Essay, Research Paper: The Spanish Inquisition

The word "inquisition" means to examine. Inquisitors would
"examine" suspected Heretics, people whose ideas do not match
those of the Roman Catholic Church, and punish them
accordingly. This meant torture and burning was involved. The
great inquisitional movement that took place in Hispania (before
Spain was unified, the area was known as Hispania), and it was
called The Spanish Inquisition. It took place for approximately
five-hundred years, from the late 15th century to the mid 19th
century. Many ironic elements were involved in the history of
the Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition lasted longer than any
other preceding it and was the most cruel, bloodthirsty, and
festive of all. The objective of the inquisition, in its early
state, was to convert all Jews into Christians, but later it
contradicted itself by making the new objective to rid the
country of the newly converted Christians. In an age where the
close bond between church and state existed, opposition to the
church was intolerable. The Inquisition caused Spain to become
intellectually backward, and economically and industrially
damaged. The powerful influence of the Inquisition
forbiddened social influences, such as books, from other parts
of Europe to enter Spain. Because of this, the universities
remained stagnant from the lack of understanding about other
civilizations in the rest of Europe. They were unable to keep up
with the rest of the early modern world. As a result of this,
they came into the 20th century intellectually inferior and
bankrupt. With the banished, tortured, and persecuted
heretics in mind, it is possible that the Spanish Inquisition is
perhaps one of the most cruel acts performed on innocent
people in the name of religion.

Before the Spanish Inquisition took place, several other
inquisitional movements appeared, but none quite so barbaric
and brutal as the Spaniard's. Waves of opposition towards the
church swept Europe in the Middle Ages. In the 12th century
it was a modern belief that a peaceful, utopian government
could be obtained if all of the population of the society were
"pure" and Catholic. The Medieval Inquisition was famous
inquisitional movement also. It started in France and Italy.
During this time a group of people called the Albigensies lived in
northern Italy and southern France. They had established a
religion called Manichaeanism which was the belief in two gods,
one for good and one for evil. Pope Gregory IX felt that it was
right to establish the Inquisition as a church law to rid the Holy
Roman Empire from the Albigensies in 1231 AD. This was the
start of the first inquisition. After that it was a common
practice in much of Europe to take Heretics before a trial, then
inflict torture on them forcing them to convert. Those that did
not convert were sent to a public burning or hanging. In 1252
AD, Pope Innocent IV agreed to use inquisitors to torture
sinners who would not repent their sins and confess. By the
fifteen hundreds, the Inquisition became wealthy, powerful,
and greedy.

In the late 15th century, Spain gained its freedom from
the Moors. They were North African people that were Islamic
and controlled much of Spain. The wealthy, educated Jewish
population financially assisted the monarchy to take back Spain
from the Moors. Large prosperous Jewish communities existed
in Spain where they were respected, unlike other areas of
Europe where the Jews were hated, persecuted and were
victims of organized massacres in the late Middle Ages. In
Spain they remained the financial and scientific leaders in the
15th century. Many of the Jews married into Catholic families,
and as a result, many of Spain's Christian leaders were of
Jewish descent. As Spain became a unified country, many
Hispanics forgot the services from which the Jewish had
provided them. All of the sudden, the economy was not in as
good of a shape as it was before, and the Jews became the
center of blame for everything that went wrong. They became
targets for bigotry. False legends were made up about them. A
couple of them included Jews murdering innocent Christian
children. These such legends fueled the expulsion of the Jews
from France and England, and then later the eventual expulsion
from Spain in 1492 AD.

In fear of persecution, thousands of Jews flocked to
churches to convert to Christianity. The government of Spain
started raiding Jewish communities, in search of wealth to
steal. The new group of newly converted Christians were called
Marranos. They made up another large portion of the Hispanic
population. For a while the Marranos had their full rights
restored again. Many of them still practiced Judaism at home
though, out of view of the government. The Jews had to
convert to Christianity, if they did not, they had the choice of
leaving the country or dying. After the Jews were banned from
Spain and the Inquisition was constituted, the Marranos became
the object of attack for the inquisitors. If someone was
suspected of having a tad of Jewish blood, which was ironic
since everyone did, they had the choice of leaving Spain or
dying.

During the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella,
the Inquisition was established for the first time in Spain in
the Kingdom of Aragon. This was before the unification of
Spain took place. The office of Grand Inquisitor was
appointed by the monarchy with the approval of the Pope.
The first and most notorious Grand Inquisitor was a
Dominican Monk named Tamas de Torquemada. Even though
he was of Jewish descent, he was obsessed in the act of
making heretics confess through torturous, inquisitorial
methods. After the unification of Spain, he convinced King
Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to extend the Inquisition to
the entire Kingdom of Spain. Torquemada told the King and
Queen that the government can obtain great wealth from
confiscating the property of the Jews and Morranos. As a
result, the spread of the Inquisition through the rest of
Spain was more in the act of greed than in the act of the
religious purification of the nation.

There were many accounts leading up to the expulsion
of the Jews from Spain, but the major reason is described
as the La Guardia Case. It is a case about a Jewish man, by
the name of Garcia, who was dragged into an Inquisitorial
Court to be examined. Under extreme torture, the
inquisitors lead the Jewish man into confessing that he,
along with other Jews, took a four year old Christian boy
and crucified him to a wooden cross, which was not true.
Although nobody was ever found or reported missing, it still
fueled an outrage in thee Christian community. Torquemada
took advantage of this situation by persuading the King and
Queen to expel the Jews from Spain. Because of bribery
and gifts from the Jews, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella
were hesitant to expel them, but Torquemada's
overwhelming influence on them lead to the expulsion of the
Jews in 1492 AD. The summer of 1492 was a sad one by
which the Jews were given four months to leave. The loss
of the Jew's social, commercial, economical, scientific, and
educational skills, did immense damage onto Spain as a
whole, but nobody realized it. The people of Spain thought
that they were actually better off without the Jews.

Once the Inquisition was established all throughout
Spain in 1478 AD, an effective way of governing was needed.
The main office of the Inquisition, located in Madrid, was
called the Suprema. It was named as a branch of
government in Spain. In every major city of the Spanish
Empire there consisted an Inquisitorial Court who reported
to the Suprema. The Grand Inquisitor governed the
Inquisitorial Courts from the Suprema. At the time, the
Spanish government was very unstable and unorganized. It
was said that the Suprema was the only effective branch of
the Spanish government. Because of this, the Suprema rose
to great power. At times, the power of the Grand Inquisitor
rivaled and overpowered the monarchy. With the
establishment of the Suprema and the Inquisitorial Courts,
the Inquisition became very effective and the death tole of
heretics and morranos sky-rocketed.

Along with the spread of the Spanish Empire to the
Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Inquisition also
spread. Inquisitorial Courts were set up all over Mexico,
Central America, the Caribbeans, and South America. The
new world offered a new variety of victims to fill its
prisons, since the amount of Jewish and Morrano victims
were growing scarce. Because Spanish women were not
allowed to colonize in the new world, the men interacted
with native women. This sin was called cohabitation and the
church viewed it with extreme disfavor. It then became
the major crime to be dealt with in the Inquisitorial Courts.
Through the strength of the Spanish Empire, the Inquisition
became the most dominant in Spanish society. By this point,
when the Suprema challenged the authority of the monarch,
the Grand Inquisitors were appointed by the Suprema
instead of the monarches. The Suprema had great power
and took out political and criminal cases just as the state
would. The remaining heretics left were dealt in mass
burnings in festival type atmospheres.

The way the Inquisitors dealt with executions were in
carnival type occasions called Auto-da-fes, or Sermo
Generalises. These festivals required elaborate preparations
and would attract thousands. The accused heretics would
be dressed in a comical but satanic attire and put on display
for the people to laugh at as they walked by. At the end of
the festival, the crimes of each heretic were announced.
Then the thousands would gather and watch the heretics go
up in flames on steaks. The church officials were forbidden
to shed blood, so the executions were carried out by the
state. While the heretics were burning, the King, Queen,
and the church officials sat in the front row snickering at
the burning corpses.

In the late 1700's and early 1800's there were few
heretics left the Spanish Empire. Only a handful of the
cases dealt by the Inquisitorial Courts were actually dealing
with religion. By this time the state was dealing with real
criminals through the Inquisitors. The papacy became angry
at this abuse, but did not have the power to stop it at the
time. The Inquisition gradually came to an end in the mid
1800's, as Spain completed its task of "purifying the
nation". By this point they were in a huge lack of education
and were not industrially adequate to enter the 20th
century along with power-house industrial neighbors such as
England. Reminisce of the Inquisition lasted into the early
20th century where suspected descendents of Jews were
punished, which was pointless because practically everyone
in Spain were descendents of these people. It was not till
1992, five-hundred years after the expulsion of the Jews
from Spain, when King Juan Carlos officially invited the
Jews to return to their homeland in Spain and addressed a
formal apology to them.


The long history of the Spanish Inquisition serves as a
reminder of the bigotry and the persecution that took place.
It is only one of many persecuting acts that are piled on top
of Jewish history. Many Christians look back onto the
Inquisition with shame and humidity. The Spanish
Inquisition has inflicted untold amounts of damage onto the
Spanish society and everyone else's. It was one of the
worst religious acts of ignorance and bigotry ever
orchestrated by a group of people. Today's bigotry and
prejudices are just remnants of the religious intolerance
that originated half a millennium ago.