I don’t actually come to this forum that often. If I have used the forum improperly, I admit it isn’t the first time. Once, I asked if there is such a thing as a pill that could send someone insane, because I wanted to argue that topic better with a different friend that I enjoy trying to debate with. The answers I got were great, and I used it for terrific ammo with my friend. I appreciate the dopers for that kind of thing, but I’m not trying to use General Questions for ‘evil’ or anything.
ETA: Also, I tried to keep it real in the OP about why I’m asking.
The Inquisition, Spanish or otherwise, was only concerned with those who were already Christian and did not force conversions to Christianity so it does not at all fit the OP.
Ha, but prepare to lose your friend over this. I had a similar discussion with a Christian friend in my early twenties. I had started my academic studies, and was in love with critical thinking, facts and cites, everything good I was taught then. I bombarded my friend with cites, the same way you do. Her reaction was similar: “When I hear you, it all seems like it isn’t true”. She then made up her mind that I was attacking her faith. Which was just the thing someone influenced by Evil would do. And she had been taught to turn away from all things evil, and to protect her faith. So, she broke up our friendship. :mad:
I’m still sad about that sometimes. Her parents, especially, had been very good to me as a kid. And they, too, severed ties with me after that.
Please leave her outside of this, it was his doing: thank you. He did it in Aragon first and, during his regency for his daughter and later grandson, in Castilla, but not before Isabella was dead. Navarra was the last of the three kingdoms to enter the fold. Ferdinand was king of Aragon and after a civil war/invasion, of Navarra; Isabella was Queen of Castilla. Their grandson, Emperor Charles V, was the first person to hold all three crowns since Sancho III of Navarra.
Back to the Christians-on-Christians, the crusade against the cathars is the source of the line “kill them all, let God pick his own.”
Nzinga, as has been already pointed out Christianity was the excuse, not the real reason. Ferdinand was up to his eyebrows in debt to the Jews and kicking the Muslims from their land, then sending there the Navarrese who still were against him was a way to attack the roots of the Navarrese problem, for example. This second tactic has been used by such luminaries as for example Stalin, which I don’t think will be raised to the altars any time soon.
For that matter, Native Americans were in many instances “forced” to convert by American colonists - children snatched from tribes and put in Christian orphanages or boarding houses, punished when they didn’t use English to communicate or mentionned their previous culture, that sort of thing. The Australians did the same with their Aboriginals.
One could possibly argue it was a matter of grabbing land by eliminating opposition down the line, and less an issue of religion than general culture, but isn’t it most often the case ?
The edict of expulsion expelled non-converted Jews from both Castille and and Aragon in 1492, when Isabella was very much alive. Portugal expelled its Jews in 1496, and Navarre in 1497, so it can’t all be blamed on Ferdinand.
Forced conversion of Muslims preceded first in Castile 1500-1502, Navarre 1515-1516, finally Aragon in 1523-1526. Ferdinand was not necessarily the problem at least as regards to Muslims. To quote:
No doubt it was the attitude of the royal family that was decisive. Here we cannot speak with absolute certainty, and we have to evaluate two contradictory indicators. The Portuguese marriage negotiations in which Cisneros had acted as trusted advisor to the Crown, as we have seen, show him and the monarchs as working in concert towards the elimination of Islam from Christian lands. However, as an indicator that royal commitment to what one might call “religious cleansing” was not unconditional, it must not be forgotten, as has been stated above, that all his life Ferdinand never allowed the Muslims of those kingdoms over which he himself reigned ( Aragon, Valencia ) to be harassed in any way. It was not that Ferdinand was pro-Muslim, but he was not prepared to break his coronation oaths.
From Muslims in Spain, 1500-1614 by L. P. Harvey ( 2005, University of Chicago Press ).
Isabel was deeply pious and very strong-willed. Ferdinand had ambitions in North Africa that necessitated a more real politik stance. The assumption then is that Isabel must have played a role in royal proscriptions against Muslims.
Now in terms of the Jews, Ferdinand ( who was himself part Jewish ) was to blame for aggressively spreading the Castilian inquisition into Aragon ( in the face of considerable local opposition ). How much of that was genuine piety and how much an attempt to exert more centralized control continues to be debateable, but the consequences were certainly real regardless.
Uh, wait, you people do realize that the Cathars were Christians right? They would have been disgusted by the idea of having their deaths exploited for someone to make cheap anti-religious arguments.
They saw themselves as holy martyrs for the true Church of Christ.
Strictly speaking, the Cathars weren’t Christians, in the fullest sense of the word; they believed in two gods, at a time when Christian doctrine was fairly well-established.
Well, I can think of the Native Americans in our country. Back in the day Pizzarro and other conquistadors from Spain along with, basically, any european explorers and settlers kicked the shit out of the indigenous peoples and forced them to speak english and get Jesus.
Actually, in a rare example of Wikipedia being right, that article does note that the entire Catholic Hierarchy stood strongly opposed to violence against the Jews. Some of the Bishops and priests in Germany put themselves at considerable personal risk by offering the local Jewish population chances to shelter in churches, or even in their own homes. There was most certainly not any endorsement of violence against Jews in Germany by the Catholic Church. The violence in Germany was the fault of rogue elements outside of church control. There’s a detailed presentation on the subject in Steven Runciman’s excellent three-volume History of the Crusades.
And they also killed thousands of Christians just for the sake of killing Christians, though it isn’t mentioned often. Most of the Catholic clergy in Poland ended up either shot or sent to concentration camps, as part of the Nazi effort to eliminate Christianity.
You might want to think twice about using that, because it’s not quite accurate. Despite being well versed in the history of Christianity and slavery, you seem to have missed the Catholic Church’s opposition to slavery.
So to summarize, the Pope asserted that (1) all humans are created equal, (2) Catholics should seek to convert by preaching and by example (3) Satan is responsible for all attempts to dehumanize the American Indians. So for a certainty, forced conversion was directly opposite to the policy of the Catholic Church. If the Conquistador’s ever did it, it was not because of Church orders, but rather the opposite. I personally have never seen any evidence that they did so at all. The Conquistadors were very violent, but it was because of greed. They believed various legends about fabulously wealthy civilizations in the Americas, and used violence to force the natives to reveal where their nonexistent wealth was hidden.
It’s also worth noting that the Spanish Inquisition was a step forward towards a humane and lawful system of justice. The methods of the Inquisition were more mild than those used by secular courts at the time. In fact, people who were arrested by the secular justice system were known to commit blasphemy just so that they could be transfered into the care of the Inquisition, where they had better chances. Here’s a cite.
Also, since this is supposed to be about forced conversions it’s worth noting who was tried at the Inquisition. Some converts from Judaism were tried, but they were definitely not a majority, as sometimes claimed.
