Hmmm. . . . there are a lot of different aspects to this, but I'll try to see if I can make any sense of this.
1. For starters, your claim of "hundreds of millions" is impossible to support. There simply weren't enough people in the world. The explosion in population began in the early 19th Century (there were more people born in the 1800s than in the previous eight centuries combined) and you have already acknowledged that the Church is not accountable for deaths after 1798.
2. Next, it is intellectually dishonest for you to implicate the Catholic Church and not Christianity as a whole for deaths prior to Luther. Unless of course you are suggesting that Christendom should have simply ceded the Holy Land to Islam.
3. The Inquisition is always a popular subject to bring up, but the reality is that most, several thousand were killed (many who were condemned were not even present for their trials and dummies were burned at the stake in their stead). Don't get me wrong, the torture and executions of the Inquisition were reprehensible, but the numbers were not that great. Of a far greater magnitude would be the numbers killed by LUTHER'S followers during the German Peasants' War of 1524-25, these estimates range any where from 100,000 to 300,000 and it was the largest "revolution" in Europe until the French Revolution nearly 300 years later.
4. The majority of wars fought in Europe were between kings, they had almost nothing to do with religion. The only two real exceptions to this would be the French Religious Wars and the Thirty Years War. The French Religious Wars had a death toll of just over 3 million and while both sides were somewhat at fault, I will ackowledge that the Huguenots got the worst of it. The Thirty Years War counted about 7 million deaths which were pretty much evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants and, while the war was nominally about religion, it also was largely political.
I think the biggest thing to realize is that today civilized Christians understand that killing another person in the name of religion is simply wrong. However, the world of five hundred years ago was a very different place. NOBODY valued human life as we do today.
During the Inquisition, the Catholic Church killed everyone in the world, donchaknow.
While I know it to be all the rage among revisionists (that being to suggest light populations prior to current history), I will disagree. As an instance, Europe suffered a tremendous hit from the Black Plague, but sustained that hit of (c.)25m in a single year. As another indicator, single battles between armies have logged casualties into the tens of thousands throughout history, and the population has sustained them.
Something very profound lowered the population and prosperity of Medieval Europe (and only Medieval Europe) in a particular and sustained fashion. I would submit that the force responsible for that was in fact the iron fist of the Holy Roman Empire- And the best evidence of that fact is the explosion of population and prosperity occurring as soon as the weight of that fist was lifted. That isn't entirely true, of course, as there were other contributing factors, such as the black plague, depopulation as the Americas were populating, etc, but it is worthy of consideration as a major factor.
And it isn't even the major events that I would point to- Consider this, If you would: Without any crusade or inquisition, to reach a death toll of 100m across 1260 yrs requires under 8,000 deaths a year in the whole of Europe- A number easy to surpass in a morality based system founded in fear and avarice, especially when one considers the bare fact that a sentence of mere imprisonment nearly guaranteed a death by starvation or disease (not considered in the death tolls btw). It is these incidental deaths, the ones below the radar that yield the biggest numbers. 5 in this town burned at the stake... 8 in the next sent to the rack... 4 here hung from a gibbet, 20 there sent to prison. These numbers add up, and they serve to terrorize the populace in the meantime.
and you have already acknowledged that the Church is not accountable for deaths after 1798.
No, I gave you leave (theoretically) in Europe only, from 1798 through 1929- The period wherein she held no power of statehood. I would hold the RCC to task for much in WWII (the Ushtarte, for instance), and certainly there is responsibility in South America, where the feudal system of Europe was largely repeated, after a fashion. My complaint against the RCC in this venue centers specifically upon what she does when not limited by any other force- IOW, when she controls the religious, civil, and state levels of any region. In that case, without any doubt, she is without any excuse, and bears the full weight of responsibility for her actions.
2. Next, it is intellectually dishonest for you to implicate the Catholic Church and not Christianity as a whole for deaths prior to Luther. Unless of course you are suggesting that Christendom should have simply ceded the Holy Land to Islam.
I will grant you, and will readily cede the point, that repelling the Muslim horde was certainly justified- If not for the Levant, then certainly to refuse them Europe and the strategic points of entry leading thereto. It was more the internal crusades against the Protestants (and Hebrews, Moors) that I was referring to, and those waged in Portugal, the African continent (to a degree), and the Americas.
3. The Inquisition is always a popular subject to bring up, but the reality is that most, several thousand were killed (many who were condemned were not even present for their trials and dummies were burned at the stake in their stead). Don't get me wrong, the torture and executions of the Inquisition were reprehensible, but the numbers were not that great.
While I can understand RCC aspersions cast upon the likes of Foxe, as one might ascribe motive to him (though I disagree), What motive is there for Canon Llorente to exaggerate? Who stands to second guess him, when he had full authority and access to the records, and no axe to grind? According to him 3m died in the Spanish Inquisition alone, with 300k burned at the stake. If those numbers are to be trusted, then it stands to reason that Foxe was probably pretty close too.
The evidence speaks from silence. There were millions of Hebrews on the Iberian peninsula of Spain... and then there were none. There were millions of Cathars in the South of France, and then there were none. These two groups specifically are easy to identify by their cultures, and had they escaped in large numbers, one would have spied them elsewhere... Where are they?
Of a far greater magnitude would be the numbers killed by LUTHER'S followers during the German Peasants' War of 1524-25, these estimates range any where from 100,000 to 300,000 and it was the largest "revolution" in Europe until the French Revolution nearly 300 years later.
The difference being that the Protestants do not deny that it occurred.
4. The majority of wars fought in Europe were between kings, they had almost nothing to do with religion. The only two real exceptions to this would be the French Religious Wars and the Thirty Years War. The French Religious Wars had a death toll of just over 3 million and while both sides were somewhat at fault, I will ackowledge that the Huguenots got the worst of it. The Thirty Years War counted about 7 million deaths which were pretty much evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants and, while the war was nominally about religion, it also was largely political.
What of the Cathars, the Lollards, the Waldenses, the Anabaptists, the Hussites, the Hebrews, the Moors, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera?
And as the RCC admits:
By the end of Christianity’s first millennium, most of western Europe had been converted to Christianity. By this time, there was little separation of Church and State. That is, secular and ecclesial offices and legal systems overlapped. The effects of one system were recognized within the other. Because of this, the secular powers and the Church, even with all their disagreements and failures, had developed a common foundation and aim in protecting the common good. One general effect of all this was that secular politics was not entirely severed from the Church. Instead, political and religious questions were inextricably intertwined, and religious heresies were considered a kind of political treason.
As such, it cannot be said that Europe's wars are to be blamed entirely upon her kings.