Cause & Effect: The Spanish Inquisition

The word Inquisition comes from the Latin word inquiro, which means “to investigate.” Inquisitors were members of the Catholic Church who were dispatched through Western Europe to seek people who were accused of heresy. Among the church leaders, heresy meant a philosophy that disagreed with the teachings of the Orthodox Catholism, which threatened the unity of the church.

Although Christianity was powerful at this time in history, it had often been a victim of persecution. The Christian religion started around the first century AD with the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christ himself was a victim of persecution because the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, believed that Christ’s teachings represented a threat to the Roman government. Christ was then condemned to be crucified. Persecutions continued through to 312, after a great number of converts from the Roman religion became part of the Catholic Church. The future of Christianity was assured because of the emperor Constantine. This resulted because of a manifestation he had that changed his way of thinking. He even converted himself to the Catholic religion. He was struggling for control of the Roman Empire against a powerful rival, Maxentius. Before the start of a decisive battle at the Milivan Bridge, Constantine reportedly saw a cross in the sky with the inscription “conquer by this.” He also said that God had appeared in his dreams. After he won, he took control of the empire and gave religious tolerance to the Christian Church. After the Catholic Church got powerful, it found itself persecuting others.

The Spanish inquisitors began to preside at trials that involved alleged heretics about the year 1231, after Pope Gregory IX called on the Franciscians and Dominicans, which were orders of friars, to undertake a special role in the Christian Church. Their role was to seek out people who were accused of heresy and put them on trial. It was fear of having a “fifth column” among them which was one of the reasons why the inquisition was started. The Inquisition also brought profit to the state because property of heretics who were found guilty was taken from them. They also wanted to establish a political and religious homogeneity; the strengthening of the main political authority also caused weakening political opposition. The Inquisition would get rid of the threat to the government, those who practiced heresy. Before the Inquisitors took their role in the cities, mobs of boisterous townspeople had taken matters into their own hands. The Inquisitors had burned supposed heretics at the stake without first holding a trial. By 1255, the Inquisition was operating across Western Europe.

The Inquisitors usually followed a fixed procedure. They arrived in an area and gave the residents a month’s “term of grace” in which to come before the Inquisitors and willingly confess heresy. The repentant heretics were given penance and punishment for their sins.

Those who were believed to be heretics but did not confess were put on trial before the Inquisitors. The accused were forced to testify against themselves and were not given the help of any legal counsel. They never saw or knew who accused them of heresy. If the supposed heretics still did not confess, the Inquisitor might resort to horrible torture to induce those who practiced heresy to confess. If the torture was successful and the heretic confessed, he or she could put a hand on the Bible, kneel, and renounce heresy. The confessed heretic would then have to serve out his or her penance. Heretics who still did not confess were burned at the stake. Other methods of the Inquisition included imprisonment, torture, confiscation of property and public execution. Preceding these burnings of heretics, a religious ceremony called an auto-da-fe (act of faith) was performed. In their ceremonies heretics who were accused were marched in procession into a church, a mass was held, and the death sentence was read. Then the convicted persons were handed to the state for execution.

The peak of the Inquisition was from 1483 to 1498. During this time Dominican priest Tomas de Torquemada presided over thousands of trials. He also supervised over two thousand burnings at the stake.

A story which demonstrates the torture used during the Spanish Inquisition is “The Pit and the Pendulum,” by Edgar Allan Poe, where the main character, a captured heretic, is put inside a dungeon. In this horrifying story, he goes through a horrible experience as he faces death, which in his case takes the form of a pendulum. The method of his sentence of death is as follows: The condemned is fastened upon a table on his back and suspended above him is a pendulum. The blade of the pendulum, which is very sharp, is constructed so that with every swing it takes, it drops down until it reaches the condemned and finally kills him. Luckily for the condemned in this story, he is released by rats and is saved by General Lasalle because the French army arrives at Toledo (where the story takes place). “The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.”

The Inquisition persisted in a limited form until about 1834 in Latin America and Spain.

Due to the Spanish Inquisition, many Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain, and on March 19, 1815, the Spanish Liberal Constitution was accepted and became the first step in a long journey toward religious freedom in Spain.