How to Understand the Spanish Inquisition

Known to most people today (if at all) as the punchline in a very funny Monty Python sketch, the Spanish Inquisition was taken quite seriously by Spanish subjects who fell under its sway in the late 15th century. Essentially, the Inquisition was a series of tribunals that enforced Catholic orthodoxy in what was then (at least in theory) the most Catholic of all countries. In any case, here are some things you may not have known about the Spanish Inquisition.

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Instructions

1. The Spanish Inquisition wasn't the first of its kind. The institution of the Inquisition was created by the Pope in the late 12th century, as a way of eliminating religious schism. Before it reared its head in Spain, the "Papal Inquisition" stamped out heresy in various European locales, mostly in southern France and northern Italy.

2. Spain had inherited a multicultural society. Until the early 13th century, a large part of Spain had been occupied by the Moors, an invading Muslim tribe from northern Africa. During their supremacy, the Moors allowed a sizable Jewish population to prosper in Spain, and they left behind a smaller Muslim remnant after they were finally driven out.

3. Most of Spain's Jews had been forcibly converted in the previous century. Although pre-Inquisition Spain was rabidly intolerant of Jews, it had warmer feelings for those who converted to Catholicism (usually under duress, but sometimes voluntarily). These "conversos" (or "Marranos") never quite lost the stigma of having once been Jewish, but they still managed to attain high positions in society and even the Church.

4. The Inquisition fed on a distrust of these "conversos." When King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella let loose the Inquisition on Spain in 1478, it was in large part out of hostility to this population. The Inquisition was charged with making sure the "conversos" adhered to strict Catholic forms, and also monitored the activities of "Moriscos" (Muslims who had converted to Catholicism) and the small population of Protestants.

5. The climax of the Inquisition was the expulsion of the Jews. Although the Spanish Inquisition persisted for centuries, one if its main accomplishments was to convince Ferdinand and Isabella to deport all the remaining Jews who did not choose to convert to Catholicism—an expulsion that took place in 1492. Needless to say, this produced a fresh stock of "Marranos" who came under the Inquisition's scrutiny in the years ahead.

6. The Inquisition used the usual medieval interrogation techniques. Part of what made the Inquisition so feared was its zealotry in the cause of faith: torture of heretics was common, as were public executions (usually by burning at the stake). According to one 19th-century historian, by the time it ended in 1834, the Inquisition had put over 300,000 people on trial—and executed about one in 10.

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