"Spanish Inquisition Dominican Monk (black hooded) persecutors/killers/spies against Jews and Moslems and heretics"
The "problem" is that many inquisitors (with Torquemada top of the list) were Maranos (Jews converted to Catholicism). Along the history this thing will have been repeated too often, especially in the WW2, Jews killing their own folks and of course, throwing the blame on other nations. Okay, let's remember this thread is about JENNIFER ANISTON and try not to get sidetracked too horribly, but just a quick sidenote on the Inquisition of Spain:
A. The Jews converted (FORCIBLY CONVERTED UNDER THREAT OF DEATH, TORTURE AND EXPULSION BY THE CATHOLICS TO THEM AND THEIR CHILDREN) were called "
conversos" by the Spanish establishment, not "maranos" (actually "marranos") which means "swine" in Spanish and was the sick name-slur given to Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism or were suspected of secretly remaining Jewish and only outwardly practicing Catholicism. Moslems were also labeled "marranos" by the Spanish.
B. Spain's Catholic religious hierarchy and Spanish aristocratic/royal regime forcibly expelled all Jews and Moslems, burned thousands alive in "auto da fe"s and tortured thousands more. Portugal followed suit some years later.
C. The Vatican and Spanish priests/monks/collaborators were the persecutors, athe Jews, Moslems and "heretics" the victims. Any questions, folks? It's not rocket science, and pretty straightforward, though ghastly and genocidal.
D. Ironically, the black hooded dress, rituals and antics of the Spanish Dominican Order and "holy" Catholic, wealthy aristocracy strongly smack of black magic ritualism and Satanism.
More on the Spanish Inquisition:
Spanish Inquisition
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The seal of the Spanish Inquisition depicts the cross, the branch and the sword.The Spanish Inquisition was an ecclesiastical tribunal started in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the medieval inquisition which was under papal control, and was considered too lenient. The Inquisition worked in large part to ensure the orthodoxy of recent converts, especially Jews, Muslims, and others coerced on pain of death to adopt the Christian religion. Various motives have been proposed for the monarchs' decision to found the Inquisition, such as increasing political authority, weakening opposition, doing away with conversos and profit from confiscating the property of convicted heretics.
The new body was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II.
The Inquisition, as an ecclesiastical tribunal, had jurisdiction only over baptized Christians. This included those who practiced forms of Christianity other than Catholicism, and at the time were considered heretics by Catholic Church and newly formed Spanish kingdoms
Contents [hide]
1 Precedents
1.1 Background
2 Activity of the Inquisition
2.1 The start of the Inquisition
2.2 Expulsion of Jews and Repression of Conversos
2.3 Repression of Moriscos
2.3.1 Demographic consequences
2.4 Repression of Protestants
2.5 Censorship
2.6 Other offenses
2.6.1 Witchcraft
2.6.2 Blasphemy
2.6.3 Bigamy
2.6.4 Sodomy
2.6.5 Freemasonry
3 Organization
4 Composition of the tribunals
5 Functioning of the inquisition
5.1 Accusation
5.2 Detention
5.3 The trial
5.4 Torture
5.5 Sentencing
5.6 The Autos de Fe
6 End of the Inquisition
7 Outcomes
7.1 Confiscations
7.2 Death tolls
7.2.1 Henningsen-Contreras statistics for the period 1540-1700
8 Historiography
8.1 Professional historians
8.2 Modern Scholarship
9 The Spanish Inquisition in the Arts
9.1 Literature
9.2 Film
9.3 Theatre, music, and television
9.4 Other
10 In Language
11 See also
12 References and footnotes
13 Further reading
14 External links
[edit] Precedents
An inquisition was created through papal bull, Ad Abolendam, issued at the end of the 12th century by Pope Lucius III as a way to combat the Albigensian heresy in southern France. There were a huge number of tribunals of the Papal Inquisition in various European kingdoms during the Middle Ages. 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. Its principal representative was Raimundo de Peñafort. With time, its importance was diluted, and, by the middle of the 15th century, it was almost forgotten although still there according to the law.
There was never a tribunal of the Papal Inquisition in Castile. Members of the episcopate were charged with surveillance of the faithful and punishment of transgressors. During the Middle Ages, in Castile, little attention was paid to heresy by the Catholic ruling class. Jews and Muslims were tolerated and generally allowed to follow their traditional laws and customs in domestic matters. However, by law, they were considered inferior to Catholics and were subject to discriminatory legislation.
[edit] Background
The Spanish Inquisition can be seen as an answer to the multi-religious nature of Spanish society following the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Moors (Muslims). For over 500 years, much of the Iberian Peninsula was dominated by the Moors following their invasion of the peninsula in 711 until the early thirteenth century. Following the Christian victory at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212), and the fall of Cordoba (1236) and Seville (1248) most of peninsula came under Christian rule. Only the small region of Granada remained under Muslim rule which ended with a final Christian victory in 1492. However, in the medieval period the Reconquista did not result in the expulsion of Muslims from Spain, since they, along with Jews, were tolerated (although treated as inferiors) by the ruling Catholic elite. Large cities, especially Seville, Valladolid and Barcelona, had significant Jewish populations centered in "Judería".
translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call&ei=1OPASaX0CIGEsQOc4P0v&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3DJuder%25C3%25ADas%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26hs%3DABa. .[1]
Post-reconquest medieval Spain has been characterized by Americo Castro and some other Iberianists as a society of "convivencia," that is relatively peaceful co-existence, albeit punctuated by occasional conflict among the ruling Catholics and the subject Jews and Muslims. However, as Henry Kamen notes, "so-called convivencia was always a relationship between unequals."[2] 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 to be Court Astronomer. Nevertheless, in some parts of Spain towards the end of the 14th century, there was a wave of violent anti-Judaism, encouraged by the preaching of Ferrant Martinez, Archdeacon of Ecija. The pogroms of June 1391 were especially bloody: in Seville, hundreds of Jews were killed, and the synagogue was completely destroyed. The number of people killed was also high in other cities, such as Córdoba, Valencia and Barcelona.[3]
One of the consequences of these pogroms was the mass conversion of Jews. Although the forcibly baptized could legally return to Judaism, after the hundreds of murders, many of the converted "felt it safer to remain in their new religion."[4] Thus after 1391 a new social group appeared: conversos, also called New Christians. Many conversos, now freed from the antisemitic restrictions imposed on Jewish employment, attained important positions in 15th century Spain, including in the government and the Church. Among many others, physicians Andrés Laguna and Francisco Lopez Villalobos (Ferdinand's court physician), writers Juan del Enzina, Juan de Mena, Diego de Valera and Alonso de Palencia, and bankers Luis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez (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.[5] Some even received titles of nobility, and as a result, during the following century some works attempted to demonstrate that virtually all of the nobles of Spain were descended from Israelites.[6]
[edit] Activity of the Inquisition
[edit] The start of the Inquisition
Alonso de Hojeda, a Dominican from Seville, convinced Queen Isabel of the existence of Crypto-Judaism among Andalusian conversos during her stay in Seville between 1477 and 1478.[7] A report, produced by Pedro González de Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville, and by the Segovian Dominican Tomás de Torquemada, corroborated this assertion.
The monarchs decided to introduce the Inquisition to Castile to discover and execute crypto-Jews, and requested the Pope's assent. "In 1498 the pope was still trying 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."[8] Ferdinand pressured Sixtus IV by threatening to withdraw military support at a time when the Turks were threating Catholic Europe. On November 1, 1478, Pope Sixtus IV published the bill Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus, through which the Inquisition was established in the Kingdom of Castile. The bill also gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors. The first two inquisitors, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín were not named, however, until two years later, on September 27, 1480 in Medina del Campo.
The first auto de fe was held in Seville on February 6, 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 Aragon, affirming that,
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.[9]
In 1483, Jews were expelled from all of Andalusia. Ferdinand pressured the Pope[10] to promulgate a new bull on October 17, 1483, naming Tomás de Torquemada Inquisidor General of Aragón, Valencia and Catalonia. Torquemada established the procedures for the Inquistion. 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 employed torture to extract a confession. Some of the crypto-Jews would be allowed to confess and do penance, while others were burned at the stake.[11]
In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII attempted to allow appeals to Rome against the Inquisition, 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.[12] 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. However, the cities of Aragón continued resisting, and even saw revolt, as in Teruel from 1484 to 1485. However, the murder of Inquisidor Pedro Arbués in Zaragoza on September 15, 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; Henry Kamen estimates about 2,000 executed, based on the documentation of the Autos de 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.[13]
[edit] Expulsion of Jews and Repression of Conversos
The Spanish Inquisition had been set up in part to prevent conversos from engaging in Jewish practices, which, as Christians, they were supposed to have given up. However this remedy for securing the orthodoxy of conversos' religion 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."[14]. The decree of expulsion was issued in January 1492. The number of Jews who left Spain is not even approximately known. Historians of the period give extremely high figures: Juan de Mariana speaks of 800,000 people, and Don Isaac Abravanel of 300,000. Modern estimates are much lower: Henry Kamen estimates that, of a population of approximately 80,000 Jews, about one half or 40,000 chose emigration.[15] The Jews of the kingdom of Castile emigrated mainly to Portugal (from where they were expelled in 1497) and to Morocco. However, according to Henry Kamen, the Jews of the kingdom of Aragon, went "to adjacent Christian lands, mainly to Italy," rather than to Muslim lands as is often assumed.[16] Much later the Sefardim, descendants of Spanish Jews, established communities in many cities of Europe, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire.
Jews were baptised in the three months before the deadline for expulsion, some 40,000 if one accepts the totals given by Kamen: most of these undoubtedly to avoid expulsion, rather than a sincere change of faith. These conversos were the principal concern of the Inquisition; continuing to practice Judaism put them at risk of denunciation and trial.
The most intense period of persecution of conversos lasted until 1530. From 1531 to 1560, however, 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 16th century. At the beginning of the 17th century, some conversos who had fled to Portugal began to return to Spain, fleeing the persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition, founded in 1532. 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 de Fe in Majorca, 36 chuetas, or conversos of Majorca, were burned.
During the 18th century the number of conversos accused by the Inquisition decreased significantly. Manuel Santiago Vivar, tried in Cordoba in 1818, was the last person tried for being a crypto-Jew.
There are differring views on the total number of Jews or conversos burnt at the stake by the Inquisition: Juan Antonio Llorente, writing in the 19th century, put the total number of those executed by the Inquisition at 32,000. This estimation has long been discredited by scholars on the Inquisition, and the generally accepted number today (including all categories such as Protestants, Blasphemers, Bigamists along with crypto-jews) is below 5,000 (see below).
[edit] Repression of Moriscos
The Inquisition did not exclusively target Jewish conversos (marranos) and Protestants, but also the Moriscos, converts to Catholicism from Islam. The Moriscos were mostly concentrated in the recently conquered kingdom of Granada, in Aragon, and in Valencia. Officially, all Muslims in the Crown of Castile had been converted to Christianity in 1502. Muslims in the Crown of Aragon were obliged to convert by Charles I's decree of 1526, as most had been forcibly baptized during the Revolt of the Brotherhoods (1519–1523) and these baptisms were declared to be valid.
Many Moriscos were suspected of practicing Islam in secret, and the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion.[17] Initially they were not severely persecuted by the Inquisition, but experienced a policy of peaceful evangelization, a policy not followed with those conversos who were suspected of being crypto-Jews. There were various reasons for this. Most importantly, 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.[18] 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 1568–1570 Morisco Revolt in Granada was harshly suppressed, and the Inquisition intensified its attention to 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.[19] Still, according to Kamen, the Moriscos did not experience the same harshness as judaizing conversos and Protestants, and the number of capital punishments was proportionally less.[20]
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, some of them probably sincere Christians. 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.[21] 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.'[22] So successful was the enterprise, in the space of months, Spain was emptied of its Moriscos. Expelled were the Moriscos of Aragon, Murcia, Catalonia, Castile, Mancha and Extremadura. As for the Moriscos of Granada, such as the Herrador family who held positions in the Church and magistracy, they still had to struggle against exile and confiscation.[23]
An indeterminate number of Moriscos remained in Spain and, during the 17th century, the Inquisition pursued some trials against them of minor importance: according to Kamen, between 1615 and 1700, cases against Moriscos constituted only 9 percent of those judged by the Inquisition.
[edit] Demographic consequences
In December 2008, a genetic study of the current population of the Iberian Peninsula, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, estimated that about 10% have North-African as ancestors and 20% have Sephardi Jews as ancestors. Since there is no direct link between genetic makeup and religious affiliation, however, it is difficult to draw direct conclusions between their findings and forced or voluntary conversion[24]. Nevertheless, the Sephardic result is in contradiction [25][26][27][28][29] or not replicated in all the body of genetic studies done in Iberia and has been later questioned by the authors themselves [30][31][32][33] and by Stephen Oppenheimer who estimates that much earlier migrations, 5000 to 10,000 years ago from the Eastern Mediterranean might also have accounted for the Sephardic estimates: "They are really assuming that they are looking at his migration of Jewish immigrants, but the same lineages could have been introduced in the Neolithic"[34]. The rest of genetic studies done in Spain estimate the Moorish contribution ranging from 2.5/3.4%[35] to 7.7%[36].
[edit] Repression of Protestants
Despite much popular myth about the Inquisition relating to Protestants, it dealt with very few cases involving actual Protestants, as there were so few in Spain. According to Kamen, only about 200 Spaniards were accused of being Protestants in the last decades of the sixteenth 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.”[37]
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 (which is striking because both Charles I and Philip II of Spain were confessed admirers of Erasmus). Such was the case with the humanist Juan de Valdés, who was forced to flee to Italy to escape the process that had been begun against him, and the preacher, Juan de Ávila, who spent close to a year in prison.
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.[38] The trials signaled a notable intensification of the Inquisition's activities. A number Autos de Fe were held, some of them presided over by members of the royal family.[39] After 1562, though the trials continued, the repression was much reduced, and it is estimated that a dozen Spaniards were burned alive for Lutheranism by the end of the 16th century, although some 200 faced trial.[40] The Autos de Fe of the mid-century virtually put an end to Spanish Protestantism which was, throughout, a small phenomenon to begin with - last remainders claimed to have survived in Netanya, Israel in the form of secluded orders, led by Irene Molochovski.
[edit] Censorship
An image frequently misinterpreted as the Spanish Inquisition burning prohibited books. This is actually Pedro Berruguete's La Prueba del Fuego (1400s). It depicts a legend of St Dominic's dispute with the Cathars: they both consign their writings into the flames, and while the Cathars' text burns, St Dominic's miraculously leaps from the flames.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 Louvain in 1550, with an appendix dedicated to Spanish texts. Subsequent Indexes were published in 1559, 1583, 1612, 1632, and 1640. The Indexes included an enormous number of books of all types, though special attention was dedicated to religious works, and, particularly, vernacular translations of the bible.
Included in the Indexes, at one point, were many of the great works of Spanish literature. Also, 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 only to be 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. However, 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; however, 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 remainder of the text's sound dogma. 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, such as Henry Kamen, 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 repeated publication of the Indexes and a large bureaucracy of censors, the activities of the Inquisition did not impede the flowering 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 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 with 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.
In addition to censorship, the Inquisition also had a campaign to destroy books. In Salamanca near the end of the fifteenth century, more than sixteen thousand books were burned in a single auto de fe.
Some scholars indicate that one of the main effects of the inquisition was to end free thought and scientific thought in Spain. As one contemporary Spanish in exile put it: "Our country is a land of ... barbarism; down there one cannot produce any culture without being suspected of heresy, error and Judaism. Thus silence was imposed on the learned." For the next few centuries, while the rest of Europe was slowly awakened by the influence the Enlightenment, Spain was to remain stagnant.[41] However, this conclusion is contested. The censorship of the books was actually very ineffective and prohibited books circulated in Spain without significant problems. Spanish Inquisition never persecuted scientists and relatively small number of scientific books were placed on Index. On the other hand, Spain was a state with more political freedom than in other absolute monarchies in 16th–18h centuries. The backwardness of Spain in the economy and science can hardly be atributed to the Inquisition.[42]
[edit] Other offenses
Two priests demand a heretic to repent as he is tortured.Although the Inquisition was created to suppress heresy, it also occupied itself with a wide variety of offences that only indirectly could be related to religious heterodoxy. Of a total of 49,092 trials from the period 1560–1700 registered in the archive of the Suprema, appear the following: judaizantes (5,007); moriscos (11,311); Lutherans (3,499); alumbrados (149); superstitions (3,750); heretical propositions (14,319); bigamy (2,790); solicitation (1,241); offences against the Holy Office of the Inquisition (3,954); miscellaneous (2,575).[citation needed]
These data demonstrate that not only New Christians (conversos of Jewish or Islamic descent) and Protestants faced investigation, but also Old Christians could be targeted for various reasons.
[edit] Witchcraft
The category "superstitions" includes trials related to witchcraft. The witch-hunt in Spain had much less intensity than in other European countries (particularly France, England, and Germany). One remarkable case was that of Logroño, in which the witches of Zugarramurdi in Navarre were persecuted. During the auto de fé that took place in Logroño on November 7 and November 8, 1610, 6 people were burned and another 5 burned in effigy.[43] In general, nevertheless, the Inquisition maintained a sceptical attitude towards cases of witchcraft, considering it as a mere superstition without any basis. Alonso de Salazar Frías, who, after the trials of Logroño took the Edict of Faith to various parts of Navarre, noted in his report to the Suprema that, "There were no witches nor bewitched in the region after beginning to speak and write about them".[44]
[edit] 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 without the explicit aim of procreation) was not a sin or for putting in doubt different aspects of Christian faith such as Transubstantiation or the virginity of Mary. Also, members of the clergy itself were occasionally accused of heretical propositions. These offences rarely lead to severe penalties.
[edit] Bigamy
The Inquisition also pursued offences against morals, at times in open conflict with the jurisdictions of civil tribunals. In particular, there were numerous trials for bigamy, a relatively frequent offence in a society that only permitted divorce under the most extreme circumstances. In the case of men, the penalty was five years in the galley (tantamount to a death sentence). Women too were accused of bigamy. Also, many cases of solicitation during confession were adjudicated, indicating a strict vigilance over the clergy.
[edit] Sodomy
Inquisitorial repression of the sexual offence of sodomy, considered, according to Canon Law, as a crime against nature, merits separate attention. This included some cases of homosexuality, rape, and separately bestiality. Civil authorities executed those convicted.
In 1506 at Seville the Inquisition made a special investigation into sodomy, causing many arrests and many fugitives and burning 12 persons, but in 1509 the Suprema in Castile declared that crime not within the jurisdiction of the Inquisition deciding that cases of sodomy could not be adjudicated, unless related to heresy. Alleging that sodomy had been introduced to Spain by the Moors, in 1524 the Spanish Ambassador to Rome obtained a special commission from Clement VII for the Holy Office to curb its spread by investigating laymen and clergy in the territories of Aragon, whether or not it was related to heresy; and proceeding according to local, municipal law in spite of the resistance by local bishops to this usurpation of their authority.
The tribunal of Zaragoza distinguished itself for its severity in judging these offences: between 1571—1579, 101 men accused of sodomy were processed and at least 35 were executed. In total, between 1570 and 1630 there were 534 trials (incl. 187 for homosexuality, 245 for bestiality, and 111 with unknown specification of the charges) with 102 executions (incl. 27 for homosexuality, 64 for bestiality and 11 uncertain cases).
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. [45] A growing reluctance to convict those who, unlike heretics, could not escape by confession and penance led after 1630 to greater leniency. Torture decreased: in Valencia 21% of sodomites were tortured prior to 1630, but only 4% afterwards. The last execution in persona for sodomy by the Inquisition took place in Zaragoza in April 1633. In total, out of about 1,000 convicted of sodomy - 170 were actually burnt at the stake, including 84 condemned for bestiality and 75 for homosexuality, with 11 cases where the exact character of the charges is not known.
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 ca. 12 years) or when the case clearly concerned rape, where they had a chance in avoiding 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 percent of death sentences[46].
[edit] Freemasonry
In 1815, Francisco Xavier 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.”[47] He then instituted a purge during which Spaniards could be arrested on the charge of being “suspected of Freemasonry”.[47]
[edit] 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.
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, save 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 cases of sodomy, bigamy, witchcraft, etc.[48]
Below the Suprema were the different tribunals of the Inquisition, which were, in their origins, itinerant, installing themselves where they were necessary to combat heresy, but later being established in fixed locations. In 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 Cordoba.
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).[49] Ferdinand the Catholic also established the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily (1513), housed in Palermo and Sardinia, in the town of Sassari.[50] In the Americas, tribunals were established in Lima and in Mexico City (1569) and, in 1610, in Cartagena de Indias (present day Colombia).
[edit] Composition of the tribunals
Initially, each of the tribunals included two inquisitors, a calificador, an alguacil (bailiff) and a fiscal (prosecutor); new positions were added as the institution matured.
The inquisitors were preferably jurists more than theologians, and, in 1608, Philip III even stipulated that all the inquisitors must 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.[51] Most of the inquisitors belonged to the secular clergy (priests who were not members of religious orders), and had a university education. Pay was 60,000 maravedíes at the end of the 15th century, and 250,000 maravedíes at the beginning of the 17th century.[citation needed]
The fiscal was in charge of presenting the accusation, investigating the denunciations and interrogating the witnesses. The calificadores were generally theologians; it fell to them to determine if the defendant's conduct constituted 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 Secreto), 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: he was responsible for detaining and jailing the defendant. Other civil employees were the nuncio, ordered to spread official notices of the court, and the alcaide, 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 honour, 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 many 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 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 memorial 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."[52]
[edit] Functioning of the inquisition
The Inquisition operated in conformity with Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church; its operations were in no way arbitrary. Its procedures were set out in various Instrucciones issued by the successive Inquisitors General, Torquemada, Deza, and Valdés.
[edit] 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 (approximately one month) were offered the possibility of reconciliation with the Church without severe punishment. The promise of benevolence was effective, and many voluntarily presented themselves to the Inquisition. But self-incrimination was not sufficient: one also had to accuse all one's accomplices. As a result, the Inquisition had an unending supply of informants. With time, the Edicts of Grace were replaced by the Edicts of Faith, doing away with the possibility of quick, painless reconciliation.
The denunciations were anonymous, and the defendants had no way of knowing the identities of their accusers.[53] 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, resulting from envy or personal resentments. Many denunciations were for absolutely insignificant reasons. The Inquisition stimulated fear and distrust among neighbours, and denunciations among relatives were not uncommon.
[edit] Detention
After a denunciation, the case was examined by the calificadores (qualifiers), who had to determine if there was heresy involved, followed by detention of the accused. In practice, however, many were detained in preventive custody, and many cases of lengthy incarcerations occurred, lasting up to two years, before the calificadores examined the case.[54]
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 only remedied following instructions written in 1561.
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 civil society, and there are even certain testimonies that occasionally they were much better.[55]Some prisoners died in prison, as was frequent at the time.
[edit] The trial
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. In order to defend themselves, the accused had two possibilities: abonos (to find favourable witnesses) or tachas (to demonstrate that the witnesses of accusers were not trustworthy).
In order to interrogate the accused, the Inquisition made use of torture, but not in a systematic way. It was applied mainly against those suspected of Judaism and Protestantism, beginning in the 16th century. For example, Lea estimates that between 1575 and 1610 the court of Toledo tortured approximately a third of those processed for heresy.[56] In other periods, the proportions varied remarkably. Torture was always a means to obtain the confession of the accused, not a punishment itself. It was applied without distinction of sex or age, including children and the aged.
[edit] Torture
The methods of torture most used by the Inquisition were garrucha, toca and the potro. 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.[57]
The toca, also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua, consisted of introducing a cloth into the mouth of the victim, and forcing them to ingest water spilled from a jar so that they had impression of drowning (see: waterboarding).[58] The potro, the rack, was the instrument of torture used most frequently.[59]The assertion that "confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum" (the confession was true and free) sometimes follows a description of how, presently after torture ended, the subject freely confessed to the offenses.[60]
Some of the torture methods attributed to the Spanish Inquisition were never used. For example, the "Iron Maiden" never existed in Spain, and was a post-Reformation invention of Germany. Thumbscrews on display in an English museum as Spanish were recently argued to be of English origin.
Once the process concluded, the inquisidores met with a representative of the bishop and with the consultores, experts in theology or Canon Law, which was called the consulta de fe. The case was voted and sentence pronounced, which had to be unanimous. In case of discrepancies, the Suprema had to be informed.
[edit] Sentencing
The results of the trial could be the following:
Although quite rare in actual practice, the defendant could be acquitted.
The trial, itself, 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). Suspension was a form of acquittal without specifying that the accusation had been erroneous.
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 the galleys.
The defendant could be reconciled. In addition to the public ceremony in which the condemned was reconciled with the Catholic Church, more severe punishments existed, among them long sentences to jail or the galleys, plus the confiscation of all property. Physical punishments also existed, such as whipping.
The most serious punishment was relaxation to the secular arm, which implied burning at the stake. This penalty was frequently applied to impenitent heretics and those who had relapsed. Execution was public. If the condemned repented, they were shown mercy and they were garroted before the body was given to the flames. 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 employed the death penalty in 40% of the processings before 1530, but later that percentage lowered to 3%).[61]
[edit] The Autos de Fe
For more details on this topic, see Auto de fe.
If the sentence was condemnatory, this implied that the condemned had to participate in the ceremony of an auto de fe, that solemnized their return to the Church (in most cases), or punishment as an impenitent heretic. The autos de fe 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 de fe 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 (in the largest
plaza of the city, frequently), 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 de fe frequently was taken to the canvas by painters: one of the better known examples is the painting by Francesco Rizzi held by the Prado Museum in Madrid and which represents the auto celebrated in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid on June 30, 1680. The last public auto de fe took place in 1691.
The auto de fe involved: a Catholic Mass; prayer; a public procession of those found guilty; and a reading of their sentences (Peters 1988: 93-94). They took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours: ecclesiastical and civil authorities attended.[2] Artistic representations of the auto de fe usually depict torture and the burning at the stake. However, this type of activity never took place during an auto de fe, 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 de fe (Kamen 1997: 192-213), 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.
The first recorded auto de fe was held in Paris in 1242, during the reign of Louis IX([62]. However, the first Spanish auto de fe did not take place until Seville in 1481; six of the men and women that participated in this first religious ritual were later executed.
The Inquisition enjoyed 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 de fe also took place in Mexico, Brazil and Peru: contemporary historians of the Conquistadors such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo record them.
They also occurred 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 728 autos de fe, while in the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV only four condemned were burned.
With the Century of Lights, 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. The latter 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 choir; who are ignorant of foreign languages, who only know a little scholastic theology...[63]
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, it was generally civil censorship and not ecclesiastic that ended up prevailing. This loss of influence can also be explained because the foreign Enlightenment texts entered the peninsula through prominent members of the nobility or government,[64] 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.
However, with the coming of 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...[65]
However, inquisitorial activity was impossible in the face of the information avalanche that crossed the border, seeing in 1792 that,
the multitude of seditious papers... does not allow formalizing the files against those who introduce them...
The fight from within against the Inquisition almost always took place in clandestine form. The first texts that questioned the inquisitorial role 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 and, even, 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, Manuel de Aguirre, in the same vein, wrote, On Toleration in El Censor, El Correo de los Ciegos and El Diario de Madrid.[66]
[edit] End of the Inquisition
During the reign of Charles IV, in spite of the fears that the French Revolution provoked, several events took place that accentuated the decline of the Inquisition. In the first place, the state stopped being a mere social organizer and began to worry about the well-being of the public. As a result, they considered the land-holding power of the Church, in the señoríos and, more generally, in the accumulated wealth that had prevented social progress.[67] On the other hand, the perennial struggle between the power of the throne and the power of the Church, inclined more and more to the former, 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...[68]
In fact, prohibited works circulated freely in the public bookstores of Seville, Salamanca or Valladolid.
The Inquisition was abolished during the domination of Napoleon and the reign of Joseph I (1808–1812). In 1813, the liberal deputies of the Cortes of Cádiz also obtained its abolition[69], 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 July 1, 1814. It was again abolished during the three year Liberal interlude known as the Trienio liberal. Later, during the period known as the Ominous Decade, the Inquisition was not formally re-established,[70] although, de facto, it returned under the so-called Meetings of Faith, tolerated in the dioceses by King Ferdinand. These had the dubious honour of executing the last heretic condemned, the school teacher Cayetano Ripoll, garroted in Valencia on July 26 1826 (presumably for having taught deist principles), all amongst a European-wide scandal at the despotic attitude still prevailing in Spain. 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.
The Inquisition was definitively abolished on July 15, 1834, by a Royal Decree signed by regent Maria Cristina de Borbon, a liberal queen, during the minority of Isabel 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 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 progresists who wanted to reduce the Church's power amongst other reforms to liberalise the economy.
[edit] Outcomes
[edit] Confiscations
It is unknown exactly how much wealth was confiscated from converted Jews and other victims of the Inquisition. Wealth confiscated in one year of persecution in the small town of Guadaloupe paid the costs of building a royal residence. [71] 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 predessor 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 propert
