Slide 1

For more information: http://history.howstuffworks.com/historical-figures/spanish-inquisition1.htm

The Pit and the Pendulum By Edgar Allan Poe

A terrible time in history when Jews, Muslims, and Protestants were systematically and specifically persecuted. They were forced either to convert to Roman Catholicism or be killed by the Spanish monarchy.

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Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores

Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

I was sick. As I heard my sentence of death fall from the lips of the Inquisitors, I became light headed. The room and my judges swirled to black as I felt the pull of a doomed descent. All went to nothingness.I began to wake, first from the realm of a dream. My senses then returned, and I was shocked awake by the memories of the trial, my sentence of death, my sickness, and the faint. Did I dare open my eyes? What if there was nothing to see? Unable to bear it any longer, I quickly opened my eyes to find ....... darkness! Unfathomable, suffocating darkness! Calming myself, I reasoned that even though quite a bit of time seemed to have passed, I was not dead. Why was I not executed the night of my trial with the others that were found guilty?

Oh no...What if..What if I was in a tomb? My entire body convulsed with the thought, as I perspired. I felt around only to have nothing touch my fingertips! Rumors of the horrors of Toledo flooded my mind. Would I be starved in the darkness or something worse? I knew my sentence was death; I did not know the mode or the hour.

INFORMATION

Translation for Latin Introduction:

Here an unholy mob of torturers, with an unquenchable thirst for human blood, once fed their long frenzy. Our homeland is safe now, the baneful pit destroyed, and what was once a place of savage death is now a scene of life and health.

Final video was from the Disney movie, The Great Mouse Detective.

Torture Chamber picture http://www.medievalwarfare.info/pics/chamber_02.jpg

Bread and Water painting by Hall Groat IIhttp://www.dailypainters.com/paintings/79129/Bread-and-Water-8-x10-Oil-on-canvas/

Pendulum Painting by William Collinshttp://www.walkercreek.com/thamber/paintings.html