Prisoners Of Torquemada
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Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. It is well written but should be read only as a fantasy. In real life, the tortures described in the book could lead to serious injuries or worse. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Anti-Jews stereotypes created to justify or prompt the expulsion and expropriation of the European Jews were also applied to Spaniards in most European courts, and the idea of them being "greedy, gold-thirsty, cruel and violent", "like Jews", due to the "Jewish and Moorish blood" was prevalent in Europe before America was discovered by Europeans.
Chronicles by foreign travelers circulated through Europe, describing the tolerant ambiance reigning in the court of Isabela and Ferdinand and how Moors and Jews were free to go about without anyone trying to convert them. Past and common clashes between the Pope and the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, regarding the Inquisition in Castile's case and regarding South Italy in Aragon's case, also reinforced their image of cymatics and heretics in the international courts. These accusations and image could have direct political and military consequences at the time, especially considering that the union two powerful kingdoms were a particularly delicate moment that could prompt the fear and violent reactions from neighbors, even more, if combined with the expansion of the Ottoman Turks on the Mediterranean.
The creation of the Inquisition and the expulsion of both Jews and Moriscos may have been part of a strategy to whitewash the image of Spain and ease international fears regarding Spain's allegiance. In this scenario, the creation of the Inquisition could have been part of the catholic's Monarch strategy to " turn" away from African allies and "towards" Europe, a tool to turn both actual Spain and Spanish image more European and improve relations with the Pope. No matter if any of the previous hypothesis was already operating in the minds of the monarchs, the alleged discovery of Morisco plots to support a possible Ottoman invasion were crucial factors in their decision to create the Inquisition.
At this point in time, the Ottoman Empire was in expansion and making its power noticeable in the Mediterranean and North Africa. At the same time, the Aragonese Mediterranean Empire was crumbling under debt and war exhaustion. Ferdinand reasonably feared that he would not be capable of repelling an Ottoman attack to Spain's shores, especially if the Ottomans had internal help. The regions with the highest concentration of Moriscos were those close to the common naval crossings between Spain and Africa.
If the weakness of the Aragonese Naval Empire was combined with the resentment of the higher nobility against the monarchs, the dynastic claims of Portugal on Castile and the two monarch's exterior politic that turned away from Morocco and other African nations in favor of Europe, the fear of a second Muslim invasion - and thus a second Muslim occupation was hardly unfounded. This fear may have been the base reason for the expulsion of those citizens who had either a religious reason to support the invasion of the Ottomans Moriscos or no particular religious reason to not do it Jews.
The Inquisition might have been part of the preparations to enforce these measurements and ensure their effectiveness by rooting out false converts that would still pose a threat of foreign espionage. In favor of this view there is the obvious military sense it makes, and the many early attempts of peaceful conversion and persuasion that the Monarchs used at the beginning of their reign, and the sudden turn towards the creation of the Inquisition and the edicts of expulsion when those initial attempts failed.
The conquest of Naples by the Gran Capitan is also proof of an interest in Mediterranean expansion and re-establishment of Spanish power in that sea that was bound to generate frictions with the Ottoman Empire and other African nations. So, the Inquisition would have been created as a permanent body to prevent the existence of citizens with religious sympathies with African nations now that rivalry with them had been deemed unavoidable.
The creation of the Spanish Inquisition would be consistent with the most important political philosophers of the Florentine School , with whom the kings were known to have contact Guicciardini , Pico della Mirandola , Machiavelli , Segni, Pitti, Nardi, Varchi…. Both Guicciardini and Machiavelli defended the importance of centralization and unification in order top create a strong state capable of repelling foreign invasions, and also warned of the dangers of excessive social uniformity to the creativity and innovation of a nation.
Machiavelli considered piety and morals desirable for the subjects but not so much for the ruler, whom should use them as a way to unify its population. He also warned of the nefarious influence of a corrupt church in the creation of a selfish population and middle nobility, which had fragmented the peninsula and made it unable to resist either France or Aragon. German philosophers at the time were spreading the importance of a vassal to share the religion of their lord.
The Inquisition may have just been the result of putting these ideas into practice. The use of religion as a unifying factor across a land that was allowed to stay diverse and maintain different laws in other respects, and the creation of the Inquisition to enforce laws across it, maintain said religious unity and control the local elites were consistent with most of those teachings. Alternatively, the enforcement of Catholicism across the realm might indeed be the result of simple religious devotion or a belief in a mystic religious ditty by the monarchs.
The recent scholarship on the expulsion of the Jews leans towards the belief of religious motivations being at the bottom of it. Ferdinand was described, among others, by Machiavelli, as "a man who didn't know the meaning of piety, but who made political use of it and would had achieved little if he had really known it. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church had made many attempts during the Middle Ages to take over Christian Spain politically, such as claiming the Church's ownership over all land reconquered from non Christians a claim that was rejected by Castille but accepted by Aragon and Portugal.
In the past, the papacy had tried and partially succeeded, in forcing out of Iberia the mozarabic rite. Its meddling attempts had been pivotal for Aragon's lose of Rosellon. The meddling regarding Aragon's control over South Italy was even stronger historically. In their lifetime, the Catholic Monarchs had problems with Pope Paul II , a very strong proponent of absolute authority of the church over the Kings.
Carrillo actively opposed them both and often used Spain's "mixed blood" as an excuse to intervene. The papacy and the monarch of Europe had been involved in a war for power all through the high Middle Ages that Rome had already won in other powerful kingdoms like France. Since the legitimacy granted by the church was necessary both, especially Isabella, to stay in power, the creation of the Spanish Inquisition may have been a way to apparently concede to the Pope's demands and criticism regarding Spain's mixed religious heritage, while at the same time ensuring that the Pope could hardly force the second inquisition of his own, and at the same time create a tool to control the power of the Roman Church in Spain.
The Spanish Inquisition was unique at the time because it did not depend on the Pope in the slightest. Once the bull of creation was granted the head of the inquisition was the Monarch of Spain. It was in charge of enforcing the laws of the king regarding religion and other private-life matters, not of following orders from Rome, from which was independent.
This independence allowed the Inquisition to investigate, prosecute and convict clergy for both corruptions pedophilia , forgery of documents.. The inquisition was, despite of its title of "Holy", not formed necessarily by clergy but secular lawyers were equally welcome to it. If it was an attempt at keeping Rome out of Spain, it was an extremely successful and refined one. It was a bureaucratic body which had the nominal authority of the church and permission to prosecute members of the church, which the kings couldn't do while responding only to the Spanish Crown.
This did not prevent the Pope from having influence on the decisions of Spanish monarchs of course, but it forced the influence to be through the kings and made direct influence very difficult. Fray Alonso de Ojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville, convinced Queen Isabella of the existence of Crypto-Judaism among Andalusian conversos during her stay in Seville between and Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella requested a papal bull establishing an inquisition in Spain in in response to the conversos returning to the practice of Judaism. Pope Sixtus IV granted a bull permitting the monarchs to select and appoint two or three priests over forty years of age to act as inquisitors.
Torquemada eventually assumed the title of Inquisitor-General. Madden describes the world that formed medieval politics: Yes, you read that correctly. Heresy was a crime against the state. Roman law in the Code of Justinian made it a capital offense. Rulers, whose authority was believed to come from God, had no patience for heretics". Ferdinand II of Aragon pressured Pope Sixtus IV to agree to an Inquisition controlled by the monarchy by threatening to withdraw military support at a time when the Turks were a threat to Rome. The pope issued a bull to stop the Inquisition but was pressured into withdrawing it.
On 1 November , Sixtus published the Papal bull , Exigit Sinceras Devotionis Affectus , through which he gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors in their kingdoms. From there, the Inquisition grew rapidly in the Kingdom of Castile. By , tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities: According to the book A History of the Jewish People , [41].
In the pope was still trying to maintain control over the Inquisition and 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. In , Jews were expelled from all of Andalusia. Though the pope wanted to crack down on abuses, Ferdinand pressured him to promulgate a new bull, threatening that he would otherwise separate the Inquisition from Church authority.
Torquemada quickly established procedures for the Inquisition. 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 physical torture to extract confessions. Crypto-Jews were allowed to confess and do penance, although those who relapsed were burned at the stake.
In , Pope Innocent VIII attempted to allow appeals to Rome against the Inquisition, but Ferdinand in December and again in decreed death and confiscation for anyone trying to make use of such procedures without royal permission. The Inquisition was extremely active between and He offers striking statistics: The Inquisition had jurisdiction only over Christians. It had no power to investigate, prosecute, or convict Jews, Muslims, or any open member of other religion. Anyone who was known to identify as either Jew or Muslim was outside of Inquisitorial jurisdiction and could only be trialed by the King.
All the inquisition could do in some of those cases was to deport the individual according to the King's law, but usually, even that had to go through a Civil Tribunal.
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The Inquisition only had power to trial those who self-identified as Christians initially for taxation purposes, later to avoid deportation well while practicing another religion de facto. Even those were treated as Christians. If they confessed or identified not as "judeizantes" but as fully practicing Jews, they fell back into the previously explained category and could not be targeted they would have pleaded guilty to lying about being Christians previously though. The Spanish Inquisition had been established 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 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. The Alhambra Decree , issued in January , gave the choice between expulsion and conversion. It was among the few expulsion orders that allowed conversion as an alternative and is used as a proof of the religious, not racial, element of the measure.
The enforcement of this decree was very unequal however, with the focus mainly on coastal and southern regions-those at risk of Ottoman invasion- and a more gradual and inefective enforcement towards the interior. Historic accounts of the numbers of Jews who left Spain were based on speculation, and some aspects were exaggerated by early accounts and historians: Juan de Mariana speaks of , people, and Don Isaac Abravanel of , While few reliable statistics exist for the expulsion, modern estimates based on tax returns and population estimates of communities are much lower, with Kamen stating that, of a population of approximately 80, Jews and , conversos , about 40, emigrated.
The Jews of the kingdom of Aragon fled to other Christian areas including Italy, rather than to Muslim lands as is often assumed. The most intense period of persecution of conversos lasted until There was a rebound of persecutions when a group of crypto-Jews was discovered in Quintanar de la Orden in ; and there was a rise in denunciations of conversos in the last decade of the sixteenth century. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, some conversos who had fled to Portugal began to return to Spain, fleeing the persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition , founded in This led to a rapid increase in the trials of crypto-Jews, among them a number of important financiers.
During the eighteenth century the number of conversos accused by the Inquisition decreased significantly. The Inquisition searched for false or relapsed converts among the Moriscos , who had converted from Islam. Beginning with a decree on February 14, , Muslims in Granada had to choose between conversion to Christianity or expulsion. It is important to note that the enforcement of the expulsion of the moriscos was enforced really unevenly, especially in the lands of the interior and the north, where the coexistence had lasted for over five centuries and moriscos were protected by the population, and orders were partially or completely ignored.
Many Moriscos were suspected of practising Islam in secret, and the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion. There were various reasons for this.
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. Most importantly, the moriscos had integrated in the Spanish society way better than the jews, intermarrying with the population often, and were not seen as a foreign element, especially in rural areas.
2. The Rise, The Growth and The End of the Spanish Inquisition by Jean Plaidy
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 Morisco Revolt in Granada in — was harshly suppressed, and the Inquisition intensified its attention on 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. Of those permanently expelled, the majority finally settled in the Maghreb or the Barbary coast. The Inquisition pursued some trials against Moriscos who remained or returned after expulsion: Upon the coronation of Philip IV in , the new king gave the order to desist from attempting to impose measures on remaining Moriscos and returnees.
In September the Council of the Supreme Inquisition ordered inquisitors in Seville not to prosecute expelled Moriscos "unless they cause significant commotion. By the end of the 18th century, the indigenous practice of Islam is considered to have been effectively extinguished in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition had jurisdiction only over Christians.
As such, those who self-identified as Christians could be investigated and trialed by it. Those in the group of "heretics" were all subject to investigation. All forms of heretic Christianity Protestants, Orthodox, blaspheming Catholics, etc. Despite popular myths about the Spanish Inquisition relating to Protestants, it dealt with very few cases involving actual Protestants, as there were so few in Spain. Lutheran was a portmanteau accusation used by the Inquisition to act against all those who acted in a way that was offensive to the church. 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. The first trials against Lutheran groups, as such, took place between and , at the beginning of the reign of Philip II, against two communities of Protestants from the cities of Valladolid and Seville, numbering about After , though the trials continued, the repression was much reduced.
About Spaniards were accused of being Protestants in the last decades of the 16th century.
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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. It is estimated that a dozen Spaniards were burned alive. It is important to notice that Protestantism and Anglicanism were treated as a marker to identify agents of foreign powers and symptoms of political disloyalty as much, if not more, than as a cause of prosecution in itself. Religion, patriotism, obedience to the king and personal beliefs were not seen as separate aspects of life until the end of the Modern Age.
Spain especially had a long tradition of using self-identified religion as a political and cultural marker, and expression of loyalty to a specific overlord, more than as an accurate description of personal beliefs -here the common accusation of heretics they received from Rome. In that note, accusations or prosecutions due to beliefs held by enemy countries must be seen as political accusations regarding political treason more than as religious ones. Other times the accusation of Protestantism was considered as an equivalent of blasphemy, just a general way of addressing insubordination.
Even though the Inquisition had theoretical permission to investigate Orthodox "heretics", it almost never did. There was no major war between Spain and any Orthodox nation, so there was no reason to do so. There was one casualty tortured by those "Jesuits" though most likely, Franciscans who administered the Spanish Inquisition in North America, according to authorities within the Eastern Orthodox Church ,: Even that single report has various numbers of inaccuracies that make it problematic, and has no confirmation in the Inquisitorial archives.
The category "superstitions" includes trials related to witchcraft. The witch-hunt in Spain had much less intensity than in other European countries particularly France, Scotland, and Germany. Well after the foundation of the inquisition, jurisdiction over sorcery and witchcraft remained in secular hands. 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 between unmarried persons was not a sin or for putting in doubt different aspects of Christian faith such as Transubstantiation or the virginity of Mary.
These offences rarely led to severe penalties. Nearly all of almost 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 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. 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 percentage of death sentences.
It is important to notice that cases of sodomy did not receive the same treatment in all areas of Spain. In the Kingdom of Castile crimes of sodomy were not investigated by the Inquisition unless they were associated with religious heresy In other words, the sodomy itself was investigated only as, and when, considered a symptom of a heretic belief or practice.
In any other area cases were considered an issue of civil authorities, and even then was not very actively investigated. The Crown of Aragon was the only area in which they were considered under the Inquisitorial jurisdiction, probably due to the previous presence of the Pontifical Inquisition in that kingdom.
Within the Crown of Aragon, the tribunal of the city of Zaragoza was famously harsh even at the time. It was seen as a symptom of them more than as a condition or peculiarity in itself. The Roman Catholic Church has regarded Freemasonry as heretical since about ; the suspicion of Freemasonry was potentially a capital offense. Spanish Inquisition records reveal two prosecutions in Spain and only a few more throughout the Spanish Empire. 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 was, in reality, a reprinting of the Index published by the University of Leuven in , with an appendix dedicated to Spanish texts. Subsequent Indexes were published in , , , , and 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.
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Included in the Indices, 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 then 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 orthodoxy of the remainder of the text. 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 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 the repeated publication of the Indexes and a large bureaucracy of censors, the activities of the Inquisition did not impede the development of Spanish literature's "Siglo de Oro", although almost all of its major authors crossed paths with the Holy Office at one point or another. La Celestina , which was not included in the Indexes of the 16th century , was expurgated in and prohibited in its entirety in Some scholars state that one of the main effects of the inquisition was to end free thought and scientific thought in Spain.
As one contemporary Spaniard in exile put it: Thus silence was imposed on the learned. The censorship of books was actually very ineffective, and prohibited books circulated in Spain without significant problems. The Spanish Inquisition never persecuted scientists , and relatively few scientific books were placed on the Index. On the other hand, Spain was a state with more political freedom than in other absolute monarchies in the 16th to 18th centuries. The apparent paradox gets explained by both the hermeticist religious ideas of the Spanish church and monarchy, and the budding seed of what would become Enlightened absolutism taking shape in Spain.
The list of banned books was not, as interpreted sometimes, a list of evil books but a list of books that lay people were very likely to misinterpret. The presence of highly symbolical and high-quality literature in the list was so explained. These metaphorical or parable sounding books were listed as not meant for free circulation, but there might be no objections to the book itself and the circulation among scholars was mostly free. Most of this books were carefully collected by the elite. The practical totality of the prohibited books can be found now as then in the library of the monasterio del Escorial , carefully collected by Philip II and Philip III.
The collection was "public" after Philip II's death and members of universities, intellectuals, courtesans, clergy, and certain branches of the nobility didn't have too many problems to access them and commission authorised copies. The Inquisition has not been known to make any serious attempt to stop this for all the books, but there are some records of them "suggesting" the King of Spain to stop collecting grimoires or magic related ones.
This attitude was also not new. Translations of the Bible to Castillian and Provenzal Catalan had been made and allowed in Spain since the middle ages. The first preserved copy dates from the XIII century. However, like the bible of Cisneros they were mostly for scholarly use, and it was customary for laymen to ask religious or academic authorities to review the translation and supervise the use.
The Inquisition also pursued offenses against morals and general social order, at times in open conflict with the jurisdictions of civil tribunals. In the case of men, the penalty was two hundred lashes and five to ten years of "service to the Crown". Said service could be whatever the court deemed most beneficial for the nation but it usually was either five years as an oarsman in a royal galley for those without any qualification [90] possibly a death sentence , [91] or ten years working maintained but without salary in a public Hospital or charitable institution of the sort for those with some special skill, such as doctors, surgeons, or lawyers.
Under the category of "unnatural marriage" fell any marriage or attempted marriage between two individuals who could not procreate. The Catholic Church in general, and in particular a nation constantly at war like Spain, [93] [94] emphasised the reproductive goal of marriage. The Spanish Inquisition's policy in this regard was restrictive but applied in a very egalitarian way. It considered unnatural any non-reproductive marriage, and natural any reproductive one, regardless of gender or sex involved.
Female sterility was also a reason to declare a marriage unnatural but was harder to prove. Despite popular belief, the role of the Inquisition as a mainly religious institution, or religious in nature at all, is contested at best. Its main function was that of a private police for the Crown with jurisdiction to enforce the law in those crimes that took place in the private sphere of life. The notion of religion and civil law being separate is a modern construction and made no sense in the XV century, so there was no difference between breaking a law regarding religion and breaking a law regarding tax collection.
The difference between them is a modern projection the institution itself did not have. As such, the Inquisition was the prosecutor in some cases the only prosecutor of any crimes that could be perpetrated without the public taking notice mainly domestic crimes, crimes against the weakest members of society, administrative crimes and forgeries, organized crime, and crimes against the Crown. Examples include crimes associated with sexual or family relations such as rape and sexual violence the Inquisition was the first and only body who punished it across the nation , bestiality , pedophilia often overlapping with sodomy , incest , child abuse or neglect and as discussed bigamy.
Non-religious crimes also included procurement not prostitution , human trafficking , smuggling , forgery or falsification of currency , documents or signatures , tax fraud many religious crimes were considered subdivisions of this one , illegal weapons , swindles , disrespect to the Crown or its institutions the Inquisition included, but also the church, the guard, and the kings themselves , espionage for a foreign power, conspiracy , treason.
The non-religious crimes processed by the Inquisition accounted for a considerable percentage of its total investigations and are often hard to separate in the statistics, even when documentation is available. The line between religious and non-religious crimes did not exist in XV century Spain as legal concept. Many of the crimes listed here and some of the religious crimes listed in previous sections were contemplated under the same article. For example, "sodomy" included paedophilia as a subtype. Often part of the data given for prosecution of male homosexuality corresponds to convictions for paedophilia, not adult homosexuality.
In other cases, religious and non-religious crimes were seen as distinct but equivalent. The treatment of public blasphemy and street swindlers was similar since in both cases you are "misleading the public in a harmful way. Making counterfeit currency and heretic proselytism was also treated similarly; both of them were punished by death and subdivided in similar ways since both were "spreading falsifications". In general heresy and falsifications of material documents were treated similarly by the Spanish Inquisition, indicating that they may have been thought of as equivalent actions.
Another difficulty to discriminate the inquisition's secular and religious activity is the common association of certain types of investigations. An accusation or suspicion on certain crime often launched an automatic investigation on many others. Anyone accused of espionage due to non-religious reasons would likely be investigated for heresy too, and anyone suspected of a heresy associated to a foreign power would be investigated for espionage too automatically.
Likewise, some religious crimes were considered likely to be associated with non-religious crimes, like human trafficking, procurement, and child abuse was expected to be associated to sodomy, or sodomy was expected to be associated to heresy and false conversions.
Which accusation started the investigation isn't always clear. Finally, trials were often further complicated by the attempts of witnesses or victims to add further charges, especially witchcraft. 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 — 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 , 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 Over time, the authority of the Suprema grew at the expense of the power of the Inquisitor General. The Suprema met every morning, except 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 "minor heresies" [96] cases of perceived unacceptable sexual behavior, bigamy , witchcraft , etc. Below the Suprema were the various tribunals of the Inquisition, which were originally itinerant, installing themselves where they were necessary to combat heresy, but later being established in fixed locations. During the first phase numerous tribunals were established, but the period after saw a marked tendency towards centralization.
In the kingdom of Castile, the following permanent tribunals of the Inquisition were established:. There were only four tribunals in the kingdom of Aragon: Zaragoza and Valencia , Barcelona , and Majorca Initially, each of the tribunals included two inquisitors, a calificador qualifiers , an alguacil bailiff , and a fiscal prosecutor ; new positions were added as the institution matured.
The inquisitors were preferably jurists more than theologians; in 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: The fiscal was in charge of presenting the accusation, investigating the denunciations and interrogating the witnesses by the use of physical and mental torture.
The calificadores were generally theologians; it fell to them to determine if the defendant's conduct added up to 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 alguacil was the executive arm of the court, responsible for detaining, jailing, and physically torturing 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: 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 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: 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. 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 usually ranging from thirty to forty days were offered the possibility of reconciliation with the Church without severe punishment. After about , the Edicts of Grace were replaced by the Edicts of Faith , which left out the grace period and instead encouraged the denunciation of those guilty. The denunciations were anonymous, and the defendants had no way of knowing the identities of their accusers.
In practice, false denunciations were frequent. Denunciations were made for a variety of reasons, from genuine concern, to rivalries and personal jealousies. After a denunciation, the case was examined by the calificadores , 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.
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 remedied only following instructions written in Some authors, such as Thomas William Walsh , stated that 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 secular authorities, and there are even certain testimonies that occasionally they were much better. They also show the accused answers, in which they address each accusation specifically.
Given that they would be informed anyway, it makes little sense for the accused to be kept in the dark prior to the trial, unless the investigation was still open. 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. The documentation of said notary usually shows a series of In order to defend themselves, the accused had two possibilities: The documentation from the notary usually show the following content, which gives us an idea of what the actual trial was likely to look like: Regarding the fairness of the trials, the structure of them was similar to modern trials and extremely advanced for the time.
However, the Inquisition was dependent on the political power of the King. The lack of separation of powers allows assuming questionable fairness for certain scenarios.
The fairness of the Inquisitorial tribunals seemed to be among the best in early modern Europe when it came to the trial of laymen. In order to obtain a confession or information relevant to an investigation, the Inquisition made use of torture , but not in a systematic way. It could only be applied when all other options, witnesses and experts had been used, the accused was found guilty or most likely guilty, and relevant information regarding accomplices or specific details were missing.
The Spanish Inquisition: Torquemada, Torture, and Death
It was applied mainly against those suspected of Judeization and Protestantism beginning in the 16th century, in other words "enemies of the state", since said crimes were usually thought to be associated with a larger organized network of either espionage or conspiracy with foreign powers. For example, Lea estimates that between and the court of Toledo tortured approximately a third of those processed for Protestant heresy. Torture was always a means to obtain the confession of the accused, not a punishment itself.
Torture was employed in all civil and religious trials in Europe. The Spanish Inquisition was no exception. Its main differentiation characteristic was that, as opposed to both civil trials and other inquisitions, it had very strict regulations regarding when, what, to whom, how many times, for how long and under what supervision it could be applied. Per contrast, European civil trials from England to Italy and from Spain to Russia could use, and did use, torture without justification and for as long as they considered.
So much so that there were serious tensions between the Inquisition and Philip III, since the Inquisitors complained that "those people sent to the prisons of the King blasphemed and accused themselves of heresy just to be sent under the Inquisitorial jurisdiction instead of the King's" and that was collapsing the Inquisition's tribunals. During the reign of Philip IV there were registered complaints of the Inquisitors about people who "Blasphemated, mostly in winter, just to be detained and fed inside the prison".
Despite some popular accounts, modern historians state that torture was only ever used to confirm information or a confession, not for punitive reasons. Rafael Sabatinni states that among the methods of torture allowed, and common in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals, 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.
It 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 the impression of drowning. The assertion that confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum literally: The case was voted and sentence pronounced, which had to be unanimous. In case of discrepancies, the Suprema had to be informed. 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. 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 autos were conducted in a large public space frequently in the largest plaza of the city , 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 Inquisition had limited power in Portugal, having been established in and officially lasting until , although its influence was much weakened with the government of the Marquis of Pombal in the second half of the 18th century. They also took place in the Portuguese colony of Goa, India, following the establishment of Inquisition there in — The arrival of the Enlightenment in Spain slowed inquisitorial activity.
In the first half of the 18th century, were condemned to be burned in person, and in effigy, most of them for judaizing. During the 18th century, 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 ; Iriarte , in ; and Jovellanos , in ; Jovellanos sent a report to Charles IV in which he indicated the inefficiency of the Inquisition's courts and the ignorance of those who operated them: