Logically, this article is not written to defend the indefensible, especially when even the Pope himself -John Paul II in 2004- apologized for the horrors of the Inquisition, it is only to denounce the many artistic licenses and linguistic festivities that surround the Inquisition and that the popular imagination believes yes or yes. We'll start with a little test:
How many of these statements about the Inquisition do you think are correct?
- It was created in Spain
- Indiscriminately killed thousands of Jews and Muslims
- They were sentenced in summary proceedings
- The prisoners were subjected to multiple and varied tortures, especially bloody
- It was used by the civil authority and to satisfy revenge
- In Spain it smelled like a burnt witch
Dear reader, I am sorry to tell you that of the 6 statements only one is correct:"It was used by civil authority and to satisfy revenge." So, if you are able to put aside that stale and "especially bloody" vision of the Spanish Inquisition -because unfortunately when we speak of the Inquisition, without further adjectives, we think directly of the Spanish-, allow me to point out each one of them . Of course, as there is much to specify and point out, there will be three parts (two points in each article).
It was created in Spain
At the Council of Verona (1184) Pope Lucius III promulgated the bull Ad abolendam , from Ad abolendam diversem haeresium pravitatem ("To Abolish Various Evil Heresies"), which decreed that earls, barons, and other lords should assist bishops in discovering and punishing heretics...
…that the bishops visit twice a year all the cities and villages of their diocese to discover the sacrilegious; that they surrender to the secular arm all those who are declared heretics by the bishops and who do not confess their crime; and also, that they be declared infamous forever and stripped of their jobs […] unless, immediately after the error was discovered, they spontaneously returned to the unity of the Catholic faith and consented – in the judgment of the bishop – to abjure their your mistake.
We see that, despite everything, the return to the flock of the lost sheep avoids punishment. The fact that it is not necessary to wait for a formal accusation to begin the process of persecution, repression and punishment of the heretic supposes definitively adopting the inquisitorial method in the process, which places us before the effective birth of the Inquisition (of the Latin inquisitio , inquisitionis , «inquiry»; derived from inquirere, « Search"). In this way, the so-called Episcopal Inquisition was created. , since the bishops are in charge of investigating and judging, and the civil power of executing the sentence.
Whether it was because it was too much work to tour the dioceses and open investigations or simply because the bishops of the time were, for the most part, just priests of mass and pot, the fact is that nothing was achieved, especially in what concerning the Cathar heresy. In addition, the civil power interfered in the work of the bishops and was not limited to executing the sentences -according to the Lateran Council (1179) the clerics were forbidden to kill-, but it was allowed to pass sentences. So, seeing that the shepherds of the Church had lost control over the flocks that had strayed from the path of the Lord and that Catharism was spreading throughout Lombardy, some areas of the Pyrenees and, above all, in Languedoc, the Pope Innocent III decided to take action on the matter. He sent papal legates to bring them to their senses by house-to-house preaching and public debate, and, to no avail, in 1208 he called for a crusade against heretics with the promise of castles and lands conquered as booty. They led the powerful Crusader army Simon de Montfort and the papal legate Arnau Amalric. In addition, they had the support of the King of France, since he hoped to seize the territories of the Crown of Aragon on French soil. As an example, what happened in Beziers in July 1209. The Crusader army besieged the city and Arnau Amalric offered an ultimatum:if they handed over the Cathars they would not take the city -it is difficult to believe a hyena when it has bloody fangs-. The inhabitants of the city refused and the Crusaders stormed the city:fires, destruction, pillage and the murder of all who cross the path of the warriors of the Church. Faced with this indiscriminate massacre, Simon de Montfort asked the papal legate:"How do we distinguish heretics from the rest?" Legacy's response...
Kill them all, the Lord will know how to recognize his own.
And to top it off, The letter that Arnau Amalric sent to the pope:
Today, His Holiness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword regardless of gender or age, and after the slaughter of the enemies, the entire city was looted and burned. Divine vengeance has done wonders.
With the general cleaning done by the crusaders, and no longer having the support of any noble and, therefore, of any city, the Cathars who managed to flee intermingled with the rest of the population practicing their faith in secrecy. With the death of Innocent III, the underground Cathars had a break... until Gregory IX arrived. and he decided to resume the persecution of heretics. Now it was no longer useful to take cities that protected them and annihilate every living creature, they had to search through the population and separate the grain from the chaff. To do this, Gregory IX created in 1231 the so-called Pontifical Inquisition . In this new Inquisition, also called medieval , the bishops lost their inquisitorial role, which passed into the hands of inquisitors appointed directly by the pope and who were only accountable to him. They investigated, judged and imposed spiritual penalties (penances, excommunications, interdicts), while in the most serious cases, they were handed over to the secular arm, which applied physical and material penalties (confiscation of property, demolition of houses or death). And, just like in police series, when you have to deal with a problem that exceeds the uniformed forces, a special group is created (type The untouchables of Eliot Ness or Harrelson's Men ), the pope decided that the inquisitors would be chosen from among the Dominicans, friars who were experts in canon law and theology.
This medieval Inquisition acted in France, Italy and Central Europe; in Spain it was limited only to the kingdom of Aragon, a refuge for many French Cathars fleeing persecution. In Castile, as there was no relevant focus of heretics, it was not necessary. Once the heresies it persecuted had been eradicated, in the fifteenth century the medieval or pontifical Inquisition, in practice, ceased to function. Therefore, we see that the Inquisition establishes itself and acts where it is needed, and for this reason, precisely, it did not reach the crown of Castile until the end of the fifteenth century.
Let's say that the peaceful coexistence of the three cultures in the Iberian Peninsula was relative, depending on the circumstances, the place and, above all, the will of the king or caliph on duty. Logically, the Jews, a minority both in the territories controlled by Christians and by Muslims, had it the worst and served as a scapegoat. The fourteenth century was the century of the black plague, the pandemic that devastated Europe and decimated the population, and throughout Europe it was decided that the Jews were responsible. In addition, the so-called first Castilian civil war broke out in Castile, which overlapped with the war of the Two Pedros, between Castile and Aragon. Plague, war and famine were the necessary ingredients for the anti-Semitic message of radicals such as the Dominican Vicente Ferrer -by the way, a saint- or the archdeacon Ferrar Martínez, to permeate, who angered the people and unleashed the persecution of Jews and the assault on several Jewish quarters . Nothing new, throughout history, and even today, any society or social group adopts coercive mechanisms against the dissident or with the "other". Faced with this bleak panorama and the lack of protection from the authorities, part of the Jewish community opted for conversion. Logically, it had been a forced conversion -to save their property and, above all, their lives-, so it is not surprising that many of them, in the privacy of their homes, continued to practice Judaism. It was a decision that, promptly, solved the problem... and generated another.
Their new status as Christians -called new, as opposed to old Christians, those of pure stock- allowed them to continue with their lives and, at the same time, raise their status to that of full-fledged citizens without restrictions (clothing, living in the Jewish quarters or exercise certain professions)… and they took advantage of it. Although logically there were Jewish artisans or peasants with difficulties to make ends meet, they have always been associated with commerce and finance. So, these new Christians, industrious and enterprising, began to occupy important positions in society -on many occasions by buying them-, to live outside the Jewish quarters, to rub shoulders with the nobility -there were many penniless noblemen whose only patrimony was their title - and even, although not very "Jewish", to flaunt wealth. That sudden socioeconomic promotion of the former Jews aroused the resentment and envy of the old Christians, both the people and the nobility. A perfect fertilizer for the seed of suspicion of false conversions to germinate and turn all converts into suspected Judaizers (false converts). Now the scapegoat ceased to be the Jews and the converts took their place (" Do not trust the converted Jew, nor his son, nor his grandson «). To please the people and the nobles, and faced with the threat of a social explosion, the Catholic Monarchs took action on the matter and asked the pope Sixtus IV the establishment of the Inquisition in Castile to, once again, separate "the grain from the chaff." In 1478, Sixtus IV had the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis published. , with the particularity that it would be Isabel and Fernando who would appoint the inquisitors (" Her Majesty commands... «, appeared in the inquisitorial documents). For the first time, the pope attributed the management and control of the Holy Office to the civil power -something he regretted later but that he could no longer remedy-. When a year later Ferdinand was appointed king of Aragon, he petitioned the pope for the establishment of the Castilian Inquisition in his Aragonese possessions. After much fighting, because the pope replied that he already had the medieval Inquisition (remember, managed by Rome), Fernando achieved his goal in 1482. In this way, and under a single mandate, the Spanish Inquisition
he Indiscriminately killed thousands of Jews and Muslims
Just as the episcopal and medieval Inquisitions were created for a specific problem (heresy in general and the Cathar in particular), the Spanish one was created, under the circumstances we have seen, to eradicate the Judaizers (false Jewish converts, also called marranos ). Neither Jews nor Muslims could be tried by the Inquisition, only baptized Christians accused of heresy (according to the RAE, «Idea or set of religious ideas contrary to the dogmas of a religious doctrine that are rejected by the ecclesiastical authorities , especially in the catholic church «). If the medieval Inquisition did not survive the heresies it persecuted, the Spanish Inquisition had a problem:it chained one to another.
Several events in which Judaizers and Jews were involved -or so it was denounced-, finished off in 1485 with the death of an inquisitor in Aragon -unlike in Castile, in Aragon the Inquisition was not well received-, heated up again the spirits . In addition, as good kings of their time, the Catholic Monarchs longed to achieve national unity (if I may use this expression typical of Romanticism), and since political unity was very difficult (Castile and Aragon were governed according to customs, laws or privileges of their territory), began with religious unity. In 1492, with the writing of the General Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada -it is said that he was running out of converts to judge and fleece their assets-, the Catholic Monarchs promulgated the Decree of the Alhambra or Edict of Granada:conversion or expulsion. The expulsion was a human tragedy, because they had to leave this land, which was also theirs and which they called Sepharad, and, in fact, many of them kept the keys to their houses thinking of returning, and a great economic loss and cultural. The expulsion decree emphasized the Jewish problem…
It is well known that in our domains, there are some bad Christians who have Judaized and have committed apostasy against the holy Catholic faith, the majority being caused by the relations between Jews and Christians.
Expulsion of the Jews
In this way, except for the Muslim minority that remained in the territories of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada when it capitulated in 1492 and to whom a series of rights were guaranteed, such as religious tolerance, the entire society remained under the surveillance of the Inquisition... including , again, all the Jews who chose to convert rather than leave. So the Inquisition still had "work." In addition, during the 16th century, the so-called Blood Cleansing Statutes were approved, by which in order to occupy certain public positions or carry out certain professions, it was necessary to demonstrate that they were pure and had no converted ancestors. Until Luther arrives... and messes it up again.
After the Protestant Reformation, the Christian religious movement of the 16th century initiated by Martin Luther and which led to the schism of the Catholic Church to give rise to numerous churches grouped under the denomination of Protestantism, everything exploded again. That movement, in favor of recovering primitive Christianity, which denounced the sale of indulgences and denied the authority of the pope, quickly spread throughout Germany and the Netherlands, principalities and territories subject to Charles I of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor. Logically, the Protestant reform, and the churches that arose from it, needed political support, and they received it from the princes and regents of the Central European territories belonging to the house of Austria -in this way, they tried to gain independence from the royal power-. Seen what has been seen, the Emperor proclaimed himself champion of the church of all life and in 1529 he repealed religious tolerance in these principalities... and he went back to messing around brown. Special mention deserves Anglicanism, a church created in England by Henry VIII due to a mess of skirts and a failed divorce. In this way, there were new heretics to question, and this time it was much more difficult because they were old Christians. With this new heresy, new types of control appeared:that of books -all those manuscripts, referring to Protestantism or written by Protestants, became prohibited- and that of borders and ports, to prevent the entry of heretics.
A European consequence of the Protestant Reformation were the so-called wars of religion, sometimes transvestite civil wars, which spread throughout Europe... except in Spain, where the Inquisition controlled any dissident attempt on religious matters. It is true that, as a European power and with possessions in territories that supported Protestantism, we participated in some, but in relation to a religious war, as such, in our peninsular and insular territory it did not exist. The reality is that the iron control of the Inquisition did not allow many joys to the Protestants in Spain and, therefore, there was not much to pursue. Two important outbreaks in Seville and Segovia, which the Inquisition nipped in the bud, and the rest are specific and isolated cases.
If we make a table of the intensity of the persecutions of the Inquisition, at the top would be the Judaizers and at the bottom, less intensity, would be the Protestants, and among them, a new heresy:the Moriscos. The concessions after the capture of Granada, in religious matters, lasted barely 10 years. The Moors had no place in the hackneyed religious unity. First of all, I would like to point out that the term Moor comes from the Latin maurus, the name of the inhabitants of the Roman province of Mauritania or Mauretania , an area of North Africa that corresponded to the Mediterranean coast of what is now Morocco and that has nothing to do with the current country of Mauritania. As the waves that crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and reached the Iberian Peninsula in 711 were almost entirely Berbers recently Islamized from this area -Arabs, what is said Arabs, few-, by extension, the term Moor ended up being used to name the one who professed the Islamic religion and the Muslim who lived in Spain. What has been said, that, repeating the move, in 1502 the Forced Conversion Pragmatic was signed -in Aragon it would have to wait until 1526-, by which the Moors in Christian territories, called Mudejars, had two options:exile or conversion. These new Christians of Muslim origin received the name of Moriscos. After the mass baptisms, since almost all the Moors opted for this route, now yes, if no exceptions, the entire Spanish society was under the inquisitor's eye.
Although the "Moorish" problem, for a temporary reason, could have started before the "Protestant" problem, the reality is that, although the number of Moriscos who kept their religious rituals private was much greater than the number of false Jewish converts, they did not they began to "bother" until almost the middle of the fifteenth century. At first, only clothing issues and certain folk customs were denounced, but there was no such seed of doubt as with the Judaizers. I suppose it had a lot to do with the fact that, for the most part, they lived in rural areas and dedicated themselves to agriculture - they bothered less than the "rich" Judaizers. The reality is that the false Muslim converts endured the injustices in the hope that one day they would once again be the ones to have the upper hand. Hopes based on the growing Ottoman power in the Mediterranean and on the Barbary pirates who, from North Africa, kept the Spanish fleet and coasts in check. With no news of a liberator and with increasing pressure from the old Christians, the crown (such as the Blood Statute we have talked about) and the Inquisition, the Moriscos, fed up, rebelled in 1568 -the rebellion of the Alpujarras. And it wasn't a tantrum, it was a full-fledged rebellion supported from North Africa and with its own champion, the Moorish Aben Humeya . For three years the troops sent by Philip II held out. , until, fearing that they would act as a fifth column against a Turkish landing in Spain, the king sent his half-brother, don Juan de Austria , at the head of the Tercios. In 1571 the rebellion was put down, those who actively participated were imprisoned (some were enslaved) and the bulk of the Moriscos were deported to other territories of the peninsula. And on this occasion, when everyone demanded the expulsion of the Moors from all the territories, Felipe II remembered the disaster that the expulsion of the Jews meant and chose to keep them. Of course, for a few years the Moors did not even dare to say "this mouth is mine" and began to follow the Church's precept of hearing mass every Sunday and holy days. It would be his son and his successor, Felipe III , the one that, without taking into account the demographic and economic disaster that it meant, especially for Aragon and Valencia, expelled all the Moors in stages between 1609 and 1613.
Expulsion of the Moors
During the 17th century, the Inquisition was completing the "cleansing" of the Judaizers -the rest of the converts were being assimilated by society after several generations, but without forgetting the Blood Statute-, and diminishing its activity in the persecution of heretical groups ( Judaizers, Protestants or Moriscos) -there were no more-. From this moment on, and during the 18th century, the Holy Office focused its attention on certain heretical practices of the old Christians (we will talk about them in the next point).
When Napoleon arrived in Spain in 1808, he abolished the Inquisition, considering that it threatened civil sovereignty and authority. The Constitution promulgated in the Cortes of Cádiz in 1812 consecrated the confessional nature of the Spanish State and, surprisingly, the prohibition of professing other confessions…
The religion of the Spanish Nation is and will always be Catholic, Apostolic, Roman, the only true religion. The Nation protects it by wise and fair laws and prohibits the exercise of any other.
The new Constitution abolished the Holy Office, but there was still the possibility that proceedings for heresy would be opened by the bishops and that penalties would be imposed by secular judges, although both justices had to abide by what the laws stipulated. Fernando VII restored the Holy Office in 1814, as an institution typical of absolutist monarchies, but with little activity. The definitive abolition of the Inquisition was produced by a Royal Decree of July 15, 1834 signed by the governor queen María Cristina de Borbón.
Second Part