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The Inquisition inspired so much terror that the nobility lost no time in imprisoning those to whom they had lately promised protection, and in sending them in custody to Seville. The number of these prisoners was so great that the tribunal was soon obliged to seek another building for its functions. It selected a castle in Triana, a suburb of Seville. On the gate of this house of blood were inscribed, in mockery of the Jews, certain verses selected from their Scriptures: – "Arise, God, judge Thy cause;" "Catch ye foxes for us," which plainly showed the utter heartlessness of their judges. Fugitives when caught were treated as convicted heretics. So early as the fourth day after the installation of the tribunal, it held its first sitting. Six Marranos who had either avowed their old religion before their judges, or made horrible confessions on the rack, were condemned and burnt alive. The tale of victims grew to such proportions that the city authorities set apart a special place as a permanent execution ground, which subsequently became infamous as the Quemadero, or place of burning. Four huge caricatures of prophets distinguished this spot, existing to the present day to the shame of Spain and Christianity. For three hundred years the smoke of the burnt-offering of innocence ascended to heaven from this infernal spot.

With that mildness of mien which skillfully covers the wisdom and the venom of the serpent, Miguel Morillo and his coadjutors gave to the new-Christians guilty of relapse into Judaism a certain time in which to declare their remorse. Upon doing this they would receive absolution, and be permitted to retain their property. This was the Edict of Grace; but it was not wanting in threats for those who should permit the time of respite to elapse, and be denounced by others as backsliders. The full vigor of the canonical laws against heresy and apostasy would then be exercised against them. The credulous in crowds obeyed the summons. Contritely they appeared before the tribunal, lamented the awful guilt of their lapse into Judaism, and awaited absolution and permission to live in peace. But now the inquisitors imposed the condition that they declare by name, position, residence and other particulars all persons of their acquaintance whom they knew to be apostates. This declaration they were to substantiate on oath. In the name of God they were asked to become accusers and betrayers – the friend of his friend, the brother of his brother, and the son of his father. Terror, and the assurance that the betrayed should never know the names of their betrayers, loosed the tongues of the weak-hearted, and the tribunal soon had a long list of heretics upon whom to carry out its bloody work.

Not only the hunted Marranos, every Spaniard was called upon by an edict of the inquisitors to become an informer. Under threat of excommunication every one was bound to give, within three days, a list of acquaintances guilty of Jewish heresy. It was a summons to the most hateful vices of mankind to become allies of the court: to malice, hatred and revenge, to sate themselves by treachery; to greed, to enrich itself; and to superstition, to gain salvation by betrayal.

And what were the signs of this heresy and apostasy? The Inquisition had published a very complete, practical guide on the subject, so that each informer might find good grounds for his denunciation. The following signs of heresy were set forth: if baptized Jews cherished hopes of a Messiah; if they held Moses to be as efficacious for salvation as Jesus; if they kept the Sabbath or a Jewish feast; if they had their children circumcised; if they observed the Jewish dietary laws; if they wore clean linen or better garments on the Sabbath, laid tablecloths, or lit no fire on this day, or if they went barefoot on the Day of Atonement, or asked pardon of each other. If a father laid his hands in blessing on his children without making the sign of the cross; if one said his prayers with face turned to the wall, or with motions of the head; or if he uttered a benediction (Baraha, Beracha) over the wine-cup, and passed it to those seated at the table with him, he was to be deemed recalcitrant. As a matter of course, neglect of the usages of the church was the strongest ground for suspicion and accusation. Again, if a new-Christian repeated a psalm without adding the Gloria; or if he ate meat on fast-days; or if a Jewish woman did not go to church forty days after her lying-in; or if parents gave their children Jewish names, the charge of heresy was held proved.

Even the most innocent actions, if they happened to coincide with Jewish usages, were regarded as signs of aggravated heresy. If anyone, for instance, on the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles accepted gifts from the table of Jews, or sent them; or if a new-born child was bathed in water in which gold coins and grains of corn had been placed; or if a dying man in his last moments turned his face to the wall – all such actions were held to be signs of heresy.

By such means unscrupulous people were given ample opportunity for denunciation, and the tribunal was enabled to accuse of heresy the most orthodox proselytes when it desired to destroy their influence or confiscate their property. Naturally the dungeons of the Inquisition were soon filled with Jewish heretics. Fully 15,000 were thrown into prison at the outset. The Christian priests of Moloch inaugurated the first auto-da-fé, on January 6th, 1481, with a solemn procession, repeated innumerable times during the following three hundred years. The clergy in their gorgeous vestments and with crucifixes; the grandees in black robes with their banners and pennons; the unhappy victims in the hideous San Benito, short and clinging, painted with a red cross, and flames and figures of devils; the accompanying choir of a vast concourse – so the executioners with proud bearing and the victims in most miserable guise marched to the place of torment. Arrived there the inquisitors recited their sentence on the victims. To the horror of the scene was added the ghastly mockery that the tribunal did not execute the sentence of death, but left it to the secular judge; for the church, though steeped to the lips in blood, was supposed not to desire the death of the sinner. The Jewish heretics were given to the flames forthwith, or, if penitent, they were first strangled. In the first auto-da-fé, at which the bishop, Alfonso de Ojeda, preached the inauguration sermon, only six Judaizing Christians were burnt. A few days later the conspirators of Carmona, Seville, and other towns, and three of the most wealthy and respected of the Marranos, among whom was Diego de Suson, the possessor of ten millions, and Abulafia, formerly a Talmudic scholar and a rabbi, were burnt to death. On the 26th of March seventeen victims suffered death by fire on the Quemadero. In the following month a yet greater number were burnt; and up to November of the same year 298 burnt-offerings to Christ gasped out their lives in flame and smoke in the single district of Seville. In the archbishopric of Cadiz no less than 2,000 Jewish heretics were burnt alive in the course of that year, most of them being wealthy or well-to-do, their possessions, of course, going to the royal exchequer. Not even death afforded a safeguard against the fury of the Holy Office. These ghouls of religion tore from their graves the corpses of proselytes who had died in heresy, burnt them, confiscated their possessions in the hands of their heirs, and condemned the latter to obscurity and poverty that they might never aspire to any honorable office. Here was a splendid field for the avarice of the king. When it was impossible to convict a wealthy heir, it was only necessary to establish proofs of a relapse to Judaism against his dead father, and then the property fell partly to the king, partly to the Holy Inquisition!

Many Marranos saved themselves by flight from the clutches of the merciless persecutors, and took refuge in the neighboring Moslem kingdom of Granada, in Portugal, Africa, Provence, or Italy. Those who reached Rome approached the papal court with bitter complaints about the savage and arbitrary proceedings of the Inquisition against themselves and their companions in misery. As the complainants did not come with empty hands, their cause usually obtained a ready hearing. On the 29th of January, 1482, the pope addressed a severe letter to Ferdinand and Isabella, censuring the conduct of the Inquisition in no measured terms. He stated that he had been assured that the proceedings of the tribunal were contrary to all forms of justice, that many were unjustly imprisoned, and subjected to fearful tortures. Innocent people had been denounced as heretics, and their property taken from their heirs. In this letter the pope admitted that he had issued the bull for the institution of the Inquisition without due consideration!

Sixtus further stated that, in strict justice, he ought to depose the inquisitors, De Morillo and San Martin; but out of consideration for their majesties he would allow them to remain in possession of their offices, only so long, however, as no further complaints were made against them. Should protests again be raised he would restore the inquisitorial office to the bishops, to whom it properly belonged. The pope refused the request of Don Ferdinand to institute in the other provinces of the united kingdom extraordinary tribunals for the trial of heretics.

But Don Ferdinand also knew how to apply the golden key to the papal cabinet, and obtained a bull sanctioning the establishment of the Inquisition in the provinces of Aragon. In this bull, dated February 11th, 1482, Sixtus appointed six monks and clerics as chief inquisitors, among them Thomas de Torquemada, general of the Dominicans of Avilo, a monk already infamous for his bloodthirsty fanaticism. In another letter, of the 17th of April, he invested these men with discretionary powers, in virtue of which they were able to dispense with certain forms of common law, the hearing of witnesses and the admission of pleaders for the defense. Thus were fresh victims brought to the stake.

In the kingdom of Aragon, however, where the nobility and the middle class had a weighty voice in public matters, the condemnation of Jewish heretics without formal trial raised such formidable opposition that Cardinal Borgia, afterwards the infamous Alexander VI, and the king himself, petitioned the pope for a modification of the conditions governing the practice of the tribunal. In a letter of the 10th of October, Sixtus excused himself from making any radical changes in consequence of the absence of the cardinals, who had fled from Rome in mortal fear of the plague. But he abrogated the conditions which too flagrantly violated the principles of common law; that is to say, he ordered that accuser and witnesses should be confronted with the accused, and that the process should be conducted in public.

The Inquisition also met with great opposition in Sicily, an appanage of the kingdom of Aragon. The people and even the authorities took the part of the new-Christians, and shielded them from the persecution of their bloodthirsty judges. Christians themselves openly charged that the victims were not executed out of zeal for the faith, but from insatiable greed which sought ceaseless confiscations. The bigoted Isabella was sorely troubled at having her pious desire to devote the proselytes to death thus evilly represented, and even the pope behaved as though it wounded him to the heart. (February, 1483.)

Sixtus IV had the greatest interest in maintaining friendly relations with the Spanish court, and, therefore, made every concession with regard to the Inquisition. As it often happened that Christian proselytes condemned by the tribunal, who had succeeded in escaping to Rome, purchased absolution from the papal throne, with the infliction of only a light, private penance, the sovereigns saw that their efforts to purge the Christian faith by the extermination of Jewish proselytes, especially by the confiscation of their goods, were most unpleasantly thwarted. The court, therefore, insisted that the pope appoint a judge of appeals in Spain itself, so that the rulings of the Inquisition might not be reversed in foreign countries, where all kinds of unfavorable influences might be brought to bear. The pope agreed to this proposition, and appointed Inigo Manrique chief judge of appeals in cases in which the condemned moved for a revision of their trial. This measure was, however, of very doubtful benefit to the unfortunate culprits, for upon what ground could they base their appeal when the trial had been conducted in secret, and neither accuser nor witnesses were known to them? It is altogether likely, too, that the tribunal did not leave them very much time to institute proceedings for the revision of the verdict. Between the passing of the sentence and the last act of the auto-da-fé only a very short interval elapsed.

Another measure of the Spanish court, calculated to deprive the accused of the last hope of acquittal, was approved by the pope. Baptized Jews, or new-Christians descended from them, frequently held bishoprics, and were naturally favorably inclined to their unfortunate and persecuted brethren in race. At the request of the Spanish court, the pope issued a bull decreeing that no bishop, vicar, or member of the upper clergy descended from a Jewish family, whether paternally or maternally, should sit as a judge in any court for the trial of heretics. From this prohibition there was only a step to the condemnation of clergy of Jewish blood to the stake. Both his own frame of mind and his political position now inclined the pope to encourage the sovereigns in the prosecution of their bloody work. He reminded them that Jesus had established his kingdom on earth solely by the extirpation of idolatry and the extermination of idolators, and he pointed to the recent victories which the Spaniards had gained over the Moslems in Granada as the reward of heaven for their efforts towards the purification of the faith – that is to say, for the burning of new-Christians and the confiscation of their goods.

Had his Holiness, Sixtus IV, not been infamous as a monster of depravity, sensuality and unscrupulousness, who appointed boys that he had himself abused to bishoprics and the cardinal dignity, and who bestowed no clerical office without payment – as his contemporary, Infessura, the chancellor of Rome, has recorded – his conduct with regard to the Holy Inquisition would have been sufficient to brand him with immortal infamy. Within a short period he published the most contradictory decisions, and did not take the trouble to veil his inconsistency with the most flimsy pretense. Scarcely had he proclaimed the utmost rigors against Judaizing heretics, and appointed a tribunal of appeals, than he partly abrogated these bulls, and issued another prescribing milder proceedings to the Inquisition, only to alter this policy in its turn.

The hated Marranos, among them the high-spirited Juan de Seville, had exerted themselves to procure from the papal court a decree to the effect that those who had undergone private penance in Rome should not be submitted to the oppression and persecution of the avaricious king and his bloodthirsty inquisitors, but should be regarded and treated as orthodox Christians. At first the pope consented, and issued a bull on August 2d, 1483, "to be held in eternal remembrance and as guide for the future," in which he especially directed that rigor be tempered with mercy in dealing with the new-Christians, seeing that the severity of the Inquisition had overstepped the bounds of justice. The bull enacted that all new-Christians who had confessed their remorse to the confessor-general in Rome, and had been assigned a penance, should not be pursued by the Inquisition, and should have their trials suppressed. It exhorted the king and queen, "by the bowels of Jesus Christ," to remember that in mercy and kindness alone may man resemble God, and that, therefore, they might in this follow in the steps of Jesus, whose peculiar attribute it was to show mercy and to pardon. The pope permitted this bull to be copied indefinitely, each copy to have the authority of the original, in order that the papal attitude with regard to new-Christians might be made universally known. Sixtus concluded with the statement that he issued this bull entirely of his own motion, not in obedience to external influence, although it was well known in high circles that it had been bought with new-Christian gold. The sovereigns, however, would have nothing to do with mercy or forbearance; they desired the death of the culprits and the possession of their property. Nor was the pope really inclined to mild measures. A few days later, on August 13th, he recalled this bull, excusing himself to the king for its tenor, and said that it had been issued in too great haste. Such was the consistency and infallibility of his Holiness, Pope Sixtus IV!

In vain Don Juan de Seville, who had procured the promulgation of the favorable bull, endeavored to circulate it. He failed to find any clerical official in Spain to copy and confirm it. He, therefore, applied to the Portuguese archbishop of Evora, who caused it to be copied by his notary and recognized as authentic. The Inquisition, however, was extremely suspicious of those who had sought and obtained indulgences at Rome, and Don Juan de Seville and his companions fell at length into its hands, and were severely punished.

Terrible though the tribunal had hitherto been; though many thousands of compulsory proselytes and their descendants, during its three short years of existence, had been cast into the flames, left to rot in its dungeons, driven from their country, or reduced to beggary, it was child's play compared with what it became when placed under the control of a priest whose heart was closed to every sentiment of mercy, whose lips breathed only death and destruction, and who united the savagery of the hyena with the venom of the snake. Until now the Inquisition had been confined to southern Spain, to the districts of Seville and Cadiz, and the Christian province of Andalusia. In the remaining provinces of Spain it had hitherto been unable to get a footing, in consequence of the resistance offered to its introduction by the cortes. Through the opposition of the people, the wicked will of the inquisitors Morillo and Juan de San Martin had remained inoperative; their uplifted arm was paralyzed by innumerable difficulties. If here and there a few courts were held in the remaining districts of Spain, they were isolated and without organization, and were thus unable to furnish each other with victims. King Ferdinand thus had not yet collected treasure enough, nor had the pious Isabella beheld a sufficient number of new-Christians writhing in the flames. For their joint satisfaction they now persuaded the pope to appoint an inquisitor-general who should constitute, direct, and supervise the several courts, that none of the suspected Marranos might avoid their fate, and that the opposition of the populace might be broken down by every species of terrorism. In cold blood, and with little interest even for the faith itself, the pope assented; and in May, 1483, appointed the Dominican, Thomas de Torquemada, hitherto prior of a monastery in Segovia, inquisitor-general of Spain. There are certain men who are the embodiment of good or evil sentiments, opinions and principles, and fully illustrate their extremest consequences. Torquemada was the incarnation of the Holy Inquisition with all its devilish malice, its heartless severity, its bloodthirsty ferocity.

"Out of Rome hath arisen a savage monster of such wondrous shape and hideous appearance that at the sound of its name all Europe trembles. Its carcass is of iron, tempered in deadly poison, and covered with scales of impenetrable steel. A thousand venom-dropping wings support it when it hovers over the terrified earth. Its nature is that of the ravening lion and the snake of the African desert. Its bite is more terrible than that of the hugest monster. The sound of its voice slays more speedily than the deadly glance of the basilisk. From its eyes and mouth stream fire and ceaseless lightnings. It feeds on human bodies, and its drink is human tears and blood. It excels the eagle in the speed of its flight, and where it broods its black shadow spreads the gloom of night. Though the sun shine never so clearly, the darkness of Egypt follows in its track. Wheresoever it flies, every green meadow that it touches, every fruitful tree on which it sets foot, withers and dies. With its destroying fangs it roots up every herb that grows, and with the poison of its breath it blasts the circle in which it moves to a desert like that of Syria, where no green thing grows, no grass-blade sprouts."

Thus did a Jewish poet, Samuel Usque, himself singed by its flames, depict the Inquisition.

The inscription which the poet Dante placed upon the portal of Hell —

"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"

would have been even more suitable to the dungeons of the Holy Inquisition, which the cruel energy of Torquemada now established in nearly all the great towns of Spain. He at once instituted three new tribunals in Cordova, Jaen and Villareal (Ciudad-Real), and, later on, one in Toledo, the capital of southern Spain. The offices of the Inquisition were entirely filled by him with hypocritical and fanatical Dominicans, whom he made the tools of his will, so that they worked like an organism with a single head, ready at his word to perpetrate the most hideous barbarities with a composure that cannibals might have envied. In those days Spain was filled with the putrefaction of the dungeon, the stench of corpses, and the crackling of the flames in which were burning innocent Jews, forced into a faith the falsity of which was demonstrated by every action of the servants of the church. A wail of misery piercing bone and marrow went through that lovely land; but their Catholic majesties paralyzed the arm of every man prompted by mercy to put a stop to the butchery. At the court itself there sat a commission on the affairs of Jewish Christians, of which the inquisitor-general held the presidency.

Don Ferdinand wished to perpetuate the jurisdiction of the Inquisition in his hereditary lands, in order to fill his purse with the spoils of the new-Christians settled there. During the assembly of the cortes at Tarazona, in April, 1484, he laid his plans before his privy council, and canceled the ancient privileges of the country, which had existed from the earliest times, and which provided that no native of Aragon, whatever his crime, should suffer confiscation of his property. The inquisitor-general accordingly appointed for the archbishopric of Saragossa two inquisitors who rivaled himself in bloodthirsty fanaticism, the canon, Pedro Arbues de Epila, and the Dominican, Gaspard Juglar. A royal ordinance was now issued to all officials and nobles, directing them to give every assistance to the inquisitors. The grand justiciary of Aragon, though of Jewish origin, and other dignitaries, were obliged to take an oath that they would spare no efforts to exterminate the culprits condemned by the tribunal.

Torquemada, the very soul of the Inquisition, now decided to publish a code for the guidance of the judges, so that the net might be drawn as closely as possible round his victims. The whole body of inquisitors was assembled to consider this design, and, under the title of "Constitutions," issued, on October 29th, 1484, a code of laws, calculated to inspire the utmost horror had no more been done than commit them to paper. It has been asserted that the monkish inquisitors merely copied the anti-Jewish enactments of the councils under the Visigothic kings. It is true that the decrees of Receswinth threatened with death, by fire or stoning, all new-Christians convicted of adherence to Jewish customs. The comparison is, nevertheless, incorrect. For not the enactments against heresy, but their enforcement, distinguishes the "Constitutions" of the Inquisition as the most hideous ever fashioned by human wickedness. It was as though the most malicious demons had taken counsel to discover how they might bring innocent human beings to destruction.

One decree ordained a respite of thirty days for those who of their own free will would tender confession of their relapse to Judaism. These were to be spared all punishment and confiscation of goods with the exception of a moderate fine. They were, however, compelled to put their confession into writing, to give exact answers to all questions put to them, and especially to betray their fellow-offenders, and even those whom they only suspected of Judaizing tendencies. Those who confessed after the expiration of the time of respite were to lose all their property, even that which they had possessed at the time of their falling away from Christianity, and though it had passed into other hands. Only new-Christians under twenty years old were exempted from loss of property in the event of later confessions; but they were compelled to bear a mark of infamy composed of flaming crosses, the San Benito, upon their clothing, and to take part in the processions and attend high mass in this guise. Those whose remorse awakened after the appointed day were indeed to receive indulgence, but they were to remain branded for life. Neither they nor their descendants were ever to hold any public office, nor to wear any garment embroidered with gold, silver or pearls, or made of silk or fine wool, and they were condemned to bear the "fiery cross" for ever. Should the inquisitors discover that the confession of a penitent was insincere, it was their duty to deny him absolution, to treat him as a recalcitrant, and to consign him to the flames. If a penitent made only a partial confession of his sins, he, too, was condemned to death. The evidence against a Judaizing Christian might, when not otherwise convenient, be taken through other persons. It was not necessary to place this testimony before the accused in full detail, but merely as an abstract. If, in spite of the evidence laid before him, he maintained that he had never relapsed into Judaism, he was condemned to the flames as impenitent. Inconclusive proofs of relapse brought against a Marrano stretched him upon the rack; in case he confessed under torture, he was submitted to a second trial. If he then adhered to what he had confessed under torture he was condemned; if he denied it, he underwent the torture again. In those cases in which an accused person failed to answer to the summons issued against him, he was condemned as a contumacious heretic, i. e., his property was confiscated.

In the face of such proceedings – the parody of a trial – and the pre-determination on the part of the judge to consider the accused guilty, how was it possible for any Marrano to prove his innocence? The dungeon and the rack frequently made the accused so indifferent to their fate and so weary of life that they made confessions as to themselves, their friends and even their nearest relatives which appeared to vindicate the necessity for the Inquisition. The trial of every new-Christian involved others in apparent guilt, and brought new examinations and new accusations in its train, thus furnishing an ever-increasing number of victims to the Holy Office.

The towns of the kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia had from the first manifested the greatest displeasure at the introduction of the Inquisition. Up to this period they had been less despotically governed than Castile, and were exceedingly jealous of their freedom. Above everything the Aragonese valued, as the apple of their eye, the privilege which forbade the confiscation of goods even on account of the gravest offenses. Now the officers of the Inquisition were to be invested with unlimited power over life and property. The new-Christians, who held high offices and influential positions in Aragon, were naturally eager to foment and increase the discontent. In Teruel and Valencia, in 1485, disastrous popular risings broke out against the Inquisition, and were quelled only after great bloodshed. The Marranos and those of Jewish descent did not, however, surrender their project of paralyzing the Inquisition in Aragon. Some of the highest dignitaries of state were numbered among them; as, for example, Luis Gonzalez, royal secretary of state for Aragon; Alfonso de Caballeria, the vice-chancellor; his brother, the king's major-domo; Philip Clemente, chief notary; and such high hidalgos as the Counts of Aranda, together with many knights, among whom were the valiant Juan de Abadia, whose sister was burnt for heresy, and Juan Perez Sanchez, whose brothers were at court.

As soon as the first victims fell under the Inquisition in Saragossa, influential new-Christians brought pressure to bear upon the cortes to induce them to protest, both to the king and to the pope, against the introduction of the tribunal into Aragon. Commissioners were sent to the royal and papal courts to effect in person the repeal of the ordinances. They expected but little trouble in Rome, for there everything was to be had for money. With the king it seemed to be a matter of much greater difficulty. Ferdinand remained obstinately fixed in the resolution to exterminate the Jewish Christians by means of the Inquisition, and to acquire their property. When the commissioners sent news to their friends in Aragon of the failure of their efforts, Perez Sanchez conceived a plot to remove Pedro Arbues, chief inquisitor for Aragon, in order to cripple the activity of the Inquisition by terrorism, and to force the king to give way. He imparted his project to his friends, and many bound themselves to stand by him. In order to win over the entire body of new-Christians, and to induce them to stand firmly together, the leaders of the conspiracy laid them under contribution for the expenses of carrying out the project. A hidalgo, Blasco de Alagon, collected the money, and Juan de Abadia undertook to hire the assassins, and to see that the death of Arbues was achieved. This conspiracy was joined by many distinguished persons of Jewish descent in Saragossa, Tarazona, Calatayud, Huesca and Barbastro.