Deportation procedings:
Might I as a question? If you were Spanish, and you became a Catholic, are you now Italian? What does a Jew become if he becomes a Catholic? As in a Catholic _ _ _. As a Jewish child are you no longer offended if your parents were burned at the stake because they turned out to be secret Jews?
What part of this logic excuses the Catholics from burning the Jews at the stake in the eyes of the ones that got away!
Anyway, have quite enjoyed this thread, thanks all.
(As an aside, they were sufficiently abusive of that authority to be chastised by Rome on several occasions, and when they were finally shut down in the 1820's, the Spanish government did so without bothering to consult Rome.)
Penalties were the responsibility of the government (as they always were), and the Spanish government wasn't executing Jews for being Jews. They deported them. That was of course unjust; nobody disputes that.
There are several good books out there now which treat the Inquisition quite accurately. One of the best scholars on the topic is a Jewish historian -- I believe he's at Yale -- named Henry Kamen.
Let's stick to facts, and not emotional appeals to hatred and suspicion over something that happened 500 years ago.
You missed the point that the charge was not that they were Jewish but that they were in a treasonous conspiracy to subvert the Catholic state. The Spanish Inquisition was an instrument of the Spanish state, not the Catholic Church. I am not saying that this was a just action but this is quite different from the false charged that Jews were targeted for execution because they were Jews.