Spanish Inquisition

Introduction

Inquisition was a system of inquiry (inquisitio) in the Roman Catholic Church dating from the thirteenth century and associated principally with the countries of southern Europe. It was originally a normal part of the judicial process. It was taken over by the church in order to inquire into a particular offense “heresy” that began to be identified and persecuted with special vigor during the later Middle Ages. The accused came principally from sectarian movements, such as the Cathars (12th century), that questioned the political power of secular princes, who consequently gave their full support to persecution and backed the establishment of inquisitions. (Haliczer, 69-70)

Spanish Inquisition was the papal inquisition which was an ecclesiastical tribunal charged with the detection and prosecution of heresy; in the Middle Ages it had never operated in Castile. In 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella, bowing to growing public anti-Semitism and the urging of Tomás de Torquemada, secured permission from Pope Sixtus IV to establish the Inquisition in Castile and its territories for the special purpose of combating heresy among recent converts to Christianity. Proceedings began in 1480, and in 1483 Torquemada was appointed inquisitor-general. In 1484, despite an appeal by conversos to the papacy, the Inquisition was extended to Aragon and all of its territories except for Naples, which remained subject to the Roman Inquisition; eventually the Spanish Inquisition was implemented in the Netherlands and in the Spanish colonies. From 1507 to 1517 the inquisitor-general was Cardinal Cisneros (Peters, 12-15). This paper discusses Spanish Inquisition.

Thesis Statement

The Spanish Inquisition led by Ferinand and Isabella persecuted people of non-Christian beliefs which led to the spread of Christianity throughout Spain.

Discussion

The Inquisition as an institution did not exist in medieval times: the term was a generic description for the various commissions issued by the papacy for inquiries into heresy. These inquisitions were created by papal bull and then supported by the laws of the local prince. They came into existence from the 1230s in France and Aragon and above all in the Holy Roman Empire, where the emperor, Frederick II (1272-1337), gave them his firm support and extended them into his Italian dominions, including Sicily. As a result, the machinery of inquisitions could be found in most states from the Mediterranean to the North Sea but not in Castile, England, and Scandinavia. A papal decree for the Inquisition was first issued by Gregory IX (1143?-1241) in 1233, and administration of the commissions was put into the hands of the Dominican and Franciscan orders. The first full-scale Inquisition, directed against the Cathars, was set up in Languedoc in 1233-1234, and jurisdiction over heresy was put in the hands of the new tribunals and taken out of the hands of bishops. (Arnold, 25-30)

In the early years of its operation, the Spanish Inquisition was exclusively concerned with the marranos, whose numbers had grown after a series of pogroms against the Jews during the fifteenth century. In some tribunals, the Inquisition began to prosecute crimes other than Judaizing heresy: in Aragon (but ...