How the Spanish Inquisition Worked

Nowadays, the Spanish Inquisition is best known as a symbol of religious intolerance and extreme cruelty. Tune in to this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the people and politics behind the Spanish Inquisition.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm editor Kendis Gipson, joined by staff writer Jane mcgraft. Hey, Kennis.
Like I do every every Thursday when we have this podcast,

(00:20):
I drink my morning coffee out of my Thomas Jefferson
mug so I can find a way to bring something
about Thomas Jefferson into whatever we were talking about. And
one of the principles that our country was founded on
is a separation of church and state, and Jefferson was
a really strong advocate of that. And I think today
issues arise every now and then where the line between

(00:41):
church and stood is a little bit blurred. I guess
a couple of years ago, one of the debates was
prayer in schools? Should there be prayer in public schools?
And that was a church and state sort of issue,
And and I think for the most part people would
agree that the separation is is a good thing or
a mediocre thing, depending on which side of the debate
you fall. But if we look back at medieval Europe,

(01:04):
we see really strong proof that separating church and state
is an excellent idea because when it's not and the
Church is corrupt and the church controls the state. It's
good to how that's true, and especially the Spanish Inquisition,
which I can't believe you connected Thomas Jefferson too, but
you did it like six degrees of Kevin Hagen. Yet
it's yeah, yeah, um, it's often grouped together with the Crusades.

(01:27):
I think of like just dark periods in the Church's
history in particular of you know, and and that too.
It's sort of like it's it's a combination of the
political state and religion, and people say that, you know,
like horrible atrocities came about because these were too close
and because there were abuses, because the political state was
taking liberties and using religion against the people. I think

(01:50):
you're right, Jane. I think that there are a lot
of similarities between the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, and
one of the main reasons is that the Church was
using the argument that God was on a side and
who are the monarchs to buck the church when the
Church is essentially a direct agent of God. That's right, yeah,
And also in connection to through Crusades, and I think

(02:11):
it often gets oversimplified in history class. For a lot
of reasons. But you know, when you look at you
take a close look at it, and not all the
actors who involved had quite as like the bad motives
that that are associated. And um, it's just interesting to
take a look back at the myth surrounding the Inquisition
and compare that to the reality that happened. That's true,

(02:32):
And if you want to boil the Inquisition down to
a basic point, it was a movement about purging. And
that may be a rather harsh word. We can certainly
think of a lot of other historical movements that were
about purging or cleansing a population of a certain type
of people. And it wasn't necessarily that the Spanish Inquisition
was after one particular opposing religion. They went after Jews

(02:56):
and Muslim Moors, and and Protestants and Lutherans specifically, they
were after anyone who went upset the status quo. That's right.
It's interesting to see, like the original the purpose of
the Inquisition was really to only go after go after
it's a bad term, but to uh to question Catholics
themselves and not any other religion, because the idea is

(03:17):
you don't want heresy inside your own religion. The Catholic
Church was looking was looking at it from you know,
one a bad apple spoils the whole bunch sort of thing.
But then it started um getting involved because all these
other religions were being persecuted in Spain at the time,
and so they were basically more or less forced to convert.
And then all these problems came in with the impressiate

(03:39):
because when you have people converting to a religion on
the basis of fear, and especially fear of death or
fear of um being extradited, you have to assume maybe
that they're not converting with a sincere faith and your
God they're doing it said that they're not called in
there and they're not expelled from your country. But before
we got any further, let's let's give y'all a framework. Care,
So we're talking about Spain and specifically around the elevenths

(04:02):
through the nineteen centuries, and also it might help if
we define heretic in terms of the Spanish Inquisition, and
a heretic essentially was someone who was declaring beliefs that
went against the Catholic Church in public. So I guess
you could be a heretic in your own home. But

(04:24):
if you weren't in a public form or a public
place talking about to prove it right, then you could
you know, be a private heretic, so public declaration of beliefs. Uh. Secondly,
you had to have been approached by a member of
the church who had tried to educate you on the
fallacy of your beliefs, and you would have had to
have made a stand that you would not renounce your beliefs.

(04:46):
That's right, And um, we should also put this in
context and the fact that it's called the Spanish Inquisition,
because there's actually more more inquisitions in the Spanish one
and like there's one in Portugal. There was a Roman
Inquisition which was famous actually probably heard of how Galileo
UH was kind of persecuted for his ideas of the
earth revolving around the song, Yes, exactly, and that that

(05:08):
happened happened. It had to do with the Roman Inquisition,
And so if you think of the Spanish Inquisition in
relation to everything else, it's it's sort of seen as
the most intense inquisition. It is because they were they
were after these heretics who also and there's two more
points where to touch on, who were trying to spread
their beliefs to other people. And lastly who were possessed

(05:28):
of their own free will and and not at the devil.
And I guess for me, when I think of heretics
and and purging out heresy from a confined group of people,
the thing that comes to mind as a Salem witch trials.
But in that instant we know that those those girls
were possessed either by the devil or maybe even best
type of ye kind of moldy grain who knows, but um.

(05:49):
In Spain at this time it was much more about
preserving the authority of the church and of the monarch.
And also it was a little bit mercenary too, because
the right side for the financial aspect of the inquisition
was that when someone was accused of harris say he
or she was, all of its belongings were confiscated and

(06:10):
so sort of models the motivations of the people who
are accusing again like a flashback to the crusade monetary measures. Yeah,
and it's interesting there are all these motivations involved the
religious trying to purge oul heretics um political. You know,
the monarchs at the time were Ferdinand and Isabella, and
they were staunch Catholics, and they used the inquisition partly

(06:31):
to just unify control of the country and secure their
power there, and as you said, the financial motivations and
this all mixed in very well, which was what was
going on at the time, which is a growing sentiment
of anti anti Semitism. So um, once these Jews were
being persecuted in Spain and some were basically forced to convert,

(06:51):
it was very easy for the people to start accusing
Jews of not being true Catholics, definitely, And in fourteen
ninety two, Ferdinand and Isabella they were up to other
things too, as y'all or called at Columbus on his
mary Way that same year as well, but he issued
the al Hambre Decree and that ordered all the Jews
out of Spain. And we talked earlier about how some
would convert to Catholicism so that they could stay, but

(07:11):
they were not welcomed by other members of the Catholic Church.
And we should also give you guys an idea of
of how these inquisitions were carried out, and Pope Gregory began,
I'm sorry, Pope Gregory the eleventh, you might want to
know which room and numeral followed his name. He began
the sort of grassroots movement of the Inquisition back in
twelve thirty one, which was a long time before uh

(07:35):
the al Hombre decree, But it started with the establishment
of these tribunals, and he picked theologians from the Dominican
order who were very very educated, uh, well versed in
the Bible. They knew backwards and forward. So he a
long time ago said of the president that these tribunals
are very religious people, very smart people would be able
to interrogate and ask questions and trick and fool people

(07:58):
into confessing the trays. Because these Dominicans were so well
versed in detailed obscure theology, they could easily like ask
a question like if it was a Dominican who was
really going after someone like with bad motivations, they could
really um ask a very obscure question to be like, well,
what would you say about this? And if they happen
to give the wrong answer, the Dominicans can say, well
that's not technically true, right, or the question itself, whether

(08:19):
it was about Bible knowledge that the Jews might not
have had, or or the Moors or someone else, the
question itself could be so up to no one in
their right mind could answer it, and that was the
upper hand. So we know the type of people who
are conducting the inquisitions, we know who's under the inquisition,
who's being I guess inquired after, and we also know

(08:40):
that it was sort of a constantly evolving process. We
see the Jews being really persecuted in the fifteenth century,
and then we see when Spain conquers Granada it's doing
the same thing to the Moors. And then in the
sixteenth century they're going after the Protestants. So it's like
this continuing cycle of well, who can we bring to
this fault knacks. And I think it's interesting about the

(09:02):
Jews in particular because anti Semitism started way back, I'd
say in the fourteenth century, and a lot of the
stem from the plague, actually, the Bondic plague. Jews were
often blamed for this because I've heard the theory that
Jews kept more cats, and so their cats would kill rats,
which carried the fleas that carried the plague. So um
it showed that um it seemed too many people that

(09:25):
less Jews were dying of the plague, so people blame
the Jews for like you know, for causing it, and
so this fed a lot of anti Semitism, and then
by about thirty eight UH and then again in UH
there were violent attacks and basically massacres are called pro
pogroms um against Jews in Spain. And the difficult thing

(09:45):
about being brought to one of these tribunals if you
were a Jew or more or a Lutheran, is that
you had to testify on your behalf. If you did
not testify, it was automatically assumed that you were you
were guilty of harrisy. And the scary thing is that
you could be brought before a tribunal and not told
what the charge wise. And also you didn't know who

(10:07):
else was going to be testifying against you, and you
didn't have a lawyer or anyone else to help you
in your case. And the same people who were conducting
the inquisition were also the ones who issue the punishment,
so it was it was a very corrupt matter and
a very corrupt state of affairs. And another important term
to remember when you're talking about the inquisition in history
is an auto de fe i believe it's pronounced. These

(10:29):
were famous ceremonial sentencing of heretics, and what happened was
it was elaborate, in spectacular like procession and a mass,
and then you give an oath of obedience to the Inquisition,
and then there was a sermon, and then at the
end they read the sentences to uh to give to
the heretics. And although they didn't actually um served, they
didn't actually punish them and carry out the sentences at

(10:52):
this ceremony, a lot of people later associating them altogether.
So a lot of people associate the Inquisition with torture.
And I think that that certainly is one of the
lasting legacies of the Spanish Inquisition, that you know, that
sort of rapid fire questioning and then also the torture
that accompanied it. But you should know and be clear
on the fact that torture didn't really become a part

(11:14):
of the Inquisition until around twelve fifty two, and that
was when Pope and Is in the fourth issued a
bull that permitted torture to extract confession from the supposed heretics.
That's right. And I was reading historian Helen Rowling. She
was arguing that, um, you know, although the Inquisition associated
with torture and the death penalty. They only basically, almost
exclusively implemented these things in the first two decades of

(11:37):
the Inquisition. And she compares this to other countries in
Europe at the time, like England and around Germany, where
they were burning heretics for much longer time up until
the sixteen hundreds. And we know from the secret Vatican
records that were released a hundred years after all the
Inquisition activities had ended, we know that there was actually
just a very small percentage of of heretics who died.

(11:58):
And I think that Pope John Paul the second made
this clear and gave us a speech to talk about,
you know, reparations and working past all of that and understanding,
you know that the proper lasting legacy of the Catholic Church.
And I think he pointed out that about and forty
thousand accused heretics, maybe a zero point one we're actually killed. Yeah,

(12:19):
I've heard that stuff. And uh, it's interesting, you know,
I all these historians are coming out in the twentieth century,
if you look at the timeline of this, and they're
starting to question the myth surrounding the Inquisition and all
of the propaganda basically, and historians are saying, like a
lot of this is exaggerated. Um, the torture and everything
that happened with the Inquisition is exaggerated because of partly

(12:41):
the president revolution, like anti Catholicism propaganda, and also just
political enemies of Spain. You know, an anti Spain sentiment
would exaggerate this as well. And um, if you just
couldn't consider it in contest compared to other things that
we're going on. It's just interesting to see the myth
that is really central of the Spanish Inquisition that it
was like the worst thing, how happening, and nothing that

(13:01):
horrible has ever happened, you know, anywhere else, when really
it's it's not that's it's not that simple. And I
think that the main purpose, really we mustn't forget is
that the members of the Inquisition they wanted a confession
from the supposed heretics that they could bring them back
into the church community. Essentially, they didn't want anyone to
have wandered off the path as it were. Yeah, it

(13:24):
was because they were a threat to the status quo
of authority, but also you know, they were believers and
they really did believe that this would save their souls.
This would save their souls exactly. So, yes, it may
have been about money, Yes it may have been about power,
but it was also about looking out for once fell
a man. In some contemporary opinions of the time, like
some were totally for it, saying like this will save

(13:44):
their souls and we need to take these harsh actions.
But some others are more sympathetic, and even from a
logical standpoint, they saw, um how counterproductive it was to
to be so um harsh and persecute people like Jews,
and that would drive them to exile, which would basically
them in a position of like they would never be
exposed because also they would never be converted. And so

(14:05):
you know, there were different opinions at the time too
that were more sensible. So those heretics who did stay
and who did confess, whether they actually were heretics or
whether they were confessing because they had been tortured or
questioned to the point of confessing, they were given penances.
And some of them are as simple as wearing well
maybe not simples the I word to use, but they
were given penances like wearing really heavy crosses around their necks,

(14:26):
or they were made to go on pilgrimages and others
were forced to stay in prison. But I think that
the legacy of torture that endures in regards to the
Spanish Inquisitions because the torture and and pardon my my,
Glee was saying that it was just it was so
amazing and just creatively constructed. I mean, I know that's
a crazy thing to say, but you look at some

(14:47):
of these crazy I know, I know, I'm just glowing
thinking about it, but you look at some of these
devices that they used, like the rack and thumb screws
and and burning coals on people's bo these, I mean,
this is the stuff that that horror movies and you know,
like body stripping, historical dramas are made up. This is
what people want to remember about history. And it's true.

(15:08):
It's more dramatic and it is It's similar to reduce
the Spanish Inquisition down to a person being stretched across
Iraq and their joints being pulled in opposite directions to
the point where their ligament snap and their bones come
out of their sockets. I'm just saying it is one
way to think of the Finish Inquisition, but it should
not be the only way. So whether my um all

(15:29):
of a Sudden Blood Thursday nos has intrigued you for
more details, or you want to know more about the
Catholic Church and the Reformation, medieval England, or Ferdinand and
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(15:54):
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