The Irish in the Spanish Inquisition

[nancylebov]

New documents found:

THE RECORDS of hundreds of Irish people who were brought before the Spanish Inquisition – including the man reputed to be the inspiration behind Zorro – have been discovered in Madrid.

The most famous Irishman brought before the inquisition was Wexford man William Lamport who was arrested in Mexico in 1659 for plotting against the Spanish colonisers and was burned at the stake.

He became a folk hero for the Mexican independence movement and was said to be the inspiration for Zorro.

****

Despite the inquisition’s fearsome reputation, undeserved according to Dr O’Connor, they were the unlucky ones. The majority of Irish people brought before it were Protestants and the overwhelming majority were given a “conditional absolution”.

“In the English-speaking world the black legend of the Spanish Inquisition is extraordinarily persistent,” he said. “It is part of an anti-Spanish prejudice in English-speaking countries.”

That interested me-- I didn't know there was an anti-Protestant element to the Inquisition, so I checked Wikipedia. For that matter, I didn't know there were any Protestants in Spain at the time.

So, yes, there was a fairly small anti-Protestant aspect to the Inquisition.

Another thing I didn't know was that the Pope was opposed to the Inquisition, but was pressured into allowing it.

I did know that the Inquisition was usually skeptical about the witchcraft (most witch-killing happened in other parts of Europe). I didn't know that sodomy was one of the things that the Inquisition had on its list of things to attack. So was Freemasonry.

Wikipedia agrees with O'Conner that the Inquisition wasn't especially awful by the standards of the era. Considering that Pope Sixtus IV and Pope Innocent VII opposed the Inquisition, I'm wondering if there was other Papal opposition to bad judicial practice.

More stuff I didn't know: Cities in Aragon revolted against the Inquisition. Napoleon conquered Spain (most of Spain?) and was instrumental in ending the Inquisition there. Emphasis on the Inquisition is mostly attributed to anti-Spanish sentiment, but there was Spanish rulers who worked very hard to keep it in place, including putting it back after Napoleon lost Spain.

I don't know how much is anti-Spanish sentiment and how much is that the Inquisition was flashier than other justice systems (was it?). I also don't know how the Inquisition is represented in history from Spanish points of view.

I also didn't know that there was a time when the primary emphasis on the Inquisition was its attacks on Protestants-- actually most who were killed were Jewish.

I've been thinking I need to find some other interests to displace some fraction of an unhealthy fascination with contemporary politics. There does seem to be a tremendous amount of history I don't know, though it can bleed into current politics. Number theory is also a possibility-- I think it's pretty unpolitical.

Link thanks to Diane Duane at Facebook.

Comments

[chickenfeet]

The Inquisition was very active against Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands particularly after the appointment of Alva as Governor.

[siderea]

The Inquisition -- Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis -- was invented to stamp out heresy[*]. Of which, from a Catholic stand point, Protestantism is just the most virulent strain.

They just experienced some scope creep.

[* Originally the Albigensian** heresy, Catharism.]

[** From the town of Albi, in Languedoc. See also Albigensian Crusade.***]

[*** It is fascinating to me how there's this one-way pointer in our culture, in our narrative about this part of history. When you read about the Albigensian Crusade, the Cathars, Languedoc, etc, one of the very first things you learn is that this is where the Inquisition comes from. But when you look into the Inquisition, the connection with the Albigensian Crusade, which is a jaw-dropping bit of Medieval history, goes almost completely unmentioned. And I don't really think one can understand the Inquisition without understanding the context in which it arose.]

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing from sources I thought reliable, that in some places the Inquisition was actually milder than the 'secular arm' or whatever they called that.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Novels in the 1632 series have some pretty darned nuanced discussions about the role of the Inquisition as a tool of the Spanish throne and Spanish hierarchy, as opposed to a tool of the Papacy or the Church as a universal institution. This is a major plot element, to put it mildly, in 1635: Canon Law.

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

Sorry: 1635: Cannon Law

[madfilkentist]

The official Inquisition of the Catholic Church and the Spanish Inquisition were two different entities. I'm not familiar with the history in a lot of detail, but I wouldn't be surprised if a power struggle between Spain and Rome was involved in the latter.

Another interesting detail: "Zorro" is Spanish for "fox," and I'm told that at first he was called "El Zorro."

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Spain wasn't the only country that had its own Inquisition.

The Portuguese Inquisition was a lot more less suspicious of ex-Jews than the Spanish Inquisition was. Even of not-exactly-all-THAT-ex-Jews. To the point that, in the New World, "Portuguese" was occasionally a code word that meant "Jewish."

[wcg.livejournal.com]

If you're interested in historical non-fiction covering other eras, I'll recommend Comanches: The History of a People by T. R. Fehrenbach. It has a lot of good info about North American history prior to the advent of Anglo-Europeans, in addition to good coverage of what happened after the Anglo-Europeans got to the places the Comanche people thought of as home.

[ndrosen.livejournal.com]

Should that title be Comanches: The Destruction of a People?

I second the recommendation of that and other books by Fehrenbach.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

It got re-titled in later editions, but yes, it's essentially the same book.

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

Well, this certainly won't keep you from contemporary politics. One big thick book on the Inquisition is by Binjamin Netanyahu's father - amd role model, who argues that the Spanish Inquisition was originally designed as a machine for the Old Christians (including Ferdinand and Isabella) to loot the New Christians, most of whom were sincerely Christian, and it branched out into other fields, including Protestantism as they came up. But this is part of why Aragon rebelled: the money was going to Madrid, not to them.

Don't trust Wikipedia articles; it's not a reliable source. This subject is particularly bad, since the "patriotic" (i.e., pro-Franco) line of Spanish historiography still has followers in the English-speaking world. They generally hold that the Inquisition was justified to maintain the religious unity of Spain; both because religious uniformity is good for a state, and (in severe cases, like Wm.T, Walsh's life of Phillip II, which must be read to be believed) that they were fighting a daibolical world-wide conspiracy, which descends from Caiaphas and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. It's a hoot.

Napoleon conquered virtually all of Spain, but he didn't keep it. The locals rebelled, and (with financial and military support from the other Great Power) took it back. We've seen that story again too. (The truly pathetic carreer of Charles IV of Spain, his prime minister Godoy (his wife's lover) and his son Ferdinand VII is reasonably well done on Wikipedia.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I agree that a lot of history isn't that much of a relief from contemporary politics, especially the part of history which consists of governments behaving badly.

Do you have specific problems with the Wikipedia article? It at least tried to explain ways that views of the Inquisition changed over time.

I don't have the foggiest how you'd judge the sincerity of conversions which happened under political pressure.

[subnumine.livejournal.com]

Sorry, my reply seems not to have posted.

No, I'm just wary of the whole category; the "Black Legend" is nationalist and sectarian defensiveness.

Netanyahu's position is that the New Christians, by and large, had been Christian for generations; their ancestors had assimilated when the Reconquest had dominated the peninsula - about two centuries before. The crypto-Judaism which the Inquisition found was partly real, but enormously exaggerated to justify the confiscations. Most New Christians were about as Judaic as the Old Christians were worshippers of Visigothic or Celtiberian gods. Whether this is the case is -er- controversial.