Religious Trials and Accusation

Introduction 

Throughout history, and especially during the Middle Ages, people have always hindered the development of their progress by not giving others their deserved freedom and covering it up with religion and human moral principles. Until today, mankind still faces this situation, discussing the difficulties brought by emerging inventions in science and non-traditional perception of society. In the past years of history, a lot of formidable religious executions have occurred by the aspect of different faiths and races. Time after time, a lot of religious leaders have lashed out onto others because of their spiritual belief. Some of these incidents have never been forgotten and have always been considered as important milestones in the world’s religious history.

One such famous daunting religious executions in the world, which is distinguished by its brutality, ineptness, and irrationality is the Spanish Inquisition that occurred in the mid-fifteenth century in Spain. It is considered to be the most bloody and deadly inquisition in history. This religiously related move was initiated to cleanse the Catholic Church of heretics and make Spain pure. The Spanish Inquisition was marked by torture, cruelty, oppression and mass executions of Jews, Muslims, and other religious minorities that were not of Christian faith. In fact, the Spanish Inquisition is usually considered as a forerunner of the secret police of contemporary dictatorships. On December 1474, Queen Isabella made a bold and an unprecedented move by accepting her deserved consent to ascend to the Castilian throne in Segovia, Castile. In addition to strengthening and uniting Castile and Aragon through her marriage to King Ferdinand II on October 1469, Isabella’s ascension to the throne also established a very powerful and dynamic Catholic Monarchy, promoting a rigid future Christian rule in Castile. Now united, the two Pope Alexander VI bestowed Ferdinand and Isabella with the Catholic Kings title. The two then started their rule with an absolute dictatorial approach, persistently working to take control of all cities and rural centers that had accepted to be their adversaries through the civil war era, forced religious conversions and Old Christina rebellions.

The following research paper explains the conflicts of religion using cases from the Spanish Inquisition as lived through the life of Juana, a Spanish woman who lived in Spain’s Toledo city, through the Inquisition phase, and the challenges that not only her but also her people that were close to her faced when an evil befell her hometown in the form of an Inquisition. The paper will bring forward Castile’s Catholic Monarchy, the brutality against the Converso, which was experienced mainly by Jewish and new Christians, and the reason why the Spanish Inquisition became the secular and secret police for the monarchy. By examining the Spanish inquisition through this lens, it will be apparent how the Inquisition brought forth dire consequences for Juana and many thriving multiethnic communities in Aragon and Castile. Besides, the paper has explained the infamous Spanish Inquisition and brought forward arguments brought by research to demonstrate how the Inquisition was utilized by the Catholic Monarchy as a cruel tool to successfully control, explore and bring forth the extermination of religious minorities that were there before Isabella and Ferdinand ascended the throne, even though severely diminished for many decades.

The Beginning of the Inquisition 

The Spanish Inquisition was initiated 1478 by the then sitting crowns of Spain, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his queen, Isabella I of Castile (Kamen 2014). At this time, I was only twenty four years, and still living with my parents in the City of Toledo. However, my mother, Lucia, had previously told me that we used to live in Aragon City and only moved to Toledo after I was six years old. I would not know the reason behind our relocation until later during my teenage years. We were originally Jews and but were forced to convert to Christianity in order to escape expulsion from Spain. The monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella took over power with a massive problem in their hands. Almost nine decades earlier, Spain experienced mass riots and thousands of Jews were baptized by force and were further forced to live like Christians afterward. These Jews had ostensibly converted to Christianity in order to escape persecution (Roth 2002). Over the centuries, the Spanish Jewish community had significantly flourished and expanded in terms of influence and numbers, though anti-Semitism was widely evident. Some Jews who had converted to Christianity went ahead to attain prestigious positions in the church and government, but they became the target of hatred and persecution by original Christians (Roth 2002). My father Luis was one of the Christian leaders in our church. He was a very wise man and highly intelligent, people loved and respected him a lot. In fact, his previous church in Aragon had sponsored his Bachelors and Master’s degrees studies.

The Spanish Inquisition was created to expose Judaizing cases, which was the reverse conversion to Judaism among the individuals who were forced to convert to Christianity and their descendants in the effort to purify Spain of heresy (Perez 2005). When they took over power, Ferdinand and Isabella, who is also popular for supporting Christopher Columbus's American voyages, called upon all the Christian church leaders and appointed them to start the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition practically served to consolidate power in the monarch of the new United Spanish kingdom and persecute the converted Jews but was able to achieve its bottom line through infamously brutal methods (Roth 2002). Within one year into the inquisition, hundreds of Jews were killed and their properties claimed by the crown. I personally witnessed the atrocities brought by the Inquisition and how our neighbors turned against each other. I witnessed as our neighbor, Sanchez, and his entire family were arrested and found guilty of being heretics. Sanchez was an elderly man who lived with his wife and two daughters who were my age mates. This was hardly a year after Queen Isabella ascended to the throne. Sanchez and his family were arrested and put on trial for secretly practicing Judaism yet they pretended to be Christians. Many rumors were already being spread about the family, some claiming that they were ritualists who made human sacrifices. Sanchez and his entire family were executed by burning at the stake. Sanchez had been betrayed and reported to the authorities by his step-brother who accused of being Marranos, a term which was used on people who practiced Judaism secretly. Marrano literally means pig. Unfortunately, Sanchez’s case was not special and it shown the dangers that many other Marranos would face as they pleaded their innocence during the Inquisition trials.

The Jewish Conversion (Conversos) 

In 1479, King Ferdinand and Queen Elizabeth, otherwise known as the Catholic monarchs marched forward to claim their new united kingdom that would later come to be known as the modern Spain (Anderson 2002). Despite of the immediate display of perseverance and resolve, the newly monarchs could not have imagined the kind of disunity that already painted their kingdom. People were already tired from many years of misrule in Castile that culminated in the lax reigns of Henry IV and John II who had allowed the utter spread of lawlessness that it was not to be found in another state at that time. The land was highly dominated by anarchy (Monter 2003). With generations of anarchy administrating all over Castile, Ferdinand and Isabella were tasked with high expectations of undoing decades of religious prosecutions, civil wars and lawlessness that had dominated the Castilian countryside and towns.

Ironically, as the Queen and the King formed their united stance, the religious and ethnic violence in Castile rose to the peak. Violence was not usual in our cities, especially in Toledo where things had calmed down for quite some time now since the expulsion of the Jews from Spain several decades back. Religious and Cultural wrangles could only be traced back to the third centuries when the Jews lived in the Andalusia region before migrating to the southern areas of Castile, making Spain their permanent home. Although the Spanish Jews have always been a minority community of the region, they offered significant resources and talent to the communities surrounding them. For instance, just like my father, my grandfather was highly intelligent and worked as a doctor for many years before retiring. The Jews of the Spanish townships stayed in segregated ghettos close to each other. They performed sacred rituals such as marital rites, dietary strictness, inheritance laws and community security and loyalty. Their religious faith was led by appointed rabbis, and were empowered with the task of enforcing Jewish laws as well as perform governmental duties. However, the Jews still experience religious persecution during this early period of Spain’s existence.

In 589 AD, Visigoth King Reccared of Toledo declared that he wanted everybody in his kingdom to convert to Christianity. Included in his declaration was his desire to bring the Spanish Jews into the Christian fold (Kamen 2014). However, the Spanish Jews rejected the Kings demand and immediately felt the stringent reprisals through Toledo County’s decree, the minority population were given three choices, which were to be Christians, stay under a great repression, or exit the country to another country where their Jewish beliefs would be accepted by the government. During the reign of Christian kings like King Alfonso X and St. Ferdinand of Castile (1252-84) both Moors and Jews started to prosper again as peninsula first returned to Christian rule (Roth 2002). Alfonso X appreciated the cultural and educational contributions of the Convievencia went ahead to translate both the Talmud and the Koran to Latin and Arabic. In fact, Alfonso’s reign marked the highest point of cross fertilization in Castile (Kamen 2014).

However, during the late medieval Europe as anti-Semitism was started to gain popularity, the cultural mosaic started to decline to a disturbing end. Medieval Europe was very intolerant and monotheistic to the Jews. Through their overzealous and derogatory teachings, Dominican priests and other preachers claimed that the rituals conducted by Jewish rituals were demonic and blasphemous. These rigorous claims caused a strong backlash of superstitious feelings and anti-Semitic among Christian communities and created a volatile environment for the Jewish communities. They were blamed for the plague that ravaged Europe in 1342 and accused of sacrificing Christian boys on their holy days. In the beginning of the fourteenth century religious tolerance and cultural mosaic started to deteriorate once again (Perez 2005). The Jews who held lucrative positions in Castilian were resented for holding such prestigious positions because of their unpopular usury practices and became the subject of hatred, jealousy and anti-Semitism that had escalated to an extent where they were again ostracized by their neighbors, forced to live in Jewish ghettos to avoid them contaminating Christian towns and cities, foreshadowing the genesis of extreme violence that they would face from their Christian neighbors.

According to Kamen (2014) in March 15, 1431, Ash Wednesday was the beginning of the dispirited Jewish movement to convert in Spain, the period when many Jewish followers gave up their stance against widespread anti-Semitism. On the same day, Dominican Archdeacon Martinez gave a moving sermon on Christ’s teachings against the Jews. His audience were enraged and formed gangs and started rampages of rape, looting, and killing through entire Jewish quarter. Word of the Jewish massacre reached the Papal authorities who condemned Martinez for his inflammatory and radical sermons against the Jews. This, however, did not deter Martinez and he carried on with his sermons and the anti-Semitic violence eventually driving out many Rabbis and their entire community out of Spain.

The violence that happened around 1391 caused mass conversions to Christian faith. Priests ignored the Monarch and Papacy warnings to leave the Jewish community in peace and continued with their vigorous efforts for converts (Honza 2006). The priests went ahead to convert hundreds of thousands of Jews without considering the social-religious implication of the new community when it becomes fully integrated into medieval Spanish society. The old Christians viewed the converted Christians with jealousy and antagonism and labelled the growing community as Conversos meaning recently baptized. The slur of the term Converso however implied an insincere Christian. Noteworthy, the accusations of the old Christians was credible to some extent. Many of the Conversos were indeed Judaizeers, meaning that they continued to practice Judaism in secret in the privacy of their own homes (Monter 2003). This was even evident after the inquisition when our neighbors, the Sanchez family were prosecuted for being Conversos.

Many Conversos choose to keep close contact with their Jewish friends and family and even intermarried within their tight knit community. They conducted rituals that were residue of the their heritage such as eating pork, bathing rituals, cooking with garlic and onions, bathing and changing linens on Fridays among others. These rituals were made into examples of Judaizing. Queen Isabella knew about the social-religious conflicts happening in her kingdom. The Conversos were established long before she took the throne but she did not want to be misled by the unruly old Christian elite community unlike her predecessors (Anderson 2002). In 1477 the queen visited my city Toledo which had once again experienced sequences of violence and rioting, and the municipal officials accepted repressive legislation against the Conversos (Honza 2006). She even preceded several court hearings and dealt with every complaint as she saw fit. In 1478 Ferdinand and Isabella asked Pope Sixtus IV for persmission to initiate the infamous Spanish Inquisition. By granting this request, the Converso community would not only be subjected to terrible repression and social stigma but also expulsion from religious ancestry would be witnessed under the reign of Isabella.

The Peak of the Spanish Inquisition 

Ferdinand and Isabella’s request was granted in 1478 November by Pope Sixtus IV with the Papal bull “Exigit sincere devotionis (Kamen 2014).” The bull permitted the monarch to appoint educated priests with a degree in theology who are above forty years to initiate investigations on heresy and deviancy cases against the catholic faith against Castile. This consent from the Pope came as a political victory for the catholic leaders because by giving the Spanish royalty power of appointment as opposed to the Vatican, then it was assured from the word go that the Spanish Inquisition could control the royal secular authority, not foreign entity, even if the foreign entity was the Vicar of Christ (Monter 2003). The news of the Spanish Inquisition caused fear among Conversos throughout Castile from the onset. Many Conversos flee leaving behind their land and properties due to the fact that the Inquisition tribunal that is backed up by royal authority was on route to Seville. The Conversos who stayed behind were very defiant to the new Inquisition, resenting its power and presence all over the city. Therefore, they chose to join together and protect the identity that they had worked hard to achieve.

My father and my best friend’s father, Diego were a very classic example of this bravery. Diego was a very wealthy and a well-established Converso in Toledo and really resented the interruption by the Spanish tribunal. He was also the closest counterpart to my father and that explains why her daughter Susan and I grew as best friends. Diego called some of the key members of Toledo in a secret meeting. They included government officials, wealthy men, and religious members including my father to create a plan to protect the rights of Conversos under Castile’s crown (Honza 2006). He incited this people against being taken over and they planned to assemble men to set the city in tumult-we in case they came after them. Diego and his team were betrayed to the Inquisition tribunal by Susan’s boyfriend. Susan had overheard her father in one of their meetings and thoughtlessly narrated it to her boyfriend Mateo and myself. Mateo was a Christian Castilian and he immediately went to the inquisition and turned in Susan’s father and his co-conspirers to the tribunal. A crucial aspect about the case against our fathers and their comrades was that they were charged of heresy as opposed to treason against the Crown (Monter 2003). They were not doing heresy but were prosecuted because of the same because that was the only charge that the municipal inquisitors had jurisdiction over. On this day, my father and his counterparts received their death sentence for heresy and were killed at the burning of the stake. Apart from this event affecting my family and our neighbors personally, it was also a very unfortunate event that would carry on with its political and religious terror dawning fear for Spanish Jews Conversos for the next three centuries to Christian Spain.

As the inquisition gained more ground, two edicts were that would lead to the exposure and capture of Judaizers were enacted; the first one demanded that the people who escaped to Seville when the Inquisition started to return and that those who are harboring such individuals to bring them forward (Monter 2003). The second was considered as blasphemy against the church and was called the Edict of Grace. It exhorted those guilty of apostasy to come forth and confess their sins in order to be reconciled with the church (Monter 2003). The repentant did not know that this edict was a trap to not only confess their sins but also those of their family and friends. After confessing to the tribunal they were misled to give the names of their associated and whereabouts or get burnt at the stake for heresy. The Inquisition was now able to trap many Conversos who were forced to disclose their allies in order to escape death at the stake. This edict further accelerated my problems. Susan’s mother Paula who was still mourning after the death of her husband Diego, felt that when she confesses she would save and protect Susan and her two brothers from religious prosecution. She did not realize it was a trick. Therefore, put under the ultimatum of being burnt at the stake, Paula disclosed the names of her closet friends and family members that were Judaizers. Unfortunately, our family featured in Paula’s confession and my mother and grandfather were arrested while I managed to escape together with Paula after she alerted me about the intended arrest. All our properties were also seized. Noteworthy, Isabella supported this supported this Edict because of the confiscation of property that heavily funded her treasury.

The Spanish Inquisition gradually came to an end. It declined as a result of enlightenment by some Spanish who were questioning the type of justice that was being dispensed by the Spanish Inquisition. However, the Inquisition remained a famous institution. It was abolished in 1808 when Napoleon invaded Spain and set up a liberal regime. However, five years after the Invasion, all the French were driven out, and the Inquisition was restored. It was finally abolished in 1834 (Kamen 2014).

Conclusion 

In conclusion, Ferdinand and Isabella started the Spanish Inquisition with the intention of undoing decades of religious prosecutions, civil wars and lawlessness that had dominated the Castilian countryside and towns. However, as the Inquisition progressed these intentions were gradually wiped off and instead replaced with an infamous religious holocaust that would see many Jews discriminated, tortured, and killed as a result. When it was finally over, the Spanish Inquisition had only achieved to cause harm to individuals who chose to stay loyal to their religious practices.

References

Anderson, J. M. (2002).  Daily life during the Spanish Inquisition . Greenwood Publishing Group.

Homza, L. A. (2006).  Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources . Hackett Publishing.

Kamen, H. (2014).  The Spanish Inquisition: a historical revision . Yale University Press.

Monter, E. W. (2003).  Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily . Cambridge University Press.

Pérez, J. (2005).  The Spanish inquisition: a history . Yale University Press.

Roth, N. (2002).  Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain . Univ of Wisconsin Press.