Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  This strike against the Inquisition failed to effect a quick exit from Aragon. In fact, it produced the oppo­site reaction. Torquemada sent three replacement inquisitors to Zaragoza taking the heavily -protected Castle of Aljafería as accommodation from which to root out those culpable for the killing. The plotters were rounded up and brought before an auto-da-fé. Sánchez, the ringleader, managed to escape the clutches of the Inquisition and fled Spain, so his effigy was burnt at the stake. Those caught would suffer, in person, the most agonising pain as the flames took hold. The man found guilty of striking Arbués’ death blow – Juan de Esperandeu – received the worst punish­ment. The murderer was dragged through the streets of Zaragoza to the cathedral, where his hands were chopped off. He then under­went the torments of being hanged, castrated and quartered before the crowd. Torquemada wished this auto-da-fé be a prose­cution and a deter­rent to those who would stand in the way of his regime. The strength of the Spanish Inquisition under the leadership of Torquemada had been successfully tested and now they were free to pursue and perse­cute throughout Aragon as well as Castile.

  His Instructions

  As well as seeing off all resistance to the Spanish Inquisition, Torquemada looked within the organisa­tion to improve its efficacy in making heresy a thing of the past in Spain. As soon as he was made Inquisitor General, Tomás began to create the first laws of this Inquisition; regulations that could be implemented and followed not just for the present period but for the future. These rules were known as Torquemada’s Instructions, the first set of which was issued on 29th October 1484. Comprising of twenty- eight articles, these Instructions endeavoured to organise the Inquisition. The edict of grace was initiated by Torquemada, giving all those who had fled a town visited by an inquisitor thirty days to return and face their religious interrogation or else be considered a heretic. Such strict, unrelenting doctrine was evident throughout this new Inquisition code. He also called for those who failed to provide true confessions to be immediately passed to the secular courts for burning. Tomas’ policy called for the auto- da-fé ceremonies to fall on holy days, knowing this would attract a larger crowd and therefore more witnesses to the inescapable fate of a heretic. But perhaps the most significant instruction was article fifteen, which encouraged the use of torture upon prisoners whose heresy proved tricky to substantiate. This authorisation of violence would be keenly imple­mented by many inquisitors throughout the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Torquemada had excelled in his role as Inquisitor General and, in 1484, was promptly given further papal support when Sixtus IV sent him an appraisal commending him on his ceaseless efforts. Further additions and revisions to the inquisitorial laws followed steadily throughout his reign with sets issued in 1485, 1488 and finally in 1498.

  In only a year as the inquisitor of Spain, Tomás de Torquemada had set out his stall as a thorough regulator of this religious establishment, helping the Inquisition to swiftly grow in stature and authority. Yet more was to come from this most dominant Dominican. As the power of the Spanish Inquisition developed, so did the influence of Torquemada, who would be central to several key decisions in the ever-evolving religious and political climate of Spain.

  On 12 August 1484, Pope Sixtus IV, the man behind the official validation of the Spanish Inquisition and Torquemada’s elector, died at the age of seventy – only six years older than the Inquisitor General himself. He was succeeded by Innocent VIII. However, any opponent to the Spanish Inquisition hoping for a papal-enforced curtailment of the establishment’s power, would be greatly dis­appointed. It would be a case of the same support and in February 1486 the new occupant of the Holy See issued a bull confirm­ing Torquemada’s position as Inquisitor General. In addition to this re­affirmation, Tomás was given the power to appoint further inquisitors rather than have to refer back to Rome for reinforcements. The year got worse for the heretics as Innocent VIII further empowered Torquemada by giving him the right to receive the appeals of those sentenced by the Inquisition. Originally the job of the Archbishop of Seville, this effectively ensured a reduction in the amount of successful appeals now that the Inquisitor General would play prejudiced judge, jury and, indeed, executioner. Tomás de Torquemada’s power was clearly growing.

  The Expulsion of the Jews

  It is a widely held belief that before she became queen, Isabella made a solemn promise to her con­fessor that if she ever took the throne of Castile, she would make the elimination of all counter-Catholic beliefs her main priority. This vow would have pleased Torquemada who, in 1478, wrote a memo to Ferdinand and Isabella from his priory residence in Segovia, detailing the problems he felt they should remedy as the sovereigns of Spain. The main focus of his letter was the Jewish faith. He attacked the Jews and labelled them as the root cause of many of the problems within Spain and Catholicism and called for the revival of old Church laws, introduced back in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council to combat the growing Jewish threat. These laws included an enforced separation of the inferior Jewish community from the superior Christian one, as well as a demand for visible identification to be worn by all Jews.

  This fervent anti-Semitism demonstrated by the Inquisitor General was not uncommon on the Iberian peninsula. Torquemada sensed a growing con­cern held by much of Spain, that the Jewish population was becoming a viable threat to Catholicism. Catholic Spain feared an uprising from the hundreds and thousands of non-Christian believers – conversos to moriscos – who they believed were not only remaining true to their publicly relinquished faith, but were actively converting those ‘new Christians’ back to their original religion. Now, with the authority of the new Inquisition governed by Torquemada – a man sensitive to their suspicions – the anti-Semitic scaremongers would be able to push for action against the suspected Jewish menace.

  As anti-Semites go, Torquemada was an ardent one and he led the charge against the Jews fuelled by a personal, deep seated hatred that stemmed from his own ancestry. Tomás’ grandfather, Alvar Fernandez de Torquemada made what could eventually be described as the momentous and far-reaching decision to marry a Jewess back in the fourteenth century. The consequence: Tomas de Torquemada, the man who would become known as the Scourge of the Jews, was in fact part-Jewish himself! In his mind, his blood was tainted and if transfusions had been possible back in those late medieval times, he un­doubtedly would have requested one in an attempt to rid himself of his Jewish connection. This, then, casts his persecutory stance in an altogether more intimate light. His desire for the expulsion of the Jews was the closest he could come to driving out the Jewish blood from within him.

  Along with the hatred of his Jewish lineage, Torquemada hated the thought that thousands of Catholics in Spain were practising other religious customs in secret, and pushed for a suitable punishment when Ferdinand and Isabella returned from their successful war against the Moors in the southern territory of Granada. Torquemada made his fury known in no uncertain terms to the Spanish monarchy, resulting in the Alhambra decree which was signed on 31 March 1492. The ruling took less than three months to finalise and was more ruthless than any Jew could have imagined, revealing how adamant Torquemada was in wishing to deal with a supposed Jewish threat. Every Jew in Spain, regardless of age or status, was given two options: convert or leave. Those who wished to remain in Spain would have to be baptised and turn their back on their faith. Those who would not abandon their religion would be forced to leave Spain with what they could carry. Although all gold, silver and currency was to be left behind – no doubt to line the pockets of the inquisitors who invaded their homes. The declaration stated they had four months to decide their fate. After the July deadline, all remain­ing Jews in Spanish territories would be arrested and handed over to the secular court for burning.

  Such a terrible proclamation caused the resident rabbis to seek some way of preventing this enforced exodus and, knowing that the war in Granada had hit the royal coffers hard, sought to buy their way out of trouble by offering them the
considerable sum of 30,000 ducats. This attempt by Rabbis Abraham Seneor and Isaac Abravanel to appeal to Ferdinand and Isabella’s material side almost worked.

  This Jewish pay-off may well have paid off if it had not been for the intervention of Torquemada who, on hearing a possible financial deal was being discussed, exploded into the room holding aloft a crucifix. Ever the preacher, Tomás reminded the sovereigns of Judas Iscariot who sold their saviour for 30 pieces of silver, and the king and queen of Spain quickly steeled their resolve and turned away the Jewish offer. Such was the power of Tomás de Torquemada that even the monarchy of Spain bowed to his holy authority.

  Torquemada then dispatched numerous inquisitors into the juderias, the Jewish quarters, to implement this decree. With an official stance of conversion not execution, between 50,000 and 70,000 Jews chose to con­vert to Catholicism to escape expulsion. However, many of these failed to escape the Spanish Inquisition which later hunted and persecuted them into con­fessing their heresies and burnt them on the stake.

  The Final Years

  By the time the edict of expulsion had been decreed, Tomás de Torquemada was an old man of seventy-two years. His incessant persecution, predominantly focused upon the Jews, was unrelenting even at this ripe old age and it has been estimated that between 1483 and 1498 he was responsible for the deaths of as many as 8,800 heretics throughout the Spanish-controlled territories, with over 90,000 receiving lesser sentences from the elderly Inquisitor General. Tomás not only sent heretics to burn, he also had an abundance of non-Christian literature consigned to the flames. Copies of the Talmud from the Jewish faith, along with many Arabic tomes, were destroyed in an attempt to check the spread of the heretical beliefs. Torquemada was a true trailblazer for Christianity. His energy and drive were unequalled at this time, or by any future inquisitor of Spain. His desire to oppress his nonconformist foes diffused into other areas of his life as well.

  The persecution of the heretic was not his sole passion. Torquemada was also a fan of architecture and, with the wealth he was able to accumulate through the confiscation of property, he could afford to fund the construction of various medieval build­ings, the most notable of which was the Monastery of St Thomas Aquinas at Avila. This structure took him ten years to complete and, unsurprisingly, incor­porated his hatred of heresy in its design. In the bowels of the magnificent monastery, he had several prison cells built, in which he incarcerated those he suspected of following an unorthodox faith.

  Despite this untiring dedication to the cause, Torquemada was not able to efficiently manage his excessive work load as he continued to rack up the years and on 23 June 1494, Alexander VI, the third pope to witness his reign as Inquisitor General, issued a bull appointing assistants to help the forever burning ‘Light of Spain’, as he became known. Martin Ponce de León, Inigo Manrique de Lara, Francisco Sánchez de la Fuente and Alfonso Suárez de Fuentesalce provided inquisitorial support to the establishment’s head, enabling him to continue in his given roles as hammer of the heretics and honour to his order. With this aid in place, Torquemada was able to focus on one of his last triumphs, managing to secure papal permission to have all conversos banned from the Dominican priory at Avila. The ruling, which came into effect on 12 November 1496, was sanc­tioned on the grounds that these converted Jews were impeding the spiritual work of the true Catholics with their lack of Christian faith and hatred of Torquemada’s Inquisition.

  His fourth and final set of Instructions were composed in May 1498, just four months before his death. These revised laws were generally considered to demon­strate a more temperate attitude to heresy and its management. At long last the ascetic friar from Castile was showing signs of softening, but his legacy would remain strong. In his fifteen-year reign of violence, persecution and terror, his Spanish Inquisition grew from a single court at Seville to a network of more than twenty holy seats of judge­ment, enabling a more efficient style of Inquisition to the original papal system of the thirteenth century.

  Tomás de Torquemada finally stopped fighting on 16 September 1498, dying peacefully in his bed in Avila at the grand old age of seventy-eight. He could afford to rest for he had assisted in the successful expulsion of the Jews from his beloved Spain and had lived long enough to witness the Moors driven out of Granada. His reign as Inquisitor General was the fundamental reason for the ascendancy of the Spanish Inquisition. It should come as no surprise, what with his love of architecture, that Torquemada provided such strong foundations for lasting success as well.

  Despite being laid to rest in the chapel of his own monastery in Avila, Torquemada – or at least his remains – endured a restless existence. It began with Philip II of Spain who, holding Torquemada in such high regard, exhumed the legendary inquisitor from his modest grave and had him buried in a spot more befitting his status within a cathedral during the latter half of the sixteenth century. Here he remained for a couple of centuries, until his bones were exhumed once more by unidentified grave robbers in 1836. These mysterious tomb raiders scattered what was left of the first Inquisitor General of Spain, leaving his final resting place unknown. Whether this was in tribute to Torquemada is uncertain. Perhaps it was a final act by his opponents wishing a fitting end to the notorious inquisitor who had been responsible for so many exhumations of his own for posthumous execution.

  Diego de Deza

  Succeeding the infamous Torquemada in the role of Grand Inquisitor, Diego de Deza endeavoured to surpass the level of terror and torment reached by the original head of the Spanish Inquisition, sending more than 2,500 heretics to the stake. He ensured that the Holy Order continued to instil fear into its enemies as they entered a new century of religious control. Like many of the Grand Inquisitors to succeed him, Diego de Deza came from humble beginnings. Born in the ancient, high-plain town of Toro in North-west Spain to parents Antonio de Deza and Doña Inés de Tavera in 1444, Diego would soon attain his own personal ‘high plain’, with royal connections and titles galore.

  Diego de Merlo, his guardian through childhood and a prominent member of the Crown of Castile, used his contacts to ensure Deza entered the royal circle at an early age, being made doncel – a royal page or squire – to Henry the Impotent, King of Castile, on 2 August 1461, aged just seventeen. Throughout his adolescence, Diego showed himself to be both a scholarly and spiritual teen and so would inevitably follow the well-trodden path to the door of the Dominicans, albeit not until the relatively advanced age of twenty-six. In 1470, he returned to his birthplace to join the order at the Convent of San Ildefonso to practise the Mendicant faith and focus on his piety. It was in 1480, however, that Diego de Deza would reveal signs of his future calling as a prosecutor of non-Catholics. His inquisitorial debut began well before his official appointment in 1498, when he was called to sit on an assembled tribunal to discover the heresies of one Pedro de Osma. Osma was, at that time, chief professor of Theology at the Dominican college at Salamanca but thanks, in part, to Deza’s examination, he was found guilty and, though not sent to the stake, he was immediately removed from his academic post. Deza had received his first taste of inquisitorial power and quickly stepped into the now-vacant role at the Salamancan college; one of many positions he would acquire over the coming years.

  This stint as tribunalist for the Spanish Inquisition brought Deza to the attention of many influential figures, none more so than the Spanish sovereigns themselves, Ferdinand and Isabella. The royal couple brought him further inside the royal circle in 1486, when they entrusted to him the esteemed position of tutor to their only son and heir apparent, Juan, Prince of Asturias. Unfortunately, the prospective king would not make it out of his teens, contracting tuber­culosis and succumbing to the illness in October 1497. His death failed to hinder Deza’s progress, as Ferdinand of Aragon quickly appointed him as his own personal confessor and spiritual counsel. By this time, Deza had already amassed the bishoprics of Zamora and Salamanca and, in the following year, would acquire a third, becoming the Bis
hop of Jaen in 1498. How­ever, this would not be his most promi­nent appoint­ment of that year. He went on to achieve the highest ecclesiastical role in all of Christendom, that of Grand Inquisitor. In a short space of time, Diego de Deza had created a close bond with the Spanish monarchs and had numerous religious titles that brought with them not only authority and responsibility, but considerable wealth as well. As the fifteenth century drew to a close, Diego de Deza was at the head of the world’s most feared religious establishment: the Spanish Inquisition.

  The Grand Imitator

  Diego de Deza reached the dizzy heights of Grand Inquisitor on 24 November 1498. However, this appointment only allowed him jurisdiction over the lands of Castile, Leon and Granada so he still had one more rung to climb to achieve ultimate control. Typically for Deza, this post was not a long time coming. In less than a year, his sphere of influence was increased to include all the territories under the rule of Ferdinand and Isabella, when on 1 September 1499 the lowly Castilian was made Grand Inquisitor of Spain. Due to his many commissions throughout Castile, it took Deza some time to actually begin his duties as the head of the Spanish Inquisition. Numerous dioceses for which he was responsible demanded his attention but, when he had seen to his sees, he was quick to put into effect his own ideas for strengthening the power of the Inquisition and the Catholic Church and, in turn, his own position.