The ceremony was painful and humiliating. Bareheaded and barefooted, 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 coarsest vestments unadorned, under pain of burning for relapse, and they were required to march in procession on six Fridays, bareheaded and barefooted, disciplining themselves with hempen cords.[473] The loving mother Church could not welcome back to her bosom her erring 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 nine hundred penitents appeared from the parishes of San Roman, San Salvador, San Cristóval, San Zoil, Sant Andrés and San Pedro. The third auto, on June 11th, consisted of some seven hundred and fifty from Santa Olalla, San Tomás, San Martin and Sant Antolin. The city being thus disposed of, the various archidiaconates of the district were taken in order. That of Toledo furnished nine hundred penitents on December 10th, when we are told that they suffered greatly from the cold. On January 15, 1487, there were about seven hundred from the archidiaconate of Alcaraz and on March 10th, from those of Talavera, Madrid and Guadalajara about twelve hundred, some of whom were condemned in addition to wear the sanbenito 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 frailes and ecclesiastical dignitaries, as well as cases of fugitives and of the dead, who were burned in effigy and their estates confiscated.[474]
TRIBUNAL OF GUADALUPE
In 1485 a temporary tribunal was set up at Guadalupe, where Ferdinand and Isabella appointed as inquisitor (under what papal authority does not appear) Fray Nuño de Arevalo, prior of the Geronimite convent there. Apparently to guide his inexperience Doctor Francisco de la Fuente was transferred from Ciudad-Real and, with another colleague, the Licentiate Pedro Sánchez 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, fifty-two Judaizers, forty-eight dead bodies and twenty-five effigies of fugitives, while sixteen were condemned to perpetual imprisonment and innumerable others were sent to the galleys or penanced with the sanbenito for life. These energetic proceedings do not appear to have made good Christians of those who were spared for, July 13, 1500, Inquisitor-general Deza ordered all the Conversos of Guadalupe to leave the district and not to return.[475] 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 auto de fe was held in which eighteen persons were burnt alive and the bones of four dead heretics.[476] Still, the existence of this tribunal would seem to have long remained uncertain for, 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 Deza that she approves of its lodgement in the house of Diego de la Baeza, 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.[477] Permanent tribunals were also established in Llerena and Murcia, 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 ten years there were hung in the church the insignias y mantetas of seventy-five victims burnt alive, of twenty-six dead and of one fugitive, besides the sanbenitos of seventy-one reconciled penitents.[478]
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 thirteenth and fourteenth 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.
ORGANIZATION
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 Córtes of Toledo, the affairs of government among four royal councils, that of administration and justice, known as the Concejo Real de Castella, that of Finance, or Concejo de Hacienda, the Concejo de Estado and the Concejo de Aragon, to which was added a special one for the Hermandades.[479] These met daily in the palace for the despatch of business and their effect in making the royal power felt in every quarter 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 an affair 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 superintendence. That a fifth council should be created for the purpose was a natural expedient, for which the assent of Sixtus IV was readily obtained, when it was organized in 1483 under the name of the Concejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion—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, Pero González de Mendoza, the royal choice fell on Thomas de Torqemada, 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 Mazara (Sicily) and two doctors of laws, Sancho Velasco de Cuellar and Ponce de Valencia.[480] 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.[481]
TORQUEMADA
The selection of Torquemada justified the wisdom of the sovereigns.
