Spanish Inquisition

12 Key excerpts on "Spanish Inquisition"

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  Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614

  An Anthology of Sources

  • Lu Ann Homza(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

    (Publisher)

  But since 1975—when the death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco liberated scholars to work on controversial topics in Spanish history—an explosion of publications has made it clear that the Inquisition in Spain was a historical phenomenon in the fullest sense of the phrase. It was created at a specific moment to solve a particular problem; its targets and penalties changed over time; its prosecutions could be affected by bribery, enmity, even empathy. 3 Over the last several decades, historians {x} have been far more interested in pointing out fluctuations and accidents in Inquisition history than in treating this institution as a moral lesson for the rest of the world. 4 By the same token, few scholars today would seriously argue that the Spanish Inquisition demonstrates eternal truths about the Spanish character. Instead, the best recent work highlights the Inquisition’s regional and chronological variation, identifies potential discrepancies between its theory and its practices, and seeks to establish the theological motives, legal discretion, and practical contexts of the inquisitors themselves. We now know that the Inquisition was never a monolithic institution, despite efforts to standardize its procedures. And while its bureaucracy was highly sophisticated, most current work disputes the idea that it functioned like a machine, if only because the officials who worked in its tribunals were all too human. Roman Antecedents The Spanish Inquisition was fundamentally indebted to legal developments in the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages. The term “inquisition” comes {xi} from the Latin noun inquisitio, or “investigation”; it should be stressed that inquisition is fundamentally a legal procedure that was first codified in ancient Rome. By the third century CE, inquisition signified a trial for a public crime, conducted by a single magistrate whose officials carried out the search for evidence. 5 The magistrate initiated these prosecutions at his own discretion

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  Judge Thy Neighbor

  Denunciations in the Spanish Inquisition, Romanov Russia, and Nazi Germany

  • Patrick Bergemann(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  2 THE Spanish Inquisition I n 1478, Pope Sixtus IV gave his formal consent to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain to appoint two to three priests over forty years of age as inquisitors. Two years later, the royal order was given to establish the first tribunal in Seville. In 1481, the tribunal began accepting confessions and denunciations, and later that year, the first heretics were brought to trial. With two inquisitors in a single city, the Spanish Inquisition had begun. It is unlikely that any of the early participants could have predicted how long the Inquisition would last and how far it would spread. For 356 years it reigned as the ecumenical law of the land, combating all types of heresy and religious transgressions by Christians. Estimates of the number of trials that took place over this time period are in the hundreds of thousands, 1 and the number of individuals who were denounced but did not experience formal trials may have been substantially higher. 2 Ultimately the Spanish Inquisition extended far beyond Spain and was implemented in Spanish colonies throughout the world, including Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Punishments for those convicted were brutal, with burning at the stake the sentence for the most serious crimes and public humiliation and impoverishment for more minor offenses. This chapter focuses in particular on the early decades, for several reasons. First, the Inquisition was most active in this period, both in terms of inquisitor activity and the volume of denunciations. More than half of all trials occurred in the first thirty years. 3 Second, this was a period of widespread uncertainty and unrest, as the two largest kingdoms of Spain had recently undergone civil wars. One of the monarchs’ primary concerns was consolidating power and achieving social control. Finally, the first decades encompass a major institutional change in Inquisitorial procedures

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  The History of Torture

  • Brian Innes(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Amber Books Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Five The Spanish Inquisition

  Few legal institutions have earned a worse reputation, or inspired more fear, than the Inquisition in Spain. Yet, compared with such events in most of southern Europe, it had a relatively late development. While the fight against heresy went on in other parts of Europe during the thirteenth century, the inhabitants of Christian Spain had a more pressing concern. The struggle against Moorish occupation was long and hard, and served to strengthen their faith. It was only as the reconquest of the peninsula was gradually completed that the question of the need for religious unity within the kingdom was raised.

  At first, the Jews were regarded as the principal obstruction to this aim. They had been tolerated under Moorish rule: scholars and merchants, they had grown in numbers and influence for seven centuries. And so, in the late fourteenth century, Henry III of Castile and Leon began to exert pressure on the Jewish community: they were given the alternatives of baptism into the Christian faith, or death.

  Those who openly converted from Judaism, but frequently continued to practise their religion in secret, were known as marranos – an unfortunate name that more commonly meant ‘filthy swine’. It has been calculated that there were more than 100,000 of them, and when Castile and Aragon were united in 1469 by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (the ‘Catholic kings’), these marranos were declared a danger to the faith in Spain, and so to the safety of the kingdom.

  In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV was persuaded to issue a bull that authorized the Catholic kings to name the inquisitors they wished to be appointed. This was intended to be an alliance of Church and State, but in reality it resulted in a strengthening of the absolute power of the throne. The earliest Spanish inquisitors, who set themselves up in Seville, showed such zeal in the pursuit of heresy that the pope attempted to restrain them; but the Spanish Government now realized what a powerful weapon they had in their hands, and Sixtus found that he was unable to influence them. In 1483 he was compelled to agree to the appointment of Inquisitors General for Castile and Leon; Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia came under the control of the Inquisition during the same year.

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  Spanish Prisons

  The Inquisition at Home and Abroad, Prisons Past and Present

  • Arthur Griffiths(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  Napoleon's invasion of Spain and the removal of the young king, Ferdinand VII, to France, put an end to the Inquisition. When the Emperor took possession of Madrid, he called upon all public bodies to submit to his authority, but the Holy Office refused. Whereupon he issued an order to arrest the inquisitors, abolish the Inquisition, and sequestrate its revenues. All Spain did not readily yield to the French conqueror, and when the Cortes met in Cadiz they empowered one of the inquisitors, who had escaped, to reconstitute the tribunal, but it was never really restored. At the same time, the governing powers appointed a special commission to enquire into the legal status of the ancient body, and to decide whether the Inquisition had any legal right to exist. A report was published in 1812, reviewing its whole history and condemning it as incompatible with the liberties of the country. The indictment against it was couched in very vigorous language. It was held to have been guilty of the most harsh and oppressive measures; to have inflicted the most cruel and illegal punishments; "in the darkness of the night it had dragged the husband from the side of his wife, the father from the children, the children from their parents, and none may see the other again until they are absolved or condemned without having had the means of contributing to their defence or knowing whether they had been fairly tried." The result was a law passed by the Cortes to suppress the Inquisition in Spain.

  The restoration of Ferdinand VII, at the termination of the war in 1814, gave the Inquisition fresh life. He resented the action taken by the Cortes, arrested its members, and cast them into prison, declaring them to be infidels and rebels, and forthwith issued a decree reviving the tribunal of the Holy Office. Its supreme council met in Seville and persecution was renewed under the new inquisitor-general, Xavier Mier y Campillo, who put out a fresh list of prohibited books, tried to raise revenues and issued a new Edict of Faith. There might have been another auto da fé

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  Homosexuality and Civilization

  • Louis Crompton(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Belknap Press

    (Publisher)

  Ferdinand and Isabella had in 1478 obtained papal sanction to set up a Spanish Inquisition whose primary aim was to enforce religious conformity among the Jews in Spain who had accepted Christianity. As a result of this campaign, thousands of Conversos, whose baptism had been coerced by force or fear, were burned on charges of having continued to secretly observe Jewish practices. Then, in January 1505, Ferdinand also issued a decree granting his new Castilian Inquisition authority to try sodomites. 13 A year later there was a spate of arrests in Seville; many men fled, but eventually twelve were convicted and burned by sentence of the local tribunal. 14 In 1509, however, the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Madrid—commonly known as the Suprema—ruled that the organization should not be diverted from its primary task of hunting down heretics and Judaizers. Thereafter, the Inquisition in Castile left the prosecution of sodomites to the secular courts, whose own fervent piety and prejudice could be counted on to mete out a comparable severity. In Aragon, by a “fateful accident,” things took a different turn. William Monter, in his Frontiers of Heresy, has told the story in rich detail. What made the Spanish Inquisition unique was Ferdinand’s determination to use it as an instrument of state power and national unity. Since the Inquisition had its headquarters in the Castilian city of Madrid, it was resisted by the provinces that made up the Crown of Aragon because they feared it would infringe on their local laws and liberties. (The Crown of Aragon consisted of the ancient kingdom of Aragon, Catalonia, the kingdom of Valencia on the east coat of Spain, the islands of Majorca, Sardinia, and Sicily, and the much-contested kingdom of Naples.) The Valencian and Aragonese opposition to Ferdinand had came from nobles who wished to protect their Converso and Moorish subjects

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  History of the Inquisition from Its Establishment Till the Present Time

  • William Sime(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  A great number of the works which were published in France, at the period of the revolution in that country, having been conveyed to Spain, and eagerly read by the people, the Inquisitors lost no time in prohibiting and seizing all books, pamphlets, and newspapers relating to French affairs, and gave peremptory orders to every person to denounce all who were friendly to the revolutionary principles. The consequence was, that informations were lodged against vast numbers, who were immediately apprehended, and thrown into prison. Among others, two booksellers in Valladolid were condemned in 1799 to two months' imprisonment, two years' suspension of their trade, and to banishment from the kingdom.

  The invasion of Spain by Bonaparte in 1808, and abdication of the throne by Charles IV. in favour of his son Ferdinand VII., gave a tremendous blow to the Inquisition. In that year Napoleon Bonaparte suppressed the holy office at Chamastin near Madrid; and, with the approbation of Joseph Bonaparte, Llorente burnt all the criminal processes in the Inquisition, excepting those which belonged to history.

  On the 22d of February, 1813, the Cortes-general of the kingdom assembled at Madrid, and having decreed that the existence of the Inquisition was incompatible with the political constitution which had been adopted by the nation, that assembly fully suppressed that odious tribunal, and restored to the bishops and secular judges, the jurisdiction which they had anciently enjoyed.

  "Thus ended the existence of a tribunal," to use the words of the translator of Puigblanch, "which in Spain had lorded it over the people for more than three hundred and twenty years, had been an outrage to humanity, and a powerful engine of internal police in the hands of despots. Thus perished a tremendous and inconsistent power, which even in Rome no longer held sway; and though the triumph was unfortunately short, the daring and enlightened measure of the Cortes will ever remain on record as part of that great attempt to rally round the sacred standard of civil and religious liberty, as far as was possible in a country so benighted as that over which they presided; and, as a meritorious act, the destruction of the Inquisition thence entitles them to the respect of their contemporaries, and the gratitude of posterity."

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  A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 4

  • Henry Charles Lea(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  He uses it to hold in check his subjects and to punish them with the secrecy and severity of its procedure, when he cannot do so with the ordinary secular authority of the Royal Council. The Inquisition and the Royal Council mutually help each other in matters of state for the king’s service. [553] This was a not unnatural conclusion to draw from a case of this nature, but the royal power, by this time, was too securely intrenched to require such aid. It was only the peculiar features of the Aragonese fueros that called for the invention of a charge of heresy in a political matter. The Inquisition, as a rule, considered it no part of its duties to uphold the royal power for, in 1604, we find it sentencing Bartolomé Pérez to a severe reprimand, a fine of ten thousand maravedís and a year’s exile for saying that obedience to the king came before that due to the pope and to the Church. [554] Thus the mere denial of the superiority of the spiritual power over the temporal was a crime. Sporadic cases occurred in which special considerations called for the aid of the Inquisition, but they were not numerous and were apt to be directed against ecclesiastics, whose privilege exempted them from the secular courts. Such was that of the Jesuit, Juan de Mariana, distinguished in many ways, but especially by his classical History of Spain. He had served the Inquisition well as a censor of books, but in his Tractatus septem, published anonymously at Cologne, in 1609, in an essay on the debased Spanish coinage, the freedom with which he reprobated its evils and spoke of the malfeasance of officials gave great offence to the royal favorite Lerma and his creatures. Had Mariana been a layman there would have been no trouble in punishing him severely, but to reach the Jesuit Philip invoked the papal nuncio Caraffa and the Toledo tribunal took a hand

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  Witches

  The history of a persecution

  • Nigel Cawthorne(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Arcturus

    (Publisher)

  7

  The Spanish Inquisition

  The Spanish Inquisition is associated with the mass burnings in their auto-da-fé . However, their efforts to rid the Iberian Peninsula of heretics overshadowed an earlier interest in witchcraft. The earliest of all the general treaties on witchcraft was written in 1359 by the Dominican inquisitor in Aragon, and in 1370, diviners and those who consulted them were declared heretics. However, under a law of 1387, laymen would be punished by the civil authorities, while only the clergy would face ecclesiastical courts. There were various attempts to tighten up the law on witchcraft, but the debate about whether necromancy and sorcery were heresy continued.

  In 1436, the theologian Alonso Tostado maintained that the idea of visiting a sabbat was a delusion brought on by drugs. However, in 1467 Alphonsus de Spina insisted that the delusion was evoked by the devil. His book Fortalium Fidei [Fortress of the Faithful] was the first to discuss the punishment for witchcraft. It also condemned Jews and Muslims and is full of anti-Semitic tales, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that Spina himself was a Jew who had converted to Christianity. The final ruling on witchcraft was made by Opus de Magica Superstitione [Book about Belief in Magic] , which remained the classic work on sorcery in Spain for over a century. It concluded that the flight of witches was an illusion, but that illusion was caused by making a pact with the devil, and that while witchcraft was not a formal heresy it should be treated and punished as such.

  After the Muslims were driven out of Spain in the late thirteenth century, the political authorities in Aragon and Castile began looking for a way to impose their authority on the rest of country and, in 1478, they persuaded Pope Sixtus IV to authorise a separate Spanish Inquisition. They set to work and the first auto-da-fé

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  A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 3

  • Henry Charles Lea(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  This employment of the Inquisition was a new development, for in the earlier time, the instances in which inquisitorial censorship was called upon for political service are surprisingly few. In the case of Antonio Pérez, it was inevitable that the Inquisition should prohibit his writings and unauthorized accounts of his persecutions. There was less excuse for suppressing, in 1609, Padre Mariana’s volume of essays on account of his criticism of the ruinous debasement of the coinage. [1455] There was unworthy complaisance to the Holy See when, in 1606, the Suprema forbade the possession by any one of the papers and memorials issued by Venice, in its quarrel with Paul V, on the pretext of their being scandalous to Christendom, and an even greater misuse of its power when it arrested and prosecuted Francisco de la Cueva, a lawyer whom the Venetian ambassador had employed to write in defence of the Republic. [1456] On the eve of the Catalan revolt, in 1640, the protest of Barcelona to the king was suppressed as coming under the rules of the Expurgatorio, being seditious, insulting and scandalous, and this precedent was followed with all writings on the subject during the revolt. [1457] On the whole, however, throughout the first three centuries of its existence, the political use made of the Inquisition, in this and other ways, was wonderfully small. It was otherwise when the upheaval came which threatened the stability of all monarchical institutions, and nothing was more dreaded than public opinion, which might develop into action

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  The Medievel Inquisition A Study in Religious Persecution

  • Charles T. Gorham(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Otbebookpublishing

    (Publisher)

  The further argument of Balmez, that the Inquisition preserved Spain from the “dangers” of Judaism and Protestantism, may also be admitted as representing facts, though it is necessary to draw from them conclusions other than his own. The material prosperity of Spain would have been incalculably greater if the Jews had been allowed the free exercise of their business abilities and the practice of their non-aggressive faith; while, if Protestantism had been permitted the freedom which it secured elsewhere, the cause of spiritual religion must have been promoted. As to the Inquisition having averted civil war, if the Church had grasped the idea of tolerance civil war over religious differences would have been impossible. But even that serious peril would have been a less evil than the extinction of liberty, the slow suffocation of the intellectual life, the neglect of science, and the decay of commerce, which actually resulted from the Inquisition’s policy. Civil war would have been at least an indication of life. The Inquisition meant death.

  Perhaps the best-known and most thorough-going apologist for the Inquisition, so far as Spain is concerned, is Count Joseph De Maistre (1754-1821), a Romanist layman who adopted a strongly ecclesiastical point of view, and whose great ability was marred by a tendency to paradox and dogmatism. His Letters to a Russian Gentleman on the Spanish Inquisition are full of a vivacious special pleading, which perplexes without enlightening the reader. His main arguments group themselves round three points: (1) That the Spanish Inquisition was a purely secular institution; (2) that it did not condemn to death; (3) that it did not punish the expression of opinion on questions of religion.

  With regard to the first point De Maistre says: “The Inquisition, by virtue of the Bulls of the Sovereign Pontiff, and the King, by virtue of his royal prerogative, constitute the authority which regulates, and has always regulated, the tribunals of the Inquisition—tribunals which are, at the same time, both royal and ecclesiastical; so that, if either of the two powers happened to withdraw, the action of the tribunal would necessarily be suspended” (p. 8). How this explicit admission that the Spanish Inquisition was both a State and a religious organization is reconcilable with the assertion that it was “entirely a royal institution” must be left to the reader’s ingenuity to discover. De Maistre effectively demolishes his own contention. It is still more effectively confuted by a later and better authority. Dr. Pastor admits that the Spanish Inquisition was “a mixed, but primarily ecclesiastical, institution. The fact that the condemned were handed over to the secular arm testifies to the correctness of this view. Had the Spanish Inquisition been a State Inquisition, a royal court of justice, there would have been no necessity for this. A court which invariably hands over those whom it finds guilty to the secular arm for punishment cannot itself be a secular tribunal. It was precisely the ecclesiastical character of the new Inquisition which made its judges decline to execute capital sentences and follow the custom always observed by the ecclesiastical Inquisition, of requesting that the prisoner ‘might be leniently dealt with’—a formality prescribed by the canon law.”[50] The formula of mercy, of course, deceived no one. In another place Dr. Pastor says: “It is important to note, as a significant fact bearing on the character of this institution, that ‘not only the ecclesiastical authorization of the first Inquisitors, but also the first regulations as to the mode of procedure, emanated directly from the Pope.’” [51] Lea states that the Inquisition even claimed that all civil statutes of which it disapproved should be abrogated.[52]

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  A History of the Inquisition of Spain; vol. 1

  • Henry Charles Lea(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  If Ferdinand imagined that he had overcome the resistance of his subjects by placing them under the Castilian Inquisition with Torquemada at its head, he showed less than his usual sagacity. They had been restive under the revived institution conducted by their own people and the intense particularism of the Aragonese could not fail to arouse still stronger opposition to the prospect of subjection to the domination of a foreigner such as Torquemada, whose sinister reputation for pitiless zeal gave assurance that the work would be conducted with greater energy than ever.

  VALENCIA

  In Castile the introduction of the Inquisition had been done by the arbitrary power of the crown; in Aragon the consent of the representatives of the people was felt to be necessary for the change from the old to the new and a meeting of the Córtes was convoked at Tarazona for January 15, 1484. Ferdinand and Isabella arrived there on the 19th and remained until May, when the opening of the campaign against Granada required their presence elsewhere. Torquemada was there ready to establish the tribunals; what negotiations were requisite we do not know, though we hear of his consulting with persons of influence, and an agreement was reached on April 14th. It was not until May 7th, however, that Ferdinand issued from Tarazona a cédula addressed to all the officials throughout his dominions, informing them that with his assent the pope had established the Inquisition to repress the Judaic and Mahometan heresies and ordering that the inquisitors and their ministers should be honored and assisted everywhere under pain of the royal wrath, of deprivation of office and of ten thousand florins.[625]

  Under the plenary powers of Torquemada’s commission, steps were taken to reorganize the Inquisition and adapt it to the active discharge of its duties. Tribunals were to be established permanently in Valencia, Saragossa and Barcelona with new men to conduct them. Gualbes was disposed of by the enmity of Sixtus IV. Orts still figures in an order for the payment of salaries, April 24, 1484, and, on May 10th, Ferdinand, writing from Tarazona, says that he is there and will be sent to Saragossa, but he never appeared at the latter place, though he was not formally removed from office until February 8, 1486, by Innocent VIII, when he was styled Inquisitor of Valencia and Lérida.[626]

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  Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal

  An Authentic Narrative of the Horrors, Mysteries, and Cruelties of Convent Life

  • Sarah J. Richardson(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  That same system which at this moment flourishes at Rome, which has never yet been either worn out or modified, and which at this present time, in the jargon of the priests, is called a "the holy, Roman, universal, apostolic Inquisition. Holy, as the place where Christ was crucified is holy; apostolic, because Judas Iscariot was the first inquisitor; Roman and universal, because FROM ROME IT EXTENDS OVER ALL THE WORLD. It is denied by some that the Inquisition which exists in Rome as its centre, is extended throughout the world by means of the missionaries. The Roman Inquisition and the Roman Propaganda are in close connection with each other. Every bishop who is sent in partibus infidelium, is an inquisitor charged to discover, through the means of his missionaries, whatever is said or done by others in reference to Rome, with the obligation to make his report secretly. The Apostolic nuncios are all inquisitors, as are also the Apostolic vicars. Here, then, we see the Roman Inquisition extending to the most remote countries." Again this same writer informs us, (page 112,) that "the principal object of the Inquisition is to possess themselves, by every means in their power, of the secrets of every class of society. Consequently its agents (Jesuits and Missionaries,) enter the domestic circle, observe every motion, listen to every conversation, and would, if possible, become acquainted with the most hidden thoughts. It is in fact, the police, not only of Rome, but of all Italy; INDEED, IT MAY BE SAID OF THE WHOLE WORLD."

  The above statements of Dr. Achilli are fully corroborated by the Rev. Wm. H. Rule, of London. In a book published by him in 1852, entitled "The Brand of Dominic," we find the following remarks in relation to the Inquisition of the present time. The Roman Inquisition is, therefore, acknowledged to have an infinite multitude of affairs constantly on hand, which necessitates its assemblage thrice every week. Still there are criminals, and criminal processes. The body of officials are still maintained on established revenues of the holy office. So far from any mitigation of severity or judicial improvement in the spirit of its administration, the criminal has now no choice of an advocate; but one person, and he a servant of the Inquisition, performs an idle ceremony, under the name of advocacy, for the conviction of all. And let the reader mark, that as there are bishops in partibus, so, in like manner, there are inquisitors of the same class appointed in every country, and chiefly, in Great Britain and the colonies, who are sworn to secrecy, and of course communicate intelligence to this sacred congregation of all that can be conceived capable of comprehension within the infinitude of its affairs. We must, therefore, either believe that the court of Rome is not in earnest, and that this apparatus of universal jurisdiction is but a shadow,—an assumption which is contrary to all experience,—or we must understand that the spies and familiars of the Inquisition are listening at our doors, and intruding themselves on our hearths. How they proceed, and what their brethren at Rome are doing, events may tell; BUT WE MAY BE SURE THEY ARE NOT IDLE.

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