Spanish Inquisition

Dr. Cecil Roth [1899-1970] has put out numerous books on the topic of the Jews. He was educated in Great Britain, and lived both abroad and in the United States. He was a foremost authority on the history of world Jewry. In this book, Dr. Cecil Roth documents the long series of events leading up to the Inquisition and the three-and-a-half centuries of torment that comprise this bloody epic of human history. It is done objectify, but with a candor and wit which is regrettably deficient by writers of today. The book covers the origins of the Spanish inquisition in both Spain and Portugal, as well as how it spread to the New World. The reliable author talks of the Muslims who were forced to convert, and the Protestants who suffered under the hand of the Catholic Church. The book covers the period of time from the expulsion of 1492, to the early 20th century. This book was written in 1933. If there is one book on the Jewish expereince in Iberia you desire, this is it.

If one is looking for a solid history of the Spanish Inquisition that will introduce the reader with the main events and features of that peculiar institution, one could do worse than read this book. One could also do better, by looking instead at Peters INQUISITION or Henry Kammen's THE SPANISH INQUISITION. But since neither of those books is perfect (Peters covers the Inquisition in all its forms, and as a result the Spanish Inquisition in less detail, while Kammen tends to minimize some of the atrocities), Roth remains an extremely viable alternative.The strongpoint of Roth's account is the clarity with which he tells the story, in particular highlighting some of the consequences that ought to have been anticipated from the manner in which the Inquisition was constructed. For instance, the Inquisition acquired the financial holdings of those whom it convicted of heresy. This, of course, provided the Inquisitors with powerful financial motivation to either find the accused guilty or to extort money from them. The weakness of Roth's book is that while he hints at other views about events of the Inquisition, he never explains what these other views are, or what the underlying issues are.I am utterly mystified by one reviewer who seems to criticize this book because it accuses the Church of anti-Semitism. Is this news? The entire initial point of the Spanish Inquisition was to ferret out Jews who had forcibly been converted to Catholicism and still retained their Jewish beliefs and ceremonies. I am not sure how this cannot be interpreted anti-Semitism, unless one is using some very unusual criteria. Morever, scholars working in a number of areas have detected a fair degree of anti-Semitism in the history of Roman Catholicism. Does this mean that all Roman Catholics in history have been anti-Semites? Absolutely not. But it does mean that it is a phenomenon that has reappeared over and over throughout European history. What possible reason would anyone have for denying that the Spanish Inquisition was not profoundly anti-Semitic? That it was would seem to undeniable to anyone with even the most cursory acquaintance with Spanish history. Other reviewers have felt that Roth is merely out to criticize the Catholic Church. Simply because he critiques one aspect of the Catholic Church doesn't mean that he would find nothing of value within Catholicism. Roth was himself Jewish, so he was not writing from within the Catholic tradition. But I can't understand why someone writing from within the tradition couldn't arrive at an assessment very close to that of Roth's.So, while this isn't the best book on the Spanish Inquisition (indeed, no clearly best book would seem to exist currently), this is a very adequate survey of the subject.

I read this book in prep school many moons ago and continue to read to it. It gives an excellent overview of the church and its influence over the populous. It displays during royalist times how the church worked for Ferninand and Isabel and suceeding ancestors of Spanish royality and reduced the role of secular government. The last chapter is riveting "the decline and fall" as it shows how secular government tried to overtake the holy tribunal as royalist rule dwindled because of misappropriations of the Marranos and the birth of new religion known as Islam today. The concept of 'appeasement' is also raised in this chapter which is a basis of the 'puritans' that migrated to the northeast section of North America. It can be inferred that this book was the basis of Adolph Hitler's philosphy with the cleansing of Jews and Protestants as non conformists to the function of the 'holy office'.

I bought this book for an overview of the history of the Inquisition, and one reason I selected it was because of the date it was written (1937), only about a hundred years after the end of the Inquisition. Roth's research in non-trivial. Of particular interest are the appendices which contain an actual record of a specific trial and a "Lista" of 1731.