Inquisition
Methods of torture used

Defendants were interrogated under torture only in extreme cases and were punished if found guilty, with their property being confiscated to cover legal and prison costs and to maintain the extensive machinery of persecution. The victims could also repent of their accusation and receive reconciliation with the Church. The execution of the tortures was attended by the inquisitor, the doctor, the secretary and the executioner, applying them on the nearly naked prisoner. In the year 1252, the bull Ad extirpanda allowed torture, but always with a doctor involved to avoid endangering life, and limited its use to non-bloody methods:

According to Catholic apologists, the method of torture (which was socially accepted in the context of the time) was adopted only in exceptional cases, and the inquisitorial procedure was meticulously regulated in interrogation practices.

The summary of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by Nicolás Aymerich, made by Marchena, notes a comment by the Aragonese inquisitor: Quaestiones sunt fallaces et inefficaces ("The interrogations are misleading and useless"). This did not stop the use of torture, strongly advised in the volume by Aymerich himself.

Despite the loss of thousands of documents over the years, many of the meticulous records of torture sessions have survived. They are extraordinary documents, dry bureaucratic expositions, which record even the screams of the tortured, and which go on for pages and pages.
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