Spanish Inquisition or the Victim of the Inquisition", which has been attributed to Spaniard Luiz Gutiérrez, and is based on the case of María de Bohórquez, ferociously criticizes the Inquisition and its representatives. The Inquisition also appears in one of the chapters of the novel "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which imagines an encounter between Jesus and the Inquisitor General. One of the best known stories of Edgar Allan Poe, "The Pit and the Pendulum", explores along the same lines the use of torture by the Inquisition. The novel Cornelia Bororquia was published in France, probably by a French writer
Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition clergy were also far more likely to be found guilty and convicted. While for the lay Spaniard who had no education to put their thoughts on paper nor the power to spread them, the Inquisition was far more compassionate and lenient than the civil alternative (the civil tribunals and the King's prisons, with no food and unrestricted use of torture), for the powerful the Inquisition was far worse than what they were used to in civil courts (no accountability at all). The sectors the Spanish Inquisition was designed to address and control were also the same sectors that had the