The Spanish Inquisition: King Ferdinand And Queen Isabella

The Spanish Inquisition was a movement begun in 1478 by the Spanish monarchs of the time: King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. It was meant to seek out non-catholics in Spain, because Ferdidand and Isabella wanted religious, and subsequently political unity in their country. Their first goal to begin the Inquisition was to appoint inquisitors over each region throughout Spain, to figure out who was Catholic, and who was not. In 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella received the reluctant permission of Pope Sixtus IV to appoint inquisitors, who began seeking out non-catholics. This Inquisition began in 1478, and continued all the way to it's final end in 1834. Like all of its kind, the Spanish Inquisition did involve torture and executions. However, contrary to the many rumors about it, the torture was not done by monks and priests, but rather by the official torturers of the state. Although the Inquisitors, who were often churchmen did hold the trials of these men, and give out the punishments for those who would confess to having been heretics or other such sins, they would not torture or perform the executions. The punishments given out by the torturers were not often and light as Diane Moczar asserts by saying: “torture was in fact rarely used, and even when it was,
These were Jews or Muslims who were Catholic in name only. The Inquisition was mainly aimed at finding these fake Catholics, and for good reason, as it is so eloquently put by Fernand Hayward: “Since the Jews occupied an important place in the Spain of this period … the sincerity of their Catholicism and of their personal acceptance of the teachings of the Church was a matter of major importance.” (127) For example, if a Jew or Muslim pretended to be Catholic, and rose to a high point in the Church, they might gain a certain amount of power (so to say) within the Church, and could easily abuse this power to cause disharmony in the