The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Even the classics that we read to our young children are full of wolves' fangs and burning ovens and bloody feet and ice shards piercing hearts. Even the New Testament climaxes with an act of unspeakable torture. Might as well just read to our kids from the Amnesty Annual Report and be done with it.
Imagine: in the medieval ages, there was no evidence of how the history of mankind has been affected by witchcraft. But there is significant factual history of how brutality and sadism of mankind have been displayed in the most obscene manner in the name of witch-hunt.
A defence in the Inquisition is of little use to the prisoner, for a suspicion only is deemed sufficient cause of condemnation, and the greater his wealth the greater his danger.
The sword was a very elegant weapon in the days of the samurai. You had honor and chivalry much like the knights, and yet it was a gruesome and horrific weapon.
Iron till it be thoroughly heated is incapable to be wrought; so God sees good to cast some men into the furnace of affliction, and then beats them on his anvil into what frame he pleases.
That religious earnestness forever tends toward fright and hence towards brittleness and inquisition is clear enough in mythology and history.
Let no one refer to the sword of Napoleon I as the instrument of progress and civilization!
For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand. Then with a wooden foot, and finally with a piece of string.
Fork: An instrument used chiefly for the purpose of putting dead animals into the mouth.
In the Middle Ages and beyond, the target was the Court Jew who had the ear of the ruler; during the Inquisition it was the Spanish Jews who thrived after their conversion to Christianity.