Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition was the Inquisition acting in Spain under the control of the Kings of Spain. This Inquisition was the result of the reconquest of Spain from the Muslims and the policy of converting Spanish Jews and Muslims to Christianity. The Inquisition was an important tool in enforcing the limpieza de sangre ("cleanliness of blood") against descendants of converted Jews or Muslims.

Death tolls

Numbers are difficult to establish with accuracy for the Spanish Inquistion, and there is an ongoing debate between recent historical research supported by the Catholic Church, which holds that the previously accepted death toll of the Inquisition is greatly exaggerated, and other historians, who claim that up to hundreds of thousands, or even more, might have been killed. Some historians and Spanish scholars point to research that suggests that death tolls are exaggerated as evidence of the Black legend, which over-emphasizes the destruction caused by Spain relative to other nations.

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Some dubious statistics of large death tolls are given by historians such as Will Durant, who, in, The Reformation (1957) cites Juan Antonio Llorente, General Secretary of the Inquisition from 1789 to 1801, as estimating that 31,912 people were executed from 1480-1808. He also cites Hernando de Pulgar, a secretary to Queen Isabella, as estimating 2,000 people were burned before 1490. Philip Schaff in his History of the Christian Church gave a number of 8,800 people burned in the 18 years of Torquemada. Matthew White, in reviewing these and other figures, gives a median number of deaths at 32,000, with around 9,000 under Torquemada. R. J. Rummel gives similar figures as "most realistic," though he cites some historians who give figures of up to 135,000 people killed under Torquemada. This number includes 125,000 who are claimed to have died in prison due to poor conditions, leaving 10,000 as sentenced to death.

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Thankfully, the Spanish Inquisition kept very good records and these are now being sifted through by historians. They paint a very different picture of sentencing patterns to traditional historians. Geoffrey Parker analyzed 49,000 trial records between 1540 and 1700, representing one third of the total, and found 776 executions took place. This suggests a total of about 2,000 in the period reviewed. Earlier records are less well preserved but do not support the picture of a bloodbath usually painted. Henry Kamen (p. 60) does not believe more than a thousand executions took place in the earlier period. However, he points out that the Inquisitors activities were heavily slanted towards Jewish and Moslem communities who would have suffered far more than most from their activities. Recent work, sponsored by the Catholic Church, also points to a significantly lower death toll. Professor Agostino Borromeo, a historian of Catholicism at the Sapienza University in Rome, writes that about 125,000 people were tried by church tribunals as suspected heretics in Spain. Of these, about 1,200 - 2,000 were actually executed, although more killings were performed by non-church tribunals.

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