The Spanish Inquisition
A royal tribunal set up to police the faith of converts from Judaism becomes, for three and a half centuries, the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy in Spain.
- The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision — Henry Kamen, Yale University Press (2014)
- Imperial Spain 1469–1716 — J. H. Elliott, Penguin (1963)
Authorised by the pope in 1478 and run by the Crown, the Inquisition first targeted conversos accused of secretly practising Judaism, later Moriscos, Protestants and “heresies” of every kind. It worked through denunciations, secret trials and public autos de fe. Most cases ended in penances rather than death; historians’ estimates of executions over its whole history are in the low thousands, far below the myth but concentrated in its brutal first decades. Its obsession with limpieza de sangre, “purity of blood”, left a long shadow. It was finally abolished in 1834.
- The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision — Henry Kamen, Yale University Press (2014)
- Imperial Spain 1469–1716 — J. H. Elliott, Penguin (1963)
Why it matters today
The Inquisition is the core of the "Black Legend", the old Protestant picture of Spain as cruel and fanatical, which many Spaniards still feel is unfair. Historians now stress both its real harm and the exaggerations.