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Spanish Inquisition: Holy Office
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The Spanish Inquisition was loosely connected with the Holy Office of the Inquisition into Heretical Depravity (which lacked the manpower/resources to conduct the inquisition properly). The Holy Office of the Inquisition into Heretical Depravity was responsible for many other inquisitions, largely targeting Christian dissenters, secular freethinkers and Jews.
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As far as procedure was concerned, the Spanish Inquisition followed the precedent established in the thirteenth century Inquisition and the secular tribunals, but Mary Ann Collins, a former nun, says the Inquisition used procedures which were banned in regular secular courts. Sworn denunciation of an individual, or even a particular village, started the legal machinery. Notionally, once accused, a defendant was provided the services of a lawyer, and he could not be examined by the officers of the court without the presence of two “disinterested priests,” though in what manner they were supposed to be disinterested is unclear.
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"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" Monty Python famously joked in 1970, and we all laughed, probably quite unaware that only a century earlier the Holy Office of the Inquisition into Heretical Depravity -- to give the Roman Catholic Church's enforcer its proper, ominous name -- was still hard at work. For 600 years the Inquisition was a real and dangerous presence in the lives of millions and, in the minds of those the Church persecuted as enemies of the true faith -- Christian dissenters, secular freethinkers and Jews -- the ultimate icon of religious tyranny. Even now its name conjures up nightmares of Pit and Pendulum-style torture and victims burning at the stake. So potent is the image that it's never been easy to separate the Inquisition of myth from the Inquisition of history. But the Vatican's 1998 decision to open up its files -- made by Pope Benedict XVI when he was still the cardinal in charge of the Inquisition's archives -- finally allowed historians to make a start.
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Seymour B. Liebman states that the social contacts between the Jews and their Christian neighbors in America during the colonial era were not marred by the religious intolerance of the Spanish Church symbolized by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Many Catholics knew that their neighbors and friends were Jews, but they neither reported this to the Inquisition nor mentioned it to their confessors. Periodically, an Edict of Faith or Edict of Grace was nailed to church doors in most towns. These edicts listed the customs of Jews, Moors, and later, Lutherans, so that people could recognize the heretics and denounce them to the Inquisition. Torture was less frequent than is popularly believed; it never occurred at an early stage of the proceedings, and it was administered only when, after several warnings an opportunities to confess, the prisoner insisted on his innocence, refusing to admit the truth --according, obviously, to the inquisitors definition of truth-- or to reveal the names of other guilty of observing the Jewish rituals. The most common form of torture in the New World was the potro, a bedlike frame with straps from side to side upon which the prisoner was placed, naked.
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The anti-Anabaptist inquisition in the Low Countries was mostly run by local religious and political leaders, not by the Spanish themselves. Charles V, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, fueled the fire by renewing a centuries-old decree against the Anabaptists. And the Spanish Duke of Alva, who ruled the Low Countries, made sure the decree was enforced. But the Martyrs Mirror testifies that the Anabaptists' worst enemies spoke their own language and lived in their own towns.
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The 2006 film Goya's Ghosts starring Stellan Skarsgård, Natalie Portman, and Javier Bardem is set during the Spanish Inquisition. In the film, the painter Goya (Stellan Skarsgård) is trying to save his muse, Ines (Natalie Portman), who is being persecuted by the Holy Office. He turns to Brother Lorenzo (Javier Bardem) for help who, unknown to Goya, has an agenda of his own.
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