The Pros And Cons Of The Spanish Inquisition

The Salem Witch Trials and the Spanish Inquisition were both the outcomes of religious fears. These events in history share several similarities, including the way people were accused and punished. The witch trials and Spanish Inquisition were used to cleanse the people. In both cases the accused did not have fair proceedings which resulted in wrongly accused innocent people. Although the Spanish Inquisition was more gruesome due to the horrific torture prisoners went through they both resulted in many unjustified deaths.

If they confessed, they were released, but if they did not confess, they were either killed and tortured or sentenced to life in prison. If people were found guilty during their trials, they were burned at the stake. Suspects would be tortured for weeks, and it was intended to be excruciatingly painful. One form of torture included lying face down on the floor with a board on your back, then heavy weights would be dropped onto the board and would crush anything beneath it. More than 323,300 people were killed during the Spanish Inquisition.

In literature and in life, the opportunity of personal and corporate gain allows for easy manipulation of vulnerable circumstances, as seen primarily by the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. Based upon the accusations of multiple vindictive Salem residents, the lack of empirical evidence, the lack of division in the church and state, and the lack of proper leadership in Salem allowed for certain members of society to claim revenge, manipulate citizens, and gain unprecedented religious influence. The continuation of these incentives caused the Trials to rapidly turn into hysteria, with dozens killed, and hundreds more convicted of faulty acts. In The Crucible by Arthur Miller and “‘Homo Economicus’ and the Salem Witch Trials” by Franklin G. Mixon, Jr., the nature of Salem residents is exposed, explaining how greed and selfishness led to the conviction of multiple men and women in the fall of 1692. Although religion and the Puritan ideology played a major role in these shocking figures, without the motivation of personal and corporate profit, the Salem Witch Trials would not have had the same devastating effects.

The Spanish Inquisition was originally an institution developed in Spain to conduct trials by the Catholic Monarchs. The Inquisition’s trial courts focused on ensuring that the Catholic Doctrine was enforced. After the conquering and colonization of indigenous groups within the New World the colony of New Spain was formed. The Spanish Crown sought to use the Inquisition to prosecute those guilty of heresy or blasphemy, which is the act of denouncing God or demeaning religious ideas. Comparing and analyzing Spanish Inquisition blasphemy trial documents demonstrate the recorded history and process by which these trials started and ended. Which presents us with the question, how did blasphemy trials effect the personal lives of indigenous groups within New Spain?

I think that the results of the crusades were negative because the setbacks they had with the muslims fighting back would hold them from conquering the empires.

The Salem Witch Trails started in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 and went on till 1693. There were 200 individuals and more accused of practicing witchcraft. Witchcraft was known for practicing the devils magic. These people who were accused were arrested and then imprisoned. Unfortunately, there were 20 people who were executed, including two animals which were dogs. Those 20 people were hung at the Gallows Hills near the Salem Village. One man was stoned to death and other individuals died in jail. Living in the colonial Massachusetts, children were known to help their parents as much as possible. Boys were known to “work as apprentices outside of the house, but also go hunting and fishing” (Jason C., Wilson K. and Shaunak P, n.d.). The girls were known to “help their mothers clean, cook, wash, and stew” (Jason C., Wilson K. and Shaunak P, n.d.). There was not much time for children to play or have fun. To show that someone didn’t pursue any witchcraft, there was a series of steps that needed to be done. This mass hysteria brought one village to be divided into two clashing groups. The nation has been facing similar problems for its entire existence and this is evidenced by the persecution of innocent people during the Salem Witch Trials.

Henry Charles Lea’s monumental study of the inquisition during the Middle Ages was originally published in 1887. In volume three of his work, he devoted a chapter to both Guglielma and Fra Dolcino. Lea provides a brief history of Guglielma intersected with his condescending

These two views do not contradict each other, but they do look at the shift in thought differently. Schwartz takes the idea that, “each person can be saved in his own religion, “and develops a study of Christian perspectives on Islam and Judaism through the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition documentation and trials. Schwartz analyzed cultural attitudes and thoughts towards religious differences from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in Spain and Portugal (Schwartz, pg. 6). Spanish and Portuguese inquisitional records captured the stories from unknown common folk and what they thought about the world they lived in, and their feelings towards what was right when dealing with religious tolerance (Schwartz, pg. 6). By not only questioning individuals but also looking at the people around that individuals and how they interacted and practiced their beliefs, Schwartz uncovered evidence for religious toleration over a course of a few centuries. These views varied from different religious individuals such as Jews, Christians, and Muslims throughout his whole book. It is important for readers of this book to decipher between “tolerance” and “toleration.” Schwartz’s book is about “the history of religious toleration, by which is usually meant state or community policy, but rather of tolerance, by which I mean attitudes or sentiments” (Schwartz, pg. 6). European leaders believed unity of religious beliefs facilitated political stability, showing religious tolerance advocates were the protagonists in this book. People during these centuries were still eager to discover how to gain salvation. Salvation began to play its own role in the spiritual and political atmosphere of society. This change in roles started to challenge the churches views of the natural world and how much

The Salem witch trials, that occurred in colonial Massachusetts, were a hostile part of American history. People lived in a constant state of paranoia and fear. A great number of people were accused of practicing witchcraft, which was thought to be connected to the devil, and some were even executed. Eventually, the colony realized the faults in the trials. By reading the primary sources ‘A Modest Inquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft Chapter II’ by John Hale and Two Letters by Governor William Phips, we are able to discover a wealth of knowledge about the aforementioned trials. The two sources allow the reader to gain insight into how the trials were flawed by showing the nature of the Salem Witch Trials, the evidence used to find the witches guilty, and the role native americans played in the trials. While also exhibiting how primary sources can be a disadvantage in navigating through historical events.

The Salem Witch Trials was a harsh time in Spring 1692. A time when young girls were accused of witchcraft. The Salem Witch Trials included harsh torturing methods for those accused of witchcraft. Torturing methods included swimming test, prayer test, touch test, witch cakes, witch marks, pricking and scratching test, incantations. These were some harsh punishments. Practicing witchcraft was considered a horrible crime on a scale with rape and murder. The 18th century Code of Hammurabi contained punishment against sorcery, and many medieval legal systems listed specific reasons for identifying, trying and even executing suspected witches and warlocks. Since finding proof of evil was no easy task, witch-hunters often went to some particular experiments in their journey to kill accused witches. From awful tortures and terrible dessert dishes to unwinnable trials by ordeal, find out more about unusual tests once used against evil misconduct.

Like the Holocaust in the 1930s-1940s, Jews during this time were treated with brutality. Manchester describes it as, “Jewry was luckier - slightly luckier - than blacks. If the pogroms of the time are less infamous than the Holocaust, it is only because anti-Semites then lacked twentieth-century technology” (35). In the year 1492, the Spanish had regained control of Spain. The rule of Spain was now under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. They were not fond of Jews in their nation. The Jews in Spain were given three months to convert to christianity or to leave. After seeing what the Spanish were doing in Spain, the king of Portugal ordered the expulsion of all Portuguese Jews. Any Jews who wouldn’t leave or were slow to leave were massacred. Around four thousand Lisbon Jews were killed during a single night in 1506. Only three years later persecution of Jews in Germany began. Jews throughout history have been treated badly but during the medieval period it was especially hard if you were a Jew.

The Inquisition started because the Catholic Church was worried that the devil was stealing people’s souls. To fight the devil the church founded a new court. The Inquisition, were those priests whose job it was to find and punish anyone who was against the church or working with the devil. They called people who worked against the church a heretic and any action against the church was heresy. The inquisition could place people under arrest and torture them until they confessed to heresy; even if u weren’t and heresy but they suspected that you were they still torture you. But, if you confess right away before torture, will be punished, but you can redeem yourself. If you didn’t confess you were torture until you did.

Kamen notes the ambiguous pressure on Jews, as despite the anti-semitism of contemporary Europe, the ‘Aragonese crown protected the Jews and conversos firmly, rejecting all attacks on them‘ and how any existing anti-Semetic legislation went unenforced (Kamen 15). Even after Ferdinand and Isabella initiated their reign in 1474, the monarchs were ‘never personally anti-Semitic’ and their intervention in domestic politics demonstrated an ‘impressive picture of the monarchy protecting its jews’ (Kamen, 16). In actuality, the inception of the Inquisition and the subsequent expulsion of the Jewish population was prompted by the actions of ‘Judaizers’, who were made up of conversos who had attempted to persuade newly assimilated Christians to return to their original Jewish faith. The efforts of these Judaizers concerned the crown and as a result the Inquisition was officially founded on September 27, 1480 as a means of regulating the the disruptive and disobedient conversos.

Voltaire directs this example of the Church, as it was an officer of the Inquisition who was responsible for the sentencing. The inanity of the whole situation, as well as the completely unnecessary drastic results that it had, makes the Church appear to be an authority that is unreliable to make sensible decisions, or rule over people. This irrationality is again portrayed through Pangloss and the Reverend Father. The Reverend Father bathed in front of a Musselman, unknowing “that it was a major crime for a Christian to be found naked” (105) with one, and ended up being tried for it. Pangloss was similarly tried, because he took too long to give a girl back the flowers that she had dropped. Both of these men, as a result of committing these simple wrongdoings, are beaten and forced into slavery, destined to spend the rest of their days as galley slaves. The crimes themselves were so small and nonsensical that the fact that they were punished at all, much less so harshly for them, is unjustifiable. Voltaire uses the unfairness and utter ludicrousness of the situation to challenge whether government should be trusted with the fate of its people. Voltaire accentuates traditional authority’s ignorance.

In 1478 an independent Spanish Inquisition was created by pope Sixtus in response to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Castile. The Spanish Inquisition had independence from Papal control and was created to consolidate authority and secure religion in a unified government organization in New Spain. By 1570 there were Holy Offices in Mexico and Lima and by 1579 an office was built in Brazil as well. The Inquisition of New Spain lasted from 1569-1821 consisting of hierarchical official and processes. Ludovicus de paramo, De Origine et Progressu Officii Sanctae Inquisitionis, in 1598 states “God was the first inquisitor”.