Spanish Inquisition (1478): Its Founding and Torquemada

The Spanish Inquisition was a church tribunal under the control of the Spanish crown, founded after Pope Sixtus IV authorised it on 1 November 1478 at the request of Ferdinand and Isabella. Its first target was the conversos, Christians of Jewish origin suspected of secretly keeping Jewish practices. Under its first Inquisitor General, Tomás de Torquemada, it built a network of tribunals and public ceremonies called autos-da-fé, and it endured for more than three and a half centuries, until 1834.

Background: Jews and conversos in Spain

For centuries the Iberian Peninsula had substantial Jewish communities living under both Christian and Muslim rulers. In 1391 a wave of anti-Jewish violence began in Seville and spread across Castile and Aragon. Thousands of Jews were killed, and many more converted to Christianity, some under direct threat and others to escape further persecution. Further conversions followed in the early fifteenth century.

These converts and their descendants, known as conversos or New Christians, entered professions and offices previously closed to them, including royal administration, town government and the Church. Their success provoked resentment among some Old Christians. In 1449 rioters in Toledo attacked conversos, and the city adopted a statute barring them from office, an early example of the “purity of blood” laws that would later spread. In 1473 deadly riots against conversos broke out in Córdoba and other Andalusian towns.

Suspicion grew that many conversos were secretly practising Judaism. Some did maintain Jewish customs, often within families, while others were sincere Christians. In the eyes of the Church, a baptised person who reverted to Judaism was a heretic, and heresy was a matter for the courts of the Church.

Why Ferdinand and Isabella wanted an inquisition

A medieval papal inquisition had existed since the thirteenth century and had operated in the Crown of Aragon, though it had become largely inactive. Castile had never had one.

When Isabella and Ferdinand stayed in Seville in 1477–1478, the Dominican prior Alonso de Hojeda and other clergy warned them of widespread “Judaising” among the city’s conversos. Advisers, including the Archbishop of Seville, Pedro González de Mendoza, reported similar concerns.

The monarchs asked Rome for permission to set up an inquisition. Pope Sixtus IV responded with the bull Exigit sinceras devotionis affectus, dated 1 November 1478. Its key feature was that it allowed the monarchs themselves to appoint and dismiss inquisitors. This made the new institution unusual: although its judges were churchmen applying church law, it answered to the crown.

Historians continue to debate the motives. Religious conviction and a desire for orthodoxy were real. So were political aims: the crown gained an institution that operated across its kingdoms, and confiscated property brought in revenue, though the Inquisition was often short of money. Social hostility towards conversos was also a powerful force.

The first tribunal in Seville

Ferdinand and Isabella waited almost two years, while a programme of preaching and instruction for conversos was tried. On 27 September 1480 they appointed two Dominican friars, Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín, as the first inquisitors. They began work in Seville at the end of the year.

Many conversos fled the city to the territories of nobles nearby. A group of leading Sevillian conversos, including Diego de Susán, was accused of plotting resistance and arrested. On 6 February 1481 the first auto-da-fé of the Spanish Inquisition was held in Seville, and six people were burned. Hojeda preached the sermon. Within a few years tribunals were established in other cities, including Córdoba, Ciudad Real (later moved to Toledo) and Jaén.

In 1482 Sixtus IV complained of abuses in Aragon, where the Inquisition had been extended, and tried to restrict it, but he backed down under pressure from Ferdinand. A Council of the Supreme and General Inquisition, known as the Suprema, was created to govern the institution as one of the crown’s royal councils.

Torquemada

Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498) was a Dominican friar, prior of the monastery of Santa Cruz in Segovia and a confessor to the queen. In 1483 he was named Inquisitor General of Castile and, soon after, of Aragon, Valencia and Catalonia, making him the first head of a single inquisition across the Spanish kingdoms.

Torquemada gave the Inquisition its rules. Instructions issued in Seville in 1484, and later expanded, set out how tribunals should operate: periods of grace in which people could confess voluntarily, the reception of denunciations, the secrecy of witnesses’ names, imprisonment during trial and the penalties to be imposed.

In Aragon, where many resented the new tribunal as a breach of local liberties, opposition ended abruptly after the murder of the inquisitor Pedro de Arbués. He was attacked in the cathedral of Zaragoza in September 1485 and died of his wounds. The investigation led to the trial and execution of a number of conversos, and resistance collapsed.

Torquemada was also a strong supporter of separating Jews from conversos, on the argument that contact with practising Jews encouraged New Christians to Judaise. He is widely associated with the decree of 31 March 1492, issued after the fall of Granada, which ordered all Jews in Castile and Aragon to convert or leave. Estimates of the number who left vary widely, with many historians suggesting somewhere between about 40,000 and 100,000, while others converted to remain.

Torquemada died at the monastery of Santo Tomás in Ávila on 16 September 1498. His name became a byword for religious fanaticism.

How the Inquisition worked

Proceedings usually began with an edict of grace, inviting people to confess heresy within a set period, often 30 to 40 days, in return for lighter penalties. Denunciations followed, sometimes motivated by genuine belief and sometimes by personal or commercial grievances. The accused were held in secret prisons and were not told who had testified against them.

Torture was permitted under regulated conditions and was used to obtain confessions in some cases. Historians who have studied the records note that it was used less often than popular images suggest, but it was a real and feared part of the process.

Sentences ranged from penances, fines and confiscation of property to wearing the sanbenito, a penitential garment, imprisonment and service in the galleys. Those judged unrepentant or relapsed heretics were “relaxed”, that is, handed over to the secular authorities, who burned them. Sentences were announced at autos-da-fé, which in later centuries became elaborate public spectacles, such as the Madrid ceremony of 1680 shown in Francisco Rizi’s painting.

Over time the Inquisition’s focus widened. In the sixteenth century it turned to Moriscos, Muslims who had been forced to convert, to suspected Protestants and to offences such as blasphemy and bigamy. Tribunals were set up in the Americas, at Lima in 1570 and Mexico City in 1571. The last execution for heresy in Spain, of the schoolteacher Cayetano Ripoll in Valencia in 1826, was ordered by a church “junta de fe” that continued its work after the Inquisition had been suspended.

Key people

• Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the monarchs who requested and controlled the Inquisition; see the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella.
• Pope Sixtus IV (1414–1484), who issued the founding bull of 1478.
• Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498), the first Inquisitor General.
• Alonso de Hojeda, the Dominican prior of Seville whose warnings helped persuade the monarchs.
• Pedro de Arbués (c. 1441–1485), the inquisitor whose murder in Zaragoza ended Aragonese resistance.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

Myth: The Spanish Inquisition burned hundreds of thousands of people. Fact: Early nineteenth-century writers, notably the former inquisition official Juan Antonio Llorente, gave figures above 30,000 executions. Research in the Inquisition’s own archives since the 1970s has produced much lower estimates, though the suffering it caused through imprisonment, confiscation and fear was very great.

Myth: It persecuted Jews directly. Fact: The Inquisition had jurisdiction only over baptised Christians. Its targets were conversos and, later, Moriscos (converted Muslims), Protestants and others accused of heresy or moral offences. Professing Jews were removed by the separate expulsion decree of 1492.

Myth: It was purely a tool of the pope. Fact: Unlike the medieval inquisition, the Spanish Inquisition was appointed and controlled by the crown, and popes sometimes protested at its methods.

Timeline

• 1391: Anti-Jewish riots across Castile and Aragon lead to mass conversions.
• 1449: Riots in Toledo and the first statute against conversos holding office.
• 1478, 1 November: Sixtus IV authorises the Spanish Inquisition.
• 1480, 27 September: The first inquisitors are appointed for Seville.
• 1481, 6 February: First auto-da-fé in Seville.
• 1483: Torquemada becomes Inquisitor General.
• 1484: Torquemada’s first Instructions are issued in Seville.
• 1485, September: Inquisitor Pedro de Arbués is murdered in Zaragoza.
• 1492, 31 March: Decree expelling Jews from Castile and Aragon.
• 1834, 15 July: The Spanish Inquisition is finally abolished.

Why it matters

The Spanish Inquisition was one of the first permanent state-backed institutions designed to enforce religious uniformity. It shaped the lives of conversos, Moriscos and many others for generations, contributed to the expulsion of Spain’s Jews, and became a lasting symbol of intolerance in European memory, while modern research has replaced myth with a more precise picture of its workings.