subjected to the rack and the water torture (I’ll spare you the details—it was worse than waterboarding), given several days to recover, and tortured again while she desperately tried to figure out what she should confess to.32 The Vatican today claims that the Inquisition killed only a few thousand people, but it leaves off the books the larger number of victims who were remanded to secular authorities for execution or imprisonment (often a slow death sentence), together with the victims of branch offices in the New World. Rummel estimates the death toll from the Spanish Inquisition at 350,000.33
After the Reformation, the Catholic Church had to deal with the vast number of people in northern Europe who became Protestants, often involuntarily after their local prince or king had converted.34 The Protestants, for their part, had to deal with the breakaway sects that wanted nothing to do with either branch of Christianity, and of course with the Jews. One might think that Protestants, who had been persecuted so viciously for their heresies against Catholic doctrines, would take a dim view of the idea of persecuting heretics, but no. In his 65,000-word treatise On the Jews and Their Lies, Martin Luther offered the following advice on what Christians should do with this “rejected and condemned people”:First, . . . set fire to their synagogues or schools and . . . bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them.... Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed.... Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.... Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb.... Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews.... Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam (Gen. 3[:19]). For it is not fitting that they should let us accursed Goyim toil in the sweat of our faces while they, the holy people, idle away their time behind the stove, feasting and farting, and on top of all, boasting blasphemously of their lordship over the Christians by means of our sweat. Let us emulate the common sense of other nations . . . [and] eject them forever from the country.35
At least he suffered most of them to live. The Anabaptists (forerunners of today’s Amish and Mennonites) got no such mercy. They believed that people should not be baptized at birth but should affirm their faith for themselves, so Luther declared they should be put to death. The other major founder of Protestantism, John Calvin, had a similar view about blasphemy and heresy:Some say that because the crime consists only of words there is no cause for such severe punishment. But we muzzle dogs; shall we leave men free to open their mouths and say what they please? . . . God makes it plain that the false prophet is to be stoned without mercy. We are to crush beneath our heels all natural affections when his honour is at stake. The father should not spare his child, nor the husband his wife, nor the friend that friend who is dearer to him than life.36
Calvin put his argument into practice by ordering, among other things, that the writer Michael Servetus (who had questioned the trinity) be burned at the stake.37 The third major rebel against Catholicism was Henry VIII, whose administration burned, on average, 3.25 heretics per year.38
With the people who brought us the Crusades and Inquisition on one side, and the people who wanted to kill rabbis, Anabaptists, and Unitarians on the other, it’s not surprising that the European Wars of Religion between 1520 and 1648 were nasty, brutish, and long. The wars were fought, to be sure, not just over religion but also over territorial and dynastic power, but the religious differences kept tempers at a fever pitch. According to the classification of the military historian Quincy Wright, the Wars of Religion embrace