Was the spanish Inquisition cruel

The Spanish Inquisition started to protect the Christian religion from heretical attacks yet despite this it has been described as "tyrannical and cruel". The Inquisition has been stereotyped as an organisation that used physical torture to extract phoney confessions, that made everyone even the innocent nervous of acting suspiciously and the killing of thousands of people.

The Inquisition affected all the religions in Spain at that present time from Jews, Moors, conversos, Moriscos and even Christians (including some humanists) it can be said that nobody was safe. The conversos were the first to beare the brunt of the Spanish Inquisition. Anti semitism was growing fast between the conversos and Jews and Christians. The Catholic Spaniard was wary of the converso because of the way the Jews had been converted, which was forcefully. It was believed that the majority of conversos still practised their old religion, this caused a problem for any kingdom because they were supposed t...