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Country
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ES
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Name of institution (English)
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National Historical Archive
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Language of name of institution
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spa
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Contact information: postal address
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Serrano, 115 28006 Madrid
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Contact information: phone number
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0034 917688500
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Contact information: email
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ahn@cultura.gob.es
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Reference number
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INQUISICIÓN
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Type of reference number
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Call number
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Title (English)
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Council of Inquisition
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Title (official language of the state)
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Consejo de Inquisición
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Language of title
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spa
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Creator / accumulator
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Spanish Inquisition
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Date(s)
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1474/1834
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Language(s)
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spa
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Extent
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3621 bundles and 1345 books
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Physical condition
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Good
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Scope and content
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The Consejo de Inquisición fonds comprises documentation produced by the Suprema, the Superior Court of the Spanish Inquisition. It had jurisdiction over all courts and districts of the Spanish Inquisition.
The fonds is divided into five main groups:
1) Colección de Documentos Especiales (Special Documents Collection), containing maps, drawings, objects, and other archival units that, due to their nature, require particular conditions of storage;
2) Contaduría General (General Accounting Office), with documentation related to the economic management of the institution, which also includes records related to seized assets and money collected as fines or penalties resulting from sentences;
3) Secretaría de Aragón (Aragon Secretariat Division), which managed all matters relating to the courts of the Crown of Aragon, Logroño, Italy, and America;
4) Secretaría de Cámara del Inquisidor General (Secretary of the Chamber of the Inquisitor General), with letters, edicts, orders, and other documents produced by the Inquisitors General;
5) Secretaría de Castilla (Castilla Secretariat Division), which managed the affairs of the district courts of the Canary Islands, Cordoba, Corte, Cuenca, Granada, Llerena, Murcia, Santiago, Seville, Toledo and Valladolid.
Given the centrality of the charges of Judaism against New Christians, this collection is rich in information regarding conversos and Sephardic Jews abroad.
Researchers can find numerous documents that have already been digitised and made available online using PARES, the Spanish Archives system. Consultation of Inquisitorial documents should be made simultaneously with the consultation of documentation of the district courts. That is important because the Suprema was a superior court that usually intervened in matters already debated or related to matters processed in district courts.
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Archival history
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The Consejo de Inquisición archive remained in the former Inquisition building in Madrid until 1850. Then, documents were sent to the Archivo General de Simancas, except those relating to the Treasury, which remained in Madrid. This part was later sent to the Central General Archive of Alcalá de Henares.
From 1896 onwards, the inquisitorial fonds held in Simancas and Alcalá began to be transferred to the Archivo Histórico Nacional. There, an Inquisition section was created and completed in 1914 by receiving the series stored in the Biblioteca Nacional (National Library).
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(source: PARES: Portal de Archivos Españoles)
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Administrative / Biographical history
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The Suprema (Supreme Court of the Inquisition) was formally created by a bull of Pope Sixtus IV in 1478. Its mission was the repression of crimes of faith, in particular, charges of Judaism imputed to those individuals who had converted to Christianity after the decree of expulsion in 1492. The court also persecuted other "crimes" such as bigamy, blasphemy, sodomy, heretical propositions, and others.
The Suprema was suppressed by Napoleon in 1808 and by the Cortes of Cadiz in 1813. However, upon the return of King Fernando VII of Spain, it was reestablished until its definitive suppression in 1820 during the Liberal Triennium.
The Suprema was organised around two territorial secretariats (Aragon and Castile) and another one for the management of the Inquisitor General himself. The Aragon Secretariat managed the affairs of the district courts of Barcelona, Cartagena de Indias, Sardinia, Lima, Logroño, Mallorca, Mexico, Sicily, Valencia, and Zaragoza. The Secretariat of Castile handled the affairs of the district courts of the Canary Islands, Cordoba, Corte, Cuenca, Granada, Llerena, Murcia, Santiago, Seville, Toledo and Valladolid.
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(source: PARES: Portal de Archivos Españoles)
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Access points: locations
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Spain
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System of arrangement
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The fonds is arranged according to document type. Series are organised chronologically.
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Author of the description
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Kevin Soares, 2023
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Bibliography
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Mantecón Movellán, T.A. 2010. “Archivi e serie documentarie: America Latina.” In Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione. Vol. 1. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.
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Ortiz, Antonio Domínguez. 1993. Los judeoconversos en la España moderna. 2nd (1st edition of 1991). Madrid: MAPFRE.
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Palmer, Mateu J. Colom. 2015. “El Tribunal de La Inquisición de Mallorca (1578-1700).” PhD thesis, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona.
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Schorsch, Jonathan. 2009. Swimming the Christian Atlantic Judeoconversos, Afroiberians and Amerindians in the Seventeenth Century. Leiden; Boston: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004170407.i-574.
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Wachtel, Nathan. 2007. La fe del recuerdo: laberintos marranos. Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
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Wilke, Carsten L. 2019. “Semi-Clandestine Judaism in Early Modern France: European Horizons and Local Varieties of a Domestic Devotion.” In Religious Changes and Cultural Transformations in the Early Modern Western Sephardic Communities, Yosef Kaplan, 113–36. Leiden; Boston: Brill.
