r a time this power waned, when, afterward in the fifteenth century, it
assumed an aspect truly alarming. Three religions then prevailed in Spain:
Christians, Jews, and Mahommedans. The power of the nobles was a bar, at
the same time, to the absolute power of Ferdinand and Isabella. But this
engine of religious tyranny accomplished their ends, and became the most
powerful instrument of their policy. Owing to the fanatical preaching of
Fernando Nunez, who taught the persecution of the Jews to be a good work,
popular tumults prevailed, in which this people was plundered, robbed, and
murdered. Cardinal Mendoza, at Seville, in 1477, condemned and punished
many who persevered in opposition to the doctrines of his faith.

Mendoza recommended the establishment of the inquisition to Ferdinand and
Isabella. Dependent entirely upon the court, what better engine could they
use to render their power absolute, by confiscation of estates to fill
their treasury, and to limit the {81} power of the nobles and superior
clergy? In the assembly of the estates, therefore, held at Toledo, 1480, in
spite of all opposition, it was determined to establish a tribunal, under
the name of the general inquisition (_general inquisicion suprema_). This
was opened in Seville, 1481. Thomas de Torquenada, prior of the Dominican
convent at Segovia, father-confessor to Mendoza, had been appointed first
grand inquisitor by the king and queen, in 1478. The peaceful teachings of
the meek and lowly Jesus do not seem to have had much influence on this
political Boanerges. He had two hundred familiars, and a guard of fifty
horsemen, but he lived in continual fear of poison. The Dominican monastery
at Seville soon became insufficient to contain the numerous prisoners, and
the king removed the court to the castle in the suburb of Triana. At the
first _auto da fe_ (act of faith), seven apostate Christians were burnt,
and the number of penitents was much greater. Spanish writers relate that
above seventeen thousand were given up to the inquisition. More than two
thousand were condemned to the flames the first year, and great numbers
fled to neighboring countries. The then pope, Sixtus IV., opposed the
establishment of this court, as being the conversion of an ecclesiastical
into a secular tribunal: but he was compelled to submit to circumstances,
and actually promulgated a bull subjecting Aragon, Valencia, and Sicily,
the hereditary dominions of Ferdinand, to the {82}