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Spanish Inquisition: Catholics
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The Spanish Inquisition was motivated in part by the multi-religious nature of Spanish society following the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors. Much of the Iberian peninsula was dominated by Moors following their invasion of the peninsula in 711 until they were expelled by means of a long campaign of reconquest. However, the reconquest did not result in the full expulsion of Muslims from Spain, but instead yielded a multi-religious society made up of Catholics, Jews and Muslims. Granada to the south, in particular remained under Moorish control until 1492, and large cities, especially Seville, Valladolid, and Barcelona, had large Jewish populations centered in juderias.
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Spanish Jews baptized as Catholics during the Inquisition are sometimes called marranos. Marrano comes from the Spanish verb marrar, to deceive. A marrano is el que marra, one who deceives. Probably during the sixteenth century, the connotation of “dirty animal” or “pig” was added. In some minds, the juderias, Jewish neighborhoods, were as dirty as pocilgas, pig pens, and so marrano became synonymous with puerco, pig. Catholics therefore use the respectful term conversos, converts, to refer to Jews baptized as Catholics during the Spanish Inquisition.
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Marvin R O’Connell, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and a priest of the Archdiocese of SPaul, says perhaps the Spanish Inquisition was indeed a wicked institution. If so, judgment should be made on an honest examination of the facts, and political, social and theological comparisons with the barbaric treatment of Catholics by such as Queen ElizabethI of England, and the fanaticism that drove Dutch Calvinists to hang all the priests and vandalize all the churches that fell under their control. Not just Catholicism but Christianity generally ignored everything it supposedly stood for. No one can ignore this historic truth.
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In 1478 Isabella established the Spanish Inquisition under the leadership of Dominican monk Tomás de Torquemada. The Spanish Inquisition was originally founded to ensure the sincerity of former Jews and Muslims who had recently converted to Christianity, known as conversos and Moriscos respectively. Insincere converts were suspected of disloyalty and punished. As an institution that operated in both Castile and Aragón, the Inquisition was an important source of unity in Spain. It brought both monarchies closer to the Roman Catholic Church and it helped guarantee that Spain would remain a profoundly Catholic country.
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Known to most people today (if at all) as the punchline in a very funny Monty Python sketch, the Spanish Inquisition was taken quite seriously by Spanish subjects who fell under its sway in the late 15th century. Essentially, the Inquisition was a series of tribunals that enforced Catholic orthodoxy in what was then (at least in theory) the most Catholic of all countries. In any case, here are some things you may not have known about the Spanish Inquisition.
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[One] novel which tells the story of the Inquisition, this time based in Valladolid and the other great Auto de Fe, is 'The Heretic' by Miguel Delibes, a nominal Roman-Catholic and top selling Spanish novellist. The description of the burning is horrific. Some scenes are less appealing to the puritanical minded!
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