Spanish Inquisition#Sentencing

{{main|Medieval Inquisition|Papal Inquisition in Spain|History of the Jews in Spain}}

File:La_Virgen_de_los_Reyes_Católicos.jpg, 1491–1493. The Inquisitor, Torquemada, is behind King Ferdinand (left).]]The Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 312. Having been severely persecuted under previous emperors, the new religion now commenced its program of persecution of heresies - Arianism, Manichaeism, Gnosticism, Adamites, Donatists, Pelagians, and Priscillianists{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=9-11}} In 380 Emperor Theodosius I established Nicene Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire. It condemned other Christian creeds as heresies and approved their punishment.{{cite book |last1=Ehler |first1=Sidney Zdeneck |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2WuMyEzani8C&pg=PA6 |title=Church and State Through the Centuries: A Collection of Historic Documents with Commentaries |last2=Morrall |first2=John B |publisher=Biblo & Tannen Publishers |year=1967 |isbn=978-0-8196-0189-6 |pages=6–7 |quote=This Edict is the first which definitely introduces Catholic orthodoxy as the established religion of the Roman world. [...] Acknowledgment of the true doctrine of the Trinity is made the test of State recognition. |access-date= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160515193906/https://books.google.com/books?id=2WuMyEzani8C&pg=PA6 |archive-date=2016-05-15 |url-status=live}}{{Cite web |title=The Edict of Thessalonica |url=https://www.historytoday.com/archive/months-past/edict-thessalonica |access-date= |website=History Today}} In 438, under Emperor Theodosius II, the Codex Theodosianus (Theodosian Code) already provided for the confiscation of property and the death penalty for heretics.{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=13}}{{Cite book |last=Pharr |first=Clyde |title=The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions |publisher=Princeton University Press |publication-date=1952 |pages=440–476}}

Following the conversion of Spain's Visigoth royal family to Catholicism in 587, the situation for Jews deteriorated as the monarchy and church aligned to consolidate the realm under the new religion.{{sfn|Rutgers|Bradbury|2006|p=512}} The Church's Councils of Toledo imposed restrictions, including prohibitions on intermarriage and holding office,{{sfn|Rutgers|Bradbury|2006|p=512}} culminating in King Sisebut's 613 decree demanding conversion or expulsion, which led many Jews to flee or convert.Assis, p. 10 Despite brief periods of tolerance, subsequent rulers and church councils intensified persecution, banning all Jewish rites,{{sfn|Rutgers|Bradbury|2006|p=512}} ordering forced baptisms, seizing property, enslaving Jews (after accusations of conspiracy in 694), taking children away from Jewish parents,{{sfn|Rutgers|Bradbury|2006|p=512}} and imposing severe economic hardships. This relentless oppression alienated the Jewish population, causing some to welcome the Muslim invasion in 711.Stillman, p.53

While Muslims of the Holy Land were the primary targets of the Crusades, other perceived enemies of Christianity soon became targets. In 1184 Pope Lucius III created the Episcopal Inquisition to combat Catharism in southern France. Heretics were to be handed over to secular authorities for punishment, have their property seized, and face excommunication. When this failed to stem the heresy, Pope Innocent III called forth the Albigensian Crusade. The Crusaders killed 200,000{{sfn|Tatz|Higgins|2016|p=214}} to 1,000,000{{sfn|Robertson|1902|p=254}} Cathars, perpetrated massacres (e.g. at Béziers), hundreds were burned at the stake. It was the start of a centralization in the fight against heresy,{{sfnp|Frassetto|2007|p=68}}{{sfnp|Leff|1967|p=37}} The Dominican Order was established to preach against the heresy, later serving as inquisitors throughout Europe. In 1252 Pope Innocent IV issued the bull Ad extirpanda, authorizing inquisitors to use torture against heretics.

European Jews likewise became targets, leading to massacres and expulsions. While papal bulls sought to shield Jews from violence, starting in the twelfth century papal bulls also prohibited Jews from holding public office, required them to wear distinctive badges, ordered the burning of the Talmud, limited their employment, confined Jews to ghettos, expelled them from the Papal States, along with other restrictions aimed at keeping Jews subordinate.{{Cite book |last=Tolan |first=John |url=https://hal.science/hal-00726485/file/Of_Milk_and_Blood.pdf |title=The Legal Status of Religious Minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean World (5th – 15th centuries)}} In 1231 Pope Gregory IX expanded the Papal Inquisition to Aragon. Cathars, Jewish converts and others deemed heretics were targeted, with trials, imprisonments and executions. Books by Spanish friars attacked Jews and Muslims. In Castile the Church Synod of Zamora protested rights granted Jews by the king. Calls for restrictions on Spanish Jews were made by Popes and Cortes (assemblies of the Church, nobles and cities). Some kings protected Jews, since they benefited from the taxes levied on Jews, and Jews serving as courtiers and tax collectors. Others - like Alfonso X, Sancho IV and Henry II - restricted Jews and exploited anti-Jewish sentiment for political gain.{{Cite book |last=Alpert |first=Michael |url=https://www.academia.edu/54526539 |title=Cryptojudaism and the Spanish Inquisition |date=2001 |isbn=978-0-333-98526-7 |pages=9–10}}

The Shepherds' Crusade of 1320, started to help reconquer Spain from the Muslims, instead killed hundreds of Jews in France and Spain.{{Cite book |last=Weisenberg |first=Nathaniel |url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=931cee3c08f2d0a3db4af7422f5e05b1b8c9bd4d |title=The Unraveling: Seville The Jews of Castile and the Road to the Riots of |date=2010 |publisher=Thesis, Georgetown University}}{{Cite journal |last=Kuzdale |first=Ann |date=1998 |title=Review of Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages by David Nirenberg |journal=Journal of the American Academy of Religion |volume=66 |issue=1 |pages=191–194 |doi=10.1093/jaarel/66.1.191 |issn=0002-7189 |jstor=1466255}}{{Cite journal |last=RAPOPORT |first=DAVID C. |date=2016 |title=Review of Holy War, Martyrdom and Terror: Christianity, Violence and the West, ca. 70 C.E. to the Iraq War by Philippe Buc |journal=Journal of World History |volume=27 |issue=2 |pages=332–335 |issn=1045-6007 |jstor=43901855}} In 1328, mobs inflamed by the sermons of the Franciscan preacher, Pedro Olligoyen, massacred several Jewish communities in Navarre.{{Cite web |title=NAVARRE - JewishEncyclopedia.com |url=https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11390-navarre |access-date=2025-04-26 |website=www.jewishencyclopedia.com}} Years of virulent anti-Jewish preaching by Ferrand Martínez, Archdeacon of Ecija, climaxed in the massacres of 1391 when riots broke out in Seville, Barcelona, Valencia, Toledo, Mallorca and elsewhere across Spain, killing thousands of Jews.{{sfn|Peters|1988|p=82}} To save themselves, some fled, mainly to North Africa, and an estimated 100,000, or one half of all Spanish Jews, converted to Catholicism. Following anti-Jewish riots in 1435 in Mallorca, the Papal Inquisitor Antonio Murta played a key role in forced conversions of local Jews.{{Cite book |last=Braunstein |first=Baruch |title=The Chuetas of Majorca |publisher=Columbia University Press |year=1973 |isbn= |location=New York |pages=42–43}} The converts were called conversos. While mostly poor or of modest means, some conversos became successful in government and commerce, drawing resentment. Converses were also suspected of continuing to practice Judaism in secret. Periods of stress, food shortages, plague and inflation led to attacks on conversos - in 1449 in Toledo (where conversos were tortured and burned alive), in 1462 in Carmona, again in Toledo in 1467, etc. In Cordoba in 1473 mobs killed conversos, regardless of sex and age, burning and looting their homes.{{sfn|Alpert|pages=12-13}}

File:Torquemada.jpg

Fray Alonso de Ojeda, a Dominican friar from Seville, convinced Queen Isabella of the existence of Crypto-Judaism among Andalusian conversos{{cite web |title=Spanish Inquisition Timeline |url=https://www.britannica.com/summary/Spanish-Inquisition-Timeline |access-date=15 December 2021 |website=Encyclopaedia Britannica}} during her stay in Seville between 1477 and 1478.{{Efn|The terms converso and crypto-Jew are somewhat vexed, and occasionally historians are not clear on how, precisely, they are intended to be understood. For the purpose of clarity, in this article converso will be taken to mean one who has sincerely renounced Judaism or Islam and embraced Catholicism. Crypto-Jew will be taken to mean one who accepts Christian baptism, yet continues to practice Judaism.|name=a}}{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|pp=89-90}}A report, produced by Pedro González de Mendoza, Archbishop of Seville, and by the Dominican Tomás de Torquemada, confessor to Ferdinand and Isabella, corroborated this assertion. The Catholic monarchs requested a papal bull to establish an inquisition in Spain. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV granted the bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus, to deal with those who have been baptized, but "revert to the rites and customs of the Jews and to keep the dogmas and precepts of the Jewish superstition and perfidy...Not only do they themselves persist in their own blindness, but also some who are born of them and some who associate with them are poisoned by their perfidy." {{Cite journal |last=Benjamin G. Davis, Andrew Gaudio |title=A Brief History of Insanity: The Gaudio Translation |url=https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1433&context=uoplawreview |journal=University of the Pacific Law Review |volume=53 |pages=719}} To "expel this perfidy", "to convert the infidels to the proper faith", and punish all those "guilty of such crimes along with their harborers and followers," the bull permitted the monarchs to select and appoint three bishops or priests to act as inquisitors.{{sfnp|Peters|1988|p=85}}

The first two inquisitors, the Dominicans Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín were named two years later, on 27 September 1480.{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=107-108}} The first auto de fé execution was held in Seville on 6 February 1481: six people were burned alive.{{sfn|Kamen|page=47}} Thousands of conversos fled in terror, depopulating large parts of the country, hurting commerce. Government revenues declined, but the Queen was interested in "the purity of her lands", stating, per the chronicler Hernando del Pulgar, "the essential thing was to cleanse the country of that sin of heresy".{{sfn|Kamen|page=47}}

The scale of the operations created an enormous amount of work. Accordingly in February of 1481, Pope Sixtus IV appointed seven more inquisitors, all Dominican friars, one of them being Tomas de Torquemada.{{Cite book |last=Kamen |first=Henry |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Spanish_Inquisition/orjqSmYJhqoC?hl=en |title=The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision |date=1998-01-01 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-07522-9 |pages=47 |language=en}} The Inquisition grew rapidly in the Kingdom of Castile. By 1492, tribunals existed in eight Castilian cities: Ávila, Córdoba, Jaén, Medina del Campo, Segovia, Sigüenza, Toledo, and Valladolid. In 1482 Ferdinand sought to take over the existing Papal Inquisition in Aragon, which led to resistance since it infringed on local rights. Relatives and others complained of the brutality to the Pope, who wanted to maintain control of the inquisition.{{sfn|Kamen|page=49}} Sixtus IV promulgated a new bull (1482), affirming that:Cited in {{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=49}}{{Blockquote|... in Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia the Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls, but by lust for wealth, and that many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other lower and even less proper persons, have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example, and causing disgust to many.}}The historian Henry Charles Lea, wrote that the Pope sought to have heresy treated same as other crimes. According to the book A History of the Jewish People,Ben-Sasson, H.H., editor. 1976. p. 588.{{Blockquote|In 1482 the pope was still trying to maintain control over the Inquisition and to gain acceptance for his own attitude towards the New Christians which was generally more moderate than that of the Inquisition and the local rulers.}}Outraged, Ferdinand feigned doubt about the bull's veracity, arguing that no sensible pope would have published such a document. He wrote the pope on 13 May 1482, saying: "Take care therefore not to let the matter go further, and to revoke any concessions and entrust us with the care of this question."{{harvp|Kamen|1998|pp=49–50}} The Pope suspended the bull, then switched to full cooperation, by issuing a new bull of October 17, 1483, with which he appointed Torquemada Inquisitor General of Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia, thus uniting all Spanish inquisitions under a single head.{{sfn|Kamen|page=50}} Setting to work immediately, they burned the first converses at the stake in Aragon in 1484. Opposition continued in Aragon and Catalonia, which sought to maintain local control. Pope Innocent VIII then resolved the issue by withdrawing all papal inquisitors from Aragon and Catalonia, thus relinquishing full control to Torquemada, including all appeals to be addressed by Torquemada and not the pope. {{sfn|Kamen|page=50-51}}

The Spanish Inquisition expanded to other territories under the Spanish Crown - Southern Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia, and Central and South America, with tribunals in tribunals in Lima, Peru, Mexico City and Cartagena (present-day Colombia).

File:An_auto-da-fé_of_the_Spanish_Inquisition_and_the_execution_o_Wellcome_V0041892.jpg at stakes (auto-da-fé) in a marketplace during the Spanish Inquisition.]]

Torquemada quickly established procedures for the Inquisition. In 1484, based on Nicholas Eymerich's Directorium Inquisitorum, he created a twenty-eight-article inquisitor's code, Compilación de las instrucciones del oficio de la Santa Inquisición (i.e. Compilation of the instructions of the office of the Holy Inquisition), essentially unaltered for more than three centuries following Torquemada's death.{{Cite book |last=Torquemada |first=Tomás de |url=https://ia903004.us.archive.org/22/items/BRes14068130Despacho/BRes14068130Despacho.pdf |title=Compilacion de las Instrucciones del Oficio de la Santa Inquisicion |publisher=Diego Diaz de la Carrera |publication-date=1667 |language=es}}{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|pp=142, 147}}{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=135}} The Church classified heresy as a crime of treason, punishable by death. A new court would be announced with a thirty-day grace period for self-confessions and denunciations. People had to denounce not only themselves, but all others - relatives, friends and acquaintances - who had attended meetings with Jewish prayers.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=136}} Simultaneously, the Inquisitors gathered accusations from neighbors and acquaintances. Evidence that was used to identify a crypto-Jew included the absence of chimney smoke on Saturdays (a sign the family might secretly be honoring the Sabbath), the buying of many vegetables before Passover, or the purchase of meat from a converted butcher.

The accused were presumed to be guilty, and they never learned who were their accusers.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=145}} Above all, the trials sought to extract an admission of guilt. The court could and did employ physical torture to extract confessions. This included water torture, torture on the rack, and suspending people by their wrists while tying weights to their feet, then repeatedly raising and dropping them rapidly.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=148}} The accused had to make their confessions publicly during the auto-da-fé. As the legal expert, Francisco Peña, stated in 1578, the main purpose of the trials and death sentences was not to save souls, but to ensure "the public good" and to strike terror into people. To do so the sentences had to be read publicly "for the education of one and all and to terrify".{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=154}} These public ceremonies became quite popular throughout the Spanish realm, competing with bullfights for the public's attention. In 1680, king Charles II celebrated his marriage with an auto-da-fé in Madrid, which drew 50,000 spectators and featured a procession, religious rituals, and the sentencing of 118 individuals, the majority of them Jewish conversos, condemned to severe penalties, including execution by burning.{{Cite web |title=Spanish Inquisition's Grandiose Auto-da-Fé {{!}} EBSCO Research Starters |url=https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/spanish-inquisitions-grandiose-auto-da-fe |access-date=2025-05-13 |website=www.ebsco.com |language=en}}{{Cite journal |last=Graizbord |first=David |date=2006 |title=Inquisitorial Ideology at Work in an Auto De Fe, 1680: Religion in the Context of Proto-Racism |url=https://www.academia.edu/28488233/Inquisitorial_Ideology_at_Work_in_an_Auto_De_Fe_1680_Religion_in_the_Context_of_Proto_Racism |journal=Journal of Early Modern History |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=331 |doi=10.1163/157006506779141560 |issn=1385-3783}}

Those who confessed were assessed punishments, from penance to public floggings, exile from their place of residence, or servitude as galley-slaves (a penalty frequently imposed in the 16th century when the king's service required many galley-slaves).{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=151}} Others who had confessed were sentenced to prison, from years to life. Confiscation of all property was almost always part of the sentence imposed, even on repentant heretics.{{Cite book |last=Alpert |first=Michael |url=https://www.academia.edu/54526539/Cryptojudaism_and_the_Spanish_Inquisition |title=Cryptojudaism and the Spanish Inquisition |date=2001 |isbn=978-0-333-98526-7 |pages=23}} In the first part of the sixteenth century the Inquisition took enormous sums from its victims; almost 87 million maravedis were confiscated by eight courts in the seven years between 1536 and 1543 alone Those who were declared to be "reconciled" could not occupy public or church posts and were excluded from professions like tax-collector, pharmacist, doctor, etc. These prohibitions extended to their children and grandchildren.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=153}}

Those who did not confess, or had relapsed, were sentenced to death.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|pp=135-136}}Ben-Sasson, H.H., editor. A History of the Jewish People. Harvard University Press, 1976, pp. 588–590. The Inquisition was extremely active between 1480 and 1530. Different sources give different estimates of the number of trials and executions in this period; some estimate about 2,000 executions{{harvp|Kamen|2014|p=68}} based on the documentation of the autos de fe, the majority being conversos of Jewish origin.{{harvp|Kamen|2014|p=65}} Kamen offers striking statistics: 91.6% of those judged in Valencia between 1484 and 1530, and 99.3% of those judged in Barcelona between 1484 and 1505 were of Jewish origin. From 1531 to 1560, the percentage of conversos among the Inquisition trials dropped to 3% of the total. There was a rebound of persecutions when a group of crypto-Jews was discovered in Quintanar de la Orden in 1588, and there was a rise in denunciations of conversos in the last decade of the sixteenth century.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, some conversos who had fled to Portugal began to return to Spain, fleeing the persecution of the Portuguese Inquisition. Complaints to the King by the Spanish Inquisitor General, Cardinal Antonio Zapata and others, denounced "the vehement presumptions of Judaism", which led to a rapid increase in the trials, among them some financiers, but also tobacconists, small artisans. etc. This included the 1680 Madrid auto-da-fé, where among the 118 accused and 21 condemned to death, the majority were immigrant Jewish conversos from Portugal. In his sermon at the auto-da-fé, the Dominican Thomas Navarro blamed Jews for denying and crucifying Christ, stating they deserved the full force of God's wrath, i.e. the typical Catholic anti-Jewish arguments of the Middle Ages.{{Cite journal |last=Graizbord |first=David |date=2006 |title=Inquisitorial Ideology at Work in an Auto De Fe, 1680: Religion in the Context of Proto-Racism |url=https://www.academia.edu/28488233/Inquisitorial_Ideology_at_Work_in_an_Auto_De_Fe_1680_Religion_in_the_Context_of_Proto_Racism |journal=Journal of Early Modern History |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=331 |doi=10.1163/157006506779141560 |issn=1385-3783}} He also called Jews a "stubborn nation", "perfidious", with mentions of "blood purity" (limpieza de sangre), thus adding racist antisemitic arguments, on top of the religious.

In 1691, during a number of autos de fe in Majorca, 37 chuetas, or conversos of Majorca, were burned alive.{{harvp|Kamen|2014|p=369}} During the eighteenth century, the number of conversos accused by the Inquisition decreased. Manuel Santiago Vivar, tried in Córdoba in 1818, was the last person tried for being a crypto-Jew.{{harvp|Kamen|2014|p=370}}

{{anchor|Explusion of Jews. Jewish conversos|reason=Old, mis-punctuated section title, to which there might be incoming links.}}

{{Main|Expulsion of Jews from Spain}}

The Spanish Inquisition had been established in part to prevent conversos from engaging in Jewish practices. The Inquisitor Torquemada convinced the monarchs that the remaining unbaptized Jews still posed a threat. Thus, in 1492 they issued the Alhambra Decree to expel all remaining Jews. The decree noted that despite the Inquisition and other efforts to segregate Jews, interactions between Jews and Christians persisted. As result Christians suffered "great harm ...from the contact, intercourse and communication which they have with the Jews". The monarchs, therefore, decreed that all Jews of any age, residing in their kingdom, must depart and were forbidden to ever return, under penalty of death and confiscation of all property. Anyone assisting or sheltering Jews also faced severe penalties, including loss of possessions and titles.{{Cite web |title=The Edict of Expulsion of the Jews – 1492 Spain |url=http://www.sephardicstudies.org/decree.html |access-date=27 June 2017 |website=www.sephardicstudies.org}}

Historic accounts of the number of Jews expelled from Spain were based on speculation, and some aspects were exaggerated by early accounts and historians: Juan de Mariana speaks of 800,000 people, and Don Isaac Abravanel of 300,000. While few reliable statistics exist for the expulsion, modern estimates based on tax returns and population estimates of communities are much lower, with Kamen stating that of a population of approximately 80,000 Jews and 200,000 conversos, about 40,000 emigrated.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|pp=29–31}} The historian Joseph Perez cites 50,000 to 100,000 expelled.{{Cite book |last=Pérez |first=Joseph |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Spanish_Inquisition/q_6AjgEACAAJ?hl=en |title=The Spanish Inquisition: A History |date=2012 |publisher=Notable Trials Library |pages=36 |language=en}}

Those expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, became known as Sephardic Jews. The Jews of the kingdom of Castile emigrated mainly to Portugal, where the entire community was forcibly converted in 1497, and subsequently many expelled by the Portuguese Inquisition. Many others - known as the Megorashim ("expelled" in Hebrew) - fled to Morocco and elsewhere in North Africa. Kamen writes that Jews of the kingdom of Aragon fled to Italy, rather than to Muslim lands, as often assumed.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=24}} Sicily, where some 25,000-37,000 Jews lived, was then under the Spanish Crown and they too were expelled in 1492. Many expelled Jews from Spain came to Southern Italy, but in 1510-1535, after Spain took over Naples, Apulia and Calabria in Southern Italy, the Jews from these regions were also expelled. Many fled to the Ottoman Empire, where Thessaloniki (Salonika) became a major center of Sephardic Jews. In 1492-3 the expellees built three synagogues named after Castile, Aragon and Catalonia, and by 1502 three more were added by Jews expelled from Spanish-controlled Sicily, Apulia and Calabria.Bernard Lewis, Islam, Gallimard, 2005, pp. 563–567.

Although the vast majority of conversos simply assimilated into the Catholic dominant culture, a minority continued to practice Judaism in secret and gradually migrated throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Ottoman Empire, mainly to areas where Sephardic communities were already present as a result of the Alhambra Decree.{{sfnp|Murphy|2012|p=[https://archive.org/details/godsjuryinquisit0000murp/page/75 75]}} The most intense period of persecution of conversos lasted until 1530.

{{anchor|Expulsion of the Moriscos and Morisco conversos|reason=Old, longer section name, to which there may be incoming links.}}

The Inquisition searched for false or relapsed converts among the Moriscos, who had converted from Islam. Beginning with a decree on 14 February 1502, Muslims in Granada had to choose between conversion to Christianity or expulsion.{{cite book |author=Hans-Jürgen Prien |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kSAbYoBGmxQC |title=Christianity in Latin America: Revised and Expanded Edition |date=2012 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-22262-5 |page=11}} In the Crown of Aragon, most Muslims faced this choice after the Revolt of the Brotherhoods (1519–1523). The enforcement of the expulsion of the Moriscos was implemented unevenly, especially in the lands of the interior and the north. In these regions, coexistence had lasted for over five centuries and Moriscos were protected by the population; in many cases, expulsion orders were partially or completely ignored.{{Citation needed|date=February 2021}}

The War of the Alpujarras (1568–71), a general Muslim/Morisco uprising in Granada that expected to aid Ottoman disembarkation in the peninsula, ended in a forced dispersal of about half of the region's Moriscos throughout Castile and Andalusia as well as increased suspicions by Spanish authorities against this community.

Many Moriscos were suspected of practising Islam in secret, and the jealousy with which they guarded the privacy of their domestic life prevented the verification of this suspicion.S.P. Scott: History, Vol II, p. 259. Initially, they were not severely persecuted by the Inquisition, experiencing instead a policy of evangelization,Absent records, the Inquisition decreed that all Moors were to be regarded as baptized, and thus were Moriscos, subject to the Inquisition. Secular authorities then decreed (in 1526) that 40 years of religious instruction would precede any prosecution. Fifty Moriscos were burnt at the stake before the Crown clarified its position. Neither the Church nor the Moriscos utilized the years well. The Moriscos can be stereotyped as poor, rural, uneducated agricultural workers who spoke Arabic. The Church had limited willingness or ability to educate this now-hostile group.{{harvp|Green|2007|pp=124–127}} a policy not followed by those conversos who were suspected of being crypto-Jews. There were various reasons for this. In the kingdoms of Valencia and Aragon, a large number of the Moriscos were under the jurisdiction of the nobility, and persecution would have been viewed as a frontal assault on the economic interests of this powerful social class. Most importantly, the moriscos had integrated into Spanish society significantly better than the Jews, intermarrying with the population often, and were not seen as a foreign element, especially in rural areas.Trevor J. Dadson, The Assimilation of Spain's Moriscos: Fiction or Reality? Journal of Levantine Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, Winter 2011, pp. 11–30{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=222}} Still, fears ran high among the population that the Moriscos were traitorous, especially in Granada. Barbary pirates backed by Spain's enemy, the Ottoman Empire, regularly raided the coast, and the Moriscos were suspected of aiding them.

In the second half of the century, late in the reign of Philip II, conditions worsened between Old Christians and Moriscos. The Morisco Revolt in Granada in 1568–1570 was harshly suppressed, and the Inquisition intensified its attention on the Moriscos. From 1570, Morisco cases became predominant in the tribunals of Zaragoza, Valencia, and Granada; in the tribunal of Granada, between 1560 and 1571, 82% of those accused were Moriscos, who were a vast majority of the Kingdom's population.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=217}} Still, the Moriscos did not experience the same harshness as Judaizing conversos and Protestants, and the number of capital punishments was proportionally less.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=225}}

In 1609, King Philip III, upon the advice of his financial adviser the Duke of Lerma and Archbishop of Valencia Juan de Ribera, decreed the Expulsion of the Moriscos. Hundreds of thousands of Moriscos were expelled. This was further fueled by the religious intolerance of Archbishop Ribera, who quoted the Old Testament texts ordering the enemies of God to be slain without mercy and setting forth the duties of kings to extirpate them.{{harvp|Lea|1901|p=308}} The edict required: "The Moriscos to depart, under the pain of death and confiscation, without trial or sentence... to take with them no money, bullion, jewels or bills of exchange.... just what they could carry."{{harvp|Lea|1901|p=345}} Although initial estimates of the number expelled, such as those of Henri Lapeyre, reach 300,000 Moriscos (or 4% of the total Spanish population), the extent and severity of the expulsion in much of Spain has been increasingly challenged by modern historians such as Trevor J. Dadson.Trevor J. Dadson: [http://www.bibliotecaspublicas.es/villarrubiadelosojos/imagenes/Dadson_Assimilation_Reality_or_Fiction.pdf The Assimilation of Spain's Moriscos: Fiction or Reality?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130612121737/http://www.bibliotecaspublicas.es/villarrubiadelosojos/imagenes/Dadson_Assimilation_Reality_or_Fiction.pdf |date=12 June 2013 }}. Journal of Levantine Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, Winter 2011, pp. 11–30 Nevertheless, the eastern region of Valencia, where ethnic tensions were high, was particularly affected by the expulsion, suffering economic collapse and depopulation of much of its territory.

Of those permanently expelled, the majority finally settled in the Maghreb or the Barbary coast.{{cite journal|last=Boase|first=Roger|date=4 April 2002|title=The Muslim Expulsion from Spain|journal=History Today|volume=52|issue=4|quote=The majority of those permanently expelled settling in the Maghreb or Barbary Coast, especially in Oran, Tunis, Tlemcen, Tetuán, Rabat and Salé. Many travelled overland to France, but after the assassination of Henry of Navarre by Ravaillac in May 1610, they were forced to emigrate to Italy, Sicily or Constantinople.}} Those who avoided expulsion or who managed to return were gradually absorbed by the dominant culture.{{cite journal |last1=Adams |first1=Susan M. |last2=Bosch |first2=Elena |last3=Balaresque |first3=Patricia L. |last4=Ballereau |first4=Stéphane J. |last5=Lee |first5=Andrew C. |last6=Arroyo |first6=Eduardo |last7=López-Parra |first7=Ana M. |last8=Aler |first8=Mercedes |last9=Grifo |first9=Marina S. Gisbert |last10=Brion |first10=Maria |last11=Carracedo |first11=Angel |last12=Lavinha |first12=João |last13=Martínez-Jarreta |first13=Begoña |last14=Quintana-Murci |first14=Lluis |last15=Picornell |first15=Antònia |last16=Ramon |first16=Misericordia |last17=Skorecki |first17=Karl |last18=Behar |first18=Doron M. |last19=Calafell |first19=Francesc |last20=Jobling |first20=Mark A. |date=December 2008 |title=The Genetic Legacy of Religious Diversity and Intolerance: Paternal Lineages of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula |journal=The American Journal of Human Genetics |volume=83 |issue=6 |pages=725–736 |doi=10.1016/j.ajhg.2008.11.007 |pmc=2668061 |pmid=19061982|issn=0002-9297 }}

The Inquisition pursued some trials against Moriscos who remained or returned after expulsion: at the height of the Inquisition, cases against Moriscos are estimated to have constituted less than 10 percent of those judged by the Inquisition. Upon the coronation of Philip IV in 1621, the new king gave the order to desist from attempting to impose measures on the remaining Moriscos and returnees. In September 1628, the Council of the Supreme Inquisition ordered inquisitors in Seville not to prosecute expelled Moriscos "unless they cause significant commotion."[http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/CHMO/article/view/37358/36158 Michel Boeglin: La expulsión de los moriscos de Andalucía y sus límites. El caso de Sevilla (1610–1613)] (In Spanish) The last mass prosecution against Moriscos for crypto-Islamic practices occurred in Granada in 1727, with most of those convicted receiving relatively light sentences. By the end of the 18th century, the indigenous practice of Islam is considered to have been effectively extinguished in Spain.[http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=4040221 Vínculos Historia: The Moriscos who remained. The permanence of Islamic origin population in Early Modern Spain: Kingdom of Granada, XVII–XVIII centuries] (In Spanish)

During the Spanish Inquisition, limpieza de sangre, or blood purity statutes proliferated against Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity, introducing racially-based discrimination and antisemitism. The first statute of purity of blood was enacted in Toledo in 1449 following anti-converso riots and killings.{{cite web |last=Chami |first=Pablo A. |title=Estatutos de Limpieza de Sangre |trans-title=Statutes of Cleanliness of Blood |url=http://pachami.com/Inquisicion/LimpiezaSangre.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230320155548/http://pachami.com/Inquisicion/LimpiezaSangre.html |archive-date=20 March 2023 |language=es}} This text stated that all Conversos or individuals whose parents or grandparents had converted to Christianity may not hold public or private office and cannot testify in a court of law. In 1496, Pope Alexander VI approved a purity statute for the Hieronymites. Religious and military orders, guilds and other organizations incorporated in their by-laws clauses demanding proof of "cleanliness of blood". Converso families had to either contend with discrimination, or bribe officials and falsify documents attesting to generations of Christian ancestry.{{cite book |last=Martínrez |first=Maria Elena |title=Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de sangre, religion, and gender in colonial Mexico |date=2008 |publisher=Stanford University Press |location=Stanford, California}}

By 1530, tribunals of the Inquisition were urged to make registers of genealogies for each town. Every married man had to submit their `genealogies, which registered them and their family as Old Christian or Converso, i.e. as "pure" or "impure". Investigations and trials would begin if one could not submit proof of a pure bloodline or there was suspicion that the individual was lying. By the sixteenth century, blood purity statutes coalesced to become a systematic effort to exclude conversos from offices in Church and state. These statutes were closely related to the Spanish Inquisition. Together they formed a system that bred fear and encouraged hostile witnesses and even perjury, a system under which the discovery of an ancestor with Jewish blood could result in a person's entire familial line losing everything. The practice set the foundations of "race"-based antisemitism.{{Cite journal |last=Williams |first=Patrick |date=July 1990 |title=A Jewish Councillor of Inquisition? Luis de Mercado, the Statutes of limpieza de sangre and the Politics of Vendetta (1598–1601) |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1475382902000367253 |journal=Bulletin of Hispanic Studies |language=en |volume=67 |issue=3 |pages=253–264 |doi=10.1080/1475382902000367253 |issn=0007-490X}}

Blood purity statures posed a significant barrier for many Spaniards to emigrate to the Americas, since some form of proof of not having recent Muslim or Jewish ancestors was required to emigrate to the Spanish Empire. In 1593 the Jesuits adopted the {{lang|es|Decree de genere}}, which proclaimed that either Jewish or Muslim ancestry, no matter how distant, was an insurmountable impediment for admission to the Society of Jesus – effectively applying the Spanish principle of blood purity to Jesuits Europe-wide and world-wide.{{cite journal |last1=Rosa |first1=De La |last2=Coello |first2=Alexandre |year=1932 |title=El Estatuto de Limpieza de Sangre de la Compañía de Jesús (1593) y su influencia en el Perú Colonial |trans-title=The Statute of Purity of Blood of the Society of Jesus (1593) and its influence in Colonial Peru |url=http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=24437295 |url-status=dead |journal=Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu |language=es |publisher=Institutum Societatis Iesu |pages=45–93 |issn=0037-8887 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141026074808/http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=24437295 |archive-date=26 October 2014 |access-date=7 December 2012}} Tests of blood purity began to wane only by 18th century. However, laws requiring blood purity were sometimes maintained even into the 19th century and were still present into the 20th century in some places such as Mallorca, where no Xueta (descendants of the Mallorcan Jewish conversos) priests were allowed to say Mass in a cathedral until the 1960s.{{cite book |last=Pérez |first=Joseph |author-link=Joseph Pérez |title=Los judíos en España |date=2005 |publisher=Marcial Pons |location=Madrid |page= |language=es |trans-title=The Jews in Spain}}

File:Anneken Hendriks, Dam, Amsterdam, by Jan Luyken.jpg, Anneken Hendriks, who was charged with heresy in Amsterdam (1571)]]

Despite popular myths about the Spanish Inquisition relating to Protestants, it dealt with very few cases involving actual Protestants, as there were so few in Spain.{{harvp|Kamen|2014|p=100}} Lutheran was an accusation used by the Inquisition to act against all those who acted in a way that was offensive to the church. The first of the trials against those labeled by the Inquisition as "Lutheran" were those against the sect of mystics known as the "Alumbrados" of Guadalajara and Valladolid. These trials were long and ended with prison sentences of differing lengths, though no person in the sect faced execution. The subject of the "Alumbrados" put the Inquisition on the trail of many intellectuals and clerics who, interested in Erasmian ideas, had strayed from orthodoxy. Both Charles I and Philip II were confessed admirers of Erasmus.{{harvp|Kamen|2014|p=94}}{{harvp|Kamen|2014|p=126}}

The first trials against Lutheran groups, as such, took place between 1558 and 1562, at the beginning of the reign of Philip II, against two communities of Protestants from the cities of Valladolid and Seville, numbering about 120.These trials, specifically those of Valladolid, form the basis of the plot of The Heretic: A Novel of the Inquisition by Miguel Delibes (Overlook: 2006). The trials signaled a notable intensification of the Inquisition's activities. A number of autos de fe were held, some of them presided over by members of the royal family, and around 100 executions took place.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=99}} gives the figure of about 100 executions for heresy of any kind between 1559 and 1566. He compares these figures with those condemned to death in other European countries during the same period, concluding that in similar periods England, under Mary Tudor, executed about twice as many for heresy: in France, three times the number, and ten times as many in the Low Countries. The autos de fe of the mid-century virtually put an end to Spanish Protestantism, which was, throughout, a small phenomenon to begin with.{{harvp|Kamen|2014|pp=102–108}}

After 1562, though the trials continued, the repression was much reduced. In the last decades of the 16th century, approximately 200 Spaniards were accused of being Protestant.

Most of them were in no sense Protestants ... Irreligious sentiments, drunken mockery, anticlerical expressions, were all captiously classified by the inquisitors (or by those who denounced the cases) as "Lutheran." Disrespect to church images, and eating meat on forbidden days, were taken as signs of heresy...{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=98}}

It is estimated that a dozen Protestant Spaniards were burned alive at the stake in the later part of the sixteenth century.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|pp=99–100}}

Protestantism was treated as a marker to identify agents of foreign powers and symptoms of political disloyalty as much as, if not more than, a cause of prosecution in itself.{{cite web |last=Rodriguez-Sala |first=Maria Luisa |title=Los Protestantes y la Inquisión |publisher=UNAM |url=https://archivos.juridicas.unam.mx/www/bjv/libros/6/2905/6.pdf |language=es |access-date=14 January 2022}}

{{unreferenced section|date=May 2020}}

Even though the Inquisition may have had theoretical permission to investigate Orthodox schismatics, it rarely did. There was no major war between Spain and any Orthodox country, so there was no reason to do so. There was one casualty tortured by those "Jesuits" (though most likely Franciscans) who administered the Spanish Inquisition in North America, according to authorities within the Eastern Orthodox Church: St. Peter the Aleut. Even that single report has various numbers of inaccuracies that make it problematic, and has no confirmation in the Inquisitorial archives.

The category "superstitions" includes trials related to witchcraft. The witch-hunt in Spain had much less intensity than in other European countries (particularly France, Scotland, and Germany). One remarkable case was that of Logroño, in which the witches of Zugarramurdi in Navarre were persecuted. During the auto de fe that took place in Logroño on 7 and 8 November 1610, six people were burned and another five burned in effigy.These trials are the theme of the film Akelarre, by the Spanish director Pedro Olea. The role of the Inquisition in cases of witchcraft was much more restricted than is commonly believed. Well after the foundation of the Inquisition, jurisdiction over sorcery and witchcraft remained in secular hands.Henry Kamen. The Spanish Inquisition A Historical Revision. 1999{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} In general, the Spanish Inquisition maintained a skeptical attitude towards cases of witchcraft, considering it as a mere superstition without any basis. Alonso de Salazar Frías, who took the Edict of Faith to various parts of Navarre after the trials of Logroño, noted in his report to the Suprema that "there were neither witches nor bewitched in a village until they were talked and written about".Cited in Henningsen, Gustav, ed. "The Salazar Documents: Inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías and Others on the Basque Witch Persecution." Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions: Medieval and Early Modern Peoples, Vol 21. Boston: Koninklijke Brill, 2004. "Second Report of Salazar to the Inquisitor General (Logroño, 24 March 1612): An account of the whole visitation and publication of the Edict with special reference to the witches' sect". p. 352.

Included under the rubric of heretical propositions were verbal offences, from outright blasphemy to questionable statements regarding religious beliefs, from issues of sexual morality to misbehaviour of the clergy. Many were brought to trial for affirming that simple fornication (sex between unmarried persons) was not a sin or for putting in doubt different aspects of Christian faith, such as Transubstantiation or the virginity of Mary.{{harvp|Green|2007|pp=7, 223–224}} Also, members of the clergy themselves were occasionally accused of heretical propositions. These offences rarely led to severe penalties.{{Cite web |last=Kamen |first=Henry |date=1981-02-02 |title=500 Years of the Spanish Inquisition |url=https://www.historytoday.com/archive/500-years-spanish-inquisition |access-date=2024-02-21 |website=History Today Volume 31 Issue 2}}

Pope Clement VII granted the Inquisition jurisdiction over sodomy within Aragon in 1524 in response to a petition from the Saragossa tribunal.{{harvp|Monter|1990|p=259}} The Inquisition in Castile declined to take the same jurisdiction, making sodomy the only major crime with such a significant regional discrepancy. Even within Aragon, the treatment of sodomy varied significantly by region because the pope's decree required that it be prosecuted according to each area's local law.{{harvp|Monter|1990|p=279}} For instance, contemporaries considered the tribunal of the city of Zaragoza unusually harsh.Kamen, Henry (2011). La Inquisición Española. Una revisión histórica. pp. 192, 259 {{ISBN?}}

The first person known to have been executed by the Inquisition for sodomy was a priest, Salvador Vidal, in 1541. Others convicted of sodomy received sentences including fines, burning in effigy, public whipping, and the galleys.{{harvp|Monter|1990|pp=280-282}} The first burning for sodomy took place in Valencia in 1572.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=277}}

Sodomy was an expansive term; while a 1560 decision ruled that lesbian sex not involving a dildo could not be prosecuted as sodomy, bestiality routinely was, especially in Saragossa in the 1570s.{{harvp|Monter|1990|pp=281-283}} Men might also be prosecuted based on accusations of engaging in heterosexual sodomy with their wives.{{harvp|Monter|1990|pp=284-285}} For that time and place, the word "sodomy" covered several kinds of not procreative sexual acts denounced by the Church, like coitus interruptus, masturbation, fellatio, anal coitus (whether heterosexual or homosexual), etc.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=91}}

Those accused included 19% clergy, 6% nobles, 37% workers, 19% servants, and 18% soldiers and sailors.{{Failed verification|date=February 2024}} Nearly all of almost 500 cases of sodomy between persons concerned the relationship between an older man and an adolescent, often by coercion, with only a few cases where the couple were consenting homosexual adults. About 100 of the total involved allegations of child abuse. Adolescents were typically punished more leniently than adults, but only when they were very young (approximately below the age of twelve) or when the case concerned rape did they have a chance to avoid punishment altogether.{{harvp|Monter|1990|pp=276-299}}

Prosecutions for sodomy gradually declined, primarily due to decisions from the Suprema intended to reduce the publicity for sodomy cases. In 1579, public autos de fe ceased to include people convicted on sodomy charges unless they were sentenced to death; even the death sentences were excluded from public proclamation after 1610. In 1589, Aragon raised the minimum age for sodomy executions to 25, and by 1633, executions for sodomy had generally come to an end.

{{Further|Papal ban of Freemasonry|In eminenti apostolatus}}

The Roman Catholic Church has regarded Freemasonry as heretical since about 1738; the suspicion of Freemasonry was potentially a capital offence. Spanish Inquisition records reveal two prosecutions in Spain and only a few more throughout the Spanish Empire.{{harvp|Green|2007|p=320}} In 1815, Francisco Javier de Mier y Campillo, the Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition and the Bishop of Almería, suppressed Freemasonry and denounced the lodges as "societies which lead to atheism, to sedition and to all errors and crimes."William R. Denslow, Harry S. Truman: 10,000 Famous Freemasons, {{ISBN|1-4179-7579-2}}. He then instituted a purge during which Spaniards could be arrested on the charge of being "suspected of Freemasonry".

As one manifestation of the Counter-Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition worked to impede the diffusion of heretical ideas in Spain by producing "Indexes" of prohibited books. Such lists of prohibited books were common in Europe a decade before the Inquisition published its first. The first Index published in Spain in 1551 was, in reality, a reprinting of the Index published by the University of Leuven in 1550, with an appendix dedicated to Spanish texts. Subsequent Indexes were published in 1559, 1583, 1612, 1632, and 1640.

Included in the Indices, at one point, were some of the great works of Spanish literature, but most of the works were plays and religious in nature.{{cite book |last1=Bleiberg |first1=Germán |last2=Ihrie |first2=Maureen |last3=Pérez |first3=Janet |year=1993 |title=Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bsvkun_p3SgC&pg=PA374 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |pages=374– |isbn=978-0-313-28731-2}} A number of religious writers who are today considered saints by the Catholic Church saw their works appear in the Indexes. At first, this might seem counter-intuitive or even nonsensical—how were these Spanish authors published in the first place if their texts were then prohibited by the Inquisition and placed in the Index? The answer lies in the process of publication and censorship in Early Modern Spain. Books in Early Modern Spain faced prepublication licensing and approval (which could include modification) by both secular and religious authorities. Once approved and published, the circulating text also faced the possibility of post-hoc censorship by being denounced by the Inquisition—sometimes decades later. Likewise, as Catholic theology evolved, once-prohibited texts might be removed from the Index.

At first, inclusion in the Index meant total prohibition of a text. This proved not only impractical but also contrary to the goals of having a literate and well-educated clergy. In time, a compromise solution was adopted in which trusted Inquisition officials blotted out words, lines, or whole passages of otherwise acceptable texts, thus allowing these expurgated editions to circulate. Although, in theory, the Indexes imposed enormous restrictions on the diffusion of culture in Spain, some historians argue that such strict control was impossible in practice and that there was much more liberty in this respect than is often believed. Irving Leonard has conclusively demonstrated that, despite repeated royal prohibitions, romances of chivalry, such as Amadis of Gaul, found their way to the New World with the blessing of the Inquisition. Moreover, with the coming of the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th century, increasing numbers of licenses to possess and read prohibited texts were granted.

Despite the repeated publication of the Indexes and a large bureaucracy of censors, the activities of the Inquisition did not impede the development of Spanish literature's "Siglo de Oro", although almost all of its major authors crossed paths with the Holy Office at one point or another. Among the Spanish authors included in the Index are Bartolomé Torres Naharro, Juan del Enzina, Jorge de Montemayor, Juan de Valdés and Lope de Vega, as well as the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes and the Cancionero General by Hernando del Castillo. La Celestina, which was not included in the Indexes of the 16th century, was expurgated in 1632 and prohibited in its entirety in 1790. Among the non-Spanish authors prohibited were Ovid, Dante, Rabelais, Ariosto, Machiavelli, Erasmus, Jean Bodin, Valentine Naibod, and Thomas More (known in Spain as Tomás Moro). One of the most outstanding and best-known cases in which the Inquisition directly confronted literary activity is that of Fray Luis de León, noted humanist and religious writer of converso origin, who was imprisoned for four years (from 1572 to 1576) for having translated the Song of Songs directly from Hebrew.

One of the major effects of the Inquisition was to end free thought and scientific thought in Spain. As one contemporary Spaniard in exile put it: "Our country is a land of pride and envy ... barbarism; down there one cannot produce any culture without being suspected of heresy, error and Judaism. Thus silence was imposed on the learned."{{cite book |last=Walkley |first=Clive |year=2010 |title=Juan Esquivel: A Master of Sacred Music During the Spanish Golden Age |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RzDMukD8yYAC&pg=PA7 |publisher=Boydell & Brewer |pages=7– |isbn=978-1-84383-587-5}} For the next few centuries, while the rest of Europe was slowly awakened by the influence of the Enlightenment, Spain stagnated.Johnson, Paul, A History of Christianity, Penguin, 1976. This conclusion is contested.{{according to whom|date=October 2021}}

The censorship of books was very ineffective and prohibited books circulated in Spain without significant problems. The Spanish Inquisition never persecuted scientists, and relatively few scientific books were placed on the Index. On the other hand, Spain was a state with more political freedom than other absolute monarchies in the 16th to 18th centuries.{{harvp|Kamen|2005|pp=126–130}} The apparent paradox is explained by both the hermeticist religious ideas of the Spanish church and monarchy and the budding seed of what would become enlightened absolutism taking shape in Spain. The list of banned books was not, as interpreted sometimes, a list of evil books but a list of books that lay people were very likely to misinterpret. The presence of highly symbolical and high-quality literature on the list was so explained. These metaphorical or parable-sounding books were listed as not meant for free circulation, but there might be no objections to the book itself and the circulation among scholars was mostly free. Most of these books were carefully collected by the elite. The practical totality of the prohibited books can be found now, as then, in the library of the Monasterio del Escorial, carefully collected by Philip II and Philip III. The collection was "public" after Philip II's death and members of universities, intellectuals, courtesans, clergy, and certain branches of the nobility didn't have too many problems accessing them and commissioning authorised copies. The Inquisition has not been known to make any serious attempt to stop this for all the books, but there are some records of them "suggesting" the King of Spain to stop collecting grimoires or magic-related ones.{{citation needed|date=October 2021}}

The Inquisition also pursued offences against morals and general social order, at times in open conflict with the jurisdictions of civil tribunals. In particular, there were trials for bigamy, a relatively frequent offence{{harvp|Green|2007|p=296}} in a society that only permitted divorce under the most extreme circumstances. In the case of men, the penalty was two hundred lashes and five to ten years of "service to the Crown". Said service could be whatever the court deemed most beneficial for the nation, but it usually was either five years as an oarsman in a royal galley for those without any qualification{{harvp|Green|2007|p=298}} (possibly a death sentence)Statistics are not available for Spanish oarsmen, but the general state of Mediterranean oared galleys circa 1570 was grim; cf. {{cite book |last=Crowley |first=Roger |title=Empires of the sea: The siege of Malta, the battle of Lepanto, and the contest for the center of the world |publisher=Random House Trade Paperbacks |location=New York |year=2009 |isbn=978-0-8129-77646 |pages=77–78}}: "... galley slaves led lives bitter and short. ... One way or another the oared galley consumed men like fuel. Each dying wretch dumped overboard had to be replaced—and there were never enough." or ten years working maintained but without salary in a public Hospital or charitable institution of the sort for those with some special skill, such as doctors, surgeons, or lawyers.Lorenzo Arrazola, Enciclopedia Espanola De Derecho Y Administracion: Ciu-Col (Enciclopedia of Spanish Penal and Administrative Law). Madrid: Saraswati Press, 2012, pp. 572 The penalty was five to seven years as an oarsman in the case of Portugal.

Under the category of "unnatural marriage" fell any marriage or attempted marriage between two individuals who could not procreate. The Catholic Church, in general, and in a nation constantly at war like Spain,{{cite book |first=Fernando |last=Cc̀eres |title=Estudios Sobre Cultura, Guerra Y Polt̕ica En La Corona De Castilla |trans-title=Studies Over War Culture and Politics in the Kingdom of Castile |at=siglos xiv–xvii |publisher=Editorial Csic Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientf̕icas |year=2007}}{{cite book |last=Kaler |first=Amy |title=Fertility, Gender and War: The culture of contraception |publisher=University of Minnesota Press |year=1998}} emphasised the reproductive goal of marriage.

The Spanish Inquisition's policy in this regard was restrictive but applied in a very egalitarian way. It considered any non-reproductive marriage unnatural and any reproductive marriage natural, regardless of gender or sex involved. The two forms of obvious male sterility were either due to damage to the genitals through castration or accidental wounding at war (capón) or to some genetic condition that might keep the man from completing puberty (lampiño). Female sterility was also a reason to declare a marriage unnatural but was harder to prove. One case that dealt with marriage, sex, and gender was the trial of Eleno de Céspedes.

The notion of religion and civil law being separate is a modern construction and made no sense in the 15th century, so there was no difference between breaking a law regarding religion and breaking a law regarding tax collection. The difference between them is a modern projection the institution itself did not have. As such, the Inquisition was the prosecutor (in some cases the only prosecutor) of any crimes that could be perpetrated without the public taking notice (mainly domestic crimes, crimes against the weakest members of society, administrative crimes and forgeries, organized crime, and crimes against the Crown).{{citation needed|date=February 2024}}

Examples include crimes associated with sexual or family relations such as rape and sexual violence (the Inquisition was the first and only body who punished it across the nation), bestiality, pedophilia (often overlapping with sodomy), incest, child abuse or neglect and (as discussed) bigamy. Non-religious crimes also included procurement (not prostitution), human trafficking, smuggling, forgery or falsification of currency, documents or signatures, tax fraud (many religious crimes were considered subdivisions of this one), illegal weapons, swindles, disrespect to the Crown or its institutions (the Inquisition included, but also the church, the guard, and the kings themselves), espionage for a foreign power, conspiracy, treason.{{Cite web |title=INQUISICIÓN, L.960 - Libro de ejemplares del Tribunal de Valencia |url=http://pares.mcu.es/ParesBusquedas20/catalogo/description/3241610 |access-date=2024-02-08 |website=PARES}}{{Cite book |last=Barea |first=María Elvira Roca |author-link=Elvira Roca Barea |title=Imperiofobia Y Leyenda Negra: Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos Y El Imperio Español |publisher=Siruela |year=2016 |language=es}}

The non-religious crimes processed by the Inquisition accounted for a considerable percentage of its total investigations and are often hard to separate in the statistics, even when documentation is available. The line between religious and non-religious crimes did not exist in 15th-century Spain as a legal concept. Many of the crimes listed here and some of the religious crimes listed in previous sections were contemplated under the same article. For example, "sodomy" included paedophilia as a subtype. Often, part of the data given for prosecution of male homosexuality corresponds to convictions for paedophilia, not adult homosexuality. In other cases, religious and non-religious crimes were seen as distinct but equivalent. The treatment of public blasphemy and street swindlers was similar (since both involved "misleading the public in a harmful way"). Making counterfeit currency and heretic proselytism were also treated similarly; both of them were punished by death and subdivided in similar ways since both were "spreading falsifications". In general, heresy and falsifications of material documents were treated similarly by the Spanish Inquisition, indicating that they may have been thought of as equivalent actions.

Trials were often further complicated by the attempts of witnesses or victims to add further charges, especially witchcraft. Like with Eleno de Céspedes, charges for witchcraft done in this way, or in general, were quickly dismissed but they often show in the statistics as investigations made.{{citation needed|date=February 2024}}

Beyond its role in religious affairs, the Inquisition was also an institution at the service of the monarchy. The Inquisitor General, in charge of the Holy Office, was designated by the crown. The Inquisitor General was the only public office whose authority stretched to all the kingdoms of Spain (including the American viceroyalties), except for a brief period (1507–1518) during which there were two Inquisitors General, one in the kingdom of Castile, and the other in Aragon.

File:Auto de fe Lima.jpg in Lima, Viceroyalty of Peru (17th century)]]

The Inquisitor General presided over the Council of the Supreme and General Inquisition (commonly abbreviated as "Council of the Suprema"), created in 1483, which was made up of six members named directly by the crown (the number of members of the Suprema varied throughout the Inquisition's history, but it was never more than ten). Over time, the authority of the Suprema grew at the expense of the power of the Inquisitor General.

By the 17th century, two councilors from the Royal Council of Castile played a key role in overseeing the Council of the Spanish Inquisition, advising the monarchy on legal and religious matters. At this time, the Spanish Inquisition consisted of six primary councilors, two afternoon members from the Royal Council of Castile, and a permanent Dominican seat. Additionally, the fiscal (prosecutor) was responsible for managing inquisitorial trials and legal proceedings. With royal approval, the Council adjusted its structure to improve efficiency, including chamber divisions for handling cases. Notable members included:Fernández Gimén, María del Camino. "El Origen y Fundación de las Inquisiciones de España" by José de Rivera. Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, vol. 23, pp. 11–46. ISSN 1131-5571.

• Joseph González, Commissary General of the Crusade, Councilor of Castile
• Juan Martínez, Dominican friar
• Diego Sarmiento de Valladares
• Gabriel de la Calle y Heredia
• Bernardino de León de la Rocha
• Francisco de Lara
• Martín de Castejón
• Doctor Gaspar de Medrano, the second-ranking Councilor of Castile

The Royal Council and the Inquisition remained deeply intertwined, enforcing religious conformity while serving as an instrument of monarchical control.

The Suprema met every morning, except for holidays, and for two hours in the afternoon on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The morning sessions were devoted to questions of faith, while the afternoons were reserved for "minor heresies,"Henningsen, Gustav: The Spanish Inquisition and the Inquisitorial Mind, p. 220. cases of perceived unacceptable sexual behavior, bigamy, witchcraft, etc.{{harvp|García Cárcel|1976|p=21}}

Below the Suprema were the various tribunals of the Inquisition, initially itinerant, which installed themselves where they were necessary to combat heresy but later settled in fixed locations. During the first phase, numerous tribunals were established, but the period after 1495 saw a marked tendency towards centralization.

In the kingdom of Castile, the following permanent tribunals of the Inquisition were established:

• 1482 In Seville and in Córdoba
• 1485 In Toledo and in Llerena
• 1488 In Valladolid and in Murcia
• 1489 In Cuenca
• 1505 In Las Palmas (Canary Islands)
• 1512 In Logroño
• 1526 In Granada
• 1574 In Santiago de Compostela

There were only four tribunals in the kingdom of Aragon: Zaragoza and Valencia (1482), Barcelona (1484), and Majorca (1488).{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=141}} Ferdinand the Catholic also established the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily (1513), housed in Palermo, and Sardinia, in the town of Sassari.In Sicily, the Inquisition functioned until 30 March 1782, when it was abolished by King Ferdinand IV of Naples. It is estimated that 200 people were executed during this period. In the Americas, tribunals were established in Lima and in Mexico City (1569) and, in 1610, in Cartagena de Indias (present-day Colombia).

File:Estructura de la Inquisición.svg

Initially, each of the tribunals included two inquisitors, calificadors (qualifiers), an alguacil (bailiff), and a fiscal (prosecutor); new positions were added as the institution matured. The inquisitors were preferably jurists more than theologians; in 1608, Philip III even stipulated that all inquisitors needed to have a background in law. The inquisitors rarely remained in the position for a long time: for the Court of Valencia, for example, the average tenure in the position was about two years.{{harvp|García Cárcel|1976|p=24}} Most of the inquisitors belonged to the secular clergy (priests who were not members of religious orders) and had a university education.

The fiscal was in charge of presenting the accusation, investigating the denunciations, and interrogating the witnesses by the use of physical and mental torture. The calificadores were generally theologians; it fell to them to determine whether the defendant's conduct added up to a crime against the faith. Consultants were expert jurists who advised the court on questions of procedure. The court had, in addition, three secretaries: the notario de secuestros (Notary of Property), who registered the goods of the accused at the moment of his detention; the notario del secreto (Notary of the Secret), who recorded the testimony of the defendant and the witnesses; and the Escribano General (General Notary), secretary of the court. The alguacil was the executive arm of the court, responsible for detaining, jailing, and physically torturing the defendant. Other civil employees were the nuncio, ordered to spread official notices of the court, and the alcaide, the jailer in charge of feeding the prisoners.

In addition to the members of the court, two auxiliary figures existed that collaborated with the Holy Office: the familiares and the comissarios (commissioners). Familiares were lay collaborators of the Inquisition who had to be permanently at the service of the Holy Office. To become a familiar was considered an honor since it was a public recognition of limpieza de sangre—Old Christian status—and brought with it certain additional privileges. Although many nobles held the position, most of the familiares came from the ranks of commoners. The commissioners, on the other hand, were members of the religious orders who collaborated occasionally with the Holy Office.

One of the most striking aspects of the organization of the Inquisition was its form of financing: devoid of its own budget, the Inquisition depended almost exclusively on the confiscation of the goods of the denounced.Cited in {{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=153}} It is not surprising, therefore, that many of those prosecuted were rich men. That the situation was open to abuse is evident, as stands out in the memorandum that a converso from Toledo directed to Charles I:

Your Majesty must provide, before all else, that the expenses of the Holy Office do not come from the properties of the condemned, because if that is the case if they do not burn they do not eat.

When the Inquisition arrived in a city, the first step was the Edict of Grace. Following the Sunday Mass, the Inquisitor would proceed to read the edict, which described possible heresies and encouraged all the congregation to come to the tribunals of the Inquisition to "relieve their consciences". They were called Edicts of Grace because all the self-incriminated who presented themselves within a period of grace (usually ranging from thirty to forty days) were offered the possibility of reconciliation with the Church without severe punishment.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=57}}{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|pp=135,136}} The promise of benevolence was effective, and many voluntarily presented themselves to the Inquisition. These were encouraged to denounce others who had also committed offences, informants being the Inquisition's primary source of information. After about 1500, the Edicts of Grace were replaced by the Edicts of Faith, which left out the grace period and instead encouraged the denunciation of those deemed guilty.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=174}}

The denunciations were anonymous, and the defendants had no way of knowing the identities of their accusers. This was one of the points most criticized by those who opposed the Inquisition. In practice, false denunciations were frequent. Denunciations were made for a variety of reasons apart from genuine concern. Some just went after non-conformists. Others wished to hurt a neighbor or get rid of an opponent.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|pp=139, 140}}

This method turned everyone into an agent of the Inquisition and made everyone aware that a simple word or deed could bring them before the tribunal. Denunciation was elevated to the rank of a superior religious duty, filled the nation with spies, and made each individual an object of suspicion to their neighbor, family, and any strangers they might meet.{{sfnp|Lea|1906|p=91 Volume 2}}

File:Mateo Zapata.jpg in his cell before his trial by the Inquisition Court of Cuenca (engraved by Francisco Goya)]]

After a denunciation, the case was examined by the calificadores, who had to determine whether there was heresy involved. This was followed by the detention of the accused. In practice, many were detained in preventive custody, and many cases of lengthy incarcerations occurred, lasting up to two years before the calificadores examined the case."In the tribunal of Valladolid, in 1699, various suspects (including a girl of 9 and a boy of 14) were jailed for up to two years with having had the least evaluation of the accusations presented against them" ({{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=183}}).

Detention of the accused entailed the preventive sequestration of their property by the Inquisition. The property of the prisoner was used to pay for procedural expenses and the accused's maintenance and costs. Often, the relatives of the defendant found themselves in outright misery. This situation was remedied only by following instructions written in 1561.Kamen (1998), p. 184 However, Llorente, despite having consulted numerous records of old Inquisition proceedings, did not find any record of such an agreement in favor of the children of condemned heretics.{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=173}}

Some authors, such as apologist William Thomas Walsh, stated that the entire process was undertaken with the utmost secrecy, as much for the public as for the accused, who were not informed about the accusations that were levied against them. Months or even years could pass without the accused being informed about why they were imprisoned. The prisoners remained isolated, and, during this time, they were not allowed to attend Mass nor receive the sacraments. The jails of the Inquisition were no worse than those of secular authorities, and there are even certain testimonies that occasionally they were much better.Walsh, Thomas William, Characters of the Inquisition, P.J. Kennedy & Sons, 1940, p. 163. According to William Walsh, the miseries of the Jews "are not the result, fundamentally, of the hatred and misunderstanding of others, but the consequence of their own stubborn rejection of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ".{{Cite web |title=Walsh_letter_to_Roth.htm |url=https://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/Walsh_letter_to_Roth.htm |access-date=2024-02-11 |website=www.jrbooksonline.com}}

File:An interrogation room of the Spanish Inquisition with two pr Wellcome V0041642.jpg's engraving, 1722). In contrast to the Inquisitor's armchair, Eymeric's manual suggests that the accused be sat on a low bench.{{sfnp|Saraiva|2001|pp=69-70}}]]

The inquisitorial process consisted of a series of hearings in which both the denouncers and the defendant gave separate testimony. A defense counsel, a so-called lawyer, a member of the tribunal itself, was assigned to the defendant; his role was simply to advise the accused and to encourage them to speak the truth.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}} He was obliged to renounce the defense at the moment when he realized his client's guilt.{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=195}}

The prosecution was directed by the fiscal. Interrogation of the defendant was done in the presence of the notario del secreto, who meticulously wrote down the words of the accused. The archives of the Inquisition, in comparison to those of other judicial systems of the era, are striking in the completeness of their documentation.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

To defend themselves, the accused had two main choices: abonos (to find favourable and character witnesses) or tachas (to demonstrate that the witnesses of accusers — whose identity he did not know — were not trustworthy, and were his personal enemies.{{sfnp|Homza|2006|pp=XXIV}}

The structure of the trials was similar to modern trials and, according to apologists, advanced for the time with regard to fairness. The Inquisition, "professional and efficient", was dependent on the political power of the King. The lack of separation of powers allows for assuming questionable fairness in certain scenarios. The fairness of the Inquisitorial tribunals is alleged by apologists to be among the best in early modern Europe when it came to the trial of laymen.{{Cite web |last=Madden |first=Thomas |date=1 October 2003 |title=The Truth about the Spanish Inquisition |url=https://www.catholicity.com/commentary/madden/03481.html |access-date= |website=Mary Foundation |url-status=live |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20220827232257/https://www.catholicity.com/commentary/madden/03481.html |archive-date= 27 Aug 2022 }}{{Cite book |last=Martínez Millán |first=José |title=La Inquisición Española |publisher=Alianza Editorial |year=2007 |language=es}} There are also testimonies by former prisoners that, if believed, suggest that said fairness was less than ideal when national or political interests were involved.Kamen, Henry (2011). La Inquisición Española. Una revisión histórica. pp. 191–192.

The historian Walter Ullmann thinks very different:

:::There is hardly one item in the whole Inquisitorial procedure that could be squared with the demands of justice; on the contrary, every one of its items is the denial of justice or a hideous caricature of it [...] its principles are the very denial of the demands made by the most primitive concepts of natural justice [...] This kind of proceeding has no longer any semblance to a judicial trial but is rather its systematic and methodical perversion.{{sfnp|Saraiva|2001|p=61-62}}

File:The inside of a jail of the Spanish Inquisition, with a prie Wellcome V0041650.jpg

To obtain a confession or information relevant to an investigation, the Inquisition used torture, as prescribed in the instrucciones. It is impossible to determine with any degree of accuracy the number of cases in which it was employed during the Inquisition's existence.{{sfnp|Lea|1906|pp=32-33 Volume III}}

Torture would be applied if the alleged heresy was "half proven" and could be repeated, according to Article XV of Torquemada's instructions.{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=162}} Henry Lea estimates that between 1575 and 1610, the court of Toledo tortured approximately a third of those processed for Protestant heresy. Nearly all of the accused in several cases tried by the Lima tribunal between 1635 and 1639 appear to have been tortured; the Valladolid tribunal report for 1624 reveals that in eleven cases involving Jews and one involving a Protestant used torture; in 1655, all nine cases involving Jews employed torture.H. C. Lea, III, p. 33, Cited in {{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=185}}. {{harvp|García Cárcel|1976|p=43}} finds the same statistics.

The recently opened Vatican Archives suggest lower numbers.Messori, Vittorio (2000). Leyendas Negras de la Iglesia. Editorial Planeta (this source is a Catholic apologist){{Page needed|date=February 2024}}{{Unreliable source?|sure=y|reason=Source is a Catholic apologist writing on a religious website.|date=January 2025}} "In truth," says Thomas Madden, "the Inquisition brought order, justice, and compassion to combat rampant secular and popular persecutions of heretics." And concludes: "The Spanish people loved their Inquisition. That is why it lasted for so long." In other periods, the proportions of torture varied remarkably.{{citation needed|date=January 2025}}

File:Museo de la Tortura Toledo 18.jpg

File:Water cure.jpg

File:Theresiana-Hochziehen.jpg

Torture was employed in all civil and religious trials in Europe. The Spanish Inquisition allegedly used it more restrictively than was common at the time. Unlike both civil trials and other inquisitions, it had strict regulations in relation to when, what, whom, frequency, duration, and supervision.Bethencourt, Francisco. La Inquisición En La Época Moderna: España, Portugal E Italia, Siglos xv–xix. Madrid: Akal, 1997. {{Page needed|date=February 2024}}{{Cite journal|last=Hassner|first=Ron E.|date=2020|title=The Cost of Torture: Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition|url=https://doi.org/10.1080/09636412.2020.1761441|journal=Security Studies|volume=29|issue=3|pages=457–492|doi=10.1080/09636412.2020.1761441|s2cid=219405563|issn=0963-6412}} According to some scholars, the Spanish Inquisition engaged in torture less often and with greater care than secular courts.{{Cite book |last1=Haliczer |first1=Stephen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=crCQmS_85EEC |title=Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478-1834 |last2=Haliczer |date=1990-01-01 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-06729-5 |language=en|page=79}}Peters, Edward, Inquisition, Dissent, Heterodoxy and the Medieval Inquisitional Office, pp. 92–93, University of California Press (1989), {{ISBN|0-520-06630-8}}.

Kamen and other scholars cite the lack of evidence for the use of torture. Their conclusions are based on research uncovered in newly opened files of the Spanish Inquisition's archives. Stories of torture and other maltreatment of prisoners appear to have been based on Protestant propaganda as well as popular imagination and ignorance.{{cite web |last1=Somers |first1=Michelle |title=Editor |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=nEKPunno5K0 |website=Myth of the Spanish Inquisition |date=14 December 2019 |publisher=BBC Documentary |access-date=14 December 2019}}

• When: Torture was allowed when guilt was "half proven" or there existed a "presumption of guilt", as stated in Article XV of Torquemada's instruciones and in Eymerich's directions.{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=162, 197,198}} However, Eymerich admits that information obtained through torment was not always reliable, and should be used only when all other means of obtaining "the truth" had failed.{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=198}}
• What: The Spanish Inquisition was not permitted to "maim, mutilate, draw blood or cause any sort of permanent damage" to the prisoner. Ecclesiastical tribunals were prohibited by church law from shedding blood. As a result of torture, many had broken limbs, or other definitive health problems, and some died.{{sfnp|Kamen|1998|pp=190–191}}
• Supervision: A Physician was usually available in case of emergency.{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=189}} It was also required for a doctor to certify that the prisoner was healthy enough to go through the torment without suffering harm,Crespo Vargas, Pablo L. La Inquisición Española Y Las Supersticiones En El Caribe Hispano. Madrid: Palibrio, 2011. pp. 120–130. which of course happened.{{sfnp|Kamen|1998|pp=190–191}}

Among the methods of torture allowed were garrucha, toca, and the potro (which were all used in other secular and ecclesiastical tribunals).{{sfnp|Kamen|1998|pp=190–191}} The application of the garrucha, also known as the strappado, consisted of suspending the victim from the ceiling by the wrists, which are tied behind the back. Sometimes weights were tied to the feet, with a series of lifts and violent drops, during which the arms and legs suffered violent pulls and were sometimes dislocated.Sabatini, Rafael, Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A History, p. 190, Kessinger Publishing (2003), {{ISBN|0-7661-3161-0}}.

The use of the toca (cloth), also called interrogatorio mejorado del agua (enhanced water interrogation), now known as waterboarding, is better documented. It consisted of forcing the victim to ingest water poured from a jar so that they had the impression of drowning.{{sfnp|Scott|1959|p=171}} The potro, the rack, in which the limbs were slowly pulled apart, was thought to be the instrument of torture used most frequently.Carrol. James, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History, p. 356, Houghton Mifflin Books (2002), {{ISBN|0-618-21908-0}}. The assertion that confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum (literally: '[a person's] confession is truth, not made by way of torture') sometimes follows a description of how, after torture had ended, the subject "freely" confessed to the offences.Peters, Edward, Inquisition, Dissent, Heterodoxy and the Medieval Inquisitional Office, p. 65, University of California Press (1989), {{ISBN|0-520-06630-8}}. In practice, those who recanted confessions made during torture knew that they could be tortured again. Under torture, or even harsh interrogation, comments Cullen Murphy, people will say anything.{{sfnp|Homza|2006|p=XXV}}{{sfnp|Murphy|2012|p=89}} Bernard Délicieux, the Franciscan friar who was tortured by the Inquisition and ultimately died in prison as a result of the abuse, said the Inquisition's tactics would have proved St. Peter and St. Paul to be heretics.{{sfnp|Scott|1959|p=32}}

Once the process concluded, the inquisitors met with a representative of the bishop and with the consultores (consultants), experts in theology or Canon Law (but not necessarily clergy themselves), which was called the consulta de fe (faith consultation/religion check). The case was voted and sentence pronounced, which had to be unanimous. In case of discrepancies, the Suprema had to be informed.{{citation needed|date=February 2024}}

The results of the trial could be the following:

1. Although quite rare in actual practice, the defendant could be acquitted, but an acquittal was interpreted as a dishonourable reflection on the inquisitors.{{sfnp|Bergemann|2019|p=58}}
2. The trial could be suspended, in which case the defendant, although under suspicion, went free (with the threat that the process could be reopened at any time). In the unusual instance of a defendant being declared not guilty during the trial, the decision was made in private.{{sfnp|Bergemann|2019|p=45}}
3. The defendant could be penanced. Since they were considered guilty, they had to publicly abjure their crimes (de levi if it was a misdemeanor, and de vehementi if the crime were serious), and accept a public punishment. Among these were sanbenito, forced church attendance, exile, scourging, fines or even sentencing to service as oarsmen in royal galleys.{{sfnp|Bergemann|2019|p=45-46}}
4. The defendant could be reconciled. In addition to the public ceremony in which the condemned was reconciled with the Catholic Church, more severe punishments were used, among them long sentences to jail or the galleys, plus the confiscation of all property. Physical punishments, such as whipping, were also used. The reconciled were prohibited from working as advocates, landlords, apothecaries, doctors, surgeons, and other professions. They were banned from carrying weapons, wearing jewelry or gold, and from riding horses. The restrictions also applied to the offspring of the convicted.{{sfnp|Bergemann|2019|p=45-46}}
5. The most serious punishment was relaxation to the secular arm, i.e. burning at the stake. This penalty was frequently applied to impenitent heretics and those who had relapsed. Execution was public. If the condemned repented, they were "shown mercy" by being garroted before their corpse was burned; if not, they were burned alive. The victims were handed over to the secular authorities, who had no access to the process; they only administered the sentences and were obliged to do so on pain of heresy and excommunication.{{sfnp|Lea|1906|p=183-185 Volume III}}{{sfnp|Haliczer|1990|p=83-85}}{{sfnp|Bergemann|2019|p=46}}

Frequently, cases were judged in absentia. When the accused died before the trial finished, the condemned were burned in effigy. The death of an accused did not extinguish the inquisitorial actions, even up to forty years after the death. When it was considered proven that the deceased were heretics in their lifetime, their corpses were exhumed and burned, their property confiscated and the heirs disinherited.{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=169-172, 222, 277-279, 432}}{{sfnp|Homza|2006|p=XIV}}{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=136}}

The distribution of the punishments varied considerably over time. It is believed that sentences of death were enforced most frequently in the early stages of the Inquisition. According to García Cárcel, one of the most active courts—the court of Valencia—employed the death penalty in 40% of cases before 1530, but later that percentage dropped to 3%.{{harvp|García Cárcel|1976|p=39}} By the middle of the 16th century, inquisition courts viewed torture as unnecessary, and death sentences had become rare.{{Cite web |title=Spain – The conquest of Granada |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Spain/The-conquest-of-Granada |access-date=2022-05-25 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}{{Failed verification|date=March 2024}}

{{Main|Auto-da-fé}}

File:Francisco rizi-auto de fe.jpg in Madrid]]

If thesentence was condemnatory, this implied that the condemned had to participate in the ceremony of an auto de fe (more commonly known in English as an auto-da-fé) that solemnized their return to the Church (in most cases), or punishment as an impenitent heretic. The autos de fe could be public (auto publico or auto general) or private (auto particular).

Although initially the public autos did not have any special solemnity nor sought a large attendance of spectators, with time they became expensive and solemn ceremonies, a display of the great power shared by the Church and the State, celebrated with large public crowds, amidst a festive atmosphere. The auto de fe eventually became a baroque spectacle, with staging meticulously calculated to cause the greatest effect among the spectators. The autos were conducted in a large public space (frequently in the largest plaza of the city), generally on holidays. The rituals related to the auto began the previous night (the "procession of the Green Cross") and sometimes lasted the whole day.{{Cite journal |last=Martínez |first=Doris Moreno |date=1997 |title=Cirios, trompetas y altares. El auto de fe como fiesta |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342894899 |journal=Espacio. Tiempo y Forma, Serie IV História Moderna |pages=143–171}}{{sfnp|Sabatini|1930|p=270-280}}

The auto de fe frequently was taken to the canvas by painters: one of the better-known examples is the 1683 painting by Francisco Rizi, held by the Prado Museum in Madrid that represents the auto da fe celebrated in the Plaza Mayor of Madrid on 30 June 1680. The last public auto da fe de fe took place in 1691.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

File:Execution of Mariana de Carabajal.jpg (converted Jew), Mexico City, 1601]]

The auto da fe de fe involved a Catholic Mass, prayer, a public procession of those found guilty, and a reading of their sentences.{{sfnp|Peters|1988|pp=93–94}} They took place in public squares or esplanades and lasted several hours; ecclesiastical and civil authorities attended. Artistic representations of the auto de fé de fe usually depict torture and the burning at the stake. This type of activity never took place during an auto de fé de fe, which was in essence a religious act. Torture was not administered after a trial concluded, and executions were always held after and separate from the auto de fé de fe,{{harvp|Kamen|1998|pp=192–213}} though in the minds and experiences of observers and those undergoing the confession and execution, the separation of the two might be experienced as merely a technicality.

The first recorded auto de fe was held in Paris in 1242, during the reign of Louis IX.Stavans 2005: xxxiv. The first Spanish auto de fe did not take place until 1481 in Seville; six of the men and women subjected to this first religious ritual were later executed by being burned alive at the stake.

The Inquisition had limited power in Portugal, having been established in 1536 and officially lasting until 1821, although its influence was much weakened with the government of the Marquis of Pombal in the second half of the 18th century. The Marquis, himself a familiar, transformed it into a royal court, and the heretics continued to be persecuted, as so the "high spirits".{{Cite book |last=Azevedo |first=João Lúcio de |title=O Marquês de Pombal e a sua época |publisher=Annuario do Brasil |year=1922 |pages=285 |language=pt}}{{Cite book |last=Freitas |first=Jordão de |title=O Marquez de Pombal e o Santo Oficio da Inquisição (Memoria enriquecida com documentos inéditos e facsimiles de assignaturas do benemerito reedificador da cidade de Lisboa) |publisher=Soc. Editora José Bastos |year=1916 |pages=10, 106, 122 |language=pt}}

Autos de fe also took place in Mexico, Brazil and Peru: contemporary historians of the Conquistadors such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo record them. They also took place in the Portuguese colony of Goa, India, following the establishment of Inquisition there in 1562–1563.{{Citation needed|date=March 2024}}

{{anchor|Enlightenment era and the Inquisition's transformation}}

The arrival of the Enlightenment in Spain slowed inquisitorial activity. In the first half of the 18th century, 111 were condemned to be burned in person, and 117 in effigy, most of them for judaizing{{dubious|date=March 2025}}. In the reign of Philip V, there were 125 autos de fe, while in the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV only 44.{{Citation needed|date=February 2024}}

File:An auto da fe in the Town of San Bartolomé Otzolotepec - Google Art Project.jpg, 18th century]]

During the 18th century, the Inquisition changed: Enlightenment ideas were the closest threat that had to be fought. The main figures of the Spanish Enlightenment were in favour of the abolition of the Inquisition, and many were processed by the Holy Office, among them Olavide, in 1776; Iriarte, in 1779; and Jovellanos, in 1796; Jovellanos sent a report to Charles IV in which he indicated the inefficiency of the Inquisition's courts and the ignorance of those who operated them: "... friars who take [the position] only to obtain gossip and exemption from the choir; who are ignorant of foreign languages, who only know a little scholastic theology."Cited in Elorza, La Inquisición y el pensamiento ilustrado. Historia 16. Especial 10º Aniversario La Inquisición; p. 81.

In its new role, the Inquisition tried to accentuate its function of censoring publications but found that Charles III had secularized censorship procedures, and, on many occasions, the authorization of the Council of Castile hit the more intransigent position of the Inquisition. Since the Inquisition itself was an arm of the state, being within the Council of Castile, civil rather than ecclesiastical censorship usually prevailed. This loss of influence can also be explained because the foreign Enlightenment texts entered the peninsula through prominent members of the nobility or government,Members of the government and the Council of Castile, as well as other members close to the court, obtained special authorization for books purchased in France, the Low Countries or Germany to cross the border without inspection by members of the Holy Office. This practice grew beginning with the reign of Charles III. influential people with whom it was very difficult to interfere. Thus, for example, Diderot's Encyclopedia entered Spain thanks to special licenses granted by the king.

After the French Revolution the Council of Castile, fearing that revolutionary ideas would penetrate Spain's borders, decided to reactivate the Holy Office that was directly charged with the persecution of French works. An Inquisition edict of December 1789, that received the full approval of Charles IV and Floridablanca, stated that:

having news that several books have been scattered and promoted in these kingdoms... that, without being contented with the simple narration events of a seditious nature... seem to form a theoretical and practical code of independence from the legitimate powers.... destroying in this way the political and social order... the reading of thirty and nine French works is prohibited, under fine...Elorza, La Inquisición y el pensamiento ilustrado. p. 84.

The fight from within against the Inquisition was almost always clandestine. The first texts that questioned the Inquisition and praised the ideas of Voltaire or Montesquieu appeared in 1759. After the suspension of pre-publication censorship on the part of the Council of Castile in 1785, the newspaper El Censor began the publication of protests against the activities of the Holy Office by means of a rationalist critique. Valentin de Foronda published Espíritu de los Mejores Diarios, a plea in favour of freedom of expression that was avidly read in the salons. Also, in the same vein, Manuel de Aguirre wrote On Toleration in El Censor, El Correo de los Ciegos and El Diario de Madrid.The argument presented in the periodicals and other works circulating in Spain were virtually exact copies of the reflections of Montesquieu or Rousseau, translated into Spanish.

File:Penitenciado por la Inquisición.jpg, based in Lima, ended in 1820]]

During the reign of Charles IV of Spain (1788–1808), in spite of the fears that the French Revolution provoked, several events accelerated the decline of the Inquisition. The state stopped being a mere social organizer and began to worry about the well-being of the public. As a result, the land-holding power of the Church was reconsidered, in the señoríos and more generally in the accumulated wealth that had prevented social progress.Church properties, in general, and those of the Holy Office in particular, occupied large tracts of today's Castile and León, Extremadura and Andalucia. The properties were given under feudal terms to farmers or to localities who used them as community property with many restrictions, owing a part of the rent, generally in cash, to the church. The power of the throne increased, under which Enlightenment thinkers found better protection for their ideas. Manuel Godoy and Antonio Alcalá Galiano were openly hostile to an institution whose only role had been reduced to censorship and was the very embodiment of the Spanish Black Legend, internationally, and was not suitable to the political interests of the moment:

The Inquisition? Its old power no longer exists: the horrible authority that this bloodthirsty court had exerted in other times was reduced... the Holy Office had come to be a species of commission for book censorship, nothing more...Elorza, La Inquisición y el Pensamiento Ilustrado. Historia 16. Especial 10º Aniversario La Inquisición; p. 88

The Inquisition was first abolished during the domination of Napoleon and the reign of Joseph Bonaparte (1808–1812). In 1813, the liberal deputies of the Cortes of Cádiz also obtained its abolition,See Antonio Puigblanch, La Inquisición sin máscara, Cádiz, 1811–1813. largely as a result of the Holy Office's condemnation of the popular revolt against French invasion. But the Inquisition was reconstituted when Ferdinand VII recovered the throne on 1 July 1814. Juan Antonio Llorente, who had been the Inquisition's general secretary in 1789, became a Bonapartist and published a critical history in 1817 from his French exile, based on his privileged access to its archives.{{harvp|Kamen|2014|p=382}}

Possibly as a result of Llorente's criticisms, the Inquisition was once again temporarily abolished during the three-year Liberal interlude known as the Trienio liberal, but still the old system had not yet had its last gasp. Later, during the period known as the Ominous Decade, the Inquisition was not formally re-established,Historians have different interpretations. One argument is that during the Ominous Decade, the Inquisition was re-established- because of a statement made by King Alphonso upon a visit to the Vatican that he would reintroduce it if the occasion arose, but the Royal Decree that would have abolished the order of the Trienio Liberal was never approved, or at least, never published. The formal abolition under the regency of Maria Cristina was thus nothing more than a ratification of the abolition of 1820.{{citation needed|date=February 2024}} although, de facto, it returned under the Congregation of the Meetings of Faith ({{lang|es|Juntas da Fé}}), created in the dioceses by King Ferdinand VII. The last known person to be executed by the Inquisition was Cayetano Ripoll, a school teacher who was condemned and hanged by the Congregation on 26 July 1826.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005|p=100}}{{sfnp|Kamen|2014|pp=372-373}}

On that day, Ripoll was hanged in Valencia, for having taught deist principles. This execution occurred against the backdrop of a European-wide scandal concerning the despotic attitudes still prevailing in Spain. Finally, on 15 July 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was definitively abolished by a Royal Decree signed by regent Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand VII's liberal widow, during the minority of Isabella II and with the approval of the President of the Cabinet Francisco Martínez de la Rosa.

The Alhambra Decree that had expelled the Jews was formally rescinded on 16 December 1968 by the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, after the Second Vatican Council rejected the idea that Jews are deicides.{{Cite news |last=Times |first=Richard Ederspecial To the New York |date=1968-12-17 |title=1492 Ban on Jews Is Voided by Spain; 1492 BAN ON JEWS IS VOIDED IN SPAIN |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1968/12/17/archives/1492-ban-on-jews-is-voided-by-spain-1492-ban-on-jews-is-voided-in.html |access-date=2024-02-11 |work=The New York Times |language=en-US |issn=0362-4331}}

The prohibitions, persecution and eventual Jewish mass emigration from Spain and Portugal probably had adverse effects on the development of the Spanish and the Portuguese economy. Jews and Non-Catholic Christians reportedly had substantially better numerical skills than the Catholic majority, which might be due to the Jewish religious doctrine, which focused strongly on education. Even when Jews were forced to quit their highly skilled urban occupations, their numeracy advantage persisted. However, during the inquisition, spillover-effects of these skills were rare because of forced separation and Jewish emigration, which was detrimental for economic development.{{Cite journal |last1=Juif |first1=Dácil |last2=Baten |first2=Joerg |last3=Pérez-Artés |first3=Mari Carmen |title=Numeracy of Religious Minorities in Spain and Portugal During the Inquisition Era |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/revista-de-historia-economica-journal-of-iberian-and-latin-american-economic-history/article/numeracy-of-religious-minorities-in-spain-and-portugal-during-the-inquisition-era/F0B49AE7BA5AFA17406F3A6C734EA949 |journal=The Revista de Historia Económica – Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History|year=2020 |volume=38 |pages=147–184 |doi=10.1017/S021261091900034X |hdl=10016/36127 |s2cid=214199340 |hdl-access=free }}

It is unknown exactly how much wealth was confiscated from converted Jews and others tried by the Inquisition. Wealth confiscated in one year of persecution in the small town of Guadaloupe paid the costs of building a royal residence.Anderson, James Maxwell. Daily Life during the Spanish Inquisition. Greenwood Press, 2002. {{ISBN|0-313-31667-8}}. There are numerous records of the opinion of ordinary Spaniards of the time that "the Inquisition was devised simply to rob people". "They were burnt only for the money they had", a resident of Cuenca averred. "They burn only the well-off", said another. In 1504 an accused stated, "only the rich were burnt". In 1484 Catalina de Zamora was accused of asserting that "this Inquisition that the fathers are carrying out is as much for taking property from the conversos as for defending the faith. It is the goods that are the heretics." This saying passed into common usage in Spain. In 1524 a treasurer informed Charles V that his predecessor had received ten million ducats from the conversos, but the figure is unverified. In 1592 an inquisitor admitted that most of the fifty women he arrested were rich. In 1676, the Suprema claimed it had confiscated over 700,000 ducats for the royal treasury (which was paid money only after the Inquisition's own budget, amounting in one known case to only 5%). The property on Mallorca alone in 1678 was worth "well over 2,500,000 ducats".{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=150}}

File:Contemporary illustration of the Auto-da-fe held at Validolid Spain 21-05-1559..jpg, in which fourteen Protestants were burned at the stake for their faith, on 21 May 1559]]

García Cárcel estimates that the total number prosecuted by the Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000; applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560–1700—about 2%—the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Nevertheless, some authors consider that the toll may have been higher, keeping in mind the data provided by Dedieu and García Cárcel for the tribunals of Toledo and Valencia, respectively, and estimate between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed.Data for executions for witchcraft: {{Cite book |last=Levack |first=Brian P. |title=The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe |publisher=Longman |year=199 |isbn=978-0582080690 |edition=2nd |location=London and New York |oclc=30154582}} And see Witch trials in Early Modern Europe for more detail. Other authors disagree and estimate a max death toll between 1% and 5%, (depending on the time span used) combining all the processes the inquisition carried, both religious and non-religious ones.Eire, Carlos M. N. Reformations: The Early Modern World 1450–1650. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016 pp 640 In either case, this is significantly lower than the number of people executed exclusively for witchcraft in other parts of Europe during about the same time span as the Spanish Inquisition (estimated at c. 40,000–60,000).

Modern historians have begun to study the documentary records of the Inquisition. The archives of the Suprema, today held by the National Historical Archive of Spain (Archivo Histórico Nacional), conserves the annual relations of all processes between 1540 and 1700. This material provides information for approximately 44,674 judgments. These 44,674 cases include 826 executions in persona and 778 in effigie (i.e. an effigy was burned). This material is far from being complete—for example, the tribunal of Cuenca is entirely omitted, because no relaciones de causas from this tribunal have been found, and significant gaps concern some other tribunals (e.g., Valladolid). Many more cases not reported to the Suprema are known from the other sources (i.e., no relaciones de causas from Cuenca have been found, but its original records have been preserved), but were not included in Contreras-Henningsen's statistics for the methodological reasons.{{Cite book |last1=Mohnhaupt |first1=Heinz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=A_Sdchs7yAkC |title=Vorträge zur Justizforschung: Geschichte und Theorie |last2=Simon |first2=Dieter |date=1992 |publisher=V. Klostermann |isbn=978-3-465-02627-3 |language=de}} William Monter estimates 1000 executions between 1530 and 1630 and 250 between 1630 and 1730.W. Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily, Cambridge 2003, p. 53.

The archives of the Suprema only provide information about processes prior to 1560. To study the processes themselves, it is necessary to examine the archives of the local tribunals, the majority of which have been lost to the devastation of war, the ravages of time or other events. Some archives have survived including those of Toledo, where 12,000 were judged for offences related to heresy, mainly minor "blasphemy", and those of Valencia.Jean-Pierre Dedieu, Los Cuatro Tiempos, in Bartolomé Benassar, Inquisición Española: poder político y control social, pp. 15–39.{{harvp|García Cárcel|1976}} {{citation needed|date=February 2024}} These indicate that the Inquisition was most active in the period between 1480 and 1530 and that during this period the percentage condemned to death was much more significant than in the years that followed. Modern estimates show approximately 2,000 executions in persona in the whole of Spain up to 1530.{{harvp|Kamen|2005|p=15}}

The statistics of Henningsen and Contreras are based entirely on relaciones de causas. The number of years for which cases are documented varies for different tribunals. Data for the Aragonese Secretariat are probably complete, some small lacunae may concern only Valencia and possibly Sardinia and Cartagena, but the numbers for Castilian Secretariat—except Canaries and Galicia—should be considered as minimal due to gaps in the documentation. In some cases it is remarked that the number does not concern the whole period 1540–1700.

{{anchor|Autos da fe between 1701 and 1746}}

Table of sentences pronounced in the public autos de fe in Spain (excluding tribunals in Sicily, Sardinia and Latin America) between 1701 and 1746:Source: Teofanes Egido, Las modificaciones de la tipologia: nueva estructura delictiva, in: Joaquín Pérez Villanueva & Bartolomé Escandell Bonet, Historia de la Inquisición en España y América, vol. 1, Madrid 1984, p. 1395.

According to Toby Green, the great unchecked power given to inquisitors meant that they were "widely seen as above the law", and they sometimes had motives for imprisoning or executing alleged offenders that had nothing to do with punishing religious nonconformity.{{harvp|Green|2007|pp=[https://archive.org/details/inquisitionreign00gree/page/4 4–5]}}Archivo General de las Indias, Seville, Santa Fe 228, Expediente 63Archivo General de las Indias, Seville, Santa Fe 228, Expediente 81A, n. 33 Green quotes a complaint by historian Manuel Barrios{{harvp|Green|2007|p=[https://archive.org/details/inquisitionreign00gree/page/65 65]}} about one Inquisitor, Diego Rodriguez Lucero, who in Cordoba in 1506 burned to death the husbands of two women; he then kept the women as mistresses. According to Barrios:

...the daughter of Diego Celemin was exceptionally beautiful, her parents and her husband did not want to give her to [Lucero], and so Lucero had the three of them burnt and now has a child by her, and he has kept for a long time in the alcazar as a mistress.{{cite book|last=Barrios|first=Manuel|title=El Tribunal de la Inquisicion en Andalucia: Seleccion de Textos y Documentos|date=1991|publisher=J. Rodriguez Castillejo S.A.|location=Seville|page=58}}

Some writers disagree{{clarify|reason=About what? If they don't deny the abused occurred, why are they complaining about Green's conclusion? If this is a which-flavor-of-authoritarianism-is-less-violent-and-therefore-"wins" thing, there's no indication of that here|date=April 2025}} with Green.{{Page needed|date=March 2024}}{{Cite news |last=Blanco |first=Patricia R. |date=2019-12-20 |title=Las citas tergiversadas del superventas sobre la leyenda negra española |url=https://elpais.com/cultura/2019/12/19/actualidad/1576745125_565402.html |access-date= |work=El País |language=es |issn=1134-6582}} These authors do not necessarily deny the abuses of power, but classify them as politically instigated and comparable to those of any other law enforcement body of the period. Criticisms, usually indirect, have gone from the suspiciously sexual overtones or similarities of these accounts with unrelated older antisemitic accounts of kidnap and torture,{{Page needed|date=March 2024}} to the clear proofs of control that the king had over the institution, to the sources used by Green,Contreras, Jaime y Gustav Henningsen (1986). "Forty-four thousand cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): analysis of a historical data bank", en Henningsen G., J. A. Tedeschi et al. (comps.), The Inquisition in early modern Europe: studies on sources and methods. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press. or just by reaching completely different conclusions.Pérez, Joseph (2006). The Spanish Inquisition: a history. New Haven, CT : Yale University Press; p. 173Juan Antonio Llorente: Historia crítica de la Inquisición en España (tomo IV, p. 183). Madrid: Hiperión, 1980.

According to a 2021 study, "municipalities of Spain with a history of a stronger inquisitorial presence show lower economic performance, educational attainment, and trust today."{{Cite journal|last1=Drelichman|first1=Mauricio|last2=Vidal-Robert|first2=Jordi|last3=Voth|first3=Hans-Joachim|date=2021|title=The long-run effects of religious persecution: Evidence from the Spanish Inquisition|journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences|language=en|volume=118|issue=33|pages=e2022881118|doi=10.1073/pnas.2022881118|issn=0027-8424|pmid=34389666|pmc=8379970|bibcode=2021PNAS..11822881D |doi-access=free }}

Within the context of medieval Europe, there are several hypotheses of what prompted the creation of the tribunal after centuries of tolerance.

The Spanish Inquisition is interpretable as a response to the multi-religious nature of Spanish society following the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Moors. The Reconquista did not result in the total expulsion of Muslims from Spain since they, along with Jews, were tolerated by the ruling Christian elite. Large cities, especially Seville, Valladolid, and Barcelona, had significant Jewish populations centered on Juderia, but in the coming years, the Muslims became increasingly alienated and relegated from power centers.Brian Catlos "Secundum suam zunam": Muslims in the Laws of the Aragonese "Reconquista", Mediterranean Studies Vol. 7 (1998), pp. 13–26 Published by: Penn State University Press

Cultural historian Américo Castro has characterized post-reconquest medieval Spain as a society of relatively peaceful co-existence (convivencia) punctuated by occasional conflict among the ruling Catholics, Jews, and Muslims. As historian Henry Kamen notes, the "so-called convivencia was always a relationship between unequals."{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=4}} Despite their legal inequality, there was a long tradition of Jewish service to the Crown of Aragon, and Jews occupied many important posts, both religious and political. Castile itself had an unofficial rabbi. Ferdinand's father, John II, named the Jewish Abiathar Crescas Court Astronomer.{{citation needed|date=August 2018}}

Antisemitic attitudes increased throughout Europe during the late 13th century and into the 14th century. England and France expelled their Jewish populations in 1290 and 1306, respectively.{{sfnp|Peters|1988|p=79}} During the Reconquista, Spain's anti-Jewish sentiment steadily increased. This prejudice climaxed in the summer of 1391 when violent anti-Jewish riots broke out in Spanish cities such as Barcelona and Valencia, killing thousands of Jews.{{sfn|Peters|1988|p=82}} To linguistically distinguish the Jews from non-converted or long-established Catholic families, new converts were called conversos, or New Catholics.

According to Don Hasdai Crescas, persecution against Jews began in earnest in Seville in 1391, on the 1st day of the lunar month Tammuz (June).Letter of Hasdai Crescas, Shevaṭ Yehudah by Solomon ibn Verga (ed. Dr. M. Wiener), Hannover 1855, pp. 128–130 (pp. 138–140 in [https://www.hebrewbooks.org/37804 PDF]); Fritz Kobler, Letters of the Jews through the Ages, London 1952, pp. 272–275; {{cite book |last=Mitre Fernández |first=Emilio |title=Los judíos de Castilla en tiempo de Enrique III : el pogrom de 1391 |publisher=Valladolid University |year=1994 |isbn=978-84-7762-449-3 |editor=Secretariado de Publicaciones e Intercambio Editorial |language=es |trans-title=The Castilian Jews at the time of Henry III: the 1391 pogrom}}; Solomon ibn Verga, [https://www.hebrewbooks.org/39487 Shevaṭ Yehudah (The Sceptre of Judah)], Lvov 1846, p. 76 in PDF. From there, the violence spread to Córdoba, and by the 17th day of the same lunar month, it had reached Toledo (called then by Jews after its Arabic name "Ṭulayṭulah") in the region of Castile.{{Cite web |title=HebrewBooks.org Sefer Detail: שבט יהודה -- וירגא, שלמה בן יהודה, 1460-1554 |url=https://www.hebrewbooks.org/37804 |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=www.hebrewbooks.org}} Then the violence spread to Mallorca, and by the 1st day of the lunar month Elul, it had also reached the Jews of Barcelona in Catalonia, where the slain was approximately two-hundred and fifty. Indeed, many Jews who resided in the neighboring provinces of Lleida and Gironda and the kingdom of Valencia had also been affected,{{Cite web |title=HebrewBooks.org Sefer Detail: שבט יהודה -- וירגא, שלמה בן יהודה, 1460-1554 |url=https://www.hebrewbooks.org/39487 |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=www.hebrewbooks.org}} as were the Jews of Al-Andalus (Andalucía).{{Cite web |title=HebrewBooks.org Sefer Detail: שלשלת הקבלה -- יחיא, גדליה בן יוסף אבן, 1515-1587 |url=https://www.hebrewbooks.org/6618 |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=www.hebrewbooks.org}} While many died a martyr's death, others converted to save themselves.

Encouraged by the preaching of Ferrand Martínez, Archdeacon of Ecija, the general unrest affected nearly all the Jews in Spain, during which an estimated 200,000 Jews changed their religion or else concealed their religion, becoming known in Hebrew as Anusim,Abraham Zacuto, Sefer Yuchasin, Kraków 1580 (q.v. [https://www.hebrewbooks.org/11550 Sefer Yuchasin], p. 266 in PDF) (Hebrew). meaning "those who are compelled [to hide their religion]." Only a handful of the more principal persons of the Jewish community, those who had found refuge among the viceroys in the outlying towns and districts, managed to escape.

Forced baptism was contrary to the law of the Catholic Church and, theoretically, anybody who had been forcibly baptized could legally return to Judaism. Legal definitions of the time theoretically acknowledged that a forced baptism was not a valid sacrament but confined this to cases where it was administered by physical force: a person who had consented to baptism under threat of death or serious injury was still regarded as a voluntary convert, and accordingly forbidden to revert to Judaism.Raymond of Peñafort, Summa, lib. 1 p. 33, citing D.45 c.5. After the public violence, many of the converts "felt it safer to remain in their new religion."{{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=10}} Thus, after 1391, a new social group appeared and was referred to as conversos or New Christians. Many conversos, now freed from the anti-Semitic restrictions imposed on Jewish employment, attained important positions in fifteenth-century Spain, including positions in the government and the Church. Among many others, physicians Andrés Laguna and Francisco López de Villalobos (Ferdinand's court physician), writers Juan del Encina, Juan de Mena, Diego de Valera, and Alonso de Palencia, and bankers Luis de Santángel and Gabriel Sánchez (who financed the voyage of Christopher Columbus) were all conversos. Conversos—not without opposition—managed to attain high positions in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, at times becoming severe detractors of Judaism.Notably Bishop Pablo de Santa Maria, author of Scrutinium Scripturarum, Jeronimo de Santa Fe (Hebraomastix) and Pedro de la Caballeria (Zelus Christi contra Judaeos). All three were conversos. ({{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=39}}). Some even received titles of nobility and, as a result, during the following century, some works attempted to demonstrate many nobles of Spain descended from Israelites.Notably the Libro verde de Aragon and Tizón de la nobleza de España (cited in {{harvp|Kamen|1998|p=38}}).

File:Murillo - Death of the Inquisitor Pedro de Arbues, circa 1664.jpg: Death of the Inquisitor Pedro de Arbués, painted by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo in 1664]]

According to this hypothesis, the Inquisition was created to standardize various laws and the numerous jurisdictions Spain was divided into. It would be an administrative program analogous to the Santa Hermandad (the "Holy Brotherhood", ancestor to the Guardia Civil, a law enforcement body answering to the crown that prosecuted thieves and criminals across counties in a way local county authorities could not), an institution that would guarantee uniform prosecution of crimes against royal laws across all local jurisdictions.

The unusual authority wielded by the king over the nobility in the Kingdom of Castile contributed to the kingdom's prosperity in Europe. This strong control kept the kingdom politically stable and prevented in-fighting that weakened other countries like England. Under the Trastámara dynasty, both kings of Castile and Aragon had lost power to the great nobles, who now formed dissenting and conspiratorial factions. Taxation and varying privileges differed from county to county, and powerful noble families constantly extorted the kings to attain further concessions, particularly in Aragon.

The main goals of the reign of the Catholic Monarchs were to unite their two kingdoms and strengthen royal influence to guarantee stability. In pursuit of this, they sought to unify the laws of their realms further and reduce the power of the nobility in certain local areas. They attained this partially by raw military strength by creating a combined army between the two of them that could outmatch the military of most noble coalitions in the Peninsula. It was impossible to change the entire laws of both realms by force alone, and due to reasonable suspicion of one another, the monarchs kept their kingdoms separate during their lifetimes. The only way to unify both kingdoms and ensure that Isabella, Ferdinand, and their descendants maintained the power of both kingdoms without uniting them in life was to find or create an executive, legislative, and judicial arm directly under the Crown empowered to act in both kingdoms. This goal, the hypothesis goes, might have given birth to the Spanish Inquisition.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005}}{{Page needed|date=October 2021}}

The religious organization capable of overseeing this role was obvious. Catholicism was the only institution common to both kingdoms and the only one with enough popular support that the nobility could not easily attack it. Through the Spanish Inquisition, Isabella and Ferdinand created a personal police force and personal code of law that rested above the structure of their respective realms without altering or mixing them and could operate freely in both. As the Inquisition had the backing of both kingdoms, it would exist independent of both the nobility and local interests of either kingdom.Pérez, Joseph (2012) [2009]. Breve Historia de la Inquisición en España. Barcelona: Crítica. {{ISBN|978-84-08-00695-4}}.

According to this view, the prosecution of heretics would be secondary, or simply not considered different, from the prosecution of conspirators, traitors, or groups of any kind who planned to resist royal authority. Royal authority rested on the divine right and oaths of loyalty held before God, so the connection between religious deviation and political disloyalty would appear obvious. The disproportionately high representation of the nobility and high clergy among those investigated by the Inquisition supported this hypothesis, as well as the many administrative and civil crimes the Inquisition oversaw. The Inquisition prosecuted the counterfeiting of royal seals and currency, ensured the effective transmission of the orders of the kings, and verified the authenticity of official documents traveling through the kingdoms, from one kingdom to the other.Canessa De Sanguinetti, Marta. El Bien Nacer: Limpieza De Oficios Y Limpieza De Sangre : Raíces Ibéricas De Un Mal Latinoamericano. Taurus, Ediciones Santillana, 2000.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005}}{{page needed|date=February 2024}}

At a time in which most of Europe had already expelled the Jews from the Christian kingdoms, the "dirty blood"{{Citation needed|reason=who said this? is this a quote? this entire section is unsourced!|date=December 2024}} of Spaniards was met with open suspicion and contempt. As the world became smaller and foreign relations became more relevant to stay in power, this foreign image of "being the seed of Jews and Moors" may have become a problem. In addition, the coup that allowed Isabella to take the throne from Joanna of Castile ("la Beltraneja") and the Catholic Monarchs to marry had estranged Castile from Portugal, its historical ally, and created the need for new relationships. Similarly, Aragon's ambitions lay in control of the Mediterranean and the defense against France. As their policy of royal marriages proved, the Catholic Monarchs were deeply concerned about France's growing power and expected to create strong dynastic alliances across Europe. In this scenario, the Iberian reputation of being too tolerant was a problem.

Despite the prestige earned through the reconquest (Reconquista), the foreign image of Spaniards coexisted with an almost universal image of heretics and "bad Christians" due to the long coexistence between the three religions they had accepted in their lands. Anti-Jewish stereotypes created to justify or prompt the expulsion and expropriation of the European Jews applied to Spaniards in most European courts, and the idea of them being "greedy, gold-thirsty, cruel and violent" because of the "Jewish and Moorish blood" was prevalent in Europe prior to the discovery of America. Chronicles by foreign travelers circulated through Europe, describing the tolerant ambiance reigning in the court of Isabella and Ferdinand and how Moors and Jews were free to go about without risk of forced conversion. Past and common clashes between the Pope and the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula regarding the Inquisition in Castile's case and regarding South Italy in Aragon's case also reinforced their image of heretics in the international courts. These accusations and images could have had direct political and military consequences, especially considering that the union of two powerful kingdoms was a delicate moment that could prompt fear and violent reactions from neighbors, more so if combined with the expansion of the Ottoman Turks on the Mediterranean.

The creation of the Inquisition and the expulsion of both Jews and Moriscos may have been part of a strategy to whitewash the image of Spain and ease international fears regarding Spain's allegiance. In this scenario, the creation of the Inquisition could have been part of the Catholic Monarchs' strategy to "turn" away from African allies and "towards" Europe, a tool to turn both actual Spain and the Spanish image more European and improve relations with the Pope.{{Page needed|date=May 2024}}

The alleged discovery of Morisco plots to support a possible Ottoman invasion was a crucial factor in their decision to create the Inquisition. At this time, the Ottoman Empire was experiencing rapid growth, and the Aragonese Mediterranean Empire was crumbling under debt and war exhaustion. Ferdinand reasonably feared that he would not be capable of repelling an Ottoman attack on Spain's shores, especially if the Ottomans had internal help. The regions with the highest concentration of Moriscos were those close to the common naval crossings between Spain and Africa. The weakness of the Aragonese Naval Empire combined with the resentment of the higher nobility against the monarchs, the dynastic claims of Portugal on Castile, and the two monarchs' exterior politics that turned away from Morocco and other African nations in favor of Europe, created a fear of a second Muslim invasion, and in turn a second Muslim occupation, that was hardly unfounded. This fear may have been the base reason for the expulsion of those citizens who had either a religious reason to support the invasion of the Ottomans (Moriscos) or no particular religious reason to be against it (Jews). The Inquisition might have been part of the preparations to enforce these measures and ensure their effectiveness by rooting out false converts that would still pose a threat of foreign espionage.Abou Al Fadl, K. (1994). Islamic law and Muslim minorities: the juristic discourse on Muslim minorities from the second/eight to the eleventh/seventeenth centuries. Islamic Law and Society, 1.Goosenes, A. (1997). Les inquisitions modernes dans les Pays-Bas meridionaux. 1520–1633. 2 vols. Bruselas

In favor of this view, there is the military sense it makes, the many early attempts of peaceful conversion and persuasion that the Monarchs used at the beginning of their reign, and the sudden turn towards the creation of the Inquisition and the edicts of expulsion when those initial attempts failed. The conquest of Naples by the Gran Capitan is also proof of an interest in Mediterranean expansion and re-establishment of Spanish power in that sea that was bound to generate frictions with the Ottoman Empire and other African nations. Therefore, the Inquisition would have been created as a permanent body to prevent the existence of citizens with religious sympathies with African nations now that rivalry with them had been deemed unavoidable.Boronat, P. (1901). Los moriscos españoles y su expulsión. 2 vols. Valencia.

{{anchor|Philosophical and religious reasons}}

The creation of the Spanish Inquisition was consistent with the most important political philosophers of the Florentine School{{dubious|date=November 2024}}, with whom the kings were known to have contact (Guicciardini, Pico della Mirandola, Machiavelli, Segni, Pitti, Nardi, Varchi, etc.) Both Guicciardini and Machiavelli defended the importance of centralization and unification to create a strong state capable of repelling foreign invasions and also warned of the dangers of excessive social uniformity to the creativity and innovation of a nation. Machiavelli considered piety and morals desirable for the subjects but not so much for the ruler, who should use them as a way to unify its population. He also warned of the nefarious influence of a corrupt church in the creation of a selfish population and middle nobility, which had fragmented the peninsula and made it unable to resist either France or Aragon. German philosophers at the time were spreading the importance of a vassal sharing the religion of their lord.

The Inquisition may have just been the result of putting these ideas into practice. The use of religion as a unifying factor across a land that was allowed to stay diverse and maintain different laws in other respects, and the creation of the Inquisition to enforce laws across it, maintain said religious unity, and control the local elites were consistent with most of those teachings.

Alternatively, the enforcement of Catholicism across the realm might indeed be the result of simple religious devotion by the monarchs. {{Crossreference|selfref=no|(see {{slink|#purely religious reasons}})}} The recent scholarship on the expulsion of the Jews leans towards the belief of religious motivations being at the bottom of it.Stuart, Nancy Rubin. Isabella of Castile: The First Renaissance Queen. New York: ASJA Press, 2004. However, considering the reports on Ferdinand's political persona, that is unlikely the only reason. Machiavelli, among others, described Ferdinand as a man who didn't know the meaning of piety, but who made political use of it and would have achieved little if he had known it. He was Machiavelli's main inspiration while writing The Prince.Black, Robert. Machiavelli. Abigdon, Oxon: Routledge, Tylor, 2013. pp. 83–120 (the quote is paraphrased)

The hierarchy of the Catholic Church had made many attempts during the Middle Ages to take over Christian Spain politically, such as claiming the Church's ownership over all land reconquered from non-Christians (a claim that was rejected by Castile but accepted by Aragon and Portugal). In the past, the papacy had tried and partially succeeded in forcing the Mozarabic Rite out of Iberia. Its intervention had been pivotal for Aragon's loss of Rosellon.{{clarify|date=June 2019}} The meddling regarding Aragon's control over South Italy was even stronger historically. In their lifetime, the Catholic Monarchs had problems with Pope Paul II, a fervent proponent of absolute authority for the church over the kings. Carrillo actively opposed them both and often used Spain's "mixed blood" as an excuse to intervene. The papacy and the monarchs of Europe had been involved in a rivalry for power throughout the high Middle Ages that Rome already won in other powerful kingdoms, like France.

Since the legitimacy granted by the church was necessary for both monarchs, especially Isabella, to stay in power, the creation of the Spanish Inquisition may have been a way to concede to the Pope's demands and criticism regarding Spain's mixed religious heritage, while simultaneously ensuring that the Pope could hardly force the second Inquisition of his own and create a tool to control the power of the Roman Church in Spain. The Spanish Inquisition was unique at the time because it was not led by the Pope. Once the bull of creation was granted, the head of the Inquisition was the Monarch of Spain. It was in charge of enforcing the laws of the king regarding religion and other private-life matters, not of following orders from Rome, from which it was independent. This independence allowed the Inquisition to investigate, prosecute, and convict clergy for both corruption and treason of conspiracy against the crown (on the Pope's behalf, presumably) without the Pope's intervention. The Inquisition was, despite its title of "Holy", not necessarily formed by the clergy, and secular lawyers were equally welcome to it. If it was an attempt at keeping Rome out of Spain, it was an extremely successful and refined one. It was a bureaucratic body that had the nominal authority of the church and permission to prosecute members of the church, which the kings could not do, while answering only to the Spanish Crown. This did not prevent the Pope from having some influence on the decisions of Spanish monarchs, but it did force the influence to be through the kings, making direct influence very difficult.{{Cite book |last=González |first=Óscar |title=El Rey Y El Papa: Política Y Diplomacia En Los Albores Del Renacimiento (Castilla En El Siglo XV) |date=2009 |publisher=Sílex}}{{Page needed|date=October 2021}}

Other hypotheses that circulate regarding the Spanish Inquisition's creation include:

• Economic reasons: As one penalty that the Inquisition could enforce on the convicts was the confiscation of their property, which became Crown property, it has been stated that the creation of the Inquisition was a way to finance the crown. There is no solid reason for this hypothesis to stand alone, nor for the Kings of Spain to need an institution to do this gradually instead of confiscating property through edicts, but it may be one reason the Inquisition stayed for so long. This hypothesis notes the tendency of the Inquisition to operate in large and wealthy cities and is favoured by those who consider that most of those prosecuted for practising Judaism and Islam in secret were innocent of it.The Marranos of Spain. From the late XIVth to the early XVIth Century, 1966. Ithaca, 1999 Gustav Bergenroth, editor and translator of the Spanish state papers from 1485 to 1509, believed that revenue was the incentive for Ferdinand and Isabella's decision to invite the Inquisition into Spain.{{cite web |title=Introduction, Part 1 – British History Online |url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/spain/vol1/i-lxxiii |website=www.british-history.ac.uk}} Other authors point out that both monarchs were very aware of the economic consequences they would suffer from a decrease in population.
• Intolerance and racism: This argument is usually made regarding the expulsion of the Jews or the Moriscos, and since the Inquisition was so closely interconnected with those actions, it can be expanded to it. It varies between those who deny that Spain was really that different from the rest of Europe regarding tolerance and openmindedness and those who argue that it used to be, but gradually the antisemitic and racist atmosphere of medieval Europe rubbed onto it.{{Crossreference|selfref=no|(see {{slink|#The "Placate Europe" hypothesis}})}} It explains the creation of the Inquisition as the result of the same forces as those that caused the creation of similar entities across Europe. This view may account for the similarities between the Spanish Inquisition and similar institutions but does not account for its many unique characteristics, including its time of appearance and its duration through time, so even if accepted it requires the addition of some of the other hypothesis to be complete.{{sfnp|Pérez|2005}}{{page needed|date=February 2024}} {{anchor|purely religious reasons}}
• Purely religious reasons: This view argues that the Catholic Monarchs had the Inquisition created to prosecute heretics and sodomites out of diligence of the laws of the Church, which seemed to them to clearly forbid both.(cf. CJC can. 1634 §1, ST IIa IIæ Q11 A3; CCC pp. 2357-8, Persona Humana 1975, ST IIa IIæ Q154 AA11, 12)

How historians and commentators have viewed the Spanish Inquisition has changed over time and continues to be a source of controversy. Before and during the 19th century, historical interest focused on who was being persecuted. In the early and mid-20th century, historians examined the specifics of what happened and how it influenced Spanish history. In the later 20th and 21st centuries, some historians have re-examined how severe the Inquisition truly was, calling into question some of the assumptions made in earlier periods.

Before the rise of professional historians in the 19th century, the Spanish Inquisition had been portrayed primarily by Protestant scholars who saw it as the archetypal symbol of Catholic intolerance and ecclesiastical power. The Spanish Inquisition for them was largely associated with the persecution of Protestants. William H. Prescott described the Inquisition as an "eye that never slumbered". Despite the existence of extensive documentation regarding the trials and procedures, and to the Inquisition's deep bureaucratization, none of these sources were studied outside of Spain, and Spanish scholars arguing against the predominant view were automatically dismissed. The 19th-century professional historians, including the Spanish scholar Amador de los Ríos, were the first to successfully challenge this perception in the international sphere and get foreign scholars to take note of their discoveries. Said scholars would obtain international recognition and start a period of revision on the Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition.

At the start of the 20th century Henry Charles Lea published the groundbreaking History of the Inquisition in Spain. This influential work describes the Spanish Inquisition as "an engine of immense power, constantly applied for the furtherance of obscurantism, the repression of thought, the exclusion of foreign ideas and the obstruction of progress."{{Cite web |last=Kagan |first=Richard L. |date=19 April 1998 |title=A Kinder, Gentler Inquisition |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/19/reviews/980419.19kagent.html |access-date=2024-02-11 |website=Archive.nytimes.com}} Lea documented the Inquisition's methods and modes of operation in no uncertain terms, calling it "theocratic absolutism" at its worst. In the context of the polarization between Protestants and Catholics during the second half of the 19th century, some of Lea's contemporaries, as well as most modern scholars thought Lea's work had an anti-Catholic bias.{{cite web |date= |title=Henry Charles Lea Papers – Biographical Sketch |url=http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/mss/lea/leabio.html |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20060910204659/http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/mss/lea/leabio.html|access-date=18 April 2007 |website=Penn Libraries - University of Pennsylvania |publisher=Univ. of Pennsylvania. –Penn Special Collections|archive-date=10 September 2006 }}{{cite web |url=http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Dossier/1112-96/article3.html |title=A New Industry: The Inquisition |publisher=Catholic.net |access-date=18 April 2007 |date=12 November 1996|last=Van Hove |first=Brian |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070405150258/http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Dossier/1112-96/article3.html |archive-date=5 April 2007}}

Starting in the 1920s, Jewish scholars picked up where Lea's work left off. They published Yitzhak Baer's History of the Jews in Christian Spain, Cecil Roth's History of the Marranos and, after World War II, the work of Haim Beinart, who for the first time published trial transcripts of cases involving conversos.

Contemporary historians who subscribe to the idea that the image of the Inquisition in historiography has been systematically deformed by the Black Legend include Edward Peters, Philip Wayne Powell, William S. Maltby, Richard Kagan, Margaret R. Greer, Helen Rawlings, Ronnie Hsia, Lu Ann Homza, Stanley G. Payne, Andrea Donofrio, Irene Silverblatt, Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Charles Gibson, and Joseph Pérez. Contemporary historians who partially accept an impact of the Black Legend but deny other aspects of the hypothesis include Henry Kamen, David Nirenberg and Karen Armstrong.{{citation needed|date=February 2024}}

Toby Green, while accepting that there was a certain demonization of the Spanish Inquisition in comparison with other contemporary persecutions, argues that the habitual use of torture should not be denied, and that correcting the "black legend" should not mean replacing it with a "white legend."{{sfnp|Green|2007|p=9-10}} Richard L. Kagan says that Henry Kamen failed to "enter the belly of the beast and assess what it really meant to the people who lived with it." Kamen does not, according to Kagan, "lead the reader through an actual trial. Had he done so, a reader might conclude that the institution he portrays as relatively benign in hindsight was also capable of inspiring fear and desperate attempts to escape, and thus more deserving of its earlier reputation." For Kagan, in order to reconstruct the world of those who were trapped in the Inquisition's net, studies that thoroughly examine the meticulous archives of the Inquisition are necessary.

{{Main|Historical revision of the Inquisition}}

The works of Juderias in (1913) and other Spanish scholars prior to him were mostly ignored by international scholarship until 1960.

One of the first books to build on them and internationally challenge the classical view was The Spanish Inquisition (1965) by Henry Kamen. Kamen argued that the Inquisition was not nearly as cruel or as powerful as commonly believed. The book was very influential and largely responsible for subsequent studies in the 1970s to try to quantify (from archival records) the Inquisition's activities.See for example Jean-Pierre Dedieu, Los Cuatro Tiempos, in Bartolomé Benassar, Inquisición Española: poder político y control social, pp. 15–39 and {{harvp|García Cárcel|1976}} Those studies showed there was an initial burst of activity against conversos suspected of relapsing into Judaism, and a mid-16th century pursuit of Protestants, but, according to these studies, the Inquisition served principally as a forum Spaniards occasionally used to humiliate and punish people they did not like: blasphemers, bigamists, foreigners and, in Aragon, homosexuals, and horse smugglers. Kamen went on to publish two more books in 1985 and 2006 that incorporated new findings, further supporting the view that the Inquisition was not as bad as once described by Lea and others. Along similar lines is Edward Peters's Inquisition (1988).

One of the most important works about the inquisition's relation to the Jewish conversos or New Christians is The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain (1995/2002) by Benzion Netanyahu. It challenges the view that most conversos were actually practicing Judaism in secret and were persecuted for their crypto-Judaism. Rather, according to Netanyahu, the persecution was fundamentally racial, and was a matter of envy of their success in Spanish society.{{cite web|url=https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/38335/personal-history|title=Benzion Netanyahu's History|date=30 April 2012|website=Tablet Magazine}} This view has been challenged; the majority of historians either align with religious causes or with merely cultural ones, with no significant racial element.Vicente Ángel Álvarez Palenzuela. Judíos y conversos en la España medieval. Estado de la cuestión (Jews and converts in medieval Spain. Estate of the matter). Universidad Autónoma de Madrid) eHumanista/Converso 4 (2015):156–191 [http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.span.d7_eh/files/sitefiles/conversos/volume3/11%20ehumcon4.palenzuela.pdf It can be checked for free here.]

{{in popular culture|date=July 2023}}

File:Ф.Гойя. Из цикла Los Caprichos 1797-98.jpg, 1797–98, by Francisco de Goya.]]

The literature of the 18th century approaches the theme of the Inquisition from a critical point of view. In Candide by Voltaire, the Inquisition appears as the epitome of intolerance and arbitrary justice in Europe.

During the Romantic Period, the Gothic novel, which was primarily a genre developed in Protestant countries, frequently associated Catholicism with terror and repression. This vision of the Spanish Inquisition appears in, among other works, The Monk (1796) by Matthew Gregory Lewis (set in Madrid during the Inquisition, but can be seen as commenting on the French Revolution and the Terror); Melmoth the Wanderer (1820) by Charles Robert Maturin and The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki.

The literature of the 19th century tends to focus on the element of torture employed by the Inquisition. In France, in the early 19th century, the epistolary novel Cornelia Bororquia, or the Victim of the Inquisition, which has been attributed to Spaniard Luiz Gutiérrez, and is based on the case of María de Bohórquez, ferociously criticizes the Inquisition and its representatives.

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's book, The Brothers Karamazov (1880), there is a chapter, "The Grand Inquisitor." A story within a story (several times published separately in book form) tells the appearance of Jesus Christ in Seville, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Arrested by the Grand Inquisitor, an old Cardinal, he is condemned to die at the stake "like the vilest of heretics". The Inquisitor questions him: "Is it You? (...) Don't answer, remain silent. And You have no right to add anything to what you have already said. So why have You come to disturb us? For You really have come to disturb us, and You know it." Christ doesn't say a word, he just kisses him. At the end of the episode, the Inquisitor releases him with the words: "Go and don't come back any more... never... never, never!"{{cite web |last1=Morsen |first1=Gary Saul |title=The Brothers Karamazov |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fyodor-Dostoyevsky/The-Brothers-Karamazov |website=Britannica |access-date=5 September 2024 |date=16 August 2024}}{{Cite book |last=Dostoyevsky |first=Fyodor |title=The Karamazov Brothers |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-283509-3 |publication-date=2007 |pages=309–332 |translator-last=Avsey |translator-first=Ignat}}

One of the best-known stories of Edgar Allan Poe, "The Pit and the Pendulum", explores the use of torture by the Inquisition.Alterton, Margaret. "An Additional Source for Poe's 'The Pit and the Pendulum'" from Modern Language Notes, Vol. 48, No. 6 (Jun., 1933), p. 349{{cite web |title=The Pit and the Pendulum |url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206172.The_Pit_and_the_Pendulum |website=Goodreads |access-date=5 September 2024}}

The Inquisition also appears in 20th-century literature. La Gesta del Marrano, by the Argentine author Marcos Aguinis, portrays the length of the Inquisition's arm to reach people in Argentina during the 16th and 17th centuries. The first book in Les Daniels' "Don Sebastian Vampire Chronicles", The Black Castle (1978), is set in 15th-century Spain and includes both descriptions of Inquisitorial questioning and an auto de fe, as well as Tomás de Torquemada, who is featured in one chapter. The Marvel Comics series Marvel 1602 shows the Inquisition targeting Mutants for "blasphemy". The character Magneto also appears as the Grand Inquisitor. The second of the Captain Alatriste novels by the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte has the narrator being tortured by the Inquisition. In 1998, the Spanish writer Miguel Delibes published the historical novel The Heretic, about the Protestants of Valladolid and their repression by the Inquisition. Samuel Shellabarger's Captain from Castile deals directly with the Spanish Inquisition.

In the novel La Catedral del Mar by Ildefonso Falcones, published in 2006 and set in the 14th century, there are scenes of inquisition investigations in small towns and a great scene in Barcelona.{{cite web |title=Magnificent Epic: Cathedral of the Sea by Ildefonso Falcones |url=https://thehistorylady.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/magnificent-epic-cathedral-of-the-sea-by-ildefonso-falcones/ |website=The History Lad |date=30 June 2012 |access-date=5 September 2024}}{{Better source needed|date=September 2024}}

• The 1947 epic Captain from Castile by Darryl F. Zanuck, starring Tyrone Power, uses the Inquisition as the major plot point of the film. It tells how powerful families used their evils to ruin their rivals. The first part of the film shows this and the reach of the Inquisition reoccurs throughout this movie following Pedro De Vargas (played by Power) even to the 'New World'.
• The Spanish Inquisition segment of the 1981 Mel Brooks movie History of the World Part I is a comedic musical performance based on the activities of the first Inquisitor General of Spain, Tomás de Torquemada.
• The film The Fountain (2006), by Darren Aronofsky, features the Spanish Inquisition as part of a plot in 1500 when the Grand Inquisitor threatens Queen Isabella's life.
• Goya's Ghosts (2006) by Miloš Forman is set in Spain between 1792 and 1809 and focuses realistically on the role of the Inquisition and its end under Napoleon's rule.
• The film Assassin's Creed (2016) by Justin Kurzel, starring Michael Fassbender, is set in both modern times and Spain during the Inquisition. The film follows Callum Lynch (played by Fassbender) as he is forced to relive the memories of his ancestor, Aguilar de Nerha (also played by Fassbender), an Assassin during the Spanish Inquisition.
• The many film adaptations of the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Pit and the Pendulum", including the 1961 film and the 1991 film.
• Akelarre (Pedro Olea, 1984), a film, about the Logroño trial of the Zugarramurdi witches.
• Tomás de Torquemada is portrayed in 1492: The Conquest of Paradise (1992).

• The Grand Inquisitor of Spain plays a part in Don Carlos (1867), a play by Friedrich Schiller (which was the basis for the opera Don Carlos in five acts by Giuseppe Verdi, in which the Inquisitor is also featured, and the third act is dedicated to an auto de fe).

• The 1965 musical Man of La Mancha depicts a fictionalized account of the author Miguel de Cervantes' run-in with Spanish authorities. The character of Cervantes produces a play-within-a-play of his unfinished manuscript, Don Quixote, while he awaits sentencing by the Inquisition.

file:Monty_Python_Live_02-07-14_12_46_43_(14415411808).jpg members Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones performing "The Spanish Inquisition" sketch during the 2014 Python reunion.]]

• In the Monty Python comedy team's Spanish Inquisition sketches, an inept group of Inquisitors repeatedly burst into scenes, after someone utters the words "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition", screaming "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" The Inquisition then uses ineffectual forms of torture, including a dish-drying rack, soft cushions and a comfy chair.

• The Spanish Inquisition features as a main plotline element of the 2009 video game Assassin's Creed II: Discovery.
• The Universe of Warhammer 40,000 borrows several elements and concepts of the Catholic church Imaginarium, including the notion of the Black Legend's ideal of a fanatic Inquisitors, for some of its troops in Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr.
• The video game Blasphemous portrays a nightmarish version of the Spanish Inquisition, where the protagonist, named 'The Penitent one' wears a capirote (cone-shaped hat). The Penitent one battles twisted religious iconography and meets many characters attempting to atone for their sins along the way.

{{Columns-list|colwidth=22em|

• Black legend
• Black Legend (Spain)
• Black Legend of the Spanish Inquisition
• Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros
• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
• Eleno de Céspedes
• Goa Inquisition in Portuguese Goa
• History of the Jews in Spain
• Holy Child of La Guardia
• Inquisition in the Netherlands in the Spanish Netherlands
• Mexican Inquisition in New Spain
• Papal Inquisition in Spain
• Persecution of Christians
• Persecution of Muslims
• Peruvian Inquisition in the Viceroyalty of Peru
• Francisca Nuñez de Carabajal

}}

{{Notelist}}

{{Reflist|30em}}

== General and cited references ==

{{Refbegin|24em}}

• {{cite book |last=Eymerich |first=Nicholas |author-link=Nicholas Eymerich |year=1821 |title=Manual de Inquisidores para uso de las inquisiciones de España y Portugal, ó Compendio de la Obra titulada Directorio de Inquisidores, de Nicolao Eymerico, Inquisidor general de Aragón (translated from French to Spanish by J. Marchena) |url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_DLE2VMvh6xgC/mode/2up?q=manual+de+inquisidores | publisher=Imprenta de Feliz Aviñon }}
• Gui, Bernard, Manuel de l'Inquisiteur, (1927)
• {{cite book |last=Lea |first=Henry Charles |year=1906 |title=A History of the Inquisition of Spain (4 volumes)|publisher=The MacMillan Co. }}
• {{cite book |last=Lea |first=Henry Charles |author-link=Henry Charles Lea |year=1901 |title=The Moriscos of Spain: Their Conversion and Expulsion |url=https://archive.org/details/moriscosspainth00unkngoog |publisher=Lea Brothers and Co. |location=Philadelphia }}
• {{cite book |last=Llorente |first=Juan Antonio| author-link = Juan Antonio Llorente |year=1817 |title=Histoire critique de l'Inquisition d'Espagne (4 volumes)|language=fr|publisher= Imprimerie de Plassan }}
• Pastor, Ludwig von, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages; Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and other original sources, 40 vols. St. Louis, B. Herder 1898
• {{cite book| last = Pérez | first = Joseph | author-link = Joseph Pérez | date = 2005 | title = The Spanish Inquisition: A History | publisher = Yale University Press

}}

• {{cite book| last = Pérez | first = Joseph | date = 2009 | title =Breve Historia de la Inquisición en España|language=es | publisher = Crítica }}
• {{Cite book |last=Torquemada |first=Tomás de |url=https://ia903004.us.archive.org/22/items/BRes14068130Despacho/BRes14068130Despacho.pdf |title=Compilacion de las Instrucciones del Oficio de la Santa Inquisicion |publisher=Diego Diaz de la Carrera |publication-date=1667 |language=es}}

{{Refend}}

{{Refbegin|24em}}

• {{cite book | last = Barea| first = María Elvira Roca| author-link =Elvira Roca Barea| title = Imperiofobia Y Leyenda Negra: Roma, Rusia, Estados Unidos Y El Imperio Español | publisher =Siruela | year = 2016 }}
• Carroll, Warren H., Isabel: the Catholic Queen, Christendom Press (1991)
• {{cite book |last=García Cárcel |first=Ricardo |year=1976 |title=Orígenes de la Inquisición Española. El Tribunal de Valencia, 1478–1530 |location=Barcelona }}
• Graizbord, David L. Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora, 1580–1700. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2004.
• {{cite book |last=Homza |first=Lu Ann|author-link= Lu Ann Homza |year=2006 |title=The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614, An Anthology of Sources|publisher=Hackett Publishing }}
• {{cite book |last=Kamen |first=Henry |author-link=Henry Kamen |year=1998 |title=The Spanish Inquisition: a Historical Revision |url=https://archive.org/details/spanishinquisiti00henr |url-access=registration |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-07522-9 }}
• {{cite book |last=Kamen |first=Henry |author-link=Henry Kamen |year=2005 |title=Inkwizycja Hiszpańska |trans-title=The Spanish Inquisition |language=pl |location=Warsaw |publisher=Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy |isbn=978-83-06-02963-5 }}
• {{cite book |last=Kamen |first=Henry |author-link=Henry Kamen |title=The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision |url=https://archive.org/details/spanishinquisiti0000kame |url-access=registration |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-300-18051-0}} Kamen has published 4 editions under 3 titles: "First edition published 1965 ... as The Spanish Inquisition. Second edition published 1985 ... as Inquisition and Society in Spain. Third edition published 1998 ... as The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. Fourth edition 2014."
• Kritzler, Edward, Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean. Anchor Books 2009. {{ISBN|978-0-7679-1952-4}}
• {{cite book |last1=Monter |first1=E. William |title=Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily |date=1990 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-52259-5}}
• {{cite book |last=Nirenberg | first=David. |year=2013 |title=Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition |location=New York |publisher=W. W. Norton & Co. |isbn=978-0-393-34791-3 }} ch. 5 "Revenge of the Savior: Jews and Power in Medieval Europe", ch. 6 "The Extinction of Spain's Jews and the Birth of Its Inquisition"
• {{cite journal |last=Parker |first=Geoffrey |author-link=Geoffrey Parker (historian) |year=1982 |title=Some recent work on the Inquisition in Spain and Italy |journal=Journal of Modern History |volume=54 |issue=3 |pages=519–532 |jstor=1906231 |doi=10.1086/244181 |s2cid=143860010 }}
• {{cite book |last=Peters |first=Edward |year=1988 |title=Inquisition |location=New York & London |publisher=Free Press Collier Macmillan |isbn=978-0029249802}}
• Rawlings, Helen, The Spanish Inquisition, Blackwell Publishing (2006)

{{Refend}}

{{Refbegin|24em}}

• Adler, Elkan Nathan – Autos de fe and the Jew (1908)
• Baião, António – A Inquisição em Portugal e no Brasil (1921)
• Baker, J. – History of the Inquisition (1736)
• Ballester, Vicente Vignau – Catálogo de las causas contra la fe seguidas ante el tribunal de Santo oficio de la inquisición de Toledo (,,,) (1903)
• Bell, Aubrey F.G. – Luis de Leon: A Study of the Spanish Renaissance (1925)
• Cappa, Ricardo – La Inquisicion Espanola (1888)
• Cardew, Alexander – A Short History of the Inquisition (1933)
• Castellano y de la Pena, Gaspar Un Complot Terrorista en el Siglo XV; los Comienzos de la Inquisicion Aragonesa, (1927)
• Coulton, George Gordon – The Inquisition (1929)
• Garau, Francisco – La Fee Triunfante en quatro autos celebrados en Mallorca por el Santo Oficio de la Inquisición en que han salido ochenta y ocho reos (...) – (1691– reprinted 1931)
• García, Genaro, La Inquisición de México (1906).
• García, Genaro, Autos de fe de la Inquisición de Mexico (1910)
• Herculano, Alexandre, Historia da Origem e Estabelecimento da Inquisiçao em Portugal (English translation, 1926)
• Jouve, Marguerite – Torquemada (1935)
• Maistre, Joseph de – Letters on the Spanish Inquisition (1838)
• Maycock, Alan Lawson – The Inquisition (1926)
• Marchant, John – A Review of the Bloody Tribunal; or the horrid cruelties of the Inquisition (...) 1770)
• Marín, Julio Melgares – Procedimientos de la Inquisición (2 volumes), (1886)
• Medina, José Toribio – "Historia del Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la inquisición de Lima (1569–1820)" (1887)
• Meliá, Antonio Paz y – Catálogo Abreviado de Papeles de Inquisición (1914)
• Merveilleux, Charles Frédéric de – Memoires Instructifs pour un Voyageur dans les Divers États de l'Europe (1738)
• Montes, Raimundo González de – Discovery and Playne Declaration of Sundry Subtile Practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spayne (1568)
• Nickerson, Hoffman – The Inquisition (1923)
• Páramo, Luis de – De origine et progressu Officii Sanctae Inquisitionis, eiusque, dignitate & utilitate 1598
• Perlas, Ramon de Vilana, La verdadera práctica apostólica de el S. Tribunal de la Inquisición (1735)
• Puigblanch, Antonio – La Inquisición sin máscara ó Disertacion En Que Se Prueban Hasta La Evidencia Los Vicios De Este Tribunal Y La Necesidad De Que Se Suprima... (1816)]
• Roth, Cecil – The Spanish Inquisition (1937)
• Roth, Cecil – History of the Marranos (1932)
• {{cite book | last = Sabatini | first = Rafael | author-link = Rafael Sabatini | date = 1930 | title =Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition|edition=rev. | publisher = Houghton Mifflin Company }}
• Sime, William – History of the Inquisition from its origin under Pope Innocent III till the present time. (1834)
• Teixeira, António José – Antonio Homem e a Inquisicão (1895)
• Turberville, Arthur Stanley – Medieval History and the Inquisition (1920)
• Turberville, Arthur Stanley – The Spanish Inquisition (1932).
• Walsh, William Thomas, Isabella of Spain (1930) and Characters of the Inquisition (1940). Both reprinted by TAN Books (1987).
• Wilkens, Cornelius August : Spanish Protestants in the Sixteenth Century (1897), 218p. [https://archive.org/details/spanishprotesta00wilkgoog read online at archive.org]{{cite web | url=http://libro.uca.edu/title.htm | title=Title Catalog | publisher=The Library of Iberian Resources | access-date=17 May 2006}}

{{Refend}}

=== Other ===

{{Refbegin|24em}}

• {{cite book | last = Bergemann| first = Patrick| author-link = Patrick Bergemann| title = Judge thy neighbor: denunciations in the Spanish Inquisition, Romanov Russia, and Nazi Germany | publisher =Columbia University Press | year = 2019}}
• {{cite book | last = Frassetto| first = Michael| author-link =Michael Frassetto| title = Heretic lives : Medieval Heresy from Bogomil and the Cathars to Wyclif and Hus | publisher =Profile Books | year = 2007 | isbn = 978-1-86197-744-1}}
• {{cite book | last = Green | first = Toby | author-link =Toby Green| title = Inquisition : the reign of fear | publisher = Thomas Books | location = New York | year = 2007 | isbn = 978-0-312-53724-1 | url = https://archive.org/details/inquisitionreign00gree }}
• {{Cite book |last=Haliczer |first=Stephen |author-link =Stephen Haliczer|title=Inquisition and Society in the Kingdom of Valencia, 1478–1834 |publisher=University of California Press |year=1990}}
• {{Cite book |last=Leff |first=Gordon |title=Heresy in the Late Middle Ages: The relation of Heterodoxy to dissent c. 1250 – c. 1450 |publisher=Manchester University Press |year=1967}}
• {{cite book |last=Murphy |first=Cullen |year=2012 |title=God's jury: the Inquisition and the making of the modern world |url=https://archive.org/details/godsjuryinquisit0000murp |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |location=Boston |isbn=978-0-618-09156-0}}
• {{Cite book |last=Peters |first=Edward |title=Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe: Documents in translation |publisher= University of Pennsylvania Press|year=1980}}
• {{cite book | last = Plaidy | first = Jean | author-link =Eleanor Alice Burford | title = The Spanish Inquisition:its Rise, growth, and end (Three volumes in one)| publisher = Barnes & Noble | location = New York | year = 1994 }}
• {{cite book | last = Saraiva | first = António José | author-link =António José Saraiva| title = The Marrano factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536–1765 | publisher = Brill | location = Leiden | year = 2001 }}
• {{cite book | last = Scott | first = George Ryley | author-link =George Ryley Scott| title =The history of torture throughout the ages |edition=7th|publisher = Luxor Press| year = 1959 }}
• {{cite book | last = Thomsett | first = Michael | author-link =Michael Thomsett| title =The Inquisition: A History | publisher = McFarland & Company, Inc |year = 2010 }}
• {{cite book | last = Twiss | first = Miranda | author-link =Miranda Twiss| title =The Most Evil Men And Women In History | publisher = Michael O'Mara Books Ltd | year = 2002 }}
• {{cite book | last = Villacañas| first = José Luis | author-link =José Luis Villacañas| title =Imperiofilia y el populismo nacional-católico: Otra historia del imperio español | publisher = Editorial Lengua de Trapo| year = 2019}}
• {{cite book | last = Whitechapel| first = Simon | author-link =Simon Whitechapel| title = Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition | publisher = Creation Books | year = 2003 }}

{{Refend}}

• {{cite book |last1=Hassner |first1=Ron E. |title=Anatomy of Torture |date=2022 |publisher=Cornell University Press |isbn=978-1-5017-6205-5 |language=en}}

{{Commons category|Spanish Inquisition}}

• [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003c1bw "The Spanish Inquisition"], BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Edwards, Alexander Murray & Michael Alpert (In Our Time, 22 June 2006)
• [https://thinktorah.org/the-spanish-inquistion/ Audio Lecture on the History of the Spanish Inquisition and 1492 Expulsion of Spanish Jewry]
• [https://www.rae.es/archivo-digital/copilacion-de-las-instructiones-del-officio-de-la-sancta-inquisicion Copilacion de las Instructiones del Officio de la sancta Inquisicion hechas por el muy Reuerendo señor fray Thomas de Torquemada ... e por los otros Reuerendissimos señores Inquisidores generales, etc.] (The first instructions of Torquemada for the guidance of the inquisitors)
• Middle East Eye https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/spain-moriscos-islam-last-remnants-after-reconquista "The historian María Elvira Roca Barea proposes the “Placate Europe” hypothesis, which says that Spaniards were usually met with open suspicion and contempt by the rest of Europe during this period for “having dirty blood”, and the image of Spaniards being the progeny of “Jews and Moors” tarnished the Spanish crown's desire to propel Spain to the forefront of world politics and power." "The second major hypothesis, proposed by historian P. Boronat, was the “Ottoman Scare” theory, which suggested that the presence of “fifth column” Moriscos on the Iberian peninsula would invite invasions from the Ottoman Empire - a potent threat after the fall of Constantinople in 1453."
• https://www.thecollector.com/what-was-the-spanish-inquisition/ "Other hypotheses that may explain why the Spanish Inquisition came into being include the “Ottoman Scare,” “Placate Europe,” and “Keeping the Pope in Check.” The Ottoman Empire was expanding at this time, and Ferdinand may have wanted to make sure that citizens of Spain didn't have a religious reason to support an Ottoman invasion or, in the case of the Jews, be indifferent to it. Both monarchs needed to improve their relations with the rest of Europe, and both were able to use the Spanish Inquisition to control the Pope's power since the head of the Spanish Inquisition was the monarch of Spain, not the Pope."

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