The History of Andalucia

The Spanish Inquisition

January 2008: Part 5, The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable

December 2007: Part 4, The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable

November 2007: Part 3, The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable

October 2007: Part 2, The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable

September 2007: Part 1, The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable

The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable, Part 5

This, the fifth article in the series about the Spanish Inquisition looks at how the Inquisition operated in practice and how the results have contributed to the myth.

The first intimation that the tribunal had arrived in an area was normally when the Inquisitors preached a sermon in that district listing the heresies and inviting those who wished to discharge their consciences to come forward and denounce themselves and others.

Thousands of conversos were faced with a dilemma. Did they admit to heresies during the period of grace, usually thirty days, or did they wait and hope that they would not be denounced by a vindictive neighbour. One of the problems faced by conversos was that, over the years, practices permissible by their old religion, Judaism, had been incorporated into their Catholic practices and many had received no real guidance as to what was permissible and what was not. To be safe they confessed to anything that could possibly be a heresy. Furthermore the Inquisition did not have a definitive list of all heresies, they tended to add them to their list if they thought that a practice would have been on the list if it had been thought of in the first place, including new heresies confessed too by unwitting conversos. In Seville thousands of conversos were imprisoned waiting to be interrogated following voluntary confessions. In one year alone, 1486, the Toledo Inquisition reconciled 2,400 repentant conversos. Many thousands more conversos fled, managing to keep one town or province ahead of the Inquisition. They were automatically assumed guilty.

It was this period of grace and the willingness of conversos to confess that persuaded the Inquisition and the rest of Catholic Spain, that there was a huge problem and led to the later historical reports that there were hundreds of thousands of heretics.

In principle, if a heretic confessed then they could be punished by losing some of their civil liberties. In practice this could be avoided by a payment to the Inquisition and records indicate that this was the most common outcome. However the Inquisition did not always accept the repentance implied by the confession and several heretics were brought to trial for offences committed after rehabilitation. In 1511 Maria Gonzalez was brought to trial. The only evidence against her was her own confession in 1483 which she gave during a period of grace. Her husband had been burnt as a heretic at that time. Maria made the mistake of maintaining ‘they burnt him on false evidence’. She too met the same fate.

At the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century the figures are instructive. In two years in Cuidad Real 52 people were burnt alive but 220 were condemned in their absence. In Barcelona in June 1491, 3 persons went to the stake but 139 were judged in their absence. In Majorca in May 1493, 3 people were burnt, whilst 47 were burnt in effigy. This pattern was repeated through Spain. It is this practice of burning an effigy and condemning people in their absence that led to the total numbers of executions being exaggerated by early historians. The real figures are bad enough. More recent estimates based on records of the time indicate that up to 1530 around 2,000 people went to the stake for heresy. This represented about 75% of the total number of people executed throughout the four hundred years reign of the Inquisition. Of those condemned, between 1488 and 1505 in Barcelona, 99.3% were conversos and in Valencia between 1484 and 1505, 91.6% were of converso origin.

This pattern was repeated until around 1530 when, effectively, Spain ran out of conversos, or rather the Inquisition ran out of conversos to persecute. During the 50 years, 1480 to 1530, first hand converso memory of Jewish practices had dwindled to the extent that any converso was of the second generation and was largely considered to be Catholic Spanish. There were odd exceptions where family memories had been kept alive but, by and large, the Inquisition had accomplished the task for which it had been created, or at least the task that it took on, to rid Spain of Jews and Jewish traditions. It now had to redefine a role for itself to justify its continued existence.

The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable, Part 4

The first three articles looked at how the Spanish Inquisition has been perceived, how the Inquisition came into being and how the Inquisition was used against Jews. This month we look at the first actions taken against heretics as a result of the bull issued by Pope Sextus IV in 1478.

On 27th September 1480 commissions as inquisitors were issued to two priests and one advisor at Medina del Campo. It had taken Ferdinand 2 years to arrive at the conclusion that an Inquisition was necessary and he now voiced his reasoning, ‘We could do no less because we were told so many things about Andalucia.’ The real reason may be more political. The Inquisition first concerned itself with the southern parts of Castile as it was then, Seville and Cordoba. Isabella’s supporters in the civil wars of the 1470s had taken lucrative official posts in these cities pushing out the incumbents who were mainly conversos and supporters of the rebel nobles. They naturally resented their loss and formed a core of potential enemies.

Once again the 15th century spin doctors got to work. A story was soon circulating involving a converso councillor, Diego de Susán. He was supposedly at the centre of a plot to overthrow the Inquisition and called a meeting of Seville dignitaries in 1480 who committed to raising money, men and arms for that purpose. Only the betrayal of the plot by the fermosa fembra (beautiful maiden) Susanna, daughter of Susán, fearing for the fate of her Christian lover, prevented an uprising. The story went on to relate how three of the richest leaders of the city were subsequently burnt alive. In fact there was no plot. Councillor Susán had died in 1479 and he had no daughter.

The first auto de fe was celebrated on the 6th February 1481 in Seville when six people were burnt at the stake. The sermon was preached by Fray Alonso de Hojeda. Within a few days he was dead, a victim of the plague. Perhaps if that had been seen as a sign from God the horrors to come would not have occurred.

During 1481 thousands of converso households took flight from Andalucia, in some areas depopulating the countryside. It was obvious that many did not trust the Inquisitors and the reason for that is not hard to find. Many accusations were made by malicious neighbours, converso, Jew and Old Christian alike. The identity of the accuser was not revealed to the defendant who was assumed guilty unless he could prove otherwise. There are many cases where the event allegedly proving heresy took place tens of years previously and may have been as innocent as changing the bed sheets on a Friday or nodding the head in the manner of a praying Jew. With such a legal opportunity to take revenge for slights imagined and real it is not surprising that the workload of the Inquisition increased.

In February 1482 seven more Inquisitors were appointed, one being the infamous Tomás de Torquemada who became the first Inquisitor General in 1488. Tribunals were set up in Córdoba in 1482, and Cuidad Real and Jaén in 1483. In 1482 an Inquisition was also set up in Aragon and shortly afterwards in Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia. Interestingly Ferdinand himself controlled appointments and salaries of the tribunals in Aragon so they were largely independent of the pope.

Even so word of the corruption engendered by the Inquisition still reached Rome and in April 1482 Sixtus IV issued a bull in which he protested: ‘that in Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and salvation of souls, but by lust for wealth and 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, 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.’

Ferdinand was outraged and in public pretended to disbelieve the authenticity of the bull on the grounds that no sensible pontiff would issue such a document. He sent a strongly worded protest to Sixtus as a result of which the bull was suspended. Ferdinand now had total control of the Inquisition throughout Spain and her territories.

Again the Spanish spin doctors sharpened their quills. They concocted a similar story to the Seville conspiracy except placed it in Toledo. The plot was supposed to be executed on the feast of Corpus Christi in 1485. The Inquisition was moved from Cuidad Real to Toledo the same year.

By 1485 the converso and New Christian (even the offspring of conversos were persecuted for the ‘sins of their fathers’) population of Spain were living in fear of their lives. As we have seen many decided to flee abroad even before the expulsion orders and this has actually contributed to the myth of the Inquisition because it was not only possible to be tried in your absence it was also possible to be punished and executed in your absence as well. For instance in the two years during which the tribunal sat at Cuidad Real 52 people were burnt alive but a further 220 were condemned in their absence and burnt in effigy. In 1493 in Mallorca, 3 people and 47 effigies were burnt.

Records show that the first 50 years of the Inquisition saw the tribunals at their most active and the greatest number of convictions for heresy. Of all those persecuted in the period 1488 to 1505, 99.3% of those tried by the Barcelona tribunal and 91.6% of those tried at Valencia between 1484 and 1530 were conversos of Jewish origin. It appears that the tribunals were concerned not with heresy as a whole but only the secret practice of Jewish rites. In other words, during this period of most intense activity during the Inquisitional period, you were only really threatened if you were a converso or of a converso family.

The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable, Part 3

The Inquisition in Seville, Cordoba and Toledo

The first two articles looked at the perception others had of the Inquisition both within Spain and outside the country and how the Inquisition came into being. This month we look at the first actions taken by the Inquisition which, surprisingly, had nothing at all to do with heretics.

Since the 1460’s Church leaders had been increasingly advocating a separation between Jews and Christians that of course included conversos. They feared that conversos would be inveigled back into Judaism despite it having been against the law since 1255 for Christians to convert to Judaism or Islam. Following the reconquest of Málaga a group of Islamic ex Christians were put to death for this offence. Conversely in Granada a similar group were welcomed back into the Christian fold.

Such inconsistency of royal policy is reflected in the outcome of the first actions taken by the Inquisition after 1480. The infamous Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor General. In order to minimise the contact between Jew and converso a partial expulsion of Jews was ordered in Andalucia in 1482. This was initiated by the Inquisition. The exiles were free to go to other parts of Spain. Jews were ordered out of Seville, Cordoba and Cadiz in 1483 but the crown delayed implementation until 1484 when the Seville Jews were expelled. Even then this action may have been motivated more by a fear of Jewish collaboration with the Moorish kingdom of Granada. A few years later Jews were still living in Cordoba and Cadiz. A similar expulsion order was issued in Aragon in 1486. The order was ignored and eventually cancelled. Even as late as 1490 Ferdinand and Isabella were actively protecting their Jews from excessive repression by nobles. However, over the next couple of years Torquemada seems to have persuaded the monarchs that a total expulsion of Jews was the only policy to follow.

Following the expulsion order of 1482 the Inquisition had got into its stride and were starting to hear heretical cases. Many of these cases were as a result of accusations made by Jews against conversos and many of the accusations proved false. In some cases the crown intervened to have the false accusers arrested and tortured. Even so, over a period of ten years it appeared that Spain was riddled with heretics, good Christians who had been tempted back to Judaism by wily Jews, or at least that was how Torquemada portrayed the situation. The edict of expulsion was issued on the 31st March 1492 from Granada and gave the Jews of Castile and Aragon until the 31st July to accept baptism or leave the country. It gave as its main justification for the edict, ‘the great harm suffered by Christians from the contact, intercourse and communication which they have with Jews, who always attempt in various ways to seduce faithful Christians from our Holy Catholic Faith’. It is clear what the monarchs thought, or was it?

The general population had been prepared for the expulsion order by a series of stories of Jewish atrocities. The converso bishop of Segovia is reported to have punished sixteen Jews for a ritual murder of a Christian child. In a separate case in 1491 six conversos and six Jews were tortured at La Guardia in Toledo province. They confessed to taking a Christian child, crucifying him and cutting his heart out in an attempt to create a spell to rid Spain of Christians. The culprits were publicly executed at Avila in November that year. The affair was widely publicised.

Many Jews were baptised and welcomed into the Church yet, two months after the edict, Ferdinand felt obliged to inform Torquemada that, ‘many wish to become Christians but are afraid to do so because of the Inquisition. Accordingly you will write to the Inquisitors, ordering them that even if something is proved against those persons who become Christians after the decree of expulsion, no steps be taken against them, at least for small matters’.

Just before July 1492 it is calculated from tax records that there may have been as many as 80,000 Jews expelled from Spain. There are no contemporary statistics, the first historian to write about the event did so one hundred years later. These early histories put the figure for expulsions much higher, as many as 800,000. Even so those expelled suffered greatly, particularly the poor. They were often helped by richer relatives, some of whom were conversos. Some richer Jews, since they could not take their wealth with them, transferred their property to converso relatives. Some bribed officials to allow them to take gold and jewellery with them. There are accounts of Jewish houses being sold for a mule but, rich or poor, they all suffered on their journeys. The ships that were to transport them out of Spain were old, leaky and badly managed. Many set sail only to return at the first storm, forcing the passengers to accept baptism to remain in Spain. Many more made it to North Africa where they were pillaged and murdered. Yet more returned to Spain by land from Portugal. When they returned they were entitled to have their property returned at the same price at which it had been purchased and return to jobs. Many Jews were actively welcomed back like the Jewish doctors who returned to Madrid as Christians in 1494. Those who returned and suffered as a result of local anti Semitism found themselves protected by the monarchs who issued a number of protectionist decrees.

It is therefore unclear just what had been achieved by the expulsion order. Even amongst the Christians in Spain there was criticism. The inquisitor Jeronimo de Zurita tells us at the time that, ‘many were of the opinion that the king was making a mistake’. A hundred years later the inquisitor Luis de Paramo, writing the first history of the Inquisition writes, ‘I cannot omit to mention that there were learned men who did not feel that the edict was justified.’

It appears that the only man to express a strong opinion for, and totally support the edict was Torquemada himself. A deputation of Jews in 1492 offered Ferdinand a large sum of money to reconsider his decision. Torquemada burst into the room and flung thirty pieces of silver on the table and demanded to know, ‘for what price Christ was again to be sold to the Jews’.

The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable, Part2

In the first article we took a general overview of how the Inquisition was perceived outside the Spanish territories then and now and how the Inquisition operated. This month we look at how the Inquisition came into being.

In 1478, the year the Inquisition was authorised, Christian Spain had been fighting the Moors, on and off, for 700 years. By 1478 only a Moorish enclave around Granada survived. It is important to remember that at this time the Inquisition was only a threat if you were a Catholic. Moors and Jews were safe from the Inquisitors. Whether part of a machiavellian plan or by accident the Inquisition was soon to be used as a weapon against the Jews

The war had not been a particularly religious war; the Spanish aim was to regain their own land, the fact that the enemy were Muslims, Jews and not a few Christians was incidental. In fact Christians had been living under Muslim rule (as Mozarabes) ever since the Moorish invasion in 711, and Muslims had been living under Christian rule (as Mudejares) ever since the Christians recaptured the first territory in 722 following the Battle of Covadonga in Asturias. Military alliances were made regardless of religion; the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula were a pragmatic bunch. Ferdinand, King of Castile from 1230 to 1252 actually called himself ‘the king of three religions’. The great Spanish military hero, El Cid, was born Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a Castilian noble, who in 1081 transferred his services from the Christians to the Muslim ruler of Saragossa (who was then at war with other Muslim rulers). Following several campaigns he captured the Muslim city of Valencia in 1094. El Cid ended his career as an independent ruler of Valencia.

During the early part of the Moorish period, from 711 to 1146, all religions had been tolerated within Moorish Spain. Jews know the period as the Golden Age of Spanish Jewry. Persecuted before 711, Jews in Spain allied themselves with the invading Muslims and soon occupied influential, powerful positions. They also accumulated great wealth. As the re-conquest picked up momentum in the 11th Century Moorish Jews were welcomed into Christian Spain where they formed self-administered communities. Some communities were protected by, and paid taxes only to the Crown; some were protected by and came under the jurisdiction of the local Duke. Due to their education and skills compared to those within the mediaeval world they were moving to, they soon again reached positions of power, wealth and influence. In 1146 the fortunes of the remaining Moorish Jews changed when the Almohad Berbers invaded and conquered Moorish Spain. They were Muslim fanatics and banned the Jewish religion. Many Jews converted to the Moorish religion, even more emigrated to Christian Spain.

It is to this period that the first traces of organised anti Semitism can be traced. The Catholic bishops in mediaeval times were arguably more powerful than monarchs and naturally wanted that situation to continue. One of their methods of retaining power was total control of education, both subject, confined to Catholic texts, and content, strict adherence to their religious code. Jews were seen as having dangerous beliefs, medical, scientific, astronomic and philosophic, that ran counter to that taught by the church. The church taught Catholics that Judaism was an inferior religion and that Israel had persecuted its prophets. The church instilled in every Christian that the Jewish people had no reason to exist as they had rejected the Messiah and brought about his death. Powerful stuff to a population deliberately kept uneducated and illiterate.

Early in the 12th century Christian church leaders were responsible for measures prohibiting Jews from holding public office, restricting economic activities, preventing Jews having Christian servants and for cancelling royal debts to Jews. Many Jews were pressured to accept baptism. They were called conversos and were accepted into, or at least alongside, the Christian fold. More importantly they retained their previous positions and wealth. Jews as a whole had support from the leading families in Spain, including the royals, after all they provided the doctors and indispensable advisors. The church appeared to try to create a schism between the Jewish person and the Jewish religion to satisfy its own needs, ridding the world of Judaism, whilst retaining its own support from the influential Spanish families by allowing the converso, the person, to continue in whatever role he had previously occupied thus not affecting the economy or efficiency of the family or state. A carrot also appears, the cancellation of royal debt. It would be naïve to think that the church believed that a baptism ceremony immediately eradicated an individuals’ long held religious beliefs and immediately implanted a new set of beliefs.

More converso families were created following violent anti Jewish programmes in 1391. These started in Seville but rapidly spread throughout Spain. The archdeacon of Ecija, Ferrant Martinez, a religious fanatic and anti semite, taking advantage of economic problems, incited mobs to attack Jews and the privileged classes. The Jewish quarters, aljamas, were destroyed in many towns and hundreds of Jews were murdered. Those not killed were forced to accept baptism. It is clear however that the nobles and royalty did not support these excesses. In Aragon the ‘governors of the cities, ministers and nobles defended us and many of our brethren took refuge in castles where they provided us with food’ (Reuben ben Nissim 1391). Following the uprising the crown of Aragon actually gave permission for conversos to revert to Judaism although most felt it safer to stay a converso. Many of these conversos and their descendants were still seen as Jews, not practicing Catholics, and, no doubt given the nature of the conversion, many still were.

By the time Ferdinand and Isabella began their reign, in 1474, many Jews had again risen to prominent positions, some actually in the royal court. Both were determined to protect their Jewish subjects as well as their conversos and native Spanish Catholics and issued proclamations and intervened repeatedly against municipalities that tried to eliminate the commercial activity of Jews. However they also had to contend with social tensions and increasingly vociferous anti Jewish groups in the towns. Perhaps not wanting a repeat of 1391 the monarchs decided the only solution was a separation of Jews and Christians. In 1480 the Inquisition was set in motion.

The Spanish Inquisition, Fact or Fable, Part 1

The Spanish Inquisition, the ‘Black Legend’, wicked simply because it was Spanish. Is it possible at so far remove to separate the fact from the fable, if indeed it is fable?

‘Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the vapour of heated iron. A suffocating odour pervaded the prison. A deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies. A richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors. Oh, most unrelenting! Oh, most demoniac of men! ‘Death,’ I said, ‘any death but that of the pit.’

These words were written by Edgar Allan Poe in his notorious indictment of the Spanish Inquisition, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’.

The name Torquemada, Queen Isabella’s confessor and sometime Inquisitor General, is still used to scare children, a Spanish bogeyman if you like.

On the silver screen, swashbuckling melodramas set during the era of the Inquisition featuring characters like Erroll Flynn, upright, handsome, compassionate, brave, Anglo supermen with light complexions and mid brown hair, save the blonde damsel from the clutches of the evil, greasy haired, swarthy complexioned Latino. The sub text here is the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism but movie moguls like to keep the plot simple. They were capitalising on deep seated prejudices that had been carefully cultivated over a long period of time, so long in fact that they became an integral part of a culture that was exported to America with the Protestant settlers on the Mayflower.

So what is the truth about the Spanish Inquisition? Common sense tells us that it lies somewhere between two extremes and that to understand it there must also be an understanding of the politics of the time and the way in which people, from kings, queens and popes right down to the humble peasant thought and, as we delve deeper into the subject, how propaganda was used to influence those thoughts. As we shall see, spin-doctors are not a phenomenon of the 20th Century.

The Inquisition was established in 1478 and was abolished on the 15th July 1834, sufficient time for any prejudice to become a self-evident fact that required no evidence in order to substantiate it but were those facts correct?

We are fortunate that the course of the Inquisition, each and every trial, each and every verdict over a period of almost four hundred years, was carefully chronicled by the Inquisitors, more carefully than any event previously and many since.

In 1478 Isabella and Ferdinand, anticipating the eventual unification of Spain, applied for a papal rescript to establish a Holy Office, an Inquisition. They used the precedent of the functioning of the Roman Inquisition during the 13th Century that was designed to quash the Cathari, a group of people whose Manichaean beliefs were inspired by a prophet called Mani, a Persian, and whose beliefs were seen as a threat to the civil as well as ecclesiastical well being of the Romanised populations of southern France and northern Italy. Circuit courts were set up and over a period of 100 years the Cathari were eliminated or driven underground.

It is difficult today to appreciate how people living in non Moorish parts of Europe during the Middle Ages thought. In their minds there was no distinction between Church and State. Pope Sixtus IV, in granting Ferdinand and Isabella’s request stated that it was ‘the first duty of kings to nurture and defend the faith of their people’ and followed this with a statement that was a truism in its day, ‘that no society could exist without religious uniformity’, despite the fact that the Moors in Spain had fairly adequately proved the contrary. Their eventual downfall was seen as proof that the truism was correct. It was not only those of the Catholic faith that believed this. Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England firmly believed Sixtus and ruthlessly persecuted Catholics during the 16th Century, the Dutch Calvinists in the Netherlands similarly barbarically persecuted anybody who did not share their beliefs.

The organisation of the Inquisition reflected the emergence of the concept of the nation-state with an emphasis on centralization and royal control, a point not lost on Sixtus and succeeding popes who variously considered the Inquisition a serious undermining of their ecclesiastical authority. The king with only the nodding approval of the pope appointed the Grand Inquisitor. He appointed five members of the High Council over which he presided. The High Council had numerous clerics responsible for recording all proceedings and consultants who debated and decided disputed questions and views. There were, by the mid 16th century, nineteen lower inquisitorial courts in Spain and more in Spanish territories in the New World and Italy. The lower courts had to submit annual general reports and monthly financial reports and could not set up an auto-de-fe without the sanction of the High Court. The auto-de-fe was the religious public ceremony that included the punishment of convicted heretics and the reconciliation of those who recanted.

This system of control is still observed today. In the UK, Parliament devolves authority to local authority, court cases can be heard by local magistrates, Crown Courts, Courts of the House of Lords and those of Appeal with the final arbiter being the Home Secretary. Centralization is a fact of life throughout the civilised world.

What contributed to making the Inquisition alien to our minds then and now was the procedure. In the UK, in the 15th century, there was already a strong tenant of Common Law, actions that were universally accepted as being crimes even though they were not written down. Habeas corpus, the right of every individual to be brought before a court if they considered themselves wrongly convicted and the presumption that an accused was innocent until proven guilty strengthened civil liberty in Common Law countries. Spain was and is not a Common Law country, you therefore have to prove your innocence if accused. In Spain, during the Inquisition, the legal process started with a sworn denunciation by an individual. The accused then normally enjoyed a thirty day ‘term of grace’. This period was to allow the accused to recant or prepare a defence. The defendant was provided with a lawyer and two disinterested priests had to be present at any examination by officers of the court. The identity of the accuser was not revealed to the defendant, which was a severe disadvantage although there were severe penalties for those proved to have made a wrongful accusation. Judges decided questions of fact and law and the Inquisition combined the procedures of investigation, prosecution and judgement. Torture was used to extract the truth. The rules stated that torture should not be that extreme that it threatened life or limb and Sixtus was deluged with complaints on this matter. The records show that his remonstrations to Isabel and Ferdinand fell on deaf ears.