In 1233, when the Inquisition in France had received the established form which was bestowed on it by St. Louis, Spain was divided into four Christian kingdoms, besides the Mahometan states. Castile was under the dominion of St. Ferdinand, who added to it the kingdoms of Seville, Cordova, and Jaen. James I. governed Aragon, and conquered the kingdoms of Valencia and Majorca; Navarre was possessed by Sancho VIII., who died in the course of the following year, and left his crown to Theobald I., Count de Champagne and de Brie. Sancho II. reigned in Portugal. Many convents of Dominicans existed in these kingdoms after the establishment of the order, but there are no authentic records, to prove that the Inquisition was introduced before the year 1232, when Pope Gregory IX. addressed a brief to Don Esparrago, Archbishop of Taragona, and to his suffragan bishops, in which he most earnestly exhorted them to oppose the progress of heresy by every means in their power. The archbishop sent the bull to Gil Rodriguez de Valladares, first provincial of the Spanish Dominicans; he also sent it to Don Bertrand, Bishop of Lerida, in whose diocese the first Spanish Inquisition was founded. Pope Innocent VI. conferred many privileges on the Dominican Friars, and in 1254 extended the rights of the Inquisitors, and in the same brief decreed that the depositions of witnesses should be considered valid, although their names were unknown. Urban VI. and Clement VI. also augmented their privileges. The Kings of Aragon continued to protect the Inquisition, and James II., in 1292, published a decree, commanding the tribunals of justice to assist the Dominicans, to imprison all who might be denounced, to execute the judgments pronounced by the monks, to remove every obstacle which they might meet with, _&c_. The hatred which the office of an inquisitor everywhere inspired in the first ages of the Inquisition caused the death of a great number of Dominicans and some Cordeliers: the honours of martyrdom were assigned to them, but St. Peter of Verona was the only one canonized by the pope. Nothing certain is known of the state of Portugal during this period: it appears that in the thirteenth century the Inquisition was established only in the dioceses of Taragona, Barcelona, Urgel, Lerida, and Girona. The convents of Dominicans having multiplied in Spain, a chapter-general of the order decreed, in 1301, that it should be divided into two provinces; that the first in rank should be named the province of Spain, and comprise Castile and Portugal; and that the second should have the title of Aragon, and be composed of Valencia, Catalonia, Rousillon, Cerdagne, Majorca, Minorca, and Iviza. The provincial of the Dominicans of Castile, designated as the provincial of Spain, possessed the right of naming the apostolical inquisitor in the other provinces. In 1302 Father Bernard was inquisitor of Aragon, and celebrated several _autos-da-fé_ in the same year.