content: The bull you're speaking of was called the Bull of Phalaris. It was a hollow bronze statue of a bull belonging to a king named Phalaris in ancient Sicily. Victims were forced inside the bull and a fire was lit beneath it. As he was roasted alive, the victim's shrieks would issue forth from the bull's open mouth in a horrid caricature of a bull's bellowing. This was several centuries before Christ and therefore had nothing to do with the Catholic church. However, during the Spanish Inquisition, supposed heretics were roasted alive in dome-shaped structures called Quemadoras. A number of victims would be herded inside and then the entrance sealed up. Large fires would be lit all around the Quemadora, thus slowly roasting the occupants. The Church's justification for killing its victims with fire was that they were forbidden from "spilling blood". By the narrow reasoning of the Church, death by fire did not involve spilling blood.