The Inquisition certainly wasn't the worst thing the humans have done, no. I didn't mean to suggest it was. Its infamous crimes need no exaggeration to earn their prominent place in the pathetic catalog of human vileness, though at times that has been no obstacle to those motivated more by hate for Catholicism than by wisdom, compassion, or personal integrity. But the bare truth is heinous enough.

I brought it up because the centuries-long intellectual blight that resulted from it is a salient example of the corrupt fruits of the poisoned tree of state censorship, a tree whose root in European history is that very Inquisition.

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21397905 for a slightly longer disquisition on that theme.