Spanish Inquisition

Unlike their Imperial counterparts, the Spanish Inquisition did not shove Inquisitorial retinues up people's asses for the slightest of offences. The Imperial Inquisition was, however, partially inspired by the Spanish Inquisition, or at least, the romanticized version of it and the one from the Black Legend, with the grimdark turned up more than a few notches of course.

Background

The Spanish Inquisition wasn't the first such order to exist, it drew heavily from the Medieval Inquisition. The Medieval Inquisition as we know it was formally establishedby Pope Gregorius IX around 1230, its goal to fight religious dissent (like for instance Catharism) in an unified way across Europa.

Origins

Fast-forward two centuries : the real-life Spanish Inquisition were a combined political/religious party formed in 1480 by the Spanish Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castille. While the reasons for their founding have been debated by historians, several clear goals (or more popular theories) are that it was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition under Papal control with one answerable to the Spanish monarchs.

While the groundwork was laid in 1478, the Spanish Inquisition was officially formed in the year 1480. For context, the reason why the Spanish monarchy wanted their own Inquisition was because Spain was in the final stages of the Reconquista, conquering Moorish Grenada ten years later. Spain, being only very recently unified and having conquered a great deal of land formerly held by Muslim rulers, wanted to maintain its existence through a strong central government supported by an orthodox system of laws & religion. All remaining Muslims were required to convert, but the monarchy wanted to make extra sure that they were being for realsies and wouldn't try to rebel or conspire with the Ottomans. They also threw in the Jews, because of the Jews' allegedly traitorous actions during much of the reconquista, allying with the Moors and often fighting alongside them such as in the Battle of La Higueruela (notice the banners) for one instance. The scope often changed with Spain's political agenda- Lutherans (who were making controlling the Netherlands more difficult) and unruly nobles often fell under investigation.

It is important to keep in mind that Inquisitions controlled by the Church (i.e. "actual" Inquisitions) were very different. For starters, they didn't kill people. The problem was that secular governments had their own laws about heresy...and were very torture and execution happy. This somewhat contributed to the end of the Inquisitions as Inquisitors weren't exactly enthusiastic about their jobs when they knew anyone found guilty faced horrific treatment but not finding them guilty so they could be forgiven by a priest would risk those people's souls. A real rock-and-a-hard-place situation. Catholic Inquisitors rarely decided there was enough evidence to go investigate an accusation and dismissed the claim as false. On the occasions they did investigate, they rarely found enough evidence for a trial. When the investigation did progress to a trial, the Inquisitors rarely found someone guilty. When someone was found guilty, they were given God's forgiveness and released. Torture was limited to about three minutes or so per day and no permanent damage of any kind was permitted. Often, Inquisitors refused to use torture or outright decried torture as sinful. The Catholic Inquisitors set standards of practice which grew into the modern day ideas of the humane treatment of prisoners and modern police investigative practices: for instance, they would allow any suspect brought before them to 'name those they considered mortal enemies', with any accusation/testimony by such a named person discarded as mere human grudges and revenge-mongering.

The politically-controlled Inquisitions were basically "you're guilty and I'm going to hurt you until you admit it" if you were a political enemy of the State, but were generally actually pretty good at their jobs when you were a random Joe.

Goals

The Spanish Inquisition was created during a time of high political development in Spain. At the end of the 15th Century, the Catholic Monarchs, Elizabeth I of Castilla and Ferdinand II of Aragon, were trying to unify all peninsular kingdoms into a single state that they might recover the legacy of the Visigothic Kingdom of old. However, it was still the Middle Ages, and this meant that pretty much all territories had their own set of laws, organizations and, of course, nobles that pretty much controlled most of the land. Medieval kings were not absolute rulers (yet), after all; they were bound by quite a lot of law with regards to their range of action, much more than many would assume. If Elizabeth and Ferdinand were to create an unified kingdom controlled by them and them alone, this massive division had to be overcome. And for that, this new Kingdom would need an organization that had authority everywhere.

It is always important to remember that the Spanish Inquisition was a political tool first and foremost (like the Gestapo). Alongside the Spanish Royal Guard (one of the first attempts to create a modern and stable army in Europe after the fall of Rome), the Spanish Inquisition was one of the organizations that were needed for the creation of a unified State in the whole Iberian Peninsula. The Inquisition targeted people and ideas that might have broken with the growing structure of Spain, and it just so happened that a religious organization was the perfect body to do so. Spain was an incredibly religious country at the time; centuries of Reconquista had seared in the medieval Spaniard's mind the idea of Christianity's right for the land over the infidel. The Spanish Inquisition worked for the Spanish monarchy, targeting cases of heresy, moral misconduct, treason, political dissidence... and all other similar crimes, while most of the time hiding them under a blanket of religious condemnation. Nobles not that loyal to the new monarchs? Accuse them of some religious misconduct, and you'd have the Inquisition keeping them under serious scrutiny. Printing books that have been deemed "problematic" by the Inquisition? You better watch out. Practice Muslim beliefs and sympathies (under a Christian façade)? You got a visit from the Inquisition. Trying to bring Protestantism to Spain? I hope you like barbecue... Witchcraft was usually laughed at as baseless superstition: The Inquisition hired some of the smartest and most prepared individuals at the time, so they were pretty enlightened about ignoring the magical and focus on the political side of things. Hollywood, popular media, and general knowledge (i.e. "common idiocy") led modern peoples to widely believe that the Witch Hunts were Catholic. They were actually Protestant; Catholicism has always held that witches do not exist (demons don't give a fuck about any deals). Witchcraft does but not witches (summon demon, get soul stolen instead of making a deal, no deal = no witch).

Remember than an accusation and investigation of the Inquisition could ruin someone's life, and that was intentional. Not only could the nobility lose everything they have (riches, titles and land that would go right into the crown's hands), but also end up ostracized from the community if they were ever condemned and punished. Fortunately, most of the guilty verdicts did not end with an execution, but rather a fine and/or incarceration. Yet the Inquisition were the ones who decided if the person was guilty or not and the local authorities were the ones who had to carry out the punishment for the crime themselves. And if that could happen to nobility, imagine what they could do to regular peasants... Also, because they were a religious corps in charge of (theoretically) rooting out heresy, they couldn't act against those who weren't Christian. They had no authority over Muslims and Jews because they were not heretics, "merely" unbelievers. The solution to that came in the form of the massive forced conversions to Catholicism during the later part of the 15th Century. Now everyone was under scrutiny.

Reputation

The Spanish Inquisition is often stated in popular media and medieval history as an example of Catholic intolerance and repression. Notably the first major authors of this idea were Protestants who disapproved of the Catholic Church and Heads of State at odds with Spain. Modern historians now question or disagree with earlier accounts concerning the severity of the Inquisition. Henry Kamen asserts that "the 'myth' of the all-powerful, torture-mad inquisition is largely an invention of nineteenth century Protestant authors with an agenda to discredit the Papacy". But due to a little thing called the printing press that the Spanish government (among others) didn't take seriously at the time, the Protestants happily made the Inquisition look as awful as they possibly could and by the time the Inquisitions stopped the "black legend" was there to stay (it didn't help that Spain was at the peak of its power and had plenty of rivals who were eager to drag its reputation through the mud).

After The Enlightenment and since the 19th century, this narrative continued. These groups capitalized on the narrative of a violently oppressive Spanish Inquisition and ran marathons with it ever since for the past 180+ years, eager to drag the reputation of the Catholic Church, all Christianity or religion itself through the mud. This still crops up in recent and comedic works; for example, the memetic "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!" originated from the British series "Monty's Python's Flying Circus". Pop cultural references to the Inquisition inevitably ignore the distinction between the Church-controlled Inquisition and the state-controlled ones because a fair and reasonable system typically makes for a dull movie.

There is an important life lesson to be had here: if you believe something because you saw it in a movie, a TV show, a game or you learned it second-hand, you need to fact-check. You should research it. And no, articles and such that just say “yeah, that’s the truth” are not research. Punching it into Google and reading the first thing it gives you isn't research either. Articles that explain the practices and history along with citing journals and such from that time is research (the Spanish Inquisition kept detailed records of their actions, most of which are in archives freely available to the public). If someone argued “everyone knows it” then remember that truth is not a democracy, feelings are not facts and that "common knowledge" is almost always wrong.

Punishments

Most of punishments the Spanish Inquisition inflicted on people declared guilty was merely paying a fine or a short jail sentence, execution was a far less common punishment for crimes. It's important to note that torture was not the punishment, torture was officially a means (and on paper at least a last resort) to extract a confession, though a rather academic point for the victim of said torture. Methods of torture included:

• Strappado: binding the victims hands behind their back and suspending them by their wrists. Sometimes a series of drops would be added, jerking the victim up and down and forcing their arms out of their sockets. Weights could be added to the victims body to make the hanging even more excruciating.
• Toca, or waterboarding: securing the victim to an inclined board and binding them so that they cannot move. Then the victim is gagged and has a cloth placed over his or her face, and water poured over it. Toca gives the victim a feeling of drowning, even if no water enters the nose or mouth. CIA agents go through it as part of their training and on average last only 14 seconds before begging to be released.
• The Rack: often considered the most painful of tortures by contemporaries. The victim had their hands and feet bound to rollers at opposite ends of a frame. In theory, the torturer would turn the rollers and the chains attached would dislocate the joints of the victim. In theory if the torturer continued to turn the rollers the victim's arms and legs would be torn off (probably not true, tendons and ligaments are incredibly strong. Reports of people being pulled apart by horses mention that they have to be helped by cutting the joints a bit to get the process started. Who knows though, maybe ratchets are just that effective, and some people spent a long time on the rack, which might loosen them up some).

There were, however, regulations for the Spanish Inquisition on how far the torture could go; no removing body parts and nothing that resulted in death. While it's a commonly publicized fact that the first head of the Spanish Inquisition (the infamous Torquemada) made frequent use of torture, a less known fact is that that the Pope at the time went to the King and Queen of Spain to try and rein in his cruelty (and as an example of problem with political elements in the Inquisition the King and Queen pressured him in various ways to keep his mouth shut about it). Despite this, the Spanish Inquisition are known to have been fairer, and used torture less often, than the secular courts at the time. There were several cases of people on trial in secular courts for lesser crimes who would blaspheme in the courtroom, just so they could be tried by the Spanish Inquisition instead, who would give them a fair(er) trial.

In a particular instance of "shit that wouldn't sound out of place in 40k", in 1256, Pope Alexander IV decreed that inquisitors could clear each other from any wrongdoing that they might have performed during torture sessions... except this decree was for the Medieval Inquisition, and predated the Spanish Inquisition by over 150 years.

Death Toll

Modern estimates based on incomplete but detailed records put the total number of people trialed from 1540 to 1700 at around 87,000, with 2,070 people being sentenced to death. With these death sentences, the numbers that ended with an execution in persona (the person is actually executed) is around 1,300. Some managed to escape the Inquisition before they were executed so instead they were executed in effigy, as in an effigy of the accused was burned in their place; "executions" in this manner (again, from 1540 to 1700) numbered at around 770. Even with records being re-examined in the wake of the Catholic Church opening historical archives, even the highest estimates from historians put the death toll below 5,000 across their 354 years.

This gives the Spanish Inquisitions trials during this period a death rate of less than 1-in-40, and this is before factoring in whether or not the death sentences were actually warranted given the Spanish Inquisition dealt with numerous crimes besides heresy.

Geopolitical Implication

Obviously the Inquisition didn't take place in a vacuum, but in a Europe that was very rapidly dividing itself up over religion. The extremes of the inquisitors, along with other incidents such as the St Bartholowmew's Day Massacre in France and the brief reign of "Bloody" Queen Mary I in England hardened opposition to Catholicism throughout pretty much all of Europe that stood to gain from seeing Spain knocked down. It also didn't help that Charles V by dint of ancestry was both King of Spain as well as the Holy Roman Emperor. Charles spent most of his reign making war with France and trying to hold Germany together even as Martin Luther tore it apart touting Protestantism in response to corruption among the clergy.

Charles's son Philip II inherited Spain and was a fanatical Catholic who was completely onboard with the Inquisition. However, having a lot of power and being an ideological nutter tends to leave you with no friends. The Dutch converted to Protestantism and revolted against Spanish rule, while the English had formed their own church and now started pirating Spanish ships. Eventually even reliably Catholic powers like France and north Italy were fighting border wars with Spain, presaging the chaos that would ensue soon after in the Thirty Years War.

By the time Cardinal Richelieu (yes, THAT Richelieu) came to power in France, the Spanish Hapsburgs had made themselves so unpopular from their fanaticism and warmongering that a catholic cardinal who used inquisition style persecution himself against protestants in his own country was willing to ally with protestant nations to fight Spain.

Later Years and Disbandment

The Spanish Inquisition began to lose influence in its later years, and was formally disbanded in the early-mid 19th century in the year 1834. While Napoleon's occupation of Spain had disbanded it 1808, his defeat and the return of Ferdinand the VIIth to the country meant that Napoleon's law became moot. Though, to be fair, Ferdinand didn't reinstate the Inquisition either, it was unpopular and pretty ineffective at this point, so it was supplanted by Juntas de Fe, a much smaller organization that was basically an Inquisition-lite. The Regent for the queen Elisabeth IInd of Spain, Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, finished the organization once after all in 1834, as a political maneuovre to win the liberal's support against the carlists.

"The Inquisition Still Exists"

There's a talking point in certain Urban Fantasy works that the Inquisition still exists.

And, yes, the Real World truth is that a version of the Inquisition does still exist. But it's wildly different from what you might picture, so "The Inquisition still exists!" is only sorta true.

To explain: The main Catholic Church's version, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on which the Spanish one was based, still exists. But the most they can do is excommunicate you. For more detail, see about the Church controlled Inquisition in the Origins section, above.

To continue from there, because they served a continuing valid purpose, and were usually fairly light hands, the main Inquisition never really went away. And with the removal of "heresy" from criminal law, any secular power they had was gone. Nowdays, they're an internal affairs watchdog and only a concern if you work for the Catholic Church.

Relating to /tg/

The Spanish Inquisition is not to be expected.

As noted previously, the current Inquisition of the Imperium of Man owes a lot of its concept to a popularized depiction of the Spanish Inquisition, right down to having their own Torquemada.

Also, Victoria Lamb makes some pretty badass Spanish Inquisitorial models.