what was the Spanish Inquisition?
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So, the Christians conquered Spain, which had previously been Muslim. They celebrated their victory by announcing that all Muslims and Jews (the Muslim rulers had been a lot more tolerant of Jews than the new regime was) were required to either convert or emigrate; and if emigrating, they were only allowed to take what they could carry. A bunch of the inhabitants of Spain chose to “convert” in order stay in Spain and keep their property; but although nominally Christian, they continued to practice their old faiths in secret.
The Spanish Inquisition was set up to deal with this problem: to *inquire* into the beliefs and practices of people who called themselves “Christian”, to make sure that they were genuine Christians and not fakes. Anyone found guilty of believing the wrong things or worshipping incorrectly would be executed.
It got just a teensy little bit out of hand. The problem was that the Inquisition was allowed to seize the property of anyone it executed, so had an incentive to convict as many people as possible. In general the pattern was that the Inquisition would come arrest you, inform you that you had already been proven guilty on the basis of someone else’s confession, and that you would be tortured until you also confessed and named at least N other co-conspirators. Once you named enough random people, it would execute you, seize your property, and arrest whoever you’d named.
Basically the same phenomenon as the “witch hunts” that would later plague America.
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