Bonnie, in addition to the info in Lecture 38, I should point out that the more notorious Inquisitions (such as the one in Spain) are driven by State interests more so than by the Church.
Moreover, the cumulative total number of people killed by Inquisitions throughout all the centuries of the Middle Ages and early modern periods is less than the number of Roman Catholic priests killed by Spanish Leftists in the summer of 1936. Why should the former be considered a “major impact” on Western civilization if the latter is not?
