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The True Origin of the Spanish Inquisition: What Historians Get Wrong — Transcript

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0:00When most people hear the words Spanish
0:01Inquisition, they picture dark dungeons,
0:04screaming victims strapped to medieval
0:05torture devices, hooded monks presiding
0:07over mass burnings, and an entire
0:09country gripped by religious fanaticism
0:11for centuries. And look, some of that
0:13happened. But the story you think you
0:15know, the one that has been passed down
0:17through centuries of textbooks,
0:18Hollywood films, and even Montipython
0:21sketches, is built on a foundation that
0:23is far more complicated, far more
0:25political, and far more economically
0:27motivated than anyone ever told you.
0:29What historians often get wrong, or at
0:31least what gets lost in the retelling,
0:33is that the Spanish Inquisition was
0:35never really about faith alone. It was
0:37about power. It was about money. It was
0:39about a newly unified kingdom trying to
0:41hold itself together by manufacturing an
0:43internal enemy. And the weapon they used
0:45to do it was not the rack or the stake.
0:48It was paperwork. So, let me take you
0:50back not to 1478 when the Inquisition
0:52was formally established, but much
0:54further to a time when Spain was one of
0:56the most religiously diverse places in
0:58all of Europe.
0:59Because to understand how the
1:00Inquisition truly began, you have to
1:03understand what existed before it was
1:04destroyed. For roughly 700 years, from
1:07the early 700s all the way through the
1:09late 1400s, the Aberian Peninsula was
1:12home to one of the most unusual social
1:14experiments in medieval history.
1:15Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived side
1:18by side across a patchwork of kingdoms.
1:20Historians have a word for this period.
1:22They call it the convenencia, which
1:24roughly translates to living together.
1:26Now I want to be careful here. The
1:28Kavvenia was not some kind of paradise
1:30of perfect harmony. That would be a
1:32romanticized fairy tale. There were
1:34tensions. There were flare-ups of
1:35violence. And the power dynamics between
1:37the three groups shifted constantly
1:39depending on who was in charge. But the
1:41important thing is that for centuries,
1:43the peninsula functioned as a place
1:44where these three religious communities
1:46were not merely tolerating each other's
1:48existence. They were actively
1:49collaborating. Jewish scholars
1:51translated Arabic texts into Latin,
1:53which helped preserve Greek philosophy
1:55for Western Europe. Muslim architects
1:57built structures that Christian kings
1:58later claimed as their own. Jewish
2:00physicians served in the courts of
2:02Christian monarchs. Muslim farmers
2:03cultivated lands owned by Christian
2:05lords. It was messy. It was imperfect,
2:07but it worked, at least for a while.
2:09Under Omiad rule in what was then called
2:11Aland Andeloo, Jews, in particular
2:13experienced a dramatic improvement in
2:15their social status. They went from
2:16being a marginalized and legally
2:18restricted community under the Visigoths
2:20to becoming physicians, diplomats, tax
2:22collectors, and advisers to the caiffs.
2:25Cordoba under Muslim rule became a
2:27center of learning and culture that
2:28rivaled anything in the Christian world.
2:30The city had paved streets, public
2:32baths, libraries with hundreds of
2:34thousands of volumes and a level of
2:35intellectual sophistication that made
2:37the rest of Europe look primitive by
2:39comparison, and Jewish thinkers were
2:41right at the heart of it. Figures like
2:43Mymones and Hastai Shaprut rose to
2:45extraordinary prominence, not despite
2:47their Jewish identity, but in many cases
2:49because of the unique knowledge and
2:51linguistic skills they brought to the
2:52table. Now, this golden age was never
2:55permanent. The Rakenista, the long
2:57grinding Christian campaign to reclaim
2:59the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rule,
3:01had been underway for centuries. And as
3:03Christian kingdoms like Castile and
3:04Aragon pushed further south, the balance
3:07of power shifted. Muslim territories
3:09shrank. Jewish communities that had once
3:11thrived under Muslim governance now
3:13found themselves living under Christian
3:14kings who were at best ambivalent about
3:16their presence. But even in Christian
3:18ruled territories, Jews continued to
3:20play critical roles. They served as tax
3:22farmers, bankers, and administrators.
3:24Many held positions of trust and
3:26influence that ordinary Christians could
3:28only dream of. And that, as you might
3:30imagine, created resentment. Now, here
3:32is where the story takes a darker turn
3:34and where we start to see the roots of
3:36what would eventually become the
3:37Inquisition. Because it was not the Jews
3:40themselves who became the primary
3:41target. It was the Conversos. Now, let
3:44me explain what that means.
3:46In 1391, a catastrophic wave of
3:49anti-Jewish violence swept across the
3:50Iberian Peninsula. It started in
3:52Seville, where a priest named Farand
3:54Martinez had been whipping up
3:56anti-Jewish hatred for over a decade. On
3:58the 6th of June, mobs attacked the
4:00Jewish quarter of Seville. Thousands
4:02were killed, their homes were looted and
4:04destroyed, and the survivors were given
4:05a grim choice. Convert to Christianity
4:07or die. The violence spread like
4:10wildfire. Within weeks, it had reached
4:12Cordoba, too, Barcelona, Valencia, and
4:14dozens of other cities across Castile
4:16and Aragon. Estimates vary, but some
4:19historians believe that as many as
4:2050,000 Jews were either killed or
4:22forcibly baptized during the pgrams of
4:241391. In Barcelona alone, at least 400
4:27were murdered, and the Jewish quarter
4:29was burned to the ground. Every one of
4:31its 23 synagogues was destroyed. By
4:331394, the Jewish community of Barcelona,
4:36which had been a center of Jewish
4:37intellectual life for four centuries,
4:39simply ceased to exist. Now, these
4:42forced conversions created a new class
4:44of people. They were called conversos,
4:46meaning converts. They had been baptized
4:48into Christianity, many of them at the
4:50point of a sword. They were now
4:51officially Christian. But here's the
4:54critical thing to understand. Many of
4:55these conversions were not sincere. How
4:57could they be? You had tens of thousands
4:59of people who had been living as Jews
5:01their entire lives, practicing Jewish
5:03rituals, observing Jewish holidays,
5:05raising their children in the Jewish
5:07faith. And overnight, they were told
5:08that they were now Christian. Some of
5:10them genuinely embraced their new
5:11religion. Some became devout Catholics,
5:14entering the priesthood, joining
5:15monastic orders, and even becoming harsh
5:17critics of their former faith. But many
5:19others, perhaps the majority, continued
5:21to practice Judaism in secret. They
5:23would light Sabbath candles behind
5:25closed doors. They would observe dietary
5:27laws when no one was watching. They
5:29would celebrate Passover in hidden
5:30rooms, outwardly Christian, inwardly
5:32Jewish. And the Christian establishment
5:34knew it. But here is what made the
5:36converso situation truly explosive. And
5:39this is the part that most popular
5:40histories miss entirely. The conversos
5:43did not remain at the bottom of Spanish
5:44society. Quite the opposite. Once
5:46baptized, they were technically
5:48Christian, and that meant all the
5:49restrictions that had been placed on
5:51Jews, the bans on holding public office,
5:53the prohibitions against entering
5:54certain professions, the limits on land
5:56ownership, all of those restrictions no
5:58longer applied. And the Conversos, many
6:01of whom had been educated, skilled, and
6:03well-connected, even before their
6:04conversion, wasted no time in climbing
6:06the social ladder. Within a generation,
6:08conversos had infiltrated nearly every
6:10level of Spanish elite society. They
6:12became bishops and abbotts. They became
6:14court physicians and royal advisers.
6:16They became tax collectors and bankers
6:18and lawyers and professors. Some married
6:20into the oldest noble families in Spain.
6:23Some became so prominent that it was
6:24later claimed and not entirely without
6:26basis that virtually every noble family
6:28in Spain had at least some converso
6:30blood in their lineage. Luis de
6:32Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez, two
6:34Conversos, were instrumental in
6:36financing Christopher Columbus' voyage
6:38to the Americas. Converso families held
6:40positions of extraordinary influence in
6:42the church, the government, and the
6:43financial system. And all of this
6:45happened within roughly two or three
6:47generations of the mass conversions.
6:49Now, if you are an ordinary Christian
6:51farmer in 15th century Castile, watching
6:53these former Jews rise to positions of
6:55power and wealth that you can never hope
6:57to reach, how do you feel about it? If
6:59you are a minor nobleman whose family
7:00has been Christian for centuries and
7:02suddenly your daughter is being courted
7:04by the wealthy son of a family that was
7:06Jewish just 40 years ago, what do you
7:08think? You feel cheated. You feel angry.
7:11You feel like the system has been
7:12hijacked by people who do not really
7:14belong. And so a powerful and poisonous
7:16idea begins to take root in Spanish
7:18society. The idea that these conversos
7:21are not really Christian, that they
7:22converted only to gain advantage, that
7:24behind their baptismal certificates and
7:26their church attendance, they are still
7:28Jews, still loyal to their old faith,
7:30still conspiring against the true
7:31Christians of Spain. The old Christians,
7:34as they came to be known, the ones who
7:36could prove that their families had been
7:37Christian for generations, began to view
7:39the conversos with a toxic mixture of
7:41jealousy, suspicion, and hatred. And
7:44this brings us to one of the most
7:45important and least understood concepts
7:47in the entire history of the
7:48Inquisition. It is called limpza
7:51desangre which translates to purity of
7:54blood. Now this is a critical concept
7:56because it represents one of the
7:57earliest examples of racial thinking in
7:59European history. Limpza desangre was
8:02not about what you believed. It was
8:04about who your ancestors were. You could
8:06be the most devout Catholic in all of
8:07Spain. You could go to mass every day,
8:09donate lavishly to the church and name
8:11your children after saints. But if your
8:13grandmother was Jewish, if there was
8:15even a drop of Jewish or Muslim blood in
8:17your family tree, you were considered
8:19tainted, impure, suspect, untrustworthy.
8:23The first formal Impesta des Sanre
8:24statute appeared in Toledo in 1449,
8:27almost 30 years before the Inquisition
8:29was officially established. After a
8:31violent anti-converso riot, the city
8:33passed the Sentencia Estatuto, which
8:35barred conversos from holding municipal
8:37office regardless of their religious
8:38behavior. The logic was breathtaking in
8:41its cruelty. It did not matter how
8:42Christian you were. What mattered was
8:44your blood. This was not a religious
8:46standard. It was a racial one. And even
8:48though both the King of Castile and the
8:50Pope initially condemned the statute, it
8:52had massive popular support. The idea
8:54spread. Other cities adopted similar
8:56statutes. Prestigious institutions,
8:59universities, cathedral chapters,
9:00military orders, all began requiring
9:03proof of Limpza Desre for admission. If
9:05you wanted to join certain religious
9:07orders, you had to produce
9:08genealological documents, proving that
9:10your family had no Jewish or Muslim
9:12ancestry going back four or even five
9:14generations. This created an entire
9:16bureaucratic industry of genealological
9:18investigation, forgery, and
9:20denunciation. Neighbors informed on
9:22neighbors. Old grudges were settled by
9:24accusing someone of having converso
9:25blood. Family records were scrutinized,
9:28falsified, and weaponized. So when
9:30Ferdinand and Isabella formally
9:31established the Spanish Inquisition in
9:331478, they were not creating something
9:35out of nothing. They were
9:36institutionalizing a system of suspicion
9:38and persecution that had been building
9:40for decades. And their motivations,
9:42contrary to what many historians have
9:44emphasized, were not purely or even
9:46primarily religious. Let me be clear
9:48about this. Ferdinand and Isabella, the
9:51so-called Catholic monarchs, were deeply
9:53pious individuals. There's no question
9:55about that. Isabella in particular was
9:58known for her intense religious
9:59devotion. But they were also
10:01extraordinarily shrewd political
10:03operators. Their marriage in 1469 had
10:06united the two most powerful kingdoms on
10:08the Iberian Peninsula, Castile and
10:10Araggon. But this union was fragile.
10:12They ruled a collection of territories
10:14with different laws, different
10:16languages, different customs, and
10:18different power structures. The nobility
10:20in both kingdoms was fractious and
10:21ambitious. The reconista was still
10:23ongoing with the Muslim kingdom of
10:25Granada still holding out in the south
10:27and the recently conquered territories
10:29were filled with Muslims, Jews and
10:31conversos whose loyalties were uncertain
10:33at best. The Inquisition gave Ferdinand
10:35and Isabella something that no other
10:37institution could. It gave them a tool
10:39for centralizing power. Unlike every
10:41other legal institution in their
10:42kingdoms, the Inquisition answered
10:44directly to the crown, not to local
10:46bishops, not to the Pope, not to the
10:48regional nobility. The monarchs
10:50appointed the Inquisitors. The monarchs
10:52controlled the purse strings. The
10:54monarchs decided who would be
10:55investigated and who would be left
10:57alone. This was revolutionary. In a
10:59fragmented kingdom where every city,
11:01every province, every noble family had
11:03its own privileges and its own laws, the
11:05Inquisition was the one institution that
11:07could reach across all borders, override
11:09all local authorities, and impose the
11:11will of the crown on everyone. And then
11:13there was the money. This is the part
11:14that really gets overlooked. When the
11:16Inquisition convicted someone of heresy,
11:18their property was confiscated. All of
11:20it. their homes, their businesses, their
11:23savings, their investments, everything
11:24was seized by the Inquisition. And a
11:26significant portion of that wealth
11:28flowed directly into the royal treasury.
11:30Now, think about who the primary targets
11:31of the early Inquisition were.
11:33Conversos, former Jews. And who were
11:36these conversos? Many of them were
11:38wealthy merchants, bankers,
11:39professionals, and land owners. The very
11:41people who had used their skills and
11:43connections to rise to the top of
11:45Spanish society were now the most
11:47vulnerable targets. Convicting them of
11:49secret Judaism did not just purify the
11:51faith. It filled the coffers of a crown
11:53that was perpetually short of cash,
11:55especially with the expensive war
11:56against Granada draining resources every
11:58year. One historian has estimated that
12:01the wealth confiscated from Converos
12:02during the early decades of the
12:03Inquisition was sufficient to finance a
12:06significant portion of the Granada
12:07campaign. Tomas de Tormada, the first
12:10Grand Inquisitor, explicitly directed
12:12that confiscated assets be used to fund
12:14the war effort. So when you strip away
12:16the religious language, the theological
12:18justifications and the spectacle of the
12:20autofay, what you find at the core of
12:22the early inquisition is a massive
12:24transfer of wealth from one segment of
12:26society to another, sanctified by the
12:28language of faith but driven by the
12:30logic of power and greed. Now let me
12:32talk about tokamatada himself because he
12:34is one of the most misunderstood figures
12:35in this entire story. Thomas de
12:37Torcamata was born in 1420 in the town
12:40of Toramada or possibly Valadolid
12:42depending on which source you trust. He
12:44was a Dominican frier, a man of extreme
12:46austerity who reportedly never ate meat,
12:48never wore linen next to his skin, and
12:51slept on bare wooden boards. He was
12:53also, and this is the part that most
12:54people find deeply ironic, of converso
12:56origin himself. His uncle, Juan de
12:59Tokamada, was a prominent cardinal who
13:01was known to have Jewish ancestry. So,
13:03the man who would become the most
13:05notorious persecutor of conversos in
13:07Spanish history was himself descended
13:09from the very people he would spend his
13:10career tormenting. Tormatada became
13:12Isabella's personal confessor early in
13:14her life and he wielded enormous
13:16influence over the young queen. It was
13:18Torquamata who convinced Isabella to
13:20marry Ferdinand of Aragan, a decision
13:22that would reshape the entire history of
13:23Europe. And it was Tormatada who more
13:26than any other single individual turned
13:28the Inquisition from a regional tribunal
13:30into a nationwide instrument of terror.
13:32He was appointed Grand Inquisitor in
13:341483 and within a few years he had
13:37established a network of 24 holy offices
13:39across Spain. He issued 28 articles that
13:42defined the crimes the Inquisition could
13:44investigate and codified the methods of
13:46interrogation and punishment. Under his
13:48direction, the Inquisition became a
13:50bureaucratic machine of extraordinary
13:51efficiency. Now, here is where we need
13:54to address one of the biggest myths
13:55about the Spanish Inquisition, the myth
13:57of the torture chambers. Was torture
14:00used? Yes, without question. The
14:02Inquisition authorized the use of
14:04torture to extract confessions, and the
14:06methods employed were brutal. The stpado
14:08in which the accused was suspended by
14:10their wrists tied behind their back. The
14:13water torture in which cloth was placed
14:15over the mouth and water poured in to
14:16simulate drowning. The rack which
14:18stretched the body to the breaking
14:20point. These were real and they were
14:22horrific. But here's what the popular
14:24image gets wrong. The Inquisition did
14:26not invent these methods. Every secular
14:28court in Europe used the same techniques
14:30and often with far less restraint. The
14:32Inquisition actually had formal rules
14:34limiting the use of torture. Torture
14:36could only be applied once per
14:37accusation. It could not last longer
14:39than 15 minutes. A physician had to be
14:42present. The accused could not be
14:43permanently maimed. And a confession
14:45obtained under torture had to be
14:47voluntarily confirmed the following day
14:48to be considered valid. None of this
14:50makes torture acceptable, but it does
14:52provide important context. In an era
14:54when secular courts routinely tortured
14:56suspects for days on end, when witch
14:58trials in Germany, England, and Scotland
15:00killed tens of thousands of people with
15:02almost no procedural safeguards at all,
15:04the Spanish Inquisition was
15:06paradoxically one of the more regulated
15:08judicial institutions of its time. This
15:10is a point that historian Henry Cayman,
15:12perhaps the foremost modern authority on
15:14the Spanish Inquisition, has made
15:16repeatedly. In his landmark work,
15:18originally published in 1965 and revised
15:20multiple times since, Cayman argues that
15:23much of what we think we know about the
15:24Inquisition is the product of deliberate
15:27propaganda. He describes the Inquisition
15:29not as a uniquely Spanish phenomenon
15:32born of some inherent national cruelty,
15:34but as an institution that must be
15:36understood within the broader context of
15:37European intolerance. And the propaganda
15:40that distorted the Inquisition's image
15:41has a specific name. It is called the
15:44Black Legend. The black legend or
15:46Leandenegra was a sustained campaign of
15:49anti- Spanish propaganda that originated
15:51in the 16th century and persisted for
15:53hundreds of years afterward. It was
15:55driven primarily by Spain's political
15:57and religious enemies, the Dutch, who
15:59were fighting for independence from
16:00Spanish rule, the English, who were
16:02rivals for colonial and naval supremacy,
16:05and various Protestant nations who saw
16:07Catholic Spain as the embodiment of
16:08everything they despised. These
16:10propagandists seized on the Inquisition
16:13as the perfect symbol of Spanish
16:14barbarism. They published pamphlets
16:16filled with lurid illustrations of
16:18torture scenes. They wrote accounts that
16:20exaggerated the number of victims by
16:22orders of magnitude. They depicted
16:24inquisitors as sadistic monsters who
16:26took pleasure in burning innocent people
16:28alive. And these images proved so
16:30powerful, so enduring that they shaped
16:32the way the world perceived Spain for
16:34centuries. Consider this striking
16:36observation from historian Edward
16:38Peters. He wrote that an image of Spain
16:40circulated through late 16th century
16:42Europe, born by political and religious
16:44propaganda that blackened the character
16:46of Spaniards to such an extent that
16:48Spain became the symbol of all forces of
16:50repression, brutality, and intolerance
16:52for the next four centuries. And the
16:54irony, as Peters and others have pointed
16:56out, is that the nations producing this
16:58propaganda were often guilty of equal or
17:01greater cruelty. The Dutch were
17:03massacring indigenous populations in
17:05Southeast Asia through the VOC. The
17:08English were burning Catholics and
17:09Protestants alike under various
17:10monarchs. The witch trials of the Holy
17:12Roman Empire killed far more people than
17:14the Spanish Inquisition ever did. But
17:17because Spain was the dominant power,
17:19the target was irresistible. When
17:21Spaniards persecuted religious denters,
17:23it was called bigotry and fanaticism.
17:25When the English or the Dutch did the
17:27same thing, it was called unifying the
17:29nation or safeguarding against foreign
17:31conspiracy. Now, none of this is meant
17:33to downplay the genuine suffering caused
17:35by the Inquisition. The autodafé or act
17:38of faith was a public spectacle of
17:41extraordinary cruelty. The accused were
17:43paraded through the streets and garments
17:45called sanenitos, coarse robes decorated
17:48with symbols of their alleged crimes.
17:50Those who confessed might be spared
17:51death but were subjected to public
17:53humiliation, imprisonment, the
17:55confiscation of their property, and
17:56permanent social disgrace. Those who
17:58refused to confess or who were judged to
18:00be relapsed heretics were relaxed to
18:03secular authorities. A euphemism that
18:05meant they were handed over to be burned
18:07at the stake. The first autofay took
18:09place in Seville in 1481 when six people
18:12were convicted and executed. Over the
18:14following decades, the scale of these
18:16events grew. Some autos duffet attracted
18:19thousands of spectators, including
18:20royalty. In 1680, the most spectacular
18:23autodafé in history was staged to
18:25celebrate the wedding of King Carlos II,
18:28turning the suffering of the condemned
18:29into a public entertainment. The
18:31numbers, though, are important, and this
18:33is another area where historians have
18:34had to revise the popular narrative. The
18:36traditional image of the Inquisition as
18:38a killing machine that slaughtered
18:39millions is simply not supported by the
18:41evidence. Modern historical research
18:43drawing on the Inquisition's own
18:45meticulous records suggests that over
18:47the entire 350-year history of the
18:50institution, roughly 3,000 to 5,000
18:52people were executed. Some estimates
18:55place the number of total accused at
18:57around 150,000 over the same period.
19:00Now, to be absolutely clear, even one
19:02execution for religious belief is a
19:04moral outrage. But the point is that the
19:06Inquisition was not the medieval
19:08Holocaust that popular culture has made
19:09it out to be. It was a ruthlessly
19:11efficient bureaucracy that operated
19:13through fear, surveillance, and social
19:15control far more than through mass
19:17killing. The terror of the Inquisition
19:18was not primarily in the flames. It was
19:20in the knock on the door. It was in the
19:22neighbor who might denounce you. It was
19:24in the genealological records that could
19:26destroy your family's reputation for
19:28generations. And this brings us to the
19:30Alhhamra decree of 1492. One of the most
19:33consequential acts of ethnic cleansing
19:34in European history. On the 31st of
19:37March 1492, just months after the fall
19:39of Granada to Christian forces,
19:41Ferdinand and Isabella issued a decree
19:43expelling all Jews from Spain who
19:45refused to convert to Christianity. They
19:47were given four months to leave. They
19:49could take their movable property, but
19:50not gold, silver, or coined money. They
19:53had to sell their houses, their
19:54businesses, their land, often at a
19:57fraction of their true value, to
19:58Christian buyers, who knew exactly how
20:00desperate they were. It was a fire sale
20:02on a national scale and the buyers were
20:04circling like vultures. The exact number
20:06of Jews who left Spain as a result of
20:08the decree is debated, but most
20:10estimates place it at somewhere between
20:12100,000 and 200,000 people. These were
20:15the Sephardic Jews and their expulsion
20:18scattered one of the most vibrant Jewish
20:19communities in the world across the
20:21Mediterranean, North Africa, the Ottoman
20:23Empire, and eventually the Americas.
20:26Many settled in the cities of the
20:27Ottoman Sultan Bazed II, who reportedly
20:30mocked Ferdinand by saying that the
20:31Spanish king had impoverished his own
20:33country while enriching the Ottoman
20:35realm. Others ended up in Portugal only
20:37to face forced conversion there a few
20:39years later. Some found refuge in Italy,
20:42in the Netherlands, or in other corners
20:43of Europe, where tolerance, however
20:45imperfect, still existed. Those who
20:48chose to stay in Spain and convert only
20:49swelled the ranks of the conversos,
20:51creating an even larger population of
20:53people whose sincerity the Inquisition
20:55was tasked with investigating. It was a
20:58self-perpetuating cycle. The Inquisition
21:00existed to root out secret Judaism among
21:02the Conversos. Its methods of
21:04investigation created terror and
21:06suspicion, driving more people to
21:08conceal their beliefs. This concealment,
21:10when discovered, provided further
21:11justification for the Inquisition's
21:13existence. The institution fed on the
21:15very fear it created. But the
21:17Inquisition did not stop with the
21:19Conversos. Within a decade of the
21:21expulsion of the Jews, the same logic
21:23was applied to Spain's Muslim
21:24population. In 1502, Muslims in Castile
21:28were given the same choice that Jews had
21:30been given a decade earlier. Convert or
21:32leave. Those who converted became known
21:34as Morisos, and they soon found
21:36themselves under the same cloud of
21:37suspicion that had plagued the
21:38Conversos. Were they truly Christian or
21:41were they secretly practicing Islam
21:43behind closed doors? The Inquisition was
21:45more than happy to investigate and when
21:47it found that many Morrisos were indeed
21:49maintaining their Islamic practices in
21:51secret, it responded with the same
21:52combination of prosecution,
21:54confiscation, and public humiliation
21:56that it had employed against the
21:58Conversos. The persecution of the
22:00morisos culminated in one of the most
22:01devastating episodes in Spanish history.
22:04In6009, King Philip III ordered the
22:06expulsion of all moriscos from Spain.
22:09Over the next 5 years, approximately
22:11300,000 people were driven from the
22:13country, many of them to North Africa.
22:15Entire regions of Spain, particularly
22:17Valencia and Aragan, were depopulated.
22:20Agricultural production collapsed.
22:21Villages that had been productive for
22:23centuries became ghost towns. The
22:25economic impact was catastrophic. And
22:27Spain, already in decline, was dealt a
22:28blow from which it would take
22:30generations to recover. Now, as the
22:32Reformation swept across Europe in the
22:3416th century, the Inquisition found yet
22:36another target, Protestantism. The
22:39relatively small number of Spanish
22:41Protestants, most of them influenced by
22:42ideas filtering in from Germany, the
22:44Netherlands, and England, were hunted
22:46down with extraordinary thoroughess. By
22:48the middle of the 16th century,
22:50Protestantism had been effectively
22:51eliminated from Spain. But the irony
22:54here is striking. The Inquisition's
22:56bureaucratic structure, its insistence
22:58on proper procedures, evidence, and
23:00documentation, actually made it more
23:02restrained than many of the ad hoc witch
23:04trials that ravaged Protestant countries
23:05during the same period. In the Basque
23:08country, when a wave of witch hunting
23:09hysteria broke out in the early 1600s,
23:12the Inquisition investigated the claims
23:14and concluded that most of the
23:15accusations were baseless. The
23:17Inquisitor Alonzo D Salazar Frius
23:19conducted a careful inquiry and
23:21determined that the majority of
23:22confessions had been coerced or
23:24fabricated. The Inquisition issued new
23:26guidelines that effectively ended witch
23:28burning in Spain. [clears throat]
23:29Meanwhile, in Protestant Germany,
23:31England, and Scotland, tens of thousands
23:33of alleged witches were being executed
23:35in proceedings that made the Spanish
23:36Inquisition looked positively civilized
23:38by comparison. But perhaps the most
23:41important thing that historians have
23:42gotten wrong or at least failed to
23:44adequately emphasize about the Spanish
23:46Inquisition is its true function in the
23:48broader architecture of Spanish state
23:50power. The Inquisition was not at its
23:52heart a religious institution. It was a
23:54political one. Yes, it used religious
23:57language. Yes, it was staffed by clergy.
23:59Yes, its stated purpose was to defend
24:01the faith. But from the very beginning,
24:03it served the interests of the crown. It
24:06was the monarchy's instrument for
24:07imposing uniformity on a diverse and
24:09fractious kingdom. It was a tool for
24:11breaking the power of the regional
24:12nobility who could not challenge an
24:14institution that claimed divine
24:16authority. It was a mechanism for
24:18controlling information, censoring
24:20books, and suppressing ideas that might
24:22threaten the existing order. It was a
24:24system for redistributing wealth from
24:25one group to another under the guise of
24:27spiritual purification. The Inquisition
24:29lasted for 356 years. It was established
24:33by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1478 and it
24:36was not formally abolished until 1834
24:39during the reign of Isabella II. Over
24:41that span of time it evolved
24:43considerably. The Early Inquisition
24:44focused primarily on conversos gave way
24:47to a broader institution that targeted
24:49morisos, Protestants, blasphemers,
24:51biggamists, and eventually anyone whose
24:53behavior or beliefs deviated from the
24:55approved norm. In its later centuries,
24:58it functioned more as a censorship board
24:59and moral police force than as a heresy
25:01tribunal. It policed sexual morality. It
25:04banned books. It investigated claims of
25:06witchcraft, though, as we noted, it was
25:08often more skeptical of such claims than
25:10secular authorities were. It became, in
25:12essence, the surveillance arm of the
25:14Spanish state. And that is the real
25:15lesson of the Spanish Inquisition. Not
25:17the torture chambers, not the burning
25:19stakes, not the hooded monks. The real
25:22lesson is about what happens when a
25:24state creates an institution with
25:25unchecked power, answerable only to the
25:27sovereign, empowered to investigate
25:29anyone, authorized to seize property,
25:31and justified by an ideology that places
25:33conformity above all other values. The
25:35Inquisition was in its structure and its
25:38methods remarkably similar to the secret
25:40police agencies of modern authoritarian
25:42states. The knock on the door in the
25:44middle of the night, the anonymous
25:45denunciation, the interrogation
25:47conducted in secret, the presumption of
25:49guilt, the confiscation of assets, the
25:52destruction of families and reputations.
25:54These are not medieval relics. They are
25:56techniques that have been refined and
25:57replicated by every totalitarian regime
25:59in modern history. So what do historians
26:02really get wrong about the Spanish
26:03Inquisition? They get the framing wrong.
26:05They present it as a story about
26:07religious fanaticism, about a church run
26:09a monk, about the inherent cruelty of
26:11the medieval world. But the evidence
26:13points to something much more
26:14recognizable and much more disturbing.
26:17The Spanish Inquisition was born from a
26:18toxic cocktail of economic resentment,
26:20racial ideology, political calculation,
26:23and the cynical manipulation of popular
26:25prejudice by those in power. It was not
26:27the product of a uniquely Spanish
26:28pathology. It was a tool of statecraft
26:31wielded by shrewd monarchs who
26:32understood that the most effective way
26:34to consolidate power is to give the
26:36people an enemy to fear and then
26:38position yourself as their protector.
26:40The conversos were not destroyed because
26:42they were heretics. Many of them were
26:44destroyed because they were successful,
26:46because they had climbed too high too
26:47fast in a society that was not ready to
26:50accept them as equals, because their
26:52wealth and influence threatened the
26:53status quo. because it was easier and
26:55more profitable to label them as secret
26:57Jews and seize their property than to
26:59compete with them on a level playing
27:00field. The Inquisition dressed this
27:02persecution up in the language of faith.
27:04But at its core, it was about power,
27:07about who had it, who wanted it, and
27:09what they were willing to do to get it.
27:11And that is a story that did not end in
27:121834. It is a story that has repeated
27:15itself in different forms and in
27:17different places throughout human
27:19history. Whenever a society finds it
27:21convenient to define a group of people
27:22as inherently suspect, whenever purity,
27:25whether of blood, ideology, or identity,
27:28becomes the measure of belonging,
27:30whenever an institution is given the
27:31power to investigate, accuse, and punish
27:33without meaningful oversight, the logic
27:35of the Inquisition is at work. The names
27:38change, the targets change, the
27:40justifications change, but the mechanism
27:42remains the same. Spain, for its part,
27:44is still grappling with this legacy. It
27:47was only in 2015 that Spain passed a law
27:49offering citizenship to the descendants
27:51of the Sphartic Jews who were expelled
27:53in 1492. An acknowledgement more than
27:55five centuries later of a historic
27:57wrong. And surveys conducted in recent
28:00years have shown that anti-Semitic
28:02sentiment remains surprisingly
28:03persistent in Spain, a country where the
28:05Jewish population today numbers only in
28:08the tens of thousands. The ghosts of the
28:10Inquisition, it seems, have not been
28:12entirely exercised. So the next time
28:14someone mentions the Spanish
28:16Inquisition, remember this. It was not
28:18just about religion. It was about the
28:20oldest game in politics. Finding someone
28:22to blame, taking what they have, and
28:24calling it justice. And that game,
28:26unfortunately, is still being played
28:28today in places and in ways that we
28:30might not always recognize, but that we
28:32should never stop questioning. If you
28:34found this story as eye opening as I did
28:36while researching it, I would genuinely
28:38appreciate it if you hit that like
28:39button and subscribe to the channel. It
28:41helps more people find this kind of
28:42content and it lets me keep making these
28:44deep dives into the forces that shaped
28:46our world. And if you have not seen it
28:48yet, make sure to check out the video
28:50right here on screen. I think you will
28:52find it just as fascinating. Thanks so
28:54much for watching and I will see you in
28:55the next

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