SPAIN

       This section talks about the Spanish inquisition which lasted from 1478 till 1834.  Spain was very dedicated to the catholic religion.  Spain was not very unified during this time so they came up with the idea of unifying the religion of Spain and making it soley Catholic.  A lot of the European Jews lived in Spain at the time and were fine until King Henry the III of Castile Leon started persecuting them.  He started the Spanish Inquisition.  He was the first to try and convert Jews to Christianity.  He started making the Jews lives terrible and eventually they weren't accepted in Spanish society. "Thepogroms of 1391 were especially brutal, and the threat of violence hung over the Jewish community in Spain. Faced with the choice between baptism and death, the number of nominal converts to the Christian faith soon became very great. Many Jews were killed, and those who adopted Christian beliefs—the so-called conversos (Spanish: “converted”)—faced continued suspicion and prejudice" - Encyclopaedia Britannica.  Jews were faced with many issues during King Henry the III's reign.  

       After King Henry III's rule, in 1478, Pope Sixtus IV declared that the churchs may elect inquisitors to run the Inquisition.  These Inquisitors were the bosses of what happened to the jews and how they were treated, yet they weren't the ones with the most power.  The Grand Inquisitor ran the entire thing.  The most know Grand Inquisitor was Tomás de Torquemada.  Most Jews and Muslims were banished from Spain and a lot died from torture.  Torquemada had brutal ways but was instructed by Ferdinand and Isabella to banish or baptise those who were left.  That is exactly what he did and more than 160,000 Jews were banished from Spain. "When the Reformation began to penetrate into Spain, the relatively few Spanish Protestants were eliminated by the Inquisition. Foreigners suspected of promoting Protestant faiths within Spain met similarly violent ends. Having largely purged the country of Jews and Muslims—as well as many former members of those faiths who had converted to Christianity" - Encyclopaedia Britanica.  

       After Spain had become purely Roman Catholic, they sought to find and eliminate all those Catholics that didn't devote themselves to the church.  The looked for those who didn't worship 100% in the Catholic religion and sought to imprision them on accounts of heresy.  Heresy means, "belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine." - Google.  They even tried to charge Saint Ignatius of Loyola on these charges after arresting him twice but failing to prosecute him.  They even charged the archbishop of Toledo, the DominicanBartolomé de Carranza.  He was sentanced to 17 years in prision for commiting heresy.  

      The Spanish Inquisition lasted until the 1800s.  It slowly started to weaken as parts of Catholocism broke out into seperate groups.  Even when the Catholics started to seperate into different forms of Catholocism, they were still prosecuted.  Eventually the inquisition was being pushed back.  Most countries held off the Inquisition.  The Spanish Inquisition got less rough after Torquemada and weren't as extreme but still continued.  Spain started to get better but didn't get fixed for a while still. That was until in the 1800s, A few people stepped in and started to fix the mistake created 330 years ago. "The Spanish Inquisition was suppressed by Joseph Bonaparte in 1808, restored by Ferdinand VII in 1814, suppressed in 1820, restored in 1823, and finally suppressed permanently in 1834." - Encyclopaedia Britanica.  The Spanish Inquisition lasted 356 years until it was finally terminated.