This infernal engine of tyranny, bigotry, and superstition, did not become known in Spain before the year 1484. The court of Rome owed this obligation to another Dominican, John de Torquemada. As he was the confessor of Queen Isabella, he had extorted from her a promise that if ever she ascended the throne, she would use every means to extirpate heresy and heretics. Ferdinand had conquered Grenada, and had expelled from the Spanish realms multitudes of unfortunate Moors. A few remained, who, with the Jews, he compelled to become Christians: they at least assumed the name, but it was well known that both these nations naturally respected their own faith, rather than that of the Christians. This race was afterwards distinguished as _Christianos novos_; and in marriages, the blood of the Hidalgo was considered to lose its purity by mingling with such a suspicious source. It was pretended by Torquemada, that this dissimulation would greatly hurt the holy religion. The Queen listened with respectful diffidence to her confessor; and at length gained over the king to consent to the establishment of the unrelenting tribunal. Torquemada, indefatigable in his zeal for the holy see, in the space of fourteen years that he exercised the office of chief inquisitor, is said to have prosecuted near eighty thousand persons, of whom six thousand were condemned to the flames. Voltaire attributes the taciturnity of the Spaniards to the universal horror such proceedings spread. “A jealousy and suspicion took possession of all ranks of people: friendship and sociability were at an end! Brothers were afraid of brothers, fathers of their children.” The situation and feelings of one imprisoned in the cells of the inquisition are forcibly painted by Orobio, a mild, and meek, and learned man, whose controversy with Limborch is well known. When he escaped from Spain he took refuge in Holland, was circumcised, and died a philosophical Jew. He has left this admirable description of himself in the cell of the inquisition:—“Inclosed in this dungeon I could not even find space enough to turn myself about; I suffered so much that I found my brain disordered. I frequently asked myself, am I really Don Bathazaar Orobio, who used to walk about Seville at my pleasure, who so much enjoyed myself with my wife and children? I often imagined that all my life had only been a dream, and that I really had been born in this dungeon! The only amusement I could invent was metaphysical disputations. I was at once opponent, respondent, and phæses!” In the cathedral at Saragossa is the tomb of a famous inquisitor; six pillars surround the tomb; to each is chained a Moor, as preparatory to his being burnt. On this St. Foix ingeniously observes, “If ever the jack-ketch of any country should be rich enough to have a splendid tomb, this might serve as an excellent model.”