The Spanish Inquisition (1478-1834)

Updated: Jul 1, 2020

Origins

The Spanish Inquisition officially began in the Iberian Peninsula on November 1st 1478 with the approval of a papal bull (entitled ‘Exigit Sincere Devotionis’) issued by Pope Sixtus IV and was completely abolished on July 15th, 1834. Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile requested the implantation of the inquisition in an attempt uphold religious orthodoxy and abolish heresy, the act of questioning the word of God as written in the Bible or going against the religion of the ruling monarch at the time with the punishment of eternal doom in Hell. Heresy was seen as treason in Roman law as it was believed that God had installed the divine right of kings granting a specific individual the position in the monarchy to serve God’s will. Several forms of heretical acts punishable by fire at the stake included doubting the resurrection of God, committing adultery, being a homosexual or even maintaining the belief that sex between two single people (an act common amongst the peasants) was permissible.

Motives

Religious Motives:

Jews: It began with the systematic hatred and intolerance of Jews who the Spanish Roman Catholic population blamed for the crucifixion of Christ as well as their refusal to accept Jesus as the son of God. Anti-Semitism was common across Western Europe in the 13th and 14th Centuries (for instance, England expelled their Jewish population in 1290 and France followed in their steps shortly after when they expelled Jews in 1306). As a result of the intolerance, several thousands of Jews fled Spain yet a quarter of a million remained in Spain but converted to Christianity (known as ‘conversos’). This led to the suspicion that they had only renounced their religion on the surface but secretly continued practising it to escape persecution (these people were known as ‘marranos’). The extent of their persecution is evident as today only three medieval synagogues remain in Spain as the rest were destroyed or converted into Churches. The inquisition begun when the original Christian population suspected the conversations were faked and sought to eradicate this false Christianity. During the inquisition, 160,000 Jews were forced into exile as a result of Torquemada’s insistence that Ferdinand and Isabella issue an edict on March 31st offering a choice of exile or baptism, 1492; the Jews' attempts to overrule the decree through bribing the monarch with 300,000 ducats failed.

Muslims: Whilst the inquisition begun to purge Spain of any population that was not a genuine Roman Catholic, the Muslims did not see proper persecution until the 16th century. Islam was forbidden in Spain in 1526 which led to their forced conversions; between 1609 and 1614 300,000 Spanish Muslims were expelled.

Protestants: Protestants were also seen as heretics going against the Roman Catholic traditions and were subsequently also persecuted.

Financial Motives:

The inquisition was financed through confiscating possessions of those found guilty hence why many of the suspected culprits were wealthy. Additionally, Jews were a target due to their optimum position in the Spanish economy (which solidified their power and status) at the time due to money-lending (for a fee) which was not permissible in Catholicism thus enraging them as well as erecting their envy.

How it worked

Gaining Intel

Thousands of Roman Catholic spies and secret informers who worked for the Spanish Catholic Church reported suspicious behaviour. The Church had jurisdiction in all of Spain’s colonies including the Canary Islands, the Netherlands, Naples, Peru, and Mexico, and so on.

Trial

Initially, an edict of grace was publicly read at the suspected heretic’s local parish. The accused then had a period of 30-40 days to confess or prepare their cases for court to defend themselves with the use of witnesses or to provide evidence that the prosecutors were lying or were wrong. Following this, the second and third edicts were read. The accused had the chance to confess within the first three days of their arrest at their first hearing, if not then they had two more hearings and if they still weren’t proven guilty or failed to confess then torture techniques were used. Allegedly those who confessed were absolved of their crimes. If two reputable people testified against the heretic in the grace period then the suspect was taken to court, if they seemed heretical to the court or if five people testified against them they were imprisoned.

Interrogation Methods

The accused was detained and told someone had reported them, yet they weren’t told who it was (despite secret testimonies being illegal at the time) nor what they were being accused of, as a result the suspect didn’t know how to defend themselves against the untold charges.

The accused would be interrogated for hours, initially the process started off calm with innocent questions about their occupation alongside their families (if one was accused of heresy then all of their connections became questionable). They were given the option of voluntary confession as this point to reduce the punishment however they would face solitary confinement for weeks, months of even years (their only human contact was with the jailer) if they failed to confess. They would then be interrogated again; the idea behind this was to extract a forced confession under the psychological pressure combined with the loneliness and constant fear for the safety of themselves and their family.

Torture Techniques

Approximately 1/3rd of people put on trial between 1575-1610 were tortured in the Court of Toledo. The role of the torturer was to force confessions; this particular figure has haunted people through the passage of time but this role was actual normal at the time. The tactics that the torturer used included:

Flogging: beating the individual with a whip or a stick
The Head Crusher: the individual’s chin was placed on top of a metal bar whilst the inquisitor tightened screws attached to a cap that held the victim’s head until their skull was compressed and crushed and their teeth chattered, occasionally their eyeballs would pop out their skull
The Strappado: strapping the individual’s feet together and tying the arms behind their back and then suspending them off the ground with a rope from their wrists and dropped to the floor but stopped before hitting the ground so that the shoulders would dislocate and snap
Waterboarding: the individual’s held is covered and held downwards whilst streams of water are poured over their face to stimulate the experience of drowning
The Water Cure: the individual would be bound to a rack and forced to consume intense amounts of water causing water intoxication (hyponatremia where the blood’s sodium levels plummet causing their cells to swell and thus inflaming their brain); variations of this water torture include forcing the victim to swallow long lengths of absorbent cloth whilst being force-fed a heavy stream of water to trick the mind into swallowing the material which would then enter the stomach and be wretched out of the mouth
The Rack: the limbs of the accused were bound together and pulled apart by a crank until they were dismembered or ripped from their body
The Knee Splitter: a device with razor-spiked surfaces would compress the victim’s knee, leaving their leg useless and motionless
The Judas Cradle: the victim’s genital region would be impaled by a sharp-pointed pyramid seat continuously for hours whilst ropes pulled them from their limbs further deeper onto the tip
The Spanish Donkey: the accused would sit on a wooden edge (occasionally decorated with spikes) whilst weights were added to their feet so that the device had the potential to impale them or cut them down the middle
The Spanish Tickler: the five-curved metal claws would tear through the individual’s flesh as it moved around the torso and had the potential to break their bones

Punishments

Execution

The punishment for heresy was the death penalty, contrary to the popular belief that the torture techniques mentioned above was the punishment. Torture techniques were only used to obtain confessions. Executions were public to deter other citizens and to humiliate the guilty; the accused was burned at the stake in front of a large crowd. Those who recanted and confessed at the last minute and kissed the cross were granted the mercy of being burnt with quick-burning seasoned wood whilst those who didn’t were burnt with slow-burning green-wood. If the subject had been tortured to death, then a figure would represent the deceased and be burned in effigy to complete the execution of the subject by substitution so that they completed their sentence.

The infamous Tomas de Torquemada, a Spanish Dominican monk, oversaw the inquisition under the position of Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition for 15 years during the reign of Queen Isabella, her secretary (Hernando Del Pulgar) reported that 2000 individuals were executed throughout his time. Overall, records indicate approximately 2% of those who faced tribunals were burnt at the stake, a majority faced lesser punishments.

The Decline

Napoleon Bonaparte abolished the inquisition when he captured Spain and positioned his brother, Joseph, on the Spanish throne; Napoleon aimed at removing Papist traditions in an attempt to maintain the views developed from the French Revolution. However, when Ferdinand VII was restored to power in 1814 and Spain was recaptured from the French, the inquisition began again. It wasn’t until an order was placed on July 15th, 1834 that the inquisition was completely outlawed after more than 300 years and 32,000 executions. The final victim of the inquisition was Cayetano Ripoll, a school teacher who was hung in Valencia July 26th, 1826.