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No one said anything about them being offered a trial...

If you say "inquisition" you are saying "trial". That's what an inquisition is.

Though the actual numbers are far less (3,000-5,000), these fiery deaths were quite real and regrettable.

That's all? Are those deaths Protestants involved with inquisitions or is it the total body count of inquisitions generally, witches, heretics generally, and Protestants as well?

Were the penalties (as distinct from the verdicts) pronounced and carried out by the state or by the inquisition.

You do know that in Spain some of those accused of secular offenses, like burglary, tried to get charged with heresy because they hopes for a fairer trial and gentler sentence from the inquisitors than for the secular courts?

And more generally, in the 17th century Protestant England treason was punishable by being castrated, hung by the neck -- but NOT until dead, being cut down from the gallows, being gutted while alive and THEN being quartered, we might want to stipulate that punishments tended to be a tad more brutal just a few hundred years ago than they are now.

Serious and thoughtful people, trying to be virtuous and even charitable, consented to such acts! If we are going to "Get into the heads" of people who thought that burning those with divergent religious opinions was a pious act, we need to try to understand how they thought such a horrible, disgusting, and brutal death was reasonable.

We complain, or some do, that felons lose the right to vote. Just a few centuries ago they used, routinely, to lose the right to breathe.

I assume you are almost as opposed to slavery as you are to the Catholic Church's treatment of heretics. May I justly conclude that you find Washington, Jefferson, and the other slaveholding Founders to be so tarred by their owning of slaves that whenever they are mentioned we should consider this piece of viciousness and discount any possible good in which they might have been involved?

In general, I'd say D-fendr is right. What good will come of going over the outrages performed by members of one group on another?

Is www.catholiceducation.org reliable?

I have no idea. It wouldn't hurt if I had a more precise URL to check what they say about inquisitions. But the questions that matter are not only the body count issues but the larger context. It is easy to look down on the crimes of our predecessors. It is not always useful, and sometimes, I think, it is downright sinful. And if I'm wrong about that, I'm still right, I think, in saying that judging 16th century treatment of one bunch of Christians by another with the standards of a later age is jejune.