The Inquisition’s procedures systematically drove detainees to financial ruin as well as physical torment

Evidence

On the Muslim side, the Moriscos (we can in this context call them that) preferred to keep the Inquisition at as great a distance from their affairs as possible. Their motives were not only the obvious ideological and religious ones but financial ones as well. Many aspects of the Inquisition’s way of conducting its affairs inevitably reduced its prisoners and their families to poverty. The procedural ease with which it could order the sequestration of the property of those it detained, the absence of limits on the time a case might drag out, the financial penalties that it could impose (and, one might add, the total absence of any provision for the award of compensation for wrongful arrest or for appeal), meant that the Inquisition was able to inflict, besides physical and spiritual torment, eventual financial ruin as well. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 512 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

This one class apart (whose special status in this respect arises from the highly privileged position of the noble within Spanish society at this time), any ex-Muslim had good reason to keep silent about his or her own Muslim past or, in later generations, about the Muslim past of his forebears. The Inquisition had procedures designed to ferret out information about individuals with a Muslim background, and against these the only effective form of self-defense and of defense of the local community was absolute silence. The modern investigator has to rely almost exclusively on written documents—there are hardly any useful techniques able to exploit other evidence. So we know about Muslims and crypto-Muslims because of what they wrote themselves or because of what others (almost always their enemies) wrote about them: aljamiado manuscripts on one hand, the contents of Inquisitorial processes, on the other. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1156 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Inquisition procedures were structured to impose financial ruin on suspects — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 512; The Inquisition’s budget needs made it economically dependent on imposing vexatious cases; Inquisition persecution forced converts into absolute silence as self-defense — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1156

Broader Connections

• Inquisition procedures were structured to impose financial ruin on suspects #corroborates (0.97) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 512
• Inquisition persecution forced converts into absolute silence as self-defense #complicates (0.72) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1156