Most of what you've heard about them is likely Protestant propaganda far removed from the truth.

You exaggerate slightly, but if anyone with more than a passing familiarity with the history of the Middle Ages were offered the choice between being tried by a civil court or an ecclesiastical court, then they would choose the later without hesitation.

Also, of particular interest to Less Wrongers, the manuals created by Church lawyers for use by Inquisitors are important to the later development of probability theory. They included such topics as how to calculate "grades of evidence" (which can be contrasted with the "proof" or "no proof" methods of earlier Roman law) and even how much to discount witness testimony (taking into account not only whether the witness saw a particular act directly or only heard it happen from a room away, but whether the witness had a grudge against the defendant or other motives for wanting them punished unjustly).

Who knows, perhaps people like Alicorn who "don't think in numbers" would be better served by using a (pre-Pascal) probability theory like the one the Inquisitors made use of that included rigorously defined verbal probabilities such as suspicion, presumption, indication, support, vehement support, and conjecture instead of floating point numbers.