 Book 1, Chapter 3, Part 5, of History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sue Anderson. History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume 1, by Henry Charles Lee. Book 1, Chapter 3, The Jews and the Conversos, Part 5. The sentencia estatuto threatened to introduce a new principle into public and canon law, both of which had always upheld the brotherhood of Christians and had encouraged conversions by prescribing the utmost favor for converts. Nicholas V was appealed to and responded, September 24, 1449, with a bull declaring that all the faithful are one, that the laws of Alfonso X and his successors, admitting converts to all the privileges of Christians, were to be enforced, and he commissioned the Archbishops of Toledo and Seville, the bishops of Valencia, Ávila and Córdoba, and the abbot of San Fagún to excommunicate all who sought to invalidate them. More than this seems to have been needed, and in 1450 he formally excommunicated Pedro Sarmiento and his accomplices as the authors of the Sentencia Estatuto, and again in 1451 he repeated his bull of 1449. Finally in the same year the synods of Vittoria and Alcalá condemned it, and Alfonso de Montaibol, the foremost jurist of the time, pronounced it to be illegal. It never, in fact, was of binding force, but the effort made to set it aside shows how dangerous a menace it was and how it expressed a widespread public opinion. It was the first fitful gust of the tornado. Toledo remained the hotbed of disturbance. In 1461 the martial archbishop Alonso Carillo commissioned the learned Alonso de Oropeza, general of the Geronimites, to investigate the cause of dissension. He did so and reported that there were faults on both sides, and at the request of the archbishop he proceeded to write his lumen ad revelacionum gentium to prove the unity of the faithful, but while he was engaged in this pious labor the inextinguishable feud broke out afresh. Any chance disturbance might bring this about, and the opportunity was furnished in 1467 when the cannons, who enjoyed a revenue based on the bread of the town of Marqueta, farmed it out to a Jew. Álvaro Gómez and Alcalde Mayor was Lord of Marqueta. This Alcalde beat the Jew and seized the bread for the use of the castle. The cannons promptly imprisoned the Alcalde and summoned Gómez to answer. When he came the quarrel grew bitterer. The Count of Cifuentes, leader of one of the factions of the city and protector of the conversos, espoused the cause of Gómez, while Fernando de Latore, a leader of the conversos, hoping to revenge the defeat of 1449, boasted that he had at command four thousand well-armed fighting men, being six times more than the old Christians could muster. Matters were ripe for an explosion. And on July 21, at a conference held in the Cathedral, the followers of the two parties taunted each other beyond endurance. Cannons were drawn and blood polluted the sanctuary, though only one man was slain. The cannons proceeded to fortify and garrison the cathedral, which was attacked the next day. The clergy galled by the fire of the assailants to create a diversion started a conflagration in the Calle de la Chapineria, which spread until eight streets were destroyed, the richest in Toledo, crowded with shops full of costly merchandise. The device was successful. The conversos were disheartened and lost ground, till on the 29th Cifuentes and Gómez fled, while Fernando de Latore and his brother Álvaro were captured and hanged. The triumphant faction removed from office all their opponents, and revived with additional rigor the Sentencia Estatuto. Toledo at the time belonged to the party of the pretender Alfonso of the Twelfth, but when the citizens sent to him to confirm what they had done, he refused, and the city soon afterwards transferred its allegiance to Henry IV. It is quite probable that, in reward for this, he confirmed the Sentencia Estatuto for when, about the same time, Ciudad Real revolted from Alfonso and adhered to Henry he granted, July 14, 1468, to that city that henceforth no converso should hold municipal office. In the all-pervading lawlessness such disturbances as those of Toledo met with neither repression nor punishment. In 1470 Viadolid saw a similar tumult, in which the old Christians and conversos flew to arms and struggled for mastery. The former sent for Ferdinand and Isabella, who came, but the majority of the citizens preferred Henry IV and the royal pair were glad to escape. Everywhere, the hatred between the old Christians and the new was manifesting itself in this deplorable fashion. In Cordova we are told that the conversos were very rich and had bought not only the offices but the protection of Alonso de Aguilar, whose power and high reputation commanded universal respect. While the old Christians ranged themselves under the counts of Cabra and the bishop Pedro de Cordova y Solier, only a spark was needed to produce an explosion, and an accident during a procession, March 14, 1473, furnished the occasion. With shouts of Viva La Fe de Dios, the mob arose and pillage, murder and fire were let loose upon the city. Pedro and his brother Goncalvo, the future great captain, quelled the riot at the cost of no little bloodshed. But it burst forth again a few days later, and after a combat lasting forty-eight hours the Aguilars were forced to take refuge in the Alcazar, carrying with them such conversos and Jews as they could. Then followed a general sack in which every kind of outrage and cruelty was perpetrated until the fury of the mob was exhausted by the lack of victims. Finally Alonso came to terms with the city authorities, who banished the conversos forever, and such poor wretches as had escaped torch and dagger were thrust forth to be robbed and murdered with impunity on the highways. Laborers from the country who chanced to be in Cordova carried the welcome news to neighboring places, and the flame passed swiftly through Andalusia from town to town. Aena was kept quiet by the Count of Cabra, Palma by Luis Porto Carrero, Ecija by Fadrique Manrique, and Seville and Jerez by Juan de Guzmán and Rodrigo Ponce de León. But elsewhere the havoc was terrible. At Jaén, the constable of Castile, Miguel Luis de Iranso was treacherously murdered while kneeling before the altar. His wife Teresa de Torres was barely able to escape with her children to the Alcazar, and the conversos were plundered and dispatched. Only at Almodovar del Campo do we hear of any justice executed on the assassins, for there Rodrigo Jaron, master of Calatrava, hanged some of the most culpable. The king, we are told, when the news was brought to him, grieved much, but inflicted no punishment. On the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1474, a converso of Córdoba, Anton de Montoro, addressed to them a poem in which he gives a terrible picture of the murders committed with impunity on his brethren, whose purity of faith he asserts. Fire and sword had just ravished the Alhama of Carmona, and fresh disasters were threatening at Seville and Córdoba. Dominicans and Franciscans were thundering from the pulpits and were calling on the faithful to purify the land from the pollution of Judaism secret and open. It was commonly asserted and believed that the Christianity of the Conversos was fictitious, and fanaticism joined with envy and greed in stimulating the massacres that had become so frequent. The means adopted to win over the Jewish converts had not been so gentle as to encourage confidence in the sincerity of their professions, and, rightly or wrongly, they were almost universally suspected. The energy with which the new sovereigns enforced respect for the laws speedily put an end to the hideous excesses of the mob, for we hear of no further massacres. But the abhorrence entertained for the successful renegades, whose wealth and power were regarded as obtained by false profession of belief in Christ, was still widespread, though its more violent manifestations were restrained. Wise forbearance, combined with vigorous maintenance of order, would in time have brought about reconciliation to the infinite benefit of Spain. But at a time when heresy was regarded as the greatest of crimes and unity of faith as the supreme object of statesmanship, wise forbearance and toleration were impossible. After suppressing turbulence, the sovereigns therefore felt that there was still a duty before them to vindicate the faith. Thus, after long hesitation, their policy with regard to the conversos was embodied in the Inquisition introduced towards the end of 1480. The Jewish question required different treatment, and it was solved once for all in a most decisive fashion. The Inquisition had no jurisdiction over the Jew, unless he rendered himself amenable to it by some offense against the faith. He was not baptized, he was not a member of the church, and therefore was incapable of heresy, which was the object of inquisitorial functions. He might, however, render himself subject to it by proselytism, by seducing Christians to embrace his errors, and this was constantly alleged against Jews, although their history shows that, unlike the other great religions, Judaism has ever been a national faith with no desire to spread beyond the boundaries of the race. As the chosen people, Israel has never sought to share its God with the Gentiles. There was more foundation, probably, in the accusation that the secret perversity of the conversos was encouraged by those who had remained steadfast in the faith, that circumcisions were secretly performed, and that contributions to the synagogues were welcomed. While the object of the Inquisition was to secure the unity of faith, its founding destroyed the hope that ultimately the Jews would be all gathered into the fold of Christ. This had been the justification of the inhuman laws designed to render existence outside of the church so intolerable that baptism would be sought as a relief from endless injustice. But the awful spectacle of the autos to fay and the miseries attendant on wholesale confiscations led the Jew to cherish more resolutely than ever the ancestral faith which served him as shield from the terrors of the Holy Office and the dreadful fate ever impending over the conversos. His conversion could no longer be hoped for, and so long as he remained in Spain the faithful would be scandalized by his presence and the converts would be exposed to the contamination of his society. The only alternative was his removal. Isabella tried a partial experiment of this kind in 1480, apparently to supplement the Inquisition founded about the same time. Andalusia was the province where the Jews were most numerous, and she commenced by ordering the expulsion from there of all who would not accept Christianity and threatening with death any new settlers. We have no details as to this measure, and only know that it was several times postponed and that it was apparently abandoned. A bolt of Sixtus IV in 1484 shows us that Jews were still dwelling there undisturbed, and when the final expulsion took place in 1492 Bernaldis informs us that from Andalusia 8,000 households embarked at Cádiz, besides many at Cartagena and the ports of Aragón, that there was vacillation is highly probable, for policy and fanaticism were irreconcilable. The war with Granada was calling for large expenditures to which the Jews were most useful contributors, and the finances were in the hands of two leading Jews, Abraham Sr. and Isaac Abravanel, to whose skillful management its ultimate success was largely due. It may be that the threatened expulsion was rather a financial than a religious measure adopted with a view of selling suspensions and exemptions, and this may also perhaps explain a similar course adopted by Ferdinand when in May 1486 he ordered the inquisitors of Aragón to banish all Jews of Saragossa from the Archbishopric of Saragossa and the Bishopric of Albarracin, in the same way as they had been banished from the seas of Seville, Córdoba, and Hain. The sovereigns knew when to be tolerant and when to give full reign to fanaticism, as was evinced in their treatment of renegades and conversals at the capture of Málaga, as contrasted with the liberal terms offered in the capitulations of Almeria and Granada. They were prepared to listen to the counsel of those who opposed all interference with the Jewish population, in whose favor there were powerful influences at work. Isabella apparently hesitated long between statesmanship and her conceptions of duty, while Torquemara never ceased to urge upon her the service to be rendered to Christ by clearing her dominions of the descendants of his crucifiers. There was no lack of effort to inflame public opinion and to excite still further the hostilities so long and so carefully cultivated. A story had wide circulation that Maestre Rebus Altas, the royal physician, wore a golden ball attached to a cord around his neck. That Prince Juan, only son of the sovereigns, begged it of him, and managed to open it when he found inside a parchment on which was painted a crucifix with the physician in an indecent attitude, that he was so affected that he fell sick, and, after much persuasion, revealed the cause, adding that he would not recover until the Jew was burnt, which was accordingly done, and Ferdinand consented to the expulsion of the accursed sect. Then we are told that, on Good Friday, 1488, some Jews to avenge an insult stoned a rude cross which stood on the hill of Gano near Casal de Palomero. They were observed and denounced when the Duke of Alba burnt the rabbi and several of the culprits. The cross was repaired and carried in solemn procession to the parish church, for it still remains an object of popular veneration. It is to this period also that we may presumably refer the fabrication of a correspondence discovered fifty years later among the archives of Toledo by Archbishop Sili Seo, between Chamorro, prince of the Jews of Spain, and Ulith, prince of those of Constantinople, in which the latter, replying to a request for counsel, tells the former, as the king takes your property, make your son's apothecaries that they may take Christian lives, as he destroys your synagogues, make your son's ecclesiastics that they may destroy the churches, as he vexes you in other ways, make your son's officials, that they may reduce the Christians to subjection and take revenge. The most effective device, however, was a cruel one, carried out by Torquemada unshrinkingly to the end. On June 1490, a converso named Benito Garcia, on his return from a pilgrimage to Compostela, was arrested at Astorga on the charge of having a consecrated wafer in his knapsack. The Episcopal vicar, Dr. Pedro de Villada, tortured him repeatedly till he obtained a confession implicating five other conversos and six Jews in a plot to effect a conjuration with a human heart and a consecrated host, whereby to cause the madness and death of all Christians, the destruction of Christianity and the triumph of Judaism, three of the implicated Jews were dead, but the rest of those named were promptly arrested and the trial was carried on by the Inquisition. After another year spent in torturing the accused, there emerged the story of the crucifixion at La Guardia of a Christian child whose heart was cut out for the purpose of the conjuration. The whole tissue was so evidently the creation of the torture chamber that it was impossible to reconcile the discrepancies in the confessions of the accused, although the very unusual recourse of confronting them was tried several times. No child had anywhere been missed, and no remains were found on the spot where it was said to have been buried. The Inquisitors finally abandoned the attempt to frame a consistent narrative, and on November 16, 1491, the accused were executed at Avila, the three deceased Jews were burned in effigy, the two living ones were torn with red hot pincers, and the conversos were, quotes, reconciled, quotes, and strangled before burning. The underlying purpose was revealed in the sentence read at the Otto de Fay, which was framed so as to bring into a special prominence the proselytizing efforts of the Jews and the judicizing propensities of the conversos, and no effort was spared to produce the widest impression on the people. We happened to know that the sentence was sent to La Guardia to be read from the pulpit, and that it was translated into Catalan, and similarly published in Barcelona, showing that it was thus brought before the whole population, a thing without parallel in the history of the Inquisition. The cult of the Saint Child of La Guardia, El Santo Nino de la Guardia, was promptly started with miracles and has been kept up to the present day, although the sanctity of the supposed martyr has never been confirmed by the Holy See. Torquemada's object was gained for, though it would be too much to say that this alone won Ferdinand's consent to the expulsion, it undoubtedly contributed largely to that result. The edict of expulsion, it is true, makes no direct reference to the case, but in its labored efforts to magnify the dangers of Jewish proselytism, it reflects distinctly the admissions extorted from the accused by the Inquisition. With the surrender of Granada in January 1492, the work of the Reconquest was accomplished. The Jews had zealously contributed to it and had done their work too well. With the accession of a rich territory and an industrious Moorish population and the cessation of the drain of the war, even Ferdinand might persuade himself that the Jews were no longer financially indispensable. The popular fanaticism required constant repression to keep the peace. The operations of the Inquisition destroyed the hope that gradual conversion would bring about the desired unity of faith, and the only alternative was the removal of those who could not, without a miraculous change of heart, be expected to encounter the terrible risks attendant upon baptism. It is easy thus to understand the motives leading to the measure without attributing it, as has been done, to greed for the victim's wealth. For though, as we shall see, there are abundant evidences of a desire to profit by it as a whole it was palpably undesirable financially. Thus the expulsion of the Jews from all the Spanish dominions came to be resolved upon. When this was brooded about the court, Abraham Sr. and Abravanel offered a large sum from the Alhamas to avert the blow. Ferdinand was inclined to accept it, but Isabella was firm. The story is current that, when the offer was under consideration, Torque Mada forced his way into the royal presence and, holding aloft, a crucifix boldly addressed the sovereigns, behold the crucified whom the wicked Judas sold for thirty pieces of silver. If you approve that deed, sell him for a greater sum. I resign my power. Nothing shall be imputed to me, but you will answer to God. Whether this be true or not, the offer was rejected, and on March 30 the edict of expulsion was signed, though apparently there was delay in his promulgation, for it was not published in Barcelona until May 1. It gave the entire Jewish population of Spain until July 31, in which to change their religion or to leave the country under penalty of death which was likewise threatened for any attempt to return. During the interval they were taken under the royal protection. They were permitted to sell their effects and carry the proceeds with them, except that, under a general law, the export of gold and silver was prohibited. A supplementary edict of May 14 granted permission to sell lands, leaving but little time in which to effect such transactions, and this was still more fatally limited in Aragón, where Ferdinand sequestered all Jewish property in order to afford claimants and creditors the opportunity to prove their rights, the courts being ordered to decide all such cases promptly. Still less excusable was his detaining from all sales and amount equal to all the charges and taxes which the Jews would have paid him, thus realizing a full year's revenue from the trifling sums obtained through forced sales by the unhappy exiles. In Castile the inextricable confusion arising from the extensive commercial transactions of the Jews led to the issue May 30 of a decree addressed to all the officials of the land ordering all interested parties to be summoned to appear within twenty days to prove their claims, which the courts must settle by the middle of July. All debts falling due prior to the date of departure were to be promptly paid. If due to Christians by Jews who had not personal effects sufficient to satisfy them the creditors were to take land at an appraised valuation or be paid out of other debts paid by Jews. For debts falling due subsequently if due by Jews the debtors had to pay at once or furnish adequate security. If due by Christians or Moors the creditors were either to leave powers to collect ad maturity or to sell the claims to such purchases as they could find. These regulations afford us a glimpse into the complexities arising from the convulsion thus suddenly precipitated and as the Jews were almost universally creditors we can readily imagine how great were their losses and how many Christian debtors must have escaped payment. The sovereigns also shared in the spoils. When the exiles reached the seaports to embark they found that an export duty of two dockets per head had been levied upon them which they were obliged to pay out of their impoverished store. Moreover the threat of confiscation for those who overstayed the time was rigorously enforced and in some cases at least the property thus seized was granted to nobles to compensate their losses by the banishment of their Jews. All effects left behind also were seized. In many cases the dangers of the journey, the prohibition to carry coin, and the difficulty of procuring bills of exchange led the exiles to make deposits with trustworthy friends to be remitted to them in their new homes all of which was seized by the Crown. The amount of this was sufficient to require a regular organization of officials deputed to hunt up these deposits and other fragments of property that could be eschided and we find correspondence on the subject as late as 1498. Efforts were even also made to follow exiles and secure their property on the plea that they had taken with them prohibited articles, and Henry VII of England and Ferdinand of Naples were appealed to for assistance in cases of this description. The terror and distress of the exodus we are told were greatly increased by an edict issued by Torquemada as Inquisitor General in April forbidding any Christian after August IX from holding any communication with Jews or giving them food or shelter or aiding them in any way. Such addition to their woes was scarce necessary, for it would be difficult to exaggerate the misery inflicted on a population thus suddenly uprooted from a land in which their race was older than that of their oppressors. Stunned at first by the blow as soon as they rallied from the shock, they commenced preparations for departure. An aged rabbi Isaac Abouab with thirty prominent colleagues was commissioned to treat with João II of Portugal for refuge in his dominions. He drove a hard bargain, demanding a cruzado ahead for permission to enter and reside for six months. For those who were near the coasts, arrangements were made for transport by sea, mostly from Cadiz and Barcelona on the south and Laredo on the north. To the northeast, Navarro afforded an asylum by order of Jean Albert and his wife Leonora, although the cities were somewhat recalcitrant. As the term approached, two days' grace were allowed, bringing it to August II, the 9th of Av, a day memorable in Jewish annals for its repeated misfortunes. History of the Inquisition of Spain, Volume I, by Henry Charles Lee, Book I, Chapter III, The Jews and the Conversals, Part VI. The sacrifices entailed on the exiles were enormous. To realize in so limited a time, on every species of property not portable, with means of transportation so imperfect, was almost impossible, and in a forced sale of such magnitude the purchasers had a vast advantage of which they fully availed themselves. An eyewitness tells us that the Christians bought their property for a trifle. They went around and found few buyers, so that they were compelled to give a house for an ass and a vineyard for a little cloth or linen. In some places the miserable wretches unable to get any price, burnt their homes, and the Alhamas bestowed the communal property on the cities. Their synagogues they were not allowed to sell, the Christians taking them and converting them into churches, or into worship of God, of justice and love. The cemeteries for which they felt peculiar solicitude were in many places made over to the cities, on condition of preservation from desecration and use only for pastridge, for this was not done they were confiscated, and Torquemada obtained a fragment of the spoil by securing March 23, 1494, from Ferdinand and Isabella, the grant of that of Avila for his convent of Santo Tomas. The resolute constancy displayed in this extremity was admirable. There were comparatively few renegades, and if Abraham Sr. was one of them, it is urged in extenuation that Isabella, who was loath to lose his services, threatened if he persisted in his faith to adopt still sharper measures against his people, and he, knowing her capacity in this direction, submitted to baptism. He and his family had, for God-parents, the Sovereigns and Cardinal Gonzales de Mendoza. They assumed the name of Coronel, which long remained distinguished. The Freilace exerted themselves everywhere in preaching, but the converts were few and only of the lowest class. The Inquisition had changed the situation, and San Vicente Ferrer himself would have found missionary work unfruitful, for the dread of exile was less than that of the Holy Office and the Que Madero. There was boundless mutual helpfulness. The rich aided the poor, and they made ready as best they could to face the perils of the unknown future. Before starting, all the boys and girls over twelve were married. Early in July the exodus commenced, and no better idea of this pilgrimage of grief can be conveyed than by the simple narrative of the Good Cura of Palacios. Disregarding, he says, the wealthy left behind, and confiding in the blind hope that God would lead them to the promised land, they left their homes great and small, old and young, on foot, on horseback, on asses or other beasts or in wagons, some falling, others rising, some dying, others being born, others falling sick. There was no Christian who did not pity them. Everywhere they were invited to conversion, and some were baptized, but very few, for the rabbis encouraged them and made the women and children play on the timbrel. Those who went to Cádiz hoped that God would open a path for them across the sea, but they stayed there many days, suffering much, and many wished that they had never been born. From Aragon and Catalonia they put to sea for Italy or the Moorish lands, or whithers so ever fortune might drive them. Most of them had evil fate, robbery and murder by sea and in the lands of their refuge. This is shown by the fate of those who sailed from Cádiz. They had to embark in twenty-five ships, of which the captain was Pedro Cabrón. They sailed for Oran, where they found the Corsair Fragoso and his fleet. They promised him ten thousand ducats not to molest them, to which he agreed, but night came on and they sailed for Arsila. A Spanish settlement in Morocco, where a tempest scattered them. Sixteen ships put into Cartagena, where a hundred and fifty souls landed and asked for baptism. Then the fleet went to Málaga, where four hundred more did the same. The rest reached Arsila and went to Fez. Multitudes also sailed from Gibraltar to Arsila, whence they set out for Fez, under guard of Moors hired for the purpose. But they were robbed on the journey and their wives and daughters were violated. Many returned to Arsila, where the new arrivals on hearing of this remained, forming a large camp. Then they divided into two parties, one persisting in going to Fez, the other preferring baptism at Arsila, where the commandant, the Count of Borón, treated them kindly, and the priests baptized them in squads with sprinklers. The Count sent them back to Spain, and up to fourteen ninety-six they were returning for baptism. In Palacios Bernaldes baptized as many as a hundred, some of them being rabbis. Those who reached Fez were naked and starving and lousy. The king, seeing them a burden, permitted them to return, and they straggled back to Arsila, robbed and murdered on the road. The women violated, and the men often cut open in search of gold, fought to be concealed in their stomachs. Those who remained in Fez built a great jewellery for themselves, of houses of straw. One night it took fire, burning all their property, and fifty or a hundred souls, after which came a pestilence, carrying off more than four thousand. Ferdinand and Isabella, seeing that all who could get back returned for baptism, set guards to keep them out unless they had money to support themselves. The whole world was pitiless to these wretched outcasts, against whom every man's hand was raised. Those who sought Portugal utilized the six months allotted to them by sending a party to Fez to arrange for transit there. Many went and formed part of the luckless band whose misfortunes we have seen. Others remained, the richer paying the king a hundred crusados per household, the poor eight crusados ahead, while a thousand, who could pay nothing, were enslaved. These king Manuel emancipated on his accession in fourteen ninety-five. But in fourteen ninety-seven he enforced conversion on all. Then, in Lisbon at Easter, fifteen oh six, a new Christian, in a Dominican church, chanced to express a doubt as to a miraculous crucifix, when he was dragged out by the hare and slain. The Dominicans harangued the mob, parading the streets with the crucifix and exciting popular passion till a massacre ensued in which the most revolting cruelties were perpetrated. It raged for three days and ended only when no more victims could be found, the number of slain being estimated at several thousand. The further fate of these refugees we shall have occasion to trace hereafter. In Navarre, where the exiles had been kindly received, the error of toleration was brief. In fourteen ninety-eight an edict, based on that of Ferdinand and Isabella, gave them the alternative of baptism or expulsion, and at the same time such difficulties were thrown in the way of exile that they mostly submitted to baptism and remained a discredited class subjected to numerous disabilities. Naples, whether numbers flocked, afforded an inhospitable refuge. In August fourteen ninety-two nine caravals arrived there, loaded with Jews and infected with pestilence, which they communicated to the city, whence it spread through the kingdom and raged for a year, causing a mortality of twenty thousand. Then, in the confusion following the invasion of Charles VIII in fourteen ninety-five, the people rose against them. Many abandoned their religion to escape slaughter or slavery. Many were carried off to distant lands and sold as slaves. This tribulation lasted for three years, during which those who were steadfast in the faith were imprisoned or burnt or exposed to the caprices of the mob. Turkey on the whole proved the most satisfactory refuge, where Bahasey found them such profitable subjects that he ridiculed the wisdom popularly ascribed to the Spanish sovereigns who could commit so great an act of folly. Though exposed to occasional persecution, they continued to flourish. Most of the existing Jews of Turkey in Europe and a large portion of those of Turkey in Asia are descendants of the exiles. They absorbed the older communities and their language is still the Spanish of the sixteenth century. When the fate of the exiles was, for the most part, so unendurable, it was natural that many should seek to return to their native land. And, as we have seen from Bernalde's large numbers did so, at first this was tacitly permitted on condition of conversion, provided they brought money with them. But the sovereigns finally grew fearful that the purity of the faith would be impaired. And in 1499 an explanatory edict was issued, decreeing death and confiscation for any Jew entering Spain, whether a foreigner or returning exile, even if he asked for baptism, unless beforehand he sent word that he wished to come for that purpose when he was to be baptized at the port of entry and a notarial act was to be taken. That this savage edict was piteously enforced is manifested by several cases in 1500 and 1501. Moreover all masters of Jewish slaves were ordered to send them out of the country within two months, unless they would submit to baptism. Spain was too wholly a land to be polluted with the presence of a Jew, even in captivity. In the absence of trustworthy statistics, all estimates of the number of victims must be more or less a matter of guesswork, and consequently they vary with the impressions or imagination of the analyst. Bernalde's informs us that Rabbi Meir wrote to Abraham Sr. that the sovereigns had banished 35,000 vassals, that is 35,000 Jewish households, and he adds that of the ten or twelve rabbis whom he baptized on their return, a very intelligent one named Zentoio of Vitoria told him that there were in Castile more than 30,000 married Jews and 6,000 in the kingdoms of Aragon, making 160,000 souls when the edict was issued, which is probably as nearly correct an estimate as we can find. With time the figures grew. Albertino, Inquisitor of Valencia in 1534, quotes Ruchlin as computing the number of exiles at 420,000. The Cache Surita quotes Bernalde's and adds that others put the total at 400,000, while Mariana tells us that most authors assert the number of households to have been 170,000, and some put the total at 800,000 souls. Paramo quotes the figures of 124,000 households or over 600,000 souls. Isidor Loeb, after an exhaustive review of all authorities, Jewish and Christian, reaches the estimate emigrants 165,000, baptized 50,000, died 20,000, total 235,000, and this in view of the diminished number of Jews as shown by the repartimento of 1474 is probably too large an estimate. Whatever may have been the number, the sum of human misery was incomputable. Rabbi Joseph, whose father was one of the exiles, eloquently describes the sufferings of his race. Quote, for some of them the Turks killed to take out the gold which they had swallowed to hide it. Some of them hunger and the plague consumed, and some of them were cast naked by the captains on the aisles of the sea, and some of them were sold for men's servants and maid servants in Genoa and its villages, and some of them were cast into the sea. For there were among those who were cast into the aisles of the sea upon Provence a Jew and his old father fainting from hunger, begging bread, for there was no one to break unto them in a strange country, and the man went and sold his son for bread to restore the soul of the old man. And it came to pass when he returned to his old father that he found him fallen down dead, and he rent his clothes, and he returned unto the baker to take his son, and the baker would not give him back, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry for his son, and there was none to deliver. End quote. Penelous, friendless, and despised they were cast forth into a world which had been taught that to oppress them was a service to the Redeemer. Yet such were the convictions of the period in the fifteenth century after Christ had died for man that this crime against humanity met with nothing but applause among contemporaries. Men might admit that it was unwise from the point of view of a statesmanship and damaging to the prosperity of the land, but this only enhanced the credit due to the sovereigns whose piety was equal to the sacrifice. When in 1495 Alexander VI granted to them the proud title of Catholic Kings the expulsion of the Jews was enumerated among the services to the faith, entitling them to this distinction. Even so liberal and cultured a thinker as Jean Pico de la Mirandola praises them for it while he admits that even Christians were moved to pity by the calamities of the sufferers, nearly all of whom were consumed by shipwreck, pestilence, and hunger, rendering the destruction equal to that inflicted by Titus and Hadrian. It is true that Machiavelli, faithful to his general principles, seeks to find in Ferdinand's participation a political rather than a religious motive, but even he characterizes the act as a pietosa crudelta. So far indeed was it from being a cruelty in the eyes of the theologians of the period that Ferdinand was held to have exercised his power mercifully, for Arnaldo Albertino proved by the canon law that he would have been fully justified in putting them all to the sword and seizing their property. The edict of expulsion proclaimed to the world the policy which, in its continuous development, did so much for the abasement of Spain. At the same time it closed the career of avowed Jews in the Spanish dominions, henceforth we shall meet with them as apostate Christians, the occasion and the victims of the Inquisition. Volume 1. Much as the conversos had gained, from a worldly point of view, by their change of religion, their position in one respect as we have seen was seriously deteriorated. As Jews they might be despoiled and humiliated, confined in narrow juries, and restricted as to their careers and means of livelihood, but with all they enjoyed complete freedom of faith in which they were subjected only to their own rabbis. They were outside of the church and the church claimed no jurisdiction over them in matters of religion, so long as they did not openly blaspheme Christianity or seek to make proselytes. As soon, however, as the convert was baptized, he became a member of the church, and for any aberration from orthodoxy he was amenable to its laws. As the Inquisition had never existed in Castile and was inactive in Aragon, while the bishops who held ordinary jurisdiction over heresy and apostasy were too turbulent and worldly to waste thought on the exercise of their authority in such matters, the conversos seemed never to have recognized the possibility of being held to account for any secret learning to the faith which they had ostensibly abandoned. The circumstances under which the mass of conversions was affected, threats of massacre or the wearing pressure of inhuman laws, were not such as to justify confidence in the sincerity of the neophytes. Nor, when baptism was administered indiscriminately to multitudes, was there a possibility of detailed instruction in the complicated theology of their new faith. Rabbinical Judaism are over, so entwines itself with every detail of the believer's daily life, and attaches so much importance to the observances which it enjoins, that it was impossible for whole communities, thus suddenly Christianized, to abandon their rites and usages which, through so many generations, had become a part of existence itself. Ernest converts might have brought up their children as Christians, and the grandchildren might have outgrown the old customs, but the conversos could not be Ernest converts, and the sacred traditions handed down by father to son from the days of the Sanhedrin were too precious to be set aside. The Anuism, as they were known to their Hebrew brethren, thus were unwilling Christians, practicing what Jewish rites they dared, and it was held to be the duty of all Jews to bring them back to the true faith. As soon, therefore, as the Church had gained her new recruits, she began to regard them with a pardonable degree of suspicion, although she seems to have made no effort to instruct them in her new doctrines, after hurdly baptizing them by the thousand. In 1429 the Council of Tortosa indignantly denounced the unspeakable cruelty of the conversos, who, with damnable negligence, permit their children to remain in servitude of the devil by omitting to have them baptized. To remedy this the ordinaries were ordered by the free use of ecclesiastical censures, and by calling in, if necessary, the secular arm to cause all such children to be baptized within eight days after birth, and all temporal lords were commanded to lend their aid in this pious work. The outlook certainly was not promising that the coming generation should be free from the inveterate Jewish errors. How little concealment indeed was thought necessary by the conversos so long as they exhibited a nominal adherence to Catholicism is plainly shown by the testimony in the early trials before the Inquisition, where servants and neighbors give ample evidence as to Jewish observances openly followed. Still more conclusive is a case occurring in 1456 in Rosellan, which, although at the time held in pawn by France, was subject to the Inquisition of Aragon. Certain conversos not only persisted in Jewish practices, such as eating meat and lent, but forced their Christian servants to do likewise, and when the Inquisitor, Frémiteo de Rapica, with the aid of the Bishop of Elna, sought to reduce them to conformity, they defiantly published a defamatory libel upon him, and with the assistance of certain laymen afflicted him with injuries and expenses. It was not without cause that when Bishop Alfonso de Santa Maria procured the decree of 1434 from the Council of Basle, he included a clause branding his heretics all conversos he would hear to Jewish superstitions, directing bishops and inquisitors to inquire strictly after them and to punish them condinely, and pronouncing liable to the penalties of fountorship all who support them in those practices. The decree, of course, proved a dead letter, but none the less was it the foreshadowing of the Inquisition. When Nicholas V in 1449 issued his bull in favor of the conversos, he followed the example of the Council of Basle in accepting those who secretly continued to practice Jewish rites. In the methods commonly employed to procure conversions, the result was inevitable and incurable. What rendered this especially serious was the success of the conversos in obtaining high office in the church and state. Importancies were occupied by bishops of Jewish blood. The chapters, the monastic orders, and the curacies were full of them. They were prominent in the royal council, and everywhere enjoyed positions of influence. The most powerful among them, the Santa Marias, the Davalas, and their following, had turned against the royal favorite, Alvaro de Luna, and with the discontented nobles were plotting his ruin when he seems to have conceived the idea that if he could introduce the Inquisition in Castile, he might find in it a weapon wherewith to subdue them. At least this is the only explanation of an application made to Nicholas V in 1451 by Juan II for a delegation of papal inquisitorial power for the chastisement of Judaizing Christians. The pokes had too long vainly desired to introduce the Inquisition in Castile for Nicholas to neglect this opportunity. He promptly commissioned the bishop of Osva, his vicar general, and the scholasticus of Salamanca as inquisitors, either by themselves or through such delegates as they might appoint, to investigate and punish without appeal all such offenders, to deprive them of ecclesiastical dignities and benefits and of temporal possessions, to pronounce them incapable of holding such positions in future, to imprison and degrade them and, if the offense required, to abandon them to the secular arm for burning. Full power was granted to perform any acts necessary or opportune to the discharge of these duties, and if resistance were offered to invoke the aid of the secular powers. All this was within the regular routine of the inquisitorial office, but there was one clause which showed that the object of the measure was the destruction of De Luna's enemies, the Converso bishops, for the commission empowered the appointees to proceed even against bishops, a faculty never before granted to inquisitors, and subsequently, as we shall see, withheld when the new Inquisition was organized. All this was the formal establishment of the Inquisition on Castilian soil, and if circumstances had permitted its development it would not have been left for Isabella to introduce the institution. The Inquisition, however, rested on the secular power for its efficiency. In Spain especially, there was little respect for the naked papal authority, while that of Juan II was too much enfeebled to enable him to establish so serious an innovation. The new Christians recognized that their safety depended on De Luna's downfall. The conspiracy against him won over the nerveless Juan II, and in 1453 he was hurriedly condemned and executed. Naturally the bull remained inoperative, and some ten years later, alone so De Espina freeingly complains, saw more heretics and Christian perverts, others are Jews, others Saracens, others devils. There is no one to investigate the errors of the heretics. The ravening wolves, O Lord, have entered thy flock, for the shepherds are few. Many are hirelings, and as hirelings they care only for the shearings, and not for feeding thy sheep. The Fe Alfonso de Espina may be ascribed a large share in hastening the development of organized persecution in Spain by inflaming the race-hatred of recent origin, which already needed no stimulation. He was a man of the highest reputation for learning and sanctity, and when, early in his career, he was discouraged by the slender result of his preaching, a miracle revealed to him the favor of heaven, and induced him to persevere. In 1453 we find him administrating to Alvaro de Luna the last consolations of religion at his hurried execution, and he became the Confessor of Henry IV. In 1454 when a child was robbed and murdered at Validolid, and the body was scratched up by dogs, the Jews were, of course, suspected, and confession was obtained by torture. Alonso happened to be there, and aroused much public excitement by his sermons on the subject in which he asserted that the Jews had ripped out the child's heart and burnt it, and by mingling the ashes with wine had made an unholy sacrament. But unfortunately, as he tells us, bribery of the judges and of King Henry enabled the offenders to escape. The next year, 1455, as provincial of the Observantine Franciscans, he was engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to drive the Conventuals out of Segovia, or to obtain a separate convent for the Observantines. Thenceforth he seems to have contracted his energies on the endeavor to bring about the forced conversion of the Jews, and to introduce the Inquisition as a corrective of the apostasy of the Conversos. He is usually considered to have himself belonged to the class of Conversos who entertained an inextinguishable hatred for their former brethren, but there is no evidence of this, and the probabilities are altogether against it. Ifordicalium Fidae is a deplorable exhibition of the fanatic passions which finally dominated Spain. He rakes together, from the Chronicles of All Europe, the stories of Jews slaying Christian children in their unholy rites, of their poisoning wells and fountains, of their starting conflagrations, and of all the other horrors by which a healthy detestation of the unfortunate race was created and stimulated. The Jewish law, he tells us, commands them to slay Christians, and to disfoil them whenever practicable, and they obey it with a quenchless hatred and insatiable thirst for revenge. Thrice a day, in their prayers they repeat, let there be no hope for Mesudanum, Conversos, may all heretics and all who speak against Israel be speedily cut off, may the kingdom of the proud be broken and destroyed, and may all of our enemies be crushed and humbled speedily in our days. But the evil now wrought by Jews is trifling to that which they will work at the coming of Antichrist, for they will be his supporters. Alexander the Great shot them up in the mountains of the Caspian, adjoining the realms of the great Khan of the Monarch Cate. There, between the castles of Gog and Magog, confined by an enchanted wall, they have multiplied until now they are numerous enough to fill 24 kingdoms. When Antichrist comes, they will break loose and rally around him, as likewise will all the Jews of the diaspora, for they will regard him as their promised Messiah, and will worship him as their God, and with their united aid he will overrun the earth. With such eventualities and prospect it is no wonder that Fray Alonso could convince himself in opposition to the Canon Law that the forced conversion of the Jews was lawful and expedient, as well as the baptism of their children without their consent, when such was the temper in which a man of distinguished learning and intelligence discussed their relations between Jews and Christians, we can imagine the character of the sermons in which, from numerous pulpits, the passions of the people were inflamed against their neighbors. If open Judaism was abhorrent, still worse was the insidious heresy of the conversos who pretended to be Christians, and who more or less openly continued to practice Jewish rites, and perverted the faithful in their influence and example. These abounded on every hand, and there was scarce an effort made to repress or punish them. The Law, from the earliest times, provided the death penalty for their offense, but there was none found to enforce it. Fray Alonso dolefully asserts that they succeeded in their presence in so blinding princes and prelates that they were never punished, and that when one person accused them three would come forward in their favor. He relates an instance of such an attempt in 1458 at Formensta, where a barber named Fernando Sanchez publicly maintained monotheism. Fortunately Bishop Pedro of Palencia had zeal enough to prosecute him when his offense was proved and under fear of the death penalty he recanted. But when he was condemned to imprisonment for life for so much sympathy was excited by the unaccustomed severity that in accordance with numerous petitions the sentence was commuted to ten years exile. In 1459 at Segovia a number of conversos were, by an accident, discovered in the synagogue, praying at the Feast of Tabernacles. But nothing seems to have been done with them. At Medina del Campo in the same year Fray Alonso was informed that there were more than a hundred who denied the truth of the New Testament, but he could do nothing save preach against them, and subsequently he learned that in one house there were more than thirty men at that very time laid up in consequence of undergoing circumcision. It is no wonder that he earnestly advocated the introduction of the Inquisition as the only cure for this scandalous condition of affairs. That he argued in its favor with warmest zeal and answered all objections in a manner which showed that he was familiar with its workings from a careful study of the Clementines and of Amaric's directorium. The good Cura de los Placios is equally emphatic in his testimony as to the prevalence of Judaism among the conversos. For the most part he says they continued to be Jews, or rather they were neither Christians nor Jews, but heretics, and this heresy increased and flourished through the riches and pride of many wise and learned men, bishops and canons and friars and abbots and financial agents and secretaries of the king and of the magnates. At the commencement of the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella this heresy grew so powerful that the clerks were on the point of preaching the law of Moses. These heretics avoided baptizing their children, and when they could not prevent it they washed off the baptism on returning from the church. They ate meat on fast days and on leaven bread at Passover which they observed as well as the Savvits. They had Jews who secretly preached in their houses and rabbis who slaughtered meat and birds for them. They performed all the Jewish ceremonies in secret as well as they could not and avoid it as far as possible receiving the sacrament. They never confessed, truly a confessor, after hearing one of them, cut off a corner of his garment, saying, Since you have never sinned, I want a piece of your clothes as a relic to cure the sick. Many of them attained to great wealth, for they had no conscious in usury, saying that they were spoiling the Egyptians. They assumed heirs of superiority, asserting that there was no better race on earth, nor wiser nor shrewder, nor more honorable through their descent from the tribes of Israel. In fact, when we consider the popular detestation of the conversos and the invitation to attack afforded by their Judaizing tendencies, the postponement in establishing the Inquisition is attributable to the all-pervading lawlessness of the period and the absence of a strong central power. The people gratified their hatred by an occasional massacre with its accompanying pillage, but among the various factions of the distracted state no one was strong enough to attempt a systematic movement provoking the bitterest opposition of a powerful class whose members occupied confidential positions in the court not alone of the king, but of every noble and prelate. Ernest, and untiring, as was Freolonso Ziel, it therefore was fruitless. In August 1461 he induced the heads of the observantine Franciscans to address the chapter of the Geronomites, urging a union of both bodies in the effort to obtain the introduction of the Inquisition. The suggestion was favorably received, but the answer was delayed, and the impatient Freolonso, with Fre Ferdinando de la Plaza and other observantines, appealed directly to King Henry, representing the prevalence of the Judaizing heresy throughout the land and the habitual circumcision of the children of Conversos. The zeal of Fre Ferdinando outran his discretion, and in his sermons he declared that he possessed the foreskins of children thus treated. King Henry sent for him, and said that this practice was a gross insult to the church, which it was his duty to punish. Ordering him to produce the objects and reveal the names of the culprits, the Freol could not only reply that he had heard it from persons of repute and authority, but on being commanded to state their names refused to do so, thus tacitly acknowledging that he had no proof. The Conversos were not slow in taking advantage of his blunder, and to crown the defeat of the observantines the Geronomites changed their views. Their general, Freolonso de Oropessa, who himself had Jewish blood in his veins, was a man deservedly esteemed. Under his impulsion they mounted the pulpit in defense of the Conversos, and the observantines for the time were silenced. While the labors of the fiery Freolonso were unquestionably successful in intensifying the bitterness of race-hatred, their only direct result was seen in the Concordia of Medina del Campo between Henry IV and his revolted nobles in fourteen sixty-four to five. In this an elaborate clause deplored the spread of the Judaizing heresy. It ordered the bishops to establish a searching inquisition throughout all the lands and lordships, regardless of franchises and privileges, for the detection and punishment of the heretics. It pledged the king to support the measure in every way, and to employ the confiscations in the war with the Moors, and it pointed out that the enforcement of this plan would put an end to the tumult and massacres directed against the suspects. After this impulsion some desultory persecution occurred. In the trial of Beatriz Nunez, by the inquisition of Toledo in fourteen eighty-five, witnesses allude to her husband, Fernando Gonzales, who, some twenty years before, had been convicted and reconciled. More detailed is a case occurring at Lerna in fourteen sixty-seven, where, on September seventeenth, two Conversos, Garci Fernandes Valenci and Pedro Franco de Villarreal, were discovered in the act of performing Jewish ceremonies. They all called a mayor, Alvaro de Cispedes, at once seized them and carried them before the Episcopal vicar, Joan Milan. They confessed their Judaism, and the vicar at once sentenced them to be burnt alive, which was executed the same day. Two women compromised in the matter were condemned to other penalties, and the house in which the heresy had been perpetrated was torn down. In such cases the bishops were merely exercising their imprescriptible jurisdiction over heresy, but the prelacy of Castile was too much occupied with worldly affairs to devote any general or sustained energy to the suppression of Judaizers, and the land was too anarchial for the royal power to exert any influence in carrying the Concordia into effect. The deposition of Avila, which followed in the next year, pushed everything again into confusion, and the only real importance of the attempt lies in its significance of what was impending when peace and a strong government should render such a measure feasible. Yet it is a noteworthy fact that in all the long series of the Cortes of Castile, from the earliest times the proceedings of which have been published in full, there was no petition for anything approaching an inquisition. In the fourteenth century there were many complaints about the Jews and petitions for restrictive laws, but these diminish in the fifteenth century, and the later Cortes, from fourteen fifty on, are almost free from them. The fearful disorders of the land give the procurators or deputies enough to complain about, and they seem to have had no time to waste on problematical dangers to religion. CHAPTER IV. This was the situation at the accession of Ferdinand and Isabella in fourteen seventy-four. Some years were necessary to settle the question of this accession, disputed by the unfortunate Beltroneja and to quell the unruly nobles. During this period Sixtus VI renewed the attempt to introduce the papal inquisition, for in sending Nicolo Franco to Castile as legate he commissioned him with full inquisitorial faculties to prosecute and punish the false Christians, who after baptism persisted in the observance of Jewish rites. The effort, however, was fruitless, and is interesting chiefly from the evidence which it gives of the desire of Sixtus to give to Castile the blessing of the inquisition. Ferdinand and Isabella, as we have seen, were habitually jealous of papal encroachments, and were anxious to limit rather than to extend the legatine functions. They did not respond to the papal zeal for the purity of the faith, and even when quiet was to a great extent restored, they took no initiative with regard to a matter which had seemed to fray Alonso de Espina so immeasurably important. In his capacity of agitator he had been succeeded by fray Alonso de Hojeda prior of the Dominican House of San Pablo of Seville, who devoted himself to the destruction of Judaism, both open as professed by the Jews, and concealed as attributed to the conversos. The Battle of Toro, March 1, 1476, virtually broke up the party of the Beltroneja, of which the leaders made their peace as best they could, and the sovereigns could at last undertake the task of pacifying the land. At the end of July 1477 Isabella, after capturing the castle of Trugillo, came, as we have seen, to Seville, where she remained until October 1478. The presence of the court, with conversos filling many of its most important posts, excited fray Alonso to greater ardor than ever. It was in vain, however, that he called the Queen's attention to the danger threatening the faith and the state from the multitude of pretended Christians in high places. She was receiving faithful service from members of the class accused, and she probably was too much occupied with the business in hand to undertake a task that could be postponed. It is said that her confessor, Torquemata, at an earlier period, had induced her to take a vow, that when she should reach the throne she would devote her life to the extirpation of heresy and the supremacy of the Catholic faith, but this may safely be dismissed as a legend of later date. Be this as it may, all that was done at the moment was that Perogonzala's de Mendoza, then Archbishop of Seville, held a synod in which was promulgated a catechism setting forth the belief and duties of the Christians, which was published in the churches and hung up for public information in every parish, while the priests were exhorted to increased vigilance and the frails to fresh zeal and making converts. The adoption of such a device betrays the previous neglect of all instruction of the Maranos in the new religion imposed on them. The court left Seville, and Oheda's opportunity seemed to have passed away. Whatever alacrity the priests may have shown in obeying their Archbishop, nothing was accomplished nor was the increased zeal of the frails rewarded with success. There is a story accredited by all the historians of the Inquisition, that Oheda had a chance to hear of a meeting of Jews and Conversoes on the night of Good Friday, March 28, 1478, to celebrate their impious rights, and that he hastened with the evidence to Cordova and laid it before the sovereigns, resulting in the punishment of the culprits and turning the scale in favor of introducing the Inquisition. But there is no contemporary evidence of its truth, and the dates are irreconcilable, nor was such an incentive necessary. The insincerity of the conversion of a large portion of the Maranos was incontestable. According to the principles universally accepted at the period, it was the duty of the sovereigns to reduce them to conformity. With the pacification of the land, the time it come to attempt this resolutely and comprehensively, and the only question, was as to the method. It was inevitable that there should have been a prolonged struggle in the court before the drastic remedy of the Inquisition was adopted. The efforts of its advocates were directed, not against the despised and friendless Jews, but against the powerful Conversoes, embracing many of the most trusted counselors of the sovereigns and men high in station in the church, who could not but recognize the danger impending on all who tracked their descent from Israel. There seems at first to have been a kind of compromise adopted, under which Pedro Fernández de Solis, Bishop of Cadiz, who was provisor of Seville, with the assistente Diego de Merlo, Freya Alonso de Hojeda, and some other frails were commissioned to take charge of the matter with power to inflict punishment. This resulted in a report by the commissioners to the sovereigns that a great portion of the citizens of Seville were infected with heresy, that it involved men in high station and power, and that it spread throughout not only Andalusia but Castile, so that it was incurable, saved by the organization of the Inquisition. The Archbishop Mendoza, doubtless, disgusted with the failure of his methods of instruction, joined in these representations, and they had a powerful supporter in Frey Thomas de Torquemada, prior of the Dominican convent of Santa Cruz in Segovia, who, as confessor of the sovereigns, had much influence over them, and who had long been urging the vigorous chastisement of heresy. At last the victory was won. Ferdinand and Isabella resolved to introduce the Inquisition in the Castilian kingdoms, and their ambassadors to the Holy See, the Bishop of Osma and his brother Diego de Santillian, were ordered to procure the necessary bull from Sixtus IV. This must have been shrouded in profound secrecy. For in July 1478, while negotiations must have been on foot in Rome, Ferdinand Isabella convoked a national synod at Seville, which sat until August 1. In the proposition laid by the sovereigns before this body, there is no hint that such a measure was desired or proposed, and in the deliberations of the assembled prelates, there is no indication that the Church thought any action against the conversos necessary. Even as late as 1480, after the procurement of the bull and before its enforcement, the Cortes of Toledo presented to the sovereigns a detailed memorial, embodying all the measures of reform desired by the people. In this the separation of Christians from Jews and Moors is asked for, but there is no request for the prosecution of apostate conversos. Evidently there was no knowledge of, and no popular demand for, the impending Inquisition. Sixtus can have been nothing loath to accomplish the introduction of the Inquisition in Castile, which is predecessors had so frequently and so vainly attempted, and which he had to say to do a few years previous by granting the necessary faculties to his legate. If the request of the Castilian sovereigns, therefore, was not immediately granted, it cannot have been from humanitarian motives, as alleged by some modern apologists, but because Ferdinand and Isabella desired not the ordinary papal Inquisition, but one which should be under the royal control, and should pour into the royal treasury the result in confiscations. Hithero the appointment of Inquisitors had always been made by the provincials of the Dominican or Franciscan Orders, according as the territory belonged to one or the other, with occasional interference on the part of the Holy See, from which the Commission emanated. It was a delegation of the Supreme Papal Authority, and had always been held completely independent of the secular power, but Ferdinand and Isabella were too jealous of papal interference in the eternal affairs of their kingdoms to permit this, and it is an evidence of the extreme desire of Sixtus to extend the Inquisition over Castile that he consented to make so important a concession. There also was doubtless discussion over the confiscations, which the wealth of the conversos promised to render large. This was a matter in which there was no universally recognized practice. In France they endured to the temporal senior. In Italy the custom varied at different times and in various states, but the papacy assumed control it, and in the fourteenth century it claimed the whole to be divided equally between the Inquisition and the papal camera. The matter was evidently one to be determined by negotiation, and in this too the sovereigns had their way, for the confiscations were tacitly abandoned to them. Nothing was said as to defraying the expenses of the institution, but this was inferred by the absorption of the confiscations. If it was to be depended on the crown, the crown must provide for it, and we shall see here after the various devices by which a portion of the burden was subsequently thrown upon the church. The bull as finally issued bears date November 1, 1478, and is a very simple affair, which, on its face, bears no signs of its momentous influence in molding the destinies of the Spanish Peninsula. After reciting the existence in Spain of false Christians and the request of Ferdinand and Isabella that the Pope should provide a remedy, it authorizes them to appoint three bishops or other suitable men, priests either irregular or secular, over forty years of age, masters or bachelors in theology or doctors or licentiates of canon law, and to remove and replace them at pleasure. These are to have the jurisdiction and faculties of bishops and inquisitors over heretics, their fouters and receivers. Subsequently, Sixtus pronounced the bull to have been drawn inconsiderably, and not in accordance with the received practice and the decrees of his predecessors, which doubtless referred to the power of appointment and removal lodged in the crown, and also to the omission of the request of Episcopal concurrence in rendering judgment. The creation of inquisitors was in itself an invasion of Episcopal jurisdiction, which, from the earliest history of the institution, had been the source of frequent trouble, and where, as in Spain, many bishops were of Jewish blood, and therefore under suspicion, the question was more intricate than elsewhere. With respect to this, moreover, it is observable that the bull did not confer, like that of Nicholas V in 1451, jurisdiction over bishops in any special derogation of the decree of Boniface VIII, requiring them, when suspected of heresy, to be tried by the Pope. Both of these questions, as we shall see, subsequently gave rise to considerable discussion. So far the anti-Semitic party had triumphed, but Isabella's hesitation to exercise the powers thus obtained shows that the conversos in her court did not abandon the struggle, and that for nearly two years they succeeded in keeping the balance even. It is possible also that Ferdinand was not inclined to a severity of which he could not forecast the economical disadvantages, for, as late as January 1482, a letter from him to the inquisitors of his kingdom of Valencia manifests a marked preference for the use of mild and merciful methods. Whatever may have been the influence at work, it was not until September 17, 1480, that the momentous step was taken which was to exercise so sinister an influence on the destinies of Spain. On that day commissioners were issued to two Dominicans, Miguel de Murillo, master of theology, and Juan de San Martín, bachelor of theology and friar of San Pablo in Seville, who were emphatically told that any dereliction of duty would entail the removal with forfeiture of all their temporalities and denationalization in the kingdom, thus impressing on them their subordination to the crown. Still there were delays. October 9th a royal order commanded all officials to give them free transportation and provisions on their way to Seville, where, as in the most infected spot, operations were to commence. When they reached the city they waited on the chapter and presented their credentials. The municipal council met them at the chapterhouse door and escorted them to the city hall where a formal reception took place and a solemn procession was organized for the following Sunday. They were thus fairly installed, but apparently they still found difficulties thrown in their way, for on December 27th it was deemed necessary to issue a royal sedula to the officials ordering them to render aid to the inquisitors. They had not waited for this to organize their tribunal with Dr. Juan Ruiz de Medina as assessor and Juan López del Barco, a chaplain of the queen, as promoter fiscale or prosecuting officer. To these were added, May 13th, 1481, Diego de Merlo, asistente or corregador of Seville, and elicitiante Ferrande Añez de Lobón as receivers of confiscations, an indispensable office in view of the profits of persecution. All soon found plenty of work. The conversos of Seville had not been unmindful of the coming tempest. Many of them had fled to the lands of the neighboring nobles in the expectation that feudal jurisdiction would protect them even against a spiritual court such as that of the Inquisition. To prevent this change of domicile, a royal decree ordered that no one should leave any place where inquisitors were holding their tribunal, but in the general terror this arbitrary command received scant obedience. A more efficient step was a proclamation addressed on January 2, 1481, to the Marquise of Cadiz and other nobles by the frails Miguel and Juan. This proved that no error had been made in the selection of those who were to lay the foundations of the Inquisition and that a new era had opened for Spain. The two simple friars spoke with an assured audacity to grandees who had been want to treat with their sovereign on almost equal terms, an audacity which must have appeared incredible to those to whom it was addressed, but to which Spain in time became accustomed from the Holy Office. The great Rodrigo Ponce de Leon and all other nobles were commanded to search their territories, to seize all strangers and newcomers, and to deliver them within fifteen days at the prison of the Inquisition to sequestrate their property and confide it properly inventoried to trustworthy persons who should account for it to the king or to the inquisitors. In vigorous language they were told that any failure in obeying these orders would bring upon them excommunication, removable only by the inquisitors on their superiors with forfeiture of rank and possessions and the release of their vassals from allegiance and from all payments due, a release which the inquisitors assumed to grant in advance, adding that they would prosecute them as fouters, receivers, and defenders of heretics. This portentous utterance was effective. The number of prisons was beatily so great that the convent of San Pablo, which the inquisitors at first occupied, became insufficient, and they obtained permission to establish themselves in the great fortress of Triana, the stronghold of Seville, of which the immense size and the gloomy dungeons rendered it appropriate for the work in hand. There were other conversos, however, who imagined that resistance was preferable to flight. Diego de Suzan, one of the leading citizens of Seville whose wealth was estimated at ten millions of Maravetes, assembled some of his prominent brethren of Seville, Uttara, and Carmona to deliberate as to their action. The meeting was held in the Church of San Salvador and comprised ecclesiastics of high rank, magistrates, and officials belonging to the threatened class. Civic tumults had been so customary a resource when any object was to be gained that Suzan naturally suggested, in a fiery speech, that they should recruit faithful men, collect a store of arms, and that the first arrest by the inquisitors should be the signal of a rising in which the inquisitors should be slain and thus an emphatic warning be given to deter others from renewing the attempt. In spite of some faint hardness manifested by one or two of those present, the plan was adopted and steps were taken to carry it out. When Pedro Fernandez Venidera, Mayor Dormo of the Cathedral, one of the conspirators, was arrested, weapons to arm a hundred men were found in his house, showing how active the preparations on foot the plot would doubtless have been executed and have led to a massacre, such as we have so often seen in the Spanish cities, but for a daughter of Diego Suzan, whose loveliness had won for her the name of the Firmosa Fembra, she was involved with an intrigue with a Christian caballero to whom she revealed the secret, and it was speedily conveyed to the inquisitors. Nothing could better have suited their purpose. If there had been any feeling of opposition to them on the part of the authorities, it disappeared, and the most important members of the Converso community were in their power. Diego de Merlo, the assistente of Seville, arrested at the bidding of the inquisitors, the richest and most honorable conversos, magistrates and dignitaries who were confined in San Pablo and then transferred to the Castle of Triana. The trials were prompt, and at the rendering of sentence a consulte de Fe or assembly of experts was convoked, consisting of lawyers and the provisor of the bisphoric, thus recognizing the necessity of concurrent action on the part of the Episcopal jurisdiction. What justified the sentence of burning it would be difficult to say. It was not obstinate heresy, for one at least of the victims is stated to have died as a good Christian. It could not have been the plot, for this, insofar as it was an ecclesiastical offense, was merely impeding the inquisition, and even the assassins of St. Peter Martyr when they professed repentance were admitted to penance. It was a new departure in disregard of all the cannons, and it gave warning that the new inquisition of Spain was not to follow in the footsteps of the old, but was to mark out for itself a yet bloodier and more terrible career. Justice was prompt, and the first auto-defei was celebrated, February 6, 1481, when six men and women were burnt, and the sermon was preached by Freyolan Sodejo Heda, who now saw the efforts of so many years crowned with success. He might well say, Nunc de Metis, for though a second auto followed in a few days, his eyes were not to rejoice at the Holy Spectacle, for the pestilence, which was to carry off 15,000 of the people of Seville, was now commencing, and he was one of the earliest victims. In the second auto there were only three burnings, Diego de Suzan, Manuel Soli, and Bartholome Toribala, three of the wealthiest and most important citizens of Seville. As though to show that the work thus begun was to be an enduring one, Aquemadero, Bracero, or Burning Place, was constructed in the Campo de Tablada, so massively that its foundations can still be traced. On four pillars at the corners were erected statues of the prophets in Plaster, Paris, apparently to indicate that although technically the burning was the work of secular justice, it was performed at the command of religion. Further arrests and burnings promptly followed the wealth and prominence of the victims, proving that here was a tribunal which was no respecter of persons, and that money or favor could avail nothing against its rigid fanaticism. The flight of the terror-stricken Conversoes was stimulated afresh, but the inquisition was not thus to be balked of its prey. Flight was forbidden, and guards were placed at the gates where so many were arrested that no place of confinement sufficiently capacious for them could be found. Yet notwithstanding this, great numbers escaped to the lands of the nobles, to Portugal, and to the Moors. The plague now began to rage with violence. God and man seemed to be uniting for the destruction of the unhappy Conversoes, and they petitioned Diego de Merlo to allow them to save their lives by leaving the pest-ridden city. Their request was humanely granted to those who could procure passes on condition that they should leave their property behind and only take with them what was necessary for immediate use. Under these regulations, multitudes departed, more than eight thousand finding refuge at Merena, Marchena, and Palacios. The Marquise of Cadice, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and other nobles received them hospitably. But many kept on to Portugal or to the Moors, and some, we are told, even found refuge in Rome. The inquisitors themselves were obliged to abandon the city, but their zeal allowed them no respite. They removed their tribunal to Aracena, where they found ample work to do, burning their twenty-three men and women, besides the corpses and bones of numerous deceased heretics, exhumed for the purpose. When the pestilence diminished, they returned to Seville and resumed their work there with un-relaxing ardour. According to a contemporary, by the 4th of November they had burnt two hundred and ninety-eight persons, and had condemned seventy-nine to perpetual prison. History of the Inquisition of Spain, Vol. 1 History of the Inquisition, Vol. 1 by Henry Charles Lee Book 1, Chapter 4, Establishment of the Inquisition, Part 3 As novices, it would seem that the zeal of the inquisitors had plunged them into the business of arresting and trying suspects without resorting to the preliminary device, which had been found useful in the earliest operations of the Holy Office, the term of grace. This was a period, longer or shorter, according to the discretion of the inquisitors, during which those who felt themselves guilty could come forward and confess, when they would be reconciled to the church and subjected dependents, pecuniary and otherwise, severe enough but preferable to the stake. One of the conditions was that of stating all that they knew of other heretics and apostates, which proved an exceedingly fruitful source of information, as, under the general terror, there was little hesitation in denouncing not only friends and acquaintances, but the nearest and dearest kindred, parents and children and brothers and sisters. No better means of detecting the hidden ramifications of Judaism could be devised, and towards the middle of the year 1481, the inquisitors adopted it. The mercy thus promised was scanty, as we shall see hereafter when we come to consider the subject. But it brought in vast numbers, and autos de fe were organized, in which they were paraded as penitents, no less than 1500 being exhibited in one of these salemnities. It can readily be conceived how soon the inquisitors were in possession of information, inculpating conversos in every corner of the land. It was freely asserted that they were all in reality Jews who were waiting for God to lead them out of the worse than Egyptian bondage in which they were held by the Christians. Thus was demonstrated not only the necessity of the inquisition, but of its extension throughout Spain. The evil was so great and its immediate repression too important for the work to be entrusted to the two friars laboring so zealously in Seville. Permission had been obtained only for the appointment of three, and application was made to Sixtus IV for additional powers. On this occasion he did not as before allow the commissions to be granted in the name of the sovereigns, but issued them direct to those nominated to him by them, whereby the inquisitors held their faculties immediately from the Holy See. Thus by a brief of February 11, 1482, he commissioned seven Pedro Ocaño, Pedro Martinez de Barrio, Alfonso de San Zebriano, Rodrigo Segara, Thomas de Torquemada, and Bernardo Santa Maria, all Dominicans. Still more were required of whose appointments we have no definite knowledge to man the tribunals which were speedily formed at Ciudad Real, Cordova, Hyane, and possibly at Segovia. The one at Ciudad Real was intended for the great Archie Episcopal province of Toledo, to which city it was transferred in 1485. The reason why it was first established at the former place may perhaps be that the warlike Archbishop Alonso Carulo, whether through zeal for the faith or in order to assert his Episcopal jurisdiction over heresy and prevent the intrusion of the papal inquisitors, had appointed before his death, July 1, 1482, asserted Dr. Thomas as inquisitor in Toledo. To what extent the latter performed his functions, we have no means of knowing the only trace of his activity being the production and incorporation in the records of subsequent trials by the inquisition of Ciudad Real of evidence taken by him. Be this as it may, the inquisition of Ciudad Real was not organized until the latter half of 1483. It commenced by issuing an edict of grace for thirty days, at the expiration of which it extended the time for another thirty days. Meanwhile, it was busily employed throughout October and November in making a general inquest and taking testimony from all who would come forward to give evidence. In the resultant trials, the names of some of the witnesses appear with suspicious frequency and the nature of their reckless general assertions, without personal knowledge, shows how flimsy was much of the evidence on which prosecutions were based. That the inquest was thorough and that everyone who knew anything damaging to a converso was brought up to state it, may be assumed from the trial of Sancho de Ciudad, in which the evidence of no less than thirty-four witnesses was recorded, some of them testifying to incidents happening twenty years previous. Much of this, moreover, indicates the careless security in which the conversos had lived and allowed their Jewish practices to be known to Christian servants and acquaintances with whom they were in constant intercourse. The first public manifestation of results seems to have been in Autodefe held November 16 in the Church of San Pedro for the reconciliation of penitents who had come forward during the term of grace. Soon after this the trials of those implicated commenced and were prosecuted with such vigor that, on February 6, 1484, an Autodefe was held in which four persons were burned, followed on the 23rd and 24th of the same month by an imposing solemnity involving the conchromation of thirty living men and women and the bones and effigies of forty who were dead or fugitives. In its two years of existence the Tribunal of Ciudad Real burned fifty-two obstinate heretics, condemned two hundred and twenty fugitives, and reconciled one hundred and eighty-three penitents. In 1485 the Tribunal of Ciudad Real was transferred to the city of Toledo where the conversos were very numerous and wealthy. They organized a plot to raise a tumult and dispatch the inquisitors during the procession of Corpus Christi, June 2, but as in the case of Seville it was betrayed and six of the conspirators were hanged after which we hear of no further trouble there. Those who were first arrested confessed that the design extended to seizing the city gates and cathedral tower and holding the place against the sovereigns. The inquisitor Pedro Díaz had preached the first sermon on May 24, and after the defeat of the conspiracy the Tribunal entered vigorously on its functions. The customary term of grace of forty days was proclaimed and after some delay we are told that many applied for reconciliation rather through fear of confirmation than through good will. After the expiration of the forty days letters of excommunication were published against all cognizant of heresy who should not denounce it within sixty days, a term subsequently extended by thirty more. Another very effectual expedient was adopted by summoning the Jewish rabbis and requiring them under penalty of life and property to place a major excommunication on their synagogues and not remove it until all the members should have revealed everything within their knowledge respecting Judaizing Christians. This was only perfecting a device that had already been employed elsewhere. In 1484 by a cedula of December 10th Ferdinand had ordered the magistrates of all the principal towns in Aragon to compel by all methods recognized in law the rabbis and sacristons of the synagogues and such other Jews as might be named to tell the truth as to all that might be asked of them and in Seville we are told that a prominent Jew Judah ibn Verga expatriated himself to avoid compliance with a similar demand. The quality of the evidence obtained by such means may be estimated from the fact that when in the assembly of Valadolid in 1488 Ferdinand and Isabella investigated the affairs of the Inquisition it was found that many Jews testified falsely against conversos in order to encompass their ruin for which some of those against which this was proved were lapidated into Toledo. Whether true or false the Toledon Inquisition reaped by these methods a plentiful harvest of important revelations. It is easy in fact to imagine the terror pervading the converso community and the eagerness with which the unfortunate would come forward to denounce themselves and their kindred and friends especially when after the expiration of the ninety days arrests began and quickly followed each other. The penitents were allowed to accumulate and at the first Autodefe held February 12 1486 only those of seven parishes San Vicente, San Nicolás, San Juan de la Leche, Santa Yusta, San Miguel, San Yuste and San Lorenzo were summoned to appear. These amounted to 750 of both sexes comprising many of the principal citizens and persons of quality. The ceremony was painful and humiliating. Bare headed and bare footed except that in consideration of the intense cold they were allowed to wear soles. Carrying unlighted candles and surrounded by a howling mob which had gathered from all the country around they were marched in procession through the city to the cathedral at the portal of which stood two priests who marked them on the forehead as they entered with the sign of the cross saying receive the sign of the cross which you have denied and lost. When inside they were called one by one before the inquisitors while a statement of their misdeeds was read. They were fined in one fifth of all their property for the war with the Moors. They were subjected to lifelong incapacity to hold office or to pursue honorable avocations or to wear other than the corset vestments unadorned under pain of burning for relapse and they were required to march in procession on six Fridays bare headed and bare footed disciplining themselves with hemp and cords. The loving mother church could not welcome back to her bosom her airing children without a sharp and wholesome warning nor did she relax her vigilance for this perilous process of confession and reconciliation was so devised as to furnish many subsequent victims to the stake as we shall see hereafter. The second auto was held on April 2 1486 where 900 penitents appeared from the parishes of San Roman, San Salvador, San Cristóbal, San Soil, San Tandres, and San Pedro. The third auto on June 11 consisted of some 750 from Santa Olaya, San Tomás, San Martín, and Sant Antolín. The city being thus disposed of, the various artidiacanates of the district were taken in order. That of Toledo furnished 900 penitents on December 10 when we are told that they suffered greatly from the cold. On January 15 1487 there were about 700 from the artidiacanate of Alcaraz and on March 10 from those of Talavera, Madrid, and Guadalajara about 1200, some of whom were condemned in addition to where the San Benito for life. While the more or less voluntary penitents were thus treated there were numerous autos de fe celebrated of a more serious character in which there were a good many burnings including not a few frilays and ecclesiastical dignitaries as well as cases of fugitives and of the dead who were burned in effigy and their estates confiscated. In 1485 a temporary tribunal was set up at Guadalupe where Ferdinand and Isabella appointed as inquisitor under what papal authority does not appear Fre Nuno de Arevalo prior of the Heronomite convent there. Apparently to guide his inexperience Dr. Francisco de la Fuente was transferred from Ciudad Real and with another colleague the licentiate Pedro Sanchez de la Calancha they purified the place of heresy with so much vigor that within a year they held in the cemetery before the doors of the monastery seven autos de fe in which were burnt a heretic monk 52 judaeisers 48 dead bodies and 25 effigies of fugitives while 16 were condemned to perpetual imprisonment and innumerable others were sent to the galleys or pennanced with the San Benito for life. These energetic proceedings do not appear to have made good Christians of those who were spared. 4 July 131500 inquisitor general de Sa ordered all the conversals of Guadalupe to leave the district and not to return. The same year 1485 saw a tribunal assigned to Valladolid but it must have met with effective resistance for in September 1488 Ferdinand and Isabella were obliged to visit the city in order to get it into working condition. It forthwith commenced operations by arresting some prominent citizens and on June 19 1489 the first autode fe was held in which 18 persons were burnt alive and the bones of four dead heretics. Still the existence of this tribunal would seem to have long remained uncertain. 4 as late as December 24 1498 we find Isabella writing to a new appointee that she and the inquisitor general have agreed that the inquisition must be placed there and ordering him to prepare to undertake it and then on January 22 1501 telling inquisitor general de Sa that she approves of its lodgement in the house of Diego de la Baesa where it is to remain for the present. She adds that she and Ferdinand have written to the count of Cabra to see that for the future the inquisitors are well treated. Permanent tribunals were also established in Urrena and Mercia of the early records of all of which we know little. In 1490 a temporary one was organized in Avila by Torquemada apparently for the purpose of trying those accused of the murder of the Santo Niño de la Guardia. It continued active until 1500 and during these 10 years there were hung in the church the insignias and magnates of 75 victims burnt alive of 26 dead and of one fugitive besides the San Benitos of 71 reconciled penitents. The various provinces of Castile thus became provided with the machinery requisite for the extermination of heresy and at an early period in its development it was seen that for the enormous work before it some more compact and centralized organization was desirable than had hitherto been devised. The inquisition which had been so effective in the 13th and 14th centuries was scattered over Europe. Its judges were appointed by the Dominican or Franciscan provincials using a course of procedure and obeying instructions which emanated from the Holy See. The papacy was the only link between them. The individual inquisitors were to a great extent independent. They were not subjected to visitation or inspection and it was, if not impossible, a matter of difficulty to call them to account for the manner in which they might discharge their functions. Such was not the conception of Ferdinand and Isabella who intended the Spanish Inquisition to be a national institution strongly organized and owing obedience to the crown much more than to the Holy See. The measures which they adopted with this object were conceived with their customary sagacity and were carried out with their usual vigor and success. At this period they were earnestly engaged in reorganizing the institutions of Castile, centralizing the administration and reducing to order the chaos resulting from the virtual anarchy of the preceding reigns. In effecting this they apportioned in 1480 with the consent of the Cortes of Toledo the affairs of government among four royal councils that of administration and justice known as the Consejo Real de Castella that of finance or Consejo de Hacienda, the Consejo de Estado and the Consejo de Aragón to which was added a special one for the Hermandades. These met daily in the palace for the dispatch of business and their effect in making the royal power felt in every corner of the land and in giving vigor and unity to the management of the state soon proved the practical value of the device. The Inquisition was fast looming up as in a fair of state of the first importance while yet it could scarce be regarded as falling within the scope of either of the four councils. The sovereigns were too jealous of papal interference to allow it to drift aimlessly subject to directions from Rome and their uniform policy required that it should be kept as much as possible under the royal superintendents. That a fifth council should be created for the purpose was a natural expedient for which the Ascent of Sixtus IV was readily obtained when it was organized in 1483 under the name of Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisición, a title conveniently abbreviated to La Suprema, with jurisdiction over all matters connected with the faith. To secure due subordination and discipline over the whole body it was requisite that the president of this council should have full control of appointment and dismissal of the individual inquisitors who as exercising power delegated directly from the pope might otherwise regard with contempt the authority of one who was also merely a delegate. It thus became necessary to create a new office unknown to the older Inquisition, an inquisitor general who should preside over the deliberations of the council. The office evidently was one which would be of immense weight and the future of the institution depended greatly on the character of its first chief. By the advice of the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo, Perro Gonzales de Mendoza, the royal choice fell on Tomás de Torquemada, the confessor of the sovereigns, who was one of the seven inquisitors commissioned by the papal letter of February 11, 1482. The other members of the council were Alonso Carrillo, Bishop of Massara, Sicily, and two doctors of Laws, Sancho Velasco de Cuellar and Ponce de Valencia. The exact date of Torquemada's appointment is not known, as the papal brief conferring it has not been found, but as Sixtus created him inquisitor of Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia by letters of October 17, 1483, his commission as inquisitor general of Castile was somewhat antecedent. The selection of Torquemada justified the wisdom of the sovereigns. Full of pityless zeal, he developed the institution with unwirried assiduity. Rigid and unbending, he would listen to no compromise of what he deemed to be his duty, and in his fear he personified the union of the spiritual and temporal swords which was the ideal of all true churchmen. Under his guidance the inquisition rapidly took shape and extended its organization throughout Spain and was untiring and remorseless in the pursuit and punishment of the apostates. His labors won him ample praise from successive hopes. Already in 1484 Sixtus IV wrote to him that Cardinal Borgia had warmly eulogized him for his success in prosecuting the good work throughout Castile and Leon, adding, quote, we have heard this with the greatest pleasure and rejoice exceedingly that you who are furnished with both doctrine and authority have directed your zeal to these matters which contribute to the praise of God and the utility of the orthodox faith. We commend you in the Lord and exhort you, cherished son, to persevere with tireless zeal in aiding and promoting the cause of the faith by doing which, as we are assured you will, you will win our special favor, end quote. Twelve years later Cardinal Borgia, then Pope under the name of Alexander VI, assures him in 1496 that he cherishes him in the very bowels of affection for his immense labors in the exaltation of the faith. If we cannot wholly attribute to him the spirit of ruthless fanaticism which animated the inquisition, he at least deserves the credit of stimulating and rendering it efficient in its work by organizing it and by directing it with dauntless courage against the suspect, however high placed, until the shadow of the Holy Office covered the land and no one was so hardy as not to tremble at its name. The temper in which he discharged his duties and the absolute and irresponsible control which he exercised over the subordinate tribunals can be fitly estimated from a single instance. There was a fully organized inquisition at Medina, with three inquisitors and assessor, a fiscal and other officials, assisted by the abbot of Medina as ordinary. They reconciled some culprits and burnt others, apparently without referring the cases to him. But when they found reason to acquit some prisoners, they deemed it best to transport the papers to him for confirmation. He demurred at this mercy and told the tribunal to try the accused again when the licentiate Villalpondo should be there as a visit to door. Some months after Villalpondo came there, the cases were reviewed, the prisoners were tortured, two of them were reconciled and the rest acquitted, the sentences being duly published as final. Torquematha, on learning this, was incensed and declared that he would burn them all. He had them arrested again and sent to Valladolid to be tried outside of their district, where his threat was doubtless carried into effect. When such was the spirit infused in the organization at the beginning, we need not wonder that verdicts of acquittal were infrequent in the records of its development. Yet with all, Torquematha's zeal could not wholly extinguish worldliness. We are told, indeed, that he refused the Archbishopric of Seville, that he wore the humble Dominican habit, that he never tasted flesh nor wore linen in his garments nor used it on his bed, and that he refused to give a marriage portion to his indigent sister, whom he would only assist to enter the order of Bayatas of Saint Dominic. Still, his asceticism did not prevent him from living in palaces surrounded by a princely retinue of 250 armed familiars and 50 horsemen. Nor was his persecuting career purely disinterested. Though the rule of his Dominican order forbade individual ownership of property, and through his position as supreme judge, should have dictated the utmost reserve in regard to the financial results of persecution, he had no hesitation in accumulating large sums from the pecuniary penances inflicted by his subordinates on the heretics who spontaneously returned to the faith. It is true that the standards of the age were so low that he made no secret of this, and it is also true that he lavished them on the splendid monastery of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which he built at Avila, on enlarging that of Santa Cruz at Segovia, of which he was prior, and on various structures in his native town of Torquemada. Yet amid the ostentation of his expenditure, he lived in perpetual fear, and at his table he always used the horn of a unicorn, which was a sovereign preservative against poison. As delegated powers were held to expire with the death of the grantor, unless otherwise expressly defined, Torquemada's commission required renewal on the decease of Sixtus IV. Ferdinand and Isabella asked that the new one should not be limited to the life of the Pope, but that the power should continue, not only during Torquemada's life, but until the appointment of his successor. The request was not granted, and when Innocent VIII, by a brief of February 3, 1485, recommissioned Torquemada, it was in the ordinary form. This apparently was not satisfactory, but the Pope was not willing thus to lose all control of the Spanish Inquisition, and a compromise seems to have been reached. For when, February 6, 1486, Torquemada was appointed Inquisitor General of Barcelona, and his commission for Spain was renewed on March 24 of the same year, it was drawn to continue at the good pleasure of the Pope and of the Holy Sea, which, without abnegating papal control, rendered renewals unnecessary. This formula was abandoned in the commissions of Torquemada's immediate successors, but was subsequently resumed and continued to be employed through the following centuries.