Letters of 1482 on the Inquisition in Castile and Aragon
Three letters of Sixtus IV from early 1482. He tells Ferdinand and Isabella of the complaints against their inquisitors at Seville, names eight more Dominican inquisitors for Castile and León, and orders safeguards for the accused in the lands of the crown of Aragon.
Read the text at cervantesvirtual.com ↗Internet Archive copy of Fita’s article (17 February 2020), for readers whom the library’s own site turns away ↗Bull of 18 April 1482: H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of Spain, vol. 1 (1906), pp. 587–590 ↗
The brief of 29 January 1482, addressed to Ferdinand and Isabella, is the pope’s own account of the bull of 1478 (Exigit sincerae devotionis (bull allowing Ferdinand and Isabella to appoint inquisitors)). He says that the man who obtained it for them had explained its terms to him only in general and confusedly, so that it was issued contrary to the decrees of the fathers and common practice. He reports the complaints made against Miguel de Morillo and Juan de San Martín at Seville as things asserted to him (“ut asseritur”), not as findings. He keeps the two men in office out of regard for the king and queen, orders that inquisitors proceed together with the bishops, warns that he will replace them if they act unjustly, and declines to let the monarchs appoint inquisitors in their other kingdoms, where the Dominican order had already appointed them.
The letter of 11 February is addressed to eight Dominicans, among them Tomás de Torquemada, and makes them inquisitors in Castile and León because those already appointed were too few. It is dated by the year of the Incarnation 1481; the pope’s eleventh year, and its mention of his letters of the end of January, show that it belongs to February 1482, where Fita places it.
The bull of 18 April concerns Aragon, Valencia, Mallorca and Catalonia. The pope says that he has been informed that the inquisition there had for some time been carried on from greed and not from zeal for the faith, and that true Christians had been imprisoned, tortured, declared heretics, stripped of their goods and put to death on the evidence of enemies, rivals, slaves and other unfit persons. Here too he repeats a report and does not say that he has tested it; he adds that he acts of his own motion, moved by the complaints of many. He orders that bishops and inquisitors proceed only together, that the accused be given the names and statements of accusers and witnesses, be allowed advocates, be held only in the bishops’ prisons, and be free to appeal to the Apostolic See. He also empowers bishops and inquisitors to absolve, without abjuration and with a secret penance, those who come to them and confess. The king’s answer is Letter to Sixtus IV on the Inquisition (13 May 1482). See the Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews.
Cited in
- 1478 to 1492, firm date