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Article: The Spanish Inquisition.
- Article from:
- Commonweal
- Article date:
- August 14, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Commonweal Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A Historical Revision
Henry Kamen
Yale University Press, $35,351 pp.
Of all the black legends about Spain, the legend of the Spanish Inquisition may well be the blackest. In popular imagination, the Inquisition was a sort of all-powerful Gestapo of black-hooded monks dedicated to eradicating freedom of thought by an insidious program of torture and burning. This image, according to Henry Kamen, is a result of the fact that most of the early accounts of the Holy Office were written by its enemies. Protestants, especially English and Dutch Protestants, were predisposed to see a Spain in the grip of a fanatical Catholic institution. Italians, many of whom ...