Was the spanish Inquisition cruel
The Spanish Inquisition started to protect the Christian religion from heretical attacks yet despite this it has been described as "tyrannical and cruel". The Inquisition has been stereotyped as an organisation that used physical torture to extract phoney confessions, that made everyone even the innocent nervous of acting suspiciously and the killing of thousands of people.
The Inquisition affected all the religions in Spain at that present time from Jews, Moors, conversos, Moriscos and even Christians (including some humanists) it can be said that nobody was safe. The conversos were the first to beare the brunt of the Spanish Inquisition. Anti semitism was growing fast between the conversos and Jews and Christians. The Catholic Spaniard was wary of the converso because of the way the Jews had been converted, which was forcefully. It was believed that the majority of conversos still practised their old religion, this caused a problem for any kingdom because they were supposed to be Christians and were practising another faith, this was heresy. The matter was not helped by the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada whom despised Jews and conversos, as he could not touch the Jews (The Inquisition only dealt with Christian problems) he concentrated in wrong footing the conversos. When a converso killed an Inquisitor it was all that he needed to turn on them. Many conversos were killed irrespective of the fact that they might truly practise their new religion. This was cruel but it solved the problem of bloodshed in Spain, its co existence was warring thin, giving way to fights between the two religions the hard line the Inquisition took solved the problem. In 1493 the Jews were given three months to convert or face expulsion from Spain here the Inquisition was still using fairly non violent and threatening techniques to create order in Spain. The Jews could have been executed but they were given a choice if they didnt like it they could go somewhere else. This wasnt unusual, Jews were discriminated all over Europe so it wasnt just Spain, in some degrees the Spanish were much more leniant on the Jews than any other country at that time, so for this stage we can not say that the organisation was strictly cruel to the Jew but more toward the conversos.
In 1492 the state of Granada was finally taken over by Ferdinad and Isabella. Granada used to be since the 8th century an Islamic state sice it was taken over this posed a problem for them as now Ferdinand and Isabella had taken over the stae would now become Catholic. When Cisneros became Inquisitor the gentle conversions were made to be forced and this completly ended Spanish leniancy they were baptised and under Charles I edicts there culture and clothes were attacked. However despite these edicts very little was done to stop them practising their culture.
At this point in time the Inquisiton can be seen as not a [next page]