@Pischinovski : If the Inquisition was a step away from "barbarism", that might only be because it operated under a relatively formal set of rules and procedures. The whole underlying concept of the Inquisition was that "heresy" was an evil that literally needed to be burned out root and branch and particularly the persecution of those whose adherence to forced conversion (itself barbaric) was deemed suspect or those, such as Cathars, whose theology differed from that of Rome. While it was the civil authorities who were legally executing the victims, the Church was there to bless the proceedings, and note they were called auto da fe, not "executions". It was the Inquisition that used torture to obtain confessions (yes, not ones that "spilled blood" but horrendous enough), and it was the Church that would make the decision even at the stake that the guilty and become penitent at the last moment and be strangled before being burnt. Of course lesser punishments from more conventional penitence through imprisonment (up to life), banishment, and confiscation of goods were used as well and executions only represented a minority of punishments, although the threat was always there.
The Inquisition continued in to the 19th century, and when the Spanish took over the French territory of Louisiana (1762-1802) the rules of the Inquisition applied there and one of the laws was that anyone who defamed the Virgin Mary was to have their tongue torn out. By any definition this sort of thing is barbarism, it certainly was not exclusive to the Church either from a religious standpoint or a more general societal standpoint, but barbarism it was. The Inquisition, in various forms, lasted from the 12th century until the middle of 19th, in Spain the last execution was in the mid-1820s (garroting of a teacher whose "crime" was teaching Deism). It was the papal States in Italy that were the last to end the Inquisition.
The Inquisition is merely one example of how Divine Authority can be used to justify barbaric behavior, especially that which is contrary to the more general teachings and morality of a religion. This extends fro human sacrifice of all sorts up to the barbarism of various extreme Islamic groups today and is not particular to the Church or any one religion. The point is that barbarism is barbarism, best to admit history, learn from it, and move on - whitewashing dos no good.