Spain And The Inquisition example essay topic

THE SPANISH INQUISITION The word "inquisition" means to examine. Inquisitors would "examine" suspected Heretics, people whose ideas do not match those of the Roman Catholic Church, and punish them accordingly. This included torture and burning. The great inquisition movement that took place in Spain, or Hispania as it was called before Spain united. It was called The Spanish Inquisition. It took place for approximately five hundred years, from the late 15th century to mid 19th century.

Many ironic elements were involved in the history of the Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition lasted longer than any other preceding it, and was the most cruel, bloodthirsty, and festive of all. The objective of the inquisition, in its early state, was to convert all Jews into Christians, but later it mutated into an ugly machine who's new objective was to rid the country of the newly converted Christians. In an age where there was such a close bond between church and state, opposition to the church was intolerable. The Inquisition caused Spain to become intellectually backward, and economically and industrially damaged.

The powerful influence of the Inquisition forbade social influences, such as books from other parts of Europe, to enter Spain. Consequently, the universities remained stagnant, unable to produce graduates understanding the world around them. from the lack of information on the other civilizations in the rest of Europe. As a result of this, they came into the 20th century intellectually inferior and bankrupt. With the banished, tortured, and persecuted heretics in mind, it is possible that the Spanish Inquisition is perhaps one of the most cruel acts performed on innocent people in the name of religion. Before the Spanish Inquisition took place, several other inquisition movements appeared, but none quite so barbaric and brutal as the Spaniard's did.

Waves of opposition towards the church swept Europe in the Middle Ages. In the 12th century, it was a modern belief that a peaceful, utopian government could be obtained if all of the population of the society were "pure" and Catholic The Medieval Inquisition started in France and Italy. During this time a group of people called the Albigensies lived in northern Italy and southern France. They had established a religion called Manichaeanism, which was the belief in two gods, one for good and one for evil. Pope Gregory IX felt that it was right to establish the Inquisition as a church law to rid the Holy Roman Empire from the Albigensies in 1231 AD. This was the start of the first inquisition.

After that, it was a common practice in much of Europe to take Heretics before a trial, then inflict torture on them forcing them to convert. Those that did not convert were sent to a public burning or hanging. In 1252 AD, Pope Innocent IV agreed to use inquisitors to torture sinners who would not repent their sins and confess. By the fifteen hundreds, the Inquisition became corrupt, powerful, and greedy. In the late 15th century, Spain gained its freedom from the Moors. They were Islamic North African people that were and controlled much of Spain.

The wealthy, educated Jewish population financially assisted the monarchy to regain Spain from the Moors. Large prosperous Jewish communities existed in Spain. They were respected, unlike other areas of Europe where the Jews were persecuted and victims of organized massacres. In Spain, they remained the financial and scientific leaders in the 15th century.

Many of Jews married into Catholic families, consequently, many of Spain's Christian leaders were of Jewish descent. As Spain became a unified country, many Hispanics forgot the services from which the Jewish had provided them. The economy plummeted, and to many, the Jews became a scapegoat. They became targets for bigotry. Stories were created to lessen the Jews image. These stories included Jews murdering innocent Christian children.

Such legends fueled the expulsion of the Jews from France and England, and then the later expulsion from Spain in 1492 AD. In fear of persecution, thousands of Jews flocked to churches to convert to Christianity. The government of Spain started raiding Jewish communities, in search of wealth plunder. The new groups of newly converted Christians were called Marranos. They made up another large portion of the Hispanic population.

For a while the Marranos had their full rights restored again. Many of them still practiced Judaism at home though, out of view of the government. The Jews had to convert to Christianity, if they did not, they had the choice of leaving the country or dying. After the Jews were banned from Spain and the Inquisition was constituted, the Marranos became the objects of attack for the inquisitors.

If someone was suspected of having trace amounts of Jewish blood (which ironic, most did) they had the choice of leaving Spain or dying. During the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the Inquisition was established for the first time in Spain in the Kingdom of Aragon. This was before the unification of Spain took place. The office of Grand Inquisitor was appointed by the monarchy with the approval of the Pope. The first and most notorious Grand Inquisitor was a Dominican Monk named Tamas de Torquemada. Even though he was of Jewish descent, he was obsessed in the act of making heretics confess through torturous, inquisitorial methods.

After the unification of Spain, he convinced King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to extend the Inquisition to the entire Kingdom of Spain. Torquemada told the King and Queen that the government can obtain great wealth from confiscating the property of the Jews and Marranos. This was the first definitive step of the inquisition away from religion towards politics. There were many accounts leading up to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, but the major reason is described as the La Guardia Case. It is a case about a Jewish man, by the name of Garcia, who was dragged into an Inquisitorial Court to be examined.

Under extreme torture, the inquisitors lead the Jewish man into confessing that he, along with other Jews, took a four year old Christian boy and crucified him to a wooden cross. This was a crime he did not commit. Although no body was ever found or reported missing, it still fueled an outrage in the Christian community. Torquemada took advantage of this situation by persuading the King and Queen to expel the Jews from Spain. Because of bribery and gifts from the Jews, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were hesitant to expel them, but Torquemada's overwhelming influence on them lead to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 AD. The summer of 1492 was a sad one by which the Jews were given four months to leave.

The loss of the Jew's social, commercial, economical, scientific, and educational skills did immense damage onto Spain as a whole, but the results were not directly apparent at the time. The people of Spain thought that they were better off without the Jews. Once the Inquisition was established all throughout Spain in 1478 AD, an effective way of oversight was needed. The main office of the Inquisition, located in Madrid, was called the Suprema. It was named as a branch of government in Spain. In every major city of the Spanish Empire there consisted an Inquisitorial Court who reported to the Suprema.

The Grand Inquisitor governed the Inquisitorial Courts from the Suprema. At the time, the Spanish government was very unstable and unorganized. It was said that the Suprema was the only effective branch of the Spanish government. Because of this, the Suprema rose to great power. At times, the power of the Grand Inquisitor rivaled and overpowered the monarchy. With the establishment of the Suprema and the Inquisitorial Courts, the Inquisition became very effective and the death toll of heretics and Marranos skyrocketed.

Along with the spread of the Spanish Empire to the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Inquisition also spread. Inquisitorial Courts were set up in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbeans, and South America. The New World offered a new variety of victims to fill its prisons, since the amount of Jewish and Marrano victims were growing scarce. Because Spanish women were not allowed to colonize in the New World, the men interacted with native women.

This sin was called cohabitation and the church viewed it with extreme disfavor. It then became the major crime to be dealt with in the Inquisitorial Courts. Through the strength of the Spanish Empire, the Inquisition became the most dominant in Spanish society. When the Suprema challenged the authority of the monarch, the Suprema, instead of the monarchs, appointed the Grand Inquisitors. The Suprema had great power and took out political and criminal cases just as the state would. The remaining heretics left were dealt in mass burnings in festival type atmospheres.

The way the Inquisitors dealt with executions were in carnival type occasions called Auto-da-few, or Sermon Generalizes. These festivals required elaborate preparations and would attract thousands. The accused heretics would be dressed in comical but satanic attire and put on display for the people to laugh at as they walked by. At the end of the festival, the crimes of each heretic were announced.

Then the thousands would gather and watch the heretics go up in flames on steaks. The church officials were forbidden to shed blood, so the executions were carried out by the state. While the heretics were burning, the King, Queen, and the church officials sat in the front row snickering at the burning corpses. In the late 1700's and early 1800's there were few heretics left the Spanish Empire. Only a handful of the cases dealt by the Inquisitorial Courts were actually dealing with religion. By this time the state was dealing with real criminals through the Inquisitors.

The papacy became angry at this abuse, but did not have the power to stop it at the time. The Inquisition gradually came to an end in the mid 1800's, as Spain completed its task of "purifying the nation". By this point they were in a huge lack of education and were not industrially adequate to enter the 20th century along with power-house industrial neighbors such as England. Reminisce of the Inquisition lasted into the early 20th century where suspected descendants of Jews were punished... It was not till 1992, five-hundred years after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, when King Juan Carlos officially invited the Jews to return to their homeland in Spain and addressed a formal apology to them. The long history of the Spanish Inquisition serves as a reminder of the bigotry and the persecution that took place.

It is only one of many persecuting acts that are piled on top of Jewish history. Many Christians look back onto the Inquisition with shame and humidity. The Spanish Inquisition has inflicted untold amounts of damage onto the Spanish society and everyone else's. It was one of the worst religious acts of ignorance and bigotry ever orchestrated by a group of people.

Bibliography

Lea, Henry Charles. [1966] A history of the Inquisition of Spain.
AMD Press, New York, NY Llorente, Juan Antonio [1967] A critical history of the Inquisition of Spain, from the period of its establishment by Ferdinand V to the reign of Ferdinand VII, composed from the original documents of the Archives of the Supreme Council of the Inquisition and from those of subordinate tribunals of the Holy Office.
J. Lilburn e Co. Williamstown, MA... Roth, Cecil. [1964] The Spanish Inquisition.
Norton Press, New York, NY. Sabatini, Rafael. [1924] Torquemada and the Spanish inquisition;
a history by Rafael Sabatini. Houghton Mifflin Compan, Boston, MA / New York, NY. Turberville, Arthur Stanley. [1968] The Spanish Inquisition.