Cold Open: The Spanish Inquisition was not actually, REALLY, TRULY, about religion. It certainly wasn’t about God and salvation. None of the Inquisitions were. They were about power and control. They were about maintaining one’s business interests and that business just happened to be the business of organized religion. They were about the Roman Catholic Church securing papal prestige in Europe and ensuring not only their survival but their ability to economically thrive. Agree with us, pay your tithes, pledge loyalty to our Catholic King or Queen and bow eternally before the might of the Church of Rome. Kiss the ring or face the horrific consequences: marginalization, expulsion, torture, or execution.

With the Spanish Inquisition specifically, it was the King and the Queen driving interrogations and persecution instead of the Pope. The used the cover of the Church’s infallibility to culturally homogenize their newly conquered lands. The Spanish Inquisition was less about saving the heretic souls of the Spanish empire in it’s newly acquired territories and more about solidifying a Catholic culture that would be easier to control than a mixed culture of Muslims, Jews, and indigenous peoples. It was about obliterating cultural ties and loyalty to the population’s previous rulers.

King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I were Catholic, they were acquiring a lot of new land, they were building a vast empire, and they needed unity to keep things moving. And their successors wanted the same damn thing. And if you wanted to remain in their expanding kingdom, you were gonna be Catholic or shit was gonna get rough. Real, super scary stuff kinda rough.

So let’s dig deep into some dark times. Let’s suck into some atrocities that would make today’s worst headlines seem quaint. Corruption, torture, persecution, and overall medieval mayhem - today - on Timesuck.

PAUSE SHOW INTRO I. Welcome A. Happy Monday Timesuckers! I’m the Master Sucker aka the Prophet of Nimrod aka the Plaything of Lucifina aka the background vocalist to the sweet bard of the suck Michael Motherfuckin’ McDonald - I’m Dan Cummins - and YOU are listening to Timesuck. Welcome to the Cult of the Curious - and Hail Nimrod!

B. New album is out! Excited to say that my new standup comedy album, Maybe I’m the Problem, is out now! This the Pandora exclusive album I’ve mentioned the past few months that is no longer exclusive to Pandora! I would’ve given a heads up regarding when it was gonna drop but, because of some behind the scenes independent music distribution stuff, I didn’t know when it would come out. But it’s here, I’m excited to say it’s currently, as of this recording at least, number one on the iTunes comedy charts - and it’s available on Amazon and on the Google Play Store - digital only - and I hope you download it, love it, and rate it! I’m really proud of it. Danger Brain did the cover design so of course it looks awesome. So go grab some new standup! Treat yourself to some laughs!

Quick shout out to Leighton Vander Esch - a Boise State Linebacker taken in the first round of the NFL draft by the Dallas Cowboys who went to my alma mater, Salmon River High School. He just went from eight-man football in a town of 400 people to a multi-million dollar contract in the NFL. Impressive! I’ve never met him, never met anyone in his family, I don’t give a shit about high school football, and for all I know, he could be a huge douche bag… BUT! He made it from Riggins to American’s Team and I respect the drive and hustle and hope he’s an awesome dude who will make my little football crazed town proud. Good luck young man.

Also quick thank you to Daniel Weaver - freemason and Timesucker who sent in an old Freemason handout he found his lodge’s office while doing some Spring Cleaning. Very cool old, cool looking mini- flier. In perfect condition! Thanks for sending that in to P.O. Box 3891, Couer d’Alene, ID 83814. Hail Nimrod!

C. My West Coast Buds pre-roll: (Awaiting further copy) Timesuck is brought to you today by the My West Coast Buds podcast! Yes! Hosted by comic, Edible Jedi and TIMESUCKER Joe Dimeo, My West Coast Buds is an inside baseball look at Cannabis, coffee, comedy, and spirits - all of Joe’s favorite vices - and so much more. It’s a fun and funny conversation where you learn a lot about the explosive new industry of legal marijuana.

This week on My West Coast Buds - dropping today - another effortless information episode because My West Coast Buds loves Timesuck and we love them back! Co-host Ben teaches host Joe about the power of intense psychedelic DMT. Shit is going to get weird .

So listen and subscribe to the My West Coast Buds podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud and all sorts of other podcast players - including, of course, www.mywestcoastbuds.com - link in today’s episode description. You can also find them in the sponsor section of the app. Just push their button!

D. Tour Dates! Big thanks to my San Francisco, Bay Area suckers today! Thank for the gifts and for your laughter at the six shows I just did at Punchline Comedy Club. Whether it was 100 people on Wednesday or sold out shows on the weekend, you fucking brought it! Most people overall I’ve ever had come out to see me at Punchline in one week by a lot. Had a blast in that historic venue - and finally got my Dan Dion photographed headshot on the wall. Only took about thirteen years. Too cool! Hope you guys bring the same energy to the live Spokane, Washington podcast at the Spokane Comedy Club this Sunday, May 6th, where we will have Timesuck beer on tap! That’s right, Young Buck Brewing has crafted a Timesuck IPA for the show. Those attending will be the first to actually taste the Suck!

And who or what will we be sucking? Gonna be sucking Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer.

And then I’ll be at the Sacramento Punchline, three nights, May 10th - 12th.

And then I’m home and focusing on Timesuck in the Suck Dungeon all the way until the last day of May, May 31st, when I’ll start the first of three nights of shows at the Tempe, Arizona Improv. Gonna be there May 31st - June 3rd.

June 8th and 9th I’ll be at the Arlington, Drafthouse in Washington DC - tickets are ON SALE! http://drafthousecomedy.com/ event.cfm?id=507358&

June 15-16th I’ll be at the Funny Bone in Des Moines, Iowa - two nights only! Tickets on sale their as well.

July 15th doing another live Timesuck podcast in Orlando at the Orlando Improv. http://www.theimprovorlando.com/ComedyClub/ 866e4def-e0ba-4722-b140-f1b2b8ab8940/Calendar/orlando

More tour dates at www.dancummins.tv. La Jolla, Dayton, Tampa, Palm Beach, Chicago, Sunnyvale, Portland, Tacoma, Columbus, Grand Rapids and more coming up in 2018!

E. Pootie and Juju: Quick sad news! A lot of the Pootie and Juju limited edition coffee mugs that were sent out were not properly packaged and they got destroyed in shipment. Not fun trying to drink from a cup with a busted ass handle. So - if you received one of these mugs - email merch man and good dude who feels terrible about how many busted mugs he sent out, Erik Radaker. He will never send out fragile items to the Suck faithful in the same way again. He’s a great guy who truly feels terrible when someone doesn’t get what they want. Email him at [email protected] and he will get you a new not-busted mug and we will throw in a sticker pack as a way of saying sorry. We care about your support!

Still waiting for forty mugs that replaced the forty of the 200 not sold due to quality issues to get in Erik’s hands and go on sale - still a chance for a few of you to get those mugs before it’s “Too little, too diddle, Pootie!” Those will go on sale sometime this week - awaiting a final quality control check by the merch man - I will announce exactly when on social media - @timesuckpodcast on IG - that’s where you can stay in touch with the latest Suck News.

F. Golden State Killer: So many emails this past week about the arrest of Joseph James DeAngelo - the man authorities believe to be the Golden State Killer. Yes - he has been added to the topic list and now Space Lizards can vote him into being an episode if that is the Will of the Suck. Also known as the original Night Stalker and the East Area Rapist. He is in the app for Space Lizards to vote on, listed as Golden State Killer.

G. Timesucker Adam Dayton: Finally, because I left his email off of last week’s episode description - need to mention again that Timesucker Adam Dayton sent two huge, custom, hand-painted Cornhole boards to the Suck Dungeon. They’re majestic. There is a pic on Instagram - @timesuckpodcast. And you can hire him to make custom boards for you as well - his email is [email protected]

Alright. Let’s get into it. Let’s get into Timesuck 85 - the Spanish Inquisition!!

PAUSE TIMESUCK INTERLUDE

II. Introduction A. History of the early Catholic church coming to power in Europe: Okay Timesucker. Alright, cool-ass curious human being who likes to have fun and learn - meat sack who understands that learning something new and interesting is actually SO much fun! It feels so good to get a little smarter and not have to work for it. Mmmm Hmmmm! I like the way you’re living your life right now.

So, to understand the inquisitions you first need to understand the early Church’s rise to power in Europe, who their competitors were, and what they did to the competition before the Spanish Inquisition ever took place.

We learned a lot about the initial formation of the early Christian church in Timesuck 83, the Lost Books of the Bible, just a few weeks ago. Various early Christians, many of whom also still identified as being Jewish, spread their messages around the Roman Empire they lived in during the first few centuries after Christ’s death, all agreeing that BOJANGLES! was their one true God. Three legs representing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. One eye, representing the one true God! And a huge, Pitbull dick representing… um power? And big, Pitbull dick- ness? Is that right? No, that’s nonsense. Early Christians didn’t actually agree on much other than that Christ was in some way very significant and a religious game changer.

Early Christians were persecuted by various Roman emperors during this time because the official religion of Roman was still the polytheistic worship of various Roman gods, but then, through persistent missionary work spreading their knowledge of scripture, a Roman emperor was converted to the new faith - Constantine the First aka Saint Constantine aka the Reverend Doctor Juniper Twiggle-Berry. Aka I obviously made up that last one. 1. Emperor Constantine: Emperor Constantine, born on or near February 27, 280 CE, was the son of army officer, Flavius Valerius Constantius aka Flavor Flav the First!

But for real, Constantine’s dad, Flavius, was super good at fighting. He was so good at military strategy and conquest that he rose to the rank of Caesar, or deputy emperor, in 293 CE and headed out to serve directly under the emperor of the Western Roman Empire, Augustus Maximian.

While dad was off fighting, young Constantine, a man who deserves his own Suck so I won’t go too deep into details of his life here, was raised and educated by the best teachers of the day in the Imperial Court - the court of Diocletian [dahy-uh-klee- shuh n] - emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire - in Nicomedia [nik-uh-mee-dee-uh], now Izmit, Turkey.

Confused by the Eastern/Western Roman empire distinction? By 285 CE the Roman Empire had grown so vast that it was no longer feasible to govern all the provinces from the central seat of Rome. The Emperor Diocletian [dahy-uh-klee-shuh n] divided the empire into halves with the Eastern Empire governed out of Byzantium (later Constantinople) and the Western Empire governed from Rome.

Initially, both sections were known equally as “The Roman Empire” although, in time, the Eastern Empire would adopt Greek instead of Latin and would lose much of the character of the traditional Roman Empire and also eat far more hummus and pita bread.

But for roughly the first 100 years of the split, they worked together and were, essentially, sister empires. That would change, and again, the split of the Roman Empire is something that would merit its own Suck. All this Roman talk is making me want to do another Roman Suck again for sure actually.

Just wanted to clarify a little here in case you were like, “What the Fuck? How is his dad second-in-command for one emperor of Rome but then he’s going to school in the court of another emperor of Rome, which clearly his dad is cool with… how many fucking emperors are there and why aren’t they fighting each other?” Two emperors, one for each half of the freshly divided half of the enormous Roman empire, and the two halves are allies. And sometimes the two halves rejoin for a minute under one emperor and then split apart. Europe man. The more you dig into its history, the more stories you come across where this dude was king of this Kingdom but then he married the heir to the throne of this other kingdom and now his empire is doubled but then there’s an uprising and he loses two-thirds of it to this other despot and then that emperor doesn’t produce a legitimate heir so then four dudes challenge for the throne of that empire which is also being attacked by two other kingdoms since it’s undergoing a power struggle and its defenses are down. It’s all wonderfully very Game of Thrones. Or, I guess more appropriately, Game of Thrones is wonderfully medieval Europe.

Anyways, Constantine, while growing up in the East, encounters people from all walks of life in Diocletian’s [dahy-uh-klee-shuh n] imperial court, including some early Christians. And Christianity was actually front page news early in Constantine’s life thanks to the great persecution of the Christians that began at the court of Diocletian at Nicomedia and was enforced with particular intensity in the eastern parts of the empire, beginning in 303 CE.

Soon, Constantine would take the throne through a series of events I’m just gonna gloss over here. No one’s gonna be tested, and if you’re a little confused, don’t worry about it - you don’t need to know any of this to understand the rest of the episode.

In 305 CE the two emperors of the West and the East, Diocletian and Maximian, abdicated their thrones, to be succeeded by their respective deputy emperors, Galerius and Constantius - Constantine’s father: Galerius Valerius Maximinus in the East and Flavius Valerius Severus in the West.

Constantius requested his son’s presence from Galerius, and Constantine joined his father at Gesoriacum (modern Boulogne [boo-lohn], France). They crossed together to Britain and fought a campaign in the north before Constantius’s death at Eboracum (modern York) in 306 CE. Immediately named emperor by his army, Constantine then threw himself into a complex series of civil wars in which Maxentius, the son of Maximian, rebelled in Rome; with his father’s help, Maxentius (Max-en-ti-us) suppressed Severus, who had been proclaimed Western Emperor by Galerius and who was then replaced by Licinius (Li- sin-i-us). When Maximian was rejected by his son, he joined Constantine in Gaul, only to betray Constantine and to be murdered or forced to commit suicide.

Constantine, who in 307 CE had married Maximian’s daughter Fausta as his second wife, invaded Italy in 312 and after a lightning campaign defeated his brother-in-law Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge near Rome. He then confirmed an alliance that he had already entered into with Licinius (Galerius having died in 311): Constantine became Western emperor and Licinius shared the East with his rival Maximinus.

Then, Licinius defeated Maximinus and became the sole Eastern Emperor but lost territory in the Balkans to Constantine in 316. After a further period of tension, Constantine attacked Licinius in 324 CE, routing him at Adrianople [ey-dree-uh-noh-puh l] and Chrysopolis, becoming sole emperor of East AND West. The empire would divide back into Eastern and Western halves when Constantine died 13 years later, on May 22nd, 337 CE.

Anyway - lot of shit right? Anyway, sometime during all that fighting and ass kicking, Constantine became not only familiar with Christianity but a Christian himself. No more Roman polytheism. And he believed that his new Christian God had given him the power to conquer his kingdom. You know how Christian athletes like to claim that God helped them win the big game at press conferences? “I just want to thank God for this Super Bowl victory! He clearly loved our team more than the other team and I appreciate God taking some time today to focus on what really mattered - helping us get a few extra TDS! I’m sure it wasn’t easy taking time away from various children dying of starvation and curable diseases in third world countries to help us get the extra first downs necessary to sustain our game winning drives today, and, I just appreciate the Hell out of it. Praise God!”

Clearly, I’m exaggerating and distorting what athletes do a bit there. But, I do think it’s funny when athletes become so self-important that they think God actually gives a shit about their silly games. And, before I get a bunch of emails - yes, I understand that the Christian God is omnipotent and can help some dude throw some crisp fade routes while also helping children across the globe! I know it’s not one of the other! I still think it’s silly when I hear it done.

BUT… ANYWAY…. Constantine was like, the first dude to be like, “I want to thank Jesus for helping me kick some heathen ass the past few years and through the Glory of my new God I reunited our great empire!”

And Constantine did a TON to empower and provide structure to this new religion he loved, Christianity. Remember from the Lost Books of the Bible Suck that he organized the First Council of Nicea in 325 which established the basis of early church doctrine.

And, after his death, all subsequent emperors would favor Christianity, with the exception of a little two year blip during the brief reign of Emperor Julian also known as Julian the Apostate who briefly shifted the empire’s official faith back the traditional Roman Gods they had worshipped prior to Constantine.

And then Emperor Super Bus! got some shit done. He did some things. No. That was a little reference to a pronunciation blunder I made way back in the Caligula Suck. No - Theodosius I (347–395 CE) made specifically Catholic Christianity the official religion of the empire in 381 and prohibited the worship of pagan gods in 392. The Pope is in big time now! The Roman Empire is a Christian Empire, and the official brand of Christianity runs through the Vatican. Nice.

Early on, in the first few centuries of the Christian church, as we’ve touched on before, there were various groups of gnostics and orthodox, or proto-orthodox, believers, and then the orthodox believers won out, there was the whole Council of Rome in 382 which established the main canon of the Catholic Bible. Early on there were various bishops in the various Roman cities, and the Bishop of Rome, due mainly to Rome’s significance as the traditional capital of the Roman Empire became the head bishop whose position morphed into that of the Pope. Pope’s in! Heathens are out! Pope 1, Heathens 0!

And, over the next few centuries, this new, powerful, state- sanctioned religion became very, very, VERY powerful, due to various emperors giving the Church to which their souls were beholden such upper hands as exemption from taxes and tithing its riches. The church became very wealthy. Became a thriving empire of its own.

There were no religious anti-trust laws in the early days of its expansion and the Pope soon conquered the market on salvation. It become the Amazon dot Com of churches, the ancient Pope even more powerful than the modern Jeff Bezos. Sure, there were competitors, but they quickly fell to overstock.com status. Judaism, various forms of Paganism, the few scattered offshoots of Christianity - all fighting for a DISTANT second place now in terms of power, influence, and wealth. Really, the Catholic Church is the most impressive empire to come out of medieval Europe. Kings and Queens and their various kingdoms would come and go - the Vatican still stands TODAY! Still crushing it.

During the thousand years of the Middle Ages, from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, the papacy matured and established itself as the preeminent theological authority of Europe. Religious life assumed new forms or reformed established ones, and missionaries expanded the geographic boundaries of the faith.

As the early church expanded, it occasionally ran into opposition, and it didn’t care for that.

It ran into people who didn’t believe the things they liked people to believe. The Church of Rome ran into Muslims, Jews, and occasionally, even other types of Christians. And those people irritated the fuck out of the church. Super annoying to the Pope. And, while for the most part, but definitely not always, the Church tolerated Jews and Muslims for political or financial reasons - it did NOT tolerate those who considered themselves to be fellow followers of Christ’s teachings who didn’t think the pope had his pope shit right. The Catholic Church HATED people who didn’t think the early church was coming correct with their spiritual teachings. These people presented the biggest threat to the dominance of the church - these people could destroy the church from within. What if some new type of Christian captured a new emperor’s attention? In with the new, out with the old, and now they’ve ruined everything!!!! How is the Pope gonna buy new, cool Pope hats and Pope robes if he’s not the official church of the rulers of Europe? Who’s gonna do the pope’s laundry then? Is he suddenly gonna be expected to wash his own hat? Nope. Fuck that.

2. If there is one thing you learn over and over studying the history of empires and large institutions it’s that when an organization becomes extremely powerful and wealthy, they do NOT give up their power without a fight.

And, so, to keep from losing power, the church begins to label professed believers who maintain religious opinions contrary to their beliefs - as heretics.

B. Heretics: Heretics were the worst! Enemy number one of the Church. The Papacy would rather deal with murderers and rapists than it would heretics. Heretics were incredibly dangerous - those fuckers could kill the church with nothing but words and ideas. Words and ideas can, in some cases, truly be more dangerous than swords. If these heretics infected enough people with their new ideas, the whole she-bang crumbles. And, as you know, things wouldn’t necessarily crumble with Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation and with King Henry the VIII’s split from Rome and formation of the Anglican Church years later, but they would certainly splinter and crack. And, while still powerful, the Catholic Church would lose forever the vice-like grip it once had over the world’s Christians.

And in the 12th century, the now powerful Roman Catholic Church encounters a large group of Christians who are reviving gnostic beliefs in Northern Italy and Southern France - the Cathars [kath- ahr]- and the Church decides something must be done with these so-called “heretics.”

C. The Cathars/First Inquistions: In the first half of the 11th century isolated groups of Cathars [kath-ahr], also known as Cathari, from Greek katharos, “pure”, appeared in western Germany, Flanders, and northern Italy. And initially, they didn’t last long. By the late 11th century no more was heard of them; then suddenly in the 12th century they reappeared.

Cathar beliefs initially varied between Cathar communities. Cathar- ism was originally taught by ascetic leaders, monks basically, people who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of contemplation and simple living. And the first Cathars didn’t have a lot of set guidelines for their beliefs. It was very loosely organized.

However, one thing most if not all ancient Cathars agreed upon from the beginning was a dualistic belief that the world was composed of things that were good and things that were evil - not a lot of grey area. This is good and of God. That is bad and of the Devil. And they believed the material world fell on the Devil side. Wealth equals Devil. And that didn’t set well with Rome and the Vatican. Ever been to the Vatican? I have. I’ve been to the Sistine Chapel. It’s beautiful and extremely expensive looking. Decadently opulent. No expense spared to present the Glory of God. I went to the bathroom in the Vatican and instead of toilet paper, they insist you wipe your ass on the faces of the faithless, who are then thrown away and new heathens are bought and brought in. No. But it’s very, very nice.

When I was a student at Gonzaga, a Jesuit Catholic institution, we used to joke about the priests may have technically taken a vow of poverty but they were far from poor. Not even close to impoverished. A friend of mine, Blaine, worked in the priests’ residence Hall where they’d eat for his work study job and he’d sometimes be able to bring home leftovers from their dinners to eat. Filet Mignon, salmon fillets, et cetera. They weren’t impoverished. They weren’t eating Ramen noodles and Mac n Cheese. They’d drive Beemers that technically didn’t belong to them, they were owned by the University or whatever, but, they were for all intents and purposes their cars. They lived a lifestyle that was comparable to being upper middle class at least. And there are just the priests. Imagine the Bishops and then the Pope himself. He isn’t eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches.

Well, the Cathars didn’t live like that. They thought that type of buge-ee shit was disgusting - they were very pious [pahy-uh s]. They didn’t just take vows of poverty. They truly lived in poverty. They’d work enough to provide for their basic survival, but that was it.

And by the 1140s the Cathari started to organize themselves. They got really into an early form of martial arts known as Ken- Jo that one Cathari brought back from a pilgrimage to Tehran where he’d met a Mongolian monk. And he taught the other Cathari the Ken-Jo forms and slowly, it was passed down from generation to generation, each generation building upon the knowledge of the previous generation until eventually, one man had perfected the forms and the art could evolve no further. It was now perfect. The perfect martial art. This one perfect human would become an invincible, one-man fighting force… unable to be stopped or killed. And that man, is Jean Claude Van Damme, the last Cathar. And, as nonsensical as this is, it makes even less sense than you might suspect because while Jean Claude seems French to me, he’s actually Belgian. But he looks so French, right?

Sorry. Got way off track there.

By 1140 the Cathari really did start to organize themselves A hierarchy forms, a liturgy or agreed upon form of worship is developed along with a formalized doctrine. Around 1149 CE the first Cathar bishop has established himself in the north of France; and a few years later he establishes colleagues at Albi and in Lombardy. The status of these bishops is confirmed and in the following years more bishops were set up, until by the turn of the century there were eleven bishoprics in all, one in the north of France, four in the south, and six in Italy.

Do you see what they're starting to do? These fuckers are forming their own rival Catholic style Christian church like there’s not gonna be severe consequences!

Outside of some organizational similarities, the Cathars could not be more different than the Catholics. The Cathars had strict rules for fasting, including the total prohibition of meat. Sexual intercourse was forbidden; complete ascetic renunciation of the world was called for which is not going to sit well with sovereign leaders either. Taking on a new religion is one thing. Taking on a new religion that calls for you to, essentially, renounce the culture you live in including your government is another. You gonna stop paying taxes now? Are you not gonna fight when we wage our next war? You not gonna add anything of value to our culture, anything we can monetize? No? Just gonna be a weird monk wandering the countryside thinking about the nature of the universe? Nah. That doesn’t work for us. We just might have to get rid of you before the cancer to our rule you represent, spreads.

And, if you’re wondering, who would join such a strict religion anyway? Who’s willing to give up sex? Well - not everyone had to be that strict.

The Cathar Chuch grew in popularity partly because you didn’t have to follow all the rules to be a part of the faith. There were two groups within the church: the “perfect” and the “believers.” The perfect were set apart from the mass of believers by a ceremony of initiation, the consolamentum. They devoted themselves to contemplation and were expected to maintain the highest moral standards. They were, essentially, the priests/monks of this new variety of Christianity. And these believers were not expected to attain the lofty standards of the perfect.

And the Cathars took a gnostic approach to the Biblical interpretation. They got real loosey goosey with it. The Cathar doctrines of creation led them to rewrite the biblical story; they devised an elaborate mythology to replace it. They viewed much of the Old Testament with skepticism; some of them rejected it altogether. The orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation was rejected. Jesus was no longer the Son of God - he was merely an angel; his human sufferings and death were an illusion.

Obviously, all of these beliefs are very incompatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church. And these Cathars are teaching other peasants living within the boundaries of traditionally Catholic countries this shit. No good.

And then the Cathars really fucked up. They fucked up big time. They openly and severely criticized the worldliness and corruption of the Catholic Church itself.

I think you can guess what comes next.

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Back to the Cathars. What happened when they dared to openly criticize the official church of the Roman empire? You guessed it - The authorities of both church and state unite to get rid of these troublesome motherfuckers.

In 1184, Pope Lucius III issues a papal bull - an official edict or command handed down from the pope - to give local bishops in France the authority to deal with Cathars. These Cathars are going to be interrogated, and if their beliefs do not match Church Doctrine, they will be labeled as heretics and then they will be dealt with.

Well, the bishops weed out a few here and few there, but the problem is just too big for the bishops to effectively deal with it in this manner. In a lot of communities in Southern France they’re outnumbered and unable to get the proper amount of stake burning accomplished. So, in 1208 CE, a crusade is called for.

In 1208, a war, or more accurately, a series of wars broke out in Southern France. Modern writers refer to them as the Cathar Wars, but traditionally they were referred to as the Albigensian (al-bi-jen- see-un) Crusade, a formal crusade in the full sense of the word - preached and directed by the papacy, and offering participants the remission of sins and an assured place in Heaven. The Crusaders regarded themselves as being "on God's business" and referred to themselves as "pilgrims".

From the first major siege (at Béziers [bey-zyey]) in 1209 the war became one of French and their allies against the independent people of the Languedoc [lahng-dawk] and their allies, Languedoc [lahng-dawk] being a former province of Southern France, an area that essentially governed itself apart from the rest of France if not formerly so for a time due largely to the Cathars. And then instead of Catholics against Cathars, it was, up until 1242 at least, consistently Catholics on one side against Cathars and, actually, some Catholics fighting on behalf of their Cathar neighbors on the other.

And this crusade lasted for 20 fucking years. And various historians would later label it as an act of religious genocide. The Catholic Church attempted to exterminate an entire other religious culture. Church condoned violence.

By mid-1209, around 10,000 crusaders had gathered in Lyon [lahy- uh] before marching south. A large number came from Northern France, while some had volunteered from England.

The crusaders started by captured the small village of Servian and then headed for Béziers [bey-zyey], arriving on July 21, 1209 CE. Under the command of the papal legate, Arnaud Amalric, they started to besiege the city, calling on the Catholics within to come out, and demanding that the Cathars surrender. Neither group did as commanded. So, the Crusaders marched right through the gates of the city, when they were opened to negotiate some kind of compromise, and the entire population was slaughtered and then the city was burned to the fucking ground. Yep. It was reported that Amalric, when asked how to distinguish Cathars from Catholics, responded, "Kill them all! God will know his own."

Damn. Cold-blooded dude.

After the destruction of this town, most other Cathar strongholds surrendered - I bet they did - and they were either banished from their communities, allowed to convert to Catholicism, or burned at the stake. If they did fight back, they were butchered. And, like so many aspects of today’s story, the crusades deservers it’s own Suck so I won’t go into further detail today.

There were revolts, there were a few prolonged sieges, there were occasional breaks in the fighting, and all in all, this goes on for two decades which seems like way over one decade too long. Two decades of continual extermination of these heretics.

E. First Medieval Inquisition: And then, in 1234, the first true, widespread, Papal Inquisition is begun. Previous inquisitions, as I stated earlier, had been carried out by local bishops. They were small time. This was a big time inquisition now. Essentially, the crusades had done all they could do to get rid of large, openly Cathar populations in Southern France. However, there still a bunch of sneaky Cathars lurking about. A bunch of heretics having the audacity to live within papal jurisdiction but not believe whatever the Pope wanted them to believe. Those cheeky bastards!

Sure - they’d show up at church, they’d kneel and stand and kneel and stand - but they were just going through the motions. They were phonies! Fake Catholics! They were Cathars!

So Pope Gregory IX, in 1234 CE, established a formal inquisition to root out the rest of these heretical bastards. And it lasted the rest of the 13th century and for a great part of the 14th. And it succeeded in crushing Catharism as a popular movement and driving its remaining adherents deep, deep underground.

Punishments for Cathars varied greatly under the inquisition. Most frequently, former Cathars were made to wear yellow crosses atop their garments as a sign of outward penance after they converted to Catholicism. Others made obligatory pilgrimages, which often included fighting against Muslims. “You believe what the Pope wants you to believe now? Well, I’m not convinced. Head to the Iberian peninsula and go kill some Muslims to prove it!”

Visiting a local church naked once each month to be scourged was also a common punishment which I swear I did not just make up. That’s an odd one.

“Alright! I believe you - you’re a Catholic now. HOWEVER! Some of the other Priests aren’t so sure AND that was pretty naughty of you to be a Cathar in the first place. So, I’m gonna need you to show up here at the Church once on a month, let’s just say the 15th, and I need you to be butt-naked and I’m gonna whip your naked bottom with a switch, m’kay?

Now, sometimes, when I’m whipping your bottom, it might seem like I’m starting to get a boner. I’m not! That’s just the way my robe gets wrapped up and twisted sometimes when I’m doing my whipping. AND - it might even look like I take my boner out from underneath my robe and that you can see me holding it in my hand and stroking it back and forth. No! That’s not what’s happening! That’s a not a boner you’re seeing!

It’s a scrol that I hold in my hand full of important scripture.

It’s a rock-hard, veiny scroll that keeps me focused on the whipping.

AND - it might feel like I’m sticking that scroll in and out and in and out and in and out of your butthole. But that’s not what I’m doing! That’s just part of what being whipped feel like. Sometimes being whipped feels like a hard but also soft at the same time scroll going in and out of your butt for awhile and sometimes getting whipped makes it sound like I’m starting to breath really heavy, and sometimes being whipped makes me start to look like I’m getting really sweaty and then it makes it seem like there is some kind of liquid-y gel in your colon and then I whip you a few more times and I go lay down and take a nap and I’m weird around you for the next week.

Well, it’s not what you might think it is! And even it IS - it’s all what God wants. It’s all part of the penance… (Chikatilo) What is big deal? It just little bit of wrasslin’ It better than burning!”

Sorry, not sorry. It’s not like there isn’t a long-standing tradition of extreme sexual misconduct within the ranks of the Catholic Church.

Cathars who were slow to repent would suffer imprisonment, the loss of property, or, of course, painful death. Usually by being burned alive which sounds really, really, really terrible.

And, as you can imagine, the power this inquisition gave local bishops and magistrates led to widespread abuse, as it would in later inquisitions as well. Some local official wants a young maiden to give up the goods and she’s not interested in him? Well, suddenly, she starts looking a little Cathar-like! “Hmmm. Are you sure you’re not a Cathar? ‘Cause it really seems like you are. You suddenly seem very heretical. I can either tell the Bishop what I’m starting to think or you can get down on your knees and, pray - in a round about way - that I change my mind and forgive you…”

Meanwhile, while the Inquisitions continued, there were still a few Cathar strongholds left. I have no idea how. You’d think after several decades of crusades and inquisitions, the Catholics would’ve gotten rid of all the Cathars, but, they were apparently some sneaky, resilient bastards. There were still a few few villages, still a couple of castles that were not going to give up that sweet, impoverished, let’s do nothing but talk about God all day every day Cathar lifestyle.

From May 1243 to March 1244, the Cathar fortress of Montségur was besieged by the troops fighting for the Archbishop of Narbonne. And on March 16, 1244, a large massacre went down, where over 200 Cathar perfects were burnt in an enormous pyre that would come to be known as the "field of the burned" near the foot of the castle. The Field of the Burned is a lot like the Field of Dreams if your dream was to be burned alive instead of playing baseball. After that, the members of the faith became even more secretive about their beliefs and were harder to find. But the Church didn’t stop looking - they continued to interrogate, torture, and kill Cathars, people who might be Cathars, people they didn’t like, people who looked at them funny, people who looked at them too seriously or didn’t look at them at all, and so on and so forth, until by 1350 CE - Catharism had been completely obliterated. Go fuck yourself, Radioshack - you had your fun but Amazon wishes you to longer exist and Amazon gets what Amazon wishes. And yes, I do realize that may seem weird for me to shit on Amazon considering I have an Amazon affiliate link at timesuckpodcast.com that you can click, be redirected back to Amazon to do your shopping and support the show for no extra charge. However, just like you couldn’t play ball with the Catholic Church in medieval Europe unless you wanted to be financially crippled or killed - it’s very difficult to function very well as, essentially, a tech business in Northern Idaho and not swing through Amazon from time to time. Is what it is!

III. Intro to the Spanish Inquisition A. RECAP: Okay - so now we’ve set up a little inquisitional context.

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Alright - now for that recap.

To recap: it really sucked to not be Catholic if you didn’t care for being burned alive. The end.

No.

After a few initial centuries of figuring out what it meant to be a Christian, and how to organize as a new religion in the first centuries after the death of Christ, a group of Christian Orthodox believers living within the Roman Empire began to model their church structure after Roman government, setting up church administrative hierarchy complete with bishops in many of the major Roman cities including Rome itself. Due primarily to Rome’s importance in the Roman empire, the Roman bishop became the head bishop - a position that morphed into the Pope, and his church morphed into the Vatican after Emperor Constantine transitioned the official religion of the Roman Empire into the Christian Empire and he also helped add structure and governmental support to the new church through the Council of Nicea. Successive emperors, minus Julian the Apostate, were also Christian and they supported and strengthened the early church.

And again. I know this is an overview that skips over a lot of important councils and figures who did this or did that but this episode is already overly detail heavy - don’t need to clutter it up further.

And then, once the Church has risen to a position of extreme power and influence - it fights to keep it! That’s what the powerful and influential almost always do, isn’t it? In order to keep a stranglehold on being the only official religion of the most powerful empire in the world, it did what it felt it needed to do to squash out competition.

There were crusades designed to exterminate Muslims and sometimes also Jews and Pagans in foreign lands and expand various king’s and queen’s empires. Soldiers were essentially told that God will forgive all their wartime sins because they were fighting for the glory of God! So kill ‘em all!

And then, sometimes afterwards and sometimes alongside the Crusades, of which there many - there were Inquisitions designed to squash out opposing theological thoughts from within the existing boundaries of nations under the influence of the Vatican. And the first formalized, wide-scale Papal decreed inquisition was used to wipe the Cathars out of Southern France in the 13th century.

C. History of the Iberian Peninsula: Now - let’s give a brief history of the land now known as the nation of Spain to establish why the Spanish Inquisition, a prolonged and especially brutal inquisition, kicked off two centuries later. Let’s dive into a Timesuck Timeline that will keep right on marching into the Spanish Inquisition.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE INTRO

IV. Timesuck Inquisition Timeline

1. 1.4 million years ago: 1.4 million years ago - let’s start there. The earliest record of hominids living in Western Europe has been found in the Spanish cave of Atapuerca; a flint tool found there dates from 1.4 million years ago, and early human fossils date to roughly 1.2 million years ago.

Before the Roman conquest the major cultures along the Mediterranean coast were the Iberians, the Celts in the interior and north-west, the Lusitanians in the west, and the Tartessians in the southwest. The seafaring Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks successively established trading settlements along the eastern and southern coast.

2. 9th Century BCE: The first Greek colonies, such as Emporion (modern Empúries), were founded along the northeast coast in the 9th century BCE, leaving the south coast to the Phoenicians. The peoples whom the Romans met at the time of their invasion in what is now known as Spain were the Iberians, inhabiting an area stretching from the northeast part of the Iberian Peninsula through the southeast. The Celts mostly inhabited the inner and north-west part of the peninsula.

3. 6th Century BCE: The Greeks are responsible for the name Iberia, apparently after the river Iber (Ebro). In the 6th century BCE, the Carthaginians arrived in Iberia, struggling first with the Greeks, and shortly after, with the newly arriving Romans for control of the western Mediterranean. Their most important colony was Carthago Nova, which is the Latin name of modern- day Cartagena (Cart-ah-gene-uh). 4. 2nd century BCE: Hispania was the name used for the Iberian Peninsula under Roman rule from the 2nd century BCE. The populations of the peninsula were gradually culturally Romanized, and local leaders were admitted into the Roman aristocratic class.

5. 1st through 3rd centuries CE: Christianity made it’s way to Spain around the time the Romans showed up. Biblically, according to Romans 15:28, Roman Catholicism and Christianity as a whole began in Spain when St. Paul went to Hispania to teach the gospel there after visiting the Romans along the way. Attempts were made from the late 1st century to the late 3rd century CE to establish the new Christian church in the Iberian peninsula.

6. 5th Century CE: After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, parts of Hispania came under the control of the Germanic tribes of Vandals, Suebi (Sweh-bee), and the Visigoths (viz-i-goths)

In the years following 410 CE Spain was taken over by the Visigoths (viz-i-goths) who had been converted to Arian Christianity around 419 - Arianism being another early competitor to the modern Catholic Church.

Arianism asserts the belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who was begotten by God the Father at a point in time, is distinct from the Father, and is therefore subordinate to the Father.

The Visigothic (viz-i-gothic) Kingdom established their capital in Toledo - Spain not Ohio - Ohio popping up right now would really add an unnecessary level of confusion to this Suck.

Visigoth (viz-i-goth) rule led to the expansion of Arianism in Spain. Then, in 587, Reccared, the Visigothic (viz-i-gothic) king at Toledo, was converted to Catholicism and launched a movement to unify doctrine. Catholics rejoiced! And everyone else trembled with fear.

Within a few years of Reccared’s conversion - surprise, surprise!!! - the followers of Arianism were labeled as heretics! That’s how you do that shit! Along with local Jews, Arians were forced to convert to Catholicism or be tossed out of the country or, you know, be savagely tortured and/or killed which probably meant some burning.

If marshmallows and chocolate bars would’ve existed back then, I wonder if anyone would’ve cooked up a little s’more while some heretic was being burned alive? It does seem like a waste of a perfectly good fire not to cook up some snacks. Maybe get some shish-ka-bob action going? Maybe lean a little grille on the side of the wood pile, cook up a steak?

And then, in the late 7th century Islamic Arabs came and fucked everything for the Iberian Catholics! Damn it! They were having so much fun introducing people to the peaceful teachings of Christ and then burning them if they didn’t jump on board!

7. 689 CE: In 689 CE the Moors- those North African Muslim nomads - conquered Melilla - a city geographically located on the northwestern coast of Africa, but culturally connected to the Iberian peninsula for many centuries. It’s actually a part of Spain today. Did you know that Spain possessed a tiny amount of land on the Northern Coast of Africa? Yup. I didn’t. They have two little cities in Northern Africa and Melilla is one of them. It's less than five square miles in size, with just under 80,000 people living there. And it is very close to the rest of Spain. The straight of Gibraltar - the gateway to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic - that little opening that separates Europe from Africa is less than 20 miles across.

8. 709 CE: By 709 CE the Arabs had conquered Ceuta - the other Spanish city located in Africa. It’s a tiny bit bigger, just over seven square miles in size and just over 80,000 people.

9. 711 CE: And in 711, the Muslims headed into Europe. They were sick of wearing robes and turbans and wanted to feel out what life was like in the land of the banana hammock! They wanted to oil their bodies, lay out by the pool, and wear tiny swimsuits that almost fully contain their balls, as one does in Southern Europe.

But for real, they headed north in 711 CE. They crossed the Straight of Gibraltar and started taking control of much of the Iberian peninsula.

10. 718 CE: By 718, Muslims dominated a lot of modern day Spain. And then, over the next several centuries, the Muslims ruled over a lot of Spain under various Caliphs who were constantly fighting various Christian Kingdoms trying to push into their territory. There was the Umayyad Caliphate and then there was the Abbasid Caliphate - these Muslims now ruling a good deal of the peninsula in the southern half.

And, while the Muslims pushed the Christians out of much of Spain, they never pushed them out of all of it. There were still the Christian kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, Castille, Navarre, Aragon, and Portugal in the central, northern, and western portions of the peninsula.

And those medieval Christian nations fought a lot with each other. It really is crazy how many different ways Europe has been carved up over the years. We just don’t have any equivalent in North America. There were the American Indians, and then a few European colonial powers laying claim to lands they generally never governed in any real, meaningful way. Like, a lot of American Indians lived their whole lives on land claimed by some European power and never met a single European person. They never even knew what new laws they were supposed to follow.

But the medieval peasants - they knew what was going on. Fuck their lives sucked! One day you’re living under this Muslim Caliph and then the next you’re living under this Christian king. And then you’re living under a different king the next year who practices a different version of Christianity. And then you have some asshole Lord or Baron to deal with, and then a new Lord or a New Baron. This fuckhead is ransacking your village one year and then some other asshole is storming your castle the next year. And when no one is ransacking anything you have religious persecutions, every disease is incurable, no one owns a microwave, no one is selling Gold Bond Body Powder, zero air conditioning, no bug spray, no birth control, no maple bars, lots of doctors who have serious hankerings for amputations and leeches - fuck all of that! So, so, so thankful to live in the modern world. And then, to make life even worse back then - there were inquisitions on top of all of that!

And things were especially turbulent on the Iberian peninsula in the middle ages.

11. 10th century: In the 10th century, things got a tiny bit better for awhile. Especially tolerant Muslim leaders - the Caliphate of Córdoba - passed laws regarding religious tolerance allowing Jews, Christians, and Muslims to live in peace together. Non- muslims would have to pay a special tax to the Caliph - but, if they paid it they were allowed to live their lives which was a good deal for the day. But the good deal didn’t last long.

12. 12th century: Things get worse again in the 12th century, when a new, not as tolerant caliphate comes to power - the Almohad Caliphate - and suddenly Christians and Jews were fleeing for their lives.

13. 1492 CE: And then, after centuries of battle between various Christian kingdoms and Muslim caliphates on the Iberian peninsula, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella show up! And they wrapped up this incredibly long period of fighting the Moors, this centuries long effort by Christian rulers to repel the Muslims back the fuck out of the peninsula - a period referred to by historians as the Reconquista that finally ended in 1492 after a big, bloody decade long military campaign against the Muslim Moors.

The same year that Columbus sailed across the Atlantic, kicking off the European colonization of the Americas. At the beginning of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s campaign, there were approximately half a million Moors in present-day Southern Spain. Over the next several years, 100,000 would die or be enslaved, 200,000 got the fuck out never to return, and the other 200,000 were still living in the area.

And King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were not as tolerant to their remaining non-Christian citizens as the previous Muslim rulers had been to Christians and other non-Muslims. Also in 1492, the entire Jewish community of the peninsula, roughly 200,000 people, would be thrown the fuck out by Ferdinand and Isabella. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Inquisition started in 1478, and before we head back there, we need to talk about the new monarchs for a second.

a) Who were King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella? And who were this monarchial duo!?! Well, honestly, like so many of the things we have to touch on for context in this episode, they deserve their own Suck. Whenever I dig into medieval history - I begin to understand why Dan Carlin ends up doing like fifteen hours of podcasting on one historical event. There is what feels like a limitless amount of exposition you can get caught up in.

Remember all those little Christian Kingdoms in the Northern portion of the Iberian Peninsula that had been fighting the Moors for centuries?

Well, in 1469, Ferdinand of Aragon marries Isabella of Castile, thus beginning a cooperative reign that would eventually unite all the dominions of Spain and elevate the nation to a dominant world power.

Ferdinand and Isabella incorporated a number of independent Spanish dominions into their kingdom. In 1492, when the reconquest of Granada from the Moors was completed, they had everything but Portugal locked up! And Spain has held dominion over the vast majority of the Iberian peninsula to this day. And, they’re still largely a Catholic country.

Lately, as with most modern nations, regular church attendance has dropped significantly, but Spain is so Catholic, contraception was still actually illegal until 1977. And that can be traced directly back to the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, two joint monarchs so Catholic they were actually called, the Catholic Monarchs. Google, “the Catholic Monarchs” - and they come up first.

They were second cousins back when cousin fucking was actually encouraged and not shunned. Lot of cousin fuckers seem to be piling up in the Suck. Not being as smart as Einstein, they weren’t first cousin fuckers, but, they were intelligent enough to get a little of that second cousin action we all crave and desire.

Ferdinand was only seventeen when they got married, and Isabella was sixty-on. If it’s fair for the men, it’s fair for the women! And she would bear him twelve children, her womb itself actually falling out along with their last child.

No, that’s ridiculous. He was seventeen and she was eighteen. She was the heir apparent to the Kingdom of Castile (Cass- steel) and he was the heir apparent to the Kingdom of Aragon. And their union was the beginning of modern day Spain even if technically Aragon and Castile (Cass-steel) were still separate kingdoms. Constitutionally the areas that made up Spain -Castile (Cass-steel), Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, and then Granada when it was taken over - they were all separate entities. But, through their marriage and then through their children those areas worked, essentially, as one unit. Their grandson, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, would officially unify their Spanish empire years later.

B. Reasons for launching Inquisition: And why did these two monarchs launch what would become the most infamous inquisition the world had ever seen? Well, there are a lot of theories about this one that historians speculate about but to me it seems pretty simple.

1. For one thing, there is the obvious answer - because they were both super Catholic and they were in charge. And when you were Catholic and powerful you wanted to keep your power and an inquisition was one of many tools you could use to do that.

2. Second - it was in in their best interest to have cultural consistency. They were the first monarchs of what would be known as the Spanish Empire, and they were coming out of an era of so much Game of Thrones type turmoil. They were jointly ruling two kingdoms that had recently been composed of other kingdoms and there had been centuries of constant change.

3. Third - they were ambitious. These are the monarchs who launched Columbus and paved the way for Europe’s entrance into the colonization and epic plunder of the New World. And, in order to not only stabilize but expand their empire, you needed everyone to be on the same team. And that team was the Catholic team.

And so, they launched an inquisition to culturally homogenize and unify their new land to strengthen their new empire which would allow them to colonize and then homogenize other lands and strengthen it more.

Fourth - you have to allow for the possibility that they did genuinely believe that through an inquisition, through forced adherence to Catholicism, they were doing God’s work and saving souls. Do I think that was their primary motivation? No, I don’t. I think the primary motivation was political, but that is just my opinion.

And there are A LOT of other possibilities - if we went over all of them, pretty soon I’d be saying, “…and 33rd, there was this guy doing that thing and this lady was pushing this agenda…” Anti-semitism was a factor - there was anti-semitism ALL the time going on Christian Europe - the Jews were constantly falling somewhere in between being tolerated and being persecuted. There was fear of another Ottoman invasion. There was general bigotry by people who were Catholic against people who weren’t Catholic. There were political rivals that could be disposed of through an inquisition. Etc, etc, etc. We don’t need to dig into all of that.

What was really interesting about the Spanish Inquisition is that they were the one’s who launched it. That was a new thing. This idea didn’t come from Rome, it came from Spain. Came from the throne! The throne using Rome to control it’s population instead of the other way around.

That’s right. This Inquisition, unlike the previous one we talked about to shut down the Cathars, was not launched by the Papacy. Ferdinand and Isabella launched this one themselves and then the Pope went along with it. The Church was more than happy to help - they also wanted to spread their religious empire and the new emerging Spanish super power made a wonderful ally.

So, Pope Sixtus IV signed off, and shit got real crazy starting in 1478. Pope Sixtus, by the way - pretty famous pope. His accomplishments as pope included building the Sistine Chapel and the creation of the Vatican Archives - pretty significant accomplishments. He was a patron of the arts, the group of artists that he brought together, introduced the Early Renaissance into Rome with the first masterpieces of the city's new artistic age.

4. 1478: So, 1478 - this is when shit really kicks off. Fray Alonso de Ojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville, has the Queen’s ear, and he convinces her that there are a bunch of people in the kingdom who pretend to be Catholic - but really they’re Jews. And there could be a lot of ‘em. And God knows what they get to talking about when they hold their secret Jewish meetings. They probably talk about how tasty Christian babies are or they talk about what demons they’ve been conjuring recently to take down the monarchy. Those are probably not accurate examples BUT - point is, he’s worried about secret Jews.

Then, also in 1478 - the Archbishop of Seville - he actually writes up and delivers a report to Queen Isabella corroborating the friars concerns! Bunch of secret Jews hiding around, working their Jew magic, using it against the kingdom.

Now - who knows how truly concerned Ferdinand and Isabella were when they got this report. You can make the historical argument that they were faithful Catholics truly suddenly worried about an attack on the national faith from within their borders OR they could’ve thought - here’s a good excuse to create a culture that will have more deep-rooted loyalty to a Catholic throne OR some combination of the two.

Here’s what they did next. They requested a papal bull - an official edict issued by a pope - establishing an inquisition in Spain in 1478 in response to the practice of Judaism. And, in early 1478, Pope Sixtus IV grants a bull permitting the monarchs to select and appoint two or three priests over forty years of age to act as inquisitors. This is a little baby decree he gives them. Try and give ‘em a little bit of inquisiting to do, but not let shit get out of hand. And, I say, he granted this, but also - he didn’t have a real choice. If the pope turns these powerful monarchs down, well, that might not be very good at all for the Pope’s future. He wants to make this new, burgeoning Catholic empire happy. And, he was threatened with some bad shit if he didn’t do it. There’s also that.

Most historians agree that King Ferdinand pressured Pope Sixtus IV to agree to an Inquisition controlled by the monarchy by threatening to withdraw military support at a time when the Turks were a threat to Rome. Also, the pope supposedly issued a bull to stop the Inquisition but was pressured into withdrawing it.

“Let us weed out who the fuck we want to weed out or, when those Muslims come a knocking at your door, you’ll have to try and pray ‘em away because we’re not gonna have our troops help you.”

Friar Tomás de Torquemada assumed the title of Inquisitor- General. His quest was to rid Spain of all heresy. The Spanish chronicler, Sebastián de Olmedo, called him "the hammer of heretics, the light of Spain, the savior of his country, the honor of his order. And, the drawings I’ve seen of this guy are exactly what I expected. This dude would’ve have for sure executed me for heresy. One smart-ass remark, one wrong twinkle in my eye, and I get tortured and killed. He really, really, doesn’t look like someone whose bad side you would want to be in. He puts off a serial killer vibe, and in a way, that’s exactly what he’d become. Instead of choking prostitutes in a van for personal satisfaction, he would be torturing and burning heretics for, well, just a different kind of personal satisfaction.

5. 1 November 1478: Well, having two or three inquisitors isn’t good enough for Ferdinand and Isabella. On November 1st, 1478, Sixtus published another Papal bull giving Ferdinand and Isabella exclusive authority to name new inquisitors in their kingdoms. Uh oh.

6. February 6th, 1481: For some reason, maybe because they didn’t have text and email back then and it took longer to meet and agree on stuff and put plans into action, the first auto-da- fé (Auto- dah-fay) was held in Seville on February 6th, 1481 and six people were burned alive for being heretics. From there, the Inquisition grew rapidly in the Kingdom of Castile. By 1492, tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities.

The auto-da-fé was the the final step in the Inquisition process. It involved a Catholic Mass, prayer, a public procession of those found guilty, and a reading of their sentences.

An Inquisition usually began with the public proclamation of a grace period of 40 days. Anyone who was guilty or knew of someone who was guilty was urged to confess. If the accused were charged, they were presumed guilty. So that’s fun. You could be like, “I saw Jane holding some kind of Jewish ritual in her house last night. And then I heard her say that she hated Jesus! AND - she fucked two sailors last week when her husband was out of town.” And they’d be like, “Guilty!” And Jane, would be like, “But he’s a liar!” “Prove it in court Jane! For now - you’re guilty you disgusting Jewish slut!” I’m simplifying, but not by much. Guilty until proven innocent - it’s because of shit like this that “innocent until proven guilty” was such a big deal for Americans when they founded the United States. It was somewhat of a foreign concept.

Officials could apply torture during the trial to get the info they felt they needed from the accused. We’ll be talking about that soon. Inquisitors were required to hear and record all testimony. Proceedings were to be kept secret, and the identity of witnesses was not known to the accused.

After the trial, officials proclaimed the prisoner's sentence and administered it in an auto-da-fé. The auto-da-fé was not an impromptu event, but thoroughly orchestrated. Preparations began a month in advance, and only occurred when the inquisition authorities believed there were enough prisoners in a given community or city. The ritual took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours with ecclesiastical and civil authorities in attendance.

Bordering the city's plaza, an all-night vigil would be held with prayers, ending in Mass at daybreak and a breakfast feast prepared for all who joined in.

That’s so weird to me. “Gonna be a long day everyone! Gonna be a lot of build up to a horrific execution, so, let’s load up on some breakfast! C’mon - crepes, breakfast burritos, maybe some eggs benny - let’s load up! Not gonna get a chance to grab a meal again until after those heretics are burned to a crisp. Speaking of that - let’s fry up some chicken! Chicken and waffles, why not? It’s a breakfast feast!”

The ceremony of public penitence then began with a procession of prisoners, who bore elaborate visual symbols on their garments and bodies. They served to identify the specific acts of treason of the accused, whose identities were kept secret until the very last moment. In addition, the prisoners usually had no idea what the outcome of their trial had been or their sentencing.

How fucking nervous are you while everyone else is hitting the breakfast buffet? They’re loading up on orange muffins and bacon and you don’t know if you’re gonna be whipped a bit and then allowed to go home or burned alive! Wow.

The prisoners were taken outside the city walls to a place called “the burning place”. That’s fun. There the sentences were read. Prisoners who were acquitted or whose sentence was suspended would fall on their knees in relief - yeah, I bet they did! Lot of thankful tears in that situation. The condemned would be punished in front of everyone. Artistic representations of the auto-da-fé usually depict physical punishment such as whipping, a variety of torture methods we’ll talk about soon, and, of course, the ol’ standard, the classic, the lead single off of the hit inquisition album - the burning at the stake.

7. 1483: In 1483, in addition to the inquisition, Ferdinand starts kicking Jews out of Southern Spain as we said earlier. More inquisitions are held in more towns. They’d set up in town and a new court would be announced with a thirty-day grace period for confessions and the gathering of accusations by neighbors.

Evidence that was used to identify a crypto-Jew - those secret Jews! - included the absence of chimney smoke on Saturdays (a sign the family might secretly be honoring the Sabbath) or the buying of many vegetables before Passover or the purchase of meat from a converted butcher. The court employed physical torture to extract confessions. Crypto-Jews were allowed to confess and do penance, although those who relapsed were burned at the stake.

Interesting note on the evidence they would use to find crypto Jews. Sometimes, people living in Spain at this time really did adhere to Jewish customs and we’re of Jewish heritage and literally had no idea. They’d get killed for adhering to a custom they didn’t know was Jewish because they’re parents or grandparents actually were Jewish but then, during some changing of the guard, in the interest of self-preservation, stopped adhering to the Jewish faith but still adhered to Jewish meal and diet and other types of customs. Every family has their favorite meals and little traditions, right? Well, what if you’re tradition of a big family dinner on Saturday, a tradition that really was JUST a family dinner - suddenly got you killed for being a “Crypto jew heretic”? That really happened to a lot of people. Killed over religious paranoia? Think about how many people have died - have died horrible, horrible deaths - due to nothing more than religious paranoia? What a sad fucking waste of life.

8. 1484: New pope shows up in 1484 - Pope Innocent VIII, and, he’s not a big fan of all the heretic torture and burning that’s been going on in 1484. He feels it’s a bit much. Maybe not the best way to bring people into the Faith. The Vatican has been getting a lot of letters sent in from Catholics saying that shit has been getting out of hand and that a lot of the people being tortured and killed really are good Catholics. They haven’t done anything.

So, he issues a new decree letting Catholics in Spain know that if they are accused to heresy - they can appeal directly to the Vatican to have their case looked at by someone other than a bloodthirsty Spanish sadist.

Well, King Ferdinand doesn’t like that. This is his and Isabella’s circus and no one gets to fuck with it. So, in December 1484 he decrees death and confiscation for anyone trying to make use of such procedures without royal permission. He’d issue a similar decree again in 1509 just to remind everyone - “Go ahead and tattle on me to the Pope if you want, but if I catch ya, I’m gonna kill ya.”

People started getting pissed off about the inquisitions and there was a revolt against them in Aragon in 1485, when one of the inquisidors gets murdered in 1485 - the public turns back in favor of the inquisitions.

Idiots.

9. 1480 - 1530: The Inquisition was extremely active between 1480 and 1530. Different sources give different estimates of the number of trials and executions in this period; some estimate about 2,000 executions, the great majority being of alleged Jewish origin. Old Church documents put 91.6% of those judged in Valencia between 1484 and 1530 and 99.3% of those judged in Barcelona between 1484 and 1505 as being of Jewish origin.

Now - if you wondering why some Jewish people were tortured and killed and others were tossed out of the country - I found this very interesting. Under the law - only people claiming to be Christians could be subjected to an inquisition. If you were openly Jewish, you couldn’t be. However, you could be thrown the fuck out. So, some Jewish people, and some Muslim people would claim to be Christian to avoid being kicked out. Also, at various times, there were unfavorable taxes imposed upon non- Christians. So, you had financial incentive to claim to be Catholic and then you just hoped no one ratted you out.

10. 1502: In 1502, the inquisitional courts shift focus a little bit, and they start looking for closet Muslims instead of secret Jews. This happens after a decree on February 14, 1502 where Muslims in Granada suddenly had to choose between conversion to Christianity or expulsion. This goes on for many, many years. 11. 1560: In the tribunal of Granada, between 1560 and 1571, 82% of those accused were Moriscos - Spanish moors who’d accepted Christian baptism.

12. 16th century: Also, in the 16th century, Protestants began showing up in Spain. After Martin Luther’s reformation in 1517, suddenly there are all sorts of new types of Christians. And guess what? Even though they’re not Catholic - they are eligible for inquisitions! Hooray!!!

Homosexuals were targeted as well.

The first sodomite was burned by the Inquisition in Valencia in 1572, and those accused included 19% clergy, 6% nobles, 37% workers, 19% servants, and 18% soldiers and sailors.

Nearly all of almost 500 cases of sodomy between persons concerned the relationship between an older man and an adolescent, often by coercion, with only a few cases where the couple were consenting homosexual adults. About 100 of the total involved allegations of child abuse. Adolescents were generally punished more leniently than adults, but only when they were very young (under ca. 12 years) or when the case clearly concerned rape did they have a chance to avoid punishment altogether. As a rule, the Inquisition condemned to death only those sodomites over the age of 25 years. As about half of those tried were under this age, it explains the relatively small percentage of death sentences.

13. The New World: And, the Spanish Inquisition was limited to just Spain - wherever Spain went - Latin and South America for example - the Inquisition went with it.

In Mexico City during the 1590s, a wave of persecutions stretched out over a decade. Its victims included Don Luis de Carvajal, a colonial governor of New Mexico, and his family.

45 suspected heretics were executed by way of Inquisition in Mexico in 1601 alone.

14. 19th century: Later, all the way forward in the 18th and 19th centuries, Freemasons were targeted as well - those boys club members we talked about in Bonus Timesuck 15 and Timesuck 69.

The Roman Catholic Church regarded Freemasonry as heretical since about 1738 and the suspicion of Freemasonry was potentially a capital offense. Spanish Inquisition records reveal two prosecutions in Spain and only a few more throughout the Spanish Empire. In 1815, Francisco Javier de Mier y Campillo, the Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition and the Bishop of Almería, suppressed Freemasonry and denounced the lodges as "societies which lead to atheism, to sedition and to all errors and crimes.” He then instituted a purge during which Spaniards could be arrested on the charge of being "suspected of Freemasonry”. 15. 1818: In 1818 - Manuel Santiago Vivar, tried in Córdoba , was the last person tried for being a crypto-Jew

16. 26 July 1826: And then on July 26th, 1826 the last inquisition was held in Spain. It condemned and executed the school teacher Cayetano Ripoll for teaching heretical religious principles. The Church wanted him burned, but, civil authorities chose to hang him instead.

And that takes us out, of this Timesuck Timeline.

PAUSE TIMESUCK TIMELINE

V. Segue into Super Scary Stuff

Alright, before I conclude my thoughts on all of this - let’s dig into to what you know you really wanted to hear about with this Suck - torture. That’s what the Inquisition is really infamous for. The horrible things done to these poor people for hundreds of years. Let’s take a look, with some Super Scary Stuff.

PAUSE SUPER SCARY STUFF INTRO

VI. Super Scary Stuff

To elicit the confessions the inquisitors were looking for, the accused were tortured. Tell them what they want to hear, admit that your mother or father or neighbor or whoever is also a secret Jew or a secret Muslim or a blasphemer or a sodomite or whatever - and the pain will stop. Give us the name of your rabbi! Give us the name of your Imam! Admit that you are no Christian, but instead worship Nimrod! Say it! Hail Nimrod! Admit your devotion to the Great Space Sasquatch Chupacabra thingy! Admit your allegiance to the giant God with suns for eyes who rides the black unicorn! The one who holds the Alpha and Omega in his ballsack and Hell in his butthole!

Or is it Lucifina, the great seductress - Satan’s Sister - is that whose curvy body you bow before!?! Say it heretic! Say Hail Lucifina!

And, if you think, “Well why didn’t people just say what the inquisitors wanted them to say to stop the torture?” It’s because, if they admitted to heresy, there was a real chance that will the torture would stop, they would also be burned alive.

Now technically - a confession obtained under torture was not valid. The inquisitors were supposed to wait a day to get the confession again when the accused was not being tortured. But, you know damn well they would just be tortured again if they didn’t fess up, so what’s the difference? And I just don’t believe all the historical accounts, accounts taken by the torturers, of how this all went down. You know there were cases when the rules weren’t followed at all and it just became pure, unadulterated sadism. And, before ever giving a confession, a lot of people died from the torture.

So what methods of torture did these priests implement?

A. Starvation! Starvation was a torture tactic! I feel like starvation doesn’t get taken as seriously as other forms of torture. It doesn’t elicit the same type of fear as other, more extreme forms of torture like the rack or some shit, but, think about just being chained to the wall, which was a thing, or, stuck in a cage, and just simply not being given food for days on end - how bad would that make you want to confess. I don’t think I’ve ever gone one full day - ever in my life, without some kind of food. I hate it when you have a dental or doctor’s appointment and you’re not supposed to eat for like 12 hours before you go in. Whenever that happens, I always eat as close to 12 hours from when I’m supposed to go in as I possibly can and then I’m still crazy hungry by the time I can finally eat again. That’s half of one day. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to go several days with no food.

I feel like at the five day mark, tops, I’d start confessing to some shit if they brought a steak over and set just out of my reach.

B. Foot Roasting: Another torture method was called foot roasting, and, it’s exactly as bad as it sounds. And remember, these are all things being done to people who haven’t been convicted of anything - they’ve just been accused.

The alleged heretic would sit or lay behind a wooden rack device, their bare feet secured in stocks. The soles of the feet were basted with lard or oil and slowly barbecued over a brazier - a container for used to hold burning coals. A screen could be interposed between the feet and the coals to modulate the exposure, while a bellows - a device used to shoot out a blast of air - controlled the intensity of the flame. Some victims of this treatment were literally driven insane by the intensity of the pain.

Variants included placing slivers of hot coals between the toes, or suspending the prisoner head-downward and placing hot coals directly on the soles. Foot roasting remains a popular technique of torture to this day, though the modern variant typically makes use of a clothes iron applied to the soles, optionally complemented by the use of a soldering iron or electric wood-burning pencil to explore the delicate webbing between the toes.

Such fun times.

C. Strappado: Another form of torture that was actually developed for Inquisitions was the Strappodo. In one version, the hands of the accused were tied behind their back and then a rope was looped over a brace in the ceiling of the chamber or attached to a pulley. Then the subject was raised until he was hanging from his arms. This alone sometimes caused the shoulders to be pulled out of their sockets.

You ever dislocated your shoulder or even had a mild shoulder sprain? That shit will hurt for weeks. It’s fucking terrible. The worst.

Sometimes, the torturers added a series of drops, jerking the subject up and down. Weights could be added to the ankles and feet to make the hanging even more painful by pulling your body even further against your shoulder socket. And, if this didn’t kill you, it was gonna fuck you up for life. It’s not like the physical therapists back then or surgeons specializing in rotator cuff repair. Even if you don’t confess and get let go and don’t get burned at the stake - you’re not gonna be skipping stones like you used to down by the pond after that one. Hell no.

D. The Rack: The rack was another well-known torture method associated with inquisition. The subject had his hands and feet tied or chained to rollers at one or both ends of a wooden or metal frame. The torturer turned the rollers with a handle, which pulled the chains or ropes in increments and stretched the subject's joints, often until they dislocated.

Not just shoulders this time! No sir! Hips, knees, elbows - all that shit could have the ligaments shredded. If the torturer continued turning the rollers, the accused's arms and legs could actually be torn off. Often, simply seeing someone else being tortured on the rack was enough to make another person confess.

While the accused heretics were on strappado or the rack, inquisitors often applied other torture devices to their bodies. These included heated metal pincers, thumbscrews, boots, or other devices designed to burn, pinch or otherwise mutilate their hands, feet or bodily orifices.

Although mutilation was technically forbidden, long before the Spanish Inquisition, in 1256, Pope Alexander IV decreed that inquisitors could clear each other from any wrongdoing that they might have done during torture sessions, so, they did what they wanted to.

E. The Judas Cradle: There was the Judas Cradle, also known as Judas chair, a torture device invented in 16th century Spain for inquisition purposes. This shit is very rough.

A naked victim was forced to sit on top of sharp-pointed pyramid seat. The pointy end would go into the anus or vagina of the victim.

The point was then inserted into anus or vagina of the person, and then the person was slowly lowered by a system of ropes. The Inquisitors would then pull ropes attached the victim’s limbs to slowly force the point deeper into the person’s orifice. If this was kept up for several hours, the victim would end up impaled by the device. You could quite literally be ripped a new asshole by this thing.

F. Newton’s Orbs: There was a device known as Newton’s Orbs where a man would have to stand facing a wooden rack. He’d be tied to it at the waist and at the legs, securing him tightly to the rack and then his testicales would be pushed through a small hole in the wood. Two metal balls on strings would swing down and hit his testicles, one metal ball hitting the right and then a second hitting the left and then the strings pulled back to have the balls hit the accused again and again and again - not hard enough to rupture them, but hard enough to cause the victim to vomit. In some cases this would go on for days, the alleged heretic passing back forth between consciousness and unconsciousness.

There was also a women’s only torture device. Jupiter’s Twist.

G. Jupiter’s Twist: With Jupiter’s Twist, similar to Newton’s Orbs, the accused would be tied to a wooden rack, facing it. This time, the accused breasts were exposed with two holes so that inquisitors could do what they wanted on the other side.

A long, sharp, ivory needle-like stick would be inserted through either one or both of the heretic’s nipples, and then, the priests would just use the leverage provided by the strong piece of ivory to slowly twist the nipple, sometimes making it up to five full rotations before the nipple would completely dislocate from the breast at which point the accused would often be forced to eat it.

Another popular torture device is known as the preposterous lie. It’s a device employed by me where I trick the listener into believing horrific nonsense, such as the Newton’s Orbs and the Jupiter’s Twist stories. Those are ridiculous. But - to be fair - not more horrific than other real torture methods.

H. Spanish Donkey: The Spanish Donkey was a real one. And it was just as awful as Jupiter’s Twist. Victims would be forced to sit on a wooden wedge, sometimes covered in spikes, with their feet left dangling on either end of the “saddle.” Sometimes, weights would be added to the victim’s feet. This device could then potentially cut a person down the middle. Fuccccckkkkk!!

I. Knee Splitter: And then there was the knee splitter. This was a terrifying device that resembled the gaping jaw of razor-toothed creature. It worked as a vice; the victim's leg would be placed in between two rows of spikes and then those two rows of spikes would be mechanically drawn closer and closer together, driving the spikes into the front and the back of the knee simultaneously.

People wouldn’t die from this, but they would be permanently crippled, and rendered useless to society for the rest of their sad, medieval lives.

And that is enough for today’s Super Scary Stuff.

PAUSE SUPER SCARY STUFF OUTRO

VII. Conclusions. A. No Idiots of the Internet today. Boo! Boo! I know. It’s terrible. I just wasn’t feeling it with this one. Needed a break. I’ll bring it back next week with Gary Ridgeway. Gotta make you miss it here and there or you’ll just take it for granted!

So, crazy stuff right? So many people died or were crippled or, at the very least, falsely accused and tortured because some 15th century monarchs were worried about Jews and Muslims rising up against their Catholic rule.

We’ll never know how many people were affected by the Inquisition - victim numbers vary wildly.

Estimated have ranged from 30,000 to 300,000 people died during the Spanish Inquisition. Some historians are convinced that millions died. The Catholic Church only admits to about 1300 people dying and 125,000 people being put on trial. Part of what make it hard to nail down numbers is due to the church only counting victims from church sanctioned inquisition tribunals when there also a lot of non- sanctioned tribunals doling out torture and murder over the years.

Makes you appreciate the whole innocent until proven guilty we have, right? It does for me. I get a little judgey like all humans do and when certain people are accused of certain crimes - like rape or pedophilia or child murder - that kind of shit - I get real inquisitional real quick. I want to put ‘em on the rack or put hot coals in between their toes. Maybe make ‘em sit on a Judas Chair or get out Newton’s Orbs or put a Jupiter’s Twist on them. And I want to do it right now!

Nope. Gotta give due process. We don’t want to ever kick off another round of inquisitions. And - another reminder of how bad the Jews had it throughout, basically, the entirety of European human history. We all know about the Holocaust - except Holocaust deniers who have gone to that unbelievably irrational flat Earther mental-place making it pointless to even try and reason with them - all of us who are rational historians know about the holocaust. But, turns out the Spanish Inquisition - another real low point for the Jewish people. A lot of historians believe that over 90% of the victims of the Spanish Inquisition were either of Jewish descent, were Jews, or, were thought to be Jews.

I’ve heard Christians joke around about the Jews being responsible for the death of Christ, but, that was only one dude. How many Jews have now been killed by supposed Christians? So many millions.

Another reminder why anti-semitism is a something to be taken seriously. Historically, anti-semitism has gotten way, way out of hand, many, many times.

Let’s get the Hell out of here. Time for some top five take aways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS

VIII. Top Five Takeaways 1. Number one. The first inquisitions took place a few hundred years before the Spanish Inquisitions - back in the 12th century. And then inquisitions continued all the way up to the 19th century. They had a good long run. Let’s hope they never make a comeback.

2. Number two. The Iberian Peninsula was a tough place to a live for a few thousand years. So many kingdoms. So much turnover. So much war. And then, when it finally achieved some sort of long lasting political stabilization, the inquisitions happened.

3. Number three. Birth control was illegal in Spain until 1977. That’s fucking crazy.

4. Number four. The Judas Cradle. That’s how some real people - as real as you or I met their fate. Your clothes are taken off, and then you’re forced to sit, naked, atop a sharp-pointed pyramid seat. Your butthole, or vagina is pressed down on the spiky tip. You sit on it like that. Naked. Not sure what would be worse for you ladies - butthole? I’m pretty sure butthole is worse. You seem much more reluctant to allow something to penetrate your butt than your vagina. Your vagina is designed for entry while your butthole isn’t. And then weights, added to your feet to slowly pull the tip deeper inside you, stretching you apart - are you cringing yet? Let’s not ever bring that back. As bad as being burned at the stake sounds - I think I tap out at the Judas Cradle and just beg to be burned.

5. Number five - new info. Was almost all of this episode utter bullshit? That’s what some Spanish historians are recently claiming.

The Hispanic Civilisation Foundation, a group of historians, academics, and Spanish nationalists, have created an organization to dispel what they consider to be historical myths about Spanish culture.

For more than 500 years, they say, the country’s past has been disfigured and distorted by the propaganda spread by its former opponents and rivals. The so-called leyenda negra – black legend – was spun by chroniclers in England and the Netherlands who supposedly sought to depict their Roman Catholic enemies as unusually cruel and bloodthirsty and to exaggerate the brutality of the Spanish empire and the Inquisition.

According to the foundation, Spaniards have spent far too long feeling guilty and ashamed of their past and worrying about how they are seen by the rest of the world.

They’re pissed about the way Spanish Conquisadors are viewed too.

They argues that Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro brought “a far more humanitarian system” to the Aztec and Inca empires they conquered, saying “Cortés and Pizarro went into territories that have been eulogised … but the Aztecs practised human sacrifice,” he says. “Cortés had no problem allying himself with those indigenous people who saw the Spanish as liberators from Aztec oppression. Things were even worse with the Incas, whose empire was very totalitarian.”

Alright. I see their point, but also, shut the fuck up. No one is pissed at modern Spaniards for what went on with the Aztecs or what went on during the Spanish Inquisition. But, they also happened! Don’t try to hide from it.

Why are you ashamed by that shit? I don’t understand people who identify that strongly with the dirty deeds of distant ancestors. If I found out that my great, great, great, great, grandpa was a slave owner, I wouldn’t think, “Ah shit, I have a lot of apologizing to do. I have to make this right!” No I don’t! It wasn’t me! I didn’t have shit to do with it, and, I was born poor - so I didn’t get a financial leg up because of it. I worry about the shit I do and have done, and, honestly, now as parent, what my kids do. If my dad kills someone next week I’m not gonna go apologize to the victim’s family. “Sorry. Tough break. I didn’t tell him to do it. I would’ve told him not to if I knew. He’s a loose cannon. Always has been. I’m not surprised but don’t yell at me. He’s a grown ass man - does what he wants!”

Why are these people worried about what others may think about certain ancestors? Different type of person I guess.

It is interesting how history works though - especially history before we were able to record it through video. So much of it is written by someone with an agenda that isn’t report the truth at all costs.

Well, I think it happened. And I think it was just as bad as I described today. And I think that’s it for this week’s Top Five Takeaways.

PAUSE TOP FIVE TAKEAWAYS OUTRO

IX. Closing Announcements A. Spanish Inquisition has been Sucked! So much torture. It was fun to dig back into European history. Gotta get some more world history. So fascinating to me how all of our nations were formed. So interesting how many cultures there are on this one big rock in space.

B. Don’t forget to grab my new album, Maybe I’m the Problem, on iTunes, Amazon, and Google Play if you’re a standup fan. It is available at all the usual digital suspects now. I’m very proud of it and the reviews so far have been outstanding!

C. Thanks to Harmony Vellekamp, Jesse Dobner, Lynze Cummins, Josh Krell, and the entire Timesuck team for their help and huge thanks to the Maddie “the Heater” Teater - Bojangles Research department official intern for doing some great research. Wouldn’t of known about the Judas Cradle without you.

Next week - Gary Ridgway! The Green River Killer, convicted of 49 murders that occurred between 1982 and 1998 in the Pacific Northwest - he’s supposedly confessed to over 70 murders, and thought to have killed over 90 people. He’s almost as bad as a Spanish Inquisitor!

According to wikipedia - he had a bed-wetting problem until he was 13, and his mother would wash his genitals after every episode. He would later tell defense psychologists that, as an adolescent, he had conflicting feelings of anger and sexual attraction toward his mother, and fantasized about killing her.

Interested in finding out if that is true. Looking forward to a serial killer suck? Is that weird to say? My brain is tired from the past several sucks - had some tough ones on the research side. Biographies are always a little more straight forward.

Thanks for following me on such a wide range of topics - that’s not how you’re supposed to do a podcast. It’s bad for marketing! Is it a history podcast? A true crime podcast? A paranormal podcast? What is it!?!

It’s Timesuck motherfucker. It’s following the path of curiosity about the world around us. And, to be honest, it tends to focus a wee bit more on the dark side of the world around us. Sorry! That’s just what I’m drawn to a little more I guess.

D. And now, let’s find out what you Suckers have been drawn to this past week, with some Timesucker Updates!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES INTRO

X. Timesucker Updates A. Shadow people update first! Always creepy. This one is from spooked Timesucker Grant Hudelson. Grant writes.

Hail suck master profit of nimrod. My brother and I have been listening to the suck for a few months now trying to catch up. We are farmers in California and the other night a was on the shadow people episode while irrigating at night. I was in the middle of a pitch black trying to get through it but I couldn’t. I know how you feel when you said that it freaked you out. Being alone at night surrounded by only trees and darkness waiting for the slow moving water with nothing to do but listen to you scare yourself sacred me. I had to wait until the next day to listen to the suck again because I don’t skip episodes. Thanks for making a community that i feel like I belong to. My brother and I talk about episodes every day and both comment on how we feel like we know you and are friends with you because you come into our ear holes and suck at us every day. Can’t wait to see you preform in Sacramento in a few weeks. We hope to finally meet the lord of suck even though we feel like we have been friends for a while now. Keep on sucking

B. And now, a sweet message from kind-hearted Timesucker Rachel Hoffman:

Hi there Dan,

Michigan Timesucker, Rachel, here to tell you how much of a difference you make. I had the opportunity to see your stand up show in Detroit in February, and you had the opportunity to have my very drunk boyfriend swoon over you. Since your show, I've marathoned Timesuck and listened to every episode while at my terrible desk job. You, dearest Dan, are the light in the dark mundane and monotonous days. Even when I don't think that I will be interested in a topic, I listen anyway and find myself endlessly amused. I have never thought of myself as a avid learner, but Timescuk has made me realized I may have a curiosity for knowledge.

Wow that was some sappy shit, but yeah, just keep doing what you're doing and thanks for allowing Bojangles' wicked self to beat knowledge into you. Hail Nimrod and also Lucifina, and what out for Chikatilo when he's feeling handsy.

P.S. Paul Bunyan might be a cool Timesuck for your Mid West timesuckers or since you have a love for the Irish accents, the Siege of Jadotville could be good one too. Rachel Hoffman

C. And now, some fan fiction from creative Sucker Grant Ritter:

What’s up señor suck! This isn’t an update but more of a story about an interesting discover that I made. I’ll start by saying that my grandfather was a HUGE Pootie and Juju fan. He owned every season of Pootie and Juju’s Magic Twinkle Hole on DVD, VHS, and oddly enough Laserdisc. He also owned every episode of the VERY short lived television show, Pootie and Juju’s Secret Silly Sin Slit, where through a mix of live action, animation, and psychedelia (think Who Framed Roger Rabbit meets your worst fucking nightmares) our dynamic duo travels through time and space to give historical naughties what for as only they can. But another thing he owned was every single P&J comic book. He owned every issue from the very first one published by Reverend Doctor Antwon Jackson Esquire The Third, to the very last one published by Jamal Jackson. Including the often glossed over “Silver Age” of P&J comics written by Antwon’s son and Jamal’s father; Reverend Doctor Antwon Jackson Esquire The Third Junior. But what many people forget about Pootie and Juju history is that Reverend Doctor Antwon Jackson Esquire The Third Junior was not always meant to be heir to the P&J empire, it was originally meant to be his older brother; Bill Jackson. When Reverend Doctor Antwon Jackson The Third Sr. became too ill to continue on with the comics, he appointed his oldest son to take over the production. Bill, however, only ever published one comic. A comic that was so universally hated that it temporarily halted production on any form of Pootie and Juju entertainment for over a year, and I have recently found that comic in my grandfathers house. The comic has since become known as “Pootie and Juju Issue Zero” in several P&J fan circles and it historically was only in circulation for less than one day. It only took 16 hours for the comic to be immediately removed from store shelves across the world, but the damage was already done. Nobody except for the seldom few who own the comic know the real title or the actual plot of it, except now. The title of the comic is “Pootie and Juju Issue 445: Pootie History X.” in which Pootie, no shit, joins the aryan brotherhood. Pootie and Juju were out on a lovely rollerblading spree, as they had done every Wednesday for years, when Pootie has a terrible accident. He or she had run into a harmless Mexican man, causing both of them to fall to the ground. The man was fine, but Pootie could not say as such. He or she had chosen to lead with their face onto the concrete, hitting their hit with a brutal thud, leaving them in a coma for many moons. Pootie awoke in a hospital with Juju right at their side. Juju could immediately tell that Pootie wasn’t as they were before the accident, they were short with just about anyone who worked at the hospital who didn’t have blond hair or blue eyes, they flat out ignored any nurses or doctors of color, and they got super into Ted Nudget and Charlie Daniels. In the days that followed, Pootie was sleeping later and later. No longer was he waking up at 5:45 am on the dot like they had FOR YEARS, but they were sleeping in until 11:12 am! Juju later discovers that the reason for this was because Pootie was sneaking out to participate in Neo-Nazi Rallies! Shock, Gasp, Horror! Juju went into Pooties room to investigate and found a poster of Adolf Hitler taking up the entirety of his wall, a long with roughly a shit ton of copies of Mein Kampf scattered around the room, almost so Pootie can read it in whatever part of the room he was in. When Juju confronted Pootie about this, they shouted “You sure do squawk a lot for a smelly brown person!” They went on to say “Put it in your lunch box n*****r!” Despite the fact that Juju was whiter than bird shit containing mostly sour cream that was dropped onto a perfectly clean toilet that was located on the sun. Juju was crushed, but Pootie gave Juju an ultimatum, “you’re either with us or you’re against us Shirley!” When Juju refused to join Pootie in his hate, Pootie mocked and insulted Juju, calling him “Jewlover” rather than his name. This was too much for Juju, he screamed “TOO LITTLE TOO DITTLE POOTIE!” and shoved Pootie onto the ground, causing them to hit their head once again. When they woke up, to Juju’s delight, Pootie was cured of his racist, bigoted, and hateful thoughts and went back to the loving and somewhat accepting Pootie that we all know and love. Just thought as a fellow P&J enthusiast that you’d enjoy to hear about the Pootie and Juju issue that almost singlehandedly ended the P&J series. I love the podcast and love being a space lizard. Praise Bojangles, be gone lucifina, and most importantly, Hail Nimbrod!

- Grant

D. And finally - one last message regarding the Anneliese Michel exorcism Suck from theology wizard and super sucker John Dvorachek. John initially sent in a pic of a busted Pootie and Juju mug, and when talking to him about replacing it, he sent this back my way.

Wow!! Honored am I to have received a reply from thou Holy Count Suckulent!! And so promptly!

Thanks so very much! And damn fine job on your latest foray into all the religiosity btw. I was Chair of Philosophy and Religion and taught History of Christianity for nearly a decade at a Catholic college. And I wrote two papers concerning exorcism and possession is grad school. So I’m actually a bit of an expert concerning your recent material, and I can say you presented very complex topics in as well as could be done in two hours. Even if you did call the four gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and “Paul” once in the Lost Books episode. Paul ain’t a gospel writer numb nuts. That fourth one is John. And John, btw, is very gnostic in ideology, and subtly carries many threads from those lost gnostic traditions.

Anyway, thank you for the mugs! And sincere thanks for all that you do! You’re the first thing that I listen to when driving or walking my puppy. My girlfriend and I love you, and we spread the gospel of Nimrod to all who have ears.

Keep on Suckin!!

John

Many thanks again to all you Suckers you show up at shows, you write in to topic, who pledge support on Patreon, and who enjoy learning as much as they can during their limited amount of rotations around the sun. Love you guys!

PAUSE TIMESUCKER UPDATES OUTRO

XI. GOODBYE! A. Have a great week everyone, don’t forget to check Instagram for the release of the last Pootie and Juju limited edition mugs, pick up Maybe I’m the Problem on iTunes, Amazon, or Google Play if you enjoy my standup, don’t set down on Judas Cradle or set someone else down on a Judas Cradle OR try to see if you really can create a Jupiter’s twist. And keep on sucking!

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