From: daveb@pogo.wv.tek.com (Dave Butler)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Spanish Inquisition (Long)
Date: 30 Jul 92 16:35:23 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Wilsonville,  OR.

Ridha Souissi asks about the Spanish Inquisition.  My apologies for taking so
long, but after long experience on the net, I am not willing to simply trust
my memory, and make unreference assertions.  Luckily, after some searching,
I was able to find a list of articles I have written on the subject, and this
is a rewrite from one of them.

The Spanish Inquisition was unique in that it was the one inquisition which
was not actually controlled by the holy see (In fact it ignored the Pope on
many occasions, and even banned books recommended by the pope).  It was
created pope at the request of Isabella and Ferdinand, and placed in the
control of the Spanish Crown to root out undesirables (the Spanish crown had
control of the church anyway, and even decided which papal bulls would be
implemented).  Pope Sixtus IV granted Ferdinand and Isabella the right to form
the Spanish Inquisition in 1478.  Within a few years, because of the excesses,
Sixtus tried to limit its powers.  The Spanish crown though, realized what a
powerful tool they had been given, and overruled the pope's orders.  And thus
the Spanish Inquisition came into its own.  It eventually became an actual arm
of the government and became one of the governing councils of Spain (and thus
wielded political as well as theological power in Spain).  One might wonder
why the Pope would allow the Inquisition to become autonomous from the chair
of holy see, and yet retain all sanctions and position accorded to an
Inquisition of the Church.  The are several answers.  One is that Spain was
strongly Catholic in a time of protestant turmoil (even though the church was
controlled more by the king than the pope).  Another is that Spain was
incredibly rich.  

Some context might well be in order.  Through the rule of the Moors and even
afterwards the Jews had been allowed to seek their own level.  Remembering
that Jew required literacy and knowledge of math of themselves, it is not
surprising that they soon became quite influential in a, for the most part,
illiterate world.  As is the norm, when a small, easily identified group
succeeds, it caused jealousy and dissension.  Finally in the mid 1300's it
started coming to a head.  In about 1340, about 10,000 Jews were killed in
Navarre, and things went downhill from there.  Many laws were enacted.  Some
of these laws restricted a Jew from court appointments, forbid them from
trimming their hair, forbid them from riding a horse, required that they
always wear course cloth and even required that they always wear a badge of
shame.  Marriage and/or sex with a Jew was treated as equivalent to incest and
punished accordingly (incest was one of the most severly punished crimes).  In
1378, a particularly antisemitic Archdeacon of Seville by the name of Ferran
Martinez, started preaching hate towards the Jews.  Worse, his eloquence was
well renouned.  He preached that not only were the Jews vile, evil, and guilty
every foul crime, but also that their very faith was an insult to Christians
and Jesus himself.  He was told to desist by his King, his bishop and even his
pope, but apparently not very strongly as he continued his hateful ravings for
over 13 years.  By the end of that time emotions were so high, that he was
able to start taking physical action.  By Christmas 1390, Martinez was able to
get several synagogues destroyed or closed.  By Lent of 1391, he so inflamed
passions with his rhetoric of hate, that an aborted attempt to sack the Jewish
quarter was made.  Spurred on by his success, Martinez preach as intense a
hatred as possible, in as many pulpits as he could (in many cities).  On June
6, the storm broke; the Jewish quarter in Seville was sacked, Jews were
slaughtered raped and their possessions plundered.  70 other towns in Castille
quickly followed suit, as did Valencia, Aragon and the rest.  In Barcelona the
Jewish population was almost wiped out, and in Palma, an exterminatory
massacre took place.  Estimates of the victims range as high as 50,000 Jews. 
The Jews were in shock.  That's when the conversions began.  Some conversions
occurred at knifepoint, while others converted out of abject fear.  Some few
even converted out of honest interest of doing so.  Many "converso" went into
their new religion with complete commitment, while others saw it as a public
mask so that they could survive among their hate filled neighbors, and kept
true to Judaism in private. 

These conversions though created the same problem which caused all the
problems in the early 1300's.  There were no laws restricting an easily
identifiable minority, who happened to be Christian, from seeking whatever
employment and station they wished; the conversos flourished.  They were so
competent that they almost immediately rocketed to the highest civil stations
within the crown.  They sought out the best marriages and family alliances,
and within a few years there were few if any noble families who did not have a
converso in their blood lines (it is thought that even Torquemada had some
converso lineage).  This was too much for the average Spaniard who had for the
last hundred years seen the Jews as vile interlopers and usurpers.  It is
noted by many historians (eg: Cecil Roth, and William Prescott) that the
Spaniards could probably have forgiven the conversos their secret duplicity,
but never their success.  The conversos were given the moniker Marrano by the
Spaniards (which means "swine"), and the remaining Jews called them Anusim
(which means the "the forced ones"). 

By the end of the 1400's, the conversos were again considered a "threat", and
at that point the Inquisition was formed.  Interestingly, while the
inquisition was Spanish, the Inquisitors were Dominican, so it could be said
that almost all major inquisitions were Dominican.  The Inquisition had
essentially two targets: Jews and Moors, but the Moors weren't included until
the mid to late 1500's.  Of course anyone else the inquisition wished to
prosecute was simply accused of being a Jew (or later a Moor).  Thus, with
little doubt, the reason that "witches" weren't extensively prosecuted in
Spain is that it wasn't needful; Spain already had the Jews to use as a
Bogeyman, for the purpose of persecution. 

Thus, anyone with Jewish or (eventually) Moorish blood, (no matter how they
came by it) came to be considered suspect.  The Inquisition, with its target
firmly in mind, started the the process of prosecution and persecution.  It
should be pointed out that the progeny of conversos, because of their wealth
and position, became especially sought after targets, as the Inquisition
received 1/3 of all confiscated wealth (1/3 went to the informer and 1/3 went
to the state).  Once convicted by the inquisition, your entire family, for
many generations was shamed and punished.  Statutes of "limpieza de sangre"
were passe which banned the descendants of Moors and Jews (especially Jews)
from universities and religious orders.  Torquemada was especially innovative
and manipulative for being first grand Inquisitor.  In 1484 he issued
instructions at Seville that

   "children and grandchildren of those condemned [by the Inquisition]
    may not hold or possess public offices or posts or honours, or be
    promoted to hold orders, or be judges, majors, constables, magistrates,
    jurors, stewards, officials of weights and measures, merchants notaries,
    public scriveners, lawyers, attourneys, secretaries, accountants, 
    treasurers, physicians, surgeons, shopkeepers, brokers, changers, 
    collectors, tax-farmers or holders of any public office."

Thus the charge of heresy was not prosecuted not merely against an
individual, but his entire family.  The sin of being a descendant could not
even be erased by baptism.  The inquisition would even prosecute the dead so
that they could persecute the heirs and confiscate their property.  It became
common for the church to rip up graves so that they could burn the mouldering
remains as heretics.

One problem remained though.  It still galled the Inquisition that they could
not punish the unconverted Jews for the same actions which would allow them to
burn a converso.  Thus after 12 years of Inquisition persecution (the
oppression of the unconverted Jews was also intensified), some priests hit
upon the plot of blaming the Jews and conversos, for murdering a child in
Avila during Passover, for the blood.  Cecil Roth, in his book "The Spanish
Inquisition" says the recent research show that the child in question never
even existed outside of the mind of the fanatical cleric, if indeed it existed
even there.  Based on these trumped up charges of blood libel, the Inquisition
in concert with the crown, banished all Jews from Spain.  The number robbed of
their properties and livelyhood was somewhere between 160,000 and 200,000, and
those that were left (up to 400,000) were converted by force.  This of course,
only exacerbated the problem of the conversos. 

It became a brutal bloody time.  2000 conversos were burned in Seville alone
(actually witnesses suggest that 2000 were burnt in the first few years of the
Inquisition in Seville).  Don Juan Antonio Llorente, in his book Historie de
L'Inquisition, estimated that the total burned in the first quarter century
was somewhere between 8800 and 13,000.  Over 90,000 more were also prosecuted
but not burned.  They were not found guiltless though, they were "Reconciled". 
"Reconciliation" is a euphemism which means that the person was found guilty
of heresy and that the death sentence was commuted to fines, civil incapacity,
usually total confiscation of property, and frequently life imprisonment. 
Around 96,000 people were "reconciled" with the church during the first 25
years of the Inquisition.  Rarely was anyone ever found guiltless.  For
instance, in the year 1495 alone, the two inquisitors of Toledo tried 3,327
people, and in the period of 1482 to 1524, the Inquisitors of Toledo found, on
average, less than 2 people per year innocent. 


Not only did The court convict almost everyone who was accused, it was also
quite corrupt.  The captain of Cordova, in the early 1500's claimed that the
grand Inquisitor of Cordova (Diego Lucero) and his helpers:

    were able to defame the whole kingdom, to destroy a great part of it 
    without God or Justice, slaying robbing and violating maids and wives 
    to the great dishonour of the Christian religion...

Lucero was in power many years, and was finally removed from office only after
he went too far and categorically stated that most of the nobles and cabaleros
of Cordova and Andalusia, were Judaiser.  No station or rank was safe, and
even the venerable Hernando de Talavera, Archbishop of Granada, and confessor
to Queen Issabella was accused (Hernando de Talavera died in shame).  Though
while Lucero was removed for his "excesses", he was never prosecuted for his
crimes.  As to the trials themselves, they were mockeries.  The accused was
never allowed to know either the exact charges, or his accusers.  He was to
defend himself from detailed accusation of which he knew nothing.  He was
allowed a lawyer, but that lawyer was also denied the facts of the case, and
access to the prisoner (the few times he was allowed to see the prisoner, was
in under the observation of an Inquisitor).  Further the other rules of
evidence in the Spanish Inquisition were the same rules as the other
Inquisition, and thus even acknowledged perjury as allowable.  And successful
convictions were based on such flimsy evidence as whether one changed their
bedding on Saturday, or was especially clean, or had refused pork as some
point.  The court was much worse than a joke; it was an atrocity.  I can quote
Inquisition records on many rather corrupt trials from the author Roth, but
would encourage others to go check it out for themselves (and save me the
typing).  Roth even references a case where several convictions occurred even
after it was found that the accuser was lying.  By the way, being found
innocent did not mean that the Inquisition had spared you.  The victim and his
family were responsible for the cost of Jailing the victim, whether the victim
was guilty or innocent.  These costs were known to pauperize a family for
generations.  Further, the Inquisition sold the position of informer (the
price was 1500 ducats in 1641).  This not only gave the informer special
consideration in his accusation (which were worth 1/3 of the accused's net
worth), but also made them immune from ALL arrest. 

Now some have argued (right here on the net) that torture was not normally
used, and that even when torture was used, the Inquisition was just following
the lead of the secular authorities.  Actually, the spread of torture in legal
matters can be laid solidly on the 13th century church's doorstep.  The only
barbarian tribes recorded to use such torture were the Wisigoths (also called
Visigoths).  Throughout Europe, only two small governments used torture at the
time the church started sanctioning it.  The Sicilian constitution of Frederic
II (1231) and the Veronese Code (1228) sanctioned torture for under very
specific circumstances.  But then Innocent IV, in 1252, published the Bull "Ad
exterpanda" which directed secular authorities to torture heretics under the
direction of Inquisitors, and torture rapidly spread with the Church's
official blessing.  The church did not follow the omnipresent lead of the
secular governments; the secular governments implemented and mimicked that
orders of the church.  Nor was torture always necessary.  First, many
prisoners were incarcerated and isolated in a 6 to 9 foot square prison cell,
for years before torture was initiated.  There was no need to hurry, the
family was paying for the imprisonment (It is interesting to note many a
pregnancy occurred in prison, caused by the jailors, and in no way was
pregnancy a salvation from being burning at the stake).  That was sufficient
impetus for some to "confess".  Second, the threat of torture was in itself an
strong inducement to "confess".  Many people (much like Galileo who was
subject to the Roman Inquisition), confessed when they saw what lay in store
for them (the question became: Would you rather be confess and at worst, be
burned as a heretic, or interminably tortured and then burned as a heretic?). 
As an example, fully 32% (approx 1/3) of those, who's offenses made them
liable to torture, were torture in Toledo, in the years 1575-1610 (which were
considered some of the more "lenient" times).  Torture was common, and threat
of torture was omnipresent. 

Another argument usually brought up in defense of the Spanish Inquisition was
that the Inquisition actually executed no one, and that is officially correct. 
The prisoners were "relaxed" (another misleading euphemism)to the secular
authorities for burning.  But any secular official who either chose to refuse
to burn a heretic, or chose to burn a "heretic" not convicted by the
Inquisition, would be declared a heretic himself.  The Inquisitors did not set
fire to the Jews themselves, but they explicitly controlled who would be
burned.  There were two other major and official lies used by the Inquisition. 
The first was that a prisoner could only be tortured once.  A prisoner could
not be tortured for the same crime one the torture was said to be ended,
unless more evidence came to light.  That's why Inquisitors did not "end" the
torture, but merely "suspended" it for a period, and thus a man could be
tortured as many times as necessary.  The second lie is that an Inquisitor
could not personally torture a victim.  In actuality, it was considered a sin
for an Inquisitor to torture a prisoner.  But any Inquisitor could give any
other Inquisitor immediate absolution for any sin except heresy.  That's why
Inquisitors were always in pairs in the torture chamber; so that they could
torture without fear for their soul. 

Now the main defense to the Spanish Inquisition is that Jews and Moors were
infesting the church and it is true that there were several conversos among
the clerics.  Most of them had impeccable personal Catholic histories.  In
fact some of them were even acknowledged by the Pope to be absolutely correct
in the faith.  The Inquisition did not care; it prosecuted whom it wished,
regardless of faith.  Worse, it became obvious that the pope had little or no
control over the Inquisition.  For example there is the case of Bartolemeo de
Carranza, Archbishop of Toledo (1559).  The Inquisition kept him in the vile
Valladolid prison for 17 years despite repeated orders from the pope to
release him to the holy see.  In 1576 he was finally released into the pope's
hand.  Carranza was described as a young and strong man upon his entry into
prison, but was so wasted away, that he survived only 18 days following his
release (even without torture, prison was a horrible trial in its own right). 

All in all, the Spanish Inquisition was one of the least savory, and more
corrupt institutions that gained official government status.  It attacked
targets of bigotry (ie: Jews and Moors), targets of profit (ie: those who were
prosecuted because of their wealth), and political targets (eg: protestants,
and those inside or outside the Church in whom the Inquisitors or their
licensed informers found disfavor).  Now as this article is getting a bit
long, and there is much too much on the Spanish Inquisition for it to be
covered in one article I shall bring this to a conclusion.  In any case though
I hope that I have in some small part answered Ridha's question. 

				Later,

				Dave Butler


    It is said, and it is to be considered true, that the principle heretics
    of Germany, who have destroyed all that nation...are descendents of Jews.
				Sileceo in 1547
				Archbishop of Toledo, Spain


    That the whole accursed race of Jews, male and female, of twenty years of
    age and upward, might be purified with fire and faggot.
				A wish expressed by 
				the Catholic Curate of Palacios 
				during the early Spanish Inquisition

    My references for the information in this article are:


		Ferdinand and Issabella
			by William Prescott

		A History of Christianity
			by Paul Johnson

		The Inquisition of the Middle Ages
			by H. C. Lea

		The Spanish Inquisition
			by Roth