May 23rd 1536 Pope Paul III installs the Portuguese inquisition.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (or so I found):
The Portuguese Inquisition, not to be confused with the Medieval Inquisition, Spanish Inquisition or Roman Inquisition was formally started in Portugal in 1536 at the request of the King of Portugal, João III to Pope Paul III (The previous King Manuel I had asked Pope Leo X for the installation of the Inquisition in 1515 but it was never granted). The Portuguese Inquisition principally targeted the Sephardic Jews (Spanish Jews or Jews descended from the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula), whom the state forced to convert to Christianity. Earlier Spain had expelled its Sephardic Jewish population in 1492 (see Alhambra decree). Many of these Jews left Spain for Portugal only to be targeted again there as well. Nice, huh.
In addition to the Jews, the inquisition also investigated cases of witchcraft, blasphemy, bigamy, and sodomy. They also had tribunals in Lisbon, Évora, Coimbra, Lamego, and Tomar in Portugal, and in Goa in Portuguese India. It was finally abolished in 1821 (285 years later…ouch!).
According to a 1578 handbook for inquisitors, the purpose of inquisitorial penalties was: (translation from the Latin) “… for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit.” How nice of them to look after their public like that….oh wait, weren’t the Jews part of the public too. Small technicality I guess.
Ironically, forced “conversions” were never really convincing either to those converted or those forcing the conversions. The Portuguese Inquisition was designed to ferret out forced “converts”, called “Marranos,” who were only feigning the practice of Catholicism but privately maintaining their identities and practices as Jews. If no evidence was discovered in the form of Jewish paraphernalia, then torture was applied to the detained individual in order to elicit the requisite “confession” (naming names, reminiscent of McCarthy Hearings in the U.S. but much worse). Since being “Jewish” is both an ethnic and/or a religious identification, ethnic Jews could never escape the suspicion of also being heretics.
Over time this lead to many Jews to leave Portugal which some hostorian’s believe to be a major factor in precipitating the decay of the fortunes of Portugal in the latter half of the 16th century. Before this time Portugal was in its golden age and prosperous. The Jews at that time comprised a significant portion of the middle class of the country and were among some of the best educated and capable of the Portuguese citizens some say. It would be hundreds of years before Portugal would recover from that decision.
On a lighter side, the “Spanish” Inquisition was satirized by both Mel Brooks in the movie “History of the World Part 1” and Monty Python in Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This was the type of humor I was going for and I used these pieces to help me find the satire in such a tragic in our human history. It can be very difficult to create a humorous comic after you have researched the real event because many times the real story was so sad it is hard to find any satire in it.
Some references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition#Portuguese_Inquisition
http://www.epinions.com/review/mvie_mu-1078261/content_147301502596
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Inquisition
http://www.geschichteinchronologie.ch/k/inquisition/EncJud/21-methods-of-Inquisition-ENGL.html
On the art side, I struggled with the script on this one and originally had a longer version but thankfully my wife helped me edit it down and tighten it up and focus the joke more to what I was trying to say. (Thank yoI was going to animate this comic and create an animatic style video but decided I did not enough time to experiment with it so I stuck with a traditional comic to tell this little story but hopefully I can play around with animation comics in the near future and see what works and what does not.
Sorry for the long blog. Please leave a comment letting me know what you think.