Spanish Inquisition
Many artistic representations depict torture and the burning at the stake as occurring during the auto da fe. Actually, burning at the stake usually occurred after, not during the Catholic ceremonies.
This article acknowledges a distinction between the Medieval Church and the Church of today but nevertheless documents the actions of the Roman Catholic Church and the Monarchy of Spain, sometimes in critical contexts, in the belief that the difficult lessons of history should be remembered, not relived, and that the Spanish Inquisition is a good historical case study, for example, of the dangers inherent in mixing Church and State. The Spanish Inquisition was a legally constituted court decreed by Sixtus IV's Papal Bull and implemented under Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile beginning in 1478. As Christian European monarchs regained control of Spain from Muslim North Africans (see Introduction, below), the Christian Monarchy gradually imposed and enforced certain legal restrictions reflecting rigid religious intolerance and provincialism or racism. There came a time when Spaniards who were not Catholics were not allowed into any of the major professions. Similarly, non-Catholics were forbidden from civil service by royal decree. Other legal and property rights depended on being baptized into the State Religion (Catholicism) as did entrance into schools and general social standing. Ferdinand and the Vatican used these tactics to assert total control over Spanish society and to gain converts for Roman Christianity. The Crown’s investment in gaining converts was such that it planned elaborate, conversion-inspiring events like the Disputation at Tortosa in 1413. Many Muslims and Jews in Spain went along with the Crown in order to keep or get jobs, be considered part of Spanish society or simply to comply with the obvious wishes of the government.
There is no doubt that many who converted had no real affinity for Christianity (or for that matter the Pope). Right or wrong, many Jews and Muslims at the time viewed Christianity as an extension of older, nature-based religions which embraced polytheism. The Jews had been persecuted by the Romans long before the Empire was Christian and may have made less of a distinction for that reason. Many conversos were secular by upbringing and had little or no connection to their abandoned religions either. But many who had converted during and after the massacres of 1391 did it simply to avoid death (see Context, below) and had held onto what was, by 1478, more than a thousand years of Jewish culture and tradition in Spain.
The Crown and the Vatican were outraged by the idea of converts following non-Christian ways of life in the dark shelter of their own heretical homes. There was also a realization in Spain and Rome that large amounts of wealth had been looted in 1468 and 1473 (see below) along with concern that those proceeds should have gone to the government and the Church. Certain behaviors (some actual religious practices - others created by the Inquisitors) were labeled by the Church as “Judaising” and were strictly prohibited under punishment of death. As of 1478, any convert suspected or accused (however haphazardly) of Judaising was tried and put through an “act of faith” (auto da fe), the result of which was always one form of horrible punishment or another. None of the accused was found innocent - the only two possible outcomes of the Church’s would-be trials were guilt by admission and guilt with denial, the latter being cause for Church and State sponsored execution. Certain Church historians have recently asserted that anti-Semitism was not one of the main motivators for Rome or Spain, pointing out that the Inquisition only targeted converted Jews accused of Judaising, not Jews who refused to convert. This argument seems less convincing in view of Ferdinand’s expulsion of the Jews (including and especially the ones who never converted) from the country of Spain in 1492. Any Jew who had not converted and did not leave Spain was thereafter legally executed by the Crown with the Pope’s knowledge and approval. Most historians would agree that practicing Jews had all left Spain by early August of 1492 and that those accused of heresy thereafter were people who a) had money and b) could be accused of having a Jewish or Muslim ancestor, whether it was true or not.
The Inquisition was removed during Napoleonic rule (1808–1812), but reinstituted when Ferdinand VII of Spain recovered the throne. It was officially ended on 15 July 1834. Schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoli, garroted to death in Valencia on July 26 1826 (allegedly for teaching Deist principles), was the last person executed by the Spanish Inquisition.
Introduction
In the 15th century, Spain was still not a single state but a confederation of realms, each with its own administration, such as the Crown of Aragon and the Crown of Castile, ruled by Ferdinand and Isabella respectively. In the Crown of Aragon (a confederation of the Kingdoms of Aragon, Baleares, Catalonia and Valencia), there had been a local inquisition in the Middle Ages, as in the rest of the European countries. The Moors had brought Islam to Spain when they successfully conquered much of the country beginning in 711C.E. They crossed the Pyrenees only to be defeated in Toulouse by a hodge-podge army of Roman concoction in 732. Had Toulouse gone the other way, Europe may not have remained a Christian continent. Islam had been established as a religion only a century earlier in 622. Some of its adherents were at least as religiously fervent as their Christian counterparts but these soldiers were primarily soldiers of fortune. Islamic culture was not as comparatively backward as it appears to be today. Many of the regions co-opted by the Moors, including Granada, developed a cosmopolitanism that often accompanies the intermingling of people from different parts of the world.
Granada remained under Moorish rule until 1492. The large cities, especially Seville, Valladolid (capital of Castile and birthplace of Torquemada) and Barcelona (capital of the Crown of Aragon) had large Jewish populations centered in ghettos/Jewish Quarters called juderias. Throughout Moorish rule and after the Christian reconquest of Spain - between 756 and 1492 - Jews in Spain rose to prominence in many fields, from medicine to philology. Jews had been allowed in civil service and were often selected by royalty to do administrative, accounting and ceremonial work. Abiathar Crescas was Jewish and had been the Court Astronomer to Ferdinand’s father, John II of Aragon. Crescas was also one of John’s doctors and is credited with restoring the King’s eyesight when he went blind from cataracts. In the hundreds of years that preceded the Spanish Inquisition, more than one Spanish monarch consulted with Jewish religious leaders or rabbis. There were extended periods of time when Christians, Jews and Muslims lived peacefully together in parts of medieval Spain. Yet despite the central role Jews and Muslims played in the life of the country, anti-Semitism was never far below the surface. In 1250, the first Spanish blood libel occurred, an event that proved to be an ominous foreshadowing of what was to come.
Origin
Was the motivation for the Spanish Inquisition different than the motivation for the Inquisition in general? While the Inquisition in Spain was unique for several reasons, it was but a part of the much larger, much longer 650-year campaign of the Catholic Church in Rome to hunt and kill real or accused religious non-conformists. So the Spanish Inquisition may have had causes independent of other inquisitions but its deepest roots are no different from those of the Inquisition in general: Papal maintenance of social control and the social structure through the creation of fear; Church and State encouragement of religious and ethnic prejudice leading to aggression; and consolidation of Roman Catholic financial and political power in Europe.
But there were circumstances and causes unique to the Spanish Inquisition. Its place in time, the late 15th Century, meant that larger numbers of Spaniards and other Europeans were becoming literate. The Church had enjoyed the luxury of most of its subjects not knowing how to read up through this time. Learning to read meant being able to read the Bible. The Church had long espoused doctrines, including central ones like the Trinity, that had little or, in the Trinity’s case, no grounding or reference in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Times were changing and increased literacy meant increased possibilities for questioning Papal authority. Indeed only 25 years separated Luther’s Theses going up in Wittenberg (the Protestant Reformation) in 1517 and the Jews’ expulsion from Spain in 1492. Luther’s ability to read enabled him to determine that neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament contained any mention of such a thing as Purgatory. When a representative from Rome came to Luther’s church and was offering time off from Purgatory in exchange for cash, Luther knew it was a scam in large part because of his ability to read the Bible. So Rome’s apprehension was by no means unjustified and heightened efforts to suppress any rejection, doubt or questioning of Papal (and therefore Monarchical) authority should not surprise those with the luxury of hindsight.
Some historians point out that portions of the Spanish Jewish Community supported Ferdinand’s political opponents but Ferdinand’s father,John II of Aragon, had benefitted from consistent financial and political support from much of the Jewish Community. Ferdinand’s father is not known to have shared his son’s religious zealotry or intolerance. But John was never in the same situation as Ferdinand, whose marriage to Isabella of Castile created something resembling or approaching a unified Spain for the first time since the 8th Century. It is clear that Ferdinand felt pressure to retain and consolidate this new power and to pass on a unified Kingdom to his heir. A remaining enemy for Ferdinand (until 1492) was the Moors, whom some Jews still supported. This may help to explain certain of the King’s decrees regarding the rights of non-Catholics. The deterioration and eventual disappearance of legal and property rights of heretics can be attributed in part to the Crown and not exclusively to the Pope.
Financial motivation likely played a more evident if not a greater role in the Spanish Inquisition than in the Inquisition at large. At least the payoff was more immediate as the wealth of an accused heretic was confiscated at the same time he or she was. Most conversos were middle class but a handful were very wealthy and accusing the right individual could bring in a nice one-day booty. When the Jews were expelled in 1492, they were specifically instructed to leave all silver, gold and money behind for the King.
Context
The first Spanish blood libel occurred in 1250. Toward the close of the 14th Century, Church leaders in Spain again began focusing their attention on local Jews. Archdeacon Ferran Martinez of the Seville diocese had preached anti-Semitism from the pulpit nearly every Sunday from 1378 onward. Until finally, on Ash Wednesday (March 15) of 1391, during the religious season when Christians commemorate the death of Jesus, parishioners headed for the Jewish Quarter straight from Martinez’ Church. Spanish authorities stepped in and two of the mob leaders were flogged. This did not deter but instead inflamed Catholic anger. There were incidents in Cordova, Toledo and Burgos. Then, on June 6th, a “Christian” mob invaded Seville’s Jewish Quarter, killing the men, raping then killing the women and emptying or possessing homes. Accounts vary as to whether hundreds or thousands were killed. Then all hell really broke loose. Christian mobs burned and looted Jewish neighborhoods from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and from the French Frontier to the Straits of Gibraltar. There was extensive killing - entire Jewish communities vanished. At least 72 towns in Castile were affected. Aragon was bad but in Valencia, very few practicing Jews were left alive in the Kingdom. Death estimates range from 25,000 to 50,000. It was in the immediate wake of these events that surviving Jews in Spain converted to Catholicism in significant numbers. Churches were literally performing conversions during and between massacres.
Church records put Jewish conversion numbers at an improbable 200,000. Between 1391 and 1395, at least tens of thousands of Jews did convert. After converting, they were officially allowed to enter the professions and own property. As other examples, conversos were no longer forced to wear the Jewish “Badge of Shame” (which existed long before Ferdinand did) and they were now permitted to socialize with and even marry non-Jews. Free from an exhaustive list of legal and social restrictions, some experienced great success and fortune in the 80 years leading up to 1478. Especially in Castile, former Jews became prominent in government. Few of the 1390s conversos were ever free of resentment against the Church or the Pope and some of the more prominent ones made less than subtle expressions of disregard for Christianity. The Christian population of Spain, who had become darker complected as a result of the Muslim / North African conquest and therefore placed high public emphasis on being of “pure, Christian blood,” resented the converted Jews as “unpure” and called them “Marranos” or pigs.
The persecution and then expulsion of the Muslims
see also Al Andulus
In 1212 Muhammad An-Nasir who was not experienced in either administration or warfare, collected an army of 600,000 men from Andulus and North Africa to repulse another crusade instigated by Pope Innocent III. Muhammed An-Nasir ignored the advice of his skilled and experienced generals. Only a few thousand muslims escaped the famouse battle of Las Navas.This was the beginning of the persecution and expulsion of the muslims by the trinitarian christians.
The conquest of Ubeda in 1212 sets the stage for the next 600 years. After the capitulation , Alfonso IX found 70,000 muslims living there. They offered to pay a ransom, in return to being allowed to live in peace. Alfonso agreed. The Roman catholic church persuaded him to break his promise. All the muslims of Ubeda were massacred, except those who were selected to be slaves.
Cordoba fell in 1236, Valencia in 1238, Seville in 1248. BY mid 13th century the trinitarians has conquered all of spain, with the exception of Granada.
The Mudéjar of Northern Spain This was the first phase, with the reduction of the muslims to slaves , stripped of their way of life. The muslims were valuable resources, hard working, skilled workers.
in 1216 the Lateran Council decreed that a distinctive garment and a badge should be worn by the jews and the muslims. The garment came to be known as the san benito.
in 1248 , Pope Innocent IV ordered the king of Aragon, 'to permit no Moors save as slaves'.
in 1250 it was decreed that no one could buy or sell anything to the Muslims unless he had first obtained a license to do so.
The council of Vienna ordered the princes of Spain to supress the worship of the Muslims and to give them the alternative of either accepting Christianity or else to 'endure a punishment which would render them a terrible example. H.C.Lea the moriscos of spain p9
The council of Tarragona in 1329, ordered all the princess to follow the resolution, adopted by the council of vienna within 2 months under pain of excommunication and interdict.
in 1388 it was decreed that all Muslims should kneel down when the Trinitarian Churchs' sacraments ' were being carried through the streets.
in 1412 the following was decreed It was decreed that Jews and Moors should wear distinguishing badges, be deprived of the right to hold office or possess titles, and should not change their domicile. In addition they were excluded from various trades such as those of grocer, carpenters, tailors and butchers; could not bear arms or hire Christians to work for them; were not allowed to eat, drink, bathe or even talk with Christians, and were forbidden to wear any but coarse clothes' H.Kamen,the spanish inquisition p18
In 1483 the spanish inquisition came into being, and now that the muslims and jews had been reduced to watched slaves living in the juderias and morerias, the inquisition could begin
History, Part I
As converted Jews began to take part in greater Spanish society, resentment over the academic, social and financial success of these “New Christians” was mostly discussed in terms of the frivolity of their commitment to Christianity, Jesus and the Pope. Isolated attacks on Jews developed into another wave of mob-style massacres in 1468 and again in 1473 when most of Jewish Toledo burned and Jewish corpses were piled high in the streets of Segovia. When Sixtus IV officially declared open season on heretics in 1478, the change was less drastic than we might assume. But introduced into the mix was official Roman machinery for finding and killing enemies of the Church along with all the appurtenant pomp and circumstance. Administratively, the Inquisition had been a relatively well-oiled machine since the later years of the Papal Inquisition (one of the Medieval Inquisitions) in the late 13th Century. It was a thorough system with a hierarchy of officials, detailed records and a notoriously long arm. Torture had been used consistently by the Church but the Pope officially opposed it until expressly authorizing the use of torture in the Inquisition by Papal Bull of 1252. Traditionally, the pay of an Inquisitor was all or part of the property of an accused (dead) heretic. If you were arrested by the Spanish Inquisition, all of your property was taken at the same time you were, an indication of how much question anyone had as to the outcome of the pending Churchtrial.
The Pope’s declaration of November, 1478 came eight months after several conversos had been spotted in the company of practicing Jews at what was likely a Passover seder again during Holy Week. Rome’s slow response came from not wanting to cede too much power to Ferdinand and another two years went by before a tribunal was actually inaugurated. Preparations were made, like the publishing of a list of signs by which Judaisers could be identified. The list included washing hands before prayer, calling children by Old Testament names and gross caricatures of stereotypical Semitic physical features. In September of 1480, two friars of the Dominican Order (Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martin) were commissioned by Rome to begin activities in Seville. They started out with only one Promoter Fiscal (prosecutor) and two receivers of confiscations. On Christmas Day, 1480, they arrived in Seville - the pomp and circumstance being reserved for a “solemn procession” the following Sunday announcing the Inquisition’s presence. Conversos in Seville immediately started planning resistance, genuinely believing the people in the region would be on their side against the Church and Crown. A wealthy merchant named Diego de Susan was their leader and had assembled enough guns to arm 100 men before the conspirators’ plot was betrayed by de Susan’s own daughter, the beautiful “La Susanna,” who in a moment of weakness divulged her father’s plans to her Christian caballero. The boyfriend informed the inquisitors and the result was the first official auto da fe (“act of faith”) of the Spanish Inquisition on February 6, 1481. Following the Church’s religious ceremony, six men and women were burned alive. The sermon before the burnings was preached by Alonso de Hojeda. Three more conversos, including Diego de Susan, were executed soon afterward.
Tomas de Torquemada was a Dominican friar born in Valladolid in 1420. He had been Isabella’s confessor before she was Queen. Some have attributed his vehement anti-Semitism to the fact that, as a younger man, he had often been accused of having Jewish ancestry. Torquemada was initially active behind the scenes of the Inquisition but was not commissioned until a Papal Brief of February 11, 1482 nominated him and six others as Inquisitors. Torquemada was subsequently appointed head of a council that coordinated Inquisition tribunals in Castile and Leon but not until October 17, 1483 did the Pope extend Torquemada’s authority over Aragon, making him the first “Grand Inquisitor.”
History, Part II
By November 4, 1481, at least 298 men and women had been burned and 95 condemned to life imprisonment with regular torture (many would die in prison). Beginning in 1482, tribunals were set up at Cordova, Jaen and Ciudad Real. There is an historical debate as to whether one was set up at Segovia. The second auto of the Ciudad Real tribunal, a two-day event spanning February 23 and 24, 1484, is well remembered because more than 30 men and women were burnt alive, along with the corpses of 40 more who died before they were set on fire. In 1485, the seat of the Ciduad Real Tribunal moved to Toledo (the place for which it had originally been intended). The Conversos of Toledo, like those of Seville, conspired to prevent the self-styled Holy Office from entering its functions. One plan was to seize the city gates and the tower of the Cathedral and to try to make a stand against the Crown - another was to attack the Inquisitors during the procession of Corpus Christi. As had been the case at Seville, the conversos’ power and influence proved insufficient to mount any real resistance. The plots were betrayed and the conspirators were eventually killed. The Toledo Tribunal could process and burn as many as 50 persons on one day. Over the course of its existence, the Tribunal killed increasingly larger percentages of its convicts before burning them.
There was some successful resistance put up by the conversos of Aragon. Shortly after the first auto there in May of 1484, the Inquisitor Gaspar Juglar was found dead, reportedly having been poisoned. On September 15, 1485, Pedro Arubes, Canon of the Cathedral of Saragossa and one of the driving forces behind the Tribunal, was attacked in his church and died two days later. In response to the assassination, hundreds were arrested and between one and two hundred were put to death, including the assailants. One of the conspirators, de Santangel, was beheaded in the public marketplace, his head then stuck on a pole for display and his body burned. This kind of swift response earned Torquemada great favor with the Crown and the Pope. For example, Pope Alexander VI wrote Torquemada in 1496 to express that he cherished him “in the very bowels of affection” for his labor and dedication to the Faith. Sixtus IV had demonstrated his faith in Torquemada by making him Grand Inquisitor in 1483. And Pope Innocent VIII showed appreciation by granting a special request - some conversos had escaped Spain and fled to other European countries. As per Torquemada’s wishes, Innocent ordered the Monarchs of these countries to return the fugitives back to the Grand Inquisitor for trial in 1488.
Moorish Granada fell in 1492. This military victory was also seen as a great religious accomplishment. Religious fervor was at a fevered pitch throughout Christian Spain. The time was right for the Office of the Inquisition to secure the expulsion of all remaining Spanish Jews (Jews who had never converted). Though they were held in check by tight legal restrictions and their numbers had been sharply reduced by massacre, execution and conversion, they were no less of a target in Torquemada’s eyes and on March 30, 1492, the Spanish sovereigns granted his request to sign the decree which drove more than 100,000 never-converted Jews into exile. The Jews complied and within four months, not a Jew was left in Spain.
The Spanish Inquisition remained in full force after Torquemada’s death in 1498. He was replaced by Diego Deza, a friend and patron of Christopher Columbus. The greatest excesses of Deza’s administration occurred in the diocese of Cordova where the accusation of having a Muslim or Jewish ancestor - if you had money - was generally sufficient for condemnation to the stake. Cordova Inquisitor Diego Rodrigues Lucero became well known for his merciless employment of torture and for burning 107 people alive because they had been present at a lecture given by a Divinity scholar named Membreque who was suspected of propagating Judaism. Cardinal Ximenes succeeded Diego Deza as Grand Inquisitor in 1507 and held the office until 1517. Though Ximenes attempted certain reforms of the office, over 2,500 burnings occurred during his decade-long tenure. From 1517, there was no significant threat to the authority of the Spanish Inquisition for close to 300 years.
Freemasonry
In 1815, Francisco Xavier de Mier y Campillo, the Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition and the Bishop of Almería, suppressed Freemasonry and denounced the lodges as “societies which lead to sedition, to independence, and to all errors and crimes.”[1] He then instituted a purge during which Spaniards could be arrested on the charge of being “suspected of Freemasonry”.[1] The Inquisition was also leveled against accused adherents to early Protestantism, Erasmism and Illuminism and in the 18th century against Encyclopedism and those associated with the French Enlightenment.
Torture Techniques
Torquemada documented some of his techniques. A favorite was tortura del'agua (water torture), in which the victim was strapped to a rack, his mouth forced open with a rag, and water was then forced down the throat so that the victim felt he was drowning. In another technique, the garrucha, the victim's hands were tied behind his back at the wrists; the victim was then lifted off the ground by the wrists. The use of torture during the repression of the Templars was severe enough to cause the death of many of them. The “Spanish Chair,” a device used to hold the victim while the soles of their feet were roasted, was certainly in existence in Spain during the period of the Inquisition. It is uncertain, however, whether it was in fact used.
Some of the torture methods attributed to the Spanish Inquisition were never used. For example, the "Iron Maiden" never existed in Spain, and was a post-Reformation invention of Germany. Thumbscrews on display in an English museum as Spanish were recently argued to be of English origin. At the same time, torture was used so routinely during the Spanish Inquisition that the absence of its mention in a given historical record cannot be seen as evidence for its not having been employed. The assertion that "confessionem esse veram, non factam vi tormentorum" (the confession was true and free) sometimes follows a description of how, presently after torture ended, the subject freely confessed to his offenses.
Death Tolls
Death tolls are given by historians such as Will Durant, who, in The Reformation (1957), cites Juan Antonio Llorente, General Secretary of the Inquisition from 1789 to 1801, as estimating that 31,912 people were executed from 1480-1808. He also cites Hernando de Pulgar, a secretary to Queen Isabella, as estimating 2,000 people were burned before 1490. Philip Schaff in his History of the Christian Church gave a number of 8,800 people burned in the 18 years of Torquemada. Matthew White, in reviewing these and other figures, gives a median number of deaths at 32,000, with around 9,000 under Torquemada [1]. R. J. Rummel describes similar figures as realistic, though he cites some historians who give figures of up to 135,000 people killed under Torquemada. This number includes 125,000 asserted to have died in prison due to poor conditions, leaving 10,000 sentenced to death. (Death rates in medieval and early modern prisons were generally very high, thanks in part to inadequate sanitary conditions and a poor diet.) There are no death toll figures available for the massacres of 1391, 1468 or 1473. These numbers will likely never be known.
The last 40 years have seen the development of a revisionist school of Inquisition history. Like Holocaust revisionists (see Holocaust Denial), Inquisition revisionists tend to fall into three categories: some deny the existence of the Spanish Inquisition altogether; others argue that the Spanish Inquisition was simply not that bad and that death tolls and tales of terror have been grossly exaggerated by Jews or Protestants and their sympathizers to gain popular pity; third, many revisionists are dedicated to demonstrating that the Roman Catholic Church was not responsible for the Inquisition and in fact went to great lengths to prevent it. The revisionist school of Inquisitional history is embraced by certain racial supremacist groups, several right wing political groups and a handful of Church scholars. Inquisition revisionism, however, cannot fairly be attributed to or associated with any denomination of mainstream Christianity, including Roman Catholicism. Inquisition revisionists have a distinct set of data regarding death tolls for the Spanish Inquisition. These tolls are, of course, considerably lower than most accepted figures and the revised numbers contradict original records, like those cited in the previous paragraph, most or all of which (necessarily) came from the Church in the first place. There is a page on Wikipedia constructed by Inquisition revisionists - it is called “The Inquisition Myth.”
See Also
- List of Grand Inquisitors of Spain
- Medieval Inquisition
- Roman Inquisition
- Portuguese Inquisition
- History of the Jews in Spain
- Cardinal Ximenes
- The Inquisition Myth
The Spanish Inquisition in the Arts
- Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum
- Voltaire's Candide
- Francisco Goya’s paintings
- Monty Python - Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
- Mel Brooks' movie History of the World, Part I
- A chapter in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
- Matthew Lewis's The Monk (1796) (also relates to the French Revolution)
- A Fredrich Schiller play (which was the basis for an opera in five acts by Giuseppe Verdi)
References
- ^ a b William R. Denslow, Harry S. Truman: 10,000 Famous Freemasons, ISBN 1-4179-7579-2
- Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain (4 volumes), (New York and London, 1906-1907).
- J.A. Llorente, “Historia Critica de la Inquisicion de Espana”
- W.T. Walsh, “Isabella of Spain,” (1931).
- R. Sabbatini, “Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition,” (1913).
- C. Roth, “The Spanish Inquisition,” (1937).
- C. Roth, “History of the Marranos,” (1932).
- A.S. Turberville, “Medieval History and the Inquisition,” (1920).
- A.S. Turberville, “The Spanish Inquisition,” (1932).
- Genaro Garcia, “La Inquisicion de Mexico,” (1906).
- Genaro Garcia, “Autos de fe de la Inquisicion de Mexico,” (1910).
- F. Garau, “La Fee Triunfante,” (1691-reprinted 1931).
- J.T. Medina, “Historia de la Inquisicion de Lima; de Chile; le la Plata; de Cartagena de las Indias; en las islas Filipinas” (6 volumes), (1887-1899).
- V. Vignau, “Catalogo ... de la Inquisicion de Toledo,” (1903).
- J. Baker, “History of the Inquisition,” (1736).
- “History of the Inquisition from its origin under Pope Innocent III till the present time. Also the private practices of the Inquisitiors, the form of trial and modes of torture,” (1814).
- J. Marchant, “A Review of the Bloody Tribunal,” (1770).
- E.N Adler, “Autos de fe and the Jew,” (1908).
- Gonzalez de Montes, “Discovery and Playne Declaration of Sundry Subtile Practices of the Holy Inquisition of Spayne”
- Ludovico a Paramo, “De Origine et Progressu Sanctae Inquisitionis,” (1598).
- J.M. Marin, “Procedimientos de la Inquisicion” (2 volumes), (1886).
- I. de las Cagigas, “Libro Verde de Aragon,” (1929).
- R. Cappa, “La Inquisicion Espanola,” (1888).
- A. Paz y Mellia, “Catalogo Abreviado de Papeles de Inquisicion,” (1914).
- A.F.G. Bell, “Luis de Leon,” (1925).
- M. Jouve, “Torquemada,” (1935).
- Sir Alexandr G. Cardew, “A Short History of the Inquisition,” (1933).
- G.G. Coulton, “The Inquisition,” (1929).
- “Memoires Instructifs pour un Voyageur dans les Divers Etats de l’Europe,” (1738).
- Ramon de Vilana Perlas, “La Verdadera Practica Apostolica de el S. Tribunal de la Inquisicion,” (1735).
- H.B. Piazza, “A Short and True Account of the Inquisition and its Proceeding,” (1722).
- A.L. Maycock, “The Inquisition,” (1926).
- H. Nickerson, “The Inquisition,” (1932).
- Conde de Castellano, “Un Complot Terrorista en el Siglo XV; los Comienzos de la Inquisicion Aragonesa,” (1927).
- Bernard Gui, “Manuel de l’Inquisiteur,” (1927).
- L. Tanon, “Histoire des Tribunaux de l’Inquisition,” (1893).
- A.J. Texeira, “Antonio Homem e a Inquisicao,” (1902).
- A. Baiao, “A Inquisicao em Portugal e no Brasil,” (1921).
- A. Herculano, “Historia da Origem e Estabelecimento da Inquisicao em Portugal,” (English translation, 1926).
- Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. (1999).
- Simon Whitechapel, Flesh Inferno: Atrocities of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition (Creation Books, 2003).
- Miranda Twiss, The Most Evil Men And Women In History (Michael O'Mara Books Ltd., 2002).
- Geoffrey Parker “Some Recent Work on the Inquisition in Spain and Italy” Journal of Modern History 54:3 1982
- Warrenn Carroll, "Isabel: the Catholic Queen" Front Royal, Virginia, 1991 (Christendom Press)
- Joseph de Maistre, Letters on the Spanish Inquisition (1822, composed 1815):— late defense of the Inquisition by the principal author of the Counter-Enlightenment. *Ludwig von Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the Middle Ages; Drawn from the Secret Archives of the Vatican and other original sources, 40 vols. St. Louis, B.Herder 1898