Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A HistorySabatini, Rafael
History
Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition: A History
Sabatini, Rafael
Inquisition -- Spain; Torquemada, Tomás, de, 1420-1498
It should be sufficiently clear from this that, notwithstanding
the racial antipathy between Spaniard and Jew, notwithstanding the
religious spirit so very ardent in the people of Spain, serving
to aggravate beyond all reason that hatred of the Israelite, the
Inquisition--as Torquemada understood and controlled it--was very
far from being desired by them. That this grim institution should
have contrived so firmly to establish itself upon Spanish soil and to
wield there a power such as it wielded in no other Catholic country
of Europe, was due entirely to the brothers of St. Dominic and the
fanaticism of Torquemada playing upon the bigotry and acquisitiveness
of the Sovereigns.
Assailants of the Roman Church have urged that the Inquisition was
a religious institution. Defenders of that same Church, in their
endeavour to shift so terrible a burden from her shoulders, have sought
to show that the Inquisition was a political machine. It was neither,
and at the same time it was both. But chiefly and primarily it was
just a clerical weapon. And clericalism in the Iberian Peninsula,
pervaded by the spirit of Torquemada, converted that institution into
an instrument far more dreadful and oppressive than was its character
in Italy, or France, or any other Roman Catholic country of the world
in which the Holy Office held jurisdiction.
In Spain it had set up in the evening of the fifteenth century an
absolute reign of terror, depriving men of all liberty of conscience
and of speech and spreading a network of espionage over the face of the
land.
And in the meantime, practice having brought to light certain
shortcomings in the decrees which he had already issued, Torquemada
added a further eleven articles in 1485. In the main, however, these
are concerned with the internal affairs of the Holy Office rather than
with its attitude towards offenders.
Articles I and II provide for the payment of officers of the
Inquisition, and decree that no officer shall receive gifts of any
nature under pain of instant dismissal.
Article III disposes that the inquisitors shall keep a permanent agent
in Rome, who shall be skilled in the law, so that he may attend to
matters appertaining to the Holy Office.
From this it is to be inferred that appeals to the Vatican continued
to be numerous, notwithstanding the provisions made by the Pope to
constitute Torquemada the supreme arbiter in matters of the Faith.
Articles V to XI are entirely concerned with details relating to
confiscations. These would be of no particular interest, but that they
serve to show how vast by now was the business of confiscation, since
the manner of conducting it and disposing of confiscated property
should demand so many decrees to govern it.
Article IV is the only one that may be said to concern the actual
jurisprudence of the Holy Office. This is intended not so much to
soften the rigour as to remove the inconveniences that might arise out
of Article X of the “Instructions” of 1484.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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