Who are some of the people that have given Christianity the worst name?

Pope Innocent IV. In 1252 Pope Innocent IV officially sanctioned torture as a way of extracting the “truth” from heretics. Prior to that time, this type of extreme punishment was foreign to church tradition and practice. During the Spanish Inquisition alone, some historians estimate that as many as 2,000 people were burned at the stake within one decade after the inquisition began.