Spanish Inquisition

Unlike their Imperial counterparts, the Spanish Inquisiton does not shove Inquisitorial retinues up your ass whenever you commit the slightest of offences. It was however probably inspired by it, or at least, the romanticized version of it, with the grim dark turned up a few notches of course.

The real-life Spanish Inquisition were a combined political/religious party formed in 1480 by the Spanish Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control.

The Spanish Inquisition is often stated in popular media and medieval history as an example of Catholic intolerance and repression. 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"; the statistics and reputation was further exaggerated later by anti-Christian and/or anti-religious critics. Although records are incomplete, estimates state about 150,000 persons were charged with crimes by the Inquisition and about 3,000 were executed. The Spanish Inquisition kept detailed records of their trials during the several hundred years they were in power; from the records approximately 50,000 people were tried by the Spanish Inquisition and of these 1,500 people were sentenced to death (with some escaping before the sentence was carried out so the Spanish Inquisition merely burnt them in effigy). If you average that out for there 356 year time of existence, that averages to either eight people dead a year using the 3,000 estimate or 0.237 people dead a year using the 1,500 executed in there records. Either result gives the inquisition a lower fatality rate per year then lighting (in 2015, 33 people in the US alone died of lighting strikes, in smaller Spain this figure would be even lower).

While they have a reputation for torture, they actually had regulations stating it was only to be used as a last resort and placed limits on how far the torture could go; no removing body parts and nothing that resulted in death. While the first head of the Spanish Inquisition made frequent use of torture, the Pope at the time went to the King and Queen of Spain to try and stop his cruelty but was politically strong-armed into silence by the King and Queen. Despite this the Spanish Inquisition are known to have been fairer, and used torture less often, than the secular courts at the time. There were several cases where people were on trial in secular courts for lesser crimes and blasphemed in the court room just so they could be tried by the Spanish Inquisition instead.

Victoria Lamb makes some pretty badass Spanish Inquisitorial models.

The Spanish Inquisition is not to be expected.