In Our Time - The Spanish Inquisition

Episode Date: June 22, 2006

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish Inquisition, the defenders of medieval orthodoxy. The word ‘Inquisition’ has its roots in the Latin word 'inquisito' which means inquiry. The Romans used the inquisitorial process as a form of legal procedure employed in the search for evidence. Once Rome's religion changed to Christianity under Constantine, it retained the inquisitorial trial method but also developed brutal means of dealing with heretics who went against the doctrines of the new religion. Efforts to suppress religious freedom were initially ad hoc until the establishment of an Office of Inquisition in the Middle Ages, founded in response to the growing Catharist heresy in South West France. The Spanish Inquisition set up in 1478 surpassed all Inquisitorial activity that had preceded it in terms of its reach and length. For 350 years under Papal Decree, Jews, then Muslims and Protestants were put through the Inquisitional Court and condemned to torture, imprisonment, exile and death. How did the early origins of the Inquisition in Medieval Europe spread to Spain? What were the motivations behind the systematic persecution of Jews, Muslims and Protestants? And what finally brought about an end to the Spanish Inquisition 350 years after it had first been decreed? With John Edwards, Research Fellow in Spanish at the University of Oxford; Alexander Murray, Emeritus Fellow in History at University College, Oxford;Michael Alpert, Emeritus Professor in Modern and Contemporary History of Spain at the University of Westminster

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk, forward slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, the Inquisition has its roots in the Latin word Inquisitio, which means inquiry. The Romans used the inquisitorial process as a form of legal procedure employed in the search for evidence. Once Rome's religion changed to Christianity under Constantine, it retained the Inquisitorial trial method, but also developed brutal means of deed, with heretics who went against the doctrines of the new religion. Efforts to suppress religious freedom were initially ad hoc

until the establishment of an office of inquisition in the Middle Ages founded in response to the growing Cathar heresy in the southwest of France. The Spanish Inquisition was set up in 1478. It surpassed all inquisitorial activity that had preceded it in terms of its reach and the length of time in which it obtained. For 350 years, under papal decree, Jews, then Muslims and then Protestants were put through the Inquisitional Court and condemned to torture, imprisonment, exile and death.

How did the early origins of the Inquisition in medieval Europe spread to Spain? Was it about power politics rather than religion itself? And what finally brought about an end to the Spanish Inquisition 350 years after it had first been decreed? With me to discuss the Spanish Inquisition are Alexander Murray, Emeritus Professor in Medieval History at University College Oxford, Michael Alpert, Emeritus Professor in Modern and Contemporary History of Spain

at the University of Westminster and John Edwards, research fellow in Spanish at the University of Oxford. John Edwards, let's go back to the Roman origin of the word. Can you tell us how it applied in Roman society before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire? I think the most important thing is to realize that the actual word inquisition and its operation was a legal technique rather than anything specifically associated with religion

and certainly not with the church, and also not particularly with Spain. And what it is is simply a way of getting at the truth. It's a principle in which you question people, not in a sort of adversarial way, like a cross-examination, but with a list of questions determined to find out some truth about a crime or whatever it might be. Was this running in the Roman Empire way before the 4th century?

Was this the way they did things? It's a part of Roman law and has remained so ever since, yes indeed. And what other attributes does it have that could, would later be taken up by the Roman Catholic Church? It's a matter of, as I say, getting at the truth, and this therefore means going in by question in a very set way, a very formal way, into the truth about a certain situation or would be a crime, of course, in the Roman period. And in fact in medieval Europe this way of doing things survives and in other contexts

in England for example into the properties of deceased people for example in medieval England What happened then between about 500 when the Roman Empire as it were disintegrated until the Middle Ages when the idea of the Inquisition came back

Did the idea of it disappear altogether in those 700 years? The Roman law didn't A lot of the successor states into the Western Roman Empire as in France, in Spain, in Italy, for example, conserved a great deal of Roman legal practice. What didn't happen for a number of centuries

was that there was any kind of inquest into heresy, that is into incorrect Christian belief. And it's really only from about the 11th century onwards when the church is being reorganised that people begin to take an interest in ordinary person's beliefs about Christianity. And at that point, the technique becomes relevant again. And it's a useful, it becomes a useful instrument. It's picked up, I suppose, by the 12th century, yes.

Alexander Murray, in the 12th century, we have the Albigensian Crusade sent by Pope Innocent I, to crush the Cathar heretics, down in the south of France. They were hunted down. Can you tell us how that brought about a... reintroduction, resurgence of the Inquisition in terms of the church now? Yes. What we call the Albigensian heresy, so-called after Albi, the town near Toulouse,

which was supposed to be a centre of it, had grown probably from the late 11th century and thus gradually have flourished in the 12th and right up to the beginning of the 13th century. and the church authorities such as they were didn't quite know what to do about it I say such as the were because that southwestern corner of France had surprisingly few bishoprics in it to lose was the only one really worth speaking about

much later the officials in the church, the popes and so on would start a whole lot of new diocese there but in the 12th century there were very few and there was something like a rival church growing up and as you will remember scholars still debate about precisely what the Albigensian thought. The key doctrine which really did worry the people who knew about it

was that they were presenting Christianity as a form of what we call dualistic religion. That is to say that what was wrong with the world, as manifestly then as now there's a lot wrong with the world, what is wrong with it? And the dualist position, which is sometimes called manichy after Marni, the heretic in the 3rd century who was persecuted in Persia. What's wrong with the world, according to the Manichean view, is the world. Flesh, matter.

It's all bad. The whole thing's bad. And really we shouldn't be here at all. And to present Christianity as this is to make mistake its essence. And I remember when I first started learning about this at school, in fact, that I used to think Genesis was just bad history. And when I learned about the Cathar Hiroshima, it's quite good theology. God made the world, and every day he stops and says it's good. And that's not what's wrong with the world.

The world's all right. Then he puts man and Adam and Eve there, and he says, now you've got to do this, this is what you've got to do, and they don't do it. In other words, what's wrong with the world is in the will of human beings. It's something in us that we're not plugged in properly to the creator. And that is roughly the Christian doctrine, and the Cathar doctrine was a fundamental,

in fundamental disagreement with that. And so rather slowly, I mean, it took them 100 years before they actually got the act together. The popes and all the church authorities were worried about this, and eventually in 1,2009, I think it is, Pope Innocent III, who was a good theologian, and he sort of emailed the King of France and said, look, the nobles down here are doing nothing about it,

they're letting the Catholic do whatever they like. will you do something about it? And he's sent back, well, I'm busy trying to take Normandy back off the King of England at the minute, but some of my nobles can go, and that was the Albiginsian crusade, as we call it, and the nobles were only too happy they were that sort of person, and they went down

under a fairly small number of cavalry, led by Simon de Montfort, father of the one who founded English Parliament. That noble, in a surprisingly short time, had subdued the whole of the southwestern France, and the nobility there weren't such great fighters, as all that. They talked about it, but they weren't as good as the northerners.

Then the church authorities, Philip Augustus, the king had meanwhile sort of taken notice of what had happened and the Pope had said fine. Was it, wasn't it? George Bush said mission accomplished and they were in exactly that position,

mission accomplished. And as one doesn't have to search far for parallels, what do we do next? Because the whole place was sort of seething. There had been a lot of massacres of supposed heretics. I mean, they didn't know who they were. They just burnt the whole lot. The knights did. And what the Pope had to do was to find a way of avoiding Lynch law, one, and discovering who the sort of the radical extremists were, the people who were actually sort of fermenting this sort of fundamentally unchristian doctrine and wanting to dissolve the whole of the church. And for that purpose, he expanded what John has described. this inquisitio, which I always think of as the way I was punished at school if I had cigarettes. The head master just called me in and say, I want to know what's this bag of cigarettes doing in your room.

So he conducted the whole thing moving to him and decided whether he believed me or not. And if he didn't believe me, he said, right, you've got to stay in two nights. That was the inquisitorial process. The bishops had done it for years. And since the year of thousand, they'd done it a bit for heresy. And Innocent the Third said, well, what we need to have is there are no bishops to speak, off down there, so I'll organise it from the centre, and we'll send down inquisitors to hold courts and to inquire into the suspected extremists. He did this, and this was in 1231, and just

then the friards had sort of been invented a few years before, and the Dominicans in particular were noted very good theologians, he said, they're the people to do this, so he got in touch with the order and said, look, will you take charge? And the Inquisition was handed over in 1233 to the Dominicans and that began the great well it didn't begin then because there was so much guerrilla warfare that people get getting shot the whole time and so there was a lot of

mopping up operations going on again we don't have to think of parallels and that was how the inquisition that we call the inquisition of heretical depravity it was called that's how it began and as you've said it became as you say in work of yours I've read

it became a very useful instrument for the Pope's only eight to turned, first of all, against the heresy of the Cathars. It was used against the Knights Templar, perhaps to take their money. It was used against the Fraticelli, the poor Franciscans who challenged the, who upheld the idea that Jesus and the apostles had no property, and this was not very acceptable. So it was useful against different sorts of enemies as the church and the power policies change.

But let's talk about how that fed into Spain, Michael Alpert. Do you think that the Spanish Inquisition came directly from, what Alexander Murray has been talking and from the persecution of the Katha as the Ninth Templar and the Fraticelli? Well, the tradition of having an inquisition to deal with heresy certainly has that origin. But the reason for establishing it in Spain very late in 1478 and doesn't begin work until 1481 is a specifically political one. It seems to me, albeit it is allied clearly with a question of religion, of heresy. And it reflects a particular, rather peculiar Spanish experience of a very sizable population of baptized Jews.

This is unique to Spain, later to Portugal. That is to say, of baptized Jews and their descendants to as many as perhaps three or four generations. generations by the time the Inquisition was introduced into Castillo and Aragon in 1478. But before we get to that, can we just talk about 15th century Spain? We talk about it as Spain, and that's the wrong word to use, isn't it? We're talking about several different kingdoms, some cut off from the other at different stages, competing, rivalries. Can you give us some idea of what was going on in what we now call Spain? 15th century Spain was fundamentally the two Christian kingdoms,

of Castile and Aragon, which were united in the persons of the dual monarchs of Isabel of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon in the late 15th century, and the very small area centered on Granada in extreme southern Spain, which was all that was left of Muslim Spain,

which had been reconquered over the last several centuries. Within that area, I want to, it's only relevant to talk about Christian Spain here. There were Christians, Muslims, unbaptized Muslims, I mean, and unbaptized Jews, until about the end of the 14th century, until about 1391. Well, two distinguishing things about what we now call Spain at that time were the different kingdoms and also the idea, the fact that had been, that had, on which, there's some purchase that in the south of Spain, to a certain extent, Christians, Jews and Muslims,

had lived alongside each other for periods of peacefulness. There'd been outbreaks and so on and so forth. And this was part of what was there, what was in front of Isabel and Ferdinand. That's true to some extent. It's been much, I think it's been rather exaggerated, the extent of, if you like, multiculturality or multi-ethnic, good multi-ethnic, relations alongside each other but separate. But the particular position of Jews was that they were minorities in both Muslim and Christian Spain

and I would say for at least 100 or 150 years before the foundation of the Inquisition movements to as it was suppress the power and influence of the Jews had been very strong. Can we then go to 1478 when Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain

petitioned the people. Pope to initiate inquisitorial proceedings. Why did they do that? Well, I think... And only the Pope could say that would, as Alexander said before in the Cathars, only the Pope could say, let's have an inquisanship. Well, ultimately the Pope had the authority. They had to ask.

But one must not, I think, underestimate the power of secular monarchs, especially in a country as strong as Spain, which was, in a sense, conducting the great war against Islam, the end of the Great War against Islam, because 1478 is towards the end of the war which would finally throw the Muslims out of Spain. So they still have a fearful military enemy, as they see it? Oh, indeed, indeed.

Something that Alexander Marius said, as a phrase which I thought was very useful about Lynch law, one of the purposes, I think a significant purpose of introducing an inquisition into late 15th century Spain was precisely to prevent suspicion of Jewish converts to Christianity being used as a pretext for uprisings, civil war,

public disturbance, and riots by what we might call in broad terms barons, that is to say nobles who were disputing the sovereignty of the monarchs. I want to come to the target of Isabella and Ferdinand in a moment. John Edward, do you want to come in? One other aspect to add to what Michael said, I think,

about the situation, particularly in Andalusia, where the new inquisition starts, was in the south of Spain, in the south of Spain, in Seville and Cordova as the first two tribunals, is that although it's true that state building was going on quite actively in 15th century Spain, Ferdin and Isabella, particularly Isabella,

were actually very weak. They had just been fighting a civil war in Castile and also against forces which were supported by Portugal. There was a rival claimant to the Castilian throne. So the notion of the enemy within was floating about. Andalusia had been very unsound from furtherin and Isabella's point of view in the period 1474 to 1478. It was under suspicion.

They were told that an aspect of this disorder or threat of disorder or rebellion was religious dissent, taking the form of insincere Christians of Jewish origin. And that, I think, is where the two things get mixed up together. That's what's interesting, it seems to me, at this stage in the discussion. Alexander Murray, in your view, are Isabel and Ferdinand using Christianity to extend their power? Are we talking about real politics here, or are we talking about religious conviction that these people will be converted to the true path? I think it's sometimes easy to distinguish between these motives

and sometimes it's difficult. That is to say some people who seem to be very religious and are fired by enormous belief that what they're doing is God's will, the whole point of history is that you can sometimes look at these people from a distance and say, actually, is this their own will puffed up into God's will? And from the position of history and looking at the Spanish situation, I mean, I'm not a Spanish historian at all, but I go there and I occasionally read books about it, and I have a very sort of simple view which I'd like my colleagues to comment on about that and Isabella and the rest.

It seems to me that Spain, if you look at it from the north, it looks like one great place. In fact, the economic strength of Spain is round the edge, which contrasts with the economic position of France, which is in the north and England which is in round the southeast. and that means that France and England have been able to unify their monarchies by expanding from those areas whereas Spain, in order to become unified, had Wapping Great Castile in the middle,

which was not its economic. I'll ask for comment from my colleagues later was not the economic centre, and therefore the somewhat militaristic character of Spain, even in Franco's time, of Spanish culture, is connected with the need for if you're going to get a unified country,

you've got to do something about it. and to me the 16th century inquisition in Spain comes about for that reason, particularly after the fall of Grenada, before the fall of Granada, the disunity of Spain was cloaked. It wasn't like a nega, it was cloaked under the fact that there was Muslims and Christians.

Once Granada had fallen, you've got the whole peninsula, and probably instinctively rather than consciously, the Catholic monarchs thought, you know, it's falling apart, we're going to keep it together, and they put that in a religious form. Now that is roughly my view and I'd like to comment.

Michael, do you like to go along with that? Yes, I don't disagree. I'd also say that religious unity as a form of political centralisation is not limited to Spain. I seem to remember that our in Queen Elizabeth did it and her sister did it in the opposite direction, Mary before her. It's not so much that, so much as the method and the intensity. of the method which was used. But clearly it was Christian unity which was the method

by which political unity in Spain would be achieved. John? I think it's worth saying at this point something to add to that. One must always remember that this Inquisition technique, if you ask the Spanish Inquisitor in the whole period of this tribunal

what he was doing, his primary aim, he would say, was to reconcile souls to God, to the church. and I think therefore that there's no doubt at all that the religious model and the political ones are completely intertwined as far as the Trastamaran, that is, the Fernine Isabella's monarchy and then the succeeding Habsburg dynasty,

that's absolutely clear. And that therefore any notion of doctrinal incorrectness is in fact almost like treason. It is a threat to the government, turn to society. And of course this doesn't only come from Jewish converts but from others. Sorry, Marcell, do you want to come in now? Yes, it is treason. It is also grossly antisocial in a way which, I mean, one could draw some sort of parallel with something like pederastity today. It's something that you just

can't mention, you put yourself out of society completely. I want to move into the Spanish Inquisition in a bit more detail here, but just to establish a few terms. You've mentioned there were Jews there and some of them had converted to Christianity they were called conversos. Thousands of them had done after a particularly

awful uprising against them in 1391 so they were called the conversos and it was after generation after generation. They did that for all sorts of reasons to their own reason but also if once they converted they got access to all sorts of offices of state

privileges which they had not enjoyed. The Islam had, a lot of those people had converted to Christianity. They were called Mariscoes. So you have Muslims and Jews and conversers and Mariscoes. And then later on, the Inquisition turns its guns back on Christianity, as it started to do, went for the Cathaus and it goes to the Protestants. But let's talk about this middle, I was going to say middle passage. That would have been unfortunate.

This middle period here. Can you tell us about the procedures briskly, the procedures in Michael Lop, but the Inquisition comes in, set up by Isabel and Ferdin now, and ferocious in its first few years. How did they go about it? This is 1478. The Pope says yes, although there's some doubts, but never mind, leave the doubts aside.

They go for it. What do they do? They visit towns. They make a proclamation, an edict of grace, it's called, announcing that anybody who is doing the following things, which the inquisitors are able by their experience to describe as being part of the Judaizing heresy. and anybody who knows anybody who is doing those things

must within a month make a declaration. Huge numbers, statistics are not easy to establish here, huge numbers of people make voluntary confessions and denounce other people, enormous numbers of people are reconciled with the church relatively easily without a serious problem. But significant numbers also are not, they don't. And they are tried,

Many of the trials are extant. They're quite brief in the early period of time. It may even be that the procedures are not even very fair or very honest. And in that early period, which you rightly describe as ferocious, there's an incidence, I suppose, of execution, burning at the stake, which is probably about 50 or 60 percent of those who are convicted. And most of those who are convicted are? are converses, are new Christians, new Christians is the correct term, Judaizing new Christians. And the charges that you've converted to Christianity to advance or secure your state, but really you're secretly,

continue with your Jewish practices and sympathies, and therefore you are the enemy within. Is that the argument, John Edwards? It is, and this is where the Inquisition technically comes in, that the questionnaires that are prepared for these trials that Michael's been talking about go through a Christian perception, as it were,

of what Jewish belief and practice was. That is a list of things. Do you, for example, a lot of it's about home life and about dietary laws and things of this kind. Do you keep a clean tablecloth on a Friday? That's right. Do you like candles? Do you cook on Saturdays?

Things of this kind. And most of it actually is not what we would call theological. I find that very interesting. Most of what people are asked about is their sort of daily life and practice. And I think this is based on. the idea among those who formulated these questions, based on some passages in the New Testament,

the Christian New Testament, that somehow Judaism is a sort of legalistic and ritualistic religion and that the spirit of things is actually in Christianity. But can I just say, please, after you, Ma. This is exactly so, as John Edwards has said, though, ultimately the questioning and the conclusions to which the Inquisition prosecutor comes are that the guilty person

that was assumed to be guilty from the beginning think or considers that the law of Moses, by which he means Old Testament, Jewish law, is the phrase is the law in which he can be saved. I mean, they use Christian terminology to express this idea, and they refer to the law of Moses. The Spanish word is a caducah, out of date, no longer valid, invalid for Christians.

They don't give, the Inquisition never gives political reasons, at least not in any of its actual documents. This is just heresy for a Christian. I'd also like to put a point here, just as I introduced the idea of real politic, which I'd like on the Murray took up, and I want to go to you here in this, is the fact is as well,

there's a lot of the, let's stick with the Jews and the conversers for the moment before going to Muslims, that they'd done extremely well, they were wealthy, they were very, very able, Indeed, and as soon as they were tried, all their goods were confiscated instantly, their movable and their immovable goods, and they went to the Inquisitional Courts, which had to be self-financing. So that must have played a part. What do you think, Alexander Murray? Well, you're quite right to bring me in at this point, because I feel all the time that my colleagues have been explaining this so well, I've been thinking, am I a heretic? Because I have got a very radical view about the Inquisition after the end of the story which I was telling about the Albugent. since, that by, if I may just put this little middle passage in, by 1300, or let's say by 1320, the time of that wonderful book Montaille, which came out a few years ago, all based

on inquisitorial evidence. By that time, the reason why the Inquisition had been invented to mop up the radicals in southwestern France, they had more or less achieved that. I mean, some had skedaddled off whether or not with the golden, with the Holy Grail, I don't know, but some of them had disappeared. But the southwestern France and the bishoprics were established, the job had been done. Meanwhile, the inquisitorial method, these were clever friars, they were theologians, they were far better in the other courts in their method, or in far better, they were the leading edge of legal procedure.

They had perfected their procedure. And I've often thought that. that they were in the position of rat catchers who, in their apprenticeship, had learnt how to catch rats, and they'd caught them all, and it's bad news for mice. Because from about 1,300,

and you mentioned the Templars, that is the first great case. The Knights Templars, yeah. The Knights Templars being wound up in the beginning of the 14th century, that it seems to me that I've got to put one more little factor in, that it has always horrified me as everybody, that after all, this is, Jesus,

was tortured to death by the religious authorities publicly and in shame. Now, it doesn't seem to have occurred to very many people in the Middle Ages that this is almost a replica of what the Inquisition seems to be doing with the religious descent. And anybody, I think anybody who calls himself a Christian, especially Catholic, is, so I think, well, how does this come about? Now, I think it comes about roughly as follows. The church could not shed blood or kill people. Now, what about the crew who says?

What about lots of things? If you look carefully throughout the Middle Ages, that belief is preserved if only by what we would call hypocrisy. That is to say, the inquisitors say, when somebody is condemned, I will release you to the secular arm. And then they just twiddle out arms

and give a wink to the secular arm who then does the dirty work. I'd better say the secular arm did this every day to all sorts of people, and they had no problems about it at all. and the violence of medieval life is quite horrific, worse than what we read in the papers about Iraq. It's terrible.

And what I think is that if you get somebody else to do your dirty work, which is what's happening, somebody else will very quickly get hold of the institution. And what happens with the Inquisition, I think, is that, I mean, basically, if you listen to the preachers, if you go around the pubs in late medieval Europe, you can find this is my heresy. Everybody is a heretic.

I mean, after all, Joan of Arc was convinced of her. Three popes were accused of it. Lots of saints in their lifetime had press campaigns against them for heresy and leaving out those great people, if you actually go around the public, you say, well, I think it's unnatural, all these priests who know not having wives,

I think they should have wives like everybody else. You often hear that said. The preachers, one of the preachers that I listen to a lot, early 14th century, says, who believes in heaven or hell nowadays? They don't, they don't believe in anything. And therefore, the inquisitors, the whole

institution of the Inquisition it's meant to be pursuing heretics, it cannot do so because there are 70 million people in Europe and you can only do 30 a year at hard work. Therefore, it has got to be looking, it's got to be some other criterion comes into it.

And once you realise that, you realize that the politicians are the great people who see how useful it is and I completely agree with Michael that they use it. John, hello. One thing just as a rider to that, which I think is very interesting and fair, is a curiosity about the Spanish Inquisition

when one investigates the actual people who manned the tribunals, particularly the senior postholders, compared with the medieval inquisition that Alexander's been talking about, where theologians rule the roost. In the Spanish Inquisition, they don't. Lawyers rule the roost.

And this is almost universal. There are very few theologians who are employed in this. Can I just, Michael Albert, can I just get a little bit of idea for our listeners as to what was going on? When people say Inquisition, they think torture, burning at the stake, parades of shame through the streets, Otta d'affa. Can you just give us a little, a few facts on that and colour it in, as it by? Well, yes, certainly. Would you mind if I just mentioned something else which has come up already?

Yes, absolutely. In fact, probably about 60% of Inquisition cases were not against secret Jews or secret Muslims or even for that type of religious heresy but precisely for the type of heresy of denying fundamental Christian beliefs like the virginity of Mary and so forth. Although they weren't treated anything like as harshly

as religious heresy as script of Judaism or Lutheranism or anything like that. And another point on the question of money, studies, and there have been very detailed studies in Spain on the finances of the Inquisition generally show that most inquisition costs were bankrupt for most of the time. And if you actually look at the lists of people who appear in the Alto de Fe and are actually punished, most of them are not wealthy. The vast majority of them are poor. and whatever it's confiscated from their property to maintain them in prison is usually not enough. So it's not really a question of the Inquisition making any great amount of money out of it because it's actually bankrupt. But as the actual procedures of, well, you're talking about the procedures of punishment or enforcing.

Yes, I just like to know a little about how extensive and intensive was torture and burning at the stake. What went on? Alexander's talked about the unbelievable violence of the Middle Ages, which spread in. to Spain and we haven't touched on that yet. I think that's an important and though graphic part of this discussion. We haven't got there yet. The Inquisition was very violent in its early days. In its later years, it goes on until the early 19th century and I've studied it pretty thoroughly and I think at the second part of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century, let's say 1650 to 1750,

it's about 10% of people are actually burnt at the stake. and about 10% of people have to go as far as torture before they'll make the confession of facts that the Inquisition knows but needs them actually to say. The only people who were burned at the stake, not trying to minimize it, heaven forbid, in those latter years are those who were recidivist, how do you say, recidivists, second offenders,

that is those who had already been at some time in the past reconciled with the church, for the same offence, people who obstinate refused to give the information that the Inquisition is sure that they possess, and the very odd martyr who says, yes, everything you say is true, so what? Yes, but we're having hundreds of people here,

and I'm wondering, how, again, pick up something Alexander Murray said about the Christians, not one who... They are shedding blood, they are behaving in this appalling, how are they justifying it to themselves? How are they still saying this is Christianity? There's just a deep hypocrisy here. I mean, going back to the point,

that was made earlier, which was the, that in fact, the shedding of blood is licensed by the church, even as it appeals for mercy. But aren't we, I feel it's strange to be sort of defending the Inquisition, but isn't that, wasn't that understood as the duty of the church for the ultimate protection of the souls of everybody else, that some people would have to suffer? I think it's very important, yes, I would agree with that,

that one thing we also have to remember in all this is that relativism doesn't have any mileage at all in this period among people in any faith. That is to say that each religious revelation was seen as perfect and complete and the only valid one. And this does justify, in a sense, for one's immortal soul, the use of methods that might appear barbarous or excessively violent. We've talked about the Jews quite a lot, although there's so much more to say, but still in the time we have here, the Inquisition moved in against the... Excuse me, it gets Muslims as well, and the Mariscos, the Muslims who have converted. Yes, converted Jews.

I think we have to understand that the Inquisition had no jurisdiction whatsoever on unconverted Jews, of which there were many in the first 12 years the Inquisitions existed, or unconverted Muslims. Yes, they certainly did. So if you didn't convert, you were much safer than if you did convert. Yes, well, from the Inquisition, yes. But all Jews were expelled in 1492,

to or offer the alternative of baptism. So it was only for about 12 or 13 years that there was an inquisition with the presence of views. But you were asking about Muslims on which I haven't got any great deal of knowledge, which is why I should try to say something useful. It was a different sort of problem. It doesn't seem, if one reads through the cases,

some of the cases and some of the studies have been made of them, it doesn't really seem to have been the same sort of concern for the Spanish state. The Inquisition, yes, it did try people for, if a crypto-Mohamedism, I suppose one could call it. But most of the people concerned were really a different class. They were usually peasants, people living way, they weren't a city class, a middle class, as the crypto Jews were. And they were often peasants who were protected by the landowners who needed their skills. It was seen in Spain, I think, rather more as a problem of assimilation in general,

whereas the converted Jews were highly assimilated, almost completely assimilated. But the Muslims weren't, or the ex-Muslims who might call them, the converted Muslims weren't. But they were seen as a political problem and even a military problem, which was why in the end they were expelled as being completely unassimitable. Why were there no insurgencies against any of this? The Jews, the conversos, the Mariscos, and later the Protestants. Is there any evidence of insurgency?

There was a limited amount of resistance from certain of the convester families right at the beginning. But I think we face here really a fundamental point which is perhaps unpalatable to a lot of people, which is that overall in Spanish society, in the 15th to the 18th century anyway, the Inquisition had overwhelming popular support. Its system of information gathering couldn't have functioned otherwise. There was a fundamental acceptance that there was a direct link between religion and the safety of society that orthodoxy meant loyalty in a political and social sense

and that therefore one did not normally rise against that. There were one or two cases of local resistance in certain rural areas to the expulsion in the moment, Moriscos at the beginning of the 17th century, but these are an exception. So if we're talking about a state looking up for itself, Alexander Murray, things like the author of Defei, the act of faith, were played out like public theatrical tragedies to convince the population that what they were doing was right and in their own rightness. Is there some sense in that?

I think that seems to fit the Spanish situation. Whether it fits the medieval situation, which I'm more familiar, is questionable. If I could just join in in the discussion of Spanish from a medieval point of view, it seems to me that the Spanish Inquisition is the supreme instance of a tendency, which one already notices in the Middle Ages. As I say, once the cathars had been finished off, the use of the inquisition, it's there. It's a little bit like sort of having a loaded weapon around.

It's an extremely useful way of polishing off enemies if you can get hold of it. whoever you are. There's one case I know where the University of Paris couldn't stand a particular mayor of Paris because he was a no-nonsense man. And it's wonderful to see the way this particular Prevo he's called, violent and anti-university, gradually watch him getting into the net

and he ends up running away and so Walter Scott escape and managed to save his life. And the Inquisition is after him. Well, it's because the university, at a certain point, they cannot stand it any longer, idea, let's get the inquisitor to get him. And of course, he's said some careless things, and he's run off with people's wives, etc.

And you watch, and the poor old Pope, I'd love to get him off the hook in a way, because in the case of Spain... I don't feel particularly sorry for the Pope in this context, Alexander. It is amazing that I could convert you on this basis. There are some wonderful bulls, 6thus to 4th, Paul

the 3rd, that the Spanish monarchy, as indeed other monarchies, drag him along. And the Pope may think he's in charge, but If he starts to say, look, these converted Jews, I mean, there's a wonderful one which says, look, if they're converted to Christianity, they're untouchable. And he has to take it back two years later because the papal state is more or less surrounded by secular powers and he can do nothing about it. And he just knows that he'll be swept away. We're coming to the end now.

The expulsion of the Jews and the expulsion to a certain extent also of the Muslims led to a great depletion of the Spanish, what became Spain. Would you say that? Depletion in energy, industry, economy, culture? Yeah, I think one would certainly have to accept that. It doesn't seem to be obvious, though, for perhaps a century and a half. I mean, one can hardly talk about a cultural depletion of a country which produces a painter like Velazquez, and a whole list of supreme cultural characters. But it does become rather more evident, I think, from about. the second half of the 17th century and certainly throughout the 18th century on

West where Spain simply doesn't have the type of intellectual efflorescence that one sees in France and of course particularly in Protestant countries like our own. And the depletion becomes more and more evident. It seems to feed on itself until well well into the 19th century and you can see it in the terrible slowness of development of industry and new ideas. And one can even see it, I think, in the persistence in Spain until relatively recently of an intensely conventional and unquestioning society. Do you think it became briefly, John Evans,

do you think this became a template for other authoritarian regimes, the Spanish Inquisition? There is a sort of invented inquisition, which of course becomes very, very prominent. in literature. It begins in the 16th century with Protestant protests against Spain as the superpower of the time and a Catholic power. And I think, therefore, in a sense, often when one talks about the Spanish Inquisition, it's actually a sort of myth that is being applied rather than the real institution. Well, thank you very much, Elizana Murray, Michael Alpert and John Edwards. Thank you very much for listening. And next week we'll be talking about galaxies.

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