Editing Inquisition (section)

==Sentences==
The overwhelming majority of guilty sentences with repentance seem to have consisted of penances like wearing a cross sewn on one's clothes or going on [[pilgrimage]].<ref name="Burr"/> When a suspect was convicted of major, wilful, unrepentant heresy, canon law required the inquisitorial tribunal to hand the person over to secular authorities for final sentencing. A secular magistrate, the "secular arm", would then determine the penalty based on local law.<ref>Peters writes: "When faced with a convicted heretic who refused to recant, or who relapsed into heresy, the inquisitors were to turn him over to the temporal authorities – the "secular arm" – for ''animadversio debita'', the punishment decreed by local law, usually burning to death." (Peters, Edwards. "Inquisition", p. 67.)</ref><ref>{{harvp|Lea|1887a|loc=[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/39451/39451-h/39451-h.htm#CHAPTER_VII Chapter VII. The Inquisition Founded]}}: "Obstinate heretics, refusing to abjure and return to the Church with due penance, and those who after abjuration relapsed, were to be abandoned to the secular arm for fitting punishment."</ref> Those local laws included proscriptions against certain religious crimes, and the punishments included [[death by burning]] in regions where the secular law equated persistent heresy with sedition, although the penalty was more usually banishment or imprisonment for life, which was generally commuted after a few years. Thus the inquisitors generally knew the expected fate of anyone so remanded.{{sfnp|Kirsch|2008|p=85}} The "secular arm" didn't have access to the trial record of the defendants, only declared and executed the sentences and was obliged to do so on pain of heresy and excommunication.{{sfnp|Saraiva|2001|p=109}}<ref>{{Cite book|last=Haliczer|first=Stephen|title=Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834|publisher=University of California Press|year=1990|pages=83–85}}</ref>

While the notational purpose of the trial itself was for the salvation of the individual soul, allegedly by persuasion, according to the 1578 edition of the [[Directorium Inquisitorum]] (a standard manual for inquisitions) the penalties themselves were preventative not retributive, thought to spread an example by terror: " ''... quoniam punitio non refertur primo & per se in correctionem & bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, & a malis committendis avocentur'' (translation: "... for punishment does not take place primarily and ''per se'' for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit").<ref>{{Cite web |last=Eymerich Directorium inquisitorum |first=Nicholas |title=Directorium inquisitorum |url=https://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=witchcraft045#mode/1up |access-date=2025-03-04 |website=Cornell University Library Digital Collections Bookreader}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Eymeric- |first=Nicholas |title=Manual de Inquisidores, para uso de las Inquisiciones de España y Portugal - Translated from French into Spanish language, by J. Marchena (abridged version) |publisher=Imprenta de Feliz Avinon. |year=1821 |language=es}}</ref>

===Statistics===
Beginning in the 19th century, historians have gradually compiled statistics drawn from the surviving court records, from which estimates have been calculated by adjusting the recorded number of convictions by the average rate of document loss for each time period. [[Gustav Henningsen]] and [[Jaime Contreras]] studied the records of the Spanish Inquisition, which list 44,674 cases of which 826 resulted in executions in person and 778 in effigy (i.e. a straw dummy was burned in place of the person).<ref>{{Cite book|last1=Mohnhaupt|first1=Heinz|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A_Sdchs7yAkC|title=Vorträge zur Justizforschung: Geschichte und Theorie|last2=Simon|first2=Dieter|date=1992|publisher=V. Klostermann|isbn=978-3-465-02627-3|language=de}}</ref> William Monter estimated there were 1000 executions in Spain between 1530–1630 and 250 between 1630 and 1730.<ref>W. Monter, ''Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily'', Cambridge 2003, p. 53.</ref> [[Jean-Pierre Dedieu]] studied the records of Toledo's tribunal, which put 12,000 people on trial.<ref>Jean-Pierre Dedieu, ''Los Cuatro Tiempos'', in Bartolomé Benassar, ''Inquisición Española: poder político y control social'', pp. 15–39.</ref> For the period prior to 1530, Henry Kamen estimated there were about 2,000 executions in all of Spain's tribunals.<ref>[[Henry Kamen|H. Kamen]], ''Inkwizycja Hiszpańska'', Warszawa 2005, p. 62; and H. Rawlings, ''The Spanish Inquisition'', Blackwell Publishing 2004, p. 15.</ref>

Italian Renaissance history professor and Inquisition expert [[Carlo Ginzburg]] had his doubts about using statistics to reach a judgment about the period. "In many cases, we don't have the evidence, the evidence has been lost," said Ginzburg.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5218373|title=Vatican downgrades Inquisition toll|date=15 June 2004|website=Nbcnews.com|access-date=13 October 2017|archive-date=2 April 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402142946/http://www.nbcnews.com/id/5218373/ns/world_news/t/vatican-downgrades-inquisition-toll/#.VP8gMPnF-Sp|url-status=live}}</ref>