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    For centuries, Spain was a model of cultural harmony, with Jews, Christians, and Muslims living together. This triad, which left its mark on Spanish history, is quite unique from a historical perspective. The various groups influenced each other's art, food, architecture, and way of life. For long periods, such close contact led to mutual tolerance of faith. Even when the Christians went to war against the Moors, it was not because of religious reasons, but rather for land. Christians lived under Muslim rule, as Mozárabes, and Muslims lived under Christian rule, as Mudéjares. The different communities, occupying separate areas and therefore able to maintain distinct cultures, accepted the need to live together. The existence of a multi-cultural framework, called convivencia or coexistence, created an extraordinary degree of mutual respect.
Spain was not, as is often imagined, a country of religious fanatics. Everyday religion among the Christians continued to embrace a range of cultural and religious options. All this was changed by the successful new Reconquest of Ferdinand and Isabella. Civil wars created disorder, leading to a strict social policy. As a result, the Inquisition only made the conflict worse. The decision to expel the non-Christian population came not from Ferdinand and Isabella, but from the Inquisition. The expulsion and persecution was a traumatic experience that left its impact for centuries on the Western mind.

The Historical Setting
    The small community of ex-Jews that was left after the expulsion joined the already large community of converted Jews. Conversions became significant from the end of the fourteenth century and were substantial during the fifteenth. Converts from the Jewish elite had the advantage of being accepted on equal terms into the Christian elite. 
Between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries in western Europe, the Latin Christian Church adapted certain elements of Roman legal procedure and employed papally appointed clergy to carry them out. The objective was to preserve orthodox religious beliefs from the attacks of "heretics." Between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, mostly in Mediterranean Europe, the process was carried out by institutional tribunals called inquisitions. The inquisition procedure was based on Roman criminal and civil law, which had already influenced early ecclesiastical practice. Most of the inquisitions were abolished between 1798 and 1820. Only that of Rome survived into the twentieth century as The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Yet the most famous inquisition, and probably most mythical, is that of Spain. 
Thus the inquisition was an ecclesiastical court of the Middle Ages, established either by the diocesan bishops or by the pope to combat deviants from the Catholic faith. The goal was for the accused to return to the church, and otherwise to arrest and punish those who refused to change their ways.

The Procedure of Inquisition 
    The procedure of the Episcopal courts, as mentioned above, was based on the principles of Roman law. Though previously Roman law was used to create specific rules and equitable process, the procedure changed during the period of the inquisitions. The role of the judge was to vindicate the faith against the wrongs of lack of faith or belief in something other than Catholicism. With such a holy goal in mind, the method of achieving it was not important. The duty of the inquisitor was distinguished from the ordinary role, because it included the responsibility to find out the inner thoughts and beliefs of the accused. 
The procedure of the Inquisition was radically different from the traditional forms of accusation or of denunciation, which were deemed ill suited to the repression of heresy. According to the new procedure, the Inquisitor could bring suit against any person who might even vaguely be the object of public rumor. On seizing suspected persons, there was rarely any external evidence to prove their guilt, for it was not necessary. The accused was denied the services of clerks and lawyers, because they would become accomplices. 
In some cases the Inquisition made general inquests which sometimes extended to the entire populations within their jurisdictions. The inquisitors required the clergy to assist them in identifying possible heretics. The pastor was required to serve notice on the suspect to appear before the Inquisitors. If the suspect did not appear within the specified time, he was excommunicated. At the end of the year, a definitive sentence of heresy was imposed upon him, with no appeal. The judge was allowed to impose penance as a punishment, including scourging, visits to churches, wearing the cross of infamy, and pilgrimages, either separately or in combination.

The Myth of The Inquisition 
    From the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, largely as a result of the division within the Latin Church into Roman Catholic and Reformed, or Protestant, branches, the organizations know as inquisitions were transformed into the myth of The Inquisition. The institutions and the myth lived until the early nineteenth century, when most of the inquisitions were abolished, and the myth became famous all over the world, as an example of European brutality. 
Although the inquisitions as organizations disappeared, the myth of the Inquisition did not. It was still used to serve the political purposes of a number of early modern political regimes, as well as the Protestant Reformation, proponents of religious and civil toleration, philosophical enemies of the power of organized religion, and historians. The myth of the Inquisition is still used today to paint a discriminatory, barbaric picture of the history of Spain. Over time, the Inquisition has come to represent the enemy of political and religious freedom, a symbol of the danger of linking the church and political rulers. 
In reality, the Inquisition was not very powerful or organized. In order to conform to the myth, the fifty or so inquisitors in Spain would have needed an extensive system of bureaucracy, a reliable system of informers, a regular income, and the cooperation of the religious and secular authorities. At no time did it have any of these. From the historical evidence of the lack of organization, financial difficulties, and conflicts between jurisdictions, it is clear that the real impact of the Inquisition was, after the first crisis decades, so unimportant to the daily lives of Spaniards over large areas of Spain, that it was hardly relevant. Beyond the major cities, one might see an inquisitor once every ten years, and many people never even saw one. The people supported the tribunal because it was rarely heard from or seen. Yet the Inquisition was a police system, so naturally it had enemies. Moreover, there is record of a great deal of Spanish criticism of the Inquisition. Very many Spaniards, even by people who were not of Muslim or Jewish descent, hated the Holy Office. The absence of contact with the tribunal can be seen in the mythical image it retained in the folklore of the country people of Spain.

    During the last decades of the eighteenth century, the Inquisition became openly political in its hostility to the Enlightenment, and thus lost the little support it had among the progressive elite in Spain. When the French occupied Spain after the French Revolution, one of the first acts, in 1808, was to abolish the Holy Office. Even the remaining patriotic forces, represented by the Cortes of Cadiz, also decreed the abolition of the Inquisition. King Ferdinand VII attempted to re-establish the Inquisition, but he was forced by liberal opposition to abolish it again. The final decree of suppression, issued by the government of Queen Isabella II in 1834, was little more than a formality. From this date the Inquisition no longer existed in the Spanish monarchy.
Though the Inquisition was eventually ended by the early 1800's, Spain's reputation internationally was already marked. Its opponents through the ages have built up a legend about its intentions and its terrible achievements. The Holy Office, ruled by a law of secrecy, refused to respond to public accusations, which made it easy for opponents to invent their own image of the Inquisition. Most Americans know little of Spanish history, except for the voyages of Christopher Columbus (Colon) and the myth of the Spanish Inquisition. Yet the Inquisition in reality was not nearly as powerful as imagined, and the process itself did not start the problem, it only intensified old ones. The Inquisition simply helped institutionalize the prejudices and attitudes that were already part of an unusual society in which numerous cultural groups lived together for many years. The Inquisition represented the views of the Catholic church throughout Europe, and the conflict that arises virtually every time distinct cultures come into contact.