In "The Pit and the Pendulum," why is the narrator standing before judges?

This story is set during the Spanish Inquisition, which was a bloody period of history where people who wouldn't convert to the Catholic church were rounded up, tortured, imprisoned, killed, and put on trial for being heretics.  So, to infer from that information, and from what the narrator says in his dazed state, we have to guess that he has refused to join the Catholic church and has so been brought before judges to pronounce his sentence.  Joining was required, you see, and if you didn't, you had to be punished.  People were "punished" for a lot of other things, too, but, that was the main one.  So, the narrator was a man who refused to do what they wanted him to do.  The judges were the ones who were going to decide what his fate would be:  imprisonment, torture, or death.

As it turns out, they punish him in all three ways--they throw him in a dark prison, torture him in phases, and intend on killing him towards the end.  Not a very fun fate, to be sure.  I hope that helped with this question--for your other questions, try submitting them separately on other days, as the format for this website indicate only one per day.  Good luck!