Sabatini’s book is a good look at the Spanish Inquisition as seen by Jews prior to 1945, when Torquemada was the Hitler of the time, and the Spanish Inquisition was the paradigm of antisemitic actions taken by a state. He uses the first few decades of the Spanish Inquisition to argue that “intolerance is the very breath of religion and – when power is present – this intolerance never fails to express itself as persecution (kindle location 47).” He then proceeds to be very sarcastic at times about the claims of the Catholic Church to be loving. His hatred for religion almost ruins an otherwise excellent book, which is well researched and includes a lot of information that other books have left out.

Sabatini traces the Inquisition back to Innocent III, although that was an entirely different beast than what the Spanish Inquisition became. The Inquisition started to wipe out heresy amongst Christians. It wasn’t until the Spanish Inquisition that it became antisemitic.

He discusses some of the most cruel aspects of the Inquisition such as forcing children to disavow their parents, and bankrupting the children of heretics. He also discusses taking the fortunes of dead men from those who inherited it, and bankrupting innocent people as a means of keeping the royal and church coffers full through the law that said all of the property of heretics was subject to confiscation. In addition, even the grandchildren of someone convicted under the Inquisition would be incapable of getting a good job, and would be required to wear certain clothing that would identify them to everyone.

Sabatini then discusses the other perpetrators of the Inquisition, Ferdinand and Isabella. He paints Isabella as a pious individual, yet also says that she fought for control over her people with the pope, and forced him to stop making appointments that she should have been making.

The book then focuses on the victims: the jews of Spain. The argument here isn’t very origional, and just talks about how being rich made people resent the Jews, and claims that both groups disliked the other either because they did not believe in the savior, or because they believed in a false god. He says there were about a million jews in Castile at the end of the 13th century. He does add that even those Jews who converted were still called “judios” and this makes an argument for racial rather than religious intolerance a point which the author conveniently leaves out.

In 1481, the Spanish Inquisition began killing people, however, technically, it killed no one. It tortured and interrogated them, and then gave them up to the secular arm for punishment. They always went through the motions of asking for lenience towards the people they handed over, but everyone knew that to be abandoned to the secular arm meant certain death. The only way to avoid the horrid punishment of the Inquisition was to come forward during the Edict of Grace and turn yourself in. However, in order to gain absolution you had to condemn everyone you knew to be a Jew.

The book then goes in depth into the trial of Yuce Franco, who was accused of crucifying a christian boy and using his heart in a magical ceremony to try to prevent the Inquisition from being able to harm him. He and several others apparently told stories of this ritual that did not contradict each other in any major way, and Sabatini finds no reason to doubt that the events actually did take place. I can find no references to Yuce anywhere else on the internet, so I have to assume that later writers proved this did not actually occur because I think if it did, antisemites would be all over that. Back to Spain