Spanish Inquisition

For other uses, see Spanish Inquisition (disambiguation).

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Spanish: Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition (Spanish: 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 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 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% of all cases.^[1]

Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Spain Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición Spanish Inquisition
Seal for the Tribunal in Spain
Type
Type	Tribunal under the election of the Spanish monarchy, for upholding religious orthodoxy in their realm
History
Established	1 November 1478
Disbanded	15 July 1834
Seats	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.
Elections
Voting system	Grand Inquisitor and Suprema designated by the crown
Meeting place
Spanish Empire
Footnotes
See 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 the royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to convert to Catholicism or leave Castile, 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.^[2] The Inquisition was abolished in 1834, during the reign of Isabella II, after a period of declining influence in the preceding century.

Previous Inquisitions

 

The Virgin of the Catholic Monarchs.

The Inquisition was created through papal bull, Ad Abolendam, issued at the end of the 12th century by Pope Lucius III to combat the Albigensian heresy in southern France. There were a large number of tribunals of the Papal Inquisition in various European kingdoms during the Middle Ages through different diplomatic and political means. In the Kingdom of Aragon, a tribunal of the Papal Inquisition was established by the statute of Excommunicamus of Pope Gregory IX, in 1232, 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 the Catholic population. 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 the 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.

Medieval Inquisition in Aragon

Although Raymond of Penyafort was not an inquisitor, James I of Aragon had often consulted him on questions of law regarding the practices of the Inquisition in the king's domains since Penyafort was a canon lawyer and royal advisor.

...[T]he lawyer's deep sense of justice and equity, combined with the worthy Dominican's sense of compassion, allowed him to steer clear of the excesses that were found elsewhere in the formative years of the inquisitions into heresy.^[3]

Despite its early implantation, the Papal Inquisition was greatly resisted within the Crown of Aragon by both population and monarchs. With time, its importance was diluted, and, by the middle of the fifteenth century, it was almost forgotten although still there according to the law.

Regarding the living conditions of minorities, the kings of Aragon and other monarchies imposed some discriminatory taxation of religious minorities, so false conversions were a way of tax evasion.

In addition to the above discriminatory legislation, Aragon had laws specifically targeted at protecting minorities. For example, crusaders attacking Jewish or Muslim subjects of the King of Aragon while on their way to fight in the reconquest were punished with death by hanging. Up to the 14th century, the census and wedding records show an absolute lack of concern with avoiding intermarriage or blood mixture. Such laws were now common in most of central Europe. Both the Roman Inquisition and neighbouring Christian powers showed discomfort with Aragonese law and lack of concern with ethnicity, but to little effect.

High-ranking officials of Jewish religion were not as common as in Castile, but were not unheard of either.^[4] Abraham Zacuto was a professor at the university of Cartagena. Vidal Astori was the royal silversmith for Ferdinand II of Aragon and conducted business in his name. And King Ferdinand himself was said to have remote Jewish ancestry on his mother's side.^[5]

Medieval Inquisition in Castile

There was never a tribunal of the Papal Inquisition in Castile, nor any inquisition during the Middle Ages. Members of the episcopate were charged with surveillance of the faithful and punishment of transgressors, always under the direction of the king.

During the Middle Ages in Castile, the Catholic ruling class and the population paid little or no attention to heresy. Castile did not have the proliferation of anti-Jewish pamphlets as England and France did during the 13th and 14th centuries—and those that have been found were modified, watered-down versions of the original stories.^[6] Jews and Muslims were tolerated and generally allowed to follow their traditional customs in domestic matters.^[7]

The legislation regarding Muslims and Jews in Castilian territory varied greatly, becoming more intolerant during the period of great instability and dynastic wars that occurred by the end of the 14th century. Castilian law is particularly difficult to summarize since, due to the model of the free Royal Villas, mayors and the population of border areas had the right to create their own fueros (law) that varied from one villa to the next. In general, the Castilian model was parallel to the initial model of Islamic Spain. Non-Catholics were subject to discriminatory legislation regarding taxation and some other specific discriminatory legislation—such as a prohibition on wearing silk or "flashy clothes"^[8]—that varied from county to county, but were otherwise left alone. Forced conversion of minorities was against the law, and so was the belief in the existence of witchcraft, oracles or similar superstitions. In general, all "people from the book" were permitted to practice their own customs and religions as far as they did not attempt proselytizing on the Christian population. Jews particularly had surprising freedoms and protections compared with other areas of Europe and were allowed to hold high public offices such as the counselor, treasurer or secretary for the crown.^[9]

During most of the medieval period, intermarriage with converts was allowed and encouraged. Intellectual cooperation between religions was the norm in Castile. Some examples are the Toledo School of Translators from the 11th century. Jews and Moors were allowed to hold high offices in the administration (see Abraham Seneor, Samuel HaLevi Abulafia, Isaac Abarbanel, López de Conchillos, Miguel Pérez de Almazán, Jaco Aben Nunnes and Fernando del Pulgar).^{[8][verification needed]}

A tightening of the laws to protect the right of Jews to collect loans during the Medieval Crisis was one of the causes of the revolt against Peter the Cruel and catalyst of the anti-semitic episodes of 1391 in Castile, a kingdom that had shown no significant antisemitic backlash to the black death and drought crisis of the early 14th century. Even after the sudden increase in hostility towards other religions that the kingdom experienced after the 14th-century crisis, which clearly worsened the living conditions of non-Catholics in Castile, it remained one of the most tolerant kingdoms in Europe.^[10][11]

The kingdom had serious tensions with Rome regarding the Church's attempts to extend its authority into the kingdom. A focus of conflict was Castilian resistance to truly abandon the Mozarabic Rite, and the refusal to grant Papal control over Reconquest land (a request Aragon and Portugal conceded). These conflicts added to a strong resistance to allowing the creation of an Inquisition, and the kingdom's general willingness to accept heretics seeking refuge from prosecution in France.

Creation of the Spanish Inquisition

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. After invading in 711, the Moors controlled large areas of the Iberian Peninsula until 1250; afterwards they were restricted to Granada, which fell in 1492. 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.^[12]

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."^[13] 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.^[14] 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.^[15] To linguistically distinguish them from non-converted or long-established Catholic families, new converts were called conversos, or New Catholics. This event must be understood in the context of the fierce civil war and new politics that Peter the Cruel had brought to the land, and not be confused with spontaneous anti-semitic reactions to the plague seen in northern Europe.

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).^[16] 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.^[17] Then the violence spread to Majorca 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 Lérida and Gironda and in the kingdom of València had also been affected,^[18] as were also the Jews of Al-Andalus (Andalucía).^[19] 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,^[20] 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.^[16]

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.^[21] After the public violence, many of the converted "felt it safer to remain in their new religion."^[22] 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.^[23] 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.^[24]

The "Enforcement Across Borders" hypothesis

 

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo. The martyrdom of San Pedro de Arbués (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 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.^{[25][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.^[26]

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".^[27][25]

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 Joana of Avis 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's Monarch 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.^[28]

The "Ottoman Scare" hypothesis

No matter if any of the previous hypotheses were already operating in the minds of the monarchs, 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 making its power noticeable in the Mediterranean and North Africa. At the same time, 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 monarch's exterior politic 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.^[29][30]

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.^[31]

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.^[32] 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.^[33]

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 Castille 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 both, 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.^{[34][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 was actually innocent of it.^[35] Gustav Bergenroth editor and translator of the Spanish state papers 1485–1509 believed that revenue was the incentive for Ferdinand and Isabella's decision to invite the Inquisition into Spain.^[36] 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,^[35] 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 than 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.^[25]
• Purely religious reasons: essentially this view suggests that the Catholic Monarchs created the Inquisition to prosecute heretics and sodomites "because the Bible says so". A common criticism that this view receives is that the Bible also condemns greed, hypocrisy, and adultery, but the Inquisition was not in charge of prosecuting any of those things. It also did not prosecute those who did not go to mass on Sunday or otherwise broke the Catholic rituals as far as it was out of simple laziness. Considering this double standard, its role was probably more complex and specific.^{[citation needed]}

Activity of the Inquisition

Start of the Inquisition

 

Tomás de Torquemada

Fray Alonso de Ojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville, convinced Queen Isabella of the existence of Crypto-Judaism among Andalusian conversos^[37] during her stay in Seville between 1477 and 1478.^[a] A report, produced by Pedro González de Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville, and by the Segovian Dominican Tomás 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 a bull permitting the monarchs to select and appoint two or three priests over forty years of age to act as inquisitors.^[38] 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.^[39]

Thomas F. Madden describes the world that formed medieval politics: "The Inquisition was not born out of the desire to crush diversity or oppress people; it was rather an attempt to stop unjust executions. Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offence. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics".^[40]

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, 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-da-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 categorically prohibiting the Inquisition's extension to Aragón, affirming that:^[41]

... many true and faithful Christians, because of the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other low people—and still less appropriate—without tests of any kind, have been locked up in secular prisons, tortured and condemned like relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and properties, and given over to the secular arm to be executed, at great danger to their souls, giving a pernicious example and causing scandal to many.

— Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision

According to the book A History of the Jewish People,^[42]

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.^[43][44] 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. A new court would be announced with a thirty-day grace period for confessions and the gathering of accusations by neighbors. 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) or 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 once the guilt of the accused had been established. Crypto-Jews were allowed to confess and do penance, although those who relapsed were executed.^[45]

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.^[46] 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 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-da-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.^[47]

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]}

Expulsion of Jews and Jewish conversos

 

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

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.^[48]

The Alhambra Decree, issued in January 1492, gave the choice between expulsion and conversion. 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.^[8]

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.^[49] 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.^[50] 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.^[51]

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-da-fé in Majorca, 37 chuetas, or conversos of Majorca, were burned.^[52]

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.^[53]

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.^[2] 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 enforced really unevenly, especially in the lands of the interior and the north, where the coexistence had lasted for over five centuries and moriscos were protected by the population, and 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.^[54] Initially, they were not severely persecuted by the Inquisition, experiencing instead a policy of evangelization^[55] 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.^[56][57] 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.^[58] Still, the Moriscos did not experience the same harshness as judaizing conversos and Protestants, and the number of capital punishments was proportionally less.^[59]

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.^[60] 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.'^[61] 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.^[62] 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.^[63] Those who avoided expulsion or who managed to return were gradually absorbed by the dominant culture.^[64]

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."^[65] 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.^[66]

Christian heretics

The Spanish Inquisition had jurisdiction only over Christians. Therefore, only those who self-identified as Christians could be investigated and trialed by it. Those in the group of "heretics" were all subject to investigation. All forms of heretic Christianity (Protestants, Orthodox, blaspheming Catholics, etc.) were considered under its jurisdiction.

Protestants and Anglicans

 

The burning of a 16th-century Dutch Anabaptist, Anneken Hendriks, who was charged with heresy

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.^[67] The Inquisition of the Netherlands is here not considered part of the Spanish Inquisition. 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.^[68][69] The humanist Juan de Valdés,^[70] fled to Italy to escape anti-Erasmian factions that came to power in the court,^[71] and the preacher, Juan de Ávila spent close to a year in prison after he was questioned about his prayer practices.^[72]

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.^[73] The trials signaled a notable intensification of the Inquisition's activities. A number of autos-da-fé were held, some of them presided over by members of the royal family, and around 100 executions took place.^[74] The autos-da-fé of the mid-century virtually put an end to Spanish Protestantism, which was, throughout, a small phenomenon to begin with.^[75]

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...^[76]

It is estimated that a dozen Spaniards were burned alive.^[77]

Protestantism and Anglicanism were 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. Religion, patriotism, obedience to the king and personal beliefs were not seen as separate aspects of life until the end of the Modern Age. Spain especially had a long tradition of using self-identified religion as a political and cultural marker, and expression of loyalty to a specific overlord, more than as an accurate description of personal beliefs -here the common accusation of heretics they received from Rome. In that note, accusations or prosecutions due to beliefs held by enemy countries must be seen as political accusations regarding political treason more than as religious ones. Other times the accusation of Protestantism was considered as an equivalent of blasphemy, just a general way of addressing insubordination.^[78]

Orthodox Christianity

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

 

Number of alleged witches and wizards killed in each European country during Early Modern Era

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-da-fé that took place in Logroño on 7 and 8 November 1610, six people were burned and another five burned in effigy.^[79] 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.^[80] In general the 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".^[81]

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.^[82] Also, members of the clergy themselves were occasionally accused of heretical propositions. These offences rarely led to severe penalties.^[83]

Sodomy

The first sodomite was burned by the Inquisition in Valencia in 1572, and those accused included 19% clergy, 6% nobles, 37% workers, 19% servants, and 18% soldiers and sailors.^[84]

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 c. 12 years) or when the case clearly concerned rape did they have a chance to avoid punishment altogether. As a rule, the Inquisition condemned to death only those sodomites over the age of 25 years. As about half of those tried were under this age, it explains the relatively small percentage of death sentences.^[85]

Cases of sodomy did not receive the same treatment in all areas of Spain. In the Kingdom of Castile, crimes of sodomy were not investigated by the Inquisition unless they were associated with religious heresy. In other words, the sodomy itself was investigated only as, and when, considered a symptom of a heretic belief or practice. In any other area, cases were considered an issue for civil authorities, and even then were not very actively investigated. The Crown of Aragon was the only area in which cases of sodomy were considered under the Inquisitorial jurisdiction, probably due to the previous presence of the Pontifical Inquisition in that kingdom. Within the Crown of Aragon, the tribunal of the city of Zaragoza was famously harsh even at the time.^[86]

Freemasonry

Further information: Papal ban of Freemasonry and In eminenti apostolatus

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.^[87] 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."^[88] He then instituted a purge during which Spaniards could be arrested on the charge of being "suspected of Freemasonry".^[88]

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.^[89] 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. Works with one line of suspect dogma would be prohibited in their entirety, despite the orthodoxy of the remainder of the text. 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, Valentine Naibod 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.

Some scholars state that 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."^[90] For the next few centuries, while the rest of Europe was slowly awakened by the influence of the Enlightenment, Spain stagnated.^[91] 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.^[92] 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. This attitude was also not new. Translations of the Bible to Castillian and Provenzal (Catalan) had been made and allowed in Spain since the Middle Ages. The first preserved copy dates from the 13th century. Like the bible of Cisneros they were mostly for scholarly use, and it was customary for laymen to ask religious or academic authorities to review the translation and supervise the use.^{[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^[93] 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^[94] (possibly a death sentence),^[95] 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.^[96] 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,^[97][98] 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.^[99][28]

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 in both cases you are "misleading the public in a harmful way). Making counterfeit currency and heretic proselytism was 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.^[28]

Another difficulty to discriminate the inquisition's secular and religious activity is the common association of certain types of investigations. An accusation or suspicion on certain crime often launched an automatic investigation on many others. Anyone accused of espionage due to non-religious reasons would likely be investigated for heresy too, and anyone suspected of a heresy associated to a foreign power would be investigated for espionage too automatically. Likewise, some religious crimes were considered likely to be associated with non-religious crimes, like human trafficking, procurement, and child abuse was expected to be associated to sodomy, or sodomy was expected to be associated to heresy and false conversions. Which accusation started the investigation isn't always clear.

Finally, 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-da-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"^[100] cases of perceived unacceptable sexual behavior, bigamy, witchcraft, etc.^[101]

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 Córdoba.
• 1485 In Toledo and in Llerena.
• 1488 In Valladolid and in Murcia.
• 1489 In Cuenca.
• 1505 In Las Palmas (Canary Islands).
• 1512 In Logroño.
• 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).^[102] Ferdinand the Catholic also established the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily (1513), housed in Palermo, and Sardinia, in the town of Sassari.^[103] 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 tribunals

 

Structure 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.^[104] 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 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.^[105]

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; it explained 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.^[106] The promise of benevolence was effective, and many voluntarily presented themselves to the Inquisition and were often 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 guilty.^[107]

The denunciations were anonymous, and the defendants had no way of knowing the identities of their accusers.^[108] This was one of the points most criticized by those who opposed the Inquisition (for example, the Cortes of Castile, in 1518). In practice, false denunciations were frequent. Denunciations were made for a variety of reasons, from genuine concern to rivalries and personal jealousies.

Detention

 

Diego Mateo López Zapata in his cell before his trial by the Inquisition Court of Cuenca

After a denunciation, the case was examined by the calificadores, who had to determine whether there was heresy involved, 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.^[109]

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.^[110]

Some authors, such as Thomas William 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, the prisoners 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.^[111] There are few records of the time of the accused in prison, but the transcription of the trials repeatedly shows the accused being informed of every charge during the trial. They also show the accused's answers, in which they address each accusation specifically. Given that they would be informed anyway, it makes little sense that the accused would be kept in the dark prior to the trial, unless the investigation was still open.^[112][113]

Trial

 

The Inquisition Tribunal as illustrated by Francisco de Goya

The inquisitorial process consisted of a series of hearings, in which both the denouncers and the defendant gave testimony. A defense counsel was assigned to the defendant, a member of the tribunal itself, whose role was simply to advise the defendant and to encourage them to speak the truth. The prosecution was directed by the fiscal. Interrogation of the defendant was done in the presence of the Notary of the 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 choices: abonos (to find favourable witnesses, akin to "substantive" evidence/testimony in Anglo-American law) or tachas (to demonstrate that the witnesses of accusers were not trustworthy, akin to Anglo-American "impeachment" evidence/testimony).

The documentation from the notary usually show the following content, which gives us an idea of what the actual trial was likely to look like:^[114]

• A first page in which the notary wrote the date, the names and charges of the members of the tribunal, the name of the accused and the accuser, the accusation, and the names of everyone present in the room during the trial.
• A second page with the accused's first statement about their innocence or culpability, and their general response and recollection of the facts. This part usually takes from a thick fluid paragraph to a couple of pages and are relatively formal, within the accused's education level, from which one can suspect that the accused had time to prepare it prior to either the trial or the declaration, and probably help from the defendant. This paragraph also shows the accused addressing every charge from the first page, by points, which shows that the accused must have been informed of the charges against them.
• A third section with the fiscal's name and the transcription of a speech in which they address the accused's statement, also by points, and presents their case regarding each one separately.
• A fourth section, usually dated on the next day or a couple of days after the fiscal's intervention, with the name of the "procurador"( defendant) and the transcription of a speech in which they address the fiscal's arguments, again by points and separately, and defend the accused regarding each one.
• A fifth section with the tribunal's response to this. In the vast majority of cases, the response is to order the search and calling of certain individuals, as witnesses, or of some experts such as doctors to testify and ratify some parts of what has been said, and giving a date for the tribunal to come together again and examine the evidence. Usually, the fiscal and procurator can ask for the presence of some witnesses here too, as it is inferred by them showing up later, but that is not always specifically stated in the transcripts and may be done outside of trial.
• The next section is often dated sometime later. Each witness or expert is introduced by complete name, job, relationship to the victim if any, and relationship to the case. The witness's testimony is not transcribed word by word like in previous cases but summarized by the notary, probably because it was not prepared and does not follow a coherent, consistent order and writing implements were rather expensive to waste.
• A page in which the procurador(defendant) declared the questions he is going to make to (usually another) group of witnesses of his choice since he often states that "he has asked them to come"or "he has called them". The answers given by each witness follow, with each witness presented as in the previous section. These testimonies are also paraphrased and summarized but addressed by points, with the answer to each question paraphrased separately.
• The fiscal and the procurador require equal copies of the testimony of the witnesses and keep them, demanding that no copy is shown to anyone until the end of a period of usually six days in which the witnesses have the chance to call the tribunal again to change their mind or add something.
• A third meeting of the tribunal with a new date. The transcription of a new speech by the procurator stating his view of the declarations and wrapping the witnesses' testimony up from his perspective.
• A similar intervention, usually far shorter, from the fiscal.
• The response from the tribunal, paraphrased, which could be to dictate the sentence, but often was to require either further clarification from the witness (restarting the procedure from the second step) or call for another type of proof (restarting the procedure from the sixth step). These steps would repeat cyclically in the documentation of the trial, through different meetings of the tribunal and different weeks, until the tribunal has reached a conclusion.
• A literal transcription of the verdict and sentence. If the accused has been accused of more than one thing the sentence usually comes by points too. It is not uncommon for some of the accusations to be dismissed along with the process and said the process to continue taking into account the remaining ones. While sentences of innocence could be given at any point in a trial for multiple crimes, sentences of culpability only appear once the trial is over and all investigations opened against the accused are closed.

Regarding the fairness of the trials, the structure of them was similar to modern trials and extremely advanced for the time. The Inquisition 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 seemed to be among the best in early modern Europe when it came to the trial of laymen.^[115][116] 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.^[117]

To obtain a confession or information relevant to an investigation, the Inquisition used torture, but not in a systematic way. It could only be applied when all other options, witnesses and experts had been used, the accused was found guilty or most likely guilty, and relevant information regarding accomplices or specific details were missing. It was applied mainly against those suspected of Judaizing and Protestantism beginning in the 16th century, in other words, "enemies of the state", since said crimes were usually thought to be associated with a larger organized network of either espionage or conspiracy with foreign powers. For example, Lea estimates that between 1575 and 1610 the court of Toledo tortured approximately a third of those processed for Protestant heresy.^[118] The recently opened Vatican Archives suggest even lower numbers.^[119][120] In other periods, the proportions varied remarkably. Torture was always a means to obtain the confession of the accused, not a punishment itself.

Torture

 

Inquisition torture chamber. Mémoires Historiques (1716)

Torture was employed in all civil and religious trials in Europe. The Spanish Inquisition used it more restrictively than was common at the time. Its main differentiation characteristic was that, as opposed to both civil trials and other inquisitions, it had very strict regulations regarding when, what, to whom, how many times, for how long and under what supervision it could be applied.^{[121][122][123][124]} The Spanish inquisition engaged in it far less often and with greater care than other courts.^[122][125] In the civil court, both Spanish and otherwise, there was no restriction regarding duration or any other point.

• When: Torture was allowed only: "when sufficient proofs to confirm the culpability of the accused have been gathered by other means, and every other method of negotiation have been tried and exhausted". It was stated by the inquisitorial rule that information obtained through torment was not reliable, and confession should only be extracted this way when all needed information was already known and proven. Confessions obtained through torture could not be used to convict or sentence anyone.
• What: The Spanish Inquisition was prohibited to "maim, mutilate, draw blood or cause any sort of permanent damage" to the prisoner.^{[citation needed]} Ecclesiastical tribunals were prohibited by church law from shedding blood.^[123] There was a closed list of the allowed torture methods. These were all tried and used in the civil courts all through Europe, and therefore known to be "safe" in this regard. Any other method, regardless of whether it was legal in the country or practiced in civil courts, was not allowed.
• How many times: Each accusation allowed for a different number of torment sessions on the same person (once the "when" condition of the culpability being supported by the strong external evidence was fulfilled). The number was dependent on how "harmful to society" the crime was. Counterfeit currency allowed for a maximum of two. The most serious offences allowed for a maximum of eight.
• For how long: "Torment" could be applied for a maximum of 15 minutes. The Roman Inquisition allowed for 30 minutes.
• Supervision: A Physician was usually available in case of emergency.^[126] It was also required for a doctor to certify that the prisoner was healthy enough to go through the torment without suffering harm.^[127]

Per contrast, European civil trials from England to Italy and from Spain to Russia could use, and did use, torture without justification and for as long as they considered. So much so that there were serious tensions between the Inquisition and Philip III, since the Inquisitors complained that "those people sent to the prisons of the King blasphemed and accused themselves of heresy just to be sent under the Inquisitorial jurisdiction instead of the King's" and that was collapsing the Inquisition's tribunals. During the reign of Philip IV there were registered complaints of the Inquisitors about people who "Blasphemated, mostly in winter, just to be detained and fed inside the prison".^{[citation needed]}

Despite some popular accounts, modern historians state that torture was only ever used to confirm information or a confession, not for punitive reasons.^[126]

 

The inside 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.

Rafael Sabatinni states that among the methods of torture allowed, and common in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals, were garrucha, toca and the potro,^[123] even though those claims contradict both the Inquisitorial law and the claims made by Kamen. 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 ankles, with a series of lifts and drops, during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated.^[128]

The use of the toca(cloth), also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua (enhanced water interrogation), is better documented. It consisted of forcing the victim to ingest water poured from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning.^[129] The potro, the rack, in which the limbs were slowly pulled apart, was thought to be the instrument of torture used most frequently.^[130]

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.^[131] Thus confessions following torture were deemed to be made of the confessor's free will, and hence valid.

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:

1. Although quite rare in actual practice, the defendant could be acquitted. Inquisitors did not wish to terminate the proceedings. If they did, and new evidence turned up later, they would be forced into reopening and re-presenting the old evidence.
2. The trial could be suspended, in which case the defendant, although under suspicion, went free (with the threat that the process could be continued at any time) or was held in long-term imprisonment until a trial commenced. When set free after a suspended trial it was considered a form of acquittal without specifying that the accusation had been erroneous.
3. 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, exile, fines or even sentencing to service as oarsmen in royal galleys.
4. 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.
5. The most serious punishment was relaxation to the secular arm. The Inquisition had no power to actually kill the convict or determine the way they should die; that was a right of the King. Burning at the stake was a possibility, probably kept from the Papal Inquisition of Aragon, but a very uncommon one. 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.

Frequently, cases were judged in absentia, and when the accused died before the trial finished, the condemned were burned in effigy.

The distribution of the punishments varied considerably over time. It is believed that sentences of death were enforced in the first stages within the long history of the Inquisition. According to García Cárcel, the court of Valencia, one of the most active, employed the death penalty in 40% of the convicts^{[clarification needed]} before 1530, but later that percentage dropped to 3%.^[132] By the middle of the 16th century, inquisition courts viewed torture as unnecessary and death sentences had become rare.^[133]

Auto-da-fé

Main article: Auto-da-fé

 

Rizi's 1683 painting of the 1680 auto-da-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 fe (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-da-fé could be private (auto particular) or public (auto publico or auto general).

Although initially the public autos did not have any special solemnity nor sought a large attendance of spectators, with time they became solemn ceremonies, celebrated with large public crowds, amidst a festive atmosphere. The auto-da-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-da-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-da-fé took place in 1691.

The auto-da-fé involved a Catholic Mass, prayer, a public procession of those found guilty, and a reading of their sentences.^[134] They took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours; ecclesiastical and civil authorities attended. Artistic representations of the auto-da-fé usually depict torture and the burning at the stake. This type of activity never took place during an auto-da-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-da-fé,^[135] 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.

 

Execution of Mariana de Carabajal (converted Jew), Mexico City, 1601

The first recorded auto-da-fé was held in Paris in 1242, during the reign of Louis IX.^[136] The first Spanish auto-da-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. Autos-da-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.

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-da-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."^[137]

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,^[138] 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...^[139]

However, inquisitorial activity was impossible in the face of the information avalanche that crossed the border; in 1792, "the multitude of seditious papers... does not allow formalizing the files against those who introduce them".

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.^[140]

End of the Inquisition

 

The 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 señoríos and more generally in the accumulated wealth that had prevented social progress.^[141] 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...^[142]

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,^[143] 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.^[144]

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,^[145] although, de facto, it returned under the so-called Congregation of the Meetings of Faith, tolerated in the dioceses by King Ferdinand. 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.^[146]

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. (It is possible that something similar to the Inquisition acted during the 1833–1839 First Carlist War, in the zones dominated by the Carlists, since one of the government measures praised by Conde de Molina Carlos Maria Isidro de Borbon was the re-implementation of the Inquisition to protect the Church). During the Carlist Wars, it was the conservatives who fought the liberals who wanted to reduce the Church's power, amongst other reforms to liberalize the economy. It can be added that Franco during the Spanish Civil War is alleged to have stated that he would attempt to reintroduce it, possibly as a sop to Vatican approval of his coup.^{[citation needed]}

The Alhambra Decree that had expelled the Jews was formally rescinded on 16 December 1968 by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, after the Second Vatican Council rejected the idea that Jews are deicides.^[147]

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, for example because Torah-Reading was compulsory. 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.^[148]

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.^[149] 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".^[150]

Death tolls and sentenced

 

Contemporary illustration of the auto-da-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.^[1] 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.^[121][151] 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).^[1]

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.^[152] William Monter estimates 1000 executions between 1530 and 1630 and 250 between 1630 and 1730.^[153]

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.^[154][155] 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.^[156]

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 totals
	Years documented^[157]	Number of cases^[158]	Executions^[158]		Trials^[157]	Executions in persona
			in persona	in effigie
Barcelona	94	3047	37	27	~5000	53^[159]
Navarre	130	4296	85	59	~5200	90^[159]
Majorca	96	1260	37	25	~2100	38^[160]
Sardinia	49	767	8	2	~2700	At least 8
Zaragoza	126	5967	200	19	~7600	250^[159]
Sicily	101	3188	25	25	~6400	52^[159]
Valencia	128	4540	78	75	~5700	At least 93^[159]
Cartagena (established 1610)	62	699	3	1	~1100	At least 3
Lima (established 1570)	92	1176	30	16	~2200	31^[161]
Mexico (established 1570)	52	950	17	42	~2400	47^[162]
Aragonese Secretariat (total)		25890	520	291	~40000	At least 665
Canaries	66	695	1	78	~1500	3^[163]
Córdoba	28	883	8	26	~5000	At least 27^[164]
Cuenca	0	0	0	0	5202^[165]	At least 34^[166]
Galicia (established 1560)	83	2203	19	44	~2700	17^[167]
Granada	79	4157	33	102	~8100	At least 72^[168]
Llerena	84	2851	47	89	~5200	At least 47
Murcia	66	1735	56	20	~4300	At least 190^[169]
Seville	58	1962	96	67	~6700	At least 128^[170]
Toledo (incl. Madrid)	108	3740	40	53	~5500	At least 66^[171]
Valladolid	29	558	6	8	~3000	At least 54^[172]
Castilian Secretariat (total)		18784	306	487	~47000	At least 638
Total		44674	826	778	~87000	At least 1303

Autos da fe between 1701 and 1746

Table of sentences pronounced in the public autos da fe in Spain (excluding tribunals in Sicily, Sardinia and Latin America) between 1701 and 1746:^[173]

Tribunal	Number of autos da fe	Executions in persona	Executions in effigie	Penanced	Total
Barcelona	4	1	1	15	17
Logroño	1	1	0	0?	1?
Palma de Mallorca	3	0	0	11	11
Saragossa	1	0	0	3	3
Valencia	4	2	0	49	51
Las Palmas	0	0	0	0	0
Córdoba	13	17	19	125	161
Cuenca	7	7	10	35	52
Santiago de Compostela	4	0	0	13	13
Granada	15	36	47	369	452
Llerena	5	1	0	45	46
Madrid	4	11	13	46	70
Murcia	6	4	1	106	111
Seville	15	16	10	220	246
Toledo	33	6	14	128	148
Valladolid	10	9	2	70	81
Total	125	111	117	1235	1463

Abuse of power

Author Toby Green notes that the great unchecked power given to inquisitors meant that they were "widely seen as above the law"^[174] and sometimes had motives for imprisoning and sometimes executing alleged offenders other than for the purpose of punishing religious nonconformity, mainly in Hispanoamerica and Iberoamerica.^{[174][175][176]}

Green quotes a complaint by historian Manuel Barrios^[177] about one Inquisitor, Diego Rodriguez Lucero, who in Cordoba in 1506 burned to death the husbands of two different women he then kept 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.^[178]

Defenders of the Inquisition discrediting with Green are many and seem to be the growing trend in current scholarship.^[28] 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,^[28] to the clear proofs of control that the king had over the institution, to the sources used by Green,^[179] or just by reaching completely different conclusions.^[180][181]

The context of Hispano America, that Green refers to often, was different from the Iberian context studied for many of those authors, due to the distance from the immediate executive power of the King, and deserves to be examined separately. Among those who do, there are also discrediting voices regarding the nature and extent of the Inquisition's abuses.^[182]

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."^[183]

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, 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 largely been portrayed by Protestant scholars who saw it as the archetypal symbol of Catholic intolerance and ecclesiastical power.^[184] The Spanish Inquisition for them was largely associated with the persecution of Protestants, or inexplicably, of witches.^[184] 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 were 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 make eco of their discoveries. Said scholars would obtain international recognition and start a period of revision on the Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition.^[184]

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."^[184] Lea documented the Inquisition's methods and modes of operation in no uncertain terms, calling it "theocratic absolutism" at its worst.^[184] In the context of the polarization between Protestants and Catholics during the second half of the 19th century,^[185] some of Lea's contemporaries, as well as most modern scholars thought Lea's work had an anti-Catholic bias.^[185][186]

Starting in the 1920s, Jewish scholars picked up where Lea's work left off.^[184] 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 support the traditional view and deny the existence of a Black Legend include Toby Green. Contemporary historians who partially accept an impact of the Black Legend but deny other aspects of the hypothesis it includes Henry Kamen, David Nirenberg and Karen Armstrong.

Revision after 1960

Main article: Historical revision of the Inquisition

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.^[187] 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 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.^[184] 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.^[188] 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.^[189]

Challenging some of the claims of revisionist historians is Toby Green in Inquisition, the Reign of Fear, who calls the claim by revisionists that torture was only rarely applied by inquisitors, a "worrying error of fact".^[190]

Historian Thomas F. Madden has written about popular myths of the Inquisition.^[191]

In popular culture

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 Polish author 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 Gutiérrez, and is based on the case of María de Bohórquez, ferociously criticizes the Inquisition and its representatives. The Inquisition also appears in one of the chapters of the novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by Fyodor Dostoevsky, which imagines an encounter between Jesus and the Inquisitor General. 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-da-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-da-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 Spanish Inquisition segment of the 1981 Mel Brooks movie The History of the World Part 1 is a comedic musical performance based on the activities of the first Inquisitor General of Spain, Tomás 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 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 Pit and the Pendulum (Roger Corman, 1961).
• Akelarre (Pedro Olea, 1984), a film, about the Logroño trial of the Zugarramurdi witches.
• Tomás 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-da-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 Inquisitor group repeatedly bursts into scenes after someone utters the words "I didn't expect to find a 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.

Contemporary politics

The Spanish Inquisition is a recurring trope that makes an occasional appearance in the British parliament, similar to calling something "nazi," to reject ideas seen as religiously authoritarian.^[192]

See also

• Black Legend
• Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition
• Cardinal Ximenes
• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
• Eleno de Céspedes
• Goa Inquisition in Portuguese Goa
• History of the Jews in Spain
• Holy Child of La Guardia
• Inquisition of the Netherlands in the Spanish Netherlands
• Mexican Inquisition in New Spain
• Persecution of Christians
• Persecution of Muslims
• Peruvian Inquisition in the Viceroyalty of Peru

Notes and references

Explanatory notes

1. 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

1. Data for executions for witchcraft: Levack, Brian P. (199). The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (Second ed.). London and New York: Longman. ISBN 9780582080690. OCLC 30154582. And see Witch trials in Early Modern Europe for more detail.
2. Hans-Jürgen Prien (21 November 2012). Christianity in Latin America: Revised and Expanded Edition. BRILL. p. 11. ISBN 978-90-04-22262-5.
3. Smith, Damian J. (2010). Crusade, Heresy and Inquisition in the Lands of the Crown of Aragon. Brill. ISBN 9789004182899.
4. Parrilla, Gonzalo Fernández, Miguel Hernando De Larramendi, and José Sangrador Gil. Pensamiento Y Circulación De Las Ideas En El Mediterráneo: El Papel De La Traducción. (Thought and Idea Propagation across the Mediterranean: The Role of Translators) Cuenca: Servicio De Publicaciones De La Universidad De Castilla-La Mancha, 1997
5. Cervera, César (3 June 2015). "La ascendencia judía del Rey Fernando "El Católico" y su primo el II Duque de Alba". ABC España. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
6. Hassán, Iacob; Izquierdo Benito, Ricardo (2001). Universidad de Castilla La Mancha, ed. Judíos en la literatura española (Jews in Spanish Literature). España
7. M.R. Menocal "The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain". BackBay Books. New York, 2009
8. Suárez Fernández, Luis (2012). La expulsión de los judíos. Un problema europeo. Barcelona: Ariel.
9. José María Zavala, "Isabel Íntima" (Intimate Isabella), Planeta editorial. Madrid.
10. Ortiz, César Mantilla. Derecho De Los Judíos De Castilla En La Época De Su Expulsión (Legal Rights of Jews in Castile at the Time of their Expulsion). Valladolid: Maxtor, 2015
11. W.S. Maltby, "The Black Legend in England" (Duke historical publications), 1750
12. 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
13. Kamen (1998), p. 4
14. Peters (1988), p. 79.
15. Peters (1988), p. 82.
16. 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. 272–75; 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 978-84-7762-449-3.; Solomon ibn Verga, Shevaṭ Yehudah (The Sceptre of Judah), Lvov 1846, p. 76 in PDF.
17. Letter from Hasdai Crescas to the congregations of Avignon, published as an appendix to Wiener's edition of Shevaṭ Yehudah of Solomon ibn Verga, in which he names the Jewish communities affected by the persecution of 1391. See pages 138–140 in PDF (Hebrew); Fritz Kobler, Letters of the Jews through the Ages, London 1952, pp. 272–75.
18. Solomon ibn Verga, Shevaṭ Yehudah (The Sceptre of Judah), Lvov 1846, pp. 41 (end) – 42 in PDF); Kamen (1998), p. 17. Kamen cites approximate numbers for Valencia (250) and Barcelona (400), but no solid data about Córdoba.
19. According to Gedaliah Ibn Yechia, these disturbances were caused by a malicious report spread about the Jews. See: Gedaliah Ibn Yechia, Shalshelet Ha-Kabbalah Jerusalem 1962, p. רסח, in PDF p. 277 (top) (Hebrew); Solomon ibn Verga, Shevat Yehudah, Lvov 1846 (p. 76 in PDF) (Hebrew).
20. Abraham Zacuto, Sefer Yuchasin, Cracow 1580 (q.v. Sefer Yuchasin, p. 266 in PDF) (Hebrew).
21. Raymond of Peñafort, Summa, lib. 1 p.33, citing D.45 c.5.
22. Kamen (1998), p. 10
23. Notably Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, author of Scrutinium Scripturarum, Jeronimo de Santa Fe (Hebraomastix) and Pedro de la Caballeria (Zelus Christi contra Judaeos). All three were conversos. (Kamen (1998), p. 39).
24. Notably the Libro verde de Aragon and Tizón de la nobleza de España (cited in Kamen (1998), p. 38).
25. Pérez, Joseph (2005). The Spanish Inquisition: A History. Yale University Press.
26. Pérez, Joseph (2012) [2009]. Breve Historia de la Inquisición en España. Barcelona: Crítica. ISBN 978-84-08-00695-4.
27. Canessa De Sanguinetti, Marta. El Bien Nacer: Limpieza De Oficios Y Limpieza De Sangre : Raíces Ibéricas De Un Mal Latinoamericano. Taurus, Ediciones Santillana, 2000.
28. Elvira, Roca Barea María, and Arcadi Espada. Imperiofobia Y Leyenda Negra: Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos Y El Imperio Español. Madrid: Siruela, 2017
29. 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.
30. Goosenes, A. (1997). Les inquisitions modernes dans les Pays-Bas meridionaux. 1520–1633. 2 vols. Bruselas
31. Boronat, P. (1901). Los moriscos españoles y su expulsión. 2 vols. Valencia.
32. Stuart, Nancy Rubin. Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen. New York: ASJA Press, 2004.
33. Black, Robert. Machiavelli. Abigdon, Oxon: Routledge, Tylor &, 2013. pp83-120 (the quote is paraphrased)
34. González, Óscar (2009). El Rey Y El Papa: Política Y Diplomacia En Los Albores Del Renacimiento (Castilla En El Siglo XV). Sílex.
35. The Marranos of Spain. From the late XIVth to the early XVIth Century, 1966. Ithaca, 1999
36. "Introduction, Part 1—British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk.
37. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Spanish Inquisition Timeline". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 15 December 2021. {{cite web}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
38. Peters (1988), p. 85.
39. Peters (1988), p. 89.
40. Thomas Madden: The Real Inquisition. National Review 2004
41. Cited in Kamen (1998), p. 49
42. Ben-Sasson, H.H., editor. 1976. p. 588.
43. Kamen (1998), pp. 49–50
44. 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."
45. Ben-Sasson, H.H., editor. A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press, 1976, pp. 588–590.
46. Kamen (1998), p. 157
47. Kamen (1998), p. 60
48. Quoted in Kamen (1998), p. 20
49. Kamen (1998), pp. 29–31
50. Kamen (1998), p. 24
51. Murphy, Cullen (2012). God's jury : the Inquisition and the making of the modern world. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-618-09156-0.
52. Kamen (2014), p. 369
53. Kamen (2014), p. 370
54. S.P. Scott: History, Vol II, p. 259.
55. 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
56. 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
57. Kamen (1998), p. 222
58. Kamen (1998), p. 217
59. Kamen (1998), p. 225
60. Lea (1901), p. 308
61. Lea (1901), p. 345
62. 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
63. 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.
64. Adams, Susan M.; Bosch, Elena; Balaresque, Patricia L.; Ballereau, Stéphane J.; Lee, Andrew C.; Arroyo, Eduardo; López-Parra, Ana M.; Aler, Mercedes; Grifo, Marina S. Gisbert; Brion, Maria; Carracedo, Angel; Lavinha, João; Martínez-Jarreta, Begoña; Quintana-Murci, Lluis; Picornell, Antònia; 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.
65. Michel Boeglin: La expulsión de los moriscos de Andalucía y sus límites. El caso de Sevilla (1610–1613) (In Spanish)
66. Vínculos Historia: The Moriscos who remained. The permanence of Islamic origin population in Early Modern Spain: Kingdom of Granada, XVII-XVIII centuries (In Spanish)
67. Kamen (2014), p. 100
68. Kamen (2014), p. 94
69. Kamen (2014), p. 126
70. Kamen (2014), p. 98
71. Daniel A. Crews (1 January 2008). Twilight of the Renaissance: The Life of Juan de Valdés. University of Toronto Press. pp. 42–. ISBN 978-0-8020-9867-2.
72. Rady Roldán-Figueroa (11 November 2010). The Ascetic Spirituality of Juan de Ávila (1499–1569). BRILL. pp. 23–. ISBN 978-90-04-19204-1.
73. 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).
74. 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.
75. Kamen (2014), pp. 102–108
76. Kamen (1998), p. 98
77. Kamen (1998), pp. 99–100
78. Rodriguez-Sala, Maria Luisa. "Los Protestantes y la Inquisión" (PDF) (in Spanish). UNAM. Retrieved 14 January 2022.
79. These trials are the theme of the film Akelarre, by the Spanish director Pedro Olea.
80. Henry Kamen. The Spanish Inquisition A Historical Revision. 1999
81. 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.
82. Green (2007), pp. 223–224
83. Kamen, Henry (1981). "500 Years of the Spanish Inquisition". History Today. 31 (2): 37.
84. Kamen (1998), p. 259
85. Monter, Frontiers of Heresy, pp. 276–299.
86. Kamen, Henry (2011). La Inquisición Española. Una revisión histórica. p. 192 pp259
87. Green (2007), p. 320
88. William R. Denslow, Harry S. Truman: 10,000 Famous Freemasons, ISBN 1-4179-7579-2.
89. Bleiberg, Germán; Ihrie, Maureen; Pérez, Janet (1993). Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 374–. ISBN 978-0-313-28731-2.
90. Walkley, Clive (2010). Juan Esquivel: A Master of Sacred Music During the Spanish Golden Age. Boydell & Brewer. pp. 7–. ISBN 978-1-84383-587-5.
91. Johnson, Paul, A History of Christianity, Penguin, 1976.
92. Kamen (2005), pp. 126–130
93. Green (2007), p. 296
94. Green (2007), p. 298
95. 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."
96. Lorenzo Arrazola, Enciclopedia Espanola De Derecho Y Administracion: Ciu-Col (Enciclopedia of Spanish Penal and Administrative Law). Madrid: Saraswati Press, 2012, pp. 572
97. 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.
98. Kaler, Amy (1998). Fertility, Gender and War: The culture of contraception. University of Minnesota Press.
99. Online access to the Historical Archives of the Inquisition in Valencia, where the records of the trials and correspondence to officials can be found; you can find the corresponding ones to various other areas in Spain in the same webpage.
100. Henningsen, Gustav: The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind, p. 220.
101. García Cárcel (1976), p. 21
102. Kamen (1998), p. 141
103. 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.
104. García Cárcel (1976), p. 24
105. Cited in Kamen (1998), p. 153
106. Kamen (1998), p. 57
107. Kamen (1998), p. 174
108. Though over the course of the trial, their identities likely became apparent.
109. "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).
110. Kamen (1998), p.184
111. Walsh, Thomas William, Characters of the Inquisition, P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1940, p. 163.
112. https://www.mecd.gob.es/dam/jcr:7d0f0b12-1c0e-49f6-b437-23206a95086d/original-primera-parte.pdf preserved transcripts of a trial as sample
113. https://www.mecd.gob.es/dam/jcr:a1b40405-5bbd-4a44-a031-41bb121702a3/transcripcion.pdf Printed version of previous source
114. "redirigeme – Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte" (PDF). Mecd.gob.es. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
115. Thomas F. Madden. "The Truth about the Spanish Inquisition." Crisis (october de 2003).
116. "LA INQUISICIÓN ESPAÑOLA".José Martínez MillánAlianza Editorial Bolsillo(2010)
117. Kamen, Henry (2011). La Inquisición Española. Una revisión histórica. pp. 191–192.
118. H. C. Lea, III, p. 33, Cited in Kamen (1998), p. 185. García Cárcel (1976), p. 43 finds the same statistics.
119. Thomas F. Madden. "The Truth about the Spanish Inquisition." Crisis (October de 2003).
120. Messori, Vittorio (2000). Leyendas Negras de la Iglesia. Editorial Planeta (this source is a Catholic apologist)
121. Bethencourt, Francisco. La Inquisición En La Época Moderna: España, Portugal E Italia, Siglos Xv-xix. Madrid: Akal, 1997.
122. Haliczer, Stephen, Inquisition and society in the kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834, p. 79, University of California Press, 1990
123. Kamen (1998), p. 190
124. 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.
125. by Peters, Edward, Inquisition, Dissent, Heterodoxy and the Medieval Inquisitional Office, pp. 92–93, University of California Press (1989), ISBN 0-520-06630-8.
126. Kamen (1998), p. 189
127. Crespo Vargas, Pablo L. La Inquisición Española Y Las Supersticiones En El Caribe Hispano. Madrid: Palibrio, 2011. pp. 120-130.
128. Sabatini, Rafael, Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A History, p. 190, Kessinger Publishing (2003), ISBN 0-7661-3161-0.
129. Scott, George Ryley, The History of Torture Throughout the Ages, p. 172, Columbia University Press (2003) ISBN 0-7103-0837-X.
130. Carrol. James, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History, p. 356, Houghton Mifflin Books (2002), ISBN 0-618-21908-0.
131. Peters, Edward, Inquisition, Dissent, Heterodoxy and the Medieval Inquisitional Office, p. 65, University of California Press (1989), ISBN 0-520-06630-8.
132. García Cárcel (1976), p. 39
133. "Spain - The conquest of Granada | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 25 May 2022.
134. Peters (1988), pp. 93–94.
135. Kamen (1998), pp. 192–213
136. Stavans 2005:xxxiv.
137. Cited in Elorza, La Inquisición y el pensamiento ilustrado. Historia 16. Especial 10º Aniversario La Inquisición; p. 81.
138. 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.
139. Elorza, La Inquisición y el pensamiento ilustrado. p. 84.
140. 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.
141. 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.
142. Elorza, La Inquisición y el Pensamiento Ilustrado. Historia 16. Especial 10º Aniversario La Inquisición; pg. 88
143. See Antonio Puigblanch, La Inquisición sin máscara, Cádiz, 1811–1813.
144. Kamen (2014), p. 382
145. Historians have different interpretations. One argument is that during the Ominous Decade, the Inquisition was re-established- because of a statement made by King Alphonso 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.
146. Kamen (2014), pp. 372–373
147. 1492 Ban on Jews Is Voided by Spain– The New York Times, 17 December 1968
148. Juif, Dácil; Baten, Joerg; Pérez-Artés, Mari Carmen (2020). "Numeracy of Religious Minorities in Spain and Portugal During the Inquisition Era". The Revista de Historia Económica - Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History. 38: 147–184. doi:10.1017/S021261091900034X. hdl:10016/36127. S2CID 214199340.
149. Anderson, James Maxwell. Daily Life during the Spanish Inquisition. Greenwood Press, 2002. ISBN 0-313-31667-8.
150. Kamen (1998), p. 150
151. Eire, Carlos M. N. Reformations: The Early Modern World 1450–1650. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016 pp 640
152. For full account see: Gustav Henningsen, The Database of the Spanish Inquisition. The relaciones de causas project revisited, in: Heinz Mohnhaupt, Dieter Simon, Vorträge zur Justizforschung, Vittorio Klostermann, 1992, pp. 43–85.
153. W. Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily, Cambridge 2003, p. 53.
154. Jean-Pierre Dedieu, Los Cuatro Tiempos, in Bartolomé Benassar, Inquisición Española: poder político y control social, pp. 15–39.
155. García Cárcel (1976)
156. Kamen (2005), p. 15
157. Henningsen, The Database of the Spanish Inquisition, p. 84.
158. Henningsen, The Database of the Spanish Inquisition, p. 58.
159. W. Monter, Frontiers of heresy, p. 327.
160. W. Monter, pp. 309, 329.
161. Museo de la Inquisición y del Congreso.
162. See H. Ch. Lea, The Inquisition in the Spanish Dependencies, London 1922, p. 204 ff. and The Catholic Encyclopedia: Mexico.
163. Francisco Fajardo Spínola, La actividad procesal del Santo Oficio. Algunas consideraciones sobre su estudio, Manuscrits 17, 1999, p. 114.
164. One burned in 1567 (E. Schäffer, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Spanischen Protestantismus, Bd. 2, Gütersloh 1902, p. 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).
165. cf. Henningsen, p. 68.
166. Four burned between 1553 and 1558 (W. Monter, Frontiers of heresy, p. 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).
167. 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.
168. 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).
169. 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).
170. 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).
171. 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).
172. 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).
173. 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.
174. Green 2007, pp. 4–5
175. Archivo General de las Indias, Seville, Santa Fe 228, Expediente 63
176. Archivo General de las Indias, Seville, Santa Fe 228, Expediente 81A, n.33
177. Green 2007, p. 65
178. Barrios, Manuel (1991). El Tribunal de la Inquisicion en Andalucia: Seleccion de Textos y Documentos. Seville: J. Rodriguez Castillejo S.A. p. 58.
179. 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.
180. Pérez, Joseph (2006). The Spanish Inquisition: a history. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press; p. 173
181. Juan Antonio Llorente: Historia crítica de la Inquisición en España (tomo IV, p. 183). Madrid: Hiperión, 1980.
182. Las luchas por la memoria en América Latina. Historia reciente y memoria política. Coordinadores Eugenia Allier Montaño y Emilio Crenzel. México: Bonilla Artigas. Editores: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, 2015. 428 p.
183. 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.
184. "A Kinder, Gentler Inquisition", by Richard Kagan in The New York Times, 19 April 1998.
185. "Henry Charles Lea Papers—Biographical Sketch". Univ. of Penn.-Penn Special Collections. 11 January 2003. Retrieved 18 April 2007.
186. Van Hove, Brian (12 November 1996). . Catholic.net. Archived from the original on 5 April 2007. Retrieved 18 April 2007.
187. 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)
188. "Benzion Netanyahu's History". Tablet Magazine. 30 April 2012.
189. 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.
190. Green 2007, p. 10
191. The Real Inquisition: investigating the popular myth by Thomas F. Madden (National Review, 18 June 2004)
192. Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England: From the Norman, Volume 35

General and cited references

Revisionist books

• 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.
• 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, The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614, An Anthology of Sources, Hackett Publishing (2006)
• Kamen, Henry (1998). The Spanish Inquisition: a Historical Revision. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07522-9.
• Kamen, Henry (2005). Inkwizycja Hiszpańska [The Spanish Inquisition] (in Polish). Warsaw: Państwowy 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, William, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily, Cambridge University Press (1990)
• Nirenberg, David. (2013). Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. New York: W. W. Norton & 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, London: Free Press Collier Macmillan. ISBN 9780029249802.
• Rawlings, Helen, The Spanish Inquisition, Blackwell Publishing (2006)

Seminal classical works

• Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (4 volumes), (New York and London, 1906–1907).
• Lea, Henry Charles (1901). The Moriscos of Spain: Their Conversion and Expulsion. Philadelphia, PA: Lea Brothers and Co.
• Juan Antonio Llorente, "Historia crítica de la Inquisición de España"
• Ludwig von Pastor, 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

Old scholarship

• Antonio Puigblanch, La Inquisición sin máscara (Cádiz, 1811–1813). [The Inquisition Unmasked (London, 1816)]
• William Thomas Walsh, Isabella of Spain (1930) and Characters of the Inquisition (1940). Both reprinted by TAN Books (1987).
• Rafael Sabatini, Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition (1913)
• C. Roth, The Spanish Inquisition (1937)
• C. Roth, History of the Marranos (1932)
• A. S. Turberville, Medieval History and the Inquisition (1920)
• A.S. Turberville, The Spanish Inquisition (1932).
• Genaro García, La Inquisición de México (1906).
• Genaro Garcia, Autos de fe de la Inquisición de Mexico (1910)
• F. Garau, La Fee Triunfante (1691-reprinted 1931)
• J.T. Medina, Historia de la Inquisicion de Lima; de Chile; le la Plata; de Cartagena de las Indias; en las islas Filipinas (6 volumes), (1887–1899)
• V. Vignau, Catálogo... de la Inquisición de Toledo (1903)
• J. Baker, History of the Inquisition (1736)
• History of the Inquisition from its origin under Pope Innocent III till the present time. Also the private practices of the Inquisitors, the form of trial and modes of torture (1814)
• J. Marchant, A Review of the Bloody Tribunal (1770)
• E. N. Adler, Autos de fe and the Jew (1908)
• González de Montes, Discovery and Playne Declaration of Sundry Subtile Practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spayne
• Ludovico a Paramo, De Origine et Progressu Sanctae Inquisitionis (1598)
• J. M. Marín, Procedimientos de la Inquisición (2 volumes), (1886)
• I. de las Cagigas, Libro Verde de Aragon (1929)
• R. Cappa, La Inquisicion Espanola (1888)
• A. Paz y Mellia, Catálogo Abreviado de Papeles de Inquisición (1914)
• A.F.G. Bell, Luis de Leon (1925)
• M. Jouve, Torquemada (1935)
• Sir Alexander G. Cardew, A Short History of the Inquisition (1933)
• G. G. Coulton, The Inquisition (1929)
• Memoires Instructifs pour un Voyageur dans les Divers États de l'Europe (1738)
• Ramon de Vilana Perlas, La verdadera práctica apostólica de el S. Tribunal de la Inquisición (1735)
• H. B. Piazza, A Short and True Account of the Inquisition and its Proceeding (1722)
• A. L. Maycock, The Inquisition (1926)
• H. Nickerson, The Inquisition (1932)
• Conde de Castellano, Un Complot Terrorista en el Siglo XV; los Comienzos de la Inquisicion Aragonesa, (1927)
• Bernard Gui, Manuel de l'Inquisiteur, (1927)
• L. Tanon, Histoire des Tribunaux de l'Inquisition (1893)
• A. J. Texeira, Antonio Homem e a Inquisicao (1902)
• A. Baiao, A Inquisiçao em Portugal e no Brasil (1921)
• A. Herculano, Historia da Origem e Estabelecimento da Inquisiçao em Portugal (English translation, 1926)
• Joseph de Maistre, Letters on the Spanish Inquisition (1822, composed 1815):— late defence of the Inquisition
• Cornelius August Wilkens: 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

• Green, Toby (2007). Inquisition : the reign of fear. New York: Thomas Books. ISBN 978-0-312-53724-1.
• Miranda Twiss, The Most Evil Men And Women In History (Michael O'Mara Books Ltd., 2002).
• Simon Whitechapel, Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition (Creation Books, 2003).

Further reading

• Hassner, Ron E. (2022). Anatomy of Torture. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1-5017-6205-5.

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Spanish Inquisition.

• "The Spanish Inquisition", BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Edwards, Alexander Murray & Michael Alpert (In Our Time, 22 June 2006)
• Audio Lecture on the History of the Spanish Inquisition and 1492 Expulsion of Spanish Jewry