A monastic writer of Andalusia, where the “new Christians” were most numerous and now most miserable, quoted by Prescott, summarises contemporary feeling regarding them in the following eloquent lines: “This accursed race were either unwilling to bring their children to be baptized, or, if they did, they washed away the stain on returning home. They dressed their stews and other dishes with oil, instead of lard; abstained from pork; kept the Passover; ate meat in Lent; and sent oil to replenish the lamps of their synagogues; with many other abominable ceremonies of their religion. They entertained no respect for monastic life, and frequently profaned the sanctity of religious houses by the violation or seduction of their inmates. They were an exceedingly politic and ambitious people, engrossing the most lucrative municipal offices, and preferred to gain their livelihood by traffic, in which they made exorbitant gains, rather than by manual labour or mechanical arts. They considered themselves in the hands of the Egyptians, whom it was a merit to deceive and plunder. By their wicked contrivances they amassed great wealth, and they were often able to ally themselves by marriage with noble Christian families.” Here we find all the old sources of the Gentile’s hatred towards the Jew: antipathy due to diversity of character--as manifested in occupation, daily diet, and conduct; steeled by economic jealousy, and edged by religious bigotry. ♦1469 Oct. 19♦ Such was the frame of the public mind, when short-sighted statecraft, in the person of Ferdinand, King of Aragon, was wedded to narrow piety in that of Isabella, heiress to the Crown of Castile. The legitimate offspring of such a union could be no other than persecution. But, even if the sovereigns were enlightened and tolerant, it is doubtful whether they could have stemmed the current. In 1473 the mob massacred the Constable of Castile at Jaen, because he attempted to repress its fury, and, after Isabella the Catholic’s accession to the throne, petitions poured in from all sides clamouring for the extirpation of the “Jewish heresy.” The bigots of Seville, headed by the Dominican prior of the monastery of St. Paul, agitated for the introduction of the Inquisition--a tribunal originally established during Innocent III.’s pontificate at the beginning of the thirteenth century for the suppression of heresy--and their demand was seconded by the Papal Nuncio. In 1477 Friar Philip de Barberi, Inquisitor for Sicily, arrived in Seville to persuade the Spanish monarchs of the manifold virtues of his remedy for infidelity. The prospect of plunder lured Ferdinand, while Isabella’s feminine tenderness was assailed by the importunities and the casuistry of her spiritual advisers. Torquemada, the narrow-hearted Dominican of universal notoriety, had already poisoned the Queen’s mind with his pernicious maxims of intolerance, when he acted as the guardian of her conscience in early youth. In that