50 free The Spanish Inquisition trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Spanish Inquisition ran for more than 350 years, and this quiz covers the whole span: the papal bull of 1478, the first burnings in Seville, Tomás de Torquemada's 28-article rulebook, the Alhambra Decree that expelled the Jews, the yellow sanbenito, the baroque spectacle of the auto de fe, the schoolteacher hanged in 1826 and the regent who finally abolished the tribunal in 1834. Easy questions ask which monarchs founded it and what the Monty Python catchphrase is; harder ones dig into the three permitted torture methods, the inquisitor nicknamed the Witches' Advocate, why Sixtus IV protested about lust for wealth, and how many people the Inquisition actually executed according to modern estimates. It suits history students, church-history buffs and quiz nights that want a round with real numbers behind the legend. Sources are cited so you can tell Black Legend myth from documented fact. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the Inquisition, its officials, its decrees and its depictions, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
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Q 01Which pope authorised the Spanish Inquisition in 1478?
Sixtus IV
His bull Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus let the monarchs appoint their own inquisitors, taking control away from Rome.
Q 02Which two monarchs, the "Catholic Monarchs", appointed the first Spanish inquisitors in 1480?
Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile
Isabella had become convinced during a stay in Seville that Andalusian conversos were secretly practising Judaism.
Q 03Who was the Spanish Inquisition originally intended to identify?
Heretics among converts from Judaism and Islam
Protestants, witches, blasphemers, bigamists and Freemasons were all added to its targets much later.
Q 04Where and when was the first auto de fe with executions held?
Seville, 1481
Six people were burned alive, and thousands of conversos fled in terror, hurting commerce and royal revenues.
Q 05Who was the first Grand Inquisitor of Spain?
Tomás de Torquemada
A Dominican friar and confessor to the monarchs, his name became a byword for religious fanaticism.
Q 06To which religious order did the first Grand Inquisitor and most early inquisitors belong?
The Dominicans
The order had been founded to preach against the Cathars and served as inquisitors across Europe.
Q 07How many articles were in the code of procedures the first Grand Inquisitor drew up in 1484?
28
Article XV allowed torture to be repeated when guilt was "half proven".
Q 08What was a Christian convert from Judaism called in Spain?
A converso
About 100,000 Jews, half of Spain's Jewish population, had converted after the massacres of 1391.
Q 09What were Muslim converts to Christianity called?
Moriscos
A 1526 decree gave them 40 years of religious instruction before prosecution, though fifty were executed before that was clarified.
Q 10The 1492 Alhambra Decree ordered the expulsion of which group?
Unconverted Jews
They were given four months to convert or leave, and the decree was only formally revoked by Franco's regime in December 1968.
Q 11Roughly how many Jews left Spain under the 1492 decree, by modern estimates?
40,000 to 100,000
The chronicler Juan de Mariana claimed 800,000, but tax records suggest only about 80,000 unconverted Jews lived in Spain.
Q 12In which year did the Spanish crown finally revoke the Alhambra Decree?
1968
The symbolic revocation followed the Second Vatican Council's rejection of the charge of Jewish deicide.
Q 13What did the limpieza de sangre statutes require?
Proof of "clean" Christian ancestry
Toledo passed the first in 1449; a single Jewish ancestor could bar a family from office, and the Jesuits adopted the rule in 1593.
Q 21What was the euphemism for handing a heretic to the civil authorities to be burned?
Relaxation to the secular arm
Those who repented at the stake were garrotted first; the unrepentant were burned alive.
Q 22What happened to accused heretics who died before their trial ended?
They were burned in effigy
Proven heretics could be exhumed and burned decades later, with property seized and heirs disinherited.
Q 23Roughly how many people did the Spanish Inquisition prosecute over its whole history?
About 150,000
Q 14In which year did Philip III order the expulsion of Spain's converts from Islam?
1609
Around 300,000 people, some 4% of Spain's population, were forced out, most settling in the Maghreb.
Q 15What does "auto de fe" literally mean?
Act of faith
It was a public penance ceremony; the executions themselves were carried out separately by the civil authorities.
Q 16What was the sanbenito?
A penitential garment worn by the condemned
Yellow with red crosses for penitents, black with devils and flames for those to be burned alive.
Q 17What did downward-pointing flames on a condemned prisoner's tunic signify?
They would be strangled before burning
The fuego revolto marked heretics who repented after sentencing; the samarra, with devils and dragons, meant burning alive.
Q 18Which decree, read after Sunday Mass, gave 30 to 40 days to confess heresies without harsh penalty?
The Edict of Grace
After about 1500 the Edicts of Faith replaced it, dropping the grace period and simply urging denunciations.
Q 19Which three torture methods were permitted by the Inquisition?
Garrucha, toca and potro
The garrucha was the strappado, the toca a form of waterboarding, and the potro the rack, probably the most common.
Q 20What was the Inquisition forbidden to do to prisoners under torture, according to its rules?
Draw blood or cause permanent damage
Church law banned clerical courts from shedding blood, though broken limbs and deaths still occurred; a physician was usually present.
Of those, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 were executed, mostly in the first fifty years.
Q 24How many people were executed by the Inquisition, according to modern estimates?
3,000 to 5,000
Other punishments included flogging, exile, galley slavery, prison and, always, confiscation of property.
Q 25What did the pope accuse the Inquisition in Aragon of being moved by, in an extraordinary 1482 bull?
Lust for wealth
Ferdinand pushed back so hard that the pope suspended the bull and appointed Torquemada Inquisitor General instead.
Q 26Which humanist was jailed from 1572 to 1576 for translating the Song of Songs from Hebrew?
Fray Luis de León
The Inquisition's Index also listed Lope de Vega and the anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, yet the Golden Age went on.
Q 27Which inquisitor, nicknamed "The Witches' Advocate", concluded that Navarre's witches did not exist?
Alonso de Salazar Frías
He reported that neither witches nor bewitched existed in a village until they were discussed or written about.
Q 28The famous "witches" of Zugarramurdi were tried by which tribunal in 1609 to 1610?
Logroño
The Basque case became the biggest witch trial in Spanish history, involving 1,384 supposed child witches and 420 adults.
Q 29How many Spaniards are estimated to have been burned for Protestantism?
About 12
Philip II's autos de fe of 1558 to 1562 in Valladolid and Seville dealt with only about 120 people in total.
Q 30Under which ruler was the Spanish Inquisition first abolished, between 1808 and 1812?
Joseph Bonaparte
The liberal Cortes of Cádiz abolished it again in 1813, but Ferdinand VII restored it in July 1814.