The Spanish Inquisition Caused Pain for the Citizens of Iberian Peninsula

They claimed that those of the Jewish faith were responsible for Jesus’ death, and therefore they were unable to be trusted. The expansion of Jewish communities infuriated the Christian society, pushing them towards their breaking point. In 1391, anti-Semitic violence broke out in Castile, and spread across many other areas in Spain such as Barcelona, Saragossa, and Valencia. Mobs entered the Jewish communities to burn synagogues, invade homes, rape the women, and kill the dominant Jewish rulers that were recognized. The Jews of Spain were given an ultimatum; evacuate, or convert to Christianity. Nearly half of them agreed to convert their faith, and they were baptized in order to show their true commitment to the Church. Those who converted were referred to as Conversos or “New Christians”. This ultimatum that those of the Jewish faith were given satisfied Christian societies, but it soon became apparent that the Conversos were not acting accordingly in respect to the Christian belief system. Although they attended church and participated in Christian traditions, behind closed doors, it was believed that they continued to practise the traditions, beliefs, and holy days outlined by the Jewish faith. They refrained from eating pork, and supposedly celebrated the Jewish Sabbath which lasted from Friday’s sundown until Saturday’s nightfall. This realization caused Christians to become furious, and those who had been deemed

The Spanish Inquisition became a major part of Spain’s history. The Spanish Inquisition began a restoration for Catholicism but as time progressed, it began to be seen as a terrible aspect of Spain rule by other European countries. The Spanish Inquisition was formed to get rid of heresy but soon turned into using force, to have people convert to Catholicism and get rid of the growing threat of Judaism and Protestantism.

The Spanish Inquisition was a method in Spain used to keep people from leaving the Catholic Church. It started around the time when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were ruling Spain. The ways of the inquisitors and what they did to the people, population of Spain, and what they had in mind to do were very bad for Spain during this time period.

The Spanish Inquisition became an infamous event in history that would interest and shock people for centuries to come. King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella of Spain started the Spanish Inquisition in September of 1480; however, it was two years earlier in the November of 1478 that Pope Sixtus IV actually authorized the two monarchs to set up and start the Inquisition. (The Spanish Inquisition, n.d.)

To understand the Spanish Inquisition, we must first understand the events that preceded it’s beginning. It all began with the conquer of the Iberian Peninsula by the Muslim Moors in 711. After the Moors had taken over much of the Iberian Peninsula, the Reconquista began. The Reconquista (Spanish for “Reconquest”) was a period of about 750 years in which multiple Christian kingdoms expanded their borders into the territory held by the Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula. The result of The Reconquista was not the removal of the Moors from Spain, but instead the combining of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim societies. The tension created by the combination of societies soon boiled over and turned into violence. The main act of violence occurring during this period that inadvertently contributed to the Spanish Inquisition are the “pogroms” against the Jewish people. A pogrom is defined as “a mob action targeting any specific ethnic or religious group, characterized by killing and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers, often with the

The Inquisition started because the Catholic Church was worried that the devil was stealing people’s souls. To fight the devil the church founded a new court. The Inquisition, were those priests whose job it was to find and punish anyone who was against the church or working with the devil. They called people who worked against the church a heretic and any action against the church was heresy. The inquisition could place people under arrest and torture them until they confessed to heresy; even if u weren’t and heresy but they suspected that you were they still torture you. But, if you confess right away before torture, will be punished, but you can redeem yourself. If you didn’t confess you were torture until you did.

During the Inquisition, the world as a whole had an affinity towards religion, whether it was in Europe, Asia, or the New World, they all focused on religion. In many circumstances religion was the main factor of deciding, new decrees, declaring war, and the laws that changed the society as a whole. While some of the disdain towards the Jews was their success in politics and other professions, it was mostly the desire to have a unified religion that drove the Christians to persecute the Jews. The idea of mass converting the Jews, did not start occurring during the Inquisition, it actually started centuries before during the Roman Empire in 64 BCE, when the General Pompey went to attack Jerusalem. The Spanish Inquisitors routinely tried to convert the Jew and disprove the torah, they did this by quoting the Talmud and Bible. But one thing unique to the Inquisition was that the Jews were given a choice to either convert, be expelled, or killed. The government started by sending in inquisitors to take the Jews into custody and force them to convert or die, it was not until the March 1492 that the Jews were forced from the country. But the Jews that converted they were let back into high society, they once again became merchants and legal experts, and

The inquisition as an institution was enough to force people to conform and at the heart of the Spanish Inquisition was conformity. However, if we were to refer to specific tools of the inquisitors to enforce outward conformity there is a plethora. Confiscation of property would certainly be a motivator. Public sentencing and obligatory garments would cause most to conform. We can guess that doing business with a convicted heretic could look bad for the customer. Heretics could be deemed “infamous,” and their descendants would be barred from public office and the middle or upper-class lifestyle.7 Anyone of these punishments could deter heretic from practicing publicly. Considering the very basis of the inquisition was witnesses testimony,

The Spanish Inquisition officially started in 1478. This was when the actual trials began against heresy. The people who carried out these trial were called inquisitors and they were mostly made up of the upper class citizens of the town. The inquisitors began by “segregating the jews from the rest of the town and put them in their own areas called aljamas”. In these areas the jews had their own set of rules and basically a

The Spanish Inquisition In the year 1469 there was a union between the Spanish kingdoms,

The Spanish Inquisition took place around the 12th up to the 19th century. During this time the Catholic Church wanted to crack down as well as punish all members of the church who had opinions that were not the same as the Catholic Faith’s (heretics) because they were afraid of loosing power and were looking to keep their rule. The Inquisition then formally started in 1231 when Pope Gregory IX brought about a decree that created a tribunal court system in order to take heretics to trial as well as punish them if found guilty . The Spanish inquisition was then backed by the current pope at the time, Pope Sixtus IV, and then officially settled by King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella. The

In 1491 a priest named Ferrand Martinez, started anti-semitic assaults in Seville, Spain. The mob violence

Kamen notes the ambiguous pressure on Jews, as despite the anti-semitism of contemporary Europe, the ‘Aragonese crown protected the Jews and conversos firmly, rejecting all attacks on them‘ and how any existing anti-Semetic legislation went unenforced (Kamen 15). Even after Ferdinand and Isabella initiated their reign in 1474, the monarchs were ‘never personally anti-Semitic’ and their intervention in domestic politics demonstrated an ‘impressive picture of the monarchy protecting its jews’ (Kamen, 16). In actuality, the inception of the Inquisition and the subsequent expulsion of the Jewish population was prompted by the actions of ‘Judaizers’, who were made up of conversos who had attempted to persuade newly assimilated Christians to return to their original Jewish faith. The efforts of these Judaizers concerned the crown and as a result the Inquisition was officially founded on September 27, 1480 as a means of regulating the the disruptive and disobedient conversos.

Initially, the Iberian Church did not fully persecute the Jewish population, despite their fears. To them, the existence of Judaism testified the truth of the Old Testament and the many prophecies of Jesus from that time. However, in 1391, the Iberian Church’s distrust of the Jews became particularly vicious when

Catholicism was a prominent religion for over 1,000 years. Before the Reformation of the 1500s, anyone who was Christian belonged to the Catholic Church— any other form of Christianity was considered a denomination. To eliminate denominations, the Church turned to inquisition. The Papal Inquisition began in the late 12th century, when Pope Innocent III sent cardinals to Southern France, where heresy was popularizing. However, the official inauguration is considered 1231, when Pope Gregory IX sent Dominicans to Southern France, Germany, Austria, Lombardy, and Aragon to convict heretics. Heretics were granted the chance to admit their deceit and return to the Roman Catholic Church. If their heresy was sustained,