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The Spanish Inquisition: Difference between revisions
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[[File:TheSpanishInquisition_8076.jpg|frame|Bet he didn't expect that.]]
{{quote|''"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"''|'''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'''}}
'''The Spanish Inquisition''' was a branch of the Castilian Church founded by Queen Isabella in 1478. It was later given jurisdiction over Aragon and Navarra as well and eventually the unified Kingdom of Spain. It was disbanded in 1834.
The Inquisition was founded by Isabella of Castile to stamp out [[Heresy]] and enforce religious orthodoxy amongst her subjects, particularly in Granada - the not-quite-complete conquest and subjugation of which was used as something of a rallying point which she used to smooth over the cracks caused by the somewhat-unexpected union of the Spanish Kingdoms brought about by her marriage to Ferdinand, King of Aragon. Who we'll mention in passing just long enough to make it clear who wore the pants, though he did come in handy at times and by all accounts was a decent husband who could be trusted to get things done. Ferdinand and Isabella are still Spain's most popular monarchs.
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Granada was the last remnant of the muslim kingdom of Al-Andalus which had once spanned very nearly the entire Iberian peninsula. With its conquest the ''Reconquista'', the reclamation of Spain for Christianity, was complete. Shortly afterwards, the Muslim population of Spain was given a choice: convert to Christianity, or leave for North Africa. Many tens of thousands left, or were forcibly evicted. The Jewish population was later given the same choice. Isabella thought that it was only fair that those subjects who had effectively agreed to be loyal, Christian subjects would take a generation or so to learn the new ways. After that, the Inquisition could be used to educate the ethnically Moorish population about Catholic orthodoxy if need be. Until then, the Inquisition got started handling its standard fare of cases, the bread and butter it would chew on for the next three hundred years. That is to say, the Inquisition would tour around the cities and larger towns and address the issues that were generally the reserve of Ordinaries (church courts) everywhere - blasphemy, immorality, sexual immorality and religious ignorance generally, and ignorance, illiteracy, corruption and (sexual) immorality amongst the clergy.
By the end of the grace period, a significant minority of Moorish and Jewish subjects were Christian in name only, using 'conversion' as an excuse to stay on in Spain. The degree to which this minority bothered to maintain this illusion varied, but in some areas of central Granada Church attendance could be measured by the dozens per annum, and ignorance of the basic tenets of Catholicism was rife. The Inquisition more or less gave up on ever addressing the huge numbers of Moorish and Jewish people living in the villages and hamlets of Granada and under the protection of Estate Lords who used them as cheap labour in Aragon. Lobbying instead for a further expulsion, they eventually got it a century on from the first expulsion and there was a second expulsion of all Moors from Granada. Most of those expelled went on to become urban poor in Spain's towns and cities, though those that could afford it generally went back to Moorish Africa. There was a third and final expulsion of all Moorish subjects from Spain after this, when it became clear that the Moorish minorities were not being assimilated and were in fact causing trouble in the locales they had migrated to.
The Inquisition exclusively focused on people in urban centres, particularly people of prominence or importance - a strategy of limited resources more than anything else. The Inquisition was to some extent used as a political weapon by the Crown, which had few other means of dealing with its political enemies amongst the Clergy and the Civic Authorities, who administered over two-thirds of the urban population of Spain virtually independently from the Crown. To this end, cultural hang-overs like daily bathing (a Moorish custom) or not eating pork were (infamously) used as the basis for accusations of false conversion. In the same manner, the possession of certain texts - a list of banned books was eventually drawn up to this end - was used to support accusations of heresy, protestantism, anti-monarchism &c. This had the effect of getting many relatively harmless intellectuals into trouble, but the Inquisition's role in preventing the outbreak of Protestantism in Spain has been called assessed as everything from marginal but useful to critical and essential.
Most of these people brought up on charges of heresy, heretical ideas, dangerous ideas &c were asked to recant their sins and accept religious re-education. The afterlife and one's place in it almost always being prized over the temporal one, this was big stuff, though just why exactly it was so may yet elude some people today given the general attitude of complacency to religion today - Atheism still being a heresy that had to be addressed for the sake of the adherents' souls, thought it was a very uncommon charge.
The Inquisition witnessed very few [[Witch Hunt|witch trials]]; this is not just because they dealt only a small proportion of the peninsula's (minority) urban population at intervals of decades or more - some towns for which there exist records were not visited more than a few times during the entire period of the Inquisition's existence. This ended in latter 16th Century, when the Inquisition ruled that so-called witchcraft did not exist. The Inquisition deemed all self-identified 'witches' insane and denounced the backwardness and unorthodoxy of witch-hunters - the Inquisition was not so much interested in enforcing 'old' Catholicism as it was in promoting the 'new' Catholicism of the Catholic Reformation or Counter-Reformation.
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Unfortunately, this did not stop civic authorities - who had their own court systems independent of the Church and the Crown - and groups of angry villagers from rounding 'witches' and hanging them anyway. Said authorities and mobs did not, sadly, keep records, so the actual number of Spanish people killed as witches remains unknown. That said, it is generally assumed to be lower than that in, say, France.
A common misconception is that the Spanish Inquisition was deployed overseas - it was not. There are contemporary, sensationalist, rumours of the Spanish Inquisition burning people left right and centre in the Netherlands during the course of the Reformation and Eighty Years' war. This was however the work of the Dutch Inquisition in the Spanish Netherlands, who were again in many cases using heresy as an excuse to deal with Dutch Nationalists and other politically troublesome individuals.
Some points about the actual Spanish Inquisition:
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=== The Spanish Inquisition in fiction: ===
* The classic film ''[[Man of La Mancha]]'' is the story of [[Don Quixote]] as told by Miguel de Cervantes to a group of inmates while qhe awaits trial by the Inquisition. An underplayed but important arch involves Miguel building up his courage to face the Inquisition, running parallel to Quixote's seeming fearlessness.
* One episode of ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'' has a [[Running Gag]] where a frustrated character would grumble, "I didn't expect some kind of/this kind of/the Spanish Inquisition!" After a "jarring chord," several anachronistic Spanish Inquisitors would burst in and seize control of the skit.
* A ''[[Batman]]'' episode actually plays a version of the famous [[Monty Python]] sketch completely straight.
* ''Candide''
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* The [[Edgar Allan Poe]] story ''The Pit and the Pendulum''
* Spoofed in a musical number in [[Mel Brooks]]' ''[[History of the World Part One|History of the World, Part I]]''.
* Also mentioned in ''[[Good Omens]]'', which has the Them playing at being the Spanish Inquisition. We also learn that Hell congratulated Crowley for the Inquisition, despite him having no involvement whatsoever in bringing it about. When he went to see what all the fuss was about, he stayed drunk for a week. [[Even Evil Has Standards]].
* Kage Baker's novel ''[[The Company Novels|In the Garden of Iden]]'' has its immortal cyborg protagonist, Mendoza, rescued as a child from the Spanish Inquisition. She is not above using this to try to squeeze sympathy and better job postings from her superiors.
* Depicted as a cancer on an idealized body politic in ''[[The Fountain]]'' by [[Darren Aronofsky]]. Then we realize it was {{spoiler|[[All Just a Dream|All Just a Story in the head of a dying astronaut who has attained enlightenment.]]}}
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:The Spanish Inquisition]]
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