The Spanish Inquisition is known for the terror it caused the inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula. The Inquisition began as a way to cleanse the nation of supposed heretics, but eventually came to have more racial and political motives as time wore on. The beginning of the Inquisition is generally credited to the reign of Ferdinand V and Isabella, though the anti-Jewish sentiments have been shown to begin well before their reign. Living in fourteenth century Spain, in Seville, there was an archdeacon named Martinez who continually tried to incite the people to purge themselves of the Jewish inhabitants of the city. He convinced others that the Jewish population was worth nothing and were basically a plague to the city. No doubt these accusations were based on his religious piety, and on Ash Wednesday (March 15, 1391), Martinez succeeded in motivating his congregation to riot. The crowd of people went to the Juderia (the Jewish part of the city).
Some of the participants were captured by the police and flogged, but that did not stop Martinez or his followers who were not arrested. Finally, on June 6th of the same year, Martinez and his followers finally succeeded in sacking the Juderia of Seville.
It is believed the victims numbered in the hundreds. (Roth, The Spanish Inquisition, 1964.) After this episode and few others like it, it is clear where the sentiments that fueled the Inquisition came from. The Jews considered themselves to be free from these problems, but this was not to be the case. When Ferdinand and Isabella married it united the kingdoms of Aragon and Castille, comprising the most powerful states in Spain. At this time many non-Christians were forced to profess their beliefs in Christianity to free themselves from persecution. These people were to be known as conversos, or converted, but it is apparent that a lot of those who professed to believe in Christianity likely did not stop practicing other beliefs, it is known that quite a bit of non-Catholic worshipping went on covertly (Roth, 1964).
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Those who were only nominally converted and who practiced their faith in secret were also called Marranos. After professing themselves to conversion, the converts were able to move on as normal citizens again, seemingly without persecution, attaining wealth, status and positions of power. This would seem to do nothing for the hatred or anti-Semitism that underlined the premise of the Inquisition. The Church began to concern itself with reports of heresy among its new members. In 1478 a young man who was trying to court a formerly Jewish girl, had gone to meet her but came upon her and others involved in some sort of strange celebration. It happened to be the Jewish Passover celebration and they had assembled and come together for it.
Ironically, Passover also falls into Holy Week for the Catholic church. News spread quickly of the event due to the highly charged religious atmosphere at this time and a few months later Pope Sixtus issued a Papal decree giving authority to the crown to conduct an Inquisition. This is how the Spanish Inquisition was founded to purify the nation of heretics (Roth, 1964).
Although the Inquisition was founded on the intent to purify, it later took on more racial and political motives which led to the terror that the Inquisition is infamous for. Isabella was a very devout Catholic. One of her advisors, who later became the first General Inquisitor, was Tomas de Torquemada. Isabella had said that at one point that she wanted “one country, one ruler, one faith” (N. Dirksen and M. Johnson, The Spanish Inquisitor’s Effect on the Church, 1996).
Torquemada was more than willing to forge ahead under the Papal decree and soon became the General Inquisitor of the Inquisition. It seems that Torquemada had some kind of personal motivation against what he might have considered to be the “un-pure” blood of the conversos. Spain had the largest Jewish population of medieval Europe and conversion and intermarriage were common. Hardly anyone had the pure blood, or sangre limpia that was so highly regarded, though most professed they did, and it was a constant preoccupation of the nobility. In fact, Torquemada’s own grandmother was Jewish and so, it seems, he was working to rid the country of the very blood that ran in his veins. The scale of punishments began with the forfeiture of property, which proved to be a convenient way to raise money to fight the Moors.
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But this would seem to be the lightest, and certainly not the last, punishement suffered by those who were sought under Tomas de Torquemada’s Inquisition. It was particularly terrifying because the accused never really knew who their accusers were. The punishments used to gain confessions are the most famous aspect of the Inquisition. Because the trials were for spiritual matters they were handled by the church. However, the punishments were usually very physical in nature, they were handled by the state. There were many means of torture used to produce a confession.
The two most famous (or infamous) were the strappado or pulley, and the aselli or water torment. The strappado was a device that used ropes to strap a person in by their arms and legs, and then weights were attached to the end of these ropes. The person would be raised up and then the ropes with the weights would be released. This created a situation in which the body was forced to stretch painfully, sometimes enough to produce death. The aselli was carried out as a person was brought to lay down on a trestle with sharp-edged rungs and an iron band to secure them with. Their feet would be elevated above their heads and then they would have a small piece of cloth forced into the throat.
Using a jar, they would pour water into the mouth and nose creating a state of semi-suffocation. The process would be done repeatedly. While pouring the water, the chords binding the limbs would be tightened until it seemed the veins would explode (Roth, 1964), but sometimes a break would be taken from the torture. If the torture were stopped it could not be started again, according to the rules of the church, but if only a break was taken then the torture could be resumed at a later time. These types of torture were used to press confessions from the accused heretics. The accusers would try to force the accused into admitting to committing some atrocious act, even going so far as to accuse them of killing Christian children when no body or evidence could be found, and if the admission was found to be heinous enough, the accused could be put to death. This usually involved burning at the stake, sometimes with dry wood, sometimes with green wood, depending on the accusation and whether or not the accused would profess to believing in the Catholic Christ.
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With more than 200,000 Jewish Spaniards forced out the country, it seems clear that the intent of the purification had more to do with ethnicity then it did with religion. Because the Church gave authority to the crown to control this religious purification it lost some of its power in Spain. The Spanish crown gained influence over the church with its power and it could be posited that this in many ways influenced many later activities in the Age of Exploration and on into the conquests in the Americas and the ways the natives were treated. It does not seem so far off to say that the above illustrated Spanish tendency to turn on those that appear less civilized, meaning less Christian, were to be regularly exploited and the results, riches and land, were to be used by the Spanish for their own desires. The Inquisition began in 1478 but did not officially end until 1808. During that time over 300, 000 people were burned to death (Roth, 1964).
There were other minorities that were persecuted, but the majority of those burned and killed were Jews. It can be said that Queen Isabella initiated the Inquisition for the purity of faith, nation and people, but it seems more apparent that the spoils of such an undertaking were more appealing than anything else. The materialistic desires of the aristocracy seem almost to out-shadow the religious piety that was the supposed motivation for the continued killing and torture. Money, and the ability to finance and keep the states functioning through war and conquest, seems to be the most important theme throughout the period between 1400 and 1800. It makes sense, then, that the Inquisition, though it may have begun as a means of religious purification, turned into a means of income for the crown and also helped to satisfy the desire to be as “pure” as possible by either expelling or killing those who were not Christian.
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The Spanish Inquisition officially started in the mid- to late- fourteen hundreds. The Spanish Inquisition was a country wide persecution of Jews for which there are several different reasons as to why it began. The actual reason, or reasons, that motivated the King and Queen are not known at this time, and may never be known for sure. Depending on whom you ask, there are different reasons of that ...
Bibliography:
Bibliography Glick,Thomas F. From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle. United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 1995.
Hope, Thomas. Torquemada: Scourge of the Jews. Great Britian: Unwin Brothers Unltd., 1939. Johnson, Matthew & Dirksen, Nathaniel. The Spanish Inquisition’s Effect on the Church. 1996 http://www.overlake.org/projects/inquisitor.html Plaidy, Jean.
The Spanish Inquisition. New York: Citadel Press, 1967..
