the priests, the horrible massacre was carried out. Tito, hearing of this, sent his troops and killed every priest and boy in the school.

• -- Peterson, 1959, p 50.

• Just recently I was in various cities in Eire (Southern Ireland), and while travelling there I spoke to over 15 priests about salvation through Christ. I realized I was treading on dangerous ground, but one Irishman seemed to realize it more than I did. I was in a compartment in a train with about sixteen people, one of whom was a priest. I gave him a good testimony, telling him of my experience of conversion. I had just asked him about his own experiences with God (which is quite an embarrassing question), when the Irishman next to him entered into the talk, but quickly steered the conversation to other matters. Later, when we had to change trains, this Irishman came to me and apologized for the way he had changed the subject. But he asked me, "Didn't you know that man was a priest ? "I replied that I knew that. He then said, "You were in danger, for this is Southern Ireland."

• -- Peterson, 1959, p. 111.

During its rise to power, the Papacy also essentially exterminated the Heruli shortly after 493 A.D., the Vandals soon after 533 A.D., and the Ostrogoths in 554 A.D, all of whom were asserted to hold to the Arian belief. However, Limborch (The History of the Inquisition, p. 95) doubts that Arius held the views attributed to him. Concerning the Vandals, Bunch writes

• “It is reckoned that during the reign of Justinian, Africa lost five millions of inhabitants; thus Arianism was extinguished in that region, not by any enforcement of conformity, but by the extermination of the race which had introduced and professed it.” – History of the Christian Church, J.C. Robertson, Vol. 1, p. 521.

• -- Bunch, Taylor, The Book of Daniel, p. 101.

Of course, the Heruli and the Ostrogoths also undoubtedly numbered in the millions, and were exterminated. Everywhere one looks there is evidence of millions and millions of people who were killed by the Papacy in various stages of its history. The Hussites were also nearly exterminated:

• [footnote, speaking of Innocent VIII] Yet on the papal throne he played the zealot against the Germans, whom he accused of magic, in his bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, etc., and also against the Hussites, whom he well nigh exterminated.

• -- Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian’s History of the World, vol. 8, p. 643.

Furthermore, in a footnote speaking of the thirty years’ war which started in Bohemia where the Hussites originated, Krus and Webb write

• The intensity of that conflict surpassed that of other types of armed confrontations. In Bohemia, for instance, there were whole sections of the country in which nobody was left to bury the dead. The total population of Bohemia decreased in the 17th century from about 3 million to 500,000. These population changes are representative of other areas of Central Europe afflicted by the Thirty Years War.

• -- Krus, D.J., & Webb, J.M. (1993) Quantification of Santayana's cultural schism theory. Psychological Reports, 72, 319-325.

In fact, many sects had been exterminated throughout the history of Rome:

• The inquisitor Reinerius, who died in 1259, has left it on record: "Concerning the sects of ancient heretics, observe, that there have been more than seventy: all of which, except the sects of the Manichaeans and the Arians and the Runcarians and the Leonists which have infected Germany, have through the favour of God, been destroyed.

• -- Broadbent, E.H., The Pilgrim Church, Gospel Folio Press, 2002, p. 90 (originally published in 1931).

One of these sects lost a hundred thousand to persecution:

• An edict was issued under the regency of Theodora, which decreed that the Paulicians should be exterminated by fire and sword, or brought back to the Greek church. … It is affirmed by civil and ecclesiastical historians, that, in a short reign, one hundred thousand Paulicians were put to death.

• -- Andrew Miller, Short Papers on Church, London, CHAPTER 16.

CHAPTER 3. The 50 Million Figure

It is often claimed by historic Protestant writers that 50 million or more people have been killed by the Papacy. For example, Buck [Buck, Charles, A Theological Dictionary, containing Definitions of All Religious Terms; ..., Philadelphia, Thomas Cowperthwait & Co., 1838, article “Persecution”, p. 335] writes, “It has been computed that fifty millions of Protestants have at different times been the victims of the persecutions of the Papists, and put to death for their religious opinions.” However, most people today have no idea how this figure of 50 million was originally computed. Some persons today are claiming that this figure of 50 million has no basis in fact and is an exaggeration based on anti-Catholic sentiment. Therefore it is of interest to find out how this figure was originally computed in order to evaluate its reliability. This study reveals some aspects of history that are being neglected today and also gives us an insight into the extent to which the true history of religion is being lost. This study also shows how some of the other figures were computed.

There were many attempts to calculate the number killed by the Papacy. Albert Barnes, in his commentary on Revelation 11:14, states, “Calculations, more or less accurate, have been made of the numbers Popery has slain….” We give one plausible method of computation for the often quoted figure of 50 million killed by the Papacy in Europe. As a starting point, John Wesley speaks of “the whole number of victims who have been offered up in Europe since the beginning of the Reformation? Partly by war, partly by the Inquisition, and a thousand other methods of Romish cruelty? No less within forty years, if the computation of an eminent writer be just, than five and forty millions!” John Wesley, "Doctrine of Original Sin", Part I, section II.8, 1757, Wesley's Works, edited by Thomas Jackson, vol. 9, pp. 217-19. He also wrote,

• Some have computed, that, from the year 1518 to1548, fifteen million of Protestants have perished by war and the Inquisition. This may be overcharged, but certainly the number of them in these thirty years, as well as since is almost incredible. To these we may add innumerable martyrs, in ancient, middle, and late ages, in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, France, England, Ireland, and many other parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

(from the commentary on the book of Revelation in Wesley’s “Explanatory Notes on the New Testament,” fifth edition, 178 Also, Bennet [Bennet, Benjamin, Several discourses against popery, Lawrence and Midwinter, London, 1714, p. 459] writes,

• And some that have pretended to make a calculation, affirm, that in the space of 40 years Rome has been the death of 30 millions of people.

Also, Halley’s Bible Handbook, 1965 edition, page 726, referencing many older works on church history states “Historians estimate that, in the Middle Ages and Early Reformation Era, more than 50,000,000 Martyrs perished.” Furthermore, speaking of Innocent III, Halley writes [p. 776], “More Blood was Shed under his direction, and that of his immediate successors, than at any other period of Church History, except in the Papacy’s effort to Crush the Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries.” In his introduction to [Berg, Lectures on Romanism, D. Weidner, Philadelphia, 1840, p. 6], Brownlee writes, “Rome has been ‘drunk with the blood’ of fifty millions of martyred Culdees, Waldenses, Albigenses, Bohemian Brethren, Wicklifites, and Protestants!” This at least gives a listing of those included in one of the computations of fifty million killed. Voltaire wrote [Traite sur la Tolerance, 1763, Chapter XVII]

• depuis environ quatorze cents ans, la théologie a procuré le massacre de plus de
  cinquante millions d'hommes.

This shows that one of these computations of 50 million killed was accepted by Voltaire and approximately covered the period from 350 A.D. to 1750 A.D. In commenting on this figure, a web page maintained by Professor James MacLean of the Department of French and Spanish at Memorial University of Newfoundland says

• allusion aux Guerres de Religion, aux Croisades, etc.

Thus Prof. MacLean speculates that the 50 million figure is based on wars of religion, crusades, and other events.



These quotations give us important clues about the origin of the figure of 50 million killed by the Papacy in Europe. Another individual recalled to the author that this figure of 50 million consisted mostly of those killed after the beginning of the reformation, suggesting that this 50 million figure contained the 45 million figure. Because Wesley quoted the figure of 15 million killed by war and the Inquisition, it is reasonable to conclude that this is part of the figure of 45 million, and that this figure of 45 million is part of the often quoted figure of 50 million. The figure of 30 million killed in 40 years probably refers to a period including the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 to 1648. Thus the figure of 45 million is probably the sum of these two other figures of 15 million killed from 1518 to 1548 and 30 million killed in 40 years including the period from 1618 to 1648. It is interesting that even in 1714, such computations were being done. In general, in reconstructing the computation, it is helpful to remember that these death tolls tend to decrease with time due to the influence of the Catholic Church, so that death tolls that are considered high today were probably used in the computation. For example, Lockman [A history of the cruel sufferings of the protestants, and others, by Popish persecutions, in various countries: together with a view of the reformations from the Church of Rome. London: printed. And, Dublin: re-printed by J. Potts, 1763, p. 226] writes that during the Huguenot wars in France, even when many Protestants were being forcibly converted to Catholicism the “Romish clergy” were claiming that these conversions were entirely voluntary. Thus the Catholic version of history will tend to reduce the magnitude of past persecutions. In addition, the specific events covered in the computation of the 50 million figure were probably mentioned by later Protestants, even if the computation itself was not mentioned. Therefore it is best to restrict the computation to massacres listed, for example, by Brownlee and others.



The time period for the figure of 45 million has now been reasonably established, but not the place. For this, Burton [Burton, Robert, Martyrs in flames: or, the history of Popery, Bettesworth and Batley, London, 1729] lists in the table of contents the following persecutions: Piedmont, France, Orange, Bohemia, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Flanders, Scotland, Ireland, and England. This seems to be the most exhaustive list of persecutions of any of the sources examined, indicating the areas in which the principal persecutions took place. In fact, Buck [Buck, Charles, A Theological Dictionary, containing Definitions of All Religious Terms; ..., Philadelphia, Thomas Cowperthwait & Co., 1838, article “Persecution”] writes, speaking of the time after the Protestant Reformation,

• The inquisition, which was established in the twelfth century against the Waldenses ... was now more effectually set to work. Terrible persecutions were carried on in various parts of Germany, and even in Bohemia, which continued about thirty years, and the blood of the saints was said to flow like rivers of water. The countries of Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary, were in a similar manner deluged with Protestant blood [p. 333].

This suggests that the principal areas of persecution included Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary. Also, Bennet [Bennet, Benjamin, Several discourses against popery, Lawrence and Midwinter, London, 1714, p. 457] writes

• Germany, Bohemia, Poland, Lithuania &c. have in their turns been deluged in blood.

Thus the time and place of the major persecutions contributing to the 50 million figure have been determined with reasonable confidence. It remains to estimate numbers killed in each of these persecutions and show that they add up to 50 million. Although it is not yet possible to give a full accounting, one can assign reasonable totals to these persecutions that do add up to 50 million.



A large portion of the figure of 45 million is covered by the thirty years’ war, the conflict in Bohemia, the civil wars and persecutions in France, and 15 million killed from 1518 to 1548. Now, the thirty years’ war lasted from 1618 to 1648 and estimates for those killed in this conflict range up to 14 million. The thirty years’ war started when Ferdinand II (1578-164 tried to suppress Protestantism in the Holy Roman Empire. As for where Ferdinand II got his motivation, “Emperor Ferdinand II, of the House of Hapsburg, had been educated by the Jesuits; and with their help undertook to suppress Protestantism.” (Halley, p. 792) “The sons and daughters of the rich and noble they [the Jesuits] sought by every means to bring under their influence, and they were soon the favorite confessors in the imperial court and in many of the royal courts of Europe. …. It was their policy to … instill into their minds [the rich and the noble] an undying hatred of every form of opposition to the Catholic faith. … When they had once molded a ruler to their will and made him the subservient instrument of their policy, they were ever at his side dictating to him the measures to be employed for the eradication of heresy and the complete reformation of his realm according to the Jesuit ideal, and they were ever ready, with full papal authority, to conduct inquisitorial work.” [Newman, pp. 374-375] Lindsay [A History of the Reformation, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1922, pp. 607-608] writes, “Many Romanist Princes had no wish to persecute, still less to see their provinces depopulated by banishment. … Toleration of Protestants they [the Jesuits] represented to be the unpardonable sin. They succeeded in many cases in inducing Romanist rulers to withdraw the protection they had hitherto accorded to their Protestant subjects …. The League was the symbol in France of this Counter-Reformation. … they [the Jesuits] were the restless and ruthless organizers of the Holy League.” Clarke [Clarke, Samuel, A looking-glass for persecutors, London, Printed for W. Miller, 1674, p. 52] writes, “The emperor Ferdinand the second, was a great Persecutor of the Protestants in Bohemia and Germany, who after his victory over Frederick, Prince Palatine, and the Bohemian States, made it his work to root out the Protestant Religion in those Countries, and turned them into a very shambles of Blood, sparing neither Age, Sex, nor Rank that refused to abjure the Truth. But while he was in his full Career, God brought in against him a contemptible people [the Swedes] under whose swords most of those bloody wretches fell; who were the Bohemian scourges, so that much of Germany, and of the Emperors Country was a very Aceldama, a Field of Blood.” A high estimate for the Thirty Years’ War is that the population of Germany was reduced from 20 million to 7 million, implying 13 million killed [Cushing B. Hassell, History of the Church of God, Chapter XVII]; actually the population should have increased by about 3 million during this time, so we can estimate 16 million killed. Ploetz [Epitome of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern History, 1884, p. 312] writes of the “Terrible ravages committed by the bands of Wallenstein” in Germany in 1632 in Saxony. Also, in 1648, Ploetz [p. 315] writes “Terrible condition of Germany. Irreparable losses of men and wealth. Reduction of population; increase of poverty; retrogradation in all ranks.” The war extended to other areas of Europe, and there was also a tremendous population loss there, so it would not be unreasonable to estimate 18 million killed altogether. In fact, one edition of Halley’s Bible Handbook states that estimates for this war reach as high as 20 million:

• The Thirty Years War had started as a Religious War; it ended as a Political War; it resulted in the deaths of 10,000,000 to 20,000,000. Jesuit educated Ferdinand II started it with the purpose of crushing Protestantism.

• Halley, Henry H., Pocket Bible Handbook, Chicago, 13th edition, 1939, p. 418.

Estimates for the number killed in the Huguenot wars in France range as high as 4 million, and probably almost all of these were killed by Catholics. Pierre Miquel [Les guerres de religion, Paris : Fayard, c1980, p. 396] writes,

• Henri IV n'était pas plus riche. Son royaume était dévasté: en quarante ans de guerres civiles étrangères, la France avait sans doute perdu plusiers millions d'hommes et de femmes (4 millions, selon Mariéjol).

In support of this figure, Albert Barnes in his commentary on Revelation 11:14 writes,

• In France several million were destroyed in the innumerable massacres that took place in that kingdom.

If four million persons were killed in France in only forty years, the total killed in France could be considerably higher including those killed afterwards. Concerning the persecutions in France, Southwell [Southwell, Henry, The new book of martyrs; or complete Christian martyrology. Containing an authentic and genuine historical account of the many dreadful persecutions against the Church of Christ, in all parts of the world, ... Imprint London : printed for J. Cooke, [1765?]] writes,

• “Thus did popish malice pursue the reformed in most parts of France, and persecute them under various names, but the denomination about this time, viz. the sixteenth century, most obnoxious to the Roman Catholics were hugonots, protestants, Lutherans, and Calvinists; and as these words were then synonymous in their meaning, and implied renouncing the errors of the church of Rome, so all who were apprehended under the imputation of belonging to either, were equally martyred. Yet the reformed flourished under persecution….” [p. 93]

• “the king [of France] publically declared he would exterminate the protestants from France….” “The general cry was ‘Turn papists, or die.’” [p. 108]

• “Those who were not put to death suffered imprisonment, had their houses pulled down, their lands laid waste, their property stolen, and their wives and daughters, after being ravished, sent into convents…. If any fled from these cruelties, they were pursued through the woods, hunted and shot like wild beasts....At the head of the dragoons, in all the provinces of France, marched the bishops, priests, friars, &c. the clergy being ordered to keep up the cruel spirit of the military. An order was published for demolishing all protestant churches….” [pp. 108-109]

Adding 15 million for the period 1518 to 1548 and 18 million for the thirty years’ war and 3 million for Bohemia and 4 million for France gives 40 million, nearly agreeing with Wesley’s estimate. The remaining 5 million persons can be accounted for by the persecutions in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, and elsewhere. Some of these estimates may be on the high side, but many smaller conflicts and persecutions have been left out, such as the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the killing of probably millions of witches. Another example is the persecution of the Waldensians; Halley’s Bible handbook, 1965 estimates 900,000 Protestants killed from 1540 to 1570 in the persecution of the Waldenses. At least this method of computation gives us a good idea where the figure of 45 million comes from and takes the mystery out of its origin.



Also, Wesley in his diary of January 16, 1760 quotes Sir John Davis in his “Historical Relations Concerning Ireland” as stating that “from 1600 to 1641, the general massacre, with the ensuing war, again thinned their numbers; not so few as a million of men, women, and children, being destroyed in four years' time.” The rebellion in 1641 killed more than 150,000 Protestants in Ireland, by the priests’ own computations, and many others died later. This shows how quickly religious wars consume lives. Similar numbers were killed in a short time in France, Bohemia, and especially Germany. Thus it is reasonable to conclude that in the countries of Poland, Hungary, and Lithuania, at least four million persons were killed at about the time of the thirty years’ war. With the million persons killed in Ireland and the 40 million figure computed above, this yields 45 million killed since the Reformation. Almost all of these would be Protestants, because Protestants do not generally massacre Catholics but Catholics in the past have often massacred Protestants. In a similar way, with the religious conflicts raging in Europe from 1518 to 1548, it is reasonable to assume that 15 million persons were killed then.



Now, to obtain 50 million, one has to include those killed before the Protestant Reformation. For this, estimates for the Hundred Years’ War from 1337-1453 range up to 10 million killed, and this war could have been furthered by the Papacy, as nearly all other European wars were. (See Philip Pregill, Landscapes in History, 2d Ed. estimating the population loss in France at 6.3 million and Frederic J. Baumgartner, France in the Sixteenth Century estimating the population loss in France at 10 million, taken from a web page by Matthew White. Both sources deny that the Black Death caused most of these deaths.) In fact, the reconquest of Spain from the Mohammedans took several centuries, so it is reasonable to estimate the number killed in this war at well over 10 million. W. C. Brownlee estimates the slaughter of Saracens in Spain at 3 million, but other estimates are higher. Joseph Berg writes [Lectures on Romanism, D. Weidner, Philadelphia, 1840, p. 260],

• The stupid quarrels that have originated from disputes relative to ceremonies the most puerile have deluged Europe with blood…. “Disputes arose in connection with this ceremony [the investiture of prelates], which cost sixty-three battles, and the lives of many millions of men. Fra. Paolo says it cost eighty battles in Germany alone. This question excited great troubles, particularly in Germany and England…. The Dictionnaire des Sciences states that it occasioned sixty battles under Henry IV., and sixty-eight under Henry V, his successor, in which two millions of men were slain.”

One can also list the Catholic crusade against the Albigenses in Southern France (from 1209-1229) with one to two million killed. Newman [A Manual of Church History by Albert Henry Newman, The American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1902, p. 461] speaks of many crusades against heretics in Europe: “There were many crusades against heretics in Europe, as against the Albigenses (1208-1249) and against the Hussites (1420-1431). These were accompanied by the indiscriminate massacre of the helpless populations in the regions invaded.” Also, Brownlee in one place speaks of “millions of Albigenses and Waldenses” killed by Rome. Computations for the total number of Waldenses killed can easily range into many millions, as shown elsewhere. These could make up the balance of the 50 million killed in Europe. But the persecutions only increased their numbers, by scattering them in many lands. Finally a crusade was pronounced against them. As an example of such persecution, Morant writes [Morant, Philip, The cruelties and persecutions of the Romish church display'd …. James and John Knapton, London, 1728, p. 52], “Again, in the year 1235, an army of the Albigenses was entirely defeated near Spain, so that not one of them escaped. Likewise in Germany there was an infinite number of them killed.” Concerning persecutions in Bohemia before the Reformation, Southwell [Southwell, Henry, The new book of martyrs; or complete Christian martyrology. Containing an authentic and genuine historical account of the many dreadful persecutions against the Church of Christ, in all parts of the world, ... Imprint London : printed for J. Cooke, [1765?]] writes,

• “In the year 1460, the king of Bohemia published a very severe edict against all protestants; commanding the Bohemian nobility and magistrates, not only to seize them wherever they could find them on their estates, and within their districts, but to pursue them to their retreats, to hunt them in their recesses, and to do every thing they possibly could toward their extirpation.” [p. 184]

• “In the year 1510, an edict was prepared for ordering an immediate and general massacre of all the protestants that could be found in Bohemia….” [p. 185]

Concerning the Cathari, who were similar to the Waldenses, near the end of the twelfth century “The Dominican Rainerius gave 4,000,000 as a safe estimate of their number and declared this was according to a census made by the Cathari themselves” [Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 8 volumes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 1910; reprint, 197, Volume V, Chapter X]. Of course nearly all of the Cathari were killed. They were said to be very zealous for their faith, and few would have recanted. In addition, if the Cathari conducted a census, they must have been a cohesive group. There must have been many other “heretics” that had similar beliefs but were not part of the Cathari; it would be reasonable to estimate at least 8 million when these were included. This would imply that the number of those killed by the Papacy before the Reformation was 8 million or more, especially when one considers the hundreds of years that elapsed since the Papacy was established.



For evidence that there were many sects during this time and that they were very numerous and willing to die for their faith rather than to recant, Neander [General History of the Christian Religion and Church: Translated from the German of Dr. Augustus Neander by Joseph Torrey, Volume VI, London: George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden, 1889] writes,

• This sect [Thondracians, a sect of Paulicians], though it met with no mercy from the bishops, at whose instigation it was fiercely persecuted, continually revived, and spread [p. 343] widely in Armenia. At one time, in particular, about the year 1002 it made the most alarming progress …. [p. 342]

• The corruption of the clergy furnished the heretics a most important vantage-ground from which to attack the dominant church and its sacraments. The ignorance of the people on religious subjects exposed them to be continually deceived by those who were seeking, on whatever side, to work upon the minds of the multitude. The fickle populace were excited sometimes by the fiery appeals of the heretics … to abhorrence of their corrupt clergy …; and sometimes, by the influence of the clergy, to fanatical fury against the heretics, who were represented as utterly irreligious and godless men. [p. 348]

• Except in the case of one ecclesiastic and one nun, all the pains which were taken to reclaim them from their errors, in other words, to induce them to recant, were to no purpose. The others, thirteen in number, were condemned to the stake, and died there. [p. 354, speaking of members of a sect at Orleans]

• The sufferings to which they [a sect of Gerhard] were exposed on account of their doctrines, they encountered cheerfully, considering them as means of expiating sins committed before and in the present life ….Those therefore who were deprived of the privilege of dying as martyrs, died cheerfully under self-inflicted tortures. [p. 361]

• … the fury with which the Catharists were persecuted in the thirteenth century may have contributed to promote among them this fanatical seeking after death; and we meet with examples which show that they inflicted death on themselves in these ways, to avoid falling victims to the inquisitions. [Volume VIII, p. 319]

• The Catharists were zealous in disseminating their principles everywhere; they were careful to improve every favorable circumstance for this purpose, and seized upon every occurrence which could serve as a means to it. …the heretics, who at the peril of their lives traveled about from village to village and from house to house. As merchants they frequented fairs and markets …. [p. 320]

• The intrepidity and calmness with which the Catharists faced an excruciating death might well create an impression in their favour on those who were not altogether hardened by fanaticism. … The persecutions furthered the spread of the Catharists, who often held their meetings in obscure retreats, catacombs, and subterranean caves. … in 1231, many priests even were affected with the heresy, and the sharpest measures had to be employed in order to stay it. [p. 330]

• Such was their boldness that, in open defiance of the church, they [the Catharists] proceeded to elect a pope for themselves, to act as supreme head over their scattered communities. Such a pope appears in South France, Nequinta. He held, in 1167, a church-assembly at Toulouse, to which crowds of men and women flocked …. Nine bishops were installed …. Still later, about 1223, the sect chose themselves a pope in their original seat, in Bulgaria …. Delegates of the sect visited him from all quarters, for the purpose of consulting him on disputed matters. [p. 331]

• … not only people of rank left their possessions and joined them, but also clergymen, priests, monks, and nuns were among their adherents. And it is mentioned as a characteristic fact, that the rudest and most unlettered peasant who joined their sect, would in less than eight days gain so much knowledge of the Scriptures, that he could not be foiled in argument by any man. [p. 337, speaking of another sect]

• … after he had laboured for ten years in those regions [Toulouse and Alby], Bernard of Clairvaux, in writing to a nobleman, could say, “The churches are without flocks, the flocks without priests, the priests are nowhere treated with due reverence, the churches are leveled down to synagogues, the sacraments are not esteemed holy, the festivals are no longer celebrated.” … he [Bernard] means the priests had gone over to the Henricians …. [p. 349]

• The corruption of the clergy had, even in places where the church-system of doctrine was still held fast, excited great dissatisfaction and violent complaints, as appears evident from the songs of the Troubadours, who came from these districts, where this tone of feeling is not to be mistaken. [p. 351]

• Since then … the church had now to engage in a violent contest with tendencies of spirit struggling in opposition to her, continually multiplying and continually spreading,--a contest such as had never occurred before,--she must be driven … to employ every means at her command for the purpose of suppressing an insurrection which could not be put down by spiritual might alone. [p. 399]

• … the bishops … were no longer regarded in the communities with the requisite respect. This was especially the case in South France, in Languedoc, in the territory of the counts of Toulouse …. The clergy and the church service had here, ever since the last times of the twelfth century, been treated with contempt and ridicule. [p. 400]

• Innocent the Third … well understood that extraordinary measures were needed to suppress the heretical tendencies so rapidly advancing, which threatened wholly to sever the connection betwixt these districts and the church of Rome. … he chose for his instruments the monks … the germ of the future inquisitions. [p. 401]

• After the land had been laid waste for thirty years, the blood of thousands had been spilt, and a general submission had thus, in the year 1229, been finally brought about by force, the maintenance of the faith was still by no means secured for the future. The sects destroyed by fire and sword sprang up afresh out of the same needs of the spirit from which they had sprung up at the beginning. [p. 404]

Many of these sects were essentially Protestants, so that many of their martyrs can be included in the figure of 50 million Protestants killed by the Papacy. Perrin, who was a leading Waldensian minister, writes [History of the Waldenses, Book I, Chapter III, 1618] that the Waldenses were called by many names including Albigenses, Josephists, Lollards, Henricians, and Arnoldists and that many false accusations were made against them in order to induce the secular powers to persecute them. They were also called Cathari, Arians, and Manichees. In Chapter VI and VIII Perrin shows that the beliefs of the Waldenses were very similar to those of the later Protestants. In Chapter VIII Perrin shows how the teachings of the Waldenses spread to England and were handed down to Wycliff and from him communicated to John Huss. Also, the Bohemians obtained their beliefs somewhat earlier from the Waldenses. Therefore there is a direct connection between the Waldenses and the later Protestants.



Where does the figure of 15 million killed in the period 1518 and 1548 in war and the Inquisition come from? It is possible to conjecture about this as well, considering the large numbers of people even in Catholic countries that were accepting Protestantism. Jortin writes, “…at the time of the Reformation, when multitudes of Heretics and Schismatics, as they called them, arose in all places …” [Jortin, John, 1698-1770. Sermons on different subjects, by the late Reverend John Jortin, ... London : printed for Benjamin White, 1771-72., p. 127]. There would have been many Protestants in Hungary, because “under Maximilian II. the Reformation made unobstructed progress” [Kurtz, History of the Christian Church from the Reformation to the Present Time, 1872, p. 105]. Also, “It [the Reformation] was most cordially welcomed in Prussian Poland” and “In Poland proper, the new movements spread with great power” [Kurtz p. 103]. The same was true in Bohemia; “Thus Bohemia became an evangelical country; in a hundred inhabitants not more than one or two were Catholics” [Kurtz p. 105]. One commentator said that more than half of France was Huguenot at one point. As for Spain, “About 1550, the reformatory movement acquired so general and comprehensive a character, that a Spanish historian of that period expresses the belief that all Spain would have fallen a prey to the heresy, if the Inquisition had delayed the application of the remedy but three months” [Kurtz, p. 106]. In Italy, the same was true, because it took many years to eradicate Protestantism: “in 1542 a special Inquisition was instituted to suppress Protestantism in Italy, which, with reckless, fanatical fury, punished every appearance of Protestantism with imprisonment, the galleys, the scaffold, and the stake; nevertheless, it did not accomplish its purpose until towards the close of the century” [Kurtz, p. 107]. Of course Protestantism was also prevalent in the Protestant countries of Europe. Everywhere multitudes were accepting the true gospel. The Papacy felt its life was at stake, and met the threat with the most determined measures.



Wherever Protestantism appeared, it was viciously persecuted, both in the period from 1518 to 1548 and later. Concerning the period from 1518 to 1548, R.B. writes [R.B., The scarlet whore, or, the wicked abominations, horrid cruelties and persecutions of the Pope and Church of Rome …, Macnair, Glasgow, 1779]

• About the year 1523 Martin Luther begain to shine as a great light in Germany, and his doctrine soon overspread Bohemia, and all the parts adjoining; which so enraged the pope and his clergy that they continually raised very violent persecutions against them, wherein multitudes of good Christians lost their lives by means of Ferdinand I. and Charles V. emperors of Germany. [p. 36]

• Germany was miserably torn and rent to pieces by the cruelties and severities which they inflicted in order to extinguish the light of the gospel. … In the year 1523 the pope excited the emperor Charles V. to destroy all the protestants as heretics, and allowed him 200,000 crowns to raise soldiers for that purpose …. The duke of Saxony and the landgrave of Hesse stood up for the protestants, and were taken prisoners in the year 1547. Wherever the papists prevailed all sorts of cruelties … pursued the protestants, so that all Germany was as it were in a flame and combustion at once, some flying, and others suffering death on every side for their conscience and religion. [p. 39]

Also, in 1521 Luther was pronounced a heretic and punishments against him and his followers were decreed. In 1522 Hadrian the Sixth incited the princes of Germany to root out the teachings of Luther. Soon afterwards Lutheranism spread over almost the whole of Europe [Garrido, Fernando, and C. B. Cayley, A history of political and religious persecutions : from the earliest days of the Christian church, London, 1870?, p. 499]. In 1525 Clement the Seventh urged the senate of Paris to punish the Lutheran heresy that had sprung up among them. Also,

• In Germany, after the victories of Charles V [about 1546], against the Lutherans, there ensued a very bitter persecution in many places, authority armed with laws and vigorous malice striving against simple verity. Both ministers and people, some were tossed from place to place; some exited out of their native countries, others driven into the woods, and forced to live in caves; some tormented upon the rack, and others burnt with fire and faggot. [The true spirit of popery, or, The treachery and cruelty of the Papists exercis’d against the Protestants …, London : Printed for Richard Baldwin ..., 1688, p. 22]

• “The emperor Charles V, in the year 1547, ordered that all the decrees of the council of Trent, against the protestants, should be put in force with the utmost rigour, in every part of his extensive dominions. This severe order occasioned a most dreadful persecution throughout the greatest part of Europe; for as the emperor’s power was very extensive, so the cruelties practiced were almost innumerable. None, however, suffered more than the protestants of Bohemia…. The poor, who had no money to pay by way of mitigation, for thinking and acting right, were [here the passage becomes very explicit, so those who are sensitive should NOT read the rest of it] Racked, Burnt, Sawn asunder, Thrown from rocks, Torn by wild horses, Cut to pieces, Hanged, Drowned, Stabbed, Boiled in oil, Immured and starved, Beheaded, had boiling lead poured down their throats, were thrown on spears, hung up by the ribs, or crucified with their heads downwards.” [Southwell, op. cit., p. 185]

• [Speaking of Germany after 1517] “Indeed, the pope was so terrified at the success of that courageous reformer [Luther], that he determined to engage the emperor, Charles the Fifth, at any rate, in the scheme to attempt their extirpation…. Thus prompted and supported, the emperor undertook the extirpation of the protestants….” [Speaking of the defeat of the protestants in battle in 1547] “This fatal blow was succeeded by a horrid persecution, the severities of which were such, that exile might be deemed a mild fate, and concealment in a dismal woods pass for happiness…. Those who were taken experienced the most cruel tortures that infernal imaginations could invent; and by their constancy evinced, that a real Christian can surmount every difficulty, and despise every danger, to acquire a crown of martyrdom.” [Southwell, op. cit., p. 195]

With so many persons accepting Protestantism, the total number killed would have been large. Kurtz [History of the Church , p. 162] says, “In Hungary the number of Protestants was reduced one-half, by various intrigues and enticements.” Freeman [p. 281] writes, “Meanwhile, at the other end of Ferdinand’s dominions, the Protestants of Hungary revolted, and for a while turned him out of that kingdom also.” Also, [p. 303] “The Emperor Leopold meanwhile, besides the wars with France, had much to do in his kingdom of Hungary, both with the wars against the Turks and with the revolts of the Hungarians, who were stirred up by his cruel persecutions of the Protestants.” The following is from W. C. Brownlee, Popery the Enemy of Civil and Religious Liberty, J. S. Taylor, New York, 1836, p. 102:

• The following is from the Jesuit Confession of Faith imposed on papists in Hungary, published in German, at Berlin, 1829 ; and translated in The London Protestant Journal of 1831. "We also swear, that we will persecute this cursed evangelical doctrine, as long as we have a drop of blood in our bodies; and. we will eradicate it secretly and publicly; violently and deceitfully, with words, and with deeds; the sword not excluded." Land. Prot. Jour. p. 210.

One source [Wylie The History of Protestantism, Volume Third - Book Twentieth, Chapter 3] says that Hungary lost over a million people in the religious persecutions after the Reformation. Another source ["HUNGARY." LoveToKnow 1911 Online Encyclopedia. © 2003, 2004 LoveToKnow. http://3.1911encyclopedia.org/H/HU/HUNGARY.htm] says the population of Hungary was 5 million in about 1500 and 3 million in 1715. Unless there is a deliberate effort to massacre the people, a war will not cause such losses of population. This suggests that a million or more persons were killed in persecutions in Hungary. Bohemia lost about 3 million, well over half of its population, due to such persecutions. In Spain “In twenty of thirty years the evangelical course was suppressed” by the Inquisition [Kurtz, p. 106]. Similar losses were probably occurring in Roman Catholic countries all over Europe. Newman [A Manual of Church History by Albert Henry Newman, The American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1902, p. 234] writes concerning the French Huguenots,

• The Romanists had all the means of aggression in their own hands. The Protestants could hope, at best, for nothing better than a gradual extinction. The Jesuits were at work here, as everywhere, and their diabolical principles were soon to work the ruin of their defenseless adversaries.

Speaking of Siebenbuergen, Newman [p. 305] writes,

• In 1523 and 1525 rigorous imperial laws were promulgated against the spread of the new doctrine. “All Lutherans are to be extirpated from the kingdom, and wherever they may be found are to be freely seized and burned, not only by ecclesiastical but also by secular persons” (Diet of Pesth, 1525).

Siebenbuergen is known in English as Transylvania and is a geographical region of Romania near the Hungarian border. It covers about 39,000 square miles. Speaking of a colony of Saxons in the Siebenbuergen area, Newman [p. 307] writes,

• Like Poland, Hungary, and Siebenbuergen, it fell an easy prey to the Jesuits, who from 1560 onward were carefully laying their plans for the crushing of all forms of evangelical teaching and the restoration of papal authority.

Speaking of Austria, Newman [p. 387] writes,

• The correspondence of the time, the careful records of public and private conferences, and the exceedingly full and well-preserved archival materials, give us an inside view of the process by which the Counter-Reformation was inaugurated and carried out to its bitter end…. [Speaking of Charles] He was led to believe that the salvation of his soul and the permanent holding of his hereditary possessions depended upon his remorseless persecution of heretics. At a conference of Catholic princes at Munich (October, 1579) Charles was urged to enter with vigor upon the work, and the princes bound themselves mutually to give each other all needful assistance in suppressing rebellion among their subjects…. The Jesuits were already present in force, and they were ready to be the chief instruments in the destruction of Protestantism….

• The Protestants struggled heroically, as long as successful resistance seemed possible. Nowhere do we find a nobler type of Lutheranism than in this region. No country in Europe was readier to throw off the papal yoke and to adopt evangelical Christianity. Apart from Hapsburg rulers, Romanism would have been swept away almost without resistance. Hapsburg conservativism and Jesuit zeal were more than a match for the sturdy Lutheran nobles.

Freeman [General Sketch of European History, MacMillan and Company, New York, 1903, p. 264] writes

• Thus, for instance, in Austria, where a large part of the people had become Protestants, the Catholic religion was brought back, chiefly by the help of the Jesuits.

Speaking of Germany and Austria after 1620, Newman [p. 388] writes,

• Within a few years Protestantism had been almost completely exterminated throughout the Hapsburg domains, multitudes having been slaughtered, and the rest banished or forcibly converted. The Jesuits were the instigators and the chief agents in this horrible work.

Concerning Belgium, Newman [p.388] writes,

• In Belgium the Counter-Reformation was carried forward under Jesuit influence with remarkable rapidity…. Half the population had been Protestant. Within a few years it became exclusively Catholic.

Lest anyone think that these people were fleeing to other countries, it is important to recall that the objective of the Jesuits was to eliminate Protestants and not to push them from one country to another. Thus the Jesuits would have attempted by every means to prevent their escape. In support of this, Halley [pp. 780-781] writes, “In Spain, Netherlands, South Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and other countries, they [the Jesuits] led in the Massacre of Untold Multitudes. By these methods they Stopped the Reformation in Southern Europe and virtually saved the Papacy from ruin.” Also, Halley [p. 790] writes,

• In Bohemia, by 1600, in a population of 4,000,000, 80 per cent were Protestant. When the Hapsburgs and Jesuits had done their work, 800,000 were left, all Catholics.

• In Austria and Hungary half the population Protestant, but under the Hapsburgs and Jesuits they were slaughtered.

• In Poland, by the end of the 16th century, it seemed as if Romanism was about to be entirely swept away, but here too, the Jesuits, by persecution, killed Reform.

• In Italy, the Pope’s own country, the Reformation was getting a real hold; but the Inquisition got busy, and hardly a trace of Protestantism was left.

Also, [Halley, page 792] “… under the brilliant and brutal leadership of the Jesuits [Rome] regained much of the lost territory; South Germany, Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, Belgium, and crushed the Reformation in France.” As additional evidence that only a few people emigrated from Bohemia, James A. Wylie [The History of Protestantism Volume Third - Book Nineteenth, Chapter 10] writes,

• Of the common people not fewer than 36,000 families emigrated. There was hardly a kingdom in Europe where the exiles of Bohemia were not to be met with. Scholars, merchants, traders, fled from a land which was given over as a prey to the disciples of Loyola, and the dragoons of Ferdinand. Of the 4,000,000 who inhabited Bohemia in 1620, a miserable remnant, amounting not even to a fifth, were all that remained in 1648.

Furthermore,

• Bohemia had its population reduced from three million to seven hundred and eighty thousand, and there were parts of the continent where unburied corpses lay so thick that the regions had to be avoided until nature had done its work with the putrefying bodies of the dead.

• Joseph McCabe, The Story of Religious Controversy, Chapter XXIX The Jesuits: Religious Rogues, 1929.

Kurtz [p. 162] writes, “It [the Protestant church] was wholly exterminated in Bohemia.” Newman [pp. 400-401] writes,

• Ferdinand Extirpates Protestantism. It need scarcely be said that Ferdinand followed up his victories in the Austro-Hungarian Empire by vigorous measures for the extirpation of Protestantism. The Jesuits were on hand in full force to aid in the terrible work. This is not the place to describe the process by which Protestants, who in Bohemia at the beginning of the war constituted eighty per cent of the population, were in an incredibly short time almost wholly exterminated. The Counter-Reformation did its work here with an amazing thoroughness. Roman Catholicism had an opportunity here to exhibit itself in its true character. The time for expediency had ended. The rigid carrying out of the principles of the body now had place.

Burton [Burton, Robert, Martyrs in flames: or, the history of Popery, Bettesworth and Batley, London, 1729, p. 107] notes that as a result of the persecutions in Bohemia, the Jesuits obtained vast possessions in that country. Also, “In the year 1617, Ferdinand II was obtruded upon the Bohemians, who joined with the papists, and raised up a terrible persecution against the protestants, which was the cause of the election of Frederic, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, to be king of Bohemia, upon which there followed those cruel wars and troubles in that country, wherein many godly ministers, and other pious, holy, and good men, suffered such barbarities and inhumanities from the popish soldiers, that the ear of a Christian cannot bear, nor his tongue relate them without the greatest abhorrence and indignation…. In the year 1621 all the ministers were banished out of the kingdom of Bohemia…. Not long after an edict was published in Bohemia for banishing all Protestants in general, and that their children should be taken from them and brought up in the popish religion…. Upon this there followed a cruel persecution, so that almost in every city, town, or village the protestants suffered great torments and barbarities.” [R.B., The scarlet whore, or, the wicked abominations, horrid cruelties and persecutions of the Pope and Church of Rome …, Macnair, Glasgow, 1779, pp. 37-38] Furthermore,

• In some places they shut up the people in the church, and forced them to receive in one kind, and if they would not kneel before the host, they used to beat their legs with clubs till they fell down; others they gagged, and when they had propped their mouths wide open, they thrust the host down their throats. Others were detained in prisons and bonds so long till they died, and particularly one was kept in a loathsome dungeon so long till his feet rotted off. If any, to avoid this tyrrany, fled to the woods or other private places for shelter, edicts were published forbidding all to entertain them, upon pain of forfeiting great sums of money for every night’s entertainment. The country people were fetched out of their houses; nay, out of their very beds, by troops of soldiers, who drove them before them like beasts in the sharpest of cold and bitter weather. And with these poor creatures they filled the common prisons, towers, cellars, stables; nay, and hog-sties too, where they were killed with hunger, cold, and thirst. Marriage, burial and baptism were forbidden to the Protestants, and if they did it privately, they were imprisoned, or else put to great fines. … In some places the heretics were shut up in privies, to the end that they might be poisoned with the stench. And these were the charitable ways, by which the Bohemian Catholics endeavored to reclaim such as were revolted from the tyrrany of the Pope. [The true spirit of popery, or, The treachery and cruelty of the Papists exercis’d against the Protestants …, London : Printed for Richard Baldwin ..., 1688, pp. 17-18]

As an illustration of the attitude of the Catholic Church towards the Protestants in Bohemia, Robbins [Ecclesiastical Megalomania, The Trinity Foundation, 1999, p. 134] writes “Two centuries after Thomas, Martin V (1417-1431) ordered the King of Poland to exterminate the Hussites. The pope wrote to the king:

• Know that the interests of the Holy See, and those of your crown, make it a duty to exterminate the Hussites. Remember that these impious persons dare proclaim principles of equality; they maintain that all Christians are brethren and that God has not given to privileged men the right of ruling the nations; they hold that Christ came on Earth to abolish slavery; they call the people to liberty, that is to the annihilation of kings and priests. While there is still time, then, turn your forces against Bohemia; burn, massacre, make deserts everywhere, for nothing could be more agreeable to God, or more useful to the cause of kings, than the extermination of the Hussites.”

• Also, speaking of Rome, “not content with petty cruelties, but still clearing her way to absolute dominion, by general massacres, entire desolations, and utter extirpations.” [The true spirit of popery, or, The treachery and cruelty of the Papists exercis’d against the Protestants …, London : Printed for Richard Baldwin ..., 1688, p.3]

After describing the persecutions in Germany in the Thirty Years’ War, R.B. states [R.B., The scarlet whore, or, the wicked abominations, horrid cruelties and persecutions of the Pope and Church of Rome …, Macnair, Glasgow, 1779, p. 41] “the same cruelties were also committed in the kingdom of Hungary and in other countries ….” Concerning Poland, “In lower Poland … In the year 1654 the papists put to death all the Protestants they could find by most exquisite tortures” [R.B, op. cit., p. 42]. Also,

• [Speaking of Poland in 1655] “The Romish clergy having thus awakened the suspicions, and appealed to the passions of the people, the latter took it for granted that the protestants were guilty, and began a most furious persecution. Every city, town, and village, presented scenes of horror and cruelty; no inhumanity was left unthought of, no barbarity unpracticed. Age, sex, or rank, made no distinction; all protestants fell alike the undistinguished victims of bigoted rage.” [Here some specifics of the persecutions are given.] [Southwell, op. cit., p. 226]

• [Speaking of the Polish nobility with their papist army in 1655] “In what manner they would have used the refugee citizens who fled [from Lesna], but more especially the pastors, they showed by their heroic conduct to those remaining; and in other places, by the most savage slaughtering of divers ministers of the church, and other faithful members of Christ of both sexes; for of all that they laid hold on, they gave no quarter, but cruelly put every one to death with most exquisite tortures….” [Southwell, op. cit., p. 236]

Concerning Lithuania, “In Lithuania all who were not Roman Catholics were slaughtered without distinction of age or sex” and “their countries and churches [were] laid waste, so that nothing was to be seen but murders and massacres; the blood of the poor suffering Protestants ran in streams through the streets of towns and cities ….” [op. cit., p. 43]. Southwell [op. cit., p. 224] writes,

• “The persecutions in Lithuania began in 1648, and were carried on with great severity by the Cossacks and Tartars. The cruelty of the Cossacks was such, that even the Tartars, at last, grew ashamed of it, and rescued some of the intended victims from their hands.”

• “The barbarities exercised were these: [here the passage becomes very explicit, so those who are sensitive should NOT read the rest of it] Skinning alive, Cutting off hands, Taking out the bowels, Cutting the flesh open, Putting out the eyes, Beheading, Scalping, Cutting off feet, Boring the thin bones, Pouring melted lead into the flesh, Hanging, Stabbing, and Sending to perpetual banishment.”

In Protestant countries as well, many would have been persecuted during the transition to Protestantism. For example, concerning the Thirty Years’ War, Newman [pp. 410-411] writes,

• The extent of the destruction of life through the Thirty Years’ War cannot be estimated. If we take into account the multitudes who died of starvation and exposure, the hundreds of thousands of women and children who were slain in the sacking and destroying of the towns and cities, the fearful waste of life that must have been involved in camp-following, the deaths caused by the war would amount to many millions. In Bohemia, at the beginning of the war, there was a population of two million, of whom about eight-tenths were Protestant; at the close of the war there were about eight hundred thousand Catholics and no Protestants. Taking Germany and Austria together, we may safely say that the population was reduced by one-half, if not by two-thirds. And the deaths were in most cases the result of untold sufferings and as horrible as we can conceive.

• [Speaking of the persecutions in Germany after 1630] “The cruelties used by the Imperial troops, under count Tilly in Saxony, are thus enumerated: [here the passage becomes very explicit, so those who are sensitive should NOT read the rest of it] Hanging, Stifling, Roasting, Stabbing, Frying, Racking, Ravishing, Ripping open, Breaking the bones, Rasping off the flesh, Tearing with wild horses, Drowning, Strangling, Burning, Boiling, Crucifying, Immuring, Poisoning, Cutting off tongue, nose, ears, etc., Sawing off the limbs, Hacking to pieces, Drawing by the heels through the streets. Theses enormous cruelties will be a perpetual stain on the memory of count Tilly, who not only permitted, but even commanded his troops to put them in practice. Wherever he came, the most horrid barbarities, and cruel depredations ensued … so that the full result of his conquests were murder, poverty, and desolation.” [Southwell, op. cit., p. 197]

Du Prin[Du Pin, Louis Ellies, A new ecclesiastical history of the seventeenth century: containing an account of the controversies in religion, Translated by Digby Cotes, T. Combes, London, and A. Peisley, Oxford, 1725] writes,

• The whole kingdom of Bohemia, and half the subjects of Hungary, Austria, and Moravia were Protestants…. In a Word, the Reformation was established by Authority in most of the principalities and imperial cities of Germany, in Hungary, Transylvania, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Great Britain, and Ireland…. The emperor has so rooted the Protestants out of Bohemia and Silesia, that there is hardly one Family of them left in those Countries; their brethren in Hungary and Transylvania have had the same fate; and in Poland they are now in great Danger of being wholly extirpated…. Their very Name is almost extinct in France. Thus the Protestant Religion, which had spread itself almost over all Europe,… has been subverted and destroy’d in Country after Country, till it is now reduced to a small inconsiderable Part of what it was once possessed of.

Persecution typically only increases the zeal and growth of the Christian Church. These Protestant communities could only have been eliminated by killing on a massive scale. The vast reduction of the Protestant communities in Europe also shows that the Protestants did not migrate from one country to another, and if they had, there would have been records of mass migrations of millions of people, with a significant impact on the culture of the receiving countries. Besides, the Papacy knew that persecution would only cause Protestantism to grow faster, and realized that the only hope of eliminating it was by a war of extermination.

Because the population of Europe in 1600 was about 80 to 100 million, mostly in Catholic countries, it is reasonable to assume that a large proportion of the population of Europe accepted Protestantism and faced persecution. In many regions half or more of the population accepted Protestantism, and many of these persons were slaughtered. Even some of those who gave up their faith under suffering were killed. From 1518 to 1548 large numbers of people would have been accepting Protestantism and would have met such a reaction from the church. Therefore significant population losses due to persecution would have taken place in all Catholic countries in Europe during these years and later. Such losses might have been viewed as the “Inquisition” by some writers. Therefore it is reasonable to assume that the Inquisition claimed millions of victims in the century or two after the Reformation, though the Jesuits would not have been initially involved because they were only recognized in 1540. After all, the Jesuits did not originate the policy that heretics should be killed; they merely implemented it.

The extent of the Inquisition can also be surmised from the following quotation, which estimates five million souls killed during the Reformation in Spain:

• But the country in which the Inquisition has reached its most flourishing estate is Spain. This tribunal was first introduced into Catalonia in 1232, and propagated over all Spain. It was re-established in greater pomp and terror in 1481 by Ferdinand and Isabella, chiefly for the spiritual good of the Jews, then numerous in Spain. The bull of Sixtus V. instituted a grand inquisitor-general and supreme council to preside over the working of the Holy Office; and under that bull commenced that system of juridical extermination which is said to have cost Spain upwards of five millions of her citizens, who either perished miserably in the dungeon, or expired amid the flames of the public auto da fe.

• Rev. J.A. Wylie, LL.D, Genius and Influence of the Papacy, Book III - Chapter III.

This could partially explain the figure of 15 million for war and the Inquisition because most of the victims may have suffered after 1481. Those in prison can be counted as killed because they undoubtedly died much sooner than otherwise, and lived the remainder of their lives in miserable conditions. In fact, the Inquisition continued for many years:

• When the papal government was temporarily suspended in 1849 by the Roman Republic, the Inquisition was found in active operation, and it was restored the moment the Pope returned to Rome. The various horrors of the place,--its iron rings, its subterranean cells, its skeletons built up in the wall, its trap-doors, its kiln for burning bodies, with parts of humanity remaining still unconsumed,--were all exposed at the time. These partial disclosures may convince us, perhaps, that it is better that the veil which conceals the full horrors of the Inquisition should remain unlifted till that day when the graves shall give up their dead.

• Wylie, op. cit.

Also, Berg [Lectures on Romanism, p. 258] writes,

• When the inquisition was thrown open in 1820, by order of the Cortes of Madrid, of the twenty one prisoners who were found in it, not one of whom knew the name of the city in which he was, some had been confined three years, some a longer period, and not one knew perfectly the nature of the crime of which he was accused.

• One of these prisoners had been condemned, and was to have suffered the following day. His punishment was to be death by the pendulum.

If 5 million were killed in Spain alone in the Inquisition, the total for all countries could easily be much higher, because the Inquisition was established in many countries:

• Wherever the poor Albigenses and Waldenses fled, the Inquisition followed them; and in a few years it was set up not only in Italy, Spain, and Piedmont, but in France and Germany, Poland and Bohemia, and in course of time it extended as far as Syria and India. …

• Spain, Portugal, and Italy were decimated by this tribunal.

• Wylie, op. cit.

Another source that indicates millions killed in the Inquisition is Halley:

• The Horrors of the Inquisition, ordered and maintained by the Popes, over a period of 500 years, in which unnumbered millions were Tortured and Burned, constitute the MOST BRUTAL, BEASTLY, and DEVILISH PICTURE in all history. [p. 732]

Newman writes

• It is also certain that the inquisitorial records preserved represent a very small part of the actual inquisitorial proceedings.

• Newman, Albert Henry, A Manual of Church History Volume 1, The American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, 1899, p. 543.

In fact, many were killed by the secular authorities and would not even be recorded in the official records of the Inquisition:

• The Jesuit Sanders himself confesses, that an innumerable multitude of Lollards and Sacramentarians were burnt throughout all Europe, who yet, he says, were not put to death by the pope and bishops, but by the civil magistrates ….

• Towers, Joseph, Illustrations of Prophecy …, William Duane, Philadelphia, vol. 1, 1808, p. 55.

The Papacy would still be responsible for these deaths because it insisted that the secular authorities should persecute heretics. Jones writes

• Authors of undoubted credit affirm, and without the least exaggeration, that millions of persons have been ruined by this horrible court.

• Jones, William, A History of the Christian Church, volume ii, page 98, 1812.

Also, Robert Bellarmine, a Roman Catholic scholar, write sometime in the period 1586-1593 that “almost infinite numbers were either burned or otherwise killed” by the Catholic Church [Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei Adversus Hujus Temporis Haereticos (Disputations about the Controversies of the Christian faith Against the Heretics of this Time), Tom. ii, Lib. III, cap. XXII]. This was written well before the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, and supports the idea that many millions were killed by the Church before the massacres in the Holy Roman Empire began. Wesley’s testimony consists of two parts: First, that “some have computed” that fifteen million persons perished from war and the Inquisition during a certain time period, and second, that Wesley’s knowledge of history confirms that an enormous number of people perished in this manner during this time, even if the figure of fifteen million may be somewhat too large. Thus a number of sources including Wesley give evidence that war and the Inquisition were responsible for millions of deaths during this thirty year period.



After such a survey of the persecutions, it is possible to revisit the question of how the total of 50 million was computed. Germany and Bohemia lost most of their population, and “the countries of Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary, were in a similar manner deluged with Protestant blood.” Thus it is plausible to assume at least several million killed in Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary. Austria also had many slaughtered: “Taking Germany and Austria together, we may safely say that the population was reduced by one-half, if not by two-thirds.” Many were probably killed in Siebenbuergen as well. Ferdinand II wanted to suppress Protestantism in the Holy Roman Empire. By the 18th century, the Holy Roman Empire consisted of most of modern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Liechtenstein, Slovenia, Belgium, and Luxembourg, as well as much of modern Poland and parts of the Netherlands. Previously, it had included all of the Netherlands and Switzerland, and parts of France and Italy. Thus there may have been bitter persecution against Protestants in all of these countries: “Within a few years Protestantism had been almost completely exterminated throughout the Hapsburg domains, multitudes having been slaughtered, and the rest banished or forcibly converted.” The Hapsburg domains included the Holy Roman Empire as a whole: “With the one exception Bavarian Charles VII in 1742, the electors of the Holy Roman Empire almost always chose a member of the Habsburg dynasty as emperor, and the Hapsburgs, consequently, regarded the title as a family fiefdom, despite the formalities of election” (from http://www.hapsburg.com/menu3.htm). All the countries of the Holy Roman Empire, excluding Germany and Bohemia, together with other areas such as Siebenbuergen could easily have had five million victims of persecution. Almost all of those killed in all of these locations would have been Protestants: “The emperor Ferdinand the second, was a great Persecutor of the Protestants in Bohemia and Germany, who after his victory over Frederick, Prince Palatine, and the Bohemian States, made it his work to root out the Protestant Religion in those Countries, and turned them into a very shambles of Blood, sparing neither Age, Sex, nor Rank that refused to abjure the Truth.” Thus there would be possibly 18 million killed in Germany and nearby areas in the thirty years’ war, three million in Bohemia, four million in France, five million in other areas of the Holy Roman Empire and Europe, and fifteen million in war and the Inquisition from 1518 to 1548 making 45 million in all for one or two centuries following the Protestant Reformation. Because the Inquisition lasted a long time, the total number killed could easily have been significantly larger. At any rate, this method of computation appears to be eminently reasonable.



Even apart from the specific figures, the general context is important. The Jesuits “were soon the favorite confessors in the imperial court and in many of the royal courts of Europe” and “dictating to [rulers] the measures to be employed for the eradication of heresy.” The number of Protestants that would be slain by such policies is clear from Germany, Bohemia, and elsewhere. Even where the Jesuits were not the favorite confessors, the Papacy would have motivated Catholic rulers to a similar policy. At the time of the Reformation, “multitudes of Heretics and Schismatics, as they called them, arose in all places” so there would have been multitudes of Protestants killed in all the Catholic countries of Europe, and the Catholic Church would have been directly responsible for these deaths.



Another method of computation also yields large figures. Annie Besant [The Freethinker's Text-Book. Part II. Christianity: Its Evidences. Its Origin. Its Morality. Its History, section I] writes,

• in the course of the Middle Ages hundreds of thousands perished; in France and Germany "many districts and large towns burned two, three, and four hundred witches every year, in some the annual executions destroyed nearly one per cent of the whole population....”

This refers only to witches, but it illustrates the attitude of the church to heretics in general. Because the church had a uniform policy in all places, one can expect similar numbers of heretics to have been killed everywhere in Europe. There would have been many heretics throughout the Middle Ages, for Joseph Towers [Towers, Joseph, Illustrations of Prophecy …, William Duane, Philadelphia, vol. 1, 1808, pp. 202-203] writes,

• The Waldenses and Albigenses, so renowned for their numbers, their virtues, and the purity of their faith, taught, in the 12th and 13th centuries, that the pope was Antichrist, and the church of Rome the Babylon of the Apocalypse.

• Footnote: Such, says Vitringa, was the language of pious men in general, during the whole of the four centuries which preceded the Reformation. In Apoc. p. 749.

The population of Europe from 1100 to 1500 averaged about 65 million people. If one percent of the population was sometimes burnt as witches per year, one can assume that on the average half a percent of the population was slain each year as heretics altogether. This would amount to an average of about 300,000 persons killed per year for 400 years, or 120 million persons total killed during these four hundred years.



These figures do not even consider those killed in the New World and the non-Christians killed in Europe and Asia. For example, referring to Bishop of Chiapa's account of the cruelty of the Spaniards in America, Grosvenor [Grosvenor, B., Persecution and cruelty in the principles, practices, and spirit of the Romish Church, 1735, p. 16] writes

• ... truly they went a great way to make this remark literally true with regard to the new world, when first found out: for, according to the account of one of their own bishops, in the space of forty years they destroyed fifty millions of people.

Adding in these deaths might explain the commonly quoted figure of 100 million killed by the Papacy. Adding in non-Christians killed in Europe might explain some of the higher figures. Adding in the total killed assuming half a percent killed per year in Europe for four hundred years would yield about 200 million total killed. Omitting those killed in the New World would yield a total of about 150 million. This might explain where many of the commonly quoted figures come from.



There is another computation that yields 100 million killed by the Papacy. In “Romanism in the light of prophecy and history: its final downfall, and the triumph of the church of Christ” [New York, American and Foreign Christian Union, 1854, p. 58], Brownlee quotes a figure of 68,500,000 killed by the Papacy, composed of 50 million Christians in Europe, 15 million Indians in the New World, 1.5 million Jews in Spain and elsewhere, and 2 million Moors in Spain. He then writes,

• And, O merciful Father in heaven, this does not include the millions of their own people, and her enemies, which fell in her crusades, and wars, and massacres! Here thirty millions and a half would be a moderate calculation! Thus, Rome papal has hurried into eternity A HUNDRED MILLION OF THE HUMAN RACE, by her bloody religion!

Other estimates of the number of Indians killed range from 30 to 40 million; using these, one obtains a total of about 120 million instead.



It is notable that discussions of the Reformation and Inquisition in modern historical works omit the religious wars from consideration and omit all consideration of the large number of people who accepted Protestantism in the early years of the Reformation, thereby hiding the truth about the magnitude of past persecutions. However, even though much of the truth about history is being forgotten, there is still enough evidence remaining to show that the figure of 50 million killed for their faith by the Papacy in Europe is reasonable. These computations do not even include the extermination of the Heruli, Vandals, and Ostrogoths, or those who died in the Crusades.



There is some additional information about the number killed in Europe in the Middle Ages. For this, G. H. Orchard in A Concise History of the Baptists, 1855, chapter 2, section 11 estimates that there were over 3 million persons possessing evangelical views in northern Italy in 1260, and mentions another authority as giving an estimate twice as large. He states that the number eventually “quadrated,” which may imply that it became four times as large, that is, 12 million or possibly 24 million persons, whom he calls Anabaptists. Almost all of these were presumably killed in persecutions. Also, of the seventy sects exterminated, which Reinerius mentioned, the great majority were probably Christians in Europe, and probably averaged well over 100,000 members each. This would yield at least 7 million more Christians killed in Europe. Together with 12 million Anabaptists, this gives 19 million Christians killed in Europe.

In general, whenever the Papacy extended its territory, it appears that a significant fraction or even a majority of the population was killed, as occurred in Bohemia, Spain, Central and South America, with the Waldenses, and in the extermination of the Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Heruli. Therefore the number killed was larger than the number remaining. Extending this proportion to all of Europe with a population of 50 to 100 million at the time yields an estimate of 50 to 100 million or more killed as the Papacy extended its sway over Europe. For example, the conversion of Prussia to Christianity in the thirteenth century was accompanied by deliberate extermination by the Teutonic Knights.

It is also possible to perform this computation in another way. There were 3 million or more persons with views similar to the Waldenses in northern Italy in 1260. They were gradually worn down by persecution over a period of several centuries. The number in their valleys in 1560 was only 10,000 or 20,000, but many in other places adhered to their beliefs. Assume their average number during these centuries was about 1.5 million. Now, a group of people following a Biblical lifestyle should at least double in population each century; this represents a growth rate of less than one percent a year. Thus during these centuries their total increase should have been at least 4.5 million. Together with the original 3 million, this leads to a loss of 7.5 million to persecution. When one adds in their fellow believers in other lands the total would be undoubtedly over 9 million. Because they were active missionaries, the Lord would have blessed their efforts, so one can assume 9 million more were converted through their efforts, leading to a total of 18 million lost to persecution. If one assumes 6 million at the start, as another authority does, the total would be 36 million lost to persecution. Either a larger growth rate or a larger number of Waldenses, as several writers attest, or more converts could easily put the total over 50 million. Therefore it is not at all unreasonable to assume that 50 million or more Anabaptists, or Bible believing Christians, as some suggest, were killed in Europe in the Middle Ages by persecution.

Another point is that the persecution of the Waldenses lasted four centuries, from 1160 to 1560, rather than three, according to Armitage. Therefore it is reasonable to multiply the above estimates by four thirds, obtaining 24 million or possibly 48 million Waldenses and their converts killed. Furthermore, the actual estimate was 3.2 million instead of 3 million persons with evangelical views in northern Italy. Thus the estimates should all be increased by about 7 percent, to nearly 26 million and over 51 million, respectively.

In addition, a Bible believing church that is on fire for the Lord will generally grow by at least 5 percent a year, and persecution generally only increases the rate of growth. Because the Waldenses were highly motivated and active in missionary work, one can expect a similar rate of growth for them. With an average population of 1.5 million, this would result in a growth rate of at least 7.5 million per century, or, 30 million in four centuries. Adding the original 3 million gives 33 million, and increasing the result by about 7 percent would put the total at about 35 million, without considering Waldenses in other countries. Including these, a lower bound for the total lost to persecution would appear to be about 40 million. Assuming twice as many persons with evangelical beliefs gives a total of 70 or 80 million. If one assumes that the population of Waldenses held steady during these four centuries instead of decreasing, the totals nearly double again, to nearly 70 million and nearly 135 million, without even considering Waldenses in other countries.

It is possible to give a partial explanation of where the figure of 3.2 million comes from, as well. Jones, in his Church History, Chapter 6, section 1, states “In the year 1530, George Morel, one of the pastors of a church of the Waldenses, published Memoirs of the History of their Churches, in which he states, that at the time he wrote, there were above eight hundred thousand persons professing the religion of the Waldenses [Morland’s Evangelical Churches, p. 224]; nor will this appear an exaggerated statement, if we consider the view that was given, in the last section, of their dispersions throughout almost every country of Europe--the immense numbers that suffered martyrdom; and what was formerly mentioned, that in the year 1315, namely two centuries before this time, there were eighty thousand of them in the small kingdom of Bohemia.” Furthermore, there were at least from one to two million Albigenses in the south of France in the early thirteenth century. In 1530, there were probably only about 10,000 to 20,000 Waldenses in the valleys of northern Italy, so these 800,000 persons must have been distributed throughout Europe. It is reasonable to assume that these persons descended from the inhabitants of northern Italy, because elsewhere persecution would have largely wiped out the Waldenses. Because their numbers were continually reduced by persecution, the number of Waldenses in northern Italy in 1260 would have been at least 800,000. Also, Orchard assumes that for every person who was officially a member of the church there were three others with similar beliefs; this could include unbaptized children as well as other adults who for some reason did not have their names on the church books. Another authority gives a ratio of seven to one. This is where the total of 3.2 million (or 6.4 million) originates.

The most reasonable assumption overall seems to be that there were at one time at least twice as many Waldenses as there were in 1530, and that this number gradually decreased to 800,000 over the course of four centuries. Also, one can assume that the total number of persons with similar beliefs was at least four times as large, and thus decreased from about 6 million to about 3 million. This leads to an average population of 4.5 million during this time, and to a total of 90 million killed. Increasing the number by seven percent gives about 96 million, and adding in the 3 million lost along the way gives 99 million. This may explain where the sometimes quoted total of 100 million comes from.


Chapter 4. The Spanish Inquisition

Now let us consider in particular the Spanish inquisition. Quoting Schmucker,

• According to Llorente, this fearful tribunal [the inquisition] cost Spain alone 2,000,000 of lives, and the amount of torments suffered by these, and the other victims of papal persecution, was probably greater than that of all the generations that ever lived and died in God’s appointed way, by natural death.

Llorente had access to the records of the Spanish Inquisition. Overall, Llorente in his “A Critical History of the Inquisition of Spain,” 1823, gave a much smaller figure. He calculated that more than 300,000 suffered persecution in Spain, of whom 31,912 died in the flames. Here are two passages from “The Reformation in Spain,” 1824, by Thomas M’Crie, p. 66 that also illustrate some of the discrepancies in such figures:

• In the course of the first year in which it was erected, the inquisition of Seville, which then extended over Castile, committed two thousand persons alive to the flames, burnt as many in effigy, and condemned seventeen thousand to different penances. According to a moderate computation, from the same date until 1517, the year in which Luther made his appearance, thirteen thousand persons were burnt alive, eight thousand seven hundred were burnt in effigy, and one hundred and sixty nine thousand seven hundred and twenty three were condemned to penances, making all in all one hundred and ninety one thousand four hundred and twenty three persons condemned by the several tribunals of Spain in the course of thirty six years. There is reason for thinking that this estimate falls much below the truth.

• According to Puigblanch, “Inquisition Unmasked,” the number of reconciled and banished in Andalusia from 1480 to 1520 was a hundred thousand, while forty five thousand were burnt alive in the archbishopric of Seville.

Cecil Roth in “History of the Marranos,” page 143, cites Amadeo de los Rios as giving the figures of 28,540 burned alive, 16,520 burned in effigy, and 308,847 punished in other ways. These figures are exclusively for Jews up to 1525, in less than half a century of existence, implying that the true figures are larger even than Llorente quoted. Speaking of Llorente’s figures, Roth says

• … these huge figures are open to suspicion. However, they are exceeded by the indications given by the intensely Catholic Amadeo de los Rios, usually most moderate in his views.

Wilder (page 86) presents the figures in a way that can explain some of the misunderstanding about the number killed. Quoting Llorente, page 5,

• The horrid conduct of this holy office weakened the power and diminished the population of Spain, by arresting the progress of the arts, sciences, industry, and commerce, and by compelling multitudes of families to abandon the kingdom, by instigating the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors, and by immolating on its flaming piles more than three hundred thousand victims.

Brownlee states

• The number of victims of the Inquisition will never be known until the day of final retribution. Various have been the numbers set down. “Authors of undoubted credit,” says Jones, “have affirmed, and without any exaggeration, that millions of persons have been ruined by this horrible court. Many were banished from Spain, a million at a time. From six to eight hundred thousand Jews were driven away from it at once; and all their property seized.” Jones’ Church History ii page 98.

Then after citing Llorente’s figures, he writes,

• This number fixed on by this unusually accurate historian, is far below the truth. It is generally admitted that under the first Inquisitor of Spain alone, namely, Torquemada, no less than 100,000 human beings suffered: under the above three classes, that is, they were burned; or they perished on the rack, or by it; or in exile; and perpetual confinement!

• -- Brownlee, 1834, pp. 339-340.

In fact, quite a number perished in prison during the Inquisition, and these are omitted from the usual statistics, as mentioned in a web article:

• It was with reason that the Serbian Orthodox Bishop, Dr. Nikolaj Velimirovic, so well known to the Anglo-Saxon world, compared what happened in Croatia, on such a large scale, with the darkest days of the Middle Ages. In an article published in 1954 by the ecclesiastical review Svecanik, the Bishop wrote: “The Spanish Inquisition is noted for its atrocities. The head inquisitor, named by the Pope, was the Dominican Monk Thomas de Torquemada, who is remembered with such sinister bitterness. During the eighteen year period of his mandate, 10,220 persons were burned at the stake while 114,401 (according to the historian Motley) perished from hunger and torture in their prisons, which meant 125,000 people within a period of eighteen years. This record is frightful enough, but the inquisition of the Serbian Orthodox was much more terrible, for 750,000 Serbs were killed in just four years.”

This figure of 114,401 is apparently in error and according to Llorente should include all that were punished by any means by Torquemada during this eighteen year period, including life imprisonment. There is also indirect evidence of the magnitude of the victims of the inquisition:

• No secrets could be withheld from the inquisitors; hundreds of persons were often apprehended in one day, and in consequence of information resulting from their examinations under torture, thousands more were apprehended. Prisons, convents, even private houses, were crowded with victims; the cells of the inquisition were filled and emptied again and again; its torture chamber was a hell.

• -- Romanism and the Reformation by H. Grattan Guinness, lectures, London, England, 1887, lecture 4, page 101.

To make the subject personal, here is the testimony of one of the victims:

• Before we let fall the curtain upon this awful subject, let us listen for a moment to some of the words of William Lithgow, a Scotsman, who suffered the tortures of the Inquisition in the time of James I. After telling of the diabolical treatment he received, which was very similar to that I have just described, he says, “Now mine eyes did begin to startle, my mouth to foam and froth, and my teeth to chatter like the dobbling of drumsticks. Oh, strange, inhuman, monster man-manglers!. . And notwithstanding of my shivering lips in this fiery passion, my vehement groaning, and blood springing from my arms, my broken sinews, yea, and my depending weight on flesh-cutting cords, yet they struck me on the face with cudgels to abate and cease the thundering noise of my wrestling voice. At last, being released from these pinnacles of pain, I was handfast set on the floor with this their ceaseless imploration: ‘Confess, confess, confess in time, or thine inevitable torments ensue.’ Where, finding nothing from me but still innocent, — Oh! I am innocent. O Jesus, the Lamb of God, have mercy on me, and strengthen me with patience to undergo this barbarous murder — ’”

• Enough! Here let the curtain drop. I should sicken you were I to pursue the subject further; it is too horrible, too damnable.

• -- Romanism and the Reformation by H. Grattan Guinness, lectures, London, England, 1887, Lecture 4 pp. 103-104.

Lower estimates for the number of victims of the Inquisition also exist, as cited by a Roman Catholic on a discussion board:

• The best estimate of the total number of executions under the Spanish Inquisition comes from the Encyclopedia Judaica (not a Catholic source) which estimates the number at around 7,000. It should be remembered that the Inquisition was a court charged with hearing cases for all crimes committed on Church property or against the Church, clerics, or professed religious. There were several capital crimes under the Inquisition's jurisdiction besides heresy. These included murder, rape, kidnapping, assault on a bishop, and others. Might I recommend that you get Henry Kamen's recent book The Spanish Inquisition : A Historical Revision (N.B.- Kamen's estimate is that there were only 3,000 executions.)

So there is considerable disagreement in the figures concerning the Spanish inquisition. And such disagreements occur in the larger context, as well. The figures are rapidly decreasing with time, and our memory of past persecutions is being lost. Because records and memories are lost with the passage of time, in general the earliest records and those closest to the source are to be preferred.

Another quotation helps to explain some of the discrepancies.

• And Walter M. Montano, writing in Christian Heritage, says:

• ‘Spain has had a long history of intolerance. The number of victims sacrificed by the Inquisition in Spain almost exceeds credulity. Yet it has been shown by Llorente, who carefully examined the records of the Tribunal, and whose statements are drawn from the most authoritative sources, that 105,285 victims fell under the inquisitor-general Torquemada; 51,167 under Cisneros; and 14,952 fell under Diego Perez. It is further reckoned that 31,912 were burned alive! Half that number, 15,659 suffered the punishment of the statute, and 291,450 were sent to penitentiaries. Half a million families were destroyed by the Inquisition, and it cost Spain two million children!’

• -- INTOLERANCE—BIGOTRY— PERSECUTION by Loraine Boettner D.D. (taken from his book “Roman Catholicism” first published 1962), Chapter 18.

This quotation explains where Schmucker’s figure of two million comes from, though it is still unclear what it means. The figure of 15,659 (which perhaps should be 17,659) represents those who were killed before being burnt. Many were also expelled from Spain; this could explain the figure of two million. Roth in “The Spanish Inquisition,” page 251, discussing those who were expelled from Spain, says

• The number of the exiles has been estimated variously between 300,000 and 3,000,000. It probably lies much nearer to the first of these figures.

He also refers to the exiles as “her children,” possibly explaining Schmucker’s statement and Montano’s statement about Spain losing 2 million children. Some of the exiles had to leave their children behind to be raised as Roman Catholics, which can explain the comment about destroying half a million families. Also,

• The whole number of Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella is variously computed at from 160,000 to 800,000 souls; a discrepancy sufficiently indicating the paucity of authentic data. Most modern writers, with the usual predilection for startling results, have assumed the latter estimate; and Llorente has made it the basis of some important calculations in his History of the Inquisition. A view of all the circumstances will lead us without much hesitation to adopt the most moderate computation. This, moreover, is placed beyond reasonable doubt by the direct testimony of Bernaldez. He reports that a Jewish rabbi, one of the exiles, subsequently returned to Spain where he was baptized by him. This person estimated the whole number of his unbaptized countrymen, at the publication of the edict, at thirty-six thousand families. Another Jewish authority, quoted by the curate, reckoned them at thirty-five thousand. This, assuming an average of four and a half to a family, gives the sum total of about 160,000 individuals. …

• We need look no further for the principle of action, in this case, than the spirit of religious bigotry which led to a similar expulsion of the Jews from England, France, and other parts of Europe, as well as from Portugal, under circumstances of peculiar atrocity, a few years later. …

• [footnote] The Portuguese government caused all children of fourteen years of age, or under, to be taken from their parents and retained in the country, as fit subjects for a Christian education. The distress occasioned by this cruel provision may be well imagined. Many of the unhappy parents murdered their children to defeat the ordinance; and many laid violent hands on themselves.

• -- Williams, Henry Smith, Historian’s History of the World, vol. X. pp. 159-160.

Commenting on Llorente’s methods of calculation, Jean Dumont in his book L’Eglise au Risque de l’Histoire (Limoge: Criterion, 1985) states

• Professor Gerard Dufour shows that the impressive numbers of Llorente which are almost universally accepted are "not at all convincing." They are in no way a reasonable statistic, but only the naive imposture of purely conjectural numbers established on the basis of insupportable fragility and exaggeration. How did Llorente arrive at his figures? The answer is quite simple. Totally ignorant of the number of victims of the Inquisition, he fabricated them from conjectural accounts available to him with regard to the tribunal of Seville during the first years of its activity, numbers provided by the early chroniclers and historians and a lost inscription. As Mariana, one of the ancient historians, pointed out, Llorente did not take note of the fact that these numbers were only rumors. Moreover, carried away by his passions, Llorente quoted inexactly and exaggerated greatly in his additions. For, as Gerard Dufour noted, among the 2,000 victims mentioned by Mariana were included some added up by Llorente, and the 700 mentioned by Bernaldez, the anti-Semitic chronicler who moreover had inflated the number to satisfy the needs of his cause. Llorente did not take all these facts into account.

• Having thus taken "entirely erroneous numbers," and these only from Seville during the early years, Llorente tranquilly multiplied them by the total number of Inquisitorial tribunals and by the number of years they functioned.

• But as he arrived by means of this method of blind multiplication of inflated figures at a total figure that was so enormous as to be absolutely unbelievable, he reduced them on a completely arbitrary basis by 50% in general, and by 90% for the first year after each tribunal was established because they would not have had sufficient time to pronounce sentence on anyone during the first year.

Dumont is a non-Catholic professor of history at the Sorbonne in Paris and argues for very low figures. But at least from his explanation it is clear that Llorente made use not only of the records of the Inquisition but also oral accounts, which he considered as reliable. Perhaps Llorente did not believe that the written records of the inquisition were complete. Also, Llorente himself says that he divided the number by 50% “to avoid all exaggeration, though it was in general much more considerable.” Dumont also cites unfavorably various other estimates of the number killed, including that during the term of Torquemada 100,000 were decimated by fire in five years, from La Grande Encyclopedie, Inventaire Raisonne des Sciences, des Lettres et des Arts, par une Societe de Savants et de Gens de Lettres / sous la direction de MM. Berthelot, Hartwig Derenbourg [etc.]. Paris: H. Lamirault, 1886-1902. This echoes the figure of 100,000 from Brownlee, but with a different meaning.

Another problem with interpreting such figures is that of language. Wilder’s figure of 68 million apparently includes those who were not killed, but persecuted and lived. If a writer says that there were 68 million “victims” of the Papacy then it could be misunderstood that they were all killed. Obviously the sources from the early 1800’s interpret the figure of 68 million as those who were killed. The same problem occurs with Schmucker’s statement about Llorente; Schmucker says that Llorente asserted 2 million were killed in the Spanish inquisition. Other sources claim that Llorente asserted 300,000 were killed (which was probably due to a translation or copying error as explained by Dumont). However, Llorente himself gives a smaller number that were killed, and a large number that were punished but not killed. It is not clear whether these disagreements result from a misunderstanding of the text or whether Llorente’s history has been modified in some way. The latter seems unlikely because M’Crie refers to Llorente’s figures at a very early date.


Chapter 5. Alethia’s estimate

What is the basis for such a large overall estimate, whether it be 50 million, 68 million or 100 million killed? Dowling does not say where he obtained his figure. Brownlee, at least, breaks the figure into categories, but does not say where the estimate of 50 million comes from. Another source also gives some information about this topic, namely, M. D. Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual (1897):

• Let us look for a moment at the number of victims sacrificed on the altars of the Christian Moloch: -- 1,000,000 perished during the early Arian schism; 1,000,000 during the Carthaginian struggle; 7,000,000 during the Saracen slaughters. In Spain 5,000,000 perished during the eight Crusades; 2,000,000 of Saxons and Scandinavians lost their lives in opposing the introduction of the blessings of Christianity. 1,000,000 were destroyed in the Holy(?) Wars against the Netherlands, Albigenses, Waldenses, and Huguenots. 30,000,000 Mexicans and Peruvians were slaughtered ere they could be convinced of the beauties(?) of the Christian creed. 9,000,000 were burned for witchcraft. Total, 56,000,000.

The source for this quote appears to be “Letters from Rome” by Middleton. Conyers Middleton lived from 1683 to 1750 and in 1729 wrote his “Letter from Rome, Showing an Exact Conformity between Popery and Paganism.” He was a rationalistic theologian, and denied the occurrence of miracles in the church. Of course, Protestants as well as Catholics have implemented witch hunts. But perhaps Middleton was the source of some of these figures of millions killed by the Papacy. Because he was not an orthodox Christian, some Protestant writers may have been reluctant to cite him.

From the information given it is possible to explain the origin of some of the common figures. Bengel’s figure of 15 million seems to be general knowledge, passed down from the time of the persecutions themselves, and obtained by some method of computation. The method of computation of the 50 million figure was discussed in a previous chapter. Brownlee shows how the figures of 68 and 69 million derive from the 50 million figure. Middleton’s figure of 56 million does not include the figure of 50 million Protestants, except for an overlap of 3 million. Adding these to Middleton’s figure gives a result of about 100 million. The figures of 120 and 150 million for the number killed by the Papacy in the Middle Ages are still unexplained. Voltaire apparently estimated that 20 million witches were killed; perhaps using this estimate and the casualties for the thirty years’ war explains some of the higher figures.

It is noteworthy that these figures of millions killed by the Papacy do not derive solely from nineteenth century scholarship, as is sometimes claimed, but also go back to sources in the eighteenth and even seventeenth century (Clarke). If Clarke cited two million killed of the Waldenses alone, surely he would have reckoned the total killed by the Papacy at many millions. The question remains whether these figures about the magnitude of religious persecution are trustworthy. Even though the figure of 56 million is broken into categories by Middleton, it is unclear where the individual figures come from and how reliable they are. It is possible, at least, to give a partial answer to this question. Middleton gives a figure of a million killed among the Waldenses, Albigenses, and others; Mede (cited in Cassels) gives a figure at least as large. Clarke doubles the figure. For this figure, at least, Dr. Middleton had some basis, and did not invent it out of thin air. The same is true of the figure of 9 million witches killed:

• Gottfried Christian Voigt (1740-1791) extrapolated from his section of Germany to calculate 9,442,994 witches killed throughout Europe. From this came the common estimate of 9 million.

• -- Selected Death Tolls for Wars, Massacres and Atrocities Before the 20th Century, by Matthew White.

Therefore the figure of 9 million witches killed also has a source and was not made up. From these two examples it is possible to infer Middleton’s approach: All of the figures he gave were obtained form another source. None of the figures were increased; in fact some of them may even have been reduced. Even the figure of 30,000,000 Mexicans and Peruvians killed, for which we do not have a source, is not too far off from the estimate of 15 million given by Schmucker, cited above.

However, it would be useful to look at one of these figures in more detail, to see how reliable it is. This can help to give insight into the reliability of the entire estimate. It is possible to reconstruct how Voigt arrived at his figure. This is from a German publication, Sepp-Depp, from July, 2001. Quoting Voigt,

• Ich habe aus dem Zeitraume vom Jahre 1569 bis 1598 also ungefähr in 30 Jahren einige 30 Fälle nachgewiesen. (...) Ich schätze die Anzahl derselben noch einmal so hoch. (...) Ich will nun annehmen, dass in dem genannten Zeitraum von 30 Jahren wenigstens 40 Personen durchs Feuer als Hexe hingerichtet sind; ob ich gleich glaube, dass ich die Zahl auf 60 annehmen könnte. Nach diesem Verhältnis würden in jedem Jahrhundert in Quedlinburg 133 Personen als Hexen verbrannt worden seyn.

The publication is highly critical of Voigt’s estimate, calling it “statisfiction.” Nonetheless, from the surrounding text (also in German), one can infer Voigt’s method of computation. In a 30 year period he found records of 30 cases of witches being condemned. He estimates the actual number to be at least twice as high, but for the sake of an estimate supposes that 40 witches were burnt during this 30 year period. At this rate, in a century there would be (100/30) times 40 or 133 witches burnt, and in the period from 1100 to 1600 (five centuries) there would be 665 witches burnt, approximately. He then notes that the population of this part of Germany is about 1/15,000 of the population of Europe (actually slightly more), so multiplying 665 by 15,000 one obtains an estimate of somewhat less than 10,000,000 witches executed in Europe in 500 years. The population of Europe was about 50,000,000, so Voigt’s area of Germany would have had somewhat over 4,000 people. One or two executions of heretics a year would have only been a tiny fraction of the population, but no less serious thereby. This number is conceivable, in a sense. If two percent of the population were witches, and half of them were caught at some time during their life and executed at an average age of 40, then 1/40 of one percent of the population would be executed as witches each year, which is one person per year in a population of 4000.

Now, the number of witches executed may have varied from time to time and from place to place, so the above estimate is not necessarily correct. However, Voigt felt that his area of Germany was representative of Europe as a whole for this 500 year period. Modern rebuttals to his figures mention that not many records exist of witches being executed. But this ignores the fact that records are often lost or destroyed; even Voigt realizes this in his discussion. Some executions may never have even been recorded. Also, the fact that so many of Middleton’s sources gave numbers in the millions adds credibility to Middleton’s overall figures. Concerning witches, it is interesting that many of those debating the 9 million figure have no idea where it came from, and those ridiculing the figure act as though it were invented out of thin air.

Some say that these high death toll figures are tinged by anti-Catholicism. One could just as well say that arguments against these figures are tinged by pro-Catholicism. The figures are so large that even Protestants probably found them hard to believe and preferred smaller rather than larger figures. Wesley or Bengel, at least, did not find the figure of 15,000,000 killed in 30 years to be ridiculous, though he admitted it might be somewhat too large. Many other well-regarded authors also found these figures to be reasonable, as cited earlier. Of course there are also instances of cruelty of Protestants toward Catholics that could be mentioned. And Protestants as well as Catholics have mistreated Indians.

According to a web site, “Modern research (Dreschner, 1987, Kung, 1991) indicates that the previous estimates of the number of victims of witch trials are seriously attenuated. Church archives on concremiret trials remain closed even to academic scholars. Research by Kung is unique by presenting the insider’s estimate of the number of victims of witch trials. For this, Kung was expelled from his teaching position and denied the right to teach at parochial schools in Germany. Kung maintains that not hundreds of thousands of victims as previously estimated, but several million human beings were subject to torture and murder by the justice system on charges of witchcraft. Among the infamous judges presiding over witch trials were Bernard Gui and Heinrich Boblig of Edelstadt. Of their victims, perhaps the best known is Joan of Arc.” This gives added support for a number of victims in the millions.

There is also a plausible source for Middleton’s estimate of 30 million killed in the New World. In 1542 Bartoleme de Las Casas wrote "Brevissima Relacion, " a short description of the atrocities committed by the Spanish on Native Americans in America. In it he states,

• "I affirm it as very certain and approved that during these forty years (1502-1542) owing to the aforesaid tyrannies and infernal works of the Christians more than twelve million souls, men, women and children, have perished unjustly and tyrannically; and in truth I believe I should not be overstepping the mark in saying fifteen million…two ways have in general been used by those who come to the Indies calling themselves Christians to extirpate and root out these wretched people utterly from the land. One, by unjust, cruel, bloody and tyrannical wars: the other, after they have killed off all those who could long or sigh for liberty, that is to say, all chiefs and warriors, they oppress those that remain, being commonly only children and women, with the most horrible and relentless and pitiless slavery to which ever men or beasts were put."

Las Casas gave numerous eye-witness accounts of repeated mass murder and torture. In a version of this work translated in 1699, the title reads “An account of the first voyages and discoveries made by the Spaniards in America, containing the most exact relation hitherto publish'd of their unparallel'd cruelties on the Indians, in the destruction of above forty millions of people ; with the propositions offer'd to the King of Spain to prevent the further ruin of the West-Indies.” Las Casas spent the last forty years of his life trying to improve the conditions of the native inhabitants in the lands under Spanish control. In particular, the population of Haiti may have been as high as 8 million before the Spanish conquest, but by 1516 only a small number of Indians remained. Smallpox did not appear in Haiti until after 1516. Many historians believe that the population of Mexico and South America decreased by 20 to 30 million during the Spanish conquest. Later accounts assigned more of a role in this population decrease to the introduction of diseases, such as smallpox, to which the Indians did not have immunity, than to the cruelty of the Spaniards. However, even the Black Plague, which has a higher mortality rate than smallpox, is estimated to have killed only a fourth of Europe’s population, so it seems unlikely that most of these Indians were killed by disease. In severe smallpox epidemics, 30 of every 100 attacked may die, and not everyone will even be exposed. In 1944 historian Rómulo Carbia linked Las Casas' work to the "black legend", which portrays the Spanish as cruel and bigoted. Carbia felt that Las Casas had exaggerated the brutality of the Spanish. But at least Middleton’s figure of 30 million has a reasonable source. However, there is still a question about whether the Papacy was responsible for these deaths. The Indians were killed when they would not convert to Catholicism and for political reasons. Clearly the Papacy was responsible for the killing of those who would not convert. Also, because the Papacy gave permission for Spain and Portugal to conquer Central and South America, it was responsible for deaths of Indians for political reasons, even moreso because the Papacy was aware of the killings and did not attempt to stop them. Another issue is that this figure of 30 million does not even include those who died after the Spanish conquest, either by inquisition or mistreatment or wars instigated by the Papacy.

Concerning Middleton’s estimate of 5 million killed in Spain during the eight crusades, the crusades took place from 1095 to 1272 to recapture the Holy Land, and during this time there were also persecutions in Europe. Therefore Middleton’s figures do not even include those killed during the later Inquisition. Wesley or Bengel accepted a figure of about 15 million or more killed from 1518 to 1548 for war and the Inquisition, and many more killed later, which other authors may have added to Middleton’s total figure. Spain had been conquered by the Moslems, and the reconquest by Papal countries took many centuries. The Crusades were not only directed against the Holy Land but also towards the reconquest of Spain, which the Papacy strongly promoted. This explains the meaning of Middleton’s figure for 5 million killed in Spain during the crusades.

As for the Crusades themselves, H.Wollschläger (Die bewaffneten Wallfahrten gen Jerusalem, Zürich 1973) estimates that there were probably 20 million victims in the Holy Land and Arab/Turkish areas alone, with all figures taken from contemporary Christian chroniclers. This book includes a full list of original medieval Christian chroniclers' writings. Of course, other estimates for the Crusades are smaller, but such original sources deserve a high weighting. Wollschläger also estimates that a million Albigenses were killed, exceeding Middleton’s figure because the latter also includes other groups. Concerning the crusades, Brownlee states

• “The last, in the Holy Land, commenced in the year 1096, and it raged with fury, for two centuries; causing, according to Mons. Voltaire, the death of two millions of men, in the flower of their youth; and ill prepared, we fear, to meet their Judge.

• -- Brownlee, 1834, page 341.

• Also, Williams writes

• The lives and labors of millions, which were buried in the East, would have been more profitably employed in the improvement of their native country … .

• -- Williams, Henry Smith, The Historian’s History of the World, vol. 8, p. 480.

Let us consider the estimate of 9 million witches killed, in another way. Our main concern is not with the number of witches killed, but with the total number executed by the Papacy. It is reasonable to assume that the total number executed by the church was much larger than the number of witches, probably by a factor of at least 2 or 3 (at least, we read much more about Bible believing Christians being executed than about witches). If Voigt felt that 40 (or even 60) witches executed per 30 years was a reasonable rate, he probably would have felt that 80 total executions by the church of witches and others per 30 years was reasonable, as well. This, extrapolated to Europe for 500 years, yields 18 million executions. Extending the argument to other regions dominated by the Papacy (especially Central and South America and India) may at least double the figure to 36 million, and then extending the figures to the full 1260 year reign of the Papacy or adding in the 15 million mentioned by Wesley or Bengel would undoubtedly bring the total over 50 million. This gives added support to the oft quoted estimate of 50 million. This does not even include those executed in special circumstances such as crusades and wars, and does not include those who died in prison due to illness or maltreatment or suicide. Voigt’s area of Germany must have had a prison, so it is reasonable to assume that there were the equivalent of nearly 15,000 prisons in all in Europe. If each year, four people died in each prison due to illness or mistreatment or suicide, then there would be 60,000 deaths per year, and extended to a thousand years this gives 60 million deaths, but not all the responsibility of the Papacy. Though we will never know the exact number this side of eternity, it is reasonable to conclude that the estimate of 50 million is in reality many times too small.

Lyman Beecher stated that the Papacy “has swayed a sceptre of iron, for ten centuries over nearly one-third of the population of, the globe.” Currently about a third of the world population professes Christianity. The world population is estimated to have grown from 200 million in 600 AD to 545 million in 1600 AD. One third of this population would have grown from about 70 million to about 200 million in this time, with a reasonable average of about 100 million. Voigt felt that 2 witches executed per year for a population of about 4000 was a reasonable number, even in an area that had been Christian for hundreds of years. This amounts to 1/20 of one percent executed per year. Assuming this proportion of executions of all heretics, not just witches, for a thousand years for an average population of 100 million ruled by Rome, gives about 50,000 executions a year or a total of 50 million deaths. Whenever Rome encountered other religions as the Papacy extended its domain, the death toll was higher, so it is reasonable to assume that the average number killed was larger than this. This does not even include those killed during crusades and wars instigated by the Papacy. It is also a steady state figure and would not include those killed during intense periods of the Inquisition. Perhaps this reasoning explains the origin of some of the estimates.

Beecher stated that the Papacy extended its domain to nearly half of the civilized world by 1800. The world population in 1800 was estimated at 900 million, so the two centuries from 1600 to 1800 would have an average world population of about 650 million. Half of this would be about 300 million, and at the rate of 1/20 of one percent per year would lead to an average of 150,000 killed per year for 200 years, or 30 million more for a total of 80 million deaths. This quantity would be reduced to some extent by the dying down of persecutions, but would be increased by the violence associated with new conquests in the New World and elsewhere.

It is also possible to make the estimates of persecutions smaller by reasoning as follows: Suppose that the persecutions took a while to gather strength, then peaked for a short time, then dwindled away. This could have happened because of the natural reluctance of humans to persecute others. Also, after a period of intense persecution, there may not have been many “heretics” left. Furthermore, the Papacy may have seen the reaction against its persecutions and tapered them off. Thus the 15 million or so that Wesley or Bengel accepted may be close to the total.

This reasoning seems to be invalid. In the first place, many respected Protestants and atheists for the last several hundred years accepted the high figures, and at least one Roman Catholic supports a high figure. In addition, any organization as powerful and corrupt as the Papacy was for so many years would continue to gain enemies. This would continue to supply opponents for the church to persecute. What we know of the fierce hostility shown in the past by the Papacy towards Bible believers, Jews, and other religions suggests that the intense persecutions continued in force for many, many years.

In support of the extended nature of the persecutions, Deschner notes that in Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain in Chmielnitzki in 1648 (K.Deschner, Opus Diaboli, Reinbek 1987). In 1349 in more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews were murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). In 1257 and 1267 the Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others were exterminated. In the 17th century Catholics sacked the city of Magdeburg, Germany and roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain (D.Stannard, American Holocaust, Oxford University Press 1992). Many other similar incidents could be cited. Thus the persecutions continued for many centuries.

The Waldenses sent out missionaries on tours of several years, and only about half of them ever came back. This suggests that of the “heretics” existing in the population, at least 10 or 20 percent were executed per year, not necessarily by the Inquisition and not necessarily mentioned in historical records. There must have been a significant number of heretics, or else the Papacy would not have set up the machinery of the Inquisition. Just one percent of heresy would hardly have alarmed them. It must have been a life and death struggle with the Papacy to set up such an elaborate mechanism and maintain it for such a long period of time. So the percentage of heretics must have been at least two percent and probably significantly higher, on the average. If five percent of the heretics were executed each year and two percent of the population were heretics, then 1/10 of one percent of the population would be executed each year. . From 1100 to 1600 the average world population would be about 350 million of which on the average about 100 million would be in Roman Catholic countries. With 1/10 of a percent each year killed there would be 100,000 killed each year, for 500 years, for a total of 50 million killed just during this time period. If the percentage of heretics were four percent and the proportion of heretics killed each year were 10 percent, the total killed during this 500 year period would be 200 million, which appears to be much nearer the truth. Persecutions before 1100 were probably smaller, and persecutions after 1518 were probably considerably more intense.

As evidence of the number of “heretics,” Brownlee states

• “These Waldenses,” says Rainerus, “were in nearly every country.” “They are multiplied through all lands,” says Sanderus. “They have infested a thousand cities,” says Caeserius. “They spread their contagion through almost the whole Latin world,” says Ciaconius. … Says Newburgh, -- “They became like the sand of the sea; without number; … .”

• -- Brownlee, 1834, page 351, Appendix 1, citing Newburgh, ii page 13.

Thus there would have been many “heretics” to persecute. And as the Waldenses existed throughout the period from 1100 to 1600 and continued to send out missionaries, the population of the Papal countries would have always had an exposure to Bible truth. Along the same line, Brownlee states

• I repeat the words of Edgar, whose testimony I prefer to Malte Brun, or any modern papist, who has not entered into the estimates of the comparative nuimbers in ancient times; nor examined the statements of these fathers, and travelers, now quoted by us: “The European, the Asian, and African denominations that dissented from popery were four times more numerous than the partisans of Romanism, when, prior to the Reformation, the papacy shone in all its glory. Popery, instead of universality, which is its vain boast, was never embraced by more than a fifth part of Christendom.” Variations of Popery, p. 67, Dublin edition.

• -- Brownlee, 1834, Appendix 1, pp. 352-353.

The Papacy must have had a very efficient method of eliminating heretics, as Bellarmine stated:

• Argument 2d. ‘ Experience shows that terror is not effective.’ I reply, EXPERIENCE PROVES THE CONTRARY—FOR THE DONATISTS, MANICHEANS, AND ALBIGENSES WERE ROUTED, AND ANNIHILATED BY ARMS.

• -- Robert Bellarmine, Disputationes de Controversiis, Tom. ii, Lib. III, cap. XXII, “Objections Answered,” 1682 edition.

Bellarmine states that these three groups were “annihilated.” This must also have been the fate of almost all the Waldenses, who were “like the sand of the sea; without number” at one time, and were essentially Protestants. How many other groups were annihilated, swelling the total figures to many millions?
Concerning the ferocity of the persecutions, Guinness writes

• This part of the prophecy began to receive its fulfillment at the end of the twelfth century, when, at the third Lateran Council (A.D. 1179), the Popedom roused itself collectively to a war of extermination against heretics. Previously to this, separate members of the system, acting alone and independently, had opposed the truth by force and cruelty. But in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, Romanism, then in the plenitude of its power, gathered itself together for a great, determined, united, and persistent effort to crush out all that opposed its supremacy, and to clear Christendom of heresy.

• -- Romanism and the Reformation, Lecture 8, p. 200.

Instead of eliminating heretics, the persecutions often only increased their number:

• So Sismondi, the historian writes: To maintain unity of belief the Church had recourse to the expedient of burning all those who separated themselves from her; but although for two hundred years the fires were never quenched, still every day saw Romanists abjuring the faith of their fathers and embracing the religion which often guided them to the stake. In vain Gregory IX., in A.D. 1231, put to death every heretic whom he found concealed in Rome. His own letters show that the heretics only increased in numbers.

• -- Romanism and the Reformation, Lecture 2, p. 45.

Concerning the effectiveness of the persecutions in rooting out heresy over a period of many centuries, Guinness writes further

• Hear Mosheim’s description of the crisis. “As the sixteenth century opened, no danger seemed to threaten the Roman pontiffs. The agitations excited in former centuries by the Waldenses, Albigenses, Beghards, and others, and afterwards by the Bohemians, had been suppressed and extinguished by counsel and by the sword. The surviving remnant of Waldenses hardly lived, pent up in the narrow limits of Piedmontese valleys, and those of the Bohemians, through their weakness and ignorance, could attempt nothing, and thus were an object of contempt rather than fear.” Milner, the Church historian, says that at this date, though the name of Christ was professed everywhere in Europe, nothing existed that could properly be called evangelical. All the confessors of Christ, “worn out by a long series of contentions, were reduced to silence.” “Everything was quiet,” says another writer; “every heretic exterminated.”

• -- Romanism and the Reformation, Lecture 8, p. 202.

But of course this was only a temporary situation, because the Reformation began soon afterwards.

Bible religion has always been attractive in comparision to the Roman Catholic faith. It was so in the days of the Waldenses, when they were greatly multiplied. It was so in Bohemia at about the time of the Protestant reformation, and also in France, in which a large proportion of the population were Protestants. And of course it was so in the Protestant countries during the Reformation, and remains so today the world over. It is reasonable to assume that Bible religion has always been popular and that a significant fraction of the population of Papal countries has always preferred it. Therefore the number of heretics, by Rome’s definition, would always have been a large fraction of the population. And persecution, instead of reducing the number of heretics, often only increased it, as witnessed in New Testament times and also later. Because Rome waged such a bitter war against Bible religion from 1100 to 1600 and onwards, the number of those killed must have amounted to many, many millions of persons.

Adding up the figures that either have multiple sources of support or seem reasonably well documented, gives 20 million killed in the Holy Land and surrounding areas during the crusades, 1 million Waldenses, 1 million Albigenses, at least 18 million witches and others killed during steady state persecutions of heretics in Europe from 1100 to 1600, about 10 million in the 30 years’ war, 20 million Protestants in the Inquisition (not just in Spain) from 1518 to 1548 and onwards, and 15 million Indians in the New World for a total of 85 million, even ignoring many small events. This also ignores 9 million from the figures given by Middleton, plus 7 million for the Saracen slaughters. There is some evidence that millions of Saracens in Spain were killed, which could not have any reasonable military justification. However, Middleton’s figure of 7 million may refer to those killed in the Crusades in the Holy Land, which are already included. Neglecting these, and adding 9 million would put the total over 94 million. All these estimates appear to be reasonable, and many more persecutions were left out, according to Bengel:

• To these we may add innumerable martyrs, in ancient, middle, and late ages, in Bohemia, Germany, Holland, France, England, Ireland, and many other parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Obviously the figure is open to debate, but at least one can see how such a large figure can be computed.


Chapter 6. An estimate based on population growth

It is also possible to estimate the magnitude of the persecutions using population figures. The world population from 900 to 1600 is estimated as follows (McEvedy, Colin and Richard Jones, 1978, "Atlas of World Population History," Facts on File, New York, pp. 342-351):





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"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend." --Alexander Hamilton

Here is another outstanding Research paper by David Plaisted on the Midieval Spanish Inquisition; And remember, the Roman Empire never ceased to exist; It was merely "Christianized" or actually catholicized; And then kept going. You will notice in the beginning of the article, that he states that the Inquisition didn't formerly start until 1231. This is a somewhat misleading statement, and when I spoke to him on the phone, cleared it up for me. It was in 1231 that the Roman Inquisition was "formerly institutionalized." It was later "mechanized" by Pope Innocent. But before these times, it had always been. Stretching back to the very beginning of Catholic Rome around 312 AD.

And it didn't start there either. For it was all happening before this time of Constantine. The entire history of Rome was replete with persecution of Christians, mass tortures, mass murders and mass killings. Why? Because Christians believed in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which rivaled the Pagan Romans own belief that Osiris was the fulfillment of Gods promise to Eve in Genesis 3:15;

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Gen 3:15
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
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This will also explain to many people why the Vatican has also persecuted Jews with the same ruthless venom as they have with Christians. Why? Because through the Jews God brought forth the Holy Scriptures through his holy Prophets. And through these, gave prophecy concerning the real and true Messiah. Something Osiris never had. There are no scriptures or prophecies concerning Osiris. Much less scriptures foretelling the event a full thousand years before it happened. Thus they held to a false belief, and Christ, along with the scriptures, only magnified their own false belief system. This was intolerable to them, and always would be. Thus they tried to extinguish all Jews and Christians with a mighty vengeance. All through history.

The Roman Caesar, Nero, used to take hundreds of Christians and Jews at a time, and have them dipped in oil, and then suspended from poles in the Roman Colosseum. And then he, in privacy, would run his Chariot through the Arena and set fire to all the people, Christians and Jews alike, strung from the poles.

This was done because the Christians and Jews were responsible for exposing Romes false religion and worship of Osiris and Semeramis. Because through them came the prophets, the holy scriptures, the Temple worship, and eventually the one true Messiah. Thus the false resurrection of Osiris was made manifest.

The Romans also had particular disdain for the Jews because through them, and the Pharaoh's obstinance of letting the Jews go, God smote that Kingdom and smashed it good! God smashed that Pharaoh, and his Kingdom, and Egypt would never, ever rise to the level of power she once had as a World Empire. And the Jews have always been hated and blamed for this by those worshiping the false resurrection of Osiris. These research papers of David Plaisted should be required reading for every child in High School. It is that important that this information needs to be known.

And now here is David Plaisted's Research paper on the Midieval Inquisition.

Cheers-
Phil

Original link:
http://jmgainor.homestead.com/files/PU/Inq/mi.htm

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The Inquisition properly so called did not come into existence until 1231, with the constitution Excommunicamus of Pope Gregory IX....

Copyright © Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, Microsoft Corporation, Inquisition

... Pope Gregory IX in 1231 instituted the papal Inquisition for the apprehension and trial of heretics.

Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Inquisition

... In Italy Emperor Frederick II, as early as 22 November, 1220 (Mon. Germ., II, 243), issued a rescript against heretics, conceived, however quite in the spirit of Innocent III, and Honorius III commissioned his legates to see to the enforcement in Italian cities of both the canonical decrees of 1215 and the imperial legislation of 1220. From the foregoing it cannot be doubted that up to 1224 there was no imperial law ordering, or presupposing as legal, the burning of heretics. The rescript for Lombardy of 1224 (Mon. Germ., II, 252; cf. ibid., 28 is accordingly the first law in which death by fire is contemplated (cf. Ficker, op. cit., 196).... The imperial rescripts of 1220 and 1224 were adopted into ecclesiastical criminal law in 1231, and were soon applied at Rome. It was then that the Inquisition of the Middle Ages came into being.

New Advent (Roman) Catholic Encyclopedia, Inquisition
The principle of toleration was unknown, or at best only here and there a voice was raised against the death penalty ... . The opinion came to prevail, that what disease is to the body that heresy is to the Church, and the most merciful procedure was to cut off the heretic. No distinction was made between the man and the error. The popes were chiefly responsible for the policy which acted upon this view.... § 79

¶ ... From the latter part of the twelfth century, councils advocated the death penalty, popes insisted upon it, and Thomas Aquinas elaborately defended it. Heresy ... was a crime the Church could not tolerate....§ 86History of the Christian Church, by Philip Schaff, Volume V, Chapter 10, §§ 79, 86

It wasn't long after the papacy authorized the Inquisition that it authorized torture as a method of carrying it out. 'Pope' Innocent IV, in his bull ad extirpanda (1252) ordered the civil magistrates to extort from all heretics by torture a confession of their own guilt and a betrayal of all their accomplices.

... The use of torture to obtain confessions and the names of other heretics was at first rejected but was authorized in 1252 by Innocent IV....
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Inquisition, Copyright © 1994-2000

... Soon after the Inquisition was instituted, Pope Innocent IV, influenced by the revival of Roman law, issued a decree (in 1252) that called on civil magistrates to have persons accused of heresy tortured to elicit confessions against themselves and others; this was probably the earliest instance of ecclesiastical sanction of this mode of examination.
Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, torture, Copyright © 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation

Ad Extirpanda effectively established a police state in Italy and is noteworthy for having introduced the use of torture into inquisitorial procedure, and for explicitly condoning burning alive at the stake for relapsed heretics. Resistance amongst secular lords was overcome by a brilliant diplomatic manoeuvre: Innocent incorporated the Sicilian Constitutions of 1239 into a subsidiary Bull, Cum adversus haereticam, thus turning Frederick's legislation against the heretics and Ghibellines that the Emperor had previously protected....

¶ Later Bulls served to refine this legislation, and it is interesting to see amendments being made constantly in response to specific demands or problems that arose in the work of inquisitors: personal letters written by the Pope carry the force of Bulls. But Innocent IV had, with this single stroke, instituted a system of repression that was then honed by Alexander IV (1254-1261), Urban IV (1261-1265), and Clement IV (1265-126, himself an ex-inquisitor, and finally codified by Boniface VIII in the Liber Sextus of 1298. The provisions of the Bull were accorded theological respectability by St Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica.
The Inquisition - Hammer of Heresy, pp. 41-42, by Edward Burman, Copyright © 1984

... torture ... . was first authorized by Innocent IV in his Bull Ad exstirpanda of 15 May, 1252, which was confirmed by Alexander IV on 30 November, 1259, and by Clement IV on 3 November, 1265. The limit placed upon torture was citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum—i.e, it was not to cause the loss of life or limb or imperil life....

New Advent (Roman) Catholic Encyclopedia, Inquisition
However, the inquisitors were given such untrammeled license in the pursuit of their goals that they paid little heed to such formalities. Lea's A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages includes a description of the plight of the populace in those times:

"... When the despairing cry of the population induced Clement V to order an investigation into the iniquities of the Inquisition of Carcassonne, the commission issued to the cardinals sent thither in 1306 recites that confessions were extorted by torture so severe that the unfortunates subjected to it had only the alternative of death; and in the proceedings before the commissioners the use of torture is so frequently alluded to as to leave no doubt of its habitual employment. It is a noteworthy fact, however, that in the fragmentary documents of inquisitorial proceedings which have reached us the references to torture are singularly few. Apparently it was felt that to record its use would in some sort invalidate the force of the testimony."

A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (Vol 1, 188, pp. 423-424, Henry Charles Lea, Harbor Press 1955
In offering here some example of the enormity of the depravity of the methods of torture used, I have chosen one of the more discreet sources available on the internet—though I must caution that it is still graphic. The following description is taken from The History of Protestantism, Volume Second, Book Fifteenth, Chapter 11, by James A. Wylie (1808-1890). The account has been shortened in an attempt at brevity. The entire chapter can be accessed via the link:

Turn we now to the town of Nuremberg, in Bavaria. The zeal with which Duke Albert, the sovereign of Bavaria, entered into the restoration of Roman Catholicism, we have already narrated. To further the movement, he provided every one of the chief towns of his dominions with a Holy Office ... . We shall first describe the Chamber of Torture.

... It derives its name, the Torture-chamber, not from the fact that the torture was here inflicted, but because into this one chamber has been collected a complete set of the instruments of torture gleaned from the various Inquisitions that formerly existed in Bavaria. A glance suffices to show the whole dreadful apparatus by which the adherents of Rome sought to maintain her dogmas. Placed next to the door, and greeting the sight as one enters, is a collection of hideous masks. These represent creatures monstrous of shape, and malignant and fiendish of nature, It is in beholding them that we begin to perceive how subtle was the genius that devised this system of coercion, and that it took the mind as well as the body of the victim into account.... The persecutor had calculated, doubtless, that the effect produced upon the mind of his victim by these dreadfid apparitions, would be that he would become morally relaxed, and less able to sustain his cause.... Yourself accursed, with accursed beings are you henceforth to dwell—such was the silent language of these abhorred images.

We pass on into the chamber, where more dreadful sights meet our gaze. It is hung round and round with instruments of torture, so numerous that it would take a long while even to name them, and so diverse that it would take a much longer time to describe them.... There were instruments for compressing the fingers till the bones should be squeezed to splinters. There were instruments for probing below the finger-nails till an exquisite pain, like a burning fire, would run along the nerves. There were instruments for tearing out the tongue, for scooping out the eyes, for grubbing-up the ears. There were bunches of iron cords, with a spiked circle at the end of every whip, for tearing the flesh from the back till bone and sinew were laid bare. There were iron cases for the legs, which were tightened upon the limb placed in them by means of a screw, till flesh and bone were reduced to a jelly. There were cradles set full of sharp spikes, in which victims were laid and rolled from side to side, the wretched occupant being pierced at each movement of the machine with innumerable sharp points. There were iron ladles with long handles, for holding molten lead or boiling pitch, to be poured down the throat of the victim, and convert his body into a burning cauldron. There were frames with holes to admit the hands and feet, so contrived that the person put into them had his body bent into unnatural and painful positions, and the agony grew greater and greater by moments, and yet the man did not die. There were chestfuls of small but most ingeniously constructed instruments for pinching, probing, or tearing the more sensitive parts of the body, and continuing the pain up to the very verge where reason or life gives way. On the floor and walls of the apartment were other and larger instruments for the same fearful end - lacerating, mangling, and agonizing living men; but these we shall meet in other dungeons we are yet to visit.

The things we have been surveying are not the mere models of the instruments made use of in the Holy Office; they are the veritable instruments themselves. We see before us the actual implements by which hundreds and thousands of men and women, many of them saints and confessors of the Lord Jesus, were torn, and mangled, and slain....
We leave the Torture-chamber to visit the Inquisition proper.... The cicerone appears, carrying a bunch of keys, a lantern, and some half-dozen candles.... We begin to descend. We go down one flight of steps; we go down a second flight; we descend yet a third. And now we pause a moment. The darkness is intense, for here never came the faintest glimmer of day; but a gleam thrown forward from the lantern showed us that we were arrived at the entrance of a horizontal, narrow passage....

Passing in, the corridor continued, and we went forward other three paces or so, when we found ourselves before a second door. We opened and shut it behind us as we did the first. Again we began to thread our way: a third door stopped us. We opened and closed it in like manner. Every step was carrying us deeper into the heart of the rock, and multiplying the barriers between us and the upper world. We were shut in with the thick darkness and the awful silence. We began to realize what must have been the feelings of some unhappy disciple of the Gospel, surprised by the familiars of the Holy Office, led through the midnight streets of Nuremberg, conducted to Max Tower, led down flight after flight of stairs, and along this horizontal shaft in the rock, and at every few paces a massy door, with its locks and bolts, closing behind him! He must have felt how utterly he was beyond the reach of human pity and human aid. No cry, however piercing, could reach the ear of man through these roofs of rock. He was entirely in the power of those who had brought him thither.

At last we came to a side-door in the narrow passage. We halted, applied the key, and the door, with its ancient mould, creaking harshly as if moving on a hinge long disused, opened to let us in.... This was the Chamber of Question. Along one side of the apartment ran a low platform. There sat of old the inquisitors, three in number—the first a divine, the second a casuist, and the third a civilian. The only occupant of that platform was the crucifix, or image of the Savior on the cross, which still remained.... In the middle was the horizontal rack or bed of torture, on which the victim was stretched till bone started from bone, and his dislocated frame became the seat of agony, which was suspended only when it had reached a pitch that threatened death.

Leaning against the wall of the chamber was the upright rack, which is simpler, but as an instrument of torture not less effectual, than the horizontal one. There was the iron chain which wound over a pulley, and hauled up the victim to the vaulted roof; and there were the two great stone weights which, tied to his feet, and the iron cord let go, brought him down with a jerk that dislocated his limbs, while the spiky rollers, which he grazed in his descent, cut into and excoriated his back, leaving his body a bloody, dislocated mass.

Here, too, was the cradle of which we have made mention above, amply garnished within with cruel knobs, on which the sufferer, tied hand and foot, was thrown at every movement of the machine, to be bruised all over, and brought forth discoloured, swollen, bleeding, but still living. All round, ready to hand, were hung the minor instruments of torture. There were screws and thumbkins for the fingers, spiked collars for the neck, iron boots for the legs, gags for the mouth, cloths to cover the face, and permit the slow percolation of water, drop by drop, down the throat of the person undergoing this form of torture. There were rollers set round with spikes, for bruising the arms and back; there were iron scourges, pincers, and tongs for tearing out the tongue, slitting the nose and ears, and otherwise disfiguring and mangling the body till it was horrible and horrifying to look upon it....

We shall suppose that all this has been gone through; that the confessor has been stretched on the bed of torture; has been gashed, broken, mangled, and yet, by power given him from above, has not denied his Savior: he has been "tortured not accepting deliverance:" what further punishment has the Holy Office in reserve ... ?

We return to the narrow passage, and go forward a little way.... Here there is a vaulted chamber, entirely dug out of the living rock, except the roof, which is formed of hewn stone. It contains an iron image of the Virgin; and on the opposite wall, suspended by an iron hook, is a lamp, which when lighted shows the goodly proportions of "Our Lady." On the instant of touching a spring the image flings open its arms, which resemble the doors of a cupboard, and which are seen to be stuck full on the inside with poignards, cach about a foot in length. Some of these knives are so placed as to enter the eyes of those whom the image enfolded in its embrace, others are set so as to penetrate the ears and brain, others to pierce the breast, and others again to gore the abdomen.

The person who had passed through the terrible ordeal of the Question-chamber, but had made no recantation, would be led along the tortuous passage by which we had come, and ushered into this vault, where the first object that would greet his eye, the pale light of the lamp falling on it, would be the iron Virgin. He would be bidden to stand right in front of the image. The spring would be touched by the executioner—the Virgin would fling open her arms, and the wretched victim would straightway be forced within them. Another spring was then touched—the Virgin closed upon her victim; a strong wooden beam, fastened at one end to the wall by a movable joint, the other placed against the doors of the iron image, was worked by a screw, and as the beam was pushed out, the spiky arms of the Virgin slowly but irresistibly closed upon the man, cruelly goring him.

... A canal had been made to flow underneath the vault where stood the iron Virgin, and when she had done her work upon those who were delivered over to her tender mercies, she let them fall, with quick descent and sullen plunge, into the canal underneath, where they were floated to the Pegnitz, and from the Pegnitz to the Rhine, and by the Rhine to the ocean ... .
Llorente, secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid from 1789 - 1791 and historian of the Inquisition, verifies that the many historical accounts of the methods of torture are not exaggerations:
I shall not describe the different modes of torture employed by the Inquisition, as it has been already done by many historians: I shall only say that none of them can be accused of exaggeration.
The History of the Inquisition of Spain, by Juan Antonio Llorente (Second Edition, 1827); p. 65

David A. Plaisted thoroughly researches the estimates of historiaan, and makes a compelling argument that the true numbers exceed 50 million.

There are any number of Roman 'catholic' apologist websites that attempt to whitewash this history, which they refer to as the 'black legend'. They mostly all refer to the same revisionist authors and the same set of records and attempt to say, "see, it wasn't all that bad". However, lets take a look at the numbers in perspective. Here is a quote from New Advent (Roman) Catholic Encyclopedia, Inquisition:

How many victims were handed over to the civil power cannot be stated with even approximate accuracy. We have nevertheless some valuable information about a few of the Inquisition tribunals, and their statistics are not without interest. At Pamiers, from 1318 to 1324, out of twenty-four persons convicted but five were delivered to the civil power, and at Toulouse from 1308 to 1323, only forty-two out of nine hundred and thirty bear the ominous note "relictus culiae saeculari". Thus, at Pamiers one in thirteen, and at Toulouse one in forty-two seem to have been burnt for heresy although these places were hotbeds of heresy and therefore principal centres of the Inquisition. We may add, also, that this was the most active period of the institution....

It most certainly was not "the most active period of the institution". The Spanish Inquisition was yet to come, to be followed by the Roman Inquisition.

First, a note on the poor math: (5/24 ≠ 1/13, and 42/930 ≠ 1/42), 5 burnt out of 24 'convicted' is over 20%, or 1 in 5; and 42 burnt out of 930 'convicted' is about 4.5% or 1 in 22. And remember, these were not criminals, murderers, thieves—but people who didn't step to the cadence of the thought police of the day. Imagine the outrage if 4.5% of the convictions at your local courthouse were to be executed next year. How about 20%? And remember, these numbers are the ones that the Roman catholic apologists are using—so they are likely the most favorable.

The centres of heresy in Germany were Strassburg, as early as 1212, Cologne, and Erfurt. The number of victims is said to have been very large and at least five hundred can be accounted for definitely in reported burnings. Banishment, hanging, and drowning were other forms of punishment practised. In 1368 the Inquisitor, Walter Kerlinger, banished two hundred families from Erfurt alone....

History of the Christian Church, by Philip Schaff, Volume V, Chapter 10, § 87

Here are more details of the 42/930 burned under Bernard Gui, taken from a now defunct webpage which had been available on the "Keeping Catholics Catholic" website. Notice that in addition to the 42 burned, there were 3 more who would have been burned, had they lived. The question naturally arises whether or not they may have died during torture. Also, see that 69 had their bones exhumed and burned. This tactic was known to be used by the inquisitors because it allowed them to confiscate the goods of the exhumed 'heretic'—even from the heirs.

Released from the obligation to wear crosses 132
Sentenced to pilgrimages, without wearing crosses 9
Released from prison 139
Sentenced to wear crosses 143
Imprisoned 307
Dead persons who would have been imprisoned 17
Abandoned to the secular Arm and burned at the stack (sic) 42
Dead persons, who would have been abandoned 3
Bones exhumed and burned 69
Fugitives, declared excommunicate 40
Sentenced to he exposed in the stocks or pillary 2
Priests sentenced to be degraded. 2
Exiled 1
Houses ordered demolished 22
Copies of the Talmud condemned and burned (2 cartloads) 1
Interdict removed 1
Total 930

It seems likely that the author of that webpage (no longer available) got the data from the same source as the New Advent Encyclopedia, quoted above. H. C. Lea gives a list that is quite similar, but the numbers are different:
In Bernard Gui's Register of Sentences, comprising his operations between 1308 and 1322, there are six hundred and thirty-six condemnations recorded, which may be thus classified:
Delivered to the secular court and burned 40
Bones exhumed and burned 67
Imprisoned 300
Bones exhumed of those who would have been imprisoned 21
Condemned to wear crosses 138
Condemned to perform pilgrimages 16
Banished to Holy Land 1
Fugitives 36
Condemnation of the Talmud 1
Houses to be destroyed 16
Total 636

A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, (Vol 1, 188, pp. 494 - 495, Henry Charles Lea, Harbor Press 1955

This webpage says that the numbers were 45 (this may include the 42 + 3 mentioned above) burned at the stake by Bernard Gui out of 615, or 7.3%, and gives a reference.

Bernard Gui (or Bernard Guidonis) was a Dominican monk and inquisitor in the early 14th century, as well as a prolific writer in his day. Perhaps his best known work is his inquisitors' manual Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (The Conduct of Inquiry Concerning Heretical Depravity). A portion of it here, translated by David Burr, offers detail of some of the methods of inquisition in his day:

The sect of Beguines, who call themselves "poor brothers" and say they observe and profess the third rule of Saint Francis ... . During the following years, in the provinces of Narbonne, Toulouse and Catalonia, many of them were seized, held in custody and, their errors having been detected, many of both sexes were judged heretical and burned. This occurred from the year of our Lord 1317 on ... .

Again, they say that those four Friars Minor who, in the year of our Lord 1318, were burned at Marseilles by the inquisitor of heretical depravity (himself a member of the order of Friars Minor), were condemned as heretics because, as the beguins say, they wished to observe the aforesaid rule of Saint Francis, preserving its purity, truth and poverty ... . They say that these brothers were condemned unjustly because they defended the truth of the evangelical rule. Thus they say that the brothers were not heretics, but rather catholics and glorious martyrs....

Again, they say that the aforementioned Lord Pope commanded or consented or still consents that the aforesaid four Friars Minor should have been condemned as heretics by the inquisitor. Through this he has become a heretic himself, the greatest one of all, since as head of the church he should defend evangelical perfection....

{note: it is the opinion of the compiler of this website that the bishop of Rome is not, and never was, the 'head of the Church'. Only Christ is the Head of the Church.}

According to Encarta, the Beguines were women, and their male counterparts were Beghards.

... By the late 13th century, many members were suspected of heresy, primarily because of their association with the Spiritual Franciscans, a rigoristic community that had been condemned by church officials. As a result, numerous groups were closed in the 14th century, and many members were burned at the stake. The Beghards disappeared altogether; some of the Beguines were assimilated into other religious orders ... .

Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, Beguines and Beghards, © 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

A study of the Beguines.

An interesting aside here is that one of the methods used by the inquisitors was to 'excommunicate' those who refused to swear or to take the oath demanded of them. This is from the same translation of Bernard Gui's Inquisitors' Manual quoted above:

If, however, they pertinaciously refuse to swear ... refuse, that is, when they are ordered by the court to swear ... a written sentence of excommunication should be pronounced against the one who, required to swear, has refused ... .

Now contrast this with the teaching of Christ in Matthew 5.33-37, and ask "who were the 'heretics'? Those who followed the teachings of Christ, or those who excommunicated them for doing so?"
In the late 14th century, the voice of John Wyclif against the papacy began to be heard in England.

In that year (1366) he appears as one of the king's chaplains and as opposed to the papal supremacy in the ecclesiastial affairs of the realm....

¶ In the summer of 1374, Wyclif went to Bruges as a member of the commission appointed by the king to negotiate peace with France and to treat with the pope's agents on the filling of ecclesiastical appointments in England....

¶ On his return to England, he began to speak as a religious reformer. He preached in Oxford and London against the pope's secular sovereignty ... . It was soon after this that, in one of his tracts, he styled the bishop of Rome "the anti-Christ, the proud, worldly priest of Rome, and the most cursed of clippers and cut-purses."...

History of the Christian Church, by Philip Schaff, Volume VI, Chapter 5, §39
Gregory XI issued a document condemning 19 sentences from Wyclif's writings as erroneous and dangerous to Church and state. Gregory ordered the archbishop to imprison Wyclif in bonds until the papal court would pass final sentence, whereupon the vice-chancellor of Oxford, where Wyclif was employed, consigned him to Black Hall under nominal imprisonment, giving an appearance of complying with the papal order. Wyclif's court appearance before the archbishop was broken up by the citizens of London. The 19 condemned heretical sentences were pronounced true by the theologians at Oxford, though they sounded badly to the ear. A few weeks later Gregory died in March, 1378, and a papal schism ensued.

Wyclif, and a body of itinerant evangelists he began—graduates of Oxford and some laymen and called the 'pore priests'—continued to speak out against papal and clerical errors. When Wyclif began to speak out against the dogma of transubstantiation, at the insistence of the clergy a trial was convened at Oxford, at which the dogma was upheld. Upon his appeal to the king's council, even the duke of Lancaster, formerly his ally, sided against him. Wyclif, believing that truth would eventually prevail, continued to speak out against the dogma, though forbidden to speak any more on the subject at Oxford.

Former bishop Courtenay, now elevated to the archbishopric of Canterbury, convened a synod at which were condemned 24 articles ascribed to Wyclif. When Courtenay sought to impose the decisions of the synod on Oxford, Wyclif received the support of both the faculty and students. Nevertheless, King Richard II sided with the bishop, Wyclif was condemned, and he was relieved of his preaching/teaching duties at Oxford. He retired to his rectory at Lutterworth, where he continued his work on Bible translation—one of the first into the English language—and he continued to spread his message through polemic tracts. Wyclif passed away Dec 29, 1384 after "having lit a fire which shall never be put out."

His books were ordered burnt by the Lateran decree of February, 1413. At the Council of Constance he was posthumously excommunicated, his memory condemned, and his bones ordered disinterred and burnt "as one who died an obstinate heretic." In 1429, on the order of 'pope' Martin V, this was carried out by Flemmying, bishop of London.

In 1409, the Council of Pisa deposed both of two rival popes as heretics, Gregory XII and Benedict XIII, and elected a third, Alexander V, in their place. Alexander issued a bull that prohibited preaching in unauthorized places. Jan Hus, a Bohemian defender of Wyclif's teachings, refused to obey the papal order and was excommunicated as a heretic by archbishop Zbynek—a charge that was dropped after Zbynek's death. However, in 1412, the charge against Hus was revived owing to a dispute over the sale of papal indulgences by John XXIII to finance his campaign against Gregory XII.

In 1414 John XXIII convoked the Council of Constance, which deposed him. This same Council of Constance, in 1415, condemned Hus as a Wycliffite heretic and he was burned at the stake. Thereupon, at the Bohemian diet, Sept 2, 1415, 452 nobles signed an indignant manifesto addressed to the council in which they defended Hus as a righteous and good man who had lived an exemplary life among them for many years, and who had been an honest and good preacher and teacher of the Gospel. They advised the council that they would defend, if necessary, to the point of bloodshed the freedom of their preachers to preach the Gospel.

Jerome of Prague, another critic of the sale of papal indulgences, and a friend of Hus and a supporter of Wyclif, was condemned by the Council of Constance in 1416 and also burned at the stake.

Martin V was elected 'pope' at the Council of Constance. After the council, on Feb. 22, 1418, he issued his bull Inter cunctos in which he ordered all who followed "the pestilential doctrine of the heresiarchs, John Wyclif, John Huss and Jerome of Prag" to be punished as heretics. Further, Martin called Europe to a crusade against Bohemia, promising indugences to the 150,000 participants. However, these invaders were driven back 5 times by the Bohemian Hussites. The issue was eventually resolved by negotiation at the ecumenical Council of Basel in 1431, attended by 300 Bohemian delegates. The Bohemians at the council praised the memories of Wyclif and Hus, and all ecclesiastical censures against the Bohemians were lifted. A primary article conceded to the Bohemians the partaking of the cup by the laity. In 1462, this concession was declared void by Pius II, who threatened to excommunicate priests who offered the cup to the laity. Upon the resistance of the King of Bohemia, Pius called on the King of Hungary to take away his crown, which he set out to do. However, the Bohemians maintained their right to the cup until it was taken away in 1629 by Ferdinand II of Austria.

It is known that the Bohemian Bretheren had some measure of relationship with the Waldenses. At the synod of 1467 they sent Michael, pastor of Senftenburg, "presbyter and bishop", to the Waldensian bishop Stephen for sanction or consecration. Frederick Reiser, a leader of the Waldenses, attended the Council of Basel in 1435 as "the bishop of the faithful in the Romish church, who reject the donation of Constantine." He was burned at the stake, with Anna Weiler, at Strassburg, in 1458.


ll original material on all pages copyright © 2002 - 2005, J. Michael Gainor, all rights reserved.

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"In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend." --Alexander Hamilton