FOUNDED IN 1478 by Ferdinand II of Aragon and his wife, Isabella I of Castile, the very mention of the Inquisition, an office of the Spanish Catholic Church has, since the late sixteenth century, conjured up images of cruelty and persecution. We have all seen the cinematic portrayals of hooded clerics torturing a terrified and naked woman or seen one of the countless Bruegel-like representations of an Inquisition interrogation chamber. The reality was very different, so who created these lies and why?
With the word ‘Spanish’ so inexorably linked to ‘Inquisition’, most of us have been left with the impression that this was the only such office. But in fact Spain was a late starter, with the first Inquisition instituted by twelfth-century France to deal with the rise of the heretical Cathars. In its day, every Catholic country – from Portugal to Peru – raised an Inquisition, so why was the Spanish one singled out for so much vilification despite its having been perhaps the most lenient of all? The answer lies in the abhorrence with which the rest of Europe regarded the rise of sixteenth-century Spain to a position of military and maritime supremacy, and the subversive activities of those same Protestant propagandists responsible for the myth of Pope Joan (see here). While the Spanish Inquisitors were not the most liberal-minded bunch of chaps one would have been likely to encounter in Spain across the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they proved the perfect whipping boys for the rest of Western Europe, anxious to blacken the name of Spain and distract attention from the fact that Protestant countries were beginning to torture and burn witches and heretics on a scale that would have made any Inquisitor’s eyes water.
At first, the Protestants raised armies to attack Catholic forces in the conventional manner but, after their complete rout at the Battle of Mühlberg in 1547 at the hands of Charles, Ferdinand and Isabella’s grandson, they realized that this was not their best option. So the Protestants attacked Spain with a weapon against which it had little or no defence – the printing press. They churned out pamphlets and gothic etchings in their thousands to besmirch the name of Spain and that of its Inquisition, presenting the reader with tales and images of such outlandish cruelty it is a wonder that any believed a word of it. Many of the enduring myths surrounding early torture can be traced back to such pamphlets – the nonexistent iron maiden, for example – whereas the torture instruments of such time were barbarically basic (if highly effective). Eventually, the Protestant propagandists played their ace in the form of a book entitled A Discovery and Playne Declaration of Sundry Subtill Practices of The Holy Inquisition of Spayne (1567), ostensibly by one Reginaldus Montanus, who claimed to have endured the brutality of the Spanish Inquisition and witnessed the deviant horrors visited on others – especially women. Despite the book being pure bunkum and the author proving untraceable, the work was immediately translated for pan-European distribution to disseminate what the Spanish still call the Black Legend. The fact that one can still buy reproductions of that book from most online book vendors speaks volumes of its impact.
In reality, the Spanish Inquisition was perhaps the most even-handed and least brutal of all such institutions as a meticulous trawl through its extensive records stored in Salamanca has suggested. Examined by many, but most notably by Professors Henry Kamen and Jaime Contreras of the Barcelona Higher Council for Scientific Research and the Spanish University of Alcalá respectively, the Salamanca records prove that the Spanish Inquisition was never the sadistic playground of sexually deviant clerics in pointy, KKK-style hats. The vast majority of Spanish Inquisitors were secular lawyers who not only insisted on hard proof of transgression but who also had to work within some very clearly defined parameters. Nor was the Inquisition an instrument of persecution aimed at Jews, Muslims and members of other faiths; the Spanish Inquisition had jurisdiction over Catholics and Catholics alone (even if some of those Catholics were Jews who had effectively been forced to convert).
Apart from dealing with heresy or crimes of faith, the Inquisition was also active in the prosecution of adultery, bigamy, sodomy and other moral issues, all the way down to breach of promise, public drunkenness and swearing in church. And its aforementioned leniency made it a highly desirable alternative to those in the grip of the civil system, many of whom opted to sit in court shouting blasphemies until the judge had no choice but to hand them over to the Inquisition, whose prisons were the best in Europe. The much maligned Inquisitor-in-chief, Tomás de Torquemada, insisted on a regime of cleanliness, decent food, a change of clothes for all inmates and a considerable degree of protection for female prisoners to save them from the unwelcome attentions of their jailers and other inmates. It is a matter of record that on at least two occasions, when the Inquisition jails of Barcelona and Salamanca were overflowing, both refused to hand over some of their charges to the local civil jails as they thought them inhumane; instead, they simply released some of the low-level prisoners on receiving promise of their return in a few months. There was a much better chance of survival when investigated by the Spanish Inquisition rather than the civil courts, which were frequently nothing more than a thin veneer of legality for some baying mob set on a lynching.
That said, to attract the attention of the Spanish Inquisition in its early days was no laughing matter; it most certainly had some very sharp teeth it was not afraid to use. Its inception had been inspired by the desire of Ferdinand and Isabella to see a Spain of unified faith, so the considerable population of Spanish Jewry was given a period of grace to decide whether to leave the country or remain as conversos, Jews converted to the Catholic faith. Some Spaniards believed – and not without justification – that many conversos were simply paying lip-service to Catholicism while continuing to practise their real faith in secret. And, of course, there was also the usual anti-Semitic envy of their wealth, which would fall forfeit if they were found guilty of such crimes. With the Spanish Inquisition structured to be self-funding through the fines and confiscations harvested by its own judgements, some groundless prosecutions must have been inflicted but, on balance, it must also be said that across those first fifteen years executions only ran to about 130 per annum which, abhorrent by modern standards, has to be seen in the context of the times. Many of those tried were indeed guilty of heresy, then considered a grave crime. By contrast and across the same period, the rest of Western Europe slaughtered perhaps 60,000 witches and heretics. Despite the English Henry VIII now promoted as a jolly fine fellow, the man was a paranoid thug; apart from those who were executed for matters of faith or heresy, during his thirty-seven-year reign he imposed tens of thousands of further secular executions.
TOMÁS DE TORQUEMADA
With the first element of his surname rather ironically bearing strong etymological links to other words such as ‘twist’ and ‘torture’, Tomás de Torquemada was perhaps an obvious target for the Protestant black propaganda machine.
A Dominican friar of Jewish descent, at the age of sixty-three Torquemada was appointed Grand Inquisitor in 1483 and, while the very mention of his name conjures up images of thousands burning to death at the stake, he only held office for fifteen years, with the last five of those years spent at home in bed due to ill health. The Spanish Inquisition, on the other hand, was in business for over 350 years.
Although he was a dogged persecutor of heretics, from all accounts Torquemada was dour but fair. He ensured the prisons of the Inquisition were sanitary and his trials even-handed, with the burden of proof on the prosecution.
On 18 April 1482 Pope Sixtus IV sent a letter to the Council of Bishops of Spain to bid them to be wary of avarice tainting their Inquisition through the malicious prosecution of converted Jews or other wealthy targets perceived as vulnerable. Although Ferdinand wrote back to inform the Pope in no uncertain terms that such accusations were groundless and that he should mind his own holy business, he nevertheless appointed Tomás de Torquemada in 1483 to oversee the actions of the Spanish Inquisition and make sure it could never stand accused of such base motives.
Although major cities had static offices of the Inquisition there were also travelling offices which toured towns and villages too small to warrant a permanent presence and, another indication as to the leniency of the Spanish Inquisition, these peripatetic offices almost proved their own undoing. Knowing that the average Spanish countryman was largely unaware of its existence or the scope and reach of its judgements, the travelling Inquisition felt it only fair to alert rural towns and villages of its impending arrival and to further announce an edict of grace to give everyone thirty days to draw up a list of any minor sin or transgression weighing on their mind so they could, on the Inquisition’s arrival, present themselves for confession and absolution. But this backfired big-time. Terrified out of their wits, the collective Spanish peasantry rushed to meet the Inquisition at every stop with endless lists of actual transgressions, any transgressions of which others might think them guilty, or any false accusations their enemies might think to throw in their direction. Thus clogged with such a caseload, the travelling Inquisitions frequently opted to issue a blanket absolution to every living soul in the area before beating a hasty retreat from the tsunami of would-be penitents flooding towards them. This was the beginning of the Inquisition becoming a victim of its own leniency.
Although the Spanish Inquisition was designed to be self-funding through its fines and confiscations, the various offices, each with one legal advisor, one constable, a prosecuting lawyer and at least a dozen or so support staff, were frequently left begging subsidies from the Crown just to meet the wages bill. Throughout its 350 years of operation the Spanish Inquisition tried something just short of 250,000 cases, resulting in about 4,000 executions – on average about a dozen a year. The vast majority of Inquisition cases resulted in acquittals. The Spanish Inquisition did indeed use torture, but so did everyone else back then and records show that it only resorted to such tactics in fewer than 2 per cent of all cases. When torture was employed it was restricted to a maximum of fifteen minutes and could only be repeated once; no one ever endured a third round and only half of the aforementioned 2 per cent received their second dose.
These were the days when English dungeons were always stocked with racks and thumbscrews and a starving waif from the streets of London could be hanged for stealing a loaf of bread. Across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, England hanged between 400 and 2,000 ‘witches’ – despite what one sees in films, such victims were never burned at the stake in England – while Protestant Germany had a much higher number. The Spanish Inquisition, by contrast, had declared early that belief in witches and witchcraft was a silly delusion so none could be tried for it or punished in any way; they further warned that anyone bringing imaginary accusations of witchery against another would end up on charges themselves. So, although shocking by today’s standards, set against the activities of the rest of Western Europe at that time, it is clear that the real facts surrounding the activities of the Spanish Inquisition do not match the myth.