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jacobolus 3 days ago

[flagged]

somenameforme 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The wrongs of religion throughout history are typically exaggerated in modern times and the Spanish Inquisition is one of the best examples of this. It lasted more than 350 years and during this 350 years a very high-end estimate of executions is 5000. So the death toll from it ranges probably from one person every ~3 months to one person every month. [1]

So for some comparison, 2-5x more people die in the US of lightning strikes each year than died during the Spanish Inquisition per year. Obviously any death is undesirable, but describing it as a horrific mass-murder is hyperbolic. It was rather more a mass public shaming campaign like the Chinese Struggle Sessions, but many orders of magnitude smaller in scale.

For that matter even the Mayans were likely sacrificing people on a far larger scale. We lack exact numbers but know that they did group sacrifice, often of children, and that this was regularly done when building new structures, or for hopes of a good crop season and the like. And I think the thing that makes human sacrifice particularly primitive in its nature is that obviously doesn't work. Whether you killed a dozen kids or not has no bearings on how your crops grow. And so they would have to, over centuries, continue to reject the evidence before their eyes.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition#Death_toll...

jacobolus 3 days ago | parent [-]

The Inquisition was mostly about mopping up the last few practicing Jews and Muslims in the Iberian peninsula, terrorizing them into conversion and conformity.

Millions of people (on all sides) were killed in the Reconquista, over a few centuries, with many others enslaved, imprisoned, driven out of the peninsula, or forcibly converted. Those who converted to Catholicism were rewarded with centuries of further discrimination and persecution. (Disclaimer: I am not expert enough to know detailed figures here; feel free to search for expert sources if you want something precise.)

Scattered lightning strikes are not meaningfully comparable to large-scale genocidal war.

somenameforme 3 days ago | parent [-]

The Reconquista was a large scale genocidal war with millions dead?

Try to find a single reliable source supporting this claim. You might be surprised to find that it doesn't exist, and that it's also an example of citogenesis. [1] This is another perfect example of what I'm talking about. After Muslim armies invaded the Iberian Peninsula they created a system of government with a tiny minority of Arabs at the top with everybody else treated as distant second class citizens. They started trying to force people to convert and imposed taxes and other penalties on those who did not.

The predictable rebellions against this were the start of the Reconquista. It spanned many hundreds of years but was almost all extremely small scale. And they weren't driving anybody out in large numbers. The Arab and Berber tribes never engaged in mass migration or anything like that. Iberia remained overwhelmingly native Iberian with a tiny Arab elite. The same Spaniards and Portuguese you know of today are the ones that were there under Islamic rule as well.

[1] - https://xkcd.com/978/

jacobolus 2 days ago | parent [-]

How many do you think were killed then, over those centuries of conflict? Several hundred thousand? What if we include deaths due to famine? How many were forced to migrate? Also several hundred thousand?

As I said, I'm not an expert; and you are right, it's not easy to find good sources for numbers about this. As far as I can tell were quite a few individual events with tens of thousands of people killed at a time. There were hundreds of recorded major battles.

somenameforme a day ago | parent [-]

The Reconquista lasted more than 700 years and the number of people killed in any given conflict is unknown, with estimates varying by orders of magnitude. Both sides tended to exaggerate casualties, including their own. It was a defacto holy war, and so large casualties on your side could be seen as a sign of great martyrdom and piety, while inflicting heavily casualties on the enemy was also framed as having God's favor - heads I win, tails you lose.

The only thing that's entirely clear is that it was very small scale for the overwhelming majority of the conflict, punctuated by a very small handful of "large" battles that would generally be considered moderate to small scale in modern times. There were certainly not hundreds of major battles. So I don't think anybody knows exactly how many were killed other than 'not that many.' Put another way - over some 700 years it's certain that far fewer people died than e.g. one large modern battle like the Battle of Stalingrad.

The greatest legacy of the era was defining, or at least solidifying, the character of Spain/Portugal and the more militant nature of Catholicism at the time. So for some context, Columbus would set sail for the New World just months after Grenada finally fell!

pqtyw 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> had just gone through several centuries of horrific mass-murder of non-Christians in Spain,

Well it varied, but such behaviour was not strictly unique to Spain in those days. Being a Catholic in England wasn't terribly exciting either.

Then you have the witch hunts across must of Europe which resulted in probably well over 10x times more people being murdered in Germany alone compared to the inquisition and they weren't really a thing in Spain.

In a way the Spanish Inquisition was quite similar to the NKVD or the Gestapo/etc. since the persecutions were usually intended to impose ideological/social conformity (or inherently racist in how it targeted even perfectly honest Jewish or Muslims converts) rather than "ritualistic".

Of course Christian Spain is interesting in the sense that it turned from one of the most of tolerant societies in Europe to the one of the most intolerant ones in a couple of centuries.

e.g. during the Almohad invasions you had Christians, Jewish and even moderate Muslims fleeing to the Christian kingdoms which generally were much more tolerant at the time.

> Can you see how this absurd double standard may come across as racist?

That's not particularly new in Europe though. e.g. the Greeks and Romans found Carthaginian mass child sacrifices extremely abhorrent yet at the same time didn't see much of an issue with "exposing" unwanted infants. Treating violence due to economic/utilitarian/political reasons differently that doing it for ritual/religious reasons was is still pretty ingrained into western culture.

StarGrit 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Why do people always ignore what happened before a few hundred years before? The Moors invaded Spain and were advancing into Europe and moved into what is modern day France. It also ignores that Muslims and Christians would in-fight between themselves in what is now modern day Spain.

pqtyw 3 days ago | parent [-]

Well... I was talking about about what was happening a few centuries ago.

Regardless why is it strictly relevant what happened 250-800 years before the Iberian kingdoms expelled or exterminated their Muslim and Jewish population?

> It also ignores that Muslims and Christians would in-fight between themselves

Seems tangential?

StarGrit 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Regardless why is it strictly relevant what happened 250-800 years before the Iberian kingdoms expelled or exterminated their Muslim and Jewish population?

The Reconquista partially led to the Inquisition. The Reconquista started 711 and ended in 1492. How could it not be relevant?

pqtyw 2 days ago | parent [-]

Well you didn't say how and why is it relevant specifically. So I don't quite get the point.

Everything partially led to everything. We might as well talk how the Persian - Roman wars led to the Spanish Inquisition as well.

StarGrit 2 days ago | parent [-]

I feel that you are being deliberately obtuse. It is pretty obvious how they are intertwined.

I actually spoke to a friend of mine who basically knows a huge amount of history (he is at University doing some sort Masters in a related subject), because some of the replies on this subject in sibling threads are so ignorant they actually gaslite me.

3 days ago | parent | prev [-]
[deleted]
StarGrit 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The Spanish state (crown, army, church) had just gone through several centuries of horrific mass-murder of non-Christians in Spain, where the most brutal and sadistic thugs were politically elevated.

That is one hell of a gloss over of the the previous 500-600 years before the Inquisition and massively over-simplifies what happened. There wasn't really a Spanish state either, certainly not as we would understand it today.

nickpp 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You guys remind me of the old joke:

A Mexican goes to Spain, accosts the first Spaniard he sees, and lays into him: “I demand an apology, sir - your ancestors pillaged my country!”

The Spaniard blinks. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Your ancestors did that. Mine stayed home.”

darkwater 3 days ago | parent [-]

I understand it's a joke and it is partially true but also there are still direct descendants of Central and South America original peoples, and also many Spanish families that exploited the conquered lands came back to the "mother land" and kept their families there.

jacobolus 3 days ago | parent [-]

The Spanish crown also repeatedly sent new waves of political allies to take over political control in the Americas, to counter the consolidation of power of the descendants of previous generations of Spanish rulers. There was a fair amount of conflict and intrigue between the two groups.

reactordev 3 days ago | parent [-]

Mmmmmm, Black Sails…

Let’s not forget the slaves sent to the fields after Spanish conquest. Irish, African, Portuguese, Indian, all found their ways to the sugar canes.

That era was literally groups of humans exploiting every other group of humans they could find.

The first wave owners children found themselves going to war with the crown or being a member of the crowns second wave to further entrench the royal riches. It became extremely political.

ffsm8 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I wasn't calling the descendants of the Mayans out for anything. I was specifically talking about the culture. Which is synonymous with the people in the upper class, which did ritual sacrifices of peasants.

the term Spaniards however targets the average people. Which are precisely farmers.

I do not see any double standard whatsoever, and frankly: you're brainwashed if you do.