Purge, Plague, and Papal Empire

By Prince Kapone, Weaponized Information

I. Black Death, Feudal Breakdown, and the Cracks in Christendom

By the mid-1300s, Europe was a disaster zone. It had spent centuries bleeding itself dry—crusades, famines, peasant revolts, and priestly plunder had left whole regions broken. Then came the plague. Between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death killed off nearly half the population. The dead filled ditches. Fields lay empty. The old order—based on lords, land, and religious fear—was crumbling fast.

The Catholic Church, which had once claimed divine authority over life and death, couldn’t bury the dead fast enough. Priests fled cities. Faith cracked. Poor people, who had already been starving, began to ask real questions: What good is salvation when your whole village is dying? What good is God when the bishops live fat off your grain?

The ruling class needed answers. But instead of changing the system, they doubled down. And they sharpened the blade of holy terror.

II. The Inquisition and the Cleansing of the Faith

In the chaos of plague and rebellion, Europe’s rulers—especially in Spain—got scared. Not of disease, but of ideas. They turned the Church into a surveillance state. The Inquisition hunted anyone who didn’t fit: Jews, Muslims, so-called heretics, midwives, healers, free thinkers. Torture and executions became theater. This wasn’t about faith. It was about tightening the noose of power.

Nowhere was this more brutal than Iberia. In 1492, Spain’s Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, completed the Reconquista and turned their gaze inward. Dr. John Henrik Clarke put it bluntly: “Spain was about to become the most intolerant nation in Europe. It did so by killing the best of itself.” Jews were expelled. Muslims were expelled. And those who stayed were forced to convert—and still treated as enemies. Spain, once home to Al-Andalus, a cultural powerhouse, became a theocratic garrison.

And behind it all was the idea of *limpieza de sangre*—purity of blood. Not just religion, but early race science. The same logic that would later be used to enslave millions in Africa was tested first on Europe’s own so-called “impure” populations.

III. The Plague’s Aftermath: Land, Labor, and Loot

The plague didn’t just kill people—it broke the economy. Feudal lords couldn’t find workers. Towns rebelled. Wages rose. The serf system began to shake. But instead of building something new, Europe’s ruling class turned its hunger outward. The land couldn’t feed them. So they looked to the sea.

Hosea Jaffe notes that this wasn’t innovation—it was desperation. The aristocracy was losing grip. The Church had been exposed as useless in a crisis. But the imperial instinct hadn’t died. It just needed new ground, new workers to exploit, new lands to loot. That’s where Columbus came in.

IV. Columbus, Gold Fever, and the Rise of Empire

In 1492, the same year Spain expelled its Jews and took the last Muslim city of Granada, Columbus set sail. He wasn’t an explorer. He was a hired gun—sponsored by the Spanish Crown, blessed by the Church, and sent to find gold and enslave whoever he met along the way.

He didn’t discover anything. He got lost and landed in the Caribbean. But when he returned, he brought news of wealth, land, and what he called “docile natives”—in other words, easy targets. Dr. Clarke again: “Columbus was not a hero or explorer. He was a trigger. His voyage was the start of Europe’s war against the rest of the world.”

The Church rejoiced. A new world meant new souls to dominate, and new gold to fill the coffers of Christendom. What began with priests and plagues now had ships and swords.

V. Inter Caetera: The Pope Divides the Earth

The following year, 1493, the Vatican issued its reply. Pope Alexander VI drafted the bull Inter Caetera—a divine decree that gave Spain and Portugal full rights to any lands not already ruled by Christians. It gave moral license to conquer, enslave, and plunder, as long as it was in the name of Christ.

Jaffe calls this the moment when Christianity became the religion of white empire. The Pope, no longer a spiritual leader, had become a CEO of global conquest. Inter Caetera laid the groundwork for the Doctrine of Discovery—the legal and theological foundation that would justify five centuries of theft, genocide, and domination.

This wasn’t evangelism. It was international law. Spirituality became strategy. Baptism became business. And the cross was now just the brand of conquest.

VI. The Gospel of Empire

By the end of the 15th century, Christendom had mutated. What started as a gospel of the poor had become an operating system for global extraction. The Church that once preached about loaves and fishes now rode alongside slave ships and armies.

The plague had cracked Europe open. The Inquisition had cleansed it. Columbus had given it a direction. And the Pope had drawn the borders.

This is how empire was baptized. This is how the soul was used to justify slaughter. And this is the blood-soaked root of the world we live in now.

The next chapter? The full fusion of church, state, and capital. The rise of racial slavery. The selling of salvation alongside human flesh. And the making of modern empire in God’s name.