How did the Spanish inquisition affect the indigenous people on the American continent?

Answer 1

The Spanish Inquisition was a religious tribunal or court established in Spain from 1480 to 1820 AD, but most active from 1492 on. It was responsible for the jailing, trial, torture, and execution of "heretics," mostly Jews accused of not completely converting to Catholicism. During its activities many thousands of Jews had to flee the country.

The Spanish Inquisition was empowered by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand of Spain in 1492. The Alhambra Decree, passed on March 31, 1492, ordered the Jews in all Spanish-owned lands to leave and never come back by August 31, 1492. If they chose to remain, they had to convert to Catholicism. Many Jews left, but some decided to remain and convert. Some Jews took Catholicism to heart; most did not. The Jews who pretended to believe in Christ but were really Jews at heart were called crypto-Jews and marranos. If you suspected someone of being a crypto-Jew, you could report them to one of the courts set up across Spain, and the judges/torturers at the court would test the people accused. They were tortured horribly; even if they weren't Jewish, they admitted that they were to get the pain to stop. Once they confessed, they were sent to the stake to be burned alive. This process included the auto-da-fé (act of faith, public penitence), which has come to be synonymous with execution for heresy.

A second decree in 1502 expelled Muslims and continued the tribunal, which remained active in the 1600s and 1700s, including a ban on Freemasons in 1815. The Inquisition ended shortly thereafter. Descendants of Spanish Jews were only allowed back to Spain beginning in 1924. The Alhambra Edict of 1492 was formally revoked in 1968.
The goal of the Inquisition was to enforce Catholicism in Spain and in Spanish territories. Torture was considered legitimate by the inquisitors. As under the Soviets, everyone was afraid of informers. Many thousands were tortured and killed.

As part of the Christianizing of Spain, Jews who openly remained Jewish were expelled from the country. Many died in the process, and everyone else was uprooted.

My colleague adds: The formation of the Jesuits and the following inquisition was a Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation. Sometimes this response is called the counter-reformation.

Answer 2

Many Muslims and Jews were forced out of Spain.

.

Catholic AnswerThe primarily result of the Spanish Inquisition is that the protestant heresy was kept out of Spain, and the Spanish were protected from its evil influence.

Answer 3

Some say there weren't any.

Some consider that the concept of Inquisition could be seen as a step towards religious tolerance.

According to this theory, heresy used to be severely fought by the political authority, which based its legitimacy partly on religion, and by the common people, out of pure and simple intolerance. Indeed, for one to quit the religion they were born into had always and everywhere been considered a betrayal and punished as such.

It still is in many countries.

The Catholic Church provided Inquisition tribunals, usually at the request and expense of the political power, to let expert theologians decide on whether the accusations of heresy were founded. In most cases the answer was "No", possibly because the accused agreed to some mostly verbal return to the orthodoxy. The Inquisition tribunals themselves could no go beyond excommunication, any further punishment was entirely the responsibility of the common law. So on can argue that:

a) without the Inquisitrion, many more people would have been condemned for heresy;

b) the Inquisition brought restraint to intolerance and in time more questioning about intolerance itself.

One can also argue that religious intolerance having been ubiquitous, it is unfair to blame specifically the Catholic church for having been, after all, rather normal; a more balanced and fair judgment should try to assess how the Catholic church figures in the overall pattern of tolerance through time and space: Not that bad.

Answer 4

The Spanish Inquisition ended in 1924. Spain established freedom of religion in 1976. At that point Protestantism became legal and the Jews that had been forced to convert to Catholicism became free to convert back to Judaism.

So, Spain had produced some of the greatest literature on earth. Then Philipe Segundo instituted the inquisition. Spain became an intellectual backwater. Maybe the old creativity will return.

Answer 5

Catholic Answer The Spanish Inquisition managed to keep the protestant heresy out of Spain, and keep the faith pure there for many years. Unfortunately, the protestant country of England was at war with Spain during much of this time and much English proganda from that time grew into legends that were accepted as history, so that the myth of the Spanish Inquisition has grown all out of proportion. In actuality, the Inquisition was very mild compared to the atrocities happening in other countries at the same time.

from Modern Catholic Dictionary by John A. Hardon, S.J. Doubleday & Co., Inc. Garden City, NY 1980

The Spanish Inquisition, set up by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1478 and empowered by Pope Sixtus IV, was directed against the lapsed converts from Judaism, crypto-Jews, and other apostates whose secret activities were dangerous to Church and State. The civil government had great influence in the administration of this Inquisition, and the Spanish ecclesiastical tribunal accused of scandalous cruelty must share its condemnations with them. The latter worked during these days in defiance of the Holy See, which often condemned inquisitors because of their cruelties. Even so, these cruelties have been grossly exaggerated, and the fact that the Inquisition did tremendous good in saving the Latin countries from anarchy has been forgotten. Much falsehood surrounds the events of this period, which should be judged by the standards of those times, not by modern ideas of the human person and of religious freedom.

Answer 6

The Spanish Inquisition led to the oppression of Jews and Muslims within reconquered Spain. Many had to convert to Catholicism to maintain their status within Castile and Aragon. Thousands more fled from Spain, and later from Portugal to avoid the Inquisitions.

It was followed in 1492 by the Edict of Expulsion (Alhambra Decree) that forced all Jews and Muslims to leave most areas of Spain.

.

Answer

This is a complex and multi-hued subject that is difficult to understand for several reasons, especially in English speaking lands in the 21st century. Spain, at the time of the Spanish Inquisition, was at war with England, and the Propaganda that came out of England at that time survived well into the 20th century and was quoted as factual history by otherwise respectable historians. To not understand what really happened is to not understand the result, I am enclosing links below about the Spanish Inquisition, and what really happened for that reason. Also, a link to Diane Moczar's book on which this answer is mostly based.

Extracted from Seven Lies About Catholic History Infamous Myths About the Church's Past and How to Answer Them by Diane Moczar, c 2010 by TAN Books, Charlotte, North Carolina

Of all the Inquisitions (and there were a few from the 12th century until the 19th century), practically synonymous in the popular mind with the term is the Spanish Inquisition, mostly due to anti-Spanish Black Legend propaganda that has been produced from the Reformation until now. Thanks be to God, finally, truth is started to take hold due to people like Diane Moczar, an history professor at North Virginia Community College, Dr. William A. Donahue, the founder and president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights as well as Henry Kamen, a British Historian and Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and his book, The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. Please see the links below.

The Spanish Inquisition began under King Ferdinand and his wife, Queen Isabella in 1481. At that time, the King and Queen had just reunited Spain, as a Catholic country, and were dealing with several distinct groups including the original Catholic Spaniards of Visigothic descent, practicing Muslims, the descendants of the invaders who had conquered Spain in the sixth and seventh centuries, practicing Jews, converted Jews, and converted Muslims. The complicating factor, which became a serious problem as Ferdinand and Isabella struggled both to unite the country and to drive out what remain of the former Moorish rulers, was that some Jewish and Muslim converts were Catholic in name only. For whatever reasons, they had outwardly converted while secretly practicing their original religions and supporting their co-religionists against Spanish unification efforts. They constituted, in effect, a fifth column with the country in wartime. It was at them, rather than at the sort of heretics... seen elsewhere, that the Spanish Inquisition was primarily aimed.

This is an important point, as the Inquisition had no authority and did not attempt to deal with practicing Muslims or Jews, they only had authority over Catholics.

Once unification had been achieved and the Muslim Moorish rulers driven out of Spain the Inquisition became dormant until Luther's ideas started the great upheaval known as the Peasants' War, and King Charles was anxious to avoid the appalling disorder and loss of life caused by Protestants in the German lands" from spreading to Spain.

Another important point that must be understood, especially in historical context is that the loss of a soul for eternity was viewed as a much greater evil than the loss of a mortal life. This was understood much better back then, and the evil that a heretic could inflict by destroying a soul was to be prevented if at all possible. The method was (hopefully) to convert them, if that was not possible to prevent harm through exile, or, later on, by other punishments, which could even include the death penalty.

Now, to quote from Diane Moczar's book, directly:

Similarly, the preservation of Spanish Catholicism, particularly from the Protestant infiltration that would have brought the civil wars and other disasters it had already caused in the north, was surely to the credit of the Inquisition. Were there cruel inquisitors in some places? Of course. Were methods of interrogation distasteful to modern sensibilities? Sure-though we can certainly think of worse methods employed even in our enlightened modern times. Given its formidable task of guarding the purity of the Faith in Christian souls, however, the overall record of the Inquisition in dealing with heresy is not only defensible but admirable. Many Muslims and Jews were forced out of Spain.

Answer 7

AnswerThe Spanish Inquisition was set up with jurisdiction over people who already professed to be members of the Christian faith. Thus, it had no formal jurisdiction over 'heathen' people. However, armed soldiers accompanied the missionaries whose role it was to convert the natives of America, willingly or otherwise.

Answer 8

The main impact of the Spanish Inquistion was that the Spanish crown managed to keep the protestant heresy out of Spain for hundreds of years.

Answer 9

It was not in medieval spain, and the spanish inquisition did not effect the economy directly. What caused the decreased the economy at that time was due to other factors.