Strangulation can be such a blessing

The presentation tonight addressed the presence of the inquisition in Mexico. The speaker began by addressing the reason the inquisition began in the first place. In the 1600 there were many Jewish families in Spain but as Catholic power in Spain grew the Jews were either forced to convert or to leave. Many of them left for Portugal. But it wasn’t long before again the Catholics came to power and the Jews were either told to convert or to leave. At this time the Spanish in a way owned the Portugal crown. So the Jews had an opportunity to escape persecution and move to the New World

In the New World they pretended to be Catholics while really practicing Judaism. This was not a problem until the inquisition began to run out of money. Many of the Jewish families had become merchants in the New World and if the inquisition found them guilty of being a Jew they could take the families property, sell it, and keep the money for themselves. Needless to say almost 400 were tried. They were also looking into this because they were afraid the merchants who were originally from Portugal were trying to take over the colony and second they wanted to stop Judaism. The speaker outlined two families that were in these trials in both, the fathers were burned while the rest of the women were let off with a slap on the wrist. Altogether only 13 people were burnt at the stake. Most of them repented and were allowed to be strangled before the burning but one man chose to pass up the wire noose and go for the flames. Needless to say it was dangerous to be anything but Catholic in 17 century.

The drastic nature of this account in many ways shows how far the Catholics will go to weed out those who weren’t like them. Through this presentation I came to better understand what Elizabeth was truly up against on the continent. In fact the aggressive nature of the Catholics is so apparent that I believe the only thing that really saved Elizabeth was the fact that England is an island nation. We especially see this when Spain comes in ships to defeat England. If there had not been water in between the two nations England could have very likely fallen and we might be a Catholic college right now…. (shudder to think)