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Jews In The 16th Century Essay

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Jews In The 16th Century Essay
In the 16th century, there were not many Jews in England. They practised their religion secretly. Many of them either converted to Christianity or pretended to have done so because of the discrimination against them. Christians believed that the Jews were inferior to them and should not be accepted into their society. Jews were treated with strong disrespect because of their alternative religious beliefs, their financial status and ways of living.

Jews were hated in many places because of the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth*, for which they were held entirely responsible. They were discriminated in the middle of the 16th century. They lived in ghettos. The city was locked to the Jews from sunset to sunrise. They were considered
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The Spanish Inquisition was one of the darkest periods of the Spanish history. It was a period in which Spain used cruelty to force their views of religion, trying to convert everyone to Catholicism. The Spanish Inquisition was founded by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1478. They wanted to maintain Catholicism in their kingdom and rid Spain of heretics and non-Catholics.

* A historic town in lower Galilee. It was mentioned in the Gospels as the home of Mary and Joseph, it is closely associated with the childhood of Jesus Christ and is a center of Christian pilgrimage.

Queen Isabella ordered all Jews to convert to Christianity or leave the country. Ferdinand and Isabella began to think that most of who converted to Christianity were just pretending and were secretly practising Judaism. So they decided that Spain needed an inquisition. There were many methods of torture. One of them was the turtle. The victim would be forced to lie face down on the floor. Then, a heavy board would be place on the victim’s back and then heavy weights would be dropped on the board, crushing the victim. There were other ways of torture such as the water torture, burning at the stake, the wheel and the torture chamber. More than 323,300 people were killed in the Spanish

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