Exigit sincerae devotionis (bull allowing Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint inquisitors)

The bull is addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella as king and queen of Castile and León and is dated at Rome on the kalends of November 1478, in the eighth year of Sixtus IV. It repeats their petition: that in the kingdoms of Spain under their rule there were very many who had been baptised, without having been strictly forced to it, and who passed as Christians while going over or returning to the rites and customs of the Jews; that their children and those who lived with them were infected; and that wars and other troubles were believed to follow from these sins and from the tolerance shown by the pope and the prelates. The pope adds his hope that the king and queen will also bring the kingdom of Granada under their rule.

He grants that three bishops or other upright priests, secular or religious, over forty years old, masters or bachelors of theology or doctors or licentiates of canon law, chosen by the king and queen for each city and diocese, or at least two of them, shall have against such offenders and those who shelter them the jurisdiction that ordinaries and inquisitors of heresy have by law or custom. The king and queen may appoint such men as often as they think fit, remove them and put others in their place.

The text printed by Fita is not the original bull. It stands inside the commission that the king and queen gave at Medina del Campo on 27 September 1480 to the Dominicans Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín, which the two inquisitors in turn copied into a mandate issued at Seville on 2 January 1481. The pope’s own later account of how the bull came to be issued is in Letters of 1482 on the Inquisition in Castile and Aragon. See the Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews.