susceptible age he had extorted from his pupil the promise that she would devote her life “to the extirpation of heresy, for the glory of God and the exaltation of the Catholic faith.” He now reappears on the scene to claim the fulfilment of the fatal vow. The young queen, noble and generous though she was by nature, could not long withstand the unanimous exhortations of persons whose sanctity her religion taught her to revere, and the superiority of whose wisdom her own modesty prompted her to accept without question. Much less could she resist her own beloved husband’s solicitations. All that was good or engaging in her conspired with all that was ignoble in her counsellors to warp her judgment, to silence the voice of her heart, and to force her to give her consent to one of the greatest crimes of any time. It required but little effort to induce Pope Sixtus IV. to allow the establishment of the Holy Office in Castile for the detection and punishment of backsliders to Judaism, and the necessary Bull was issued on November 1st, 1478. But the Queen still hesitated to make use of the dread weapon, while her husband was not without misgivings regarding the absolute power claimed by the tribunal. As a last resource, before proceeding to extremes, the monarchs commanded Cardinal Mendoza, the Archbishop of Seville, to set forth the doctrines of the Catholic faith in a short catechism, and to cause his clergy to diffuse the light among the benighted Marranos throughout his diocese. This worthy and humane ecclesiastic gladly obeyed the royal command, and betook himself to the work of friendly persuasion. But with little success. The Christians were incited to acts of hostility by rumours of Jewish plots against the Church and the State, and of Jewish crimes of the traditional type, such as sacrifices of children and insults offered to the Host. The Government, yielding to public clamour, expelled the Jews from Seville and Cordova in 1478, and renewed the severe measures of repression in 1480. Furthermore, an ill-advised Jew, by the publication of a caustic criticism of Christianity at that inopportune moment, threw oil into the fire, and precipitated a catastrophe which perhaps no power on earth could have averted in any case. A people whose inflexibility had triumphed over the temptations and the persecutions of fifteen centuries was hardly likely to be bent by the good Archbishop’s catechism; and, after two years’ fruitless endeavour, a Commission appointed for the purpose returned a highly disappointing report. The term of grace having expired, the only remaining alternative was the Inquisition.[71]