The Trial of Faith in the Spanish Inquisition

Abstract

By starting from a series of practical manuscript manuals produced by Spanish inquisitors for daily use in their work, then following their references to Latin legal treatises, it is possible to gain a better understanding of the theoretical, theological, philosophical, and pastoral underpinnings of inquisitorial practice. Further information can be gleaned by comparing the procedural structure of trials with the relaciones de causas, the reports that summarized those trials and justified inquisitors’ decisions to their superiors. This double approach reveals that the inquisitorial trial of faith can be conceptualized on two different levels: the formal judicial proceedings that shaped the organizational sequence of the trial, and another process that followed a less explicit internal logic and sought to produce a penitential rather than a judicial truth. Though less evident for modern readers of the Inquisition’s archives, this second level formed a key part of the theoretical apparatus described in the Latin treatises. The first level was repressive and, once the offense was proved in conformity with all judicial forms, imposed punishment. The second was integrative and ecclesiastic, and aimed to reintegrate defendants into the fold of the Catholic Church even when found guilty. The inquisitors mobilized these two levels with a certain flexibility that has not always been evident to historians: seen from this angle, their expressions of interest in defendants’ spiritual well-being were more than simple hypocrisy. The two conflictual logics nevertheless meant that the inquisitorial trial of faith was an unbalanced edifice that could easily sway in one direction or the other, depending on the inquisitors’ choices. Over time, it appears that the penitential aspect of the trial took precedence over the purely judicial dimension. There are several indications that a similar double logic governed the criminal trials of other jurisdictions, meaning that such an approach may shed a broader light on early modern institutions and their resolution of conflicts.