Inquisition, The
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
The, a name given usually to an organization in Spain for the detection and suppression of heresy. It is known also as the "Holy Office." It was established in 1480, in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, at Seville. At the beginning we may believe readily a sincere desire to weed out error and to win persons back from a wrong belief lay at the foundation. It seems equally certain that the lust of power and the desire to bring rivals to the dust actuated those in control. Two names in power, Tomas of Torquemada and Ximenes, are associated forever with a reputation for cruelty. The inquisitors were usually Dominican monks. Our knowledge of the inquisition is derived chiefly from Jesuit writers. It was aimed primarily at the Jews and Moors. Many of these were wealthy. Their property afforded a rich booty, which throws an additional suspicion on the sincerity of the inquisitors. During the first year of operation a local historian certifies that 298 victims were burned in Seville alone, and that no less than 2,000 were burned in the archbishopric. The Holy Office had no respect for persons. The wealthy Jew, the Moor, the peasant, the merchant, the priest, even a cardinal, were haled before the inquisitors. Queen Isabella, though a zealous church-woman, had a tender heart. "In the love of Christ and his Maid Mother," said she, "I have caused great misery and have depopulated towns and districts, provinces and kingdoms." In the reign of Charles V, her grandson, and his son, Philip II , the Holy Office extended its inquiries into the Netherlands. Many suffered also in Italy and Sicily. 30,000 executions took place in Spain alone. Although the inquisition fell off little by little as more modern ideas prevailed, it was not suppressed in Italy and Spain until the time of Napoleon. In fact a Jew was burned and a Quaker was hanged in Spain as late as 1826. In magnitude and ferocity the inquisition is unparalleled in the annals of history. An official burning of a heretic was known as an auto-da-fe, or an act of faith. In order to escape passing a partisan judgment, however, we have only to remember that atrocities very similar in character were perpetrated on a small scale in Puritan New England . See Dominicans
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 figure of "30,000 executions ... in Spain alone" came ultimately from Juan Antonio Llorente, a former secretary of the Spanish Inquisition writing in the 1810s; since the 1970s historians such as Gustav Henningsen, Jaime Contreras and Henry Kamen have counted the surviving trial records themselves and put the death sentences actually carried out between 1480 and 1834 in the low thousands, with the great majority of the roughly 150,000 cases ending in penance, fines or imprisonment. The claim that the tribunal ended "in the time of Napoleon" is also too early: Spain's Inquisition was abolished in 1808, restored in 1814, and finally suppressed in 1834, its last execution being the schoolmaster Cayetano Ripoll, garrotted at Valencia in 1826. The Roman branch, the "Holy Office" of the entry, never closed: it was renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965 and the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2022. Its own archives were opened to outside scholars in 1998, and in 2000 John Paul II made a public apology for the violence done in the church's name.
Written for this edition, 2026.