THE SPANISH INQUISITION

The infamous institution’s beginnings and how it gained its bloodthirsty reputation.

For Tudor martyrologist John Foxe, the “cruel and barbarous Inquisition of Spain” was a mire of inexcusable atrocities. Prisoners would be held “in darkness palpable, in horrors ininite, in fear miserable, wrestling with the assaults of death.” There was no end to the “injuries, threats, whippings and scourgings, tortures and racks”, but the secrecy of the institution was equally offensive to Foxe. “All the proceedings of the court of that execrable Inquisition [are] open to no man, but all is done in a hugger-mugger, and in close corners... by covert ways and secret counsels.”

This is the image of the Spanish Inquisition that has held sway for centuries and which remains in the popular historical imagination. Of late, however, scholars have sought to provide a more nuanced understanding: not to excuse the Inquisition’s many excesses, but to place its activities in context. Sad to say, the methods and goals of the Spanish Inquisition were par for the course in early modern Europe. Torture was applied, though far less often than one might expect, but the same could be said of tribunals and secular and religious engines of justice across the continent. People were killed, though fewer than the sensationalist accounts suggest, but the notion of despatching stubborn heretics was normal in this period and on both sides of the confessional divide. As horrible as the Spanish Inquisition undoubtedly was, the “black legend” of a uniquely vicious enterprise does not hold up to scrutiny.

For all that, it is still seen as a stain on the reputation of the monarchs who founded it: Isabella of Castile and her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon. This is, to an extent, understandable, because the Inquisition was certainly at its most menacing during its earliest decades. It has been calculated that threequarters of those killed over the course of the institution’s history, which stretched all the way to 1834, perished in the first 50 years.

There is much to admire about Isabella of Castile. She was a woman who lavished patronage on arts and letters, who could balance private austerity with public appearances in posh frocks and gleaming jewels and who, so the story goes, hunted down a sizeable bear. But the founding of the Spanish Inquisition can look a lot like a blot. Why, then, did she consent to it? Politics were every bit as important as faith. When Isabella ascended to the throne in 1474, she had a chaotic past and an uncertain future to confront. The Inquisition was one very useful tool of self-assertion.

During her early years, no one really expected the daughter of John II to become queen. She had two brothers, Henry and Alfonso, ahead of her in the line of succession. The former duly became Henry IV of Castile in 1454, but his reign was blighted – largely due to his incompetence – by revolt, factionalism and discontent. When Henry’s wife, Joan of Portugal, had a daughter called Joanna in 1462, rumours of the child’s illegitimacy travelled far and wide. For many, Alfonso was a far more suitable candidate as a successor and, after his hand was forced, Henry named him as such.

When Alfonso died in 1468, Isabella’s prospects were transformed. She had no truck with plans to supplant Henry on the throne and was named heir, but relations with her half-brother soured over the issue of her marriage. Henry had sought, on various occasions, to match her with a suitable husband, but Isabella plumped for Ferdinand of Aragon – a man, as one chronicler put it, “of good effort and much activity in war.” Against Henry’s wishes, the pair married, and relations between the half-siblings never recovered.

In December 1474, immediately after Henry’s death, Isabella was to be found proceeding to her coronation in Segovia. Ahead of her, someone carried “an unsheathed sword so as to demonstrate to all how it was apt for her to punish and chastise wrongdoers.” It would prove to be necessary. Regardless of the claims of illegitimacy, Joanna insisted that she was Henry’s daughter and direct heir. She also had a formidable champion, Afonso V of Portugal, to whom she was betrothed. For the next ive years conlict raged. Isabella emerged triumphant, Joanna lived out her days in the coninement of a monastery, and in 1479 the security of Isabella’s rule was greatly enhanced by her husband’s accession to the throne of Aragon.

These, though, were not events to be quickly forgotten, and the joint monarchs’ obsession with asserting their power deined their rule. Many strategies were available. Isabella was positioned as the woman who would rescue Castile from shipwreck. She was the shepherdess, an eagle and even comparable to the Blessed Virgin Mary. As one sycophant gushed, “Just as our Lord wished that our glorious Lady might be born in this world because from her would proceed the universal redeemer of the human lineage, so he determined that you, my lady, would be born to reform and restore these kingdoms and lead them out from the tyrannical government under which they have been for so long.”

Ferdinand was by her side and he was a welcome contrast to the feeble Henry who, so the gossipers never tired of suggesting, had been impotent in every sense. Bluster only got you so far, however, so Ferdinand and Isabella worked hard to curb the powers of troublesome nobles, to reorganise the machinery of government and, crucially, to complete one matter of urgent geopolitical business.

After a 12-year crusade, the Muslim kingdom of Granada was finally conquered in 1492 and, for contemporaries, proofs of legitimacy and divine approval of the regime did not come much better than that. Religious unity – or at least the containment of religious diversity – was a crucial part of this project. Isabella’s faith was deep and sincere, but she also saw the political advantages of a muscular Catholicism: inquisitions were its embodiment.

The concept of an inquisition was nothing new. During the Medieval era, temporary local tribunals had been established to cope with outbursts of heresy – notably to combat the Cathar threat in 13th-century France. But when Ferdinand and Isabella petitioned Pope Sixtus V in 1478, they made a groundbreaking demand: their proposed inquisition was to be under direct royal control. With papal approval secured, the irst tribunal began its work in Seville in 1480, with additional bodies quickly springing up in Jaén, Córdoba and Ciudad Real. The experiment was extended to Aragon and other provinces and, in line with the monarchs’ policy of streamlining and centralising governance, a special royal council for the Spanish Inquisition was established with an inquisitor general at its head.

Later in its history, the Spanish Inquisition would pursue witches, Protestants and all manner of other perceived threats, but at the outset it was focused on one group: the so-called ‘conversos’. Through pressures of threat and persecution, large numbers of Jewish Spaniards had converted to Christianity, but they and their descendants always endured suspicion.

It was suggested that some continued to maintain Jewish beliefs, follow Jewish rituals and observances in private and surreptitiously spread their faith. As the Inquisition-seeking letter to the Pope put it in 1478, “Be advised that we have taken note that in our kingdoms and domains there have been and are certain Christians, apostates, heretics and conversos who, despite receiving the sacrament of baptism and being baptised, and having the name of Christians, have turned and converted, and continue to turn and convert, to the sect, superstitions, and faithlessness of the Jews.”

One of the leading historians of the Inquisition, Henry Kamen, has described the campaign against the conversos as “an exaggerated product of the clerical imagination,” and, crucially, it had as much to do with socio-economic factors as religious ones. Many converso families had made great strides within Spanish society and their inluence and success was resented. It is also apparent that many converso victims of the Inquisition came from elite groups that had supported Isabella and Ferdinand’s rivals. In any event, the monarchs appear to have been convinced that concerted action was a necessary policy.

It was certainly this unfortunate group that bore the brunt of the Inquisition’s earliest intrusions. In Catalonia, for example, 1,199 people were brought to trial between 1488 and 1505: all but eight of them were conversos.

But how did these tribunals operate? Contrary to Monty Python, people always expected the Spanish Inquisition. The arrival of inquisitors was announced well in advance and sermons would provide information on the kinds of behaviour that would be investigated. Typically, a tribunal would be headed by two inquisitors, supported by various oficials, including a constable, to make arrests, with theological advisers and laymen, known as familiares, in subsidiary roles.

Especially in the first decades, an edict of grace would be issued. This gave a speciic amount of time – ranging from a few weeks to several months – in which people could voluntarily confess and seek reconciliation or report others who they suspected of errant activities.

Steps were taken to assess individual cases and determine whether a person had fallen into theological error. If suficient evidence was accrued, the culprit would be arrested. Guilt was assumed, but the goal was always to secure confession and repentance during incarceration. If this was not forthcoming, a trial would follow. Matters would culminate in the so-called ‘autos-da-fé’, during which the guilty and the penitent were paraded in public.

Sentences varied widely: from loss of property to beatings, from exile to enforced pilgrimage, and the wearing of distinctive clothing – marking the guilty party out – for a period of time. If the unrepentant prisoner had committed a suficiently serious crime, or if they had relapsed after a previous offence, the death penalty was available. At this point, the prisoner would be handed over to the secular authorities to be killed, usually by burning, as the Church was not oficially allowed to oversee the shedding of blood.

The eficiency of the early Inquisition was combined with what many saw as unnecessary harshness. As early as 1482, the pope complained that “many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other lower and even less proper persons, have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics.” They had, he continued, been “deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example and causing disgust to many.”

Precise numbers are hard to pin down but, while contemporary chroniclers tended to exaggerate, more accurate estimates are still harrowing. During the first decade, 130 people may have been killed at Saragossa along with 225 at Valencia. It has been suggested that a further 1,000 men and women were killed in Castile during this time. Spain as a whole saw up to 2,000 deaths.

This history contained some truly horrific moments, like when a notary at Jaén locked up a 15-year-old girl, stripped her naked and whipped her until she testified against her mother. Moments of absurdity were not uncommon. Many led the Inquisition before its agents could pounce, so sentences frequently had to be passed in absentia and the condemnedwere burned in efigy. Such judgements meant a lifetime of fear, as was the case with Isabel, the wife of Lope de la Higuera of Ciudad Real.

In 1484, the inquisitors determined that she “lives with the reputation of a Christian” but “follows the laws of Moses.” She did not work on the Sabbath, read Jewish books, kept Jewish feast days and followed Jewish dietary rules. Isabel was given 30 days to appear, but she wisely led the scene. In her absence, it was announced that she was “a heretic and apostate.” She was to be killed by the authorities of “any other cities, villages and places within the kingdoms and outside of them, wherever the aforesaid Isabel might be found.”

The Spanish Inquisition may not have been special in terms of its goals and procedures, but during its irst decades it provoked unusually ugly attitudes. In the early 16th century, a parish priest in Seville fumed against the “heretical mosaic depravity” of lapsed conversos. It was a “horrible beast” that had “walked around very freely” and, even with the Inquisition at work, the menace remained at large. “It will be necessary,” the priest wrote, “for this ire to burn until all who judaize are consumed by it, so that not one remains, not even their children... it should burn even the younger ones if they are touched by the same leprosy.”

At the heart of all this was the broader anti-Semitic sentiment in Spain. The Inquisition couldn’t move against practising Jews – its purview was limited to baptised Christians – but converts were irresistible targets. Throughout the Middle Ages, Iberian Judaism had veered between periods of relative security and terrible outbursts of persecution. In 1391, for example, hundreds of Jews had been slaughtered in the streets of Seville, with 250 more massacred in Valencia and a further 400 in Barcelona. Many others had been forced to convert. Anti-Semitic feeling was alive and well at the time of Isabella’s birth and people were peddling their fantastical notions of Jews as traitors, “physician-poisoners” and “ritual murderers” who cut the throats of Christian children.

The queen does not appear to have shared the more virulent strains of anti-Jewish feeling. She happily employed Jews as doctors and financial advisers, and men such as Isaac Abravanel did well in royal service. In 1477, Isabella had declared that “All the Jews of my kingdom are mine and are under my shelter and protection, and it is for me to defend and protect them and maintain their rights.” At times throughout the 1480s, the monarchs took steps to contain the worst anti-Semitic excesses of local oficials. Conversos, however, were a different matter and, in the end, even the queen’s pledges to the Jewish community came to count for very little.

In 1492, the Edict of Expulsion arrived, and its intent was all too clear. It spoke of “the great damage that has been done and is being done to Christians by the contact, conversation and communication they have with Jews.” They “seek by all possible means to subvert faithful Christians and take them away from our holy Catholic faith... luring them and perverting them with their flawed beliefs and opinions.” Local banishments had been tried but they had failed, so “We have resolved to order all the Jews and Jewesses of our kingdoms to leave them, never to return to them, nor to any part of them.” Should they do so, they would be stripped of their property and killed “without any trial, sentence or declaration.”

Leading members of the Jewish community launched their protests. They included Isaac Abravanel who, by one account, “stood like a lion in wisdom and strength, and in the most elegant language... admonished the king and queen.”His pleas were rejected and, ahead of leeing Spain, he wrote a letter to Isabella “in which he chastised her mercilessly, and showed no respect for her rank.” Who could blame him?

It is arguable that Ferdinand and Isabella engineered the expulsion in order to achieve religious uniformity within the country. Finally capturing Granada was part of the same process, as was the Inquisition. Isabella perhaps believed that winning back converts who had strayed was an act of compassion and that those who failed to comply were beyond her help. Such logic, while deeply unpalatable to us, was commonplace at the time. It is also worth remembering the adjudication of one of Isabella’s many chroniclers, however. When necessary, he explained, she would “follow the path of harshness rather than mercy.”

It is often suggested that Ferdinand was the guiding force when it came to the Inquisition, but little happened without Isabella’s approval. When she married Ferdinand, strict and somewhat humiliating conditions were forced upon her husband. He was to reside in Castile and not leave without permission, and any appointments to leading roles would require the queen’s explicit approval. When Henry IV died in 1474, Isabella rushed to a coronation without waiting for Ferdinand – an action that made it very clear that his role in Castile would be that of a consort.

The couple adopted new heraldic emblems in which their symbols were intertwined and a cheery motto declared “tanto monta, monta tanto – Isabel como Fernando”, (one is equal to the other – both Isabella and Ferdinand). Everyone knew, however, that Castile was more important than Aragon in terms of size, population, resources and prestige. Isabella was, beyond question, the senior partner in the union of the two crowns. Ferdinand may have possessed greater inquisitorial zeal, but his wife certainly shared the responsibility for the Inquisition’s actions.

As for those actions, historians have wisely suggested that the Spanish Inquisition was not conspicuously more savage than comparable institutions over the course of its history, but during its early decades it showed its most uncompromising face and claimed more than its share of undeserving victims. Contemporaries did not fail to notice.

An undertow of criticism was discernible in those years and, upon occasion, drastic action was taken. One inquisitor, Pedro Arbués, knew he was at risk and routinely wore a chainmail smock and a steel cap to protect him from attack. These did not deter the eight men who stabbed him in the neck as he knelt in prayer at Saragossa Cathedral on 15 September 1485. He died of his wounds the next day.

Sometimes vengeance gave way to poignant words, as when in 1507, three years after the death of Isabella, Gonzalo de Ayora concluded that “the damage which the wicked oficials of the Inquisition have wrought in my land are so many and so great that no reasonable person on hearing them would not grieve.”

**********

THE FIRST INQUISITOR GENERAL

Discover the friar who led the Spanish inquisition at the very beginning.

Born in 1420, Tomás de Torquemada was Spain’s first inquisitor general, a position he held until his death in 1498.His headship of the royal council for the inquisition, the Suprema, granted him considerable, though not limitless, powers over tribunals across the peninsula. Torquemada was never allowed to forget that he was a royal servant and Ferdinand especially missed few opportunities to instruct him on how to conduct his business. One letter of 1486 shows the king instructing Torquemada on the trivial issue of how much to pay the inquisition’s doorkeepers.

A Dominican of austere habits (he shunned meat, for instance), Torquemada had been a royal confessor and appears to have taken to his new role with gusto. He clearly possessed a strong animus against Judaism and any variety of heretical dissent. He had burned Jewish books while at his monastery in Salamanca and showed a marked commitment to completing the Jewish expulsion of 1492.

For all his influence, Torquemada oversaw an inquisitorial network in which local initiative often trumped centralised directives. One way to alleviate this problem was through the issuing of ‘instructions’, which provided basic rules to be followed by all tribunals. Inquisitors were told how to present themselves to municipal authorities, what subordinates to employ and how to announce their arrival to local populations.

Some of Torquemada’s rubrics were decidedly harsh. He ordered, for example, that even the children and grandchildren of those condemned by the inquisition should be prevented from taking up a staggering range of roles and public offices. The list of forbidden occupations included “judges, mayors, constables, magistrates, jurors, stewards, officials of weights and measures, merchants, notaries, public clerks, lawyers, attorneys, secretaries, accountants, treasurers, physicians, surgeons, shopkeepers, brokers [and] tax-farmers.”

There is surprisingly little evidence that allows us to pin down Torquemada’s theological opinions, and portrayals of him, especially in historical fiction, have tended towards caricature. Still, it is not too hard to believe the accusation, laid before a local inquisition tribunal in 1490, that one Jewish convert to Christianity had referred to Torquemada as “the most accursed man in the world.”

**********

IBERIAN ISLAM

How Isabella finally removed the thorn of Granada from Castile’s side.

The goal of achieving religious uniformity also had an epochal impact on Spain’s Muslim population. Medieval Iberia had been home to a thriving islamic culture but, by the time of Ferdinand and isabella, only the emirate of Granada survived. It had long been the ambition of Castilian kings to expunge it, but conquest was only achieved in 1492.

At first, by the treaty of surrender, Muslims were promised that they would be allowed to maintain their customs and religious practices. Conversion efforts were made by the first archbishop of Granada, Hernando de Talavera, but were limited to gentle persuasion, such as the preaching of sermons in Arabic. By 1499, with the lack of meaningful evangelical success, harsher measures, including forced baptisms and the conversion of mosques into churches, were deployed. In 1502, all Muslims in Castile were made to chose between baptism or expulsion – a ruling that had spread across the entire peninsula by 1526.

Those who chose to formally adopt the Christian faith would be termed ‘moriscos’ and, like the conversos of Jewish origin before them, they would become the focus of suspicion and hostility. Great efforts were indeed made by many moriscos to sustain their true religious identity and, during the first half of the 16th century, they were occasionally brought before the Inquisition.

At times, the search for supposed signs of islamic sympathy reached almost comical levels. in 1538, a morisco in Toledo found himself in trouble for no more than “dancing the zambra and eating couscous.” Between 1568 and 1570, the moriscos of Granada rose up, unsucessfully, against Philip II. The Granadan population was forcibly scattered across Spain and moriscos became much more frequent targets of the inquisition.

Between 1570 and the early 17th century, a majority of those facing the inquisition in Aragon, Valencia and granada were moriscos. Calls mounted to expel the moriscos from Spain and, in 1609, the axe fell. Somewhere in the region of 300,000 people were forced to leave their homeland. Cardinal Richelieu declared it the “most barbarous act in human annals.”

By Jon Wright in "History of Royals" UK, issue 18, August 2017, excerpts pp. 62-69. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.