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The Spanish Inquisition:

The Battle of Good vs. Evil

American Public University

History 535: Renaissance and Reformation

Dr. Heather Thornton

November 2, 2014

Adam Manuel



1

Today, history is often discussed on a topical basis. For example, look in any United

States college catalog, and one will see history classes such as U.S. History, World History,

Ancient History, Renaissance, and Reformation listed on the pages. While it is good idea to

single out a topic and gain a better understanding of the topic, sometimes a person tends to

misinterpret or miss vital details that could perhaps be better seen if the topic is studied in

conjunction with other topics and times. For example, when reading the book The Spanish

Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources, edited by Lu Ann Homza, one can see that in

many ways, the Spanish Inquisition is the missing link between many of the topics of Early

Modern Europe. In reading the book one can truly see that the Spanish Inquisition was greatly

influenced by the Renaissance, the Reformation, and even had a great influence on the events of

the Salem Witch Trials in Massachusetts. By analyzing where Homza’s book stands

historiographically in the history of the Inquisition, one can gain a greater understanding of how

the Inquisition was not only influenced by other movements of the time such as the Renaissance

and the Reformation, but also how it influenced similar movements in recent history.1

Historian Geoffrey Parker describes in his article, “Some Recent Work on the Inquisition

in Spain and Italy,” where research stands as of the moment. He also sheds light on some very

interesting statistics concerning the Spanish Inquisition that allows a person to see how truly

large the Inquisition was. For example, he states that at the prime of the Inquisition, there were

at least twenty-one tribunals located all over Spain. According to his statistics, 49,000 of

145,000 cases of the Inquisition during the years 1540-1700 exist today.2 While these numbers

1 The Sufferings of John Cousos for Free-Masonry and for his refusing to turn Roman Catholic in the

Inquisiton of Lisbon, London 1746, 63, 65, 67, located in Francisco Bethencourt, “The Auto da Fé: Ritual and

Imagery,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 55 (1992): plate 34e.

2 Geoffrey Parker, “Some Recent Work on the Inquisition in Spain and Italy,” The Journal of Modern

History 54, no. 3 (September 1982): 519-520.



2

are not astronomical, they are large and show that the Inquisition was a way of trying to get the

heretics under control. Parker then goes on to discuss how the study of the Spanish Inquisition is

going, and according to him writing on the Inquisition is severely lacking, due to the fact that

people during the period of the Inquisition were afraid to write about it out of fear of being

persecuted.3 However, he also states in his conclusion that there are still many cases that can be

examined by the historian, and that today there are perhaps more sources that focus on

Catholicism.4 The author of the book The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of

Sources also agrees that when she states that at the moment that a large portion of the research of

today “…seeks to establish the theological motives, legal discretion, and practical contexts of the

inquisitors themselves.”5

To better understand the importance of the Renaissance and the Reformation on the

Inquisition, one must examine the book The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of

Sources, edited by Lu Ann Homza. In this book one will find a collection of primary sources

from the period listed in the title, concerning the Spanish Inquisition. The sources in the book

range from letters from priests talking about their positive feelings about the Inquisition to

lengthy whole court proceedings of individuals accused during the Inquisition.6 Throughout the

book, Homza also goes to great lengths to point out areas where there are holes in research, and

where a person could do further research. For example, she mentions in one of her footnotes,

“The question of whether and when inquisitorial instructions were published in early modern

3 Parker, “Recent Work on the Inquisition in Spain and Italy,” 531

4 Ibid., 532.

5 Lu Ann Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources, (Indianapolis, Hackett

Publishing Company, Inc., 2006): x.

6 Lu Ann Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 1-8, 80-153.



3

Spain — and the degree to which they circulated —deserves further investigation.”7 With

reference to the footnotes of the book, one will find them to be the most helpful footnotes in

many historical books. The footnotes explain any terms that may be unfamiliar to some people,

as well as poses discussion questions, or elaborates on topics, other than just giving citations.8

One cannot help but feel that this book was meant to be used in the classroom and be used to

provoke discussion on the topic of the Spanish Inquisition and help create a desire to research the

topic in young historians. However, other than these technical niceties and benefits, where this

book really shines is when one discovers the reason these people felt the way that they did is

based on movements that occurred parallel and consecutive to the Inquisition. The Renaissance

moved through Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the same time as the new ideas of

the Reformation were unfolding. The Inquisition was a period of persecution and hostility

toward individuals the Christian church saw as heretics and corrupt individuals. The individuals

that they saw as heretics were often either influenced by the new ideas created by the

Reformation or were supporters of other religions. This overlap is hard to miss, and through

further looking at the points of similarity, one can see that the Spanish Inquisition is a vital piece

of the puzzle of the Early Modern Era that deserves more research.

Homza realizes that the main tool for the study of the Inquisition is found in the primary

sources of the period. She states in the closing paragraph of her introduction why she feels these

sources are so vital. Homza states:

Primary sources from the Spanish Inquisition are peculiarly useful for teaching historical method,

since they force us to contemplate gaps in the evidence, the challenges of legal records, and the

difficulties of uncovering religious beliefs and cultural practices in earlier centuries. Above all,

7 Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 62, footnote 4.

8 Ibid., xvi, xxii, 33.



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these texts exhibit alterity: they demonstrate the foreigness of the past, and in the process reveal

that Spain and the Inquisition were far more complex than mythical stereotypes allow. 9

It is through Homza’s desire to get people to see the reality of the time period that causes

the reader to easily see the overlaps in events. The Renaissance is perhaps one of the first events

that can be seen as being a contribution to the struggle of the Spanish Inquisition. The biggest

ideas to come out of the Renaissance were the ideas of humanism, the ability to question

previously hard-fast ideas, and a revitalization of classic literature. One cannot help but see how

this would cause trouble for the Catholic Church, not just in Spain, but all over the known world.

Many concepts of the Renaissance irritated the Catholic Church, but perhaps it was the writings

of scholars of the time, criticizing the church and giving new ideas to the way religion should be

interpreted, that irritated the church. One such man Desiderius Erasmus was a humanist who

was infamous for his works on new ideology of doctrine. Erasmus is famous for his satires,

treatises, and critiques of the Catholic Church.10

In the Spanish Inquisition many people were

reported as being executed or punished because of their support of Erasmus’s writings.11

What

made Erasmus so irritating to the Catholic Church was his style of humanism, and how it

encouraged people to think for themselves. He irritated the Spanish Inquisitors so much that

there was, in fact, a conference in the city of Valladolid to discuss the problem of people in Spain

reading Erasmus’s works. The main problem that they had with his writings mostly dealt with

the way that Erasmus tended to translate ancient religious texts for the people to read for their

own and not have to have someone read the Latin version to them. This ability to read by

oneself the religious text caused the people to be able to meditate and question what they were

reading. According to an article also written by Homza, “the vernacular translation of the

9 Ibid., xxxvii.

10 Ibid., xxix.

11 Ibid., 125, 128, 132,154, 218, 219, 249.



5

Enchiridion had so enraged the members of Spain’s monastic orders and provoked such public

calumny that Inquisitor General Manrique had no alternative but to admonish their superiors

personally.”12

Also, it was the effects of the Reformation that contributed to the problems of the Spanish

Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition started out dedicated to the act of getting the Jews of Spain

to either convert to Christianity or leave. However, some under pressure converted but were

reported to relapse into their Jewish traditions. The Inquisition considered these relapses to be

heretical to the Christian faith that they claimed to have converted, hence the Spanish term ,

conversos. However, eventually the Inquisition began to persecute and prosecute individuals for

being heretics, for thinking in the new ways introduced by the Renaissance and Reformation.

For example, according to the source located in Homza’s book, the members of the Inquisition

met together to discuss these heretical ideas and to make it easier to prosecute people they felt

were guilty of thinking any of the listed ideas. Some of the heretical ideas were:

2. That the Father was made flesh like the Son, alleging the authority… 5. Although the words of consecration of the Eucharist were not spoken with the mouth,

it was enough to utter them internally.

8. Confession is not divine but positive law.

15. It was wicked to adorn the statue of our Lady, the Virgin Mary, and take her in a

procession through the street; it was idolatry.

25. That married people were more united to God while making love than if they had

been praying….13

If a person were to take this list of heretical ideas according to the Spanish Inquisition,

they would perfectly match with some of the ideas proposed by men like John Calvin or Martin

Luther. These men were the major figures during the Reformation, and it was these ideas that

caused the Spanish Inquisition so much worry. Anyone who refused to change their ways or

12 Lu Ann Homza, “Erasmus as Hero, or Heretic? Spanish Humanism and the Valladolid Assembly of

1527.” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 82-83.

13 Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 83-87.



6

failed to prove their innocence of heresy was found guilty and sentenced to be “relaxed to the

secular arm. This essentially meant that the individual was going to face execution at an event

called an Auto da Fé. It was at this event where people were invited to watch the heretics

executed, and it was used as a way of education and warning as to what happens when one fails

to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church.14

There are historians who question the idea of whether or not the Inquisition truly was a

secular or religious event. According to the historian Christine Caldwell Ames in her article,

“Does Inquisition Belong to Religious History,” it is difficult to answer whether it was a

religious event or not. While it is true that it appeared to the persecuted that this was a way for

the Catholic Church to control and repress the spread of heretical ideas, recent “…historians

have placed religious violence and the repression of religious minorities under the rubrics of

power, authority, society, and politics.”15

Ames later states that the Inquisition used the idea of

persecuting the heretic as a way to control an unstable society.16

Ames then solidifies the idea of

this thesis by discussing the contradiction of how if it was a religious event, the pious individuals

in charge of the persecution would try harder to convert these individuals and not just execute

them.17

Then throughout the rest of her article, Ames discusses how the Inquisitor would have

seen what they were doing in their time. At the end of the article, Ames comes to the conclusion

that “Religion’s persistent instability comes from that tectonic interpretation of other world and

14 Bethencourt, “The Auto da Fé ,” 156-168.

15 Christine Caldwell Ames, “Does Inquisition Belong to Religious History?” The American Historical

Review 110, no. 1 (February 2005): 12-13.

16 Ames, “Does Inquisition Belong to Religious History?,” 14.

17 Ibid., 15.



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real world, that pliancy of belief.”18

This means that one cannot truly figure out whether the acts

of the Inquisition were done out of religious fervor or not.

An author that may argue with that idea is Andrew Keitt. In his article “Religious

Enthusiasm and the Spanish Inquisition,” Keitt argues that it was the fervor and over-enthusiasm

of religion during that time that could have contributed to the events of the Reformation and the

Spanish Inquisition.19

People were so worked up over Christian and superstitious ideas that they

“…made a concerted effort to scrutinize claims of direct unmediated divine inspiration more

closely, to subject prophecies, apparitions, miracles, revelations, and other such examples of

supposedly supernatural religious phenomena to stricter control and more thorough

verification.”20

Keitt goes on to discuss how this idea of religion over zealousness spread like a

disease. He even intensifies this ideology by the use of key terms such as “outbreaks” and

“epidemics.”21

First, the Renaissance rejuvenates the people and causes them to think in

interesting ways. This new way of thinking both frightens and intrigues people, and it causes

them to start to have differing opinions. These different ideas then start to get people to gather

together and share their new ideas. Then once their ideas begin to spread, people get angry and

organizations like the Inquisition form. The Reformation intensifies this because people, such as

Martin Luther and John Calvin, introduce their new ideas, and people begin to accept them, and

this makes the Inquisition have to work even harder to make people stick with Catholicism and

stay away from the heretical ideas of Protestantism.

18 Ibid., 36.

19 Andrew Keitt, “Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the World.”

Journal of the History of Ideas 65, no. 2 (April 2004): 233.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid., 234.



8

A period of extreme religious fervor would have most definitely caused the people to see

anything unusual or odd to be a form of heresy. This idea of extreme heresy would have

definitely caused the Inquisition to persecute anyone they saw as a threat to the Catholic Church.

This idea is made obvious once one realizes that the Inquisition also persecuted what they

considered to be “witches.” Even before they were persecuted in the United States in the

seventeenth century, they were also persecuted in Europe in the sixteenth century. If Keitt is

right, and this period was full of people who were vigilant over anything supernatural or

peculiar, this would definitely make people be more apt to consider a person to be a mythical

entity such as a witch. Being able to prove whether these people accused of witchcraft were in

fact witches, it can be seen in the records that many people were persecuted and even executed

for being a witch. This heresy would have definitely caught the eye of the Inquisitors, and they

would have prosecuted these witches with the greatest severity. Although most of the victims of

the witch trials were women, occasionally there were also men accused of being a witch. Lu

Ann Homza and Emily Oster also agree with one similarity, and that is most of the women

involved in the witch persecutions were both poor and usually did not have a husband.22 During

this time it was peculiar for a woman to have no husband, and these widowed women were often

looked at with some sense of superstition. One can also go as far as to say that the events in

Europe led to the events that took place in Salem, Massachusetts. The similarities are extremely

obvious, and are easy for anyone to see. Both the European and Salem, Massachusetts

persecutions persecuted anyone that they considered to be a witch. The Inquisitors defined a

witch as anyone who was accused of making a pact with the Devil or knowing something that

they should not know. Obviously making a pact with the Devil would be a heresy against a to

22 Homza, The Spanish Inquisition, 153; Emily Oster, “Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in

Renaissance Europe,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 218.



9

God, so the Spanish Inquisition was against such actions. Another similarity is quite interesting.

It is during both times that the persecution was to be administered by a manipulative force.

During the Spanish Inquisition it was the Catholic Church that was persecuting the witches for

heresy. Then during the Salem Witch Trials, it was the Puritan ideology that was using its

Christian concepts to persecute anyone accused of being a witch. The Puritans emerged out of

the period of the Reformation. Their ideas on living a strict life of constant religious study and

pre-destination caused them to have a separation from the Catholic ideas. Emily Oster has

another interesting idea of why these two persecutions even occurred. She states that she had

found a correlation between the rise and fall of the temperatures and the rise and fall of the

executions of witches. During warmer times, there were less witch trials and in cooler times

there were more trials. She attributes this idea to the economy of the areas during the rise and

fall in temperature. During times of regular weather Oster states that people were happy and

were not suspicious of events. However, when temperatures began to fluctuate they began to

blame it on witches and there began to be rises in witch trials. Now if there is a similarity

between the temperature fluctuations in Spain and Salem, Massachusetts, that requires more

research, but that would be interesting to see if there was a correlation in the information. (See

Figure to see visual representation of what is described above).23

23 Oster, “Withcraft, Weather, and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe,” 217.



10

24

To this point it has been discussed that the Spanish Inquisition was a very important time

in world history. The Spanish Inquisition was more than just a single event in which Catholic

Spanish priests persecuted, prosecuted, and executed people accused of heresy. The Spanish

Inquisition was a time not to be studied by itself, but in the context of other events in history. As

it has been discussed, the Spanish Inquisition is a period of time tied to the Renaissance and

Reformation periods. While these two events are often studied together, sometimes the

Inquisition is given not much more than a paragraph, a chapter if it is lucky. The Spanish

Inquisition is a vital time in history, and it is connected to the Renaissance and Reformation in

many ways. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Renaissance occurred, and

through it births the new ideas of renewal in the classics and the concept of humanism. These

24 Ibid.



11

ideas of humanism then influenced people all over Europe and the rest of the world to think

about humanity and what it means to be a person. However, it also caused a new growth in

thought about religion and what role man and God play in contrast with each other. It is this

question of how God should be worshipped that caused the perfect time to develop the Catholic

Inquisition. In this Inquisition the Catholics’ goal was to bring authority over the heretics and

execute or punish them if they refused to convert to the Catholic idea of Christianity. However,

with the emergence of the Reformation, more people were rebelling against those ideas and

causing the rise in the Spanish Inquisition, and causing it to become seen as a society bent on

domination. It was also a time of renewal in superstitions not seen since ancient times. Beliefs

in witches and mystic spirits flourished and caused people to question changes in temperature or

weather patterns. However, currently the Spanish Inquisition is a topic that is not often studied

as well as it should be. That is why the book The Spanish Inquisition by Lu Ann Homza is a

great place to look. Homza’s book may not stand historiographically to the same heights as

other writers of the Inquisitions, but it is definitely a great place to start. One cannot discuss the

Inquisition without talking about the Reformation or the Renaissance. Not only can a person see

the connections with Homza’s book, but it is Homza’s goal to get people interested in this very

interesting time in World History. That is why Homza used the primary sources to form an

anthology of study. She wanted the reader to hear about the Inquisition from the words of the

people involved. She wanted them to read the words, no matter biased or negative they may or

may not be. She wanted it to be real, so the reader could think for themselves on the topic.

Bibliography



12

Ames, Christine Caldwell. “Does Inquisition Belong to Religious History?” The American

Historical Review 110, no. 1 (February 2005): 11-37.

Bethencourt, Francisco. “The Auto da Fé: Ritual and Imagery.” The Journal of the Warburg

and Courtauld Institutes 55, (1992): 155-168.

Homza, Lu Ann. Editor. The Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614: An Anthology of Sources.Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. 2006.

Homza, Lu Ann. “Erasmus as Hero, or Heretic? Spanish Humanism and the Valladolid

Assembly of 1527.” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 78-118.

Keitt, Andrew. “Religious Enthusiasm, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Disenchantment of the

World.” Journal of the History of Ideas 65, no. 2 (April 2004): 231-250.

Oster, Emily. “Witchcraft, Weather and Economic Growth in Renaissance Europe.” The

Journal of Economic Perspectives 18, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 215-228.

Parker, Geoffrey. “Some Recent Work on the Inquisition in Spain and Italy.” The Journal of Modern History 9, no. 3 (September 1982): 519-532.

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