Customer Reviews

The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an effort to produce an unbiased description and analysis of the Spanish Inquisition. Based on Kamen's remarkably thorough knowledge of early modern Spain, Kamen takes pains to present the Spanish Inquisition as neither the Black Legend of liberal 19th century historians or the needed force of Catholic apologists. As shown by Kamen, the Spanish Inquisition was not nearly as powerful or inhumane as its critics allege. He demonstrates that many of its most unsavory features were not products of a particularly brutal regime but in fact conventional for early modern europe. This book contains a wealth of interesting detail and Kamen meets his primary goal, that of presenting the inquisition in an objective fashion. This book has a major defect, which is its poor organization. Kamen presents this study in a series of topical essays with some overlapping and redundant narrative in each chapter. This often obscures the sequence in which important events occurred. In addition, important material for understanding the whole inquisition, such as its organization and methods, is not presented until well into the book, obscuring understanding of material in the earlier chapters. Despite Kamen's intent to produce a book for general readers, the organization of the book is really suited best for professional historians seeking information on controversial topics. This book is also limited in the sense that Kaman cannot, ultimately, account for the emergence of the Inquisition in Spain though one has the impression that it has a somewhat accidental character, and that it might have been a transient institution without the occurrence of the Reformation.

Kamen admirably doesn't attempt to answer all of the many questions that the Spanish Inquisition brings up. Neither does he attempt to reduce it to a simple explanation. Instead he shows us many aspects of the complicated history of the most famous tribunal in the world. Kamen's work is even handed and attempts to understand the Spanish Inquisition on a historical rather than polemic basis.

Kamen's book does fall down in two ways however. At times his arguments seem weak. For instance, in his discussion of inquisitorial censoring and its affect on Spanish literature he uses book sellers in Barcelona in an attempt to show that it the index of banned books had little effect. However, in other parts of the book he repeatedly points out in Catalan in general and Barcelona in specific the Inquisition had little power. Kamen also fails to give any kind of comparison of Spanish literary output before and after the index.

Kamen's second weakness is his failure to put the Spanish Inquisition in context. To a certain extent this is understandable. The book is already over 300 pages, not counting end notes, and a line needs to be drawn somewhere. However, it leaves out any details of the medieval inquisitions that were the basis for the Spanish Inquisition. It also doesn't do a very good job of comparing the Inquisition to other tribunals and judicial systems.

It also would have been nice if Kamen's final chapter "Inventing the Inquisition" had done a better job of explaining how the mythology of the Inquisition grew to be. For what it's worth, Edward Peters' Inquisition delves into many of these issues in more detail.

One note regarding the reader below from Florida. He recommends Jean Plaidy's Spanish Inquisition. It is worth noting that Plaidy's books are 40 years out of date and includes none of the wave of research that was came out in the 70s. For instance, Plaidy contends that the Isabella and Ferdinand "were determined to have a unified country, and they did not believe this ambition could be achieved unless all their subjects accepted one religion." This contention is hard to support given that Ferdinand and Isabella allowed Muslims to exist in their kingdom for 20 years after they forced Jews to convert or be exiled. It wasn't until the rule of Charles V that Muslims were given the choice between baptism and exile.

Kamen, who began researching the Spanish Inquisition as a graduate student nearly forty years ago, came out with this book in April of 1998 to correct many misrepresentations concerning the Spanish Inquisition that even he had once believed. Although the book is not as well written as it could be it is still deserving of five stars because of Kamen's excellent research into the inquisition itself as well as the myths surrounding it. This book is best read along side the pioneering work of Edward Peters' INQUISITION. Peters is a canon law expert and oversees the Henry Charle Lea library at the University of Pennsylvania. I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE ONE PARTICULAR POINT. SOME PEOPLE, BLINDED BY BIGOTRY WILL NOT TRUST KAMEN'S FINDINGS NO MATTER WHAT. There are many such people out there. Just look at the review posted by the guy from Panama. If he had a clue about what he was talking about he would know that NOBODY was burned at Salem. Those who were executed for witchcraft were hanged. This may seem like a tiny point, but this notice how this loser accuses Kamen of trying too hard to overturn myths and yet he promotes them himself!

Given the fact that Henry Kamen is Jewish himself, further adds to the objectiveness of this book. The spanish inquisition is often perpetuated as true when the members perpetuating it often have a very small understanding of the actual facts. Henry kamen, in this book, does a wonderful job of using facts and statistics in proving that the Spanish Inquisition was not what most people think.

I would also like to recommend Edward Peters, "Inquisition", who as a University of Pennsylvania professor, expels the myths and continues to show the true nature of the Inquisition. Show how the myths started and continued to multiply to laughable numbers.

Both books should be on the shelf of any objective person investigating the history of the inquisition.

I own a reprint of Kamen's original book of this title and the revised history book and they are superb starters for the period in question. Previous histories of the Spanish Inquisition focused on the more salacious anecdotal evidence. Lea's masterful book, long the standard, is terribly flawed because of his research. Lea's sources were largely English and French. England was a Protestant country that was at war with Catholic Spain and France, an emerging (Catholic) power was envious of Spain and needed to drive it down for colonial purposes in the new world. Therefore, Lea's sources were largely based on the propaganda of rivals. A previous review recommended books by Jean Plaidy, but Plaidy (aka Victoria Holt, etc) is a novelist. I have not read Plaidy's works so cannot assess them. I don't even know if they are novels. And in the past novelists have written servicable histories. But a novelist will still have his eye on the salacious, trying to shape raw facts into a story (if they use primary sources at all). There is no conflict of interest in using Vatican sources for the Inquisition as the Spanish Inquisition was Catholic, although a case may be made that it was guided more by "secular" governmental authorities (Torquemada was the confessor of Isabella of Aragon before being head of the inquisition). It's always hard to find that things one always believed are incorrect, and Kamen's presentation of the Spanish Inquisition may shatter long-held illusions. (I'm surprised the reviewer who recommended the Plaidy book didn't say Kamen was wrong because he didn't say Inquisitors had to be clad in red, wear flight goggles, and that Kamen never mentioned the dreaded Comfy Chair. Kamen presents a Spanish Inquisition Nobody Expects!

Written by a prominent Jewish author, THE SPANISH INQUISITION is a book that really should be made public, to get across the truths about it. Many people today get most of their information about the Inquisition from Poe's THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM or from some other bad source. This is a book which anyone who wishes to know about Church history or Spanish history should read. If you are looking for an answer to the "Muslim question," or the Inquisition's response to Muslims, this book does not tend to cover that too well. Also, a poor account of St. Vincent Ferrer is given, which can be construed almost as a smear campaign against him. At any rate, a good book worth spending the money and time on.

The Spanish Inqusition is one of the frightening stories that everyone hears as they grow. Henry Kamen, through some vicious research, finally disspells many of the myths and legends associated with it. Methodically showing what the Spanish Inqusition really was and how it was not nearly as bad as it has been played out to be, Kamen does an excellent job of putting together a book full of first hand accounts of what went on, who the accussers and accussed were and who really went to be burned at the stake.

However, the book does fall short it its attempts to be for the general reader. Where Kamen's research excels, his writting seems to suffer as information is not as well organized as it should be and some information is repeated quite often when it shouldn't. This makes it hard to trudge through and leaves it to be a wonderful resourse for professional historians, not for the everyday reader.

However, if one is daring to learn more about what really happened during this time, this is a wonderful book to start with. Just a rule of advice: Follow the rule of the historian and view things objectively and don't apply todays moral standards to yesterdays events. To many other readers (as can be seen in the reviews) try to do this and come up with a very negative opinion of the book. One has to realize that the time period being looked at differed greatly from ours today and that disciplining was much harsher than it is now (This was a period where one could be executed for running in the street naked). With this in mind, enjoy.

A refreshing take on The Spanish Inquisition. Henry Kamen separates the facts from the myths. As a Spanish Literature major at UCLA, I found this book very useful and impartial. Kamen gives data that is very interesting to say the least. Dates and people are mentioned, something that lacks in many books. He presents dates from very reliable sources. The footnotes are almost extreme but it is a job well done.

Contrary to some prejudiced reviewers who erroneously think that Kamen is attempting to justify or downplay the Spanish Inquisition, this book is actually a major work of historical scholarship. It is fascinating to learn the real story of what happened (and yes, it is quite barbaric by modern standards, though not nearly so horrific as the Black Legend would have us believe) since the Spanish Inquisition holds such a place of horror in the minds of average people today, who don't read history books. The book is very long and erudite, but if you are interested in learning about the facts of the Spanish Inquisition, you pretty much have to read this book.

As for putting to death the Black Legend, I'm afraid this book will do little, because mostly only scholars are going to read it. Certainly not anti-Catholics who twist history to suit their agenda.

Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition is an amazing experience. It is a highly detailed, supremely scholarly and ultimately enlightening account of an historical phenomenon whose identity and reputation have become iconic. So much has been written about it, so many words have been spoken that one might think that there is not too much new to be learned. But this is precisely where Kamen's book really comes into its own, for it reveals the popular understanding of the Inquisition as little more than myth.

He explodes the notion that the busy-bodies of inquisitors had their nose in everyone's business. It was actually quite a rare event for someone to be called before it. And in addition, if you lived away from a small number of population centres, the chances were that that you would hardly even have known of its existence.

Also exploded is the myth of large numbers of heretics being burned at the stake. Yes, it happened, but in nowhere near the numbers that popular misconceptions might claim. Indeed, the more common practice was to burn the convicted in effigy, since the accused had fled sometimes years before the judgment, or they might have died in prison while waiting for the case to reach its conclusion. The intention is not to suggest that the inquisition's methods were anything but brutal, but merely to point out that perceptions of how commonly they were applied are often false.

Henry Kamen skilfully describes how the focus of interest changed over the years. Initially the main targets were conversos, converts to Christianity, families that were once Jewish or Muslim who converted to Christianity during the decades that preceded the completion in 1492 of Ferdinand and Isabella's reconquest. Protestants were targeted occasionally in the following centuries, but it was the families of former Jews that remained the prime target, sometimes being subjected to enquiry several generations after their adoption of their new faith. A focus on converts to Christianity gave rise to a distinction between Old and New Christianity, an adherent of the former being able to demonstrate no evidence of there having been other faiths in the family history.

What consistently runs through arguments surrounding Old and New Christianity, a distinction that was also described as pure blood versus impure blood, is that at its heart this apparent assertion of religious conformity was no more than raw xenophobia and racism. Henry Kamen makes a lot of the contradiction here, since Spain at the time was the most "international" of nations, having already secured an extensive empire and sent educated and wealthy Spaniards overseas to administer it. In addition, of course, Spain was emerging from a long period when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived competitively, perhaps, but also peacefully under Moorish rule. It is worth reminding oneself regularly that the desire and requirement for religious conformity during the reconquest was imposed from above.

Completing Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition prompts the reader to reflect on which other major historical reputations might be based on reconstructed myth. One is also prompted to speculate on the future of an increasingly integrated Europe, a continent forcibly divided for half a century where xenophobia and religious intolerance might be closer to the surface than most of us would want to admit.