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The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Spanish Inquisition was a judicial institution that lasted between 1478 and 1834. Its ostensible purpose was to combat heresy in Spain, but, in practice, it resulted in consolidating power in the monarchy of the newly unified Spanish kingdom.
- Overview
- The rise of the Spanish Inquisition
- The Inquisition at its peak
- Resistance and the decline of the Inquisition
Thousands were burned at the stake under Torquemada, the most notorious of the grand inquisitors, and tens of thousands were killed during the forced expulsion of Moriscos (Spanish Muslims who had been baptized as Christians) which began in 1609.
How did the Spanish Inquisition work?
When the Inquisition opened an investigation in an area, inquisitors typically would offer comparatively light penances to those who were willing to admit their own involvement in heresy. Those confessions were used to identify other “heretics,” who were brought before a tribunal. At this trial, the accused received no assistance to defend themselves, they were frequently ignorant of the charges against them, and confessions were often obtained through coercion, confiscation of property, or torture. If the accused were found guilty, the sentence would be announced at an auto-da-fé, an elaborate public spectacle. The accused would then be handed over to civil authorities for the carrying out of the sentence.
When did the Spanish Inquisition end?
The Spanish queen regent María Cristina de Borbón issued a decree abolishing the Spanish Inquisition on July 15, 1834. The papal Inquisition—founded in 1542 and formally known as the Congregation of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, or Holy Office—was reorganized by Pope Paul VI and renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965. It remains one of the congregations of the Roman Curia and concerns itself primarily with questions of Roman Catholic dogma and doctrine.
Did anyone expect the Spanish Inquisition?
The medieval inquisition had played a considerable role in Christian Spain during the 13th century, but the struggle against the Moors had kept the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula busy and served to strengthen their faith. When toward the end of the 15th century the Reconquista was all but complete, the desire for religious unity became more and more pronounced. Spain’s Jewish population, which was among the largest in Europe, soon became a target.
Over centuries, the Jewish community in Spain had flourished and grown in numbers and influence, though anti-Semitism had surfaced from time to time. During the reign of Henry III of Castile and Leon (1390–1406), Jews faced increased persecution and were pressured to convert to Christianity. The pogroms of 1391 were especially brutal, and the threat of violence hung over the Jewish community in Spain. Faced with the choice between baptism and death, the number of nominal converts to the Christian faith soon became very great. Many Jews were killed, and those who adopted Christian beliefs—the so-called conversos (Spanish: “converted”)—faced continued suspicion and prejudice. In addition, there remained a significant population of Jews who had professed conversion but continued to practice their faith in secret. Known as Marranos, those nominal converts from Judaism were perceived to be an even greater threat to the social order than those who had rejected forced conversion. After Aragon and Castile were united by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella (1469), the Marranos were denounced as a danger to the existence of Christian Spain. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV issued a bull authorizing the Catholic Monarchs to name inquisitors who would address the issue. That did not mean that the Spanish sovereigns were turning over to the church the struggle for unity; on the contrary, they sought to use the Inquisition to support their absolute and centralizing regime and most especially to increase royal power in Aragon. The first Spanish inquisitors, operating in Seville, proved so severe that Sixtus IV attempted to intervene. The Spanish crown now had in its possession a weapon too precious to give up, however, and the efforts of the pope to limit the powers of the Inquisition were without avail. In 1483 he was induced to authorize the naming by the Spanish government of a grand inquisitor (inquisitor general) for Castile, and during that same year Aragon, Valencia, and Catalonia were placed under the power of the Inquisition.
The grand inquisitor acted as the head of the Inquisition in Spain. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction that he had received from the Vatican empowered him to name deputies and hear appeals. In deciding appeals, the grand inquisitor was assisted by a council of five members and by consultors. All those offices were filled by agreement between the government and the grand inquisitor. The council, especially after its reorganization during the reign of Philip II (1556–98), put the effective control of the institution more and more into the hands of the civil power. After the papacy of Clement VII (1523–34), priests and bishops were at times judged by the Inquisition. In procedure the Spanish Inquisition was much like the medieval inquisition. The first grand inquisitor in Spain was the Dominican Tomás de Torquemada; his name became synonymous with the brutality and fanaticism associated with the Inquisition. Torquemada used torture and confiscation to terrorize his victims, and his methods were the product of a time when judicial procedure was cruel by design. The sentencing of the accused took place at the auto-da-fé (Portuguese: “act of faith”), an elaborate public expression of the Inquisition’s power. The condemned were presented before a large crowd that often included royalty, and the proceedings had a ritualized, almost festive, quality. The number of burnings at the stake during Torquemada’s tenure was exaggerated by Protestant critics of the Inquisition, but it is generally estimated to have been about 2,000.
At Torquemada’s urging, Ferdinand and Isabella issued an edict on March 31, 1492, giving Spanish Jews the choice of exile or baptism; as a result, more than 160,000 Jews were expelled from Spain. Francisco, Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros, promoted the suppression of Muslims with the same zeal that Torquemada had directed at Jews. In 1502 he ordered the proscription of Islam in Granada, the last of the Muslim kingdoms in Spain to fall to the Reconquista. The persecution of Muslims accelerated in 1507 when Jiménez was named grand inquisitor. Muslims in Valencia and Aragon were subjected to forced conversion in 1526, and Islam was subsequently banned in Spain. The Inquisition then devoted its attention to the Moriscos, Spanish Muslims who had previously accepted baptism. Expressions of Morisco culture were forbidden by Philip II in 1566, and within three years, persecution by the Inquisition gave way to open warfare between the Moriscos and the Spanish crown. The Moriscos were driven from Granada in 1571, and by 1614 some 300,000 had been expelled from Spain entirely.
When the Reformation began to penetrate into Spain, the relatively few Spanish Protestants were eliminated by the Inquisition. Foreigners suspected of promoting Protestant faiths within Spain met similarly violent ends. Having largely purged the country of Jews and Muslims—as well as many former members of those faiths who had converted to Christianity—the Spanish Inquisition turned its attention to prominent Roman Catholics. Saint Ignatius of Loyola was twice arrested on suspicion of heresy, and the archbishop of Toledo, the Dominican Bartolomé de Carranza, was imprisoned for almost 17 years. Nominally Christian groups that diverged from the Inquisition’s orthodoxy, such as the followers of the mystical Alumbrado movement and adherents of Erasmianism (a spiritualized Christian belief system influenced by the teachings of humanist Desiderius Erasmus), were subjected to intense persecution throughout the 16th and into the 17th century.
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Under the supreme council of the Spanish Inquisition were 14 local tribunals in Spain and several in the colonies; the tribunals in Mexico and Peru were particularly harsh. The Spanish Inquisition spread into Sicily in 1517, but efforts to set it up in Naples and Milan failed. In 1522 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V introduced it into the Low Countries, but its efforts to wipe out Protestantism were unsuccessful. John III of Portugal, with the permission of Pope Paul III, introduced a tribunal like the Spanish Inquisition against Portuguese Jews in 1536. Though John III’s methods led the pope to revoke the grant, the Inquisition was definitely established in Portugal in 1547, at which time its scope was also widened.
The Inquisition remained a force in Spain and its colonies for hundreds of years—indeed, autos-da-fé were a common occurrence into the mid-18th century—but the excesses seen under Torquemada were checked to some degree. Ironically, the well-established bureaucratic structure of the Inquisition would help insulate Spain from the effects of ad hoc witchcraft trials that swept Europe and claimed tens of thousands of lives in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The Spanish Inquisition was suppressed by Joseph Bonaparte in 1808, restored by Ferdinand VII in 1814, suppressed in 1820, restored in 1823, and finally suppressed permanently in 1834. The Portuguese Inquisition was suppressed in 1821.
- Edward A. Ryan
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition ( Spanish: Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición ), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition ( Inquisición española ), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile.
- 15 July 1834
- Grand Inquisitor and Suprema designated by the crown
- 1 November 1478
Nov 17, 2017 · Beginning in the 12th century and continuing for hundreds of years, the Inquisition is infamous for the severity of its tortures and its persecution of Jews and Muslims. Its worst manifestation...
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The Spanish Inquisition was founded in 1478 by Ferdinand and Isabella to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and was under the direct control of the Spanish monarchy. It was not definitively abolished until 1834, during the reign of Isabella II.
[JARRING CHORD] (The cardinals burst in) Ximinez: NOOOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, and an almost...
