The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile. It began toward the end of the Reconquista and was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under papal control. It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition, along with the Roman Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition. The "Spanish Inquisition" may be defined broadly as operating in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Kingdom of Naples,[] and all Spanish possessions in North America and South America. According to some modern estimates, around 150,000 people were prosecuted for various offences during the three-century duration of the Spanish Inquisition, of whom between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed, approximately 2.7 percent of all cases. The Inquisition, however, since the creation of the American courts, has never had jurisdiction over the indigenous. The King of Spain ordered "that the inquisitors should never proceed against the Indians, but against the old Christians and their descendants and other persons against whom in these kingdoms of Spain it is customary to proceed".
Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition
Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición
Seal for the Tribunal in Spain Flanking the cross is a sword, symbolising the punishment of heretics, and an olive branch, symbolising reconciliation with the repentant. In Latin, the inscription "Exurge Domine et judica causam tuam. Psalm 73." ("Arise, O God, and defend your cause)
Consisted of a Grand Inquisitor, who headed the Council of the Supreme and General Inquisition, made up of six members. Under it were up to 21 tribunals in the empire.
The Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 312. Having itself been severely persecuted under previous emperors, the new religion now felt capable of commencing its own program of persecutions. From the moment it was recognised and empowered, there were persecutions against the adherents of other cults — pagans, Jews, heretics. Though only in the fourth century of its existence, Christianity had spread widely and was already beginning to experience a multiplicity of schisms within itself. Among the most significant of the heresies at this time were Arianism, Manichaeism, Gnosticism, the Adamites, the Donatists, the Pelagians and Priscillianists.
The Edict of Thessalonica issued on 27 February 380 by Emperor Theodosius I, established Nicene Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire. It condemned other Christian creeds as heresies of "foolish madmen" and approved their punishment.
In 438, under Emperor Theodosius II, the Codex Theodosianus (Theodosian Code), a compilation of laws of the Roman Empire, already provided for the confiscation of property and the death penalty for heretics.
The Spanish ascetic and theologian Priscillian was accused of magic and libertinage, and excommunicated in 380. He was later tried and executed, along with several of his companions, by emperor Magnus Maximus, at the instigation of two Christian bishops, despite the opposition of important figures like Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Ambrose. Priscillian has been described as the first martyr killed by a Spanish Inquisition.
After the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, there followed a period of almost seven centuries in which persecutions for heresy became very rare. Some of the old heresies survived, but in a weakened state, and they tended not to operate openly. No new schisms appeared to emerge during this period.
The (Episcopal Inquisition) was created through papal bull(Ad Abolendam) ("To abolish") at the end of the 12th century by Pope Lucius III, with the support of emperor Frederick I, to combat the (Albigensian heresy) in southern France. Heretics were to be handed over to secular authorities for punishment, have their property seized, and face excommunication. Holders of public office, counts, barons, rectors, in cities and other places, were required to take responsibility for punishing heretics handed over to them by the Church; any authority who failed in this duty would be excommunicated, removed from office, and stripped of all legal rights. Commercial boycotts would be imposed on cities that supported heretics and declined to participate. It was the start of a centralization process in the fight against heresy. There were a large number of tribunals of the Papal Inquisition in various European kingdoms during the Middle Ages. In the Kingdom of Aragon, a tribunal of the Papal Inquisition was established by the statute of of Pope Gregory IX, in 1231, during the era of the Albigensian heresy, as a condition for peace with Aragon. The Inquisition was ill-received by the Aragonese, which led to prohibitions against insults or attacks on it. Rome was particularly concerned that the Iberian Peninsula's large Muslim and Jewish population would have a 'heretical' influence on Catholic citizens. Rome pressed the kingdoms to accept the Papal Inquisition after Aragon. Navarra conceded in the 13th century and Portugal by the end of the 14th, though its 'Roman Inquisition' was famously inactive. Castile refused steadily, trusting in its prominent position in Europe and its military power to keep the Pope's interventionism in check. By the end of the Middle Ages, England, due to distance and voluntary compliance, and Castile (future part of Spain), due to resistance and power, were the only Western European kingdoms to successfully resist the establishment of the Inquisition in their realms.[]
Creation
There are several hypotheses of what prompted the creation of the tribunal after (centuries of tolerance) (within the context of medieval Europe).
The "Too Multi-Religious" hypothesis
The Spanish Inquisition is interpretable as a response to the multi-religious nature of Spanish society following the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Moors. The Reconquista did not result in the total expulsion of Muslims from Spain, since they, along with Jews, were tolerated by the ruling Christian elite. Large cities, especially Seville, Valladolid, and Barcelona, had significant Jewish populations centered on Juderia, but in the coming years the Muslims became increasingly alienated and relegated from power centers.
Post-reconquest medieval Spain has been characterized by (Américo Castro) as a society of relatively peaceful co-existence (convivencia) punctuated by occasional conflict among the ruling Catholics and the Jews and Muslims. As historian Henry Kamen notes, the "so-called convivencia was always a relationship between unequals." Despite their legal inequality, there was a long tradition of Jewish service to the Crown of Aragon, and Jews occupied many important posts, both religious and political. Castile itself had an unofficial rabbi. Ferdinand's father John II named the Jewish Abiathar Crescas Court Astronomer.[]
(Anti-semitic) attitudes increased all over Europe during the late 13th century and throughout the 14th century. England and France expelled their Jewish populations in 1290 and 1306 respectively. At the same time, during the Reconquista, Spain's anti-Jewish sentiment steadily increased. This prejudice climaxed in the summer of 1391 when violent anti-Jewish riots broke out in Spanish cities like Barcelona. To linguistically distinguish them from non-converted or long-established Catholic families, new converts were called conversos, or New Catholics.
According to Don Hasdai Crescas, persecution against Jews began in earnest in Seville in 1391, on the 1st day of the lunar month (Tammuz) (June). From there the violence spread to Córdoba, and by the 17th day of the same lunar month, it had reached Toledo (called then by Jews after its Arabic name "Ṭulayṭulah") in the region of Castile. Then the violence spread to Mallorca and by the 1st day of the lunar month Elul it had also reached the Jews of Barcelona in Catalonia, where the slain were estimated at two-hundred and fifty. Indeed, many Jews who resided in the neighboring provinces of Lleida and Gironda and in the kingdom of Valencia had also been affected, as were also the Jews of Al-Andalus (Andalucía). While many died a martyr's death, others converted to save themselves.
Encouraged by the preaching of Ferrand Martínez, Archdeacon of (Ecija), the general unrest affected nearly all of the Jews in Spain, during which time an estimated 200,000 Jews changed their religion or else concealed their religion, becoming known in Hebrew as Anusim, meaning, "those who are compelled [to hide their religion]." Only a handful of the more principal persons of the Jewish community, those who had found refuge among the viceroys in the outlying towns and districts, managed to escape.
Forced baptism was contrary to the law of the Catholic Church, and theoretically anybody who had been forcibly baptized could legally return to Judaism. Legal definitions of the time theoretically acknowledged that a forced baptism was not a valid sacrament, but confined this to cases where it was literally administered by physical force: a person who had consented to baptism under threat of death or serious injury was still regarded as a voluntary convert, and accordingly forbidden to revert to Judaism. After the public violence, many of the converted "felt it safer to remain in their new religion." Thus, after 1391, a new social group appeared and were referred to as conversos or New Christians. Many conversos, now freed from the anti-Semitic restrictions imposed on Jewish employment, attained important positions in fifteenth-century Spain, including positions in the government and in the Church. Among many others, physicians (Andrés Laguna) and (Francisco López de Villalobos) (Ferdinand's court physician), writers (Juan del Enzina), Juan de Mena, (Diego de Valera) and Alonso de Palencia, and bankers (Luis de Santángel) and Gabriel Sánchez (who financed the voyage of Christopher Columbus) were all conversos. Conversos—not without opposition—managed to attain high positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, at times becoming severe detractors of Judaism. Some even received titles of nobility and, as a result, during the following century some works attempted to demonstrate many nobles of Spain were descended from Israelites.
According to this hypothesis, the Inquisition was created to standardize the variety of laws and many jurisdictions Spain was divided into. It would be an administrative program analogous to the (Santa Hermandad) (the "Holy Brotherhood", a law enforcement body, answering to the crown, that prosecuted thieves and criminals across counties in a way local county authorities could not, ancestor to the Guardia Civil), an institution that would guarantee uniform prosecution of crimes against royal laws across all local jurisdictions.
The Kingdom of Castile had been prosperous and successful in Europe thanks in part to the unusual authority and control the king exerted over the nobility, which ensured political stability and kept the kingdom from being weakened by in-fighting (as was the case in England, for example). Under the Trastámara dynasty, both kings of Castile and Aragon had lost power to the great nobles, who now formed dissenting and conspiratorial factions. Taxation and varying privileges differed from county to county, and powerful noble families constantly extorted the kings to attain further concessions, particularly in Aragon.
The main goals of the reign of the Catholic Monarchs were to unite their two kingdoms and strengthen royal influence to guarantee stability. In pursuit of this, they sought to further unify the laws of their realms and reduce the power of the nobility in certain local areas. They attained this partially by raw military strength by creating a combined army between the two of them that could outmatch the army of most noble coalitions in the Peninsula. It was impossible to change the entire laws of both realms by force alone, and due to reasonable suspicion of one another the monarchs kept their kingdoms separate during their lifetimes. The only way to unify both kingdoms and ensure that Isabella, Ferdinand, and their descendants maintained the power of both kingdoms without uniting them in life was to find, or create, an executive, legislative and judicial arm directly under the Crown empowered to act in both kingdoms. This goal, the hypothesis goes, might have given birth to the Spanish Inquisition.[]
The religious organization to oversee this role was obvious: Catholicism was the only institution common to both kingdoms, and the only one with enough popular support that the nobility could not easily attack it. Through the Spanish Inquisition, Isabella and Ferdinand created a personal police force and personal code of law that rested above the structure of their respective realms without altering or mixing them, and could operate freely in both. As the Inquisition had the backing of both kingdoms, it would exist independent of both the nobility and local interests of either kingdom.
According to this view, the prosecution of heretics would be secondary, or simply not considered different, from the prosecution of conspirators, traitors, or groups of any kind who planned to resist royal authority. At the time, royal authority rested on divine right and on oaths of loyalty held before God, so the connection between religious deviation and political disloyalty would appear obvious. This hypothesis is supported by the disproportionately high representation of the nobility and high clergy among those investigated by the Inquisition, as well as by the many administrative and civil crimes the Inquisition oversaw. The Inquisition prosecuted the counterfeiting of royal seals and currency, ensured the effective transmission of the orders of the kings, and verified the authenticity of official documents traveling through the kingdoms, especially from one kingdom to the other. See "Non-Religious Crimes".[]
The "Placate Europe" hypothesis
At a time when most of Europe had already (expelled the Jews from the Christian kingdoms), the "dirty blood" of Spaniards was met with open suspicion and contempt by the rest of Europe. As the world became smaller and foreign relations became more relevant to stay in power, this foreign image of "being the seed of Jews and Moors" may have become a problem. In addition, the coup that allowed Isabella to take the throne from (Joanna of Castile ("la Beltraneja")) and the Catholic Monarchs to marry had estranged Castile from Portugal, its historical ally, and created the need for new relationships. Similarly, Aragon's ambitions lay in control of the Mediterranean and the defense against France. As their policy of royal marriages proved, the Catholic Monarchs were deeply concerned about France's growing power and expected to create strong dynastic alliances across Europe. In this scenario, the Iberian reputation of being too tolerant was a problem.
Despite the prestige earned through the reconquest (reconquista), the foreign image of Spaniards coexisted with an almost universal image of heretics and "bad Christians", due to the long coexistence between the three religions they had accepted in their lands. Anti-Jewish stereotypes created to justify or prompt the expulsion and expropriation of the European Jews were also applied to Spaniards in most European courts, and the idea of them being "greedy, gold-thirsty, cruel and violent" due to the "Jewish and Moorish blood" was prevalent in Europe before America was discovered by Europeans. Chronicles by foreign travelers circulated through Europe, describing the tolerant ambiance reigning in the court of Isabella and Ferdinand, and how Moors and Jews were free to go about without anyone trying to convert them. Past and common clashes between the Pope and the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula regarding the Inquisition in Castile's case and regarding South Italy in Aragon's case, also reinforced their image of heretics in the international courts. These accusations and images could have direct political and military consequences at the time, especially considering that the union of two powerful kingdoms was a particularly delicate moment that could prompt the fear and violent reactions from neighbors, even more if combined with the expansion of the Ottoman Turks on the Mediterranean.
The creation of the Inquisition and the expulsion of both Jews and Moriscos may have been part of a strategy to whitewash the image of Spain and ease international fears regarding Spain's allegiance. In this scenario, the creation of the Inquisition could have been part of the Catholic Monarchs' strategy to "turn" away from African allies and "towards" Europe, a tool to turn both actual Spain and the Spanish image more European and improve relations with the Pope.[]
The "Ottoman Scare" hypothesis
The alleged discovery of Morisco plots to support a possible Ottoman invasion were crucial factors in their decision to create the Inquisition. At this time, the Ottoman Empire was in rapid expansion and the Aragonese Mediterranean Empire was crumbling under debt and war exhaustion. Ferdinand reasonably feared that he would not be capable of repelling an Ottoman attack to Spain's shores, especially if the Ottomans had internal help. The regions with the highest concentration of Moriscos were those close to the common naval crossings between Spain and Africa. If the weakness of the Aragonese Naval Empire was combined with the resentment of the higher nobility against the monarchs, the dynastic claims of Portugal on Castile and the two monarchs' exterior politics that turned away from Morocco and other African nations in favor of Europe, the fear of a second Muslim invasion, and thus a second Muslim occupation was hardly unfounded. This fear may have been the base reason for the expulsion of those citizens who had either a religious reason to support the invasion of the Ottomans (Moriscos) or no particular religious reason to not do it (Jews). The Inquisition might have been part of the preparations to enforce these measures and ensure their effectiveness by rooting out false converts that would still pose a threat of foreign espionage.
In favor of this view there is the obvious military sense it makes, and the many early attempts of peaceful conversion and persuasion that the Monarchs used at the beginning of their reign, and the sudden turn towards the creation of the Inquisition and the edicts of expulsion when those initial attempts failed. The (conquest of Naples) by the Gran Capitan is also proof of an interest in Mediterranean expansion and re-establishment of Spanish power in that sea that was bound to generate frictions with the Ottoman Empire and other African nations. So, the Inquisition would have been created as a permanent body to prevent the existence of citizens with religious sympathies with African nations now that rivalry with them had been deemed unavoidable.
Philosophical and religious reasons
The creation of the Spanish Inquisition was consistent with the most important political philosophers of the Florentine School, with whom the kings were known to have contact (Guicciardini, Pico della Mirandola, Machiavelli, Segni, Pitti, Nardi, Varchi, etc.) Both Guicciardini and Machiavelli defended the importance of centralization and unification to create a strong state capable of repelling foreign invasions, and also warned of the dangers of excessive social uniformity to the creativity and innovation of a nation. Machiavelli considered piety and morals desirable for the subjects but not so much for the ruler, who should use them as a way to unify its population. He also warned of the nefarious influence of a corrupt church in the creation of a selfish population and middle nobility, which had fragmented the peninsula and made it unable to resist either France or Aragon. German philosophers at the time were spreading the importance of a vassal sharing the religion of their lord.
The Inquisition may have just been the result of putting these ideas into practice. The use of religion as a unifying factor across a land that was allowed to stay diverse and maintain different laws in other respects, and the creation of the Inquisition to enforce laws across it, maintain said religious unity and control the local elites were consistent with most of those teachings.
Alternatively, the enforcement of Catholicism across the realm might indeed be the result of simple religious devotion by the monarchs. The recent scholarship on the expulsion of the Jews leans towards the belief of religious motivations being at the bottom of it. But considering the reports on Ferdinand's political persona, that is unlikely the only reason. Ferdinand was described, among others, by Machiavelli, as a man who didn't know the meaning of piety, but who made political use of it and would have achieved little if he had really known it. He was Machiavelli's main inspiration while writing The Prince.
The "Keeping the Pope in Check" hypothesis
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church had made many attempts during the Middle Ages to take over Christian Spain politically, such as claiming the Church's ownership over all land reconquered from non-Christians (a claim that was rejected by Castile but accepted by Aragon and Portugal). In the past, the papacy had tried and partially succeeded, in forcing the Mozarabic Rite out of Iberia. Its intervention had been pivotal for Aragon's loss of Rosellon.[] The (meddling regarding Aragon's control over South Italy) was even stronger historically. In their lifetime, the Catholic Monarchs had (problems with) Pope Paul II, a very strong proponent of absolute authority for the church over the kings. Carrillo actively opposed them both and often used Spain's "mixed blood" as an excuse to intervene. The papacy and the monarchs of Europe had been involved in a rivalry for power all through the high Middle Ages that Rome had already won in other powerful kingdoms like France.
Since the legitimacy granted by the church was necessary for both monarchs, especially Isabella, to stay in power, the creation of the Spanish Inquisition may have been a way to apparently concede to the Pope's demands and criticism regarding Spain's mixed religious heritage, while at the same time ensuring that the Pope could hardly force the second inquisition of his own, and at the same time create a tool to control the power of the Roman Church in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition was unique at the time because it was not led by the Pope. Once the bull of creation was granted, the head of the Inquisition was the Monarch of Spain. It was in charge of enforcing the laws of the king regarding religion and other private-life matters, not of following orders from Rome, from which it was independent. This independence allowed the Inquisition to investigate, prosecute and convict clergy for both corruptions and possible charges of treason of conspiracy against the crown (on the Pope's behalf presumably) without the Pope's intervention. The inquisition was, despite its title of "Holy", not necessarily formed by the clergy and secular lawyers were equally welcome to it. If it was an attempt at keeping Rome out of Spain, it was an extremely successful and refined one. It was a bureaucratic body that had the nominal authority of the church and permission to prosecute members of the church, which the kings could not do, while answering only to the Spanish Crown. This did not prevent the Pope from having some influence on the decisions of Spanish monarchs, but it did force the influence to be through the kings, making direct influence very difficult.[]
Other hypotheses
Other hypotheses that circulate regarding the Spanish Inquisition's creation include:
Economic reasons: Since one of the penalties that the Inquisition could enforce on the convicts was the confiscation of their property, which became Crown property, it has been stated that the creation of the Inquisition was a way to finance the crown. There is no solid reason for this hypothesis to stand alone, nor for the Kings of Spain to need an institution to do this gradually instead of confiscating property through edicts, but it may be one of the reasons why the Inquisition stayed for so long. This hypothesis notes the tendency of the Inquisition to operate in large and wealthy cities and is favoured by those who consider that most of those prosecuted for practising Judaism and Islam in secret were actually innocent of it.(Gustav Bergenroth), editor and translator of the Spanish state papers from 1485 to 1509, believed that revenue was the incentive for Ferdinand and Isabella's decision to invite the Inquisition into Spain. Other authors point out that both monarchs were very aware of the economic consequences they would suffer from a decrease in population.
Intolerance and racism: This argument is usually made regarding the expulsion of the Jews or the Moriscos, and since the Inquisition was so closely interconnected with those actions can be expanded to it. It varies between those who deny that Spain was really that different from the rest of Europe regarding tolerance and openmindedness and those who argue that it used to be, but gradually the antisemitic and racist atmosphere of medieval Europe rubbed onto it. It explains the creation of the Inquisition as the result of exactly the same forces as those that caused the creation of similar entities across Europe. This view may account for the similarities between the Spanish Inquisition and similar institutions but completely fails to account for its many unique characteristics, including its time of appearance and its duration through time, so even if accepted requires the addition of some of the other hypothesis to be complete.[]
Purely religious reasons: essentially this view suggests that the Catholic Monarchs created the Inquisition to prosecute heretics and sodomites "because the Bible says so".
Activity of the Inquisition
Start of the Inquisition
Torquemada is buried in the monastery of Saint Thomas at Ávila, and left his own epitaph: “Pestem Fugat Haereticam” i.e. “drove away the pestilence of heresy".
Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella requested a papal bull establishing an inquisition in Spain in 1478. Pope Sixtus IV granted the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus permitting the monarchs to select and appoint two or three priests over forty years of age to act as inquisitors. In 1483, Ferdinand and Isabella established a state council to administer the inquisition with the Dominican Friar Tomás de Torquemada acting as its president, even though Sixtus IV protested the activities of the inquisition in Aragon and its treatment of the conversos. Torquemada eventually assumed the title of Inquisitor-General.
Ferdinand II of Aragon pressured Pope Sixtus IV to agree to an Inquisition controlled by the monarchy by threatening to withdraw military support at a time when the Turks were a threat to Rome. [] The pope issued a bull to stop the Inquisition but was pressured into withdrawing it. On 1 November 1478, Sixtus published the Papal bull, Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, ("Sincere Devotion Is Required") through which he gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors in their kingdoms. The first two inquisitors, Miguel de Morillo and (Juan de San Martín), were not named until two years later, on 27 September 1480 in Medina del Campo. The first auto de fé was held in Seville on 6 February 1481: six people were burned alive. From there, the Inquisition grew rapidly in the Kingdom of Castile. By 1492, tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities: Ávila, Córdoba, Jaén, Medina del Campo, Segovia, (Sigüenza), Toledo, and Valladolid. Sixtus IV promulgated a new bull (1482) categorically prohibiting the Inquisition's extension to Aragón, affirming that:
... in Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls, but by lust for wealth, and that many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other lower and even less proper persons, have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example, and causing disgust to many.
Outraged, Ferdinand feigned doubt about the bull's veracity, arguing that no sensible pope would have published such a document. He wrote the pope on May 13, 1482, saying: "Take care therefore not to let the matter go further, and to revoke any concessions and entrust us with the care of this question."
According to the book A History of the Jewish People,
In 1482 the pope was still trying to maintain control over the Inquisition and to gain acceptance for his own attitude towards the New Christians which was generally more moderate than that of the Inquisition and the local rulers.
In 1483, Jews were expelled from all of Andalusia. Though the pope wanted to crack down on abuses, Ferdinand pressured him to promulgate a new bull, threatening that he would otherwise separate the Inquisition from Church authority. Sixtus did so on 17 October 1483, naming Tomás de Torquemada Inquisidor General of Aragón, Valencia, and Catalonia.
Torquemada quickly established procedures for the Inquisition. In 1484, based in (Nicholas Eymerich)'s (Directorium Inquisitorum), he created a twenty-eight-article inquisitor's code, Compilación de las instrucciones del oficio de la Santa Inquisición (i.e. Compilation of the instructions of the office of the Holy Inquisition), essentially unaltered for more than three centuries following Torquemada's death.A new court would be announced with a thirty-day grace period for self confessions and denunciations, and the gathering of accusations by neighbors and acquaintances. Evidence that was used to identify a crypto-Jew included the absence of chimney smoke on Saturdays (a sign the family might secretly be honoring the Sabbath), the buying of many vegetables before Passover, or the purchase of meat from a converted butcher. The court could employ physical torture to extract confessions. Crypto-Jews were allowed to confess and do penance, although those who relapsed were executed.
In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII attempted to allow appeals to Rome against the Inquisition, which would weaken the function of the institution as protection against the pope, but Ferdinand in December 1484 and again in 1509 decreed death and confiscation for anyone trying to make use of such procedures without royal permission. With this, the Inquisition became the only institution that held authority across all the realms of the Spanish monarchy and, in all of them, a useful mechanism at the service of the crown. The cities of Aragón continued resisting, and even saw revolt, as in Teruel from 1484 to 1485. The murder of Inquisidor (Pedro Arbués) (later made saint) in Zaragoza on 15 September 1485, caused public opinion to turn against the conversos and in favour of the Inquisition. In Aragón, the Inquisitorial courts were focused specifically on members of the powerful converso minority, ending their influence in the Aragonese administration.
The Inquisition was extremely active between 1480 and 1530. Different sources give different estimates of the number of trials and executions in this period; some estimate about 2,000 executions, based on the documentation of the autos de fé, the great majority being conversos of Jewish origin. He [] offers striking statistics: 91.6% of those judged in Valencia between 1484 and 1530 and 99.3% of those judged in Barcelona between 1484 and 1505 were of Jewish origin.[]
False conversions
The Inquisition had jurisdiction only over Christians. It had no power to investigate, prosecute, or convict Jews, Muslims, or any open member of other religions. Anyone who was known to identify as either Jew or Muslim was outside of Inquisitorial jurisdiction and could be tried only by the King. All the inquisition could do in some of those cases was to deport the individual according to the King's law, but usually, even that had to go through a civil tribunal. The Inquisition had the authority to try only those who self-identified as Christians (initially for taxation purposes, later to avoid deportation as well) while practicing another religion de facto. Even those were treated as Christians. If they confessed or identified not as "judeizantes" but as fully practicing Jews, they fell back into the previously explained category and could not be targeted, although they would have pleaded guilty to previously lying about being Christian.[]
Though not subject to the Inquisition, Jews who refused to convert or leave Spain were called heretics and could be burned to death on a stake.[]
Expulsion of Jews and Jewish conversos
The Spanish Inquisition had been established in part to prevent conversos from engaging in Jewish practices, which, as Christians, they were supposed to have given up. This remedy for securing the orthodoxy of conversos was eventually deemed inadequate since the main justification the monarchy gave for formally expelling all Jews from Spain was the "great harm suffered by Christians (i.e., conversos) from the contact, intercourse and communication which they have with the Jews, who always attempt in various ways to seduce faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith", according to the 1492 edict.
The Alhambra Decree, issued in January 1492, gave the choice between expulsion, conversion or death. It was among the few expulsion orders that allowed conversion as an alternative and is used as a proof of the religious, not racial, element of the measure. The enforcement of this decree was very unequal with the focus mainly on coastal and southern regions—those at risk of Ottoman invasion—and more gradual and ineffective enforcement towards the interior.
Historic accounts of the numbers of Jews who left Spain were based on speculation, and some aspects were exaggerated by early accounts and historians: Juan de Mariana speaks of 800,000 people, and (Don Isaac Abravanel) of 300,000. While few reliable statistics exist for the expulsion, modern estimates based on tax returns and population estimates of communities are much lower, with Kamen stating that of a population of approximately 80,000 Jews and 200,000 conversos, about 40,000 emigrated. The Jews of the kingdom of Castile emigrated mainly to Portugal (where the entire community was forcibly converted in 1497) and to North Africa. The Jews of the kingdom of Aragon fled to other Christian areas including Italy, rather than to Muslim lands as is often assumed. Although the vast majority of conversos simply assimilated into the Catholic dominant culture, a minority continued to practice Judaism in secret, gradually migrated throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire, mainly to areas where Sephardic communities were already present as a result of the Alhambra Decree.
The most intense period of persecution of conversos lasted until 1530. From 1531 to 1560 the percentage of conversos among the Inquisition trials dropped to 3% of the total. There was a rebound of persecutions when a group of crypto-Jews was discovered in (Quintanar de la Orden) in 1588 and there was a rise in denunciations of conversos in the last decade of the sixteenth century. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, some conversos who had fled to Portugal began to return to Spain, fleeing the persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition, founded in 1536. This led to a rapid increase in the trials of crypto-Jews, among them a number of important financiers. In 1691, during a number of (autos de fé) in Majorca, 37 chuetas, or conversos of Majorca, were burned.
During the eighteenth century, the number of conversos accused by the Inquisition decreased significantly. Manuel Santiago Vivar, tried in Córdoba in 1818, was the last person tried for being a crypto-Jew.
Expulsion of Moriscos and Morisco conversos
The Inquisition searched for false or relapsed converts among the Moriscos, who had converted from Islam. Beginning with a decree on 14 February 1502, Muslims in Granada had to choose between conversion to Christianity or expulsion. In the Crown of Aragon, most Muslims faced this choice after the Revolt of the Brotherhoods (1519–1523). It is important to note that the enforcement of the expulsion of the Moriscos was implemented unevenly, especially in the lands of the interior and the north. In these regions coexistence had lasted for over five centuries and Moriscos were protected by the population; in many cases expulsion orders were partially or completely ignored.[]
The (War of the Alpujarras) (1568–71), a general Muslim/Morisco uprising in Granada that expected to aid Ottoman disembarkation in the peninsula, ended in a forced dispersal of about half of the region's Moriscos throughout Castile and Andalusia as well as increased suspicions by Spanish authorities against this community.
Many Moriscos were suspected of practising Islam in secret, and the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion. Initially, they were not severely persecuted by the Inquisition, experiencing instead a policy of evangelization a policy not followed with those conversos who were suspected of being crypto-Jews. There were various reasons for this. In the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon, a large number of the Moriscos were under the jurisdiction of the nobility, and persecution would have been viewed as a frontal assault on the economic interests of this powerful social class. Most importantly, the moriscos had integrated into the Spanish society significantly better than the Jews, intermarrying with the population often, and were not seen as a foreign element, especially in rural areas. Still, fears ran high among the population that the Moriscos were traitorous, especially in Granada. The coast was regularly raided by Barbary pirates backed by Spain's enemy, the Ottoman Empire, and the Moriscos were suspected of aiding them.
In the second half of the century, late in the reign of Philip II, conditions worsened between (Old Christians) and Moriscos. The Morisco Revolt in Granada in 1568–1570 was harshly suppressed, and the Inquisition intensified its attention on the Moriscos. From 1570 Morisco cases became predominant in the tribunals of Zaragoza, Valencia and Granada; in the tribunal of Granada, between 1560 and 1571, 82% of those accused were Moriscos, who were a vast majority of the Kingdom's population at the time. Still, the Moriscos did not experience the same harshness as judaizing conversos and Protestants, and the number of capital punishments was proportionally less.
In 1609, King Philip III, upon the advice of his financial adviser the (Duke of Lerma) and Archbishop of Valencia (Juan de Ribera), decreed the Expulsion of the Moriscos. Hundreds of thousands of Moriscos were expelled. This was further fueled by the religious intolerance of Archbishop Ribera who quoted the Old Testament texts ordering the enemies of God to be slain without mercy and setting forth the duties of kings to extirpate them. The edict required: 'The Moriscos to depart, under the pain of death and confiscation, without trial or sentence... to take with them no money, bullion, jewels or bills of exchange.... just what they could carry.' Although initial estimates of the number expelled such as those of Henri Lapeyre reach 300,000 Moriscos (or 4% of the total Spanish population), the extent and severity of the expulsion in much of Spain has been increasingly challenged by modern historians such as Trevor J. Dadson. Nevertheless, the eastern region of Valencia, where ethnic tensions were high, was particularly affected by the expulsion, suffering economic collapse and depopulation of much of its territory.
Of those permanently expelled, the majority finally settled in the Maghreb or the Barbary coast. Those who avoided expulsion or who managed to return were gradually absorbed by the dominant culture.
The Inquisition pursued some trials against Moriscos who remained or returned after expulsion: at the height of the Inquisition, cases against Moriscos are estimated to have constituted less than 10 percent of those judged by the Inquisition. Upon the coronation of Philip IV in 1621, the new king gave the order to desist from attempting to impose measures on remaining Moriscos and returnees. In September 1628 the Council of the Supreme Inquisition ordered inquisitors in Seville not to prosecute expelled Moriscos "unless they cause significant commotion." The last mass prosecution against Moriscos for crypto-Islamic practices occurred in Granada in 1727, with most of those convicted receiving relatively light sentences. By the end of the 18th century, the indigenous practice of Islam is considered to have been effectively extinguished in Spain.
Christian heretics
Protestantism
The burning of a Dutch Anabaptist, Anneken Hendriks, who was charged with heresy in Amsterdam,1571
Despite popular myths about the Spanish Inquisition relating to Protestants, it dealt with very few cases involving actual Protestants, as there were so few in Spain. Lutheran was a portmanteau accusation used by the Inquisition to act against all those who acted in a way that was offensive to the church. The first of the trials against those labeled by the Inquisition as "Lutheran" were those against the sect of mystics known as the "(Alumbrados)" of Guadalajara and Valladolid. The trials were long and ended with prison sentences of differing lengths, though none of the sect were executed. Nevertheless, the subject of the "Alumbrados" put the Inquisition on the trail of many intellectuals and clerics who, interested in (Erasmian) ideas, had strayed from orthodoxy. This is striking because both Charles I and Philip II were confessed admirers of Erasmus.
The first trials against Lutheran groups, as such, took place between 1558 and 1562, at the beginning of the reign of Philip II, against two communities of Protestants from the cities of Valladolid and Seville, numbering about 120. The trials signaled a notable intensification of the Inquisition's activities. A number of autos de fé were held, some of them presided over by members of the royal family, and around 100 executions took place. The autos de fé of the mid-century virtually put an end to Spanish Protestantism, which was, throughout, a small phenomenon to begin with.
After 1562, though the trials continued, the repression was much reduced. About 200 Spaniards were accused of being Protestants in the last decades of the 16th century.
Most of them were in no sense Protestants ... Irreligious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions, were all captiously classified by the inquisitors (or by those who denounced the cases) as "Lutheran." Disrespect to church images, and eating meat on forbidden days, were taken as signs of heresy...
It is estimated that a dozen Protestant Spaniards were burned alive in the later part of the sixteenth century.
Protestantism was treated as a marker to identify agents of foreign powers and symptoms of political disloyalty as much as, if not more than a cause of prosecution in itself.
Orthodox Christianity
This section does not any . Please help by . Unsourced material may be challenged and .(May 2020) ()
Even though the Inquisition had theoretical permission to investigate Orthodox "heretics", it almost never did. There was no major war between Spain and any Orthodox nation, so there was no reason to do so. There was one casualty tortured by those "Jesuits" (though most likely, Franciscans) who administered the Spanish Inquisition in North America, according to authorities within the Eastern Orthodox Church: St. (Peter the Aleut). Even that single report has various numbers of inaccuracies that make it problematic, and has no confirmation in the Inquisitorial archives.
Witchcraft and superstition
The category "superstitions" includes trials related to witchcraft. The witch-hunt in Spain had much less intensity than in other European countries (particularly France, Scotland, and Germany). One remarkable case was (that of Logroño), in which the witches of (Zugarramurdi) in Navarre were persecuted. During the auto de fé that took place in Logroño on 7 and 8 November 1610, six people were burned and another five burned in effigy. The role of the Inquisition in cases of witchcraft was much more restricted than is commonly believed. Well after the foundation of the Inquisition, jurisdiction over sorcery and witchcraft remained in secular hands.[] In general the Spanish Inquisition maintained a skeptical attitude towards cases of witchcraft, considering it as a mere superstition without any basis. (Alonso de Salazar Frías), who took the Edict of Faith to various parts of Navarre after the trials of Logroño, noted in his report to the Suprema that, "There were neither witches nor bewitched in a village until they were talked and written about".
Blasphemy
Included under the rubric of heretical propositions were verbal offences, from outright blasphemy to questionable statements regarding religious beliefs, from issues of sexual morality to misbehaviour of the clergy. Many were brought to trial for affirming that simple fornication (sex between unmarried persons) was not a sin or for putting in doubt different aspects of Christian faith such as Transubstantiation or the virginity of Mary. Also, members of the clergy themselves were occasionally accused of heretical propositions. These offences rarely led to severe penalties.
Sodomy
Pope Clement VII granted the Inquisition jurisdiction over sodomy within Aragon in 1524, in response to a petition from the Saragossa tribunal. The Inquisition in Castile declined to take the same jurisdiction, making sodomy the only major crime with such a significant regional discrepancy. Even within Aragon, the treatment of sodomy varied significantly by region, because the pope's decree required that it be prosecuted according to each area's local law. For instance, the tribunal of the city of Zaragoza was considered unusually harsh by contemporaries.
The first person known to have been executed by the Inquisition for sodomy was a priest, Salvador Vidal, in 1541. Others convicted of sodomy received sentences including fines, burning in effigy, public whipping, and the galleys. The first burning for sodomy took place in Valencia in 1572.
Sodomy was an expansive term; while a 1560 decision ruled that lesbian sex not involving a dildo could not be prosecuted as sodomy, bestiality routinely was, especially in Saragossa in the 1570s. Men might also be prosecuted based on accusations of engaging in heterosexual sodomy with their wives. For that time and place, the word "sodomy" covered several kinds of not procreative sexual acts, denounced by the Church, like coitus interruptus, masturbation, fellatio, anal coitus (whether heterosexual or homosexual) etc.
Those accused included 19% clergy, 6% nobles, 37% workers, 19% servants, and 18% soldiers and sailors.[] Nearly all of almost 500 cases of sodomy between persons concerned the relationship between an older man and an adolescent, often by coercion, with only a few cases where the couple were consenting homosexual adults. About 100 of the total involved allegations of child abuse. Adolescents were generally punished more leniently than adults, but only when they were very young (under about 12 years) or when the case clearly concerned rape did they have a chance to avoid punishment altogether.
Prosecutions for sodomy gradually declined, in large part due to decisions from the Suprema intended to reduce the publicity for sodomy cases. In 1579, public autos de fé ceased to include people convicted on sodomy charges unless they were sentenced to death; even the death sentences were excluded from public proclamation after 1610. In 1589, Aragon raised the minimum age for sodomy executions to 25, and by 1633 executions for sodomy had generally come to an end.
Freemasonry
The Roman Catholic Church has regarded Freemasonry as heretical since about 1738; the suspicion of Freemasonry was potentially a capital offence. Spanish Inquisition records reveal two prosecutions in Spain and only a few more throughout the Spanish Empire. In 1815, Francisco Javier de Mier y Campillo, the Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition and the (Bishop of Almería), suppressed Freemasonry and denounced the lodges as "societies which lead to atheism, to sedition and to all errors and crimes." He then instituted a purge during which Spaniards could be arrested on the charge of being "suspected of Freemasonry".
Censorship
As one manifestation of the Counter-Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition worked actively to impede the diffusion of heretical ideas in Spain by producing "Indexes" of prohibited books. Such lists of prohibited books were common in Europe a decade before the Inquisition published its first. The first Index published in Spain in 1551 was, in reality, a reprinting of the Index published by the University of Leuven in 1550, with an appendix dedicated to Spanish texts. Subsequent Indexes were published in 1559, 1583, 1612, 1632, and 1640.
Included in the Indices, at one point, were some of the great works of Spanish literature, but most of the works were religious in nature and plays. A number of religious writers who are today considered saints by the Catholic Church saw their works appear in the Indexes. At first, this might seem counter-intuitive or even nonsensical—how were these Spanish authors published in the first place if their texts were then prohibited by the Inquisition and placed in the Index? The answer lies in the process of publication and censorship in Early Modern Spain. Books in Early Modern Spain faced prepublication licensing and approval (which could include modification) by both secular and religious authorities. Once approved and published, the circulating text also faced the possibility of post-hoc censorship by being denounced to the Inquisition—sometimes decades later. Likewise, as Catholic theology evolved, once-prohibited texts might be removed from the Index.
At first, inclusion in the Index meant total prohibition of a text. This proved not only impractical and unworkable but also contrary to the goals of having a literate and well-educated clergy. In time, a compromise solution was adopted in which trusted Inquisition officials blotted out words, lines or whole passages of otherwise acceptable texts, thus allowing these expurgated editions to circulate. Although in theory, the Indexes imposed enormous restrictions on the diffusion of culture in Spain, some historians argue that such strict control was impossible in practice and that there was much more liberty in this respect than is often believed. And Irving Leonard has conclusively demonstrated that, despite repeated royal prohibitions, romances of chivalry, such as (Amadis of Gaul), found their way to the New World with the blessing of the Inquisition. Moreover, with the coming of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, increasing numbers of licenses to possess and read prohibited texts were granted.
Despite the repeated publication of the Indexes and a large bureaucracy of censors, the activities of the Inquisition did not impede the development of Spanish literature's "Siglo de Oro", although almost all of its major authors crossed paths with the Holy Office at one point or another. Among the Spanish authors included in the Index are (Bartolomé Torres Naharro), (Juan del Enzina), (Jorge de Montemayor), (Juan de Valdés) and Lope de Vega, as well as the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes and the Cancionero General by Hernando del Castillo. (La Celestina), which was not included in the Indexes of the 16th century, was expurgated in 1632 and prohibited in its entirety in 1790. Among the non-Spanish authors prohibited were Ovid, Dante, Rabelais, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Jean Bodin, and Thomas More (known in Spain as Tomás Moro). One of the most outstanding and best-known cases in which the Inquisition directly confronted literary activity is that of (Fray Luis de León), noted humanist and religious writer of converso origin, who was imprisoned for four years (from 1572 to 1576) for having translated the Song of Songs directly from Hebrew.
One of the main effects of the inquisition was to end free thought and scientific thought in Spain. As one contemporary Spaniard in exile put it: "Our country is a land of pride and envy ... barbarism; down there one cannot produce any culture without being suspected of heresy, error and Judaism. Thus silence was imposed on the learned." For the next few centuries, while the rest of Europe was slowly awakened by the influence of the Enlightenment, Spain stagnated. This conclusion is contested.[]
The censorship of books was actually very ineffective, and prohibited books circulated in Spain without significant problems. The Spanish Inquisition never persecuted scientists, and relatively few scientific books were placed on the Index. On the other hand, Spain was a state with more political freedom than in other absolute monarchies in the 16th to 18th centuries. The apparent paradox gets explained by both the (hermeticist) religious ideas of the Spanish church and monarchy, and the budding seed of what would become Enlightened absolutism taking shape in Spain. The list of banned books was not, as interpreted sometimes, a list of evil books but a list of books that lay people were very likely to misinterpret. The presence of highly symbolical and high-quality literature on the list was so explained. These metaphorical or parable sounding books were listed as not meant for free circulation, but there might be no objections to the book itself and the circulation among scholars was mostly free. Most of these books were carefully collected by the elite. The practical totality of the prohibited books can be found now as then in the library of the (monasterio del Escorial), carefully collected by Philip II and Philip III. The collection was "public" after Philip II's death and members of universities, intellectuals, courtesans, clergy, and certain branches of the nobility didn't have too many problems to access them and commission authorised copies. The Inquisition has not been known to make any serious attempt to stop this for all the books, but there are some records of them "suggesting" the King of Spain to stop collecting grimoires or magic-related ones.[]
Family and marriage
Bigamy
The Inquisition also pursued offenses against morals and general social order, at times in open conflict with the jurisdictions of civil tribunals. In particular, there were trials for bigamy, a relatively frequent offence in a society that only permitted divorce under the most extreme circumstances. In the case of men, the penalty was two hundred lashes and five to ten years of "service to the Crown". Said service could be whatever the court deemed most beneficial for the nation but it usually was either five years as an oarsman in a royal galley for those without any qualification (possibly a death sentence), or ten years working maintained but without salary in a public Hospital or charitable institution of the sort for those with some special skill, such as doctors, surgeons, or lawyers. The penalty was five to seven years as an oarsman in the case of Portugal.
Unnatural marriage
Under the category of "unnatural marriage" fell any marriage or attempted marriage between two individuals who could not procreate. The Catholic Church in general, and in particular a nation constantly at war like Spain, emphasised the reproductive goal of marriage.
The Spanish Inquisition's policy in this regard was restrictive but applied in a very egalitarian way. It considered unnatural any non-reproductive marriage, and natural any reproductive one, regardless of gender or sex involved. The two forms of obvious male sterility were either due to damage to the genitals through castration, or accidental wounding at war (capón), or to some genetic condition that might keep the man from completing puberty (lampiño). Female sterility was also a reason to declare a marriage unnatural but was harder to prove. One case that dealt with marriage, sex, and gender was the trial of (Eleno de Céspedes).
Non-religious crimes
Despite popular belief, the role of the Inquisition as a mainly religious institution, or religious in nature at all, is contested at best. Its main function was that of private police for the Crown with jurisdiction to enforce the law in those crimes that took place in the private sphere of life.[] The notion of religion and civil law being separate is a modern construction and made no sense in the 15th century, so there was no difference between breaking a law regarding religion and breaking a law regarding tax collection. The difference between them is a modern projection the institution itself did not have. As such, the Inquisition was the prosecutor (in some cases the only prosecutor) of any crimes that could be perpetrated without the public taking notice (mainly domestic crimes, crimes against the weakest members of society, administrative crimes and forgeries, organized crime, and crimes against the Crown).[]
Examples include crimes associated with sexual or family relations such as rape and sexual violence (the Inquisition was the first and only body who punished it across the nation), bestiality, pedophilia (often overlapping with sodomy), incest, child abuse or neglect and (as discussed) bigamy. Non-religious crimes also included procurement (not prostitution), human trafficking, smuggling, forgery or falsification of (currency), (documents) or signatures, tax fraud (many religious crimes were considered subdivisions of this one), illegal weapons, swindles, disrespect to the Crown or its institutions (the Inquisition included, but also the church, the guard, and the kings themselves), espionage for a foreign power, conspiracy, treason.
The non-religious crimes processed by the Inquisition accounted for a considerable percentage of its total investigations and are often hard to separate in the statistics, even when documentation is available. The line between religious and non-religious crimes did not exist in 15th century Spain as legal concept. Many of the crimes listed here and some of the religious crimes listed in previous sections were contemplated under the same article. For example, "sodomy" included paedophilia as a subtype. Often part of the data given for prosecution of male homosexuality corresponds to convictions for paedophilia, not adult homosexuality. In other cases, religious and non-religious crimes were seen as distinct but equivalent. The treatment of public blasphemy and street swindlers was similar (since both involved "misleading the public in a harmful way"). Making counterfeit currency and heretic proselytism were also treated similarly; both of them were punished by death and subdivided in similar ways since both were "spreading falsifications". In general heresy and falsifications of material documents were treated similarly by the Spanish Inquisition, indicating that they may have been thought of as equivalent actions.
Trials were often further complicated by the attempts of witnesses or victims to add further charges, especially witchcraft. Like in the case of (Eleno de Céspedes), charges for witchcraft done in this way, or in general, were quickly dismissed but they often show in the statistics as investigations made.[]
Organization
Beyond its role in religious affairs, the Inquisition was also an institution at the service of the monarchy. The Inquisitor General, in charge of the Holy Office, was designated by the crown. The Inquisitor General was the only public office whose authority stretched to all the kingdoms of Spain (including the American viceroyalties), except for a brief period (1507–1518) during which there were two Inquisitors General, one in the kingdom of Castile, and the other in Aragon.
Auto de fé, Plaza Mayor in Lima, Viceroyalty of Peru, 17th century
The Inquisitor General presided over the Council of the Supreme and General Inquisition (generally abbreviated as "Council of the Suprema"), created in 1483, which was made up of six members named directly by the crown (the number of members of the Suprema varied over the course of the Inquisition's history, but it was never more than 10). Over time, the authority of the Suprema grew at the expense of the power of the Inquisitor General.
The Suprema met every morning, except for holidays, and for two hours in the afternoon on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The morning sessions were devoted to questions of faith, while the afternoons were reserved for "minor heresies" cases of perceived unacceptable sexual behavior, bigamy, witchcraft, etc.
Below the Suprema were the various tribunals of the Inquisition, which were originally itinerant, installing themselves where they were necessary to combat heresy, but later being established in fixed locations. During the first phase, numerous tribunals were established, but the period after 1495 saw a marked tendency towards centralization.
In the kingdom of Castile, the following permanent tribunals of the Inquisition were established:
Initially, each of the tribunals included two inquisitors, calificadors (qualifiers), an alguacil (bailiff), and a fiscal (prosecutor); new positions were added as the institution matured. The inquisitors were preferably jurists more than theologians; in 1608 Philip III even stipulated that all inquisitors needed to have a background in law. The inquisitors did not typically remain in the position for a long time: for the Court of Valencia, for example, the average tenure in the position was about two years. Most of the inquisitors belonged to the secular clergy (priests who were not members of religious orders) and had a university education.
The fiscal was in charge of presenting the accusation, investigating the denunciations and interrogating the witnesses by the use of physical and mental torture. The calificadores were generally theologians; it fell to them to determine whether the defendant's conduct added up to a crime against the faith. Consultants were expert jurists who advised the court in questions of procedure. The court had, in addition, three secretaries: the notario de secuestros (Notary of Property), who registered the goods of the accused at the moment of his detention; the notario del secreto (Notary of the Secret), who recorded the testimony of the defendant and the witnesses; and the escribano general (General Notary), secretary of the court. The alguacil was the executive arm of the court, responsible for detaining, jailing, and physically torturing the defendant. Other civil employees were the nuncio, ordered to spread official notices of the court, and the alcaide, the jailer in charge of feeding the prisoners.
In addition to the members of the court, two auxiliary figures existed that collaborated with the Holy Office: the familiares and the comissarios (commissioners). Familiares were lay collaborators of the Inquisition, who had to be permanently at the service of the Holy Office. To become a familiar was considered an honor, since it was a public recognition of limpieza de sangre—Old Christian status—and brought with it certain additional privileges. Although many nobles held the position, most of the familiares came from the ranks of commoners. The commissioners, on the other hand, were members of the religious orders who collaborated occasionally with the Holy Office.
One of the most striking aspects of the organization of the Inquisition was its form of financing: devoid of its own budget, the Inquisition depended almost exclusively on the confiscation of the goods of the denounced. It is not surprising, therefore, that many of those prosecuted were rich men. That the situation was open to abuse is evident, as stands out in the memorandum that a converso from Toledo directed to Charles I:
Your Majesty must provide, before all else, that the expenses of the Holy Office do not come from the properties of the condemned, because if that is the case if they do not burn they do not eat.
Mode of operation
Accusation
When the Inquisition arrived in a city, the first step was the Edict of Grace. Following the Sunday Mass, the Inquisitor would proceed to read the edict, which described possible heresies and encouraged all the congregation to come to the tribunals of the Inquisition to "relieve their consciences". They were called Edicts of Grace because all of the self-incriminated who presented themselves within a period of grace (usually ranging from thirty to forty days) were offered the possibility of reconciliation with the Church without severe punishment. The promise of benevolence was effective, and many voluntarily presented themselves to the Inquisition. These were encouraged to denounce others who had also committed offences, informants being the Inquisition's primary source of information. After about 1500, the Edicts of Grace were replaced by the Edicts of Faith, which left out the grace period and instead encouraged the denunciation of those deemed guilty.
The denunciations were anonymous, and the defendants had no way of knowing the identities of their accusers. This was one of the points most criticized by those who opposed the Inquisition. In practice, false denunciations were frequent. Denunciations were made for a variety of reasons, apart from genuine concern. Some just went after non-conformists. Others wished to hurt a neighbor or get rid of an opponent.
This method turned everyone into an agent of the Inquisition, and made every man aware that a simple word or deed could bring him before the tribunal. Denunciation was elevated to the rank of a superior religious duty, filled the nation with spies, and made each individual an object of suspicion to his neighbor, his family, and any strangers he might meet.
Detention
(Diego Mateo López Zapata) in his cell before his trial by the Inquisition Court of Cuenca. (An engraving by Goya)
After a denunciation, the case was examined by the calificadores, who had to determine whether there was heresy involved. This was followed by the detention of the accused. In practice many were detained in preventive custody, and many cases of lengthy incarcerations occurred, lasting up to two years before the calificadores examined the case.
Detention of the accused entailed the preventive sequestration of their property by the Inquisition. The property of the prisoner was used to pay for procedural expenses and the accused's own maintenance and costs. Often the relatives of the defendant found themselves in outright misery. This situation was remedied only following instructions written in 1561. However, Llorente, despite having consulted numerous records of old Inquisition proceedings, did not find any record of such an agreement in favor of the children of condemned heretics.
Some authors, such as apologist (William Thomas Walsh), stated that the entire process was undertaken with the utmost secrecy, as much for the public as for the accused, who were not informed about the accusations that were levied against them. Months or even years could pass without the accused being informed about why they were imprisoned. The prisoners remained isolated, and, during this time, they were not allowed to attend Mass nor receive the sacraments. The jails of the Inquisition were no worse than those of secular authorities, and there are even certain testimonies that occasionally they were much better. According to William Walsh, the miseries of the Jews "are not the result, fundamentally, of the hatred and misunderstanding of others, but the consequence of their own stubborn rejection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ".
Trial
Two priests and a suspected heretic in a Spanish Inquisition interrogation chamber ((Bernard Picart)'s engraving, 1722) In contrast to the Inquisitor's armchair, Eymeric's manual suggests that the accused be sat on a low bench.
The inquisitorial process consisted of a series of hearings, in which both the denouncers and the defendant gave separate testimony. A (defense counsel), a so-called lawyer, a member of the tribunal itself, was assigned to the defendant; his role was simply to advise the accused and to encourage them to speak the truth. [] He was obliged to renounce the defense at the moment when he realized his client's guilt.
The prosecution was directed by the fiscal. Interrogation of the defendant was done in the presence of the notario del secreto, who meticulously wrote down the words of the accused. The archives of the Inquisition, in comparison to those of other judicial systems of the era, are striking in the completeness of their documentation.[]
To defend themselves, the accused had two main choices: abonos (to find favourable and character witnesses) or tachas (to demonstrate that the witnesses of accusers — whose identity he did not know — were not trustworthy, and were his personal enemies.
The structure of the trials was similar to modern trials and, according to apologists, advanced for the time with regard to fairness. The Inquisition, "professional and efficient", was dependent on the political power of the King. The lack of separation of powers allows assuming questionable fairness for certain scenarios. The fairness of the Inquisitorial tribunals is alleged by apologists to be among the best in early modern Europe when it came to the trial of laymen. There are also testimonies by former prisoners that, if believed, suggest that said fairness was less than ideal when national or political interests were involved.
The historian (Walter Ullmann) thinks very different:
There is hardly one item in the whole Inquisitorial procedure that could be squared with the demands of justice; on the contrary, every one of its items is the denial of justice or a hideous caricature of it [...] its principles are the very denial of the demands made by the most primitive concepts of natural justice [...] This kind of proceeding has no longer any semblance to a judicial trial but is rather its systematic and methodical perversion.
A fictional scene of a jail of the Spanish Inquisition, with a priest supervising his scribe while men and women are suspended from pulleys, tortured on the rack or burnt with torches (Etching, date unknown)
To obtain a confession or information relevant to an investigation, the Inquisition used torture, as prescribed in the instrucciones. It is impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy the number of cases in which it was employed during the Inquisition's existence.
Torture would be applied if the alleged heresy was "half proven" and could be repeated, according to Article XV of Torquemada instructions. Henry Lea estimates that between 1575 and 1610 the court of Toledo tortured approximately a third of those processed for Protestant heresy. Nearly all of the accused in several cases tried by the Lima tribunal between 1635 and 1639 appear to have been tortured; the Valladolid tribunal report for 1624 reveals that in eleven cases involving Jews and one involving a Protestant used torture; in 1655, all nine cases involving Jews employed torture.
The recently opened Vatican Archives suggest lower numbers.[] "In truth," says Thomas Madden, " the Inquisition brought order, justice, and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics." And concludes: "The Spanish people loved their Inquisition. That is why it lasted for so long." In other periods, the proportions of torture varied remarkably.
Torture
A rack on display at the Torture Museum in Toledo, Spain.Water torture (engraving from 1556)In the strappado torture, the victim's hands are tied behind their back and the body is suspended by the wrists, resulting in dislocated shoulders. Weights can be added to the feet (engraving from 1768)
Torture was employed in all civil and religious trials in Europe. The Spanish Inquisition allegedly used it more restrictively than was common at the time. Unlike both civil trials and other inquisitions, it had strict regulations in relation to when, what, whom, frequency, duration, and supervision.[] According to some scholars, the Spanish Inquisition engaged in torture less often and with greater care than secular courts.
When: Torture was allowed when guilt was "half proven" or there existed a "presumption of guilt", as stated in Article XV of Torquemada's instruciones and in Eymerich's directions. However, Eymerich admits that information obtained through torment was not always reliable, and should be used only when all other means of obtaining "the truth" had failed.
What: The Spanish Inquisition was not permitted to "maim, mutilate, draw blood or cause any sort of permanent damage" to the prisoner. Ecclesiastical tribunals were prohibited by church law from shedding blood. As a result of torture, many had broken limbs, or other definitive health problems, and some died.
Supervision: A Physician was usually available in case of emergency. It was also required for a doctor to certify that the prisoner was healthy enough to go through the torment without suffering harm, which of course happened.
Among the methods of torture allowed were garrucha, toca and the potro (which were all used in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals). The application of the garrucha, also known as the (strappado), consisted of suspending the victim from the ceiling by the wrists, which are tied behind the back. Sometimes weights were tied to the feet, with a series of lifts and violent drops, during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated.
The use of the toca (cloth), also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua (enhanced (water interrogation)), now known as waterboarding, is better documented. It consisted of forcing the victim to ingest water poured from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning. The potro, the (rack), in which the limbs were slowly pulled apart, was thought to be the instrument of torture used most frequently. The assertion that confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum (literally: '[a person's] confession is truth, not made by way of torture') sometimes follows a description of how, after torture had ended, the subject "freely" confessed to the offences. In practice, those who recanted confessions made during torture knew that they could be tortured again. Under torture, or even harsh interrogation, comments Cullen Murphy, people will say anything.Bernard Délicieux, the franciscan friar who was tortured by the Inquisition and ultimately died in prison as a result of the abuse, said the Inquisition's tactics would have proved St. Peter and St. Paul to be heretics.
Once the process concluded, the inquisidores met with a representative of the bishop and with the consultores (consultants), experts in theology or Canon Law (but not necessarily clergy themselves), which was called the consulta de fe (faith consultation/religion check). The case was voted and sentence pronounced, which had to be unanimous. In case of discrepancies, the Suprema had to be informed.[]
Sentencing
The results of the trial could be the following:
Although quite rare in actual practice, the defendant could be acquitted, but an acquittal was interpreted as a dishonourable reflection on the inquisitors.
The trial could be suspended, in which case the defendant, although under suspicion, went free (with the threat that the process could be reopened at any time). In the unusual instance of a defendant being declared not guilty during the trial, the decision was made in private.
The defendant could be penanced. Since they were considered guilty, they had to publicly abjure their crimes (de levi if it was a misdemeanor, and de vehementi if the crime were serious), and accept a public punishment. Among these were (sanbenito), forced church attendance, exile, scourging, fines or even sentencing to service as oarsmen in royal galleys.
The defendant could be reconciled. In addition to the public ceremony in which the condemned was reconciled with the Catholic Church, more severe punishments were used, among them long sentences to jail or the galleys, plus the confiscation of all property. Physical punishments, such as whipping, were also used. The reconciled were prohibited from working as advocates, landlords, apothecaries, doctors, surgeons, and other professions. They were banned from carrying weapons, wearing jewelry or gold, and from riding horses. The restrictions also applied to the offspring of the convicted.
The most serious punishment was relaxation to the secular arm, i.e. burning at the stake. This penalty was frequently applied to impenitent heretics and those who had relapsed. Execution was public. If the condemned repented, they were "shown mercy" by being garroted before their corpse was burned; if not, they were burned alive. The victims were handed over to the secular authorities, who had no access to the process; they only administered the sentences and were obliged to do so on pain of heresy and excommunication.
Frequently, cases were judged in absentia. When the accused died before the trial finished, the condemned were burned in effigy. The death of an accused did not extinguish the inquisitorial actions, even up to forty years after the death. When it was considered proven that the deceased were heretics in their lifetime, their corpses were exhumed and burned, their property confiscated and the heirs disinherited.
The distribution of the punishments varied considerably over time. It is believed that sentences of death were enforced most frequently in the early stages within the long history of the Inquisition. According to García Cárcel, one of the most active courts—the court of Valencia—employed the death penalty in 40% of cases before 1530, but later that percentage dropped to 3%. By the middle of the 16th century, inquisition courts viewed torture as unnecessary and death sentences had become rare.[]
Auto de fé
Rizi's 1683 painting of the 1680 auto de fé, (Plaza Mayor) in Madrid
If the sentence was condemnatory, this implied that the condemned had to participate in the ceremony of an auto de fé (more commonly known in English as an auto-da-fé) that solemnized their return to the Church (in most cases), or punishment as an impenitent heretic. The autos de fé could be public (auto publico or auto general) or private (auto particular).
Although initially the public autos did not have any special solemnity nor sought a large attendance of spectators, with time they became expensive and solemn ceremonies, a display of the great power shared by the Church and the State, celebrated with large public crowds, amidst a festive atmosphere. The auto de fé eventually became a baroque spectacle, with staging meticulously calculated to cause the greatest effect among the spectators. The autos were conducted in a large public space (frequently in the largest plaza of the city), generally on holidays. The rituals related to the auto began the previous night (the "procession of the Green Cross") and sometimes lasted the whole day.
The auto de fé frequently was taken to the canvas by painters: one of the better-known examples is the 1683 painting by Francisco Rizi, held by the Prado Museum in Madrid that represents the auto celebrated in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid on 30 June 1680. The last public auto de fé took place in 1691.[]
The auto de fé involved a Catholic Mass, prayer, a public procession of those found guilty, and a reading of their sentences. They took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours; ecclesiastical and civil authorities attended. Artistic representations of the auto de fé usually depict torture and the burning at the stake. This type of activity never took place during an auto de fé, which was in essence a religious act. Torture was not administered after a trial concluded, and executions were always held after and separate from the auto de fé, though in the minds and experiences of observers and those undergoing the confession and execution, the separation of the two might be experienced as merely a technicality.
The first recorded auto de fé was held in Paris in 1242, during the reign of Louis IX. The first Spanish auto de fé did not take place until 1481 in Seville; six of the men and women subjected to this first religious ritual were later executed.
The Inquisition had limited power in Portugal, having been established in 1536 and officially lasting until 1821, although its influence was much weakened with the government of the Marquis of Pombal in the second half of the 18th century. The Marquis, himself a familiar, transformed it into a royal court, and the heretics continued to be persecuted, as so the "high spirits".
Autos de fé also took place in Mexico, Brazil and Peru: contemporary historians of the Conquistadors such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo record them. They also took place in the Portuguese colony of Goa, India, following the establishment of Inquisition there in 1562–1563.[]
Enlightenment era and the Inquisition's transformation
The arrival of the Enlightenment in Spain slowed inquisitorial activity. In the first half of the 18th century, 111 were condemned to be burned in person, and 117 in effigy, most of them for judaizing. In the reign of Philip V, there were 125 autos de fé, while in the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV only 44.[]
Auto-da-fé, Viceroyalty of New Spain, 18th century
During the 18th century, the Inquisition changed: Enlightenment ideas were the closest threat that had to be fought. The main figures of the Spanish Enlightenment were in favour of the abolition of the Inquisition, and many were processed by the Holy Office, among them (Olavide), in 1776; Iriarte, in 1779; and Jovellanos, in 1796; Jovellanos sent a report to Charles IV in which he indicated the inefficiency of the Inquisition's courts and the ignorance of those who operated them: "... friars who take [the position] only to obtain gossip and exemption from the choir; who are ignorant of foreign languages, who only know a little scholastic theology."
In its new role, the Inquisition tried to accentuate its function of censoring publications but found that Charles III had secularized censorship procedures, and, on many occasions, the authorization of the Council of Castile hit the more intransigent position of the Inquisition. Since the Inquisition itself was an arm of the state, being within the Council of Castile, civil rather than ecclesiastical censorship usually prevailed. This loss of influence can also be explained because the foreign Enlightenment texts entered the peninsula through prominent members of the nobility or government, influential people with whom it was very difficult to interfere. Thus, for example, (Diderot's Encyclopedia) entered Spain thanks to special licenses granted by the king.
After the French Revolution the Council of Castile, fearing that revolutionary ideas would penetrate Spain's borders, decided to reactivate the Holy Office that was directly charged with the persecution of French works. An Inquisition edict of December 1789, that received the full approval of Charles IV and Floridablanca, stated that:
having news that several books have been scattered and promoted in these kingdoms... that, without being contented with the simple narration events of a seditious nature... seem to form a theoretical and practical code of independence from the legitimate powers.... destroying in this way the political and social order... the reading of thirty and nine French works is prohibited, under fine...
The fight from within against the Inquisition was almost always clandestine. The first texts that questioned the Inquisition and praised the ideas of Voltaire or Montesquieu appeared in 1759. After the suspension of pre-publication censorship on the part of the Council of Castile in 1785, the newspaper (El Censor) began the publication of protests against the activities of the Holy Office by means of a rationalist critique. (Valentin de Foronda) published Espíritu de los Mejores Diarios, a plea in favour of freedom of expression that was avidly read in the salons. Also, in the same vein, Manuel de Aguirre wrote On Toleration in El Censor, El Correo de los Ciegos and El Diario de Madrid.
During the reign of Charles IV of Spain (1788–1808), in spite of the fears that the French Revolution provoked, several events accelerated the decline of the Inquisition. The state stopped being a mere social organizer and began to worry about the well-being of the public. As a result, the land-holding power of the Church was reconsidered, in the señoríos and more generally in the accumulated wealth that had prevented social progress. The power of the throne increased, under which Enlightenment thinkers found better protection for their ideas. (Manuel Godoy) and (Antonio Alcalá Galiano) were openly hostile to an institution whose only role had been reduced to censorship and was the very embodiment of the Spanish (Black Legend), internationally, and was not suitable to the political interests of the moment:
The Inquisition? Its old power no longer exists: the horrible authority that this bloodthirsty court had exerted in other times was reduced... the Holy Office had come to be a species of commission for book censorship, nothing more...
The Inquisition was first abolished during the domination of Napoleon and the reign of Joseph Bonaparte (1808–1812). In 1813, the liberal deputies of the Cortes of Cádiz also obtained its abolition, largely as a result of the Holy Office's condemnation of the popular revolt against French invasion. But the Inquisition was reconstituted when Ferdinand VII recovered the throne on 1 July 1814. (Juan Antonio Llorente), who had been the Inquisition's general secretary in 1789, became a Bonapartist and published a critical history in 1817 from his French exile, based on his privileged access to its archives.
Possibly as a result of Llorente's criticisms, the Inquisition was once again temporarily abolished during the three-year Liberal interlude known as the Trienio liberal, but still the old system had not yet had its last gasp. Later, during the period known as the (Ominous Decade), the Inquisition was not formally re-established, although, de facto, it returned under the so-called Congregation of the Meetings of Faith (Juntas da Fé) , created in the dioceses by King Ferdinand VII. On 26 July 1826, the "Meetings of Faith" Congregation condemned and executed the school teacher (Cayetano Ripoll), who thus became the last person known to be executed by the Inquisition.
On that day, Ripoll was hanged in Valencia, for having taught deist principles. This execution occurred against the backdrop of a European-wide scandal concerning the despotic attitudes still prevailing in Spain. Finally, on 15 July 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was definitively abolished by a Royal Decree signed by regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand VII's liberal widow, during the (minority) of Isabella II and with the approval of the President of the Cabinet (Francisco Martínez de la Rosa).
The prohibitions, persecution and eventual Jewish mass emigration from Spain and Portugal probably had adverse effects on the development of the (Spanish) and the Portuguese economy. Jews and Non-Catholic Christians reportedly had substantially better numerical skills than the Catholic majority, which might be due to the Jewish religious doctrine, which focused strongly on education. Even when Jews were forced to quit their highly skilled urban occupations, their numeracy advantage persisted. However, during the inquisition, spillover-effects of these skills were rare because of forced separation and Jewish emigration, which was detrimental for economic development.
Outcomes
Confiscations
It is unknown exactly how much wealth was confiscated from converted Jews and others tried by the Inquisition. Wealth confiscated in one year of persecution in the small town of Guadaloupe paid the costs of building a royal residence. There are numerous records of the opinion of ordinary Spaniards of the time that "the Inquisition was devised simply to rob people". "They were burnt only for the money they had", a resident of Cuenca averred. "They burn only the well-off", said another. In 1504 an accused stated, "only the rich were burnt". In 1484 Catalina de Zamora was accused of asserting that "this Inquisition that the fathers are carrying out is as much for taking property from the conversos as for defending the faith. It is the goods that are the heretics." This saying passed into common usage in Spain. In 1524 a treasurer informed Charles V that his predecessor had received ten million ducats from the conversos, but the figure is unverified. In 1592 an inquisitor admitted that most of the fifty women he arrested were rich. In 1676, the Suprema claimed it had confiscated over 700,000 ducats for the royal treasury (which was paid money only after the Inquisition's own budget, amounting in one known case to only 5%). The property on Mallorca alone in 1678 was worth "well over 2,500,000 ducats".
Death tolls and sentenced
Contemporary illustration of the auto de fé of Valladolid, in which fourteen Protestants were burned at the stake for their faith, on 21 May 1559
García Cárcel estimates that the total number prosecuted by the Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000; applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560–1700—about 2%—the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Nevertheless, some authors consider that the toll may have been higher, keeping in mind the data provided by Dedieu and García Cárcel for the tribunals of Toledo and Valencia, respectively, and estimate between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed. Other authors disagree and estimate a max death toll between 1% and 5%, (depending on the time span used) combining all the processes the inquisition carried, both religious and non-religious ones. In either case, this is significantly lower than the of people executed exclusively (for witchcraft in other parts of Europe) during about the same time span as the Spanish Inquisition (estimated at c. 40,000–60,000).
Modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Inquisition. The archives of the Suprema, today held by the (National Historical Archive of Spain) (Archivo Histórico Nacional), conserves the annual relations of all processes between 1540 and 1700. This material provides information for approximately 44,674 judgments. These 44,674 cases include 826 executions in persona and 778 in effigie (i.e. an effigy was burned). This material is far from being complete—for example, the tribunal of Cuenca is entirely omitted, because no relaciones de causas from this tribunal have been found, and significant gaps concern some other tribunals (e.g., Valladolid). Many more cases not reported to the Suprema are known from the other sources (i.e., no relaciones de causas from Cuenca have been found, but its original records have been preserved), but were not included in Contreras-Henningsen's statistics for the methodological reasons. William Monter estimates 1000 executions between 1530 and 1630 and 250 between 1630 and 1730.
The archives of the Suprema only provide information about processes prior to 1560. To study the processes themselves, it is necessary to examine the archives of the local tribunals, the majority of which have been lost to the devastation of war, the ravages of time or other events. Some archives have survived including those of Toledo, where 12,000 were judged for offences related to heresy, mainly minor "blasphemy", and those of Valencia. These indicate that the Inquisition was most active in the period between 1480 and 1530 and that during this period the percentage condemned to death was much more significant than in the years that followed. Modern estimates show approximately 2,000 executions in persona in the whole of Spain up to 1530.
Statistics for the period 1540–1700
The statistics of Henningsen and Contreras are based entirely on relaciones de causas. The number of years for which cases are documented varies for different tribunals. Data for the Aragonese Secretariat are probably complete, some small lacunae may concern only Valencia and possibly Sardinia and Cartagena, but the numbers for Castilian Secretariat—except Canaries and Galicia—should be considered as minimal due to gaps in the documentation. In some cases it is remarked that the number does not concern the whole period 1540–1700.
According to (Toby Green), the great unchecked power given to inquisitors meant that they were "widely seen as above the law", and they sometimes had motives for imprisoning or executing alleged offenders that had nothing to do with punishing religious nonconformity. Green quotes a complaint by historian Manuel Barrios about one Inquisitor, (Diego Rodriguez Lucero), who in Cordoba in 1506 burned to death the husbands of two women; he then kept the women as mistresses. According to Barrios
the daughter of Diego Celemin was exceptionally beautiful, her parents and her husband did not want to give her to [Lucero], and so Lucero had the three of them burnt and now has a child by her, and he has kept for a long time in the alcazar as a mistress.
Some writers disagree with Green.[] These authors do not necessarily deny the abuses of power, but classify them as politically instigated and comparable to those of any other law enforcement body of the period. Criticisms, usually indirect, have gone from the suspiciously sexual overtones or similarities of these accounts with unrelated older antisemitic accounts of kidnap and torture,[] to the clear proofs of control that the king had over the institution, to the sources used by Green, or just by reaching completely different conclusions.
Long-term economic effects
According to a 2021 study, "municipalities of Spain with a history of a stronger inquisitorial presence show lower economic performance, educational attainment, and trust today."
Historiography
How historians and commentators have viewed the Spanish Inquisition has changed over time and continues to be a source of controversy. Before and during the 19th-century historical interest focused on who was being persecuted. In the early and mid 20th century, historians examined the specifics of what happened and how it influenced Spanish history. In the later 20th and 21st century, some historians have re-examined how severe the Inquisition really was, calling into question some of the assumptions made in earlier periods.
19th to early 20th century scholarship
Before the rise of professional historians in the 19th century, the Spanish Inquisition had been portrayed primarily by Protestant scholars who saw it as the archetypal symbol of Catholic intolerance and ecclesiastical power. The Spanish Inquisition for them was largely associated with the persecution of Protestants.William H. Prescott described the Inquisition as an "eye that never slumbered". Despite the existence of extensive documentation regarding the trials and procedures, and to the Inquisition's deep bureaucratization, none of these sources was studied outside of Spain, and Spanish scholars arguing against the predominant view were automatically dismissed. The 19th-century professional historians, including the Spanish scholar (Amador de los Ríos), were the first to successfully challenge this perception in the international sphere and get foreign scholars to take note of their discoveries. Said scholars would obtain international recognition and start a period of revision on the (Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition).
At the start of the 20th century Henry Charles Lea published the groundbreaking History of the Inquisition in Spain. This influential work describes the Spanish Inquisition as "an engine of immense power, constantly applied for the furtherance of obscurantism, the repression of thought, the exclusion of foreign ideas and the obstruction of progress." Lea documented the Inquisition's methods and modes of operation in no uncertain terms, calling it "theocratic absolutism" at its worst. In the context of the polarization between Protestants and Catholics during the second half of the 19th century, some of Lea's contemporaries, as well as most modern scholars thought Lea's work had an anti-Catholic bias.
Starting in the 1920s, Jewish scholars picked up where Lea's work left off. They published (Yitzhak Baer)'s History of the Jews in Christian Spain, Cecil Roth's History of the Marranos and, after World War II, the work of Haim Beinart, who for the first time published trial transcripts of cases involving conversos.
Contemporary historians who subscribe to the idea that the image of the Inquisition in historiography has been systematically deformed by the Black Legend include Edward Peters, Philip Wayne Powell, William S. Maltby, (Richard Kagan), Margaret R. Greer, Helen Rawlings, (Ronnie Hsia), (Lu Ann Homza), Stanley G. Payne, Andrea Donofrio, (Irene Silverblatt), (Christopher Schmidt-Nowara), Charles Gibson, and Joseph Pérez. Contemporary historians who partially accept an impact of the Black Legend but deny other aspects of the hypothesis include Henry Kamen, David Nirenberg and Karen Armstrong.[]
(Toby Green), while accepting that there was a certain demonization of the Spanish Inquisition in comparison with other contemporary persecutions, argues that the habitual use of torture should not be denied, and that correcting the "black legend" should not mean replacing it with a "white legend." Richard L. Kagan says that Henry Kamen failed to "enter the belly of the beast and assess what it really meant to the people who lived with it." Kamen does not, according to Kagan, "lead the reader through an actual trial. Had he done so, a reader might conclude that the institution he portrays as relatively benign in hindsight was also capable of inspiring fear and desperate attempts to escape, and thus more deserving of its earlier reputation." For Kagan, in order to reconstruct the world of those who were trapped in the Inquisition's net, studies that thoroughly examine the meticulous archives of the Inquisition are necessary.
Revision after 1960
The works of (Juderias) in (1913) and other Spanish scholars prior to him were mostly ignored by international scholarship until 1960.
One of the first books to build on them and internationally challenge the classical view was The Spanish Inquisition (1965) by Henry Kamen. Kamen argued that the Inquisition was not nearly as cruel or as powerful as commonly believed. The book was very influential and largely responsible for subsequent studies in the 1970s to try to quantify (from archival records) the Inquisition's activities from 1480 to 1834. Those studies showed there was an initial burst of activity against conversos suspected of relapsing into Judaism, and a mid-16th century pursuit of Protestants, but, according to these studies, the Inquisition served principally as a forum Spaniards occasionally used to humiliate and punish people they did not like: blasphemers, bigamists, foreigners and, in Aragon, homosexuals, and horse smugglers. Kamen went on to publish two more books in 1985 and 2006 that incorporated new findings, further supporting the view that the Inquisition was not as bad as once described by Lea and others. Along similar lines is Edward Peters's Inquisition (1988).
One of the most important works about the inquisition's relation to the Jewish conversos or New Christians is The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain (1995/2002) by Benzion Netanyahu. It challenges the view that most conversos were actually practicing Judaism in secret and were persecuted for their crypto-Judaism. Rather, according to Netanyahu, the persecution was fundamentally racial, and was a matter of envy of their success in Spanish society. This view has been challenged multiple times, and with some reasonable divergences the majority of historians either align with religious causes or with merely cultural ones, with no significant racial element.
In popular culture
This article may contain references to . Please remove the content or add to and .(July 2023)
Literature
There was no remedy, from (Los Caprichos), 1797–98, by Francisco de Goya.
The literature of the 18th century approaches the theme of the Inquisition from a critical point of view. In Candide by Voltaire, the Inquisition appears as the epitome of intolerance and arbitrary justice in Europe.
During the Romantic Period, the Gothic novel, which was primarily a genre developed in Protestant countries, frequently associated Catholicism with terror and repression. This vision of the Spanish Inquisition appears in, among other works, The Monk (1796) by (Matthew Gregory Lewis) (set in Madrid during the Inquisition, but can be seen as commenting on the French Revolution and the Terror); (Melmoth the Wanderer) (1820) by (Charles Robert Maturin) and (The Manuscript Found in Saragossa) by (Jan Potocki).
The literature of the 19th century tends to focus on the element of torture employed by the Inquisition. In France, in the early 19th century, the epistolary novelCornelia Bororquia, or the Victim of the Inquisition, which has been attributed to Spaniard Luiz Gutiérrez, and is based on the case of (María de Bohórquez), ferociously criticizes the Inquisition and its representatives.
The Inquisition also appears in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880) in the chapter "(The Grand Inquisitor)". A story within a story, (several times published as a separate book) "The Grand Inquisitor" is a legend, composed and narrated by the character of Ivan Karamazov, that imagines an encounter between Jesus and the Inquisitor General. Jesus unexpectedly appears in Seville at the height of the Inquisition and is arrested by the Grand Inquisitor, an old Cardinal, who condemns him to die at the stake "like the worst of heretics". In the course of a long diatribe the Inquisitor tells Jesus "You have no right to add anything to what was said by You in former times. Why have You come to get in our way? For You have come to get in our way, and You yourself know it." Jesus remains silent throughout the speech, but when the Inquisitor finally concludes with the words "Tomorrow I shall burn thee", Jesus approaches him and, without a word, kisses him on the mouth. The Inquisitor releases him with the words: "“Go and do not come back... do not come back at all... ever... ever!”
One of the best-known stories of Edgar Allan Poe, "(The Pit and the Pendulum)", explores the use of torture by the Inquisition.
The Inquisition also appears in 20th-century literature. La Gesta del Marrano, by the Argentine author (Marcos Aguinis), portrays the length of the Inquisition's arm to reach people in Argentina during the 16th and 17th centuries. The first book in Les Daniels' "Don Sebastian Vampire Chronicles", The Black Castle (1978), is set in 15th-century Spain and includes both descriptions of Inquisitorial questioning and an auto de fé, as well as Tomás de Torquemada, who is featured in one chapter. The Marvel Comics series Marvel 1602 shows the Inquisition targeting Mutants for "blasphemy". The character Magneto also appears as the Grand Inquisitor. The (Captain Alatriste) novels by the Spanish writer (Arturo Pérez-Reverte) are set in the early 17th century. The second novel, Purity of Blood, has the narrator being tortured by the Inquisition and describes an auto de fé. (Carme Riera)'s novella, published in 1994, Dins el Darrer Blau (In the Last Blue) is set during the repression of the chuetas (conversos from Majorca) at the end of the 17th century. In 1998, the Spanish writer Miguel Delibes published the historical novel (The Heretic), about the Protestants of Valladolid and their repression by the Inquisition. (Samuel Shellabarger)'s (Captain from Castile) deals directly with the Spanish Inquisition during the first part of the novel.
In the novel (La Catedral del Mar) by (Ildefonso Falcones), published in 2006 and set in the 14th century, there are scenes of inquisition investigations in small towns and a great scene in Barcelona.
Film
The 1947 epic (Captain from Castile) by Darryl F. Zanuck, starring Tyrone Power, uses the Inquisition as the major plot point of the film. It tells how powerful families used their evils to ruin their rivals. The first part of the film shows this and the reach of the Inquisition reoccurs throughout this movie following Pedro De Vargas (played by Power) even to the 'New World'.
The film (The Fountain) (2006), by Darren Aronofsky, features the Spanish Inquisition as part of a plot in 1500 when the Grand Inquisitor threatens Queen Isabella's life.
(Goya's Ghosts) (2006) by Miloš Forman is set in Spain between 1792 and 1809 and focuses realistically on the role of the Inquisition and its end under Napoleon's rule.
The film Assassin's Creed (2016) by (Justin Kurzel), starring Michael Fassbender, is set in both modern times and Spain during the Inquisition. The film follows Callum Lynch (played by Fassbender) as he is forced to relive the memories of his ancestor, Aguilar de Nerha (also played by Fassbender), an Assassin during the Spanish Inquisition.
The many film adaptations of the Edgar Allan Poe short story "(The Pit and the Pendulum)", including the (1961 film) and the (1991 film)
(Akelarre) (Pedro Olea, 1984), a film, about the Logroño trial of the Zugarramurdi witches.
The Grand Inquisitor of Spain plays a part in (Don Carlos) (1867), a play by Friedrich Schiller (which was the basis for the opera Don Carlos in five acts by Giuseppe Verdi, in which the Inquisitor is also featured, and the third act is dedicated to an auto de fé).
The 1965 musical Man of La Mancha depicts a fictionalized account of the author Miguel de Cervantes' run-in with Spanish authorities. The character of Cervantes produces a play-within-a-play of his unfinished manuscript, Don Quixote, while he awaits sentencing by the Inquisition.
Monty Python members Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones performing "(The Spanish Inquisition)" sketch during the 2014 Python reunion. In the Monty Python comedy team's (Spanish Inquisition sketches), an inept group of Inquisitors repeatedly burst into scenes, after someone utters the words "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition", screaming "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" The Inquisition then uses ineffectual forms of torture, including a dish-drying (rack), soft cushions and a comfy chair.
The Spanish Inquisition features as a main plotline element of the 2009 video game (Assassin's Creed II: Discovery).
The Universe of Warhammer 40,000 borrows several elements and concepts of the Catholic church Imaginarium, including the notion of the Black Legend's ideal of a fanatic Inquisitors, for some of its troops in (Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr).
The video game (Blasphemous) portrays a nightmarish version of the Spanish Inquisition, where the protagonist, named 'The Penitent one' wears a (capirote) (cone-shaped hat). The Penitent one battles twisted religious iconography and meets many characters attempting to atone for their sins along the way.
The terms converso and crypto-Jew are somewhat vexed, and occasionally historians are not clear on how, precisely, they are intended to be understood. For the purpose of clarity, in this article converso will be taken to mean one who has sincerely renounced Judaism or Islam and embraced Catholicism. Crypto-Jew will be taken to mean one who accepts Christian baptism, yet continues to practice Judaism.
Citations
Data for executions for witchcraft: Levack, Brian P. (199). The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (2nd ed.). London and New York: Longman. ISBN . OCLC30154582. And see (Witch trials in Early Modern Europe) for more detail.
Splendiani, Ana María (1997). Cincuenta años de la inquisición en el Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias. p. 86. the American Inquisition was never involved in the conversion and evangelisation of the Indians, as they were outside its jurisdiction from the very promulgation of the edicts founding the American courts.
Ehler, Sidney Zdeneck; Morrall, John B (1967). Church and State Through the Centuries: A Collection of Historic Documents with Commentaries. Biblo & Tannen Publishers. p. 6-7. ISBN . from the original on 15 May 2016. This Edict is the first which definitely introduces Catholic orthodoxy as the established religion of the Roman world. [...] Acknowledgment of the true doctrine of the Trinity is made the test of State recognition.
Momigliano, Arnaldo (1977). Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography. Wesleyan University Press. p. 113.
Jedin, Hubert & Dolan, John (1993). "41: The Priscillianist Movement". The Early church: an abridgment of History of the church (Volumes 1 to 3). Wesleyan University Press. pp. 226–228.{{}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list ()
Brian Catlos "Secundum suam zunam": Muslims in the Laws of the Aragonese "Reconquista", Mediterranean Studies Vol. 7 (1998), pp. 13–26 Published by: Penn State University Press
Letter of Hasdai Crescas, Shevaṭ Yehudah by Solomon ibn Verga (ed. Dr. M. Wiener), Hannover 1855, pp. 128–130 (pp. 138–140 in PDF); Fritz Kobler, Letters of the Jews through the Ages, London 1952, pp. 272–275; Mitre Fernández, Emilio (1994). Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial (ed.). Los judíos de Castilla en tiempo de Enrique III : el pogrom de 1391 [The Castilian Jews at the time of Henry III: the 1391 pogrom] (in Spanish). Valladolid University. ISBN .; Solomon ibn Verga, Shevaṭ Yehudah (The Sceptre of Judah), Lvov 1846, p. 76 in PDF.
Notably Bishop (Pablo de Santa Maria), author of Scrutinium Scripturarum, (Jeronimo de Santa Fe) (Hebraomastix) and (Zelus Christi contra Judaeos). All three were conversos. (Kamen (1998), p. 39).
Notably the Libro verde de Aragon and Tizón de la nobleza de España (cited in Kamen (1998), p. 38).
Pérez, Joseph (2012) [2009]. Breve Historia de la Inquisición en España. Barcelona: Crítica. ISBN .
Canessa De Sanguinetti, Marta. El Bien Nacer: Limpieza De Oficios Y Limpieza De Sangre : Raíces Ibéricas De Un Mal Latinoamericano. Taurus, Ediciones Santillana, 2000.
(Barea, María Elvira Roca) (2016). Imperiofobia Y Leyenda Negra: Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos Y El Imperio Español (in Spanish). Siruela.
Abou Al Fadl, K. (1994). Islamic law and Muslim minorities: the juristic discourse on Muslim minorities from the second/eight to the eleventh/seventeenth centuries. Islamic Law and Society, 1.
Goosenes, A. (1997). Les inquisitions modernes dans les Pays-Bas meridionaux. 1520–1633. 2 vols. Bruselas
Boronat, P. (1901). Los moriscos españoles y su expulsión. 2 vols. Valencia.
Stuart, Nancy Rubin. Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen. New York: ASJA Press, 2004.
Black, Robert. Machiavelli. Abigdon, Oxon: Routledge, Tylor, 2013. pp. 83–120 (the quote is paraphrased)
González, Óscar (2009). El Rey Y El Papa: Política Y Diplomacia En Los Albores Del Renacimiento (Castilla En El Siglo XV). Sílex.
The Marranos of Spain. From the late XIVth to the early XVIth Century, 1966. Ithaca, 1999
(Archbishop Arnold H. Mathew), The Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia, pp. 52–53. Quote: "Isabella's Confessor, Torquemada, had imbued her with the idea that the suppression of all heresy within her realms was a sacred duty. She had, therefore, in November 1478, obtained a bull from the Pope, Sixtus IV., for the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile. Many modern writers have sought to reduce her share in the introduction of this terrible institution, but it must be remembered that Isabella herself probably considered it a meritorious action to punish with inhuman barbarity those whom she looked upon as the enemies of the Almighty. In 1480, two Dominicans were appointed by her, as Inquisitors, to set up their tribunal at Seville. Before the end of the year 1481, 2,000 victims were burned alive in Andalusia alone. The Pope himself became alarmed and threatened to withdraw the bull, but Ferdinand intimated that he would make the Inquisition altogether an independent tribunal. This it became later for all practical purposes, and its iniquitous proceedings continued unchecked."
Absent records, the Inquisition decreed that all Moors were to be regarded as baptized, and thus were Moriscos, subject to the Inquisition. Secular authorities then decreed (in 1526) that 40 years of religious instruction would precede any prosecution. Fifty Moriscos were burnt at the stake before the Crown clarified its position. Neither the Church nor the Moriscos utilized the years well. The Moriscos can be stereotyped as poor, rural, uneducated agricultural workers who spoke Arabic. The Church had limited willingness or ability to educate this now-hostile group.Green (2007), pp. 124–127
Trevor J. Dadson, The Assimilation of Spain's Moriscos: Fiction or Reality? Journal of Levantine Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 2011, pp. 11–30
Boase, Roger (4 April 2002). "The Muslim Expulsion from Spain". History Today. 52 (4). The majority of those permanently expelled settling in the Maghreb or Barbary Coast, especially in Oran, Tunis, Tlemcen, Tetuán, Rabat and Salé. Many travelled overland to France, but after the assassination of Henry of Navarre by Ravaillac in May 1610, they were forced to emigrate to Italy, Sicily or Constantinople.
These trials, specifically those of Valladolid, form the basis of the plot of (The Heretic: A Novel of the Inquisition) by Miguel Delibes (Overlook: 2006).
Kamen (1998), p. 99 gives the figure of about 100 executions for heresy of any kind between 1559 and 1566. He compares these figures with those condemned to death in other European countries during the same period, concluding that in similar periods England, under Mary Tudor, executed about twice as many for heresy: in France, three times the number, and ten times as many in the Low Countries.
These trials are the theme of the film Akelarre, by the Spanish director Pedro Olea.
Henry Kamen. The Spanish Inquisition A Historical Revision. 1999
Cited in Henningsen, Gustav, ed. "The Salazar Documents: Inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías and Others on the Basque Witch Persecution." Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions: Medieval and Early Modern Peoples, Vol 21. Boston: Koninklijke Brill, 2004. "Second Report of Salazar to the Inquisitor General (Logroño, 24 March 1612): An account of the whole visitation and publication of the Edict with special reference to the witches' sect". p. 352.
Statistics are not available for Spanish oarsmen, but the general state of Mediterranean oared galleys circa 1570 was grim; cf. Crowley, Roger (2009). Empires of the sea: The siege of Malta, the battle of Lepanto, and the contest for the center of the world. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks. pp. 77–78. ISBN .: "... galley slaves led lives bitter and short. ... One way or another the oared galley consumed men like fuel. Each dying wretch dumped overboard had to be replaced—and there were never enough."
Lorenzo Arrazola, Enciclopedia Espanola De Derecho Y Administracion: Ciu-Col (Enciclopedia of Spanish Penal and Administrative Law). Madrid: Saraswati Press, 2012, pp. 572
Cc̀eres, Fernando (2007). Estudios Sobre Cultura, Guerra Y Polt̕ica En La Corona De Castilla [Studies Over War Culture and Politics in the Kingdom of Castile]. Editorial Csic Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientf̕icas. siglos xiv–xvii.
Kaler, Amy (1998). Fertility, Gender and War: The culture of contraception. University of Minnesota Press.
In Sicily, the Inquisition functioned until 30 March 1782, when it was abolished by King (Ferdinand IV of Naples). It is estimated that 200 people were executed during this period.
"In the tribunal of Valladolid, in 1699, various suspects (including a girl of 9 and a boy of 14) were jailed for up to two years with having had the least evaluation of the accusations presented against them" (Kamen (1998), p. 183).
Azevedo, João Lúcio de (1922). O Marquês de Pombal e a sua época (in Portuguese). Annuario do Brasil. p. 285.
Freitas, Jordão de (1916). O Marquez de Pombal e o Santo Oficio da Inquisição (Memoria enriquecida com documentos inéditos e facsimiles de assignaturas do benemerito reedificador da cidade de Lisboa) (in Portuguese). Soc. Editora José Bastos. pp. 10, 106, 122.
Cited in Elorza, La Inquisición y el pensamiento ilustrado. Historia 16. Especial 10º Aniversario La Inquisición; p. 81.
Members of the government and the Council of Castile, as well as other members close to the court, obtained special authorization for books purchased in France, the Low Countries or Germany to cross the border without inspection by members of the Holy Office. This practice grew beginning with the reign of Charles III.
Elorza, La Inquisición y el pensamiento ilustrado. p. 84.
The argument presented in the periodicals and other works circulating in Spain were virtually exact copies of the reflections of Montesquieu or Rousseau, translated into Spanish.
Church properties, in general, and those of the Holy Office in particular, occupied large tracts of today's Castile and León, Extremadura and Andalucia. The properties were given under feudal terms to farmers or to localities who used them as community property with many restrictions, owing a part of the rent, generally in cash, to the church.
Elorza, La Inquisición y el Pensamiento Ilustrado. Historia 16. Especial 10º Aniversario La Inquisición; p. 88
See (Antonio Puigblanch), La Inquisición sin máscara, Cádiz, 1811–1813.
Historians have different interpretations. One argument is that during the Ominous Decade, the Inquisition was re-established- because of a statement made by upon a visit to the Vatican that he would reintroduce it if the occasion arose, but the Royal Decree that would have abolished the order of the Trienio Liberal was never approved, or at least, never published. The formal abolition under the regency of Maria Cristina was thus nothing more than a ratification of the abolition of 1820.[]
Francisco Fajardo Spínola, La actividad procesal del Santo Oficio. Algunas consideraciones sobre su estudio, Manuscrits 17, 1999, p. 114.
One burned in 1567 (E. Schäffer, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Spanischen Protestantismus, Bd. 2, Gütersloh 1902, pp. 41–42), 13 in the period 1570–1625 (W. Monter, Frontiers of heresy, p. 48), 5 burned in 1627, another 5 burned in 1655 (Kamen (2005), p. 266) and 3 burned alive in 1665 (Miriam Bodian, Dying in the law of Moses: crypto-Jewish martyrdom in the Iberian world, Indiana University Press 2007, p. 219).
cf. Henningsen, p. 68.
Four burned between 1553 and 1558 (W. Monter, Frontiers of heresy, pp. 37–38 n. 22), one in 1561 (W. Monter, Frontiers of heresy, p. 233), 19 others in the period 1570–1625 (W. Monter, Frontiers of heresy, p. 48) and 10 burned in 1654 (Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, Vol. V, 2009, p. 91).
Two persons condemned to death in 1678 were burned in the auto de fe celebrated in Madrid in 1680 (H. Ch. Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain, New York 1907, vol. III, p. 300). Therefore, they are included in the number of executions for Toledo/Madrid.
This number includes 7 persons burned ca. 1545 (H. Ch. Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain, New York 1907, vol. III, p. 189), 9 persons burned in 1550–52 (Flora García Ivars, La represión en el tribunal inquisitorial de Granada, 1550–1819, ed. Akal, 1991, p. 194), 14 persons burned in the 1560s. (W. Monter, p. 44, 233), 24 burned between 1570 and 1625 (W. Monter, p. 48), 12 burned in 1654 (Heinrich Graetz, History of the Jews, Vol. V, 2009, p. 92) and 6 burned in 1672 (A. J. Saraiva, H. P. Salomon, I. S. D. Sassoon: The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536–1765. Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 2001, p. 217 n. 62).
154 burned between 1557 and 1568 (J. L. Morales y Marin: El Alcazar de la Inquisicion en Murcia, s. 40), 11 executed in the period 1570–1625 (W. Monter, p. 48) and 25 between 1686 and 1699 (Consuelo Maqueda Abreu, El auto de fe, Madryt 1992, p. 97).
This number includes 2 executions in the auto-da-fé in 1545 (W.Monter, Frontiers of heresy, p. 38), 114 executions in the autos da fe between 1559 and 1660 (Victoria González de Caldas, Judíos o cristianos?, Universidad de Sevilla, 2000, p. 528) and 12 executions in the autos da fe between 1666 and 1695 (Consuelo Maqueda Abreu, El auto de fe, Madrid 1992, pp. 99–100).
13 burned in the autos da fe between 1555 and 1569 (E. Schäffer, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Spanischen Protestantismus, Bd. 2, Gütersloh 1902, p. 79–91.), 25 burned between 1570 and 1625 (W. Monter, p. 48), 2 burned between 1648 and 1699 (H. Ch. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, vol. IV, New York 1907, p. 524; cf. Joaquín Pérez Villanueva & Bartolomé Escandell Bonet (ed.), Historia de la Inquisición en España y América, vol. 1, Madrid 1984, p. 1395), and 26 burned in two autos da fe in Madrid w 1632 and 1680 (H. Ch. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, vol. III, New York 1907, p. 228).
This number includes 6 executions given by Henningsen and Contreras for the period 1620–1670 (Henningsen, The Database of the Spanish Inquisition, pp. 58 and 65), 26 burned in two famous autos-da-fé in 1559 (W.Monter, Frontiers of heresy, pp. 41, 44),2 burned in 1561 (W. Monter, pp. 41, 44, 233),15 burned between 1562 and 1567 (E. Schäffer, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Spanischen Protestantismus, Bd. 3, Gütersloh 1902, p. 131) and 5 burned in 1691 (H. Ch. Lea, History of the Inquisition of Spain, New York 1907, vol. III, p. 197).
Source: Teofanes Egido, Las modificaciones de la tipologia: nueva estructura delictiva, in: Joaquín Pérez Villanueva & Bartolomé Escandell Bonet, Historia de la Inquisición en España y América, vol. 1, Madrid 1984, p. 1395.
Contreras, Jaime y Gustav Henningsen (1986). "Forty-four thousand cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): analysis of a historical data bank", en Henningsen G., J. A. Tedeschi et al. (comps.), The Inquisition in early modern Europe: studies on sources and methods. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press.
Pérez, Joseph (2006). The Spanish Inquisition: a history. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press; p. 173
Juan Antonio Llorente: Historia crítica de la Inquisición en España (tomo IV, p. 183). Madrid: Hiperión, 1980.
. Penn Libraries - University of Pennsylvania. Univ. of Pennsylvania. –Penn Special Collections. Archived from the original on 10 September 2006. Retrieved 18 April 2007.
Van Hove, Brian (12 November 1996). . Catholic.net. Archived from the original on 5 April 2007. Retrieved 18 April 2007.
See for example Jean-Pierre Dedieu, Los Cuatro Tiempos, in Bartolomé Benassar, Inquisición Española: poder político y control social, pp. 15–39 and García Cárcel (1976)
Vicente Ángel Álvarez Palenzuela. Judíos y conversos en la España medieval. Estado de la cuestión (Jews and converts in medieval Spain. Estate of the matter). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) eHumanista/Converso 4 (2015):156–191 It can be checked for free here.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor (2009). The Grand Inquisitor. Penguin Books.
(Llorente, Juan Antonio) (1817). Histoire critique de l'Inquisition d'Espagne(4 volumes) (in French). Imprimerie de Plassan.
Pastor, Ludwig von, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages; Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and other original sources, 40 vols. St. Louis, B. Herder 1898
Pérez, Joseph (2005). The Spanish Inquisition: A History. Yale University Press.
Pérez, Joseph (2009). Breve Historia de la Inquisición en España (in Spanish). Crítica.
(Barea, María Elvira Roca) (2016). Imperiofobia Y Leyenda Negra: Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos Y El Imperio Español. Siruela.
(Carroll, Warren H.), Isabel: the Catholic Queen, Christendom Press (1991)
García Cárcel, Ricardo (1976). Orígenes de la Inquisición Española. El Tribunal de Valencia, 1478–1530. Barcelona.{{}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ()
Graizbord, David L. Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora, 1580–1700. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2004.
(Homza, Lu Ann) (2006). The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614, An Anthology of Sources. Hackett Publishing.
Kamen, Henry (2005). Inkwizycja Hiszpańska [The Spanish Inquisition] (in Polish). Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. ISBN .
Kamen, Henry (2014). The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN . Kamen has published 4 editions under 3 titles: "First edition published 1965 ... as The Spanish Inquisition. Second edition published 1985 ... as Inquisition and Society in Spain. Third edition published 1998 ... as The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. Fourth edition 2014."
Kritzler, Edward, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean. Anchor Books 2009. ISBN
Monter, E. William (1990). Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily. Cambridge University Press. ISBN .
Nirenberg, David. (2013). Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN . ch. 5 "Revenge of the Savior: Jews and Power in Medieval Europe", ch.6 "The Extinction of Spain's Jews and the Birth of Its Inquisition"
Peters, Edward (1988). Inquisition. New York & London: Free Press Collier Macmillan. ISBN .
Rawlings, Helen, The Spanish Inquisition, Blackwell Publishing (2006)
Old scholarship
Adler, Elkan Nathan, Autos de fe and the Jew (1908)
Baião, António, A Inquisição em Portugal e no Brasil (1921)
Baker, J., History of the Inquisition (1736)
Ballester , Vicente Vignau y - Catálogo de las causas contra la fe seguidas ante el tribunal de Santo oficio de la inquisición de Toledo (,,,) (1903)
Bell,Aubrey F.G. Luis de Leon: A Study of the Spanish Renaissance (1925)
Cappa, Ricardo - La Inquisicion Espanola (1888)
Cardew,Alexander - A Short History of the Inquisition (1933)
Castellano y de la Pena,Gaspar Un Complot Terrorista en el Siglo XV; los Comienzos de la Inquisicion Aragonesa, (1927)
Coulton,George Gordon - The Inquisition (1929)
Garau, Francisco - La Fee Triunfante en quatro autos celebrados en Mallorca por el Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en que han salido ochenta y ocho reos(...) - (1691– reprinted 1931)
García, Genaro, La Inquisición de México (1906).
García, Genaro, Autos de fe de la Inquisición de Mexico (1910)
Herculano, Alexandre , Historia da Origem e Estabelecimento da Inquisiçao em Portugal (English translation, 1926)
Jouve,Marguerite - Torquemada (1935)
Maistre, Joseph de , Letters on the Spanish Inquisition (1838)
Maycock, Alan Lawson - The Inquisition (1926)
Marchant John - A Review of the Bloody Tribunal; or the horrid cruelties of the Inquisition (...) 1770)
Marín Julio Melgares - Procedimientos de la Inquisición (2 volumes), (1886)
Medina, José Toribio - "Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la inquisición de Lima (1569-1820)" (1887)
Meliá, Antonio Paz y - Catálogo Abreviado de Papeles de Inquisición (1914)
Merveilleux, Charles Frédéric de - Memoires Instructifs pour un Voyageur dans les Divers États de l'Europe (1738)
Montes, Raimundo González de -Discovery and Playne Declaration of Sundry Subtile Practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spayne (1568)
Nickerson, Hoffman - The Inquisition (1923)
Páramo, Luis de - De origine et progressu Officii Sanctae Inquisitionis, eiusque, dignitate & utilitate 1598
Perlas, Ramon de Vilana , La verdadera práctica apostólica de el S. Tribunal de la Inquisición (1735)
Puigblanch, Antonio - La Inquisición sin máscara ó Disertacion En Que Se Prueban Hasta La Evidencia Los Vicios De Este Tribunal Y La Necesidad De Que Se Suprima... (1816)]
Roth, Cecil - The Spanish Inquisition (1937)
Roth, Cecil - History of the Marranos (1932)
Sabatini, Rafael (1930). Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition(revised edition,1930). Houghton Mifflin Company.
Sime, William,History of the Inquisition from its origin under Pope Innocent III till the present time. (1834)
Teixeira, António José - Antonio Homem e a Inquisicão (1895)
Turberville, Arthur Stanley - Medieval History and the Inquisition (1920)
Turberville, Arthur Stanley .- The Spanish Inquisition (1932).
Walsh, William Thomas, Isabella of Spain (1930) and Characters of the Inquisition (1940). Both reprinted by TAN Books (1987).
Wilkens, Cornelius August : Spanish Protestants in the Sixteenth Century (1897), 218p. read online at archive.org"Title Catalog". The Library of Iberian Resources. Retrieved 17 May 2006.
Other
(2019). Judge thy neighbor: denunciations in the Spanish Inquisition, Romanov Russia, and Nazi Germany. Columbia University Press.
(Frassetto, Michael) (2007). Heretic lives : Medieval Heresy from Bogomil and the Cathars to Wyclif and Hus. Profile Books. ISBN .
This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Spanish Inquisition news newspapers books scholar JSTOR February 2024 Learn how and when to remove this message The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition Spanish Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition Inquisicion espanola was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile It began toward the end of the Reconquista and was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition which was under papal control It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition along with the Roman Inquisition and the Portuguese Inquisition The Spanish Inquisition may be defined broadly as operating in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories which included the Canary Islands the Kingdom of Naples citation needed and all Spanish possessions in North America and South America According to some modern estimates around 150 000 people were prosecuted for various offences during the three century duration of the Spanish Inquisition of whom between 3 000 and 5 000 were executed approximately 2 7 percent of all cases The Inquisition however since the creation of the American courts has never had jurisdiction over the indigenous The King of Spain ordered that the inquisitors should never proceed against the Indians but against the old Christians and their descendants and other persons against whom in these kingdoms of Spain it is customary to proceed Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la InquisicionSeal for the Tribunal in Spain Flanking the cross is a sword symbolising the punishment of heretics and an olive branch symbolising reconciliation with the repentant In Latin the inscription Exurge Domine et judica causam tuam Psalm 73 Arise O God and defend your cause TypeTypeTribunal under the Spanish monarchy for upholding religious orthodoxy in their realmHistoryEstablished1 November 1478Disbanded15 July 1834SeatsConsisted of a Grand Inquisitor who headed the Council of the Supreme and General Inquisition made up of six members Under it were up to 21 tribunals in the empire ElectionsVoting systemGrand Inquisitor and Suprema designated by the crownMeeting placeSpanish EmpireFootnotesSee also Medieval Inquisition Roman Inquisition Portuguese Inquisition Mexican Inquisition Peruvian Inquisition The Inquisition was originally intended primarily to identify heretics among those who converted from Judaism and Islam to Catholicism The regulation of the faith of newly converted Catholics was intensified following royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert to Catholicism or leave Castile or face death resulting in hundreds of thousands of forced conversions the persecution of conversos and moriscos and the mass expulsions of Jews and of Muslims from Spain The Inquisition was abolished in 1834 during the reign of Isabella II after a period of declining influence in the preceding century Previous InquisitionsThe Virgin of the Catholic Monarchs The Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 312 Having itself been severely persecuted under previous emperors the new religion now felt capable of commencing its own program of persecutions From the moment it was recognised and empowered there were persecutions against the adherents of other cults pagans Jews heretics Though only in the fourth century of its existence Christianity had spread widely and was already beginning to experience a multiplicity of schisms within itself Among the most significant of the heresies at this time were Arianism Manichaeism Gnosticism the Adamites the Donatists the Pelagians and Priscillianists The Edict of Thessalonica issued on 27 February 380 by Emperor Theodosius I established Nicene Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire It condemned other Christian creeds as heresies of foolish madmen and approved their punishment In 438 under Emperor Theodosius II the Codex Theodosianus Theodosian Code a compilation of laws of the Roman Empire already provided for the confiscation of property and the death penalty for heretics The Spanish ascetic and theologian Priscillian was accused of magic and libertinage and excommunicated in 380 He was later tried and executed along with several of his companions by emperor Magnus Maximus at the instigation of two Christian bishops despite the opposition of important figures like Saint Martin of Tours and Saint Ambrose Priscillian has been described as the first martyr killed by a Spanish Inquisition After the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century there followed a period of almost seven centuries in which persecutions for heresy became very rare Some of the old heresies survived but in a weakened state and they tended not to operate openly No new schisms appeared to emerge during this period The Episcopal Inquisition was created through papal bull Ad Abolendam To abolish at the end of the 12th century by Pope Lucius III with the support of emperor Frederick I to combat the Albigensian heresy in southern France Heretics were to be handed over to secular authorities for punishment have their property seized and face excommunication Holders of public office counts barons rectors in cities and other places were required to take responsibility for punishing heretics handed over to them by the Church any authority who failed in this duty would be excommunicated removed from office and stripped of all legal rights Commercial boycotts would be imposed on cities that supported heretics and declined to participate It was the start of a centralization process in the fight against heresy There were a large number of tribunals of the Papal Inquisition in various European kingdoms during the Middle Ages In the Kingdom of Aragon a tribunal of the Papal Inquisition was established by the statute of of Pope Gregory IX in 1231 during the era of the Albigensian heresy as a condition for peace with Aragon The Inquisition was ill received by the Aragonese which led to prohibitions against insults or attacks on it Rome was particularly concerned that the Iberian Peninsula s large Muslim and Jewish population would have a heretical influence on Catholic citizens Rome pressed the kingdoms to accept the Papal Inquisition after Aragon Navarra conceded in the 13th century and Portugal by the end of the 14th though its Roman Inquisition was famously inactive Castile refused steadily trusting in its prominent position in Europe and its military power to keep the Pope s interventionism in check By the end of the Middle Ages England due to distance and voluntary compliance and Castile future part of Spain due to resistance and power were the only Western European kingdoms to successfully resist the establishment of the Inquisition in their realms citation needed CreationThere are several hypotheses of what prompted the creation of the tribunal after centuries of tolerance within the context of medieval Europe The Too Multi Religious hypothesis The Spanish Inquisition is interpretable as a response to the multi religious nature of Spanish society following the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Moors The Reconquista did not result in the total expulsion of Muslims from Spain since they along with Jews were tolerated by the ruling Christian elite Large cities especially Seville Valladolid and Barcelona had significant Jewish populations centered on Juderia but in the coming years the Muslims became increasingly alienated and relegated from power centers Post reconquest medieval Spain has been characterized by Americo Castro as a society of relatively peaceful co existence convivencia punctuated by occasional conflict among the ruling Catholics and the Jews and Muslims As historian Henry Kamen notes the so called convivencia was always a relationship between unequals Despite their legal inequality there was a long tradition of Jewish service to the Crown of Aragon and Jews occupied many important posts both religious and political Castile itself had an unofficial rabbi Ferdinand s father John II named the Jewish Abiathar Crescas Court Astronomer citation needed Anti semitic attitudes increased all over Europe during the late 13th century and throughout the 14th century England and France expelled their Jewish populations in 1290 and 1306 respectively At the same time during the Reconquista Spain s anti Jewish sentiment steadily increased This prejudice climaxed in the summer of 1391 when violent anti Jewish riots broke out in Spanish cities like Barcelona To linguistically distinguish them from non converted or long established Catholic families new converts were called conversos or New Catholics According to Don Hasdai Crescas persecution against Jews began in earnest in Seville in 1391 on the 1st day of the lunar month Tammuz June From there the violence spread to Cordoba and by the 17th day of the same lunar month it had reached Toledo called then by Jews after its Arabic name Ṭulayṭulah in the region of Castile Then the violence spread to Mallorca and by the 1st day of the lunar month Elul it had also reached the Jews of Barcelona in Catalonia where the slain were estimated at two hundred and fifty Indeed many Jews who resided in the neighboring provinces of Lleida and Gironda and in the kingdom of Valencia had also been affected as were also the Jews of Al Andalus Andalucia While many died a martyr s death others converted to save themselves Encouraged by the preaching of Ferrand Martinez Archdeacon of Ecija the general unrest affected nearly all of the Jews in Spain during which time an estimated 200 000 Jews changed their religion or else concealed their religion becoming known in Hebrew as Anusim meaning those who are compelled to hide their religion Only a handful of the more principal persons of the Jewish community those who had found refuge among the viceroys in the outlying towns and districts managed to escape Forced baptism was contrary to the law of the Catholic Church and theoretically anybody who had been forcibly baptized could legally return to Judaism Legal definitions of the time theoretically acknowledged that a forced baptism was not a valid sacrament but confined this to cases where it was literally administered by physical force a person who had consented to baptism under threat of death or serious injury was still regarded as a voluntary convert and accordingly forbidden to revert to Judaism After the public violence many of the converted felt it safer to remain in their new religion Thus after 1391 a new social group appeared and were referred to as conversos or New Christians Many conversos now freed from the anti Semitic restrictions imposed on Jewish employment attained important positions in fifteenth century Spain including positions in the government and in the Church Among many others physicians Andres Laguna and Francisco Lopez de Villalobos Ferdinand s court physician writers Juan del Enzina Juan de Mena Diego de Valera and Alonso de Palencia and bankers Luis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez who financed the voyage of Christopher Columbus were all conversos Conversos not without opposition managed to attain high positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy at times becoming severe detractors of Judaism Some even received titles of nobility and as a result during the following century some works attempted to demonstrate many nobles of Spain were descended from Israelites The Enforcement Across Borders hypothesis Bartolome Esteban Murillo The martyrdom of San Pedro de Arbues 1664 According to this hypothesis the Inquisition was created to standardize the variety of laws and many jurisdictions Spain was divided into It would be an administrative program analogous to the Santa Hermandad the Holy Brotherhood a law enforcement body answering to the crown that prosecuted thieves and criminals across counties in a way local county authorities could not ancestor to the Guardia Civil an institution that would guarantee uniform prosecution of crimes against royal laws across all local jurisdictions The Kingdom of Castile had been prosperous and successful in Europe thanks in part to the unusual authority and control the king exerted over the nobility which ensured political stability and kept the kingdom from being weakened by in fighting as was the case in England for example Under the Trastamara dynasty both kings of Castile and Aragon had lost power to the great nobles who now formed dissenting and conspiratorial factions Taxation and varying privileges differed from county to county and powerful noble families constantly extorted the kings to attain further concessions particularly in Aragon The main goals of the reign of the Catholic Monarchs were to unite their two kingdoms and strengthen royal influence to guarantee stability In pursuit of this they sought to further unify the laws of their realms and reduce the power of the nobility in certain local areas They attained this partially by raw military strength by creating a combined army between the two of them that could outmatch the army of most noble coalitions in the Peninsula It was impossible to change the entire laws of both realms by force alone and due to reasonable suspicion of one another the monarchs kept their kingdoms separate during their lifetimes The only way to unify both kingdoms and ensure that Isabella Ferdinand and their descendants maintained the power of both kingdoms without uniting them in life was to find or create an executive legislative and judicial arm directly under the Crown empowered to act in both kingdoms This goal the hypothesis goes might have given birth to the Spanish Inquisition page needed The religious organization to oversee this role was obvious Catholicism was the only institution common to both kingdoms and the only one with enough popular support that the nobility could not easily attack it Through the Spanish Inquisition Isabella and Ferdinand created a personal police force and personal code of law that rested above the structure of their respective realms without altering or mixing them and could operate freely in both As the Inquisition had the backing of both kingdoms it would exist independent of both the nobility and local interests of either kingdom According to this view the prosecution of heretics would be secondary or simply not considered different from the prosecution of conspirators traitors or groups of any kind who planned to resist royal authority At the time royal authority rested on divine right and on oaths of loyalty held before God so the connection between religious deviation and political disloyalty would appear obvious This hypothesis is supported by the disproportionately high representation of the nobility and high clergy among those investigated by the Inquisition as well as by the many administrative and civil crimes the Inquisition oversaw The Inquisition prosecuted the counterfeiting of royal seals and currency ensured the effective transmission of the orders of the kings and verified the authenticity of official documents traveling through the kingdoms especially from one kingdom to the other See Non Religious Crimes page needed The Placate Europe hypothesis At a time when most of Europe had already expelled the Jews from the Christian kingdoms the dirty blood of Spaniards was met with open suspicion and contempt by the rest of Europe As the world became smaller and foreign relations became more relevant to stay in power this foreign image of being the seed of Jews and Moors may have become a problem In addition the coup that allowed Isabella to take the throne from Joanna of Castile la Beltraneja and the Catholic Monarchs to marry had estranged Castile from Portugal its historical ally and created the need for new relationships Similarly Aragon s ambitions lay in control of the Mediterranean and the defense against France As their policy of royal marriages proved the Catholic Monarchs were deeply concerned about France s growing power and expected to create strong dynastic alliances across Europe In this scenario the Iberian reputation of being too tolerant was a problem Despite the prestige earned through the reconquest reconquista the foreign image of Spaniards coexisted with an almost universal image of heretics and bad Christians due to the long coexistence between the three religions they had accepted in their lands Anti Jewish stereotypes created to justify or prompt the expulsion and expropriation of the European Jews were also applied to Spaniards in most European courts and the idea of them being greedy gold thirsty cruel and violent due to the Jewish and Moorish blood was prevalent in Europe before America was discovered by Europeans Chronicles by foreign travelers circulated through Europe describing the tolerant ambiance reigning in the court of Isabella and Ferdinand and how Moors and Jews were free to go about without anyone trying to convert them Past and common clashes between the Pope and the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula regarding the Inquisition in Castile s case and regarding South Italy in Aragon s case also reinforced their image of heretics in the international courts These accusations and images could have direct political and military consequences at the time especially considering that the union of two powerful kingdoms was a particularly delicate moment that could prompt the fear and violent reactions from neighbors even more if combined with the expansion of the Ottoman Turks on the Mediterranean The creation of the Inquisition and the expulsion of both Jews and Moriscos may have been part of a strategy to whitewash the image of Spain and ease international fears regarding Spain s allegiance In this scenario the creation of the Inquisition could have been part of the Catholic Monarchs strategy to turn away from African allies and towards Europe a tool to turn both actual Spain and the Spanish image more European and improve relations with the Pope page needed The Ottoman Scare hypothesis The alleged discovery of Morisco plots to support a possible Ottoman invasion were crucial factors in their decision to create the Inquisition At this time the Ottoman Empire was in rapid expansion and the Aragonese Mediterranean Empire was crumbling under debt and war exhaustion Ferdinand reasonably feared that he would not be capable of repelling an Ottoman attack to Spain s shores especially if the Ottomans had internal help The regions with the highest concentration of Moriscos were those close to the common naval crossings between Spain and Africa If the weakness of the Aragonese Naval Empire was combined with the resentment of the higher nobility against the monarchs the dynastic claims of Portugal on Castile and the two monarchs exterior politics that turned away from Morocco and other African nations in favor of Europe the fear of a second Muslim invasion and thus a second Muslim occupation was hardly unfounded This fear may have been the base reason for the expulsion of those citizens who had either a religious reason to support the invasion of the Ottomans Moriscos or no particular religious reason to not do it Jews The Inquisition might have been part of the preparations to enforce these measures and ensure their effectiveness by rooting out false converts that would still pose a threat of foreign espionage In favor of this view there is the obvious military sense it makes and the many early attempts of peaceful conversion and persuasion that the Monarchs used at the beginning of their reign and the sudden turn towards the creation of the Inquisition and the edicts of expulsion when those initial attempts failed The conquest of Naples by the Gran Capitan is also proof of an interest in Mediterranean expansion and re establishment of Spanish power in that sea that was bound to generate frictions with the Ottoman Empire and other African nations So the Inquisition would have been created as a permanent body to prevent the existence of citizens with religious sympathies with African nations now that rivalry with them had been deemed unavoidable Philosophical and religious reasons The creation of the Spanish Inquisition was consistent with the most important political philosophers of the Florentine School with whom the kings were known to have contact Guicciardini Pico della Mirandola Machiavelli Segni Pitti Nardi Varchi etc Both Guicciardini and Machiavelli defended the importance of centralization and unification to create a strong state capable of repelling foreign invasions and also warned of the dangers of excessive social uniformity to the creativity and innovation of a nation Machiavelli considered piety and morals desirable for the subjects but not so much for the ruler who should use them as a way to unify its population He also warned of the nefarious influence of a corrupt church in the creation of a selfish population and middle nobility which had fragmented the peninsula and made it unable to resist either France or Aragon German philosophers at the time were spreading the importance of a vassal sharing the religion of their lord The Inquisition may have just been the result of putting these ideas into practice The use of religion as a unifying factor across a land that was allowed to stay diverse and maintain different laws in other respects and the creation of the Inquisition to enforce laws across it maintain said religious unity and control the local elites were consistent with most of those teachings Alternatively the enforcement of Catholicism across the realm might indeed be the result of simple religious devotion by the monarchs The recent scholarship on the expulsion of the Jews leans towards the belief of religious motivations being at the bottom of it But considering the reports on Ferdinand s political persona that is unlikely the only reason Ferdinand was described among others by Machiavelli as a man who didn t know the meaning of piety but who made political use of it and would have achieved little if he had really known it He was Machiavelli s main inspiration while writing The Prince The Keeping the Pope in Check hypothesis The hierarchy of the Catholic Church had made many attempts during the Middle Ages to take over Christian Spain politically such as claiming the Church s ownership over all land reconquered from non Christians a claim that was rejected by Castile but accepted by Aragon and Portugal In the past the papacy had tried and partially succeeded in forcing the Mozarabic Rite out of Iberia Its intervention had been pivotal for Aragon s loss of Rosellon clarification needed The meddling regarding Aragon s control over South Italy was even stronger historically In their lifetime the Catholic Monarchs had problems with Pope Paul II a very strong proponent of absolute authority for the church over the kings Carrillo actively opposed them both and often used Spain s mixed blood as an excuse to intervene The papacy and the monarchs of Europe had been involved in a rivalry for power all through the high Middle Ages that Rome had already won in other powerful kingdoms like France Since the legitimacy granted by the church was necessary for both monarchs especially Isabella to stay in power the creation of the Spanish Inquisition may have been a way to apparently concede to the Pope s demands and criticism regarding Spain s mixed religious heritage while at the same time ensuring that the Pope could hardly force the second inquisition of his own and at the same time create a tool to control the power of the Roman Church in Spain The Spanish Inquisition was unique at the time because it was not led by the Pope Once the bull of creation was granted the head of the Inquisition was the Monarch of Spain It was in charge of enforcing the laws of the king regarding religion and other private life matters not of following orders from Rome from which it was independent This independence allowed the Inquisition to investigate prosecute and convict clergy for both corruptions and possible charges of treason of conspiracy against the crown on the Pope s behalf presumably without the Pope s intervention The inquisition was despite its title of Holy not necessarily formed by the clergy and secular lawyers were equally welcome to it If it was an attempt at keeping Rome out of Spain it was an extremely successful and refined one It was a bureaucratic body that had the nominal authority of the church and permission to prosecute members of the church which the kings could not do while answering only to the Spanish Crown This did not prevent the Pope from having some influence on the decisions of Spanish monarchs but it did force the influence to be through the kings making direct influence very difficult page needed Other hypotheses Other hypotheses that circulate regarding the Spanish Inquisition s creation include Economic reasons Since one of the penalties that the Inquisition could enforce on the convicts was the confiscation of their property which became Crown property it has been stated that the creation of the Inquisition was a way to finance the crown There is no solid reason for this hypothesis to stand alone nor for the Kings of Spain to need an institution to do this gradually instead of confiscating property through edicts but it may be one of the reasons why the Inquisition stayed for so long This hypothesis notes the tendency of the Inquisition to operate in large and wealthy cities and is favoured by those who consider that most of those prosecuted for practising Judaism and Islam in secret were actually innocent of it Gustav Bergenroth editor and translator of the Spanish state papers from 1485 to 1509 believed that revenue was the incentive for Ferdinand and Isabella s decision to invite the Inquisition into Spain Other authors point out that both monarchs were very aware of the economic consequences they would suffer from a decrease in population Intolerance and racism This argument is usually made regarding the expulsion of the Jews or the Moriscos and since the Inquisition was so closely interconnected with those actions can be expanded to it It varies between those who deny that Spain was really that different from the rest of Europe regarding tolerance and openmindedness and those who argue that it used to be but gradually the antisemitic and racist atmosphere of medieval Europe rubbed onto it It explains the creation of the Inquisition as the result of exactly the same forces as those that caused the creation of similar entities across Europe This view may account for the similarities between the Spanish Inquisition and similar institutions but completely fails to account for its many unique characteristics including its time of appearance and its duration through time so even if accepted requires the addition of some of the other hypothesis to be complete page needed Purely religious reasons essentially this view suggests that the Catholic Monarchs created the Inquisition to prosecute heretics and sodomites because the Bible says so Activity of the InquisitionStart of the Inquisition Torquemada is buried in the monastery of Saint Thomas at Avila and left his own epitaph Pestem Fugat Haereticam i e drove away the pestilence of heresy Fray Alonso de Ojeda a Dominican friar from Seville convinced Queen Isabella of the existence of Crypto Judaism among Andalusian conversos during her stay in Seville between 1477 and 1478 A report produced by Pedro Gonzalez de Mendoza Archbishop of Seville and by the Segovian Dominican Tomas de Torquemada of converso family himself corroborated this assertion Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella requested a papal bull establishing an inquisition in Spain in 1478 Pope Sixtus IV granted the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus permitting the monarchs to select and appoint two or three priests over forty years of age to act as inquisitors In 1483 Ferdinand and Isabella established a state council to administer the inquisition with the Dominican Friar Tomas de Torquemada acting as its president even though Sixtus IV protested the activities of the inquisition in Aragon and its treatment of the conversos Torquemada eventually assumed the title of Inquisitor General Ferdinand II of Aragon pressured Pope Sixtus IV to agree to an Inquisition controlled by the monarchy by threatening to withdraw military support at a time when the Turks were a threat to Rome citation needed The pope issued a bull to stop the Inquisition but was pressured into withdrawing it On 1 November 1478 Sixtus published the Papal bull Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus Sincere Devotion Is Required through which he gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors in their kingdoms The first two inquisitors Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin were not named until two years later on 27 September 1480 in Medina del Campo The first auto de fe was held in Seville on 6 February 1481 six people were burned alive From there the Inquisition grew rapidly in the Kingdom of Castile By 1492 tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities Avila Cordoba Jaen Medina del Campo Segovia Siguenza Toledo and Valladolid Sixtus IV promulgated a new bull 1482 categorically prohibiting the Inquisition s extension to Aragon affirming that in Aragon Valencia Mallorca and Catalonia the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls but by lust for wealth and that many true and faithful Christians on the testimony of enemies rivals slaves and other lower and even less proper persons have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed to the peril of souls setting a pernicious example and causing disgust to many Outraged Ferdinand feigned doubt about the bull s veracity arguing that no sensible pope would have published such a document He wrote the pope on May 13 1482 saying Take care therefore not to let the matter go further and to revoke any concessions and entrust us with the care of this question According to the book A History of the Jewish People In 1482 the pope was still trying to maintain control over the Inquisition and to gain acceptance for his own attitude towards the New Christians which was generally more moderate than that of the Inquisition and the local rulers In 1483 Jews were expelled from all of Andalusia Though the pope wanted to crack down on abuses Ferdinand pressured him to promulgate a new bull threatening that he would otherwise separate the Inquisition from Church authority Sixtus did so on 17 October 1483 naming Tomas de Torquemada Inquisidor General of Aragon Valencia and Catalonia Torquemada quickly established procedures for the Inquisition In 1484 based in Nicholas Eymerich s Directorium Inquisitorum he created a twenty eight article inquisitor s code Compilacion de las instrucciones del oficio de la Santa Inquisicion i e Compilation of the instructions of the office of the Holy Inquisition essentially unaltered for more than three centuries following Torquemada s death A new court would be announced with a thirty day grace period for self confessions and denunciations and the gathering of accusations by neighbors and acquaintances Evidence that was used to identify a crypto Jew included the absence of chimney smoke on Saturdays a sign the family might secretly be honoring the Sabbath the buying of many vegetables before Passover or the purchase of meat from a converted butcher The court could employ physical torture to extract confessions Crypto Jews were allowed to confess and do penance although those who relapsed were executed In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII attempted to allow appeals to Rome against the Inquisition which would weaken the function of the institution as protection against the pope but Ferdinand in December 1484 and again in 1509 decreed death and confiscation for anyone trying to make use of such procedures without royal permission With this the Inquisition became the only institution that held authority across all the realms of the Spanish monarchy and in all of them a useful mechanism at the service of the crown The cities of Aragon continued resisting and even saw revolt as in Teruel from 1484 to 1485 The murder of Inquisidor Pedro Arbues later made saint in Zaragoza on 15 September 1485 caused public opinion to turn against the conversos and in favour of the Inquisition In Aragon the Inquisitorial courts were focused specifically on members of the powerful converso minority ending their influence in the Aragonese administration The Inquisition was extremely active between 1480 and 1530 Different sources give different estimates of the number of trials and executions in this period some estimate about 2 000 executions based on the documentation of the autos de fe the great majority being conversos of Jewish origin He who offers striking statistics 91 6 of those judged in Valencia between 1484 and 1530 and 99 3 of those judged in Barcelona between 1484 and 1505 were of Jewish origin failed verification False conversions The Inquisition had jurisdiction only over Christians It had no power to investigate prosecute or convict Jews Muslims or any open member of other religions Anyone who was known to identify as either Jew or Muslim was outside of Inquisitorial jurisdiction and could be tried only by the King All the inquisition could do in some of those cases was to deport the individual according to the King s law but usually even that had to go through a civil tribunal The Inquisition had the authority to try only those who self identified as Christians initially for taxation purposes later to avoid deportation as well while practicing another religion de facto Even those were treated as Christians If they confessed or identified not as judeizantes but as fully practicing Jews they fell back into the previously explained category and could not be targeted although they would have pleaded guilty to previously lying about being Christian citation needed Though not subject to the Inquisition Jews who refused to convert or leave Spain were called heretics and could be burned to death on a stake citation needed Expulsion of Jews and Jewish conversos The Spanish Inquisition had been established in part to prevent conversos from engaging in Jewish practices which as Christians they were supposed to have given up This remedy for securing the orthodoxy of conversos was eventually deemed inadequate since the main justification the monarchy gave for formally expelling all Jews from Spain was the great harm suffered by Christians i e conversos from the contact intercourse and communication which they have with the Jews who always attempt in various ways to seduce faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith according to the 1492 edict The Alhambra Decree issued in January 1492 gave the choice between expulsion conversion or death It was among the few expulsion orders that allowed conversion as an alternative and is used as a proof of the religious not racial element of the measure The enforcement of this decree was very unequal with the focus mainly on coastal and southern regions those at risk of Ottoman invasion and more gradual and ineffective enforcement towards the interior Historic accounts of the numbers of Jews who left Spain were based on speculation and some aspects were exaggerated by early accounts and historians Juan de Mariana speaks of 800 000 people and Don Isaac Abravanel of 300 000 While few reliable statistics exist for the expulsion modern estimates based on tax returns and population estimates of communities are much lower with Kamen stating that of a population of approximately 80 000 Jews and 200 000 conversos about 40 000 emigrated The Jews of the kingdom of Castile emigrated mainly to Portugal where the entire community was forcibly converted in 1497 and to North Africa The Jews of the kingdom of Aragon fled to other Christian areas including Italy rather than to Muslim lands as is often assumed Although the vast majority of conversos simply assimilated into the Catholic dominant culture a minority continued to practice Judaism in secret gradually migrated throughout Europe North Africa and the Ottoman Empire mainly to areas where Sephardic communities were already present as a result of the Alhambra Decree The most intense period of persecution of conversos lasted until 1530 From 1531 to 1560 the percentage of conversos among the Inquisition trials dropped to 3 of the total There was a rebound of persecutions when a group of crypto Jews was discovered in Quintanar de la Orden in 1588 and there was a rise in denunciations of conversos in the last decade of the sixteenth century At the beginning of the seventeenth century some conversos who had fled to Portugal began to return to Spain fleeing the persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition founded in 1536 This led to a rapid increase in the trials of crypto Jews among them a number of important financiers In 1691 during a number of autos de fe in Majorca 37 chuetas or conversos of Majorca were burned During the eighteenth century the number of conversos accused by the Inquisition decreased significantly Manuel Santiago Vivar tried in Cordoba in 1818 was the last person tried for being a crypto Jew Expulsion of Moriscos and Morisco conversos The Inquisition searched for false or relapsed converts among the Moriscos who had converted from Islam Beginning with a decree on 14 February 1502 Muslims in Granada had to choose between conversion to Christianity or expulsion In the Crown of Aragon most Muslims faced this choice after the Revolt of the Brotherhoods 1519 1523 It is important to note that the enforcement of the expulsion of the Moriscos was implemented unevenly especially in the lands of the interior and the north In these regions coexistence had lasted for over five centuries and Moriscos were protected by the population in many cases expulsion orders were partially or completely ignored citation needed The War of the Alpujarras 1568 71 a general Muslim Morisco uprising in Granada that expected to aid Ottoman disembarkation in the peninsula ended in a forced dispersal of about half of the region s Moriscos throughout Castile and Andalusia as well as increased suspicions by Spanish authorities against this community Many Moriscos were suspected of practising Islam in secret and the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion Initially they were not severely persecuted by the Inquisition experiencing instead a policy of evangelization a policy not followed with those conversos who were suspected of being crypto Jews There were various reasons for this In the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon a large number of the Moriscos were under the jurisdiction of the nobility and persecution would have been viewed as a frontal assault on the economic interests of this powerful social class Most importantly the moriscos had integrated into the Spanish society significantly better than the Jews intermarrying with the population often and were not seen as a foreign element especially in rural areas Still fears ran high among the population that the Moriscos were traitorous especially in Granada The coast was regularly raided by Barbary pirates backed by Spain s enemy the Ottoman Empire and the Moriscos were suspected of aiding them In the second half of the century late in the reign of Philip II conditions worsened between Old Christians and Moriscos The Morisco Revolt in Granada in 1568 1570 was harshly suppressed and the Inquisition intensified its attention on the Moriscos From 1570 Morisco cases became predominant in the tribunals of Zaragoza Valencia and Granada in the tribunal of Granada between 1560 and 1571 82 of those accused were Moriscos who were a vast majority of the Kingdom s population at the time Still the Moriscos did not experience the same harshness as judaizing conversos and Protestants and the number of capital punishments was proportionally less In 1609 King Philip III upon the advice of his financial adviser the Duke of Lerma and Archbishop of Valencia Juan de Ribera decreed the Expulsion of the Moriscos Hundreds of thousands of Moriscos were expelled This was further fueled by the religious intolerance of Archbishop Ribera who quoted the Old Testament texts ordering the enemies of God to be slain without mercy and setting forth the duties of kings to extirpate them The edict required The Moriscos to depart under the pain of death and confiscation without trial or sentence to take with them no money bullion jewels or bills of exchange just what they could carry Although initial estimates of the number expelled such as those of Henri Lapeyre reach 300 000 Moriscos or 4 of the total Spanish population the extent and severity of the expulsion in much of Spain has been increasingly challenged by modern historians such as Trevor J Dadson Nevertheless the eastern region of Valencia where ethnic tensions were high was particularly affected by the expulsion suffering economic collapse and depopulation of much of its territory Of those permanently expelled the majority finally settled in the Maghreb or the Barbary coast Those who avoided expulsion or who managed to return were gradually absorbed by the dominant culture The Inquisition pursued some trials against Moriscos who remained or returned after expulsion at the height of the Inquisition cases against Moriscos are estimated to have constituted less than 10 percent of those judged by the Inquisition Upon the coronation of Philip IV in 1621 the new king gave the order to desist from attempting to impose measures on remaining Moriscos and returnees In September 1628 the Council of the Supreme Inquisition ordered inquisitors in Seville not to prosecute expelled Moriscos unless they cause significant commotion The last mass prosecution against Moriscos for crypto Islamic practices occurred in Granada in 1727 with most of those convicted receiving relatively light sentences By the end of the 18th century the indigenous practice of Islam is considered to have been effectively extinguished in Spain Christian heretics Protestantism The burning of a Dutch Anabaptist Anneken Hendriks who was charged with heresy in Amsterdam 1571 Despite popular myths about the Spanish Inquisition relating to Protestants it dealt with very few cases involving actual Protestants as there were so few in Spain Lutheran was a portmanteau accusation used by the Inquisition to act against all those who acted in a way that was offensive to the church The first of the trials against those labeled by the Inquisition as Lutheran were those against the sect of mystics known as the Alumbrados of Guadalajara and Valladolid The trials were long and ended with prison sentences of differing lengths though none of the sect were executed Nevertheless the subject of the Alumbrados put the Inquisition on the trail of many intellectuals and clerics who interested in Erasmian ideas had strayed from orthodoxy This is striking because both Charles I and Philip II were confessed admirers of Erasmus The first trials against Lutheran groups as such took place between 1558 and 1562 at the beginning of the reign of Philip II against two communities of Protestants from the cities of Valladolid and Seville numbering about 120 The trials signaled a notable intensification of the Inquisition s activities A number of autos de fe were held some of them presided over by members of the royal family and around 100 executions took place The autos de fe of the mid century virtually put an end to Spanish Protestantism which was throughout a small phenomenon to begin with After 1562 though the trials continued the repression was much reduced About 200 Spaniards were accused of being Protestants in the last decades of the 16th century Most of them were in no sense Protestants Irreligious sentiments drunken mockery anticlerical expressions were all captiously classified by the inquisitors or by those who denounced the cases as Lutheran Disrespect to church images and eating meat on forbidden days were taken as signs of heresy It is estimated that a dozen Protestant Spaniards were burned alive in the later part of the sixteenth century Protestantism was treated as a marker to identify agents of foreign powers and symptoms of political disloyalty as much as if not more than a cause of prosecution in itself Orthodox Christianity This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed May 2020 Learn how and when to remove this message Even though the Inquisition had theoretical permission to investigate Orthodox heretics it almost never did There was no major war between Spain and any Orthodox nation so there was no reason to do so There was one casualty tortured by those Jesuits though most likely Franciscans who administered the Spanish Inquisition in North America according to authorities within the Eastern Orthodox Church St Peter the Aleut Even that single report has various numbers of inaccuracies that make it problematic and has no confirmation in the Inquisitorial archives Witchcraft and superstition The category superstitions includes trials related to witchcraft The witch hunt in Spain had much less intensity than in other European countries particularly France Scotland and Germany One remarkable case was that of Logrono in which the witches of Zugarramurdi in Navarre were persecuted During the auto de fe that took place in Logrono on 7 and 8 November 1610 six people were burned and another five burned in effigy The role of the Inquisition in cases of witchcraft was much more restricted than is commonly believed Well after the foundation of the Inquisition jurisdiction over sorcery and witchcraft remained in secular hands page needed In general the Spanish Inquisition maintained a skeptical attitude towards cases of witchcraft considering it as a mere superstition without any basis Alonso de Salazar Frias who took the Edict of Faith to various parts of Navarre after the trials of Logrono noted in his report to the Suprema that There were neither witches nor bewitched in a village until they were talked and written about Blasphemy Included under the rubric of heretical propositions were verbal offences from outright blasphemy to questionable statements regarding religious beliefs from issues of sexual morality to misbehaviour of the clergy Many were brought to trial for affirming that simple fornication sex between unmarried persons was not a sin or for putting in doubt different aspects of Christian faith such as Transubstantiation or the virginity of Mary Also members of the clergy themselves were occasionally accused of heretical propositions These offences rarely led to severe penalties Sodomy Pope Clement VII granted the Inquisition jurisdiction over sodomy within Aragon in 1524 in response to a petition from the Saragossa tribunal The Inquisition in Castile declined to take the same jurisdiction making sodomy the only major crime with such a significant regional discrepancy Even within Aragon the treatment of sodomy varied significantly by region because the pope s decree required that it be prosecuted according to each area s local law For instance the tribunal of the city of Zaragoza was considered unusually harsh by contemporaries The first person known to have been executed by the Inquisition for sodomy was a priest Salvador Vidal in 1541 Others convicted of sodomy received sentences including fines burning in effigy public whipping and the galleys The first burning for sodomy took place in Valencia in 1572 Sodomy was an expansive term while a 1560 decision ruled that lesbian sex not involving a dildo could not be prosecuted as sodomy bestiality routinely was especially in Saragossa in the 1570s Men might also be prosecuted based on accusations of engaging in heterosexual sodomy with their wives For that time and place the word sodomy covered several kinds of not procreative sexual acts denounced by the Church like coitus interruptus masturbation fellatio anal coitus whether heterosexual or homosexual etc Those accused included 19 clergy 6 nobles 37 workers 19 servants and 18 soldiers and sailors failed verification Nearly all of almost 500 cases of sodomy between persons concerned the relationship between an older man and an adolescent often by coercion with only a few cases where the couple were consenting homosexual adults About 100 of the total involved allegations of child abuse Adolescents were generally punished more leniently than adults but only when they were very young under about 12 years or when the case clearly concerned rape did they have a chance to avoid punishment altogether Prosecutions for sodomy gradually declined in large part due to decisions from the Suprema intended to reduce the publicity for sodomy cases In 1579 public autos de fe ceased to include people convicted on sodomy charges unless they were sentenced to death even the death sentences were excluded from public proclamation after 1610 In 1589 Aragon raised the minimum age for sodomy executions to 25 and by 1633 executions for sodomy had generally come to an end Freemasonry The Roman Catholic Church has regarded Freemasonry as heretical since about 1738 the suspicion of Freemasonry was potentially a capital offence Spanish Inquisition records reveal two prosecutions in Spain and only a few more throughout the Spanish Empire In 1815 Francisco Javier de Mier y Campillo the Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition and the Bishop of Almeria suppressed Freemasonry and denounced the lodges as societies which lead to atheism to sedition and to all errors and crimes He then instituted a purge during which Spaniards could be arrested on the charge of being suspected of Freemasonry Censorship As one manifestation of the Counter Reformation the Spanish Inquisition worked actively to impede the diffusion of heretical ideas in Spain by producing Indexes of prohibited books Such lists of prohibited books were common in Europe a decade before the Inquisition published its first The first Index published in Spain in 1551 was in reality a reprinting of the Index published by the University of Leuven in 1550 with an appendix dedicated to Spanish texts Subsequent Indexes were published in 1559 1583 1612 1632 and 1640 Included in the Indices at one point were some of the great works of Spanish literature but most of the works were religious in nature and plays A number of religious writers who are today considered saints by the Catholic Church saw their works appear in the Indexes At first this might seem counter intuitive or even nonsensical how were these Spanish authors published in the first place if their texts were then prohibited by the Inquisition and placed in the Index The answer lies in the process of publication and censorship in Early Modern Spain Books in Early Modern Spain faced prepublication licensing and approval which could include modification by both secular and religious authorities Once approved and published the circulating text also faced the possibility of post hoc censorship by being denounced to the Inquisition sometimes decades later Likewise as Catholic theology evolved once prohibited texts might be removed from the Index At first inclusion in the Index meant total prohibition of a text This proved not only impractical and unworkable but also contrary to the goals of having a literate and well educated clergy In time a compromise solution was adopted in which trusted Inquisition officials blotted out words lines or whole passages of otherwise acceptable texts thus allowing these expurgated editions to circulate Although in theory the Indexes imposed enormous restrictions on the diffusion of culture in Spain some historians argue that such strict control was impossible in practice and that there was much more liberty in this respect than is often believed And Irving Leonard has conclusively demonstrated that despite repeated royal prohibitions romances of chivalry such as Amadis of Gaul found their way to the New World with the blessing of the Inquisition Moreover with the coming of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century increasing numbers of licenses to possess and read prohibited texts were granted Despite the repeated publication of the Indexes and a large bureaucracy of censors the activities of the Inquisition did not impede the development of Spanish literature s Siglo de Oro although almost all of its major authors crossed paths with the Holy Office at one point or another Among the Spanish authors included in the Index are Bartolome Torres Naharro Juan del Enzina Jorge de Montemayor Juan de Valdes and Lope de Vega as well as the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes and the Cancionero General by Hernando del Castillo La Celestina which was not included in the Indexes of the 16th century was expurgated in 1632 and prohibited in its entirety in 1790 Among the non Spanish authors prohibited were Ovid Dante Rabelais Ariosto Machiavelli Erasmus Jean Bodin Valentine Naibod and Thomas More known in Spain as Tomas Moro One of the most outstanding and best known cases in which the Inquisition directly confronted literary activity is that of Fray Luis de Leon noted humanist and religious writer of converso origin who was imprisoned for four years from 1572 to 1576 for having translated the Song of Songs directly from Hebrew One of the main effects of the inquisition was to end free thought and scientific thought in Spain As one contemporary Spaniard in exile put it Our country is a land of pride and envy barbarism down there one cannot produce any culture without being suspected of heresy error and Judaism Thus silence was imposed on the learned For the next few centuries while the rest of Europe was slowly awakened by the influence of the Enlightenment Spain stagnated This conclusion is contested according to whom The censorship of books was actually very ineffective and prohibited books circulated in Spain without significant problems The Spanish Inquisition never persecuted scientists and relatively few scientific books were placed on the Index On the other hand Spain was a state with more political freedom than in other absolute monarchies in the 16th to 18th centuries The apparent paradox gets explained by both the hermeticist religious ideas of the Spanish church and monarchy and the budding seed of what would become Enlightened absolutism taking shape in Spain The list of banned books was not as interpreted sometimes a list of evil books but a list of books that lay people were very likely to misinterpret The presence of highly symbolical and high quality literature on the list was so explained These metaphorical or parable sounding books were listed as not meant for free circulation but there might be no objections to the book itself and the circulation among scholars was mostly free Most of these books were carefully collected by the elite The practical totality of the prohibited books can be found now as then in the library of the monasterio del Escorial carefully collected by Philip II and Philip III The collection was public after Philip II s death and members of universities intellectuals courtesans clergy and certain branches of the nobility didn t have too many problems to access them and commission authorised copies The Inquisition has not been known to make any serious attempt to stop this for all the books but there are some records of them suggesting the King of Spain to stop collecting grimoires or magic related ones citation needed Family and marriage Bigamy The Inquisition also pursued offenses against morals and general social order at times in open conflict with the jurisdictions of civil tribunals In particular there were trials for bigamy a relatively frequent offence in a society that only permitted divorce under the most extreme circumstances In the case of men the penalty was two hundred lashes and five to ten years of service to the Crown Said service could be whatever the court deemed most beneficial for the nation but it usually was either five years as an oarsman in a royal galley for those without any qualification possibly a death sentence or ten years working maintained but without salary in a public Hospital or charitable institution of the sort for those with some special skill such as doctors surgeons or lawyers The penalty was five to seven years as an oarsman in the case of Portugal Unnatural marriage Under the category of unnatural marriage fell any marriage or attempted marriage between two individuals who could not procreate The Catholic Church in general and in particular a nation constantly at war like Spain emphasised the reproductive goal of marriage The Spanish Inquisition s policy in this regard was restrictive but applied in a very egalitarian way It considered unnatural any non reproductive marriage and natural any reproductive one regardless of gender or sex involved The two forms of obvious male sterility were either due to damage to the genitals through castration or accidental wounding at war capon or to some genetic condition that might keep the man from completing puberty lampino Female sterility was also a reason to declare a marriage unnatural but was harder to prove One case that dealt with marriage sex and gender was the trial of Eleno de Cespedes Non religious crimes Despite popular belief the role of the Inquisition as a mainly religious institution or religious in nature at all is contested at best Its main function was that of private police for the Crown with jurisdiction to enforce the law in those crimes that took place in the private sphere of life citation needed The notion of religion and civil law being separate is a modern construction and made no sense in the 15th century so there was no difference between breaking a law regarding religion and breaking a law regarding tax collection The difference between them is a modern projection the institution itself did not have As such the Inquisition was the prosecutor in some cases the only prosecutor of any crimes that could be perpetrated without the public taking notice mainly domestic crimes crimes against the weakest members of society administrative crimes and forgeries organized crime and crimes against the Crown citation needed Examples include crimes associated with sexual or family relations such as rape and sexual violence the Inquisition was the first and only body who punished it across the nation bestiality pedophilia often overlapping with sodomy incest child abuse or neglect and as discussed bigamy Non religious crimes also included procurement not prostitution human trafficking smuggling forgery or falsification of currency documents or signatures tax fraud many religious crimes were considered subdivisions of this one illegal weapons swindles disrespect to the Crown or its institutions the Inquisition included but also the church the guard and the kings themselves espionage for a foreign power conspiracy treason The non religious crimes processed by the Inquisition accounted for a considerable percentage of its total investigations and are often hard to separate in the statistics even when documentation is available The line between religious and non religious crimes did not exist in 15th century Spain as legal concept Many of the crimes listed here and some of the religious crimes listed in previous sections were contemplated under the same article For example sodomy included paedophilia as a subtype Often part of the data given for prosecution of male homosexuality corresponds to convictions for paedophilia not adult homosexuality In other cases religious and non religious crimes were seen as distinct but equivalent The treatment of public blasphemy and street swindlers was similar since both involved misleading the public in a harmful way Making counterfeit currency and heretic proselytism were also treated similarly both of them were punished by death and subdivided in similar ways since both were spreading falsifications In general heresy and falsifications of material documents were treated similarly by the Spanish Inquisition indicating that they may have been thought of as equivalent actions Trials were often further complicated by the attempts of witnesses or victims to add further charges especially witchcraft Like in the case of Eleno de Cespedes charges for witchcraft done in this way or in general were quickly dismissed but they often show in the statistics as investigations made citation needed OrganizationBeyond its role in religious affairs the Inquisition was also an institution at the service of the monarchy The Inquisitor General in charge of the Holy Office was designated by the crown The Inquisitor General was the only public office whose authority stretched to all the kingdoms of Spain including the American viceroyalties except for a brief period 1507 1518 during which there were two Inquisitors General one in the kingdom of Castile and the other in Aragon Auto de fe Plaza Mayor in Lima Viceroyalty of Peru 17th century The Inquisitor General presided over the Council of the Supreme and General Inquisition generally abbreviated as Council of the Suprema created in 1483 which was made up of six members named directly by the crown the number of members of the Suprema varied over the course of the Inquisition s history but it was never more than 10 Over time the authority of the Suprema grew at the expense of the power of the Inquisitor General The Suprema met every morning except for holidays and for two hours in the afternoon on Tuesdays Thursdays and Saturdays The morning sessions were devoted to questions of faith while the afternoons were reserved for minor heresies cases of perceived unacceptable sexual behavior bigamy witchcraft etc Below the Suprema were the various tribunals of the Inquisition which were originally itinerant installing themselves where they were necessary to combat heresy but later being established in fixed locations During the first phase numerous tribunals were established but the period after 1495 saw a marked tendency towards centralization In the kingdom of Castile the following permanent tribunals of the Inquisition were established 1482 In Seville and in Cordoba 1485 In Toledo and in Llerena 1488 In Valladolid and in Murcia 1489 In Cuenca 1505 In Las Palmas Canary Islands 1512 In Logrono 1526 In Granada 1574 In Santiago de Compostela There were only four tribunals in the kingdom of Aragon Zaragoza and Valencia 1482 Barcelona 1484 and Majorca 1488 Ferdinand the Catholic also established the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily 1513 housed in Palermo and Sardinia in the town of Sassari In the Americas tribunals were established in Lima and in Mexico City 1569 and in 1610 in Cartagena de Indias present day Colombia Composition of the tribunalsStructure of the Spanish Inquisition Initially each of the tribunals included two inquisitors calificadors qualifiers an alguacil bailiff and a fiscal prosecutor new positions were added as the institution matured The inquisitors were preferably jurists more than theologians in 1608 Philip III even stipulated that all inquisitors needed to have a background in law The inquisitors did not typically remain in the position for a long time for the Court of Valencia for example the average tenure in the position was about two years Most of the inquisitors belonged to the secular clergy priests who were not members of religious orders and had a university education The fiscal was in charge of presenting the accusation investigating the denunciations and interrogating the witnesses by the use of physical and mental torture The calificadores were generally theologians it fell to them to determine whether the defendant s conduct added up to a crime against the faith Consultants were expert jurists who advised the court in questions of procedure The court had in addition three secretaries the notario de secuestros Notary of Property who registered the goods of the accused at the moment of his detention the notario del secreto Notary of the Secret who recorded the testimony of the defendant and the witnesses and the escribano general General Notary secretary of the court The alguacil was the executive arm of the court responsible for detaining jailing and physically torturing the defendant Other civil employees were the nuncio ordered to spread official notices of the court and the alcaide the jailer in charge of feeding the prisoners In addition to the members of the court two auxiliary figures existed that collaborated with the Holy Office the familiares and the comissarios commissioners Familiares were lay collaborators of the Inquisition who had to be permanently at the service of the Holy Office To become a familiar was considered an honor since it was a public recognition of limpieza de sangre Old Christian status and brought with it certain additional privileges Although many nobles held the position most of the familiares came from the ranks of commoners The commissioners on the other hand were members of the religious orders who collaborated occasionally with the Holy Office One of the most striking aspects of the organization of the Inquisition was its form of financing devoid of its own budget the Inquisition depended almost exclusively on the confiscation of the goods of the denounced It is not surprising therefore that many of those prosecuted were rich men That the situation was open to abuse is evident as stands out in the memorandum that a converso from Toledo directed to Charles I Your Majesty must provide before all else that the expenses of the Holy Office do not come from the properties of the condemned because if that is the case if they do not burn they do not eat Mode of operationAccusation When the Inquisition arrived in a city the first step was the Edict of Grace Following the Sunday Mass the Inquisitor would proceed to read the edict which described possible heresies and encouraged all the congregation to come to the tribunals of the Inquisition to relieve their consciences They were called Edicts of Grace because all of the self incriminated who presented themselves within a period of grace usually ranging from thirty to forty days were offered the possibility of reconciliation with the Church without severe punishment The promise of benevolence was effective and many voluntarily presented themselves to the Inquisition These were encouraged to denounce others who had also committed offences informants being the Inquisition s primary source of information After about 1500 the Edicts of Grace were replaced by the Edicts of Faith which left out the grace period and instead encouraged the denunciation of those deemed guilty The denunciations were anonymous and the defendants had no way of knowing the identities of their accusers This was one of the points most criticized by those who opposed the Inquisition In practice false denunciations were frequent Denunciations were made for a variety of reasons apart from genuine concern Some just went after non conformists Others wished to hurt a neighbor or get rid of an opponent This method turned everyone into an agent of the Inquisition and made every man aware that a simple word or deed could bring him before the tribunal Denunciation was elevated to the rank of a superior religious duty filled the nation with spies and made each individual an object of suspicion to his neighbor his family and any strangers he might meet Detention Diego Mateo Lopez Zapata in his cell before his trial by the Inquisition Court of Cuenca An engraving by Goya After a denunciation the case was examined by the calificadores who had to determine whether there was heresy involved This was followed by the detention of the accused In practice many were detained in preventive custody and many cases of lengthy incarcerations occurred lasting up to two years before the calificadores examined the case Detention of the accused entailed the preventive sequestration of their property by the Inquisition The property of the prisoner was used to pay for procedural expenses and the accused s own maintenance and costs Often the relatives of the defendant found themselves in outright misery This situation was remedied only following instructions written in 1561 However Llorente despite having consulted numerous records of old Inquisition proceedings did not find any record of such an agreement in favor of the children of condemned heretics Some authors such as apologist William Thomas Walsh stated that the entire process was undertaken with the utmost secrecy as much for the public as for the accused who were not informed about the accusations that were levied against them Months or even years could pass without the accused being informed about why they were imprisoned The prisoners remained isolated and during this time they were not allowed to attend Mass nor receive the sacraments The jails of the Inquisition were no worse than those of secular authorities and there are even certain testimonies that occasionally they were much better According to William Walsh the miseries of the Jews are not the result fundamentally of the hatred and misunderstanding of others but the consequence of their own stubborn rejection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Trial Two priests and a suspected heretic in a Spanish Inquisition interrogation chamber Bernard Picart s engraving 1722 In contrast to the Inquisitor s armchair Eymeric s manual suggests that the accused be sat on a low bench The inquisitorial process consisted of a series of hearings in which both the denouncers and the defendant gave separate testimony A defense counsel a so called lawyer a member of the tribunal itself was assigned to the defendant his role was simply to advise the accused and to encourage them to speak the truth citation needed He was obliged to renounce the defense at the moment when he realized his client s guilt The prosecution was directed by the fiscal Interrogation of the defendant was done in the presence of the notario del secreto who meticulously wrote down the words of the accused The archives of the Inquisition in comparison to those of other judicial systems of the era are striking in the completeness of their documentation citation needed To defend themselves the accused had two main choices abonos to find favourable and character witnesses or tachas to demonstrate that the witnesses of accusers whose identity he did not know were not trustworthy and were his personal enemies The structure of the trials was similar to modern trials and according to apologists advanced for the time with regard to fairness The Inquisition professional and efficient was dependent on the political power of the King The lack of separation of powers allows assuming questionable fairness for certain scenarios The fairness of the Inquisitorial tribunals is alleged by apologists to be among the best in early modern Europe when it came to the trial of laymen There are also testimonies by former prisoners that if believed suggest that said fairness was less than ideal when national or political interests were involved The historian Walter Ullmann thinks very different There is hardly one item in the whole Inquisitorial procedure that could be squared with the demands of justice on the contrary every one of its items is the denial of justice or a hideous caricature of it its principles are the very denial of the demands made by the most primitive concepts of natural justice This kind of proceeding has no longer any semblance to a judicial trial but is rather its systematic and methodical perversion dd dd A fictional scene of a jail of the Spanish Inquisition with a priest supervising his scribe while men and women are suspended from pulleys tortured on the rack or burnt with torches Etching date unknown To obtain a confession or information relevant to an investigation the Inquisition used torture as prescribed in the instrucciones It is impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy the number of cases in which it was employed during the Inquisition s existence Torture would be applied if the alleged heresy was half proven and could be repeated according to Article XV of Torquemada instructions Henry Lea estimates that between 1575 and 1610 the court of Toledo tortured approximately a third of those processed for Protestant heresy Nearly all of the accused in several cases tried by the Lima tribunal between 1635 and 1639 appear to have been tortured the Valladolid tribunal report for 1624 reveals that in eleven cases involving Jews and one involving a Protestant used torture in 1655 all nine cases involving Jews employed torture The recently opened Vatican Archives suggest lower numbers page needed In truth says Thomas Madden the Inquisition brought order justice and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics And concludes The Spanish people loved their Inquisition That is why it lasted for so long In other periods the proportions of torture varied remarkably Torture A rack on display at the Torture Museum in Toledo Spain Water torture engraving from 1556 In the strappado torture the victim s hands are tied behind their back and the body is suspended by the wrists resulting in dislocated shoulders Weights can be added to the feet engraving from 1768 Torture was employed in all civil and religious trials in Europe The Spanish Inquisition allegedly used it more restrictively than was common at the time Unlike both civil trials and other inquisitions it had strict regulations in relation to when what whom frequency duration and supervision page needed According to some scholars the Spanish Inquisition engaged in torture less often and with greater care than secular courts When Torture was allowed when guilt was half proven or there existed a presumption of guilt as stated in Article XV of Torquemada s instruciones and in Eymerich s directions However Eymerich admits that information obtained through torment was not always reliable and should be used only when all other means of obtaining the truth had failed What The Spanish Inquisition was not permitted to maim mutilate draw blood or cause any sort of permanent damage to the prisoner Ecclesiastical tribunals were prohibited by church law from shedding blood As a result of torture many had broken limbs or other definitive health problems and some died Supervision A Physician was usually available in case of emergency It was also required for a doctor to certify that the prisoner was healthy enough to go through the torment without suffering harm which of course happened Among the methods of torture allowed were garrucha toca and the potro which were all used in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals The application of the garrucha also known as the strappado consisted of suspending the victim from the ceiling by the wrists which are tied behind the back Sometimes weights were tied to the feet with a series of lifts and violent drops during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated The use of the toca cloth also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua enhanced water interrogation now known as waterboarding is better documented It consisted of forcing the victim to ingest water poured from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning The potro the rack in which the limbs were slowly pulled apart was thought to be the instrument of torture used most frequently The assertion that confessionem esse veram non factam vi tormentorum literally a person s confession is truth not made by way of torture sometimes follows a description of how after torture had ended the subject freely confessed to the offences In practice those who recanted confessions made during torture knew that they could be tortured again Under torture or even harsh interrogation comments Cullen Murphy people will say anything Bernard Delicieux the franciscan friar who was tortured by the Inquisition and ultimately died in prison as a result of the abuse said the Inquisition s tactics would have proved St Peter and St Paul to be heretics Once the process concluded the inquisidores met with a representative of the bishop and with the consultores consultants experts in theology or Canon Law but not necessarily clergy themselves which was called the consulta de fe faith consultation religion check The case was voted and sentence pronounced which had to be unanimous In case of discrepancies the Suprema had to be informed citation needed Sentencing The results of the trial could be the following Although quite rare in actual practice the defendant could be acquitted but an acquittal was interpreted as a dishonourable reflection on the inquisitors The trial could be suspended in which case the defendant although under suspicion went free with the threat that the process could be reopened at any time In the unusual instance of a defendant being declared not guilty during the trial the decision was made in private The defendant could be penanced Since they were considered guilty they had to publicly abjure their crimes de levi if it was a misdemeanor and de vehementi if the crime were serious and accept a public punishment Among these were sanbenito forced church attendance exile scourging fines or even sentencing to service as oarsmen in royal galleys The defendant could be reconciled In addition to the public ceremony in which the condemned was reconciled with the Catholic Church more severe punishments were used among them long sentences to jail or the galleys plus the confiscation of all property Physical punishments such as whipping were also used The reconciled were prohibited from working as advocates landlords apothecaries doctors surgeons and other professions They were banned from carrying weapons wearing jewelry or gold and from riding horses The restrictions also applied to the offspring of the convicted The most serious punishment was relaxation to the secular arm i e burning at the stake This penalty was frequently applied to impenitent heretics and those who had relapsed Execution was public If the condemned repented they were shown mercy by being garroted before their corpse was burned if not they were burned alive The victims were handed over to the secular authorities who had no access to the process they only administered the sentences and were obliged to do so on pain of heresy and excommunication Frequently cases were judged in absentia When the accused died before the trial finished the condemned were burned in effigy The death of an accused did not extinguish the inquisitorial actions even up to forty years after the death When it was considered proven that the deceased were heretics in their lifetime their corpses were exhumed and burned their property confiscated and the heirs disinherited The distribution of the punishments varied considerably over time It is believed that sentences of death were enforced most frequently in the early stages within the long history of the Inquisition According to Garcia Carcel one of the most active courts the court of Valencia employed the death penalty in 40 of cases before 1530 but later that percentage dropped to 3 By the middle of the 16th century inquisition courts viewed torture as unnecessary and death sentences had become rare failed verification Auto de fe Rizi s 1683 painting of the 1680 auto de fe Plaza Mayor in Madrid If the sentence was condemnatory this implied that the condemned had to participate in the ceremony of an auto de fe more commonly known in English as an auto da fe that solemnized their return to the Church in most cases or punishment as an impenitent heretic The autos de fe could be public auto publico or auto general or private auto particular Although initially the public autos did not have any special solemnity nor sought a large attendance of spectators with time they became expensive and solemn ceremonies a display of the great power shared by the Church and the State celebrated with large public crowds amidst a festive atmosphere The auto de fe eventually became a baroque spectacle with staging meticulously calculated to cause the greatest effect among the spectators The autos were conducted in a large public space frequently in the largest plaza of the city generally on holidays The rituals related to the auto began the previous night the procession of the Green Cross and sometimes lasted the whole day The auto de fe frequently was taken to the canvas by painters one of the better known examples is the 1683 painting by Francisco Rizi held by the Prado Museum in Madrid that represents the auto celebrated in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid on 30 June 1680 The last public auto de fe took place in 1691 citation needed Execution of Mariana de Carabajal converted Jew Mexico City 1601 The auto de fe involved a Catholic Mass prayer a public procession of those found guilty and a reading of their sentences They took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours ecclesiastical and civil authorities attended Artistic representations of the auto de fe usually depict torture and the burning at the stake This type of activity never took place during an auto de fe which was in essence a religious act Torture was not administered after a trial concluded and executions were always held after and separate from the auto de fe though in the minds and experiences of observers and those undergoing the confession and execution the separation of the two might be experienced as merely a technicality The first recorded auto de fe was held in Paris in 1242 during the reign of Louis IX The first Spanish auto de fe did not take place until 1481 in Seville six of the men and women subjected to this first religious ritual were later executed The Inquisition had limited power in Portugal having been established in 1536 and officially lasting until 1821 although its influence was much weakened with the government of the Marquis of Pombal in the second half of the 18th century The Marquis himself a familiar transformed it into a royal court and the heretics continued to be persecuted as so the high spirits Autos de fe also took place in Mexico Brazil and Peru contemporary historians of the Conquistadors such as Bernal Diaz del Castillo record them They also took place in the Portuguese colony of Goa India following the establishment of Inquisition there in 1562 1563 citation needed Enlightenment era and the Inquisition s transformationThe arrival of the Enlightenment in Spain slowed inquisitorial activity In the first half of the 18th century 111 were condemned to be burned in person and 117 in effigy most of them for judaizing In the reign of Philip V there were 125 autos de fe while in the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV only 44 citation needed Auto da fe Viceroyalty of New Spain 18th century During the 18th century the Inquisition changed Enlightenment ideas were the closest threat that had to be fought The main figures of the Spanish Enlightenment were in favour of the abolition of the Inquisition and many were processed by the Holy Office among them Olavide in 1776 Iriarte in 1779 and Jovellanos in 1796 Jovellanos sent a report to Charles IV in which he indicated the inefficiency of the Inquisition s courts and the ignorance of those who operated them friars who take the position only to obtain gossip and exemption from the choir who are ignorant of foreign languages who only know a little scholastic theology In its new role the Inquisition tried to accentuate its function of censoring publications but found that Charles III had secularized censorship procedures and on many occasions the authorization of the Council of Castile hit the more intransigent position of the Inquisition Since the Inquisition itself was an arm of the state being within the Council of Castile civil rather than ecclesiastical censorship usually prevailed This loss of influence can also be explained because the foreign Enlightenment texts entered the peninsula through prominent members of the nobility or government influential people with whom it was very difficult to interfere Thus for example Diderot s Encyclopedia entered Spain thanks to special licenses granted by the king After the French Revolution the Council of Castile fearing that revolutionary ideas would penetrate Spain s borders decided to reactivate the Holy Office that was directly charged with the persecution of French works An Inquisition edict of December 1789 that received the full approval of Charles IV and Floridablanca stated that having news that several books have been scattered and promoted in these kingdoms that without being contented with the simple narration events of a seditious nature seem to form a theoretical and practical code of independence from the legitimate powers destroying in this way the political and social order the reading of thirty and nine French works is prohibited under fine The fight from within against the Inquisition was almost always clandestine The first texts that questioned the Inquisition and praised the ideas of Voltaire or Montesquieu appeared in 1759 After the suspension of pre publication censorship on the part of the Council of Castile in 1785 the newspaper El Censor began the publication of protests against the activities of the Holy Office by means of a rationalist critique Valentin de Foronda published Espiritu de los Mejores Diarios a plea in favour of freedom of expression that was avidly read in the salons Also in the same vein Manuel de Aguirre wrote On Toleration in El Censor El Correo de los Ciegos and El Diario de Madrid End of the InquisitionThe Peruvian Inquisition based in Lima ended in 1820 During the reign of Charles IV of Spain 1788 1808 in spite of the fears that the French Revolution provoked several events accelerated the decline of the Inquisition The state stopped being a mere social organizer and began to worry about the well being of the public As a result the land holding power of the Church was reconsidered in the senorios and more generally in the accumulated wealth that had prevented social progress The power of the throne increased under which Enlightenment thinkers found better protection for their ideas Manuel Godoy and Antonio Alcala Galiano were openly hostile to an institution whose only role had been reduced to censorship and was the very embodiment of the Spanish Black Legend internationally and was not suitable to the political interests of the moment The Inquisition Its old power no longer exists the horrible authority that this bloodthirsty court had exerted in other times was reduced the Holy Office had come to be a species of commission for book censorship nothing more The Inquisition was first abolished during the domination of Napoleon and the reign of Joseph Bonaparte 1808 1812 In 1813 the liberal deputies of the Cortes of Cadiz also obtained its abolition largely as a result of the Holy Office s condemnation of the popular revolt against French invasion But the Inquisition was reconstituted when Ferdinand VII recovered the throne on 1 July 1814 Juan Antonio Llorente who had been the Inquisition s general secretary in 1789 became a Bonapartist and published a critical history in 1817 from his French exile based on his privileged access to its archives Possibly as a result of Llorente s criticisms the Inquisition was once again temporarily abolished during the three year Liberal interlude known as the Trienio liberal but still the old system had not yet had its last gasp Later during the period known as the Ominous Decade the Inquisition was not formally re established although de facto it returned under the so called Congregation of the Meetings of Faith Juntas da Fe created in the dioceses by King Ferdinand VII On 26 July 1826 the Meetings of Faith Congregation condemned and executed the school teacher Cayetano Ripoll who thus became the last person known to be executed by the Inquisition On that day Ripoll was hanged in Valencia for having taught deist principles This execution occurred against the backdrop of a European wide scandal concerning the despotic attitudes still prevailing in Spain Finally on 15 July 1834 the Spanish Inquisition was definitively abolished by a Royal Decree signed by regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies Ferdinand VII s liberal widow during the minority of Isabella II and with the approval of the President of the Cabinet Francisco Martinez de la Rosa The Alhambra Decree that had expelled the Jews was formally rescinded on 16 December 1968 by the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco after the Second Vatican Council rejected the idea that Jews are deicides The prohibitions persecution and eventual Jewish mass emigration from Spain and Portugal probably had adverse effects on the development of the Spanish and the Portuguese economy Jews and Non Catholic Christians reportedly had substantially better numerical skills than the Catholic majority which might be due to the Jewish religious doctrine which focused strongly on education Even when Jews were forced to quit their highly skilled urban occupations their numeracy advantage persisted However during the inquisition spillover effects of these skills were rare because of forced separation and Jewish emigration which was detrimental for economic development OutcomesConfiscations It is unknown exactly how much wealth was confiscated from converted Jews and others tried by the Inquisition Wealth confiscated in one year of persecution in the small town of Guadaloupe paid the costs of building a royal residence There are numerous records of the opinion of ordinary Spaniards of the time that the Inquisition was devised simply to rob people They were burnt only for the money they had a resident of Cuenca averred They burn only the well off said another In 1504 an accused stated only the rich were burnt In 1484 Catalina de Zamora was accused of asserting that this Inquisition that the fathers are carrying out is as much for taking property from the conversos as for defending the faith It is the goods that are the heretics This saying passed into common usage in Spain In 1524 a treasurer informed Charles V that his predecessor had received ten million ducats from the conversos but the figure is unverified In 1592 an inquisitor admitted that most of the fifty women he arrested were rich In 1676 the Suprema claimed it had confiscated over 700 000 ducats for the royal treasury which was paid money only after the Inquisition s own budget amounting in one known case to only 5 The property on Mallorca alone in 1678 was worth well over 2 500 000 ducats Death tolls and sentenced Contemporary illustration of the auto de fe of Valladolid in which fourteen Protestants were burned at the stake for their faith on 21 May 1559 Garcia Carcel estimates that the total number prosecuted by the Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150 000 applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560 1700 about 2 the approximate total would be about 3 000 put to death Nevertheless some authors consider that the toll may have been higher keeping in mind the data provided by Dedieu and Garcia Carcel for the tribunals of Toledo and Valencia respectively and estimate between 3 000 and 5 000 were executed Other authors disagree and estimate a max death toll between 1 and 5 depending on the time span used combining all the processes the inquisition carried both religious and non religious ones In either case this is significantly lower than the number of people executed exclusively for witchcraft in other parts of Europe during about the same time span as the Spanish Inquisition estimated at c 40 000 60 000 Modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Inquisition The archives of the Suprema today held by the National Historical Archive of Spain Archivo Historico Nacional conserves the annual relations of all processes between 1540 and 1700 This material provides information for approximately 44 674 judgments These 44 674 cases include 826 executions in persona and 778 in effigie i e an effigy was burned This material is far from being complete for example the tribunal of Cuenca is entirely omitted because no relaciones de causas from this tribunal have been found and significant gaps concern some other tribunals e g Valladolid Many more cases not reported to the Suprema are known from the other sources i e no relaciones de causas from Cuenca have been found but its original records have been preserved but were not included in Contreras Henningsen s statistics for the methodological reasons William Monter estimates 1000 executions between 1530 and 1630 and 250 between 1630 and 1730 The archives of the Suprema only provide information about processes prior to 1560 To study the processes themselves it is necessary to examine the archives of the local tribunals the majority of which have been lost to the devastation of war the ravages of time or other events Some archives have survived including those of Toledo where 12 000 were judged for offences related to heresy mainly minor blasphemy and those of Valencia These indicate that the Inquisition was most active in the period between 1480 and 1530 and that during this period the percentage condemned to death was much more significant than in the years that followed Modern estimates show approximately 2 000 executions in persona in the whole of Spain up to 1530 Statistics for the period 1540 1700 The statistics of Henningsen and Contreras are based entirely on relaciones de causas The number of years for which cases are documented varies for different tribunals Data for the Aragonese Secretariat are probably complete some small lacunae may concern only Valencia and possibly Sardinia and Cartagena but the numbers for Castilian Secretariat except Canaries and Galicia should be considered as minimal due to gaps in the documentation In some cases it is remarked that the number does not concern the whole period 1540 1700 Tribunal Documented by Henningsen and Contreras Estimated totalsYears documented Number of cases Executions Trials Executions in personain persona in effigieBarcelona 94 3047 37 27 5000 53Navarre 130 4296 85 59 5200 90Majorca 96 1260 37 25 2100 38Sardinia 49 767 8 2 2700 At least 8Zaragoza 126 5967 200 19 7600 250Sicily 101 3188 25 25 6400 52Valencia 128 4540 78 75 5700 At least 93Cartagena established 1610 62 699 3 1 1100 At least 3Lima established 1570 92 1176 30 16 2200 31Mexico established 1570 52 950 17 42 2400 47Aragonese Secretariat total 25890 520 291 40000 At least 665Canaries 66 695 1 78 1500 3Cordoba 28 883 8 26 5000 At least 27Cuenca 0 0 0 0 5202 At least 34Galicia established 1560 83 2203 19 44 2700 17Granada 79 4157 33 102 8100 At least 72Llerena 84 2851 47 89 5200 At least 47Murcia 66 1735 56 20 4300 At least 190Seville 58 1962 96 67 6700 At least 128Toledo incl Madrid 108 3740 40 53 5500 At least 66Valladolid 29 558 6 8 3000 At least 54Castilian Secretariat total 18784 306 487 47000 At least 638Total 44674 826 778 87000 At least 1303Autos da fe between 1701 and 1746 Table of sentences pronounced in the public autos de fe in Spain excluding tribunals in Sicily Sardinia and Latin America between 1701 and 1746 Tribunal Number of autos de fe Executions in persona Executions in effigie Penanced TotalBarcelona 4 1 1 15 17Logrono 1 1 0 0 1 Palma de Mallorca 3 0 0 11 11Saragossa 1 0 0 3 3Valencia 4 2 0 49 51Las Palmas 0 0 0 0 0Cordoba 13 17 19 125 161Cuenca 7 7 10 35 52Santiago de Compostela 4 0 0 13 13Granada 15 36 47 369 452Llerena 5 1 0 45 46Madrid 4 11 13 46 70Murcia 6 4 1 106 111Seville 15 16 10 220 246Toledo 33 6 14 128 148Valladolid 10 9 2 70 81Total 125 111 117 1235 1463Abuse of power According to Toby Green the great unchecked power given to inquisitors meant that they were widely seen as above the law and they sometimes had motives for imprisoning or executing alleged offenders that had nothing to do with punishing religious nonconformity Green quotes a complaint by historian Manuel Barrios about one Inquisitor Diego Rodriguez Lucero who in Cordoba in 1506 burned to death the husbands of two women he then kept the women as mistresses According to Barrios the daughter of Diego Celemin was exceptionally beautiful her parents and her husband did not want to give her to Lucero and so Lucero had the three of them burnt and now has a child by her and he has kept for a long time in the alcazar as a mistress Some writers disagree with Green page needed These authors do not necessarily deny the abuses of power but classify them as politically instigated and comparable to those of any other law enforcement body of the period Criticisms usually indirect have gone from the suspiciously sexual overtones or similarities of these accounts with unrelated older antisemitic accounts of kidnap and torture page needed to the clear proofs of control that the king had over the institution to the sources used by Green or just by reaching completely different conclusions Long term economic effects According to a 2021 study municipalities of Spain with a history of a stronger inquisitorial presence show lower economic performance educational attainment and trust today HistoriographyHow historians and commentators have viewed the Spanish Inquisition has changed over time and continues to be a source of controversy Before and during the 19th century historical interest focused on who was being persecuted In the early and mid 20th century historians examined the specifics of what happened and how it influenced Spanish history In the later 20th and 21st century some historians have re examined how severe the Inquisition really was calling into question some of the assumptions made in earlier periods 19th to early 20th century scholarship Before the rise of professional historians in the 19th century the Spanish Inquisition had been portrayed primarily by Protestant scholars who saw it as the archetypal symbol of Catholic intolerance and ecclesiastical power The Spanish Inquisition for them was largely associated with the persecution of Protestants William H Prescott described the Inquisition as an eye that never slumbered Despite the existence of extensive documentation regarding the trials and procedures and to the Inquisition s deep bureaucratization none of these sources was studied outside of Spain and Spanish scholars arguing against the predominant view were automatically dismissed The 19th century professional historians including the Spanish scholar Amador de los Rios were the first to successfully challenge this perception in the international sphere and get foreign scholars to take note of their discoveries Said scholars would obtain international recognition and start a period of revision on the Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition At the start of the 20th century Henry Charles Lea published the groundbreaking History of the Inquisition in Spain This influential work describes the Spanish Inquisition as an engine of immense power constantly applied for the furtherance of obscurantism the repression of thought the exclusion of foreign ideas and the obstruction of progress Lea documented the Inquisition s methods and modes of operation in no uncertain terms calling it theocratic absolutism at its worst In the context of the polarization between Protestants and Catholics during the second half of the 19th century some of Lea s contemporaries as well as most modern scholars thought Lea s work had an anti Catholic bias Starting in the 1920s Jewish scholars picked up where Lea s work left off They published Yitzhak Baer s History of the Jews in Christian Spain Cecil Roth s History of the Marranos and after World War II the work of Haim Beinart who for the first time published trial transcripts of cases involving conversos Contemporary historians who subscribe to the idea that the image of the Inquisition in historiography has been systematically deformed by the Black Legend include Edward Peters Philip Wayne Powell William S Maltby Richard Kagan Margaret R Greer Helen Rawlings Ronnie Hsia Lu Ann Homza Stanley G Payne Andrea Donofrio Irene Silverblatt Christopher Schmidt Nowara Charles Gibson and Joseph Perez Contemporary historians who partially accept an impact of the Black Legend but deny other aspects of the hypothesis include Henry Kamen David Nirenberg and Karen Armstrong citation needed Toby Green while accepting that there was a certain demonization of the Spanish Inquisition in comparison with other contemporary persecutions argues that the habitual use of torture should not be denied and that correcting the black legend should not mean replacing it with a white legend Richard L Kagan says that Henry Kamen failed to enter the belly of the beast and assess what it really meant to the people who lived with it Kamen does not according to Kagan lead the reader through an actual trial Had he done so a reader might conclude that the institution he portrays as relatively benign in hindsight was also capable of inspiring fear and desperate attempts to escape and thus more deserving of its earlier reputation For Kagan in order to reconstruct the world of those who were trapped in the Inquisition s net studies that thoroughly examine the meticulous archives of the Inquisition are necessary Revision after 1960 The works of Juderias in 1913 and other Spanish scholars prior to him were mostly ignored by international scholarship until 1960 One of the first books to build on them and internationally challenge the classical view was The Spanish Inquisition 1965 by Henry Kamen Kamen argued that the Inquisition was not nearly as cruel or as powerful as commonly believed The book was very influential and largely responsible for subsequent studies in the 1970s to try to quantify from archival records the Inquisition s activities from 1480 to 1834 Those studies showed there was an initial burst of activity against conversos suspected of relapsing into Judaism and a mid 16th century pursuit of Protestants but according to these studies the Inquisition served principally as a forum Spaniards occasionally used to humiliate and punish people they did not like blasphemers bigamists foreigners and in Aragon homosexuals and horse smugglers Kamen went on to publish two more books in 1985 and 2006 that incorporated new findings further supporting the view that the Inquisition was not as bad as once described by Lea and others Along similar lines is Edward Peters s Inquisition 1988 One of the most important works about the inquisition s relation to the Jewish conversos or New Christians is The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain 1995 2002 by Benzion Netanyahu It challenges the view that most conversos were actually practicing Judaism in secret and were persecuted for their crypto Judaism Rather according to Netanyahu the persecution was fundamentally racial and was a matter of envy of their success in Spanish society This view has been challenged multiple times and with some reasonable divergences the majority of historians either align with religious causes or with merely cultural ones with no significant racial element In popular cultureThis article may contain irrelevant references to popular culture Please remove the content or add citations to reliable and independent sources July 2023 Literature There was no remedy from Los Caprichos 1797 98 by Francisco de Goya The literature of the 18th century approaches the theme of the Inquisition from a critical point of view In Candide by Voltaire the Inquisition appears as the epitome of intolerance and arbitrary justice in Europe During the Romantic Period the Gothic novel which was primarily a genre developed in Protestant countries frequently associated Catholicism with terror and repression This vision of the Spanish Inquisition appears in among other works The Monk 1796 by Matthew Gregory Lewis set in Madrid during the Inquisition but can be seen as commenting on the French Revolution and the Terror Melmoth the Wanderer 1820 by Charles Robert Maturin and The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki The literature of the 19th century tends to focus on the element of torture employed by the Inquisition In France in the early 19th century the epistolary novel Cornelia Bororquia or the Victim of the Inquisition which has been attributed to Spaniard Luiz Gutierrez and is based on the case of Maria de Bohorquez ferociously criticizes the Inquisition and its representatives The Inquisition also appears in Fyodor Dostoevsky s novel The Brothers Karamazov 1880 in the chapter The Grand Inquisitor A story within a story several times published as a separate book The Grand Inquisitor is a legend composed and narrated by the character of Ivan Karamazov that imagines an encounter between Jesus and the Inquisitor General Jesus unexpectedly appears in Seville at the height of the Inquisition and is arrested by the Grand Inquisitor an old Cardinal who condemns him to die at the stake like the worst of heretics In the course of a long diatribe the Inquisitor tells Jesus You have no right to add anything to what was said by You in former times Why have You come to get in our way For You have come to get in our way and You yourself know it Jesus remains silent throughout the speech but when the Inquisitor finally concludes with the words Tomorrow I shall burn thee Jesus approaches him and without a word kisses him on the mouth The Inquisitor releases him with the words Go and do not come back do not come back at all ever ever One of the best known stories of Edgar Allan Poe The Pit and the Pendulum explores the use of torture by the Inquisition The Inquisition also appears in 20th century literature La Gesta del Marrano by the Argentine author Marcos Aguinis portrays the length of the Inquisition s arm to reach people in Argentina during the 16th and 17th centuries The first book in Les Daniels Don Sebastian Vampire Chronicles The Black Castle 1978 is set in 15th century Spain and includes both descriptions of Inquisitorial questioning and an auto de fe as well as Tomas de Torquemada who is featured in one chapter The Marvel Comics series Marvel 1602 shows the Inquisition targeting Mutants for blasphemy The character Magneto also appears as the Grand Inquisitor The Captain Alatriste novels by the Spanish writer Arturo Perez Reverte are set in the early 17th century The second novel Purity of Blood has the narrator being tortured by the Inquisition and describes an auto de fe Carme Riera s novella published in 1994 Dins el Darrer Blau In the Last Blue is set during the repression of the chuetas conversos from Majorca at the end of the 17th century In 1998 the Spanish writer Miguel Delibes published the historical novel The Heretic about the Protestants of Valladolid and their repression by the Inquisition Samuel Shellabarger s Captain from Castile deals directly with the Spanish Inquisition during the first part of the novel In the novel La Catedral del Mar by Ildefonso Falcones published in 2006 and set in the 14th century there are scenes of inquisition investigations in small towns and a great scene in Barcelona Film The 1947 epic Captain from Castile by Darryl F Zanuck starring Tyrone Power uses the Inquisition as the major plot point of the film It tells how powerful families used their evils to ruin their rivals The first part of the film shows this and the reach of the Inquisition reoccurs throughout this movie following Pedro De Vargas played by Power even to the New World The Spanish Inquisition segment of the 1981 Mel Brooks movie History of the World Part I is a comedic musical performance based on the activities of the first Inquisitor General of Spain Tomas de Torquemada The film The Fountain 2006 by Darren Aronofsky features the Spanish Inquisition as part of a plot in 1500 when the Grand Inquisitor threatens Queen Isabella s life Goya s Ghosts 2006 by Milos Forman is set in Spain between 1792 and 1809 and focuses realistically on the role of the Inquisition and its end under Napoleon s rule The film Assassin s Creed 2016 by Justin Kurzel starring Michael Fassbender is set in both modern times and Spain during the Inquisition The film follows Callum Lynch played by Fassbender as he is forced to relive the memories of his ancestor Aguilar de Nerha also played by Fassbender an Assassin during the Spanish Inquisition The many film adaptations of the Edgar Allan Poe short story The Pit and the Pendulum including the 1961 film and the 1991 film Akelarre Pedro Olea 1984 a film about the Logrono trial of the Zugarramurdi witches Tomas de Torquemada is portrayed in 1492 The Conquest of Paradise 1992 Theatre music television and video games The Grand Inquisitor of Spain plays a part in Don Carlos 1867 a play by Friedrich Schiller which was the basis for the opera Don Carlos in five acts by Giuseppe Verdi in which the Inquisitor is also featured and the third act is dedicated to an auto de fe The 1965 musical Man of La Mancha depicts a fictionalized account of the author Miguel de Cervantes run in with Spanish authorities The character of Cervantes produces a play within a play of his unfinished manuscript Don Quixote while he awaits sentencing by the Inquisition Monty Python members Terry Gilliam Michael Palin and Terry Jones performing The Spanish Inquisition sketch during the 2014 Python reunion In the Monty Python comedy team s Spanish Inquisition sketches an inept group of Inquisitors repeatedly burst into scenes after someone utters the words I didn t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition screaming Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition The Inquisition then uses ineffectual forms of torture including a dish drying rack soft cushions and a comfy chair The Spanish Inquisition features as a main plotline element of the 2009 video game Assassin s Creed II Discovery The Universe of Warhammer 40 000 borrows several elements and concepts of the Catholic church Imaginarium including the notion of the Black Legend s ideal of a fanatic Inquisitors for some of its troops in Warhammer 40 000 Inquisitor Martyr The video game Blasphemous portrays a nightmarish version of the Spanish Inquisition where the protagonist named The Penitent one wears a capirote cone shaped hat The Penitent one battles twisted religious iconography and meets many characters attempting to atone for their sins along the way See alsoBlack legend Black Legend Spain Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Eleno de Cespedes Goa Inquisition in Portuguese Goa History of the Jews in Spain Holy Child of La Guardia Inquisition in the Netherlands in the Spanish Netherlands Mexican Inquisition in New Spain Persecution of Christians Persecution of Muslims Peruvian Inquisition in the Viceroyalty of Peru Francisca Nunez de CarabajalNotes and referencesExplanatory notes The terms converso and crypto Jew are somewhat vexed and occasionally historians are not clear on how precisely they are intended to be understood For the purpose of clarity in this article converso will be taken to mean one who has sincerely renounced Judaism or Islam and embraced Catholicism Crypto Jew will be taken to mean one who accepts Christian baptism yet continues to practice Judaism Citations Data for executions for witchcraft Levack Brian P 199 The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe 2nd ed London and New York Longman ISBN 978 0582080690 OCLC 30154582 And see Witch trials in Early Modern Europe for more detail Splendiani Ana Maria 1997 Cincuenta anos de la inquisicion en el Tribunal de Cartagena de Indias p 86 the American Inquisition was never involved in the conversion and evangelisation of the Indians as they were outside its jurisdiction from the very promulgation of the edicts founding the American courts The Alhambra Decree Edict of the Expulsion of the Jews of Spain PDF Florida Atlantic University 1492 Hans Jurgen Prien 2012 Christianity in Latin America Revised and Expanded Edition Brill p 11 ISBN 978 90 04 22262 5 Sabatini 1930 p 9 11 Ehler Sidney Zdeneck Morrall John B 1967 Church and State Through the Centuries A Collection of Historic Documents with Commentaries Biblo amp Tannen Publishers p 6 7 ISBN 978 0 8196 0189 6 from the original on 15 May 2016 This Edict is the first which definitely introduces Catholic orthodoxy as the established religion of the Roman world Acknowledgment of the true doctrine of the Trinity is made the test of State recognition The Edict of Thessalonica History Today Sabatini 1930 p 13 Pharr Clyde 1952 The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions Princeton University Press pp 440 476 Sabatini 1930 p 14 Momigliano Arnaldo 1977 Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography Wesleyan University Press p 113 Jedin Hubert amp Dolan John 1993 41 The Priscillianist Movement The Early church an abridgment of History of the church Volumes 1 to 3 Wesleyan University Press pp 226 228 a href wiki Template Cite book title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Sabatini 1930 p 17 Text of ad abolendam issued by Pope Lucius III Synod of Verona 4th November 1184 Professor Moriarty Retrieved 12 February 2024 Thomsett 2010 p 13 Frassetto 2007 p 68 Leff 1967 p 37 Leff 1967 p 42 Brian Catlos Secundum suam zunam Muslims in the Laws of the Aragonese Reconquista Mediterranean Studies Vol 7 1998 pp 13 26 Published by Penn State University Press Kamen 1998 p 4 Peters 1988 p 79 Peters 1988 p 82 Letter of Hasdai Crescas Shevaṭ Yehudah by Solomon ibn Verga ed Dr M Wiener Hannover 1855 pp 128 130 pp 138 140 in PDF Fritz Kobler Letters of the Jews through the Ages London 1952 pp 272 275 Mitre Fernandez Emilio 1994 Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial ed Los judios de Castilla en tiempo de Enrique III el pogrom de 1391 The Castilian Jews at the time of Henry III the 1391 pogrom in Spanish Valladolid University ISBN 978 84 7762 449 3 Solomon ibn Verga Shevaṭ Yehudah The Sceptre of Judah Lvov 1846 p 76 in PDF HebrewBooks org Sefer Detail שבט יהודה וירגא שלמה בן יהודה 1460 1554 www hebrewbooks org Retrieved 6 February 2024 HebrewBooks org Sefer Detail שבט יהודה וירגא שלמה בן יהודה 1460 1554 www hebrewbooks org Retrieved 6 February 2024 HebrewBooks org Sefer Detail שלשלת הקבלה יחיא גדליה בן יוסף אבן 1515 1587 www hebrewbooks org Retrieved 6 February 2024 Abraham Zacuto Sefer Yuchasin Krakow 1580 q v Sefer Yuchasin p 266 in PDF Hebrew Raymond of Penafort Summa lib 1 p 33 citing D 45 c 5 Kamen 1998 p 10 Notably Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria author of Scrutinium Scripturarum Jeronimo de Santa Fe Hebraomastix and Zelus Christi contra Judaeos All three were conversos Kamen 1998 p 39 Notably the Libro verde de Aragon and Tizon de la nobleza de Espana cited in Kamen 1998 p 38 Perez 2005 Perez Joseph 2012 2009 Breve Historia de la Inquisicion en Espana Barcelona Critica ISBN 978 84 08 00695 4 Canessa De Sanguinetti Marta El Bien Nacer Limpieza De Oficios Y Limpieza De Sangre Raices Ibericas De Un Mal Latinoamericano Taurus Ediciones Santillana 2000 Barea Maria Elvira Roca 2016 Imperiofobia Y Leyenda Negra Roma Rusia Estados Unidos Y El Imperio Espanol in Spanish Siruela Abou Al Fadl K 1994 Islamic law and Muslim minorities the juristic discourse on Muslim minorities from the second eight to the eleventh seventeenth centuries Islamic Law and Society 1 Goosenes A 1997 Les inquisitions modernes dans les Pays Bas meridionaux 1520 1633 2 vols Bruselas Boronat P 1901 Los moriscos espanoles y su expulsion 2 vols Valencia Stuart Nancy Rubin Isabella of Castile The First Renaissance Queen New York ASJA Press 2004 Black Robert Machiavelli Abigdon Oxon Routledge Tylor 2013 pp 83 120 the quote is paraphrased Gonzalez oscar 2009 El Rey Y El Papa Politica Y Diplomacia En Los Albores Del Renacimiento Castilla En El Siglo XV Silex The Marranos of Spain From the late XIVth to the early XVIth Century 1966 Ithaca 1999 Introduction Part 1 British History Online www british history ac uk Gorsky Jeffrey 2015 Exiles in Sepharad The Jewish Millennium in Spain University of Nebraska Press p 246 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Spanish Inquisition Timeline Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 15 December 2021 a href wiki Template Cite web title Template Cite web cite web a last1 has generic name help Sabatini 1930 pp 89 90 Peters 1988 p 85 Saraiva 2001 p XXXV Saraiva 2001 p 40 Peters 1988 p 89 Cited in Kamen 1998 p 49 Sabatini 1930 p 107 108 Kamen 1998 pp 49 50 Ben Sasson H H editor 1976 p 588 Archbishop Arnold H Mathew The Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia pp 52 53 Quote Isabella s Confessor Torquemada had imbued her with the idea that the suppression of all heresy within her realms was a sacred duty She had therefore in November 1478 obtained a bull from the Pope Sixtus IV for the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile Many modern writers have sought to reduce her share in the introduction of this terrible institution but it must be remembered that Isabella herself probably considered it a meritorious action to punish with inhuman barbarity those whom she looked upon as the enemies of the Almighty In 1480 two Dominicans were appointed by her as Inquisitors to set up their tribunal at Seville Before the end of the year 1481 2 000 victims were burned alive in Andalusia alone The Pope himself became alarmed and threatened to withdraw the bull but Ferdinand intimated that he would make the Inquisition altogether an independent tribunal This it became later for all practical purposes and its iniquitous proceedings continued unchecked Torquemada Tomas de 1667 Compilacion de las Instrucciones del Oficio de la Santa Inquisicion PDF in Spanish Diego Diaz de la Carrera Sabatini 1930 pp 142 147 Perez 2005 p 135 Perez 2005 pp 135 136 Ben Sasson H H editor A History of the Jewish People Harvard University Press 1976 pp 588 590 Kamen 1998 p 157 Kamen 1998 p 60 Quoted in Kamen 1998 p 20 Suarez Fernandez Luis 2012 La expulsion de los judios Un problema europeo Barcelona Ariel Kamen 1998 pp 29 31 Kamen 1998 p 24 Murphy 2012 p 75 Kamen 2014 p 369 Kamen 2014 p 370 S P Scott History Vol II p 259 Absent records the Inquisition decreed that all Moors were to be regarded as baptized and thus were Moriscos subject to the Inquisition Secular authorities then decreed in 1526 that 40 years of religious instruction would precede any prosecution Fifty Moriscos were burnt at the stake before the Crown clarified its position Neither the Church nor the Moriscos utilized the years well The Moriscos can be stereotyped as poor rural uneducated agricultural workers who spoke Arabic The Church had limited willingness or ability to educate this now hostile group Green 2007 pp 124 127 Trevor J Dadson The Assimilation of Spain s Moriscos Fiction or Reality Journal of Levantine Studies Vol 1 No 2 Winter 2011 pp 11 30 Kamen 1998 p 222 Kamen 1998 p 217 Kamen 1998 p 225 Lea 1901 p 308 Lea 1901 p 345 Trevor J Dadson The Assimilation of Spain s Moriscos Fiction or Reality 12 June 2013 at the Wayback Machine Journal of Levantine Studies vol 1 no 2 Winter 2011 pp 11 30 Boase Roger 4 April 2002 The Muslim Expulsion from Spain History Today 52 4 The majority of those permanently expelled settling in the Maghreb or Barbary Coast especially in Oran Tunis Tlemcen Tetuan Rabat and Sale Many travelled overland to France but after the assassination of Henry of Navarre by Ravaillac in May 1610 they were forced to emigrate to Italy Sicily or Constantinople Adams Susan M Bosch Elena Balaresque Patricia L Ballereau Stephane J Lee Andrew C Arroyo Eduardo Lopez Parra Ana M Aler Mercedes Grifo Marina S Gisbert Brion Maria Carracedo Angel Lavinha Joao Martinez Jarreta Begona Quintana Murci Lluis Picornell Antonia Ramon Misericordia Skorecki Karl Behar Doron M Calafell Francesc Jobling Mark A December 2008 The Genetic Legacy of Religious Diversity and Intolerance Paternal Lineages of Christians Jews and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula The American Journal of Human Genetics 83 6 725 736 doi 10 1016 j ajhg 2008 11 007 PMC 2668061 PMID 19061982 Michel Boeglin La expulsion de los moriscos de Andalucia y sus limites El caso de Sevilla 1610 1613 In Spanish Vinculos Historia The Moriscos who remained The permanence of Islamic origin population in Early Modern Spain Kingdom of Granada XVII XVIII centuries In Spanish Kamen 2014 p 100 Kamen 2014 p 94 Kamen 2014 p 126 These trials specifically those of Valladolid form the basis of the plot of The Heretic A Novel of the Inquisition by Miguel Delibes Overlook 2006 Kamen 1998 p 99 gives the figure of about 100 executions for heresy of any kind between 1559 and 1566 He compares these figures with those condemned to death in other European countries during the same period concluding that in similar periods England under Mary Tudor executed about twice as many for heresy in France three times the number and ten times as many in the Low Countries Kamen 2014 pp 102 108 Kamen 1998 p 98 Kamen 1998 pp 99 100 Rodriguez Sala Maria Luisa Los Protestantes y la Inquision PDF in Spanish UNAM Retrieved 14 January 2022 These trials are the theme of the film Akelarre by the Spanish director Pedro Olea Henry Kamen The Spanish Inquisition A Historical Revision 1999 Cited in Henningsen Gustav ed The Salazar Documents Inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frias and Others on the Basque Witch Persecution Cultures Beliefs and Traditions Medieval and Early Modern Peoples Vol 21 Boston Koninklijke Brill 2004 Second Report of Salazar to the Inquisitor General Logrono 24 March 1612 An account of the whole visitation and publication of the Edict with special reference to the witches sect p 352 Green 2007 pp 7 223 224 Kamen Henry 2 February 1981 500 Years of the Spanish Inquisition History Today Volume 31 Issue 2 Retrieved 21 February 2024 Monter 1990 p 259 Monter 1990 p 279 Kamen Henry 2011 La Inquisicion Espanola Una revision historica pp 192 259 ISBN missing Monter 1990 pp 280 282 Kamen 1998 p 277 Monter 1990 pp 281 283 Monter 1990 pp 284 285 Perez 2005 p 91 Monter 1990 pp 276 299 Green 2007 p 320 William R Denslow Harry S Truman 10 000 Famous Freemasons ISBN 1 4179 7579 2 Bleiberg German Ihrie Maureen Perez Janet 1993 Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula Greenwood Publishing Group pp 374 ISBN 978 0 313 28731 2 Walkley Clive 2010 Juan Esquivel A Master of Sacred Music During the Spanish Golden Age Boydell amp Brewer pp 7 ISBN 978 1 84383 587 5 Johnson Paul A History of Christianity Penguin 1976 Kamen 2005 pp 126 130 Green 2007 p 296 Green 2007 p 298 Statistics are not available for Spanish oarsmen but the general state of Mediterranean oared galleys circa 1570 was grim cf Crowley Roger 2009 Empires of the sea The siege of Malta the battle of Lepanto and the contest for the center of the world New York Random House Trade Paperbacks pp 77 78 ISBN 978 0 8129 77646 galley slaves led lives bitter and short One way or another the oared galley consumed men like fuel Each dying wretch dumped overboard had to be replaced and there were never enough Lorenzo Arrazola Enciclopedia Espanola De Derecho Y Administracion Ciu Col Enciclopedia of Spanish Penal and Administrative Law Madrid Saraswati Press 2012 pp 572 Cc eres Fernando 2007 Estudios Sobre Cultura Guerra Y Polt ica En La Corona De Castilla Studies Over War Culture and Politics in the Kingdom of Castile Editorial Csic Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientf icas siglos xiv xvii Kaler Amy 1998 Fertility Gender and War The culture of contraception University of Minnesota Press INQUISICIoN L 960 Libro de ejemplares del Tribunal de Valencia PARES Retrieved 8 February 2024 Henningsen Gustav The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind p 220 Garcia Carcel 1976 p 21 Kamen 1998 p 141 In Sicily the Inquisition functioned until 30 March 1782 when it was abolished by King Ferdinand IV of Naples It is estimated that 200 people were executed during this period Garcia Carcel 1976 p 24 Cited in Kamen 1998 p 153 Kamen 1998 p 57 Perez 2005 pp 135 136 Kamen 1998 p 174 Perez 2005 pp 139 140 Lea 1906 p 91 Volume 2 In the tribunal of Valladolid in 1699 various suspects including a girl of 9 and a boy of 14 were jailed for up to two years with having had the least evaluation of the accusations presented against them Kamen 1998 p 183 Kamen 1998 p 184 Sabatini 1930 p 173 Walsh Thomas William Characters of the Inquisition P J Kennedy amp Sons 1940 p 163 Walsh letter to Roth htm www jrbooksonline com Retrieved 11 February 2024 Saraiva 2001 pp 69 70 Sabatini 1930 p 195 Homza 2006 pp XXIV Madden Thomas 1 October 2003 The Truth about the Spanish Inquisition Mary Foundation from the original on 27 August 2022 Martinez Millan Jose 2007 La Inquisicion Espanola in Spanish Alianza Editorial Kamen Henry 2011 La Inquisicion Espanola Una revision historica pp 191 192 Saraiva 2001 p 61 62 Lea 1906 pp 32 33 Volume III Sabatini 1930 p 162 H C Lea III p 33 Cited in Kamen 1998 p 185 Garcia Carcel 1976 p 43 finds the same statistics Messori Vittorio 2000 Leyendas Negras de la Iglesia Editorial Planeta this source is a Catholic apologist Bethencourt Francisco La Inquisicion En La Epoca Moderna Espana Portugal E Italia Siglos xv xix Madrid Akal 1997 Hassner Ron E 2020 The Cost of Torture Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition Security Studies 29 3 457 492 doi 10 1080 09636412 2020 1761441 ISSN 0963 6412 S2CID 219405563 Haliczer Stephen Haliczer 1 January 1990 Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia 1478 1834 University of California Press p 79 ISBN 978 0 520 06729 5 Peters Edward Inquisition Dissent Heterodoxy and the Medieval Inquisitional Office pp 92 93 University of California Press 1989 ISBN 0 520 06630 8 Sabatini 1930 p 162 197 198 Sabatini 1930 p 198 Kamen 1998 pp 190 191 Kamen 1998 p 189 Crespo Vargas Pablo L La Inquisicion Espanola Y Las Supersticiones En El Caribe Hispano Madrid Palibrio 2011 pp 120 130 Sabatini Rafael Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition A History p 190 Kessinger Publishing 2003 ISBN 0 7661 3161 0 Scott 1959 p 171 Carrol James Constantine s Sword The Church and the Jews A History p 356 Houghton Mifflin Books 2002 ISBN 0 618 21908 0 Peters Edward Inquisition Dissent Heterodoxy and the Medieval Inquisitional Office p 65 University of California Press 1989 ISBN 0 520 06630 8 Homza 2006 p XXV Murphy 2012 p 89 Scott 1959 p 32 Bergemann 2019 p 58 Bergemann 2019 p 45 Bergemann 2019 p 45 46 Lea 1906 p 183 185 Volume III Haliczer 1990 p 83 85 Bergemann 2019 p 46 Sabatini 1930 p 169 172 222 277 279 432 Homza 2006 p XIV Perez 2005 p 136 Garcia Carcel 1976 p 39 Spain The conquest of Granada www britannica com Retrieved 25 May 2022 Martinez Doris Moreno 1997 Cirios trompetas y altares El auto de fe como fiesta Espacio Tiempo y Forma Serie IV Historia Moderna 143 171 Sabatini 1930 p 270 280 Peters 1988 pp 93 94 Kamen 1998 pp 192 213 Stavans 2005 xxxiv Azevedo Joao Lucio de 1922 O Marques de Pombal e a sua epoca in Portuguese Annuario do Brasil p 285 Freitas Jordao de 1916 O Marquez de Pombal e o Santo Oficio da Inquisicao Memoria enriquecida com documentos ineditos e facsimiles de assignaturas do benemerito reedificador da cidade de Lisboa in Portuguese Soc Editora Jose Bastos pp 10 106 122 Cited in Elorza La Inquisicion y el pensamiento ilustrado Historia 16 Especial 10º Aniversario La Inquisicion p 81 Members of the government and the Council of Castile as well as other members close to the court obtained special authorization for books purchased in France the Low Countries or Germany to cross the border without inspection by members of the Holy Office This practice grew beginning with the reign of Charles III Elorza La Inquisicion y el pensamiento ilustrado p 84 The argument presented in the periodicals and other works circulating in Spain were virtually exact copies of the reflections of Montesquieu or Rousseau translated into Spanish Church properties in general and those of the Holy Office in particular occupied large tracts of today s Castile and Leon Extremadura and Andalucia The properties were given under feudal terms to farmers or to localities who used them as community property with many restrictions owing a part of the rent generally in cash to the church Elorza La Inquisicion y el Pensamiento Ilustrado Historia 16 Especial 10º Aniversario La Inquisicion p 88 See Antonio Puigblanch La Inquisicion sin mascara Cadiz 1811 1813 Kamen 2014 p 382 Historians have different interpretations One argument is that during the Ominous Decade the Inquisition was re established because of a statement made by upon a visit to the Vatican that he would reintroduce it if the occasion arose but the Royal Decree that would have abolished the order of the Trienio Liberal was never approved or at least never published The formal abolition under the regency of Maria Cristina was thus nothing more than a ratification of the abolition of 1820 citation needed Perez 2005 pp 100 Kamen 2014 pp 372 373 Times Richard Ederspecial To the New York 17 December 1968 1492 Ban on Jews Is Voided by Spain 1492 BAN ON JEWS IS VOIDED IN SPAIN The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 11 February 2024 Juif Dacil Baten Joerg Perez Artes Mari Carmen 2020 Numeracy of Religious Minorities in Spain and Portugal During the Inquisition Era The Revista de Historia Economica Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History 38 147 184 doi 10 1017 S021261091900034X hdl 10016 36127 S2CID 214199340 Anderson James Maxwell Daily Life during the Spanish Inquisition Greenwood Press 2002 ISBN 0 313 31667 8 Kamen 1998 p 150 Eire Carlos M N Reformations The Early Modern World 1450 1650 New Haven Yale University Press 2016 pp 640 Mohnhaupt Heinz Simon Dieter 1992 Vortrage zur Justizforschung Geschichte und Theorie in German V Klostermann ISBN 978 3 465 02627 3 W Monter Frontiers of Heresy The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily Cambridge 2003 p 53 Jean Pierre Dedieu Los Cuatro Tiempos in Bartolome Benassar Inquisicion Espanola poder politico y control social pp 15 39 Garcia Carcel 1976 citation needed Kamen 2005 p 15 Henningsen The Database of the Spanish Inquisition p 84 Henningsen The Database of the Spanish Inquisition p 58 W Monter Frontiers of heresy p 327 W Monter pp 309 329 Museo de la Inquisicion y del Congreso See H Ch Lea The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies London 1922 pp 204 ff and The Catholic Encyclopedia Mexico Francisco Fajardo Spinola La actividad procesal del Santo Oficio Algunas consideraciones sobre su estudio Manuscrits 17 1999 p 114 One burned in 1567 E Schaffer Beitrage zur Geschichte des Spanischen Protestantismus Bd 2 Gutersloh 1902 pp 41 42 13 in the period 1570 1625 W Monter Frontiers of heresy p 48 5 burned in 1627 another 5 burned in 1655 Kamen 2005 p 266 and 3 burned alive in 1665 Miriam Bodian Dying in the law of Moses crypto Jewish martyrdom in the Iberian world Indiana University Press 2007 p 219 cf Henningsen p 68 Four burned between 1553 and 1558 W Monter Frontiers of heresy pp 37 38 n 22 one in 1561 W Monter Frontiers of heresy p 233 19 others in the period 1570 1625 W Monter Frontiers of heresy p 48 and 10 burned in 1654 Heinrich Graetz History of the Jews Vol V 2009 p 91 Two persons condemned to death in 1678 were burned in the auto de fe celebrated in Madrid in 1680 H Ch Lea History of the Inquisition of Spain New York 1907 vol III p 300 Therefore they are included in the number of executions for Toledo Madrid This number includes 7 persons burned ca 1545 H Ch Lea History of the Inquisition of Spain New York 1907 vol III p 189 9 persons burned in 1550 52 Flora Garcia Ivars La represion en el tribunal inquisitorial de Granada 1550 1819 ed Akal 1991 p 194 14 persons burned in the 1560s W Monter p 44 233 24 burned between 1570 and 1625 W Monter p 48 12 burned in 1654 Heinrich Graetz History of the Jews Vol V 2009 p 92 and 6 burned in 1672 A J Saraiva H P Salomon I S D Sassoon The Marrano Factory The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536 1765 Leiden Boston and Cologne Brill 2001 p 217 n 62 154 burned between 1557 and 1568 J L Morales y Marin El Alcazar de la Inquisicion en Murcia s 40 11 executed in the period 1570 1625 W Monter p 48 and 25 between 1686 and 1699 Consuelo Maqueda Abreu El auto de fe Madryt 1992 p 97 This number includes 2 executions in the auto da fe in 1545 W Monter Frontiers of heresy p 38 114 executions in the autos da fe between 1559 and 1660 Victoria Gonzalez de Caldas Judios o cristianos Universidad de Sevilla 2000 p 528 and 12 executions in the autos da fe between 1666 and 1695 Consuelo Maqueda Abreu El auto de fe Madrid 1992 pp 99 100 13 burned in the autos da fe between 1555 and 1569 E Schaffer Beitrage zur Geschichte des Spanischen Protestantismus Bd 2 Gutersloh 1902 p 79 91 25 burned between 1570 and 1625 W Monter p 48 2 burned between 1648 and 1699 H Ch Lea A History of the Inquisition of Spain vol IV New York 1907 p 524 cf Joaquin Perez Villanueva amp Bartolome Escandell Bonet ed Historia de la Inquisicion en Espana y America vol 1 Madrid 1984 p 1395 and 26 burned in two autos da fe in Madrid w 1632 and 1680 H Ch Lea A History of the Inquisition of Spain vol III New York 1907 p 228 This number includes 6 executions given by Henningsen and Contreras for the period 1620 1670 Henningsen The Database of the Spanish Inquisition pp 58 and 65 26 burned in two famous autos da fe in 1559 W Monter Frontiers of heresy pp 41 44 2 burned in 1561 W Monter pp 41 44 233 15 burned between 1562 and 1567 E Schaffer Beitrage zur Geschichte des Spanischen Protestantismus Bd 3 Gutersloh 1902 p 131 and 5 burned in 1691 H Ch Lea History of the Inquisition of Spain New York 1907 vol III p 197 Source Teofanes Egido Las modificaciones de la tipologia nueva estructura delictiva in Joaquin Perez Villanueva amp Bartolome Escandell Bonet Historia de la Inquisicion en Espana y America vol 1 Madrid 1984 p 1395 Green 2007 pp 4 5 Archivo General de las Indias Seville Santa Fe 228 Expediente 63 Archivo General de las Indias Seville Santa Fe 228 Expediente 81A n 33 Green 2007 p 65 Barrios Manuel 1991 El Tribunal de la Inquisicion en Andalucia Seleccion de Textos y Documentos Seville J Rodriguez Castillejo S A p 58 Blanco Patricia R 20 December 2019 Las citas tergiversadas del superventas sobre la leyenda negra espanola El Pais in Spanish ISSN 1134 6582 Contreras Jaime y Gustav Henningsen 1986 Forty four thousand cases of the Spanish Inquisition 1540 1700 analysis of a historical data bank en Henningsen G J A Tedeschi et al comps The Inquisition in early modern Europe studies on sources and methods Dekalb Northern Illinois University Press Perez Joseph 2006 The Spanish Inquisition a history New Haven CT Yale University Press p 173 Juan Antonio Llorente Historia critica de la Inquisicion en Espana tomo IV p 183 Madrid Hiperion 1980 Drelichman Mauricio Vidal Robert Jordi Voth Hans Joachim 2021 The long run effects of religious persecution Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118 33 e2022881118 Bibcode 2021PNAS 11822881D doi 10 1073 pnas 2022881118 ISSN 0027 8424 PMC 8379970 PMID 34389666 Kagan Richard L 19 April 1998 A Kinder Gentler Inquisition Archive nytimes com Retrieved 11 February 2024 Penn Libraries University of Pennsylvania Univ of Pennsylvania Penn Special Collections Archived from the original on 10 September 2006 Retrieved 18 April 2007 Van Hove Brian 12 November 1996 Catholic net Archived from the original on 5 April 2007 Retrieved 18 April 2007 Green 2007 p 9 10 See for example Jean Pierre Dedieu Los Cuatro Tiempos in Bartolome Benassar Inquisicion Espanola poder politico y control social pp 15 39 and Garcia Carcel 1976 Benzion Netanyahu s History Tablet Magazine 30 April 2012 Vicente Angel Alvarez Palenzuela Judios y conversos en la Espana medieval Estado de la cuestion Jews and converts in medieval Spain Estate of the matter Universidad Autonoma de Madrid eHumanista Converso 4 2015 156 191 It can be checked for free here Dostoyevsky Fyodor 2009 The Grand Inquisitor Penguin Books General and cited referencesSeminal classical works Eymerich Nicholas 1821 Manual de Inquisidores para uso de las inquisiciones de Espana y Portugal o Compendio de la Obra titulada Directorio de Inquisidores de Nicolao Eymerico Inquisidor general de Aragon translated from French to Spanish by J Marchena Imprenta de Feliz Avinon Gui Bernard Manuel de l Inquisiteur 1927 Lea Henry Charles 1906 A History of the Inquisition of Spain 4 volumes The MacMillan Company Lea Henry Charles 1901 The Moriscos of Spain Their Conversion and Expulsion Philadelphia PA Lea Brothers and Co Llorente Juan Antonio 1817 Histoire critique de l Inquisition d Espagne 4 volumes in French Imprimerie de Plassan Pastor Ludwig von History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and other original sources 40 vols St Louis B Herder 1898 Perez Joseph 2005 The Spanish Inquisition A History Yale University Press Perez Joseph 2009 Breve Historia de la Inquisicion en Espana in Spanish Critica Torquemada Tomas de 1667 Compilacion de las Instrucciones del Oficio de la Santa Inquisicion PDF in Spanish Diego Diaz de la Carrera Revisionist books Barea Maria Elvira Roca 2016 Imperiofobia Y Leyenda Negra Roma Rusia Estados Unidos Y El Imperio Espanol Siruela Carroll Warren H Isabel the Catholic Queen Christendom Press 1991 Garcia Carcel Ricardo 1976 Origenes de la Inquisicion Espanola El Tribunal de Valencia 1478 1530 Barcelona a href wiki Template Cite book title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Graizbord David L Souls in Dispute Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora 1580 1700 Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 2004 Homza Lu Ann 2006 The Spanish Inquisition 1478 1614 An Anthology of Sources Hackett Publishing Kamen Henry 1998 The Spanish Inquisition a Historical Revision Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 07522 9 Kamen Henry 2005 Inkwizycja Hiszpanska The Spanish Inquisition in Polish Warsaw Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy ISBN 978 83 06 02963 5 Kamen Henry 2014 The Spanish Inquisition A Historical Revision New Haven Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 18051 0 Kamen has published 4 editions under 3 titles First edition published 1965 as The Spanish Inquisition Second edition published 1985 as Inquisition and Society in Spain Third edition published 1998 as The Spanish Inquisition A Historical Revision Fourth edition 2014 Kritzler Edward Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean Anchor Books 2009 ISBN 978 0 7679 1952 4 Monter E William 1990 Frontiers of Heresy The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0 521 52259 5 Nirenberg David 2013 Anti Judaism The Western Tradition New York W W Norton amp Company ISBN 978 0 393 34791 3 ch 5 Revenge of the Savior Jews and Power in Medieval Europe ch 6 The Extinction of Spain s Jews and the Birth of Its Inquisition Parker Geoffrey 1982 Some recent work on the Inquisition in Spain and Italy Journal of Modern History 54 3 519 532 doi 10 1086 244181 JSTOR 1906231 S2CID 143860010 Peters Edward 1988 Inquisition New York amp London Free Press Collier Macmillan ISBN 978 0029249802 Rawlings Helen The Spanish Inquisition Blackwell Publishing 2006 Old scholarship Adler Elkan Nathan Autos de fe and the Jew 1908 Baiao Antonio A Inquisicao em Portugal e no Brasil 1921 Baker J History of the Inquisition 1736 Ballester Vicente Vignau y Catalogo de las causas contra la fe seguidas ante el tribunal de Santo oficio de la inquisicion de Toledo 1903 Bell Aubrey F G Luis de Leon A Study of the Spanish Renaissance 1925 Cappa Ricardo La Inquisicion Espanola 1888 Cardew Alexander A Short History of the Inquisition 1933 Castellano y de la Pena Gaspar Un Complot Terrorista en el Siglo XV los Comienzos de la Inquisicion Aragonesa 1927 Coulton George Gordon The Inquisition 1929 Garau Francisco La Fee Triunfante en quatro autos celebrados en Mallorca por el Santo Oficio de la Inquisicion en que han salido ochenta y ocho reos 1691 reprinted 1931 Garcia Genaro La Inquisicion de Mexico 1906 Garcia Genaro Autos de fe de la Inquisicion de Mexico 1910 Herculano Alexandre Historia da Origem e Estabelecimento da Inquisicao em Portugal English translation 1926 Jouve Marguerite Torquemada 1935 Maistre Joseph de Letters on the Spanish Inquisition 1838 Maycock Alan Lawson The Inquisition 1926 Marchant John A Review of the Bloody Tribunal or the horrid cruelties of the Inquisition 1770 Marin Julio Melgares Procedimientos de la Inquisicion 2 volumes 1886 Medina Jose Toribio Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la inquisicion de Lima 1569 1820 1887 Melia Antonio Paz y Catalogo Abreviado de Papeles de Inquisicion 1914 Merveilleux Charles Frederic de Memoires Instructifs pour un Voyageur dans les Divers Etats de l Europe 1738 Montes Raimundo Gonzalez de Discovery and Playne Declaration of Sundry Subtile Practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spayne 1568 Nickerson Hoffman The Inquisition 1923 Paramo Luis de De origine et progressu Officii Sanctae Inquisitionis eiusque dignitate amp utilitate 1598 Perlas Ramon de Vilana La verdadera practica apostolica de el S Tribunal de la Inquisicion 1735 Puigblanch Antonio La Inquisicion sin mascara o Disertacion En Que Se Prueban Hasta La Evidencia Los Vicios De Este Tribunal Y La Necesidad De Que Se Suprima 1816 Roth Cecil The Spanish Inquisition 1937 Roth Cecil History of the Marranos 1932 Sabatini Rafael 1930 Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition revised edition 1930 Houghton Mifflin Company Sime William History of the Inquisition from its origin under Pope Innocent III till the present time 1834 Teixeira Antonio Jose Antonio Homem e a Inquisicao 1895 Turberville Arthur Stanley Medieval History and the Inquisition 1920 Turberville Arthur Stanley The Spanish Inquisition 1932 Walsh William Thomas Isabella of Spain 1930 and Characters of the Inquisition 1940 Both reprinted by TAN Books 1987 Wilkens Cornelius August Spanish Protestants in the Sixteenth Century 1897 218p read online at archive org Title Catalog The Library of Iberian Resources Retrieved 17 May 2006 Other 2019 Judge thy neighbor denunciations in the Spanish Inquisition Romanov Russia and Nazi Germany Columbia University Press Frassetto Michael 2007 Heretic lives Medieval Heresy from Bogomil and the Cathars to Wyclif and Hus Profile Books ISBN 978 1 86197 744 1 Green Toby 2007 Inquisition the reign of fear New York Thomas Books ISBN 978 0 312 53724 1 Haliczer Stephen 1990 Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia 1478 1834 University of California Press Leff Gordon 1967 Heresy in the Late Middle Ages The relation of Heterodoxy to dissent c 1250 c 1450 Manchester University Press Murphy Cullen 2012 God s jury the Inquisition and the making of the modern world Boston Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN 978 0 618 09156 0 Peters Edward 1980 Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe Documents in translation University of Pennsylvania Press Plaidy Jean 1994 The Spanish Inquisition its Rise growth and end Three volumes in one New York Barnes amp Noble 2001 The Marrano factory The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536 1765 Leiden Brill Scott George Ryley 1959 The history of torture throughout the ages 7th ed Luxor Press 2010 The Inquisition A History McFarland amp Company Inc 2002 The Most Evil Men And Women In History Michael O Mara Books Ltd Villacanas Jose Luis 2019 Imperiofilia y el populismo nacional catolico Otra historia del imperio espanol Editorial Lengua de Trapo 2003 Flesh Inferno Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition Creation Books Further readingHassner Ron E 2022 Anatomy of Torture Cornell University Press ISBN 978 1 5017 6205 5 External linksWikimedia Commons has media related to Spanish Inquisition The Spanish Inquisition BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Edwards Alexander Murray amp Michael Alpert In Our Time 22 June 2006 Audio Lecture on the History of the Spanish Inquisition and 1492 Expulsion of Spanish Jewry Copilacion de las Instructiones del Officio de la sancta Inquisicion hechas por el muy Reuerendo senor fray Thomas de Torquemada e por los otros Reuerendissimos senores Inquisidores generales etc The first instructions of Torquemada for the guidance of the inquisitors, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library, article, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games, mobile, phone, android, ios, apple, mobile phone, samsung, iphone, xiomi, xiaomi, redmi, honor, oppo, nokia, sonya, mi, pc, web, computer