Editing Spanish Inquisition (section)

== Punishments ==

Most of punishments the Spanish Inquisition inflicted on people declared guilty was merely paying a fine or a short jail sentence. Execution was the least common punishment for crimes, usually reserved for cases with vast amounts of evidence where the accused still refused to confess or repent or for people who spouted a grave [[Heresy]] and were repeat offender heretics.

It's important to note that torture was not the punishment, torture was officially a means to extract a confession and (on paper, at least) a last resort - albeit a rather academic point for those subjected to torture. Methods of torture included:

*Strappado: binding the victims hands behind their back and suspending them by their wrists. Sometimes a series of drops would be added, jerking the victim up and down and forcing their arms out of their sockets. Weights could be added to the victims body to make the hanging even more excruciating.
*Toca, or [[waterboarding]]: securing the victim to an inclined board and binding them so that they cannot move. Then the victim is gagged and has a cloth placed over his or her face, and water poured over it. Toca gives the victim a feeling of drowning, even if no water enters the nose or mouth. CIA agents go through it as part of their training and on average last only 14 seconds before begging to be released.
*The Rack: often considered the most painful of tortures by contemporaries. The victim had their hands and feet bound to rollers at opposite ends of a frame.  The torturer would turn the rollers and the chains attached would dislocate the joints of the victim. In theory if the torturer continued to turn the rollers the victim's arms and legs would be torn off (probably not true, tendons and ligaments are incredibly strong. Reports of people being pulled apart by horses mention that they have to be helped by cutting the joints a bit to get the process started. Who knows though, maybe ratchets are just that effective, and some people spent a long time on the rack, which might loosen them up some). In practice, whether it happened or not, dismemberment would go against the Inquisition's own regulations (see below).

There were, however, regulations in the Spanish Inquisition on how far their use of torture could go; 

* It was limited to a certain amount of sessions per day.
* It was limited to 15 minutes or less per session.
* Permanent damage was prohibited (which obviously included removing body parts)
* Drawing blood was prohibited
* Nothing that resulted in death 
* Torturing children was completely prohibited/not allowed under any circumstances

They also required a doctor to oversee the torture, mainly to verify if the person's confession was genuine instead of rambling a pain-addled person and to ensure things didn't go too far.  It's a commonly publicized fact that Torquemada made frequent use of torture and was quick with the death penalty on those deemed guilty.  Despite this - as the majority of his successors were fair or least far more moderate, the Spanish Inquisition are known to have been fairer, and used torture less often, than the secular courts at the time. Often, Inquisitors refused to use torture or outright decried torture as sinful. 

It got to the point that many people on trial in secular courts for lesser crimes who would blaspheme or confess to heresy in the courtroom, just so they could be tried by the Spanish Inquisition instead, who would give them a fair(er) trial.      

In a particular instance of "shit that wouldn't sound out of place in 40k", in 1256, Pope Alexander IV decreed that inquisitors could clear each other from any wrongdoing that they might have performed during torture sessions... [[Derp|except this decree was for the Medieval Inquisition, and predated the Spanish Inquisition by over 150 years]].