The Christian Crusades and Inquisition

During the Dark Ages the Church continued gaining wealth and power rapidly becoming a safe-haven for “legalized” corruption and criminality. During this most bleak period of human history at least 40 different Popes are known to have bought their way into the papacy. Leadership was constantly changed as allegations of high-crimes were perpetually surfacing. In the period from 891-903AD alone, the papacy was changed over 10 times.

“The Church amassed inordinate wealth during the Dark Ages. Patrimonial properties, the Church-held lands that were free and clear of taxes or military obligation to the king, made up between one-quarter and one-third of western Europe. In addition to patrimony, bishops often held territories in feudal tenure, obliging them like any count or baron to provide the king with soldiers when called. The Church made money by collecting revenues from imperial rulers, by confiscating property as the result of court judgments, by selling the remission of sins (called ‘indulgences’), by selling ecclesiastical offices (called ‘simony’), and sometimes by simply taking land by force… The Church, now enormously wealthy, interested itself more in collecting money than in relating to its members. The medieval Church's preoccupation with riches was such that its ten commandments were said to have been reduced to one: ‘Bring hither the money.’ Priests were selected more on the basis of their money than upon any other virtue. A huge disparity developed not only between the clergy and the laity but also between ranks of the clergy.” -Helen Ellerbe, “The Dark Side of Christian History”

From 1095-1291 the seven Christian Crusades were a series of religious/military conflicts fought against Muslims, Pagans, Mongols, Cathars, Hussites - any and all political enemies of the Popes. The Crusades recaptured Jerusalem and the Holy Land from Muslim rule and furthered the Christian churches dominance in Europe. Following the Crusades came the Church Inquisition which lasted from the 13th all the way up to the 19th century, killing countless millions in its path. The driving ideology behind the Christian Inquisition was simple: convert or die. Pope Gregory IX in 1231 declared that all heretics be burned to death, citing the Gospel of John 15:6 as justification for the Inquisition’s brutal ideology: "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."

“In 1231 Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition as a separate tribunal, independent of bishops and prelates. Its administrators, the inquisitors, were to be answerable only to the Pope. Its inquisitional law replaced the common law tradition of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ with ‘guilty until proven innocent.’ Despite an ostensible trial, inquisitional procedure left no possibility for the suspected to prove his or her innocence; the process resulted in the condemnation of anyone even suspected of heresy. The accused was denied the right of counsel. No particulars were given as to the time or place of the suspected heresies, or to what kind of heresies were suspected. A suspected friendship with a convicted heretic was also a crime, yet no information was given as to which heretic the accused was to have ‘adored.’ The names of the accusing witnesses were kept secret. One's only recourse was an appeal to the Pope in Rome which was so futile as to be farcical. The friar Bernard Delicieux declared that: if St. Peter and St. Paul were accused of 'adoring' heretics and were prosecuted after the fashion of the Inquisition, there would be no defense open for them.” Helen Ellerbe, “The Dark Side of Christian History”

Inquisitors were chosen primarily based on how vigorously they prosecuted heretics. They were prosecutor, judge, and sometimes executioner rolled into one with no checks or balances from any other power. Inquisitors had their own spies, messengers, and assistants who answered only to them, and they answered only to the Pope. In 1244 the Council of Narbonne decreed that no heretic’s wife be spared because of her husband (and vice-versa), no sentence mitigated due to sickness, young or old age, and that every sentence include flagellation. Through sanction from Pope Innocent IV, from 1252 all the way until 1917, using torture to extract confessions was a legal option for the church. Inquisitors dressed in black robes with black cowls over their heads and used many gruesome machines/methods to coerce confessions like the rack, water boarding, and slow roasting while covered in lard.

“Inquisitors grew very rich. They received bribes and annual fines from the wealthy who paid to escape accusation. The Inquisition would claim all the money and property of alleged heretics. As there was little chance of the accused being proven innocent, there was no need to wait for conviction to confiscate his or her property. Unlike Roman law that reserved a portion of property for the convicted's nearest heirs, canon and inquisitional law left nothing. Pope Innocent III had explained that God punished children for the sins of their parents. So unless children had come forth spontaneously to denounce their parents, they were left penniless. Inquisitors even accused the dead of heresy, sometimes as much as seventy years after their death. They exhumed and burned the alleged heretic's bones and then confiscated all property from the heirs. Inquisitors rarely shared the money collected with the Episcopal courts, the civil government, or spent it building churches as planned. One historian writes how the inquisitor was often able to ‘seize everything for himself, not even sending a share to the officials of the Inquisition at Rome.’ Inquisitors were reluctant to pay for even the cost of feeding their victims, encouraging the families or the community to pay such costs.” -Helen Ellerbe, “The Dark Side of Christian History”

Countless millions in Europe were tortured and killed for believing or practicing a religion other than Christianity. As soon as Columbus and the colonizers came to America the Inquisition continued all the way down to Mexico and Peru. Christianity’s ideology of a vengeful, controlling, Father-like, singular God provided the perfect spiritual propaganda to militarily conquer those who refused to convert. After the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre killing 10,000 in 1572, Pope Gregory XIII wrote to Charles IX, “We rejoice with you that with the help of God you have relieved the world of these wretched heretics.” The Inquisitor Francisco Pena said in 1578, “We must remember that the main purpose of the trial and execution is not to save the soul of the accused but to achieve the public good and put fear into others.”

The Inquisition was still active in some places as late as 1834. During and after the Inquisition, the Reformation Wars resulted in thousands of Christians killing Christians and the witch hunts condemned many innocent Pagan women to death. This is why the “Holy” Vatican stood by and the Pope did nothing to pacify World Wars I and II. This is why the Vatican helped give Nazi scientists American passports after the war. Beneath a veil of benevolence, the Vatican is not only complicit but one of the driving forces behind the global conspiracy.

“The dark side of Christian history has been and continues to be about the domination and control of spirituality and human freedom. Orthodox Christians built an organization that from its inception encouraged not freedom and self-determination, but obedience and conformity. To that end, any means were justified. Grounded in the belief in a singular, authoritarian and punishing God, orthodox Christians created a church that demanded singular authority and punished those who disobeyed. During the Dark Ages, civilization collapsed as the Church took control of education, science, medicine, technology and the arts. Crusaders marched into the Middle East killing and destroying in the name of the one Christian God. The Inquisition established a precedent in the Middle Ages for the systematic policing and terrorization of society. The Protestant and Catholic Counter Reformation sparked wars where Christians slaughtered other Christians, each convinced that theirs was the one and only true path. And the holocaust of the witch hunts plumbed the depths of horror as it eradicated countless women and men as well as the belief in earth-based divinity.” -Helen Ellerbe, “The Dark Side of Christian History”

“From the very beginning of our quest to unravel the Christ conspiracy, we encounter suspicious territory, as we look back in time and discover that the real foundation of Christianity appears nothing like the image provided by the clergy and mainstream authorities. Indeed, far more rosy and cheerful than the reality is the picture painted by the vested interests as to the origins of the Christian religion: To wit, a miracle-making founder and pious, inspired apostles who faithfully and infallibly recorded his words and deeds shortly after his advent, and then went about promulgating the faith with great gusto and success in ‘saving souls.’ Contrary to this popular delusion, the reality is that, in addition to the enormous amount of bloodshed which accompanied its foundation, Christianity’s history is rife with forgery and fraud. So rampant is this treachery and chicanery that any serious researcher must immediately begin to wonder about the story itself. In truth, the Christian tale has always been as difficult to swallow as the myths and fables of other cultures; yet countless people have been able to overlook the rational mind and to willingly believe it, even though they may equally as easily dismiss the nearly identical stories of these other cultures.” -Acharya S., “The Christ Conspiracy”

“The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving the world and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves…these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.” - Thomas Jefferson

source - http://www.atlanteanconspiracy.com/2008/12/religious-conspiracy-part-3.html