No Spanish Inquisition

The Spanish Inquisition was established by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478.
The Spanish Inquisition was targeted to rid Spain of all non-Catholics.
Suppose there was no Spanish Inquisition.
 
But...

"We'll always have the Inquisition, TODAY!!"

Mel Brooks



P.S.
Aktarian
You've just been made illegal in Washington State
So now its 21:(
 
I've read a lot disclaimers (can't provide source right now, but includes previous threads in this forum) that affirm that the "bad legacy" of the Spanish Inquisition as a bloody thirsty cabal of religious fanatics bent on rooting out witchcraft is a repercussion of the "Black Legend" (basically, hundreds of years of British and French propaganda against the Spaniards that paints them as savages and obscurantists).

For a start, it would seem that the "casualties" of the Inquisition were far less numerous than the popular conception imagines, and that it was, at least for a time, quite a "progressive" institution regarding procedural matters. They innovated in attributing the burden of proof to the accusation for example, instead of demanding from the defendant to produce evidence of his own inocence. Also, the infamous "let's burn witches" mentality was already ingrained in the masses' consciouness (specially rural folk), and the Inquisitors actually were more rigid with determining what was heretic and what was not. They actively tried to face anti-Catholic phenomena not based on superstition, but rather on legislation and education of the commoners. Anyways, all of this perhaps was washed aways by Protestant Reformation, when it became a fervent competition to see who gets more adepts.

If we adopt those suppositions as true, then modern Procedural Law perhaps would have a rather different logic (I myself don't think this would be carried to modern day, as many concepts of contemporary Law doctrines actually were born from Illuminism and Liberalism). Anyways, I study Law, so this kind of stuff, even if not of macro-historical importance is relevant to me :p

I'm not entirely sure how this would affect colonial affairs, but we can't forget that the Inquisition was stablished right before the discovery of the Americas, and gained impetus during the height of the Spanish colonization.

I do remember the Jesuits, for example, had - on early phases of colonial establishment at least - an instrumental purpose, and actively tried to resist the extermination of natives and emphasized the policy of baptism instead slavery... I have no idea how IOTL this was related to the Inquisition, but perhaps an ATL with no Inquisition has a more pervasive influence of the Jesuit order, in the metropolis and the colonies.
 
You could say (if you choose to look at the business with an outsider's eye) that the Society of Jesus was intended to make up for the flaws of and clean up the mess left by the Spanish Inquisition.


Let's start a bit further back; with the papal inquisition of the late twelfth/early thirteenth centuries. This had largely been a response to the surge of new ideas as a result of the 'little renaissance' that was the first fruits of the plunder of the Crusades- mostly graeco-roman rediscovery. Orthodoxy suddenly became an issue in a way that it had not really been since the fifth century.

The problem from the church's point of view being that these early inquisitors were curious too, were rarely men of blood and iron but usually bookish and learned themselves, and generally quite interested in what these heretics thought and why. Emmanuel LeRoy Ladurie's book is good on this.

Generally, in front of the papal inquisition, you had quite a good chance of being able to talk your way out of trouble- provided you were actually innocent (by their standards), they would likely let you go; they were genuinely concerned about guilt and innocence in a way we don't see again until at least the rise of Scotland Yard.


...And the Spanish Inquisition was established, largely to clear out the crypto- Islamics from Spain in the wake of the Reconquista, in the belief that the Papal Inquisition had been far too soft, these were harder times and much harder measures were necessary and permissible.

The operations of the papal inquisition were hardly peaceful, considering they were often accompanied and preceded by military force, but the Spanish inquisition proceeded on the assumption of malice, chasing hidden traitors rather than lost sheep, and things did become much more brutal on the ground.


The Jesuits are established after- and make no sense without- the Reformation; they were both a reform movement within the Church and a counterattack against Protestantism, and some of the variations on Christianity they gave rise to, with missionary activity being taken by the locals in their own ways, are so fascinatingly strange they would have made a papal inquisitor's brain curl up. (The church has frequently regarded the Jesuits as too clever for their own good.)


Anyway, without the Spanish Inquisition, well, Spain would not have been entirely cleared of Moriscos and Jews, and the Spanish people would not have been taught to fear their own government- not quite so much, anyway.
 
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