God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World by Cullen Murphy
Authors: Cullen Murphy
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pace and thereby extracted the maximum suffering.Sometimes the authorities allowed a bag of gunpowder—
saccus pulverarius
—to be hung around the waist or neck of the condemned, bringing sudden and definitive closure when the fire reached a certain point.
The six men and women who died on February 6, 1481, were followed a few days later by three more, and then, over the course of the next two decades, by several thousand. The Inquisition came to Spain quickly and with particular virulence. Like earlier inquisitions, the Spanish one claimed jurisdiction over people who were ostensibly Christians. As noted, its primary targets were converted Jews and Muslims whose sincerity as converts was questioned. Later, after the Reformation, it turned some attention to Protestants, though there were never very many in Spain, and to a variety of specific transgressions, such as the solicitation of sex by clergy in the confessional.Jews had lived on the peninsula since the days of the Roman Empire, and perhaps even earlier. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Jews of Iberia, constituting perhaps 2 percent of the population, were an educated and wealthy class.But a program of persecution and forcible conversion had undermined the Jewish community’s identity, and Jews who had accepted Christianity—New Christians—were regarded by many Old Christians with suspicion as judaizers or “crypto-Jews” who secretly held fast to their faith. Another term used for them was
marranos,
sometimes said to derive from a Spanish word for swine, though the etymology is not certain.Muslims had likewise been in Spain for many centuries—indeed, had ruled Iberia after overrunning the Visigothic kingdoms there. But as the Christian reconquest advanced, the Muslims, too, were subjected to persecution and forcible conversion. And like the Jewish
conversos,
the converted Muslims, known as
moriscos,
came to be regarded with suspicion.
The pogroms and conversions had begun long before any centralized, official inquisition was put into place. When the Spanish Inquisition was formally established, in 1478, it built on the previous inquisitions in other places. It used the same interrogation methods that the Medieval Inquisition had, and the same manuals, at least at first. It relied on the same established codes of canon law. It employed the same kinds of record-keeping; indeed, the record-keeping was even better. The records are so voluminous that scholars in recent years have been able to compile a vast computerized database—names, dates, charges, trials, punishments.But the Spanish Inquisition also went down new paths. For one thing, as time went on, it attempted to be more systematic about censorship than the Medieval Inquisition had ever been, drawing up lists of books to be kept out of Spain or destroyed if they found their way in. Many other books were expurgated, as censors wielding inkpots took aim at offensive passages.
The Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington, D.C., preserves a copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio
,
from 1632, which was originally in the possession of a Jesuit seminary in Spain. The book bears the official stamp of the Inquisition and reveals the hand of a Spanish censor at work on
Henry VIII.
The last pages of the play hold flattering passages about Henry’s daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth, Spain’s longtime nemesis, and the censor in heavy ink has crossed out such admiring lines as “Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn.”
More important, unlike earlier inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition was bound up not only with religion but with an ideology of ethnicity—the notion of
limpieza de sangre,
or “purity of blood.” It was about classes of people rather than just categories of belief. And unlike earlier inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition was a wholly owned subsidiary of the state. Previous inquisitions had of course had their political uses—and they depended upon, and employed, secular power—but
saccus pulverarius
—to be hung around the waist or neck of the condemned, bringing sudden and definitive closure when the fire reached a certain point.
The six men and women who died on February 6, 1481, were followed a few days later by three more, and then, over the course of the next two decades, by several thousand. The Inquisition came to Spain quickly and with particular virulence. Like earlier inquisitions, the Spanish one claimed jurisdiction over people who were ostensibly Christians. As noted, its primary targets were converted Jews and Muslims whose sincerity as converts was questioned. Later, after the Reformation, it turned some attention to Protestants, though there were never very many in Spain, and to a variety of specific transgressions, such as the solicitation of sex by clergy in the confessional.Jews had lived on the peninsula since the days of the Roman Empire, and perhaps even earlier. By the end of the Middle Ages, the Jews of Iberia, constituting perhaps 2 percent of the population, were an educated and wealthy class.But a program of persecution and forcible conversion had undermined the Jewish community’s identity, and Jews who had accepted Christianity—New Christians—were regarded by many Old Christians with suspicion as judaizers or “crypto-Jews” who secretly held fast to their faith. Another term used for them was
marranos,
sometimes said to derive from a Spanish word for swine, though the etymology is not certain.Muslims had likewise been in Spain for many centuries—indeed, had ruled Iberia after overrunning the Visigothic kingdoms there. But as the Christian reconquest advanced, the Muslims, too, were subjected to persecution and forcible conversion. And like the Jewish
conversos,
the converted Muslims, known as
moriscos,
came to be regarded with suspicion.
The pogroms and conversions had begun long before any centralized, official inquisition was put into place. When the Spanish Inquisition was formally established, in 1478, it built on the previous inquisitions in other places. It used the same interrogation methods that the Medieval Inquisition had, and the same manuals, at least at first. It relied on the same established codes of canon law. It employed the same kinds of record-keeping; indeed, the record-keeping was even better. The records are so voluminous that scholars in recent years have been able to compile a vast computerized database—names, dates, charges, trials, punishments.But the Spanish Inquisition also went down new paths. For one thing, as time went on, it attempted to be more systematic about censorship than the Medieval Inquisition had ever been, drawing up lists of books to be kept out of Spain or destroyed if they found their way in. Many other books were expurgated, as censors wielding inkpots took aim at offensive passages.
The Folger Shakespeare Library, in Washington, D.C., preserves a copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio
,
from 1632, which was originally in the possession of a Jesuit seminary in Spain. The book bears the official stamp of the Inquisition and reveals the hand of a Spanish censor at work on
Henry VIII.
The last pages of the play hold flattering passages about Henry’s daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth, Spain’s longtime nemesis, and the censor in heavy ink has crossed out such admiring lines as “Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn.”
More important, unlike earlier inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition was bound up not only with religion but with an ideology of ethnicity—the notion of
limpieza de sangre,
or “purity of blood.” It was about classes of people rather than just categories of belief. And unlike earlier inquisitions, the Spanish Inquisition was a wholly owned subsidiary of the state. Previous inquisitions had of course had their political uses—and they depended upon, and employed, secular power—but
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