The Most Disturbing Thing About The Spanish Inquisition Isn't What You Think

Publish date: 2024-05-05

The Spanish Inquisition had a specific set of rules to go by when it came time to torture. The biggest one was they couldn't spill blood, and that meant getting a little creative with their methods. It's why the rack was so popular, along with starvation and something called strappado.

How Stuff Works says that's essentially when the accused has their hands bound and tied to a pulley that hoists them off the ground. Weights might also be attached to them, and needless to say it meant they were hanging from dislocated limbs. Applying pressure was also popular, as was burning with hot tools.

But doesn't burning draw blood? Well, technically, yeah, but Pope Alexander IV had written a loophole into the whole thing during a 1256 precursor to the Spanish Inquisition: Inquisitors could act as witnesses to each other and clear their colleagues of wrongdoing during torture sessions. Convenient!

By the time the Spanish Inquisition got around to their interrogations, the University of Sheffield says they had a formalized document they read from before they got down to torturing. Not only did the very legal document absolve them of any wrongdoing, but it placed the blame for the torture squarely on the person being tortured. The inquisitors, of course, were just doing their jobs.

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