Spanish Inquisition Vs Protestant Reformation

Throughout our history there have been many events which caused a significant impact on how the world is today. Among those from the Medieval Times are the Spanish Inquisition and the Christian Reformation. Even today, people still debate over the actions and motives of these events as to whether or not they were justifiable among other topics. Within these discussions, it is interesting to see comparisons between the two.
The popular opinion regarding these two events is that the Spanish Inquisition was entirely wrong while the Protestant Reformation was entirely good. However, this is a very simplistic view and if there’s anything to be learned while studying the history of human beings, it’s that nothing is ever simplistic. There is always …show more content…
Spain too was a victim to the reformation and effected the Inquisition. While the Spanish Inquisition started before Luther’s reformation, these events overlap on the time line and influence each other. There were many people within Spain who claimed to have converted from their former religion, but who were actually spreading heresy amongst the Spanish people in the name of their own religion. One such group of people, were the protestants. The protestants had especially an easier time spreading their false teachings because, at the time, they were still Catholics. Granted, they were rebellious Catholics, but Catholics none the less because they had not yet separated themselves from Catholicism. When Queen Isabella found out that there were heretics in her midst that were nearly impossible to distinguish from the true Catholics, she enforced many forms of regulation throughout Spain to find and, at least, stop the actions of such heretics, for she saw them as a threat to her country. The first step in filtering out those who could have endangered the religious unity was a change in the court system. If a witness(es) came to the court, they would express their grievances or crime committed against them in a testimony and name their aggressor. The Spanish court practice the philosophy of “innocent until proven guilty”, so when a supposed witness or victim came to them with their testimony, they would then address the accused and asked who their enemies were without telling them the person who accused them in the first place. If the supposed victim or witness was mentioned, their testimony was dismissed and assumed to be giving a false report in order to harm them. In the case of heresy, it would usually involve multiple witnesses and if they were deemed reliable, the accused would be subject to torture many today would say is inhumane and cruel. This is where such a negative opinion of