I recently read an article from Crisis Magazine about how the Spanish Inquisition was actually a fairly nice organization rather than the blood-thirsty zealots they're made out to be. I know that getting my information from an obviously biased, unsourced article was kind of pushing it, so I just want to ask if there is any basis for this belief? Are there any primary sources that speak to either side of this argument?
/u/destin34
Indeed, we Papists suffer from centuries of leyenda negra promulgated by anti- Spanish, Imperial, Papist pamphleteers. Some of the tropes are cross-overs from tales of European cruelty in the New World, and (intentional) blurring between the various inquisitions that have existed. Thus, there was no distinction between the Spanish Inquisition's investigations on Protestant heretics, conversos, moriscos.
This topic has been discussed on this sub in the past 1 2 so you owe yourself a read of those threads.
Fortunately, a timely revisit has began in the 20th century and still continuing today, starting with H.C. Lea's A History of the Inquisition of Spain published in 1906. More recent good reads are Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition, fourth ed, 2014, and Helen Rawlings' The Spanish Inquisition, 2006. With each edition, Kamen has updated his book according to the latest available sources.
If you truly want to know about sources, there are many available but of course re-constructing history from sources isn't a trivial thing, even if we Papists are guided by the One True Faith. Delve straight into J-P. Dedieu's The Spanish inquisition: Current research in perspective, Academia Nazionale dei Lincei, 2008; or some digitized resources such as at Notre Dame Inqusition Project.
As far as I'm concerned, the Wikipedia page on Spanish Inquisition Historiography is well-curated and is a good starting point.
Are there any primary sources that speak to either side of this argument?
I don't know what you mean by this. Are you asking about primary documents that shed light on the impact of the Spanish Inquisition, or primary documents of contemporaries arguing the impact of the Spanish Inquisition?