The Spanish Inquisition

Richard Kagan and Abigail Dyer, ed., Inquisitorial Inquiries: Brief Lives of Secret Jews and Other Heretics (2nd ed., Johns Hopkins 10 Inquisitorial Inquiries· University Press, 2011). ll The Spanish Inquisition The common denominator linking these diverse lives is, of course, the Spanish Inquisition, otherwise known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition (Santo Oficio de la Inquisici6n). No matter how unusual the case before it, the Holy Office acted in accordance with a consistent set of internal procedures that applied equally to all of its far-flung tribunals. Integral to these procedures 'I . was the requirement that its judges collect detailed information about every I · individual it prosecuted, a stipulation that harks back to the beginnings ofthe ! institution itself. i ' The Spanish Inquisition belonged to a long line of ecclesiastical tribunals, also called inquisitions, that the papacy created for the purpose of extirpating heresy from within the confines of Christendom. The name Inquisition derives from inquisitio, a particular form of juridical procedure that evolved out of earlier Roman practices and found its way into the canon law of the medieval I church. This procedure, utilized only in exceptional circumstances, empow ! ered the presiding judge or judges to order arrests, gather evidence, interrogate ! witnesses, and render judgment, that is, to direct the entire court proceeding. The papacy first deployed this legal weapon in the late twelfth century against deviant communities of monks and nuns and then, with greater determina tion, at the start of the thirteenth century against Cathar heretics gathered in southwestern France. Subsequently, it authorized individual bishops to in stitute inquisitorial tribunals whenever the need arose. But whereas these me dieval inquisitions were essentially papal or at least episcopal institutions,12 the Spanish Inquisition, authorized by papal bull in 1478, was directly 11nder the auspices of the Spanish Crown. Initially, the papacy, fearing loss of power, i,vas reluctant to sanction this new arrangement, but the reigning Spanish mon archs, King Ferdinand (1479-1516) and Queen Isabella (1 479-1503), pre- l 2. The bibliography concerning the medieval Inquisition is immense. A useful recent introduc . tion is Edward Peters, Inquisition (New York: Free Press, 1988). i i t' I 12 Inquisitorial Inquiries fotwduction vailed, having insisted that a new and somewhat extraordinary institution was fundamentally transformed th~ nature of Spanish society itsel£ i; In the Middle necessary to suppress heresy among Spain's large and growing population of Ages Jewish converts to Christianity were by no means unknowll-the twelfth New Christians or conversos, a term that initially applied to converts from century scholar Petrus Alfonsi is a famous example-b1.1t, starting in 1391, Judaism but which later, and for reasons discussed below, also applied to the conversos emerged as a large, powerful, and in many ways uncla.ssifi.able social descendants of converts. group that did not mesh. neatly with the tripartite division of Spanish society Spain's converso problem dated from 1391. In that year a wave of violent into separate "nations" ot ethnoreligious groups: Christian, Jewish, and Mus pogroms that swept across the Iberian peninsula prompted large numbers of lim. Conversos were reg~rded as outsiders, individuals whose very existence Spanish Jews to convert, at least nominally, to C,:hristianity. Subsequent po threatened the cohesion} of the existing religious communitie~. Jews labeled groms prompted further conversions, as did the royal decree of 31 March 1492 sincere converses as apostates, or meshumud. Old Christians were reluctant to ordering all Jews in Spain to convert or face expulsion. Numbers are vague, bqt accept them as equals, as repeated fi.fteenth-centuryou~breaks of anti-converso in the course of the fifteenth century, perhaps as many as one-third to one-half violence among Old C,:hristians readily attest. Furthermore, starting in the early of the kingdom's former Jewish poptJlation had been baptized. These Jews fifteenth century, various cathedral chapters, religious orders, and university officially changed their faith, becoming what was popularly known as cris colleges instituted estatutos de limpieza de sangre ("purity ofblo()d" statutes) in tianos nuevos, or New Christians, a term that distinguished them from cris an effort to restrict membership to individ11als of proven Old Christian blood. tianos viejos, or Old Christians, individuals whose lineage was supposedly free In the process, genealogy, formerly something that mainly concerned the high from either Jewish or Muslim blood. Some of these conversions were sincere, nobility, acquired new importance: ordinary Spaniards sought to demonstrate and many others were not, but whatever the circumstances of their private a lineage free from com~erso taint. Once an Old Christian, always an Old devotions and religious rituals-and there was astonishing array of such prac Christian; and by this same logic New Christians were accorded a separate and tices, many of which had little to do with orthodox Judaism per se-New seemingly immutable social status, one that not even the sacrament ofbaptism Christians were widely sqspected of "relapsing" into the faith of their ances had the power to erase. As a result, the term converso was applied not only to tors. Canon law classified relapsi as guilty of the sin of apostasy, a capital crime. actual converts, but also to their children and grandchildren, even those who More prosaically, the Spanish Inquisition labeled these heretics as judaizantes, were devout Catholics. or Judaizers. In Portugal they were known as marranos (pigs), a term that was It follows that the Holy Office had a particular interest in the family history occasionally used in Spain as well. The important to thing to remember here is of conversos arrested on stispicion of heresy. Previot1s papal inquisitions had that whatever the terminology employed-conversos, judaizantes, or marra been aware that heresy tended to propagate itself in family groups, but in nos-these New Christians were not all alike. Their backgrounds differed, and general medieval inquisitors were more interested in belief than in blood and so did their devotions. But in general the Inquisition erroneously lumped these questions of inheritance.14 In accordance with the trial procedures outlined in individuals together into a single, ·homogeneous group. Modern scholars, Nicolau Eymeric's Directorium inquisitorum of 1339 and othtr inquisitorial using such labels as crypto- (secret) Jew, have done likewise. While these terms 111anuals of the late Mi~dle Ages, these judges secured information about a also appear in this book, largely for the sake of convenience, we employ them prisoner's place of origin and current residence, along with others, "both living guardedly and with the tmderstanding that they do not do justice to the broad ~nd dead" with whom she or he had been in contact. Howel"er, inquisitors range of religious devotions followed by New Christians, whether in Spain, rarely made a systematic effort to extract detailed biographical information Portugal, or the New World. But whatever the precise nature of New Christian belief, central to in 13. "Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century quisitorial understanding of this religious group were issues of inheritance Spain:· Past and Present (February 2002): 3-41. and blood. As David Nirenberg has argued, the sudden appearance of ever 14. James B. Given, Inquisition and lvfedieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resi>tance in Lan guedoc (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), 38, notes the interest of medie1al inqLtisitors in increasing numbers of converts in late-fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spain ·the families of the individuals they interrogated. 14 Inquisitorial Inquiries Introduction 15 from accused heretics. 15 They were more concerned with having these in she) was raised, the places where he had lived, and the persons with whom he dividirnls expound upon their particular religious ideas and practices, and had contact and communicated with, "all extensively and with great detail."11 they forced the accused to do so by means of lengthy question and answer Thus, by the end of the sixteenth century, life histories became a regular and sessions that formed the heart of inquisitorial trials, otherwise knovm as "trials distinctive feature of inquisitorial practice, although, as noted above, inquisi of faith." tors had considerable leeway to prosecute individual cases as they saw fit. The Spanish lnq\lisition was equally concerned with such matters, and its Inquisitorial procedui\es were also unique in other important ways. One question and answer sessions were modeled upon those of earlier inquisitions. was the secrecy with whi~h Inquisition trials were marked at every stage. The In keeping with contemporary notions of purity of blood, moreover, Spanish Inq\lisition initiated its pases by a secret process called denunciation, which inquisitors also subscribed to the notion that heresy could be inherited along differed substantially from the sect.ilar and ecclesiastical court process of ac with other family traits, such as eye color, stahire, and the like. They conse cusation. Crimes prosecuted in these latter tribunals had human victims who quently set out to learn about the family history of the accused, generally

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