Research on the Spanish Inquisition: 1391, Jews, Catholicism (Essay Sample)

The Spanish Inquisition
Name
Institution
The Spanish Inquisition
The anti-Semite uprising of 1391 saw the massive conversion of Jews to Catholicism in the bid to save their lives. While Spain had been a peaceful country where Jews, Christians, and Muslims lived in relative harmony, the uprising resulted in tension within the kingdom. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella set up an inquisition to identify heretics among the new converts and return them to church. To ensure uniformity in faith, the Muslims, Lutheran, Jews, and Protestants were subjected to the Inquisition. What had begun as a religious tool continued to influence the private and public lives of individual immensely (Perez, 2005). In particular, it inhibited the development of science in several ways as discussed in this paper.
First of all, the state funding of scientific research was skewed. Most of the funding went to applied research and allocations to fundamental research and theoretical thinking were often opposed (Perez, 2005). As a result, there was limited original scientific output (Perez, 2005). The reasoning was that theoretical science encouraged opposition to church dictates hence the preference of applied sciences.
Secondly, the Spanish Inquisition applied proscribing books where reading certain types of books led to one being labelled as a heretic. At the beginning, only certain Islam and Judaism books were prohibited. However, the Inquisition continued to gain strength as a political tool for the monarchs and any books that were viewed to be attacking Catholicism were banned (Perez, 2005). While scientific books were not initially censored, any parts of a book that were deemed to...