In the entirety of human history, nothing has claimed more lives than in the name of religion.
Every era of history has one or two prominent examples of religion gone wrong
and when we talk about Early Modern History, the Spanish Inquisition takes the biggest piece
of the cake. For nearly 400 years, the Spanish Inquisition honed perfection in two objectives,
spreading Catholicism and the art of punishing the non-believers. Welcome back to Nutty History.
Today, we’re exploring the Spanish Inquisition and what happened during this dark time in human
history. Let's get started with Why you Wouldn't Survive Life During the “Spanish” Inquisition.
First off, the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t just in Spain. It was most-certainly popular in
Spain for a long time, after Ferdinand and Isabella came to power in 1469,
unified the country, and then set up a system of forced conversions,
punishments, banishments, and elimination for anyone who wasn’t Catholic. It continued for
centuries. But it also went on elsewhere. The Portuguese King Joao III had his own version of
it during his reign from 1521 to 1557. Joao III helped grow Portugal into a colonial powerhouse,
but not in a good way. The Portuguese spread all over the world, establishing exploitative colonies
in Brazil, India, and Southeast Asia. In addition to helping kickstart the Atlantic slave trade,
Joao III also had a thing for forcing Catholicism on people. In 1536, thousands
of forcibly converted Jews were pushed out of Spain and found a new, equally unfriendly home in
Portugal. Shortly after, King Joao III appointed the first Grand Inquisitor, Diogo Da Silva.
Like in Spain, the Grand Inquisitors were head officials in charge of leading the inquisitions.
In 1540, the first trial was held. They called them auto-da-fe’s – Portuguese for “acts of
faith”. These trials were basically public rituals of penance, where anyone accused of either faking
their Catholic faith or not being Catholic to begin with - practicing witchcraft, sorcery, or
anything else contrary to orthodox Catholicism - either had to formally apologize or face whatever
punishment the officials thought were warranted. First, the accused were paraded in front of their
judges wearing raggedy clothing adorned with various symbols. There were three basic types
of clothing worn by those on trial, all of which pointed to the type of punishment they were going
to receive – so it really wasn’t a trial so much as it was a “final judgment”. If you wore
something called a Samarra, there were dragons, devils, and flames painted on your shirt. This
meant you were facing the horrible possibility of being used as kindle. If you wore something
called the Fuego Revolto, you had downward-facing flames painted on your shirt, which meant you
were mercifully spared the painful demise by flame and instead being asphyxiated. Finally,
if you had a red cross painted across your shirt, you were wearing a garment called the Sambenito.
This meant you only had to do penance and wouldn’t meet the grisly fate of the other two. Eventually,
the Portuguese felt they had either converted or eliminated most of the threats to Catholicism
within their own borders and moved out to their colonies. Similar inquisitions began in Brazil,
and in particular in Goa, a colony in India valued for its connection to the blossoming spice trade
between Europe and Asia. In Goa, Hindus and Muslims were converted by the thousands.
Their worship was considered idolatry, and the Portuguese effort to impose Catholicism in the
region persisted until 1812. The Catholicization of Goa meant that by the end of the 17th century,
less than 20,000 people out of a population of 250,000 in Goa had held on to their Hindu or
Muslim roots. There’s actually a whole lot that we don’t know about the Portuguese Inquisition.
Lots of what went on either went on in secret, without many documents being kept,
or were destroyed by later administrations to cover up what went on. And it didn’t help
when Portugal fell into the hands of dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar from 1932 to 1968.
Salazar reportedly made sure to suppress any inkling of Portuguese maleficence.
Inquisitions of other religions existed before even the Spanish Inquisition officially started.
Jewish people living in Europe between the 13th and 16th centuries faced all kinds of persecution.
In 1290, King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, forcing the entire Jewish population
out of England because of its religion being Christianity. The Edict would remain in effect
for the next 350 years. Those who came to Spain faced more persecution, especially after the
Bubonic Plague hit the Iberian Peninsula in 1348. Many Catholics blamed the plague on the Devil,
and saw it as a sign that Spain needed to be purged of any anti-Catholicism influence.
Naturally, Jewish people were scapegoated and more intensely persecuted in the plague’s aftermath.
Part of this persecution involved forced conversions starting in the second half of
the 14th century. Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism were called conversos. However,
many of them didn’t really convert. Instead, they just said they had accepted Jesus while continuing
to practice their Jewish faith behind closed doors. These people were known as Crypto-Jews,
and the officials running the inquisition were highly suspicious of them. What’s more,
once conversos had pledged their allegiance to Catholicism, they were able to participate more in
the social and political spaces that were normally reserved for “original” Catholics. This created
resentment among anti-Semitic groups within Spain and Portugal. Eventually, a series of pogroms
erupted across Spain in 1391. Also known as the Butchering of 1391, the wave of anti-semitism lead
to widespread violence against Jews in different cities across Spain. Many were forced to convert,
others were disposed of. Before 1391, Spain had one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe.
Afterwards, it’s estimated that a third of that population had either left or been finished off.
And it kept getting worse. 100 years later, in 1492, 200,000 Jews were expelled from
Spain. Many of them fled to Portugal, where they were again either forced to convert,
punished, killed , or exiled. Those that fled to the Americas were again persecuted. The
Inquisition seemed to follow them wherever they went. Similar fates awaited Muslims during the
Inquisition. Muslims living under Catholic rule were called Mudejars, and those who had converted
to Catholicism were known as Moriscos. Like the Conversos, many Moriscos didn’t really “convert”
to Catholicism, but instead continued practicing their Muslim faith in secret as “crypto-Muslims”.
During the 1500s, Muslims faced increasing levels of persecution in Spain. In 1567,
King Philip issued a decree that banned all kinds of Morisco identity, including certain types of
dress, literature, and cultural practices. They even had to leave their doors open on Fridays,
the Muslim equivalent to Catholic Sundays, and get rid of their Moorish names. By the early 1600s,
some 300,000 Moriscos were expelled from Spain, many finding refuge in Northern Africa.
And let’s not forget about the rest of Europe. Various inquisitions were carried out over the
course of the 16th and 17th centuries across the continent, particularly in Rome. The Roman
inquisition began in 1542, and was the one inquisition explicitly condoned by the Pope.
In 1588, Pope Sixtus V – apparently liked counting backwards – created the Immensa Aeterni Dei,
a constitution, or papal bull, that reorganized the Catholic church. Part of that reorganization
involved the creation of a department called the Supreme Congregation of the Roman and Universal
Inquisition. The name was long, but the goal was shortstop heresy wherever it may be. The
department went on to persecute some of the most groundbreaking scientists in human history,
including the likes of Galileo and Copernicus. What’s more, the Roman inquisition has never
technically ended. The Supreme Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition was
rebranded several times, and still exists now as the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. While
the department no longer tries people for heresy, it does make decisions about Catholic doctrine.
One of the main causes of the Spanish Inquisition was the fact that the Iberian Peninsula was very
diverse back in the Middle Ages. After the fall of the Roman Empire, what’s now Spain and Portugal
and parts of France were ruled by the Visigoths, who migrated from the Balkans. The Umayyad
Caliphate, a vast empire stretching from the Arabian Peninsula and across North Africa,
conquered the Visigoths in 711, establishing Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula. To Europeans,
they would become known as the Moors. While most of Europe floundered during the so-called “Dark
Ages”, Al-Andalus became a cultural hub and a center of learning. Science flourished. Advances
were made in astronomy, medicine, mathematics, and many other fields, and Al-Andalus became a
conduit for the flow of information between the Catholic and Islamic worlds. Catholics,
Muslims, and Jews would coexist peacefully in Al-Andalus for the next few centuries.
However, the ruling Muslims did force Catholics and Jews to pay a special tax called the jizya in
order for them to keep practicing their faiths in peace. This, of course, created resentment
that would eventually boil over as Catholic populations began chipping away at Al-Andalus.
By 1236, most of the Iberian Peninsula had been conquered by the Catholics from the north.
The advancements made during the time of Al-Andalus helped give rise to the mighty
Spanish Empire in the 1500s. Their naval prowess helped them conquer and pillage the Americas.
As they colonized Mexico and South America, the inquisition spilled over into those regions, too.
In 1570, the Mexican Inquisition began after the son of infamous conquistador Hernan Cortez
was caught plotting to make the Mexican colony independent from Spain. In 1736, the Palace of the
Inquisition was built in modern-day Mexico City. The Palace was complete with rooms for trials,
punishment chambers, jail cells, and accommodation for members of the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
The Palace was used until the official end of the inquisition in 1821, after Mexico gained
its independence from Spain. Another Place of the Inquisition was also built in Colombia in 1770 and
was used in the same fashion. Interestingly, the New World inquisitions rarely targeted indigenous
populations. While there were plenty of other ways European colonists abused indigenous Americans,
the Holy Office of the Inquisition wasn’t particularly interested in trying them for heresy.
Instead, they went after many of the Jews who had fled the inquisition from Europe,
as well as slaves who had been brought over from Africa. Women in particular were accused and tried
for sorcery and witchcraft throughout the nearly 250-year history of the New World inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition lasted a long, long time. Its official timespan is nearly 400 years, from
1478 to 1834. There are records of some 67,000 trials that still exist, but there were surely
more that we don’t have any record of. It’s been statistically proven that places in Spain where
there were more Inquisitorial trials – and thus more persecution – have lower GDPs. These areas
also have lower levels of education and report less trust among people. The takeaway? The more
persecution there is, the less trust there is, the less education there is, the less income there is.
Do you have any more weird facts to share about the Spanish Inquisition? Share them with us in the
comments, and do share and like the video. Thanks for watching yet another Nutty History video.