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.[442] 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, Torquemada, 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.[443] Be this as it may, all that was done at the moment was that Pero González de Mendoza, then Archbishop of Seville, held a synod in which was promulgated a catechism setting forth the belief and duties of the Christian, 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 frailes to fresh zeal in making converts.[444] The adoption of such a device betrays the previous neglect of all instruction of the Marranos in the new religion imposed on them.
The court left Seville and Hojeda’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 frailes rewarded with success. There is a story accredited by all historians of the Inquisition that Hojeda chanced to hear of a meeting of Jews and Conversos on the night of Good Friday, March 28, 1478, to celebrate their impious rites and that he hastened with the evidence to Córdova 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.[445] The insincerity of the conversion of a large portion of the Marranos 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 had come to attempt this resolutely and comprehensively and the only question was as to the method.
THE INQUISITION APPLIED FOR
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 Conversos, embracing many of the most trusted counsellors of the sovereigns and men high in station in the Church, who could not but recognize the danger impending on all who traced 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, Fray Alfonso de Hojeda and some other frailes 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 high in station and power, and that it spread throughout not only Andalusia but Castile, so that it was incurable save by the organization of the Inquisition.[446] The Archbishop Mendoza, doubtless disgusted with the failure of his methods of instruction, joined in these representations and they had a powerful supporter in Fray 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.[447] 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 Santillan, were ordered to procure the necessary bull from Sixtus IV.[448] This must have been shrouded in profound secrecy, for, in July, 1478, while negotiations must have been on foot in Rome, Ferdinand and Isabella convoked a national synod at Seville which sat until August 1st. In the propositions 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.[449] Even as late as 1480, after the procurement of the bull and before its enforcement, the Córtes 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.[450] 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 his predecessors had so frequently and so vainly attempted and which he had essayed 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 resultant confiscations. Hitherto 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 to the other, with occasional interference on the part of the Holy See, from which the commissions 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 internal 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 enured to the temporal seigneur. In Italy the custom varied at different times and in the various states, but the papacy assumed to control it and, in the fourteenth century, it claimed the whole, to be divided equally between the Inquisition and the papal camera.[451] 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 dependent on the crown the crown must provide for it, and we shall see hereafter the various devices by which a portion of the burden was subsequently thrown upon the Church.
NATURE OF THE PAPAL BULL
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 moulding 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 regular 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 fautors and receivers.[452] Subsequently Sixtus pronounced the bull to have been drawn inconsiderately and not in accordance with 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 requirement of episcopal concurrence in rendering judgment.[453] 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.[454] Both of these questions, as we shall see, subsequently gave rise to considerable discussion.
So
