The Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews

On 1 November 1478 Sixtus IV answered a petition from Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, king and queen of Castile and León. They had told him that in their kingdoms many who had been baptised, without having been strictly forced to it, were returning to the rites of the Jews while passing as Christians. The pope allowed them to choose, for each city or diocese, three bishops or other priests over forty years old and trained in theology or canon law. These men were to have against such people the jurisdiction that bishops and inquisitors have by law. The king and queen could remove and replace them (Sixtus IV, Exigit sincerae devotionis, Fita, pp. 449–452).

Andrés Bernáldez, parish priest of Los Palacios, who approved of the work, describes what followed at Seville. Two Dominican friars began their inquisition there at the start of 1481. They arrested some of the city’s richest and most honoured citizens and burned six men and women at the first burning. Many fled. In eight years, he says, the tribunal burned more than 700 people and reconciled more than 5,000 (Bernáldez, History of the Catholic Monarchs, ch. 44 (vol. 1, pp. 129–134)).

Complaints reached Rome. On 29 January 1482 Sixtus wrote to the king and queen that his bull had been drawn up contrary to the decrees of the fathers, its terms having been put to him only in general. The two inquisitors at Seville, it was said, had proceeded without order of law, imprisoned many unjustly, put them to cruel torments, declared them heretics unjustly and taken the goods of those put to death. He left the two in office, ordered them to act together with the bishops, and refused to let the monarchs name inquisitors in their other kingdoms (Sixtus IV, Letters of 1482, brief of 29 January 1482 (Fita, pp. 459–461)). On 18 April he wrote that, as he had been informed, the inquisition in Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia was being conducted not from zeal for the faith and the salvation of souls but from greed for gain. He ordered that the accused be told the names and testimony of their accusers, be allowed advocates, be held only in the bishops’ prisons, and be free to appeal to Rome (Sixtus IV, Letters of 1482, bull of 18 April 1482 (Lea, vol. 1, pp. 587–590)). Ferdinand replied on 13 May that he gave the report no credit, that if such things had been granted he did not intend ever to let them take effect, and that inquisitors must be appointed at his pleasure (Ferdinand, Letter to Sixtus IV, Lea, vol. 1, pp. 590–592).

In February 1482 the pope himself had named eight more Dominicans as inquisitors in Castile and León, among them Tomás de Torquemada (Sixtus IV, Letters of 1482, letter of 11 February 1482 (Fita, pp. 462–464)). By November 1484 Torquemada was inquisitor general, and inquisitors and lawyers summoned by him to Seville drew up instructions (Instructions of Seville (1484), preamble (fol. 2r–v)). On arriving in a town the inquisitors were to preach and announce thirty or forty days of grace. Those who came in that time and told all they knew of themselves and of others would escape death, perpetual prison and the loss of their goods (Instructions of Seville (1484), articles 1–4 (fol. 3r–v)). The reconciled would abjure in public and be barred for life from public office and from a list of trades, from wearing silk or gold, from riding and from bearing arms. Money penances were to go to the war against the Moors of Granada. Those who confessed after the term lost their property (Instructions of Seville (1484), articles 5–8 (fol. 4r–v)).

On 31 March 1492, at Granada, the king and queen ordered every Jew to leave their kingdoms by the end of July and never return, on pain of death. The edict gives the reason: some Christians were judaizing, and contact with Jews, who taught them their law, was much to blame. Separate quarters, twelve years of inquisition and the removal of the Jews from Andalusia had not been enough. They might sell their property and take their goods, but no gold, silver or coin (Edict of Expulsion (1492), Amador de los Ríos, vol. 3, pp. 603–607). Bernáldez describes their going. They sold a house for a donkey and a vineyard for a piece of cloth, he writes, and took the roads, old and young, on foot and on asses; there was no Christian who did not feel sorry for them. They were urged to accept baptism all along the way, and very few did (Bernáldez, History of the Catholic Monarchs, chs. 110–112 (vol. 1, pp. 337–342)).