"This history will make known numberless attempts perpetrated by the inquisitors against magistrates who defended the rights of sovereign authority, in opposition to the enterprises of the holy office and the court of Rome; and which enables me to state the trials of many celebrated men and ministers who defended the prerogatives of the crown, and whose only crimes were having published works on the right of the crown, according with the principles of jurisprudence. These trials will display the Counsellors of the Inquisition carrying their audacity to such a height, as to deny that their temporal jurisdiction was derived from the concession of their sovereign, and actually prosecuting all the members of the council of Castile, as rash men, suspected of heresy, for having made known and denounced to the king this system of usurpation. In addition to these intolerable acts, will be found accounts of their assumption of superiority over viceroys, and other great officers of state. I have also shewn, that these ministers of persecution have been the chief causes of the decline of literature, and almost the annihilators of nearly all that could enlighten the people, by their ignorance, their blind submission to the monks who were qualifiers, and by persecuting the magistrates and the learned who were anxious to disseminate information. These monks were despicable scholastic theologians, too ignorant and prejudiced to be able to ascertain the truth between the doctrines of Luther and those of Roman Catholicism, and so condemned, as Lutheran, propositions incontestably true.
The horrid conduct of this holy office weakened the power and diminished the population of Spain, by arresting the progress of arts, sciences, industry, and commerce, and by compelling multitudes of families to abandon the kingdom; by instigating the expulsion of the Jews and the Moors; and by immolating on its flaming shambles more than three hundred thousand victims!! So replete with duplicity was the system of the inquisitors-general, and the council of this holy office, that if a papal bull was likely to circumscribe their power, or check their vengeance, they refused to obey, on the pretext of its being opposed to the laws of the kingdom, and the orders of the Spanish government. By a similar proceeding, they evaded the ordinances of the king, by alleging that papal bulls prevented them from obeying, under pain of excommunication. Secrecy, the foe of truth and justice, was the soul of the tribunal of the Inquisition; it gave to it new life and vigour, sustained and strengthened its arbitrary power, and so emboldened it, that it had the hardihood to arrest the highest and noblest in the land, and enabled it to deceive, by concealing facts, popes, kings, viceroys, and all invested with authority by their sovereign. This holy office, veiled by secrecy, unhesitatingly kept back, falsified, concealed, or forged the reports of trials, when compelled to open their archives to popes or kings. The Inquisitors constantly succeeded, by this detestable knavery, in concealing the truth, and facilitated their object by being careful not to number the reports. This was practiced to a great extent in the trials of the archbishop of Toledo, of the Prothonotary, and others.
Facts prove beyond a doubt, that the extirpation of Judaism was not the real cause, but the mere pretext, for the establishment of the Inquisition by Ferdinand V. The true motive was to carry on a vigorous system of confiscation against the Jews, and so bring their riches into the hands of the government 1. "
Juan Antonio Llorente, A Critical History of the Inquisition of Spain [Williamstown, Mass: John Lilburne Company, 1967] p. xv - xviii
Inquisition, Phase 2
As Llorente noted in the final sentence of the extract above, money as well as power, not the saving of either individual souls or society as a whole, were the great motivations behind many of the charges of heresy, and later witchcraft. Many commentators have noted that when an area was picked over so that there was no more money to be had for the Inquisitors, the Inquisitors moved to another locality.
The second phase of the Inquisition began about 1480 and ended in various parts of Europe at different times. Geographical areas subjected to Inquisition 2 include Spain, the Spanish colonies, and the Papal Estates; Inquisition 2 also includes the Counter-Reformation and the witchcraft trials which were largely confined to northern Europe.
By 1480, the Inquisition had been so successful in other parts of Europe for so long that, unneeded for, at least, a generation, the church allowed it to fall into disuse and decay. The now-creaky machinery of the Inquisition was somewhat revived through the efforts of Ferdinand and Isabella, Their Catholic Majesties, to rid Spain of all subjects who were not orthodox Catholics. As we will see, though, when the real crisis came, the machinery was slow to respond; and, when it finally responded, responded very timidly, at least according to its old, established norms.
As the second phase of the Inquisition begins, intellectually, Europeans had much more in common with medieval men than with modern men, although the Renaissance was in full swing and new ideas were being explored. With the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, many Christians fled west, bringing to western Europe their knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics. Roman and Greek literature was being resurrected and the visual arts were reviving: Michaelango (1475 - 1554) would paint the Sistine Chapel between 1508 and 1512. Nonetheless, although there was some flexibility in new ideas, many of the old restrictions still applied. Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) did not publish his famous work on astronomy, On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres (De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) until 1543; Galileo (1564-1642) would not be condemned by the Inquisition until much later, 1633; and Issac Newton (1642-1727) did not publish his revolutionary work, Principia, until 1687. Not until the end of the witchcraze would the great political writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries appear. In the fifteenth century when Inquisition 2 begins, all aspects of thought, including medicine, science, and law, were permeated with theological ideas, so that when a religious difference of opinion arose, it split society to the very foundation2.
The church was still undisputed master of the land. To show an example of the power of the church, Froude writes,
" I know nothing in English history much more striking than the answer given by Archbishop Warham to the complaints of the English House of Commons after the fall of Cardinal Wolsey [1475-1530]. The House of Commons explained that the clergy made laws in Convocation, which the laity were excommunicated if they disobeyed. Yet the laws made by the clergy, the Commons said, were often at variance with the laws of the realm.
What did Warham reply? He said he was sorry for the alleged discrepancy; but, inasmuch as the laws made by the clergy were always in conformity with the will of God, the laws of the realm had only to be altered, and then the difficulty would vanish.3 "
Spanish Inquisition
For a variety of reasons -- the domination of large areas of Spain by the Moors, the presence of very little Christian heresy, and the division of the Christian portion of the Iberian peninsula into, at least, four major and additional minor kingdoms -- large portions of Spain were spared Inquisition, Phase 1, although the Kingdom of Aragon, beginning with James II in 1292, supported it4. The Spanish kingdoms of Castile and Leon were spared5 until Ferdinand the Catholic succeeded to the throne by right of his wife, Isabella, in 1474. Although Ferdinand succeeded to the throne of Aragon in 1479, the Moors held Granada until they were driven out in the last battles of the Reconquest in 1492. Only toward the end of the Reconquest could their Catholic Majesties turn their attention to purging their country of unorthodox Christian and non-christian subjects.
During the fifteenth century, Jews in Spain were alternately reviled and tolerated. During each episode of persecution, some Jews converted to Christianity and became known as New Christians, Marranos,6. or conversos. As Jews, these men had been forbidden to hold high secular and ecclesiastical offices; as Christians they had access to positions where they could wield power and influence. Both Jews and New Christians became rich, stirring up the envy and jealousy of their Christian and Old Christian neighbors. According to Llorente, it was this jealousy that prompted the inquisitors to examine the New Christians. In 1478, the pope issued a bull to Ferdinand and Isabella empowering them to name the priests who would be commissioned as Inquisitors, introducing the modern Inquisition into Castile and Leon. To her credit, Isabella wavered7, but by 14818, Inquisitors were sending heretics to the stake in her kingdom. In 1483, Father Thomas de Torquemada, whose name has become synonymous with torture and death, was appointed inquisitor-general of Aragon9.
As we saw in other parts of Europe, almost any action could lead to the accusation of heresy. Llorente writes in part, "A convert was considered as relapsed into heresy, if he kept the Sabbath out of respect to the law which he had abandoned; this was sufficiently proved if he wore better linen and garments on that day than those which he commonly used, or had not a fire in his house from the preceding evening; if he took the suet and fat from the animals which were intended for his food, and washed the blood from it; if he examined the blade of the knife before he killed the animals, and covered the blood with earth; if he blessed the table after the manner of the Jews; if he has drunk of the wine named caser, (a word derived from caxer, which means lawful,) and which is prepared by Jews; if he pronounces the bahara or benediction when he take the vessel of wine into his hands, and pronounces certain words before he gives it to another person; if he eats of an animal killed by Jews; if he has recited the psalms of David without repeating the Gloria Patri at the end; . . .10. " Llorente's list of offenses continues for another page.
In 1492, with the fall of Granada and the Reconquest complete, Ferdinand and Isabella could turn their attention to different matters: they purged their kingdom of all people who were not orthodox Catholics, beginning with the expulsion of, first, the Jews, and then the Muslims. Jews and Muslims who preferred to remain in their Spanish homeland, fearing to remain in Spain as Jews or Muslims, flocked to the Christian religion, converting in droves. The converted Moors, known as the Morescoes, were promised by the sovereigns that the Inquisition would not be introduced among them until 152611.
Martin Luther posted his 95 Thesis on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany inaugurating the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Gradually, Protestant ideas filtered into Spain.
Each of these events provided fodder for the Inquisitors: pre-Inquisition New Christians, Jews and Muslims who refused to leave Spain when they were expelled, conversos and Morescoes, Protestant heretics, and, finally, as noted in the introduction, any person who in any way impeded the operations of the Inquisition, even royal ministers. At times, to retain the favor of the monarchy, the Inquisition acted as an internal police force, purging Spain of voices of political dissent. Gradually Spain was purged of all voices in opposition to the RC church; commerce was slowly destroyed along with the advanced learning for which Spain had long been renowned. Although in time the Spanish Inquisition became less voracious and less vicious, it was not ended until 181112 after Spain was overrun by Napoleon's troops. To the eternal shame of the Spanish government, the Spanish Inquisition was reinstituted when Napoleon was driven from Spain and was not finally ended in Spain until 1833.
Perhaps Llorente gives us some insight into just how deeply the Inquisition penetrated into the psyche of the Spanish people when he writes, "On the 25th of February, 1560, the inquisitors of Toledo celebrated an auto-da-fé, in which several persons were burnt, with some effigies, and a great number subjected to penances. This auto-da-fé was performed to entertain the new queen, Elizabeth de Valois, the daughter of Henry II, King of France. It is rather surprising that this melancholy ceremony was chosen to amuse a royal princess of thirteen years of age, and who in her native country had been accustomed to brilliant festivals, suitable to her rank and age13. "
Inquisition in Spanish Dependencies
As should be expected, the Inquisition was soon instituted in Spanish colonies around the world.
In 1516, Ferdinand V appointed an inquisitor general for the Spanish colonies then known by the name of the kingdom of Terra Firma and in 1519 appointed an inquisitor for the Indies and Isles of the Ocean14.
In 1522, Charles V introduced an exceptionally severe form of the Inquisition into the Low Countries (the Netherlands and Belgium)15, causing the Flemish provinces to rebel in the 1560s with Belgium remaining Catholic and The Netherlands adopting a Protestant religion, but with both countries throwing off the Spanish yoke.
In 1562, Phillip II reformed the inquisition in Sardinia so that the institution there conformed to the current rules of the Holy Office in Spain itself, not the older, less severe rules of Ferdinand V16.
In 1563, Phillip II established the Inquisition in Milan17.
In 1570, Phillip II appointed an Inquisition for Mexico, and in 1571 established three tribunals to cover all of the Americas: one each in Lima, Mexico, and Carthagena18. The first auto-da-fé in Mexico, celebrated with such pomp and splendor that it was favorably compared with an autos-de-fé which had been attended by Phillip II himself and others of the royal family, took place in 157419.
The Inquisition, quite literally, became a world-wide affair.
Roman Inquisition
During the middle ages and the Renaissance, large sections of the Italian peninsula were under the temporal control of the Papacy. Areas of Italy not under the direct control of the Papacy were influenced by papal policies - the popes often took an active part in Italian politics, meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign city-states.
For centuries Popes had been natives of Italy. As the saying goes, "Familiarity breeds contempt" and such was the case with the various holders of the office of the papacy. In an age when the city-state, not the national government, was the dominant political entity, many local officials were intimately knowledgeable about the private lives of individuals who eventually became popes. Less than overwhelmed by the personal sanctity of many of the popes and desiring to retain political power, local officials often successfully ignored the pronouncements of whichever incumbent held the office of the papacy.
To counter those efforts, Popes instituted the inquisition both in the Papal Estates and in the free-city states where the papal party yielded sufficient power to allow the inquisitors to operate.
The refurbishment of the machinery of the Inquisition, at least in some areas, then, was well underway by the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, the resurrection of the hated institution, along with the continued depravity and corruption inside the church, were partly to blame for the success of the Reformation.
End Notes
References
Theodore Dwight, The Roman Republic of 1849: With Accounts of The Inquisition, and The Siege of Rome, and Biographical Sketches with Original Portraits, [New York: R. Van Dien, 1851
James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905]
Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, vol 2, (1888) [New York: Harbor Press, 1955 ]
Juan Antonio Llorente, A Critical History of the Inquisition of Spain [Williamstown, Mass: John Lilburne Company, 1967]