The Spanish Inquisition served political unification rather than religious zeal

Evidence

The Inquisition was very often an instrument in power struggles in which religious factors were of only marginal relevance and in which the interests of the Muslim/Morisco communities were not at stake at all. We risk distorting reality if we see the Inquisition’s policies as solely, even primarily, directed toward the solution of a “Morisco problem” (or a “Jewish problem”). Yet in the Aragonese political arena, where the Inquisition, acting as the instrument of the new royal bureaucracy, was tending to play an ever more active role, the Moriscos, the crypto- Muslims, were of course particularly vulnerable to Inquisition action. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1184 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Ramon de Penyafort studied law in Bologna (from 1210 to 1219) where he met Dominic; he became a Dominican in 1222. Ramon served as confessor and chaplain to Pope Gregory IX from 1230 to 1238, then served as master general of the Dominicans from 1238 to 1240. Most of the rest of his life he spent in Barcelona, where, as spiritual adviser to Jaume I, he convinced the king to establish an inquisition in Aragon and to give his backing to the evangelical activities of his team of Dominican missionaries. In the last thirty-five years of his life, Ramon rallied royal and papal support for the establishment of language schools for missionaries, for the obligatory attendance of Muslims and Jews at the friars’ missionary sermons. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1183 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Spanish Inquisition was mainly political and economic domination in religious guise. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 117; The Spanish Inquisition was economic control, and Ottomans sheltered its Jewish refugees — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 353; Alfonso X’s cultural patronage served his political ideology rather than distracting from it (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• The Inquisition chiefly served political power struggles, not religious goals. #corroborates (1.00) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1184
• Missionary conversion of Muslims required royal inquisition-backed coercion #complicates (0.72) — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 1183