A Popular History of Unpopular Things
A podcast that makes history more fun and accessible - we love all things gory, gross, mysterious, and weird!
A Popular History of Unpopular Things
The Spanish Inquisition
Join Kelli as she goes over the history behind the Spanish Inquisition. How and why did Spain hunt down heretics to purge the country of non-Catholics?
And there will be a LOT of medieval torture devices in today's episode!
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The Spanish Inquisition
Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a mostly scripted podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird.
From 1478 to 1834, the Catholic Church in Spain established offices throughout the country, with support from the monarchy, to pursue one goal - the removal of all non-Catholics. It was a brutal period marked by persecution, torture, fear, and death known as the Spanish Inquisition.
*Insert Nobody Expects the Spanish Inquisition video*
In today’s episode, we are going to go over the history of the Spanish Inquisition, with all of its brutality, torture, and death. Hooray!
First, as we normally do on the APHOUT podcast, we will start with the historical context - how and why did it begin in the late 15th century, that’s the 1400s? Was there any precedent, in Spain or Europe more broadly, that explains why Spain would start hunting down non-Catholics? Why those years in particular? Context helps us get a better understanding of the history that leads up to and surrounds the Spanish Inquisition, which is a super important part of engaging in history.
Then, we’ll take a look at some of the key events, people, places, and torture devices of the Spanish Inquisition, before capping it off with how it officially ended in 1834. And although the Spanish Inquisition did bleed outside of the homeland to its Spanish colonies, today I’m just going to focus on the Inquisition within Spain itself.
There’s no cannibalism today, but there is a whole lot of medieval-style torture. How fun!
So let’s get started!
Historical Context
So the basis for the Spanish Inquisition rests in tensions between the Catholic Church and those with other beliefs. And no, this time it’s not the Protestant Reformation - it goes back way before then. While I can probably trace this back to the Romans, I’m going to start today’s historical context with a papal bull.
In 1184, Pope Lucius III issued a papal bull, which is essentially just an official document or decree from the Pope. It called for ad abolendam, or abolishing and removing heretics from the church. And with this began the Age of Inquisitions. Because although the Spanish Inquisition was the most well-known and infamous of them, it was not the only Inquisition. Or even the first.
The accompanying heretic hunting that took place after Lucius’ papal bull is known as the Episcopal Inquisition, named after the local bishops, or “episcopals,” who were sent to their dioceses twice a year to hunt for any heretics. And there were a handful of groups targeted.
One was the Cathars in Southern France, also known as the Albigensians. They believed in dualism, which in their context meant that was there a good God and an evil God. The good one ruled Heaven, while the bad one ruled their world and present age. So… it went against the Catholic Church’s teachings, and the Catholics wanted to root them out and destroy them. To do this, they sent inquisitors - men from the church who investigated claims of heresy, conducted a trial, and then enacted the punishments. Between 1208 and 1218, over 15,000 Cathars were persecuted and killed, and by 1350, the whole sect was destroyed.
But the problem with this Episcopal Inquisition is that it was incredibly disorganized; villagers felt free to run around their towns and burn those they deemed to be heretics without holding a proper trial. And that won’t do, that’s just normal murder, not murder authorized by the Church, which I guess makes it okay.
So, to combat this, Pope Gregory IX instituted a new law: heretics who are prosecuted and condemned will be met with punishment. Those who are repentant will get life in prison, while those who are unrepentant will be burned alive.
And this began the Papal Inquisition.
And I also want to point out that Pope Gregory is also on the record for saying, quote,
“When you hear any layman speak ill of the Christian faith, defend it not with words, but by the sword, which you should thrust into their belly as far as it will go.” End quote.
Religion in the medieval and early modern periods was just… different. Violent. They were so pious and zealous in their beliefs that they would kill to defend them from whoever they deemed a threat, which seems pretty counterintuitive to the fifth commandment of thou shalt not kill. But anyways.
The Papal Inquisition broadened the scope beyond the Cathars and a handful of other groups. Now, any heretics were questioned. People with slightly different or clashing religious beliefs were sent to inquisition centers, interrogated, and then dealt with accordingly. And we know all this because the Catholic Church kept volumes of documentation. Seriously. They were as fanatical about keeping records of the heretics as they were about heresy in general.
When an entire area was under review, a pair of inquisitors would be sent together to interrogate and try suspected heretics with a tribunal. And things carried on in this way until 1252. In 1252, things went a step further when Pope Innocent IV sanctioned torture as a means of extracting information and the “truth” in heavy air quotes from prisoners accused of heresy. Pope Innocent is quoted as saying
“Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God which conflicts with church dogma must be burned without pity.” End quote.
That’s a bit harsh, no?
Now if suspected heretics wouldn’t confess on their own, then inquisitors were now authorized to torture them until they did, and then burned at the end, all thanks to Pope Innocent the fourth. And the irony of his name is not lost on me. And anyway, we all know how torture is going to go down, right? Think of how many people must have falsely confessed to crimes they didn’t commit, and aren’t even real crimes outside of what Catholics believed, just to stop the pain of torture.
People started fleeing at the mere sight of an inquisitor, terrified of being culled, questioned, and killed. The inquisitors had so much power that not even royals, nobles, or the famous were exempt; even Galileo was tried with heresy for his beliefs about heliocentrism in 1633, the belief that the Earth revolves around the sun. At the time, the Catholic Church was teaching geocentrism, where the earth was the center of the universe because God made it so.
So we’ve got a history here of the Catholic Church targeting so-called “heretics” - those who don’t believe in the Catholic Church’s teachings, or actively speak out against them. But believe it or not, one of the key events that led to the Spanish Inquisition in particular just happens to be my favorite topic of all time - the Black Death!
So if you didn’t listen to my episode on the Black Death, it was when plague bacteria, yersinia pestis, decimated roughly one-third of Europe’s population. As a result of a massive population loss, there were food shortages, which led to rampant inflation and a rise in poverty. People were miserable. Many didn’t want to blame their God for this tragedy, so they turned to a scapegoat - the Jewish populations living around Europe.
In my Black Death episode, I mentioned the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Strasbourg, where 2000 Jews were rounded up and either forcibly converted or burned to death; half converted, half died. But in another town, Basel, in Switzerland, every Jewish person was arrested and burned alive, simply for being Jewish.
We call this a pogrom - an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group. And the Jewish pogroms spread from Central and Northern Europe down to Spain, where it combined with the Inquisitions already happening to begin the Spanish Inquisition.
The Lead Up to the Spanish Inquisition
In 1391, James II of Aragon - not Aragorn - established a law banning anyone who was Jewish from Spain. They were given three choices: leave, convert to Catholicism, or die. It certainly wasn’t the first anti-Jewish pogrom in Spain, but it was the beginning of a renewed set of persecutions that led to the Spanish Inquisition.
Though the law made it seem like they just wanted the Jews gone, at first, the Catholic Church was really trying to convert as many Jews as possible. Then, with their new converts, they could bring even more people over from Judaism to the Catholic Church. Those that converted were known as conversos.
And though the Catholics did see some success with their conversos, there were those Jewish scholars that doubled down with their faith, pointing out that what the Catholics were doing was… not great. And so, in retribution, the Catholic Church decided to punish all Spanish Jews.
Starting in 1412, Spain passed a series of anti-Jewish laws to really try to push them out of Spain, or get them to convert. Jews were segregated from the city and pushed into slums on the outskirts of town, they were given a strict dress code, they couldn’t wear perfume, accessories, or luxurious clothes, men were forced to let their beards grow unruly and long, they were to have no interaction with non-Jews, they were banned from owning land, farms, holding political office, and engaging in most businesses, and were only allowed to perform manual labor - things like splitting wood and carrying water. And as you can imagine, these harsh laws caused mass emigration from Spain into nearby countries like Morocco, Portugal, and other European nations to the north. It’s estimated that around a quarter of a million Jews left Spain in the 15th century, the 1400s.
Now in addition to all of this, in the 1470s, a Dominican friar ratted out some conversos that were still practicing Judaism in secret. He told the King and Queen at the time, Ferdinand and Isabella, about the deception. And at this point, we see the beginnings of the Spanish Inquisition.
The Spanish Inquisition
In 1478, Queen Isabella established the Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, which began a renewed focus on rooting out heresy in Spain. But… why? Why Queen Isabella, and not her predecessors?
Well for one, Isabella was in conflict with her Portuguese counterpart. And more than that - the Portuguese and French were conspiring against Isabella in the hopes of overthrowing her. So, in starting the Spanish Inquisition, Isabella hoped to forge a new alliance with Portugal over religious unity and a shared devotion to Catholicism in the Iberian Peninsula. She also wanted to remove any potential rival powers, including the Jews.
And so, she and her husband established the Spanish Inquisition to take over from the Papal Inquisition in her country, and she put her personal clergyman in charge as the Grand Inquisitor, a man whose name became synonymous with death and mercilessness - the Dominican friar Tomas de Torquemada.
And Torquemada was on a whole other level of cruelty.
First, it’s worth noting that his family lineage included some conversos, and my guess is that he was really motivated to prove his undying faith and loyalty to Catholicism, because he is the reason why the Spanish Inquisition became so violent.
His one goal was to remove all heretics from Spain. And by extension, anyone who promoted cultural or religious diversity. The Spanish were to look a certain way and follow a certain set of beliefs, and anything outside of that was seen as heretical.
To Torquemada, heretics were the worst kind of people - below even murderers and rapists, because the latter two could at least be redeemed. But heretics? They were seen as greedy, hopeless, and unrepentant. So to root them out, Torquemada established a set of procedures for interrogation, a massive list that all inquisitors would work through to establish guilt. And Torquemada’s procedures were used for almost the entirety of the Spanish Inquisition, which gives us an idea of how powerful a figure he was.
Among the heretics, Torquemada was especially angered at what he considered to be false conversos - those who “converted” to Catholicism but really kept practicing Judaism in secret. They were called relapsos. Again, perhaps because his own lineage could be traced back to a converso, he was especially sore about that topic. But regardless of his motivations, Torquemada and his inquisitors went about Spain tracking them down, looking for signs. For example, following suspected reversos into Jewish stores to see if they still purchased kosher products. Or looking at chimneys on Saturdays to see if suspected reversos were not lighting their fires because they were practicing the Sabbath. Things like that. And if they were caught, it wasn’t good.
In addition to these reversos, the Spanish Inquisitors sought out anyone who doubted the resurrection of Christ, or questioned the logic of a pregnant “Virgin” Mary, or anyone who had no issue with things like pre-marital sex. They also persecuted those who were accused of any kind of sexual indiscretion that essentially wasn’t a man and a woman, married, engaging in intimacy - anything outside of that was seen as heresy. They also, for a time, hunted down sorcerers and witches, combining those good ole’ European witch hunts with their quest to destroy heresy.
One contemporary account wrote that, quote,
“Everyone shudders at [Torquemada’s] very name, as it has supreme authority over property, life, honor, and even the souls of men.” End quote.
It got so bad that those who feared prosecution, or thought they might be accused, turned the tables and ratted out their neighbors. And children weren’t exempt, by the way - girls as young as 12 and boys as young as 14 were held accountable for their actions and thoughts. No, seriously. For example, a 15-year-old girl was brought in by inquisitors and tortured until she confessed. Not that she was a heretic, but that her mother was. And when the poor girl snapped and confessed, the mother was killed.
The interrogations themselves were rough. After the inquisitors went through Torquemada’s list of questions, the accused was given a chance to confess. If the prisoners confessed, they were given lighter punishments. Sometimes they were let go and put under house arrest, sometimes they were only lightly beaten and tortured. But those who still wouldn’t confess to heresy were automatically accused of lying and brought to a gross, dark, basement prison cell to stay in solitary confinement. They would be left alone for days, or sometimes weeks, or in extreme cases months, to stew on their decision not to confess. The only person they’d see was the inquisitor, and eventually, the psychological torture would break them.
After a time, it wasn’t just relapsos or deviants who were arrested. Protestants were targeted, and then intellectuals in general. Inquisitors engaged in censorship, book banning, and book burning. Then it was the Spanish Muslims, who were killed and/or chased out of Spain like their Jewish counterparts. And in the 18th century, the Freemasons were added to the Catholic Church’s list of sworn enemies, so anyone accused of being a Freemason was also put to death. I did a fun, weird episode on a para-masonic group called the Order of the Pug which is tangentially related to this, so go listen to that episode if you haven’t already.
After a while, medieval torturers were brought in to help speed up the confessions. And these torturers were paid by the confession, so they got real creative in how they extracted information from their victims.
So let’s go over some of the torture methods used during the Spanish Inquisition :)
Methods of Torture
One of the more basic, and perhaps mildest, methods was flagellation, or flogging. The prisoner would be stripped naked with their wrists bound to a post. The torturer would then use whips, metal rods, wooden planks, or a good ole cat-o-nine tails on their back. The beatings were so harsh that strips of skin would be pulled away, sometimes sticking to the rods and instruments. And don’t even get me started about hygiene and the spread of disease with open, bloody wounds like this.
Another classic one was called the strappado. Essentially, the prisoner would be bound by the wrists and then suspended in the air by a rope and pulley. If they were in a cell, they’d be raised to the ceiling with six feet underneath them. If they were outside, they might be raised even higher. Once suspended, a pair of 100-pound iron weights were shackled to their ankles at a similar height, and then released to drop, pulling on the prisoner’s legs, breaking bones and destroying nerves and joints. And nevermind the base level of pain from having to hang from your arms, before adding in the extra stuff!
I’m sure you’ve also heard about the rack. That’s a classic one. The torture rack stretched the prisoner out by their arms and legs, pulling them into a Vitruvian man kind of position. From there, the torturer would crank a wheel that pulled their limbs back even more, snapping them out from their sockets, and causing immense pain. If they wanted to, the torturer could continue to crank the rack, ripping their arms and legs off completely.
Sometimes, the rack would be used differently - prisoners would be tied down to it, and a serrated iron ball would be suspended above. Then, like a pendulum, the ball would swing back and forth, slowly lowering each time, until it sliced the prisoner’s stomach open.
Another good one is the iron chair - a chair with rusty spikes on the seat, and sometimes a hole underneath for a fire to burn the prisoner.
Now in addition to being fixed to these structures, torturers would employ other methods of torture, sometimes in addition to being strung up, sometimes alone. For example, they would use pincers to pull fingernails off or break off the fingers altogether. Sometimes they would be made to wear metal boots that were heated up, so the feet burned on the inside and the skin melted into the metal. Heads were dunked in dirty water. I’ve read that sometimes, women would have their breasts torn off with razor-sharp claws, or be subjected to the pear of anguish, which was a corkscrew-type instrument inserted into a woman’s lady parts, though modern historians question whether that one really existed or not. Just like the Iron Maiden - not the band - a sarcophagus of sorts with spikes inside that would close on a person and impale them. The earliest known Iron Maiden was built in the 1800s for museums that wanted to display medieval torture devices, and it’s become a popular symbol ever since… even though it’s not real.
So why go to these lengths? Well, the inquisitors needed confessions. They were on a mission to root out heresy. And thanks to Pope Innocent IV, they were allowed to employ torture to do so.
Sometimes, humiliation did the trick. In 1486, 750 relapsos were rounded up and forced to walk through the streets of Toledo wearing dirty yellow robes with a red cross painted on the front. The shame of walking through the streets and having people yell at them, caused many to convert back to Catholicism. It reminds me of that scene from Game of Thrones where Cersei Lannister is forced to walk naked through the streets of King’s Landing with the Septa ringing a bell and saying SHAME over and over again.
After a confession was obtained, many were put to death - purification of sin by fire. But it got to a point where there were so many that needed to die that they started doing mass executions, and they called it the act of faith, or auto-da-fe.
Now these mass executions were not only ways to cleanse Spain of its suspected heretics, but they also served as entertainment - much in the same way that the coliseums of Rome held animal bouts or gladiator fights to appease and entertain the people. They would be held in city squares or amphitheaters so that lots of people could come and watch - not only did it help justify the continued inquisitions by providing entertainment, but it also helped serve as a deterrence for any would-be heretics out there.
The largest auto-da-fe was held in Madrid in 1680, where hundreds of male and female prisoners were put to death, and over 5,000 spectators watched. It took a month to put the whole thing together, it boosted the local economy, and there were even food carts there profiting off things by selling food and drinks.
If a prisoner confessed on the spot, they would be given a quicker death by strangulation with a rope or metal cord.
If the prisoner refused to confess, they would be suspended in the air with a rope and lowered into the fire, dying of a burning, horrible, slow, agonizing death as the crowd cheered on.
And this Madrid mass execution was in 1680, hundreds of years after the whole Inquisition began. Which tells you how much it was a part of everyday life for most people.
The End of the Spanish Inquisition
Over time, despite the mass executions, the Inquisition was slowly lessening in intensity and religious vigor. I’d argue that Torquemada, who served as the Grand Inquisitor for 15 years, oversaw probably the worst period of the Inquisition. But by the 1700s, it was deteriorating. When Charles IV took the throne in 1788, he saw the damage it had done to the public and Spain’s economy, so he started to reduce its power.
But in 1808, Napoleon conquered Spain, installed his brother Joseph as the new King, and abolished the Inquisition. It briefly came back with Ferdinand VII once the French no longer controlled the Spanish crown in 1814, but the people weren’t having it. It didn’t help that a scathing expose came out, written by a former general secretary of the Inquisition, titled “A History of the Inquisition of Spain.”
The last Inquisition death in Spain was that of a teacher, a man named Cayetano Ripoll, who was accused of being a deist and pushing his beliefs on his students. Essentially, deism is a belief in God, but not in religious institutions like the Catholic Church. Ripoll was hanged on July 26th 1826.
Less than a decade later, it was over for good. Ferdinand VII’s widow, Maria Christina, signed a royal decree ending it for good. It was already more or less done by this point, but now it was official - the days of the Catholic Church sending inquisitors around the country, trying and executing those suspected or convicted of heresy, were now over.
So how many died in the 356 years of the Spanish Inquisition? Well, actually, despite the meticulous recordkeeping that went on, the numbers vary wildly. The general range is somewhere between 30,000 and 300,000, with some historians thinking that millions might have died or been put to death. But according to Professor Agostino Borromeo, a professor of Catholicism in Rome, only 1% of the 125,000 people tried were executed - so only 1,250 people. Dr. Edward Peters of the University of Pennsylvania places the number at around 3,000. So while the death toll is still very much debated, it’s unlikely that the number is as high as the 30,000-300,000 range.
But the overall lesson we can take away from the Spanish Inquisition is that when those in power become corrupt, they can abuse that power. And in some cases, like with the Spanish Inquisition, it can go to the extreme. Once it gets to this point, it becomes very hard to end - those who wanted to speak out against the injustice of it all would just be accused of heresy, and the process continues. Or, as British historian Lord Acton once wrote about the Renaissance-era popes, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely…There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies [on its holder].”
Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of the Spanish Inquisition. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen!
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Go listen to Nedric, my editor and the genius behind my intro and outro song, Yello Kake. You can find his stuff wherever you get your music! There’s a link in the description to his website.
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