Links


History of the Atlantic World Podcast Patreon  https://www.patreon.com/AtlanticWorld

Deep Into History Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deep-into-history/id1440486315

History Required Discord Server https://discord.gg/a4gqnuG

A Difficult Truth news show  https://www.twitch.tv/adifficulttruth

Henry Charles Lea is a boring writer here is the proof https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kArOfpx-mAA&t=2s


Bibliography

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Inquisition-1478-1614-Anthology-Sources/dp/0872207943

https://www.amazon.com/Spanish-Inquisition-Historical-Revision/dp/0300078803

https://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-Passages-Moriscos-Colonial-Americas/dp/0812248244/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1AEDR762OPFZ2&dchild=1&keywords=forbidden+passages+muslims+and+moriscos&qid=1593139718&s=books&sprefix=forbidden+passages%2Cstripbooks%2C182&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Atlantic-Diasporas-Conversos-Crypto-Jews-Mercantilism/dp/0801890349/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=atlantic+diasporas&qid=1593139774&s=books&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Early-Modern-Spain-Documentary-History/dp/0812218450/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=early+modern+spain+cowans&qid=1593139811&s=books&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Pirates-Caribbean-Swashbuckling-Freedom/dp/0767919521/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=jewish+pirates&qid=1593139827&s=books&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Other-1492-Jewish-Settlement-World/dp/0595152791/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+other+1492&qid=1593139847&s=books&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/Bernard-Lewis/dp/0195102835/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=cultures+in+conflict&qid=1593139873&s=books&sr=1-4

https://www.amazon.com/History-Inquisition-Spain-Henry-Charles/dp/1345685807/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=lea+the+inquisition&qid=1593139898&s=books&sr=1-3

https://www.amazon.com/History-Inquisition-Middle-Ages-Complete-ebook/dp/B0082P1ZA4/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lea+the+inquisition&qid=1593139926&s=books&sr=1-1

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the History of the Atlantic World Podcast, a member of the Big Heads Media Network.  This is part five of Conquest of the Americas.  I am your caffeinated host Jesse Wuest, thank you for listening.  Now, as you know Big Heads Media is sort of like a Netflix of Podcasts because what they do is sift through the great sandbox of the Internet to find the best podcasts and collect them for people who enjoy listening to them like you and me.  Needless to say that means we are part of an in awesome line-up of history podcasts.   One of them is Deep Into History which is an absolutely fantastic show:

I also want to tell y’all about a discord server that I’m involved with.  Discord is basically a pretty cool social media platform if you’re not aware and one group I’m a member of is called History Required.  History Required is a community of well, obviously history nerds like me, and they have really neat discussion points like Questions of the Day.  Anyway, I put a link to the community in the shownotes and so please check them out. And hey, you can find me there! WOW.

In addition, I also put a link up for a really cool political talk show that I’d like to promote on Twitch.TV.  Now I just recently learned about Twitch.tv myself but it’s basically a live Youtube.  Anyway, the show I like on Twitch.TV is called A Difficult Truth, which is basically a progressive talk show hosted by a dude who does news and politics and tries to bring the important issues to the front.  It airs 4 times a week, Monday-Thursday, What more can you ask for?  I put a link up for the show in the shownotes.

Alright folks thanks for supporting the people who support this show.  Awesome, now if you want to support the show directly -  First, please take a moment to share, subscribe, rate, and review the podcast and if possible, head on over to Patreon.com/AtlanticWorld and become a Patron of the show – by doing so you’ll be helping me to get research materials faster and that means you get quality episodes faster in return.  You can do so for as little as one dollar per month – a pittance in exchange for some great history.  In addition, you’ll get to listen an audio form of a new project I’m working on called The Man Who Killed George Washington, which I ultimately hope to publish as a graphic novel.  I’m uploading a preview for The Man Who Killed George Washington soon so you can check that out and see if you want to hear more.  At any rate, please check out the show notes for links to all of this great stuff and in addition I’ve also got the bibliography for this episode listed there if you want to read and learn more.

One might sum up the conquest of the Americas basically as an extension of the crusades and especially of the Reconquista of Spain and Portugal.  These nations were reconquered by Christian warriors slowly and hundreds of years after the start of the Reconquista, the final Muslim kingdom Grenada capitulated to Spain.  In that same year, 1492 – Christopher Columbus discovered the New World in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, the most Catholic King and Queen of this most Catholic realm.   Now, last episode we learned that the conquest of the Americas wasn’t completely one-sided – while no American armies sailed to Europe to sack coastal villages – American ideas – and specifically, Brazilian ideas - certainly did cross the Atlantic and one might say infected Europe with ideas about freedom that much of the continent had not experienced since before the days of Rome.   In the fifth installment of Conquest of the Americas we similarly discuss movements across the Atlantic which aren’t so easy to detect.  

So while it might seem odd that the focus of this episode is about the Spanish Inquisition, by the time we’re through you’re going to have a great understanding of exactly why the Spanish Inquisition is SO important to the history of the Atlantic World.  So even if you are a Monty Python fan, I think you’ll find this episode to be full of surprises.  Now, if you’re jonesing for a return to a more….shall we say…traditional episode about conquest – you won’t be waiting long because our next episode is going to be all about Cortes and Montezuma.  And if you are jonesing for that sort of thing – well let me tell you I’m a little bit chomping at the bit to get to that too –but we really have come to the  point in our story where I can’t hold off on this topic any longer  -  so, first things first…before we get any further into the Conquest of the Americas…I have a confession to make.

                In Roman law, there were three forms of legal action in criminal cases.  Accusatio – denunciatio and inquisitio.  I have no idea how to pronounce Latin so I hope that’s right.  In accusatio, an accuser accused someone of something, as you might imagine.  Denunciatio involved a public official asking a court to take action, and inquisititio, or investigation, involved the imprisonment of someone for interrogation in an attempt to secure a confession.  By the third century, inquisitio was used in Rome as a trial for a public crime where a magistrate, who sent out agents to search for evidence.  The magistrate sought to find “complete proof”, which might come via a confession or from two eyewitnesses who agreed on the details of the same event.  Inquisitio was used to root out the truth of all manner of crimes in ancient Rome but what concerns our story is one crime in particular - the crime of heresy.  Some of the earliest heretics punished under Roman law were the early Christians by pagan Roman officials.  Septimius Severus made the inquisitio of Christians a prominent feature of his public policy in 202 AD.  As time passed, Roman magistrates who practiced inquisitio gradually obtained more control over Rome’s legal system.  Rome’s emperors simultaneously expanded the list of public crimes – and their favorite to charge people with was treason.  The Romans also began torturing people to get confessions – just slaves at first.  But the use of torture became widespread such that by the time Rome converted to Christianity - both free citizens and slaves could both be tortured in case of treason.  Additionally, when Rome converted to Christianity, inquisitio was expanded again so that it applied to opponents of orthodox Christian beliefs and pagans.  Heretic comes from the Greek word haeresis – meaning choice or thing chosen.  In the “Latin West”, heresy came to be known as a theological error.  The word didn’t mean doubt – it was the formal, public denial of an aspect of orthodox Christian theology.  At any rate, the Roman conversion to Christianity meant that enemies of Christianity became enemies of the state across large swaths of Europe.  

Even as the Western Roman Empire fell apart, Roman law continued in Europe with the help of the Church.  For example, Charlemagne ordered his bishops to be diligent in investigating offenses in their dioceses.  Until the formation of the medieval inquisition however, punishment for heretics was tame by comparison.  Excommunication was the most severe punishment meted out to heretics in the 10th and 11th centuries.  Henry Charles Lea was an historian of the early 20th century and wrote what is still basically the bible of the medieval inquisition and while he is kind of a boring writer if you ask me, his work is highly informative.  At any rate, Lea stated that by the 12th century “the church thus possessed an organization well adapted for the discovery and investigation of heretics.”  At that same time, Roman law was finding a revival in Western Europe as both Church and kings sought ways to consolidate power and discovered Roman law was just what the despot ordered.

                The Catholic Church grew in power through the middle ages, and heresy grew alongside the church.  This might even sound counter-intuitive – because the Church had control over souls, minds, and actions of Christians – and so if the church was growing – well – how did heretical thought?  Well, having control over souls, minds, and actions is quite a bit of power – and as they say – power corrupts.  Numerous high ranking church officials in the middle ages were married – some had mistresses – many had numerous mistresses – many Episcopal offices were sold to priests of wealthy families rather than doled out to the pious priests who might deserve such honor.  The common people were burdened with tithes that added onto extensive taxes paid to the nobility – indulgences were for sale – that’s what pissed off Martin Luther later – and to add on to all of this - whenever clerics got in legal trouble they claimed clerical immunity – and sometimes this was for the same sort of thing that they get in trouble for nowadays.  What Henry Charles Lea calls “sexual disorders among sections of the clergy” or what you might call child rape.  Add all this up – and you’ve got “fertile soil for the growth of…heresy.”  

                So the medieval inquisition arose to power as a counter-reaction to the people who were disillusioned by the church’s excesses.   Incidentally, the church also realized that merely performing an inquisition didn’t always result in a confession.  What if the person you tried interviewing was really smart and they outsmarted you.  No seriously.  Or what if the person you’re interviewing for a confession really, really knew the Bible well.  How would you ever find out how if they were truly heretical and not just pretending to be to be faithful?  Well, that was a problem in the minds of the inquisitors.   Lea tells us “the inquisitor was frequently baffled by the innocence or astuteness of the accused.”  So how to fix that.  Well, the first modification to the inquisition to combat this was that trials were extended.  The records of the medieval inquisition show us that trials often lasted between 3 and 10 years.  So, imagine sitting in a jail cell for 5 or 10 years, being interrogated every few weeks and meanwhile your family may be starving without your help.  Well, this length of time for imprisonment led to a greater rate of confessions.  And 10 years just so you know, is not the longest inquisition trials we have records for.  The Frenchman Guillm Garric is the unfortunate man to hold that record - he stood trial for heresy for nearly 30 years before confessing.  

                Lengthening the accused’s stay in prison wasn’t the only way inquisitor’s might induce confession.  The conditions of inquisitorial jails were actually usually better than secular prisons, but in order to obtain confession an inquisitor might rob a prisoner of his or her bed – or start feeding them insufficient food.  But beyond that – the inquisition began to torture in the mid 13th century after the murder of an inquisitor now known to history as St. Peter Martyr.   The assassins in fact, were tried not for murder but for heresy – which is also an indication of the growth of the power of the inquisition as an instrument of law throughout parts of Europe.

                The Church also resorted to physical torture in order to induce confessions.  Now, technically, torture wasn’t really part of traditional European culture except for the Romans, who practiced torture on a pretty regular basis, but according to Lea “the barbarians who founded the commonwealths of Europe, and their system of jurisprudence had grown up free from its contamination.”  In the 13th century, Europe was reintroduced to many ancient texts of Roman and Greek origin and as they began studying Roman Law.  European rulers learned about Roman concepts of justice such as why  Roman emperor’s found torture a practical tool and in turn began to practice torture on their own subjects.  So too, did the inquisition and the church, who saw torture as an effective means of gathering confessions, “just as thieves and robbers are forced to confess their crimes and accuse their accomplices.”  

                Now, of course we aren’t really here to talk about the Medieval Inquisition though.  I bring that up as background for what we are going to talk about – the Spanish Inquisition – because while it is certainly true that Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition…it did not simply arise out of thin air and the only main difference in how the Spanish Inquisition functioned as opposed to the Medieval Inquisition is that the Inquisition of the Middle Ages was an agency controlled by the Papacy.  In some ways, the Spanish Inquisition was not particularly Spanish and the only way it differed from the medieval inquisition was that the Spanish Inquisition was controlled by the Spanish crown instead of the papacy.  

                Now, Henry Charles Lea is an excellent guide for this – as he wrote an awesome tomb on the Spanish Inquisition and another on the Medieval Inquisiton but I found his writing so boring that I couldn’t get through his Spanish Inquisition even when I tried listening to it on Youtube.  No seriously, you try it and tell me I’m wrong, I’ll put links in the shownotes.  Luckily, there are other great historians who have written about how the Inquisition functioned – chief amongst them, in my humble opinion, are Lu Ann Homza and Henry Kamen– Lu Ann Homza is the editor and translator of “The Spanish Inquisition an Anthology of Sources” and Henry Kamen is the author of The Spanish Inquisition.  Both are excellent historians who help not only make the Inquisition interesting, but they revise Lea’s work, which was published over 100 years ago.

                By the 13th century the Inquisition took a pretty standard form and the Spanish Inquisition copied this.  Tribunals consisted of two inquisitors, an alguacil or bailiff, a fiscal or prosecutor, and two calificadors or qualifiers – who were trained theologians and acted as part of the jury.  So, just right off the bat, to give you an idea of the sort of justice meted out by the Inqusition, the jury consisted of five members – the two califacadors, who were paid by the Inquisition by the way, the two Inquisitors, and then one member of the local clergy – literally 4/5ths of the jury was not comprised of the accused’s peers.  The prosecutor or fiscal by the way, was not only in charge of interrogating witnesses – they were in charge of the physical and mental torture that went along with Inquisitorial trials. The alguacil or bailiff was personally responsible for jailing the defendant of course, and of actually committing the torture as ordered by the fiscal.   In addition to these individuals, Inquisitorial courts employed 3 secretaries who recorded court proceedings and testimony of both accuser and accused.  

Beyond that – the Inquisitors also hired other auxiliaries called familiars – considered an honor for those chosen for this role, and a high proportion of familiars were people with noble titles.  One of their chief duties was to arrest those accused of heresy.  But with that said, the familiar was also a collaborator and spy and not really someone who truly deserves a lot of respect in my opinion.  The familiar was the lay servant of the Holy Office, charged with being ready at all times to perform duties in the service of the tribunal.  In return, the familiar was allowed to bear arms to protect inquisitors, and enjoyed a number of other privileges in common with other public officials.  Familiars are probably most notorious for their role as acting as informers – with that said most denunciations were made by ordinary Spaniards – not by familiars or other Inquisitorial officials.  Rather, personal conflicts between neighbors, acquaintances, or family members most often resulted in denunciation.  

Since trials involved the confiscation of property, Familiars had perhaps more room to steal and rob people than anyone in the whole system.  That’s because technically, the inquisitors themselves were at the mercy of both the inquisitor general and the king – mind you they normally didn’t really care that much unless an inquisitor was extremely corrupt – but the inquisitors were also technically employed by Rome and while they worked for the Spanish Crown, they could be fired by the Pope too and sometimes people did appeal to Rome for leniency when they thought they could prove that an individual inquisitor was being unfair.  Familiars though – were really only answerable to their inquisitors.  Though the familiar was himself a layman – any crime he committed was under the jurisdiction of inquisitorial justice not secular justice.  Well, this essentially meant that often familiars had free reign to do pretty much whatever they wanted.  King Phillip the II wrote a letter to the Inquisitor General in 1574 where he admitted “we all know that in the past there have been very great irregularities, and I can assure you that I saw it in Valencia with my own eyes.”  The Council of Aragon likewise complained as late as 1632 that familiars who committed crimes were sure to escape with impunity, relying as they did on the intervention of their protectors the inquisitors.  Of course, it probably didn’t help matters that the Inquisition attempted to recruit familiars from the highest social circles in Spain. Especially in port cities, familiars generally consisted of people from the nobility and the wealthiest merchant families in Spain – though in the rural, inland regions of Spain, it was far more likely to find peasants obtaining the job of familiar.  

A less infamous occupation than familiar was the comisario.  Comisarios helped the inquisitors with paperwork and religious aspects of the Holy Office.  They were mainly chosen from amongst the rural clergy of Spain – and while they aren’t nearly as interesting to talk about as the familiars, what with their carrying weapons and sometimes spying on people – the comisario was perhaps the more vital job.  Paperwork is pretty much that important – and boring – but also comisarios frequently passed on denunciations to regional inquisitors and without that essential help – the inquisition would have been unable to carry out their role except in the cities.  

                When the Inquisition strolled into town their first step was to initialize a law called the Edict of Grace.  Essentially, the inquisitors explained possible heresies and encouraged the local congregation to self incriminate themselves over possible heresies they committed in return for leniency.  The edict of grace lasted from 30 to 40 days, and those who presented themselves before the court under its edicts were offered the possibility of reconciliation with the Church without severe punishment.  So that sounds pretty nice huh? Well, after this period of time was over, those who had self-incriminated themselves were then questioned again – this time they were told to incriminate others guilty of the same heresies.  Those poor souls – in many cases friends, family, and neighbors – faced far harsher penalties.

                Generally speaking, heretics were convicted were convicted via 3 methods.  First, family members might provide evidence against the accused.  It appears in cases like these that personal quarrels were usually involved.  Second, someone might be condemned by the hearsay of neighbors – sometimes malicious neighbors – and many of these cases show people reaching back between 10 and 50 years to find incriminating evidence.  Third, if you ran from the inquisition you were automatically guilty – and you would be convicted and burnt in effigy.  

                When someone was denounced by another person, the calificadores determined whether or not heresy had occurred.   The defendant was immediately locked up and their property would be sequestered by the Inquisition and used to pay for procedural expenses – like paying the Inquistor’s salaries and buying food for the person imprisoned.  Yes, if you were in Inquisition Jail you paid for your own imprisonment.  Often the relatives of the defendant would find themselves begging on the streets as a result. 

                The trial consisted of a series of hearings.   The defendant recieved counsel as defense, though this was one of the inquisitors!  The defense counsel perhaps unsuprisingly advised the defendant to admit their guilt and thus “speak the truth”.   The defendant did not get to learn about who his accuser or accusers were, and whatever information he learned of his crimes from these denunciations were purposefully left very vague so that the defendant could not figure it out!  As such, the defendant would be left to a strategy of guessing what crimes he might have committed – sometimes this worked – other times the defendant ended up confessing to additional heresies.  

                The defense could call its own witnesses – these could hopefully demonstrate the defendant’s Christian virtue or perhaps attempt to cast doubt on whatever the specific accusations were.  Additionally, some defendant’s made lists of their enemies – and by naming individuals who were enemies the defense might be able to invalidate the prosecution’s witnesses.   Additionally, the defendant could attempt to recuse an inquisitor or prosecutor out of personal enmity and appeal the case to the Suprema – though in practice this only occurred with defendants who were well-off.   

Of course, the defendant might simply refuse to mount a defense at all and remain silent.  In this case, or if the defendant did not confess, then torture would be employed.  I don’t think it’s all that difficult for us to imagine torture being used as a punishment – the slave whipped by his master or the sailor whipped by his captain.  But the Inquisition used punishment as a means to elicit confessions – which in fact you may only understand if you have an older brother or sister.  Now, although this all seems crazy – there were rules for how the torture was conducted.  Torture was allowed in the Inquisition “when sufficient proofs to confirm the culpability of the accused have been gathered by other means, and every other method of negotiation…[tried and] exhausted.”   Confessions obtained through torture could not be used to convict or sentence anyone technically, and needed to be reaffirmed by a subsequent confession the next day.  The Inquisition got around this restriction by never technically ending a torture session, rather the sessions were “suspended.” As such, if a confession was elicited during torture, it needed to ratified on a subsequent day and so if the confession was revoked the prisoner was tortured again.  On the other hand, most historians believe it was far more likely that a prisoner would just see the instruments of torture and that itself would provoke a confession so in practice torture wasn’t always used.  

 

The Inquisition was prohibited to “maim, mutilate, draw blood, or cause any sort of permanent damage” since church law forbid the shedding of blood.  So inquisitors worked with a list of approved torture methods which included water boarding, the rack and and especially horrible torture of hanging by the limbs.  The Spanish called waterboarding “la toca” and it involved large quantities of water being poured down the defendant’s nose and mouth to simulate drowning.  I know most of my listeners in the United States at least will be quite familiar with waterboarding torture since it is apparently still a favorite weapon of torture by the CIA.  Anyway,  In Spanish, the rack was called el potro.  On el potro, he prisoner was laid out and then tied at the wrists and ankles spread eagle, bound with cords that were tightened on the rack.  Each turn of the rack twists the ropes which put increasing pressure on the joints of the prisoner.  The hanging torture was called la garrucha and was undisputedly the most feared torture utilized by the inquisition.  The prisoner had their wrists tied behind their back and then were hung by the wrists from behind and then pulled up into the air before being violently dropped.  Their fall would be stopped just a few feet from the ground in an intentional effort to dislocate shoulders.  Prisoners were warned that any injuries they suffered were their own fault and repeatedly were asked during the torture to confess.  

Now just in case you’re the kind of sociopath who thinks that all of this doesn’t sound all that bad – let me tell you there was also no age limit on the torture.  The inquisition records tell us about women between 70 and 90 years old being subjected to the potro – elderly people died on occasion from this bloodless torture.  In Valencia, a girl of 13 was subjected to torture.   Many of those who were subjected to torture were “left in a sorry state” according to Henry Kamen – suffering with limbs which were irreparably broken, and a few died under torture.  

The Spanish Inquisition kept meticulous records, and so before we move on from the topic of Inquisitorial torture I would like to present you what the Spanish Inquisition wrote down about the torture they conducted during the trial of Elvira del Campo, accused in 1567 for secretly practicing Judaism.  Elvira had been denounced to the Inquisition by two of her household employees, so we can make of her as an employer what we will – the employees told the Inquisitors that she would not eat pork.  Now Elvira was probably what we would call in 2020 a total Karen, but even with that in mind I’m certain she did not deserve what happened to her.  Elvira del Campo was pregnant went arrested, and what follows took place shortly after her baby was born.  

“She was carried to the torture chamber and told to tell the truth, when she said she had nothing to say she was ordered to be stripped and again admonished, but was silent.  When stripped she said “Señores, I have done all that is said of me, and I bear false witness against myself, for I do not want to see myself in such trouble; please God, I have done nothing.”   She was told not to bring false testimony against herself but to tell the truth.  The tying of the arms was commenced; she said. “I have told the truth, what have I to tell?”  One cord was applied to the arms and twisted and she was admonished to tell the truth.  She screamed and said “I have done all they say.”  

The inquisitors began questioning Elvira del Campo about what specifically she had done – she claimed to have not eaten pork for it made her sick, but she had done everything.  As per the rules of the Inquisition of course, she did not get to know her accusers names or what specific crimes she had committed.  She begged again and again for them to loosen her and she would tell them the truth.   The Inquisitorial scribes recorded that instead another turn was ordered.  

“Oh my arms, my arms!” she repeated many times…”O wretched me….I will tell you all that is wanted señores, they are breaking my arms, loosen me a little, I did everything that is said of me.”  Del Campo was again told to truly detail exactly what it was she did.  “I don’t know what I have to tell – don’t you see what a weak woman I am? Oh! Oh! My arms are breaking”  More turns were ordered and she cried “Oh Oh Oh my arms”  More turns were given and she continued to beg “release me, they are killing me….señor do you not see how these people are killing me? Señor I did it, for gods sake let me go” She said it many times “Señores Señores….they are tearing out my soul – order them to loosen me.”  

Finally she said “Señor I did it to observe that law.”  She was asked what law.  “The law that the witnesses say.  I declare it all Señor.  And don’t remember what law it was.”  She was asked repeatedly what law and she replied “If I knew what to say I would say it….Lord bear witness that they are killing me without my being able to confess.”  She was told that if she wished to tell the truth before the water was poured down her throat while her nostrils were plugged she should do so and discharge her conscience.  She said that she could not speak and that she was a sinner.”  

Elvira del Campo was then transferred from the potro to a table and the linen toca, where a funnel was stuck down her throat and a jar of water was poured down.  She clamored for confession saying she was dying.  Not long after, del Campo appears to lose consciousness.   She was told that the torture would be continued....but was recorded as remaining silent through additional questioning and waterboarding, and the scribe writes in conclusion that the Inquisitors, “seeing her exhausted by the torture, ordered it to be suspended.” 

Prisoners of the Inquisition were always presumed guilty – and almost never acquitted outright.  If found guilty and a confession was elicited, the suspect was then “reconciled.”  If the crime was for a lesser heresy than instead they were “penanced”.  Penanced crimes like blasphemy or bigamy were lighter crimes but the prisoner was required to pay fines to cover the cost of the trial.  This was of the same for reconciled heretics – who might have been imprisoned for years and so many “reconciled” people ended up bankrupt with all their property confiscated to pay for the trial against them.  In addition, if either a reconciled or a penanced heretic was ever found guilty again they were subject to the ultimate punishment – death by burning at the stake.  This was called “relaxation to the secular arm” because priests can’t kill people of course and so the Inquisition instead handed over such condemned persons to secular authorities for execution.  If someone confessed en route to the execution they would be politely strangled and burned after they were killed.  If not, they would be burned alive in excruciating agony.  

There was no formal Inquisitorial trial afterwards – not in the same way that you are probably imagining -  one process that takes place in one room from day to day, from start to finish, like a modern trial.  Instead it was held as a series of audiences in a courtroom setting where both prosecution and defense submitted their arguments, and a series of interrogations carried out by inquisitors in the presence of the notary in a jail or dungeon or torture chamber type setting.  After the case was made and concluded, it was voted on by a body called a consulta de fe – which included the two inquisitors – so the two prosecutors get to vote – the two califacadors also voted – and who were generally less biased against the defendant than the prosecutors, but still as I said, were professional jurists paid by the inquisition  – these four were joined by one representative of the local bishop whose archdiocese the trial took place.  These five officials, four of whom were employed by the Inquisition and two of whom literally just finished presenting the case against the defendant, then voted on the guilt or innocence of the accused.  Very few people were innocent, generally, one was either a little bit guilty and “penanced” and deserved to be shame-walked at the auto-de-fe while wearing a sanbenito or they were very guilty and “reconciled” and about to receive a far worse fate.  

The defense was not allowed to cross examine any witnesses and besides drawing up the articles of defense was allowed to make no arguments.  The defense counsel, like most of the jury, was also an employee of the Inquisition.  Thus, the Inquisitors were judge and jury, both prosecution and defense, and in the words of Henry Kamen “the prisoner’s fate depended entirely on the mood and character of the inquisitors.”

The most common form of punishment for prisoners of the Inquisition was their forced participation in what is called the Auto-de-fe – translated literally as act of faith.  Similar to the famous Game of Thrones scene, convicted heretics were shamed through town, walking barefoot and wearing a special yellow tunic with a giant cross on it so everyone in town could tell just what terrible heretics they were.  The yellow smock had a red cross and was called a sanbenito – which would then be hung for a specific length of time in public in parish churches so that the whole community knew to shame the person – who’s name would be written on the sanbenito as well.   Autos de fe were popular events and everyone came to watch as sentences were called out publicly.  Some defendants wore knotted ropes with the number of knots signifing the number of lashes they would get for their crimes.  Others were sentenced to perpetual prison in monasteries and convents.  Lesser penalties included the sponsorship and attendance of a certain number of masses and monetary fines.  

Flogging was also a common punishment, though Christian tradition dictated it could only be used against those of low social status.  The accused was usually “whipped through the streets” after being stripped to the waist if male, and flogged as they marched through the town, often mounted on an ass for greater shame.  Often passers-by and children hurled stones at the accused, and there was no age limit on subjecting both men and women to flogging – girls in their teens and women in their 80s were recorded as being flogged.  Generally, 200 lashes was the maximum, and sentences of 100 lashes were very common.  

The worst punishment, other than being straight up executed, was enslavement in the king’s galley fleet – generally a death sentence as well.  Sentenced to galley life was a new addition to the Spanish Inquisition – an idea of Ferdinand’s who found a cheap source of labor for his extensive navies.  Foreign protestants and Moriscos were the prisoners most frequently subjected to the punishment of becoming a galley slave, and about 50 men a year were sent to the galleys as punishment by the second half of the 16th century.  

Most of the accused were sentenced to more than one punishment at the same time.  Alonso Ribero was given 4 years banishment from Granada, six years in the galleys, and 100 strokes of the lash for falsifying documents.  Francisco de Alarcon received five years banishment, five more years in the galleys, 200 lashes, and a monetary fine for blasphemy.  In addition, sometimes the heirs of convicted heretics were declared “infamous” a legal category in Spain that prevented the descendants from holding public office, carrying arms, riding horses, or entering clerical orders.  

My copy of Early Modern Spain: A Documentary History has a great contemporary description of an auto-de-fe that occurred in the city of Seville in 1559, translated from Spanish by Hans J. Hillerbrand,

“On the Square of San Fernando two large platforms were erected – one for the Inquisitors and the cathedral chapter, the supreme tribunal and the monks of San Francisco.  The other platform was for the penitents, the clergy and monks of other orders.  An altar was erected here for the…licentiate Juan Gonzalez.  On one side of the square another large platform was erected for the town...the dutchess of Bejar, other marquises, and eminent gentlemen.  Many noble ladies were found here….All around the square were numerous scaffolds upon which stood a great throng of people.  It was said that some people who came to see the auto had arrived three days early.  The crowd of people was so huge that it was impossible to find lodging in the city….Between two and three hundred men, equipped with lances, well-dressed and decorated, were selected to accompany the penitents.  They were a pleasure to behold.  They marched orderly with drums and flags to the castle, where they received the penitents with whom they then walked to the square.  About 4 o’clock in the morning fifty priests arrived with the Cross of Saint Ann and went to the castle, where forty monks of all orders had gathered.  Together they accompanied the penitents…eighty penitents with habit and candles, twenty-one persons condemned to fire with a statue of Francisco de Cafra (who had escaped).  Then came the magistrates with their marshal, then the cathedral chapter with the sextons in front.  Finally came the Inquisitors with their banner....Don Juan Ponce de Leon was turned over to them so that his confession could be heard and he brought back to the Catholic faith.  He was a damned Lutheran, who despite two years in prison, had not given up his Lutheran errors.  The rector heard his confession…This Don Juan was sentenced to die at the stake…he died with many tears of remorse over his sins.”

It’s hard to say which is more insidious, the fact that people were tortured and killed for thought crimes or the fact that every sentence involved the confiscation of the heretic’s property.  At the moment of arrest, the suspect’s possessions were inventoried and sequestered and from this the trial proceeded.  In fact, you might be surprised to learn that the Inquisition didn’t really have much funding – confiscation of property was “far and away the most important source” of revenue, a process called sequestration - and was the standard punishment for heresy in both medieval and Spanish Inquisitions.    Property of arrested individuals was immediately “sequestrated” by officials and was much dreaded by Spaniards.  Sequestered property was then used to pay for jailing the accused, and if the accused were in jail long enough this meant that his or her dependents would be driven into poverty.  As such, the sequestration of property could literally amount to confiscation even if the person was acquitted.

Since acquittal meant admitting an error, acquittals were very rare – though in fairness, the medieval inquisition never acquitted anyone so the fact that the accused in Spain were rarely acquitted was an improvement in justice from the medieval to Spanish Inquisitions.  Kamen provides us with statistics for the tribunal of Valencia from 1566-1609 to give us an idea of what happened to the accused.  He took a look at 3075 trials during that period.  44.2 percent were penanced, 40,2 percent reconciled, 2.5 percent absolved, 9 percent suspended, 2.1 percent burned in effigy, 2 percent burnt in person.   Suspension of the trial sounds decent, and if we include the percentage of trials that ended in suspension to the percentage of trials which ended in acquittal we find that 11.5% of accused suspects were not punished beyond the sequestration of property to used to pay for the trial.  But with that said, suspension was still very much feared because it meant that the trial could at any time and for any reason be resumed – and if that ever happened, one might usually expect a very severe punishment – and the reality is that there are numerous records of individuals who were punished by the inquisition multiple times in their lives – sometimes with trials that took place decades apart.  At any rate, since prisoners had their goods confiscated at the beginning of the trial, they often faced a life of beggary upon obtaining freedom.  

Anyway, the outcome of being penanced was the least of the punishments imposed and came in two flavors, de levi or a lesser penance and de vehementi or a grave penance.  Penitents swore to avoid sin in the future – and if they ever relapsed after this light penalty they were subject to very severe punishments afterwards.  They were then condemned to wear the sanbenito for a specific period of time and often to pay a fine.  Those convicted of grave offenses were in addition, subjected to the punishment of banishment from Spain and sometimes work on the galleys.

The accused who were reconciled, which in theory was the return of a sinner into the bosom of the Church, received the most severe penalties.  In addition to the sanbenito and very heavy fines, accused persons might be condemned to flogging or to long spells in prison or on the galleys.  Anyone accused of backsliding into heresy after being reconciled was sent to the stake to be burnt.  The first inquisitor-general of the Spanish Inquisition made a list of heresies which reconciled heretics had to avoid or else they could be burnt at the stake as a relapsed heretic.  The reconciled could not “possess public offices or benefices, nor may they be advocates, landlords, apothecaries, spice dealers, physicians or surgeons, or bleeders or public criers.  They may not carry gold, silver, coral, pearls, or other things, nor precious stones, they may not wear any sort of silk or camlet, nor carry it on their clothes or belongings.  They may not ride horses or carry arms their entire lives, under penalty of falling into relapse.”

Being burnt at the stake was the worst punishment of all, of course.  Two classes of accused qualified for the stake – unrepentant heretics and relapsed heretics.  Of course, considering many people died before their trial concluded, and many fled – more people were burnt in effigy than were burnt alive – but around 2% of those accused were “relaxed” to the secular arm and executed by burning – or if they repented at the last second – strangled and then burnt after being killed.  Now, 2% isn’t a whole lot of dead comparatively – but Henry Kamen reminds us that this punishment was almost exclusively used on Jewish and Muslim converts and so for minorities in Spain the threat of being burnt at the stake was very real.  

While all accused individuals were required to pay for their own imprisonment and the cost of their trial, the guilty faced an additional financial penalty in the form of sequestration proper – a regular penalty for major heretical crimes.  In Spain, the principal victims of confiscations were rich conversos, “whose wealth must have stirred many an Orthodox spirit” accord to Henry Kamen.  Not surprisingly, many Spaniards came to the conclusion that the Inquisition was designed thus to rob them. One citizen of Toledo, Henando del Pulgar wrote, “What great inquisitors of the faith they must be, to be finding heresies in the property of the peasants of the town of Fuensalida, which they rob and burn!”  One resident of Cuenca reported of inquisitorial victims, “they were burnt only for the money they had” and another agreed “they burn only the well-off, because they have property, the others they leave alone”.  One woman in 1501 expressed alarm about the announced coming of the inquisitors to her neighbor, who retorted back “Don’t be afraid of being burnt, they’re only after the money.”  In 1484, Catalina de Zamora was accused by the inquisition of asserting “This Inquisition that the fathers are carrying is as much for taking property from the conversos as for defending the faith” and on another occasion to have stated “It is the goods that are the heretics.”   That assertion became common belief in Spain if we are to judge the complaint made by Barcelona city authorities 25 years later, who complained in 1509 that “goods are not heretics.”  With that said, we have no records of the value of the confiscated property – nor do we have records of what percentage of the confiscated property went to the Spanish crown.  

With that said I don’t want to give you the wrong idea that this was a steady source of income – because by its very nature – the idea that you’re going to arrest wealthy people and confiscate their property means you’re not talking about a reliable source of income.  In the early years of the inquisition – a lot of money was made – but afterwards, you’re basically talking about occasional windfalls of great wealth between years of tribunals desperately looking for income to pay for prosecution, administration, prisoner maintenance, and the increasingly large and expensive autos-de-fe, which quickly grew to become gigantic public spectacles.  Between the reliance on finding wealthy heretics, the graft of corrupt familiars and inquisitors, and the fact that Ferdinand and Isabella never intended the Inquisition to be a money making operation but one to bind the nations of Castile and Aragon together – the tribunals themselves were in near constant debt regardless of whether or not individual inquisitors or their servants were getting rich.  This is important distinction because it helps illustrate the point that the primary purpose of the Inquisition wasn’t really to root out heresy or to rob people– though both were obviously important side motivators – the primary purpose of the Inquisition was to instill fear in the populations of Castile and Aragon and thus help bind them together as one Spanish nation.

The Spanish Inquisition was founded in 1478 under the auspices of Ferdinand and Isabella and with acquiescence from the Pope, though technically it was not up and running until 1480.   The reasoning for the creation of the Spanish Institution was purely Machiavellian.    Spain was riven by civil war in the years leading up to the creation of the Inquisition and Ferdinand and Isabella created the institution basically to unify the nation.   Which – we should remember – was being formed as a result of their being married.   So while institutionally and procedurally – the Spanish Inquisition was basically exactly like the Medieval Inquisition – in other ways it was radically different.  The power dynamic was tilted much farther in the direction of the monarchy with the Spanish Inquisition for starters.  

In addition, the types of heresy investigated were different.  In the middle ages, the inquisition dealt mainly with alternative Christian sects who were involved with disputes over the authority of the papacy to make things really simplified.  Sort of like early precursor Protestant sects in some ways – incidentally, last episode I argued that until the invention of America,  espousing revolutionary ideas weren’t popular enough in Europe to achieve a “reformation” in case you haven’t checked out last episode.  

In Spain, the Inquisition first and foremost dealt with the heresy of “judaizing.”  In part because Jews were able to successfully work as conduits of trade between Muslim and Christian lands, Spain had the largest population of Jews in Western Europe until 1391.  At that time some particularly vicious Dominican friars began preaching that provoked the destruction of Jewish neighborhoods and the forced conversion of numerous people.  These were called conversos.  And a hundred years later – some of them were secretly still Jewish, as you might imagine.  Others were as Catholic as could be but, well, that’s not really what this was about.  The Spanish Inquisition was originally a racist institution that focused on the descendants of Jews that thrived on popular support amongst Spain’s Old Christian population.

It wasn’t always that way.  Once, Jews thought of their time in Spain as a golden age –  ever since the diaspora that followed the 2nd destruction of the temple of Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in 70 CE, Spain held the largest population of Jews in West Europe.  Through the rule of the Visigoths and Muslims in Spain, Jews flourished.  They continued to do so as the Reconquista started.  But  in the 14th century that changed.  Now – to be clear – racism always existed.  Sometimes Visigoths and Jews fought, sometimes Muslims and Jews fought, sometimes Christians and Jews fought, etc.  But Spain did not become a truly intolerant place until the 14th century.  During the Reconquista at various times, several Jewish communities received incentives from the Christian kings of Spain to switch sides basically from Muslim to Christian rule.  Spanish historians have called this Convivencia – a society of coexistence – albeit uneasy coexistence at times.  

The communities of Christians, Jews, and Muslims never existed on equal terms – but all three faiths participated in society.  For example in 1470 town of Ucles experienced a horrific drought, and in response “there were many processions of Christians as well as of Muslims and Jews, to pray for water…”  In towns like these, nobody saw any harm in different faiths praying together.  20 years later, one of those citizens of Ucles, Hernan Sanchez Castro, was denounced by the Inquisition since it was alleged that Castro “set out from the church together with other Christians in the procession, and when they reached the square where the Jews were with the Torah he joined the procession of the Jews..and left the processions of the Christians.”   Diego Gonzales was a poor orphan in Spain when he was a boy, and he remembered accepting alms from Muslims and Jews as well as Christians, though Gonzales was a Christian he received kindness from some local Jews and picked up a few Hebrew words and asserted “the Jew can find salvation in his own faith just as the Christian can in his.”  Twenty years later, Diego Gonzalez, who grew up from orphan boy to become a Catholic priest, was arrested for pro-Jewish tendencies and burnt as a heretic.  So, two things are thus true.  Spain became less tolerant over time –  and, the Inquisition did not arise from “a society dominated exclusively by zealots.”  

As the Reconquista wound down in the 14th century, many of Spain’s faithful crusading Christians began to grow increasingly envious of their Jewish neighbors, some of whom had received benefits such as land and favorable trading contracts as a result of their supporting the Catholic kings during the Reconquista.  In 1355, an angry mob in Toledo burned Jewish homes and murdered nearly nearly 1200 Jews.  In 1371, the king of Castile and Leon was Henry II, also known by his nickname el fratricide, so you just know he was a great guy.  Anyway, in 1371 Henry decreed that all Jews had to wear distinctive badges and could no longer have Christian names in the kingdoms of Castile and Leon.  20 years later in 1391, mobs in Seville went on a rampage that was started by the Dominican archbishop Fernan Martinez.  “Spain for Christians” was their catchphrase.  They robbed and burned the Jewish quarter and 400 men women and children were killed.  Thousands more converted in a mass conversion that saved their lives.  In the mass conversions, perhaps 35,000 people became Christians.  Well, legally speaking at least.  

Now, before we get any farther – I want to make clear that Spanish Jews and Conversos weren’t one singular entity.  As the 16th century goes on, Jewish Spaniards  formed part of a larger network of Sephardic Jewish communities that existed in Jewish communities both in Spain and across parts of Western Europe while the Conversos were generally at least outwardly Catholic and specifically existed within Spanish and Portuguese societies.  And Conversos might range from anywhere from doing as much as possible to hold on to their traditions all the way to being super faithful Catholics.   And while I’m at it – this goes for the Morisco or the converted Muslim communities in Spain as well.

The Sephardim were those who would not convert – they formed a stateless diaspora that dispersed across the Western World and as the 16th century went on – across the Atlantic.  The Sephardim never obtained political power – but their dispersal across the Atlantic, through Western Europe, and into the Ottoman Empire enabled the creation of trade links that eventually got them some significant economic power in the 17th century.  And when they got that, well, let’s just say that some of the Sephardim never did forget about how they were betrayed by Spain.  

At any rate, the creation of the New Christians or Conversos as they were called created a lot of debate within Spanish society.  Were they sincere in their beliefs, should they be allowed to hold public office or enter the priesthood.  They were baptized, so….the law was yes.  And for the record – both Rome and many Spaniards answered yes to those questions.  But many other Spaniards weren’t so sure.  And in fact, the race riots of 1391 which resulted in these mass conversions seem to have resulted in more distrust and racism in Spain than before.  Basically, the converts could be divided into 3 groups – though some Spaniards did not do this.  Some were enthusiastic Christians – others, mainly wealthy merchants and nobles, quietly honored their Jewish roots while remaining converted publicly.    Most were “far from sincere in their new faith.”

                Incidentally, the forced conversions just ended up making the Christians who were massacring Jews even more suspicious of them, since conversos now could hold public office or become priests – well some of them did – and the Conversos began climbing Spanish society through the 15th century.  In places where lots of Jews lived before 1391, and then they were mass converted to Christianity, well they took power in the Spanish government.  In Cuenca for example, 85 percent of city council was held by Conversos.  Simultaneously, anger against the conversos also grew.  They were banned from municipal offices in Toledo in 1449, and in Ciudad Real in 1467.  Which, in that same year there was another bloody riot in Toledo with many Conversos being killed.  In 1473, a similar race riot took place in Cordova.  

Now, believe it or not, during this same period Muslims living within Christian society, called Mudejares were not as affected by the religious tension because there were fewer of them in Castile – and in Aragon they tended to live in separate communities rather than alongside Christians in cities like Jews.  This too changes – just later.  In 1487 the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the city of Malaga within the kingdom of Granada, and afterwards the entire surviving population of the city was enslaved.  In the words of Henry Kamen, the incident “gave hint of a new savagery among the Christians.”  

                I think it’s worth considering why there was anger against Jews and not Muslims.  Well – there’s anger towards both obviously – but since both Jews and Muslims were seen as continuing threats to hard-won Christian reconquests in Spain – why isn’t the Inquisition focused on obviously more dangerous threat of Islam – I mean considering there’s an Ottoman Empire out there, a powerful Moroccan state to the south – and at the date of formation of the Inquisition – still a Muslim Kingdom – Granada – on the south end of Iberia!  

                So on the one hand, the military and political danger of a Muslim counterattack was very, very real.  The Ottoman’s captured Constantinople in the mid 15th century and were extending both military and naval power to the west.  In addition, the success of the reconquest meant that, generally speaking, far fewer Europeans saw Islam as attractive as they had when it was successfully conquering Spain–  and so Islam was not seen as a very dangerous religious enemy to most Christian theologians.  The Christian theologian could argue very simply that Islam came after the Christian Bible and was therefore necessarily false and heretical – in fact, it was probably the “beast” of the Revelation.   At any rate, the Spanish won’t be really fully centered Muslims and Moriscos in Spain until towards the middle of the 16th century.

                On the other hand, the Jews were a different story altogether.  Of course politically and militarily they were unimportant – but unlike Islam, which could be dismissed as part of the apocalypse, Judaism literally could not be dismissed as a heresy or aberration – The Old Testament of course being the Hebrew Bible just renamed from Torah to Old Testament and with another New Testament added to the end of it explaining Christ.    Judaism and Islam have a similar relationship – and so Jewish society existed as minorities within both Christian and Muslim lands – and in this atmosphere, Jews were seen by some in Europe as agents of Muslims – or at least sympathizers who could not be trusted.   

                Now mind you – this is the atmosphere that exists when the 18 year old Isabella of Castile and the 17 year old Ferdinand of Aragon get married, thus uniting their kingdoms for the first time.  So, in 1469, these two teenagers get married against this backdrop of increasing racial animosity.  From Isabella’s perspective, marrying the king of Aragon let her do two things at once – first, she and her family and basically most of the Castilian nobility wanted to expand – and joining the crown with that of Aragon – the other expansionist Christian kingdom – was a great way to do that – in addition – marrying a Spanish speaking king gave her ammunition against any potential internal rivals.  So the Portuguese and French royal families who were trying to woo the Queen of Castile lost out to Ferdinand of Aragon, who like I said was 7-fucking-teen, and who from his perspective -was desperate to increase the power of Aragon because the French kept threatening his kingdom.  

Surprising maybe no one, this Romeo and Juliet pair encountered strong political resistance in both of their kingdoms to the marriage.  Many Aragonese noblemen were very angry that Ferdinand was forced to offer up significant concessions in order to help mollify the Castilian noblemen who were fearful of an Aragonese takeover to go along with their new Aragonese King –  and so to mollify the dissent, both Aragon and Castile specifically kept their own laws in the concessions, and although Ferdinand would be king of both, he promised to be a very, very good king.    I also want to point out that he also promised that “once we have these kingdoms and domains of Castile and Leon in our joint power, we will be obliged to wage war on the Moors, enemies of the holy Catholic faith, as the other preceeding Catholic monarchs have done and…I will pay the expenses for the fortresses on the frontier on the Moors, as other kings have done.”  So obviously Ferdinand was a nice guy as I said before.  And while I’m being sarcastic in saying that, as an American I’d like to say wow, how  refreshing to have a king who promises to pay for his wars.

So – without this as backdrop information - it’s easy to accidentally ascribe all sorts of motivations for the Spanish Inquisition.  The apologist might argue that Ferdidand and Isabella were spurred by their Catholic faith to allow the Inquisition to form.  The cynic on the other hand, might argue that the monarchs began the inquisition out of personal racism, or perhaps more likely, that it began out of greed – like many Spaniards believed – that the Inquisition was founded in order to rob them.  But like I said, Ferdinand’s own great-grandmother was Jewish, and some of his favorite people were Jews and he protected his friends from the Inquisition – He and Isabella were both religious – in addition, they both seem to have enjoyed the money they got from robbing inquisitorial victims – but these were secondary side effects to the main goal – unifying the nations of Spain!  Remember, Spain isn’t a country – we’re talking about Ferdinand and Isabella the king and queen of Aragon and Castile – and these two places have been engaged in civil wars lately.  Ferdinand didn’t hate the Jews, but he knew that a lot of the conservative Old Christian nobility in Spain did.  As such, the real reason Ferdinand and Isabella formed the Spanish Inquisition was Machiavellian – a demonstration of realpolitik. The Catholic monarchs of Spain believed that allowing a Spanish Inquisition, were they in control and not the pope, just might enable the creation of a larger, and lasting, Spanish Empire  – the Inquisition was Ferdinand and Isabella’s way of creating an institution designed to outlast the unification originally brought about by their marriage.  And just fyi, this whole is Aragon and Castile a new nation of Spain now thing -  wasn’t settled until 1520 – after Ferdinand and Isabella are dead – and the Revolt of the Comuneros occurs.   Back to this topic later in the episode.

                Ok, regardless of Ferdinand’s promise to be a very, very good king a civil war broke out in Castile over the succession of the throne in 1475.  Ultimately the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella were victorious over Joanna and Afonso V, king of Portugal in what is called the War of Castilian Succession.   Now, I talked about that quite a bit in the episode Canary Wars, mainly from the perspective of the Portuguese just fyi if you have not checked out that episode.  At any rate, the four year conflict was very destabilizing – and even though Ferdinand and Isabella emerged victorious they were looking for more allies after the war, and so to quote Henry Kamen, they “accepted an alliance with social forces that prepared the way for the elimination of a plural, open society.”           So anger and hatred against Muslims and Jews was growing in Spain, and two teenagers decided to use that anger and hatred as a tool of unification.  Ok. 

The fact that Spain was more Jewish and more Muslim than anywhere else in Europe and had been for centuries and so many, many people had Jewish or Muslim ancestors was irrelevant.  God damnit, Spain was a Catholic country!  Amirite? The 15th century hotheaded Old Christian might ask in Madrid in 1477.  Well, one such hothead was the Dominican friar Alonso de Ojeda – who is NOT the same Alonso de Ojeda who went on a murder spree in the Caribbean for years.  But I bet they were related.  At any rate, THAT Alonso de Ojeda would have only been 11 years old in 1477 and so he certainly wasn’t the friar preaching that year in Seville and who told Ferdinand and Isabella how dangerous the situation was.  Ojeda complained that Judaizing conversos were practicing Mosaic law, and the ecclesiastical authorities were doing nothing.   His main argument was basically, that the so called New Christians occupied the same posts and social position as the Jews!  Which really makes sense if you think about it – if some soldiers showed up and forced you to convert your religion tomorrow wouldn’t you still have the same job? Probably.  

After meeting with Ojeda, Ferdinand and Isabella asked Pope Sixtus IV for a bull that would allow them to name bishops or priests to fullfill the inquisitorial office in the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon.    The Pope’s response was somewhat shocking since he agreed to let Ferdinand create an inquisition, and in later years the Papacy came to regret the rights it granted the Spanish Monarchy. But at the time, Ferdinand was basically lending the papacy an army in Sicily and so Sixtus probably didn’t want to jeopardize that.  The Pope responded to Ferdinand’s request on November 1, 1478 with a bull that stated that he gave permission to Ferdinand and Isabella to name two or three inquisitors who were to have the qualifications of being over forty years of age, of respectable customs, and with theological or law degrees.  The monarch’s privilege of naming inquisitors was granted in perpetuity.  

                The first Inquisitors were named on September 27, 1480 when Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin were invested with inquisitorial powers in the city of Medina del Campo.    Ferdinand and Isabella appointed them in a letter addressed to the council of Seville, entitled “Letter of Commission to Carry out Inquiries into Bad Christians.”  

                “Be advised that we have taken note that in our kingdoms and domains there have been and are certain bad Christians, apostates, heretics, and conversos, who despite receiving the sacrament of baptism and being baptized, and having the name of Christians, have turned and converted, and continue to turn and convert, to the sect, superstition, and faithlessness of the Jews….Therefore, we command you that, whenever you are requested by those Inquisitors, you shall place your men and relatives at their disposal and you shall let them have your jails in which to keep their prisoners, and should they wish to have a separate jail, you shall agree to that, and you shall give them chains and stocks and all the other equipment that may be necessary for the keeping of said prisoners.  And you shall adhere to and carry out any sentence, censure, and penalty they give, and you shall denounce the infidels and their supporters and those who help conceal, no matter what their estate, position, or status.  And you shall do this under penalty of the confiscation of the property and the loss of your position.  Signed I the King, I the Queen.”

Morillo and San Martin arrived in Seville and published the edict of grace on December 1.  All who appeared within 30 days and confessed would be pardoned and their goods would be untouched.  But at this very first inquisition, most conversos decided to start fleeing.  Ferdinand and Isabella ended up ordering all inhabitants in the Sevillian archdiocese that they must remain in their houses and suspects were arrested.  But we don’t have the trial records for the earliest inquisition.  And in fact, the first 20 years or so of the Spanish Inquisition contain lots of gaps in the evidence.  We don’t know all the inquisitors names, where they worked, or how the specific hierarchy of the Inquisition came into being.  Anyway, I can tell you that the first auto-de-fe occurred  in Seville on February 6, 1481.  6 people were burned at the stake in front of a crowd of Sevillian residents – nobles, commoners, and clergy alike.  

It was soon clear to the Inquisition that they needed to operate in tribunals which were established in cities rather than simply marching around the country from place to place.  Many were established at first, which later were merged into fewer tribunals as the work of burning heretics and stealing their things began to slow.   Tribunals spread quickly through Castile.  Seven more inquisitors, all Dominican friars, were appointed on February 11, 1482.  One of them was Tomas de Torquemada – soon to be in charge of the whole operation.   By 1492, Castile had tribunals at Avila, Cordoba, Jaen, Medina Del Campo, Segovia, Siguenza, Toledo, and Valladolid.  By 1495, there were 16 tribunals throughout Spain – in the early years these were simply set up wherever political need and conditions permitted.  After a flurry of early trials, this number of tribunals was uneconomic and they were merged together.  In 1507, the number of tribunals was reduced from 16 to 7.  However, the Inquisition continued to grow – two years earlier, in 1505, a new tribunal was formed at Las Palmas on the Canary Islands. 

As a rule, the Inquisition expanded quickly in Castile, and slowly in Aragon because the medieval Inquisition existed in Castile, but not in Aragon, so there was greater resistance there when the Spanish Inquisition formed.  There was even more resistance in Aragon’s Italian colonies – the inquisition barely functioned in Sicily and Sardinia – both of which Ferdinand ruled as Aragonese possessions.  Spanish America was also technically Aragonese and not Castilian – but Inquisition did not reach the Americas for nearly a century.  1568 in Mexico City to be precise, Lima in 1570 and Cartagena de Indies not until 1609.  

Anyway, the auto-de-fe’s were relatively rare occurrences – which made them quite popular when they did happen.  Over time, as the Inquisition expanded, they grew in pomp and circumstance as well.  For example in the first auto-de-fe in Toledo, over 700 judaizers were reconciled in a single Sunday morning and afternoon – it was all over by 2 PM.  But by the mid-16th century the autos had transformed into 12 hour ceremonies that were always held on feast days, and as they grew in ceremony they became more expensive.  

                The earliest Inquisitors were all Dominican friars – which was the same sect that stoked the flames of anti-semitism during the 14th century in the first place that led to the creation of so many Conversos which 15th century Dominicans were so paranoid about.  But as the Inquisition became entrenched in Spain the institution was eventually dominated instead by trained canon lawyers – each team of inquisitors consisted of two and those two might be a theologian and a canon law jurist – or two jurists.   Henry Kamen analyzed the backgrounds of 57 inquisitors from the tribunal of Toledo and learned that all but two of the inquisitors had law degrees – and of those nearly half had been trained in at Colegios Mayores the most exclusive law school in Spain,  and in fact, most Inquisitors went on to serve on the highest courts of Spain.  For the elite old Christians in Spain – the Inquisition was a stepping stone to furthering a law career.  Each team of inquisitors worked under the direction of the Inquisitor-General – the first was Tomas de Torquemada, appointed on October 17, 1483, and who was himself a distant descendent of Conversos.

                Tomas de Torquemada seems to be the person more than any other who is responsible for why the Spanish Inquisition was such an insidious institution.  I say that because Torquemada didn’t just run the Inquisition as the First Inquisitor-General – he was the one who set up the rules.  Like the edict of grace.  Torquemada instructed his inquisitors that while those who came forward would be left alone “so that they lose none of their goods….[however they] must present their confessions in writing…And they shall be asked about the circumstances surrounding the content of their confession….especially they shall be asked about the prayers they said, and where and with whom they gathered.”  The extensive written records gathered during the Edicts of Grace were designed to create evidence for future prosecutions.  I mean this guy is a real slimeball  - he instructions included “inquisitors can repeat the question of torture in a case where they must and can do so.” Torquemada told his inquisitors not to worry too much about the orphans they created – instead this was an opportunity to create “Good Christians, especially the orphaned girls, who could marry or enter a religious order.”  

                One of Torquemada’s first points of business, other than setting up the rules, was to firmly establish the inquisition within Aragon, regardless of the local hostilities there.  And those hostilities didn’t come just from Conversos in Aragon – who were relatively few in comparison to those in Castile.  Conversos and “other leaders and gentry, claimed that the procedure was against the liberties of the realm because…their goods were confiscated and they were not given the names of witnesses.”  Ferdinand responded to the resistance of his subjects by claiming “there should not be such dread of the Inquisition…if there are so few heretics.”  Whether through “personal dread or constitutional opposition” resistance to the Inquisition continued in Aragon, who saw the Inquisition as an imposition of Castilian law on their sovereignty. 

                Ferdinand’s response to Aragonese resistance to the Inquistion was severe.  When the Inquisition arrived at the city of Teruel, the clergy of Teruel asked for and obtained papal letters releasing the city from Inquisitorial censures and likewise wrote to their king Ferdinand in protest that “they were coming to set up an Inquisition that will repeat the excesses committed in Castile.”  The King’s response was to raise arms to help his inquisitors by massing troops at the walls of Teruel and “faced with such massive coercion the city was easily reduced into obedience.”  Ferdinand stated of the incident, “no cause nor interest, however great, will make us suspend the Inquisition.”  The cause or interest he wrote about were the city counselors of Barcelona, who begged Ferdinand to reconsider the Inquisition due to the mass numbers of converso emigrants who were leaving Barcelona in fear.  As a result, they argued, “foreign realms are growing rich and glorious through the depopulation of the country…the few remaining merchants have ceased to trade.”  In May of 1486 they warned him again that the city was soon to be “totally depopulated and ruined if the Inquisition were introduced.”  All this protest was in vain however, the Inquisition was implanted throughout Aragon largely by 1487.  But victims were fewer here, in part due to emigration, in part due to the fewer conversos in Aragon.  At any rate, Aragon was basically comprised of the two joined kingdoms of Valencia and Catalonia.  By the time the Inquisition was established in 1488 in Catalonia, only 7 people were burnt that year, and in 1488 only 3.  However, there was never any doubt as to who the Inquisition was directed against.  In Catalonia between 1488 and 1505, 1,199 people were tried by the Spanish Inquisition.  All but 8 of them were tried for being conversos.  Most of those tried were tried in absence since they had fled.

                In Valencia, the resistance to the Inquisition was so great that the inquisitor of Saragossa, a certain Pedro de Arbues, was assassinated while kneeling in prayer at the chapel.  8 assassins crept behind him while he was praying and stabbed him in the back with a stroke that went through his neck.  He was stabbed several more times before the assassins fled, and Arbues died 24 hours later.  Before the assassination, many of the Old Christian nobility of Saragossa was against the Inquisition – they did not want anyone to mess with the taxes and rents they collected from their converso subjects.  The mood of the city changed afterwards however, the constitution was suspended, and mobs roamed the streets for justice.  Pedro de Arbues was canonized as a saint, miracles were reportedly performed with his blood, and in this atmosphere the inquisition quickly took hold.  When one of Arbues’ murderers was found,  his hands were cut off and nailed up in the town square, and afterwards he was dragged to  the marketplace, beheaded and quartered, and the pieces of his body were suspended hanging above various streets in the city.  Another captured assassin committed suicide in his cell the day before his scheduled auto-de-fe by breaking a glass lamp and swallowing the fragments.  Nevertheless, he still suffered the same punishment as his comrade, albeit he was already dead when he was quartered.  There is not much evidence about how exactly this assassination plot went down – but it is believed the cost of the attempt was 600 gold florins.  Since the end result of the assassination amounted to “an act of mass suicide that annihilated all opposition to the Inquisition for the next hundred years” I think it is fair to wonder if conversos were even behind it.  Possibly they were – it would hardly be the first time someone did something that turned out to be a bad decision – on the other hand – I think it is fair to point out that Ferdinand or Torquemada could have deliberately staged the assassination in order to smooth the way for the Inquisition.  

                At any rate, as I’ve mentioned, the Spanish Inquisition was laser focused on ferreting out heretical conversos.  Conversos might prove themselves as heretics by say…not eating pork or by not working on the Sabbath.  Such was the fate of a woman who was recorded in the Inquisitorial records as “Isabel, wife of bachiller Lope de la Higuera” A bachiller means her husband had a university education the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree by the way.  Isabel stood trial for heresy in 1484.  Inquisitorial scribes recorded her crimes thusly.  “She lights new candles early on Friday evenings…She cooks her meals for Saturday on Friday….She does not do any sort of work on Saturday but instead put clean undergarments and clothing and shaves and dresses up on those days…..On those Saturdays she would withdraw to pray, sometimes alone and sometimes with other women….And when she had to swear an oath, she said Hebrew words. She did everything in the style of a Jewish woman and as the Jews do.  Because of these things….Rodirigues del Barco, [the local inquisitor] asked that she be declared a heretic and condemned as such.”  Isabel was presented with a summons to appear before the Inquisition and defend herself for these crimes.  Well, Isabel promptly fled – and when she did not appear within the time limit given of 30 days she was found guilty by default, and “incurred a sentence of greater excommunication, and all the other spiritual and temporal punishments contained in the laws against heretics, as well as the loss and confiscation of her goods.”  In addition, she was relaxed “to the virtuous…royal magistrate”.  Isabel was burned in effigy and instructions were given “to any other judges of other cities, villages and places within these kingdoms and outside of them, whenever the aforesaid Isabel might be found…they may do with her what they can and should do by law.”

                A certain Marina Gonzalez was not so lucky.  Marina confessed during an edict of grace in 1484, and those confessions were preserved in the Inquisitorial record even though she was not punished on that occasion.   However, 10 years later in 1494, Marina was again tried for heresy by the inquisition.  Since records existed of her confession a decade before, Marina was arrested for being an apostate heretic in January.  The Inquisitor who in charge, Diego Martinez Ortega, accused Marina of returning to the heresy she had already once been convicted of “like a dog to its vomit.”  Ortega accused Marina of “resting on Saturdays…she ritually purged the meat she had to eat in order to observe Jewish ceremony.  Likewise, she did not eat pork…What proves her heresey even more is that she had no picture or figure of any male or female saint in her house, nor the sign of the Cross.”  The trial went on for months, and on June 9th, 6 months after being arrested, the Inquisitorial records state that Marina Gonzalez began to starve herself in an attempt to kill herself.  Perhaps out of depression, who knows.  The fact that she stopped eating was added to the evidence that proved her being a heretic.  The inquisition argued that Marina “tried to kill herself in prison to avoid confessing her errors.”  On June 30, 1494, Marina was convicted at an auto-de-fe of being a relapsed heretic and apostate.  “She has incurred a sentence of major excommunication, and the confiscation and loss of all her possessions.  We must relax her to justice and the secular arm.”  

                 The Inquisition often targeted Converso women.  The similarly named though completely unrelated Maria Gonzalez was another converso who was prosecuted by the Inquisition on multiple occasions.  She was first arrested in 1511 after she was denounced as a judaizer.   Maria confessed and made allegations against dozens of other conversos while she was interrogated.  She was sentenced to prison in 1512 and there she sat for a year and a half.   At that point, in 1513 Inquisitorial prosecutors set out to try Maria again for perjury.  Lying under oath was an act of heresy.  Maria was sentenced to torture during the second trial because the Inquisition believed “she spoke against…people with whom she did not commit…crimes….and because of other reasons that move us to ascertain the truth, as we are obliged to do for God and our consciences.”  

                On July 19, 1513 “their reverences went to the torture room and admonished Maria Gonzalez to declare the truth….for it was imperative for their reverences to know the entire truth, and they assured her that if she should receive death, a wound, or the loss of some limb during the torture, it would be her own fault.”  She was stripped and put on the rack, and tied with cords.  After “being tied up, she said that she made it all up, she made it all up because she detested them”, presumably them being the people she may or may not have falsely accused.   Regardless of that confession, “their reverences ordered a jar of water poured into her nose and mouth, which was started.  As the jar of water was emptied….she said everything she said in her confessions before…they can put her into a fire, and still everything she said is true….their reverences ordered the water torture continued.  As she was given the water, she said she had told the truth….The order was given to pour another jar of water.”  As this happened, Maria is recorded in the Inquisition as stating “I speak the truth, I have spoken the truth, I have already spoken the truth, I speak the truth, what I have said is true, I am telling the truth, I do not tell any lies, I have not lied, I have spoken the truth, I have spoken the truth.”  At that point the second jar of water was finished.  Shortly thereafter, “their reverences ordered the water continued.”  Before the trial ended, Maria Gonzalez “begged their reverences that they let her go raise her children who walked astray.  She asked for mercy, begging their reverences to spare her life so she might go and raise her children.”   On September 7, 1513 her “sentence was read in a loud, intelligible voice…Maria Gonzalez must be relaxed to justice and the secular arm for having falsely confessed and being impenitent.”  

Proponents of the inquisition began to view their converso suspects as being contaminated by the remaining Jews in Spain as time went on.  Antisemetism continued to rise in Spain after the foundation of the Inquisition, and edicts of expulsion were passed into law.  Jews were first expelled from the city of Jerez de la Frontera in 1482.  Next year, they were expelled from Seville, Cordoba, and Cadiz.  In 1486 they were expelled from Zaragoza, Albarracin, and Teruel.  The Inquisition and its supporters continued to successfully lobby the Crown from there until 1492.  In that year, two months after the conquest of Granada and 6 months before Columbus reached the New World, Ferdinand and Isabella signed an edict of expulsion that covered both Castile and Aragon.  12 years after the founding of the Inquisition, all Jews in Spain were required to accept conversion to Christianity and become baptized – thus being subjected to the inquisition - or they were to leave the country.  

                Ferdinand signed the edict of expulsion despite the fact that he had two Jewish friends.  Rabbi Isaac Abranel, who was the chief treasurer of the royal police force and Rabbi Abraham Senior, who was the chief royal treasurer. Both visited with Ferdinand multiple times and begged him to reconsider but the king refused.   Ferdinand signed the Decree of Expulsion – which stated that Jews could convert, or leave – and if they refused this offer “then they shall incur the penalty of death and the confiscation of all their property for the benefit of our chamber and treasury, they shall incur this penalty by the mere fact, without any trial, sentence, or declaration….also…anyone in these kingdoms, of any estate, condition, or dignity whatsoever…daring to receive, take in, shelter, or defend any Jew or Jewess either publicly or secretly, in their houses, or in any other place…[also incurs the] penalty of the loss of all their property, vassals, castles, and other inheritences.”  Jews had until “the end of July” to dispose of their goods and property.  The edict was signed March 31st.  

You know what’s really funny to me is that Ferdinand did sometimes protect his friends – so he probably didn’t even think he was a racist.  For example, On May 30, 1497, Ferdinand issued a decree that exempted Luis de Santángel, his family, and his future successors, from the Inquisition.  Santángel was a wealthy converso who was a key figure in providing funding to Columbus and other Spanish ventures into the Americas.   Now, lest you get the impression that Ferdinand was anything other than a rotten sociopath – he signed the decree protecting the Santángel family only after one member of the family had been burnt at the stake.  

                In fact, many of those accused in Aragon were some of the wealthiest names in the nation.  The last names of Santa Fe, Santángel, Caballeria, and Sanchez were all noble families with converso blood who repeatedly show up in Inquisitorial records.  Francisco de Santa Fe, son of a famous converso and a city counsellor, committed suicide by jumping from the tower that he was imprisoned.  His remains were burnt in the auto-de-fe of December 15, 1486.  These families were fervent supporters of Ferdinand before the Inquisition started. Luis Santángel, had been personally knighted by Ferdinand’s father, King Juan II for his military prowess, but that didn’t stop his cousins from being beheaded and burnt in the marketplace of Saragossa on August 8, 1487.  Luis Santángel, who loaned money to Columbus and made possible the discovery of the New World, was sentenced to do penance in July, 1491 – regardless of Ferdinand’s edict of protection.  In fact, 15 members of the Santángel members were punished by the Inquisition before 1499.  Another family, the Sanchez’s – were another popular target of the Inqusition – between 1486-1503, 14 Sanchez family members were punished by the Inquisition.  

                So whether or not Ferdinand was behind the assassination of his own Inquisitor, he was clearly using the Inquisition for what we might call today Realpolitick.  Both the installation of the Inquisition and the edict of expulsion were part of an attempt to gain political control after the chaos of the civil wars and fuse Aragon and Castile into one.  Ferdinand and Isabella’s reasoning with the edict of expulsion didn’t really work out how they planned however.  The monarchs thought that their edict of expulsion would result in mass conversions not mass emigration – but the reality is that the edict caused both mass conversions and mass emigration and Ferdinand himself admitted that the edict hurt his finances.  Upwards of half of the Jews in Spain are thought to have converted to Christianity – the rest left Spain.  Of course, the results of the expulsion was devastating not just to Ferdinand’s pocketbook, but to all of Spain and especially to many of those who chose to leave. 

                An anonymous observer wrote an account of the expulsion three years later in Hebrew.  I have a translated copy of the letter, thanks to Jon Cowans, the translator and editor of Early Modern Spain a Documentary History.   According to the author of the account– between 50,000 and 53,000 families were exiled as a result of the edict.  120,000 exiled Jews went to Portugal, something like a quarter of the total population of exiles, each paid “the fourth part of all the merchandise they had carried thither” to the King of Portugal, for the right to settle in his nation.  King Manuel proved himself to be as villainous as Ferdinand, “the king acted much worse toward them than the king of Spain, and after six months…he banished seven hundred children to a remote island to settle it, and all of them died.  Some say that they were double as many.”  That island is Sao Tome, off the coast of Africa.  Manuel desired to marry Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter, and so to gain currency with the Spanish monarchs he took the additional step in 1497 of ordering his own expulsion of the Jews from Portugal.  This never did end up happening –both the expulsion and the considered marriage - but many were forcibly converted – and thousands of children were forcibly taken from their parents.   Two years later, Manuel changed tacks again when he realized this was all backfiring for his real plan – getting rich – so many Jews and converted Jews were fleeing Portugal that in 1499 the king prohibited New Christians from leaving the country.  Instead, he asked the Pope for his own inquisition – though the Pope did not agree until after Manuel was dead in 1536 with the first auto-de-fe in Portugal occurring in 1540.  Unfortunately, that’s a bit beyond the scope of this episode - 

                Others fled to Muslim-controlled lands.  The anonymous account of the Expulsion tells us “Many of the exiled Spaniards went to Mohammedan countries, to Fez, Tlemcen, and the Berber provinces, under the king of Tunis.  Most of the Muslims did not allow them into their cities, and many of them died in the fields from hunger, thirst, and lack of everything.  The lions and bears, which are numerous in this country, killed some of them while they lay starving outside of the cities.”  Though this wasn’t the fate of all the Jews who fled to Africa – the author notes that while in general North Africa was difficult to say the least, the viceroy of the kingdom of Tlemcen was a Jew and “spent a large amount of money to help them.”  Likewise, “the Jews of Northern Africa were very charitable toward them.”  Others were not so lucky, and after unfruitfully begging in North Africa, returned to Spain and became converts to Christianity.  

                Spanish refugees also went to Italy and likewise received a range of treatment.  “When the edict of expulsion became known in the other countries, vessels came from Genoa to carry away the Jews.  The crews of these vessels…acted maliciously and meanly toward the Jews, robbed them, and delivered some of them to the famous pirate of that time, who was called the Corsair of Genoa.  To those who escaped and arrived at Genoa the people of the city showed themselves mercilessly, and oppressed and robbed them, and the cruelty of their wicked hearts went so far that they took the infants from the mothers’ breasts.”  Those who went to Naples got a different experience, “the king of this country was friendly to the Jews, received them all, and was merciful toward them, and he helped them with money.”  But despite this kindness, plague and famine broke out in Naples suddenly, and “a very many of them died, so that the living wearied of burying the dead.”  

                Others went to Ottoman Empire.  “Some of them were thrown into the sea and drowned, but those who arrived there the king of Turkey received kindly, as they were artisans.   lent them money to settle many of them on an island, and gave them fields and estates.”  

                Of course, only about half the Jewish population of Spain departed.  The rest were converted and thus subject to the Inquisition.   As the institution spread through Spain in the late 15th century, thousands of conversos came forward to admit their offenses to the inquisition and be reconciled.  When the Inquisition reached Seville, the prisons quickly overflowed with conversos waiting to be interrogated as part of their voluntary confessios.  In Mallorca, the first auto-de-fe included a 300 person procession repentant Conversos in Sanbenitos.   

An additional response one might have to the Inquisition and the expulsion was to never leave Spain, but flee within the nation.  Some conversos wandered from province to province, always one step ahead of the Inquisition.  One converso resident of Cuenca explained the fear and humiliation which the Inquisition brought.  “I would rather see all the Muslims of Granada enter this city…than the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which takes away life and honor.”   Fear of the Inquisition was very real for Conversos during this period.  Perhaps ¾ of those who died at the hands of the Inquisition did so during the first 50 years of the existence of the Tribunal.  From 1481-1524, 1000 heretics were sent to the stake in the city of Seville.  In Castile, the incidence of executions was probably higher Aragon but we don’t really have complete records for the early years so that’s an estimation rather than absolute fact.  

                Now, I should point out that Henry Kamen, one of the best historians of the Inquisition, argues that the death toll for all of Spain in tribunals up to 1530 was probably only about 2,000 people – which is fewer than most other historians estimated – I am not an expert enough to say but whatever the total was – Kamen also argues that a lesser death toll doesn’t really lesson the impact of the Inquisition – because the inquisition was unquestioningly a reign of terror that had devastating consequences for Spanish minorities.  For example, in Valencia, the rate of execution before 1530 might have been as high as 40% of all accused.  

Besides the legal reasons for Conversos to fear the Inquisition - Fraud and extortion were also rampant if we are to judge by the example of the Inquisitor Diego Rodriguez Lucero.  Lucero was appointed as Inquisitor of Cordoba in 1499 and within a short time he began arresting leading citizens on trifling or false pretexts –so that he could steal property.  This was basically par for the course – what made Lucero even more bold than many other inquisitors was that his greed was such that he even began arresting Old Christian families and accused them of being Conversos.  Later witnesses testified that Lucero even forced Conversos to teach Jewish prayers to his Old Christian prisoners so that he could accuse the Old Christians of Judaizing.  In 1500, Lucero “relaxed” 130 people to the secular arm to be executed.  In 1504, he’d burnt 120 people in one auto-de-fe, 27 more in May of 1505.  Reportedly, some who were burnt were executed to prevent them from complaining to the new king Philip. Finally, in 1506 independent inquiries were made into Lucero’s activities as Inquisitor – since the Inquisitor General basically ignored the petitions against Lucero.   Lucero was found to have 400 prisoners in his cells and finally – Lucero was stopped by King Philip as a result of the independent investigation – just in time to suspend the Inquisitor’s planned mass execution of 160 more prisoners at the next auto-de-fe.  But just so you know, Lucero was not guilty of any crimes – in fact he wasn’t even fired or anything, and he went ahead and continued prosecuting people in order to steal.  After the investigation, Lucero was merely stopped from executing the 160 prisoners.   

So Lucero’s career continued – and next he focused his attention on the 80 year old archbishop of Granada, a Jeronomite monk named Hernando de Talavera who lived in a palace and Lucero thought – Hey, I would really like to have that palace.  So, Lucero accused Talavera of having a synagogue in his palace.  Lucero arrested the archbishop and his household which included his sister, two nieces and their daughters, and the servants.   Both servants were tortured until they denounced Talavera.  The papacy eventually intervened and he was acquitted in April 1507, but one month later Talavera died of a fever, getting sick the day after walking barefoot in penitence through Granada in the auto-de-fe.  It wasn’t until June of 1507, when the new Inquisitor General Francisco Jimenez Cisneros took over was Lucero eventually removed from power.  He was arrested in 1508 and his victims in prison in Cordoba were released.  But with that said he received no further punishment for his crimes after his arrest.   Diego Rodriguez Lucero instead retired in Seville and died peacefully.

                Both the crown and the Inquisition made a tidy profit conducting inquisitorial trials – and since making money was part of the motivation for the Inquisition  - many people were prosecuted on very flimsy evidence.  Sancho de Ciudad, a leading citizen of Ciudad Real, was accused of practicing Judaism based on the hearsay of a neighbor who testified that they remembered him practicing Judaism 30 years ago.  Juan de Chinchilla was a tailor in Ciudad Real who admitted to Jewish practices in 1483 after the edict of grace expired.  He was burnt at the stake on the word of witnesses who claimed to have seen him engage in Jewish practices on two occasions, 16 and 20 years before the trial.  Another person was prosecuted on the words of an elderly woman who recalled something “fifty years ago”.  In fact, in most Inquisitorial cases, it seems that the prosecution relied on either “voluntary” confessions extracted from torture, or from fragments of hearsay evidence that may have occurred years or decades prior.    Maria Gonzalez was brought before inquisitors at Ciudad Real in 1511.  The only evidence against her was her own confession during an edict of grace in 1483.  Her husband was burnt as a heretic in that same year, 1483 – and ever since Maria Gonzales maintained “they burnt him on false witness” and “he went to heaven like a martyr”.  On the evidence of her espousing those beliefs, she was sent to the stake and burnt in 1511.

                Often it was the familiars and other agents of the inquisitors who committed the worst offenses against the accused.   One inquisitor in Cordoba employed a man named Bravo who got the job after previously getting experience as an assistant of the previously mentioned Diego Rodriguez Lucero.  In Cordoba, Bravo threw so many wealthy prisoners in jail that it is pretty clear he purposefully targeted people with property so he could steal from them and that’s almost definitely something he learned from Lucero.  The relatives of his prisoners petitioned the crown that Bravo “carried out many irregularities in the procedure of imprisonment and trial, and…maltreated not only the said prisoners but their wives and children and property.”  But Bravo never appears to have been ever investigated despite pleas for justice and so his career as a professional thief likely went unchecked.  

This general lack of oversight also helped out the career of Diego de Algeciras.  -I think I pronounced that correctly - Algeciras was basically a professional witness – who for “a reasonable pittance…was ready to perjure himself.”  Thanks to Algeciras’ assistance, the Inquisition of city of Jaen was able to put all of the richest conversos of the city in jail.  One of Jaen’s citizens was arrested after her daughter, a 15 year old girl, was locked in a room, stripped, and whipped by the notary until she agreed to testify against her mother.  In Toledo, it was reported in 1487 that the official in charge of receiving confiscated goods for the Inquisition, Juan de Uria, had up to that point, September 26, 1487, defrauded 1.5 million maravedis from Toledo’s citizens, which I don’t know the exchange rate into today’s currency but that certainly sounds like a comfortable living.

                At any rate, had it not been for the events of 1492 – I think it is possible that the Inquisition would have run out of Converso victims – but the expulsion changed all of that since anyone who converted to remain in Spain was now subject to Inquisitorial judgement and that number was well into the tens of thousands.   Forcibly converting thousands of Jews certainly is a way to create converts, but not many of these new converts were good pious nonheretical Christians.  One Spaniards wrote of his experience, “If it were not for the debts owed to me…I would [not convert]…This is real captivity.”  Another commented “when we were Jews we were lords, now we are slaves.”  

                Now, I think it’s fair to point out that the Inquisition was never fully accepted in Spain – and I don’t just mean by Conversos because obviously they had issues what with them being the primary opponents of the Inquisition.  But there were Old Christians as well who were not convinced the Inquisition was a good idea.  Sanbenitos especially were  unpopular.  It wasn’t just that the condemned had to wear them – but afterwards they were nailed to the rafters of the church of the diocese in which the condemned was a member.   Many Spaniards believed this was not just distasteful, but was oppressive and brought public humiliation upon the entire community.   With that said, it’s unquestionable that during the most bloody period of the Inquisition few Old Christians bothered to “bestir themselves to raise their voices in protest” as thousands of their Christian brothers and sisters were executed, driven into financial ruin, or exiled in an unprecedented campaign in Spanish history.  

                Reforms were proposed after the death of Ferdinand in January, 1516 and the Spanish crown passed to Charles his grandson.   It was argued that at the very least, the veil of secrecy regarding witnesses ought to be changed, but the Francisco Cisneros the Inquisitor General was just fine and dandy with how things were going.  Cisneros wrote to his new king that “there will never be any need for reform and it would be sinful to introduce changes.”  Cisneros died not long after Charles became king, but his successor, Cardinal Adrian of Utrecht, who was Charles’ old tutor was likewise completely against any form of reform.  Whatever hopes the opponents of the Inquisition might have had for change, it was clear that the monarchy still wanted the institution around.  Remember Spain was still a nation in the process of being created – after Isabella died, Ferdinand was theoretically once again only king of Aragon – not Aragon and Castile.  The Inquisition was the first state institution that had power in both kingdoms – and now that Charles was taking the throne he had no more desire to get rid of it than his grandfather had – the Inquisition was the key to the formation of the Spanish empire.

                Now, like I said earlier – not everybody was a fan of the creation of the Spanish Empire out of Castile and Aragon.  From 1519-1521 the peninsula was wracked by a series of events known as the Revolt of the Comuneros.  Basically, some of the nobility and many town oligarchies allied together in a confusing and complex struggle waged war against the crown – and other Spanish factions – and sometimes against other groups of Comuneros.  The Comuneros weren’t exactly a unified movement.  At any rate – since some Comuneros were also Conversos….Yep, you guessed it - by the end of the revolt the Crown and the Inquisition were blaming conversos for the revolt – the constable of Castile for instance claimed that after a battle he inspected the dead and found “many dead were found without foreskins.”  How’d you like that job? Well, in reality the Revolt of the Comuneros was not a Converso revolt –  in fact many conversos fought on the royalist side.  

The revolt of the comuneros was essentially fought over the succession after Ferdinand and Isabella were both dead.  The monarch’s direct heir was Juana “la loca” or Juana the Mad – who was widely thought of incapable of ruling Spain – and so the plan as that her son– Charles – was going to inherit the throne and he was not Spanish.  Charles was born in what is now Belgium and did not speak Castilian.  When Charles arrived in Spain he brought with him an entourage of foreigners who helped sap the treasury while they enriched themselves and combined with the fact that Charles did not get along with the Cortes – the Cortes is basically Spanish Parliament – well you can see how a widespread rebellion occurred in 1520.  The rebels, known as Comuneros, were primarily townspeople – but clergy, nobility, and commoners were also included.  It was not a coordinated movement – but it was widespread in various cities and the rebels did reflect common demands.  Thanks to Jon Cowans, editor and translator of my copy of Early Modern Spain a Documentary History, I can share those demands with you.  

First was the issue of succession.  “After Charles, no woman can succeed to the throne” and in addition all future kings after Charles must be born in Castile.  The Comuneros wanted a say in the royal council as well – that each bishopric in the kingdom of Spain would nominate three men of whom the king would chose one.  All governors and councilors would be chosen from amongst “lettered men over 40 years of age.”  They wanted the Cortes, or basically Spanish Parliament – to consist of two houses – and for each bishopric to chose two members of the Cortes, one from amongst the lords, one from amongst the commoners.  The comuneros wanted the right to bear arms. “everyone shall be allowed to carry the offensive and defensive weapons that they wish to carry, and no law shall prohibit their carrying them” in fact – far beyond the RIGHT to bear arms – the Comuneros argued that “all shall be obligated to bear arms in this manner, each member of the lower estate shall be obliged to have a sword, a dagger, a helmet, a lance, and a shield…while those of the highest estate are obligated to have two swords and two daggers (one for oneself and one for a squire), as well as a pike, a halberd, and a shield.”  The Comuneros also demanded that the Cortes have the right to declare war, not the king.  “Whenever the king wishes to make war he shall summon a Cortes and inform its members…so that they can see whether it is just or willful…without their consent the king cannot fight any war.”

So basically, far from being some sort of Converso plot, the Comuneros wanted a Spanish Constitution.  Ultimately, they failed in securing one and two years later, what remained of the rebel bands surrendered to royal forces.  From the perspective of Ferdinand and Isabella as well as their successors – the Inquisition was the tool with which they could defame and defeat the popularism of the revolt by blaming Judaism.  The inquisition was a tool of the Spanish crown to use against those in Spain who wished to challenge the status quo.

                Now that I’ve given a very brief explanation of a very complicated rebellion – let’s get back to the Inquisition.  Inquisitorial trials for judaizing continued after the expulsion at a fairly regular pace until about 1510.  At that point trials began to slow down, and according to Lu Ann Homza, “there were substantial rumblings about reforming the Inquisition’s jurisdiction and legal procedures.”  But the Inquisition survived the attacks made against it by Spaniards and when Martin Luther began preaching the inquisitors found plenty more justification for their office.  This was also when more Old Christians began to speak out – far too late with their resistance to stop the inquisition mind you.  Luther and Charles actually met – in 1521 Charles, just a year removed from being crowned Charles V the Holy Roman Emperor in addition to his being King of Spain – attended the Diet of Worms, a meeting which Luther spoke and expressed his anger against the Church with remarkable boldness.  Charles was furious and issued a reply in a statement on Luther where he ordered that “He is not to preach or seduce the people with his evil doctrine and is not to incite rebellion….I am resolved to act and proceed against him as against a notorious heretic.”  

As such, the Inquisition was stronger than ever by the end of the Revolt of the Comuneros, and with a brand new enemy to persecute in the spread of luteranautoismo.  Thus strengthened, and in response to Charles’ repugnance of Luther, from 1521 to 1535 the Inquisition began searching for luteranismo within the people of Spain.  Incidentally, most of the people convicted for luteranismo were also Conversos – not charged with judaizing mind you, but the Inquisition was often seems like it was guided by racism not religion.  So, say in Northern Spain, French immigrants often ran afoul of the Inquisition and in the South it was the Moriscos.  In the words of Henry Kamen, the Inquisition wasn’t solely “the imposition of a sinister tyranny on an unwilling people” – it was supported fully by a large section of the Old Christian population and “controlled by men whose outlook reflected the mentality of the mass of Castilians.”  

With that said, one might not necessarily be a minority within Spain to run afoul of the Inquisition – especially after the 1520 Diet of Worms.  The King was not the only Spaniard in attendance, the humanist Juan de Vergara recalled that “everybody, especially the Spaniards, went to see [Luther]….At the beginning everybody agreed with him…and even those who now write against him confess that at the beginning they were in favor of him.”  Such was the fear that the Inquisition instilled in Spaniards.  Juan Luis Vives was a Spanish scholar in the 16th century, he wrote to the philosopher Desiderius Erasmus in 1534 that “We live in such difficult times that it is dangerous either to speak or be silent.”  

Regardless of the fact that many Spanish intellectuals and not to mention King Charles personally heard Luther speak – Inquisitors were actually pretty ignorant of what Luteranismo actually was.  Still, Spain was full of religious experimentation – much of it directed by women – and various spiritual leaders, preachers, and intellectuals began to fall under the purview of the Inquisition as potential lutherans.   One group that received a lot of attention were called alumbrados or the illuminated ones – they rejected priestly intermediaries between God and human beings and in 1524 several key leaders in the movement were arrested.  Now, incidentally a lot of alumbrados were also conversos.  Henry Kamen says of the growth of the movement “it was as though conversos were seeking to reject formal Catholicism by interiorizing their religion.”  The Alumbrados, to be clear were a Christian sect – not Lutheran – but similarly “protestant” in that theirs was a Christian protest against the Church.  Alumbrados come from the verb alumbrar – to illuminate, and was a system of belief which was endemic to Castile.  They rejected external rituals such as meditating on the Passion, bowing before the Eucharist, and praying to saints as intercessors.  They also didn’t believe that priests were necessary as mediators between humanity and the divine.   At any rate – there was nothing remotely Jewish about any of the alumbrados except that some of them were conversos.  

Alumbrado beliefs predated Lutheranism but it wasn’t until after Inquisitors began searching for luteranismo amongst the Spanish population that they really started cracking down on alumbrados and accusing them of luteranismo.  Many groups of alumbrados were led by women called beatas – a beata is an unmarried woman who “quested for holiness” and took vows of chastity and poverty, but were not nuns.  One such beata was Isabel de la Cruz, who was denounced by the Inquisition in 1519, as alarm about Luther was beginning to spread.  The inquiry into Isabel de la Cruz and other alumbrado leaders stretched over years – Isabel was arrested in April 1524, and the Inquisition issued an edict that pronounced alubrado beliefs heretical the next year.  Francisca Hernandez was another alumbrado with a group of followers at Valladolid.  Hernandez was investigated by the inquisition in 1519 and 1524 before she was finally arrested by the Inquisition in March, 1529, and tortured until she revealed the names of others who practiced luteranismo – and especially until she revealed the printers who printed alumbrado writing.   In total, few alumbrados were killed by the Inquisition – but alumbrado texts were banned and burned, and “a whole generation of spirituality” was basically silenced by the Inquisition.

Many of the Old Christians targeted by the Inquisition were intellectuals and over time, the effect of the Inquisition on Spanish intellectualism seems fairly stifling. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain was full of humanists and philosophers and writers – I mean even at the end of the 16th century you’ve got Miguel de Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote – a classic of Western literature.  The Inquisition began censoring books in 1521, but this was pretty intermittent work until 1550, at which point the Inquisition began freaking out about banning books – in 1551 the first list of censored books was published in Spain.   Things got even more ramped up in the late 1550s when Protestants were discovered in Seville and Valladolid.  More and more lists of banned books were circulated through Spain and by 1583, the list of prohibited literature in Spain numbered 2,315 items.   Inquisition continued to review books and other printed materials and over the centuries, by the 19th century certainly when the Inquisition finally ends, there’s I think a dearth of Spanish free-thought as a result – at least in some subjects.  

Bartolome de Carranza y Miranda was one intellectual targeted by the Inquisition.  Carranza was born in 1503 in Navarre, the son of poor hidalgos.  He entered the university of Alcala at the age of 12 and at 17 joined the Dominican order, where he was sent to study at Valladolid and where his intellectual gifts won him a chair in theology.  He obtained a doctorate in theology in Rome, and returned to Spain in his early 30s, a famous theologian.  Carranza was by all account a pious man and in fact for many years was a censor for the Inquisition – deciding what books to ban.  He was offered numerous prestigious posts but he declined them all – and eventually, he was offered the most prestigious post of all – well, outside of Rome – the archbishopric of Toledo – a very important archbishopric and one that might make a bishop very, very wealthy.  Well, Carranza always had a bitter enemy in Melchor Cano – another Dominican, who likely out of envy of Carranza’s rise in politics, made it his point to turn Carranza into a heretic.  Carranza published a book titled “Commentaries on the Christian Catechism” in 1558, which were thoroughly orthodox in doctrine and numerous other theologians in Spain agreed.  But all Cano needed were a few phrases, which he took and quoted out of context to attempt to transform Carranza into a heretic.  

                This wasn’t easy – because in addition to Carranza’s reputation, as archbishop he wasn’t really under the jurisdiction of the Inquisition – only Rome could punish him.  Cano was successful mainly because at the same time a “Protestant Crisis” was taking place in Spain – with hundreds of Protestants being uncovered in Valladolid and Seville.  On August 20, 1559, ten armed familiars arrived at Carranza’s residence, and Carranza was arrested by inquisitorial authorities.  The arrest would have caused a public scandal, and so the city was put under a curfew and in the silence and darkness of midnight of a city where residents were warned not to look out of their windows, Carranza was escorted to a home in Valladolid and kept in a private house, locked in two rooms of that city.  He was kept under house arrest for seven years.  During this time, the archbishop was not allowed any recourse to the sacraments.  Politically, Carranza’s story ended there – but in human terms, the tragedy of his life was just beginning.  

Spain refused to release Carranza because the crown did not want to relinquish any control to Rome – and so when a delegation from Rome came to Spain to argue that Carranza had done nothing wrong – it fell on deaf ears.  The delegates wrote back to Rome, “Nobody dares to speak in favor of Carranza for fear of the Inquisition.  No Spaniard would dare to absolve the archbishop, even if he were believed innocent, because this would mean opposing the Inquisition.  The authority of the latter would not allow it to admit that it had imprisoned Carranza unjustly.  The most ardent defenders of justice here consider that it is better for an innocent man to be condemned than for the Inquisition to suffer disgrace.”

Ultimately, Carranza’s defenders were able to get him transferred to Rome – but his case remained unsettled – Carranza spent 9 additional years of his life in detention in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo.   Ultimately, Spain and Rome came up with a compromise to settle the issues of jurisdiction – but as for Carranza, he died just 18 days after his case was finally settled in 1576.  As for the Inquisition, well, this is an example of the dual authority it claimed right from the beginning.  On the one hand the Inquisition claimed that because it was an ecclesiastical authority was exempt from other secular authorities and because it was a secular authority it was exempt from the authority of Rome.   Basically, inquisitors argued that they represented both pope and king and were thus entitled to precedence over all other authorities – archbishops, viceroys, anyone.  Incidentally, at times Church and City Officials sometimes refused to attend autos-de-fe for this reason.  

At any rate, we have an example of how the Inquisition investigated such prohibited materials thanks to the Inquisition of Toledo, which investigated a letter nailed up in the town square in 1559.  Inquisitors reported “we are carefully and secretly applying ourselves” to investigating academics regarding some pamphlets found at the doors around town.  “All teachers were called in, one after the other, and were asked under oath if they knew the handwriting….All inns and hostels in Toledo have been reached to learn who has stayed there during the past two months, from whence they came, and what papers they had in their possession.  This search was also undertaken in hospitals….Notaries were called in to identify the handwriting….these and other methods are used…no trace as been found however….it appears that an apostate monk is the author.”  Another inquisitorial agent made a similar report about fighting luteranismo and wrote about his investigations into Montpellier, a French town.  While undercover in France, the agent discovered “several Lutherans from France who have close contacts with Spain….I pretended to be a heretic myself and indicated my intention to take some books, such as the works of John Calvin…to Spain…since I was afraid of the Inquisition, I did not dare to purchase any there, and they, as believers, desired to help me in this regard…A bookseller and a merchant volunteered to bring the books secretly to Barcelona to the home of one of their friends who were, as they said, of the faith.”

The Inquisition loved burning banned books – and that made it difficult for many people in Spain to actually learn about Lutheranism – few actual Lutherans seem to have been uncovered by the Inquisition – most of those who were tried of luteranismo were either alumbrados, or epressed atheistic or agnostic beliefs and were thus charged with luteranismo.  But small groups of Protestants did live in Spain in secret.  One was in Seville, where perhaps several hundred Protestant sympathizers lived in secret until the 1550s, when the Inquisition seized 450 Bibles.  Another group existed in Valladolid of perhaps 100 Protestants.  Leaders of the Sevillian group were arrested in 1557 for the crime of introducing books from Geneva.  After collecting information from these initial arrests, a wave of new arrests took place in 1558, including entire families.  The Inquisitor General, Fernando de Valdes exaggerated the number of Protestants to “regain the favor he had recently lost with the court in Spain” according to Kamen.  

Charles wrote a revealing letter to his daughter in 1558 regarding Protestantism in Spain, which provides further evidence that the monarchy viewed the Inquisition primarily as a tool of control.  “I wanted to introduce an Inquisition to punish the heresies that some people had caught from neighboring Germany and England and France.  Everyone opposed this on the grounds that there were no Jews among them.  Finally, an order was issued declaring that all people of whatever state and condition who came under certain specified categories were to be ipso facto burnt and their goods confiscated.  Necessity obliged me to act in this way.”  The first significant auto-de-fe featuring Protestants was held at Valladolid, on Sunday May 21, 1559.  30 stood accused of luteranismo, of them, 14 were burnt.  13 of the 14 wept and died repentant, but Francisco Herrero, from Toro, died unreptentant.  That means his 13 friends and family members were strangled before being lit on fire, Herrero was burnt alive.

On October 8, later that year in Valladolid, a second auto was performed, this time in the presence of King Phillip.  Of the 30 accused, 26 were considered Protestants, and of these, 12 were burnt at the stake, including 4 nuns.  One of the accused, Carlos de Senso, had shown great fear and repentance in the days leading up to the auto-de-fe.  This made him a popular point of interest amongst the large crowd gathered to see the auto-de-fe.  Yet in the end, Senso realized that he was going to be executed regardless of whether or not he repented to his Inquisitors.  And so, when they ask him to repent he instead blasphemed again. “In Jesus Christ alone do I hope, him alone I trust and adore, and placing my unworthy hand in his sacred side I go through the virtue of his blood to enjoy the promises that he has made to his chosen.”  Then, Carlos de Seso turned to King Philip “How could you allow this to happen?” He is said to have called out to the king.  Philip replied “If my own son were as wicked as you, I myself would carry the wood with which to burn you.”  Or at any rate, that’s how the story goes – whether Philip actually said that is dubious.  Regardless of the veracity of Philip’s supposed statement, Carlos de Seso and the others accused were burnt alive as impenitents while the king of Spain watched.

Seville hosted its first auto-de-fe filled with protestants on Sunday, September 24, 1559. 76 accused were present, nineteen of which were burnt as Lutherans, only one of them in effigy.  The next was Sunday, 22 of December 1560, during which of a total of 54 accused, 14 were burnt in person and 3 in effigy – in all 40 of the 54 were accused Protestants.  Included in those burnt were two English sailors, as well as a Sevillian mother named Leonor Gomez along with her three daughters.  In 1562, two more auto-de-fes were held in Seville, which combined saw 88 more Protestants punished, 18 burnt in person, amongst them the prior of San Isidro and four of his priests.  Through the 1560s, the Inquisition focused on hunting Protestants and by the end of the decade, “native Protestantism was almost totally extinguished in Spain” and after 1562, many of those accused of the heresy of luteranismo were French, Flemish, and English residents of Spain.  80 Frenchmen were executed as heretics during the 16th century, another 100 were burnt in effigy, and 380 were sent to the galleys.

The inquisitors broadened their search for deviations in Catholic faith after that such that by the mid-16th century, the inquisition was fully going after all sorts of “moral offenses” which the Inquisitors argued were proof that someone was not a true Christian.  No true Christian would blaspheme, or make scandalous statements, or fornicate, or commit bigamy, or sodomy., etc. unless they were a heretic.  Thus by the 1550s and 1560s – Old Christians began to be targeted in large numbers.  With that said – far fewer Old Christians were ever executed than minorities perhaps with the exception of those accused of homosexuality.

                Now with that said,  Inquisition was unquestionably zenophobic and racist – and while it is true that more Old Christians were targeted as the Protestant scare unfolded across Catholic Europe – the truth is that the number of Protestants targeted by the Inquisition pales in comparison to the increasing number of Muslims targeted by the Inquisition as the 16th century proceeded.  Similarly to the Jews, substantial numbers of Muslims had converted to Christianity over the years  - often by force through mass baptisms.  Since converted Jews were known as Conversos, Spaniards called converted Muslims moriscos, and basically the reason that they escaped the prosecution of the Inquisition largely for a while was that Ferdinand and Isabella had given Muslims the assurance that they could retain their property, customs, laws, and religion when Granada capitulated in 1492.  

Ferdinand did not keep his word for long.  Immediately after the capitulation of Granada, Muslims in Spain felt increasing pressure to likewise convert.  At first this was mostly peaceful under the direction of Archbishop Hernando de Talavera, who carried out a relatively peaceful campaign designed to attract converts from Islam by allowing traditional dances and music like the zambras to be performed during Mass.    The archbishop of Toledo - Francisco de Cisneros, did not at all believe in using dances like the zambra to attract converts.  Cisneros  began arguing for mass baptisms and converted a mosque into a church in 1497.  Two years later, he accompanied the Inquisition to Granada to investigate the Morisco population there – this provoked riots that began in December, 1499 and which continued periodically in the Muslim quarters of Spanish cities through 1500 and into the early weeks of 1501.   By this time the Spanish government was basically trying to decide against one of two policies.  Cisneros and many others argued that the Muslims of Granada forfeited their rights guaranteed in the terms of the capitulation of 1492 and as such “that they be converted and enslaved, for as slaves they will be better Christians and the land will be pacified forever.”  In Contrast, Ferdinand favored another policy – more moderate in comparison - “If your horse trips up you don’t seize your sword to kill him instead you give him a smack on his flanks.  So my view and the Queen is that these Moors be baptized.  And if they don’t become Christians, their children and grandchildren will.”  Over the next few months mass baptisms occurred and in October 1501, a massive bonfire of Arabic books took place in Granada.  Yuce Venegas, a contemporary Arab leader and scholar lamented “If the king of the conquest does not keep faith, what can we expect from his successors?”    I’ve mentioned this in previous episodes, but while I’m at it – Francisco de Cisneros rules Spain as regent for a few years after Ferdinand’s death since Charles was only 16 at that time.

Anyway, on February 12, 1502, all Muslims in Castile were ordered to convert or emigrate from Spain.  In Aragon, by contrast, the landed nobility found Muslims “a plentiful, cheap, and productive source of labor” and shielded Muslim subjects there from the Inquisition – Aragonese Muslims were spared the Inquisition until after the Revolt of the Communeros in 1520.   After the Revolt of the Communeros failed, mass baptisms of the rural Muslim population took place in Valencia in 1522 to punish the rebellious nobility there.  And once that happened, the Inquisition began to argue that it wasn’t really right for some of Aragon’s Muslim population to have been baptized without the rest of Aragon following suit.  Within a few years, this argument won the day – by 1526 mass baptisms took place in the Aragonese realms of Majorca and Catalonia and thus all of Aaragon’s Muslim population was  technically converted to Christianity– which meant that after 1526 all Muslims in Spain were formally and officially Christians and subject to the Inquisition.  According to Spanish law – Islam was an extinct religion in Spain.  

After 1526, Moriscos were increasingly targeted by the Inquisition.  Inquisitors had a list of practices which they considered evidence of “Islamismo”.  There were 36 possible infractions, which included circumcision, giving children Muslim names or singing Muslim songs or performing zambras or other Muslim dances – or using prohibited Muslim musical instruments.    Any of this might be enough to get the attention of the Inquisition.  In 1538, Juan de Burgos, his wife Julia, and some friends gathered at his house for “the zambra where they were dancing and singing in Arabic, and there they all ate dinner together.”  So said their servant who testified to such in the Inquisition – making her a secret witness against her employers the Burgos.  

With that said – it wasn’t until the 1560s – and the military threat of the Turkish Empire rising – that the Inquisition turned fully its attention on eradicating all traces of Moorish culture in Spain.  Perhaps easier said than done – especially in Granada – where in the 1560s 54% of the population consisted of Moriscos – and in some regions of Granada – such as the well defended Alpujarra mountains – Moriscos comprised close to 100% of the local population.  Well, in the 1560s a series of new laws were passed that required Moriscos to give up their language, clothing, and other customs – all things which were supposedly rights granted as terms of the capitulation of Granada – and in addition, Inquisitorial surveillance of Moriscos grew alongside the passage of the new laws.  In 1568 a large community of Moriscos in the Sierra de Alpujarras in Granada responded with violent insurrection.  What followed was “a savage war between Christians and Muslims, with atrocities on both sides, and military repression was brutal.  Thousands of Moriscos died.”  Besides that, perhaps 4000 foreign Turks and Berbers crossed into Spain to fight alongside the Granadan insurgents.  The Moriscos fought for 2 years in what might very well have been the most savage war fought in Europe that century - but they eventually lost.  Thousands of Moriscos were sold into slavery within Spain and then Spanish government dispersed the rest of the Morisco population throughout Castile – 80,000 Granadan Moriscos in total were forced from their homes after the revolt in a Spanish version of the trail of tears.  Incidentally, the dispersal of Moriscos throughout Castile – where few Muslims lived before - made those Moriscos much more visible to very suspicious neighbors.  Ultimately, in 1609, the Moriscos were expelled from Spain – and thus within a century, and with the support of the Inquisition, Spanish authorities essentially removed two of the three cultures within Spain.  Only a few Morisco noble families and the Morisco slaves of Old Christian nobility remained after that.

                Francisco Nunez Muley was a Morisco who wrote a letter he titled “A Morisco Plea” in 1567 which details the oppressive new laws that led to the rebellion which I would like to paraphrase for you. “Anyone who looks at the new laws from a distance will think they would be easy to follow, but the difficulties they imply are very great….The clothing our women wear is not even Moorish clothing…it is simply the local clothing, like the clothing in Castile, and as in other places the headdresses, clothing, and shoves serve to distinguish people.  Who can deny that the clothing of the Moors and Turks is very different from these people’s clothing?....What good can it do anyone to take away our clothing, keeping in mind that we have spend a great deal of money on it, money earned in the service of the pervious kings…Why would they want to make us lose more than 3 million gold pieces we have tied up in this clothing, wiping out the merchants, traders, jewelers, and others who make their living my making clothing, shoes, and jewelry in the Morisco style?....Our weddings and festivals and the pastimes to which we are accustomed do not in any way prevent us from being Christian.  I do not even see how these things can be considered Moorish ceremonies….What good does it do to make us keep our doors open?  That would allow thieves to rob us, rapists to force themselves on our women, and policemen and scribes the opportunity to destroy poor people…..Can it really be true that the baths serve a ceremonial purpose? No, certainly not.  Many people gather at the baths, and most of the bathers are Christians…The old surnames we have serve for people to know each other, and without them knowledge of persons and lineages will be lost….what good does it have to such memories lost?....Then let us speak of the Arabic language, which is the greatest issue of all.  How can one take away people’s native tongue, with which they were born and raised?...It would be very difficult, almost impossible, for the old people to learn Spanish in the days they still have left, much less in the brief period of three years, even if they did nothing but go to school the whole time.  This is clearly a rule that was created to harm us.”

The expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain was ordered on April 4, 1609 – and the process took place in stages through 1614, during which time around 300,000 moriscos were forced to leave Spain.  This was an unmitigated disaster – a plague occurred in Spain just prior to the expulsion and so the additional loss of manpower meant Spanish agriculture and finances were greatly affected – both land productivity and tax revenue decreased substantially.  In addition of course, the Inquisition lost business by this move – though the Inquisition didn’t really have much to do with the expulsion other than I imagine most inquisitors liked the idea.  But not all clergy were in love with the idea – the archbishop of Seville, Dom Pedro Vaca de Castro, argued strongly against it.  De Castro asked the crown what to consider that some Morisca women were married to old Christians. Likewise he asked the crown to consider the children, “There is also no danger from the little children.  Where must they go?  And especially those who have neither father nor mother.  Will they not be enslaved and lose their faith and religion?  They are not of age to be punished…there are others who lent service [to Spain] in the last rebellion….they left their relatives, served Your Majesty…and it does not seem likely…that they would rebel.”  De Castro’s pleas to the Crown went unanswered.  And in fact  the Spanish inquisition continued on after that for another 200 years, ultimately the inquisition lasted until the 19th century before it was finally finished off.

                Now, regardless of whether or not you’ve been enjoying this episode so far you might very well be wondering why exactly it is I am spending so much time talking about the Spanish Inquisition considering this is a podcast about the history of the Atlantic World.  We are going to get to that very soon, but first, I have a confession to make.

                As bad a picture as I have painted of the Spanish Inquisition to you thus far, the Inquisition probably has a worse reputation than it deserves.  I mean – don’t get me wrong, it deserves a terrible reputation – but if I may ask one of my very favorite questions  – compared to what?   Well, the Spanish Expulsion of the Jews in 1492 was less harsh than the one that happened in 1496 to the Jews of Portugal – at least in comparison to the fact that in addition to the expulsion, King Manuel also kidnapped hundreds if not thousands of Converso children to send them to Sao Tome.  We can also compare the expulsion of the Jews from Spain to pretty much everywhere else in Western Europe.  In the late 13th and early 14th centuries Jews were expelled by royal decree from Naples, England, and France – as well as many cities and principalities across Europe.  Jews were outlawed in France in 1394 – one hundred years before Spain did the same.  And they were outlawed in England in 1290 – two hundred years prior.  

Similarly, based on how witch-craft was treated in Europe – the Inquisition was downright liberal.  There are a few records of women and girls being punished for witchcraft, but the few times that witches were burnt after Inquisitorial trial, the organization itself got angry with the inquisitors responsible for doing the burning.  The Spanish Inquisition largely seems to have viewed witchcraft as a type of mental illness.  One Inquisitorial official,  Alonso de Salazar Frias made a report on the issue and concluded “I have not found the slightest evidence from which to infer that a single act of witchcraft has really occurred.  Indeed, my previous suspicions have been strengthened by new evidence from this visitation: that the evidence of the accused alone, without external proof, is insufficient to justify arrest…I deduce…that there were neither witches nor bewitched until they were talked and written about.”  The idea that witchcraft wasn’t something to be punished is on the one hand evidence that the Inquisition’s zeal for religion was mainly just based on racism and xenophobia – similarly, most Protestants who were killed by the Inquisition were foreign born.

Spain wasn’t the only place Protestants were murdered.  In the Netherlands between 1557 and 1562, 103 heretics were burned – more than in Spain during that period.  The Huguenot protestants in France were targeted for massacres throughout the 16th century – I mean – thousands of Huguenots were killed during the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre alone – historians guess the number is anywhere from 5-30,000 killed during that single incident.   And if you think that’s bad – well - I wouldn’t even begin to guess how many people died in Germany during the 16th century as a result of conflict between Lutherans and Catholics.  In England, Bloody Mary burned three times the number of heretics in England during her rule than were burnt in Spain during that period as well.  Likewise, the rule of Elizabeth saw numerous heretics burnt in England – over decades of course, but many more heretics died under Elizabeth’s rule than Mary’s.  And of course the medieval Inquisition barely made its presence felt in Spain – but throughout France, Germany, and Italy – heretics were burnt just as they were in Spain.  In truth, the only thing that really differentiated the Spanish Inquisition from the judicial systems elsewhere in Europe was that the Inquisitors wrote everything down – the Inquisition is one of the only institutions of the early modern period with extensive records in fact.  

NOW WITH ALL OF THAT SAID – the real reason that we’re talking about all of this is because of the tremendous impact The Inquisition had on the history of the Atlantic World.  Jews and Muslims who fled Spain to escape persecution were not allowed to take gold, silver, or weapons with them…and in fact most of their valuables – especially since they could not take their homes.  Those who wished to keep their faith left for Portugal or the coasts of North Africa.  They went to the Italian states, and to Greece, and the realms of the Ottoman Empire, and, of course, some went to the New World. 

 The first European to set foot on the new world was an interpreter on Columbus’ expedition – his name was Luis de Torres – and he was a converso who spoke Arabic. In fact, Edward Kritzler, the author of Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean – argues that a number of “secret Jews” made their way amongst Columbus’ original crew because they were attempting to escape the Inqusiition.  I don’t know why Torres signed up for that voyage – but I bet if you were able to ask him he’d tell you that it sure beat sitting in Spain and waiting for the inquisition to find him.  Torres wasn’t alone either – examining the historical record of the early Spanish Main we find that by 1495, a number of Converso settlers made their way to Hispaniola – even though Spain banned conversos from going to the new world in 1493.  In 1515, some conversos were sent back to Spain from Hispaniola to face inquisitorial trials. Expulsion.  

A community of secret Jews calling themselves “the Portugals” formed a community on Jamaica in 1510, they were some of the only settlers willing to live on the island owned by Columbus’ son Diego, ultimately, their descendants formed much of the population of the city of Port Royal.  In 1520, one of them, Joao Rodrigues Cabrilho, led 30 men armed with crossbows to Mexico to join the conquest there.  Later, Cabrilho will discover California in 1542 – we’ll get there eventually in a later episode.

On April 22, 1500, Brazil was claimed for the Portuguese crown by Admiral Pedro Alvarez Cabral and with him was a new Christian named Gaspar de Gama.  We first met Gaspar de Gama in my first series Rise of the Conquistadores, at that point he was at one point going by the name of Moncaide and was living in India.  There, he agreed to pilot Vasco de Gama’s ships to port.  Moncaide claimed to be a Converso, though de Gama described him as a “renegade Jew.”  When they returned to Portugal, he took the name Alonso Perez and, a runaway Jew from Castile and was baptized and took the name Gaspar de Gama with Vasco de Gama as his godfather and then later sailed with Cabral.  When they returned, Gaspar began telling other conversos in Portugal that Brazil was a safe-haven.

With that said, some Conversos actually got sent to Brazil by Portugal as part of the sentence of banishment that was offered to so many Portuguese criminals.  Others went there purposefully to escape persecution and make a profit like Fernando de Noronha, who obtained a monopoly contract for trade in Brazil and who’s Jewish ancestry might have contributed to the change in name from St Veracruz or whatever the Portuguese tried calling it to Brazil.  At any rate, Noronha once had a ship called the Sao Cristovao or St. Christopher and which he renamed A Judia once he was in the Americas.  

Unlike many of their Catholic peers in the New World, the Jews and others escaping the Inquisition were not looking to get rich quick with gold silver and slaves to return to Europe with, but instead for a safe home.  As such, conversos were pivotal to the creation of the sugar trade in Brazil.  The first sugar plantation in Brazil was imported from Madeira by the converso who owned it in 1516 – by the end of the century, over 200 sugar mills were in Brazil and most were owned by Conversos.  Now – earlier I mentioned that the conversos who were going across the New World were different in many ways than the Sephardim Jews spreading across the world – but these two groups did have some connections.  The success of Portuguese conversos from Sao Tome who came to Brazil and began cultivating sugar attracted further investment – hence the great growth in sugar mills – a lot of this investment comes from the Sephardic community who then use some of this wealth from Brazilian sugar to finance war and piracy against their Spanish enemies.  Now all that will come at a much later episode – but for now – what is happening is that Conversos in Brazil become economically connected to the Sephardic community in Europe – remember those are the people who left Spain because they refused to convert from Judaism to Christianity – well that means Brazil becomes connected with the large Sephardic presence in Amsterdam – and as the 16th century goes on, more and more Dutch interlopers begin arriving in the Americas, smuggling slaves and what the Dutch called “cracas toeback” or tobacco along the coasts of Santo Domingo, Cuba, and western Venezuela. 

Now – as you may have noticed by now – I am talking a lot less about Moriscos than Conversos.  Well, frankly, a lot less has been written about Moriscos than the “rich parallel historiography concerning Spanish and Portuguese Conversos in the New World” which is why Karoline Cook wrote the book Forbidden Passages: Muslims and Moriscos in Colonial Spanish America.  The same royal decrees that prevented conversos from going to the Spanish New World prevented Moriscos from going to the new world and similarly, these emigration controls seem ineffective.  Both free and enslaved Moriscos traveled from Spain to Spanish America clandestinely.  But we only have records for those who were denounced, which began when the Inquisition reached Mexico in the 1570s.

Such as Maria Ruiz, who was born in Spain near Granada, and at the end of her life she spent time deciding how she wished to die – as a Muslim or Christian.  She denounced herself in 1594 to the Inquisition in Mexico City and wished to be reconciled with the Catholic faith and reincorporated into the church because she felt bad about having continued to recite Islamic prayers she’d learned as a child.  Karoline Cook asks “What events…during her lifetime…prompted her and countless individuals to have to choose which faith they considered to be the true one in which they might attain salvation?”  Good question.   So, similarly to how we talked about how Conversos ranged from doing everything they could in secret to preserve their Jewish identity to being pious Catholics who happened to have Jewish ancestors – this is also true of the Moriscos.

For every 10 European men in the New World of the early 16th century there was 1 European woman.  So, Señoritas like Maria Ruiz were in high demand you could say.  In combination with the fact that the Inquisition specifically targeted Converso and Morisco women meant that multiple factors pulled women such as  the four Estrada Sisters to the new world.  The Estradas were the four Converso daughters of Alonso Estrada, the royal treasurer to Ferdinand, and who all four of them found many suitors in Mexico who were not in the slightest worried about their wives’ blemished ancestry.  So too, were Francisca and Beatriz Ordaz – two other Converso sisters who came to Mexico to escape the Inquisition.  Beatrice Estrada was a converso who came to New Spain and married Vasquez de Coronado, the conquistador who sought the 7 cities of gold.  Beatrice also came with her sister, Luisa, who married Jorge de Alvarado, the future governor of Guatemala and a conqueror of Mexico.

Numerous Morisco heretics were discovered in the New World when the Inquisition was established there.  One was even an ex-governor of Mexico – Luis de Carvajal – a converso.  Of course, since Conversos Jews and Muslims participated in the conquest that shouldn’t come as a surprise.  One was Hernando Alonso, one of the carpenters responsible for much of the Spaniards success in Mexico as you will learn next episode if you don’t already know.  Alonso became the wealthiest farmer in Mexico after that after being awarded a large tract of land north of Mexico city and becoming the biggest supplier of meat for the colony.   Other Moriscos made their way to the New World in the role of slave.  Such as the enslaved Morisco known to us only as Estevanico, who accompanied the conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca across the American Southwest.  

With that said, in the early years of the Atlantic world, Moriscos were common on ships going to the New World.  Many Moriscos attached themselves (or found themselves attached in case of enslavement) to ships bound for the Americas before it was known that America was not Asia.  The Portuguese of course, found Morisco translators necessary during the 15th century as they made their way down the Atlantic Coast and via recruitment and capture – and various Moriscos found themselves in the service of navigators such as Columbus or Magellan, both of whom recruited Arabic speakers.   Some of the degradagos left behind in Brazil and Africa by the Portuguese were Moriscos as well.

 

Other Moriscos got to the New World by virtue of their being excellent craftsmen.  Talented Morisco artisans were sometimes requested in the New World by Spanish colonial officials despite their being forbidden.  One such artisan was Diego Herrador, a shoemaker who was summoned before Mexican inquisitors on May 23, 1576 to answer questions about his name – Diego confessed that he changed his name to Herrador because his parents were Moriscos.   His maternal grandmother was executed by the Inquisition, and he did not want to get any undue attention because of his background.  He obtained the paperwork necessary to travel to the New World by bringing four Old Christian witnesses who testified to Spanish officials of Herrador’s good Christian nature and his limpieza de sangre.   Diego Herrador’s case is particularly instructive in telling us how one might skirt the law prohibiting New Christians from the New World.  After obtaining his paperwork, Herrador was supposed to take his paperwork to the Casa de Contracion in Seville to be processed.  But instead of doing that, he simply went to Lisbon and then sailed for the Canary Islands, effectively dodging Spanish officials who would otherwise wanted to give him a background check.  Herrador simply boarded a passenger ship in the Canaries that was headed for New Spain – this well-travelled route was in fact apparently used by all sorts of folks who wished to avoid Spanish control but still trade in Spanish America.  These sorts of tricks were used by various Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, and other European merchants who wished to get to America – and Conversos and Moriscos were also able to take advantage of these secret routes.  And in fact – despite all the power the Inquisition had in so many aspects of Spanish law – the institution specifically did not have jurisdiction over false licenses – and so beyond just a way to the New World – for many Conversos and Moriscos like Diego Herrador – travelling illicitly to the New World was a way to escape the Inquisition. 

Charles V issued a decree in 1540 that attempted to punish foreign captains that “pretend to load their ships for the Canary Islands, and go secretly to Hispaniola, and other parts of our Indies.” That didn’t seem to work at all because in 1558 Charles issued another decree to regulate captains that “pretend to be going to Brazil, but that due to a storm, they docked in these parts.”    His successor Phillip II was likewise bothered by what he considered illicit trade and unwanted travelers.  “They pass to our Indies secretly, some as sailors, others as soldiers, and others pretending to be merchants or their agents.  Others go through the Canary Islands, and find other routes and ways to pass.  Under these guises men pass who are thugs and of sinful life and poor example, and [some are] prohibited persons…some people leave from ports that are outside of these kingdoms, in foreign and domestic ships…and pretend that with bad weather they docked in the Indies…with this deceit they pass…and acquire goods and estates….and there they give it to their heirs.”  The Inquisition likewise fretted about “infected persons” leaving Spain via the Canary Islands and escaping Spanish law.  The royal decrees speak to the number of desertions in the Spanish army and navy as well.  Sure, only Old Christians could legally go to the New World as colonists and conquistadores – but you could still be a Morisco or Converso and sign up for the Spanish armed forces – in fact hell- you could be Italian or English or French and they would accept you in the Spanish navy.  From there, many Spanish soldiers and sailors were stationed in the Indies – and many of those who got stationed in the Americas simply went AWOL when they arrived. Visitors of Havana in the 16th century often remarked that the city was international – and comprised of numerous deserters who were originally from Genoa, Greece, Venice, England, and France besides those who came from Spain.  For while Conversos and Moriscos could not go to the New World in any other way, they could join the army and navy and maybe still get there.  

Diego Romero was one such Morisco who travelled illicitly to the New World and became an encomendero in New Granada.  Romero was accused by the inquisition of being a runaway North African slave.  During the trial, Romero defended himself successfully as a priviledged conquistador whose services to the Crown entitled him to retain his encomienda.   Romero wasn’t alone.  Though most Moriscos who fled Spain actually went to North Africa – those who went to America often hoped to forge new lives for themselves where there was less surveillance.  In America, A Morisco might claim to be an Old Christian – why not?  And if he gained honors or encomiendas than a Morisco would establish himself amongst the local elite.  Incidentally – this was also a motivation for plenty of non-noble Old Christians who came to the Americas – in America a common man might find land.  And what else was nobility other than a man who owned land?

In 1546, an inspection of the colony of New Spain was made and the inspector, Francisco Tello de Sandoval, reported an interesting case of a Morisco which involved the interpreter of the Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, who took his post in New Spain back in 1535.  Mendoza’s interpreter, Antonio Ortiz, as reported by Sandoval, was engaged in a plot with three other Moriscos, Francisco de Triana, Marcos Romero, and Alonso Ortiz de Zuniga as illegally selling slave and cheating people with whom they were dealing with.  The men “lived more like Muslims than like Christians.”  Sandoval, and Spanish authorities when they read this report – which contributed to the expansion of the Inquisition across the Atlantic.  Perhaps of greatest concern was the fact that Triana ran a tavern where he sold pulque to Indians and Africans. 

Spanish authorities had no desire of allowing what might be potential Islamic proselytizing in the new world.  They were suspicious that Triana and the other Moriscos “conversation and dwelling has always been with Indians and among Indians.”  In addition to the fact that they were Moriscos, Spain was attempting to control all relationships between Spaniards and Indians.  Triana was ultimately tried for bigamy since he was cohabitating with Indian women while simultaneously his wife lived back in Spain.  The judge of the Audiencia of Mexico stated that Triana was “such a liar that he never, or only by mistake, tells the truth, and a very bad Christian who never enters any church, nor has anyone seen him confess.”  Now –  Triana comes across as a dirtbag – which might very well be an accurate description – but it isn’t really clear how that makes him, or Romero and Zuniga different from any other conquistadores.   The charges against Romero were that he was “a very poor man of vile roots without honor or shame.”   At any rate – the fact that they were investigated means we have records of them – how many other conquistadores were Moriscos but successfully escaped the Inquisition and thus escaped the records of time?

Many other Moriscos arrived as slaves of their Christian masters – many of whom participated, or their fathers participated, in the conquest of Granada before coming to the New World.  Many of these were women.  One was named Maria, who was the berberisca slave of a certain Bartolome de Anaya y Villanueva, who arrived in New Spain to assume a secretarial post in the government.   Bartolome Anaya sent witnesses to authorities before leaving Spain that testified to Maria’s behavior, stating she was “a Christian, because they see her go to Mass and pray, and she does Christian works.”  And so, instead of being refused on grounds of being a Morisco Maria obtained the documents necessary to emigrate.  In 1578, the Crown ordered Ruy Diaz de Mendoza to return two Morisca slaves he brought to New Spain so they could be punished for four years and if he did not comply he would be punished for 4 years.   In 1512, Hernando de Peralta, similarly to Anaya, received license to bring two “esclavas blancas” to San Juan.  Escalvas blancas, or white slaves – was a term often applied to enslaved Moriscas.  In 1537, Licenciado Inigo Lopes de Cervantes also brought two esclavas blancas, in addition to four Africans, who were “raised in his household” as Christians which is why they were allowed to emigrate.  In 1543, one esclava blanca named Juana petitioned for her freedom when her master sold her to another Spaniard and had her case tried before the Royal Audiencia of Panama. 4 years later, in 1547, a judge finally ruled that Juana and her daughter were free.

Other Muslim slaves were brought from Africa. Now, the slave trade is a deep dive that requires a whole series on its own, but for now let me say that perhaps something like 25% of the African slaves in the Spanish Caribbean during the 16th century were Muslim.   Or at least, of the approximately 200 Africans transported to Havana in 1575 to construct the military fort of La Fuera contained 45 Islamic and Turkish slaves.  Spanish officials worried about African Muslim slaves because they were potentially rebellious – Muslims were often literate in Arabic and thus able to plot rebellion in secret.  But the demands for slaves were so high and the reputation of Muslim slaves as excellent craftsmen means that Muslim slaves became common in the Spanish Caribbean as well as the coast of South America.  Ultimately, as the end of the 16th century drew near, Spanish officials became increasingly concerned that their Muslim slaves might help Dutch interlopers in an attack against Spanish interests.  

Most Spaniards did not think well of Muslims and Moriscos – except that there was one profession a Morisco might have which would instead be very desired and admired.  That is that of the medicine man or doctor.  Muslim medicine was more advanced than Christian medicine in the 16th century.  There were even European charlatans who pretended to be Muslim so that they could sell their remedies and tonics to a more believing audience.  “Il Barbaresco” Il Turchetto, and Il Persiano were three Italians who paraded themselves about Europe as Turkish doctors.  Or, at least I think so – maybe some of these charlatans could have been Ottomans passing as Europeans passing as pretend Ottomans.  Does that make sense? Well, anyway,  in 16th century Spanish America, a number of itinerant healers travelled about selling medical services which hint at the Muslim influence on Spanish colonial medicine.  One was Lopez de Aponte, who often angered his patients by calling the Virgin Mary “that woman” as in “bring me that woman” or “here, you take that woman” but nevertheless, was a popular physician who used Islamic medicine techniques rather than counting on the help of Christian saints.  Accounts of 16th century doctors in Spanish America mention words like hechizada which means sorcery were often used.  Not everyone was a fan of course, one Jesuit theologian remarked that as a “result of the Moorish occupation of Spain, the magical arts were virtually the only subjects being taught in Toledo, Seville, and Salamanca.”  

Yet despite the seeming ease with which Conversos and Moriscos found themselves across the Atlantic – it wasn’t always possible for Moriscos or Conversos to get to the New World.  In 1537, the bishop of Mexico, Friar Juan de Zumaraga requested that a group of married Moriscos be allowed to travel to New Spain in order to teach the indigenous peoples there the art of raising silkworms and producing silk.  The Crown rejected this request.  Likewise, the Inquisition eventually followed people into the New world – which is why we have records of Conversos and Moriscos getting in trouble.  

But with that said – inquisitorial officials often complained about the difficulty of policing thought crimes on the frontier.  In addition, there were numerous bishops established in the New World decades before the arrival of the Inquisition – some of them controlled substantial estates and Indian subjects and they had no desire to relinquish their authority to Inquisitorial authorities either – we’ll get into that in a future episode.  For now I just want to leave you with the impression that because of the Inquisition – well, the colonization of Spanish America wasn’t really all that different from the colonization of British America – in that it was two things at once.  Yes, it was a horrible conquest and a genocide of indigenous peoples and all of this was fueled by the chattel slavery of Africans.  But it was also a chance at freedom and escape for those Europeans also subject to the cruelties of European society.  

At any rate, as for this episode, I think it’s about time I wrapped it up.  I struggled a bit with trying to figure out how to tell this story.  On Saturday, May 30, 2020, while I was in the process of writing this episode, I decided to a protest in support of Black Lives Matter and to march for justice and to attempt to get more police accountability.  The murderers of people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and far, far too many others must be held accountable.  After that march was concluded I was fired upon by police officers, along a crowd of others, with tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets, one of which struck my right hand and broke my index finger.  I have never before seen state violence but as a consequence of that experience – I took a little extra time to finish writing this episode.  For starters, with a broken index finger it was tough to type.  Haha, in addition it was difficult for me to not flavor the episode with that experience.  It’s not I didn’t see parallels between the violence of the state that I experienced what African Americans and far too many others have experienced at the hands of the state and what happened with the Spanish Inquisition – because there are a lot of parallels – and I’m mad as hell about them.  But this is not my story.  This is the story men and women like Elvira del Campo, Maria Gonzalez, Diego Herrador, Maria Ruiz, Carlos de Senso and everyone else who was targeted by the Inquisition, robbed of their liberty, their property, and sometimes their life.

I am also cognizant that I live in a nation with a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, 16th century Spain was a place where the “Revolt of the Comuneros” failed in 1522 and there was no Constitution, no Bill of Rights.  So the society I live in – the United States in the 21st century is significantly less oppressive than 16th century Spain – so while parallels exist there I am aware that things are better here.  Well, for now anyways.  We do live in…turbulent times to say the least.   By examining the history of the Spanish Inquisition we are reminded that if we think things are bad now….well, they can get a whole lot worse.    What that means to me is that we must be vigilant and proactive in safeguarding freedom for EVERYONE.   Especially in times like these.  Or at least that’s my opinion.   At any rate, I leave you this episode with a poem written by Martin Niemoller, a German who did not stand against the Nazis, and who came to regret his inaction.

First they came for the Communists
 And I did not speak out
 Because I was not a Communist
 Then they came for the Socialists
 And I did not speak out
 Because I was not a Socialist
 Then they came for the trade unionists
 And I did not speak out
 Because I was not a trade unionist
 Then they came for the Jews
 And I did not speak out
 Because I was not a Jew
 Then they came for me
 And there was no one left
 To speak out for me

 

Martin Niemoller was a Protestant Minister arrested in Nazi Germany on June 1st, 1937.  They say those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Well, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again there is a truth about stories and that is this – You have heard this story now – what you do with it is up to you.  Until next time my friends, thanks again for supporting the show and check out the show notes for more information and links!