Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition was founded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, and authorized by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478 to examine the genuineness of recent converts from Judaism to Christianity. The majority of its activities were dedicated to the suppression of the Jews, and it was primarily a political tribunal.

Background

Since the 13th century Spain had been divided into 3 distinct regions:

• the Kingdom of Castile,
• the Kingdom of Aragón, and
• Granada.

An Inquisition had existed in Aragón since 1232, when Pope Gregory IX had issued the Papal Bull Declinante, although castile had never had an Inquisition and Granada was an Islamic stronghold. In 1474 Isabella succeeded to the throne of castile and her husband ferdinand to that of Aragón in 1479. They made a political decision to force religious conformity across all three regions, and the enforced conversion of the Jewish and Muslim population were crucial to their aim.

Spanish Jews had been persecuted since the 7th century, but the persecution reached new heights in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1235 jews were forced to wear a yellow circular patch for easier identification. In 1391 massacres of Jewish communities began, in Majorca, Aragon and Seville (where at least 4000 were killed). Tens of thousands of Jews converted to Christianity to escape death, but the sincerity of these conversos was questioned. Ferdinand and isabella and the rest of the ruling elite believed that the Jews and the conversos posed a genuine threat to their power and saw a full Inquisition as a means of reasserting the predominance of the aristocracy.

Tomás de Torquemada

Isabella first established the Consejo de la Suprema y general Inquisición in 1483, designed primarily to operate within the Kingdom of Castile. It was headed by the newly-appointed Inquisitor-General, Fray Tomás de Torquemada. Torquemada was a Dominican Friar and confessor to Isabella. On 17 October 1483 Sixtus IV appointed Torquemada as papal Inquisitor-General for Aragón, Valencia and Catalonia, with permanent standing tribunals in Saragoza, Barcelona and Valencia. this was the first organization in Spanish history that possessed equal powers throughout the entire country.

1492

After 9 years of warfare, granada finally fell to the Spanish in January 1492. Ferdinand and Isabella set uop their royal house in the Alhambra, by joining the palace of Comares (the official throne of the Sultans of granada0 with their own Palace of the lions. This ended several centuries of Islamic rule in southern and western Spain. Their finances bolstered by the conquest, the King and Queen no longer needed the financila support of the Jewish businesses in Spain, and on 31 March they issued the Alhambra Decree, ordering the expulsion of all Jews from Spain and its territories and possessions by July 31, 1492, unless they converted to [[Roman Catholicism]. About 400,000 left before the allotted date, losing their livelihoods and being forced to pay exorbitant taxes as they departed. (This Jewish money helped fund Columbus's voyage to America, which departed on 3 August.) Around 50,000 Jews chose to conert and remain in Spain.

The Suprema

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