So I happened upon a blog post from the Catholic League (http://www.catholicleague.org/cosmos-smears-catholicism/) in which they claim that Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos "smeared" the Catholic Church by claiming that the Papal Inquisition was brutal and silenced opposition. Naturally, this conflicts with everything I've learned about the Church in Catholic schools (admittedly, it's been a long time).
Moreover, Mr. Madden claims that the Inquisition actually saved innocent people from being burned at the stake by unruly mobs. Does this, or any of his claims, have any objective historicity?
This episodes of Cosmos has produced a lot of these same questions, I've linked to the below where I discuss them:
A form of the medieval inquisition was first authorized by papal bull Ad abolendam in 1184 which created powers for bishops to conduct inquisition in their jurisdiction under direct supervision of the pope, this was in reaction to the growing threat of heresies in France. A few decades later the papacy modified the authorization of inquisition to enable it to be conducted by certain orders, namely the Dominicans. It shaped further the powers and methods of inquisition without creating a papal office of inquisition; each local inquisition was individually licensed by the pope and he would become involved in issues that sprung out of them. Inquisitions over the medieval period were conducted by bishops and/or Dominican friars preachers.
The later renaissance Roman Inquisition was constructed differently - it was an office within the papacy with centralized power and administration, generally in the territory we now call Italy. Inquisitions were conducted by the Dominicans, cardinals and papal legates.
The renaissance/early modern Spanish Inquisition was driven (invented) by secular power under Dominican influence, staffed with lawyers and clergy. The spanish monarchy and the papacy tangled over rights and jurisdictions and sometimes papal complaint and intervention is viewed as papal mercifulness; it should be viewed in context of various power struggles.
One could interpret the development of the inquisition as a development of some crude 'rule of law', and the methodologies of inquisition as a form of 'due process', and certainly they were more sophisticated than the sporadic outbursts of anti-heretical 'mob rule' . The suggestion that the inquisition saved people from mobs is an interesting view, but one which strips out the source and composition of 'mobs'. One would have to willfully ignore the encouragement and licensing (and even direct stimulation) of anti-heretical feeling and 'mob rule' by bishops, archbishops, papal legates and the Cistercian order over two centuries preceding the inquisition. Generally the events of 'spontaneous' accusations of heresy and direct 'mob rule' in the 11th and 12th century have now been traced back to conflicts of power within communities, often with direct involvement of bishops and archbishops (power here in its broadest Foulcauldian sense).
So, if one was going to argue that the inquisition protected anyone from anything, one would then have to argue that the church was protecting the public from the church itself. Neither part of that argument is full, subtle or close to fact, nor complicated like life is. It's an argument from ideology.