[The] Spanish Inquisition

Question: What was the Church’s involvement with the Spanish Inquisition? It seems clothed in shadows. — Dorothy Perez, San Antonio

Answer: This brief column cannot cover all the details and provide extensive references. However, the Spanish Inquisition was run by the secular government, not by the Church. The Church did have its own inquisition, distinct from the secular government of Spain. Most people preferred the Church’s inquisition and often appealed cases there since it was more clement and just by their estimation.

The term “inquisition” simply refers to an inquiry into charges leveled against a person, usually of heresy. They were questioned as to their true views rather than be condemned on hearsay or rumors. If a person was found guilty of heresy, they were permitted to recant or clarify their views. If they would not, the solutions ranged from exile and imprisonment to, in rarer cases, death.

In an age of secularism and wider religious liberty (though it is increasingly threatened), such severe measures strike moderns as excessive and reactionary. However, until recent times, religion, social order and justice were strongly tied to proper religious practice and understanding. For one to adopt heretical views and encourage others to do so posed a serious threat to the social order and peace. The state, even more than the Church, would seldom abide religious rebellion and knew by instinct that social disorder and chaos often followed religious squabbles.

Did the Church cooperate with the Spaniards? To some degree yes, to others degrees no. The Church’s hands are not likely pure in the matter. But neither are the Protestants who ran a tight ship in places like Geneva and England. There are many Catholic martyrs to show that Protestants, too, worked with local governments to shut down dissent from Protestant notions and punish noncompliance, often with death.

could you point me to the quote in Scripture that directs you to obey sola scriptura?

Yes, I could. But why should I? You can search the archives of the myriad Sola Scriptura vs. Catholic Traditions threads yourself. It's been done to death.

i dont believe you

Oh noes! I'm crushed. I have my sad face on right now. How will I be able to sleep tonight???? I feel this crushing weight on me, right now. I think i'm sinking into a depression. I can't see the monitor too clearly, fighting back all these tears. But I'll get over it IF you'll just make some effort on your own to research the archives. It's up to you.

The Cathars were not Christians.

That's funny, as they kicked y'alls butt in the scriptures...

They resisted repeated attempts by missionaries to convert them to Christianity

Yes... the rise of the Dominicans, mimicking the modesty and charity that was natural among the Cathars.

so the authorities (both civil and ecclesiastical) resorted to what was then the usual method of dealing with insurrection.

No, the royalty defended them... hence the need to wipe them out and the promise to the Franks.

The Cathars would probably have wiped themselves out eventually anyway, due to their infatuation with suicide.

Propaganda of the Roman church. The endura was not suicide, and was only entered into when death was imminent and/or unavoidable.

The protestants were vicious to the Catholics in St. Elizabeth’s England (1585 Penal Laws and the killing of priests) and the Puritans and other protestants persecuted (including the burning of Churches) Catholics in the New World.

The main difference being that the protestants did not do so for nearly a millennia - Protestantism righted itself in a matter of decades. And ALL of Protestantism cannot be painted with that brush - The Anglicans and Calvinists perhaps, but not the whole lot... One of the virtues of a distributed model.

I don’t think he did, while I’m sure he had laser printing facilities available, I doubt the existence of the projector. Perhaps the translator might be able to clear it up using the ‘bleed punch nose fist hit’ method.

"That's funny, as they kicked y'alls butt in the scriptures..."

Really? Dualists who believed in reincarnation, believed that the "bad god" had created all physical matter and somehow tricked or trapped angels into inhabiting humans and animals, that by living a good enough life they could escape the "bad god's" realm and enter the "good god's" realm (i.e., Heaven), believed in universal salvation, did not believe in Hell, and committed suicide (or whatever you want to spin it as).

Yeah, those guys had a great grasp of Scripture...Thanks for the laugh home-fry.

Really? Dualists who believed in reincarnation, believed that the "bad god" had created all physical matter and somehow tricked or trapped angels into inhabiting humans and animals, that by living a good enough life they could escape the "bad god's" realm and enter the "good god's" realm (i.e., Heaven), believed in universal salvation, did not believe in Hell, and committed suicide (or whatever you want to spin it as).

Yeah, those guys had a great grasp of Scripture...

Yes, that is where the whole Protestant argument dies on the vine, so to speak, in history. To start, restart, renew, reform, or command a new religion into being in the 16th Century obviously is a disability. To trace it back to heretics, ... insanity.

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Matthew, Catholic chapter, Protestant verses eighteen to nineteen,
as authorized, but not authored, by King James

The British Jewish historian Henry Kamen, well-known scholar of the Spanish Inquisition, has calculated a total of some 2,000 victims put to death along its four centuries of existence.

Kamen adds that “it is interesting to compare the statistics on sentences to death of civilians and inquisitorial tribunals between the 15th and 18th centuries in Protestant Europe: for every one hundred death sentences handed down by courts, the Inquisition (Catholic) issued one.”

Although Netanyahu had a different perspective than Kamen, he agreed with your most salient point (bolded below).

The 'Jewish Question' in 15th and 16th Century Spain

Historian Sustains Spanish Inquisition Myths

The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain, by Benzion Netanyahu. New York: Random House, 1995. Hardcover. 1390 pages. Illustrations. Source notes. Bibliography. Index.
Reviewed by Brian Chalmers

It is nearly impossible to dig into any chapter of Jewish history without uncovering lessons for our own age. Spain during the 15th and 16th centuries is a particularly striking example. Even today, our view of this period, and particularly of the Spanish Inquisition, colors our attitudes regarding relations between Jews and non-Jews. The Inquisition is considered one of Jewish history's darkest chapters -- and one of Christian history's most shameful.

In 1391 intense, pent up anti-Jewish sentiment in Christian Spain erupted with great violence against the country's prosperous, well-established Jewish community. Spanish cities were engulfed in ferocious pogroms that destroyed much property and claimed many lives.

Thus began a century of conflict between Jews and non-Jews that culminated in the mass expulsion of all Jews from Spain in 1492. (Ten years later, the Muslims were likewise driven out.) In their edict of expulsion, issued on March 31, 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella announced their "decision to banish all Jews of both sexes forever from the precincts of Our realm." Ordered, on pain of death, to leave within four months, the Jews were permitted to take their personal belongings, except for gold, silver, coined money, or jewels. Estimates of the number of Jews banished generally range from about 165,000 to 400,000. An estimated 50,000 Jews chose baptism to avoid expulsion. In his diary Christopher Columbus noted: "In the same month in which Their Majesties issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories, in the same month they gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of discovery to the Indies."

Expulsions of Jews and outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence have been features of both European and non-Western societies over many centuries and under a variety of political and religious regimes. What is noteworthy about these 14th- and 15th-century actions in Spain, however, is that tens of thousands of Jews escaped death or expulsion by converting to Christianity. As a result, by the middle of the 15th century there was a numerically large (perhaps 100,000), and politically and economically significant community of people of Jewish descent in Spain who were, at least outwardly, Christians.

Establishing the Inquisition in Spain

Beginning with a furious anti-Jewish uprising in Toledo in 1449, the hostility of Spain's common people came to be directed against these baptized Jews, who were known as "New Christians," Conversos, or, contemptuously, Marranos ("pigs"). This new hostility developed in large part because the vast majority of these New Christians were, in the words of Jewish historian Cecil Roth, "Jews in all but name, and Christians in nothing but form," /1 and in part because the Conversos, freed from the legal constraints against "open" Jews, rapidly ascended to the highest ranks of Spanish society and represented a competitive threat to all but the highest levels of "Old (non-Jewish) Christian" society.

In A History of the Marranos, Cecil Roth sums up the central problem. "In race, in belief, and largely in practice," the Conversos "remained as they had been before the conversion." These New Christians, Roth continues, /2

were Christians only in name; observing, in public, a minimum of the new faith while maintaining, in private, a maximum of the old one ... Baptism had done little more than to convert a considerable proportion of the Jews from infidels outside the Church to heretics inside it ... The populace, whose feelings thus became more and more inflamed, could not be expected to appreciate the theological subtleties of the matter. In the Marranos it could see only hypocritical Jews, who had lost none of their unpopular characteristics, fighting their way into the highest positions of the state.

Another Jewish historian, Howard Fast, has similarly noted: /3

The nut of the matter is that most of the converted Jews remained Jews; they accepted baptism, they assumed the trappings of Christianity; and in the seclusion of their families, their homes, and their hearts, most of them did a thing that was then called "Judaizing" ... And not only did they Judaize, but in the feeling of power and security these Marranos had gained, they helped the Jews who had remained Jews, prevented a great deal of persecution, and gained favors for the Jews.

King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Their marriage in 1469 united the provinces of Castile and Aragon. In 1492 their armies took Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Spain, and unified the country. That same year "their Catholic majesties" banished the Jews from the kingdom. Similarly, the Muslims were driven out or forcibly baptized in 1502. In the decades that followed, Spain amassed great wealth and a vast empire. By the late 1500s it was the world's foremost military and colonial power.

After decades of continuing anti-Converso disturbances, Ferdinand and Isabella, acting with papal approval, established the Spanish Inquisition in 1480. Its task was to combat religious heresy and root out crypto-Jews and crypto-Muslims among the "New Christians." "The introduction of the Inquisition," reports The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, "was largely fostered by the civil power as a means of checking the Jews, whose numbers, wealth and frequent intrigues with the Moors were causing alarm." /4

Soon this highly centralized authority was carrying out its work under Tomás de Torquemada, the able and energetic Grand Inquisitor who elevated the auto da fé, the "act of faith," and the rite of purification by burning alive, into a spectacle at once horrifying and fascinating.

The vast majority of those brought before the Inquisition during its first 20 years of activity were Conversos accused of heresy (secret Judaizing). With the passage of time, this agency grew into a powerful institution for protecting Catholicism and the established order in Spain. (It was abolished in the early 19th century.) It played a major role in successfully persuading Ferdinand and Isabella to expel the remaining unconverted Jews in 1492 on the grounds that they were continuing to interact with the Conversos, and were proselytizing among their former co-religionists.

It should be emphasized that the grim reputation of the Spanish Inquisition is largely undeserved. Its cruelty and arbitrariness have been greatly exaggerated over the centuries, largely as a result of anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish propaganda. The Spanish Inquisition invoked torture and the death penalty only very sparingly, and actually treated heretics more leniently than did other European countries during this period. /5

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Among Jewish scholars, deep emotional involvement is seldom far from the surface. Thus, a common reaction of Jewish historians to the phenomenon of Iberian crypto-Judaism has been to accept its reality and portray it in very positive terms. In the preface to the first edition of his work, A History of the Marranos, Jewish scholar Cecil Roth wrote admiringly of the "incredible romance" of the story of these secret Jews, referring to "the submerged life which blossomed out at intervals into such exotic flowers; the unique devotion which could transmit the ancestral ideals unsullied, from generation to generation, despite the Inquisition and its horrors." /17

Map of Spain, showing the permanent tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition. However, other Jewish historians -- including Henry Kamen /18, Ellis Rivkin /19, and now, most notably, Benzion Netanyahu -- have been troubled by the fact that the generally accepted view of this chapter of history implies that the New Christians were in fact cunning deceivers and hypocrites, and that their behavior thus provides a certain moral justification for the Inquisition. After all, nearly everyone during this period -- Christians as well as Jews -- regarded heresy as a serious crime worthy of severe punishment. Consequently, and regardless of how strange and even odious such sentiments may seem to the modern mind, the Inquisition was certainly acting within the moral and theological premises of the age.

It is this moral dimension that most concerns Netanyahu. In this massive (1385 page) work, he marshals evidence and arguments in an effort to prove that the "New Christians" were sincere adherents of Christianity, and even "ardent assimilationists" who were eager to marry into Christian families and otherwise melt into Spanish society. Consistent with this, Netanyahu seeks to prove that the Inquisitors, as well as the anti-Converso pogromists who preceded them, were immoral, bigoted hypocrites who knew that the Conversos were actually sincere Christians.

In keeping with his thesis, Netanyahu also castigates the Conversos for their supposed lack of Jewish loyalty, effectively writing them off as traitors to Judaism. He unfavorably compares the Conversos to the Jews of medieval Germany, who "far surpassed the Jews of Spain in religious devotion and readiness for martyrdom" (p. 163). From Netanyahu's perspective, these Iberian Jews, rather than convert to Christianity, should have accepted martyrdom like their Ashkenazi co-religionists (in central and nothern Europe) at the hands of the marauding Crusaders in 1096.

"The Spanish Inquisition invoked torture and death penalty only very sparingly . . "

Well that's comforting. Not to the ones being tortured and murdered for their different beliefs of course. So, instead of the tens of thousands, it could've been much worse? Like the hundreds of thousands. That did take some restraint. I feel much better now.

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