The Spanish Inquisition was founded by the Catholic Monarchs, Queen Isabella of Castille and King Ferdinand of Aragon, with the intent of spreading the Catholic faith throughout Spain and her territories. Part of this desire for religious conformity probably came from the end of the Reconquista, where previously Islamic territory in southern Spain (such as the emirate of Granada) fell into Christian hands.There were concerns that Jews who converted to Christianity were not truly believers, and that Crypto Judaism was an issue (pretending to adhere to another faith while practicing Judaism in truth). The Spanish Inquisition actually began with papal bull (basically the Pope giving the ok for the conversion plan) establishing an inquisition in 1478, but the Pope was eventually pushed into allowing monarchs the right to choose the inquisitors operating in their lands. The Catholic Monarchs, perhaps realizing the power of the inquisition to stabilize their holdings and give themselves more power. Torture was frequently used (a sign of the times, really, when it comes to judicial systems) and while Protestant critics of the inquisition did inflate the numbers, some estimates claim two thousand burnings at the stake, and executions were sometimes performed in public. In 1492, Spanish Jews were given a choice between exile and baptism, thousands left Spain. Crackdowns on Islam followed afterwards. Not counting religious efforts in the Spanish Netherlands, few Protestants actually showed up in Spain, but those who did were subject to the inquisition's jurisdiction as well. Attempts to bring the inquistion to the Netherlands and other Spanish territories like Milan and Naples didn't work quite as well. During the early 1800's, it was toggled on and off a few times before finally being decommissioned in 1834.