Tomas de Torquemada, after studying in Valladolid,…

1483 CE

Tomas de Torquemada, after studying in Valladolid, had joined the Dominicans in 1434 at age fourteen.

Pious, learned and austere, he was still young when he was sent to be prior at the monastery of Santa Cruz at Segovia, where he became confessor to Princess Isabella, the heiress of Castile.

She was crowned in 1473 and he becomes Spain's Inquisitor General a decade later.

There is very little sound information about Torquemada's personal life, which has always been subject to speculations.

"As an honest interpreter and efficient administrator of the popular will, Torquemada was superb.

In the fifteen years of his reign the Spanish Inquisition grew from the single tribunal at Seville to a network of two dozen 'Holy Offices'" (The Age of Torquemada, by John Edward Longhurst [1962], from vlib.iue.it [European University Institute]).

The Spanish Inquisition’s primary targets are the Marranos (converts from Judaism) and Moriscos (converts from Islam), many of whom are suspected of secretly adhering to their original faiths, but anyone who speaks against the the Inquisition falls under suspicion.

The Inquisition’s strong ties with the crown will render it particularly severe, strict, and efficient.

The Inquisition touches every individual in Spain with a thoroughness that will scarcely be equaled before the twentieth century.

Every Christian soul over the age of twelve (for girls) and fourteen (for boys) is fully accountable to the Inquisition.

To help guard against the spread of heresy, Torquemada promotes the burning of non-Catholic literature—especially Jewish Talmuds and, after the final defeat of the Moors at Granada in 1492, Arabic books as well.

Accusations of excesses can be supported by reference to Pope Sixtus IV's observation, early in 1482, that the Inquisitors at Seville, "without observing juridical prescriptions, have detained many persons in violation of justice, punishing them by severe tortures and imputing to them, without foundation, the crime of heresy, and despoiling of their wealth those sentenced to death, in such form that a great number of them have come to the Apostolic See, fleeing from such excessive rigor and protesting their orthodoxy."

To impress and intimidate, Torquemada travels with fifty mounted guards and two hundred and fifty armed men.

He pushes vigorously the prosecution of Jews, apostates, witches, crypto-Jews, and other spiritual "offenders."

Over the next several years, two thousand will die and many more will be tortured under the authorization of Torquemada, who is to become a legendary symbol of ultimate cruelty, bigotry, intolerance, and religious fanaticism.