The King of Spain ordered "that the inquisitors should never proceed against the Indians, but against the old Christians and their descendants and other persons against whom in these kingdoms of Spain it is customary to proceed".[2]. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). These tribunals were marked by the severity of questioning, lack of rights of the accused, and rigorous punishment. A similar intervention, usually far shorter, from the fiscal. As about half of those tried were under this age, it explains the relatively small percentage of death sentences. This persecution was pursued by three Spanish kingdoms during the early 16th century: the Crown of Castile in 1500-1502, followed by Navarre in 1515-1516, and lastly the Crown of Aragon in 1523-1526. Carolingian empire The category "superstitions" includes trials related to witchcraft. [130], The use of the toca (cloth), also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua (enhanced water interrogation), is better documented. "[15] 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. [23] After the public violence, many of the converted "felt it safer to remain in their new religion. All those offices were filled by agreement between the government and the grand inquisitor. 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. Those confessions were used to identify other heretics, who were brought before a tribunal. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics".[42]. Other hypotheses that circulate regarding the Spanish Inquisition's creation include: Fray Alonso de Ojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville, convinced Queen Isabella of the existence of Crypto-Judaism among Andalusian conversos[39] during her stay in Seville between 1477 and 1478. [3] In the Crown of Aragon, most Muslims faced this choice after the Revolt of the Brotherhoods (15191523). This proved not only impractical and unworkable but also contrary to the goals of having a literate and well-educated clergy. [56] Initially, they were not severely persecuted by the Inquisition, experiencing instead a policy of evangelization[57] a policy not followed with those conversos who were suspected of being crypto-Jews. 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. In practice, the Spanish Inquisition served to consolidate power in the monarchy of the newly unified Spanish kingdom, but it achieved that end through infamously brutal methods. On 4 April 1609, the Habsburg king Philip III of Spain and his corrupt, all-powerful first minister, the Duke of Lerma, authorised the phased expulsion of the entire population of the people known as Moriscos ('Little Moors') from Iberian soil. Those in the group of "heretics" were all subject to investigation. In addition to the above discriminatory legislation, Aragon had laws specifically targeted at protecting minorities. 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."[139]. In other words, the sodomy itself was investigated only as, and when, considered a symptom of a heretic belief or practice. Crisis (October de 2003). Show more Show more Full History of. 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. In 1483, Jews were expelled from all of Andalusia. The auto-da-f eventually became a baroque spectacle, with staging meticulously calculated to cause the greatest effect among the spectators. Spanish Inquisition - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia In 1492, after 10 years of lobbying Spain's monarchs to force Jews to convert to Christianity or be exiled, Spain's Inquisitor General Toms de Torquemada finally . The second novel, Purity of Blood, has the narrator being tortured by the Inquisition and describes an auto-da-f. In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus . 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-f) that solemnized their return to the Church (in most cases), or punishment as an impenitent heretic. Rome was particularly concerned that the Iberian peninsula's large Muslim and Jewish population would have a 'heretical' influence on the Catholic population. The denunciations were anonymous, and the defendants had no way of knowing the identities of their accusers. 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. 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. Spanish Inquisition Remembrance Ceremony. The lack of separation of powers allows assuming questionable fairness for certain scenarios. 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. 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. Menocal "The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain". This attitude was also not new. To police Converso beliefs and practices, Ferdinand and. Pogroms, individual acts of violence against Jews and anti-Semitic laws . an effigy was burned). 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. [186] 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. 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. The Spanish Inquisition spread into Sicily in 1517, but efforts to set it up in Naples and Milan failed. It had no power to investigate, prosecute, or convict Jews, Muslims, or any open member of other religions. Although quite rare in actual practice, the defendant could be, The Grand Inquisitor of Spain plays a part in, The Spanish Inquisition features as a main plotline element of the 2009 video game, This page was last edited on 25 May 2023, at 16:59. Causes The institution of the Spanish Inquisition was ostensibly established to combat heresy. [17] To linguistically distinguish them from non-converted or long-established Catholic families, new converts were called conversos, or New Catholics. 2, Gtersloh 1902, p. 41-42), 13 in the period 15701625 (W. Monter. Translations of the Bible to Castillian and Provenzal (Catalan) had been made and allowed in Spain since the Middle Ages. Among the Spanish authors included in the Index are Bartolom Torres Naharro, Juan del Enzina, Jorge de Montemayor, Juan de Valds and Lope de Vega, as well as the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes and the Cancionero General by Hernando del Castillo. 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. 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. [151] There are numerous records of the opinion of ordinary Spaniards of the time that "the Inquisition was devised simply to rob people". 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. Spanish Inquisition, (14781834), judicial institution ostensibly established to combat heresy in Spain. After the papacy of Clement VII (152334), priests and bishops were at times judged by the Inquisition. [186] The Spanish Inquisition for them was largely associated with the persecution of Protestants, or inexplicably, of witches. One of the most outstanding and best-known cases in which the Inquisition directly confronted literary activity is that of Fray Luis de Len, 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. "They were burnt only for the money they had", a resident of Cuenca averred. [105] In the Americas, tribunals were established in Lima and in Mexico City (1569) and, in 1610, in Cartagena de Indias (present day Colombia). From Jesus' command to "love your enemies" to the idea of "holy war" is a giant leap. The court could employ physical torture to extract confessions once the guilt of the accused had been established. 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. Anti-semitic attitudes increased all over Europe during the late 13th century and throughout the 14th century. In addition to the members of the court, two auxiliary figures existed that collaborated with the Holy Office: the familiares and the comissarios (commissioners). Ferdinand's father John II named the Jewish Abiathar Crescas Court Astronomer. The number of years for which cases are documented varies for different tribunals. sfn error: no target: CITEREFSmeulers2011 (, Parrilla, Gonzalo Fernndez, Miguel Hernando De Larramendi, and Jos Sangrador Gil. "[186] Lea documented the Inquisition's methods and modes of operation in no uncertain terms, calling it "theocratic absolutism" at its worst. Within the Crown of Aragon, the tribunal of the city of Zaragoza was famously harsh even at the time. 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. Taxation and varying privileges differed from county to county, and powerful noble families constantly extorted the kings to attain further concessions, particularly in Aragon. Professor of Church History, Woodstock College, Maryland, 193662. The Suprema met every morning, except for holidays, and for two hours in the afternoon on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. What effect did the Spanish Inquisition have on the Reformation in Spain? This goal, the hypothesis goes, might have given birth to the Spanish Inquisition. [186] In the context of the polarization between Protestants and Catholics during the second half of the 19th century,[187] some of Lea's contemporaries, as well as most modern scholars thought Lea's work had an anti-Catholic bias.[187][188]. Samuel Shellabarger's Captain from Castile deals directly with the Spanish Inquisition during the first part of the novel. [82] In general the Inquisition maintained a skeptical attitude towards cases of witchcraft, considering it as a mere superstition without any basis. The inquisitorial process consisted of a series of hearings, in which both the denouncers and the defendant gave testimony. p. 192 pp259. The Spanish Inquisition was suppressed by Joseph Bonaparte in 1808, restored by Ferdinand VII in 1814, suppressed in 1820, restored in 1823, and finally suppressed permanently in 1834. Making counterfeit currency and heretic proselytism were also treated similarly; both of them were punished by death and subdivided in similar ways since both were "spreading falsifications". New Haven, CT: Yale University Press; p. 173. Elvira, Roca Barea Mara, and Arcadi Espada. Valencia. The first texts that questioned the Inquisition and praised the ideas of Voltaire or Montesquieu appeared in 1759. By the second half of the 18 th century, the Inquisition abated, due to the spread of enlightened ideas and lack of resources. Spanish Inquisition - History, Heritage, Misconceptions, and Modern The kingdom had serious tensions with Rome regarding the Church's attempts to extend its authority into the kingdom. Is that what really happened? The 17th-century expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: what happened? 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 the past, the papacy had tried and partially succeeded, in forcing the Mozarabic Rite out of Iberia. The Spanish crown now had in its possession a weapon too precious to give up, however, and the efforts of the pope to limit the powers of the Inquisition were without avail. 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.) It is believed that sentences of death were enforced in the first stages within the long history of the Inquisition. Ironically, the well-established bureaucratic structure of the Inquisition would help insulate Spain from the effects of ad hoc witchcraft trials that swept Europe and claimed tens of thousands of lives in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Torture was always a means to obtain the confession of the accused, not a punishment itself. The pogroms of 1391 were especially brutal, and the threat of violence hung over the Jewish community in Spain. 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. Other times the accusation of Protestantism was considered as an equivalent of blasphemy, just a general way of addressing insubordination.[80]. On that day, Ripoll was hanged in Valencia, for having taught deist principles. That did not mean that the Spanish sovereigns were turning over to the church the struggle for unity; on the contrary, they sought to use the Inquisition to support their absolute and centralizing regime and most especially to increase royal power in Aragon. Updates? 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. In some cases it is remarked that the number does not concern the whole period 15401700. Autos-da-f also took place in Mexico, Brazil and Peru: contemporary historians of the Conquistadors such as Bernal Daz del Castillo record them. 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. Which accusation started the investigation isn't always clear. Spanish Inquisition | Definition, History, & Facts | Britannica Navarra conceded in the 13th century and Portugal by the end of the 14th, though its 'Roman Inquisition' was famously inactive. [136] They took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours; ecclesiastical and civil authorities attended. The Spanish kingdom was unified with the marriage of Ferdinand II and Isabella I, and the Inquisition served to consolidate power in the monarchy. The persecution of Muslims accelerated in 1507 when Jimnez was named grand inquisitor. Did anyone expect the Spanish Inquisition? 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. Toms de Torquemada - Wikipedia [64] 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. The Spanish Inquisition - Chabad.org Catharists The Inquisition has its origins in the early organized persecution of non-Catholic Christian religions in Europe. 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. 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. 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. 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. Heresy was a crime against the state. The sentencing of the accused took place at the auto-da-f (Portuguese: act of faith), an elaborate public expression of the Inquisitions power. Abigdon, Oxon: Routledge, Tylor &, 2013. pp83-120 (the quote is paraphrased), The Marranos of Spain. The Inquisition was extremely active between 1480 and 1530. La Inquisicin En La poca Moderna: Espaa, Portugal E Italia, Siglos Xv-xix. This saying passed into common usage in Spain. A second page with the accused's first statement about their innocence or culpability, and their general response and recollection of the facts. A number of autos-da-f were held, some of them presided over by members of the royal family, and around 100 executions took place. 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. 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. Les inquisitions modernes dans les Pays-Bas meridionaux. In 1522 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V introduced it into the Low Countries, but its efforts to wipe out Protestantism were unsuccessful. Though over the course of the trial, their identities likely became apparent. Once approved and published, the circulating text also faced the possibility of post-hoc censorship by being denounced to the Inquisitionsometimes decades later. The main goals of the reign of the Catholic Monarchs were to unite their two kingdoms and strengthen royal influence to guarantee stability. The Inquisition effectively eliminated the movement that inspired the Reformation in Spain. It considered unnatural any non-reproductive marriage, and natural any reproductive one, regardless of gender or sex involved. This is striking because both Charles I and Philip II were confessed admirers of Erasmus. 7 (1998), pp. According to Gedaliah Ibn Yechia, these disturbances were caused by a malicious report spread about the Jews. As historian Henry Kamen notes, the "so-called convivencia was always a relationship between unequals. New York, 2009. 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. The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemadas tenure was exaggerated by Protestant critics of the Inquisition, but it is generally estimated to have been about 2,000. The public trials of alleged heretics become spectacular highly ritualized affairs that culminate in the sentencing of the convicted. Contreras, Jaime y Gustav Henningsen (1986). 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. "Forty-four thousand cases of the Spanish Inquisition (15401700): analysis of a historical data bank", en Henningsen G., J. One of the best-known stories of Edgar Allan Poe, "The Pit and the Pendulum", explores the use of torture by the Inquisition. When the Inquisition opened an investigation in an area, inquisitors typically would offer comparatively light penances to those who were willing to admit their own involvement in heresy. 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. From 1531 to 1560 the percentage of conversos among the Inquisition trials dropped to 3% of the total. Dadson. The pope issued a bull to stop the Inquisition but was pressured into withdrawing it. One of the first books to build on them and internationally challenge the classical view was The Spanish Inquisition (1965) by Henry Kamen. [54], During the eighteenth century, the number of conversos accused by the Inquisition decreased significantly. Una revisin histrica. The Church had limited willingness or ability to educate this now-hostile group. 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. [48] German philosophers at the time were spreading the importance of a vassal sharing the religion of their lord. How historians and commentators have viewed the Spanish Inquisition has changed over time and continues to be a source of controversy. "[67] The last mass prosecution against Moriscos for crypto-Islamic practices occurred in Granada in 1727, with most of those convicted receiving relatively light sentences. The fight from within against the Inquisition was almost always clandestine. [194], Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Spain, The "Enforcement Across Borders" hypothesis, The "Keeping the Pope in Check" hypothesis, Theatre, music, television, and video games. The murder of Inquisidor Pedro Arbus in Zaragoza on 15 September 1485, caused public opinion to turn against the conversos and in favour of the Inquisition. Starting in the 1920s, Jewish scholars picked up where Lea's work left off. 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. pp. 2, Winter 2011, pp. Madrid: Akal, 1997. By 1492, tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities: vila, Crdoba, Jan, Medina del Campo, Segovia, Sigenza, Toledo, and Valladolid. [186], At the start of the 20th century Henry Charles Lea published the groundbreaking History of the Inquisition in Spain. 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. Prez, Joseph (2006). 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. Not until 1808, during the brief reign of Joseph Bonaparte, was the . During the auto-da-f that took place in Logroo on 7 and 8 November 1610, six people were burned and another five burned in effigy. 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. The archives of the Inquisition, in comparison to those of other judicial systems of the era, are striking in the completeness of their documentation. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions.