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Spanish Inquisition: King Ferdinand
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The Spanish Inquisition was an institution that had precedents in other Inquisitions. In the 15th century, as the kingdoms of Castille and Aragon united under the Catholic monarchs and concluded the Reconquista with the conquest of Granada, anxiety about the cultural unity of the country grew. Suspicions were especially raised against Jews who had recently converted to Christianity, called conversos or derogatively marranos, as many doubted the sincerity of these conversions. Indeed, many Jews had been baptized to escape violent anti-Jewish outbursts around 1400. In 1492, the Alhambra Decree ordered all remaining Jews to leave the kingdoms.
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As far as the Spanish Inquisition is concerned, one must look for context to chronology and geography. Chronology first. The Holy Office, as it was popularly called, was founded in 1478 on the strength of a papal rescript requested by the sovereigns of a newly united Spain, the wife and husband, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. For precedent they cited the functioning of the Roman Inquisition during the thirteenth century when, under this rubric, the popes established special circuit courts to investigate and, when possible, to root up various heterodox movements, especially in southern France and northern Italy. These movements - lumped together under the rather sinister-sounding label "Cathari" - had alarmed the lords temporal of the time no less than the lords spiritual, because the Manichaean doctrines and life-style proposed by the Cathari were deemed as subversive of civil well-being as of ecclesiastical. Over the course of a hundred years or so the Cathari were pretty well stamped out or driven underground through the cooperative efforts of Church and State.
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In the Spanish Inquisition, the Grand Inquisitor was appointed by the king, then the pope had to approve. The Inquisitor in turn appointed and presided over the five members of the High Council, which, with its swarm of consultants and clerical staff, was the ultimate power of the Inquisition. It decided all disputed questions and heard all appeals from the lower inquisitorial courts, which by 1538 numbered nineteen in Spain and three more in Mexico, Lima, and Cartagena. Without the permission of the High Council no priest or nobleman could be imprisoned. Everyone was subject to it, not excepting priests, bishops, or even the sovereign. The judges were to be at least forty years old, and of unimpeachable reputation.
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The Spanish Inquisition, authorized in 1478 by 'pope' Sixtus IV for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, became harsher than the medieval Inquisition. Its primary target was those Jews and Muslims who had been coercively, and insincerely, 'converted' to the faith. However, it was the view of Llorente, secretary of the Inquisition at Madrid from 1789 - 1791 and historian of the Inquisition, that this reasoning was only a pretext useful for confiscating the wealth of the Jews, and that Sixtus went along for the purpose of extending the dominion of Rome. In later years the focus of the Inquisition was turned against Protestants.
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Ferdinand and Isabella chose Catholicism to unite Spain and in 1478 asked permission of the pope to begin the Spanish Inquisition to purify the people of Spain. They began by driving out Jews and other non-believers. In 1483 Tomas de Torquemada became the inquisitor-general for most of Spain. He was responsible for establishing the rules of inquisitorial procedure and creating branches of the Inquisition in various cities. He remained the leader of the Spanish Inquisition for fifteen years and was responsible for the execution of thousands of Spaniards.
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Sixtus then blessed the royal institution of the Spanish Inquisition. Ferdinand had won everything he sought: the Inquisition was under his sole control, but had the blessing of the Pope, and the royal coffers were swelling with the loot of the Jewish victims.
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King Ferdinand