Editing Spanish Inquisition (section)

== Reputation == 

The Spanish Inquisition is often stated in popular media and medieval history as an example of Catholic intolerance and repression.  Notably the first major authors of this idea were Protestants who disapproved of the Catholic Church and Heads of State at odds with Spain.  Modern historians now question or disagree with earlier accounts concerning the severity of the Inquisition. Henry Kamen asserts that "the 'myth' of the all-powerful, torture-mad inquisition is largely an invention of nineteenth century Protestant authors with an agenda to discredit the Papacy".  But due to a little thing called the printing press that the Spanish government (among others) didn't take seriously at the time, the Protestants happily made the Inquisition look as awful as they possibly could and by the time the Inquisitions stopped the "black legend" was there to stay (it didn't help that Spain was at the peak of its power and had plenty of rivals who were eager to drag its reputation through the mud).

This narrative picked up steam during the Enlightenment and the 19th century.  Writers with an axe to grind against religion threw their hats into the ring, also capitalized on the narrative of a violently oppressive Spanish Inquisition and ran marathons with it for the past ~ 200 years.  In modern times it's used almost exclusively by those eager to drag the reputation of the Catholic Church, all Christianity or religion itself through the mud.  For example, the memetic "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" originated from the British series "Monty's Python's Flying Circus" and at least one showrunner had an avowed contempt for religion.  Pop cultural references to the Inquisition inevitably ignore the distinction between the Church-controlled Inquisition and the state-controlled ones either because a fair and reasonable system typically makes for a dull movie or they have an agenda.  

This is a large part of why the most well-known Inquisitors are ones like the infamous [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom%C3%A1s_de_Torquemada Torquemada] - also because he was the Spanish Inquisition's co-founder and first leader - or his successor [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_de_Deza Diego Deza] rather than ones like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_de_Sandoval_y_Rojas Bernardo Rojas] (a patron of many Spanish authors, including the creator of Don Quixote) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Adrian_VI Adriaan Boeyens] (who left the position of Grand Inquisitor and became Pope, even trying to fight corruption in the Catholic Church).  

For all their flaws, various monarchs and Popes repeatedly reined in the Spanish Inquisition.  The biggest example comes from Pope Sixtus IV himself - the very same Pope who helped establish the Spanish Inquisition in the first place.  Sixtus IV saw so many complaints about Torquemada's abusiveness that '''he gave the order to disband the Spanish Inquisition three years after its founding''' (he only failed because the King and Queen coerced him to rescind the order by threatening to withhold military aid when the Turks threatened Rome and to continue the Inquisition regardless).

There is an important life lesson to be had here: if you believe something because you saw it in a meme, movie, TV show, game or gossip, you need to fact-check it... research it.  And no, articles and such that just say “yeah, that’s the truth” are not research.  Punching it into Google and reading the first thing it gives you isn't research either.  Articles that explain the practices and history along with citing journals and such from that time is research (the Spanish Inquisition kept detailed records of their actions, most of which are in archives freely available to the public).  If someone argues “everyone knows it”, then remember that truth is not a democracy, feelings are not facts and that "common knowledge" is almost always wrong.