During my flight back from Philadephia to Rome I read Rebecca Goldstein's Book "Betraying Spinoza". The book is not only an introduction into the affascinating (and completely unconvincing for me) Philosophy of Spinoza, but it is also an account of the man Baruch Spinoza and the history of the sephardic Jews. Some excerpts:

The jewish people on the Iberian Peninsula had a period of splendor during the tolerant islamic rule from 900 on. "As the Christians unified their hold on Spain, the sorts of intolerance tha had dominated in other European lands began to creep into sephardic existence as well.... a famous disputation (between a Rabbi and catholic Cleric was held in Barcelona before the king and gathered bishops. Rabbi Nachmanides had secured permission to speak frankly, and so he did, arguing the the evidence that Jesus had ushered in messianic times was scant, for had not the prophet Isaiah foretold of the perfect peace that would follow upon the Messiah's coming? Nachmanides: Yet from the days of Jesus until now that whole world has been filled with violence and pillage. The Christians, moreover, shed more blood than other nations; and how hard it would be for you, your Majesty...and for these knights of yours if they were not to learn war any more?"
After these provoked debates, Riots, torture, forced conversions and murder increasingly concluded these staged debates.
..The practice of burning heretics at the stake was introduced in the last years of the twelfth century. The Holy Inquisition was a procedure devised and named by Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) for exposing Christian heretics, though it was another pope, Gregor IX, who established it as an institution. It was to last for 350 years.
.......
The first mass burning of Jews at the stake took place in 1288, following a blood libel. This was in Troyes, France...
... the lapse of any Christian (after forced conversion) back into Judaism was punishable by death.....
Over the course of the next twelve years, the inquisition, with their irresistible methods of forcing confessions claimed to have found over thirteen thousand secretly Judaizing New Christians....many of whom were burned at the stake....
""If a ma abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered; and men gather them and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." (John 15:6) Well, not only the Coran has passages that can be interpreted in evil way.
It is important NOT to forget these events in a time, in which the catholic church pretends to be able to offer moral values to society. There are persons around which claim to defend christian civilization agains islamic barbarism or which claim at least a principal moral primate for the Christians against Islam. When the Christian faith was at the same age as Islam now we were in the times of mass burning!

The catholic church has no more moral weight to propose moral principles than the Chinese Government. Neither Mao nor pope Innocent III got a trial up to now.

Completely unacceptable is that the church tries to dictate their principles also to those who dare to be of different opinion.

Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza, www.schocken.com, 2006