Spain: Notable Groups, Organizations and Movements

1400s - 1500s - Navigation Schools (All Facts)

• Founded in inspiration of the voyages of Christopher Columbus

• They produced a new group of expertly trained mathematical and nautical technicians, which greatly influenced the standing of science in Europe

1400s - Conversos (All Facts)

• Ex-Jewish Christian converts in Spain

• Many were forced to convert on pain of death, and so, were not very strong in their Christian faith

• Due to the Spanish Inquisition, thousands of the namesake throughout Spain were

  • arrested

  • imprisoned

  • burnt at the stake

  • tortured to extract confessions that they were still practicing their old faith of Judaism

  • encouraged to betray their friends and family

1400s - Moors (All Facts)

• Name used to refer to Muslims living in North Africa, Spain and Portugal at the time

• They were expelled from the Kingdom of Castile if they were not already baptized during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella

1478 - 1834 - Spanish Inquisition (All Facts)

• It begun under the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, with reluctant permission from Pope Sixtus IV, who regarded it as a breach of Church privilege

  • Spain’s Catholic kings obtained Pope Sixtus IV’s consent to appoint the namesake members of the namesake institution

  • Although it was set up by order of the Pope, it was mainly responsible to the Spanish crown

  • Although its first Inquisitor General was a Dominican Friar, it gradually became run by Catholic lawyers rather than monks

• It persecuted converted Jews and Muslims as well as Catholic intellectuals like St. Ignatius Loyola

  • Its main target was conversos, thousands of which were arrested, imprisoned, burnt at the stake, and sometimes tortured to extract confessions that they were still practicing their old faith

    • They were encouraged to betray their friends and family

  • It denounced the Jews as blasphemers and usurers, and encouraged every form of intolerance towards them

  • It acquired a fiercesome reputation for the cruel persecution of “deviants” in general and Jews in particular

• In Seville and Barcelona, many were being vigorously prosecuted

  • It spread to other cities in Aragon, despite local protests

• Each instance of the namesake institution began with edicts offering people a chance to confess their errors and also to denounce others

  • Only one informer was necessary for anyone to be charge

  • When anyone was convicted, they were liable to be “relaxed” (burnt alive)

• Institution in which most penitents / converts

  • suffered heavy fines

  • could not ride horses

  • could not bear arms

  • were forbidden to wear anything but the coarsest clothes

  • were sometimes forced to dress only in green, with cloth crosses on their clothes

• In the first 20 years of the namesake institution,

  • several thousand people were thought to have been burnt at the stake

  • more than 500 people were “relaxed” (burnt alive)

  • more than 5,000 people were “reconciled” by their confessions

  • many were sentenced to march for six Fridays to the cathedral, whipping themselves in the streets

• Around 100 years into the namesake institution,

  • only 3-4 people in the whole of Spain were executed by it, generally “Old Christians” who were neither Jewish nor Protestant but did not conform to prevailing views

    • For instance, people brought before the tribunal had been charged with witchcraft, marital misbehavior, and superstition

  • in rural areas it handed out minor sentences for trivial offenses like blaspheming while drunk or using love-potions to seduce the opposite sex

  • it was used to stamp out homosexuality

  • it was still a powerful force restricting what went into people’s minds as it had been effective as a censor

  • it jumped on and censored Juan de Mariana after he had published a work reminding Spain of the namesake institution’s cruel past

1400s - 1500s - Marranos (All Facts)

• Spanish (and Portuguese) Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism but secretly continued to practice Judaism

1500s - 1600s - Moriscos (All Facts)

• Ex-Muslim Christian converts in Spain

• Some genuinely believed in Christianity and may have even tried to give up their Moorish ways

• However, the majority of the 300K-strong community by the time of King Philip III essentially remained Muslims

  • Their language, society, clothes, customs, and even their eating and drinking remained alien to native Spaniards

  • Few truly abandoned the Quran

• In order to remain residents of Spain, they had to convert to Christianity

  • They were pressured to change their ways for a century, for with a large presence in North Africa, they were seen as a major threat to Spanish national security

  • They had remained second-class subjects throughout Spain and were exploited, hated, and feared, and plagued by bandits of their own race

  • Despite all this, they maintained resistance to assimilation

• Under the reign of King Philip II, they were persecuted and were forbidden to speak Arabic or wear their traditional dress

• Under the reign of King Philip III, they were ordered to be completely expelled from Spain

  • This was because they refused to fully assimilate in Spanish society

1500s - Mestizos (All Facts)

• People who were half Native American and half European

1503 - House of Trade / Casa de Contratación (All Facts)

• Office established during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, in Seville in Spain, to supervise

  • trade with the New World

  • the expenses of Christopher Columbus

1509 / 1524 - Council of the Indies (All Facts)

• Founded during the reign of King Ferdinand / King Charles

• Founded to take responsibility for administering Spanish conquests in America

• Its first president was Garcia de Loaisa

• In 1570, it passed a law prohibiting Mestizos from becoming notaries / caciques / local rulers

1540 - Jesuit Order / Society of Jesus (All Facts)

• Catholic Order established in Paris, France, by St. Ignatius Loyola of Spain and six of his companions

  • A papal bull of Pope Paul III confirmed its establishment

  • Order which began when St. Ignatius Loyola and his six companions took a vow to offer themselves to the pope to be sent wherever he wished to convert pagans and infidels, even the Ottoman Turks

• Its main object was “the propagation of the faith”

• It was they, above all, who had spearheaded the Catholic Counter-Reformation, to regain the religious ground from the Protestant Reformation

• Catholic Order which

  • does not require its members to say the daily office together, like monks, but only to pray silently

  • requires an essential vow of total obedience to the pope and to the Grand Superior (Loyola was the first Grand Superior)

  • requires one to prepare by training with, reading, and implementing St. Ignatius Loyola’s “Spiritual Exercises”

  • believed that subject themselves to this ascetic discipline will teach them to master the will and learn total obedience to their superior and to the church, being prepared to believe that what seems black to them is white if the church declares that it is

  • became a teaching order both at home and across Europe, establishing schools in the slums of Rome and providing education for the best families at their colleges and universities such as those in Rome and at Padua

  • was renown for their teaching methods

• They worked amongst the native Americans, hoping to establish permanent missions in (Spanish) Florida and what is now modern-day Georgia and South Carolina

• In 1571, eight of their members were on a mission in modern-day Virginia but were murdered by natives there who had pretended to be their friends

  • The native killers were led by Don Luis, a native who had been converted to Christianity, taken a Spanish name, and had even been a guest at the court of King Philip II

• In 1608, they founded Paraguay, their own religious utopian colony in South America

• In 1697, they founded Loreta, their first mission in California

1579 - The Theater of the Cross (All Facts)

• Founded during the reign of King Philip II

• Located in Madrid