As Spain extended its empire in the course of the sixteenth century, it brought with it the Inquisition. Tribunals were established over a vast geographical area, from Sicily to the western coast of the Americas, in an effort to impose orthodox Catholicism in Spanish-held territories. During almost two centuries of research since the final abolition of the Holy Office in Spain in 1834, many theories and interpretations of its policy and behaviour have been advanced; but now that much of the immense documentation has been studied, it is at last possible to reach certain conclusions and to provide the sort of survey contained in The Cambridge companion to the Spanish Inquisition. Some of the more obvious myths were dismantled long ago. Despite bouts of ferocity, the Holy Office was reluctant to apply torture and even more reluctant to sentence its victims to the stake. Torture was above all a threat, and the inquisitors resorted to it with distaste. Since their object was to convert, moreover, every execution was a mark of failure.

The emphasis of the first chapters of this volume is on the legal background of the procedures of the Holy Office and the appointment and careers of the inquisitors and staff of the tribunals. To become an inquisitor was, as Kimberly Lynn writes, ‘sometimes an intermediary step in an upwardly mobile trajectory’ (pp. 57–8). And, indeed, the Spanish Church, government, universities and society in general were intricately involved with the Inquisition, from bishops and royal councillors who had once been inquisitors to scholars who had been asked for their opinion of suspect texts, and the vast array of familiares, or voluntary assistants, from every social class. A question prompted by some of the trials is who was ultimately responsible for their conduct. There were cases when both the king and the inquisitor general proved incapable of securing the immediate release of their protégés, so by whom, one wonders, was it ultimately decided? Judging from Lynn’s article, it was frequently a local inquisitor who could determine the management of a trial and prolong or curtail a detention. It could also be a particular inquisitor who decided on what questions to ask. The result is that the interrogations often tell us far more about the interests of the interrogator than about the true beliefs of the defendant.

The section on the inquisitors is followed by essays on the main groups targeted by the Holy Office: conversos, moriscos, alumbrados, Protestants and Old Christians usually accused of blasphemy, sexual misdemeanours, witchcraft or sorcery. In her survey of the alumbrados, Jessica Fowler rightly insists on the vagueness and elasticity of the term, which was redefined in a series of edicts from 1525 to 1623. While charges of alumbradismo were taken (and punished) lightly, the accusation of Protestantism was far more serious and frequently led to executions. But what, we might ask, was the Protestantism of the Spaniards? Like the Italians, the Spaniards who sympathised with the Reformation seldom had a clear idea of the confessional reality in northern Europe. Those who managed to escape over the Pyrenees or the Alps were frequently disappointed by what they found, and their independent ideas meant that there, too, they were considered heretical.

The last section of the book is on the Inquisition in the Spanish overseas possessions – Sicily, Mexico, Peru and the Colombian port of Cartagena. The structure of the Holy Office abroad was based on the structure in Spain, but the tribunals in the Americas were not always taken seriously by the Supreme Council of the Inquisition in Madrid; moreover, being understaffed, insufficiently subsidised and faced with an immense territory they were supposed to control, they were relatively inactive. The power of the tribunal in Mexico was limited; it was distrusted by the Suprema; and it was hated by the local population. The Inquisition in Lima was hardly more effective, even if, to the standard trials for clerical solicitation – blasphemy, bigamy, sorcery and witchcraft – it extended its activity after 1580 to the investigation of Judaisers among the New Christian merchants from Portugal. The tribunal in Cartagena, which was established only in 1610, suffered from a lack of funds and, later, from a depletion of its archives. Judging from what survives, it was even less active than the tribunals in Mexico and Peru.

The most interesting of the tribunals is that of Palermo, studied by Marina Torres Arce. Initially opposed by the local nobility, the Inquisition acquired a great appeal when its jurisdictional autonomy was reaffirmed in 1543, and the Sicilian noblemen realised that, if they served it, they could turn the situation to their own advantage. To the alarm of the Suprema, which wanted the Inquisition to be entirely independent of politics, the Sicilian judges increased their power by entering into league with the viceroy. Thanks to their support, the Holy Office flourished, investigating a large number of suspected Judaisers as well as renegades from the Islamic world eager to return to the bosom of the Church. Torre Arce might have added to her bibliography Gianclaudio Civale’s Guerrieri di Cristo (2009), a study of the attempt to establish a tribunal in Messina in 1571, the Inquisición de la mar, intended to monitor the behaviour of the Spanish troops assembling to attack the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto.

Students of the Spanish Inquisition will find this Cambridge companion most useful. But there still remain certain questions about the policy of the Holy Office. One is the power of the tribunals and whether anyone was beyond their reach. In the alumbrado trials it is quite evident that a number of Spanish grandees were regarded as untouchable. Some of the accused were charged with uttering their heterodox propositions in the presence of their noble employers. While the inquisitors did not hesitate to interrogate their younger sons and illegitimate offspring, they stopped short at the heads of the ducal families.