Debunking Spanish Inquisition Myths For Vocab Malone

Last night I happened to catch the end of a livestream by Vocab Malone.  It was on the Protestant reformation but he dabbled in the Inquisition as well.  I want to clear up some inquisition myths.  I love Vocab Malone’s work but I don’t think that he understands the Inquisition, particularly the Spanish Inquisition.  Here’s the story of the Spanish Inquisition.

In the 1300’s a plague swept across Europe known as the Black Death.  Many people blamed it on the Jews.  In 1348, Pope Clement VI issued a papal bull saying the Jews weren’t to be blamed.  He pointed out that the plague was affecting areas with no close Jewish communities.  He also made it clear that Jews were dying in large numbers as well.  Some listened to the Pope and some didn’t.  Antisemitism eventually headed south from France into Spain and this resulted in pogroms.  In 1391 there were huge pogroms all over Spain and Jewish quarters were sacked.  Many Jews feared for their lives and received baptism.  Once the Jew received baptism he could walk out of the Church untouched through the angry mob that wanted to kill him only minutes earlier.

When the riots died down, the King of Aragon reminded everyone that Church teaching says that baptism cannot be forced so Jews were given the option to return to Judaism without penalty.  Some did but others surprising didn’t.  They continued to live as Christians but maintained Jewish customs.  They lived in Jewish neighbourhoods, wore Jewish clothes, ate Jewish food but went to Church instead of the synagogue.  This phenomenon is known as the converso.

In the 1470’s there was a fear that Jews were becoming conversos to try to subvert the Christian population.  People who were baptized were bound by canon law but to enforce canon law requires an ecclesial court.  The monarchs wrote to Pope Sixtus IV and in 1478 he gave the monarchs permission to establish the Inquisition.  They did so in 1480.  It started in Seville and eventually spread throughout all of Castile.

In 1485 the Inquisition spread to the Kingdom of Aragon in the city of Zaragoza.  The people of Zaragoza were nervous and didn’t know what to think when the inquisitor Pedro de Arbues came into town.  Shortly after Pedro arrived, he was praying in the Cathedral at night when a band of Jews and conversos entered the church and murdered him.  From then on, popular opinion in Aragon turned in favour of the Inquisition.  Pedro de Arbues became a saint in the Catholic Church and is popular in Spain to this day.

There are a lot of myths about the Spanish Inquisition.  The Spanish Inquisition could only put you on trial if you were willingly baptized.  A Jew that had never been baptized could not be touched by the Inquisition.  However, if you were a Jew who got baptized then promoted Judaism, you’d be hauled before the Inquisition for heresy.  The irony of this is that many non-Christian Jews liked the Inquisition because they could testify anonymously and take advantage of the Inquisition to get back at conversos who they thought had betrayed the Jewish faith by receiving baptism.  It’s an ugly truth that no one talks about.

In 1492 the Jews were expelled from the Kingdom’s of Castile and Aragon.  It was not the Inquisition that did this but the monarchs themselves.  At this point a Jew could only remain if they were baptized as no rabbinic Jews were allowed to remain.  Some converted and some left.

They were expelled because the monarchs believed that the Jews were converting the conversos back to Judaism but ironically the opposite was true.  Regardless, by 1530 the converso problem was pretty much over.  At this point Lutheran missionaries were attempting to enter Spain.  The inquisition acted as a brick wall against these missionaries and Spain remained uniformly Catholic.  When Napoleon invaded Spain in 1809 he abolished the Inquisition.  When Napoleon was defeated it was restored but never got the same momentum as it did in times prior and was abolished for the final time in 1834.

There are many good books on the topic but if you want one to get started, I recommend Characters of the Inquisition by William Thomas Walsh.  Let me list the chapters to peak your interest.

1. Moses
2. Pope Gregory IX
3. Bernard Gui
4. Nicholas Eymeric
5. Torquemada
6. Cardinal Ximenes
7. Some Sixteenth Century Victims
8. Llorente

There is so much else that I could talk about regarding this topic.  I do hope that one day I’ll get to talk to Vocab Malone about the Spanish Inquisition as well as the reformation.  I believe he has unintentionally absorbed some false information about the Catholic Church regarding these issues.  The man does good work though so I wish him the best.