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Spanish Inquisition
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The Spanish Inquisition was an independent state tribunal modelled after the medieval institution. It was formally announced by Pope Sixtus IV (1414-1484) in a papal bull in 1478. This inquisition was controlled by King Ferdinand (1452-1516) and Queen Isabella (1451-1504). The original intention of the Spanish inquisition was to hunt out relapsed converts from Islam and Judaism. To carry out the task, Ferdinand and Isabella appointed a Dominican monk, Tomas de Torquemada (c1420-1498) as the Inquisitor General. [1]
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The Spanish Inquisition (not to be confused with the hit song) was a jovial TV quiz show between 1590-1963, which nobody expected. One of the first successful television shows, contestants had to answer a series of questions in order to win £12.34 in cash. It was canceled in October 1963 when an audience member opened fire, assassinating John F. Kennedy. No one expected this either.
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The most famous period of the Spanish Inquisition, under the legendary Torquemada, had little to do with the common caricature of simple "bible-believing" Protestants torn apart by ruthless churchmen. The true picture is unsettling enough: it was a government-controlled inquisition aimed at faithful Catholics of Jewish ancestry. The papacy, under Sixtus IV (1471-1484) and Innocent VIII (1484-1492), rather than controlling the Spanish Inquisition, protested its unfair treatment of the conversos with little result.
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Protestant propaganda that took aim at the Spanish Inquisition drew liberally from the Black Legend. But it had other sources as well. From the beginning of the Reformation, Protestants had difficulty explaining the 15-century gap between Christ's institution of His Church and the founding of the Protestant churches. Catholics naturally pointed out this problem, accusing Protestants of having created a new church separate from that of Christ. Protestants countered that their church was the one created by Christ, but that it had been forced underground by the Catholic Church. Thus, just as the Roman Empire had persecuted Christians, so its successor, the Roman Catholic Church, continued to persecute them throughout the Middle Ages.
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As one manifestation of the Counter-Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition worked actively 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 Louvain in 1550, with an appendix dedicated to Spanish texts. Subsequent Indexes were published in 1559, 1583, 1612, 1632, and 1640. The Indexes included an enormous number of books of all types, though special attention was dedicated to religious works, and, particularly, vernacular translations of the Bible.
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The Spanish Inquisition was used for both political and religious reasons. Spain is a nation-state that was born out of religious struggle between numerous different belief systems including Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism and Judaism. Following the Crusades and the Reconquest of Spain by the Christian Spaniards the leaders of Spain needed a way to unify the country into a strong nation. Ferdinand and Isabella chose Catholicism to unite Spain and in 1478 asked permission of the pope to begin the Spanish Inquisition to purify the people of Spain. They began by driving out Jews, Protestants and other non-believers.
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Spanish Inquisition