[Cesar Chacon El Paso TX USA]
Ferdinand and Isabella, also called the Catholic Monarchs, got married in 1469 to unite their kingdoms (Aragon and Castile), but the other two realms of Spain (Catalonia and Valencia) were still estranged. Isabella was considered more powerful and influential than her husband. Isabella’s counselor and confessor Fray Alonso De Ojeda, was the priest that incited Isabella to initiate the Inquisition (Llorente 14). The Church approved the Inquisition in Spain in November 1st 1478 (See Table 1.1), more specifically Pope Sixtus IV (Lemieux 44). At that time the large population of Jews in Spain was the main target of the inquisition, constituting the highest concentration of Jews in Europe. Muslims and Protestants were other minorities targeted by the inquisition.

After the battles of Granada directed personally by Ferdinand, he accomplished driving the highest concentration of moors out of Spain that had occupied the city of Granada since the 8th century.

Later, the New-Christians, as denominated by society, were discovered secretly continuing with their previous religion, or that they had not yet adopted the customs of Christianity, which triggered the grudge of the Christians towards them. Hence, Fray Alonso de Ojeda talked the much-worried Queen Isabel to impose the Inquisition in Castile. The Church praised Isabel and Ferdinand as “The Catholic Kings” for their interest in establishing Catholicism as the only religion in Spain.

Initially, the Inquisition was not initiated because the Christians hated the Jews or wanted to slaughter them all, but because the converted Jews did not adopt the Christian customs right away.

The Church released an Auto de Fe (public ceremonies in which the verdicts of the cases tried by he tribunals of the holy office were announced) that established the punishments to those convicted by the inquisition. The punishment was assigned in the tribunals set up by the Church, but it was executed by secular authorities because the Church cannot “Shed Blood” (New Catholic Encyclopedia 489).

The people who were executed were often tortured to gain confession about other heretics, and very often, they would be killed after they had confessed. The inquisition also killed many Jews that had formerly supported King Ferdinand. They were killed because the crown owed them money, so in that aspect, Ferdinand eliminated savagely the debts that he had with investors from other religions.

Timeline
1478 Pope Sixtus IV authorizes the setting up of the Spanish Inquisition
1480 The Spanish Inquisition begins operation
1481 First auto de fe held in Seville
1483 The Suprema is setup with Torquemada as the first Inquisitor General
1492 All non-Converted Jews expelled from Spain
1558 Phillip II becomes king
1558-62 Discovery of Lutheran groups in Seville and Valladolid
1591 Phillip tries to use the Inquisition to arrest and try Antonio Perez
1598 Death of Phillip II
1609 Decree issued expelling all the Moriscos from Spain
1808 Occupation of Spain
1814 Ferdinand II restores the Inquisition
1820 Abolition of the Inquisition by Ferdinand under liberal pressure
1834 Final decree of suppression issued by Queen Isabella
Table 1.1 (Lemieux 49)
The reasons that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella had, were varied. Many writers claim that the Spanish Kings used the Inquisition as a tool, both economical and political. However, there was a meaning to the mass murder of people that took place, a very wicked one some may say, but it can be further analyzed. The Spanish inquisition would have happened because of the pressure of the people; regardless of the crown.

“Then the master told his servant, ‘Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full…” Says the Holy Bible in Luke 14:23 in a parable Jesus told to the Pharisees. It does not seem very shocking and revealing at first glance, but St. Augustine saw in this phrase the beginning of an institution. It sounds ironic that a Saint actually set the first draft of what would later become the Inquisition, but he did.

According to the dictionary, “Religion” is defined as: “A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.”
For every person the word “religion” means something different, it is as hard defining it, as it is to define “love”. Moreover, nobody can actually recall when he adopted his/her religion (if induced by parents). Our religion is something deeply rooted on us, and has a big influence in how we perceive the world. Our beliefs in a higher power helps us envision a meaning to our lives. We feel watched over, like a child playing joyful in the playground because he/she knows that his/her mother is nearby sitting on a bench.

Throughout world history, we can find that the Jewish religion is the most prosecuted religions of all. England, France, Spain, and Germany are some of the countries that have expelled the Jews out of their land.

Picture yourself being forced to change your religion, to pray in another language, to engage in activities you consider sinful and worthy of capital punishment, and also having to vow to high officials of your imposed religion because it is the rule, and pledging to a god other than the one you feel in your heart. Would you get use to it?
If we cannot define what religion is, how can we force a large amount of people to change their religion on a basis of wealth and survival?

Spain was divided into two territories, the Christian and the Moorish. Jews originally settled in the Islamic part of Spain, they arrived in Spain with the moors invasion in 305. In addition, it was then when the first laws against the Jews were made. Jews paid special taxes to the Muslim Government in order to be respected as a protected group, having freedom inside their territory.

The creation of lies to blame the Jews started in the hearings of Spanish secular authorities in the Vatican, where they illustrated drawings of Jewish people and New Christians destroying images of Jesus and sacrificing Christian children (Llorente 15 ). It could be inferred that the Vatican authorities who listened to the claims, did not send anyone to verify the authenticity of the evidence that was presented during the hearings.

The inquisition trials were used as a tool for the people and the government to obtain wealth. For example, if a merchant owed money to one of his suppliers, the merchant could frame the supplier by planting evidence (using Jewish religion articles) in his store and then accusing the supplier with the inquisitorial authorities. Being a wealthy converso was very dangerous. The New Christians contacted Pope Leon X to call for his attention on such matters, but King Charles V sent his representative Lope Hurtado de Mendoza to lie to the Pope and tell him that most of the convicted felons were poor and that their stay in jail, and legal representatives were paid for (Lea 259). Henry Lea, specialist in medieval studies, demonstrates based on case study examples of how the inquisitorial tribunal forced prisoners to pay with money or work their debts of lodging, trial expenses, legal representation, and any other process that their conviction generated.

According to Raphael Sabatini, the definition of heresy was constantly changed depending on the mood of the tribunal. Therefore, the inquisitorial judges were constantly legislating the definition of blasphemy ( ). This insubordination by the judges was not regulated by the Spanish government.

There are many books written about Fray Tomas de Torquemada, pointing to him as the infamous murderer responsible for all the wrongdoing that was part of the inquisition. However, what is really a leader without his followers?

The Papal bull of 1478 permitted the crown to appoint two inquisitors, later in 1482 a second bull allowed them to appoint seven more inquisitors. Ferdinand and Isabella already had established four more councils of state as institutional branches of local government; and in 1483 they established a fifth: Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion (The Council of Supreme and General Inquisition) with Torquemada as the Inquisitor General (New Catholic Encyclopedia 489).

Torquemada was just the head of the organization, but he did not live the 340 years that the inquisition lasted, the Inquisition continued even stronger after his death (Lemieux 46). Fray Tomas was a psychologically unstable man, and he constructed the instructions he would later give to the different districts based on his own twisted beliefs of what should be done. Since the Inquisition was established in Spain, the Vatican had little control of the administration of punishment (Lemieux 45). Because King Ferdinand knew that if he had let the Vatican officials have power over the Inquisition, they would be soft and merciful just like Queen Isabel.

After Torquemada died, the inquisitorial council had gotten stronger and was ready to gain jurisdiction on more issues. According to historian Henry Lea, in his book Historia de la Inquisicion Española, with the help of the bull granted by Pope Leon X in august 1st 1516, the members of the Council along with the general inquisitor obtained jurisdiction over cases related to faith (20). Moreover, King Ferdinand died, and as years went by the Council became more powerful.

The amount of inquisitors, as we could call them, were an average of 911, distributed within the16 districts plus the Council and the general inquisitor(Lea 766, 767).

Even though the main purpose of the inquisition was forcing the Jews to convert to Catholicism or be exiled, Christians were not so happy welcoming the New Christians. Conversos were never referred to as Christians; they were never separated with their religious past. Moreover, the children of converted Jews were still seen as descendants from Jews, and then they began working as high officials and successful merchants; which was not surprising because of the Jewish reputation in productivity.

Subsequently, the Christians got envious of the New Christians that were gaining more power every year. Generation after generation of converses, the Christian community refused to accept them as equal. This leads to the question: why did the Inquisition officials allowed the Jewish people that wanted to stay to convert, if they were never going to be fully accepted? The answer is as ancient as civilization: money. If the government would expel all the Jews out, their money would be gone forever, and since King Ferdinand’s purpose was to gather wealth, he would rather let them stay and offer them freedom. Nevertheless, he never stated that people would accept them.

There is a controversy between historians about the conversos detaching their Jewish roots to become Christians. According to historian Stephen Haliczer, there are three sides to this controversy. (1) The belief that conversos “were and remained Jews at heart, and their Judaism was expressed in their way of life” (Beinart). (2) That Marranos were detached from Judaism, in other words, Christians (Benzion). (3)”That some of the conversos formed a distinct religious tendency neither Jewish nor Christian” (Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia 1478-1834 211). Given this information, we could suppose a combination of the three types of conversos fused in the Spanish society. Thus, Christians would be exposed to different type of conversos, and would judge all conversos based on the behavior of the type that they were exposed to.
There were approximately 29 categories from which a felon could be convicted, ranging from bigamy to sexual solicitation within confession. From 1483 to 1819, the activity if the tribunal of the Toledo district was about 4,423 cases, if we consider this amount as an average per district we would have 70,768 cases in a period of 336 years (Gomez). The range of people that were executed ranges from 30,000 to 300,000 some historians say; but it is clear that the amount of people killed by the inquisition could not have exceeded the number of cases. In addition, capital punishment was not administered in most of the cases; there were different types of punishment such as a fine, exile, attending Sunday mass, whippings, humiliation, slavery, reconciliation, prison time, penitential garments, and limitations (Lea 633, 638, 643).

Whenever I hear the word torture, I remember all about my visit to the Inquisition exhibition that came to Juarez once. The torture devices that were displayed were unconceivable. I stared at the strange designs trying to figure out how you could possibly place a human being inside such complicated and uncomfortable apparatus. Next to every device, an image showed how the machine was used. There were metallic masks called sanbenitos (a penitential garment made of yellow cloth emblazoned with two oblique crosses [Haliczer 83]) were placed at the beginning of the exhibition that seemed extremely heavy for a person to wear on their face. Some of the masks deformed some features of the face. It was en exhibition that shocked the visitors, the pictures of babies being killed with swords, and a woman attached to a circle of wood that crushed her bones was something no one could ever want to see again. It was not comforting for me to go to church the Sunday of that week.
The Inquisition in Spain was not solely because the Spanish kings wanted Catholicism as the only religion practiced in Spain; but also because of the ambitious desires of the Spanish people.

Spain, unlike other countries, did not conform on expelling the Jews from its land, it wanted the property of those Jews who decided to stay and change their religion to keep their assets. King Ferdinand saw the opportunity to impose a religious discrimination as a political strategy to gain wealth, both legally and illegally. Thus, setting the example to Christians to use the inquisitorial institutions as a tool to gain resources.

Even though King Ferdinand was the intellectual author of installing the Inquisition of Spain, another character is the one who was blamed primarily for the cruel procedures followed by secular authorities when processing heretics. His name was Fray Tomas de Torquemada, ironically, he was a descendant of Jews that latter became the inquisitor general of the inquisition. Books have been written with his name in the title pointing at him as a monster. Nevertheless, did he murder every human being by his own hand? The answer is no, in fact he never did killed anyone himself. He was a priest that had strong beliefs that did his job because he was appointed to by his superiors, which framed the Jews to obtain a Papal bull to institute the inquisition. Let it not be understood that he should be exonerated for any of his wrong doing, but let it be acknowledged widely that King Ferdinand did a great job in keeping himself out of the historical picture of responsibility for the Spanish Inquisition.

Let us not forget about the executioners that held the ropes, carpenters who built the torture machines, officers that planted evidence, priests that lied in the Vatican, assistants who installed punishment masks, and everyone that agreed to conspiring, lying, and betraying the Jews. Because after every leader, whether secular or political, there was a hierarchy of bureaucracy that obeyed blindly, along with a society that accepted and reinforced discrimination.

The Spanish Inquisition’s presence in history gives Christians in general a bad name, because greed, blasphemy, hatred, and pride were assigned as a social bias of other religions towards Christians. Even though the Vatican has apologized for the actions that take place in the inquisition, nothing can guarantee that it will not happen again.

Work Cited
Beinart, Haim. Conversos on Trial: The Inquisition in Ciudad Real. Quoted in Haliczer
Benzion Netanyahu. The Marranos of Spain from the Late XVth to early XVI Century. Quoted in Haliczer
Gomez Del Campillo, Miguel and S. J. Fresca. “Catalogo de las Causas Contra la Fe Seguidas ante el Tribunal del Santo Oficio en Toledo” Quoted in Lea.
Haliczer, Stephen. Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia 1478-1834, University of California Press, Oxford, 1990. 89, 211.
Hillgarth, J. N. The Spanish Kingdoms, v. 2. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1976. (1250-1516). JSTOR: The Scholarly Journal Archive.
Holy Bible: New International Version. 2005
“How the Inquisition Saved Lives” Christian History & Biography, Summer 2004 Issue 83, p7-7, 2/3p, 2c; (AN 14242232).
Lea, Henry. Historia de la Inquisicion Española. V. II. Fundacion Universitaria Española. Madrid, 1983. 20, 259, 633, 638, 643, 766, 767.
Lemieux, Simon; “The Spanish Inquisition: Simon Lemieux Examines the Hard Facts
About the Inquisitional and Counters the Common Caricature.” History Review, 2002. EBSCO: Information Services.
Llorente, Juan Antonio. Historia Critica de la Inquisicion de España. Madrid: Hiperion, 1981.
“Inquisition”. New Catholic Encyclopedia. Detroit: Thomson/Gale; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2003.
Rafael, Sabatini. Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition. Boston: The Riverside Press
Cambridge, 1913.

[Cesar Chacon El Paso, TX USA]
I think it is important for a student that is thinking on getting a major related to social, theological, or political science major to know about the Spanish Inquisition. An inquisition is a systematic investigation that violates the rights or privacy of individuals, a tribunal dedicated to the suppression of heresy (Dictionary.com). It is by these two definitions where many questions rise. Such as: to what the extent should the government have the right to intervene or dominate our private lives? Is the establishment of one and only religion upon a society crucial to form a powerful nation? Is the union of Church and State possible without the corruption of the system? Maybe there is no real answer for these questions but having an understanding of what happened in the Spanish Inquisition might help to rationalize with more background long-held controversies like the separation between church and state.

The first reason is that from long ago in the history of the US there has been a continuous controversy about the separation between Church and State. We can make hypothetical questions about the Spanish inquisition. Would the Inquisition have been avoided if Ferdinand and Isabella had not been Catholic? Supposing they had established a freedom of religion as we are guaranteed according to the first amendment of the Constitution, would the inquisition had not begun?, or would the on growing hate of the Christians towards the Jewish population had triggered the inquisition?. Most people in the US believe in something divine, so there comes the importance of respecting and tolerating other religions. Since the US has a large diversity, a student with social-related studies must have knowledge on how to make policies that do not offend people’s race, gender, religion, age, ethnicity, disabilities, among other characteristics. In this case religion is the main issue, but other characteristics arise as well that are motive for the Spanish people to discriminate certain minorities.

Also, to increase racism awareness, because in the US there are not much campaigns to promote racism awareness, and even though regular Americans usually presume that they are very open minded and they respect other cultures the reality is very different. In large cities like New York were the diversity of cultures gathered is more notorious. The difficulties of making laws and public policies are greater than in small towns or villages. As a the City Mayor or a Senator you would not like to upset any of the major contributors to the economy of your city that belong to a minority group.

Some people might say that the Spanish Inquisition is an event that happened too long a go to be studied in the 21st century. But I don’t think no one would like an “American Inquisition,” therefore, the study of the historical context of this event would make future politicians, and lawmakers more aware of what discrimination of religion may cause, sort of a medical frame from which a disease may emerge.

In conclusion, I think it is very important to understand the Spanish Inquisition, because is more than just bloody tortures, or voracious human prosecutions. It is about a social harmony that has to be maintained, it all comes down to the phrase “Do you as a leader, prefer to be feared or to be respected by your followers?”.