50 Fun Facts About The Spanish Inquisition

Which pope authorised the Spanish Inquisition in 1478?

His bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus let the monarchs appoint their own inquisitors, taking control away from Rome.

Which two monarchs, the "Catholic Monarchs", appointed the first Spanish inquisitors in 1480?

Isabella had become convinced during a stay in Seville that Andalusian conversos were secretly practising Judaism.

Who was the Spanish Inquisition originally intended to identify?

Protestants, witches, blasphemers, bigamists and Freemasons were all added to its targets much later.

Where and when was the first auto de fe with executions held?

Six people were burned alive, and thousands of conversos fled in terror, hurting commerce and royal revenues.

Who was the first Grand Inquisitor of Spain?

A Dominican friar and confessor to the monarchs, his name became a byword for religious fanaticism.

To which religious order did the first Grand Inquisitor and most early inquisitors belong?

The order had been founded to preach against the Cathars and served as inquisitors across Europe.

How many articles were in the code of procedures the first Grand Inquisitor drew up in 1484?

Article XV allowed torture to be repeated when guilt was "half proven".

What was a Christian convert from Judaism called in Spain?

About 100,000 Jews, half of Spain's Jewish population, had converted after the massacres of 1391.

What were Muslim converts to Christianity called?

A 1526 decree gave them 40 years of religious instruction before prosecution, though fifty were executed before that was clarified.

The 1492 Alhambra Decree ordered the expulsion of which group?

They were given four months to convert or leave, and the decree was only formally revoked by Franco's regime in December 1968.

Roughly how many Jews left Spain under the 1492 decree, by modern estimates?

The chronicler Juan de Mariana claimed 800,000, but tax records suggest only about 80,000 unconverted Jews lived in Spain.

In which year did the Spanish crown finally revoke the Alhambra Decree?

The symbolic revocation followed the Second Vatican Council's rejection of the charge of Jewish deicide.

What did the limpieza de sangre statutes require?

Toledo passed the first in 1449; a single Jewish ancestor could bar a family from office, and the Jesuits adopted the rule in 1593.

In which year did Philip III order the expulsion of Spain's converts from Islam?

Around 300,000 people, some 4% of Spain's population, were forced out, most settling in the Maghreb.

What does "auto de fe" literally mean?

It was a public penance ceremony; the executions themselves were carried out separately by the civil authorities.

What was the sanbenito?

Yellow with red crosses for penitents, black with devils and flames for those to be burned alive.

What did downward-pointing flames on a condemned prisoner's tunic signify?

The fuego revolto marked heretics who repented after sentencing; the samarra, with devils and dragons, meant burning alive.

Which decree, read after Sunday Mass, gave 30 to 40 days to confess heresies without harsh penalty?

After about 1500 the Edicts of Faith replaced it, dropping the grace period and simply urging denunciations.

Which three torture methods were permitted by the Inquisition?

The garrucha was the strappado, the toca a form of waterboarding, and the potro the rack, probably the most common.

What was the Inquisition forbidden to do to prisoners under torture, according to its rules?

Church law banned clerical courts from shedding blood, though broken limbs and deaths still occurred; a physician was usually present.

What was the euphemism for handing a heretic to the civil authorities to be burned?

Those who repented at the stake were garrotted first; the unrepentant were burned alive.

What happened to accused heretics who died before their trial ended?

Proven heretics could be exhumed and burned decades later, with property seized and heirs disinherited.

Roughly how many people did the Spanish Inquisition prosecute over its whole history?

Of those, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 were executed, mostly in the first fifty years.

How many people were executed by the Inquisition, according to modern estimates?

Other punishments included flogging, exile, galley slavery, prison and, always, confiscation of property.

What did the pope accuse the Inquisition in Aragon of being moved by, in an extraordinary 1482 bull?

Ferdinand pushed back so hard that the pope suspended the bull and appointed Torquemada Inquisitor General instead.

Which humanist was jailed from 1572 to 1576 for translating the Song of Songs from Hebrew?

The Inquisition's Index also listed Lope de Vega and the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, yet the Golden Age went on.

Which inquisitor, nicknamed "The Witches' Advocate", concluded that Navarre's witches did not exist?

He reported that neither witches nor bewitched existed in a village until they were discussed or written about.

The famous "witches" of Zugarramurdi were tried by which tribunal in 1609 to 1610?

The Basque case became the biggest witch trial in Spanish history, involving 1,384 supposed child witches and 420 adults.

How many Spaniards are estimated to have been burned for Protestantism?

Philip II's autos de fe of 1558 to 1562 in Valladolid and Seville dealt with only about 120 people in total.

Under which ruler was the Spanish Inquisition first abolished, between 1808 and 1812?

The liberal Cortes of Cádiz abolished it again in 1813, but Ferdinand VII restored it in July 1814.

Who was the last person executed for heresy in Spain, in 1826?

He was hanged for teaching deism; the Church reportedly buried him in a barrel painted with flames.

Who finally abolished the Spanish Inquisition by royal decree in July 1834?

Ferdinand VII's liberal widow acted during Isabella II's minority, with cabinet president Martínez de la Rosa's approval.

Juan Antonio Llorente, who published a critical history of the Inquisition in 1817, had held what post?

He turned Bonapartist and used his access to the archives while in French exile.

Which three American cities had tribunals of the Spanish Inquisition?

It also operated in Sicily and Sardinia under the Spanish crown.

What was the name of the Inquisition's supreme governing council?

It met mornings on questions of faith and afternoons on "minor heresies" such as bigamy and witchcraft.

Who painted the famous 1683 picture of the 1680 auto de fe in Madrid's Plaza Mayor?

The 1680 auto sentenced 118 people and executed 21, mostly immigrant Jewish conversos; the painting hangs in the Prado.

In what year was the last public auto de fe held?

Autos had grown into baroque spectacles staged in city plazas on holidays, beginning at night with the procession of the Green Cross.

Which Enlightenment figure, later a minister, called inquisitors ignorant, gossipy friars?

Olavide, Iriarte and Jovellanos were all tried by the Inquisition in the late 18th century.

What did the Inquisition's 1815 purge target, arresting people merely "suspected" of it?

Inquisitor General Mier y Campillo denounced the lodges as leading to atheism, sedition and all errors and crimes.

Which Monty Python catchphrase, first broadcast in 1970, has become an internet meme?

Cardinal Ximénez was played by Michael Palin, with Terry Jones as Cardinal Biggles and Terry Gilliam as Cardinal Fang.

In the Monty Python sketch, what kitchen item does Cardinal Biggles fetch as the instrument of torture?

The cardinals' other instruments of torture are soft cushions and the comfy chair.

Which Dostoevsky novel has the chapter 'The Grand Inquisitor', with Christ arrested in Seville?

The aged cardinal condemns him as a heretic; Christ answers only with a silent kiss.

Which 2006 Miloš Forman film focuses on the Inquisition's role in Spain between 1792 and 1809?

Mel Brooks had earlier turned Torquemada into a musical number in History of the World Part I.

Which Verdi opera, based on Schiller, features a Grand Inquisitor and devotes an act to an auto de fe?

The five-act grand opera premiered in 1867.

The 1449 statute barring conversos from office, the first blood-purity law, was passed in which city?

It followed anti-converso riots in which conversos were tortured and burned alive.

Which pope had authorised inquisitors to use torture in 1252, long before the Spanish tribunal?

His bull Ad extirpanda followed the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars of southern France.

The Spanish Inquisition's first Index of prohibited books, published in 1551, reprinted whose list?

Later Spanish Indexes grew from 72 pages in 1559 to a 1,300-page volume in 1667.

Men convicted of bigamy by the Inquisition typically served five years doing what?

They also received 200 lashes; skilled men instead did ten years of unpaid work in a hospital or charity.

In which city was the Inquisition's Sicilian tribunal housed after Ferdinand set it up in 1513?

Sardinia's tribunal sat in Sassari, and Cartagena joined Lima and Mexico City as the Americas' third seat in 1610.

What were the Inquisition's permanent lay collaborators, whose post signified Old Christian status, called?

Most were commoners, though the honour came with privileges; comissarios were clergy who helped only occasionally.