The Museum of Torture and the “painful questions” of the Spanish Inquisition

So, you’ve been accused of heresy in 15th century Spain. The Inquisition stole into your home and snatched you from your bed. The identity of your accuser is being kept secret from you and, to protect them, so are the details of your alleged crime. And while few have made it out of the Spanish Inquisition’s dungeons, their stories of torture have. Now, as you anxiously await questioning, your imagination runs wild as a question crosses and recrosses your mind: What’s next?

But I’ll spare you the anecdotal details of my own incarcerations. Instead, join me at Toledo’s Museo de la Inquisición – also known as the Museum of the Spanish Inquisition or the Museum of Torture. And learn not just what comes after an accusation but some of the important things that came before.

As the Catholic empire of Fernando II and Isabella I spread across the Iberian peninsula, so did it thin. Citizens were distrustful of recent converts. Meanwhile, cashflow dried up. In 1478, under pressure from the Spanish monarchs, Pope Sixtus IV granted them permission to name inquisitors. And with the Inquisition under their control, Fernando II and Isabella I could solve two of their biggest problems: keeping their populace happy by eliminating so-called heretics; and confiscating the property of the accused to refill the royal coffers.

In the Museum of Torture, half a dozen rooms collect instruments employed in the undertaking.

The likes of the rack and iron virgin hardly need explaining. The interrogation chair, too, appears straightforward with its hundreds of iron spikes. Though an imaginative interrogator might also apply pressure or heat. In fact, the purpose of most of the devices is immediately apparent even if their use doesn’t bear thinking about. The museum insists that the most “cruel and merciless” Spanish Inquisition torture methods were “in many cases exaggerated”. Yet the tools it displays and acts it describes exceed all expectations. For the accused, kept waiting in the dark in every sense of the phrase, even their most gruesome exaggerations would have fallen short of what came next.

After the inevitable confession, the accused would appear at the auto de fé. This was a spectacular public sentencing. The punishment – exile, imprisonment, humiliation, but most often burning at the stake – followed immediately.

If you’re in the area, San Juan de los Reyes Monastery, with its flamboyant gothic architecture, is a far more beautiful legacy of Ferdinand II and Isabella I. And if you’re in the mood, you can still find five cells of an Inquisition dungeon in Madrid’s Carcel de la Corona.