Joan of Arc and the Spanish Inquisition
After Joan of Arc had turned the tide of war in favor of France, she was captured by the Burgundians, sold on a bribe to their English allies, and tried in 1431 by the Inquisition.
Both the English and the church had reasons to try her. The English recognized that Joan represented the threat of a unified France. The Earl of Warwick held her as an English prisoner instead of turning her over to the bishop. He surrounded the court of the Inquisition with English soldiers, threatened and otherwise influenced the judges to condemn her, and organized her burning immediately after the verdict.19The church also saw Joan as a challenge to its unified authority. For months she was questioned by experts in theology and law. She impressed them with her simple piety but, as well, with her astute replies to their ensnaring questions. She had heard voices and appealed to God and to the saints. Further, she was reluctant to give full obedience to the pope and the church hierarchy by admitting that the voice of the men in the court she faced was the voice of God. At the time the church was engaged in a campaign of major proportions against those who claimed supernatural powers and magic. Unless Joan agreed that the church, Christ’s vicar on earth, could override her voices, they would have to condemn her. Even when she was offered the possibility of having her case heard by the pope, which would free her from English control, she refused. She could not recognize the pope’s authority over her voices, only over matters of faith.20 To the Inquisition, as to many involved in trials of nationalists in any age, this spelled anarchy. Augustine would have sided with the Inquisition’s duty to correct Joan, and, given a change of language and context, so would many in our time.
The Inquisition came in two separate editions, medieval and Spanish.
The medieval Inquisition had been established two centuries before Joan’s trial by Pope Gregory IX in 1233 to bring unified authority to the church. The Spanish Inquisition operated independently of the papacy as an arm of the secular rulers to unify Spain, not the church. Granted, it would be difficult to classify the medieval Inquisition as a system of trials within the rule of law. It had replaced the episcopal courts which had operated under an equitable process in Roman law.21 But the Spanish Inquisition is an extreme example of expediency made legal. It was a tribunal of Spanish nationalism.Although the Spanish Inquisition lasted for more than three centuries, it was at the height of its terror when Ferdinand and Isabella employed it to unify their rule. Jews had suffered persecution in Spain long before Aragon and Castile were joined in 1479 under Ferdinand and Isabella. The Muslims persecuted both Jews and Christians. Later, beginning in the thirteenth century, Christians persecuted both Jews and Muslims, especially Jews. Pogroms in 1391 wiped out the Jewish ghettos, murdering 4,000 in Seville alone, and compelling the rest into baptism.22
Under Ferdinand and Isabella the Inquisition accelerated with such ardor that Pope Sixtus IV, who had earlier authorized the rulers to name the priests of the Inquisition, rebuked it saying that:
The Inquisition has for some time been moved not by zeal for the faith and salvation of souls, but by lust for wealth, and…many true and faithful Christians, on the testimony of enemies, rivals, slaves and other lower and even less proper persons, have without any legitimate proof been thrust into secular prisons, tortured and condemned as relapsed heretics, deprived of their goods and property and handed over to the secular arm to be executed, to the peril of souls, setting a pernicious example, and causing disgust to many.23
This strong papal admonition, far from cooling the Inquisition, only inflamed Ferdinand’s determination. Pope Sixtus, after hearing from Ferdinand, agreed to suspend the bull, giving the Inquisition under Ferdinand’s direction a green light.
More significantly for the development of the totalitarian regime which the Spanish Inquisition became, Pope Sixtus in 1483 agreed to the appointment of Tomás de Torquemada as inquisitor general, uniting the tribunal directly under the crown.24Baptized Jews (conversos) and Muslims (moriscos) were persecuted by the Inquisition on the slightest pretext for relapsing into their old faith. After the Reformation began, Christians likewise were persecuted for heresy. Unbaptized Jews and Muslims were forced to leave Spain, an exodus of several million. In all, the terror of the Spanish Inquisition unified the new national state. The state, in turn, confiscated the property of its victims and achieved a rigid rule over an orthodox society. Spain was purified, but more important, it was unified. The price in human suffering was high.
Punishment by the Spanish Inquisition took a variety of forms. The mildest was a penance such as wearing a yellow garment called a sanbenito. It was a smock with a diagonal cross on it, worn as a mark of infamy for a few months or for life. It had to be worn by those condemned whenever they went out in public. Imprisonment could be decreed by the Inquisition for a short time or, in the case of heresies deemed “perpetual and irremissible,” for life. Scourging by being “whipped through the streets,” while passers-by and children threw stones to show their hatred for heresy, was another form. Confiscation of property was imposed whenever possible. Since informers received a percentage of the confiscated property, the temptation to inform was heightened, but the temptation was even greater for the government, which received most of the confiscated property. Wealth confiscated by the Inquisition was used to fight the war in Granada against the Muslims and some of it was used to finance a risky expedition proposed by an Italian, Christopher Columbus.25
The ultimate penalty of the Inquisition was burning at the stake.
This was reserved for those who failed to confess before punishment was pronounced or for those who did confess in time but had relapsed into heresy. The Inquisition professed that it never killed. The heretic was surrendered, or, as the Inquisitorial jargon had it, “relaxed” to the secular arm which would hold the public ceremony of burning heretics, or, to use the euphemism, carry out an auto-da-fé, an act of faith.What about the Jews who remained Jews? Torquemada had a plan which would bring national unity to Spain by ridding it of all Jews. He convinced Ferdinand and Isabella in March 1492 to sign a decree forcing all Jews of whatever age or condition to leave Spain by the end of July. They could take with them only what they could carry but no money, silver, or gold. Over 100,000 Jews, as a result of Torquemada’s plan, disposed of their homes and all they possessed in order to leave Spain on pain of death. It is said that as Columbus set out for the unknown, his three ships passed several vessels carrying Spanish Jews away from Spain toward exile and dispersion.26