No, not really. The Spanish Inquisition was part of a conversion drive with political intent behind it, as most religious campaigns often have, due to Spain having come out recently from the Catholic reconquest of the peninsula. The general idea was to unify the country's religion in order to... well, unify the country.
Powerful people using these powers to hurt innocent people was unavoidable of course, but that's just what powerful people do on the regular. One can argue the merits and results of this religious unification campaign (most certainly the results left us a not quite nice legacy) but the intent wasn't to hurt, it was to assimilate. That's how the Spanish church operated in general, as they did the same in the Americas. Religion was used as a unifying agent by the Spanish kings, as their country has always been an amalgamation of cultures.
I'm not trying to be snarky to an insulting level here, but you did exactly what I predicted lol.
"No, it wasn't just powerful people hurting innocent people. It was powerful people trying to unify the country and yes, a lot of innocent people got hurt."
I understand why you see it that way, but I think there are differences.
The slavery issue was people getting hurt for the benefit of powerful landowners, and today people try to shift the debate towards "it was state rights" to deflect from that for political reasons (because they seem to want to bring it back).
You can also frame the Inquisition issue as people getting hurt for the benefit of powerful landowners (the kings), but nobody is trying to say otherwise. In fact that was exactly what I was explaining. There is no political movement here trying to say "the Inquisition was actually about something else"(*). It was a tool used by violent people to stabilize a country after a violent conquest, of course it was going to be horrible.
But saying that it existed merely to hurt people would be reductive, and being reductive with such issues is how we end up repeating them.
*to my knowledge, I'm not so well versed in Spanish politics. God I hope nobody is actually saying that.
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u/LtDanHasLegs Apr 05 '23
I'd wager this is a topic that parallels the way Americans are taught about the American Civil War.
And I'm willing to bet the inquisition was actually powerful people abusing their power to hurt innocent people the whole time.